slow night, so long

today's title is from kings of leon. it's one of the good songs from before they sold out and became all pearl jammy. is it sad that i preferred them as musicians when they were drunk, drugged up, and whoring themselves out around england? because i totally do - their music was just so much better then.

it has been a slow night (and day) though. i've mostly been doing homework and last-minute scholarship applications, with occasional breaks for snacking or running or heading down to the grocery store to buy more ice pops. i know, i know - my life. it's terribly exciting, right?

so i guess this post is going to be more of a link/picture/music post than anything else (since i'm doubting any of you wants to hear the story of the little old lady in line behind me at harris teeter and her conviction that the 'teevee', pronounced with extreme emphasis on the 'e' sound, lectured the cashier about the importance of triple-ply toilet paper).

to begin with, while googling around for reviews of the last and latest johnny cash album, i came across this and it made me smile. he was pretty awesome, right? which, naturally, leads into the beginning of my homework playlist: god's gonna cut you down.

i studied for calc a little, drafted my poisonwood essay, and then took a break to watch the unseen skins vignettes online and catch up on reading the music director's blog, now that i've watched all the way through the fourth season. among other things, i realized that eyes as candles by passion pit and dog days are over by florence and the machine were both used in one of my favorite episodes. in other words, they became songs two and three on today's playlist.

after skins, i finished studying for calc and started doing more scholarship applications. that got tedious fast, though, so eventually i wandered back to tumblr and found a pretty amazing this, which is stark sands' cover of outkast's hey ya. i thought it was so amazing that i wasted a good half hour of my day finding a download link for it - which, let me tell you, was not easy since it's not even available on itunes.

insert a break for ice pop shopping, showering, and dancing around the house to she's lost control by joy division and skream's 0800 dub. and, i'll admit that those songs don't really go together except for how much i love them both. that and you can't really listen to either of them without wanting to move.

then came a few hours of uninterrupted work, after which i rewarded myself for my wonderful display of concentration by looking at funny pictures:

then came dinner, catching up on my emails, and blog-reading (speaking of which, hannah got a blog, go follow her). i still haven't turned my phone back on, though. strangely enough, i've been enjoying the silence. 

so that was my day, as told by ginger through pictures, music, and occasional capital letter-free text. here's hoping tomorrow will be more interesting. and by 'more interesting' i mean 'interesting in a good way and not in an i-failed-calculus-and-forgot-my-lit-homework-on-the-kitchen-table way'. 

be like the squirrel, girl

today's title comes from little acorns by the white stripes. i love this song (and am listening to it right now). it's also my haircut theme song. i'd explain why, but you should really just listen to it.

anyway, my day started out pretty badly and has steadily gotten better. expect a giddy post at 11:59 about how i won the lottery or met daniel craig.

to begin with, i had to do all 91 of my government vocabulary words in econ and yearbook because. well, there is no good reason for it, i just forgot the list at school yesterday. oh, and our spreads were due in yearbook. and i had a giant government test.

those were all the bad things. the good? singing telegrams, especially watching teachers get them. finishing my homework and yearbook spread on time. realizing that the government test was insultingly easy and filling my free response answers with snarky comments and stick figure drawings. finishing highlighting quotations for my colonialism thread in the poisonwood bible.

oh, and i got a haircut.

you're totally expecting me to post a picture, i can tell. but i won't. why?

well, it all starts at 2:30 this afternoon. which, in case you were wondering, is when i got the text from the family i babysit for telling me they wouldn't be needing me after all. in other words, i'd cleared my entire evening for nothing. so, i did what any sensible person would - i went out for a haircut and pedicure session with the momster. also added in was eyebrow shaping, which - wow. no wonder hers always look perfect, the woman she uses is an artist. an artiste even, with all the silly french pretension that implies. she made the pain fun. and yes, i am aware of how crazy that sounds.

