I think I just found one of my buttons.

You know, I had something funny prepared to write today, but I guess that's just going to have to wait until tomorrow.  This post is not funny.  It is serious, and although I don't want this blog to turn into me airing my grievances, I won't be able to focus on blogging properly until I get this off my chest.  I also want to say that though this blog takes its inspiration from differences of opinion, this post is not going to be about whose opinion is right or wrong (as hard as it may be to not write about that).  This is about the best and worst ways to support a viewpoint such that other people will actually listen.  

My afternoon:

Image from http://xkcd.com/386/

I want to preface this by saying that I can count on three fingers the number of times I can remember getting into an internet argument/debate.  I generally avoid getting into internet debates like the plague because I, like everyone else, has seen how they turn out on YouTube (see the TVTropes page on GIFT).  Usually no-one ends up either victorious or happy.  The first time was a debate about the finale of Battlestar Galactica, in which both sides were actually quite polite and I think a mutual agreement/respect was achieved.  The second was a Facebook debate about feminism, which never devolved into a horrifying mess but which basically ended with everyone realizing that an agreement was not going to be reached.  I can accept that.  The third is what I am about to describe.  It is once again rooted in feminism (though this time I found myself disagreeing with someone from the opposite side of the spectrum), but the topic that I disagreed with was not actually what set me off.


Today, I was directed to an article which was a self-proclaimed "radical feminist" analysis of a popular TV show.  Now, I consider myself a feminist, but I disagreed with much of what the author was writing.  Like I said, I'm not going to go into that.  Reading through the article and the comments, I let everything slide because my general way of thinking is that everyone has the right to their own opinion, no matter what I may believe.  However, there was one thing that just completely sent me over the edge.  One person who had read her article left the following comment:


"While I realise you hate my sex, may a gay man comment on what has been a facinating read?"


The author of the post had the following response.


"I don't hate your sex, I hate your gender. If you don't understand what I mean by that then go and do your feminist homework before attempting to take up space on my blog."


This response riled me up enough that I wrote an email, and since I don't feel like completely rewriting what I've already written, here's the main body of the email I sent to her:


"This man, a man who is, due to his sexuality, probably trying to fight the establishment in many of the ways you are, is trying to complement you. He wants to open a discussion. He is trying to present himself as an ally.  [...]

"You shut him down and chased him away because he didn't use one word in the way you consider correct. He's clearly interested in what you have to say, so why not explain the difference to him yourself? Educate him. Maybe just give him a few links to look at explaining the difference. Then tell him that you would like to talk more about this issue which is clearly so important to you. 

"The battle of equality is not going to be won by locking people out. If you want to convince people of the validity your viewpoint, you have to be willing to talk to them first. Otherwise you give your movement a bad name. Listen, I'm a feminist too. [...] But it's hard to get these things rolling when part of our movement exudes blind, mass hatred (reminder, you used "hate" in your comment - I'm not pulling that out of thin air) for so much of society with little chance of letting people in. It makes me sad to say it, but in some ways it seems to me that you are hurting the cause. I know that is not your goal. Please, please, please let people engage in conversation with you. Your ideas deserve to be heard and discussed. Right now, you are the major reason why it's not happening."

I wish I'd edited the message when I'd had a cooler head to check aggression levels and grammar, but it is what it is.  Anyway, the point is not the feminism, the point is that locking out outsiders by shutting down communication is detrimental to people trying to spread a message.  It causes resentment and misunderstanding and can lead to many larger problems down the road.  If someone expresses interest in an idea that you care about, guide them though it!  


Anyway, that's my thought for today.  Hopefully the funny will return tomorrow.  

It's Sunday!

Because it's Sunday, I'm taking the chance to do only a small post instead of a huge one.  Don't worry, my time is being well spent doing research for my internet video thing.  There's been quite a bit of evolution in the project recently, as the trope videos are turning into more of a side project to my newer videos.  I'm not going to say too much about it (I'm a bit paranoid about getting my ideas stolen), but basically I'm retooling the videos I was going to make so that I can submit them to Channel Awesome, which many of you may know as the home of the Nostalgia Critic.  As my mantra has been for months now, if I can script well and make some decent funny (that's the hard part, but I'm figuring out a decent system), I think I have a shot.  

Anyway, the thought for today is really just an observation I had as a child.  When I was watching Teletubbies one day (YES I WATCHED TELETUBBIES.  GO AHEAD, MOCK AWAY), I noticed that if I turned the volume up on the TV, I continued to feel the need to increase the volume.  However, if I decreased the volume slowly, I could eventually bring the volume down to very low levels without losing any understanding of what was being said.  My ears adjusted to the reduced volume quite quickly.  The urge to continue turning down the volume in the latter situation turned out to be much stronger than the need to turn up the volume in the former situation.  Has anyone else ever noticed this effect?

Finally, a video which everyone should see and which most of you have probably already seen: Kirby meets Snoop Dogg.

Is that a clown in the mirror?

