As I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life this summer, I'm going through the treacherous process of applying to internships. This week, a bunch of companies came to our school and made presentations about why we would want to work for them, and while I was sizing up the competition (kid in a suit with white socks? non-social Asians galore? yeah, I looked pretty good in comparison) I couldn't help but notice all these companies wanted us to work for them for free.
I don't know who came up with that idea, but it's a pretty terrible one. Even worse was whoever came up with the idea that students had to take a college course in conjunction with their internship. Now not only do I have dangerously low motivation while performing menial office tasks, but I have to waste 2 credits on it...instead of educating myself in the art of sailing, guitar playing, or any of the other 2 unit classes that will help me bolster my resume...with the ladies.
So not only are you not getting paid, but you're essentially paying to workand you have to write various papers about your internship experience for the class. How did you get that big of a shaft? that's what she said It is completely baffling how we got to this point.
And I've heard very disturbing rumors from my elders about the c word lately, so I could really use the money to save up before the teet runs dry. (definition of the c word - cut, as in cut off)
Many of the companies were saying they can't afford to pay interns because of the recession (even $8/hour? really? would that be making a killer dent?). Maybe it's payback/justified for our generation since we get our news, music, TV shows, etc. for free.
Still, on donut runs, I'd like to think "this job sucks" because I am a lowly pawn who gets no respect, instead of "this job sucks" because I'm being paid less than a sweat-shopper.
I made the mistake of catching a clip of some weird addictions show where the woman habitually ate foam insulation. Now I can't get the sensation of how that must feel in your mouth of out my head - I keep imagining the taste of it in my mouth when I touch anything that resembles it. It's been more than a month and I can't stop. It's getting to the point where I feel the need to try it so it will be over.
The thing about late-night posts as a Mormon is that you don't have any excuse for any rambling/uninteresting/racist thoughts you may post late at night because you're never hyper-caffeinated, drunk, or under the influence of anything (EXCEPT LIFE!). So here are my late-night stone cold sober, random thoughts:
As a Mormon, I took interest in an interview with Rachel Bilson (of The OC fame) mentioning she had Mormon friends and had even been to church once. I mention this because there is a vacancy in my female celebrity crush - previously occupied by Hilary Duff and most recently Natalie Portman, these women have decided to rip out my heart and get engaged (and pregnant in Natalie's case - double shot to my heart). So I'm on the prowl for a new impossible love interest. I am considering Ms. Bilson but Kristin Kreuk (pictured in all her glory below), who I just saw on Chuck, has me intrigued. She is literally the PERFECT blend of Asian-American-ness. I'll keep everyone posted. In case you were wondering, my male celebrity crush of Taylor Kitsch remains constant.
I am not minding this season of American Idol. I find Steven Tyler incredibly entertaining, which is interesting because I've never been smitten by Aerosmith's music, but his mannerisms and spontaneity keep me watching to see what he does next. He brings back some of Paula's zaniness that was sorely missing last season. Also, J-Lo in HD is mind-boggling - the woman doesn't have a flaw!
I am growing to enjoy Community more this season - the most recent Dungeons & Dragons episode was awesome, which should be sign enough to watch this show because it made that topic interesting. Also, 30 Rock (along with Modern Family) is the most consistent comedy - I find myself laughing out loud multiple times a episode, something I can't say for The Office mainly because I can't stand Erin and Gabe separately, let alone together.
I won my first contest! Actually, that's a lie, I won a teddy bear at a middle school Valentine's Day dance, but this one is legit. I won a one-year subscription to Rdio, a music streaming site that can also stream from your phone. I'm pretty proud of myself and excited to get into all the Coachella artists I need to check out.
Watching various concerts on palladia (if you don't know about this channel, they basically show concerts all the time - I'm in love) has me convinced I need to see 1) La Roux and 2) Paul McCartney in concert. The clock's ticking on the latter so I should get moving.
I am going to a friend's wedding on Saturday and am having a facial catastrophe - why is it though that at all weddings I've been to/pictures I've seen acne seems to disappear for a day? Maybe I just know too many beautiful, clear-skinned people. I have a feeling on my wedding day, I'll have a redux of the monster that took up residence on my nose a couple years ago (that's the monster in action in the picture above and yes, I have pictures of the most significant zits in my life).
