With A Little Help From My Friends

With the group project and tons of other classwork, I have hardly had time to find some good sites to post up here.  The current weather has also sucked my creativity and inspiration right out of my body.  All I've wanted to do this week has been sleep.  But last week, Marvin gave me a site to look at, and a couple of days ago, Joy showed me another.  Both are quite interesting, so I thought I'd share them.

The webiste Marvin told me about is Today's Big Thing.  It has one post a day in each of the categories, whether it be videos, pictures, or cute animals.  Each post is hilarious, and being able to check back every day for something new is great.  It's a great website to go on for a couple of minutes every day to get a little chuckle.  Yesterday's video was great; it was a parody of Rebecca Black's "Friday."  But this girl put a religious spin on it and called it "Sunday." I still don't know if she is was being serious or joking, but it was very entertaining nonetheless.

While we were researching pictures for our group project, Joy found the website Foundshit.  It basically posts pictures of things.  Any kind of things.  But they're all really interesting to look at .  The blog has been around for about 4 years now, and they have amassed quite a collection of interesting thing to see.  They have a link on the blog to the subject of my very first ever blog post, Oddee, and a couple of other sites with strange pictures or weird articles.  Each site is fun and can take up hours of time to explore, which is always a good thing.

So thanks to Marvin and Joy for showing me these sites, or else I would have found some really stupid thing to put up here instead, which would have been boring for all of us.

Lighten Up!

My past week has been pretty crazy.  It's getting to be the end of the semester, so my professors are really piling on the work, and on top of that, I have rugby practice AND I got sick last week.  I was stressed.  It was not cool.  But then I remembered that it's only school, right?  I mean, if I get a less than stellar grade on a test, is it really that big of a deal?  My philosophy is not to take anything too seriously, and I sincerely try to keep to that.  I need a good dose of laughter and tomfoolery in my life.  So does this guy.

Surviving the World is a good place to go if you need a little pick-me-up after a rough day of classes.  This dude is the coolest.  Each day, his graphs, picture, etc. are all so wonderful and true.  His wonderfully straight face during most of the pictures kills me as well.  He is so spot-on with everything he posts, his insight is fascinating.

Moral of the story:  don't take things so seriously.  It's really not that big of a deal if you bomb a test next week, are you really going to remember it fifty years from now?  Highly doubtful.  So relax, and enjoy your life.  I could put so many corny quotes here, so I will.  From one of my all-time favorite movies, " Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  If anyone needs some sort of inspiration or idol in their life, it should be him.  He is the chillest kid ever.  I wish I was Ferris Bueller.  

Sometimes I amaze myself.

Woah.  I just found the coolest thing ever.  It's called The Laybrinth of Genre, and it has officially blown my mind.  I was on it for a good forty-five minutes yesterday, it it's pretty fascinating.  Some of the artists featured I had never heard of, but they are definitely going to be added to my iTunes library.

Music is a pretty amazing thing.  Not to sound too horribly cliche, but music really does bring people together.  I was in a choir in high school, and last summer we went to Spain, Andorra, and France.  I don't speak a lick of Spanish, and whenever I had traveled overseas before I had always known the language, so getting around the English- Spanish language barrier was very hard.  I couldn't understand anything that the people were saying, but when we were singing, all the barriers just stopped existing.  I could understand their expressions just as they could understand the words I was singing, and we just had this moment of harmony, where it was okay to not know what each other was saying but we could feel what each other was feeling.

This was one of the many songs we sang while on tour, and it's still one of my all time favorites to sing.  This video was recorded in Cavaillon, France, where we had the pleasure of singing with the local choir, whose average age was approximately eighty.  But that sang with the spirit of children.  I was an absolutely amazing experience.

I am a huge advocate of music everywhere.  I can't go an hour without listening to something, and I don't really care what it is.  I listen to Sublime, Lil' Wayne, Justin Bieber (oh yeah), Kenny Chesney, Mozart, and the Dave Matthews Band.  You name it; I listen to it.  I love it all because music is so much more than a beat and some lyrics, each song has it's own personality.  Music extends across all boundaries made my race, gender, language, and geography.  It can take you by the soul and show you something that could never otherwise be seen.  Sorry for waxing poetic, but I can't help it.

The Post That Has Nothing To Do With A Website

Sunday night, a horrible thing happened to me: my computer broke.  Oh, the unspeakable horror!  Yes, I have gone a full three days without my laptop, and have had to do the seemingly impossible: live without the Internet. However would I be able to survive?  It's been a rough go, and seeing as I will probably be without a computer for at least another three days, I have found other ways to occupy my time, and honestly, it's been wonderful.

I have rediscovered the simple joys of a hard copy of a piece of literature.  I have read the entirety of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (which I highly recommend to anyone in need of a good book), ALL of my assigned readings for the week in very class, and every copy of SURFER and SURFING magazine I own, and even a couple of copies of USA Today and The New York Times.  I had forgotten the feeling of holding a book or magazine in my hands and turning actual pages.  I love being able to look at a book and see exactly how much I have read, and how much more I still have to read.  

