12/21/12

Hello!

               So for the past few days one of the big things that I hear people talking about is December 21^st, 2012. Apparently some calendar designed by a bunch of dead people is going to end on this day, and that means that everyone’s freaking out. Honestly, the guy making this calendar many hundreds of years ago either died or thought, “Hey, maybe since I made this calender last so long, someone will continue it later.” They were probably not thinking at the time “Er Mer Gerd end of the world!” They were probably more concerned with everyday things, like getting food. But also, Nostradamus predicted a thousand “golden years of peace” right about this time, and I figure that the best chance we’ve got is if everyone is dead. So maybe the world will end, we won’t really know until the 21^st, eh?

               So my advice for you this apocalypse season is to do exactly what you’d normally do. Don’t go do stupid crap because some very dead guy didn’t finish his stupid calender. In the event that the apocalypse actually happens, though, feel free to do whatever the heck you want, whenever the heck you want to. I’ll see you in the looting. I will have a gun though, so don’t mess with me. You might want to have the three most important necessities of life close at hand – A shotgun, goldfish crackers, and a full set of plate mail. There is nothing that you can’t do if you’ve got those things. Plus, I mean who wouldn’t love to run around in a full suit of armor just for the hell of it? Definitely not me. But yeah, have fun, I’m rambling now. Don’t die, that would suck. If the apocalypse happens, though, I suppose this blog doesn’t really matter, so I’m going to stop now. Buh bye.

Thanks for reading,

Matt Finley          

OM NOM NOM

Hello!

               So as the year goes on, I can definitely tell it’s starting to be winter. The days are getting shorter, the air is getting colder, and this morning we had a few minutes of slushy crap that I suppose could be called snow. Although it has a lot of downsides – I really, really, REALLY hate shoveling snow, for example – one of my favorite parts of the holiday seasons is the food. I’m not a chef of any caliber, but my mother cooks the best stuff I’ve ever had. Fudge is a holiday staple at my house. I swear, my mom makes at least 20 different kind. Chocolate Orange, Plain Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, Peppermint – You name a flavor of fudge and I’ve probably had it made for me.  Another piece of kitchen witchery that she creates is little round pretzel things, with a Hershey’s Kiss melted on top, and then an M&M  pressed into that, then allowed to cool. They taste wonderful, and I could eat them all day. Another of my favorite things around the holidays is the food for Christmas itself. My family doesn’t have any relatives that live anywhere near Iowa, but we cook a big meal all the same. So I hope this sounded pretty good, ‘cause here’s some recipes, yo.

               Chocolate-Covered Pretzel Things:

Ingredients

-Pretzel Sticks

-Chocolate for melting

-Sprinkles

Directions

               Take your pretzel sticks. Dip them in the melted chocolate. Roll them in sprinkles. Eat them. Victory.

               Chocolate M&M Pretzel Things

Ingredients

               -Circular Pretzels

               -Hershey’s Kisses or Rolos or whatever chocolate you want

               -M&Ms

Directions

               Put a ton of pretzel circles down on a piece of wax paper that’s on a cookie sheet. Then place the Hershey’s Kisses down on top of these, facing up. Pop them in the oven for three or four minutes, just until the chocolate gets soft. Then take it out and carefully press an M&M down onto the top of each of these things. Pop the whole mess into the fridge, or in this weather just put them outside until they cool down. Then eat. Enjoy. Win.

              

Chocolate Fudge:

Ain’t nobody got time fo’ that!

               But really. Go ham this holiday season, pun intended. Food’s awesome. Your friends/parents/significant others will appreciate it very much. And even if they’re Grinches and hate food, which is an odd combination, at least it’ll give you something to do this holiday season.

Thanks for reading,

Matt Finley

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program . . .

               I’m throwing off my weekly blogging schedule quite a bit here by adding a fourth post to my usual 3-post, 1200 word count schedule. This breaking news report is brought to you because my wonderfully quiet friend Kendall has done something that few people can actually do – left me speechless. Her response to my post “Extroverts Will Inherit the Earth” was so successful at shutting down my original post that I don’t even know what to respond with. So, in short, she wins. Go visit her blog, Everything Counts Eventually. (everythingcountseventually.blogspot.com) If you know her, go give her a high five. She deserves it.

Extroverts Will Inherit the Earth

Hello!

                So recently I’ve found myself interacting with a group of people infected with a common disability, and I’m afraid it might be contagious. In the words of a high school socialite, “lol jk.” In actuality, I’ve found myself hanging out with my introverted friends more and more in the last few weeks, and I just don’t get it. Why would you choose to be an introvert? And don’t think that it’s not a matter of choice, because it totally is. One would have to put more effort into not socializing than they would have to if they did socialize. Personally I don’t see too many positives to being one of those people that stares at their feet through every conversation they’ve ever had with another person, ever. There are a lot of disadvantages, though.

                For starters, you miss out on a lot if you don’t socialize with your peers. You don’t get as much out of the time you spend in school, for sure. School would just not be the same without the group of close friends that I have, because we take part in some pretty crazy shenanigans. Although we do a lot of stupid stuff that we probably shouldn’t do, it makes it a lot more fun and a lot more memorable. If you’re too quiet to make friends very well, you definitely won’t have as much of a fun time.

                Kennedy is a wonderful place filled with all kinds of people. Everyone could find at least one person they “connect” to. ‘Nd usually, high school is a pretty decent place to start seriously dating. Not many people are going to make fun of you, etc, etc. Downsides to being a shy, introverted person continue here. At some point in the future an introvert might decide that they’ve finally found “the one” and want to start dating him/her. Love will have to wait, though, because Mr(s). Introvert doesn’t have any idea what they’re getting into. Lots of laughing will probably occur when the aforementioned introvert messes up and ends up falling straight on their metaphorical face.

