Follow up post: Toy Story Costumes

Earlier I wrote about some of the Toy Story costumes I've seen throughout the ages, so here's a fluff follow-up post. Toy Story 3 was a big deal, so obviously we had to go to the midnight showing in costume. In an effort to make sure that none of the fringe characters felt left out, I dressed up as Pterodactdoll that Sid made with his sister's Sally doll and a dinosaur head.

The resemblance is uncanny. 

Above, I give you Rex, Hamm and Slinky Dog. 

And here is Barbie, a waaaay less creepy Hamm, and a toy soldier. 

Two Things. Also, spoilers.

1. Hey! So it's winter break, which means that when I'm not sleeping 10 hours a night and listening to Michael Buble's Christmas album, I'm unearthing diamonds in the rough like this guy (or woman.. ah?!!?):

I AM MRS. NESBITT!

NO WORDS! Coming from someone who has dressed up as Toy Story characters/ props several times (once as the pterodactyl doll from Andy's room, once as the bowl of Fruit Loops Woody dunks his head into.. don't worry, I'm looking for the pictures) , I can only say that I have nothing but rock solid admiration and love for this man, who has pulled off the world's greatest Toy Story costume I've ever seen.

2. Also, Grey's Anatomy remains the single most impressively jaw-dropping teledrama I have ever laid eyes on. I know it sucks when people talk nonstop about TV shows.. but I can't help it. This show has broken about ten million glass ceilings on what is okay to show on television and how much human suffering viewers are capable of withstanding before taking their eyes out with an ice cream scoop (which is essentially what I would have to do if I wanted to stop watching this show). For example :

The one where Izzy goes crazy and cuts her fiance's LVAD wire, then spends like week in the bathroom in her prom dress when he dies anyway, then has hallucinations for a year. 

The one where someone shoots McDreamy IN THE HEART.

The episode where two people were impaled with the same pole. Actually. And they were facing each other, so one had to watch the other die as he got pulled off.

Mediocre medical teledramas might draw the line at Stephen King-esque hallucinations or double impalements, but Grey's Anatomy spares no expense. NO EXPENSE. Which is how they got to episode 18 of season 7 .. the Musical. 

It's not enough that Dr. Callie Torres and her baby (Dr. Sloane's baby!)  are about ten minutes away from dying, but everyone has to be singing The Fray's "How to Save A Life" while they are literally failing to save her life. I don't know whose idea this was, but I'm making it my duty to:

Step One - Find out who and tell them we need to talk.
Step Two - Say 'Sit down, it's just a talk."
Step Three - Punch them in the face for letting Ellen Pompeo sing at all. Not even The Fray deserves that sort of suffering.. please.
Step Four - Sign over my soul in gratitude for allowing Dr. Sloane to sing a whole half a verse, which I have engraved into my heart for time and all eternity.  I have fallen in love with Mark Sloane about sixty times during this show, and "Let him know that you know best, cause after all you do know best," makes this the 61st time.

List of Thoughts I Am Too Lazy To Make Into A Real Post

1. My dad and I got to see Andrea Ledesma in Munich! She and Jörg took the two-hour train from Neumarkt and spent Sunday eating white sausage and seeing impressionist paintings and drinking German punch with us. I tell you this so that you will think we are classy and cultured, when really the opposite is true because my dad and I spent Monday night watching Friends in German. Really it was just me watching Friends with a German phrasebook in hand trying to see what the laughtrack was laughing at while my dad was Skyp(e?)ing with my mom. Other notes about the trip..

-  ABSURDLY expensive internet ($6 euro per hour. PER HOUR!)

- ABSURDLY amazing Michael Jackson altar randomly sitting there on a street. I mean there is some seriously heartfelt fandom going on in Munich. 

The king of Bavaria is no match for the king of pop. 

MJ = Just another part of Munich. 

Speaking of Michael Jackson, this video does a pretty good job of showing exactly what I look like 90% of the time I'm in the kitchen. 

2. The latest Modern Family episode confirmed yet again that Cameron Tucker and I are the exact same person. Exactly. It is mildly terrifying. Even though I'm sure that none of you are in the least bit interested by the freakish similarities between me and TV's most loveable gay dad, I am taking notes to dedicate a whole post (with actual sentence structure) to this. The jist of it will probably be something along the lines of: Paulina Lopez and Cameron Tucker: Hypersensitive, passive aggressive, believe "the more you spend the more you save," invest way too much meaning on random events and cry for hours when others do not remember dozens upon dozens of these tiny but meaningful moments, own too many shirts, have an unhealthy relationship with food, etc.  Stay tuned.


3.  Why yes, I did see The Muppet Movie in theatres. Twice. I wouldn't want to see it a third time because everything about Walter makes me want to punch him in the face. Everything about Kermit makes me want to punch him in the face, too. It's the same feeling I got from Mickey Mouse, or Tommy from the Rugrats/All Grown Up, or Little Foot from The Land Before Time. There's something about these characters that makes me feel like I'm being conned.

