OMG! I CNT WT 2 TLL MY BFFS!!!: A Lesson on Getting a Life

Sleep does wonders for my psyche. Since the school quarter ended yesterday, I was able to sleep for as long as I wanted. I woke up at 11:30am and felt so refreshed. God, it feels good to sleep.

There are two problems I have today:

I read an article about some random technical school in Pennsylvania that decided in cruelty—I mean, experimentation—to ban Facebook and other internet timewasters for a week. Apparently, there was a MAJOR BACKLASH. I can imagine students protesting, holding up signs with horribly misspelled slogans (FACBOOK KNOW!, U CNT DENY R FREEDMS!). I don’t get it at all. Personally, I think Facebook is for stalkers and people with absolutely no social skills to make friends on their own. What happened to the days when, if you wanted to talk to someone, you would pick up the phone and call them, or even more radical, go to their house and meet them face to face, or at least at Starbucks?

In the past 10 years, the world of technology has changed so much, but has it really been for the better? Sure, with Facebook you could have over 500 friends but how many do you actually have in real life? And who are you actually talking to? Is it some cute 13-year-old who says they like you, or is it some 50-year-old pervert who’s stalking you hoping you’ll come to the park for a visit? Those profiles are so easily faked you have no idea who it is you’re friending.

I don’t get Facebook. I have a Facebook page, but I don’t use it. I don’t get the point. It seems to be some vain attempt for people to try to be more important than they really are. It’s an ego thing; it’s something I would really like to study, but really can’t see myself actually doing. Some people are so desperate to give off the impression of being popular, that they don’t think about the people they’re getting attention from. But I can’t do it. I think it comes from my lack of trusting people. Or the fact that I just don’t give a damn.

Also there was a section of the article featured on Yahoo! that really just made me scoff with a strong sense of “they can’t be serious.”

Though Facebook has been blocked in some workplaces as a time-waster, it is a crucial tool for college students to coordinate social schedules, organize events, plan study sessions and collaborate on assignments.

Facebook, until they banned it at my random technical school in Georgia (which, by the way, got no attention from anybody) was widely used, but I can’t name a single person who used it to “plan study sessions”. I don’t know what type of studying sessions they’re talking about in this article, but if they’re anything like the people at my school, that is the biggest euphemism of the year.

Thing number two thing that was bothering me:

ELLEgirl.com

I went on ELLEgirl through a Google search randomly looking for a beauty routine, which is how I stumbled upon my new favorite person of the day, Kate Fridkis from Eat The Damn Cake. Anyway, I took a quiz where you answer five predetermined questions, and the website randomly generates “What Your Nightly Beauty Routine Says About You”. I, reluctantly, took the quiz, as I truly had nothing better to do, and here was my result:

Low Maintenance Lady
We can definitely respect your laid back attitude towards nightly beauty pampering but sooner or later your laziness is bound to catch up with you. Building a nightly routine is not as tough as you might think: set aside ten minutes each night before you go to bed, or even before you sit down to watch your favorite TV drama, and dedicate to performing some fundamental tasks. We don't expect you to transform into a beauty nut but you might find that brushing your teeth, washing your face, and moisturizing your skin are beneficial to your health and to your self-esteem.

I took a slight bit of offense to this, and not just because the site basically called a lazy, sloppy bitch who’s not capable of taking care of herself, and apparently is so far behind on the evolutionary scale that she must eat with her feet, but because of the message this is sending to teenage girls.

It seems, to me at least, that this is setting young girls up for a lifetime of obsessing about their appearance. “Sooner or later your laziness is bound to catch up with you.” There are 12-year-old girls reading this quiz result, and apparently a 21-year-old with no one else in her life, and that sentence says to me and my conspiracy theory reflex: “Yeah, you might be young and spritely now, but if you don’t get a move on it, you’re going to be a wrinkly old hag by 27. Have some teen brand cold cream we’re pushing!” It’s one thing to encourage people to take care of their bodies, it’s another to send subtle messages saying “you’re too lazy to be pretty.” And I do brush my teeth, by the way, and I moisturize daily with a big bottle o’ lotion, face washing is what rain is for.

