I titled this blog 'How to relieve stress in college' and there's a reason for that. College can throw some ridiculously stressful situations on you!

Last weekend I went out partying with my friends. At some point we ended up at this weird guy's house in the burbs. I think it was actually his parents' house, though I didn't see any parents there, maybe they were gone for the weekend or something.

Anyway, we go into his basement, and he breaks out the drugs. I've smoked marijuana before, I got no qualms with the reefer. But this guy brought out the big guns. He and my 'friends' all started with the ecstasy. But before the night was over, there were mushrooms, LSD, and some weird designer drugs from China that were tagged as 'sort of like meth but cleaner and non addictive.'

I was the only one not doing drugs.

Needless to say, I was in some serious need of some Damage Control. Here's how I handled the situation:

I told my friends I start taking drugs a little after them, I wasn't feeling so well. Then once everyone was good and baked, I simply whipped out my multivitamins and popped a few natural supplements while everyone else was popping E. Tada! I'm still part of the cool gang, and all the healthier for it!

Super Bowl parties are fun good times, partially for the commercials and mostly for the food. The super bowl party I went to yesterday had some truly amazing eats.

First off, I'm the lazy one, so I brought a couple buckets of KFC popcorn chicken.
My good friend brought a quiche.
Some guy named Hal brought a bunch of beer.
And a newly married couple brought a full size Fondu pot, complete with broccoli, bread, carrots, and apples.

The Fondu made the party. We dipped everything in that Fondu pot. Never underestimate the power of cheese.
So now I've got to be extra healthy for the rest of the week to work off all that KFC transfat and all that glorious Fondu cheese.
So, the first thing I'm doing is posting my health blog lineup.
Orac value is a blog about measuring the quality of particular vitamins
Life extension is a comprehensive look at the anti-aging process.

And, by the way...Best Super Bowl EVAAARRR!!!!

I consider myself an "amatuer" "struggling" "aspiring" writer, which is an offensive thing to call somebody, but what the hell. That's why I feel obliged to applaud or condemn other aspiring writers as they rise to success or become public darlings. One such author was Mark Wiengardner, the man assigned to write a sequel to the Godfather novel.

"He'll bastardize such a great work!" I thought, ready to scowl at his success. Then I read the sequel and it was even better than the original. The man earned his success the hard way, writing a solid, intricate mafia story. It just happened to be a sequel to help it sell, but it would have been solid regardless.

Then there are people like Diablo Cody. Ex ad-exec, ex-stripper, ex-blogger turned Hollywood screenwriting darling. She was a splash when she released a book detailing her exotic life as an exotic dancer. Then she became a poster girl for the writers strike, holding a big red sign and wearing big, red, heart-shaped sunglasses.

Then her first film came out. Juno. Admittedly, I went in with a sour face (just like when I opened The Godfather Returns). The film was very indie, laced with sappie indie chic music, and constantly making references to movies, bands, and 80's pop culture I'd never heard of. There were certainly funny moments, and Michael Cera is a true comic gem, I can't wait until he grows into a leading straight man.

But, aside from the wonderful casting, Juno wasn't much of a film. It was 20% too snarky, which is bearable for half an hour, but 100 minutes is just too much. The sass was in front of everything. Plot, character, and emotional connection were all thrust aside for the sake of the self-assured punch wit of the writer. The classic John Hughes premise (pregnant high schooler) is a great start to do a modern interpretation, but the premise was almost thrown aside entirely. It's almost as if Juno became pregnant just so the main character could throw out sharp lines like, "The kids at school call me the cautionary whale." The character growth was almost nil, and I just didn't care about Juno, because she didn't seem to care much about anything.

Remember Dane Cook? He was super hot for two months. He had some funny behind him, but no talent. He made couple awful movies, and now I'd be surprised if he could headline another comedy tour. This is what I make of Diablo Cody. She's got snark, but no substance. People point at Quinton Tarantino or Kevin Smith for film makers with thick styles. But the reason these guys keep making movies is because the style is only present to serve the plot and characters of their stories. You date a girl with style, and you marry a girl with substance. Juno may have sass, but she's not wife material.

And on that note, time for some healthy, healthy, go-go bang.  Omega 3 benefits and damage control are two good sites for all your health needs. Good luck!

Oh. My. God. Three and a half hours.

When I was in high school, I used to drive from my hometown in the middle of the swamp all the way up to Saint Louis to watch a Cardinals game with my boyfriend. We crossed an entire state and the trip took three hours.

Yesterday I left my dorm at 4:30pm to visit my friend in Silver Lake (about 15 miles away). And the trip took THREE HOURS!!!!! Just when I think I'm finally managing my stress, traffic sneaks up and drops an S-Ball right on my temporal lobe.

Screw this, I'm selling my car and riding a bike. I'll let people drive through three hours of traffic to get to ME.

Okay, now it's health craze time. These two sites, Best antioxidant and how to relieve stress provide some links to other useful sites that link up to other sites. Hope all these links help in some way. I swear there's a few gems out there, you just have to look for them.

Short Post this week. Why? Because I'm just too stressed out to wright!

No, just kidding. But I am stressed out. I was having problems with a term paper I was writing a few days ago, so I took a break to play minesweeper. I played it for a couple minutes, then gave up. That game is just awful! I believe maybe three brain cells are actually necessary to play minesweeper.

So I downloaded a flash game from the web called Ngame. Oh. My. God. The game is so addictive You control a little ninja guy who runs and jumps around on platforms. If you can get your ninja guy through the special pink door, you win. It's that simple.

I played Ngame for like an hour and didn't get my paper done. So much for stress relief. Anyway, the game's a real button mashes, and I mashed my keyboard so hard that today two of my fingers are numb! Oh boy, I really need to figure this stress thing out!

And now for a couple other blogs you can check out if you're getting bored and you don't want to fall prey to the Ngame madness. Vitamins online is a basic guide for vitamins and what not and the best antioxidant blog gives some more health info, but from a more personal point of view. Hope these help!

I'm in an english class. It's literature of the late 18th to early 19th century. The class is a primary course credit, but the teacher has decided to focus on women in literature, so all our books are written by women. I was excited by this idea.....then I got the book list.

The woman has us reading a 500 page novel every single week! That's 100 pages a weekday for an entire semester! This class was supposed to be FUN! A sort of stress reliever. Women in the 1800's must have been crazy to write such long novels. What were they thinking?!

I was disgruntled the first few weeks. Then we got to Adam Beede. Adam Beede, by all accounts should be a boring...BORING...novel. It's written by George Elliot, the same woman who wrote one sentence in Silas Marner that went on for a page and a half. But Beede was different. I just couldn't put it down. Then we read Pride and Prejudice the next week. Even better! Why did I skip this in high school?! Suddenly a book a week isn't so bad anymore.

The grading system is simple. We take a quiz and then write a one page paper on each book. The quiz is just a check to make sure we've read the book, but my teacher is clever (her name is Azelda, how cool is that?). She makes quiz questions that no cliff's notes would have the answer to, so you really have to read the book to nail the quiz. The papers are all opinion papers which are so much easier to write than research papers. Azelda believes it's better for us to come up with our own thoughts on what we've read, rather than wasting time trying to understand someone else's. I agree, and it keeps the class discussions interesting as well, since we come to class with an opinion already in our heads.

So, 19th century women's lit might actually be my new stress relief.

Also, I found a few health blogs. Not the best in the world, but certainly worth a glance or a skim or whatever it is you do when your mind isn't really doing much, but you need something to keep you interested on the net. Check out either the benefits of vitamins or best antioxidant blog and you'll know what I'm talking about.

I took up inter mural ultimate frisbee this week. I thought it would CALM ME DOWN some how. Boy, was I wrong.

The first day was great. I got to meet a bunch of new people, some cute guys (though short, why are frisbee players short?!) and we did a bunch of stretching and drills which pumped up my endorphins and left me feeling refreshed.

The next day was not quite as fun. There are a couple of girls on the team and they are uber good looking and uber competitive. And they NEVER PASSED ME THE FRISBEE. Suddenly the game wasn't a team as much as a sporty flirt contest. I didn't even realize that these two girls were wearing matching sexy sporty clothes the first day, but now it became very apparent as they pranced around, showing off their lovely sprinting legs to the boys, who had no qualms starring their eyes out. There are a few other girls on the team, and I could tell they knew exactly what was going on, but were playing along anyway, the same way you keep coming home to an alcoholic in the hopes that he'll be a fun drunk or something come dinner time.

Then there was the third day. I sprained my ankle, and let me tell you, there was no sort of damage control on the Frisbee field. The other players just stood around me for a moment until one of the chubbier guys said, "Why don't you just stand up, walk around, see if it gets better." No way mister halflete, I believe I'll get someone to carry me to the sidelines and then help me home. But for some reason, ultimate frisbee players aren't the sort who think carrying a girl is cool. Anyway, one of the less gazelle-like girls on the team helped me hobble back to my dorm. I'm done with that form of stress relief.