anyway, i went home with my newly short hair, and did what any sensible person would do after a few hours of self-pampering when faced with an empty house: i turned my music up loud, swiped some pore cleanser across my cheekbones like a linebacker, and held a pants-off dance off across my dining room floor. which eventually descended into a slightly more toned down night of blogging/texting/waiting for the half an hour required for pore cleanser to be on my face to elapse.

and then the doorbell rang.

i, expecting it to be the momster returning with snacks, cluelessly opened the door. only to be faced with Cute Boy. Cute Boy turned out to be the nephew of the people i babysit for, and came bearing an apology cake from his aunt for canceling on me on such short notice (apparently Cute Boy's family dropped in for a surprise visit). my reaction?

this:

like, i'm not even kidding. it was horrible. i hate my life, okay?

luckily things started looking up. mostly because of the bookstore, snacktime, and newly cleansed pores.

ETA: remember how i said i'd be posting around midnight with something awesome? well, i found it. enjoy:

a series of unfortunate events

and i don't even have the benefit of having my misfortunes narrated by lemony snicket. if i could just go through life with a snarky, possibly british author detailing my every move i have a feeling that i'd be a much better person. or at least a more self-aware one.

even if the one and only, most perfect ruler of the universe neil gaiman were narrating my life, today would still be enough to make me depressed. you see, a catastrophe has befallen me - a disaster, a calamity, un contretemps, and other-synonyms-for-Something-Really-Bad-which-i'm-too-lazy-to-look-up-on-thesaurus.com.

in other words, my ipod broke.

for those of you unfamiliar with her, this is ophelia the ipod, looking annoyed. i can only assume she's annoyed with me since there is no other reason why she refuses to turn on after a whole day of being charged while i was at school.

i am, as you can imagine, distraught. my suffering was only compounded by the momster refusing to drive to the apple store to get it fixed until this weekend. i will admit that i reacted poorly to this news (there was shouting...and stomping, slamming of doors, and pointed blasting of music through my subpar computer speakers to prove a point, mother. i'm beginning to suspect that i have a tendency to melodrama when i'm annoyed)

you may now be wondering how i can reflect on this calamity-catastrophe-contretemps so calmly. shouldn't i still be screaming and threatening to throw my life away and become a crack addict if my ipod doesn't magically resuscitate itself right now?

of course not. the momster's not even in the house anymore and it would be an utter waste to do all that yelling without an audience. also, she went grocery shopping and i'm very, very fond of whole fruit ice pops and pound cake, so she's temporarily forgiven.

in all seriousness, i calmed down once i realized that i still had my phone, which, once i removed all the apps, bookmarks, and about 90% of my contacts, can now hold around 3,000 songs.

so then came the tedious song-selection process - it's something i had to in a relatively calm state of mind. so, armed with my pound cake, coffee, and 100-calorie sandwich (i made it myself, though, so who knows if it really is or not), i got to work. the smart playlist that resulted is...interesting, to say the least.

and, in case you were wondering, i decided to exclude my favorite/most played artists and songs. if i'm going to be without an ipod for the next two weeks or so, i might as well spend it listening to relatively new songs, right?

oh, and just for kicks, this is the 100-calorie wondersandwich. i came up with it (and by 'came up with' i mean that i figured out how much of each ingredient to use so everything would total up to a hundred calories) over the weekend while i was trying to think of the perfect bite-sized snack food for when you're sick of junk food. enjoy yet another grainy iphone photo:

oh, and in case you were wondering, i'm listening to hometown glory by adele. i love this song, but the end of cassie's episode on skins made me start playing it on loop all day. 

never gave a thought to an honorable living

today's title comes from yeasayer's madder red. it's a great song, check it out.

