2. summer is also the time for magical connections between two people that would usually not be made otherwise. opportunities and situations present themselves on those hot days and nights that would never arise in the other nine months of the year. you find your summer-self behaving in ways that your fall-, winter-, and spring-selves would either shy away from, sneer at, and avoid completely, respectively.

say, for example, you’re at the house of a friend of a friend, enjoying a cool drink inside their well air-conditioned den. your friend and your friend’s friend are hitting it off and having a great time all on their own. you, too, are enjoying yourself, watching reruns of a favorite show while sitting next to the friend of the friend of your friend. he offers you a sip of his imported beer, and, seeing the big drops of condensation slowly sliding down the crystal clear glass, you can’t help but lick your lips in anticipation of the rich, dark refreshment. even though the air-con is on full blast, you realize that you’re still pretty stuffy and maybe it’s a little cooler outside. so you take the offered glass into your own hand and, while the glass is being transposed from one owner to the next, your fingers brush against his. you raise the glass to your lips but then realize that you’d much rather be outside. so you get up from your seat and head for the door, hoping that the friend of the friend of your friend follows behind you. when you open the door, you breathe in the sweet, night air and feel the cool breeze wrap you up. behind you is the friend of the friend of your friend. he shuts the door behind him and watches you as you finally take a sip of the indian pale ale he is so graciously sharing with you.

as you sip from the tall sweating glass, he says, “man, it’s hot out.”

finishing the sip, you reply, while looking down at your exposed toes (because you’re wearing sandals), “sure is.”

you look up at him, he smiles, and says, “uh, you’ve got a little froth-stache.”

embarrassed, you raise your hand to your mouth, ready to wipe the offending new accessory. before you can do the job, though, he grabs your hand and intertwines his fingers with yours. “wait,” he says. so you become this subservient version of yourself for a moment. with his free hand, he places a curled forefinger under your chin and uses it to tilt your face up. you think that this is the part in the movies where the girl gets kissed underneath the cloudless night sky when you can see so many stars, but then you feel that he’s really kind of just kissing that funny spot between your upper lip and nose, your cupid’s bow. and then you realize that’s perfectly fine because that part of you never gets properly kisses so you’re not going to complain.

“thanks,” you say as a hot flush creeps across your cheeks.

“no problem,” he replies.

when you realize that he still really hasn’t moved away and he’s standing a little too close, you look up at the sky because you can’t really stand looking into his eyes because you’re sure you’ll fall right into them and never get back out. as your heart rate slows, you decided to try to look at him. he, too, is looking up at the sky, at the stars, at the endlessness of it all. you see the taut skin that stretches over his adam’s apple, and you can’t help yourself. you bring your lips to that esophageal protrusion and get to know it.

after you get walked to your side of the car later that night by that nice young man and after he kisses you goodnight, you drive away with a warm feeling in your stomach that has nothing to do with the weather. there is some magical force that is pulling up the corners of your lips, whether you like it or not. then you realize that had it not been for the warmth of the summer breeze or of the position of the moon and venus in the sky that night or the freezing air inside the house or the shared pint of beer or that feux-froth facial hair, perhaps you would never have done any of the aforementioned. hypothetically, of course.

but that’s just what summer is known to do to people.

3. about three halloweens ago, i dressed up as an electrical outlet. silly, i know. it was a total diy last-minute costume and to kind of spice up the whole ensemble, i donned a long black wing with blunt bangs across the forehead. stupid costume aside, i thought i looked pretty cool, and it was mostly because of the wig. so that night, i kinda decided that i wanted to have my natural hair just like that. long, dark with bangs. fast forward to last summer and my hair is getting pretty darn long. i have never had successful bangs but i put on a brave face and head to the hairdresser’s. with me, i take my bff zooey deschanel (a picture of her anyway) and say, “i want those layers and i want those bangs.” she looks at me. “please,” i finish.

