Category Archives: Society

Season One, Episode Sixteen: Christmas Magic and Reddit Madness

Posted in Culture, Random, Society, Uncategorized by

Merry Christmas!!! I hope Santa was good to all of you…I guess Santa did not read my blog in time, because Alex O’Loughlin was not under my tree. Damn. Oh well, there’s always next year, hahaha.

Merry Christmas 🙂

And holy Reddit, Batman!!! I signed up for Reddit last night and posted the link to this little gem of blog fabulosity. I currently have gotten 98 hits in the past 24 hours. Um, that is pretty splendid. And to all the people who have followed the link here to Chasing Lala, I say thank you and if you like what you see, please follow by email or click the sweet little Facebook “like” button on the right side of this blog to head on over to the Chasing Lala Facebook page. I appreciate you checking my blog out, and feel free to come back again!

In the light of today being Christmas, I figured I’d share some little holiday factoids with y’all, courtesy of Random Facts:

  • In A.D. 320, Pope Julius I, bishop of Rome, proclaimed December 25 the official celebration date for the birthday of Christ.
  • Christmas trees have been sold in the U.S. since 1850.
  • In Poland, spiders or spider webs are common Christmas trees decorations because according to legend, a spider wove a blanket for Baby Jesus. In fact, Polish people consider spiders to be symbols of goodness and prosperity at Christmas.
  • Christmas wasn’t declared an official holiday in the United States until June 26, 1870.
  • Alabama was the first state in the United States to officially recognize Christmas in 1836. Oklahoma was the last U.S. state to declare Christmas a legal holiday, in 1907.
  • Because they viewed Christmas as a decadent Catholic holiday, the Puritans in America banned all Christmas celebrations from 1659-1681 with a penalty of five shillings for each offense. Some Puritan leaders condemned those who favored Christmas as enemies of the Christian religion.
  • Christmas has its roots in pagan festivals such as Saturnalia (December 17-December 23), the Kalends (January 1 -5, the precursor to the Twelve Days of Christmas), and Deus Sol Invictus or Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun (December 25). The Christians church heartily disapproved of such celebrations and co-opted the pagans by declaring December 25 as Christ’s day of birth, though there is no evidence Christ was born on that day.
  • Santa Claus is based on a real person, St. Nikolas of Myra (also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker, Bishop Saint Nicholas of Smyrna, and Nikolaos of Bari), who lived during the fourth century. Born in Patara (in modern-day Turkey), he is the world’s most popular non-Biblical saint, and artists have portrayed him more often than any other saint except Mary. He is the patron saint of banking, pawnbroking, pirating, butchery, sailing, thievery, orphans, royalty, and New York City.

Merry Christmas ❤ Here’s a little Josh Groban for you all to enjoy 🙂

 

Season One, Episode Twelve: Of Michael Bolton, Consumerism, and Christmas Spirit (or the Lack Thereof)

Posted in Culture, Society by

I’m not exactly in the Christmas spirit this year, and I’m not exactly sure why.  Our tree is up and decorated, my shopping is all done, and my mom is rocking out to Michael Bolton singing Christmastastic magic, circa 1995 (when he still had the luxurious flowing mane).  MB alone should have me sitting near the fireplace, anxiously awaiting Santa and his bag of gifty awesomeness.

In my house, Michael Bolton and Christmas go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

 But, alas, I am not excited for the big guy or Christmas in general.  Siiiiiighhh.

I’m thinking it might be because it’s too warm for snow, so there won’t be a white Christmas…and maybe because all it’s really done all year is rain, rain, rain and I’m just depressed that we’ve had a rainy December.  A soggy, muddy Christmas is not exactly the stuff of Christmas classics (“I’m dreaming of a muddy Christmas” just doesn’t have the same ring to it).  Maybe it’s because Corporate America has been shoving Christmas down our throats since right around Halloween.  I think I may have actually rolled my eyes at the juxtaposition of Halloween decorations and Christmas crap thrown together at Target–because, you know, we all love to have our bloody skulls wearing Santa hats.  It adds that extra bit of undead class, you know?  It also may have been the Christmas music playing 24/7 on two radio stations since the week before Thanksgiving–and I’m guessing Thanksgiving will soon be known as Black Friday Eve.  We don’t even really dwell on the meaning of the holidays anymore.  It’s just consumerism.

I know I sound like a Scrooge, but maybe we just need Linus Van Pelt to remind us what Christmas is all about.  Maybe then I’ll get in the Christmas spirit.  Preach it, Linus:

Season One, Episode Six: Through The Looking Glass

Posted in Beauty, Culture, Parenting, Random, Society, Writing by

I was on the site 20 Something Bloggers earlier, and one blogger, Andrea Regueria, posted in one forum a great topic to blog about–writing your teenage self a letter.  I did a lot of stupid stuff towards the end of my teen years–goofing off my junior and senior years, failing a few classes that I had no business failing, not walking with my class, getting pregnant at 18 and becoming a mom at 19, getting dumped by Nicky’s idiot father at 20, failing horribly at two (count them, two!) universities and ultimately losing financial aid at both schools–some of which made me into the person that I am today, the rest just stuff that I wish I could go back in time and kick my teenage ass over.  Instead of writing a letter, which would be too time consuming, and let’s face it, Teenage Me wouldn’t have bothered to read it because I thought I knew every damn thing back then, I am going to give Teenage Me just a little advice and a heads up on the consequences that lurk ahead in the years to come.

