gone but not forgotten

beverly cleary died today, and this death hit me harder than any of the celebrities that died this year, or maybe ever. she was such a huge part of my childhood and the adult that i grew into and the one that i aspire to be. 

i don't remember a time that i didn't love books. my mom is a reader, and we were raised on them. there are many books that stand out to me when i think of my early childhood - from picture books that every child in the school was obsessed with to obscure titles in our little bookshelf in jeddah that we'd read every summer without fail. but the first author i loved, that was beverly cleary. for years, any book that i read for pleasure was one of hers. we had used copies with yellowed pages and covers so precariously attached you were almost afraid to touch them. i got copies, shiny and new, for birthdays and major holidays. i distinctly remember opening up a present that included ramona and her mother, ramona and her father, ribsy, and socks. muggie maggie is the first book that i remember choosing for myself in a bookstore. i can't listen to the national anthem without thinking of ramona. and it should come as no surprise that when, a couple of years ago, i started reading chapter books to my kids, her books were ones of the first that i turned to. and seeing my kids fall in love with ralph s mouse, henry and ribsy, socks, beezus and ramona, ellen and otis, mitch and amy, and emily with her runaway imagination was like falling in love with them all over again. she might have been my most read author in 2020. and while it was special to read to my kids from the same copies that i had first been introduced to these characters with, i also loved all of the reprints we got from the library with interviews with the author at the back. 

beverly cleary books were the ones that made me a reader. i'm so grateful for her and them and the fact that i can share them with my own children, and that they're still as enjoyable to read in my 30s as they were back in 3rd grade. (which also happened to be the first year i had already read the book we read in class. my teacher had told me he liked henry more than ramona and i thought he was crazy, but reading them again last year and seeing how much my son loved henry definitely endeared him to me.) 

*I'll See You Again - Westlife

there's so much you have to know

my life pre-cricket involved a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen and wandering the internet. office hours, "study" hours, and those random in-between times when it's too early to leave the house yet but too late to do anything productive were all spent at a laptop. and because of that, i was pretty on top of everything that was going on from international big news stories to the latest tabloid news, from personal stories about friends i had never actually met in real life to stories about the fictional people that i felt i had known forever.

my life post-cricket, at least so far, has involved a significantly less amount of computer time. while there have still been hours staring at a screen, the screen usually has netflix on it. (anything that needs my hands to type or scroll just was not feasible at the time.) the times that i do have access to my hands, i am usually found googling baby-related stuff or playing candy crush. most of the time, though (and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to end this sentence. the past six weeks are just a hazy blur of feeding and rocking and changing clothes and diapers and sheets interspersed with interrupted sleep and i have no idea what i have been doing "most of the time," but i feel like i have been wildly productive and one hundred percent unproductive at the same time. on the one hand, hello, keeping a baby alive here, but on the other hand, what have i been doing with the past six weeks?)

this is all to say that, as i've been coming out of my first-six-weeks-of-motherhood daze (which is totally a thing), i find myself saying over and over and over again, "wait, what?! when did that happen?" things like zayn malik leaving one direction and that plastic surgeon that was parodied in the unbreakable kimmy schmidt committing suicide were thrown casually into conversations like of course everyone knows about this, what rock have you been living under? i didn't know about the bombings in yemen until a few days into them. and for the first year in as long as i can remember, i missed every single website's april fool's day prank.

i'm not sure i have ever been so uninformed about everything. starting from today, and until i feel like i have caught up as much as i can, i will start every conversation i have with people with "so what was your favorite piece of news/information from march/april?" feel free to catch me up in the comments.

*Father and Son - Cat Stevens

all these things that i've done

did you know that kids are more likely to own a cellphone than a book? and i'm not just talking about teenagers, here. i'm talking about every child from the age of seven to seventeen. now, if this meant that libraries were being frequented more than bookstores, well then, i'd be okay with that. but most libraries i've been to say that they have some days where no one comes in. not one single person. and maybe i just live in an area where there are too many other things to do and people are too busy working for the government to go to a library or take their kids to one, but i really don't think this is only limited to my area. and i find this statistic both sad and really, really scary.

i want to blog more, but aside from feeling like i have no time to do anything lately, i also feel like i have nothing to say. i'm actually being pretty productive with my days. well, sort of. i'm getting things that i want to do done, and they may seem like a waste of time to other people, but i am not other people so it counts as being productive. and there are only so many times i can say that i'm editing and potterying and schooling and knitting before i want to punch myself in the face, so there's that.

