How To Survive In A Horror Film

1.  Don't explore, or spend the night, in an abandoned house.
If you come across an abandoned house in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, don't be stupid and decide to spend the night, or look for a phone.  Now why in hell would an abandoned house have a working telephone?!  Who do you think has been paying the phone bill, the weeds?  I think not!  If the phone does work, the place is obviously not abandoned.
As was the case in the movie Plasterhead, don't waltz up to a house that is rumoured to be that of a killer's, find that the door is open, the house empty, and then go ahead and invite yourself in!  Let's forget, for a moment, that you are in a horror film; inviting yourself into a stranger's house, bringing in your belongings and friends, even taking a shower is just being a rude penis!  Who raised you?  Christopher Columbus?!
Then when a cop comes a-knockin', don't flat-out lie to the guy and claim that this is your aunt's house!  Really, it's your aunt's house?  And no one in the small town has noticed a woman living in the house said to be that of a maniac?  Right.  Also, when the cop offers to escort you to the highway, don't refuse and say you'll just be staying the night in the house!  Rude!
Now when you go into town and ask around for a gas station and the townsfolk start telling you stories about how some psychotic killer lives in the very house you waltzed into, don't brush it off and insist that you're still going to sleep there!  No!  You will not sleep there because you will be dead before you have dreams!  

2.  Don't toy with methods of paranormal communication.

What is wrong with you?!  Yes, you!  The one playing around with the ouija board, or holding a séance in your dorms!  Why do you want to bring spirits into this world?  Spirits you don't even know?  That's like leaving your door open in the middle of the world and just letting anybody come skipping through.  You just don't do it!  Let's think of this from a non-horror point of view: you're tearing someone away from their deadly slumber to come play charades with you.

Rude.

People who tend to be doing these little séances?  Uninformed doofs.  As in the movie Séance (appropriate), the kids were performing a séance in order to rid their elevator (just use the stairs!) and bathrooms of a creepy, ghost girl.  She was a bit of a pervert, I suppose.  What they didn't realize, as the crabby loner in the other dorm-room informed the main girl, is that they were summoning the killer ghost into their midst!  As the guy said, séances are meant for summoning spirits that aren't already there.  Oh, now you've done it!

3.  When you gain the upper-hand, finish them.

You're terrified out of your wits because an insane killer is on the loose and is picking you all off one by one because of your group's nutty, Scooby-Doo split-up antics.  It's understandable that your "flight or fight" response is wishing it had freaking wings right now, but you must remember this: if you get rid of the threat once and for all, you won't have to spend the rest of the movie, or the rest of your life, looking over your shoulder!

You see it all the time in horror films.  The victim manages to punch the killer to the floor, or stab them in the leg, but instead of continuing the assault... they run away.  You just gave the killer a bruise to the face, or a knife wound to the toes; that does not mean they're going to leave you alone!  They are not thinking, "Oh, damn, she just punched me in the mask, I guess she wins!  I quit!"  They are far from incapacitated from your feeble retaliation.  If anything, you just made them angrier.  You get that guy on the floor, you finish the job!  Then you can walk away from the ordeal without fear, or worry, that the killer is going to suddenly be in the back of your car or something.  The threat is gone because the threat is dead.

What NOT to Do:

What You SHOULD Do:

4.  Listen to The "Weird" One.

A lot of these horror movies tend to have the one "strange" character.  If the person isn't strange, they at least have a strange knack for all things paranormal.  Often, this character will try to warn the others when something is wrong, telling them to either stop what they're doing, or run far, far away.  You would listen, right?  If you answered anything other than "yes" to that question, you are so dead.

Usually, when this character tries to warn everyone, what are they met with?  "Stop being such a scaredy-cat!"  "Nothing is going to happen!"  "Don't listen to him/her, haha!  Chill out!"  "Calm yo' tits!"  No!  The one who knows about séances, or the one who knows all about this hocus-pocus stuff is saying, "No bueno!"  Listen!  It's like laughing at a cop and then running into gunfire because silly cop doesn't know what he's talking about!

5.  Don't Split Up!

There is safety in numbers!  Ten people can take on one person a lot more effectively than one or two people can.  Why do people insist on splitting up anyway?  To cover more ground?  A good lot of help that will do you!  You're trying to survive, not conduct a search party!

You and your ascot can fuck right off, Fred!

