let's go for a drive, see the town tonight

today's title comes from arcade fire's suburban war. their new album finally leaked and i can't recommend it enough. the live performance is the best version of it i can find on youtube, but don't let the quality put you off - it's amazing:

so, funnily enough, today's post was almost titled "bitch i'm a let you finish in a minute", courtesy of eminem and lil wayne's no love. no, i'm not kidding. sometimes i listen to rap. don't judge me, okay? i don't see how anyone could hate a song that samples what is love. actually, just to prove my point i'll go ahead and post that song, too. it's been a while since i blogged and we need an appropriately angry soundtrack for the remainder of this post:

why an angry song? well, the answer is simple. i got into an accident today. again. and it actually wasn't my fault. but let's rewind a little since i've been absent from this little blog for a while now.

s-la's already blogged about our shopping adventure earlier this week, so i won't bother recapping that. basically i'm only mentioning it so i can post this:

isn't it horrific? i don't know why they exist. the frost-patterned jeggings, obviously, not s-la and travis-with-no-label-because-he's-too-lame-to-have-one. i feel like the very existence of those monstrosities should have been a warning: bad things will happen this week...and they did.

see, after our little shopping excursion, s-la left for her cousin's (i'm assuming it was a cousin, anyway) wedding, i ended up watching/playing with/feeding her ah-dorable animals. she blogs about schweini all the time, so i'll post a picture of dick cheney in kitty form  sugar:

see? cuteness. it even inspired me to try to spend time with my own evil animals (who've been especially horrendous this week...they ate their eighth pair of headphones. at least the new ones are pink), as shown here:

the good one

lucifer in fluffy form

so far so good, right?

...wrong.

while returning from s-la's house to play with my own furballs this morning (that's right! i drove! by myself! voluntarily!) i decided to be ambitious and pull into the garage...and you all know my driving history. this was a huge step for me.

so everything is going fine. i checked my mirrors for passers-by and cars, looked over my shoulder, prayed to jesus/allah/ratatouille/paul the octopus that nothing would go wrong, took a deep breath, and pressed down on the gas pedal.

and then some crazy evil bitch i swear to god i will get her in her sleep jogs right in front of me. as in she cut across the middle (the middle! who does that? we have sidewalks for a reason!) of my driveway to jog in front of my car as i was pulling in.

being as my foot was still on the gas pedal and all of this happened in about .0005 seconds, i did the only sensible thing i could - i swerved...into the side of my house.

don't worry, it wasn't a major accident or anything. i just clipped the corner of the garage. but look what happened:

the momster was, needless to say, not pleased. neither am i. and apparently it's all on us to pay for the damage since the pedestrian has right of way all the time.

now does everyone see the need for angry background music? yeah, i thought so.

don't worry, though. i'm pretty calm now - blame the arcade fire and ice cream i've been indulging in today.

oh, and i'm still on that poetry kick. here's today's. it was comforting:

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

- dorianne laux 

happy birthday america

i'd post about watching the fireworks in dc/the hellhole that is the beltway, but it's late and i'm tired. ditto for why there isn't another world cup picture post waiting for you. instead, i'm just going to leave this here:

it's true and it's sad and i'm not allowed a third dog yet but in the unlikely event that any of you are looking for a new pet...well, you know what to do.

it's all for the rain

today's title: film noir by the gaslight anthem.

so. today i read a book that made me profoundly grateful for the momster, assorted other friends and family, and the fact that i'm not a rape victim suffering from multiple personality disorder. predictably, the book came from s-la. thanks a lot, s.

just kidding. well not about the first part. the book was pretty amazing, though. it's called switching time and it's a psychologist's story of meeting and treating a woman with 17 alternate personalities caused by a lifetime of...well, the kind of abuse that would make a good lifetime movie, actually. if you're squeamish, so i'd recommend skipping the prologue, but it's still a great read.

speaking of great reads (see that? wasn't that clever? no? oh well. i tried), banana reminded me of a lovely little band called the inklings. these are the inklings. and, yes, that is a link to wikipedia. why? because of the lovely typos included on the page (i really hope they aren't edited out before i post this). my favorite is probably the cleveland high school named after the inklings which likes to "discus" theology and fantasy. i suppose the ancient olympics reenactment club is highly disappointed in them.

which brings me to a new topic which means you'll just have to steal religion is a buffet from me since i really want to know what you think about it oh banana-souled one or, rather, two very old ones presented in a new (for me) way:

books. and makeupclothesshoespopmusic (the triad of evil, if you will).

the older i get the more apparent it becomes that people don't expect girls to be capable of liking both of those things. it's like people assume that if you (and by 'you' i mean me) have, hypothetically, read lord of the rings, the hobbit, all of the histories of middle earth companion books, the silmarillion, and various other novels generally considered the rightful property of The Nerds Who Shall Inherit the Earth, Blessed Be The Names of Tolkien and JKR over a dozen times that you should be completely hideous. and if you talk about things like eyeshadow and floral patterns and debate the relative merits of buying the new ke$ha album and getting a free bonus track over getting new gladiator sandals, you must be mentally deficient. or at least too slow to notice the looks that ugly-not-that-that-should-matter-but-it-does-because-i'm-feeling-petty-okay they are trading behind your back while you chat on the phone in line at starbucks.

and, not to sound shallow or anything, but if you are (i'm estimating since i don't know or go to school with the seriously hideous people, but as a high school student i feel like my estimate should be fairly accurate) a high school junior (in your mid- to late-teens, at least) and you and your friend are wandering around in public in sketchers, too-short jeans, and hot topic t-shirts, you have no room to judge anyone. ever.

i guess i'm just sick of people trying to pigeonhole me. there is a reason i have approximately 300,000 labels on this blog and that's because - you probably couldn't have guessed this - i'm a big fan of variety.

i will happily admit to being a nerd. so will all 4,000 books living in my basement (they're such mooches, i swear. they don't even pay rent). i have a designated stack of kitchen books so i can read something while i eat. i google music reviews and dead poets and medieval european history (it's interesting, okay? they were inventive back then) in my spare time. of course i also play tap tap revolution and look at pretty pictures on flickr and read horrible 'young adult' books and experiment with eyeshadow the rest of the time. balance. i hear it's important.

i get that we all judge people. a lot. some of us (me) more than others. but there's a difference between being judgmental and ignorant. the former involves drawing logical conclusions based on a person's actions, demeanor, and appearance and going "gee, they look cool" or "ew. who let the troll out?" (there is a third option, reserved for those members of society who fall under the heading of Cute Boys, but it would have to be typed almost entirely in asterisks, so i thought i'd refrain from posting it). the latter? well, ignorance is mostly being judgmental but without the "logical" part. like ralph nader. or tyra.

and, okay, it's entirely true possible that i'm kind of a bitch. at least i'm not the kind of person who automatically assumes (and we all know what you make with that word) that someone's dumb for liking makeup - because if this is the kind of behavior we're encouraging in the "twilight generation" (i read an article in time a few weeks ago that actually called us that, lord help us all), well:

yeah. listen to katie fucking fitch. she's epic. and from skins, in case you didn't know.

anyway, let's comfort ourselves with music. it's kind of a random selection today. ranging from my initial wave of irritation to something off my car ride playlist for the ride home to the song i was dancing around the house and treadmilling to:

oh, fine, i'll blog something real

mostly because i'm so annoyed with this site for existing. annoyed enough that i'm going to get up on my soapbox and rant because the fact that even the name of the website is perpetuating this awful thin ideal makes me so angry i don't even know what to do besides go off in my own quiet corner of the internet. because, honestly, the fact that "curvy" is portrayed so negatively (to say nothing of how repugnant the site's concept is to begin with - judging famous women based solely on their weight without caring about why they're famous - like, say, having actual talent and not just the lowest number on the scale) is offensive to me. and yeah, i know - "free speech means everyone can do/say/post whatever they want". which, obviously, i'm all for that (geez, can you imagine if censoring was real, all 1984-you-can't-have-a-diary? my poorly capitalized blogging days would be o-v-e-r), but how do you justify creating or maintaining that website? what possible purpose or satisfaction can you get from spending your time judging other people?

well, okay, i just spent an entire paragraph judging other people, but at least there was a purpose to it, mainly that i think they are doing something wrong and would like to do something to call attention to it just to ease my own conscience.

okay, you can all stop doing the duck-and-cover now. i'm done ranting. here, have one of my favorite songs to make up for it: