romerooremor-blog

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today, catherine saw a video of a young boy making silly faces and she thought it wasn’t that funny. I thought it was. The kid was very cute and she didn’t really seem to think he was cute. We argued for at least a minute on this topic. Then I realized she might be in a weird mood because she is hungry and I had been doing hw for a while. 

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Lindsey told me a story about how her housemate cried because he felt that the house they lived in was too “man hating.” While most people in that house are very critical of men (for appropriate reasons), they don’t hate men. Lindsey tried to hold back laughter as the housemate vented about how he feels unsafe to be there. It made me feel sorry for him because he probably genuinely felt as though it was a personal attack, but he doesn’t know that in order to keep sane, Lindsey and her housemates need to vent and be critical about men in their home. 

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oh boy

I was working with my group trying to combine the scripts and that was pretty difficult. It’s hard working with people that you did not choose to work with, people whose ideas are far from your own. A lot happened that made me upset, but I had to continue to work in a productive way. The one thing that really took out a lot of energy was deciding on which story structure we would pursue. When we tried to combine the stories, it was clear that certain story lines stood out over others because they had more scripts involved with that story line. Because there were two deaths I suggested that we split those stories into two where a person loses a loved one. Then I suggested that my queer character and xio’s character who is a person of color be the main characters in those story lines that end with deaths. However, when it came down to Justin having to change the gender/sexuality of his character, he wouldn’t allow it. Everyone else in the group was chill with the idea but him. When I asked why, he said it wouldn’t have the same emotion as before. I argued that homosexual couples are the same as heterosexual couples, they can love each other just as much and they can also find ways to have kids. He kept saying it wouldn’t work with how he wrote and when I told hm to elaborate he kept evading the subject and turned it around on me saying that I wouldn’t want my character to be straight. (Mind you, my script is about a girl who comes out as gay to her mother so..) Anyway, eventually I decided to give up. It wasn’t worth the energy to try and change his mind. 

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This kind of stuff happens to women a lot

My friend told me a story that happened while she was traveling back to Santa Cruz from LA one weekend. She was driving and decided to make a pit stop for lunch and while she was walking back to her car she noticed a shirtless, white man in his late 40′s, early 50′s standing near her car. When she walked up to her car he said, “If another person doesn’t smile at me, I don’t know what I am gonna do?” So my friend politely smiled and got into her car and then he began to yell and ask why she wasn’t talking to him. She nervously started her car while he stood outside of her car yelling at her to stay and talk to him. When she finally drove away she feared that he might have gotten into a car to folloW her. She was scared and paranoid the rest of the drive home. So in this situation, her goal was to get home safe and his was to get her attention to talk.

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housemates

The other day my housemate Leah told me that she wanted our other housemate, Jordan, to move out next year so she could have a more feminine presences in the house. Jordan needs to find a roommate before next year and that scares Leah because she doesn’t want to live with a stranger. So yesterday she approached Jordan and asked him if he found a roommate yet. He said he didn’t so she told him to post something on facebook and she said she wanted him to have a post by the end of the week and he was kinda nonchalantly agreeable so she didn’t really believe him so she emphasized what she wanted and then asked if he was for sure planning on staying. He said he was 100% down to stay. Leah doesn’t want him to stay so she furthered the pressure and said “okay well yeah definitely have someone soon or like we are gonna have to talk about it more seriously.” So tensions are high.

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My cat’s name is Chubbs

My girlfriend got mad at me because I don’t clean the litter or change my cats water as frequently as I need to. She said that she is always the one doing it and she was FED UP. [Her objective: get me to do my chores so kitty is taken care of]. I, being the good cat owner I am, said I will get better at it, I am just very busy this quarter with my classes and my new job. [OBSTACLE: busy lifestyle]. She became more upset with me and said that I shouldn’t own a cat if I can’t take care of it. I got mad here and argued that I need my cat because she makes me happy and she is very therapeutic to have around. Then I remembered that my girlfriend hates the cat hair that is everywhere and just wants my cat gone because of the cat hair. So I said that and she got really defensive. She said she doesn’t like cat hair, but she loves my cat and she just wants what is best for her. I quickly came to my senses and agreed so I made an alarm clock every day at 9pm to remind me to clean the litter and put fresh water in her bowl every day!

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Rico told me about his experience with a ghost in the same house I am currently living in now. Why did he tell me? who knows. I am very afraid of strange things so I don’t like the idea of ghosts messing with me. Rico said that the bathroom fan was on really late at night so he tried to turn it off, but the door was pushing back at him so he couldn’t open it. Then the door shut and closed on his jacket sleeve. He had to pull really hard to get it free. When he did, he rushed to his room and locked his bedroom door. This story scared me because I use that same bathroom every day. Now I am going to be scared every day. 