4. I tried making a list of the top five worst Christmas songs, but all I could come up was Christmas with Weezer, the Christmas album my sister keeps playing around the house.



 I'm into celebrity Christmas albums as much as the next person, but whoever thought that a rock version of O Come All Ye Faithful and O Holy Night would be a good idea is doing the world a disservice.

5. I was going to write something about Herman Cain and Pokemon, but these guys say it best. Needless to say, I was crossing my fingers that he'd quote the ancient prophecy with the clever plot-twisting "ash" pun.

Postcards from Paulina

This was originally going to be a post about traveling in Munich with my dad (see the clever title I came up with?!), but like so many other times during this trip, plans have changed.

Obviously, if I wanted to write a post about my really interesting and educational travels, I needed to stand on the shoulders of giants by seeing how Buster writes his travel blog. So I went to Postcards From Buster and was browsing through some of his posts when I came across a little place called.. GUANAJUATO, MEXICO YEAAAAAHBUDDY!

 <-  Just a completely real, totally not fake picture Buster took. Here's what he had to say about the most beautiful place on earth

The coolest part of this post was reading that Buster met a mime named Sigfrido, which is remarkably similar to Sigifredo (Yes, Ernesto). 

In conclusion, PBS knows where it's at. Also in conclusion, Buster and I are basically the same person because we are both traveling with our dads and we use the exact same angle when photographing the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato. 

Danke Schoen

If you are like me, you spent no less than an entire hour verifying that Wayne Newton, the person who sings "Danke Schoen" is actually a MAN. Just listen to that voice, that is not a man's voice. Only it is. This is really similar to the way I was convinced for months/years that Adele and Duffy were black, only to find out I was very wrong. The moral of the story, I guess, is not to judge a singer by the very convincing qualities of their voice. The other point of the story is that I'm pretty sure I've mentioned "Danke Schoen" at least five times in this blog, and I want this post to spend a little bit more than six words talking about what the song is about.
 

1. I'm thankful for the journals that have been piling up in my room since I was 6 that let me travel back in time and allow me to be simultaneously embarrassed and entertained. Sometimes, I feel good knowing that I've grown a lot since 5th grade. Most of the time, I just see that most things have stayed the same. Ten years ago, for instance, I STILL 1) never knew what date it was, 2) used too many exclamation points, 4) made everything into lists / bad poems, 5) wrote too much about food and TV, and 6) had terrible cursive. It would be a lot of fun to make this post into a list-poem for old times' sake, but I'm already up past my bedtime and I don't think I could come up with something meaningful for V that isn't velcro (... Vinny Guadagnino?). Anyway, I'm thankful for my mom, who gave me my first journal (a bunch of colored index cards) and told me to write. 

2. This is sort of a cop-out because it's an extension of number 1, but I'm thankful for National Novel Writing Month. A month ago, I told myself to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, and that novel is officially finished as of Nov. 30, 2011. It's a terrible novel that probably needs 30 months of editing, there are plot holes and continuity errors all over the place, random lists of Crayola colors and magical candles, and a couple of characters with no first name because I'd run out of good ones, but according to the creators of National Novel Writing Month, it's a capital N Novel and I am so happy. I couldn't have done this without the teachers who taught me what it meant to write and what it meant to love it, particularly Mrs. Barbara Bonday in 2nd grade, Dr. Rebecca Koelln in 10th grade and Prof. Greg Smith in my third year of college. And (duh) I'm thankful for a very patient and understanding husband who encouraged me the entire time, and was willing to put up with late dinners, leftovers and a lot of Basil's pizza while I typed away. 

3. I can't tell you enough how thankful I am for Christmas music, and that it's finally socially accepable to listen to it all I want. ALL I WANT. (yes, Ernesto). Panino and I grew up listening to a "Frosty The Snowman" album that taught us Jolly Old Saint Nicholas and Up On the House and ten other essential songs. I love that there are entire radio stations dedicated to Christmas music, I love that there is a Christmas song for every occasion, I love that Celine Dion recorded O Holy Night, I love watching Love Actually just so I can sing along, I love that there are about 10 bajillion Christmas-related excuses to listen to Christmas music (baking cookies, decorating the tree, cooking a huge meal, washing the dishes after eating a huge meal, ice skating, Christmas Charaoke (or Kristmas Karaoke), wrapping presents, writing Christmas cards, all of it). MOST OF ALL, I am so thankful that two of my favorite singers have re-made one of my favorite songs. 

Danke Schoen, Justin and Mariah, for saving Christmas.


