BRBcoffee

Is this picture not badass?! Perhaps it is my half-delusional mind as a result of finals week, but I greatly enjoy it.

Peace.
Elaine

P.S.
This is definitely my best work to date, and I’m not talking about the photo because I totally stole it off a free layout example.

Well, because this is my first blag, I guess I will introduce myself and whatnot. I am Elizabeth, I am close to being seventeen years old, and I live in the United States. Just as a warning, most of my blogs will be on Religion; I like Religion. However, this one will break away from that mold a tad. Why? Because it’s easy this way.

Three days ago in the mail, I got a letter from a Time Capsule that I wrote to myself when I was six–which was a little more than ten years ago. I’ll pick and choose a few parts because some of it I can’t read/understand and I’ll try to make it more flowing than it really is.

Dear Future Me,

I am six. I like bears. I want to be a Princess. I hope you are a Princess by now. My best friend is Tray. I hope he is still me best friends. (BAD GRAMMAR, SIX YEAR OLD ME, BAD GRAMMAR!) My dog is T-Rex. He is the better (I guess I mean best. Oye.) I live in the best house in the world. I share a room with my brother and my sister. Sunflowers are the better (best) flower. I love everyone.

I think the future will be changed. (different, perhaps?)  We might have channels on our tb (I guess I mean tv, not tuberculosis) other than the one. I think their (there) will be floating cars in 2010. I think all meanness (I think war would be better under context) will go away and everyone will be smiling.

I give you my mickey mouse watch that grandmother gave me. It is good and the better (best).

Truly Yours,

EBG

The lingering thoughts from my childhood still correspond with my every day life. I still want to be a Princess. I want to marry a Prince and have every little thing handed to me. I want to let everyone else worship me–even to this day. It’s just one of the things that I will always want; it’s one of those unrealistic ideologies that we get as children that stay with us for our entire life. But trying to hang on to the past isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Keeping dreams has more pros than cons, and I’d encourage it in anyone.

The rest of the paragraph saddens me. About a month after I wrote this letter, we moved from my birthplace in Virginia all the way to Massachusetts. I came back to that town in Virginia last year the week that my best friend as a child–Tray–got hit by a vehicle and died. T-Rex had the same fate in Massachusetts.

The paragraph about the future is intriguing. Whether it is childhood innocence that fueled the paragraph, or me just acting like myself, the simplistic thought process of a six year old is possibly also the best thought process. No more meanness in the world. I guess I can expand that to no more war, no violence, and no cruelty. Aren’t I just the best optimist in the world? I think so.

What does this all mean, you may ask? It is simple! A fundamental theme of humanity is to dream. It is to hope, whether it be for Princess-hood or to remain friends with someone from first grade to eleventh. Even though some of these dreams don’t come true, and especially even if the future isn’t as expected, we, human beings, have got to continue to dream. We have got to constantly hope, whether it be in something like having cable in ten years or receiving a Mickey Mouse watch, there always needs to be hope.

So regardless of whether you are six or sixteen (or sixty… or six hundred), you need to constantly have faith in something. It doesn’t matter what it is, just always have faith, always have hope, and always have dreams.

P.S. If you’re a Prince, let’s get married.

OK is a man sideways. If you did not already know this, was your mind blown? Also, the word bed looks like a bed. The question then becomes, is there a way of putting a man on a bed using nothing but ascii characters?

In other news, Windows 7 has not blue-screened on me for over a day, which is certainly a new record. Granted, I haven’t really done anything, and it has stopped receiving input from a bluetooth keyboard (that it insists is still connected) several times, but you just have to take what you get and run with it.

Going to some concerts tonight… Does anyone know who the fuck the “Skanksters” are?

Over the past couple of months I have been introduced to a new culture. Experiencing such a thing is quite, what’s the right word for it, organic. Learning anything new is always a rich experience, but when it comes to culture, it is more profound. The process is rather predictable; (1) start with total ignorance, (2) become aware of said ignorance, and (3) lose/lessen that ignorance. As a newcomer to this particular culture, I feel almost like an ambassador between two worlds. That might be rather precocious of me, but it is truly how I feel. I think it is only natural to feel loyalty to that which we respect and value, so if you have come to value two cultures, you should feel loyalties to both and want both to peacefully coexist.

At this point you may be wondering what specific culture I’m talking about, or you may be totally disinterested and drifting your cursor closer and closer to the key which will exit you out of this blog. In case of the latter, I am now going to capitalize the name of the culture which I have been referring to in an attempt to catch your attention:

AMERICAN DEAF CULTURE!

