A newfound love

So, I have a bit of a new obsession. I'm looking into a program for next winter, which takes students to D.C. and sets them up with internships in their field. The only problem is I'd have to save up some money, so I've started looking at scholarships again, going back to FastWeb and college-scholarships and college board and stuff.

In any case, I've found a new site that is really quite interesting. It's called Scholarship Points (http://www.scholarshippoints.com/). You basically do little activities and earn points, which you can use to enter scholarships. The activities are pretty cool, actually, like reading articles about student loans, checking out FAFSA, taking surveys, etc. It's kind of fun.

The thing I like about it, though, is that the scholarships you enter are mostly drawings (you use your points as entries) so it doesn't take a lot of time, and you're not competing for who has the highest GPA or lowest annual income or anything. Everyone has the same chance, so it's almost like... lottery-style? For this months I entered two scholarships worth $1,000, one for $2,500, and one for $10,000, and all I had to do is take surveys and junk. It's pretty cool. Plus then you don't have to write a bunch of essays or fill out ten thousand applications. I guess it is just leaving it to chance though, which could be a good or a bad thing. Meh.

Anyway, I'd recommend it. We'll see if I win anything, haha.

Conundrum

Whew! Haven't blog'd in a while. Long story short: I made it home (after a few more cancellations, ending in Delta putting me up in a hotel for the night), had a rockin' good time, slept in every day, ate too much, etc.

Now I'm back in school! I love Oregon--I'm convinced the Northwest is Utopia--but it's nice to be home in Provo again.

Okay, now for my dilemma:
I have long been looking forward to the upcoming adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, which is coming out later this year. It has ROBERT DOWNEY JR. cast as Sherlock Holmes, which basically means that it's going to be hardcore and awesome. I mean, come on. IRON MAN playing Holmes. As if that weren't enough, Mr.-unbelievably-attractive-and-debonaire-Jude Law is playing Dr. Watson. What a duo! So unexpected, and yet I anticipate it to be genius.

I am frankly in love with Sherlock Holmes. I've read every case, as well as seen them depicted by both Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone (Don't ask me which one is more awesome. There's no way I could ever decide). The Great Mouse Detective was, and continues to be, one of my favorite movies. I mean, come on. My roommate and I went as Holmes and Watson for Halloween.

So. That being said, you'd think that nothing, nothing could get in the way of me and the midnight premier of Sherlock Holmes, wouldn't you? Well, my loyalty was tested when I found out that Sherlock Holmes was being released on the same day as NEW MOON. November 20th.

Good fan that I am, I decided ahead of time that I'd just pull a double feature. Sherlock Holmes at midnight (because let's face facts, it takes priority over Twilight) and then New Moon at 3am.

BUT, here's the kicker. It turns out the midnight release of Sherlock has been bumped up to Nov. 13th, so no worries! I guess that's what I get for trying to plan my life 10 months in advance. :P

A little bit stranded, but morale is high!

I haven't seen my family in 189 days (who's counting), so what's one more, eh?

My flight, which was supposed to leave yesterday, was canceled. Wasn't I just speculating about airport catastrophes? Haha. In any case, It wasn't Utah that screwed up this time - from what the airline told me, the runway at PDX is basically a skating rink right now. Ice makes it hard to land planes.

So the new plan is that I come home tomorrow. All of my climactic countdown-ing was for nay. If all goes well I'll arrive in Portland at 4:04 pm.

Although I am really sad to not be home already, here are the consolation prizes:

1) My amazing boyfriend, Scott, postponed his trip home to stay with me while I'm stranded. When I first found out my flight was canceled, I was borderline distraught (I'm not going to lie, I had a little cry, too), but he was over in minutes to give me a hug and cheer me up. He spent most of yesterday and today hanging out with me, even though I was being totally boring doing homework and cleaning, rather than going home himself.

2) My roommate, Hailey, also leaves tomorrow, so I'm not alone in the apartment. Also, this is really the last chance I have to spend time with her. Once she leaves, I probably won't see her for a few years, so it's nice to have a couple more days with her. We've been watching movies and bonding and being ridiculous.

3) It's probably better I didn't fly Saturday. The weather sounded pretty treacherous. In fact, I had just said a prayer, praying for a safe trip home, and literally minutes later I found out my flight was canceled. I'm not going to complain if God's lookin' out for me.

4) I'll still get home in time for Tia's Christmas party, so, as long as we're not all snowed into our houses, I'll get to see all of my high school friends!

5) My sister is picking me up from the airport (something she might not have been able to do if I'd come in Saturday), and we'll have a chance to hang out one-on-one.

So basically, my morale = good.

Let it snow

NINE DAYS UNTIL I GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!

