Posts filed under ‘Reviews & Opinions’
Church Etiquette
I’m not necessarily a religious person, but I do go to church every Sunday because of my parents. I’ve noticed I have a lot of pet peeves at church, especially when I attend baptisms, weddings, and quinceañeras. It’s obvious who goes to church regularly and who doesn’t. Anyway, here’s a little list I came up with of things you should and shouldn’t do at church. Most of these things just require common sense and respect to others.
- Arrive to the mass early or be there right when it begins. If you get there after the mass starts, you are a distraction. Also, seats tend to get full after a certain amout of time. Being on time to church will not only save you the embarassment of walking into a quiet room and heads turning to look at you with disgust, you will also have the freedom of choosing to sit near someone you know rather than a total stranger.
- Dress appropriately. I know my mom always tells me to wear my sunday best when I go to church, but nowadays more and more people are starting to dress casually for church. If you want to dress that way, it’s okay with me (as long as it’s accepted by the religion). Just don’t wear anything that you would wear to sleep like sweats, a tank top, a muscle shirt, or an oversized t-shirt. And use common sense: don’t wear something that says “I’m with stupid.” In fact, try to avoid wearing anything with words or logos.
- Turn off your cell phones and electronic devices. Wait… Who am I kidding? No one turns their cell phones off anymore. Put them on silent. No, not vibrate. Silent. I know for a fact that if it vibrates, you will be tempted to sneak a look into your pocket to see who called or texted you.
- Don’t walk in and out of church during the service. Go to the restroom and take care of everything you need to take care of before the mass starts. On a similar note: don’t leave church early. That’s disrespectful.
- Try to avoid talking. If you talk, it implies that you’re not paying attention and disrespecting the word of God. Even if you don’t believe in what’s being said, have some respect for everyone else.
- Don’t chew gum. That’s just tacky.
- If you have small children, don’t feed them snacks. The opening of wrappers and chewing of food is annoying and distracting. (Also, I hope you have the sense not to be eating snacks yourself.)
- If you have a baby and it begins to cry, please take it outside. There’s something just not right about people who go to church against their will covering their ears to drown out the sound of a baby’s cries instead of the preacher’s sermon.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Movie Review (sort of)
You can either watch the video:
… or just read it here if you don’t feel like listening to my obnoxious voice:
So I finally saw HBP. I wasn’t fully satisfied with it, but not too disappointed either. I guess this is the part where I talk about a few scenes, and tell you what I thought about them movie in general.
Fred and George’s joke shop was exactly what I pictured it to be inside. So colorful, noisy, and fun. It was just… perfect.
During quidditch tryouts, Ron Weasley le daba unos cabezasos a esa quaffle! He swears he was playing soccer! It was funny to watch, though.
What the hell? They burned down the Burrow? I mean, it didn’t bother me as much as it did other people, but did they really have to? If they wanted more action in the movie, they could’ve added a lot near the end with all the death eaters. But whatever. (more…)
Libros.
Since my second session of summer classes got cancelled… I’m gonna need something to distract me. I figured, why not start reading again?
Before I forget everything I did, I’ll blog about it.
I could easily just break each day up into one blog and pretend I posted it on the day that it happened, but fuck it. I’ll do this thing again where I label the day and shit.
Thursday: Typical summer session day. Went to class, took notes, etc. I got home, went online for a while and then got something to eat. When I came back on the computer, I refreshed Twitter found out Michael Jackson had died. That sucks, I thought. I also thought WTF? I leave the internet for like 15 minutes and Michael Jackson dies?! Wack. There were many grieving, and many making way-too-soon jokes about it. I guess I’ll post my view on it now. As a person in general, he did a lot of fishy things. All those accusations of molestation and shit, and the whole thing where he was swinging a baby from the window and who knows what else. What the fuck was that all about? Anyway… he was an amazing performer and pop culture icon. He was the king of fucking pop! I would even always say when there was a dispute about what song should be played that “you can never go wrong with Michael Jackson.” Ever. RIPMJ♥
Friday: Mom woke me up so I could start cleaning the house in case people came over. Well, a few rooms in it anyway. After that, I went to this salon nearby with my mom to check out hairstyles and stuff for Chava’s wedding. I didn’t find one that suited me, but whatever. At least my mom did. I kinda already knew how I wanted my hair to be anyway. Not so long after that, I went to get my nails done at this nail/spa place nearby. Gosh, I love where I live. All these places are just walking distance from my house. Anyway, Nery walked into the place when I was getting my nails done and I left with her when I was done, since we had already planned on going to the movies that day. We picked up Danny, then met up with Rick and his sisters in Hollywood. We watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at the Arclight. Movie-wise, it was okay I guess. Not the best movie in the world, but not as boring as others said it was. I mostly liked the effects and all that shit. It was pretty tight.
