Does blogging about my bookshelf ensure impending Crazy Cat Ladyhood?

Fear not, loyal No Pantsers. I've been making up for my laziness on the interwebz by being super productive in real life.

Par example, last week I reorganized my bookshelf. It used to be laid out according to author and genre so there was a chunk of Neruda books on the poetry shelf and all the Salingers huddled together on one end of the fiction shelf. But that was stupid and neurotic and, as it turns out, problematic, because what do you do with something like The Journals of Sylvia Plath, which wants to be with the rest of her Plathiness on the fiction shelf, but is technically non-fiction? Also, I have begun amassing a fair amount of plays in the last couple years, which, to my mind, lie in some nebulous not-quite poetry, not-quite fiction zone, and there's only so much space in the Ikea Flarke bookshelf.

So! Here was my solution:

That's right. It is now organized by color. Books with covers that are primarily covered in warm reds, oranges and browns are at the top, cool hued blues and greens are second, and then I divided the rest into spines that were mostly black or mostly white.

This pleases me on several levels. First of all, it's just prettier. Second, it's deceptively neurotic. It might seem less organized, but this shit took me an hour and a half. And it requires a certain level of observational skill to notice the grand chromatic scheme--the Boy I Like Better Than The Other Boys came over after it was done and I giddily asked, "See what I did to the bookself?!" His best guess before I finally told was, "Uhhhh, you moved the picture of your dog?" My bookshelf is like a brain teaser.

Twinkle Toes

Anyone else notice how J. Crew totally went off its meds this year and the results are magical?

I've spent the morning at work compiling my Christmas list, and although I set myself a $40 Global Economic Collapse Christmas List Item Limit, I decided to take a peek at J. Crew to see what I can't afford. As a lazy girl who likes attention, I find that the quickest way to meet both demands is by always wearing one vibrantly colored piece of clothing. As a result, I'm usually not a fan of J. Crew's loafers, cableknits and twinsets in various pastel hues. And don't get me wrong, they still have all that shit. But now you can get them in like, hot pink!

OR! You can opt for these:

This looks like something I would have concocted when I was 10 by hotgluing fake feathers from Michael's to some shoes out of the Dress-Up Drawer! It's all, "Wait, am I trudging around rainy Seattle or have I somehow just stepped into Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium?"

There was a time in my life when pretty equaled sequins. J. Crew's totally traditional, staid old a-line skirt? HOW ABOUT COVERING IT IN SPARKLES:

Hey, model. You are wearing a skirt that looks like liquid gold. How about you cut the jaded nonchalance crap and rise to the occasion? There's even a huge bow attached:

I love that they put it with a thermal tee that looks snuggly enough to sleep in. Because isn't that sort of the whole ethos of style as a child? You're imagination is just like, out of control and you want to be the kid on the playground wearing the raddest shit, but, you know, nap time is also a consideration. That's why I hate the way Katie Holmes dresses Suri, except for those sparkly red Wizard of Oz flats she wears sometimes. What kid gravitates towards neutrals?

Of course all of this is well out of my price range. But it is nice to see that if J. Crew is going to charge a bajillion dollars for their stuff, at least they're serving it with a little 'tude.

I'll eclipse your new moon

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, I've been a little busy lately.

With what, you ask? Papers? Finals? Work?

No.

This:

All you tools who think you're too good for this series can go cry and read whatever it is you read. I'll be on my couch eating pretzels, squealing over sparkly vampires in meadows and enjoying the deliciously terrible writing by the raddest Mormon since Brigham Young.

And the writing is bad. Meyer has these little descriptive catchphrases that she uses over and over and over, my favorite being "...said so-and-so, through unmoving lips." Jigga, what? I tried this, I tried talking without moving my lips. I worked at it for about 10 minutes before I realized that there are people in the world who dedicate their entire lives to perfecting this craft. They're called ventriloquists.

And of course the whole thing is a thinly veiled chastity lesson. Um, a 17 year old girl who will literally get the blood sucked out of her if she bones her boyfriend? Couple that with the cover of the second book in the series...

...and you realize that subtlety is not high on Meyer's priority list. But still! The...the...seventeen-ness of it all is magical. J.K. Rowling may have the upper hand when it comes to plot, narrative, blah blah blah, but homegirl wishes she could write unmitigated teenage angst like this.

I'm about to start the 3rd book in the series, Eclipse, and the inside flap is taunting me with the following sentence: "With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?"

INDEED!

