Romantic Comedies

Don't say you didn't see this coming. And to the girl community: I'm sorry, alright? I tried. I tried really really hard to like them. You don't know the number of sleepovers I have been to where I tried to giggle along with the other girls while watching a romantic comedy. I can't help it, my giggles always inevitably turn into gagging. But I figured it's only fair I write why these movies deserve to burn and then be ceremoniously stomped on. You think that's a bit much? You've never really paid attention to a romantic comedy then.

Warning: To those of you who, for some reason that will never be known by me, actually like romantic comedies, you may not like this post. Feel free to criticize in the comment box. You won't change my mind, but I'm sure it will make you feel better.

The Leading Girl

I'm sorry, but it has to be said. Tall. Skinny. Blonde. I mean really, think back to all of the romantic comedies you've watched, 90% of the leading girls fits this criteria. The girls that don't are labeled ugly and nerdy by their peers and thus rejected. Even a lot of the blonde leads still are labeled "ugly" even though they are clearly drop dead gorgeous. "I'm just not as pretty as the popular girls." Please, go dig a hole and live in it so I don't have to listen to you whine any more. 

Most of the time the girl is shy or for some other weird reason has been unable to date. It isn't until Mr. Whatever comes along that she is saved from her formerly meaningless life. I guess that is one thing Hollywood got right. These girl's lives are meaningless. Why it is considered enjoyable to watch girls who just sit and get all weepy eyed about how difficult it is to find love, I will never know. No shit it's hard, you think you're the first person to notice this? Go back and read every play ever written in the planet of ever. Your problem is far from original. But please, continue to sit around complaining about this to your friends or your diary or what have you. I'm sure that will help.

The Leading Guy

Thank god for love, because it seems to save so many guys from being total jerks for the rest of their life. I mean really, it's like he going along in his life, not giving a you know what about anyone or anything, and then all of the sudden WHAM he falls in love and he changes all of his ways. Idiot? Now the hopeless romantic. Loner? Now can't imagine being alone. In real life it's more like: Idiot? Idiot. 

The Plot

My favorite plots are those where the girl dramatically has to chose between two guys. How hard that must be. You know we should give her some sort of award for being able to get up and keep going each day just knowing the stress she is forced to endure. Some people just never catch a break in life.

The worst part about every romantic comedy is how you know exactly what is going to happen before the movie is even going to start. She's going to fall in love with the best friend. They're going to kiss now. Uh oh, their fighting. Gee, I wonder if they will make up? The suspense is literally killing me. Literally. Killing me.

The ending really annoys me. It's as if all of their life's problems suddenly disappeared, just because they found true love. News flash: relationships continue to be difficult even after you decide to be in one. People move on, change, want different things in life. Oh man, did I just bash the entire foundation of every romantic comedy ever? opps.

This is actually only the tip of the iceberg, but I think I mentioned the main points. Sorry if I just made any of you cry or hate me. Well actually not really. Romantic comedies are so far detached from real life that you really shouldn't be that emotionally attached to them anyways.

So in conclusion I think I'll stick to my sci-fi, thrillers, and action movies thank you very much. Far less whining, with the awesome possibility of something blowing up. You hardly ever see something blow up in a romantic comedy. Although I wouldn't mind seeing some of the characters suddenly blow up in the middle of their overly dramatic love confession scenes. Now THAT would be something worth seeing.

On my ipod today: "This Is For Real" by Motion City Soundtrack. I was slightly obsessed with this song when it first came out. The whole CD is great actually.

Studying

Here is the typical cycle of studying that I go through. I'm sure many of you can relate. I always start off with such high expectations, then something happens....

Week Before the Test: I'm going to start today and keep studying everyday until the test. That way my knowledge will slowly build and I won't be as stressed out the day before the test. Well actually the test is still a week away so it won't hurt if I don't start exactly today. Besides, I have other work to do. But first let me check that one thing on the internet....

Three Days Before the Test: Man how did I wait this long!? And how did we cover this much material in such a short amount of time? There is no way I can learn all of this. I should just accept failure. There's no hope now. Besides, a life as a janitor wouldn't be so horrible. I can be one of those nice ones that everyone knows and wants to chat with. Maybe they will even give me a cool nickname like "J the janitor."

