Apologies Galore

Yesterday was not a day for celebration. Yesterday, April 6^th, was a day for apologies to Charlie. I’m not sure which Charlie deserves these apologies or what the purpose of Sorry Charlie Day is, but, hey, it’s an obscure holiday; probably no one knows. I came up with a list of Charlie’s to apologize to, so here are my top three:

1) Dear Charlie the Unicorn,

I’m sorry for your constant misfortune with the questionable blue and pink unicorn brothers (or sisters, it really isn’t clear). It is quite lamentable that you have lost your kidney, material possessions, trademark horn (unichorn?) to this pair of jesters. I’m also sorry that you have to go through ridiculous situations and quests without any of them going to fruition. The banana king’s crown and Candy Mountain were nearly in your grasp. Most importantly, I am sorry for showing your videos to all of my friends and spreading your humiliation. Schadenfreude…

2) Dear Charlie (bit my finger),

            I’m sorry that you have the need to bite your brother’s finger while your parents video-tape you. Disregarding your young age, you obviously have a disorder which compels you to bite fingers. Your life will be full of hardship trying to fight these urges, but you must resist! On the plus side, though, you’ll be able to get into any college you want because you are an international sensation (due to the magic of YouTube). Plus, girls love child stars with British accents. Just look at Freddie Highmore.

3) Dear Charlie Sheen,

            I’m sorry for all of the negative publicity you are receiving, just because you are brave enough to tell everyone the truth. You should not be ashamed of having tiger blood running through your veins, nor should you be modest when it comes to telling everyone that you are a winner. Winners win, and, as a result, they must tell everyone that they are winners, resulting in a winning situation for them. Keep your head up, Charlie Sheen, for better days, without warlocks, will come, and the tiger-blooded will rise.

Four for You, Glen Coco!

I’m not sure if you can cheat on something that you manage the rules for, so I’m not going to say that I cheated this week on the blog. Instead, I’m going to say that I merely used a creative approach to my own guidelines. Yes, that should work. I bring this up because I’m going to be talking about a holiday from last week, March 26^th’s “Make Up Your Own Holiday Day.”

Another thing to note is that I didn’t consciously celebrate the holiday. It’s only now, with the creative juices flowing (probably because of Dunkaroos and Monster), that I can realize a recurring theme from last Saturday. So, in the spirit of the day, I deem March 26, 2011 as Four for You Day.

            Why “Four for You Day,” you might ask? Well, there were a lot of “fours” for me that day. That day I left with my a cappella group, NOTA, to go to the semifinals round for an international a cappella competition at Rutgers University. It was a FOUR hour car ride, with FOUR passengers. My group performed FOURth that day, and I personally believe we did the best we have ever done. We’d been practicing the same three songs over and over for two months, and it every time we sang it sounded the same for a while, but at that moment on stage I could tell just how much we had improved.

            Okay, so that has nothing to do with the number four, but the results of the competition do. We placed FOURth out of eight groups, meaning that we were in the top 20 a cappella groups in the country, according to the judges. It made my life knowing that, even though we had come in with the lowest quarterfinal score, we did our absolute best and made it into the top 50% of the day’s competition. Or rather, the top [12.5 x 4]%, but that might be taking the FOUR (ahem, four) motif to an unnecessary level.

            The holiday may have been unintentional, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was one of the best days of my life. I got to rock it out with some of my best friends, and it paid off in the end. Oh, and the name for the day? You can thank Mean Girls FOUR (eh? eh?) that. “Four for you, Glen Coco!" You go, NOTA!

Complete Absence of a Disney Character Day

It’s wonderful to take a break every once in a while, a Sabbath that isn’t limited on the weekend. A day to pull the sheets over your head, stay in bed, and get some of that sweet commodity that college students (ironically) dream about, “sleep.” Sadly, that day was not today.

