take me out to the ball game

My family and I are Sox fans, and it is funny hearing my die-hard Cub fan roommate support her team.

Except tonight, after they lost the season-opener.

"Of COURSE they couldn't just lose, they had to lose in a spectacular way!... It's like UGH! Cubs."

El odio a los Emos

Have you heard about a recent emo-bashing insurgence in Mexico? I am not an emo myself, but I find this...I can't even find the word for it. Odd, yes. Frustrating? I guess, yeah. I don't know, tell me what you think.

There's been riots and these mobs attacking groups of emo kids in Mexico.
Here's two blogs with a bunch of links to stuff, but some links are to Mexican news sites, so if you don't know un poco de espanol, you may have to put the site into google and do a translation.
http://danielhernandez.typepad.com/daniel_hernandez/2008/03/violence-agains.html
http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/letter-from-mexico-city/more-on-the-emo-attacks-in-mex/index.php

There really hasn't been a definite word yet as to why there is so much hatred, but some believe it is because it is almost a feminine way for guys to dress, and this hatred is more of an anti-gay hatred.

Here's a video that was linked from the second blog I posted above, and from the site I got it from, it says:
"In Mexico, emo culture is a butt of many jokes. It is either despised intensely or generally ignored. But it's only the despising sentiment that lately has been getting wide airply. In the above clip, a Televisa on-air personality named Kristoff expresses a serious dose of anti-emo rhetoric and switches to English to say, on network television, "Fucking bullshit" to the emo movement. Some emos I've interviewed point to the Kristoff clip as a defining provocation of the current wave of anti-emo violence. Now check out this clip from another Televisa program where three emos are interviewed about the attacks. At the end, the kid on the left asks if he can say more thing: he directly accuses Kristoff of spreading anti-emo hate."


That clip is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEQshjri6P8
If you don't speak/understand Spanish, he's basically saying "emo is a thing that 15 year-olds follow, and they only do it because they like the singer of the group, not the actual music." He also says "Is it really necessary for you to create a new genre for this? Were you not satisfied enough with punk, dead-metal or the current bands out there? Was it necessary to be like 'no, the rest of the music out there is the same...they aren't emotional enough. It's fucking bullshit. There isn't a movement, a new way to think, this isn't music. You are confusing the hard rock, punk, and screamo together with the current music to justify your stupid and cowardly movement."


What do you think about this?

WHAT??!

WHAT?! I just found out that Miley Cyrus (yes, hannah montana)'s older brother is the lead singer of Metro Station. And Miley's costar, Mitchell Musso, his brother is in Metro Station too! WHAT? I heard this band on the-n during one of their commercials featuring all the stars from their shows.
Ok, ironically enough, I will post here all the summer promos EXCEPT the one with the song (because I can't find it). Huh. If you do find it, I believe it is called "summer '07 promo pool party" or something of the sort. It is tagged to some or all of those.

There was a series of promos airing during summer, and these are them:
Pool Party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpykEl9tYpA&NR=1
Valery Ortiz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_I8bwx5Z4s&NR=1
The Guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQIgUte63Xc&feature=related
Charity Laughs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aqMuuWnnqg&NR=1
Sunrise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8_h3tSJWM


There are so many the-n promos I love. Like this:
On Top Of The World: http://youtube.com/watch?v=a8OKf6nP6Rw
Times Square: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_lk4pkG5QLw&feature=related
City Lights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHI-GPHtDDc

and here is their myspace. The song in the video is "seventeen forever".

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=82052063

Thinking out loud, edition 1

Have you ever thought something that only makes sense to you, but you said it out loud and made a complete fool of yourself?

I find that this happens when you have a train of thought going on in your head, and then no one around you knows where the hell what you just said came from.

An example today, where i PREVENTED myself from acting a fool:

So there has been a nickel sitting on the edge of the arm of the couch in our living room area that has been there for three days now. I have wondered why none of my roommmates have claimed it, since it has been there so long. And why a nickel? Why no other coin? A penny is understandable, I mean, those are everywhere, and who the heck wants a penny?


So today in class, I am walking to my seat and next to this one girl's backpack and purse pile, there is a nickel on the ground.
I was thinking "Another nickel? Why are there nickels everywhere?!" And I almost said that out loud, but I held it in.

Can you imagine what people would have thought? They would have thought I was crazy. Unless they already do, which is understandable.


What are your random "thinking out loud" thoughts? don't even explain them, they are so much better when you don't know the story leading up to them.

ASRTD?

Today I met up with a friend from high school, Briana. We were with her sister and mom, and some of their family friends.

We went to Crate and Barrel, CB2 and Crate and Barrel Outlet. It was insane. But we had fun.

(there's a crate filled with egg cups in different colors, and the sign above it reads: "Asrtd. egg cups")
Briana: I thought this was a word at first (points to Asrtd). I was like "why would someone name it like this? This is so difficult to say! Then I realized it was an abbreviation for "assorted." Like at Ikea, where everything is named "norseteborg!" The worst is when you have to buy it and tell the person who works there. You don't want to sound like a fool, and mispronounce it. They might be like "um, it's norsteBURG. Gosh."

i gotta have faith!

When I was driving around today I heard "Faith" by George Michael on the radio.

It's hard to imagine that that was the same singer behind "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go!"



Wait...no it's not.

laundry humor

Me: So I couldn't get to the dry cleaners today because they closed at 5, and I got there a few minutes after that.
Eric: so they were...*tugs on shirt*...clothesed? Do you think that's what they put on the sign when they aren't open? "We're clothesed?"

I don't care for jelly beans

Don't call me.

*phone rings*
Eric: I'm not getting it.
Me: You're closer.
Eric: Come ON. You're on a stool...I'm laying down, on the couch.
*phone rings again*
Eric: Dammit! This is bulls**t! (picks up phone) Hello?

FREE STUFF!!!

I love free stuff.

That's why I JUMPED, yes JUMPED at the opportunity to send in for a free projection alarm clock from Pop-Tarts.
I got it in the mail this past week, I'll post pictures later!


And my mom was like "did you see your Barbie watch?" I was like "what?" and she revealed to me a neon yellow wristwatch with pink flowers that my brother found in the cereal box the other morning. It, by the way, is everything I could dream and more in a watch.

I will post pictures of it along with the alarm clock.

I love being home.



ever had a cool cereal box prize? tell me about it and comment!

Quote of the day

Eric, watching Mission To Mars, commenting on how Don Cheadle looks unkempt when they discover him on mars: "I didn't know there were homeless people on Mars!"

I'm always ready for a challenge

So I had a full gallon of milk that I opened last night, hoping that I could finish it before I left for the weekend. I was up for the challenge. Unfortunately, half the gallon was gone when I had to leave. Challenge failed.

But a challenge I completed was trying to not drive to Indiana today. I made a wrong turn after I drove my dad to the airport today...I took the expressway south instead of north...(I knew I made the mistake right after I made the exit) so I was driving on some random road for a while, then I took an exit and was driving on that trying to find somewhere to turn around. It was pretty difficult. I was up for the challenge, though, and found my way home before I crossed the border. And I didn't need to ask for directions or call anyone or anything!

Don't worry, I was only on the wrong road for about 15 minutes...so I really wasn't even close to the border.

You sing a sad song just to turn it around...

So, let me tell you of the evolution of my bad day. (don't worry, it ends happily.)

It all began this morning, waking up an hour and a half before my class begins (when it only takes me 20 minutes to get ready for class). It's all about the transportation...



Let me give you a brief backstory here. I have a class at the other campus at 8:30am. It takes me about 18 minutes from the time I wake up to get ready for school. There are 4 methods of getting to the other campus, and disadvantages of each.
1. The school shuttle (more like the school glacier that is completely unreliable and slow)
2. The El (which takes about 40 minutes during rush hour, and especially unreliable because it likes to go super slow between stops)
3. A taxi (which would cost about $20, and really isn't that necessary. But of course, it's fastest)
4. The public transportation bus (my preferred method, because I get to class on time, but I have to catch it about 1 hour before class in order to arrive on the campus by 8am, but if I waited for the next bus, I would most likely get to class at 8:45, therefore late to class)

If I had a car, it would be the fastest, because a direct drive from one campus to the other is like fifteen minutes, tops.

