BANG!

Yesterday was my first real time playing Bang!, which is an Italian card game (don't worry, there's an English version). I had kind of played it before, and by kind of I mean, I 'played' on my friend's team (read: I watched her hand while they played). So basically, I was a complete amateur. It was embarrassing how little I knew about the game since my sister and all of my Asian friends are obsessed with it.

The first game I played, I was that guy. You know. The one that tries to learn a game as he/she goes, which basically makes the game boring and difficult to play for everyone since it goes slow and the person is clueless and asks too many questions. Everyone tried to kill me off first because I was so slow and bad at the game.

After a few hours and many games, guess who turned pro?! THIS GUY (girl)! I only killed four people in one turn. And if you're familiar with the game, you know how spectacular that is. So, no big deal.

You probably have no idea what in the world this game is, but just know that it is the best and most fun card game to play with a small group of people. It will keep you occupied for hours. It's great.

It's Risky Stuff

When I think of "risk," I think of stepping outside of my comfort zone. The bubble that protects my sanity, self esteem, and feeling of security gets rubbed by something from the outside. Its fragile membrane could be broken by any sudden movement. My precious bubble gives a little with the exterior friction. There's a chance of it popping, and all hell could possibly break lose.

If taking a risk stirs up so much commotion, then why do people still choose to take them? It could be because they think that the outcome will be good. Or because they want attention. Or they just want change.

But when I take a "risk," it's an impulsive decision that I don't really think through. And I usually end up regretting it, even if it turns out to be OK. The uncertainty of not knowing how things are going to turn out is scary, and I'm not a fan of it. When I take a risk, the stability of everything in my bubble is at stake. The bubble is slightly nudged, which sends its content into temporary chaos until everything can settle. It's that nauseous twisting that you get in your stomach when you don't know what's going to happen.  If the consequence of my risk is a positive one, then the bubble comes to a standstill and all is right in the world. If the consequence of my risk is a negative one, then everything in the bubble is shaken up with no sign of calming down.

Haha

Spotify - The Next Best Thing

If you haven't heard of Spotify, you are seriously missing out. It's the best music library type program after iTunes. Seriously. You can listen to your favorite songs or discover some new ones without buying them. This program has saved me some cash and is very friendly to my wallet. You can get this lovely program for five easy payments of $0. It's great.

This program has a huge library of music to choose from. It even has music iTunes doesn't sell. The creators of Spotify also provide a Top 100 chart that doesn't consist of only every overplayed song on KDWB but also other awesome songs that don't play not the radio. You can even see the Top 100 charts of other countries and listen to the songs on them. That's something that iTunes doesn't offer. In iTunes, you can't buy songs from a different country unless you have a mailing address in that country. I assume that it's because of copyright issues, but it's still lame.

It is also extremely easy to create a playlist of all of your favorite songs. There's a "Starred" playlist that can have songs easily added to by clicking the star icon next to the song you're listening to. Unfortunately for other playlists, you have to click and drag. But doesn't that sound so much more appealing than click-and-dragging-and-maybe-some-scrolling for adding songs to a playlist in iTunes?

Spotify also makes it very easy to keep up with (creep on) your friends' latest fav songs by connecting to your Facebook account. It syncs with your friends list and allows you to look at playlists made by friends who have their Facebook accounts connected also. So, instead of having your friends burn you CDs, which is technically illegal, they can just go listen to your playlist on Spotify. You don't have to spend time to burn a CD (who uses CDs anymore?), and you won't arrested. Your friend also doesn't have to buy the songs. It's a win-win situation.

There are only a few negatives about Spotify, but they're tolerable. The first is the occasional commercials that play in-between songs, but the good news is that they're only 15-30 seconds long. It's the same as Pandora, except you can actually hand pick the songs you wish to listen to and there's also a radio for those who just want to listen to a certain genre/mixture of genres of music. The second negative is that you can't put the songs that you listen to from Spotify onto your iPod or other MP3 player you own. You can only listen to music from Spotify on a computer with internet connection. This is not a major dilemma though in modern times because in this era most people use their laptops more than their iPod or MP3 player and internet is easy to find.

The program is overall very easy to use. All you need to do to get started is make an account on the site spotify.com then download the program, which all takes a total of about 10 minutes. And then you're free to play all the music you want, with the exception of occasional commercials.

Now don't worry, I'm not getting paid by Spotify to gush about it. If I was, I'd probably have a lot of obnoxious emoticons and too many exclamation points. But sadly I am not. I just love it that much.

