Blah

This week has been dragging on and on. The weather sucks, I have nonstop homework, and I feel like I’m being cramped up with too many deadlines. Sure, spring break starts next Friday, but I just took an APUSH test last Friday and a Biology test yesterday. I don’t need to squeeze in another 2 chapters by next week.

It’s been raining all week. Actually, that’s a lie. It looks like it’s gonna rain but it doesn’t really. It’s just cloudy, humid and windy. I don’t even know if that’s possible. I heard it’s gonna snow in the NYC area, and that it’s going to create a Nor Easter for the area which will end next Friday. I swear, if there’s a black out this weekend or spring break, I’m going to scream. Last year, there was a major Nor Easter in the area, which caused floods, black outs, broken fences, huge trees in sidewalks (I had to walk in the middle of a busy road to get to my bus stop :/), contaminated water and one angry teenager: Me. Oh, and to make things worse, things didn’t get fixed for two days because it happened on a weekend and the electric company people didn’t want to pay their workers their weekend fee. So… yeah. If I’m not online for a few days, it might be weather related.

I don’t know if I’ll have free time this weekend because of homework and real life commitments.

And I have a pep rally tomorrow. Fun. It’s just for all the jocks to be annoying and obnoxious and cut class and crap. I always end up sitting near the obnoxious kids who troll in real life to annoy others. I’ll blog about their antics tomorrow. And my grade never wins any of the events because we don’t care.

I’d blog more, but I have a 23 paged outline to do for APUSH.

But to quote Degrassi, Whatever it takes, I know I can make it through.

Oh My Gosh

You know a week is going to be stressful when you barely finished your homework on a Sunday. :/ So yeah, I’m not gonna be on until… Spring Break?

But to make this post less depressing, here’s a funny video about the Sims online. It’s kind of long and I’d give it a PG 13 (The ‘riskiest’ thing they mention is WooHoo).

Degrassi- Hide & Seek Review

Here’s the review for the Degrassi episode Hide & Seek. I know, what a descriptive introduction.

A plot: Holly J is becoming sicker and sicker. Like, falling during class presentations, sore throats, and wetting herself. So she starts self medicating herself (Read: getting Tylenol, Advil and other medicine and hoping the problem would go away like most people would). I thought it was like since Holly J went through financial issues last season or something, she couldn’t afford going to the doctor, but I’m pretty sure Canada uses socialism, which means that everyone could go to the doctor. Holly J later woke up in a hospital bed with an IV thing in her arm, but later took it out and acted like nothing was wrong. By the end of the episode, she has to undergo kidney dialysis. Apparently, Holly J’s strep throat turned into kidney problems. o.O So remember kids, always go to the doctor!

B plot: Alli tries to go to Vancouver, but gets mugged and goes back to Johnny’s dorm. Johnny called Sav! So Alli goes back to the Bhandari household and they have an intervention for the problem and decide to go to family counseling together. I’m happy that the Alli plot is (hopefully) tied up for the season, she’s been in the last 4 episodes, and with the season ending in like 4 episodes, I’d rather see other characters focused on. Oh, and I’m happy that Alli got her life back together again.

C plot: Wesley tries to get a world record after reading his time capsule letter from 7th grade. He fails, but in the process, he gets a new girlfriend, Hannah. I wish they’d give Wesley, Connor, and Dave better plots that aren’t ripped off from Disney or Nick. But they’re almost juniors, so maybe the powers that be will decide ‘hey, some girls find nerds attractive. Let’s give them makeovers and make them hook up with people!’. But hopefully Hannah will stick around. Now, only Connor needs a girlfriend.

 

The new characters for next season seem interesting. There’s…

• Mo MacDonnel, an (unconfirmed) overweight senior. Maybe he’ll be a male version of Terri?
• Imogen Moreno, a junior who pretends to cut herself for attention. But she’s hiding a big secret: She’s boring.
• Jake Martin, a heartthrob who knows Clare from childhood? Great, this love triangle just turned into a love… T? With Clare being the perpendicular part, Eli, Fitz and Jake being the corners.
• Katie Matlin, a tomboy.

And it’s interesting to know what will happen once all the seniors graduate.

• The show could follow them to college, because we’ve only known them since they were sophomores and juniors, so it won’t be like what happened with Paige’s and Emma’s classes, because they still have potential storylines.
• New kids? Self explanatory.
• Someone gets held back: Fiona, because of rehab and the trial stuff (And it would be interesting to see Fiona survive without an emotional crutch) or Holly J (Because of her kidney dialysis and it would be interesting to see how she’d deal with being a super senior).
• The cast will become (gasp) small again.
• Another school gets burned down and needs to share with Degrassi, like Lakehurst in season 7 (Which reminds me, are they even trying to rebuild it?).

