in the month of may

today's title comes from arcade fire's new single month of may. it's great.

since the momster's return has ruined all my plans, i've spent a lot of the last few days finding new music and reading. in other words, expect this post to feature a lot of obsessing and very little substance.

before i start boring you all with the full tale of said obsession, i think i'll elaborate on the momster's return: it happened...after i spent most of wednesday night and thursday morning waiting in an airport. that's right - her flight was delayed from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. to, finally, 8 in the morning. damn thunderstorms. i ended up staying home from school thursday since after all that waiting i was a little like the baby in this gif:

oh, and then i had to miss school again today because the momster scheduled my monthly checkup with dr. emperor-from-mulan for this morning. and when i tried to at least go to calc and physics she pulled the "why doesn't my only pumpkin want to spend time with me? you're leaving me soon." card and i had to "bond" with her. at least she equates mother-daughter bonding with trips to georgetown cupcakes.

i had this one:

it made me:

even though i complained about the thunderstorms earlier in the post, i actually really love the weather right now. thunderstorms are so pretty and they always make me want to curl up with a blanket and read. which, given my impromptu vacation from school this week, i've been doing quite a bit of. well, rereading, anyway. you might have noticed from the sidebar that i've finished rereading lord of the rings. now i'm continuing my tolkien binge with the hobbit, and later on the silmarillion. don't worry about my literary health, though. after that i'll start reading new books again.

the thunderstorms made me twitchy for new music, too. here's a little of what i've been listening to lately:

you've already heard what i think about most of those albums, so i'm not going to bother restating it. the hold steady's new album is probably my favorite of the bunch, so check it out. if you need more incentive, they were even on the colbert report promoting it. gina might want to check out jessie james, though. she's got pretty good country/pop, which normally isn't my type of music at all but her song blue jeans was all over the confessions of a shopaholic soundtrack and it was awesome so i decided to give the rest of her album a listen.

this is turning out to be an image-heavy post so, just for the hell of it, let's throw in a couple more:

oh fine, i'll just go crazy. have a video, too:

wasn't that adorable? it was iron man with babies. babies!

okay, that's all for now. i'm going to finish reading my nerd books now.

with no shadows on your doubts

today's title comes from devil in the details by the ambience affair. it's amazing. i got it off of this month's indie/rock playlist and am completely in love with it. so, naturally i went a-looking for the rest of their songs and found them to be equally amazing. also, their lead singer personally answered a lyrical question on yahoo answers, which i find pretty endearing. anyway, i'll just post the song so you can become obsessed with them, too.

and, yes, part of the reason i'm posting the music video is because i think it's incredibly cool that they didn't use a video camera to make it. whatever - i'm easily amused, okay?

since s-la has already blogged about it, i'm not going to bother recapping our fun-filled, backyard hair-dyeing adventures with jenibean and meggo. instead, i'll talk about glee.

i know what you're thinking: "not this again." but hear me out - tonight was the lady gaga episode. gaga. and it made fun of twilight. repeatedly. all while promoting a message of tolerance, family togetherness, and the importance of hot outfits. what's not to love? i can't wait until next week's episode. the previews made it look insane.

speaking of things that are insane, the momster has been gone for the last few days. she's in las vegas at a business conference, leaving me all alone for days. five of them, to be specific, since she comes back late tomorrow night and left on sunday. i'm still bitter that i didn't get to go with her, but leaving school for a week when we only have, like, two weeks of classes left seemed like a bad idea.

now, we all know that i'm not the most...practical of people. i'm not all that great with the whole self-sufficiency thing. never fear, though - i made myself checklists of things i need to do so i don't die or get kidnapped or starve or something. also, the momster and several of our nosy neighbors have been calling constantly. as you can imagine, that got annoying pretty quickly, so i've stopped answering the phone. they'll get over it.

i've been loving having the house to myself. it's been nice having everything so quiet. i think it's a sign of how nerdy/lame i am that the craziest thing i've done in my four days of alone-time is reenact the risky business pants off dance off around my house. for those of you who don't know what i'm talking about, here's the clip:

okay, so i lied. i couldn't help it. risky business had tom cruise in it, and there's no way i'm putting him and his crazy scientologist face up on my blog. it's not even a real word, let alone a religion; safari keeps putting a little red line under scientologist. besides, i love scrubs.

oh, and in musical news, christina aguilera's album leaked. i might be jumping the gun a little here, but based on my first few listens, it's pretty awful. at its best, it's a lady gaga rip off. at its worst it turns into a watered down version of britney spears' worst songs. no wonder she cancelled her tour. how did she spend four years working on this? back to basics was so good. even her greatest hits album had amazing remixes on it. it's like she regressed...into jessica simpson.

and in linky news, if espn covered sports like this i might actually watch it. or at least know what channel number espn is.

other than that, my week has been pretty boring. mostly all i've been doing is playing card games and apples to apples in class, wandering around the school getting up to shenanigans that i'll tell you about after graduation (if i remember, which is doubtful), and actually learning new things in physics. like i said: boring.

and now i'm going to do more boring things: feeding, watering, and walking my dogs. they're like plants but cuter.

in the morning at the top of the stairs

today's title comes from casimir pulaski day by sufjan stevens. i'm not listening to it right now, nor did i listen to it at the top of the stairs, but it was playing this morning. now i'm listening to stephen fry read some of oscar wilde's short stories. i don't normally like audiobooks, but i'll make an exception because...stephen fry. it makes me do this:

i've been pretty busy lately. i got into my first (minor) accident wednesday night. i got lost trying to come home on a back road from ashburn and ran into a gate at the alien testing facility janelia farms. i hate that place. there's a key-card-swipe/security gate thing and it shuts automatically if you don't have the key card. and it's on a one way street. i slammed on the brakes pretty quickly but there's still a tiny dent on the car. oh, and then i got to back up for a half a mile. so that? that is just one of the many, many reasons i hate driving.

