Just Sayin'

In the spirit of the Christmas season, I decided to do a holiday themed blog.  I don't know what it is about wrapping paper and scissors and tape, but something does not compute. You'd think wrapping Christmas gifts would be easy. All you have to do is take a big piece of paper, wrap it around your object (perhaps a book or a nice penguin), and then tape it in place. That sounds simple, right? It should be, but somehow -- someway -- I always manage to screw it up. I am one of the worst Christmas gift wrappers you will ever meet. I'm not even talking about wrapping weird shapes; perfectly normal rectangles are completely beyond my capabilities. The other day I was trying to wrap a book. After twenty minutes, I was just like "well, I give up." I started off my cutting a piece of paper that was too small, then I cut a piece of paper that was too big. Of course, then I was like "what do I do with all this extra paper at the ends?" No matter what I do...

I'm a big fan of the concept of air travel. It's quick, it's relatively simple, and, when you're flying with someone you know, it's not so bad. But I absolutely hate flying alone because, when you fly alone, you end up sitting next to someone you don't know and that person is always suffering under the delusion that, because you have to sit next to them for four hours, you're suddenly best friends. These are the people who want to talk to you. These are the people I hate. Now, I never initiate conversation with strangers but, under normal circumstances, if a stranger tries to talk to me, I attempt to be a mammal. I'll say 'hi, I'll say 'how are you,' I'll wish you a 'merry Christmas.' But, if you try to talk to me on after I got up at 5 AM to catch this plane and went through the torture that is airport security, you're poking a timber-rattler with a pixie stick. This is how it goes. I'm sitting in my seat. I'm co...

The immortal fish, he hates socialization, happiness, and having fun So, as I've written before, fish are delicate creatures . I don't know if it's the gills or the cold blood or what, but, if you expose them to toxic chemicals, they're very likely to die (which I don't get because I drink Diet Coke on the daily and I'm still kicking). Currently, I'm combating an ammonia poisoning crisis in my fish tank. Without getting too scientific about it (science = snore), basically what happened was I destroyed my fish tank's biological filter when I cleaned it. I cleaned it to, you know, get rid of the horrible disease that was killing all my fish . Established fish tanks have a certain level of good bacteria that process waste, which is good because, if you don't process waste, you get toxic chemical build up. Anyway, while I wait for the biological filter to rebound, I have to be on high alert for ammonia and nitrate spikes. I test the water for p...

No One Appreciates Me! So, the other day I was starring out the window diligently studying in English when I had a thought: I'm really grateful that I live in a society that appreciates Justin Timberlake. Like, the frightening truth is that history is full of cultures and nations that wouldn't have liked JT. I, for one, am EXTREMELY glad that we have progressed as a species. Do you think the Romans would have appreciated SexyBack ? No! They would have been like "um...we're bringing Caesar back." Do you think the vikings would have listened to Suit & Tie ? No! Vikings didn't wear suits! In fact, they were probably pillaging all the people who wore suits and ties. If you turn up in a suit and tie in a viking town, you're liable to get the blood eagle. If you don't know what a blood eagle is, go look it up on Urban Dictionary and then come back here and try to tell me that you're not profoundly grateful that people are now able to wea...

So...I think it's time to add posters to the official list of things I'm addicted to (if you're just going us, that list also includes eyeshadow, Snapchat, gory vampire fiction, making fun of Voldemort, nail polish, and Justin Timberlake music). Seriously, ever since I moved into my new apartment, I've gone poster crazy. I have over twenty posters in my bedroom alone. That's not normal! And don't even get me started on my expanding collection of living room posters. At some point, something just clicked in my brain and I was like "OMG, I can hang things on my walls."  That was the beginning of the end.  I've gone through over 100 command strips since I moved in. It's gotten to a point where one of my roommates  actually had to say, "I don't want to live in a catalog. There has to be some white space." My response to that was " quoi? " Like, making the apartment look like a giant picture book was sort of my ...

I miss True Blood There's been a fang-shaped hole in my heart ever since True Blood ended this summer. I mean, you just don't get that sort of graphic violence, strong sexual content, and explicit language on network television. Fortunately, I stumbled across Netflix's token vampire/werewolf based drama Hemlock Grove and promptly watched every single episode in less than 48 hours. I don't think I've ever seen so much gore in my life and I watch Game of Thrones ! It was a magical experience. Anyway, I was about half way through the first episode and I was like "hey, self, doesn't the actor who plays Roman (the main character on Hemlock Grove ) remind you of someone," and then I was like, "yes, thanks for pointing that out; he reminds me of Eric from True Blood ." WELL. It turns out that the actor who plays Roman Godfrey, Hemlock Grove's compulsory brooding vampire with a six-pack, is actually Bill Skarsgard, the brother of Alex...

