My Rambling Reward for Recent Productivity.

First of all, you all should know that I did try to find a word for "productivity" that began with the letter "r" for the sake of alliteration. Clearly, I was unsuccessful.

My 202 prof is definitely a more radical version of Professor Binns. Yes, that Binns. Harry Potter's ghost history teacher. He's who Binns would be if Binns charged his hair with static electricity, changed into jeans, and started making his students take turns saying the word "summer."

(Side note: Can ghosts change their clothes? I will look into that. Oh...survey says "no." Sorry, Prof Binns. At least you can spend your laundromat money on butterbeer.)

Speaking of the laundromat...sometimes I do laundry just because I miss the smell of it. I crave the smell of fabric softener the way I would normally crave chocolate or PBS Kids. Perhaps I am destined to be a laundress. Oh, wait. Reality check. I'm a feminist.

(Side note: "I don't want to be a laundress; I want to be famous!" Anyone? Name that movie. First person to get it right...gets...a shout-out in my next post.)

(Side note the second: That's a terrible prize. Fine, you request a prize. One that can be fulfilled anonymously from within the confines of this blog. Good luck.)

(Side note the third: Now no one wants to identify that quote. It would take longer to think up a prize.)

Recent obsession: 8tracks. I want to make a playlist consisting of all the songs I listen to on the way to class that make me feel like I could conquer the world and all of its problems. And I think I will call this playlist..."All the Songs I Listen to On the Way to Class That Make Me Feel Like I Could Conquer the World and All of Its Problems."

Boom. Did you hear that? It was the sound of dynamite.

(Side note: Not really, though. I really don't want the Patriot Act to come hammering on my door at all hours of the night.)

Another typical nonversation.

I watched "The Social Network" twice in the last week. Now, whenever I'm blogging, I feel like I should have curly hair, sandals, a bad attitude, and genius programming skills.

(Side note: I don't have a single one of those. Not even sandals. And definitely not skills.)

Speaking of skills, I just realized that "latent" is an anagram for "talent." So...perhaps...we all have a handful of latent talents that could make us rich and famous someday. Maybe I can tame lions or juggle toddlers or something.

(Side note: Why is my concept of cool talents limited to circus tricks? There is some hidden meaning here.)

Geek time.

Today in my ethnomusicology class—yeah, it's for real—one of the topics we discussed is music's role in identifying people in/and society. And…this stuff might sound obvious to some people, but when you really think about it…it’s kind of mind-blowing material. And, no, I am not talking about this to sound pretentious. It's just kind of fascinating.

Quick notes.

Music = You know. Just…yes. You know.

Self = Body +Total Set of Habits.

Identity = Partial selection of habits.

Now that we have that covered, we can move into

MUSIC

AND

IDENTITY.

.

..

…

….

Dramatic pause.
….

…

..

.

Anyway.

Music reflects who you are. You can look through someone’s music and make a few educated guesses as to who they are and how they operate. Music is something genuine that you can’t really fake. If you load up your iPod with your fave jams, you really are projecting your personality into a concrete representation.

Music is…flypaper. Or something. Music is not only meaningful because we like the lyrics, the beat, or the adorable guitar player. We attach memories and personal experiences to different songs/albums/artists. (Although adorable guitarists don’t hurt.) Seriously, though. I listen to stuff we played in concert band last year and can’t help but remember the experience of making music with my best friends. Which contributes to how much I still love it.

(Side note: Yup. That was really corny.)

Music links directly to emotion. Music is similar to language in many ways—one way being that we give meaning to language/music just as language/music gives meaning to us/what we do/say/feel.

(Side note: Lots/of/backslash/mark/things/get/annoying.)

When you exercise, you listen to pumpin’ club jams because you’re more likely to run faster/work harder. (Or Duke Ellington…but that could just be me.) When you’re walking home after a deep conversation with a buddy, you’re more likely to listen to something subdued/meaningful because it’ll fuel thought. On the other hand, if something subdued comes up on shuffle while you’re on the treadmill, your workout is going to take a hit. If you listen to previously mentioned “pumpin’ club jams” on your way back from your friend’s, you’ll probably get home in half the usual time.

Is this making any sense? I’ve been rambling for way too long. Quite honestly, I don’t know why you’d still be reading at this point.

I don’t understand those asthma commercials that ask us to get rid of the threats to asthmatics. What, am I supposed to throw out all my goose-down pillows and personally ban dust from the natural world? Not to be insensitive or anything.

I need more Sara Bareilles in my life. Maybe she's free for lunch tomorrow.

Fish Yawns and the Boy Who Lived.

Lesson of the day:
Even fish yawns are contagious.

