What a Tease

One of the Starbucks "Pick of the Week" iTunes song redemption cards that my aunt gave me... had no download code. Now I will never know what "Se Fue" by the frighteningly angular-faced Bebe sounds like. What a shame.

Also, Dan Brown still can't write for shit... so I removed the jacket cover when I took my brother's (Christmas present) copy of The Lost Symbol to Panera today. Still, I will concede a high-five for his mad research skillz.

Also also, Panera's macaroni and cheese is definitely not worth five bucks.

Things I Don't Understand About "Party in the USA"

1. Have you ever seen Miley Cyrus wear a cardigan?
   
2. If Miley is, as she claims, in a taxi cab, can she really be "movin' her hips like yeah"? The last time I checked, doing so requires a standing position.
3. I'm pretty sure you've been working in LA for long enough to know that it is indeed not Nashville, Ms. Cyrus.
   
4. Since when is a Hollywood club representative of the entirety of America?
   
5. If "USA" is really defined by Jay-Z and Britney instead of Springsteen and Aretha... I think I'll move to Europe.

Funny as Grammar

One of my history books describes a British soldier in India as "agile as a verb."

Does this mean someone can be... steadfast as a noun? eloquent as an adjective? guiding as a preposition?

Some Less-Than-Profound Things

I watched "Memento" last night. MIND = BLOWN.

I realized that I spend about a day each week (usually Sunday—this very post is, in fact, procrastination) in a computer lab just writing essays. This is not a fruitful way to spend my life, especially when the essay topics don't whip me up into a frenzy of academic awe. And, because I hate starting papers, I dither around doing nothing even remotely productive until an idea comes to me... then I agonize over word choices. So what takes a less diligent but more alive person maybe three hours ends up taking me ten.

When I get lost on Wikipedia, I really get lost. Hyperlinking and trivia will be the death of me yet. There is so much interesting stuff to know about the world... but most of the time I just want to read about it rather than have to analyze it for a grade on my transcript.

I heard Mika's "We Are Golden" for the first time on Friday and it just made me sad that the fun parts of teenagerdom are all too fleeting and all too few.

Remember when I wanted to be Harriet the Spy? (Yes, I do.) Remember when I knew a guy like Sport? (No, I don't.)

In other words: I need to stop taking myself (and my schoolwork) so seriously. I'll never get back the weeks I've already lost to self-consciousness and over-achieving.

"Working on My Night Cheese"

I can't decide whether I'd want to be or marry Tina Fey.

(And how perfect is her last name?! Jealous.)

Why I'm Sometimes Silent in Class

It's not that I don't care about the book—it's that I care too much. That it feels blasphemous to discuss it before I've finished reading it. That some books shouldn't be subjected the inane questions and answers of barely-awake teenagers. That to try to analyze this particular novel would be relegating it to a homework list when it belongs to something so much better.

The Perfect Man?

Heart and personality of Marshall Eriksen, brain and looks of Ted Mosby, humor and, uh, vitality of Barney Stinson.

I think yes.

Verbose Volumes

This semester, I go from 821-page David Copperfield in Class #1 to 560-page Midnight's Children Class #2 to 682-page Jane Eyre in Class #2... and then 560-page Midnight's Children in Class #1. I must also trudge through most chapters of a 656-page history book.

If I make it through, I think I might deserve a medal.

Self vs. Others vs. Self

Funny how all my classes this semester have me examining other people's identities, when the one I need to be focusing on at the moment is my own.

More Like "Wept-ember"!*

The crisp beauty of September is always ruined by the swamp of work. Couldn't you once let us enjoy the fading days of summer so well complemented by the coloring of the leaves, o gods of higher education?

*This is a terrible title. I don't apologize.

Highways and Byways

Thank God for interstate rest stops and 99-cent Arizona iced tea cans.

Misheard Lyrics

For the longest time, I thought Santana's version of "Black Magic Woman" used the lyrics "Blacken my diploma."

True story.

How I Spent (Thirty Minutes of) My Summer

Talking about dual-flush toilets.

(Which are actually one of the most ingenious ideas I've ever heard. I can't believe I've never thought of the concept before.)

I've Got a New Drug

Speed Scrabble is the crack cocaine of word games.
This is irrefutable.

(Apparently it's the poor man's Bananagrams. This gal's only got room for one fruit-based lark in her repertoire, and that's Apples to Apples.)

The Seven Stages of Man Could Well Be Shortened to Six

I'm certainly not of the "live fast, die young" variety, but I don't think I want to be the owner of the Costco cart filled with extra-large Depends, either.

Stop! Sexy Time!

In my hometown there is a stop sign that has been grafitied to read "Try for a baby."

I wonder how many children were conceived this year after their parents came to a halt at an intersection.

I Sing My Heart Out to the Infinite Sea

Microsoft Word's thesaurus just returned "cry" and "noise" as synonyms for "song."

Is Bill Gates secretly a philistine?

Here Comes the Bride, A Decade in Advance

Would it be terribly gauche of me to wear Converses to my own wedding?
I did in my dream last night, but I can't remember if that drew any strange stares as I walked toward the man I have yet to meet.

