Monday, July 8, 2013

RED

One of things I find really inspiring is color palettes and how people play off of it. So I decided I wanted to try and find pictures where one color pops. I'm starting with red.


 



Sunday, July 7, 2013

Bossypants




Disclaimer: I completely love everything Tina Fey has done and love it blindly. So rather than this being a "What a great book!" and thoughtful this will unfortunately sound like a fangirl love letter to Tina Fey. I'm not sorry.

After reading The Fault in our Stars, I needed something that was hilarious because that book broke my feelings. (If you're interested in how it broke my feelings, read here!) I found that Bossypants became more than just a memoir and was inspirational, silly, incredibly quotable, and very relatable.

"To say I’m a troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair."
I've always been told that someone's a great writer if you can hear their voice through their writing.   Reading her book, you can definitely hear Tina Fey in it. Best example? Read the chapter "The Secrets of Mommy's Beauty" and tell me you don't hear Tina Fey reading it in your head. The most prevalent theme in her book is about her job as a writer. She starts from how she worked at a desk job and poured all her money into improv classes, and builds upon that. But not linearly, she breaks it up between her home life, stories about her family, and random Q&A's with the internet. It's the way she can change the topic is great, and something I've always admired in watching 30 Rock.
"‘The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.’ This is something Lorne has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go."
Speaking of 30 Rock, her chapter about the show will make you love it even more. She introduces the writers of 30 Rock and a little bit of their background, and you can see some of the similarities with the ones shown in the show. After reading Bossypants, I've noticed that 30 Rock has a very improv-y feeling. The jokes per scene, sight gags, and how the characters play off of each other does seem very SNL-ish, but not overtly so.
“One afternoon a girl walked by in a bikini and my cousin Janet scoffed, “Look at the hips on her.” I panicked. What about the hips? Were they too big? Too small? What were my hips? I didn’t know hips could be a problem. I thought there was just fat or skinny. This was how I found out that there are an infinite number of things that can be “incorrect” on a woman’s body.”
And like a lot of Tina Fey's works, there's a lot about being a feminist and views on women. Throughout her chapters dedicated to improve, her stint on SNL, and working on 30 Rock, she talks about women and their role in the media. How women aren't seen as funny, getting women to turn on each other, etc. We've all seen this, especially if you've seen Mean Girls. (Which surprisingly was not mentioned at all during this book. Please for book 2?) But some of the most inspirational bits about her view of women was that it's all encompassing. It's okay to be progressive and work 70+ hours per week. She wrote some real truths about how it's okay to cry, how you shouldn't be mean to people to get things to happen your way, among other things. As someone who likes to be nice to people and cheery, that was so good to read because so often I come across people who seem to just want to ruin my mood. 

Anyway, other little tidbits I noticed/want to mention:



  • The fact that Tina Fey seems to swear in every other sentence was actually great. She used it in a way to be funny, and not annoying. Although, I can see that putting some people off. 
  • As I mentioned before, Fey didn't mention Mean Girls. Which is strange because that's what made me hear of her first. I mean I don't know what she could have written about, but I'd love to hear what she thought about writing that movie and how big of an influence it's had on us. 
  • "Don’t concern yourself with fashion; stick to simple pieces that flatter your body type. By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever. The shirts allowed me to express myself with cool sayings like “There’s No Crying in Baseball” and “Universität Heidelberg,” the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the fanny pack held all my trolley tokens. I was nailing it on a daily basis. Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible.” -- One of my favorite passages ever actually.
  • Tina Fey can't drive and that makes me feel okay. She went out of her way to mention this, and I figure if she's successful in life without a driver's license, than so can I. (Who's thinking bad logic? Anyone?)

Anyway that's just about it. Sorry for the word vomit. (This might be my longest entry yet? Oh man) The next book I'll probably talk about is going to be The Silver Linings Playbook. I'm almost done with it actually. (On the last 100 pages.) So yay! :)

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Girls in Science

Targeted as a way to get girls interested in science, the European Commission decided to create a commercial to inspire women to get careers in science. It got pulled shortly after it was released and the European Commission has received a great deal of criticism about it.

I recently stumbled across this, and felt very disappointed. As a women currently studying Bioengineering, and looking forward in studying it more, this seems like a very strange way to encourage women into science. For me, personally, I just always enjoyed science more so than any other subject in school. Science feels so optimistic all the time, and I wish the European Commission had tapped into that.

A couple of blogs and news sources explored the commercial in detail:

What are your thoughts on this commercial?

Friday, July 5, 2013

Favorite Tumblrs

I, like many other college students, use tumblr to procrastinate as much as possible. I've enabled endless scrolling. I've changed my layout four times in a day. And most of all, I've gained a weird group of followers on my account, and wondered why they're following me. (Most of them are high school friends though.)

c'est positif (optimistes.tumblr.com)
Possibly one of the happiest tumblrs I've found ever. I love it!
Humans of New York (humansofnewyork.com)
I know it's own thing, but you can follow it on Tumblr! I love seeing the pictures, and some of the stories are so inspiring. Definitely one of my favorite websites. 
Doctor Who (doctorwho.tumblr.com)
Doctor Who is one of my favorite shows, and keeping up with it on tumblr is great as well. They do respond to all asks, and they also combine both fan stuff and real stuff so well. 
The Mindy Project Style (http://themindyprojectstyle.com/)
Not run by Mindy Kaling or her production crew, but these guys go out and find whatever Mindy's wearing and either link it directly or find similar alternatives. There's also a couple for Zooey Deschanel and Zooey's show New Girl as well which are all great. 
We Love Canines (fyeahcanines.tumblr.com)
Because dogs are awesome, and I love finding dog pictures. 
The Daily Bunny (http://dailybunny.org/)
Similar to We Love Canines, but these guys post daily. Not to mention, I love bunnies more than everything else in the world. 

If you're interested in following me on Tumblr, I'm at icedpeppermintmocha.tumblr.com. :)


Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Voldemort Appeared in my Cheesecake and other things....

This summer has been a conglomeration of trying to figure out what I'm going to do after I graduate college, working out, reading a ton, and occasionally visiting a couple of friends here and there. What I love about the summer is that it is continuous stretch of relaxation and peace, but sometimes it does feel a bit too long. Blogging seems a bit redundant at that point because I'm not doing much of anything.

College me is a lot more exciting than summer me.

Regardless, I'll keep updating with books I've read this summer. (I'm working my way through Bossypants by Tina Fey, and picked up a couple of plays that I've been meaning to read for a while.) And some other silly stuff.

As for the most exciting and possibly downright disturbing event of the summer so far:

Voldemort appeared in my cheesecake.


Creepy right? Well, I've got a glorified stick that I've fashioned into a wand. If Voldemort shows up, I can just stab him with that I guess. 

That's it for now!