Why I Have No Readers

A lot of you are probably not-commenting about the fact that no one reads my blog.  I really wanted to address this before my lack of readers scares off any more readers.  No one reads my blog because it is a secret.  No actually, it's a secret (don't you feel special now that you've found the hidden, secret blog - now go away - no actually don't - please?).  You see I actually have quite a few friends (there is no way to write that without sounding like I'm implying that you don't have friends, I'm sorry, I'm sure you have lots of friends, probably more friends than me) but I refuse to tell them about the blog, because then they would know that I blog and would tease me and my social standing would go down and I'd probably end up with less friends.  Also probably a bit because I'm self conscious and really don't want to be under their scrutiny.  My boyfriend thinks this is the most ridiculous thing ever.  I have sworn him to secrecy about the blog.  Sometimes he mentions it's existence in front of friends and then they are all like "Oh c'mon we won't judge you (yeah right!), you can't let us know about it and not tell us where it is!" (this is my second readerless blog) thinking that this will force me to relent and tell people the location of the blog, it doesn't.  My social paranoia can not be brought down with such guilt tactics.  Anyways I just wanted us to be clear that the reason I have no readers is not because I am tragically ugly or some sort of social pariah.

My boyfriend in his ongoing wish to promote my secret blog (which would really kinda destroy it's secret-ness) suggests that I follow some of the online suggestions to get readers.  I'd say the number one suggestion is to write useful content, well I suppose this is useful if you are also a paranoid freak who would like to feel not alone.  So check!  The next set of suggestions usually involve things that I either purposefully (twitter) or actually (what the fuck is an RSS Feed?  How do I mobile communicate?) don't understand.  I get the impression that if I had an IPhone my blog would probably somehow be ILaunched to billions of readers but my Samsung phone is old school and can only be used to communicate with people whose phone numbers I already have and, as discussed above, I have already ruled them out as readers.  The final suggestion most people give is to comment intelligently on similar blogs and leave my url.  Luckily for me blogs about boring neurotic people are a dime a dozen so I have plenty of company.  But then what should I say?

•  "Hahaha, so true, cheese is delicious.  Check out my blog!!!" 

or

• "wow, you and your children are so fascinating, please tell me more about your all organic origami vagina crochet project and then check out my blog!"

Of course there's always posting on blogs I like, but they often seem like super secret clubs.  I read the blogs and it's like I am hearing so much about this person, and then I read the comments and everyone is all laughing and already friends and I feel like I'm just some creeper eavesdropping on their blogclub and if I talk they'll all be weirded out that I read what they wrote cause I'm a stranger and they intended it for their friends and better looking, funnier, cooler strangers (although I do want to re-iterate, that I'm actually not that bad looking, and kinda cool, kay?).  I guess I'm also worried that people will hate my blog and that it sucks like that voice in my head that won't let me tell my friends about it tells me it does.

Anyways, I just wanted to clear all this up because lately I've been commenting on some blogs and I'm really worried that somehow someone will end up here they will be all like "OMG, this creepy stalker girl who has no friends is reading my blog!"  Instead you can be more accurate and think "OMG, this creepy, stalker, self-absorbed, delusional freak who has no friends is reading my blog!"

P.S. I do like a lot of craft blogs, I just also hate a lot of craft blogs, so if you have a craft blog and I commented on it, then probably that organic origami vagina crochet project comment doesn't apply.  Same goes for kid blogs, family blogs, cheese blogs whatever.

P.P.S. Even if I didn't comment on your craft blog, I'm still not trying to insult it, the internet's a big place, I probably haven't seen your blog if I'm not following it.

P.P.P.S. I promised myself I would be unapologetic about my commentary and try to curb my paranoia when I started blogging, so you can just take back the previous P.S.'s.

Everyone Loves Dinosaur Statues!

Usually one of my friends comes over on Tuesday nights to watch Lost but he wasn't around last night so I've decided to share my thoughts and commentary with you.  Spoilers ahead.

Last night's Lost starts off by showing that it's not just us, the fans, that love Hugo but apparently people who give away dinosaur trophies love him too!  It's extra awesome cause it's T-Rex!

His mom of course has to ruin the awesomeness of the moment by reminding him he's single.  It's like all mom's have this desire to ruin every happy moment.  I talked to my mom after a bunch of kids I TA gave me a nice Christmas card one year and she was like "That's nice, but just a card?  No presents?  Not even some chocolate?"  Thanks mom.  Anyways Hugo's mom is the same way and pesters him into going on a blind date.

Later Hugo is on his blind date, only it appears his date has decided not to show.  Instead Libby comes over and talks to him.  Apparently his mom is really a bitch and usually sets him up with ugly girls.  Libby says she feels like she knows him from somewhere but before she get very far Dr. CockBlock comes and cuts them off and tells Hugo that she's crazy.  Poor, sad Hurley has to see his girl driven away in the crazy van, and his blind date never shows to boot.

