Youth Media, First Paycheque, Safe Management

Kids these days are so unoriginal.

Everyone turns on the TV in the morning for some cartoons before school, and what are they watching? Reruns of Spongebob that came out when I was a kid. I'm like, "This was old when I was your age". Harry Potter is still as popular as ever despite the final official novel of the series having been published a decade ago. Pokemon is still updating, even hitting record levels with Pokemon Go (although that's died down a bit). I've been considered "cool" for having opinions on Dragon Ball Z. I watched that show because it was being released weekly when I was watching. These kids are all watching reruns.

As far as new content goes, I've seen kids watching "Nearly Naked Animals". I want to see how a writer pitches that concept to a team of publishers and gets it approved. It's a bunch of hairless animals with body stubble, wearing underpants and getting into slapstick comedic situations.

To be fair, my generation wasn't exactly devoid of bad cartoons either. "What About Mimi", "Brace Face", "Bein' Ian", "My Life as a Teenage Robot", "Monster by Mistake", etc. It's not exactly fair to judge a generation's media by one example, there are always flubs. But it does feel strange that I'm still so in the loop

Hunger Games and Maze Runner came closer to the mark for main-stream youth media, I guess. The one movie I watched for Maze Runner was off the chain. Just ridiculous action piled on action. Like, running away on a tightrope from people who are following you on the same rope, with music playing which will set off an explosion when it ends, and then falling off the rope from the explosion from a skyscraper only to fall onto a pane of glass which slowly starts breaking, but then a fast zombie falls onto the glass pane so he has to fight the zombie while trying to get off the glass panel while it breaks. Just ridiculous.

Finally got my first real paycheque. Whenever I'm really poor, I cut corners hard on my spending. Like, I'll only use bar soap, I don't buy condiments etc. I just got myself some shea butter handsoap and upgraded from yellow mustard to dijon! Got myself a fruit bowl too. Nutrition kind of becomes an after thought when you're only thinking about living to tomorrow, and not five years later. But I got apples, pears, bananas, and mangos! Gave my wardrobe a much-needed update, too.

I have a deep freezer now, too, but that's not something I got because I have money. I just lucked out that a neighbour wanted to get rid of her deep freezer. My unit is really well furnished and it's basically all from getting things from my neighbours.

Got my tax return. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't a student in the previous year. If you're a student, they burn you for like, two thirds of your return for some reason. So I got something nice this year.

I ran my first Safe Management course! I got to do it with the two other more seasoned facilitators, which was nice. I was super nervous but it turned out okay. Twelve hour course, six hours over two days. I was only going to be running courses like, three times a year, but there was suddenly an increase in who is required to be trained, so now we've got courses almost monthly. Used you be an eight hour training too, but it got upgraded to twelve. I'm not doing every one, but I am doing most of them.

I need to update my 1st Aid and CPR soon, too.