i need to develop some subplots for my novel, and though i have two in mind, neither of them seem particularly exciting to me so i'm kind of dragging my feet with it. (probably because they're kind of hinted at and ignored already and my brain keeps telling me that if they weren't worth developing then, they aren't worth developing now.) i also desperately need a title for it, but can't think of anything good. titles are hard. once i have all the main plot points in, i can go back and edit line by line which i am looking forward to because there are a lot of things that need to be fixed on a sentence level. i was literally laughing at loud at some of the things i wrote when i was doing the initial read. so, so bad, you guys. but then there were some scenes that i read through and was just like, "wow okay i like this. this is good," and if i can get the rest of the scenes to incite that same reaction then i think this may actually go somewhere. maybe. at least i hope so.

i have two homework assignments due friday that i am supposed to be doing right now. actually, i was supposed to start them at nine and finish them at ten. which was fourteen minutes ago. so maybe i'm not as productive as i'm letting myself believe.

*All These Things That I've Done - The Killers

and if i never see your face again, i don't mind

one of the biggest pieces of news recently (and in light of everything that's going on everywhere i find this a little sad, in the way that makes me feel that someone should be punched in the face) is that hostess is declaring bankruptcy and closing down. it is the end of the twinkie (at least until some other company decides to buy them and start reselling all of hostess's products). for maybe half a second, i was caught up in the overwhelming sadness and panic that the rest of the world seemed to be swept up in: no more twinkies?! how will we ever survive?! but then i remembered that i don't even like twinkies and moved on with my life.

in fact, i've never actually met anyone in real life that liked twinkies. pop culture likes to boast about how they're the greatest thing since putting cheese on a burger, and it seems like every other celebrity is claiming that its their favorite food, but real live people that i could reach my hand out and touch (despite the fact that that sounds a little creepy) have never once told me that the thing they love most in the world is a twinkie. 

every once and a while, my sister and i would get caught up in the hype of the twinkie. we'd be bombarded with references to its awesomeness and think, 'you know, maybe we're just remembering them wrong. maybe we got one that they forgot to inject with awesomeness. maybe we should try another twinkie.' and so we run out to 7-11 and pick up a couple. of course, after tearing open the wrapper in anticipation, taking a bite and chewing in slow motion to give it maximum dramatic effect, we are hit with the same thing we are always hit with: disappointment. i'm not saying twinkies are bad or anything, but i never seem to remember what they taste like besides disappointment. i would never choose a twinkie over a hoho is all i know.  

(i refer to this as the KISS phenomenon. i have never once met a KISS fan and yet on every movie and tv show i see they are toted as the greatest band ever. granted, the fact that they did a concert semi-recently must mean that someone has to like them, but i dunno. twinkies and KISS are mixed up in the worst conspiracy ever.)

so if the world really doesn't see another twinkie ever again, well, i think i might be okay with that. and deep down, i think every one else will be too, because if you stop to think about it, no one likes twinkies. 

just in case you were wondering, i'm more of a little debbie girl anyway. 

*If I Never See Your Face Again - Maroon 5

cause i'm sick of being treated like i have before

the other day, my professor said something along the lines of "terrorism is 99% political." i found that interesting. though bombings and senseless killing is very much a reality, for the most part we lose more people a year on the highways than on terrorist attacks, as he pointed out. but car accidents just don't instill the same fear as a bomb strapped to a terrorist does (how many of you instantly imagined that terrorist to be arab [likely bearded] when you read that sentence?), and fear is a very good emotion to stir up if you want a reaction. vote for me and i'll get rid of the terrorists sounds so much better than vote for me and i'll make stricter road rules. but when it comes right down to it, the latter would probably save more lives in the long run.

more than half of the projects i've done and scenarios i've worked with in class have centered around a band of terrorists - usually muslim, always with arab-sounding names - wanting to blow something or other up. we get their hard drives, find their plan, stop them, and save the day. according to my professor, this just doesn't happen as much in the real world as it does in our classrooms.

i'm not saying that terrorists don't exist or that we should just do nothing about terrorism, but what i'm trying to get at is that there are more important things to worry about, more likely things to happen. a while back i wrote about how sick i was of the arab = terrorist equation that society seems to have taken as fact, and i still am. every person that does not look or think like you does not want to kill you. getting them before they can get you does not work when they don't want to get you in the first place. i don't understand why that is so hard for some people to understand.

on a semi-related note, i thought that tarek mehanna's statement at his hearing was worth a read. and then you can read this article (that's super short) which seems to have missed the point of the statement entirely.

