every night i go sneaking out the door

today's title comes from mama do by pixie lott. i've been listening to her a lot lately. i'm not really sure why - maybe because her style reminds me of amy winehouse who is obviously not singing because she's... indisposed? anyway, listen to it:

since this blog has pretty much replaced my actual diary, i've been thinking that i should have posted about my last few days of school or how i only had to take two exams or how utterly depressed i am that school is ending. i should talk about those things, but i won't, because i've gotten all my nostalgia out already. besides, there's only one thing that really matters right now:

so, with that said, i'm going to turn off the computer, walk my dogs, and wait for the germany game to start.

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.

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:

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.

said the joker to the thief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and this (in air guitar):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oh hypocrisy

dear ke$ha-with-the-unpronouncable-name (s-la has decided to call her 'k-dollar-ha', but i can't quite reconcile my conscience to that) :

i really didn't want to like you, but you're making it so hard when you give interviews like this. it doesn't hurt that you take pictures like this (please take the time to mention that midtown reunion - you know you want to):

lots of not-quite-love-or-even-complete-like-but-a-tolerable-amount-of-affection-nonetheless

rachel

to all the rest of you: 

exams are over. physics was a breeze. i'm going to reward myself by finishing my peppermint mocha, hopping on the treadmill (since my poor drink is chock full o' calories but having it made with skim milk is a travesty not to be considered), and then rereading good omens or listening to my brand new sherlock holmes audiobooks. i should probably hunt down a bag for s-la's prezzie, too. 

speaking of s-la, i'm headed over to her house for her birthday extravaganza (there are rumors of cheesecake varieties and pocahontas - i'm excited) later tonight, so maybe i'll blog again from there. if i can't be a travel blogger yet, i'll at least blog after i've traveled...three whole streets away from my house.

oh and i'm listening to steven by ke$ha. all her songs are so snickery. besides, she really is great workout music.

i'm actually going to miss exam week

now, i know what you're thinking. it probably goes a little something like this:

(let the drummer kick - citizen cope)

but gina's post got me thinking that she should get a label already. maybe it's just the nostalgia of these being (hopefully) the last exams i'll ever take in high school, but mid-terms this year were...easy. even the ones where my hand felt like it would fall off from the writing or my eyes went cross-eyed from staring at the calculator. more likely was that this is the first year i've actually studied/been prepared for all of my exams. whatever the reason, this week has been surprisingly fun. at the very least, i've liked getting out of school at 1:30 every day (and 11 today and tomorrow!).

also, i just got out of the shower after running errands and getting through a two hour treadmill/yoga/wii fit session. the highlights? 45 minutes on the treadmill! oh, and finally graduating out of 'unbalanced' on the wii fit. i refuse to disclose how long that was my classification, but...it was a while. oh, and i finally unlocked all the advanced levels on everything.

unfortunately, all that goodness came at a price. let me preface this by showing you what i normally work out in:

(teenagers - hayley williams)

now, that's not so bad, right? i'm sure all of you lounge around your houses or hit the gym in some variation of an outfit like this. shorts. overlarge t-shirt. these are normal articles of clothing! 

until you forget to change before running errands which include visiting the grocery store where approximately nine billion of your classmates work, the post office, and the leesburg baptist church to drop off papers for your mother. especially the baptist church. imagine walking into a church to drop off papers to the pastor dressed like this:

(straight to hell - the clash)

in conclusion, always leave a pair of sweatpants in your trunk - you never know when you'll need them. 

for those of you wanting a real blog post

lit and calc tomorrow. been studying all day, with breaks for idol and food. commentary will follow eventually.

now listening to: josie by blink-182. it's been a j kind of day, musically speaking. i don't know why, i just felt like skipping to the j section of my itunes and hitting shuffle. highlights? jesus christ by brand new, jack's lament by danny elfman (all caps are just not gonna happen, danny boy), jolene by ray lamontagne, the jokes with guitar by demetri martin (who's coming back to comedy central soon!), juicy by better than ezra, jumper by third eye blind, and je dis aime by -m-. j songs are pretty good, i'm thinking. also, when combined, they made one weird study playlist.

does anyone else study with music? i'm finding that it helps a lot. like, when i'm going over notes i usually end up remembering whatever was on them to the tune of the song that was playing when i studied them. like in this morning's econ exam, i remembered the definition of economies and diseconomies of scale to ellie goulding's the writer. and the whole slew of tiny formulas for total revenue and average total cost and marginal revenue and cost and all the rest of them were memorized to the tune of grandma got run over by a reindeer (oh, itunes shuffle, never quit on me, k?).

oh, and before i wrap this post up, s-la, this is for you. and it is not a cover song and you should've known better, notey jr. and i are highly disappointed in you.

redundancy is redundant

today i:

1. visited meggo and got bonus jenibean
2. changed into pajamas 
3. went grocery shopping with the momster...in said pajamas
4. all of the above

i think we all know the right answer here. clearly it was all of the above. i'm pretty tired and have my lit multiple choice exam to study for, so this'll be a short post.

i've been out of shampoo and conditioner for most of this week. sadly, i kept forgetting that when i got in the shower and would have to perform a wet and wild naked run to the momster's bathroom to steal hers. well, there was a towel involved, but that's seriously no help at all when it comes to the whole wind chill effect. so when the momster asked if i wanted to go to harris teeter with her, i said yes and hopped in the car - still in my pajamas.

now, they're pretty cute pjs - purple and black plaid flannel bottoms and my r t-shirt from the senior panorama picture - so i didn't feel that bad about being in the grocery store with them, even if it was a little awkward since i recognized most of the baggers and cashiers. so i ignored my slightly inappropriate grocery shopping attire and went about making my all-important shampoo, conditioner, and mysterious birthday supply purchases.

let me rephrase that - by 'purchase' i mean 'scooped up all this stuff i wasn't paying for and went in search of the momster and her cart'. while on said search, i ended up in one of those four-cart pileups in the middle of the candy/school supply/hosiery/foot fungal cream aisle (which, by the way, who came up with that shelving system?). you know the kind i'm talking about - four middle-aged ladies pushing carts piled sky-high with ragu and three dollar store brand cereal get into a passive-aggressive stare-off over who gets to make it through the aisle first, with a couple of loners (i.e., me) trying to figure out a way to edge around them without being trampled.

in the midst of the four-way stare-off, one of the women turned to me, did a double take, and said with exceeding slowness and care, as if i must be mentally deficient, "you're wearing pajamas and your shirt has a giant r on it. did you know?"

no. no, i didn't know what i was wearing. i am one of those unfortunate people who can't afford to pay their electric bill and had to get dressed in the dark today. oh, or maybe i'm just an incredibly functional blind person - i don't have a seeing eye dog because i just use a combination of echolocation and the sonar app on my phone to find my way around.

now, here's the part in the story where you shake your head and go, "oh, rachel." i will admit to unleashing a veritable torrent of bitchery. she deserved it, okay?

...well, maybe she deserved a little, but i probably should have stopped when my mother wheeled the cart up and looked impressed with me. the momster. she who once made a south carolina police officer cry when she was the one who'd been pulled over for speeding. the momster was impressed with my bitchery.

i'm thinking i should've taken that as a sign to, you know, stop the snippy comments. i didn't, though, with the end result that i'm now probably feared in the brambleton harris teeter. i'll be the new version of the chupacabra or however you spell it. or maybe the boogie man, that sounds cooler.

besides, if i have to suffer through the misery of upcoming exams, everyone else should have to suffer too.

i'm listening to today was a fairytale by taytay. the irony hasn't escaped me.

on the phone with the jenibean now. here, check this out, i found this when i was cleaning out my pictures folder and it made me laugh:

la lala la

did you know that barbara kingsolver researched for twenty years before finishing the poisonwood bible? that's a pretty daunting number. so is 433. as in 4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence. this was a buzzer club question a few weeks ago - none of us knew the answer. it popped up on a blog i follow today and i thought i'd share the link with you.

(heartless (kanye west cover) - the fray)

yesterday was fun. it probably shouldn't have been since now i have a ton of homework to finish before tomorrow, but i don't really regret it. i should probably get over this whole procrastinating thing before college.

speaking of college, what's with all of the tiny schools no one's ever heard of still sending application emails? deadlines have passed and i'm clearly not interested. i still don't know how exactly they all got my email (i never checked that box on the sat that says it's okay for collegeboard to send out your information) but it's really annoying. i hate that i can't check my email without deleting thirty billion college emails first.

(stateline - butch walker)

this poem has been on my mind lately. i've always been a big dylan thomas fan, but i always stayed closer to refusal to mourn the death of a child by fire in london and things of that sort than poems like this. i suppose it's because when i first started reading his poetry i thought this was more literal than the others. and, like all little teenies making their first forays unaccompanied into the wide world of poetry, i was in search of something a little more ephemeral. it's always more gratifying to one's own ego to try and wrestle with the 'big' topics and forget that, to quote l. m. montgomery (again), 'all things great are wound up with all things little'.

(the little things - colbie caillat)

i've managed to work out some this weekend, but i'm thinking the bulk of getting back into shape is going to have to wait until after midterms. sadly, i can only study (or read, for that matter) when i'm munching on something. let's face it - i'm a grazer. and it is horrifyingly easy to go through an entire pint of ice cream while reviewing econ. at least the shape of the output and total revenue curves of a firm in the short-term will always be grouped together with the taste of half-baked ice cream. i just hope my stomach doesn't pull that embarrassing grr-argh-i-am-godzilla-feed-me routine during the exam. those things are long and we can't even eat in that classroom because of some stupid kid with peanut allergies. in other words, i won't even be able to have breakfast/graze during the two hour long economics exam.

if i had a kid who has one of those obnoxious food-in-class-preventing allergies, i'd at least have the decency to home school it so the other kids didn't have to suffer. geez (oh man).

(typical - mutemath)

anyway, here's your poisonwood quote of the day. i've been picking these by random - letting the book fall open and typing whatever i highlighted in round one, which was the fun stuff, not the colonialism or adah-related quotes. today's quote could kind of fall under any of those topics, though, so i guess you lucked out:

tgif.

i felt the strongest urge to being this post with 'so'. having realized that i begin too many sentences like that already, i resisted the urge. it was painful.

after being possibly the last person in the universe to see avatar, i've now managed to see it twice in one week. s-la's review pretty much hit any points i could've made about the movie, so i won't bother with that. the only thing i have to say is something most of you probably already knew: the momster is a sadist. by the time momster-daughter movie night rolled around yesterday we'd already seen everything decent, so it was a toss-up between alvin: the squeaquel and avatar, and we went with the latter because, apparently, 'it's so funny watching you get all worked up over the sad parts'. gee, thanks.

(diamonds on the soles of her shoes - paul simon)

quote of the day: "i always knew that washington was full of lies. did you know that the air & space museum was actually full of things?"

- Stephen Colbert

i'm watching the colbert report right now. in other words, i came home just in time for it. why, yes, i am that cool. i was out earlier looking for more tights (unfortunately, my legs have decided to follow jeni's example of pantslessness. clearly i can't be held responsible for their unruly behavior). i got tights and leggings in red and blue and green and black. no purple, though. the only pairs left were in terrible shades like lavender (the redheaded stepchild of the violet family) or mediums. you can imagine my disappointment.

(voyeur - blink-182)

(in for the kill - la roux)

so exams start soon. i'm taking this weekend to study, which is probably going to end in disaster since i am usually pretty bad at it. i know, i know, you're thinking 'how can someone be bad at studying?' i don't really know - it's just that i either understand something right away or i'll never get it. but i heard an interesting study technique in english today that i want to try out: bringing all your notes to a coffee shop and just talking over everything with a buddy. since we all know that i love to talk, this is probably going to be the study method for me. anyone want to join in?

(oops i did it again - britney spears)

the poisonwood bible is taking over my brain. i started another reread after my physics test just because i was bored and s-la got Notey back today. rory gilmore approves:

i feel like do that rory gilmore book challenge that was floating around the internet back when gilmore girls was still on the air. i think i'll have to wait until second semester or summer, since it's pretty long. oh, school, you just go out of your way to ruin my life, huh?

that's all for this post. also, i just realized that this playlist probably looks a little schizophrenic to most of you. er, my itunes apologizes?

(you and i - ingrid michaelson)

...okay, i lied. this was just too cute not to include:

bloggy time

so, in the interest of finally updating this thing, it's time to play the what's-happening-in-rachel's-life game.

player 1: is obsessed with making friendship bracelets. they're just so pretty.

player 2: is in the midst of finals week, and just took her french exam. it was ah-mazing. 

player 3: is writing this blog and dedicating it to stephanie, who is even more ah-mazing than the french exam and has also never been mentioned in a blog before (and just to clarify, stephanie is not s-la)

player 4: is desperately trying not to start writing until she's done attempting to study.

now, i'm sure you're all wondering which player is the winner of this little game. the correct answer would be e. all of the above. since i have faith in all of you, i'm just going to say that you all guessed correctly and move on to the prizes.

which are piccys! yay! and for once they aren't from flickr. 

so this is stephanie, who is the dedicatee of this post. and has very nice arms. and also bracelets, which she made. 

and this is the bracelet that i'm making for her right now. it's about an inch and a half longer than that now. i'm thinking after i finish this one i'm going to try and make one of the ones with a heart-shaped pattern, or this double zig zag type that i saw on google. 

and now onto my other obsessions, like this song.  

she has such a pretty voice and really, i just love the verse that goes "i am the voice of the past that will always be". it's so lyrical that i just feel the urge to use it in that fantasy story i'm trying not to write until exams are over. 

other obsessions include 

because every line in this is just gorgeous, and i just wish i could find a text version online because her voice is kind of strange, but still. the part where she goes "i am done holding my tongue like a bible. there is too much war in every verse of our silence." is just gorgeous, and if i could write like that i think i'd get up and do the funny hitched breath hiccup thing between verses too. i'd leave out the lesbian part though. boys are pretty. 

speaking of pretty, pretty boys. shia leboeuf. i'd go see transformers two just for him. although the megan fox hysteria is highly annoying. 

in other news, i got a hair cut. and took off six and a half inches. and i'm officially going to be a design editor next year for the yearbook. which has led to me going to yearbook camp on some week or the other in july. 

also, my french exam featured ernest hemingway leaving the spanish civil war to meet two jewish boys fleeing paris for le zone libre. in other words, my future tense composition turned into crossover fanfiction between hemingway and our short story l'etoile jaune. yes, i have issues. hopefully i'll get an a?