Unintelligible squealing

If I were ranking my imaginary girlfriends again, Kelly Clarkson would once again be at the top. I can't believe I almost kicked her off. She is the loveliest woman on the planet, and she sings, and I LOVE her. Last night, I watched the video for "My Life Would Suck Without You," which is just so...cute!

Oh my god, and then, internet, I actually wrote a review of the single for iTunes, just cuz. I don't write reviews of things! At least not anywhere other than here! It was an unintelligible bunch of baloney, but I really wanted to give the song five stars, and then they had this whole box for words, and I like words, so I wrote some. (Also, iTunes has a list of helpful suggestions for review writing, and one of them is "Take the time to copy edit your work so that you avoid embarrassing typos or grammatical errors." I LOVE YOU iTunes.)

Also, there's this brief part in the video where she's wearing a man shirt and boxers as, like, pjs, and oh man. So cute. I have to find her and pledge my love.

(I included both of these screen grabs cuz I couldn't decide which was better. Deal with it.)

I don't know. I can't take it. I love her so bad, and apparently her album is coming out on March 10 now instead of March 17, which, yay! But that's still too far away. I would like it now. And I would like iTunes to sell it with bonus tracks if you pre-order it like they did with the last one. Chip chop chip, iTunes.

I think I forgot how to write a blog post

Hello, internet, how are you? I haven't felt much like blogging lately. I've been very busy lately outgaying myself by watching all seven trillion episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, and gosh, Lucy Lawless is hot. And gosh, that show is gayer than I'd ever imagined. It was good times. But now that's done, and so what do I do with myself?

Well, internet, I am moving. My best boy Mike and I finally got our act together and leased an apartment. We move in on Saturday. I cannot effing wait. As nice as it is to live rent-free in my mother's basement, I am so sick of living with my brothers. They are giant pains. Also, I am sick of living in my mother's basement, just on principle. I'm twenty-four, and I'm employed. Time to bail. Apartments aren't cheap in this stupid area, but Mike and I found a good one we can afford. It's huge, too, and I have my own half of a bathroom! So sensitive Mike won't have to deal with the horrors of feminine hygiene.

Also, I bought a Wii as a housewarming gift to us, and soon we will purchase the Rock Band version of Guitar Hero. (World Tour or something? Whatever.) And then there will be a lot of bad fake instrument playing and off-key wailing in our house. The cats! They will love it! And the neighbors as well, I'm sure. Our next purchase, hopefully, will be a new widescreen tv, and then I will finally realize my dream of owning an Apple TV. Oh, joys. Then I won't need my DVDs at all! Anyone wanna buy some DVDs?

Several of our friends have already informed us that they will be hanging out at our swinging new bachelor pad all the time, and I, though I quite enjoy my privacy, am thrilled. I love having the hangout house. I did junior year of college, when four of us lived in a giant six-person suite, and now it will be happening again. We have a lot of second-hand furniture from our families, so there will be couches to sleep on and everything! So come on over, internet. Mike and I know how to party.

I read an article, then forgot where it came from

Okay, so I'd heard vaguely of this "iPod concierge" service before, like, a year or two after the iPod was first introduced, and basically some nerd offers to fill up your iPod for you, either importing your CD collection or just going to town on the iTunes store with a list or selecting songs herself based on any preferences you may have. I was like, "Oh please, who on earth would bother paying for that?" Because I was as yet mostly unaware of how little extra rich people care for money. Also, I just could not understand why anyone wouldn't want to do this for himself.

Anyway, I totally want that job, but here's the thing. I would do it for free. Yes. I love messing with iTunes and iPods and organizing music libraries and even the mostly tedious process of importing CDs so much that I would volunteer to load up people's iPods for them. I could also do DVDs, but that would take a lot of extra time. So, you know, if anyone out there wants help with iPods/iTunes at no cost email me. Seriously, you'll be doing me a favor.

Nerdier by the hour

So a friend of mine who is still in school (suckah!) is taking a Shakespeare class this semester, and this has caused me to think about Shakespeare things. I did a tally, and I have read 22 out of 38 plays, which sounds impressive at first glance (if you're into that sort of thing, anyway), but it's really only a little more than half of them. Now I must read the rest. Clearly.

Secondly, I was thinking about all the ways Shakespeare shows up in modern works. For one, NBC did a TV version of The Tempest some time ago, when Katherine Heigl was turning me gay--she was Miranda. And it took place in the Louisiana bayou during (or just after) the American Civil War, and like, it was terrible. I can't remember if I've seen a recorded staging of The Tempest. Stephen had us watch recorded stagings of some of the plays we read in class, but they were usually so dull that I turned them off after the first act.

For two, in the fourth pants book, Carmen gets a part in some theater company's summer production of The Winter's Tale--she's Perdita, in fact, and she has this strange flirtation with some mildly famous British actor who is also in the cast, but he's, like, older than she is, and he's allegedly playing Mamillius, but, uh, Mamillius dies when he's, like, five, from grief because he thinks his mother is dead, and he has about two lines. I hate that! When the author apparently just looked a list of parts in the play and picked one. In the pants movie, this fellow plays Florizel, who is Perdita's love interest, which, for Christ's sake, makes so much more sense. At least whoever was in charge of the movie was familiar with Shakespeare. Ugh.

Uh, okay, that's it, I guess. Viva Shakespeare! And down with Ann Brashares!

Alarming!

I have a question, people of the internet. I know no one who regularly or semi-regularly reads this blog will be able to answer my question or know what I am talking about, but maybe a googler or two could offer some insight. Some day. At the very least, I must express my displeasure.

Okay. In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, why oh why is Ojo covered with a Klan robe when he is taken to prison? "the soldier put upon the boy the jeweled handcuffs and white prisoner's robe with the peaked top and holes for the eyes." Like, what? What??? WHAT.

This is disturbing. All the kid did was pick a six-leaf clover, and now he's got to wander around the Emerald City like a Klan member? What does that mean?

Also, I know I'm a completist, and there are, like, twelve of these Oz books left, but oh my god, they suck. I'm totally throwing in the towel after I finish this one.

(Still better than Twilight, though!)

Here are today's top stories

image snagged from Full Metal Democrat

I know I'm probably the last lesbian in America (in the world?) to jump on the Rachel Maddow bandwagon, but that's because I can't watch cable news shows. Even hosted by someone I probably totally agree with. But I've seen enough of her to know that she's super extra smart, articulate, and totally adorable, in an "if Harry Potter were a lesbian" kind of way. (Uh, that's a good thing, really.) Anyway, the reason I am writing about her today is because I watched her appearance on The Daily Show, and I have discovered my favorite thing about her is not that she's a super genius or that she's a big lesbo with her own news show or even that she wears glasses. It is how hard she laughs at Jon Stewart. Like, he is funny, obviously, but she just lets go a number of times in this interview, like what he said is the funniest thing she's ever heard in her life. That is so endearing. And he obviously admires and respects her, and as fun as it is to watch him totally tear those he disagrees with apart, I love watching him talk to someone who's on the same side of the political spectrum as he is. I don't like political debating--it gives me hives to watch people fight, even in a civilized manner. In fact, uncivilized fighting is much more easier to stomach, because then there's always at least a small chance that someone's weave is gonna get ripped off! And that is nothing less than pure entertainment. No, I like it best when it's two liberals lightly ripping on conservative bigots. I know that's immature and biased, but I don't know how to let somehow have a differing opinion on important issues without wanting to hurl. I'm working on it, and in fact one of my very best friends in the whole world and I agree on almost nothing politically, but it still makes me crazy when I think about it too deeply.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Rachel Maddow

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Anyway, Rachel Maddow is adorable, and the way she laughs at Jon Stewart is utterly charming. I should really watch The Daily Show when it airs.

However! She doesn't own a tv! She claims she watches the good ol' Daily Show "on the online machine" (heeeeee), but is that for truth? At least she said she didn't own a tv without sounding like one of those snobs who think popular entertainment is beneath them. That's the other thing! This woman is so smart and so well-informed, but she's never come across as condescending. That's, uh, a minor miracle.

Okay. I am fully and utterly smitten starting right at this moment.

Soap box! (sorry)

I know people feel the need to be overly cautious about air travel safety these days, but if a white family were talking which were the safest seats on an airplane do you think anyone would have said anything to an airline employee?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE5012XV20090102

Seriously, that is an entirely innocuous discussion. And if they were actually planning on hi-jacking the plane, I imagine travel safety would not be their concern. I guess the one good thing is that the FBI handled the situation well, according to the family they interrogated, and the agents even spoke to the airline on the family's behalf to get them on another flight. Why the airline refused is a freaking mystery, but whatever. The thing is that I'm pretty fucking certain the only reason this happened in the first place was because this family was Muslim.

And, like Margaret Cho said, suspecting people of terrorism because they look like the people behind the 9/11 attacks is like arresting Emmanuel Lewis because Gary Coleman punched that woman. Wise up, America.