Iceland! Part I: Things I Saw, Places I went, Stuff I Did

Places I went: Even as I type this, it sounds as though I didn't see much, but honestly I was constantly moving and going somewhere. I stopped briefly at each spot to really appreciate everything before moving on. The truth is there is SO many things to see and do in Iceland and one week is nowhere near enough time to see everything. In the winter, hours are reduced in a lot of places too, and when visiting outdoor features, you are limited by the short days. While in Reykjavik, I visited a couple of museums, the National Museum of Iceland and the Aurora Borealis Museum. I wish I had made it to the Saga Museum and the Settlement Exhibition but I ran out of time. All of these places are spread out through the city and so it took some time to walk to them, and of course, I wanted to stop and take pictures of pretty much everything so yeah, the evenings crept up on me pretty quickly. I also wanted to kind of experience a bit of the local culture, so I hung out in a lot of pools and went to a few coffee shops and bars. I did a walking tour of the city, went to the famous hot dog stand, and on Monday night, walking to Grotta Lighthouse, I stopped and sat on a rocky cliff to watch the northern lights. It is said that you shouldn't expect to see them when you visit, so I felt so lucky to see them my second night there.

On Tuesday, the plan was to do the Golden Circle, which I did most of by the end of the day. I never made it to Thingvellir National Park which makes me incredibly sad but it just never worked out. On Tuesday morning it was sleeting, and as I got closer to the park, the roads got progressively worse and worse, and my little 2WD hatchback was not having it. About 3/4 of the way there, I ended up behind a row of cars that were stopped and ahead there was a tour bus that had rolled off the road and was laying on its side down a little ravine. Honestly, it doesn't sound like much here, but it was terrifying to see it and to watch the terrified, disoriented tourists stumble out of the bus. To make a long story short, a police officer came around a few minutes later to tell us they were closing the road and was nice enough to turn my car around for me on the extremely narrow, icy road and once I was closer to Reykjavik again and the roads were better, my nerves finally eased up. I drove to Hverger∂i, calmed down a bit, and decided to just do the rest of the tour backwards. I ended up visiting Keri∂ crater first (which was so beautiful), then a tomato greenhouse in Reykholt for lunch, then Geysir (where I saw Stokkur erupt a few times), then Gullfoss, the giant waterfall.

Wednesday was the day that I finally learned that plans in Iceland are completely useless. I set off from Stokkseyri, where I spent the night, and drove to Oddi (an old church/monastery/graveyard), and Keldur (which are viking ruins that I discovered were closed for the winter). At Keldur, I realized I left my phone charger back at the guesthouse and I made it almost back there when I ran over a screw that punctured my tire. I managed to get to a gas station, call the rental car company, and attempted to change my very first flat tire when a very nice person (the Icelandic Keith Richards) came out to change it for me. I then had to drive to Selfoss to get it fixed which was probably the least fun experience I had in Iceland. Service industries are very different over there (understandably so) and they weren't the most pleasant people to deal with, but the man fixed the tire for me and honestly that's all I care about. By this point, it was mid afternoon and I had to drive to Vik before dark so I only made a couple of stops on the way and those were at Skogafoss and another waterfall (which is the waterfall that you're able to walk behind!) and in front of Eyjafjallajokull volcano (the one that erupted in 2010). I never did get my phone charger back but I'm okay with it. Later that night, at my guesthouse, I happened to glance out of my window before bed and the northern lights were right there! I couldn't believe I had seen them twice now. They only lasted a few minutes before the clouds took over, but they were beautiful.

I think Thursday was my favorite day. I experienced the crazy weather in the morning as I drove to Dyrholaey lighthouse and to Reynisfjara (beach). I set off from there with the goal to make it all the way to Jokulsarlon, a few hours drive. As I drove, the landscape became exponentially more incredible (which I found hard to believe because I was already completely in awe of everything I had seen thus far). I saw vast lava fields covered in green moss, Laufskalavar∂a, which is a rock memorial for a farm that was destroyed in a past eruption. I put a rock for good luck because I definitely didn't want anything else to go wrong. I drove past Dverghamrar, which was a giant rock cliff where elves are said to live (there were a lot of these). I decided to put the Game of Thrones soundtrack on and those few hours driving through Southeast Iceland definitely rank highly among the best experiences I've ever had. The music personified the landscape so perfectly. At one point, the grass and farms disappeared and I was driving through what looked like a desert on another planet. There were these beautiful snow capped mountains in the background and I actually think I shed a tear at this point because I was so overwhelmed by how incredibly beautiful it was. I then began to see the glacier tongues descending down the mountains and stopped for a ton of pictures. It was so calm out here in the middle of nowhere surrounded by this incredible landscape. It was so quiet and at times, I was completely alone. I ended up missing the glacier walk I was supposed to do, so I spent a lot of time exploring Jokulsarlon, which was definitely one of the best places I saw. Across the road, there was a beach with a bunch of glaciers washed ashore. They call it the Diamond Beach or something because the glaciers look like a bunch of diamonds scattered among the black sand. I visited a smaller glacier lagoon on the way back to my next guesthouse. This was the first night we had that was completely clear and I was determined to see the Northern Lights again. It took a lot of trips outside to check, but finally around 11 pm, I went outside and was absolutely overwhelmed by the display. I only saw the green, but instead of looking like green wispy clouds like they had the previous nights, they were very distinct and I could actually see them shimmering among the vast number of stars.

On Friday, I got the pleasure of traveling with an awesome German girl I met at the guesthouse, and her and I drove back out to Skaftafell to do the glacier walk I was supposed to do the previous day. The glacier we hiked on was called Svinafellsjokull, which descends from Vatnajokull, the largest glacier cap in Iceland. Aside from dealing with obnoxious tourists on the walk, some of which were taking pictures of themselves laying on the ice pretending to fall into crevices (and making our guide extremely nervous), it was an amazing experience. Apparently I was standing on the same glacier where they filmed Batman Begins and Interstellar! After the tour, I had to begin the long five hour drive back to Keflavik, stopping in Vik briefly to enjoy the sun set behind a cliff near a beach.

Saturday was my flight home and quite honestly, I was completely exhausted. I had plans to go to a museum, but I decided to just relax and explore local life in Keflavik before returning my car and heading to the airport. I went to a local pool and then to a coffee shop where I had my last cup of delicious Icelandic coffee and a really good donut.

Yeah, I have to be an adult and stuff, but at least I'm no baby.

Journal prompt #4: What is your earliest memory and (I believe) how did it make you feel?

This one is a hard one to answer, but I'm going to go with the memory of how I met one of my first friends, since it happened when I was four and that's when you start forming reliable long term memories. I was sitting on the sidewalk playing with some chalk and one of the neighborhood kids came over and asked me to be his friend and if I wanted to come over to his house and play. I said yes and I went over to his house. I know, it's kind of an anticlimactic memory. It's basically something a typical four year old would do. But that's not why I decided to put this post in my blog. As I was thinking about this prompt, I got on a whole other topic.


Emily prompt of the day: Why do we begin to form memories at age four anyway?

This got me thinking. Four is such a random age to begin remembering things and it's really quite late when you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint. I'm sure back in the day, when our very survival depended on our capabilities as human beings (unlike now, when technology has enabled a completely directionless, dependent, lazy person to pass along their traits to as many kids as he/she desires), it was important for a young child to be able to remember important stuff, like lions are bad and will eat you, etc.

Of course, times have changed. I'm sure that the real reason behind this phenomenon is simply that age four is when our brains are developed enough to form long term memories, but I have a different theory.