Okay, here's the thing.  Even though I'm a twenty-year old college student, make-up sort of terrifies me.  I just have no real concept of how it is supposed to be used.  The only lessons I got in the area came from my brief exposure to fashion magazines, but with no close, fashion-capable female friends during my formative years, I quickly lost any knowledge I gained.  It's been an uphill struggle ever since to try to catch up with my peers.  I'm pretty sure it's too late, though.  Basically, I have no sense of how to apply makeup and how much makeup is enough.  To any guys reading this, I want you to think about how lucky you are as you keep reading.

Here is all the makeup I have with me for the summer.  At least I think that it's all that I have, but there could be more hiding elsewhere...

And yes, for those of you paying attention, I do have 3 nearly identical hairbrushes there.  There's one or two more hiding in other places.  Yet my hair does not stay neat and tidy.  Make of that what you will.

Now, if the intelligence I have gathered is correct, that's actually a relatively small number of cosmetic-y things for a girl/woman [insert Britney Spears song here] my age to have.  That's scary.  Here's a breakdown of these various war paints and how much I understand them.

The Lip Coloring Agents

Okay, these I mostly get.  However, these are all either glosses (generally no real color) or very light lip tints.  Even so, I'm worried that I put on too much.    I put on the slightest bit of lip tint and see this:

turn into this:

So I defeat the purpose of the whole venture by wiping off most of what I just put on.

Eyeliner and Mascara

I actually used to know how to use eyeliner and mascara, at least somewhat.  I still have some mascara skills (kind of) but it doesn't help that all I have is mascara I inherited from my mom that is now at least 3 years old.  It clumps and doesn't quite work right and I'm always worried I'm going to have a tiny seizure and get the stupid stuff all over my face.  Speaking of tiny seizures: eyeliner.  Eyeliner is one of the scariest things in the world to use, and yet many women are societally expected to use the stuff every day.  IT'S A PENCIL MOVING RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR EYE.  THAT IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS.  But even if I do manage to get eyeliner on without poking my eye out, apply the mascara, and then use the little curling thing to make my eyelashes stick up, I always feel like I've messed up.

I make a lovely raccoon.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing or wearing, I always feel like eyeliner in particular marks me out as trying too hard.

Also, you see that little brush in the picture?  I've tried using it to untangle my eyelashes (yes, that is a problem), but I have no idea if I'm even using the thing correctly.

Eyeshadow

Oh God, eyeshadow.  This stuff really terrifies me.  I've had it all my life, but it has brought me almost nothing but pain.  The only time I ever wore it was when I went to my proms.  I had a friend (Tonks from the last post) put it on for me both times and before I got the dress on I always thought I looked like a prostitute (and, as Tonks will tell you, I declared that thought quite loudly and with great emotion the first time).  I just have no idea.  I put a little on and I see nothing.  I put a little more on:

I should audition for the part of Oscar the Grouch.

My friends tell me that I'm supposed to blend it or something.  Okay.

THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU.  BEGONE, SATAN!

It just never works, so I never wear it.  So why do I have so much of it lying around?  Why do I bother to bring it to college and bring it home every time I travel?  Because I have a vain hope that one day I'll have a magical epiphany about the stuff, that's why.

Note: You may have noticed that there is no blush anywhere in my makeup stash.  That is because, if anything, I know less about blush than I do about eyeshadow.  Oddly, though, I trust it more.

Face junk

This one hurts the most because I thought I actually had a handle on it.  Wash face twice a day with the face-washy stuff (doesn't always happen, but I know how to do it!), put lotion on skin (well, apparently I should really have some special face moisturizer, but I don't), then put foundation/concealer stuff over face so that my acne and acne scars are less blatantly obvious.  I've been using concealer since high school (I didn't even know it existed until about sophomore year - what a great discovery that was!), so I was almost positive I knew what I was doing.  That is, until about a month ago.  One of my friends asked, "Are you wearing foundation?".  My response:

Captain Oblivious.

My friends finally told me that apparently there were lines around the edges of my foundation that I hadn't blended in well enough.  Great.  Apparently, the only makeup I really felt comfortable with was stuff I had been using wrong for years on end.  Brilliant.  The worst part?  My skin problems were still pretty visible anyway.

So, in conclusion, there are way too many cosmetic products out there, and some of us were absent on makeup day in the School of Life.  Maybe someday I'll figure it all out, but part of me doesn't want to.  Part of my identity has been set pretty firmly as "the girl who doesn't do girly stuff," and I'm not sure how much I want to change that.  Basically, if you ever see me wearing well-applied eyeshadow that I put on myself, keep an eye out for four menacing horsemen hanging around.

Edit: I have remembered at least two fashion-savvy friends I had growing up.  However, by that point I was focused on video games instead of asking questions about makeup.

The Greatest Sales Pitch In the World

I sold Girl Scout cookies for most of my life up until college.  From second grade through senior year of high school, I was going door to door, standing out in front of banks, and bothering people at Blockbuster, all for the sake of supporting the Scouts.

Every year the major way I sold cookies was site sales, where I would go out to grocery stores and banks and the like for two hour blocks of time in order to disrupt the lives of the general populace with sales pitches about boxes of delicious fat and sugar.  The older I got, the more site sales I did.  This was problematic, and the best way I can explain why is through an urban legend among older Girl Scouts.

