a newly orphaned refugee

today's title should come from a very familiar source - four winds by bright eyes. it came up on shuffle late last night and once i heard it again, i couldn't stop listening. so you can listen to it again, too:

and here's the killers version, too:

this is basically a music post, since i've got another rachel post in the works. so here's what i've been listening to lately:

hands down, my favorite thing to listen to in october. it's kind of like my ultimate halloween song. well, besides this:

and here's some of the new stuff i've been listening to. it's been a while since i've posted, so a lot of this isn't new (and some of it was only ever new to me):

one of my favorites. stand out tracks? bang bang bang and the bicycle song. it's just a really fun, dance-y album.

in a word: disappointing. i don't care how much crap they spout off in interviews about "returning to [their] roots". um, this crap isn't their "roots"- it's them trying to capitalize on their sex on fire/use somebody success with a bad album that all their sheep new fans are going to buy without listening to. i'll stick to this, thank you very much:

my new workout album. it's so much fun to listen to. my favorites right now are: gordita, rabiosa, and her cover of islands by the xx. 

and just for kicks (and because i love it), here's the original:

and a couple of random songs:

we all know how i feel about covers. some of you might remember when odd blood by yeasayer came out earlier this year, and how crazy about this song and mondegreen and ambling alp and every other song by them ever i was. this is almost as good. 

i unashamedly love this cover. it's not that different from the original, but between the lack of useless synths and the changed lyrics it just feels better. 

excited as i am for the new taylor swift album (i'm listening to it right now, actually) in my head, kanye > taytay any day of the week. he can even redeem justin bieber. 

come around sundown

today's title comes from the cutie and the followills album of the same name. it leaked! i'm listening to it now - reviews will be forthcoming...eventually. i have four papers due this week (on top of the four papers i had due last week). i'm beginning to hate school.

you know what i don't hate? justin timberlake. he and britney spears are basically the last relics of my musically-challenged childhood which i can look on without feeling endless shame. actually, watching this makes me and the hall-es all sorts of giddy. you should watch it, too:

to get the tedious recapping out of the way, here's my week in pictures:

rainy days leads to umbrella fencing in the halls. 

why do i always get the mean fortune cookies? the last one told me to eat more carrots to avoid cancer. this can't be normal.

L decided to hang out in my step stool today. she also may have decided to get stuck in it. oh, hall-es.

i was up bright and early at 7:45 this morning to volunteer at the food bank with circle k, but i didn't bring my camera or my phone, so i couldn't take pictures. it was fun, though. we did a lot of sorting and boxing, mostly. people (and businesses) like to donate some weird stuff. we had pallets full of dietary supplements called flush the fat, a bunch of ankle and knee braces, and around fifty boxes of shampoo and conditioner. that was the worst. a lot of the bottles burst in the boxes, which was disgusting to feel when you were reaching in to sort and box them - we went through a ton of paper towels cleaning off the bottles, and my hands still feel kind of slimy. the club and the hall-es and i went out to brunch afterwards, where i introduced everyone to my favorite, most unhealthy brunch food of all time: southwestern tater tot bowls. it's basically what it sounds like: a bowl full of tater tots covered in cheese, bacon bits, tomatoes, green onions, salsa, and sour cream.

...needless to say, i have since been convinced to join in on a healthy eating month. after all, i do have to get into jasmine shape. so for the next 31 days, i'm not drinking coffee or soda (i will probably cheat on the coffee - however, the hall-es seem convinced that my caffeine intake isn't healthy, so i'll have to sneak some on the side) or snacking after nine in the afternoon evening. it's going to be horrible. hopefully it'll pay off. at least it gave me an excuse to stock up on tea and hot chocolate and marshmallows at giant today.

i'm going to have a busy day of homeworking and soccer watching tomorrow (note: real madrid is being shown on espn 2 at 3 p.m. and liverpool plays at 10). i should actually probably just save this post and go to sleep, since i only had a little nap today before watching mean girls in joanna's room (also, apparently i curl up when i sleep? i had no idea that wasn't normal. i don't know, i just like to sleep with the covers over my head and apparently all the hall-es were debating on whether i was actually under the blankets or if it was just a pillow. oh, and apparently i like to hit people who try to wake me up? who knew. ) but i just feel like blogging tonight. it's been a very, very long time.