after that i went home and did homework until 4 in the morning. oh, i hate school now. i can't wait until it's over. well, i can't wait until the part of school where we're still doing work is over. i don't mind all the free periods where we just play board games and cards (i learned two new games today and failed miserably at both of them). that was all i did today, since the momster surprised me by picking me up at 12:30 so we could get lunch and go to borders. well, i went to borders - she just did boring work things.

i feel like i'm slowly becoming nocturnal. i end up napping for an hour or two when i come home, staying up until 3 or so, and then catching a few more hours of sleep. actually, i guess that isn't really nocturnal. semi-nocturnal? i don't know. i still feel a little loopy.

i've got to go finish doing my laundry (that's right - i'm still working my way through the piles that built up during AP week) and throw some clothes in a bag for our s-la/meggo/jenibean weekend.

oh, and let's switch things up today. instead of posting songs, i'm going to share something even better: robert downey jr.

sit and contemplate your day

today's title comes from brand new colony by the postal service, also known as one of the ten songs guaranteed to turn me into a gibbering pile of mush. congratulations, ben gibbard.

i'm just playing on the computer until glee starts. american idol is on mute in the background so sometimes i look up and catch the top three making funny faces. i started my reflective essays for lit, too. and by "started" i mean that i haven't actually written anything yet - but i reflected! oh, yes, i reflected my butt off but not really, i'm still doing yoga and squats for that and now i can't feel my legs and discovered that i don't actually know how to reflect. at first i thought it would be a little like meditation, so i waited until no one was home, put some music on and plopped on the couch, waiting for thinky thoughts to come to me. unfortunately the only things that arrived on the thinky thought train were song lyrics and random things like "gee, all the toes on my right foot look bigger than the ones on my left foot if i turn my head just so and squint a little."

i could have put that in my essay, but i've got a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good oh dear god i'm quoting the black eyed peas, where did my life go wrong? that my teacher would have been all:

so i decided to cut the music and actually use my brain...it was hard. i think it might have atrophied from disuse since i've been afflicted with senioritis for several months. hopefully i reached some conclusions that'll make for a halfway decent essay. and if i haven't, well...at least i have videos of cute kittens to keep my company. like this one:

See more funny videos and Cute Animals Videos at Today's Big Thing.

while i was wasting my life doing homework and looking up cat videos and waiting for glee (which just started - neil patrick harris is singing on my television screen!) a trailer for freaky friday came on. i'm not actually sure why, since lindsay lohan is about as relevant as swiss cheese at this point in her coked up career, but it was still there. somehow or another it got me thinking about th-- oh my god. neil patrick harris and shue are singing dream on! 

...okay, it's done. i just lost my train of thought, but i'll leave that paragraph as is so that you can all appreciate my difficulties in focusing long enough to do anything productive. aren't you all amazed that i've almost successfully graduated from high school? 

here's another random thought: if you switched bodies with someone like in freaky friday, would you think of the mouth on that body as yours? i know that i would, but that one scene from the movie (also known as the only scene that i remember, since the rest was a horrible mess of lindsay lohan - who can't act - and chad michael murray - who's like 30 - pretending to be high school students) where the mom-character and the daughter (who were otherwise so forgettable that i don't actually know their names) are driving somewhere and the mom-in-daughter's-body says something about not letting the daughter-as-jamie-lee-curtis eat french fries since they'll go from her mouth to jamie lee's thighs. 

that whole paragraph was one rambly stream-of-consciousness way of giving you all homework. someone tell me if the fact that disney and i agree that even if you were magically transported to a new body, your mouth is still, well, yours makes sense. i got into an argument over the phone with a non-blogger-who-shall-not-be-named about this, and i want it settled. 

so i just looked away from the television screen for like three seconds to finish that sentence and the momster walked in and turned it off. apparently she thought i wasn't watching it. can you believe that? it's glee. and she turned it off right in the middle of a neil patrick harris scene! 

i'm going to stop blogging and protect my right to the remote now. wish me luck, kids.

one night to be confused

today's title comes from heartbeats by the knife, as covered by jose gonzalez. it's pretty.

i've had a fairly busy two days. yesterday, as i might have mentioned (i don't know if i did or not, and i'm too lazy to go back and check), i did yoga for the first time since AP exams began. it was great at the time, but i've been feeling the effects all day. here's a helpful warning for all of you: lunges, squats, running, and leg- and thigh-targeting yoga tapes do not make for a very comfortable monday morning. i was so sore today and most of the soreness was centered in my legs so i spent the whole day convinced that i was walking strangely. paranoia: it's the new black.

this whole day was pretty weird, actually.

you totally thought this would be a gif. to which i say: suck it, predictability.

yeah, that picture basically sums up all my feelings regarding school, life, and the world in general.

my day kicked off at the wonderful hour of 2 a.m. because i had a killer migraine. still retaining hopes of getting a decent amount of sleep, i went downstairs and hit up the advil bottle, figuring that would get rid of all my headache-related troubles. and then i went back to bed and waited for my migraine to go away...for two hours. at 4:30 i finally gave up and went downstairs and took three of the closest aspirin-looking bottle i could find (i wasn't wearing my glasses), figuring that the pills looked like tylenol. and they were - tylenol p.m. needless to say i finally got back to sleep...and woke up at 8 a.m. to find the momster banging on my door. i took one of the fastest showers of my life, threw on an outfit comprised entirely of clothes i haven't worn since eighth grade or freshman year, and went to school.

