April Fool's Jokes: the good and the bad

It's April Fools Day, and it's great to play tricks and practical jokes on people, but what is appropriate and what isn't?

The good: involve cute little gags such as tying someone's shoes together or placing saran wrap over the toilet. All the small gags create an "I got you" feeling and all is forgiven, but some things go too far. Things like putting fake bugs in a salad or switching names on some cans is all good clean fun.

Even companies play tricks on their employees on occasion, like my boss did once by convincing us that the store would close early.

The bad: serious gags are not appropriate when stress is involved. Some people can't handle stress very well, have a medical condidtion, or may even hurt you. These types of incitements should be avoided.

Examples of this would be: telling someone you have cancer or another serious disease, telling your boyfriend you're pregnant, spraying things on people's cars, throwing eggs at people, etc.

Company's who have gone a little too far but creating a panic include: a Cincinnati radio station called Q102, broadcast a modern version of Orson Well's War of the Worlds radio play when they reported that aliens had landed at the local Lunken Airport.

When Friends Turn Out to be Sociopaths

It's inevitable that most of us will run into at least one sociopath in our lifetimes. It is estimated that 3% of the US population are sociopaths. Therefore, an American can run into 3.3 sociopaths, figure-wise, in their lifetime. Sad to say, I've had about three boyfriends who were sociopaths and dated another one briefly. The last one I had contact with when I was 20. So you can imagine my surprise to learn that someone I considered my good friend turned out to be a complete sociopath today.

So why do I say he turned out to be a sociopath? Well by definition from dictionary.com, a sociopath is "–noun Psychiatry.
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."

This all started out when my former friend hung up on me last night for no reason. He took a joke I made, twisted it beyond definition into something cruel, and yelled at me for something I didn't say. I had a disgusting voicemail last night from him but I shrugged it off and went to bed. This morning I had a note from him on facebook calling me all sorts of names and saying all sorts of cruel things that played on my insecurities. So I wrote him back, wishing him a good life, but saying I didn't want anything to do with someone who'd treat me with such disrespect.

All this created a barrage of text messages sent to me since 10am this morning until 6:36pm tonight. Like an idiot I responded back to him until I just stopped reading and deleted all incoming messages. At one point I asked him why he was trying to hurt me so badly. His response was "I'm sorry, I was venting, and I feel really good right now." This is when I knew he was a sociopath because he kept sending more cruel text messages which made him feel good. That is the epitome of a sociopath: getting pleasure out of my emotional pain.

My cell phone company couldn't block him and he was sending me multimedia texts which cost me lots of money to receive. He sent me fifteen multimedia texts within one hour, so I phoned the non-emergency police number and made a report. All they had to do was phone him and they stopped. I took control and stopped the situation. I let the boyfriends and the date emotionally and mentally abuse me to the point that I developed such a bad anxiety disorder that I was having panic attacks every couple of days. I'm sorry, but not anymore.

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

So here it is finally.....the big green holiday.....St. Patty's Day! How do you properly celebrate this great holiday at the University of Western Ontario?


Simple: Wake up, drink a beer, stand outside on Richmond or Huron street at 8:30am with a beer while wearing green, drink more beer, walk around to other drunk people's houses, drink a beer, hang around to 2:30pm and strip off some of your clothes to get ready to go to the bar, appear half naked, drink a beer, walk to the bus stop half naked, get off at Jack's or Barney's or Molly's, or your bar of choice, drink a beer, try to pick up a guy/girl, dance, drink another beer, trip over a chair, drink ten beers, hang out til 11:30pm, hail a cab while drinking a beer or try stumbling home while hiding the beer you're drinking, open your door, fall on the floor while trying to drink a beer, sleep.

Suicide Attempt? Man Goes Over Niagara Falls

On Wednesday a man jumped into the Niagara River on the Canadian side and went over the Horseshoe Falls. Not only did he survive the 175ft fall, but while resisting rescue efforts for 30 minutes, he managed not to die from hypothermia. Luckily for the idiot, local helicopter pilot and owner of Niagara Helicopters LTD., Mr. Hafen, used his copter to assist in the rescue. He actually used the rotors of the copter and the already wild wind to create an "artifical current" to push the man towards rescuers. Still, the man kept trying to swim away from the resucers. Finally after being in the ice cold water for so long, his muscles must have went rigid because he was able to be rescued. The man was stripped naked from his impact with the bottom of the falls, and he was rushed to the hospital.



A video featuring the story can be found at the link provided below.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090311.wfallsplunge0311/VideoStory/National/home?pid=RTGAM.20090311.wfalls0311

It's horrible to even think of anyone trying to commit suicide, but if you're that trying to end your life, why would you try to do it in front of hundreds of tourists who are going to call the police? Granted only three people have been known to go over the falls and lived, but all that attention is just drama.

Turnitin.com = Crap

Thankfully I haven't had to use Turnitin.com since first year, but I did decide to take an first year American Studies class this year. And guess what? I had to use it again. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this site, you submit an essay or term paper onto its online database which checks it against other essays on its database to see if you've plaigarised. Why this is stupid is because when I checked the results of my essay, apparently I have stuff in common with 11% of the other essays on the site. I checked what parts I had in common and it was stuff I had quoted from sources. Utterly ridiculous.

The majority of my professors hate this site and refuse to use it because it stores your essay, which is your own personal work. After you submit to the site though, it is available for the world to see....basically stealing your work. That is the argument that my professors have made. It's plaigarising your own work so it can catch plaigarism. Quite a paradox of stupidity if you ask me.