said the joker to the thief

today's title comes from all along the watchtower, originally by bob dylan and covered by every decent musician of the last 20 years. if you don't have it already, download it.

i've been a bad, bad blogger. let's just call april the month of bad blogging and leave it at that. and i'd like to think that i'll make it up to you next month but...prom. and AP exams. so my blogging will probably remain sporadic until at least early june.

so, before i talk about anything else, i think i'll update you on my life. yes, i know - you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats for this.

the highs? b day early release turning into the Hijack Empty Classrooms to Watch The Amazing Race on a Promethean Board Club. getting fours and fives on my econ and gov practice exams. new books. new makeup. forgetting lunch at home and having the momster's assistant drop off robeks and chocolate covered strawberries. glee. bones. kings of leon tour dates being announced. having audrey hepburn on a shirt.

the lows: calc. physics. homework. ap exams. realtors and buyers and sellers being in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night shrieking things like "the contract hasn't been ratified yet!" and "what's it's mris number?" and "oh my god will you all shut up?"

...okay, maybe that last one was me. but in all fairness it was extremely annoying having to listen to real estate talk the one time i actually finished my homework and went to bed early.

minor complaints aside, i've been feeling pretty lucky lately. maybe it was the unexpected smoothie windfall today, or the even more unexpected side-trip to tyson's to get this:

and this (in air guitar):

or maybe it's just that i'm glad not to be a rape victim with multiple personalities (see my last post). lately i've been thinking that life? it's been pretty good to most of us so far.

i've kept a list of quotes as long as i can remember. some of the notebooks are so old the pages are actually starting to yellow (don't worry - the glitter gel pen remains as bright as ever) and i actually have to squint to render my oh-so-lovely-hearts-and-stars-over-the-letter-i middle school handwriting legible. i looked through a few of them last night and found it ironic that two of the first things i wrote down could be summed up like this: great art comes from great suffering.

i haven't suffered. not really. if anything, i've been stupidly, ridiculously lucky in life. i might complain about the parents (a lot) or school (even more) but...i got parents who spoiled and loved me. maybe a little too much, actually, since if they'd just had the decency to deprive me a little bit i might be a little more prepared for life in the Real World, but i digress. and school? well, we all complain, but deep down most of us like it. for one thing, none of us would know each other without it. and for another thing, none of us would be reading, writing, or blogging without the wonderful benefits of education - something millions of children in the world still go without.

so maybe i'm not yet capable of creating great art. well, i already knew that - why do you think i'm going to college? and maybe i'm one of those people who you can look at and say, "well, nothing really bad has ever happened to her." i've got thinky thoughts nonetheless.

banana will be blogging about this pretty soon, so i'm not going to delve into this too much (right now) but -

remember when my lit class was reading the poisonwood bible and i dragged out my poor, defeated little copy from freshman year and went back to being in love with it? i don't think i ever blogged this quote, but it's one of the first that i highlighted:

According to my Baptist Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly. This was the sticking point in my own little lame match to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used a month's ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Saviour as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn?

it's a question we all have at one point or another, and i don't think we will ever know answer. god isn't something you can understand; faith isn't a cheat-sheet to all the universe's mysteries, just your place in it.  in other words, there are just some things that we aren't supposed to know because we're human (hopefully). we are supposed to question and argue and grow.

oh, growth. it's a complicated word. for most people, it carries pleasant connotations of preteen growth spurts and too-short pajama bottoms and passing average height. the rest of us mostly hear it and feel bitter. sometimes we even use it to talk about moral growth. sometime like today, i mean.

like it or not, the world has changed a bit since the inklings roamed the streets of oxford smoking pipe tobacco and having Serious Theological Debates. we are, in the words of one lovely new york times article, a generation raised on "pulp and not substance" (if anyone else read that article, mind sending me the link? i never emailed it to myself and i want to reread it). there are people whose only goal in life is to be famous or date someone wealthy, and instead of being the exception, one only has to look at mtv, e!, tlc, or any other television channel besides cnn and fox, to see that they're becoming the rule. these are supposed to be our role models and peers.