i probably would have fallen right back asleep in the car if it weren't for an emergency trip to starbucks. i lucked out there. they were training a new employee and it was still raining so there was no line, and the new employee messed up my drink order the first time she tried to make it so i got a free venti sized drink instead. i also had two backup tumblers of coffee to tide me over until lunch. luckily school wasn't so bad. my a day teachers, at least, have had the decency to give up on the possibility of any of us learning anything within the lovely cinderblock walls of a high school ever again. so we're doing a completely useless project in econ (jennifer and i are already almost done), sitting around and chatting in yearbook, and watching movies and drawing pictures about our Feelings in gov (you don't know how much i wished i was british during that class so i could sit up and announce, "i'm english - we don't have feelings" and maybe thrown in a "pip pip" or a "cheerio" or something similar. i don't know, in my mind people in england are still stuck in the empire builder stage).

robert downey jr. has no purpose in this post. robert downey jr. needs no purpose.

and then came early release, where i chatted with mona while i waited for the momster to come collect me (no, i will not be driving regularly enough to take myself to school, thank you very much. i'm not that crazy). we had a good talk, involving makeup, music, and blogging. apparently she's a lurker. also, she might be joining our Nameless Band of Munchkins Except For Jenibean Who Throws the Entire Thing Off By Being a Tall Asian So I Guess We're Musketeers for our sleepover this friday. since we don't want a repeat of how s-la was introduced to the other Musketeers (it was awkward), i suggest she start commenting so that the Musketeers can get to know her. also, everyone keep in mind that our merry band of almost-munchkins is welcome to suggestions for a better name.

then came the two hour conference call of slightly dead-eyed randomness (methinks i wasn't the only one feeling a little out of it today) where we attempted to hash out our weekend plans. conclusions reached: we can't make plans. it was enlightening. at least i rediscovered a kesha song and found my 997th cover song. now to find those last three. i'm hoping they're good ones. quality control is important, you know?

and then i started blogging. oh, and catching up on my usual internet binge of current events/music news/blog reading. here's a new one i found. it's equal parts funny and sad, so be warned.

and here are the songs i've been listening to today. none of them are new or unique or anything. they've just been on loop in my head.

today's title song:

another pretty song. i first heard it on grey's anatomy years (has it really been years since that show was decent enough to watch? that's so weird) ago in the second season episode damage case. if you haven't watched the first two seasons of that show, you should, since they were actually really good...and then it got famous and the writing became awful:

oh, and this one's been on my summer sleep playlist for a while, but i thought now would be a good time to post it since i have a banana-related message anyway and i'm too lazy to get on facebook (which i hate). dear banana: s-la wants you to come on a b day like tuesday or thursday or next monday or wednesday. then you can join the early release movie club and visit the weeds in the senior courtyard with us. i half agree with this plan, but would also like to point out that i am both incapable of giving advice and am in actual classes for three fourths of every b day, whereas you could probably sneak into econ (i have williams) and yearbook on a days. but then you could visit sturtz on b days when i have her and...i have no idea. i'm highly indecisive. show up some day so we can marvel over how much you once grew and how worldly wise you are &c. &c.

phone blog!

It's been a long day. I drove by myself again, then did some laundry, finished my homework, and went to dinner at the Melting Pot with The Momster. It was great, as usual. We got smoothies at Yogen Früz afterward...which was probably a bad idea since I realized today that I need to start losing the pounds I packed on during AP exams/study binges/being too tired to work out at all. I'll blog for real tomorrow (I keep saying that, I know, but I hope my former life as Macbeth will increase my chances of turning it into a self-fulfilling prophecy), but until then here's a fun link I found during the car ride to Reston: now helpfully reformatted into a clicky link

Oh, and forgive my use of capital letters. I'm blogging from...well, just look down since the app is nice enough to say it for me.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

i was made for sunny days

today's title comes from the song of the same name by the weepies. it's both true and cheerful, so have a listen:

inspired by banana's adventures in driving, i decided to try and get over my fear hatred mild aversion to driving. i was semi-successful. i ended up driving (alone!) for a significant amount of time doing errands for the momster and taking the dogs to the park, but i still hated every minute of it. at least when i drive alone i don't have the momster cringing and shrieking about how we're both going to die. it's hardly encouraging, and it's not like i do that to her (except for when it's deserved - and when she is driving with one hand on a coffee cup, another hand on her cell phone, and no hands on the wheel i think i'm justified in shouting a little).

in case you were wondering, my mongol eyes are gone. i had to sleep with an ice pack on my face (all night! and the stupid thing kept melting and waking me up so i'd have to go refill it and barely got any sleep at all and probably don't make any sense and gee, i'm really not living up to yesterday's promise to blog coherently today, huh?) but it all worked out in the end.

you thought it'd be another gif, didn't you? ha, i'm full of surprises, okay?

i started to solve my hard drive space issues today. i've got to back everything up first, which i'm doing in stages since copying everything to CDs is going to take days, and after that i'm going to move most of my tv shows and movies (but not skins - all four seasons of that will stay on my computer forever) to one of the desktops in the house or an external hard drive - and then i'll have space for more music! i had to move a bunch of music from my computer to the momster's earlier this week since i was down to less than 1 GB of space, but i've started bringing some of it back. i still can't believe i took gogol bordello off, just four days after i blogged about them. don't worry, though - it was an accident. i meant to move the goo goo dolls off, instead, and then i found out during music day that i'd messed it up and was just like

it's really been a good day for Compy, actually. i cleaned up her widgets, too, and loaded a few new program icons in, too.

we've only got one more song for this post. and i don't care if it's technically a spoiler, i've been listening to the leak of this all day:

just leave my memory away

today's title comes from kill me carolyne by the whigs, a new song gleaned from s-la's music library as a result of music day. oh, music day. it's such a good time. i have the whole harry potter musical now and spanish acoustic songs (they're playing right now)! it's pretty great.

my calc essay turned out pretty great, too, even though i ended up finishing it during early release. that was okay, though, since i ended up surrounded by a bunch (four) other procrastinators also doing their essays. oh, and i worked my procrastination into the essay by talking about how my lack of motivation to do calculus should be taken into account when planning for next year's students. except in snarkier, less sleep-deprived terms.

after that we went to see iron man 2...again. it's just that good.

robert downey jr. agrees

after that we had dinner at california tortilla (still in brambleton, sadly, since the lansdowne one went out of business) and were horrified by the actions of the hooligans and teenyboppers (these are real terms, okay?) who were milling about, stealing drinks and climbing trees willy nilly. it was awful. they were all like five years old and strolling around like they owned the place, or at least like they should be allowed to stroll around at all and not still be strapped to high chairs.

and then came music day. which, in case you hadn't heard, is awesome. music was shared. in a day, even.

...i know, i know. s-la and i are extremely creative namers. is namers even a word? i'm too tired to look it up, but safari isn't putting a little red line under it so i'll assume i can use it.

we watched our sophomore english project on macbeth, too. we recorded one of the acts. i was macbeth and s-la was lady macbeth. oh, and we were both murderers and witches and a few minor characters. leanne was banquo and every other character. as you can imagine, our acting skills were phenomenal. i don't sound monotone at all and it certainly wasn't strange to have a cross-dressing macbeth (i spent the majority of the project in tunics and dresses). at least steffi's editing was great - we had the coolest soundtrack. the bloopers and credits were the best part, though. for some reason meggo is credited as our hair stylist. the rest of it is a jamboree (oh, that's a fun word) or spatula-flinging, cheese it-eating, word-forgetting mistakes. oh, the good old days.

in other news, the momster transitioned between her rightful title (the momster) to That Woman and back several times today, mostly as a result of tiny, but highly annoying incidents. and then she and her assistant decided to have dinner at 9:30 (she's cray cray, okay?) while i was at s-la's. it was thai food and they remembered to bring home a meal for me, too. so clearly all is forgiven. the moral of this story? my heart will always be won via my stomach. that should probably worry me. one day i will have Moral Fiber (i think they sell it in pills at the grocery store, but the momster told me only old people use them and she wouldn't buy any) and will attempt to resist the lure of food, but until then...bring on the pineapple fried rice.

less exciting is the return of the mongol eyes. i can't even blame s-la's cat this time, since they didn't set in until i got home. the momster suspects that it just happened because i didn't take my allergy medicine today and it was finally nice out, but that doesn't explain why it looks like someone punched me in the face. seriously, the swelling - it's horrible. i look deranged. however, i'm heavily medicated now (but not the fun kinds; i kind of miss dr. cray cray. i've always wanted to try those crazy pills that let you hallucinate things, but during the lit and both econ exams i sat right next to the poster in the health room that tells you all the bad physiological effects drugs have on you so there's one dream deferred until...forever, actually) so hopefully it'll be gone by tomorrow morning. and if not, well...i guess i'll just become a hermit. i've always wanted to be one.

you don't get any youtube links today, since i'm dead tired right now. you can probably already tell that, though. i've got a feeling that there are typos and nonsensical sentences and horrible grammatical errors all over this post. i'll try to make it up to you tomorrow. maybe i'll even use capital letters! maybe.

you think it's endless, endless, endless

today's title comes from sleigh bells' crown on the ground. i can't find a decent version on youtube so you're just going to have to look it up yourself.

my econ exams went well. kind of. the macroeconomics exam was fine, since that's the unit we just finished learning. microeconomics wasn't that bad, either...not until the free responses, anyway. even after travis and i murdered a tree printing off past free responses to study, this year's was still a mystery. i put down a few nonsensical terms and busied myself drawing pictures. lots and lots of pictures. my personal favorite was a goldfish rendering of the high school cafeteria map in mean girls - i made the asians sushi rolls.

at least our teacher fed us. it figures that my worst exam(s) would have the best food. my favorite parts were the costco box of twizzlers (i still have a bunch in my bag), peanut m&ms, and buffalo chicken kickers for lunch. food just makes everything better, you know? in the mean girls cafeteria hierarchy i think i might be one of the girls who eat their feelings. oh no.

blossom is my favorite. who's yours? also, do any of you even read the captions? can i just start saying strange things in these or trying to brainwash you via subliminal messages embedded in the photo/gif captions or... i'm feeling kind of pinky and the brain today. don't judge.

oh, look, jon stewart has a teddy bear. that's nice. watching the daily show is a horrible distraction when one is trying to complete homework. blogging and watching the daily show, on the other hand, makes any hopes of finishing homework nonexistent, so...at least i can accept my fate? which will probably include staying up to an unhealthy hour finishing it or waking up really early and finishing it or taking it to lit and finishing it?

i don't know, don't expect anything sensible from me tonight. all i've done today is binge on sugary snacks, take two giant tests, and nap. my brain is still warming up. or shutting down. i'm not entirely sure.

in case you hadn't noticed already, my preferred exam time music tends to have a lot of the same songs/genres as my nighttime playlists: quiet or acoustic or old. makes sense, right? who wants to sleep or study or slit their wrists shrieking "why me?" and cursing college board and everyone who runs it to, i don't know, rap or death metal or club remixes? not me. (well except for the title song. but that was part of my special New Music exception). so if today's songs seem sort of familiar in tone, there's a reason...i'm a creature of extreme predictability (or not. i'm not entirely sure about that, actually. the momster says i am, but most other people say i'm not. what do you think?) and i listen to the same playlists while i blog or put of doing homework or pretend to study or attempt to sleep. in this case, the playlist features a lot of someone s-la likes to call "ray lamontage". for future reference, his name is ray lamontagne. you've all probably heard of him since he's awesome and coffeehouse loves him. in case you haven't heard the correct way to say his name, it's ray la-mon-tane.

