Dry Season

Why do so many chapstick and skincare products market themselves as being able to moisturize your lips and skin during the dry season, when they very clearly do not? As someone who struggles with dry skin, this is irritating to me. I’ve only ever been able to find a select few brands that can get the job done, including Burt’s Bees and Aquaphor. Burt’s Bees will always be my go-to, but it’s super expensive. Several dollars per stick? A stick that’s too easy to lose? They drive a hard bargain, but at least their product works. I once picked up a free stick of chapstick at a food truck fair down in the valley. Given the circumstances, my expectations were low to begin with. But oh my goodness, it felt like I was rubbing strawberry-flavored butter on my face. It didn’t stick at all, and I don’t know if it was safe to enter my body.

The other product, Aquaphor, is good for other reasons. It specifically helps with acne scarring, oily skin, and dry skin. It comes in a monstrously-sized toothpaste tube, and it’s easy to go overboard with it. However, I’ve heard that it is a good way to help combat the dry hands that people get in the wintertime. But so far, I haven’t had much luck with it. It does it’s job, but I must be using too much. It leaves a subtle sheen on my hands that I don’t feel comfortable with.

All in all, the winter is coming. And some of these products don’t seem to realize it yet. Or… perhaps they do, and they know that their products will keep enticing us consumers to keep using just a *little* bit more. Who knows?

Thanksgiving – The Calm Before The Storm

My family and I took it easy this thanksgiving break. Our grandparents and cousins live in town, so we all ate dinner together. But that was it. No National Lampoon Thanksgiving Vacation. And I was fine with that. It was refreshing to get a small break before the backbreaking week of final exams.

However, the break was a calm before a different storm as well – Christmas break. By luck of the draw, my family will be the ones hosting my extended family for Christmas. Take everyone that we spent time with, and add some relatives from New Mexico, California, and a few other places. Leave inside a small ranch home for a week. Remove, leave to cool, and serve. That is the storm that will be hitting the McLaughlin residence this holiday season. Of course, this isn’t a bad thing by any means. I’m excited to see some relatives that I haven’t seen in a good while. But boy oh boy, I’d almost rather spend my break in a can of sardines than in a house with that many people inside of it.

Have Halloween decorations been getting less scary, or am I just getting older?

Every year, a store called Spirit Halloween opens up in a vacant department store space near my place of employment. The store is open from around the end of September to the beginning of November. How this store stays in business is beyond me (I may write a blog about their business practices later). Anyway, my friends and I paid a visit to one of these stores recently, and I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. The store was not like I remembered it. And I have a theory that “mainstream” Halloween decorations (or, at least the ones provided by Spirit Halloween) are falling victim to social trends and shying away from the spooks that allowed the Halloween tradition to survive for so long.

One of the main reasons I loved the Halloween decorations of my childhood is that they scared me. Now, I wasn’t jumping out of my pants after every turn of a corner in the store, but some of the decorations and costumes were scary enough to earn a spot in my long-term memory. One particular image that I still remember clearly is that of a wall of masks. On this wall were clown faces of all shapes and sizes, zombies, ghouls, and even a cameo of Pinhead from 1987’s Hellraiser. The juxtaposition of a mask from one of the most graphic films of the 80’s next to a child’s tiara hasn’t escaped my mind to this day.

Along with the standard ensembles of masks and robes, the lawn decor shouldn’t be ignored. I will give Spirit Halloween some credit, these decorations still impressed me during my last visit. Mechanical dolls, scarecrows, and demon babies were still present. An 8-foot-tall clown even greeted my friends and I as we entered the store. But the front door was where the similarities ended. To my right was an entire quarter of the store dedicated to costumes for kids. This made sense, kids love Halloween. However, upon further inspection, there were no cowboys, zombies, or other standard Halloween getups. Instead, I found Fortnite memorabilia, plastic trinkets similar in material to a red solo cup, and worst of all – foam masks. These soft, spongy “costumes” had a picture printed on the front, such as a cat, dog, or political figure. A small, flexible cord wrapped around the back, which allowed a customer to wear the mask by stretching the cord around their head. How much did these miniature sponge mattresses cost? $25 for each mask. Even 8-year-old me would’ve smelled something fishy. The memorable wall of masks was also gone, as were many other decorations that spooked me as a child, and may have still spooked me today.

Maybe Spirit Halloween (and Halloween in general) is changing for the better? Maybe I need to experience it for a few more years for my mind to be changed. In any case, as Halloween stands now, I can’t help but notice its commercialization dragging it away from what I was once spooked by.

