Friday, October 28, 2011

Friday Five: Favorite Time Wasters

I love the internet - I've made that known before, but here are five of my favorite sites. When my house needs to be cleaned, I have papers to write, or could be doing a whole slew of other productive tasks, I am lured into these sites:

1. Hello Giggles
This is a cute site that has funny articles and although a bit hipster-y, it is still fun. Also, my favorite new actress - Zooey Deschanel is one of the creators of it.

2. Television Without Pity
Probably my all time favorite site as it combines snark and television. It's like it was created just for me.

3. Pinterest and Etsy
I'm not a member of Pinterest - I don't want to get sucked in too deep, but I like going to it for ideas for parties, crafts, etc. Etsy is equally as good for one of a kind items and craft ideas too.

4. STFU Parents
If you've ever dealt with a Facebook friend who overshares everything on their status updates or can't stop talking about their kids every two minutes, this is the site for you. The level of oversharing is on a whole differet level.

5. Go Fug Yourself
The Fug Girls are super funny and their take on celebrity fashion is hilarious. I have laughed out loud numerous times when reading that site.

Go check them out if you haven't already. You can thank me later!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Snarky Sunday: Can I Take Your Order Please?

How frustrating is it when you are in line at a restaurant (i.e. McDonalds, Starbucks, Tim Horton’s) and the person in front of you is taking twenty years to figure out their order? Honestly, I could strangle them. It irritates me so much. It’s like, what else are you going to order at McDonald’s but a freaking Big Mac? And really, if you’re at a Starbucks, chances are it isn’t your first time, so today isn’t going to be the day that you try something new – just get your regular drink and move to the side.

A “gourmet” donut shop opened in our city and I wanted to see what the fuss was about, so one day when we were going to our cousins’ house for brunch, my husband and I went there to pick up some donuts for everyone. First of all, the place was a joke. I was so irritated just by walking in there – it was all modern and pink and lame, and took itself way to seriously about how awesome and cool it was. Shut up, donut shop. You sell overpriced donuts in a craft box to hipsters – you aren’t as cool as you think you are.

There were two women in front of us (they were together), and two people behind the counter. They had probably 8 different flavours of donuts on sale. They were talking to the cashier/donut wrangler and asking what the best donut was, and what would they recommend, and which is the most popular. And then the employee went into detail about every single donut and the ingredients, and how everything was natural, and home made and blah, blah, blah. I wanted to tap them on the shoulder and tell them that my husband was about two minutes away from turning into the Incredible Hulk and was going to flip the counter over if they didn’t hurry the fuck up and pick something. Of course, after all of the fuss, they ended up getting two of each flavour. Seriously? There are people behind you waiting – make up your damn mind! I get if there isn’t a line – sure, take your time, but when people are waiting – chop, chop people, let’s get moving!

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Dry Spell

After my hot streak blogging three times in one week, I had a bit of a dry spell over here. Mainly due to poor planning and real life getting in the way. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on my masters, and this semester I got really cocky for some reason and registered for two classes. Plus work full time. Plus the CW Monday night line up – I can’t lie, I love the Hart of Dixie. It’s easy to see how writing two papers due on the same day sort of got away from me. Needless to say, I completed them, spending way more time than I care to admit trying to properly format them to APA requirements. Seriously, why do they change the rules so often? So unbelievably frustrating when you think that you’re done, and then have to go back and spend so much time trying to decipher if it’s one or two spaces after a period, and trying to figure out how to properly format your page headers.

I received feedback from the one paper already and I think I kind of love my instructor and his snark. Here is some of his feedback (emphasis mine):

A very good submission. Well reasoned and supported by solid examples. Other than some irritating semantic and syntactical errors, your paper is reflective of a good grasp of the underlying concepts and the hypothetical application of the associated methodologies/approaches. A good read.

I’ve actually never had someone put in writing that I irritated them, so kudos to him and his boldness. Quite frankly, it endeared me to him, and obviously, it didn’t irritate him too much – I ended another dry spell with this paper. I finally got my first A on a paper since Sociology 201. Yes, you heard that correctly. The only A I ever received in my academic career was for a Sociology 201 class during my first year of university. I remember it like it was yesterday: the year was 1999, Justin and Britney were still dating, I was seventeen years old and it was still the nineties! It’s not that I crashed and burned after that, but I hovered in the B- to B+ range, with a few Cs and A-’s for good measure. I never did reach that elusive A again. Until now. It took me long enough but the academic dry spell is finally over. Now if I could only figure out APA.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Snarky Sunday: Social Media

I love the internet. I think it's awesome. I love that I can "meet" people on the internet, try and build an online invitation business and keep in touch with long lost friends through Facebook.

However.

How annoying is it when you are on Facebook and your friends have updated their fifteenth status update of the day, and it is riddled with spelling errors? I'm not talking about a typo here and there, I'm talking about words spelled totally incorrectly, and no * in the comments to indicate they realize their mistake. Drives me bananas. Even more grating is when you're on Twitter and you follow someone famous, and their tweets are riddled with errors.

I follow Nina Dobrev from Vampire Diaries. I love her, I love the show, I love that she is dating Damon in real life. I think they are awesome. I wonder if it's awkward on the set with them and Stefan, considering in real life she's dating one brother, and on the show, she's in love with another? It just seems like there might be some tension there, trying to balance her real love life with her love life on a scripted television show. About vampires. ANYWAY. The other day she tweeted "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Don't get me started on people who use famous quotes or inspirational messages as their status updates/tweets, but then she went and attributed the quote to none other then Leonardo Dicaprio. Is she kidding me? I love Leo as much as the next girl - I could probably recite the words to his version of Romeo and Juliet because I only saw it about 25 times when I was in grade 10, but I am pretty sure we shouldn't be giving him credit for that quote. Low and behold, a quick Google search indicates it was someone named Lord Anton.

And this is the problem with the internet. All the filters are down. There is no hiding behind an aura of mystery or coolness. People are too accessible. Like is it really so hard to run a spell check, or do a quick Google search and (make an attempt) to check facts? The same thing that makes the internet amazing is the same thing that is destroying it. IT'S LIKE WE'RE KILLING THE INTERNET!