So I found this video on CUTE THINGS FALLING ASLEEP, the blog that makes me feel better even after openly weeping over my GRE math practice test. (Oh yeah, the real one is going to be a blast.) This cat is definitely falling asleep, but it only got a cuteness rating of 1 on the 1-5 scale. Well. It’s because it’s hairless! ( Yeah yeah yeah, like Mr. Bigglesworth.) Discrimination! Bigots! Hairists!
Okay, it’s a pretty heinous cat. And I don’t recommend watching the entire three minutes of it falling asleep. Seriously, cat people are so weird. Why would they think the internet wants to watch a cat fall asleep for three minutes?! Thirty seconds would do just fine.
Kathleen and I are currently sitting next to each other on my couch, wearing matching J.Crew yoga pants, typing on our matching elitist white MacBooks, with our matching jaunty ponytails, watching The Daily Show and playing on the Internets. Could we BE any more DC right now? Or any more liberal? Or any more elitist? Maybe, but only if there was a life-size cutout of Barry sitting between us, wrapped in a down comforter.
I first heard The National in The Cellar, my undergrad university’s on-campus bar. I was having a beer there with my friend Heaps, and this song came on. She has some fancy phone where you can play music to the phone, and it can tell you what the song is. (And this was BEFORE the iPhone could do that, I’ll have you know.) The song was “Apartment Story,” and I clearly went home and listened to it on repeat. Be sure to note John Lennon on the drums:
I’ve been listening to some more of The National’s stuff, and I really like all of it. I think it’s because I adore Matt Berninger’s voice. It’s so deliciously deep. Makes me feel like he has a beard, although I’ll settle for the scruff he’s rocking in the video. I’m guessing he could sing some rando song from High School Musical and I’d still be all “ooh, Matt, so scruffy and baritone.”
Here’s the whole band, just having a cocktail or two at their on-campus bar:
Are you SEEING all that beard-age?
I love music in a way that makes me wish I could express myself through it in some legitimate way. I tried to learn to play the guitar once, but got about as far as “Redemption Song” and then gave up. Maybe I need to try again, or maybe I need to settle for what I have. Which is a great backup singer voice, as long as the music is so loud that you can’t hear me.
Today is one of those days where it’s just too cold to be out in public. I was not dressed for the weather and nearly froze to death when I stepped outside to walk home, and that made the decision for me that I will not be going out tonight. I think.
See, the problem is that I don’t really have anything to do if I stay home. My roommate isn’t here and I’m not all that into the book I’m reading and I’m one of those people who gets bored really, really quickly. And when I’m left alone and bored for too many hours, I start to get all emo and watch weird depressing music videos on iTunes and email my best friend asking her if she’ll marry me if I’m still alone at 30. Which is all well and good, except too much emo music makes me go a little nuts and I don’t particularly want to marry a girl.
Spending time in the real world tends to cure my emo-ness, and thank goodness I was forced out into that real world to work today. (I know! I worked! Like a real grownup!) For a large chunk of the day, I was uploading things to my program’s website, and I got this weird sense of power. Like, I could RUIN LIVES by posting embarrassing things. And then I remembered that I already have my own website, and that I tend to prefer embarrassing myself.
Besides getting out of your own head or maybe reading about people who have actual problems, this video is a pretty good cure for being a hot emo mess:
I’m sorry, I know. But that video is hilarious. I’m a little bit in love with Andy Samberg:
He wears nerdy glasses, too!
Hmm. In my situation, Andy Samberg would probably go out.
Here’s the thing. I feel like I am drunk, but really, I have just been writing papers for too many hours and days and days and hours. I got so wacky that I almost wrote “peace is not a side dish” in my paper before realizing that it was not even a remotely academic thing to say. Now I’m done writing for tonight, but I have to wait for my friend Jill because I don’t want to walk home alone in the cold.
So how about I tell you some random shit?
First, this is a weird video that Kathleen nerded over from South America:
I find it both cute and really, really sad. I hate when the hamster is left on his back like that!
Junior year of college, my friends Katie and Annie got two gerbils, and named them Stella and Jager. We played fun games like Blackout Gerbil Out and Gerbilvision, but that got old after like two weeks. Now Katie’s little sister takes care of the herby gerbs.
Speaking of animals, did you hear about the woman who “hid a sedated monkey under her blouse on a flight from Thailand“? This crazy lady, whose name is obviously Gypsy, tried to hide the monkey under a loose-fitting blouse, and now she’s in big trouble for smuggling. Apparently it just looked like she was pregnant. I mean, I wear a lot of loose-fitting blouses, but usually it’s to hide a belly full of Smartfood and breakfast sandwiches, not a monkey.
Speaking of monkeys, I LOVE Pandora. Like a lot. It is so great. Another thing that I love is video chat. I love that video chat turns quasi-adults into four-year-olds making funny faces in the mirror. It’s hysterical. My friend Jill and I video-chatted our friend Tamar today, and we essentially spent the whole time seeing who could make the ugliest face. Mature? No. Entertaining? YES.
Aaand continuing with the stream-of-consciousness, have you guys tried the fancy new things on Gmail? There are SO many cool new things, which I obviously spent way too long playing with today. You can make task lists on your Gmail (hellooo, Type A); take “breaks” where your Gmail basically forces you to not be glued to your computer for 15 minutes (hellooo, lack of self control); and you can customize your label colors (hellooo, NERD). The best one, though, is the attachment reminder. If you write in your email that you are attaching something and then you forget to attach it, Gmail will REMIND YOU TO ATTACH IT.
This is all awesome, but it also freaks me out a little. I mean, Gmail has been around for a few years and it is already basically thinking for us. I can’t even fathom what they’ll come up with next. If it’s a feature that blow dries my hair and makes me breakfast while I check my morning email, though, I’ll be okay with it.
Final Bonus Confession: I get both Economist updates and Self Fit Move of the Week updates emailed to me, and I always delete them before I even open them. But I won’t unsubscribe, because that would prove that I’m un-intellectual and lazy. Logical, right?
I’ve been on campus for an hour, and haven’t done any work yet. Why, you ask? Because of the Top Five Favorite Foods Game. I’m not sure if I have talked about this game on the blog yet, but today I played with my “bosses.” The rules vary from game to game, but for the purposes of this game, categories (i.e. Mexican food) and drinks were forbidden. So here’s a peek into my life (or just my Gmail):
Subject: i want to play!
————————
From: Jen
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:36 AM
To: Mallory, Go
Are these foods discretionary? i.e. Are all of my nutritional needs already met? If so, then my list is as follows:
5. Broccoli is tied with Soy Sauce
4. Macaroni and Cheese
3. Garlic
2. Bacon
1. Krispy Kreme donuts
———- From: Jen
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:38 AM
To: Mallory, Go
Crap. I forgot coffee, beer, and mayonnaise.
———- From: Mallory
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:38 AM
To: Jen, Go
Yes, totally discretionary. There is a different game about which foods you would eat if you could only eat five for the rest of your life. Go and I think you cheated because you can’t have a tie. Other than that, good choices.
———- From: Go
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:40 AM
To: Mallory, Jen
HAHAHAHAHAHA, broccoli and soy sauce?!? Ok, just to update you, these are Mallory and my top five favorite foods as of this morning:
Mallory
#5 Stuffing
#4 Goat cheese
#3 Pizza
#2 Salsa
#1 Breakfast sandwiches (e.g., sausage, egg and cheese on toast, bagel or English muffin)
The harassment continued today in a group email, this one sent by SWTCTW operative “Fannie”:
p.p.s. Forget “grad school” and “finals” don’t you think Mal should get back with the program and start updating her blog with the frequency we who troll the internet have come to expect?!?!
Sigh. The public shaming worked. I only have three more days of papering (hooray!), but in that time I will try to maintain my blogging duties. Just to prove to you all how exciting my life has been the past few days, here is a random list of what I did today:
1. Woke up, ate a bowl of cereal and a peanut butter ball for breakfast, and danced around in my underwear to “All I Want for Christmas is You.”
2. Ate 14 cookies. (I’m serious. We have a thing called “Cookie Fest” going on this week. Be jealous.)
3. Listened to this song, um, a LOT:
4. Tried to figure out what that song means. Consensus from the Internets is that it’s about love lost/broken hearts/an ending relationship/etc. etc.
5. Read a lot about youth and peacebuilding.
6. Was loud in the quiet study room.
7. Ate 14 more cookies.
8. Cried while watching a NYTimes video analysis of It’s a Wonderful Life.
MY LIFE IS BORING AND MY SNARK IS GONE. I blame the cookies. The cookies have stolen my snark.
Before I post the (yet again belated) Hump Day Cry Face, let’s all welcome our wonderful new bloggerette, Madeline! Hooray! It’s like we elected a new president, except that old president’s still around, and doesn’t suck.
It is raining a lot today which means I hate my life. Every time it rains my brain switches into “mmm let’s lie under the covers and watch lots of bad television and eat carbohydrates from a bag” mode. But instead, I had a “business meeting” and “lunch with a colleague.” Which mean I hung out with my friend and my boss looking at pictures of Cry Face and then had lunch with a family friend. Do you SEE how important my life is?
Anyway, as I was showing my friend and my boss some Cry Face photos, I stumbled across this gem:
Featured above are the father and youngest daughter of one the greatest, wackiest families in the universe. Doesn’t Frank, on the left, look as though he belongs in a nursing home?
Greetings, readers! It’s your favorite Jersey Shore-correspondent-turned-guest-blogger here, Madeline! I’ll be filling in for Kathleen while she’s gallivanting around South America, living life in the adventurous way expected from twenty-somethings. Personally, I defy those expectations by spending most of my free time watching the teevee with my dog. How exciting for all of us.
Kathleen has left some pretty big flip-flops to fill but she assures me that I’m well prepared as I’m unemployed and still suffering from regular bouts of post-college depression. Still, this is a big task so I’ll start off slowly and in the way most entertaining to me: by talking about myself! So that we can all become better acquainted I’ll follow the SWTCTW tradition set by Mallory and Kathleen:
About Madeline
pictured above, your favorite bloggers and guest blogger
(is it weird that we have this many pictures of us snuggling in beds together?)
People/things not to be trusted: curling irons, Tyra Banks, humidity, decaf coffee.
Unhealthily obsessed with: all things French, high heels, Bruce Springsteen, Madeleine Albright, Ireland, cocktail dresses.
Favorite Sports: skiing, tailgating, group e-mailing.
Favorite Foods: champagne, brie, peanut butter.
Six word memoir: I’m Madeline! Nice to meet you! (Okay so that’s a temporary one but it works!)
six words to change the world. 