In order to CONNECT with you, we need something [common] to relate to. Beside my everyday life, I am curious about the world. Why do we have two nostrils? Why do we yawn? How much does a shadow weigh? How do we memorize sound? Call me your personal and educational entertainer.
In this blog I am going to attempt to explain life's simple questions, share my life stories, and say those things that people don't have the guts to say (thank you Jenna Marbles).
My friend showed me this Buzzfeed that I believe any female will appreciate. This is so hilarious and I haven't laughed so hard in a while. This was very well needed and if you ever need a laugh then CLICK HERE to see the article! Here's one from the post, enjoy!
If your friend hates someone, you will automatically hate them too - and not know exactly why.
I'm going to take a study break and begin to pose questions and thoughts that I hope many people share.
So when I go to the bathroom I always get this relief when no one is in there. That means I don't have to worry about anyone "criticizing" me and I can take my sweet old time without pressure. I hate it when there is one other person in the stall because it's so damn quiet and all you can hear is personal business going on. Especially when you and the other person exit the stall at the same time. So I try to wait until the person leaves, but sometimes that doesn't work because some people just pee like race horses. And it gets better, us girls need to fix our hair, check our makeup, check for zits, contemplate whether or not you're going to pop the zit, read our texts, fix our hair, oh and check our makeup. With all those, the other person is going to be in there longer and I can only "hold" for so long. So what's the best solution when things aren't going as I planned? I pretty much express myself the most when someone flushes-You know, it's go time- so take that however you'd like.
Here's another one. For some reason when I go on the elevator I have this sudden urge to pee. It's as if I've been conditioned to start "building up" every time I hear a ring for each floor the elevator passes. So I make this awkward "oh-shit-don't-piss-your-pants" dance in order to cope my uncomfortable feeling. Not only that but inconveniently there would be people in it when I have to fart, badly. One time I ripped it when nobody was in the elevator and as I walked out of the doors, someone was walking in for a surprise, and I ran out of those doors like no other. Later that day I saw that person again in the elevator and I just grinned. Let's be honest we all have those moments...to some extent.
Now that I think about it, this post is extremely weird. But, what's new? Because of this, you won't see going to the bathroom the same. Or me. Awkward.
Enjoy your day, at least it's going better than these people!
Dear Colorado, Why are you snowing? It is May. Last time I remembered, April showers were suppose to bring May flowers, not snow hours. Go home Colorado, you're drunk.
I'm sorry if this post is a jumble of mess. I understand there is problem with organization and clarity. This was meant to be artistic, and in my opinion, artistic allows room for ambiguity. I believe it works the mind to truly understand what the message is being portrayed. I also wrote this to get my mind off of things and to think freely. I didn't want to go back and edit it constantly because then my ideas would be different from what I intended them to be. Enjoy and let me know what you think of this!
Before I start off, I saw this post by a person named Magnoliazolia earlier and I want to share it:
Our World is kind of awful. | No. Our world is great. For every one person that plants a bomb, you have hundreds more running a marathon. For every one person that makes a joke about the dead and dying, you have thousands more donating blood, offering prayers, and volunteering their time. Things like this are the fault of single individuals who make violent, loud statements. We just have to make sure that the statements of the good are louder.
If you haven't figured it out yet, this is in response to the Boston Marathon Explosion that occurred yesterday, Tuesday (4/15/13)
As of today, it seems that our world is shifting, from new and improved cogs, wires, and levers, to innovations for efficiency; we are finally mastering the art of a "perfect machine."
Our machine, full of ideals, rules, and order, is powered by the human mind. We shape our society based on the good vs. bad (wanted vs. unwanted) archetypes. Some qualities such as violence, mischievousness, and greed are associated to bad guys, so in response it becomes a mechanism and program that our machine obeys to discard the unwanted traits: violence, mischievousness, and greed. Our basic purpose is to advocate human betterment and world peace, qualities that the good guys would do. But we tend to forget without evil, there wouldn't be an existence of good, so much for the irony in machines.
Dwight Eisenhower mentioned something interesting in his Fairwell Address, which is one of my favorite speeches, "Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment." He explains that America has the materials needed for continuing in being world leaders, but abundance of material is unimportant, its a matter of fact of how they are used that maintains our balance. Consequently, our machine is too complicated to the point where it unfavorably increases our chance for errors.
