reasons why rachel has yet to sleep

1. the interwebs:

(climbing up the walls - radiohead)

2. coffee. and links about coffee. 

(you wanna get me high - the donnas)

3. them things with the words and the - what's it called? oh yeah, paper. 

(bell, book, & candle - eddi reader)

winter is nature's way of saying "up yours"

today's title was taken from a quote by robert byrne. i totally agree with it and, in protest of the untimely snowfall which postponed my american university interview and ruined all my hopes and dreams of getting to a bookstore soon, i've spent most of today imagining that it's summer.

s-la's already posted about our fun-filled friday, so i'll spare you a repeat of all the details. she's not the only one who's been writing, either, but we all know how i feel about sharing what i write with The World. even if The World currently consists of a six people and a few lurkers.

i spent most of today reading and writing and running (and cleaning up my poor, abused itunes library), though, so to salvage this post i'll share a meme that's been floating around the interwebs:

Put your iTunes on shuffle and post the first lines of the first 20 songs that play in a poem. Make the first line of the 21st song the poem's title. 

"where it began, i can't begin to know when"

i was running late for work

i think it's time that i mention

there is no greater love

i like my music loud

the ice is thin come on dive in

are you going to take me home tonight?

in the dream you were

in a car in the driveway the conversation's colors paint themselves on canvas

no mercy for what we're doing

mon amour mi corazon

classic makes perfect in person

the trophy that i made for us

as far as i can see

tough break handjob broke it all in two

the samples won't delay but the cable

please don't go crazy if i tell you the truth

you spin my head right round, right round

once i had a love and it was a gas

free - that's all that she could bleed 

i will keep the bad things from you

wow, the person i snagged that meme from was right - it does turn into a really cracked out poem. i'm okay with that though - mostly because i'm feeling silly today and the internet is facilitating my immaturity. then again, unlike some people i'm still a youthful seventeen and can't possibly aspire to the dignity and solemnity required by adulthood. also that same person should know that the kingdom hearts version of this is halloween just came on and it's amazing. i think i'm going to get back on the treadmill now or maybe sniff around the kitchen for the leftovers from tonight's dinner - thai food, yum. 

oh hypocrisy

dear ke$ha-with-the-unpronouncable-name (s-la has decided to call her 'k-dollar-ha', but i can't quite reconcile my conscience to that) :

i really didn't want to like you, but you're making it so hard when you give interviews like this. it doesn't hurt that you take pictures like this (please take the time to mention that midtown reunion - you know you want to):

lots of not-quite-love-or-even-complete-like-but-a-tolerable-amount-of-affection-nonetheless

rachel

to all the rest of you: 

exams are over. physics was a breeze. i'm going to reward myself by finishing my peppermint mocha, hopping on the treadmill (since my poor drink is chock full o' calories but having it made with skim milk is a travesty not to be considered), and then rereading good omens or listening to my brand new sherlock holmes audiobooks. i should probably hunt down a bag for s-la's prezzie, too. 

speaking of s-la, i'm headed over to her house for her birthday extravaganza (there are rumors of cheesecake varieties and pocahontas - i'm excited) later tonight, so maybe i'll blog again from there. if i can't be a travel blogger yet, i'll at least blog after i've traveled...three whole streets away from my house.

oh and i'm listening to steven by ke$ha. all her songs are so snickery. besides, she really is great workout music.

i'm actually going to miss exam week

now, i know what you're thinking. it probably goes a little something like this:

(let the drummer kick - citizen cope)

but gina's post got me thinking that she should get a label already. maybe it's just the nostalgia of these being (hopefully) the last exams i'll ever take in high school, but mid-terms this year were...easy. even the ones where my hand felt like it would fall off from the writing or my eyes went cross-eyed from staring at the calculator. more likely was that this is the first year i've actually studied/been prepared for all of my exams. whatever the reason, this week has been surprisingly fun. at the very least, i've liked getting out of school at 1:30 every day (and 11 today and tomorrow!).

also, i just got out of the shower after running errands and getting through a two hour treadmill/yoga/wii fit session. the highlights? 45 minutes on the treadmill! oh, and finally graduating out of 'unbalanced' on the wii fit. i refuse to disclose how long that was my classification, but...it was a while. oh, and i finally unlocked all the advanced levels on everything.

unfortunately, all that goodness came at a price. let me preface this by showing you what i normally work out in:

(teenagers - hayley williams)

now, that's not so bad, right? i'm sure all of you lounge around your houses or hit the gym in some variation of an outfit like this. shorts. overlarge t-shirt. these are normal articles of clothing! 

until you forget to change before running errands which include visiting the grocery store where approximately nine billion of your classmates work, the post office, and the leesburg baptist church to drop off papers for your mother. especially the baptist church. imagine walking into a church to drop off papers to the pastor dressed like this:

(straight to hell - the clash)

in conclusion, always leave a pair of sweatpants in your trunk - you never know when you'll need them. 

greetings from mount cyanide

exams went pretty well - after an all-night study binge, anyway. predictably, the lit exam left me feeling like my hand was about to fall off so after s-la and i went to cold stone - it was a redemptive sort of day, in that she redeemed her birthday ice cream and i used jeni's christmas gift card to buy two of the yummiest, most sugar-filled treats i've had since gingerbread time - i took a nice long nap. and by 'long', i mean i got hom earound 3:30 and woke up ten minutes ago.