       I spent this past Thanksgiving in El Paso with Ernesto, his parents and his sister, and it made me feel very lucky to be a part of their family. Naturally, I missed being at home, which reminded me of how lucky I am to have a family that I love enough to miss and that loves me enough to save me some cranberry mold leftovers for when I got back. I am indescribably thankful for Ernesto, who constantly rescues me from the towers that I build for myself.
     The past two months have had a pretty fair deal of challenges for me, for Ernesto, for my family, for our friends and for our neighbors, and throughout it all, I've felt so lucky to be surrounded by people with such an impressive capacity to love and to persevere. Wayne Newton sang, "Thank you for all the joy and pain," and to that, I'd add that I'm thankful for all of the people in my life who have made the joy worth remembering and the pain worth enduring.

What time is it?

WINTER BREAK TIME! 

Hello world, some announcements:

1. Tomorrow is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. So much happy up in hurr.

2. Fall term finals have fried my brain and left nothing but a tiny pile of ash. I know this because after I turned everything in and went to the airport, it took me five minutes to just to say the word "strategize." 

3. While writing an essay about the fascinating dynamics between scholarship and educational policy, I spent a good ten minutes researching the word "compromisation" just to come to the sad, sad realization that it isn't real. So, thanks for that, Spice World. 

4. HOW does Adele get through her own songs? I have yet to get through "Someone Like You" without crying like a baby. I'm actually not joking, you can ask my brother. 

5. During finals, I spent a good 25% of my time daydreaming of all the cool SKEWLS OUT SEEYUH Facebook statuses I could put after I turned everything in, and then I didn't put anything at all. My life is very, very lame. 

6. I knew that Thanksgiving in El Paso was going to be a hit when I walked into Lucia's room and saw her Justin Bieber backpack (pics later). At this point, I'm just crossing my fingers that she won't outgrow him before I do. 

Before I melt down and cry from the stress of finals/life..

haha oh wait, I already did that TODAY. On the way back from Econo Food carrying a ton of groceries. And then again in my apartment.The day I get to spend my life sitting at home eating blueberries and reading blogs and watching Justin Bieber's "Somebody to Love" music video will be the happiest day of my life.

Seriously, have you seen that video? I am currently watching it in the library and this kid just walked past my computer screen and gave me a LOOK. This next part is directed at you. All I want to do in life (this is not a joke. NOT a joke.) is spend every breath trying to recreate this video. There are approximately eleven dance sequences that give me major butterflies inside, including but limited to: 1) backpack dance sequence  2) impossible footwork by Usher 3) Beat Freaks dance sequence 4) the HSM-style All In This Together sequence at the end. And (approx) seven other sequences that make SYTYCD look like a hot mess. This video is the bomb.

Thoughts
1. Do you know how I'm officially a boring senior? Because I spent last Friday printing a 500 (500!!!!) page reading. On Head Start. It's actually sort of fascinating (I'm a nerd) but.. I mean it's 500 pages. It's a good thing Carleton's insane tuition covers all printing on campus. I had to tell this hurried-looking freshman she should probably use another printer because I was gonna be there a while. I was that person. Since this monster was too big for the butch heavy duty stapler (which maxes out at 60 pages), the librarian had to find me a binder clip. Call this mundane but I feel pretty freaking accomplished right about now. 500 pages! Also, there is no way I am doing grad school after this experience. You can only brag about this sort of thing once, not once a week for 5 years so...

2. More complaining about school: Is it just me, or is the author of the article on the left trying to kill all of its readers? It's 80 pages long and ALL OF IT is in yellow text with black background. It felt like one of those weird exercises where you stare at a thing and then stare at a blank wall and see Jesus or a happy face, only I kept seeing a purple wall of text about the environmental effects on IQ.

wth

3. Pros and Cons of my African-American lit class. Cons: Waste of approx ten hours per week. Pros: Get to watch the film adaptation of "Waiting to Exhale" starring Whitney Houston ("and IIIIIII"), the guy who plays Turk in Scrubs, and Adele from Grey's Anatomy. It's like the Ghosts of TV Shows Past are reminding me that I still haven't finished seasons 5- whatever.

S/Cr/Nc

On Carleton Moving its S/Cr/Nc Deadline to Seventh Week
Sooooo for those of you who have anything to do with Carleton College, you are probably aware by now that faculty voted with a 67-21 majority to make several nightmarish unpleasant changes to the beloved S/Cr/Nc policy that has saved us in our darkest hours. Previously, the S/Cr/Nc (pronounced 'scrunch'.. gettit?!) policy allowed students up until the last day of classes to designate a maximum of 6 credits (= one normal class) reviewed on a Pass/Fail basis. Students who anticipated getting a low grade in a class (or students like me who are anal about their GPA and cry every time they get anything other than an A-) could designate one class per term, six classes over all four years at Carleton, as S/Cr/Nc and receive either a Satisfactory (i.e. "Pass") , Credit Received (i.e. "Barely Passed"), or No Credit (i.e. "Faiiiiil!").

