I like to put my money where my mouth is—and by that I mean, after being a vegetarian for 10 years I’ve recently also transitioned into no longer purchasing cosmetic products from companies that test on animals. While I know it’s not possible to be a totally ethical consumer, I feel better about doing something than I do about doing nothing, and this choice was the next natural step to my dietary lifestyle. No one can argue that animal testing…
By writing this blog, I will be revealing that I know much more about One Direction off of the top of my head than I would generally like to admit to the public. However, Zayn Malik’s recent move to quit the boyband has become fairly unavoidable news, and I think there are implications to his choice that merit examination even if you couldn’t care less about the band itself. Being half-Pakistani, Zayn was the only person of color in the…
Warning: This review contains spoilers of the Parks and Rec finale. The season 6 finale of Parks and Recreation, the one before the series’ actual finale that aired a few weeks ago, could have functioned just fine as an ending for the whole show. I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but it left off at a good point of transition for Leslie from local to federal government. There were unanswered questions, but the finale ended on a note of potential after…
Sometimes I sleep with a light on because I get creeped out at night. As a child, I was traumatized by haunted houses on the boardwalk, haunted hayrides, and that time my friends made me watch “The Ring” and “The Ring Two” in the same night, as well as another time they showed me episodes of “The Twilight Zone” in sixth grade. I am still unreasonably freaked out by anything that is meant to be mildly scary. I watched “The…
Generally, my summers are not complete unless I spend a sickening number of hours watching a new television show. Working 40 hours a week this summer, though, I found that the time I normally allotted to my disgusting TV comatose was suddenly limited. What I needed was something that I could watch as it was airing so I couldn’t possibly take it all in at once. One of my friends from home convinced me to watch the premiere episode of…
A few years ago, J.K. Rowling drew attention when she revealed that she had published a book, The Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Authors publishing under pen names is, of course, nothing new in the literature world, but the practice has no set source of inspiration. In Rowling’s case, she wanted to publish her first novel after Harry Potter without the intense pressure that would follow the beloved series. However, many other circumstances have brought writers to hide their true identities. Here are a few…
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all of my World Wide Web exploration since my Neopets glory days many years ago, it’s that the Internet is a weird place. It does weird things to communication by making communication so easy and introducing a multitude of forms for it to take. Specific and revolutionary, I know, but I promise I’m going somewhere with that basis in mind. Let me begin here: I love Jane Eyre. A lot. I also happen…
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” It is also a truth universally acknowledged that we’ve all heard the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice approximately a million times. And there’s a reason for that. The opening lines of classic novels have a tendency to become iconic, gaining lives of their own beyond the fame of the novel itself. There are certain opening lines…
I’ll admit it: when it comes to books, I have a tendency to be a bit pretentious. So, when I started reading John Green’s novels and loved them after having turned my nose up at the “young adult” shelf for years, I went through a period of mild identity crisis. I tried to reconcile my conflicting feelings and I was just short of tossing and turning in my sleep over it. Thankfully, I have been courageous enough to work through…