Aleatoric: The Best Band that Never Made It Anywhere, Unless You Count the Relay For Life, and You Shouldn't: A Saga

I think I had a really good segue into this story, and I think that the segue probably had to do with the fact that I've been listening to all these CDs I found that I burned in the eighth grade, but I seriously have no idea what that might have been.  I think I thought of it when I woke up from my nap today and thought that I had slept through class, then remembered I didn't?  And then promised myself that I would definitely go to sleep by midnight tonight so I do more in class tomorrow then sit there like an attendance zombie...?  But no.  Here I am at 12:27 AM, and I can't remember my own pre-story story.  So I will just dive straight into it.

So, once upon a time I was in middle school and, as "punky" (hahaha...if you'd known me in middle school you'd know how "punk" I was) preteens are wont to do, I decided it would be the BESTIDEAEVER to form a band.

Now, of course, I didn't really know anyone who played any instruments suited to a girl version of Blink 182....so basically I didn't know a bassist or drummer.  No matter, however, I decided to recruit my friends, who also wanted to be in a band.  If I remember right, Brielle (my best friend at the time) and I had already been writing lyrics together and/or separately in a notebook covered in duct tape (obviously.)  I remember the songs having titles like "Broken" and lyrics like "roses will wither and die away, black and cold, still clinging to their lifeless vine...like we cling to our lifelines." Seriously, that's an actual quote from an actual "song" I wrote in our songbook.  I think I found myself really clever.  Like LOOK everyone, I can tie these things together.  WORDSMITH.

Anyway, Brielle played the cello, and, as Jack Black says in School of Rock, "turn it sideways and CELLO, you have a bass!" Or something.  I can't remember all the School of Rock quotes exactly.

Then there was my friend Taylor. I can't remember if she could already play the guitar when we started this band, but I am thinking no...?  And then she learned almost immediately after and was way better than me, and then I was sad.  But, with my middle school logic and obviously EXCELLENT understanding of how musicians work, I decided that Taylor would be a fantastic drummer, based on the fact that she was "a spaz" and "that's all you really need for drums."  Being the most lovely and accomidating friend ever, she consented.  Lucky for us, my Dad had a drumset in my basement, so we had something to work with.  Luckily, Taylor was not half-bad, not that we ever played any shows with this band.  I can't for the life of me remember what this band was called, but I'm guessing it was something very, very reminiscent of black eyeliner and Hot Topic bondage pants.

Update: To find pictures of us in this band (which performed exactly once, playing All The Small Things at the school talent show) I tried to get on my MYSPACE and found that I had encrypted it pretty heavily, using an alternate email address and the like, because I was not supposed to have a myspace.  Anyway, can't get on there.  Lalala.  I'm pretty sure my email address was something with "marmalade" in the title.  And 182 of course.  For Blink 182.  So you can't see any pictures of us, sadly.  But that's OK because this post, contrary to what you might think, is not about this band.  No no.  It is about the band that sprung forth from this band.

I think what happened was my mom made an inadvertently offensive comment to Brielle's mom, and since we were 13 we decided to get in a HUGE fight over it, and anyways, our band broke up.  I really can't remember any of the details but at the time it was a PROBLEM cause we were headed straight for the top, obviously.

Then I joined the Jazz Band, a somewhat poor decision on my part because there is nothing on this earth that will get me up at 6 AM, except for Jazz Band, apparently, because I was there erryday.  Brielle was also in the Jazz Band, and I wouldn't be surprised if I joined to stick it to her, or maybe our band hadn't broken up yet?  I really don't know.

In any case, I met Katie in Jazz Band.  She played the bass and sat between me and Brielle.  We bonded over a set of Pretty Princess fake nails from the dollar store that reminded us of childhood.  And somewhere along the line after we talked about how much we loved Panic! At the Disco (they weren't even big yet, we'd just heard them on a Fueled by Ramen sampler CD, duh) we decided to start a band.

At this point, I had a friend named Brittany who would sing songs from Wicked and Rent with me in duets regardless of whether they were boy/girl, girl/girl, or originally solos.  She also played the piano a bit.  So we brought her in as keyboards and vocals.  Katie had a friend named Stephany who played the drums, or at least I thought she did because she had a myspace picture where she was playing the drums.  Aleatoric was formed.

Ohhh Aleatoric.  We took ourselves so seriously, had fights that bands that...have fights in hotel rooms...and stuff...could only dream of.

Oh, before I forget, for reference, here are some pictures of us.

This is before the Talent Show when we played "Soul Meets Body"

This is backstage at the concert we played at the Circuit. 

Backstage at the circuit, but not as sad to be there.

Onstage

Probably covering Simple Plan

Might have been covering Death Cab for Cutie

As Aleatoric, we had constant fights over when/where band practice would be.  Sometimes our parents didn't want us out late, sometimes they didn't want us making noise, most of the time we got exactly nothing done at band practice.

However, we got a taste of success and we got it fast. We were going places fo' reals.  First, we got to play the Relay For Life.  My friend Carson's older brother, Larss, was also in a band called Caligo, and out of the goodness of his heart, they asked us if we'd play in the little tent set up in the middle of the football field while people ran and/or speedwalked around us.  So, of course, we did.

If I remember correctly, the Aleatoric setlist went something like this:

1. It Ends Tonight-All American Rejects

2. Soul Meets Body-Death Cab for Cutie

3. Crazy-Simple Plan

4. Broken, and original song that I wrote with Brielle when we were in our old band.  Katie and her bass teacher wrote a bass line and I wrote a couple chords for the piano.  Iiiiiit was a mess.

We learned Helena by My Chemical Romance but we never played it anywhere because we had to switch octaves every other line because it was either too high or too low.  

Anyway, we played Relay for Life, messed up the words to the AAR song, and generally had a lovely time.  

Somehow after our fantastic performance at Relay for Life, Lars got us ANOTHER "show" (I remember talking a lot about "playing shows" like I did it ALL THE TIME when I think we had been together for 3 weeks) at the Circuit, which I think was a comedy club, then a concert venue, now they do plays there or something.  Anyway, it was THE PLACE, in my inexperienced opinion.  We played with 4 other bands and were the only band who 

1. Had a four song set list

2. Played exactly 1 original song

Finally, we played the Talent Show.  The best part of this was Katie's sister worked at Vanity and somehow (I have no idea how this worked) convinced them to let us wear clothes from their store, tags still on, to our performance, with the stipulation that we'd mention everything we were wearing was from Vanity.  There was also talk of doing a show IN THE MALL (Iknowright?!) but that never panned out.

