“the night winds whisper to me, I’m lonesome as I can be”

So, I forgot to inform the internet that I won a karaoke contest a few weeks ago.

Hah, yeah, you read that correctly. I don’t know how this happened, but it did.

Anyway, my friends and I go to the Ritz almost every Friday night to sing karaoke, socialize with one another and make jokes with John the bartender and Scott the bouncer.

I’ve idly entered to win a few times, making myself look like a goof singing random oldies songs. However, after John and I attempted to sing Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” several Fridays ago (which in sort of ended up with me doing about 90% of the singing, while John helpfully held up the microphone for me and swayed with me, oh so sensually. This all added a nice romantic vibe to this love song.) I realized how many of the words I knew and took a mental note that I could use it as a competition song some Friday if I wanted to.

I entered that song a few Fridays ago. I took care to put it into the list after a few other people had entered so that I wouldn’t have to go first. That didn’t work. My song was the first for the competition. Great. Awesome, just what I wanted.

I was so nervous.

Usually, what we all do is go stand up with our dear friend who is singing and dance around them in support of the singer so that they do not feel alone. How was this possible with Patsy Cline’s lovelorn lyrics? No jumping up and down style dancing could take place to this song without it being some weird mockery of this lovely song.

Amanda usually graciously helps me by supporting me, but since it was competition time, she suggested that a boy do it, to make my performance more convincing. Gah! So, it ended up that Kyle just sat in a chair and let me sing at him for the duration of the song, as though he was my heart’s desire.

Fast forward to the end of the night. No way was I going to win! There had been so many great performances. John had even done another of his wonderful AC/DC impressions.

By some bizarre twist of fate, the DJ had thought that John had already won karaoke, so I won that night.

This means I’m in the finals this Friday! Now, I won’t win. I know I won’t, but it’s going to a great load of fun. The prize is $200, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Kyle is going to win with yet another rousing rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine.” You may be laughing, but it truly is a sight to see. He’s a god.

I’m going to upload some karaoke videos I have taken on here soon. They’re pretty fun.

“i thank the lord there are people out there like you”

Okay. I stand corrected. I guess.
I was feeling all hum-drum about my birthday last night and the few days preceding, but my friends have been making my birthday pretty special. I know it’s kind of dorky, but the amount of love I’ve been getting via facebook, twitter, and text has been pretty phenomenal and made my insides all mushy.
Thanks everyone.

tick tock

It’s my birthday in less than an hour.

Honestly, I don’t feel that excited at all. I hate that. And I wasn’t mega excited for Christmas either. I hate that too. I’m more worried about the two bills I got today. But I hate that the most.

I think I hate growing up.

sons of bankers, sons of lawyers

This week I start school again and turn 22.

I leave you with this, as I watched Almost Famous just the other day:

not a conjurer of cheap tricks

One of the things that was most looked forward to over Christmas break for Will and I was a marathon.

A marathon that was dependent upon Will receiving a gift. Not a gift of running shoes, nor running shorts. We were awaiting the gift of the entire extended edition box set of Lord of the Rings.

Yep. A Lord of the Rings marathon. Extended editions.

Are we crazy? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.

On Sunday, Will brought over the box set and dinner. My house supplied the surround sound and large television, snacks, cute cat, and beers.

We started after 2 p.m., and with minimal breaks, we finished right around 1a.m.

My parents made it through most of the journey, both mom and dad making it into movie 3. (Each movies had two discs, and watching the theatrical release version is not an option. It’s all or nothing.)

Movie one is SO long. They added a lot of stuff at the very beginning, like an explanation of hobbits and hobbit life (which really, if one is going to be so committed to the Lord of the Rings that they purchase the extended edition box set of these films, said purchaser probably knows all of these hobbit facts.) So, that was okay, but the least interesting or stimulation additions to the extended versions out of all of the movies. Movie two is my favorite so I was ready for action during that movie, and movie three was probably like the end of a marathon: I wanted the pride of saying I completed it, but not the current struggle.

Also, I had heard a rumor (that was confirmed by the internet) that Peter Jackson has small cameos in each of the movies. I spotted him in the first two! I am a master of cameo spotting.

But we did it. It was oddly exhausting. I am proud of us though.

Allow me to leave you with a video of Sir Ian’s acting techniques employed during the filming of Lord of the Rings, from the TV show, Extras.

List No. 2

Ten Books that I Read within the Last Decade that Changed Me (this does not mean that these books came out in the last decade, some of them have, some of them haven’t. I’m just saying that I read them within the last decade and thought they were wonderful.):

01. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

This is just one of those books that makes a lot people feel like it’s okay to feel the way they feel. And that they’re okay as they are. The copy I have is my dad’s old version and he and I have read it so many times that it is completely falling apart. I love it.

02. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Roll your eyes all you want. I found it randomly on amazon in the eighth grade, and when it arrived I read this in one day. Again, it’s all of those complex teenage insane feelings that I was feelings, but spelled out in someone else’s words and highlighted with awesome, awesome ideas for mixtapes.

03. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I know I’m listing a lot of books that a lot of people would put down, but this was the first piece of “real” literature that I really delved into. It made me see that the classics are classics for a reason. A good reason.

04. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

I don’t remember why I bought this book, but I know that I did really close to when Will got sick. I would read it while he was in the ICU, unable to really talk or do much of anything. Not only is it just a truly incredible story, it still comforts me.

05. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

This probably extends beyond the decade, but I’ve reread them within the decade so I’m counting it. And I’m cheating and including all seven books into one entry. Deal. Never in my life have I cared so deeply about an entirely different world that is not real and characters that are not real. The movies are merely a supplement. I would still love them just as much (and perhaps even more so) without the movies. Again, even though it’s a different world, I could relate. People of all ages could relate, and that’s why it’s a hugely popular series, for me, and for others.

