Internet Movies

Dear Readers,

The internet is this fabulous resource, right? It can connect you to hundreds of different people from all over the world. It gives you resources you could never find in your library. And of course it allows you to easily watch television series from a multitude of different countries. This is the part of the internet which is currently trying to murder me via sleep deprivation. I discovered two new shows on the internet I love. One from South Korea, Faith, and a Canadian television series, The Listener. Both of these shows demand all of my free time to discover what happens next. Freaking Faith is just like the Walking Dead. There is ten minutes of action at the beginning. Thirty minutes of nothing. Finally, ending with a three-minute cliff hanger. It is enough to drive me bonkers!

Without the internet I might actually have more time to do my homework –nah, that still would have been procrastinated on– or hang with friends. Sadly, no. My time is divided up as such: 40% at school, 10% at clubs, 45% watching these stupid shows which will drive me insane, 3% thinking how I should be doing something else other than watching this show, 1% telling myself “only one more episode”, and 1% sleeping.

What about you guys? Any shows you discovered and became obsessed with? Leave it all in the comments!

Regards,

Squirrel

College Stress. Scholarship Applications

Dear Readers,

As many of our older readers will most assuredly recall, college is a time of learning. Getting accepted into college is easy. Funding the endeavour however, not so easy.  Each college gives you a number that they will be willing to give you when you apply. The thing I have learned recently is everything I was told as a child was a lie. Everything regarding to college at the bare minimum.

As a youth there are two things we are told. If you are good in school, that is get straight A’s and a 4.0 unweighted GPA, then you will get big scholarships. Don’t forget to partake in meaningless school activities. This includes sports you suck at, and clubs that will suck up more of your time than necessary. With these you can trick a college into thinking you are a well-rounded individual. We haven’t even begun talking about the countless hours you spent volunteering at your local library over the summer.

Forget all of that bologna. College will cost more than they are willing to give you. That is unless you are the child who got a perfect ACT or SAT score. In which case, congratulations! Please stop bragging how you didn’t even study even though we all know you studied because before you wouldn’t stop saying how you couldn’t hang out because you were studying for that particular test. If, like me, you happen not to fall under the perfect test taker category you have a few other hopes to rely on. 1) Perhaps you are a minority and can get a crap ton of smaller scholarships. Unfortunately I am whiter than an iPhone. 2) Chances are you are the most eloquent writer since Mark Twain. Excellent because you know have to write 10 million essays for every single $300 scholarship available under the sun. Somehow you have to manage to make that essay better than the other 1 million competing against it and saying the exact same hackneyed “pick me! pick me! please pick me! I will give you my first unborn child if you pick me!” response.

Can you tell I am a little stressed? AHHHHH. I will have no hair remaining by the end of this process. Please forgive me for my infrequent blogging through out this semester. I am currently drowning in the sea of life attempting to climb on a college lifeboat with the captian repetitively smacking me on the head with an oar screaming “Go away and come back when you have some real money!”.

Regards,

Squirrel

People on Airplanes

Dear Readers,

I realize that today is not my day to post; however, seeing as I missed yesterday’s posting this will have to make up for that.

Airplanes. Most people today have been on one. After all, we’ve become so lazy as a society that strapping ourselves into a metal tube and hurtling off into the sky Is more convenient than taking a two day drive. Seriously, who is the guy that said “I have an idea! We get this tube, strap on some more metal, and thrust people into that air!” And then there had to be at least one other guy who said “what a great idea!”

Anyways, I was just sittting on this plane trying to read my book ( The Bridge ). Unfortunately, i underestimated the length of my book compared to flight duration. now i still have two hours to kill in the air. So,with my row mates asleep, I resorted to people watching.

The guy in front of me stares out the window for the majority of the flight even though he’s on the aisle seat. Plus, at random intervals he shush’s the lady next to him. Even though she is not talking.

Then there’s the college guy in my row who has such a bad case poison ivy he has his hand wrapped up like his wrist is broken and the rash is creeping up his neck. I can’t really complain though, because he’s been asleep for a majority of the flight. Also, he seems like a nice enough person.

Can’t forget to mention the small child behind me who likes to keep bringing the tray table down and up, down and up, down and up on the back of my seat. With the mother who keeps chanting “oh, isn’t she adorable” and “kids will be kids”. As if saying it enough times will fulfill the satanic ritual and make it true and her kid any less annoying.

Then there’s the girl two on the opposite side of the aisle who keeps pressing the stewardess button because she wants them bring her a Mountain Dew-which they don’t offer.

