what a weekend

This weekend was insane.

Let's just go through this step by step.

FRIDAY

1:00 - Get out of class.

1:15 - Catch a cab to the airport.

1:40 - Go through security. Get searched, because I'm going to DC and not checking any luggage, which is suspicious. Find it weird, anyway, that they had to pat me down, seeing as the clothing I tend to wear is pretty tight. Where would I be hiding anything?

2:15 - Hang out at the airport bookstore. Move Glenn Beck's books to the children's section. Feel clever, although I certainly hope no children really pick that book up. Yikes.

2:50 - Flight takes off.

4:15 - Land at National. See house. Get unduly excited at the thought of being back in my hometown.

One thing I've noticed about the life itinerant is that perhaps, rather than being more or less homeless, everywhere I go is home. This weekend I went home, and then I went back home, and I'm going home again over thanksgiving, going home, going home over winter break, going home at the end of january, and then going home again sometime in March or April to see my baby niece (!!!!)

4:17 - Get on the Metro. I love not checking baggage. SO worth the awkward pat-down.

5:30 - Meet Vivian in Rockville. Go back to her house. Eat Brazilian food.

6:3o--1:00 - Do weird things. Vivian and I read through our entire Wall-to-Wall looking for quotes without context. I catch Vivian up on the past season and a half of Gossip Girl. Daphna calls. I try to learn how to play the ukelele.

Me: So Serena is like "ohhhh I don't know what to dooo everybody just likes me!" and Juliette is like "*obvious scheming*" and Nate is like "You like me? OK! You're teaching dentistry to midgets? OK!"

1:15 - Go to bed.

SATURDAY

8:30 - Wake up.

9:30 - Go to Vivian's friend's house for breakfast. It turns out, Vivian's friend's dad is a columnist that I used to read all the time (back when I got the Washington Post). Get excited.

10:20 - Get to the Silver Spring Metro stop. Get seats, because it's early and Silver Spring is near the end of the line.

10:25 - Realize that the crowd on this Metro is only a taste of what is certainly to come. Feel like a sardine.

11:30 - Arrive in Metro Center. Try to meet Sam at Caribou Coffee but he is not there. Get caught up in the general enthusiasm of the day, and probably rant about the impossibility of meeting people anywhere else, because there are literally hundreds of thousands of people here.

12:15 - Get to a crowd of people dense enough that it must be considered the Rally.

12:23 - See some cool signs.

12:48 - Get stepped on.

12:57 - Try to hear something. Realize that this is futile.

(lather, rinse, repeat)

Angry Guy: PUT DOWN YOUR SIGN! WE CAN'T SEE! PUT DOWN YOUR SIGN PLEASE!

Me: Yeah, and if everyone could shrink by about a foot, that would be great too!

People around me: *giggles*

1:30 - Reason that while we've had the Rally experience, the rational thing to do would be to locate a TV in a warm food-serving environment from which we could watch the end of the Rally.

1:50 - Get out of the densest part of the crowd. Use our awesome DC-native knowledge to navigate to Union Station.

2:00 - Go to UNO's. Have some deep dish pizza. Have a sassy waiter named Tommy. Tommy inexplicably hates us, because we ordered an appetizer or something.

2:50 - Catch the metro to the airport.

4:15 - Buy a Washington DC shot glass. Buying an Alexandria one is on my to-do list.

4:35 - Get on the bus from the terminal to the actual airplane. Strike up conversation with a family from Indiana who was at the Rally as well. Engage in intelligent political discourse with various bus passengers. Make a friend.

4:59 - Take off for Philadelphia.

5:45 - The kid from the bus runs after me to exchange facebook-friendship. I may have been short with him. I was in a hurry. Regardless, we are now facebook friends.

5:55 - Board flight for Providence.

7:30 - Land.

7:40 - Catch a cab back to campus. I had a very nice cab driver. He was probably around my age, going to college during the day and driving taxis at night. He was from Syria, and wanted to go to med school. I told him to rock on.

8:00 - Get back to school. Change into my Halloween costume. Spend a good amount of time trying to make myself look like Marie Antoinette.

9:45 - Go with Hannah to Jameson. Chill there for a bit. Realize that most people are dressed with a Harry Potter theme. Audrey drew a sick Dark Mark on Scott's arm.

10:20 - The hallway party is dissolving. Jump on the bandwagon going to the Harry Potter party. Decide that for the purposes of this party, I'm a veela. Realize too late that John and Alex are still in the back, taking pictures of themselves and uploading them to facebook.

10:30 - Get to the Harry Potter party. Drink Butterbeer which involves cream soda and is actually delicious. Meet a "Hipster Harry Potter". Meet a girl with whom I'm friends on facebook.

later - Decide to leave. Get my tiara tangled in the fake spiderwebs on the stairs.

Me: Oh my god! I'm a spider web!

Guy: You're a spider web? That's not very sexy.

Me: I know! It's a problem!

later - Go into a chinese restaurant to use the bathroom. Commit some crimes.

later - Hit up the frat scene. Make some friends. Lose Hannah. Find Hannah. Go outdoors.

later - Meet some guys who were either seriously from Yale, or dressed up as guys from Yale. They said their costume was "Ivy League Douches". Yale kids seem cool enough to make fun of themselves that way, but they might have been serious.

later - Meet someone dressed up as "Security" who is trying to mess with people, telling us not to stand in certain places and whatnot. I tell him that I'm Princess Peach and that he does not want to fuck with royalty.

later - I seem to recall talking to someone about the fact that I'm a shiksa? i.e. a non-jewish girl? I'm not sure how anyone got onto this topic.

later - I want food. Hannah and I go to the new cone place. The new cone place serves pizza and other food items in a cone. I get eggplant parmesan ... in a cone. We meet Jackie and her friend, who are dressed as sexy founding fathers.

Jacqueline: we the white male landowners, in order to serve our corporate interests, do delcare:
1. all founding fathers look the same.
2. if it's not slutty, it's not halloween

2:00ish? - Go home. Fall asleep.

SUNDAY

10:30 - Decide that church bells are a tool of the devil, ironically.

11:00 - Actually get out of bed.

1:00 - Go to the library. Actually get shit done for the first time this weekend.

2:30 - Walk to the other side of campus to try to arrange Hakuna Matata.

3:00 - Try to teach said arrangement to other people. Feel ineffective.

4:15 - Go to the Brown Bookstore. Chill there for a while.

5:00 - Post- meeting.

6:30 - Get dinner. Feel like soup. Feel a head-cold coming on.

8:00 - Try to do linguistics. Feel the desire to hit my head against the wall. Repeatedly.

9:00--12:00 - Watch three hours of Law and Order.

12:30 - Go to bed.

And now it's Monday and I have class and almost definitely a sinus infection. But it's so cold! Shouldn't the cold have frozen all of the allergens? Does that even make sense?

I don't know. My ears hurt. And my head feels strange.

Well, if this weakened-immune-system was brought on by anything this weekend... it was worth it.

Love always,

Clara

oh my god puppy

Going to DC today. Not bringing my laptop. Will take lots of pictures.

Here's a blog post.

I'm obsessed with this dog.

His name is Boo and he is very famous.

Love always,

Clara

fish co? fail co.

Alex and I tried to go out last night. We were dressed up as CEO/Caterer and 80's workout girl (respectively) and everything.

Alas, we arrived at the bar at the same time as the popo.

When you see flashing lights and hear whistles, that's when you leave.

Or, you know, wait around outside and ask people what's going on because your journalistic instincts are taking over.

(Speaking of, I've been published twice in two days. Feeling so culturally relevant right now. Read Post- for my take on terrible teen fiction)

Anyway, eventually we encountered Megan, and the three of us went to East Side market and got ice cream bars. Alex and I were still restless and looking for something to do, but we didn't find anything.

Funny how that happens.

We did see a guy shaving in one of the third-floor windows. I named him Mr. Torso because that was the only section of him that we could see.

I'm not sure why I do these things.

Alex: CLARA! YOUR HAIR! Leave it! I want to take a picture!

Me: Oh god, what's it doing?

Alex: It's coming out from behind your headband... you look like a PREPUBESCENT PANDA!

Love always,

Clara

legitness

I've written for the Blog Daily Herald!

Check it out!

Shameless self-promotion all over the place!

In other news, I'm so busy it's literally insane. My sanity is notably absent.

In other other news, I've got at least three nights of halloween on the agenda, and all require different costumes. Love college.