remember how i've been worried about yearbook this week? our deadline is tomorrow, but i don't feel fussed anymore. to begin with, i managed to make my story a little better during early release today by getting the apples to apples table to give me better quotes about deadlines/college applications. s-la's was my favorite (and i'm sorry i spelled your name with a ph! i come to early release from a class with stephanie! it's hard to keep track of spellings when people never use your full name anyway). on a slightly related note, i would just like to inform Certain Persons that metal/screamo/doom metal is in no way related to the music i listen to. not even a little. my music (and all three thousand seventy-two genres which itunes tells me comprise it) refuses to associate with that sort of crap and would prefer to never be mentioned in relation to it ever again. especially since metal (excluding every time i die and slipknot) is the one genre i will never, ever listen to or like in any way.

after early release, gina and i stayed after school and worked on our spreads. it went a little like this. or this:

that's the art room (where the literary magazine meets), and i'm wearing one of the floral dresses i got with s-la. we spent a good fifteen minutes or so interviewing (i love interviewing yearbook and newspaper people - they always know how to give good quotes) and spinning around while standing atop chairs. it was pretty hard to get all the way around at first - i was mostly flapping my arms and looking silly until tori took pity on me and spun me. and then gina and i spun backwards around the room a few times since there was nothing else to really do.

this really is just the worst week for deadlines - there was a staff meeting today, so we couldn't get sholly to give us the keys to the camera room, and spring sports tryouts are this week, so cory couldn't stay after to help out. well, that and the 8492853 homework assignments and tests that all magically happened to fall within this oh-so-short five-day span.

in case you couldn't tell, i'm a little bitter. let's cheer ourselves up, okay?

and, my personal favorite:

it's getting tragic now

so today's post has actual points and topics and things, but i thought i'd just start off with a question. you know when you're dunking cookies in milk and the cookie breaks off and sinks to the bottom? yeah, that just happened to me. three times in a row. and the momster was just in the kitchen to give me a weird look for getting a fork out to fish my cookies off the bottom of the cup, so i think i'm going to have to resign myself to losing those three cookies forever. my woe, it's a tangible thing.

(standing in the way of control - fat segal)

topic the first: life sucks. then you go to yearbook. and slit your wrists. today was pretty awful as far as deadlines and homework are concerned. our yearbook spreads are due wednesday and gina and i have...nothing, actually. well, we have our stories (i finished mine today), but that's just about it. i have this prediction that most of this week is going to be spent on yearbook things. yippee.

(as serious as your life - four tet)

don't worry, this post has happy parts. like this:

this, in case you were wondering, is the cast of skins. it's a show on the e4 channel in england which the momster bought to cheer me up because operation: read instead was kind of killing me this weekend. it's not a show that would ever be on american television (and i do mean ever, since the fcc would possibly implode if it had to deal with the things this show gets up to), so i'm not counting it. don't judge me, i need some form of outlet.

(star guitar - the chemical brothers)

remember how i said that the secret life of the american whatever is the most unrealistic, pointless excuse for a television show i've ever seen? well, think of skins as the answer to it. they have real problems! and those problems aren't usually tidily resolved at the end of the episode! people screw up and are different and look healthy and...i love the british. i really do. everyone but steffi needs to start watching skins, like, right now. (s-la, sorry, but they're so far from g-rated that you'd be better off staying away)

(totally wired - the fall)

also, the music is awesome. i love that their music directors blog about their song choices - it makes finding things so much easier and the things they have to say are pretty interesting. i never really thought about why television shows use the music they do. actually, all the songs i listed today came from my brand new skins playlist. 

(up where we belong - joe cocker)

so that's all for today. i have to go do my lit, physics, and calc homework. what joy. 

desktops!

remember how i promised you a nice long blog post about yesterday? and i said i wouldn't keep posting pictures and music and random things?

well, i lied. i'm sure you're all surprised. i was kind of busy today, but most of my adventures can't be written up here (you'll probably hear about them anyway). there is one thing i can share, though - the momster's shiny computers inspired me to change my desktop and icons!