The new policy doesn't completely eliminate the S/Cr/Nc option, but is pretty radical nonetheless. For starters, it changes the S/Cr/Nc designation deadline from the last day of classes (end of 10th week) to the Friday of 7th week. It also requires the course professor to sign off whenever a student wants to Scrunch the class, whereas before the professor wasn't contacted about the student's decision until after all grades were submitted, and some higher power (the registrar's office?) changed Scrunched classes' A-F grades to S-NC grades.

I have beef with these changes. (Did I say that right, Jersey Shore Cast? Probably not. )

I think these changes suck. The new policy changes the Scrunch deadline to 7th week regardless of whether you've gotten enough graded work or feedback from a professor in a class to make an informed decision of how you're doing. Two of my classes (English and Political Science) this term didn't give me graded work back until 6th week, in part because they didn't assign anything until 5th week (wtf..). Ernesto's Biochemistry class schedules all of its TWO exams 6th week or later, and hasn't yet heard how he did on the first one. The 7th week Scrunch deadline would be a terrible indicator of whether it would be a good idea to Scrunch a class when we've only gotten one or two assignments graded by then.

I have scrunched one class* during my time at Carleton (science, physics-related, required a graphing calculator and a comfortable knowledge of high school-level math that I have tried very hard to forget.. you understand this). It wasn't an easy decision either time, mainly because whether to Scrunch or not depended on how I did on the second exam before the final, which typically got graded after 7th week. While I know that some students might be 100% sure that they'll Scrunch a class from Day One, most people wait until 8th, 9th, and even 10th week to make a decision based on graded assignments and returned exams.

Assuming that I pass all my classes and don't fail comps and eventually graduate in June, I'll be far, far away from this campus by the time these policy changes get implemented in Fall '12. So what do I care.  But it irks** me to think that what used to be a useful policy that gave students the flexibility to choose how a course was to affect their GPA, transcript, etc, is now essentially being rendered moot by an earlier deadline.
* Edit: I thought I'd scrunched two classes, I've actually only scrunched one
** I believe this is the first time I've ever said "irk"

This post was originally going to be about a bunch of other thoughts, but my stomach is pretty much yodeling right now, so I'm gonna go tend to more important needs.

Take-away point from this rant: Carleton has very efficiently been deteriorating since I got here, I just want to leaaaaaaaaaave.

My relationship with most fruit

Listeria (Part ?)

Best/Worst Parts of Today:

1. Having to explain to Ernesto why this Calvin and Hobbes strip is funny
2. Hearing Lily's actual American voice on the American Pie trailer after having spent months growing fond of Spanish voice-over Lily in the Spain version of How I Met Your Mother
3. Seeing the American Pie trailer

gotta get back on r/nanowrimo, seeyuh

Dia de los Muertos

Today is Dia de los Muertos, and I wanted to share something my bff Pablo Neruda wrote. If you live in Salamanca, Gto., you're lucky enough to have his poems scattered all over the street (one of the town's very, very few perks..). Otherwise, you can read it here. 

¿Quien muere?

Muere lentamente quien se transforma en esclavo del hábito, repitiendo todos los días los mismos trayectos, quien no cambia de marca. No arriesga vestir un color nuevo y no le habla a quien no conoce. Muere lentamente quien hace de la televisión su gurú.

Muere lentamente quien evita una pasión, quien prefiere el negro sobre blanco y los puntos sobre las "íes" a un remolino de emociones, justamente las que rescatan el brillo de los ojos, sonrisas de los bostezos, corazones a los tropiezos y sentimientos.

Muere lentamente quien no voltea la mesa cuando está infeliz en el trabajo, quien no arriesga lo cierto por lo incierto para ir detrás de un sueño, quien no se permite por lo menos una vez en la vida, huir de los consejos sensatos.

Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee, quien no oye música, quien no encuentra gracia en si mismo. Muere lentamente quien destruye su amor propio, quien no se deja ayudar. Muere lentamente, quien pasa los días quejándose de su mala suerte de la lluvia incesante. Muere lentamente, quien abandona un proyecto antes de iniciarlo, no preguntando de un asunto que desconoce ono respondiendo cuando le indagan sobre algo que sabe.

Evitemos la muerte en suaves cuotas, recordando siempre que estar vivo exige un esfuerzo mucho mayor que el simple hecho de respirar. Solamente la ardiente paciencia hará que conquistemos

una espléndida felicidad. 

He who follows the same routes every day, who never changes pace, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion, who prefers black on white, dotting ones "it’s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer, that turn a yawn into a smile, that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, who is unhappy at work, who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, to thus follow a dream, those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.

He who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.

Let's try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing. Only a burning patience will lead
to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Before I start off this post, allow me the pleasure of telling you that today is the first day in what feels like forever that I don't have a bajillion deadlines hanging over my head. I have nothing (NOTHING) due for a good 48 hours. So I took a much-needed nap and looked at lots of tumblrs without feeling guilty! Wins all around. Okay, now you may keep reading.

