208 - Overreacting

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I'm sure we all agree that our parents, our spouses, our children and our boyfriends and girlfriends are the biggest drama queens and kings in our lives. A while back, I blogged here about how my mother once found cigarettes in my desk drawer while I was out of the house. She was utterly upset by her nicotine discovery, and called me up to say that she would be taking these away from me. The fact that I had only smoked (half of) one didn't matter to her. She told me she didn't care if I went to another convenience store to purchase some. She was going to take that packet of cigarettes and that was the end of the story, according to her, as demonstrated by her hanging up the phone.

But not on my terms was that the end. I thought she had blown the whole thing in her mind way out of proportion, so I called her back to try to explain to her that I had only tried one cigarette and I didn't even like it. The dial tone rang and it rang and I tried again and again, each time I dialed, it was picked up by her voicemail service.

On the sixth or seventh time, there was no ringing sound - instead, it went straight to voicemail - and upon realizing that my mother had turned her phone off altogether to avoid more argument with me, in a compulsive fury, I raised my own mobile phone up high above my head, and smashed it on to the ground. Before I could even fathom what had just happened, battery, buttons, and bits of screen were scattered all over the ground in front of me.

Talk about overreacting.

People freak out about a great number of things, like lip piercings, and grades of B- or lower, and little boys who may or may not have drifted away in helium balloons.

Does this mean my daughter's having sex with her new boyfriend?
Does this mean we're all going to die in 2012?
The guy over there is sneezing and sniffing a lot, could he have swine flu?

Take the following story as a prime example of what I mean.

On December 19th, thanks to such social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter, over 200 people were able to gather beside a street in downtown Washington D.C. to have a friendly neighborhood snowball fight. As the snowball fight was well underway, a large maroon Hummer drove by the neighborhood, and members of the public decided to launch snowballs towards the vehicle.

It turned out that the driver of the car was a detective who, I guess, just wasn't liking the snow that day. He got out of his car holding a walkie-talkie in one hand, and waving a gun in the other.

Why on Earth would he take out his gun?


Apparently, it was because of the simple reality that he had been hit with snowballs.


I wonder if at any point he had considered throwing snowballs back at them instead of pointing a gun. Or considered throwing his phone at them. I also wonder what his mother was thinking when she heard about that.

200 - 2012 is the end of the world

Today is the day I publish my two-hundredth post. Congratulations to me, right? I can't even believe I continued doing this for a year, and still want to continue to do this - it makes me proud, it makes me wonder when I will stop and why, it worries me a little to know I have that much to complain about, it makes me feel hungry

Oops, typing out loud.

Ahem, 200 is a pretty special number. A cholesterol level of 200 or lower is considered to be a desirable amount to have, corresponding to a lower risk of heart disease. $200 or £200 is how much you're given when you pass "Go" in Monopoly. And the year 200 is when the Classic Period of Mayan Civilization begins.

Ah, 2012... Ever since I read an article five years ago, about Doomsday coming our way, set in stone to occur on December 21st, 2012, I knew that it was just a matter of time before all the hype about it would be generated, before the books, the documentaries, and the movie were going to be created to depict its apocalyptic effect, and before the scientists, the media, the public, the religious groups, the bloggers, the believers, the skeptics, and the government, all jumped on the bandwagon to build 2012 up and aggrandize it to something that it isn't.

I'm not going to go into the Mayan Long Calendar, or rant about how heinously flawed it is to attribute and reduce all this crap to the Mayan culture. I'm sure if you go to the library and pick up a book, or read some online journals, actually educated people will tell you how nonsensical all of this End of the World stuff is. It is true - they did predict a great end to the human race, as well as are birth of said human race, according to their specific time line. I've read about some of the theories, some of the explanations of why it's truth and why it's fiction - and whether or not I believe in the scientific word, or the words of whomever - I believe that it all doesn't matter, so long as I live today, and have plans for tomorrow, to continue living my life.

You may say that I'm conceited, perhaps a little bit too comfortable leaning back on my pillow as I sit on my bed here in my university dorm, and you may ask me, what if I'm wrong?

Truth is, I may be. The Olympics are set to happen in London in the summer of 2012. A solar eclipse is due in May and November that year. The Kyoto Protocol set up by the UN is set to expire at the end of 2012. The USA will elect a new president. It is said that Jupiter and Venus will align with the Sun and the Moon. It is said solar flares from the Sun will shift our poles and destroy the Earth. It is said a comet might hit us. It is said we might head straight into a black hole.

But I don't care. I am not going to swallow half a bottle of gin every night because there's no reason to live the next day. Nor will I live every day with no respect for my own wellbeing, or use this 2012 rubbish as an excuse to escape from my responsibilities.

And I believe it's wrong, man, how people are freaking out about it, naive, innocent people that don't know any better but to believe in these prophesies. The other day, I read something about people slitting their wrists and hanging themselves after seeing 2012, and I think that's quite messed up.

Anyway, I'm going to end there. Tell me what you think.

And here's a cool illustrated guide to how much 200 calories look like. And don't forget to follow me on Facebook and Twitter!