Ok, so I leave my room this morning with Katie around 7:25. We usually try and catch the bus that arrives at 7:32. So we are walking (the stop is a few blocks away) and we are waiting for the light to change to cross the street and catch the bus when OH LOOK THERE GOES THE BUS. But it stops at the stop, so we have like, 70 seconds to get across the street and over about 100 feet to catch it. So here I am dodging traffic on Michigan Avenue in order to catch a bus. I run across the street only to see it start chugging along again to the next stop. By now Katie has caught up to me, and she is panting "quick.....run....to....the next stop..." so we are running, backpacks on us, four blocks trying to catch a bus moving at like 30 mph. Katie, the runner she is, catches up to it when it stops at the next bus stop, and is approximately 6 feet from the door when the bus starts moving again. Now, we could have continued chasing it, but we kind of assumed it would be highly unlikely to catch up to a bus going 50mph on Lake shore drive.

So at this point, it's like 7:38 and we are ten blocks away from our building. Katie's class starts at 8:05, so she is really in a rush. We don't want to take the el because we would have to walk 12 blocks to get to the entrance, and if we waited for a bus, we would have to wait in the cold for about 25 minutes until one came. Our only real option was the school shuttle.
As we were walking back, we were wheezing, spitting up loogies (lovely, i know...but I really am not in that bad of shape...I can take 14 flights of stairs a couple times a week and I am not exhausted).
To be honest, I don't know what was wrong with me, since I am still having some subtle wheezing when I breathe now...five hours later.
So we walk alllllll the way back to the school, to the shuttle bus stop (we get to wait indoors, so that's nice), when I see only one girl in line. (By now it's 7:42) This usually signifies that we had just missed a shuttle. Then I find out it doesn't even come until 8am (the FIRST SHUTTLE OF THE DAY) which is stupid, since it is unlikely that you'd get to class on time taking the shuttle if it arrives at 8 (because they have to empty it, then to load the bus some people are slow and/or stupid and take forever, then the trip is about 20 minutes without traffic). So here I am...just waiting...and the bus (i will applaud it on this) arrives precisely at 7:58, TWO WHOLE MINUTES EARLY! Normally the bus is 10-20 minute LATE. So I get on the bus like "sure, i won't get some time before class to relax or read, but I will get to class on time."
But that was before the trip began. When we get off of lake shore drive, there is a bumper to bumper traffic jam about 15 blocks away from my school. I was in said traffic jam from about 8:15 until 8:45.

Therefore, I arrive FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE TO CLASS.
You may think "no big deal, only fifteen minutes" but when you compare it to the fact that I got up an HOUR AND A HALF BEFORE CLASS BEGAN, it's a little ridiculous.
PS. Our shuttle caught up with the public transportation bus that I could have caught had I waited for the next one to come....but I would have had to stand in the cold.

So at this point, my joy level is at about 0%.


Later, however, it rises.
Its about 11:00, ten minutes before my second morning class ends, when EHHHH! EHHH! EHHH! EHHH(this is my siren noise)! EHHH! EHH! there are flashing lights, and it is clear that the fire alarm has gone off. I am just happy that I can leave, because this class sucks so much, so my joy level is about 20%. Our teacher usually leaves the door open to the hallway. I happen to glance out there as I am gathering my books and I see a SUPER guilty-looking kid acting as if he just, well, set off the fire alarm of a building filled with 300 people. Yeah, it was definitely him. As he paces back and forth with his guilty, furrowed brow, I see the fire alarm has been pushed behind him...by his backpack. The moron was chilling in the hallway, and leaned right up against the alarm, setting it off. Way to go, Mr. Stupid.I'm at about a 90% by now.

So I leave, and catch the bus after pretty much no wait at all, it was great. 95%

Then, to top it all off, I sit by a group of stupid people ( I assume college freshmen, 3 boys and 1 girl). I love stupid people. I love how...gosh, I can't even explain it. I just love it. Especially Mr. "Der, I Swear I didn't set off the fire alarm...what's that? It's behind me? And I was the only one in the hallway? Naw, wasn't me!" So I get on the bus and get to hear intelligent conversational topics like "dude, have you ever tried throwing one of those Nalgene bottles off a roof? They're indestructible!" or "You've heard of the El Niño, right?" To get a visual of the boys, imagine white suburbans wearing flat-brimmed baseball hats with a huge circumference.