Hugo is drowning his sorrows in bucket chicken when he notices Desmond lurking about him.  Hurley pours his heart out to this stranger and Desmond throws in some awesome love advice that "all women are crazy."  And the oh so subtle advice for Hurley to listen to his gut, his order, number 42, is up and it's time to go.

Hugo bribes Dr. CockBlock for entrance to the insane asylum and then asks Libby for the beach picnic they never got to have on the island.  He brings six different types of cheese, this would be a home run date with me!  Hugo gets all sad because he thinks he's too ugly to be loved.

It's super sad because Hugo is so awesome and not so bad looking.  His perception is just skewed because he hangs out on..

Seriously, who wouldn't feel bad when juxtaposed against this cast?  Anyways, Libby is sweet and they kiss and then Hugo remembers all their time together and is probably relieved because now they can both be crazy together.

On the island Hugo is all sad that deadLibby has never come talk to him, so the island knowing what's best, sends deadMichael, her murderer to talk to Hurley.  It appears that deadMichael has had sometime to think about things and has decided killing people is wrong and that they shouldn't blow up Smokie.

Ilana comes back from the Black Rock with some seriously unsafe looking dynamite.  I mean I was wondering if Jacob had touched her and she was invincible like Richard (and Jack?) because otherwise there is no reason to be so cavalier with explosives.

There's a little bickering cause deadMichael told Hugo not to blow up the plane but it all gets cut short when...

...Ilana explodes.  Well I guess she's no longer necessary to the plot island.

Hugo ruffles through some stuff, finds a book with what looks like Cyrillic writing on the cover and opens up some bag.  The music cues tell me it should be familiar/important but I have no idea what it is.  More bickering till Hugo agrees with Richard to go grab more dynamite.  

Ben talks bitterly about the island killing people who throw dynamite around it has no use for.  His candidate jealousy gets interrupted by Hugo blowing up the Black Rock.  Richard is pretty pissed, I think it's where he stored his eyeliner.  The group splits into factions.  Hugo, who wants to go talk to Smokie, gets Jack, Sun and Lapidus.  Richard who wants to blow up the plane, gets Miles and Ben.  I love Hugo but I gotta agree with Miles, Smokie is super scary! 

Walking through the jungle lit by the never ending supply of burning torches Hugo starts to lose some of his confidences.  He fesses his lie to Jack and pretty much tells Jack to take the reins again.  Hopefully he will, I know everyone hates Jack and he can be a pretty annoying hero but in the end, I love Jack.

The voices get explained in the most phoned-in way ever.  It's not that them being the ghosts doesn't make sense, it's just the whole scene was super corny and Hurley even says "That's what the whispers are?" just in case this was going to go over anyone's head.  Apparently fans aren't the only one's who need to have their hands held through this episode because deadMichael also has to point out the obvious campsite of Smokie.  Guess it's good he hid in this clearing.

In camp smoke monster there is more bickering, but at least this scene involves Sawyer.  Smokie seems to think that the only way to leave is to re-create the way they arrived.  I guess that's easier than trying to recreate their previous helicopter/barge assisted escape.  I thought all they needed were the right co-ordinates.  Anyways, Sayid shows up and he has Desmond.

Smokie unties Desmond and decides they should stretch their legs.  While they walk and try to out-do eachother with vague conversation they run into a kid.

I guess this could be the same boy?  But I think they are brothers and I bet the dark haired one is Jacob because MIB said that Jacob stole his body or something like that.  Anyways, Smokie seems to want to avoid both of them.  He takes Desmond to a well and tells about how it was built by people wanting water knowledge.  He tries pretty hard to be creepy but Desmond just won't be creeped.  Smokie is disappointed so he pushes Desmond in the well.  Luckily I don't believe the plot island is done with Desmond just yet so I'm not going to get all sad just yet.

Smokie gets back to camp just as Hurley arrives bringing everything the smoke monster has been looking for. Jack eyes Kate and then he and Smokey super eye each other so I don't think there's going to be tons of smooth sailing in this camp.

Anyways as you all know, Lost always has to end with a some sort of cliff hanger (or huggy montage) and so far neither had happened so it can't be over yet.

Desmond is perving on some school being as totally hot conspicuous as possible.  After being spotted by Ben he decides to move in and show us his license. 

Which is pretty anticlimactic because it doesn't have any of the numbers.  But then makes up for it with this.

I gotta say I didn't see this coming.  Also I totally feel horrible for poor Locke.  I really do like Locke, especially this incarnation that knows his dad and is marrying Helen.  Nonetheless, I'm going to trust Desmond on this one.