basically, we're screwed. see will smith for details:

so what do we do? are we supposed to sit around all day and contemplate life? it's doable, i guess, especially if we add cigarettes and fedoras and french garrets in paris into the mix. we can all swan around looking wan and miserable and contemplating important questions about life, god, death, and the universe. (if you get that song reference, you get a cookie). for true authenticity we should try absinthe and practice sighing asthmatically. oh, and bonus points if you die of consumption.

or, we join the mtv-worshipping, twilight-loving, abercrombie- and hollister-wearing, d-list wannabes that seem to make up half our generation. instructions include buying an edward cullen poster, listening to nothing but top 40 music, and having no original thoughts or ideas.

i don't know about you, but i kind of hate both of those options. i'm not a genius, though - i'm not entirely sure what's behind door number three. i guess that this whole post has actually been one long, rambling, grammatically incorrect way of asking - who am i? what am i? and where do i go from here?

because most of us reading this have the same source material, if you will. we're all lucky. we're all pretty smart or just plain pretty, i love you all for being good-looking, not that i'm shallow or anything. and as soon as we entered this world shrieking with all of our considerable lung power, things started influencing us - family and friends, religion and pop culture. literature. music. the woman you bumped into on the street and the homeless person you pretended not to see. school and work and ideas and plans. that vague picture in the sky that alternately looks like a castle or a prison but is always, always labelled The Future, in capital letters that block out everything else. falling back on someone else's words is easy, so i'll let chuck palahniuk say it better: "nothing of me is original. i am the combined effort of everyone i have ever known."

so i guess that's where i'm going to leave off. mostly because those are the conclusions i managed to reach in my allotted time on the think thought train today. after that i got distracted by the momster's clients offering me cookies and ice cream cake (it was great) and makeup and books and making silly allusions to books everyone has read but which i'll quote anyway. my relationship with life is very, very complicated (take that facebook).

and i can never leave a post without sharing music, so here's lissie's latest:

it's all for the rain

today's title: film noir by the gaslight anthem.

so. today i read a book that made me profoundly grateful for the momster, assorted other friends and family, and the fact that i'm not a rape victim suffering from multiple personality disorder. predictably, the book came from s-la. thanks a lot, s.

just kidding. well not about the first part. the book was pretty amazing, though. it's called switching time and it's a psychologist's story of meeting and treating a woman with 17 alternate personalities caused by a lifetime of...well, the kind of abuse that would make a good lifetime movie, actually. if you're squeamish, so i'd recommend skipping the prologue, but it's still a great read.

speaking of great reads (see that? wasn't that clever? no? oh well. i tried), banana reminded me of a lovely little band called the inklings. these are the inklings. and, yes, that is a link to wikipedia. why? because of the lovely typos included on the page (i really hope they aren't edited out before i post this). my favorite is probably the cleveland high school named after the inklings which likes to "discus" theology and fantasy. i suppose the ancient olympics reenactment club is highly disappointed in them.

which brings me to a new topic which means you'll just have to steal religion is a buffet from me since i really want to know what you think about it oh banana-souled one or, rather, two very old ones presented in a new (for me) way:

books. and makeupclothesshoespopmusic (the triad of evil, if you will).

the older i get the more apparent it becomes that people don't expect girls to be capable of liking both of those things. it's like people assume that if you (and by 'you' i mean me) have, hypothetically, read lord of the rings, the hobbit, all of the histories of middle earth companion books, the silmarillion, and various other novels generally considered the rightful property of The Nerds Who Shall Inherit the Earth, Blessed Be The Names of Tolkien and JKR over a dozen times that you should be completely hideous. and if you talk about things like eyeshadow and floral patterns and debate the relative merits of buying the new ke$ha album and getting a free bonus track over getting new gladiator sandals, you must be mentally deficient. or at least too slow to notice the looks that ugly-not-that-that-should-matter-but-it-does-because-i'm-feeling-petty-okay they are trading behind your back while you chat on the phone in line at starbucks.

and, not to sound shallow or anything, but if you are (i'm estimating since i don't know or go to school with the seriously hideous people, but as a high school student i feel like my estimate should be fairly accurate) a high school junior (in your mid- to late-teens, at least) and you and your friend are wandering around in public in sketchers, too-short jeans, and hot topic t-shirts, you have no room to judge anyone. ever.

i guess i'm just sick of people trying to pigeonhole me. there is a reason i have approximately 300,000 labels on this blog and that's because - you probably couldn't have guessed this - i'm a big fan of variety.

i will happily admit to being a nerd. so will all 4,000 books living in my basement (they're such mooches, i swear. they don't even pay rent). i have a designated stack of kitchen books so i can read something while i eat. i google music reviews and dead poets and medieval european history (it's interesting, okay? they were inventive back then) in my spare time. of course i also play tap tap revolution and look at pretty pictures on flickr and read horrible 'young adult' books and experiment with eyeshadow the rest of the time. balance. i hear it's important.

i get that we all judge people. a lot. some of us (me) more than others. but there's a difference between being judgmental and ignorant. the former involves drawing logical conclusions based on a person's actions, demeanor, and appearance and going "gee, they look cool" or "ew. who let the troll out?" (there is a third option, reserved for those members of society who fall under the heading of Cute Boys, but it would have to be typed almost entirely in asterisks, so i thought i'd refrain from posting it). the latter? well, ignorance is mostly being judgmental but without the "logical" part. like ralph nader. or tyra.

and, okay, it's entirely true possible that i'm kind of a bitch. at least i'm not the kind of person who automatically assumes (and we all know what you make with that word) that someone's dumb for liking makeup - because if this is the kind of behavior we're encouraging in the "twilight generation" (i read an article in time a few weeks ago that actually called us that, lord help us all), well:

yeah. listen to katie fucking fitch. she's epic. and from skins, in case you didn't know.

anyway, let's comfort ourselves with music. it's kind of a random selection today. ranging from my initial wave of irritation to something off my car ride playlist for the ride home to the song i was dancing around the house and treadmilling to:

been there, done that, messed around

today's title comes from la roux's bulletproof. it was playing in forever 21 today and got stuck in my head. again. oh well. at least it's cheerful.

in case i hadn't made it clear, i went shopping today. in comparison to the momster's haul, i didn't get too much. you should all be proud. see?

clockwise from left to right: the widow of the south, an at-home parafin spa kit, urban decay's essential shadow box, eye shadow primer potion, and the best bra of all time

audrey hepburn t-shirt dress and floral lace leggings, both from forever 21

technically the at-home parafin spa kit was one of the momster's purchases but i'm counting in my books too. mostly because i'm going to be the first one using it as soon as this blog is over.

oh, and the bra isn't just me being slightly inappropriate (come on, do i blog every time i go bra shopping? i think not. well, except for that one time with the rainbow bra, but that was an exception because...rainbows). nope. this time there's a story behind it.

you know how victoria's secret has all those mannequins scattered throughout the store? and they always wear the cutest things? well, at the fair oaks victoria's secret the first mannequin you see in the store was wearing the same bra pictured above. isn't it cute? i think so. unfortunately it was sold out in my size, so i had the momster distract the saleswoman while i...well, technically i stripped the poor, unfortunate mannequin, but it was all for a good cause giving the store money and therefore stimulating the economy and doing my little bit to get us out of this recession before i have to get a job so just...

no, really. i know it sounds bad, but at least i paid for it, okay? and so what if i didn't find another bra to put on the mannequin? that would've looked even worse. i was lucky enough that no one saw me taking the bra in the first place - trying to put one on it would've looked a bunch worse. i could've been arrested. the mall cops would've been all, "why were you doing inappropriate things to a mannequin in public?" and i would've had to be like, "i wasn't! really! see:

no, really, how is he not gay?

and it would've been awkward for everyone. oh, and i was already an hour late for jenibean's birthday party (she turned old legal eighteen today so everybody head over to her blog and say happy birthday, okay?), which then turned into two hours between the momster's pressing need for cheesecake factory and the horrible traffic in fairfax/chantilly.

anyway, while i was shopping today, i came to a surprising conclusion. it's probably going to get me a 2 on my ap econ exam, actually, but:

the average american consumer is a moron.

seriously. 

this one's $12.00. 

harsh words, but while in forever 21 today - a store i usually consider more sensible than urban outfitters or free people, much as i love them both - i discovered that people will willingly spend over twenty dollars on 37 holes and leftover bits of t-shirt. not even a shirt. a shirt-fetus. in nine months these might one day have emerged as fully grown t-shirt members of society, but those darn chinese factory workers got to them and aborted their little fabric-y souls before they ever had a chance.