We did, however, flop down on a bed in disbelieving childish giggles before returning to the reception to eat tiered lemon cake.

(A flower garden in May or an elegent library* in September.)


*Perhaps a flash-back to our first date?

...I have got to stop reading these things.

A Question

"How did you grow, as a person?"

What the hell else would I be growing as?! A garden? A piglet? A slime mold?
Stupid interview preparation suggestions.

You Know You're Living In a Special Part of the Country When...

...instead of presumably illegal immigrants, the guys helping lay a new sidewalk are Amish.

Top Five Musician-Inspired Names That I Might Bestow Upon My Future Children...

...So That They'll Have Good Answers to the Inevitable "Are You Named After Anyone?" Question

Sons

1. Dylan (as in Bob)
2. Graham (as in Nash)
3. Jude (as in "Hey")
   
4. Arlo (as in Guthrie)
5. Garfunkel (as in Art) ...except not really.
   

Daughters

1. Melissa (as in the Allman Brothers song)
2. Natalie (as in Merchant)
3. Laurel (as in the famous canyon)
4. Judy Blue Eyes (as in "Suite")
   
5. Magnolia (as in "Sugar") ...except not really.
   

Words, Words, Words

Fact: The bigger the book in front of you but the smaller the text, the more scholarly you feel.

I've got a 1910-page Shakespeare concordance. You can just hand me my doctorate now.


And in this concordance, printed in 1937, I espied a typographical error: "...ay, there's the rnb..."
An upside-down "u"! (Though I suppose technically it's really just an "n.")

...shut up. I think it's funny.

Spring Has Sprung (I Open My Lungs)

I might have the motivation to buckle down and research if I could only forget that at this very moment, crocuses are pushing their way out of soil sleep.

Not a Barefoot Contessa

Okay, really?
Are you really going to change the television above our respective elliptical machines to the Food Network, of all channels?
Yes, you are?
Are you a sadomasochist? I feel like I'm running up Mount Everest in hundred-degree weather in a vain attempt to shave fat off my protruding stomach, and you're going to make me watch chocolate truffles being made?
This is too much.

You've driven me to buy a smoothie downstairs—and just before she finished the tiramisu!

Psychology Doesn't Balance

You'd think that having simultaneous superiority and inferiority complexes would result in a well-adjusted and happy person.

This is, frustratingly, not the case.

That Punk Punxsutawney

Killing a groundhog isn't met with capital punishment... right?

Add a Little Irony

As I was trying to type "success" in a text message but forgot the second "c," the ezi-spell function spit out "puberty" instead.

There's No One New to Know

I have come to the conclusion that Facebook has rendered me socially inept—not because it has skewed my sense of "friendship" or driven me to compartmentalize my interests and activities, but because my endless attentiveness to profiles* ensures that I already know the answers to the basic questions one normally asks when getting to know another person.

Social networking doesn't translate well to real life when you feel compelled to "meet" someone before you meet them.

*euphemism, "stalking"




On another note, I had forgotten how much I like cheesy rice cakes.

Shut Up Shut Up Shut UP

You know when you're in a crowd and stop focusing on words and everything just becomes endless fucking noise, all these people spewing inconsequential chatter, blathering idiots and moronic mouths, and you press your fingertips to the holes in your ears and make them open and close like valves until you want to scream to high heaven that all this talking doesn't amount to fucking anything?

Well, that may very well be the opening scene of my adolescent angst movie.

If it ever gets made.
But let's not be bitter and pessimistic.

Light Me Up

Things to Do While High: A Purely Hypothetical List

1. Sync "The Wizard of Oz" and Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon."
   
2. Read Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons.
3. Re-create the Woodstock setlist with a stereo system in a field.
   
4. Cloud-gaze.
   
5. Rock down to Electric Avenue.
   

What Enzymes Have Made Me Realize

When it comes to boys, I suffer from the effects of competitive inhibition.

What I need is an allosteric regulator to help induce a conformational change.

Too bad that infatuation usually follows the first law of thermodynamics.

A Complaint

The great irony of a teenage girl's life: no one will love you until you love yourself, but loving yourself is difficult until someone loves you.

Corollary: teenage girls are doomed to years of therapy.

Men Are From Mars

According to four upperclassmen (emphasis on the final syllable) I overheard today before dinner, the ideal wife is one who visits the toilet at the opposite time of day than her (apparently regularly scheduled) husband, and that the ideal Saturday night is spent getting high and visiting all the drive-through fast food joints in town.

Now, I'm not trying to pass judgment, but... really?

One Poor Girl

Buddy Holly loved her, called her "pretty pretty pretty pretty," but four years later The Regents tried her and knew she wouldn't do. And as if that weren't enough, The Beach Boys did the same, preferring Barbara Ann once again.

Peggy Sue must have needed a therapist.

Be It Resolved

I don't think I want to lead a life of quiet desperation anymore.

It just doesn't produce stories worthy of telling to wide-eyed future grandchilden.