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| Essays, Memoirs, Etc. |
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| Where am I? I would like to take this time to talk to you about an extremely important topic: Where am I? I, like most of you, have long pondered this question, thinking its answer is hidden so well that the human mind cannot find it. But, alas, I have found the answer to this question. I have sought wisdom from all people of importance, including President Bush, The Pope and the men at a local adult daycare center. Except for the old men at the local daycare, I received no useful information at all. (In case you’re wondering, the men at the daycare told me about the National Plumber’s Foundation plan to destroy the world in 2047, with a high application of Draino.) So I went to the glorious Internet. I knew of one place; one solitary kingdom; where I just might be able find the answer to the question that had frustrated me for the past 8 years. I went to my navigator bar, typed in the name of this holy site, and with a simple click of the mouse, I reached my destination: AskJeeves.com. As soon as I saw our bald, pinstripe-suit-clad butler friend, I was sure I would find the answer. I quickly typed in my question and in the blink of an eye a screen came up. Under the heading that said, "Click below for your answers", I saw a link that said, "Where am I?" I was so excited I almost called my good friend Bob, which would have cut off my Internet connection and leave me, still, answerless. As soon I calmed down a bit, I clicked on those words. Where am I? Ah, these simple phrase, that used to bring so many tears and so much anger, had suddenly made me the happiest person on earth, for I now the answer to this question; I knew the punch line in this confusing joke; I knew the secrets of the world. Soon the page started to download and on the top of the page it was there: Ask Jeeves Answer: The Milky Way Galaxy - Our Home. The Milky Way is the spiral galaxy we call home, as do roughly 100 billion other stars. It looks very much like other spiral galaxies when viewed from above. There are spiral arms and a nucleus. The Sun can be found rather far from the center of the Galaxy, halfway to the edge of visible matter along the Orion spiral arm. The Sun is revolving at a speed of half a million miles per hour around the center of the Galaxy, yet it will still take 200 million years for it to go around once. Radio observations of gas in our Galaxy reveal that the gas is feeling the gravitational effect of matter far beyond the edge of the visible Galaxy. Astronomers call this material dark matter, since electromagnetic radiation from it is not currently detectable at any wavelength. Like other spiral galaxies, the Milky Way has a bulge, a disk, and a halo. Although all are parts of the same galaxy, each contains different types of objects. The central bulge contains old stars, the halo houses globular clusters and dark matter, and the disk is filled with gas, dust, and young stars. Our Sun is itself a fairly young star at only 5 billion years old. The Milky Way is at least 5 billion years older than that. The ages of globular clusters suggest that it may be closer to 10 billion years older. Recent observations of the numbers and distributions of stars in the Galaxy suggest that it may have a bar! This source of this material is Windows to the Universe, at http://www.windows.ucar.edu/ at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). ©1995-1999, 2000 The Regents of the University of Michigan; ©2000-01 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. All Rights Reserved. I hope this answer has changed your life as much as it did mine. Thank you, and always remember where you are. Petty Little Complaints Really Short Forward for a Really Short Essay I’m different. "Well of course you are, ya’ silly! We’re all different." I’ve heard this about a million times but never really understood how much it could mean to me until recently. I am not like most of my friends, and I admit this can sometime depress me, but in this essay you’ll see an aspect of my friend’s lives that I will continuously mock and demean. Enjoy. The Essay I rarely pay attention to anyone because I am so busy daydreaming. I’m the kind of person who enjoys closing her eyes and being taken away into her mind where she can just sit and wonder about numerous people, the meaning of life, and true love. And wouldn’t you know it, fate has given me a ton a friends whose thoughts are mainly comprised of boys, gossip, and shopping. And unless I’m in the mood to hear about Freddie Prinze Jr., the cute new cashier at Redner’s, or the ongoing debate over the convenience of quick drying nail polish over the quality of the regular kind, I can’t usually communicate that well with my friends. I, while still taking time to have fun and talk with normal people (who, because of life’s irony, aren’t my close friends), would just as soon die to not hear the name Justin Timberlake again. The funny part about this all is that I don’t want friends that I can talk about big moral issues with, I want friends who like to have a good time. Now, if you’re idea of a good time is going to the mall for the Delia’s sale or standing around a bunch of "hot" guys who have an ultra huge personality (or lack thereof), then you’re probably wondering why I can’t have a good time with a lot of my friends. But for those of you that find that kind of thing extremely boring and/or annoying, then you should why it can be hard hanging out with people that drool over anything with the "Y" chromosome. So I let them do the talking and I sit there daydreaming. They could talk forever, and they probably would if things like eating, sleeping, or breathing didn’t get in the way. It’s not that my friends are shallow people. They are about the sweetest and most caring people that I know, thus making them my friends. It’s just that most of the time, I don’t feel like listening hearing all the petty little complaints. This is why I am constantly daydreaming. Even at the end of the day, after pretending to listen to countless little problems from a bunch of hyperactive people, I still enjoy my thinking session each and every night. I spend on the average, 2 hours each night thinking. Nothing really specific, sometimes nothing even important, but nonetheless, I continue contemplating all the decisions I make along with the how I really feel about other people. You know, the same other people that I talk to but never really connect with. The same people that spend hours upon hours talking AT me and asking me for advice. Most of my friends call me a good listener. I relish this, and find it entirely amusing that the only time I am regarded as a good listener is when I just shutup. I mean, these people are able to sit forever and just tell me about all this crap that, most of the time, I don’t care about it. (Although not all: sometimes I enjoy hearing about my friend’s latest problem with her dry-clean only sweater.) These people take up my useful thinking time and bore into my brain these stupid questions and touchy-feely statements that they keep repeating. "Okay, Britney or Christina?" and "Am I really not too bossy?" and my favorite: "I feel like no one ever listens to me." Eventually, most of my "clients" pause from their ridiculously annoying stories and see me gazing out the window, thinking of what new adventure I could, but never do, come across tomorrow. "You know what I mean?" "What?" I say glancing back from my frosted stare. "Oh yeah readin’ ya loud and clear." This usually gets some laughs, although I don’t know whether it’s for the humor in that line or for the fact that I was obviously not paying attention to their petty little complaints. But you know what? I love my life, my friends, and those little conversations. If I were given the chance to change any of those, I wouldn’t…I think. No, but really, I wouldn’t give up any of them. Not even those petty little complaints. Lesley Barth |
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