Think about it: you're a fetus, floating around in the womb in a nice, warm, quiet environment. Everything you could ever need is literally fed directly to you through a giant tube in your stomach. You don't even have to open your eyes. You just sit there, occasionally suck your thumb and throw out some kicks for good measure. Then, all of a sudden, without warning, the warm fluid you're floating around in goes away, and the walls of your bedroom literally push you right out the door. Within a few hours, you're thrown into a cold, loud world full of bright lights and strange people. I think the reason that we don't remember things as babies is because we simply just aren't ready for this bullshit.

I know that your first thought is that babies have it really easy. Your parents literally do everything for you and all you  have to do is smile occasionally, spit some food on your clothes, and cry whenever you get the least bit unhappy. Sounds like an easy life, doesn't it? In reality though, babyhood is like one giant Monday. I don't think we give babies enough credit for all the shit they have to go through.

For starters, they don't get a say in what they eat. Have you seen baby food? Is there anything remotely appetizing about pureed mushrooms or chicken mush? No. There isn't. In addition to that, half of the things babies eat make them puke anyway, so they get to taste that shit twice. And they get no say, because they can't talk yet. Sometimes they get Colic, which is just one giant stomach ache all the time. That doesn't sound remotely fun to me. Then there's the whole teething situation, which is the first time a human being gets taught the lesson that their body will betray them on a regular basis. They can't even just drink the pain away like adults do, since they're babies and their tiny fingers and lack of motor skills renders them incapable of opening whiskey bottles.

It only gets worse from there too. I think one of the worst things about being a baby would be that literally everyone and their mother wants to be in your face and holding you. And I don't blame them, because babies are adorable and squishy and I think it's a stress reliever holding something that squishy. They're like living stress balls (but only when you can return them to their rightful owner when the going gets rough). The problem here is that every baby has a disgusting relative--a person with questionable hygiene and absolutely no capacity for personal space who only seems capable of destroying a baby's personal bubble and going to town with the ridiculous faces.

Thinking about all of this stuff, I can't imagine what it would be like if I remembered every instance I threw something up or had my personal space violated. I'm pretty glad our brains decided to delay this memory forming process, otherwise, I'm pretty sure every single baby on the planet would grow up to have post-traumatic stress disorder.

I'd like to thank old dead guys for doing my thinking for me

I know I haven't been good about writing in here lately, as I am now an adult with an adult job and I  require an insane amount of energy just to stay awake and function day to day. This, in addition to what I consider an "easily excitable mind," has resulted in a behemoth writers block that I haven't been able to shake for a while. I found myself reminiscing the good old days of high school and college english class, being given a prompt and being forced to sit and write in a journal. Some of my best work came from being forced to just write the first thing that came into my head. Luckily, I was given an awesome book for my birthday that includes 365 writing prompts, so it's basically like having my own nagging english teacher!

Today's writing prompt was the following: What does 'happiness' mean to you? Would you describe yourself as a naturally happy or an unhappy & worried person? Tell me about a time when you felt really happy and about a tie when you made someone else feel happy.

Happiness is a strange concept to me. Looking for some inspiration, I read the quotes in the back of the book on happiness and found one by Aristotle that kind of jumped out at me: "Happiness depends upon ourselves." This, of course, led to a google search (where the magic begins) on the quote, which led to a mad frenzy to find my copy of Nicomachean Ethics that I SWORE up and down that I kept, since I keep pretty much all of my textbooks from college (I believe you can learn a lot about a person by what's on their bookshelf), only to find that I had, in fact, gotten rid of that book. So until I receive my ordered copy of the book, the internet has to suffice.

Aristotle has kind of a strange perspective on happiness that does not in any way support anything our society does nowadays. Lately we have "rediscovered" the concept of mindfulness (which is basically the new "kale"--aka a trend that everyone pretty much disregarded for years and now all of a sudden its the hottest "thing" in health. This isn't shocking given that our society has basically been built upon giving history the giant middle finger and doing what we want anyway. Modern day society is basically a giant teenager full of angst and bad decisions); we have learned that living in the moment and not worrying about the past or the future can be beneficial, which makes sense, but Aristotle believed that we should always act with the future in mind. How will our actions now make the future a better place? 

Aristotle believed in happiness as a human goal (which it is) and the central purpose of life itself (which I suppose it kind of is. We haven't figured out the purpose of life quite yet, so I guess this one wins out as a default). He believed that happiness is an end result, that it's not something we can feel and then not feel again in the course of a few minutes. It's not the result of something good happening, and when something bad happens, its not a feeling that can just go away. It's a culmination of living a fulfilling, virtuous life. If you have friends and are just, courageous, and a good citizen all in a way that is neither excessive or lacking, happiness is the end result. Like when you're playing the Sims, and you've achieved their life goal and their Sim thing turns gold for the rest of their lives.

Now obviously I do not regard Aristotle, as insightful as he was (basically the Jesus of ancient philosophers) to be an all-knowing authority on such a complicated, intangible concept, but he has certainly put more thought than a lot of people have and his ideas have helped me in answering the question of what happiness is. I, too, believe that happiness is not a temporary feeling. I believe that one can be happy and also feel bad for a bit. I believe that a person can be content with his or her life but get angry over somebody cutting them off in traffic. Despite having an asshole boss, one can still be overall happy with everything else and grateful to have a job. I think that each positive action that one performs during life is a brick and happiness is the building that results from many good actions. Everyone is in charge of their own happiness and they decide how strong the building will eventually be. The stronger the building, the more able to weather any storms that life decides to conjure up. 


Personally, there are lots of things that make me feel good that I should probably implement in my day-to-day life and I think it's important to figure out the difference between things that make me feel good and things that will make me feel happy in the long run. I feel that this whole Aristotle business was a good way to start and was also kind of like knowledge porn for my brain.

Dear Facebook Aliens, I'm on to you

In keeping with what will probably be my new year's resolution to write in here more often (or in general, I guess), I am going to attempt a post today. Or maybe not, because goals are meant to be followed and resolutions are meant to be broken. New year's resolutions really are just our way of balancing our life; if we got EVERYTHING done that we set out to do, then we would never experience the euphoria of accomplishing anything because we would always get everything done. Somewhere along the line, I'm sure some human invented the idea of the New Year's resolution to help society become more productive. Plus, if we accomplished everything we set out to do, we would become cocky little jerks and everyone would hate people even more than they already do. So really, when you think about it, creating this blog was just a way for me to make me more tolerable to people. You're welcome.

I'm sure I've written in here about how much I despise facebook, you know, despite my pretty frequent usage. Actually, when you think about it, using facebook kind of perpetuates an addictive/self-loathing kind of behavior. You get on, and then you can't get off. You are literally stuck. You find yourself scrolling through cat videos and buzzfeed recipe videos for whatever cheesy, bacon-y, oven broiled monstrosity your friends swear up and down they're going to make for their next party, meanwhile, the voice in the back of your head is trying to tell you to do something productive, so you get off, and then immediately forget what it was you got off your phone to go do*, and you get back on the phone for another four hours. I swear, it's like aliens invented this shit to turn all of our brains to mush and turn us all into mindless zombies.