since i just got home from jenibean's birthday party (where, s-la, meggo, and emmeline-with-no-code-name-because-she-doesn't-blog-but-don't-get-any-ideas-gina-this-can't-be-your-label-because-you-blog-and-also-it's-too-long-and-has-too-many-hyphens-oh-my-god and i decorated her room in a manner which i, personally and redundantly, think deserves a blog post. a gentle hint, bean), i'm going to finish this post up with two things. never mind, i lied and am too lazy to hit the backspace button. it's going to be three things.

thing the first: dear lurkers - and i know you exist, sitting at your keyboards and being all lurker-y - did you know that you can comment anonymously? really, you can. just hit the little comment button at the top of the post and say something so i know i'm not hallucinating you. thanks.

thing the second. more la roux:

thing the third. the very best birthday song:

but the clothes i wore just don't fit my soul anymore

today's title comes from the gaslight anthem's new album. i'd share it with you, but it hasn't been released yet so i can't find a decent version on youtube yet. there's actually a lot of songs i've been saving up to blog about, but - well, let's just say i have a love/hate relationship with leaks, okay?

the love.

and the hate.

random tangent: i'm watching the colbert report right now and wow is damon from the gorillaz hot. now i'm glad i really liked plastic beach. oh, and his accent's great, too. it reminds me of cook from skins. also, he's not a record company-produced robot. we love him, right? yeah, i thought so.

so, in the spirit of my dwindling enthusiasm for education, let's do a little quiz, okay? for eleventy bajillion points, answer the following:

1. Who skipped school today?

a. Rachel

b. Rachel

c. Ra- Give it up, already, we all know it's you and why would you miss another day of school when the only real classes you had were econ (easy) and gov (laughable)?

d. Lady Gaga

2. Why did I skip school?

a. You're a lazy brat. 

b. You listened to too much Lady Gaga and started swanning around the house in a Kermit the Frog outfit screaming, "I'm a free bitch, baby!"

c. You were forced to by The Momster.

d. Someone offered you crack, but you could only pick it up at 11 a.m. in a shady alleyway in D.C.

3. Why did The Momster make you skip school?

a. She decided to schedule her annual psychotic break for April this year.

b. She needed a partner for a Beegees-themed 70s disco dance-off. 

c. She got fed up with your college-related indecision and made you visit UVA (which you already rejected) and UMW in one day. 

d. She decided to trade you for drugs and/or real estate deals. 

you know how people always tell you to pick C if you get stuck on a test? well, i hope you picked C because that was the answer to all three oh-so-difficult questions.

basically, as of 8 a.m. this morning, i still hadn't made a definitive college decision. like 99% of me was all for going to UMW and keeping the dent in my strictly-limited-to-60k-we-can't-give-you-everything-rachel-be-grateful-already college fund pretty small but that pesky 1%? well, that 1% was sitting there going "but you like william and mary", "there's a banana at william and mary", "you stayed up all night and occasionally studied things for four years so you could get into william and mary".

yeah, i know. that 1% - she's a troublemaker.

after explaining this to the momster, her genius solution was to road trip to UVA and UMW - i still don't understand why UVA was included, maybe to serve as a see-you-already-made-one-decision-now-do-it-again example? idk, i'm just bitter she refused to drive to william & mary since banana and gina were both there today, but i guess it wouldn't have made much sense since i've seen that campus like four times now - and then make me choose. and the UMW campus is pretty. so it wasn't that hard of a choice after all. but then the momster decided that she couldn't take the risk of me changing my mind in the next week, so she made the deposit directly to the admissions office and paid for housing.

to sum all that up, the momster is the kind of cray cray that makes lady gaga look sane and i'm officially enrolled in college.

anyway, during the twelve hours i was in the car today, i spent a lot of time staring out the window in sulky-yet-alliterative silence listening to my ipod. after listening to my newest songs a few times, i ended up switch to the 100! playlist and listening to it on loop, because as much as i love new music - well, the top 100 songs made it there for a reason, right?

anyway, it got me wondering - what do all of you listen to? i know that most of us don't listen to the same music, so i really want to know what's in your top 25. or if you're too lazy to comment with that, then what are your top 5 most played songs, at least?

