After a stint of boy craziness that’s lasted maybe ten years, I’ve had one bad break-up too many and recently entered a period of no-men-under-any-circumstances- and-I-mean-it, lasting indefinitely.

Don’t get me wrong– I like being single. I’m pretty independent. I can still study and interact with other humans. I function. But when it comes to the menfolk, I get easily distracted. And attempting to stay celibate in college is like asking Whitney Houston to get clean in a crack house. So, thinking that the best offense is a good defense, I’m using a plethora of methods to stay on track and focused.

These are the ones that didn’t work.

Fattening Food I started eating pizza every day. Like, a lot of pizza. There’s this place down the street from my house that serves whole pies for five dollars. (I get the “Oahu,” which is just fancy-pants for Hawaiian. Eating an entire pie in less than three minutes almost helps you forget you’re totally pathetic.) And the first few days I was feeling all blob-like and disgusting, but that’s actually passed. Because after a few weeks I’ve plumped up a bit, and now my skin glows (read: has a greasy sheen) from the extra calories. It kind of makes me want to have a baby. Which is bad. Bad, bad, bad. Read More »

I’m pretty sure microtrends were something we learned about in Sociology. That was also the class in college I had to force myself to sit through for at least 45 minutes.

Then I would just walk out.

Even though I know nothing about them (I got a C in Soc), I can understand them on a level I can see.

I see people knitting on the subway everyday. The rise of stitch and bitch groups is just as prevalent as getting tattooed during undergrad.

And apparently, tattoos and knitting among our age demographic are quite telling microtrends.

And Mark Penn, a “pollster” as this article calls him, says that mircrotrends “reveal the often baffling “under the radar” shifts that are reshaping American society—from one based on group identity and forces of circumstance such as race, religion and education to one based on personal choice.”

By the time everyone else has caught on to the microtrend “it is ready to spawn a hit movie, best-selling book or new political movement.”

But, why knitting and tattoos?

Grandma isn’t the only one knitting these days. Knitting is most popular for teens and twenty-somethings. Between 2004-2005, yarn sales rose 56%. And this rise in knitting shows that our generation is turning away from the virtual world and searching for something tangible to express ourselves. Read More »