If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends

My taste in music, which I have mentioned before may or may not be relatively indie at times, but in certain situations I will settle for nothing less than the bubblegum pop from my early adolescence that I certainly eschewed at the time but have embraced with open arms of late. "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne just came on and Oh Em Gee does that song make me happy. This sometimes purported origination of the MILF is all kinds of delightful. Also included in this mix is "Addicted" by Simple Plan as well as a little bit of the soundtrack to Mamma Mia (you just TRY listening to Dancing Queen without improving your mood significantly) but even some more respectable selections like Vampire Weekend, The White Stripes, The Killers and the Strokes. It is, by far, one of the best mixes I have ever made, aside from how spot on my iTunes genius is capable of being (the one time it ultimately fails is when I want to listen to the Beastie Boys because the mix inevitably ends up consisting solely of the Beastie Boys, TTC [a French rap group] and The Roots, because these are the only Rap/Hip-Hop artists that I have more than one song of)(what can I say, I'm a white girl).

However, the basis of this mix is questionable. It makes me vaguely ashamed and I hate to tell you that I purchased this song last Sunday night and I've already listened to it 19 times (not counting the number of times it has played on my shuffle). But I. LOVE. THIS. SONG. It makes me smile, it lets me know everything's gonna be ok. It puts my hands in the air, people.

Yes, Party in the USA is the basis of this, my most awesome of mixes. And I love it. While I was not 100% present upon purchasing it from the iTunes store, my roommate commented that she admired how unabashedly I was dancing to it on my bed and how enthusiastic I was about it. And I've decided to go with that. Sure, I can continue to dislike Hannah Montana (I mean, really, it's just a wig! How does no one notice? How is this the premise for an entire TV show?), but I do love me some Miley Cyrus when it's just so catchy. And who cares if it's vapid and poorly conceived and has nothing even remotely approaching depth? I've spent way too much of my life trying to like deep music and trying to be deep myself, when really, sometimes I just want to listen to my music and have some fun.

So I'm gonna go listen to Beautiful Girls by Sean Kingston (which I totally know all the words to) and enjoy myself. Later I may break out some Sufjan Stevens or Decemberists, but right now I just need to rock out to some bubblegum pop.

Find a job you love and you'll never work another day in your life.

I'm at one of those epic places in life where I'm making decisions and finding new things and charting the course of at least the next couple of years of my life, if not the rest of my life. So I was all about library science and basically becoming and archivist and working with way-cool old rare books and manuscripts and stuff. It would be sweet. I'm currently interning and the Special Collections Resource Center at Swem Library (at the College of William and Mary) and all I've done so far is go through this box of letters and things to sort/organize them to be usable in the future. And it is THE FREAKING COOLEST THING EVER. Seriously. I read a letter written by someone FROM THE TRENCHES OF THE CIVIL WAR. Seriously.

And then I think about how I'm taking classes in rooms where Thomas Jefferson took classes and then I have a history nerdgasm and I know why I go to William and Mary.

But anyway, I was pretty stoked and set on the whole Library Science thing. I'm looking at Pitt and the University of Maryland because while they aren't top schools for Library Science, they are both in the top 10 and frankly I like the idea of going back to Pittsburgh and not being 7 hours away from home/my nephew. I got the idea from reading The Time-Traveler's Wife because the time-traveler got an MLS (Masters of Library Science) and works at an archive in Chicago and every time he talks about his job in the book I'm like, "OMG that's so cool." And it still seemed cool months after I first read it, so not just a momentary fancy.

But then I went to the grad fair last Thursday. Right next to the UofM able were the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, then the Columbia Theological Seminary and the Yale Divinity School. Talking to the theological seminaries was nice; they're both Presbyterian and again, PTS has location location location on it's side. But they're seminaries and I REALLY don't want to go into ministerial work by any means. And you can get an MA from either of them, but MAs are in the minority with most students going for an MDiv (Masters of Divinity) (does it make you think of Harry Potter and crystal balls and tea leaves? me, too). BUT if I want to get PhD, I probably have to get an MDiv and not just an MA (that's what they told me).

Anyway, then I got to the Yale Divinity School and she started telling me about possible concentrations and I was just so intellectually excited by the possibilities. I'm currently working on a paper for my Theory of Religion class about Unitarian Universalism and cognitive/moral/linguistic relativism and this guy named E. E. Evans-Pritchard's ideas about anthropology and it is the most excited I've been about writing a paper since I was taking The Golden Age of Pirates and I wrote 12 pages in 6 hours about idealized Madagascan piratical socieities and how they were projections of the ideas of Locke and Hobbes onto non-existent situations. Anyway, the more I study religion to complete my minor, the more I realize I wish I had been a religion major because it's like history but it also has aspects of anthropology and linguistics and stuff that I find fascinating [religion as a cultural phenomenon is really the COOLEST. THING. EVER.]

So now I've got all these other schools I want to apply to BUT it also brings out the same anxiety I had when applying for undergrad that maybe I'm just not good enough and maybe I'm just not cut out to even think about getting a PhD and maybe it will just be a waste of my money.... Last year when I first started thinking about my future and graduate school I went to a Phi Alpha Theta (the history honor society) presentation about history grad school and it literally scared me to death about going to grad school for history because they explained that you have to want to study what you're going to study with all of your heart or it's a waste of your time. And I knew I didn't feel that way about anything in history (thus not writing a senior thesis), but I think I feel that way about religion. But I also think it's kind of late to be figuring that out.

So that's where I am. History? Religion? Library science? Job security? My future happiness? What do I even believe I'm capable of? I really was due for some kind of crisis soon; it's been awhile. But at least it's familiar territory.

I like other blogs. They're cool.

I've been digging wordboner lately. I only recently found it, but I appreciate it's ability to make words into art. I'm learning about oral cultures in my Theory of Religion class and we discussed the book Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong where he talks about how words become objects in written culture. In oral culture words are an event, a moment, they are necessarily transient and only purposeful for communication. Once written down, once recorded, words themselves become objects and not just the means of communication. Wordboner appeals to this idea in me about words becoming objects. Anything like script or artistic depictions of words (think: Arabic script in mosques and illuminated texts).

Except that where illuminated texts and the script in mosques are the divine words of revelation to an entire religious community and wordboners tend to be a play on words that evokes less than religiously-inspired behavior. Like this one.

Also on this same note of books-words-religion, I would desperately love love love to go here someday. A church for books, helllllo, just what I've always wanted.

I like this band that's so indie they haven't even heard of themselves

I have been perpetually wrong lately. My answers in class? Totally off-base. My social conduct? Awkward and annoying. My table-dancing skills? Masterful.

Normally this would get me down and depressed and I'd go get a pint of Ben and Jerry's and have a delightful date with the most loyal men in my life. I'd have to reach out to someone and talk about how the universe is clearly against me. But I'm rolling with it. It's not a huge deal. At least I'm speaking up in class, at least I have friends I can be annoying to who don't discard me at a moment's notice. I think this means I've grown as a person. I'd like to think that's what it means.

Of late I like this and this. Liking Banksy and Andy Warhol makes me feel mature and counter-cultural and Pomo and all that stuff. I like to think that this is also growth that I have taste and I know what I like and it's not just the stuff all the cool kids like. I don't think college has cool kids, at least not mine. Actually, when I visited and had dinner at a local restaurant, my waiter, a W&M student told me that it's full of kids who weren't cool in high school who think they're cool not that they're in college but actually aren't. I don't know what he was trying to say, exactly. Isn't thinking that you're cool what makes it true? Or something like that. I just watched "17 Again" and the fleeting vision of what popularity is in high school is escaping me.

I'm gonna go listen to The Kooks and Cat Power and Rilo Kiley and whatever else I have in my iTunes that you haven't heard of that makes me cool....

Believe, Achieve, Succeed

I don't know about you, but the Soviet Russia meme (is it a meme? I'm not absolutely certain) is definitely one of my favorites. It is best expressed in this delightful poem:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

In Soviet Russia,

POEM writes YOU!!!!

So of course, this just made me unbelievably happy.

