I Heart Words (Can My Prof Tell I'm Not Paying Attention?)

So I'm in my Children's Literature class right now. Yes, right this second. (Sorry, mom.) Children's Lit, doesn't that sound fun? It would be more fun if we were reading Dr. Seuss instead of Anne of Green Gables but I guess I shouldn't complain. (I complain anyway. I hate Anne of Green Gables.)

The class in this room before us is like chemistry or calculus or something that has numbers and symbols in it and the previous prof likes to leave it all up on the board, as if to say, "Haha, you English students have no idea what this means." Which is absolutely true. But anyways, then my prof erases the garbage on the board and starts putting up notes about Cinderella (which is actually a terrifying story about chopping off your own feet to make someone love you.) which is something I find humorous for some reason.

Today we're actually talking about a lovely book called Harris and Me by Gary Paulson, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the fact that it's for kids. I do suggest that you read it someday or get your kids to read it. (Just get your kids to read anything. It scares me when I think about the number of people I know who never read.)

I love when profs swear. Mine just said, "You'll never find that the subtext in an adventure story is 'life's a bitch and then you die.'" Then we all had a laugh.

I recently decided to take the 50 Book Pledge. I'm really behind mostly because of school, and I'm becoming convinced that I may not make it to 50, but this is fun, and I'm almost positive that they don't send anyone to pop your eyes out with a spoon if you don't complete all 50 so I think I'll stick with it.

If you've been keeping up with my previous posts, you may know that I've been going through some lack of inspiration. But as I was searching for books to add to my "to-be-read bookshelf" for the Pledge, and I read excerpts and quotes, I found exactly what I needed. I found great writing and I knew that I wanted to make great writing too. Granted, I wouldn't exactly call any of my blog posts "great" or like the next A Man Without A Country or anything. However, I also found a spark of inspiration to start writing a story that's been hanging out in the back of my brain for a while. I couldn't sleep last night because I was so excited about it! Damn sleep. I hate it sometimes. I awoke this morning and the excitement was gone. (It was replaced with anger because I think everyone in the entire building I live in decided that this morning would be a fun time to slam a lot of doors.)

Since we're talking about being annoyed, I'm also annoyed because some chick decided to take my usual seat in class and I had to sit towards the back of the room. I'm pretty sure I'm going blind so my prof is extremely blurry and for all I know is an impostor. Also, my foot is asleep.

Where am I going with all of this? This is a question that maybe I ask too often. What I'm talking about is the power of books. The power of literature. The power of words in general. I love words. One of my favourite word-users, Stephen King, once said, "Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe." 

They're so much fun! There aren't a lot of things that I can name that are as versatile as words. Think about life without them. You would have just spent 20 minutes trying to use symbolism (symbolism other than letters/sounds organized in such a way that other people understand what you're communicating, that is) to order a sandwich. And what would our thoughts be like? They would just be pictures. That's lame. 

And what would comedy be? It would be all farcical. Or "fartsicle" which is a reference to the most recent episode of Parks and Recreation but is extremely appropriate at this moment. Comedy would be all fart jokes and slipping on banana peels. And as much as I enjoy watching the roadrunner outsmart Wile E. Coyote off of cliffs, I wouldn't want to rely on that for constant comedic entertainment.

Some of the most beautiful things in the world come from instances where the most perfect words are put together in the most perfect way.

Am I getting too sentimental about words? I don't think so. I think people overlook how strong and exciting words can be. They make you laugh, they make you cry, smile, think. With the exception of maybe the ocean or the grand canyon or a snow-capped mountain range or the opening scene of Up, I don't think there are things existing on Earth that are as powerful.

I mentioned Dr. Seuss. What a guy! Making up his own words. And why not? I make up words all the time. (You should see all the red underlines happening during most of my posts.) And Shakespeare practically invented half the words we use today. The possibilities with letters and words and sentences and paragraphs are endless! This is one of my favourite examples of playing with words:

r-p-o-p-e-s-s-a-g-r by e.e. cummings

I think that's a perfect place to stop. Because this might be the perfect poem. I don't know, though. Have a nice day.

Damn it, Dunham!

I don't know how many people caught the recent episode of HBO's Girls, or how many of you have given in to the madness surrounding the show (for the record, I started watching Girls BEFORE all the award business, so I was here first and the rest of you can stop crowding me on this wagon, okay?) For those of you who didn't watch, there are spoilers coming up so don't read any further!! (But feel free to share this post and like it and follow my blog and tell everyone about how I'm the best.)

