The Womanly Arts

I suck at baking. As in, I can follow a recipe, but why bother I like ramen. Several of my friends though are very good at baking, [shout out to Beth's mint chocolate cake--it deserves one] including a couple who have made food related blogs. I've always wondered why so many of my female friends are so good at the womanly arts.

There's the friend who can crochet five hats a day, half my friends have some recipe or other they specialize in, usually comfort food for finals. My personal efforts in sewing stopped at crocheting "BURN THIS HOUSE" onto my dad's handkerchiefs. Mom told me he was very touched.

Still, I always wondered. Why are so many smart, girls publically practicing the womanly arts? When do they even have time? Why be so straightforward about things usually linked at least in peoples minds to female oppression?

[get back in teh ktichen biatchez]

As usual I have no compunction to try and answer questions I've raised, videogames and engineering are funner.   That's right boiz, I'm a gamer girl xD <3333

Since I've just mimicked two different brands of obnoxious idiots in as many paragraphs, you'd better have some ramen in apology.

Can't We Just Learn Telepathy Already?

I hate people. I really do. I especially hate how they expect me to be able to come up with conversations on demand. If you have something to talk about, sure, I'll make up words and stuff. I'm good with words and stuff. But if you walk up to me, say "hello" and then wait expectantly, what you will get will basically amount to lolnope.

It's not that thinking of conversations is hard. Well, it is. Well, not really. It's pretty easy, I just don't think you're worth it.

Don't take that the wrong way! Conversation in general just isn't particularly fun for me, and when I have to get my brain to jump through hoops for it on top of everything else in my life, well. It's just stupid.

So to combat stupidity, here's a greeting card for all the other antisocialites out there. (I know I'm not the only one....)

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am known for being a bit neurotic when it comes to sleep. And by a bit, I mean a lot. And by a lot, I mean ten hours a night without fail. I don't know why. My classmates seem to be more awake than me, rather then less; going on about going to bed at 3:00 for a nice, hour and a half rest before they had to catch the bus, all nighters to get in that time to study and finish the latest video game, "I just got sucked into the internet, I was only going to be on for five minutes I swear..." One of my friends regularly gets less sleep in a week than I get in a day.

I'm known as extremely weird for this little habit: it's not like my life is any less full than most people, doing lights for the school play, violin, my youth group, keeping up writing and art, a class five internet addiction and a full homework load, and it's not like I have any secrets. I don't procrastinate less, (though I am known to be fairly antisocial in both senses) I just keep organized and slowly go crazy on the inside.

[Well, outside too.]

My friends are kind of used to me signing off at eight thirty to "go slee," not that that doesn't allow them to snark at me regularly. But really, everyone knows adults need a good solid eight hours, and teenagers, needing more food, should probably need more sleep too. It stands to reason.

Of course, busy lives tend to encroach on that principal.

Hey look! It moves!

I understand it. Sometimes you want to do swimming AND theater  and you can't leave that trombone alone either! Plus three types of dance and a social life. You took all AP's too didn't you. Of course you did.

You know what? You're hopeless. Have fun with dementia.

Let's try this, shall we?

I have a bit of a hard time when it comes time to write things that do not need to be formal. I can't write a sentence without using long words. In fact, right now I am taking up the challenge to write a post using only one syllable words.

I have already lost that challenge.

In the first sentence.

This is hard.

[let's start over]

You see, I try to be sparse, but using short words just can't sound right. They get old. You need to change your ways or things start to lag. My brain starts to melt, too.

As I write, my left eye will twitch. I see dead friends at my back. There is blood on my hands. Off a long way, a high pitched wail sounds. The floor pools with blood. I laugh. The walls are yellow.

...yellow is two syllables isn't it?

Oops.

Well then, I guess I'll have to start a descent into insanity some other time. Now how am I going to clean this up?

Yes, My Laptop is my Only Child, and Yes, I Really Should Be Taken In For Abuse.

I love my baby dearly, but it has some serious mental issues.