They say that there was once a Girl Scout in high school who tried to sell cookies to a man, but he said he wanted none.  She later saw him across the street buying from an adorable little Girl Scout, maybe seven years old.  And they say this was not the only time this happened...


The fact of the matter is that people generally tend not to want to buy from older Girl Scouts.  We are simply less endearing and are perhaps seen as too old to be Girl Scouts.  What this means is that we have to better and more persistent in our sales pitch in order to bring in any customers.  So I was assertive.  Every single time a person walked by during a site sale, I asked, "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies?"  I said it so often that it started slurring into a southern drawl that I couldn't get rid of if I tried.  I also got creative with my sales.  This is where my awesome friend (who will here be known as Tonks for her sheer awesomeness) comes in.

One night in my junior year of high school Tonks volunteered to sell cookies with me.  I was ecstatic, and for very good reason.  It was a slow sales night, so we spent the better part of two hours building towers on the sales table with the cookies.  When I say towers, I don't mean stacks.  I mean tall and relatively complex structures with flying buttresses.  Every time we sold a box, we had to rebuild the structure.  It was great, and the sheer awesomeness probably convinced several customers to buy (after I assaulted them with my drawl, of course).

Afterwards, Tonks came home with me to eat dinner with my family.  As at every meal, we started with my family's only real remaining connection to religion - saying grace.  I started to speak, expecting the classic Catholic grace I had recited since childhood to come out.  Instead...





That's right.  I tried to sell Girl Scout cookies to God.  You only wish you were as accidentally blasphemously cool as me.  I really kind of wish I had finished that sentence.  Just think of the untapped divine market.  I mean, who doesn't like Girl Scout cookies?



I would like to end this post by noting that this blog is exactly one month old today.  Not long in the grand scheme of things, but after posting every day, it feels like forever.  I would really like to thank my readers for all of your support.  I have gotten such lovely comments and phone calls and complements, all encouraging me to keep going.  You are why I post every day.  I have had such a blast writing this so far, and if you think that you would also like to start a blog, go for it!  Just make sure to tell me if you do; I'd love to follow it.

Bubble Girl

Something strange happened to me recently.

I became the sole resident of a self-contained world.

That statement might seem like an exaggeration, and in some ways it is, but the basic truth of it stands.  A few days back, on a day when I didn't have work, I found that until my friend summoned me from my habitat to go food shopping, I was doing all my living from three rooms.  Dorm rooms during the school year are already strange places where one not only sleeps and dresses but also does work.  Now I find that my room is also where I store all the food I need to survive, not just occasional snacks.  My food lives on my dresser, on my shelf, and in my refrigerator.  I pack lunches on the unoccupied desk across the room.  The only times I need to leave my room even within my suite are when I need to cook something on the stove or in the microwave in the main room or when I need to do a sink-or-bathroom related activity in the bathroom across the hall.  That's it.  Everything I need is within ten steps of my room.  I could live entire weekends without going more than 15 or 20 feet from my room door.  Entire weeks, if I didn't have to buy food or go to work.  Luckily, I have a friend who I eat dinner with some nights, but the fact of the matter is that other than work, 90% of my interactions with the outside world happen through the internet.

A few months ago a friend of mine who graduated college went through much the same thing, at least in terms of sudden social isolation (I don't know if he stored food on top of his dresser).  I find that I understand what he went through a little better now.

The only things keeping me tied down to sanity right now are this blog (which eats up a fair chunk of time, let me tell you) and the hope of getting my video series launched.  Unfortunately, both are starting to pull me down more than I'd like - the stress of getting a decent blog entry up every single day is more than I'd like to admit, particularly now that they are becoming increasingly MS Paint heavy.  This last week I haven't been able to make them as good as I would like, and I think it shows.  The first week of work is always kind of a shock to the system.  I promise that tomorrow I will do my best to break the slump and get something legitimately funny posted again.

The vlog is also a problem.  Long hours of work and tutoring mean that I have made almost no progress on that front, and I feel that the longer I go before I get the ball rolling the less likely it is that it will ever start.  I'm not going to let this opportunity pass, though.  This weekend I will get a script done, if not filming.  Hold me to this, readers.  I'm going to shatter this bubble I find myself in, even if it is only virtually.  Let's rock and roll!

The Zombie War Escort Mission Part 3: Live and Let Die

Part 1 is here, part 2 is here.

Although we could clearly hear the zombies ahead of us, the only viable option was to move toward them until we could divert left down a slope.  The group quietly divided up into pairs so that we could send staggered bursts of people down the path to safety.  When it was my turn to go, I ran as quickly and as low to the ground as I could.  The combination of the two quickly connected by butt to the ground in a rather undignified manner, but I picked myself up and kept moving.

The whole group managed to reach the bottom of the slope.  We also met up with another group of resistance members, doubling our numbers from about 15 to 30.  Everything seemed like it was going to be all right.