Should I mention the guy who looks like John green, the author and co-founder of nerdfighteria, mixed with the vampire, angel, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, doesn’t help that your wearing all black and walk very majestically for a man.

Who else? Should I mention the guy who got on the plane and loudly announced he was an air Marshall to the girl he sat next to? Doesn’t quite feel legit. I think somebody was trying to flirt-and failing at it.

I am on a plane full of crazies. Honestly, all that’s missing is for the pilot to come storming out of the cockpit screaming the lyrics to “never gonna give you up”. At first, I thought I was in purgatory. Now I am convinced that this is one of those hidden camera shows and soon Simon Cowl will pop out of nowhere and give me a million dollars. Wish me luck.

Regards,
Squirrel

Aimless Staring

Dear Readers,

Remember when you were little? Back when you thought to drive a car you had to violently jerk the steering wheel back and forth. Before the lessons of less is more? None of us could drive. So we sat in the back seat, or passenger seat as the case may be, and we stared. We stared at the landscape. We stared at the buildings. We stared at people on the street. We stared at clouds. We stared at people driving. Occasionally we managed to stare at another staring at us.

One thing I don’t remember seeing much of when I was staring, aimlessly, was other people staring. I mean, ya, plenty of little kids were staring out their windows. Probably imagining Jurassic Park and Godzilla scenarios happening right outside that car window. However, I don’t think I ever really saw adults or even teenagers staring aimlessly out their windows. Some of you might be thinking: What brought on this a) insightful thought or b) slightly emo thought? I thought of this because as Hedgehog was driving us back from the movies tonight I reverted back to my childish state of staring. Is there an age where this behavior is no longer accepted? Perhaps there was a massive chain text sent out around age 13 where everyone decided “Hey, look guys, we had a nice run of it but its time to call it. No more staring out the window”?

If so that would make sense, because I was the only 13-year-old without a cell phone at my school. This really drove me batty at the time. Although now I can see where my parents were coming from. I really wanted a phone since third grade, but after seeing all these kindergartener with iPhones all I can think of is: Who are you going to call? You’re five. You don’t have any peeps. At least none that aren’t made of marshmallow and covered in sugar.

Oops, I am getting off topic again.

Anyways, what do ya’ll think? Is there an age where you should stop staring out car windows? Should kindergartener have iPhones? Leave a message below in the comments after the **Beep** and I’ll try to get back to you. See what I did there? I’m sorry, that was very, very lame. That will never happen again.  Actually, it probably will, but one can hope.

Regards,

Squirrel

Legitimate Excuses

Dear Readers,

I know what you are thinking. “Geeze Squirrel, you skipped 2 whole days of posting!” Where was our Challenge Friday and Surviving Saturday!Well, I’ll tell you where they were. I was busy. preoccupied. Otherwise engaged. Torn away from my plans. I fully intended writing Saturday and Friday. However, last week kind of went like this.

Friday after school I was on my way home. One might say I was homeward bound. No, no one would say that….. no, I would. I was homeward bound. When suddenly. BANG! Yes, that’s right. Someone rear ended me while I was in the turn lane. So Friday, I was busy filling out a police report and all that crap. Then Saturday was full of getting my car to the Mechanic’s shop for him to take a look at. Apparently, my muffler has been shoved into my cadalitic converter (I have no idea what this is, if you know please leave a comment)  and is now banging into my bumper. Which apart from sounding very suggestive, makes the most horrendous sound I have heard in my entire life. I drive down the road and fear that one of two things will happen. 1.) My car will spontaneously explode. BLAM!!! No more squirrel. -OR- 2.) My muffler flies loose from my car, it shatters the car behind mine’s windshield. Suddenly there is a huge pile up behind me. Cars are crashing, children screaming.

Basically, I have had a bad week. Sorry, my attitude is not likely to improve until Friday when my car might be fixed. Please, bare with me through this week of please-dear-god-car-don’t-explode.  Leave any suggestions for surviving saturday or challenge friday in the comments.

