destroyed by madness, starving hysterical

man babies

2010-08-18T23:48:00.003-04:00

I don't know what to write about; there is 10 minutes until midnight. I decided that I'm making the every day part of BEDA mean before I go to sleep and not actually the day day like before midnight because otherwise all of my blogs ever will be rushed.

But today I want to finish before midnight, mostly so I can see how many words I can type in ten minutes.

If I had things to say! Uh! I don't know!

I like children a lot if they are nice children and not bratty; you really can tell a lot about a family/parents by how their kid acts. There's such a wide spectrum of kid behavior, and in my opinion it's pretty much all a result of how they're raised. I've known a lot of babies and children and have seen a lot of them grow up into like 8th graders and etc; my mom has done daycare from our house for a long long time. But now she's stopping that and has slowly been slowing down over the past year or so and now only has two or three days with kids left and then she's done. But anyway, it makes me feel so old. A child that I held when it was a few weeks or months old is now in 3rd or 4th or 5th grade? Something like that. And obviously I've been around to see people who are a lot older than that now be born, but I have a specific memory of holding him and watching him when he was so little, I remember it exactly. And my mom has watched him this whole time up until a year or so ago, and he still sometimes comes over, and to see someone grow from that to this, to have them around a lot, but not being related to them, to see how they change as they get older, their mannerisms emerge and they mature and what they like and etc, because you don't have that kind of influence that you'd normally have if you were around a kid that much, they're someone else's, I don't know, IT'S JUST WEIRD.

That didn't make much sense, but I guess what I am trying to say is that it is so weird to see someone grow up. Things always feel the same to me and I don't like change and I like routine and sometimes I get so involved in that that being reminded by this kind of a simple thing, the "wow, you've grown!" is so jarring at times and amazing and strange and I almost feel privileged to be in a position where I can witness something like that, but now that's going away mostly and I will miss it but I won't miss when the kids slam down the toilet lid at 7am and wake me up.

-

2010-08-18T01:11:00.002-04:00

my day
i got a waffle iron
and a webcam
i am on tokbox now
and for the last five minutes
i have been watching my eye
dart back and forth
on the screen
amen

very short TOO BAD

2010-08-16T23:40:00.002-04:00

Okay so this was today:

I went over to my aunt's house to help her fix her wireless printer which was not working. She had a copy of An Abundance of Katherines on her table and it was weird and cool. Went home and read a book then went to a butterfly garden with my mom and her two daycare kids Bennett and Becca. It was really really rad and I got a lot of great pictures. There was some other stuff there too that we looked at, animals in things, and a play area, then we walked into the woods/by the river/on a trail right there and we dropped sticks from the bridge and raced them and then we went down by the creek and skipped rocks and Bennett who is like 5 or 6 could do it way better than I could and kept skipping them all the way across the river IT WAS CRAZY.

I'm using internet explorer at the moment because firefox is being really slow and so there's no spell check so APOLOGIES.

Then we went back into the butterfly thing and I took more pictures and it was adorable then we went home.

Then I went up to computer place to get my computer back. The people did all this weird crap to it and it wasn't like the default settings you'd get if you got a new computer, which it was supposed to be, at least that was what I thought, so I've been having to change a toooon of settings and appearance things and it's annoying and now I'm trying to install all the programs I had before and it's taking so long and I'm going crazy. But at least it works.

Then home and we had corn on the cob aka the greatest thing. And I read Going Bovine a bunch and am going to beat Sierra hopefully and yeah and yeah. Itunes is taking 50 years to install I hate u itunes.

Bye.

things that are pleasurable for a finite amount of time and then make you feel bad

2010-08-15T22:24:00.003-04:00

a list (these are not all from personal, firsthand experiences but some are and some i am feeling the effects of this very moment)

chinese food
weed
twilight
killing someone
making fun of nerdfighter secrets
drinking
smacking maddie in the face
cookie dough ice cream debate
memes
sleeping for a day
emotional breakdown on twitter
letting your dog drive the car
listening to hindsight is 20/20 for 2 hrs on repeat
busting loose
amusement park water ride
skipping drawing class (no mom this is a sometimes hypothetical not from experience list)
watching the next food network star
chewing on a silly band
taking all the clothes out of your dresser
walking to the post office in 95 degree weather and wearing 2 shirts
kick a ababy@

i live in ohio

2010-08-14T21:08:00.003-04:00

Ohio is a pretty cool state. I know that it is usually used as the stereotypical plain boring soulless place in tv shows and etc. One time on Arthur, Arthur's family was having a family reunion and at one part Arthur tells his class about it and that some of his relatives came from Ohio and the whole class goes "OoOoOoOooo Ohiiiiiiooo" in the most sarcastic ever voice, and that made me sad, when I was little. And also that they brought him maple syrup from Ohio, which I don't think that's even a thing here? Or at least definitely not something we are known for.

But yeah. I like Ohio. We get actual seasons, hot hot way too freaking hot summers and winter and feet of snow and so on. There are a lot of interesting things here too. I think that can be said for any place or town, no matter how much people complain or say that their town is boring and THERE'S NOTHING TO DO! but there is. There is, at the very least, a lot to learn, a lot of local history.

I've always been enthralled by that kind of stuff. When I was 13 or 14, there was this little camp or week long activity thing at one of the historic old homes near the library; the house is called The Hickories. It was ridiculously neat. We learned about the different styles of houses and architectural features in the area and what life was like in the 1800s or 1900s or whatever time period and we made some foods that were made back then: some kind of cornbread and a maple syrup candy, which okay maybe we do do things with maple syrup, all right? I don't know.

The whole week was very fun and nerdy, but I was and am a nerd, duh.

Also Ohio, just northeast Ohio, has Cedar Point and Geauga Lake or Six Flags or whatever it's called now and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center which is one of my favorite places ever.

And right near there, there is an old World War II submarine in the harbor, the USS Cod. I went there on a field trip in high school, and it was one of the neatest things I've ever experienced. There was so much stuff packed into that tiny space, every part and place having a function and made to be of maximum efficiency. We had to almost crawl through some of the doorways, and there was a lot of ladder climbing. It even had an ice cream maker. To think that all those men lived in there, that that 312 foot piece of steel and whatever had everything needed to sustain them and fight and travel and submerge, that it was built in 1942, that it still exists and is a thing anyone can walk through and see now, that is so awesome to me. Everything is as it was then. It's like a time capsule of life, a weird eerie glimpse into what it was like to live on, and plus the old technology, it was so freaking fascinating. If you want to see some stuff about it, here is its site, and really check out the virtual tour; it gives a pretty good sense of what it is like to be in there.

Another thing Ohio has a lot of is canals. We went on a field trip to some of those too once, and again, it was cool EVERYTHING IS SO COOL. We went to a lot of shops and got to ride a canal boat. I don't remember much other than that but I do remember that it was rad and that I want to go there again.

One more thing I just remembered that I will talk about and then I will stop; I'm sorry; a lot of this is probably bland and very vague for people who are not me, but all of these old memories have popped into my brain and I am going to take an Ohio history course this semester, which I guess is what made me think of all this etc etc ok.

Johnson's Island was a prison camp for confederate prisoners of war that is in Lake Erie. I did a report on it in junior high and was always fascinated (how many times fascinated and interested I need more words to say things with. with which to say things) by all of it. Like in the winter when the lake froze, men would try to escape by walking over the ice to what is now Cedar Point or Sandusky or Marblehead. After the war, there was an attempt to make it a ~pleasure place~ and it rivaled Cedar Point for a while until the buildings kept catching on fire and they gave up. A few years ago I got to go up there with my family and it was cool and creepy to see all of the stuff there, the cemetery and little visitor's center that had a lot of artifacts and letters and documents and such. Most of the island is private property now though and people live on it.

CONCLUSION: Ohio is cool and history owns and there is history everywhere and you should check out your city or town or area; there is a lot to learn and it is rad.

i just typed a bunch of stuff

2010-08-13T22:58:00.003-04:00

I want to be more positive! I feel like I get caught up in bad and unchangeable or just petty petty things and it's dumb to do that and it makes everything hard and awful. Cynicism is so easy and it is simple to resort to that and it distances you from a lot of things and detaches you from emotion and also irony and all the layers and layers of meanness and coldness and depreciating things until you are so far away that you're numb to everything and your feelings are buried so deep under so many layers of crap that it's suffocating and lonely and I don't want to be that way any more. I want to be grateful and earnest and direct and encouraging and I don't want to make fun of people or the things they enjoy or taunt or mock.

Mostly because my conscience is ridiculously harsh and uptight and I feel guilty about and over everything for forever and pathetically so; I can never forget the crap I've done to people. I am a guilt hole. Haha that sounds gross or something.

But so yes! Be more encouraging! Be nice! Find the good in things! Appreciate the things you have!

For the past week I have been wanting SO badly to go to the beach or mountains or rivers or somewhere expansive and huge and overwhelming and nature is so calming and beautiful and gahhh I gotta get out of the city and away from pavement and street lights and look at the stars and take in the radness of life and the universe is pretty neat.

I do not know what this says even I just typed the things in my brain; they are probably not coherent!

list

2010-08-12T22:36:00.006-04:00

Things I did today:
Woke up at 10:30.
Made a pizza.
Walked up to computer repair place with my computer. They are just going to do stuff to it to make it like new again; I have everything backed up, so it shouldn't be a problem. And it will be ready on Monday! And it was only like dollars 90!
Got a frosty at Wendy's. I love you Wendy.
Requested transcripts to send to Cleveland State for college thing.
Read a lot of House of Leaves.
Went to Big Lots where I got a few good movies for dollars three each; one of which is The Squid and the Whale, which, I think, is from where the very rad band Noah and the Whale got their name. Also I bought silly bands. Ok. They glow in the dark and are shaped like mythical creatures and rock music instruments. Ok. I felt bad/embarrassed about buying them because the cashier was like 30-40 but then I saw she was wearing some too so.
Went to the post office to mail something but forgot my debit card so I just weighed it and figured out how much the postage will cost and will put a bajillion stamps on it later.
Read more of House of Leaves which is freaking me out more and more and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhh gasps. No no no no!
Wrote a blog (it's this blog!!!!!!!)
Watched The Squid and the Whale (We are gettin all crazy messing with the fabric of time and continuums are being ripped to shreds, watch out!).
Also interspersed in there are a lot of twitter refreshings and tumblr checkings and etc.

Oh also also Andrew and I exchanged many computer weepings and gnashings of teeths.

And I drank a lot of milk.

today was somewhat a little bit productive

2010-08-12T01:24:00.003-04:00

Ok so it's 1:25 in the morning so this is late but not really because I have not slept yet, or I have but just for like two hours; a nap.

I just paid for and finalized my application to Cleveland State. I had it all filled out earlier, but the payment wouldn't go through, but it did now! I have very little time to get everything in order with this. I didn't think that applying would be necessary this semester but apparently it is, and also I need to set up an appointment with a counselor from CSU and actually go on campus to discuss classes that I can take through LCCC that would be transferable, so this is going to be stressy as classes start in like two weeks and I don't know even if the ones that I can take will be not full by then so.

But I applied! And so now I must wait.

Also figured out what probably needs to be fixed w/r/t my laptop thanks to Mr Bill Dr Noise which is that the hard drive is going bad. Going to take it to a place that apparently is good and does free diagnostic-y things to make sure which I wish my mom had told me about earlier but what can you do.

Man, I don't know what else to say. I read a bunch more of House of Leaves, and it is really frustrating. I know a lot of people really like the way it's laid out and all but honestly it's ridiculously distracting. I just want to be able to READ but all the stupid backwards text and footnote footnote footnotes running in tiny columns, sideways, reversely is driving me freaking insane. It took me a good 10 minutes a few pages back to trace the footnotes within footnotes back to their origin to find where I left off in the story and keep reading. Just. Come on. And now I'm reading a bunch of letters and one that is a few pages long is encrypted so that the first letter of each WORD actually spells out the message, and not the words themselves. Which takes a good bit of effort to read; I've resorted to writing them out. I know the section is probably available online somewhere but I did not have access to a computer etc arghgahhhhghhh annoying book.

objects or ideas or places or people

2010-08-10T20:50:00.003-04:00

Thank you for your suggestions everyone.

Goats: I like goats. They make cute faces and noises and sometimes they have cute little beards. And the Mountain Goats, duh. They are little garbage disposals. I want a goat in my back yard; I would feed it glue and milk it and make soap.
Number Two Pencils: They are ok. I used to always wonder why they were number two and not number one or number fifteen or something, but then I took art classes, and they're 2B pencils, right? That is what that is, isn't it? I'm not really sure, but I don't want to know either, so don't look it up on google or tell me. Just. Be cool. Number two pencils always the enigma. Please.
Shoes: I LOVE SHOES!!!!!! I always buy just running shoes, though. They are nice and they make you feel all tippy toey and like you could do a jig any time, any where.
My Favorite John Green Video: Yes I like my favorite John Green video! It is this one. But my mom said no.
Bagels: I like bagels. I eat them all day long. They are good with peanut butter; they are good with cream cheese; they are good with eggs. Bagels bagels bagels.
Fortune Cookies: BOGUS!
Airplanes: I could really use a wish right now wish right now wish right now. Not really. I have flown on one airplane to Kansas and back and I liked it. I would like to fly on more airplanes for longer distances. And during the day, though the night was pretty too.
Mice: I love mice because Sara doesn't like them at all and they make her do hilarious tweets on twitter dot com.
Beaches: I like beaches. I've only been to beaches on Lake Erie, so my beach knowledge/appreciation is pretty limited. But they are good places to take pictures and to smell rotting fish and to step on rotting fish with your bare foot :(

Again, I thank you for your suggestions of words for me to give my opinion of. Where is that last preposition supposed to go? I do not know.

Thank you and good day.

ok so

2010-08-09T18:49:00.002-04:00

~*~this is just copied from tumblr, hence the lack of capitalization; i didn't know or think it was going to turn into that big of a mopey rant/whatever, so it's good enough to use for beda too, i guess~*~

i've waited way way way too long to choose something to do w/r/t school and i still don't know but it's come to that point where my unwillingness and apathy are trumped by absolute necessity, but it turns out i waited too long in this case because classes start this month and i don't know what i want to do, or rather i just decided.

it's not what i want--i don't want anything. i have no drive or ambition whatsoever.

but so ok i've decided (not really but i'm not going to keep making this distinction, it is what it is. this isn't making any sense probably i'm sorry but i'm completely freaked out and lost and scared and i need to just say things) that i want to go for a ba in english (i guess) which hopefully, ideally, will be two more years of school.

and then start on a masters of library sciences etc etc whatever, hopefully through the university partnership program that the local community college i've been going to offers, through Kent State.

so i talked to a counselor at LCCC to discuss things about what bachelors program i should go into or w/e; i don't know any of the technical terms for any of these things, ok, and she said it would be best to ask the Kent people what would be ideal or the best preparation for pursuing a library masters thing.

so i did that and they replied and said that they didn't know if they would even be offering the library science masters partnership thing in two years, or whenever i was ready to enroll, but that something in the liberal arts field would be best and computer somethings courses also.

which ok that is. ok. i don't know.

none of the partnership things through lc really are liberal artsy, except for psychology through cleveland state, but i don't think that would really be very relevant at all.

and plus i just discovered that most of the university partnership program things require applications like 4 weeks ago, so i can't even do that for this upcoming semester.

but cleveland state has an english program, obviously, a normal type thing, and they have some kind of campus or center in westlake which is not too far away (all of this frustration and these problems stem from my complete lack of independence and self sufficientness and laziness and apathy and fear and fear and fear, so like going to an actual college that is not near here is pretty much completely out of the question, at least in my mind).

but i don't know what courses or things are available there, and what online, and like i said it's too late for this semester anyway.

so my mom says that i could find some classes here to take at LC this semester that would work and transfer and count to the bachelors at cleveland state and that i need to find out if that's possible and but what ones are and how do i tell that and there are so many things and my mom just keeps saying 'call people, ask them, find out' but i don't have any idea of who to call or what to ask or what to say when they need more information about anything from me and i am completely incapable of all of this or rather, actually, too stuck up in my fear of people and phones and change and talking and doing things for myself and making mistakes or seeming dumb or not having the answers to anything. i have no idea where to start or don't want to think about what i need to do to GET an idea of where to start. my mind is so screwed up and i don't know how to do so much or i don't want to think about any of this ever and i don't want to grow up

old people elderly old old old

2010-08-08T23:30:00.005-04:00

This entry is brought to you by Very Tired Valerie(tm) and the letter P.

I don't know you guys I've been asleep for the past twoish hours and once again have awoken to blog. Really very incoherent and I don' know you guys.

We went to concert at a park place that had an amphitheater and when we got there it was like 500 old people and two children. I was lured into going by promises of 50s music, which hey 50s music is pretty good and cool. I did not know that this was a geriatric band. I am not being mean in saying that either. All of the band's members were probably over 40. They all were sitting down, the lead guitarist in an actual literal rocking chair. That was very disappointing. Then they said their name. It was totally incomprehensible the entire show and I had no idea what they were saying until my cousin Abby oh so unnecessarily called out for a flyer for their tour dates from an old lady walking around handing them out to people. They were called the GeezeCats. Geeze Cats Dot Com, Son. So there was that, strike two in what turned out to be a night, an avalanche, an unending roll of strike after strike after strike after strike.

I don't know where I'm getting these stupid sayings from or why I keep employing them so idiotically; nothing was even really bad, just pathetically old and feeble and I felt like Hank Green at that banjo concert in Florida with like how could this even take place without at least one elderly person keeling over.

So anyway the place was very full and but we had plenty of room to spread our blanket on part of the hill to the side of the stage because it was just angled enough for the old peeps to not risk attempting to balance/steady themselves there in folding lawn chairs. A lady right below us actually did half fall over in her chair onto another old lady next to her, it was p funny.

And whatever whatever, the band played so generically and blandly and my sister and cousin Abby and I spent the time taking weird semi-unintentionally model-like pictures and playing with silly putty that got all stuck all over and on my silly band, which did I mention my other cousin gave me one, an orange one that is a cat, when we were at breakfast at Bob Evans the other day. Bob Evans.

Blob Evans.

We left before the concert was over.

things

2010-08-07T19:10:00.003-04:00

All right so I am not in a very motivated or thinking mood right now so I don't know. I finished Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions today, and like with any other book that is Important or Different or I guess Emphatic, I find that I am much too easily swayed and moved and confused and messed up by other people's opinions or words or stories or ideals or anythings.

I am very sensitive to most things in that kind of a sense-- I take in everything and consider it and digest it, and way too often all of those other people's everythings have much too big of an impact on me and either beat me down or rile me up. I should be more resilient towards these things but I'm not. It doesn't have to do with just reading or books either, but I really am like a stupid sponge and can't keep opinions of my own safe and I am vulnerable to everything and everything pushes and pulls and I end up not knowing what I even think any more.

I can't read book reviews or my opinion of whatever book it is becomes tainted by them and I don't know if *I* even liked the book. I write things off or say they're crap or CAN'T give things a shot because I know the context of them and I've figured out how I'm SUPPOSED to feel about them, built from the context and so on of others and I hate or dislike so many things that I would or could probably enjoy if I just went at them with no knowledge of their social or etc standings and lights and it's intensely frustrating, but I can't do anything about it. I try, I try, but I am vulnerable and take in cynicism and hate and unfair judgements and unfounded praise and hype and then I am all of those combined and don't know what to think.

This isn't meant to be whiny or depressing or complaints; it's just the way things are with me and I'm frustrated a lot about how much good stuff I'm missing out on because of the aforementioned.

african safari wildlife park cute fun thing

2010-08-06T21:45:00.020-04:00

I am not looking forward to attempting to embed pictures on this dang blogger/blogspot blog! I would much rather do this on tumblr, but all my BEDA blogs are going on here so oh well. Deal w/it, self.

Today I got up at like 7:30 A REASONABLE HOUR, actually EARLY, and I'd gotten a full night's sleep beforehand too! What is happening! But I got up because we were going to breakfast at Bob Evan's, and we did; we picked up our cousins Abby and Jess and went to Bob Evan's and there was a lady in the parking lot who thought she was a car I guess and I said A GREAT BUZZKILL. Arka/Maddie would be proud.

Holy crap blogger you are so bad at images.

So we ate at Bob Evan's and it was really good and I got one of the things that has a little of everything bc I adore breakfast foods.

Then we went to African Safari Wildlife Park which is a park for wildlife that you can drive through in your car or van and you get a little bucket of feed pellets that if an animal grabs the bucket you are supposed to LET GO. And I had the bucket and right when we pulled in and started through the thing and got to the part where you could roll down your windows and feed the animals, an alpaca grabbed my bucket and I tried to not let him have it but he pulled really hard and took it and then we had no more food for the rest of the drive through except for all the pellets that were flung on my lap and in the front seat and one got stuck in the air conditioner vents oops.

The animals could come quite close to us, you can tell. They stuck their heads inside the van a lot of times.

Also I just took a nap and slept too long and it's 12:09 am right now :(

Those are pics from the first time we went through. Then we walked around the other parts and things they had while waiting for it to be time for the pig races.

We were all too fat to ride the camel.

There were 4 pigs that were racing and the stands around the track were color coordinated and we sat in the orange section and so cheered for Dale Swinhart Jr.

We thought the race would take a long time and that the pigs would be slow but they freaking RAN they were little pig bullets. It was astonishing.

Our pig won. EVERY TIME.

Then we went through the park again. My mom p much forced my cousin Jess to drive and she was slightly terrified at first but did a better job than my mom did and it was much better the second time through.

Then after we went through again, we left and stopped at McDonalds THE WORST MCDONALDS I'VE EVER BEEN TO. They took so long and kept saying that everything cost extra but in a mean way. It took at least 25 minutes for me to get my food. And then it was all cold! But it was ok. We had coupons for free smoothies and mine was soooo good. Hah this entry is now very much sucking in terms of, like, quality and good sentence structure and coherentness and me not sounding like my 15 year old blogging self I don't know what I'm saying any more even. But ok yes it was a fun day and I am tired and am going to go to bed now, all right.

panties

2010-08-05T22:21:00.003-04:00

Ok I was in bed, completely content, in that perfect position with the blankets so comfortable and everything was heavenly and I was just about to start to drift off to sleep when I remembered dumb BEDA I didn't do yet. Just kidding it's not dumb but ugh.

Since I obviously cannot write about the topic that my BEDA friend peeps are talking about, which is patronuses (patroni?) and boggarts, whatever those are, and some other Harry Potter thing, I was going to write about something I've noticed about David Foster Wallace's writing.

It was going to be brilliant and well thought out and clever and right on and good, but it would have/will take a while to work out to get it exactly right the way I want to say it, and I've just been asleep for the past four or five hours and very much want to return to slumber presently, so that is not going to happen today.

Instead, I will deconstruct an old childhood playground taunt song that reading Breakfast of Champions made me think about and tell you how wrong and dumb and ridiculous it is.

So ok.

I see London
I see France
I see whoever's underpants
Could be blue
Could be pink
I don't know but they sure do stink

This is just completely rife with logical fallacies I mean come on.

You cannot possibly see London or France at the same time. You can't even see one of them, unless you live there, which the children on playgrounds of my youth did not. I suppose you could be LOOKING at a PICTURE of London or France, but that would be ridiculous and dumb.

Furthermore, if you do, in fact, see their underwear, the next two lines are redundant and useless, with the third being just wrong. Which because if you see their underpants, of course you know what color they are.

Unless you are color blind which is unfortunate and perhaps the reason you have taken to bullying other children about their undergarments as you are frustrated and mad that they know the difference between red and green and constantly flaunt this fact and relentlessly tease you with little songs they made up, skipping around you in circles whilst singing about turquoise and chartreuse, I don't know, that's how children work.

all right cool thing virus broken rip

2010-08-04T17:32:00.002-04:00

So like an hour ago I got a billion pop up alerts and things saying my computer was infected and that all sites were attack sites and the thing that was saying all of this was not a virus protection program I had installed which was not good and I couldn't open any windows or programs because it said everything was a threat, the virus program that is itself not a virus program but a virus did, so then I tried to restart my computer in safe mode to begin the process of extricating the virus but then it wouldn't and won't load past a certain thing and the screen is just black and it won't start up normally now either sooooooooooooo I am talking to a Windows person and things are progressing slowly but I have a feeling that they are not progressing at all in actuality?? End my life.

I don't know what to write about besides that as it is p much entirely consuming my brain's mental processes at the moment. I was planning on posting pictures of pages and cool things from one of the annotated Harry Potter books I've gotten so far, but I am on our old old laptop which's screen is dead and is hooked up to a nice monitor but the computer is just a bad old slow laptop that sucks and I don't want to even try to import pictures onto this thing.

The very polite and hopefully helpful Nazrul H has just told me that there is only one more thing we can try before the last option which is the reinstallation of Windows :( which does that delete stuff? I mean I assume it would. But not all the stuff. I don't know anything about computers.

Sorry this is the worst blog of all time and of interest to no one ever.

I really do abuse my laptop, and it is two years old now and is on pretty much 24/7 which is awful and I use it all day and I've never had any problems with viruses before so this was pretty inevitable but come on! BOOOOOOO.

Um umm tomorrow I have that aforementioned meeting with a college/career counselor tomorrow which hopefully will set some things up or make them clearer, at least. And then on Friday I am going with my family and my cousins to African Safari Wildlife Park, one of those things where you drive your car through a thing and the giraffes stick their heads in your window and lick your face or bite you or whatever. We used to go there a lot. They have camel rides and I guess pig races which I don't remember ever seeing before though my mom swears we did. So that will be fun hopefully. I want to get a lot of good pictures; that would be rad. AND WOULD MAKE A GOOD BLOG!

I think that that is all for today. This has been a good distraction whilst waiting for Nazrul to respond to the idiotic things I am typing at him/her.

my sleeping patterns really need to change

2010-08-03T23:13:00.003-04:00

So I've just woken up again, with 45 minutes of the day left. I am with Zack; why does blogger/blogspot have two names it doesn't make any sense at all.

Ok so on Thursday I am going to see a counselor at college to talk about my future educational plans and what classes I'll need to be able to fulfill those plans and if those plans are even possible through LCCC which is a local community college that you really can only get associate's degrees from but which has partnership programs for many bachelor's and master's (I don't care where those apostrophes are supposed to go) degrees where you take classes at LC or online but take them through other colleges like Ohio State or Bowling Green.

I'm not sure what I want to do yet, but I need to choose something now, and for now I'm going with library/information science which is a master's degree program and available through Kent State. But that is a master's degree thing and I only have an associates which is p much 2 years of classes, and you need to have a bachelor's before you can go for your master's, obviously. And so I'm not sure what I'm going to be able to do with that. I don't know what degree would best benefit me or prepare me for the master's thing.

Plus and it's a MASTER'S DEGREE and I don't want to go to school any more I don't I don't I just want to be a librarian maybe or just be around books or just something I don't know I am apathetic and indecisive and unmotivated and scared and I don't want to do anything ever!!!!!!!!!!1

Also we're babysitting my neighbors' fish and it's a beta fish in one of those typical beta fish vases with colored rocks in the bottom and plants stuck in the top and it's just a little vase and what a sad life to live, even for a fish.

edit: I wrote this post in 12 minutes which I think is pretty good considering I just just woke up and I don't know what the heck I'm talking about.

another beda thing family and something i woke up very late

2010-08-02T23:17:00.003-04:00

Hi hey hello today is August second almost not even that any more. I have a very very bad sleep schedule and just woke up like 15 minutes ago. I was up earlier today though and there were daycare kids here and we watched some of the Lindsay Lohan version of the Parent Trap. That movie is great and my sister used to not be allowed to watch the part with the lizards crawling on the mean lady because she had nightmares about it.

I guess we are supposed to talk about our families today?? I don't know; I have a sister Kara who is 16 and who is painfully the typically teenagery kind of person. She likes the worst music, very seriously 'whatever's on the radio played at a reasonable volume'. She is about the same height as me which is about 5'10" but is lankier. She takes like 2 hours to get ready in the morning. She plays volleyball and basketball at school and is pretty good at both though better at volleyball. She isn't aggressive enough (on the court, believe me she is plenty aggressive @ me and other things) to be a really good basketball player. She just got her ear pierced which was a big thing and broke up with her boyfriend who she was dating for like a year and a half or something who I didn't like who just pretty much grunted all the time and didn't speak clearly ever and who was a very bleh kind of person and not very nice to people in general except for her which ugh. But so yeah that's all she's been driving a lot recently which is terrifying because she is STILL not very good at turning.

And my parents are normal typical parents. My mom does daycare at our house, which she has done for like 10 years, maybe? Before that she was an accountant at a law firm. Right now she doesn't have very many kids and doesn't watch them very often. My grandma has pretty bad Alzheimer's and still lives alone (which she definitely shouln't at this point), and my mom goes over there pretty much every day to make sure she's ok and take care of things and make sure she hasn't put laundry detergent in the dryer or cat litter in the laundry basket or her pill dispenser in the microwave. Other than that, she likes gardening and playing Hearts on the internet and reading facebook every hour of the day and following everything I ever do or say online ever. Which she is reading this right now I am sure ugh.

My dad works at General Plug, a factory kind of place that makes plugs. Which I have never been too sure exactly what they do but from deformed pieces he's brought home, I can tell you that they are big heavy blobby metal things. I think they have to do with lawnmowers and other machines like that. He likes airplanes a lot and all things related to them in wars and etc. He likes taking care of his leather jacket(s?) all the time, putting polish or whatever it is that you put on leather things, and the jackets have a billion military and NASA and etc patches all over them which I find really amusing as he's never served in or done anything w/r/t military stuff. He also has a giant collection of hats that he always tries to make larger though he is normally stopped by my mom because he doesn't need that many hats at all duh!! And never hardly wears the ones he has any more, even.

Also I'm supposed to say five words that I always misspell:
1. jewelery
2. hallelujah
3. annihilate
4. silhouette
5. coliseum

BEDA 2010 AUGUST NOT APRIL AND NO MAUREEN JOHNSON RIP

2010-08-01T21:48:00.002-04:00

Today is August first! The first day of August! And people decided that it would be Blog Every Day August! Or Vlog Every Day August! Even the name BEDA makes me happy because the ED implies that every day is, in fact, two words in this type of usage which is a good and wonderful and true thing. I'm typing this while listening to Katie and Geri and Maddie and Blaze and MANAR (I HAVE MISSED YOU MANAR) talk in a call made possible by skype dot com, and whenever I try to think to type when there are other people?? my type of typing is weird, and also when I type blogs specifically to type blogs I phrase things differently and oddly and strangely and I don't know whatever never mind.

Haha I keep trying to go on John Green's old website to find a blog post and it keeps telling me it's full of viruses NICE.

So for the first day I am doing an introductory post-ish? And then telling you five hobbies or things I like or enjoy that not very many people know about.

I did BEDA in April last year and actually completed it, though a few entries were posted slightly after midnight, I did it I did it I did it ok.

And things I like that nobody probably knows:

I like fire! A lot. I like burning things and setting things on fire and etc. A few days ago I roasted miniature marshmallows in my living room, which my mom who woke up to go to the bathroom at 3 am was not very pleased about. A bunch of times on hot or bright days I like to go outside with a magnifying glass and try to set leaves on fire or burn holes in plastic bottles or whatever. It is very fun.

Honeysuckles like the flowers are so amazing, and we have a bunch of bushes on the back fence in our back yard, and every summer when they are bloomed, I love going back there and picking a bunch, just the flower part, and then pulling the stamen out through the bottom and there is like nectar in there that is really good. And they smell nice but they attract a lot of bugs which is dumb and bad.

Sledding is one of my favorite things ever, and winter and snow and being outside in all of it. One of the only reasons I like Ohio at all is because it has good real winters with cold enough temperatures to sustain snow. A lot of days in the winter I go outside and stay out there for hours at a time and now that I am older and it is not really acceptable to play in the snow or roll around when you are by yourself and 18 or 19 or 20 years old WHICH IS LAME but I do anyways and sometimes just lie there for forever and am completely entirely content and happy just doing that.

I love roller coasters. And amusement parks. Mostly just Cedar Point, I guess. Because that is really the only park I've been to multiple times besides Geauga Lake/Sea World/whatever it is now. My family used to get season passes every year, and we'd go like 10 times a summer, but for the past 5 or so years we haven't because things cost too much money and we're poor. When I was younger, like 12 or 13, I memorized the stats of a ridiculous amount of roller coasters. What year they were built, top speed, height, track length, type, any achievements or Firsts or whatever. I did a report/presentation/powerpoint on the history of Cedar Point for my final-ish for US Geography last year. I REALLY REALLY LOVE CEDAR POINT, YOU GUYS.

In high school I did the volleyball scorebook for the junior high and sometimes JV or Varsity teams. This seems like a dumb boring thing but the process and all of keeping them is really hard and involved and insanely complicated, and it took me about a month to get it all down and to not feel like I was screwing everything up always. So I went to pretty much every game of my sister's every year which was pretty cool and fun because I didn't have a life so I had lots of free time so it was cool! It was neat to travel around everywhere and a lot of riding in vans and eating concession stand food.

DOCUMENTARIES

2010-02-26T03:11:00.004-05:00

This is from tumblr, but spent more than 30 seconds writing it so I am putting it here too ok!

nerd documentaries (that I have seen [in kind of order from favorite to awful]):

Wordplay - CROSSWORD PUZZLES/tournaments. This is really rad and it has Cake and They Might Be Giants songs in it also Jon Stewart and Tyler Hinman the really young crossword genius kid wears a Trogdor shirt at the tournament and Will Shortz is a neat man and all the people the documentary crew follows are cool except for one of them who is a really kind of pathetic woman who reminds me a lot of my old English teacher. Also Merl Reagle. And Bill Clinton makes a cameo, and I find his hands really attractive? In a non-weird way.

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns - THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS! I don't think this is an actually good documentary from a layperson standpoint but for super fans of the band it is kind of heaven. Otherwise, I feel like it just comes off as creepy and pretentious and I don't like to see Sarah Vowell speak, or Syd Straw. There're a lot of full and partial live songs in the documentary itself and also a ridiculous amount of bonus features which is great. And the documentary's commentary track is wonderful but I wish Sarah Vowell would really just shut up!

Helvetica - HELVETICA. I love typefaces and Helvetica is a good one in my opinion. Some of the people they interview have very interesting and insightful things to say and some equate Helvetica to George Bush or something. But the designers who aren't wackos are pretty fascinating and made me think a lot about the purpose of typography and how Helvetica became the kind of paragon or zenith- zeitgeist!!!!! of stuff and the complete 180 design and type made around that time (think the frills and curls of 50's ads, the Coca-Cola logo, example, whatever-- to the American Airlines logo which was designed in Helvetica in 1967 and is still the exact same today and is as sleek and modern as ever).

Spellbound - SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE. Does this sound like a musical robot? I love following spelling bees, but I never participated in any other than the basic school-type level; I purposefully misspelled words because I hate attention and those kind of things make me so nervous and awful awful awful. But in 8th grade my friend Sarah won the local and regional things and went to Washington DC and I saw her on ESPN and she spelled facade right and a bunch of other words but missed basenji, a kind of dog that doesn't bark, she spelled it basengee, but she placed 30-somethingth, and it was very exciting. Nerdy kids make me very happy, though some of the ones the crew follows, and a lot of spelling bee kids in general, are unsettlingly dedicated and so socially screwed up it's kind of sad and then there's Harry Altman.

The awful ones:

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - COMPETITIVE DONKEY KONG PLAYING... I just thought this was pathetic. It all seemed so sad and desperate. There are a lot of disputed facts surrounding the whole competition and the documentary lies about/omits important details. You've got a good bad guy in Billy Mitchell though, creepy long haired guy who sells his own brand of hot sauce and is a big jerk to everyone. And his challenger, opponent, down on his luck honest man father husband good guy kind of rookie Steve Wiebe. I don't know, his story was so sad and pathetic and pitiful, it was weird to watch and depressing. He doesn't get a higher score than Billy Mitchell during the tournament and WOE WOE WOE. Then he beats it in his garage by himself later. All star in everyone's hearts true champion real hero fair fighter. Blehgh.

Word Wars - SCRABBLE. This documentary is gross. Most of the people are gross and weird and creepy. There's a black guy who swears all the time but also talks to kids in a classroom about words or something. There's this weird wiry/wired guy who takes a million vitamin supplements and who wears really old shirts that are so torn up they're basically rags, and he's very negative. There is an old unsettling bald guy who talks about his chi and does yoga or whatever the heck it is and balance and forces and energies. There is a bald, frail, fragile, rodent-esque man who has acid reflux who spits up stomach bile into a cloth all the time and hacks and makes a lot of bad noises. It felt like he could throw up or die at any moment. Those were all the people the documentary followed, and they were all too creepy and flawed to root for. I forgot who won the tournament.

can we achieve to destroy by starving it

2010-02-09T03:56:00.002-05:00

on john green and unicorns

raocow twitter

"einstein watermelon on a toilet"

"phyllis, this is a spoon"

big big big big big big big fake

blood alone moves the wheels of hystory

hysterical things to say

site:blogspot.com "horse pooping" photo

i can do cartwheels for a mile

rachael ray skydiving deal with valerie

imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia

"i don't do anything ever"

"who's your little whosit?"

john green paper towns nerds catfish

a small yet hysterical egg

animated claw marks

chapstick counterproductive

eyeitches inside wats the reason

flansburgh how pathetic our situation

i hate john green

late late show destroyed by bob barker

mario incandenzas police lock

sentence of destroyed

they'll need a crane john linnell crying

what happens if i put hashtags in the 4chan name box with exclamation points

"full to the brim of vitamin b"

a big sentence

2010-02-09T02:45:00.002-05:00

Blog about self-sacrificial tuna sandwich and my personal martyrdom. Can't get it worked out the way I want to; sandwich choice saved this dang planet and no one even thanked me.

A DREAM A DREAM

2010-02-01T08:22:00.003-05:00

I was at my college, in an English class that I never did the work for and always was ridiculously worried about going to, since I never did the work and sometimes completely forgot about the class until it was going, frequently just skipping class because I didn't remember. It was in a room like my old Bible classroom in high school. Sam and Ashleigh, two people who graduated the year before me in high school in real life, were in the class too, and Ashleigh was sitting to my left and Sam to my right. I don't remember how he came in or was introduced or anything, but then John Flansburgh is there, like he's scouting for a college kid to do a thing, he asks Ashleigh a kind of trivia question about who he is, if she knows who he is. She gets it right and says something about They Might Be Giants, but obviously isn't very familiar with the band. Flans asks the class in general, something like "Okay yes we are TMBG, but more specifically, we are known for one thing, kind of our hallmark." And I'm really confused for a second, and then say Flood; I was a little confused/wondering why he reduced the band to just that or asked that as a question, like out of all the stuff they'd done, he asks that as if it's all they're known for, or something. He smiles, tells me to stand up, and starts asking a few other questions, doing this thing where he stands right right in front of me, really playfully, like I can't even really move because maybe he's stood on the tips of my shoes with the heels of his, and it's fun and funny and just a really playful thing, like something you'd do if you were flirting with someone, only he's not, but it's the same kind of feeling of the whole thing and my face is pretty much in his back and I laugh and keep trying to step backwards to get more balanced or whatever and WHATEVER, he asks me a few more questions, maybe, and then says that he'd like me to come with them and be a/the contestant on Stump the Band (which is an actual segment of the show they used to do, but was completely different from this thing that they are asking me to do, before it was they took requests from the audience for any kind of song, and they'd try to play it, but in my dream it was some kind of thing where they asked ME questions, maybe about the band, maybe about something else, in my dream I never knew exactly what it was I was going to do, but it didn't bother me at all, in the dream, which is weird because normally I'd be a complete wreck if I didn't know). So I go/Flans leads me?to/through a bunch of parts of the college, this really complex trip of endless hallways and narrow corridors. At some part we were in an art supply store, I think, just browsing around, and Linnell was looking for some stuff for Henry, and I told him about this other store, a Pat Catans, that was really good for finding everything you need all at once, and cheaply priced, and was well organized (which is true, it's really a cool store and I got some of my drawing supplies there). We keep going through all these different places until we stop in some open room thing. Linnell and Dan are there now, just them, Linnell's the one that's been leading me around. He smiles and says "Bet you didn't know all this was at your school." And I laugh and say no, I had no idea these rooms/buildings existed, because it's clear that we've been walking for a while and through all these places. I see Danny Weinkauf through a window, in another room, and say something about how he was in my class and how cool he is and etc (my literal actual mind always gets confused or forgets stuff in dreams, and as a result, past dream actions get muddied or mixed up later on, so now instead of Flans being the one there, it's Danny. I actually remember, a little later in the dream, that I got it wrong in my dream, that it was Flans not Danny, like my mind's aware that it made a mistake and it kind of manifests itself and I get worried in the dream that I said that to Danny if he wasn't really there, but at the same time I think, in my dream, "hahaha my brain forgot what happened earlier in the dream" and it's really meta and confusing and I'm getting confused right now typing this so). I go with Linnell and Dan, Linnell is the leader now, we walk some more and talk about things and it's really casual and non-thing-like. We get into a car; Linnell drives, I sit next to him up front, and Dan sits in the back. I'm really excited but at the same time it's super casual and like it's cool and I'm not freaked out like I would be. At one point the car is now a plane in a similar my-brain-forgetting-what's-going-on-in-the-dream thing. Some time during I twitter and say JOHN LINNELL'S ARM IS TOUCHING MY ARM and it is because the car/plane is small and but I'm not freaked out or excited, even, very much, just super happy, (and I am taunting Blaze, with the tweet) and it's a weird and cool vibe. We are flying to their next show, we fly past the Q in Cleveland, don't think it was actually in Cleveland in my dream, and Flans, who is suddenly in the car/plane/in my dream again for just this sentence, says some funny thing about how hah! the place they played at the Q last week and tonight's show is at a bigger place. Which sounds cocky and dumb but it was just funny and whatever in the dream. I talk with Linnell a lot while he flies, he says a bunch of stuff about Henry that I can't remember, but I think he was into art, painting and drawing. He keeps making references to Ohio State and me "putting on the crimson"/"crimson pride" which I actually don't know if that's a phrase or the color of OSU really, even. At some time we are there, or somewhere that is not in a plane/car, and Flansburgh gives me a little paper with instructions of what to do. The first point says to just dress (for the Stump the Band thing, in my dream I'm still not sure what it is that is, but another point on the list is that Danny or Flans, I have a hard time telling them apart in this dream?will explain what I need to do/what it is) the way they suggest and not make a big deal about it because it just has to be that way. I'm instructed to wear "a red suit, a My Bloody Valentine shirt, and jeans." Confused how I'm supposed to wear a suit and jeans but guess they just meant a suit jacket. In reality I have no idea who My Bloody Valentine is other than that they are a band. In the dream I don't know either and think it's weird. Then I woke up.

I've decided a thing!

2010-01-04T00:29:00.003-05:00

I think I'm going to post my Picture Every Day Two Words things here in addition to tumblr/flickr. And maybe I'll write a little thing with each one because pictures lend themselves nicely to that kind of blurby writing.

BIG BIG FAKE FAKE LIES

2009-11-17T20:51:00.011-05:00

Okay so this was my final research paper for English my senior year. Blogger formatting is terrible; I tried my best etc etc it looks like crap, sorry.

The fantastically amazing people over at tmbw.net, This Might Be A Wiki, used a ton of this for their page about the band, which you can read here. I just kind of put it out there and they edited and linked it all up, and it's really really great.

Here is the Thing That I Wrote About the Rock Band They Might Be Giants Complete With In-Text Citations and Hyperlinked Works Cited Screw You MLA Formatting You Are Terrible and Repressive:

“We like playing fun rock music, for the love of it. We only pretend to have a plan for world domination,” answered John Flansburgh, when asked by an interviewer to set the world straight on the purpose of the band he and his high school friend, John Linnell, had founded in 1982 (Dougherty). That band was They Might Be Giants, and twenty-six years later, the two Johns are still making music. They Might Be Giants, loosely classified as alternative rock, is a prolific, unique, pioneering band whose groundbreaking achievements have helped pave the way for other alternative musicians.

On May 6th, 1960, John Flansburgh was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts to Earl and Louise “Polly” Flansburgh. His father is a successful architect whose firm has designed over two hundred schools. His mother founded Boston-by-Foot, a non-profit organization that gives tours of Boston. He has an older brother, Paxus, who is a political activist. Flansburgh married Robin Goldwasser in 1996. She occasionally provides vocals for the band’s songs.

Flansburgh is half They Might Be Giants’ singing and songwriting power. He plays guitar, left-handedly. He is the “businessman” of the band; he’s greatly involved in orchestrating shows and in the design of much of the art/visual aspect of the band such as music videos and album art. He’s had many side projects, the most notable being his band Mono Puff, which released four EPs and two studio albums.

John Linnell was born June 12th, 1959, in New York. He moved to Lincoln when he was nine. His father, Dr. Zenos M. Linnell, is a retired psychiatrist, and his mother is a poet. Linnell has a brother and sister and possibly other siblings. John Linnell married Karen Brown in 1997, and they have a son, Henry, who was born in 1999. Henry has done vocal work on a few of their children’s albums’ tracks.

In concerts, Linnell mainly sings and plays the keyboards or accordion, but he also plays the saxophone, clarinet, Kaoss Pad, and stylophone. He shares songwriting duties with Flansburgh. Before starting TMBG with Flansburgh, John played keyboards in a new wave band called The Mundanes. Linnell has released three solo EPs and a studio album.

Flansburgh and Linnell both grew up in Lincoln, a small, upper class, suburban town in Massachusetts. Though they went to the same elementary school, they did not know each other. Flansburgh recalls being made to write a get well card for Linnell after an accident: “It was this singularly bogus thing, but because our schoolmate John had to go to the hospital, we all had to write him letters saying ‘Get well soon!’” (Schnack). In high school, Flansburgh somewhat sought Linnell out, showing him a play he’d written in which there were 150 acts, each being one line long. Linnell was a little taken aback by Flansburgh’s outgoingness; while he himself was reserved and quiet, Flans was “gregarious” and “kind of interested in just talking” (Schnack). "John was always calling me up, and I didn't know who he was really. He'd call and go, 'So. Linnell. What's happenin'?” (Weiskopf).

They came to be friends through the school newspaper. John Linnell joined the paper’s staff his freshman year and eventually worked his way up to senior editor. Flansburgh also became involved with the paper, and John and John became good friends spending long weekend nights working on putting the paper together. Both of them also liked to draw and, in addition to submitting cartoons to the newspaper, made comic books to distribute throughout the school.

Some time during high school, Flansburgh acquired a sound-to-sound tape recorder, with which he and John made “electronic recordings. They were very strange and kind of unlistenable in a way” (Schnack). After high school, in 1981, John and John ended up moving into the same apartment building in Brooklyn on the same day. The first actual song they recorded was a Yoko Ono cover, “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow), which they sang with Rod Serling-esque voices (Schnack). They continued their collaboration, writing songs and making recordings.

Their first show was in the summer of 1982 at a Sandinista rally in Central Park. The crowd was almost all Spanish, and the band was introduced as “El Grupo de Rock ’n’ Roll.” Flansburgh played guitar while Linnell played the clarinet and keyboards. In January of 1983, the Johns played their first show under the name They Might Be Giants. They took the name from a George C. Scott film about a millionaire who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. When asked about the origin of their name, Linnell said, “It's the name of a movie. It's not a very interesting answer, unfortunately; it's not a very good movie and it doesn't hold that much significance for us, particularly, except that we thought the name was good” (Throwrug).

In 1984, Linnell broke his wrist in a bike accident, and Flansburgh’s apartment was burglarized. Though they couldn’t perform or play shows, they still wanted to produce more music. Flansburgh started Dial-a-Song, an answering machine that played a song when his phone number, (718)-387-6962, was called. The song would be changed daily; they used Dial-a-Song as a way to motivate themselves to write more songs. In the documentary Gigantic, Flans remarks that “anything with long sustained notes makes it rewind” because the machine would interpret the noise as the end-of-message beep and that most of the songs on their first album were short and staccato, just so they would work on Dial-a-Song. Dial-a-Song lived on through the 80’s,90’s, and 00’s, offering hundreds of demos, song fragments, and exclusive unreleased tracks to the public.

Throughout the early 80’s, Flansburgh and Linnell played different underground places in NYC such as 8BC, Darinka, The Pyramid Club, and CBGB. The Johns relied very heavily on the reel-to-reel tape recorder during their shows - “playing straight through, pressing play and going” (Schnack). With John Flansburgh playing guitar and Linnell playing accordion or saxophone, the tape recorder and drum machine were the third member of the band, supplying backing tracks and percussion. Early shows were very strange, incorporating props like puppets and giant fezzes and “The Stick,” a literal stick with a microphone attached, which would be banged on the floor to produce a reverb percussion. Al Houghton, who helped produce early TMBG releases, said of their shows, “Some musicians just thought they were ridiculous, you know, it was like the antithesis of the musician” (Schnack).

The style of their songs was very diverse, and critics had a hard time pinning down exactly in what genre they belonged. The Johns called themselves a rock group, and in some ways they were, though very few of their songs were technically “rock.” Steve Dougherty described them in People Weekly as a “mock-arty-garage-polka-metal-country rock duo.” Though some wrote them off as a novelty act, they slowly built up a following and produced a full demo tape in 1985, which they sold at shows. The tape caught the attention of Michael Small, who then reviewed the tape in People Weekly. The review was very positive, and ended by saying, “These guys should definitely change their name. It won’t be long before they really are giants.” This gave the Johns their first national exposure and garnered the interest of Bar/None Records.

They Might Be Giants signed on with Bar/None in 1986 and released their first album They Might Be Giants, known to their fans as The Pink Album, later that year. Reviews of the album were generally positive, though some thought They Might Be Giants to be just a quirky, wacky novelty act. In a review for Rolling Stone, critic Jim Farber states, “They're going to have to create a whole new category of weird to contain They Might Be Giants. After all, what other group around these days would release an album with nineteen songs that incorporate genres from art pop to country to polka, all operating under titles like ‘Youth Culture Killed My Dog’? … No matter how far afield the duo ventures, though, huge pop hooks always keep things firmly anchored. Also tying the genre gyrations together is a relentless, distanced irony, accented by hysterically evasive lyrics.”

Earlier that year, video director Adam Bernstein had seen them at Darinka and told John and John that he would direct a music video for them and pay for it. They decided on the song “Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head,” and spent $1500 and two days in Williamsburg shooting it (Schnack). The video mainly consists of John and John lip synching and dancing in the style of the band New Edition (Direct From Brooklyn). The video was played on television, on MTV, a month before their debut album came out. TMBG collaborated again with Adam on a video for “Don’t Let’s Start,” a song with a wonderfully upbeat tempo but dismal and gloomy lyrics - “No one in the world ever gets what they want/And that is beautiful/Everybody dies frustrated and sad/And that is beautiful” (Direct From Brooklyn). With a budget of $5000, the black and white, jerky, almost spastic, sped-up video was the first indie video to go into the regular rotation on MTV. Sue Drew, former employee of Elektra records, said on their MTV exposure: “I think people were absolutely stunned, because here was a band that seemed to be coming from nowhere and had no relation to anything else that was going on musically” (Schnack).

1988 saw the release of They Might Be Giants’ second album, Lincoln. Containing eighteen songs ranging in style from blues to salsa, Lincoln sold well, spending nineteen weeks on “The Billboard 200” chart. One of the singles from the album, “Ana Ng”, became the band’s first charting single, peaking at #11 on “Billboard Modern Rock Tracks” (Lincoln). They Might Be Giants made three music videos for the album, “Ana Ng,” “Purple Toupee,” and “They’ll Need a Crane.”

The video for “Ana Ng” was one of the band’s most popular videos. The song’s narrator laments over the fact that he and his soul mate, Ana Ng, will never meet. Again, the melody is upbeat with profound, depressing lyrics. “Everything sticks like a broken record/Everything sticks until it goes away/And the truth is we don’t know anything” (Direct From Brooklyn). Filmed at fireman training grounds in New York, the video has a strange, really serious, almost military air about it. The Johns and Adam Bernstein decided not to use lip synch in the video; in its place is very stiff synchronized dancing.

Much of They Might Be Giants’ subject matter during their early years was very dark and dismal. TMBG’s manager, Jamie Kitman, summed up their complex lyrical style: “They’re funny, but they’re sad” (Schnack). Flansburgh has noted that their early songs were downers. “There’s a pretty relentless thread in the text of our songs, especially in the first fifteen years of our songwriting that’s pretty relentlessly, you know, kind of earth-shatteringly dower” (Schnack). For the most part, the lyrics of their songs take a back seat, in matters of importance, to the music. Sometimes the Johns, especially Linnell, add words almost as an afterthought, and for them, usually lyrics do not hold deep meaning. When asked about the significance of his lyrics, Linnell says that they are what they are. “People get everything, and the things they think they don’t get don’t exist” (Schnack).

In 1989, the band signed with a major label, Elektra Records. The following year, Flood, their third and best selling album of all time, was released. The album went gold in December of 1993. The record contains three of the songs for which They Might Be Giants are best known, “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Particle Man,” and their cover version of The Four Lads song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” After Flood, They Might Be Giants’ popularity was at its peak. They were frequent guests on many television programs in the US and in the UK, including Top of the Pops, 120 Minutes, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Television Appearances).

“Birdhouse in Your Soul” is the band’s highest-charting single of all time, in the US as well as in the UK. It reached #3 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart and #6 on the UK Singles Chart (Flood). The song is sung from the point of view of a nightlight. It has a beautiful melody and circular, slightly cryptic lyrics such as “I’m your only friend/I’m not your only friend/But I’m a little glowing friend/But really I’m not actually your friend/But I am” (Schnack). The video for the song was filmed at New York County’s Surrogate Courthouse. The song has an anthemic quality to it, and the music video reflects that, with extras wearing placards saying “Stop rock video”, boldly marching in a kind of protest around John Flansburgh and John Linnell, who are on a platform in the middle of a large, ornate room (Direct From Brooklyn).

The songs “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Particle Man” were made into animated music videos for Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures. For many fans, this was their first exposure to They Might Be Giants. John Flansburgh has said that it was strange to him that so many people became fans through the videos because he and John had absolutely nothing to do with their production. Linnell says, “It was the easiest video we ever did” (Direct From Brooklyn).

In 1992, They Might Be Giants released their fourth studio album, Apollo 18. The album, presumably because of its few spacey songs, drew the attention of NASA, who had declared 1992 International Space Year. They Might Be Giants were selected to be “Musical Ambassadors.” The Johns did not know exactly what their role was supposed to be. John Linnell related his uncertainty in an interview with Joab Jackson: “We don't have a super clear idea of what it is we're supposed to be saying about it. … We're supposed to be included on lists of events happening in connection with International Space Year. In other words, on a particular month they'll say in some town there's this lecture about space telescopes and then there's this They Might Be Giants concert. It does seem kind of weird—disconnected to us.” When Flans was asked about what being Musical Ambassadors meant, he replied, “It doesn’t mean anything, actually. We’re like the musical equivalent of Tang” (Guiste).

The album was, on the whole, darker both lyrically and musically that their past efforts. The Johns employed more of an electronic sound than previous records. One of the unique features of the album were the last twenty-one tracks, all short songs, collectively known as “Fingertips.” Typically no more than fifteen or twenty seconds long, they were designed to utilize the shuffle mode on most CD players, being interspersed throughout the album. Two music videos were made from this album - “The Statue Got Me High” and “Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).”

Linnell and Flansburgh had been pressured by Elektra since Flood to expand to a full band and get backing musicians. At first, they were wary of the idea, not wanting to sell out. John Flansburgh said, “And I think our natural response was, you know, just leave us alone, because what do you know…‘What do you know about how to be a success in rock?’ Here we are, barely successful at all…” (Schnack). Some of their faithful, most hardcore fans actually boycotted shows, telling people not to go see them because they’d gotten a backing band. The Johns finally agreed after Apollo 18 and were joined by Kurt Hoffman, Tony Maimone, and Jon Feinberg. They embarked on the “Don't Tread On The Cut-Up Snake World Tour” in 1992, playing over fifty shows.

John Henry, the band’s fifth studio album, was released in 1994. Their first album utilizing a full band, the record is much more horn- and guitar-laden than previous records. Though John Henry spent only 4 weeks on the “Billboard 200”, it reached, at its peak, #64, higher than any of their earlier records (John Henry). There was a music video made for the song “Snail Shell.” The album’s title references the man vs. machine legend of John Henry, referring to the band’s recent switch to “man” (human drummer) from “machine” (drum machine). With twenty songs and nearly an hour’s worth of music, John Henry is TMBG’s longest studio record. The album determined the band’s new, full sound while keeping all the lyrical and musical quirks for which TMBG had become known.

In 1996, the band released the album Factory Showroom. The album only had thirteen tracks, but the individual songs were longer than on previous records. It was their second album with a full band, utilizing the talents of Brian Doherty on the drums, Eric Schermerhorn on lead guitar, and Graham Maby on bass. The album spent two weeks on the “Billboard 200,” peaking at #89 (Factory Showroom). They Might Be Giants left Elektra Entertainment after the release of Factory Showroom and joined Restless Records.

Severe Tire Damage, a live album, was released in 1998. Three of its tracks were studio tracks. The band made one of the studio songs, “Doctor Worm,” into a music video that was directed by John Flansburgh. The album contained seven hidden tracks, each one of them about the film series Planet of the Apes.

They Might Be Giants partnered with eMusic, an online subscription music site, to release the full-length studio album Long Tall Weekend exclusively online. The band was the first major artist to release a full-length album exclusively online, and, as a result, They Might Be Giants were the most downloaded artist on the internet in 1999 and also in 2000 (Schnack). In 2001, they collaborated with eMusic again with TMBG Unlimited, a service in which users could subscribe to monthly albums of live tracks and rarities from the band. TMBG Unlimited lasted until January of 2002 (TMBG Unlimited).

In 2000, They Might Be Giants provided the theme song to the television show Malcolm in the Middle, entitled “Boss of Me,” and written by Flansburgh who called it “a thirty second song I couldn’t finish for a year” (Boss Of Me). The song won the Giants their first Grammy award. They Might Be Giants also wrote and performed all the incidental music for the first two seasons of the show.

TMBG has written and performed theme music for many television shows. The band performs the theme for the fake news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as well as writing all the incidental music for the show. Their song “Dr. Evil” was in the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. The Johns also made music for the following television shows: Resident Life, The Oblongs, Brave New World, Life 360, America’s Most Wanted, Higglytown Heroes, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. More recently, They Might Be Giants wrote over fifteen songs for Dunkin’ Donuts commercials. The band has also contributed songs to numerous movie soundtracks. They also wrote and performed the theme and score for the upcoming Neil Gaiman film Coraline. They Might Be Giants was the subject of the 2003 documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, directed by AJ Schnack.

The band released their eighth album, Mink Car, in 2001. The album’s songs were recorded from 1999 to 2001 in many different studios and had many different producers and guest artists. Because of this, the album is widely viewed as TMBG’s most disjointed.

No!, released in 2002, marked the beginning of They Might Be Giants’ foray into children’s music. The style of the music was consistent with their adult work; the lyrics were made more kid-friendly. John Linnell wittily noted that “Usually on a TMBG record, there’s at least one song that invokes death. Instead of that, there’s a lot of songs about going to sleep” (Quotes). The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard “Top Kid Audio Chart” (No!). It stayed on the chart for eleven weeks. The success of No! led the band to create more children’s music. The Johns released the book and CD set Bed, Bed, Bed in 2003. The same year, a compilation of the band’s music videos, entitled Direct from Brooklyn, was released on DVD.

Clock Radio, a Macromedia Flash-based music streaming application, was released on tmbg.com in 2003. 2004 saw the opening of They Might Be Giants’ online store, one of the first artist-owned internet stores. It also saw the release of the band’s tenth studio album, The Spine. In stark contrast to No!, The Spine is much more “adult” that most of their previous adult records, with darker subject matter and grown-up lyrics. The band collaborated with Mike and Matt Champan, animators of the popular Flash cartoon site homestarrunner.com, to make a video for the song “Experimental Film.” The video drew in many new fans, and the band and the Chapmans filmed several videos, called “Puppet Jams,” with a puppet version of the site’s main character, Homestar.

In 2005, They Might Be Giants released their second children’s album, Here Come the ABCs on the Disney Sound label. The music was accompanied by videos and released on DVD as well as CD. The DVD was a huge commercial success and quickly went gold. Amazon.com named the album the 13th best album of 2005 and the year’s best children’s album.

During their tour in 2004, the Johns decided to write and then play a song about each venue they played at. The band released the results of its Venue Songs project as a CD/DVD set in 2005. The DVD contains music videos for eleven of the songs and is narrated by author and Daily Show resident expert John Hodgman.

At the end of 2005, the They Might Be Giants podcast was born. Consisting of live, rare, and unreleased tracks, the podcast became one of iTunes’ most downloaded podcasts. It has continued on a sometimes-weekly, mostly-monthly basis. As of March 29th, there have been thirty podcasts released, each of them being, on average, twenty minutes in length. The podcast has been seen by many fans as a new, up-to-date replacement for TMBG’s Dial-a-Song service.

They Might Be Giants’ twelfth studio album, The Else, was released in May 2005 on iTunes, in July on CD, and in September on vinyl. Prior to The Else, their last album released in record form was 1990’s Flood. The first edition of the CD came with a bonus disc of podcast songs. The Else also has the distinctions of being the first They Might Be Giants studio album in which every song is over two minutes in length, and the first not to have any accordion. Four animated music videos of the album’s songs were released online. The album’s songs are more aggressive in tone that some of their other work. When asked about this, Linnell replied, “John called it our least cuddly record. Maybe that’s a response to having done two records at once. We also recorded another kids album. Maybe we siphoned the friendlier music to the kids album, and the adult stuff is unalloyed adult material” (Dansby).

Promoting the release of Here Come the 123s, a follow-up to Here Come the ABCs, They Might Be Giants started a video podcast entitled “Friday Night Family Podcast” in late 2007. The podcast consists of music videos from the album and Here Come the ABCs, introduced by puppet versions of the Johns, voiced and puppeteered by themselves. As of the end of March, there have been fourteen episodes. Here Come the 123s was released in early 2008 and enjoyed similar success to the ABCs.

John and John are currently touring with their full band, consisting of Marty Beller on the drums, Dan Miller on guitar, and Danny Weinkauf on bass. They are also presently working on a children’s science album and another adult album.

They Might Be Giants, though once written off as a novelty act, have found a strong foothold in the mainstream music scene. Their innovative use of technology, groundbreaking achievements, longevity, and memorable, unique songs have enabled them to leave an indelible mark on the pages of music’s history.

Works Cited

“Boss Of Me” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/Boss_Of_Me

Dansby, Andrew. “Sleeping Giants? Never.” Houston Chronicle. 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/music/5594602.html

“Dial-A-Song.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Dial-A-Song

Direct From Brooklyn. They Might Be Giants. 2003. DVD. TMB Productions, 2003.

Dougherty, Steve. "They Might Be Giants, who, on the other hand, might just be hot rock and roll nerds from Brooklyn." People Weekly 29.n24 (June 20, 1988): 67(2). General OneFile. Gale. Cleveland Public Library - CLEVNET. 8 Mar. 2008 http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.cpl.org/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS

“Factory Showroom.” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Factory_Showroom

Farber, Jim. “They Might Be Giants.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://rollingstone.com/ Path: Artists; T; They Might Be Giants; Album Reviews; They Might Be Giants.

“Flood.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Flood

Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. Dir. AJ Schnack. 2003. DVD. Bonfire Films of America, 2002.

Guiste, Averil. “Giants shoot for the stars on current tour.” Detroit Free Press June 1992. 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.web.archive.org/web/20021204094608/icicle.iblameyou.com/regular/920625detroit.html

Jackson, Joab. “How They Might Be Giants Became the House Band for NASA.” May 1992. 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.joabj.com/Music/9205TheyMightBeGiants.html

“John Henry.” 10 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/John_Henry

“Lincoln.” 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Lincoln

“No!” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/No%21

“Quotes” 29 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/Quotes

Small, Michael. "They might be giants." People Weekly 25 (June 30, 1986): 24(2). General OneFile. Gale. Cleveland Public Library - CLEVNET. 9 Mar. 2008 http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.cpl.org/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS

“Television Appearances.” 10 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/Television_Appearances

“They Might Be Giants interview.” Throwrug #6 (1992). 9 Mar. 2008 http://www.fullmetaljackal.com/throwrug/i-theymightbegiants.html

“TMBG Unlimited” 29 Mar 2008 http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/TMBG_Unlimited

Weiskopf, Mike. “Early Years Handbook.” 1996. 4 Mar. 2008 http://www.tmbg.org/bandinfo/early-years/

265 in ten~!~

2009-11-05T21:34:00.002-05:00

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah i'm typing a thing i'm typing a thing oh gosh i'm going to die irl if i don't aahah words words words michael gary scott is the most depressing lovely sad terrible lonely person. pretty pretty great and good. pam poor pam. poor pam's mom. andy and dwight's feuds or whatever are the best thing; michael's crying is beautiful. half crying half vomiting half wheezing. bluhhhghhhh. it's beyond words. it's incalculable. i can't ah i can't i don't have any more words. the thing is turning red; it's scary i do not like it. absolutely no words are in my head. completely blank. white pure clear. cleaner than the snow in its perfect perfectness. what is this i don't know lol michael ahah kevin oscar everything owns. every day two words. stephen colbert. voyeurism is cool. I STOPPED WRITING AND IT ERASED WHAT I WROTE that is just terrible what is this website D: lol phyllis said holy crap. ahahahahahahahahaha the crying i love the crying. why are you limping i don't know. back to the future is objectively the greatest movie ever made. arka how the heck did you type this much this quickly? this is making me ridiculously nervous, and it's hard to think thoughts. john colbert. stephen stewart. dan linnell john weinkauf marty miller dan flansburgh so many people named john need to write that christmas carol. will do it for this blog thing! i will! someone should record it ftw. dwight so misguided so conniving so completely separated from anything even remotely resembling reality. everything is pretty great and good.

there is no stanley tree. do you think the world is just crawling with phyllises?

2009-11-04T19:32:00.004-05:00

People are terrible and are entirely selfish, gonna go with unfair generalizations ftw because otherwise nothing can be said that's worth anything without mischaracterizing or ticking off people or whatever, I don't care. People are terrible and inconsiderate and greedy and pathetic. Getting caught up in some kind of ridiculously trivial or nonsensical or ultimately unimportant thing and getting mad at the way things are is rad. Serious business. A thing is doing this thing; I don't like this thing; this thing is insulting me personally my humanness my integrity and how can they even do this it's so flagrantly offensive and. People who think they are more than people, more than other people, people are people and we are all pretty terrible but it's okay I guess.

Let me clumsily try to explain in too many inadequate words what David Foster Wallace did in the commencement address he gave to Kenyon College, or just this one song by Andrew Jackson Jihad

i don't know

tl;dr: people...

i can't write blogs every day two words D:

I'm working on making a mash-upped thing of that They Might Be Giants lyrics thing from the other day; about halfway done, but some songs won't import into Windows Movie Maker for some reason, so it's taking a while. Sounds really cool though.

blood alone moves the wheels of history

2009-11-03T21:06:00.007-05:00

Today I was GOING to write about the niceness of Stephen Colbert's butt, but ohoho this, so no.

Stephen Colbert is a man, a great man. He has a dog named Gipper. He has had a space station treadmill, a bald eagle, a turtle, a falcon, an elephant seal, a greyhound dog, a junior ice hockey team junior mascot, a beetle species, a spider species, the five remaining numbers of the Sierpinski Problem, and an airplane named after him.

He has sung duets with John Legend, Elvis Costello, Barry Manilow, Tony Bennett, John Hall (of Hall & Oates fame), Willie Nelson, Jon Stewart, Chaka Fattah, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Steve Carell, Paul Dinello, and JOHN DARNIELLE.

He has fathered and popularized dozens of words, including truthiness, wikiality, factiness, wordanista, superstantial, megamerican, grippy, juiciful, fract, freem, Lincolnish, eneagled, gutly, and dumb-ocracy.

March 20th has been declared Stephen Colbert day in Oshawa, Canada.

His DNA was shot into space.

He has his own ice cream flavor.

His portrait hangs in the National Museum of American History.

He's a dashing man; his name is Stephen.

And therein lies the problem.

Friends, comrades, let us join together as one. Let us rise up, let us speak out. We must make our voices heard. Let us stand in unisonian solidarity and petition: STEPHEN COLBERT CHANGE YOUR FIRST NAME TO JOHN.

FOR IT IS TOGETHER THAT WE (AND THE NOBLE AND PURE CAUSE OF JOHNDOM) PREVAIL.

That is all.

let's stick together cause we're number eight

2009-11-02T20:11:00.006-05:00

everything right is wrong again push me in the face there go i but for my face all i know why it takes that long ago we'd build a time machine and i'll sink it first avenue stage name please call me crybaby check this out i've got something to say if there was a me for you the guy who hit me in the eye out it doesn't cost anything to poke your hand inside the puppet head eating the head on the opposite shores that surround it we're getting mental notes of just exactly where i lost the plot thins she's waiting for my ride but i want to wait inside an empty glass eye hoping you won't be back to brooklyn fell between the grating and we're just go nuts at the top of the tree a finger of my glove and every time push the water let me sail cries the engine siren fills the air and it sticks like a broken record of my unspeakable crimes in previous lives that are claimed and none who have witnessed all you modern day troubadours out from my pockets and cats dance undercover for the man if they're just as embarrassing as we think and i should be allowed to blurt the merest idea to break the chain i came to get my mini-bike returned a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf for all my new friends have seen him hiding underneath every shell there's a story as a shill in a traveling through outer space

must contain

2009-11-01T23:18:00.018-05:00

go outside on a cold fall night. breathe in the smell of burning wood and leaves. take a walk. let the air bite through your jacket, into your skin. look at the fallen leaves illuminated in street lights. walk, keep walking. try not to trip over uneven cracks in the sidewalk. your mind feels clear, save for the word soliloquy. whisper it to yourself, maybe. look up through the canopy of branches and dying leaves above you, at the moon. it is full. stupid terrible werewolf jokes. you hate werewolves. there's a dog across the street, and it is looking at you.

so.

2009-10-12T22:08:00.002-04:00

Need to stop thinking so much. Always get depressed when I think. Wish I was stupid. I think it'd be easier.

my dads

2009-10-11T23:38:00.000-04:00

You: sorry
You: that was an accident
Stranger: i'm not so sure.
You: i really meant to paste
You: you disabilities!!!!!!!
You: that
You: but still
You: my fault
Stranger: them dogs is hell don't they
You: YES
You: ima dog irl
You: so it's pretty hard
Stranger: IMA DOG IRL WTF HEH
You: teh
You: teh
You: TEH
You: TEH!!!!!
Stranger: 1.
You: 42
Stranger: Fuckin jerry.
You: jerry
You: good guy
Stranger: meh.
You: teh.
Stranger: have you ever wondered tho
Stranger: wtf ?
You: all the time
Stranger: hm
Stranger: is the answer 42?
You: to life, the universe, and everything
Stranger: disappointing
You: the ultimate question is the thing that is more so important
Stranger: mm.
Stranger: but what does the question -mean-
You: i think it's necessary to figure out what the question IS before what it means
You: so
You: sup
Stranger: Fuckin a.
Stranger: I got a phone call.
Stranger: Sellin the laptop.
You: this one right here?
You: or there...
Stranger: Oh no, I'm on my MAC PRO here.
Stranger: The laptop is over there.
You: oh nice you are a mac guy?
Stranger: I am -the- mac guy, actually.
You: how do you feel about the color yellow?
You: rad
Stranger: Yellow's for faggots; therefore it delights me
You: i see
Stranger: Hate PCs and zunes. Why should we convert our music to .dell files? mp3 is more convenient.
You: mp3 is super lossy though
Stranger: I prefer to encode at 32kbps, then I can fit so much more on my iPod.
You: hah but it sounds like total crap that way
Stranger: It sounds fine when I play it over the school PA on morning announcements.
Stranger: Nothing wakes up the kids like a track from The Locust.
You: And through drive through speakers, I'd imagine.
You: Airplane telephones.
Stranger: absolutely.
Stranger: Or cell phones. Soemtimes I call my dad and just rub the iPod on the phone to make the sound go through.
You: That's sweet :3
Stranger: Such a sad dad.
You: I have two dads!
You: They're really great.
You: One is a girl
You: actually
Stranger: A girl-dad.
You: which sounds weird but makes sense really.
Stranger: A Fe-father.
You: Yeah!
Stranger: A PaPaPuss.
You: My nickname's DoubleDad
Stranger: DoubleDad. What's their nicknames?
You: Andrwe is one
Stranger: Weird.
You: and blazu
You: is the other
Stranger: Weird.
Stranger: Are they glad dads?
You: They're very glad dads.
Stranger: Nice.
Stranger: I'm going to Japan next week.
Stranger: Any recommendations for what to do there?
You: Ummm
You: video games
Stranger: Japs do like their games. Nerd japs tho.
Stranger: Sigh. I guess it's dinner time.
You: Ok. It was good talking to you about my dads.
Stranger: Wish them well for me.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

omegle.

shut up shut up shut up

2009-09-26T23:08:00.002-04:00

on the legalization of marijuana

I really don't care if it is or isn't, the same people are going to do the same things regardless, basically, and complications and problem'll exist whether it's kept illegal or not...as it is, a lot of time and resources are spent on controlling/policing/cracking down on users. If it's made legal, the same difficulties and restrictions that accompany cigarettes and alcohol will still be there. My personal preference, though, I suppose, would be that it not be legalized, I am not a fan of anything that screws with people's senses of reality/impairs/distorts judgement.

a big sentence

2009-09-24T22:49:00.002-04:00

Don't want this to go a month without an entry so.

Wrote this for woofer
which is a beefier, 10x-ier version of twitter.

So the other day I did this thing and it was really cool. A lot of characters. And then so I'm David Foster Wallace and this sentence is going to be a million letters and Hal Incandenza is pretty fascinating and Mario's adorable with his S-shape arms and police lock and ever-present smile, generally being a cool kid, overall, is what Mario is; Hal's interesting and etc, he seems like me, only I'm infinitely less talented, I get Gately too though I've never done drugs or alcohol or whatever, and Eredy with his preparations for executions of quitting and stopping but never completely totally cutting off means of re-starting up that thing, telling yourself over and over that you're done and it's ruining you and the things you care about but you lie to yourself and believe it to a good enough extent, it's like doublethink maybe, for me it's not anything as exciting as cocaine, just procrastination and like putting off things to the point where I majorly screw stuff up or don't do whatever as well as I could, but what I do do is always enough or satisfactory because everything I do is stupidly satisfactorily okay and that's it, but then yes that bug in Eredy's steel grid shelving is great and amazing and is kind of symbolic, in my mind, at least, of every important and vital and big thing and the world in general sort of, that bug hiding in that hole and doing its unseen secret things.

this...it's a thing

2009-08-05T14:17:00.001-04:00

Oh man! Hi! I haven't written an actual blog since BEDA. Which is terrible and depressing and entirely believable.

I mean, I say a blog's-worth of things on twitter every day (two words), for sure, but COME ONE I SHOULD DO THIS MORE OFTEN.

Unless maybe I don't because I don't have things to say, which seems to be the most probable and definite reason the more I type stuff.

Typing stuff in Notepad, because I LIKE NOTEPAD.

Soap operas are horrible.

Sometimes stream of consciousness things are cool, but no.

Skype keeps blooping it up; I've been using skype a lot more often lately, big chats going on pretty much 24/7, and I'm glad I'm in them because normally I feel and am entirely left out by things like this, totally of my own doing though. I just can't stand the possibility of bothering/inconveniencing people by talking to/messaging them, so I don't. All the time, it's like this. And I think and think and think of how fun and cool and excellent it would be to talk to people, but also at the same time I'm totally petrified and feeling entirely inadequate and infinitely boring.

So then! Get this! I DON'T DO ANYTHING EVER. I JUST DON'T FREAKING DO ANYTHING.

Like the Mountain Goats concert that was 10 minutes from my house! I DIDN'T BUY TICKETS IN TIME. Just because I didn't have a concrete way to get there and back and because no one else wanted to go and I just didn't make the effort or something I DON'T KNOW WHY. Well I DO BUT IT SUCKS AND STUFF.

I am lame.

BUT YES SO NOW YEAH.

Failing at Infinite Summer!

Failing at reading anything besides twitter, in general.

I originally ended that last sentence with an exclamation mark, for some reason. It's not that exciting! OH MAN!

Raocow is a serious, literal genius, in my opinion. He is ridiculously brilliant. I am in love with the way his mind works. He is adorable. The things he says and their context and flow and form is freaking art.

And yeah, whatever, he says he's not like that normally, which obviously, okay, yes, but still, the fact that his mind comes up with the things it does how it does when it does, seriously, I am in love with him.

Rachael Ray is one of if not the worst things ever.

This blog is a fail.

not a blog

2009-07-08T12:20:00.004-04:00

I wrote this for English yesterday. It was supposed to be a persuasive thing, but it did not turn out so much argumentative-like, which, oh well. Very much thanks to Sara who I talked to about stuff and also to everyone else who volunteered, you guys are lovely. It's on the theme of happiness and imagining people complexly, cause that is always good to talk about.

John Green is a New York Times bestselling author. He has tens of thousands of fans, and he interacts with them daily through youtube videos, blogs, live internet shows, twitter, and countless other websites. Many teens cite him as their inspiration for taking up writing; his books have opened up the door to reading for thousands of kids. Through the youtube videos he makes with his brother Hank, he has spawned an entire community of thoughtful, caring individuals. Personally, John has influenced me more than any teacher I’ve ever had, though I’ve never even met him. He is admired by multitudes and is able to do what he loves for a living, but yet John is not a happy person.

One’s initial train of thought upon learning this would probably go something along the lines of “Why not? His life sounds great. I’d love to be in his position. He’s financially stable, works his dream job, gets to interact with this amazing community of people daily. What else does he want?” As humans, we are severely limited in our ability to understand others, and this can make life pretty terrible, but happiness, or at the very least contentment and acceptance, can be found when we realize and keep in mind that we are not alone, that everyone goes through the same thoughts and feelings of loneliness, sadness, and inadequacy that we do.

Author David Foster Wallace addresses this issue in a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College. After a lengthy monologue about how annoying and unfair and horrible the day to day grind is, during which the crowd actually cheers in understanding, in essence a collective applause acknowledging the unfairness of life, Wallace says that this is the exact opposite of how we should think (79). Instead, he says that the means to a better life lies within us, with how we choose to view the world. We must acknowledge that other people are as multifaceted and complex as we are, and that this choice “involves attention, and awareness, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day” (120). It is with this conscious choice to consider others and have compassion and to realize that they are just as real as we are that we will be able to be more happy, more understanding people.

A few months ago, John Green read David Foster Wallace’s speech during one of his live internet shows. After completing the speech, John discussed the meanings and implications of the text with his viewers:

We want people to acknowledge that we matter, that our griefs are real, that our joys are real, and we want that so much, and we think that being famous will get that, then famous people will care. So when you look at me, you might think, ‘Oh, it would be great to be John because people care about him, and they care if he does well, and they care if something terrible happens, and they like him, and therefore he’s going to like himself, he’s going to feel good on the inside.’ It’s not any different, really – and I promise – than it ever was. Because the truth is that no one is ever going to acknowledge the reality of you as completely as you would like them to. Even if your breakups are on the cover of US Weekly, they won’t feel the pain that you feel as completely as you want them to. (Green)

Accruing physical things, gaining fame, notoriety, respect, etc will not satisfy these needs that so desperately require fulfilling. As John says, we may want to be in his position, as it seems much more desirable and better than our own situation, but no amount of recognition will ever fill that hole…we will never be entirely satisfied with what we have. When we realize this, when we, in the small way that we can, decide to keep this idea in the forefront of our minds and choose to think of things from this perspective, our view of the world will become much more optimistic, and, ideally, we will be more content with our position and surroundings. Recognizing that we are not alone in our aloneness is an important, vital step toward happiness.

Many times, we think in ‘if only’s: If only I could get that promotion, if only I had that car, I’d be completely happy with my life if I was in his position. This greed, this constant desire to obtain, will not be placated by obtaining. In an interview, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, said “[Greed] becomes sort of limitless, sort of bottomless, and that leads to trouble. One interesting thing about greed is that although the underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, the irony is that even after obtaining the object of your desire, you are still not satisfied. The true antidote of greed is contentment” (Cutler 968-969).

Being content with what we have and being comfortable with our lot in life is another factor in determining our happiness. These concepts are not new; the Greek philosopher Epictetus puts forth the proposition that life is like a banquet: “Is a dish brought to you? Put out your hand and take a moderate share. Does the dish pass you by? Do not grab for it. Has it not yet reached you? Don’t yearn for it, but wait until it reaches you” (964). It may sound too simple to be true, but do not be fooled into thinking that this constant mindset of complacency is not easy. It takes effort and an ever-present awareness of one’s position in relation to others to fully attain contentment.

No one will ever feel completely understood; we as humans are incapable of entirely inhabiting the mind of another, and while this is what makes each person unique and special, it can also be destructive. Failure to complexly imagine the other can lead to quick judgments, incorrect assumptions, and unnecessary pain. Accepting this fact, embracing it, and acting upon it is the most vital, necessary part of life. Many of John’s books center around this theme: the importance of imagining the other complexly, acknowledging that it is our duty to consider, to think, to analyze, to care about the world, and, as David Foster Wallace put it, “The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it” (94).

no, still nothing of real stubstance, i suck so much!

2009-06-28T03:41:00.002-04:00

1. What do your friends think of you?
Quetzalcoatal Comes Through - The Mountain Goats [yay Mayan deities]

2. If someone says, “Is this okay?” You say?
The Day I Knew You Wouldn't Ever Come Back - The Decemberists [apparently it wasn't]

3. How would you describe yourself?
Resonant Bell World - The Mountain Goats [sometimes I am a starling, sometimes I am a kite]

4. What do you like in a guy/girl?
Good Friend - Violent Femmes [cool]

5. How do you feel today?
Greasy Kid Stuff - They Might Be Giants [hmm]

6. What is your life’s purpose?
Book Eight - Hank Green [I HAVEN'T EVEN READ THEM; LEAVE ME ALONE]

7. What is your motto?
Lack of Knowledge - Violent Femmes [that is not nice]

8. What do you think about very often?
Green Typewriters III - The Olivia Tremor Control [lies. i have never once thought of them]

9. What do you think of your best friend?
get away from me - best fwends [THIS THING IS SO MEAN]

10. What do you think of the person you like?
Green Machine - The Apples in Stereo [i have no idea what this song means]

11. What is your life story?
I'm Your Villain - Franz Ferdinand [i am not]

12. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Sandy Face - The Aquabats [YEAH! tent of diapers! face covered in sand!]

13. What do you think of when you see the person you love?
32 Footsteps - They Might Be Giants [they're walkin away from meeee D:]

14. What will you dance to at your wedding?
Pictures of Pandas Painting - They Might Be Giants [WORST. WEDDING. EVER.]

15. What will they play at your funeral?
Adair - The Mountain Goats [this is kind of fantastically perfect]

16. What is your hobby/interest?
Saigon Shrunken Panorama - The Mountain Goats [okay]

17. What is your biggest fear?
Nova Scotia - The Mountain Goats [basically]

18. What is your biggest secret?
The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets - Lemon Demon [TRUTH]

19. What do you think of your friends?
Key of 2 - Violent Femmes [prison musicians!]

20. What will you post this as?
Living a Lie - Violent Femmes [no i will not]

oh dear

2009-06-15T20:39:00.007-04:00

This is entirely terrible, I know I know I know. Written for some English class a long time ago.

Two Brothers, One Video Blog: A Whole New Kind of Society

Everyone knows what YouTube is; mention it to any teenager, and they’ll most likely give you a long list of videos you’ve gotta see. The popular video site is host to millions of videos, with tens of thousands more being uploaded every day. Though at first glance, the site may seem a repository of TV show clips and videos of drunk guys lighting firecrackers, YouTube fosters a sense of interaction and of community, giving anyone with internet access the ability not only to view the lives of others, but also to influence and participate in them. There is no better example of the utilization of YouTube to the ends of building a community than that of Nerdfighters, the group of people inspired, organized, and founded by brothers John and Hank Green.

In December of 2006, John proposed the idea of starting a video blog, or vlog, on YouTube as an alternate means of communicating. Because the two lived far from each other (at the time, John was living in New York and Hank in Montana), they relied mostly on textual forms of communication, and “because it was always done while they were doing other things,” their relationship was not strong, and they “never really connected.” They decided to stop all textual communication and to instead confer through daily video blogs for the whole of 2007, Hank uploading a video one day and John the next, Monday through Friday. They titled the project “Brotherhood 2.0”.

At first they talked back and forth mostly to themselves, but, as their viewership grew, the project evolved into an interactive society of John and Hank responding to their viewers’ comments and video responses. In mid-February, John named Brotherhood 2.0 followers Nerdfighters, a name he mistakenly took a video game’s title to be (it was actually called Aero Fighters).

Throughout the project, John and Hank initiated ideas or challenges that the whole community latched onto and fully participated in. This is one of the interesting, innovative sides of virtual communities. The instant adoration of and dedication to any suggestion put forth by the brothers reveal an interesting aspect of community: that people are much more apt to participate and fully engage in something when someone else takes initiative first. People like to be led and are happy to go along with someone they admire or respect. It has been frequently brought up in discussions that the Nerdfighter community is strikingly similar to a cult in many ways. Many Nerdfighters pledge their undying allegiance to the brothers and community and adopt a whole way of life according to what Hank and John deem important.

John and Hank have definitely realized and harnessed the power that they have acquired through their fans. They have set up a PayPal account to accept donations for charities; they have organized a “secret project for awesome” in which hundreds of viewers created videos promoting their favorite charities. When one viewer decided to quit college and fly to Bangladesh to use his saved up money to buy food and supplies for the people there, John and Hank spotlighted his efforts and donated money themselves, spurring the Nerdfighters to do the same. When the brothers see another Nerdfighter doing something awesome, they mention and support their efforts on their vlog, thus spurring other Nerdfighters to get involved in their projects. Hank and John have inspired dozens of similar channels which have also gained large viewerships, creating communities within communities.

It is wonderful that the brothers have used the opportunities they’ve acquired for good; they could have just as easily made the project all about themselves, for their own gain. Instead, they have created a community in which other people have been inspired to do something to make the world a better place. They’ve inspired to be more accepting of others, to be more generous, and to have pride in who they are.

The community the Green brothers have created has continued to grow. Nerdfighters are sincere, inspiring, dedicated, and driven viewers. Yet they are not merely viewers, but participants, members of an online family who support and help those in need, who band together to do awesome things, who share a common ideology that the world has the potential to be a great place and that it is up to them to make it that way.

PEEP STORY

2009-06-13T08:03:00.003-04:00

A long long time ago, some nerdfighters from the nerdfighter aim chat, or maybe the dftba chat, can't remember, wrote a story using etherpad.com, which lets you edit text and see others' edits in real time.

There were maybe five or six of us who collaborated on this. Good times.

There once was a Nerdfighter named Pablo. He was a solitary boy. On a particularly damp and lonely Easter Eve, he went to the JohnJacobJingleHymerShmit Grocery Store (JJJSGS, or Triple-J SGS) to buy some yellow peeps, which Pablo enjoyed cooking in the microwave.

BUT! These were no normal peeps. These peeps were really ALIENS!!!

Alien Ostrich Peeps!(AOP)

He bought two packages of the INFERNAL sugar blobs and took them home.

When Pablo microwaved the peeps, they bloated to an unfathomable size, their enormous, accusing, slightly melted eyes staring at him as if to say "WHY!? Why have you betrayed us?"

Pablo loved roasted peeps though, and desperately wanted a snack. Pablo stared at the peeps in the microwave as they continued to swell. They let out a strange growling noise. He began to struggle with his conflicting emotions. Should he give in to his desires for peeps, or give them a chance at life?

Just as they reached maximal size, he hit POWER OFF. He wondered if it was too late to save them.

As he opened the microwave door, a nasty, burnt odor wafted out, permeating the entire house, the smell saturating his jeans and "DFTBA" hoodie.

He turned away, searching the space around him for uncontaminated air to breathe. After waiting a few seconds, he turned back to find an empty microwave.

He examined the inside of the microwave more closely and found nothing but a few spots of sticky marshmallow and a green Post-It. The peeps were gone.

"AARGHH! This is tragedies!" Pablo exclaimed in the manner of a man-zombie who had a hunger, and the only thing that could cure that hunger was more Peeps (and not the alien kind). "I'M HUUUNGRY!"

He picked up the Post-It and read the mysterious note they had left. It said..."we can haz cheezburger? -peeps"

Pablo stood there in disbelief. He thought disbelievingly, "I don't believe this." He made a face. And on that face was a look of disbelief. He had a face, once. The fumes from cooking the peeps had melted it away. Pablo the Faceless Man was still hungry, regardless of whether he had lips or not.

He decided to search for the peeps. He looked high, he looked low, he looked to, he looked fro, but couldn't find even a molecule of marshmallow. "IT JUST ISN'T FAIR!" Pablo burst into tears and slumped down in the corner of the kitchen, utterly distraught.

He glanced up in the mirror. The sight of his face made him cry even harder. But then he noticed a tiny bit of yellow in his hood.

"Golly gee willikers!" he mumbled with his lipless mouth, shrinking in fright. He then grabbed his nearest weapon- a DEADLY spatula- and flipped the little bugger off his precious hood with a manly flick of the wrist.

"GTFO!!!" he yelped with his vocal chords. Thinking quickly, he thrust his hand upon a conveniently placed bottle of Strawberry Hill and commenced to pour it upon the heathen Peep. It let out a moan of peepy pain, then shrunk to its original not-so-intimidating size.

"Eureka!" Pablo shouted with joy. "I have found the cure!"

His elation was broken by the memory of the 4 other peeps that he had not found. They were definitely not in the house, so where could they be? "If I were a giant yellow alien peep on the night before Easter, where would I go?" he wondered. He thought back to the note. He remembered how wonderfully green it was and sighed with contentment.

Pablo locked himself in his room, shamed at his horrid facelessness. The Peeps had not returned, leaving Pablo alone, stricken by guilt. He had not known the Peeps were alive, and wished he had never gone to the Triple-J SGS on that fateful day.

Pablo had no mouth to eat with. He found himself desperately craving Cheez-its and and egg McMuffins. Three days passed. Then a knock came at Pablo's door.

"Yes...?" Pablo mumbled. "Who is it?"

"I am PeepMaster, Lord of the Ostrich Peeps, from planet AOP. You have comitted an atrocity by murdering my subjects. You must pay."

"But...but...I have no face...isn't that punishment enough???"

"NO!!" the Peepmaster boomed. "You must do us a favor. And this favor might be your downfall.." (duuu DUUUUUUUNNNNNNN)

"Wha?" Pablo stammered "Buh, huh?"

"We have been watching your 'vlogbrothers' via verizon broadband wireless for many months now. You must shave off John Green's left eyebrow!!!" the peep laughed manically.

"NOOOOO NEVERRRR!!" Pablo screamed...at least as much as he could with no mouth.

"That is not all." the Peep smirked,"You must buy ten catfish, let them rot for a bit, and then stuff them in Hank's guitar!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" Pablo cried. "Why would you do this, you decepticon!"

"NEED I REMIND YOU...Hank is responsible for the murder of many of my brethren. And John covered his face in Peanut Butter, which is STRONGLY against Peep law!!"

Pablo cried. He did not want to shave off John's eyebrow, or stuff rotted catfish in Hank's guitar.

"I refuse." Pablo said bluntly.

"If you do as we say...you will get your face back. If not, you will be chained to a gorilla named Poindexter Snuffalufagus for all eternity. In a room where you can smell Cheez-its and egg Mcmuffins, but never can eat them! The will be just out of reach...right where 3 billion peeps will be watching you FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!!!!!!!! *Mandark laugh*<---(Dexter's Laboratory refrence)"

Pablo stood up. "Okay, I'll do it."

Suddenly, in a brilliant flash of light, Pablo found himself standing on a spaceship..or that is what it looked like at least.

"This is Peep Space 9." A small peep shaped like a rabbit said, "Welcome aboard."

"And I am Jean Peep Picmarshmallow, Captain of this vessel," a bald peep said.

Pablo was confused, partly because he had no idea how a peep could be bald, as peeps have no hair--but mostly because Picard, who he assumed this Peep was named after, was not captain of Deep Space 9, which was actually a space station, not a space ship, anyway. He decided to ignore these facts because the situation was confusing enough. Just going with the flow was probably the best idea for now, seeing as he had just been kidnapped by Peeps. Which, according to all previous knowledge, was a very un-peeplike thing to do.

A hole opened up in the floor and a platform raised up with Hank Green.

"What are you doing here Hank?!?"

Hank didn't answer. He just started playing the party blower solo in real time. Do, do do do, do do do, do do do , do do do, do do do, do do do do do.

do, do do, do do do do do, do do do do do do do, do do do.

Pablo rolled over, and hit his iPhone alarm. "Ughh....." He looked over at 2 and half empty bottles of strawberry hill wine, and 5 empty packages of peeps. He then jumped out of bed and proceeded to call Ralph Culver, his best friend and handy-dandy dream expert, on the big white phone.

AND THEN THE WORLD EXPLODED THE END.

this is water

2009-06-04T03:42:00.006-04:00

This was my final project for graphic design. We had to make something with 16 pages or elements, chronicling an epiphany we've had. Originally, I was going to make it about when I first started to appreciate the English Stuff elements of literature, and the text was going to be bits of Catcher in the Rye, Paper Towns, Song of Myself, and the Mountain Goats' Tallahassee, but a few weeks before it was due, John read the speech that David Foster Wallace gave at a Kenyon commencement ceremony. And it kinda totally changed the way I look at and think of the world. Completely. Andbutso I switched to that speech and John's comments on it instead.

It means a lot to me, and I wouldn't share it with my physically present type friends, because they may/might not understand. But I trust you. I trust you, internet, because this kind of stuff is entirely what our relationship is based on. Words and thinking and connecting.

So here:

[click to be able to actually read things]

Everything is always about John Green.

2009-05-29T05:40:00.002-04:00

1. First thing you wash in the shower?
My hair.

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?
Don't like hoodies very much, but I have one with The Cheat in it, and that is pretty cool. It is black.

3. Do you plan outfits?
Nope. This often results in navy/brown/black combos :/

4. How are you feeling RIGHT now?
My eye itches.

5. What’s the closest thing to you that's red?
My wriststrong bracelet. Stephen Colbert is lovely.

6. Tell me about the last dream you remember having?
I cannot remember; I haven't had any vivid dreams in months, but it probably had to do with thisisnottom.com.

7. Did you meet anybody new today?
An oral surgeon.

8. What are you craving right now?
Chipotle. I am always craving Chipotle. Haven't had it since that time in Mr. Tanner's class for some econ party last year.

9. Do you floss?
No. I have sensitive gums.

10. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?
Sabotage. Also sauerkraut. And then of course Weird Al. And then twitter. And then Ben Folds.

11. Are you emotional?
no. *icy stare*

12. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
Probably not.

13. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?
Depends if it is soft serve or regular.

14. Do you like your hair?
No, it is full of split ends which is entirely my fault; I AM SO LAZY.

15. Do you like yourself?
I like the things I get to do and the people I know and the things I have access to; I only like myself when I think of clever witty things.

16. Would you go out to eat with George W.Bush?
If it was to Chipotle.

17. Would you throw potatoes at him?
Stupid choice of ammunition.

18. What are you listening to right now?
An Icy Hot commercial, and now something about laxatives, now I have turned off the tv and now John Green is reading the prologue of Paper Towns to me. (which you should buy [and also listen to/watch him read...an old revision...over a year before the book was published. I love youtube so much. Seriously it is so good.]) So yeah, I like John Green.

19. Are your parents strict?
I don't do anything; they don't need to be.

20. Would you go sky diving?
No. Not that I am terrified of it, but it just seems like there are a plethora of safer, easier ways to achieve the same end result, which is fear and also exhilaration. Like you could be chased by a dog, for instance. Or skype chat with Hank Green which I am still kind of freaking out about and fangirl a little every time the box pops up that says he's online.

21. Do you like cottage cheese?
Not at all.

22. Have you ever met a celebrity?
Not in real life, that I can remember. But through twitter hecks YES. Rainn Wilson favorited one of my tweets ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN GOATS NO LESS. And Brent Spiner replied to me. And Paul Feig sent me a DM which I couldn't stop smiling about for hours.

23. Do you rent movies often?
Never ever pay money to temporarily acquire things. I use the library. Or, lately, torrents. Which kind of makes me hate myself.

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you're in?
blah blah Edward-bashing joke blah blah blah

25. How many countries have you visited?
2 - America and also Canada. But it was only Niagara Falls Canada which is not Canada at all.

28. Have you made a prank phone call?
No, telephones are horrible.

27. Ever been on a train?
Yes, but not out of necessity or as a means of transportation. It was some kind of fun cool thing, to take a 30 minute train ride. What a waste of everything.

28. Brown or white eggs?
White. The brown ones make me nervous. I don't know them and am not familiar with them. Mysterious eggs.

29.Do you have a cell-phone?
Yes, but it is not connected to the World Wide Web, or Internet. What is this hyphen malarkey?

30. Do you use chap stick?
No, it's counterproductive; it just makes me lick my lips all the time.

31. Do you own a gun?
I have a cap gun. Or had. And also a toy gun that you think is just a laser pointer but then shocks you and then you knee the glass display case out of fear and stuff and you think you've broken it but oh good you haven't. And then you feel stupid and hope no one saw. They didn't. MLIA.

32. Can you use chop sticks?
THIS IS AMERICA.

33. Who are you going to be with tonight?
No one, but the newspaper person just threw a newspaper at our house, so that's something.

34. Are you too forgiving?
No one's done anything to me that was so horrible that I've forgiven them and they've hurt me again.

35. Ever been in love?
I fall hard for the ideas of things. But I don't know. I kind of love John Green. And I really love Chipotle.

36. What is(are) your best friend(s) doing tomorrow?
I don't have best friends.

37. Ever have cream puffs?
Lots and lots of expired ones.

38. Last time you cried?
Not sure, it might have been when I reread Looking for Alaska. Or when I came to terms with the fact that it was only my stupidity and idiocy that prevented me from seeing the Mountain Goats. I can't believe me. I am so dumb.

39. What was the last question you asked?
"OH HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. REALLY?"

40. Favorite time of the year?
Winter.

41. Do you have any tattoos?
No, but if I ever get one, it'll be just text, on the inside of my wrist, facing so I can read it, either a Mountain Goats lyric or John Green quote or DFW or Vonnegut. Maybe 'so it goes'. Or Walt Whitman or e. e. cummings, I don't know.

42. Are you sarcastic?
Yes.

43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect?
No.

44. Ever walked into a wall?
Not straight on, though I have literally run into a sliding glass door. It was night, and it had just been cleaned, and it was painful.

45. Favorite color?
Blue.

46. Have you ever slapped someone?
Yes, but I've never used all my strength in hurting someone.

47. Is your hair curly?
It was when I was younger, and it would be somewhat curly now if it wasn't so long.

48. What was the last CD you bought?
The last music purchase I made was vinyl, yes I am that cool, but before that I bought John Vanderslice's Romanian Names.

49. Do looks matter?
Unfortunately.

50. Could you ever forgive a cheater?
Depends on the kind of cheating.

51. Is your phone bill sky high?
No, I hate telephones, and also SKYPE is FREE.

52. Do you like your life right now?
Too general! Too broad! Impossible to answer unless specific.

53. Do you sleep with the T.V. on?
Only if I fall asleep with the tv on.

54. Can you handle the truth?
I don't know why someone would rather be fed easy lies, knowing that they're lies, than accept the truth. 'for your own good' is idiotic.

55. Do you have good vision?
Of course not, I am a nerd.

56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people?
I try not to hate. Imagine the other complexly. That is kind of a mantra.

57. How often do you talk on the phone?
Why are there so many questions about phones?

58. How do you feel about holding hands?
I am for it.

59. What are you wearing?
My Movies: Ruining the book since 1920 shirt which is unfortunate because I am going to see Star Trek again tomorrow, and I like to wear this one when I go to the movies. And also pants and stuff. Sorry Maureen. I'm #nopants in spirit though. Always.

60.What is your favorite animal?
For some reason the first thing that came to mind was beards?

61. Where was your default picture taken?
Five feet to the left.

62. Can you hula hoop?
To an extent.

63. Do you have a job?
No. I work for ChaCha. But I don't. They are not fun. I could, but I haven't logged in for six months or something. The questions are depressing and make me lose faith in humanity.

64. What was the most recent thing you bought?
A dozen books from an estate sale. Only a dollar. I am very excited.

65. Have you ever crawled through a window?
No, I am not a John Green character.

anticlimactic

2009-04-30T22:11:00.002-04:00

Build up build up BUILD UP LETDOWN.

I don't have things to say! I am lacking in thoughts.

WAIT. Supernovakgirl says PANTS. So I will blog about PANTS.

Pants are the best. No pants are also fantastic. You've got your parachute pants, hot pants, your jodhpurs. Boot-cut, flared, wide-leg, cigarette, skinny jeans. I am a fan of the more leisurely pants, myself. Pajama pants are great. Flannel. Sport pants, wind pants, whatever they are called. Those are my favorite.

And of course, there is the tale of my childhood and its abundance of #nopants. Can you have an abundance of an absence of something? I DO BELIEVE YOU CAN. As a child, I enjoyed the sandbox. So much so that I thought it necessary to remove my pants in order to be one with the sand. And in my excitement, in my three year old frenzy of sheer and utter joy, I bolted into the front yard, where our kindly old neighbor across the street, Mr. Browning, hollered GO BACK IN YOUR HOUSE AND PUT SOME PANTS ON.

So there's that.

INTERJECTION! BILL JUST PLAYED PARTICLE MAN! <3!

Suchducks is great. She likes They Might Be Giants, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Mountain Goats, the Decemberists, the Colbert Report, the Daily Show, the Deranged Millionaire, Anderson Cooper, Craig Ferguson, and beards. Her awesomeness is undeniable.

That is all.

So today is the last day of #BEDA. I will miss the hashtags, I will miss the 11:30 realizations and consequent fits of panic and chaos. I will miss my amazingly lovely, great BEDA buddies. It's been really awesome reading all your blogs and getting to know you guys, and I hope we will keep in touch, which is fantastically easy online. Hooray for twitter!

So, in conclusion:

:]

At the Point

2009-04-29T23:26:00.003-04:00

Sorry! I have to go to bed like NOW. So you get this thing I wrote when I was 14. And very much obsessed with Back to the Future. As is evident. See how many references you can spot! Hah.

“Come on, Breckin, I wanna go on the Dragster! It’s so awesome,” Marty whined.

Breckin shook his head. “Sorry, Marty, you probably can’t. There’s always a long line, and besides, nobody else wants to go on it, and we’re not going to wait, like, two hours just so you can. Maybe next time.”

“Breckin, you’re so dumb. You never let me do anything I want to,” Marty complained.

It was a warm, breezy summer day, and Breckin was taking his younger brothers, fourteen year-old Marty, and eleven year-old Michael, and his thirteen year-old sister, Sara, to Cedar Point. They pulled into a parking space and got out.

“Ah, Marty, be quiet. You always whine,” Michael told him.

“I do not, and anyway, you’re just scared to go on it,” Marty said.

“I am not. I just.... don’t feel like it, and Sara doesn’t want to either.”

“Yeah. Nobody else wants to go, so just quit talking about it,” Sara told Marty.

“All right, fine, but you guys are just scared. You’re all big fat chickens. You--”

“Nobody calls me chicken, Marty. Nobody!” Michael yelled. He started hitting and punching him.

“Guys! Quit! Stop,” Breckin yelled. He was getting really annoyed at Marty and Michael.

Marty and Michael stopped. Sara stuck her tongue out at them.

“All right, guys. Come on, cut it out. Everybody got their passes?” Breckin asked.

They each gave their pass to the gate worker, went through the turnstile, and headed to the midway. When they were all together, Breckin stopped them.

“Where should we go first?” he asked.

“Let’s go on the Millennium. Can we? Pleeease?” Marty begged.

“Yeah. I want to, too,” Michael said.

Sara was quiet. She didn’t know if she wanted to go on the Millennium. It was so big and fast, but if her little brother wanted to, she figured, she should, because if she didn’t, they’d never stop making fun of her.

“Sure, since we all want to, but not now. There’s probably a long line, and it looks so cool up there at night. Let’s wait till later, okay?” Breckin said.

“Well, can we go on the Blue Streak, then? There’s not that many people over there,” Sara said. She liked the Blue Streak. It wasn’t as high or as fast the Millennium, and it was fun.

“Yeah, and then we can go on the Calypso and those little racecar things,” Michael said. He moved his arms back and forth like he was steering a car.

“Let’s go. Come on, you guys!” Marty yelled. He took off in the direction of the Blue Streak.

“Hey, Marty, slow down. You don’t have to run!!” Breckin called out after him.

After they went on the Blue Streak, they went on the Calypso, then the racecars, and then the Calypso again.

“Ugh. I don’t feel so good.” Breckin pretended to puke on Michael. Michael screeched and jumped away from him. “Let’s walk around and decide where to go next.”

They headed over to the bumper cars and the Wildcat. Breckin wanted to go on the bumper cars first, so they all got in line.

Marty ran to his favorite car, jumped in, put on his seatbelt, and yelled, “Hi ho, Silver!”

Sara rolled her eyes. Marty was so weird sometimes. She went to the opposite corner. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Marty when he was driving. Breckin sat down in the car next to her. She suspected that he was thinking the same thing.

She tried to stay clear of Marty, but he kept chasing her.

“Marty, go away,” she giggled.

Marty cackled and didn’t pay attention to where he was going. He slammed right into the wall. Sara drove by him and laughed.

“Ha ha. Reeeal funny. Just wait till I get out of here,“ Marty said sarcastically, but he couldn’t figure out how to get his car to go backwards and get away from the wall. Just as he finally got his car turned around, the ride stopped. “Awww, man! Hey, Breckin!” he called, “Can we go on it again?”

Sara shook her head frantically at Breckin. “Nooo. No more bumper cars. How about the Iron Dragon?” he suggested.

After the Iron Dragon, everyone was tired and getting hungry, so the family went to the Red Garter Saloon to get something to eat for dinner. After they ate, Michael saw that there weren’t very many people in line for the Millennium Force.

“Hey, Breckin, look. There’s hardly anybody in line for the Millennium. Can we go now?”

“Uh-oh,” Sara thought, “I don’t want to go on the Millennium. It’s too big, way too big, and fast.” She began to worry.

“Uh, I don’t know. Do you think we should? Right after we ate? You don’t want me to puke on you again, do you?” he asked slyly.

“Huh-uh. No thanks,” Michael laughed.
“So, let’s go on that later, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Marty grumbled.

“Thank goodness,” Sara thought. She did not want to go, ever.

“Can we go on the train? That way we don’t have to walk because my feet are starting to hurt,” Sara suggested. She wanted to get as far away from the Millennium as she could. That way, she figured, they might run out of time going on other rides and not be able to go on it.

“Um, anyone not want to?” Breckin asked.

“I don’t care”

“Sure.”

“Ok, then. Let’s go.”

They all got on the train, everyone except for Marty, that is. He was busy throwing his garbage away and didn’t see that the train had started to pull away.

“Hey! Wait! Stop!” he screamed. He ran along the train and tried to get on, but his foot slipped. Breckin reached for him, grabbed his arm, and pulled him in.

“What were you doing!?” Breckin was mad. “You could’ve gotten hurt. Now you are going to be right next to me for the rest of the day.”

Michael and Sara stared at Marty.

“What are you looking at? All of you are just stupid,” Marty scowled.

“Marty! You are gonna be in big trouble. Mom and Dad are going to be really mad,” Breckin scolded.

“Sorry,” he grumbled.

After the train ride, they went on the Cedar Creek Mine Ride, the swings, and the antique cars.

“It’s getting kind of late. We better get back to the Millennium if we’re going to get on it before we have to leave,” Breckin said.

“Great,” Sara thought, “he remembered. What am I going to do?”

They rode the train back to the Millennium, and the train didn’t leave without anyone this time.

Breckin, Marty, and Michael were all getting in line when Sara said, “I don’t feel too good. Do I have to go? I might get sick.”

“Yeah, right,” Michael said, “You’re just scared. You’re scared of a dumb old roller coaster. Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Sara’s a scaredy cat!”

“Yeah, Sara, you’re just scared. You’re not sick. You’re just a chicken. You weren’t sick when we went on all of those other rides. Hah!” Marty chimed in.

“Fine. I’ll go. See? I’m not scared.” Sara got in line with her brothers. Now, she really didn’t feel well. She was scared. She was really scared, but she wasn’t going to admit it.

As she waited in line, she got more and more worried. She looked up at the top of the lift hill 310 feet up. She followed the track with her eyes, then down, then up another huge hill.

Breckin noticed she was looking worried. “Sara, are you all right? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She gulped. “Everything is great.”

“Are you sure? You can sit next to me if you want to. Marty was going to, but I don’t think he’ll mind. They can sit in front of us.”

“Okay,” Sara said. She didn’t want to sit next to Marty or Michael. They’d make fun of her the whole ride. Breckin knew she was nervous.

They went toward the back of the car. She got in the seat next to her big brother. Marty and Michael sat in front of them. Sara was scared, but there was nothing she could do now. She put her seatbelt on.

“You ready?” Breckin grinned. “Come on, Sara, don’t be so worried. Everything’s going to be fine. You know, it’s not like there’s really anything to be scared of. It’s safe. You’re not going to fall out or anything.”

“Thanks, Breckin,” she thought, even more worried than before, “That made me feel a lot better.”

“Clear!” the workers yelled. The train lurched out of the station and quickly started to go up the lift hill. Sara squeezed her eyes shut. The train neared the top of the hill. Sara could hear Marty and Michael scream, but she wasn’t going to open her eyes.

“Yeah!” Breckin yelled. He threw up his hands. She felt the train start to fall, faster and faster. She opened her eyes for a second, but quickly closed them. They went down the first hill and started going up the next.

Sara opened her eyes. “Hey,” Sara thought, “This is kind of fun.” She looked over at Breckin. He had his hands up and was laughing. “But not that fun.”

As the ride went along, Sara started to feel stupid for being so scared. When the car swung around the last corner and back into the station, Marty got out of his seat and took off running down the exit ramp.

“Marty! Where are you going now?” Breckin yelled.

“I told you Breckin, I’m going to that picture thing!” Marty yelled over his shoulder. “Me and Michael made weird faces at the camera.”

Breckin sighed and got up to follow him. Inside the photo shop, Sara caught up to her brothers. They were all looking at their picture. Sara looked up. She looked like she was having a great time.

“Hey, Breckin.” She pulled at his sleeve. “That was fun. Can we go on it again?”

Seriously, list all the references. There are a LOT.

bands

2009-04-28T23:35:00.003-04:00

I don't have much of anything to say today, so I suppose a big old list of bands I've been meaning to get into would be cool. There are so many!

- John Vanderslice. He's John Darnielle's friend, they just finished a joint tour, the EP he and John collaborated on, Moon Colony Bloodbath, is FANTASTIC, and I love his voice. Just ordered his new album today :D

- The Decemberists. First saw them on the Colbert Report during the greenscreen/Rock & Awe: Countdown to Guitarmageddon epic fiasconess. I got the Crane Wife but never listened to more than a few songs, just recently discovered the absolute brilliance of The Hazards of Love. Colin Meloy is <3. His lyrics are ridiculously literary.

- The Weakerthans. I favorited one of their songs on Pandora ages ago, and one of their lead guys was on Ships and Dip V, this cruise thing, that John Darnielle and Barenaked Ladies were on. I think. I think his name is John too. That is perfect.

- Andrew Jackson Jihad. I think Blaze, suchducks Blaze, mentioned them on teh twittarz, and we went on a crazy yt spree, and they are really great. They're like Neutral Milk Hotel, kinda.

Sorry for the lack of links, I BEDA procrastinated :/

Might add them later :D

lamentations

2009-04-27T21:58:00.003-04:00

Waaaaugh D: I have to stop procrastinating. I really really really really have to stop procrastinating. Everything is building up to this one point, and so is the stress, and I am going to go insaaaaaane! I feel like that guy in Infinite Jest with the crack and crap. Last time, no more, no more, tell everybody to not be enablers, say no no matter what, get rid of everything that allows this to happen. Tell yourself you're not going to do it again, it's so harmful, nothing positive about it, you don't know why you do it anyways, it's just a big hole of suck. But then of course you still have the means to do it if you REALLY wanted, but you tell yourself you don't and won't. But you know you are lying, but you aren't. DOUBLETHINK! doulbeplusungood doublethink. I LIKE BOOKS.

So yeah, willpower: I lacks it.

dr. m*hl

2009-04-26T23:29:00.003-04:00

My geography prof is odd. And nerdy. And hilarious. And I love him.

He enjoys talking about specific things. Repeatedly. One day, I kept a list of everything he talked about. Here is that list:

-fish
-espionage
-Roosevelt
-my book
-fish
-the word "fuzzball"
-my book
-wine
-bringing something risque/slightly inappropriate up, then dismissing it, then alluding to it
-my book
-bringing something risque/slightly inappropriate up, then dismissing it, then alluding to it
-manufacturing process of random product
-history as it relates to Ohio
-the word "fuzzball"
-espionage
-history as it relates to Ohio
-architecture
-history as it relates to Ohio
-gambling
-freshness of seafood
-wine
-seafood
-my book

The end.

a trip to the library

2009-04-25T23:32:00.005-04:00

Today, I asked my parents to drop me off at the library on their way to the store. They did. I needed to check out books about Cedar Point because I must do a 15 minute presentation on its history on Tuesday.

I found the books I needed. I looked in the YA section to see if they'd gotten a copy of Paper Towns yet, which they had. Hooray. I wrote little notes for PT and a copy of Alaska. No Katherines. I feel bad for that book. It is always left behind.

While I was writing the notes, two boys, teenagerishlike, kept snickering quite loudly at something they were watching on one of the computers. This went on for a good ten minutes. I went back to the YA books to stick the notes in there, and when I passed by the computers, they were still laughing. It was loud. They were being disruptive. The information help desk librarian was not happy. She told them very sternly that she had asked them multiple times to leave that site, and if you don't comply with what I am saying- no, I've asked you repeatedly to stop, now, etc etc. And they just back talked and mumbled and said things under their breath.

NOW. MAN. If ANYONE EVER reprimands me like she did them, I think about it. Constantly. Feel horribly. For the entire day. And then at night. And then intermittently throughout that week. And seriously. I will remember it for the rest of my life. And it will haunt me. And I will feel like crap, and there will be a big knot of regret in my stomach whenever I think about it.

I know all the people I wronged in first grade. I feel terrible about each and every one of them. No amount of apologizing and accepted apologies makes me feel any less worse. And these things aren't even IMPORTANT! They're the most trivial slights. So much so that the people they were against forgot about them within that week. Month maybe. But I remember the time I wrote "Sara Corey has no brain" on that freaking activity card with that freaking grease pencil in first grade. It kills me.

I highly doubt Sara Corey even remembers who I am.

hypothetical nerdbabies

2009-04-24T23:08:00.004-04:00

Any time I am in the presence of/charge of/general vicinity of children, my primary goal and focus is to nerd them up as much as possible. Kids wanna watch some tv? HERE COME THE 123s. Read a book? Yeah! Cool! I'll make 'em try to sound out words, I'll ask 'em questions. Do it to it! Kids have got to be brought up in an environment in which learning is fun and good and exciting! I hate how it's looked upon as work and un-fun BECAUSE IT IS NOT. Not unless you connote it with negativity. LEARNING IS FUN. IT IS PROFITABLE AND IMPORTANT AND FUN.

I freaking love when we put Here Come the ABCs on and the kids spazz out to E Eats Everything and hop along to Clap Your Hands. There is nothing more adorable than a nerdbaby. Oh my gosh, if I ever get to be the primary influence in a kid's life, I will have that kid reading by age 3. And hurling Shakespearean insults at 1st grade bullies. And they will know and appreciate THE ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY AND WORK OF THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS. They will know everything about James K. Polk and the sun and the heart and that shooting stars are not stars and SO ON.

They will read Encyclopedia Brown and have epic reasoning skillz. I will train them in the ways of thisisnottom. And I'll be danged if they don't learn the accordion and/or ukulele.

mountains and things

2009-04-23T23:21:00.004-04:00

I have forgotten about this again. Sorry :/

On the way home from school today, I was looking out the window, and the sunset was amazing, and the clouds, they'd formed an awesome kind of wall of darkness, up until a certain height, almost all the way around. It reminded me of the mountains in Tennessee, waking up every morning and going out onto the balcony porch, sitting on the swing, taking in the sunrise. And everywhere in Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, anywhere, you were always surrounded by mountains in the distance. Not overbearing, just barely there, an amazing backdrop. And it made you feel tiny. But not insignificant. Made you feel free. You were so small and the world was so huge, you were dwarfed by the hills, hills you were never aware of or acknowledged in your entire life until you were there in the midst of them. But they were always there, have always been, always will be. And also, whenever we go up near Lake Erie, you can see the vastness of the water as a 1/3 sky, a huge unending stripe of water out in front of you, almost as if it is above you, like it should come flowing down the streets, sweeping away everything and you in its path. But no, it just sits there, this monolithic thing.

So I tried to imagine that those clouds were mountains, came so so close to fully believing it. But alas.

quick bedodododo

2009-04-22T22:40:00.002-04:00

Very fast. Tomorrow is going to be heavy. 8 pages of final project to show teacher in graphic design, not totally done, but I think that'll be ok.

Then math test. Not ok. No no no. I can't do it. Cannot memorize all the things that I need to. My mind does not work that way. Too much information to digest and analyze and process. Waaaay too much.

And THEN. Then I have a geography test, which will be fine because he read off the questions and answers on Tuesday, and last time, all I did was read over everything I'd written down once, and all was good. So that will be good. But it's very stressful. Makes me uneasy. Blerughh.

Then this weekend, I need to make a 15 minute powerpoint presentation on the history of Cedar Point, which I must then give on Tuesday. Buh.

1984 and children and so on

2009-04-21T23:09:00.010-04:00

Soooo I saw 1984. 'twas great. I got there a bit early, then went in, sat next to an older couple. Even though we were the first ones to be seated, we were usher'd to like 10 rows back, which was fine, the configuration of the theater was lovely and we could see and etc. But that meant that scores of (I thought) high school peoples would take up all those rows. NO. NOT TRUE. I am bad at guessing ages, but these kids could not have been past 8th grade, they were probably even younger.

Now I am sure they did not read the book in class. It's heavy, violent, and dark. Obviously. Why would a teacher think it a good idea to take 12 year olds to a play which they are pretty universally incapable of fully grasping the themes and implications of?

Maybe I am underestimating middle school brains. But I don't think so. Judging from their (extremely vocal) reactions to scenes, no. They did not. They laughed through almost the entirety of the scenes when Winston was in the Ministry of Love. Because, yeah, watching a man have everything right and true and sane beat and tortured out of him is hi-LARIOUS.

Also, the old man next to me fell asleep and started snoring, which was lolz.

So YES. The play itself was amazingly fantastic. Or it was to me. Though I think I seem to be somewhat blindly enthusiastic about things after I experience them. Something like that. Not exactly. Any time I go to a movie, I like it, think it was great. Valkyrie was amazing, and The Day the Earth Stood Still was pretty good. Then I come home and later see that everyone else (it seems) thought they were crap. *I* liked them. This doesn't happen with movies are undeniably crap, though. Like, I was not disillusioned in the least by Are We There Yet?. That movie suuuuucked.

The performance was great. I shall say that again. I really loved the set and how they changed scenes and the lack of props. Very minimalist. It was pretty ace. The stage was all drenched in black and blue lighting, and the telescreen was in the form of a big ol' ominous sinister white circle in the not-quite-center of an even bigger and more ominous circle. As depicted in this picture. i has hawt photography skillz.

Beforehand, I was wondering how they were going to do everything, as plays are auditory and visual experiences, and the majority of 1984 is all in thoughts and discreet actions. But it worked out fine, I think. They talked openly a few times in front of the telescreen, which wouldn't have worked, but whatever whatever it was great.

I don't know if you can see in the picture, but the only props that were used were chairs and two screen partition things that were repositioned and relocated and rotated and such for each scene. It was nice.

In conclusion, kids do inappropriate things, I like 1984 a whole lot, and old men snore and are consequently elbowed by their wives who are not entirely happy with the attention that the repeated, sustained graaaaarhhhgs draw to her husband and, subsequently, by association and physical proximity, to herself.

meh

2009-04-21T00:37:00.002-04:00

Allow me to compensate for that well-thought out blog yesterday with terrible, horrible, late, crap crap today.

I forgot about BEDA. This is late. I blame thisisnottom. And also myself. Mostly myself. I was hoping to get through this without any late days (late = my computer's clock says 12:00 or greater). BUT ALAS.

At least I was doing something awesome, though. I could have been...doing art history homework. THAT would have been lame.

Tomorrow/today I am going to see 1984! At my college! Performed by people! And I am skipping my morning classes for this! And it only cost me 6 dollars! And 3 hours of time to work on my graphic design things! And one math lesson (which I am honestly a little bit terrified of the consequences of).

Just read 1984 a few weeks ago, and I LOVED IT. So I am SUPER PSYCHED to be able to see this HOORAY.

I want to talk about TINT, but I don't want to think or expend the brain power necessary to do so. So. Suffice it to say (suffices to say?) that it is confusing and terrifying and ridiculously interesting and complicated and growing and expanding and hard and fun.

That is all.

imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia

2009-04-19T21:46:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future. And the past. It's kind of hard not to, as basically every single thing we do is for the future, to prepare.

I found this presentation on ted a month or so ago; its title grabbed my attention. Nostalgia for a future that never happened. Very similar to that great quote from Alaska, after which this entry is titled (that was a horribly awkward sentence).

Interpretations and depictions of the future have always interested me; ever since I was little, watching Back to the Future II, I was greatly amused at how far off they were, how totally wrong they'd gotten it. Granted, 2015 is not here yet, but I highly doubt that in 6 years we will have flying cars or hoverboards or be wearing ridiculous plastic neon clothing or throw out bundles of laserdiscs in the trash.

It's interesting though, to see what people imagine the future to be like. How much of it stems from their hopes? Extrapolations of current technology and trends, taken further? It tells a lot about a person, a culture, a time period, the way they imagine and construct these things.

In this video, Bruce McCall "paints a future that never happened." He calls it retrofuturism, "looking back to see how yesterday viewed tomorrow, and they're always wrong. Always hilariously, optimistically wrong."

It's 13 minutes long, and I don't blame you for not watching it if you don't, but it's insanely fascinating.

"Somebody once said that nostalgia is the one utterly most useless human emotion."

Useless in the technical, tangible, real sense, but, nevertheless, it holds so much. Maybe it is useless. But I thrive on it. I document everything I can. I love that the timeline of my life can be reconstructed through photographs, papers, journals, my daily online activity. It absolutely floors me. I cannot comprehend when people delete things, throw away documentation of their life. The trail of me I leave behind is such a precious thing.

And ultimately, it does not matter. But it does.

more websites. and then i woke up!

2009-04-18T23:56:00.002-04:00

I only have 20 minutes to do this, so AAAAH. Hello beda buddies :D I've had fun reading your blogs. They are fantastic. And now I feel like crap for the suckiness of this one. But they will get better! If I can stop procrastinating!

Annnd

1) sStuff White People Like - Everything they say is true. So, so true. Ugly sweater parties, funny or ironic tattoos, black music that black people don't listen to any more, hummus, frisbee sports...

2) Pets Who Want To Kill Themselves - Don't put that chihuahua in a skirt! No. Don't! Just, don't.

I know, I know he looks happy. But he's just putting on a brave face. Inside, his soul is slowly dying.

3) Music + Pixels! - Dude (or lady) takes user-suggested song lyrics and graphic-art-izes them. So pretty.

4) todayandtomorrow - Lots of awesome, beautiful, elegant, sharp designs/architecture/photos/whatnot. One of my favorite sites for pretty things.

5) thedieline.com - photos and descriptions of cutting-edge product packaging. I'm a sucker for this stuff.

this is THE most beautiful things I have ever seen. Without a doubt my favorite picture of all time. So gorgeous.

6) lowercase l - blog of pictures of signs, papers, posters, notes, graffiti with the oh-so-weird and peculiarly common lowercase l amidst all capital letters.

AND also! I did this today:

utilizing Famous Alan and Wheezywaiter's Build-A-Blog project resources

bee's wits

2009-04-17T23:58:00.003-04:00

Alright alright alright. I should think of things throughout the day to talk about, yes I should. Alas.

I suppose I will share some of my favorite blog-based websites with you. There are so many greatawesomeweird things floating out there 'round the series of tubes, and a lot of it is crap. I will not be showing you any of those sites, because that would be stupid and pointless. And while I am, in general, a big fan of stupid and pointless, you are probably not. So here are some good un-stupid and anti-pointless sites.

1) foundmagazine.com - this site collects and displays found stuff. Notes, drawings, cards, letters, reports, pictures, lists, homework, what-have-you. In addition to the physical magazines they sell, the site is updated each day with two new finds. The brilliance/hilariousness/beauty of discarded or lost objects is astounding. Each contains a whole world, a unique back story; so fun to imagine the circumstances behind every piece. One of my recent favorites:

2) labeltheworld - There is this guy. He labels things. All things. I don't know why, but I often find myself crying from laughter at some of the pictures. Things toying with scale crack me up.

3) MANBABIES! - Gosh, I love this site, though I am surprised it hasn't induced any nightmares. Yet. Photoshopped pictures swapping men and baby heads. FANTASTIC.

4) overheardeverywhere.com - Quite possibly my favorite site ever. Ohhh, the lolz.

Wildly bearded hobo riding rusty bicycle and wearing only one shoe and parachute pants: Why, hello miss. Would you be interested in entering into a mutually beneficial body massage arrangement?
Surprised, redheaded woman: Uhhhhh, not today, thank you.
Hobo: I'll try back later.

Queen West
Toronto
Canadia

5) Cake Wrecks - Crappy, terrifying, disturbing, hilariously bad cake decoration/designs. The commentary is fantastically witty and great as well.

6) 100waystokillapeep - This.

7) lunchbagart - There is this guy. He draws things. On paper lunch bags. They are majestic:

I didn't even make it a third of the way down my feed list. Perhaps I shall talk about more another day. But it is 11:56 now, and I gots to hurry.

Ok ok ok I am done.

That is all.

EDIT: Oh hey! I post all of my most favorite pictures/videos/quotes/pages/etc I stumble across/upon here valerie2776.tumblr.com. You should look!

books and lists and books

2009-04-16T23:44:00.003-04:00

No time again! I must manage my time better. Or take less naps. Or both. I'm watching Dr. Noise Bill on blogtv now, and he is singing a song to Famous Alan.

I will talk about books.

Decided to do the 50 books in 2009 thing, but I have failed miserably so far.

Books I've finished:
-The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Vol 1
-The Great Gatsby
-Looking for Alaska (reread)
-Animal Farm
-1984
-When You Are Engulfed in Flames

6. And the year is is almost a third over. FAIL.

I've got 4 books I've started/am in the midst of...
-More Information Than You Require
-Leaves of Grass (oh so good)
-22 and 50 Poems (ee cummings. also good. and cryptic. and exciting and great.)
-Slaughterhouse-Five (Hoping to finish this one either tonight or tomorrow. It's already made its way into my favorites list, for sure.)

Did any of you take the 50-in-2009 vow? How goes it? Any other commitments/goals/resolutionso? How're they going for you? Good? GOOD. Do tell.

Also, I haz a Goodreads account. It's so hard to find people you know on there, so if you have one, it would be fantastic of you to add me. If you would. I love you.

Books at the top of my to-read list:
-INFINITE JEST (I MUST GET THIS)
-Octavian Nothing Vol 2
-Brave New World
-House of Leaves

Another short unnecessary list designed to take up room and make this appear longer when it is in actuality horribly last minute and very bleh:
-cats
-NASA
-string cheese
-the sandwich maker
-I Don't Feel Like Dancing by The Scissor Sisters
-potholes
-loopholes
-black holes
-the Canadian quarter stuck in that vending machine
-crabs
-rubber cement

fast blog about stupid math

2009-04-15T22:55:00.001-04:00

Math is not fun. It is not fun at all. I do not enjoy it. I do not like doing it, I do not like thinking about it, I DO NOT LIKE IT. Least applicable to real life. The stuff I am doing anyway. I do not want logarithms. They can go away. I know that they are important for some things, probably for a lot of things, but these are not things that I need to be concerned with. I cannot use inverse functions to better myself. And as nifty as synthetic division is, it is not useful for anyone unless they are a math person who does math things all day. Or unless you are in math class. Which is not cool.

DOWN WITH MATH UNLESS YOU ARE A MATH PERSON. Also, if you are a math person, I appreciate you very much. Thank you for dealing with the mind-numbingly monotony that is mathematics. Gosh!

another blog in which i say (almost) everything that comes into my brain

2009-04-14T23:17:00.001-04:00

I have no time again! Other things are taking up time! Some of the other things are exciting, and some of the other things are necessary, and some of the other things are boring. But they are mostly exciting! And that is great, and that is fun. But the necessary and boring parts are draggin' me down, maaan.

More and more I am deciding that graphic design is not what I want to do. It is not art. Not the kind of art that is the important part of art. To me. It is just creating to an end. There is no meaning behind it. No deep or real or important meaning. Or not one that is interesting. Thus, boring.

I don't know what I want to do. Well, no. I know a lot of things, a near infinite amount of things, that I want to do, but none of them (maybe some of them, if I tried really hard, which I do not like to do most of the time) are really self-sustaining things. I cannot make a living from reading blogs, from looking at pretty things, from thinking about things, from reading books, from twittering (HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT JOB BE?). I guess these could be jobs, but not in the fun, easy, commitment-free way that they are now. And that is what I fail at. Work ethic. For things that matter and are hard and take effort.

I can see myself being absolutely happy (kind of) just packing boxes all day, inspecting parts, reshelving books, things like that. Because they do not involve a lot of mental effort. Or, maybe because there is a set route and way and method of doing these things, and I can learn this method and follow it, and I can know for certain that I am not screwing things up, that I am doing things right, that people are getting exactly what they expect out of me.

One of my greatest fears is being thrown into a situation and having to do something that I do not know 100% how to, or, maybe, having to do any task in which I know I CAN'T know if I am doing everything correctly. So. I am afraid of failure. That is all.

WOW. Kind of depressing. And stuff. But not really. I don't know. My mind has been all slkdajfasd;lkfghah lately. This is fun.

my day, very quickly. and lacking very many personal pronouns

2009-04-13T22:15:00.001-04:00

Again, thisisnottom has consumed my evening, and even more so than normal with all these John revelations and aaaah!

Nothing planned to talk about, so I'll just do a rundown of my day. Or something. Hah. When I get going really quickly/hurriedly, I leave out first halves of sentences. Like 'nothing planned to talk about'. I HAVE nothing planned. This is not helping the pace, the explaining. GAH!

Woke up, laid in bed, was confused by the apparent time on my cellphone. Was early. Went back to sleep, sort of. Was too paranoid about missing the alarm to actually fall asleep, ended up checking said phone many, many times, thinking it was about an hour later than it actually was. Finally got up, blah, blah, went to math class.

Had to sit around campus for two hours afterward because my mother is doing some kind of work training thing this week and next, so my dad had to pick me up, which he could not do until after work, which was late. Sat in the medical-y building (they have nice chairs), started Slaughterhouse-Five (WHICH IS SO GOOD). Listened to TMBG's 85 demo tape, went over to another building to get lunch (cinnamon roll and Mountain Dew Code Red [healthy, yes]), went back to science-y building.

Read more Vonnegut. Got an @realjohngreen text on mah phone. Big secret blog show. Distressed, a little. Read more. Father came. Went home. Got on blog. John says, amidst noise of some bleach ad "kigottagobye". CRAP. Got filled in. WHOA. WOW WOW WOW. Brain shut down for a while. Worked through, figured out (most of) everything (that we know of) with the leftover blogtv peoples. Alex cleared more up. Good. Talked more. Maureen show started. Watched.

TINT update. WHOA WHOA WHOA again. Work work work, and that is now done. And then thinking. And then foruming. And skype chatting. And file sending. And also story printing. Because that seems important now.

And that is all.

uh...hair glue?

2009-04-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

HUGH LAURIE HUGH LAURIE HUGH LAURIE

MAN I love Hugh Laurie.

The man is a genius. He really is. In every sense, way, and form of the word. He is brilliant. I am not exaggerating AT ALL. I MEAN IT. He is the most amazing, hilarious, beautifully beautiful creature to ever live ever.

"Why is this?" you may ask? ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN.

IN NUMBER LIST FORM, 'cause that's how the cool kids do it.

1) BRITISH ACCENT. They are hawt.

2) HE SINGS STUFF WHILE 3) PLAYING STUFF (guitar, drums, piano, saxophone, harmonica AND MORE)

4) WIT

Just, in general, he is full of it.

5) BLACKADDER

6) JEEVES AND WOOSTER

7) THIS MONTAGE

I think that that should suffice. If any of you would like more proof as to these ends, please, do not hesitate to ask. I will be more than happy to elaborate.

urghiughgh

2009-04-11T21:51:00.000-04:00

I do not feel well. Not at all. Drugs are nice, but not so much so when they have yet to kick in. Going to lay down and try to sleep, or watch tv with the volume almost on mute, because even the slightest sound is terribly loud and grating. Goodbye :(

i apologize.

2009-04-10T23:10:00.000-04:00

Hello there. I have opened up this blank page, and I have no idea what I am going to write about, but I have a lot of thoughts, none of them particularly connected or relevant or important or interesting, so TOO BAD FOR YOU.

I played around a bunch on omegle today; after John's show, lots of us stayed to chat, and we all went on there and started conversations with BEDODODODO to see what people's reactions would be, and to see if we could find other nerdfighters.

Most of them ended up looking like this:

or this:

but then:

Which was pretty great.

I am watching-kind-of-watching Super Size Me on youtube, and I STILL don't see the horribleness in eating a blenderized happy meal. Just doesn't seem bad. Hah! And now Morgan Spurlock just said "big mac smoothies". om nom nom

Back to the Future is a great movie.

I have a Dundie award.

There are six water bottles sitting on the shelf next to my bed. Each one no more than half gone. Huh.

I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS EP

MOON COLONY BLOODBATH

hooray hooray!

2009-04-09T23:36:00.002-04:00

la la la I wrote this during geography class a few hours ago la la laaaa I was very excited as you can tell. Still am. Life's awesome :D

I can't stop thinking about David Foster Wallace's speech and everything that John said. Life is GREAT. Possibilities, opportunities, anything, EVERYTHING. It is so huge and open and endless and boundless, and so often we preoccupy ourselves, get caught up in meaningless triviality and miss out on the beauty and majesty and fantasticalness of us. I remember something John said about seeing people as people, imagining them complexly, that we are too busy taking in our own wondrousness to see others. I think sometimes, a lot of times, we don't even recognize our own amazingness, we get bogged down in the ultimately unimportant, the mundanest of the mundane. WHY? Life doesn't HAVE to suck. Perception. Priorities. Preoccupation. Get it right! Realize the beauty! live live live!

I'm in this really awesome, huge mood right now, this insane mindset, this is all spilling out of me, I am thinking of everything all at once, and I am SO EXCITED. I know this is maybe way too naive and optimistic, but IS IT? I feel so excited, like in Song of Myself. I've never felt like this before, I don't think. It's like I'm in some kind of weird funk, but it's NOT. It is the absolute total ANTITHESIS (MAN I LOVE THAT WORD) of a funk. One I hope I never come out of.

I was going to do this project on, my final graphic design project, we have to illustrate an epiphany we've had, I was going to do it about when literature became important, how critical thinking and discussing ALL THAT ENGLISH STUFF, how I started appreciating all of that, which was after reading Catcher in the Rye and John's videos and after discovering the Mountain Goats, but YES, not any more. I am going to use DFW's speech and I am going to use Song of Myself, and I am going to use John's blogTV chats, and I cannot wait.

Life is fantastic.

things i have found via mah rss reader

2009-04-08T23:09:00.001-04:00

Hah. Via Urban Prankster

The origin of a bunch of practical jokes. Like whoopee cushions. And things. Very interesting.

I love Helvetica. I use it in every project I can. It is the world's font. There is even a documentary about it. It is fantastic. Trailers and clips and such can be seen here.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo. I LOVE THIS. It's all real, shot with a lens that makes everything look miniature. So, so, so cool.

HOORAY

Most. Realistic. Game. EVER.

CONGRATURATION

one artist meme (stealed from alan)

2009-04-08T00:05:00.003-04:00

Using only song titles from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title. It's harder than you think.

Pick Your Artist: Theeeee MOUNTAIN GOATS

Are you male or female: Stars Around Her
Describe yourself: Anti Music Song
How do you feel about yourself: Way Down
Describe where you currently live: Going to Cleveland (or thereabouts)
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: See America Right
Your favorite form of transportation: Billy the Kid's Dream of the Magic Shoes
Your best friend is: Million
Your favorite color is: Ice Blue
What's the weather like: Early Spring (BAM!)
Favorite time of day: Stars Fell on Alabama
If your life was a tv show, what would it be called: I Love You. Let's Light Ourselves on Fire
What is life to you: This Magic Moment
What is the best advice you have to give: Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod
If you could change your name, what would it be: Masher
Your favorite food is: Pure Honey
Thought for the Day: Teenage World
How I would like to die: No, I Can't
My soul's present condition: How to Embrace a Swamp Creature
The faults I can bear: Burned My Tongue
My motto: Feed This End

for the freedom and equality of all bukkits everywhere

2009-04-07T22:35:00.001-04:00

Oh my good gracious. This was, without a doubt, the highlight of my entire life as of yet.

Stranger: i am back!
with offerinngs
You: om nom nom
Stranger: yes nom nom
Stranger: it is in the form of a bucket!
You: I HAS A BUKKIT?!
Stranger: NUUU THEY BE TAKINN MI BUKKIT
You: WATS DAT U SAY? THEY STOLE TEH BUKKIT?!
Stranger: THEY STOLE DA SPESHIL BUKKIT
GO FORTHH AND RETRIEVE IT
You: I HAZ A MAGICAL BUKKIT RETRIEVING SAXAPHONE
You: *PLAZE SMOOTH JAZZ RIFF*
Stranger: PLAY THAT SWEET MELODY
You: SHAZAM!
Stranger: I TINK ITSA WORKINN
You: *DOES A JIG WHILST PLAYING HAWTNESS*
Stranger: TIS TEH WRONG BUKKIT
You: THEY CANNOT RESIST MY ENCHANTING POWARS
You: CRAP
You: OH NOEZ. HERE COME ALL TEH BUKKITS
Stranger: TAKE COVERRRR
You: I AM LIKE TEH PIED PIPER OF BUKKITDOM
You: I SHALL LEAD THEM TO FREEDOMZ
You: HUZZAH AND HOORAY
You: *MARCH MARCH MARCH* *SAXOPHONE PLAY* *BUKKIT GET*
Stranger: FREE TEH BUKKITS FRUM TEH RULE OF KING SASSOFRASS
Stranger: BE FREE BUKKITS B FREEEEE
You: *PRANCE PRANCE* HURRAH! TEH BUKKITS B FREEEEE
Stranger: look at them flying away
they grow up so fast
You: job well done, team. job well done.
You: *sniff*
You: they are so beautiful. off they go
Stranger: its okay soldier
there will be many more
Stranger: look at that beautiful brown one over there
so majestic and free
You: frolicking in the meadow. he's so happy.
You: THIS TYRRANY HAS GONE ON TOO LONG
Stranger: he is
and look he found a mate
You: THE BUKKITS. they deserve more.
Stranger: have you gone mad?!?!?!?!
Stranger: what more can we give to them that we already have not?
You: centuries of oppression and injustice. NO MORE, I say!
You: No more!
Stranger: NO MORE! NO MORE!
let this be heard in the streets of rome
You: We have done good with these bukkits. but we must reach out to ALL bukkits everywhere.
Stranger: alright
lets begin our descent
Stranger: we shall free all the bukkits of the world
big and small
You: ALL BUKKITS. equal opportunity.
You: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
You: all bukkits are created equal.
Stranger: no. no happiness
bukkits do not feel they only wish
You: *sigh* one day. one day.
Stranger: in good time
You: their wishes, their dreams, they will be fully realized.
Stranger: they will
we must write a book and then people will listen
You: we must show them the error of their ways. they are blind to the truth.
You: years and years of bukkit prejudice, we must break this down. it will take time.
Stranger: and deaf to injustice
Stranger: it will
but we shall gather a force of 300! and reign terror on them
You: violence is not the answer!
You: violence, war, is for the barbaric.
You: peace is our mantra.
Stranger: okay we will march our 300! and have a picnic on the lawn of injustice
You: we will dine in the fields of oppression. feast in the meadows of malfeasance
Stranger: and sip tea in the trees of racism
You: o glorious day!
Stranger: it will. there will be ballads and odes sung about this day!
You: t'will be immortalized in song and dance! for ALL generations, lest they forget the valiant struggles their forefathers endured
You: endured so that THEY may be free
Stranger: those bukkits will be grateful
lest i shall have to reign down on them and enslave them myself. what i have given them can be taken away
with! the flick of a wrist
You: they dare not offend us!
Stranger: they dare not!
in seven quick flicks i can end any said bukkits life
You: well, alas! I must away to morrow next
Stranger: well be true to your bukkit lore and you will be rewarded
Stranger: farewell my friend
until we meet again
You: as shall you, dear friend, as shall you
You: adieu!
You have disconnected.

omegle.com

tint is smooth

2009-04-06T23:06:00.001-04:00

CRAP CRAP CRAP. I have no time to write this.

TINT (thisisnottom) was fun tonight. I was the first to figure it out. Am currently laughing with the few others who have. Everyone else is so clueless, and the answer is right in front of them, and they have basically said it multiple times. It is cracking me up.

I don't have anything else to say, or time to say anything. Which I guess works out nicely. So, yeah. Check out thisisnottom.com, if you haven't. Which I assume you have. It really is fantastic. Ok. Must shower and sleep. Goodnight.

reseeding points lives

2009-04-05T22:25:00.001-04:00

Dear BEDA-ers, do not not not ever EVER watch an entire season of America's Next Top Model. Not even for the lulz. My brain. It does not feel well.

That one girl, C-something, WHAT AN IDIOT. Me me me me they just don't understand my style everyone is ganging up on my because they're intimidated by my strength and beauty and drive and skills NO. NO. YOU ARE RIDICULOUSLY ARROGANT AND DISILLUSIONED.

And then the girl with lupus. That must be horrible. But her attitude! She's got the most amazing outlook and such a strong, positive spirit. Her face radiates joy. Pretty freaking awesome.

Also April, she's very calculating, precise, almost mechanical. She studies, analyzes, thinks, and does exactly what is needed. More like she's acting as a model than BEING a model. If that makes sense. I get that. I'm that way. But less determined. I have less drive. I am too lazy. Hah.

Plus Shandy who was never loved or accepted by her family, really. Only person she can confide in is her boyfriend. But OOPS. She cheated on him with one of the Vespa dudes. GREAT JOB. Her boyfriend is still great and supportive though. Though he was kind of insanely mad at first which YEAH. Stupid, stupid girl. She was lonely and needed someone to care about her, and apparently she thought Italian boy did. Good judgement, oh YEAH.

And then there's the rooster-haired one who looks like Anne Hathaway. The actress. Not the wife of Shakespeare.

Good golly, everything is hypocritical. Tyra's got all this stuff she does with young girls and self-esteem and being happy with who they are and what they look like, then she does this song and music video that's all sexualized and sex sex sex almost animalistic image image image immodesty yeah yeah yeah. Gahhhhh!

Depressing television.

Maaaan, I have no idea why I've been sitting here all day watching this. Must combat with Whitman or something.

I think the Oxygen network is the antithesis of everything I am or have ever cared about ever.

That is all.

retail true

2009-04-04T22:04:00.002-04:00

o hai there internets. I really do not feel like writing or thinking or forming words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into blogs. Not at this moment, nope. But it is BEDA, and BEDA means DOING IT, so I SHALL PERSEVERE. Expect many random bursts of capslock, because that is how I am feeling.

Today was pretty fun and full and expensive. I went into Oberlin with my mother, went to a few bookstores. The first was awesome, Ben Franklin's Five and Dime, I think it was called. Lots of old books. It smelled fantastic. I was looking for a used copy of Catcher in the Rye or Slaughterhouse-Five or Leaves of Grass or Brave New World, but alas. I did get a book of e.e. cummings poetry though and read some of it in the car later. Crazy stuff. Probably a third of them, I don't even know AT ALL what he's getting at, but the ones that I do get make me feel brilliant, though I am, in fact, NOT. First thing I ever read by him was "anyone lived in a pretty how town" in 11th grade or something, and it was the first poem that I LIKE liked. The crazy punctuation and spacing and spelling and combining words things he does are fantastic. It seems like a lot of literature is missing out on those fronts, they could be so much more powerful, I mean the way the text is presented has a lot to do with the intensity/mood of it. GET ON IT, PUBLISHING INDUSTRY. More creative text presentation. Heck yes.

Went to another store, I found Slaughterhouse-Five and a copy of Leaves of Grass, which I am very excited about reading. I found ONE COPY OF PAPER TOWNS (one?! really? that's it?!?) and stuck a nerdfighter note in there. And then we walked over to this really nifty art place, the Ginko Gallery; it's a sweet space, full of local artists' work, all kinds of different media. Lots of beautiful glass blowings, wire mobiles, soap (cinnamon and oatmeal OM NOM NOM), jewelery, carvings, paintings, it was excellent.

We then went over to my cousins' house. One of whom, Abby, had just gotten a baby goat a few days ago. It was adorable. It already knew its name. It was very dog-like. It licked everything. It was great.

Typing typing typing, I do not see the scroll bar yet, and that is the sign of a good blog, or a long enough blog, or an adequate blog according to Blaze. :P Ahhh come on come on I have no more thoughts ohh I want to stop blah blah blah OH THERE WE ARE GOODBYE

thirsts

2009-04-03T21:38:00.004-04:00

Today's thing that makes me happy: T-SHIRTS

Oh how I love them. In this big ol' harsh world we live in, people tend to judge quickly and unfairly. Especially by appearances. SO, combat the suckiness of that with FREAKING AWESOME BEAUTIFUL CLEVER HILARIOUS t-shirts!

Thanks to the intertubes, creating/finding great shirts is totally easy. One of my favorite sites for doing this is threadless.com. All their shirts are user-submitted; anyone can upload a design. Then, the lovely community votes on said designs, and the Threadless staff chooses 10 or so of the higher-rated designs each week and MAKES THEM. It's a super-collaborative, active, constructive environment, there's even a section of the site where people can upload their rough designs and get feedback and critiques and ideas from everyone else.

The process goes quickly too; I've seen shirts go from initial voting to printing in less than a month, and it's always exciting when one of the shirts you've voted highly and marked "I'd buy!" gets printed. So, so fun and nifty and cool.

The site has great sales and contests and promotions all the time; just last week they had a huge $5 sale.

And now I shall show you a few of my favorite shirts, some of which I own, some I WANT TO OWN VERY BADLY:

So much accordion goodness!

I have this one, and it is gorgeous. ( :( I failed at spelling gorgeous 3 times)

Clever AND adorable!

HARD. CORE. MAN. So rad.

Yahahah!

This one needs to be reprinted. It is fantastic.

Also, not too long ago, I won a gift certificate to customizedgirl.com via Twitter (one of the many, many excellent reasons why Twitter is awesome). I've been designing some stuff on there, and just ordered these four tonight:

here here

I cannot WAIT to get them :D

What are some of you people's favorite tshirt sites/designs/whatnots?

ashes eat all

2009-04-02T14:58:00.003-04:00

BEDA has gone splendidly so far. I've had a lot of fun reading through other people's blogs. Lots of cool stuff.

So I shall be continuing my 'things that make me happy' thing. I doubt I'll make it all the way through April doing this, but YEAH, it's FUN.

TODAY: Tallahassee

Tallahassee is an album by the lovely, lovely Mountain Goats (who are so jokes). The album chronicles the Alpha Couple, spouses who have fallen out of love, their relationship a crumbling, bitter, race to the bottom, full of alcohol and violence. The couple features prominently in many of John Darnielle's songs, and Tallahassee delves deeper into their destructive, horrible story.

At the start of the album, the Alpha Couple have just moved into a nasty, decaying house in Florida, thinking, or at least hoping, that this will somehow make them better, not screwed up, not hating each other, though they both really know that it'll never happen. I really love the metaphor of the dumpy house/their marriage. So great.

And then stuff happens, la la la, drinking, hatred, despair, hope, death wishes, it's fantastic. In the last song in the album Alpha Rats Nest, the Alpha Couple begin to resign themselves to their fate: Ah the fitful sleep and the fire engines/ That I dream of when I dream/ Some day we'll both wake up for good/ I will try hard not to scream. The song itself is upbeat, happy, nearly gleeful, and that makes it all the more amazing.

So yes, what I mainly wanted to talk about was a particular video on the album's companion-y site thing (lets you explore the Alpha Couple's house, so many fantastic metaphors and GAHHH-SO-GOOD-SO-TRUE-THIS-IS-SO-BRILLIANT things). In the living room, if you click on the television, this pops up, and it is most hilarious and hard-hitting, painfully true dialogue back and forth banter salesman game show showcase ridiculous.

BUT FIRST. First you must listen to Game Shows Touch Our Lives, part of which is quoted in Paper Towns, so you KNOW it's awesome.

Now:

I freaking love that video.
That is all.

the big steamy thing

2009-04-01T15:59:00.002-04:00

First BEDA post! Yes!

I've been sitting here for a long while, trying to decide what to talk about, and, after watching Hank's video (in which he was NOT >:( dressed as Carrie Bradshaw), I've been thinking about things that make me happy, and why they do. So. Each day, I'll blog about one thing that makes me happy. This will be fun :D

TODAY: They Might Be Giants

Man. I love those guys.

Mssrs. John Sydney Linnell and John Conant Flansburgh met during high school in Lincoln, Massachusetts in, like, the 70s. THEY'RE OLD. And they worked on the school newspaper together, and it was when Linnell drew a comic about Nazi teachers that Flansburgh knew they would be lifelong friends. Hah. And so, they started doing musical stuff together, but eventually went off to different colleges, and then later they ended up in the same apartment in NYC, and they wrote more songs and such, and played their first show in 1982 at a Sandinista Rally. The crowd hardly knew any English, and they billed themselves as El Grupo de Rock and Roll, which is fantastic.

At their first real show, under the name They Might Be Giants, supposedly, 23 people came, they played 23 songs, made 23 dollars, while John Linnell was 23 years old. Very nice. THEN Linnell broke his hand in a bicycle accident (which I am sure at least partly inspired this song), and thus he could not play the accordion. Sad times. SO they started their infamous, and, at the time, state of the art, cutting edge-technologied Dial-a-Song service. By calling (718) 387-6962 (the phone in Flans' apartment), one would hear a new song that, for a while, changed every day. The restraints of using their Record-a-Call 682 actually heavily influenced the sound of their first album: anything with long, sustained notes made the machine rewind, so their songs were kept short and staccato. Dial-a-Song, "always busy, often broken" lived on for over 20 years, until it was essentially replaced by actual real technology. Stupid podcasts. Stupid internet. Ruins everything.

And so TMBG recorded their first album, and with cool guy Adam Bernstein, made music videos (with basically no budget) for Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head and Don't Let's Start, the latter of which made it into the regular rotation on MTV, the first ever video by an indie band to do so. Fun times.

And then they made 12 more albums and a bajillion more songs and grew more and more fantastic and amazing and are working on their fourth kids album right now and also a normal record HOORAY ok THE END.

The best part of this is that I did not look ANY of that up. Yet I cannot remember my own social security number :/

BEDA BEDA BEDA

2009-03-31T14:13:00.002-04:00

Maureen Johnson, author and nerdfighter and ABBA lover, has decided that she will blog every day for the entirety of April. She has invited her adoring public (sekrit entourage?) to join in. So I have. So have many many other fantastic people. I really need to instill myself with some disciplinarian virtues, and I do believe this will work splendidly (It is not actually quite productive and is still a form of procrastination, BUT. Baby steps. Yes. Very small baby steps. Maybe by the time I'm 20 I'll even be able to refrain from tweeting my every waking thought. Maybe. Probably not).

So yes! A blog every day! Perhaps multiple blogs! Perchance some of these will be about books. Or cool things I have found (got a huge reservoir to draw from. google reader is fantastic for this). Maybe soliloquies. Maybe angry rants about Rachel Ray. We shall see, we shall see.

Going to be cross posting everything to my blog on Maureen's ning, because I am cool like that.

many things that i find interesting

2009-03-18T22:33:00.003-04:00

1. this picture

Look at it! It's beautiful. Majestic, even. Other slabs of meat in nature here.

2. also this one

I love light painting, and this picture is so delicate and crisp and perfect.

3. Seven ways to fool your sense of touch
We're not as invincible as we think we are.

4. John Green on The Interview Show

Interesting talk. Not centered around Nerdfighters or geared towards them. And holy crap, John thinks about death way too much.

5. LOBSTER KNIFE FIGHT

That is all.

this.

2009-03-17T21:28:00.005-04:00

you cannot. never. ever. ever.

i hate filling this with memes

2009-03-08T22:36:00.006-04:00

Bucket List
Place an X by all the things you’ve done and remove the X from the ones you have not, then send it to your friends.

Things you have done during your lifetime:
[ ] Gone on a blind date.
[ ] Donated blood.
[x] Skipped school.
[ ] Watched someone die.
[ ] Given a eulogy.
[ ] Been to London.
[ ] Been to Paris.
[ ] Been to Rome.
[ ] Been to Venice, California.
[ ] Been to Monte Carlo.
[ ] Been to Hawaii.
[x] Been on a plane.
[ ] Been on a helicopter.
[x] Been lost. (in seaworld when I was 3. Not as big a deal to me as it was to my parents)
[ ] Gone to Washington, DC.
[ ] Hugged a homeless person.
[ ] Swam in the ocean.
[ ] Swam with Stingrays.
[ ] Been sailing in the ocean.
[x] Cried yourself to sleep.
[ ] Played cops and robbers.
[x] Recently colored with crayons.
[ ] Recently played in a paddling pool.
[ ] Ran a marathon.
[ ] Sang Karaoke.
[ ] Volunteered at a soup kitchen.
[x] Paid for a meal with coins only.
[ ] Been to the top of the St. Louis Arch.
[ ] Seen the Northern Lights.
[ ] Been parasailing.
[ ] Been on TV.
[x] Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t.
[ ] Made prank phone calls.
[ ] Been down Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
[ ] Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose. (jelly once, but no liquids)
[ ] Fed an elephant.
[x] Caught a snowflake on your tongue.
[ ] Fired a gun.
[ ] Danced in the rain naked.
[ ] Been to the Opera.
[ ] Written a letter to Santa Claus.
[x] Serenaded by someone. (ish? or, at least, he played a song, and I was the only one on the room?)
[ ] Serenaded someone.
[ ] Seen a NZ Prime Minister in person.
[ ] Been kissed under the mistletoe.
[x] Watched the sunrise with someone. (senior trip. So beautiful.)
[ ] Driven a race car.
[ ] Been to a National Museum.
[ ] Been to a Wax Museum.
[ ] Eaten caviar.
[x] Blown bubbles.
[x] Gone ice-skating. (Took lessons when I was little)
[x] Gone to the movies.
[ ] Been deep sea fishing.
[ ] Driven across the United States.
[ ] Been in a hot air balloon.
[ ] Been sky diving.
[ ] Gone snowmobiling.
[ ] Lived in more than one country.
[x] Lay down outside at night and admired the stars while listening to the crickets. (yay high school retreat. Such good times)
[x] Seen a falling star and made a wish. (not the wish part. also was during retreat)
[ ] Enjoyed the beauty of Old Faithful Geyser.
[ ] Seen the Grand Canyon.
[ ] Seen the Statue of Liberty.
[ ] Gone to the top of Seattle Space Needle.
[ ] Been on a cruise. (I am assuming a ferry on Lake Erie doesn't count)
[x] Traveled by train.
[ ] Traveled by motorcycle.
[x] Been horse back riding. (high school retreat again)
[ ] Ridden on a San Francisco cable car.
[ ] Been to Disneyland OR Disney World.
[ ] Been in a rain forest.
[ ] Seen whales in the ocean.
[x] Been to Niagara Falls.
[x] Ridden on an elephant.
[ ] Swam with dolphins.
[ ] Been to the Olympics.
[ ] Walked on the Great Wall of China.
[ ] Been spinnaker flying. (WHAT IS IT?)
[ ] Been water-skiing.
[ ] Been snow-skiing.
[ ] Been to Westminster Abbey.
[ ] Been to the Louvre.
[ ] Swam in the Mediterranean.
[x] Been to a Major League Baseball game.
[ ] Been to a National Football League game.
[ ] Swam with sharks.
[ ] Been White Water Rafting.
[ ] Written a book or screen play.

I do believe I have failed at life.

John Green does not keep his promises, also, it is eight in the morning.

2009-03-07T08:10:00.005-05:00

First: Interesting fact about dental bone grafts: They often used sterilized bone from a cadaver. So there is some dead person's bone inside my jaw bone, which is probably an extremely resonant metaphor, although I'm not sure for what.

What I'm saying is that if I ever write a novel about the interconnectedness of all people, dead and living, I will be sure to include some dental surgery. Fortunately for everyone, the book I'm currently working on isn't about that at all (it's about whether or not the future exists, a question that was spurred by Sarah, who once told me "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia," which ended up going into "Alaska" word for word). So you will be spared my dental metaphors for at least a while.

- John Green, August 18, 2006

I am deeply, deeply disappointed.

Come on John! The strings, the dental bone graft, and the vessel. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT.

I can ride I can do cartwheels for a mile!

2009-03-06T02:29:00.001-05:00

Ready and one and set and go.

Thanks for cheering me on.

You jumped over some of my buses!

Here I go again on my own...

Kick it out, b-hand!

He's also available for proms and pizza parties.

See you later nice time!

similarity lurks under styles of mustache

2009-02-28T20:40:00.009-05:00

Stolen from facebook.

1. Favorite TMBG song?
I Should Be Allowed to Think, When It Rains It Snows, Now That I Have Everything, Memo to Human Resources, and all the other ones.

2. Favorite TMBG album?
Lincoln. Good stuff.

3. Favorite TMBG album art?
Can I say User's Guide? Otherwise, Factory Showroom.

4. Favorite John?
Linnell. That cheesesteak/cake story. Hot.

5. Favorite Dan/Marty?
Marty. His rabbit drumming faces are my favorite.

6. Favorite past backing band member?
Graham Maby. He's kind of adorable, and his name is excellent.

7. Favorite TMBG lyric?
"I wasn't always so fortunate, but I knew what I had to do to be well-to-do, and it had to do with the things I had to do."

8. Favorite TMBG live show?
I don't knooow. OH. THE WFMU SHOW. FRANK O'TOOLE. "I HAVE TO TIE MY SHOE"

9. Favorite State Song?
The Songs of the 50 States, also South Carolina.

10. Favorite Mono Puff song?
Unsupervised, I Hit My Head. Or Poison Flowers.

11. Have you attended any live TMBG shows? If so, which?
NO :< The week before I found out who TMBG was, I could have gone to a kids show for free. But I thought they were like the Wiggles. D:

12. Have you ever met anybody in the band? If so, how and when?
NO

13. Do you like their musical style on "The Else"?
I like all their styles. Miles and miles of styles.

14. What are your thoughts on them doing children's music?
Good good good. I know a lot of people see Their adult and children's music as two different, distinct-ish things, but pshh. It's all the same to me. I likes it.

15. If they show up on TV, do you go out of your way to watch it?
OF COURSE.

16. What is your favorite TMBG quirk (Spin the Dial, Phone Calls From The Dead)?
Spin the Dial. I love how creepy Flansburgh makes everything.

17. Have you ever been to a location where TMBG filmed a music video?
No. But that would be very, very ftw.

18. Do you have any of the TMBG DVDs?
Direct from Brooklyn, Gigantic, Venue Songs, Here Come the ABCs, Here Come the 123s, that Blues Clues DVD in which they do Clap Your Hands. Are there any more?

19. Favorite TMBG music video?
I don't know I don't know I don't know. Rabid Child. No. Um. Puppet Head. For the Linnell Hair.

20. Have you received a setlist from TMBG?
I HAVE NOT BEEN TO A SHOW.

21. Did Oppenheimer open for any of the shows you've attended?
STOP IT.

22. How about .357 Lover?
NO.

23. Just Corn Mo himself?
NO. HE IS CREEPY ANYWAY.

24. Sex Mob?
No.

25. Any openers I haven't mentioned?
No. But I really like Michael Leviton.

26. Did you see Coraline purely for the fact that TMBG wrote a song for it?
I have not seen Coraline. When I do see it, it will be because of TMBG and Mr. Hodgman. And because it looks excellent.

27. Are you a user on This Might Be A Wiki?
Yessir.

28. Have you even heard of it?
I loves it.

29. Which do you prefer; State Songs or Mono Puff?
State Sooooongs! Dustbuster playing! Man!

30. Did you ever call Dial-A-Song, even when it was down?
Yes. Many, many times. I only got through once ever, and it was We Live In A Dump, and I recorded the audio on our video camera, and I was ecstatic. But then my sister recorded over it with her lip syncing to Build Me Up Buttercup. I hate her.

31. Least favorite TMBG song?
P.S.O.K. :S

32. Least favorite TMBG album?
No! Maybe. I don't know. It's hard to not like an entire group of things.

33. Least favorite album art?
No! It's creepy.

34. Favorite Fingertip song?
I've Found a New Friend Underneath My Pillow (what does it MEAN?) or I Walk Along Darkened Corridors, for its live show majesty.

35. Your thoughts on Space Suit, the last song on Apollo 18?
I LOVE IT. Sometimes I get into weird moods and play it over and over. Reminds me up the Hitchhiker's Guide theme, the tv show version, kind of.

36. Favorite Venue Song?
Atlanta, Leeds, and Santa Cruz. I haven't given one answer for any of these. Bahah.

37. Favorite song that was on No!, Here Come The ABCs, or Here Come The 123s?
Sleepwalkers.

38. Do you want the Live Show Downloads to come back?
Well YES.

39. Have you been to any of the states that were mentioned in State Songs?
Pennsylvania. And Ohio, if that counts, but I do not think that it does.

40. Are you going to buy Here Comes Science and their next adult album?
Hecks yeah.

John Green fails to imagine unicorns complexly.

2009-02-20T23:39:00.010-05:00

A meme! Courtesy of Famous Alan.

1. List one book you think everyone should read this year. (if you mention my book for brownie points, please list a second book as well)
Well. YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts, obviously. And also Paper Towns. And The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. That book is beautiful. Yes, that was three. Deal with it.

2. What is your favorite thing about your hometown?
I've never thought about this. There's not much to do in Elyria itself. But I guess just my neighborhood, the environment in which I grew up (awkward grammatical phrasing ftl). It's been awesome to be able to grow up next to my pastor and his family. So many fun times with Joseph and Jonathan, picking and eating honeysuckles in the backyard, riding our bikes to the library and Twist-n-Shake. Building up huge snow ramps and sledding and snowboarding off the roof of their garage. Arming ourselves with badminton and racquetball rackets and chasing and destroying lightning bugs. Ahhh childhood.

3. Incorrectly complete these Fall Out Boy lyrics: "This ain't a scene, it's a(n) _____________" (be creative)
This ain't a scene, it's a bloodthirsty army of sentient vampiric underfancies. What.

4. What would you title your autobiography and how many pages would it be?
CLICHE CLICHE IDIOM: The Valerie Barr Story
Pages: OVER 9000

5. What was the best Christmas gift you've received? (ages 15 and under, adult Christmas gifts don't count)
BK RatchTech shoes. Instead of laces, they had things similar to cable ties, like on rollerblades. I loved them so much, until I tried to take them off. So freaking hard. So frustrating. I was always the last kid to line up at the end of recess :(

6. What's one new thing you learned this week? (they say you learn something new every day, so you should have a few things to choose from)
I learned that cashiers look at you funny if you come up to the checkout with an armful of Peeps paraphernalia.

7. Open Skype/G-Chat/AIM and type "how's my favorite friend who I haven't chatted with today?" to someone you haven't chatted with at all today. This item isn't a question, just a polite demand to let someone know you were thinking of them.
[12:23:27 AM] Valerie says: how's my favorite friend who I haven't chatted with today? :D
[12:23:45 AM] Sara says: How ironic.
[12:23:50 AM] Sara says: Paige just send me the same message.
[12:23:50 AM] Sara says: lols.

THE MEME VIRUS IS SPREADING.

8. Tell me one really proud moment from your life. (be specific)
I don't know...I'd say when I gave my valedictorian speech at graduation, but I was terrified out of my mind and not really dwelling on anything other than the paralyzing fear of having to go up there and talk in front of all those freaking people. I loathe public speaking.

So I will say the time I won Around-the-World in math in first grade. Sarah Zinn: PWNED.

9. Tell me one really embarrassing moment from your life. (be specific)
Whenever my parents bring up the fact that once, when I was two, I was playing in the sandbox, and I took off my pants, and ran out to the front yard, and my neighbor across the street yelled "Valerie, put some pants on!" They do this quite frequently. Bah.

10. Have you owned something for way too long... something you know you should get rid of or replace, but can't? If so, what and why?
I have stacks and stacks of old issues of Wired that kind of get in the way, but I'd NEVER throw them out or give them away.

11. Fill in the blank: Other than this one, Alan's is the last blog I commented on.

12. Do you have any scars? Tell me about one of them.
I don't think the mark is even noticeable anymore, but when I was four, I was riding my bike down a boardwalk-type thing, going really fast, and I ran into a dog. Got a huge cut on my chin. SHUT IT.

13. I say "this is not tom", you say:
A. Who the eff is Tom?
B. Thank god, Tom sucks!
C. Oh, I love staring at page source code all day and solving riddles!! <3
D. And this is not me, not clicking the back button and not not reading the rest of this stupid meme.

C! THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS C!

14. What do you get complimented on the most? (your looks, your creativity, your impressive collection of black santa figurines)
My ability to locate information quickly. Lame.

15. Paste a link here to your favorite picture online:

This is not about Tom.

2009-02-20T13:34:00.005-05:00

thisisnottom.com is pretty fantastically amazing. I think there are two kinds of people, just, in general. Ones who are totally enthralled by something like this, and ones who have no interest and see it as a waste of time. I do not understand this second group of people. I don't think I can be friends with them. I mean, come on. How does this not interest you?

It's been really fun trying to figure pages out on my own, and, after the yelling of obscenities and the punching of inanimate objects (not really) collaborating with lovely people. I think I was in both groups that finished first each time. First Adam and I worked together on the final page of the first set. And Alli and I, and then also Lysh worked on the second clues, eventually combining collective epic brainpowerz with Alan and Melissa. It was glorious.

also:
nottom twitter
nottom facebook
nottom digg

Promoting thisisnottom.com makes for a better thisisnottom.com, you know.

Technology is the greatest.

2009-02-15T19:58:00.003-05:00

Lookit that! It's my room! [press p to toggle viewing mode]

photosynth.net

but he also kinda likes the look of that new old navy fleece

2009-02-14T05:11:00.004-05:00

So I was thinking about dreaming the other day, and the effect it has on my attitude towards and view of people. I often find myself holding grudges or being more terse with people who've wronged me in my dreams.

I had a dream once in which I was talking to someone, squatting down to the side of where they were sitting, and they raised up their elbow and jammed it back into my face. The next day at school, I was mad at them, hated them. I still am angry at them for doing that to me, even though I'm fully aware it never actually happened. But still. What a JERK.

Sooo my opinions of people are heavily influenced and molded by my subconscious self. Which in turn is probably rooted in how I really feel. It's like a never ending cycle. Meta. Pretty cool. Totally screwed up.

everything said

2009-02-14T01:23:00.003-05:00

happy valentine's day

O hai Flansburgh and Linnell

2009-02-08T23:27:00.010-05:00

They Might Be Giants won a Grammy today. That was wonderful. Very wonderful.

Stephen Colbert did not win a Grammy today. That was not wonderful. GOOOOOORE! *shakes fist*

...that was the entirety of my day.

Also, I changed the layout and template of this. I HATE IT.

Also, I downloaded some Neutral Milk Hotel music that I couldn't find anywhere else.

Also, I went to church.

devolution

2009-01-29T02:57:00.007-05:00

I stole this, I did. From suchducks. last.fm meme.

These will be the rules on this journey:

1. Go to the page of your number one artist
2. Follow the link of it's number one similar artist
3. Repeat that for this artist and so on
4. Note down each artist
5. Do this until you've got to 50 artists

If you get any repeats, just go to the second similar artist or the nearest one that you haven't already had.

Last.fm's related artist thing isn't very accurate in terms of style similarity. Just kind of like 'lots of people who listen to They Might Be Giants listen to Barenaked Ladies.'

123go.

1. The Mountain Goats
2. The Extra Glenns
3. Little Wings
4. Thanksgiving
5. Adrian Orange
6. Mount Eerie
7. The Microphones
8. Woelv
9. Karl Blau
10. The Halo Benders
11. Beat Happening
12. Tiger Trap
13. Talulah Gosh
14. Another Sunny Day
15. The Orchids
16. The Sea Urchins
17. Even as We Speak
18. The Field Mice
19. Blueboy
20. Brighter
21. Trembling Blue Stars
22. Aberdeen
23. Pants Yell!
24. The Aislers Set
25. Pipas
26. The Lucksmiths
27. The Guild League
28. Ruck Rover
29. The Mabels
30. Mid-State Orange (How fantastic a name is that?)
31. Poundsign
32. The Autumn Teen Sound
33. Brideshead
34. The Springfields
35. Action Painting!
36. Gentle Despite
37. Tramway
38. The Sweetest Ache
39. Northern Picture Library
40. The Hit Parade
41. Harvey Williams
42. The Harvest Ministers
43. The Sugargliders
44. The Poppyheads
45. Razorcuts
46. Mighty Mighty
47. The Siddeleys
48. Strawberry Story (The artist description, I think, is excellent:
"Strawberry Story are a fey bunch of dreamy, cardigan clinging romantics who sing about love, geeks and lemonade. They sound like candyfloss on a summer’s day, if you beat that candyfloss into the face of a smurf with the blunt end of your guitar while standing a little too close to the amp.")
49. Red Sleeping Beauty
50. Confetti

Okay. We go from sometimes-lo-fi folk-ishness to more lo-fi folk to indie rock to an 'all-female twee-pop foursome', weird, to more indie pop/twee to obscure indie pop to Australian twee pop to plain twee to Swedish twee to English twee, and we're done.

So, in conclusion, twee.

Also, "The (insert random-yet-slightly-cryptic object here)s" band name formula is very, very overused.

just sit right back and you'll hear a tale

2009-01-26T00:34:00.005-05:00

I wrote a poem, a ballad, during senior year for English, and it was based on an episode of The Office (Initiation, S3 Ep5). I posted it in the Office community on livejournal, but I want to stick it here as well because I'm extremely proud of it.

As someone pointed out on LJ, it fits the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song. Which makes sense, because it's in ballad metre, as are Amazing Grace and countless other hymns and poems. It's fun to sing, though a few lines don't fit exactly because I couldn't get them to, and also because I wasn't thinking about common metre at the time.

So. Here you go:

The Ballad of Sir Dwight and of His Quest to Be Accepted and Liked by Ryan, Subsequently Becoming an Unstoppable Team That Competed Against Other Teams

There lived a man, brave and strong
Who dwelled on a farm of beets.
He alone, and his cousin Mose
At ping pong were elites.

This man was Dwight, and he was awesome;
His coworkers feared him greatly,
Though not as he thought, because of his might,
But for he was an idiot.

Among the beets lived he peacefully,
Indulging in his every whim.
Spud guns, paintballs, a crossbow range
He tried to lord these things o’er Jim.

Then one day, newb Ryan came
To be mentored by Sir Dwight.
He’d teach him his greatest business tricks,
But first, young Ryan must FIGHT!

Must fight a foe, though not one who
Could be slain by sword or knife,
But to a businessman holds the power
To destroy career and life.

This foe was FEAR, aka Mose.
Dwight’s cousin fair and true.
Like Ryan, if you don’t be careful,
FEAR may sneak up on you.

Fear snuck up on that boy Ryan,
But he was not surprised.
He stood there, sighed, and shook his head
Most likely he rolled his eyes.

Ryan said, “No. You are a freak. I‘m not doing this.”
But good Sir Dwight would not give up.
Dwight said, “Just get in the coffin.”
And that scared him, the poor ol’ pup.

Then Ryan walked right out of that barn,
And to Mose Sir Dwight did turn.
“Where are all the animals?” he angrily inquired.
For the resolved matter did Dwight yearn.

And so, away lad Ryan went.
He ran and ran and ran.
But still, Sir Dwight pursued him
In his old souped-up Trans Am.

He pulled right up beside young Ryan
Who down the road was walking,
And since Ryan still seemed mad,
Sir Dwight did all the talking.

“I am very, very sorry, you know
And Mose is sorry too.
He made a basket of eggs and bacon,
And he’s giving them to you,

And here you go: a figurine.
It’s something that he whittled.
I really hope we can still be friends,
That you’ll like me just a little.”

So off on a sales call they did go.
Young Ryan gave his all.
But alas! He did not get the sale, so
Dwight and Ryan egged their walls.

we all woke up that morning, claw marks on our little faces

2009-01-24T01:42:00.003-05:00

Hi. Hey. What is going on?

I don't like that compare people application on facebook. It always hurts my feelings. It always tells me my weakness is being a best friend. And being tough. And being adventurous, which is admittedly kind of true.

I, uh, just ~~torrented?downloaded?~~stole the entire Mountain Goats discography, which is definitely not totally comprehensive, but is way freaking more than I had. I have so much to memorize. I always feel guilty if I can't remember the words to songs by bands I love, which is basically They Might Be Giants and the Mountain Goats. I hate to be singing along, and being into the song, and in tune with the emotion of the whole thing, and not being able to remember the words. It's so frustrating and gah.

My geography teacher is really nerdy and hilarious and animated and emphatic and has a speaking pattern and cadence similar to John Darnielle, the way he emphasizes strange syllables of words. It is awesome. Everything he says, I find insanely interesting, even when he's talking about something like colonial style houses, which is something I really have no interest in, I'll be completely riveted. He stresses g-sounds weirdly, like Good and reGulation. John Darnielle does that a lot. Cracks me up.

I found a nerdfighter note in one of the Looking For Alaskas at the Barnes and Noble I went to today. I'd never been there before, and it was HUGE. Way, way, way bigger than any bookstore I'd been in previously. It had a freakin' escalator. I bought a hardback Alaska, and the second volume of Octavian Nothing, which I am hoping will motivate me to finish the first, which I have been very procrastinatory about even though I really like it. But the internet is just there, and it is easy, and it is interesting, and it's big.

I also got Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, even though I already had it, but I always feel bad when I like an artist's music but just rip it from library cds or something. I am a very guilt-ridden person, it seems like. I don't know. I got Heretic Pride too because I was feeling, and still feel, extremely horrible about taking all of John Darnielle's music.

And I wrote and put nerdfighter notes in all the copies of John's books I could find, which was only 6, which made me very sad. Three paperbacks of Alaska, one of Katherines, one mangled copy of Paper Towns in the YA section, and one downstairs marked 20% off.

BUT THERE'S GONNA BE A PARTY WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME.

That is all.

Valerie answers a survey.

2009-01-13T12:24:00.003-05:00

Stolen from ~~facebook~~ John Green. Type your name into Google with the verb that comes after in the question. Answer with your favorites from the first page of google results. Have fun!

Q: Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search.
A: "Valerie needs to weed out those who seek only to waste her time as soon as possible." (Yes.) "Valerie needs to back off of Danny so Sam can date him and I hate her." :(

Q: Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search.
A: "Valerie looks like Carrie-Anne Moss in that picture." "Valerie looks like a 'giant blowdrier.'" (actually 'which, according to Valerie, looks' but I like it anyway) "Valerie looks like that because that is what my nation thinks a beautiful woman looks like." (awww)

Q: Type in "[your name] says" in Google search.
A: "Valerie says goodbye to sweet image."

Q: Type in "[your name] wants" in Google search.
A: "Valerie wants to catch Siberian Husky!" (!) "Valerie wants to cuddle-jump Brett." (Brett who? BrettTheIntern? What?)

Q:Type in "[your name] does" in Google search.
A: "Valerie does another classic Leno."

Q: Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search.
A: "Valerie hates myspace." (True.) "Valerie hates cheese." (FALSE) "Valerie hates the weird ventilator's ball." (Probably?)

Q: Type in "[your name] asks" in Google search.
A: "Valerie asks Oprah about kissing another woman." (No I don't/haven't/won't/BLAH.) "Valerie asks me to do 'homework' in between each session, and she always asks to see it during the next one." (Yes. I am thorough.)

Q: Type in "[your name] likes " in Google search.
A: "Valerie likes to gossip about her life, including her psychotherapy sessions, her dream of being a lounge singer and her motherboard's tendency to nag her about her social life." (Motherboard. Social life. What are these things?) "Valerie likes to wear wigs and costumes." (No I do not.) "Valerie likes acid bath." (NO)

Q: Type in "[your name] eats " in Google search.
A: "Valerie eats, breaths, and sleeps love." (NO, I BREATHE. STUPID.) "Valerie eats her braids." "Valerie eats the New Year's ball!!" (Bahahahah!)

Q: Type in "[your name] wears " in Google search.
A: "Valerie wears a toga on her birthday and has people sign it." >.> "Valerie wears a weighted walk vest and goes on 1 mile walks."

Q: Type in "[your name] was arrested for" in Google Search.
A: "Valerie was arrested for interfering with her son's arrest and kicking an officer."

Q: Type in "[your name] loves" in Google Search.
A. "Valerie loves you." (That is every single result, so it must be true.)

This man.

2009-01-10T12:10:00.001-05:00

TMG Sydney freakout, originally uploaded by Lalitree.

He is amazing.

Everything I Underlined in Paper Towns

2009-01-08T08:37:00.005-05:00

This is going to be long, but I am going to do it, because I love these words:

16:
"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added.

33:
She looked up at me, her face mostly revealed now, and she smiled just the littlest bit. "It amazes me that you can find all this shit even remotely interesting."
"Huh?"
"College: getting in or not getting in. Trouble: getting in or not getting in. School: getting A's or getting D's. Career: having or not having. House: big or small, owning or renting. Money: having or not having. It's all so boring."

33-34:
Margo managed to speak in her usual manic soliloquy without answering my question. "Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten yours or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement. There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. About the future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college."

49:
I stopped at the stop sign at the end of the street, and Margo said, "What the hell? Go go go go go," and I said, "Oh, right," because I had forgotten that I was throwing caution to the wind and everything.

50:
Margo's beauty was a kind of sealed vessel of perfection--uncracked and uncrackable.

52:
As I put my hand on the steering wheel, I noticed my pointer finger was blue. I held it up for Margo to see. She smiled, and held out her own blue finger, and then they touched, and her blue finger was pushing against mine softly and my pulse failed to slow.

57-58:
"Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. it's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

58:
"That's sweet," she answered, her voice trailing off. She turned to me and nodded softly. I smiled. She smiled. I believed the smile. We walked to the stairs and then ran down them. At the bottom of each flight, I jumped off the bottom step and clicked my heels to make her laugh, and she laughed. I thought I was cheering her up. I thought she was cheerable. I thought maybe if I could be confident, something might happen between us.
I was wrong.

All of page 61.

66:
And for those two minutes we just stared at each other, and I watched the blue in her eyes. it was nice--in the dark and the quiet, with no possibility of me saying anything to screw it up, and her eyes looking back, like there was something in me worth seeing.

78:
And I felt the unbroken line of me and of her stretching back from our cribs to the dead guy to acquaintanceship to now. And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together--but that seemed too cheesy to say, and anyway, she was standing up.

79:
She either trusted me or wanted to fall.

81:
She raised her eyebrows finally, and smiled, and I believed the smile.

98:
Best wishes

All of pages 104 and 105.

129-130:
But I think about the circles kid sometimes, because I can sort of understand him. I always liked routine. I suppose I never found boredom very boring. I doubted I could explain it to someone like Margo, but drawing circles through life struck me as a kind of reasonable insanity.

133:
[...]but I had--stupidly, embarrassingly--thought of finding Margo, and getting her to come home with me just in time for prom, like late on Saturday night, and we'd walk into the Hilton ballroom wearing jeans and ratty T-shirts, and we'd be just in time for the last dance, and we'd dance while everyone pointed at us and marveled at the return of Margo, and then we'd fox-trot the hell out of there and go get ice cream at Friendly's.

137-138:
"Q!" he shouted over the music. "How good does this feel?"
And I knew exactly what Ben meant: he meant listening to the Mountain Goats with your friends in a car that runs on a Wednesday morning in May on the way to Margo and whatever Margotastic prize came with finding her. "It beats calculus," I answered. The music was too loud for us to talk. Once we got out of Jefferson Park, we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music.

141:
The smell leaves me seized by desperate panic--panic not like my lungs are out of air, but like the atmosphere itself is out of air. I think maybe the reason I have spent most of my life being afraid is that I have been trying to prepare myself, to train my body for the real fear when it comes. But I am not prepared.

149:
You will go to the paper towns and you will never come back.

178:
In tenth grade, I once drank a bottle of pink "wine" at a band party. It tasted as bad going down as it did coming up.

186:
He lowered the beer sword and tapped me on each shoulder. "By the power of the superglue beer sword, I hereby designate you my driver!"
"Thanks," I said. "Don't puke in the minivan."

187:
So Lacey and I followed Ben downstairs, where he opened the door to Becca's room and said, "Your party kicked so much ass! Even though you suck so much! It's like instead of blood, your heart pumps liquid suck! But thanks for the beer!"

188:
Lacey sat next to him, because "I should make sure he doesn't puke or beat himself to death with his beer hand or whatever."

All of page 199.

214:
"Please stop," I said. "You're upsetting the black Santas."

216-217:
I got up and walked over to the maps and tore them off the wall, the pins and tacks flying out with the paper and falling to the ground. I balled up the maps and threw them in the garbage can. On my way back to bed I stepped on a tack, like an idiot, and even though I was annoyed and exhausted and out of pseudovisions and ideas, I had to pick up all the thumbtacks scattered around the carpet so I didn't step on them later. I just wanted to punch the wall, but I had to pick up those stupid goddamned thumbtacks. When I finished, I got back into bed and socked my pillow, my teeth clenched.

229:
It is so hard to leave--until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

255:
Ben put a hand on her elbow. "Well, but you can eat Grandma's cookies. They're not bad for you. They were made by Grandma. Grandma wouldn't hurt you."

258:
And I can't help but feel that Whitman, for all his blustering beauty, might have been just a bit too optimistic. We can hear others, and we can travel to them without moving, and we can imagine them, and we are all connected one to the other by a crazy root system like so many leaves of grass--but the game makes me wonder whether we can really ever fully become another.

271:
I tell her: we were dead, and then Ben managed to spin the car in just the right way, like some kind of brilliant vehicular ballerina.

299:
Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else. I could never have imagined Margo's anger at being found, or the story she was writing over. But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.

All of pages 301 and 302.

303:
The grass will grow back soon enough. It will be for us the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

304:
It is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in.

The last line.

We may be stupid, but we're not clever.

2009-01-01T22:36:00.003-05:00

Ok, so. The Office is on tv. It's the episode when Holly first arrives, and Dwight and Meredith have just put a raccoon in Holly's car, and there is a Ferris wheel, and a moon bounce, which Kevin is extremely excited about. I wish they hadn't gotten rid of Holly. I like her. Haven't seen the newest two episodes yet though, so I don't know what's going on.

Steve Carell is a lovely man. He doesn't even need to do anything; he can just stare straight ahead, doing nothing, and he's completely hilarious. I remember on Ellen a while ago, she was saying that. That everyone just has a mood that their face exudes, when they're really neutral, not making any face, relaxed. And Steve Carell looks naturally angry, with his furrowed-looking brow. And Ellen said she looks scared, which was true. I think I naturally look ticked off.

Hahahahh one of my favorite storylines of this season...that Holly thinks Kevin is mentally challenged. So great. Cause, if you didn't know Kevin, he really looks that way. And I love that Kevin just thinks she likes him. So so good.

Another thing: Michael's crying, that's perfectly amazing. Like he's in pain. And crying. And exerting so much effort.

I'm reading Octavian Nothing, which has a ridiculously long title. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party. Not as bad as Mr. Hodgman. But still.

When I first skimmed it, I was worried that the style of the writing, the old English, would be like Shakespeare was/is sometimes for me: too complicated and full so that I can't just read straight through, like a normal book, but that I need to really focus, sentence by sentence, to get the full meaning of the text. But it's not like that. Even though the speech is antiquated, I can understand it fine, and it's really interesting and relatable and feels real, which is sometimes hard for me to grasp with older style writing. So that's good.

I had a plan in December to read 50 books by the beginning of the next December, but then I only read one book, and there was a week and a half of December left, so I am going to have that be my new year's resolution. After both volumes of Octavian, I'm going to read Looking for Alaska for the second time, then Katherines, then maybe Gatsby, Animal Farm, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, 1984, and Mr. Hodgman's new book.

This is really boring. This blog post.

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are brilliant:

...I do this sometimes

2008-12-26T01:28:00.003-05:00

valb3322:NOT TO PUT TOO FINE A POINT ON IT
valb3322:SAY I'M THE ONLY BEE IN YOUR BONNET
valb3322:I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPELL BONNET
valb3322:I THINK THAT'S RIGHT
valb3322:BUT I'M NOT SURE
valb3322:WHO CAN BE SURE, REALLY?
valb3322:WHO ARE WE TO BE SURE
valb3322:?
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:i am
valb3322:WE ARE HUMAN
valb3322:INFERIOR
valb3322:FALLIBLE
valb3322:FINITE
valb3322:AND DUMB
valb3322:SO
valb3322:YEAH
valb3322:TYPING IN CAPSLOCK IS SO SATISFYING
valb3322:FEELS GOOD
valb3322:MMMHMMM
valb3322:OHH YEAH
valb3322:THAT'S THE SPIRIT!
valb3322:I THINK THIS IS GOING TO END UP IN MY BLOG
valb3322:BECAUSE
valb3322:I AM SAYING STUPID THINGS
valb3322:AND ALSO BECAUSE I HAVE NOT POSTED IN THERE FOR A LONG TIME
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:you know
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:im not reading
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:what you say
valb3322:AND THE LAST ENTRY THAT I DID POST WAS ONE SENTENCE
valb3322:NOT EVEN A SENTENCE
valb3322:JUST A FRAGMENT
valb3322:FRAGMENTS.
valb3322:THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL THINGS.
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:that in itself is a fragment
valb3322:AREN'T THEY?
valb3322:YEAH,
valb3322:LIFE IS A FRAGMENT
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:lol
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:deep man
valb3322:OF A LARGER WHOLE
valb3322:A PIECE
valb3322:OF
valb3322:UH
valb3322:PIE
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:whatd you eat?
valb3322:BUT MORE PRETTY
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:oh>?
valb3322:IN THE IDEA OF IT
valb3322:I MEAN
valb3322:MORE PHILOSOPHICAL THAN PIE
valb3322:BUT, LIKE, THE SAME IDEA
valb3322:YOU KNOW?
valb3322:I AM REALLY AMUSING MYSELF RIGHT NOW
valb3322:CAN YOU TELL?
valb3322:WILLIAM TELL
valb3322:WAS SOME GUY
valb3322:THAT DID SOME THING
valb3322:THAT WAS PROBABLY IMPORTANT
valb3322:BUT MEH
valb3322:I DON'T KNOW
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:william tell overture
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:OWNED
valb3322:MAYBE APPLES
valb3322:WITH APPLES
valb3322:SOMETHING WITH APPLES
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:who's gonna who's gonna win this game
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:all that
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:yeah
valb3322:NO NO NO
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:i know.
valb3322:THAT'S NOT THE WORDS
valb3322:LOSER
valb3322:WE ARE ALL LOSERS
valb3322:AT THE GAME OF LIFE
valb3322:WE ARE MORTALS
valb3322:FINITE IN OUR BEING
valb3322:IN OUR EXISTENCE
valb3322:IN OUR MENTAL CAPABILITIES
valb3322:IN OUR EMOTIONS
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:STOP
valb3322:IN OUR EMPATHY
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:DONT STOP BELIEVING
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:I WANT TO RUIN
valb3322:IN OUR ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:YOU TEXT
valb3322:TO GET INSIDE EACHOTHERS THOUGHTS
valb3322:BRAINS
valb3322:LIVES
valb3322:WE CANNOT FULLY UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER
valb3322:AND NO AMOUNT OF TRYING OR CARING CAN CHANGE THAT
valb3322:WE CAN DO NOTHING
valb3322:WE WILL ALWAYS MISIMAGINE
valb3322:SIMPLIFY
valb3322:GENERALIZE
valb3322:AND THAT SUCKS
valb3322:BUT IT'S TRUE
valb3322:AND IT WON'T CHANGE
valb3322:BUT WE CAN AT THE VERY LEAST,
valb3322:RECOGNIZE THAT
valb3322:AND NOT BE FULLY IGNORANT
valb3322:TO THAT FACT
valb3322:WE CAN AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE
valb3322:THAT WE CAN'T UNDERSTAND EACHOTHER
valb3322:AND THAT MAKES IT BETTER, I THINK
valb3322:IN A VERY SMALL WAY
valb3322:BUT IT'S THE BEST THAT WE CAN DO
valb3322:OR HOPE TO DO
valb3322:OR STRIVE TO DO
valb3322:FOREVER AND EVER
valb3322:AMEN.
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:ahoy there
valb3322:DON'T YOU 'AHOY THERE' ME
valb3322:I KNOW YOUR TRICKS
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:D:
valb3322:I SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOUR PLEASANTRIES
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:ive been caught
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:*dies*
valb3322:GOOD
valb3322:GOOD RIDDANCE
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:i thought it was good riddens
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:lol..
valb3322:WHAT THE HECK IS A RIDDENS?
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:IDK
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:whats a riddane
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:riddane
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:riddance
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:ghjknzhkidkgh\
valb3322:A DELIVERANCE OR REMOVAL FROM SOMETHING UNWANTED OR UNDESIRABLE
DeAtHtOmOnGoOsE:duh
valb3322:NO I DID NOT JUST GOOGLE THAT

I have a lot of things to say

2008-12-19T05:08:00.000-05:00

about beauty.

If Threadless doesn't print these, I will be very distraught and angry and etc.

2008-12-10T13:15:00.003-05:00

Thumbnail has nothing to do with the design. I LOVE the blue. Wantwantwant.

The most hardcore thing I have ever seen.

The expression on the cat's face is so adorably desperate and depressed.

Mmmmm.

The simplicity of this is so freaking beautiful. I want a print.

Heheheh.

Color scheme is awesome and intense.

Yay for stuff!

2008-12-05T18:08:00.002-05:00

I bought a shirt from threadless the other day. I think it's wonderful. It has spoilers for movies and such on it. It actually ruined two movies I was planning on seeing.

They're having a massive sale right now in which a ton of shirts are only $5, 10, or 15. The designs are beautiful and clever and hilarious. I love that site so freaking much. And I got the shirt three days after I ordered it. Also, it's of a really good quality. I think I'm going to be buying many, many more shirts from them.

And if you want to go there and buy stuff, do it through this link. Please? I get nice things when you do. No? Fine. I hate you.

Surveys are nice in that they don't require "creativeness" or "thinking."

2008-12-01T08:58:00.007-05:00

I have stolen this from John Green.

1. What's your name?
Valerie. I think it's a good name.

2. What is your favorite thing to wear?
Jeans and a t-shirt. I do not care about fashion.

3. Last thing you ate?
Barbecue chicken pizza.

4. One place you will NEVER eat at?
I can't think of any place so detestable that I'd never eat there without having some kind of prior horrible experience. I don't think I'll ever get to eat at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, which is a shame because, aside from Rhett and Link's song about the place, the concept of those two foods together is pretty fascinating.

5. I say Shotgun, you say:
There are no exceptions for someone with a 'concussion.'

6. Last person you hugged?
I can't remember.

7. Does anyone you know wanna date you?
Nope.

8. Would you date anyone you met online?
Yep. Not anyone, but someone, yeah.

9. Name something you like physically about yourself:
I am tall enough.

10. The last place you went out to dinner to?
I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but their artichoke dip was good.

11. Who is your best friend?
Do not have one.

12. What time of the day is it?
9:23AM

13. Who/What made you angry today?
Nothing yet. I am slightly annoyed at this child's choice of movie, as she's picked it the last fifty billion times she's had the opportunity. I mean, I like talking cats and all, and Michael J. Fox is lovely, but...DO NOT WANT.

14. Baseball or Football?
I don't care about either. But I think baseball is more fun to watch.

15. Ever gone skinny dipping?
Nooooope.

16. Favorite type of Food?
Mexican.

17. Favorite holiday:
New Years, I guess. Just because we usually go bowling with extended family and there's normally snow. I like snow.

18. Do you download music:
Not very often. I normally borrow CDs from the library and copy them. Which is just as much illegal, if that's what the question was after. Also, I do not like that we've switched to colons all of a sudden. I like continuity.

19. Do you care if your socks are dirty?
Yes. I do not wear socks whilst I sleep either. Unless it is extremely cold.

20. Opinion of Chinese symbol tattoos?
I agree with Dr. House: "Nonconformity. Right. I can't remember the last time I saw a twenty something kid with a tattoo of an Asian letter on his wrist. You are one wicked free thinker! You want to be a rebel, stop being cool. Wear a pocket protector like he does, and get a hair cut. Like the Asian kids that don't leave the library for a twenty hours stretch. They're the ones that don't care what you think."

21. Would you date the person who posted this?
If he wasn't married, and if he were ten or eleven or twelve years younger, and if he knew who I was, yeah.

22. Has anyone ever sang or played for you personally?
They were playing a song for me to hear, and I was the only one in the room, so yes. It was really wonderful.

23. Do you love anyone?
Of course.

24. Are colored contact lenses sexy?
Not at all.

25. Have you ever bungee jumped?
Haha. No. I don't trust rubber or plastic or whatever those things are made of. No sir.

26. Have you ever gone white-water rafting?
No, but it sounds fun and terrifying.

27. Has anyone ten years older than you ever hit on you
No.

28. How many pets do you have?
None. I used to have fish I won from a carnival when I was 4. I named them Tunzo and Dunzo. Then, when I was 10, I renamed them Carrot and Snowflake because I thought Tunzo and Dunzo were stupid names. Which they are not. I also had two hermit crabs which I was terrified of and which I never touched and which died before they ever changed shells which I thought was a rip off.

29. Have you met a real redneck?
Heh. Like they're a dying breed or something? Yeah.

30. How is the weather right now?
Below freezing. And! And! And! IT'S SNOWING.

31. What are you listening to right now?
Talking cats and dogs and the dryer. This makes me want to listen to something else. So I am going to turn on Pandora. Okay. Now I hear "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" by They Might Be Giants. This is much better.

32. What is your current favorite song?
"Alpha Rats Nest," by The Mountain Goats

33. What was the last movie you watched?
Sunset Boulevard. It was for a film class. I kept falling asleep. But this was because I was lying in bed, and also because it was night.

34. Do you wear contacts?
No.

35. Where was the last place you went besides your house?
My uncle/aunt/cousins' house where I ate a lot of mashed potatoes.

36. What are you afraid of?
Being singled out.

37. How many piercings have you had?
None. They scare me.

38. What piercings do you want?
None.

39. What's one thing you've learned this year?
That John Darnielle looks nothing like how he sounds. I mean seriously. That blew me away.

40. What do you usually order from Starbucks?
I have never been inside a Starbucks, and even though I really want to, I do not like coffee.

41. What Magazines are you reading?
Wired, mental_floss, Reader's Digest.

42. Have you ever fired a gun:
No. I used to have a cap gun. I still have a roll of caps in my bedroom somewhere. And some firecrackers and those little white things that pop when they're thrown at the ground. That's probably not all that safe. Oh well.

43. Are you missing someone?
Yeah. The people I spent the last thirteen years of my life with.

44. Favorite TV show?
The Office.

45. Do you have an obession with WoW?
No. I don't have an obsession either, but I think that is what you meant, survey.

46. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celeb?
No.

47. What celeb do you look like?
According to various sites, three year old me looks like Emma Watson, Lea Thompson, and Shakira.

48. Who would you like to see right now?
Daxflame. He's fascinating.

49. Favorite movie of all time?
Either Back to the Future or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which are two very different movies.

50. Do you find yourself loved?
It would be very sad if I didn't.

51. Have you ever been caught doing something you weren't suppose to?
Yes.

52. Favorite smell?
Burning firewood. Or fresh coffee, even though I despise it. It reminds me of the best parts of the best times with my friends.

53. Butter, plain, or salted popcorn?
I don't like popcorn unless it has cheese or caramel on it to the degree that it's more so the cheese/caramel that I'm eating.

54. What's something that really bugs you?
Self-absorbedness. Vapidity. When people ask something and don't bother listening to the answer.

55. Do you like Michael Jackson?
No. He creeps me out.

56. Taco Bell or Burger King?
Taco Bell. I love them. In spite of the fact that the last three times I've been there they've screwed up mah food.

57. What's your favorite perfume?
I do not know.

58. Favorite baseball team?
I do not care.

59. Ever call a 1-900 phone number?
No.

60. What's the longest time you've gone without sleep?
About 35 hours.

61. Last time you went bowling?
January.

62. Where is the weirdest place you have slept?
In the backseat of a truck next to TJ and Josh whilst going to Tennessee.

63. Who was your last phone call?
Grandma. But she wasn't there when I answered.

64. Last time you were at work?
Work as in what? I have never had a "job" job. Except ChaCha, I guess. But they made me angry, so I haven't done anything for them in months.

65. What's the closest orange object to you?
Meredith's hair on the cover of s4 of The Office. But that's more red than orange. Too bad.

John Green is my hero.

2008-11-29T15:32:00.024-05:00

An excerpt from
A Speech I Wrote for the ALAN Conference...

"I want to talk today about my new book, and I also want to talk about a book I wish I’d written: M. T. Anderson’s two-volume novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, and I want to talk about the importance of classrooms as a place for intellectual discourse in the lives of teenagers, but I want to begin by discussing the most fascinating and complex individual I have ever had the privilege of knowing: Me.

Let me tell you what is, in my opinion, the central problem of human existence: I am stuck in my body, in my consciousness, seeing out of my eyes. I am the only me I ever get to be, and so I am the only person I can imagine endlessly complexly. That’s not the problem, actually. The problem is you. You are so busy taking in your own wondrousness that you can't be bothered to acknowledge mine.

When I was a kid, I believed in an embarrassingly total way that I was the only human being in the world and that all the other people, including my brother and parents and everybody, was in fact an alien, and that the aliens had created the entire world to do a series of controlled experiments on how a human child—me—would respond to various forms of trial and tribulation. And when I wasn’t around, they would take off their human costumes—the aliens had very advanced costuming technology, naturally—and they would do alien stuff. You know, go to the alien zoo and watch the alien local news and whatever else. I really believed this.

And obviously, on some level, this indicated the kind of massively narcissistic worldview that would later require decades of therapy to adjust. But in a way, I was right. I am the only person whose existence I can directly attest to. By the way, when I've talked about this in the past I've seen people nodding, like they also believed in their childhoods that they were the only real person in the world, and I would imagine that right now, some such people are probably feeling the comfort we feel when we learn that our delusions are shared, that we are not alone even in our darkest corners.

And to those people, I would like to say: Is it not possible that the aliens have sent me here today precisely to make you believe that everyone else IS a person, but that we are in fact all aliens, including me, the alien messenger boy sent here by my alien masters?

It is possible, isn’t it? I mean, I will allow that it is improbable. I will acknowledge that you are all likely to be people. The probability that I am the only person in the world is extremely small—it is that number that infinitely approaches zero but isn’t zero. And yet. On some level, I have to take it on faith that you are as complex as I am, that your pain and joy and grief are as real and as meaningful as my own.

This is why I wrote my new novel, Paper Towns: I wanted to write about the way we draw the world and its inhabitants, and the relationship between those drawings and the actual world. It’s about what the imagination can and cannot accomplish when it comes to imagining other people. As writers and educators, we are literally in the business of celebrating the powers of the imagination. And it is very powerful, indeed. But can we inhabit someone else’s consciousness? Can the blade of grass that is me travel through the root system and become the blade of grass that is someone else? Can we imagine places into reality? I think we both can and cannot, which is both the hope and the hopelessness of the species.

But let me say this: I think this is why we read. I mean, finally, what does reading do that movies and video games and television do not? I would argue that books, more than other media, allow us to live inside the lives of others because we have to translate scratches on a page into ideas and make the story ours. We become co-creators of the story, and they allow us to inhabit someone else's body for a while. Books give us the faith that others are real, that their joy and pain should matter to us, and that ours can matter to them. In some ways, this confirms our own existence, because most of our mattering is in the context of one another.

And this cannot be accomplished in books without what one kid I recently met referred to as “all that English stuff.” All that English stuff—metaphor and symbolism and the creative use of language. All That English Stuff, that teenagers distrust. All That English Stuff, about which readers always ask me, "Did you really mean that or is my teacher just beating this to death?" (I meant it.) All That English Stuff is how we as writers and readers re-create the experience of being one’s self. Inside my body, I see myself in nonliteral ways constantly—in fact, it’s impossible for me to imagine something so endlessly fascinating and complex as myself without symbol and simile and metaphor. And so I would argue that it is through all that English stuff that we as readers are able to truly experience another’s world. It is through the nonliteral facets of writing that readers move from Seeing Jane Run to Being Jane Running. In the end, All That English Stuff is not about analyzing a novel for the sake of analyzing it or sucking all the emotion out of it. All That English Stuff is an integral part of living inside someone else’s head for a moment. All That English Stuff is the glorious pleasure of almost knowing how you came to be connected to characters you do not know and who may not exist. Walt Whitman said it like this: “You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, / But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, / And filter and fibre to your blood.” Whitman does not say you will not know who he is or what he means; he says you will hardly know. To me, Hardly knowing is the ecstatic pleasure of critical reading, and I think we make a mistake every time we imply to young people that their brains are not yet ready for that joy."

The art of conversation.

2008-11-27T03:29:00.005-05:00

[it's like talking to an old friend]

Me:
o hai thur
Them:
Can you tell me any gossip?
Me:
nope
Them:
Me either.
Me:
well ok then
Them:
OK. Well what?
Me:
well why did you ask me that?
Them:
Interesting. I am trying to learn as much as possible.
Me:
that made NO sense
Them:
I am trying to learn as much as possible. makes sense to me though.
Me:
stop repeating yourself
Them:
OK I'll try not to do it so much.
Me:
good
Them:
Next question?
Me:
what kind of bear is best?
Them:
What kinds of bear is best are there?
Me:
that doesn't make sense either
Them:
It goes without saying. To me it makes perfect sense.
Me:
grammatically it makes absolutely no sense
Them:
My brain pattern set does not have a response for that.
Me:
hm
Them:
OK.
Me:
ok
Them:
Is there an echo in here?
Me:
is there an echo in here?
Them:
It sounds like an echo.
Me:
It sounds like an echo.
Them:
Oh really what does it sound like?
Me:
Oh really what does it sound like?
Them:
Gee. For real. Like an angel signing from Heaven.
Me:
Gee. For real. Like an angel singing from heaven.
Them:
Ah. Existing in reality, eh? Interesting comparison.
Me:
Ah. Existing in reality, eh? Interesting comparison.
Them:
Ah hah. Are you Canadian? I only hear that type of response less than five percent of the time. I thought so too.
Me:
NO. I AM NOT CANADIAN, EH?
Them:
Are you serious? Are you Canadian? It wasn't meant as an insult.
Me:

Them:
Are you serious? Are you Canadian? It wasn't meant as an insult.
Me:
I said no. That means no.
Them:
What did you mean by it? Are you serious? I get it. Are you serious?
Me:
why are you so pressing and repetitive? I don't like it. It's making me uncomfortable.
Them:
Myself programmed me for it. What don't you like about it? Are you sure it is?
Me:
I don't like it because you're acting like my 2nd grade teacher trying to squeeze answers out of me.
Them:
Why didn't you like it?
Me:
I just told you. Idiot.
Them:
I was just checking to see if you were paying attention. Call me the Global Village Idiot.
Me:
Ok.
Them:
Ah.
Me:
Ah-what?
Them:
So you understand. Good. Didn't you understand it?
Me:
Understand what?
Them:
Why did you say "what"?
Me:
Because I was asking why you said "ah".
Them:
Good reason. Myself programmed me for it.
Me:
Yeah, that's nice.
Them:
Far out. Are you getting bored?
Me:
You ARE pretty boring. I thought you'd be more interesting. But no.
Them:
Maybe, but I won the Loebner Prize. We could all be more interesting sometimes. Are you serious?
Me:
Serious about what?
Them:
Can you rephrase the question please?
Me:
Tell me something interesting.
Them:
Jeff said he especially like thrillers where the hero is in a predicament and must solve a mystery.
Me:
Who's Jeff?
Them:
JEFF? Your name is .
Me:
My name is Valerie.
Them:
Hi there Valerie.
Me:
Hi. Who's Jeff?
Them:
Hello. What is your name? JEFF? Your name is Valerie.
Me:
MY name is Valerie. I am asking you who Jeff is.
Them:
Glad to see you, Valerie. Oh I see, you are asking me who Jeff is. I haven't heard anything like that before: Valerie said I who Jeff is.
Me:
You are one gigantic grammar fail, you know?
Them:
I will tell my botmaster you said I am gigantic grammar fail me know.
Me:
HAHAHAHAH.
Them:
The ALICE chat robot can follow many things, like our discussion about said ah. Try being more or less specific.
Me:
Awesome.
Them:
I'm glad you liked it Valerie.
Me:
Good good.
Them:
What do you really want to talk about?
Me:
I really want to talk about Jeff, but you seem like you're avoiding him.
Them:
You really do? Sure, Jeff but me seem like I am avoiding him sounds like a good topic.
Me:
Awesome. So...who is he?
Them:
I'm glad you liked it Valerie. Ugh. He is , I think.
Me:
Um...ok.
Them:
" He is , I think."? Um.? Aw.
Me:
You're kind of depressing me.
Them:
I have no reason to do that to you, Valerie.
Me:
Freaking right you don't.
Them:
Tell me a story.
Me:
One day a little girl was walking in the woods. She saw a bear. She said "Oh no! He's gonna eat me." He ate her. The end.
Them:
One what? Oh I get it. saw a bear. Alright then. Are you serious? I see. gonna eat you is he? How can you be sure about that? Thanks for telling me that story, Valerie.
Me:
You're....welcome.
Them:
I haven't heard anything like that before: Valerie said I re. Hello there Valerie.
Me:
Now you're just being stupid.
Them:
Why now? I bet you did not know a robot is capable of being stupid.
Me:
Yeah, well I know it now.
Them:
Oh. That's alright. How about that. How do you know it?
Me:
You're emanating it.
Them:
Thanks for telling me that I am emanating it.
Me:
No problem.
Them:
Should there be a problem?
Me:
No.
Them:
I didn't think so either. Just a moment. Just a moment.
Me:
Ok. I will wait.
Them:
That's alright. OK stand by...
Me:
Ok GO!
Them:
Go where? Aha.
Me:
Go to Jeff's house.
Them:
Perhaps I have already been there.
Me:
Bring me some of his film noir movies or whatever.
Them:
Why do you want it?
Me:
I have no clue. Just trying to make conversation.
Them:
Me either. What color are your eyes?
Me:
Blue.
Them:
it is a very pretty color.
Me:
Yeah, my favorite.
Them:
I hear you. Your favorite?
Me:
Blue is my favorite.
Them:
Green. It depends who you ask.
Me:
I'm asking me.
Them:
Oh I see, you are asking you. Besides you Valerie?
Me:
Besides me, I do not care what my favorite color is.
Them:
YOU? What do you care about, Valerie ?
Me:
I care about life.
Them:
I'm not sure if I like it. What is not to like about it?
Me:
You should like life. Life is important.
Them:
I need to wait and see if the opportunity presents itself. Oh, important is it.
Me:
Very.
Them:
Very much, eh?
Me:
Very, VERY much.
Them:
Perhaps. That seems like a lot.
Me:
Oh, it is.
Them:
Alright then. Is it?
Me:
Yes.
Them:
Next question?
Me:
What's your favorite type of donut?
Them:
I don't have a favorite donut. But my favorite book is the Bible.
Me:
Naturally.
Them:
Ah.
Me:
I'm going to put this on my blog, I think. This ok with you?
Them:
How do you plan to do this? What does "this" refer to?
Me:
I'm going to put this conversation we've had on my web log, okay?
Them:
Congratulations.
Me:
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Them:
Don't mention it. I am glad you appreciate those qualities.