Reflections: It will never be worth something

As I sift through my mounds upon mounds of $3 Garage t-shirts and tank tops and try to decide which magazines from my chronologically organized and meticulously maintained collection to pitch, and which to keep... it occurs to me how INCREDIBLY wasteful our society is. I mean, yes, individually-wrapped snack packets, fast food and water bottles are bad for the environment, but it definitely goes deeper than that.

You could say that I am a pack-rat, although I would not use the term "horder" (you wanna see one of those, check out the people who showed up for our "free" garage sale last monday--yikes!). I use things, but I take care of them and thus, they last a long time... and then I also buy more of them in the mean time. Honestly though, I do not "use up" items, and the reason I don't dispose of stuff is, yes, I'm weirdly emotionally-attached to "stuff", but I am not DONE with it yet. We live in a society where there is endless new SHIT. I have stuff that works, but Oh! a new one is less than half the price of the perfectly good old one that I already have, and Oooh! it has twice as many features and it comes in 6 awesome limited edition colours. Why not? Now, throw out the old one? Ah-ha! No, sell it on E-bay!!

Well, it's a good idea in theory, but as I look out over the vast wasteland of filled garbage bags piled on my front porch for a Diabetes pickup tomorrow AM, I wonder at what point will it stop? I am hard-pressed to find an argument against the post-apocalyptic junkyard of Wal-E... We buy and buy and buy and buy, why keep anything? You can just get a new, no, a HUNDRED new ones, at Dollarama for $1 an item, and throw out the old one without a thought.

And what is collecting any more? Who collects? No one has "stuff" anymore (except my family apparently). The Spice Girls dolls that I've saved in mint condition in their boxes for the past 11 years are worth mmmmm.... not even 0.99 cents on E-bay. Nice. And those Care bear toys and My Little Ponies from 1989? Three dollars a piece. Whyyyy bother... We just threw out 2/3 of our movie collection, literally THREW OUT, because they are movies on VHS, and who has the space to store them, the players to watch them, or the patience to wait for them to rewind, even? It's not worth the effort. No(thing) is.

What a wasteful, wasteful world.

Reflections: On interrupting

Okay, I don't think Elisse (et al.) can actually BLAME me for interrupting them when they're speaking.... which apparently I do quite a lot.

Okay, yes, it is annoying and disrespectful and i TRY not to do it, although it's so so hard to do... but, like, I interrupt even MYSELF. What the hell. Read my other posts, I was realizing this as I wrote that last one... I don't even let MYSELF get a whole sentence out without an interjected (bracketed phrase) :semicolon: or --dashdash.... or ellipses.

Although that's like my signature grammar mark (loser? yes.)
...
I think it signifies... mmm.... boredom? time lapse... it cues people to read my written phrasing properly, since people BARELY EVEN KNOW what a comma means nowadays. If I ever write I novel, its going to be filled with ellipses. and I don't care what my editor says, I am not taking them out.

AND, I'm going to insist on recording the audiobook myself. and not doing voices. and not having an annoying voice like Laurel Merlington. That woman should have her throat ripped out. Just listen to this bitch: http://www.lauralmerlington.com/demos.html. She ruins so many long drives.

Reflections: Roswell is not a very good show...

For the past several weeks (okay, 2 and a half), I have been diligently watching episodes of the 90s teen sci-fi-drama Roswell every night before I fall asleep. I did this following a 5-seasons-of-buffy marathon... and comparatively, the show is basically crap.

HOWEVER, it does have its merits in being a nearly perfect splice of the concepts and characters from X-Files and Dawson's Creek.... with the narrative pace of All My Children (aka: none). I compliment the show's creators on their profound efficiency in taking two clearly successful recipes, and merging them, while saving money on writers by taking the plot of what would (in a normal show) be one episode and dragging it out over nearly 22 hours of screen time.

For all my bashing it, I have a disturbing need to watch it. And I say NEED: I feel like a crack-addict if I sleepover somewhere else or are too tired to watch it--actually, i turn it on anyways, and just have to wake up to the mega-annoying titlescreen music playing on loop at 5:09 AM and turn it off. BUT, then I wake up in the morning feeling unfulfilled... what have I become!?!?!? I am pathetic.

I actually got the idea from Jenna, who cured insomnia with endless episodes of "i've already seen it three-times-over" sex and the city before bed... but it doesn't seem to be having the same effects on me...

On the bright side-- an opportunity to indulge my pathetic new Trekkie-ness: FanExpo Canada is August 28th - 29th. At best, it could be a chance to get James Marsters' autograph, at worst, it would be a sweaty conference hall filled with societal rejects dressed as fully-illuminated characters from TRON. I don't think I'll go, since I'd be going by myself, and I think that would be.. well, "The Ulitmate Loser" doesn't really cover it.

