we live half at night

today's title comes from vcr by the xx.

i know i've posted this song before. it's just that good. listen to it again, okay?

i went on an adventure to central park and the mall with some of the hall-es. our main goal was chipotle for the burritos (successfully acquired), but we got distracted by other things. i discovered the wonders of the dollar store today! we played in there for a while - christmas decorations are already out. i was a little mystified. whatever happened to thanksgiving? does no one appreciate the turkey anymore? or wearing politically incorrect pilgrim and indian costumes? this is the backbone of our country, people! okay, nor really. whatever. it's still a time honored tradition. they were still fun, though. i'm debating whether or not i should decorate my dorm room for the holidays. i really want to (you all know by now how i feel about holidays - i'm already trying to organize a gingerbread house for the hall), but i'm not sure if it'd be worth it when we leave campus on december ninth. decisions, decisions (you all know how i feel about those, too).

after that, we went to target and played in the toy section. there's so many cool ones now! i don't know what it is about the holidays, but i always feel about five years old the second the weather starts turning cold. like, i have to bundle up in the puffiest, warmest clothes i own and the christmas socks come out...and so does the christmas list. would it be silly if i asked for this for christmas?

i mean, yes, it is a toy. but - it's buzz lightyear! and we played with it at target and it talks and turns toward you and has a spanish mode and everything. it's pretty much the coolest thing i've ever seen.

oh, and don't forget: chelsea v. liverpool tomorrow at 11 a.m. you should watch it. here's why:

listen to didier. it'd be a fucking disgrace if you missed it. tune in for the atletico madrid-real madrid derby tomorrow, too. it's always fun to watch.

oh, and you might have noticed that i finally changed my 'currently reading' book. i'm rereading extremely loud and incredibly close by jonathan safran foer for three reasons: 1. it's awesome. 2. i finally bought a copy of it and can see all the pretty pictures and word circling and the flip book at the back. 3. he's releasing a new book in just nine days and i want to get used to his crazy multimedia style again.

this new book is the real reason i'm mentioning it. i just preordered it (since barnes and noble is offering free shipping and if you preorder it online you get a much-needed discount, considering the downright cray cray original price of the book) and it looks amazing. see for yourself:

to explain what you're looking at, i'll just include the interview that first clued me into this book:

An enormous last day of life.

“Jonathan Safran Foer, deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story. In our world of screens, he welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers that it actually has a body.”
–Olafur Eliasson

Our early conversations with Jonathan Safran Foer aboutTree of Codes started when Jonathan said he was curious to explore and experiment with the die-cut technique. With that as our mutual starting point, we spent many months of emails and phone calls, exploring the idea of the pages’ physical relationship to one another and how this could somehow be developed to work with a meaningful narrative. This led to Jonathan deciding to use an existing piece of text and cut a new story out of it. Having considered working with various texts, Jonathan decided to cut into and out of what he calls his “favourite book”: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.

As Jonathan began to carve out his story, we started doing our production homework and literally got turned down by every printer we approached – their stock line being “the book you want to make just cannot be made”. Thankfully, we found Die Keure in Belgium who relished the challenge of making a book with a different die-cut on every page.

Over a year of writing, cutting and proto-typing later, comesTree of Codes, a haunting new story by Jonathan Safran Foer cut from Bruno Schulz’s words.

The book is as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling: here is an “enormous last day of life” that looks like it feels.

doesn't it look amazing? i'm excited.

random fact: i've been listening to the xx while i typed this. itunes is weird, though, so when i type "the xx" into the search bar, i get every song, band, or album artist that features two Xs and/or the word "the". which means i went from nice, muted, good-for-writing, indie techno pop to:

yeah, i don't know either.

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:

while our blood's still young

today's title comes from sweet disposition by the temper trap as covered by ellie goulding. it's amazing. if i had any sort of singing ability or musical talent, i'd hope to make music like her or grace potter, even though they're completely different. i love her original songs, even if i still don't know how to describe them. girly techno indie electro pop? i'm not really sure.

so, in nail polish news, these are the ones i've picked up lately:

take the stage

bring on the bling

rising star

barefoot in barcelona

for audrey

curry up don't be late

nevermore

there's one more, but the nicole by opi site is down, so i can't post it for you. it's this really fun green called fell from the tree, though. nail nights are going to be a lot more fun now, i'm thinking.

i have a bio test tomorrow. i'm not looking forward to it at all. i hate genetics. i hate reviewing for it even more. i've been taking periodic breaks in my studying all week just because it's so hard to focus on it. i hate science.

i've come to the conclusion that the postal system hates me. i managed to send out letters filled with glow sticks and nothing happened, but my latest batch of letters got returned to me because they didn't have enough stamps. i don't get it - it was just paper. not a surprise in site. and they were brand new stamps, so it's not like they're the old ones where you have to put two on. and i even double checked the addresses after that first time. what did i ever do to the post office workers to make them hate me so much?

this song worries me. enrique, i expected better. if you insist on singing songs with stupid lyrics, please do so in spanish:

random thought: listen to this song (on youtube) and die on the floor by franz ferdinand (in itunes) simultaneously is kind of amazing. maybe i should try mashing them up in garage band. i'm thinking i'll need help with that. it's probably going to turn into a hall-e or munchkin project.

and since this post now features talk of both enrique and mashups:

there, i'm done now. time to go back to biology.

