Because we all need some comic relief in these tough times...

When headlines like this are plaguing all news outlets, there needs to be some humor to get ourselves through the day. Because if there isn't, we'll all wind up plugging up our ears with our fingers and shoving our heads under our pillows. And what good would that do?

So, I present you with some eerie, yet silly, photos of my younger brother, Anthony, that I took while experimenting with my new camera.

Gasp! A ghost?

Anthony, in normal form.

Birthday Blues

So much pressure sits on the expectation of a birthday. For some reason, it's embedded into our brains that our birthday is the one day where everything must go right. It's this expectation that makes birthdays as high maintenance and stressful as they are.

For instance, Monday was my birthday. Monday is my deadline day so it's the craziest day of the week. It's usually hectic but bearable...but not on my birthday.

There's about a foot snow on the ground and I wore the wrong shoes (as always) and my feet were soaked the entire day. Usually, not much to whine about but it is on my birthday.

Every year, I find myself feeling more anxiety than pleasure as the calendar inches it's way to my birth date...but maybe that's linked to the whole getting older thing.

The whole ideal that a birthday is a special day for nothing to go wrong makes it a hard thing for anyone to live up too. Little mishaps are seen as devastating and they happen everyday.

For now, I'll look forward to nothing more than a strawberry cake with my name on it.

A brutal winter welcoming

I spent the entire weekend living a nomadic lifestyle seeking out warm places to sleep. My house was one of the many in central Massachusetts that fell victim to the severe power outage due to the ice storm on Thursday, Dec. 11.

At about 9:30 p.m. the night of the storm, while in my living room, I hear what sounded like a gunshot as the lights went out. (Later I found out the "gunshot" was most likely the wires breaking from the pressure of the ice.) I summed it up to just a typical temporary outage and resumed my Christmas card making by candlelight.

But listening to branches breaking as I drifted to sleep, I knew this was more than an ordinary storm. On my drive to work in the morning, mangled, icy tree branches looked like bony fingers trying to crawl onto the roads. The sun peaking out from the gloomy clouds cast rays onto the frozen trees creating deceivingly picturesque winter images.

Here are a couple photos I took in Auburn, the town I cover.



My mom kept saying stuff like this happens because, "God is mad at the world." While, I don't think that is an explanation for this, I do wonder if natural disasters are mother nature's way of telling us to take better care of her?

Infidelity now made easy

While reading the Boston Herald during my lunch break today, the sandwich I had just finished eating almost revisited my mouth when I came across this article.

The Ashley Madison Agency is a dating service devoted to assisting married men and women cheat on their spouses. A classy concept, isn't it?

The slogan "Life is too short, have an affair," is featured in their ads. To enter this world of digital deception all you have to do is create an account, specify your relationship status and your on the road to secrets and lies.

According to the Herald, as of last week local radio stations such as WAAF 107.3 and WBCN 104.1 have started to air the agency's ad and T.V. commercials as expected to debut next month. The Herald also reported that the site has 2.7 million members.

I'm all about free will for everyone, but this pushes the limit. A few comments on the article that agree with the idea argued things like, "It's no one's business what others do." Well, truth being, it could very well be anyone's business. After all, The Ashley Madison's mission is to keep affairs secret, so how is anyone to know if their spouse is seeing someone else on the side? So, anyone could be subject to the turmoil it may bring.

Aside from the fact the site is an ethical mess, what does this say about our culture?

It's unfathomable the creators of this internet filth feel the need to feed into the hunger of the selfish and careless portion of the population. Something like this is as lethal as giving a junkie all the free drugs they desire. A drug addict will never kick their habit if they're given what's hurting them all they wish.

What ever happened to fixing problems?

A New Era: Barack Obama on the path to the White House

Everyone, no matter who they voted for - or if they even voted at all - should feel at least partially at peace after the results of last night's election. An African-American is on his way to the White House for the the first time ever. Something that had been deemed impossible by many in the past.

This was my first election as a reporter and I am pleased that is has been such a historical one. I spent the day running around, interviewing local politicians and getting voters' opinions on the presidential election. Though my part is microscopic compared to others around the country, it still felt nice to be somewhat a part of it.

Obama's victory was a head-on tackle to racism. I hope Obama as president starts to blur the racial lines are society is divided by.

Penguin Love

Last night my father held up the book he just read to my six-year-old brother and said: "This is an interesting book."

The book, called And Tango Makes Three, is about two male penguins who raise a baby penguin together. An egg was placed in the nest the two had made by the zoo keeper after he noticed the penguins were trying to hatch a rock. The last page of the book states the book is based on two real-life penguins in the Central Park Zoo.

In May of '07, a librarian from Southwick, MA told the School Library Journal she felt her job was threatened after reading the book to a group of elementary age children. In November of 2006, parents in Chicago wanted the book banned from the shelves.

It's understandable parents would feel uneasy about a subject such as this being showcased their children at such a young age. It is a sensitive and difficult subject to talk about. But we're getting to a point, a child being raised by a same sex couple is becoming more frequent.

Same sex couples can provide the same loving environment for a child that heterosexual parents do, and this book displays that.

These instances of people wanting the book banned show that some people are not fully adapt to the idea of same sex couples. What a book like this can do is make others more open to the idea and most of all, make members of families with same sex parents feel accepted by society.

Book Munchies

I've been a bookworm since graduation. While in school I would want to bury my nose in a good book occasionally, but my studies destroyed my motivation to read leisurely. Now that I have no more academic required readings I decided to participate in "book mooching" via bookmooch.com. My sister - queen of the bookworms - introduced me to the website last summer. Despite her constant pleas for me to join, I did not have the time or patience to give it a chance.

It's a nice concept. You post books you want to give away and in return you receive points to "mooch" other books. The only fee is the postage to mail books to moochers. Yet I'm debating whether to continue with it since my first mooching attempt was successful, but not so pleasant. I got a request for my book Up High in Trees by Kiara Brinkman from a woman in Illinois. I kindly sent it to her and was quite miffed when my feedback comment from her was "Thanks, though the book was really bent because it wasn't packaged well."

The remark put me right back in the classroom and made me feel like a teacher was scolding me on a barely passing grade. Though I am suspicious of this moocher (the book was thick so it couldn't have been that bent and points are refundable, if the giver agrees to do so... just think about that) it angers me. This is a recreational activity that's supposed to be fun, not something to be graded on.