it's funny, but i've been feeling like a sponge, lately. i don't know...i guess i'm just trying a lot of things i never thought i would be interested. like aikido. it's weird and kind of hard and i fall down a lot but it's still really fun. oh, and pilates...actually, that's just hard, but we're going again this week anyway. oh, and letter writing. there's something i never thought i'd pick up - but then i realized the joys of a full mailbox and changed my mind. i wonder if my sponginess is going to stick around. i kind of hope it does, but then...well, i quite liked being a hermit. me and my room or basement or kitchen on a winter afternoon with lulu on my feet as slippers and a book or new music...well, it was nice. better than nice, actually. i'm actually ridiculously excited to get back to that during my breaks.

i guess you could call this my poem of the day, but i've been obsessing over it for, like, the last week, so i don't know if that label really applies any more:

You who never arrived 
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost 
from the start, 
I don't even know what songs 
would please you. I have given up trying 
to recognize you in the surging wave of 
the next moment. All the immense 
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt 
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and 
unsuspected turns in the path, 
and those powerful lands that were once 
pulsing with the life of the gods-- 
all rise within me to mean 
you, who forever elude me. 

You, Beloved, who are all 
the gardens I have ever gazed at, 
longing. An open window 
in a country house-- , and you almost 
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,-- 
you had just walked down them and vanished. 
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors 
were still dizzy with your presence and, 
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same 
bird echoed through both of us 
yesterday, separate, in the evening... 

- rainer maria rilke 

no post would be complete without music. in no particular order, here's what i've been listening to lately. being deprived of my usual rachel-time (and therefore, music-finding time), i need recommendations. what have you all been listening to lately?

okay, so i lied. clearly there is an order to this and clearly florence and the machine covering girls aloud deserves to be first. i've actually probably blogged this song before, just because my love of cover songs and florence has been well-documented here. you can listen to it again anyway.

praise the lawd

cutie and the followills are back. the new album releases on october 18, just five little days after my (18th!) birthday. best prezzie ever? i think so.

anyway, they have a new music video. watch it.

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.

slow night, so long

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

derailment

i had all these plans for a really great post about the thinky thoughts jeni's post on high school inspired me to have. and by "really great" i mean "general bitchery about how i'm just ready to graduate and doing something i'm actually interested in". it would have been a masterpiece - i'm 99% certain that i would've managed to shoehorn in an overblown metaphor or eight. in the words of rory gilmore - alas, alack. i was distracted by the complete perfection that is proenza schouler's pre-fall collection. i want it all. i mean, it's a snow day in the middle of february and it has me wishing for the good ol' september august back-to-school frenzy.

really, though, i just want this entire outfit:

(come on get higher - matt nathanson)

oh, why must it be so crazyexpensive? i suppose i'll just have to pull on a lady gaga mask and go knock over some banks. 

i'm drinking another peppermint mocha frapp right now and feeling very lovely and dissipated for doing so. it's sort of sad that my idea of luxury is having the guys at starbucks know you well enough to reopen and make you a drink even after they've closed. then again, my idea of a glamorous late night involves sipping said drink and putting itunes on shuffle while i play on the internet, so i guess it makes sense. 

(between - vienna teng)

i just updated the bloglist to include some of the songs that i've kept on loop these past few days. i've pretty much given up on making it any sort of actual playlist - now it's more of a 'here's what i want to listen to when i post things' type of deal.

today's link roundup is mostly positive. sure, there's the stray rumor that beyonce might be collaborating with kings of leon (please, god, no), but there was also news of the strokes' new album, a collaboration i actually like in the form of gerard way on amanda palmer's next album, hilarious rock star spending stories, a free (and legal) kid cudi download on kanye west's blog. the best of all these, though?

(jolene - ray lamontagne)

j. k. rowling is now a barbie doll. no, really. where was this when i was a kid? 

and now i'll step away from the linkage to fill you in on my fun-filled snow day. hooray for emergency babysitting for the neighbors - i love that employers won't let parents off of work when their kids don't have school. now i've got shopping money (not proenza schouler shopping money, but still). i did a lot little light reading today, too. the list? the golden compass and subtle knife by philip pullman, followed by the communist book club-approved looking glass wars. i figure that i'll finish that and the sequel and then reward myself by rereading the amber spyglass. and then stealing the third looking glass book from s-la. 

(exitlude - the killers)

does truth lie in the sincerity of another sullen song?

so i'm thinking blogging about my favorite drink discovery was a bad idea. mostly because whenever i have one now i keep wanting to blog. so, here, have a picture of my latest favorite drink in the universe (it's quite photogenic) and my favorite cheeseball too (isn't he cute?). also, in case you couldn't tell, i'm rereading the potters in time to watch the newest one on dvd. is it lame that i'm excited about that? i don't think so. but, eh, it's me - i spent half an hour in the car looking up youtube interviews with the cast about the deathly hallows movie. (according to daniel radcliffe they're hitting the "home stretch" of filming after christmas. which means new movie soon!) besides, it's not like my fixation with british children's fantasy literature in general is news to anyone. it's not even my fault, either. if they would just write silly fantasy

like twilight i wouldn't be so addicted, but, nope, those silly brits had to go and invent narnia and hogwarts and - and - roald dahl. how could any kid have been expected to step away from the bookcase after reading the witches? it's just not possible. and speaking of old roald, we went to see the fantastic mr. fox and it was pretty funny (if a little disconcerting to hear clooney in theaters so soon after goats). i still prefer the book, though. oh, and remember my last post? (you should, it was from, like, two hours ago) well, i'm serious about midtown, okay? they were my cutie and the followills before i knew who cutie and the followills were. you will like them. like, it's not even up for discussion. and to help you out with that, i'm going to feature an album review/primer every day for the next...three days. maybe longer, since they had a few EPs that weren't officially released.

let's start with my favorite: forget what you know. it was their last album. and their best (according to me and gabe saporta; clearly this is a consensus you should trust, okay?). here's the ap.net review, which is a lot more detailed and coherent than i could ever hope to be since my default state when listening to music i like tends to be roughly equivalent to a gibbering baboon. i'm just saying. also, here's gabe from cobra starship talking about midtown. let's all take a moment to soak in the hopes of a reunion tour (well, if blink-182 could do it, why can't they?). excited now? good. now when you listen to the album (and you're going to listen to the album or we're not friends anymore), here's the songs you should pay special attention to, aka rachel's list of favorites:

1. to our savior - no, s-la, they aren't taking the lord's name in vain and i will never forgive you for making that your only comment on brand new/jesus christ.
2. waiting for the news - the intro. also, for any cobra fans, gabe's voice on this kind of reminds me of his voice on the scene is dead; long live the scene.
3. god is dead - no, seriously, steffi, i know what you're thinking and you should stop it right now. it's a nice interlude, okay, and there's a reason it's been on my sleep sleep playlist since eighth grade.
4. help me sleep - doesn't actually help me sleep, but it's fun to sing along to in the car. the only way the momster got me to drive on the way back from gettysburg this summer was by letting me play this song on loop for half an hour (although was she really expecting me to drive to the accompaniment of the beegees? she should've known better)
5. whole new world - i don't why, but in my mind this is automatically filed under 'soundtrack'. even if it never made it to tv (that wikipedia knows of), it's still awesome. besides, everyone knows the only things being played on tv shows nowadays is lady gaga and the disney kids. (although that bonus jonas kid's blog is the most amazing thing i've ever read, even if i don't know if it's real or not. either way, go look at it)

itunes update

so i've been trying for the longest time to get to 7000 songs. and by 'trying' i don't mean that i was too lazy to buy or download music, it's just that i couldn't find enough music that i actually liked (my itunes library is selective, okay, it's only got the stuff i actually like).

and then i discovered phantom planet.

now, you might be wondering why i say 'discovered' when do the panic's been on the playlist for this blog for the last two weeks and everyone and their grandmother knows the theme song they did for the o.c.

but by discovered i mean i actually listened through most of their albums on youtube and liked it. a lot. i would get into them after they already broke up. at least i have all their albums/covers/acoustics/b-sides to keep me company. oh, and in i-tracked-down-this-unreleased-song-ask-me-how news, kings of leon has a b-side called woo hoo. it's great.

oh, and i'm done with my gothic novel introduction! it is silly and THISCLOSE to being a parody.

what am i listening to right now? raise the dead - phanplan

today i...

was boring. went to school. stayed during early release to help multicultural club set up for mix it up day. went to buzzer club. went to cheeseball. went home. basically, the highlight of my day was helping cheeseball's neighbors spray paint a water gun black so it'd look like one of the plasma blasters from halo. and starbucks. starbucks is always a highlight.

here, have some cheeseball:

my playlist today:

harbor and cannonball (damien rice cover) by vienna teng

battle studies (the album, i've listened to it once through, i think i'll give it a few more loops before i offer any judgement on it) by john mayer

that joke isn't funny anymore - the smiths

and this makes me ridiculously happy. mostly because when i opened up youtube to find a link to the video i was originally going to post (helena by my chemical romance) i found myself face-to-screen with a whole featured section on cutie followill and co. so here, have a kings of leon cover (since i know you'll have followed that link and watched every video they have).

use somebody (with bonus paramore):