This year is the first Valentine’s Day I have ever experienced while in a relationship. It’s a strange feeling, and one that prompted me to dive a little deeper into the complex entanglement of feelings I have around this ‘holiday’ or ‘celebration.’
Continue reading “Valentine’s Day”Now, before anyone gets too excited about this article’s title, know it refers exclusively to the fact that I – author of the heterophobe’s guide to TV – am beginning to run out of titles for suitable film reviews to write, and not to anything else. Frankly, if you were thinking of any other meanings I would kindly ask you, dear reader, to get your mind out of the gutter. This is not that kind of article (probably).
Continue reading “Hetero-Free TV 3 – Scraping the Bottom (Of the Barrel)”In my previous article, I am a raccoon: why I love trash television, I mentioned that Gen Z has been called the Burn-Out Generation. And I gotta say, I’m feeling the burn. Since it’s also the dead of winter, my tropical disposition has given up on leaving the house, choosing instead to rot on the couch and embrace seasonal depression. However, this winter I decided to say thank u, next to hours and hours of Netflix and ennui, and actually do something. Since a girl has to eat anyway, I’ve been putting more effort into cooking. But not only cooking, also baking. Those that have known me pre-transatlantic-move would remember that I love baking. Perhaps you were one of my high school friends over at my house while I made donuts or caramel apples. Or maybe you were a grade school classmate who ate the cupcakes I baked for my birthday. Either way, I have found myself delving into that old hobby once again. You know how it goes: if you love something, let it go.
Continue reading “An Ode To Baking: How To Give The Finger To Seasonal Depression”
“What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had that flower in your hand? Ah, what then?”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1. REM
Sometimes I try to push my finger through the palm of my hand. Every time I do this I question the reality of my surroundings, and the answer to that question depends on whether or not my finger passes through my hand. If it doesn’t, it means that I’m bound by laws of physics and biology; that I’m standing in this three-dimensional place that we refer to as “waking life.” But if my finger does pass through, it means that I could float off the earth if I wanted to, and soar over cities and mountains and valleys and among stars. It means that I could walk through walls or teleport to different locations or run at the speed of light. It means that I could compose symphonies, paint photo-realistic portraits straight from my imagination, or change the color of the sky at will. In other words, when I manage to push my finger through my palm and it comes out of the back of my hand, I know that I’m dreaming, and suddenly anything is possible.
Continue reading “Oneironautics: Exploring Lucid Dreams”I found out about An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green from watching his channel ‘The Vlogbrothers’ on YouTube, made up of him and his brother, John Green. Because I have followed their channel for years and have been a fan of his brother’s writing as well, I was well excited to read Hank’s debut novel. It turned out to be one of the most interesting books I have read in 2018. I finished reading it in two days, which is pretty fast for me. In fact, I feel like I could have finished it in one day, had it not been for the need of eating and sleeping. So without further ado, I will try to convince you to read it as well, hopefully without spoiling the story too much.
Apart from 15-year-olds still being as full of hormones as books are of pages, freshmen being petrified by their newly appearing pubes, and 20-year-olds being just as proud of their weirdly thin, slightly gross beards, the answer to this question might partially be yes, our youth has grown up. Biology won’t change, sadly, but culture does. On the 12th of April, 1954, Bill Haley & His Comets recorded Rock Around The Clock, a song in hindsight widely known as the first ever rock ´n roll hit, consequently launching the entire genre, and, according to some, establishing the first-ever foundations of a phenomenon known as youth culture. In the decades that followed, teenagers losing it over Elvis Presley were quickly substituted by Hippies freely enjoying the atmospheres at Woodstock, subsequently reacted upon by the Punk and Hard Rock movements shortly after. In other words, through the second half of the twentieth century, subcultures, emerging from the younger part of society, appeared one after another. Yet, the rebellious nature these subcultures used to have in the past seems to have been lost. Although any randomly gathered group of high school kids would nowadays still be easily dividable by who listens to Hip Hop, who prefers folk and which kids identify as goth, riots and demonstrations no longer regularly feature in the evening news. In short, has our youth grown up?
Continue reading “Has Our Youth Grown Up?”I’m kind of a sucker for the American dream. America is the land of possibilities, of glitter and glamour, of making wishes come true, of starting at the bottom and going all the way up. In America, you can be anything, and everything is beautiful and amazing.
Continue reading “This Is America”