The first half of season 11 is gonna be the nightly telenovela format like the first half of this season (As in, nightly blog post reviews, maybe?) and it’s starting out with spring break of this school year.

Zynga

FarmVille has gotten a bit more interesting. They have events with achievements that can be completed quickly, and they have interesting themed stuff. Like they had Valentine’s Day mission during February, Spring missions during March and so on. They had a special Donate to Japan event thing which if you spent 25 Farm Cash (Their premium currency), they’d donate it all to Japanese Relief Groups, and you got a special crop. Don’t worry, they give you 1 free Farm Cash every time you level up, so I didn’t have to actually spend any of my own money to donate. But yeah, Zynga, their parent company, got yelled at last year for not donating the amount they promised to donate to Haiti, so I was kind of suspicious of donating, but since I wasn’t really spending the money, I thought ‘hey, why not’.

They have a new English Farm feature which gives you a second farm in ‘England’. But you need at least 4 friends to activate it and I have like 2 friends that actually play FarmVille, so yeah. I’m not gonna make fake accounts because that’s just sad, and I have a feeling FarmVille will change it in a few months so anyone above a certain level can play.

And YoVille has gotten increasingly worse. The items are more and more expensive and it’s never been popular. The graphics kind of suck. It’s like if the Sims was online. I remember how there used to be a social aspect to YoVille but now it’s just ‘go to the factory, get paycheck, log off’.

Zynga in general has a new reward feature which if you play a lot, you can get specific rewards via reward points. So far, the YoVille section of the website looks lacking, but the FarmVille one is promising. It’s still in BETA mode, though, so it’s probably gonna get revamped over time.

I Can Explain!

I’ve been away from the blog for a while because of a top secret government mission. Lol, just kidding. School as always. This weekend doesn’t look that good, though. I have bio homework (did it yesterday), an APUSH outline (for Tuesday), and an English research paper (I already have most of it done, I just have to make it MLA style and fix my conclusion. And do the citation stuff. And add more paragraphs if I still don’t reach the page requirement). Then I also have Spanish stuff for Tuesday but I don’t feel like doing it yet.

So… yeah. It’s the usual pre spring break schoolwork attack.

But more schoolwork means I’ll procrastinate more, so who knows? Maybe I’ll blog a lot today.

Yay

I found out that I miscounted the weeks we have until spring break, so now it's only 3 instead of 4. :D And there's an EA promotion thing going on with T Mobile, and it's moderately good free sports stuff from EA, so that brightened up my mood, too. I like how it's not just jerseys and uniforms, but it's actually usable sports content. No offense, but the Sims 3 CC makers aren't exactly in the 'sports playing crowd', so they make better casual or dressy stuff. Like, most CC I see is like hipster clothes, not FootLocker. And if you're wondering, the Hipster style is like, stripes, plaid, thick glasses, converse, skinny jeans, scarves, and 'those' kinds of stuff. But yeah, I wonder if the hoop content thing is playable.

The Future

In October, I took the PLAN, a practice standardized test for the ACT. There was an option for if you’d like to get email and mail from colleges, and I checked that box, because the test costed 10 dollars and I figured it could only help me.

Right now, I’m going through a bag of mail from colleges and I’m feeling overwhelmed. The colleges that I really like so far are either really far away, really expensive, or both. I know there’s financial aid, but financial aid could change in 2 or 3 years. And I’ve also been on the CollegeBoard website and I used their academic tracker thing and I’ve realized some stuff:

• 4 years isn’t enough for every elective I want to take.

Last year I took an elective for graphic arts. I thought it would be like Photoshop, but it’s actually for making stickers, T shirts, paper pads and more. I regret taking the class because it didn’t fulfill my visual arts requirement and it was one year long. Now I’m wishing I took other classes (Like business or journalism classes) so I could know more about what I want to do in the future. And the business class I planned on taking is only available for freshmen through juniors now, because apparently it was too easy and seniors took it to pad their schedules, so I can’t take it because I already am taking other classes next year.

• I should’ve take the SATs last weekend.

I didn’t really have a lot of homework, and I heard there was an essay prompt for reality shows. I took SAT prep in the first semester, and frankly, I know I’m gonna forget everything by next year. I’m taking math SAT prep next year, though. I had a 1570 and 1620 when I took practice ones. And if I didn’t do as well as I wanted to last weekend, I’d have more time to retake it. And then there are subject SAT tests…

• The entire education process is a monopoly.