...yes, i really am lame enough to be excited about that. don't judge me. or do. it's only the internet.

here, take a look:

i'm particularly fond of the darth vader and r2d2 icons (preview and safari, respectively). i loaded in a bunch of goodies today. i'm still kind of sad that the lord of the rings icon set was only for windows users. my life just doesn't feel complete without having mordor/mount doom as my trashcan.

you know what else my life isn't complete without? television. i miss it so much. the only good thing that's come of all this is that i've been reading way more than before. hopefully i've been reading better, too. remember being a kid and reading things just for the 'story'? like, you thought the plot sounded cool (not that you even knew what plot meant) so you'd read the story mostly so you could pretend that you were in it. (well, maybe i was the only kid who did this, i don't know)

i had a really funny conversation with someone about not understanding people who don't reread books. the conversation in question was made even better by the girl standing behind us in line at the bookstore interrupting to tell us that she 'never rereads books, i don't see the point, it's not like the words, like, change, or something'. someone was obviously in academic english. doesn't it seem like books change every time you read them? even the so-called 'easy reads'. i've never reread a book without learning or noticing something new. and so i bring you, in more or less accurate order, my rereads of the week:

1.  the poisonwood bible. this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since we're still working with it in english and i have a giant project on it due in two weeks. 
2. jane eyre. i finally finished it (again!). i tried to draw it out as long as possible.
3. wide sargasso sea. which i prefer to pretend is unrelated to jane (and darling mr. rochester). 
4. moby dick. call me ishmael, kids. 

that's all for today. if you're really interested in what i'm listening to, scroll back up and take a closer look at that desktop image. or scroll down and look at yesterday's picture.

time has come today

it's been a long, long day. i'll give you the details tomorrow, but - well, time has come today has been my theme song of the day. that should tell you something.

i'm really just dead tired right now, so i'm going to do exactly what i said i wouldn't - today's blog will be oh-so-very picture-heavy. beginning with:

that last picture is probably my favorite. if i saw that when i drove - well, you probably wouldn't have to threaten/bribe me to get behind the wheel of a car. 

since this is going to be a short blog, i thought i'd share a random (rachel-related) fact of the day: the only thing i hate more than steak is seafood. this fact is actually not all that random, but you won't get to hear that story until tomorrow. 

i'm finishing this up with another picture and a challenge. every day i create a new on-the-go playlist to house all of the songs i feel like listening to while i'm at school, in the car, out and about, or just relaxing away from my computer; usually i delete it when i re-sync/charge my phone for the night, but every once in a while a playlist is so spot on or reflective of my mood that day that i save it. you've all probably guessed that that's what happened with today's playlist. so there's the picture (it's posted below), and here's the challenge: make your own playlist of the day and post it (or a link in the comments) and i'll try to guess why you picked the songs that you used. sound fun? yeah, i didn't think so, but do it anyway.

walked and crawled on six crooked highways

today's title is adapted from a hard rain's a-gonna fall by bob dylan. i've been loving my classic rock playlist today.

so day one of operation:read instead has been allowed me to realize that gandalf was right:

in other words, i've been attempting to study calculus and/or write my yearbook story for the last four hours. see gina's post for details.

don't worry, though, i've given up on my oh-so-brief attempt to be a decent student. i've more or less resigned myself to failing calculus - my highest calculus-related aspirations at the moment are to get a c and pass so i don't have to take the exam.

while i was in the library today, attempting to figure out my lit homework with helena and alina (oh, the rhymes), i realized something sort of disappointing - most people my age have vocabularies gleaned directly from the thesaurus app on their iphones. now, that's not to say that my vocabulary is Too Cool For School (and, yes, that phrase needs to be capitalized, it's just that awesome), but at least i make an effort. for example, i actually read the books we're assigned in english and i do not complain about the instructions on our homework assignments including too many 'big words' (the 'big word' in question was incredulity. as in: imagine my incredulity when i realized people that stupid actually exist)