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I hate my neighbor. He is the WORST. So I played drums once in the middle of the day and he yelled at my housemate cursing at him because it was too loud. Okay, I get it, most people aren’t into that. That’s fine, but don’t be so rude about it. Anyway, any time he is outside of his house he stares at people. It’s weird. He won’t try to hide that he’s looking at you, he will just do it. But I think he only does it with people that he feels he has some sort of power over. He typically chooses more feminine people to stare at. I don’t think he would really stare at another white man the way he stares at me and my friends. It’s also not necessarily a creepy, sexual kinda stare, it’s like he is mad or something. So the other day I drive home and as I am getting out of my car I see him there STARING. He didn’t once take his eye off of me. It’s not even in a friendly neighborly way, If you look back at him, he doesn’t smile, he just keeps that same ugly, scowling, glare. So I’m grabbing stuff out of my car progressively getting creeped out and I am trying to figure out what to do. Do I stare back? Do I pretend like i don’t notice? Do I wave? I don’t want him to think that he can do this without a reaction so I look at him, but I couldn’t hold the stare. I’m afraid of him. He’s a physically fit white man in his late 30′s/early 40′s. I don’t want to get in any trouble. But i feel his eyes on me, weighing on me, making my whole body tense as I grow anxious wondering what I should do. What does he get out of this? Must be some kind of a power dynamic. So as I’m approaching my door I look at him and he has his head complete turned to the side at this point so he can maintain his gaze. As I’m looking at him I nod my head as to say, I acknowledge you. I figured, it’s polite enough right? how can he get mad at that? But then I see him start to slightly walk toward me so I look down and i book it inside. Maybe he wasn’t going to approach me, but I wasn’t going to take my chances.

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I had work on Monday where I help kids at a middle school make a short film. In one of my groups that I work with there was a girl who not participating and on her phone the whole time. When I asked her to join the group and be productive by helping her classmates she wouldn’t listen to me. She seemed to be in her own little world where she was happy and nothing could bother her. Unfortunately my job was to make sure students all participated. So essentially my objective was to get her to work and my obstacle was that she had her phone and was acting sort of oblivious when I would ask her to help the group. So I asked her to put her phone away, but I didn’t wanna make her not like me nor did I want any of the kids to not like me so I had to keep my cool. I noticed nothing I would say would change her mind so after class I talked to the teacher about how she was acting and the teacher decided to take her out of the project, but not because she was acting badly, but because she had been going through a really terrible time at home. The teacher didn’t say much other than that one time the girl came to school with a black eye. I couldn’t believe it. It hurt so much to hear that this girl was going through that. I couldn’t stop thinking about it the rest of the day. I wished there was something I could do. All I can do now is just be nice to her. The teacher decided she would have this girl work with her and not in the group projects which I thought would be a good idea because it would allow this girl to have one on one time with a really kind adult. 

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Bronson

I got out of my car the other day this lady, about 45, was frantically walking around calling the name “Bronson”. I figured it must be a lost cat or dog that she was calling for, but when she saw me she ran up to me and asked if I had seen any 13 year old boys on their skateboards around here. She was looking for her son. Before I could say anything I heard a skateboard sound coming from up the street. There were two boys together and the woman yelled in a ferocious mother yell. “Bronson, where were you?!” He said he went to 7/11 to get slurpees and the mom said he was supposed to be home by 5 and he wasn’t answering any of his phone calls. He argued that it wasn’t a big deal and he didn’t even have any hw. I felt so awkward in the middle of all of it. Then the mom got so mad she just walked away. The kid said bye to his friend and followed his mom home. 

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4   /   2   0

4/20 is a very special holiday to some folks here in Santa Cruz. It is also very special for the police of Santa Cruz because this is the day that they get to give tickets left and right. Apparently they gave 100 citations that day! Well anyway, my friends was one of them. He told me about how he was driving down bay leaving campus and a cop pulled him over. The cop pulled him over for speeding. He repeatedly told the officer that he was going with the flow of traffic and why did they target him only. He is latino so he is used to racial profiling, but he wasn’t gonna let it get him this time. My friend’s goal was to get out of getting a ticket while the cops goal was to give a ticket. The obstacle my friend faced was the fact that it was a special day. While my friend was not under any substance influence, the cop made him get out of the car to see if he was high. Luckily, he only ended up getting a speeding ticket. My friend decided not to be difficult because he knew that things could get out of hand for him unnecessarily.  

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Pants

I was in salvation army and a man came in and grabbed a pair of pants then ran out. The man’s goal: theft/to be clothed. The obstacle came when the manager yelled at the man telling him to come back, but when it came down to it. The man did not come back and the manager did nothing. I had never seen the man before. It happened so fast. I have never witnessed a robbery before. 

