For Those Days When You Just Need a Laugh...

This little gem has been a favorite picture of mine for a long time. :) My professor introduced me to it during a parenting and child guidance class. I like showing it to my friends because it always gets a good laugh - oh, the things we have to look forward to when we become parents! Poor baby.

Phobias

We were talking about phobias in my abnormal psychology class, and my teacher had us watch this clip. Pretty funny stuff. :)



I wonder if the phobias represented here are real. This video got me thinking about what it would be like to live in mortal fear of a certain word or awkward silence. Good thing we have good treatments and therapies today, because that certainly would be a miserable way to live!

Death Comes to Pemberley

I've been reading this book. It's a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, written in an imitation of Jane Austen's style. It's been really interesting so far! I like how it is true to Jane Austen's social witticisms and stream-of-consciousness prose. It tells what happens to Mary (she gets hitched! woohoo!) and the rest, only...there's a murder! I won't tell you who dies, and I can't tell you who did it because I don't know yet. If only I had more time for reading in college!

Anyways, I'm enjoying hearing more about these two.

Mitch Hedberg

I like reading comedians' quotes online, because I can skip the bad ones more easily. Mitch Hedberg died of a drug overdose, but he left behind a memorial of HILARIOUS material. Below are a few of my favorite Mitch Hedberg quotes.

"Once I had a parrot that talked, but it did not say 'I am hungry' so it died."

"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read!"

"Every time I go and shave, I assume there's someone else on the planet shaving. So I say, 'I'm gonna go shave, too.'"

"The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall."

"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

Sometimes reading funny quotes online is just a great pick-me-up when I need one. :) His death was sad, but luckily he's still making people laugh and I'm sure he'd be happy knowing that.

Singin' in the Rain

Two nights ago I re-watched one of my top ten FAVORITE films, "Singin' in the Rain." This movie makes me nostalgic for days I never even lived through! The glamorous costumes, heart-felt songs, clean humor, and INCREDIBLE dance routines make me feel so wistful for the talent of past decades. I think the tap dancing in this movie stands today as a memorial to a lost art. But I digress.

Interestingly, this movie's plot documents a huge change in media that took place in the 1920's - the transition from silent to "talkie" films. While the storyline follows the struggles of the actors during this transition and what it meant for their personal lives, it was interesting to see how the film portrayed the technical glitches that came along with implementing early sound systems. I enjoyed thinking about how thrilling it must have been to hear words connected with actors movements in early films.

Well, "In the words of that immortal bard, Samuel J. Snodgrass" - this is one of the best films ever made. And if you're confused about that quotation, just watch the film clip below. :)



Donald O' Connor = Amazing.

Carryin' the Banner!

Sorry, couldn't resist the Newsies reference. This blog post is about the newspaper I read embarrassingly often: The Daily Universe.



Let me preface this with a few key statements. I am a college student - hence, I have little to no free time! I like to fill the free time I DO have with naps, movies, time with friends, or catching up on the million to-do's that get pushed out of the way when it's paper time. I am not a hugely political person. It's interesting, but I simply don't get enough exposure to issues to have concrete opinions or political preferences. I don't read the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. I don't have time, remember?

I realize that's completely my fault. I see other noble students pulling out the Times and keeping up-to-date on world events and feel a twinge of jealousy at their political know-how. Call me crazy, but I feel like you need to have political opinions to be an educated, contributing adult. Hence, I have a goal to read more newspapers and take a stance!

Okay, here's how the Daily Universe fits in. While I don't seek out random newspapers during the week, I do enjoy reading BYU's paper as I eat my delicious L&T wrap in the cougareat. I get snippets of world news, laugh at the police beat, catch up on the cougar sports, and marvel at the meat prices at Smiths. It may seem silly, but reading the Daily Universe makes me feel a bit more cultured (don't laugh!), simply because I'm taking time away from books and online databases to get a peek at what's going on around me.

Imagine my disappointment that after this year, the Daily Universe will be available in paper format only once a week! Do I really need to spend more time online? Nope. I don't think this bodes well for my personal newspaper-reading goal.

Cupcake Fetish

I ADORE cupcakes. Whenever someone hands me a slice of cake, I rarely finish it because it seems so dry and there is too little frosting. Cupcakes are a different story - a moist, perfectly sized serving of cake with a deliciously proportional heap of frosting! And they are just so gloriously cute (see above for evidence).

Where does media come in? Well, as a result of said fetish, I spend at least an hour a week on cupcake blogs. My favorite one is this website, because the author works mainly from cake mixes and adds sour cream and different proportions of oil to get that gourmet cupcake density. Being a poor college student, simple recipes with few ingredients are exactly what I need. Plus, she comes up with all kinds of interesting recipes. Cinnamon toast crunch cupcakes? Nutella cupcakes? Raspberry neapolitan? Hello?! Awesome. I'd like to think that this particular media exposure has a good effect on me (my cupcake-eating friends certainly think so). I'm expanding my baking skills, and that thought makes me happy. Or, at any rate, hungry!

Other favorite cupcake-related blogs:

www.cupcakeproject.com

www.cupcakesandcashmere.com

"The Coat" Warms My Heart

Okay, Mormon Messages are amazing. I love them because they are short, simple videos that speak truth (with beautiful music in the background!). Watching them makes me take a break from a crazy college day and think about something outside of myself. It's a great way to feel the Spirit and the church is SO smart to be using youtube to spread the gospel. The video below is one I found a few weeks ago - I've watched it multiple times a week since I found it!

The animation is beautiful, the feelings are powerful. I've shared this with lots of people and have watched their faces soften and eyes fill as they view it. I could see in their faces what I felt as I watched it - this is the kind of media that motivates us to be better people!