That’s 364 Letters Too Many, Gosling,

I’m calling baloney on romantic dramas and rom/coms. Grade A baloney. Seriously, next time you are head over heels going “awwwwww!” at some romantic, grandioso gesture the guy does to win back the girl, take a step back and process what he is actually doing. Take “The Notebook” for example: Ryan Gosling writes Rachel McAdams a letter everyday for a year while he gets no response from her the whole time. What is wrong with you Ryan, you needy sap!? Move on buddy! That stuff isn’t romantic anymore, it’s just creepy and half-psychotic. You are trying to get a girl, not a restraining order. Also, what on earth did he talk about for 365 letters? I wish the movie let you know that, at least in a deleted scene or something. I can just imagine the evolution of the letters’ content. Letter 1: “My love for you blazes like the hot sun of my soul … .” Letter 22: “Hey, it’s the Ry-Dawg, getting a little bummed over here … .” Letter 45: “Hey, what’s the homework for HOTA?” Letter 46: “You’re good, you didn’t fall for my trick. I knew what the homework was, I just wanted to give you an excuse to respond to me.” Letter 225: “Hey, I’d like to apologize for cussing you out in the last letter, that wasn’t cool and that doesn’t reflect who I am as an individual … .” Letter 319: “I ate a tuna sandwich for lunch today. It was pretty average … .” In real life, a girl would move houses or call the police if she was bombarded with 365 letters. You know how Rachel McAdams responds? By giving Ryan Gosling the 2005 MTV Awards Best Kiss and then marrying him. You are both giving naive kids terrible dating advice. They need to take a Cleveland health class and get educated. And “The Notebook” isn’t the only movie that praises a character with stalker tendencies; look at the whole romance genre and you’ll find much of the same. I can’t believe I haven’t heard somebody mention this sooner. Am I the only one who has noticed? Sorry, I just put a major dent in the greatest love story of our generation, but somebody had to say it. Still though, with all of this being said, damn does Ryan Gosling make co-dependency look sexy. That is a difficult trick to pull off.

Junioritis? Is That a Thing?

Have you ever been lying on the couch watching TV while your inner monologue is just roasting you alive for not starting your homework yet? The whole show your mind is trying to send instructions down to your legs to start moving, but everything remains stationary, as if the message somehow got intercepted at your waist. “I’ll wait until this show ends. Ohhhh, but this next show is decent. It’s 6:56, I’ll get up at 7:00, I like round numbers. Whoops, it’s 7:06, I guess I’ll just wait until 7:30 now. Oh, but this Progressive commercial is interesting.” That is my mind working, all night. It is exhausting to be that lazy! I hate it! I’ve blown whole nights that I should’ve been studying, just debating inside my mind about when I should start studying. This certain behavior is an example of a condition I self-titled, “Junioritis.” It is basically the same exact thing as “Senioritis,” except you are much more of a weenie because you receive the condition one year premature. Junioritis comes in many forms of procrastination, not just “Full Couch Mode.” There is productive procrastination: One night I cleaned my bedroom, did the dishes, worked out, and walked the dog I don’t have all in order to avoid writing three paragraphs. And then there is the, “I-don’t-even-know procrastination”: An example of this would be the time I lost 30 minutes of my life pacing back-and-forth between my kitchen table and a mirror in my hallway. The funny part is people are so accepting of procrastination as an excuse for not getting things done. You know why I think that is? Because the actual word “procrastination” does not sound that bad. If you were to say out loud what you actually did with your day, you’d feel a lot worse about yourself. Look at these two sentences: “I didn’t study for my final because I procrastinated.” And “I didn’t study for my ultra-important, crucial-to-college final because I watched the ‘Damn, Daniel’ video for two hours and then played with my acne for another 30 minutes on top of that.” “Damn, Daniel” and the family photo albums you never look at anyway can wait. These are messages I have been trying to tell myself lately. I need to break free from Junioritis. I hope writing out these feelings can help me in my battle with this very serious condition. The Blazers may be on a hot streak. The Oscars might be on. But, don’t let that keep you from the mission. If you convinced yourself that you really wanted to see who won the Oscar for Best Foreign Documentary Short Subject, then you played yourself.

Asparagus

If you read the header for this complaint and thought, “Is he really going to do a whole complaint about the vegetable asparagus?” I would tell you that you are exactly right. I’d also tell you the world has been pretty good to me lately and I’m struggling to come up with a third thing, so I have to nitpick a little here. Whoever said, “Don’t sweat the small things” was not a wise man. Small things can swing the momentum of mojo the wrong way if they hit you just right. For example, the vegetable asparagus. I do not care for asparagus. Nope, not one bit. I would go as far as to say I hate asparagus, and I don’t hate many things. Gosh, they’re all smug with their long green shoots and stupid afro sticking out at the top. If asparagus were a person, I would give him an elbow square in the back of the head. Asparagus is like broccoli’s lamer, ugly cousin. Consider yourself roasted, asparagus.