So on the day of the talent show, my Dad, who was pretty much in charge of setting up our equipment, couldn't get work off, but he explained to us how to plug everything in, so we really didn't worry.  We were last, anyway. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't figure out how to make our mics work, so we had to set up for about an hour.  They almost let everyone go home because we were taking so long.  Eventually we went out onstage with one working mic, and you could barely hear us over the music.  But in the meantime, before we went onstage, there were people doing backflips, Katie's sister came up and told everyone we were sponsored by Vanity... I felt like Selena Gomez launching her K-Mart exclusive fashion line, only not really, because she hadn't burst out onto the scene yet, and I wasn't launching a fashion line, and we were playing a Death Cab song in a middle school auditorium.  But whatever.

Eventually we broke up.  I think it was a combination of lack of motivation, inability to write songs together, and being 14.  The world will little know nor long remember how totally awesome and bitchin' Aleatoric was, but they can never forget their great outfits, courtesy of Vanity.

Kahlil Gibran and an analogy comparing reading Dickens to running at a waterfall

I love Kahlil Gibran.

I have loved him since I was in middle school and came to visit my Grandma at the Matheson Courthouse for Career Day (I didn't really want to work at the courthouse, I just wanted to hang out with my Grandma because she loves me the most.)  There was a guy working doing I don't even know what who had the coolest sleeve tattoo, and winding around his arm was this quote.  I wish I could remember which quote it was now, but I remembered he said it was from a guy named Kahlil Gibran.  So of course I went home and looked him up and I've loved him ever since.  Kahlil Gibran is awesome.  He is the third best-selling poet of all time behind SHAKESPEARE and Lao-Tzu.  Suffice it to say, the guy can write.

Today I was trying to read Hard Times on my Kindle (and having a "Hard Time(s)" of it, amiright?) and I decided to take a break and for some reason that break led me to read some of my favorite pieces of Kahlil Gibranese wisdom.

Here are some of my favorite Kahlil Gibran quotes:

"Poetry is a great deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary."

Seriously, I don't think there's a better way to describe poetry.


"Love is trembling happiness."

I just think this is a pretty image.

And finally, one of my favorites:

"When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. "
How true is this?  Things go sour after a while, and we can't truly mourn that which we've never known, so when we know true sorrow it is because of the loss of something that once gave us joy.  I'm not as articulate as Kahlil, even restating his points, clearly.

Anyway, just thought I would share with you guys.  Are you feeling inspired now?  I hope so.  I, for my part, am not that inspired, or at least, not inspired to do what I SHOULD do, which is either a) read Hard Times or b) go to bed.  Not like I wasn't forewarned.  I took an entire Dickens course from this Professor before, and this semester he told us that reading Dickens is like running at a wall of water.  If you go full speed it will smack you in the face, but if you take you're time you'll be fine.  AND I STILL DIDN'T LISTEN.  Anyway.... adios.

Dramatic Poem written from my Cold Bedroom on an October Evening

Decided to take a five minute break from my Titus Andronicus essay to write a blog...couldn't think of anything to write, wrote this poem real quick.  Hopefully it is not the worst poem ever (clearly I do not think it is the worst EVER or I wouldn't post it.)

I think I am going to call it, "Dramatic Poem written from my Cold Bedroom on an October Evening"


The feeling you get when you realize
Those you thought you knew, you don't:

You see it in the way that dust settles on your dresser
When you swept it away an hour ago,
And you realize your life is covered through and through
In a fine layer of grime no matter what you do.

And you think, how can it be so?
I'm disorganized, distressed, distrustful
But I am water in a shell of skin
Surely I can cleanse myself of this memory of sin...

But you give up because all things considered
At the end of the day
Though your heart is dirty and grey
Some things you don't want washed away.

Keepin' It Positive (Sasha Fierce)

Sometimes, you have a bad day.  I know, readers, you're all, "what?! That happens to people?! Those poor people."

Anyway, there are many, many things I do when I have a bad day.  Sometimes I go to McDonalds with Colton and MayLynn and we eat hot fudge sundaes and Colton makes me sit in a line of sight with a McDonalds worker that he says was checking me out, and we try to eat seductively with our plastic spoons so that if he looks over he will be uncomfortable.

Sometimes, Colton sends me Beyonce songs over facebook and I listen to the same one like, 100 times because it is the best and she is SOOO Sasha Fierce (a term that Tess and I coined when her album, I Am Sasha Fierce came out--it means she is strong and takes no crap from nobody!)

Annnnnd sometimes I think instead of being negative, I will make a blog about all the things I am loving right now.

And so here it is, the blog about things I am loving right now!

* The fact that it's raining right now.
* PUMPKIN EVERYTHING!!

THIS STUFF

Reeses Pumpkins...because the best Reeses are seasonal, shaped Reeses.

Vegan Pumpkin Mac

Pumpkin Hummus

She is the cutest and the best.

* New Girl!  This season is so good!

* And in that vein...Zooey Desch and everything about Zooey Desch!

* Writing!  I am getting some really good writing done and I am loving the drafts I'm turning in.

* Nanowrimo is coming up SOON!  I really want to finish this year.  We'll see how busy I am.

* All the new movies coming out!  Especially Cloud Atlas.  I really want to see that.

* Pitch Perfect... I've seen it not once, not twice, not even three times, but FOUR TIMES.

* Tattoos in these places:

* These songs:

* This

Oh, and this.

* Getting to use my space heater

* Playing D&D every Sunday

* The way Sardine Canyon looks right now when you drive through it

* Taking hot showers when I'm stressed out, or reading a book in the bathtub...which is what I'm going to do now.

Love you all!!

Manifestoconfessional. It's like Dashboard Confessional, only not at all like Dashboard Confessional.

I'm a little bummed out because I was thinking of what to write in this Manifestoconfessional, then I got in the shower and forgot it all.  Iknowright?  Stupid.

So anyway, on Sunday night I had a friend over and we were talking about our religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to my roommate and good friend, MayLynn.  Or I guess I could say he was mostly talking and I was saying affirming things like "me too" and "yes."  But regardless, today when I was in my room, I heard my other roommates talking about how they "wished I wouldn't talk about my beliefs in the living room."

At first, I found this really funny.  Then I was a little bothered by it.  I know I shouldn't have been.  It's just a fact of life that when you have different beliefs from the general population, some people are going to resent them, and by extension, you.  I was bothered because they get to air their beliefs whenever and wherever they want, and they are praised for "spreading the word," whereas when I talk about what I believe, I get shut down, some people don't want to talk to me any more, and there's a general feeling of discomfort even among those who are more accepting.

However, instead of shutting me down, actually experiencing a little piece of this disdain for the first time (or I should say, for the first time with people I don't really know or care about) only spurred me on to say what I want to say and just let the chips fall where they may.  Hopefully those of you who are reading this are open minded enough to realize that religion, like sexuality or whether or not you like green beans, is really, truly, nobody's business but your own.  Whether someone believes in God, many Gods, no God, or doesn't know what they believe it should in no way affect how you treat them, how you perceive their morality, or whether or not you get to know them.  Religion is personal and private, and for some reason we as a society refuse to let it stay that way, to the point that I have to write something like this, though I hardly think I need to justify myself, to explain what I believe just to get it out there in the open and see who can deal with it and who can't.