In case any of you aren't watching Girls but for some reason have decided to continue reading, here's what happened last night:

Hannah (Dunham) got a new job writing for an internet site and decided to try cocaine with her gay ex-boyfriend/roommate Elijah so she would have something exciting to write about. Then they go to a club and la dee dah, Hannah ends up wearing nothing (NOTHING) but a mesh tank top and a really, truly terrible pair of shorts. Yeah... Then she galavants all over the city with everything ALL out and about, if you know what I'm saying and ends up making out with her creepy former-junkie downstairs neighbour. (The fact that Lena Dunham could make Hannah more awkward and naked than she already was blows my mind.) Other stuff happened too but it was mostly just your basic Marnie looking unimpressed about stuff, Shoshanna talking about losing her virginity and Jessa being hipster as f**k. 

What I'm trying to say here is, I feel that currently my daily life is not offering me a lot to write about. This is what I did today:

• Woke up at 12:00
• Stayed in bed until 2:45 watching Dexter
• Ate half a pop tart and some soda crackers at some point during the Dexter watching
• Put pants on
• Went pee, finally
• Watched an online lecture (yay, progress!)
• Ate real food (like, a real vegetable! My body was shocked.)
• Finished lecture on police selection and criminal profiling, googled serial killers for about an hour
• Watched Dexter

And here we are. No cocaine, no public nudity. Just a kind of disturbing amount of time spent on serial killers and some really bad eating habits.

That's my life right now, though. Dexter and crackers. And an above average enthusiasm for reading text books. I think it's because reading is easy and the longer I put off doing statistics homework, the longer I can avoid the involuntary eye twitch I get whenever I have to think about standard deviations. But it's also because I genuinely enjoy the stuff I'm learning right now (school doesn't suck ALL the time, kids!) But, I don't come in contact with a lot of stuff that inspires me to write.

This episode of Girls didn't bring me to this conclusion. I'm not like, "Oh my God, I need to have cocaine to write!" I wrote about socks once, for goodness sake. But it just made it painfully obvious that I've been being a tad boring lately. Which is sad, for me, because there are few things I enjoy doing as much as I enjoy writing.

So, what you should take away from all of this is that I've been having some pretty serious writer's block and I'm not really up for experimenting with drugs to fix it. You might even say I'm having serious life block, but we don't want to get too deep into like feelings and stuff because feelings are the worst. So, if I disappear for a while, don't worry. I'm not dead or locked in a basement somewhere. I'm just unblocking my life. (This only applies to my blog/Twitter presence. If you know me in real life and I disappear there, I AM PROBABLY LOCKED IN A BASEMENT OR BEING FED TO PIGS IN TINY PIECES GET HELP! Or I slept in again.)

Until then, this is where I'll be, taking frequent naps between classes, trips to Subway and textbook readings:

University, Children's Cartoons, and Other Things

I have a story for you.

So the other night I'm reliving my childhood by watching clips from the beloved children's film (if you can even call it a children's film because holy goodness, it's intense. Epic battle scene, much?!), The Land Before Time.

Completely-off topic-you-can-skip-over-this-if-you-want-Note: Does anyone in the world really know what the rules are with parenthesis and other punctuation? Does anyone even care? Are brackets even relevant anymore outside of BEDMAS? Just a thought. Googling it later. Anyways...

So I'm watching TLBT and loving my life when suddenly it occurs to me, "Holy fucoxanthin, these dinos are racist!" Yes, yes, it is true. Examples:

Cera: Threehorns never play with longnecks. They only talk to other threehorns and they only travel with other threehorns. 
(And at one point she calls Littlefoot's dead mom a "stupid longneck." Like, for realsies.)
Also...
Ducky: Hello. I said hello! What is your name? Maybe you cannot talk yet, huh?
Littlefoot: Don't you know anything? Longnecks don't talk to, whatever you are.

