The world can't end today (because I said so).

So, as you might have heard, the world is supposed to end at some arbitrary 6:00 PM today. This will simply not do because right now my life is amazing. Of course, the likelihood that the world would come to a cataclysmic end once I finally reached an acceptable level of happy and good is high because if there's one thing I've learned from being alive the last 23.5 year it's that life LOVES to fuck with happiness. Anytime people on a TV show or in a movie are happy and enjoying their existence, you just know there's a creepster with a chainsaw lurking behind the sunshine and flowers ready to fuck their shit up. It's just how the universe balances out.

But, I figure that I should at least be allowed a few years' worth of this happy rainbow existence before it's all sucked away. Is that really too much to ask? So, to whatever being is looking down upon us ready to push the "end all" button, I present some reasons why that's a terrible idea that he/she/it should feel terrible about. 

1. I just became an adult. Okay, so technically I've been an "adult" now for 5 years but up until the last month or so I was still more or less dependent on other people for things. As of Monday morning, I will be a permanent, full-time, salaried employee at the company I've been temping with for the past 9 months. I have a career, so to speak, a gorgeous apartment in a funky cool neighborhood, I pay all of my bills (even my phone now -- huzzah!) and I'm slated to get married in just a little over 2 years. I'm a friggin' grown up! I've spent most of my existence as a kid needing to depend on others, and it's about time I get to make life mine.
2. Lady Gaga's new album isn't out yet. Sure, to some she might be all the evidence necessary to point to the world's imminent doom, but I am a proud Little Monster and refuse to go out without hearing every single second of Born This Way. Come on, can you get any more amazing? I'm guessing possibly yes, which is why the world can't end until after at least May 25 to give me time to rock out and memorize every single track (starting with Judas which is just incredible).
   
   
3. My tomatoes aren't even purchased, let alone in the ground and growing. The best part about our new apartment/neighborhood is the community garden that sits literally next door to our lovely little carriage house. I am super pumped to grow things and eat the fruits of my labor which won't happen if the world ends. And how cute is Terrell standing in our new plot?
   
   
   
4. Summer has finally reached Syracuse. Today started off slightly humid, but had brightened to sunny and gorgeous by late morning. We spend six-eight months out of the year enduring the cold, the snow, the wind and the rain (not to mention all the grey... so. much. grey!) so when summer/spring decides to show up we DESERVE our fair share with it. End the world during the second straight week of snow and bitter cold, sure, but now when things are beautiful? What a jerk.
   
   

   

   Look - green, everywhere! What a sight.

   
   

   

   OMG, a color that isn't white or grey.

So, what I'm basically saying is this: the world won't end because it's too wonderful right now and I'm sure we've all got far too many awesome things to look forward to.

What are you looking forward to doing after today ends?

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Bloodbuzz, Ohio taunts my inner fear demon.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of beesI never married, but Ohio don't remember me
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
           ─ The National

Continuing my obsession with The National, I'm going to start this by casually dropping off the latest song that's wormed its way into my ear and refused to budge.



Bit of a strange video, but it's always the lyrics that draw me into pretty much every song I fall in love with. With the holidays and everything going on over the past month, I've found myself thinking about Ohio quite a lot. On the best of days, my feelings about Ohio range from a vague affection to a mocking dislike, on the worst.... well, let's just say the word choices are rarely what anyone could call "nice".

I left Ohio for good in August 2006, and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Sure, I've returned a number of times for visits over the past few years, some extended and some frighteningly brief. But I go with the intention of leaving. I have a habit, still, of calling Ohio home because I'm still in college mode half the time, but it really isn't and (most importantly) I don't want it to be. Regardless, people that I love live there and that binds me to it. I can sometimes almost physically feel the connections tethering me to the land - as if a few strong yanks might be all it takes to pull me back, willingness be damned.