It's important to know, first of all, that I grew up in an interesting family dynamic.  My mom is a Mormon, but my dad is Atheist.  I actually consider myself very lucky to have grown up this way.  It allowed me to see vastly different sides of the religious spectrum.  Additionally, I already had a very inquisitive personality, and I was never quick to accept that something was true just "because it is."  I was never OK with just hoping for an explanation, I wanted to know.  Having two parents with beliefs that differed in the extremes only made me more curious.  I'm grateful for that.

That's not to say that growing up torn between two "extremes" wasn't difficult.  I wanted to make both of my parents happy, like most children.  However, my mom was the one who got to decide our religious upbringing, and she raised us Mormon.  Of course, I had all of the Mormon guilt that comes along with being human, or as I've often heard people described, "the natural man."  However, I was never quite as guilty as I "should" have been in order to be a "good" Mormon.  Sure, I felt bad when I had thoughts pertaining to anything against the Word of Wisdom, and when I swore, sometimes I felt a little regretful.  But overall, my inclination against being told what to do and a universal, objective morality kept me from really, truly squashing my desires.  I've heard it said that some people just do what they do out of fear of being punished.  I think that I lost that fear at a young age, at least when it came to church.

The older I got, the more I got the feeling that church didn't really hold anything for me.  I remember skipping Seminary in middle school to walk home to eat lunch because I felt so uncomfortable trying to express opinions that I didn't share just because I was expected to by the teacher.  I remember pretending to be sick every Sunday so I wouldn't have to go to church and being so excited when I finally got a job that would require me to be at work during our meeting time.  And I remember being fourteen or fifteen and changing my myspace (I know, right) page to say that I was "agnostic," because at the time I was still afraid to question religion beyond simply the existence of one "correct" religion.  I thought that organized religion takes up too much of people's time and dictates too many of their opinions for them.  The more I saw people get in to organized religion, the less individuality I saw.  That always really bothered me, especially since, though Mormonism claims to be "the one true religion"  there were huge, HUGE parts of Mormon doctrine that I fundamentally disagreed with (particularly their views on women's roles and marriage.)  I wondered what the point was of belonging to a church that I couldn't be behind 100 percent.

Anyway, my mom found my myspace (because this was middle school/early high school, and that was still a thing that happened...moms found your secret myspace pages) and I got in a LOT of trouble for having put "agnostic" as my religious preference.  I understand now that she just wanted what she perceived to be best for me--to be part of a religion that she thought (and thinks) is pure truth from a divine creator.  I also remember her saying "does this mean you don't believe in God?" It was the first time I let myself really form that thought in my head.  I was too scared of what it would mean if I didn't believe in God to let myself pursue the idea further.

During high school, my mom basically gave up on trying to make me go to church.  I was no longer even asked if I wanted to go to girls camp, and no one made me take seminary.  I don't know to this day how I got off scott free, but I managed it.  Throughout all that time I played with the idea of the non-existance of God, I even talked about it with one of my friends.  Any time I brought it up, though, I was shut down.  It was pretty lonely, and I tried to push it back as much as possible.  I genuinely thought that there was no way for me to be happy if I didn't believe in God, and I felt so sorry for my Dad that I often cried because I was sure that he must be so  miserable, knowing there was nothing to look forward to after death.

In college, I lived with my best friend, Tess.  She, like me, had had some issues with the church.  I felt we were really on the same page--that is, we both assumed that we were Mormons at heart that just couldn't accept the full truth of the gospel yet, and obviously we'd go back to being Mormons in the end, but for the moment we wanted to do whatever we wanted to do without regard to religion.  I believed that, to an extent, or at least, it was easier to believe it when she was around.  Secretly, though, I knew I wouldn't ever go back, and I feared that if and when she did it would sever all ties between us.

By the time we got into our junior year, I knew from enough research (which I had been assured by multiple persons was blasphemous--there's always something wrong written about the church on the internet for you to find, apparently, even if that "something wrong" is scientific fact...) and enough personal feeling that I was no longer willing to accept anything that could not be conclusively proven to me until such a time that it could, in fact, be tested and proven true.  Unhappily, that included the idea of a deity.  Still, with no one I felt like I could talk to, I kept my mouth shut.

I have been so lucky in this last year.  Tess moved out and is going on a mission, and I'm happy she's happy. I miss her all the time and still love her to death.  However, when she moved out we both got to grow and develop into more full versions of ourselves.  With more or less no one left in Logan that I knew from my formative years, I felt more comfortable delving deeper into feelings I had previously left unexplored.

Then, in the last couple of months, I met a person who shares my beliefs, and is free and open and willing to talk to anyone who will listen about those beliefs.  Seeing that kind of "eh, whatever, this is who I am, deal with it" attitude made me feel better about expressing myself.  It's always nice to know you have an ally.

So before now I've only let a couple of people in on my dirty little secret.  Really, I shouldn't have to tell anyone, unless they ask.  But such is the way of the world.  Again, I am so lucky.  No one I've told that really cares about me has shied away from a friendship with me just because we are different.  We can respect one another and focus on all the many thousands of things that make us who we are instead of the one stupid, insignificant detail that everyone seems bound and determined to get stuck in their teeth.

I could really go on and on and elaborate on this post forever, but as I have a midterm tomorrow, I feel like I should probably just call it a night.  To whoever is reading this, don't be afraid to question what you know.  If you don't question and search beyond your comfort zone, how will you ever know for sure what you believe?

Sometimes, it's 7:45 in the morning and you have to write a poem because you haven't slept yet.

Sometimes me and Nate write a poem by flipping a coin and having the heads or tails person write the next line, then flipping it again.  Sometimes I have to write 1000 lines in a row.  But then Nate has to write 200 lines in a row so it's fine.

Sometimes this is the poem we wrote:

Strings

But tight, I am strung through the room so bravely

But soft, my chest is strung up to your rising sun

You are my morning

Do I dare to rise, share the light?

Or cloud over, could I even lock myself up so dark and so tight?

But stop, think of the sky to cover

Your horses are tired and so are mine

And you are not Apollo

Thoroughly labored, pretty and petty

Unable to swallow my treason

Forgetful, unable, revived and unstable

So wretched in thinking my friends are the reason

What is true, what is myth

Who can say for certain?

Honestly, I tried once before

Though my score was settled, I ached for more

Fuck you, Jekyll

I've no reason to Hyde

I'm both monster and man, God and Godless

So brave in my pursuit of you, truth, time

This vague repetition reminds me of rhyme

But why asked the heckler I tried to repress

Why can't I detach these strings from my chest?

Surprise, you won Tic Tac Toe!! : A new game from the makers of the game where you throw the ice into the hole in the soda machine at U6

Today at work, I taught my roommate slash bestie slash work colleague MayLynn how to play Ultimate Tic Tac Toe.

