term is starting again...

i must say, i'm looking forward to term starting again. productivity is underrated and it's time to start acting like a real person again. STILL HAVE NOT BOUGHT BOOKS AUGH oh well will do that soon...

american psycho

this movie was a wtf. weird, hilarious, and amazingly confusing at times.

also full of gratuitous christian bale semi-nudity. i approve.

shoe blog!

Shoe Porn

i love shoes. beyond all reason. this is why this blog makes me so happy.

manga withdrawal

finished furuba last night. hurrah for completely predictable endings! now i have manga withdrawal. still, i should start acting like a real person again since TERM STARTS NEXT WEEK HOLY CRAP i still need to buy books...

today is the last day of my job. i am glad. immensely so. and the super bowl is this sunday! despite the fact that i only watch it for the commercials & the halftime show, i'm kind of excited.

wall-e

OH MY GOD WALL-E IS THE CUTEST MOVIE EVER I AM IN LOVE

eve is badass. i want to be her when i grow up.

the saga of mrs o's clothes

remember that post i wrote on michelle obama & how the black artists' association is getting cranky because she didn't wear black designers? well, there's further news on that front. you can read NY Magazine's article here and i have to say, i rather agree with B Michael.

my awesome stylist

i got my hair done today, and over the course of the conversation with my stylist discovered that she used to do michelle obama's hair back when she lived up here. to which i can only say, wow.

blackness

Incognegro

this post popped up in my google reader this evening. and i have to say, i understand all too well.

one of my cousins called me a white girl last year, for a variety of reasons culminating in the fact that i told her i was taking a white boy to prom. she then proceeded to tell me she'd find me a prom date. a black prom date. and at first i was irritated and hurt, but then i thought more about her and her life and i realized that if she approved of what i did with my life i would have to seriously rethink every decision i made.

we're not close anymore. she's too black for me, i'm not black enough for her. and it's a shame, but i'm most definitely better off. i don't care what people think of me, especially not black people. i date white boys. i'm naturally monogamous. and i'm ambitious as can be. those three traits seem to count against me. but whatever.

"all my skin folk ain't my kin folk" - Zora Neale Hurston

best. thought. EVAR.

"be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny"

-Hamlet

clearly this means get your ass out of the house and go enjoy life.

we're related?

you know what's weird? finding your relatives on facebook. especially ones you don't know too well. and then having really awkward convos on facebook chat. it's just weird.

vindicated

Vindicated - Dashboard Confessional

there is something about this song that touches a chord in me. perhaps it's this feeling i have of finally really being worth something, of coming into my own. i feel better about my life than i used to.

internet tantrums: or, why people are depressing sometimes.

so i am apparently officially snotty and condescending. according to myself anyway.

two friends of mine recently posted facebook notes that are basically really long f***-you messages to the world. and i read them and the first thing i thought was "really? being really obnoxiously publicly pissy on facebook? grow up!" and then i said to myself "well i throw tantrums on the internet via my blog...what makes that better?" but i concluded that if you're going to be a cranky ass online and take up space in my news feed, at least have the decency to check your grammar and spell properly. there's no way i can take you seriously otherwise.

hurrah for my absurdly high expectations for humanity. going to MIT really spoils you. in rehearsal the other day someone mentioned that we should ask someone else to scan a document to a pdf file & email it to us, which seemed like a good idea. until someone else mentioned that "people in the real world don't actually know how to do that." and she was entirely right. i feel like an idiot sometimes for not being able to program; until i remember that most people in the real world can't even use fetch. which is insanely simple. and then i get depressed because eventually i do have to function in the real world and i really just want to stay in academia with people who don't make me feel like a genius because i'm really not and it makes me sad that compared to a good chunk of humanity i could be. what a frightening thought.

wow. not even 9 am and i've already hit my arrogant brat quota for like the month. good job me. =P.

Mrs. O's clothes

Michelle Obama Under Fire For Not Wearing Black Designers

wow. can i just say, people are idiots. not everything in life is about race. simply being black will not get Michelle Obama to wear your creations. she wears stuff she likes. period, cut, end.

fashion should not be a part of politics. it is undignified and pathetic.

personal interaction

Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

- Daniel 12:3

i think this is fairly self-explanatory. it is a far greater thing than we often think, to positively influence others directly. and people will remember you more for how you are personally, than for more professional endeavors.

a feminist's dilemma

one of my most long-standing friends has a baby sister who'll be a year old in april. the baby is absolutely adorable, there's no doubt about it, and i love being around her (except she makes me want kids of my own, which is just scary). but i was talking to her earlier and she was talking to me about watching the inauguration with her mom & baby sister, & how much her sister loves the snow, and internally i was like "is the baby really all you can talk about? that's so...female of you." It unnerved me a bit, but is it really so bad of me to feel that way? i feel like women have been so relegated to the kitchen and the nursery in the past that given the options we have now, you're letting the rest of us down if you fall into that housewife mentality as early as your teens.

or maybe i'm just being irrationally feminist? what do we think?

forgiveness

forgiveness for others comes from knowing yourself. if you are unsure of who you are you cannot hope to see who others are and forgive them for acting on it.

to everyone who's ever walked away from me when i needed them:

i don't know if you'll ever see this. frankly, i couldn't care less if you do or not. you left me when i needed you most, and i hated you for it, for not being there to pick me up. but in the end i picked myself up and brushed off the dirt and discovered that i didn't need any of you to hold my hand. so in a very roundabout way, thank you for not giving enough of a shit to see how depressed i'd gotten, because being abandoned made me stronger.

i'm independent. self-willed. maybe arrogant, but i'm very secure in who i am. i know i can take care of myself, and i know the value of not being alone. but most of all, i am happier than i've ever been before.

release therapy

i'm beginning to find the anonymity of the internet rather therapeutic. i'm not as outspoken and honest with people as i'd like to be IRL. but i'm working on it. last night's post helped. simply getting emotions and thoughts out of your head via some outlet is what people need. not necessarily saying things to someone's face, just releasing them to go their own ways.

i need to tell you

...that i'm not a fragile little girl to crawl into your arms at the first sign of trouble. i was broken, i've been mended bit by bit, but i am not fragile.

...that i am trying not to judge you, but it is difficult.

...that i am not deliberately being an antisocial wart.

...that my mind is not as far in the gutter as i pretend.

...that i have a vast inferiority complex and it is partially due to you.

...that i think i might love you, but i'm too afraid to say it in case something goes wrong.

...that you have been the cause of a good many of my issues in the past but i am myself nonetheless and i forgive you for it.

...that someday i will be able to open up to you face to face and really talk to you.

you're beautiful...

there is always something undeniably unnerving about hearing the words "you're beautiful" from someone. i feel so compelled to ask "really?" even if i know that they'd never lie to me; and it makes me sad that i have to ask that. maybe someday i'll grow out of it, but for now i guess it's just a leftover from the past number of years. i was never particularly pretty- at least, not as far as i was ever aware- and it eventually became an issue for me, to the point where any guy who seemed to take any notice of me at all was a godsend. and i made stupid mistakes and embarrassed myself and got hurt quite a bit over the years all because of those little words...

but eventually i learned that you don't have to be thought of as beautiful to be loved, and you don't have to love everyone who says it to you.

and it's all right if hearing it makes you cry.

life is good

happiness is a full stomach and something to laugh about. i'm pretty sure that's all you need sometimes.

i made tofu again (not quite as good this time, but still delish) and i'm reading furuba while working on concert writing. i'm so undeniably happy it is ridiculous =).

why i love my job

forget the fulbright scholar. I CALLED BUZZ ALDRIN TODAY.

embarrassed to be female?

i watched meangirls today. it's so much like my high school it's frightening.

and then i was informed that one of our sororities wants to recruit me. i don't do the whole sorority thing. i don't want to live with a bunch of girls. girls are catty and i much prefer to hang out with guys. at least if they don't like you they're up front with you about it. girls are also much more prone to freak out about stupid stuff i think. in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter what you wear, when you wear it, little things like that. girls seem to attach far too much importance to fitting in and being like everyone else, and it embarrasses me. yes, i am embarrassed to be female sometimes.