my favorite:

a cover! we all know my weakness for those (in case you're wondering, the cover songs smart playlist is at 989 songs). the original is (unfortunately) one of the momster's favorite songs, but we've managed to compromise on this version for the car (usually):

and another cover!

give them to the night

today's title comes from sunflower by low. i've been listening to it (and the rest of the album it's from) constantly this week. it makes for good "gee, i should probably study for APs, but i won't, so i guess i'll just listen to relaxing music and not panic instead" listening.

it gets bonus points for having the first youtube result for the song be a skins video, but since e4 (the channel skins is on in the uk) disabled embedding on any video featuring its content, you'll have to make do with the boring one instead.

i've decided that i approve of the alien rat dog haircuts after all, even if they did make cookie and lulu are extra-shivery in the cold. now i have an excuse to dress them up in cute little sweaters! also their neverending search for heat has made them even more cuddly than usual (as i type this lulu is curled on top of both my feet), which is always good. best of all, it's made the daily check for ticks that much easier; i took them for a run in the rain to the canoe launch and was able to pry one off cookie in seconds. shrieky, flaily seconds, but seconds nevertheless.

besides, lulu (the one that looks like a mixture of pinky and the brain) is actually looking sort of cute with her giant head and paws and floppy ears. i'd snap a picture of her, but...well, i already mentioned the sleeping on my feet, right? because she is. and my toes are extremely toasty and reluctant to return to their normal unheated state, so you'll just have to make due with a puppy from cuteoverload.

i don't think you're complaining too much about the lack of lulu. that little dude is adorable.

other than my acceptance of hairless rat dogs my beloved pets, nothing much happened today. i went to school, got tacos and starbucks, came home, read, wrote, and blogged. i'm so interesting, i know. i guess being boring is better than having something horrible happen, though, so there's that.

besides, the national's new album high violet was officially released yesterday. and we all know what that means: i had to go on a mass deletion spree from my iTunes to make room for all the glee songs and an official studio release of high violet there are finally high quality versions of their songs on youtube (and in my iTunes library). this is one of my favorites (and is probably going to be the first single from the album, so i guess it's their favorite, too)

here's little faith, too:

i'd post another one of my favorite songs from this album, but it's not available on youtube yet. it's called england, though, if you want to get it.

anyway, it's getting late and i have to be a good little girl and actually make it to an AP exam on time for once (this is my last shot! ever!), so i guess this is where i'm going to leave off. expect lots of depression and whining about hand cramps tomorrow.

you know those rainy days ain't so bad when you're the king

today's title comes from fans by kings of leon. here, listen to it, it's one of my favorites.

i'm home now, and i'm pretty much killing time until glee comes on, so i thought i'd blog now.

nothing very interesting happened today. i woke up (late, as usual, so yesterday's straightened hair didn't get to make a reappearance), made coffee, went to school, played apples to apples in econ, sat around and talked in yearbook, went to lunch, mooched a bag of frozen strawberries off of jennifer (she brought them in to make punch for her spanish class), and went to gov to watch the world's most boring civil rights movie ever. seriously. i didn't think it was possible to make me hate thurgood marshall but that movie managed it. oh, and then i tagged along with the momster to do Mysterious Real Estate Things (organize papers and look up numbers) and possibly accidentally flashed half the cars on route 7.

gratuitous robert downey jr. gif is gratuitous

just kidding about that last one. well, sort of. basically, i wore two bras today (i felt like bean, it was fun), and then on the way to starbucks (half price frapps! i had three, so it might have cancelled out, but whatever - at least when i work for the momster she buys my coffee) i was like "hey, the momster's office has a gym attached, maybe i can work out" and blame the caffeine i've had seven cups today proceeded to do the good old sleepover/locker room wiggle to pull it off. so, really, i probably didn't actually flash anyone today, but according to the momster i got several strange looks from people on the road.

and here, have some pictures of the alien rat dogs. they have to wear sweaters when we walk them now since otherwise the cold makes them shiver.

look at my little baby aliens

doesn't she look like brain from pinky and the brain?

i like to think of this picture as cookie mourning his lost fur

glee just came on, so that's all for now. how can i resist rachel berry butchering the climb?

the scene: a city after dawn

today's title comes from in sleep by lissie. i posted about it a little while ago. if you don't remember it, go youtube it, i'm blogging from my phone.

while researching clips for the awesome, no really, i'm actually excited for something school-related, isn't that weird? film studies project i'm doing in lit, i came across a veritable gold mine of late 40s and early 50s educational films.

i know, i know - that doesn't sound all that interesting. certainly not good enough for an entire blog post (because i am, of course, a blogger of High Standards and only post about meaningful things like makeup and robert downey jr. and hair), but...well, just watch them. you'll see what i mean.

for example, there is the classic Boys Beware, which takes care to warn teenage boys of the dangers of hitchhiking. the 1950s sure must have been a nice time. nowadays most people aren't allowed to hitchhike because of the possibility of being kidnapped, raped, or murdered. back then the only danger was that you might meet a sick, diseased... homosexual. that's right. back in the 50s the biggest danger to hitchhiking teenagers was this:

anyway, here's the clip:

there's a companion video for girls, too. don't worry - girls, beware isn't about our risk of being killed by an angry lesbian. nope, it's about our risk of being killed by, oh, just about everything else.

after watching that you might be wondering why it was that just about everyone in 1950s america wanted to murder women. it's probably because of little films like this, which "educated" the modern man on how to deal with women.

there are a bunch of other clips in the related links on the side. watch them all when you have the time - they make for really fun car viewing.

oh, and in case you didn't notice, this is my hundredth post of the year! woo hoo!

look for another post from me later tonight - i'm going to go eat dinner and plan my lit and calc essays now. oh, and watch the daily show (don't worry - i know it's on right now, i've got it recording), the colbert report, and glee. i'm so excited for glee, it's a little unreal. the previews last week made it look like this episode is going to be hilarious.

oh, and while i'm sharing links i found in the car, here's one that left me a little horrified and a little hysterical. i love cracked.

