rockershrimp

hot damn, I finally solidified my schedule. solidified.

monday
9.00-9.50 french
10.00-10.50 arabic
11.00-12.15 astronomy
1.15-2.30 shakespeare***
5.00-6.00 theatre board meeting
7.15-9.30 vocal jazz
tuesday
9.00-9.50 french
10.00-10.50 arabic
11.00-11.50 ballroom dance
2.00-3.30 history of the middle east from 1800-present at amherst college
6.00-7.00 jazz board meeting
7.15-9.30 glee club
wednesday
9.00-9.50 french
10.00-10.50 arabic
11.00-12.15 astronomy
1.15-2.30 shakespeare
4.15-5.45 vocal jazz
thursday
9.00-9.50 french
10.00-10.50 arabic
11.00-11.50 ballroom dance
2.00-3.30 history of the middle east from 1800-present at amherst college
4.15-5.45 glee club
6.00-7.00 arabic table
friday
9.00-9.50 french
10.00-10.50 arabic
sunday
5.00-7.00 arabic conversational study

***I had started out having intro to islam around this time, but I absolute hated everything about it. so. i'm now taking shakespeare with the amazing professor brownlow (a really tall old irish man with a voice like jim dale's only deeper and much more stately). he reads us passages from the plays and it makes me want to adopt him as my grandfather so he can read me bedtime stories every night.

also. I have as of late decided that i'm going to become an english minor. I didn't think I would have a minor because there was nothing else that would dedicate to my focus in arabic - besides international relations, but that doesn't come as a minor. I was thinking of religions, but I really don't want to have to deal with how philosophical and deep my essays needed to be for the classes. the french department is incredibly pretentious and makes the french minor impossible for me to do, and I didn't want to do politics or economics. so basically, the minor for me would just be something fun for me to do and not detrimental to a career. I didn't want to deal with the theatre department or have to work crew on a project because I don't have the time, so the obvious answer is an english minor. you only have to do four classes in order to be eligible for it, so why not? it'll be my fun class. I've missed english very much. shakespeare this semester, victorian literature in the spring, old norse next fall and the amherst emily dickinson class next spring where you go to her house and help with the general upkeep of the archives and such.

now I have to go catch the bus to go to amherst for some hot eye candy. I mean... learning.

one of the reasons going to a liberal arts school in massachusetts is lamesauce: you can't make a card play in apples to apples setting down "anne frank" for a "dead" green card (I mean, she is dead) and then laugh about it without half of the people in the group going "oooooh. that's terrible."

brief rundown version

I love being back.
my room is huge.
my desk faces our four-paned windows and I can always hear birds singing.
my first breakfast here consisted of amazing banana chocolate-chip muffins.
I miss the seniors from last year.
we have a giant meadow behind our dorm to frolic and picnic on.
I pounced my sixty-something-year-old arabic professor with a hug today.
I found another south dakotan guy in my amherst class who goes to umass.
(it's a very small world.)
I got into all the classes I wanted.
this year is going to be stressful and painful and difficult but i'm excited for it.
my new body wash smells like lotuses. (lotii?)

the end!

haagen-dazs has a new campaign to save honey bees, as they are slowly dying off. poor little things. visit the site to learn more about how to save the beeeees.

http://www.helpthehoneybees.com/#

i'm all done packing and I fly out tomorrow at some ungodly hour for school. i'm very complacent and chill. it's weird.

so. I just completely changed around my fall semester class schedule.
before it was
monday/wednesday: chem, arabic, french, intro to islam, vocal jazz
tuesday/thursday: arabic, french, pilates, glee club
friday: chem, arabic, french, chem lab

which made me want to vomit a little. i'm not even good at chem. I was just going to take it because ashley's in it and she's actually good at math and may have helped me not to fail. but I finally mustered up the courage to figure out an actually decent schedule that I didn't do just because it fit.
so now it is
monday/wednesday: french, arabic, survey of the universe (my non-lab. i'll just do my lab science in the spring.), intro to islam, vocal jazz
tuesday/thursday: french, arabic, ballroom dance, history of the middle east 1800-present at amherst, glee club
friday: french, arabic

the amherst professor said she'd take me as long as I just showed up on the first day. i'm happy. and ready to leave. I do not like hanging around in limbo.

this is probably the best youtube video I have ever seen. and I have seen a lot of youtube videos. anderson cooper (who did not make my last top five list but who I would still gladly reproduce with - half indian, half silver fox/vanderbilt babies!) + adorable baby bear.

okay, this meme was inspired by a post on dooce.com, that i've also seen elsewhere before. list your top five hotties. one of them must be a wildcard, i.e. old, someone nobody else really thinks is hot, etc. also, they can't be dead. I have thought about this meme thoroughly and this is the final draft (in no real order):

( up in here )

who's on your list?

the "livejournal writer's block" question of the day is:
While India's Independence Day is often celebrated with kites, the US celebrated with fireworks. How does each methods reflect its culture?

what the heck kind of prompt is that? you know everyone's going to say "the US likes blowing crap up and kites are... pretty."

here are some ridonkulus answers:
"I'd prefer kites actually. I've never heard of a kid blowing up his hand with a kite. They are beautiful, don't pollute, and are legal."
"We like to blow sh*t up."
"It reflects what is important to ones culture in how great one nation is to their people."
"Eastern cultures are more refined, skilled, and peaceful.
America just likes to see things blow up. :D"

what happened to all the "why do you like bubblegum?" and "which care bear is most like you?" questions?

