Tag Archives: fun

2 Broke Girls, S6E5 “And the College Experience”: A TV Review

Posted on November 1, 2016 by | Leave a comment

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I am invested in Max and Caroline’s relationship.

While it’s no secret that reviewing 2 Broke Girls is far from my favourite task for the week, I do care about how the show deals with the pair at its core. Strongly in its favour is the fact that the conflict that tends to arise between people of vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds is literally the premise of my favourite Arthur episode. For as much as this CBS sitcom is built on the friendship Max and Caroline share, what actually keeps both it and the narrative moving forward is the two butting heads. That said, what difference arises between the two titular leads this week?

Caroline doesn’t like having fun.

Which, to be fair, is sort of true. A much more accurate statement might be: Caroline doesn’t like having fun compared to Max. Though even then the definition of fun would need to be reduced to general debauchery [drinking, drugs, premarital sex, the sorts of activities your parents didn’t want you doing in your teens]. Having just typed out that stipulation it still doesn’t feel entirely accurate, since just last season we had the former heiress knocking back multiple tiny bottles of hotel liquor. Just trying to lay out the conflict in this episode is proving really difficult and I’m not even 300 words into this review.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Comedy, family, relationships, review, television, writing

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The 3 Best Pieces of Advice I’ve Received in 3 Years of Marriage

Posted on July 6, 2016 by | 1 comment

I started writing for the blog a little before I got married. Around the time of my anniversary each year, I’ve written a post about my married experience. For my first anniversary I shared “4 Things I Didn’t Expect” (about marriage) and last year I gave you “4 Reasons Why Marriage is Worth the Risk (Even in the Age of Ashley Madison)“. This year I was thinking about what sort of married life wisdom I could share with you, and the only thing that came to mind was advice that older and wiser people had told me. So, as my third wedding anniversary approaches (next month) I’ve decided to share the three best pieces of advice I’ve received during my marriage.

1. Go to Bed Angry (Sometimes)

I’ve always been a fighter when it comes to my relationships. I think that discussing an issue can allow you to unearth the deeper problem and talking things out can keep you from feeling resentment. By the time I got married I had also heard and/or read one piece of marriage advice over and over again: don’t go to bed angry.

I’m glad someone told me to cast that advice aside.

Instead, they suggested that sometimes we really should go to bed angry. Because sometimes, even the best of us want to strangle our partner for a reason that will seem pretty silly the next day. Often, by postponing that impulse to vent your irritation, you can avoid making an argument out of something that doesn’t really matter.

nevermind-man-gif Continue reading →

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Mystery Room: A Culture War Report

Posted on August 29, 2014 by | 6 comments

I’m actually being half-serious when I say that today’s post very well could have been “Re: Re: Do Western Christians Want Martyrs?”. It’s an extremely relevant topic, and I hope that you’ll take the time to read what Kat had to say, as well as Gordon’s response. No, instead what I have for all of you is another one of my rarely shared new life experiences, this time being the hour and a half I spent on Wednesday night trying to escape a series of dark locked rooms.

Now apparently this sort of thing is, and has been, all the rage according to a friend of mine, but the very concept was extremely foreign to me. Wikipedia’s entry for it is titled “Real-life Room Escape”, and describes it as being:

“a type of puzzle simulation games in which you are locked in a room with other participants and have to use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles, find clues, and escape the room within a set time limit.”

It also mentions the fact that their existence stems directly from online video games, which is honestly the coolest thing. Whereas most video games are based on real life activities [stealing cars, shooting ethnically ambiguous terrorists,
running your own farm, etc.], this is an example of an activity that mimicks a video game. That is, and realize I don’t use this word lightly, neat. It’s super neat.

I should probably get to what my time with it was actually like, though. To help prime your expectations a little bit, the course my friends and I went through was titled “Haunted Hospital”.

Zombie nurses not included.

