How To: Hand Dryers, the Perils of

Hello! So sorry I haven't written anything in a while. I was busy doing college-y things! And/or I was watching Fringe and trying to decode the secret word message in each episode. Either way. But I am back! So. Let's talk about hand dryers.

First of all, there are virtually no bathrooms in my entire school that have paper towels to dry your hands with. One of the main reasons this is--claim the people in charge--is because paper towels kill trees. Which is true. I'm pretty sure paper towels are made out of tree parts. But then you get hand dryers. Which use electricity! I don't know which uses more energy, paper towels or electricity, but it seems like either one is going to be killing the planet! And yet, we go for the inconvenient ones.

Which conveniently brings me to my next point that hand dryers are inconvenient. They all claim they're very convenient on that silly generic sticker they have on them, but no! Do not let that fool you! It says they're always available, as one reason for this misguided convenience. But what if there was a power outage? Then how is that electrically generated low-pressure air stream going to be always available?

They also claim to create a cleaner bathroom area. And maybe that would be true if we were just looking at the paper towels that fall on the floor out of a trash can. But we have to take into account the water that splashes off people's hands and on to the floor creating not only water-y puddles, but kind of a hazard if people were to slip and fall. Also, people sometimes think these hand dryer things take too long, and so they leave the bathroom without drying their hands at all, and leave their wet hand prints all over the door. Lots of bacteria grows in water, I learned sometime in biology. That's the opposite of cleanly.

One of the other claims is that they prevent chapped hands. However, as stated above, people think these dryer things take too long to dry their hands. So they either leave before their hands are truly dry, creating lots of chapping, or they don't dry their hands at all, also creating chapping!

I'm supposing that the only for sure way to avoid having to use these dangerous/horrible inventions is to bring your own towel. A nice, soft, fluffy towel that makes your hands feel like satin. Because otherwise, your hands will die a slow and lonely death of chapped unhappiness. Poor hands.

PS: Hand dryers are LOUD. It's like, "I need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and oh, let me just wake up the entire hallway while I turn on the hand dryer to make it's hideous noise!" That's no fun.

Open Letter to Prescribed Medication

Dear Prescribed Medication,
Oh how strange you are. I understand your importance in the grand scheme of things, like, I really enjoy not being so dizzy I can't even sit up. And probably you're very important to many other people because I'm sure medical advances have saved many people and made their lives easier.

However, I am skeptical of the fact that you have these so called "side-effects." Why are we as society so medically advanced, yet cannot make you without side-effects? Why can't you just do as you are told? I mean, if you have to come with a warning to not drive and to not make important life decisions, there might be a problem.

You also might notice, dear Prescribed Medication, that it is very late. Or early, depending on how you look at it. But that is because you are being very unkind to me. Do you know that I'm supposed to work in the later morning? You're probably like, "Let me just make you stay up until 3:30 am. That sounds like a perfect time!" But I dislike you for this! Why? Why strange thing why??

So, as punishment towards you, here are all the things I've accomplished while not sleeping:
1. Pretty much nothing important. Like, that book that I'm supposed to read for Friday that's like a bajillion pages? Yeah. I haven't read that. Probably because you also (among your numerous other charming qualities) make it difficult to focus.

2. Showering. Because people (normal people) don't take showers at midnight! Aha! Shower all to myself! Yes! Victory!

3. Blogging. Obviously. I obviously wrote this while I was not sleeping. I hope you appreciate how important you are to me/this blog.

4. Many YouTube videos. I didn't make them, no. Because I'm not that cool and because people were sleeping and that would be bad. But I watched many many of them.

5. Oh hey! I finished my robot play thing that I'm supposed to read for tom--today. It was really really weird. And I honestly don't know if it would be that weird if you weren't influencing my brain. I hope it'll still be that weird when we talk about it in class. I don't want to sound like a weirdo.

6. Thinking about how in almost all the books I read for English classes, I miss an essential part. Like, this one, I missed that the weird girl burned the manuscript. When we read Lord of the Flies in 9th grade I missed that Piggy died. Sorry. Those were both probably spoilers for you. Don't worry. Neither of those books were pretty good, in my opinion. In Persepolis I missed the guy peeing on the other guy. I mean, how do I even know I don't miss essential things in books I just read for fun?! This is actually of concern to me. Mostly just right now. It's probably not concerning in real life.

7. Stumbleupon. That's an actual website. Some people use Tumblr, I use Stumbleupon. And if you set the category only to Humor, that just makes it so much better. Because a) things are just funnier at night and b) I'm pretty sure things are funnier when you're being my friend, Prescribed Medication.

8. Music. Both my lovely, calming (although not really), familiar music and new music as discovered for me by Spotify.

That's actually a lot of stuff. I hope you're proud of yourself. And also, I have a band concert tonight. So I hope you're glad that I'm going to be falling asleep during that. Hmm. I'm wearing my turtle slippers. They're pretty cool. Cooler than you. Why can't I just wear turtle slippers as my anti-falling over medication? I think that would just be better.

As sincere as one can be when instructed to not make important life decisions,
Jen

How To: Mental Recuperation?

I just want to warn all you strange people out there who may be under the impression that I have emotional stability in all parts of my life and don't feel lonely or sad or disappointed or any negative feelings anywhere that this is actually not true and I'm just going to reveal all my weakness right now. In this "highly public" forum.