when i walk out of the salon, i feel awesome. that wonderful cathartic feeling that comes with shedding some hair buoys me for a good week. the next couple of months, however, are filled with me complaining about my goddamn bangs and how annoying they are and how they’re always in my face and some days i wake up and they’re just being totally uncooperative and now with these bangs i can’t skip out on washing my hair because then they get really oily and it looks like i have nasty grease hair and whydidievergetthesestupidbangs???

it’s been about a year since i got the bangs and i’ve grown them out. mostly. i can almost completely tuck them behind my ears and i can pull them up if i want to have an alarmingly high bun or ponytail. i miss them sometimes because i think i looked pretty okay with them.

now, though, my hair is kind of long. as in, down to my waist long. and i don’t know what to do with it! i’d love to do bangs again but they’re more trouble than they’re worth.

4. so this is potter-tastical year. in two days, it will be the 1-month anniversary of universal studio’s wizarding world of harry potter theme park. my brothers and i are planning a short vacation over to the park next month and we’re all stoked! the park was completely designed with j.k. rowling signed on as a consultant so everything’s got her stamp of approval. even the butterbeer is supposed to taste exactly how she imagined it. in her mind! j.k. rowling’s mind! butterbeer!

later this year, in november, the seventh installment (and part 1 of 2) of the film series will premiere. harry potter and the deathly hallows should be an amazing film and i can’t wait for it to come out.

5. i’ve come to the conclusion that ever july, i go into a mini-depression. luckily most of my friends are away for school or visiting family or something that takes them away so i’m allowed to sulk at my own leisure. this month i’ve been missing my younger brother like crazy as he’s currently on an epic road trip with my dad. one of my bffs is flying up east to visit her family, another is in california doing some crazy internship at a hippie school. another bff just got married and moved to florida and another one is in spain. i miss them all terribly, but this allows me to kind of feel sorry for myself and also really concentrate on my class and get an a+++.

+1. if i don’t update for the next month and a half, enjoy the rest of your summer and remember to free yourself to all opportunities!

2. The semester is fast coming to a close and I can’t wait. The long semesters always drag forever. I just want it to be over already. Although I hate summer with every fiber of my being, I always enjoy taking summer school because of its brevity.

3. My car was out of commission for a few weeks. On a night out with some friends, it just mysteriously stopped working. For a while, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Since I’m a mess when it comes to dealing with cars, I was just asking my parents to tell me what to do. They kept trying to get these flakey mechanics to come do a house call but they always bailed. Because they’re flakes. It had been pretty upsetting. Finally, I got it sent to a local reputable auto shop but, to repair it, it was hellishly expensive.

4. Since the repairs turned out to be so expensive, my grandmother offered to help me out. I said yes, but only on the condition that I would be allowed to pay her back. She didn’t want to agree to this at first, but she compromised, saying she’d let me pay her back half the original amount. It’s still a lot so I’m thinking I’ll get a second job for the summer.

5. Mad Men is returning July 25th! Awesome, right? I can’t wait.

2. This cinematic genius, Eli Roth, is currently dating a disgusting English socialite, notorious for poor behavior and drug abuse. Now, there are many reasons why I find her to be unworthy of his attention, but if I really went into all of it, I’d hate myself. I don’t want to waste effort writing about her, but I really think Eli could do much better.

3. I know this is a little late as the Academy Awards were almost a month ago, but I really want to go see Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man. As I live in a culture-less city, of course, the film never made it to theaters regardless of the fact that it was released in December of last year. Not only do I feel that Tom Ford is a talented individual and that is good enough reason to go see the film, it also stars one of my favorite actors Of All Time, Colin Firth. In the supporting cast there is also the fantastic Julianne Moore and the charming Matthew Goode.  In short, it has all the makings of a movie that I seemed to be programmed to love. Unfortunately, however, it seemed I would simply have to wait for the dvd or something because I didn’t know how else to see it. Earlier today I was checking the movie list on Fandango because I really want to watch Clash of the Titans, only instead of looking at those showtimes, I see that our local dollar theater is currently showing A Single Man! Isn’t that great? I really want to go see it tonight so, yes, I will be doing that definitely today. I’m sure I’ll love it.

4. I’m a pretty poor blog keeper. Clearly. Since I was about twelve (ten years ago!), I’ve kept some form of online diary. As horrifying as the idea is, it’s true. There are bits of me scattered all over the web, most of which I couldn’t find if I tried. None of them, however, have I ever had to pay for up until this blog. I have been paying for it for about seven months now, and I need to use it! I’m going to try much harder after my winter hiatus. I just wish there was some program on my computer that I could have that would just pop up every day and not leave until I’d written something substantial. It’s not that I find myself at a loss for what to write. No, that’s not it at all. I’ve got words coming out of my ears. I just think I’m easily distracted and I really have to sit down and concentrate on doing a simple task like writing a fairly unsophisticated blog entry like this. But, yes, from now on, I shall try to keep regular posting.

5. This month has come with crazy awesome magazines. On PAPER, Beth Ditto is on the cover. Nylon has Zoe Saldana; Esquire has Tina Fey; Details has Sam Worthington. These are the four that have caught my attention. I know Shia LeBeuouf is on the cover of GQ but, eh, he’s not that great. Of those four first mentioned, I only have PAPER, thanks to a gift subscription. I need to go get the other three. I read the article on Zoe from Nylon, and it was really good. She seems like a really rad person. I could have dedicated a whole FF bullet on her, but I didn’t want to make all five them totally related to films. So, yeah, go out and buy a good magazine because that industry needs support!

The Magnetic Fields – Swinging London
“I read your manifestos and your strange religious tracts/You took me to your library and kissed me in the stacks.”

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Young Adult Friction
“Between the stacks in the library/Not like anyone stopped to see/We came they went our bodies spent/Among the dust and the microfiche.”

Final Fantasy – Library
“Anna, Gerald, Henry Waugh/Let this longing retire/I will purge my shelf of classics/Watch them fade upon the fire/I will burn my every book/To warm your cold, cold blood”

Talking Heads – The Book I Read
“I’m embarassed to admit it hit the soft spot in my heart/When I found out you wrote the/Book I read”

My Morning Jacket – Librarian
“It’s not like you’re not trying, with a pencil in your hair/To defy the beauty the good lord put in there/Simple little bookworm — buried underneath/Is the sexiest librarian/take off those glasses and let down your hair for me”

The Beatles – Paperback Writer
“Dear Sir or Madam will you read my book/It took me years to write will you take a look/Based on a novel by a man named Lear/And I need a job/So I want to be a paperback writer”

Modest Mouse – Bukowski
“Went to bed and didn’t see/Why every day turns out to be/A little bit more like Bukowski/And yeah, I know he’s a pretty good read/But God, who’d want to be/God, who’d want to be such an asshole?”

Camera Obscura – Books Written For Girl
“he likes to read books written for girls/he prides himself on being a man of the world/in the darkest of places he gets his thrill”

Tahiti 80 – Open Book
“Your eyes are like an open book/One can tell everything from the way you look”

Morrissey – Reader Meets Author
“You don’t know a thing about their lives/They live where you wouldn’t dare to drive/You shake as you think of how they sleep”

Ryan Adams – Sylvia Plath
“And maybe she’d take me to France/Or maybe to Spain and she’d ask me to dance/In a mansion on the top of a hill/She’d ash on the carpets/And slip me a pill/Then she’d get me pretty loaded on gin/And maybe she’d give me a bath/How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath”

Saint Etienne – Lost In The Library
(No lyrics, but a great composition anyway that has a bookish feeling.)