                Another reason why being introverted would suck is because it’s nice to be loud. If you’re confident in yourself enough to go through the halls screaming about your love for turtles with a pink sequined cowboy hat on and the breeze blowing through your knees in your nice new kilt, I can vouch for your obvious manliness, and give you props as well.  At this point there are not many things that you can’t do. Besides gaining back the respect lost from your friends. But who’s counting?

Thanks for reading,

Matt Finley

Morgan Freeman!

Hello!

               So yesterday I had some friends over to my place, where we screwed around for a bit. As it got a bit later we decided to pop a movie into the DVD player, and “Shawshank Redemption” got picked. As a fan of Morgan Freeman, I’ve seen the movie before, but not for a long time. So watching it for the second time, I really paid close attention to the smaller details, and found it to be really good. There were a lot of jokes that I understood this time around that made the movie that much more enjoyable.

               Firstly, though, is Morgan Freeman. It was really interesting seeing Morgan Freeman as a younger actor playing an older person, instead of what you usually see now – Morgan Freeman as an older actor playing an older person. It was cool seeing how his acting style has changed over the years. But hands down, he’s the best actor in the movie. I really enjoy Morgan Freeman’s acting in any movie, and he didn’t disappoint in this one. He both plays a character as well as narrates, which is a bonus. I’d listen to Morgan Freeman narrate paint dry, if such a thing was sold.

               On to the actual movie, though. The main character is a banker who’s falsely accused of murdering his wife and is thrown into Shawshank prison, where he meets a variety of people who are both helpful and hurtful to him. He meets “Red,” who’s played by Morgan Freeman (Aw Yeah!), who helps him learn the ropes of the prison, and can get him anything from a rock hammer to a poster of Marilyn Monroe.  To counteract the wonderful voice of Morgan Freeman, though, is the Warden. He runs the prison, and helps and hurts our main character depending on what mood he’s in. I love this character because if you think about it, you can probably relate the Warden to someone you know. Makes the movie that much more enjoyable. I also really thought that the plot twist that happens at the end was pretty good, and I didn’t see it coming. This movie was really nice overall because it doesn’t conform to the standard mold of most movies, which we’ve all seen. You know, “boy meets girl, boy falls in love, etc.” I’ve seen that kind of thing too many times to get any enjoyment out of it. So this movie was a refreshing breath of air, as it were.

Thanks for reading,

Matt Finley

Finals Anxiety

Hello!

               All of us at some point have taken a final. And around finals time, if you’re anything like me, you get a little bit stressed. I mean, who wouldn’t? Finals will usually “make or break” your grade in high school, and most definitely will in college. So yeah, we’ve all got a right to be stressed, because our society drills into our head that we need a good grades to get into a good college, and need to get into college to get a good job, and need a good job to have a good life, etc, etc.

               There are a few other things that add to the stress of taking these end-of-term exams, as well. For example, some teachers, towards the end of the term, will continue with the curriculum but also start adding review, which doubles the workload of the students. On the other side, some teachers won’t review at all, and leave all of it up to you. This leaves you scrambling for information and equally as stressed. One final thing that I see around finals time that’s stressful is when teachers wait until weeks after all the other teachers to grade your final. This shows laziness on their part, and increases the time from when students take the test to when they get to see their final grades for a class. That just irritates everyone.

               There are some ways to relieve this stress, though! When I’m studying for finals, I try to study with a friend when I can. That way you can bounce ideas and whatnot off of another person, plus it’s not one hundred percent work, one hundred percent of the time. I find that a little screwing around every now and again helps me to do better work when I have to. Another thing that I find works is when I take breaks from studying for finals. Study for an hour or so, then take a break and check your twitter, or facebook, or whatever it is that needs checking. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s too bad, because it allows me to get my studying done and have a little fun at the same time. Madness, right?

               So next time finals come around, maybe you could find your own things that relieve stress, instead of just giving your teacher the ol’ one-two and slug ‘em in the gut.

Thanks for reading,

Matt Finley

Ho Ho Ho! Happy Capitalism!

Hello!

                This post marks me beginning the second third of my blog posts for this school year, and the last part of my blog posts for this calendar year. To go hand-in-hand with the growing cold and the shorter days, I’m going to be talking about Christmas!

                Recently I was busy relaxing after stuffing my face of good ol’ homemade food with my family for Thanksgiving. As usual, my mother invited me along on her swashbuckling midnight adventuring during the ritual us Americans know as “Black Friday.” Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for my mother, this involves me holding her place in line with my hands full of the crap she wants to buy while she fights other grown women to the death over that “must have” pair of shoes that’s on sale. To make it even worse, this tomfoolery didn’t even start at midnight; it started at nine o’clock on Thanksgiving night. Think of all of the unfortunate retail workers who don’t get to spend their holiday with their families because they’re being used and abused by the angry housewives of America.

                Another terrible occurrence that I see more and more often is the post-Halloween-Xmas-Sales. Stores around the country tear down their Halloween aisles and replace them with the green and red that we associate with Christmas -at the beginning of November. This is madness, my friends. Christmas is in late December, I do not want to see lights and trees up by the first of November.

                To me, it almost seems like the beginning of the end. My parents tell me of the days when they “had to walk ten miles to get to the nearest grocery store!” Now, however, with massive chain retail stores popping up on every corner of the nation, Christmas seems to be less about the “holiday spirit” and more about the money. Ask any child in the U.S.A. today what Christmas is all about, I guarantee 95% of them would tell you it’s about the presents. That’s terrible, when it should be about friends and family. I challenge each and every one of you who reads this to take a step back, and really ask yourself why you’re excited. Is it because you get cool new stuff, or get out of school? If so, see if you can’t have a better time by thinking more about your family and less about yourself. Either way, happy holidays!