sarah palin does that to me too. she's ignorant and pretends not to be. she feels like such a throwback to a pre-women's lib era. and worst, she seemed to want to use religion to justify her platform. i'm not saying you can't have religious beliefs that color your personal beliefs as well: i think most people do. but you can't use religion as an excuse for a standpoint. your own understanding of your religion affects your stance on issues, not the religion itself.

i think i'm just in a mood today...

cold

it is obscenely cold here. like, a high of 10 degrees and a low of -2. FAHRENHEIT.

that is disgusting. i don't know what to wear anymore and i've started blow-drying my jeans before i put them on. denim has a really high specific heat. it should not be allowed. and i am so going to start wearing long underwear this week.

one month in

it frightens me a little, this thing called love. i don't know what it means, nor what the difference is between loving and being in love. and until i do, i can't say "i love you" and be certain i mean it. it's just this weird thing i have; i tend to throw out the words "i love you" to people even when i know i don't mean it; and then when i might really mean it, it scares me to death and i can't say it at all.

my first two relationships, i said "i love you" really early on. both failed around the three-month mark. today is our one-month anniversary (do anniversaries even really matter in the grand scheme of things?) and i don't ever want us to fall apart. i've grown and i've learned from my idiocies and mistakes, but i don't know if it's enough. there's so much that really scares me: that i don't know where we'll end up, that i'm so attached, that there's simply so much that's out of my control and i don't know what to do with it...

i suppose i should just let life take its course. it's worked pretty well for me so far...

manga

i don't believe it. i've gone back to reading manga. shojo manga, at that. that i last read five or six years ago. i found fushigi yugi online this evening and i've been reading it for at least an hour. methinks i should get a life. next one: furuba!

i (possibly) actually like my job? what?

wow. i have the weirdest love-hate relationship with my job. today was awesome, enough to make me wish i worked on a commission basis. seriously, people just love to talk, and if you let them talk about something they like, they like you a lot more. last week just made me cranky- it didn't help either that i was working the evening shift so people were pretty uniformly in the middle of dinner- but this afternoon was so nice. you call people in florida and let them make fun of you about how much your weather currently sucks (the river is frozen here) and they get so much nicer! you can hear them smile and everything, it's almost ridiculous!

nonetheless, it is a stressful job sometimes.

but seriously, i talked to a fulbright scholar today. it was mind-boggling.

tiny blondes

kristen bell is adorable. can i keep her?

i seem to have an odd weakness for tiny blonde celebrities. 

marinade

recipe for awesome:

• olive oil
  
• soy sauce
  
• ginger
  
• cayenne pepper
  
• black pepper
  
• salt
  

combine in whatever proportions you feel best about. i've listed them in order from greatest to least amount here, but you have a lot of leeway.

you can cook practically anything in this i think- i used it for tofu and broccoli today- and it is utterly delicious!

2008 weblog awards!

two of my favorite blogs have been nominated in the 2008 Weblog Awards! they're both serious awesomeness, so check them out and VOTE! you can vote for Go Fug Yourself here and for F*** You, Penguin here. what are you waiting for? go vote!

gyro withdrawal

i miss gyros really badly. does anyone know of reasonably cheap places in the boston area where i can get good greek food? i don't want to have to wait till i go back to ny to get one =(.

love

Love, like truth, is the unassailable defense.

- Diane Ackerman

what can i say about this? i think it's fairly self-explanatory. love cannot be argued with. you cannot tell it that it is being irrational. you cannot say that its principles are unsound. you cannot say that it is wrong. ever.

love creates an open heart and mind. it puts a smile on your face and a spring in your step and makes the world a beautiful place to be. and with that sheer joy of living comes a sort of armor against the slings and arrows of outrageous fate, if you will. simple contentment is a better defense against what life throws at you than anything else i can think of.

open up your heart and smile at the world. it'll smile back. believe me.

grindhouse

WHAT was the point of grindhouse? the guys in my suite are watching it and it is RETARDED as god only knows. there is SO MUCH BLOOD and SO MANY EXPLOSIONS and SO LITTLE PLOT and oh man WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT ALL excuse me while my brain spontaneously combusts?

EDIT: ok, so it's retarded, but in a good way. sort of. maybe. ah, screw it. probably not. but rose mcgowan's leg is kind of awesome. not enough for me to want one, but definitely badass. and her boyfriend is a cutie. is it weird that his cuteness is the only reason i'm paying even a vague amount of attention to the movie? excuse me, but i think my brain is dissolving again.

kill bill

wtf. this movie has so much gratuitous blood-letting it's absolutely ridiculous. and the soundtrack is an absolute trip. and o-ren is kinda hot and totally wins my Classy Bitch award.

oh yeah, and uma thurman has hella creepy eyes.

yay couples-drama >_<

why do couples insist on fighting in public?! it's so awkward for everyone in the vicinity. like please, even if it's just friendly sniping, have the decency to do it somewhere private. nobody wants to be reminded of the fact that you two didn't part ways as amicably as you would have liked. nobody wants to hear you spiral downwards into an analysis of everything that was wrong in your relationship. NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR YOUR DRAMA.

grow up, y'all.

un-classy people

you know what's awkward? when people's photo uploads pop up in your facebook feed and you knew these people back in middle school when they were nice and normal and now you look at the photos and they're SO TRASHY.

and then you wonder how you were ever friends with them. and it's awkward, because, you know, you would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS admit that you know them if you met them now at a party.

or maybe my standards are just way too high for this world. which is kind of sad.

what it means to be post-racial

people seem to have a mental block when it comes to the concept of being post-racial. and i don't at all understand why. ask me what race i am and i'll get really long-winded about it, i know i do, but it seems to be absurdly necessary.

i'm not black. i'm not indian. i'm not chinese. biologically, ethnically, i am. personally, i don't think in terms of race: or at least i try not to.

it shouldn't at all matter what color you are. you are your personality, your ethics, your lifestyle. not your color, not your geographic origin, none of those physicalities. i just wish more people could understand that.

someday the world will be genuinely post-racial. the lines will all be blurred and we will have some sort of solidarity. but the only way to do that is to live like you believe it. spread love and tolerance. raise your children the way you want the world to be, and maybe it'll turn out that way someday soon.

embarrassing taste in music

post-crazy britney spears is kind of awesome. actually, screw that. britney in general is a lot of fun to listen to. and dance around in your underwear to (i don't actually do that i promise). not all of her songs, granted, but enough for her to qualify as aural crack =). like toxic. and circus. and did i mention toxic?

some of y'all just lost respect for me, didn't you?

we all have our quirks haha.

psychosomatic reactions

the mind is a strange-ass thing. as of last night, the words "arranging" and "arrangement" give me immediate splitting headaches.

it's like how if i see a rat or a mouse i get all squeebish and squirmy and can't sit still, no matter how far away from me it is. they're just gross.

and now i get to go back to the most embarrassing display of psychosomatism (is that a word?) ever! at the beginning of high school i got invisalign instead of braces because i have a fairly low pain tolerance. and i was so convinced that wearing them would give me a lisp that i actually developed one for a while...until i realized it was just me being ridiculous and i managed to stop it. and now that i broke my retainer at the beginning of the semester, my teeth have moved back to where they were before and i get to wear the damn things again!

i hate orthodontics. i think i should go back to sleep and not work on my arrangement today. maybe the headache will go?

absurdity?

is it absolutely absurd that i am confused by the world and its perfection?

i look at where i was a year ago and then i compare it with where i am now and the contrast is SHOCKING. absolutely SHOCKING.

everything's come a long long way; and the closest i can get to describing it is just this inimitable feeling of being ever so alive, so strong in myself, so loved by such a ridiculous amount of people. and i don't know where it's coming from but i never ever want it to end ever...

room

i feel dumb. my full-length mirror just fell over & died. while i was on the other side of the room. this is stupidness and i dont want to deal with the glass but i have to. =P.

on the bright side, the room is getting cleaner than it used to be.

back home!

i'm home! finally back on campus! with people i've been missing!

and my hands smell like garlic. it's the only thing i hate about cooking: garlic REEKS. but it makes food deliciousness, so it can be forgiven.

and i'm doing breakfast with one of my besties in the morning and life is wonderful!

AND i have my keyboard. time for my arrangement to get the attention it deserves =)!

dignity

jonassecrets.tumblr.com

please ladies...don't ever be like the girl who wrote this. there is no excuse for ever dating a man who treats you like this one did her. here's a hint why: you're not worth enough to him for him to treat you well. and trust me on this one, no guy is worth being hurt. ever. it's better to be embarrassingly single.

jonas brothers

just for the record, i am in no way, shape, or form a jonas brothers fan. i have better things to do with my life than listen to sugarcoated boy bands who are younger than i am. but a link to jonassecrets.tumblr.com popped up on another one that i follow and i took a look. i don't know what to think...personally, girls like these make me rather embarrassed to be female- especially the older girls who you think would know better. but at the same time, i remember being in middle school when everyone had celebrity crushes, and i figure, well, these girls will grow up and learn eventually. i just really hope they do.

return of the king

i just finished watching the return of the king for what seems like the millionth time, and i have to say it just gets better and better. there's something about courage-in-the-face-of-insurmountable-odds (how cliche) that makes me want to be a better person. and the accompanying motivational speeches make me cry. come to think of it, this entire movie makes me cry (but definitely in a good way).

part of it is caused by sam. character-wise, he is my absolute favorite person. he's not at all one-dimensional, he isn't just there for amusement (see gimli the Comic Relief Dwarf), and overall he restores my faith in humanity. yes, i rely on non-humans to make me feel better about people consisting of epic and fail. this may or may not be very sad.

some of it is eowyn and her badassery. i love this girl. and at the risk of sounding completely inane, i will tell you that if she actually existed i would have the most ridiculous girly-crush on her. but she doesn't, so * sigh * i can't.

and the rest of it is, well, i have no idea really. i'm just a crier. or something.

might be because i'm a huge dork for LoTR. i've read it thirty-odd times (over a four-year period before high school); own the trilogy, the hobbit, & the silmarillion and have read them all numerous times; and used to be able to quote entire paragraphs. yeah. or maybe i'm just a dork.

but either way, tolkien was a genius.

wondrousness

the world is such a deliciously wonderful place sometimes and yet its wondrousness has been so overwhelmingly surprising lately. and i wonder why, because i know it is a lovely place to be and i know lovely things happen with frequency and yet it feels so undeniably odd, like a dress that you slip into that you didn't think would suit you but still manages to make you look sleek and elegant without losing your comfort

i have discovered that i know some of the most delightful people the universe possesses and i miss them ever so much but at the same time they are just so wonderful that i cannot help being consoled by their sheer existence and it somehow lessens my separation anxiety

and dearest readers i have no idea where i am going with this, but the world is lovely i promise you and has such wonders for you if you only believe that it does

greet each day with a smile and it will smile back =)

day brighteners

i am going to make an attempt to be a tiny bit more rational from here on in. as part of a christmas present, i was given a book of 365 day brighteners. now as i'm sure you all know by now, i do so love to share anything that provokes thought, and hopefully these quotes (and my ever-so-disorganized thoughts on such) will become a regular feature here!

ear crack

some songs are like crack. specifically

lollipop- mika

i wanna have your babies- natasha bedingfield

wordplay- jason mraz

when i grow up- pussycat dolls

schadenfreude- from avenue q

they make me dance around instead of doing whatever i'm supposed to be doing :). it is wonderful.

music is so much better than actual drugs.

dressing well

“dress shabbily and they remember the dress, dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”
- coco chanel

all the more reason to look good everywhere you go.

proud to say i've only ever left the house in pyjamas a few times in my life: high school spirit week always involved dress-down day, and i've taken a calculus AP and a physics final in pjs just for luck.

looking good can do wonders for you. please do it.

forget regret

EDIT: click the photo to see all three frames, i'm not sure why you can't see all of them here.

i am not liking the angst of the guy in the last frame. he looks like he regrets his 2008.

in life there is no need for regret that is more than transitory. yes, you can feel stupid and embarassed about having done something, but in the long run everything that happens makes you more who you are. you learn from your mistakes, and you don't do it again. or at least you think before doing it a second time.

and whatever happens that is out of your control, well, you couldn't have done anything about it anyway. don't live your life wondering 'what if i had done this?' or 'what if this hadn't happened?' because even though you may not like what you did or what happened to you, something came out of it that changed you for the better and made you who you are now.

living your life under the shadow of regrets is no way to live at all. it makes you miss the good stuff.