            I feel like I just committed a crime for being productive on National Goof Off Day. Well, if the Goofy Police (picture a bunch of Disney Goofy characters wearing lanky police outfits) come to get me, it's not my fault. It’s just there were a lot of meetings and things to do today. Perhaps it would be best to outline this in an itinerary:

7:00 AM – Wake up, brush teeth, shower.

7:30 AM – Realize the previous actions were part of a dream, actually wake up and accomplish them.

8:15 AM – Check email, wonder why that thing was posted on my Facebook wall.

8:30 AM – Head over to the HUB to give a presentation on the Eberly College of Science to accepted students.

10:00 AM – Go over to my research lab and wonder how these dead frogs are different species…

12:30 PM – Go to calculus. Fun.

1:30 PM – Grab a quick lunch and do a lot of homework

2:30 PM – LA 101H with Ben Henderson. Enroll in it! (Shameless course marketing?).

3:45 PM – Quickly change to go to a mentoring program orientation.

5:00 PM – Finish with exceedingly long orientation and go straight to helping market a musical.

7:00 PM – Grab a quick dinner and go over to sit in for a rehearsal for said musical.

11:00 PM – Wonder where the time went and proceed to plop down on my bed. With a Monster. And, instead of watching An Extremely Goofy Movie, do absurd amounts of other work.

TBD – Write this post, and then collapse from exhaustion.

            So, all in all, it was not a good day for relaxation or goofing off. But it was a good day to get (or rather, forced to get) work done , and that can build up a foundation so that, one day, I can have a much belated sleep-in session. All that hard work can pay off, eventually, and, when it does, that Goofy Movie will be waiting for me...

Totally Kosher

Up until now, I’ve been using random holidays from a certain website. So.. all of super-fun and crazy celebrations I’ve been partaking in on the side bar (yep, it’s been there for a while) originate from that particular site. This week, though, I varied from the norm, and used a holiday that I learned about from none other than Facebook. Thank goodness for Facebook events, otherwise how could I possibly have known about Hug a Jew Day?

Now, since the means of celebrating the holiday is in the title, I feel obligated to explain why the day exists rather than how I spent it. There are two possible approaches to this subject:

1) The cynical approach. Because obviously practitioners of Judaism feel ostracized and are just greedy for hugs. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT AN OKAY VIEW OF THE DAY.

2) The much more reasonable and sane approach (which I would hope everyone agrees with). Because Jewish people are people. Yes, they can be classified as Jewish (due to going to synagogue, getting circumcised, having a bar mitzvah, etc.), but that isn’t an entire person’s being. Religion doesn’t define a person’s entire life, not even that of a priest or rabbi. In actuality, Hug a Jew Day is just an excuse to hug your friends who happen to be Jewish.

Technically, every day is “Hug a Jew Day,” since you shouldn’t even need an excuse to show affection for your close friends or really any other person you know. I mean, if they’re scared of commitment or just don’t like being touched, don’t hug them Or, contrariwise, do it to freak them out. But, by all means, you shouldn’t feel limited to hugging them only once a year.

I’ll hug my friends any day of the year; I don’t need an excuse or some random holiday. Even more so, I definitely don’t need to label them by their religion. Sometimes, though, it’s fun to bring religion up as a joke… it helps when your friends are Gina and Jon “the Jews.”

Remember Animal Farm?

Everyone has heard the saying, “when pigs fly,” but it’s a little old and overused. So, how about, “when pigs have opposable thumbs?” A strange phrase, yes, but it’s something to think about on If Pets Had Thumbs Day.

            Now, pigs aren’t very common pets, but I’m sure someone out there has their own Babe who they love and care for (and not just for the pork). Also, I’m not sure how dogs and cats would work if they had thumbs, since they don’t really have fingers in the first place. Paws have pretty… connected digits.

Maybe?

 

      So today, it might be more sensible just to imagine a world with anthropomorphic (human-like) animals. In other words, a furry fantasy, or a real-life Wonderland.

