Procatinate

No, I don’t have spelling issues. I spelled it correctly: proCATinate. As in, cats.

While we are on the topic of cats, I will tell you a little bit about my cat, Fuzzy.

My cat Fuzzy is a wonderful cat. She sleeps, eats and sleeps more like a normal cat. But anyone who knows her personally will assure you that she is not an ordinary cat. And no, I’m not one of those people who exaggerates about their cats to make them seem cooler or who comes up with some lame thing about how their cat “knows” things. I will throw my hands up right now and say Fuzzy is a very dumb cat. I mean, she knows her name and if I hit the bed enough times she’ll jump up. But this cat talks… a lot. I have dozens of videos of her meowing over and over again. My friends come over to my apartment and say “kitty!” and she talks right back, to the surprise of my friends. But overall, I do love Fuzzy. As most pet lovers and owners, I could go on forever talking about how dumb and loud she is [God bless her nutshell brain] but I shall not.

Back to the main topic: procatinating. I have located this website called http://www.procatinate.com that is PURE genius. They randomize videos of cats and songs and it is a piece of heaven. I highly suggest you go to it whether you wish to procrastinate or procatinate. It makes me waste tons of time and my friend Jessie wholeheartedly agrees.

 

This is dedicated to Fuzzy.

“The Happiness Hypothesis”: Elephant and Rider

Over the holidays I was given a book on psychology called The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. Upon picking up the book and reading the back and introduction, I was dreading to read it [I make a personal rule with myself to read at least 4 chapters of a book before putting it down]. The topic was clear: what makes humans happy and why? My first reaction wasthat it would be a psychology book and it would be ultimately boring. However, after now having read 103 pages of it and continuing, I realize that I was wrong. It is a psychology book, but it is anything but boring. His clarity about the human mind, and his analogy to it makes the book very enjoyable to read and I LOVE it.

I mentioned his analogy a moment ago. He makes the comparison of the mind to an elephant and a rider. He talks about how the rider is similar to consciousness and control, and the elephant is our animal instincts and emotions. For example, when you have a delicious looking dessert in front of you, you can’t resist the temptation to eat it (most of the time), so you take a bite. However, one small voice inside of you is saying “don’t do it Alexa! You don’t need the calories!” But you don’t care and you don’t listen. Inside of your mind, here is what is happening: The elephant is walking down the street with the rider on its back. The rider thinks he is in control because the elephant is going pretty much on the path that the rider wants and he’s being pretty obedient. But then, the elephant smells a Nuts 4 Nuts stand across the street next to the park. His animal instinct takes over and he crosses the street without the rider’s permission and eats some of the nuts. To sum up, when it comes down to it our animal instincts are what control us, simply by nature.

This is a great analogy because it works for many ideas about the mind, like impulse control, greed, and behavior. Another idea it supports is boredom [although Haidt does not mention this in his book… if he has I haven’t read it yet but I am pretty sure he doesn’t…]. When we are bored, it is like the elephant in our minds has taken over. He does mindless tasks like walking from one end of your head to the other, and he goes in a rhythmic step that makes the rider fall asleep.

My point is that I wholeheartedly agree with Jonathan Haidt and his ideas about the human mind. We are all animals in the end and boredom could just as well be a part of our species that we just have to deal with.

Morphlings

So yesterday, I got an email from my dad. It said, “Sweatpea, [which is what he calls me after the little baby in the cartoon show Popeye] I found this photo on the front of the New York Times. It looks sooooo much like you!!! Is there something you’re not telling me?”

The photo was so similar to me that I thought to myself, I don’t remember taking this photo, but it looks like me… In the end, it was a girl who simply looked like me. 

This is a picture of me in the same position as the look-a-like. [If you know me in person I look much more like the look-a-like then I do in this picture].

On Facebook, after posting both photos and tons of my friends telling me “Wait – that’s not you?” one of my friends took both photos and posted this new one:

I could not tell if this was a photo of the look-a-like, or me!! [Identity crisis much]. I asked my friend who it was a picture of, and she told me it was a morph of us. After about two hours of morphing people together, I realized this was the absolute PERFECT time-waster.

On http://www.morphthing.com/ you simply put a picture of your face and mark certain facial points on it and then you can take a celebrity’s face or a friend’s face and combine them, either to make a baby or a person. It is so much fun and I am on my knees and hands praising the friend who showed me this website.

Here are a VERY small portion of some of the morphs that I created:

                      

Harry Potter & Me         The child of me and Fuzzy      The child of me and Justin Bieber

The child of me and my friend [the one who showed me morphthing.com GOD BLESS HER]

Now go make your own crazy morphs! Again: http://www.morphthing.com

Man’s Best Friend Rocks. Literally.

Yes I said it. Rocks. Rocks rock. So for our first art project we are going to turn rocks from your local park into lovable pets. Of course, this is very easily done but there are a variety of ways of doing it, so if you’re having trouble thinking of ways to make your pet, you’ve come to the right place.

1. The first and most basic step of creating your new best friend is to locate a rock. This can be any rock. Really, any rock. Big or small: long or short: round or square.

