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