(now playing: icky thump by the white stripes)

this blog has been pretty picture-heavy lately. now, part of the reason for that is that i had lots of time to stock up on amusing pictures during the snow week, but there's another reason: tumblr.

in case you missed the news, i started using my tumblr during winter break 2.0. and that's great - i have actual followers and everything (i'm one away from fifty followers; someone sign up and follow me, geez oh man) and i've missed how much easier it is to share things that i like (and god knows there's a lot of them) but i feel like this blog has been suffering as a result.

like, we all know that i have this tendency to obsess over things. i mean, there's a reason that ashlee simpson's song little miss obsessive is the twenty-first most played song in my itunes library. i can't help it if the lyrics speak to me! (okay, i've just been dying to write/say a sentence that pretentious - it's been a life-long goal) i've also got a healthy appreciation of good pop music, so that didn't hurt my love of the song one little bit.

(neon bible - arcade fire)

the song changing gave me time to realize that i'd started veering off onto a tangent. good work, arcade fire. 

anyway, what i'd been getting at (before ashlee simpson took over this post) was this: should i confine my obsessing to tumblr? should i go back to letting a little of it trickle over here? because my life, it's not even a little bit interesting except for the next thing that i'm about to post because it is hilarious

(time has come today - the chambers brothers)

today i'm bringing a new feature to this blog. it'll (hopefully) be a one-time only type of deal. let's just call it Texts You Don't Want To Get From A Friend While Standing Near A Family of Four In An Elevator:

friend: omg, i took a nap before going to work and i had a dream that i was having a threesome with freddie mercury and johnny weir.

me: wtf?

friend: brb, bleaching my brain out. it was so weird. johnny weir was straight.

 yeah, my reaction went a little like this:

and, oh hell, we'll throw in another picture or two just for kicks (after all, i need to free up hard drive space).

read instead.

in the interests of moral and intellectual improvement, i have given up watching tv for the next 40 days.

i'm a little worried, though. without the tv i'm going to miss gems like this:

and this:

and the show that inspired this (not even gonna lie, i totally still watch it when it's on and i'm actually awake on a saturday morning):

pity me. i'm trying to focus on the positive and am taking this as my motto, so hopefully this will all work out:

at least the internet and early release apples to apples will be around to keep me happy. s-la and i agreed that the helen keller card is clearly the holy grail of that game - it just applies to everything. she got the next best card today, though - adolf hitler. life, it's not fair.

on the plus side, i just realized that movies don't count. i'm thinking turner classic movie marathon with sarah (and her wonderful DVR) this weekend is in order. or maybe i'll just revisit the classics. and by the classics, i mean these movies:

although i'm definitely probably not watching them tonight. they're even longer than avatar, for one thing, and for another - well, i've got to actually read the gov chapter i just outlined. ugh, i hate reading quizzes. 

oh, and i'm listening to hey jude by the beatles. i don't care if you have (and better have) already heard it, go listen to it again. 

guess who's not doing her homework

if you guessed 'rachel' you'd be correct. actually, if you guessed any name at all you'd probably be right since there's gotta be at least one steffi/jeni/megan/shaniqua not doing homework right now.

(this picture never fails to make me laugh)

if you'd asked me a few minutes ago, my lack of productivity could have been blamed on the lofty, wholesome goal of... laziness. now, however, there is a more visible reason for my procrastination:

also, since somehow this was the most important element of my google picture post, i present the catholic cat choir:

happy watching, i'm off to continue not doing homework. also, gina got a tumblr, go follow it. 

edit:

oh god, i have a youtubing problem

dear world...

homework sucks. i really don't want to go back to school tomorrow, especially since i've somehow become nocturnal after not waking up before noon for the last week and a half.

on a happier note, i'm going to have, like, a four-hour day between the delay and d-lunch/early release. so i think i'll just pull an all-nighter, come home, and nap.

i'm listening to little lover's so polite by silversun pickups. it's pretty good.

