Walmart makes you dumb.

I avoid Walmart. In Maine, this is easy to do, just don't go in. The out-of-your-way drive and terrible hours help make this goal attainable. In NH, though, which is where I am for break, Walmart is in the center of Concord and my bank lives in it. For this reason, I went in.

My mission was simple:

1. Purchase a world map

2. Purchase a national newspaper

Turns out, not so simple.

After walking the store twice, I asked for help. A nice young man who wasn't wearing a ridiculous vest approached me and showed me the dismal selection of New Hampshire road maps. No.

"What about in the children's section?" I suggested.

We tried.

Nope.

"Thank you anyway."

On my way out of the store I saw no traces of a newspaper stand. I, again, asked. 

"Right there."

My choices were: The Union Leader -- a respectable paper I used to freelance for, and Laconia Gazette -- a county paper with who bought whose horse and for how many goats. Neither of these would help prepare me for the international current events test Columbia will give me next month.

Mission: fail. No newspaper, no map.

HOWEVER, this Walmart had 30 different women's magazines detailing how fat I was and where, and how to lose it; and 400 different ways to please my man. I could have bought at least five different types of pink cupcakes and 3,490 assortments of Tupperware.

Perhaps Walmart's priorities are skewed. Perhaps Walmart's patrons are not of the highest intellect, but maybe if the store sold more educational tools it could help remedy the latter.

I swear

Usually I do not like swearing. Maybe that's not true, I think the "c word" is pretty funny and, in my workplace it is hilarious to swear in screams across the room. But in every day conversation, I avoid them. I feel if I must use profanity, it is probably because I do not have an advanced vocabulary to properly excoriate someone. I do not like this feeling.

How funny are American swears though? They indiscriminately focus on bodily fluids and actions. Most other countries' obscenities focus on hell and the devil, pretty lukewarm in our culture.

This post was inspired by the swear I used today. For the first time in my life (also probably a lie) I swore at my dad. He was driving through Boston, downtown. He was smoothly accelerating to 45 MPH around tight turns in the 25 MPH zone. My nails dug into the seats, as they had been for the previous 45-minute tour of Boston. Then a car, going in the opposite direction, swerved into our lane. "DAD," I said with urgency. "Fuckin slow down."

"You don't have to swear," he said to me.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn't have to swear.

"You really don't like driving in the city, huh?" he said.

Take that back, maybe swearing is sometimes completely justified.

"No dad, I don't like You driving in the city."

In conclusion, swearing is a poor use of language, but sometimes it gets the job done.

Christmas, again.

I don't like Christmas. Of all the holidays, it's low on my list. Quite frankly, it is an inconvenience. Not only does it take me away from my news rooms, leaving me weeks behind in work, but it also allows my brain to atrophy between semesters. Also, while running around finishing up my news section and show, finishing finals and moving out of my dorm, I have to think about purchasing and wrapping dozens of presents including playing Santa for my dad.

Yes, I'm a Grinch, Scrooge, etc. 

My hatred extends to the whole ambiance. Not just the preparation, but I'm irked by the entire state of Maine's population that migrates to Bangor from Nov. 20 until Dec. 24. Then, once I've won the traffic battle, I then must go into the stores I fought so bravely to get to. Fine. I don't mind shopping. What I do mind is holiday music. And crowds. 

Billy Family-of-five Belfast is in front of me rounding up his spawn, yelling and grabbing wildly at both aisle ends for more toys, candles and dog treats -- I, behind him, can neither pass him nor escape from the incessant Rudolf the Red Nose Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Jingle Bell Silent Night Rock. Fun.

My suggestion would be this: If your family is involved in the capitalist-based, economy-infusing holiday, perhaps you could be smarter and better use your resources. Just give the kid the $300 you would have spent on him/her and allow said child to buy its own gifts at after-Christmas day prices.

This would save me from much frustration.

Happy holidays.

War for a greener planet?

I am, for the most part a pacifist. Physically anyway. Don't get me wrong, if insulted the words from my mouth and glares from my eyes spew ammo faster than any machine gun could. But I don't like physical confrontation, including war.

I have been, for the most part, opposed to the wars of America. But today I had a thought. Much like the myth that lemmings jump off cliffs to maintain a reasonable population, perhaps war is necessary to reduce the ever-rising human populous. 

I don't like the idea of soldiers dying. I don't. But what I also do not like is the idea that the world is dying. It is dying because 6 billion people and their economies persist on infringing on land, overusing water, dumping loads of carbon while not replacing it, etc. 

Human reproduction laws seem both unjust and unenforceable. Killing each other, is for the most part illegal. But war. That's one way we can unload some of the strain on the planet.

Or, you know, we could live sustainably, but that's out of the question; this is America after all.

A is for Astouded

I have always been good at everything. Except golf. When I played sports in grade school I was agile and quick. In school I get A's. My friends are good to me and I'm good to them. Until modern dance.

Many of you have heard me groan about the flowery essence and how my rock-hard personality and lack of any drop of grace was detrimental to my class choice: modern dance.
When the girls in pink leggings went left, I stumbled right. When their hands flew over their heads, my eyes were trying to figure out what to tell my feet to do. When my teacher asked me to be a tree, my gaze turned cynical. Etcetera.

After the first day of class, my teacher e-mailed me asking if I should be graded differently for my disability. I kindly explained to her that I did not have a disability.

Some of you even got to listen to my tale of the final.

For the final, I was required to perform a one-minute modern dance performance -- twice. Same dance two times.

My thesis' due date was eminent, as were two video projects. I was editing the newspaper and producing the news broadcast, I did not have time to make a dance. So I didn't.

The day of my final I freaked out. "I am going to fail. I will have to explain to Columbia why I failed modern dance," I fretted to my classmates.

Then it came.

So I did what any good editor or producer would do. I pretended that I knew exactly what I was doing.

It worked.

"Heather," my teacher said as she stopped my music. "You said you couldn't dance and you just did the most difficult thing there is to do in dance -- legato -- the smooth flow of movements."

"Beautiful," my classmates echoed.

It cemented me as a bullshit artist. I felt vindicated.

I got my grade today for modern dance. A.