I watch a lot of TV, and since I’ve been homebound for a few weeks because of surgery, I have been watching more TV than should be legally allowed in the United States. Most nights, there are previews for NEW FALL SHOWS!! every 3.2 seconds, and having watched my fair share of these previews, I’d like to make a list of a few of these new dramatic ventures. A list in which I try to determine what the show is about, and how long it will go without being cancelled, from only the actors and title.

* Bad Mother’s Handbook - ABC - (premires: Midseason) With a cast that includes Megan Mullally, Alicia Silverstone, and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat, there is the potential for this comedy to either turn out okay or really, really suck. Mullally has Will and Grace, but she also has that horrible talk show that failed harder than Jessica Simpson’s country album. Silverstone has Clueless and she loves animals, but she’s also made a boatload of horrible movies. Based on the title, I’d say we have a situation comedy where Mullally predictably plays a hard drinking, irresponsible mother, and Silverstone plays her lovable and cheerful daughter. Hijinks ensue. Hijinks that will probably go on for about 5 episodes before getting the ax.

Gary Unmarried - CBS - (premieres: Wednesday, Sept. 24, 8:30 pm/ET) Jay Mohr and Paula Marshall (??) no doubt play either a husband and wife, a divorced-yet-still-talking husband and wife, or a shticky guy who can’t find a mate and his ever reliant best female friend. Jay Mohr tends to be funny 20% of the time. I have no idea who Paula Marshall is. And I’m so freaking tired of comedies where it’s all about finding a significant other. I predict maximum suckage and cancellation after 2 episodes. Read More »

Gossip Girl is back, and so are hotties Chuck and Nate. In madras. Scrumptious. While the drama on the tube is nothing short of delicious, it is the battle off the screen that has our attention:

Chuck v. Nate - who is hotter?

One is dark, dangerous and brooding.
The other is pensive, driven and sexy.

Check out some hot pics of Chuck and Nate and choose which Gossip Guy does it for you.

Which flavor do you prefer?

I am one of those random girls who will wear dresses and skirts and too pretty/impractical shoes to class more often than not. Don’t get me wrong - I will absolutely show up in my gym clothes on occasion, but for the most part, I just prefer dressing up. Strangely enough, what I wear elicits quite a wide range of reactions and people often feel more than comfortable sharing their opinion of my clothes with me.

Here’s the general breakdown:

Pro: Being known as the fashion plate. I like that after a meeting with my cool, young English Prof she said, “I love your style. I was waiting to see what you’d wear to our meeting.”
Con: Being perceived as the girl who tries too hard. No, I actually didn’t wear this dress to impress any of the lame guys in our poly sci class. Really.

Pro: Compliments abound. I’m not vain but it is nice to hear people say that they like what you’re wearing.
Con: Criticisms abound. My best friend will never let me live down this exchange:
BF: What are you wearing?
Me: What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?
BF: Other than the fact that you’re wearing sequins at 10 am? Nothing.

Pro: It’s a conversation starter. I feel like I don’t have enough female friends/acquaintances in my life and I can be sort of shy, so if my shoes get a girl to start talking to me then that makes me happy.
Con: People thinking that you did the walk of shame to class. Someone asked me once if I was wearing last night’s outfit. Um, no. Very embarrassing. Read More »

Will she or won’t she? Apparently she will.

Sarah Palin is pitbull…with lipstick.

What the cast of 90210 is really saying.

Trend alert: bell sleeves are back?

For those of you who missed the RNC last night, here is the highlight.

Teen mothers unite!

Paris Hilton has a documentary. About her life.

Lily Allen: the next Amy Winehouse?

He’s a mother f—ing redneck!

We want all these bags for fall. All. of. them.

Want to major in death?

There is nothing as sweet as revenge…especially when it involves crabs.
Cindy McCain’s $300,000 outfit.

Tyra scares us, so we couldn’t bring ourselves to watch and blog the ANTM cycle 1,257 premiere. Get the rundown here.

Welcome to the Dining Hall! It is a new year, but the menu hasn’t changed much since the spring semester. While its cuisine might fall short of the five-star Michelin rating, your dining hall is still offering the same mediocre-to-decent fare that you’ve been demanding as students with only a few minutes to eat, anyway.

As a freshman, you might have been awed by the mere expanse of food before you. Inspired by the hustle and bustle of upperclassmen milling expertly around the different food stations, you were elated to find that dessert is served at every meal. But come October, the honeymoon glow dimmed to a faint flicker, and your affair with the dining hall turned into something of a mess.

