Happy Birthday, John Green!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much for everything you have taught me in your books and videos over the past 4 years. You have seriously changed my life. My Sunday blog this week will be in your (and Hank's) honor. I hope you had an amazing birthday. :D
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I think I have been posting too much on Tumblr lately. I have especially been posting too much about the X-Files. I kind of have these bouts where 5 or 10 posts in a row are all about the same thing--Harry Potter, The X-Files, a movie, a book, whatever. I hope my followers (all 38 of them...) don't think it's annoying. It's just the way my mind works. So yeah.
Man, it's a good thing there's only a week left of blogging every day. Because I am seriously running out of ideas.
I guess I will resort to the news.
While I'm in bed, before I fall asleep, I read the news on CNN on my phone. I start with the headlines, and move on to World, Health, Travel, and Justice. There was an article on CNNHealth yesterday "NY, DC briefly shaken by 9/11 memories during earthquake." It was a rather well-written article by CNN's standards,* discussing how even people who don't suffer from full on PTSD can experience short rather severe anxiety attacks when they experience something similar to what happened during a traumatic event. I personally can absolutely understand why in the first second of feeling a building shaking, the people of New York or DC would think it was a bomb or an aftershock from a bomb. And each person interviewed in the article said that after that first feeling of terror, they rationalized and realized it was an earthquake.
What bothered me was the comments people were leaving on the article. I wanted to post an example here, but it appears that CNN has deleted the really mean comments since last night. Good for them.
There were a lot of people criticizing the people of New York for not being able to get over 9/11, which I thought was completely useless and ridiculously insensitive. Perhaps our country does relate too many events to 9/11, but there's no denying it was a huge event for our country, changing the way we live. We do live a bit more in fear now. Which isn't necessarily a good thing, since that is the point of terrorism, but it's also not something that's going to go away after only 10 years. That would be like telling a soldier suffering PTSD from Vietnam to just get over it already, that was 40 years ago. And I don't mean that's the same kind of PTSD, because it absolutely is not. What I am saying is that we have no right to tell other people how they should feel or react to an event. The people of New York still remember the tragedy of that day, the explosions and fire, the feeling of buildings near the Twin Towers shaking. So, yeah, first thought, probably a panicking one. Of course.
I'm just saying we shouldn't be judging anyone on how they feel after any event. Each and every single person has a valid reaction and valid feelings. I know how it feels to have someone tell you to not feel a certain way, and that does nothing. You still feel that way deep down, you just stuff it until it comes up eventually and is so much worse.
In general, I'm not really a fan of CNN's reporting--they feature some very mundane articles that don't really seem like news--but I liked this article. It made sense. It went deeper than the general "aaaaaaaaaaa, earthquake on the East Coast" article, but was still informative. Yay!
While we're still discussing the news, my dad made a funny comment yesterday after one of the news articles in The Denver Post quoted someone saying, "Gaddafi's days are numbered." Said my dad, "But they didn't say how manydays." ;D
I also feel like I should be paying more attention than I am to what's happening with all that in Libya, but my French teacher was kind of obsessed with it back in April, so I stopped really wanting to know because I didn't enjoy that class. But I do try to pay attention more now.
Anyway. I have been working on thoroughly cleaning my room and finishing up packing. Tomorrow I will do my last load of laundry and pack everything away, and finish cleaning my room. And also walk to the mall to buy a one-piece Speedo at the sports store. It's only 54 hours until we leave the house to go to the airport. O_o
Okay, and I'm sure you guessed this by now, but I love words. And today Dictionary.com had a cool article saying why "Irene" is a funny name for a hurricane. You will see why in today's word of the day here.
Cheers!
Word of the Day: irenic--tending to promote peace or reconciliation; peaceful or conciliatory
Inspirational quote/photo of the day: 
Days until I leave for college: 2
*I actually don't really like CNN, but nytimes.com doesn't work well on my phone. CNN works beautifully. So I deal with it. It's boring, so it helps me fall asleep. When I get into trouble is when I start finding articles I actually want to read...
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