*Hands Held High - Linkin Park

how did you get that way? i don't know

[day thirty: nature]

i'm going to step away from discussing nature in the sense of trees and flowers and birdsong, and instead talk about the nature vs nurture debate. how much of you is dependent on what you were born as and how much on your environment? i touched upon this in a previous post where i rambled about how much of my fear of failure was just me and how much of it became me from other people's expectations.

i think we can all agree that both nature and nurture play a large part in how a person grows up: what they act like, look like, speak like, think like. you can't just jump onto one ship and declare the other has nothing to do with anything.

in the 60s/70s there was a secret research project done to test the nature vs nurture debate. identical twins were separated at birth and their development was then followed. neither the children nor the adopting parents knew this, though they were told that the children were part of an on-going study. sounds a little messed up, right? well, enough people thought that that the person doing the study, realizing that the public backlash would be strong, decided not to publish the results. they are archived at yale and sealed until 2066. he was not apologetic about doing it at all, though. one set of twins from this experiment claim that, after meeting for the first time after 35 years of separation, they found that more than 50% of their personalities are similar, giving nature the lead in the debate.

though i agree that the study wasn't very ethical, i think that, since it was already done, you may as well just publish the results. not publishing them won't erase what happened, and since everyone knows about it anyway, what's the point? i would be interested to read them, at least.

just in case you were wondering, thirteen infants were used for the experiment. three sets of twins and one set of triplets have discovered each other, but, as of 2007, there are still four kids out there that have no idea that they have a twin that was separated from them in the name of science.

what do you think? what makes you who you are? nature or nurture?

and with that, i officially declare an end to my thirty day challenge.

*Million Dollar Man - Lana Del Ray

time goes by so slowly

yesterday was the longest friday. which i guess was an appropriate way to end what i'm pretty sure was the longest week of my adult life. maybe even the longest week of my entire life. actually, weeks have definitely not been this long since the invention of the internet. maybe not even since the invention of the car. but after i finish the million assignments to do today the week will be officially over.

it is taking all of my will-power to sit here and do my work (i'm waiting for a program to finish installing on my computer so this is not really procrastinating) instead of getting my book from the bedroom and finishing it. i couldn't even bring it with me to the living room because i knew if it was within reach i wouldn't do any work. and seeing as this is the one class that i think i'm really screwed in, i probably should put in the effort. right? right.

speaking of this class (OS security), i took it because i didn't want to take a malware engineering course. since i registered so late, there wasn't much to pick from (plus, i took everything i actually wanted/semi-wanted to take in my last degree). i get into class at seven on wednesday, bored to death from my four:thirty class, and guess what he decides we should learn this semester? malware engineering on computers and phones. which is basically harder than the class i had opted out of to take this one that was easier in the catalog description. stupid professors. stupid luck.

anyway, to take a short break from my school complaints which i'm sure will resume eventually, here are a few links to look at. first, check out these inappropriate answers to test questions/assignments. they're pretty amusing, and most of them are not the cliched "find x. here it is." ones. next, the world's population is expected to hit 7 billion pretty soon. this link shows where you fit in among all the other people. it's pretty cool. i was the 5,106,445,605th person alive on earth, and the 80,068,484,098th person to have lived since history began (i'm not quite sure where these people in history lived before earth). it also shows information about the population growth of the country you live in, what you can expect to see in your lifetime, and other interesting facts. it's definitely worth a look. finally, here's a link to a short story that was written by a college friend of mine way back in my undergrad days. (it's a 99 cent ebook.) i haven't had the chance to read it yet, and haven't read anything he's written in forever, but i'm extremely jealous of him so i thought i'd share.

*Hung Up - Madonna

with all this fever in my mind, i could drown in your kerosene eyes

blogging is momentarily really hard. that is all the time i am going to waste talking about my current inability to blog regularly. the following were originally going to be posts by themselves, but i keep starting one and never finishing it. this way's better.

[one] i would like to be annoyed that the movie industry has completely given up on even pretending to put out new movies. remakes are one thing, but it seems like just bringing an old movie back to the big screen is getting more and more popular. the thing is, i completely get it. when times are tough, no one wants to risk spending fifty plus dollars to take their family to a movie which might very well completely suck. bringing back the classics is a way to guarantee an audience. bringing back the classics in 3d is a way to guarantee an audience to shell out an extra five bucks or so per ticket for nothing special. and the thing is, most of the movies i am excited for this year are either ones i've already seen or remakes of ones i've already seen. with movies like the lion king (which held two top spots at the box office when it was out for both the 2d and 3d versions), beauty and the beast, titanic (the preview for which kills me because it says from the director of avatar), finding nemo, and star wars all coming back with virtually no changes to them, you have to wonder if they'll just stop making new movies altogether. and you know, maybe they should. 