So anyways, you get the point. And by the end of the movie everyone loves each other and species doesn't matter anymore and everything is great. So I'm feeling all warm and happy and then I think, "Wow, this would be great for an essay about race relations or anti-racism!" And THEN I think, "Holy $&%@! I hate university." Because? Because it's ruining perfectly enjoyable entertainment and making me find themes and deeper meaning. I don't want to think about themes and meanings behind my favourite childhood films. I just want to laugh at the silly farcical comedy (FARCICAL?! See, it's happening again) and giggle at the more adult jokes that I didn't get when I was little. (Another side note, a bit more relevant - 13 movies later and Littlefoot and the gang still aren't grown up... Which is probably a good thing for him because what giant dinosaur wants a name like Littlefoot?)

So now I'm thinking about all my favourite childhood stories and they're all being ruined! I hate learning life lessons! And I hate thinking when I don't want to think. My brain doesn't shut up half the time. It's why I watch kids movies. They're so simple.

You know what was a good movie? The Swan Princess. And was it about accepting people even if they're different and love is blind and bestiality isn't really a big deal? NO! It was about nothing. It was just a good story. So shut up, brain.

For the record, I'm not talking about shows like Caillou and Veggie Tales that are clearly trying to teach us about sharing and not calling out the dumb kids in class for being dumb. I'm not talking about the clear societal morals that we're always trying to teach our children so they don't grow up to be major brats with babies at 16 (Wait a second, did teaching kids these lessons through television and media fail? Did they all become a little too friendly and curious because Spongebob is just a little too friendly and curious? That would be a great essay...) And for the record again, I hated both of those shows. (Caillou and the talking vegetables.) Jeepers, Caillou, listen to you parents and clean up your mess already, okay? Stop being a brat. And it was on PBS. PBS is the worst thing in the world. Except for the show Zoom. I will not argue about this any further.

I learned all my important life lessons from reading Berenstain Bears books. They were the greatest. And look, I'm basically perfect now. (*cough*)

Okay, I've gotten off topic just a bit. I hope you haven't nodded off. Let's make an awkward commute into the point that I know gets brought up by every bored English student while we're reading To Kill A Mockingbird and Huck Finn:

"What if the author just wrote that and had no intentions of providing us with commentary on racism." This statement can clearly be applied to every other book that we study and CLEARLY it does not always have to involve racism. (Whenever I'm writing things on the internet I feel as if I have to spell everything all out for everyone. I have no idea why...)

What if all of these amazing, breakthrough tales read and written about over and over again are just that? Just tales, meant to entertain. That's what storytelling is, isn't it? When my cousin used to make up stories for us when we were kids, she wasn't trying to teach us life lessons. We just thought that a bear who had gas and fell down hills a lot was hilarious. And guess what? It is. It is hilarious. And things like that will never stop being hilarious.

Unless the author comes back from the dead and says, "I'm talking about Racism, you fools!" then I don't quite buy some of the stuff people say about some literature.

So, university, STOP making me unconsciously look for themes and values in everything I watch and read. There's a time and place for deep thinking and for coming up with ideas. That time is not when I'm watching one of my favourite childhood films. UNLESS I actually need to write that essay someday, in which case, thank you for giving me such insight.

I don't think I've said a single insightful thing at all in this babbling. What does it all mean? What's the meaning of life? Who cares? We're going to die and find out eventually. Sometimes you have to take a step back from the problems and the pressures of society and just watch a freaking cartoon rabbit trick a cartoon duck into running off a cliff. And it's funny. And we laugh. And we don't know why. And we don't care why. And that's the truth.

The end.

Making Books Useful

So if you're like me and my family, you probably have shelves full of these really irritating dust collectors called "books." Like seriously, just Wiki the plot summary and get those damn things out of there. Your lungs will thank you.
The internet has summarized and scrutinized all the information that books can offer, so why bother risking a paper cut, right?
And besides, there are so many other things that books can do. (More useful things, at that.) Think about it:

"It's cold out, Mama. We have no wood." "Well, paper burns real nice. Here, Kathy Reichs has written enough fire fuel to last us all night."

"One table leg is shorter than the others!" "How much shorter?" "It's a difference of about one Great Gatsby, I'd say." "Well stick it under there, then!"

"It's Christmas eve, the presents aren't wrapped and the wrapping paper closet is filled with nothing but bare cardboard tubes. But Michael Martchenko did a hell of a job illustrating those silly Munsch books. Use those pages as wrapping!"

"The kid can't reach the sink to wash his hands." "Pile up those hardcover King books. Desperation weighs about as much as the kid does anyway."

