pick up the slack & Eroticizing Safe Sex

So after a bout of stomach flu (or norovirus or whatever else it was that induced the most thorough stomach evacuation I have ever experienced), my teeth are stained blue from rehydrating with so much Gatorade, and my last classes of the semester (and of my college career!!!) just kind of ended... around me.


So now I'm left with an English essay to write, some reading, a Ruby programming assignment, and months' worth of outfit photos to blog. (And some studying for finals. Eventually.)


(And a movie I need to watch! It's going to be History Boys, Dirty Dancing, or Secretary. This may be hard to believe, but I've actually never seen any of them before. Now how to decide...)


Anyway, let's start the outfit barfing with this one from May:

 

Jacket: mother's. White shirt: Target probably. Skirt: American Apparel, secondhand, gift. Tights: secondhand, gift. Black and white oxfords: Miz Mooz.

To my inner voice screaming at me about posting my Reverb11 and Things I Love: November instead of this, 


I KNOW, I KNOW. BUT I DIDN'T THINK ANYONE WOULD COMPLAIN, BECAUSE I TRIED TO WRITE EROTICA AGAIN. (Disclaimer: It was for an assignment.) (See my previous two attempts to write in the style of a trashy romance novel here.)


I write stuff after the jump.

nard and saffron & W1L 033: Write one leaf in which you answer a question incorrectly.

I guess I don't know how to wear neutrals yet because I always ruin the effect with an inappropriate shot of color.


Cue lavender socks.

Today I was reading the Song of Solomon for the first time ever for one of my classes, and I got totally sucked in even though I was barely following the content. The translation was just so rhythmically pretty.


Also lavender the herb used to be called nardus in ancient Greek. #hellarelevant

Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;

milk and honey are under your tongue.

The fragrance of your garments is like that of Lebanon.

You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;

you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.

Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates

with choice fruits,

with henna and nard,

nard and saffron,

calamus and cinnamon,

with every kind of incense tree,

with myrrh and aloes

and all the finest spices.

omg my facial expression. why am i allowed to have a blog

Sweater: grandmother's. Skirt: secondhand, gift. Tights: generic. Socks: Nordstrom. Shoes: Miz Mooz.

This is the last Write One Leaf I have prepared, so if you've been reading along, you can, I don't know, weep and tear out your hair in anguish. If you haven't, you could toss a virgin into a volcano and drink honeyed milk in celebration or something. Y'know. If you're into that.



I write stuff after the jump.

a haul post & iron deficiency

My laptop is alive but my hands are in a stupid sort of pain.



School starts soon. (When this is published, it'll start in about 3 hours.) I'm slightly more excited about this than I was a week ago, because I just found out the Harry Potter class (2 units, P/NP) is still on this year.



Here's a bunch of my aunt's and cousins' old stuff I claimed for myself while helping them organize a garage sale in June.

A butterfly brooch and a ring that was probably from a machine at the supermarket.



An Aladdin pencil pouch, because I've been looking for a replacement one for a while, because I like my pencil pouches transparent.



A Belle Rose bag. (My second one. The first one, I thrifted.)



A dress. This, like a lot of the things I decided to purloin, is a bit small in the waist because my aunt, like my mother, didn't actually break 110 pounds until after pregnancy. They both had very small (possibly so small they were only theoretical) waists. I am not nearly so small.



A pink sweater. Because I don't own enough pink. And I like giant sweaters. (Side note: while helping my aunt sort out her clothes for garage sale-ing, I had to start an Ugly Sweater pile (because they were too menny), which ended up filling up maybe two check-in-sized suitcases.)



This Gloria Vanderbilt button-down which fits like a dream and is sweat-stained like a newly pubescent teenage boy's PE uniform. I'm not sure what to do with it - I was thinking about dyeing it, but I don't know how much it'd change the design.



Another dress, also sweat-stained to kingdom come, although less noticeably so because of the intense floral pattern. I think this is probably some disagreeable synthetic, though, so I'll probably end up layering it instead of wearing it in warm weather anyway.



