the kids are alright

Okay! I have something to add to my band daydream of the other day.  I knew what I wanted to do with myself - now I know how I want myself to look, too.  I'll be a complete person before you know it.

I have been listening to an awful lot of the Who lately (I've sung la-la-la-la-la-la lies - just that bit of the song - about eight hundred times today), and then there was this editorial in vogue, and I've wanted a Vespa for forever (though mom says, "I couldn't convince my dad and you can't convince me.  We both scraped too many motorcyclists off the side of the road.") - so I have decided to become sort of a mod.
It's the exact sort of clothes I like, and I'd get to have a scooter and be scornful of people who get drunk.  It's perfect.

I just want to look like that.  That's all.

The only possible problems I can forsee are:
1. I do not have the figure for A-line or boxy clothes, and I'm not likely to get it anytime soon.
2. I do not plan to engage in the whole "recreational amphetamine use" thing.  I need sleep.  I'm trying to think up a way of changing that line from Captain America (which I have seen twice and enjoyed thoroughly both times - have I mentioned that?), "a weak man knows the value of strength" into something to do with insomniacs appreciating sleep, but I can't.  I'm too tired.  Har har, what a bad joke.
3. I don't want to get into fights or be an existentialist.

But otherwise I think it will be fantastic. It's quite convenient that The Who is sort of a mods band, because I have the feeling that I'm about to go slightly mad for them.
It's like the time when I got my ukulele.  All of a sudden, ukuleles were all over the place - in a magazine article, on youtube, at church, at school - and I took it as a sort of collective sign.   This time I bought The Who's first album, and was googling Vespas, and then I got the September Vogue and - pow! - there was a whole editorial on mods called "My Generation".   It all adds up.

I'm sure there's some Ben Franklin quote that would just be a killer post title for this.

When I someday make my thunderous slide into financial ruin, I will at least have things to read and listen to on the way down.  And I won't have to blame something vague and confusing like the stock market. (Which hopefully means that I will never have to learn anything about the stock market.  The only reason I would do so is if I wanted to complain to people about how it did me wrong.)  I'll just point a long, bony finger to the bookcase and the ipod and the whole story will be told.  I am the most gluttonous book and music buyer I have ever met.   I never want to find out how much money I have spent on music downloads.  Never, never, never.  Knowing without a shadow of a doubt that I could have had a car instead would make me feel too guilty.  I like my happy ignorance.

I don't know why I feel more guilty about buying music than I do about buying books.  If the books and music I own were sort of graphed together, it would clearly show that the music has got more use.  I guess I feel less guilty because books can theoretically make me smarter.  The music I listen to can only boost my self-esteem a bit, give me tinnitus and make my brain cells burst in tiny, multi-colored explosions.  (According to Bill Bryson, you only get one lump of brain cells - and they don't get re-made or replaced.  So I really don't have any to spare for math.  I need all the cells I can get for other things.  It's vitally important.)

I would like to say that I am making a solemn vow to knot the purse strings and be frugal from now on.   No more five dollar amazon albums for you, Kelsey! Put down that paperback!  But the honest truth is, I don't feel particularly repentant. At all.  

Wait a moment, I thought I felt... No, not a bit. 

Now that I can practically smell my own room approaching (29 days to closing), I have decided to recommend a bit of prudence to myself.  Just suggested it.  You know, avoid buying tatty paperbacks of The Complete Works of Sophocles just because I know I ought to read it, and instead go for things I know I will read for sure.  Right now my bookcase gives off a much stronger aura of well-read girl than I actually deserve - I've bought stacks of learned looking paperbacks en masse at sales and never got around to reading them.  Shameful, but there it is. 

So, when I go to the library sale this weekend, I solemnly swear that I will not to grab every book I see, nor will I purchase any of the dubious "surprise" boxes that I know, deep down, will mostly contain murderously boring old textbooks.  I swear.  Or may I be chopped up and made into soup. 

I must impose some moderation.  Otherwise it's all going to end in some sort of turn on the body in the library theme. 

well, I don't like your tie.

I'm kind of insane for the Beatles right now. (If an imaginary reader gets the reference in the title, they win a prize! So! I offer lots of non-existant prizes to non-existant readers, don't I?)
Recently, I've found myself listening to them more and more.  And playing them pitifully on my dear ukulele.  (By the way, in a recent issue of Time, they had an article about how a big ukulele renaissance is taking place right now.  People are buying them in droves because it makes them feel good when they play. Also, it makes them super cool.  I am so ahead of the times! Har har! Bad pun!)
I'm reading this massive biography of the group by Bob Spitz. I feel like I'm going to get into one of my obsessive reading cycles.  A year or two ago I read every Audrey Hepburn biography in the San Diego County Library system.  Every one.  It was the same story every time, but I still read them all.  For a while, I also read books exclusively on parakeets.  My gosh, I'm insane or something.
But, anyways.
The Beatles are fantastic.  It's just weird.  How are they that great.  How?  I just don't get it.  Magic. What would today's music be like if we hadn't had them?
Sigh, sigh.  I'm wandering all over the place, and should probably delete all this.  Oh well.

