shine when the sunset shifts

today's title is, once again, from tv on the radio's wolf like me. if you haven't listened to it yet (or heard it before - like i said before: it's old) scroll down and hit play. i'm four winds in love with it right now.

so gina tagged me in the little ha, little, i love you, gina, the way to my heart and bloggy affections is through shiny things and flattery award above (and i, being highly susceptible to flattery, am all sorts of pleased) so i'm going to go ahead and use this as an excuse to talk about my shopping adventures.

i headed out after the interviews (which seemed to go well, except for the part where the manager at guess asked my age at the end and then told me that she would hire me but would have to wait til i'm 18...when i'll be at college. which sucks. but if i need a job next summer i guess i know where to go) to do some graduation present shopping for myself. i picked up a few things for other people, don't worry, but the real highlights of my trip were these:

i got a few other things, too, like a black romper and a green shirt (for ten dollars! ten! at banana republic!) but they're in the washer so i can wear them this week. oh, and then i went to tyson's with the momster. be proud, everyone. i went to free people and bought something for another person who better be damn grateful or i will cut her.

now that i've shared my materialistic joy with everyone, time to follow the rules of the award:

so, five random facts about rachel:

1. all of my electronics have names. my first laptop was named dorothy parker, dot for short. this one is named compy. my ipod is ophelia and my phone is eve. i'm not sure why i always name things, but i think it has something to do with being an only child.
2. when in doubt, i blame my parents for everything. see fact #1. 
3. i worry all the time and about the most random things. i guess i think too much. like, it's impossible for me to get to sleep until i'm dead tired because my brain just won't shut off. 
4. i reread all my favorite children's book series at least once a year. it's all the basics: anne of green gables, betsy-tacy, harry potter, narnia, lord of the rings, and madeleine l'engle's books. 
5. i've had this bracelet since i was a baby. back then it was so big i could wear it around my neck as a necklace. the momster told me that i would grow into it but i still have to fasten it between the zebra and the elephant:

looking at that list, it's very obvious that i'm a pretty boring person. oh well. maybe in my next life i'll be Dramatic and Mysterious. of course, if reincarnation is real i'll probably end up as a cockroach in my next life for all the horrible things i've done (or plan to do, let's be realistic here) but cockroaches can be Dramatic and Mysterious, too. 

now i get to tag 5 bloggers for the award. oh boy! 

1. dulce candy and euchante tv. hell, i'll throw in the stylish wanderer, too, even though everyone already follows her. they're all actual fashion bloggers, so i don't think they need too much explanation. 
2. high kicks and high hopes. this is the blog of one of the radio city rockettes who i found - shameful as this is to admit - during the Dark Days of Yore when i was obsessed with panic! at the disco and the guitarist she was dating. since then she and said guitarist broke up...and then the guitarist broke up with his band...and my stalking activities are sadly curtailed. i still follow her for her interesting posts. it's not a fashion-centric blog but some of her posts are and her style is great.
3. the sassy curmudgeon. i found this blog via jenibean. it's great - she's snarky, looks up to carrie bradshaw as we all should and has great clothes.  
4. last and very definitely least since she is the worst blogger in the world and never updates is The Bean herself. jenibean has fun (albeit overwhelmingly black) clothes, but she's been branching out since the Dark Days of A Little Bit After Yore But Not Yet The Present and buying things with actual colors and patterns. sometimes she even cleans her closet. 

by the way, i finished reading john adams. it was really good. i still have half of that writing post i mentioned a few days ago saved in my drafts, so maybe i'll tack on a review and put it up later. i'm probably going to save it for another day, though. it has actual thinky thoughts in it and i want to do them justice. 

here's what i've been listening to a lot today:

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:

is this a soul that stirs in me, is it breaking free, wanting to come alive?

so i lied in my last post. this isn't even close to being about clothes (although, i did just get some new ones, yay for prezzies). just to get you up to speed, i just took my last ap quiz (of course, there is an 80 question practice test on tuesday, also graded), so for the next...oh, i don't know, we'll be generous and say two days, i might actually be able to blog. and then will come next monday, when the ap exams actually begin, in which case the only bloggage you'll be getting from is OHMYGOSH I'M DYING.



since i think we'd all like to avoid me posting anything of the sort, i thought i'd get this post out of the way now.



my latest book obsession has been c.s. lewis's mere christianity. i'm about three quarters of the way through it, and i'm pretty much in love with it. it's his perspectives on why religion in general, and christianity in specific, is the most logical view of the world and it goes on to explain why youcan't just adopt the "religion is a buffet" mentality and pick and choose the tenets you want to follow (but if religion was a buffet, what would 'thou shalt not kill' look like? i'm thinking a rare steak, what do you think? and what about adultery? i'm torn between an obscene ice sculpture and spotted dick...now that i think about it, i feel like the whole 'religion is a buffet' idea should just get its own post). really, i'm just in love with the book because it seems to verbalize so many of the ideas i believe, but in a more concise (and less rambly, parenthetical, teenage girlish sort of way). i feel like i should include quotes, but right now i'm in the school library during study hall, and on one side of me J is reading an anime featuring scantily clad girls with multi-tonal hair and physiologically improbable chests and gun-slinging, violence-adoring androgynous boys; and on my other side a collection of academy of science, sex-obsessed freshman nerds are wiki-ing sex.



in other words, these are not conditions conducive to quoting theological anythings. (unless one wants to throw a few of those chastity verses at them, because my school already has one pregnant underclassmen, we don't need the nerds to contribute a few more).



until then, i'm going to direct you to this song, which is based off the book and which has been in my itunes 25 most played years before i even realized c. s. lewis wrote anything besides narnia.

and while we're at it, here's a picture of the day, courtesy of flickr. i'll give you the quote the user used as a caption, just because it, too, is from My New Favorite Book.




[...] Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite [...]-- Quote by C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)