[two] last friday i had written, "it is friday the thirteenth, and i have nothing to say." not sure if i was going anywhere with that, but there it is. 

[three] in the days where all the energy i could afford to use was spent turning on my ipod, i was listening to a lot of bob dylan and bruce springsteen, because why the hell not, right? and then a friend posted a video of a song by the tallest man on earth, and i fell in love. you should go check out some of his music. you know when you like a singer and think that you're the only one who knows him and one day you realize that they're really super famous and you're just completely out of the loop? it was one of those kind of feelings with him. you see, i had a song of his on my ipod, but it was a cover and i always thought that he was just one of those random people that put out a good cover and disappeared. you know the type? it was awesome finding he had his own stuff, too. 

[four] i feel like i should mention the sopa and pipa bills, though i'm sure most of you already know about them since the internet is on strike today. (you may have noticed that a bunch of sites are blacked out today.) you know, the bills that want to be laws that will basically destroy the funness of the internet in an attempt to stop piracy? yeah, those. you can go here to sign petitions and send emails to congress and stuff to let them know that you think the bills suck. 

[five] i have friends who work at hospitals and are constantly posting pictures of children that they particularly like who are treated at their hospital. this could just be me, but it makes me extremely uncomfortable. i mean, it's one thing plastering pictures of your own children hooked up to tubes and sitting on hospital beds all over the internet, but another thing entirely to post pictures of other people's children. i mean, doesn't that go against some code of ethics or something? or am i just overreacting here?

[six] i feel like my blog needs a makeover. finding the motivation, time, and energy to give it said makeover is at the top of my to-do list. it's really too bad that i suck at keeping to to-do lists. 

*Where Do My Bluebird Fly - The Tallest Man on Earth

i'm going away for a while, but i'll be back

so i just finished packing for florida and... i need a new wardrobe. desperately. everything i have has either been worn a million times and i am sick to death of it or it doesn't fit me thanks to my new found marriage fat. (this was going to be a post on its own, but i never got around to writing it. basically, everyone in my family - and i'm talking sisters, cousins, aunts, etc - gains weight after marriage. i don't know what it is about us, but i don't like it.) i will be leaving early tomorrow morning, and there is a high chance that i won't be blogging for the next week. hopefully, though, i will come back with a fresh brain that is capable of writing posts that are worth reading.

in my absence, please enjoy this medley of random links and videos.

>>i know that clips of the mickey mouse club are pretty much everywhere since it was where a whole bunch of actors and singers got their start, but this clip of ryan gosling, justin timberlake, and jc whatever his last name is, in my opinion, hilarious. i find the dance thing they do at the end especially funny.

>>remember recess (the cartoon)? well, this class remade the theme song with real people. aside from the fact that the elementary students are suddenly old, i think it's pretty awesome.

>>i thought this was a nice mash-up of the killers' somebody told me and the gorillaz feel good inc. both of which are songs you should listen to if for some reason you never have.

>>this poem, called the cold within, is worth a read. it tells a lot about the way of the world/society.

>>if you're on any other social media sites, you have probably seen the "shit girls say" videos. just in case you haven't, though, you can watch episode one here and episode two here. i have to admit that, stereotypical as this is, i actually do some of these.

>>this amazing fact generator is a great way to procrastinate (in case you were looking for one) and get smarter at the same time. a win - win situation.

>>i found this article interesting about how smartphone cameras are gaining popularity. now 1/3 of all pictures taken are with phones.

oh, and my professor finally posted my grade, officially ending my masters degree, but still no word from mason about the phd program. grr.

also, i was wondering. do people still go caroling these days? if you do or know people who do or see people who do, let me know.

*Misguided Ghosts - Paramore

it's been a long day

today was a long day. a long, long day. today started at four when my body decided that it just wouldn't go back to sleep to avoid hitting snooze on my alarm one too many times. it also decided to spend the next hour and a half until my alarm actually went off and i got out of bed covering and uncovering myself because it couldn't decide if it was hot or cold. after leaving the house before the sun was even considering coming out for the day, i went over to my parents house to pick up my sister. together, along with my husband who was acting as driver before i could really wake up, we made our way over to the testing center to finally take our gre's. i thought i was unprepared last time because the only "studying" i did was to take an online practice test and a half. that was the last time i prepared for this test. add that to the fact that my brain was not fully functioning yet (while waiting for the building to open i was completely slaphappy. the radio played that no no no cat, and i was dying of laughter over it among other things) and i was pretty worried, though my mind didn't realize it at the time. thankfully, once i finally was able to sit in front of the computer and get the test started, my mind and body automatically went into test mode, a comfortable place for me. when i got my result range at the end, i was happy enough with it that i don't think i'm going to bother with a retest.