i saw steffi did a post about twilight i thought i'd share something that made me laugh. i really hope google never reconsiders their search suggestions:

fifteen cans of spray paint in a chemical swirl

today's title is brought to you by Are You Fucking Kidding Me?, or four winds by bright eyes. get on with listening to it so i can start pimping another song to you.

in two minutes it's going to be valentine's day. it's a good thing i don't have class until tuesday (maybe later, if all that hoopla about snow on monday is true) because this would be something i'd do:

i actually left my house this weekend! it was exciting in the oh-so-pathetic way that an ordinarily boring trip to the mall always becomes after being snowed in for a week. and i bought things (i hope you're fist pumping like a champ for capitalism). here's a sampling of the things i got:

in case you couldn't tell, my shopping priorities are heavily skewed in favor of the printed word. and stephen colbert, who would like you all to know that he didn't write his book, he dictated it in a tape recorder to his agent. also i picked up two floral dresses, a really soft blazer, and this great slouchy, loose-collared cardigan (respective points of purchase: nordstrom, j. c. penny, and charlotte russe).

today's round-up of pictures are a little more political than usual (don't ask what i was googling, the answer will be even more boring than usual):

right now i'm listening to: ghost animals by foxy shazam

a heart just can't contain all of that empty space

the title of today's post is brought you by Why Haven't You Just Listened To The Damn Song Yet. alternatively, four winds by bright eyes.

in case you hadn't noticed, i drank a little of this today:

in other words, i wrote another poem (but it was too long to shoehorn into this post so scroll down to read it). today's post was also heavily injected with creativitea, but it requires some explanation.

i woke up this morning with my headphones wrapped around my neck. well, this is according to the momster, who came in to wake me up and ended up detangling me from said headphones while i continued to sleep. once convinced that i wasn't going to become a victim of Death By Headphone (so much less enjoyable than Death By Chocolate), she tried waking me up and apparently received a response of 'go away, ray lamontagne is singing me to sleep.'

she thinks this is endlessly funny; i see nothing wrong with it and wouldn't have mentioned it except that it inspired me to make:

a valentine's day mix

(or eight songs that turn rachel's eyes into hearts)

1. josie - blink-182 
2. i will keep the bad things from you - the damnwells
3. you are the best thing - ray lamontagne
4. you and i - ingrid michaelson
5. on call - kings of leon
6. all i believe in - the magic numbers
7. all the small things - blink-182
8. you've got the love - florence + the machine

if you're looking at this and thinking "one of these things is not like the other", well, just look at the lyrics to josie and then try to argue with me. 

and now for today's store of funny pictures, since i'm still spending too much time on the computer (i think once we're back in school i'm going to just leave my computer off for a week)

four poems, or a poem in four parts

What do you see when you sleep?

Do lights wheel behind your eyes, 

setting off sparks and showers of color?

Do you dream of open roads and empty spaces, 

rain beading on your hair and

water pooling in your shoes, or - 

Do you dream of me?

When the wind is in the east or 

the lights are out, 

when the Beatles sing "I've just seen a face",

or when my heart is simply beating

(when my lungs are simply breathing):

I think of you. 

A voice on the radio says 

Hello, good friend

and I automatically change it to goodbye. 

Remember when we snuck out of the house

in the middle of the night

with flashlights and pillowcases and silly,

childlike dreams?

The flashlights broke and the pillows ripped.

We lost ourselves in a forest and never found Big Foot

or the monster under the bed.

And if I ever see you again I would ask:

Remember when we were fearless?

It is night now. 

All the world is asleep,

is silent and still and

unmoving. 

Except for me. 

Being awake still feels like something furtive

and strange. I keep expecting to hear

footsteps crashing down the stairs 

and having my flashlight taken away.

But there is no flashlight anymore,

or blankets pulled tight over our bent heads, 

a tent made just for two. 

All that is left is the kitchen table, 

lamps lit and blazing, and a mug of coffee

hot and fragrantly steaming by my right hand. 