In other other other news, I've invented a linguistic rule. You can add as many "others" as necessary to "in other news."

I just liberated you from the shackles of an unnecessary standard in our language.

The number of potential sentences in the english language just increased exponentially (not that it wasn't infinite already).

Hot damn. I feel powerful.

In other other other other news, clearly I'm losing it.

Love always,

Clara

your love your love your love is my drug

KE$HA CONCERT TONIGHT.

Trashy music for the win.

(Real-Conversation-Without-Context:

Girl: [opens door for us]

Me: Friendly strangers for the win!

John: No one says 'for the win,' Clara.

Hannah: Um...

Girl: I say 'for the win'

John: ... I meant, no one among the three of us.

Me: JOHN YOU JUST ALIENATED A STRANGER.

End scene)

Seriously, the ke$ha concert was awesome. The first opener, Deluka, was pretty sweet, and the second was very bizarre, and the main event didn't show up until 10, but that's all well and good. So worth the wait.

I'd forgotten how much I legitimately like her music, actually. I downloaded her album
when it first came out, and listened to a lot of Ke$ha in mid-January.

Mid-January was an interesting time for me, actually, for a number of reasons. Ke$ha was in fact a good influence, I think.

The thing about her is that I'm fairly certain she was drunk on stage tonight. She absolutely does not take herself too seriously.

First semester last year, I was definitely taking myself too seriously. But you listen to songs about actually, perhaps, going out and enjoying yourself, and it's hard to stay focused on dumb overdramatic shit.

I might need a little more Ke$ha in my life.

Don't want to be the Ke$ha of the group though. Every group of friends has that one girl who is the Ke$ha. I'd like to avoid that.

... Although it might be too late.

Love always,

Clara

migraines

I had dinner with John's family last night. Sometime towards the end of the night I got a migraine.

By the time I got back to my room I kind of wanted to die.

John: I need to do work.

Me: I need to shoot myself in the head repeatedly.

John: ... or just lie down?

Later, I heard 'Chicago' (Sufjan Stevens, obvi) coming from down the hall. I stumbled over to see where it was coming from.

Me: Are you guys playing Chicago? Is that this room?

Nick: Yeah, I love that song.

I think I was actually out in the hall to use the bathroom or brush my teeth or something.

I passed by again on the way back.

Me: That song is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Gavin: Nick put it on.

Me: I'm going to have to beat him with a shovel.

So.... it appears migraines make me unduly violent.

Curious.

Now we're all chilling in my room.

Genevieve: Yeah, the average was a fifty.

John: Wow, you did fantastic then!

Genevieve: I was below average...

John: ... That's fantastic!

John is reading his blog posts out loud.

Genevieve: Teach me to blog. I feel like I would only write sarcastically.

Me: Do that. If sarcastic is how you do shit, then do that shit, yo.

Love always,
Clara

you know what they say about economists

I had dinner with my parents again tonight. That's always nice. I'd forgotten what good food tastes like.

We were discussing my friends' parents' marriages for whatever reason.

I'm going to have to keep this anonymous.

Dad: Well they got married right out of college, but he had that wild year in europe to run around. That's why his teeth are like that. It's the venereal disease.

The man in question is not someone I can imagine ever acquiring a venereal disease.

Dad: You know what they say about economists. That if you lined them all up end to end... it would be a good thing.

Love always,

Clara

gorgeous

Thomas just sent me a whole facebook-message-ful of music, and John was showing me some cool stuff yesterday. That does it. I'm now wandering around the internet, downloading songs as I please.

In that process I stumbled upon this video, which you should watch, because it's absolutely beautiful. The song may not appeal to all tastes, but I personally am a fan, maybe mostly because I'm going to imagine this video every time I see it now.

Curs In The Weeds - Horse Feathers

Pursuit of Happiness (Kid Cudi cover) - Barbara

Time To Pretend (MGMT cover) - Jonsi

Rome (Neighbors and Devendra Banhart remix) - Phoenix

Hold You - Wale

Quitters Raga - Gold Panda

You Started - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool

Blueberry - Late Of The Pier

Love Lust - King Charles

Citizen - Broken Bells

Mean - Taylor Swift

I get so lost when I'm looking for music. It's always such a wandering odyssey. Like, if Odysseus wasn't even sure he wanted to go home, and figured he might as well stop by some other islands first to see if anything cool was going on.

Love always,
Clara

google search me

Nick is in my room right now. Google Analytics was being strange, so I started wandering around their site looking at varying statistics.

Including the Google searches that most frequently lead here.

Including "ipad boobs."

Nick: You should start blogging about more sexy words.

Me: Yeah, like... ipad twitter penis sex.

Nick: Twitter penis sex... that's probably wild. That's so good, it's probably illegal.

I'm sure people google that.

And they'll be directed to Love Always Clara.

Just another step in my quest for diverse viewership, right?

Love always,

Clara

family weekend

My family is in Providence right now. I haven't seen them yet, but that's beside the point. I'm somewhat excited to see them, I suppose, but right now I have this vague sense of discomfort regarding their presence in what I've considered to be "my" city. Or at least my area-- I really haven't ventured too far into Providence, just the eastern side.

Some people are staying with their parents (i.e. in hotels) over the weekend. I wouldn't be able to handle that. I'm actually very much looking forward to sending them on their way later tonight, and going back to my room.

I don't know.

I've been sitting in the SciLi for the past 20 minutes trying to get my goddamn MCM paper to print. I'm supposed to be able to print it from my laptop if I'm connected to the wireless network, but it hasn't been working and something (let's call it pride) is keeping me from just emailing it to myself and printing from a school computer.

The school computers are slow.

I don't think there exists a school where the computers are not slow.

MIT, maybe?

Unlikely.

Love always,

Clara

the kids

the kids, originally uploaded by clarabellum.

I took this! And edited it!
This is one of those little girls who came to visit us in august.
And my chili dog.
Whom I miss dearly.

Oh, also, there is a correction that I must make. John's pretzels did not have rainbow sprinkles. They had individually-colored sprinkles, in a variety of shades.

I've got to keep my journalistic integrity. John may not be thrilled, but he's just bitter anyway.

Love always,

Clara

my, what a large package.

John got a care package today. It's not from his mother. It's from someone else's mother.

He's excited.

John: Oh, I'm sorry, is my care package in your way?

Benny: I don't blame you for having a large package.

He's got chocolate-covered pretzel sticks (with rainbow sprinkles!) in there. I feel like people are a lot more domestic in Florida. Or maybe they're just a lot more domestic in places-other-than-my-home.

I just got phenomenal news from Thomas, that I will keep quiet because these sorts of things are sensitive information.

But I'm excited about it.

Sitting in Linguistics. It appears that class has started. I should go.

Love always,

Clara

do YOU ever watch youtube?

Man: Jim, do you ever watch youtube?

I'm sitting in Starbucks (no I'm not telling you where it is! And if you've guessed, you're wrong!) with my shitty earbuds in, and people are assuming I'm listening to music. In reality I can listen in on other people's conversations in an inconspicuous way. This might be my new hobby.

These two older men are sitting nearby. They seem to be writers of some kind, with a particular interest in the middle east. They had a great conversation about Tom Friedman. Very smart guys.

Man: Speaking of parallel universes...

I came here with the intention to write my MCM essay about voyeurism, cinematic pleasure, freudian psychoanalysis, and Alfred Hitchcock.

I'm finding it strangely fitting that my preferred method of procrastination is basically being a creeper. Just like Jeffries in Rear Window! So relevant!

I'm just trying to make the most of my Ivy League education over here. Applying new concepts to everyday life. Not being a freak at all.

Jim: I don't know where the truth lies.

Man: Somewhere... deep down below.

... I really wish I knew what that was about.

Love always,

Clara

maybe i should learn to cook at some point...

Chris W

At home alone and having to make dinner. This is why I need a girlfriend
Kyle M

like the last one would have be helpful in such a situation?

(Chris W and Clara B like this)

I really can't cook. I've been ridiculed for my inability to make a sandwich (turns out, I'm a failure as a woman. Who knew?).

Yesterday I made a quesadilla in the Ratty. That felt like an accomplishment.

All of this has me thinking, what the hell am I going to eat when I eventually leave this place?

I do enjoy culinary-type activities. I made bruschetta once. I felt very accomplished.

That said, I can hardly get my shit together as it is. What would I do with one other necessary task? Probably eat out a lot.

I'd say that describes most of my youth, actually. We did Pita House or Indian food or Thai food or something along those lines on a fairly regular basis. Not all the time, but a significant amount. I can't fully comprehend those families in which the parents cook a meal every night. How do they have time for that?

(Even more baffling is the family in which everyone eats together every night. We did that maybe once a week, and it was an event)

I don't know. I guess I could manage to cook for myself, but feeding a family is way outside my area. I could bake cookies, I guess. And make lots of soup. If I had access to tomatoes and feta, I could probably put together a Greek salad (minus the olives, of course, because... ew).

And bruschetta.

Oh, by the way, if anyone wants to legitimize their identities by way of print publications, you should buy a magazine from this website tonight. It's cheap, and it helps Jeanette somehow, and the future of print media is in our generation's hands.

If you feel compelled, I'd recommend that you do this within the next 24 hours.

Love always,

Clara

fierce.

TA Hunter: Tyra Banks uses this term "je ne sais quoi" frequently on the show, not that I have a vast encyclopedic knowledge of America's Next Top Model or anything...

I love it when teachers admit that they're real people. People fall into roles so quickly.

My linguistics teacher talks about her dogs all the time (within the context of example sentences, but still). And apparently our MCM TA is really into America's Next Top Model.

TA Hunter: Perhaps to paraphrase Tyra Banks, this is a fierce photograph.

Love always,

Clara

back home

Princeton was epic in countless ways.

We beat their football team. Go bears! Also, our marching band had pizzaz.

There were so many fantastic quotes without context last night.

Daphna: I want to high five the world!

Me: Hey chief! How have you been?

Princeton Guy [whom I have never met in my life]: Oh hi! Remind me of your name?

Me: Oh I'm Clara. I don't remember your name either... I've just met so many people in the past month...

Princeton Guy: Oh right! Clara! I'm Bryan.

David: The best way to get into my pants is to compliment them.

Guy on the phone: I'm going to die. I'm gonna die over here.

Me: Excuse me sir, but please don't die. No deaths here.

Now I'm back in brown town, going to meetings and doing work and such.

Has it occurred to anyone the degree to which one's activities and routines depend on their location?

Is that such an obvious point that no one would bother to comment on it?

Maybe I'm just super insightful today?

Perhaps.

Love always,

Clara

makeover!

Daphna: Too floopy to quit! That doesn't rhyme! Fuck.

... Tada!

I was going to wait until Sunday to tweak this and reveal it, but Daphna looked over my shoulder just now and she says I'm good to go, and I trust her blindly.

That said, I want yall's opinions if you have any to share.

Daphna: I was so happy when I got the plague today!

Obviously we're in quite a mood over here. Hooray for New Jersey. And the bubonic plague? And Sartre? I like all of these things.

Love always,

Clara

surprises coming!

Excitement!

Some changes are in store for Love Always, Clara. By the end of the weekend they should be perfected and ready for your viewing. Get ready. This shit is about to get real.

Love always,

Clara

thomas's tunes

I just downloaded a bunch of new music! At Thomas's recommendation, seeing as his musical tastes have greatly influenced my own in the last year.

Some are of my own choosing though.

Such as TSwift.

Welcome Home - Radical Face

Judy Flame - Laura Veirs

Blue Beard - Band of Horses

Simple Man - Alessi's Ark

Space - Martha Tilston

Oviedo - Blind Pilot

Made by Maid - Laura Marling

I Go to Sleep - Sia

Empty Hearts (acoustic) - Josh Ritter

Fljotavik - Sigur Ros

Lonelily - Damien Rice

Hazelton - Justin Vernon

Autumn Song - Will Cookson

So This Is Goodbye - William Fitzsimmons

Funeral Dress - William Fitzsimmons

Brackett, WI - Bon Iver

Back to December - Taylor Swift

So it appears that I'm obsessed with Thomas today?

Not the case entirely.

Okay kind of.

Whatever.

Love always,

Clara

okay, this is a legitimate recommendation

Everyone needs this album. And you should buy it, because it's a charity album for AIDS/HIV relief. And you should buy it from amazon, because... I referred you. And you can get DRM-free downloads, which is cool. iTunes is sort of shifty with that.

Seriously.

Ben Gibbard and Feist?

Bon Iver?

The National?

Yeasayer?

Arcade Fire?

All in one place?

This is good advice that you should follow.

Love always,

Clara

poetry, antisocial tendencies, and tflan

I am going to remind you now to read Thomas's blog, mostly because this post was mostly inspired by him.

He was talking about autumn, and a poem he wrote once. I used to write shitty poetry as a child as well. I think we all did.

But what this all most reminded me of was a poem that I didn't write. No, this is the artistic masterpiece of Katie, age... 6? I don't know. I'd like to say 9 or something, but she was definitely among the more literate in our fourth grade class, and the spelling here indicates otherwise.

Katie, I'm sorry, but I have to share this.

tristen is a trixter
i know its true
he some times
evean cears me up
when i'm bluue,
i'm sure of the
trixter part,
but i still
like him in my hart
"NO" said the teachers
but he still
ran on the bleachers,
Hes verry tuff,
and sometimes ruff
oh i love tristen

We were both somewhat in love with Tristan at various times in our elementary school years.

I like that it was his 1st grade badassery that attracted Katie. I remember having a huge crush on Patrick A. that year because this one day we were doing some kind of activity that involved flipping coins, and we were partners, and instead of actually following directions he showed me magic tricks for the whole 15 minutes.

What. A. Rebel.

I wish I had more of my younger-years shitty poetry. I know there was a lot of it on my old old laptop (that I had in 7th and 8th grade).

I was a little bit emo. Always lovesick. Generally unsatisfied most of the time.

Mary Evelyn: I'm going sailing today!

John: Cool! What kind of sailing?

Mary Evelyn: I think it's one of those boats where you have to strap yourself in. They're going to put me with more experienced people.

Me: Sailing is nice. I like sailing on small boats... by myself. I just like being by myself on a boat in the water. Actually, I just like being alone.

Benny: Whoa, how did this get from sailing to antisocial behavior? Like, "Yeah sailing is fun... I hate people."

Me: I don't know. It seemed like a pretty natural transition.

I may be turning into one of those people who can turn any inane thing (such as, perhaps, mooing at cows?) into a reflection of my inner turmoil.

Not sure how I ended up like that.

Probably too much dentistry in my life.

I went to the dentist again yesterday. Just for a cleaning this time. But still. I hate the dentist. I had this whole rant to Genevieve last night about how much I hate dentists.

Anyway, Thomas's blog is really picking up and I really want him to stick with it, because I laughed out loud several times just now, catching up.

Love always,

Clara

things one needs in college

I have an exciting announcement, and that announcement is that I want you to buy things!

I've signed up for Amazon Associates, so I'm going to be posting links to thing on amazon every once in a while, and if you end up buying those things or using those links or something, I getmoney.

Honestly, I'm only going to link to things that I actually think you should buy, because obviously if I linked to things that sucked, no one would buy them, and then everyone losesbecause I waste your time and I don't even get paid to waste your time. I'm not sadistic. Not really.

Anyway, I kind of want to experiment with this. Without further ado, a list of things I have decided one needs in college in new england, and links to buy these things if they strike your fancy.

The links are the pictures. Snazzy!

1. Rain Boots.

It rains here all the damn time. The thing about college though is that at home, when it rained, I had to try to stay dry on the 30 second walk from school to the tram stop. Here, classes can be legitimately across campus from one another, and there's a lot of rain-walking going on.

Um also let's try to get "rain-walking" to catch on. I'm thinking it could be a cool dance move.

2. Headphones

Mine are broken and it's killing me. Earbuds will not do the trick in college. I might end up buying these. They're selling at Urban Outfitters for like, sixty bucks, but you can get them online for basically half that, which gets me excited.

3. Coffee machine

You need one that doubles as a tea kettle, because sometimes when you steal someone else's tea kettle, they want it back. Ridiculous, I know. Anyway, coffee in the Ratty is terrible and I'd rather have my own in my room, and be able to make tea and soup and whatnot at my leisure.

And, on that note...

4. Starbucks VIA Instant Coffee. One of the flavored ones.

I'm actually somewhat obsessed with this. The unflavored ones taste like instant coffee (which is not the best thing to taste like), but the caramel flavored one tastes delicious. Apparently if you make it with steamed milk it's even better, but who the hell steams milk?

