True Words

I’m fairly certain that truer words were never spoken when dealing with online stalkers/trolls.

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Shit My Professor Says

I’d been mulling over the idea for a while about starting a blog about the shit that my professors say, and I ended up finalising the idea the other day.  If you would like to check out the new blog, here is the link:

Shit My Professor Says

If you can’t hit the link, then go to http://www.smpsays.wordpress.com

Anyway, if you would like to add any quotes or stories from your professors, you can comment here or send an email to smpsays@gmail.com.  Since I’m launching the site right now, I will take just about anything you have to give me.

Thanks, and hopefully you guys will have some quotes to add.  Just give me the name of your college/university and the department (i.e. math, physics, history…).

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The Fashion Bitch

There’s a quote somewhere that says, “With blogs, never have there been so many people writing with so little to say.”  As odd as it sounds, I completely agree with this.  Blogs aren’t some new force to rival media outlets or really get your opinions out there.  They’re public diaries followed by close friends in order to keep in touch.  Sure, every once in a while, you’ll get a blog that is actually viewed by thousands of people, usually because they’re either about fashion or entertainment.

I’ll fully admit to lavishly looking through European fashion blogs about street style and the blogs of my friends, but I otherwise stay far from other people’s ramblings.  Which brings up a point.  If I don’t like to read blogs all that often, then why do I keep one?

In a way, it’s a vanity.  It’s the thought that someone out there will read it (even though I couldn’t care less), and I realise that many people start blogs for this express reason.  The reason I started mine was because I was behind in writing in my diary (which is not public in any form, may I add), and typing was simply faster.  So, I figured that I would keep a blog as a secondary diary when I had something interesting to say that maybe a wanderer would be slightly interested in.

Well, I’ve had my fair share of wanderers, and I’ve also had my share of friends read what I’ve posted.  But, it still comes back to “why do I really have a blog?”  I can’t answer that with anything other than the paragraph above.

And, here, I’m going to send you on another loop–I’m interested in starting a second blog.  Actually, interested is too light of a word; I’ve already started it.

As mentioned before, my guilty pleasure is to scroll through the pages of European fashion blogs (particularly Copenhagen Street Style and Dam Style) in search of what will inevitably be in style three years off.  Yes, the Midwest is three years behind European fashion and Japanese fashion.  Only in big cities (New York, Chicago, etc.) in the US will you see some of the newer styles.  So, you could call it interesting to see into the future.

Now, I’m not obsessed with fashion.  I don’t scour the malls for what’s just come into stock (because I don’t find American fashions appealing in the least bit).  But I will search Goodwills and thrift stores for the perfect shoes or skirt.  And I will buy things that are unique and then sew them up to fit better.  I like chic skirts with opaque tights, cardigans, and Rockport shoes.  And I’ve found that Europe seems to like that as well.  Granted, some of the styles are a little crazy (they will never be marketable to the US public), but I still like to muse over them.

I fully realise how vain I sound at the moment.  But let me sum this up in the best way possible: I dislike American styles and love European ones because they are more mature, classy, and unique.

So, let’s talk about the Midwest.  We’re one year behind the coasts, two years behind Japan, and three years behind Northern Europe.  Why is this?  Is it because we’re in a state of isolation?  Or is it because too many Midwesterners are content going to work, school, and shopping in sweatpants and an old t-shirt?  Occasionally, we see someone breaking that mould a little, but it’s not often enough.  Even on campus, I’ll see person after person in the same pair of grey sweatpants, and it saddens me to see the lack of originality.

Don’t take this as a slam, of course.  I want each person to wear what they want to wear.  It isn’t my choice to decide your wardrobe for you.  But, I have come under the thought lately that you should take care of yourself.  Take it from someone who dressed like crap for a good portion of her life, once you tug on something that is classy and mature and well-fitting, you feel a little better about yourself.  You may not feel rich and super-powered, but I find that you’ll respect yourself more.  So, it really all comes down to respect, I guess.  And if you really love your body, you’re going to want to treat it with nice things to show that respect.

So, this all boils down to the thought that I want to start a fashion blog called “Midwest Style Watch”.  It is a paradox, I realise, but I want to post photos that show that the Midwest is not only trying to catch up, but that there are people here who have interesting styles and quirks that you won’t find in an American Apparel catalogue.  Too many people get slammed for dressing “weird” when really it’s just another style that does not involve sweats and an Aeropostale shirt.  My goal is to show these individuals.