We moved along in our herd for a few minutes, the package safely concealed in the middle, but two problems quickly became apparent.  The first was that no one seemed to know exactly when we were supposed to arrive back at the main safe zone.  The second was quite a bit more serious.  At some point, for some reason, about two-thirds of the group, including several key leaders, decided to go somewhere else.  I don't know where they went or why they decided to go, but they left behind the package - the whole point of the mission - very exposed and weakly defended.  

Once they left, our odds of survival plummeted.  We were out in the middle of an open area with zombies visible in the distance, moaning for brains.  The only cover we had was the slight slope of the ground.  We lay flat for several seconds, analyzing the threat.  Finally, we realized that time before the mission ended was running out.  The only thing we could do was to run the last few hundred feet to the final safe zone, otherwise we would fail the mission by default.  We ran, sprinting through open area and stray zombies.  When we approached the safe zone, the whole area was filled with people.  I heard vague shouting, but I was so confused that I couldn't process any of it.  For all I could tell I might have been running toward a patch of zombies hidden in the crush of people.  I ran anyway.

I made it.  I lived.  I arrived at the final safe zone untouched with my other team members.  Some scattered humans had not been so lucky.  I saw friends of mine who had been converted to the zombie horde.  From that point on,








they were truly dead to me.  


YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!


The end (finally).

The Zombie War Escort Mission Part 2: (Artificial) Intelligence

If you haven't read part 1 yet, either scroll down or click here.  


The resistance finally arrived to liberate us.  We opened the door to discuss strategy with them and found out that for some reason the zombies had left their post.  I was excited to see that the group sent to rescue me included the two friends I knew who were in the resistance.  One of my friends was carrying this style of gun:

For those of you who have been reading since the beginning, this is the gun I have mentioned before.  I liked my friend's so much that I later bought this one for myself in preparation for the ultimate battle described here.  

This gun, however, was far from the biggest or most impressive.  Some people were carrying fully automatic Nerf guns.  That's gun power.

From this point on, my group and I were referred to as "the package".  We were to be protected at all costs.  As I mentioned previously, if one of us got bitten, all of us became zombies.  It was then that I realized what I was.  I was Ashley from Resident Evil 4 - a huge liability and a zombie magnet.  I was the dreaded escort mission that all gamers must eventually face.  I comforted myself with the thought that I at least I probably had better AI than Ashley did.

The group swarmed around us as we left the building.  We moved as quickly and silently as possible - the package doing our best to stay in the middle of the pack, the resistance doing their best to cover all sides.

Zombie howls filled the air almost immediately.  We couldn't run without running the risk of exposing the package to zombie assault, so our speed was stunted.  We were only saved by the apparent stupidity, cowardice, or ignorance of the zombies - they didn't even try to attack us.

We kept moving through the dark fields and roads of the college.  Every bush was suspected of secluding zombies.  Then we saw the parking lot.

I don't know how many of you have ever looked at a parking lot the way I saw it that night.  It was terrifying.  Every car presented the perfect hiding spot for a zombie.  Not only that, but we clearly heard zombies coming from the direction we had to move toward if we wanted to escape.  We all flattened ourselves behind the cars and waited for them to pass, hoping that they hadn't seen us.  It was no good.  The zombies were still out there.  Staying in place guaranteed our doom.  We had to run.

To be continued...

The Zombie War Escort Mission Part 1: Moons and Socks

A few weeks ago, zombies invaded my college. They went under the guise of armband-wearing college students, but those in the resistance knew the truth. They were zombies and they wanted human flesh.

One night, the resistance learned of small packs of human survivors who were spread out across the campus. They knew that there were seven safe locations in which three or four teams of these humans were hidden. However, the zombies had somehow gotten the same information. The two groups had very clear goals: the resistance had to rescue the survivors, the zombies had to bite a human in each group in order to turn the whole pack into zombies. I was one of the scattered humans. This is my story.

I was out of the loop when the zombie invasion began. I had been too busy doing homework to notice what was going on in the outside world. By the time I realized what was happening, the resistance had already formed and settled into a base location far away from where I was. I found two other humans like me who had been left behind. They had heard of the safe locations, so we decided to travel to one and hope that the resistance found us so that we could join their ranks instead of succumbing to the zombie horde.

Before we began our journey, I prepared myself for the trials to come. The only weapons known to hurt the zombies were socks and Nerf gun darts; therefore, lacking the latter, I stocked up on all the balled-up socks I could find. I put on my black leather jacket because it served as nighttime camouflage and because it had deep enough pockets to hold my arsenal of projectiles. With courage in my heart and socks in my hands, I went out to face the night with my team.

 Ready to kick butt.

Trouble made itself known as soon just after we left the team meeting spot. As we made our way to the safe zone, we saw zombies tailing us in the far distance. They knew exactly which location we were going to hide in. Luckily, we arrived before they did, rushing into the dorm common room and locking the door before the zombies could get in. All we could do then was wait.  

The team in the safe room.

The locked door we had entered through.

The wall on the opposite side of the room from the entrance door. There was a door in the glass wall which opened outward but was locked to the outside. It was our alternate escape route.

