I, Robot?

So, I'm reading this book on cybernetics that I bought at the gift store in a science museum. I was reading chapter three today when I found out some shocking news. (cuse the dramatic music) News that would turn my whole world as I knew it upside down....

That news was the definition of the word cyborg:

cy·borg

   /ˈsaɪbɔrg/ Show Spelled[sahy-bawrg] Show IPA

noun

a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device.

 

(source: dictionary.com)

Glasses, as it was pointed out by the book, are a mechanical device. I wear glasses. Therefore, I'm technically a cyborg.


...


...

...0_o

Seriously?!? This is shocking news to me, it's like, right below being told that I'm actually an alien. And all I can come up with is an emoticon?!?

Oh. My. Goodness.

THAT'S EXACTLY HOW A CYBORG WOULD REACT!!!!!!!




Crap. I did it again...sort of.

I'm bad at internet memes.

Probably a good sign.

Still trying not to hyperventilate.



Maybe if I...got contacts?

Wait. Still a lens.

Laser surgery?

Can't afford it.

Darn it.

Oh well. Guess I'm a cyborg for life, then.



The lame thing about knowing something is that you can't unknow it...

Dahlia or Dandelion?

Have you ever seen a flower growing through a crack in the pavement? It makes my day every time.

The thing is, you'll never see this occurring with the more delicate flowers. No roses or orchids or dahlias here. The flowers that make it through the concrete are the dandelions, the wild pansies, the daisies. They're the weeds. The ones that annoy me when I see them growing on the front lawn.

How could something be so beautiful in one situation, but held in such low regard in another? The only solution that I can think of is that it's not the beauty of the flower itself that I'm reacting to, but the beauty of the situation. Every tiny blossom that a plant growing through the sidewalk produces is a reminder that adversity can be overcome.

At any time, there are pairs of feet cruising by, any one of them might crush its delicate petals. A child could easily pluck it out of the ground, inadvertently destroying the subject of his or her admiration. Herbicides are sprayed with the express purpose of killing the tiny plant.

Add to that the fact that it's growing through a slab of rock. There are no nutrients there to support it. At least not at the surface.

But what the rose would see as a death sentence, the wild pansy sees as a challenge. Its roots shoot far, far down into the soil, as its stem makes the long, difficult journey to the light. Down beneath the pavement, the dandelion finds virgin soil, free from other plants that might compete with it, and gets all the nutrients it needs to flourish in its difficult environment. Even if it gets plucked, the roots of the plant are so deep that it can regenerate and start over. It adapts.

As do we. Everyone faces adversity. What separates the dandelions from the dahlias is whether we see it as a minor setback or an insurmountable obstacle. The only question is which will you be?

The Best Things Ever

My two favorite things in the world are fresh air and music. I've decided to procrastinate from my homework by creating a list of scenarios which combine the two, all of which are guaranteed to cause a little happy coma, deep within my soul:

1) playing guitar outside
2) hearing some one else play guitar outside
3) outdoor worship services
4) outdoor concerts
5) listening to a crappy stereo while at the beach
6) listening to a crappy stereo while camping in the mountains
7) blasting the radio while driving with the window open
8) sitting at the window, listening to my ipod
9) campfire sing-a-longs
10) singing in the parking lot (until I inevitably get caught, that is)

The Cliff

I've been on this road for awhile now. Trying to live two lives. There's the life that I imagine for myself at some point in the future. There's not a day goes by that doesn't find me thinking about it, picturing what it will be like, longing for it. Then there's the life I actually live. It's good, respectable, and most of the time I actually find myself enjoying it. On some level, I knew that the day would come when I'd have to choose.

Do I chase the awesome but admittedly crazy dream, or do I grow up and settle for an easy, peaceful life?

I've been inching closer for a good portion of my life so far.

And finally, I find myself at the edge of a metaphorical cliff with two options.

I can jump off, knowing that I'll have to fall through all of my deepest fears and way, WAY out of my comfort zone. But if I find that I can fly, the payoff would be huge. I could become all I've always felt I was meant to be.

Or, I can walk away. I'll be safe, comfortable, stable, maybe even moderately happy. But I'll never know whether I ever had a chance at my dream. I'll never know whether I could fly.

I've known the time to make this decision would eventually come ever since I realised that the life I pictured is highly improbable. I've always thought that I would make the brave decision and go for it anyway. And now everything in me is telling me the time to make that commitment is now. But I'm terrified. I know that this is a risk that I need to take, but something keeps pulling me back.