Also...

5. Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa Mix

Because who doesn't want hot cocoa when it's cold? (And of course I'm partial to the Swiss)

6. A cool book about linguistics

How else will people know how independently driven and curious you are? Read in public places.

Also, I just really like Steven Pinker, and if you're a fan of linguistics you should definitely read this. It's very cool.

7. A drinking camera

i.e. A camera that you won't worry about. I love Turtle the DSLR dearly, and I don't want anything to happen to him. Which is why I bought Lucy, refurbished, for $75. I can take her to frats without being too concerned about the repercussions. She's sturdy.

8. Wall decor

This poster is on my wall right now. It's great. Boring walls suck. I can't really give you any better reasons to buy a poster than that.

This is my new experiment, guys. Basically all I'm asking is that if you know you need to buy something off of amazon, you get there from here. Or not. It really doesn't matter.

Love always,

Clara

um, hi.

Let me tell you some facts about myself.

• I have brought no less than eight pairs of sunglasses to college.
• I have no idea what the fuck we talk about in Modern Culture and Media
• Somehow it looks like everyone has more work than me.
• I can't listen to songs on repeat. It ruins it. (Which is why I'm so OCD about my mix CDs)
• I'm actually OCD about a lot of things including: my rug being flat, my statistics on last.fm, where I sit in economics (mostly because it's caused problems in the past), and my ongoing scrabble games with my parents.
• Yeah, I play scrabble with my parents. I'm beating my dad at the moment.
• I get underestimated a lot.
• I have more scarves in my possession than some people have pants.
• I'm still figuring out the social-interaction thing.
• I'm afraid I'm often nostalgic for things that never existed.
• I'm allergic to nickel. This interferes with my love of cheap jewelry, or my unwillingness to spend more than $15 on a watch.
• Actually, I'm usually unwilling to spend more than $15 on anything at all, but somehow money still seems to fly away as soon as I get my hands on it.
• I name inanimate objects.
• I'm very protective of my music tastes. Some things are sacred, right?
• I wish I had more "awesome thrift store finds." So far, I have an oversized Ralph Lauren sweater, and an oversized polo shirt. I also had a very long pearl necklace that I got at a flea market in Neuchatel. For whatever reason, the only things that appeal to me in thrift stores are larger-than-usual prep staples.
• I miss the days when Death Cab for Cutie seemed to know everything about me.
• I make weird faces in pictures, because I'm fairly certain I'm going to end up looking weird anyway, and I'd rather it be on purpose.

I felt like I hadn't blogged anything substantial today.

This feels substantial now.

Good.

Love always,

Clara

loving the blog.

Follow my blog with bloglovin

I'm trying to get a bigger audience. Ergo, I'm shamelessly self-promoting.

Um...

Tell your friends?

Love always,

Clara

thomas is a blogger!

So, if this isn't your first time here, I'm sure you've read about Thomas by now. He basically cracks me up on a daily basis.

And now, he has a blog! So he can continue to crack me up, even while I'm over here in america!

Obviously the only reason he created this blog was for my entertainment, but you can read him too!

I am so excited.

Also, I've got a shoutout in the first post, which is brilliant. Go read that first, so that you can read about me, and because that makes the most sense chronologically.

I Can Talk

Love always,

Clara

i took this photo!

And edited it thusly!

And I really like it!

I've been playing with my free trial of Lightroom lately. It's pretty fantastic.

Love always,

Clara

fetishes...

This is another one of those blog posts that gets out of control because I haven't really done much in the past few days, and thus have very little source material.

I sure love three day weekends.

While I was doing all of this not-much this weekend, I happened to do my MCM reading (which isn't due until wednesday! I'm such an overachiever, guys!). It was wild.

I was reading a deep analysis of a shitty Nicholas Cage movie,* when I came across this passage:

... the camera suddenly embarks on what could only be called a wet dream of surveillant omniscience, craning up and over the walls of the hallway in an "impossible" shot that tracks across one room after another as if the ceiling had been lifted off, peering down into each until finally it locates the object of narrative desire.

So I'm pretty sure that this shot could indeed be called something else. A "fantastic illustration" of surveillant omniscience? A "prime example"?

Although, when you look at the rest of the language, I think this author just wanted to slip "wet dream" into his scholarly masterpiece.

*Okay, I haven't actually seen the film in question, but I really don't like Nicholas Cage. On that note, this author was obsessed with him. The article discussed five or six films, but the author only managed to name that one actor, who happened to be in two of them.

Seeing as everything is fetishistic in cinema anyways, I can't even make a Nicholas-Cage-fetish-joke. It wouldn't even work.

Me: Hah! You have a Nicholas Cage fetish, obviously!

Author: Are you referring to my inherent fetishistic scopophilia? Yes.

Me: ...

Love always,

Clara

chill day

I can't decide whether today was delightfully relaxing or eerily antisocial.

I woke up around ten and decided it would be a good day for a walk, and that I should also do some work, and the intersection of these two things would be to walk to the bookstore in Providence to look for a book I needed for philosophy, which the Brown bookstore had sold out of (thanks, brown.)

So I did that, and I brought my reading for my modern culture and media class, which I was planning on reading in Starbucks, or perhaps the bookstore coffee shop.

That was fun.

Around 2 I got hungry, so I bought some sushi. That was cool.

Seriously, that was my day. The coolest part was buying sushi. That should be sad, except I really was quite pleased with the sushi.

Then I downloaded a bunch of songs.

Big Red Machine - Aaron Dessner & Justin Vernon

Train Song - Ben Gibbard & Feist

Light Up - Tegan and Sara

Sailing - Deerhunter

Easy Lovers, Hardly Friends - Jeremy Messersmith

Virginia - Jeremy Messersmith

Miracles - Jeremy Messersmith

The Great Escape - Patrick Watson

Love always,

Clara

bitches of shit

I had the funniest night last night.

First, at like, 7:30, basically right after dinner, there was an impromptu dance party in Poland 308 (also known as my room) (also, [insert snappy nickname here]).

We played this song at least twice.

We also played "Fuck You", and wondered what on earth the radio edit could possibly sound like. Happily, we're smart kids who know how to google, so that question was answered basically as soon as it was asked.

They call it, "Forget You."

What?

So then we started reading youtube comments, because there are few things funnier than youtube comments.

Commenter (in spanish): Bitches of shit! This is bad!

Or something like that.

Is "bitches of shit" a normal spanish expletive? Because I think it's my new favorite.

Anyway, then I headed over to Jameson and the boys tried to throw popcorn into my dress. I always thought they would grow out of that by senior year. No luck.

That's okay. I kind of liked high school boys anyway. Glad they haven't grown up completely.

Love always,

Clara

photographs

faunce, originally uploaded by csb324.

I took this picture!
I also blogged possibly 300 times today.
That's cool.

Whatever. Haters gonna hate, hatters gonna hat.

Love always,
Clara

ophelia

There are so many things to blog today. People around me keep being either hilarious or wonderful or both. Maybe it's the coffee talking.

Thomas

ew. English has killed me.
I'm off to die in my sleep.
Tell MT I'm sorry.
And Hamlet is my hero.
Me
when i first read hamlet, it was a few months before i moved to switzerland. the degree to which i identified with ophelia's losing-her-mind-ness was actually alarming.
if ONLY anyone in that play could just die in their sleep... much less drama.
Thomas
That's true.
But then, what would it be without the drama?
A castle full of dead Scandinavians?
Probably.
ANd I like Scandinavia.
A lot.
So much, I want to study their language.
but Not Danish, obviously. Polonius is a sket. But for some reason reminds me of a certain principal. take a guess.
Anyway. I can see how you and Ophelia relate.

File this under: Thomas is my absolute hero. He should start a blog. He already twitters. He's halfway there, if he plans to have 280 character blog posts.

Do you remember when I was having my Ophelia moment? I seriously lost my mind and played in the flowers and such. There were some serious and relevant parallels.

Love always,

Clara

my secret starbucks

I have discovered the most wonderful place in the world, and I'm not going to give you directions.

It's mine, and I think what I like about it is that it's not overrun with college kids.

I'll say that it's a starbucks, and it's off college hill, and I have to take a bus to get here, but a short bus ride, and it's worth it. I came here once before after my unsurprisingly hellish dentist appointment earlier, and the guy behind the counter showed me their new Clover coffee machine and we had a nice chat about coffee connoisseurship.