The zombies arrived soon after we did. They were stymied by the locks and didn't notice the emergency escape route (we worked hard not to draw attention to it). For a while, nothing happened. We sat in the room and the zombies patrolled the hallway outside the entrance door; no one could do anything until the resistance arrived.

I decided that the best thing to do was to demoralize the enemy. I made faces at the zombies outside our door, sticking out my tongue, stretching out my cheeks, and pulling down on the skin below my eyes. They responded in kind, but despite their rotting skin none of them could make a face to match the horrors that mine could produce. Victory was mine.

The zombies did get their vengeance in another way, however. When we opened the blinds around our alternative exit, the zombies became aware of our back-up plan. They immediately ran around to that side of the room to see if they could get in through the glass door, but they failed.

Our enemies in all their undead glory.

The female zombie on the far right decided to strike back against the blow their morale had taken in the face-off by pulling down her shorts and ramming her rear end against the glass. Truly there is no flesh as disgusting as that of a zombie.

The zombies soon gave up their assault on the glass wall and returned to the hallway. Eventually, we couldn't see them at all. For all we knew, they were plotting to get into the safe room through the interior balcony on the second floor. All we could do was sit and hope that the humans would arrive before the zombies could get in.

To be continued...

Note: the framing story for this story might be fictionalized, but the events themselves are eventually true. This event was one of the most fun things I have ever done. Advice for everyone out there: if your college/local area does have Humans vs. Zombies, join in the next game. If not, start one for yourself.

http://humansvszombies.org/

P.S. Lizzle, this is for you.

P.P.S. TWAIO, who are you? Am I just being really thick about acronyms?

P.P.P.S.  This site's crazy formatting issues are my real arch-enemy.

A History of Social Awkwardness #2: The Boston Tree Party

Disclaimer: this post actually has nothing to do with Boston.  I apologize to any native Bostonians who may read this.  

I don't know what impression I tend to give, but at heart I'm really a very shy person.  This trait becomes especially apparent at parties.

When I was a freshman at college, the first week of classes was filled with parties for freshman to get to know each other.  One party was outdoors at a place I didn't know very well.  It was a nice night, the party was going well, and there were nice trees around for scenery.  I was pretty happy.  There was only one problem.  This isn't true for most of the world, but for me, going into a crowd at a dance party and meeting new people is about as likely to happen as going up to an Orc to ask for a cup of sugar.

Not going to happen.

Instead, I decided to go examine the trees.  I found a cool line of ants walking up and down the tree and examined their paths.  I examined their paths more intently than I really wanted to, actually, mostly because I wanted someone to notice.  

My attempts at gaining people's attention by thinking at them VERY LOUDLY only worked a little.  One or two people walked by, asked what I was looking at, and then immediately figured out that I was a few Roswells more strange than they wanted to deal with and moved on.  I met no one and went home a little more informed about ants and a little less socially competent.  

Today's lesson: People are less aware of you than you think.  Standing around and waiting for someone to talk to you is a strategy with a high rate of failure.  Don't do what Trope Girl did.  

Orc photo from http://orc-world.com/images/orcs.jpg

A History of Social Awkwardness #1: Personal Choo-Choo Bubble

This is the first installment of my multi-part series “A History of Social Awkwardness”.  I’m not even going to try to put the parts of this series in chronological order because I am positive that I will continue remembering more incidents in no particular order over the course of the series.  Because I have a bit of time on my hands right now, I’m going to give you the most elaborate event first. 

When I was 18 years old, I went to Disney World with my mom, dad, and best friend.   We went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios the first day and it was great.  Even though it is distinctly the weakest of the four parks, you really can’t go wrong with the Tower of Terror and the Rock n’ ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLercoster [Man, it would be so cool if Disney actually spelled it that way].  We had lunch reservations at the Prime Time Café.  The point of the café is that the employees act like it’s still the ‘50’s, minus the racism and McCarthyism.  As we were led to our table by the hostess, we were told that this was “Ma’s place” and that we had to follow Ma’s rules.  We got to our table and saw that there were little televisions everywhere, all of them playing the same clips of 1950s television.  It was, in theory, a very fun little place.

When our waiter (I’m going to call him Joey, although I forget if that’s really his name) showed up, he told us Ma’s rules.  They were approximately as follows:

1) No elbows on the table

      2) Eat all your vegetables

      3) Clean your plate.

The second rule seems redundant in light of the third rule, but in retrospect it’s very possible that he really meant “Eat all your vegetables first.”  Anyway, my family smiled and nodded and agreed to all the rules, then promptly forgot all about them for five minutes.  What we didn’t know was that Joey was serious. 

We were distinctly more careful about our elbows after that.  It’s amazing how intimidating a Disney employee in his mid-twenties can be. 

Our food arrived a little while later.  I had ordered a chicken pot pie in a bowl.  It was delicious, so I was guaranteed to clean my plate, and because there were no side dishes, I didn’t have to worry about eating all my vegetables.  I was totally solid. 

We all sat at the table happily eating our food when Joey came back.  “I see you haven’t eaten all your vegetables,” he said to me.  I looked at my half-eaten pot pie, confused, and then saw the offending vegetable.