It's the craziest thing to know exactly what you want, and what the next step to getting it is, but being afraid to do it. It's like being paralyzed.

Not that this is something meant to be interesting to read. I just needed to think through some things, and writing is a way for me to do that. Sorry to have wasted your time if you were expecting to read something excellent.

I Wore My Sunglasses at Night

A long-time pet peeve of mine is when people wear sunglasses indoors. Not due to a medical condition or being sensitive to light or recovering from laser eye surgery, or because they have those lenses that automatically shade when you go outside and then take forever to go back to normal. But as a fashion statement. It's not practical, everyone knows it. It just looks bad. Please don't.

And WHAT is with the selection of these already fairly awful frames? It's like they're just designed to be unflattering. You've got the aviators, which make you look like you walked out of your time machine straight from the seventies, ditto the ones with ridiculous day-glo frames that you can buy at the dollar store if you happen to be blessed with good vision. You've got the ones that are so dark they completely block out your eyes and the ones that are so lightly tinted they barely qualify as sunglasses. What's worse is that there doesn't seem to be a nice, medium range. And lest we forget those ones that are so huge they make virtually everybody look bug-eyed (which, much to my bewilderment, most model/actresses don't seem to mind). I bought the least offensive pair I could find at lenscrafters and I still hate the way they look on me.

Don't get me wrong, sunglasses are useful sometimes, and there are a few occasions when I'll go ahead and swap them in. If I'm driving and the sun is in my eyes, if I'm walking out of an afternoon showing of some movie, if I'm on the beach, or in Hawaii (my Canadian eyes are just a little too delecate to handle that much sunlight), or if the sun is reflecting off the snow enough for it to hurt not to squint I won't hesitate to pop them on, but other than that I avoid them like the plague.

So it kind of sucked for me last week, when my regular glasses broke. I tried to make do with an old pair, but it's easier said than done when you have to read the whiteboard to take down notes. So, I wore my sunglasses in a particularly note-filled class one day. I wasn't proud of it then, and I'm not now. I'm pretty sure I blushed for fifty minutes straight that day. I put them away as soon as I got out of class and immediately felt dizzy wearing my old prescription. Having already experienced a good dose of cognitive dissonance from wearing them indoors for almost an hour despite my chagrin when I see other people do it, I decided "What the heck? I already paid for it.". And wore them for the rest of the day. In costco. At the mall. Shopping for a new pair of glasses. Playing with the cat. At 11:00 pm.

It really annoyed my family. Good to know I'm not the only one.

I'll Probably Decide to Delete This By Tomorrow

I've always kind of liked minesweeper. I find that there's something kind of soothing about using simple logic to avoid certain (virtual) doom.

There's just one problem: I used to really suck at it.
Like 33% win rate kind of suck.
Really bad.

Then last week I finally figured out how to flag mines (you right click, FYI), and after losing a few games by accidentally left clicking on a mine I was trying to flag, I found myself winning almost every game.

It was such a small peice of the puzzle, but without it, winning more than 50% of the time was a pretty much hopeless endeavor. And then I started thinking: What if real life were like this? What if there were just some "little peice" that was holding me back? Would I change it? Would I be able to? If not, would I even want to know?

Then I remembered: that was computer land, and this is here. So I don't have to even wonder.
It was the first time I was ever thankful that life is more complicated than a computer.

AUGH! :(

Know what sucks?!?!

*waits for you to guess*

Wrong! Miniseries's. They suck.

Allow me to back up a little bit. Recently, I was unlucky enough to find what could very well be my favorite TV related thing ever. Spoiler alert: it's BBC's Sherlock. It was perfect. Everything about it was just perfect. The british accents, the mystery, the adventure, the british accents, the creativity that still managed to stay somewhat true to the source material, the british accents, the bromance between Holmes and Watson, and did I mention the british accents (which are only the second most beautiful accents ever)? Also, Sherlock Holmes is my all-time favorite book series. Even the throw cushion on Holmes's armchair is exactly like the one I have on my bed (which I bought before knowing of the series). It's like the producers had me in mind when they made it.

Now, I say that I was unfortunate to stumble (or rather, be directed to via a friend's recommendation) upon this little slice of heaven because it's a miniseries. Which basically means there are a total of three 90 minute episodes available for me to watch until the new year, when the second season is to come out. I've watched two of them already.