If I've learned anything over the past 16 years I've spent living in the US of A, it's that Halloween is more than the year's greatest holiday. It's an investment where you can't lose. If you're a kid or a short person with a mask, you get candy. If you're at that sad, sad point in your life when it's no longer okay to go trick-or-treating, you get to buy copious amounts of candy without being judged. And no matter what age/height/sugar tolerance, you wear a costume.

The most rewarding thing about Halloween costumes isn't that you get to adopt a new, more interesting persona. It's that costumes are a sly way of adding items to your wardrobe/life that would normally be frowned upon. FOR EXAMPLE, the year Haley Bly, Kelsey Norton, Alexa Turner and my brother dressed up as the Spice Girls, I got to buy a pair of red pleather pants. Did they chafe like a mofo? Yes. Did they make me look like a less glamorous Britney Spears? Yes. But they were red. And pleather. And in my closet. Thanks to Halloween, the gift that keeps on giving.

Here's a list of some of the life-enhancing items that you can get for a Halloween costume, and then enjoy afterwards for years to come.

Costume: NASCAR racer
Item: Sweet (PUN INTENDED) M&M jacket
Between October and April in MN, every day you have to wake up and remember that it's cold and cloudy and generally depressing outside. You put on your boring jacket with your head hung low and greet the world with a little less hope than you had the day before. Well, no more! With this M&M-sponsored jacket, you'll bring a little bit of sunshine and a whole lot of happy to a grey, cold world. Or just to yourself.



Costume: Rini from "Sailor Moon"
Item: Luna ball
How fun would it be to play four-square or dodgeball or really anything with this thing? I'll tell you. It would be SO fun.



Costume: Tobias from "Arrested Development"
Item: Diamond Cream
I don't remember why Lindsay bought this stuff in the first place, but the possibilites seem endless. You could rub it on your skin to make it sparkle. You could wash your hair to make it glow or to hide your dandruff. You could spread it on your sandwiches and eat it so that diamonds run through your bloodstream, amping up your self-worth.

Other uninteresting things that I want to tell you:

- I've been really into Mariah Carey's old stuff for the past 8 months. All I want for Christmas is to be able to sing "Always Be My Baby" like she can, but until then, Ernesto and the next-door neighbors will have to put up with my overwhelmingly out of tune renditions.

- Vinny Guadagnino has a blog! It's filled with his poetry, mini-essays on morality and ethics (and how to tell whether a girl is good in bed), and awkward uses of HSM3 images. Also, he uses Blogger (suck it, Wordpress), which makes us soul-siblings.

- A bunch of of the MMUF people and I went to a conference in Chicago, and I won a raffle for the first time in my life. It was a weekend of wonders. Also, the U of Chicago campus in the fall was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. Why is Carleton so ugly? Why why why why?

- I chipped my tooth again, this time while I was eating a BLT (shocker) in the gamer computer lab (double shocker). That makes this the second time in the past month, the fourth time overall. Why why why why? On the plus side, I'm getting better at talking with my lips over my teeth.

WHY

am I always in the CMC gamer lab on Friday nights? I'm cooler than this, I swear.

Well I guess I'm not.

Bad Day/Bieber

What's Justin Bieber doing on a bibliography site? I don't know. But today has been hard and randomly hearing "One Time" as I wrote in my 36th (yes) citation made it a little better. I think manna must have tasted like late-night/early-morning Bieber. 

That Time of Year Again

not new reasons. just really good ones. 

s.o.s.

I am currently sitting alone in a motel room in Texas trying very very hard not to think of the terrifying Texas motel scene in No Country For Old Men.

Intro to Sculpture

"I can't stop thinking of this as a horcrux." 

        - my art professor during my sculpture critique in class today.

Not what I was going for, but definitely taking the credit anyway. Like an artist.

@aniluap11

Warning: This post contains inappropriate/obnoxious use of caps lock. 

okay so long story short some jerk on twitter stole the internet handle I have been using since I was eleven years old and IT IS NOT OKAY. I've been daydreaming for weeks about all the cool hashtags I was gonna use and how fun it would be to retweet The Hater and now all those dreams have gone up in flames.

Paulina Melgoza Hdz has tweeted exactly ONE time in the last year, she has ZERO followers and is only following SIX other tweeters (five of whom are famous celebrities, and one is the Morelia Film Festival).

It's been like 10 years since I've had to come up with a new username for something. I'm so upset I can't even communicate how upset I am in more than 140 characters. I don't even want a twitter anymore.

I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY ERNESTO MANUEL LLANO

#fffuuu #thatsnotyourname #actuallyistillwantatwitter

Fate?