Final thoughts:

• Desmond's totally not gone, right? 
• Lost is really all about Love:  Desmond/Penny, Charlie/Claire, Gin/Sun, Sawyer/Juliette, Hurley/Libby
• How weird would it be hanging with the God-like evil spirit that has possessed your friends body?
• Originally I had counted on there being an Ilana episode and not being a Desmond episode so I guess her death gets my predictions back on.

Just cause I don't want to leave you guys with the sad pic of Locke, enjoy some more hot murderous Desmond.

How To Be Awesome at Writing a Paper

Not to brag but I can write an awesome paper, in fact I can probably write the shit out of your paper.  I am a graduate student, that means I graduated from being a student but I was so good they were like "No, don't leave us, come be a student more, 'cause your so awesome!"  Hell they even pay me to be a student.  Anyways, I know at this point you are like "woah, I can't believe someone so awesome that they couldn't get a real job after university, someone who goes to school professionally would be willing to give up the secret to their success."  Well guess what, I am.  So here it is so you don't have to keep lurking around my blog trying to steal my knowledge.

How to Write a Paper

1.  Choose a topic:  A lot of people will mislead you to believe that you should choose something you enjoy learning about.  This a lie that will probably cause you to waste valuable "study time" learnging about Gavin Rossdale and cupcake recipes.  Contrary to popular belief this is not because nothing interesting is worth studying, rather it is that studying makes anything you like boring.  Don't believe me, here are some REAL journal article titles.

• Physical properties and consumer liking of cookies prepared by replacing sucrose with tagatose. Journal of Food Science
• Acceptability and stability of no-sugar-added cupcakes containing encapsulated aspartame.
• Isolation and Nucleotide Sequence of Canine Glucose-6-phosphate mRNA:  Identification of Mutation in Puppies with Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1a.

I hope you enjoyed that, because those projects undoubtedly ruined cookies, cupcakes and puppies for some poor souls.  So really you should just choose something that sounds vaguely familiar and has lots of hits come up when you google it or put it in pub med (sorry Arts kids, I'm a Scientist suckers!)  Luckily sometimes the unexpected happens and when you study something that seems boring it will actually turn out interesting (ie/ I now happen to think that Yeast-Two Hybrids are cool (double bracket, that's right, I said cool)).


2.  Wikipedia your topic and read about it (note many profs, TAs, asshats, will say wikipedia is not a valid source, this true but I will tell you a secret once you get to step 4).


3.  Check facebook/myspace/twitter/blogger/msn/porn sites (don't judge, maybe xxxslutbutt3000 is a proteomics genius by day).  Make sure you talk to everyone you know somebody may have something valuable to say about your topic.  You don't have to do this step but my years of experience has shown me that the majority of undergrads do.


4.  Follow the links at the bottom of wikipedia!!!!  Did you get that, see all that cool stuff you learnt on wikipedia, reference it to the proper reference as given at the bottom of wikipedia.  Hell maybe even take out that reference at your local library and learn more about your topic.  Or just trust wikipedia and copy the references, that's still better than referencing wikipedia.


5.  It's Tuesday so watch Lost.  What if it's not Tuesday you say?  I dunno call your friends or something, your in undergrad, shouldn't you be drunk already?


Tomorrow I may give you more tips, or I may write a paper about Yeast-Two Hybrid systems, who knows?!?!

The House Always Wins

Tim Horton's is a freaking genius!  I don't even like gambling, but every March it becomes part of my daily routine.  At first it all seems so innocent and fun, every coffee is a little game.  Maybe I'll win a car?  Soon I'm making small changes to my travel routes to ensure I end up at a Tim Horton's not Starbucks.  I stop buying Mercury or Darkhorse coffee on the weekend, because there is no chance I could win there.  Then I'm having an extra coffee with a co-worker to up my chances.  Then one day I realize I'm walking down the street shaking while I drink my fourth coffee of the day and have spilled hot coffee all over myself and am late for work because I went out of my way to go to a Timmy's and then waited in line (even though the cafeteria has no line) and then ordered a hot drink instead of a cold so I would get a cup that could potentially win and spilled coffee all over myself because I am trying to drink the coffee as fast as humanly possible so I can roll up the rim!  And then I fucking lost!  And I knew I was going to lose, I always lose.  It says the chances of winning are 1 in 9.  I did some math and in the 8 years I have been religiously rolling up the rim I have probably bought around 592 coffees, of that I have won 3 times!!!  I should have one around 65 times, I have lost 20X more than the statistical average.  Will this knowledge stop me, of course not.  In fact for some reason the more I lose the more I want to play, because of course one of the days I have to win.  It's like I'm a gambler who hasn't seen the sun in days and has been glued to a Hello Kitty slot machine for 13 hours under the blinking fluorescent lights with the constant sound of jackpot wins urging me on despite the fact that I'm down thousands of dollars and am wide eyed on meth trying to stay "alert" and have probably soiled myself because I refuse to leave the slot because I *know* that the next pull is going to be the big win.  Or the one after that.  Or the one after that...

