the impression that i get

I remember the first time I was introduced to ska as if it were the first time I was introduced to my soulmate.

I was sitting on the bus, coming home from middle school. Like most days on the bus ride home, I was contemplating my plight in life as a girl with no friends and a crush who wouldn’t notice me, even when I was wearing silver pleather pants and carrying a Teletubbies lunchbox.

And then that song came on. That feel-good toe-tapper full of positive vibes--”The Impression That I Get” by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

I ran home from my bus stop, not caring that my violin case was clanking hard against my side. As soon as I got home, I Altavista-ed the band and learned that this kind of music was called “Ska.” I found out that the people who listened to it were usually unpopular rejects, like me. Maybe this was my chance to find people who would accept me! Loserish Teletubby lunchbox? No, fun and quirky Teletubbies lunchbox! Visions of fedoras and skanking danced in my head. Soon I was tying our phone line up quite nicely with a 7 hour WinMX queue.

And 7 hours later, I was left with this: a lecture from my mom about the dangers of prolonged unsupervised internet usage, and a feeling that beneath the surface, this ska music wasn’t really for me.

That wasn’t the impression that I got from “The Impression That I Get.”

It was a very meta way to learn a very valuable lesson: I am bad at first impressions, in general.

Time after time, I have judged the surface “coolness” of a person and allowed that judgement to carry me into too deep of a friendship with them. And then by the time I realize that this person is someone I should avoid entirely to ensure that my picture doesn’t end up on the 11 o’clock news, it is too late. I am on their hit list. Or, I am one of their 13 Reasons Why.

My first example is not the boy who stole my Death Cab tickets in 2006 for once. I figure the Dec article I wrote about him that his dad ended up reading was enough redemption for a lifetime.

No, rather, my first example is my former roommate. Despite her mullet and the gruff conversations she’d have on the phone wherein she usually called her mother “fuckin’ retarded,” I was originally convinced that my roommate was soooo cooooool. She had the awesomest dog I’d ever met, a party attitude, and good taste in music (that’s the one that always gets me.) In the first month of living together, another roommate who was moving out got into many tiffs with her, one of which resulted in them screaming obscenities at each other while disposing of one anothers’ food, and another of which resulted in our gas and water being shut off for an entire week. The whole time I was thinking, can’t wait til the crazy one moves out. 

Clearly, drama attracts drama, and long story short, both girls were crazy. And apparently used to hook up? Okay. Fast forward seven months and I’m putting a lock on my door because I just don’t know how far this girl’s periodic fits of rage will take her one day. (One place it had already taken her was a townhome common area in Fair Lakes, chasing a 17-year-old girl around with a shotgun.)

Then there was the time when I made a “friend” at the Ocean City. My other two friends were chilling in the hotel room when I decided I should scope out the pool. I scoped out the pool, alright, and waltzed back proudly with big news.

“Hey guys,” I said triumphantly. “I made a friend at the pool. His name is Chris.” They looked on skeptically. “I invited him to come to our room to party!”

They began burying their faces in their hands. Apparently, I was the only person in America who took Chingy’s “Holidae In” to heart.

So, as promised, Chris came to our room “to party.” And as soon as he showed up, it became evident to everyone in the room that this fellow was basically Jesse Pinkman minus all redeeming qualities. I quickly became embarrassed and started backpedaling.

“So actually, we’re going out tonight...” I stammered, ”our friends invited us to a party over in Rehoboth Beach.” Because in my head, that sounded like it could be a thing. But of course, it wasn’t a thing. Of course, the party remained in our hotel room. And of course, we were going to need ice to cool down all of those room-made girly drinks we were consuming. And of course, Chris’ room was right next to the ice machine. And of course, we made one of our friends a makeshift burka out of things found around the suite to ensure her safety during her trip to the ice machine.

I still shudder to think of what unspeakable things would happen to the Ocean City version of Natalee Holloway.

More recently, I started a new job and was instantly super-friended by a manic pixie of sorts. She went above and beyond to make friendly gestures to me in a way that no one ever has before. She’d bring me coffee, she bought me a book, she wrote me cute little notes about how she liked my knee-high socks. Ultimately, I learned this: manic pixie in real life=manic depressed. She’d be super short and nasty with me one day, then offer to do my job for me the next. Just as I was starting to feel a little bit like Rihanna, our friendship ended as quickly as it began: one day, she literally freaked out on me for not knowing the tense difference between lay and lie, and then I decided enough was enough. I suppose she is not a Snow Patrol fan.

Maybe I’m completely jaded now, but these days I force myself to be really unimpressed by every new person I meet. And if we’re talking music from the early 2000’s, the only thing that’s worse than being jaded is being in too deep.

that terrible girl from train's drops of jupiter

    I don’t like people who do a lot of things. Especially if I have to hear about it.

    You can ask anyone who lives with me about my reaction to this one Expedia commercial. “My friend just asked me to be in a wedding in San Francisco,” the bright-eyed, poor man’s Katherine Heigl begins, “But I was already training for the big race in Boston!”

    That’s usually the part where I start throwing whatever I can find nearby--usually the Trader Joe’s appetizers that I am stuffing in my sedentary face--at my roommate’s television. “Oh poor me,” I say in a voice you can barely understand because my mouth is so full of Lemongrass Chicken Bites. “I do so many important things!”

    You can do things. That’s fine. But don’t expect me to give you a round of applause for your action-packed life of sucking up awesomeness. You’re biking from coast to coast, stopping at little no-name towns along the way? Yeah, I don’t want to hear about it. You’re moving to Honduras for a few months to--you’d better just stop there.