trust me when i say my laziness knows no bounds.

in the last - oh, just about fourteen minutes - i've managed to reheat and eat two slices of pizza (why, yes, i am feeling healthy today) pull out an old book and curl up on my couch beneath my giant, fluffy purple throw. today's agenda? rereading my way through betsy-tacy, jane eyre, and maybe some t. s. eliot or thomas hardy - one of the latter's poems was on my lit midterm and gave me an itchy feeling to read some more. if i'm still awake after all that, i think i'll continue writing. it's fun to have a story that won't be told until i'm physically typing it out - most of the time i can play the whole thing out in my head and not have to worry about actually writing it.

before i do all that, though, we have three very important things to get through: the daily show, the colbert report, and american idol. i might have to turn idol off when the jonas comes on, though. i'm not sure how i feel about him thinking he can judge other musicians, no matter how crappy.

what am i listening to right now? it's looping between daisy and degausser by brand new. they, along with jesus christ which just doesn't fit my mood right now, are my favorites by them.

also, this may be one of the cutest animals on earth. according to cuteoverload it's called a dik-dik after the noise it makes when it runs, and it's native to africa. according to wikipedia, it's a grazer. feel free to go aww and make smooshy faces at your computer screen:

for those of you wanting a real blog post

lit and calc tomorrow. been studying all day, with breaks for idol and food. commentary will follow eventually.

now listening to: josie by blink-182. it's been a j kind of day, musically speaking. i don't know why, i just felt like skipping to the j section of my itunes and hitting shuffle. highlights? jesus christ by brand new, jack's lament by danny elfman (all caps are just not gonna happen, danny boy), jolene by ray lamontagne, the jokes with guitar by demetri martin (who's coming back to comedy central soon!), juicy by better than ezra, jumper by third eye blind, and je dis aime by -m-. j songs are pretty good, i'm thinking. also, when combined, they made one weird study playlist.

does anyone else study with music? i'm finding that it helps a lot. like, when i'm going over notes i usually end up remembering whatever was on them to the tune of the song that was playing when i studied them. like in this morning's econ exam, i remembered the definition of economies and diseconomies of scale to ellie goulding's the writer. and the whole slew of tiny formulas for total revenue and average total cost and marginal revenue and cost and all the rest of them were memorized to the tune of grandma got run over by a reindeer (oh, itunes shuffle, never quit on me, k?).

oh, and before i wrap this post up, s-la, this is for you. and it is not a cover song and you should've known better, notey jr. and i are highly disappointed in you.

i should've just stuck to tumblr

i don't even know, okay? i'm just sick of studying and i really love find the cost of freedom. also, this vid brings back the good ole apush outlining days.

random fact: i'm listening to my hippies playlist and suddenly wishing it was summer and we could have sit ins. and yes, yes, i know there are plenty of things to protest and that being anti-establishment is kind of ridiculous unless you know why you've got that viewpoint and aren't just following the pot-smoking herd, but...i really wish i'd been around for the sixties. or that someone would hurry up with that time machine.

did anyone else watch this show?

i used to watch it all the time, but no one else seems to have heard of it. i forgot about it until i went back to distraction-googling to avoid studying.

i don't even know

i probably shouldn't find this picture amusing. i do anyway. moving on, my saturday has been an exciting mix of studying econ, studying calc, studying physics, and - you guessed it - more studying.

since that's all too boring to blog about, i'll just share some of the things that the interwebs invented to distract me from all of that studying.

1. oh, zooey deschanel, never change:

2. first person tetris

3.  3OH!3's new song off tim burton's alice in wonderland soundtrack premiered today. it actually doesn't suck.

4. pretty much does what it says on the tin. or, you know, web address bar. 

5. the old foodie

6. okay, so this one isn't necessarily an internet-related distraction, but it does exist on the internet, so i'll still include it. i finished rereading pride and prejudice and moved onto...idk click the link. and then read it because it is awesome.

blogging from the phone

now listening to:

approach the throne - clues

redundancy is redundant

today i:

1. visited meggo and got bonus jenibean
2. changed into pajamas 
3. went grocery shopping with the momster...in said pajamas
4. all of the above

i think we all know the right answer here. clearly it was all of the above. i'm pretty tired and have my lit multiple choice exam to study for, so this'll be a short post.

i've been out of shampoo and conditioner for most of this week. sadly, i kept forgetting that when i got in the shower and would have to perform a wet and wild naked run to the momster's bathroom to steal hers. well, there was a towel involved, but that's seriously no help at all when it comes to the whole wind chill effect. so when the momster asked if i wanted to go to harris teeter with her, i said yes and hopped in the car - still in my pajamas.

now, they're pretty cute pjs - purple and black plaid flannel bottoms and my r t-shirt from the senior panorama picture - so i didn't feel that bad about being in the grocery store with them, even if it was a little awkward since i recognized most of the baggers and cashiers. so i ignored my slightly inappropriate grocery shopping attire and went about making my all-important shampoo, conditioner, and mysterious birthday supply purchases.

let me rephrase that - by 'purchase' i mean 'scooped up all this stuff i wasn't paying for and went in search of the momster and her cart'. while on said search, i ended up in one of those four-cart pileups in the middle of the candy/school supply/hosiery/foot fungal cream aisle (which, by the way, who came up with that shelving system?). you know the kind i'm talking about - four middle-aged ladies pushing carts piled sky-high with ragu and three dollar store brand cereal get into a passive-aggressive stare-off over who gets to make it through the aisle first, with a couple of loners (i.e., me) trying to figure out a way to edge around them without being trampled.

