Who wants to hear about my cat?!

So once again, I'm trying a new blog design. I think it's looking more or less okay for now. My technological ability is fairly limited so unfortunately none of my blog visitors will be treated to any fancy-shmancy layouts or gadgets here. My one concern is this font I'm using for my posts. I feel like it looks far more serious than anything I'll actually ever be saying.

I have been pondering ways to spice up my blog a lot lately. Probably the best way to start would be to actually write posts on more than a monthly basis... I hear that really helps bring in the crowds.

I've been considering whether I'd be able to pull off a "themed" sort of a blog, but that poses a couple of problems. First, I have to come up with a theme. That would involve me knowing a fair amount about a certain topic, or having a hobby I can showcase on here. That really narrows down my list of options. Let's see... I could write about my cat, who I spend quite a bit of time with but doesn't really do much that anyone other than me, my boyfriend, and my mom would be interested in hearing about. Then there's women's rights, but I don't know what kind of an audience that would bring in, and my current readers (AKA my family and friends) already get stuck listening to me preach about that topic quite a bit in real life. So that leaves... books. I know a lot of books and I spend a lot of time reading. But there's still the problem of my thinking of things I can write about related to that topic. It's bad enough that I can't think of things to write about for my hodge-podge of a blog that I'm running right now. Looks like maybe a theme wouldn't work out so well for me. The title of the post alone will probably mean I only get 5 hits on this post tops.

You know what I should probably write about? Crop shirts. I did a post about them a while ago and it's still the number one google search that brings people to my blog. Those poor suckers. They are probably some young fashionistas looking for some stylish crop t-shirts online and instead their search brings them to my blog post where I basically rip up the whole idea of the things.

Well, looks like I'll have to ponder this some more and try to ramp up the interest level of my little blog somehow. Maybe I should just write about my daily life and hope that people actually find it more entertaining than it actually is. That's what everyone does on Facebook, at least.

Small town murder

Sometimes I don't know what to write about on thing darn thing. I suppose I'll follow my recent theme of talking a bit about current events. Missing girl has still not been found. So unfortunate. Latest happening in Pictou County was a murder in Trenton last night. Super! Let the havoc begin.

Let me mention something I also mentioned on facebook earlier today. Someone's status was about the shooting being an isolated incident, and that Pictou County is no more dangerous than anywhere else. A lot of people commented saying that there's been shootings in lots of other places, so it's basically no big deal, and that there's really nowhere any safer. I had to disagree with that. Here's why:

To the best of my knowledge, it is quite likely that the shooting was related to drugs. Mainland Nova Scotia has six hot spots for injection drug use. Four of those are in Pictou County - Trenton, New Glasgow, Pictou, and Stellarton. The other two are metro Halifax and Amherst. It is not uncommon for people to get pissed about drugs/money, which can lead to violence.  It's easy to pin a shooting as an isolated incident, but people can get caught in the crossfire. It doesn't take much for an innocent person to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All this leads me to suggest the idea that moving to an area with less drug use actually could be safer than living in Pictou County.  Now, I'm not saying that people need to shit their knickers about it and pack up and move... in that way I believe that some of my fellow facebookers were correct. That being said, I don't believe that being apathetic about it isn't really the answer either. Why is it acceptable for people to be shot and killed in our community, no matter what the motive or reasoning behind it was?

I doubt you're that popular.

Today a thought popped into my head while I was on facebook. I've had this thought many times on facebook, so today I figured I might as well express it via blogger.

Why is it necessary for people to have so many friends on facebook? Almost everyone I check has over 400 friends. Some people even have thousands. GET REAL. There is no way in hell that you actually have 400 friends in your life. Maybe you have met that many people, or they could be distant acquaintances, but they are not your friends and I'm pretty sure you don't need them on your facebook friend list.

I frequently go through my friends list and clear out anyone I don't talk to on a regular basis or wouldn't be able to have a conversation with if I saw them in person. I just checked, and I currently have 88 people, some of which will still probably get cut out in the upcoming months. Even that number is excessive. Do we really need so many people to be able to access us or for us to access them? I don't think so. If I don't feel the desire to know you enough that I would befriend you in person, then I don't see the purpose in having access to your personal life via facebook. Sure, sometimes I'm nosey and like to see what people are up to, but facebook has become excessive in that it becomes a competition for some people. If you don't have a lot of people on your facebook, you must not be popular, right? At a cyber-bullying workshop I attended the Community Policing Officer told us that there is a sort of fad happening with youth where it's like Facemon instead of Pokemon - Gotta get em all.

This all may sound fairly hypocritcal considering I'm blogging on the big old world wide web here, but to be honest the only reason I continue to blog is to give myself an outlet for my writings, and also for the people that I know in life outside of the internet who enjoy reading it. For some reason the friending craze on facebook just seems to bother me. Maybe it's because I hate that people put on such facades in their lives, and it is now spilling over onto fcebook as well.

To be clear, I don't expect anyone else to necessarily feel the same about this whole rant, or to rush over to facebook and delete half of your "friends". This is my blog, and these are simply my ramblings. Enjoy it for what it is.

A Dreamer's Life

Blogging has taken a back burner to my new temporary online addiction... Baking Life! It's a Facebook game where you create and run your own bakery. Right up my alley! I am almost embarrassed to admit that I feel somewhat committed to this pretend business, and I actually feel pleased when it flourishes. Maybe this is because I truly do love to bake in real life, and owning a successful bakery would probably be one of my dream jobs. This reminds me of a recent blog post by my fellow blogger friend Yvonne, which was about dream jobs. There are probably a lot of jobs I would call a dream job for me. Mostly they are not extravagant or unrealistic though, and most of my dreams for life are not. A few jobs I would be happy to have would be: owning a bakery (but I would not be the one to decorate cakes... because I dislike that part), hula-hooping for money, writing a children's book, a yoga teacher, an editor, full-time beach babe, etc. Some of these are obviously more achievable than others, although I doubt I will end up doing any of them. Except maybe becoming a yoga teacher. Cause that would be a pretty great side job... getting paid to do something you'd be doing anyway. Nice!

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Other than the previously mentioned jobs, my dream life would involve a medium sized, beautiful home with a loveable cat and maybe a smallish well-behaved dog, lots of yard with trees and few neighbors. I would have a sweet hubby to grow old with, and maybe some kiddies at some point. My vehicle of choice would be a jeep and maybe something more practical for winter. Maybe I would travel, but sometimes traveling is only good for me in theory and not in practice. I would have a room with lots of shelves filled with books that I will have read, and a kitchen with all kinds of baking supplies and tools. These are some of my life dreams.... I'm sure I will gather more as I go... maybe some that are more adventurous... but for now I like my idea of a happy life, so I'm stickin' with it! :)

Gay.

Something I read on facebook today (and many times in the past) sparked my idea for this post. I want people to know how much I absolutely CRINGE when I hear someone say "That's so gay". I don't care if you're talking about a person or an object, or an behaviour. It really doesn't matter. Saying something is gay shouldn't be used as an insult. Being gay is something that should be accepted as completely normal. Imagine if people went around saying "That's so straight". In fact, I have a great resource that I would love to share that shows just how stupid people are when it comes to talking about being gay. I just have to dig it out of my desk at home first. It's a list of ridiculous questions that people who are gay get asked, with heterosexual subsititued in to show how silly it sounds. One example I can think of is "When did you decide to become heterosexual?".

I'll update this post again later once I find that paper and go win my award for college tonight ;)