Christ...This is probably from between 2002 and 2004, making me anywhere from 16 to 18. I'm leaning more towards 16, but anyway, I'm the girl in the middle. I look pretty much exactly the same.

*You won’t believe me now, you won’t see it until you’re about 25, but you are absolutely beautiful.  I know you think you are ugly and you want plastic surgery on the nose you think is too big and you hate your high forehead and all your curves and features that don’t exactly blend in with all your friends, but you are so, so beautiful.  I wish you would see it for yourself at 16 because that would stem the tide of bad decisions that you make in the next few years.

*Don’t worry so much about having a boyfriend.  You’ll learn that you’re completely fine without one.  I know you think you are a loser because you haven’t been kissed yet, but you aren’t a loser.  You aren’t ugly or hideous or gross.  You just go to an all girls’ school and you are insanely sheltered.  In a year’s time, you will kiss a stupid boy at Burger King who just wants to get in your pants and since you won’t give it up, pretty much ignores you forever.  You won’t even like him.  You will feel like an idiot, and I wish that you would listen to Jari, but I know you think that there is something wrong with you if you don’t kiss him.  Please don’t kiss him.  Save that kiss for someone who deserves it.  That kiss leads to a long line of stupid mistakes with guys that you still will have a hard time with when you are nearly 26.

*School is so important.  So much more important that the kids you are going to meet at Burger King, the same kids that you try to fit in so badly with because they think you are stuck up because you go to a Catholic school and this Burger King thing is the first time in your life that you feel like you don’t exactly fit in at all.  Don’t blow your 3.5 GPA over these kids.  It’s not worth it.  You are going to screw up so bad in the next two years and everything you worked for since Kindergarten is going to go down the drain.  You never get to join NHS, you never get to graduate with honors.  Remember that you wanted to graduate with honors.  Please, please do your homework and get up and go to class.  And please stop thinking your SJA friends are lame.  They are not lame.  They all go on to four year universities while you become a teen mom who is struggling to pay her bills.  And 10 years from now you will be a receptionist who makes $10.25 an hour and is still a freshman in college.  Please just focus on school.

*You have no idea how much that postcard from Yale will still mean to you at 25.

*Stop being such a bitch.  You will regret some of the things you did and the way you treated people when you lay in bed at night years and years down the road.

*After you get pregnant, which you will do because you will become a mom to the most beautiful and amazing boy you’ll ever lay eyes upon, please just ditch his dad and do it alone.  Because you are going to do it alone anyway, and it’s easier to get rid of him before you talk yourself into falling in love with him.  You can do better, please remember that you are beautiful and you can do so much better than him.  Please don’t waste two years of your life on him.  It will take you years to finally let go and you will never trust a man with your heart ever again.  And if you don’t let go of him after you get pregnant, please don’t take him back.  He leaves you when Nicholas is 10 months old.

*Follow your dreams.  Try to become a singer.  Keep writing those stories and poems.  Don’t ever give up.

I’m sure there’s more that I could say, but I think that I covered the things that matter the most.  I think I might do another episode before my birthday in December, but please feel free to share a few things you’d share with yourself if you could 🙂

XOXO

Season One, Episode Five: Just A Thought…

Posted in Culture, News, Society by

This makes me sad.

The state of Georgia executed a man tonight who most likely was innocent of the crime he was convicted, yet the biggest topic on my Facebook news feed is the new layout.  In my opinion Troy Davis outweighs Facebook’s new layout any day.

There was so much outrage on the social network when Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her two year old daughter based solely on reasonable doubt, yet we all knew she was guilty.  Anyone familiar with the basics of Davis’ case knows that his entire case was riddled with reasonable doubt, much like Anthony’s–no murder weapon was ever found, seven of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis recanted or changed parts or all of their testimony and claimed that they were coerced under duress, it is believed that another one of the witnesses was the actual murderer…and yet, Davis was found guilty of murder, and ultimately executed at 10:53 pm.  Where is the outrage now?  Where is the anger over the judicial system now?

It appears that any anger on my Facebook news feed is directed at the new layout, which seems to have pissed off plenty of people, excluding yours truly.  I don’t have any issues with it.  I can still do what I go on to the site to do, and if I couldn’t, well…I’d figure it out, like the last time Mark Zuckerberg changed things up.  Change happens.  Updates occur.  Big deal. You adapt and move on…because you know in a few months or a year, Facebook will change things up again.

But Troy Davis will never take another breath.  Troy Davis will never get to prove his innocence.  Troy Davis may have been wrongly executed while the real killer, believed to be Sylvester “Redd” Coles, spends the rest of his life a free man because the state of Georgia will never investigate that trail and openly admit that they may have killed the wrong person.  And the MacPhail family may never really know who killed Mark MacPhail that night at Burger King in 1989.  We may never know if Troy Davis was the one who pulled the trigger.

And that, to me at least, is more frustrating than the way my news feed shows up when I log in on Facebook.

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