So maybe that’s why I think the girl from Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” is a smug, self-righteous bitch. In addition to doing things, she makes a really big deal about knowing herself. Even Juno once said, “I don’t know what kind of girl I am,” and she seemed to be the quippy-est, wittiest, most self-assured pregnant high-schooler that never existed.

    Train creates character pieces. That’s what they do. (Listen to me talk about Train like I know more than four of their songs.) I was almost as surprised when I found out that “Meet Virginia” wasn’t on the Miss Congeniality soundtrack as I was when I found out that Hot Chelle Rae’s “Tonight, Tonight” wasn’t on the The Hangover 2 soundtrack. So as I listen to the words, the sensory detail is there--creating the perfect puke consistency in my mouth as I imagine what this girl is all about.

    The line that stands out the most to me as the perfect example of why I hate everything about this girl is: “She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-bo/ Reminds me that there’s room to grow, eh-ehhhh.”

    First of all--hey, have you checked out this new band yet? They’re pretty underground, so you probably haven’t, but Pitchfork gave them like 8.3 stars, and Pitchfork doesn’t give those stars out like knockoff Livestrong bracelets, so, you know, they’re actually pretty good. They’re called...Mozart?!?! Check ‘em out?!?!

    Second of all, she’s also doing Tae Bo? Is Billy Blanks her sensei?

    Third of all, her musings in classical music and non-traditional exercise are making you want to be a better person? Wow, you don’t have a lot going on, do you?

    So...in case you didn’t know, this is a song about Pat Monahan’s girlfriend finding herself. In fact, she is just now back from a soul vacation.

    Soul vacation-- noun. Spending a semester of senior year abroad in Amsterdam where you commit acts so heinous that you literally take a vacation from having a soul.

    His crooning begs the question, “And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?”

    The answer is no. No, she did not. Breaking up with someone because you need to “find yourself” is just about as original as “It’s not me, it’s you.” And George Costanza invented that line. So by the transitive property of pop culture of the 90’s-00’s, Pat Monahan’s girlfriend is George Costanza. Make of that what you will.

    So, your girlfriend’s back. With “drops of Jupiter in her hair,” apparently. I suppose he means dark orange streaks? With light bluish streaks? In her hair? Personally, this sounds like a hot mess to me. The first thing I think of is the only time I felt empathy towards Rashida Jones (usually I am just holding my unceasing grudge against her for keeping Jim and Pam apart on The Office.) It was on Parks and Recreation when she was upset with Rob Lowe’s character for breaking up with her. She emerged with an ugly maroon streak in her hair, and among the list of pathetic things she had done in the past few days, she pointed at it and said helplessly, “And I did...this...to my hair.” I, too, have been through particularly rough break-ups, and I, too, have been tempted to make bad hair decisions. My thinking is usually along the lines of, “Okay, now that I’m single, I can finally cut my hair like Tegan. Or Sara.” But then that idea is usually overridden by the temptation to listen to Dashboard Confessional’s So Impossible EP on repeat while I cry into my Ramen noodles.

    “Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken” is also particularly offensive to me. Because I’m telling you now, I can say this with almost complete certainty. This girl who wants to find herself on Daddy’s dollar and has got one foot in every possible extra-curricular activity is the whitest. So now she’s like, I like soul food, I’m so quirky!

    Then there’s, “Now that she’s back in the atmosphere I’m afraid that she might think of me as/ Plain ol’ Jane told a story ‘bout a man who was too afraid to fly so he never did land.”
Are you going to take that kind of thinking, Pat Monohan? Too afraid to fly? You gave up all reasonable career paths so that you could be in a rock band. What did she do? Is she just mad that you didn’t go to Tae-bo at Gold’s with her last Wednesday night?

    I think the very last line of the last verse sums up Pat Monahan’s fate: “The best soy latte that you ever had...and me.” And him. That’s all he’ll ever be from now on. Riding backseat to this girl’s fantasies of being a totally fake granola hippie who so totally knows herself.

    Gag me with an eco-friendly corn-based spoon.

me vs. god vs. the internet

    When I lay down to bed and start counting all of the horrible things I’ve done (sheep are just too scary!), it isn’t god that I’m afraid of.

    Trust me, I was raised as a god-fearing Catholic. While I’d eradicate my future chromosomally abnormal babies faster than you could say, “Cuba Gooding Jr. is…Radio,” I’d probably feel so guilty about it that I’d adopt a family of ten cleft-lipped children from some starving Third World country. You can fix that. You can’t fix Radio. You probably can’t even fix Cuba Gooding Jr. at this point.

    So yes, god is scary. And so is hell, probably. But the Internet is TERRIFYING. And the darkest depths of the Internet are probably worse than hell could ever even dream up.

   God only knows the terrible things I’ve done. And I say, “god only knows” not as a phrase, but literally. I literally do not even remember some of the things I’ve done.

    I’ve got a dark internet past. Don’t act like you don’t. Even youth groups take pictures of themselves stealing street signs and post it under an album called “WWJD? YOLO!!!”

    Mine mostly consists of, but is not limited to, exacting revenge on my exes in the most public way possible. So that no one will ever want to date them, or me, ever again. But for real—that’s what they get for dating girls clearly on this side of the Vicky Mendoza Diagonal. And for stealing my Death Cab tickets right after Plans came out, you ginger.