100%

pop-up

I just had an interesting time at my library, showing Carolyn that our college library has children's books. We checked some out.

A pop-up Wizard of Oz

A pop-up Alice in Wonderland

And a pop up dinosaur book.

A contradiction of sorts

I just came back from my local convenience store.

I asked if I could request that they carry non-dairy chocolate ice cream. They used to carry it, but now they don't and I am very disappointed.

I then proceeded to buy two gallons of milk.

sweet dreams are made of these

I love that I can vividly remember my dreams.


Last night I dreamed that I had this secret power that I could harness the humidity in the air and make people visible again (since there was a disease sweeping the local elementary school that was causing kids to disappear, duh). So I went to the school and scooped up the humidity and threw it at the children in a giant ball (street fighter/mortal kombat style). Then the kids would stop fading away and they were visible again. Then the school day was over and all the kids were getting picked up from school. Unfortunately I had no ride home. Then a car pulled up, driven by KATIE HOLMES HERSELF, with a ton of passengers in it. It was like a 5-seater, but there were like 5 people in the backseat alone. Anyways, she offered me a ride, so I hopped in the passenger seat, and I had to sit on (guess who!) M NIGHT SHYAMALAN'S lap. So the entire ride to whereever we were going, he and I were talking about his movies and how cool he was (he was modest, I was the one discussing his coolness). Then we arrived at his house which was an enormous mansion. There was a giant fountain, and behind it was a small corn field and I was impressing him with all the trivia i knew from imdb and wikipedia, asking if that was the corn field that they filmed Signs in. And it WAS. (of course, the corn field was small, and they CGI'ed the rest of it). There were also these creepy/weird statues in front of the enormous fountain, that could only come from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. Oh, and there was a huge party at his house. And I almost was cast in his new movie.

jealous?

% is more of a letter than CH is!

You know something I don't get? That CH is a letter in the Spanish language.

It shouldn't be. It is only two letters put next to each other. Just because all of our words that begin with the letter Q in English are followed by a U (quick, quill, quantum etc), doesn't mean QU is a letter. It's a combination of letters! There should be rules of the creation of letters. Like, it should be a weird squiggle or something, but if you have to lift your pencil to complete the letter, it should not be considered a letter. Unless when you lift the pencil it is to write OVER the thing you currently have drawn. Like the tail of a Q, or the top of a T (because I can't think of anyone who writes uppercase Qs and Ts without lifting their pencil...they'd look like a cursive lowercase A and a pointy question mark without the dot underneath, respectively). You can't just put two separate letters that each work completely on their own as letters, then put them next to one another and create a new letter! IT'S TWO LETTERS! NEXT TO EACH OTHER! And since we are on the topic of Spanish double letters, that goes for ll or rr. Like, seriously? You put "llama" later in the dictionary than "lugar"? LL is just two L's! NOT ONE LETTER.

But I don't know how I feel about accented spanish letters (how come ñ is its own letter, but ó is not, it's only an accented o?) Or how I feel about the funny looking c with a tail in the word façade. What do you think?

Then again, I don't know much about the creation of the Spanish language, so if you do, enlighten me.

That's all for my rant.



In related news, I had difficulty finding "chinches" in my spanish dictionary.

That's a guaranteed winner!

Haven't you guys heard? The director of such greats as BLUE CRUSH and the tv show GIRLICIOUS is remaking THE BREAKFAST CLUB!



This will either be horribly terrible...or terribly horrible.

Some current events...

"If given a choice on Super Tuesday, I'd have to go with soup. Sorry, Tuesday."
--Weekend Update 3/8/08


And yes, I know what's on your mind. You are thinking "gee, I wish they had game shows in America that are similar to those in Japan!" For all three of you stirring in your sleep over this idea, I have good news. Fox, the maker of such great game shows as "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?", "Don't forget the lyrics", and "The Moment of Truth", has decided to remake the human tetris show from Japan for us Americans to watch.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117980832.html?categoryid=14&cs=1


And for those of you who haven't already witnessed the downfall of human kind in the form of a three-minute video about human tetris, watch this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84_QL1kEmH4


enjoy, and ciao