Bonjour, bonne nuit, au revoir, salut

today's title comes from this song by stereo total. yes, it's french and about death. listen anyway - all of their music is ridiculously catchy and fun to sing along to and the only reason i didn't epically fail every french speaking exam i've ever taken.

today i went downtown with michelle and some of the other hall-es. we stopped by a dance store to pick up leg warmers and a tutu for my kitty costume. no, this was not planned. but halloween is supposed to be cold and they just looked so cute. besides, as it stood, my costume was one very tiny leotard, a tail, and cat ears and i don't really feel like subscribing to the regina george school of halloween costumes this year. while i was there, we chatted with the girl who works at the store and somehow or the other i found myself signing up for dance classes, starting next semester. i'm learning how to salsa! also, i'm taking ballet again for the first time in five years - wish me luck. i'm not even sure why. but...i'm in college. if i don't try new things (or retry old things) now, when will i, right?

on the way back, the school's alert system sent about a thousand text messages (read as: three) warning about a possible warning and telling us to take cover. the word immediately was spelled wrong. it took away a lot of the message's credibility. naturally thinking the whole thing was a joke, we took our sweet time strolling back to campus. michelle and i stopped to get frozen mochas. stella found a dollar on the sidewalk.

so, of course we return to our dorm to hear sirens and the pa system telling everyone to get inside the building in case of high winds.

we finally start panicking and run into the basement (which was horribly hot since it's where all the washers and dryers are) and stay there for a good ten minutes before we find out that the whole thing was a precaution and nothing was happening after all. because this is my life and nothing ever goes right.

in happier news, i've finally listened to taytay's new album...fifteen times. okay, that's not as excessive as it sounds. i usually listen to new albums that often just to get a feel for them. some songs need time to grow. other songs, like this one, will never, ever be okay:

yes, for some unknown reason this song was playing during bingo today. i feel unclean just from listening to it. why does this even exist?

anyway, as for tay tay:

it's a little easier to talk about what i didn't like: the story of us and innocent. the story of us just seemed silly and throw back-ish. basically, a little too much like her last album. actually, both of them did, except innocent doesn't even have the saving grace of being catchy and poppy and fun. it's just...bland. everything else is pretty awesome, though. romeo, juliet, and the scarlet letter are all spared a second appearance - thank god. better than revenge, long live, sparks fly, and never grow up are my favorites right now. never grow up is probably the only one that's going to end up being played consistently over the next few months, though. much as i thought speak now was an improvement over last year's crop of taylor-swift-earworms-on-the-radio, i've got way too much (better) new music to listen to. like the glee rocky horror soundtrack, have you watched it yet?

and since i finally worked out exactly what classes i want to take next semester (and french is definitely on the list...as is spanish, strangely enough, so expect lots of pleas for help if you speak it), i thought i'd close this off with something french - a poem, actually, and one of the few french ones i know.

Et peut-être que tout était écrit dans le livre
mais le livre s’est perdu

ou quelqu’un l’a jeté dans les ronces
sans le lire

n’importe ce qui fut écrit
demeure, même

obscur, un autre qui n’a pas vécu
tout cela

et sans connaître la langue du livre, comprendra
chaque mot

et quand il aura lu, quelque chose
de nous se lèvera

un souffle, une sorte de sourire entre les pierres. 

claude esteban 

it was hot and it was summer

today's title comes from better than revenge by taylor swift. underwhelmed as i was by her last album, i'm pretty in love with this one. it's pretty amazing - and she's actually doing all her own writing. i'd post it, but it isn't on youtube yet, so listen to this instead:

i forgot to mention this album in yesterday's music post, which is strange since it's all i've been listening to at night:

it's wonderful. like rock n' roll and radio and new york city's killing me are my favorites right now, but the whole thing is great. it's a little softer than gossip in the grain, but still good.

we read this in class today, and i really liked it. also, it's been a while since i posted any poetry:

Coming by evening through the wintry city

We said that art is out of love with life.

Here we approach a love that is not pity.

This antique discipline, tenderly severe,

Renews belief in love yet masters feeling,

Asking of us a grace in what we bear.

Form is the ultimate gift that love can offer -

The vital union of necessity

With all that we desire, all that we suffer.

A too-compassionate art is half an art.

Only such proud restraining purity

Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.

