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…