A single pea.  A single pea was visible on the surface of my pot pie.  I want to make something very clear about pot pies.  THEY ARE MEANT TO BE FILLED WITH VEGETABLES.  YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO PICK THEM ALL OUT FIRST.  THAT WOULD BE INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS AND AGAINST THE PURPOSE OF THE PIE.  But Joey didn’t care.  Before I knew what was happening, Joey walked up next to my chair, grabbed my fork, scooped up the pea and the surrounding pie, and held the loaded fork in front of me. 

Finally, my social survival instincts overwhelmed the embarrassment-induced freeze.  I ate the pea.

Joey left the table right after that.  Let me tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as fast as I did in the minutes after the choo-choo incident.  I made darn well sure that the plate would be absolutely clean and that my elbows would be off the table when he returned.  I succeeded.  When Joey came back, I was ready, but there was one factor I couldn’t control: my mother.

Things got kind of blurry after that.  Joey and my parents joked around a bit about long-distance relationships.  I’m pretty sure that I found a nice spot on the table to give my attention to.  I was all too happy to get out of that restaurant when it was time to leave.

I promised to get revenge on my mother that would arrive five years after the event.  I wonder if she’s forgotten…I certainly haven’t.  

Worth my weight in quarters

As I have already firmly established, I lacked a certain degree of common sense as a child.  And by that I mean that I had fewer street smarts at age ten than the average three-year-old.  My excess of academic aptitude had to get drawn off from somewhere else, and that somewhere else was my "how to operate in the real world" aptitude.  Those of you who know me well are fully aware that this imbalance is still in full effect.  But I digress.

One night when I was about nine or ten years old, I decided to heat coins in front of the fireplace.  They didn't actually get hot, just warm.  One quarter called out to me and I decided to put it in my mouth.  Why did I do that even though I was old enough to know better?  Please see the first paragraph.

Anyway, I made some strange movement and suddenly the quarter slid to the back of my throat.  My mom was nowhere within the immediate vicinity to Heimlich me out of the situation, so the only option to prevent asphyxiation was to swallow said quarter.  It.  Hurt.

I found myself marvelously not dead a few seconds later.  I tried swallowing and felt the quarter stuck in my throat, though I could still breathe normally.  Starting to worry, I ran upstairs and found my mother in the bathroom.  I didn't want to scare her, so I presented the issue as gently as I could.







Her mother senses kicked in and told her exactly what had happened.  We called a nurse hotline and found out that I was most likely not going to die.  The quarter had gone into my stomach and not my windpipe (which really would have killed me) and the quarter I thought I had stuck in my throat was just some scraping from the quarter's journey.

The take home message: when it comes to small objects, keep an eye on me as you would a toddler.

"I'm having a really hard time naming this post," Trope Girl said titularly.

Some of my friends are going to kill me for bringing this topic up, but I am the daughter of a woman who makes puns constantly - it's kind of in my blood.  Today's topic is Tom Swifties.  I suppose the best way to explain what these are is to give a few examples (courtesy of Wikipedia):

• "They had to amputate them both at the ankles," Tom said defeatedly.
• "Who discovered radium?" asked Marie curiously..
• "Who put the moss in the bog again?" asked Tom repeatedly.
• "A word that contains all five vowels? And I suppose you want those vowels to appear in alphabetical order?" asked Tom facetiously.
• "The robber is coming down the stairs", Tom said condescendingly.
• "Nnnn", Tom murmured forensically.

So, as you've probably gleaned, Tom Swifties are a specific type of pun in which someone says a sentence and the sentence is described with a pun.  They were originally inspired by the Tom Swift books in which no one ever just said anything, they always spoke with an descriptive flair.

Anyway, a few summers back my friends introduced me to Tom Swifties while we were on a trip together.  They quickly regretted this decision.  Here's some of what was produced then*:

“Stop throwing trash out of your car,” the cop said literally, and Tom refused.
              -Me, Nia, and one other

“Man overboard!” Tom said swimmingly.
              -Me

“Your toupee fell off,” Tom said baldly.
              -Me

“I’m all for cow rights,” Tom said provocatively.  [This is my favorite.  Hint: Spanish is required.]
              -Me

“I fail,” Tom said saucily.  [This one expects that "failsauce" is part of your vocabulary.  If it isn't already, make it so.]
              -Dreamwaffles

“I have the queen of spades,” Tom said heartily.
              -Dreamwaffles

“I’ve tried every way to get to sleep,” Tom said sheepishly.
              -Me

“I’ve cleared the lawn of leaves,” Tom said rakishly.
              -Me

“I’m tired of digging,” Tom said trenchantly.
              -Dreamwaffles

“Ms. Little’s here,” Tom said in a small voice.
              -Me and Nia

“What’s the antiderivative of sec²?” Tom said tangentially.
              -Me

“I’m menstruating,” Tina said periodically.
              -Me

“I have a turtle,” Tom said awkwardly.
              -Dreamwaffles

“That brush hit me really hard,” Trope Girl said bruisingly.
              -Dreamwaffles

“I’ve lost my flashlight,” Tom said darkly.
              -Me

“I’m a believer,” Tom said faithfully.
              -Me

“Hi!” Tom said loftily.
              -Dreamwaffles and/or me

“Put some more hemlock in the pot,” Tom said deadpan.
              - U-dawg

“I love semaphore!” Tom said unflaggingly.
              -Me

*Credit to Dreamwaffles for transcribing these.