"F" for Effort?

A woman went up to the cash register to pay with her two rowdy boys in tow. She had her purse hanging from the crook of her arm. Her other arm was occupied with shoo-ing away her boys each time they presented to her a candy or snack while rattling off in a foreign language. The cashier gave an unenthused greeting then proceeded to scan the woman's items. Realizing that their mother would not give into their pleas, the young boys started to punch each other back and forth. The mother spun around and grabbed both boys by their arms. I watched her give her boys stern eye contact as she spoke in hurried, hushed Spanish. She let go of the boys, and they silently marched to stand by the bags of groceries.

The cashier told the woman her total; the woman opened her purse to rummage around for her checkbook. There was a lot of rustling coming from the woman's purse as she dug through. As she pulled out her checkbook and quickly closed her purse, I caught a glimpse of some small clear packages. My suspicion was confirmed when the cashier's was-dull face turned to alarm. "Where did you get those?" He demanded.

The woman replied in a thick accent with incoherent broken English. All I could make out was, "I.... not... her.... gave me..." The rest was incomprehensible mush.

Flustered, the cashier called over his boss who was a small Asian lady. After the cashier explained the situation, the small Asian lady screeched in a shrill voice, "WHAT?" In the same shrill voice, the boss started yelling at the woman about how she was stealing and that she was going to call the police.

The cashier positioned the family against a wall; the boss took a picture of them. The mother was smiling for the camera.

This irked me, and it still does. I witnessed this several years ago, but the memory always randomly comes up. The woman seemed to be a struggling single mom who was foreign to America. She definitely was stealing, and the check she was going to write probably would have bounced. As any mother would, she was giving her children what they wanted - even though it was through illegal means. However, I don't know if she was unashamed of her act or if she just didn't understand the situation. She could have just thought the picture was for fun, but I don't know of any sane person who would think so if they were in her place, foreign or not.

But the mother should get some credit (I guess not some. A little. Very little.). It's in a mother's nature to try to give their children the best life possible. I guess that was her attempt. "A" for effort? Maybe not since it was illegal... More of an "F".

On a broader scale, the situation served as an eye-opener to the sad reality that there are people who less fortunate and struggle daily. People do whatever they can to survive, even if it means committing crime.

Were you right?

1. Example
2. Definition
3. Classification/division
4. Compare/contrast
5. Narration
6. Description

I am in misery

1.) Maroon 5 knows the feeling of misery well since they have a song all about it. In the song, Adam Levine is miserable because a girl emotionally hurt him. He describes the unpleasantness of the feeling with the line, "There ain't nobody who can comfort me." The hurt he is feeling is so deep that it can't be alleviated by anyone, not even a good friend which usually does the trick.

2.) Misery is the feeling of extreme unhappiness and emotional distress. It can be temporary or permanent depending on the context of the situation. Temporary misery can come from small loses in life that can be gained again or moved on from. Permanent misery can come from the lose of something important to a person; the lose can't be moved on from, only coped with. A person who is in misery isn't just unhappy, he/she is extremely unhappy, he/she is in misery. There's quite a difference, especially since the person took the time to think of another word to perfectly describe how awful he/she is feeling. 

3.) The feeling of misery can be felt in two different ways, emotionally and physically. Emotional misery is the feeling a person gets when a personal situation has a negative outcome for him/her. The person is emotionally hurt by it, and they can become sad. Physical misery is experiencing physical pain from an injury. The hurt part of the body sends a signal to the brain to feel pain. Both, emotional and physical misery, make people unhappy since they negatively affect them.

4.) Despair is listed as a synonym for misery on Dictionary.com, but I feel like they share more differences than similarities. Misery can be used to describe how a person feels when in emotional pain or physical pain. Despair can only be used when talking about emotional pain. It is a feeling felt from hopelessness. Compared to misery, despair is a more extreme feeling felt from an unfortunate situation. It can only be indirectly connected to physical pain. If someone has incurable cancer, then the person could be in despair because there is no hope in the situation. 

5.) If you go through a bad break up, you may experience misery. The guy was the love of your life. He was your everything. You guys had already talked about the wedding as if it already happened. You planned what your kids' names would be. He was the peanut butter to your jelly, the straw to your juice box, the light to your darkness. Everyone thought you two were the perfect couple. Until he decided he liked some other girl more than he "loved" you. In this decision he broke you, sending you into a world of misery.