*You know, like when you walk up three flights of stairs in your house with the intention to go do something, and then you get upstairs and you forget why you went up there? Or when you go stand in front of the fridge for ten minutes trying to figure out why you are standing there? On second thought, I just came up with a million dollar idea. How cool would it be to have a fridge that you could open, and as you're sitting there in a mind trance waiting for your brain to start working again, it throws a sandwich at you, or a beer or something. Like "HERE, QUIT WASTING MY TIME AND GO AWAY." Or what if your fridge gave you something to do? If you stand in front of it long enough, it'll tell you to go clean your room, or it'll give you a pinterest worthy project to work on. That way, you can go upstairs and work on a Paper Mache collage of the universe instead of bathing the dog which is what you were going to do before you went and stood in front of the fridge.

Anyway, back to aliens. Today, I hate facebook because it keeps insisting it knows me better than I know myself. It's like when the internet uses your cookies to track what you're searching for and then you find those same searches in the side bar of your webpage. Before I knew why that happened, it would really freak me out because I would be like "Whoa, how did the internet know I was looking for a fancy lunchbox?" Cookies, that's how.

But I don't even think facebook uses cookies; it's facebook aliens trying to destroy humanity. I have seen suggested posts for things that I have had nothing to do with ever. Back in college for instance, I ended up putting on some weight (you know, because I was a little busy trying to graduate a year early, commute to school, and basically work full time in a damn bakery all at the same time), and I would get on facebook and it would recommend baby stuff to me. Like, you little condescending piece of shit, there are better ways to tell me to lose weight. And then sometimes, it just tries to make me feel worse about myself. Like on days that I feel kind of down and blue, and it comes up with a suggested post that says something about helping starving kids in Africa, or an article titled, "How to Make Friends in Real Life," or a book that I should read called "How to Get the F*** Over Yourself." Or it'll take every lifetime achievement of my facebook friends and permanently pin it to the top of my page. Hey, facebook, if I decide to post some cryptic song lyrics, just lay off, yeah? Or how about recommending me a hug and a bottle of wine?

Don't take advice from stick figures

I will have to admit that one of my favorite past times is making fun of stupid pictures people put on Facebook. You know, the ones that have some "inspiring" quote in front of a picture that does not at all relate to the subject? How about the ones that take some really inspirational quote from someone like ghandi and set it to a picture of some emo teenage couple doing a pinky promise? I've never actually seen that one to be fair, but with half of the crap that I see on the Internet, I won't doubt it's existence. Or my personal favorites, the bucket list excerpts written by obsessive teenage girls about how they want their future guy to act. "23: to find a guy who makes you breakfast in bed every single morning" or "4556743: to find a guy who loves me so much, he spends all night staring at me and obsesses over me every damn second of the day." Adorable.

Anyway, seething animosity aside for ditzy teenage girls aside, I found this picture today. I don't really want to make fun of it, because the picture has a lot of good intentions, but I had so many objections to pretty much everything in this picture. The pic is below, titled "How to Not be Hard on Yourself." First and foremost, I would like to say how wonderful this idea was. I think that we are all a bit too hard on ourselves. I mean, for God's sake, the fact that you are alive today means that you were the one out of billions of sperm cells that made it to the egg and finished the job. You literally grew yourself into a human from a blind date between two cells. You fight gravity every single day. You take food and turn it into poop. Seriously, if anything, just take five minutes out of your day and just think about that. 

That being said, I will now rip this picture to shreds with my biting sarcasm. 

My mistakes are part of my learning. So every time I go out and get drunk and make bad decisions, it's really just like going to school, right? And school is good. Everyone says to never stop learning so basically I should never stop making mistakes. 

There is no right way to do anything? This implies there is no WRONG way to do anything either, and I'm pretty sure if you get out of bed in the morning head first, you might break your neck. 

Stand up for what I believe in, even if it's popular. Except maybe advocating killing other people, because that's pretty unpopular and you should never advocate that. I feel as though maybe Hitler took this advice the wrong way. 

Learn from people who criticize me. The only thing I've learned from people who criticize me is that I'm basically worthless scum. You should learn to take CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and think about it carefully. 

Look at my past as an adventurous biography. Except it's an autobiography because I'm pretty sure I wrote it.

Don't underestimate your talent until you apply it 100 times. After that, you just suck and should learn from the criticism you get for wasting your time.

Express your anger in a positive way. Like beating the shit out of a punching bag while eating a turkey leg. 

But I get it, there's a lot of pressure on us. I think it has something to do with our place in history. The problem is that there have been SO many awesome people before us that have done so many awesome things. We are literally running out of things to be accomplished so honestly, I think that makes even getting out of bed and living day to day without dying or being eaten by killer geese a pretty spectacular accomplishment. 

Things that Don't Make Any Damn Sense

So I noticed my blog is getting some random views so I figured maybe I should write something in here, yes?

Anyway, I don't normally title my posts, but I'm going to preemptively (I'll have you know it took me way too long to spell that word because my phone claims it doesn't exist. Liar.) call it Things that Don't Make any Damn Sense. And actually I was going to start with pickles, but I've been inspired by creating my title, so the list now goes as follows:

1) Why we Capitalize Some Words in Titles but Not Others and How the Hell do I Figure Out the Difference?

Wow that title alone annoyed me. So what determines if a word gets capitalized in a title? This is one of those random facts that just kind of slips its way into your brain when you're not looking. Like how you learned what a gondola is (true fact from a conversation I had in real life today). You just kind of wake up one morning and you know more stuff. It's like there's a knowledge fairy that comes and pays you a visit when you're sleeping. Anyway, I think I was taught in school that only important words get capitalized in a title, but how exactly do we define "importance?" Because the words "and," "if," "but," "the," "in," "we," "do," well, they're all kind of reeeeally important words. If any of those words do get capitalized and I have simply neglected to do so, please let me know. Or don't, because you shouldn't take anything I say seriously anyway. In fact, these words are like the under appreciated housewives of word society. I think they should all go on strike. That's as much as I care to write about words because now we're going to talk about....

2) ...PICKLES.

Pickles make no sense to me. I mentioned this to a friend actually, so to at least one person, this conversation will sound familiar. Anyway, who in their right mind was like, "hey! Let's take this perfectly good and delicious cucumber and bathe it in vinegar and then eat it?? Well, I will tell you! Apparently, after googling it, it was the Mesopotamians. Blame Mesopotami and the deranged science that led to the creation of pickles! Blame one of the earliest human civilizations! Also apparently Thomas Jefferson enjoyed pickles, but only in the summertime as I can garner.

3) mushrooms

This I seriously don't understand. Let's pick something that grew in a pile of shit and eat it! I blame drugs.

I get inspired by older black ladies

I have had something completely uneventful happen to me today. I have had a very bad day. You know, one of those days where you just want to take a bottle of wine and go hide under a rock (forever)? I kind of wish we all had giant pods, kind of like something in a totally crazy spacey sci-fi movie where the main characters are all wearing skin tight leotards and doing some weird shit like trying to colonize another planet with only blood type AB+ people. On a totally unrelated topic, WHY do people think that spandex is the best thing to wear in space? If I were in space, I would probably be wearing some kind of industrial grade shit that is literally one step short of a walking dungeon. It would be the only thing to keep my ovaries safe from the outstanding amount of radiation  that everyone forgets actually happens in space, thus protecting the unborn children who will ultimately carry on the name of the human race. We don't want them possessing an extra arm. Although, that probably went out the window when we all decided to leave planet earth for an entire lifetime spent aimlessly drifting through the void and sleeping in those little pod things. Oh, right! The pods. And the bad day. Back to that. 