Me: has three windows open.
Me: opens photoshop.
Laptop: How could you do this to me?
Laptop: gargle
Laptop: That's it. This is the end.
Laptop: Goodbye cruel world.
Laptop: dies. 

Oh, also it's convinced that my tablet is a virus. Every time I plug it in to the USB port it throws a fit, warning me over and over again that my tablet is behaving similar to a Trojan virus. Same goes when I open up the program I use for music. Obviously it hates the arts.

I guess I shouldn't complain though, seeing how much I abuse the thing.

My solution is fairly simple. Computers are primitive beings who must know fear to function properly. If a computer threatens to malfunction in any way, I have five simple steps to how to get it to stop.

1. Stare the computer down. It might be thousands upon thousands of times smarter than you, but you are the one with autonomous movement. Always remember that. 

2. Flick it: hard enough to make a sound, but not hard enough to damage it. It must know what you are capable of. 

3. Murmur softly into it's microphone. Start with death threats and work up to different ways you'll torture it before it is given sweet escape. 

4. Slowly raise your voice until you are shouting an incomprehensible mess of swearwords at what every witness around you will swear is an inanimate object

5. Turn it off and turn it on again.

[And thus you have computer advice from the girl who can barely get her calculator to work.]

Comparing Reddit, and Tumblr, and Why Having Both Will Probably Keep You Happily Away From Productivity Basically Indefinitely

This is something everyone has major opinions on on the internet, and in fact, may throw their allegiance to different sites entirely. I just happen to be affiliated mainly with those two, so I know more about them in general. However, if you expect me to be choosing one, I'm going to direct your attention back to the Old El Paso TV Commercial.

[Yeah, I'm going to get judged heavily for that one.]

That's the thing, though. Both sites hate each other's guts, though they both also consider each other minor villains compared to the horrors of 4chan and deviantart.

It goes like this: Reddit is convinced that tumblr is a bunch of teenage girls writing bad fanfiction, making crappy social justice blogs, and obsessing over doctor who. 

Tumblr is convinced that reddit is a bunch of twenty-something men making stupid jokes, complaining about how horrible their white, twenty-something lives are, and obsessing over mindcraft.

They're both kind of right. Reddit's home to a lot of jerks, and tumblr's home to a lot of crazy feminist jerks. If you weren't expecting unsavory people on the internet, you, well...

Let's just say you should expect unsavory people on the internet. It's kind of a given. 

However, I'd like to remind people before they start actually tying me to the stake: people don't notice, but both sites borrow heavily from each other. Tumblr makes it a lot easier for original content users to both display and get credit for their work and to let them distribute it quickly, whereas Reddit is simply a way to share links to a variety of other places. I hate to break it to you, redditors, but a lot of those really funny exchanges that got so many upvotes? That format's Tumblr. Sorry, Tumblr, those little facts you found so interesting? Third page of Reddit. 

I ship it.

How I Justify Occasionally Killing My Face With Unregulated Minerals That Could Quite Pawsibly be Carcinogenic

Makeup is really an interesting art form.

...aaaaaaaand every male in the room promptly leaves.

It has huge amounts of history and cultural significance, and, at least among females, it is generally assumed that almost everyone has a basic knowledge of it, even when they don't. 

It's also extremely limited. 

There's only so much stuff you can put on your face before it becomes simply unhealthy. And it serves an extremely specific purpose. Unlike most arts, where the goal is to express yourself and your beliefs, makeup is simply there to accent and hide features you want to accent or hide, or to make up entirely new ones. I spent a day with light and dark powders (though it was hard to find a powder much paler than I already was) rearranging the shape of my nose. Another day I decided I wanted to look like a creepy doll.

And that's the thing. For most people, makeup is something that's essential: they think you can't be pretty without it. They aren't going to be bothering to experiment too much outside of the trends. It's... different for me.

Jokes aside, it is a pretty cool art form, that I think should be more widely accepted for what it is.

If we can get the stuff regulated, that is. 

I mean seriously, people are smearing stuff on our face everyday, and most of the time they have no clue what's in it.

[Happy skin cancer, my fellow makeup users!]