Regards,
Squirrel

Surviving Saturday: A Murder of Essays

Dear Readers,

As you may recall. I procrastinated like a boss. Ten essays due monday. With procrastination this amazing comes stress like a rhino horn shoved up your spinal column. So how is one supposed to write ten essays essentially in one day? Listen close my fellow procrastinaters. I will tell you the magic of my ways…

Surviving: A Murder of Essays:

1.  Freak out. This step is essential. Don’t hold back. Eliminate the stress. Let it all go. Here are my personal favorites ways of freaking out.
   1. Cry. Show the stress who is boss. Gather it all up and release it from your eyes. If someone should make fun of you for crying. Well, we all know you are a boss. After all your shoving your stress right out of your eyes! Kick their butts! Then return to releasing the stress, or move on to step two.
   2. Complain. After all, if your day is going to be miserable why not spend it with someone else who is equally miserable. It just makes you feel better. Even if they totally hate your whining. Make sure to make it sound horrible. As if Satan himself has dropped a load of poo-poo on you and only you are capable of freeing the world from his feces. (Sorry for that mental picture).
   3. Complete mental break down.  Depending on the level of procrastination you managed, use this is a last resort. If the world will literally end due to your procrastination… Fake a mental break down. This will take some determination. You need to get committed to an institution. It will take an awful lot of work. Your gonna have to–ah, who am I kidding. You’re obviously not going to put the effort into faking a mental break down. Just procrastinate some more. Skip to step 2.
2.  Pull your stuff together. Just man up, or woman up as the case may be, and get it done. The world won’t end. You could do a pretty crappy job and honestly no one would really care. Usually the only person you hurt in procrastination is your self. Just learn from your mistake and don’t do it again. Unless you are a surgeon and procrastinated learning an operation. I swear to god one of my biggest fears is being on the operating table and having an out-of-body experience where the surgeon says, “Okay, now pull up the wikiHow article.” If you procrastinated something that serious, just quit. Give up. Do patients everywhere a favor and go into Taxidermy. At least there you won’t accidentally remove a leg.

In other news I managed to finish 10 fairly good essays in one day. Level of awesome? Chuck Norris.

So leave your procrastination stories in the comments. Together we can conquer this problem….tomorrow.

Regards,

Squirrel

Wasted Time

Dear Readers,

School. Supposedly, it is a place of learning. You go and sit through seven hours of “learning”. What exactly do you do in those seven hours of “learning” though? I’d argue that maybe four of those seven hours are spent actually absorbing new information. First of all, there is that half-hour lunch. You know the type, disgusting food. Wait, did it just move? Answer: most likely. Not even kidding our school sent kids home with food poisoning after eating the fish nuggets. Who on Earth thought fish nuggets were a good idea?

The rest of the wasted two and a half hours begin with traveling periods. Ten minutes between each class. Next, almost everyday in at least one of my classes we watch a movie. It is a part of the integrating technology into the classroom initiative. Don’t forget to add twenty minutes because the teacher can’t figure out how to operate the DVD player, or sometimes even scarier, a VHS player.

Occasionally, that twenty-minute what does this do-hick do turns into thirty minutes because a student volunteers to help. Sadly, the teacher refuses to give up control. So, they stand there fighting.

Student = Italics
Teacher = Bold
 “Press play.”
“Which one?”
“Play”
 “This one?”**Hits eject**
“No, play. It looks like a sideways triangle.”
“Oh, I found it!” **Hits power button**
I only wish I was exaggerating.

Other wasted class time includes, but is not limited to: Passing out papers, looking for papers, waiting for others to finish test/quiz, listening to the slowest reader read aloud, waiting for others to finish “silent reading”, listening to the announcements, trying to listen to the announcements over a rowdy class, teacher trying to quiet a rowdy class, free time, and last but certainly not least waiting the last three minutes of each class by the door wishing the clock would tick just half a second faster.  Just when you thought I couldn’t murder a sentence any more, well, take that Grammar!

Regards,

Squirrel

This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.

Dearest Readers,

Trick or Treat,
Smell my feet
Give me something good to eat
If you don’t, I don’t care
I’ll pull down your underwear.

What are we teaching kids these days? Go up to a random strangers house, ring the door, then blackmail them for a snickers. Halloween has got to be the most insane holiday of the entire year. Ghouls, goblins, and gregs running around the neighborhood. Parents dragging around toddlers. Parents complaining about dragging around toddlers. Teenagers smashing pumpkins. Parents complaining about said teenagers smashing said pumpkins.

It seems to me that Halloween is a love hate relationship. Parents love the idea of it. So they drag their children around door to door for a few years. Then they get sick of it and don’t want to anymore. However, by this point the kids have caught on to the free candy. So the parents still go door to door. Once the children decide they are too old for Halloween the parents want to go door to door again. A vicious cycle if ever I saw one.

 

Regards,

Squirrel

Challenge Friday: Embarrassment

Dear Readers,

A challenge issues a challenge preformed. It’s that time again! CHALLENGE FRIDAY! **Cues thundering applause**  Thank you. Thank you. Today’s challenge consists of me embarrassing myself. So basically a usual day. Except, twice as much embarrassment.

Challenge: Write about how you embarrassed yourself today. Be honest because we all know you managed to embarrass yourself somehow.

Today in my honors science class we were studying the transfer of thermal energy with a lab. A very simple lab. Boil some water. Stick aluminum, brass and copper in the water one at a time. Then transfer the metal to a room temperature water and calculate the change in temperature. Simple right? There is no physical way I could call attention and humiliate myself could I? Wrong. You underestimate my abilities.

We had successfully finished the first two trials with aluminum and brass. On to the last trial with five minutes left in class. So while using the tongs to place the copper into the bubbling boiling water, it slips. Boom. Splashing into the 100C beaker. Water splashes out everywhere. On the table, on our papers, and on the floor. Luckily our teacher had just taken away our laptop because one of our group was playing duck life 2.  Alright, so I spilt some water…. No big deal just clean it up. If only.

There we were, wiping up water on a hot plate with paper towels. And gosh, the water just never seemed to end. I continued to boil and fizz and jump on that hot plate. Yet, no holes were visible in the beaker. Sure enough, when I screw something up I go all the way. I had smashed a hole right through the bottom of that beaker. And slowly all 500 mL of water was pouring out. So after we turned off the hot plate and were scooping up the water. I thought I was in the clear. The humiliation was over. Until I slipped on a pile of water and fell….taking two members of my lab group with me. **Smacks self in head**

Regards,

Squirrel

What Disney Movies Taught Me

Dear Reader,

Today, my friends and I had a movie marathon. Disney themed to be specific. Before anyone gets on my case **cough** Hedgehog **cough**. You’re not to old to watch Disney movies unless you have kids. In which case, you still get to watch them. See how that works?

Anyways while we were watching them I started to see all the dirty jokes I had missed as a child. Oh, innocent me. And when I really started thinking about it. Disney movies are messed up.

What I learned from 7 Disney movies:

The Little Mermaid

Remember how Ariel loved Prince Charming but he didn’t even now she existed? Well, Ladies this is an excellent example of how men only want you for your body. Anyone can marry a prince so long as they get extreme and extensive plastic surgery. Ariel was lucky, all she had to do was chop off her tail, lose her vocal chords, and get new legs. Even after all that the prince still dumped her for some other chick, too. Moral of the story? You have to be willing to change everything about yourself to catch a guy. Then he will still chase after the evil hot chick who will try to kill you.

Lion King

Hedgehog and I disagree about this one. Remember the scene from the lion king when Rafiki is trying to get Simba to go back to save the pride lands? Hedgehog claims the story is that Rafiki hits Simba repetitively with a stick to show that the past can still hurt us but we need to learn from it. I however believe that the moral of the story is this. Disney is clearly trying to say  that it’s okay to hit people – so long as you are trying to help them.

Aladdin

Where to even start? It is okay to lie or steal to get what you want. That loaf of bread? Take it. The creepy monkey? Stole it. Dusty lamp? Just shove it in your back pocket. Later you can just wipe it off and hock it at the local pawn shop. If you get really lucky a giant genie will pop out of it and suddenly you can pretend you’re a prince to get the attention of the hot princess.

Snow White

First of all, Harlot. I am not the only one thinking this. She lived with SEVEN MEN. That has got to mean something. Secondly, apparently you can eat poisonous foods. Worst comes to worst and those seven men you have been meandering with will build you a lovely dome-like thing in the middle of the forest and just wait around. Until some fool wanders in and decides ‘hey, unconscious girl…. lets kiss her.’ Seriously, sounds like someone got waisted at a frat party, passed out, and you know the rest of the story.

Bambi

Some movies you can only watch once, no matter how much you loved them as a child. Also, you are going to die. Sooner or later either you or everyone you know will die. Due to circumstances beyond your control i.e. hunters or forest fires eventually everyone you know will be put into harms way. How depressing is that?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

From the first time Quasimodo laid his eyes on Esmerelda he loved her. He did everything for her. In the end who did she end up marrying? Quasimodo? NO. Some other guy. Moral of the story? Doesn’t matter how sweet you are. No one wants to marry the ugly guy.

Cinderella

Cinderella was supposed to clean the house everyday according to her stepmother. She would take no action. Never once did she stand up to her stepmother for being so evil. Not even any dirty looks. Then one day…BAM! A magic fairy shows up and hands her everything. A carriage, a few horses, a dress, a prince and even a kingdom. Moral of the story? Just wait around long enough and eventually the universe will had you everything on a silver platter.

Regards,

Squirrel