I've Always Fancied a Good Cup Of Joe.

I tend to gravitate towards things with the letter J.

• I really like jello and strawberry jam. I love Jalapeno flavored potato chips- especially the baked kind. I could sustain myself the rest of my life off of beef jerky. I always have a can of Jiff peanut butter in my possession. Jolly Time popcorn (butterlicious) >>>> anything else. Junior mints. Yes, I eat them outside the movie theater [gasp].Jolly ranchers will forever be delicious and rewarding. Then there is juice and who doesn't love juice? 
• "Juno" is a quality movie, of which I was obsessed with in high school. As a cheerleader, we had to dress up for Courtwarming Spirit days and stuff. I forget what the theme of the day was, but I came to school impersonating a pregnant Ellen page carrying around a thing of Sunny D. [I was cool].
• I have always wanted to own a jeep. 
• Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey was one of my favorite movies as a child, which I begged my mom to rent on VHS quite frequently. 
• The months of June and July are the best months of the Summer season.
• Jasmine is one of the coolest Disney princesses. She has a pet tiger for crying out loud
• I have laughed at one or more of the Jimmy Dean breakfast commercials. There is just something about a man in giant sun costume that carries just a tid-bit of humor.
• Two Words:Aunt Jemima.
• Journalism is pretty nifty. 
• I love Jazz music. 
• I can't juggle though.
• The Joker is my favorite batman villain  (Due to my best friend's obsession with Heath Ledger. She even named her first car after him).
• Jack-O-Lanterns come from the letter J and Halloween is the best holiday of the year. 

 Obviously, J is just a badass letter.

Jealousy is probably one of the few bad things that come out of the word J. Well that, and quite a few ex-boyfriends. Even in my "love" life, I tend to gravitate towards the letter J. 80% of the guys I have talked to, went on dates with, or courted have had a first name starting with a J. Maybe it's because I wanted to continue on my mother's family tradition of everyone having "J names"; since I couldn't do it by myself, I thought I'd marry one. Secretly I have a grudge against her for not naming me something starting with a J. Here are some cool "J names" I could have been called , with ways they would have been catchy:

• Jaxine ...."Jaxxxxinee, you don't have to put on the red light"
• Janet. I've one thing to say and that's Dammit, Janet I love you. (If you don't get that reference, watch "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" right now. Seriously. Do it).
• Jacaranda (I'm just simply Jacaranda Sue).

So maybe my mom saw how great of a person I was going to be and thought that Shelby was much more fit. I just think if I had a "J name" I would be more likely to date another letter of the alphabet. The problem with me gravitating towards "J names" is that there are only so many and eventually I'm going to run out. And after twenty years of life on this planet, I think I might have found the most popular J name out there. I have many personal experiences with it. Many of my favorite celebrities icons are named it. One survey says that there are over 2,000,000 in the United States alone. It's ranked number 9 or higher on multiple lists for "most common male names". What is the name you ask? Joseph.

The Many Josephs of My Life

• My Grandpa does not know if his real first name is Joseph or Eugene. The courthouse burnt down and with it burnt his birth certificate records. My great grandmother could not exactly remember if it was Joseph Eugene or Eugene Joseph (weird right?). He goes by Eugene Joseph, but who knows. His real legal name could be Joseph Eugene. 
• One of my best friends longest relationships was to a guy named Joseph. This story is hers to tell, but if I had a list entitled "people I really did not care for that I barely knew", he would be number one.
• One of my friends dated a guy named Joseph in the fifth grade. I sat next to him in our class. Since I like you all so much, I'll tell you an embarrassing story involving this particular Joseph. I have already informed you all that I was a very strange child (dreaming of riding llamas as my future career and such). Well, weird carried through with me in all aspects of life- Starting with breakfast. I can never remember eating a completely normal breakfast. From burritos to blocks of cheese, I ate what I felt like. Well on one morning in particular, I decided I wanted garlic toast. (You toasted the bread, buttered it, and then sprinkled garlic powder all over it). Not just one serving, but two were stuffed into my mouth. You'd think being the smart kid I was, I would have known that the smell of garlic stays with you all day (even after brushing your teeth). To save this long story from becoming a novel, this kid named Joseph was burdened of sitting next to me on this day. Garlic and all. My gum and mints could not save either of us. Luckily, it was the first day that bastard named Edward Cullen left me alone.
• My longest high school relationship was to a guy named Joseph. Our relationship started off at a volleyball game where my best friend and I called him some obnoxious name to get him to come over and talk with us. If flirting were an Olympic sport, I would be the water girl for the team.