So now I'm stuck with this terrible dilemna: I can go ahead and watch the third episode right now. Or I can resist and have a new episode still to watch until the new series comes out. And I blame the miniseries format of the show. Three episodes is just not enough for a satisfying season of any show, let alone a contender for the greatest thing ever. It's enough to get you hooked, and then it's like: No more! Season's over. See you next year, SUCKA!!!

You suck, BBC, you really, really suck.

Murphy's Law Rears it's Ugly Head

So, I've been taking singing lessons this semester. It's been a combination of good, bad, and ugly.
The breakdown:

The Good:
-I can sing approximately seven million, one hundred and twenty one times better than when I started two months ago
-I've discovered that my range is actually somewhat decent (one note shy of three octaves, last time I checked)
-it gives me a legit excuse to practice, which is something I didn't have before
-having to occasionally listen to recordings of myself singing has forced me to sort of half get over my hatred of my own voice

The Bad:
-only being allowed to sing classical. Actually, I guess bad is an overstatement, because I've found its emphasis on good technique to transfer quite easily to the other genres I find myself singing in everyday life (rock and pop in the car, worship while I'm at church, and so on)
-having to perform in front of my classmates. partly because of my own self-consciousness about my voice, partly because they're all really amazing singers and I feel slightly inadequate more often than not
-having to practice at home has caused some conflict with the family. lame.

The Ugly:
-I've got a bunch of performances coming up, including one that's pretty much my final exam, and my throat has been killer sore for the past three days.

Yeah. Perfect timing, body. Just go ahead and get sick now. It's not like I need you to be in working order for a few more weeks, or anything like that. No, it would be absolutely unhelpful to me if you could just abstain from rendering me mute until Christmas break. Gosh. >_<

The Dumbest Thing

For weeks now, the school's been posting mysterious Ads all over campus. They ran something like this: "Have you met Mark? Come see what he stands for!" and included a little origami figure of a person (presumably Mark). Everyone at school knew about them because most of us had either seen them for ourselves or had some one else ask us what it was all about.

Today, I was hanging out in one of the common areas at school when some one brought out a giant statue version of the origami figure that was on all the ads. Naturally, I was as curious as everyone else, so I decided to stick around and find out what was going on.

After about 20 minutes of watching people set up, I was handed a pamphlet, which I eagerly read. Basically, it was about how we could make our "Mark" by donating to the school's scholarship funds. Facepalm.

Don't get me wrong. Scholarship funds are awesome, but asking college students to donate to them is like going to the foodbank and asking the people who rely on it for donations of non-perishable food items. Those of us who aren't currently making use of scholarships and bursaries are saving every penny just to pay to come here. Heck, some of us are living off ramen noodles even with our scholarship money. The point is that we rely on scholarships because we couldn't otherwise afford college. For the most, we certainly can't afford to donate to scholarship funds at this point. Our budgets are on life support as it is. Do they seriously not realise that we're poor?!?

I'm sorry. This is a bit of a rant, but it makes me angry.

How I Wasted $130

This Summer, when I started making a point of practicing playing guitar regularly, I used to just sit cross-legged on the floor next to my amp to practice. Chillin' hippie style for an hour or so a day was absolutely fine by me...at first.

Then one day, my feet started cramping. The muscles would tense up and they would curl themselves tighter and tighter into themselves. Needless to say, this was excruciatingly painful, but I was determined and I figured that I could power through the agony if it only happened on occasion.

Of course, life doesn't work that way. The cramps became more and more frequent until it started happening almost every day. Luckily, I'd found a way to stop it from happening. All I had to do was stand up and put some weight on it for a few moments. Unfortunately, this had the effect of interrupting me, sometimes several times in one practice session.

It got so bad that I went to the doctor about it. She advised me to get new shoes. And also to stop sitting cross legged. Apparently it can pinch a nerve or something. Of the two explanations she offered, I was more want to believe the one about sitting cross legged. I had, after all, been wearing ballet flats on a daily basis for almost four years with no prior ill effects. So I knew I had to do something about my current practice set up. I decided to take the plunge and buy a chair.

I got the idea of setting up a little "practice corner" in my bedroom, complete with a magazine rack for my music books and a place to keep my guitars, and of course, a comfortable place to sit when I wanted to use them. I looked at dozens of pictures of other people's practice spaces on the Internet to get inspiration for my own. Finally, I settled on a lovely cream leather chair and bought it.

