Sunday, June 24, 2012

it's once again traveling day. i'm going to spare you all the list of things i can't find and can't remember, because honestly i think the only thing that will do is make me panic a bit. so let's just pretend that everything's hunky dory (i was going to say peachy but somehow that came out instead. i don't think i've ever used the phrase hunky dory before this in my life). anyway, i should probably have internet in the desert both at my family's and my husband's family's houses, so hopefully i'll still be blogging for the next six weeks. now i'm off to find my sunglasses case (and hope that i didn't shove it into my suitcase at one point because there is no way i am unpacking that thing again) and try to remember what else i needed to bring. (yay for procrastination.)

oh, and i can't remember if i ever posted about them on here or if i just talked about it in real life, but a couple of months ago i read that crunch was making girl scout cookie themed chocolates. i finally tried them, and i have to say that i am not a fan of the peanut butter one (though i like that cookie). the samoa and thin mint ones are okay, though. 

Thursday, June 21, 2012

so this is great britain and welcome aboard

i recently rewatched the first three seasons of primeval with my husband (because he hadn't seen them) so that i could watch the final two seasons and finally finish the show. (the new (to me at least) episodes made me so mad in the beginning that i could only watch one episode at a time to keep from throwing things at the tv (a really bad habit of mine). i hated everything about them.) but this post is not about primeval. while watching the show and thinking about other british tv shows i've watched, i decided to compile a list of things that i learned about british people by watching british tv if i actually believed everything i see on tv. that is a long name. probably longer than the list to be honest. but here it is:
  • british people don't lock their doors. ever. it doesn't matter if you're a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks or the head of a super secret government agency that fights dinosaurs, you never lock your door. actually, they might not even have locks on their doors. this makes it way easier to get into your apartment if you're in a rush (and let's face it, when you're cramming at least a day into forty three minutes, you're always in a rush) and makes it easy for people to just barge into your house uninvited (and usually at inconvenient times) whenever they feel like it (usually to further some minor plot point).win win, really. 
  • british people have a legal drinking age of like, three (or fifteen or sixteen). either that, or they never card and everyone's perfectly okay with sharing their bars with children. you see kids in high school just sitting there drinking beer for breakfast before school, and everyone is all, "jolly good day sir" instead of "what the hell do you think you kids are doing?"
  • british people who cuss will never not sound amusing and will always sound higher class than american people who cuss. always. there is no way for me to ever unlearn this. british cussing will never not be awesome.
  • british people who are smart are smart in every field possible. a history buff will know complex mathematics and science formulas and engineering. a star wars fan who likes dinosaurs and believes in conspiracies is basically a complete genius at every little thing you throw at him. if you're not ridiculously smart, you have the ability to understand things way beyond what should be possible for your level of intellect. breathing just generally makes them smarter is what it looks like to me.
  • british people like to say that it's always raining, when in fact, the sun never stops shining. on the rare occasion where there is a little rain, they like to make jokes about english weather and how very used to the rain they are (though they rarely get any).
  • british people have no property laws. if you throw a party in your house and a hobo moves in and locks you out, you are forced to find a new place to live because that is now the hobo's home sweet home. squatting apparently never goes out of fashion.
  • british people (and animals and monsters and what have you) are polite and orderly. dinosaurs only visit places after closing time to keep the government's secret safe and keep injuries and death at a minimum. hundreds of magical british students will obey all school rules to avoid detention, while in reality they could totally overthrow the ten teachers watching over them. super evil british wizards always wait until the end of the school year to attack their underage enemies to allow them to learn as much as possible before they die. making them get behind in their studies would just be rude.
i could probably go on with this list forever, but i won't. 