in the midst of the four-way stare-off, one of the women turned to me, did a double take, and said with exceeding slowness and care, as if i must be mentally deficient, "you're wearing pajamas and your shirt has a giant r on it. did you know?"

no. no, i didn't know what i was wearing. i am one of those unfortunate people who can't afford to pay their electric bill and had to get dressed in the dark today. oh, or maybe i'm just an incredibly functional blind person - i don't have a seeing eye dog because i just use a combination of echolocation and the sonar app on my phone to find my way around.

now, here's the part in the story where you shake your head and go, "oh, rachel." i will admit to unleashing a veritable torrent of bitchery. she deserved it, okay?

...well, maybe she deserved a little, but i probably should have stopped when my mother wheeled the cart up and looked impressed with me. the momster. she who once made a south carolina police officer cry when she was the one who'd been pulled over for speeding. the momster was impressed with my bitchery.

i'm thinking i should've taken that as a sign to, you know, stop the snippy comments. i didn't, though, with the end result that i'm now probably feared in the brambleton harris teeter. i'll be the new version of the chupacabra or however you spell it. or maybe the boogie man, that sounds cooler.

besides, if i have to suffer through the misery of upcoming exams, everyone else should have to suffer too.

i'm listening to today was a fairytale by taytay. the irony hasn't escaped me.

on the phone with the jenibean now. here, check this out, i found this when i was cleaning out my pictures folder and it made me laugh:

writer's block is god's way of making pms last all month long

you know how some of you have depressed alter-egos? depressteffi and depresseni and my-name-is-multiple-personality-hear-me-roar, or what have you.

well, i don't.

and for a little while there i tried to think of one or pinpoint the moment depressedrachel showed up but then i realized that it was never going to happen. mostly, because depressedrachel? she's my default state. it's like there's this undercurrent of fearworryparanoia in everything i do and say. an undercurrent that's a little more prominent today.

there's no real reason for it either. nothing particularly bad happened. and i have my whinier moments, but it's not like my life is completely horrible. my brain's still on when everything else is off. and it's going: you will try and try and always fail. it's going: give up now, in the style of bitchy fortune cookies everywhere. mostly it's going: why can't you do any better? there's kids writing books and founding businesses and curing cancer right now. hurry up. 

pressure is a ticking clock, is an empty page, is the thousand and one ideas you can't articulate and the words flying through your head like birds on the wind.

i'm tired. this is unedited and i'm ignoring the little red lines that safari's putting up under my typos. i think i'm going to watch a little comedy central to cheer myself up. south park's still on.

i read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. 

all my problems are solved

(i'm waiting for the man - the velvet underground)

the phone is dead (so is my brain). it's time to recharge and hop back on the ole homeworking horse, i guess. oh, i just know i'm mixing my metaphors dreadfully right now (refer back to the first sentence of this post, if you please). jane austen makes me want to be british. barbara kingsolver mostly makes me happy i'm not white, male, or a baptist preacher. thanks, babs.

and we thought our dreams were weird

la lala la

did you know that barbara kingsolver researched for twenty years before finishing the poisonwood bible? that's a pretty daunting number. so is 433. as in 4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence. this was a buzzer club question a few weeks ago - none of us knew the answer. it popped up on a blog i follow today and i thought i'd share the link with you.

(heartless (kanye west cover) - the fray)

yesterday was fun. it probably shouldn't have been since now i have a ton of homework to finish before tomorrow, but i don't really regret it. i should probably get over this whole procrastinating thing before college.

speaking of college, what's with all of the tiny schools no one's ever heard of still sending application emails? deadlines have passed and i'm clearly not interested. i still don't know how exactly they all got my email (i never checked that box on the sat that says it's okay for collegeboard to send out your information) but it's really annoying. i hate that i can't check my email without deleting thirty billion college emails first.

(stateline - butch walker)

this poem has been on my mind lately. i've always been a big dylan thomas fan, but i always stayed closer to refusal to mourn the death of a child by fire in london and things of that sort than poems like this. i suppose it's because when i first started reading his poetry i thought this was more literal than the others. and, like all little teenies making their first forays unaccompanied into the wide world of poetry, i was in search of something a little more ephemeral. it's always more gratifying to one's own ego to try and wrestle with the 'big' topics and forget that, to quote l. m. montgomery (again), 'all things great are wound up with all things little'.

(the little things - colbie caillat)

i've managed to work out some this weekend, but i'm thinking the bulk of getting back into shape is going to have to wait until after midterms. sadly, i can only study (or read, for that matter) when i'm munching on something. let's face it - i'm a grazer. and it is horrifyingly easy to go through an entire pint of ice cream while reviewing econ. at least the shape of the output and total revenue curves of a firm in the short-term will always be grouped together with the taste of half-baked ice cream. i just hope my stomach doesn't pull that embarrassing grr-argh-i-am-godzilla-feed-me routine during the exam. those things are long and we can't even eat in that classroom because of some stupid kid with peanut allergies. in other words, i won't even be able to have breakfast/graze during the two hour long economics exam.

if i had a kid who has one of those obnoxious food-in-class-preventing allergies, i'd at least have the decency to home school it so the other kids didn't have to suffer. geez (oh man).

