I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. Please, just trust me: click it and watch the whole thing. All I'll say is that this takes stop-motion animation to a whole new level. I won't say anything else because I don't want to spoil it. Just go watch it.

http://www.vimeo.com/993998

As always, punk cabaret is freedom.

I have loved this song ever since the first time I heard it live, so it's exciting to have an awesome studio version. :D

Disclaimer: This is an uncharacteristically girly post. Forgive my rambling.

I went to the Garment District yesterday, and let me tell you, internets, the dollar-a-pound floor in that store brought out a deeply-buried love for shoes in me. Oh no. See, I've never been one of the "OMG shoes" girls, because unlike Kelly, if these shoes are 300 fucking dollars, I'm going to say: "Let's not get 'em." Because I am practical, you see. Shoes just aren't worth $300 to me.

But in the Garment District, there is a giant pile of clothes. And it's $1.50 a pound ($1 a pound on Fridays). This is all well and good, but the shoes. Guys. Guys. You don't understand. The same rule goes for the giant pile of SHOES. I never knew this until yesterday. I thought it was just clothes. It is a giant unorganized mess, but if you can find a shoe you like in the pile and then find its twin, you're good to go. Oh, and if they're not in your size, too bad, since the shoes are so random and unorganized, and there's generally only one pair of each. And while some of the shoes are old and scuffed up, there are some really surprisingly nice shoes in that pile.

I wish I had a camera to show you the shoes I got. But I got two amazing pairs of Sketchers brand shoes. One is a black pair of leather ankle boots with a chunky four-inch heel. And the other is a brown pair of shoes with a buckle and a chunky two-inch heel. By the grace of the gods, both pairs of shoes were in my size exactly. I could barely believe it. And guess what the total was. Just guess.

... $7.80. Not per pair. $7.80 FRAKKING TOTAL for two kick-ass, frakking gorgeous pairs of shoes. I mean, they're not brand new, but they still look really nice. Oh my god. I practically squeaked at the girl behind the counter when she gave me my total. Good gods. I foresee myself developing a severe shoe problem from this moment forward, now that I can get awesome shoes for super-cheap.

I also got a cute pair of brand-new sneakers from the second floor (the regular store, not the dollar-a-pound floor). They're gray-and-black striped (vertical stripes if you're looking at them from the side) with white on the toe and along the bottom, and they came with white laces and black laces. I put white laces on the left sneaker and black laces on the right sneaker, because they look awesome that way. And they were only $15. <3

Then I got some new clothes, but that's not quite as exciting. Especially since the gorgeous black skirt I found was too big for me, and it only came in one size. Putting it on in the dressing room and watching it slide down my hips a few inches too far was a very sad moment. IT WAS SO PRETTY. :( But I got some other nice stuff, so it was okay in the end.

Okay. That's out of my system. Back to your regularly scheduled whatever-the-hell-it-is-I-do-and-say.

I am finally caught up with Battlestar Galactica so far. My head is swimming with random thoughts as well as lots of theories, so I'm going to get them all down here. They are in no particular order. There are tons of spoilers, so beware if you are not caught up, or if you haven't seen it at all but are planning to start watching it soon. (And if you haven't seen it, please, please, please, do yourself a favor and start from the beginning. This show will change your life.)

I bolded important phrases to keep this from turning into a massive TL;DR wall of text. I hope it helps. :)

There are days when I think what I really want to do when I "grow up" (so says the 22-year-old) is teach music to children. And I don't mean that I want to be the old, grumpy piano teacher who blandly teaches scales without any passion or meaning. I want teach music.

Also, hello there, Internet. It's nice to be back. I missed the Internet a great deal. But it was a very enlightening week. I'm glad I did it, and I'm amazed that I pulled it off.

But without the Internet, I missed important things like THIS:



And obviously, that is a very important thing for me to see.

Oh, internets. I will never be free of your hypnotic spell of LOL, will I? But at least I've learned that it is possible to live without you. And hopefully I will use you less now that I have realized this.

I may or may not post a day-by-day breakdown of the week tomorrow. We'll see.

Mental Detox Week - April 21-27

The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult - yet also how life-changing - a week spent unplugged can really be.

I'm a day late, but I am starting this today. I'm extending it a day to make up for the lost day, so I'll be doing this from April 22nd to April 28th. I don't know if I can really pull this off, but I'm going to try.