And that is certainly a fear I entertain from time to time. Having to return to the place where I unloaded all of the bitterness, sadness, frustrations and fears of my youth so I could move on and be happy in another place... how could I even begin to deal with that? And it's all purely selfish, but I think in this case selfishness is necessary. Selfishness is what got me out of there in the first place, and that's something I could not and would not ever apologize for. I think, perhaps, what I fear most is all those people who continually spout the adage that everyone always comes back will be right.

Even if it's a highly implausible notion, fears aren't usually logical or rational, and that's certainly one of my deepest - right there next to becoming my mother (and who isn't afraid of THAT?).

Oh god. I completely had a different intention for this post than to whine about how much I despise my home state. And, of course, any of those plans have been totally wiped from my memory. Maybe it's all the snow... C'est la vie! This is likely not getting a facebook repost...

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Obligitory New Year's post: Check

People act like New Year's is such a big deal. They make grand promises to themselves that they don't really have the intention of keeping, they sing songs and kiss strangers, truly loving their neighbors for a few brief moments. But it's just a big sham. We count down the best of the past year: best movies, best songs, best celebrity catfights -- yes, to remember them, but also in preparation of forgetting. Because that's what New Year's is really all about for most people, forgetting. Forget the terrible things that happened, forget our shortcomings, forget our mistakes and hope that a new year will make everything instantly better. If 2010 is over, then everything that happened in 2010 is finished and can no longer come back to bite us in the ass.

Except, if we're prepared to instantly forget and dispose of everything that happened over the course of the year on one night, then what's the point of anything we do (or say we'll do) during the next? All of 2011 will be nothing more than a countdown to December 31, when we can throw confetti and praise our chosen deity that it's finally done with. It's a perplexing cycle, but when you think about the human condition it makes sense. We like to think that things can be changed at the blink of an eye, without any real effort on our own part. It's why people flock like mad to new diets and religions and trends. Anything could be the one thing that fills in all the gaps and makes you whole.

But people, I think, aren't meant to be whole. We all have issues and things we need to work on, and true change takes time and work. Perfect people are fucking boring, and even most of the people you assume to be "perfect" have their own holes (often gaping ones). So don't make resolutions. Don't make silly promises you won't keep - instead, think about how you could work to improve your life and be who and what you want to be, and use the next few days, weeks and months of "nothingness" to actually do something about it.

The problem with the holiday season is how much emphasis is put on this one week out of the entire year. Christmas can be great, don't get me wrong - I love the trees, the lights and (some) of the music. I love seeing people I might not get to other times of the year and exchanging thoughtful gifts and watching movies like Die Hard and The Santa Clause. But it's one week out of the entire year, and as soon as it's over things just snap into this bleakness unparalleled by any other time of year. January is seriously the most awful month out of the entire year, and it doesn't really deserve to be. So I say, this year, try and appreciate January a little bit. Unlike the bustle and hustle of December, January is a time when winter activities can truly be enjoyed. Go sledding, drink some delicious hot chocolate with baby marshmallows and bask in the mellow warmth of the sun if you've got it (while remembering all of us poor souls living in the frozen tundras that won't see that giant ball of fire until April at the earliest).

And appreciate the whole year, as it happens. Don't let everything that happens to you in 2011 just be another thing to try and forget about this time next year. Live in the moment and appreciate that you get to experience the weird miracle that is life for just another day or two. And don't put too much pressure on yourself to miracle grow into someone else -- unless you're an asshole, you're probably pretty cool already.

Switching gears from holiday ranting a bit, I'd like to toss up my own contribution to the plethora of countdowns that plague every blog and website this time of year. I promised Christmas songs and that didn't happen, so instead you get the 7 songs that rocked my world in 2010. Enjoy!

1. Teeth - Lady Gaga



Lady Gaga as a whole rather revolutionized my musical world this year. She's just fabulous, everything pop music should be and I am SO EXCITED to be seeing her with Allison in April! It's going to be mind blowing, I'm sure. Teeth is probably my favourite song she's done so far, and my most-listened to song on iTunes and my ipod. There's just something really, really powerful about it that puts me in an insanely powerful mood when it's playing. I really, really want to make a music video for True Blood to this song because it feels like they were made for one another.