- Adrienne Rich 

i was too depressed to blog about it at the time, but on sunday i got one of the hall-es to give my bangs an emergency trim (since they were approaching IT LOOKS LIKE YOU DON'T HAVE EYES levels of growth) and michelle (the usual trimmer) was at home. sadly, the trim turned into a massacre. my poor hair has been maimed. it's a good two inches shorter than it's supposed to be. i've been assured that it'll grow back in two weeks or so, but until then...well, i wore a hat in 78 degree weather today. and i asked the momster to drop of all my scarves and her trench coat, so i've been swanning around wearing headscarves and sunglasses and her trench coat and doing my best imitation of a fifties film star, as outlined in the plan i proposed to s-la, meggo, and jeni on oovoo sunday night.

we're doing laundry now. or, we're waiting for our laundry to finish drying so we can get to the horrible task of folding it. one of the dryers broke, like, ten minutes into us using it - which is ridiculous since they're brand new bought-in-august-you-must-buy-the-super-expensive-high-efficiency-detergent-or-else machines. but while we were loading up the other dryers with our clothes we heard a bang and then a series of thumping noises coming from it. upon investigation, one of the curvy plastic things inside it broke off and was rattling around with our clothes, so we moved them into another dryer. i pulled the liverpool jersey out, though. i decided it was an omen against drying it. fernando torres in jersey form is now drying on a hanger in front of joanna's fan.

never mind, our clothes are apparently done. au revoir.

a newly orphaned refugee

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

and here's the killers version, too:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and a couple of random songs:

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

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

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

be like the squirrel, girl

today's title comes from little acorns by the white stripes. i love this song (and am listening to it right now). it's also my haircut theme song. i'd explain why, but you should really just listen to it.

anyway, my day started out pretty badly and has steadily gotten better. expect a giddy post at 11:59 about how i won the lottery or met daniel craig.

to begin with, i had to do all 91 of my government vocabulary words in econ and yearbook because. well, there is no good reason for it, i just forgot the list at school yesterday. oh, and our spreads were due in yearbook. and i had a giant government test.

those were all the bad things. the good? singing telegrams, especially watching teachers get them. finishing my homework and yearbook spread on time. realizing that the government test was insultingly easy and filling my free response answers with snarky comments and stick figure drawings. finishing highlighting quotations for my colonialism thread in the poisonwood bible.

oh, and i got a haircut.

you're totally expecting me to post a picture, i can tell. but i won't. why?

well, it all starts at 2:30 this afternoon. which, in case you were wondering, is when i got the text from the family i babysit for telling me they wouldn't be needing me after all. in other words, i'd cleared my entire evening for nothing. so, i did what any sensible person would - i went out for a haircut and pedicure session with the momster. also added in was eyebrow shaping, which - wow. no wonder hers always look perfect, the woman she uses is an artist. an artiste even, with all the silly french pretension that implies. she made the pain fun. and yes, i am aware of how crazy that sounds.

anyway, i went home with my newly short hair, and did what any sensible person would do after a few hours of self-pampering when faced with an empty house: i turned my music up loud, swiped some pore cleanser across my cheekbones like a linebacker, and held a pants-off dance off across my dining room floor. which eventually descended into a slightly more toned down night of blogging/texting/waiting for the half an hour required for pore cleanser to be on my face to elapse.

and then the doorbell rang.

i, expecting it to be the momster returning with snacks, cluelessly opened the door. only to be faced with Cute Boy. Cute Boy turned out to be the nephew of the people i babysit for, and came bearing an apology cake from his aunt for canceling on me on such short notice (apparently Cute Boy's family dropped in for a surprise visit). my reaction?

this:

like, i'm not even kidding. it was horrible. i hate my life, okay?

luckily things started looking up. mostly because of the bookstore, snacktime, and newly cleansed pores.

ETA: remember how i said i'd be posting around midnight with something awesome? well, i found it. enjoy:

where's kanye when you need him?

dear tay tay,

normally i like you. but when your songs about sitting in the bleachers watching the cheerleaders and getting dumped by joe jonas beat beyonce and lady gaga we have problems. 

thoughts on the grammies

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:

buzzer club!

academic bowl, fondly known as buzzer club, had its first competition today. and we won! which was exciting, mostly because we beat park view (which, seriously, is just full of the most annoying kids ever...they wore ties.) and also because i got to visit with meggo, who's plays buzzer for freedom. which was exciting, especially because seeing her spiffy jacket reminded me that i need to go shopping this weekend. oh, and in my competition to woo s-la to buzzerdom, i would just like to point out that sarah and i are campaigning for the club to dress as ninjas for the next meet or districts. because, really, what better way to buzz than while dressed as a ninja?

speaking of things happening this weekend - because, in my world, friday is so the weekend - new moon is coming up. i can't wait. i hope we have people who dressed up in our theater. and maybe someone like that crazy twilight fan on youtube who started hyperventilating and crying when she first saw the new moon preview. that'd be amusing.

what am i listening to right now? half of my heart feat. taylor swift by john mayer. it's happy.

and all mellow. good music to blog to.

i stopped by starbucks after school today. here, have a flickr picture which shows my order (well, okay, this is much prettier looking than my order...and also, my drink doesn't splash like this. whatever.)

oh tay tay

so i'm a giant taylor swift fangirl and just bought the platinum edition of fearless. like, legally, even. and it was so worth it because bonus tracks! music videos!

...in other words, my homework soundtrack is now gonna be a lot better than just putting my ipod on shuffle or letting the tv play in the background.

other than that, nothing much is going on. but, look, i'm blogging! like, consistently. so that's exciting.

(playing on the ol' ipod: superstar - t. swift)