    Whatever specific Internet crimes I’ve committed aside, face it—it’s hard to see your future as an 8^th grade English teacher in a suburban school while you’re writing terrible shit on the internet about your 8^th grade English teacher in your suburban school. No, man. You were just a kid. Lookin’ for fame and 4chan. How could you have predicted your future?

    So naturally, when I first got to college, I had absolutely no interest in education or the Curry School, which sounded like it’d make a better 12-course meal than a 12-course program. I wanted to write for the paper.

    Unfortunately, both papers at UVA were cliché characters from nineties movies. One of the papers was a straight-A student bulimic girl. The other one was a guy with a beard and a burlap hoodie who liked to make experimental music about insects in his basement. Since I didn’t really know which one of those things I was more like, I wrote equally insufferable things for both. For one, I was making jokes about the Virgin Mary losing her virginity at frathouses. For the other one, I was bitching about the library not being open on weekend nights. Really. Don’t blame me! I can’t be held responsible. For the life of me, I cannot believe I’d ever die for these sins. I was merely a first year.

    Oh, you call them “freshmen”? Hahahaha. You must not have gone to Mr. Jefferson’s University.

    Anyway, the result of those misguided years is this: I dread a Google search of my name.  Not that I’ve done anything so SO bad, but if Culpeper County can ban The Diary of Anne Frank in school, what hyperbolized psychotic confession could the world dig up on me? I DON’T EVEN KNOW!!!

    I don’t think I’d have to be as afraid of the Internet if my name were Anne Smith or something. But it’s not. And there are even things on the Internet connected to my name that I didn’t even create. Like a Ratemyteachers review that says I’m too easy? Really?! F’s for everyone.

    Anyway, to get back to my thesis, which I have strayed from since I am a terrible English teacher: God, do your worst. Consider me that overweight guy wearing a trucker’s hat that says, “I hope they serve beer in hell.” Preferably PBR. But gods of the Internet ,please keep my good name sacred from scorn. 

    P.S. Microsoft Word is autocorrecting for me to capitalize the Internet, but not god. They know, man. They know. 

northern virginia wants a shout-out, goddamnit!

    Okay, so we’re not the 212. We are not deserving of countless anthems. In fact, almost everyone who lives here fucking hates it here and would give their right thumb to live anywhere else. But like, someone in the music industry, just acknowledge our existence, please? 

    Someone? Anyone? Are you there, Jason Derulo? It’s me, Marissa.

    In college, one of my roommates put a map up in our kitchen that he found on the Internet. It highlighted the area code locations of Ludacris’ hoes. The map was ripe with factual data and was an anthropological study of sorts.  From this map, I garnered three pieces of information:

1          1) There is a Ho Belt, nearly synonymous with the Bible Belt, in the southern part of the US.”

2          2) There are hoes in central Indiana (317), half of Nebraska (402), and Milwaukee (414), but NO HOES in Nova. I beg to differ. Ludacris, I will take you to Arlington on a Saturday night. You will see hoes. In fact, you will see nothing BUT hoes. You might even find that there are so many hoes that you need one of these.

3                   3) I should maybe consider switching my major to anthropology?

    Since I felt so blatantly excluded from Ludacris’ cell phone (he’s got his condoms in a big ass SACK! He can’t spare a few on the metro area?) I have been on a quest to find a shout-out ever since. And everywhere I look, I am misled or just offended.

    In his mesmerizing swan song “Miss New Booty,” Bubba Sparxxx begins his opus with “College Park Bubba Sparxxx!”

    That’s okay, We’ll take that. It’s technically in Maryland, but it’s still the metro area—NOPE! He is referring to the OTHER College Park, a part of Atlanta. Which really makes more sense if you take a look at the guy’s body.

    Maybe we need to cast our net wider. I’ll even count the Eastern Shore as an extension of the ‘burbs if I can get it. In MGMT’s groove-thang shaker “Electric Feel,” we get what seems like a shout-out to those parts. But according to rapgenius.com, a very reliable source that I found on the Internet, “’All along the Western front’ and ‘All along the Eastern shore’ are lines used to visualize ‘worldwide,’ or coast to coast. So MGMT’s just talking about global sex.”

    But really, when aren’t they?

    One would hope that Dave Grohl, who grew up in Springfield and attended Thomas Jefferson and Bishop Ireton (the latter of which he transferred to because, “the marijuana usage was affecting his grades”) could throw us a bone at some point in the Foo Fighters discography.

    And then, in 2011, he did. He gave us “Arlandria,” which I at first thought was his own term for Arlington and Alexandria combined, but it’s actually the name of a neighborhood in Del Ray. Obscure. So far, I like it.

    But then I listened to him whine, “You are not me, Arlandria, Arlandria/ You and what army, Arlandria, Arlandria?”

    Oh come on, Dave Grohl. I got made fun of in high school, too (although I didn’t go to TJHSST, so I had more of an excuse not to fit in), but you don’t see me claiming, “Shame, shame go away/ Come again some other day/ Memories keep haunting me.”

   Ugh. Just shut your enormous D.S.L., Mr. Grohl. I would estimate like 99.995% of the US can’t even tell you what you mean by Arlandria. So I like how this is your little dig at us that only we will get.

    In a sad Washingtonpost.com Post Local article, overzealous blogger Tom Jackman hears Arlandria once and speculates that, “It has the elements of an anthem." He even claims that the lyrics are “SO wrong on the Internet” because he wants it to be true. I’ll grasp at straws for an anthem, but this is basically The Foo Fighters’ northern VA version of The Decemberist’s “Los Angeles, I’m Yours.” But not as funny to me. Because I hate L.A.