One Hour Into Studying, Three Days Before the Test: I've so got this. This material is easy. I don't even know why I was panicking. There is no reason that I can't get an A on this. I'm so smart, there is no reason I can't achieve everything I want in life. Hell, I think I'm going to run for President someday! In fact, I think I can put off studying till tomorrow. It shouldn't be that hard to go over.

Two Days Before the Test: Man how did I talk myself out of studying AGAIN?! There is no way I can learn all of this information in two days. There's too much of it.

Two or Three or Four Hours Into Studying, Two Days Before the Test: Wow this is going way easier than I thought. I'm remembering all of this information pretty easily. Damn I'm smart. I'm going to show all of those other students up! Take that all of you who think I'm weird for switching my desk! What now?!

Day Before the Test: How is it that I just went over this information yesterday, but I can't seem to remember any of it! This is bad. There is no way I can do well on this test. 

20 Minutes Later: I remember it all now! Wow, that came back to me pretty easily. Now I just need to go over that one section I haven't looked at yet.

10 Minutes Later: Oh my God there is a ton of information in this section! There is no way I can remember all of this! Maybe I should drop out and find some sort of street preforming skill. I could be a belly dancer that also preforms magic tricks. People would watch that, right?

10 Minutes Later: That wasn't so bad. I think I've got it all now. There is no part of this test that should trip me up! Well maybe I should review that one thing I can never seem to understand quite as well.

10 Minutes Later: This is way too difficult. It's too late to go to the professor for help now, so there is no possible way I will ever understand this. I'm so going to fail this test. And there is no freaking way people would watch a belly dancer/ magician. That's just stupid. I'm not even good at failing. What's wrong with me?

10 Minutes Later: Ohhhhh now I get it! Why didn't I get that before? I'm so going to ace this test! Good thing too, I don't actually know any magic tricks.

Notice Clock Reads 11: It can't be that late! I still have so much studying to do! Why did I procrastinate so much all week! Darn those cute kitten videos...

Notice Clock Reads 12: Well that's it. I can't take anymore. If I fail, I fail. It is what it is.

On my ipod today: "Riding Dirty" by Chamillionaire. Oh come on, we all need that guilty pleasure song that makes us feel bad ass. In reality the only bad ass thing I do is take extra salt packets from the dining hall. They'll never know....

Desks

My school has an issue with desks. They don't have whole ones. Apparently the desks they use to fill the classrooms were donated from high schools, so a lot of them are these tiny half desk things that barely hold half a book. It's incredibly annoying. I'm not sure what the logic was when the college bought them. "Oh perfect, half a desk! It's only college, why would we need more than that? They're adults now. No more normal sized desks."

So I sit in the same seat everyday because I'm weird like that. Really, ask people have taken a class with me. If you happen to sit in a seat that I always sit in I'll suddenly get all crazy white girl on you and say something really passive aggressive like "You know I sit there like everyday? No no it's fine, stay there. I just think it's so funny when people randomly take other people's seats. It's fine, really I don't care." I do care. A lot. Stay away from my freakin' seat.

Well anyways, for this particular class I always sit in the second row, two rows from the window. I sit there everyday because this particular seat has one of the elusive normal sized desk that some students can only dream of getting because they always show up too class late. It's great. I can open my notebook and it doesn't fall straight to the ground because the entire notebook is supported by the desk. It's a beautiful thing that I'm sure all of you are actually extremely used to because any normal school has normal desks. They are so commonplace that you don't even have to say "We have normal desks," you just say "We have desks." Must be nice.

The only problem this morning was that this seat had switched. There was a pretend desk in it's place (giving these half-desk things the full title of "desk" would be an insult to the word "desk"). This wouldn't do at all. I couldn't spend the whole period writing on half a desk. It would be like writing on a type writer because you have to keep moving the part of the notebook you need to write on over so that it's the part lying on the desk. I'm not coordinated enough to managed that.

So in the five minutes before class started I decided to switch the pretend desk with an actual desk. While I'm moving things around it's of course making a lot of noise. I'm not sure if it was because it was 8:30 in the morning or because I was so fixated on switching the desks, but I failed to notice that literally everyone was staring at me. Not just mildly amused staring, but ogling like I was stripping my clothes off or suddenly decided to start singing show tunes in front of them.

It was then that I looked over to my professor. He was staring also, with a look of complete confusion on his face. 

"What are you doing?" he asked me. 

"Umm switching the desks."

