oh captain, my captain

i couldn't sleep and was sick of studying biology, so i decided to start working on my iranian film paper. it's about the movie offside, which was actually pretty interesting. it's basically the iranian version of bend it like beckham - and, as i've been learning in my seminar, the "iranian film version" of anything should automatically be read as "the secretly super-political film version of"featuring iranian people.

the movie is about a bunch of girls who dress up like boys to sneak into a soccer game, because girls aren't allowed in the stadium. well, iranian girls aren't, anyway. if you're foreign and you go to iran to support your team in, like, a world cup qualifier or something the iranian government still has to let you in. anyway, while writing my essay, i kept using the word "matchgoer" and getting annoyed when the little red line of spell-checkiness inevitably appeared. i was convinced it was a real word. like, heard-it-in-conversation-read-it-a-million-times-all-over-the-place convinced. so i googled it. and this was the result. why, yes, the first six or so of those links would be liverpool-related. i guess this is what happens when i try to do homework late at night on a game day (which we won, for the record. 3-1, no less, after spending the first half down a goal to napoli)

captain fantastic scorer of a hat trick as a substitute stevie g thanks you for your time with his wonderful fuck-off-napoli celebration:

same small world at your heels

today's title comes from vanderlylle crybaby geek by the national. it's awesome and you're really dumb, fo' real if you don't listen to it:

i want a schnoodle.

and now i'm going to stop procrastinating and get back to my papers. plural. at least i have the rally to restore sanity to look forward to on saturday. anyone else going?

fell out of a daydream

today's title comes from low road by grace potter and the nocturnals. she's my latest musical obsession. and, no, ginger, i don't care if you don't like her - watch the video, anyway. here it is:

 

due to my college-bound circumstances, i've been forced to buy her albums on itunes. they were so worth it, though. i'm listening to them right now. other recent itunes purchases (since today turned into a less-awesome version of music day): sharon jones and the dap-kings, tv on the radio's return to cookie mountain (since my less-than-legal version was a little lacking in quality), and a preorder of cutie and the followills' new album. it came with a free download of radioactive, also known as the new single with the ridiculous music video.

so...what's been happening in my life? not much, actually. college feels a lot like home, but not as nice. and isn't that weird to realize? like, it's more fun and there are always people to hang out with and things to do but...i want my dogs. and my bed. and my mommy coffee maker. speaking of the momster, she's on vacation with husband number three right now and keeps texting me pictures of dolphins and restaurants and food that i can't eat. it's highly depressing, especially since - surprise surprise - i'm sick. again. oh immune system, why must you hate me? at least michelle the hall-e/neighbor has vitamin c and cough drops and orange juice and managed to turn me into a semi-functioning person today.

class was actually fun, today. my chaucer class - aka the 300-level class that my advisor warned me was really hard - was hilarious. all we talked about was rocky and bullwinkle, dante, and chickens. well, chickens and roosters. and then to illustrate how hilarious the nun's priest's tale was, the professor made us all cluck and crow like chickens and roosters...for ten full minutes. and since our auditorium is right by the building's entrance and the door was open, we got a lot of weird looks. also, since i was still a little doped up on dayquil/cough drops/vitamin c, my clucking was...enthusiastic. let's go with that word. enthusiastic enough to get me singled out with other dozen or so "champion cluckers". why do these things always happen to me?

after that, we celebrated one of the hall-e's birthdays by surprising her with sherbet and ice cream and cake. oh, and we got her a balloon and nail polish. it was fun, since we surprised her with all of this - and singing - at 12:01 in the morning.

so, in case you couldn't tell, this post was actually started on tuesday. a lot has happened since then, so i'm just going to keep typing in this draft instead of posting the beginning of this separately. let's see...

i had my stats and bio tests on thursday and friday. they were both easy. disappointingly so, actually, since (as the oovoo munchkins probably saw) i stayed up forever on thursday night rereading the six chapters covered on my bio test just in case i forgot something. i didn't. it was possibly the easiest test i've taken in any science class since elementary schools. one of the questions asked where one goes in the event of a fire (one of the answer choices involved standing in a corner). i'm a little bitter.

to cheer ourselves up, the hall-es and i went to see toy story 3. we showed up a little late after dinner so we got to see it for free, even. it was awesome, and all of the hall-es who hadn't seen it before had the decency to tear up (take that, ginger). after that, michelle and i went to our round of club meetings. the last one ended around 11:30. so, walking back to our dorm in the dark, we're a little surprised to see a huge crowd of people sitting on the ground in a circle in the middle of campus walk. oh, i think. there must be a hippie club on campus.

...and then three of the hippies turn around and wave at us, and we realize we know some of them. it turns out that after our epic halloween idea thursday afternoon (we're being the disney princess ensemble - i'm jasmine!) the hall-es who didn't have club meetings decide to wander around campus. and somehow or the other they ran into friends and friends of friends and started a disney song hippie circle. one of the hall-es even has the disney treasury songbook with sheet music and lyrics for all of the songs from every movie. we made our way through a ton of them, scared a few passersby, and talked a few more into joining us. and then someone started singing airplanes and one of the new friends mentioned that if you look at the sky for eleven minutes, supposedly you'll see a shooting star. so, being sensible people, we all lay flat on the ground in the middle of campus walk at 1 in the morning to look for shooting stars...but all we saw was airplanes. and then lauren the hall-e had the bright idea to take us on a field trip to the old amphitheater (it's in this out of the way corner of campus on a hill backing the woods, and the back of it is crumbling off the hill so they decided to stop using it and let it just turn into creepy ruins) where we...were creeps, actually. it's good to know that i'll never have normal friends.

after that, we drew inappropriate chalk people outside the auditorium and hung out a little longer, before finishing a knight's tale (where i had the incredible brainwave that ginger could be the ginger in the movie. well, if he was angrier and cooler. maybe our goal should be to turn him into the ginger from the movie?) and watched get smart. oh, anne hathaway. your bangs are such an inspiration to me.

today we woke up in time for brunch. i broke a flip flop (that's the third pair since june. what's going on here? it's like karmic retribution since lulu isn't here to eat my headphones) and left my starbucks mug on a bench (it's okay - it was still there when i went back for it). mornings suck. we're doing homework now (or i'm supposed to be, but i figured i'd take time to finish this post since i've been such a lazy blogger) while we wait for our laundry to be done. and then we're going downtown to get stuff to make t-shirts for our glee watching party (next week! i'm so excited i'm just going to use a few more exclamation points! like this! !!!!!) and stationery (so i can write you all letters/send you postcards, etc.) and random things.

i'm going to go do my homework now. i really don't want to have to spend my whole weekend worrying about it. but, before i go, i'll leave you with a few more songs:

idk, idk. blame the hall-es. 

oh, and this:

that's right - 8:30 tomorrow morning. liverpool v. manchester united. don't forget to watch.

p.s. i'm watching this game right now. you should, too:

in the morning at the top of the stairs

today's title comes from casimir pulaski day by sufjan stevens. i'm not listening to it right now, nor did i listen to it at the top of the stairs, but it was playing this morning. now i'm listening to stephen fry read some of oscar wilde's short stories. i don't normally like audiobooks, but i'll make an exception because...stephen fry. it makes me do this:

i've been pretty busy lately. i got into my first (minor) accident wednesday night. i got lost trying to come home on a back road from ashburn and ran into a gate at the alien testing facility janelia farms. i hate that place. there's a key-card-swipe/security gate thing and it shuts automatically if you don't have the key card. and it's on a one way street. i slammed on the brakes pretty quickly but there's still a tiny dent on the car. oh, and then i got to back up for a half a mile. so that? that is just one of the many, many reasons i hate driving.

after that i went home and did homework until 4 in the morning. oh, i hate school now. i can't wait until it's over. well, i can't wait until the part of school where we're still doing work is over. i don't mind all the free periods where we just play board games and cards (i learned two new games today and failed miserably at both of them). that was all i did today, since the momster surprised me by picking me up at 12:30 so we could get lunch and go to borders. well, i went to borders - she just did boring work things.

i feel like i'm slowly becoming nocturnal. i end up napping for an hour or two when i come home, staying up until 3 or so, and then catching a few more hours of sleep. actually, i guess that isn't really nocturnal. semi-nocturnal? i don't know. i still feel a little loopy.

i've got to go finish doing my laundry (that's right - i'm still working my way through the piles that built up during AP week) and throw some clothes in a bag for our s-la/meggo/jenibean weekend.

oh, and let's switch things up today. instead of posting songs, i'm going to share something even better: robert downey jr.

just leave my memory away

today's title comes from kill me carolyne by the whigs, a new song gleaned from s-la's music library as a result of music day. oh, music day. it's such a good time. i have the whole harry potter musical now and spanish acoustic songs (they're playing right now)! it's pretty great.

my calc essay turned out pretty great, too, even though i ended up finishing it during early release. that was okay, though, since i ended up surrounded by a bunch (four) other procrastinators also doing their essays. oh, and i worked my procrastination into the essay by talking about how my lack of motivation to do calculus should be taken into account when planning for next year's students. except in snarkier, less sleep-deprived terms.

after that we went to see iron man 2...again. it's just that good.

robert downey jr. agrees

after that we had dinner at california tortilla (still in brambleton, sadly, since the lansdowne one went out of business) and were horrified by the actions of the hooligans and teenyboppers (these are real terms, okay?) who were milling about, stealing drinks and climbing trees willy nilly. it was awful. they were all like five years old and strolling around like they owned the place, or at least like they should be allowed to stroll around at all and not still be strapped to high chairs.

and then came music day. which, in case you hadn't heard, is awesome. music was shared. in a day, even.

...i know, i know. s-la and i are extremely creative namers. is namers even a word? i'm too tired to look it up, but safari isn't putting a little red line under it so i'll assume i can use it.

we watched our sophomore english project on macbeth, too. we recorded one of the acts. i was macbeth and s-la was lady macbeth. oh, and we were both murderers and witches and a few minor characters. leanne was banquo and every other character. as you can imagine, our acting skills were phenomenal. i don't sound monotone at all and it certainly wasn't strange to have a cross-dressing macbeth (i spent the majority of the project in tunics and dresses). at least steffi's editing was great - we had the coolest soundtrack. the bloopers and credits were the best part, though. for some reason meggo is credited as our hair stylist. the rest of it is a jamboree (oh, that's a fun word) or spatula-flinging, cheese it-eating, word-forgetting mistakes. oh, the good old days.

in other news, the momster transitioned between her rightful title (the momster) to That Woman and back several times today, mostly as a result of tiny, but highly annoying incidents. and then she and her assistant decided to have dinner at 9:30 (she's cray cray, okay?) while i was at s-la's. it was thai food and they remembered to bring home a meal for me, too. so clearly all is forgiven. the moral of this story? my heart will always be won via my stomach. that should probably worry me. one day i will have Moral Fiber (i think they sell it in pills at the grocery store, but the momster told me only old people use them and she wouldn't buy any) and will attempt to resist the lure of food, but until then...bring on the pineapple fried rice.

less exciting is the return of the mongol eyes. i can't even blame s-la's cat this time, since they didn't set in until i got home. the momster suspects that it just happened because i didn't take my allergy medicine today and it was finally nice out, but that doesn't explain why it looks like someone punched me in the face. seriously, the swelling - it's horrible. i look deranged. however, i'm heavily medicated now (but not the fun kinds; i kind of miss dr. cray cray. i've always wanted to try those crazy pills that let you hallucinate things, but during the lit and both econ exams i sat right next to the poster in the health room that tells you all the bad physiological effects drugs have on you so there's one dream deferred until...forever, actually) so hopefully it'll be gone by tomorrow morning. and if not, well...i guess i'll just become a hermit. i've always wanted to be one.

you don't get any youtube links today, since i'm dead tired right now. you can probably already tell that, though. i've got a feeling that there are typos and nonsensical sentences and horrible grammatical errors all over this post. i'll try to make it up to you tomorrow. maybe i'll even use capital letters! maybe.

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!

greetings from mount cyanide

exams went pretty well - after an all-night study binge, anyway. predictably, the lit exam left me feeling like my hand was about to fall off so after s-la and i went to cold stone - it was a redemptive sort of day, in that she redeemed her birthday ice cream and i used jeni's christmas gift card to buy two of the yummiest, most sugar-filled treats i've had since gingerbread time - i took a nice long nap. and by 'long', i mean i got hom earound 3:30 and woke up ten minutes ago.

trust me when i say my laziness knows no bounds.

in the last - oh, just about fourteen minutes - i've managed to reheat and eat two slices of pizza (why, yes, i am feeling healthy today) pull out an old book and curl up on my couch beneath my giant, fluffy purple throw. today's agenda? rereading my way through betsy-tacy, jane eyre, and maybe some t. s. eliot or thomas hardy - one of the latter's poems was on my lit midterm and gave me an itchy feeling to read some more. if i'm still awake after all that, i think i'll continue writing. it's fun to have a story that won't be told until i'm physically typing it out - most of the time i can play the whole thing out in my head and not have to worry about actually writing it.

before i do all that, though, we have three very important things to get through: the daily show, the colbert report, and american idol. i might have to turn idol off when the jonas comes on, though. i'm not sure how i feel about him thinking he can judge other musicians, no matter how crappy.

what am i listening to right now? it's looping between daisy and degausser by brand new. they, along with jesus christ which just doesn't fit my mood right now, are my favorites by them.

also, this may be one of the cutest animals on earth. according to cuteoverload it's called a dik-dik after the noise it makes when it runs, and it's native to africa. according to wikipedia, it's a grazer. feel free to go aww and make smooshy faces at your computer screen:

did anyone else watch this show?

i used to watch it all the time, but no one else seems to have heard of it. i forgot about it until i went back to distraction-googling to avoid studying.

you waited since lunch (it all comes at once)

i had a plan for this post but it got derailed by gabe saporta posting this:

please tell me this means there's a midtown reunion show in the works. i can hope, right?

in other news, i've finished listening through my preorder of ke$ha's new album. conclusions: she does fun, dance-y, mildly obnoxious songs perfectly. i've got a new treadmill playlist filled with nothing but her new releases and demos. there's a couple of times where she tries to be comparatively serious - "dancing with tears in my eyes" & "hangover" - and it just doesn't work. i mean, this is the girl who sings about wanting someone to put a little love in her glove box.

just to get all the music-related news out of the way, i'm listening to the vampire weekend's new album contra. it's amazing. my current favorite song is white sky. hence the title of this post. oh, and i'm currently listening to diplomat's son off the same album.

now, onto the most depressing part of the day - and also the reason i didn't blog yesterday.

still confused? well, here's the whole story. i stayed up all night on sunday. i came home from school on monday and took a three hour nap. and then i stayed up all night again doing homework. so, naturally, tuesday called for a long-overdue bout of power-napping. except i actually got about four hours of sleep since i still had - you guessed it - more homework.

most you already know this, but i'll point it out anyway. i am not a morning person. i'm even less of one when i've had, at most, eight hours of sleep in three days. in other words, i woke up super late this morning. like 8:40 late. it was my first tardy since this but i still have saturday school. oh, and when i got to class i found out that we were having a free day in my econ class (first block). we could either do homework or watch up. i'm sure you can all imagine my bitterness - i wasted all my time yesterday doing homework. i got super-detention for doing my homework. and then i walk into an AP-class-turned-study-hall? i was pretty much seconds away from yelling the unabbreviated version of fml this morning. it didn't help that i had another free period in yearbook today. at least now i remember why procrastination is a girl's best friend. and enzo and a few other people i know are also stuck in saturday school as a result of chronic lateness, so i won't be alone. my bitterness is still unassuaged.

blogging from my neighbor's house, by the way. i'm babysitting until midnight. it's a good thing they live right next door. the youngest has an eight o'clock bedtime, so she's already in bed and the oldest decided to stay in his room and read - the third harry potter, apparently - until he has to go to sleep (nine), so all's well. i finished all my homework last night (just checked...still bitter) and all i have with me is my laptop, so i've been cleaning up my folders. so far i've freed up 42 GB by deleting old school projects. i've also done my routine itunes purge, clearing out any duplicates and songs i don't really like. down to 9457 now, but it leaves me feeling so happy to know that compy is all organized now. i'm gonna finish that up and check on kid #2 now.

we don't need no education

well, we might. just maybe. but we certainly don't need to finish senior year and the mountains of homework that i have to finish before this break ends. why can't we have another snow day or three? i'm going to die before this ever ends. die. my brain is no longer equipped to do school-related things.

oh well. in times of trouble i guess it's always best to turn to audrey hepburn.

i've been trying to ease myself back into the world of academic thought via the interwebs. in other words, i've been going through my usual list of links and not the crazy batch of OMGCUTEFLUFFYANIMALS that comprised the bulk of my googling over break. here's my favorites so far:

1. 'don't overuse commas. think of the poor children who have to go to bed each night without any.'
2. malcolm gladwell and other writer-type people discuss the effects of religion on writing. and make it interesting.
3. articles like this should probably discourage me from journalism. should.
4. no list would be complete without the onion. or a mean girls parody.
5. ...or cute fuzzy animals. just one though. really!

i'm listening to the greek version of i won't say (i'm in love) from the hercules soundtrack. thank s-la for that one, because it is ah-mazing. it even made it onto my ^^ playlist, which, as you can probably imagine, is huge. also, it's a great playlist to blog to since every song is happy. you know what isn't happy? yesterday's UVA admissions blog proclaiming 'happy deadline day!' even though i'm done applying i still wasn't happy about january first. i wonder if i'm just going to hate new year's day for the rest of my life - it seems highly likely right now. i'll probably end up hating april-whenever-we-get-our-rejection-letters day, too, but i don't feel like dwelling on that right now. after all, i have cookies and wake up by arcade fire just came on the ^^ playlist. life is good. until monday, at least.

time to go back to homework. if you're reading this you probably should, too.

nothing you can do but learn how to be in time

a commercial came on with all you need as love as its soundtrack. the original (well, it was remastered but still the beatles) and not one of the crappy pop covers commercials always play. it was pretty happy-making.

cookie's christmas shirt is pretty happy-making too. it even has a little green hood! less happy is the fact that he had a bath five days ago and is already messy. silly doggy, does he have to roll around in the grass outside?

i presented my government project today. it was surprisingly easy to do even though i hate presenting things. speaking in front of the class is never fun, why do teachers make us do it?

i'm avoiding my calc homework now. i started it, so never fear that i'll, like, flunk out of school now (is that even possible? according to my guidance counselor the only graduation requirement i have left is gov). i'm just putting off finishing it because it is long and evil. EVIL. here's how i've procrastinated so far:

detention?

detention. as in, i had my first one today for the oh-so-badass crime of accumulating three tardies in a semester.

yeah, i know. i'm such a rebel.

so my first experience in detention. it was interesting. and by interesting i mean it was mindnumbingly boring. because, really, all you do is sit in the main office and read for forty-five minutes. man, i can just feel the guilt and remorse, like, soaking into my soul.

except my soul feels a lot like my stomach, and guilt feels a lot like hunger.


i have an english essay to finish. i'm halfway through right now. i've just got my paragraph on point-of-view and the conclusion to do. it's pretty sad, but it took me at least forty-five minutes to start the essay, just because it's been so long since i've written anything that wasn't a short story or college essay or blog post. in other words, i no longer know how to write.

...way to fail, self.

i'm listening to living in the sky with diamonds by cobra starship. it's fun. i'd post a youtube link, but you can just help yourselves since i'm at school right now.

by the way, this is gina. she's interesting, go follow her.