ONE ANIMAL PRINT SHIRT TO RULE THEM ALL. This is not just leopard (or cheetah? I cannot be bovvered to Google it) print; it's leopard (or cheetah) print INTERSPERSED WITH ACTUAL GIRAFFES AND ZEBRAS (as opposed to interspersed with giraffe and zebra print). I don't normally condone animal print in my wardrobe, but this is the lone exception because it is absolutely ridiculous.



High-waisted, light-wash denim shorts.



STRIPED DENIM SHORTS. I wore these every other day for three weeks immediately after acquiring them.



My cousin tells me this is something she used to wear under her dresses (like a slip, I guess), but I plan on wearing it as a risque (insert Pokemon e) dress.

A sleeveless collared shirt, because I have a weakness for them almost as bad as my weakness for pussy bows.

And another.

WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY THE GREATEST T-SHIRT IN ALL OF EXISTENCE. A Space Jam t-shirt, because my brother and I probably watched it more than a hundred times. (And Mulan. We watched Mulan so many times I lost count.)



AHAHA this is a terrible wildlife/art/mail-order t-shirt or something, and I love it.



My cousin's very small sweatshirt that I am determined to cram my upper body into.



And some wool skirts and a pair of pants (non-denim pants!), because I can't resist a good plaid.

Now I know this is going to say "I write stuff after the jump" but today's bit is more like "I throw up a little after the jump."



I write stuff after the jump.

virgin snow & this is for you

SUBTLETY? What is that?

- Symbolism

Progression of zooms to uncomfortable closeup: amateur night at The Troll's Head. Slip: secondhand Elle MacPherson, gift. T-shirt: Napoleon in War Paint, Threadless. Green leggings: American Apparel, secondhand, gift. Socks: Forever21. Shoes: Kork-Ease. Rekindled fondness for the song below: Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 10.

I write stuff after the jump.

I think I got carried away, or IFB Project #2: Let's Get Poetic

This is my entry for the second installment of the IFB Project, for which the instructions were to "pick something out of your closet you love and write a haiku about it." I'm no Winona, but I couldn't resist trying. I guess I'll call the first haiku my official entry... The nine other ones that follow are just for fun.

double seagull ring,
you give a whole new meaning
to flipping the bird.

--------------------------


cheapest shoe i own —
no self-respect, just lets me
walk all over it.

--------------------------


fcuk slip:
sunny the prostitute from
catcher in the rye

--------------------------


banana necklace:
neither apple nor orange —
y u so phallic?

--------------------------


ron weasley t-shirt:
the closest i've ever let
a man near my heart.

--------------------------


discontinued keds:
i carry them in my heart —
they carry my soles.

[Photo: Work It, Berk]

--------------------------


extremely striped pants:
let's run away together —
circus or prison?

--------------------------


coral marquise ring:
the classiest of them all —
lost in a bathroom.

--------------------------


ugliest sweater:
only a mother'd forgive
the gilt on your chest.

--------------------------


batman timepiece: it's
the watch my wrist deserves, but
not the one it needs

21 Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far: So You Want To Be A 20-Year-Old Getting a Humanities Degree Instead of a Computer Science Degree

Because I like lists, and everyone should want to take life advice from someone who still can't legally drink and is going to be unemployed post-grad.

1. For every 10 minutes of solid crying, drink one cup of water.


2. After spending any extended period of time in the hospital, disinfect the bottoms of your shoes.


3. Always rinse your mouth after vomiting. Brush your teeth if you can.


4. Sometimes when you have inexplicable crushes on people, it’s not because you want to do them; it’s because you want to be them.


5. If you’re studying or reading and you’re losing focus, break open a can of tuna or eat peanut butter straight from the jar. (Yay protein!) If you can spare the time, scrambled eggs with ketchup are great, too.


6. If you’re coding, stay up as late as you want. If you’re debugging, go to bed before midnight and don’t look at your code until you wake up.