"I always keep a hardcover copy of Jane Eyre in my purse." "Oh, well that's not exactly light reading." "No, and it's not exactly a light tap on the head when a fella gets a little too friendly either."

See? And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making books a little more useful around the house. Now I don't mean to get ahead of myself, but you're welcome. Sitting indoors with a book is no place for a child in this society. They're all overweight and pasty and 3400 pages of Harry Potter nonsense isn't going to fix that. So prop up your tables and warm your feet. And make a little more space on the mantle for family photos and the coyote your kid shot in the backyard.

The Bible? There's a cute website that acts out the holy book with little lego guys.

There's no place for books anymore. They're too slow. They're too bulky. And you can't keep up with the Kardashians AND read their biographies too.

Being A Grown Up

The surprisingly difficult things that you didn't realize were difficult until you had to do them yourself. Maybe most of these were only difficult for me. Yes, okay, actually, let's start over:

Things That I Found Surprisingly Difficult Once I Had To Do Them Myself:

Hair appointments. #1 reason I find this hard to do is that I absolutely hate the phone so making appointments is scary. (That being said my mommy made my last hair appointment so this is a moot point.) I hate that you can hear a voice, but you can't see a face. And I hate the way my voice sounds. I don't want to sound like an idiot. And it's super unfortunate that there's no way to edit the stupid things you say on the phone. Plus when I get there I always panic and I don't know what to tell the hairdresser. 

Cleanliness. The fact that I'm sitting here in sweatpants that haven't been washed in who knows how long, with piles of clothing and empty bottles surrounding me and unwashed dishes on my desk says it all. (That's a real photo from my dorm room last year. Things have not changed.)

Ordering Food Over The Phone. (Because this is an option now that I'm out of the small town scene.) Again, with the phones. I hate them. And then you have to go meet the creepy delivery guy downstairs where he'll probably kidnap you and take you away to be his sex slave and live in his yucky pizza-box-filled basement.

Laundry. Everyone agrees with laundry, but a lot of it might have something to do with having to go all the way to the basement of the building you're living in to actually do the laundry. Or at least that's how I feel. And everyone else using the laundry room is always an idiot! I've found it very tempting to just go out and buy new underwear every week.

Grocery shopping... Alone. I never know what to buy and I always find that I buy too little or I buy a bunch of stuff that I don't even actually want. Plus, it's scary, going into that big place all alone, facing all the intimidating old ladies with their reusable bags and Air Miles cards. They mean business, but you're just a little university student trying to get her Mr. Noodles.

Healthy eating. Pizza pockets are easier than salad, okay!

Finding someone to talk to. We're going to get a little serious, just for a sec. It's tough to talk to other university students about your problems because they have lots of problems of their own. Not having your mommy there all the time to chat with is tough, at least for me.

The emergency room. Last year I accidentally sliced a tiny piece off the end of one of my fingers. (See pic.) There was blood everywhere and I was freaking out because I thought it was a lot worse than it actually was (I thought my finger was going to have a chunk out of it forever.) But despite the bleeding,  I was absolutely terrified to go to the hospital without my mom, so I didn't. Everything is fine, now (except now when you look suuper close, my finger is a weird shape, I SWEAR!) but I'm not going to be able to skip the emergency room in more severe cases like if a bookcase falls on me or if I accidentally cut off my whole arm with a rusty saw.

There are definitely a lot more of these things I'm going to discover as I get older. I'm super lucky that I can call my mom or dad up almost any time and ask them how the heck I'm supposed to do this stuff. I'm sure I'll repay them someday (when they turn 65 and I don't immediately send them to a nursing home.)

Internet Bandwagons, Scams and Bullying

I wrote a blog post a while ago regarding Invisible Children and Kony 2012 on one of my old Tumblr blogs (you can read it here if you'd like.) The point of the whole thing was my frustration with internet bandwagons. People support a cause because it's popular to support a cause, or people post whatever because that's what is popular right now. They don't think about it, they don't do any research, and often it's something they cared absolutely nothing about before.

Recently, a young girl committed suicide because she was being bullied over the internet. The video she posted on Youtube about a month ago was truly heartbreaking and gave everyone a lot to think about. Since then #RIPAmandaTodd has been trending on Twitter, and Facebook groups have been popping up everywhere to honour her memory.