Kids go to school to do good on state tests to get into better middle school classes for better high schools for better high school classes for a better college for a better job. Those ‘better classes’ I mentioned cost money, if you’re taking the AP tests with them. And then the SATs cost money, and the ACT, PLAN, Pre-SAT…. yeah. And only one company runs the SAT and AP tests, so they can set the prices to whatever they want.

 

On the plus side, I’ve realized what I kind of want to do in the future: Web Design or something Social Science or History related. Web Design, because I enjoy it and the Internet isn’t going away anytime soon, and Social Science/History because I’ve loved it as a child and it sounds genuinely entertaining.

I don’t want to mention any specific colleges that I’m interested in, just in case if they find my blog and whatnot. And like I said, it’s too early to decide.

I guess I’m worried about the future for a lot of things. Being away from home, driving, relationships, jobs, paying bills, raising kids… aaahh. Everything’s going so fast.

Whatever it Takes, I know I can make it through (Season 2)

Ironically, after blogging about blogging about too much Degrassi, I’m gonna make a post on… Degrassi!

So anyway, I started this season at Winter Break and I finished it Thursday night. This season was really good, but… I don’t know. It had it’s challenges.

For starters, the Teenick website doesn’t have a lot of the 22 episodes up. The episodes that were missing were

• When Doves Cry, Part 2. It dealt with child abuse, but greatly impacted the storyline. It also had a (14 year old) character have a suicide attempt.
• Careless Whisper. A boy named Marco is confused about his sexuality (By the end of the season, he admits he’s gay to his best friend). I don’t understand why they didn’t have this episode up. I mean, I know why, but so far, there are 2 episodes that have actually showed the 13 and 14 year old cast with condoms. This episode had a nice discussion on being gay with a counselor lady, which had questions teens would ask, like ‘isn’t it a sin?’, or ‘are people born gay?’. For the first question, the lady said ‘isn’t it more of a sin to not be who you are?’ and she said ‘some people say yes, others say no’ for the second question. The only homophobes were the actual kids, but seeing as they’re high school freshmen living in suburbia, I’m not too shocked.
• The 2 part finale, Tears Are Not Enough. It dealt with child abuse, death and dealing with the death of a loved one. It didn’t have anything that bad, although I cringed at the child abuse scenes (And I knew about them in advance! Thanks, spoilers! –_–) .

Some of their decisions bother me, because they chose to play episodes with rape and terrorism as the main plot, but they thought those were suitable for kids. I think it’s because TeenNick became lighter and softer as opposed to TheN, it’s original channel. And Careless Whisper confuses me, because TeenNick had 2 episodes last month about a gay teenage boy who was coming out to his Mom, and those 2 episodes featured make out scenes and whatnot. I’m not saying gay make out scenes are bad or threatening or anything, but apparently it’s not okay to talk about homosexuality but showing actual gay people (Well, characters) show their affection (I can’t word this paragraph without sounding like a homophobe, sorry D: ) is okay? Nick Cannon needs to get his act together.

And because some of the episodes were blocked, I had to go online to find videos elsewhere. I didn’t want to download anything because I know online TV links are shoddy if 900 pop up windows come when you load the page. And I wanted to find legal copies, too. I’m not just saying that to look nice, but SS knows how paranoid I get about those things. When Doves Cry part 2 was easy to find, along with Careless Whisper, but the finale was extremely hard to find. But I found the links eventually. I hope the rest of the seasons are up on TeenNick.com .

And the worst part? Most people became unlikeable this season. It’s time for my like-neutral-dislike chart!

Like

• Paige- The Cheerleader who got raped. She was one of the few characters who wasn’t affected by PISS (Plot induced stupidity syndrome). Intentional acronym.
• Craig- The child abuse victim. He’s into art (Well, photography and music). He’s friends with a lot of the guys, Emma and Manny, and Ashley. I think his actor was really great. Although, I wish he didn’t ruin the dance for Ashley and everyone else.
• Ashley! I still like her after her ‘Goth’ transformation. Her poem in Shout was nice, and I loved Dressed in Black.
• Terri. To be honest, I thought I was gonna dislike her after she left Ashley at the start of the season. And she was slipping down my list throughout the season. But she reclaimed her spot in the like section by comforting Craig after his Dad died.
• Ellie: Although she wasn’t in the main theme song, I really liked her. She was a great friend to Ashley and treated Marco well. And she stood up to Paige in the computer lab.
• Marco- the boy who’s gay. I like how he’s probably the only guy on the show who isn’t stupid or intolerable so far. I just hope all of his plots won’t revolve around his sexuality.

