Blog, meet Charles Harper.  Like, the coolest guy ever.

School sort of stinks.  Maybe it will get better when we're not reading Plato, done with MLA quizzes and into the Revolutionary War.  I have doubts.

But drown thy sorrows in hot chocolate, music downloads and yogurt with granola, directionless youth. 

And also try to banish unhappiness by admiring clothes from American Apparel.

It didn't work.  Now I just feel sorry that I wear sweatshirts. 

I need to be a bit more cheerful to you, blog.  Not whine about boring things.  

YES!

I have some news, blog.

Did you catch that?  Once again I'd like to tell you, my dear blog (in a contrasting font, to make it even more exciting), that-

This afternoon.  And it's going to be perfect.  It's a cafe/bakery here in town that has regulars, cookies with flowers on them, and needs a gawky college student to smile and work a cash register between the hours of ten and two.  I start next week.
The reason I announced this so exuberantly, blog, is because this is technically the first job I have ever gotten where I didn't already have an in or knew the employer.  None of my relatives work there.  It was just me.  I am basically terrified, but very proud.

HOLY MOLY!

I have had, like, an awesome couple of days.  Wanna know why, blog?  Huh?  Do you?
1. Because Pomplamoose gets cooler by the second (that started happening yesterday, and the coolness has been increasing exponentially since then).
and
2. Because, via their website, Pomplamoose introduced me to Marc Johns.  I'm probably the only person on earth who didn't know about him (I tend to be the not-in-the-know person quite often) but I'm going to do some mad posting anyways.  Because how cool is this:

I mean... rad.

TEN THINGS I THINK YOU, MY DEAR BLOG, WOULD BE INTERESTED IN. I DON'T KNOW THAT, IF I WERE YOU AND YOU WERE ME, I WOULD BE INTERESTED, BUT THAT'S LIFE.

1.  I am slightly in love with Wade Johnston and Anthony Michael Hall (circa 1985) at the moment.  At least they're not dead.  Wade Johnston probably has a slight lead on Anthony Michael Hall.  Because he plays ukulele.  And is not twenty-two years older than me.

2. I have five Agatha Christie books left.  Five, heaven help me! Possibly four.  What the heck will I do when I've read them all?  I've re-read most of them already, so that's not a solution.  Read books  I haven't read already?  Expand my horizons?  Read books on the dumb list I've made?
Well, that's a stupid suggestion.

3. I would like to learn harmonica.

4. The only mildly illegal thing I think I have ever done is trespass.   One time, at about ten at night, the cat got out and I climbed into the neighbor's backyard to catch the bugger.   And I think I might have ridden in the back of someone's truck once.
But you know what?  I don't feel that I have not-lived because I've never done anything illegal.  I feel I've not lived because I've never been to England.  I'm quite content to abide the law.

5.  I wish I was prettier.  But there's really no point getting in a twist about it.

6.   Have you ever noticed that almost all female singers (I mean, like, people who make albums and go on tours and lead moderately successful musical lives) are good - but a huge percentage of popular male singers are not?  I wonder why bad-ness is okay with guys.  I suppose because it's just endearing.

7.  I don't like flip flops.  At all.  I know they're comfortable, but they just look silly.  On me, at least.  They rob me of the molecule of dignity I have.

8.  I am getting an English degree.  Did I probably already mention this?  It's just a strange thought.  ("major in YouTube."  That's a little quote by Wade Johnston, there.  Yeah.  Don't judge me.  I was on his channel for like half an hour today.  I love the YouTube people.   The whole little funny pack of them. Pomplamoose is on there, did you know that?  I bought one of their albums on itunes a month or so ago, and then today, wham-o! There they were singing songs with my best friend Wade!  How fun is that?  Isn't fun fun?)

9. I got two of my new textbooks the other day.  They are dull.  Why am I always disappointed, every semester, to learn this inevitable fact yet again?  Textbooks are boring, Kelsey.  They just are.  They will never not be.

10.  And, last and least, I would like to do something to my hair.  I am incapable of leaving it in it's natural state.  It is asking to be died, fried, chopped or in some other way destroyed.  Wa ha ha ha.

Okay, I already blabbed a bit about Amelie, but let's talk about it some more, okay blog?
As you may or many not remember blog, I saw it for the first time the other day (On June 25 at 8:33 PM and and 26 seconds) and since then I have watched it two more times.   After the third watch, at about three in the morning, I cut myself some short-ish bangs, even though I knew it would look terrible, to publicly display my adoration. Mostly, people have just asked if I'm feeling well.
I think I can almost call myself a fan at this point.
I love it. The color, the quirkiness - all of it.  It's a small story, really . In a lot of movies nowadays, the characters end up famous or rich, or they meet or work for or marry a famous/rich person, but Amelie is about a small circle of normal-ish people living their messy lives. 
I realized as I watched that my old room (pre-move) was almost entirely white. 

