Happy Hunger Games Day

So far, everybody I've asked is going to The Hunger Games movies- if not for the midnight showing, at least on the day after. I mean, even the professor I asked (who will remain nameless) is picking up his daughter at 2:30. Why all the hype people?! After all, it's just a movie. A movie that we will all probably disapprove of because it's not like our interpretation of the book. And a movie to which that all the people in the theater will attach their own commentary while you are trying to watch in peace. Is this really worth all of us falling asleep in the mock trial tomorrow?
Yes. One hundred percent absolutely no doubt in my mind yes. As much as I cannot understand it, I am in no way exempt from this. Over the past couple of weeks my husband and I will often turn to each other in the middle of a conversation and just sigh and say "I can't wait for The Hunger Games." My husband woke me up this morning by saying "Happy Hunger Games Day!" and grinning like it was Christmas. And not only that, we've one-upped everyone by getting into an early showing at 8pm tonight so that we don't have to wait even a few hours longer. I had a terrible night of sleep last night because I had nightmares (yes, they were traumatizing enough to count as nightmares!) about somehow missing out on getting to watch the film. First, I arrived at the Theater and just as the movie was starting I realized I'd forgotten to pick up my sister like I promised. So I went back to get her, but she wasn't quite ready and then we got stuck in traffic and ended up having to help all these people on the way. When we got back to the Theater, we realized we has missed the entire movie! Heartbroken, I went to try and get a ticket for a midnight showing, but they were sold out. After trying every theater, I finally managed to get some from some random person selling them on the side of the road. By the time I made it back to the theater, I was 45 minuets late, but that's when I had my first stroke of luck! They had just spent the first 43 minutes watching interviews with the actors and I had actually only missed the first 2 minutes of movie. Happy at last, I settled down to enjoy the film. After it was finished , my husband asked me how I enjoyed it, and I realized with horror that I only remembered only the first 5 minutes, and I had slept through the rest. When my husband woke me up with his Happy Hunger Games this orning, I gripped his arm and whispered "we can't be late. Don't be late.... we can't miss it....we must not be late..." over and over til he reassured me that everything was going to be fine.

All I can say is: This had better be good, or we're all going to be pretty bummed out at 3 in the morning tonight.

Content or Medium?

I watched TV for 4 hours on Tuesday! 4 whole hours of my life! I turned on the TV to watch the Republican Presidential Primary in Michigan, and I was kind of sucked in. Not only was it incredibly close as the votes came in, but there were plenty of speeches and panels to watch. So... here's where I come to the question. When we talked about books, we talked about how the content is more important than the medium (i.e. we shouldn't be okay with inappropriate books just because they are books). For me, I felt that the content of the Primary was valuable; I was getting involved in the elections (personally I feel like that is part of my civic duty) and learning about some of the most important issues. So is the fact that I was watching TV for that long bad? Would it have been different if I had been reading about the elections? Or is this just a question of excesses?

My Media Addiction

This weekend I came to the realization of the full extent of my media addiction. Here's the story:
It was like any normal day. I was having a great time learning in my history class (read here: feeling bad about continually nodding off) when I had the overwhelming need to see if my husband had sent me any text messages . But when I reached for my phone.... IT WAS GONE! Surreptitiously, I started going through my bag to try and locate it (I know! Sleeping AND texting AND cleaning out my bag in class! Please don't judge me...it was Friday afternoon). It was then that the truth hit me: I had lost my phone. It was no more beside me to comfort and guide me. A shadow passed over my day, and the world was just that little bit more of a scary place. After class I began to retrace my steps, but it was to no avail. I was alone. Withdrawal symptoms had begun.
The next morning, BYU lost and found called to tell me that they had my phone. REJOICE! During the time that it was missing (... 18 hours at the most) I missed:
1. 8 phone calls from my cousin-friend trying to tell me that she got engaged
2. almost-but-not-quite 8 phonecalls from my mom reminding me that I needed to help set up my sisters nook
3. one pleading phone call from the RS President asking me to help our with some dinners that evening. (Sorry about that Jill)
4. 506,823 texts from my sister trying to organize our exercising plans for the next day
5. love messages from my husband

Being cut off from the world was very difficult for me. I'm still in recovery mode. Pity my addiction....


P.S Sorry for the melodrama and sarcasm. Sometimes I like to try keep the 18th century Gothic novel writer inside me alive.

The grand question of this generation is whether a single person can simultaneously use more than 5 forms of Media at once, say for example, writing a blog, watching the Jimmer-Jazz game on TV, listening to music, texting, and playing Plants vs. Zombies on my husbands Ipod.......

Let's just say this blog post is taking a little longer than usual to write.

Dear Friends,
It was a day like any other in the Howard Household. After a long hard day of working and studying and cleaning and general productivity, the assignments were finally completed and the dinner was eaten and cleaned up. "Won't it be fun," says my husband, "to sit down and watch something together?". Together we logged on to our shiny new netflix accounts and settled down enjoy some media. Several hours later (slight exaggeration), we had  narrowed it down to these choices:
Tangled
Mythbusters
Doctor Who
North and South
Prince of Persia
Daddy Daycare
A Knight's Tale
Dirty Dancing
That Thing You Do!
Star Trek (I'm going to clarify here- the movie, not the TV show. Sorry Trekkies, I am not one of you...)
Psych
Secretariat
Sense and Sensibility
Phineas and Ferb

Gone are the days when we would just go to out rather limited movie shelf and say "Well... I guess it's Pirates of the Caribbean again!" Life was so simple then...

P.S Just to clarify, and in case my father-in-law (who gifted us the netflix subscription) reads this, Netflix is actually really cool and I am grateful for it :)