If you want to know more about Tom Swifties, you can visit the Wikipedia page.  For a more fun use of your time, read Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar, a very funny book about a high school student which includes many well-done Tom Swifties.  

["I don't know how to end this blog post," Trope Girl said terminally.]

Note: yes, the font and format went a little screwy, but I don't know how to fix it without a lot of work.

What is means to chose a college

When I was picking what college I was going to attend, I came to a realization which has shaped my attitude toward life ever since.  I realized in my deliberations between the two finalist colleges that what I was choosing was not the college that would be best for me, but who I wanted to become.  It is true that people should apply to colleges where they think they would be happy, but once they have been accepted, the final decision should be based on the type of person a student wants to become.  For example, if someone is choosing between a college that specializes in athletics and parties and a college that is more quiet and academically based, they are essentially choosing the person that they want to evolve into over the course of their college career.  Even more subtle differences, such as the presence or absence of a ballroom team, exert their influence on a person.

For me, this ultimately became a choice between two colleges of generally equal academic merit - one with more diverse academics and more high-profile local events, the other with a better chance of a social life and dating.  I chose the former, knowing that I was choosing to put myself in an environment where I would have more opportunities to become a well-rounded person in every way except dating.  As far as I know, this has played out pretty accurately.  In fact, I couldn't even imagine going to the other college now.  But that's the point - I couldn't have.  The person I am now is a product of the experiences I have had in college.  A different person would have emerged from the other college I would have chosen.  She could not have attended the college I have.  I know that's all a bit fuzzy - but it's how I think.

An environment is not the sole determining factor in shaping a person.  Some people have totally surpassed or missed the opportunities or detriments present in their environment to become an unexpected person.  However, choosing an environment will change you in some way.  Make sure you play the odds as best you can to become the person you think you should be.

Note: Apologies for any grammatical problems and the rampant use of the word "environment".  I'm writing this very quickly to meet the deadline and I'm not very awake right now.  I'll hopefully be back with the funny illustrations tomorrow.  At least, I hope they're funny.

The short version is that I cannot be trusted around food.

As some of you may know, I have a strong mischievous streak in me, though it has (un)fortunately been suppressed slightly as of late.  When I was younger, though, it was something that was very clear to everyone around me.

My best friend threw a party at her house one day.  I think that there were about 15 to 20 people there, about half of whom I knew.  We were all just hanging out having a good time when I suddenly got bored in a way that is dangerous for everyone around me.  I went upstairs with another friend, a girl a few years younger than me, then we came back down about ten minutes later with a surprise for everyone.



Who wouldn't trust such innocent faces like that?

Apparently, almost everybody.  Everyone who knew me had, by the looks on their faces, pretty clearly decided not to touch those marshmallows with a ten foot pole.  Some people who didn't know me but who were observant of the first group's reactions also decided to decline the treats.  But a couple of teenage boys, bless their souls, were oblivious to everything but their stomachs.  Everyone else watched with bated breath as the boys reached for the sugar bombs on the tray.



The audience wasn't disappointed.



It was true that the tray held marshmallows covered in syrup; however, my associate and I had loaded the syrup up with salt.  Tasty.  After all this time I've forgotten who those boys were, but I wouldn't be surprised if they involuntarily shuddered upon meeting me again.

Apparently beheading isn't that bad.

I had a strange dream last night.  I've forgotten the bulk of it, but all I know is that at some point, I died.  I think possibly through beheading - that feels like it was a pretty big theme.  I felt the life leave my body, but then woke up in a nearly identical one somewhere else.  In context of the dream, it was like reincarnation hybridized with Quantum Leap (from what I know of that show).  Each time I died I woke in a different body.  The first was a girl who looked exactly like me, the second a young boy, the third a teenage boy.  Each time I woke, the most urgent thought in my head was the hope that I had reincarnated near the time of my death so that I could find my parents and let them know that I was okay.  I never did find them before I woke up.

The most interesting part of the dream came in my first reincarnated body when I saw a whole army lead by someone who I think looked like Russell Crowe demolish an entire city before he got there just so that he could dramatically run straight to the king from the beach with no hindrance.  As his executioner lifted up the blade to behead the king, I knelt down on the ground as well, suddenly understanding that the king and I were linked and that a blade to his neck would sever mine as well.  I felt no pain as the sword struck my/his neck, but as I lay there on the beach with the life bleeding out of me, my last thoughts in the comfortable warmth of death (I was sleeping in a warm bed in real life) were how good this body had been to me all my life (somehow it didn't matter that it was actually just an identical body to the first) and how much I would miss it.  I thanked the body, felt the last of its life leave it, and then jumped to the next one.

Somehow I don't think that a creepy dream should count as the daily post.  I'll try to get something funnier/more interesting up later.