I'm pained that Justin Bieber was booed at a Knicks game - why the hate New Yorkers? He's such a nice kid.
I don't think I've ever been less excited for a Super Bowl. I just don't like the Packers and I take personal issue with Ben Roethlisberger and his dealings with women. Plus, halftime is The Black Eyed Peas - Fergie is terrible live and I have not enjoyed the singles from their last two albums. My predictions: Packers lead at halftime, I go to the bathroom during BEP's set and miss Fergie's wardrobe malfunction (this happened to me w/ Janet Jackson and I have never forgiven myself for the opportunity I missed to see guilt free nudity), and the Steelers win.
A while back, I was trying to pick a major and was told taking a future employment test would help me decide. Here were my results for the top ten occupations I should consider based on my interests/strengths.
1) College Instructor
2) Special Education Teacher
3) Social Worker
4) Administrative Assistant
5) Bookkeeper
6) Foreign Language Teacher
7) Business Education Teacher
8) Parks & Recreation Manager
9) Community Service Director
10) Speech Pathologist
So basically I'm destined to make no money and I might be a woman.
2010 was my first full calendar year back in America and I very much appreciated being able to absorb all this entertainment. Here were my favorites.
My Favorite Albums
1) Valencia - Dancing With A Ghost
I discovered this band this year, and immediately was smitten by their record from two years ago, which was written after the lead singer's girlfriend died in a car crash. While that record was about the loss and mourning that comes from the fallout of death, Dancing With A Ghost is about what is left standing after the dust of tragedy clears - the hope for a brighter day shadowed by the discovery of an even greater darkness you weren't aware existed. I have yet to experience the sense of loss that comes from losing someone close, but I know I'll have Valencia to turn to when the time comes.
2) The Graduate - Only Every Time
I waited three years not knowing if this band was going to ever make music again, but the wait was worth it - "Pull Me In" is the standout track, a song about the lead singer leaving his wife to head out on the road in order to support their life is one of the most beautiful I've heard - it's play-at-your-wedding worthy in my opinion. My favorite album art of this list as well, it captures the sound of the album so well.
3) My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
How can you not like an album with that awesome of a name? I usually hate 15-song albums because that means the fat hasn't been trimmed, but it was all meat on this album.
4) The Narrative - Self-Titled
Fronted by two singers who met on Craigslist, The Narrative make me wonder why more bands don't have male and female vocals. Probably because they wouldn't sound as good as these guys (and girl). "Don't Want To Fall" is the most beautiful piano song by a female vocalist I've ever heard (so I've included it below).
5) He Is We - My Forever
Speaking of beautiful female vocals...this lead singer is like Taylor Swift in that she's blonde and sings about love songs. She's unlike Taylor Swift in that she can sing live and writes awesome love songs.
6) The Maine - Black & White
I love their play on words ("I did the right thing to the wrong girl", "growing up won't bring us down") which are so simple but work.
7) Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History
The definition of catchy. These guys can shred.
8) Neon Trees - Habits
They make me proud to live in Utah. There is not a single who person who hasn't liked "Animal" after I introduced it to them. And I've introduced that song to a lot of people.
9) Mercy Mercedes - Believe It
Sugar-sweet pop-rock done right. I love how this band has guitar solos. Points down for the lame album art.
10) Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Is there a sicker start to a song than "Stylo"s beat? Found this album's instrumentals stimulating to my ears.
My Favorite Movies
1) The Town - Good year for Boston movies - it feels like a different country because the culture/accents are so different. Ben Affleck has come a long way from Gigli.
2) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I - I usually don't enjoy the movies, but this one had great humor, was so stunning visually (seriously, where did they shoot?), and wasn't constrained by trying to jam 700 pages into 2 1/2 hours - I loved the pacing and the character development between the trio.
3) Inception - Coolest movie ending ever?
4) The King's Speech - The only movie on this list to make me cry. Amazing, amazing performances from Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush - wow. Like The Social Network, the premise is quite ordinary, but unlike The Social Network, this movie made it come alive.
5) The Ghost Writer - Second coolest ending this year. And a good twist thrown in. More people need to see this movie.
6) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - The most fun I had in a movie theater this year. Michael Cera is the idol of awkward adolescents everywhere. Ramona Flowers is my type of woman (that's her on the right).