The economic, all-you-can-eat style buffet, serving food that is generally fatty, sugary, and over-processed, leads many collegiates to pack on the pounds as they struggle to navigate this danger zone. Whether you’re shoveling tasteless food as fast as you can to make a class in ten minutes, or leisurely enjoying a couple hours of all-access binging while chatting with friends, the cafeteria offers a wide variety of ways to overindulge. Here are a couple of tricks to help you avoid the pitfalls of college dining:

1. Survey the Scene. Make a tour of the available options of the day so that you don’t load up on all the stuff at the beginning of the line, only to have to nab a second plate for the food at the next station. Read More »

Colleges are breeding grounds for a whole lot of things. One of the things that college fosters a love for is…THE GROUP.

You know what I mean; the singing groups, political groups, volunteering groups, and sports groups. It always seems, from afar, as though most colleges have got a group for everyone. I, however, disagree. Had I only had the motivation and school spirit in me to start my own groups while in college, there would have been a whole new clump of groups to add to the group roster. Those sentiments precisely are what bring me to my first group:

The I WOULD START A GROUP OF MY OWN IF I WEREN’T SO LAZY group

I feel as though this group should exist. How many of us out there have had our own ideas for groups but we haven’t started them because we were just too damn lazy? Think about the possibilities. We could all gather each week and discuss why we didn’t gather during the prior week. We could all voyage to the local bar for drinks after group meetings because we were too lazy to bring our own alcohol. I could have used some like-minded friends during school and I think that launching this group would have helped me.

The I’M NOT REALLY GOING TO QUIT DRINKING group

I didn’t want to have friends who were apocalyptic drinkers with no conscience, I didn’t want to have friends who were straight edge, and I also didn’t want to have friends who were moderate drinkers. While I was in college, I wanted friends who drank too much, but had a conscience about it. I wanted self-destructive friends who knew that their drinking was bad, advocated quitting, but never planned on quitting themselves. This should be a group in college. Read More »

Shopping for college can be stressful: you don’t know how much room you will have in your dorm, how much is too much, if you’ve brought enough, and if it will match the stuff your roommate has.

Shopping for elementary school supplies was so much more fun - you got to stock up on your favorite Lisa Frank supplies and you begged your mom to buy you a few gel pens because everyone was using them.

This year, instead of making a quick pit-stop at Staples on the way to school and buying a few notebooks and black pens, why not bring some of that grade school excitement back with fun school supplies?

Remember how excited you were to use those gel pens to fill out worksheets in the first couple weeks of school? How cool it was to start a brand new notebook? Here are some funky school supplies that will make you want to head to class, take some notes, and do some hardcore studying. Or at least they will help you make friends by serving as a good conversation starter for the girl sitting next to you.

This stuff puts the “cool” back in school. Yeah…I went there.

Calculator - You will probably need to bring one of those nerdy graphing calculators to your Advanced Stats class, but why not buy one of those enormous & brightly colored calculators for when you just need to add, subtract, multiply, or divide? Math sucks, but bright pink makes everything better. Read More »

(And we didn’t even have to pay $10,000,000 for ‘em)

So, I’m tired this morning. All that Democrat bashing and baby hair licking at the Republican National Convention last night kept me up late. Since I can’t get productive until this Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte kicks in (yes, they are back!), I decided to peruse the interwebs for awhile.

And boy did I find a gem.

Want to know what your baby would look like if you could somehow seduce Brad Pitt or Michael Jackson? Want to know if you and the BF are gonna have ugly children? What about the ex and his ugly new whore?

Just plug the photos into this site, wait a mere 30 seconds (much better than nine months of morning sickness) and, voila! A baby.

I don’t really want kids - in fact, I spend a lot of money not to - so I decided to see what my pals Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston’s baby would look like. You know, cuz they are gonna have one in a few months, even though he made it abundantly clear on his MySpace page that he doesn’t want any.

She’s got her daddy’s forehead and her momma’s mouth. Let’s just hope she doesn’t have her grandma’s political views.

Despite all of you who are going off to college in the fall, moving thousands of miles away from dear old mom and dad, there are a few of us who choose to remain close to home. So close in fact, that we don’t even have to move. That’s right, I’m talking about living with your parents throughout college. Lucky (or not so lucky) for me and my peers, my hometown has our very own, reputable university. And with my college fund having the capacity to cover my entire undergrad at Lakehead or only ONE year at another school, the choice was pretty simple for me.

I know, I know, many of you are shocked. Isn’t a key part of the college experience the independence you gain living in dorms? You have to learn to cook, clean, do laundry and manage your own time! And what about rules? People always question how I live under my parents thumb at 19. And I do agree, it’s definitely not easy to abide by rules when I could be making my own, under my own roof.

Bar none, the best part about living on your own for school is the freedom. When you move out of your childhood home, curfew and chores go out the window! If you want to come home at 5AM every night (or morning depending on how you look at it), that’s totally possible. But with mom and dad sleeping soundly and working the next morning, even if your curfew is non-existent, you still can’t help but feeling guilty. After all, you’re still bumming off of them. Read More »