I just finished reading the newest blog post on Hyperbole and a Half. It was entitled The Scariest Story, I encourage you to read it, it's really comical. It got me thinking of my own childhood nightmares, and I thought share the cause of some of them to you.
Possibly the most frightening experience of my life happened one October when I was about eight years old. My aunt had taken my sister (who was 6 at the time) and me, along with some of her friends children to what she thought was a hayride. When we got there we found out that the hayride was in fact next weekend, and that the haunted cornfield was scheduled for that night. My sister was a huge fan of scary stories, so she insisted that we do the haunted cornfield, since we were there already. I agreed, because I didn't want to be a party pooper. The other girls we were with weren't to excited about it, but they agreed as well. We waited in line for a half an hour. We finally got to the corn maze, and walked about 6 feet in, there was a wire that shocked people as you walked by. The older girls, and the adults in our thought it was funny, but my sister and I, begin considerably smaller than everyone else thought the shock was kind of painful. This was not of too a good start. We walked a few more feet and someone jumped out, it scared me, but not as much as the girl who was about 12. She screamed and started freaking out. It was relativly quite for a while, except for the occasional nerve wracking rustle of the corn leaves. Suddenly someone with a running chain saw ran across the opening. There was a lot of screaming, and I was honestly concerned with my saftey, I mean, what if he tripped!? A few more things happened, and our whole group was terrified, but somewhat enjoying ourselves. Until my sister's ankle was grabbed. A hand shot out from corn field and latched on to her, the owner of the hand did not realize the owner of the ankle was a six year old, and pulled with too much force. My sister tumbled to the ground, not quite catching herself with her hands. She started bawling, the owner of the hand came out of the cornfield to apologize. You can imagine how that went over, when a grusemly clad, tall man comes at a hysterical six year old. She screamed bloody murder and leaped in to my aunts arms. This was suddenly not fun anymore. The rest of our group went ahead, and my aunt tried to find a way out, we decided to go forward, because we figured the maze couldn't be that much longer. We were wrong. It was so much longer. Luckily we found someone who was normally dressed who could take us out on a short cut. My aunt brought us hot choclate to calm us down.
My parents were not happy when we got home, because we both slept on their bedroom floor for the next few nights.
Most haunted houses, and corn mazes don't allow the employes to touch people who come by anymore. I can understand why.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
I Don't Let People Win
Some children have everything handed to them, their parents baby them through every game of Candyland, let them win at Go Fish, purposefully miss shots when playing basketball. This may seem harmless to you but it's bad parenting. Children don't learn how to get things on their own.
I know a boy who is about twelve years old now, I've had the 'pleasure' of spending a lot of time with him. His parents always let him win. So when he plays games with my family he always throws a huge tantrum. Someone will knock one of his piece out it Sorry, and he'll throw his pieces and yell "I wanted to win" and burst into tears. His parents will quickly scoop up the pieces and say "it's okay honey, you can still d win, the game's not over." I am not one to appease such behavior. His parents say, "I bet Madge will let you put your piece back where it was." I make a psssh sound and say "No I won't." (With tons of attitude of course). Usually this leads to him running into a different room and screaming.
When I was little, it was very seldom that I won things, my parents always did there best to win, and I believe it has taught me a lot. I developed the skills I needed to win, and good sportsmanship. I probably wouldn't have won anything if the games we played hadn't involved luck. To this day, I still haven't been able to fairly beat my dad at chess, since he taught me how to play a few years ago, but I can beat a few other people, because every time I play him, I get better.
The boy a mentioned earlier, he's not good at anything, because he never works toward anything. A bunch of adults were playing volleyball, and he begged to play, after much pestering they finally allowed him. The first time the ball came toward him, he missed the bump. He picked up the ball and threw it in the face of one of the adults on his team, he started screaming at them about how he wanted to hit the ball that time, like it was there fault he missed. He proceeded to lie on the ground and scream and ball for a few minutes halting the game.
This boy will never be successful in life, he will get to college, and instead of studying, he will throw a tantrum when he gets his test scores back. The same for job interviews. Throwing a tantrum at that age seems kind of unlikely, but this boy is twelve and still throwing tantrums. I don't know very many twelve year olds that would cry and scream in front of a bunch of people. There is very little hope for him.
I know a boy who is about twelve years old now, I've had the 'pleasure' of spending a lot of time with him. His parents always let him win. So when he plays games with my family he always throws a huge tantrum. Someone will knock one of his piece out it Sorry, and he'll throw his pieces and yell "I wanted to win" and burst into tears. His parents will quickly scoop up the pieces and say "it's okay honey, you can still d win, the game's not over." I am not one to appease such behavior. His parents say, "I bet Madge will let you put your piece back where it was." I make a psssh sound and say "No I won't." (With tons of attitude of course). Usually this leads to him running into a different room and screaming.
When I was little, it was very seldom that I won things, my parents always did there best to win, and I believe it has taught me a lot. I developed the skills I needed to win, and good sportsmanship. I probably wouldn't have won anything if the games we played hadn't involved luck. To this day, I still haven't been able to fairly beat my dad at chess, since he taught me how to play a few years ago, but I can beat a few other people, because every time I play him, I get better.
The boy a mentioned earlier, he's not good at anything, because he never works toward anything. A bunch of adults were playing volleyball, and he begged to play, after much pestering they finally allowed him. The first time the ball came toward him, he missed the bump. He picked up the ball and threw it in the face of one of the adults on his team, he started screaming at them about how he wanted to hit the ball that time, like it was there fault he missed. He proceeded to lie on the ground and scream and ball for a few minutes halting the game.
This boy will never be successful in life, he will get to college, and instead of studying, he will throw a tantrum when he gets his test scores back. The same for job interviews. Throwing a tantrum at that age seems kind of unlikely, but this boy is twelve and still throwing tantrums. I don't know very many twelve year olds that would cry and scream in front of a bunch of people. There is very little hope for him.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Squish Fish
I am blessed to have a sister who is allergic to pretty much every animal. I can't have a puppy, or a cat (but honestly who wants a cat), I had a hamster for awhile, but she was allergic to that too. I had some pet turtles, but they have salmonella. So now I have two fish. I love my fish. There official names are Nanners and Polka, but they rarely get called that. Nanners is most frequently called squish fish, and occasionally stud muffin. Polka is most often called poop sucker, and some other names I shouldn't put on the internet.
My fish can do flips. I have the best fish in the world. If there were fish shows, mine would win. He can jump so high, he had flipped out of his bowl on several occasions, and I have had to grab his wiggling body and toss him back in the water (which is no easy feat) he is a very large and healthy fish.
My whole family treats my fish like a dog, on any given day you can find a member of my family staring into my fish bowl saying "you're a stud" and "you're so cute" repeatedly. One of these days I'm post of a video of my amazing flipping fish. I'm convinced he's part dolphin. He even smiles like a dolphin. Okay, enough about my fish. The end
My fish can do flips. I have the best fish in the world. If there were fish shows, mine would win. He can jump so high, he had flipped out of his bowl on several occasions, and I have had to grab his wiggling body and toss him back in the water (which is no easy feat) he is a very large and healthy fish.
My whole family treats my fish like a dog, on any given day you can find a member of my family staring into my fish bowl saying "you're a stud" and "you're so cute" repeatedly. One of these days I'm post of a video of my amazing flipping fish. I'm convinced he's part dolphin. He even smiles like a dolphin. Okay, enough about my fish. The end
Cold Remedies
It only seems appropriate, since I've been coughing up a storm this week, and can barely keep my eyes open from exhaustion. I've heard the normal remedies, drink lots of fluids, get lots of rest, but I'm interested in the more unusual remedies.
For instance, there has been a recent study on Zinc supplements, they are known to reduce the duration of a cold by about a day, which sounds lovely to me right now. Apparently it's not really certain how these work, or whether they have bad side effects after long term use, but I'm willing to try them, I'm tired of being sick (although I'm too lazy to go out and buy some). Also people have reported that the supplements have made them lose their sense of smell. Oh well, smelling isn't that great anyway.
One remedy I found seems highly unpleasant:
" Pour a little warm water into a dish and add a level teaspoon of your sodium bicarbonate. Stir it well and then immerse your nose and surrounding parts of your face into it. Slowly breathe the water up your nose until it reaches the point where it begins to overflow into your mouth. Then expel it and rinse your mouth out."
I'm sorry but I'm not willing to have the contents of my nose in my mouth. I'll have to pass.
The best advice I found on the Internet was here. Basically it tells you to get of your lazy butt and get some exercise.
For instance, there has been a recent study on Zinc supplements, they are known to reduce the duration of a cold by about a day, which sounds lovely to me right now. Apparently it's not really certain how these work, or whether they have bad side effects after long term use, but I'm willing to try them, I'm tired of being sick (although I'm too lazy to go out and buy some). Also people have reported that the supplements have made them lose their sense of smell. Oh well, smelling isn't that great anyway.
One remedy I found seems highly unpleasant:
" Pour a little warm water into a dish and add a level teaspoon of your sodium bicarbonate. Stir it well and then immerse your nose and surrounding parts of your face into it. Slowly breathe the water up your nose until it reaches the point where it begins to overflow into your mouth. Then expel it and rinse your mouth out."
I'm sorry but I'm not willing to have the contents of my nose in my mouth. I'll have to pass.
The best advice I found on the Internet was here. Basically it tells you to get of your lazy butt and get some exercise.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Wowzers!
Amazing Dance!
I assumed that you've just clicked on the link above and just watched a video of some highly talented dancers. I just wanted to share this with you, and commend this kind of talent. I cannot imagine the time that must have been put in to clean all those quick moves. I really don't have much to say about it, I'm just in awe right now!
I assumed that you've just clicked on the link above and just watched a video of some highly talented dancers. I just wanted to share this with you, and commend this kind of talent. I cannot imagine the time that must have been put in to clean all those quick moves. I really don't have much to say about it, I'm just in awe right now!
Wizard of Oz
"A few days a go, in my AP Lang class, we discussed an argument know as the straw man, (for those of you not familiar with the straw man, basically it's an argument that you make up a stance to argue against because they don't have the capacity to fight back), but ever since we've discussed this I've been seeing tons of examples of this.
For example, we have three show choirs at our school, a freshmen group, a prep, and a varsity. One girl, we'll call her Cake, was discussing show choir with someone who is not in show choir, we'll call him chip (I'm hungry if you can't tell). Anyway, well chip says "It's seems like you guys (as in the people in varsity show choir) are really mean to the prep group." Cake automatically gets defensive (even though she was totally just trashing a few specific people in the prep group) and says "No we're not, they just all think they're better than us!" So here's where the straw man comes in, "Everyone in the prep group says that they're going to beat the varsity, *blah, blah, blah* *mean, low blow about someone, etc*" First of all, saying 'everyone' can not possibly be true, you cannot sum up the views of an entire, diverse group of people with one statement. Second of all, since when has ANYONE said that. I would say, in general, our three show choirs get along pretty well, we support each other and cheer our loudest, and hope for them to win.
Another example, many commercials use the straw man, using the statement "Other *insert type of product here* don't have *insert special feature here*" What do you mean by other, how do you know they don't have that special ingredient? Did you illegally high-jack their recipe? Didn't think so.
It's weird how when someone points something out to you, that's all you see.
Like on Glee, when they introduced Sam, Finn made a comment about the largeness of his mouth, and now that's all I can see. (it's okay though I think his large mouth looks good on him)
For example, we have three show choirs at our school, a freshmen group, a prep, and a varsity. One girl, we'll call her Cake, was discussing show choir with someone who is not in show choir, we'll call him chip (I'm hungry if you can't tell). Anyway, well chip says "It's seems like you guys (as in the people in varsity show choir) are really mean to the prep group." Cake automatically gets defensive (even though she was totally just trashing a few specific people in the prep group) and says "No we're not, they just all think they're better than us!" So here's where the straw man comes in, "Everyone in the prep group says that they're going to beat the varsity, *blah, blah, blah* *mean, low blow about someone, etc*" First of all, saying 'everyone' can not possibly be true, you cannot sum up the views of an entire, diverse group of people with one statement. Second of all, since when has ANYONE said that. I would say, in general, our three show choirs get along pretty well, we support each other and cheer our loudest, and hope for them to win.
Another example, many commercials use the straw man, using the statement "Other *insert type of product here* don't have *insert special feature here*" What do you mean by other, how do you know they don't have that special ingredient? Did you illegally high-jack their recipe? Didn't think so.
It's weird how when someone points something out to you, that's all you see.
Like on Glee, when they introduced Sam, Finn made a comment about the largeness of his mouth, and now that's all I can see. (it's okay though I think his large mouth looks good on him)
Moment 4 life
Yes, the new Nicki Minaj video is out. It was way under my expectations, which means it's especially terrible, because my expectations weren't that high in the first place. First of all, the name. Ick. I hate when people don't use complete sentences when texting, but I find it even more annoying in titles. Anyway, the first few minutes is just Nicki awkwardly talking to her fairy godmother, it is terrible acting, and if I wasn't going to write a review on it, I would have quit watching it then. When the music starts I am very relieved only to be disappointed by the terrible rapping, the atrocious lyrics, and the awkward strutting/dancing. I stopped watching this video at three minutes and twenty-eight seconds. I couldn't bear any more of it. It just makes me sad to see what the music industry has gotten to.
Where are the good old days, with Men at Work, and Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Everly Brothers!
Where are the good old days, with Men at Work, and Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Everly Brothers!
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