If you read my last blog about my fish, you know that my fish tank is going through a bacterial swim bladder disease epidemic, which, surprisingly, is much less fun than it sounds. Anyway, in the middle of this whole thing I left for a couple of days to visit family and I left my roommates in charge of the fish. While I was away, one of my fish died and my roommates didn't notice right away. Well, they didn't notice until they caught my Chinese Algae Eater EATING the dead fish. There was some screaming that day. Needless to say, my Chinese Algae Eater is now in time out. Which basically just means that he's in a tank by himself and I scold him whenever I walk past the tank. Now, a lot of you may think that this is too harsh. A lot of you may say "he's just a fish; he's just following his instincts." That's not true! My Chinese Algae Eater, whose name is Joaquin (but I call him Joaquo [pronounce wah-co]), is not really a fish; he's more like...

So, the other day I was visiting with some family members, and we were sitting around a round table having lunch, and one of my cousins asked me to pass the water. I reached my arms across the table, picked up the water pitcher, and handed it to her. She looked at me like I was a psycho, mutant, alien and said, "wait, did you reach that without standing up? You have freakishly long arms." Me being me, I've been thinking about it ever since: Is this true? Do I have freakishly long arms? How long is an arm supposed to be? Wait, is this why my hand eye coordination is so awful? That's why I'm so bad at sports!  I'm like really self-conscious about it now. I've been walking around with my elbows tucked against my body so that it looks like my arms are shorter. Actually, that probably looks just as weird as having really, really long arms, but I'm going to look weird either way, so what's the difference? I tried to measure my arm span with a tape ...

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, I didn't have a Snapchat, and I was okay with that. I was like "Snapchat! What's wrong with these young people and their bamboozling picture taking devices! You kids get off my lawn!" Oh, how young I was (note, this was about 10 months ago). I don't actually remember why I got a Snapchat, but I suspect my friends KLMM and MKPJ had something to do with it. They were probably like, "if you get a Snapchat, your life will be full of unicorns and chocolate and everyone will want to share a Coke with you!" And, like a fool whose name was never on any of those Coke bottles, I believed them. If you've read my first blog, you know that the same logic is responsible for the existence of this blog. Anyway, now I have a Snapchat and everything is AWFUL. I'm addicted to Snapchat. I don't want to Snap. I have to! I have a Snapping dependency problem. Half the time, I don't even know what I'm Snapping...

So, if you know me, you'll know that I've recently been going through a fish crisis. What's a fish crisis, you ask? Well, a fish crisis is when you have a fish tank full of thirty, healthy guppies, you get one new guppy with a tiny little bit of bacteria on its scales, and all of the sudden you only have six guppies. Yeah. That's a fish crisis. So, while I was frantically trying to avert mass guppy death, I did a lot of research on the internet about fish diseases (yes, I am that person), and decided that my guppies were afflicted by bacterial swim bladder disease, which is just as fun as it sounds. Basically, it makes your fish swim upside down until they die. So, while I was reading all these fish enthusiast forums, all the fish experts were all like "yeah, if it's this disease do this and this and treat with a general antibiotic." Of course, my reactions to this was, they make antibiotics for fish? (I mean, I guess it makes sense since a lot of...

I've had it up to here with English! (In this case, here is somewhere between extremely irritated and an anger that burns with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns). I mean, I really love the English language and all that crap (I mean, I am an English major), but, at the same time, I sort of think that it's punishment for the sin's of man. Like, now that I'm getting into upper level English classes, my teachers are actually stressing proper grammar and I'm just like "ugh, I hate everything." Like, but actually, I'm so casual about grammar. I use commas incorrectly all the time because I literally don't care at all. I'm just like, "eh, let me stick a comma here...and there...and maybe here and here and here. Comma rules? There are no comma rules. Let the commas run free!". I mean, in general, the meaning of a sentence is 100% clear weather or not you use a comma correctly. Granted, there are a few exceptions to this rule...