Saturday: I woke up at 6:30 ’cause my mother and I had appointments at the hair salon at 7am. Gosh, I looked so dead when I got there. Got my hair and make-up done there. Not much to say about that. After that, I pretty much just waited ’til it was time to get ready for Chava’s wedding.
We got to the church with a lot of time to spare. The ceremony itself was nice. Apparently the minister was a family friend or something and they surprised Cristina by having him marry her. My tio Ruben was singing with his group during the mass. That was cool too. Angie, Jay, and two of Cristina’s family members did some of the readings, and the minister joked a lot. It was cool.
The reception was fun too. My cousins from my dad’s side seemed to have a lot of fun, it was cute to watch. The food was spicy and the cake kicked ass. Woot. Also, they had these really cool liquor things on the table with Cristina and Chava’s names on them that everyone liked and many took home:
As for me, I was walking in heels the whole day for the first time. Boy, I sucked at it. Hahahaha. The day was fun, though. Congrats big brother and new sister in law!
Sunday: Despite the fact that the previous day had been long and left me a bit exhausted, I woke up early to help my mother with the food and stuff because people came over. I made two salads. I swear, that’s all mom ever makes me do when she tells me to help her cook. I just make salads. Sometimes rice too. Meh, I don’t mind. Anyway, a lot of family members came over for lunch or whatever. We had birria and chicken. At one point, mostly all the dudes and kids were in my living room watching the USA vs. Brazil soccer game. It looked something like this (except less blurry):
Later on, I went to the beach and Hollywood with my cousins from Colorado. It wasn’t as fun as I would’ve wanted it to be, but still pretty cool. It’s nice to get out of the house and go somewhere with people you don’t see very often.
Monday: I woke up thinking something along the lines of Awesome, History class got cancelled today. That means I only have one class! When I arrived to my Health class, though, I came to find that that class had also been canceled. I love it when that happens, even though there’s also the whole thought process I go through where I realize I could’ve just stayed home and not missed a thing. Hahaha. I stayed at school for a bit ’cause Zack texted me that his Sociology class got cancelled, so we hung out after he got out of his first class. We ate at Thai House (no surprise there). He threw up. We brushed our teeth. We met up with Dan. I swear, I don’t know if I can fully get into the habit of just saying ‘Dan.’ I actually typed ‘Daniel’ and then backspaced because I realized that if I wrote ‘Zack’ instead of ‘Zachary’ then I should write ‘Dan’ instead of ‘Daniel.’ Anyway… we went to Pasadena, just for the hell of it. It was pretty fun. Like usual, we went to Barnes & Noble, the Apple Store, Urban Outfitters, and a few other shops. Is it proper to call them shops? Or are they stores? Because when I call them shops, I picture like, more of a local family-owned little store. I felt kinda bad, though ’cause we kept physically hurting Dan. Pobresito.
Today is tuesday the 30th. Crap, that means I can’t use my TAP card tomorrow. I should renew that shit. Too bad I have no cash and don’t wanna use my own money.
Update — I actually came back to finish this blog because… I dunno what happened, but I never got a chance to finish. It is now wednesday. Boy, I’m a lagger. I guess I might as well let you know that I finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower today.
Also, I didn’t bother to proofread this. Sorry for the mistakes.
Super quick blog before I begin my essay
Not much to say, really. Finals week sucks. I think I did good on my final for Journalism 105 (mass communications). It was just a scantron thing and a few essay questions. Journalism 101 was fairly easy… I think. Apparently I’m getting a B or C in that class. I didn’t think I did that bad during the semester. I guess I was wrong. I’m not sure how I did on my Geography final, though. Some I knew the answer to right away, while others I had to sit there and think about. I hope I did okay, though.