"Why?"

"Because not even my desks in Elementary School were this small."

Luckily he laughed at this because people who don't get my humor usually just assume I hate the world and I'm mad and bitter all of the time, which is totally not true. I only hate most of the world. My classmates were not as amused at my response and they continued to stare at me for the next few minutes before class started. That quickly I had become "that one girl" in the class. I feel like the more I try to just blend in, the more of a spectacle I make of myself. A normal person would have just left the desk where it was.

On my ipod today: "Dog Days Are Over" by Florence + the Machine. Nothing beats running to the fast parts of this song. You kind of feel unstoppable.

Eye Doctors Part I

I've had the same pair of glasses for about 5 or six years now. They've served me well though this time, but I guess this summer was just too much for them. While volunteering at a camp one of the kids through a dodge ball at my head and my poor glasses have not sat on my face right since then. I worried that when I eventually do get a new pair, the action of pushing my glasses back up will have come so second nature to me that I will continue to try and push my new glasses up, even though they won't need to be. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Anyways, a few weeks ago I got the tiniest of scratches on one of my lenses. Anyone who has ever worn glasses knows that a tiny scratch on a lens = 40% of your visual area once you actually put your glasses back on. Did I mention that the scratch is directly in the middle also? Needless to say my endless putting off of getting new glasses had to end. My current pair is failing at the two basic functions of glasses: Staying on my face and helping me to see.

So I called my mom and asked her whether I was due for an eye doctor exam, and she told me she would call and set up an appointment for me. Later that day she told me I could go in at 2:30, Monday the 17th.

Now my mom has a habit of mistyping, mishearing, misunderstanding, mis-anything else that could cause some more annoyance in my life. So a few days later I made sure to verify the date and time with her. I've learned from experience that you have to phrase these things in a way that makes it sound like your fault. If I just said "Are you sure it's Monday at 2:30?" she would have gotten mad that I didn't trust her. So instead I said, "I completely forgot, when is my eye doctors appointment again?" That way I could compare the two dates and times to make sure that they were indeed the same. 

My mom thought it would be best if she, my sister, and me all went that day to get our eyes checked. So today (Monday, 17th) I drove back home after my classes to meet up with them to get our eyes checked. When we got there only the man that helps you pick out your glasses was there, so we started to look at the different glasses out of boredom. 

It should be known that I am basically blind without my glasses. This always makes picking out glasses interesting. Every 5 seconds my mom would ask "What about these?" and I would (not really) patiently tell her I couldn't see them. She could have been holding up small rodents in her hand for all I knew. So then she would hand them to me and I would press my nose against the mirror trying to see this new pair. By the time I actually started to see what the pair looked like, my mom would once again ask "What about these?" and the whole process would start again. In a sitcom there would be a laugh track that played every time she asked me, but in real life it was just incredibly annoying.

After a while I got tired of trying on glasses and I figured I would make my final decision after my eye exam. At this point my mom casually asked the man helping us look at glasses if the eye doctor was running late, to which he replied "Oh he only works every other Monday. He's not coming in today."

Well I must have made quite the face because at this point both the man and my mom just stared at me for a few seconds. I couldn't believe it. Firstly, my mom mixed up the date of something...again. I even did my tricky method of making sure she had the right date! Man, I thought that method was fool proof. Now I need a new method.

Secondly, why on Earth did the man let us walk around trying on glasses randomly for almost a half an hour without asking us why we were there if there was no eye doctor coming in?  Nobody had any appointments that day, so there should have been so sort of bell that went off in his head that said maybe something was wrong. Instead, he politely chatted with us the entire time, acting as if it were completely normal for a family to spend their afternoon randomly trying on glasses that they can't actually purchase that day. Let me tell you, on my list of things I want to do with my afternoons, randomly trying on glasses is below many things. Admittedly it may still be above watching a romantic comedy though. It's hard to tell, both waste so much time and completely annoy me. At least trying on glasses doesn't make me physically ill though.

So you see this is Eye Doctor Part 1 because I have to once again drive back home next week for an actual appointment. Knowing how everything in my life is so unnomal, I'm sure Part 2 will be just as interesting. 

On my ipod today: "Grow A Pear" by Ke$ha. After today I need a good laugh, and this song cracks me up every time. It's just so ridiculous. Look up the lyrics, you'll see what I mean.