I'll have to make a slight exception on Saturday and Sunday, because I have to use a computer on those days when I work at the A.R.T. -- I have no choice. But I will only use the computer for ticket sales those days, and I won't surf the Internet during downtime like I usually do. I won't open any Internet browsers at all. During downtime, I'll read a book instead.

So here I go. I unplug starting now. See you all next Tuesday.

I hate 4/20. Don't get me wrong, I like smoking pot. It's fun. I've got nothing against that. But nothing is more annoying than all the OMG LOLOLOLOL ITS 4/20 LETS GET HIGH GUYS AHAHAHAHAHAHA YEEEEAH THIS IS SO AWESOME people. SHUT UP. You can smoke pot any day of the year. You were capable of smoking it yesterday, and you can... gasp!... smoke it tomorrow as well! You are not clever or hip for knowing that the number has cultural significance. And you are not impressing anyone.

Disclaimer: I'm not talking about anyone on my friends list. You guys are cool. <3

I finally signed up for classes for the coming fall semester, when I will finally be heading back to college for my senior year. I had to call the frakking Emerson office today and harass them until they lifted the hold off my account from last semester, but they finally did it. My schedule isn't exactly comprised of my first choices, but I'm not unhappy about it. I'll try to switch it around later if other classes open up, of course.

Monday + Wednesday
10:00 AM - 11:45 AM -- The First Amendment [PL333]
12:00 PM - 1:45 PM -- Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction [WR311B]
2:00 PM - 3:45 PM -- Literature of Continental Europe [LI306]
4:00 PM - 5:45 PM -- Queer Identity [IN404]

Because obviously, if I'm going to go to one of the gayest (literally) colleges in the country, I really can't leave without taking at least one class on something GLBT-related. It just wouldn't be right. ;)

Joe and I spent most of the day wandering around Central Square, which was nice. When he left, I went to the Cambridge Public Library and got a library card. How have I lived in Cambridge for two months without a library card? I'm a five-minute walk away from the library. There is no excuse. My library membership comes with access to free passes to a lot of museums, which is amazing. I had no idea they did that! I foresee a visit to the Museum of Science in the very near future.

Anyway, I took out three books: Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil by Stephen Batchelor, and Parallel Myths by J. F. Bierlein. I am not in the mood for fiction lately. I am in the mood to educate myself and to broaden my mind.

Off to make some tea and start one of those books while listening to Tori bootlegs from 1992. This is what happens when Blockbuster doesn't have disc two of the third season of Battlestar Galactica. Heh.

Okay, sorry, I know I just posted about this. But I finished the play, and I'm pretty psyched. It's a very rough first draft, but I really don't want to spend time editing it until I have some opinions on it. Would anyone be willing to read it? It's 32 pages, but that's in Courier New, and with double spaces between all of the lines of dialogue, so it's not as long as it sounds.

If you are willing to be a separate set of eyes, just comment with your e-mail address, and I'll send it along. And I will love you forever. This was mostly just written for fun; it's not like I'm planning to put this up on an actual stage in a month. But I still really welcome feedback, so if anyone's bored and wants to take a look at it, that'd be so awesome.

(I wrote 26 of those 32 pages today. Hooray for being productive!)

I am writing a play. It is so god damned meta. Heaven help us all. I wrote over twenty pages of it today. It's not done, but it probably will be by the time I go to sleep. I don't know what it's called yet, but I might as well call it "This Play Is Very Meta and It Likes to Break the Fourth Wall a Great Deal" and just be done with it. MY SELF-INDULGENCE, LET ME SHOW YOU IT. Oh well. I like it, I think, and that's all that matters. Off to write the denouement.

I'm also trying to figure out if it's possible for me to live as a vegetarian without starving to death. I doubt it, but it's worth a try. Starting today. A week-long trial run. Ready, set, go.

Parents Fight Over Which Gang Toddler Should Join

A couple fighting about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father's arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday.

On Saturday, Joseph Manzanares stormed into the Hollywood Video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays and even a computer, Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval said.

After he ran out of the store, police were called and the 19-year-old was arrested at his home.

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, is a member of the Crips. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman said.

"They have different ideas on how the baby should be raised. Basically, she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would 'claim,'" Sandoval said.

That's it. I quit the Internet, and I also quit humanity. I am fucking done.

AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuugh.