  

    So now that my options have been exhausted, someone, anyone: please write us a northern VA anthem. I know you aren’t even from here, Jason Derulo, but at this point, even you would do. Be the hero that Nova deserves, Mr. Derulo.

   JUH-JUH-JUH-JUH-JAY ARRRR.

7 Modern-Day Remakes of That Scene from Say Anything…

 7. Macbook Air + extension cables + Beats headphones. Throw them ‘phones up to the window. Try not to be like, careful with those headphones, bitch! Shit’s expensive! Dre made those!

6. Lloyd Dobler knew nothing about real music, man! It’s all compressed these days, man! Extension cord + record player + Peter Gabriel LP + hipster glasses. Careful with that above your head…hold it straight…it’s gonna skip…goddamn it.

5. You should use the most influential invention of the late 90’s—the Silent Shout Lollipop. Wait—you really don’t know what I’m talking about? Wow. Somebody was way too into those Stargate: SG-1 marathons.  Anyway, throw your special lady a lollipop that will play music in her mouth. Resist the urge to change the song to Lil’ Wayne—“Lollipop.” Or don’t. Up to you.

4. You know, Say Anything… wasn’t really John Cusack’s best work. He’s really matured as an actor since then. You would be better off channeling his much more romantic role from The Raven. Bring your Kindle over (or your Kobo…I’m sorry. Did you really get a Kobo? I’m so, so sorry.) and read her some “Annabel Lee”! Nothing says, “I really liked sleeping with you that one time” like a poem that basically says “I WANT TO SLEEP NEXT TO YOUR TOMB FOREVER, MY COUSIN.”

3. Get real meta with it and instead of playing Peter Gabriel, play something by the band Say Anything! But be careful. Their songs are kind of weird. And that guy kind of sounds like he’s always throwing up…

2. You just banged this girl and you want to play her a song about her EYES? No, no. You should be playing her a song about what’s really important to you…DAT ASS! Pop out the tired Peter Gabriel and replace it with Bubba Sparxxx- “Miss New Booty.” You FOUND her, after all.

1. This is the 21^st century, man. What are you doing off your ass?! Just send her a Spotify playlist. Spend the time and effort saved JOing and playing Call of Duty. 

unaired Friendzone episodes

Rob and Big: Too bromantic.

Catherine and Heathcliff: Too long. Too boring.

Calvin and Hobbes: Too furry.

The kids from Bridge to Terabithia: Love interest died during filming.

Oedipus and Mom: Oedipus didn’t want them to air it. He felt he was blind-sided at the end of the episode. The producers agreed; the end was unsightly.

Kanye West and himself: It was clear from the get-go that they were already much more than friends.

stalking 2.0

    Stalking used to be easy.

    In high school, all you had to do was wait for the day the school directory came out, steal your mom’s minivan after she went to sleep, drive it to the person’s house, break in their back door, tiptoe to their room, reach under their mattress, take their diary, and take a heavenly whiff of their hair before bailing out of their second story window.

    In college, all you had to do was send them a Facebook friend request, wait to get rejected as usual, take a picture of the hot girl on your hall, make a fake profile for her, send a new request from said hot girl, and voilà: you knew everything you needed to know. 

    Nowadays, there is the feeling that you can never really know everything there is to know about a person. The rise of apps and websites with user-created profiles has created a diversification of trivial information that can be found. Stalkers these days might feel like a tiny sand crab staring into the endless Pacific Ocean. We meekly tap our pincers on our keyboards. Wherever to begin?

    Do they have a Google+ account? What are those even for, anyway?

    What is their most watched YouTube video? Please don’t let it be David After Dentist or any of those Annoying Orange ones…

    Do they have an OkCupid? Are they even INTERESTED in your gender? Does their profile picture include a dog, guitar, or small child? If so, you don’t stand a chance.

    What was the last article they read on Yahoo News?

    What was the last pair of running shoes they bought on Zappos? Is their gait neutral?

    Do they have a LinkedIn? God, I hope not.

    Did someone think they were worthy of having a Vimeo?

    What songs do they thumbs-down on Pandora?

    How many fights have they started via YouTube comments? How many have they walked away from with their head held high?

   What is their top-played Portuguese electro-pop ballad from the 90’s on Spotify?

   DID THEY HAVE A XANGA IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND OH MY GOD IS IT CACHED SOMEWHERE IN THE DEPTHS OF THE INTERNET?

    How many classics are on their Goodreads bookshelf

    Are they smarter than a 5^th grader?

    What are their favorite buttons on Fart Soundboard?

    Who do they follow on Twitter? How many of their tweets end in #YOLO?

    Wait, WAIT! Do they have a Blogger? Do they use it to tell you their opinions on women, Howard Huge, Skrillex, and emo? 

     Well never mind, then! Your target’s an open book!

     Fuck.

13 modern-day tragedies

13. That Facebook tells you what news articles people read.

12. That Facebook is full of little bitches trying to brag about shit like what news articles they read.

11. That I’m not doing so well in FarmVille right now and all of my Facebook friends know about it.

10. That “Skrillex Hair” is now a hairstyle.

9. That Skrillex is a recording artist.

8. That Skrillex is a human being.

7. That they fucking stopped making those sneakers that lit up every time you took a step. All I ever hear about is how LED technology is progressing…isn’t that a pretty big counterexample?