I don't need to go into details about the bad day. It was just kind of one of those "the universe hates me and is trying to stop every bit of progress I make right in its tracks" days. Maybe the universe was mortally offended over something I said? Maybe this is some supreme higher powers way of "making me a better person by mentally beating the crap out of me?" I've stopped trying to make sense of it at this point. 

              Dear universe,

                      I see your "totally shit day" and raise you one "popcorn and wine for dinner." 

                Take that!

                Emily. 

I always kind of feel bad for feeling bad. I mean, I really don't have a BUNCH of stuff to complain about. I mean, there are starving children in Africa being hunted down by hippos and I'm sitting here tapping away on an iPad. As if the thought of that isn't enough, the other day at the metro, I saw a guy in a wheelchair just chilling in the lobby sleeping. Upon closer examination, I noticed a cord coming from the chair. Plugged into the wall. That guy literally couldn't go anywhere because his wheelchair battery died. It. Died. The poor dude literally had nothing else he could do except just sit there and try to catch some Z's until that he could eventually make it home. 

And it's that kind of stuff that just puts it all into perspective. I think the worst thing to do when you're sad is to think of ways it could be worse. The only thing you're actually doing is tempting the universe, not to mention, reminding yourself that the world can be an awful, dreadful place. I'm not saying that you shouldn't count your blessings, because you definitely should, but don't distract yourself from sadness. Sadness is the natural balance of things. It exists to make the happy stuff feel good. Revel in it. Bathe in it. Appreciate it. And then when it's ready to leave, make sure it has its coat and walk it out to the car. It's only polite. 

I hate commuting with every ounce of my being. Having to shove past people while dealing with  temperamental subway service and the overpowering feeling of JUST WANTING TO BE HOME while someone is standing next to you with their ass in your face is just about unbearable at times. And unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who can be perky about a bad situation. It's almost  inhuman. But as I was waiting on the platform for ages after leaving work a half hour late, teeth grinding and trying desperately to think of the silver lining in my awful day, the lady next to me, An older black ladies (the "fountain of wisdom" type) asked where the train was (because it was literally taking forever and a day) and upon being notified that it was literally nowhere to be found, she turned to me and said something that made me laugh. 

                                                         "Woo! Ain't that some bullshit?!"

Lady, you took the words right out of my mouth. 

Dog ladies have more fun anyway

I kind of wish more people read my blog... Sigh.

Just kidding, that sounds unnecessarily needy. My blog is really for me. Why? Because I've discovered that if you make people laugh, they will like you more. Even better though, if I can make myself laugh, then I like myself a little more. It's kind of a win-win situation.

I've been thinking a lot about just what makes a person successful, mostly just because I have an undying desire to just be successful right now. At 22. Hey, if Taylor swift can do it, why can't I, right?  WRONG. I know that deep down, success is just what you make of it. Unfortunately, it's not just like getting a bunch of signatures on a petition, like HEY YOU'VE REACHED YOUR 50 SIGNATURES CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE OFFICIALLY PERFECT. That kind of makes it sound as though adulthood is an exclusive club. Just pay a certain amount each month, and you can have a cool box mailed to you every month with stuff like Adult Magazine, and shit like kale chips and fiber biscuits and if you pay more, you can have the premium box that includes really good wine and your own personal therapist.

I guess really, my biggest fear being the young tadpole that I am, is that I'll never know what I truly want out of life, that I base my decisions on what other people want for me, and what others will find impressive. Even worse, I'm nervous that I'll never make sense out of anything that life throws at me. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do people intentionally hurt other people? Why does the government take so much of my money and what do they actually do with it anyway? (you know, since all of the public transit I ride is from 1975, all of the roads are falling apart, and I don't see public schools doing much for kids these days)

Sometimes I wish that I was surrounded by people my own age more often. Graduating early sounded like such a great idea until I entered the work force and realized that I'm the only one who deals with the issues I do. You know, the "twenty something" issues. If you still have no clue, I'm pretty sure Buzzfeed comes out with daily articles on crazy life is in your twenties. The truth is, though, that older people make the best company. While it sucks being around other people who seemingly have everything figured out and who seem to have some sort of stability and control in their lives, it's a reminder that eventually I will be like that. I'm sure if I could manage to find some magic glasses that made it so I was able to see others when they were my age (definitely not unlike some sort of cool x-Ray vision type shit) I would see myself in a lot of them.

And sometimes it's hard, because I see older people who still don't seem to have things figured out. I see little old ladies, crocheting on the train, with cat hair all over their coats and a look in their face that is filled with regret and loneliness. Sometimes I get scared, too. Life is literally like having a friend who will love and hug you and build you up, but is also subject to random bouts of beating the crap out of you in a dark alley and stealing the shirt right off your back. I guess it is all about hindsight though. Maybe you got the shit beaten out of you because you genuinely needed it. Or it got you out of going to something you truly didn't want to go to. And maybe that shirt was way too small, or unflattering. It's always hard not to constantly think about all of the "what-if's." It's also hard to come to the conclusion that I can kind of control things. If I don't want to be a sad, lonely old cat lady, I just won't allow myself to fill the voids in my life by allowing feral cats into my home. I've been pretty good at it so far. Anyway, I'll be a dog lady, they're much cooler :)

Why can't TLC just pay me to do something pointless?

Sometimes in life, you just have to appreciate the little things. One of the things that intrigue me the most (especially since reading a comprehensive history on the English language ((it was more interesting that it sounds)) ) is when we come up with words that don’t actually mean the thing that they’re supposed to mean. Like, how panda bears aren’t actually bears at all. Why don’t we call them Panda Raccoons, which is what they are? Maybe it’s because too many stupid people would associate raccoons with pandas and attempt to go pet whatever is digging through their trash. Although, I’m not too sure why you would see a bear with its huge claws and super sharp teeth and be like “Awwww it’s so cute I’M GOING TO GO PET IT.” I think it’s actually something to do with saving the Pandas. People care more about bears than raccoons.

 

Or maybe like “human resources,” which is literally the biggest joke in the world. Honestly, though, I know that it would be a mouthful to say something like “Humans that may or may not answer their phones/emails and if they do at all, they do it on their own time because they are too busy derping around all day,” or “humans hired to process paperwork at painfully slow speeds.”

 

Now that my defamation of Human Resources Depts everywhere is done and over with, I would like to get to the biggest paradox I have ever encountered in my life: TLC.

 

TLC, or The Learning Channel, is literally the biggest bullshit excuse of a channel ever created. I have learned nothing on that channel that I can apply to real life. It kind of reminds me of half of the core classes that I had to take in college, especially that one about Medical Ethics. When am I ever going to need to make a life or death decision on someone else’s part that involves their religious beliefs? Hopefully never. But then again, I did find out that my Rabbi professor was arrested for videotaping Jewish ladies taking ceremonial baths, so I guess anything can happen. And I’ll go ahead and write a letter to my old professor in jail and let him know that what he taught me was super helpful and I’m forever grateful that I paid like, $700 for him to tell me that Catholics don’t like abortions. It’s funny the kind of stuff you think of every time you make a student loan payment. I’ve decided that March’s loan payment will go out to the band director who gave me a B in marching band.

 

Anyway, diversions aside, the only thing that I remember being on TLC that was even remotely educational was Magic School Bus, which came on for 20 minutes before school started, but it was only a small glimmer of hope that was to be later crushed by marathons of “A Wedding Story.” My favourite part about the channel was the one night a week where it just showed TV shows of people who had eaten themselves out of the ability to walk out of their bedroom door. Is there anything I learned from these marathons? Only that in the case that my emotions become absolutely too much to handle, I really shouldn’t eat 20 candy bars, 2 whole rotisserie chickens, 7 ears of corn, a baby elephant, a Game of Thrones style 17 course meal and finish it off with a Ben and Jerry’s Vermonster for dessert. So far, I can safely say that I have never had that urge though.