I am really sick. I threw up around four or five times last night, and probably six or seven times today. Nothing would stay down for a while, not even water. So I went to the doctor, and she gave me anti-nausea suppositories. Awesome. At least now I can eat dry toast and ramen without immediately puking. :|

Now I am curled up in my bed at my parents' house, watching Battlestar Galactica on my laptop and still feeling really hungry. I will probably have to call in sick to work again tomorrow. That sucks, because I need the hours.

SO MANY FUN TIMES ARE BEING HAD RIGHT NOW.

Note: If you are a fellow Battlestar fan, tread carefully if you are going to comment. I am three episodes away from the end of the second season. I have seen nothing in the third season. (Yes, I know, I'm horribly behind. But I am catching up as fast as I can so I can experience the fourth season along with Joe as it comes out each week.) So... careful what you say. I loathe spoilers.

Hey, so while I'm thinking of that: who else here is a Battlestar fan, anyway?

- I made garlic lemon double-stuffed chicken breast, garlic and herb rice pilaf, and Gujarati green beans for dinner on Tuesday night. The chicken breast and the green beans were home-cooked (as opposed to coming out of a box or something). Then I made chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips from scratch. OM NOM NOM.

- I am writing a play. I've had the idea for this play in my head for a very, very long time. Since I have the day off tomorrow, I intend to spend all of it sitting in a coffee shop, working on the play. I'm so afraid that the idea in my head (which I quite frankly think is a great idea) is not going to make it into written words intact. But I'll do my best.

- As usual, everyone who works in administration at Emerson is completely incompetent. They are bouncing me back and forth from department to department, and it's gotten to the point where they are being rude to me over what I feel is a simple, reasonable request. All I want is for them to stop telling me I owe them money when I absolutely do not owe them a cent at the moment. Is that so hard? Apparently so. Can't they just lift the unwarranted hold on my account so that I can register for fall classes? Apparently not. If I get one more condescending, patronizing e-mail from the woman in the dean's office, she will get a truly nasty reply. I mean, what's she going to do? Put me in detention?

- The Dresden Dolls have a new song up on their Myspace. I do not condone the use of Myspace as a general rule, but this is worth an exception. "The Kill" is an amazing song, and the studio recording does it plenty of justice. Only seven weeks until the new album comes out! I can wait. NO I CAN'T. But I must.

- Joe and I watched Meeting People Is Easy (the Radiohead documentary) at 1 AM last night. We watched it on the (relatively) big screen at ImprovBoston, just the two of us. I enjoyed it, except a few clips of the live footage just made me miss Tori's tour. Yes, I recognize that I have a one-track mind. I think Radiohead makes fantastic music and I really enjoy their work, and I think they're an amazing band; one of the very best in the world, in fact. And yet they haven't "clicked" for me like they seem to have clicked for so many people. Do you know what I mean? You know the difference? I'm not sure I understand why that is. What's keeping their music in my head and (mostly) out of my heart?

Look at this awesome Muppets video. Such a classic! Oh man, this brings back serious memories. I miss the Muppets. But that's why we have Youtube, I suppose. :)

Call this number: 248-434-5508. I promise that nobody will answer. Nothing bad will happen. Just do it.

Oh god. I was just looking at my online bank statement, and saw that $20.90 was taken out of my account due to paying for dinner for me and Zach last night. "Huh," I thought. "That's strange. Didn't I pay $24-something including the tip?" So I looked at the receipt in my wallet. And lo and behold: I accidentally took the receipt that I added the tip amount to and signed, and left the unmarked one on the table.

I want to crawl in a hole and die. :( I feel like a jerk.

This is a cat named Frinkle.

Me: *leaves work, goes over to bike, puts stuff down, kneels to start unlocking bike*
Guy: *standing by a car* Well, hey there, cutie!
Me: *looks up* Hi. *polite smile*
Guy: *grin* How're you doing?
Me: Fine, thank you.
Guy: Good, that's good! This your day off?
Me: *wondering if this guy recognizes me from in the store and knows I work there, or is just asking a totally random question and has no idea* No, I just got out of work.
Guy: Oh! Well, good for you. *grins, waves, gets in car*

The way he said "good for you" was SO WEIRD. It wasn't mean at all. But his tone of voice reminded me of a tone you'd use with a child who's just brought home a macaroni picture from kindergarten. You know, that cloying "wow, great job!" voice you use when the accomplishment isn't that great in general, but it's great for a kid that age.

Um, good for me, I've done a good job... because I have a job? Because I work? What? Was this badly veiled misogyny? Was he talking down to me? Or is he just a weird but well-meaning creep? I DON'T UNDERSTAND. :(