Alien Rat Dogs

I am sitting at the kitchen table, sipping my coffee, and lamenting the change in my dogs from these pinacles of furry glory:

To this:

My babies! They've been shaved! How could That Woman do this to us? See if I get her a Mother's Day present ever again. Look how she repaid me - by having my fluffy little munchkin dogs replaced by aliens.

I'm going to go drown my sorrows in frappucino. Excuse the capital letters, I'm blogging from my phone.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

i've been reading some texts in my dreams

today's title comes from gypsy part of town by gogol bordello. i'd post it for you, but i'm on a terrible school computer (it's a pc - blegh). travis is here printing econ free responses...again, because apparently the 600 sheets we printed thursday weren't enough. oh well, at least we recycle.

i have coffee. it's not even starbucks coffee (well, it kind of is, but the kind you grind at home, not the kind they make for you). it's even better, though. like, i'm not a big fan of going to, say, a restaurant and ordering the most complicated, picky dish on the menu with very specific cooking guidelines. doing that always makes me feel bad for the waiter, and then i overtip out of guilt, and then i see s-la and feel guilty for overtipping (she's my consumer conscience, it's great). i feel the same way about ordering something really complicated from coffee shops (except the drive-thru ones in ashburn and frederick, because we go there pretty regularly and they should be willing to suffer for our continued patronage...also, i like the word patronage. it makes me feel powerful and tyrannical and a little like kurtz in heart of darkness, all "exterminate the brutes"...only in this case the brutes would be bad coffee makers, i guess), so i actually like making it at home in the mornings, since then i could have my half teaspoon of raw, not processed thankyouverymuch, sugar and my coffee piping hot (and not left out and starting to cool) and just a splash of half and half. a splash, which indicates just tipping your hand for a second, not just dumping in milk.

...yeah, i'm a little compulsive. don't judge me. judge robert downey jr. instead.

this just in: travis doesn't like poor, abused robert downey jr. i know, i know. get the pitchforks ready. we're about to burn the witch.

why should we even care?

today's title comes from iron man by black sabbath. here, enjoy it:

if you haven't heard by now, i went to see iron man 2 at midnight the day of/after my ap lit exam (which was ridiculously easy, i felt so smart...look for that to change on thursday when i have to take two econ exams). i liked it even more than the first one but my appreciation of these movies has always been based on how long robert downey jr. is on screen, so it was definitely worth going to the midnight showing, even if i did have to suffer through school on four hours of sleep (and not one drop of caffeine until i cried to an unnamed school official for coffee - did you know that officially teachers can't provide us with anything caffeinated because it's a "drug"? those fascists). luckily we weren't doing anything too strenuous in class on friday...or anything at all. we mostly spent the day playing board games in various parts of the school. i'm guessing the last few weeks of school are going to hover somewhere between "easy" and "laughable" or the hard work scale.

oh, and a little thing called prom happened yesterday. it was...like every other dance i've been to, actually. the only new additions to the formula of bad music + good dinner + fun group + pretty clothes and nails and hair were the limo and meggo. and even meggo doesn't really count, since s-la and i have both tagged along to her dances before. at least i sort of managed to dance with my shoes on for a little while? i find that impressive. so does robert downey jr.

after, however, something wonderful happened. i learned how to take out my contacts. and it neither ripped in half nor mysteriously popped out while i kept stabbing my eye with my finger. all the credit for that goes to s-la. so, who knows, now that i've figured out how to touch my eye without horrible things happening maybe i'll even start wearing them regularly. maybe.

an alternative name for this holiday is gratuitous rdj gif day, just so you all know

today was mother's day. it was pretty uneventful. i presented the momster with her prezzie, she flapped around a bit, we went out to eat, the end. i'm mentioning this because it's sheer lack of drama fills me with glee. i learned long ago in middle school to include a handwritten disclaimer with all of her cards and presents banning overly emotional displays of affection between us, since hallmark hasn't seen fit to create a card with that addendum. they should really get on that. would any of you want to be cried on and called pumpkin for, like, an hour? i don't think so. this way is so much better.

anyway, i'm still pretty tired/operating on a sleep deficit, so i'm going to cut this post short. look for longer blogs this week, though, since things are finally winding down in school.

they told me you missed school today

and they would be right, although i'm thinking that the stereophonics didn't write handbags and gladrags specifically for me.

in other words, the momster did something kind of crazy today. after lunch (and also after the calc exam which i sadly couldn't skip even though i should have since it, like all my exams but one, was held at an unearthly hour in what i hear is termed "the morning"), she called the school and told them we had a "family emergency" so i could get out of class. and then we went shopping and to final fittings of my prom dress since she was afraid i was getting too stressed. it was pretty awesome, even if her shopping habits manage to horrify me (don't ask how much she spent on foundation because it is not a pretty number). also, i finally got her a mother's day present, so there's one thing off my To Do list. oh, and then i went to godiva and had one of their dark chocolate raspberry drinks. it was almost as good as a frappucino.

oh, and then we went to borders and i picked up city of god, one of the books i was too broke to buy on my borders trip with s-la last week. i can't wait to start reading it. since i pretty much failed at leaving breakfast at tiffany's for after AP exams, i think it'll become my reward book, along with the tin drum, which i borrowed from sarah, even though i sort of already started reading that.

anyway, it's late and i have to be up early for the lit exam tomorrow, so i'm going to cut this short and leave you with music:

"I mean a girl just can't go to Sing Sing with a green face."

today's title comes from breakfast at tiffany's, both the movie and the novella. it's been my obsession of the day. i promised myself i wouldn't read any of the books i got on friday until after AP exams were over, but...