 

Whatever intellectual content that was ever once on TLC, however, is gone forever now, and has been replaced by awesome trashy reality TV instead. I mean, really, 19 Kids and Counting is really just a show about a lady who covers herself up by day and perpetually puts out by night; she’s basically a baby-making werewolf. I love the show so much, because deep down, I know that the odds are too great that with 19 children, at least one has to break free and go nuts. My money is on Jinger, mostly just because her parents gave her that awful name. Or maybe even Josie, since she is apparently incapable of leaving her shirt on. Behind the blank stares and the eerie smiles and perfect long, wavy hair, you know shit is about to get real, and I’m gonna be watching when it does.

 

My real fascination though is with all of the shows on “little people.” I personally can understand something like that Mermaid Girl special, or “9,000 pounds and pregnant with an alien” because those are shows that show people who actually live differently than the norm. But midget shows are pretty much the ultimate paradox. The purpose of the TV show is to show us normal folk that little people can lead normal lives, and in so doing, they show us that their lives are completely fucking normal and not really worthy of a freaking TV show. I can’t think of anything more boring than watching a show like “Little People, Big World.” The only thing they do differently is that sometimes they crawl around on countertops, but hey, I do that and I’m normal sized. How am I learning anything at all from this show?

 

All kidding aside though, if TLC is ever willing to pay me huge dollar signs to walk around on countertops, or have a million babies, or try on wedding dresses, you bet your ass I’ll do it.

I wish I could have learned this stuff in high school instead

I've come to the conclusion (again) that growing up is really hard. In the attempt to navigate life's treacherous waters while staying afloat and not getting the awesome metaphorical pirate hat that I'm probably wearing wet, I have succeeded and failed and succeeded again multiple times already. One thing I'm slowly learning to accept though is the fact that sometimes life throws you a huge storm and sometimes you just gotta ride it out. The best way to ride out a storm? Movies. What better way to relive your childhood than with a good old Disney movie?

Anyone who knows me in real life will know that I will always to my grave argue that The Lion King is the best damn movie ever created, and of course, with the new Frozen craze, I have pissed off (and by pissed off, I mean mildly annoyed people who proceeded to not listen to me anyway) many good folk. However, it came to me (in the shower, as many good moments of genius often do) that some of the Disney movies that I watched growing up have TERRIBLE messages.

*DISCLAIMER: I absolutely do not advocate never watching the following movies again. You probably learned worse things in public school anyway. This is purely for the purpose of me being a jerk and ruining your favourite movies for you :P

POCAHONTAS: Someone strange walks into your village from a different country? By all means, be totally naive to their ulterior motives. Odds are they probably won't try to kill you with smallpox blankets (what they never show you in the sequel is that the reason she went off to England is actually because they destroyed her village with smallpox blankets.)

CINDERELLA: I'm pretty sure my cousin inspired this one. If a guy you danced with was too drunk to remember what your face looked like and therefore tried to cover his tracks by making every girl in the village try on a shoe, you should definitely marry that guy because he's rich and you don't care anyway. I laugh because when she got married, she probably though she was done cleaning up after people lolololololol

THE LITTLE MERMAID: If you meet a really hot guy on the beach, change everything you are to be with him. Seriously, even your species.

SLEEPING BEAUTY: Meet a hot stranger in the woods? Dance with him. Find out that he was totally fondling you in your sleep? Marry him.

SNOW WHITE: I seriously don't know what this gullible bitch was thinking. If a strange old lady randomly gives you an apple, and then cackles as you take and eat it, you are just asking for trouble. She probably left her drink unattended in bars too and just ignored the funny taste it had when she came back or the strange guy lurking dangerously close.

I'm not even going near the movie Frozen, since I'm pretty sure that Elsa was just paid off by climate change deniers to cause an eternal winter. And also, if you have freaky uncontrollable ice powers, try seeing a doctor. At the very least, maybe a shrink so you can at least make an attempt to control them.

I just love The Lion King because it is the perfect coming of age tale. First of all, it is Hamlet with lions. How is that not cool? Let's take one of the greatest playwrights in history and use one of his stories as our next movie! Sounds good to me.

Also, I have no clue if maybe it's just because gender roles don't really apply to lions, since they are basically backwards anyway, but the lionesses literally don't take shit from anyone. Most Disney princesses live on the premise that as long as they do their daily pilates, there will always be someone to take care of the rest. Nala, however, is a self sufficient lioness who isn't afraid to get what she wants.

Most of all, it's so realistic. It literally goes through everything that a typical young adult would go through. Seriously who doesn't have at least one evil uncle? Just kidding. Actually I'm pretty sure I do.... But I can safely say that he's never tried to kill my father and blame me for it.

Anyway, aside from all of that, it really is realistic. What young adult doesn't see themselves in Simba? When you're little, you think you're invincible, right? And I like that simba is a cocky little shit in the beginning, because you know what? We all were. You were bullied in school because as a kid, you think that you can literally do and say anything you want to anyone and there are no consequences. Simba is the perfect comparison to a child's free, optimistic, "rose coloured glasses" spirit.

And then guess what, his dad dies. Mufasa, literally the most badass lion father who ever lived, it turns out is actually just mortal. We have all had our "mufasa dies" moment. Whether it is puberty, or simply the lesson that you can't get what you want in life all the time, or maybe someone actually died, we've all been there. I have a firm belief that in order to be a good person, life has to bitch slap you in the face at least once. At LEAST once.

This is getting long winded, so to wrap it up, we all know how it ends. Simba runs away with some vagabond hippies, smokes some grass, sees his father's ghost and realizes that he can't change the past, but he must learn from it. It's a tough pill to swallow, but he literally ran back towards his problems, beat the shit out of them, and reaped the sweet lion rewards.

So for the record, if life knocks you down and steals your crown, get up, put that shit behind you and go reclaim your rightful place in the universe. That's a life lesson that I can get behind.

Stop Burning Harry Potter Books, Kidz Bop is the Real Evil

Reasons why Kidz Bop is the worst thing humans have ever done:

1. They spell "Kidz" with a Z.

This reminds me of people who still use "txting language" even though we've invented autocorrect. People who still say "coolio," and who still say stuff like "u r cool." Why are we promoting this? Seriously, it just about kills me to think that a bunch of business executives with advanced degrees sat in a room and were all like, "Hey, how do we market this stuff to kids?" and they figured that spelling something incorrectly was obviously the best way to do it.

2. They pick songs with terrible messages and think that by changing all of the bad words, that the song is magically okay for children. 

If you've ever looked at the back of a Kidz Bop CD, you find hits that you would find on any radio station, except all of the bad words are taken out and replaced by stupid phrases. I also can't stand when they sing songs that are obviously written by emotionally troubled adults. You know that song "I Don't Care (I love it)?" You know, the one where the girl crashes her car into the bridge and watches it burn after a guy (who's about twenty years older than her) dumps her? I just can't trust that song being sung by a nine year old kid. Especially since they're singing it with a big ass grin on their face, as if mental instability is hilarious. Seriously, nine year old, you don't understand. Your biggest hardship in life thus far has probably been getting a girl toy in your happy meal instead of the boy one. We all know you wanted the ninja turtle over the princess one. Go cry me a river.