Neutral

• Liberty- Was Sarah unavailable when they shot this season? She was in like 3 episodes. But yeah. She got annoying in Relax. I never even knew Liberty liked sports.
• Emma – She disappeared this season, which was okay because she only was the hippie girl. She’s friends with Ashley, apparently, so that saves her from the Dislike section… for now.
• JT- He grew up from the younger brother to… the class clown. He was okay in the Science Teacher episode. I like how he still went to the Luau dance with Liberty.
• Sean- the drinking episode annoyed me because Sean got mad at Emma’s Mom for offering leftovers and he thought she meant it like he was a welfare case, and he called her judgmental. But he was homophobic to Marco a few episodes before, and he made fun of Ms.Hot Sauce Science Teacher whose name I can’t spell for being attractive. And he crashed Jimmy’s party and got kicked out. Why.
• Toby- He hasn’t seriously pissed me off this season. There’s nothing else I could say about him, besides the fact that him and Kendra are annoying together.

Dislike

• Spinner- annoying character, annoying plots. He looks like the older brother from Home Alone at this point of the show.
• Jimmy- annoying. Drake can’t act. Like, he tries to say everything in a narmy, serious tone, but he can’t pull it off.
• Manny- I try to like Manny. I really do. But she’s annoying. She reminds me of those annoying girls who misread any male communication as ‘he loves me’. She’s just annoying. Ugh. Unfortunately, the actress looks like my cousin at this point, and I heard Manny gets a slutty makeover later on in the show… . It doesn’t help that my cousin is currently 14 and Cassie was/is 2 years younger than everyone else.

Last night’s episode was good, but I’ll recap it once both parts are played, as in next week.

Question

Would you prefer if I made another blog for like Degrassi reviews and whatnot? Because I’m pretty sure my weekly (okay, bi-weekly) Degrassi updates are irrelevant-ish, and I kind of want my blog to be about my personal life and the Sims and stuff, not just a review blog, if that makes sense.

Like, I know most of the blogs that have my link don’t have it up for the Degrassi parts, but I think having a separate blog for one tag would be pointless. Maybe I could put other reviews on it too, or something.

Then again, this season ends April 22nd (Good Friday, I believe), so after that, there’s probably gonna be less Degrassi posts. Never mind, I watch it online, too.

So… what do you think?

Friday, Friday

When I was a kid, there used to be the occasional plot on shows and cartoons when a character had some musical skills. They’d pay a bunch of money to some scammer for a ‘recording session’ and they’d get an address for the ‘recording studio’. Once they’d go, however, it would be an abandoned building and they’d be scammed from con artists.

This weekend, I watched it happen in real life.

There’s a company called Ark Music Factory. They convince Stage Parents that their teenage daughter is ‘the one’, so they pay a lot of money to get a video, song and promotions for their new ‘superstar’. The videos are laughable (They make Disney look amazing) and they’re never taken seriously.

And what was this recent result?

It’s about a girl’s obsession with Friday. Except she sounds like a 13 year old Ke$ha, she sings lyrics about the days of the week, her friends are horrible dancers and she’s autotuned like hell. And do I see Usher in there, too?

And now, that video has gone viral. There’s even a Time article on her! She’s been trending on Twitter for God knows how long, and she’s becoming an Internet joke. The poor girl is probably around 15 and just wanted to be famous, or had a Lohan like parent who forced her to do this. And now her entire reputation is ruined. She probably lost all of her friends, boy or girlfriend, and millions of people are making fun of her online. Someone’s gonna need a self esteem seminar.

Apparently that company has other videos as well. Rebecca just was the ‘chosen one’ to end up with Internet fame.

But yeah. Due to some random company’s greed and Usher wanting to find Justine Bieber, Rebecca Black is probably going to have to change schools.

Please, please let this be a stealth parody.

Generations

I have mixed feelings on Generations. The trailer didn’t seem exciting or even new. I feel like the either have that from 2009, ie the base game, or they had to rush it before Amazon had the news before they did, like what happened for Ambitions last year.

The only exciting thing so far from the trailer seems to be home videos (Did we already have that?) but I could only watch what I already played so many times, you know? But maybe it could be edited to have stuff like custom TV shows. I also thing the possible magic part seems fun, but I’d be more interested if it’s like magic-magic. Like stuff from the Sims 2, or what I’ve seen from legacies. Not just random moodlet spells. But then again, apartments were ruined. So magic, which was from the same EP, probably will also be ruined. Would it be too big of a wish to expect decent kid’s and elder stuff?