Wikipedia lists these Joseph's as important people:

• Joe Camel: Cigarette Mascot
• Joey Chestnut: Competitive Eater
• Joe Pasquale: Won the 4th series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

But not only do Josephs seem to have a prevalence in my life history, Joseph is the name of many of my Hollywood friends. Okay, well they are not my real friends per se. But if they met me, we would like this [doing the whole finger cross gesture thing].

Celebrities associated with the name Joseph that are awesome and you know it:

• Joey Zimmerman: This kid, though his character is slightly annoying, is one Joseph that I am quite envious of.  He only is from one of my favorite Disney Channel Original movies, playing Marnie Piper's little brother Dylan. For those of you reading that aren't Disney Channel Original Movie fanatics, he was in "Halloweentown" (and all the sequels). He got to go to a magical town full of crazy creatures. Eventually, if my memory does not mistake me, he even gets to become a warlock. How cool is that? 
• Joseph Fatone: He only tore up up our hearts with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Jc Chasez, Lance Bass, and Chris Kirpatrick in a little band called 'N Sync. He's wonderful, as are the rest of his former band mates. He also had a big comeback by taking second place on Dancing with the Stars in 2007. He is a very big deal.
• Joey King: This Joey is actually female, but she deserves to be on the list. She's only 13 years old and has more street cred in Hollywood than I ever will. She gets to play the daughter of Steve Carell in "Crazy Stupid Love", which makes her a co-star of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Enough said right there. Not only that, but she played Ramona in "Romana and Beezus" alongside Selena Gomez. She had a lead role in a adaptation of the classic Beverly Cleary novels. This kid knows what she is doing.
• Joey Ramone: (who's actually name is Jeffrey, but since he is known as Joey I am making him acceptable) He was only apart of a little band called the "Romanes". He only wrote a little song called "I wanna be sedated". That little song was only one of my older sisters and mine favorites of all time. It was only in a little movie called "Carpool", which is only one of my favorite films of all time. If this is not reason enough, Joey and the rest of the band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. 
• Joey Tribbiani: Let's face it, after this role Matt LeBlanc will never be called Matt again. Friends was on air for ten years. Ending when I was in the 6th grade, it took up a pretty big chunk of my adolescence. Joey and Phoebe were obviously my favorite characters. Joey as a child had an imaginary friend, that was a space cowboy by the name of Maurice (obviously Joey could be Carl and mines best friend too). & then with his catch phrase, "how you doing" , he was destined to be one of the coolest Josephs in history.

 & most importantly:

• Joseph Gordon Levitt: It's times like these that I wish I went to Hogwarts. I would make a magic potion, wave my wand, and create my own Joseph Gordon Levitt to love, and hug, and squeeze em to death. But sadly, my acceptance letter never came on my eleventh birthday so I just have to admire Joseph Gordon Levitt from the pages of the interweb. From "Angels in the Outfield" to "Ten Things I Hate About You", this love started at a young age. I remember sitting in the outfield of softball games wishing that if I flapped my arms, I would have the ability to see and talk to angels too. Instead of swooning over a young Heath Ledger, I thought the new, awkward, slightly nerdy Levitt was the bees knees. Bianca did not deserve him. Joseph won me over completely when accepting the role of Tom in "500 Days of Summer". Co-starring with Zooey Deschanel (who will eventually get a blog post all of her own), this movie is easily in my top 5 favorites. It for once tells the true story of life. It skips the candy coating, and let's us take a straight, sharp bite into reality. Oh, and he is kind of Robin in the third installment of the Batman trilogy "The Dark Knight Rises". Joseph (if you are reading this), I was Robin for Halloween once. It's just another reason you should like me.

Well, I'm all J'd out. But to end this post, here is one of my favorite quotes from the only Joseph Gordon Levitt (at least the interweb said he said it. who knows if that's true):

"A lot of boys and girls think their lives will have meaning if they find a partner who wants nothing else in life but them. That's not healthy. That's falling in love with the idea of a person, not the actual person"

Simply Shelby Sue

 

P.s. I know most of you are wondering why I did not mention the obvious Uncle Joey from the classic family sitcom, "Full House". Well he is creepy and I really don't like him. Sure, when I was little I thought doing his "cut , it, out" hand motions was pretty fantastic. Now that I'm older, I only see him as the creepy, voice impersonator friend of Bob Saget's living in a basement in a household of little girls (who resemble Uncle Joey, more than daddy Danny-just saying).