Note: The rest of this post is in NO WAY meant to be disrespectful at all to anyone. It's only something I was thinking about.
Internet bullying has been around for a long time. We've all heard about it, some of us have taken part in it and some of us have been the victims. It's easy to bully people online. You don't have to look them in the eyes. You can think about everything you want to say or do beforehand. None of this is in real time. In fact, sometimes what goes on online doesn't even feel real. There's just enough disconnection from the bully and the victim that it's easy to avoid feeling guilty.
So I was thinking, why is it that only when stuff like this happens, when a girl posts a message on the internet before she kills herself, that we step up and say we need to end bullying?
There are countless stories like this. Kids being so bullied that they don't even want to be on earth anymore. And every time one of these stories ends up in the news, people say, "we need to do something about bullying." And this lasts for about a few weeks. Facebook groups pop up, people join them and then that's that. That's all you need to do to support something, right? Share it on Facebook and then go about your daily life.

And it's not just bullying. Let's look again at this whole Kony business. One of the crucial steps in the whole Kony 2012 plan was Cover The Night - basically running around and vandalizing stuff with Kony's name and picture. I don't believe I saw one Kony poster the day after Cover the Night, although I saw so many people on Facebook claim they would be "attending" the event. People just simply forgot about it. It was too far down the road from their initial viewing of the Kony 2012 video.

But that's the thing about the internet, isn't it? Everything is changing, all the time. There's too much information going in and coming out, you can't just concentrate on one thing, and you can't show support for everything. So we join groups, like statuses and retweet messages, hoping that that'll be enough. Someone else can do the hard stuff. Someone else can teach the anti-bullying classes and send money to the children of Uganda.

And I do this too. I'm not standing on any pedestal, wagging my finger at the world for not being better citizens. It's hard to be passionate about things these days.
Not only that, but it's hard to know what groups, or organizations or sad stories are for real. There are so many internet scams created everyday. People make up sad stories and attach an unsettling photo from Google so that they can have their photo shared thousands of times.

So when things like youth suicide happen, and when the entire world knows about it, it's hard to not join the "bandwagon" isn't it? You want to seem sensitive and so you like RIP Amanda Todd on Facebook and you retweet some stuff about her.
But then you actually read some of the things on the group's wall and there are people being disrespectful there. Saying that the people who bullied her should "go die."
And all I can think is, "did you all completely miss the point?" Why did you join a group remembering a girl who wants to stop bullying, if you're just going to be rude and disrespectful (a bully) while you're there? Just because the person you're bullying is a bully, doesn't mean that what you're doing is okay.

I'm not against supporting causes, or joining groups. I'm against the complete lack of thinking that you see on the internet every day. And it's not anyone's fault necessarily. Like I said, the information being thrown at us every day is astounding. Processing it all is more work than most people even realize and so I guess it's understandable that maybe you post things without thinking, or like groups without understanding what they're all about.

In closing, all of my blabbering about bandwagons and scams aside, I hope we never have to see another news story like this. I know, bullying is something that will probably never truly go away. But we can change things and hopefully this is truly the push we need to do it. Bullying awareness is something that I always remember being a part of education (did anyone else learn the warm fuzzies cold pricklies story?) but maybe it takes a story like this one to really make it sink in.

The Dreaded Essay - A Student's Rant

Okay, today I got my first paper of the year back. I'm not going to say it was bad, because it wasn't, but the mark was quite a bit lower than my usual. So of course, I got super offended and decided to write a blog post about how terrible my professor is. Just kidding. That's not what this is about. This is just a few of the frustrating things about essays. I'm not badmouthing any profs or teachers I've had at all (especially if one of you happen to read this.) I'm just badmouthing whatever idiot invented the stupid essay.

So, first off, why do they have to be so long? What's the point in a 10 page essay? Didn't Einstein say that any fool can make something long and complex, only a genius can condense it and dumb it down? I may have just made that up. If I did, feel free to quote me on it (WITH a citation, please. You better not take credit for my work.) In other words, I feel like it's more difficult to condense the information and make a really good summary than it is to go on and on and on about the same thing. I don't know about everyone else, but when I'm writing an essay I feel like it's 20% good information, 50% me using a thesaurus to say the same thing in a bunch of different ways, and 20% complete BS (I'm not a math major. I don't know what the other 10% is. Me napping and choosing snacks, probably.)