after the test my sister, husband, and i went out for a bagel breakfast. again. i swear that ever since my brother-in-law introduced us to this bagel place a few years ago a huge chunk of its profits has come from my sisters and i.

later in the day i went to my parents house and say with my mom, sister, and nephews. then my cousin and her husband and my dad came home. (did i mention that my cousin and her husband made a stop in DC to see us on their honeymoon? no? well, consider it mentioned.) that meant pretending i wasn't tired and being my semi-fake version of me that i use with some of my cousins that i am not particularly close to. the overly laughing and smiling and polite version. once my brothers came home we went out to olive garden. when we got home i helped my brothers with their homework, did a bit of reading with them, and then sat on the couch and alternated between reading my book and watching criminal minds with my parents.

i left my parents' house at ten, got home, couldn't find my computer and searched the apartment for it until finally finding it between the couch cushions. and here i am, blogging this in the commercial breaks of top chef: just desserts. and i am tired and can't wait until my head hits my pillow.

oh, and steve jobs died today. you know, in case you didn't know. must have been a long-ish day for him too.

*Long Day - Matchbox 20 

stuck in a lava flow of brakelights

i left the house last night to go to class at five:fifty-seven. i know this because right before i left my brother said, "but you still have three minutes before you usually go" and i said, "i guess i'll just be three minutes early." i have never been so wrong. the drive to school takes about twenty minutes on average, fifteen when there are no other cars on the road and i get all green lights. last night i pulled into campus at seven:forty-five. that's almost two hours after i left my house. two. hours. by the time i found parking and got to class, it was almost eight. class officially starts at seven:twenty, but the dude always starts at seven:ten-ish.  my final presentation was yesterday. i race across campus, and if you knew me in high school PE days, you'll know that i tend to get really red whenever i race anywhere for however long. so i get into class looking like a tomato, my professor informs me that i missed my time slot but i can go immediately after the dude presenting, i get in front of the class two minutes later and completely bomb my presentation. i have never in my life presented so badly. ever. i think if it was possible to take points from my already mediocre grades that i have gotten in this class so far, the professor would. just because there are not enough points he can minus for the presentation. he should probably dip into my other classes too. it's like i was watching myself completely screw up and couldn't do anything to stop it, though i knew this presentation inside and out. i was ready.

anyway, someone told me that all of the traffic was because the whole "osama bin laden was killed" thing. which i completely don't understand. so the dude is allegedly killed and the number of cars in virginia suddenly multiplies? or have all of these people been hiding in their houses too scared to drive while he was alive but now that he's dead they're out and about again? i just don't get it. the same person also told me (when i was complaining about said traffic and the way it ruined my grade) in that i'm so patriotic and if you're not you must be a terrorist tone, "i don't get why you're complaining. it seems a small price to pay for the death of a terrorist." what the hell? why should i have to pay for "the death of a terrorist" by sitting in my car for two hours wasting gas and showing up late to class? how does that make any sense? and why the hell does my annoyance with the traffic mean that i was the number one osama supporter? (which i'm not if any of you had any doubts.)

gah just reliving yesterday through this is pissing me off again.

*River of Brakelights - Julian Casablancas

oh, look what you've done

four years ago (or something like that) a friend told me to watch skins, and i did. i stuck with the show for a while, and when they announced that mtv was making an american version i was rightly outraged. i am not a very big fan of mtv (read: i think they have a poisonous touch and destroy everything they even think about), and america doesn't have the greatest track record with turning good british shows into good american knock offs. (i know, i know, everyone loves the office. i get it. really. but for every show like the office i can give you five that are awful.) plus, america's tv laws or whatever are waaay stricter than the british ones, so i really didn't see how they would get a show like skins to comply with them.

after watching the first two generations of skins, i opted to not follow the third one because, really, i just don't watch anything anymore. it's kinda sad. and as i had already decided to not watch anything even related to the american version, i thought that me and skins were through. (well, at least until they made the movie if it had the original cast members.)

but then the articles started to flow in. the show started to air here, and it is apparently the most scandalous thing to hit our tvs despite claims by the british actors that it is extremely censored.