In a world with animal equals… humans would actually be pretty screwed. After all, the only real advantage we have over our pets is that we have rational thought. Think about it: dogs have superior senses and sharp teeth, cats are agile and can slash someone like it’s nobody’s business, birds can FLY, and fish can rule the oceans. As for more obscure pets: rams have very strong horns, horses can gallop (i.e. really fast), rabbits have very powerful legs on a large scale, and tarantulas can just scare anyone into submission. Humans, in comparison to all of these creatures, have nothing going for them. If a rabbit-man and I fought, I would definitely be kicked into submission.

            

            So, the most important thing to do on If Pets Had Thumbs Day is to imagine this terrifying future, and appreciate the fact that you have thumbs and a greater mind than your beloved pet. Also, be nice to your pets, just in case widespread radiation actually mutates them into superhuman creatures. You’ll need to be in their good graces if you want to survive after that point…

The Dog Day is Over

        This may be a little late in arrival, but, hey, better late than never! After all, dog biscuits don’t expire. Why mention dog biscuits? Well, this past Wednesday was Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day…

            Ah, glorious (at least in a canine's opinion) dog biscuits, they, unlike normal biscuits, come in many forms: Milkbones, Iams, Purina, or even Giant. Yes, these biscuits can be in any imaginable shape or size, and even serve as forms of advertisement for political organizations.

Because dogs can vote?

            There’s also the option of making your own biscuits, which are much more like cookies (the British for which is actually, “biscuit”) and can actually be consumed. Well, they’re technically made from the same kinds of ingredients as regular biscuits, but generally with lower quality ingredients and additive meat flavorings. You can eat one, but it will probably trigger a gag reflex. These recipes lead to even more kinds of biscuits, including ones with fruit (dog food a la Martha Stewart).

            So, yes, dog biscuits can be appreciated for the ingenuity that is used in creating them, but, even more so, they can be admired for how they cheer up man’s best friend. Feeding your beloved pet a biscuit is a greater way of showing affection than rubbing his tummy, scratching his head, or even playing with him. These treats can also be used as rewards when training dogs, via operant conditioning.

        

    It shouldn’t be hard, then, to guess what I did in honor of this holiday. Dog treats are readily available at any given grocery store, and they can be eaten by humans, so… I did not eat one. That would just be gross. Instead I fondly regarded a picture of my own two dogs at home (Fabi and Dora) and decided that it would be a much, much better idea to feed them some biscuits over spring break. After all, the holiday was in their honor, not mine. Plus, regular biscuits taste better.

C0MPUT3R L0V3

      Ah, February 14^th. Valentine’s Day. The day of all kinds of love: true love, teenage love, animal love, and even computer love. Granted, computer love does not mean that someone should have relations with his or her laptop. Rather, it’s just good to show your computer some loving sometimes, like on Clean Out Your Computer Day.

            Day after day, a computer chugs through all of the tasks it’s given. It plays music and videos, processes essays and emails, and maintains save files on video games. After a while, it starts to get “tired” and clogged with unnecessary files that slow it down. My own computer was a bit of a mess at the start of the day. It had been running slowly for a while, and I hadn’t organized my files for weeks. Needless to say, my desktop wasn’t very attractive.

But, in honor of the day, all of that changed. It was time to show this laptop some tough love.  

    I put my laptop through defragmentation and virus scans (with no less than three separate programs), cleared up my desktop, and updated all of my programs. Then came my internet browser. Fun fact: if your browser is running very slowly, then it’s probably because there are too many cookies (not chocolate chip, but bits of data or text) stored on your computer. It’s a good idea to delete your browsing and download history along with all of those saved cookies (amounting to many, many bakers dozens) from time to time in order to make things run faster. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I did!

            Finally, to wrap it all up, there was the polishing and dusting of the laptop itself. A lot of things can get caught between keyboard keys (such as tidbits of Lucky Charms marshmallows) and jam them. It won’t do you any good if your “e” key stops working, it will just leave with with som- r-ally strang- typos.