Anyway. A girl down the hall has the word "believe" in a magnet on her door. I think there's another word as well, but it struck me that it just says "believe." Not "believe in something," "believe in yourself," "believe in God," "believe in the power of your dreams;" just "believe." It made me think of this poster in my high school foyer: "Believe...Achieve...Succeed." What does that even mean? It's like they just took three very positive-sounding words and put them together. I don't think I ever felt inspired by that poster in the foyer. It never meant anything to me. Like those motivational posters about teamwork and climbing the mountain. A teacher of mine had one of syncronized sky-divers making patterns in the sky. And I want to say I remember one with pictures of hot-air balloons. I prefer these. Particularly this one. I'd rather look at a poster and be amused than look at a poster to get motivated.

On my wall I have Raphael's School of Athens and Van Gogh's Almond Branches in Bloom. And Matisse's Goldfish. What does this say about me? I think it says, "I've taken Art History classes and I might be a snob about it." I have, and sometimes I am. I actually wanted to major in Art History, but as much as I love going to a museum and being all, "I totally know what this painting is and can tell you off the top of my head who painted it, when they painted it and with what!" Which I love doing, but I haaaaaatttteeee the process of memorizing slides for exams (even though when I took my last Art History class [19th Century European Art] I had a most excellent method for memorizing images that involved pretending they were all hanging on the walls of my dorm....long process, but very effective). I also KICKED ASS on my Art History final my freshman year and OWNED the slide identifications (and by owned I mean I got a perfect on that portion of the exam-BOOO-YAH).

Anyway. I think writing inspiration words on the wall is kind of stupid. There are things of this nature that can be effective; someone once suggested to write down all the stuff I like about myself and put it on the wall of my closet to remember how AWESOME I am. I haven't done it, but I think it might work.

Ohhhh I know this isnt' going anywhere. I'm going to post it anyway, because I need to work on a speech for tomorrow.

I'mma let you finish...

So I feel like the Kanye Interrupting meme may die rather soon, but the history major within me is just so very amused by this one. And my vague tendencies not to take religion as seriously as I should think this one is freaking hilarious. The VMAs were this past Sunday and already by Monday there was a website dedicated to the whole endeavor of pointing out what a huge douche Kanye was to Taylor Swift. I don't particularly like Taylor Swift, I don't particularly like Kanye (though I actually have some Kanye in my iTunes while I definitely don't have any Taylor Swift), but I think Barack Obama was certainly justified in calling the man a jackass.

What I ultimately find fascinating is the rate at which something like this becomes a part of internet culture, how quickly it's just another thing to laugh at, another enormous in-joke that would take quite a long time to explain to my mother. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to explain lolcats to her once, but I couldn't get past the point of, "Why do they spell things incorrectly?" Once you become acquainted with a meme and start appreciating it, it's like joining an enormous club that everyone can be a member of but that parts of the population will never understand. And like any good inside joke, those on the inside laugh whole-heartedly while those outside shake their heads and furrow their brows.

I don't know that I'm going anywhere with this, but at least I wrote for the day :)

"It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write"

but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't."*

I don't think I can write, I know that I can. In the most obvious sense that loooook here, I'm writing sentences. But seriously, I want to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tolstoy and Thomas Hardy and I want to make people feel things and think about things. I hope I can. I was at a party this weekend and some fairly drunk chick charmed a defintely drunk guy by quoting from The Great Gatsby to him (if you've never heard of William and Mary, this is very typical W&M). She only got out a couple of lines and I haven't read The Great Gatsby since high school but I heard the few sentences she could remember, it was just, "Damn. That man can write." To the drunk guy's credit, his immediate response was "Will you be in a relationship with me?"

So. I'm not going to write here to convince you of things, I'm just going to write to make myself write regularly and keep it somewhere. It may be that no one ever reads this thing and that's actually quite fine. I will also post things that I think are freaking cool if only because the amount of time I spent on a computer at work this summer made me very well acquainted with Google Reader and the joys it can bring. It's actually to the point that I have sacrificed valuable afternoon nap time in order to keep up with the new things popping up on my Reader. If you know how much I like sleep or how much any normal college student likes sleep, that should definitely tell you something.

Actually, in some way, I'm going to use this to synthesize all the sweet internet-ish things I find all day long but don't share on facebook because I don't want to be all obnoxious and flooding everyone's newsfeed.

So anyway. I have to get back to doing homework. Josephus isn't going to read himself. I've got Judaica to study. (I really like the word "Judaica," I think it just sounds realllly cool.)

*title from I Will Not Read Your Fucking Manuscript by Josh Olsen.