1999 - My brother chips my front tooth in a Hide-and-Seek-related rage attack

2010 - I re-chip the same tooth with a cereal bowl 

2011 - I re-re-chip the same tooth (and swallow the missing piece) eating a fried tortilla

September 24, 2006

"Twenty-five years ago, my mom and dad kissed for the very first time.

Angelica Ledesma Ledesma and Francisco Lopez Jimenez grew up in a town in Mexico where the most romantic spot was on a bridge over a river. The river has more oil and grease than water in it. Want to hear a story? One day, someone lit a match and threw it in the river. If it were any other river on the planet, the match would've gone out. But this was Salamanca and the match didn't go out, it lit a patch of oil on fire and people had to hose down the river to set it off.

Sometimes if there's enough light, you can look down at the river and see rainbows on the water from the oil that's sitting on the surface. I wonder if my parents caught a glimpse of them when they kissed for the first time on that bridge, or if they were too happy to notice."

- 16-year old me, the first page of an old journal.

I know the L word is pretty heavy and at the risk of overusing it, I'd like to say the following: I love my parents, I love that they love each other, and I love that I exist as a byproduct of what started on a bridge overlooking a river of oil and rainbows.

Realization

Highlights of my day:

1. Getting two FREE mini-boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats at the grocery store
2. Eating fried rice
3. Making a ton of salsa


Lows of my day:

1. Running out of milk
2. Having to share my salsa with 40 people

This inspires me to write a personal manifesto in haiku form:

All I care about

Is what's inside my stomach

And inside my fridge. 

Educational Policy

So I was doing what all the cool kids are up to these days and reading 70 pages on educational policy in Georgia. As it turns out, The Atlanta Public School Agreement of 1973 is not as page-turny as you might think.

And then, two thirds into the article, I got to the Tootsie Roll center of the Tootsie Pop:

        "The plaintiffs initially insisted that there had to be enough busing to raise the percentage of black students in every school to at least 50 percent. The Board of Education negotiators refused to budge. Back and forth the discussion went, with no one willing to yield on the point of principle and everyone eager to explain why he or she was absolutely right. 
       As the evening grew later, the talkers grew hungrier. At 9:15 p.m., they sent out for several buckets of fried chicken and a crate of Pepsi Cola. Their appetites were obviously as ravenous as their capacity for talk was great. Only an hour later, they sent out for more buckets of chicken and another crate of Pepsi. The meeting lasted until about 12:30 a.m., but they still had not reached an agreement on the question of student desegregation. They had met, talked, munched chicken, and guzzled Pepsi for seven and one-half hours with nothing to show for it. "
I don't know if Joel L. Fleishman had me in mind when he wrote his article, but I think I speak for all of academia/pseudo-academia/Carleton College when I say that I've never been so rewarded for doing late-night political science readings. 

El Grito

Oh hey, Blog. Guess what I'm doing tomorrow.
 Washing the Mt. Everest of dirty clothes in my closet? No.
 Spending five hours making a plaster sculpture? No.
 Eating fried rice for the third night in a row? No.
 Messing with Texas?
YES.


In other news, my phone is in a coma. In other other news, I feel like the only girl on campus who didn't get a boy haircut over the summer.

Y AHORA..
un video en honor del pais mas bello del mundo:

Viva Mexico!

Mi Casa es Mi Casa

I could tell you all about how much I love living in my hundred-year-old apartment and how living above an antique store makes it fun to pretend that I'm living in a sci-fi time machine building and go on and on and on. Or I could show you what I see every time I come home. 

There is very little

to like about Bruno Mars. There is even less to like about Bruno Mars dueting with Eminem, where the latter can't decide which beat he's rapping to and rhymes 'king' with 'king'. There isn't an official music video for this gem yet, but I've made up a storyboard for my idea of how it might go.

Just Came to Say 'Hello'

Well well well.. long time no blog, eh?

SO summer has been a blast in a glass. Actually, that's not quite true because Ernesto and I have yet to watch the full first two episodes of Jersey Shore in Italy. Circumstances beyond our control (i.e. we are too poor for cable tv) have tried to stop us on our pursuit of happiness, but I'm confident that we'll get caught up with the gang soon.

Meanwhile, I'm still doing everything in my power to become this person:

Expectations vs. Reality

Expectations
Reality

Words Like Girls

"You know I can't construct a poem

cause words, like girls, get bored and run."

-The Format

A Brief History Of Modern Painting

1863 - Manet:

1889- Van Gogh:

1914- Duchamp:

1915 - Malevich:

1921- Rodchenko:

1930- Mondrian:

1945 - Pollock:

Listeria II: Goodbyes

The past week has seen a lot of losses. You might want to find a Kleenex box and scroll to the bottom of the post to refer to my handy list of Top Ten Goodbye Songs before continuing. You could also just pop in a NOW! cd, because most songs I put on the list have been on those compilations .. no surprise there.

