I'm so Bored that I stayed up until 5:30...and then slept til 12:30

No, I didn't have any reason to stay up so late. Everytime I go to bed at 5 or 6, people mistakenly assume that I must have wanted to get some homework done, or perhaps that I was suddenly inspired and had to write for hours. What no one (excepting those crazy people who stay awake with me, of course) usually guesses is that I stay awake because I am too Bored to sleep. So, instead of sleeping, I chat with other insomniacs on facebook, watch TV on Netflix (currently on season 4 of Numb3rs!), and drink caffeinated, sugary beverages (not to stay awake, just because they're my favorite type of drink). I never intend to stay up til 5. I start off thinking, "I will watch this one last episode, tell my friends good night, and go to sleep at midnight." Slowly, though, over the course of a few hours during which I am unable to shut down the computer, the realization dawns on me that this is one of those nights. I won't say all-nighter, because my sister insists that if you go to sleep afterwards, no matter what the time, then you have not pulled a proper all-nighter. I would argue with her, but my ex-boyfriend always insisted that if you left somewhere at 4 or 5 am (or really any time) and then went to sleep in your own bed, you had not spent the night. Apparently, I am the only person who thinks that the word "night" does not aptly apply to the late morning and early afternoon. Anyway, to get back to my point, the realization dawns on me that this is one of those glorious nights, a night in which I shall stay awake and revel in my awakeness. Yes, staying up late is truly glorious, even exciting, although the activities I described may sound mundane to those people awake in the daytime hours. You see, everything becomes infinitely more interesting, more exciting, and more amusing between 2 and 5 am. Jokes that would make absolutely no sense at 3 in the afternoon send me into rioutous bouts of laughter at 3 in the morning. A quest for the perfect name to call day clothes, since night clothes have their own name, seems like an important, serious manner, and the pronouncement that day clothes should be called majamas (so that all clothes will be Ma & Pa Jamas) suddenly sounds like the type of joke that should earn me a hosting gig at a comedy talk show (when really, letting me do standup would be an extremely BAD idea). Fortunately for everyone reading this, I will never again post a blog during one of my "not an all-nighter"s. The first blog I ever tried to write was started at 4:30 am in my dorm room. Most of my friends, including my roommate, were gone for the weekend, so there was no one around to stop me from writing the most embarrassing blog post in history.  Of course, my friends showed up in time to read it out loud to each other in my room, but that blog post was soon deleted and (fingers crossed) forgotten. I think it may have something to do with the way sleep deprivation affects the frontal lobe, but no matter the reason, even when it produces an embarrassing story for later, whenever I'm Bored, being late-night drunk (my friends and my term for the way we act after midnight) seems a drastically more magnificent option than sleeping.

I'm So Bored that I gave myself a headache playing on the Wii

So, today, I got up obsecenely early (like...9 something!) so that I could go to a doctor's appointment at which the doctor basically told me he had no idea why I'd been referred to him (nobody does, Doc, it's ok). Afterwards, I had way more time on my hands than I usually do (I generally eat time with a fork), and seeing as there was only one show in my Hulu queue, I soon resorted to stealing the Wii blipper (aka, the Wii remote, for all people who do not know me outside of Boredom) from my little brother and playing swordfight showdown for about three hours.  I definitely got past more than 4 levels in that time...Anyway, spending this much time playing a video game did 2 things. First of all, it gave me a massive headache, which is not really surprising. The list of things that gives me headaches is about as long as the list of things that have at one time or another been at least vaguely connected to cancer (for anyone who doesn't know, that list contains everything from bacon to childbirth to not having children to bubble bath). Lights, sounds, tv, heat, cold, computer, little brothers, stress, lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of caffeine, baseballs thrown at my head, and chemistry exams all give me horrible headaches. Of course, now that I have a headache, I have stopped playing on the Wii and taken medicine, but I am, of course, updating my blog before I do anything else, because the second thing playing on the Wii did was remind me of the circular evolution of video games. I'm going to assume that all the readers of my blog are either familiar with Little Bear stories or can look them up. Video games remind me of the Little Bear story in which he is cold and wants something to put on. When he is bundled up in layers of clothes, his mother offers him a fur coat, and when he accepts, she takes off all the clothes and sends him out to play naked, because he obviously already has a fur coat. When I was younger, I truly believed that the moral of this story was that clothes were pointless and we should all play outside naked, but that is completely beside the point of my current rambling. I like video games because they have always been something anyone could play, even cripples like myself. The evolution of video games, however, goes like this:
Two little kids are dancing around. They say "Mom, I'm Bored. I want something more advanced!" Mom invites them inside, gives them a gamecube (for brevity's sake, I omit several generations of gaming. sorry, atari fans and their predecessors), and says "Here, now you can dance just by hitting buttons." After a few minutes (or years), the kids say "Mom, I'm Bored. I want something more advanced!" Dutiful Mom gives them a Wii. "Here," she says, "Now you can dance by waving this blipper around." In a little while, the kids say, "I'm Bored, I want something more advanced." Ever obliging Mom gives them a Kinect, and says  "Here, now you can dance by...DANCING." If the kids say they're Bored one more time, I bet you that Mom's going to take all the game systems away and send them back outside.
I would go on more of a rant about video games, but I promised my bestie we could watch Music & Lyrics, so for now I must leave Boredom. Au revoir!