This must be the time of college when all the normal people finally feel like they know what they're doing with their life and college and the world and they have friends and people they like and they don't eat every single meal by themselves and they actually do things on the weekends instead of watch all the episodes of television that they didn't get to during the week because homework is a thing. And if you're not normal you feel LIKE DEATH. Because you feel none of the aforementioned things.

And one of the hardest parts is watching all your friends be normal. It's basically like you're left in the dust when it comes to the path of social maturation. And all the people say that the social aspect is the last part of college to happen, UNLESS YOU'RE FREAKING NORMAL. Because normal people don't have social anxiety that prevents them from making friends easily. Like, normal people don't walk super fast to avoid having to awkwardly not know whether or not the person behind you is close enough for it to be reasonable to hold the door open for them. And normal people don't freak out about buying chips at the weird store because they don't want people to judge them for buying chips. And normal people don't eat quickly and terrifiedly in the hopes that no one will come and sit down at the same table in an attempt to seem friendly.

But all your friends don't need you anymore, because they have their new friends, and all the people you should be making friends with already have all their friends, because they're just better at making friends than you. And you feel really lonely and you just want to talk to your old friends, but you're also worried that you're too needy and that they don't really miss you that much (because new friends) and that you're interrupting their life with your need for socializing that you haven't figured out how to satisfy in real life yet.

And you know what? All these things apply to me. Way more than I would like. Because people don't actually like being lonely. No says, "Ooh, yes! Lonely! That's my favorite feeling!" So I don't actually have a solution to this problem. I guess I listen to music a lot. But I don't want to tell my friends that I'm not as socially capable as them, because that's just not cool. But if you have a solution to my problem, (that's not, "Just go join clubs" or "Just go up and talk to people" because neither of those things work/will be happening) please, please let me know. I'd love to seem well adjusted to college and life and the world. That would be just great.

How To: Write a Poem

Ahh, poetry. What could be better? EVERYTHING.

No. I like writing poems. But usually only funny poems. Because the weird ones you're supposed to analyze in English class are given way too much meaning, probably. It's way more fun to just make stuff up off the top of your head.

So here I'm going to give you a step by step guide on how to write a poem that people can't read into more than surface value.

1. Topic.

• Sometimes finding a topic for your poem is the hardest part. You usually want something that's just random and weird and awesome. And random. So, you should go to Wikipedia and hit the random article button. Of course, you should probably be careful, because you might get a random article that you know absolutely nothing about (like Khadayata) and then in order to write a good poem, you'd have to do research and poetry is definitely not about learning! So, just hit random until you get something you actually know about. Note: This process may take longer than writing the whole poem. Apparently there are more entries on Wikipedia than I planned for...

2. Done.

• Once there was a disaster
• That lived in Mexico
• But no one likes Mexico
• Especially disasters
• So it wanted to move
• To not Mexico
• But buses aren't very
• Reliable transport
• Especially because
• Disasters are made
• Out of materials
• Like mushrooms
• And Fungus
• Which do not travel well
• On buses
• Poor mushroom-y
• Fungus-y
• Disaster-y
• Mexico
• You make the world
• Cry

3. Title.

• I hate titles. Just pick a couple words, preferably nouns with a verb, and mash them together in a sentence. Like: Poor Mexican Disasters

4. Publish.

• Good think this is a blog and I can just publish things whenever I want, regardless of if a third party read my poetry and thinks it's good. I literally just get to push the orange Publish button. It's great. 

I hope that was an informative lesson for you. Poems aren't supposed to make sense. That's half the reason you're still analyzing poetry written hundreds of years ago. No one truly knows what it means. Please share with me all your lovely poems. I would love to read them and not analyze them. 

How To: Avoid Obligation

One of the main things college is supposed to teach students, in my opinion, is time management skills. And what better way to learn these skills than run away from any important thing you're supposed to do ever? You see, when you do fun things, or just not what you're supposed to be doing things, it teaches you how to accomplish things under pressure.

[Side note: I'm definitely listening to a random radio station on Spotify, and the song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover came on. I am so amused right now. A lot. Sorry. I just had to document that.]

So in reality, avoiding obligation will be the most useful thing you can ever do during your college education.

Firstly, you should always leave your homework to the last possible day. I recommend having something else you really like to do to distract you. For example, you could start a blog. I know this thing is a huge time waster (but not wasting because I'm learning important skills, remember?) for me. Plus, you're technically still writing something, so it feels more productive if you're still in the stage where you feel guilty about not doing things.

Of course, there're always video games and TV shows and Netflix and YouTube and Facebook and all those other electronical things. I think you could do well with a nice book, because that goes along with the eliminating the guilty feelings, because reading often teaches you things. Or, you could go get some physical recreation time, because not only is that important, but then you might feel healthier too, which is always good.

Now, I can read your mind, and I see you asking me how physical activity isn't an obligation. To that, I simply say that running is bad. Running is like death. So I do not feel obligated to death. So there. Feel free to debunk my logic. I dare you. You won't take on my challenge.

Also, you can go out to eat with friends! Yeah! Because it's November, and by now you might have some friends. My friends and I went out to eat at a taco-y place today. I should have been writing a paper, but instead I devoured delicious tacos with people who made me laugh. So, tomorrow then, I have to write my entire paper. And read some horrible things. Gross.

But it's more important to learn these things about pressure and writing papers and not dying and also having friends and a kind of social life than to do stupid homework. Actually, I'm feeling slightly worried about doing that tomorrow. Because I also have to work. Although not worried enough to do it right now. My brain is the biggest procrastinator (meaning best teacher of the working under pressure ever) that I know of.

Thank you brain.