the british skins boasted from the start about how, unlike american shows, all the underage characters would be played by underage actors. no twenty-somethings playing high school students. they went and got the real deal. the american show then decided to do the same. only problem is, here in america, we have strict laws concerning a little thing called child pornography. child pornography can basically be anything (picture, video, whatever) of children (under 18) that is sexually suggestive. so when shows were casting older actors in everything that wasn't aired on the disney channel, they were kinda saving themselves from child pornography charges. something the american skins might be facing.  major companies - like taco bell, gm, and wrigley's - are even pulling their advertisements from the skins time slot because they do not want to have any association with such a controversial show. if it can't make any money, i can't see the show staying on for too long even if it doesn't get charged with child porn.

with all the media about the new show, i finally caved and decided to watch the trailer. i was shocked by how amazingly similar it was to the british show. if you were going to copy exact story lines to the t, you might as well have just aired the british show (which in fact was/is? aired on bbc america only censored a bit) and which is probably loads better.

the show is not the most family friendly show on tv, or anywhere close, but the characters were real and the acting was good and it instilled in me a love for british cussing. is it only me that prefers it over american? anyway, here's some youtuber's comparison between the american and british skins trailers. i would not suggest you watching it if you are easily offended by bad language, sexual references, or really anything else.

*Look What You've Done - Jet

while we're quietly losing control

have you guys heard about IBM's Watson, a new supercomputer designed to accurately mimic human thought? it is labeled as a "question answering machine" that can understand all the nuances of natural speech and come up with a simple answer. to test it out, they are pitting it against jeopardy champions in three jeopardy matches that will be aired sometime in february. jeopardy questions cover a vast array of topics. they deal with puns, metaphors, and slang. you have to buzz in quickly and think even quicker. all of these factors make it impossible for artificial intelligence computers that otherwise excel in things like chess, archery, or eating dead bodies for fuel. (click the links. enlighten yourselves.)

here is a video of a sample round played with the three contestants:

now, i don't know about you, but i think we might all end up ruing this very day. who cares about the zombie apocalypse or the world ending in 2012? so what if we're in a recession and there's never anything good on tv? we just created a computer so intelligent that it just might take control over the army of less smart but way more deadly robots we've already created. so go ahead, eat that extra donut, take that trip you always wanted, splurge on the ridiculously expensive pair of shoes. pretty soon, you may not have the chance.

also, you know all those unexplained mass animal deaths? i'm thinking it's time we take the robots in for questioning.

*I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light - Brand New

wipe that smile off your face

i am not usually classified as one of the "happy people." you know, the ones that have rainbows and butterflies oozing out from every pore on their bodies. i'm not all doom and gloom 24/7 either, though. i'm more of a pessimist with my head in the clouds, if that makes any sense. anyway, negative people are always looked down upon by the more obnoxious half of the population. for some reason, they have been branded as the "wrong" ones.

my younger sister just sent me this article, which just goes to show you that grumpy people are just that much more awesome than cheerful ones. it's scientifically proven.

An excerpt from the article:

"An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine."

i think it's important to note the difference between grumpy and other kinds of negativeness. i'm pretty sure when you're really mad you dont make the best decisions, and people wallowing in undeserved self-pity all the time are not an awesome kind of negative. they're even worse than the happy people.

the article reminded me of this comic that i have in my picture collage above my bed:

if you don't read pearls before swine then there must be something wrong with you because it is the number one comic strip ever. rat is awesome and would be my best friend.

*One and Only - Timbaland

i lock myself inside my room i wanna be alone

i'm not sure how caught up you are with recent literary news, but in case you didnt know, the author jd salinger recently died at the age of 91. (he wrote the catcher in the rye for those of you who dont know.) the catcher in the rye was one of the few things that he ever published, but after his death they found a safe in his house that contained fifteen unpublished novels.

now they're not sure whether to publish these or destroy them. read the article here. i would totally buy all of them if they they were published.

salinger was awesome. he was a complete social hermit (he supposedly walked away when people approached him in the streets and ate in the kitchen if he went to a restaurant). his last interview was in 1980 and was given to a high school newspaper. he wrote one of the most famous pieces of literature, and instead of basking in the fame this entails, he turned instead to his private life and pretty much ignored everyone else.

in his last interview he said, "I love to write and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it." i love the quote.

according to my sister, she could "totally see [me] turning into salinger. he's so [me]!... if i was a ninety year old man."