For those of you who don't know, Ultimate Tic Tac Toe involves drawing a tic tac toe...square? Board? Whatever you want to call it....inside each of the squares of a large tic tac toe square/board/whatever you want to call it.

Now, before today I had played Ultimate Tic Tac Toe precisely one time, but for some reason, I thought I was totally awesome at it.  Not the case.  Or I guess yes the case, but MayLynn and I were perfectly evenly matched.  Or perfectly evenly bad?  Whate'er.

Then the most beautiful thing happened.  It just exploded out of my brain and onto paper.  We looked at the ceiling and on the count of three wrote three x's or o's on a paper, then looked down to see who got the most.  Surprise, you won Tic Tac Toe!! was born.

We refined it over several game playing sessions.  First, you must rotate the paper with the tic tac toe on't while looking directly into your opponents eyes.  After the first round where you draw 3 x's or o's, you may only draw one per round.  You must draw your x's and o's at the same time as your opponent.  You may not break eye contact for any reason.

I don't know if I am properly conveying how fantastic this game is.  Anyway, here's a picture of what it looks  like compared to Extreme Tic Tac Toe.  As you can see, we are evenly matched in the Extreme version, but X (me) is clearly better at randomly writing on a piece of paper without looking.

Conspiracy?

I can already tell this post is going to make no sense.

I'm supposed to get up tomorrow bright n early (7:30) to go to the library and look in special collections to make sure I have my two minute presentation right for my 9:30 class.  I know, that sounds like overkill, but this professor is writing one of my letters of recommendation, so I have to be awesome at errything, which is hard to do when you are me and you'd rather die than be up and learning at 9:30.

Anyway, instead of going to bed right now, I used sleepyti.me, which is a sleep calculator, and it told me I didn't have to be falling asleep until 3 for maximum efficiency in sleep cycles, SO I AM STILL UP AND BLOGGING TO YOUUUUUU.

So I dunno if this happens to you, but it happens to me ALL THE TIME and I think it's a conspiracy of some kind concocted by the universe and/or by tiny devious aliens that we can't see with the naked eye because they have...invisible spaceships.

When I wear a lot of eye makeup, after 10 PM it starts migrating towards the center of my eye like it's the Land Before Time 17 or whatever...or Ice Age 4.  Something where dinosaurs and other things like mammoths have to migrate somewhere.  And then, no matter what color the makeup was, it will turn very, very black and greasy, like it was mixed with vaseline.

So now I wonder, did the makeup perish?  Is eyeshadow alive but for only 1 day like a house fly or something, and then it dies and turns into black goop?  I don't understand.

On that note, why do the tiny invisible spaceship aliens come to earth for the express purpose of making me look like a crack whore after 10 PM?  Do they not know how infrequently I see people that late?  Do they not know that I typically wash my face clear of makeup around then, thus making their plan totally totally stupid?  I don't think they know, so I hope that all the pageviews I'm seeing are from these aliens because they are totes into blogs, and they're like oh, PSA, maybe we shouldn't do that any more!  Thanks Mighty Over-Mistress Chloe!

That's all I wanted to say to you right now, the Internet.  I think when I read this tomorrow I am going to be perplexed.

October is the best.

Do you know why October is the best, dear reader I'm still assuming I have?  October is the best because it is PUMPKIN TIME.  I try to drag pumpkin time all the way through February or March if I can.  I'm talking asking my mom and grandparents to buy me canned pumpkin that I can take home and use to make things.  I know that pumpkin is available year round in the can, but mostly it's just the pie-filling variety which, while delicious, is not always conducive to my pumpkin needs.

ANYWAY.  So tonight I was fully prepared to either
a) eat carrots and hummus and chips and salsa for dinner, as I have the past couple of nights...whatever.
or
b) make stacked vegan enchiladas and have food to eat for many moons.

But then I realized I was pretty much out of carrots and I was too lazy/scared to make vegan enchiladas because it seems every time I try to cut a sweet potato, part of my finger is in grave, grave danger of being chopped off.  Plus, I was feeling fall-ish.  My roommate lit a fall-smelling candle.  It was seasonal as all get out in my apartment.  That was when I remembered I didn't make vegan pumpkin mac and cheese the other day.

Vegan mac and cheese has plagued me for a long time now.  It always seems like it's right on the cusp of being FREAKING PHENOMENAL, but one little thing went wrong, like the sauce got too thick or I used too much turmeric.  I decided, however, that it would be worth trying again once pumpkin got involved.

I would seriously put pumpkin in my cereal, just so you all know.  In fact, as I'm typing this I'm thinking, would it really be so bad if I put pumpkin in with my rice crispies and a little agave nectar tomorrow??? And then I am thinking stop it Chloe, you are not going to have any friends if you can not get it together.

So yeah, back to my story.  I figured that someone somewhere on pinterest would have made a recipe for vegan pumpkin mac and cheese, and sho' 'nuff, lots of people had.  Hooray!

I adapted my recipe from http://ohsheglows.com/2011/10/13/vegan-pumpkin-mac-n-cheeze-sauce/

Basically, I didn't use djon mustard, I used regular mustard powder and a bit of season salt.  I also added cinnamon, nutmeg, and sage.  I don't know how much.  I got all Next Food Network Star with it (which, if you haven't seen it, is a fantastic show and I love it)

So I had the sauce all assembled, tasted it, heard Amy Grant in my head (Breeeeath of heeeeaven hold me togeeeether) and then I realized oh yeah, I hadn't done the noodles.  So I had to pause for the noodles.  Longest pause ever.

Let me just say this about my vegan pumpkin mac and cheese...if I could marry it, I would.  I would let it be the bride.  I would let it have a custom Vera Wang wedding gown and I WOULD PAY FOR THAT GOWN because I love it so much.  It is quite literally the most delicious thing ever.  I think that if there were angels present right now, they would weep as they sang the melody of Ode to Joy in their tiny angel voices.

That's all.

What Would You Do?

The other day as I was going to class I saw one of those whiteboards that a traveling...preacher?  We'll call him a preacher, because I don't know what else to call him, had set up.  It said

"What would you do if you were free from all obligation to law and goodness?"

Of course, that got me thinking.  What would I do?  It's not like I go about my day to day doing lots of illegal activities on the sly that I could suddenly do in the open if I wasn't bound by the law, except...ya know...jaywalking.  I like to think I don't do certain things, like murdering people or stealing simply because I don't really have the desire to do them.  Upon deeper self-examination, I feel reasonably certain that that is really the case.  But then I wonder, do I have these desires (or lack thereof) simply because I've been taught that they are "good" and to want to do "good" is what society, and God, expect of me?  And if I tap the deepest parts of me, will I find that human nature is murderous and covetous without some exterior force to keep it in check -- that is, without fear of God or society, punishment or rejection?