            So, all in all, don’t neglect your computer! It needs maintenance every now and then to keep things running smoothly and quickly. I mean, you don’t want it to catch the blue plague, do you? 

Lost in Candyland

            Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow. Actually, the parting in this case literally is “sweet” sorrow. Today will be a day without sweets, to make up for the fact (at least in my mind) that I ate sugary goods all of yesterday in the “hopes” of getting a toothache. Why? Because yesterday was National Toothache Day, of course!

            Now, toothaches are a hard thing to appreciate. After all, they cause a lot of pain (hence “ache”) in a very sensitive part of the human body, a part of the human body that is used on nearly an hourly basis. After all, people need mouths to eat (except in rare, hospitalized cases). The thing is, though, when a person has a really bad toothache, he can’t eat anything without wincing, and even that influx of serotonin (i.e. the “happy hormone”) from the brain won’t make him feel better. But here’s the plus side to toothaches: there isn’t one.

            I’m not going to try and come up with some idealistic reason behind this holiday, because toothaches are not things to be commemorated; they’re just pains. This holiday literally makes no sense, but, then again, was Tuesday’s Kite Flying Day sensible? Who in their right mind (and in a non-tropical climate) would fly a kite in the middle of winter? Toothache Day is a prime example of why these are obscure holidays. It makes sense that no one would celebrate it, and so it would never become as mainstream as Christmas or Valentine’s Day. But, even with this black sheep of holidays, I made it my goal to celebrate one a week, and by George did I party it up.

            My Toothache Day consisted of trying to get what everyone else avoids; a toothache. I needed to show this ailment some love, and I decided that the best way to get one was by playing an all-day, interactive game of Candyland. Breakfast consisted of a peanut butter sandwich. Lunch? A nutella crepe. Dinner? A burger and fries (but there’s a lot more sugar in there than anyone would want to know). Dessert required a trip to NDulge, quite possibly the only cupcake store in the entire world that puts as much cream cheese in one cupcake as is needed to make five cheesecakes. Oh, and then I may or may not have decimated a bag of sour gummy worms. Needless to say, sugar was a recurring theme.

As of now, I’m not feeling any cavities (just stomach pains),  but I’ll see how things turn out. Who knows, toothaches might actually have their day… a week late.

Nugroho, Agus. "The Story of My Root Canal (*auch!*)." The Bloginning. 

15 Aug. 2004. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://bloginning.blogspot.com/>.

Bye Bye, Miss American Pie

            This week’s holiday is a little more somber than those in the past, because today was the Day the Music Died. Well, music itself isn’t actually dead (sadly in the case of Ke$ha and Miley Cyrus), but today commemorated the deaths of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens, three of America’s greatest rock stars. 51 years ago, on February 3^rd, these three musicians were involved in an airplane crash and did not survive, taking their talent with them to the grave.

            So, in memory of these three musicians, I wore black all day long (at the risk of seeming slightly Goth) and listened to a playlist of their songs. Another song I listened to on repeat was “American Pie,” by Don McLean, mainly because its chorus matches the event, “the day the music died.” Or rather, the holiday has a title that matches the song, since McLean composed it in honor of Buddy Holly and company.

            The ironic thing about the day, though, is that the music didn’t die. Literally. If you go on iTunes, you’ll find all three musicians’ songs in the store, in multiple collections. The music lives on, because people still listen to it. Buddy, Richie, and Big’s lives were based on music, and the emotions and spirit they put into their performances carry the songs through the decades. When so much of your soul is put into something, it can never perish.

This may seem clichéd, but as a musician myself (Penn State a cappella, all the way), I can vouch for this statement. I may not be professional, or even close to having the talent to go pro, but I know that I feel truly alive when I sing. I pour every ounce of energy into doing a song, and people can tell the difference between people who sing on a whim or people who sing because they need to. Again, this may seem clichéd, but it is true, and my own life would be much more forlorn without music.