Now, it will be difficult.  It’ll mean carrying my camera at all times, finding the courage to confront people on campus to see if I can take their picture, and it will be a lot of work keeping up the blog.  But I am highly interested in starting this project.

So, wish me luck, and if you have any recommendations, ideas, comments, criticisms, questions, etc., they are greatly appreciated.  And when the blog is up and running, I’ll post a link.  Thanks, and watch for the fashion bitch. ;)

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Blogging, Qat, and Grown Women

Blogging seems to be contagious, as some of my best-friends have recently started their own blogs after my mentioning that I had one.  Granted, half of them were writing before on Facebook or the like, but I still feel slightly accomplished.

Okay, now I just feel self-centred.  Let me reiterate: I feel pretty happy that my friends are now blogging, too.  It gives me yet another source for easy stalking–you know, should Facebook’s stalker-feed ever lose its shine.

Thanksgiving break has been going… okay.  I am by no means getting along with my mum, but that’s to be expected.  Instead, I’ve been running errands with my step-dad and have been shutting myself in my bedroom with Cat.  Cat is my cat.  My mum calls her Sweetie, but I thought that was terribly unoriginal, so I call her Cat.  Yes, I was even less imaginative with naming her, but maybe I’ll spell it as Qat.  Ultimate win.

Right now, there’s homework that I should be doing, though.  Instead, I’m reading the same old Lord of the Rings things, listening to Foo Fighters, and staring out of my open window.  None of which are bad things, it’s just that I have over 100 pages to read for psychology and about an equal length for history.  Somehow, I doubt that I will be able to get everything done that I wanted to over break.  Guess I’ll be working hard when I get back, even though I wanted to be able to read everything now so that I only had to study come December.  Finals will not be fun, and I am most certainly not looking forward to them.  Hell week is not welcome.

At least I’ll be too busy cooking tomorrow to really be able to think about homework.  My tofurkey needs to cook along with my family’s normal turkey, and I’ll also be helping out my grandmother since she is hosting the Thanksgiving party for my extended family.  That will be fun (sarcasm).  Not the helping–I’m looking forward to that.  It’s the extended family.  To say the least, we’ve never really gotten along.  They’ve used me as their punching bag for far too long, and not even in the ways that I can joke off.  I make half of the cousins look like dumb asses, so the parents make themselves feel better about their children by pointing out all of my oddities.

“She sings in choir and plays piano?  How stupid.  Why doesn’t she like video games?”

“Missi’s going to Truman; guess she has no fun.”

“Oh look, I can sing just like Missi.” (Insert off pitch squealing here.)

“You actually get all A’s?  You must be a loser.”

“Lin, your daughter doesn’t drink?  What the hell does she do for fun?”

“Oh, well, J-‘s had a girl-friend for two years now, why isn’t Missi dating anyone?”

Etc.

It’s the type of immature stuff that middle schoolers like to say, except that these are fully grown adults who have nothing better to do than pick on a teenager.  I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty sick when an adult needs to make fun of a kid in order to make themselves feel better.  And as much as I scoff at this immature nagging, it really does bother me.  They’ve made it up in their mind so much that I’m nerdy and not really all that good but all talk that they won’t bother to see what I can do sometimes.  They won’t bother to see my on stage, and they later gossip with each other about how I’m not really that good, but that my mum must just be boosting her own confidence by speaking so highly of me.

Bull shit.

Grown Women, if you can’t find anything better to do with your time than harass a teenager, then you might as well off yourself now.  Because, you may think that it doesn’t matter, but it does when your children learn to do this same thing as you.  And I’d feel pretty bad if my child grew up to be arse to others.  But maybe that’s just me.

Sorry, though.  What a rant.  It’s just something that has been bothering me for, well, years.  Immaturity bothers me.  Remaining ignorant/uneducated purposely bothers me.  Uneducated sounding accents bother me.  Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at here: If you don’t try, I don’t try.  And that’s how it will go.

Hopefully they won’t harass me during Thanksgiving, though.  My success so far will make it difficult for them to resist, but maybe they will have become more mature lately.

Somehow, I doubt it.

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