*So This is Great Britain - The Holloways

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

pedicure on our toes, toes

yesterday my sister and i went to get pedicures, because we can be girly like that sometimes. (only, not that often i guess because it was my first pedicure ever, which my sister (and most everyone else) found shocking for some reason.) instead of normal pedicures, though, we drove the extra half hour and got fish pedicures (where a bunch of tiny (in my case) and not so tiny (in my sister's case) fish basically ate the dry skin off our feet). it sounds really gross when i say it like that. poor fish. it was pretty awesome, though, despite the potential fish cruelty. it was followed by a traditional spa pedicure.

in other news, we're leaving on sunday for the desert. i should really start thinking about packing but when i look at the suitcases that i had my husband take out i'm instantly hit with a wave of lazy boredom and the feeling that if i get up to pack my head will surely explode. or my arm might fall off. or my leg might turn to ash. basically, i'll suffer some form of bodily harm, and who would risk that? we'll be gone for a little over a month and splitting the time between his side of the country and my side of the country, and i'm starting to just not feel like going. it's way too much work to travel across oceans and continents just to see people for a few days is my opinion. though that may just be my laziness talking (assuming that my laziness is a separate entity from myself). and that reminds me of a youtube video my sister sent me a while back. let me go find that for you. actually, my sister sent me episode two, but here's the first one:



seriously, story of my life.

also, i just used ke$ha lyrics for my blog title. i quoted someone with a dollar sign in her name. i think i should be tarred, feathered, and ran out of town, but that won't make me change them.

*Tik Tok (apparently she's too good for c's?) - Ke$ha

Sunday, June 17, 2012

look what they made

do you guys happen to remember april fool's day 2011 when there was a fake teaser trailer for the "new" show the aurors? you can see the trailer in that old blogpost that's linked in the previous sentence because i don't feel like going to get the embed code from youtube. but anyway, a little over a year later, and some harry potter fans have decided to make it a reality with a webseries about aurors in new york:



what do you guys think?

on a completely unrelated note, the other day i learned that some people pour milk into a bowl before pouring the cereal. now, granted, i don't always eat my cereal with milk, but when i do, the cereal always goes in first. always. i would like to meet these backwards people and find out why exactly they do this because it makes no sense to me.

*The Veldt - Deadmau5

Friday, June 15, 2012

and today i will trust you with the confidence of a man who's never known defeat, but tomorrow upon hearing what i did i will stare at you in disbelief

it has been ridiculously hard to choose a name for this cell phone of mine. he's definitely the hardest to name of all my electronics, which led me to the conclusion (if you read my responses to comments you already know this) that my children will be numbered instead of named. but only odd numbers because hello, i am not cruel enough to wish an even number on anyone. i'd probably start at three, though. i'd only name a boy five, and i'd skip seven altogether because back in the desert they call 7-up (the soda) seven (but with an f for the v because they don't have v's in arabic) and i wouldn't want my kids to be made fun of with idiotic insults generating from a soda brand. originality and wit are always appreciated, though. there would definitely be a nine and a fifteen (that one would be my favorite) and i'm still debating whether to go in order or not. it'd probably be kinda stupid if i started at fifteen went to three and ended at nine, though, don't you think?

also, this afternoon i had a meeting with one of my professors, and can i just say that whenever i walk out of that professor's office i feel like i'm the most amazing thing since the decision to put cheese on a burger? seriously, i think that this whole phd program will be doable and interesting and groundbreaking and amazing and that i'm amazing for doing it and for being me and that i can do whatever i want because, i mean, just look at me. i'm awesomeness incarnate. there is nothing that i can't learn and nothing that i can't do and nothing that i wouldn't want to learn, because have you ever learned about any of this computer-y stuff? it's fascinating. give me a day or two and the high will wear off, but for now i will bask in the knowledge that i am the most amazing contribution to the human race that has walked this earth.

on a less happy note, i woke up this morning to find that my washing machine was broken. it had decided that it was above rinsing and spinning and instead wanted to become a laundry soup maker. (it thinks it could be a big thing among vegetarians.) on an ordinary day this would be an inconvenience. on a day when you find out that you're leaving the country in a week and have absolutely no clean clothes because you've been an anti-laundry bum for the past few months, it is catastrophic. thank god for apartment repair men who come to save the day. even if they do claim that there is nothing wrong with a washing machine that is obviously going through a mid-life crisis.

oh, and i made granola bars last night. like, by myself from scratch. and washed the dishes when they were baking instead of leaving them for this morning. they should totally make a tv show all about how domestic i am.

