I'm Not Very Thirsty, But I'll Have Some Pudding If You Happen To Have Some Thursday

First off, let me let you know how much I hate it every Thursday when I see four thousand facebook statuses of people I went to high school with that say "Thirsty Thursday!" or "THURSTY THURSDAYAYAYAYAYAYA" or something that resembles that. Shut. Up. I understand that you are in university and for some reason feel the burning need to broadcast the fact that you do, in fact, drink alcohol to the world, but I was hoping that you would have gotten over it after your first semester or year something. I guess not. So while talking to a friend about this today, I thought of a much better idea for Thursday: "I'm not very thirsty but I'll take some pudding if you happen to have some Thursday". This idea was dreamed up for a variety of reasons:
1.) The term "Thirsty Thursday" pisses me off.
2.) I have a class that goes to around 11 pm on Thursday nights, therefore not allowing me to drink.
3.) I love pudding.
I think that if people started using this as their Thursday night status it would solve the problem of teen drinking. Saving lives, one spoonful at a time!

I bought chocolate pudding cups whole grocery shopping today. It was a mistake. I always underestimate my love for chocolate pudding, and so when I was wandering through the aisle and my eyes locked on the sign advertising that a four pack of pudding was only $1.19, I couldn't resist.

I'm going to be honest here: I didn't really have a choice. Pudding robs me of any scrap of willpower I may have previously possessed, which most likely isn't much. I looked down into the basket I held and saw a bunch of healthy things like carrots and peppers and so I used this as justification to get one chocolate thing.
It seemed like a really good idea at first. My thoughts were along the lines of: "It's cheap and delicious and will last for four days! I love pudding!" Essentially, getting pudding seemed like an all around good idea.

But that's when disaster struck. I had forgotten: Once I begin to eat pudding, I cannot stop myself. I immediately ripped the lid off of one when I got home. It is now around eight hours later. They are all gone, and I have a stomachache. Burn in hell, pudding.

Now that I am balled up in bed trying to recover from my pudding discomfort, I've written myself a letter:

Dear Kara,

You're not allowed to buy pudding cups at the market anymore, even if they ARE on sale. You cannot handle it.

Regards,

Kara

English Lit Douchebag: an Introduction

I think now is as good a time as any to introduce you to an unfortunate character that I, being an english literature major, encounter frequently: the English Lit Douche Bag. 

Taking douche-baggery to lofty new heights, the English Lit Douche-Bag is a special breed of ass-hat. For the sake of shortening their title, we'll just create one generic douche named, say, "Cliff". Many times Cliff will come in the form of your stereotypical hipster: molester mustachio, multiple tattoos, a v-neck so low you can play "I spy" with his nips and win in seconds, Buddy Holly-esque glasses that aren't prescription but are worn anyway... the works, essentially. If you've hit the jackpot they'll have a leather man-purse. But they will never call it a man-purse. They will call it a satchel. They will bring $40 moleskin notebooks to lectures, only to type their notes on their macbook pro instead.

None of these things are uncommon in my university and normally I wouldn't think twice about any of it, but Cliff manages to take this perfect storm of hipster qualities and by the end of the two hour and fifteen minute lecture will make you hate him from his perfectly tousled hair to his pointy toed leather riding boots, which are fitting because Cliff never dismounts his high-horse.

Cliff has an answer for everything, and you don't have to fret about forgetting this because he won't let you. Cliff knows best! In fact, if Cliff even chooses to raise his hand before he speaks, it never leaves the air. Maybe this is a tactic to get the blood from his arm to rush into his brain as a warm-up so he can start stringing the longest words he thinks he knows together for his answer regardless of whether a.) It makes any sense, b.) It has any relevance to what the prof is saying, or c.) The point has been beaten to death by the class just moments before. He will criticize a Slyvia Plath poem because he has eaten an entire bag of green apples without getting a stomachache. He will even let the class know that the desert is, indeed, a lonely place.

Regardless of how repetitive or confusing what he says may be, Cliff will never fail to judge every other person for whatever comes out of their mouth.

Imagine: You've just come in from walking into class after braving the Montreal cold to get there. You've got your coffee. You're warm and seated. Your books and notes are ready to go, you're on top of your shit. You are content with life.

But this feeling of security does not last for long. Once the class starts, it doesn't take long for Cliff to come out of his silence to become:

This is the point at which the class takes a turn for the worse. The English Lit Douche-Bag has the amazing power of judgement combined with a super condescending tone to ruin your class. You think one thing about a poem? The English Lit Douche-Bag thinks your interpretation is stupid. Not even your own opinions are safe from judgement. Your self esteem, confidence and comfort will be eaten away at throughout the entire class until your former feelings of content have been reduced to nothing but those of hatred and insecurity.

If you are unfortunate enough to share the classroom with an english lit douche-bag, chances are you will experience feelings that make you want to rip someone's jugular out with your bare hands at least once every time the class meets.