1. Goodbye, crappy white Macbook.

After 3.5 years of constant use/abuse, you might think that this computer is totally unusable. That's sort of true, because it was totally unusable until 2 days ago, when it was given a new hard drive, new battery, and sent to Mexico.

This computer has seen me through the thick and think of my adolescence. When I was in France, it was my connection to Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts in Newport Beach. It was also my connection to people I actually knew/ college acceptance emails/lots of music, but most importantly it endured hours upon hours of Californiaaa Here We Coooome.

At Carleton, this computer saw me through my linguistics all-nighter, my Latin American Poetry all-nighter, my Arrested Development all-nighter, my English all-nighters, and my many many many studio art all-nighters. The night I was supposed to spend writing an art history essay, I instead spent in the library trying not to cry as Ernesto did his best to salvage my waterlogged computer. I had walked in the rain for 7 minutes, and 7 minutes was enough to ruin the laptop.

NOT! Because my computer is a FIGHTER and on the third day (or the fifteenthth day) it was risen from the dead in glory and splendor and with minimal screen damage. Not to draw inappropriate comparisons.. but that MacBook could've come straight out of the New Testament.

2. Goodbye, Memory Card

So about 36 hours ago I realized that my camera was missing its memory card. Seeing as how the last place I'd left it was approx. 2 inches away from my trash can, and how I've searched EVERYWHERE, I'm assuming it fell in and is now sitting in a landfill next to a bunch of pizza boxes and old tires. It's unfortunate because the neither the pizza boxes or the tires have any way to enjoy the 594 pictures that were on there, so they'll assume that Mr. Memory Card is just boring and quiet and they won't bother starting a conversation when actually he's got 594 stories to tell if anyone would just say "Hey."

3. Goodbye, Yellow Sunglasses
I'd been waiting 7 LONG MONTHS for there to be enough sun that I needed to wear these. Two weeks into that long-awaited springtime, I found away to drop, step on, and break the sunglasses all in half a second. That makes these the fourth pair of glasses I've stepped on in the past year. Owning glasses = constant heartbreak.

My life won't ever be the same without the three of you. Even if I try to replace each of you with bigger and better products, a little bit of me will always be stuck saying "Goodbye." I hope you'll be saying it back to me.

Top Ten Goodbye Songs (dedicated to Crappy MacBook, Memory Card, Yellow Sunglasses, and all of the other possessions I will someday break or misplace):

10. All I Have (ft. LL Cool J) - J. Lo. For all the times you don't want to say goodbye. For all the times J.Lo is bouncin' and you can't do anything about it but rap to try to convince her to stay. 'Instead of beefin come hold me, I promise I'm not a phony.'

9. Closing Time - Semisonic This song is the kind of thing that everyone pretends to hate, they roll their eyes when it starts playing and shake their heads at the DJ, but they secretly know all of the lyrics and get sort of sad when it's over. Also see The Graduation Song by Vitamin C and Good Riddance by Greenday.

8. Cry Me A River - Justin Timberlake So Justin tries to act very strong and detached during this song, but if you listen hard enough, you can tell that it's hurting him to leave. He's mad, and when people are mad they act detached and cold, but the verses in falsetto give him away. He's crying himself a river, that's how hard it is for him to say goodbye.

7. Won't Go Home Without You - Maroon 5 I guess this is another song that's more about not wanting to say 'Goodbye,' which makes it close enough to a Goodbye song.

6. Bye Bye Bye - N*Sync

It's cliche, but it would be blasphemous to NOT have this song on this list. Besides, I'm pretty sure that the Bye Bye Bye Clap has replaced the Wave Goodbye.

5. Let It Burn - Usher There's a fine line between a regular break-up song and an actual goodbye song. The typical break up song is mostly angry or bitter, and few are as emotionally well-rounded as this one. Or if not well-rounded, it's a little confusing as to who's leaving and who's staying, which automatically makes it DEEP. In a few days when I'm no longer procrastinating for my Modern Art final, maybe I'll do a post about how Let It Burn fits pretty well into the PostModern scheme of things. You're welcome in advance.

That's a joke, I hate postmodern things, postmodernism can push itself off a cliff please and thank you.

4. Ruby Tuesday - Rolling Stones This is the part of the list where things get serious. Like, I hear this song and I actually get sad, and it feels like the louder I sing the chorus the better I'll feel. I'm saving this one for the last Harry Potter movie - the credits will start rolling and I'll go, "GOOOOOODBYE, RUUUBY TUESDAY!"

3. You And I Both - Jason Mraz I have nothing snarky to say about this song, because it's very pretty and a little sad and a lot of fun to sing. It's also what plays inside my head every time I leave Rochester. One time I heard it in the HyVee gas station right before heading back to NoFo (that's right) and it made my whole night, because gas stations usually play more annoying things like "Lucky" or "I'm Yours", not good ones like this. I pretended to consider buying a bag of beef jerky so that I could stick around long enough to hear the whole song play.

2. I'm Gonna Find Another You - John Mayer Recently, I had a conversation with my brother about which John Mayer song he could play for me at the wedding, (since he's the best brother in the world and is willing to something like that for me) and after the third angsty anti-love song I suggested, we concluded that John Mayer songs might not be the most suitable for the event. They ARE, however, very suitable for So Longs and Farewells, and so this one made it onto this list.

1. Danke Schoen - Wayne Newton Remember that one amazing movie where the beautiful Matt Broderick wins over the city of Chicago with little more than a wink and a couple of dance moves? That amazing movie is the first thing I'm going to watch when I'm done with finals, and this amazing song is the first thing I'm gonna sing when I'm driving far far away from the cesspool that is Carleton College in about a year and four days. Because although Carleton is a terrible place, it's a terrible place that I somehow care about, and when I say "Goodbye," I want to do it right.

Listeria

Things That Have Recently Made Me Super Happy:

1. This picture:

2. Elias from Clerks, my new favorite movie character. Here's a glimpse of him for you to enjoy/fall in love with him:

Dear Jason Derulo

"Things become fashionable in 20 year cycles. So watch out, because the 90s are coming up, and nothing looked good in the 90s." - my art history professor.

20ish years after my mom and dad were wearing bell-bottoms, I was wearing bell-bottoms. And now, 20ish years after the 80s leg warmers and skinny jeans were cool, I'm wearing those. This recycling of fashions is acceptable because I wasn't alive to see the original hippie bellbottoms or original Flashdance stuff in its heyday. But you can't bring back everything. It would NOT be acceptable to wear a bib or a pacifier just because I had used those 20 years ago. That makes sense, right?

Likewise, it is NOT acceptable for Jason Derulo to bring back a Raffi song. It is NOT okay for people to be grinding to a song that we were all singing when we were 6.

Let's examine some of the differences:

At this point, Jason Derulo just comes off as annoying and sort of sad, like a really bad American Idol audition where you know Simon Cowell (or J. Lo, apparently) is going to tear the poor guy apart. But THEN:

Jason Derulo, You might've gotten away with ruining Hide and Seek, but that's only because everyone and their mother (by which I mean Andy Samberg and, more importantly, Shia LaBeof) ruined Hide and Seek (thanks to The. O.C.) * You're not allowed to turn the stacks of bananas into a bunch of shots, and you're not allowed to turn Mr. Tally Man into your sexy Haitian girl. Just wait until I mature a little more and stop listening to Top 40 radio stations. Alternatively, since I will probably never stop listening to Top 40, you and Lupe Fiasco could stop ruining good songs.

* On a side note, SNL had no business making fun the most emotionally charged episode of the The O.C.'s second season. Marisa shoots Trey which leads to her getting arrested which leads to her getting expelled which leads her to break up with Ryan for the 234th time which eventually leads to her DEATH. Which leads to the demise of the entire show, which leads to me not having anything to watch on late nights. :(

Scientific Blabbity Blah

Fig. 1 : Blogging

Nothing like a bunch of deadlines to get the totally irrelevant juices flowing.

Fig. 2: "Trolling"

There has to be a more like-able way to refer to unlikeable people. Maybe I'm just bitter that I couldn't dress up as Boxxy for that one Halloween.

Fig. 3: My Recent Music Downloads

It's all groovy stuff, I'm saying.

Fig. 4: LinkedIn

Hey Brooooother

Today my baby brother turned 19 years old, which means he is going to be uncomfortable for another 365 days until his age is an even number. This is why we love each other, because I understand that odd numbers are annoying, nasty and uncomfortable while even numbers are soft, inviting and friendly. Well, the point is that it's his birthday, and he only gets one a year, which means I am going to dedicate a little piece of the internet just to him.

Like all masterpieces, this one begins with a song.

Wake up in the morning feeling like Francisco,

Got my hair cream, I got my comb, time to make myself look pretty.

Before I leave, drink my milk, straight out of the carton.

My Geo Metro got junked, it ain't coming back :(

I'm talkin' checkered Vans on my toes, toes,

Mom washes all my clothes, clothes,

Never answer my phone, phone.

(In the car I'm) Playin my favorite CDs,

Another episode of Modern Family,

Tryin to beat a battle with Misty ...

Oh stop,

Charizard,

you're a fire type, why did I choose

you? I'm a fool,

Now I'll lose half my money.

This sucks,

so-o much,

I should've bought another Heal,

Oooh, oh oh.

Oooh, oh oh.

This is him at 16. Not much has changed.. except the hair is all gone. So really everything has changed. I guess I don't mind so much, as long as he never stops:

- eating nauseatingly large amounts of popcorn

- pulling all-nighters with me to watch Avatar

- playing BBMak songs on his guitar.

- owning 300+ Pokemon fan art images

- letting me take his car for half a year

- surviving scary near-death experiences

- being cooler than me