i hope you have more luck with this than me

this blog is brought to you by death cab for post titles or something like that. alternatively, today's title comes from your new twin sized bed by death cab for cutie. what can i say? i've been rediscovering them this week - i accidentally caught an episode of the o. c. and it rekindled my ben gibbard love. here, listen to it so you can obsess with me:

so i was a lazy blogger again. blame cookie and calculus. cookie turned up the cute levels this week, so he's been swanning around the house looking extra fluffy and puppy-eyed. i've got a low tolerance for doggy-resistance (see: lulu forgiveness following the murder of headphones 3, 4, & 5). even if i'd spent hours making silly faces and spouting baby talk at a very unimpressed dog i still would have time to blog - or i would if it wasn't for calculus. to fully understand my feelings on math, i refer you to tim gunn:

oh, project runway. i miss the days when you were still good. i haven't even watched this season.

however, i have been wishing i could wield a sewing machine like one of the project runway contestants. mostly so i could make myself this:

and this - although before any of you start making faces, i want them to wear under tank tops. i think it'd be cute. especially with heaps of necklaces. and - oh, i'm not fooling anyone. we all know i'm going to be wearing one by itself around the house and answer the door just in time to traumatize some of the traveling mormons or something:

of course, if i keep on eating like i've been doing lately i won't fit into any of them and so the poor mormons' eyes will be spared. i say this because i am finishing up a bowl of cookies n cream ice cream. and once i am three thousand pounds i will waddle into the math work room brandishing a spoon and screaming "you! you did this to me! your soul-crushingly hard tests have driven me to drink and ice cream binges and hard drugs."

ahem. not that i've pictured this in any great detail.

now, onto the music...

here's my favorites from the last two days:

this video is so fun:

i've actually been listening to the original, but the video for this version is so much more fun:

and one last death cab song:

the place where your soul had died

today's title? bixby canyon bridge by death cab for cutie. yes, that death cab for cutie. wait? that's just a picture of ben gibbard and zooey deschanel? oh well. they're both ah-dorable and ah-mazing and incredibly talented. oh, and we love their music. mona would like you all to know that she is amazingly cool. in case the mona-mention hadn't tipped you off, i'm writing this post from the library.

i know, i know. marvel at my dedication. or don't, since i didn't blog at all over the weekend. here, i'll make it up to you:

Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;

stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are
nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;

yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
when all the others blighted, reel and fall,
your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst
to freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.

isn't that a pretty poem? it's by h. d., aka hilda doolittle. she was pretty awesome. i'd go on a bit more about poetry, but mona's currently describing the homemade sponge cake she's bringing to school tomorrow, so i'm mostly just salivating over that. i'm serious - hearing her descriptions of dessert has reduced me to a drooling, gibbering wreck of a person who has no other purpose in life beyond the googling of chocolate-filled images. see? proof:

...hypothetically speaking, the prospect of future desserts might intensify my natural tendency to hyperbolize. might.

true story: i just tried to type "might" as "mgmt". freudian slip much? in other words, i've had mgmt's new album on my brain. it's so different from oracular spectacular that when i first heard it i was kind of like:

but then it started to grow on me. it's strange - i initially hated every song in my 100! playlist (in case it wasn't obvious, that's the smart playlist that houses my 100 top-played songs), while the songs i find most earwormy and hummable are among my least favorites. like this weekend - during our lovely friday off, i went to dsw to hang with jenibean and was exposed to her strange collection of car music for the second time. among them was a song whose lyrics seemed to be nothing but the phrase "she's a sexy chick" and three or four songs which sounded exactly like and whose subject matter dealed with "rumpy pumpy" as my lit teacher calls it. the only saving grace to any of them was that they had pretty awesome beats and bad mixing so you could never really tell what the singer was saying. in other words, they were all the perfect earworms. do you think i'm going to be sullying ophelia the ipod with any of those songs?

if you answered anything other than "no" to that question, i will refer you to the following gif. in this scenario, pretend that ophelia the ipod is jim and Crappy Music is dwight. now watch:

there, does that clear things up for you? i thought it'd help. the office can explain anything. so can family guy, actually.

wow, early release is almost over. i've got to go to buzzer club in, like, ten minutes, so i'm going to wrap this up. oh, and in case you didn't notice, i copied gina's idea and added a currently reading tab over on the right side of the page.

just for the sake of the storyline

the title comes from we the dreamers (scroll down a post if you still haven't listened to it).

