a song i've never heard

today's title comes from academia by sia and is (for once) actually relevant to this post - being home means i've been bingeing on new music. it's wonderful. i'll put up reviews if anyone's curious.

this song really can't be called good, but the music video is so hilarious i had to post it.

i didn't do much today. worked out, walked the dogs, helped the momster with work, wandered around manassas and arlington today. the usual, basically. i found a panda hat at anthropologie, though! it's adorable, but way too expensive. thankfully, christmas is just around the corner so it is totally going on my wish list.

i've been making friends with my keyboard today. i can't explain it here, so don't ask me to, but i've been...afraid, i guess, of writing. not academic writing, or blogging (since this is so nonsensical and insubstantial it barely counts as writing anyway). just...the more i read (good books, this time around, and not twilight or the other crap booksellers market to kids nowadays), the more intimidated i get. there are so, so many wonderful writers out there, how could i ever compete?

of course, there are plenty of horrible writers out there, too. one only has to wander over to the shelf of romance novels in the grocery store to realize that. so i've decided that (as i have no current hope of publication), i'm going to write anyway. besides, all of you are being so creative right now that i feel guilty.

never meant to start a war

today's title comes from jordin sparks' battlefield, as seen in this:

joanna the hall-e posted it on my wall on facebook. i think it's hilarious. ophelia the ipod is still dead. i'm still working on papers. life seems quite dismal at the moment. also, i have jane austen postcards. they're very limited in number, though, so i'm still trying to figure out who to send them to. currently, i'm leaning toward sarah-with-an-umlaut, since she was able to respond to the hall-es and i texting her harry potter pickup lines with a few of her own, and that kind of dedication deserves a reward. we'll see, though.

also, the real madrid copa del rey game was hilarious. see for yourself why:

want to live in a fantasy?

surprisingly enough, my silversun pickups kick hasn't ended in the twelve or so hours since i last posted. this post's title comes from:

so right now i'm midnight munching on one of the two dishes i actually know how to make from scratch - stuffing. yep, glorified bread and seasoning is my specialty. i'm sure you're all surprised. i even got fancy and added broccoli to it. this whole quest i'm on to attain a few basic survival skills seems to be going well.

like s-la, five is my new favorite number. it's nice to see your hard work pay off, you know? or, in my case, it's nice to see my serious dedication to caffeine in all its many forms pay off. it's all the same in the end, right?

i watched the espys on espn for the first time ever. yes, i was only watching for the usmnt. and, yes, i'm aware that the link i just posted leads to stu holden's twitter (look, i'm even linking it again - just click it already) and not the usmnt's website or twitter or blog. the twitter is better, okay? it's got pictures.

i've got a highly shameful confession to make now...i'm in love with the twilight movies' soundtracks.

take a deep breath and reread that sentence. yes, i said the soundtracks. there's no need to worry for my soul/sanity/sudden loss of intelligence. look, i can even form semi-complete sentences! capital letters, sadly, are still beyond my power.

some of you might already know about my sad, sad predilection for indie-but-not-really bands. i try and try to hide it but...well, i figured now was the best time to come out about it. hopefully these two songs will sway you to the Dark Side:

i picked these two songs because they're from bands that i've previously pimped on this blog, but i've actually liked a lot of songs from these movies. just the songs, though. oh, and the unintentional humor. watching kristen stewart try to show emotion is definitely better than 99.9% of the shows on tv right now. however, i would like to recommend recasting taylor lautner and foot-face pattinson with a pair of soccer players. none of them can act, either, but at least their abs look better. feel free to make player suggestions in the comments and make them spanish because the fewer players they have for euro 2012 the more like germany is to win.

and -- oh, fine. i've tortured you with enough horrible twilight-related things. here, have another poem:

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

-- yeats

what a difference a day makes

today's title comes from narcissus in a red dress by the like. in case i hadn't made it obvious, i love the like, so if you haven't already, check them out, especially if you're a fan of sixties throwback pop.

other things which are amazing include the world cup (of course), makeup (i got some), and the early release club. s-la has a pretty awesome recap of our alternative senior trip posted here, but she forgot one very important detail: the zoo. roller coasters are awesome and all but how could she not mention the cuteness that was:

prairie dogs! they were so cute. not as cute as my own dogs, of course, but close enough.

now, onto the makeup...

it wasn't a very big haul, but i did pick up two of my favorite things of all time, so i thought i'd share them with you.