Despite the anonymity of this blog, I am going to take a moment to respond to my own Facebook status...as promised.

(Side note: I am a painfully accurate example of my generation. Responding to Facebook via blog. As if anyone cares that much about what I'm thinking. But anyway.)

For one of my classes, we had to describe five artistic experiences that are meaningful to us. So, naturally, I wrote about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was life-changing. Here's the brief little paragraph about HP world. Yes, I hammed it up. Which is completely appropriate for the occasion.

(Side note: Yes, I pretentiously quoted myself in my own post. Except it wasn't for the sake of being pretentious. It was so you'd realize that I do not talk like this.)

"In a world that frequently oscillates between reality and make-believe, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter finally manages to satisfactorily combine the two. There is no debate as to whether or not Harry Potter world is art. The intricacies in the architecture, the flawless timing of the theatrical interruptions, the subtle tones of Hedwig's theme providing a backdrop for Muggle conversation--every wizarding motif present in Hogsmeade brought awe, exuberance, and nostalgia to the hearts of every witch, wizard, Muggle, and Squib."

(Editor's note: Harry Potter is not make-believe. I know this. I just don't think my professor would understand that he's been charmed into believing magic is only found in books. I'd rather not live out the rest of my life in a straitjacket. Not that I don't respect that lifestyle. I'm digging myself into a pretty deep hole, here. That's what she said. Forget it.)

Granted, it's only three sentences--and not very good ones, at that--but I think Disney might have to pay me a few royalties for the increased attendance in HP world. Either that, or they'll sue me for scaring everyone away.

Right-o, back to reality. Or...another reality, rather.

No-kay post. Better luck next time.

(Editor's note: Happy 2011, all! Let's make some revolutionary life changes. I, for one, will not write a post that is worse than this one for the rest of the year. Won't take much effort.)

It's a list day. A day for no-kay's.

NOT OKAY:

1) Murder.

2) Blasphemy.

3) Pos-T-Vac.

(Side note: I'm not explaining that last one. Ask your parents. Or Google it.)

(Side note to the previous side note: The latter is more reliable and less awkward.)

(Side note to that last side note: That last side note could refer to the side note preceding it...or the list...apparently. Pos-T-Vac. NO-KAY.)

(Ahem...yet another side note: It was an infomercial, for your information. (Pun?) I wasn't just on the lookout for this kind of product.)

ANYWAY.

My draft of this post (circa five minutes ago) included a more extensive list, but those three pretty much sum it up. Although I did mention your-versus-you're-errors and the consumption of felines. NO-KAY.

News.

I bought a betta fish. His name is Tyson because he thinks he's a tough guy. I like to watch him instead of Friends, sometimes. Which is kind of a big deal.

My whole house is great.

I can do anything good.

This post is going nowhere. Oh, that wasn't news. You knew that from the moment you saw that I had written a new post. (PASSIVE VERBS: NO-KAY.)

Ugh. How to save this post...story time? Perhaps.

Once upon a time...

...when I was young(er)...

...I had a crazy friend. Seeing as I was/am similarly crazed, we would do crazy things. One such "crazy thing" was this two-week phase in which we deliberately consumed plants. Like, grass and shrubbery and stuff.

The end.

(Side note: NO-KAY.)

Tune in next time for: SO-KAY. Except probably not.

Have a lovely existence, my darling blogee.

A Bloody Mess.

Strap yourselves in. This is a good one.

(Side note: I haven't written this post yet, so I have no way of knowing whether or not it will, in fact, be a "good one." However, I'm taking this new approach where I actually have something to write about before I start writing. So we'll just see where this takes us.)

Today, I gave blood for the very first time.

I know, you seasoned blood-givers might shrug off this personal mighty feat. But, let me tell you, I took great strides in life today. I will procede to assume that you care about this achievement and I will blog about it. Feel free to leave at any time.

I suppose this story begins yesterday, when I signed up for the blood drive out of nowhere. So I drank a lot of water. And ate a hamburger.

(Side note: If that's the beginning...let's skip to the middle of the story. That was going to get boring pretty quickly.)

I had to be at church at 7:45 this morning to play in the orchestra for the Christmas drama/sermon/beauty. It went pretty well; I know you were wondering. The point of this part of the story is to tell you that I didn't exactly eat all that much today. Which, incidentally, is not a wise decision when you are about to have an eighth of your blood siphoned from your body.

My appointment to donate was at 2pm. I walked in, read the brochure, did a few pull-ups, pet the llamas, and went to do my background check...with this guy with a receding hairline, a stringy white beard, and a semi-permanent scowl. (Every time I looked at him, I envisioned him brandishing a cane from a dusty old porch and hollering, "Hey, ya daggum kids, get off mah lawn!") He looked all too ready to stick somebody with a needle. And that somebody was going to be me.