Sia – Academia
“But to you I’m just a novel that you wish you’d never wrote”

http://drop.io/khvhpr59183#

sorry for the major lack of update-age. clearly, i stopped updating as soon as i was done with school which is weird, but that’s what it is. not much has been up. well, that’s not true. december has been a crazy, overwhelming month with way too many things going on all at once, but i have enjoyed every moment of it.

happy new year, world. may it be more wonderful than anything has ever been, may you be loved and like and have people to love and like in return.

last semester i went to this academic conference where i presented a paper. it was in march and in minneapolis. at first, i was excited due to the mere fact that one of the guest speakers would be the incredible demi-god, Neil Gaiman. i’d never been to minneapolis and just assumed that it would be a boring-as-heck city. also, i would be sharing a hotel room with a someone else who was going alone and was not looking forward to it either. however, it turned out to be an awesome experience. i turned out loving minneapolis. it’s a simple, friendly, green city with a great downtown area and so much to see and do. my hotel roommate also turned out to be a really great gal from NY by way of NJ. she was totally saving about getting around on the bus and sharing the experience with her was a really fun time.

the reason i’m bringing that up is that the same conference will be happening again this coming march and deadlines for papers were due a few days ago. i was feeling uncertain as to whether i really wanted to submit or not. finally, i decided that i did and submitted a paper i wrote this past summer about john milton’s marriage ideals. i should be hearing back in a couple of months whether my paper was accepted or not, but i’m hopeful. this year’s conference is in st. louis which is a major drag. i mean, st. louis? come on! i’ve been there once, and it wasn’t that great.  but it’s fine. i don’t even know if i’m going yet obviously. it would be nice to, though. going to conferences like that where everyone there is interested in pretty much the same thing you are is kind of a really cool experience. but it does get tiresome. since it’s like one hundred percent english majors at these things, it gets a little crowded with all the fat heads and inflated egos. we all think we’re so great and smart and intellectual. i mean, i love being there, but i won’t pretend to be really happy the whole time.

on sunday, i was feeling very French. i grew out a moustache, listened to the Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain soundtrack all afternoon, put up an Eiffel tower wall sticker up, and consumed cheese and wine all day. i’m just kidding about the first and last things. those are horrible stereotypes. and in proof of my apologetic commitment, i’ll show you a picture of my tower! it’s pretty neat. also, i guess i’ll be signing off so i’ll include some other pics of my humble room. enjoy!

one:
a couple of weeks ago, i went out of town to go see these bands i really like in austin. since this is a four-hour trip, i decided to take two days off of work. just two. i hardly ever take days like this off of work, so i thought they would be understanding. i told them i’d be gone wednesday and thursday, and that i’d be back the friday before halloween. so i went to the amazing concert, had a great time in austin the next day, and friday i was back at work. at first, i thought everything was peaches and cream, but then my supervisor called me into her office, and that’s never good. apparently, several of the people i work with had banded together while i was gone to tell my supervisor all the fuck-ups i’d committed over the past year or so. when you put all these little things into one big list, yeah, it sounds fucking awful. so right now, i’m in some sort of probationary status which totally blows. i haven’t spoken to these other women who i thought i was somewhat friends with in a while. it’s kind of a bummer, but that’s why it’s work. you don’t go to make friends. you go to make money.

two:
i attend a university and, within this university, i’m studying my major in the arts & sciences college (aka the humanities college, the liberal arts college, etc). in a lot of my classes, professors are constantly urging us to discuss the course content between us. in one particular classroom discussion about two weeks ago, a classmate made a particularly irrelevant and asinine comment. now, i’m not that brash that i point out people’s stupidities to them immediately. no. this girl has been a thorn in my side since the beginning of the year when i had her for two classes in the spring semester. since then, i’ve noticed that she seems to relish in making remarks in class that she, in some vague way, feels pertain to our discussion. she will constantly mention things about her family or the house her family is building or her boyfriend or her ex boyfriend and it’s not appreciated by me at all. finally, she said this one thing recently that i really couldn’t stand. everything went in tunnel-vision, and, before i knew it, i was making some snide remark about where she learned these things. a week later, my professor was emailing me to please visit her and it was to address this incident. this classmate of mine was truly hurt and instead of confronting me, she went to the professor and demanded that i publicly apologize to her in front of the class. hah! i told the professor that i would not do this, but i knew that i had lost control which was in poor taste on my part. while the issue has been dropped, it still feels shitty.

three: i think i’m a pretty level-headed girl. however, there is one aspect in my life in which i totally fucking fail at. i’m constantly losing things: clothes, gadgets, homework, personal belongings, etc. recently, though, it feels like i’m particularly good at losing my identification/drivers license. in the past two years, i’ve gone through about four different IDs. it sucks hard. especially now that i’m twenty-one and i should be able to go out to bars. anyway, last week, a good friend of mine invited me to this bar to go see his really cool band play. knowing that this bar sometimes has asshole-y bouncers, i took with me my provisional paper license, a birth registration card, and a student ID to prove i was the person on the first two credentials. even with these three documents, the bouncer did not let me in. i was turned away and i couldn’t even let my friend know in person. i was pissed.

four & five: these two are actually really pathetic reasons, having to do mainly with guys and how stupid they are and the demeaning effect they have on my personal confidence. i won’t waste my words.

i love you guys.

I’ve been feeling pretty misanthropic lately, and it’s stemming out into my writing. I don’t want to do any of it. Sorry.

over the years, we’ve been able to discuss books both of us have read and we’ve also gone to midnight premieres of lots of movies. we also have been to a few concerts together. we also share likes as far as clothing goes. we both really like the sister company of abercrombie, ruehl (that will soon be closing down due to insurmountable financial loss), and we are crazy about the online clothing store, alternative apparel. while i do wear a different size than her, i have on occasion lent her clothes that she’s been able to rock into amazing outfits. we have the same item in our respective closets, but in different colors.
in one thing, i have noticed, that our tastes differ greatly. guys. while she usually is attracted to fun-loving, carefree very cute and funny guys fairly close to her age, i tend to gravitate towards surlier, brooding, devastatingly handsome men that usually run a bit too old for me. her guys are music-centric, and i fawn over those who like to consider themselves writers.
not too long ago, though, we had a bit of a weird situation. she started crushing on this guy, and i started crushing on his best friend. these two guys were practically brothers. it was i that was changing tastes. he was much closer to my age than any guy had been in a while, and he was very easy going. totally different than my usual “type.” the four of us are all still friends, which should tell you, obviously, than nothing seriously romantic came of our respective crushes. both of us crushing on those two close buddies was a very interesting experience. we were able to talk about these guys all the time and (sort of unfairly to the boys) compare their personalities and actions.

i never thought we’d every be in a situation like this again, and we haven’t been! however, my friend and i currently find ourselves in an even more complicated scenario. what’s more complicated than one pair of best friends crushing on another set of best friends? i’ll tell you. a pair of best friends crushing on… the one and the same guy! in a previously mentioned bar, we met a very charming fellow. she might disagree, but i’m going to go ahead and say that it’s her this time who is straying from her usual taste in guy. he’s more than just a few years older than us. he’s moody and, at times, rude (not to us but his co-workers). but he’s really funny and smart. we have, so far, spent hours talking about him and trying to decipher everything else. like a very concentrated stoner who is cleaning out their weed, we try very hard to separate the (non-malicious) lies he tells us from the truth. it’s a fun little challenge.we also talk to people we’ve discovered who have any sort of acquaintanceship with him to find out anything about him. again, it’s fun and entertaining. when you are just a college student with a part-time job, you tend to latch on to anything out of your daily routine, like we have.

he’s a great guy, and we like to visit him and work and flirt with him. he makes us laugh, but that’s pretty much all it is right now. i’m going to include a very poor quality picture of him just because i we like him so much!

he’s on the right

001
photos of your back
i know it’s kinda creepy
but you’ll never know