my life doesn't usually lend itself to alliteration so you probably won't see a friday favorites post from me (but go check out gina's, they're fun). however, i can do a tuesday favorites (alas and alack, that really doesn't have the same ring to it at all) post since it's tuesday and i have...favorites.

yeah, i know. i should have named this post Unwieldy Phrases For $1000, Alec. maybe next time?

anyway, these are my favorites of the day:

cookie's been looking awfully cute lately, even if he did try to sleep on my face last night.

chocolate, new shoes, and coffee. life is good. the shoes might be my favorites. the momster surprised me with them on the way home from school. i don't feel like taking a decent picture of them (see labels: 'fatty fatty no friends' and 'i sold my soul to sbux' for a full explanation), so here they are as photographed by dsw. the link is kind of weird, so future reference i have them in black. someone else who wears a size eight get them in the other colors so we can trade because i love them all.

surprisingly i'm actually done with my homework already. mostly because i gave up on paying attention during physics and have turned the class into a giant study hall, but still - you all need to be extremely proud of me, okay? especially since no homework leaves more time to blog and write and read and drool at pictures of cute shoes on my computer screen.

so i'm fully aware that nine times out of ten you will all hate the music i post. i'm pretty okay with that since the tenth time will allow me to introduce you to kate voegele or mumford and sons (ahem, s-la). but since it's my blog i'm going to go ahead and post whatever i want to.

so first up is the new single from b.o.b. & hayley williams (from paramore) that just premiered on itunes. i held off on posting this one since the leak i had was pretty low quality and so were all the versions on youtube, but with an official studio version out the youtube videos are finally good enough to post:

oh, and s-la, this one's for you. we all know about my butch walker love, but this video's also great for it's guest stars and actual plot:

let the caffeine do the talking

today's title is from we the dreamers by kate voegele. it's a fun song, even in its demo form, since i don't think there's been an official release yet. luckily, it, and everything else in the world, are on youtube, so have a listen:

i know i promised a few of you a music post today, since i discovered a new artist and a handful of songs which i'm dying to obsess over with you, but we have more important matters to discuss first --

i found a prom dress. by accident, actually, while flipping through the momster's copies of the saks catalog.

can you guess which one it is? no? here, i'll help you out. sadly, i didn't have much luck wheedling a pair of the matching jimmy choos out of the momster. oh well, a girl can dream, right?

anyway, since april is national poetry month i thought i'd share a poem with you today:

Bad women
know how to cook
create a miracle in a pot
make something out of chicken feet, pigs feet, cornmeal,
hogmaw, fisheads, fatback, ribs, roots, soy or red beans
Bad women overcome homelessness, violence, addiction and self hate.
Bad women march for equality
education, jobs, childcare, universal health care,
affirmative action and choice.
Bad women flaunt themselves
plump as mangos, skinny as tallow
tall, short
dark as plums and coffee
light as cream and butter
gold as sun on lemons, red as cinnamon
brown as kola.
Bad women don't get old, they get full
full flavored like aged wine
full as harvest's vine
seasoned.
Bad women celebrate themselves,
fingerpopping, hipshaking, big laughed, wisemouthed
hefty thighed, smart thinking women
hatwearing, soft syllabled, eyelash fluttering
tangerine lipstick queens,
small and big breasted
fat kneed, skinny ankled women
who dance without warning
wrap their men or their women around their waist
and dance to the edge of dawn.
Bad women know how to stir
their tears in pots of compassion
add some hot sauce, wasabe, five spices, jalapenos
the salt of memory
stoke the fire of history
simmer in resilience
make it taste like home.

Bad women can burn.

- Janice Mirikitani 

isn't that gorgeous? i love poetry. but not as much as music, so without further ado, i give you sky ferreira.

i feel like i should be jealous that she's my age. seventeen. mostly, though, i'm a little bit horrified, since. well, you saw the video. and i first heard about her because she's getting drunk everynight with friends with katy perry and gabe saporta from cobra starship. her voice is amazing, though. i can't find embeddable links yet, but her cover of miike snow's animal is gorgeous. and i actually really like her single. so, you know, make of her what you will.

anyway, i have to go do my calc flashcards so that's all for now.

