Zombies, Vampires, and Further-Suspending-the-Reality-of-Adulthood, Oh My!

In the spirit of Halloween, let’s assess the recent fascination with fictional beings that has taken over the country.

I don’t understand the recent obsession, on campus and throughout the nation, with vampires and zombies. I was thrilled when the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings hype finally subsided, and now there has been a return of this ridiculous, infantile fixation with imaginary monsters.

Halloween is not my favorite holiday. Girls my age take advantage of it by dressing like hussies, taking away the childhood wonder of Halloween. I think it dates back to high school when my mom grounded me on Halloween night… Nonetheless, it’s not my favorite holiday and I most certainly don’t want to celebrate it all year round.

I hate everything Twilight. I had friends and high school that obsessed over it and sadly that has translated to college. I have never cracked one of the books open in fear of getting sucked in. I was even hesitant to watch the movie. Alas, I did, and made Erik watch it, as well. It was ridiculous. “It's like you're my own personal brand of heroin.” Oh, please.

Though I understand the desire for romantic movies, there’s nothing romantic about a vampire falling in love with a human. This movie is chock-full of cheesy lines; my eyes were tired from rolling so much. People say the book is better; I say fat chance.

Following the release of the Twilight saga, several television series were released about vampires (i.e. Valmont or Vampire Diaries). It just seems so childish to me. It’s not as much of a surprise that young girls are buying this stuff, but even some grown women like it. I just don’t understand it.

Not to mention the whole recent zombie obsession. Zombieland was released and crowds of viewers dressed like zombies filled the theaters. In my hometown, MacArthur mall was crawling with zombie look-a-likes complete with fake blood, a limp, and torn clothing. This includes adults. I don’t mean to condescending or more “scholarly” than everyone else, but where’s the fun in this? Why can’t you just go to a movie and enjoy it?

I think it’s the chance to escape your everyday identity that attracts people to this phenomenon. People have normal jobs, families, classes, etc. and they will jump at the first opportunity to leave that in the dust… even for a two-hour long movie.

Also, there’s a new game being played on college campuses all across Virginia. It’s called Zombies vs. Humans. A friend of mine explained the rules to me, but forgive me if they are slightly inaccurate, for I lost interest after I found out there was actual structure to it. Zombies wear headbands. Zombies and humans carry Nerf guns. The human shoots the zombie and the zombie is dead. The zombie can also become paralyzed, in which they put their bandana around their neck to symbolize this. My friend assured me that they are only paralyzed for a short period.

This game bids many questions. How do you win? How do you know when each side has won? And, of course, why on earth are you doing this? I assume it’s to relieve the boredom of dorm life, but wouldn’t you think, with a full course load and several clubs/teams offered, they would have other activities to occupy their time?

This whole thing baffles me. Hopefully it dies out soon.

Have a great Halloween!

Dear Suite Mates,

Emily and I have reached the end of our rope. We could handle your constant blaring of Miley Cyrus or your incessant door slamming, but this week, when the plumber told me there was a tennis-ball sized wad of hair clogging the sink, I decided it was the last straw.

At the beginning of the school year, I made a toilet paper sign-up list. For the first two weeks or so, each set of roommates was taking in their own roll of toilet paper. Aware of this, I took it upon myself to initiate taking turns to replace the toilet paper. You agreed to it to my face, but probably cackled about my OCD tendencies behind closed doors. That’s okay; unbeknownst to you, your opinion is completely negligible. Two days following the posting of the neatly typed-up toilet paper sheet, someone defaced it by writing “WTF it’s just toilet paper!” then scratched it out (not well enough, obviously). A few days later I wrote “you suck” then tried to scratch it out in order to make it look like one of our friends wrote it, but my pen ran out of ink, because God unfortunately doesn’t like to grant me gratification for spiteful revenge most of the time.

On one of the several occasions that you locked us out of the bathroom, I knocked on your door and asked you to please unlock the bathroom door. You did. The next morning, I found a message on our board that read, “You are a C word!” I stared at it for a few minutes, dumbstruck by all of the hilarious potential responses that flooded my brain all at once. Not only were you too big of wimps to actually write out “the C word,” but also you couldn’t even say it to my face. Though I wanted severely to respond, I respected Emily’s wishes to avoid drama and simply erased it.