*Let It All Out - Relient K

Thursday, June 14, 2012

i never want to act my age

at twenty-four i'm supposed to be a fully functioning adult, or so i've been told. if that's true, then i guess there are a few things that have followed me into adulthood, things that i don't think i'll ever grow out of. (not that i would want to anyway.) here's the first five that came to mind (in no particular order):

cake batter: i don't think i will ever get too old to lick the spoon/bowl when baking a cake (or brownies). i don't think i will ever reach a point when i say, "well, i guess i'll just wait until after the cookies are cooked to eat them." you can lecture me about salmonella and food poisoning all you'd like, but that spoon is still going into my mouth as soon as the cake is in the oven.

YA books: while growing up, i was never told to "read books for my age," and i guess that's stuck with me. i read books that were "too old" for me when i was young and books that are "too young" for me when i'm old, and i couldn't care any less. i don't think i'll ever stop switching from adult to young adult to children's books and back again.

nickelodeon/disney: i will be one of those people who is eighty years old and still watches cartoons. i will watch victorious and big time rush and icarly until i'm fifty. disney movies will never become too juvenile for me to enjoy. also, raffi and sesame street and other shows for that age group have awesome songs. i will never not think that.

sugar cereals: i don't know what age people generally go to the cereal aisle and skip over the lucky charms and cinnamon toast crunch, but i don't think i'll ever reach it. not to say i don't eat more grown-up cereal too, because i do, just not at the expense of my fruity pebbles.

puzzles and board games: i mean, does anyone actually grow out of these? i don't understand people who claim they do.

*What's My Age Again - Blink 182

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

here i am again, doing things that i said i wouldn't do

i have finally succumbed to peer pressure (and dying phones) and gotten myself a smartphone. and guys, a part of me died yesterday. the part that adamantly refused to jump on the smartphone bandwagon, the part that was more than willing to let the train going through the present to the future pass me by without hopping on to be left in the past with the polluted smoke and gum wrappers, the part that held onto my dumb phone like it was the only thing keeping me me, that part is dead. and part of me mourns her loss. part of me wants to host a funeral and set up a memorial for lasting as long as she did. part of me wants to bake a batch of gingerbread men and put icing frowns on every single one. but the other part is too busy playing games that don't require you to press six to go right and four to go left. the other part is caught up in trying to find an appropriate name for the new addition to our family of electronics. the other part saw the dead phone lying helpless on the nightstand this morning and felt... nothing.

so yeah, that's my big news of the day i guess. i really am working on finding the perfect name, i will let you know what i come up with. (the names i have thought of so far have been shot down so we'll see. feel free to suggest names in the comments. has to be a "j" name, though.)

i have also been babysitting my sister's plant while she's in the desert. his name is peter. i dunno why i mentioned that really, except that i thought i had something to say about him and then realized that i didn't.

also, i need to reorganize my bookshelves.

and i have the perfect lyric in my head for the title, but i can't for the life of me remember what song it's from or who sings it and google isn't helping and it's killing me. i've never even heard of the bruno mars song google is telling me to use instead, but there it is.

*Only When You're Lonely - Bruno Mars

Monday, June 11, 2012

i don't think it's fair

with seven million and twelve different channels on tv, you know what one should put on? a competition for writers. i mean, they have competitions for every other career/interest/hobby: cooks, pastry chefs, interior designers, artists (painters/sculpturs/etc), car designers, singers, pretty people, smart people, dogs, etc. you know how chopped makes cooks create meals with mystery ingredients? they should do the same thing with mystery characters and plot points. like, the group should have to write a short story in twenty minutes that includes a one-legged man, an old bridge, and an alien invasion. and the one with the worst story is eliminated. but you could do different forms of writing for different rounds (like poetry/prose and different genres) and then the winner gets ten thousand dollars. i would totally watch that.

i guess the closest thing that i ever saw was this show that my younger sister was obsessed with. my sister used to be really into slam poetry. she really wanted to be a slam poet? poetry slammer? but a combination of culture, religion, and parents made the trips it required impossible, thereby making the whole endeavor impossible. but anyway, we used to watch this slam poetry competition on tv and it was awesome, but i think it got cancelled, and i don't know why because it was awesome. now that i mention it, though, it really isn't very close at all. but it was still a really good show. they should restart it. or you know, do something.