This goes for anything.  It doesn't matter if you're at a party and you want to take that cute girl out into the back woods to do sinful things.  It doesn't matter if you suddenly decide you want to play Hide-And-Seek in a corn maze (MAZE!).  You stick together because you are less likely to die a bloody, butchered death when you have more people to fight off a killer with you.

6.  Don't Let Pride Get In The Way of Your Survival.

So, big guy, you can take care of that demon in your home all by yourself, eh?  You don't need to call in a priest to make it go away because you have too much pride, huh?  Yeah, you're The Man of this house and this is your territory and you will defend it yourself!  That demon will run away with its tail between its legs once you're through with it!

No.  You're going to die because you have no idea what you're doing, do you?

In the movie Paranormal Activity, Micah is King of the Stubborn.  SPOILERS:  Micah's pride gets in the way of banishing the demon that has been following his girlfriend, Katie, since childhood.  Katie continuously begs him to just call in the pros, but he resists.  Oh, no,  he can take care of it when no one else has been able to do so.  No,  he certainly knows more about the situation than his girlfriend, who has been dealing with the thing longer than she's even known him.  Yep, his stubbornness basically kills them both.

Damn, Micah, you mean you didn't scare away the scary Demon Man with your camera and baby powder??

The powdery horror!

If things are flying around your house and you're being dragged around by your ankle like some cave-woman, I think it's time to shelve your pride and call in the professionals.  No one will think less of you, I promise.  Turning a camera on the thing is not going to make it go away, and it will not help you solve the problem.

7.  Run First, Ask Questions Later.

Someone comes running to you, screaming that someone is dead.  They yell that you all need to run and get out of the area as soon as possible.  What do you do?

A)  Do as they say and run for your life.

B)  Stop this person from running and demand they explain everything before you do anything.

Which was your answer?  I hope it was A.  If it wasn't... dude...

In the movie Death On Demand, after the killer ghost has arrived and started offing all the people in the house, a woman runs down the stairs, meets a couple and screams that they need to get out of there because the other girl is dead.  She then commences clawing at the boarded up exit in a desperate attempt to flee.  Do these two listen?  Do they begin to join her feverish atempt to claw down the door?  Yes?  You're funny.

Nope.  The guy grabs her, stops her, and repeatedly asks her what's wrong and what she's talking about.  Guy!  Is her frantic screaming not a good enough reason for you?!  This is no time to have a nice little tea party as you chat about how there's a killer and mutliple dead bodies in the same house you're in!  When things like this happen, you don't stop a person and interrogate them, and you certainly don't continue to demand they show you what they're yelling about!  Gees...

8.  Just Use Your Common Sense!

If you hear that there is a killer on the loose, don't take that as your cue to throw a party in an abandoned barn.  When you get attacked, you call the police, not run inside, lock the door and hang out in your tub all night.  When you hear blatant footsteps, or man-made noises, in the house you are supposed to be alone in, don't call out, "Hello?!"  Er, the person is not going to answer back with a, "Oh, hey!  Just me, the killer, lurking around.  Doing stuff.  Sorry I startled you with my footsteps and ominous silhouette."  No!  If you are by yourself, do you really think anything friendly is in your house without your knowledge?  Do you really think some swell fellow just decided to sneak into your house for some tea time?  Don't think so!

And unless you have a fire-escape, or a bat-cave, on your upper floors, do not run upstairs!  You are trapping yourself.  Unless you believe you can evolve into a flying squirrel, you are not leaving that place alive, unless you hop out a window and pray you don't damage your getaway legs.

In the movie High Lane, don't do what the characters did and go rock-climbing on a closed trail!  Really, guys?  Really.

You're gonna die, man.

Also, have you ever noticed how no one ever seems to know the number to 9-1-1?  I get that you can't dial it while you're running for your life, or when you're in an appropriately-named "dead-zone", but call them when you are safe, or when you first suspect shit is going down.  Don't just breathe heavily inside your house as you wait for the nice killer to please go away.  Don't just assume it's a cat when you hear your windows smashing.  Don't go investigating a loud noise in your nicest lingerie.  The killer will not be impressed.

Call the cops!  They have guns!  They at least have those nifty batons!  They are much better equipped to handle Mr. Mask Face than you are.

This is how I feel every time I walk back to the parking lot after my morning class because that bitch gets full after 9:40am.

Time On My... Neck.