3. These kids are making more money than I am. 

Seriously, go f*** yourself, nine year old singer of Kidz Bop. You lend your prepubescent voice to a cause that is cultivating a degenerate breed of children, and you are making more money per album than I will ever make in my life. 1

Another diet rant

I know I don't write in here nearly as often as I would like to, but today, I have that winning combination of something to rant about and enough free time to do so.

Before you start reading, however, I would like to warn you: this is another rant on diets. I know we really don't see enough posts about this (sarcasm), but I feel like my two cents is warranted.

What prompted this? Well, in the time that I have woken up, checked my news feed, read the news, and drank my morning cup of tea, I have been exposed to a fistful of HEY, HERE'S A DIET THAT WORKS. And you know what? They all look really stupid. I wish I had a dollar for every time I saw something that promised "fast, long lasting results." I'm sorry, that's basically an oxymoron to me. Either you like bird food (and you have never had weight problems), or you don't, and you are overweight. Forcing yourself to like salads because it's what some "diet guru" says you should is not going to work.

I guess I'm sounding a bit harsh, but honestly, I have been exposed to this my entire life. I was dealt the "bad genetics" card. My parents worked full time to support us and didn't have the time to make all of those dumb "kid approved-healthy-animal shaped-paleo-no carb-no fat" pinterest snacks. Honestly, I wouldn't have cared if my celery was dressed up to look like a caterpillar, it was still celery, and it tasted awful. I was a fat kid, but I really ate no worse than any of my friends, they all just had lightning speed metabolisms, and so I was the one who was picked on.

And honestly, that's tough. I'll be the first to admit that this definitely prompted an unhealthy relationship with food. When I got to high school, I exercised two hours a day. I never ate macaroni and cheese, and sometimes I never ate lunch. I ate low fat TV dinners for dinner, and only drank diet soda. And you know what? I never realised how miserable I was doing that. I would never even THINK of doing that stuff now, because life is too short to be miserable. If I want a cookie, I will eat one. I won't eat five, because that's bad, but I will eat one because cookies taste glorious, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.

Now, before you get the wrong idea, being really overweight is not a healthy thing. I definitely condone diets for those who really need to lose weight for health reasons, emotional reasons, whatever, but I think that we go about them the wrong way.

1. We first establish that people are fat. According to the all knowing BMI calculator, I am morbidly obese. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't waddle, I wear an average size for jeans, I have one chin, and I am not too big to ride on amusement park rides. My cholesterol, blood pressure, and all of those other levels are all normal/healthy, and my doctor has told me that I'm not actually obese. Now, personally, I know that if I lost 15 lbs, it would be beneficial, but I've decided not to put my trust and self worth into a scale number/online calculator that doesn't understand my love for bacon.

2. We tell said "fat people" to eliminate this, eliminate that, carbs are bad, fat is bad, don't eat so much, eat six meals a day, whatever. You know what's bad? Excessive ANYTHING. If you eat nothing but salads all day, that's not healthy. If you eat your weight in pasta every day, that's bad too. Now, if you FEEL better not eating so much bread, then do it, but if you are just going to be thinking about fries all day, then you won't feel much better. We tell fat people to eat vegetables all day, but don't teach them how to grow a vegetable garden (WHICH WILL MAKE YOUR VEGGIES SO MUCH CHEAPER). Seriously, bagged lettuce and freeze dried fruit gets expensive after a while.

3. Then, we tell fat people that they need to buy all of these packaged diet foods. You know why? Because diet companies, like everyone else in the world, like receiving money. If you are eating frozen rubbery chicken, and bland broccoli every night in a tray that looks like it would feel a two year old child, then you probably won't stick to your diet. Then you feel more guilty, and buy MORE diet food that will likely not be enjoyed. We tell them to eat less, and eat better foods, but don't teach them how to make it taste good. If you eliminate the butter from your vegetables, it won't taste as good, but if you add garlic/herbs/whatever, it probably will.

4. Now, once their self esteem is completely dependent on how well their diet is going, we tell them to exercise. Exercise is SO good for you, but nobody wants to run around on a treadmill all day like a damn hamster. That's just not enjoyable. Go ride a bike. Go for a walk. Maybe you won't work up a sweat, but you're still moving. Find something you enjoy. Honestly, I can't stand workout videos (if they work for you, disregard my opinion). I can't trust anyone who looks that happy doing push-ups in a cold gym all day. Most of us don't have the time to do two hours of pilates all day, just take pride in not sitting on the couch all day.

Anyway, the weather is nice, so I'm going to go ride my bike.

I pretty much have the cure for obesity

Hello, world. 

It's that time of year again. Seals are getting mauled, people's arms are getting bitten off, and sharks are flying through the air. That's right, shark week is coming. And I'm super freaking excited, because I live for shark week. But it's not only the fact that I get to watch an entire weeks worth of shows devoted to one of nature's most perfect animals, it marks the beginning of the end of summer. It's kind of nature's way of saying, "Alright guys, wrap up the barbecues and pool parties, real life starts back up again pretty soon." And you know what? I'm pretty okay with that. Because honestly, I would take cooler weather, snow, flannels, and pumpkins over swamp ass and hair frizz any day. I make summer sound so attractive.

However, the end of summer is almost here, and unfortunately, it makes me realise that I really haven't done much towards the whole, "I'm gonna get fit and eat healthy" kick that I was so hoping to be on by now. I have discovered that in hot weather, I want to do nothing. Just nothing. So this afternoon, on the way home, I decided that I needed some sort of motivation to go exercise, and like any girl would, I decided that if I went and got some exercise shorts and a sports bra, I might be a little more apt to get my ass outside and do it. It was a sign, as I went inside of Walmart and saw exercise clothes practically staring me in the face. I also got stickers, because I can't think of anything to motivate me better than stickers. Except ice cream, but that's a no-no. 

But I also came up with a better idea. As with all undesirable things in life, I just need to word it differently. Instead of going out for a run, I'm gonna go prowl the neighbourhood in my running shoes. See? Prowling. It puts it in a whole new light for me. 

Mom: Hey, where were you?

Me: Just out prowling the neighbourhood. 

Instead of "cutting back," I'm boycotting the ice cream industry for trying to give me a heart attack.

Maybe we've been going about it all wrong. Maybe the cure for obesity is something as simple as optimism. And using euphemisms. 

How not exercising will save the world from Japan.

With the summer in full swing and almost nothing to do (aside from when I'm doing everything, of course), I like to take some time and contemplate my way of life a little. This normally takes about two minutes and involves this kind of thought process:

"I wish I had a car."
"I wish I had money."
"I'm hungry."

Done.

However, also with summer in full swing, means all of the white trash comes out to buy all of the junk food that's on sale at the grocery store. If you've ever seen a lady who's popped out six illegitimate children and apparently doesn't know what size shirt she wears, it isn't pretty. In fact, it's enough to make you think about pulling out the Wii Fit when you get home, which brings me to today's discussion:

My Wii Fit is a Condescending Piece of Shit

So I've done the right thing; I've decided to exercise. These random moments come to me periodically after I  end up eating my weight in chinese food, or after I've been lucky enough to remember that assignment in Life Skills class, where you had to write your family history on a cutout of a tree. Yeah, mine was basically a weeping willow. 

So I pulled my Wii Fit out, dusted it off, put fresh batteries in it, and turned it on when all of a sudden, the console greets me.

"Oh hello!... I seem to have forgotten your name.