thing the first is, as you may already know, lipstick. specifically, red red say-it-a-few-thousand-times-and-you-might-understand-how-red-it-is lipstick. in this case, shanghai express by nars.

and thing the second is my new favorite eyeshadow/liner palette of all time. it's so summery and fun. oh, and there's purple. i'm considering picking up another one and swapping out someone's graduation prezzie with it, what do you think? hopefully she'll use it - i've only had mine two days and i'm already in love. it's really great for everyday wear because it's mostly neutrals (and purple! which is supposedly good for brown eyes so my obsession is still justified). go ahead and admire it:

since the boring part of this post is over, let's get down to the important things: soccer and soccer players.

we'll begin by mourning michael ballack and cursing the ghanian player who injured him days before the world cup, depriving us of his hotness presence. here, comfort yourselves, children:

are you comforted yet? no? well, how about you show your patriotism and ogle one of our own players or at least enjoy him being ridiculous:

and even though we were robbed in our last match against slovenia, we at least have happy pictures and tweets like this to amuse ourselves with:

what? that last one had nothing to do with soccer? oops...

since this post is nothing but links and pictures anyway, here's one something i've been listening to a lot lately: 

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.

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:

things i learned today

1. spill orange juice on your jeans in the car
2. show up at school two minutes late
3. forget what day the juniors have sol testing 

in other words, i woke up half an hour late this morning, rushed through a shower, grabbed a glass of orange juice on the way out the door, and attempted to towel dry my hair with a wash cloth in the car. 

sadly, even with all of these sacrifices to my morning routine i still ended up at school at 9:02, two whole minutes after i was supposed to be in class. so i went to the attendance office for a pass. and found out that, as a result of the stupid juniors and their stupid writing sol, my lit class had been moved to another room, which - of course - no one knew the location of. you see, our lovely main office only kept a record of which stolen classrooms the oh-so-precious baby juniors were supposed to report to, not where the Displaced Seniors were supposed to go. 

so i spent half an hour chilling in the main office only to learn that my lit class had been relocated to the library. 

there's a three word phrase that sums up my reaction to this statement but it's a little profane so i'll stick to the acronym: fml. 

there, i'm done being bitter and whiny. someone sent me this link today and i thought it looked pretty cool:

Adobe Photoshop Cook from Lait Noir on Vimeo.

you know what else is pretty cool? 

reverend and the makers. they're a band out of england, they toured with oasis (before the brothers gallagher decided to pull a mean girls and have a girl fight with each other), and spend their time being awesome and making music. see?

other things i liked today? 

also, i'm incredibly thankful for operation: read instead. before giving up the telly (ha, british people have the best words) i used to watch the daily show all the time and now i'm glad i can't anymore since i found out at school today that rpattz (you might know him as eddie c. from Those Crappy Vampire Books, or merely as FootFace for the strange shape of his head on tabloid covers) was on last night's episode. whew, that was a close one. i might actually have been tricked into watching FootFace simply because his interview would've been sandwiched between my two great comedian loves - jon stewart and stephen colbert. 

"you have flapper hair"

today's title is courtesy of s-la, in reference to the New Hair which you might remember me mentioning on friday. lately my judge of a good haircut has been based on one factor: what it looks like first thing in the morning. sadly, i was too blegh this morning to snap a picture, but i did take a nap when i got home from school today (why, yes, i am that boring) and had the presence of mind to snap a picture. in other words, here are your before and after shots. form your own opinions on The Hair.

(after school: don't i look cheery? yeah, i didn't think so either)

 (post-nap bedhead)

in other news, my ipod is on its way to the apple store, after days of waiting. i neglected to accompany it since the last time i went in there they greeted me by name. in other words, i've broken one too many gizmos and thingamees to feel comfortable setting foot in an apple store for the next two years.

today was a mixture of boring and horrible. in other words, i went to lit, calc, and physics. lit sans a teacher and calc with a quiz (thankfully it was a partner quiz, though, so thank god for stephanie) were both horrifically boring and physics was an exercise in endurance. you know those classes where you have to pinch yourself to keep from drifting off? that's physics for me.

thankfully things have started looking up. this is mostly because i'm on frappucino number two of the day, but also due to naptime, series four of skins, and fleet foxes. oh, and i finished my homework early for once.

i think i'm going to cut today's post short - i've got some reading to catch up on. top of the list? nightlight, that twilight parody i blogged about way back when.

great satan's gone, the whore of babylon

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

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

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