I believe we think too intelligently and egotistically of ourselves to be prideful in our work, and sometimes we take it for granted when the machine get the best of us. Sure some will deny their mistakes while others accept them, that's human nature for you, but riddle me this: What happens when our machine explodes? Until it's fixed, whatever that means, we have to manually labor ourselves into jobs that were originally tested. That means our imperfections will lead to uncertainties and often struggle for time. In other words, we are more complex than machines we build, so we can't be sure for ourselves what we are really programmed for, leading us to frustration and temperament For example, I will think of wanted ideas, propose them to you, and you can figure out if they work or not; I trust you. But how would I know if I planned out unwanted ideas that were proposed unconsciously? Or vice versa, how would you know if they were unwanted? After all you were told what to do and not why I want you to do them.
In order to have a successful and complete system, one not only has to be the thinker but also needs to be the tinker. We can only see it for ourselves or else we will be building machines that we never intended to build. Ultimately, it seems like the machine, things that were created by pure imagination, are the very materials creating us.
We've witness events from the Civil War, to The Progressive Era, to World War I, to The Great Depression, to World War II, to The Terror Attack on 9/11, to The Sandyhooks Elementary Shooting, and finally the Boston Marathon Explosion; all to shape us in some way or form. We've progressively accepted the evilness that exists in the world. Evil is inevitable. Why do we have to extract our plan of exterminating the enemies, when the enemies are inside us? We need to celebrate the imperfectness in people, to expect the unexpected, and in a way it naturally strengthens human connection. That is exactly what Magnoliazolia's excerpt lies. It tells us that unfortunate events happen for a reason, that they occur purely out our melioration, and acknowledges our needs for the goodness in our spirit. Our will to conquer fears and problems is a special quality that I think we all neglect. We need to not only be the ones that plans a promising world, but to be the ones who act upon it. Therefore, we can't be hopeful in other people unless we are hopeful in ourselves.
To wrap this up, I want to share this video that shows exactly what I mean by finding the source of evil, ourselves. In reality everyone is beautiful and unique but these thoughts are inhibited by the lack of the role in being "the machine". Accept imperfection
Oh hey guys. I was just out these past days in the wild living the supertramp life called COLLEGE. Gah. So I want to be back with the blogs and such so hopefully I'll be able to make a gradual progress. But in the mean time, in the middle of your studies of course, enjoy this collection of "Bras We Have Known, Illustrated"
Like the site? Well its from SparkNotes, oh I mean SparkLife.
Last weekend I went to Tucson, Arizona (which I mispronounced repeatedly) for a tennis tournament. This was for the club team at my school. To distinguish sport team tiers, intramural is the lowest and most laid back, club is more serious and competitive but no commitments are necessarily enforced, and lastly varsity is the most demanding level where you are playing officially for the school and often times based on scholarships.
There were 15 people there which meant there were two teams. I was part of the A team which was "higher" than the B team. We finished 4th in the gold bracket while the B team finished 1st. There were 16 teams in the tournament so not too shabby huh?
Despite all the coach conflicts on that trip, I enjoyed escaping school for the sake of playing tennis. I play tennis as an outlet of stress relief. Plus I really enjoy every aspect of tennis ranging from fitness to friends.
Arizona was an interesting place. The first impression we had of this place was the smell of sulfur and if you know that glorious (kidding) smell of sulfur, then you know how awesome (kidding again) it was. Overall Tucson was pretty sketch I must say but it certainly made me more thankful for living in beautiful Boulder, Colorado! There were police cars everywhere and by everywhere I meant a car per block. The water seemed as if it was unfiltered and was probably the reason why I felt groggy returning to the mountains. However, Mexican food was bomb. In fact we went to a famous restaurant that was featured on TV and visited by President Bill Clinton. We sat at the presidents table and I ate cactus haha a little too good.
Unfortunately, our club team was suspended once we came back from Arizona. It wasn't because we were terrible kids but it was due to our team "culture" of running teams and policies. This was a new process and sometimes you have to learn your mistakes the hard way.
But I've never had so much fun in a long time and it was all thanks tithe tennis team. Every person carried a unique quality to them that made our team stand out and fun. Everyone on the team is my friend and they have pushed me to be better than I am. My good and close friends even came from the tennis team. We've created a lot of memories, crazy and memorable ones, and I can't thank them enough for all that they have done. All I can say is, rage on.
I've been stressed with school and it doesn't help that I'm at Norlin library, once again, to escape my wrath and cultivate myself in an emotionally stable environment. Jk. What I meant was I need free time away from school. But as you can see I've been pretty productive.
I'm going to try to post on the blog more often again. Like I said, I was busy with school work.
On the plus side I bought Girl Scout cookies! Yummmm.