I've grown up being told that "the natural man is an enemy to God."  And ya know, maybe the guy with the whiteboard proposed the question "what would you do if you were free from all obligation and goodness" because he wanted people to admit their deep dark desires so that he could "prove" when you take away obligations to laws and goodness, the "natural man" is worse than an animal--he/she is an "evil" entity (after all, God is good and therefore the enemy of God would be evil...just follow my logic here.)

I'd like to submit to you two things: a question and a proposal.  First, what is evil?  Or rather, what does the word evil mean to you, considering I believe the term to be relatively subjective.  I know that that idea will bother some, but I think that the idea of evil is personal and is based on experience, trained values, and societal values as a whole.  For example, many young children have a tendency to shoplift until they are told not to do so.  They are not born knowing that stealing is "wrong," it is something they have to be taught.

Now, I submit to you this...  I don't believe I am innately "evil," at least, not by the parameters of our society.   Nor do I think I am innately "good."  I simply am, but what I am is hard to define, and will take more time than I'm currently willing to give with class in six hours.  Anyway, I honestly think everyone is born with such different inclinations and curiosities that are labeled as evil or good.  I mean, I want to think even without being told it was wrong, I wouldn't have the desire to kill (to go back to my standard example) because if nothing else I find blood and gore distasteful and physical pain (my own or others) upsets me.  But then, maybe those ideas have been conditioned in me, too.  Or maybe the natural man is neutral ground.

What do you think?

Illusions

Today, I finished reading a fantastic book called Illusions by Richard Bach.

For any of you who haven't read it, I would highly recommend it.

There are a lot of little excerpts from a companion book called The Messiah's Handbook which is featured heavily in Illusions.  All of the little... I guess you'd call them "lessons" really spoke to me in one way or another, and a lot of them interconnected, in my opinion.  So I just want to talk about them a little bit and try to make sense of the meaning I took from the story.   Regardless of how the book ended, and my general feelings on the subject matter before the plot...twists (I'm not going to say what happens) this book made me really think about myself, my life, and what I want to do with the time I have here.

Your only 
obligation in any lifetime
is to be true to yourself. 
Being true to anyone else or 
anything else is not only
impossible, but the 
mark of a fake
messiah.

In Illusions, the "messiah," Don Shimoda, frequently asserts that people need to be their own messiah.  Or rather, he implies it when he tells Richard (the other protagonist) that everyone has the power to do what Shimoda himself can do, they just have to learn to use it.  So I guess that the "mark of a fake messiah" doesn't necessarily have to mean performing miracles, because though people have the potential to perform their own personal miracles, they often don't, instead looking for someone to easily save or cure them.  The simpler things that one can do to be one's own messiah involve being true to oneself, making oneself happy, and so on.

I had a difficult time with the idea of making oneself happy for a while.  Shimoda has actually quit being the one and only messiah at the beginning of the book, having been told "I command that you be happy in the world as long as you live."  For some reason, it seemed a selfish notion to me, as if "being true to yourself" meant "living only for yourself without a care for others."  Then I realized that the point is not that one should be selfish in one's happiness, rather one should never sacrifice what will make one happy, no matter what other people may want or expect.  If people have the ability to save themselves, there's no need for anyone to be anyone else's savior.

For a long time now, I've felt like I've been an observer in my own life, and a tentative observer at that.  The kind of person who comes to class every day, does the reading, and pays attention, but never raises her hand to speak, even though she's sure she knows the answer.  I have a lot of desires and impulses that I squelch within myself because I'm afraid of how people will react if I just learn to let go.

I am tired of clinging.  Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going.  I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.

When I read this at the very beginning of the book, I was struck by how much the creature reminded me of myself, as corny as that sounds.  I easily dismissed the idea, however, because I, like the other creatures, was convinced that boredom was worth safety.  My paradigm shift really didn't come until I read the first aforementioned passage.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.  I'd been wondering about this idea for quite some time before I actually read it.  I wondered who I was really servicing in holding back pieces of myself and my desires from my friends, family, and acquaintances.  I thought that if this life is the only time that I have to do what I want to do, and when I die I will inevitably be forgotten by the world as those I know also die, then the only thing that should matter to me is doing what I want to do with my life, regardless of my fear of the consequences.

Just in the last few days (right before I read Illusions, and then after I read that particular passage) I have had what some might call a case of the f*ckits, but really, I'm just letting myself be free and follow my impulses.  And it's fantastic.   It's not like I've done anything crazy.  In the last two weeks or so I have not, in fact, skydived or given up college to become a traveling troubador.  I have, however, told people what I think and feel for the most part, when before I would have just kept my mouth shut.  And for me that is a big step.

Anyway, I'm sure I will want to write more about this incredible book later... it's really one of "those" books, the kind that stick with you forever and make you look at things with this sort of poetic sadness that weighs heavy on your brain and makes you want to write sappy poetry about the beauty of life until you snap out of it and walk around in a general literature daze.  This is just the beginning of me trying to dissect my feelings on the material.  Hopefully it was coherent and I didn't get redundant or anything.  Who knows.  I have run on something like 7 hours of sleep in the last three days combined.

Look at me, making excuses.

Argue for your limitations,
and sure enough,
they're 
yours.

Goodnight, internetworld.

It's just one of those days...

Today was a freakin' lazy day. I'm sure you all have those days where you don't wake up until one, then you go to Burger King for breakfast because screw it, you don't care about being healthy any more because you are too tired to care about anything. And then after that, you go to work for two hours and as soon as your manager asks who wants to go home, you raise your hand. As soon as you get home, instead of doing your relatively easy homework and going to sleep so that you can actually participate in class, you get on pinterest and learn how to do your makeup like Lana Del Ray, even though you're still not really sure who she is. Then you make brownies with your roommate and while you're waiting for them to cook you eat frosting out of the can with a fork, because it's a day that the chins are demanding tribute, and they will not be silenced. Then when the brownies come out of the oven, you smother them in not one, but two cans of frosting that ends up being thicker than the actual brownies, and you eat them with icecream directly from the pan without cutting them while listening to Ingrid Michaelson songs you pulled up on youtube. And you are not ashamed of this, because it is just one of those extremely tired days. Or maybe you guys have different lazy day rituals?