In other news, mom went out and measured the thickness of the snow outside.  Six inches.  This is our third batch of snow.  I'm beginning to feel suspicious of all the people who told us it snowed only one day here -"Barely enough to whiten the ground! Ha-ha!"  Those people also said the summers only got into the 90's.  I'm probably exaggerating, but I think we had a month of days over 100 degrees.  I'm not complaining (hey, I got three days of work and school this week - I'm not complaining AT ALL), just pointing out the discrepancies here.

So, how did I spend this snow day?  Not going outside, that's for sure!
No, I spent the day becoming painfully aware of how unmusical I am.  I decided, all fired up from this Beatlemania thing I'm going through, to write a song.   Here's how the day panned out:

Writing easy, almost asinine lyrics ("you" rhymed with "do" at least twice, etc.): 1 hour
Figuring out chords: 4 hours (no joke.)
Recording: 2 hours
Total: 7 hours, for one idiotic song.

I don't think I'm going to be the next Lennon-McCartney.
But, hey, I enjoyed myself.  And I've got a pathetic little song to show for the day.

That's all that's going on with me at the moment.  I'm doing good.

Goodnight, dear void.

Wrock it!

I have a lot of regrets.

Loosing my vast CD collection on an airplane, never becoming a sports person, cutting my hair - the list goes on and on. But the biggest regret I have, at the moment, is this list-topping bit of woe:

That I missed out on Harry Potter and The Hype of Hogwarts when it raged in its full glory. (I made up that title, by the way.)

I didn't really care about it all when the books were new. Now, I sincerely wish I had.

On a recommendation from a couple of friends, I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I was hooked, and, weirdly, I can't explain why. I thought the book would be silly and - I don't know - thin. Childish. But I found myself rooting for characters, and soon realized that I would have to read all of the other books as well. My family went away for about four weeks in June, and I spent that month reading and watching all the Harry Potter stories. I wanted to have read all the books, and seen all the movies by the time the Half-Blood Prince film came out. I went to the library at least three times a week, and spent many a night huddled under the cover, reading until the wee hours of the morning. I could not put the books down.

It's hard to describe the pull those books have. There are a thousand reasons why they are so intoxicatingly interesting. The story is enthralling. I want to go to Hogwarts. I want to wear ties and sweaters, have an accent, fly on a Firebolt, visit the Burrow - all of it. It's every kid's dream world. If I could mix it (minus, you know, bad things) and Narnia into one world...oh my poor heart would burst.

But I so, so regret not having read the books when there were still books to come out. I feel like an outsider. I want to be a part of the Potter world in it's true glory days - not read about it. Waiting for the movies is not the same. At all.

I'm coming cross all bitter in this post - and I intended to be happy!

The happy thing is (and this shows how truly dull my life is) I splurged on some itunes the other night, and bought five fabulous wizard rock - or wrock - songs. When you have no source of income, five songs is a big deal. Wrock is a whole new genre entirely devoted to Harry Potter. The songs, bands, everything is Harry.  I mean, it's awesome. Unabashed geekiness.

The Remis Lupins are a favorite - I quite enjoy "Alone on Valentines' Day" and "For all the Hufflepuffs". "The Last Word of the Book Wasn't Ska" by The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office is also rather catchy.

Yep, I'm obsessed...

I had a dream last night (and if you, reader, were talking to me face to face, you would interject and tell me about the funny dream you had last night. That's the way of the world) that I was standing in a pew in some church, and a guy was onstage playing ukulele and we were all singing along. The weird thing was, they weren't church songs. It was a nice little medley of Beatles songs. I remember thinking, "Oh, the Beatles in church? Huh." as I sang away.  "Hey Jude"sounded very nice when the whole congregation belted the "naaaa na na nanana na" bit together. And, somehow, it sounded like a hymn.  It was a good dream.

Okay, I absolutely do not agree with the message behind John Lennon's "Imagine", but I must say, just from a music standpoint, it is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. And so easy to get stuck in your head. I sang/hummed that song all the way home on a particularly trying road trip recently, and my dear mum was about ready to kill me. Sort of negated the whole peace thing.

Poor Mama. I do tend to sing a lot, I suppose. She often has to say things like, "Okay, stop while I'm talking to you" and "You need to pay attention to the road, dear. No, like, hand-motions while driving, okay?"