I was taking a study break from psychology and naturally wandered to Facebook, my evil companion. I couldn't help but see a post about awkward thing because after all I am one myself. After looking through the list I thought it was extremely hilarious which was in need of being shared. I find these to be genuinely funny so this is my awkward gift to you, enjoy!
To be honest, this post doesn't really have anything to do with boba, I just had Thai Tea and it was refreshing. Be jealous. I finally used a karma check to good use! I ate at The Sink on the Hill tonight with some great people and I hope the staff will frame this check somewhere in their restaurant :) I had the spicy blackened tilapia and it was yummy! Have a fantastic Friday, TGIF!
I finally got on the Buff Bus after waiting out in the cold for 20 minutes! I will never miss that. Anyways, I like to play little games whenever I ride the bus, its not like I'm doing anything else. There were two Asian girls in front of me and predicted something to happen with them. The bus made an unexpected stop and one of the girls goes flying off, stumbling across the walk way and struggles to grab a pole after another. She only flew off about 5ft from her seat but it seemed like more. Everyone watched her and we all couldn't help laughing because the girl freaked out cutely. She shrugged it was nothing and she and her friend are still talking about it in their foreign language. I couldn't help but smile. People are great.
Surely, your initial reaction is to squeal and reveal the inner dog lover in you by saying things like "Aww he's so cute and fluffy!" It's ok, it happens to the best of us. Alright we know what fluffy means but what exactly does cute mean? Scientifically?
The word "cute" is a shortened version of the word "acute" which actually means keen, shrewd, or perceptive. About 180 years ago cute was used as slang to girls who were pretty. Eventually, it gained a new meaning and was used to describe cuddly, delicate, precious, youthful traits.
There was a guy who actually studied cuteness in living things named Konrad Lorenz.
Well that's cute...
He made a list of things that we would find cute. He noticed that cuteness is usually characterized and this is what he found:
Small body sizes with a disproportionately large head
Large eyes
A pleasantly fair
Dimples
Round and softer body features
Traits: Playfulness, Fragility, Helplessness, Curiosity, Innocence, Affectionate Behavior, and a need to be Nurtured
But why do these features trigger an "aww" response from us humans? Because these are very common features of infants which was an evolutionary adaption.
When we look at our offsprings (not that I have any) we feel a protective and nurturing instinct. That is why we react more positively to animals that resemble infants with -big eyes, big heads, shortened noses, etc.- than to animals that do not. There is more specific information to this here.
Coincidentally, our experience with cuteness can be triggered by things that don't look like human babies. For instance...
Turtles like Squirt
Polar Bears
and a hammer
Wait, a hammer? How so? Because if you applied Lorenz's theory of cuteness adding more roundness and shorter length are similar qualities to human babies, so you get something like this...
Aww it's a baby hammer, don't hurt him!
There's even an interactive program here that you can play around with to adjust a cat, human, and hammer to what you think is cute.
So where exactly do we find cute? Well I mean you know what is cute and how it is cute, but where? Researchers have shown baby pictures to people while using functional MRI to track activity in the brain. They found that the cuter the baby the higher the activity which was found in the nucleus accumbens part of the brain. This is a pleasure center and dopamine is released, a way of rewarding the body internally, and this is the same area targeted by cocaine and meth.
Cuteness has such a powerful effect that it can even effect behavior. Therefore, it influences what we like and what we buy. So it's no surprise that cartoon makers like Pickachu, Hello Kitty, or Mickey Mouse have drawn them to be more cute over time.
Let's learn more words shall we?
Kawaii is the quality of cuteness in context of Japanese culture. Japanese are known to include manga and anime as part of their culture and the idea above with Mickey Mouse is similar, but different. For adults, it roughly takes about 7-7.5 heads to be stacked on top of each other to equal the height of a person. We typically find that those who are 8-8.5 heads high to be heroic. Cute goes the other way where manga characters are 5.5-6.5 heads tall.
Neoteny is a term used to describe juvenile traits in those who retain it throughout adulthood. A good example of this is poopy diapers from babies. Yet, we adore this especially in animals we keep as pets. We've bred all kinds of animals overtime to make them more "useful" to us. However, it's found that we have spent the most time "designing" dogs. Each generation becomes better at hunting or even staying cuter for longer. In other words, that means we have been spending so much time dictating behaviors and traits in ways we want, which is similar to DVD player and it's features. That pretty much means that dogs are not only work of nature but human technology.
Here's another way to look at it: Certainly, dogs are a man's best friend, but undeniably due to the fact that dogs are man's best invention.
