if you're not here when i break in, i'm gonna go to your closet just so i can smell your skin

i spent most of my life without watching a single reality tv dating show. no bachelor. no bachelorette. no roses or rings or tears. i never even wanted to watch them. not in a i'm-better-than-that way, but in a never-grabbed-my-interest way. i would sometimes hear a recap on the radio the morning after it aired, and i would think... nothing. so i was surprised when commercials for i wanna marry harry aired on fox a few months ago and i thought, yes. i would like to watch that. (for those of you that don't know, twelve american girls went to england where they were competing - for lack of a better word - for a guy they all thought was prince harry but was really just a guy that looked a lot like prince harry. then at the very end he revealed his true identity to the girl he chose in hopes that she would still choose him back. spoiler: she did. and they won a quarter of a million dollars for not being shallow losers.) when the first episode aired i watched it on demand, as i do, and i thought, this is a show that i cannot watch an episode at a time. (i find that reality tv needs to be marathoned for maximum enjoyment.) so i waited. (and forgot about it.) the other day i went to fox on demand and found that all of the episodes were up. (i thought that they had all aired, but really the show was cancelled due to absolutely no one watching it and they just threw the episodes up because there was no point holding on to them.) the point of this story is, after watching eight episodes of a reality tv dating show, i have learned that people can be psychotic. one contestant (what the heck am i supposed to call them?) was straight up terrifyingly crazy and jealous and i was half expecting her to shank the other girls in their sleep the entire time. she was like text book crazy jealous girlfriend. it was both entertaining and horrifying. but mostly horrifying.

you would think that watching eight straight hours of reality tv would mean that i am not being productive, but you would be wrong. (yay insomnia caused by my body being stupid and not knowing how to deal with completely normal hormone fluctuations. still. nothing makes me not wanna get pregnant more than thinking about how my body is obnoxious with every day hormones and how it will go completely haywire with pregnancy hormones. was that tmi?) i have been doing some serious cleaning and reorganizing of my apartment. it looks roomier already. (i also finished crocheting forty plus turtles for my sister's scarf. i hate turtles.) 

*(One Of Those) Crazy Girls - Paramore

but all the possibilities, no limits just epiphanies

do you know that i cannot remember the last time that i stayed in my pajamas all day? i'm not even sure how that happened, but there it is. i haven't just had a spend-all-day-lounging-around-the-house without guilt or shame in so long. but today will change that. i am staying in my pajama pants forever (that happen to be way too big on me and also have hogwarts written down my left thigh) and only leaving the living room to go as far as the kitchen (and okay maybe down to the basement to grab a diet rootbeer), and no one can stop me.

there is something extremely freeing about being stranded at your parents' house. my husband's car is currently being nursed back to health by some mechanics so he took reggie (my car, in case you're new) to work. my parents drove my grandmother up to CT in their minivan, and my sister took their other car to work this morning. which all leaves me: carless. and let me tell you, it is wonderful. it's been over a year since i could use the excuse, "oh sorry i can't. i don't have a car." and i have missed it. it's also great that i'm stranded at my parents' house instead of my apartment because not only is there more space, there is also no sense of responsibility telling me that since i'm at home all day anyway i should clean and cook and get rid of all the clothes that i haven't worn in years. and with the semester being over, i can tell myself that i should get at least two weeks of summer vacation before sitting down to do the work i should have already done. it's perfect.

anyway, i hope that your day is wonderful. i am off to do whatever i feel like.

i can suddenly really relate to lemonhope. and just in case you are not an adventure time watcher, here is what i mean:

*Best Day Of My Life - American Authors

a long time ago we used to be friends

i have never really had a problem with mondays. like, i know that they are universally known as the worst day of the week, but aside from the occasional, "ugh i don't want the weekend to end" dread during my school years i never had an issue with them. until now. why is it that the universe is suddenly conspiring to make mondays the worst day of the week? i mean, really. i suddenly find myself relating to garfield in a way i never thought i would. i don't know what it is, but suddenly mondays are the embodiment (can a day embody something?) of everything awful and my usual grit or whatever it is that allows me to get through the rest of my life seems to take off sunday night and saunter in tuesday mornings slightly disheveled and looking like it slept in its clothes all the while acting like it didn't completely abandon me the day before. ugh.

but anyway. that's all of the attention that i am willing to give to mondays until they get their act together. they don't deserve any more words.

