s(NO)w

No one likes the cold. Argue all you want, Northern people (myself included I guess.) But I know that you're only saying you love the cold and the snow so that the rest of the world can't tell you that you're a complete idiot for choosing to live in cold places. Yes, I live in Canada. I was born here, so this isn't my fault (Hey, did you know not all of Canada gets tons of snow?!?) Okay, YES, I moved to stupid Ottawa where it's freezing and snows like crazy. That is my fault. But I will happily admit to you that snow is the devil's confetti and I HATE it.

Okay, so there are some good things about snow. Including (and limited to) snow forts, snowmen, snow globes and being able to follow the trail of the polar bear that stole your baby. Oh! And when you're thirsty at recess a nice handful of snow is super refreshing (note: at this time in human's pollution of the earth, this may result in superpowers or death.)

So, there are the good things. Now it's time for the bad. Here are a some reasons (not all the reasons) that snow sucks.

- Driving. Going 40 in a 100? Not my favourite thing. Having to guess if you're in the correct lane or not? Even farther from my favourite thing. Car chases in the snow? Google Canadian Police Chase.

- Digging your car out of the driveway. People are going to say "Oh, I have a garage, you're an idiot for not having a garage." Shut up.

- Wet feet. Snow melts, you guys. It melts and becomes water. Snow gets in your boots (or shoes because I try to avoid boots. Okay, I see where this one is partially my fault.) Snow melts in your boots and then it takes approximately 48 hours for your feet to be not freezing. And that's only if you don't have to go outside again in that time.

- Running away from enemies. Running through deep snow is very difficult. And try hiding from someone when they can follow your tracks exactly. Yeah, that's what I thought.

- Dropping money. ~$2,367,832.23 CDN is lost annually in the snow.

- Danger from above. Snow falling off branches, ledges, windowsills. And avalanches, duh.

- It's GODDAMN COLD.

And et cetera. Let me repeat: No one ACTUALLY likes the cold. No one wants their face to be so numb that they can't even feel the snot running down their chins. No one wants their fingers to turn black and fall off. And no one wants to see their backyard covered in disgusting sparkly white stuff while they sit toasty and warm with a cup of hot chocolate by the fire. NO ONE. If you say you like it, you are a liar. (Pants on FIRE. The opposite of snow. There's a joke here somewhere. Let me know if you find it.)

And STOP WRITING IT'S SNOWING STATI. God, Facebook ruins everything.

In conclusion, there's SNOW way I will ever like winter. You can sCOLD me all you want for being so grumpy about it. But it isn't nICE. (Note: I should be PUNished because those were the worst jokes that have ever been written.)

University, Children's Cartoons, and Other Things

I have a story for you.

So the other night I'm reliving my childhood by watching clips from the beloved children's film (if you can even call it a children's film because holy goodness, it's intense. Epic battle scene, much?!), The Land Before Time.

Completely-off topic-you-can-skip-over-this-if-you-want-Note: Does anyone in the world really know what the rules are with parenthesis and other punctuation? Does anyone even care? Are brackets even relevant anymore outside of BEDMAS? Just a thought. Googling it later. Anyways...

So I'm watching TLBT and loving my life when suddenly it occurs to me, "Holy fucoxanthin, these dinos are racist!" Yes, yes, it is true. Examples:

Cera: Threehorns never play with longnecks. They only talk to other threehorns and they only travel with other threehorns. 
(And at one point she calls Littlefoot's dead mom a "stupid longneck." Like, for realsies.)
Also...
Ducky: Hello. I said hello! What is your name? Maybe you cannot talk yet, huh?
Littlefoot: Don't you know anything? Longnecks don't talk to, whatever you are.

So anyways, you get the point. And by the end of the movie everyone loves each other and species doesn't matter anymore and everything is great. So I'm feeling all warm and happy and then I think, "Wow, this would be great for an essay about race relations or anti-racism!" And THEN I think, "Holy $&%@! I hate university." Because? Because it's ruining perfectly enjoyable entertainment and making me find themes and deeper meaning. I don't want to think about themes and meanings behind my favourite childhood films. I just want to laugh at the silly farcical comedy (FARCICAL?! See, it's happening again) and giggle at the more adult jokes that I didn't get when I was little. (Another side note, a bit more relevant - 13 movies later and Littlefoot and the gang still aren't grown up... Which is probably a good thing for him because what giant dinosaur wants a name like Littlefoot?)