7. The ChromeTaster extension for Google Chrome makes it possible to download any audio files posted on tumblr.


8. Front-load trumps top-load, always.


9. If you really need to stop yourself from crying (or at least from producing tears; this doesn’t help with that racking-sob-feeling), roll your eyes. Or cross them. Tilt your head back and count ceiling tiles.


10. There are people who like musicals and people who don’t.


11. When buying jeans, the most important thing aside from fit is pocket placement because they will make or break your ass.


12. When browsing for books of interest, read the first few pages and a couple smack in the middle. If both are good, consider buying it.


13. If you are making a pie crust from scratch and want a flaky crust, your butter should be pretty much frozen solid before you add it into your dough.


14. The more unnatural the lipstick color, the more likely you will want to apply it with a lip brush (for a matte lip) or finger-mix it with gloss in the palm of your hand (for a good dull shine).
    


15. Do not wear thigh-highs unless you are prepared to deal with cat-callers.


16. Avoid scheduling classes after noon. Also avoid large gaps of free time between classes.


17. Film is not less respectable than live theater; it’s just that it’s easier to watch crap movies than to watch crap theater. Watch better movies.


18. You have chronic bitchface.


19. If you need to make or take an important phone call, put on high heels and walk around a few times, then sit down to talk.


20. There is rarely any need to buy full-size perfume bottles. Do it if the scent is being discontinued, but otherwise, you’ll never use the whole thing.


21. It’s easier to wake up if you have a half-glass of water before bed, because as soon as you’re awake enough to realize you’re in bed, you’ll realize how much you need to go to the bathroom.

Look, it's David Tennant in drag!

Aaaaand I would still hit that, which is making my watch of Doctor Who, Series 4 a little awkward.

And a little foxy.

THIS IS RELEVANT TO NOTHING EXCEPT MY RECENT LIFE PLANNING SESSIONS

From an email to someone I never thought I would be in contact with.

(insert GIF of someone wiping sweat off their brow) Phew, good thing I decided to poke around the ModCloth website because apparently these are the engineering positions they're looking to fill: http://www.modcloth.com/careers and they definitely would not be recruiting at Berkeley for people like me (bloggers, writers, clothing designers), since I think they usually head-hunt those people online. (At least, I think they head-hunted their current blogging team through the internet.) So now I don't have to feel guilty about not writing up a resume or cover letter...

I don't want to work with code. At all. To be honest, I don't think I'm in any position to be doling out advice or any kind of information you should value as useful, because I think I am borderline depressed, seeing as I've reverted to the version of me as a high school senior filling out college applications, which is to say, I think I just want to work in theater again. Or (more) preferably, to die young and not have to worry about work or burdening other people with the knowledge that it will be hard for me to find work. The thing is, I don't want to work for someone else, and I've never really wanted to, and it wasn't until I took a couple semesters of CS courses that I realized I really, really can't do something in a space where I don't feel comfortable enough to be creative. I know there's a lot of space for creativity and innovation in computer science, programming, building up enormous (or elegantly short) pieces of code, manipulating data, whatever, but it's not something I can put myself into. There's some quote that goes ~if you can't put yourself into it, take yourself out of it.

I don't know what I'm doing with myself, and at this point I could not care much less about my declared major (linguistics), and even though I'm a 4.0 student in my major, I wouldn't care much if I got B's in my upper divs this semester because I don't see what the point of this is. At all. I'm not going to work as a linguist. Jobs for half-hearted linguists don't even exist.

So part of me is like, this is selfish. You are being selfish because you owe your family everything, and if you aren't going to be able to support them, if you're going to be dragging them down, you may as well wander off and die because they've invested so much time and energy and love into you, and your so much as thinking of taking it for granted is offensive and unworthy of the kind of lifestyle they've enabled you to have.

And then the other part of me is like, yeah, but mostly they just want you to be happy, or at least not so caught up in your neuroses about what you think you're supposed to be doing that you lose the ability to look around and go, hey, what I have is pretty great. It would be a pity to die because I would lose this.