every summer is a hot token

today's title comes from beach baby by bon iver. it's good road trip music, see:

gee, i've been a horrible blogger this month. i don't even have an excuse. at least it's been a relaxing break from blogging. i've spent 25 of the last 48 hours sleeping. that's right - 25. as in, i went to sleep at 6 p.m. friday night, woke up at noon saturday, and went back to sleep at 11. it was awesome. i feel wonderful and  i finally got rid of the bags under my eyes. i'm thinking this was time well spent, even if the momster was so mystified by my being in bed before midnight that she thought i wasn't home and called poor s-la trying to figure out where i was. oh, parents. i worry about what'll happen to her while i'm at college. that woman can't function by herself. i think i need to get her a boyfriend or a nanny. i'm working on it.

besides that i went shopping, picked up some moisturizer, got some chipotle, went on a car ride with the momster, and enjoyed the sunshine. thank god for the sun today. i missed it friday.

oh, and kings of leon's episode of austin city limits was on today. i came home just in time to watch it. they were on before only by the night came out, so it's all their good music. since you're all cunty whores terrible people who missed it even after i texted you, i'll post samples:

see, don't you feel better now? cutie followill approves of this post:

besides being a faithful acolyte of kings of leon, i spent a lot of my time in the car and at lunch youtubing videos of cute things. these are my favorites:

that one just made me lol for the poor, scared, frozen cat on the left in the beginning

and this one is...pretty self-explanatory, actually.

my favorite!

boys who like cats are awesome.

watch the last wall collapse

today's title comes from matt nathanson's sooner surrender. it's such a cute song, go listen to it.

i've been absent for blogging lately. surprisingly this was caused by neither surprise illness or a sudden binge of tv-watching (although i am watching the daily show right now. i love sesame street michael steele). nope, i've just been too lazy or silly to blog.

you see, as a result of the momster only having to pay around $2000 for college, life has been very, very good lately. and by 'good' i mean that she's been dropping me off at fair oaks after school with a credit and a commandment to play. which i have. among other things i bought a ton of books - i just finished reading elizabeth kostova's the historian, more on that later - and clothes and sandals. mostly, though, i spent my money on makeup.

here's my favorites:

clockwise, from top: smashbox camera-ready concealer, guerlain insolence primer, makeup forever mat velvet foundation, estee lauder nail polish in pink champagne, smashbox lash plumper mascara, urban decay eyeliner in zero, sephora eyeshadow in milestone and mad for macaroons, and urban decay eyeshadow in baked

i'm pretty happy with my haul. the weather lately has been making me really want more bronze- and gold-toned makeup. plus i had the people at MAC and sephora do my makeup and pick my foundation, which saved me a lot of indecisive "does this one or this one match me better" wavering in front of the mirror.

i had a few other adventures at the mall, but i'll save them for another day. i know, i know. cop out. but i'm tired - stupid calc homework/flashcards. they took so long last night. it wasn't even hard - i just had no idea what to include on the cards since the descriptions were so vague. ugh, i don't even understand why we still have to go to school. can't we just graduate already? there's still another quarter to go.

anyway, there's one more joyous piece of news i wanted to share with you. i'm going to get fat! and i don't even mind. this is why:

yep, those are panera sandwiches. and salads. and soup and green tea. not pictured are the giant baskets of bread and pastries and cookies from them that are filling up our kitchen.

it's all the momster's fault. once a month her real estate firm does like a conference-type thing and panera caters it. but since they're all talking business no one ever eats anything and the people in her office split up the food. yep, that's right - all of that's a fraction of the original mountain of food. nevertheless, we won't be able to grocery shop - well, for anything besides ice cream/freezer food and dry goods - for a week. it's going to take forever to eat all of this. i'll try anyway. and by try, i mean that i'll open my fridge and do this:

now, just a quick note on the historian, which i mentioned earlier in this post. it's awesome. it's great to read a fun book that's actually well-written. it's wonderful to find an entertaining book that's better written than, say, the average dan brown novel. i guess i'm really just happy to read something about vampires that are actually scary. Comrade S-la, i hope you've inferred from this paragraph that this is going to be the latest addition to the communist book collective.

this is the song that i stole the title of this post from. listen to it, it's pretty:

and here's the song that i'm listening to now:

state of the union

i hear today's a holiday of some sort. i like to think of it as zombie jesus day but i've been informed that that name may offend some people. to which i say this:

Dear Some People,

Suck it. 