So now I'm thinking about all my favourite childhood stories and they're all being ruined! I hate learning life lessons! And I hate thinking when I don't want to think. My brain doesn't shut up half the time. It's why I watch kids movies. They're so simple.

You know what was a good movie? The Swan Princess. And was it about accepting people even if they're different and love is blind and bestiality isn't really a big deal? NO! It was about nothing. It was just a good story. So shut up, brain.

For the record, I'm not talking about shows like Caillou and Veggie Tales that are clearly trying to teach us about sharing and not calling out the dumb kids in class for being dumb. I'm not talking about the clear societal morals that we're always trying to teach our children so they don't grow up to be major brats with babies at 16 (Wait a second, did teaching kids these lessons through television and media fail? Did they all become a little too friendly and curious because Spongebob is just a little too friendly and curious? That would be a great essay...) And for the record again, I hated both of those shows. (Caillou and the talking vegetables.) Jeepers, Caillou, listen to you parents and clean up your mess already, okay? Stop being a brat. And it was on PBS. PBS is the worst thing in the world. Except for the show Zoom. I will not argue about this any further.

I learned all my important life lessons from reading Berenstain Bears books. They were the greatest. And look, I'm basically perfect now. (*cough*)

Okay, I've gotten off topic just a bit. I hope you haven't nodded off. Let's make an awkward commute into the point that I know gets brought up by every bored English student while we're reading To Kill A Mockingbird and Huck Finn:

"What if the author just wrote that and had no intentions of providing us with commentary on racism." This statement can clearly be applied to every other book that we study and CLEARLY it does not always have to involve racism. (Whenever I'm writing things on the internet I feel as if I have to spell everything all out for everyone. I have no idea why...)

What if all of these amazing, breakthrough tales read and written about over and over again are just that? Just tales, meant to entertain. That's what storytelling is, isn't it? When my cousin used to make up stories for us when we were kids, she wasn't trying to teach us life lessons. We just thought that a bear who had gas and fell down hills a lot was hilarious. And guess what? It is. It is hilarious. And things like that will never stop being hilarious.

Unless the author comes back from the dead and says, "I'm talking about Racism, you fools!" then I don't quite buy some of the stuff people say about some literature.

So, university, STOP making me unconsciously look for themes and values in everything I watch and read. There's a time and place for deep thinking and for coming up with ideas. That time is not when I'm watching one of my favourite childhood films. UNLESS I actually need to write that essay someday, in which case, thank you for giving me such insight.

I don't think I've said a single insightful thing at all in this babbling. What does it all mean? What's the meaning of life? Who cares? We're going to die and find out eventually. Sometimes you have to take a step back from the problems and the pressures of society and just watch a freaking cartoon rabbit trick a cartoon duck into running off a cliff. And it's funny. And we laugh. And we don't know why. And we don't care why. And that's the truth.

The end.

Making Books Useful

So if you're like me and my family, you probably have shelves full of these really irritating dust collectors called "books." Like seriously, just Wiki the plot summary and get those damn things out of there. Your lungs will thank you.
The internet has summarized and scrutinized all the information that books can offer, so why bother risking a paper cut, right?
And besides, there are so many other things that books can do. (More useful things, at that.) Think about it:

"It's cold out, Mama. We have no wood." "Well, paper burns real nice. Here, Kathy Reichs has written enough fire fuel to last us all night."

"One table leg is shorter than the others!" "How much shorter?" "It's a difference of about one Great Gatsby, I'd say." "Well stick it under there, then!"

"It's Christmas eve, the presents aren't wrapped and the wrapping paper closet is filled with nothing but bare cardboard tubes. But Michael Martchenko did a hell of a job illustrating those silly Munsch books. Use those pages as wrapping!"