The old way seemed better. 

If this was a movie - 

Well, it's not, is it? Or if it is, it's one that's 

already been written, only the ending is wrong. 

You call, or I call, or one of us stops being stubborn 

and we never, ever grow up. 

Here's what Disney didn't tell you:

Neverland leaves on a train with your childhood

and even Peter Pan ends up alone. 

Fairy tales only exist in the dead of night,

in whispers between friends after the batteries 

have died. What's left, when you are old,

or young and merely feeling old, is lies and half-truths 

and a longing for the phone to ring. 

It is night and the world is still. 

Two houses away is a small bedroom 

painted Cinderella Blue. 

There are smudges on the walls in the shape

of handprints, small and fuzzy around the edges 

where the bouncing light of a flashlight 

glances off them. 

In the bed, in the corner, are two small figures 

twined together beneath a blanket, 

curly heads bent over a book

that explains how to trap Big Foot and monsters

and the bad fairy that invented Brussels sprouts. 

Next weekend, they will wrap themselves in winter coats

and scarves, lug sleeping bags and pillowcases into the woods

and chase the stuff of dreams. 

They will be fearless and together and 

think that the world will stay simple forever. 

In the kitchen, the phone rings. 

note: blame s-la. always, always blame s-la for poetry. it's one of the (previously unwritten) rules of the universe.

i wrote a poem!

no, really.

i'm serious, guys, stop laughing.

i mean, yes, we all know that i like to read poetry, not write it. actually, we all know that my attempts to write poetry are usually...laughable failures, actually.

jeni's reaction probably summed it up the best: Wow...Seriously? That's kinda crazy. See what cabin fever's done to us.

(side note: doesn't she have wonderful grammar and punctuation in her texts? it warms to cold, dark cockles of my heart.)

well, i take no responsibility for this mess. blame s-la. she said e-mailed something that both annoyed me and reminded me that there's a fine line between an editor and a critic. usually i try to avoid being the latter.

anyway, now that i've given you that lovely long introduction to get your laughing well and done with, i present That One Poem Rachel Wrote While Watching The First Part of Miss Congeniality and Waiting For American Idol. that's it's working title, anyway, i'm open to suggestions (and lots and lots of criticism - i'm quite obviously an amateur when it comes to poetry) in the comments.

Poem With the Really Long Title (See Above)

your step falls on the snow,

feather-light, 

smooth like the glide

of a feather on wind.  

and like a bird

your gestures are small and

all-encompassing

(and say, look, 

look at me, i want to go south

for the winter).

your coat is red, red, red.

the birds (that have gone south for the winter) 

approve of your plumage,

glowing bright against the snow

as you walk up the hill. 

(up, up, up. 

you remember reading a book once,

long ago, 

about falling up

and wish it would happen now)

there are books in your bag,

the bag on your back , 

slung over one shoulder 

like your mother told you not to, 

but the book in your hands

is something precious. 

you think:

soon, soon. 

soon you will be in school and the room will be warm.

and maybe you will read your book, 

when the teacher's back 

is turned

soon you will be sitting

quietly

sneaking peaks out the window 

and hoping the snow will melt 

(it doesn't)

and soon, soon you will be leaving,

red coat on, 

backpack slung over your shoulder

to begin the walk again, 

up the tall hill

and back down again. 

and your step will fall on the snow, 

feather-light. 

will be back (and blogging for real), after american idol, which starts in two and a half minutes (yes, i love this show. no, i'm not ashamed)

great satan's gone, the whore of babylon

today's title still stolen from bright eyes' four winds. also, it is actually appropriate.

apparently cambridge university is going to teach twilight in a children's literature course. it's going to be featured alongside, among other books, harry potter.

once again, bree van de kamp says it so much better than i ever could:

hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds

guess what? today's title was stolen from bright eyes' four winds. i know, i know - you're shocked. i love this song so much. almost as much as i love florence + the machine.