So he started in with the questions, stabbed my finger, drank the sample...what? Just checking to see if you're paying attention. (There wasn't nearly enough to drink. Or even sip. At that point, anyway.) I asked what blood type I am and he said, "Red."

(Side note: By this time, I had shifted my perception of him from cranky old loner to tired, witty grandfather.)

So then it was time for the real fun. Nothing to report, really. I looked at the needle before he jammed it into my vein...it wasn't too imposing. I guess. Yes, it was uncomfortable to have a small, metal pipe stuck in my arm. (Surprise.) I got done pretty quickly--having hydrated myself most adequately over the past couple of days--that was a horribly worded interruption--this is definitely not grammatically correct--I'm going to keep doing it just to spite everyone--and, anyway, I got up and followed the nurse's instructions. I also asked to poke my blood bag.

(Side note: It was warm.)

I kept telling them I felt "awesome," and, truly, I did. I chugged some apple juice, swallowed six Oreos, and couldn't stop bouncing around. I mean, I had just saved three lives! I was ecstatic, and for good reason.

I was chatting with my sister when I started to feel really tired. So I sat down: a fairly logical response. I told her not to worry, but I was just going to put my head down on the table. There were a few people hanging around. I listened and tried to rest my eyes.

A:

Then, slowly, I felt a dull dizziness creep all through my head...and there was this weird heat clinging to my skin...and my mouth went all dry and my head got really heavy and I felt like everything about my body was getting revenge on me for taking it for granted. Like my lungs, for example. And my entire central nervous system. Except for my hyperactive imagination--which depicted the late-night news story of the girl (me) who died from giving blood, after assuring everyone that she was feeling "awesome"--and the part of my brain that allowed me to pray, "Dear God, please don't let me die."

(Side note: Yes, I am usually a bit melodramatic. But I can assure you that my response to this situation was 100% valid. This was terrifying.)

I have no idea how much time passed in this stage. When I found a moment to pick my head up, I turned toward my sister. She took one look at me and went, "Um, you're really sweaty. And green."

Naturally, being the Spartan that I am, I responded, "Good. Green is the best color."

(Side note: I have been informed that, when you have given blood in the last half hour and are reduced to a sick, sweaty mess, green is not necessarily the best color. Not sure if I agree yet.)

Overcome by another wave of EVERYTHING, I put my head back down on my arms and tried to make it all stop. For some reason, people were talking to me...when I was obviously in no state to open my mouth. Goodness knows what would have come spewing out. (Probably demons. What?) So I was draped across the high table, nodding and shaking my head when appropriate, and trying to focus on breathing, praying, and not vomiting. At the same time. Not easy.

My dad and my sister took turns pressing cold cloths to my exposed cheek, commenting on both my face's warmth and it's very prominent shade of green. ("Wow, when they say your face can turn green, they actually mean green!") Again, I responded that I was glad my face was green, because at least something about the situation was right. My dad chuckled a little and said, "Go green!" To which I had to respond, regardless of nausea and intense discomfort, "Go white!" (Due to the fact that my face was smooshed up against my arms, and because I didn't want to open my mouth too wide to provoke vomiting, it may have sounded more like "Grwoh Whreye!" Regardless...the Spartan pride was indubitably there.) I refused to lie down, or even take off my band jacket. Too much movement. And the band jacket provides instant comfort.

There came a point when I thought I was ready to throw up, so I stood up, intending to politely upchuck my Oreos in the restroom.

Big mistake.

There was a general chorus of, "Are you okay?" to which I responded with two shakes of my head, and collapsed back into the chair. Repeat back to "A." (Just once. Or else you'd be caught in an endless cycle of re-reading.)

Eventually, it was time to attempt the walk out to the car. (I noticed that my hands had mascara smeared on them...apparently, I cried too. Doesn't happen often.) My dad ran out to do something (I couldn't tell you what, I was completely unaware of everything beyond staying upright) while my sister supported me. Walking has never been such a task. Eventually I had about 85% of my weight on my sister's right side, while my legs did this freaky headless-chicken dance. My sister was laughing, and then told me she wasn't laughing...through her laughter. I told her to "shhhuddaph." (Translation: "Shut up." Good-natured, though.) Meanwhile, I had this ongoing head-rush. You know how, at the worst moment of a really bad head-rush, you can feel it consuming your brain, and all you can see are colorful lines and splotches and nothing related to real life? That's how I felt for about thirty five minutes. The sun didn't improve things. When my dad came over, my sister informed him that my "legs [weren't] really working," and somehow he managed to pick me up and carry me to the car.