Yesterday was pretty fun. Went to the movies with Zachary and Daniel. We watched Drag Me to Hell and Terminator Salvation. Drag Me to Hell Made me laugh so much. Talking goats FTW! I’m very jealous of Alison Lohman. She had blonde hair with dark eyebrows, a face that isn’t very skinny, small lips, tiny boobs, but she still looked beautiful! Gosh! Anyway… Terminator would’ve probably been cooler if I’d seen the movies more recently… or at least remembered the one I saw. Hahaha.
In other news… I am a total lesbo. Just kidding. My online friend Enmanuel made a little collab video with me and some other online friends: Jason, Athina, and Veronica. I don’t know if you’ll find it funny or not. It has a few inside jokes. But I rofl’d. Here it is:
Also, I’m gonna fix the categories section of my blog once I’m done with finals. I don’t really have the time to sort everything out right now.
MTV Movie Awards
I was gonna write a review blog, but nevermind. My research paper is much more important. Here are my tweets from when I was watching, though:
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. On the bright side, more andy samberg! #MTVMovieAwards// //
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My highlight moments: Keyboard Cat, New Moon Trailer, Harry Potter scene (been there done that, though), Eminem ass in face moment, Kristen Stewart dropping her award, Andy Samberg hosting <3, Zac Efron being as cute as ever.
Twilight did not deserve best movie. Ugh. Whatever.
I guess I was meant to listen to Owl City
I couple months back, I remember getting a friend request on MySpace from a music profile: Owl City. Being the lazy person that I am, I just kinda left the friend request sitting there along with a few others for a few weeks because I didn’t feel like looking through the profiles. Eventually, I came around to looking through my pile of friend requests and listened to Owl City’s music. I liked it. I didn’t stick around the profile long enough to make a good judgment, though. I denied the friend request for some reason, and Owl City sent me yet another friend request a couple weeks after that. I was like Fine, I’ll accept! gosh! This time around, I took more time to listen to the music. It kinda began to grow on me after the second or third song. (I wish I remember which songs they were.)
Then this one time, I was listening to music on last.fm and what do you know, the same Owl City that requested me on MySpace twice begins to play. I finally caved in and downloaded some Owl City songs after that and put ‘em on my iTunes. I couldn’t stop listening after that.
For those of you who don’t know, I went through a phase where I had an e-crush on the “Twilight Guy,” Kaleb Nation. He recently posted this video:
I dunno, I thought that was pretty cool though. I guess he feels the same way about Owl City that I do.
I think I was meant to listen to Owl City no matter what. I feel like it was written in a prophecy somewhere. Nahh, not really. But I was bound to listen to them (or him, whatever) at one point or another. I don’t know much about Owl City right know. From what I’ve seen on MySpace and Last.fm, I know it’s a musical “project” of this dude named Adam Young. I just know that it’s pretty cool electronica/pop music that I enjoy listening to. It reminds me of an upbeat version of The Postal Service and gives me that feeling of summer time that I always got when listening to Hellogoodbye. If you’re into that sorta music, you should totally check out Owl City.
YouTube is so stalkery
YouTube is totally the Facebook of video-watching websites. What’s the term for them anyway? Is YouTube still considered a social networking website? You can comment, message, and add friends, so I guess so. Maybe… Meh, I’ll research it later. Don’t have much time for being all OCD with my blog right now.
Anyway… I just wanted to take a moment to talk about YouTube realtime sharing. Isn’t it just awesome?
In case you didn’t know, YouTube realtime is this bar at the bottom of your YouTube page that lets you know what your friends are watching, rating, favoring, and I don’t know what else. Of course, you have the option to disable it, but it’s kinda fun to see what others are seeing.
It leads you to start conversations like this one:
(1:34:01 PM) Reyna: ahahah. did we just rate the same video?
(1:34:12 PM) Enmanuel: i saw that u were watching it
(1:34:15 PM) Enmanuel: and thought it was funny
(1:34:18 PM) Reyna: LMAO. THIS IS SO STALKERY
(1:34:21 PM) Enmanuel: LOL
In case you don’t have it (’cause I think it’s still in its beta stage), this is what it looks like:
You can click the image if you wanna enlarge it, I guess.