instead, let's talk about the fact that i really like to introduce characters. like, i love to sit down to an empty word document or compose blog post box or blank sheet of paper or whatever and start writing out a character. i'll be happily typing out their basic introduction, deciding what kind of narrator they will be, figuring out what their voice sounds like, and then, a few paragraphs in, it gets to the point where it's no longer enough to have a character. i need a plot, too. and then i sit there for a minute, realize that i have nothing for this character - who happens to be quite awesome - to do or talk about, and i stop. they'll be in the middle of running away (though from who/what/where i don't know and please don't ask about a why) or they'll be about to tell you about the really cool thing that happened that day a year ago when they woke up thinking that their life was just normal and boring enough to be a commercial for car insurance and then nothing. i close the document or the notebook or go back to my blogger dashboard and never see these characters again. it's kind of sad, but i have hopes that one day i will go back and write all of their stories. (i'm thinking that in the future i will probably realize that a few of them belong in the same one.) that is my new life goal. 

i think this love of developing characters is the reason that i have so little patience for books that are all plot and no character. like, yes it is great that this massive war is going on and aliens are about to suck this guy's brain out with a straw, but i would care a lot more if the guy wasn't a cardboard character that talks in cliches and i'm told to like. i'm still working on balancing character and plot in my own writing, but that is neither here nor there. 

in other news, i feel like i should document the fact that i watched the veronica mars movie. [it is highly possible that you have little or no interest in veronica mars and will have no idea what i am talking about in the following paragraph. if this is the case, feel free to just stop reading here. you won't miss anything. i promise.] i used to watch it on tv with my sister. then it got cancelled. then years went by with nothing. then i backed the kickstarter for the movie. then i rewatched all of the episodes and fell in love with it even more. (my fangirl capabilities have grown so much in the past seven years. i don't think i was capable of being a true fangirl at the time of its tv airing.) and then i finally watched the movie friday night. (and am currently debating whether i should buy the books coming out if they aren't in the library or save the forty five dollars i have left to spend on books for the year for something else.) i was going to write a whole post about my movie thoughts, but i don't think i will. i will say that the first words out of my mouth when the credits started rolling were, "what the hell, rob thomas?" but i liked the movie more the more i thought about it afterwards. i feel like i need a rewatch to properly assess it. no matter how many times i rewatch it, though, i will never be okay with how they dealt with the piz story line. (and this is coming from a person who watched it on her couch wearing a team logan t-shirt because yes i am a huge dork thanks for noticing. i was also eating marshmallows.) 

*We Used to Be Friends - Dandy Warhols

some things in this world, man, they don't make sense

these days i am made up of wistful half-thoughts and almost-sentences trailing off into silence. i am smiles with just a touch of self-doubt. i am a butterfly garden. i am being productive to procrastinate and filled to the brim with, "yeah no, don't wanna, not gonna." i am itching to write and lacking the words. i am wanting to go back to my mermaids but scared that the memory of how i left them is better than the reality. basically, i'm doing a lot of nothing important.

on to more pressing matters, though. and by pressing i mean at least there is a focus of sorts to this next part and maybe even a point or a moral to be learned or a good phrase lost in the paragraphs. or something. i don't know. i haven't gotten that far in yet.

so i don't know how many of you are living in america and seeing these turbotax commercials, but they come on way too often for me. they make me feel... lacking. just in case you are not living in america and watching the same channels as i am, here's the video so you can watch it in all of its judgmental glory. (i can't even remember the last time i embedded a youtube video into a post. i think i used to do it a lot though? maybe not...)



there's just something about this video that makes me feel like i completely wasted away twenty-thirteen. i mean, i thought it was a pretty good year at first, but then i see this commercial over and over and over again and it's just like, okay, i get it! i have done nothing worthwhile. stop judging me! let's go through it point by point, shall we?
one) you made another human being: actually, no. i didn't. sorry. you're not the first person to assume this of me, though. is the universe hinting that i should get on with it or what?
two) you found that one person who you're meant to be with: once again, no. (i think maybe being married already makes this a moot point, but it kinda makes me feel like i should have waited until last year.)
three) you bought a house: ugh, no. i wish. stop rubbing it in my face. stupid commercial.
four) you got a new job: *sigh* nope.
five) you went on an important business trip: not likely with my answer to point number four.
which leaves me with what? reading a lot and not catching up with tv shows? what in the world did i do last year?

and yet, there's another turbotax commercial, "the year of you," that basically says the same things but somehow makes me feel all empowered and accomplished and hopeful.


it's weird. maybe it's the extra parts with the hair cutting and the shirt giving awaying? i dunno. but i love the second commercial and usually have to pause the tv after the first one to rant at turbotax for making me feel bad about myself. oh, the power of editing.

(oh, and i have already used this lyric as a title before. oh well. it was the first that came to my mind.)