I bought this nifty clock necklace yesterday from Forever 21.  It's the cutest piece of jewellery I have ever seen!  It's not just a decorative necklace clock, it's aworking necklace clock!  It's my new favourite thing.  It helps, since my old watch lost its battery and I've been too cheap to go replace it.  This will do for now, and I will no longer have to waste my phone battery, or risk trouble in class, by checking my phone clock all the time.

Super Mario 64

Why did I always do this?

Leaving The Nest

Yesterday I left the nest.  Packed up all I needed and headed out to my new home.
Staying in housing for school for the first time and so far, I feel okay.  I felt great sadness as I watched my family leave without me yesterday.  My mum and sister cried, and it felt strange to sleep in a new place, in a bed that wasn't mine.  However, I haven't cried and I don't yet feel weird.  I feel fairly comfortable here and I've kept myself busy for the most part, so maybe I just haven't had time to think about how my friends and family are further away now.
My room-mates seem nice so far and we've already bonded well enough to be pretty comfortable with each other.  I only hope I can make other friends as well; I don't want to become that person that clings to their room-mates and doesn't socialize with anyone else.  I'm quite excited for the first day of school and I'm even more excited to start exploring this new city.  I'm even excited to go back home, see familiar faces, and bring back some more stuff to entertain myself and decorate my side of the room with.
So far, this experience is exciting.

Operation Repo

This is one of those shows that has a bunch of stupid people, but you can't help but be entertained.  I also think it's a perfect example of how disgusting it is, some peoples' attachment to material objects.  People are willing to risk life and limb (and not necessarily their own) to keep someone from taking their precious vehicles or whatever they happen to have missed a payment on.  People are willing to kill a repossession person so that they can keep their car?  How pathetic.  They're not going to keep their car.  They're still going to have it taken away and then guess what?  They get arrested and jailed for murder, or attempted murder.  Good job, genius, how did that plan work out for you?

People are so stupid.

Life

Me last night, basically.

As I was typing away on my floating laptop, I suddenly started thinking about how much things were going to change once I leave next week.  I started thinking about how I will no longer be reading all the time to my mum while she cleans, or that I won't be able to play her some music while she does something else.  Then I started thinking about the fact that I might not even come home again once I leave, unless I come back for the summer to prepare for a year abroad.  Let's face it, it would be much more convenient and less expensive if I find my own place where I'm going; rather than continue to reside in housing.

It made me sad, really.  This has been all I've ever known and to know that my home may not be my home for much longer is a bit sad, even if it is just a part of life.

So close...

After doing an official campus tour of the university I'll be attending in a little over a week, it suddenly seems so real.  I've acquired an I.D. card, filled out a job application, reserved a room for housing, I've almost completely depleted my savings, signed up for classes, bought my textbooks, set up a shopping list and my mum even insisted on buying me a school sweater, while my grandmother bought me a bear key-chain wearing a school shirt.  It's hit me that yes, this is happening, and it's happening soon.
In exactly one week, I leave the only home I've known.  I leave my friends, I leave my girlfriend, and I leave my comfort.  Yes, I have wanted this.  Yes, I have wanted to experience going out in the world on my own.  Yes, I have wanted to attend a "real" college.  Doesn't make it any easier to leave behind the people I love, knowing it'll be harder to hang out with them, or to see them.  Sometimes I worry that things won't work out.  Will we have enough money to pay for my housing?  For my groceries?  For my school supplies and other needs?  I've spent so long buying things for myself, paying for my entire education thus far, paying for my entertainment, for my clothes, for my gas, for my trips, that I've almost forgotten if it's even possible for my mum to pay for some of this stuff.  It makes me worried, really.
Aside from the worry and the stress, I am getting pretty excited.  I plan on getting the college experience I've wanted.  Getting involved in clubs and rallies and whatever else.  I hope it turns out just fine.

Awkward Moment

That awkward moment when you're not yet sure if you're on hugging terms with a new friend:

I hate that moment.  Or when they attempt to give you a hug and you're completely caught off guard and you can't help but think-yell, "What's happening?!"

A Favourite

One of the pictures I took while in Vancouver:

The skytrain was passing by while we were on the bridge towards Science World.  Looks pretty neat.  I love how it came out.  Very sharp, no blurring going on, even though the train was rushing by and there's a lot of Vancouver going on in the background, so it seems to me.  I loved Vancouver.