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BIG BAD

The other day I was driving to band practice and I was already running late so I was in a rush. You see, my band has a practice space that we can only use for about two and a half hours a week so time was of the essence. So I’m in the car driving in the fast lane when, BAM. it hits me. A terrible burst of gas swells up in my tummy causing me to have wildly painful aches. “This has happened before,” I say to myself. “And it never ends well.” I try to think fast as I am short on time. I think maybe I can push through the pain and maybe it will pass by the time I get to the practice space. I force myself to imagine something other than the pain, but this ache was no ordinary ache. It was the BIG BAD GAS that I knew all too well. The most important thing about the BIG BAD GAS is that there is only one cure. TUMS! I knew that if I didn’t get a Tums then there would be no end to my pain. I had to make a decision. My goal: get to band practice as soon as possible. My obstacle: my gas pain. My crisis point came at a stop light when I could barely press on the gas peddle due to my pain. So I did the smart thing and just turned around and went home to get my tums. 

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Rico’s Birthday

My housemate Rico turned 21 this past monday so naturally our plan was to visit a bar or two. We had to wait til it was officially 12 am though so we waited. It was me, Rico, and Catherine and we were waiting on our friend Roan who is always late. Rico and Roan have been best friends since middle school so we couldn’t start the celebrations without her. It was about 11:40 and still no word from Roan so Rico called her. When she picked up the phone she said she had fallen asleep and wasn’t sure if she wanted to go out because she had a 9am the next morning. Rico was pretty upset because on Roan’s birthday he had work the nest morning and still went celebrated with Roan. So they argued on the phone for a bit. Rico’s objective was to get Roan to hang with us and Roan just wanted to fall back asleep. Rico mentioned how Roan has been not the best friend lately and that he is always doing stuff for her. Finally she realized she owed it to Rico to go out. So she did. The clock hit 12am and she swung open the door with a bottle of vodka. The rest is history. 

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Leah and the NASTY MEAN Car Dealership

My housemate Leah needed to get her car fixed so she went to the Volkswagon dealership and they were being very condescending and not helpful at all. We knew that this would not be a delightful experience as car dealerships often treat women poorly due to their “lack of car knowledge”. Her car took an extra day to get fixed, but that was not the real problem. The real problem was that the employees were dismissive and rude to Leah and Leah just wanted to be treated fairly. After her experience with them, she wrote bad reviews about them all of the internet, Facebook, yelp, and their website. Now everything is okay and Leah has her car back as well as her pride. 

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8th grade was not that long ago

I recently got a job working with the Artsbridge program where I help a group of 8th graders make a short film about a prevalent historical movement. Today was my first day working with the kids and to be honest, I was pretty nervous about it; like would the kids like me? Would they think I was cool? (These were common thoughts I had when I was in the 8th grade so I guess things don’t change much.) Anyway, I was able to work with a group of four girls today and their topic for their film is on the women’s march on Washington. Two of the girls were very talkative and would often get carried away on tangents while the other two were quieter. One of the girls, they called her Tea, had moved here from China recently and I was told that she doesn’t talk much because she is still learning English. I noticed right away that she wouldn’t talk and would mostly just keep her head down. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, but I did want to keep a productive discussion going so I talked a lot with the other girls in the group. I asked if they have ever had a moment in their lives where they were treated unfairly due to their gender. Everyone, except Tea, had a story to tell. It was so fascinating to see what they had to say. One girl talked about how she was in a lab group with only boys and they wouldn’t let her touch any lab equipment. Then I asked Tea if she had any stories and she just shook her head so I said that it’s okay and she didn’t have to talk if she didn’t want to. We continued our discussion going off on more tangents and then I see Tea raise her hand. I immediately stopped the discussion and let her speak and she told a story about how she was told by a male teacher and a male classmate that she’s not good at math because she’s a girl which made her really sad. I felt so much pain for her in that moment and just told her that being a girl doesn’t mean she is less than. I tried to reassure her that she should continue doing math if she wants to. I felt so happy to see her open up and talk about something that hurt her. It was an incredibly gratifying moment. Later, towards the end of class, there was an earthquake drill and as I was sitting underneath a desk I turned and saw Tea smiling at me. So I think I made a friend today! 

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My girlfriend Catherine and I got into a tiny fight in the bathroom of the Catalyst downtown. It was little and kinda funny. She was a pretty drunk and she rarely drinks so it hit her hard and she was mad at me because I went to the bathroom without her and she thought i ditched her to hangout with other friends. She was afraid being alone at the show because she didn’t have anyone else to hangout with. I told her I was going to the bathroom, but she thought I said I was going to get water and when I was gone for a long time she got upset and walked around and couldn’t find me and finally she checked the bathroom and I was there. She came in and called my name and i was in one of the stalls having a rough time and she was like “why did you ditch me, you always do this, you leave me alone to hang with other friends.” she has said this to me before so i immediately got upset, but I asked what was going on. She said I ditched her and I laughed because I was actually in the bathroom the whole time. I was having diarrhea. When I explained that to her she laughed too and said she was sorry for getting mad.