2. Next you need to think of an idea of what kind of character your pet rock will be. I like to think of fantasy and movie characters when decorating my pet rocks. Try coming up with your own ideas, but if you get stuck here are some other ideas: Tinker Bell, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, Harry Potter, Voldemort, Zuko, Aang, Katara, Beatles, Elvis, Dorothy, Lady Gaga, or even just a puppy dog rock. You can also work with a theme and create your own character. Visualize your rock’s personality. Is he nice? Mean? Funny? Athletic? Serious? Get CREATIVE!!

3. Get some materials and get to it! Add some eyes, a mouth and nose, maybe some ears or even some clothing like a shirt or sweater. Add some creativity and uniqueness to your rock.

4. If you want to be really creative, make a home for your rock. Take a cardboard box and decorate it so that it fits uniquely to your rock’s personality.

And wallah! A lovable, personalized, [and time waster] pet rock!

Hope you enjoyed making one as much as I did.

Here’s mine if you want to look:

This is my pet rock: Harry Potter

Feel free to post pictures of your own pet rocks and put them in the comments below.

The Power of Lists

During history class a few months ago, I was sitting next to my friend “Emma” [this is not her real name and there is no one in that class under this name]. I saw her take out a little notebook and she started scribbling tons of things down. I whispered, “Emma, what are you writing?” She told me that this was her List Book. “I write down lists of things: anything, everything.” I looked through it and saw lists of tons of things: clothing to buy, clothing to get rid of, things to buy to make her room look nicer, a schedule by week and day, and so many other things.

The point is, sometimes the best way to manage our time is create lists for ourselves. I myself have a little weekly calendar and whenever I have something like a cross country practice or a party to go to, I write it down so I don’t forget. This in of itself could be a time-waster, because no one can monitor what your list is about. It could be a list of the homework you still need to do, or maybe even a list of games you want to play. I find to-do lists very helpful and they keep me on track, especially when I’m doing work. Here’s a to do list of a little less than 50 or so things to do when your bored.

1. Make your own to do list. When you’re bored you can pick something from the list.
2. Play solitaire
3. Make a Veggietales film
4. Clean your room
5. Watch Charlie is so cool like on youtube.com
6. See if you can catch more than 30 grapes in your mouth in a row
7. Take a die and at each junction throw the dice in your hand to determine which direction you go in. 1,6 go right, 2,5 go left, 3,4 go straight. If you get a number twice in a row, go into a store.
8. Make a geometry proof about something in real life that doesn’t matter
9. Click the red button                                                                  
10. Look for every single letter of the alphabet on the street and take a picture of it. Edit the pictures and make a unique album.
11. Learn how to tie a necktie
12. The classic: read a book
13. Learn yoyo tricks
14. Learn Morse code
15. Make a time capsule
16. Count how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop
17. Watch Vlogbrothers on youtube.com
18. Become obsessed with someone who isn’t worth getting obsessed over. e.g. Jordan Pruitt
19. Organize a traveling meal with your friends. go to house #1 for appetizers, house #2 for soup, house #3 for salad, house #4 for main course, and house #5 for dessert.
20. Learn one really cool magic trick
21. Build robots using items around the house.
22. Take a photo of yourself every day for a year and see if you change at all
23. Make a Rube Goldberg invention
24. Invent your own board game
25. Make a story exactly [no more and no less than] 100 words long using a topic found on a topic generator
26. Go for a whole day without speaking. Make a bet with someone that you can do it.
27. Give life to some old clothing
28. Make a hacky sack out of old socks: cut sock in half, put rice or pinto beans or other biodegradable loose-fill item and fill half of sock with beans, sew sock closed.
29. Play Marco-polo
30. Play tag
31. Make a pet rock and put it in a nice box
    

    A Pet Rock

32. Fry marbles and do something cool with them
33. *************** Make a blog with your own to do ideas on how not to be bored ***********
34. Play “Cut The Rope”
35. Play “Temple Run”
36. Play “Fruit Ninja”
37. Create a quiz for your friends online. There are tons of websites on which you can do this.
38. Make a playlist or CD of your favorite songs
39. Teach yourself sign language
40. Cook something new
41. Bake creme brulee
42. Do origami
43. Learn to juggle
44. Make a personal calendar with your own pictures
45. Print out the word “Dumble” and tape it to all the doors
46. Play 20 questions
47. Order something on Amazon or Ebay
48. Watch all the Star Wars movies in a row

Hopefully some of these ideas were useful to you in your state of boredom. Post your own to do lists in the comments or suggestions for me to add to my list. Thanks!

Boredom Takes Action

Being bored. It’s a nuisance that many of us have to face. On one hand, being bored most likely means that you have completed all of your work, or at least enough of it to take a break. So I shout out “congratulations!” to anyone reading this because they have no work to do. On the other hand, boredom itself is a flaw within ourselves that we are yet to improve. It leads us to do many unproductive and time-wasting things like watch youtubers, stalk people on facebook, and watch television. Of course, there are other reasons that people do some of these things and I am not implying that some youtubers aren’t funny, or that stalking people on facebook isn’t enjoyable, or even that television isn’t entertaining. But what essentially compels us to these things sometimes is often boredom.

I for one never have any ideas what to do with my spare time. I find myself doing the things listed above, including many other idle activities and games. As bored people, we can team up together to find a useful, or at least fun way of spending our spare time.