7) Catfish - The best twist of the year (and it came from a documentary). Made me laugh and gave me the creeps. It's also why I will never try online dating.
8) True Grit - Nice storytelling - took many unexpected twists and turns for me. Hailee Steinfield for Katniss in the new Hunger Games movie! Girl can act.
9) It's Kind Of A Funny Story - Actually was a funny story and now I have a crush on Emma Roberts.
10) The Fighter - Another great immerse-yourself-in-the-world-of-Massachusetts movie. Some of the fight scenes were actually really poorly staged for me, but Christian Bale made me forget about them very quickly.
Favorite animated movie: Toy Story 3 - Really refreshing to see Pixar put real effort into this knowing even with a terrible product they would've made millions (see: Shrek 3). I was a little disappointed I didn't cry after I heard everyone else did.
Favorite indie film: Monsters - a very different, slower-paced take on alien invasions. Great chemistry between the leads as well.
My Favorite Book
The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance (A Memoir)by Elna Baker
Made being a Mormon funny and interesting instead of boring as it can tend to be (and tends to be perceived). Did make me wonder if all girls are as obsessed with love as she is though.
My Favorite New TV Show
Terriers
A P.I. show with great chemistry between the leads, crazy plot twists (I can think of several instances where I gasped or shouted "no!" at the TV), and a satisfying finale. And it was cancelled. I don't understand why people didn't flock to this, there were no good new shows on the networks this fall.
My Favorite Company
Amazon
Their MP3 division offered an alternative to iTunes that was better in every way - no tax, daily deals ($6.99 is not a deal, Apple), awesome $5 digital albums that change every month, handed out MP3 credits throughout the year. A music-lover's wet dream. Oh, and they gave all college students free two-day shipping for a year.
Side note: My least favorite company changes this year were Netflix removing its friend feature and Facebook's new profile that doesn't have the text box where I can jot down the emo lyrics that are affecting me at this time in my life (hence their new appearance on the right of my blog).
My Favorite YouTube Video
This represents everything wrong with the Millennial Generation, but boy is it funny (and there's 3 parts!). This girl had some sort of video channel and was addressing her "haters" who were leaving her nasty comments.
She has some great phrases: I've wanted to make I'll pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushee" a shirt for a long time now. Haters: I'm not 9, I'm 11. Suck my non-existing penis. Get AIDS and die.
But if haters don't phase her then why is she having a breakdown (cue the unintentionally funny protective father who doesn't know a thing how this Internet thing works)....
You done goof'd. No more needs to be said. Now for the grande finale...
The dad makes it - I love the consequences line - you can tell he really wants to tell these kids off and he's halfway there, but then he's like, oh crap this sentence isn't going to make sense, but I just have to go with it. I don't know just the idea of a dad yelling at a computer screen is quite amusing to me. I just hope he doesn't use the cypberpolice to backtrack this blog post. I'm praying for a web redemption on Tosh.O. And yes, I know I'm a terrible person for deriving pleasure from this girl's pain.
I can't tell if these commercials are done ironically or not. I think they're not. Which is disturbing. This could air without any changes on SNL (actually it's already better than most of their sketches). The most interesting part is where people are wearing them at tailgates - do they really expect someone to wear this in public? Yikes.
Speaking of laziness...I've been watching a lot of TV lately. One of my professors told us the average person consumes 9.6 hours of media a day which I thought was ridiculous until I spent all of Saturday and Sunday watching the NFL playoffs and the Golden Globes. Yikes.
May I recommend watching Onion SportsDome on Comedy Central. The clip below should be enough of an indicator. (I fear people who read this not getting it though, since most of my followers are women...)
The other new show that I'm watching (and that you should too): Lights Out on FX. And Parks and Recreation this Thursday - seriously, it's as good as The Office was in Season 2.
My dad always asked/made us set goals as his minions/children so that we could grow/excel in life and learn...something. Clearly I missed the lesson. You see, I was never too hot on the idea of goals. The thing is unless you're really motivated you're going to either a) forget them or b) remember them (and realize they're out of reach hence killing any motivation).
On my mission in Russia goals were shoved down our throat, which turned me off the prospect even more. For some reason, we were instructed to have a weekly goal of 5 new investigators each week. I'm not quite sure why this was the standard since I didn't reach 5 new investigators for my whole mission.* Goals may work in other places, but in Russia no matter how ambitious or hard-working you were, goals had this way of saying "Hey, I appreciate the effort, I really do, but when you tally your numbers at the end of the week I'm going to crush your spirit by reminding you that the lofty goals you set are in a different stratosphere from your actual numbers." So as you can imagine, I've grown quite bitter towards goals. A good friend of mine's philosophy is if you don't set goals, you have nothing to be disappointed about. Sound advice.
* I'm not sure why I'm writing about my mission 1 1/2 years after the fact...I think it has something to do with me being asked how many baptisms I had today. I must say I prefer my answer to the kid who answered '1' but later divulged that the person had asked to have their records removed from the church. Zero is better than one in that case.
ANYWAYS, the point of this post was to highlight some of my goals from the past year that I failed to meet. It didn't help that the only place I had them written down was in an obscure folder on my computer. So without further adieu...my shortcomings of 2010:
Read 20 books- The only goal I actually achieved. I just readInto The Wild- I don't know if you can do something more hurtful to your parents, but I quite admired his daring living his life the way he did.
Pay off $1000 of car debt - I'm in debt $7000 to my dad for my car, unfortunately the Census and working at the fly lab didn't contribute enough to make a dent in that.
Straight A's- Ummm....no. No C's since freshman year though! The problem with me and grades in college is I'm not planning on grad school (at least for a while) and I have to take a bunch of classes I do not care about for my major where I just do the minimum amount of work possible and wait for the semester to end (Exhibit A: Native American Literature last semester).
Attend the temple 2x/month - Once I didn't achieve this the first month, there was little motivation to do so for the remaining 11.
Read scriptures every day - I can't say I recommend exclusively studying the Old Testament. Not the most exciting set of scripture.
So it wasn't my most productive year, but I did remember to do what my fourth-grade teacher taught me - D.E.A.R. - Drop Everything And Read!
And I did make a blog, so the year was not lost. And I'll still probably set goals for 2011.
I've become more aware than ever during this break that I will have no trouble transitioning into retirement. I will not be one of those 'has to be working' types or even a 'has to be doing something in the community' types. I've been perfectly content surfing the Internet, listening to music, watching movies, playing Wii, reading books, and skiing (my lone physical activity, which will be replaced by golf in retirement). It just doesn't get old for me - I'm perfectly happy being a consumer and not a creator.
Unfortunately, I have quite some time before I get there (if I get there) but for these next two weeks I'm perfectly happy living my retired lifestyle.
Politics aren't my forte because when I express my opinions, I like to be fully informed on the issue. For me to be fully informed about U.S. politics would require a lot of effort that I'm not necessarily interested in making at this point in my life.
But I have been following Republicans' refusal to pass the 9/11 responders bill, which would give them medical benefits/compensation for their sacrifices. Many of them are facing serious health issues because of their heroism on that day. There's a time to be stubborn and hold out to get what you want, and then there's black-and-white decisions.
Jon Stewart highlighted their hypocrisy last night. I mostly watch his show for the comedic/satiric aspect, but I think he excels in these moments where he is able to call out politicians' backwards thinking and flip-flopping.
The Walking Dead's first season just ended, and while I didn't love the human characters in it, it's pretty cool to have zombies in your living room. As I was watching the survivors trying to stay alive in the zombie apocalypse, I thought about how poorly I would handle this catastrophic event. This is because...
1) I've never shot a gun, but if my experience in multi-player shooting games is any indication (always last place, always), I would not be a good shot, so I'd probably end up being eaten alive by a zombie even with a gun in my hand.
2) I'm not like fat people where I am constantly thinking about food, in fact I usually forget to eat, but when I do eat I like to know I can keep eating until I'm full. Hence, I would not do well on the can-of-beans-a-day diet.
3) Society never recovers from a zombie attack. So that hopelessness would not help my emotional state, likely resulting in a breakdown where I'd question the purpose of my existence and try to bring others down with me.
4) I have a very strange taste in women and could see myself falling in love with an emo zombie girl and then trying to write a terrible song about our forbidden romance before she fatefully bit me.