My bedding was white, the walls were white, everything was white white white.  All my (gulp, embarrassment) other blogs are white on white.  The apartment room I've got now is blah beige. I wear black and gray almost exclusively. 
Sure, white looks clean and black is nice.  But a little color isn't a bad thing, is it?  
And after watching the movie I felt very sorry that I don't do funny little things for people.
But hey! Gee whiz! I can make my life as colorful and quirky as I darn well feel like making it. And there's nothing you can do to stop me!  Wa ha ha! 
Let's make this post absurdly long, shall we? Because this is my blog and I can post if I want to (which sounds distressingly like the mix of a terrible pop song and me me me mindset) let's have a little Oh My Gosh How Fantastic party and swoon over some pictures. Let's talk about color, k?  'Cause it is like so totally like gorgeous! 
So, IMDB says that the color choices in the movie were inspired by the paintings of Juarez Machado. 

Which is pretty sweet, even if somebody just made it up. 

 

Even though she's a shy person, the colors are very bold - but it never feels like she's acting out of character wearing and decorating with them.  She just does what she likes.  I love that the art director or director or whoever made the choices didn't feel the need to dress her in drab, frumpy colors and then brighten them up as the story progresses.   Which, may I say right now, happens far too often in movies these days.

I guess it's the whole complimentary color thing, but the berries make it pop, don't they? And I've never seen such good casting - this kid is perfect.  It's so bothersome when kids cast as the younger version of  a character don't match the adults.  How is this movie so perfect?

The red room.  I've been googling (what a stupid word) and a ton of people have written blog posts about that red room.  (And about how they all cut their hair and started listing their likes and dislikes after they first saw the movie.)

And, my favorite:

My gosh.  I mean... gosh. 

So, there.  I've swooned yet again. I hope, blog, that you swooned too. 

Because self-centeredness is sooooooooo much fun! Lol!

 I've got a few things to whine about and then we can talk about happy things, okay blog?  Just so you know, this post will be one of unabashed narcissism.

1. I can't make this silly blog look nice and I am tired of fiddling.  Blah.

2. On the topic of blog design, I don't like the new template designer thingy.  It gives error messages all the time and is inconvenient. And I fear change.

3. I can't seem to get to bed before three these days.  What's the deal?

4.  I realized this afternoon that I don't like some of my facebook friends.  Which is terribly mean of me to say, but there it is.  And anyways I just made a rule that says I can be as mean as I want to on this blog.  So there.

Okay, that's all.  Here are some happy things.

1. Amelie.  I saw it for the first time the other day and then watched it again the next day.  And again the next day.  My gosh.

2.  Netflix.  What a terribly nice thing.  Last night, dad and I watched an episode from a lovely space documentary (How We Left Earth or something like that) on instant watch.  Rear Window came today.  On The Town (which was mildly awful but had Gene Kelly) and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Italian Job (also not the best movie ever, but certainly enjoyable.  I like heist movies.) recently went back to Netflix.  I imagine the housing place as a giant vault with bookshelves stacked with mix-matched shoe boxes of DVDs.   And guys in glasses who look like Mac from the Apple commercials bustling around chatting about the movies with one another as they send DVDs off to people. (I know it is killing traditional rental stores, but I don't feel particularly sorry for rental shops when they make me pay six bucks a movie.)

3.  Reading in the bathtub for hours and hours.  One of the many delights of summer vacation.

4.  Music.  Pomplamoose's Tribute to Famous People. Vampire Weekend.  The Beatles.  French singers in general. the soundtrack from An Education.  Sinatra and Bobby Darin and Michael whatever his name is.  Gosh, music is a wonderful thing.

5.  Sad, scary poetry.

6.  Reading books by people much, much smarter than me and then adopting their superior literary loneliness, even though I don't have the brains to be crushed by, like, Dostoevsky the way the writers are.  I can barely spell Dostoevsky.  But I enjoy walking around Super Walmart in a kind of huddled despair and wondering if I'm the only person with a soul. I bet I enjoy abandoning myself to the sorrows of these writers more than they did themselves when they actually had them.

7.  I've also enjoyed wondering if this move will become the Personal Tragedy That Fuels My Art. (Yes, in caps.) You know what I mean?  A good number of really great actors and painters and writers were either wacko or had parents who gave them drugs or something.  My theory has always been that if you want to be really great at something you either have to have talent or a personal tragedy.  You just can't make it if you're mediocre and like your parents.  I've always been sorry knowing I could never do anything great - my home life is ridiculously happy and I have no talent of any sort. (Scratch that.  I have one talent.  I can sing one or two lines from different Beatles songs one after another without pausing - like switching radio stations - for approximately nine minutes.  Although, some people I know do not call that a talent.)
 But, what have we here?  A recent and possibly scarring out-of-state move! If I play my cards right and cry a lot, this could be my tragedy.  How awesome is that?  Who cares if moving is actually not that bad - in interviews I could talk about the angst of it all and look troubled!  I've got a golden ticket, baby!