Me Time

So I was just thinkin' about me today. Cause I'm so narcisistic. I can't spell that word. I'm sure you know what I mean though. I'm like Narcissus? Ya know, the guy from greek mythology who stared at his reflection until he turned into a yellow flower? Yeah... Actually, I was just trying to decide what to watch on Netflix even though it is 1 AM and I have an interview tomorrow morning, and I found myself, as usual, being drawn to the True Crime shows. And I thought to myself, "self, are you a sociopath and you just don't know it?" And then I thought, "probably not." But then I got to wondering if other people enjoy true crime TV as much as I do. I'm talkin' Deadly Women, Disappeared, Solved: Extreme Forensics, and so on. So here are some things about me I like to pretend are super quirky, but I kind of hpe you all (haha...like people are reading this. Hahaha) do these things too. I love True Crime TV. I support gay rights like I'm an actual gay man. I get annoyed (just a little) when guys and girls act like makeup is a way to "cover up" what you really look like. I just think makeup is fun to play with. Sometimes when I see movies with Emma Stone or Zooey Deschanel in them I get distracted pretending they are my real-life best friends, because I am also super famous and adorable in this scenario. Sometimes I think if I will things hard enough, I can make them happen. For example, if I just think hard enough that I'm very good at tap dancing, my body will suddenly know how to tap dance. But then I try to tap dance (or whatever) and I still suck. Sometimes I have a family sized hummus in my fridge and I think "yeeeah...that's not going to make it through the night." Then I go buy more hummus. I give out "points" when people say things I like. For example, a good Shakespeare reference might earn you...I dunno...ten Bard Buddy points. Sometimes I refer to desserts as my "husband desserts" because I would literally marry that dessert. For example, carrot cake icecream. Yeeeah. Well, that's all for now I suppose, because I feel like I am digging myself into a very deep place that no one wants to visit, like Arizona. Goodnight internetworld!

New Things

In case any of you have missed it because you have been in comas, or hiding in your basement playing video games, or other things, it is summertime! Hooray! That means only slightly less stress and running around like an idiot for me! So, of course, to add to my stress level, I decided it would be a really good idea to be in not one, but two musicals this summer. The first is a musical written by my lovely friend and manager, Caroline. So it will not be as stressful as the second musical, which is West Side Story. I don't know if you have seen West Side Story, but if you have seen the movie or a stage version, or if you youtube it right now, you will notice that the girls in West Side Story are really good at dancing. Except Maria. She doesn't dance a lot. So I auditioned thinking that the only way I would ever get into the musical was if I was Maria, because I am the worst at dancing. So I went to the auditions, yadayada whatever, I got cast in the show yay! But not as Maria. Which is fine, it just means that I now have a ton of dancing to do. And the choreographer, while she is amazing, is also trying to kill me apparently, because the dances in this show are CRAZY HARD. And I'm one of the Puerto Ricans, so I get a lot of crazy hard dancing. Here is how not good at dancing I am, readers, in case you think I am just being modest. I went home after dance auditions and showed my mom and sisters the dance. They laughed at me while I was doing it. They laughed so hard that they cried. In conclusion, please come see West Side Story, if only to see if I suddenly uncover the dancer within. That is all.

I'm So Not Cool

I don't know how many of you remember Savage Garden. I didn't remember Savage Garden, really. I used to listen to them with my BFFL (except not really for L because I haven't seen her since High School graduation...whatever) in her bedroom forEVER. And we were really, really offended by the song "Universe" because they said something about being naked. I should probably google it so you can read how offensive and terrible it was. Whatever. Moving on.
I was in one of those weird nostalgic moods a couple of days ago and for some reason I thought, you know what is a good idea, self? To listen to Savage Garden real loud. And dance. So that's what I did.

If I was on My Strange Addiction, that would be my opening monologue, then there would be a video of me watching Savage Garden music videos and doing literally nothing else. Except maybe eating chips and buying Savage Garden merch, and maybe dying and cutting my hair to look like the lead singer. Idk. Things to think about.

For those of you that don't know, this is Savage Garden:



...Oh. The line was "imagine that our clothes are on the floor." SCANDALOUS. STOP IT, SAVAGE GARDEN!

I think something might be wrong with me...

I have a crush on Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec.

Not the actor that plays Ron Swanson, Ron Swanson the character. He wears long-sleeved polos tucked into his bad, bad, bad jeans and has a thick, distinguished mustache.

This is him.

He says things like "you had me at meat tornado" and "It’s never too early to learn that the government is a greedy piglet that suckles on a taxpayer’s teet until they have sore, chapped nipples."

Why do I love him???

Undeniable Foxiness

So, today I was thinking it would be a great idea for me to start my own line of perfume to be sold exclusively at Dillards, or somewhere. And the perfume would be called "Undeniable Foxiness," as undeniable foxiness is what I possess. And then the picture for the perfume would be this picture:

Because it showcases how undeniably foxy I am and would sell wayyyyy more perfume than this kind of hideous garbage:

Happy Leap Day!

If I took this holiday seriously I would go to Ireland with my longtime boyfriend and propose to him in an effort to be romantic that would come off as sad instead.

Actually, that's a lie, I would never, ever do that. And I do a lot of things that you should probably never, ever do (see post on geocaching)

So anyway, because it's Leap Day, I feel like I should be doing something special, ya know, since it's a once every four years type of thing, but instead, I am watching a gross amount of Parks and Rec. Seriously, I don't want to think about how many episodes of Parks and Rec I've watched today.

OH! I want to tell you guys about my couch.

My beautiful wonderful and lovely roommates Clare and Summer went to the DI while I was home visiting my parents because they do fun things when I'm gone on purpose (OK, maybe not.) Annnnd I guess they decided that it would be a great idea to buy the back seat of a car and use it as a couch. So now we have that in our living room annnd it's pretty comfy and I love it. Aside from being comfy and weird, the couch has a special Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants significance, in that we are all going to have to make out with someone on it before the end of the year.

Just kidding, that would be gross. But also funny. So I might be a little serious.

Anyways, have a lovely day, guys.

Flirting, Part 2

Today I was talking with my mom, telling her of all my various man-catching flirting techniques, in particular, those I utilized today, which included:

1. Not flirting

2. Not doing the flirty touch thing

3. Not acting interested at all

My mom listened to me patiently, then told me I was a dipshit and had better make some reparations.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Celery

In an effort to eat something other than corn chips and breads of all kinds, I decided to buy some celery while I was at the grocery store. Now, I knew going into my celery adventure that I am not the biggest celery fan. However, as celery is mostly water and has basically no flavor, I thought that it would be a good way to pretend to be eating healthy things and that it would be very easy for me to mask any flavor the celery might have with something else. Like peanut butter, for example. I mean, have you ever put peanut butter in/on something? You put one fifteenmilionth of a spoonful of peanut butter in a milkshake or smoothie and it is a freakin peanut butter smoothie. It doesn't matter if the other ingredients are raw salmon and lemon juice. The thing will taste like peanut butter.

So today when I got home from work, I thought to myself, self, you have eaten nothing but movie theater popcorn for about 6 hours. You should probably try to put something in your body that is not going to literally kill you. As it was already almost 11:00 PM, I decided that my super special snack was going to be celery, and since I was not yet feeling brave enough to put hummus on it (I don't know why, because hummus is my favorite food EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and I am not saying this in a sarcastic tone) I decided that I would put peanut butter on my celery. I put a lot. We're talking a ratio of about 16 parts peanut butter to 1 part celery.