So this week, I am asking each of you to take a step away from the electronics, and read a good, old paperback for a change.  Magazines and newspapers are becoming somewhat of a lost art nowadays because subscriptions have plummeted.  Which makes sense.  The internet is so convenient now that it takes more effort to get a magazine than it does to pop open a tab on your internet browser and type in a dot-com address.  And those pesky Kindles are lighter and smaller than lugging three novels in your carry on luggage.  But don't give up on these more traditional mediums just yet!  Go pick up a recent copy of SURFING, Sports Illustrated, or Glamour and you'll see so much that is missing on the web.  The advertisements, photo editorials, and articles are just not the same on a 600x800 pixel screen.  Come on, what's more satisfying: finishing that last sentence on the last page of a 700 page tome that you've been working on for the past three weeks, or clicking away for a webpage?  Call me old-fashioned, but I'd take the dusty book over the flashy Nook any day.

The Soundtrack to My Life

I'll admit it, I've got some strange musical tastes.  Just the other day I subjected my roommate to something that my computer likes to call 'Dream Crunk.'  Apparently the genres of Rock, Pop, and R&B just aren't enough anymore, and so we get 'Dream Crunk.'  The band that was under this genre was Sleigh Bells, a wonderful duo of hardcore guitars and psychedelic vocals.  I would never have discovered this gem of a group were it not for SoundCloud or 8 Tracks.

Both of these websites are music sharing mega sites.  I can be on them for hours and hours on end, happily discovered perviously unheard of musical acts.  Some of my all time favorites have been found on here, including Sleigh Bells, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and Chew Lips.  SoundCloud (as soon as you get past the pesky sign up stage) is used mostly by unsigned and unrepresented band who are hoping to get a record deal, or small record companies looking for the next great indie sensation.  On SoundCloud, you can search for specific people, labels, or songs, and you can also download many songs completely free (and it's legal!)  Another nifty little function is that you can post a comment directly onto the song, so while listening, you can read what other people think about the songs.

8 Tracks is a simpler concept than SoundCloud, but just as good for finding interesting new stuff.  I'm listening to a 'friday night dance party' playlist right now (Ray Ban Vision by A-Trak feat. CyHi Da Prynce), and it's given me a great mix of rap, pop, and dub.  You can find a playlist for any mood in 8 Tracks; I've got a great go-to studying list, and also a rainy day list.  Anyone can submit a playlist to 8 Tracks, so if you're ever feeling creative and want to share your musical prowess with someone, here you go.  So, I'm writing this blog at 11.52 pm, and I just made a list.  Here it is.  Enjoy!

1000 Awesome Things!

1000 Awesome Things is a genius website.  The concept is wonderfully simple, yet entertaining for hours on end.  It's a blog about completely random things in life that can make you happy.  Yesterday's featured article was #302 'Grandma Hair.'  You know, the perfectly coiffed white (or grey) fluff that everyone's grandmother has?  It was an article dedicated to just that.  And then this morning, it was #300, Successfully Navigating Your Home in the Dark.  I am an epic home navigator, so I really loved reading about this one.

This is not my grandma.

The original list of 1000 is not yet complete, but it has all been archived, so you can read them all in numerical order if you ever have hours upon hours of free time.  They range from actually useful things (#386  Double Spacing Your Essay So That It Takes Up Way More Space) to totally random (#710 When Little Babies Let Out Adult-Sized Burps), but each one get a chuckle out of me.  They are each written in a style that is very relaxed, almost like you are in a conversation with the author.  And the best part is that there are still 300 Awesome Things left to be written!  A new entry is written every weekend (sorry Saturday and Sunday, I guess you're just not special enough to get your own entries), so we've still got around a year's worth of Awesome Things to look forward too.

The author has also taken it upon himself to write books of awesome things, so if you really get into the website, go ahead and buy his books.  I have not bought them, but I am definitely thinking about doing so.  The website is awesome, so I would think that the books would be just as, if not even more, awesome.

A Worthy Cause

I have a slight obsession with jewelry.  Not big, flashy stuff with pearl and bling and whatnot, but like string bracelets and rings.  At the moment, I've got 2 bracelets on my left wrist, 3 on my right wrist, a ring on my right hand, and an anklet on my left foot.  I'll give you a little back story to each of these.  My left wrist is home to a braided leather bracelet that I bought in a flea market in France and what is basically a really long string wrapped around my wrist probably 10 or 15 times.  My ring is a silver Claddagh bought by my best friend in Ireland.  On my right wrist I've got a crab-shaped Silly Band (and I'm not ashamed to admit that) two Brazilets and 46664 Bangle.

Never heard of Brazilets before, have you?  Well allow me to educate you.  They originated in the Bahia region of Brazil (hence the name) and are believed to bring good luck to the wearer.  The bracelet must be tied in three knots, one for each wish you make, and you must allow it to degrade naturally.  Once it falls off of your wrist, your wishes are said to come true.  I have had mine since last May and they are still in relatively good condition, and my mom still has her originals from the summer of 2006.  The proceeds from these bracelets go to Plant A Billion Trees, an organization that replants trees in the Brazilian Rainforest.

My other bracelet that you probably haven't heard of is the 46664 Bangle.  That number may or may not ring a bell in any of your minds, but it's significance is that it was Nelson Mandela's number while he was imprisoned in South Africa from 1964 to 1990.  The proceeds from this bracelet go towards the 46664 Foundation, which Mandela founded to raise awareness for HIV and AIDS.

If you couldn't tell, I'm a sucker for products which benefit different organizations and causes.  If something says that it helps cure cancer or aid people in poverty in Guatemala, I will more than likely buy their product over something different.  I like to think that my purchase makes a difference, even if it is small.   I know that I can't save the world, but if I know that Ican make at least one person's life a little better, I will do all that I can to help them, even if it is something as small as buying a little bracelet.