There's some life/career advice from Eve Ensler (of the Vagina Monologues, which I haven't seen) that goes something like "Give the world the thing you want the most, to fix the broken parts inside you," and for me, I who am broken in stupid ways in stupid places, it has to be art. Maybe for other people it is solving problems for other people, or making cool things that inspire people to go do shit, or making people feel good about themselves, or supporting their family, if you...have grown up too aware of a lack of money and feel that it is the driving force behind all your actions. For me, it is something about young people and the feeling of aloneness or isolation, outsiderness, like something is wrong with you, or like you are holding something too heavy for you to bear but no one can see it. I don't know what that translates to in terms of a career, but I suspect it has very little to do with ModCloth or working for a solid paycheck. I imagine a regular paycheck would be nice, but maybe it's overrated.

Maybe that's a middle-class-America mindset. I don't know. I'm more lower class than middle class. What I do know is that money matters, but only to a point, and for me, I hit that point early and low on the economic scale, because people matter to me so much more than creature comforts. I think I would rather suffer than be mediocre, because at least out of suffering can come great art. Shooting for mediocrity feels like you're just trying to avoid pain, but what's the point? Living is painful. I mean, you have to risk failing hard if you want to do something enormous. It's not like I feel the need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but I am pretty sure (and am kind of afraid) that if I'm not doing something that elicits responses from people along the lines of "What you're doing helped me through X," I won't be able to live with myself.

I don't know what the big picture is for what I am doing right now...Just equipping myself with whatever I happen to pass by that looks like it could be lethal if used properly.

For levity, this is a picture of Jesse Eisenberg that exists.

From the The Social Network cast's appearance on El Hormiguero. It was pretty ridiculous.

How to wait for an email: a not necessarily harmless technique

An incomplete guide for the restless.

FIDGETING FOR A FEW MINUTES:

• Robot Unicorn Attack.
• On that same thread but cuter, Orisinal games.
• Knock items off your petty to-do list (things like “flip calendar to new month” and “make clothes hangers all hang the same way” and “schedule dentist appointment” and “soak retainers in denture cleaner”).
• Chores. Scour that tub, wipe off that counter, do those dishes, start that laundry, organize that desk, shred those papers, vacuum those motherfucking cobwebs.
• Take a shower. (Shave your legs if you need to kill lots of time. If you need to kill a lot of time, you could try turning your shower water into wine while in there.)
• Groom. Tweeze those stray eyebrow hairs, exfoliate, moisturize your body, wax something you didn’t know you could wax.
• Do a Face-Replace on a group picture with your friends.
• Send me an email. Insult me. Bitingly. Tits or GTFO. Whatever. (Actually don’t send me pictures of your tits; I don’t really like them.)
• Hem those clothes you’ve been meaning to hem. Or if that’s too plebeian for you, take that shit to the tailor. Drop your shoes off and have them resoled. BLEACH THOSE MOTHERFUCKING PIT STAINS.
• Design a new signature for yourself.
• Do some jumping jacks. Or squats. Or lunges. Or whatever.
• Clean out your blog reader, twitter follows, tumblr follows, phonebook, friends list, etc.
• Masturbate.
• Write a Things I Love Thursday for yourself. Even if it isn’t Thursday. Because you can.
• Email your favorite blogger and tell them why you like them. (Or do the same for a friend.)
• Make a mixtape/playlist for someone.
• Walk around with a mirror under your nose so you can feel like you’re walking on the ceiling.
• Make a detailed agenda for the coming week or weekend. Consider color-coding it.
• Find someone to Wiki Race with.

FIDGETING FOR A FEW HOURS:

• Go for a walk and leave anything connected to the internet at home.
• Find someone you like a moderate amount. Make immediate plans and follow through with them, with the intent of getting to the point where you like them quite a bit. Consider involving food.
• Compose a massive, ambitious blog post.
• Cook or bake, especially for other people.
• Leave 10 sincere blog comments on 10 different blogs. (I’ve never actually been able to do this because I rarely have anything of substance to say in a comment, so this definitely kills a lot of time, just searching for something worth saying.)
• Re-customize your desktop wallpaper and icons.
• Stream a movie you’ve been meaning to watch online. Yeah, that smart, serious, slightly indie flick. Oops, I mean “film.” (Personal suggestions for Films That Not Enough People Have Watched And Which I Think People Would Benefit From Watching: Brick, The Squid and the Whale, Maria Full of Grace, Holy Rollers, The Cove, Memento, Layer Cake)
  
• Go in your closet and compose thematic outfits. (e. g. dress in only one color, dress in every color of the rainbow, dress in only primary colors, dress in only florals, dress in only stripes, wear nothing but cotton jersey, match your furniture, pretend to be a Disney princess, cultivate a uniform)
• Perfect some really complicated hair style.
• Read a book. Like, a book in print. (Personally, I will always suggest sci-fi/fantasy novels because they’re easiest to get sucked into, but whatever makes you forget where you are. That being said, Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, Ender’s Game, and pretty much anything by Terry Pratchett will probably work.)
• StumbleUpon.
• Learn how to make animated .GIFs, then make really embarrassing .GIFs of your friends. Or awesome .GIFs of your favorite movies. Or Glee .GIFs with the caption "fanning my vagina." (You can send those to me.)
• Go shopping. Buy an entire outfit for under $30. Buy something in every color of the rainbow (to wear or to eat, whichever you feel like). Buy something completely hideous, then figure out how to refashion or style it so it fits your aesthetic.
• Visit the Forever21 website and try to online window shop until you have $21K of merchandise in your shopping cart.
• Find a runway look you really like an attempt to replicate it. DIY as much as you can, and shop for the rest.
  

FIDGETING FOR A FEW DAYS OR WEEKS OR MONTHS:

• Start a blog. Be ambitious. Post at least twice a day, every day. Don’t reuse anyone else’s content, ever, not even flickr photos under Creative Commons.
• If you already have a blog, start a new blog series. Compose and schedule posts at least two weeks ahead of time. If you’re feeling particularly fidgety, write about something that will require a lot of outside research on your part.
• Start a new TV show you’ve been meaning to watch. (I recommend Freaks and Geeks or Glee or Mad Men because their first episodes are excellent and total hooks.)
• Change your blog layout.
• Learn a crafty skill, like sewing, pattern-drafting, knitting, embroidery, yarn spinning, pottery, metalworking, leather upholstery, etc. Or begin a very ambitious crafting project. (Like sequining a giant Chanel logo onto a top.)
• In the style of THXTHXTHX, write thank-you notes to everyone. If you’re feeling gutsy, send them out to their recipients.
• Learn how to cook low-sodium, low-fat meals (in case you have a family history of heart disease and an aging relative!). Then send me your recipes and/or techniques.
• Listen to 1000 new songs, a la Mighty Girl.
• Pick a director or actor you admire and watch everything he or she has ever done that you can get your hands on. Read an author’s complete oeuvre or listen to every song a musical artist’s ever performed. Take a look at where greatness springs from.
• Pick up a musical instrument or a language. Foreign ones are great, but I’d count programming languages too.
• Obtain a map of the world to affix to something. Stick pushpins in all the countries whose cuisine you’ve sampled, then eat around until you’ve filled your map. Alternatively, set out on an expedition to discover the best ____ in your locale. Fill in the blank with whatever you like (gelato, vegan dessert, sushi, hot chocolate, used book selection, female impersonator). Consider enlisting a partner in crime.

If you are so restless that you scrolled through this post looking for a picture, here's one of Andrew Garfield:

Andrew Garfield is always relevant.

[EDIT: SHIT GUYS I LOST THE CREDIT FOR THIS PHOTO HOLD ON I'M GONNA FIND IT I WILL]

[EDIT: Guys, I don't know where this picture is from. I know it's tumblr somewhere, but trying to find a source on tumblr is like trying to find a Horcrux. Which means Harry Potter could do it, but I'm not him.]

[EDIT: JUST KIDDING! Thank you Google image search-by-size. Source]