The zone between sleep and reality

You know that feeling when you’re about to go to sleep and your brain starts pumping those feel-good chemicals? I’ve always wondered if there was a way to stay in that limbo between the real world and the dream world.

As your eyes start to get heavy, your brain coaxes you to give in to temptation and fall asleep. It releases some kind of chemical to help you go all the way. For as long as you stay awake during this process, you’ll continue to feel the effects of these chemicals in your mind. Ever since I was young, I’ve wondered about this state of mind. “Is this the same feeling that people get when they’re high? I don’t know if I want to find out. But if it is, then I’ve basically solved the opioid crisis.” These kinds of thoughts have flickered on and off in my mind for several years now.

I decided to try a small experiment. Over the weekend, I’d try to experience this sensation for as long as I could, and fight the urge to fall asleep. The results – disappointing. Maybe my willpower is just weaker than most, but I couldn’t fight the urge for very long. It was as if my brain intentionally ignored my pleas to stay awake and enabled my autopilot mode. Maybe I was afraid of snapping awake and not being able to fall asleep at all? I don’t know.

In any case, a group of very smart people with strong wills should seriously consider looking into this.

That moment when…

I despise it when people begin their sentences with “That moment when…”. Almost 100% of the time, the information that follows is usually some kind of statement that aims to make people pity them. The use of these pity tactics isn’t smart, and too often makes the speaker seem like an attention seeker. For example, one of my friends walked up to me last week and said “That moment when you have a C in AP World” directly to my face. What was the point of that? I don’t want to know about your AP World grade. What did you want me to say? “Oh, wow, I’m so sorry! You must be dog-tired, go ahead and take a week off from school.”

The reverse of this is also true. When people use “That moment when” to humbly brag about their own accomplishments, it makes them seem arrogant and sly. Obviously, telling your friend about your A+ in Chemistry shouldn’t be looked down upon. After all, it’s good to be happy about your accomplishments. However, stating “That moment when you have an A+ in Chemistry” is different. Claiming that the statement carries the same weight as another, similar statement would be like claiming that steak and bacon are the same food because they’re both meat. They just… aren’t.

Home alone with the dog

This past weekend, I was home alone with nobody but my dog to keep me company. His name is Chester, and he is a 7-month old Cavalier King Charles spaniel mix. And, oh boy, if this is anything close to the amount of care and attention that a human baby requires, I am NOT ready to have kids.

As soon as I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, I was walking Chester while most of my friends were sound asleep. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with him. However, even at 7 months, he found ways to manipulate me. Not only did he fake his signs of needing to go to the bathroom, he always made sure that I could see him waiting by the door as I was doing my homework, making breakfast, or practicing music.

I don’t blame him, though. I love the outdoors, and so does he. But the reasoning of why he needed my attention all the time is beyond me. I love him to death, but I hope he grows out of this soon.

I almost died (not clickbait)

Last week, one of the best homecoming proposals was supposed to take place. However, life had other plans.

My girlfriend and I had always wanted to go to Castlewood State Park together sometime. Because we don’t live too close, we had never gotten the opportunity to do so until one recent Thursday night. The plan was simple: I’d pick her up from her flute lesson, drive to Castlewood while she closed her eyes, and perform the proposal from the top of a hill in front of a beautiful sunset. Simple, right? That’s what I thought.

Everything was going smoothly. I picked her up, and she faithfully kept her eyes closed as we made our way to the park. The sun was going to set in about 40 minutes. That should be enough time. As we arrived, we exited my car and made our way up the first hill (with our eyes open). However, as I traveled a bit further ahead, I made a terrible discovery: the spot I initially picked had no clear view of the sunset.

While my girlfriend insisted that this was okay, I wanted to continue. At this point, I was unfamiliar with the trail ahead. I didn’t think too much of it, since there were no twists or turns, and was a single pathway for the most part. After nearly 20 more minutes of hiking, we found a perfect location. With the nearby river in view, we watched the sun go down together. It was perfect.

But… the sun was going down too quickly. By the time we began leaving (we didn’t watch the sun set all the way), the forest began to darken. The canopy of leaves blocked an already minuscule amount of light from the sky. This wasn’t a problem to me, because the park closes 30 minutes after the sun sets. By the time we would arrive at my car, the park would close and we would leave. Simple, right?