Yes we did

I'm an English major. Before that I was a kid who read like an insane glutton. The way words bounce off of each other is the shape my brain takes. When Barack Obama said, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible...tonight is your answer," I couldn't get this out of my head:

"It's vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory, enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

And when he said, "It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long, and by so many, to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we could achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more towards the hope of a better day," this was on my mind.

I first read both of these--Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise"--a few months before the '04 election when I was 17, just shy of being able to vote. Despite the fact that I felt an unnerving disconnect between the hope in those words and the reality I saw unfolding around me, both took hold of my imagination and haven't let go since. Four years later my hope is that I never, ever have to read them with cynicism or bitterness again.

We were dancing and setting off fireworks on the Hill last night, but they passed Proposition 8 in California. Let's all listen to some Sam Cooke and get to work.

Life in Amurrrrrrica

I just realized that I only post when I'm bored or when I have something really exciting to talk about, aka experiences in foreign cities, and today is no exception. Unfortunately (or maybe not so unfortunately, because, hey, that Disney prince blog wasn't too shabby, right?) today falls on the monotonous end of the blog inspiration scale. My boss at my new job got me to come in on Friday under the pretext of giving me responsibility, namely, by "allowing" me to man the office by myself for the first time.

I'm working as a receptionist and hostess for this firm that facilitates focus groups for market research firms, blah blah blah basically it all boils down to a shit ton of free food. Rich dudes and dudettes come in to observe focus groups, which is apparently very hard work because they order more food than anyone could ever possibly consume in a sitting from expensive restaurants. When it's time to clean it all up, that's when my coworkers and I make our move. Last night for dinner I had lamb kabob, the night before it was shrimp tempura and the night before that I believe I enjoyed a lovely chicken costoletta from the Cheesecake Factory, but I could be wrong; it all starts to get a bit hazy amid the bountiful feasting.

We only had one focus group today, but they needed someone here 9-5 to answer phones. Which means bring in the new girl and tell her she's going to be "in charge, all day, by yourself." Yes, I feel a bit duped, but, hey, more free food for me. And after all the big shots left I took my shoes off and spent a solid half hour doing that thing where when you wear tights you run and slide for a couple feet on the linoleum floor in the kitchen. I answered one phone call, ate a sandwich I didn't pay for, felt it was the responsible and informed thing to do to read some CNN articles on MONEY MELTDOWN '08, but ended up feeling paranoid and confused and finding my way to this much more cheerful site: menwholooklikeoldlesbians.com. Which proved to be thoroughly entertaining for about 40 minutes. I'll probably wind this exciting day down with some homework in this last hour or so.*

In my exploration of FISCAL FIZZLE '08, the article I found most interesting and in which I had the highest level of personal idenfication was one that noted the parallels between our current situation and the fiduciary circumstances of the Ingalls family in Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic novel The Long Winter. This led me to wonder what Laura Ingalls Wilder looked like, which led me to a Google image search (about which I was hesitant, due to the time I Google-image-searched Maria Von Trapp and found that she was most definitely NOT the bright blonde ray of sunshine Julie Andrews led me to believe she was), which made me wonder what Almanzo Wilder, Laura's husband, looked like, which led me to this. Which makes me think, "HOT DAMN LAURA WAS ONE LUCKY PRAIRIE BITCH." In my youthful worship of her novels, I often wished I could travel back in time and meet Laura Ingalls; now, I find myself wishing that again, this time so I can say, "Gurrrrrrl! Kudos."

*When I say "homework," what I mean is "looking for more pictures of prairie hotties."

The Aftermath

Well. I'm glad my last post from Europe was articulate, eloquent and insightful. Really, really nice, if I do say so myself.

The backstory on that is that at around 3 am I came across some little internet stations in the course of my wanderings. I was gleeful until I saw that they cost 21 EURO AN HOUR. Yeah, Germans, go figure. Anyway, I had a few 1 euro coins leftover so I deposited one just to see how much time it would get me. Turns out about a minute and a half. So, in my haste to update, trivial concerns such as punctuation, spelling and coherence had to be sacrificed. Hence, "gpooing."

We're not exactly sure how, but we survived our wild night in the Frankfurt airport (which included, at one point, me falling asleep standing up). Now we're back, both with colds. I've uploaded all pictures and created a few photo albums on Facebook, which non Facebook users can check out by following these links:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045034&l=b5c6c&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045035&l=a5937&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045044&l=05836&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045070&l=cb515&id=32402591
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045071&l=7f6cd&id=32402591

The coming weeks might see posts on fighting through the jet lag and plane cough while shilling uniforms during the height of back-to-school season, but for now I am just too sleepy!

we are in the frankfurt airport gpooing crazy!!