And today? I keep a regular book in the magazine rack. You see, as ridiculous as it is, I've to this day been unable to break the habit of practicing on the floor. So every day, I kneel down right in front of the chair I purchased for this very purpose, and practice my guitar. I find that if I kneel instead of sit cross-legged, my feet don't cramp up the way they used to. However, by the time I'm done practicing, my legs are so thoroughly numb from sitting on them that I usually can't get up right away. And I figure that if I'm stranded on my bedroom floor, I might as well read a book while I'm waiting for my legs to gain the strength to support the rest of my body.

Driving

Call me crazy, but commuting is actually my favorite part of the day. It's just me, my music, and whoever happens to be watching me rock out from the car next to mine when I'm stuck in traffic (which is pretty much inevitable, given my current school schedule).

At church, I only get to sing worship music, and at school, I only get to sing classical. Not that I want or expect things to be any different, but there's just something very liberating about being able to sing along to whatever I want, as loudly and as badly as I want. The only other place I get that kind of freedom is in the shower, and even there, the echo keeps me from ever wanting to go for a crazily high note just to see if I can pull it off.

And then there are the people. They're stuck in traffic, and grouchy, then they look over at me, having a blast being stuck in the same situation. It makes some people even grouchier to see me having so much fun, but every so often it makes the person crack a smile when I make eye contact, grin, and go back to acting as though no one was watching.

The best though, are the days when I'm a little bit angry and it's warm enough to roll down the window. I crank the music and sing along regardless, no doubt sounding like an obnoxious teenager who stumbled here straight from the 80's. To be just a little bit loud and annoying sometimes is such a nice escape from the pathologically polite (seriously, if some one bumps into me, I will apoligize to them), timid person I usually am.

Maybe I'm just nuts, but it all makes me very happy. ^_^

This is Why I Shouldn't Blog when I'm Tired.

For all the years I've spent hanging around me, you would think I'd know me better.

But the more I think about it, the more apparent it's becoming that this is not the case.

I think about what I actually know about myself and if I'm honest, it's not a lot. I know that I like to please people way too much. I know that at some point a long time ago, I actually felt good about my chances at succeeding at life in some way, and I know that now I struggle not to let pessimism hold me back almost every day.

As for the goals that I used to feel so sure I'd accomplish one day, I barely know what they are anymore. What's worse is that for all my uncertainty, I'm almost positive that wherever I do find success, I'll wish for something else once I get there. I can already see that happening in my life now. And the fact that I know how little focus I have terrifies me.

I've always said that I don't care about money so much as living my passions, and I still feel that way, but it's easier said than done when you hardly even know what you want out of life. I just wish I could get my priorities together long enough to get some sort of plan in line for my life, somewhere where I can focus my energy without feeling so doubtful all the time.

If I could just get that...I could go from being kind of okay at lots of things to being really good at whatever it is I need to be good at...and if I could just go to bed, maybe I wouldn't be posting depressing "nobody understands me" teen angst on the internet. But here I am, I guess. Sucks. Just sucks.

Canadian Thanksgiving: Why We Don't Do it the "Normal" Way

So, tomorrow is Canadian Thanksgiving. It's ridiculously early by American standards. Being mostly submersed in American culture as a kid, I used to wonder why we didn't have it in November like the "normal" people down south did. I had several theories: maybe British thanksgiving was in October*, maybe the Natives and the Pilgrims shared meals in Canada first, maybe we were just weird that way.

Now that I'm older, though, Canadian thanksgiving makes a lot of sense. As it turns out, in Canada, Mid-October is a much more suitable time for the holiday than Late November. All of the major elements of this tradtion just work better on the Canadian date (at least for us Canadians).

Foliage:

There's a saying in Canada: "We have two seasons, eh: Winner an' waitin' for Winner." Fall, while not completely non-existant, is extremely short. If we want to frolic in falling leaves, or more to the point, give them to our children to glue on to centerpeices for the kitchen table, we have to do it FAST.

And really, you tell me: which one looks more like Thanksgiving?

Turkey Dinner Satisfaction Ratio:

As you can see from the above diagram, the progression of American statuory holidays (pictured in blue), includes and extended "dry period" at the beggining of the season where turkey dinner satisfaction is at its lowest, due to a lack of turkey dinners, followed by an elongated high period between American Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Canadian progression (pictured in red), follows a more balanced trajectory, with some degree of turky satisfaction throughout the season. 

Giving Thanks:

As sad a commentary as it is, most people don't feel particularly grateful when it's minus forty and we're contending with 7 hours of sunlight or less a day. In Canada, that's most of the time, November 24th included most years.

Which scene makes you feel better about life?

Black Friday: Yeah...we don't do that in Canada. We have Boxing Day on December 26 instead.


See?!?, it's just better, as far as us Canadians are concerned.**

*As it turns out, Canadian Thanksgiving corresponds with the Harvest Festival in Europe, so this childhood assumption wasn't completely wrong. Yay me!
** DISCLAIMER: the contents of this article are intended for humor purposes only. Any offence taken is unintentional and extremely unfortunate.

Redo!

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I could have /should have done differently over the course of my life so far. Not so much to make myself regret the things I've done so far, but more to recognize those choices as mistakes so I don't remake them in the future. Because I don't really feel like doing my homework, I've decided to instead post the list online for everyone to see. Because that is apparently my masochistic brand of fun. So without further ado:

REWIND: 12 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: Don't give up on piano lessons! Practice! A lot. You'll use it later.

REWIND: 10 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: Look. I know you hate swimming lessons, but you're going to nearly drown three times and have to be rescued by friends over the course of your future life before you give up swimming for your own safety. If you learn to like it, you might be able to save yourself some embarrassment...

REWIND: 9 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: I know you don't want to be a walking Hollister bilboard and I still completely respect that choice. However, that doesn't mean that wearing gigantic neon t-shirts is a good idea. Please stop.

REWIND: 6 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: Also? Lose the charity jelly bracelets. I know you think it looks cool to wear 14 of them at once, but the key to being both charitable and likable is to not make a show of what you're doing...

REWIND: 5 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: Yes, you're an awkward geek, but this year, everyone else is, too. If you think the other kids are judging you, they probably are, but they're all just as lame, so whatever. Also, the fight you're having with your best friend is going to end eventually, so just chill about it in the meantime.

REWIND: 4 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: You're starting guitar lessons. Allow yourself to enjoy them and practice a lot. It'll kill at first, but the pain will go away and you'll get good at it. Also, people don't think you're as lame as you think they think you are.

REWIND: 2 years.
WHAT I'D TELL ME: Your counselor told you that you wouldn't need biology. FOR THE LOVE OF ICE CREAM, DON'T LISTEN TO HER!!!!!!!

Of course, at no point would past me listen to a vision of myself from the future, if anything, I'd probably have myself interned at a mental hospital, but it's nice to pretend that doing this would make some sort of difference...and actually, my regrets are not as numerous or grave as I thought they would be...

That Awkward Moment When...

You realise you've been embarrassing yourself every day for a solid three months and didn't even know about it.

It all started at the beggining of Summer when I started a job at my Dad's office. It was a lot of fun for the first week or so, then boredom set in. And it set in hard. Fortunately, it didn't take me long to accidentaly discover one fun thing about the job: the bathroom.

Yes, the bathroom. You see, it was covered in floor to ceiling tile, which meant that the accoustics were horrible in the best possible way. Every little sound echoed and magnified itself. Of course, being me, I had the immediate urge to try singing. And so I did, and it was amazing.

So then I started lingering after my bathroom break to sing and hear my voice sound approximately one billion and three times more intense than usual. Then I started going in just to sing. Because, hey, the song that was playing on my ipod ROCKED and I TOTALLY NEEDED to sing along. No one would hear me, anyway.

Or so I thought.

I should have figured it out when I was walking across the parking lot one day and a coworker complimented me on my voice. Unfortunately, I happened to be singing along to my ipod at the time, so even though I didn't think I was singing all that loudly, I figured he'd heard me.

I finally did figure it out about a week before I was due to quit. I was walking past the bathroom when I heard two women inside talking. The bathroom wasn't soundproof. I seriously wanted to die. And that's the story of my life's most embarrassing moment.

Illusion: Shattered.

So, I found out something pretty mind blowing recently.

I've been self conscious about being shy for so long. In high school I just basically gave up on the idea of ever being actually liked by the people I hung out with. I'd just be tolerated. After all, that's all some one as awkward as myself was capable of. I just got used to being lonely.