Two weeks ago, you locked us out of the bathroom for the fourth time. This time, it was eleven o’ clock at night, which just happened to be the time that I had to use the restroom. So, we knocked and we knocked and we knocked, not only on your bathroom door but also on your front door. No response. We assumed you were out; after all it was “thirsty Thursday.” So, we walked up to the front desk and told them you locked us out of the bathroom. Two RA’s followed us down to our hall. (I have nicknames for them now, since we talk so often. These two were Kiki and Bon-Bon.) They knocked once, twice, three times, four times, said “RA keying in” then unlocked your door and opened it. You were both asleep. Taken aback, also probably expecting you to not be in the room, one of the RA’s said, “Oh, uh, you locked them out of the bathroom.” So, one of you got up and unlocked our bathroom door.

We could have the potential of being friends, but what once was a possibility is now out of the question. Some suitemates go to dinner or parties together, but giving you a “hi” in the hallway out of my gracious social charity will do for me. You yell, you sing, and most of all, your flirting with the boys down the hall involves loud squealing. Squealing is one of the most awful sounds in the world, next to the hiss of a cat.

Emily told me that even today she went into the bathroom to perform a number one and one of you promptly used the restroom after her. She told me that after one of you used the bathroom, one of your friends used it and exclaimed, “Oh my god, it stinks in here!” in our room’s general direction, probably trying to make Emily insecure about her bathroom habits. But, alas, she did not produce the stench. You pooped, and you know it.

Hugs and kisses,

Your suitemate

A Letter of Complaint

Dear frat boys that live above me,

 You are loud. You are beyond loud. It has gotten to the point where you have woken me from my sweet slumber, reminding me in the middle of the night that I’m being pierced by the springs of my victim-of-budget-cuts mattress.

The bass from your “music” thumps my room and sometimes shakes my window. I would enjoy it a lot more if I could hear all elements of whatever you’re always listening to, but instead I only receive the vibrations that simply sound like one of you farting out of your window on to mine.

Also, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from rearranging your furniture at two in the morning. Maybe you haven’t gotten the feng shui of your room quite right, but it would be really cool if you could work on that during the daylight. I apologize if one of you is just terribly obese and falls out of bed in the middle of the night three times a week… my mistake.

I have reported you twice to the front desk. Yes, I’m that girl. They say things like “we’ll take care of that” or “I’ll look into that.” I know for a fact they haven’t because 1) they’re college students and, regardless of being RAs, are probably of the same grade as you, friends with you, or you’re by some wild chance “cool” and they want you’re approval and 2) you haven’t stopped.

One night when I was chatting it up with the lady at the front desk about your barbarian behavior, she informed me that you were fraternity members practicing for the sorority vs. fraternity lip-syncing competition that was coming up. So, you were dancing. Okay, I can deal with that. I was just relieved to have a reason.

So then I spied on you one afternoon. I watched Harriet the Spy far too often throughout my childhood to let my keenly developed spy skills go to waste. Not only was your door open (a concept popular to dorm dwellers that I don’t understand), but you were also blaring your music and talking about “that bitch” and “getting crunk.” Needless to say, you adequately met my expectations.

I crossed off on my calendar as the days drew closer to the lip-syncing competition. I almost wanted to attend just to see if I could tell which frat was yours, considering I could almost do the dance routine for you I’d heard it stomping from my ceiling so many nights. But, alas, I didn’t go. I was enjoying quiet time in my room knowing you wouldn’t be there.

Sincerely,

that girl that lives below us, no not “the hot one” the other one

Sidenote: This may be the first of many notes to my neighbors. They all suck.

Ashton Kutcher, Come On Out!

Every time I go to the Farmville Dairy Queen, I feel like I’m getting punked.

 

Mind you, I’ve only been twice, but the service has been so bad both times that I feel like someone is playing a joke on me; like they’re going to hop out with a hundred dollar bill and yell, “GOTCHA!”

I have no issue with any other Farmville businesses. I have never experienced anything but fully satisfactory customer service at businesses such as Goodwill, Wal-Mart, Rite-Aid, etc. But this Dairy Queen has got something against me.

The first time I went to this Dairy Queen was when my boyfriend and I drove up to Farmville over the summer so he could tour the campus, as he’s considering Longwood as a university he’d one day like to transfer to. So, we had a nice jaunt around the campus and I pointed out the buildings he needed to know. On our way out of town we decided to stop for some ice cream at Dairy Queen.

The ordering process was not unlike the usual. The cashier wasn’t the sweetest lady in the world, but she did her job; punched our order in, took our money, and handed back our change. We both ordered chocolate malts; not at all a difficult thing to make. I know this because I worked as a soda jerk for a year in a diner. (Yes, a soda jerk is a real term. It’s someone that makes root beer floats, sundaes, shakes, etc.)

They finished our order and we picked up our cups. I glanced down at mine and saw that it wasn’t chocolate; it was vanilla. Now I’m not the kind of person so complain about little things like a dirty fork at a restaurant or cheese on my potatoes when I specifically asked for none. Little things like that don’t bother me, and I let them slide, but something as easy as making a chocolate malt when you only have three flavors of malts is a mistake that should be avoided.

I politely said to the woman that had taken our order, “Excuse me, I asked for a chocolate malt.” She looked at me and said, “You didn’t specify what flavor you wanted.” I was taken aback and responded, “Yes I did, I said I wanted chocolate. It’s no big deal though, if you could just put —” She then proceeded to snatch my malt back and said, “Yeah, sure.”

Making a malted shake chocolate is not something that is difficult. Three squirts of the standardized chocolate syrup, mix it, and it’s a done deal. She made it sound like it was heart surgery. Let it be said that this DQ was not busy; we were two of maybe five customers. I was polite, and even if I didn’t specify what flavor I wanted (which I did), it wasn’t my fault that she didn’t ask what flavor I wanted. Plus, who gets a vanilla malt? Only old men, as far as I’m concerned.

 

 

The second instance at this Dairy Queen was this past Oktoberfest Saturday. Erik and I went to Dairy Queen because I was craving the hell out of a cookie dough blizzard. So, as the usual sequence of ordering a blizzard goes, I specified to the young man who was taking my order what size I wanted and what flavor. Suddenly, before he told me my total, he yells out, “F***!”

I turn around and look at Erik. We share a “surely-this-can’t-be-happening-again” look, both in disbelief of this kid’s outcry on the job. His manager looks over her shoulder and asked, “What?” I know that if I had yelled the “F” word at any of my past jobs (maybe excluding Tres Amigos Mexican Restaurante) that I would have been fired on the spot. This manager did nothing.

The cashier exhaled heavily and said, “It didn’t register her cash. I put in ten dollars cash and her total was four sixty-six. And the thing just… it just… JAMMED ON ME!” The manager, though she didn’t scold him for cursing on the clock, responded adequately for the situation. “Well,” she said, “Do the math.” That being said, he stared into space. No apology to me, the customer, whatsoever. I sighed, took out my phone, and calculated my change. The cashier said “oh” and handed me a few crinkled bills and some coins.

 

Wow, this blog turned out to be a lot longer than I anticipated for the whole thing being a complaint about an ice cream joint. Anyway, it was ridiculous. Farmville needs a charming little ice cream shop; they have charming little everything else.

 

Much-Needed Noisy Mint

There is always that person that absolutely, positively needs a Lifesavers mint in the middle of your psychology lecture, but why?

Why must you have that mint right this second? And why must you leave us all in suspense while you wrestle with it in your lap for ten minutes? There is no quiet way to open a snack in class, so just get it over with, quick and dirty. There are a few different variations of packaging and techniques for this situation:

1) The cheap plastic holding the small circular mint; needless to say the most annoying for being so small. In this instance, just open the damn thing. Rip off the corner and pop it in your mouth. Don’t try and split the seam open like a bag of Lays, just rip off the corner and be done with it. It makes the most awful crinkling noise.

2) The twisty-ended hard candy. For some reason people try and wriggle the candy out from where the two long sides of the wrapper meet. If this was the way you were supposed to open this candy, they wouldn’t have those convenient twisties at the ends. Just untwist them, maybe just one side (if that’s what you’re into), and eat it; very simple.

3) The god-forsaken chip bag. There is no easy way to open a chip bag. Somehow by pulling at both sides of the bag, the only real way to open it, causes this horrible squeaking noise. Why? No one knows. This is a snack that is just going to be annoying to those around you, but hey, you were willing to make that sacrifice for the delicious Cheetos inside.

Hopefully these pointers helped. Generally, it’s a good idea to just get something over with, whether it’s taking off a band-aid or eating a mint.

 

Sidenote: I was walking to the same building as a kid in front of me earlier today. I could tell he was repeatedly looking at me out of the very corner of his eye, and he even turned fully around a few times to grimace at me. Once we got to the building he almost literally ran to his classroom. Why would this kid think I was following him? Regardless, it was my morning hilarity. Probably my topic for next week; sidewalk traveling patterns and habits.