Coming up: An introduction to "The Annoying Mature Student Who Sits Front-and-Center"!

Ghost Lobstahs Staying in on a Saturday Night

There are many things I find amusing throughout the day, so I've decided to start a collection of these stories and observations purely for my own amusement. I was going to call it "An American Student in Montreal", kind of like "An American Werewolf in Paris", but I felt no one would get it, so I didn't. I would normally just file these little stories away in my own brain, but I am a bum and no matter how often I may refresh the "jobs" page on craigslist I cannot find a job to employ the copious amounts of free time I find myself with. So I figure "Hey, why not type shit down, it's not like I already have to read and write enough already as an English Lit major!" So here I sit in bed drinking beer on a Saturday night, staying in because I've spent my self-designated weekly booze allowance on a pet rat, whose gender I'm currently unsure of. I'd also like to scan some drawings to illustrate my posts, but seeing as I do not have a scanner and am not nearly dedicated to this enough to go all the way to the university library to scan them, we will see about that part. So for now I only have paintbrush, which I am stupendously incapable of working well. However, I was thinking about making one of these last year when I lived right downtown, and have a few of these poorly done drawings along with an accompanying tale of distress and paranoia, so here we are:

I am terrified of all bugs. In fact, when I was a chillun' I used to have a fear of lobsters because they resemble bugs. Subsequently, my parents would occasionally find it amusing to follow me around the house brandishing them. I shared a room with my twin sister, and we had a fear of,i kid you not, ghost lobsters at the bottoms of our beds who we believed would pinch our feet if we stretched out in bed. I believe I slept curled up in a ball for at least a week for fear of having the undead soul of a crustacean take off my pinky toe. A completely rational fear.

Considering my fear of bugs and organisms that resemble them, it's pretty much a given that I am absolutely horrified by the idea of spiders. I'm pretty sure most people are afraid of them, and my first assumption when it comes to people that aren't is that they've been dropped on their head as a nugget. Anyway--last year while I was living in my university residence, in a room that greatly resembled a very long walk in closet, Christmas break happened. Or, I should say, Christmas break happened for everyone else. Being one of the odd non-fine arts students in the building, I actually found myself having a legitimate finals schedule, and subsequently was there wandering the halls of my dorm much later than it's average inhabitants. So what did I do with this wealth of time by my lonesome? Well, I'll tell you! Study and watch bad (codeword for awesome) halloween slasher films from the 70s and 80s. Think "Firday the 13th", "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween". 

Anyway, there I'm sitting contentedly watching Freddy invade the dreams of the baby-faced Johnny Depp when BAM--out of the corner of my eye, I sense something is wrong.

Now to the eyes of one who is not deathly afraid of spiders, perhaps nothing seems strange about this scene. But to the carefully trained eye of someone who cannot help but nearly shit their pants when they see an arachnid, the view looked like this:

Now the ceilings in this dorm are extremely high...in fact, the ceiling was most likely 12 or 13 feet from the ground. Now I'm no short girl, I stand just under 5'7'', but even with the help of my desk chair this spider was out of reach. What's a girl to do? Every five minutes I would glance up from my slasher film to make sure that the spider had not changed it's location on the wall. I always hold the irrational assumption that spiders have the mental capacity to plot against me, and I had just killed a spider the week before by drowning it in laundry detergent because I hate the crunch you feel when squishing them, and ever since I had been paranoid about other spiders seeking revenge in the name of their fallen comrade. 

Eventually, I decided I needed sustenance to continue my strenuous task of laying in bed watching movies and keeping an eye on spiders while being depressed about my lack of human interaction. To accomplish this task I needed to trek 10 minutes in the Montreal cold to get to our library building so I could get a soggy veggie wrap from the caf, meaning I would have to leave my new enemy unattended. And leave the warmth of my bed. I was not happy about either, considering it was -17 degrees Celcius that day, which I remember so specifically because it is the coldest weather I have ever felt. I got bundled up, went out on my journey and made it back. My spider had not moved. Breathing a sigh of relief, I  returned to my movie, still glancing up every few minutes to make sure that my life was not in danger. After the conclusion of the movie, I decided it may be a good time to go to bed, considering it was probably around 1 or 2 am around that time, but I felt strangely defeated when I turned off the light. I felt as if I was letting the spider win, like I was giving him a free pass to come bite me and lay eggs in my face while I slumbered like a babe. So I lay tossing and turning in the dark for a while, until I had a thought:

And sure enough, I was right. The conniving little thing had snuck further down the wall, as if it was slowly making it's way towards me in bed. But it had made a terrible mistake: it had come within reachable distance if I stood on my desk chair. This spider would rue the day it messed with me. Feelings of defeat now replaced by those of triumph, I grabbed my shower flip flops and crushed the spider, not even thinking twice about the small crunch that could be felt through the foamy sole of my shoe.

                                                                I had won.