I'm So Bored that I forgot to update my blog

Yes, the sad truth is that lately I have been so incredibly Bored that I forgot to document what I did in my Boredom. So, here's a recap. Due to a medical procedure, I have spent most of the last couple weeks in my room, watching entire series of TV shows on Netflix, most notably In Plain Sight and Numb3rs.  I watch In Plain Sight because when I am mad at the world, I can always count on Mary Shannon to be mad with me. I watch Numb3rs because secretly (although I guess not so secretly now...), my fantasy in life is to be a certifiable nerd. High test scores and a book collection 5 million times the size of my DVD collection isn't enough. I've always wanted to be able to rattle off 500 digits of pi, tell you the meaning of floccinaucinihilipilification, and remember what year squirrels arrived in Nantucket, then tell you how many calories you've burned banging your head against the wall while I speak. But, no matter how many random facts I look up, I never can quite convince anyone, including myself, that I'm actually a nerd. Instead, I just watch nerdy tv shows like Numb3rs and experience the characters' nerdiness vicariously.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing most of the time, but I've also spent some time thinking. This thinking had led me to change my name to Angry for a while, although I'm sure to switch back to Bored soon. You see, I'm so Angry right now that I'm actually going to explain my religious beliefs on my blog, where I said I would never discuss them. I am Catholic, for anyone who doesn't know me. (You don't know me and you're reading my blog? Yay!) In my life, I generally have not received much direct opposition to my beliefs. Yes, people disagreed with me, but most people never attacked me directly. Recently, however, I have been accused of being illogical in my faith. The allegation is that I am only Catholic because my parents raised me as such, and that I have no reason to actually believe in the Catholic Church. This claim is unfair, and I intend to show why. Yes, I was baptized Catholic at my parents' request, and for many years, as a young child, I gave little or no thought to religion, simply believing whatever my parents told me. I did become Catholic solely because of my parents, but they are not the reason why I remain Catholic. I remain Catholic, and I always will, because relatively simple logic dictates to me that the Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ, and it's all based on the Eucharist.
You don't have to agree with me, but I see the Bible as very explicitly stating the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 1 Corinthians 11 states: "For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." Not only does this verse indicate the Real Presence, but it also indicates that we must be especially reverent towards the Eucharist, only receiving it in the proper way. Therefore, it stands to reason that there must exist some specific proper way to receive the Eucharist, a ritual. If there is no specific ritual, then it may be thought that whenever someone says "This is my Body" anything in front of them, even goldfish crackers, might become Jesus' body, but no one would know for sure so it would be impossible to show the right reverence, and people might in fact reverence items that did not contain the Real Presence. So, there must be some ritual, and only that ritual results in Transubstantiation, for God does not wish his Body to be received unworthily. How can we know this ritual? It is not described precisely in the Bible, so based on the Bible alone, the ritual could be open to interpretation. Therefore, we must have a reliable tradition - the ritual must have been passed on since the apostles. The Catholic Church claims to have passed it on, but how can I trust the Church? I must trust the Church because I know God would not leave us without the Eucharist, when He was so clear about its importance, and for me to trust the Church to be the perpetual messenger, then the Church must be infallible. For if the Church makes mistakes in her doctrine, then I cannot trust that the Eucharist I receive at Mass is truly the Body and Blood of Christ. The Catholic Church must be infallible in her teachings to be able to precisely preserve the Eucharist for over two millenia. So, since I know the Eucharist must have been preserved, I know the Catholic Church must be infallible. Since I know the Catholic Church must be infallible, I must accept all her other teachings, even when they seem strange to me or even unacceptable. God does not fit into our logic. Just because I do not understand something does not mean it is false. When something appears illogical at first glance, I cannot just write it off, because I am not the ultimate expert on logic. That's God. Yes, I have innumerable reasons for my beliefs. I have many justifications for my faith. Even when I doubt everything else though, I cannot suspend my belief in the Catholic Church, the Church which faithfully delivers the Eucharist throughout the ages. I hope this helps anyone who wonders why I'm Catholic or thinks I'm insane for believing what I do. You don't have to believe the same way I do, but you should at least recognize that I believe of my own choice, based on my own reason and not merely that of others.