6.) Misery is that pessimistic weight on your shoulders. It makes your shoulders feel heavy and your body lethargic. There's an emptiness inside your stomach even though the licked-clean bowls of ice cream stacked next to you tell you otherwise. You feel too bad about yourself to go out and do something. Nothing more than curling up into a blanket bundle on your bed with the romance section of Netflix and a box of tissues would please you.

I Think Winter's Here.

Sweet-smelling candle burning in the corner.
Computer softly singing calm music to my room.
Warm fuzzy socks with grippies on the bottom to keep me from slipping.
Glasses continually needing to be pushed up to their proper position.
The pond still, powerless to the weather's ice cold grip.
Wind whistling with every blow behind the music.
Little specks of white whizzing past my window.
This is winter.


I love the start of a new season. This is when there's the most beautiful weather that showcases the best of it. I find that almost all Kodak moments of the season are found at the beginning. When it gets further, the beauty has faded. Leaves have disintegrated, snow is no longer white. At the beginning, I appreciate the season the most. For the rest of the season, I'm just bitter and wishing for a change of scenery and weather.

The start of winter is my favorite time of the year. There's something about the jolly atmosphere and being able to wear mittens that make me happy. Snow is always a plus too. The first real snowfall of the year marks the day that it is finally socially acceptable to wear Uggs without getting looks of disapproval/disgust since there is snow on the ground to justify wearing the hated-by-some/loved-by-some boots (although I've been shamelessly wearing mine since the end of September). The only downfall of the winter and the snow is that I hate driving in snow. The accident prone conditions make me nervous to drive during this time of year. But this is a small price to pay for a winter wonderland!

Abbrevs r totes sew adorbs! (X^2 pg 133)

Every generation keeps getting dumber and dumber, and the language of each generation exemplifies this. When you listen to conversations between people of this generation, you'll probably hear them using abbrevs (abbreviations, ex: presh, supes, totes, adorbs), texting talk (ex: lol, btw, omg, wuts up?, u r kewl, <3) or words without the true meaning to express their thoughts. It's ridiculous, isn't it? My auto-correct in Safari is going crazy with all of these crazy ways to spell things. If someone older who was not well-versed in texting language heard people of this generation talking to each other, they would probably not understand much. Abbrevs are sweeping the nay-sh (nation), as someone I know would say. And this is, sadly, true.

Text messaging seems to be the culprit. People have become too lazy to type out the whole word, so abbrevs and txt talk were born. They make life simpler for those who aren't tech-savvy. For example, my mom is a frequent user of this kind of language when texting me, but I understand that typing out the whole word for her is too time-consuming because she struggles finding the letters for the word in a timely fashion (even though the keyboard is the same as a regular computer keyboard but smaller...). Try not to hate on me too much since I may seem like a hypocrite in saying this, but I have also conformed to using this kind of language. But, most of the time I use it when I'm joking around with my friends. Or when I abbreviate what I say in text messages, I do so because I don't have time or two free hands to type out whole words.

I would NEVER talk/text like this in normal situations. That wud just be totes ridic! Kidding.

To add to the madness, our generation has twisted words to have new meanings, such as sick, tight, ill, and beast, to name a few. These words are often used as synonyms to words like: cool, amazing, or awesome. But in reality, those words are not even close in meaning to cool, amazing, or awesome. When people say something like, "That movie was so sick!",  I cringe. The movie does not have an illness. And what about the word "beast"? Every time someone says "That was totally beast!", I just shudder. "Beast" is typically used when describing a monster... So no, that was not totally beast because it's not going to cause you harm or eat your innards.

Silent Halloween

This Monday was my second annual Silent Halloween. It was silent because my doorbell was, thankfully, broken, and it was the second year that my doorbell didn't work. You may think I'm cruel for not wanting to give out candy to little kids in cute costumes, but I am perfectly fine not doing so. I was quite content with having no distractions from homework and not spending money to buy candy that one kid will end up taking about half of. 

In my opinion, Halloween is a pointless holiday. Sure, it's fun for the social aspect, but other than that there's no real purpose for it. It's a holiday devoted to scaring the snot out of people. And unless you're a thrill seeker, getting scared is not something that you go looking for. The only benefit of Halloween is that it puts some money into the economy. People spend large amounts of money every year on decorating  their home and buying Halloween themed clothing and/or costume. It provides business for some stores and the Halloween shops that pop up around town every year. However, other than that the holiday is just 'there'. It lacks the meaning or significance behind it that bigger holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, have. 

I may sound pessimistic, but Halloween is just really not my favorite. At least we'll start to hear Christmas music soon!