Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Earthquake?

Wow, there was an earthquake over here. Well, not here here (NJ), but in Virginia. Virginia is like 8 or 9 hours away from here, but we felt it here in NJ. Even people as north as Rhode Island felt it. It was weird because it was a 5.9 which is something California would be getting. My couch was shaking and I didn’t think anything was going on. Then all of the news stations started covering it and I was like ‘oh my gosh, that was an earthquake!’. Thankfully everything is alright so if there aren’t any aftershocks, we should be safe. But I have to cancel my plans for today (just going to the mall Smile with tongue out) because of earthquake safety stuff.

Did you feel the earthquake where you live?

Friday, August 19, 2011

The Drive to Drive

I don’t feel like driving yet, even though I turned 16 in January. Over here it’s a big deal if you can’t drive because you have to take the bus to school or your parents drop you off, so if you get a study in senior year then you can’t leave the school. And all the part time jobs are literally highways away so it’s not like you could walk to work. But everytime I think about getting my permit, it just feels like one big panic attack. For starters, I don’t think I’d be a good driver. I can’t even stay focused in Mario Kart Wii without flinching or pausing to let go and look around for a few seconds (It’s just keeping my hands on the wheel that’s annoying. I could pay attention in school and stuff). And a lot of the ‘etiquette’ sounds complicated. Like the 3 car distance rule thing. Apparently you have to be 3 cars behind someone on the roads. How do you know? What if I suck at visualizing the 3 car distance? Or the intersection stuff. There were a lot of factors for intersections. Like waiting for the other car, realizing if you go first because of distance, how to turn the light thing on that says which way you’re going… . And I actually did pay attention in Driver’s Ed. It’s just been a while.

And then getting my permit seems like a long, impossible process. Do I go to the DMV first? A driving school? Is the driving school just a fancy way of driving in an empty parking lot with your parent? How long does it take to get an appointment? What if my driving instructor is rude? In my Spanish class a kid was talking about how his driver was really rude to him, and then a bunch of other kids were like ‘Oh, you got stuck with him too?’. What if I get stuck with someone who’s too nice to tell me I’m driving incorrectly? Google hasn’t helped answer my questions. I know I just have to ask someone, but anytime I tell someone I don’t have my permit yet, they look at me like I’m an alien.

Then the entire thing against people with driving anxiety bothers me. Over here in NJ, you need your permit for 6 months before you get your license. But it has to be 6 months before your 17th birthday (I suck at explaining things) so my birthday is January 31st, so I needed to get my permit by July 31st if I wanted my license on my 17th birthday. However, I have midterms on my 17th birthday, so I’d have to go to the DMV and wait for my test, do the driving test thing and then come home and study for 2 midterms and then celebrate my birthday. I already celebrate my birthday on the weekend closest to it now because of midterms and the driving test would be the last thing I need to make my birthday more stressful. Not to mention, the roads are covered in snow, ice, and slush, so the driving test thing would be harder. But when I told my cousin this, she acted like I was being so high maintenance! Honestly, just because she doesn’t care about school or grades doesn’t mean I don’t. And what if I failed my license test thing? Then I’d be depressed about that on my birthday, lose time to study, be upset about that for the rest of my midterms and the week, then I’d have to reschedule. I know this is all melodramatic and stupid but people act like if you can drive you have to drive. And my other cousin (lower 30’s) acted surprised when I told her I didn’t get my permit yet at a family party. She was all ‘driving isn’t scary’ and stuff, but later at that same party, her mother told me that she didn’t get her permit until she was in her 20’s because she was scared of driving. Now she lives in the city so she just uses public transit. And when she has to drive, her husband just drives for her. So yeah. Her advice wasn’t helpful at all.

And apparently Hollywood and other show producers have no idea how getting a car works. I hate how every character could drive perfectly at the age of 16 and gets their own car during junior year, too. My cousin (notice a pattern?) got an average (I don’t know. I’m not a car person.) looking car that wasn’t pimped out and stuff for her graduation. The only reason her sister (cousin 1 in this post) got a car at the beginning of senior year was because her Mom or Dad or someone was buying a new one and they didn’t want to get rid of it or something. Heck, when I walk near the student parking lot at my school, most of the cars look average and from the mid-2000’s, with maybe one or two pimped out brand new car each row. But on Degrassi, any character who could drive not only drives, but has their own car! Eli Goldsworthy has a hearse, while Jake Martin has a pick up truck. Peter Stone had a brand new convertible. And all three were only juniors! I think I remember Peter’s Dad being a car salesmen, but still. I remember my driver’s ed teacher telling us to get average first cars because we’d be first time drivers and accidents would be really likely then, so it wasn’t worth it to get a pimped out car. I could think of way more fictional high school students who had a car then didn’t.