"The kid can't reach the sink to wash his hands." "Pile up those hardcover King books. Desperation weighs about as much as the kid does anyway."

"I always keep a hardcover copy of Jane Eyre in my purse." "Oh, well that's not exactly light reading." "No, and it's not exactly a light tap on the head when a fella gets a little too friendly either."

See? And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making books a little more useful around the house. Now I don't mean to get ahead of myself, but you're welcome. Sitting indoors with a book is no place for a child in this society. They're all overweight and pasty and 3400 pages of Harry Potter nonsense isn't going to fix that. So prop up your tables and warm your feet. And make a little more space on the mantle for family photos and the coyote your kid shot in the backyard.

The Bible? There's a cute website that acts out the holy book with little lego guys.

There's no place for books anymore. They're too slow. They're too bulky. And you can't keep up with the Kardashians AND read their biographies too.

Paranoid: Things I'm Constantly Worried Will Kill Me The Final Part

I know I said the last one was the last one but let's face it, I find new things to be scared of every day. So, similarly to the Final Destination films which have fuelled so many of my irrational fears, Paranoid is back, even after I promised it was finished.

16. Shaving. Yep, I'm just gonna run this sharp tool over major arteries and stuff while in the slippery shower. That's not dangerous at all. Oh, and let me add some shaving cream because THAT's not going to make it any more slippy in here.

17. Living BELOW someone else. I already talked about living upstairs and the possibility of falling through the floor to my death, and for the most part that has been my main concern. But it dawned on me that if I can fall through the floor, so can the person above me. And so I stare at my ceiling at night, just waiting for the day that the dude upstairs decides to jump on his bed and rip on his air guitar while jamming to his sick tunes and SMASH! I'm squished.

18. The microwave. I don't fully trust anything that can cook food so quickly. And I can't fully trust myself to not put something stupid in there. Either it's going to explode or it's going to catch fire and burn the house to the ground, I know it.

19. Manholes. Um, no, I will not walk over that door in the ground. I don't know if it's sturdy. And I also don't know whether or not a murderer is going to pop out of it after I go by.

20. Walking in the woods and falling into a covered hole filled with sharpened sticks. Hey, it happens in movies all the time. And we all know how serial killers like to imitate things that happen on TV. And it's not like I take tons of nature walks, but this could happen in any old field or back yard.


Have you read the others? No!? Check them out here.

Don't Eat Plants

I can't even believe the selfishness of some humans, honestly. Like just because we have all of this technology and higher cognitive function we can prey on whatever weaker species we like. And these other beings try SO HARD to stay alive. They have mechanisms and processes going on inside of them that the average person can't even begin to understand. I'm talking about plants, you guys. Poor, innocent plants.

Plants provide our world with nothing but beauty. Gorgeous forests, stunning fields of flowers, gardens that take your breath away. But humans come along, all high and mighty, and pluck these plants out of the ground like they're nothing.
It's like if elephants developed some kind of super powers and became invincible (probably after a nuclear war) then decided they would start eating humans. They could just come along and snatch you out of your car and there would be nothing you could do about it. That's what it's like when humans eat plants.

And VEGETARIANS!? They have the nerve of eating only plants. The weakest of all species on Earth and these monsters prey specifically on them. And they'll argue that they just take the fruit. That the plant will be okay. But that apple is the plant's OVARY. Yeah. What if a giant came along and plucked your ovaries out? Doesn't seem so harmless now, does it? I don't even know how vegetarians can live with themselves. They prey on the weakest of living things. They're the cruelest of humans.

"But plants don't feel anything!" Umm.. did a plant tell you that it can't feel anything? No!

Animals? Animals are pests. Animals root through our garbage and destroy our yards. They steal our babies and defecate on our cars. Plants have never done a bad thing. Except for what, grow through cracks in your sidewalk? Fallen over on your house because ANIMALS have damaged its physical stability?

If we really are a higher species, if we really are a progressive and caring race, we would do something about this issue. Have a heart. Join me. Join in the fight to protect our plant friends. Don't eat plants.