(typical - mutemath)

anyway, here's your poisonwood quote of the day. i've been picking these by random - letting the book fall open and typing whatever i highlighted in round one, which was the fun stuff, not the colonialism or adah-related quotes. today's quote could kind of fall under any of those topics, though, so i guess you lucked out:

s(a)tu(r)d(a)y

so my today was eventful...not. ha, sorry, i was feeling pretty nineties today.

(all the small things - blink-182)

it started with breakfast. breakfast, in this case, took place around noon and involved a quick trip to the drive-thru starbucks in ashburn. in my hot pink, hello kitty pajamas. unfortunately the drive-thru was closed and i had to get out of the car to get my caffeine fix. in my hot pink, hello kitty pajamas.

listen, kids, this is why you should just say no when someone offers you coffee. addiction is not the way, it leads to all sorts of unspeakable horrors and humiliations. also, you spend a lot of time on the treadmill working off those darn empty calories.

(a funny thing - penguin prison)

anyway, after that we went to the post office and sent some stuff off to various relatives with birthdays this month and to the momster's mysterious work-related people. while leaving the parking lot, i had time to realize my dog really is the cutest creature in existence. just look at his little face! and his smooshy little nose!

(come save - sarah reeves)

after that i got down to work. i've made a good dent in my giant AP lit exam review packet and made some calc formula flashcards. luckily we're getting a formula sheet for the physics test, so i don't have to worry about that. i finally printed out the eleventy billion and one pages of review packets my english teacher put online, too, and started reading them over. it was pretty boring, so i was pretty happy when the momster brought down the lovely bowl of chopped cherries and cookie dough ice cream pictured above as a mid-studying snack. clearly that whole 'get fit in the new year' resolution can be deferred to february.

(breakin' - the all-american rejects)

i snacked, then studied a little more, and finally gave up and started rereading the poisonwood bible again. i know, i know. it's probably not necessary. i rationalized it to myself by figuring that i'd be so familiar with this book come exam time that all the essays would be a breeze. i'll just write about nothing but poisonwood, who needs those other three books?

anyway, by now my copy of the book looks like one giant block of highlighting. see, on the first few rereads, i just highlighted the parts that made me laugh or seemed important. since then i've been highlighting the bits that talk about colonialism or adah's character, but it's all been with the same highlighter, so you get pages that look like the one in the picture. one of these days i'll learn to color code.

at least it was fun to go through and see all the things i highlighted on my first reread. here's one of my favorites:

"With all due respect," my father said, "this is not the time or the place for that kind of business. Why don't you sit down now, and announce your plans after I've finished with the sermon? Church is not the place to vote anyone in or out of public office."

"Church is the place for it," said Tata Ndu. "Ici, maintenant, we are making a vote for Jesus Christ in the office of personal God, Kilanga village."

Father did not move for several seconds. 

Tata Ndu looked at him quizzically. "Forgive me, I wonder if I have paralyzed you?"

- Leah Price, The Poisonwood Bible 

tgif.

i felt the strongest urge to being this post with 'so'. having realized that i begin too many sentences like that already, i resisted the urge. it was painful.

after being possibly the last person in the universe to see avatar, i've now managed to see it twice in one week. s-la's review pretty much hit any points i could've made about the movie, so i won't bother with that. the only thing i have to say is something most of you probably already knew: the momster is a sadist. by the time momster-daughter movie night rolled around yesterday we'd already seen everything decent, so it was a toss-up between alvin: the squeaquel and avatar, and we went with the latter because, apparently, 'it's so funny watching you get all worked up over the sad parts'. gee, thanks.

(diamonds on the soles of her shoes - paul simon)

quote of the day: "i always knew that washington was full of lies. did you know that the air & space museum was actually full of things?"

- Stephen Colbert

i'm watching the colbert report right now. in other words, i came home just in time for it. why, yes, i am that cool. i was out earlier looking for more tights (unfortunately, my legs have decided to follow jeni's example of pantslessness. clearly i can't be held responsible for their unruly behavior). i got tights and leggings in red and blue and green and black. no purple, though. the only pairs left were in terrible shades like lavender (the redheaded stepchild of the violet family) or mediums. you can imagine my disappointment.

(voyeur - blink-182)

(in for the kill - la roux)

so exams start soon. i'm taking this weekend to study, which is probably going to end in disaster since i am usually pretty bad at it. i know, i know, you're thinking 'how can someone be bad at studying?' i don't really know - it's just that i either understand something right away or i'll never get it. but i heard an interesting study technique in english today that i want to try out: bringing all your notes to a coffee shop and just talking over everything with a buddy. since we all know that i love to talk, this is probably going to be the study method for me. anyone want to join in?

(oops i did it again - britney spears)

the poisonwood bible is taking over my brain. i started another reread after my physics test just because i was bored and s-la got Notey back today. rory gilmore approves:

i feel like do that rory gilmore book challenge that was floating around the internet back when gilmore girls was still on the air. i think i'll have to wait until second semester or summer, since it's pretty long. oh, school, you just go out of your way to ruin my life, huh?

that's all for this post. also, i just realized that this playlist probably looks a little schizophrenic to most of you. er, my itunes apologizes?

(you and i - ingrid michaelson)

...okay, i lied. this was just too cute not to include:

picking up where we left off, or a post in three parts

part the first: idol.