It's been 762 days since your last workout!"

Not like we're counting or anything, right?

Then it tries to give you some "friendly fitness advice."

"Try laying off the afternoon snacks!"

Seriously? 

So anyway, once you've taken that emotional abuse, you go ahead and bite the bullet and weigh yourself. Now, I'm blessed with the ability to look 30 lbs lighter than I actually am, so of course, this damn thing tells me I'm morbidly obese and to top things off, plays fat music. That's right. Fat music. Like, tubas and shit. As if I didn't feel bad enough about myself. Thanks Wii Fit.

People always imagine the apocalypse to be fairly sudden. One meteor crashing into the Earth. One disease that wipes out humanity. Zombies. Jesus. Whatever you believe, it's wrong. The Wii is going to find it's way into your home, earning your trust, and finally, when the moment is right, killing your self esteem until you are a slave to the console. Actually, Japan is probably just laughing at us as we speak. 

This one is about giraffes

I haven't written in here in forever, as school really takes a toll on my creativity. However, I've had moments where I think of something witty that might work as a facebook status, but instead I wrote them down in my phone to be used as potential ideas for this blog.

1) How people get a giraffe from zoo to zoo.

I vaguely remember this one. I was sitting in Panera with one of my friends, and he was talking about how a giraffe got moved from one zoo to another, and we're both sitting there wondering how in the hell they transport something like a giraffe. I mean, there are those horse cart things that can go on the back of a truck, but I think it would really be quite awkward to see a giraffe's long ass neck sticking out of the top while driving down a highway. Actually, that sounds like something you could get a ticket for.

Officer: Hello, do you know why I've stopped you today?
Driver: Why, officer. I'm so sorry, I must not have been looking at my odometer; I'll try to be more careful next time.
Officer: Wrong. I couldn't help but notice you are transporting a giraffe. That's quite a distraction to other drivers.

That would make quite a story for your friends.

There was a Magic School Bus computer game that I used to play when I was little that involved finding the animals that were in the wrong habitat and transporting them back to the right one, and one of the animals that was in the wrong habitat was always a giraffe. And you know where I always found him? In the fucking arctic. Or at the bottom of the ocean. Seriously, people? You realise that even in a perfect world, I can't travel the world in a matter of seconds, and that giraffe would have definitely been dead by the time I got there to rescue it. Really poor planning on that zoo's part. I'm surprised there hasn't been a lawsuit by now. Anyway, they used a helicopter to transport them, with a cage hanging down which was where the animal went, but I still don't really find that to be an effective way to transport a zoo animal.

Now, here's the idea I propose, which probably already exists, we just don't know it: an underground railroad for zoo animals. Think about it, just stick a little staircase with an elevator in each exhibit that connects to a network of tunnels that each animal can use to go to other zoos. I'm not going to think this one through, because I'm sure there are other people who would actually like to, so I'll end this one for now.

To be continued.

Reflections on vanilla crack. And by "crack," I mean Tazo tea.

With of all of the middle upper class snobs in the world, why is it that when I go to Starbucks, I get stuck sitting next to the hippies that smell like feet?

I'll tell you why, it's because upper middle class people have no time to sit around in a Starbucks all day. They take their shit to go and drive off in their oversize SUVs to their decent paying jobs.

So why am I here? Why don't I just go to Dunkin Donuts? I'll tell you.

1) Tazo tea is my crack. And since I can't drink coffee (sadly), a Tazo tea latte is enough to fool me into thinking that I'm drinking some fancy overpriced flavoured coffee.

2) I have an image to uphold. The whole "I'm a broke college student but I own an iPad" image. It's harder than it sounds, trust me. So Starbucks is my way of fooling the world that I am too cool to eat dinner and that I would rather just live off of my fake overpriced coffee, because I'm young and I can get away with it.

3) This is the most important thing. Starbucks allows me to have an alter ego. This all started when my friend and I went to Starbucks one snowy day. You know how they ask you for a name to write on the cup, right? Well she was all like, "I'm gonna give them a fake name." And so she did. But she didn't give them just any name, right? She told them her name was "Roxanne." It's one thing to just be like, "hey my name is derp," but to give them a name with a completely different personality is so empowering and something you can do at Starbucks that you just can't get away with anywhere else. I mean, "Roxanne" just says, "I'm a free spirit girl with crazy hair and a flair for show business but I'm also a complicated soul deep down on the inside." That is just awesome.

So of course, next time I went to Starbucks, I was like, "I'm gonna try out a fake name." But I didn't want any conventional name, and I was pretty much joking with the guy because I was so offended he didn't ask me for a damn name, so I told him my name was Thaddeus, but in a girl way. So he gave it a female spelling and thus my Starbucks alter ego "Thaddieusse" was born.

I really wish I could drink coffee.

Because Wednesdays kind of really suck.

Bonjour world.

Wednesdays suck. I've figured this out because it's right smack dab in the middle of the week. It's obviously not Friday yet, but it's not even Monday, so it's not like you can just sit in your sweatpants all day long and watch netflix and use the excuse, "because it's Wednesday." Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I know because I've tried.

Wednesdays suck because it's typically the busiest day of the week. For everyone. So if you're ever in the position of "oh shit, got nothing to do," you can't even ask your friends to hang out because they're all busy. And for my friends reading this, it's not meant to be a slap in the face. I know that asking a friend to hang out on a Wednesday (especially one that's two weeks before finals) is like asking a mother of newborn twins to go out to the bar with me. Just not happening. It's just one of those unfortunate things about life.

So how did I deal with this Wednesday? Well, it was my inner hipster, actually, that decided to emerge today and was all like, "Hey, Emily, you should go to Barnes and Noble and just look at books." So you know what? That's what I did. On the way I decided to stop at Starbucks, because an outing where you are indulging your inner hipster isn't complete without overpriced coffee.

I feel the need to mention the value of self image. Because the whole time I was out, I felt like this:

but I looked more like this:

(you know, that "oh shit, finals are coming" glow)

I've deduced that in this phase of my early life crisis, I need to get some cool fake hipstery glasses.

Anyways, back to Starbucks. When I went inside, and took my place in the line that was literally to
the front door (as in, my butt was basically touching the door), I noticed a familiar face in front of me. It was the astronomy professor. I've never had a class with this guy, but I have such a fondness for him, and I'll be honest when I say that it all stems from the fact that he wears suspenders and looks like Santa Claus. It's awesome. So I'm sitting here, really wanting to talk to him, because I just feel like professors would just have such interesting things to say outside of a lecture hall, and while waiting for our drinks, I eventually tackled the social anxiety long enough to spark up a conversation. It subsequently died within sixty seconds of beginning, (probably because I thought I heard him say "I rule the planetarium" instead of "I run the planetarium" and I started laughing) but hey, whatever. I get points for trying. When I have a green tea frappe in my hand and a hipster mentality, I don't give a shit what anyone thinks of me.

Do you ever have that feeling when you walk into a place and you feel as though the only thing that would make the place better are like, flying unicorns? That's how I feel whenever I walk into a Barnes and Noble. If all of my dreams were to come true, they would do so in a Barnes and Noble. I don't think people understand is that there were so many great men and women who poured their hearts and souls into their books, and when you walk into a bookstore, you're walking into a room full of souls. It's like an art museum, only you can admire the art, pick it up, admire it some more, admire it in a big comfy chair, and then buy it and take it home with you to admire whenever you please.

Outcome of my hipster adventure: I left with Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," with a green tea frappe in my belly. Life is good.