Okay, and bibliographies! Ahh! I think I get more frustrated with citing my work than I do actually writing it. I'm all for people getting credit for their work, and plagiarism is bad and stuff. But there are so many rules! And every class is different. I've taken psych courses, English courses and history courses and each one calls for a different format. And we all come to university to find out that MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. formats aren't just for the bibliography. No, they're for the whole paper. Spacing, font, headers, footers, type of citation, title page or no title page. (Thanks for informing me of that nice little surprise, high school.) WHY DOES IT MATTER!? Really? I change the font and it makes it like one centimetre longer. Oh boy. Why can't we all just agree on one? I had a TA once who said it's because different disciplines are looking for different things and want to be able to find stuff faster. What do I have to say to that? I do not care, disciplines. I DO NOT care.

Okie dokie, so you hand it in and then you get it back. And (hopefully) you got a pretty decent mark. Why is it that even though you got an 80, which is pretty decent if you ask me, the comments your prof puts always make it sound kind of like you wrote the worst thing ever? (Or maybe that's just me because I am the absolute worst at taking criticism. If I ever tell you, "I want your true opinion, even if it's bad," I'm lying and I will probably hate you a bit if you tell me I need to fix something.)

When it comes down to it, the most frustrating thing about essays is that every prof is different. They all expect different things and give different types of criticism. You figure out how to please one and then your course is over and you're on to the next one, who hates everything that your other prof taught you. There's no winning. So, just power through and do your best. And that's the most inspirational thing I have to say today.

If you're a fellow student, good luck with midterms and assignments. If you're out of school, I can confidently say that all students (myself included) strongly dislike you, in like, the best way possible, at least until summertime.

Pet Peeve of the Week: The Difference Between "Seen" and "Saw"

I don't know if this is a common grammar issue all over the place or just where I'm from. I'm going to bet its everywhere. Now, I know that English is a stupid language. (This is a common thing found all over the internet but here's a link to the first blog I found. Hilarious, give it a read.) Anyway, the thing that baffles me is that people can't get their minds around the difference between "seen" and "saw." *disgruntled sounds*

The number of times I have heard "I seen that movie," I don't even know.

"I saw that movie," or, "I have seen that movie."
"David saw me at the park," or, "David has seen me at the park."

OR

"Have you saw that movie?" NO!

"Have you seen that movie?" Yes.

Now, I'm not an English teacher, so maybe I'm wrong, but how about we make a rule that "seen" can't be by itself? "Has" or "have" need to go with it. They're best friends, attached at the hip. But "saw" has no friends and should be all alone.

Or, I read this somewhere, and it made sense to me:
Think of the use of "seen" as talking about the past, but thinking about the present.
Think of the use of "saw" as talking about the past and thinking about the past.

I understand that this may be extremely confusing so let me put it this way:
"I seen you yesterday," doesn't even sound right!! Or is that just me? I understand that maybe some people just never learned it, or they never quite understood it, but I honestly don't think it's a concept that is too difficult. And maybe it's habit now. That's understandable as well. But bad habits can be broken. So let's break them before I start breaking things over the heads of these grammar murderers.

I will admit, I am an unofficial member of the infamous Grammar Nazis (although I hate the name. I would prefer Grammar Angels or something nice like that.) But someone has to be in charge of this stuff. You can't just go making your own rules about language. Wait, that's not a hundred percent true. If you know what you're doing (kind of) there's possibility for some creativity in language. But it's a different thing if you're doing it on purpose, right? Do I sound like an a**hole? Yeah, probably a little bit, but that's just how much this grammar mistake rattles me.

This doesn't mean I don't make grammar mistakes myself. I do it all the time. But I'm also constantly looking up the proper way to say things because I don't want to write posts like this and have people call me out on grammar mistakes that I've made.

I don't have anything to say to sum this up. Just stop doing it, okay? Just stop!

Super Study Tips

It's back to school, and we all know what that means. Studying! And a lot of it. So, I've put together a list of study tips that I hope will make your studying experience more comfortable and worthwhile.

• Have an abundance of your favourite snacks nearby. Hunger can only distract you.
• The coffee you have at home isn't good enough, so you should probably take a trip (or several) to the coffee shop down the road.
• Use the reflection of your laptop to compare how you look with your glasses on and with them off. Do this multiple times for maximum cuteness results.
• Your desk is super messy. You should probably clean it. And the rest of your room. And the bathroom. And look at all the old stuff in the back of your fridge. You should clean that too.
• Keep your phone nearby in case one of your friends is trapped in a burning building and you need to go save them.
• Build a palace with your textbooks to get your creative juices flowing.
• The temperature in your room is weird so change from sweatpants to shorts and back like six times because there's no way you can study unless you have a comfortable body temperature.
• Study for 20 minutes and then watch 3 episodes of your favourite show because it's good to give yourself breaks while you're studying. Gotta let it all sink in.
• Your eyes are pretty sleepy after all that Parks and Recreation you watched, so you should probably lay down for a bit and rest them.
• After your nap, you wake up and you can probably get 20 more minutes of studying in before you realize that you haven't checked the news today and what if your hometown got burnt to the ground?
• Shoot, it's your aunt's birthday. You should catch up on your happy birthday Facebook messages so the guilt can't distract you from your studying.
• You've had enough of eating gummy worms so you should probably order a pizza.
• Chat up the delivery guy for longer than usual, because loneliness has a negative effect on the retention of information, probably.
• Your friends are going out for drinks and alcohol is just what you need to get rid of the stress of all this homework you have. It'll be way easier to study once you're super relaxed.
• Finally, just go to bed, because after all, you can always study tomorrow.

Cosmetics are the Biggest Waste EVER.

I have no idea who reads this and who doesn't, but the important thing to know before we start off this rant is that I wear zero makeup. Nothing. The only exception to this is grade 8 grad and prom. Oh, and a few unfortunate acne days where coverup was necessary for me to function. Wait! Stop right there. That's the perfect sentence to sum up the problem with cosmetics. They're necessary for some people to function. But why?

Makeup (and other junk in the makeup family) is the most wasteful product there is (this is my opinion so it's obviously right.) At least plastic bags carry stuff and can be used again (Side note - Toronto is attempting to ban plastic bags. What are they going to put in the little garbage cans in the bathroom then?) Same with bottles. They can be recycled, and at least they had a purpose to begin with. These are the products people are concerned about, but no one ever mentions makeup and how it's totally pointless. Hold it, ladies who want to argue with me, I haven't explained myself yet.

Makeup is virtually pointless. Okay, so you have bags under your eyes or maybe you emerged from the more unfortunate end of the gene pool but so what? Eventually, the people who you love (I'm talking about men, dummies) are going to see you without makeup, and they're going to have to deal with what you really look like. So why lie to them with makeup in the first place? (That's right, I said LIE.) I place makeup in the same category as the pushup bra. The LIE category.

"But if I don't wear makeup he's going to go for that hot looking chick who is wearing makeup." This is true. Maybe someday women will give up on makeup and this won't be an issue. But until then, yes, you may lose some conquests to that girl with the glittery eyelashes. But don't worry, because their relationship will be built on LIES and will end in a messy breakup, broken dishes and running mascara. (Did I just point out ANOTHER bonus of no makeup?)

Okay, but here's where we start with the real issues. Resources, duh! Think about the stuff that goes into making makeup, and don't even get me started on the packaging. Ugh, it's so frustrating how much stuff is wasted. And then think about all the stuff that you buy but you never use. And it's expensive (I assume, as I've never bought my own.)

This brings us to money. Did you know that the amount of money spent on cosmetics in one year (that would be about 7 billion dollars, I did the research for you) could be used to fund education for more than a billion African children? Now you feel like a total jerk, don't you? But let's bring it back and talk about something a little closer to home. How about those people who are on welfare, or with crappy jobs who complain that they don't have a lot of money. Well, excuse me, lady, but I don't give a flying fingernail file about your problem if you're wearing a ton of makeup (I'll make this same annoyed statement if I ever choose to write about lottery tickets.) Obviously you have enough money to pay for your glitter. (This is being too hypocritical, maybe, but leave me alone, I'm proving a point.)

Of course, you can apply everything I've said to home renovations and decorations, clothing and gardens and this blog too. It's about looking good and feeling good, right? I'm just saying, it's not that important, and if we all stopped bothering with it, then it wouldn't matter. People would be beautiful just the way they are and blah blah blah. And we would have billions of extra dollars kicking around and WAY less monkeys running around with shiny red lips and pink nails. Right? Right. I know this hasn't convinced any of you, but I had to get it out of my brain.

Alene