            So today may have been the day that the musicians died, and it would do everyone good to remember them (Buddy Holly is really good, just listen to “Everyday”). However, today is not the day that the music died. Today, and every day, their music persists and adds to the lives of others in so many ways.  

Cans n' Clocks

            In honor of the second week of this project, here’s a surprise: I celebrated not one, but TWO holidays this time. A festive double whammy, in the form of Beer Can Appreciation Day.

A can factory in 1963. They've been around for a while.

            It may seem like a pointless holiday, but beer cans have played a key role in today’s economy. Beer cans don't just magically appear, you know. In fact, it takes a lot of work to produce them en masse. Machines can’t do all of the work (most of it, yes, but not all), and lots of new jobs are created to make up for this deficit. People are hired to oversee production of cans, obtain materials for the cans, deliver the cans, create new designs, and even pull some lever to fill the cans with the eponymous beer. Believe it or not, the beer can industry is responsible for thousands of livelihoods, and, for that, it deserves recognition. (This video paints a good picture of how the cans are made how they're made).

            

            Beer Can Appreciation Day, though, did not take over the week, for Thursday was Punch the Clock Day! Now, this holiday can be taken in one of two ways:

            1) “Punching the clock,” as in putting in hours at work and clocking in and out. This holiday probably originated as a sneaky way of making employees work hard for at least one day a year.

            2) Literally punching a clock. This is the more creative and thus much more fun aspect of the day. I may or may not have visited a grandfather clock and celebrated in this manner.

I definitely punched a clock.

         

    You can go with either one, but I think the day is really a combination of these two interpretations. You need both, a little yin and a little yang, in life to balance things out. It’s fun to goof off and punch those clocks in your life (alarm clocks, especially), but it’s also important to work hard at your given tasks. Despite my detour, I actually accomplished a lot (chemistry and biology assignments, done) and it felt good to have been so productive. Hard work (or at least its end product) is fun, and sometimes we all need to realize that. Just look at a beer can; it took a lot of labor to get to where it is, but I’m sure the manufacturers enjoy the end product.

Penguin Awareness

Every day of the year is special. There's only one January 20, 2011, and, even though it isn't as mainstream as holidays like Christmas, it should still be celebrated as Penguin Awareness Day.

Yes, January 20 is the one day each year, if there ever was one, that humans should set aside their differences and take note of penguins and their role in society. Penguins actually appear a lot in human cultures, and they deserve recognition for their efforts. Without penguins, the Pittsburgh men’s ice hockey team would not have an iconic mascot. Without penguins, Madagascar would not be a funny movie. Without penguins, ostriches would be the laughingstock of the bird community for not being able to fly.

            So, in honor of penguins and their vast contributions to society, I chose to suit up, penguin-style. I wore my tuxedo for most of the day, only changing so I could wear another penguin-themed shirt. I think I got a few people into the spirit of the holiday.

          
       But Penguin Awareness Day isn’t just about commemorating penguins, it also involves learning about them. A great movie for this purpose (which I actually watched) is “March of the Penguins.” It details the long journey that emperor penguins in Antarctica make in order to mate. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but it definitely takes a lot more work for penguins than it does for people to have a baby. Also, if the prospect of a gripping penguin tale isn’t incentive enough, Morgan Freeman is the narrator.

            So please, remember to take time next January 20^th to remember the penguins in your life. Out of the 18 known species of penguins, four are endangered because of oil spills and global warming ("Penguins"). One thing you can to do help is donate to the World Wildlife Fund by “adopting” an emperor penguin. This funds the organization in its attempts to preserve Antarctica by cleaning spills and preventing climate change. 

 Enjoy some holiday-appropriate penguin-related links!

-Adopt a Penguin

-March of the Penguins Trailer

-The Madagascar Penguins

"Penguins." Defenders of Wildlife. Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/penguin.php>.

Howdy

Right now I'm in the process of setting up this blog, so this is a test post. Keep your eyes open for a post on Thursday or Friday, then! (Spoiler: Thursday is Penguin Awareness Day)