“You might find that brushing your teeth…is beneficial to your health and to your self-esteem.” Thanks, ELLEgirl for saying I don’t care about myself. This makes me so mad I’m going to unlike ELLEgirl on Facebook. That’ll show ‘em.

What pisses you off? Leave a comment or something. I’ll be brushing my teeth non-stop for the next 2 days, with my feet.

I Want to Be the Best! On Second Thought, I’ll Settle for Average: A Lesson in Realism

Needless to say, yesterday, I was very upset. And the upset continues today. I’ve been crying off and on since that hard drive died. I was so worried I was going to fail since I didn’t turn in my final project. But I did pass, if only just barely. At the beginning of the quarter I was determined to get straight A’s, but by the end, especially in Photoshop, I was just looking to pass. It’s funny how much my goals changed during the 10-week quarter. Oh, well…

In better news, I did pass, and I may have gotten A’s in my other two classes. Which means my GPA is 2.67, 3.0, or 3.33 for the quarter. I’m hoping for the last one. I don’t know what it is about Photoshop that makes it so difficult. The application in itself isn’t hard to figure out. It must be the work load, coupled with the fact that I get stressed out way too easily. But that has passed; the quarter is over and it is time to move on.

Meanwhile, to distract myself, I watched Top Model tonight and have managed to group the models into traditional network-induced stereotypes.

Kayla: the lesbian who had no mention of it in the previous episode.

Kendal: the loveable hillbilly

Chris and Terra: the package deal

Ann: Tall and naturally skinny, A.K.A. everyone hates her. (She also takes the best photos)

Jane: Ivy Leaguer

Chelsey: No info on her. She just scares me.

Esther: Orthodox Jew with super-huge boobs who’s essentially renounced her religion for the sake of network TV.

Kacey: Blind as a bat and dumb as a doornail (who else would take off their glasses, essentially blinding themselves as they teeter above a shaky catwalk suspended 50-feet in the air?)

Lexie: Party girl. Not to be confused with Rhianna.

Rhianna: Stoner party girl. Not to be confused with Lexie.

Liz: Rocker chick who I would’ve picked as lesbian if I had known before hand that there was a random lesbian in the group.

Sara: She’s a single mom, trying to support her baby by choosing a career that’s one step above stripper. She scares me, too.

And let’s not forget the whole reason I even brought up this whole “realism” topic via Top Model:

Anamaria: the recently eliminated girl who prompted a PSA-type response from judges for being so bony and unnaturally skinny. I hope she gets help. There also was no mention of this in the previous episode, then again, she was always in baggy clothing. To see her in a bathing suit with all her bones showing was super scary. Again, she can’t be healthy, and I hope she gets help, because if she is anorexic, she’s in extreme denial. I saw a picture of a model that was taken shortly before she died of anorexia, and she didn’t look much thinner than how Anamaria looks now. Anamaria said how she wanted to be lean, but I think she’s gone way past lean, she’s emaciated. She just doesn’t get how unhealthy she looks. To paraphrase Tyra, she could be the healthiest girl in the world, but if she doesn’t look healthy, that won’t cut it. She needs a reality check. If she’s happy with the way she looks, that’s fine. But she just doesn’t look like she treats her body as well as she should. And on a random note, I think her lack of eating made her into a bitch.

It’s great to be an idealist and optimistic, but sometimes we’ve got to drop the layer of BS and face reality. Things aren’t going to be as easy as we want them to be. There are going to be times when “troubles melt like lemon drops” and there are going to be times when you’re so pissed off at the world being unfair that you’ll want to take those lemon drops and run them over with your overpriced SUV and then torch those little bastards. The important thing is to find a balance, and I haven’t really found that balance yet, which would explain why I had a 24-hour meltdown. But alas, everything in its own time. It’ll pass eventually. Things aren't always as bad as they seem. The hard part is waiting out the storm.

My question for you: How do you deal with the stresses in your life? Leave a comment.