(tv family - the rocket summer)

the good: simon and kara and posh.
the bad: recognizing the beegees song which played during the auditions. oh, mother, will you never stop ruining my life?

part the second: they call me ishmael rae rae rachel.
(our life is not a movie or maybe - okkervil river)

"That's a lovely idea, Diana," said Anne enthusiastically. "Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with . . . making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself."

- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

aren't names strange? think about it - everything we are and were and will be, all summed up in two or three words. in the course of my admittedly short life i've wished to be called violet, cordelia, ray (or rae), princess serena/sailor moon, and, according to the endlessly amusing shameful second grade journal i found a short time ago, lulu. yes, like that lulu. at least the origins or her name aren't so mysterious. i always did wonder how we went from calling her chocolate chip to lulu.

i am feeling distinctly poisonwoody today. and, yes, i am perfectly aware that poisonwoody isn't an adjective. it's a noun, referring to a state of being in which one's mind has been invaded by the spirit of vengeful AP literature teachers who have assigned piles and piles of novel-related homework. to take the positive view of things, at least it's only the homework and not the actual class that's painful. my discussion group is focused on adah, who was my favorite. even though i'm finally learning to appreciate rachel, i don't think i would have been able to cope with discussing her in class - how would i know if someone was talking about me instead of the character? i tell you, sharing a name with a main character in english class is hard work. i think all english classes should only read books about people named karrenhapuch or hermione or aya.

part the third: them furry doggies and other random thoughts.
(passed your place, saw your car, thought of you - butch walker)

in no particular order, these are some of today's most random thoughts, which were considered too off topic to be enshrined in Notey the Second (s-la is a slacker who has yet to mention Notey the First's retirement):

1. do you ever feel like your dogs are the cutest in the whole world? like, you know that you're probably biased, since other people clearly are when they're talking about their dogs being the cutest creatures in existence, but then you look at their fuzzy little faces and think 'but my dog, now - my dog's special'. 
2. i really want to sit all those nerds who dress in too many layers of hot topic and spend all their free time watching anime and playing video games down and impart a Very Important Life Lesson to them: doing those things doesn't make you unique, or witty, or interesting. it makes you just like every other nerd doing those exact same things. quit trying to pretend you're a special little snowflake or you're super misunderstood. 
3. i'm wearing pants and even though there are giant holes in the knees, it's just weird. i'm thinking it'll be tights and a dress or sweats tomorrow. 
4. it's time to repaint my nails. i really want to use one of the colors from that stupid nail polish names blog. too bad i don't know where to find any of them. 

i miss paula

idol's on.

i'm sure you've been waiting for this (with bated breath and quivering lips)

(can you guess why i used this picture?)

today's post is going to be a little different. instead of throwing in a paragraph about what i'm listening to and why i'm listening to it at the end of the post, i put my itunes on shuffle and am going to include whatever comes on during this post. i think it'd be pretty interesting if you could figure out why i like certain songs or artists. even if you know me, i think there'll be a few surprises.

(shoot your gun - the 20-20s)

so remember when i was excited about finishing the yearbook spreads due before break? or how i thought that meeting this deadline would be easy to meet because cory, gina, and i only had one spread due?

yeah, i was wrong.

(shadowfeet - brooke fraser)

it turns out that when you have a spread on activities that happen before school, getting pictures and interviews for said activities has to happen...before school. that time when you have to wake up early. and not forget your homework in the kitchen and turn around on three minutes from hay road to go back and get it. and remember to check out cameras the day before you show up at 8:30 to take pictures.

now, i know what you're all thinking. it probably goes something like this:

but gina and i honestly didn't think it would be this hard to coordinate everything. so far this one spread has required more crazed text messages, preplanning, and actual effort than the last four did. combined. (i do believe in italics! i do, i do!)

our infographic ideas for it are pretty awesome, though, so hopefully the result will be proportional to the effort placed in it. and even if it isn't, gina's layout design for the spread is one of my favorites, so maybe people will just be happy with that and not bother reading/looking at the infographics.

(bottle it up - sara bareilles)

oh, and i'm thinking it's time gina got her own label. i don't know what yet, though. it took me forever to find the post i linked to at the beginning because it didn't have a yearbook label, so i went through and labelled everything properly. i'd be kind of sad to have to go through and label all the gina posts, but i suppose one must suffer in the name of organization. besides, i've actually finished my homework before midnight - how better to celebrate than by blogging and catching up on all my recorded shows and movies?

yeah, i know. my life: it's boring.

(when doves cry (cover) - damien rice)

speaking of shows i've recorded, the new episode of make it or break it on abc family is at the head of the queue. go ahead and judge me, since i freely admit that my favorite television shows are the most ridiculous. proof? i watch jersey shore. apparently the rolling stone staff does, too, which is the justification i use whenever someone tries to call me on it. however, i will never, ever (and you can quote me on that, mr. frost) watch the secret life of the american teenager. just hearing people try to describe the plot to me makes me want to wash my brain out.

(amon hen - howard shore)

i did record last night's premiere of chuck, though. i've heard enough people tell me about how wonderful it's supposed to be that i couldn't resist.

of course, now that i've said that, i'm going to watch it and be hopelessly disappointed. such is life, right? although i'm thinking it's a good sign that the cast is so pretty and the episode opened with a flashback. it makes things easier to underst- holy james bond briefcase, batman. the scene with the television started out funny and has turned interesting. although i would really hate to have scenes relating to george bush flash through my mind every time i turned on the news.

(better off dancing - the donnas)

(kerosene - miranda lambert)

i'd blog more but my day was pretty boring. school. learning (of a sort). homework. as per usual, i felt like the AP government vocabulary was a slight to the collective intelligence of the senior class. half of the terms overlapped with terms from the last quarter of apush - do teacher's really assume our attention spans are that short? are our brains supposed to auto-erase knowledge after a span of six months? i just set my email account to do that - yay auto-emptying trash and spam boxes! - but i don't think it's possible to recreate the effect in my mind. oh, and the other half of the terms could be defined using common sense and a basic knowledge of current events (CIA? cold war? gee, what's next, "define: president"?)

(slow dance - senses fail)

okay, this post has dragged on forever. i'd like to say this is proof of my ability to write about any topic however uninteresting (in other words, my 'blogging is an academic exercise' essay for random scholarships fastweb likes to email me), but we all know that it really just shows how much i excel at bullshitting.

i'm going to drag this on just a little bit longer to impart one last bit of news. i hit the ten thousand mark on itunes today. actually, that was a lie. i bought my ten thousandth song last night but then i had to go through my library and cull the songs i no longer like/see myself listening to. i thought i'd pass my excitement on to you: if you guess what songs 10,000 - 10,009 were (well, the album or artist, anyway) you get to pick the topic of my next post. i'll even pull a j. k. rowling (oh, how i miss her, i wish she'd write something new) and give you a hint: RDJ.

(sons & daughters - the decemberists)

oh, and excluding the length of this post, how do we feel about the new format? keep the shuffle songs or go back to the original here's-your-giant-run-on-sentence-of-music-go-ahead-and-skip-it-steffi paragraphs?

(dramamine - modest mouse)

this is the last thing. really: the cast of chuck has its own car commercial! with ipods! and they're adorable! i need to download seasons 1 & 2.

let's all take a moment to be utterly horrified

You know how people are always getting on television to talk about what's wrong with the world today? Well, I've just put them out of a job because this, this is it.

Stay tuned for a real blog in about an hour. I decided to take a break from my googling for gov terms to share my disgust.

"stay yet, illusion, stay a while"

i reread marmion today. i did a few other things, too, homework being chief among them, but this was easily my favorite activity. oh, i can't reread it without being warmed by the names of 'the mightiest chiefs of british song'. i will confess to being unimpressed by ivanhoe - hey, i'm a child of the 90s, okay? i expect my medieval stories to have a little more action and a little less 'rebecca the jewess' - but marmion never fails to make me thrill all over, as anne shirley might have said.

in case you couldn't tell, i'm in a distinctly literary sort of mood. blame my lit homework. i've been rereading the book of genesis in poisonwood for references to colonialism. you're all highly imaginative, i'm sure you can figure out how fun that must have been.

never mind. i just got linked to this in my email and my literary frame of mind has been entirely dispelled. look at the seal's little face! and the happy frolicking penguins! it's like happy feet came to life and this is the post-production cast party. all the pretentious lead actor/director/executive producer penguins are out of frame, though - they didn't want to be caught on film drinking champagne and consorting with that ridiculous seal.

so i'm watching harry potter and the goblet of fire right now (although 'watching' is a rather loose term for it - one could just as easily argue that the tv is on in the background and i'm paying attention to every sixteenth scene which plays) and have reached two conclusions:

1. rita skeeter is one fierce bitch. she and lady gaga would probably get along famously. also, her glasses make my day and i want a pair just like them. 
2. robert pattinson was actually mildly attractive at one point in his life. i suppose all the blame for his subsequent uglification rests directly on the shoulders of stephenie meyer. i wonder how she sleeps at night. oh, right - by having creepy dreams about sparkly teenagers getting it on in a meadow.

in music news, i'm currently listening to mowgli's road by mariana and the diamonds. it, like everything else she does, is fabulous. i finally listened through nme's radar 2010 mixtape (it's available for free download here), paying especial attention to obsession by mariana and the diamonds since i already liked her music and it'd just been posted on another blog i follow as part of a playlist. in other words, i had high expectations of the song and wouldn't have been all that surprised if it failed to live up to them.

it just cracked my top fifty on itunes with 96 plays. in other words, go listen to it. i've even put it on the bloglist just so it'd be easier to find, so no excuses, okay?

to round up all mentions of anything remotely music-related (you can come out now, s-la) this makes me both sad and gleeful. sad for the obvious reasons of "ew, plagiarism", and gleeful because now i have a comeback for when people go 'you don't like owl city? wtf is wrong with you?'. oh, and i've been looking for a reason to use the word gleeful today.

i still have homework to finish up, so i think this post is going to be a little shorter than normal. i was going to blog about this, but i think i'll just let you read the book for yourself and draw your own conclusions. i found it pretty interesting.

my day without caffeine

this picture is pretty hilarious, but it also sums up my day kind of perfectly. that black sign with the lovely inspirational message (oh, old testament, how you slay me) was my morning. my morning without caffeine. we ran out of soda and i missed coffee since i was in detention/hell. after that (and my nap) things started looking up when the momster picked up more caffeinated everythings at costco today. it was warm and we didn't feel like waiting for takeout to arrive so we stopped by wendy's on the way home. unfortunately wendy's is right next to the drive-thru starbucks in ashburn. which is where the happy, uplifting 'haha all the bad parts of today were just a joke' part came in:

but decisions? however was i going to make them? after all, i'm a libra, i can't be expected to know my own mind. eventually i decided to go with the diet soda and slap The Drink in the freezer so it wouldn't get all melty and disgusting. and then i hopped on the treadmill for an hour and a half to make up for the sudden influx of calories, with the uplifting thought of a Frapp At The End Of The Tunnel/Mile to look forward to. (in other news: 6:58 mile! how? i have no idea. seriously, i never run for speed on a treadmill, but man oh man was it rewarding to see it all lit up. but then i had to slow down and pace myself for the rest of my hour and a half and that was hard, so i think i'll stick to slow and steady from now on).

i'm tucking into my frapp now, and feeling extremely well-rested and healthy and other fit magazine adjectives - for some reason one of those was in the car this morning. neither the momster nor i reads it. we figure the car fairies left it for us as a gentle hint to get our butts in shape.

we got to play/have lunch in alexandria today. i found a likely looking thrift store but didn't go in - the momster does not approve of secondhand clothes and refuses to go in with me. also, i just typed the last two paragraphs without looking at the computer screen and had fewer typos than i normally do, which just goes to prove this theory i have that most of my typos are a result of second guessing myself and going 'no that can't be right' and changing it, only to have the little red line pop up under the word in safari.

oh, and there's this:

plenty of people have already reviewed it (and they're professionals, so their opinions are both more annoying and eloquently phrased) so i won't bother. all i can say is this song makes me feel like summer. don't you just want sunshine and bare feet in the grass and car rides with the top down and your hair flying around your face? because i do. i was kind of bitter at the time, but now i'm glad my poisonwood bible project topic isn't the natural world because i'd probably just end up making a mix or a music video of animal collective songs and failing. somehow i don't think my teacher would be all that pleased with a justification of 'but they make me feel like doing nature dances and becoming a hippie or turning into a sprite or a tree or a wood nymph' in lieu of a real project. darn it.

don't you know your bed awaits and now it's time for sleeping?

so i've come to the conclusion that i don't need an Indie Music Friend after all. don't get me wrong - i definitely wouldn't mind one. it's that it i don't think having one is essential to the overall health and well-being of eve the ipod or my itunes library.

now, i've been filling this blog for months with tales of my epic longing for an Indie Music Friend so you might be wondering what's wrought this sudden change. well, it's pretty simple - after seventeen years (give or take a few when i was still learning how to walk & talk &c.) of using the computer i have finally figured out how to work the interwebs. you can translate that from rachel-to-english and read it as: spoon's new album transference leaked and i have a copy. man oh man!

i've been listening to it for half the night now. it's pretty awesome. i'm going to get some sleep - after all, it wouldn't do to be late to saturday school when i'm going because i was late - but right now i'm listening to goodnight laura. i'm hoping it'll inspire me to sleep.

i want it all

...but perhaps not right now. nevertheless, here's the top three things i've been drooling over, brought to you via the intertubes.

1. remember my kitty fixation? it's back:

2. this scale:

3. a new cam cam

in less greedy news, i'm listening to believing is art by spoon. i just finished watching viva las vegas - it was elvis day on tcm. i remembered to record speedway but not blue hawaii and the momster was the one who recorded viva las vegas for me. oh well, at least i've still got another hour and a half or so of elvis to look forward to tomorrow.

random thought: ann-margret's wardrobe in viva las vegas makes me want to go shopping. i'm feeling the urge for a-line skirts and sleeveless dresses. i think i'm going to add a 'vintage/thrift store shopping buddy' to the list of friends i need to make. he/she (it can be a he! that way i'd be getting a gay bff and a vintage shopping buddy all in one go...two birds, one stone, etc.) might even be higher than the indie music buddy, since i'm getting pretty good at finding stuff in the interwebs - helped in large part by after the show and the 405 - but not so good at going to thrift stores by myself.

hmm, that's all for now. i guess i'll go back to writing.

"please don't say cahoots anymore, it's disturbing."

long time no see, blogger. a long time for us, anyway. homework and inevitable sleep-marathons brought on by chronic insomnia contrived to separate us last night.

we had a two hour delay this morning because of the snow. i was pretty annoyed, actually, since that meant i had to wait til 2:50 to leave. at least we've worked it out in gov so that the next time we have a delay we'll have d lunch and be able to leave at 2:20, which is a little bit better. still - delays. blegh.

i'm rereading poisonwood, this time for references to colonialism. i'm actually pretty excited for my lit project - after all, colonialism. i'm sensing an opportunity to take tons of pretty pictures and maybe even trek to williamsburg and get some re-enactors to post for me. also, on a fourth (fifth? i don't even know any more, but the first time i read it was the summer before sophomore year) reread rachel is somewhat more tolerable. at the very least i can now appreciate the inadvertent hilarity of her perspective. man oh man!

i'm forcing myself to take the writing of Untitled Book slowly. when i binge-write my writing usually takes a hit in quality, so slow. slow and steady wins the race against that darn rabbit. i'm not entirely sure why one would race a rabbit in the first place, but i mean for my book to win the race anyway.

the gilmore girls episode where paris loses her editorship of the yale daily news and rory takes over is on right now. it's on my favorite scene right now. i'd describe it for you, but i think it'd be better for all of us if you just watched it instead:

to all of you who've never seen this show - start watching. aren't you feeling inspired now?