Dislike… well, I don’t want to write a novel. I don’t like the pranks because they seem more malicious than ‘humor’ ish or Mischief night style pranks. Like ‘I stole your bills and you’re getting evicted because of my prank LOL!’ than buzzers and whoopee cushions. Not that kind of whoopee, game show fans.  

I feel like this EP will be more at home stuff than clubs or new lots. Like, at least Ambitions had new places to socialize with people like the Laundromat or salon. Sure, they’re not like the watering holes of spouse hunting (like Clubs), but those NPCs sometimes had family members or something. Besides, custom content makes anyone look like a model.

Oh yeah, clubs! I haven’t really had the time to play them yet, but I wish they’d have clubs for kids. Not like pedo bait places, but after school clubs where kids could befriend others with similar interests. Like science club for genius Sims/Sims with logic points, art club for any ‘art’ trait Sim or ‘art’ skill (There’s no way I’m writing down 90 million traits and skills down), sports teams, orchestra and so on. And they could be rabbit holes that meet once a week after school or something. So this way, spouses could have stuff in common, not just be high school sweethearts.

No Title

First of all, welcome back TMN! We all miss you.

The next part of the post is a rant. Mean? Yes. Uncalled for? Probably.

No offense Vidkid, but I think you overreacted. I understand that sometimes some jerks overreact on your blog, but last night’s post wasn’t that rude. Maybe enough to close comments, but not enough to make your blog private. And we all didn’t comment on your blog negatively, so just because a few people were mean to you, that doesn’t mean you need to hide your entire blog. I understand this post is going to be viewed negatively and I’m going to be antagonized for my opinion, but guess what? That’s it. My opinion. Nothing else.

A few years ago, I had a Pokémon fansite. I got several rude comments from an unknown visitor. He wasn’t anonymous, but everyone literally knew each other in that community, so yeah. But I didn’t delete that chatbox or hide my website or anything. I just checked his IP address and ironically, it was the same IP address as my frenemy from that community. And that week, we were enemies. So yeah. And then I simply told him ‘look, your IP address matches so-and-so’s. Explain.’ . But the frenemy said it was his cousin staying over his house (who ironically also knew a lot about web design ) and his cousin just trolled. The only outside source that got involved was my other friend who was hosting the website at the time, and soon, the comments went away. I was 14, the frenemy was 13 and the hostess was 17. But we managed to keep it under control. So if a bunch of teenagers could control their problems, why can’t young adults?

And I got into a Facebook fight once. This girl, who I’ve blogged about in August I think, was acting completely psycho. Like, writing on my wall, status, wall posts, and everything else with… messages. Everything you could think of. From apologies to threats. But I handled it well and maturely (and I even got 4/5ths of the grade to be on my side ) by responding to her calmly. She just hid her wall, blocked anyone who didn’t completely support her, and printed out selected screenshots to the principal. Most of the grade thought she acted stupid about it, because she couldn’t even fight her own battle (which she started). My point is, you can’t just hide from your battles all the time. Sometimes, you gotta deal with negative people and comments, too.

*prepares to get ostracized*

One Week

Has it really been one week since my last post? Sorry, school was time consuming last week and I was too lazy to post anything. And March in general is just a bad time, spare time wise, so… yeah. Nothing else to say, unless if you want a random post about me complaining for everything.

However, my latest blogging goldmine, Degrassi, had a new episode last Friday. It was awful.

• Sav acted like a jerk to Alli, who is now suspended from her private school. Did someone forget to tell me it’s ‘hate Alli month’?
• Eli and Clare had a boring plot. Fitz came back, and now he’s a born again Christian. Unlike other fans, I was excited to see the new Fitz and if he’d make Clare & Eli break up. They didn’t. But Eli is being strange and protective over Clare, and believes that Clare can’t talk with Fitz. This was before he mocked Clare’s religion and Christianity. Adam, the voice of reason, sided with Eli on this one because he almost stabbed Eli @ Vegas Night. Eli poisoned Fitz’s drink and got him suspended or expelled or something and actually ruined Fitz’s life. I’d be scared and stuff too if I was Eli, but Fitz only almost stabbed him because of what Eli did. I’m not an EClare fan, if you can’t tell.  
• Jenna is being an OCD pregnant teen. KC is a slacker dad. Jenna feels that KC isn’t taking an active role in the baby’s life, so she drags him to her prenatal class thing. Then some relay race-diaper change game thing that KC won made Jenna feel like she’d be a bad parent. But the instructor lady was like ‘oh you can babysit my son’ and Jenna said yes… but we didn’t see the babysitting actually happen. Next week, maybe?

Season 2 > Season 10. In so many levels. But I’ll wait a few more episodes into season 2 (I’m on like episode 9 or something) for my character review.