*I Want to Be Alone - Green Day

and wouldn't it be grand if we were dead?

so i was sitting talking with this kid in my class yesterday as we waited for the rest of our group members to actually show up to the meeting thay they planned - it was ridiculous., they showed up forty five minutes late. anyways, i was talking to this kid, who's actually almond boy, if you guys remember that far back. we got to talking about that dude that was thought to be in a coma for twenty three years but was really conscious the entire time. you know, the one i mentioned at the beginning of this post.

we both agreed that that would be a miserable existence, simply awful. we also agreed that living alone in your own head would most definitely cause some insanity, because come on that situation just reeks craziness. we didnt agree, however, on why (besides the whole only having yourself to talk to) it would be so miserable. almond boy said that for the twenty three years they thought he was in a coma, he was probably hoping for them to pull the plug. because really, who wants to stay alive on a machine forever? and then he was like, now that they know he's conscious, it makes everything worse because they cant pull the plug now. it goes against the hippocratic oath. but if it was him, he'd still want to die. he said that having suffered for twenty three years, he wouldnt want to suffer any longer. he'd want them to end it for him, and that would be the reason he would try to let them know he was still conscious. to tell them to kill him.

i wasnt sure what to think about that. on one hand, i suppose it is kind of true. but on the other, he must have some hope that he would regain control of his muscles or whatever and make a recovery? yes? no? almond boy knew exactly what he would want and do in a situation like that. i have no idea.

and then i got to thinking, you know in movies and shows and i suppose it happens in real life, too, but ive never witnessed it so i cant be sure, when someone goes into a coma everyone goes and says what theyve always wanted to but never got around to saying to him? some of those things are probably good. it'll make him happy to hear what they were saying to/about him. but some of them would be awful. confessions to lighten the other person's burden. things you would never have the courage to say to him if he wasnt a vegetable.

and like dream world in narnia, how could the good thoughts stand a chance when the bad ones are so persistent in remaining in the foregrounds of a person's mind? twenty three years of having to live over and over those confessions. nothing else to think about besides how hopeless your situation is. nothing to do but watch as everyone you loved moved on with their lives, leaving you behind? nothing to do, nothing to say. just the thought is horrifying. and then i think, you know, maybe almond boy is right.

*Dead! - My Chemical Romance

this is a lesson in procrastination

with the end of the semester drawing to a close, tests and projects are being thrown at all of us with full force (if not, then i am extremely jealous of you).

with all these things to do, we'll all need things to procrastinate with (because we obviously cant be expected to just work the whole time. right?). here's a couple of things/news stories ive been wasting time with. feel free to put off important work with any of them.

>>first, take a moment to be thankful that you're stuck sitting at your desk with a bunch of work to put off instead of conscious, paralyzed, and presumed to be in a come, like this guy. doctors thought he was in a coma for 23 years! when, in fact, he wasn't and couldn't tell them.

>>now that you've put everything into perspective, take a philosophical minute and think about your perception. i found this article interesting. a famous musician played in the subway the night before his big show (with $100+ tickets) to the people who were probably attending the show the next night. everyone ignored him.

>>let loose your inner artist, and have fun making picasso-esque pictures online.

>>or be artistic by making flowers.

>>find out which drugs each of your internet addictions are compared to.

>>if you're going on a trip soon, use this packing list to know what to pack. or, if you're like me and aren't, use it anyway just to compare what you usually pack to what it tells you to.

>>make a short animated video (or ten) to practice your directorial skills.

>>if you're like me, and get lost in lists, this site will keep you occupied for a while with a long list of lists to peruse.

>>this is an image 100m long that fascinated me for some reason. it's worth a minute or two of your time to look at.

>>find out what the no. 1 hit song was in either the US , the UK, or Australia the day you were born. my US one was where do broken hearts go by whitney houston.

>>this hypnotized me for a while before my brain got around to realizing how stupid and pointless it was.

>>entertain yourself with the crazy rabbit.

>>and finally, find out why you yawn and why yawns seem more contagious than just about anything.

*Failure By Design - Brand New

just give me some candy

candy corn... it's absolutely one of the best creations in the history of the world. i love candy corn. and it's fat free! lol. but you know what i dont love about candy corn?? the size if the bag. it's more than twice as big as it needs to be which means they fill it less than halfway. and no, fattiness is not the reason behind this annoyance. but do you know how much plastic they could save by cutting the bags in half?? plastic that could better be employed in making barbies to give people unrealistic expectations about their appearances and life in general. barbies that 19 year old girls who need lives could be buying. and it's not like they need the big bag to advertise on. most of it is just empty space. plus, if they cut out half the bag there will still be space for the candy to move around in. and yes, i do realize the same thing holds true for everything else in a bag so dont bother telling me.