yeah, i couldn't hold out. and breakfast at tiffany's technically isn't a book - it's a novella. so i've read it three times now. it's that good.

like, i've always loved the movie but i always thought that most of holly's charm was due to her being played by audrey hepburn. she could make anything seem glamorous. so i figured that i was watching the movie and enjoying holly's character more because i'd already seen (and enjoyed) audrey in other movies.

the other movie. with bonus atticus finch gregory peck.

since i've read the novel(la), though, i've kind of had to revise my thinking a little. i always knew that truman capote's story would be darker than the film since...he's truman capote. i've read in cold blood and the flower house and a few of his other short stories and i know that he's a lot grittier than the happy ending/hot male lead hollywood adaptation. so i was prepared for that aspect of the story, at least.

i didn't expect it to be so interesting, though. like, the story is darker and holly golightly is disturbed and flighty and complex and fascinating. so, so fascinating. i don't want to spoil anything for you (because you're all going to read it, okay? every last one of you. it's short, so no complaining). and then you'll watch the movie, because who could resist this?

i know, i know. anyway, i'm sure you'll all be pleased to hear that ophelia the ipod is healthy and has all her songs back. it took three hours, but it was worth it.

glee is on now, so i'm going to leave off here. sue sylvester is so awesome.

emergency

this just gets its own post. ophelia the ipod did something weird so itunes prompted me to restore. i, being retanded (hey, i'll use the word if i want to), clicked okay.

and now my ipod has been wiped and has to be resynced. it's actually syncing right now. as in, it's got to upload over thirteen thousand songs back onto it.

...i'm dying. also, clearly i'm going to be up all night. i hate life.

while the limousines wait in the street

today's title comes from chelsea hotel #2, originally by leonard cohen.

i'm pretty annoyed with blogger today. originally i wasn't going to post at all - i was just going to edit my last post with more hints about the blatantly obvious, really children songs on my summertime sleep playlist but when i tried to go in and edit it, the post disappeared.

seriously. the stupid post self-deleted. methinks lulu gave it her suicidal tendencies. i always knew that dog was evil. luckily i was able to find it saved in my drafts, so it's back up but all your comments are gone. oh well, such is life in moscow i suppose...although i still kind of want to do this to blogger:

i kind of want to do that to all of you, too. it's nothing personal, it's just -

none of you have heard of dorothy parker. none. not even sarah bitch-don't-even-try-i-will-always-be-better-than-you-in-english stucke. how could this happen?

for future reference, this is dorothy parker. begin with wikipedia and let google and your friendly neighborhood library or bookstore take you further, okay? and you should definitely read her work. it's so awesome that i named my first laptop - which most of you knew by her nickname, dot - after her. that's right - when given the option to name one of my favorite inanimate objects after an author i chose dot over j. k. rowling, tolkien, c. s. lewis, any of the mitfords, or even t. s. eliot. in other words: start reading.

here, i'll even give you a place to start - the same place i did. in other words, this is the portable dorothy parker:

even rory gilmore loves dorothy! if that's not an endorsement, i don't know what is.

oh, and another little thing happened today. namely, the ap gov exam. it was...easy, actually. and this is coming from someone who was too distracted by the momster/giant x-men marathon on tv yesterday to study. of course, it was only easy once i, you know, showed up (7:53 a.m. - it's a good time) but, eh. life can't be perfect all the time. i had a few dumb moments during the test, too. and by "a few" i mean that i completely lost my head during the free responses and forgot little things like, oh, i don't know, the english language.

i know, i know. be ashamed of me. i am. i forgot how to spell suppress and amendments. i also forgot some other important things like basic sentence structure, paragraph organization, and the word reminded. and for that last one i mean i wrote "retanded" instead of reminded and then spent a good ten minutes staring at my paper going, "gee, i wonder what that was supposed to mean". hopefully the ap readers aren't expecting me to know basic english.

anyway, i'll just be posting two songs tonight. or, technically, one song sung by two different people. the first is the original version of chelsea hotel #2, as sung by leonard cohen, that i mentioned at the beginning of the blog, and the other is regina spektor's cover of it:

under marble movie skies

Today's title comes from Daniel by Bat For Lashes. I probably blogged about it last summer since her album, Two Suns, was one of my favorites last year.

In case the capital letters weren't enough to give it away, I'm blogging from my phone. It's been a while since I did this, but I felt a pressing urge to blog triggered by Lulu's attempted suicide that wouldn't let me wait until I got home.

Caught that, did you? Yeah, my genius of a headphone-eating dog got her leash tangled around the backseat of the car and then she jumped...and didn't quite hit the ground.

That's right: I am the proud owner of the only dog in existence that tried to hang itself on Route 7.

Don't worry, she's alright. I did a quick dive to the backseat and detached her from her leash, but not without flashing possibly every car on the road today. My life - it's occasionally horrible.

Proof? I decided to pick up a Calculus review book after all. Of course, since my dogs had just demonstrated a strong desire to play My Chemical Romance and cry tears of emo blackness before killing themselves (I might be hyperbolizing. Might) I had to wait in the car with them while the Momster headed into Borders to pick up our books. Before she left I asked her to check if they still had copies of Fight Club since I still don't own it. What did she buy instead? Three Calc review books (three!), Calc flashcards (and considering the giant flashcard project we have due on Wednesday, this is highly, highly ironic), and Garnishinh For Dummies.

...no, I'm not kidding. Garnishing. Not even Cooking For Dummies. What are we going to do with a book about garnishing food? We can barely work the oven!

My life is occasionally ridiculous. At least I get to comfort myself with frappucinos.