I hope you enjoyed this! I'm sorry I haven't posted lately and I hope this post will make up for it. Thanks again and please comment below, I would love to see what you have to say! Take care!
Sorry I haven't been posting! I've been busy with school and hopefully I can write a blog sometime soon! I'm planning on it anyways. Enjoy this picture of the Williams sisters...I am not watching the Australian Open or anything...ok maybe I am.
So I decided to buy this fun little book full of "karma checks." There are two separate checks one for bad karma and the other for good karma. The checks are preprinted with messages that apply to common daily scenarios. Good Karma Checks are intended for acknowledging positive moments (receiving an unsolicited favor, being served by a waiter who doesn't rush the table, having an excellent conversation with a stranger), while Bad Karma Checks are for admonishing bad behavior (talking loudly on a cell phone in a public place, chatting during a movie, stealing a parking spot). Fun to fill out and eminently practical, the Good Karma Checks are perfect for leaving on a recipient's desk or tucking into a thank-you note. If you aren't feeling bold enough to actually issue a Bad Karma Check, at least you'll have the satisfaction of glaring at the perpetrator as you privately write one out!
This is a serious issue that we need to pay attention to. Just because you aren't bullied doesn't mean that you don't need to do anything. You do realize that this issue can lead to death? How funny is that? Not very.
It breaks my heart to see people especially little children being bullied. Every human should be treated and respected equally because there is no justification for bullying and it should not be tolerated. I have not been bullied and if I have it was only minor. Certainly, I don't want to be bullied nor do I want to be the bully, even though I was one when I was young.
Even though I sort of contradicted myself in the statement before, understand that I am trying to say that it wasn't a significant or harmful act of bullying. It was weird, I don't think my bullying was intentional but it happened. However, that was only elementary school so we were just kids having fun. I would playfully hit or slap people or throw out some unnecessary comments. I would never do something extreme like threatening or physically attack someone. Yet, bullying is bullying. Even to this day I regretted for behaving the way I did and feel sorry for those that I have "bullied." At least I grew out of that awful phase during middle school. The great thing? It didn't take long.
I have a younger sister (9) who is a fourth grader. I am trying to teach her to stand up against bullying and properly identify a situation. It's tough not knowing what to do and be scared, but the best way to prevent bullying is letting them see it for themselves. So that's what I did, I showed my sister some videos of kids being bullied. I asked her various questions from how it made her feel to what she would have done. At first she felt uncomfortable and confused as to why I was showing her these videos, but she started to pay more attention to the video watching the emotions of people, realizing the purpose of watching the video. I hope it gave her a new perspective with bullying. But at least she is the sweetest girl I know and as long as she knows that I'm there for her, then she'll feel safe. Ultimately, I want her to be people's "go to", as I am to her.
In my opinion, bullying is a pathetic immature thing to do, and people need to learn how to respect others. My motto basically comes down to: "Behave the way you want to be treated." We need to step up to bullying. I only ask you to take some time to watch these videos. I think it is important to remind ourselves what is happening in reality and how we can help. We can start helping by caring and listening to people, by not shutting them out of the world, and being there when they need someone. Finally, this goes out to all parents, to love, discipline, and teach your children manners when and where they belong. The foundation of personalities start from homes, in other words, we act and behave from the past. Nowadays we, as kids, can get away with anything. It's as simple as that.
If you are to watch one of these videos, at least watch the very last one with Amanda Todd.
This video is the one I showed my sister: the bus monitor, Karen, was bullied by students during a field trip. The students called her unforgivable names and even physically touched her calling her "fat." The bus monitor was crying, which made me furious.
This video is a boy picking on a "fat" boy. He punches the kid and ends up being slammed to the floor (though he deserved it). This is why shootings like the Columbine shooting happen. Plus, never pick on someone who is clearly larger than you!
This video is a story about a girl named Amanda Todd. She was a victim of having nude pictures on the internet, being used for sex, bullied at school, moving to several schools, having no friends because of her "reputation," using drugs and alcohol, etc. Let's say she has been through a lot and thanks to the bullies in her life, she committed suicide on October 10, 2012 after she posted this video.
It's finally 2013! I don't like the literal look of 2013 for some reason, it looks too modern while 2012 looked hipster. Anyways, I hung out with some of my favorite girls today watching a tennis match, Pitch Perfect, and some Rose Bowl. This DVD didn't come out long ago so I highly recommend getting it. I even bothered to purchase it because that's how much I LOVE IT!
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