And people act like just because I don’t have my permit now, I never want to drive and I’m gonna live in my parents’ basement for the rest of my life. Obviously I want to drive. Just not yet. And saying ‘you could go to the mall 24/7!’ isn’t a great promise because I need to be with a licensed driver over 21 until I’ve been driving for a year or something, so basically a permit is useless. I mean, you could only have 1 licensed passenger with you, so why not let them drive?

Okay, I think I’m done. Smile with tongue out

Edit: Oh yeah, remember how a few weeks ago I said that 90’s Nickelodeon took over Twitter?

twitter

Here’s that screenshot. Only Sister Sister wasn’t from 90’s Nickelodeon but it was still from the 90’s so it counts. Smile with tongue out And Mano A Mano in el Bano was promoted so yeah. They still haven’t changed the lineup, though.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Sims 2 Things I’d Want in The Sims 3

I’ve never played The Sims 2 but there are several features I’d really want in The Sims 3.

Career Rewards- Career Rewards look really fun and interesting. It makes careers useful after your family doesn’t need the money anymore (which happens after a few generations in legacies). The Obstacle Course one, the plastic surgery one, the pinball machine thing, and the koi pond look interesting. I like that there were goofier rewards, too.

University- Maybe I’ve been watching too much Undeclared lately, but college looks fun on TV and it probably would be interesting in TS2. I guess it’s probably because I’m going into my junior year at high school and everyone is all ‘omg college SATs scholarships!!!!’ and stuff but the scholarships and majors intrigue me. Smile with tongue out 

The old supernatural stuff- TS2 had more interesting life states, in my opinion. Plant Sims, Witches, Werewolves, Zombies and Aliens look more interesting than what TS3 offers, IMO. And apparently they have hybrids? The TS3 Simbot and Imaginary friend are really similar to me, but then again, this is EA that we’re talking about. Smile with tongue out And does the Mummy even have any advantages?  Maybe EA is saving all the good ones for last. Eye rolling smileAnd apparently Pets is bringing a unicorn? Honestly? That sounds so stupid. You could bring a unicorn with a magic EP but you can’t bring a werewolf with any other EP. And as least the other ones were human-shaped. I swear. EA’s next life state is gonna be a rock or something even stupider.

The usual stuff- seasons, old careers, less glitches, a company that cares, etc.

Okay, so this entire rant could be summarized as ‘If you want these features, play The Sims 2.’, as Jarsie would say. That’s a good point, actually. Especially with all the collections that are 20 dollars. I could own the entire series for less, I could skip EPs that I’m not interested in, and the game would probably work better on my laptop. The only thing I’d miss would be Create a Style and the trait system.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Rambling

LiveJournal is seriously complicated for a blogging website. It’s impossible for me to successfully use the ‘read more’ part without wasting half an hour trying to figure out how to use it. At least on Blogger and Tumblr you just press ‘split post’ or you press ‘insert read more break’ and it works. But I shouldn’t have to go to the FAQ each time I want to use the ‘read more’ option.

Oh, and I hate Blogger’s new website. I can’t use it without the window freezing up. And I want to update the blog links section but I can’t because of Blogger.

In other news, NewSea left TSR. Good for them, I guess. Looks like I lost all my reasons to check PMBD, then. Smile with tongue out

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The 90s are not All That

So TeenNick recently started airing old 90s shows at midnight. Everybody else is happy and I should be too, but I’m not. List time. And the second person refers to people on my newsfeed, not you specifically. Smile with tongue out 

  • I saw several people my age (born in 1995) or younger (1996, 1997, etc) last night on my Facebook news feed with ‘yay it’s like my childhood again <3’ and stuff. By 2000, people born in 1995 would be 5 AT MOST and people born in 1996 would be 4 and so on. How much of your childhood do you remember from when you were 5 and younger? Especially what you watched? And a lot of these stuff strike me as older kids/ tween and up stuff. When I was a kid, I watched whatever was on PBS and Kids WB and stuff. I barely watched Nickelodeon, and if I did, it wasn’t Clarrisa Explains it All (which ended before I was born) or Kenan & Kel, but cartoons (Rugrats mostly Smile with tongue out). And I know there’s syndication and everything but seriously. And a lot of people didn’t even refer to Clarissa as the show, but literally ‘the blonde girl’. If you can’t name her now, how would you remember watching her over a decade ago?
  • The seizurific commercials. I don’t really have vision problems or anything, but there’s this one commercial that has clips of random shows and cartoons in 10 seconds… except they all flash before my eyes while I try to figure out which clip belongs to which show. For some reason the video won’t embed in here, so here’s a link.
  • They got rid of Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, which ironically got cancelled because of low ratings. I don’t care much for Freaks & Geeks but it was pretty good and Undeclared was really funny. They only started airing them in the middle of June, too! I get they both barely have 40 episodes combined but still.
  • They’re airing them at the worst time of the day (night?). I get that it’s for teens and up so they could stay up late, but on the forums I visit most people were commenting how they had to TiVo it. Also, once the school year starts nobody will be able to watch it, and they’ll cancel it. They could air it several times a day, like from 12 to 2 PM, 6 to 8 PM, then one more time from 12 AM to 2 AM so more then one crowd could watch it. Okay, so that would be 1/4th of their programming, but still.
  • And the worst offender… THEY SHOULD BE DOING THIS ON A REGULAR BASIS ANYWAY. The N used to show All That, Caitlin’s Way and other shows frequently. Now it’s just Dan Schneider’s old shows, including some that currently air on Nickelodeon. I don’t mind how often they show What I Like About You, Drake & Josh, or even Zoey 101 but I get so pissed off when they show iCarly, Victorious or Big Time Rush. We shouldn’t even have to be asking for it. Instead of showing iCarly or Spongebob for 20 hours a day, they could air these shows on Nickelodeon instead.
  • Oh, and they’re milking it for all it’s worth. In every commercial, I see a Facebook or Twitter logo telling us to talk about it on Facebook or Tweet about it. During the actual shows, they show the twitter # (hashtag?) telling us to go online as if we forgot. And it worked. Last night most of the trending topics on Twitter related to the 90s are all that. I don’t have a screenshot on the laptop I’m typing on now but I’ll have it up later.

