Uncle Lili Goes to Jail.

There was once a boy called Uncle Lili. This wasn't his real name, but his friends called him that just to annoy him. Uncle Lili was friends with several boys and several girls, and everybody was happy. That was, until the boys played a horrible, nasty trick on the girls.

It was Sam and Jess's first recital for the Dance Team. They had to dance at the basketball game that night, and were very nervous. They made everybody promise that they would be there to support them, which everyone agreed to.

A few hours before the game, around lunch time, Uncle Lili and his friends Corbin and James decided to go to Target. You see, Uncle Lili and his friends liked to play a card game called Magic.

If you have never heard of the game Magic, you may have never met a teenage nerd boy. Some show their Magic love loud and proud. Other's hide it a little better, looking cool on the outside but secretly wishing they were holed up in their room playing Magic or Skyrim.

The problem with Magic cards is that they are expensive, especially to a broke college student. So Uncle Lili and his friends tended to come by them in, ahem, other ways.

So while Sam and Jess were getting ready for their performance, three other girls in the friends group, Rachel, Colleen and Liz, got a phone call from Corbin.

Corbin, James and Uncle Lili couldn't come to the game. Why, may you ask? Uncle Lili had been caught shoplifting, and was in jail.

Uncle Lili was in jail. For stealing cards. Magic cards.

Corbin and James had to go and bail him out, so they wouldn't be able to make it to the game. Colleen, Liz and Rachel banged on James's door, thinking the boys had to be playing a joke on them. They searched the room, but Uncle Lili was nowhere to be found. It had to be true.

Then, poor Sam and Jess heard about what happened, five minutes before they had to go out and dance.

All the girls were freaked out and panicking, but poor Sam and Jess even more so, since they had to perform. They went out and dance, and they danced awesomely, but they couldn't enjoy it. They were to worried about Uncle Lili.

The dancing was over, but the girls were still panicking. Rachel was even about to cry. Unable to see the girls in distress any more, Jacob, Uncle Lili's roommate, came over and told the girls the truth.

Uncle Lili wasn't in jail. The boys had made it up to pull a prank on the girls. He had been hiding under James's bed the entire time.

And that is how Uncle Lili had the living shit beat out of him by five teenage girls.

The Lousy, Terrible Day.

Today was a lousy day in general, but what started it was an event so terrible, so awful that it makes me want to hide in a corner just thinking about it.

I wrote a terrible story. And by terrible I mean "why-does-this-story-exist-and-why-did-I-show-it-to-fifteen-other-people-when-it-should-burn-in-a-pit-of-fire" kind of terrible.

Somehow, I came up with an idea for a futuristic, totalitarian short story in my head. It involved a world were nobody read, so nobody really understands emotions and love, ect. There was also a love triangle.

The prose was fine, but the plot? Dreck. Rotten eggs. Dog poo. Yet I sent it off anyway to be critiqued by my classmates, thinking at the time I had written a piece that was good.

The whole week before my critique day, my classmates kept coming up to me telling me how much they liked my previous story, and how they couldn't wait to read my next one. They could only think of one nice thing to say about this story.

I'm fine with criticism. What I'm embarrassed about is the fact that I wrote this horrible story in the first place, that I messed up so drastically it made me want to go hide in the corner and never come out.

Bleck.

My Writing Process. With pictures!

Every writer goes about their writing process differently. Some have a certain number of hours in the day in which they must write. Others only can write when inspiration strikes them. Others even move into nude hippie communes so that the creative flow can fly through the air.

My writing process is a little bit of everything (Except the nude hippie part. That's just weird). To give you a good idea on how my process goes, I will provide you with some visual samples.

This is me:

And this is me when I begin to write a story or a paper:

After a few minutes of furious typing, random thoughts start to pop into my head, such as wondering who invented tampons, or why Tasty Kakes don't exist in Rhode Island.

Naturally, this leads to a Google search, and then to Wikipedia, and before long I have learned about the fascinating history of salt water taffy.

Eventually, all this strenuous research makes me yearn for something amusing, and eventually this happens:

This leads to frequent trips to Youtube, Facebook, or inspiration for another blog post (ahem).

Finally, it's one o'clock in the morning, and suddenly full on inspiration hits me like a fully loaded garbage truck.

Then I type a ten page masterpiece, and fall asleep.

When I wake up the next morning, I feel like I can put my bad writing habits behind me, and start to work on another paper. Then I start to wonder how rubber bands were invented. 

If You Need a Girl to Jump, Scare Her With a Chainsaw.

Here in good old Central Pennsylvania, we pride ourselves on three things: Pierogis, Whoopie Pies (Don't ever believe that Maine invented that glorious treat), and Haunted Attractions.

Field of Screams, The Bates Motel, Eastern State Penitentiary... the list goes on.

So of course, my friends and I jumped at the chance to go to Jason's Woods for the mere price of five dollars.

Now what you need to understand about Central PA is that most of it is farmland. So take miles of empty farmland in Lancaster, with no streetlights and dirt roads, and your already halfway through your own version of an horror movie (In this one, the blond with the huge boobs dies first).

The first site that we got to go through was this small maze. It wasn't that scary, since the only things that happened was this huge fireball that would blow up every once and a while and Freddy Kruger would sneak up on you. The problem with this maze was that it was extremely small, the the Jason's wood staff didn't regulate how many people could go in at once. So when a very large group of thirteen year old teenage girls decide that something is so scary that they need to stampede the place to get out of the maze, you'll most likely end up squished against the wall.

The nest attraction we got to go on was the Haunted Hayride. The problem with Haunted Hayrides is that you can't just run away if somethings scary. You're stuck on that sucker till it starts to move again. Because the universe is just and fair, my group of friends ended up on the same hayride as the terrified thirteen year old girls.