Check

•Two towels and hand towels
•Two bed covers and pillow cases
•One fluffy pillow
•One safe
•One printer

Just listing some new things I've gotten, or bought, for college living.  I'll be living on campus and I'm getting a little nervous.  Just a little over two weeks and I leave.  I leave my friends, I leave my family, I leave my girlfriend, I leave home.  I'm not too happy about leaving everyone, but I'm pretty excited for the experience of being on my own and going to an actual university.  I just hope it all turns out to be okay.

No Freebies

Always remember, students: if you are trying to get something for free, you would do well to not be snarky about it.
At work today, we quickly ran out of iced coffee.  For some reason, a tonne of people were wanting it.  I was just starting a fresh brew for two more pitchers of iced coffee (mind you, I started this the second I noticed the iced coffee was down) when this girl ordered a medium iced coffee.  My co-worker informed her that it would be a couple of minutes, since I was starting a fresh brew, unless she wanted an iced Americano instead.  She said she would wait and it'd be no problem.
Hardly a minute went by and I was finishing up some other drinks when I heard a little, "Excuse me?"  I turned around and it's the girl who ordered the iced coffee.  She leaned over the counter and babied up her voice, as if she were speaking to someone slow, "I used to work at a Starbucks and if iced coffee wasn't ready, we would give it to them on the house.  Do you do that here?"  I told her that we weren't a Starbucks ("Oh, you're not a Starbucks?? *Mumbles something with "Starbucks" in it*") and she then asked, "Well, could you ask if you could give it to us for free, since we're waiting?"
I already knew we wouldn't be doing that, but to humour her, I went to the back and pretended to be asking about that.  I came back and told her that, unfortunately, we don't do the same things as Starbucks and we can't give things away for free, but what we usually do is offer Americanos instead, since they are basically the same thing and made quickly.  She looked at her friend, looked back and said, "No, she doesn't like Americanos."  An awkward silence passed and I just sort of nodded and went back to staring at the timer so I could get the iced coffee ready as soon as possible.
Then, with her sweet voice gone, she said, in a tone that dripped with disdain, "...Well, can you at least make it a venti?"
I told her it was not likely.
"Is there a manager?  Couldn't you ask them?"
I said I could get a manager if she wanted.
"How long will that take?"
I'm not sure, it depends.
"Never mind."
She continues to give me a look of, "How dare you not give me my drink for free?!"
I give her the drink and there are more customers.  She yells, with intense sarcasm, "Thank you so much!/Thanks again!"  Twice.  When she gets a straw and when she finally leaves.  Me and my co-worker just said, "You're welcome!"  Her sarcasm isn't getting her anywhere, so it's not like it mattered.

Thing is.... We're not magic.  We can't snap our fingers and instantly brew that coffee in less than two to three minutes.  The most we can offer is a drink that's quicker and almost exactly the same.  If you don't want that and you choose to wait, you know what you're getting into.  No time to wait?  Don't say you'll wait.  Ask for your money back and go somewhere else.  Take that similar drink.  Order something else.  Don't practically demand a free drink, or a larger drink, because we dared to not be a Starbucks and we dared to make you wait a whole two minutes.
If she had involved a manager, she would have just been told the same thing.  Being passive-aggressive and trying to bully me into giving you free goods is not going to win you anything.  Ugh.  People.

Subway, Eat There

This happened.

I would just like to make a few things clear:  I don't mind when customers ask if it's possible to remove a certain ingredient from a sandwich (it isn't, unless you'd like a mutilated sandwich, due to the condiments and whatnot being so fused together).  It's natural and I'm sure a lot of people are used to getting their way and it being possible.  The problem I had with this certain customer was his attitude.  He had an air of pretentiousness that let you know off the bat that he expected the world to owe him all of his wishes.  When he was told the sandwiches were pre-made and it was difficult to remove ingredients, he actually acted offended; as though he expected us to entirely remake a sandwich from scratch for him, or that he found it unbelievable that this task was not easily done, or done well.
Listen, guy, we're a café, not a Subway.  If you wanted a customized sandwich, you could have gone there.  We can't easily peel off everything but the cheese from a sandwich.  First off, the ingredients are really smushed together, so there would be problems there already.  Secondly, the cheeses on our sandwiches are super clingy and it would be near impossible to remove everything satisfactorily, let alone doing it without obliterating the sandwich in the process.
We're sorry we can't take things off of our sandwiches, but please don't sneer at us in disdain as if we're failures at life for not adhering to your needs.