I Don't Wanna Grow Up

What's wrong with playing video games past the age of 18?

Well, from my point of view, a lot of things. When it comes to some college boys I know, video games have taken a huge chunk of their homework time and money--i.e. games have gone down the toilet and video games and consoles were purchased before birthday, Christmas and Valentine's day presents for certain girlfriends. There are also a slew of hyper-sexualized avatars and characters that boys can choose from to play with and fantasize about while they're away from their girlfriends. Come on, Lara Croft? What does a video game character need boobs that big for? It's just ridiculous. And the other day my boyfriend asked what I thought of sex scenes in video games. WHAT THE HELL FOR?


Yet, there is something about playing a good Nintendo game that really hits the spot. I've always enjoyed my NES--the original Nintendo console. I still have the one my parents bought in the 80s, and the Super Nintendo I got for Christmas back in the day. My mom still has our original, fat Game Boy somewhere, too.

Nobody in my family had purchased a new game system since the Super Nintendo. And then, my boyfriend bought me a Nintendo DS. I had played with his mother's DS during a spring break in Mexico, and really enjoyed hours of Big Brain Academy. Ian got me that same game AND Pokemon diamond. Now, it may sound nerdy, but I'm a big fan of Pokemon. I had the Game Boy yellow version of the game, and I played it a lot on my Super Nintendo at the end of my third semester in college. And the diamond version is just as addicting.

Soon after I got the DS, my mom got a Nintendo Advance for her and my dad. They don't play them often, but they enjoy them just the same. They're thinking about getting a Wii for the exercise now, too. Can you tell we're a Nintendo family?

For me, video games are not about the violence, the adrenaline or, as I was just debating with Ian a week ago, the "plot line." Sure, Pokemon may have a plot line. But I don't pay attention. All I care about is powering up my Pokemon so I have the biggest, fastest, strongest, rarest Pokemon. Who the cares about the plot line when you've got a level 16 Budew and you're getting ready to fight a trainer with level 25 Pokemon? Power up, baby!

Maybe that's the difference between the casual user who only gets to play these games during winter, spring and summer breaks and the boys who get addicted to one game after another, year 'round. If you ask me, video games are OK for relaxing--not for casual addictions.

Time Wasters

Yeah, I'm a procrastinator. But I'm in college--it's part of the job description, right?

Well, to commemorate the fact that I'm one semester away from ending my four-year tenure at The University of Arizona, I've compiled a short list of my favorite time wasters. The list is short because I spend so much time at each of them I don't have time to look for new ones!

The Facebook. Spare me the communications-world and blogosphere hoopla. Facebook really is all that. I've been on the social networking site since the fall of 2004. I've been an addict ever since. At first, I let the identity-theft skeptic in me keep a distance from the site, but since then I've been a several-hours-at-a-time user. Even after the site opened up to everyone, and even with the commercialization. I think it's a great tool for keeping in touch, a great tool for hanging on to contacts, and a great way for organizations and politicians to do community outreach. In relation to MySpace, I have found that Facebook is far more user-friendly and communication-facilitating.

FirstView. So, the site's not 100 percent free for all users, but for the runway-fashion fiend, it's a nice tool. You can search by designer or country to check out past and current lines from the runways. It's also an easy way to figure out the tangents of fashion and different designers, and help you educate yourself about what designer you really like best. I've been using it, believe it or not, since I was in middle school. I found it randomly and have loved it ever since.

The New York Times. Okay, so this only works if you want to know what's going on in the world. But the Times is one of the last good papers, and that great content is online. I suggest you find out what's going on--pay close attention to Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today.

My Story Is Makeover. Much as I hate watching Lifetime movies, or even the commercials on that channel, I have found a guilty pleasure on the Lifetime TV Web site. This dandy makeover tool gives you a daily task--you're going to the movies, or something like that--and you have to dress your "paper doll" for that outing. It's shallow, superficial and for fashion lovers only. My mom groaned when I showed it to her, and she's my "What Not to Wear" watching buddy. Not for everyone, but for those who can get into it, a fabulous waste of time.

Projekt Gutenberg. For those who read in German and appreciate literature, this site is a great way to pass the day. You can find authors and read full text versions of various writings. For example, I found Germany's brightest star, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. You can read all of his works, and some of them even have a version you can listen to or purchase in the mp3 shop. It's a great way to get your daily literature boost.

Songza. It's easy, simple and horizon-expanding. This site plays music clips for free. You can't buy them, but it will save your play list for several days. You can also find music you'd never have found on the Billboard Top 40. I searched for "French rap" and found Neg Marrons, a French reggae group whose song "Le Bilan" I particularly like. I searched for "Czech music" and found Tarafuki, the first contemporary Czech group I've been able to find on the Internet.

Good luck and happy time-wasting. :-)

All the Hullabaloo

For the second year in a row, I ventured out on December 26 for all those goody "post-Christmas" sales.

All I remember of last year's adventure was that I shoved my way through crowded aisles in Target, shoving the last few good items into my basket as other shoppers tried to get to them first. I bought a lot of gift bags and bows.

This year, we got to the store much later than last year, and were surprised to see the selection of clearance goods was still pretty good. However, the clearance wasn't that great--50 percent? Come on, 75 percent would be more appropriate for a holiday that's not coming again for a year.

Again, lots of wrapping paper, ribbons, bows and Christmas paraphernalia went into the basket. There were a few good buys, but nothing spectacular. Target, TJMaxx, World Market--eh, eh, eh. Borders had the best deals by far, and those weren't even the holiday items!

Why do we go out en masse to buy clearance goods after a holiday? Because the commercials tell us the sales will be good? It's just the after-effect of Christmasumerism, if you ask me. We buy and buy and buy. And then, after all the presents have been unwrapped, it's still not enough to hold us over. The spend-lust is too great.

And the sickest part? Valentine's Day displays are already up. What a great nation this is.

Growing up, take 2

I did it again. No, I didn't cut open my finger or splurge on "hurty shoes."

I failed to use common sense in an adult-like way, in an easily solvable adult-like situation. No, not like in adult movies.

I was baking a pumpkin today--yes, an entire pumpkin, left over from Halloween. I foresee a great amount of pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies and maybe some pumpkin soup in the future. But getting to the point where those recipes may be possible was...interesting.

I cook squash in the oven all the time. It's not that hard. Cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, place it on foil, bake until you can easily poke it with a fork.

Well, I did the usual today. Only maybe the oven was a bit too hot. Okay, it was too hot. After 40 minutes of listening to the pumpkin crackle and sizzle in the oven, I opened the door to check on it. I was confronted with mottled looking orange gourd halves and the scent of burning pumpkin skin.

I turned on the fan over the oven to absorb the smoke coming out, turned off the oven and went looking for oven mitts. Then it all began.
The smoke alarm by Alycia's room starts going off. I freak out, but run over, grab a chair to climb on and start waving the oven mitts at the alarm, hoping they'll move the smoke away and the alarm will turn off. Then the other smoke alarm starts going off, the one by my room. So there are now two alarms screeching at me in unison from completely different sides of the house.

So I call my dad.

He tells me to take out the batteries. But these are plugged into the wall. There are no batteries.

He tells me to flip the breaker. I'm too excited at that point to read which breaker goes to what part of the house, so I turn them all off, a few at a time. The alarms continue to wail.

As my dad thinks of a new way to approach the situation, the house alarm starts going off. Three loud alarms shrieking at me.

We decide it's a good idea to turn all the breakers off. I stand in near-dark silence. All of the alarms have shut up, thank goodness.

As the front door lets in freezing air and lets out the pumpkin smoke, my dad and I discuss the coming situation: the house alarm.

You see, this is not a user-friendly alarm. It once went off while Alycia and I were blow drying our hair at the same time. Another time it went off randomly at 6 a.m. I know that the second I flip the breaker connected to that damn thing, it's going to go off again.

My dad goes through several ideas he has for keeping it from going off. Nope, tried that before. Nope, that won't work.

I turn the breakers on again. For a brief period, silence. Then, BEEP BEEP BEEP EEK EEK EEK BEEEEEEEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP EEK EEK EEK BEEEEEEEEP.

My dad asks me to read the buttons on the alarm panel to him. I have to go out front to yell them into the phone because the alarm is so loud by the door. Then, my neighbor comes over. In a matter of seconds, he presses the right button and the sound STOPS.

Gee, who would have guessed you have to tell it you're HOME?

If I'd gotten a chance to tell my dad the names of the buttons, he'd have told me to press that one. But did it ever occur to me on my own? Nope.

More reasons to believe those in their 20s are not yet grown-up enough to handle difficult situations.

*Sigh*

Step on this

Everyone has a fetish of sorts. I'm not talking about kinky bedroom fetishes. I mean something you have a sort of obsession with (non-sexually). Mine is, has been and probably always will be... shoes. That's why I keep sprinkling this blog with pictures of what I deem to be the best and worst shoes. And I'm going to keep doing it, dammit. (These are good ones, by the way.)

Hugo Boss

Cole Haan












Fitzwell Piri











Stuart Weitzman












Stuart Weitzman

The Party Spirit

This is the partying-est week of my entire year. Really.

By that, I mean I'm hosting two parties this weekend and attending two next weekend. No, not crazy typical-college-student parties. A work party tonight (fondue), a German club party tomorrow (Feuerzangenbowle), and two Christmas parties next weekend--one of them a City of Willcox party I'm attending with my dad.

In light of all the merry-making and stress to have a perfect setup, I've come up with my idea of what the perfect hostess should be/have/do.

1. Enough to drink, and not just alcohol. Rule: have two kinds of beer (one light, one dark), a variety of wine (chilled white, room temp red, sparkling, etc.), milk water and orange juice, ice, hard liquor for cocktails (but pick one or two that you're willing to serve--your home is probably not a bar), coffee, tea in various varieties, and, if it's a seasonal party, egg nog of some variety.
2. Even if others are bringing food, make sure you have at least two "meal-type" items and several "dessert-type" items.
3. Fondue is ALWAYS an easy appetizer, entree and dessert option. Note: cheese, chocolate and oil fondues all have their own type of pot. You can't cook all three kinds in ceramic. Be prepared for what you're planning to make.
4. Clean your home first--extra clean. Scrub the bathroom (NOBODY wants to use a disgusting-looking toilet. Think hotel clean--but cleaner). Vaccuum, tidy up. Make it look nice.
5. A festive-looking centerpiece or flowers are always nice. I picked up a small evergreen centerpiece from Trader Joe's for $6--fragrant, festive and nice to look at.
6. Invite more people than you expect to show up. Otherwise, you'll invite 10 people and end up with four guests.
7. Have a backup plan for silence or boredom: a few board games (Trivial Pursuit always gets people going), Scattergories, Pictionary, etc., a movie (think about your audience before picking one up--no chick flicks for your work party if there are lots of men coming), or a "Would you rather" book. There are lots of options.
8. Dress the part. Even if you're getting together with old friends, it helps to make yourself look nice. Throw on dark jeans, an ironed shirt and do your hair.
9. Pester your guests without being a pest. Make sure everyone has something to drink (who wants something to drink), and check in every so often to make sure nobody's dying of thirst. Make sure your guests have eaten enough, are comfortable with the temperature or chairs, etc.
10. Don't stress. It's super easy to get all worked up. But hey, I didn't get home from the grocery store today until 30 minutes before my party was supposed to start. My hair was a mess, I was in cruddy clothes, and I hadn't cleaned the bathroom. But I didn't go bonkers. I was calm and collected, and I got everything together.
11. Demand your guests RSVP. It seems old fashioned, but it helps. It sucks to end up with a surplus of food the next day, especially if you're sick from eating too much of it the night before.
12. Allow your guests to help you clean up a little afterwards, but not too much. You're being the host/hostess, and it's your place. So you get to do the bulk of the work--and that's fair.

More Stacey London? Yay!

Quite frankly, I have few idols in the fashion world. People I admire, yes, and people who I feel may or may not be geniuses. But idols? That's a rare one for me. The only one I can think of, other than Coco Chanel, is Stacey London.

If you don't know who she is, that's OK. She's the star of TLC's "What Not To Wear", a makeover show that teaches people how to dress properly for their shape--no matter what size or shape they are. Like me, London was a Phi Beta Kappa German studies major in college. She also worked in magazines. She's of course got better credentials, as I haven't graduated yet and she's got experience on numerous fashion magazine's editorial staffs. But you see the appeal for me, I'm sure.

