"Do I know you?...." The Story of Celebrities

          Zac Efron. John Green. Nash Grier. Shailene Woodley. Oprah for goodness sake! The world is full of celebrities. Obviously not as many as there are normal people, but still, tons. And we idolize them, they are the faces on our t-shirts, the reason we spend hours on YouTube, you might even know that they wear argyle socks (as I happen to about John Green...it was in a YouTube video.) See?! I know tons of useless information  just from watching his videos, which, by the way, are brilliantly funny, sometime punny, and totally demonstrate why he could write such an amazing book. But the thing is, John Green doesn't even know I exist. He probably never will. Yet I sit there watching his videos and crying over his book. 

          Its a funny relationship really. We feel like we know a celebrity, invest time and money into seeing them, meeting them, and they forget us within a second. Not that its their fault, no body is at fault in this crazy loop. I'm just trying to understand how it works. How even though I know that the "relationship" doesn't even meet minimum requirements that say, being friends with a kid in math class would, I still feel like I'm friends with the collection of pixels on my computer screen. 

          I guess it's sort of humbling, to realize how infinitely tiny you are in just one man's fan base. Imagine how much of a speck you are compared to the rest of the world. Just goes back to not taking yourself too seriously. There's not much wrong with our whole celebrity system, as long as its still in perspective. Remember that we are not personally responsible when Justin Beiber ends up in jail, yet I can still find insane happiness in every episode of Sherlock (or anything featuring Benedict Cumberbatch). It's all in the balance, as always. 

Everyone in their boxes..

  People are confusing creatures. There are the obnoxious ones that everyone loves, the quiet ones that never speak but everyone still hates for no reason, the listeners, the talkers, and everyone has a little piece of each type in them. At least I do.

 I listened as my friend told me about how many gosh darn rants he listens to a day, and how he himself never rants (not entirely true, but that’s not the point.) I realized, we all end up in our own little box with each person, whether we put ourselves their or they put us there. Our box defines us and everyone’s expectation of us. It’s like when the know-it-all kid cracks a joke in class, nobody thinks it’s funny. But when the popular kid says the same thing, it’s suddenly hilarious. It’s because the know-it-all is stuck in a shipping box labeled "annoying and dorky", while the popular kid's box says "cool and always funny." It’s only with the people we’re really close with that we can stick every limb in a different box and not seem two-faced.
At the beginning of this post I had it in me that we could change this boxed system. But as I wrote, I realized it would probably take years of evolution for the brain to rewire like that, since it’s such a universal human trait. Either way, if we all stopped believing that each person belongs in one personality box, then we would be appreciated more easily, and would have freedom to be whomever we wanted. The first step is individually listening to the content, and not where it’s coming from. Maybe the dorky kid will surprise you.

Impromptu Poem

These are 4 Truths of Life. 

Imagination is a powerful tool.

Without it, phones would look like refrigerators,

and we would be locked into reality

Clichés stomp out creativity.

Why contaminate our own writing with second-hand ideas?

Self-consciousness is detrimental.

We hate being addressed with demands, or commands,

But every day,

We allow others control our lives,

With their opinions.

Drama does not find us, we invite it.

*This is not meant to be a full poem, just a few observations. 

An Open Letter to Genetically Modified Foods

Dearest raspberries, strawberries, assorted meats and vegetables, I find it alarming how fake you really are. Oh, but alas! I do not wish to bestow any of the blame on you, my friends, you just bear the brunt of the trickery ruining our nation. I am not ignorant enough to forget about the sly chemist or manufacturers conjuring up these atrocities. I find both the creator, and the suppliers pitiful, disgusting, and manipulative. They are not happy with the size of a natural raspberry, you are constantly undergoing test after test to make you appealing to the human eye. The fact that I can now purchase raspberries the size of my big toe, watermelon sized grapefruit, and “whole wheat” bread the color of a blank sheet of paper is appalling to me. The natural look is simply not the style any longer.

Every orange is seedless and “made for little hands.” They are admitting to us right in the commercial that you are not real! You were engineered in a lab! You are a fake! A counterfeit! I do not know how to escape the mayhem! I wonder what I am really eating, because you are not the produce God intended for this Earth. It has come to the sad truth that I would rather eat a Jolly Rancher, because it is not trying to trick me with some empty health claim. I know that it is bad for me, I know what I am getting into. When I eat a strawberry, I have no idea what I’m putting in my body.

Sincerely,
Sharon.

*If you too are deeply troubled by the abnormal size of fruit lately, or have a take on genetically modified foods in general, share or comment on this post to let me know.

Trinidad: Lakes filled with water? How boring.

Have you ever heard of a Pitch Lake? Nope, neither had I. Here’s a little historical/science knowledge for you then. The Pitch Lake is an enormous natural deposit of natural asphalt bubbling and building its way from the Earth’s core. Imagine this, in Trinidad, an insanely tiny island which I didn't think I would ever go to, is the world’s largest pitch lake! And that was one of our day trips during our visit to Trini and Tobago a few summers ago. 

After walking for a few minutes on worn paths and through tall grasses, the Pitch Lake began to appear. The area seemed more like an enormous playground black top than a lake, but nobody planning on living through the experience would try and play kick ball on it. There were areas that were completely liquid, and insanely dangerous. Our guide told us the story of a local farmer’s cow who wandered onto the Pitch Lake at night and accidently walked into one of the areas of fresh pitch and was swallowed alive. We had to be careful. Most of the lake was hardened, or hard enough to keep us from plunging into the Earth’s core, though we do have pictures of depressions our flip flips made in some areas of softer pitch. It was absolutely sweltering hot, but I can’t remember if it was humid or just dry. It felt like I was frying in a cast iron skillet. Wow, there’s so many great similes I could use under that comparison…

A few times through the tour, the guide took a long wooden rod and pulled up fresh, liquid, pitch from the open areas of the lake. It looked a bit like melted chocolate, or pancake batter if you let it ooze from your spatula to the pan. 

At one point a group from a local girl’s school walked past, we made room for them, waiting on the edge of a path. The girls walked one in front of the other and were probably only 10 or 11. As they walked past, every one of them said hello to us, complete strangers, happily and politely. They didn't look up when they greeted us, but kept their heads down and smiled. At home, a group of children on a field trip would never be walking in a straight line, more like a huge clump washing through an area. Second, children are taught to be weary of strangers, especially adults, and never address them. In Trinidad it was the opposite, and seemed natural and expected. Just an interesting cultural difference. 

The Pitch Lake was a really neat experience…much cooler than posing stiffly in front of some monument somewhere. Not to say that we haven’t done our fair share of that though!