*Bright Lights - Matchbox 20

i'm living in a tree house

my husband watches things on tv that i would never turn to on my own but that i find strangely addicting once i start watching them. one of these shows is on the animal channel about some guy named pete who builds tree houses. and not just any tree houses, but really, really cool ones with electricity and running water and plumbing and lofts and fireplaces and guest rooms and garden roofs. they are amazing. of course, they are also crazy expensive. they'll get a call in the beginning of the episode about "potential clients willing to spend up to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars" and i'm just like, what? how do you people just have that much money sitting around to be spent on a tree house?

i'm pretty sure that all kids grow up wanting a tree house. at least, my sisters and i did. really, really badly. but we either lived in townhouses, or houses without big enough yards, or houses with big yards and no good tree-housey trees, or houses that we left before we could ever build one. basically, we never got the tree house. i'm not sure about my sisters, but i never really stopped wanting one. i'm not sitting around actively longing for one or anything, but the desire is still there in the back of my mind. just waiting for the right moment to surface completely.

and this show feeds that desire endlessly.

i have this thing where i'm always saying "one day when i'm rich and famous i'll..." (i remember writing a post about it but when i went to link it here i realized that i never actually posted it. probably one of those times when i couldn't think of a title and decided to come back later in the day when i thought of one but then forgot about the post completely. i'm not going to copy paste it here because it wouldn't really fit, but it includes things like having a house on the beach with huge windows and high ceilings and window seats, hiring someone to hold my book and turn the pages when i'm knitting, hiring someone to talk on the phone for me whenever i'm feeling particularly phone-phobic, having a private plane... stuff like that.) my new addition to my rich and famous list is a tree house. a pete tree house.

i'm going to have a tree house library. all of my books lining the walls of a space where i can read in the branches of a tree. doesn't that sound fantastic? there will also be a little writing area because if i'm rich and famous i will probably be some totally awesome author and need a place to write my totally awesome books. and what better place than hiding in leaves with the squirrels and birds? of course, my tree house will also have to have somewhere to hoard my junk food and maybe also a bed because i would obviously want to live in it. i mean, really, i don't understand how i've lived my life so far without this. i don't know how anyone lives their lives without a tree house.

when you're rich and famous, what will your tree house look like?

*Treehouse - Nada Surf

trying to decide

so i'm probably going to stick with this whole school thing. mostly because i was born with three times the normal amount of inertia - maybe more. but i can't help weighing the pros and cons of staying and going all the time. it's like some weird kind of masochistic addiction where i tease myself with the idea of freedom and release and then go to class. i think i've really developed my cases for and against post-grad school, though. i'm super analytical and deep.

[case for dropping out] i've thought about this, and dropping out would mean i would have time to do something meaningful. or important. or just really big. like, maybe watch the entire netflix collection. i'm talking about every single movie, show, and whatever else is on there. streamed and dvd. you know how you can get sponsors to do something crazy like climb mount everest and swim across a shark-filled ocean? when you think about it, neither of those things give any more to society than sitting on the couch watching tv, right? but they get media coverage and money and other stuff that is probably really cool. and i've been seeing tons of articles lately about binge tv watching (as if this is some new thing). this would be the ultimate binge. totally newsworthy. i bet there would be tons of companies willing to sponsor me. orville popcorn, nestle chocolate chips, peeps, any rootbeer company... really, the possibilities are endless. i could make history, you guys.

[case for not dropping out] there's this professor - not one that has been especially helpful to me or really even cares much (or at all) about what i'm doing - but he agreed a while ago that he would be on my committee and he reagreed yesterday morning. and this professor is just... there's really no way to describe him besides giggle giggle swoon. really. there is just something about this guy that makes people (i'm not the only one, i promise. there are others.) giggly and swoony and it's really not healthy. i can just imagine me trying to defend my dissertation and getting caught in a fit of giggles because this guy. i'm not even a giggly person. at all. i don't think a single crush of mine in my life made me giggly. and i grew up with two sisters. we went through a very long boy crazy phase and had a million and four crushes. never giggled. so this is big, guys.

as you can see, this is a very tough decision. movies or giggles? suffer though watching stuff that i know i will hate or embarrass myself during my dissertation defense. i just cannot decide.

(i know i just posted about school and dropping out/staying, but my brain. it's tired.)

*Sahara - Relient K

no, i won't give up

okay, so. i have a bunch of drafts that will eventually make really great starts to blog posts, but i am not going to use any of them now because i am hungry, and i am fasting, and i have no energy or will power to do them justice. see, there's this thing about my family where we get grumpy when we get hungry. or we cry. one or the other, and sometimes both. it ranges in severity from person to person. for example, my uncle gets downright obnoxiously ornery. and mean. and if respecting one's elders wasn't such a big thing, i would probably punch him in the face. or at least yell at him, because he gets absolutely ridiculous. i am nowhere near that bad, but hungry!me is definitely not one of my funnest versions to be around.

in other news, i have seventeen pages of my novel left un"edited" and i have only added just over twenty-three thousand words to it. my goal was forty thousand. i've made a few notes like, "go back and add such and such here" and "you forgot to make connor's mom into an actual character. again. go fix that." and "make the passing of time less inconsistent and unrealistic." so those will add more words, but i dunno if i'll actually get to forty thousand even with those or if i feel like going through the thing again to address these notes. the longer i sit with the thing (the thing being my novel) the more it seems really, really bad. it's very discouraging. but i'm stubborn. the plan is to go back and fix all the little notes i've been making first, then to go through it with a pen and paper(s) and every time i mention something about a character or an event to write it down so i can see how many times i contradict myself and fix it. (i complain so much about obvious inconsistencies with other authors that if i have any i deserve to be punched.) then i will move it into a book format by either pretending to publish it for the proof copy or just printing out the pages. i will read through it as a reader (or try to at least) and if i do not want to crawl into a hole with shame (actually, crawling into a hole is acceptable. killing myself from embarrassment is not.) then i will pass it on to some trusted readers to find out what they think. if all of this goes well then i will try to get published. and once i am published i will sign books with: editing sucks. -sarah

completely unrelated information: i go through phases with "scary" things. like, sometimes i can watch anything and not be affected at all and sometimes i watch nancy drew and am afraid to walk into my bedroom alone. the phases last for months and are very unpredictable. when supernatural first came out, i watched it religiously. then class time got in the way of show time and it was not one of the shows available online so i missed a couple of seasons. i have always said that i would go back and watch them all, though. i decided that this summer, the summer of shirking responsibility, was the perfect time. unfortunately, when i got four episodes into the first season (i forgot most of what happened) i realized that i was getting way too jumpy and should probably wait a bit on it. this made me sad so i decided to go through a few of the top shows that i always wanted to watch (or the ones that netflix did not take down. which is not many. grr.) and then go back to it, jumpy or not.

*I Won't Give Up - Jason Mraz

sometimes you make me sad

so while i was being the poster child for productivity, i was avoiding websites and other distractions that i usually get lost on for hours. this limited the things i was allowed to do and look at to pretty much nothing, because i pride myself on my ability to do the same thing for hours at a time, be it reading a book, watching tv, or getting angry at the stupid things people post online. so i started watching webseries(es?) on youtube and taking three minute facebook breaks. (in order to not get stuck hitting next for youtube or staying on facebook too long, i would also have to exercise while not working. we have one of those pedal things that let you "bicycle" from the comfort of your own couch. when i got sick of pedaling, i had to go back to work.)

one of the series(es?) (how do you say that?) that i was watching was the lizzie bennet diaries. if you've never heard of it, this series set out to try and retell a classic through vlogs. the classic, of course, is pride and prejudice, and the story is told through lizzie's vlogs. it is a modern adaptation of the story, though, meaning that most things in it are just not the same as the book. balls are turned into weddings and birthday parties, london is LA, sisters are changed to cousins and cats, marriage proposals are changed into job offers... there are other changes but i don't want to give too many things away to people who may want to watch it. though the plot devices are modernized, the plot itself stays pretty much the same. (except for lydia who they made into an actual character that i kinda love.) so darcy and lizzie hate each other at first, wickham turns out to be a world class jerk, the bennet mom wants her daughters married, and they all (sort of) get together in the end.

a lot of the people who were watching had read the book. not too surprising. so when lizzie was gushing over wickham, for example, comments were talking about how it sucked that he was so "charming" when he ends up being someone you would like to punch in the face repeatedly. we didn't know exactly how he would suck, but we all knew that he would.  other people, the ones that made me lose faith in humanity and future generations for the umpteenth time, commented with the (i suppose should have been) expected "stop writing spoilers!" looking beyond the fact that the story has been around for two hundred years and is so well known that even people who haven't read it know the main parts of the story, there have been countless movie adaptations that non-readers could have watched. i mean, just a few years ago (longer than it feels) there was an adaptation that was huge at the box office. everyone saw it. it still comes on tv a lot. people still talk about it. spoilers should not have been an issue here.

but they were. and the people defending the ones crying out against the spoilers were just as bad. i read things like, "just because you and i have heard of the book doesn't mean that everyone has. it's a cult classic." um... no. it's just a normal classic. nothing cult about it. like i said before, it's everywhere. "the book isn't known world-wide, but this webseries is." what?! the book is translated into a gajillion languages so that people in every country can read it. i'm pretty sure it's a bit more popular than a webseries that started a year ago, even one that does have a pretty large fan base. "i hate hipsters that are always trying to prove that they knew these obscure things before they were popular by ruining it for the rest of us." like i said before, i think the fact that the book has been out for two centuries and is still being read and adapted into other formats makes it pretty popular. if you were going to be "hipster" about it, you'd have to have been jane austen's neighbor.

anyway, aside from losing faith in humanity, i actually liked the series. i know people who didn't, though. (i think reading fanfiction and seeing stories in ways other than the author intended them lets me have an open mind for adaptations that others (like my sister) may not have.) there's also a kickstarter going on for the dvd and future projects if you're into that sort of thing.

*Pale Blue Eyes - David Gray

and she's so confident that she's what everybody wants

last week, which consisted of two presentations, a ten page paper, two homework assignments, etc, is finally over. and thank god for that. now i'm at my favorite part of the semester: finals. when all the work is done (possibly), when everything that could be learned was learned (or not), and all you have left is a test that you either study for or not, but that's it. no more busy work. and i hate busy work.

anyway, school is definitely not what i want to talk about today. i'm planning on planting myself on the couch for the entirety of today and catching up on all the shows that i have been missing to do school stuff. with a few darcy breaks thrown in there.

but before i do that, have you guys heard about how jk rowling is working with bbc to turn the casual vacancy into a tv series? now, i liked the book, i did. but it was extremely slow starting. if any other book took two hundred pages to hook me, i probably would have put it down and never looked at it again. if any other book had that cover or that synopsis, i likely wouldn't have picked it up to begin with. and let's just be frank here and say that if anyone else had tried to publish it they would still be getting rejection letters in the mail. but because it was jk rowling, we all gave it way more of a chance than we would have had she tried to do this pre-potter.

and i hate to admit this, but i'm starting to feel that jk rowling is just like fifty shades of grey. before you get all in a huff, i do not mean that she writes crap. i am a huge potter fan and a few lines up said that i liked her new book, too, remember? i just mean that, things are getting done because she has a guaranteed fan base. why does twilight fanfiction continuously find its way to publishing deals? because it already has a ton of readers and dedicated fans. rowling and her agents and her publishers can talk themselves blue in the face about how her new book is this amazing, earth-shattering, completely new look at life in a small english town, but we all know that it would have never gotten off the ground if they didn't assume that at least eighty percent of the people who read potter would read this just because she wrote it. and the people who didn't read potter would read it because they knew her name and were curious about her writing but never could stomach children's fantasy. and that's okay, because what good is becoming a world famous author if you can't publish that unpublishable book that you wrote just because you wanted to?

however, if she wasn't "the celebrated jk rowling," do you think that that book would have gotten a tv series? absolutely not. but they know that they are guaranteed viewers because she wrote the book and is working on the series. i mean, i'm happy for her, i really am. (or as happy as i can be for someone who i feel has always sort of regarded her fans with a certain measure of disdain. i'm not sure what it is about her, but i always get that feeling whenever i watch her interviews.) i just don't like the idea that books are getting published and then interpreted to screens (big or small) just because they know they'll get money out of it. i mean, i totally get it, but i just don't like it.

and no, this is not just bitterness and jealousy from someone who wants to be published but, having no guaranteed fan base, probably never will be, or maybe it is a little. i'm not sure. either way, i'll probably end up watching the series and then hating myself for playing into their hands and supporting this idea that the only things worth taking a chance on are the things where no chance is needed.

*The One I'm Waiting For - Relient K

every new beginning comes from another beginning's end

it's an exciting time to be living in our household, let me tell you. we are all about new beginnings and rekindling dreams and giving things a shot. (don't worry, though, there is still plenty of time being wasted sitting on the couch watching stupid tv shows and eating brownies.)

first of all, my fourth grade dream of owning a bunny was realized last night when my husband got me this guy:

(ignore the mess in the background and the fact that the lighting isn't great because it was dark (as it tends to get when the sun goes down) and our lights kind of suck in this apartment.) his name is fitzsarah darcy, or just darcy for short, and he is adorable and has a ridiculously sweet temperament.

second of all, my sister recently read my 2011 nanovel and said it had promise. i never opened the story after i finished nano last year, but remember really liking the idea of it before i started. so now i am re-excited about it and once i get my fifty thousand words for this nano finished, i will go back and take a second look at it. remember three years ago when i said that i was going to edit sincerely, mr. nobody and start sending it out to agents, but never did? yeah, well, this time i am planning to actually get further into the editing than the first three chapters and do this for real. i'm kind of stupidly excited about it, though i still haven't read the story myself so i don't know how discouraged i will get after that. (i painted my nails to look like pages in a book, though, and i think that that shows writerly promise, don't you?)

third, my husband also brought home a new tv last night, which he is super excited about. (though to be honest i kind of miss the way that the picture would stay printed on the screen for a few seconds every time a scene ended with our old one. enough people have told me i'm being stupid for that, though.)

finally, my husband is finishing his master's this semester (in like, two weeks) and i will be maybe dropping out of school next semester (but even if i don't it will be the last semester i take classes. like ever.) and the end of being married students is both liberating and terrifying and a slew of other emotions, but it is also a new beginning so it deserves to be listed here.

long story short, change is in the air, and though i am the biggest advocate of anti-change, exciting things may be happening.

*Closing Time - Green Day

rape me, my friend

the other day i was watching an episode of melissa and joey, and joe was teaching one of mel's boyfriends how to be confident or whatever so he could get a job so mel could dump him without feeling bad about it. anyway, he stops by mel's house and asks her to go out with him that night and mel says no. joe then tells the boyfriend (i can't remember his name) to never take no for an answer. i've heard that saying a million and three times before in my life. we've always been told that the people who get ahead in life, the ones that are destined for success, never take no for an answer. and maybe it's because i heard it so much that i never really listened to it, but it wasn't until that moment that i thought, wait a minute... that's totally rape mentality.

and that got me to thinking.

you know how when you're younger you were always told that the girl/boy that is mean to you really likes you? that you should give them a chance because, yeah they do stupid things, but it's only because they can't tell you how they feel about you. i'll be at the playground and see a boy chasing a screaming little girl around and no one will tell the boy to stop because, "the girl really wants him to chase her, she's just pretending not to." that's also rape mentality.

so basically we're raising our children to think like rapists their whole lives - from the playground to the workforce. it's no wonder that almost every society blames the victim. they're the ones creating the rapists so of course they won't see them in the wrong.

*Rape Me - Nirvana

the right way to go about this

i was sitting there last night pondering my future, wondering, perhaps a little late (read: way late) in the game if i really wanted to be a forensic examiner, and suddenly i thought that kirk from gilmore girls had the right idea. now kirk was an idiot, there's no debating that, albeit a very lovable one, but his career choice was genius. or his lack of a choice was genius, i should say. in the show, kirk held fifteen thousand jobs. fifteen thousand. for someone who still harbors the secret desire to be twelve different things, the idea of having that many jobs is awesome.

i mean, okay, you probably don't have much, or any, job stability, but you can actually be everything that you wanted to be. when you choose to walk through one door, you don't have to close all the other ones. they'll stay open for you to walk through each of them in turn. see, this is why i should have been born into a fictional world. the real one just does not work for me. at least with all the things i want to do, too many of them require years of learning/training that would make it impossible instead of just slightly ridiculous. 

speaking of fictional worlds, though jk rowling's book was a little slow to start, it ended up being really good. her writing style and use of language is the same, but that's all you should expect to transfer over from potter. she is one of my favorite character writers, and she did not disappoint in this one (though i really thought she was going to from the first hundred pages or so.) she once again made you like characters whether you wanted to or not. and then she tore out your heart and spit on it, as per usual. anyway, i'm not going to say that you should all go out and read the book because i realize that a lot of people may not like it. but if the synopsis sounds at all interesting and you can go into it with an open mind, you should totally go read it. 

*Give - Relient K

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

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

aint it so cool gettin in and gettin out of the volgenau school

when i was in third grade, i sat in my doctor's waiting room (dr. haymen i think his name was?) with my family. there were little chairs and those toys where you push wooden beads along colored wires and books. i went for the latter and picked up a hard cover book with a missing dust jacket titled excalibur. though i didn't get a chance to finish the book at that visit, i left the office with a new found interest in arthurian stories. i never ended up finishing the book, actually. i remember asking for it once as a present, but i never got it. enter my fourth grade teacher who shared the same interest in all things medieval. we had an entire section of the year devoted to it in which we read and wrote stories about knights and castles, made ceramic castle candle holders, and ended with an authentic medieval feast (no utensils were allowed, we used pieces of bread instead of plates, drank apple cider, and the only lighting came from the candles in our handmade candle holders). it was awesome. as the years went on, though my obsession with king arthur never actually died down, it did get covered up with other interests and obsessions. (i like to obsess.) the other day while watching merlin, all of the traditional arthurian elements came into the story: he knighted characters like lancelot and gawain, sat around a round table, and merlin put the sword in the stone (yeah i'm a season or two behind the rest of the world). and suddenly my fourth grade self, who was apparently alive and well for the past fourteen years just waiting for this moment, came up to the surface with as much excitement for the whole thing that i had back then. and within the course of the forty minute episode, my obsession jumped right back to the top.

the only problem with this is that i recently bought a bunch of books and now i don't want to read any of them because they have nothing to do with king arthur or his knights.

oh, and off topic but because i said i would post it, here's the video of my convocation speaker's rap. he sent it out in an email with the lyrics to all of us saying how he wanted it to go viral. with only around seven hundred views, i think he's going to end up being a little disappointed. but he is an awesome guy, so you should watch it:



*Convocation Rap - Dean Griffiths

you're a rotter, mr. grinch, you're the king of sinful sots, your heart's a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots

last year i came on here and complained about the idea of santa claus. i said that giving credit to a magical man for all the gifts a parents struggles to get for his/her children was wrong. this year, because i seemingly can't stick to an opinion, i'm here to complain about the opposite.

last year, best buy's commercials all said that santa got his presents from best buy because what they had was cooler than what a magical factory at the end of the world could make. this year, the commercials show moms getting such great presents from best buy that santa is no longer needed. they are doing exactly what i wished they would do last year: taking credit for the gifts.

but for some reason, watching santa become obsolete is more sad than funny. showing that moms who shop at best buy don't need santa is depressing. it's like they're saying that there is no longer any need for magic or wonderment this time of year, which is basically what santa is. a man who rides a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to deliver presents to children all over the world for nothing but the occasional plate of cookies? yeah, let's get rid of him and then have moms stay up to mock him and rub it in his face that he is no longer needed. what kind of values is that teaching the children? where is your christmas spirit, best buy?

i see now that over the past few years, best buy has been slowly working towards this point of getting rid of santa claus. making him seem less and less competent until they could finally just throw him overboard without causing public outrage. and you know what that means, don't you? the grinch's heart has shrunk back down to three sizes too small, and he owns best buy.

*The Grinch's Theme Song

can i say that there's something wrong with this place?

the winner of the next food network star, jeff something or other, has his first show coming up, so obviously the channel is flooded with commercials about it. he's a sandwich guy and his new show is called the sandwich king. i'm sure it will be an awesome show, but i hate watching the commercial. see, jeff is one of those people that says "samwich" instead of "sandwich" and it absolutely kills me. i was slightly surprised by this because a few people close to me say samwich and while it can bug me once and a while, it doesn't annoy me anywhere near the way it does when jeff says it. maybe because it's on tv? maybe because i hear it repeatedly? i dunno... but if he ever mentions sandwiches in his show - which, being a sandwich show is pretty likely - i dunno if i could watch it.

in other news, i applied for graduation the other day and then for some reason decided to check graduation evaluation or whatever it's called when i looked at which classes i've taken and how many credits i have left. technically, it should say that i have everything completed. only, it didn't. it's a new program and is still changing, but for some reason they replace the old catalog instead of adding a new one. so when i started there was a class that was a requirement that switched to an elective and an elective that switched to a requirement. so that is missing. there is also a class that switched its course number. they were supposed to deal with this, but they didn't, so that class is missing too. my advisor said to fill out these forms and get them submitted asap to get the paperwork done before my application for graduation is processed and rejected. i try, and the person that i'm supposed to give them to is not going to be in the office until at least next week. this may not seem like a long time, but i have heard horror stories about my school's ability to process stuff close to graduation. i know of several people who had to push back their graduation. i really don't want to do that. i cannot drag out this master's degree longer than i have. i want it over with. 

*Do It Alone - Sugarcult

how do you do when i'm not around?

i have had a killer headache since last night. it hit really bad out of nowhere and just won't. go. away. it's bad. like bad enough to keep waking me up at night. it's a strange mixture between throbbing headache and medicine head, though i don't have a cold and haven't taken any medicine. anyway, it's really starting to annoy me. i am not a happy camper.

moving on.

you know what i miss about my old house? my ability to people watch. i had some pretty interesting neighbors, from the couple that never took their child out of the house (though the mom would stand with her/him in front of the window occasionally) to the family that would form an assembly to bring their groceries one by one into their house. there was always something interesting going on right outside my window, even if it was just a congregation of squirrels or crows. here, i don't see anyone. it's like our apartment is in a little twilight zone of its own where no one exists besides us. i need to know what is happening in my [old] neighbors' lives. i'm just nosy like that.

also, i have taken to watching the food channel and travel channel all the time. i think i've watched more episodes of diners, drive-ins, and dives and man vs food in the past couple of weeks than most people watch in a lifetime. and all of those competitions like iron chef and chopped and whatever else. anyway, i watch them. all the time. and now they're infiltrating my dreams and i'm not sure how i feel about that. it's one thing when a book or movie will weasel its way into my subconscious, at least those actually have a plot. i don't remember much about my dream last night, but i can say pretty confidently that it wasn't the most thrilling dream i've ever had. though that could be because it was interrupted every three point seven seconds.

*How Do You Do - Foo Fighters

you were just always talking about changing, guess what i am the same man

i started this post writing about the fact that i finally watched the 90s are all that on teen nick last night and how it was awesome and slightly sad at the same time. and kenan was so young! i mean, they all were, but he's the one i see the most these days and he was hosting the thing so we kept seeing him all grown up and facial haired and then we'd see him in all that and he was a baby. seriously. the post started to drag so i deleted it but still wanted to let you guys know that i miss 90s television.

anyway, i've been thinking about making a change (because, you know, getting married isn't a big enough change for me). see, i was talking to my cousins before i left saudi arabia and they were convincing me to get a new haircut (i have had the same hair style for as long as i can remember) since i'm married. it was apparently the first thing my cousin did and she said it was such an amazing feeling. they just about convinced me to cut bangs at my next haircut until a couple of days ago when i was thinking about it and realized that bangs can get really annoying and i just don't think i want them. she was also saying that her friend got a pet immediately after she was married and i should do that since i've always wanted a rabbit. that was an exciting idea for about three seconds until i decided that i like the idea of a pet rabbit more than i'd really like the actual pet. at least right now. it's just too much work that i don't feel like dealing with at the moment. plus, i want to be able to just get up and go on a spontaneous road trip without having to worry about who's going to take care of my pets. i mean, sure, i probably won't be going on many spontaneous road trips, but i want the option. 

so i got to thinking that maybe the problem isn't that bangs are annoying and pets are a lot of work. maybe it's just that i really do have an aversion to change that's too strong. maybe  i want to stay the same a little bit too much? to test out this theory, i am trying to think of a change that i won't have a million doubts about, but i'm coming up blank. maybe i will just go chop up my hair (every time i decide to do this though i remember my older sister cutting bangs a few years ago and absolutely hating it, plus, i'm not sure how i'd look with bangs seeing as the last time i had them i was five). ideas for changes? 

*Changing - Airborne Toxic Event

i'm a weirdo

i just about finished my first paper. i have a few bits and pieces i needa add/change but i just can't bring myself to do them. maybe i'll be more inspired tomorrow morning. doubt it, but here's to hoping. only problem is that he never gave us a page number range and mine (or ours.. whatever) is twenty without the references and appendix. some professors have a problem with papers over ten pages. oh well.

also, a couple of weeks ago (possibly last week? my memory sucks these days) i reread the hunger games series, and i think my mind is still partly living in that world because my conclusion was way too power-to-the-people-let's-start-a-rebellion. if katniss was fighting for network security, i swear my conclusion would have been one of her speeches. i'll have to edit it later and calm it down.

speaking of books, for the past few months i've been living on a tight budget. before i buy anything i do a bunch of calculations in my head and usually decide that gas and textbooks are more important than a lot of things. but now i have money in my account again, and it's all i can do not to go and buy all of amazon. i've been adding things to my cart for the past few months, and i just want all of it. i know there's a responsible money budgeter inside of me, but she's been locked up by the part of me that wants new books. i have to set her free.

on another note, i have this imaginary library in my head that will exist in my house when i grow up. not just a bookshelf, but an entire room dedicated to books and reading. when that happens, i will get this great gatsby poster to put on a wall. i just started rereading gatsby yesterday, and when i was "doing my paper" i came across the poster and decided it was fate. i'm not sure why exactly i fell so in love with it, i mean it's cool and everything, but i need it. just not right now. i think i will also get the pride and prejudice one. and maybe the wizard of oz. (do you ever do that? shop for imaginary places you will own in the future? or am i just certifiable?)

anyway, my mind is really struggling to be coherent right now, but i feel like it's failing miserably. and my blankets are all tangled, and i feel like i'm trapped/being strangled.

oh, and i know that this is an april's fool joke, but i would totally get back into tv to watch it:



*Creep - Radiohead