I swear, if one more person tells me to read twilight or tries to explain the storyline to me, I will push them down some stairs.

as I write this I am climbing atop my high horse. his name is rurik.

this article is what frustrates the heck out of me whenever I have to work or, really, walk around my town. it talks about how children are become sexual and sexualized way too early in their lives.

"Several recent books and news and research reports have expressed concern about today’s sexual attitudes and behavior of many adolescents, and increasingly even tweens (eight- to twelve-year-olds)."

I hate seeing girls who look like their nine wearing hollister and american eagle clothes, doused in perfume and wearing gobs of mascara and eyeliner, looking like baby prostitutes. when I was their age in the golden years, I wore huge t-shirts over skorts with my hair in a side ponytail and I didn't care what I looked like until about seventh or eighth grade. and even then I didn't start wearing makeup (and by makeup I mean mascara and maybe foundation if my skin was horrible that day) until eighth or ninth grade. it makes me want to vomit.

"Jennifer reported that one evening not long ago, her seven-year-old daughter Hannah began crying in the bathtub. Alarmed, Jennifer asked what was wrong. Hannah responded, “I’m fat! I’m fat! I want to be pretty like Isabelle — sexy like her! Then Judd would like me too!”"

say whaaat. I still thought boys had cooties at that age. i'm not even kidding. they were gross and I kicked them in gym class when the teacher wasn't looking. and then heath gemar tattled on me to my second grade teacher and I got a lecture about how I should not kick boys anymore. it was a sad day for me.

this article, written by a "scriptwriter" in hollywood, complains all about how the film adaptation of brideshead revisited is horribly anti-catholic and full of.. brace yourselves.. GAYS.

Imagine if someone did a new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and it ended up savagely racist? That's what they've done here. A profoundly Catholic novel, in this "adaptation", Brideshead Revisited is viciously anti-Catholic. They turned a movie about God and the soul, into a lurid love triangle between a homosexual, his sister and a hapless hunk. It's lame. It's bad.

firstly, "Imagine if someone did a new adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and it ended up savagely racist?" what. just... what. secondly, I just finished reading brideshead revisited and it is exactly that. a love triangle between a homosexual, his sister, and a "hapless hunk"; or rather, the maturation of charles ryder who befriends sebastian flyte, feels deeply about him, but because he can't have him he falls in love with his sister instead (who is basically just a female version of sebastian in his eyes). she obviously didn't even read the book. it's not "a movie about God and the soul". it's a book/movie about how a woman can completely ruin a family by manipulating people using religion (waugh is obviously very anti-catholicism.)

I have no personal beef with catholicism or christianity - it's not my religion, so it's not my place to say anything. as long as you believe in something - that's how I see it. but when religion skews observations so that the message behind literature isn't even fully grasped anymore is what is a little bit ridiculous. just because a book mentions religion does not make it a religious book.

I just got my brand new beautiful phone. I named her cecilia. (but she's not breaking my heart or shaking my confidence.)

i'm leaving on a jet plane to d.c. to visit the brother tomorrow for a little under a week!

also: wot does everyone think of the new harry potter and the half-blood prince trailer?

alright, i'm officially over this summer. it can be done now. the worst part is that it's only the end of july so fall stuff hasn't really come out yet so I can't console myself with online shopping. and even if I do, I can't order it all yet because i'd rather have it shipped directly to school so I won't have to worry about packing it, but it's still too early for that. and the amazing 40's style dress I found on forever21 is sold out. woe is me.

in other news, the americans for the arts ad campaign is pretty amazing. this one's my favorite:

hilarious "font conference" video from college humor.



also, look at my new layout! it's purdy.

true story.

my dearest friendslist. please do yourselves a favor and watch avatar the last airbender. I watched the last episode and it was amazing. just.. watch all three seasons. your life will be so much better after having done so. for being a low-scale hand-drawn anime series on nickelodeon, it is the greatest thing since oatmeal. and I HATE anime.

i'm so sad it's over. D: WOE IS ME. I guess I still have the office, lost, project runway, and pushing daisies to obsess over. ..and gossip girl.

thank god for sheryl crowe. she's discovered that if she writes a repetitive song about how we're inherently all the same because we're all human, and if she shows a bunch of people flashing the peace sign (which is also looked at as offensive in many countries around the world), then she can begin to fix all our problems and stop all wars from ever happening, including putting an end to all conflict in iraq.

see how she juxtaposes michael moore, mahmoud ahmadinejad, and bono all showing the peace sign? this will fix everything.



oh wait. no it won't. shut your worthless, talentless mouth, sheryl crowe.

stolen from penguinkye.

which batman character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Alfred You are Alfred. The mother hen of your group, you lead a virtually thankless existence in the name of love. You treasure those around you, and though you spend your time running around straightening their messes and tending their wounds (physical and emotional), you know that deep down they love you too, and wouldn't mind if you took a break - but god knows how they'd survive without you. Alfred 95% Dick 73% Batman 73% Barbara 58% Robin 58% Batgirl 38% Spoiler 33% Jason 15%

now that I think about it, it's incredibly fitting.