How to Be Hipster About World Issues

This past Tuesday I watched a video that my friend had promoted on his Twitter and Tumblr called Kony 2012.  If you haven’t seen it, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc .  Unless you lack compassion, the video is pretty touching and highlights an issue that has been going on for over two decades now. 

By mid-morning Wednesday, the video had gone viral amongst my Facebook friends.  This brought on a surprising amount of negative comments from the male population of my friends list, with most of them posting statuses condemning the sharing of the video.  Their reason for this being,  “it’s been going on since 1986 and people only care now because it’s trendy.  If you want to do something, grab a gun and go to Uganda”.  

 I believe that we should be somewhat cynical of every charity and being wary about donating to Invisible Children, (the charity behind Kony 2012) doesn’t make you a bad person.  I’d like to know where my 30 dollars is going.  I had a problem with a lot of the things that were being said, however, because it turned from campaign bashing to mocking of the situation as a whole.  Also, donating money or trying to make sure I show the video to my friends and family so that they may be informed are both more plausible than going to Uganda with a gun.

This past week I saw a lot of ignorance and racism from people who I thought had a good head on their shoulders.  As for those who said the video was just a trend.  They’ve posted more statuses and memes about Kony 2012 than the people spreading awareness.  Trying really hard not to care seems to be more of the trendy thing here.

The Value of One Life

I haven't paid much mind to the death of Singer and long time drug addict, Whitney Houston, nor do I plan on it after this post.
This photo, which has been swimming around Facebook, made me think about what we as a society consider a valuable life. 
I am in no way diminishing the value of one person’s life over another, but this and the similar Steve Jobs photo are true reflections on how we as a society place the value of one life above the lives of millions.
Ms. Houston defiled and destroyed her own life through the chosen abuse of drugs and alcohol, but it was her life and she lived it how she saw fit, and I won't judge her for that.  But, I also won't mourn her.
  A lot of people cry out at the deaths of Whitney Houston and Steve Jobs, but stay silent when the less fortunate in our own community come around asking for food, shelter or warmth.  It's like we've been trained to find annoyance in those who actually are suffering, but to take pity on people because they acted in a movie or sang an iconic song. 
I am not claiming to be a humanitarian, nor am I saying that I've never paid attention to the deaths of celebrities.  I mean, it's hard not to be a little curious when it's already being shoved down our throats by tweets, Facebook updates and some news channels. We all need to take a step back and consider who we give our undivided attention to.  Did anyone who wasn't a fan, friend or family member REALLY care about Whitney before her death?  No, this is the most she's ever been on screen since The Bodyguard. 
When we live in a world where a drug addicted woman's life and death has more meaning than those who have suffered only because of the hand fate has dealt them, there's an issue.

Let us, as a collective society, try to do our best to place our energy and attention where it's needed.  More PEOPLE less celebrity.

Procrastination and Inspiration

 When I’m heading into a solo project for school I feel more pressure to start and finish early because of the evil little monster that lives inside all of us named procrastination.  It is honestly a huge problem for me, because I like to live in the present.  I don’t want to think about deadlines and I know when I start working on whatever project it is that I’ve been assigned, I’ll think about it until its finally finished.  It’s so easy to become distracted, though.  Facebook is literally 3 clicks of a button away. 

It’s to be expected that when there’s a daunting task looming over someone, there will be a nagging pressure to pick up the remote or pull up YouTube, just for five minutes.  Then five minutes turns into half an hour, half an hour turns into half an afternoon and so on.   I tell myself I’ll do it tomorrow, but tomorrow turns into next week.   Perhaps it’s the work that I am doing; inspiration plays a big role in my initiative and drive to finish something that I’ve started. 

Inspiration has a lot to do with this procrastination problem.  I find myself taking initiative to start and finish personal projects like paintings or sketches without problems because I have the inspiration at the time.  If I don’t have inspiration, I find I can hardly even start a painting or sketch. 
If we can figure out how to inspire ourselves about tasks that we may not enjoy very much, then I think the procrastination epidemic would back off a bit.  Sometimes it will be hard to find inspiration in something completely dull, but it’s worth a try.  You have to expect that there will be tasks that come along in your life that will be arduous or dull, but if you make the most out of them at least you’ll get it out of the way.

Official 2012 Honda CR-V Game Day Commercial is Trollerific

I'm a fan of a couple of local radio stations on Facebook and I recently came across a 10 second teaser ad that 98.9 The Drive had posted.  The ad featured Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller, the popular character he played in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
The short clip here features a greying Ferris eluding to playing hooky from work.

