So, I'm waiting for my meat loaf to cook, and its a Friday night. Being the loser I am, I have decided to be antisocial and not hang out with friends or do some groovy fun stuff because I am in a battle for my soul with academia.

AKA - School sucks, my grades suck, and therefore I feel like crap.

However, this would be a good time for a hearty update :) I'm sorry I haven't been around here lately, commenting and post! Every second I breathe is in debt to my school's science department haha. It's so bad, it's to the point I want to dorm in our science building.

Enough babble about college, how was everyone's Halloween? I know I am a bit late, but I'm so curious to know! Did anyone dress up? See a haunted house? Watch a good horror movie? Do something wild and fun for Mischief night?

As for me, I did considerably a bunch, taking in account I had so much    bullshit    assignments due that week.

On Tuesday, my friends and I went to The Eastern State Penitentiary here in Philly. It was voted the number one haunted house attraction last year by AOL, and was actually one of the largest prisions in Pennsylvania. I had a special admission and only paid $10, however the regular price is $20 on the weekdays & $30 on the weekends.  

Now, I don't want to spoil it for those who want to go next year, but suffice to say, it is worth it! Despite the fact the entire thing is considerably short, it defintely had an eerie feel to it! The actors were very convincing and super creepy (one guy breathed on me so heavily, I could of swore I felt his mouth on me and another dude purred at me O_O).

Some highlights of the E. State Penn.:

• 3D section - They give you 3D glasses and the scenery around you literally jumps out! Very cool, I felt like I was travelling through the tattoos of the "Invisible Man" by Ray Bradbury.
  
• Black out section - They actually give you teeny tiny flash lights to travel through the dark. It was unnerving, but the part I hated most was after the black out section where they kept flashing lights that were blinking so fast it would have given anyone a seisure.
  
• The new section added - The Infirmary. Very creepy, not because actors jump out and try to startle you but because it has that Silent Hill hospital feel to it. And derange doctors and patients (whom I have jokingly dubbed the Drexel pre-med students that went insane and ran away haha)

Defintely scary! I would have screamed more, but I think I was too tired to be affected by the haunted prision :(! Plus, my physics midterm had drained and scared me oh so much more! So instead everytime someone try to run after me and spook me, I giggled at the zombies. It was so funny too because I am short, everyone tried to pick on me! But you could tell they were coming after me because they had to duck low before charging :P

On actual Halloween day, I had opted to making my very own costume! I was Chun Li from Street Fighter :) That's right, Ms. Thunderthighs herself! It was great because throughout the day all I kept hearing was "OMG it's Chun Li!!!" Mostly from dudes, but that's okay, I'm glad more than just me and my friends recognized who I was dressed up as :)

I also helped Megan make her M&M costume and John's straight jacket.

We decided to all go out and just watch a movie: Paranormal Activity. The first hour and some change was super boring in my opinion. I got a good jump like 2 times. However, the ending did creep me out for a while. It scared me so much that after I came back to the movie and ran down to the Philly Art Museum with the guys, I went back to my dorm and stayed up til 6AM doing my lab report haha. At least I got school work done!

Take care all!
*Christal* <3

- Definitely bombed the Physics midterm (surprise, suprise -_-V)

- Geocities officially shut down all their sites as of yesterday. Thanks for the memories Yahoo!

- Trudging along with only Halloween & Thanksgiving to look foward to in what I can honestly say must be the hardest term ever.

- A real AnimaAriesGirl update Sunday? I hope?

And with this, I leave you with pictures of Sir Isaac Newton, scientist and mastermind behind gravity as well as the destruction of Gaia. That's right, you heard/read me correctly! Sir Isaac Newton wants to destroy the fantasy world of Gaea where Escaflowne parades around and control fate. It's his Final Newton Law <== sad attempt at a science-y/anime joke.

(I just finished watching the Escaflowne series last night by the will of my friends. The night before my Physics midterm, too! Oh the irony! I couldn't look at my textbook for an hour without giggling at it!)

*Christal <3 *

As the title says, there happens to be a running trend recently with websites that depict the daily, personal accounts of various people. The submissions are usually just one, sometimes two sentences long.

The most popular example that started to attract a lot of viewers last year is FMyLife (FML).

Site: http://www.fmylife.com/

I concluded that perhaps FML is popular because sometimes reading the misery of others can be enjoyable and amusing for some. It could be because the audience finds FML stories have strange and unusual situations or chuckle worthy irony.

A month or two later, via a Facebook status, a friend (Nataly) had posted a link to a counter site to FML named GivesMeHope (GMH).

Site: http://www.givesmehope.com/

The creators of GMH said although they love reading FML from time to time, it can get a bit depressing. So they made GMH for a more positive and uplifting end of the story spectrum, sharing the daily miracles that occur in people’s lives.

So, I again came up with a hypothesis for the GMH’s popularity. I figured, “who doesn’t love a story with a happy ending?”

Then when I thought there couldn’t be anything else the internet could come up with to follow this format of storytelling entertainment, a new college friend introduces me to MyLifeIsAverage (MLIA).

Site: http://mylifeisaverage.com/

Breaking the barrier, MLIA uses not 3, but 4 letters in its acronym, and instead of writing about extraordinarily horrible experiences or absolutely optimistic revelations, MLIA basically thrives on mediocrity. The site focuses on stories that make life normal for people.

With these sites, Twitter, and features like Xanga’s Pulse and Facebook statuses, it makes me think that the popularity behinds the sites are not so much the content, but how it is written. The vast majority may actually prefer snippets of thoughts these days rather than a full fledge blog! It’s like Sparknotes for blogging! Forget about the details, give me the bottom line of your story!

Or perhaps the majority is attracted to these sites because our sense of humor has shifted to appeal more to witty, concise one-liners?

What are your thoughts on sites like FML? Why do you think they are so popular? Do you know any other “Daily Anecdotal Acronyms” websites like these?