It was too simple. As we made our way back, we discovered a path that we hadn’t seen before. On the way up, it merged onto the main path and was invisible to hikers that were on the other converging path. Here’s the catch: we had 0 idea which path we had taken. My girlfriend started to panic, and for good reason: we were about to get lost in the woods, get murdered, and become another statistic. I kept my cool on the outside, but truth be told, I was terrified. We chose the leftmost path because it seemed to be closest to where the exit to the park was. Guess what? Wrong move. We hit a dead end after 10 minutes of walking, meaning we lost another 25 minutes after we retraced our steps.

At this point, the path was pitch black. The canopy was too thick to allow any moonlight in, and our only light source was my girlfriend’s dim phone flashlight. Which, might I add, was minutes away from losing all power. At this point, we were nearly running down the hilly paths, tripping over stones, roots, and loose dirt. 5% battery left, and no further to the parking lot. What happened next all sort of blurred together: We ended up actually losing the path and we had to climb down about 25 feet of near-vertical hillside. We had both begun to accept that we were no longer safe. But, at last, after we scaled the hillside, a roadside light was in sight. With no flashlight, we both sprinted to the road. My girlfriend and I were genuinely lost.

The road we came upon ended up being about a mile away from our parking lot. And while we survived with (several) strokes of luck, I can’t help but believe that things would’ve gone much worse had we left only five minutes later than we did. Nothing makes me believe the butterfly effect more than the thought of the countless ways the night could’ve ended tragically.

Resistance

A week or two ago, I learned a thing or two about a force called resistance. Even though it was only briefly brushed upon in my creative writing class, I listened because I could relate to its descriptions. One idea that was presented to me was that resistance is not a malevolent force, but rather a force of nature that acts upon everyone and everything. Upon hearing that, I realized that in everyday life, the kinds of resistance you experience don’t entirely matter. However, the ways that you handle your resistance are the factors that determine how you’ll overcome them.

As I was listening, I could come up with several examples of ways resistance has held me back from doing something I love or something that I need to accomplish. For example, f I were to start my high school career over, I would definitely try to fight it more and get more involved around my school in areas such as the talent show, poetry slam, and theater. Resistance has held me back from doing those things in the past. And I can’t even remember why! All of those activities seem extremely fun and exciting, and I wish I could’ve participated in them more often. Even though I could spend all the time in the world being sad and mopey about missed opportunities, I’m going to try to use my experiences to help myself get more involved in the future instead.

In one of he most unassuming ways possible, my eyes were opened to a huge aspect of my life that has indirectly controlled some of my actions. I never would’ve thought that my subconscious would receive a talking-to in a class about creative writing.

An Viewer’s Review of André Øvredal’s “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”

*This post contains spoilers for the 2019 film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark*

Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a trilogy of scary story collections published throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Each book contains ~20 short stories that are unsettling, comical, and fun to read with friends. I have fond memories of the times when I would read the stories for the thrill, but throw the book across the room after one of the scarily realistic illustrations would appear on the page in front of me. This past June, I was both excited and curious when I discovered that a film adaptation of these books was on the way. Several weeks after the film made its debut, I watched it in theaters with my girlfriend on the 23rd. Unfortunately, I left the theater that night feeling rather disappointed. In my opinion, the movie was enjoyable, but there was so much missed potential given the quality of the source material.

To be fair, a text-to-script film adaptation of a short story collection would be incoherent and impossible for a new audience to understand. In this scenario, one of the only choices that a producer has is to build a world from the ground up and incorporate the source material somehow. As far as I know, one of the only other modern films that is made in this way is 2009’s Shorts (Going in, I was hoping Scary Stories would do a bit better than a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Overall, I believe that the settings and character designs of Scary Stories were adequate at best. Sure, you can make do with having your characters’ designs model different stereotypes of high school students. In Scary Stories‘ case, it was probably necessary to do this. However, I feel like the main cast was very two-dimensional and artificial, and many of their interactions were awkward as a result. The film spent very little time introducing the main cast to the audience, and I often had trouble remembering which geeky nerd was which, or who exactly the protagonists was trying to find.

The story was alright. It was entertaining enough to watch, but again, I feel like the directors could’ve done more given with the source material. Several of the short stories from the books actually made an appearance in the film, and I had fun noticing all of the little references scattered throughout. Although some events were predictable, the occasional jumpscare or plot twist was introduced to help keep the story fresh.

Overall, while this movie was an entertaining murder mystery-like story, I don’t think I would watch it again. I still firmly believe that the movie doesn’t do the book series justice and that there was much more potential that, sadly, wasn’t used. I rate this movie a 6/10.

Rating: 6 out of 10.
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