florence + the machine is and isn't a new love. i got kiss with a fist from the jennifer's body soundtrack (dear itunes, i hate you for making new perspective an album-only purchase even if the rest of the soundtrack was good) and liked it. so then i hunted down the rest of her album and liked it enough to listen to it a few times, but it never really reached earworm status with me. of course, due to the snow week i've had nearly unlimited music-listening time, so i started listening to it again and realized how amazing it is.

i wonder why that happens? i almost never like something the first time i'm exposed to it. the first time i heard kings of leon i made a face and paused the album to put the strokes back on; cobra starship had me reaching for my midtown cds before half a song had finished; even four winds, the song i've been relentlessly plugging for most of the last week, gained a 'meh' reaction the first time i heard it.

there's probably a moral in that last paragraph, lurking in the gaps between sentences. don't judge a song by its album art, or something along those lines. i don't know, it was just a stray thought that crossed my mind. we all know that this blog is more stream of consciousness than anything else.

i've been making good use of my free time this week. i'm currently watching gilmore girls, which is always enough to bring on a minor fit of nostalgia - how is it already rerunning on abc family? not to be completely cliche, but it seems like just yesterday that i was hurrying to finish my homework in time to sit on the couch and watch the latest in the rory-jess-dean-marty-logan saga.

well, no, that was a lie. the boys were pretty and rory was wonderful but everyone should have watched the show for all of the minor characters. especially paris. because she was awesome.

surprisingly that little tangent had an actual point. see, i finally got around to watching the latest episode of bones only like five days late and wow. i hadn't thought there was a show on the air that could beat gilmore girls' nostalgia factor and then bones gave me david boreanaz genuflecting and talking about demons.

i will admit that, at first, my reaction went a little like this, since said buffy the vampire slayer/angel flashbacks were 'brought to you by The Most Ridiculous Plot Since Twilight':

but then i took the time to reflect and recall that, even though the plot was a little silly, it was angel david boreanaz. recalling his good ole badass vampire days/demon hunting. sort of. and then my face was more like this:

because it's angel/seeley booth/david boreanaz on my television and i miss the buffy-verse so much. i don't even care that it takes one of the most ridiculous plots in five seasons of bones to bring back a flash of that. it was perfect. i am just barely resisting the urge to dig out seasons two and three of buffy to rewatch. barely. 

i will probably be giving into this urge in the near future, especially since it's still snowing and isn't supposed to stop for a 'good long time' according to abc news. 

(and yes, i can overuse italics if i want to. i am having a flashback to my thirteen year old self and she was quite, quite fond of the 'slanty-word-effect')

munching on tacos right now. it was fun to actually leave the house. less fun? coming home to see snow already falling. oh well. 

okay, gilmore girls is no longer on but i didn't get to live-blog through the end because i was busy bawling a like a little baby. lorelai's letter about luke. and christopher's reaction. and luke's face. the whole ending of this episode just kills me. obviously. 

here, even though this is a stream-of-consciousness post (can we even call this a post? it was like an uninterrupted stream-of-fangirling instead), i'll try and give this some closure. i've liked a lot of things since i was a kid. i've latched onto fads and trends and scenes, then one day got the idea (at the same time as everyone else did) that i was going to be an 'individual' and only like things that no one else did. it's taken me a long a time to admit to liking the things that i do, not because they're cool or popular - because god knows most of them aren't - but because i think they're amazing. because they inspire me. and because i want them to inspire you, too. 

maybe that's why it took me so many tries to like the things i mentioned earlier in this post. sometimes you're so busy trying to be someone else that you miss being able to discover new things. you think, 'gee, that's niceboringsimpleaverage' and move on to whatever someone else has told you is cool. 

and maybe growing up means admitting that you'll never really grow up at all. 

on that note, i'm going to leave you with my favorite picture of the day. thank god for the internet.