Back in my day (A love letter to the internet)

Note: I've realized that the linked text on this blog (and in this post) is rather hard to see and I don't know how to fix it.  Just keep your eye out for some slightly pinker text.

Often, it is too easy to look around at the world and think that nothing is changing, that even with the advances in technology that we see, things are generally staying the same.  But they aren't.  The world is constantly in flux, it's just that often, changes creep up on us.

When I was a child, cell phones were rare.  Not unheard of, but not ubiquitous, either.  Getting a cell phone for high school was a big deal.  Now everyone has one.  Quick, try to think of how your life would be if you got lost while driving and couldn't call a friend for directions (or for some people, if you couldn't pull up Google Maps on your phone).  Google Maps, for that matter.  Mapquest and the like have given us the ability to ignore maps altogether and simply tell the computer to get us from point A to point B.  I don't remember having that as a child.  

The internet as a whole is quite astounding.  I know that I would have lost contact with all my amazing friends from  high school without Facebook.  I'm bad at letters and phone calls and even emails, but Facebook is just so easy.  Way back when, and I'm talking 10 years ago, whole families shared email addresses.  Now I'm not part of the real world right now (yay college!), but I feel like that's changed as well.

Some of us remember actually having to go to the library to do any kind of research.  Back in my childhood, internet access was limited, and what we could get was sometimes blocked by dial-up anyway.  Now, the information of the world is at our fingertips.  Heck, even I have designed a website for a class.  And in another one of those airplane/ice-cube type situations I mentioned yesterday, I just realized that I'm being astonished at the power of the internet to let people design their own internet and broadcast their own information while writing my own blog.

Blogging!  Vlogging!  Allie Brosh, Charlie McDonnell, Alex Day, BriTANick, The Nostalgia Critic, Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation, Barats and Bereta, Justin Bieber, and many, many others are all people who would likely have remained undiscovered and unheard without the internet.  Now, they get to share their awesomeness with the world, and we get to benefit from it.  The internet is a place where the people of the world get to decide what is seen and what is popular.  Anyone can try, and with a lot of luck, they can find their place and their online community.  People who have gotten their start on LiveJournal have even published their own great books.  It's a new and amazing world out there.

On a related note, the final thing I want to discuss is YouTube and video-sharing sites.  I didn't discover YouTube until the middle of my junior year of high school, but now I can't really imagine life without it.  Want to know what a politician said years ago?  YouTube it.  Want to watch and rewatch a favorite clip from a favorite show?  YouTube it.  Want to see an awesome hybridization of Kirby and Snoop Dogg?  YouTube it.  

There's a lot going on out there and it's all at our fingertips.  Is the internet perfect?  No.  But it is changing the world, and faster than we realize.  With our cellphones and our internet (and our increasingly internet-capable cell phones) we are moving forward.  Maybe it will turn out in the end that the catalyst for world peace is finding that everybody thinks that videos of kittens are adorable.

Ice Ice Baby

Well, I was going to subject you to parody lyrics of Ice Ice Baby, but I figure trying to do that with my brain as deep-fried as it is right now would be a bad idea for all involved.  Warning: there may be coherency problems ahead.  3.5 hours of sleep after several other low-sleep nights will do that.

Anyway, to get to the main point of the thing, I was flying home from college today when I noticed the stewardesses travelling through the aisle and dispensing drinks, adding ice to the cups with the water and soda.  I was then overwhelmed with appreciation for how awesome it is that we have the ability to create and store ice at will.  Really, think about how cool that is.  Back in the pioneer days, when the pioneers weren't break-dancing to catch a ride from a guy driving a giant rock, they could only get ice in the winter when it snowed.  We take it for granted, but ice is awesome.

In the middle of this thought process, I realized something.  I was thinking about how incredibly awesome readily-available ice is while I was flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour in a metal flying machine.  Believe it or not, I was actually still more impressed by the ice at the time.  

With regards to the airplane, it's weird what people take for granted.    Just think about all the things you use all the time that people just a hundred years ago, or even fifty or fewer years ago, would have thought impossible to have at this time.  I think I'm going to talk about that a little more tomorrow - even within our lives there have been some pretty substantial changes.  


Now I'm off to sleep for about 12 hours.  No alarm set - that's going to be a very nice change after all these weeks.  


Edit: Just remembered there is a new Doctor Who episode out that looks to be really awesome.  I wish I was awake enough to watch it now!

Coming soon...

Thoughts about ice cubes.  However, I have things to do right now and I'm worried the post won't make it before midnight.  I'll try to at least post it before I go to sleep.  If the post doesn't make it before midnight, this will technically be the post for today, but the ice cube one later will really belong to today.  Another one will go up tomorrow either way.

Yay blogging!

The semester's over!

Congratulations!  You've just survived one of your hardest semesters yet!  What are you going to do now?

...I'm going to pack.  

Which is why this is the third day in a row with no real content.     Fun fact: packing is much better with real storage containers instead of re-taped and crumbling used cardboard boxes.  

Interesting fact: at one point some people said the Earth had two moons: "The Moon" and Cruithne.  The latter is actually not a moon, but now you know what people are talking about if you ever hear it come up.