I don't know how the celery did it, guys. I don't understand how this possibly could have happened. But I couldn't finish all 3 sticks? pieces? whatever you call them, of celery, because celery is nasty bullcrap.

There, I said it. Celery is literally the worst thing ever. I don't care that it's a negative calorie food, or whatever. I don't know anyone that can eat celery without drowning it in something, and I'm pretty sure that the drowning thing un negatives the negative calorie effect.

ALSO. Celery must be freaking magic, because I coated it in peanut butter, meaning that this blog post should not have ever been written because I should not have been able to taste the celery. But I could. Celery managed to make its disgusting, odd-textured self known through a frightening and potentially harmful amount of chunky peanut butter.

I am not a picky eater, by the way. I don't eat meat, but I will eat pretty much anything else. All vegetables, fruits, whatever are up for grabs. But not freaking celery.

Also not bananas, but that's another post.

A brief list of things I would rather do than go to work today

Tonight we have midnights, which means I won't get off of work until at least 1:30 AM annnnnd I really don't want to work until 1:30. So here is a list of things I would rather do:

Pull out all of my eyelashes one by one and eat them.

Watch a marathon of The Closer starring Kiera Sedgwick while Kiera Sedgwick sits next to me and tells me behind the scenes info about The Closer and/or intimate secrets about her marriage to Kevin Bacon.

Have a marathon of all the Transformers movies.

Get my blood drawn.

Make out with a hobo.

A blog about things that have already happened!!

Ok, so a lot of the events on this post happened a while ago, but I thought it would be more effective to talk about them now that I have all the pictures! Right? Right.

First thing's first, I am the best at building things.

Obviously.

This is a bookshelf I got at WalMart, so it was not going to turn out that great to begin with. So first I lost the instructions and looked up some instructions on the internet. And then I started assembling the parts incorrectly. Then I found out I had been sitting on the instructions all along, which made me feel like a fool.

Once I found the instructions, I noticed that for some reason, the folks over at CheesyBookshelves (TM) had not bothered to do anything apart from draw some really vague pictures of what I assumed were the pieces of the bookshelf with some arrows pointing at different parts that were labeled A,B,C,D, and E. So after about 40 minutes of watching me try and hammer things with my shoe, Emi stepped in to help a brotha out. When Emi started helping, things started coming together because she has a knowledge of bookshelves and how to assemble them far beyond my comprehension. Within an hour, the bookshelf was complete, and we were patting each other on the back and commenting on how great we are at building things, even though we had managed to somehow break three of the little screw things in half. As we were having our moment of triumph, McKay looked up from whatever he was doing on his laptop instead of helping us (jokes, McKayKay) and was all, "oh hey, I think that you did it wrong." It was only then that we stepped away from the bookshelf and noticed, oh hey, one of the sides is completely upside down and backwards (see photo) and it was only when I went to take a picture of the bookshelf that I realized the bottom shelf was also upside down, exposing the high quality-wood underneath the... beautiful white paint.

The plan was to disassemble the bookshelf and let McKay draw pictures on the wood, which we would then...hang on our walls...with a lot of heavy duty 3m. Buuut instead I just went home for the weekend and left the bookshelf in my living room because I'm not the worst roommate ever.

When I came home, my lovely roommate SummerJones had had her friends fix my bookshelf! I don't know how they did it considering Emi and I preeetttty much broke everything we could have broken in assembling it, but whatever. It is now in my room and though it tips to the side a little (a lot) it works just fine, so I'm happy with it. Yaaaay.

Now for the next thing that already happened but that I am just now releasing to the

blogosphere. I'm sure you were all very anxious to know what I was doing at all the times that I was not blogging about what I was doing, because I am very interesting and don't spend most of my time watching Breaking Bad on Netflix.

We had an Indian food night! It was all very exciting. We decided we were going to try and make Chicken Tikka Masala, because it is the BEST, and also naan, which is also the BEST. Annnd it turned out pretty OK. I started cooking things at about 4 thinking that t

hings would be ready by six, but SummerJones, my sous chef, was out on a run, because she is insane. I do not like to run, ever, and I don't understand people that do. Mad props, or whatever, though.

So Summer had said she was going to be gone about 20 minutes, but she didn't show up for 2 hours, so I was pretty sure she was dead and I was very scared that no one was going to eat Indian food with me. Finally she came in and I was very relieved and we had a touching re

union and then started cooking.

Then things started to go awry. First of all, we were about to eat when McKay (who came over with Emi and Amber) asked if we had any rice, and we didn't, because we are dumb and don't think things through. So then Emi had to go home and get her rice cooker. While we waited for the rice to cook, we started Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, which is my favorite movie EVER.

If this photo doesn't convince you to watch it, I don't want to be friends with you.

I didn't think that anyone would like the movie because it's all in Hindi and it's a musical and it's very, very corny at times, but everyone got way into it, which was nice, except later when we were going to play Bang! it was hard to get everyone to stop watching it.

Anyway, we thought it would be a real good idea to let the curries sit on low heat while we waited for the rice to cook. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. You have been chopped (that's a Food Network reference, in case people don't watch as much Food Network as I do, and you probably don't, because I watch a lot of Food Network.) Leaving the Tikka Masala on low made it coagulate a bit, so when we ate it it was....interesting. I will definitely stick to Tandoori. Mmmm...Tandoori...

Also, we for some reason thought if we rolled the naan dough (which is basically biscuit dough...scratch that, it's biscuit dough) into balls, it would flatten out into the really thin stuff you get at Indian restaurants. Because typically that's what bread does...it flattens out. Especially when it has yeast in it. Soooo we had biscuits with our Indian food. NBD.

Pictured: Non Naan

OK, part 1 complete! I bet when you started reading this you didn't think that I would split my story into a 2 part thingy, and now you are upset but also intrigued, because, after all, the best things in life are split into two parts, like the Breaking Dawn movies.

Try not to die of anticipation for part 2.

On a slightly more romantic note...

This is one of my favorite love songs everrrrr, so naturally I have listened to it an embarrassing number of times today.

Valentimes

I bet you are all hoping that I will either:

a) Blog about how much I hate Valentimes, not because I'm bitter about being single, but because love should be celebrated every day, or something, which is a dumb reason to hate a holiday. Do you also hate Father's Day or Mother's Day because you should celebrate your parents every day? Anyway...

b) Blog about my undying love for some boy who will read my blog, see that I am in love with him, and immediately fall into my loving embrace, or something.

But alas, I am not going to do either of those things. Because hating Valentimes day (yes I know that it's actually Valentines, picky readers) is stupid, and so is declaring your love on the blogosphere. Especially since no one ever just writes, "oh hey, by the way, I have a crush on you, Jake Ryan (or whatever this guy's name is.)" It's always more like "this boy, no, this man, has my whole heart, and he doesn't know how beautiful his deep ocean blue eyes are. I hope that he somehow knows that it's him I speak of, because of *THINLY VEILED REFERENCE TO SOMETHING YOU TALKED ABOUT ONE TIME*" Annnnnnd I don't talk like that. Ever. The closest I come is saying, "yeah, homeboy is pretty foxyfly." Also, I am not Nicholas Sparks, any character playing opposite Channing Tatum in any movie ever, or a fourteen year old with braces who has never spoken to her crush.