Continue reading →

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Posted in bizarreness, Culture War Report, games, video games

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Giving Money [Minus the Ice Bucket]

Posted on August 22, 2014 by | Leave a comment

I’d say there’s no better time than right now to discuss what we do with our money in light of the hundreds upon thousands of Ice Bucket Challenge videos that have been taking up most of the internet the past few days [FYI, Emily Blunt’s is the best]. Just yesterday my youngest brother posted one to Facebook, so it’s gotten just about as close to home as it possibly can.

Now there’s been a lot of discussion about how this appears to be just the latest trend, which probably has a lot to do with the sheer number of celebrities who are getting in on this. What can’t be argued with, though, is the fact that in a very short time this challenge has resulted in over $50 million being donated for ALS, which is roughly 80% of what the organization raised last year. That’s big, that’s worth applauding. I’m going to end this paragraph on that note.

What else it is, though, is fun. It’s fun watching people like Bill Gates and Nick Offerman get soaked in frigid water and calling out their peers. It’s fun when our peers do it to us, and when we in turn choose to douse ourselves in glacial H2O. That makes it easier to give, I think, there’s this pervasive lightheartedness about it that makes us more inclined to reach into our wallets and give howevermany dollars towards ending Lou Gehrig’s Disease [an ailment I only very recently connected to these shenanigans]. Giving gets infinitely harder when there’s none of that fun involved.

Here’s my favourite scene from a pretty bad 2004 Jackie Chan movie [no offence to Steve Coogan, but we weren’t watching it for him]:

Continue reading →

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Reflections On One Year of Marriage: 4 Things I Didn’t Expect

Posted on August 20, 2014 by | 4 comments

Next week will be my one year anniversary with John. Next week we will also be heading out on our belated honeymoon. Since I’ve made a bit of a habit of updating you on these personal aspects of my life, I thought I’d also go ahead talk about a few things I’ve learned in my new phase of life. 

1) Guys Actually Care About Stuff Other Than Sex

I’ve mentioned in the past that I grew up in the purity movement. I realize you may have read some horror stories about how the purity mentality makes women afraid of sex. I can certainly see how this can and has sometimes been the case, but let me assure you, for me, it was the polar opposite.

I built up sex in my head, a lot. I had all these plans and ideas for when I was FINALLY having sex, and some of them were… a little off base.

First of all I thought that all guys ever wanted, ever, was sex. You can blame it on the purity movement, or you can blame it on media, or you can blame it on my overactive imagination, but somewhere alone the line I decided that guys just wanted sex ALL THE TIME.

So imagine my shock when John and I got to the point in our relationship where he could say things like “well, I’m actually in the middle of writing a paper right now” or “just let me finish this chapter.” Sometimes he even wanted to just cuddle (gasp)!

What was this? This was not what happened in the movies! What was he doing? Being a person? With interests besides sex? What was the world coming to?

Don’t get me wrong, sex is still the awesomeness I always imagined it would be, but it was eye-opening for me to realize how I had internalized such a common gender stereotype without even realizing it.  Continue reading →

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Fame Day: Christmas Traditions

Posted on December 19, 2013 by | 3 comments

It’s actually pretty hard to write a Fame Day post for Christmas since it’s now pretty much synonymous with materialism, something that most people agree “eats you from the inside out.”

But dang it guys! I really love Christmas! I love all the lights everywhere draining energy and creating light pollution. I love the repetitive Christmas music on the radio. I love giving and (gasp) even receiving gifts (though I try to only purchase gifts from businesses I feel happy supporting ex. fair trade, local, etc). So much about how Christmas is marketed goes against the things I want to be socially conscious about, and yet I can’t seem to help loving it. I think this probably comes down to the many fun traditions my family has had, and the way the season forces us all to drop everything going on in our lives just to spend time together.  

So I’ve decided that for today’s Fame Day post I’m going to share a few of my favorite traditions, and I would really love if you could tell me a little bit about yours. Continue reading →

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