Here is the foolproof way to not be terrorized on a hayride: Laugh your ass off. The performers will aways go for the people who actually show how scared they are. My friend Sam and I, who were sitting next to each other, were never terrorized because we were laughing so hard at everybody else.

For example, while on the Hayride, at one point the actors bring out chainsaws (with the blades removed) and shake them at people. I saw a girl literally leap six feet in the air in an attempt to get away from the man. It was pretty impressive.

After the Hayride, we got to go through two haunted houses (Sadly, because of our amazing discount, we weren't able to go in the actual Jason's Woods), and somehow got split into two groups.

While dodging terrifying clowns and pirates, I learned three things:

1. There are some parts of the haunted houses that are pitch black.
2. The actors are allowed to touch you.
3. The actors are freaking allowed to touch you.

At one point, we were debating who was to go first in a very narrow and dark hallway, when somebody grabbed Sam and tried to pull her into the dark hallway. She, naturally, freaked out and pushed everybody into the wall in an attempt to escape. 

At another point, we entered a white room full of dots that glowed brightly. As we walked through it, we were scared out of our wits by an actor that blended perfectly against the wall. However, as scared as most of us were, nothing could top Jess, who as she saw the person, slowly started to scream:

"That's. a. PERSON!!!"

She then proceeded to push everyone out of the way and onto the floor as she bolted from the room.

Luckily, we all came out in one piece. We calmed ourselves down with soft pretzels, hot chocolate, and homemade vanilla Coke.

We then all gathered back onto the bus, everyone happy from a great night. Then, as we started to drive away, the bus driver made an announcement over the loudspeaker:

"Good evening everyone. I hope you had a fun evening tonight, and I hope you enjoy the movie. By the way, does anyone know the way back to your college?"

We're all pregnant now. Or have an STD. Possibly both.

WARNING: Due to some adult content, viewer discretion is advised.

Picture this: You're standing with several of your closest friends, when suddenly you are pushed into a mass bubble bath full of people. People are "dancing" way to close to each other, there is no rooms to breath, bubbles are towering over your head, most of the guys have their shirts off, and you definitely saw a penis a minute ago.

Actually, don't picture that. Very sorry for that mental image you are now experiencing.

Despite what you are now thinking, this was not a porno being shot or a planned mass orgy. This was SU's  Foam Party. The Water Club put this event together to help raise money to build wells in Africa (actually, I'm not sure what they do exactly, but don't most water clubs have the same goal?).

I've been to one other Foam Party in my life. It was at an Under-21 Dance Club in Ocean City, Maryland. The club, H2O, had a large pipe that dropped foam from the ceiling onto the dance floor.

This party, however, was a bit different. Foam still shot out from a pipe, but instead of it just landing on the dance floor, there was a foam pit. Yes, a pit. As in a very large bath tub.

Of course, my friends and I only learned this after we had gotten into to TRAX. However, despite our reservations (especially about the fact that we were not allowed to wear shoes) we went in.

Somehow, we got pushed to the section where the foam was continuously coming out of the pipe. There were several times were I was completely covered in foam and had to fight my way out so I could breath. I touched way to many slippery bodies as there were so many people in this very small pit. My friends and I had to hold each other up so that we wouldn't slip and drown in the foam. And yes, I did see a penis.

After we had had enough of the foam (and the penises) we fought our way out, only to realize that we were all soaking wet, wearing only old shorts and tank tops, and it was 50 degrees outside. So we sprinted, barefoot (our feet were to slippery to run in flip flops), across campus and got back to Aikens as fast as we could. We all then took extremely hot showers for a good half hour.

The next day, we all had a good laugh about our gross experience. Then I heard from someone that they had found seven condoms in the foam pit. So I went and took another shower.

Who Run the World (Squirrels)

Harrisburg had a lot of squirrels. Every day I would see two or three run up the trees and telephone poles in my neighborhood. I would often see them run across the telephone wires with a nut in their cheeks wile walking home from school. So I thought I was properly prepared to deal with squirrels when I came to college.

Boy was I wrong.

SU's squirrel problem (yes, it is a problem), can only be summed up with this picture:

I can see about thirteen different squirrels in 20 minutes. Yes, only 20 minutes. They are everywhere. I have seen squirrels run, jump, skip and frolic across campus. I have seen squirrels chase each other like they were about to kill each other, and squirrels frolic together like Simba and Nala in The Lion King. 

There are simply to many of them. The only thing that dwarfs the amount of squirrels on campus are the amount of recklessly piloted golf carts.

String Quartets Make Everything Better. Even Failed Waffle Making.

Today my school was so happy to see me at breakfast that they had waiters, fancy food, fifteen ficus trees and a string quartet waiting for me at the cafeteria.

I'm just kidding. Those things were not for me. They were for the alumni that were visiting for Homecoming Weekend. The school had separated the cafeteria, with one side for us mere college students and the other side for the illustrious alumni. They even got table cloths.

Slightly disconcerted by this, I decided that making myself some fresh waffles would be a good breakfast. I was pampering myself because I had just finished a short story that was due that day.

I walked over to the waffle machine, prepared to make myself a great breakfast. I turned on the machine, poured the batter on it, and let that baby cook. It smelled delicious.

Two minutes later, my waffle was ready. I lifted the top of the waffle machine... only to see my waffle in pieces, stuck to the two sides of the waffle maker.

At first I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. Then my roommate came up to me, looked at my mess, and said:

"Did you remember to spray the waffle maker?"

Oops.

And that is how I ended up scraping off waffle bits while accompanied by Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.