So I'm Kind of a Big Deal.

No really, I am. I kind of got published in a newspaper.

Tuesday. August 21st. 2012. 

The day my life changed (Actually it was the 22nd because that's the day my paper comes in the mail, but for all intensive purposes we are using the 21st).

Prepare for dramatization of events that really did not happen like this at all( I prefer this be read in a British accent. You may not read it otherwise):

"Not knowing whether my work was good enough to make the final cut, sat there I,  tapping a pen back and forth on the night of August 20th. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. While chewing my finger nails down to bits, I pondered what tomorrow would bring. My feet could be swept up and taken into a lavish lifestyle. Picturing myself with a martini in hand, mixing business and pleasure with the big wigs of the American newspaper society. Yet, the worst could overcome. Instead of rolling in my new wealthy lifestyle, my soul could be fed to the dogs. Rejected and cold, my new home would be nothing fancier than a browned, soiled cardboard box. Come the morning with the sunshine and chirping birds, I found myself flabbergasted while enjoying my morning brew. I- yes I- was featured in my cities newspaper. My words spread across a half page in the beautiful newspaper ink. My words- not yours- but mine for all the beautiful hearts and souls of my lovely town to enjoy. While not holding a martini in my hand, I held the greatest wealth any writer could ever long for- my words- yes mine- published."

 So I might have failed to mention that my town has a population of a little over a thousand. Sure, it was not The Times or The New York Post. & yeah, it was not Cosmo. & yeah, it might not have even been Star. But it was pretty close...Well, not really close. It was a newspaper.  Though I don't live in a town of one million or even ten thousand, I still felt like the whole world would read my work & so they will.

So as much anticipated, here is my first published article [screams of excitement]. Picture a little kid in a candy store, with unlimited funds. Yeah- I was that excited. Don't hate.

Printed in the Edina, Sentinel August 21st, 2012:

A Rush to Six Feet Under

The sixties- a time of LSD and psychedelic prints. The seventies- Marijuana and dancing disco queens. The eighties- Cocaine and John Hughes movies. The nineties- Ecstasy and trapper keepers. The 2000's- Methamphetamine and skinny jeans. Fads are nothing new to American Society and culture. Each decade can easily be associated with different types of fashion, movies, music, and more importantly, drugs. After attending the forum hosted by The Knox County Coalition Against Meth on the evening of August 13^th, I realized there is a new fad on the rise.

Held at the Knox County Community Center, members of the community came out to hear the presentations of two speakers. The first speaker, with18 years of experience, is a Sergeant with the Division of Drug and Crime Control as a Narcotic Investigator. He outlined the “Shake and Bake” trend. It is a popular way to manufacture methamphetamine. From simple cold medicine to camp fire fuel, community members soon realized that the ingredients used in the manufacturing process are not foreign. When it came time for questions, one community member strongly voiced his concern on methamphetamine and how it is effecting the children of our community. The second speaker, with 13 years of experience, hails from the Saint Joseph Missouri Police Department. Capturing the audience's attention, he used witty commentary and pictures to help lighten the subject matter. Captivating the audience with his presentation of case stories, he brought some audience members to tears. Story after story, I faced the realization that it is my generation being heavily affected by the newest fad drugs- Bath Salts, K-2, and Plant Food.

These are not your average bath salts, incense, and plant grow. They are not crystallized and scented like cherry blossoms, the plant food is not Miracle grow, and the K-2 is not the normal incense you burn to add a pleasant aroma to your room. Most bath salts contain a substituted cathinone, which have a similar effect of cocaine. What separates this decade's fad drugs from others in the past? It is still completely legal to sell. Being sold mostly at convenience stores and tobacco shops, the products are simply marked “not for human consumption”. Yet seven out of ten times, if you ask the clerk how to use the product, they will instruct you. One of the main issues is that the drug is hard to detect because so little is known currently.

Young lives are being wasted all for a little rush. After one time, a drug user is always looking for a bigger high. The further they fall into addiction, the more statuesque they become. Constantly striving for a goal that they will never reach. The truth about Bath Salts, Plant food and K-2 is that they are not okay for consumption. Teenagers need to realize that with these drugs it only takes one time to change their entire life.