06. The Book of Lost Things by Michael Connolly

I love fairy tales. And books that walk the line between adult and young adult literature. While I definitively feel that this book is for adults, the beautiful weaving of childhood fantasy and fairy tales makes for a tale that would engage, and consequently terrify young readers.

07. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

This was a book assigned to me my junior year of college. As soon as I finished reading it, I was immediately irritated that I hadn’t already read it several times. There are too many good things about this book to only read it once. It’s one of those books that always demonstrates the power of the human spirit and the female spirit. And it accomplishes this all while being wrapped up in the yumminess that is a Gothic style novel with the supernatural, a broken down home, and a lady in distress. Yes yes yes.

08. Titus Andronicus – William Shakespeare

Okay, yes, I am an English major. But, I will admit, that most of the time I found Shakespeare to be cumbersome and most of the time uninteresting. Well, for my Shakespeare class I took this most recent semester, the first play we read was Titus and not only could I not put it down, I found myself laughing out loud at times (I am fairly certain that the world’s first published “your mom” joke is in this play”), and shrieking in fear and disgust. It’s a widely unknown play of his, but by golly is it interesting. (Do not, I repeat DO NOT, watch the film adaptation entitled “Titus” by Julie Taymor, of the Lion King of Broadway fame, it is creepy and horrifying and not in a cool way despite all of the great actors in it.)

09. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Again, I am cheating by putting a series, but again, deal with it. When the movie “The Golden Compass” came out, everyone freaked out. So, I decided to finally read the books so I could have an educated opinion on what goes on in these books. I read the three of them in a week. I am aware that they are written for children, but it was the weekend of my sister’s wedding, which was also terribly close to finals week. This meant that despite the tons of stuff I had to do I STILL could not put then down. I needed to know. Read them, read them, read them. They reminded me of how terrifically difficult it can be to be a child, and how magical that time is despite of those hardships.

10. My Friend Leonard by James Frey

You are probably scoffing and looking away because yes, this is the James Frey of Oprah’s Book Club Shame Fame. Yes, he wrote A Million Little Pieces and got found out for “lying” (I’m using quotations here because I still feel that if wrote something about a time in which he was on drugs, he is most likely not incredibly certain as to WHAT the truth of certain situations is. Should he have called it a memoir if he wasn’t certain of the facts? No, but hey. It was still a great read. Yep. I’m admitting it, a great read.). And yes, I read A Million Little Pieces anyway and loved it and wanted to read the follow up. It was incredible. The friendships and hardships that were outlined in this truly moved me.

End of the Year Listing: No. 1

As it is the end of the year and even the end of the decade, I am feeling that I should also come up with some lists. Granted, I am not very cool, and cannot really keep track of things that I appreciated since 1999, so I am just going by the seat of my pants here (and with a little help from my last.fm page.) So here we go, list number one.

Top 5 Artists from my freshman year up til now including one of my favorite songs of theirs:

01. Elliott Smith (may he rest in peace): Memory Lane

02. Iron + Wine: Boy with a Coin

03. Arcade Fire: Intervention

04. The Mountain Goats (the coolest thing about this video is that my brother took it, and John Darnielle’s speech beforehand): The Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton

05. Modest Mouse (not actually a video, but a good song): You’re the Good Things

tis the season to be jolly

I took a research methods class this semester. Now, this was not something that I wanted to do, but I knew that I would have to take this class when I decided to move my minor up to a major in Women and Gender Studies. (Thus making me one of those snobby, smarty pants double major folks.) Now, the only thing that really gave me pause in signing up to become a WGS major was the research methods class requirement. (Almost?) Every social sciences major has to take a research methods class, and I would always laugh at the misery of my friends struggling through the class. I felt it was one of the great many positives to being an English major (the main benefit being you read books, good ones!, for HOMEWORK. I sincerely wonder sometimes if anyone realizes how much fun all of us English majors are having. It’s the papers I guess that cover up the fun).

But one year ago, there I was, signing the official papers trying to tell myself that research methods would not be so bad. I even got a override to be in the class because I had not taken Intro to Stats. So I was feeling good, I got an override.

I was wrong. I have never fely so absolutely stupid all of the time. My brain does not function under the realm of the social sciences and much to my dismay, the culminating project of the class was going to be a 12-15 page research proposal. This proposal was to be up to the caliber of actually being able to take the final product to the Institutional Review Board for approval. When I read this in the syllabus all I could think was, “WHAT? I am still an English major people!” OH, and this proposal is worth 40% of our final grade, and it has to be written in the style of social sciences.

Needless to say, I stumbled through the class readings, participated like hell in class so I could at least count on THOSE points for my final grade.

When it came time to really start work on that proposal I just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.

And then I deleted, deleted, deleted.

And then I moved sections around. And then I put it back where it was.

And then I got peer review from two classes in which I got torn up. (I know that it was all to help me, but it still stung a bit.)

And then I had a dream that I got a C- on the project.

And I woke from that dream crying.

Good lord! This all made me feel like I was going to fail miserably at keeping a good grade in this class.

I GOT A 91% ON THE PROPOSAL. I am feeling all right about my life right now.

we’ve got rules and maps and guns

I apologize faithful reader(s)! I am in the throes of finals week (and for the record, the week before finals week bludgeoned my brain into the consistency of mashed potatoes. So, I know, it’s been a while.)

I shall return in full glory soon. For now, I leave you this to bring you joy:

P.S. – Just so you know, eating a cupcake with a fork is far more refined than just nomming the shit out of it with your face. You all probably have known this for an incredibly long time; alas, I just learned of it last night.

historiography

Will and I, years ago,  had the following conversation:

Me: “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Will: “Don’t ever think of it that way. Think of what you can do because you’re with me.”