2. Coming To Terms - Carolina Liar



Another huge musical discovery for me this year was Carolina Liar. Last.fm started mixing them into my Something Corporate radio station and I fell in love and bought their entire album on iTunes (something I don't often do, I'm more of a song cherry picker). They've got new material coming out soon, which is ridiculously exciting, and I hope they end up coming nearby on tour because I will so be there. This song is my favourite they've done (#2 on my iTunes, natch) and exemplifies everything that's wonderful about their music. Lead volcalist Chad Wolf has a unique, penetrating voice, and I'm obsessed with their lyrical styling and drummer.

3. King of Wishful Thinking - New Found Glory with Patrick Stump



I have been a gigantic fan of New Found Glory since I was 13 years old and the boy I was head over heels in love with tossed me a mix CD that featured them quite prominently. Alas, our love was never meant to be - he knocked a girl up and moved down south to help her take care of the kid - but my love for NFG has stayed true. I realized a few months ago that I didn't quite own every single album they'd ever made, so I logged into my iTunes account and rectified that and found this cover on their From the Screen to Your Stereo II album. The original song is... well... painfully dull. Not bad (though the video is certifiably awful and perplexing), but just not a song you'd remember past 1990 when it was a hit. NFG's cover, however, is fucking awesome. I actually spent a whole week listening to this song at work every hour or so, that's how great it is. And this is a perfect example of why I love covers, because one band/artist can take a song and turn it around into something entirely new - and often 10x better.

4. Dynamite - Taio Cruz



Something really quite phenomenal has happened the past couple of years in hip hop, and I think this is a song that exemplifies it pretty well. I love this song. If I'm in a bad mood, this song will instantly lift me out and I will also on occasion begin to dance (usually a Very Bad Thing). Terrell also loves it, and we've spent many car rides blasting this and acting like giddy idiots because it makes us THAT happy. So much of the music on the pop stations this year focused on happiness, living in the moment, people just being wonderful and good how they were. And I loved that, I think it's just what everyone needed (especially me).

5. Dark Blue - Jack's Mannequin



I talk about Jack's Mannequin way too fucking much on this blog, but I'm not sorry because they are amazing. This song had to be on this list because I listened to it nonstop for almost five months while I put together my senior video project in my head. This was my mantra, I heard those opening piano notes in my sleep and while I walked to and from class. Dark Blue speaks to all of the craziness of 2010 - the intensity of finishing college, finding a job and transferring myself to an entire new sort of life.

6. Graduate - Third Eye Blind



I couldn't not include this one, because like #5 this song was on repeat for almost half the year. And it's weird, because now I can't really bring myself to listen to it. I always hit skip on my iPod, and I think that maybe I built graduation up so much in my head that anything relating to it is just finished in my mind. College is over, I graduated and now all that's left ahead of me is the wide expanse of Life. Terrifying.

7. Young Forever - Jay-Z and Mr. Hudson



Let me come right out and say it: Jay-Z is incredible. An incredible artist, an insanely talented lyricist and a really cool guy. I'm still getting into a lot of his other music, but this song zapped me through the heart and that's why I had to put it on this list. Just do yourself a favor, even if you skipped every other video on this list, watch this one and listen to the lyrics. You'll be thankful you did.

May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows.

Happy New Year, y'all :)   I'm gonna go get my drink on!

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Some thoughts:

• If you have a cat and would like to freak him or her out a lot, put on a workout DVD (and, y'know... work out). It helps if every occupant in the home participates at once, that way the feline becomes further agitated and confused. Just don't kick it - they don't like that.

• Snow is great. Snow is fun. Continuous snow for four+ days is.... pretty fucking awesome (albeit mildly annoying).
  

Monday morning

Tuesday morning

Wednesday morning (remember the bike from Monday?)

 

• Holidays spent away from my family are in no way as crazy or fun, but they are ridiculously less stressful. I spent four glorious days in Massachusetts with Terrell and his family for Thanksgiving, and it was heavenly. Delicious food (oh god, stuffing muffins... what has been tasted cannot be forgotten!), ridiculous SciFy movies involving evil bees, and a little too much money spent on Friday shopping (especially since none of it could be excused as necessary gift shopping). 

Respect the pumpkin turkey.

•  I think it's time for a new hair colour. Not that I don't like being.. whatever this is. But I think winter time deserves something else. I tried red last year but didn't really keep up with it long enough. Idk...

Roughly a year ago, I tried to become a leprechaun.

I feel like other people liked it more than I did. But blonde feels too summery, and without the sun to help keep the colour going I fear it'll just go flat really fast. Allison and Rachel will be visiting in the next few weeks, so if I'm gonna do it I'll probably wait until then so I can rope one of them into helping :D

• Christmas music has an incredibly short shelf life. I'm already sick of everything I have and it's only been about a week. -sigh- Still, there's one Christmas song I'll never tire of:

I'm probably going to make a post soon with my top ten (or five or... seven, whatever) favourite Christmas/winter holiday songs. It's a nice thing to do, and I like doing nice things. But until then, enjoy the stunning beauty that is Vienna Teng.

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Memories, like bullets, they fired at me from a gun

Things that are true:

• Harry Potter 7 releases in less than a month and I am beyond psyched.


• Without fail, the more you anticipate something (such as a turkey and bacon melt) as wonderful, the more disappointing it'll be. Stupid soggy disgusting mess.


• Adult life requires the hanging up of several cherished youth habits - such as staying up until midnight every night - for the sole sake of your health and well-being. I think the useless zombie I turned into yesterday after a mere 3.1555 hours the night before has finally cured me of the notion that pulling all-nighters for the hell of it is functionally acceptable anymore.


• In 15 days, I will turn 23.

At first, I was going to write about how boring this birthday will be because it won't really mean anything or cross any milestones. But then I thought about how much my life has changed in the past year, and I realized something. While turning 23 won't actually mean much, it should still be celebrated for the singular fact that I almost didn't make it to this birthday.

A little over a year ago, I was in the hospital with multiple blood clots in my lungs. I've spent a lot of time mentally downplaying it to cope, but that's actually fucking frightening by itself. I spent the next month and a half of recovery battling the flu, including the much-hyped H1N1 virus, three times. For 9 months, I ingested varying amounts of rat poison every day to keep more clots from forming and made a weekly trip to the clinic so they could extract my blood. It got to the point where scar tissue built up in the crook of my right arm from having so many needles stuck into it.

Despite all of that, I didn't even remember until three days later when the one-year anniversary came around because I was too busy living.

Over the last year, I have fallen head-over-heels in love with Jack's Mannequin. I was already a huge Something Corporate fan, dating back to my early high school years. But Jack's Mannequin has managed to parallel my life during this time period in that magic way that a musician's catalog can every once in a while. I am still kicking myself for missing their show at SU a couple of years ago - inexcusable.

Their second album, The Glass Passenger, was written during/after frontman Andrew McMahon's (successful) battle with leukemia. The lyrics are rife with the fear, doubt, happiness, confusion, and myriad of other emotions that come from dealing with something as huge as fighting for your life and coming out on the other side okay. And hope.

"The Resolution" is my go-to song these days whenever I start feeling down because it reminds me why I shouldn't be: I'm alive, I survived.


(The video, apparently written/co-directed by Stephenie Meyer, is sadly too terrible to post - but here's a fantastic live acoustic version.)

The first three lines, especially, have been my mantra the past couple of months since I received the "all clear" from the pulmonologist.

And when I need to be down, or can't lift myself out of it, I have "Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby)".



To the sleepless, this is my reply: I will write you a lullaby.

Thank god for people like Andrew, who can take their amazing talent and turn a personal nightmare outward to expose it to the light so people like me can have a way to articulate and work through our own nightmares - to cope. Or, at the very least, feel comforted knowing someone else has been there.

I mostly feel like my experience last year wasn't as big of a deal as it might sound. After all, I didn't really feel sick - if it wasn't for strange, recurrent chest pain I never would've gone to the ER because I honestly just thought I was dealing with a minor chest infection. I felt slow and stupid having to take the medical transport to class, and foolish asking for extensions on my work. What I went through certainly was no lukemia treatment.

But it was something that has majorly effected the way I approach life (and death, to some extent). I still fear the unknown that might lurk around the next corner - what time bomb might currently reside in my body, waiting to explode when I least expect it? But for the most part, those fears are quelled daily by the one short, beautiful life I have to live. I'm certainly going to try and live it as well and as much as I possibly can.

I swim for brighter days despite the absence of sun...

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I think I'll try defying gravity (oh, wait - I do that daily. Silly lack of balance!)

I always promise to make regular blog updates and completely fail to keep my word. In case you wondered what I've been doing with all this time, here's a pictorial essay:

I met monsters and a very wonderful giraffe at the New York State Fair.
Love & hugs at the Westcott Community Cultuarl Festival.
New haircut! And lots of time dressing up at the office.
Last downtown farmers' market until the spring :(
Homemade maple cinnamon donuts and Indian food = super delicious.


Because I spend an obnoxious amount of my week sitting at a computer with nothing to keep me entertained between fishing lures and hunting knives but my ipod, I have been devouring an equally obnoxious amount of music. My cute little red 4gb ipod nano has served me for four wonderful years, working perfectly up until a few months ago when it started in with poltergeist-like flash forwarding through my entire collection and flickering the backlight. However well it was working, the truth of the matter is that 4gb does not hold up when you have a steadily growing 20.31gb music collection.

So, last Saturday I purchased a shiny new 32gb ipod touch. And I am officially in love -- not only with how beautiful and fun and technologically gratuitous it is, but how much of my previously unlistened to music I have been able to experience now that I can have it all with me at one time. The biggest problem with having (less than) 4gb of space was that it forced me to pick and choose. So, of course, I would load it up with all of my favourites or music for a certain activity: workout playlist, classical for a train ride, etc. And all that great stuff that came along with the album I bought for one specific song went unlistened to.

Until now.

And because of this, I have a couple of new favourites. The two most recent additions to my list are:

Runaway by The National


The first time I heard this song, I was walking back to my office through rainy mist. It was such a perfect setting for the slow, dark intensity that the song maintains. The National is a band I really stumbled upon by accident last year, but they're quickly becoming one of my favourites. The lead singer has a gorgeous baritone voice that is so unlike anything I've heard before. And they are just as fantastic live as in the studio, as this video proves:



I'll probably reduce a couple of people to shock with number two:

Defying Gravity from the Wicked soundtrack


I read the Wicked books ages ago, but never paid much attention to the musical until my friend Allison started talking about how amazing it was. I borrowed her copy of the soundtrack, but didn't listen to any of it until my ipod started throwing it in with my Rent genius playlists.

And oh. my. god. Idina Menzel's voice is so incredibly gorgeous it almost makes me want to cry. Out of the entire soundtrack, this song is the one I find myself repeating most. It gives me goosebumps, especially the second repeat of the chorus. I want to marry her voice. I want to bottle it up and distribute it around the world -- screw buying everyone a Coke, I'm pretty damn sure something that beautiful just might bring about world peace.

So, thank god for my new ipod (which I have decided to name Glorious Sunshiney Love. Because I can.) and the musical enlightenment it has brought me.

I don't promise insanely frequent updates, but I have a couple of recipe posts planned (peanut butter kisses and Amish friendship bread, a la Allison) and will most likely continue to shove my musical tastes down the interwebs' throat.

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