the sky looks pissed

today's title comes from the chain by ingrid michaelson. just go to s-la's blog to listen to it - every time i visit it that song comes on and gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day. damn you, s.

anyway, i am officially temporarily gainfully employed. you might recognize my new boss:

that's right - it's cheeseball! i'm watching him until wednesday in annapolis. after a whole day of cheeseball-sitting i've come to a few one conclusions: best. job. ever.

if i could turn this into a full-time career i totally would. i'm being paid to sit around someone's house, play with a fluffyfluffy puppy, and go shopping (there are malls! and stores! and three starbucks in walking distance!). in my book, this totally counts as a win.

stephen colbert agrees.

oh, and unlike Some People, i am neither taking a break from the soccer posting nor supporting the oranje. nuh uh. see, i've been telling Some People frank and s-la all along that i hate watching the netherlands play because it was ugly/boring/weird. and i just thought it was a personal thing. but after reading this and this i feel totally validated. even the dutch aren't supporting their own team! so there. nevertheless you are still dead to me until monday, oh unnamed banana-souled one.

in other rachel news, i got dragged along to a super fancy restaurant - like a four-course-dinner-three-varieties-of-water-served-in-its-own-stone-holder type of place - with the momster yesterday since we got here early...except i was dressed in cheeseballing/lazy clothes. our waiter's bitchface was particularly impressive. thankfully the food was good enough to make up for it. well, almost. i was wearing flip flops after all.

i'm still dead tired, so i guess that's all for now. i've got to get my nap in before the game, after all. which all of you better be watching, even the traitorous flying dutchbanana.

day in the life

a quick scroll through my blog revealed a slight favoritism of one topic the best topic it's the world cup and only happens once every four years what do you expect?- in my last few posts, so i thought i'd take a break from all the soccer-spamming to actually blog about my life again.

today i...

started the day with a healthy breakfast of poptarts and milk in my room

said hi to my teddy bear shelf

laughed at my woefully un-updated bulletin board (last used circa 2008)

actually made my bed

played with my dogs (and started my epic harry potter reread)

showered and got dressed

went to the mall with sarah stücke (cool story: i totally just learned the short cut for umlauts on a mac - you hit the option button, then u, then whichever letter you want the umlaut over), where i...

bought the world's silliest bra (and a few other things, but they're in the washer so i won't picture them)

saw hannah banana in her natural workerly habitat

went to kohl's for the very first time. (here pictured: sarah stücke, obstructing the wonder of kohl's). be proud, s-la

and then i came home, where i rewatched the conferation's cup (in spanish, since univision was the only channel in the US that would show it) and...

began an epic lord of the rings marathon.

i really am that boring. now i'm off to continue my boring life with the hobbits for company.

one night to be confused

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

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

this whole day was pretty weird, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

today's title song:

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

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

i was made for sunny days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

but the clothes i wore just don't fit my soul anymore

today's title comes from the gaslight anthem's new album. i'd share it with you, but it hasn't been released yet so i can't find a decent version on youtube yet. there's actually a lot of songs i've been saving up to blog about, but - well, let's just say i have a love/hate relationship with leaks, okay?

the love.

and the hate.

random tangent: i'm watching the colbert report right now and wow is damon from the gorillaz hot. now i'm glad i really liked plastic beach. oh, and his accent's great, too. it reminds me of cook from skins. also, he's not a record company-produced robot. we love him, right? yeah, i thought so.

so, in the spirit of my dwindling enthusiasm for education, let's do a little quiz, okay? for eleventy bajillion points, answer the following:

1. Who skipped school today?

a. Rachel

b. Rachel

c. Ra- Give it up, already, we all know it's you and why would you miss another day of school when the only real classes you had were econ (easy) and gov (laughable)?

d. Lady Gaga

2. Why did I skip school?

a. You're a lazy brat. 

b. You listened to too much Lady Gaga and started swanning around the house in a Kermit the Frog outfit screaming, "I'm a free bitch, baby!"

c. You were forced to by The Momster.

d. Someone offered you crack, but you could only pick it up at 11 a.m. in a shady alleyway in D.C.

3. Why did The Momster make you skip school?

a. She decided to schedule her annual psychotic break for April this year.

b. She needed a partner for a Beegees-themed 70s disco dance-off. 

c. She got fed up with your college-related indecision and made you visit UVA (which you already rejected) and UMW in one day. 

d. She decided to trade you for drugs and/or real estate deals. 

you know how people always tell you to pick C if you get stuck on a test? well, i hope you picked C because that was the answer to all three oh-so-difficult questions.

basically, as of 8 a.m. this morning, i still hadn't made a definitive college decision. like 99% of me was all for going to UMW and keeping the dent in my strictly-limited-to-60k-we-can't-give-you-everything-rachel-be-grateful-already college fund pretty small but that pesky 1%? well, that 1% was sitting there going "but you like william and mary", "there's a banana at william and mary", "you stayed up all night and occasionally studied things for four years so you could get into william and mary".

yeah, i know. that 1% - she's a troublemaker.

after explaining this to the momster, her genius solution was to road trip to UVA and UMW - i still don't understand why UVA was included, maybe to serve as a see-you-already-made-one-decision-now-do-it-again example? idk, i'm just bitter she refused to drive to william & mary since banana and gina were both there today, but i guess it wouldn't have made much sense since i've seen that campus like four times now - and then make me choose. and the UMW campus is pretty. so it wasn't that hard of a choice after all. but then the momster decided that she couldn't take the risk of me changing my mind in the next week, so she made the deposit directly to the admissions office and paid for housing.

to sum all that up, the momster is the kind of cray cray that makes lady gaga look sane and i'm officially enrolled in college.

anyway, during the twelve hours i was in the car today, i spent a lot of time staring out the window in sulky-yet-alliterative silence listening to my ipod. after listening to my newest songs a few times, i ended up switch to the 100! playlist and listening to it on loop, because as much as i love new music - well, the top 100 songs made it there for a reason, right?

anyway, it got me wondering - what do all of you listen to? i know that most of us don't listen to the same music, so i really want to know what's in your top 25. or if you're too lazy to comment with that, then what are your top 5 most played songs, at least?

show me your teeth

the title of today's post comes from lady gaga's teeth and is for once highly appropriate. mostly because i didn't actually have a full set of teeth this morning. worse - i was missing half (read it like this: half!) of one of my front teeth.

yes, morgan freeman, i agree. this doesn't make any sense.

i suppose i should splainy then (hey, if banana can make up words, so can i). as we all remember, i had very excited plans to return to school today. to that end, i woke up (early, for once, i even got meggo's seven-something-in-the-morning text but was too busy bleeding all over the bathroom to reply to it), brushed my teeth (oh, my teeth), and took a shower. to borrow from jenibean's third person blogging style, Shi(h)t(zu) Happened Like This:

7:20 - Rachel shampoos her hair. 

7:21 - Rachel stops shampooing hair and takes a moment to appreciate the oh-so-delectable scent of Herbal Essence's Hello, Hyrdation shampoo. (The reader should note that this shampoo is even more wonderful than its name and scent would suggest owing to the fact that it is not one, but two whole shades of purple)

7:22 - Rachel resumes shampooing. 

7:24 - Rachel gets dizzy. 

7:24 and a half - Rachel thinks "Gee, this isn't good, time to get out of the shower."

7:25 or 11,320-Why-Is-The-Clock-Spinning-Like-That - Rachel hops out of the shower.

7:26 - OMG OMG OMG I CAN'T BREATHE. 

7:27 - Ditto. 

7:27 - AGHHHHHH.

7:28 - Rachel nosedives. Onto the bathroom's exceedingly soft tile floor. Bottom half of front tooth decides to abandon ship. 

7:29 - The Momster, henceforth referred to in all communications as The Momster, begins a single-front offensive on an enemy known as Locked Bathroom Door. 

7:30 - The Momster, despite being approximately a foot tall and twenty two pounds (more or less), is as her name suggests, a formidable figure of fury. The Door surrenders. 

7:31 - Rachel catches sight of tooth. Uncontrollable crying ensues. The Momster calls in Emergency Dental Reserves. 

And then from eight in the morning until a little after noon there ensued a truly horrifying process known by the cheerful name of Tooth Reconstruction. it involved drills, and filing, and compulsive measuring of my teeth. however, throughout this process i was allowed the use of my iPod and was able to more or less ignore the fact that my dentist (who's adorable and asian and yet has a southern accent and is always pleasantly surprised that i can pronounce her last name - nguyen - because of meggo's tagalog newspeak tutelage) was, you know, filing my front teeth into an acceptable shape and size.

i have since been assured by the momster, her assistant, and the entire dentist's office don't judge me they were my front teeth and prom is in like a month a few tooth-experts that the change isn't noticeable. actually, the momster went so far as to say they look better now than before, since i had been (past tense! my poor lost teeth!) in the possession of rather overlarge front teeth and now they're more-or-less normal sized. but she's required to say that, since she's my tiny, scary, psychotic momster. actually, so are the rest of you. i'm not even kidding. if i see you in the next few weeks, there had better not be an honest comment from any of you or i will cry. and, trust me, you don't want to see my cry. it's a messy business, all snot and flapping hands and hiccups and shrieking and things. let's all avoid it, okay?

well, except you, s-la. i'm trusting you to give me your unmitigated opinion on The Tooth Situation. and if, after careful observation, you have concluded that i'm horribly disfigured i'm retiring to my bedroom forevermore and becoming a professional hermit i'm not going to prom.

on a happier note, i discovered that i'm fully capable of texting while having my teeth drilled. also, i used my dentist-time productively by googling facts about the healthcare bill. and then i used that freebooks app jeni was going on about a little while ago to read more sherlock holmes, since my copy was still at home. oh, and the momster has tried to comfort me over my state of probable-exam-takingness by pointing out that when one is a Student In Good Standing and will be handing over no less than eight (highly bloodstained, but that couldn't be helped, i had the great misfortune of landing on my face) notes to the attendance office tomorrow, there's got to be at least one teacher willing to let me off. right? don't shatter my dreams, kids.

oh, and after some prompting, i have concluded that the development of my (dearly departed) front teeth has kept pace with hermione granger - first they were too big and then they got horrifically filed shrunk. so at least i have that to comfort me.

also comforting? these three songs, they were my favorites during the Dentist Trip of Nightmares Future:

because i do have a ton of "bruises and contusions" between Sickville #1, the Great Pancake Incident, and The Holy Union of Floor and Face:

and a classic which now rings sadly true:

every single one's got a story to tell

today's titles is from seven nation army by the white stripes. they really should've just used this for the quantum of solace title track instead of the alicia keys/jack white mess masquerading as a duet that they ended up going with. still bitter? who, me? never.

so remember my great plan to beg, borrow, and steal cry my way into going to school today? yeah, that pretty much failed miserably. actually, it prompted a call to dr. emperor-from-mulan who nearly made me stay home on monday, too. which - well, let's just wee little baby potter explain my reaction to this:

so i stayed home. again. this time with a lovely little burn on my hand that actually isn't my fault. really, it isn't - it's the momster's fault.

most of you probably know that the momster's culinary skills are...questionable, at best. well, she tried to make pancakes for me yesterday to distract me from the Let Rachel Go Back To School offensive. in the process she set the entire pan of batter, the overhead fan, and parts of our kitchen on fire.

i know. 


anyway, i managed to put the fire out - hence the burn, which is actually quite tiny even if it does sting like you wouldn't believe - with our handy dandy fire extinguisher and now we're going to have to vacate the house saturday while some construction-type people replace the overhead fan and surrounding tiles and things.

also, the pan is completely unsalvageable. it's the real loss in this whole mess. well, that and my poor dogs' peace of mind since they both took off to hide behind the washing machine at the first shrieks of the smoke alarm and refused to come out until three hours after everything had calmed down. is it possible for animals to acquire their owners' neuroses? because i think mine have.

never mind, i have proof that it is possible. i went a-googling and came across this picture:

clearly the sensible cat's owner is an english teacher. blahbedy blah blah learned proper kitty grammar from its owner blah blah blah some more and - i'm right.

yes, i know. i was wonderful at proofs, i can assure you.

so last night was the season finale of skins. since you're all mentally deranged none of you have watched the show, i'll give you a brief overview. the show follows a group of friends through the british version of high school, known to those crazy people as college. the characters get more or less equal screen time since they all get one episode titled and devoted to them per season. oh, and the cast completely changes every two seasons since by the end of the second season they're all ready to head off to university or the real world or something. with me so far?

good.

anyway, the season four finale was last night. i had to practically sell my remaining good hand to find a live stream of it, but find one i did. and it was - well. i can't accurately describe it. so instead i'll continue wasting your time by blathering on about it until one of you watches the show so i can obsess over it with someone. also, it gives you scenes like this:

and this:

and this:

but s-la, you're still never, ever allowed to watch, okay? actually, you, too, banana. you'd both probably hate it anyway and that'd make me sad.

anyway, since the momster and i are both afraid of the kitchen, tonight's pizza night. in other words, i'm going to pull a hamtaro on some cheese sticks. and, yes, i'm fully aware that i just outed myself as an irredeemable nerd with that reference. it's okay. i've got a pikachu gif to make up for it:

okay, that's all for now. time to go attack the food.

in the blackest of rooms

today's title comes from - okay, seriously? if you don't know this song, i honestly don't know how we're friends. everyone knows this song. i'm pretty sure it's been covered on american idol, even. but i'll give you a hint anyway:

it's been a pretty ben gibbard sort of day, actually - lot's of complaining and a whole three bands playing on my ipod. and since two of those bands include him and the other one has his wife, i'm not even sure they should be counted separately.

in other words, i'm listening to brand new colony (acoustic) by the postal service right now. all i've been listening to today is volume two of she & him (zooey deschanel's and m. ward's band), a bunch of random death cab, and the forty song compilation of ben gibbard's various acoustic performances i got on tumblr. that last one's my favorite. he covers thriller. and avril lavigne.

just to get all the music news out of the way before i launch into my epic tale of doctorly madness and pain and suffering and things, i thought i'd address something banana brought up in a comment to my last post. the end of the boombox video? totally disgusting. old people are supposed to be asexual. just focus on the Important Parts. like this:

and this:

and this:

and how much i wish julian casablancas was ten years younger so i could stalk/obsess over him with a clear conscience, it's not fair that the last generation got him and all of the followills and all we got is stupid justin bieber and, like, the jonas brothers. ahem.

now, onto the doctor story...

you've all probably figured out that i'm sick. what else is new? however, a change is gonna come has already come. dr. cray cray has been replaced. the momster finally got around to switching our general practitioner to dr. omg-it's-the-emperor-from-mulan.

i'm not kidding, either. he looks, acts, and talks like the emperor from mulan. like, i was sitting their babbling on about muscle spasms and migraines and fevers and malfunctioning pain killers and he started talking about my freaking chi.

at first i thought that meant he was even crazier than the last doctor (and the momster definitely thought so, i wish i could've snapped a picture of her face), but then he wrapped it back to actual medical terminology and managed to work in the usual bout of drink-less-coffee-have-a-few-more-calories-stop-staying-up-so-late-and-for-christ's-sake-turn-your-brain-off-you're-probably-not-going-to-die-yet-you-crazy-bitch. anyway, the gist of it is that i'm supposed to stay heavily medicated (just the painkiller kind this time and not the "sing me a song about pineapples, mr. squirrel" kind) and at home all week.

this was my reaction:

since if i miss the entire week i'm going to have to take exams in all my b day classes - calc, lit, and physics. it's just not going to happen, okay? i'd rather go to school all "HI GUYS, I'M DOPED UP ON PAINKILLERS LIKE YEAH, ENOUGH TO SING MILEY CYRUS LIKE YEAH" than take those three exams. so thursday night i'm going to institute a campaign of whining, crying, and screaming "think of my education!" and "think of all the starving kids in Africa who don't have any education at all!" at the momster so i can go to school friday.

reread that last paragraph. that horrified "why would you want to go to school?" face you're making at the screen right now? yeah, that was basically my reaction. sacrifices must be made, though.

this really is the worst time for Operation: Read Instead, though. my fingers have been twitching toward the remote all day, especially since i'm still too blegh to run/work out. i've been reading and listening to music nonstop to make up for my lack of television. i just started villette by charlotte bronte.

oh, and i've been writing. it's been weird trying to get back into it after a few months of nonstop homework. i miss february. this month just seems so long, you know?

anyway, this post has gotten pretty long. i'm just going to stop here, especially since the painkillers have made my fingers sort of numb and typing kind of crazy. that is my defense for all the typos: the meds made me do it, OKAY?

i'll just leave you with this, it made me laugh:

where in the world is carmen sandiego?

you probably don't know where carmen sandiego is (unless you're playing the game right now, in which case i congratulate you for managing to play and read this at the same time) but i'll let you know where i am: the ashburn keller williams realty office. that's right, i'm helping the momster with more paperwork since her secretary's still sick. she's still in a meeting so i'm just playing around on the computers now. they're nicer than the school computers but more complicated - i just don't understand windows. i miss my compy. here, in honor of mac owners everywhere let's just take a minute (or ten) to appreciate the wonders of apple computers:

today wasn't very eventful. a Certain Person got my hopes up with hints of a visit today and then never came. i totally felt like the little, let down kid in disney movies whose parent never, ever makes it to the baseball game in time. i was horridly depressed for an entire seven minutes. then i realized i still had a whole box of thin mints in my purse and immediately perked right back up. today's been a snack-filled day, actually. we had goldfish in yearbook and i munched on twix bars during gov. mona and i got to the halfway point in the thin mints while she saved my calculus grade during early release.

s-la might want to look away now. i'm about to share my incredible love of mumford & sons. and after that i'm going to obsess over skins some more. really, steffi, you might just want to stop reading here.

well, now that she's gone, let's talk music. specifically, mumford & sons. they're fairly well known. not on, like, a lady gaga/britney spears/that-devil-child-cyrus level, but they've been building up a decent amount of buzz on blogs (actual music blogs, i mean, not just the random whiny teenage ones like...this one actually. although now that you mention it, this whiny teenager did mention them a few times between december and february, since i put them on at least two playlists i posted. if PCs weren't the most evil things in existence and i could actually use windows i would look the posts up myself, but otherwise you'll have to take my word for it or do your own search of the...oh my giddy aunt, has it really been 177 posts? geez.)

but back to the music. mumford & sons are a british folk/rock band. and that's not one of those weird genres that some music blogger made up just to appeal to hipsters like, i don't know, classic electro indie rock/pop or dubstep. it's actually a fairly accurate label - to me, at least, they really do sound like the love child of, like, the entire cast of skins an orgy really is the only thing left to do on that show it is so ridiculous and i love it the cute british boy from what a girl wants (that movie where amanda bynes realize that she's the embodiment of every romantic comedy aimed at teenage girls ever) and kings of leon when they were still drunk crackheads a bunch of hillbillies. don't ask me how i reached this conclusion. i'm not an actual reviewer (but listen to them anyway so i can send you all loads of text messages filled with nothing but exclamation points and DID YOU LISTEN TO THE LIVE PERFORMANCES YET? and other caps locky text), but i think i more or less formed my opinions from the fact that they use an acoustic guitar and a banjo and in, like, every song ever and still sound awesome. i keep hoping they'll pull out a cowbell on their next album.

wow, that paragraph was terribly rambly. blame the PC. i have to go now, so go youtube them yourselves. or wait about half an hour and when i'm done doing real life things i'll post some more.

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'.