*Low Fidelity - The Spill Canvas

Sunday, June 10, 2012

i can't hear you

so my phone died yesterday. my beautiful (on the inside, maybe?), crappy, dumb, dumb, dumb phone finally had enough of being thrown across parking lots when i get out of the car and forget it's in my lap, being drooled on by numerous children, dropping out of pockets and bags and hands onto various types of floors, and whatever else it had to endure on a daily basis. apparently dropping calls and eating text messages was just not getting the results it wanted, so yesterday evening it up and killed its own mic. suddenly people i was talking to could hear a robotic hum at best and absolute silence at worst. it was a very sad moment when i realized that i could no longer spend months looking at different phones and pretending that i was going to buy one. the time has come when i am forced to buy one.

i've switched over to a temporary backup phone for the moment. (though i did strongly consider not doing that and actually having a valid excuse not to talk on the phone with anyone ever until i got a replacement. i really do hate telephones most of the time. it would have been perfect. unfortunately, my family is in the desert and since we have no land line, they contact me through my cell phone. though i have no problem being telephonically-unavailable to people here (because, hello? just text me.) i don't think it would work so well with a continent or two between us.)

i've never had a phone die on me before. my husband, though, has had several. he's pretty much an electronics murderer. (okay, maybe not that bad... but whatever.) i blame my phone's death on him, obviously.

*The Noise - Regina Spektor

Saturday, June 9, 2012

it's not so bad

over the past couple of days i've had a draft open in blogger, and i'd periodically go back to it and jot down whatever errant thought it was that i had just had that i felt needed to be its own blog post because i've been super busy and stuff, and um... i'm pretty sure there must be something wrong with me because some of it was just ridiculous. i mean, what was i thinking when i decided that you all needed to read an entire post dedicated to my flip flop tan lines? what would i even write about them that would fill up a post? or how about the note that said my dad called me up a couple of nights ago to tell me that beauty and the beast was playing on the disney channel? and then there are so. many. links. that part of me doesn't even want to open them all to see what they are.

so instead i'll tell you all about the book i'm reading where the mom waited up till three in the morning to tell her daughter some bad news. news that was clumped into the same category of family calamities as the oldest daughter cracking her skull open and suffering from temporary amnesia and the middle child killing herself with drugs, alcohol, and a car smashing into a telephone pole. the news was that the youngest child, a fourth grade boy, wanted to be a writer. i still don't understand what the problem is. the book is a translated japanese novel, so maybe it's something about that culture? maybe it's just the book and i'll find out later why this was so bad? i dunno, but i feel like i should probably figure it out.

there was another part that really stuck out to me as a culture (not really) difference, though it was really just a little side comment. the main character walked into a room with dark mahogany floors that shined with oil, was how i think it was exactly described, and she mentioned that the floors reminded her of her junior high classroom. um... you know what kind of floors were in my junior high classrooms? scuffed linoleum. most people i know will have memories closer to mine than hers.

anyway, my family has abandoned me for the desert yesterday. i felt that that should be mentioned.

*Bling (Confessions of a King) - The Killers

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

i think that i can't do this

the first time i really remember studying poetry in school was in sixth grade. my teacher's husband was a "real" poet and i think that may have been one of the reasons that she took it so seriously. (although, really, she took all writing seriously. i owe her a lot.) anyway, she had us do a bunch of different exercises and experiment with a bunch of different kinds of poetry. for example, one time, she had us eavesdrop on a conversation of strangers, take a line they said, and center a poem around it. instead, i went to my sister's poetry, chose a poem, and changed it a bit to make it sound like a line could have been taken from a casual conversation. it was pretty bad. poetry has never really been my strong suit in writing. another time she gave us a poem that she had taken all of the line breaks out of. basically it looked like a giant paragraph, and we had to put it back into poem form. i'm still not sure exactly why, but i guess seeing where we thought the lines should break off told more about us than i could see.