Why doesn't the United States have more nude beaches?

Hi. So I haven't been on here a whole lot, obviously, but you know, school sucks and I'm busy and all my spare time is spent procrastinating.

Also, remember back to, "this blog is like a kick ass Christmas present that I just want to play with everyday?" Yeah, Christmas was four months ago, so it's safe to say that the thrill has kind of gone away. But it's a good present, so I certainly won't forget about it. Actually, to be honest, I wish I could write more often, but lately it's just been "ALGHIAOIENVOAEINRE SCHOOL," so there's not much creative energy flowing.

Anyway, I've been presented with two questions this week that seem good enough to talk about.

The first one was asked in my french class, so of course, it was in french, and the point of the question was to practice my knowledge of verbs in the conditional form, but whatever. The question was:

If you could be another person (any person in the world) for a whole day, who would you be?

Obviously, my answer was Ms. Frizzle, based on my recent fascination with a woman who owns a magic bus, but this later prompted some greater introspection. 

Who would I be if given this opportunity?

Part of me wants to say that I would be a pirate, but I don't think it's as fun as it looks when Johnny Depp does it. Scurvy doesn't sound like much of a thrill.

Another part of me wants to say something like, "Oh, I'd be Abraham Lincoln," but then I remember that he's dead. What do you think the odds would be of me being Abraham Lincoln on the day that he dies? 

Then there's the part of me that's all like, "Hell nah, I'd be myself." Because in reality, I'm the only one fully equipped to be myself. What happens to my body if I'm hanging around in someone else's? Am I just sleeping for a day? Do I just disappear? What? 

This brings me to the problems that I have with those movies/tv shows where two people switch places. Call me strange, but my first thought is always, "how do they go to the bathroom?" If I had switched places with an old man, for instance, I would be traumatised. Nor would I ever look at that old man the same way again. They probably don't have this problem in Brazil, with all those nude beaches and whatnot. 

I don't even remember the other question that was on my mind. 

Viva le Bacon!

Spring is finally here. And by "finally here," I mean, "it took you long enough, mother nature." It's no wonder we refer to nature as a woman. As beautiful as she is, she's definitely hormonal. Like, PMDD hormonal. Let's get Mother Nature some psychological help. We could bury some Midol in the ground or something, except I think that may piss off the EPA, so let's not. Anyway, speaking of Spring, which is great and all, allergies have hit me like a brick wall. Actually, I just sneezed after I wrote that sentence, so maybe I'm allergic to similes.

Allergies are just the worst thing ever. I mean, probably not as bad as cancer or anything, so if you have cancer, I'm sorry, but in my little "I'm young so everything revolves around me" world, allergies are the worst thing ever. It's not just the staying up late at night sneezing, or the fact that my eyes are so itchy that I am one step away from growing Wolverine nails and just blinding myself here and now, or the fact that I'm shuffling my feet everywhere and seeing the world through my little fog (Claritin really hit the nail on the head with that one), or even that I wake up in the morning with my throat being three times larger than it usually is and can't enjoy any type of food or drink. The biggest problem I have with allergies is that everything that usually annoys me annoys me three times more. I'll tell you what annoys me today. Vegans.

Now, before I begin, and manage to piss someone off the wrong way (not like I really care either way), there are two types of vegans.

1) There's the "hey guys, I'm just gonna sit here and be vegan because I want to and it doesn't bother me if you decide to eat meat because it's your right as a human being to make your own damn decisions" vegan. Also known as a milder form of Anorexia, but the people are nice, so I don't really mind. These are the kind of people who make it easy for us all to coexist peacefully. It's just kind of like, I'll sit over here with my massive BLT, and you can eat your tofu patty and soy nuts, and we can still be friends at the end of the day.

2) Then there's the "I'm vegan because I'm, evolutionarily speaking, one step above everyone and I have all the money in the damn world to spend on all of my fake, processed shit, and all the time in the world to sit around in my homegrown organic farm, and I won't stop until every damn person on the planet is also vegan" vegan. These are the people who believe that we are no better than animals, but that for some reason, humans are the only species that should willingly starve themselves for the greater good. Why is it okay for a lion to eat a steak, but not me? If we're on an even playing field with the animals, then as long as I catch it, I can eat it. According to these vegans, we should all ignore the fact that there are starving populations in other parts of the world, completely neglect a source of food, and live off of processed soy products.

So, as with everything in life, it's not your opinion that matters, it's how far up my butt you are about it that bothers me.

I was on campus the other day, just walking around, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, I'm almost run over by this girl with a piece of paper that she was asking me to sign. The paper was a petition to get more vegan options in our dining halls on campus. That would be all well and good, except that it's so damn expensive, and I'm not paying more in fees so that you can have a grand buffet of bird food. If you willingly decide to exclude like, 90% of food from your diet, you can't really complain when a campus dining hall doesn't have your favourite veggie tofu quinoa. Make that shit yourself and get out of my face.

Viva le bacon.

And Claritin. 

It is my firm belief that backpacks should never have wheels.

I have a couple of things to say. Also, at this point in time, sitting here in the geography lab writing this, I am having a crazy amount of deja vu.

1. I think that deja vu is a cool concept. Except I don't think that I've been here in a past life, I just feel like I dreamed about doing this exact thing. Which I probably have. Which is weird.

2. Anyway, lately, I've been thinking about the whole, "what the hell am I going to do with my future thing," and I've been seriously thinking about maybe getting a second degree after I graduate. Something in science. I'll tell you why. I am a scientific person. When I was six, and other kids my age were still sucking on their thumbs and wetting the bed (okay, I did once, I'll admit, but I never needed those weird child diapers), I was reading books on the solar system and watching Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy. And also Rugrats and Spongebob, because let's face it, without them, I would have turned out to be the weirdest person on the planet. Like "I'm in college and I still use backpacks with wheels" weird.


So I've decided that my life aspiration is to be Ms. Frizzle when I grow up. I've set up a timeline to achieve this goal.

1. Get a degree in science. Like, every science imaginable. Sleep with headphones in playing Bill Nye episodes, that cool show Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and anything Neil deGrasse Tyson has ever said in an effort to infuse my head with knowledge of all that is scientific.

2. Graduate, acquire plenty of random dresses with matching shoes that have things on them like food, space, the rainforest. There has to be a store somewhere in the world that sells science themed attire.

3. Acquire a magic bus, capable of displaying emotions and turning into anything I desire. *

*I just now, after years of living on this planet, appreciate the irony that this show seems to think magic is the only way to explain science to children. Am I complaining? No.

4. Go on a joyride through an inner city neighbourhood, picking up a number of children representing a diverse array of ethnicities and other minority groups. Preferably orphans/foster children, since I'm going to be taking these kids out into space, and into lightbulbs, and human bodies, and electrical sockets.

5. Get a pet lizard. I forgot that part.

There we go. I'm all set for life. Sounds much more fun than being a doctor.
Face it. She looks like she's having way more fun than the rest of us.

3. Backpacks should never have wheels. Actually, when I get down about myself, I always come to this conclusion:

At least I do not use a backpack with wheels.

 People who use rolly backpacks seem to have a personality of their own. A kind of personality that says "I let my fingernails grow really long," and "I always run whenever I have to go anywhere," and "I talk to myself when I am running to class." It can describe a person who was in those weird child diapers until they were 12. Someone who always seems to have peanut butter on their face. Have you ever looked at a person and thought to yourself that they probably have plastic wrap on their couch at home? I'll bet you that their backpacks probably have wheels.