NEW BLOG!?!?!

So the other day I was reading a blog I like and I decided to click to follow and was asked to sign in with my email. Turns out I had once upon a time signed up here but then decided to go fail at blogging at wordpress instead. Anyways now upon further inspection I think I like blogging here more, much more control. Luckily I have no readers so I don't have to worry about losing anyone with the switch. Anyways, without further ado, my new blog. (P.S. I just copy and pasted my old entry)

A few years ago I went on a backpacking trip to Europe. I had met two girls Kate and Stacy and we had somehow got it in our heads that we should head to Romania, so we did. Seeing as we had lots of time and almost no money and we took the most roundabout way possible. We were in Vilnius (Lithuania) and wanted to get to Sighisoara (Romania) so we took a train to Riga (Latvia) a plane to Vienna (Austria) and then a 36 hour bus (although googlemaps says it's only a 9 hour drive) to Timisoara and then another 6 hour bus to Sighisoara. I think the story should really begin on the bus ride.

We pile onto this crammed Greyhound style bus to begin our 36 hour journey. I sat with Kate and Stacy had two seats to herself right in front of us. Pretty quickly we all fell asleep. We woke up when the bus driver slapped Stacy across the face, I think this was the first negative omen about our trip to Romania. None of us spoke any Romanian so we weren't exactly sure as to why Stacy was slapped but it seemed to have something to do with her feet being on the seat beside her. Although the slap alone would have probably sufficed to keep all of us awake for the rest of the bus ride the driver then picked up the speaker and started speaking in Romanian while pointing at us, the rest of the bus laughed, we all vowed not to sleep. While on this bus ride I made friends with the man across the aisle from me, he didn't speak much English but did manage to get across that he didn't understand why we were travelling to Romania alone and that it probably was not safe. This was not the most reassuring thing to be told.

Our bus arrived in Timisoara around 9am, before we left we had checked and seen that there should be a bus from Timisoara to Sighisoara at 2pm so we had a while to wait. Luckily we had saved some of our bus food, including a source of protein, peanut butter! I went in first to get tickets for the 2 pm bus, then Kate, then Stacy. Unfortunately for reasons that none of us have ever figured out the ladies at the ticket counter would not sell a ticket to Stacy. They just kept telling her there was no bus. It went something like this:

I go in

Me: I'd like to buy a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket Lady: Okay it's 264, 000 lei (conversion was about 33, 000 lei to 1 euro).

Kate goes in

Kate: I'd like to buy a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket Lady: Okay it's 264, 000 lei.

Stacy goes in

Stacy: I'd like to buy a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket Lady: Sorry, there is no bus.

Stacy and I go in

Stacy: I'd like to buy a ticket to Signisoara.

Ticket Lady: There is no bus.

Me: But I have a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket lady mumbles

Me: What?

Ticket Lady: What?

Me: What?

Ticket Lady: Sorry bad english. No bus.

The ticket ladies were wise to our ploy when Kate or I tried to buy a second ticket and would not sell us an extra. Stacy was pretty fed up at this point (having already been slapped on the first bus and now denied entry to the second), unfortunately we didn't really have many (any) options. Eventually we bribed someone wondering by to buy Stacy a ticket. Everything was settled, we all slept a little and waited for 2 pm. At 2 pm the bus did not arrive. At 3 pm the bus did not arrive. At 4 pm the ticket office closed and the ticket lady told us that the bus would come, we just had to wait, and left (I should mention we were the only one's waiting for the bus). Sometime around sunset we all started freaking out that we had no where to sleep and were quickly running out of food and were going to die alone in the cold in Romania. Then a white minivan pulled up. In Canada I call these van's RapeVans, you know the scary one's with blacked out windows that always seem to be conspicuously parked on sketchy streets or in alleys. A gruff man got out and informed us that this was the bus to Sighisoara. At this point the decision looked like this:

Sketchy Bus Station

• Cons: Dark out, cold out, not much food, probably will be robbed and killed in bus station parking lot.
• Pros: Not a rape van.

Rape Van

• Pros: Might take us to Sighisoara, heated.
• Cons: Might be a rape van.

I think our want for warmth must've won out because we decided to get in the van. Luckily for us this was the right decision (I don't like thinking about what would have occured with the wrong decision) and we arrived in Sighisoara safe and sound and found our hostel and went to sleep.

Okay that feels like a lot of blogging for now. A lot more stuff happened in Sighisoara and leaving was almost as much trouble as getting there but this feels long and really I should get back to the work I was procrastinating from doing. If anyone ever actually reads this I hope you are not offended by anything. Romania was awesome and fun (and terrifying) so don't let my stupid cheap travel throw you off. When you pay the equivalent of 8 euro's for an 8 hour trip you get what you pay for. Anyways, that's it for now.