Did it work? Yeah, probably not. However, many of you may not even be aware of such a culture’s existence. Many of you may think American Deaf Culture is no different than American Culture. Many of you may think that Deafness is an unfortunate disability that only limits those individuals who possess it. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.

American Deaf culture does exist, it is entirely separate from American Culture, and the only “disability” which may be associated with Deafness is that which the hearing world forces upon it.

Now, you may be feeling offended, confused, or downright dumbfounded at that statement, but hang tight and I promise you it will get better.

I should start by saying that “Deaf” and “deaf” are two different things. Being “deaf” is being without hearing. Being “Deaf” is being a member of a culture. Not all who are “deaf” are “Deaf,” and  sometimes being “Deaf” does not mean you’re “deaf.” Have I thoroughly scrambled your mind yet? Let me elaborate. Some people who are born deaf do not acknowledge their culture and are therefore not part of the Deaf culture. The Deaf culture mostly consists of those who have a serious hearing loss, but some hearing people are included too.

Within the Deaf community, deafness is not viewed as a disability. It is simply a gift. They do not feel like they are missing out on anything by not being able to hear. In fact, they think we, the hearing folk, are the ones to pity because we are so easily distracted by noise. With the invention of the Cochlear Implant, many children (very few adults go through with the surgery) are being taken out of the Deaf world they were born into and being placed in between their old world and the world of the hearing. This is a very controversial topic as most Deaf people think the Cochlear Implant will be the death of Deaf Culture. On the flip side, many parents feel that getting the C.I. will give their children more opportunities in life. Both sides have valid points, but I cannot see any reason to get a C.I. unless you think that being Deaf is an inferior quality which should be fixed at any and all costs.

I realize I could go on and on detailing the intricacies of A.D.C., but perhaps I should save that for another blog. The lasting effect I want to get across to you, my reader, is to change your mindset towards Deaf individuals. They are not a burden on society, they are not disabled, they are no different than you or I in the sense that their deafness is simply a quality they possess, just like some of us are gifted with athleticism and some of us are not. Should those of us who are not athletic be made to feel inferior? No. Should we be treated less like humans? No. The same goes for the Deaf. They are perfectly fine the way they are, they do not need to be changed or “fixed,” and we should make an effort to reach out to them and bridge the two worlds in a harmonious coexistence.

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Welcome, dear reader, to BRBcoffee’s final resting-place. Although it has had different names through the ages, this blog is nearly as old as the interwebs themselves! It started out as a personal myspace-blog, but it has grown since then, both in size, maturity, diversity, and last but most definitely not least, number of authors.

It has not been an easy road for my poor little blog. It seems I have a tendency to wait with migrating it to a new place and platform until long after the necessity arises. From myspace it was moved to blogger, I believe, where it thrived for some time. I fear I neglected it quite often, and I guess that’s when I got the idea to get some help in keeping it alive. Enter Elaine and Vegard.

It looked something like this

Now I don’t remember if there were any intermediate steps, but somehow I reached the conclusion that tumblr would be the best place to host a collaborative blog. I clearly did not know what I was getting myself into! Customization at tumblr is dreadful, multiple authors is a feature only in name, and just trying to add comment functionality is a royal pain in the ass. However, through combined effort, we made it work … somewhat. The tumblr blog is both the darkest and the brigtest chapter in the history of this blog. Bright, because it saw some brilliant entries from three brilliant people, dark because it suffered mass neglection. Clearly just adding more authors means nothing if there is no driving force.

Which brings us here. The truth is, the tumblr-thing was never supposed to be a long-lasting experiment. Since before we set it up, I had been talking about buying a proper domain and setting up something myself. I even had another friend of mine (who might be making some cameos later on), partially on board with programming the thing. Clearly, such a thing did not happen, but I did buy brbcoffee.com, .net, .info, and .org quite some time ago now! It’s been “under construction” ever since, which here means “Bjørn isn’t doing anything because he’s lazy.”

But lo and behold, brbcoffee is under construction no more! I’ve decided that I don’t like lazy people, and as a testament to that I’ve decided to do this again, for real this time! I will not disappoint any more waiting readers. Instead I shall make this site something I can be proud of, and I think that with a little help from my friends, that goal is very much attainable!

So what are your thoughts? Are you looking forward to reading and listening to us rant?
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Song of the blog: L’s Theme