I guess it’s nice that they’re doing this, but I feel like it’s for the wrong reasons. And I’d like some reunions or other special features. I could go on YouTube to watch the same things whenever I want.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Melodramatic Teen Angst

I feel so blank lately. School ended a month ago (Shit, has it been that fast already?) but I still feel like I just got out of school so I could get away with doing nothing. I’ve just been so lazy lately that everything feels like a chore now. Like I have a summer reading assignment to just talk about my positive/negative reactions, comment on a literary style, talk about 2 short passages and compare and contrast and normally I’d be able to finish that up within a day or two but in the summer it just takes forever to get stuff done. I feel like getting rid of everything, Facebook, this blog, my LiveJournal. I don’t know why. I don’t talk to anybody at all on Facebook besides saying happy birthday so it’s basically useless to me at this point. I barely use this blog anymore because I have nothing to say. I’ve grown out of writing legacies so that makes my LiveJournal a waste of Internet bandwidth.

Okay, so this is probably just a combination of me procrastinating on my summer reading and learning how to drive in addition to watching Freaks and Geeks and knowing myself I’ll probably go under another personality metamorphosis before summer ends.

In other news, Rest in Peace Amy Winehouse. I’m not gonna lie and say I listened to her non-Rehab songs or ignore the druggy-jokes I made about her frequently but yeah, RIP.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Casey Anthony Trial Rant

I think that the Casey Anthony trial thing has been taken completely out of hand. People are treating it like it’s a soap opera or a reality show, when it’s just a trial. I understand that people are emotionally invested to Caylee but goodness. Things like this go on everyday and just focusing on Caylee is a slap in the face to other victims. Not to mention, Casey Anthony will probably be getting a book deal, a LifeTime movie, and weekly updates online.

I think Casey’s not the only one who’s cashing in on this. HLN, a ‘fluff news’ network, has their greatest ratings ever because of this trial. They’ve added way more commercials to their programming as well as forcing all of their anchor people to cover the trial. I understand Nancy Grace should talk about it because she’s been covering this since 2008, and Jane Valez Mitchell kind of covers this kind of stuff, but Dr. Drew, aka the Celebrity Rehab guy, normally doesn’t cover this kind of stuff. He normally covers things like celebrity addicts or that kind of stuff, but unless if he’s interviewing people who are addicted to trials or addicted to killing children, then Casey Anthony is irrelevant. And Joy Behar usually covers lighter things like interviewing random people. Casey Anthony doesn’t belong there either. Showbiz Tonight exists to basically cover trainwrecks like Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen’s every move, and now they’re covering ‘celebrities’ like Casey Anthony. Yes, because killing your child is totally celebrity like.

HLN doesn’t even produce their own content for this trial. They interview people on the streets, quote Facebook comments, and play clips from the trial. Then they’ll have Nancy Grace shouting for a few minutes and cut to commercials.

I feel like Nancy Grace is the wrong person to cover this. She’s too shouty and loud and way too emotionally invested in this. She’s just encouraging mob mentality. And she actually drove someone to suicide. In 2006, she interviewed Melinda Duckett and just acted crazy towards her, and then Melinda killed herself. And Nancy claims her interview had absolutely no impact whatsoever! What a heartless bitch! Ugh.

I don’t know what to think about this trial. I don’t know if Casey actually killed Caylee, but even if she didn’t, she should be arrested for not reporting her missing daughter for 31 days. I hope she doesn’t try to make money off of this trial.