This 10 second clip was enough to convince the first of the viewers of a sequel to this 80's classic.  Most of the early viewers left comments expressing their excitement at the thought of a second Ferris Bueller adventure.

 I was kind of excited myself, Ferris Bueller's Day Off was an excellent 80's movie and I want to see an old Ferris doing the same crazy thing.  However, a week later, I stumbled upon the full length 2.5 minute video, and it wasn't what I expected.
                                                                                                                                          

It was disappointing for most, to say the least. 

The people at Honda are the ultimate Ferris Bueller 2 trolls*.  It was like looking for that music video for that really weird or old song you like that just does not seem to exist on Youtube; then when you do find it you get Rickroll'd*.  The video did received nearly 9 million views and a good like to dislike ratio on the rate bar.  However, most of the comments are either people who are mad about being tricked into watching a Honda ad, people who are bashing the idea of a Ferris Bueller sequel anyway or the select few who are still confused on the whole, no sequel at all thing.  I was actually impressed that Honda thought to bring such an iconic movie back for Game Day and I also thought that the commercial itself was really entertaining, but do the YouTube comments and reactions really count when it comes to response to the ad?  I think in a way, people can be swayed by what others have to say, even if it's only on YouTube. 


*Troll - An internet savvy person who enjoys evoking emotional responses from people on forums.  In this case Honda troll'd the audience by making them believe they were about to watch something they really wanted to see, but then showed something completely different. 

*Rickroll'd - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Hasty Decisions

Young love, I’m all for it, but young, legally binding, marriage is not exactly my cup of tea.     

There are a lot of big decisions in life that like to disguise themselves as fun and exciting new adventures that you just cannot wait to partake in.  These big decisions can also be associated with impulse and one-track thinking. 

I’m talking about decisions like, getting married at a very young age. 

I feel as if a lot of these life altering decisions are taken to lightly these days and that society needs to take a step back and ask themselves what they’re really expecting out of their lives. 

            I understand that I have no right to be judgmental toward the couples that decide to get married in high school, but seriously, this isn’t the renaissance.  Kids in don’t realize that there is life and love outside of the brick confines of high school relationships and it ends up being damaging to their future. 

What did they expect?

            Personally, I don’t think that marriage should be taken so lightly and it’s not the religious aspect of it at all, that means nothing today.  It’s the legality of the whole shebang.  Marriage is a big deal.  I don’t believe in the rush of it all because how many people really stay the same person that they were in high school for the rest of their lives?  Unless you have the same ideals as you did when you were 16 at 25, I don’t see it lasting.

            It’s also the difficulty of marriage that is misunderstood.  A marriage between couple at two different colleges in different provinces would be quite difficult to maintain.  There are some genuine couples who are able to do long distance, but straight out of high school with a whole new world at your fingertips, things may start to get lost in translation.    

            In my opinion, which I can only make heard, is that there shouldn’t be a rush.  You get one life and you may as well try to make the best decisions for yourself.  Don’t hang all of your future expectations on a high school romance, because there’s plenty of time to sign a piece of paper and say, “I do” after college.

Things Happen.

This year has been throwing me a lot of curve balls.  OK, I’ll admit, a lot of those curve balls could have been avoided had I not put myself in the situation in the first place, BUT…That’s not the point right now. Recently, very, very, very, recently, things started looking… in an upward direction…  My team at school has been really on the ball, I’ve been slightly more motivated than usual, hence I’ve gone to the gym, (once, but I was on my way for round two I swear).  I’ve been de-stressing over the last couple of days and it felt so good to be getting into a better routine and looking forward to getting through the next couple of months to the sweet victory of graduation.
So, two nights ago, I am on my way to my second hefty installment of pumping iron.  I open my car door and my light doesn’t come on; DESTRUCTION.  Everything is strewn from my glove compartment, there’s no gym bag, which means no ipod, and my really awkward pair of fur lined half mittens are gone.  My expensive ipod cord is still there though(?), my car has just been torn apart.  The kicker: they left both doors open and drained my battery.
But, hey, what can I do at this point?  I need to have some pretty darn low expectations that I will ever see my ipod, ratty old gym bag or half mittens again.  That's what you have to do when situations go sour, as this one did.  You can't run around blaming the last person who got out of that door, or banging your fists on the wall with fury.  Just keep calm and carry on, because an ipod, old gym clothes and mittens aren't the most important things right now, and I'm sure one day I will be rich enough to buy 100 ipods, (there was a little hope inside that joke). 
When I first moved out I always said, "yeah, but that will never happen to me", oh how wrong I was.  When you're away from home expect the unexpected.