i'm thinking of reorganizing the communist book collective. i really want to read st. augustine's the city of god, but i don't feel like i'll understand it completely unless i have someone to talk it over with and make me read it slowly. anyone in? as communists we are welcoming of all new readers.

oh, and i'm listening to lisztomania by phoenix.

this just deserves its own post

you waited since lunch (it all comes at once)

i had a plan for this post but it got derailed by gabe saporta posting this:

please tell me this means there's a midtown reunion show in the works. i can hope, right?

in other news, i've finished listening through my preorder of ke$ha's new album. conclusions: she does fun, dance-y, mildly obnoxious songs perfectly. i've got a new treadmill playlist filled with nothing but her new releases and demos. there's a couple of times where she tries to be comparatively serious - "dancing with tears in my eyes" & "hangover" - and it just doesn't work. i mean, this is the girl who sings about wanting someone to put a little love in her glove box.

just to get all the music-related news out of the way, i'm listening to the vampire weekend's new album contra. it's amazing. my current favorite song is white sky. hence the title of this post. oh, and i'm currently listening to diplomat's son off the same album.

now, onto the most depressing part of the day - and also the reason i didn't blog yesterday.

still confused? well, here's the whole story. i stayed up all night on sunday. i came home from school on monday and took a three hour nap. and then i stayed up all night again doing homework. so, naturally, tuesday called for a long-overdue bout of power-napping. except i actually got about four hours of sleep since i still had - you guessed it - more homework.

most you already know this, but i'll point it out anyway. i am not a morning person. i'm even less of one when i've had, at most, eight hours of sleep in three days. in other words, i woke up super late this morning. like 8:40 late. it was my first tardy since this but i still have saturday school. oh, and when i got to class i found out that we were having a free day in my econ class (first block). we could either do homework or watch up. i'm sure you can all imagine my bitterness - i wasted all my time yesterday doing homework. i got super-detention for doing my homework. and then i walk into an AP-class-turned-study-hall? i was pretty much seconds away from yelling the unabbreviated version of fml this morning. it didn't help that i had another free period in yearbook today. at least now i remember why procrastination is a girl's best friend. and enzo and a few other people i know are also stuck in saturday school as a result of chronic lateness, so i won't be alone. my bitterness is still unassuaged.

blogging from my neighbor's house, by the way. i'm babysitting until midnight. it's a good thing they live right next door. the youngest has an eight o'clock bedtime, so she's already in bed and the oldest decided to stay in his room and read - the third harry potter, apparently - until he has to go to sleep (nine), so all's well. i finished all my homework last night (just checked...still bitter) and all i have with me is my laptop, so i've been cleaning up my folders. so far i've freed up 42 GB by deleting old school projects. i've also done my routine itunes purge, clearing out any duplicates and songs i don't really like. down to 9457 now, but it leaves me feeling so happy to know that compy is all organized now. i'm gonna finish that up and check on kid #2 now.

let's just begin this post on a happy note

because you know that a first-monday-back-at-school-in-over-sixteen-days post will not be filled with many happymaking facts.

so, fact #1: i am actually ridiculously, unironically happy about the fact that i managed to discover - and fill my itunes top 25 - with bat for lashes and phoenix and the dirty projectors (although this one's only because of mark hoppus's music blog) long before pretentious indie music blogs started featuring them on their year-end roundups.

fact #2: the new blogger dashboard draft thing? is awesome. if i'd had my way if s-la hadn't made me get one of these things i'd still be on livejournal or tumblr, which are both much easier to use (and have communities for basically everything) so it's nice to see google catching up. you go blogger, coco.

fact #3: i've officially completed my reread of the poisonwood bible, just in time for class tomorrow. that makes the fourth time i've read it. the multiple points of view are still so well done as to make you feel you fail at life and/or writing. rachel is sadly still a moron. i foresee this being a fun unit in lit.

oh, and the best news of all? i've got a full scholarship to my preferred tiny safety school. which is, you know, exciting. at the very least i'm no longer feeling super-stressed, so hopefully i'll actually be able to keep my new year's resolution of zen this year.

and now for the bad news:

this writing-a-story thing is highly complicated. i'm afraid i'm going to have to chop a good chunk of what i wrote during my all-night writing binge. i adore some bits of it but it just isn't doing anything to further the plot and if i keep it the pace will drag. oh well. i'm hoping after about fifteen years and compulsive rewriting this might actually turn out decently. like let-people-read-this decent, even. one can only hope.

i've updated the bloglist, too. it's tiny right now - a few of the most recent adds to the old one and two new songs. well, i'm not sure if they count as two separate songs since kid cudi's the prayer samples the funeral by band of horses. i love the original and the not-quite-a-remix, though, so they both went it. also - and you'll probably be able to tell this by the lyrics - both of those songs have been my theme for what little of The Book With No Name that i've written so far. oh and right now i'm listening to holdin' on together by phoenix.

ugh, i have to go back to my homework now. i'd rant about that, too, but gina and jenibean have both done a better job of that, so just read their posts instead.

here, i'll leave you with something vaguely inspirational. or i assume it's inspirational since when i look at it now i mostly just laugh uncontrollably, since when i was a tiny wee widdle emo rachel and had a myspace and a xanga and still had an aim screenname to post away messages to (oh, the bad old days) this was one of my deep and insightful posts. it's good to know that, no matter how old and grown up you may feel, some things never change: