Tuesday, September 29, 2009

What to Wear on Halloween


           In Burlington, Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year.  The celebration usually starts the Saturday before October 31st and continues until the night of September 1st, which is always filled with tired, stained costumes from its previous nights of being worn.  With this in mind it’s easy to see why we college students need to begin pondering our Halloween costume options around the beginning of August.  After many thoughtful costume discussions with my roommate, Allyson, I have come up with a set of guidelines for sporting the proper attire on All Hallows Eve. 

            1.  Don’t order a fully made costume from online.  It shows that you have no creativity or style, and you will be forced to wear a cheap, 100% polyester outfit that is highly flammable and highly shiny. 

            2.  Don’t spend a lot of money or brag about how much you spent on your costume.  Halloween is all about being resourceful and frugal.  If you want to blow your paycheck, go celebrate Christmas instead.  Usually, clever and inventive costumes made out of items you have in your kitchen drawer are as popular as expensive props bought at a costume store. 

            3.  The best costumes are unexpected and catchy.  Everyone has seen pirates and cowboys and hippies and it’s time to move on from these clichés.  An easy way to come up with new ideas is to think of very specific things, like a flying squirrel, mayonnaise jar, or a red blood cell.  It’s not hard as you think to make these costumes either.  For mayonnaise, all you need is a clear laminating sheet to make a label to wrap around your stomach and a mayonnaise jar cover to wear as a hat.

            4.  Use caution with indecent exposure.  Many girls think that the fun part about Halloween is that they get to wear their lingerie out in public.  While this may seem fun at first, it’s actually trampy and annoying.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t wear something that you feel good in.  I’m saying that sexy for the sake of being slutty automatically becomes immature.  A costume that is geeky and fun and happens to be sexy is cool. 

            5.  Incorporate something that you already have as your “base” item for a costume.  While it’s fun going to second hand stores to find Halloween apparel, it can be frustrating when you have a specific idea in mind and you can’t find all the parts that fit into it.  That’s why it’s a good idea to build a costume off of some weird hat or funny prop that you already have at home.

            6.  Consider the weather.  October nights are cold in Vermont and it’s no fun walking around Burlington with miniskirts and cut off shorts in 40 degree weather, so keep the forecast in mind while you plan. 

            7.  If you’re thinking of doing a group costume, make sure you are working with motivated, reliable people, or keep the idea very simple.  Groups are hard to coordinate and take a lot of planning, especially if each person needs a unique and specific outfit.  It’s usually best to have a back up idea, in case your crew leaves you hanging.    

            Thursday is October first, so it’s time to start getting ready if you haven’t planned your outfit yet.  Of course, it may end up that you won’t get a burst of creative inspiration for your costume until the night of the 30th, but even so it’s time to start collecting possibilities and keeping an ongoing Post-it note of your ideas.  Happy October to all and best of luck with your costume endeavors!         

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

My Guide to a Busy Lifestyle: Time Machines and Outer Space


            Now that I have embedded myself in a Jenga-dangerous schedule of academic and extra curricular activities this fall, I wake up panicking.  Whenever things are busy, I come to my senses every morning with high blood pressure and my teeth clenched, worrying that I’m forgetting the books that I need for class, or that I’ll double book myself for meeting, or that I’ll disappoint someone who will be writing me letters of recommendation someday. Today I found a remedy for that.  It came to me during a discussion in Scientific Revolutions, and I scribbled, “wake up on Pluto” in my daily planner so that I wouldn’t forget about it later.  It’s a sort of quasi-meditation activity to make me feel better when I am feeling like the Pentagon will implode if I don’t post my online response to the reading questions 3 days before it’s due.   

            Before you start the process, make sure you have someplace moderately relaxing and where you won’t feel self-conscious for closing your eyes.  (Just put your earbuds in and pretend you are sleeping).  It’s a good mental exercise to do when you wake up or anytime throughout the day that you find yourself panicking. 

            First picture yourself on Pluto.  Stereotypes work.  I’m thinking about cratery purple terrain and frigidness.  As soon as you get the feeling of being on Pluto take one giant jump through space and land on Neptune.  Then, before your other foot even has time to touch the ground, push off onto Uranus.  When you land on Uranus, say the Uranus/Your Anus joke once to yourself, and then skip to Saturn and Jupiter.  Dive face first through the asteroid belt and do some sort of cartwheelish gymnastics move over Mars and onto Earth.  Just so you know, you landed on Earth in year infinity BC and time is now moving at 5,000 years per second.  Before your eyes plants spring up, and then animals, and then dinosaurs.  Eventually, you see a caveman inventing a wheel, which rolls into Greeks statues, the renaissance, the Revolutionary War, and BAM it’s you being born.  Now your entire life zips before your eyes in exactly one second.  Any more time than a second is boring and difficult, so get yourself to the present pronto.  Congratulations, you have just traveled through an immense amount of space and time. 

            Now picture the current set of problems that you have to fix.  They should feel small in comparison.  If not, keep worrying, because there is probably about to be a nuclear explosion or something extremely monumental about to happen.  If your problems do seem more manageable, get to work.  And if you can, give all those planets and history a tiny, tiny nudge.        

            

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Road Never Before Traveled


          Anyone who’s taken high school English knows “The Road Less Traveled.”  Important choices, Robert Frost, one clear and breezy path, one rooty and dark path, etc.  In class, I remember discussing how the easy path makes boring, unchallenged people and the trickier path makes inspired, happier people.  Then the bell would ring for my next class and I would continue to be manhandled into a traditional, rule-following, white collar-destined person bound to a diploma, college, marriage, kids, career, retirement, death. 

            In truth, I am satisfied with the notion of experiencing all of these stages, but I have decided that I need to do it on my own terms.  That begins with rethinking everything.  There has never been a lifestyle designed to precisely fit my personality, so it would be unfair to my existence to recycle anyone else’s.  It is my challenge to create a personal biosphere, and I already have some ideas about where to start.  1.  I need a habitat that allows me to be synched with nature.  Sunlight should ribbon through my window when I wake up in the morning (unless its cloudy), and I should be able to experience the awesomeness of a forest or a river to chastise me whenever I am feeling too smug about the beauty of my existence.  2.  I need the company of someone who I love.  We should to be able to support each other without constricting our personal independence.  We should never have to be ashamed of how much we love each other, and we should never have to lie when our feelings change.  3.  I need to have enough quietness to be able to reflect.  Being I writer, I cannot produce anything worth reading without making a discovery about myself.  I should have a place and time when I am not bothered by others.  4.  I need to be busy with activities that always lead me towards a more meaningful and happy lifestyle.  Otherwise, I will fill my life up with unimportant “obligations” that waste the significance of my existence.  I should set myself up to make charity, gentleness, and understanding habit, not circumstance. 

            Now that I have arranged my priorities (which are changing by the second), I am already aiming myself towards a life that I desire, not just one that I can accept.  I hope that my life will prove that traditions (even pleasant ones) give people a limited view of their options.  I do plan to take a road less traveled, and I expect there to be some rocky ledges and prickly grass in it, but I’m not going to choose a dark path for the sake of having some gloominess in my life.  Instead, I want a path that will let me trip and fall in a gross, leafy mud puddle, and know it was totally worth the trouble.  That, I am sure, is what will make all the difference.