She had a talk show in the spring, the name of which I can't remember. It seemed like a good thing to me, but I never got a chance to watch it because we don't get TLC on our free basic cable (schade!).

Now, she appears to have revamped the show and renamed it "Fashionably Late with Stacey London." I watched the first airing on Thanksgiving weekend and enjoyed the show. You can watch some clips on YouTube.

During the Nov. 23 episode, London visited a makeup factory, talked with former model Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and gave away lots of presents to audience members. It seemed very similar to the spring show. I found it quite enjoyable from my parents' couch, but found this anecdote from an audience member very interesting.

If my roommate and I were privy to TLC airwaves, I'm sure we'd be spending Friday evening on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, watching the show. If you get the channel, you should do it for us.

Christmasumerism

That's right--Christmasumerism. This catchy phrase just burst into my brain a few minutes ago. I'm sitting at my desk at work, listening to "classic" Christmas music--choirs, symphonies, etc., taking on Christmas carols (my current favorites are the Medieval and Renaissance carols). I have to keep turning up the volume on my pitiful computer speakers, higher and higher, to compete with the students who populate the cubicles surrounding me.

Not only do these people practically shout at one another as they talk, but they have contemporary Christmas music blaring. That's right, the Bee Gees and Nick Lachey singing your favorite Christmas hits--one butchered tune at a time.

There's nothing wrong with contemporary Christmas music, don't get me wrong. It just reminds me of that catchy term...what was it again? Oh, yeah. CHRISTMASUMERISM.

Definition (if I were publishing my own dictionary): Christmas as celebrated in the United States of America in the 21st Century. The act of excessive spending surrounding the Christian winter holiday. Using Christmas as a profit machine.

Hmmm.

Duh. I hear people talking about this concept all the time, about the "commercialization of Christmas," as Charlie Brown put it. I'm not so bothered by the fact that the holiday has strayed so far from it's religious meaning. If we really want to return Christmas to its original habitat, then we need to go into the woods with a bonfire and have an orgy, to celebrate the Winter Solstice on December 21.

No, here are the real reasons the winter spend-a-thon that bothers me. (Yes, yes, we live in a high capitalist society. Some believe the U.S. would not-so-spontaneously combust if people stopped running up their credit card bills.)

• It's nice to receive gifts you like. It's great to see someone's face when they unwrap a gift they love. But the increased amount of acceptable consumerism surrounding each Christmas makes it difficult to compete with the last one. Say I bought you a Christmas present last year for $150. It was super nice--a digital camera, say. This year, I don't have as much money because I bought everyone nice presents last Christmas and had to spend the last 11 months catching up, reimbursing my savings account. So I only have $50 to buy you a nice present. What the hell can I buy you with $50 that's going to be nicer than a digital camera? Although they say, "it's the thought that counts," once you get a standard of expectation going, it's hard not to look like a cheap-ass if you can't keep up with the standard in future years.
• Religious dominance in a country founded on religious tolerance. I've been hyper-sensitive to this idea ever since I dated a Jewish kid in high school. Although children from religions other than Christianity grow up surrounded by the Christmas hullabaloo and understanding that they're not getting presents on Christmas like half their peers, I just wish those getting presents didn't have to rub it in their faces. Why do we call it "Christmas Break", anyway? (And let's not get me started on those people calling this "a Christian nation".) Not everyone is celebrating Christmas. I'm glad a lot of organizations are stepping up and calling it "Winter Break" and "Holiday Party", because those terms are non-denominational--just like winter should be. I'm also happy to see the Chanukah displays in a lot of stores becoming larger and more prominent. It's not the most important holiday in the Jewish religion, so it doesn't need to be a massive thing--but then again, Christmas is also not the most important holiday in the Christian religion...so why does Christmas need to be a massive thing? Point being: give equal play to holidays from different faiths.
  
• Christmasumerism = excessive spending = credit card debt = not enough money for your children to go to college, and if you're middle class with whopping credit card debt, your kids are screwed becuase FAFSA doesn't care how much debt you have and the kids are getting zilch because--ha, your expected family contribution to their education this year is x-thousand dollars.

There are plenty more reasons to loathe Christmasumerism or anything that reminds you of it. I think the three above pretty much take the (fruit)cake, though.