6. That I can no longer get caffeine and alcohol in the same $1.99 bottle. (Not to mention Taurine and Guarana.)

5. That Haley-Joel Osment isn’t hot.

4. That I can’t tell wether or not ur trollin me rite now(?)

3. That our generation is getting totally screwed by pensions for the elderly…or something. I didn’t actually read it, but my newsfeed told me that a bunch of you pretentious fucks did.

2. That Skrillex has a GIRLFRIEND? And she ALSO has Skrillex Hair?

1. That anyone should ever have to apologize for party rocking.

this one's for the girls

    You’re a girl.

    Your favorite place to eat lunch is Panera.

    You had never tried beer until they came out with Bud Light and Lime.

    You tell stories that include the necessary epilogue of, “You had to be there.” You’re laughing like a coquettish maniac that makes us all think, my god, I suppose we can’t judge since we weren’t there, but I really hope we had to be there, or else this girl has a serious mental disability.

    You think Dane Cook is funny. You kind of wish he was your bf.

    You think Ellen is funny. You kind of wish she was your bff (BNIAGW).

    Your favorite karaoke songs are “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” “I Will Survive,” and “Love is a Battlefield.” Depending on the number of Smirnoff Ices you’ve consumed beforehand, they are all dedicated to your ex-boyfriend.

    Your ex-boyfriend is a lying son of a bitch.

    His new girlfriend is a whore, and I mean seriously, she JUST got out of college. How could you have ever dated someone THAT immature? It doesn’t matter, you got your girls with you, and the club is playing the terrible rap song that has a dance that goes with it that just came out last week and THIS IS YOUR SONG, you announce.

    You go to wedding showers and baby showers and you do gift registries and you eat a very tiny piece of cake while you’re there and hold back tears and just hope to god that this will happen for you someday.

    You go out to Georgetown, Dupont, Adams Morgan…any place that is inconvenient to get to and has a 400% mark-up on drinks.

    You take at least 300 pictures every time you go out.

    Of those 300, at least 50 make it on Facebook.

    You spend the next morning looking through said pictures, laughing maniacally and screaming, “DETAG! DETAG!!!”

    You go to Zumba class thinking that you’re really going to get into shape and show said ex-boyfriend, goddammit, this is what you’re missing out on, you lying son of a bitch. When you get home from Zumba, you have a pint of Ben and Jerry’s for dinner while watching Sex and the City and thinking I’m totally the Miranda of my group.

    Your underpants cost more than most work pants.

    Your sweatpants cost more than you make in a month. After all, how affordably can they stud the word, “Hottie” in diamonds to the ass of something? You think it’s a decent value.

    You are probably the reason for the gender pay gap. 

mood: untitled

       Oh, you. You're so postmodern.

       This is you: Hey guys, I wrote this new song for our band. I know what we'll name it. Something with the right amount of edge and mystery. No one will really be ready for this shit. We're going to take over the world. Well, not the whole world. But the really cool part of the world that knows what the baser part of the world will never know. A very small minority of the world. No more than 5,000 Youtube users' worth of the world.
       We'll name this shit "Untitled."
       But that's the title. How mind-blowingly paradoxical, right?

       You should know that there are currently 12 tracks on my iTunes titled "Untitled." And I don't mean things that I forgot to manually tag when ripping CD's from unsuspecting ex-boyfriends in the early 00's. I mean shit that they literally titled "Untitled."
       Yeah, I get what you were trying to do there, but like duct-tape wallets, that practice is OOOOOVVVVEEEERRR.
        I mean Kasimir Malevich was really on to something when he painted an enormous fucking black square and called it art. Or, maybe you will argue that it was the fact that it was the "absence" of art that made it so damn remarkable. Or, maybe you will argue that it was the sheer interplay of contrast, the dichotomy of the universe, the sex & death of it all...
        No. It was a big black square. That is all. And it was a really nice black square, Kasimir. I will not deny you that!
        But no one would try to make a second big black square and expect it to have the same effect.
        It's just like Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (spoiler: it's a urinal). Nobody was about to make a second pee-fountain and call it art once again. Yet Creed keeps making music...

       Alright, bros. Don't get your boxer-briefs in a bunch about it (is that what you're wearing these days?!) Just give it a title! Any title! Anything other than "Untitled" will do. Even if it is only ONE letter off from "Untitled." How about "Untittled?" And then you can be SO cool and stylize the "i" on the back of the album cover to be without the dot! Because a "tittle" is what you call the little dot on top of a lowercase i! Funny, right?

Gchat is a misleading name...

...because i do not use it to chat with my G's. I miss AIM, but just like Livejournals written in pink on black backgrounds, it seems they are becoming just another thing dismissed as SOOO HIGHSCHOOL (and I'm the only one sayin ain't nothin wrong with that).

The list of people on my Gchat is arbitrarily decided for me by Google. Somehow, my best friends don't show up as my contacts, but a select few people who I hate having to do schoolwork with and the lady I babysit for do. And google has to be so damn user-friendly to the point that they're cryptic: Do I want to automatically appear on user's lists as previously specified by...I DON'T KNOW, GOOGLE! JUST LET ME TALK TO MY FRIENDS!

But only my friends. Because now that I see the lady I babysit for, and she sees me, i wonder if everyone I email can't use some setting also to see me. Is my professor looking on? My future employers? Whoever may be looking makes me to afraid to write expletives or emo lyrics as my bullshit Gchat mockery of an away message.

And don't you go telling me that's a good thing.

Ur outfit's soooo hegemonic

Every now and again, I’ll see a MDST Queen.

Be it male or female or she-male, they are sure to out-sparkle the rest of the class in a Google search of the room.

Media studies fashion, if executed satisfactorily, exists in subtle pieces of flair. But once in a while, it is executed astonishingly well, and therefore begs the question, “Did your five-year-old sister sleep over and dress you?”

MDST 110 seems to be an eye in the hurricane of North Face. Sometimes the ladies will wear a hoodie but NEVER a plain one and even less often a standard pattern (except an ugly shade of plaid, that’s sometimes allowed.) Your hoodie needs to have something along the lines of duckies or boom boxes on it; more power to you if it incorporates both.

Shoes—men, I’ve already discussed your poor shoe choices. (See the posts “Not sure if I’ll fail or pass…” and “For every 1,000 people who read this blog…” below.) Women—never heels, usually flats. The flats must have very fat and very ugly rhinestones, very enormous gold pendants, or both.

Scarves and pashminas are encouraged across the board. Any form of headdress (save for a U.Va hat unless of course it is worn ironically) will gain a MDST student honor and mad propz.

In 110 today, in the MiDST of contemplating what Siva’s home life could possibly entail, I saw her walk nonchalantly to the restroom. I first noticed her enormous pewter peace sign earrings somehow shoved through her ear. Next, I saw her slouchy black rubber boots fit for a lady fisherman…who ever said you had to conform and wear those pink galoshes with whales on them in the rain? Her coat was a mangy looking oversized plaid number—homeless-chic.

But what really hit it out of the park was her iridescent headband—it looked as if it was a left-over party favor from her best friend’s birthday party. When she turned eight. Sometimes I miss the occasional ENGL lecture. Angry, under-appreciated minds clad in drab sweaters and functional pea coats now seem like they’d be refreshingly bleak.

Garrett Hall

Garrett Hall is not sexy arrogance.

Not graduating is.

But not if the main reason you didn’t graduate was your fear of the old biddies at the front desk of Garrett Hall.

Therefore, facing Garrett Hall unabashedly, flicking off the old biddies and grabbing a minor declaration form, crossing out the word “Minor” and writing in “Major”—well that’s sexy arrogance at its finest.

What purpose does Garrett Hall serve, really? It once served the sole purpose of Pick Up Your Course Action Forms Here, until they decided that would make them too useful and instead put a polite flyer in their place, demanding you print out your own form. I think we both know the ladies behind that flyer.

You walk into Garrett Hall and you are instantly bombarded by signs demanding way too much out of you. “TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES” screams a neon green sign with an Xed out Windows 97 clip-art phone. The phone is grinning. The ladies behind the desk are not. And any of us with the smallest ounce of S.A. are not even moving towards our phone. Some of us are willing to gamble that our phone may not ring and send the ladies into insanity spasms in those 4 minutes we’re in this building. And others of us are confident that it will ring, and anxiously await that moment.

Seriously, what do those ladies do? The last time I was in Garrett Hall, I needed to turn in my graduation form (alas, I haven’t gotten the boot for mis a behaving yet). I politely told this to the lady at the front desk, who did not look up from her four-year-old computer as she raised a pointed finger, Ghost of Christmas’ Future style, at a sign she created. “GRADUATING? GO TO ROOM 118.” I wonder how many times she had to strain her vocal chords before finally deciding that U.Va wasn’t paying her enough for this shit and making a sign.

Down at Room 188, which had a stressful line with arrows outside it, reminiscent of absentee in-person voting booths, had another hard-working Garrett Hall employee inside it. She waited, arms crossed, not saying a word, as I examined the sign above her door. “STOP! GRADUATING? YOU WILL NEED A VISTAA REPORT.”

I turned around, waited a few days, printed my VISTAA report, and attached in neatly with a yellow paper clip. I marched up to Garrett Hall, bypasses the ladies, and did not turn off my cell phone. Room 118 was locked with a sign “CLOSED FOR THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY.” A Windows 97 clip-art turkey greeted me with more hospitality than anyone else in Garrett Hall ever could.

this bottle of beast is taking me home

Current music: Dashboard
Current mood: NOTHING MATTERS :(

I need to stop. Really. I was stalking people from kindergarten (again!) and I happened upon a super...(I'm not saying it) depressing quote that sounded like it could be from some terribly (again, it's not happening) whiny song. So I googled it, of course. And then I happened upon this blog:

http://www.xanga.com/bottle_of_broken_hearts

Bottle of broken hearts. Yep. But don't ask how they got in there. I am personally more intrigued by the pear inside the liquor bottle on Bea's shelf.

At first, I thought that this blog was some poor middle-schooler pouring his heart out. But as I read on, I was embarrassed to realize that I actually knew about 60% of the song lyrics posted here. Eh. An interesting literary technique used in this blog ( I suppose since the words are unoriginal, we've got to give this kid something) is the use of spaced out adverbs. For example:

i want to lead you on
and let you go --->
e f f o r t l e s s l y

don't go worrying about me
it's not like i think about you
c o n s t a n t l y

My teacher told me not to use adverbs unless it was absolutely necessary. Is it here? I guess that's debatable. Maybe some people were a little too busy drawing black hearts in class to catch that advice.

or maybe they're just doing it
i n t e n t i o n a l l y.

6 degrees of separation

Now that would be a sweet name for an emo band.

But here it is, and I'm hoping that this is one of many volumes:

I drove out to a tiny woodsy neighborhood of cul-de-sacs today off RIO Road (which use to be called Route Ten until people in Charlottesville decided to be retarded...I hope Alexandria doesn't soon spawn people calling our favorite strip-mall-Applebee's corridor RI Road) and started knocking door-to-door to find people to interview for a story I'm working on. This activity was prescribed by my boss, who apparently has not seen the Sexual Predators Map of this area. Anyway, after I chatted it up with a harmless-looking older man listening to headphones, he directed me to the home of an elderly couple who had lived there for 20 years.

The nice old lady got side-tracked, as old people often do, and started bragging about her granddaughter, as all awesome old people always do. Apparently she's a sixteen-year-old who plays drums. She rocks. At least, that's what the drummer for the Dave Mathews Band told her. Seriously, grandma alleges. It happened for real.

But the real talent in the band is the lead singer/guitarist kind (grandpa shakes his head at this. Our granddaughter is the real talent, he says.) But this boy has been away for six months, at sea. At SEA? Well you see, his mother is a professor at the University, and she took her family with her to Semester At Sea...

His mother isn't any old professor. His mother taught me fiction writing. She sent me an anthology of American fiction in the mail to my home in Northern Virginia, for god sakes. Me and Lizzie-girl go WAY back.

So there you have it: I interviewed my teacher's son's bandmate's grandma and grandpa. I guess that's only four degrees. It left me feeling kind of good about life in general and Self, Solitude and Connectedness (but that's another story for another occasion entirely). But it also left me extremely jealous of this sixteen-year-old drummer who has the respect of someone in DMB (whose name I still think is missing a U, but still. Their respect is kind of a big deal). I think grandma could tell, and as I walked out the door she told me I still had time to learn how to play in a band; I was so young.

If she's right, I at least know what to name it.

Only a woman named "Bunny" could come up with this

I just saw Howard Huge. And just like the comic strip, it wasn’t even funny.

I knew as I ran down Old Farm Road that I had made a wrong turn into the Secret Lives of Wealthy Charlottesvillians. There were gardens here. And bunnies. And quaint cottage-mansions protected from the outside hooligans like me by enormous bush-fortresses.

As I trekked to the end of the road, obviously too caught up in whatever I was listening to to notice the blatant error with reality, I stopped at a miniature bridge leading to a clearing in the woods. Like any yuppie cottage-mansion dweller would dream of having in his backyard, I saw in the distance the glowing cursive-ish sign for Barnes and Noble. I’d really entered an alternate universe now, and no more than .5 miles away from my own modest bedroom.

I turned around, deciding I could get overpriced lattes and the Best of Emmylou Harris some other time (Barnes and Noble sells books, too? No way.) And that’s when I heard the loudest bark ever known to man.

God, I thought, that thing’s gonna kill me. And that was before I even saw it.

The sight shocked me about as much as a real-life version of Clifford the Big Red Dog. There was Howard Huge, a breed of dog that I had believed to be entirely fictional until today. I was worried he might chase me down/paw me to death, but I found that just like in the pathetically short wiki article for Howard Huge, he was “somewhat of a gentle giant.”

This all took place not too far from Wayside Place. Perhaps on my future runs, cows will populate my school, my teacher will have an ear on top of her head that hears thoughts, and I, Marissa, (actually Maurecia, but in fourth grade this seemed to be my first and only opportunity to almost share a name with a fictional character. In tenth grade my theory proved to be incorrect.) will be forced to read aloud the dictionary page with “Journey” on it after I accidentally ripped it out and felt terrible about it.

T$$

Oh, it sounds real sensational. It almost sounds like that dumb portugese band that everyone loved after they made that iPod commercial—CSS. Cansei de Ser Sexy. (Me too.) But doesn’t it sound a little too…convenient…to be true?

Toxic Shock Syndrome- the SYNDROME where you wear a tampon so long that your state of being unclean sends you into toxic shock. Toxic shock? Aren’t those adjectives…overkill? Isn’t the fact that it is a SYNDROME bad enough?

But let’s be honest. If there was no such SYNDROME, what would stop people from wearing the same tampon all day? (I should really stop saying “people,” but these days, who knows.) Also, have you ever heard of someone dying from this SYNDROME? Granted, dying from this is somewhat embarrassing. A little like dying from gangrene or leprosy. Only much more dramatic sounding.

Oh, she died of Toxic Shock Syndrome??? Was it one of those hairdryers-falling-in-the-bathtub type thing? Oh….that’s the TAMPON thing? Gross.

So basically, what I think I’m trying to say is, you could probably wear the same tampon for years if you really wanted to. All TSS stands for is Tamponcompany $$making $cheme. Yeah.

things i know because of katelyn

1. Louis XIV uses sexual slang so advanced that you can’t even find it in urbandictionary. Yet.
2. Some sorority girls at U.Va are a tad overweight. They compensate by spending extra hours in the tanning booth. The result is something referred to as a Fat-Tan.
3. Pesto is delicious.
4. Wheelchairs have four wheels, not two. Additionally, when the guy in Placebo says “think of me stuck in my chair that has four wheels” he isn’t merely reflecting on his cooped-up office life. He is reflecting on his life as a paraplegic.
5. Along those lines, “white lines that sped us up” from Bright Eyes’ Gold Mine Gutted are not the white lines marking the yards on a football field. Furthermore, making a nice clean cut “like a bag we buy and divvy up” is not talking about candy. To summarize, Marissa=naïve.
6. Christian kids are confused about what constitutes a fun time. Many think that group activities such as stealing stop signs are what should make them feel giddy.
7. Man-plaid is bad.
8. Any slide show of party pictures can be made an epic viewing experience if set to The Killers (feat. Lou Reed) – Tranquilize.
9. The coolness/mad street cred of any artist can be greatly increased by featuring any one of these three artists in a song: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop or David Bowie. (Also, take note of the omission of the Oxford Comma. Not that I give a fuck about it, or anything…)
10. The awkwardness level in a room can be dramatically increased by verbal recognition of the presence/absence of sexual tension.