Instead of giving it try, I will tell you exactly what will happen when you choose to light up the “legal” drugs. Do you like being chased? Well prepare to be chased all the time. Users of these drugs commonly report that they are always being followed. Do you like being covered in bugs? Get ready to scratch. Reports show that users feel like they have bugs crawling all over their skin. Have you thought about trying cannibalism? This drug takes only a few weeks and you will be eating faces off of people. The most terrifying result is actually one of the most common symptoms. Most users of these fad drugs report the feeling of constantly wanting to kill themselves. The sad reality is that some act on that feeling.

Teenagers and young adults need to realize there are many other ways to get an adrenaline rush . While spending thousands of dollars on bath salts and plant food, you could go sky diving multiple times, learn to drive a plane, go skiing at a resort, furnish a food bank, write a novel, go a spur of the moment vacation, feed a humane society full of animals, or simply buy yourself a new wardrobe. Instead of turning a man's face into practically nothing, you could skip the smoke and chew on a piece of beef jerky. A delicious, less cannibalistic rush. In the end it really is all about choices. With the “plant food” fad, you could make the choice between packets that make your plant “happy” or “real happy”. I have a decent background with plants; they are typically happiest with a little bit of water, moderate sunshine, and a bit of healthy conversation.

Our community needs to learn to make the right choice. Let's put down the Bath Salts,throw away the Plant food, and stop inhaling the K-2. One right choice from our small community can lead to a big change nationwide.

I hope you enjoyed my first printed piece of work. Prepare for more in the future.

But for now I'm just ...

Simply Shelby Sue

P.s. I like you all. You smell of sugar plums & now I have fairies dancing in my head. Thanks for that.

Back to School. Back To School. To Show Daddy I'm Not A Fool.

I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight.

The first day jitters area always there. If your five, six, or twenty years old. 

I start classes at a new school tomorrow. Sure, it's not near as big as the University I was attending, but I'm still nervous. I do not think it will be bad experience; it will just be a different experience. I'm entering an unknown territory. I do not have class room numbers, I do not know the building. I do not know anybody in my classes yet. I feel completely unprepared. I keep going over a checklist of things I need to remember before I leave the house in the morning and know I am definitely going to forget something. These feelings take me back to the elementary school days, when the first day was the biggest day of your life. It was your first impression on the people that you would be stuck in a room with for the rest of the year. It was not like college, where you only see certain people for an hour a day. If you make a bad impression, you can avoid them the rest of the year. Having a decent class reputation in elementary school was the ultimate satisfaction.

So tomorrow, I take with me the 5 Valuable Lessons elementary school taught me about first day impressions:

1. Have good hair: Whether your hair wants to behave or not, make it. Today is not a day for frizzes and fly aways. Also, do not try that "super cute way to make second day hair look fabulous" that you read about in Seventeen magazine. Today is not the day to experiment. Go with a guaranteed look. Curl it, if you want to look high maintenance. Gel it, if thats your thang. Blow dry, for a simple, yet "you tried" look.
2. Don't Overdress: I have made this mistake one too many times. You buy a super cute dress and decide to wear it the first day. You think the boys will go "gaga" over you in it. The truth is that dress probably has a under layer of material. That material likes to stick to your legs as you wiggle in your chair. Chances are when you stand up, you could possibly show more than you want. Also, factor in that you have to be in classes for 8 hours. That is a long time to sit in a dress. Did you go with a new high low style? Have fun crossing your legs all day long. I recommend choosing your favorite pair of jeans, favorite comfy t-shirt, and a cute cardigan. Be yourself and be comfortable. Syllabus day can get boring.
3. Pack a Healthy Lunch: The best way to start a new year is healthy. By creating a routine of healthy lunches, this lifestyle change will be one for the better. You will fall into choosing carrots over potato chips and water over carbonated sodas. By doing this the first day, you will associate it with hopefully good feelings, unless you just have one of those really terrible first days (which let's hope does not happen).
4. Gum & Mints: NEVER. & I mean never forget to have gum and mints in your backpack. Even if you have excellent dental care, your breath will not smell minty fresh in 3 hours. What if a cute boy sits next to you in Chemistry? You can't create any chemistry with him if your breath doesn't smell like heaven. Do yourself a favor and always make sure you have this essential. If mints and gum are not your thing, try lemon drops or red hots.
5. Bring a Good Luck Charm: A little extra luck can never hurt. Make sure to have something that makes you feel at home. From a necklace that was your grandma's to a bracelet your best friend got you, a little trinket can make you remember what you are doing this all for. 

Hopefully tomorrow I don't wake up with a frizzy head, craving a greasy hamburger, out of gum, with only a dress to wear and broken locket. 

SimplyShelbySue

P.s. Wish me luck!