curry up don't be late

i only have six minutes to post this! oh no! well, to recap my day as quickly as possible: i came back to campus, i bought nail polish and toy story 3 on dvd. the nail polish is pretty. i'm attempting to catch up to the hall-es' giant collections...so i bought six more online today. five of them are opi, and one is for audrey by china glaze. never fear, though. thanks to the wonderful advice of this blogger, i found out where to buy them on the cheap. only 3 dollars a bottle! be proud. i'm demanding a nail night whenever we all see each other again. oh, and today's title comes from one of the aforementioned nail polishes. oh, opi names, never change.

where you came from

today's title comes from radioactive by cutie and the followills as covered by cee-lo green. it's not on youtube yet, but you can listen to it here. and you should. you really, really should. it's way better than the original.

i'm still enjoying having fox soccer channel again. i've been watching all the champion's league matches in high definition. it's been wonderful. real madrid drew 2-2 today, but it was okay because i occupied myself/fought off disappointment by laughing at the way the oh-so-american commentators kept mispronouncing everyone's names. the real highlight of the day came in watching bayern munich slaughter some random team called cfr cluj. mario gomez scored three times! and muller scored once! and schweini was wonderful with his assists (and his yellow card). biebstuber had a groin injury and couldn't play, though. i've decided that even if husband number two doesn't like them because they are like the real barcelona of germany and always spend too much money and buy all the good players, i'll support them.

a little. all teams are not equal, after all, and liverpool is (deservedly) number one forever and ever. i'm so excited that s-la has been converted, because now we can watch the istanbul dvd together over some break or the other and force jenibean and meggo to watch, too.

speaking of s-la, her contact removal advice once again proved to be priceless. after the regular doctor's appointment, the momster dragged me to the eye doctor. i got new contacts. and new glasses, but those aren't here yet. i had to wear contacts all day, though, so i could give the doctor a "report" about how they felt over the phone tomorrow. doesn't that just sound strange? i think so. i finally took them out a few minutes ago and i didn't poke myself in the eye or flip the contact inside out or rip it in half or anything. you go, s-la. four for you, steffi coco. here, have some germans as thanks:

this just made me laugh. i'm not even sure why. i just like picturing kanye west and george bush having one of those old school rap feuds. the mental image of george bush rapping diss tracks and shooting people in drive-bys is wonderful.

i've pretty much given up on this post. i'm a little too caffeinated/high on leftover halloween candy to string together anything remotely coherent. here, have some more pictures!

question: how much do i want these? answer: a lot. 

tumblr reminds me that i'm not the only loser who gets excited by the debut of the christmas cups at starbucks.

i have decided to try to keep this in mind more often.

enzymes

today's title comes from the song of the same name by freelance whales:

i'm home. i have the flu. i am headed to the doctor tomorrow - and after that the eye doctor. i am clearly the sickliest child on the face of the earth.

i think today's theme is going to be sentences beginning with i - it's good to be selfish.

i've been home for four hours and have already had to pry my headphones out of lulu's tiny mouth. i've missed having fox soccer channel to watch champion's league games on in hd. i also missed having cookie sleep on my feet (he's doing that right now).

i think this i-thing is harder than i thought it would be; how does steve jobs manage it?

i think the trailer for tangled looks really cool:

i was a bad citizen and didn't vote today. i don't think i'm registered yet. i also think you should stop judging me since i've only been eighteen for two weeks.

i came home and was terrified by my laundry room - the momster replaced our washer and dryer with these scary, high tech things that beep and have a spinny dial and very complicated instruction manuals.

i'm tired and mucus-y and think i will end this post here. i also think that the road to recovery lies with the giant bags of leftover halloween candy sitting in my pantry. i think i'll go liberate them.

a matter of time

today's title comes from walk in the park by beach house.

it's that time of year again. nanoblogmo time! is anyone else doing it this year? you better be.

anyway, to kick this year's nanoblogmo off, i have exciting news. well, exciting news for some of us, anyway. s-la, jenibean, meggo - take note. we have the world's best gingerbread house theme for this year. joanna the hall-e helped me come up with it. it was kind of an accident, but then i thought - hey, this could work. check your mail for the blueprint soon, meggo.

random, but this has been floating around facebook and i thought it was cool. however, there is the better football soccer news, too:

like this. that's right - schweini is considering a move to the premier league next season. and, you know, liverpool has new owners and new money to spend...please, oh please, let this happen. and speaking of liverpool, this happened. i miss rafa. and i really hope that idiot manager leaves soon.

anyway, today's post is going to be short. i've been doing too much writing lately. first there was the five page paper i did in two hours (but spent, like, a week outlining), and then all of the letters to reply to. isn't the wall of mail terrifying wonderful? it's actually grown since then because the other circle k officers sent me "welcome to the club" cards, but i haven't put them up yet.

despite the fact that i'm running out of room, keep up the good work, guys, since i'm getting, like, next to nothing from the parental units. well, husband number two sends care packages and husband number three signed me up for all those magazine subscriptions, but the momster...hmmph. i texted her yet another picture of my sad and empty mailbox today as a gentle hint and she called me back and sounded really depressed and promised me packages, maybe even a package full of candy. and i totally believed her. until she burst into laughter and said, it'd probably be more like an envelope. with a single m&m in it. what the hell, mother? i was so excited. but according to her, i'm supposed to settle for seeing her in person. apparently she finds my love of snail mail extremely "silly". i had to pull out my hmmphiest hmmph-face yet, and it had no effect. i'm still annoyed. 

and now i'm going to the gym with joanna the hall-e. wish me luck/calorie burning!