Unfortunately, that means I have only a couple of days until finals week. *shudder*

On a more serious note, when I flew home for Christmas last year, I was stuck on the tarmac for a good two hours or more due to weather conditions. My plane was de-iced twice. Then we had to wait until the runway was sufficiently salted. Last winter was pretty brutal as far as snow went - we were bombarded with it as early as September, and there was a good six inches of snow *still* on the ground when I left for summer break at the end of April.

I know, Canada and Siberia, I know, I shouldn't complain. Screw you.

My point is that for the last three days, the temperature has been averaging between 25-35 degrees Fahrenheit. Snow may very well be imminent. I hope I don't get snowed in at the airport. That would be super-mondo-sad face. Listening to the same 12 Mannheim Steamroller Christmas songs on a loop, rueing the fact that SLC doesn't have free wifi, eating all of my meals at Sbarro, Manchu Wok, or Starbucks (oh, and 'On-the-fly Urban Market', of course), and playing all of those dumb sociology mind-games you're supposed to play with strangers (sitting right next to them even if there's lots of open seats around, doing odd things in elevators, etc.).

In any case, I'm really excited to go home - impending airport disasters or no. The only sad thing is that my roommate is going back to Australia after this semester, so basically won't ever see her again! I don't tend to make it to Australia very often.

Merry Christmas!

Twilight at Midnight

TWILIGHT.

I have to say, the Twilight movie was amazing. Quite well-done, and very well-adapted. I think we can all agree that certain movies, aka Harry Potter, were crap at following the books, but Twilight accomplished it most excellently.

I honestly was preparing myself for pure cheese covered in corn, and - I kid you not - I thought Edward was literally going to be covered in glitter due to low budget issues, but... it was fantastic! The casting was perfect. I wouldn't have changed hardly anything, with the exception of Jacob Black's wig (HEINOUS! I was more scared of that wig than I was of James).

For your amusement, here is the breakdown of the audience - roughly:
Total seats in theater: 1,960
Number of empty seats: 0
Percent who were female: 92% (I was surprised at how many guys there were, actually.)
Percent wearing twilight t-shirts: at least 40%
Number of capes seen: 2 (one was red and sparkly, though, so that counts as extra)
Average age: 12-16 yrs.
Number of morbidly obese people seen: 14 or so
Number of people who went strait to IHOP after the movie: 44

Number of times we had to listen to David Archuleta's Crush while waiting for the movie to start: 19.
Granted, we were in our seats for about 3 1/2 hours before the movie started, but still, that means Crush was played about 5 times an hour.


Oh, just some other quick facts.

Numbers aren't concrete yet, but last night, in midnight showings alone, Twilight is reported to have made "north of $7 million." It's predicted that it'll hit $60 million over the weekend. (Dateline Hollywood)

Wednesday Morning, the day before the movie came out, 2,000 midnight showings were sold out across the country.

As of Friday morning, Fandango was selling 5 Twilight tickets per second.

Twilight took #3 for most advanced tickets sold on Fandango. It beat out Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Lord of the Rings. #1 and #2 are Star Wars III and Dark Knight, respectively.

34% of polled moviegoers said they took time out of school or work to see Twilight.


If Twilight made $7 million just on midnight showings last night, it's well on track to make bank. At the West Jordan, UT theater alone (where I saw the movie), there were 7 showings last night. Only three of these were midnight screens (12:01, 12:02, and 12:03). The others were in increments of 15 minutes after that but they still looked like full showings.

Basically, I LOVED the movie. I was very much pleasantly surprised, and I have very few complaints. Catherine Hardwicke did a fantastic job, the actors were phenomenal, and I am still jumping up and down like a little girl.

YAY TWILIGHT.

I'm not even ashamed.

So the movie 'Twilight' comes out tonight at midnight. I'm not going to lie - I'm going. Three hours early. In costume. Not only that, but all 6 showings in town were sold out, as were the theaters in American Fork, Orem, Springville, and Payson. So... just to make my day that much more fangirly, I'm driving an hour up to West Jordan, just to see Twilight.

That's right, I'm a Twilight fan (or Twilighter, Twi-hard, fanpire, whatever classification your prefer. My personal favourite is 'Cullenist'). Honestly, it's not something I generally broadcast. One of those guilty pleasure things. Like my love of Gwen Stefani.

Barstool Economics

This is a really cool analogy (originally posted by my brother) that I thought cleared up a lot of confusion about how proportional taxes work. It comes from a book by David R. Kamerschen.

"For anyone who doesn't get how unfair our tax system is, here's an awesome analogy. For those of you who do get it, it's just an awesome read!

Bar Stool Economics by David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

'I only got a dollar out of the $20,'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'

'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'

'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'

'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible."


It's no wonder that America's wealthy want to take their money overseas. If we keep beating them up, pretty soon they're going to jump ship and we'll finally realized, "Crap, they were paying most of the tab, weren't they?"

I'm for a flat tax, personally.