The RIAA can finally feel cooler than me. Jerks.

So I just got back from a trip that involved a 4 hour bus ride and 100 minute train ride each way. This is a lot of time to sit and do nothing…and since I’m not one to be productive the first week of summer, I brought with me two crucial entertainment objects—my iPod, and the latest copy of Rolling Stone (which I was forced to purchase, by the way, because all of a sudden Spin is very obscure in convenient stores, and which also, by the way, appeared pornographic thanks to the ladies of the Hills stripping on the cover). I was very excited to have a solid amount of time to engross myself in Death Cab’s latest album, which came out right before I left.

Okay, I lied. It came out the very day I left. Knowing I wouldn’t have time to buy it (which I really would have done, I swear. No one wants to contribute to the Buy Ben Gibbard Some Actually Fashionable Glasses Fund more than me) I downloaded it off the internet. And I don’t mean off of iTunes, either.

Now I’ll admit that I have done my share of downloading in my years, and I’ve been cursed a couple of times. Back in my Kazaa days (God, that program was awful) once in a while I’d be treated with a corrupted file that would turn into loud alien static at the end of a song. Luckily, I would only end up listening to these songs when I was falling asleep alone in a dark, creepy house. Or driving alone for the first time in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.

But it was never like this. I only reserve this title for the extremely elite, but the dudes who recently fucked up my illegal Narrow Stairs experience…they were some crafty motherfuckers.

So, on principal, I decide to give the entire album a listen first—start to finish—before I open my Rolling Stone to see what they have to say (although I can already see that it says on the cover, “Death Cab For Cutie: 4 Stars”). It’s…okay…Death Cab has done better, but this definitely resembles some of their better older stuff, and I’m sure that it will grow on me.

I open the article and instantly agree. This album is dark, man, dark as fuck, if the fucking we’re talking about is illegal, immoral and heartbreaking. And yeah, it does kind of sound like it was recorded in a tiny room picking up all kinds of reverbs and what not. But as I read on, I swear that I never heard any of the lyrics featured in this feature once. I mean, of course I recognized that “Cath…” was about an unhappy, unfulfilling marriage, but I didn’t think he actually ever said it outright. It was just one of those things I kind of knew. In hindsight. After reading the article. And it would seem cheesy if he ever actually sang the words “Talking Bird.” DCFC was just trying to pull a Brand New and make really obscure unmentioned song titles. Riieeeght?

Nah, man. Thank god for Wikipedia. The album I had listened to was actually by an obscure German band called Velveteen who “leaked” the “New Death Cab” album as an April Fool’s Joke. Real funny and all, but come on guys. If you’re sure everyone is going to fall for you calling yourself Death Cab, and you aren’t as good as Death Cab, why even exist? I mean, they’re slightly more depressing than Death Cab, I will give them that, and that is no small feat.

don't get hanged

Contrary to popular belief, there is more than one kind of hangover. For decades, scientists were under the impression that there was only one kind of hangover: the kind you wake up with (Hangovertes Mellitus Type I.) But ladies and gentlemen, my life of late has proved otherwise. Hangovers don’t just strike the innocent. Just like another disease to which I will not directly allude, there is another type of hangover that, by living your day in a sloppy, unhealthy, frowned upon way, you can fuck yourself into having. You might try to tell me, oh no, Marissa, this kind of thing doesn’t run in my family. Well guess what? It doesn’t matter. Hangovertes Mellitus Type II is deadly, and it doesn’t discriminate. If you aren’t careful, you could be next.

The ideal morning after a night of wastecasing—roll over at noon. Look at the clock. Cancel all plans. Roll back over. Get up at 3 (If it’s Sunday, get up at 2:50. I know every minute counts, but so does every ounce of fat). Go to Bodo’s. Order your normal order X2. Actually, in an ideal morning, these steps would be skipped by you handing your credit card and an exhaustively detailed order form to a friend (it better be munster cheese this time, not provolone, you absent-minded fuck). Consume Bodo’s. Go back to bed. Begin your day as the sun sets.

You might wake up at 9:30 and say no man, I’m fine! You’re not fine. You’re like a little kid gallivanting around a mine field shouting “I feel so alive!” Come 1 or 2, that hangover is going to strike you with a sadistic smile.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve been an irresponsible morning person. I will admit, I’ve tried to attend a 9 am after a night of drinking. I’ve tried to go to work. I’ve even tried to drive two hours home to Alexandria. And do you know what I’ve received as punishments (respectively) for my thoughtless actions? 1. A pool of vomit in a New Cabell Hall stall 2. A pool of vomit in a chocolate store toilet 3. A puddle of vomit in a certain Alexandria driveway.

Hangovertes Mellitus Type II is a serious medical condition (so what if it’s not on WebMD? Neither is penis envy) that can affect all of us if we’re not careful. Don’t be stupid. Functioning is overrated.