2003-08-13|6:42 p.m.
I�ve wanted to get this piercing for some time.
It looks the same from the back of the ear as well.
I saw it on a girl in NYC while I was competing in the National Model UN. And like the year before when I saw a lovely German girl at the same competition with a nose ring, I just had to have one. I should stop trying to get the things I like on others, on myself. Let�s just say it doesn�t ever work out right. My nose ring lasted maybe a month.
I went into the tattoo parlor/piercing place and asked if they could do what I wanted. The guy had said that he�d never done that before but that he�d try. This should have made me rethink going here, but I am incredibly impatient (and pay for it).
So, he brought me back to the room to be pierced and I laid myself down on the table. He brought out a ring and a barbell (which I didn�t want, but he wanted to try if he couldn�t get the ring to work). He pierced two holes (which I learned that cartilage makes a slight popping sound when pierced) and tried to put the jewelry through the holes. Both pieces he tried twice and each time it would get through one hole but struggle through the second. He made the hole off the mark.
A was holding my hand as he did it and could see all the blood pooling up in my ear. He looked nauseous.
The guy poking holes in me looked a bit ill and frustrated. He finally admitted he could not do it. Blood was all over his latex gloves. I agreed that it was time to give in.
He put the ring in one of the holes.
(note: taking pictures of one�s own ear is quite hard to do)
It wasn�t as painful as I thought it would be. It�s weird, when faced with expected pain, my mind thinks, rather than placing myself outside of the pain, absorb the pain and accept it. It�s one step before actually liking it, I suppose. I don�t enjoy feeling like my ear is getting ripped off the side of my head, but I found that I could deal with it.
No one really seems to like the piercing. MM hates how big the ring is. Others just think it�s in a weird spot.
It seems to be growing on me though.
�You�re a good sport. I don�t get tough people in here like you enough. You top my list,� the piercer said.
My piercing is that.
It was nice seeing my old high school best friend and her husband (A�s best friend in high school as well) and the children they have produced, which are like small extensions of our friends in many ways.
Enough of me talking about it, here are the pictures I saved from our visit:
Yeah, I was wrong about the Iraq war. In fact, I think it�s worse than I thought it would be. In next year�s budget, the Senate failed to allocate ANY money to either the war effort itself or the rebuilding of Iraq.
And if that wasn't enough, I read articles that say things like this:
Family shot dead by panicking US troops
Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car
And you can read that article here.
This is real pain. How do people accept this? I doubt I could.I think you should really read it too. It�s from a British paper, so sadly, it�s the news we don�t see on our own news networks. It is the other part of the story that we have spared ourselves the sight. So, change that, I think to myself. It is the least I can and should do.Here is another pretty interesting article to read as well about what is happening in the war.
And this from another article:
The Bush administration has abandoned the idea of giving the United Nations more of a role in the occupation of Iraq as sought by France, India and other countries as a condition for their participation in peacekeeping there, administration officials said today. "The administration is not willing to confront going to the Security Council and saying, 'We really need to make Iraq an international operation,' " said an administration official. "You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but right now the situation in Iraq is not that dire." "The last thing we need is a loss of momentum over the efforts to get things under control in Iraq," said a Western diplomat involved in these discussions. "Besides, the violence in Iraq is not as bad as everyone thinks it is." Everyday people die there from the fighting, Americans and Iraqis. How could it be more dire? They are estimating that the rebuilding will take over 600 billion dollars. Many areas still do not have running water and/or electricity. We're going to allow people to die and suffer because we're too worried that Europe is going to take a chunk of our booty.It's sick. And it's not about your safety or my safety or their safety. It's about greed and revenge and all the dark and horrible things that humans can produce.
I sincerely pray to God that electing another man to be president will somehow fix this.