On the dark side (not of the Force, don't go there... wow, I already did. Too many FanExpo thoughts inspired by "at worst...", what can I say? No, I don't have a working pod-racer. Yes, I do occasionally photoshop my face into pictures of sci-fi/fantasy tv shows circa actor-from-reno-911 in the movie 17 Again. Guilty.)-- Brendan Fehr (Michael from Roswell) seems to think that making his initials into a "logo" for his website is cool (at left. See: Not cool)... and his "Rant & Rage" section of his personal website devotes 1/3 of its text to praising Our Heavenly Father... usually "ranting" involves a little less "praying to jesus". However, interestingly, the photo gallery includes a section called "Personal Photos" which are actually just pics that he like, took with his digital camera while on vacation. Seeing a celebrity (okay, a D-list celebrity even... whatever) in amateur, monkey-arm, sweaty, vacation pics is very... surreal. Like it shouldn't happen. Perez Hilton bursts celebrity bubbles, but this all-too-real glimpse at a celebrity's actual life (like he ACTUALLY went on there himself, and uploaded those from his camera--like his WEDDING PHOTOS even!!) is very disturbing to me. Celebrities are not supposed to HAVE sweaty vacation photos. I guess that comes in the definition of 'celebrity', I doubt you'd see Nicole Kidman on her laptop uploading her wedding pictures onto the web and "ranting" about Jesus in a blog entry... but who knows? Social Media is changing everrrrryyyythhhinnnngggggg....

Did you know that in 2011, the owner of facebook has plans to invent an app that, once you click on "wall-to-wall" it actually transports you back in time to when you clicked "post" after typing on their wall? True story.

Reflections: Buying Stuff Online

It occurred to us today, as we diligently tried on 9 items each at XXI (Forever 21--but I think the numerals look prettier, as does the company obviously who have started to drop the "forever 21" words from their bags/storefront altogether. Is the store XXI different from Forever 21, you may ask? No, no it is not.) that it is ridiculous to think that people buy stuff from forever 21 online ALL. THE. TIME. HOW!?!?!?!

1) The crap is made in all parts of Asia by all kinds of child labourers: and as such there is little quality control (resulting in rock bottom prices!) and absolutely no such thing as "consistency"

2) The clothes are literally manufactured a maximum (thank god) of FOUR INCHES DIFFERENT per large/large, medium/medium of different items. How could you ever know what size you are for REALZ??
Answer? You couldn't.

So, the moral is... DON'T buy stuff online from Forever 21, or H&M, or Urban Behavior, etc etc, because although they may be some of my favourite stores due to their relatively high coolness/cheapness ratio (any item under $5 = insta-buy in my world), buying online from them will only result in dashed hopes and dreams.

You wait patiently for your package to arrive, only to discover that the Vietnamese made THIS particular medium 3 inches smaller around the ribcage than that other summer dress from the same company. Thus you are now out $13.50, and have an ill-fitting (or non-fitting) new item.

BETTER idea, is to buy stuff that you DON'T have to try on, stuff that's a sure bet. Posters. T-shirts. Books. DVDs. CDs. mmmmm.... fantastic. Might I recommend All Posters, Threadless, and Amazon. Once, I also bought 50% off clearance stuff from HotTopic.com, but they charged me $200 worth of duty charges from Puerto Rico, Mexico and halfway across the globe because they had to ship it to their warehouse before mailing it. Fair? Helllll no. So they're cut from the list.

OR, better yet, buy ME stuff from MY list.... http://www.amazon.ca/wishlist/1M0M18GCIIPK4

Happy Shopping!!

Reflections: procrastinating

*sigh*
This entry should be titled "Story of My Life".

If you added up the total hours spent wasting time and divided by the number of minutes I am late for class everyday, then multiply that number by the average % by which my GPA has dropped due to late marks taken off... well, that would be some number. Probably really high (or low?).

Who am I kidding, math is def not my thing, but I sure as hell know how to drag out the writing of an essay. This current one--feminity and the automobile--has been 4 days and counting. Days late = 3, % penalty = 15 ... oh i'm dumb.

Reflections: this is strangely liberating to write an online diary/journal and have no followers...

...I can say ANYTHING, and no one will read it!

but they could... randomly happen upon it and i might not even know.... duh Duh DUHHHH

Refelctions: Suck it, Captialism.

Down with Wal-Mart, I got ice skates at Goodwill for FIVE BUCKS!!

and also a pretty sweet selection of VHS tapes for my new kijiji-purchased TV/VCR Combo for ONE DOLLAR each!! Bommmmbbbb diggity.

We don't buy cable, so I only get one channel on my fairly new TV... and that means watching what's on it, when it's on, with no other options. Think of it like anti-TiVO. Like the evil, shitty degenerate cousin of Rogers on Demand that the family doesn't speak to anymore because of his different religious beliefs. ANYWAY... as a result, I'm becoming strangely wrapped up in the mid-season plot of Road to Avonlea (cancellled like, mmm... nine years ago) and i have a MEGA crush on late night Jimmy Fallon. Like, seriously. Father my children, Jimmy.

ALSO: ER is totally sick. I wish i cared whatsoever for hospital dramas, and I was more than ten years old at the height of its fame because i would TOTALLY have watched it. I didn't know that there were a handful of moderately-famous celebrities on it! John Stamos, Shane West

Reflections: Christmas Cards

I'm also currently assembling a list of people I'm going to send Christmas cards to again this year.

Last year I purchased a 15-pack of 3d snowflake cards with glitter on them that politically-correctly wished people a "Happy Holidays" (I didn't want to offend the Jewish demographic).... and to spice things up, I cut out the mini heads of pornstars and glued them in the middle of the snowflakes. I also included speech bubbles from the pornstars that tastefully wished my friends many holiday sexcapades. I don't think their parental units were very impressed.

That being said... I need a new idea for this year.

Any thoughts?