I got to university, and it seemed like I'd actually made a couple friends. At first, I wouldn't let myself believe that people actually wanted to get to know me. I told myself that they just talked to me because I hung out with people who they actually liked.

But then yesterday, I skipped hanging out with my friends during my break to study for a midterm. I was still so used to just being tolerated that I figured they probably wouldn't miss me for a day. It was a couple hours later when I was talking to one of them and he asked where I'd been that morning that it hit me: I was actually missed. Which could only mean one thing: I was liked enough to be missed.

Needless to say I was thrilled. It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I'm not as utterly unlikable as I've convinced myself that I am. The funhouse mirror that I'd look in to see a timid, awkward, generally hurting version of myself had been shattered. In its place were all the memories of feeling unwanted that I'd repressed and now had to reconstruct.

Looking back at the past five years, it's just crazy to me just how elaborate a lie I'd constructed for myself in order to keep that mirror, that false perception of reality, alive. People used to smile at me in the hallways out of pity. People would say hi to me because I looked lonely and it seemed like the right thing to do. Nobody knew or even cared who I was. All were lies I had told myself and believed. It makes me angry at myself to think that I thought I was smart, and yet, I was never able to put 2 and 2 together enough to realise that perhaps, just maybe, people were nice to me because they actually wanted to be.

On the plus side, now that my cycle of thinking so poorly of myself has officially been broken, I'll probably be a lot more confident from now on. :)

What I'd Forgotten About University

Post-Haircut Weirdness

So I did something today that I've always wanted to do.

I cut my hair really, really short. I went from about ten inches long to a pixie cut.

I kind of figured that if I hated it, I could just go buy a wig to wear until it grows out. Luckily, it looks awesome (I'm not saying it to brag, but I just love my new look).

However, there's some weirdness that comes with a really dramatic makeover. First, there's the feeling that there's something missing up there. Your head just feels lighter. It sounds really weird, but it's true. Then there's the fact that your brain still expects the hair to be there after it's gone. I only came home from the salon about four hours ago, and I've caught myself reaching for my non-existant ponytail once already. Also, people stare. I forget that I've had my hair cut until some one walks into the room and stares at me.

But the weirdest thing has to be how much I've stared at myself. I can't help but stare at any reflective surface: mirrors, windows, the powered down computer screen. It's just so weird. Honestly, I can't even describe how weird it is to look at yourself in the mirror after a big makeover. You have to experience it. The closest thing I can say is that it's like you don't recognize your reflection. It's like "Hey! Who's that person wearing my clothes?...oh yeah." maybe not exactly. Like I said, you have to experience it to know what I mean.

Hopefully I'll get used to this soon, I'm getting kind of sick of having these out of body experiences with the mirror; it's creeping me out just a little... :S

A Rose By Any Other Name

So I spontaneously decided to spend the next week overhauling my bedroom, which means choosing paint colors.

You would think that this would be the easy part, since I have pretty much everything else I want to put in chosen, and some of it already purchased.

However, I've come an unexpected hurdle in what should be an easy process: the fact that they name paint colors.

You see, I'll find a color which I love called say "Gumball Red", which is an okay name I suppose. But then I'll see another color that's less close to the color I actually want, that is called something like "Hot Chili Pepper". From there my train of thought goes something like the following:

hot chilli pepper --> red hot chilli peppers ---> good music ---> oh my gosh I WANT THIS ONE

The worst part is, I am completely aware of the process, I'm just powerless to stop it. Deep down, I know that this is the reason why a color called "Purpoise" (because dolphins are pretty) beats out "Silver Charm" (meh) for me even though the two are almost identical. And yet, I can't help falling in love with "Purpoise" and "Edgy Red" instead of "Poppy" and "Mountain Fog" even as a part of me knows that if I cut the names off of all my paint chips, I'd probably do a better job of choosing the colors I actually want.

What's more, I'm pretty sure the paint companies know that this works. That would certainly explain why last week's newspaper included an ad from the paint company about a contest to rename a shade of beige known as "Cuddle" to something more man-friendly (the prize was an entertainment center, btw).

It's just weird. I would have thought that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but apparently not...speaking of which, what do you think of "Velvet Rose"? because I bet it would sell...

A Collection of MAGICAL Words

Some words just ring with sheer awesomeness from every syllable. Words like:

Vertigo

Nevermore

Matrix

Panini

ubiquitous

zigzag

philharmonic

Sunshine

harmony

exquisite

Let me know if I've missed any! :)