Halfway home, I discovered that I could kind of see again. I noticed that we were following the Red Cross van. The following conversation ensued:

Me: "Do you think my blood is in that truck?"

Dad: "I'm positive that your blood is in that truck."

Me: "Maybe they should give it back. Clearly, I'm not doing so well without it."

Dad: "I'll get right on that."

He didn't. It's all right. I'd rather save three lives.

Is it nothing more than a Gedankenexperiment?

(Preface: (Yes, it's pretentious to preface a blog post.) I apologize in advance for the spazzy fonts. Blogspot is notoriously incorrigible.)

(Side note: You guessed it...it's vocab day!)

All right, I think I'm over my OfAllThings-versus-Hyperbole-and-a-Half comparison/depression. Enough to write for real, anyway. However, schoolwork has been sapping all my writing energy...so I turned to Merriam-Webster Online for inspiration. (Good old www.m-w.com has an abundant supply of writing ideas. You just need to know where to look.)

"Love" is the third most-looked-up word on Merriam-Webster Online. The next is "cynical." Coincidence? I think not.

(Side note: Upon discovering this, I, naturally, looked up "love" in the online dictionary. Did you know that a score of zero in tennis is called "love?" This was news to me. Apparently it's because the word "love" stems from the French word "l'oeuf," or "egg." (The official word etymology does not list this as an origin for "love," but I like the idea of it.) (A parenthetical statement within a parenthetical statement? I'm a mess of redundancy. Or meticulousness. Or something.) And eggs are shaped like zeros...meaning "nothing." So if we bring this full circle (bearing in mind the cyclical nature of life and, you know, other super-important themes), our "love" is a rough equivalent to "nothing." According to Merriam-Webster, however, Love (with a capital L) is synonymous to God. So now we know where to look for real Love. Yup. The convent. Joy.)

(Side note to the side note: Thus far, this post's side notes have outweighed the rest of the material.)

(Side note to the side note's side note: This is getting ridiculous.)

Vocabulary lesson. Oh, don't kid yourself. You're looking forward to this.

Hemidemisemiquaver: A sixty-fourth note. The "quaver" is the eighth note, which is turned into a sixteenth by the "semi," then halved again by the "demi" to become a thirty-second, and finally halved one more time by the "hemi" to become the sixty-fourth. (Was that right? You know what I'm saying.) The real conundrum here, I believe, would not be defining the hemidemisemiquaver, but making each hemidemisemiquavered note speak individually when playing a run of hemidemisemiquavers. But, you know...c'est la vie.

All right, you guys. I'm sick of this. I work on this blog so that you have something with which to distract yourselves, even just for a minute. I keep track of comments. I try to keep my writing accessible and minimally irritating. But, honestly, if you guys can't keep the prestidigitation to a minimum, I'm going to have to call it quits. I just can't take that from you anymore.

(Side note: Yeah, I'm just being an idiot. I thought "prestidigitation" sounded like a solid, angry word. A ranting word. So I wrote that train-(of-thought-)wreck paragraph above. It actually just means "sleight of hand.")

(Side note to the last side note, but unrelated to previous side notes: These side notes are becoming tedious. I really should get more sleep. Or take up yoga like I did in my WiiFit days. (Oh, how I miss those days.) (Double parenthesis.))

I think that's quite enough for now. Let's play a game. It's called "Let's See How Many Readers I can Scare Away in a Single Post." Trust me...it's a fun game.

Ready...
..............Set...
.......................Count.

Don't get too excited. Weak week.

Oh, hey everyone. Or no one. Seeing as this blog has become a bit of a wasteland for the last several (twenty-eight) days. But anyway. News.

Hyperbole and a Half is the best blog I have ever read. It's one of the reasons that I haven't been blogging. I am...ashamed. Almost. As a result, I will be periodically adding images to my posts. Because I recently discovered how much I love doodling.

(Side note: If you haven't read Hyperbole and a Half...please do. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/)

Random fact. I can almost always tell if I have a fever because:
a) I'll be running a temperature.
b) I'll get chills.
c) when I close my eyes, I see arcade games.

Seriously. I blink and catch a glimpse of Pac-Man. I try to fall asleep at night and find myself watching a game of Whack-a-Mole. I'll tell ya, though, Pinball Wizard is the WORST. Those bells and flipper things make a ton of noise.

(Side note: Yes. I'm crazy.)

Well, this post has been lingering in my “incomplete posts” folder for about a week and a half, so I’m going to wrap this up right about…now. Kinda weak, but…oh, well.

Here’s some love from a State fan:

The bird knows what’s up.