Love, 

Rachel

in order to commemorate this wonderful day of peep-giving and -receiving i thought i'd share a picture with you:

i realize it's been a while since i've blogged. i don't actually have an excuse for that since i've mostly spent this week in blissful seclusion - excluding one trip to visit jenibean - and it's been the best thing to ever happen to me.

i don't know if you noticed, but the last few times i blogged i'd been feeling pretty run down. or sick. or depressed and sick and partially on fire. whatever. the point is, i was not in a happy place. however, after a week of literally doing nothing besides snacking, reading, running, lying around in my backyard enjoying the pretty weather, snickering at jenibean's life, and listening to music in the sun like a hippie i feel amazing. like, skipping-through-fields-to-the-sound-of-music happy, even.  basically, i'm as happy as this Tiny Elephant:

now, as it's zombie jesus day easter sunday and Operation: Read Instead is officially over, i'm sure you're all wondering why i'm typing up this blog and not, like, avidly watching tv. my poor, abused, full-capacity DVR is also wondering this. suprisingly, though, i think Operation: Read Instead was a success. i still haven't watched any television today. instead i did some laundry, snacked (and snacked and snacked, oh my lord i love peeps), worked out, and read. i finished rereading a thousand splendid suns by khaled that-guy-who-wrote-the-kite-runner-whose-last-name-i-can't-spell-and-am-too-lazy-to-look-up and am now smack dab in the middle of yet another sherlock holmes. after that i've got a few more books lined up.

anyway, i've come to the conclusion that i thrive under pressure. well, i kind of already knew that. but i still thought that fact bore pointing out. i like challenges. most importantly, i like challenges with a finite ending. i'm not entirely sure what i'll take up as my next one, but i think it's going to be either doing the 30 day shred properly or something else fitness related. the only downside to both Operation: Read Instead and visiting The (Jeni)Bean is that both of them seem to make me ridiculously fat. seriously, between all of jeni's baking and my compulsive need to snack i've definitely gained weight. so look for eventual depressed updates on that the next time i go shopping.

here's a random observation: putting my iTunes on shuffle always makes me feel like i've stolen the music library of a manic-depressive schizophrenic. mostly because i've listened to punkbitch by 3OH!3, keep the car running by arcade fire, shut up i am dreaming of places where lovers have wings by sunset rubdown, and i just can't wait to be king from the lion king soundtrack since i started writing this post.

now, onto the news i'm sure you were all waiting for:

College. with a capital c, no less. anyway, here's the verdict:

1. american university - accepted
2. mary washington - accepted + $12,000 a year
3. william & mary - accepted
4. UVA - accepted
5. christopher newport - accepted + full tuition
6. NYU - is full of complete asshats. i've gotten emails and phone calls basically confirming acceptance. but where's my letter? a quick look at the website and call to the admissions office reveals that they're still in the process of mailing things. well, gee, great. thanks a lot. 

i kind of felt like this when i found out:

so there's where i stand right now. i know that i'm going to pass on UVA, CNU, and american for various reasons. actually, i'm 99% sure i'm going to pass on william & mary, too (sorry banana) since UMW is willing to give me money and it's pretty. at least for the first year. if i can save $12,000 as a freshman and then transfer, well...i mean, if they let me in once i'd have to, like, flunk out of college for them to reject me as a transfer applicant, right? 

anyway, there's been a lot of dancing and screeching and shopping going on in the house o' rachel as a result of april first. i mostly mention the screeching to reiterate my earlier point that the NYU admissions office is full of horrible people who need to quit taking vacations on the weekend and get around to mailing things already. but i'm calm. it's cool. also included in the general celebrations has been permission to download-at-will on iTunes, courtesy of the momster. so now i've got sherlock holmes, casino royale, both narnia movies, and a ton of music residing on compy. 

update of the shuffle craziness: we've gone from freak-a-leak by petey pablo to you and i by ingrid michaelson to folds in your hands by passion pit. i don't even know anymore. here, i'll give you some decent music to make up for it:

what? do you not count that as decent music? i'm shocked. shocked and appalle- oh, who am i kidding. i figured the tales of my iTunes shufflage would be enough. just watch the funny video while i go outside and soak up the last few hours of freedom sunlight before school tomorrow.