I figured I'd come back today and get some work done.

So I hop on my bus to this undisclosed location, and get in line, and then I decide I'm in a fall latte mood. It's pleasantly windy out. So I ask whether the toffee mocha latte is good, and the woman behind the counter advises me that it's a little too sweet for her tastes, but if I don't like it they'll make me something else.

Then I see new flavors of VIA (starbucks insta-coffee) on the table, and feel the need to investigate, and they offer me a sample! The woman explains that it was made with steamed milk, so I ask how to steam milk, because I honestly don't know. And she says, "Well, you can microwave it, or heat it over the stove."

They assumed I had a stove at my disposal!

What a wonderful feeling. To top it all off, the guy accidentally made me a grande latte instead of a tall, and apologized.

This is great. This is the kind of place that has regulars. Real live Providence people. I love it.

Love always,

Clara

liveblogging linguistics

We're talking about prefixes changing the syntactical identity of a word. Apparently it's unusual. Suffixes do it a lot.

Prof: Question in the back?

Benny: I thought of one. Game... and pregame.

It's true. One is a noun, one is a verb.

Isn't college fun?

Love always,

Clara

oh, life.

We're talking about South Korean cultural domination in eastern asia. And eye-opening surgeries. And how this isn't Westernization exactly.

(This is in Modern Culture and Media. Obviously)

Prof: So this eye surgery is a way of becoming more South Korean, the same way getting a boob job could be considered a way to become... more Californian... I love California. I had the best time there this summer, although I clearly didn't participate.

She is adorable.

In other news, my life is a JOKE. Literally one day after I had that nervous breakdown about my headphones breaking and being temporarily stuck with my crappy earbuds, my crappy earbuds are horribly mutilated by the elliptical and my carelessness.

THIS IS A PROBLEM.

I was really upset, but then I worked out with what was left of my earbuds, and the endorphins have me placated a little bit.

Still. Things seem to be conspiring against me.

Robert is taking the PSATs soon.

Robert

hehe, well my goal ideally would be to lay open some hideous truth, bankrupt collegeboard, and walk away with perfect marks and a MIT scoloarship
but thats not likely to happen
Me

THAT WOULD BE AWESOME
I hate the college board
i used to write them nasty letters
Robert
hehe
well i don't have anything against them
Clara
not yet you don't
Robert
its just my natural instinct to destroy large cooperations, and my general hatred for the world
well not really
i am rambling
i am relatively happy currently

That makes one of us.

That's a lie. I'm relatively happy as well, but I really do think that's just the endorphins.

Robert
as males do, i assumes the best possible option as a god given truth and so went about my life, thinkign of haggis, pussy and tea

... And, of course, Robert's excellent storytelling skills.

Love always,

Clara

songs to distract me from scarring korean films

So today for Modern Culture and Media, we watched a highly relevant and critically acclaimed Korean film called "Oldboy". Basically, people lose limbs and tongues and teeth and incest is everywhere, and I don't recommend it.

So instead of talking about that any further, I decided it would be worthwhile to wander around youtube and post songs I like, and some intermittent real conversations.

John: They were so cute. I basically stalked them.

Genevieve: I stalked a couple in high school too. It was an interracial couple.

John: Were you friends with them?

Genevieve: No.

Alex: Does it rain when it snows?

Genevieve: It doesn't rain. It snows.

Alex: OH! The rain IS the snow!

In the process of writing this blog post, my headphones broke. This is not okay!

I am so angry. I've only had these headphones for like, a year, and they were fairly expensive, and I loved them so much because they were blue and I felt so cool when I wore them, and now they only play sound in one ear, which gives me basically the biggest headache in the world. Thanks a lot, Urban Outfitters. Now I'm using crappy earbuds which fall apart all the time.

Before I was in college, I'd complain for a bit and I'd buy some new ones but now I have to think about my purchases. So I'm tempted to just stay with my crappy earbuds or buy other crappy headphones, but those will just break just as quickly. And I'll be angry again, and they won't even be as good to begin with. And there's no solution, because I wouldn't be able to afford legitimately nice ones. And mine looked cool, and let's be real for a moment- the hardcore audiophile quality headphones all look ridiculous, and not in the way that I tend to strive for. Fuck this. I need happy music even more now.

No luck. The bad mood persists.

Love always,

Clara

michelle needs genevieve

My roommate Genevieve just got a new phone, and it displays emails in essentially the same way it displays texts.

Witness this:

Obviously Michelle needs Genevieve's help with something. I had no idea they had such a personal relationship. Rock on.

Love always,

Clara

tricky undercover seasonally affected republicans

Thomas, on my economics woes:

Maybe it's run by Republicans.
Bad Republicans
Undercover.

That would be interesting.

I had a linguistics partay up in this hizzle tonight.

Me: Oh my god, post-classical greek!

John: Does that excite you?

Me: It warms my heart!

Me

Hey double checking - did you get three rules for #2?

Benny

Nope. 3.

Me

Three = 3 ?

John: Where's your sun lamp?

Me: Over here.

John: I might be seasonally affected.

Me: You're not going to be seasonally affected on october fourth.

John: It's getting worse as the days go on though!

Me: Oh, so the stem is more reliably found in the genitive and accusative. That makes sense. The nominative is tricky.

Benny: Yeah, the nominative is a tricky little bitch.

Obviously we're all really cool.

Love always,

Clara

peter pan owes me sixteen dollars

I saw The xx last night!

Naturally, because John and I are dysfunctional and Peter Pan is a douche and most strangers are friendly, it took us about three hours to get there (and we still didn't miss Intro!).

Allow me to explain/vent.

So John and I were supposed to take a 5:45 Peter Pan bus from Providence to Boston. It was supposed to get us to boston with plenty of time. I'll acknowledge that I did fall asleep in my room shortly before we were supposed to leave to get to the major providence bus stop, but we hauled ass and got to Kennedy Plaza at probably 5:42.

Which should have been great, but it turns out this bus leaves from Kennedy Plaza at 5:30, and leaves a different Providence area bus stop at 5:45. Peter Pan just decided that it would be better not to list the names of the stops on their tickets, and leave us to assume (with our impeccable utilization of Occam's Razor) that "Providence" means "That huge obvious bus terminal in central Providence". Which, of course, was incorrect.

John decided it would be a good idea to try to run to this other bus stop. That didn't work so well. We didn't even know where the other one was.

At this point we realized we had two options. Take a train, or take a taxi. I looked it up on my phone - train tickets seemed cheaper, and there was a train from Providence to Boston at 6:30, which would get us there around 7:30, when the show officially started. We wandered over to the train station and bought our tickets, annoyed by the situation in general, and sat down.

Oh, this whole time, I was carrying my dinner in a Ratty take out box. This is the point when I finally got to eat my goddamned grilled cheese.

So. It turns out our train is delayed by 25 minutes. At this point we'd googled it and established that The xx had two openers, so we were only a little worried. We saw people getting up and someone saying "this is the train to Boston," so we figured we were in business.

Not so much. Somehow we didn't realize that this was the commuter train? Although it essentially could not have been more obvious if it said "commuter" on the side? And didn't look like an amtrak train at all?

Luckily, we somehow got into a conversation with the guy sitting across from us, who filled us in to this glaringly obvious fact. At that point we saw our real train, for which we had tickets, pull into the station.

Me: Do you think that's it?

Guy: You want to make a run for it? I think you could make it.

Us: Let's go

I was literally pushing John into people trying to get off this train in an appropriately timely manner.

We sprinted.

And we made it! Finally! After that our transportation woes had basically ended, although the metro ticket machine in Boston gave John fifteen dollars worth in gold coins, which he seemed to think was a problem.

I like those.

Anyway, the concert was amazing, and taking the Peter Pan bus back was fairly uneventful.

Although it didn't fly.

Love always,

Clara

oh what a weekend

Sorry I've been absent. I've also been busy.

Yesterday Alex and I went to the mall. It was fantastic. The mall-people put makeup on us, which I loved. Apparently Alex's person was overzealous with the foundation, which didn't fly, but regardless the experience as a whole was a positive one.

We really shouldn't go shopping together. It's dangerous.

Now I'm in the ratty doing homework, trying to have everything finished by five.

Clearly that's going really well, seeing as I'm blogging.

Not my fault. N. Gregory Mankiw, former economic advisor to George W. Bush, author of my econ textbook, is evil and cruel and wants me to go through pages and pages of government reports to answer his (frankly, quite useless) questions about tax policy. If he wants me to analyze some data, he'd better provide me with the fucking data, not send me on a ridiculous wild goose chase.

I'd really rather not do that.

Also, what the hell is an economic advisor to dubya doing writing my econ textbook? I wouldn't say that the economics of 2000-2008 were the most successful. Quite the opposite, actually. Are they trying to teach me how to run the economy into the ground?

Luckily, my professor is quick to point out any glaringly obvious conservative-propaganda-based blanket statements.

So I'm annoyed about econ right now. That's about it.

Love always,

Clara

varying degrees of trouble with english

I went to Jo's with Hannah and John tonight. We were talking about one of John's friends whose English language skills could probably be described as sub-par.

John: So her facebook status... this one time... was... "I have so many shits in my head!"

Hannah and I: *death by laughter*

Me: All my friends, in America at least, are pretty good at english. But this one time my friend Sam facebookchatted me, and he was like, "don't you hate it when people don't use the subjunctive where they're supposed to?" and I was like "oh yeah, are you stalking Natasha too?"

Same concept, but not nearly as funny. Natasha had said something like "I wish it was the weekend."

By the way, can we talk for one moment about the term "sub-par"? Because the most common field in which to hear the term "par" used is golf, and when you're playing golf, being below the par (i.e. sub-par) is actually better. So why does "sub-par" mean bad? Why doesn't "super-par" mean bad?

I guess people are so used to "super" meaning "AWESOME! SUPERHEROES!" to think of "super par" as anything other than "exceptionally average"

Love always,

Clara

tswift, freud, and new songs

I've been meaning to download some more Mates of State (and what little Oh Land I can find. Apparently her new EP comes out next month, so I'm way ahead of the curve. What else is new?)

Anyway, just buying a few new songs is not how I work. So here's the lastest batch.

Apologies - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

Rambling Man - Laura Marling

The Box - Johnny Flynn

Brown Trout Blues - Johnny Flynn

Inni mer syngur vitleysingur - Sigur Ros

Infinity - The xx

Sun of a Gun - Oh Land

True Love Will Find You In the End - Mates of State

My Only Offer - Mates of State

In the process, I stumbled upon this music video. I'll be real here: it gave me chills [OMG! TAYLOR SWIFT! LOVE! BOYS! OMG!]. At the same time though, it's incredibly cheesy and sort of weirded me out.

And then I figured out why.

It's so freudian. Like, he would have a field day with Taylor. She lacks the love of her father, so she seeks a surrogate in a guy her age, and then has some sons.

Maybe I'm taking my MCM class too seriously. I've been seeing sexual imagery everywhere these days. Do y'all realize how phallic the SciLi is? Do you have any idea?

Maybe I'm just a freak. That's always an option.

Love always,

Clara

snap back to reality

I've been at college for a month, as of today.

Holy crap.

This seems like an apt time to think about impressions.

I was talking to David a while ago and he said something interesting. He'd just gotten to Princeton, and he said, "I guess I'd assumed that I'd show up to school, make a few great friends immediately, love all my classes, and never have any drama ever." It hadn't been the case.

Now, I won't say I made that assumption. Actually, before I got here, I was pretty sure (irrationally) that I wasn't going to find any friends at all.

So, neither of those assumptions were true. I've encountered dramas. Several times, mostly in my own head, which is the worst kind. I seem to have friends, and even Sam now understands what I meant when I said (around this time last year), "I'm not sure if I have friends, but I have good acquaintances who seem to enjoy my company, and I enjoy theirs as well".

And there have been times when I've wondered, "Why the hell am I taking Modern Culture and Media?" or nearly shouted at my econ section leader for not making sense.

Shit isn't necessarily easy, but it isn't horrible by any standard.

So reality is an interesting thing. My mom attributes this quote to Barack Obama: "Nothing is ever as good or as bad as you expect it to be" (Or something like that. I can't find it on the internet in less than 20 seconds, so it's not really worth investigating further). That pretty much describes it here.

That said, I'm exhausted right now, because Cameron decided it was necessary to come over and tell me my facebook status was irrelevant to him (no kidding), and obviously he can't handle me, so I had to handle that situation. Crazy kids these days.

... So I probably need to sleep or something.

Love always,

Clara

everything is gonna get lighter

Even if it never gets better!

Get Better - Mates of State

I just went to their concert. Talk about spur of the moment. Hannah M got sick and couldn't go, so John texted me and asked if I'd buy her ticket.

Um, obviously.

To be honest, I was probably the least-well-versed in Mates of State canon, among John, Benny, Leela, and myself. But Get Better was essentially the song that got me through this fall, and it holds a special place in my musical consciousness.

The opener was really cool too. Nanna Øland (known as Oh Land) had been a ballerina, but an injury sort of killed that plan, so she went into music instead. She's from Copenhagen, and her mother was a great Dane.

This caused much amusement.

I have so much work to finish tomorrow morning though. Not looking forward to that. Not at all.

... Worth it.

Love always,

Clara

lazy sunday

The thing about Sundays is that I spent five hours working today. And I don't have that much to blog about.

I did sign up for the P.E. membership (Hey dad, you'll see that on your credit card, figure you wouldn't mind) so I could go to a spinning class with Alex. That was fun.

They do kickboxing on tuesday nights. I might try to pop over after my Modern Culture and Media screening. We shall see. I'd love to learn to kick ass.

Anyway, the point of this is that I really don't have much to say about today. Here are some pictures, because I'm lazy.

Um... yeah. Go sports!

Love always,

Clara

foooootballllll

This weekend is homecoming. Who knew?

To be fair, homecoming in college is very different from homecoming in high school. Here, there are classy-looking alumni all over the place, and no one cares what dress you're wearing, although they might be wondering why you're wearing a dress to begin with. We're yankees, and we don't do the sundresses-and-pearls-to-football-games thing.

Obviously.

Anyway, we had our homecoming football game tonight and I'd say it was pretty awesome. I ran around with some Jameson kids beforehand, but (rather rudely; I apologize) peaced out to see where John was sitting. His seats were better.

Getting there was an adventure though. He'd texted me that he was sitting in front of two shady characters with whom I'd had enough contact to recognize. So I was making my way across the stadium, and I see these two sitting down and assume that John is nearby. It was a fair assumption. So I'm looking around that area, and not seeing him at all, but I keep using these two guys as a reference point, so I'm basically staring at them, standing awkwardly in the aisle, and I know they see me, and they're likely wondering why I'm staring at them and typing furiously into my phone.

I imagine I looked creepy as a mofo.

So finally I see John somewhere else entirely and make my way over there and I have to explain to him why these two people now think I'm a total freak.

Not that they didn't already, actually.

Whatever.

We beat Harvard though! And we had clever cheers! I like sports. I don't like playing sports, but I enjoy watching them. I feel like every time I try to play a sport, the sport tries to entice me... and then shuts me down. I've just been hurt too many times. I know to keep my distance.

I'm horribly cynical these days.

That's not entirely true. Neither is anything Alex tells you about little children. For the record.

Love always,

Clara

i just wanna dance

For the record, I totally understand international trade, so it was totally okay that I was on facebook chat during Economics this morning.

Cameron and I were discussing weekend plans.

Cameron
i wanna dance
Me
right now?
Cameron
nuh uh
lol
later tonight
Me
hahaha
Cameron
i wanna dance right now, but later tonight
lol
Me
i want to dance. in econ. right now.
econ always makes me want to dance
Cameron
that's wonderful
you should get up and do it
Me
i might dance on my way out
like ellen degeneres

Love always,

Clara

"you guys, i just had a vision"

So last night around nine, I decided to start doing my homework. At maybe 9:15, there was a knock on my door.

Behold, John White!

There goes any chance of doing work.

Elsewhere in the universe, someone had decided that it would be funny to put spare mattresses up against Ivy's door, which means my hallway now has some random mattresses lying around.

We took advantage of this.

Building a fort didn't work, so we eneded up just jumping on the mattresses for like, half an hour. Cardio!

I took lots of pictures.

Me: People are going to see these and be like, "How drunk were you?" and I'm going to be like "Oh, I was sober. That was a thursday."

Then John and Hannah and Genevieve and I sat on the floor for a bit, and I painted my nails, and we talked about Pretty Little Liars.

And then we went to Jo's. They have music playing at Jo's most of the time. Alejandro came on.

John: You guys, I just had a vision of us performing a dance routine to this song right here. We had professional backup dancers. Clara, they were lifting you and you had enigmatic looks on your face. Hannah and I were writhing on the floor... sexily.

Hannah: That was all happening in your head? Good. Let's keep it there.

I plan to have a more hollywood-movie type college experience this weekend, but it's all off to a good start.

Love always,

Clara

strange correspondence

I've been emailing with my parents. It's more efficient than calling.

They're both very strange people, and had very different reactions to the news that I had been ill.

Mom

I am glad you made the call on your throat- just make sure you get seen! Throat Coat is my fav. I used to drink it before the show (right after a big mug of Thinko Tea!) It gives you a sexy voice.

Dad

I am glad to hear you are healing. You are probably surrounded by more germs than at any time since St. Paul's [preschool]. The great Plague of 1918 (which killed your great-grandfather's wife and son, thank God, lest we not exist) was mostly spread by housing WWI soldiers in massive barracks, each sleeping 12 inches from the next guy. Whoosh, they carried it across the world.

No further comment. This says it all.

Love always,

Clara

don't you just hate that?

I went to Jo's with John and Hannah last night. We had a number of interesting conversations.

John got a salad. He made it himself.

Me: I can't do that. It's too much stress. I always get a pre-designed salad. If they put an ingredient in and I don't like it, I can blame them. But what if I design it, and I don't like it? It's all on me! What does that say about me... as a person?

Hannah: That's deep. Salads, man... Salads.

Hannah and I are probably the last two people on earth who haven't seen Inception. We're going to go see it at some point. We invited John to come along.

John: I didn't think it was that good. I mean, it was a good movie, but I'd give it like, four out of five stars. . . You know what I don't like? When they make the beginning of a movie intentionally confusing. It's like, rubbing it in your face that you don't know what's going on.

About fifteen minutes later, we were walking back having some conversation (that I can't remember), and, out of the blue--

John: Don't you hate it when old people fart?

Hannah and I: ... What?

John: That will make sense in the context of what I'm about to tell you...

Me: You're doing just what Inception did! You hypocrite!

I feel like my retelling of these conversations do not do them justice.

I hate it when funny things happen but you had to be there, because one of my favorite things is trying to convey these funny things to other people.

Damn.

Love always,

Clara

don't think that i'm pushing you away...

... when you're the one that I've held closest

-Crystallized, The XX

I just bought tickets to The XX in Boston on October 3rd. Also, cheap bus tickets to and from boston that night. John and I are making a concert trip.

This is happening.

And I am so excited.

It all started when I ran into John on the way back from the campus store. I had to buy tomato soup. (Or, I wanted to buy tomato soup, because it was too late to go to the ratty, and having some tomato soup on hand is always a good idea. Strictly speaking, it wasn't absolutely necessary.) He suggested that we discuss linguistics later. I agreed.

So about three hours later I stopped into his room with my laptop and we discussed consonant clusters and such.

Me: I had these as tense vowels in the high and mid tongue positions.

John: I think they're just regular tense vowels though.

Me: Oh, you're right! Sorry, I don't know why I'm so anal about tongue positions. I mean... What?

John and I: [hysterics]

Clearly he and I focus really well.

Anyway, we got on to talking about music, and we both love the XX, and they're playing in Boston, and tickets weren't too expensive, so we went ahead and bought some. The plan is to leave Providence around 6, get to Boston around 7, go to the show at 7:30, leave Boston at 11, and be back in Providence by 12 so that we can be in bed in time for class the next morning.

It's going to be epic. Between this and my journey to DC for the rally at the end of October, I'm developing quite an itinerary.

Me: I need to figure out cheap transportation to Princeton. I'm going down for the football game.

John: Who are they playing?

Me: ... Brown?

John: Oh! Do you know anything about our football team?

Me: Well, they play football... what else do I need to know? We're playing Harvard next weekend...

John: Oh yeah, my Harvard friend is coming down.

Me: Nice. I don't have any harvard friends. All my friends are far too interesting to go to Harvard.

John: Yeah, she's not very interesting...

I really need to make some tea and go to bed. Dan and Cameron aren't getting their kettle back any time soon. For real.

Love always,

Clara

life without speaking

I have laryngitis! This blog post will be the most communication I've done with the outside world all day!

Oh my god I feel so free!

Seriously, I haven't been able to speak all day. I was mostly fine yesterday (although my voice did sound a little weird) and I feel totally ok. I wasn't feeling well earlier in the week, but my voice was alright, and now I feel great, and my voice is gone?

I do not know what to make of this.

At the moment though, I'm making tea. Hannah gave me a couple bags of her Throat Coat, because she is an incredible human being, so that's brewing at the moment. It'll be my second cup of tea today.

I'm a mess.

I hate not being able to speak, too. It has been pointed out to me that I talk a lot. (It has also been pointed out to me that I tend to use needlessly long sentence constructions. Perhaps there is a connection?).

What am I if I can't communicate?

Web MD was utterly unhelpful. It basically said, "stop talking so much."

Thanks.

Well, I'm mute.

And I'm hating it.

So I'm going to watch TV or something and mope.

Love always,

Clara

clara beyer, gym rat

That's a gross overstatement. I'm that kid who does 45 minutes on the elliptical and nothing else.

But still.

I've been going to the gym, voluntarily, maybe twice a week. On a fairly regular basis.

And, more shocking, I've been enjoying it. I get excited. I've got a workout mix on my ipod.

Who am I? What has this new person done with the normal Clara that everyone had gotten used to?

I have a theory regarding this.

An interesting fact that I had not truly acknowledged is that in college, you're rarely alone. There are always people. So when I'm working out, although other people are in the room, I've got my headphones in and I'm in my own head. (Basically going to the gym is a better way to fulfill my antisocial desires than, for example, wandering around Keeney at two AM on a saturday night, singing songs to myself. That would be an example of "coping badly")

It sort of serves the same purpose as driving around with Zola. I actually plan to have some kind of commute when I enter the working world, because I need 20 minutes here and there to sit in my car or on the tram or something and just chill out.

I don't commute anywhere here (which is great) so I need some kind of designated-not-thinking-or-being-around-other-people-period.

Also, only some people will know what I mean by this, but I feel like I have a lot more energy lately. Not in terms of sleep - I'm definitely not getting enough of that - but in terms of like... vitality. Or something. I don't know.

The reason I bring all of this up is that I just got back from the gym, actually, and it was intense because my evil ipod decided to only play fast songs from my workout mix until like, the very end. I was sprinting like crazy.

So essentially, I'm all hyped up on brain chemicals. No complaints here.

Love always,

Clara

i am not a robot

Dan: I'm the most rational. I'm all logic. Binary. 1s and 0s. If someday you're thinking, "wow, Dan can do the Robot really well..."

Me: I know the secret.

Now all of you do too.

I feel like every time I try to go to the Blue Room to study and eat and get things done, life gets in the way, and I can't really complain, because I love life, but I also love being prepared for class

(Maybe that's an overstatement. More accurate would be that I don't love not being prepared for class).

(I also don't love staying up late to finish said work.)

Someone on the lower quad of Keeney was playing The Decemberists really loudly tonight. I'm a fan. If they were pumping techno on a thursday, I'd be annoyed. But super-loud-folk-music is perfect for a chill thursday evening, drinking peppermint tea and listening to the rain and not being sure whether you should close your window, because it's not like the rain is coming in that much.

Anyway, that's been my life these days.

Love always,

Clara

undecided

I'm mad conflicted at the moment. One part of me wants to go out, because this week is seriously dragging and there's definitely some kind of party happening (for heaven's sake, it's a wednesday. Of course there's a party happening.)

The other part of me feels lazy, overfilled with grilled cheese and soup, and probably sick. And that part of me wants to curl up in sweatpants and watch Law and Order and be in bed before midnight.

At the moment, I'm not sure which faction is going to win.

In the meantime, I've had a music downloading moment.

Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros

Animal Arithmetic - Jonsi

The Con - Tegan and Sara

Saturday - Rachael Cantu

Boy With a Coin - Iron & Wine

Without You - Junip

Two Wooden Spoons - This Is the Kit

In Every Direction - Junip

I feel like my music tastes have changed so much over the past couple years, and yet stayed the same in a lot of ways. When I first started this blog, I was just discovering Iron & Wine. Can you imagine?

Love always,

Clara

bewildering

I made the radical decision to take Intro to Modern Culture and Media Pass/Fail yesterday. Here's why:

"Or even when signs are studied from a social viewpoint, only the traits that attach language to the other social institutions -- those that are more or less voluntary -- are emphasized; as a result, the goal is by-passed and the specific characteristics of semiological systems in general and of language in particular are completely ignored."

Try to understand that sentence on first-read.

Anyone who can give me a summary in the comments gets... some trail mix. Because that's what I have in my dorm room.

Love always,

Clara

the bird is the word

So right now I'm excited because twitter used a Freelance Whales song in their new-format-unveil video.

Can I just talk about twitter for a second?

I am a little bit obsessed with it. The twitter app on my phone was broken for a little while back there, and it made me so sad. Let me tell you why-

1. Remembering things. A lot of times something funny happens, I tweet about it so that I remember to mention it on the blog later.
2. Communicating with my awesome twitter-buds. This is also useful when I have a twitter-based nervous breakdown and people who know me in real life ask whither my mind has gone.
3. Showcasing my brilliant iPhone photography. Ish.
4. Drunk tweets.
5. Stalking people on their own terms. On twitter, people are sort of asking to be stalked, but they're the ones feeding the information in, so I think it's okay.
6. A reminder that Justin Bieber is still relevant in many parts of the world. Actually wait, I'd rather not have that all over my home page, thanks.

Anyway. All of yall should join twitter. It's phenomenal.

Also, listen to Freelance Whales.

That's all for tonight. Maybe I'll give you more authoritarian demands tomorrow. We'll see.

Love always,

Clara

all over the place

I have been busy basically all day. I can never decide whether I love that feeling or hate it. It's like working out - exhausting while you're at it, but pretty awesome when you're done.

I'm basically done now. The only thing left on the agenda is to watch Gossip Girl, which isn't exactly the most stressful of my daily activities.

Let me recount this for you.

On monday and wednesday mornings, I have three classes in a row- 9 AM Economics, 10 AM Philosophy, and 11 AM Modern Culture and Media. Somehow last night it didn't fully occur to me that it was a sunday and that I should probably go to bed before 2 AM, so getting up was an adventure in itself. I decided that I absolutely without question needed coffee this morning.

Now, the coffee in the Ratty is questionable at best, and the Blue Room always has this ridiculous line, so I decided I would utilize an oft-forgotten resource: the Campus Market. I'd seen coffee maker machines there, so it seemed like a safe way to avoid the morning rush and still get my fix.

So I show up, and I'm the only one there, because literally no one goes to this place. And I'm in this weird brain-dead state, just blinking at the coffee machines, trying to figure out how to persuade them into giving me the caffeine that I so desperately need. And finally I just ask the guy at the desk how they work.

So he comes over, and blinks at them too, and says, "Oh, I guess they're not working right now."

At this point, I died.

So I stumble out of there with a Snapple tea (maybe there's some caffeine in there? I had too much pride to go for the 9AM red bull) and a little bag of Welch's fruit snacks. And I sit there for a moment vowing never to go back to this cursed market again, unless I really feel like buying a microwavable vegan burrito. Which might happen, actually.

Anyway, so then I had my three-class whirlwind, which was no more or less insane than usual. I wandered into the Ratty alone for lunch, which is inherently dangerous, but ran into this kid who I can only assume is in my unit, whose name I must have learned at some point. The problem is that we've hung out too much for me to ask his name now. Hopefully it will come to me, or I'll hear someone refer to him in the third person.

After lunch was my one break, during which I bought a couple posters for the room and finished my econ homework. Then I had econ section at 3, which I had expected to last an hour, but the TA seemed baffled by all of these faces looking at him expecting him to say something, so we all just handed in our homework and left after fifteen minutes of awkward silence.

Then another short break, then my unit had some kind of gathering including Meeting St. Cookies, so I had to check that out, but I also had to leave early because I was planning on going over to the Women's Center to phone-bank for Theresa Tanzi, who's running for State Representative in Rhode Island. I let it slip that I did my first phone banking when I was twelve. That's always a fun story to tell.

(It was 2003, I was in sixth grade, and Howard Dean was running for the Democratic nomination. Dad's idea of family time with the daughters often involved bringing us to work with him, but at least at the Dean headquarters I could make myself useful. The uncontested highlight was our Iowa caucus slumber party, which was also the first time I've ever stayed up all night. Dad was supposed to bring me home at some point, but I wanted to stay and Mom wasn't there to make me go home. We called people all night, adjusting our phone lists to the time zones. I called people in Hawaii. This has been a very long parenthetical.)

We had pizza there, and I learned about the Students for Choice group, which sounds pretty interesting. Then I had to peace out and get my mail and go to the Blog Daily Herald information session, because I'm a blogger at heart and need to take my inner monologue a little more public. That was a fun time, and now I'm back in my room blogging and trying to write an article for the BlogDH, and (un)surprisingly one is far easier than the other.

And in 24 minutes, Gossip Girl will be on.

Hell yes.

I'm going to sleep well tonight. That's all I have to say.

Love always,

Clara

it's for the u.s. census

Me: MCM readings make no sense.

Dan: MCM readings make few senses.

Me: No, they make no sense. Zero senses.

Dan: They make one or two senses.

Cameron: Like the census bureau?

I'm trying to do work in Dan and Cameron's room right now. Clearly that's going well, considering the fact that I'm blogging right now.

Someone somewhere is watching a bit of a documentary on the Antikythera Mechanism, a sort of ancient clock that is very clever.

Narrator: The Antikythera Mechanism would be an incredible discovery, even if it were less clever than it is.

This narrator thought that this is a very good joke.

Today has been slightly more productive than yesterday. My life still isn't sorted out, but it's looking sunnier.

Love always,

Clara

i shouldn't be so hard on myself.

Me: You are a better man than I

David: you are worse at being a man only bc you have lady parts, don't be so hard on yourself.

Sorry I've been M.I.A. for the past few days. College keeps you busy.

I'm not sure why they do that, actually.

Also, basically all I did yesterday was sleep and eat until about 8:30. So that wasn't much to blog about.

I've been listening to music and doing work and catching up on sleep and such. I took a bunch of pretty sweet pictures last night, so I'll throw those onto facebook later today I think, and if any are super-crazy-cool, I'll post them up here as well.

Last night was a weird sort of wild-goose-chase, looking for parties. We did find parties, but I kept getting restless and antsy and I couldn't stay still for too long, so I kept bouncing around to different places and driving myself crazy with wanderlust and discontent.

Not the ideal way to spend a Saturday night.

I wasn't in the right mood, I guess.

Now I'm texting David and doing work and trying to sort out my life.

We'll just see how that goes.

Love always,

Clara

first collegiate music binge

And I'm as all-over-the-place with my musical preferences as ever.

My recently acquired tunes:

Waitin' for a Superman (Flaming Lips cover) - Iron & Wine

King of Anything - Sara Bareilles

Suburban War - Arcade Fire

We Used to Wait - Arcade Fire

Faithfully (Journey cover) - Matt the Electrician

Hang With Me - Robyn

Bulletproof (La Roux cover) - Lou Barlow

Love is All - The Tallest Man on Earth

Go Do - Jonsi

Clearly David showed me 'King of Anything' like, months ago, but I only just now decided I want it in my music library. It reminds me of my encounters with family this summer. The general theme is "seriously, don't tell me what to do because it's really not your place, and that's just rude" which I think is a good theme for a song.

Also, I discovered this awesome blog that is all about covers (which is great, because I'm all about covers). It's called Cover Me and it's rocking my world. Note the abundance of covers above.

Unrelated sidenote: Today, in linguistics, I learned that, "anything can happen if you're drunk enough."

(Thanks, professor!)

Love always,

Clara

poor chuck...

Sam just directed me to a startling news article regarding Taylor Momsen.

Me
hahahahaha
holy shit
wtf
Sam
i know
crazy
Me
wild
Sam
i guess we know what happens to Chuck this season

Speaking of things found on the internet, you need to check out the new concept-y Arcade Fire music video. It is actually the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.

Click here to have your mind completely blown.

Love always,

Clara

what color is YOUR apple?

[Scene: David, Dylan, and myself are eating lunch in the vdub. David is eating a typical red apple. It has a slightly green tint on the inside.]

David: Why is my apple green?

Me: I don't know... why is any apple green?

Dylan: That apple is red, you moron.

We're all really smart at this school, by the way.

Love always,

Clara