Oh, and I made a new sleep/nighttime playlist for the summer. It's 33 (hopefully familiar) songs long. Anyone want to guess what's on it? Whoever gets the most gets...well, I don't actually know since this is the Internet and all. But something good. Really.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Fort Evans Rd NE,Leesburg,United States

waiting with the wind against your face

today's title is from what? two posts in one day? looks like may is off to a good start california summer by vampire weekend.

i'm sitting here, getting crumbs all over the keyboard, while munching on one of the cupcake's the momster surprised me with. it was really pretty looking before i started eating it - all chocolate fudge swirling frosting and a little cherry on top. i was going to take a picture of it but i forgot because i was a ravening beast consumed by hunger feeling mildly peckish. peckish. isn't that a great word? it makes me think of all sorts of lovely things like charles dickens and shepherd's pie and england and hippogriffs. i think i'll start using it more often.

i'm listening to this really great song called don't be the one by lissie and george stanford. i'd post it here but it's impossible to find on the internet. even the lyrics don't exist anywhere. but it's so amazing that i thought i'd mention it anyway - if any of you feel like listening to pretty folk duets, shoot me an email.

you know what's really cool? synesthesia. i really wish i had it. i think it'd be really fun to see different letters or sounds or smells as colors. that wasn't completely random, either. here, i'll explain my thought process to you:

TEN MINUTES EARLIER:

Rachel places her cup of milk and cup of cake on the coffee table. No, that isn't right. Let's start again:

Rachel places her cupmilk and cup of cake on the coffee table. That's not it either. One more time:

Rachel places her cup of milk and cupcake on the coffee table. Then she flings herself onto the couch dramatically. This is accomplished by flinging her hands out to each side and sighing while she sits down. One of her hands nearly overturns the cupcake. It wobbles precariously, about to fall - but, no. The cupcake is safe. 

"Woe," Rachel says. "Woe is me. I'm on my deathbed.  My deathcouch. Alas and alack, that I should meet my demise on such an unpoetic piece of furniture."

"You're dying?" says Character Who Only Exists For Exposition. "You look very healthy."

"How can you say that?" Rachel says, with more dramatic flinging of the hands. 

The cupcake wobbles some more. It can tell that this is going to be a very long scene. Cupcake hopes that it's getting paid overtime for putting up with this sort of abuse. 

"I'm dying. Dying. My life is almost over. I'm nearly eighteen. I'm going to have to be an adult and make money and have a job or at least go to college and not have a Momster getting me surprise cupcakes while I'm out walking the dogs. I'll be too old for that. I think I feel a wrinkle forming."

Rachel flaps her hands around. This time the cupcake doesn't escape unscathed, although Rachel does stop flailing long enough to suck the icing off her finger. 

"It's not the end of the world," Character Who Only Exists For Exposition says. "According to movies all you do in college is get drunk and become an underdog who morphs into Amanda Bynes and steals Sara Paxton's boyfriend through sheer pluck and cleverly timed bouts of clumsiness. You even get your own soundtrack!"

"But I'll have to do my own laundry," cries Rachel. 

"You already do laundry. You're doing laundry right now," Character Who Only Exists For Exposition says. "Maybe you should quiet your fears of leaving childhood by doing something impossibly juvenile."

"You're stupid, Character Who Only Exists For Exposition," Rachel says. "Go away now. No, wait - Your name is sort of weird. Are you Native American?"

"Why does everyone always ask me that? I'm Canadian, geez." And with that Character Who Only Exists For Exposition disappears in a cloud of Deus Ex Machina. 

Rachel sighs dramatically and waves her arms around some more. Then she looks back at Poor Abused Cupcake and Innocent Cup of Milk. 

"Well, it wouldn't hurt..." she says. 

FIVE MINUTES LATER:

Rachel is still blowing bubbles in her milk. Poor Abused Cupcake wants you all to know that this is because she is five years old and easily amused. 

The End. 

did you like my story? i know, i know, it was a masterpiece. i even used capital letters! and i almost managed to reread it for typos, but i got distracted by my cupcake and the prospect of blowing even more bubbles in my milk. i forgot how much fun that was.

i think that's all for this post. i'm going to bed in like two minutes - i need all the sleep i can get, since tomorrow is going to be one long study marathon. oh, i can't wait until AP week is over.

200! (stay tuned for the spartans)

so, i made it through 200 blog posts. i feel accomplished.

i put off writing this post for a few days because i wanted to blog about something really interesting for my 200th post. then i decided to look back at my 100th post for inspiration. this is my 100th post. clearly the bar isn't all that high. also, i'm still waiting on my purple grape suit.

i did get this today, though. it's my second romper! i'm kind of in love with it.

i like it, but not as much as i like the books i got with s-la yesterday after a busy, busy day of learning things and laying under trees in the school parking lot waiting for the momster to drop off my smoothie (i've been rediscovering my smoothie love with the warm weather - they're yummy and they make me feel healthy...ish). it was painful having to narrow my to-read list down, but eventually i settled on breakfast at tiffany's, everything is illuminated, and prodigal summer (which was written by barbara kingsolver!). and then i got locked out of the house and went home with s and learned that nbc has other funny shows besides 30 rock and the office. it was exciting.

today has been less interesting. i spent a few hours studying in the yard, enjoying the sunshine, and getting bitten by bugs. having deemed my suffering to be great enough for one day, i came inside and played with makeup. specifically, this look. after a few unfortunate mistakes i managed to work out a very toned down version for school and a slightly toned down version for everywhere else. i love looking at fun makeup but i'm just not enough of a risk taker to actually wear it, you know?

anyway, here are my songs of the day:

here's a warning for this video. if you haven't heard already, it's pretty graphic. the song is pretty good, though, and the video is interesting (although i did have the worst desire to laugh while watching it. because, on the one hand you have a hypothetical police state attacking people to the tune of techno hip hop, but on the other hand...gingers):

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.