I saw the new trailer for Season 5 of Downton Abbey today and I have only one thing to say: WOW! Like, I can't even express how excited I am right now. It looks so good! There was kissing and fire (literally and figuratively - I'm sort of concerned about the literal fire) and people making dramatic pronouncements in English accents! Kissing! I'm pretty sure no one kissed anyone on Downton Abbey for at least two seasons (well, excluding Mary's ill-fated venture with the infamous Mr. Pamuk, but let's ignore that), so it's getting pretty racy up in here. Not to mention that there's all this family drama going on: Mary's probably going to re-marry, Edith is a baby mama, Tom (possibly) has a love interest, and there's at least one love triange (a la Twilight). Downton Abbey has officially become the Edwardian version of the Kardashians! This is the best thing to happen since Amazon Prime was invented. Nothing beats Amazon Prime, nothing. Just sa...

A lot of people in the Game of Thrones-verse seem to be asking this question: who will ride Dany's dragons? There's no doubt that whoever gets a chance to ride one of Dany's dragons is going to be a hugely important to the series. That is, of course, provided that the dragons don't all develop grey scale and die (because George R.R. Martin would do that) and that every dragon has a rider. Although there seems to be some disagreement about this out on the forums, I am of the opinion that each dragon will have only one rider - if they have a rider at all. It's been pretty well established in the books that the bond between dragon and rider is very special; each dragon has only one rider and each rider has only one dragon. Which, of course, means that both Dany and Drogon are already spoken for (which is interesting because Drogon's name comes from Drogo, as in Khal Drogo, Dany's husband; which has profound implications for the intensity of th...

The one Time Bill was Well Dressed So, in honor of the final season of True Blood , I've decided to share my thoughts on True Blood fashion, because, let me tell you, vampires wear some brilliantly horrible clothes. And by brilliantly horrible, I just mean horrible. Like, take Bill for instance; Bill has not once, in seven seasons, had a decent outfit. The closest he got was the leather jacket he wore in season 2. I swear, for the entirety of season 1 he wore the same STUPID WHITE SHIRT. What is it with that shirt??? Sometimes it'll disappear for a few episodes or for an entire season, then it comes back out of NOWHERE! It's like, every time he takes two fashion steps forward, he then takes ten million steps back. For example, Bill dressed pretty well in seasons three and four. Then, in season five, he went back to the white shirt. Like, what?! It's like he has an on again/off again relationship with that style of shirt; It's basically a metaphor for his r...

So, the other day I was listening to some 'best of 90s' playlist on YouTube when I'm Too Sexy came on. As soon as I heard it, I was like: "Oh, this is Jaime Lannister's song". While I think this may have had more to do with Prince Charming singing this song on Far Far Away Idol from Shrek 2 then anything else (come on, Prince Charming and Jaime look exactly the same!), I still decided to do a list of Game of Thrones character theme songs. Because, apparently, that's the sort of person I am. Arya - Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran:   Arya is on the hunt and she's after you. Well, she's after you if you're on her list, which is getting longer every day. She's got a needle and she's not afraid to use it.  Robert Baratheon - Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin and Sorry for Party Rocking by LMFAO: Robert is one of many characters who really needs two songs because he changes so much. Before the series starts, Robert is thi...

So, the other night I was playing Cards Against Humanity with a group of my friends and somehow we got on to the topic of drunk Voldemort (it's not as weird as it sounds because a lot of our make-your-own cards have something to do with Voldemort; that's as weird as it sounds). I mean, he is an evil man in evil clothes (extra points if you get the reference), so I think it's resonable to suppose that he's not shy about drinking. I think if you're the most evil wizard in the world, sometimes you're just like, "you know what, I'm Voldemort, I do what I want". So you can bet that Voldemort gets hammered. I did a little investigating and found that this was indeed the case. Fortunately, I'm BFFs with Nagini and Nagini has access to Voldemort's phone. I give you, the best Voldemort drunk texts: Actually, it looks like Voldemort drinks a lot. Apparently he likes tequila, which is weird because I would have pegged him for a margarita guy. ...

Warning: Spoilers for Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire from A Dance with Dragons on  So, if you read/watch A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, you're undoubtably really frustrated because there are so many unanswered questions in this series, and you're going to have to wait at least TWO YEARS to get the next book (if not more). I know, it frustrates me too. Anyway, If you've read  A Dance with Dragons , this question has probably been on your mind: Is Aegon/ Young Griff the real deal? If Aegon Targaryen did, in fact, survive the sack of King's Landing it would create some ambiguity as to who is the true heir to the Iron Throne. As the son of Rhaegar, Aerys' heir, Aegon has a better claim to the throne than Daenerys Targaryen. Of course, there have been many theories put forward stating that Dany with rule jointly with the other two heads of the dragon, but it seems that Dany's ascension is George R.R. Martin's endgame. Conversely, the su...