on another candy corn note, we (my sister and i) noticed that this year's candy corn is flatter than usual. noticeably flatter. not just one or two... all of them.

i remember one semester i had this really awesome class taught by two amazing professors. we somehow got into a conversation about how we eat candy corn. one professor ate it the normal way, biting off one color at a time. the other one just popped the whole thing into her mouth at once. *gasp* i know. how do you eat candy corn?

oh, and have you ever realized the different colors have different tastes? the white layer is my favorite. it's the lightest and sugariest. it's also the bottom even though most people think that the yellow is the bottom.

and october 30 is national candy corn day because it is awesome and deserves its own day. you know that if the amount of candy corn americans eat a year were laid end to end it would go around the world four and a half times?! that's a lot of candy... and that's only americans.

on a completely unrelated note that shows that my intelligence goes beyond candy, who thought that obama deserved winning the nobel peace prize?? yeah, me neither. you don't give someone the prize for stuff they say theyre gonna do. sheesh.

*Candy - Paolo Nutini

i'm sure you've heard it all before

since my return to america has apparently started me on a blogging frenzy, i might as well continue. here are some interesting-ish facts i dugg up:

>>remember that mom that pretended to be a teenaged guy on myspace which resulted in the suicide of a girl she knew?? she couldnt be charged for causing the girl's suicide directly, but they charged her with three misdemeanors so she wouldnt get let off completely. a judge recently dismissed her case because it was too "vague."

>>defining a slave as someone who is "forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence," did you know that there are more slaves in the world today than ever before in human history? 27 million!

>>proof that girls rule and boys drool, godmothers are the new godfathers of the naples' crime scene, but way cooler. not only do they "rule their crime families with steely determination, [they] also raise the kids and stir the pasta." way more than the men used to do.

>>if you live in the uk, you can be fined and jailed for holding a fake designer bag. they go against counterfeit and copywright laws, and now the producers of the bags are not the only ones to get in trouble.

>>remember in science when we used to learn about molecules?? well for the first time ever, a single molecule has been pictured close-up with an Atomic Force Microscope.

>>we've all seen people with ridiculous reactions to things, but i think this dude takes the lead. he shot his girlfriend in the neck because she gave him aids. she died.

>>i say it a lot more than i probably should, as do most people i know, but is the word 'retarded' as bad as the "n word"? these people think so. i think the fact that it's becoming so main stream might make me want to stop saying it more than anything else.

>>just more proof that kids in this society can be cruel and vicious, a 15 year old boy was killed in a school yard fight. remember when kids used to be innocent??

>>sometimes, real life has story book endings too. at least it did for this family whose daughter showed up alive and healthy 18 years after she was abducted. she's probably traumatized, and she has two kids, but at least she was able to remember who she was.

>>because technology is awesome, they've discovered that studying the way you type can be used to give early warnings of dementia. speaking of health, chewing gum can help your memory. they dont know exactly why yet, only that it does.

>>the stethoscope as a symbol for doctors is universal and timeless, or so i always thought. the medical tool is beginning to be considered obsolete and dated. kinda sad.

>>according to these 12 signs you'll live to 100, it's a surprise i made it to 21. i can sure kiss seeing a triple digit age good-bye.

>>and finally, he thinks that energy drinks are just a way to give lazy, overweight people enough energy to maybe stand to get off the couch for a couple of hours. i think i agree.

congratulations, you are now a marginally small amount more informed.

*Wonderwall - Oasis

it's a very, very mad world

i'm sitting in my room, on my bed, watching dvds of tv shows my cousin wanted me to see. i take a break from staring at the screen for a second as an episode ends and casually glance out my window... and there are a lot of cars out there. like a lot a lot. the road in front of our house has parked cars along both sides, as does the road to the side of our house - the whole road. i can count 25 cars from my bedroom window, but half of the road is cut off from my view so i can only imagine how many more are out there. keep in mind that we live in a pretty deserted area so cars are pretty much a rarity. around us we have a bunch of empty lots and buildings that are still being built. we have a handful of neighbors that, for the most part, are pretty ignorable. so why are there so many cars out there?? i dont see any lights that would signal a funeral or wedding, so there's only one thing left to assume: death eaters. yes, voldemort has come back from the dead and moved headquarters from the uk to saudi arabia. and forget about brooms, air conditioned cars are the only way to travel in the desert of course. there's no other logical explaination.

death by death eater is a much cooler way to go than death by flip-flops, which apparently i'm destined for.

i'm sleep deprived and my head hurts... don't judge me.

*Mad World - Gary Jules