Anyways, I'm just wondering how many confessions of love there will be today. For some reason, Gary Marshall (yep, he's gonna take the fall for terrible rom coms today) has decided to make a series of movies (or should I say a series of the same movie but with a different setting) telling everyone how every holiday in the history of the world is a holiday where one should tell the truth to the one one loves, whether it's because the ball in Times Square is stuck halfway to the top of...the thing that drops the ball...I don't know the technical term... or because Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks for love in your lives, and how can you give thanks if the person doesn't know you love them??? If you got confused reading this paragraph, good, because I get confused every time one of my friends or sisters forces me to go see a Gary Marshall film.

This video from 30 Rock pretty much sums up the plot of Valentines Day and New Years Eve. I just saved you 2 dollars at Redbox (or probably more than that, because you will probably keep both movies much longer than a day because they are soooooo good.)

Alright, so, I kind of lost track of where this post was going. How grand. I'll just conclude by saying that I don't mind Valentimes. It's a day with a lot of pink things involved, which I appreciate. Additionally, my mom sends me a bunch of candy with a balloon tied to it and my French professor gives me cupcakes. So while I usually feel like a diabetic by the end of the day, overall, it's a good day, and I'm not going to be dramatic about it. The end.

Now I'm going to go watch Valentines Day (I'm not going to watch Valentines Day)

So remember that time that I posted that video about getting a boyfriend in middle school?

Here is the version for all of you boys that were all, "that's great, but how do I get a girlfriend now when I'm 24 or whatever and still act like I'm in middle school?"

You're welcome, boys of the WORLD.

A Sad Day for America

OK, so today my dress came!!

What dress, you ask? Since this is Utah (well where I am, anyway) you may think it is my WEDDING DRESS. But as you may have inferred from my earlier posts about how bad I am at flirting, I am not getting married. This dress is better than a wedding dress anyway. It's this really cool vintage dress from etsy! Whoa, right? Yeah, anyways...

I bought this dress thinking "I never do anything nice for myself," which is a lie, because about a week before I bought this dress I also bought myself a dress on modcloth.

ANYWAYS, so the dress came. And I was way excited, so I went to try it on. Now, because I am way smart, I didn't unbutton all the buttons on the dress when I stepped into it, just most of them. And one of the buttons, because it is a very old dress, fell off. And now I can't find it. It's OK, because if I safety pin the dress, it looks presentable. However, if I don't safety pin the dress, it shows my entire belly button and surrounding area. Which is obviously way cute and everything, but not suitable for class.

So now I am looking for the button and I am very sad. As is the rest of America, I'm sure.

Oscar Buzz!!!

Ok, guys. This is very serious. This movie might just top One For The Money, Think Like A Man, AND Snow White and the Huntsmen!! WHAT THE WHAT.

The movie is called The Lucky Ones, which is fitting, because it is based on the Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky Ones. I really, really wanted Nicholas Sparks to have written the script for this gem himself, but no such luck. Maybe when Nicholas Sparks' new book, The Best of Me (which I am assuming is titled The Best of Me because it is the best thing Nicholas Sparks has ever written) is made into a movie starring a former Disney star (male or female, I don't care) then he will finally do what the world has been demanding and write the screenplay.

Anyways, it is going to be so great. Like, the way that Zac Efron, who is supposedly an adult (you can't fool me, people in the movie that call him a "man" even though he still looks like he's 16, even with his strategic beard thing) seduces some lady who is a mom and looks 35, and then she gets mad at him for having a picture of her he found at war but then in the end she's like, "whatevs, I love you anyway." That's gonna be sosososogreat. Another thing I like is all of Zefron's way cool military tats. Like the one on his back that says something like "Live Like an Eagle" (I wasn't looking too closely during this part of the trailer)

Oh man, it's gonna be the bomb. Probably the bomb dot com, if I'm not getting ahead of myself. Someone please tell me this movie's exact release date.

Oh, sorry. Apparently, I have been calling it the Lucky ONES and it's actually just the Lucky ONE. Singular. So who is the lucky one??? Zefron or the lady? OHHH THE SUSPENSE CONTINUES TO BUILD.

Also, I would like to add when I googled this book/movie, the cover of The Best of Me came up, too. So maybe they are the same book? That would be clever of Nicholas Sparks, to write the same book twice and then just publish it under different titles. Oh wait, he would never do that.... right? (wrong)

Hypotheticals

So, I was hanging out with my roommates, which was odd in and of itself because we generally don't all hang out together, and of course the topic got turned to boys. I mean, come on. Of course it did. Don't pretend to be surprised.

And then, of course, the topic got turned to boys that I like, because, ya know, I guess everyone has to share.

And then my roommate, Clare, bless her heart, tells me that I should "

go over to his house and just kiss him and leave RIGHT NOW."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaha.

Here's how I imagine that would go down:

Me: Uhh...hi. Is so and such home?

So and Such's Roommate: Uhh...I think so. Who are you?

Me: I'm Chloe...can I just talk to So and Such for a second? (Said like I are going to throw up all over my shoes at any second)

So and Such's Roommate: Yeah, OK. I think so and such is in his room.

I knock on So and Such's door. He answers, sees me, and looks very, very confused.

So and Such: Hi Chloe. What the balls are you doing in my apartment/house/

condo?

Me: Uhhhhh.... (Tries not to have a repeat of the geocaching incident of '09) I uhm...need to talk to you.

So and Such: OK, but I have a lot to do and I'm really not sure why you're here unannounced.

We go into So and Such's room. So and Such looks at me like he is not sure whether or not I am completely sane and sober. Finally he sits down at a desk or on his bed or something and I sit down next to him. I try to sit closer to him but he moves away with a terrified look on his face

Or alternatively does not pick up what I am trying to do at all.

Me: So, my roommate said I should come over here and kiss you HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I continue laughing while So and Such looks on, not sure how to respond. Finally, I make some sort of erratic head movement in his direction, then either pass out, run away, or smack heads with him so hard that one or the other or both of us crack our skulls.

The end.

I don't know how smooth my roommates think that I am (because they kept trying to convince me this was an EXCELLENT plan for about 2 hours) but I can assure you, I am about as smooth as...an unsmooth thing. Oatmeal? I don't know. I have about as much game as John Heder even after John Heder made some money in the movies which should have given him more game (my apologies to John Heder if you are under the illusion that you have game and that you don't have milk teeth. Also, I couldn't think of a phenomenal example of someone with no game, except maybe myself again)

Pictured: Me on a "hike" a few years ago

Not pictured: Game.