For the first time ever I am hanging out in a coffee shop using the Internet! I know, y'all didn't know I was so clever and technologically advanced. And you are surprised that I sprang for a laptop. Wrong on that one. They gave me one at work. Yay! I accidentally stopped in a Starbucks to get out of the rain once shortly after I got my new laptop. So, I was like, this is it! Finally I will join the proud tradition of Hemingway and Satre and write something (erm...email) in a...cafe! So I got out the laptop and was disappointed to find that you had to pay for the Internet. :( So today I looked on the Internet to find a place with a free connection and here I am! It is a gay/lesbian coffee shop, I think. I fit right in with my hair. I bet that are many a pushing 40 lesbian gal that thinks I look lik quite a propect! Hehehehehe. Well, I guess I shouldn't get crazy...

Anyway, yesterday my friend of 20 years said words I never expected to hear... Hey, you were right and really saw this coming. I should listen to your more often. Maybe she shouldn't rush into this. After all, she might have to wait quite awhile for more payback.

Anyway, we were just talking and she told me about a horrid crime in Knoxville. Four or five men carjacked, kidnapped, raped, and murdered a UT student and her boyfriend. I don't know if he was a student. You might be thinking, "Well, who cares whether he was a student..." I am coming to that. I said like, "What? When? Why haven't I read about this on CourtTV? Then it became clear. The victims were white and the perpetrators were black. She asked me why I though I should have heard about the crime. Didn't things happen like this all the time? I told her this is yet another media bias in crime reporting based on race of victims and perpetrators. I said the lack of reporting on the crime will eventually become national news and indeed it did... I saw a story about it on MSNBC yesterday.

Naturally, the bias in news reporting is generally to ignore non-white victims of crime. This is perhaps most obvious in cases of kidnapping/murder of young girls and women. Chandra, Lacy, Natalee, the runaway bride, and now that English child that was kidnapped at some foreign resort... (It is rather strange that violence against women and girls is usually considered completely unimportant and boring with these few exceptions.) This obsession with missing white girls/women is commonly noted in the press. I almost felt that the media was pretending to be interested when they focused for awhile on two missing black sisters. Anyway, the reason for this media blindspot is clear. Our society doesn't value non-white people. They are not quite "like us" and therefore do not merit the same attention from the media, police, or criminal justice system (unless it is to arrest them.) It is not really a conspiracy because each media outlet rightly decides that their readers are not interested. If you read the CourtTV news on a given day you will get the impression that only white people are the victim of crimes. I mean, I should really stop reading this racially discriminatory reporting but...I am one of those weirdos who really likes to follow the crime news. I have an especially unhealthy interest in missing persons. I always wonder...where are they??

There are several aspects to this crime that make it CourtTV worthy regardless of the racial/ethnic background of the victims or perpetrators...

1. The crime involved a COLLEGE student. I guess this is one of the good children that the public cares about.
2. Multiple victims.
3. Multiple perpetrators. (A woman was one of the perps, too!)
4. Sexual abuse of both victims (i.e. a man which is way more interesting than yet another woman).
5. The length of time of torture between kidnapping and death.
6. The possibility it could be a hate crime (i.e. victims of different races).
7. Murder of a couple.

Believe, you make it big on CourtTV with a WHOLE lot less...

I am a chosen person!! I think we all pretty much suspected that I must be somehow "chosen" for something. I found out from a DNA test from the National Geographic genographic project that I am most likely an Ashkenazi Jew on my mother's side. Subsequently, I read that most of the people who were murdered by the Nazis were Ashkenazi Jews. :( It seems that our end was written in the name. Eek. Am I the only one to ever notice that? I called my mother and told her the good news. She remarked, "you know, I always thought I was Jewish!" And I said, "Me too!" She said that she thought she was Jewish because her dad looked Jewish. I probably just thought if anyone was a choosen person it should probably be me. Also, my last name is German and I have never liked the Germans (or Japanese for that matter) for their post-WWII weasel-ways.

I posted my DNA results on a website and a woman with my dad's last name contacted me. So, we are both "haplogroup k" on our mothers' side (so we likely have an ancester in common) and one of her relatives has my dad's side's last name.* Hmmm. It is probably just my lack of understanding of genetics that makes this interesting to me. Ahh, the joys of ignorance.

More about me and where I have been all this time. Two things have driven me back...

1. Lack of people to talk about "Second Life" with...
2. Lack of people to talk about celebrity news with...
3. Well, there is one more. I was about to break with Paris Hilton over her acting like such a child over her upcoming imprisonment and I was faced with previously listed problem number 2. (She posted an apologia on her blog so that break is postponed pending further developments.)

*I would state my slightly unusual last name but I don't want to go down the same ugly path of seeming like an idiot by having someone who knows me actually...read my blog.

The old Sarah who was interested in INXS Rockstar is dead dead dead. We did see INXS in Vegas last year and as per my usual reactions to concerts I nearly fell asleep.

I was just looking at my blog for an example of a silly blog post (a short order on this blog) to post on a blog for a class about social computing I am taking. I was totally to surprised to find that I have had a blog since 2003! I have sadly neglected it in the last few years but it seems pretty clear that I used to enjoy posting stuff! Maybe if I work really hard to make this relevatively interesting my one reader will return! My sister! Well, and her friend Lee.

I remembered my blog today because I was checking out Stumble Upon for my social computing class and I randomly stubbled upon a website from a young man who is suffering from chronic EBV...according to his doctor in Phoenix! Naturally, I jumped all over that... A doctor in my state who believes that people suffer from chronic EBV... Hopefully he will cough up the name.

Then, I got jealous of his site and remembered that my blog was my former best outlet for complaining about my health struggles and misadventures... Also, for posting goofy pictures...

So, we are back for the moment!