one of my friends broke the poem up exactly like the poet had. i remember my teacher being fascinated, especially when she found out that my friend had never read or even heard of the poem before. i, on the other hand, was far less successful. my "poem" had lines so long that the only reason they didn't wrap around was because my handwriting was so tiny. (i once had to rewrite an entire paper because my teacher said the writing was too small, and he couldn't read it.) they were far too long to be considered a traditional poem. looking at the page, you might probably still confuse it with prose. looking back, i guess that's when my prosetry kind of started. my inability to break up the lines then led to my unwillingness to break up the lines now.

over the years, i took poetry a few more times in school, i went in and out of poetry phases out of school, but i am still pretty much unable to write poems. i think. which leads me to my main question: is there a difference between a poem and prose with line breaks? i recently took a piece i had written a couple of years ago and tried to make it into a traditional poem. i broke up most of it without a problem, but when i came to the last part, i just couldn't see where it could be broken. i ended up with a poem consisting of three stanzas followed by three lines of prose. but should that even be considered a poem? if i broke up the last part would it be a poem? does it matter where you put line breaks? does the writing have to be different?

i mean, i know the technical answers already because, like i said, i've studied poetry quite a few times. but i think there's something about it that i'm just missing, because my poems all scream out fake to me, and trying too hard. and the words that seemed fine in prose form look cheap and cliched in shorter lines. and my work only has rhythm when its lines can wrap around the page. and i may never be able to write a moving traditional poem, but i really want to know what i'm doing wrong. and why hitting enter a few times can completely change the mood/tone/effect of the piece.

*More Than Useless - Relient K

Sunday, June 3, 2012

i can see you're trying to hide all the darkness in your mind



this is the video that plays on repeat in the anne frank house.

i was listening to otto frank's video, and he says that in anne's diary he met an entirely new version of his daughter, someone much more serious and self-critical than the girl he had known. and i thought, if there's one thing about me that's completely true, it's how transparent i have become. if you read through my journal, it would, for the most part, be like reading through my blog, like talking to me in person, like looking at a picture of me. (except for the fact that i haven't written in my journal for months of course and really haven't taken many pictures either.) i wear my thoughts, dreams, and ideas like a second skin for everyone to see. all my words were born from them, my lips know how to speak nothing else. all my lies are truths and everything just exposes me further. they live in my eyes, in the palm of my hand, on the soles of my feet. i can't run from them, as much as i'd like to sometimes. i can't hide them or cast them away. they are the seasoning of every joke and the stowaways in every story. that is not to say that everyone, or even most people, really know me. but if they don't, it's just because they weren't looking.

i wasn't always like this, and i'm not always sure if it's the best way to be, but it's pretty much who i am now and you know, i think i'm okay with that.

(random side note: the song quoted in the title is awesome and has great lyrics and i love it and you should listen to it because you might too.)

*Long Island Blues - Julian Casablancas

Saturday, June 2, 2012

'cause you're amazing

you know what's really amazing? pringles. like, the way the flavors of their chips taste exactly like whatever they're supposed to taste like. it really is the greatest achievement of the universe. i mean, i'm eating the mexican seven layered dip pringles, and my mouth thinks it's eating some kind of seven-layer nachos and my brain is telling it that it's just pringles because it can read the box (tube?) and my mouth is telling my brain to just shut up because it knows what it's eating and it is freaking nachos. i was obsessed with the cheeseburger pringles for a while, too. i never see them in stores anymore, though. do they still make them? also the honey mustard and the dill pickle ones. i mean, all the original flavors are awesome, but these crazy ones are just crazy with how perfect they are.

on another note, the weather today is gorgeous. so obviously i spent all morning at chuck e cheese's with my husband, sister, and nephews. because there is no better way to enjoy beautiful weather than to be cooped up in a dark little building filled with beeping games and shouting kids and tickets and pizza. i mean, duh. and then after that we spent an hour in petland fawning over the bunnies. (i think that i really decided to fulfill my inner fourth-grader's dream of having a pet rabbit. i mean, after i check if they're allowed in my apartment and after we come back from our maybe-overseas-travels in the summer of course. because this seems to be the year to resurrect my fourth grade self, relive obsessions, fulfill dreams, and then finally put her away and grow up. or something.)

oh, and i'm kind of in love with that song from the brave trailer. you should probably listen to it.

*Just the Way You Are - Bruno Mars