blame it (on the alcohol). wurd

ummm...i totally don't get it. but jake gyllenhaal looks like hot sex.

happy bizarre friday.

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises

Well, this certainly makes it easy to stay abreast of political  developments.

I heartily thank the responsible parties.

PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.

We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate themPromise Kept, Compromise orPromise Broken.

The report card provides an up-to-the-minute tally of all the promises.

Trying to find a way to use this in my Side Project Show

I've liked this song for a long time, but I just decided to look up the video on a whim.

It's breathtaking.

This is the most beautiful post-breakup song I know.

Stars - Your ex lover is dead
by Cooperative-Music

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin 

You tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in 

And now you're outside me you see all the beauty 

Repent all your sin ...

There's one thing I have to say so I'll be brave 

You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave 

I'm not sorry I met you 

I'm not sorry it's over 

I'm not sorry there's nothing to save 

Subway Crushes--We've All Got 'Em

Now we know how to find 'em.

Subwaycrush.com

I'm pretty sure these are mostly about me.  So.

Thought for the Day

Philosopher Antonio Gramsci: 

The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions 

and without becoming disillusioned.

photo from Le Love

Good morning, Vietnam.

Every little girl wants to be a princess.

superpoop.com

GFY for today

So I'm just going to keep reposting things from Go Fug, because THEY FUNNY.
about Miley Cyrus:

She banters with Ryan Seacrest better than people twice her age, even if occasionally that banter is about how bummed she is that she got a hand-me-down Porsche for her birthday. (I mean, I hope she can also have her tight diamond shoes stretched so they don't give her blisters -- seriously, I've had the same Honda since I was 20, and I just found out the front undercarriage is being held together by a coat hanger. For real. I have no idea how it happened.)

... ANTICHRYSLER, anyone??!? ah, good times.

Something I read in Los Angeles

At the Museum of Jurassic Technology 

All of nature in its awful vastness and incomprehensible complexity is in the end interrelated - worlds within worlds within worlds: the seen and the unseen - the physical and the immaterial are all connected - each exerting influence on the next - bound, as it were, by chains of analogy - magnetic chains. Every decision, every action mirrors, ripples, reflects and echoes throughout the whole of creation. The world is indeed bound with secret knots.

--Valentine Worth

The Moo and Oink, y'all!

Oh, yeah.

This is happening.

ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO (aka, the Baddest Part of Town).

Christ on a Bike...

How perfect is this?

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!!

Meet the Fuggers

While I think we all appreciate the regular site content that Heather & Jessica contribute to Go Fug, have y'all read this??

http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/meetthefuggers/

Pretty hysterical. On many levels.

tgif mothafuckas!

and trip out to this!

Andrew Bird

My favorite song (so far) is here. Photos by Cameron Wittig.

mixtape challenge: shut up, I've been busy

Mixtape Challenge: Lauren

Ok, I came up with the following list based on what I'm listening to right now & what just randomly popped into my head (since most of my favorites were STOLEN by my ALLEGED FRIENDS). Here's what I got. (I would make it all pretty & formatted & insert album covers, but I'm at work & therefore gotta make it quick.)

1. "A Message" - Coldplay
This song is so sweet, great to sing, and it breaks my fuckin HEART when he wails "I looooove you, PLEEEASE come hooome!" at the end.

2. "My Love for You is Real" - Ryan Adams
This plays on Starbucks right now, and I hadn't previously heard it (he's so sneaky about letting you think you know all his music and then BAM, outta left field, he's put one out in some genre you didn't even know about, and it's The Greatest Thing You've Heard Since You Last Discovered One of His Albums). Anyway, if you can get over the recent Mandy Moore Engagement WTF-ness, you will fall in love with this song. Fave lyric: "It's river-long/ rock-strong/ true & wild as hell./ Honey now/ my love/ for you/ is real."
(Actually, the lyrics-look-up-sites are in dispute about the "true & wild as hell" part, but that's what I think he's saying and I love it.)

3. "Linger" - the Cranberries
Come on, I don't have to explain this. "You know I'm such a fool for you."

4. "Keep On Lovin You" - REO Speedwagon
This song makes me fist-pump harder than any other 80's ballad. I love it. I think my favorite line is "Instead you lay still in the grass/ all coiled up and hissin" because he uses the correct conjugation of "lie," which I don't even do. Props.

5. "Madly" - Tristan Prettyman *I had it misspelled earlier
This is another one I learned of through Starbucks, and it's really fun & catchy. Also, it's about knowing you should be over someone but not being able to let them go. Which I can relate to right now. (Shut up.) And my favorite thing about it is not a specific lyric, but the claps/rhythmic guitar pattern in the verses.

BAM!

new phrase alert! FML

Freaking fantastic.

fuckmylife

le sigh

Shout out

Being without her is hard, ya'll.
I'm trying not to die.

Chiming In

mixtape challenge: SMASHLEY





1. The Temptations: The Way You Do The Things You Do (1964)
I love this song and it always makes me happy. I remember this song at my aunt and uncle's wedding when I was 10 years old. This is exactly how you would want someone to think of you and hopefully spend time with them. It sounds like how good love should sound.
"well, you could've been anything that you wanted to
and i can tell, the way you do the things you do."

2. The Postal Service: Nothing Better (2003)
"will someone please call a surgeon, who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart."
Is there any more I need to say? This song is amazing.
Sidenote: used this song as a project in my choreography/improv dance class senior year. one of my favorite projects.


3. Bob Marley: Waiting in Vain (1977)
This is a tough one so I'll just spit it out. I started to fall in love with someone to this song. I remember the moment and the day and this song was playing. And now, it hurts to listen to. But other than the nausea that now accompanies this song, it's fantastic. I love Marley. So I better suck it up if I want to listen to him at all this summer.
"from the very first time I rest my eyes on you girl
my heart says follow through"
le sigh.

4. Justin Timberlake: LoveStoned/I Think She Knows Interlude (2006)
Well, Justin is my boyfriend of 10 years. We make sweet sweet love ALL the time.
This song is so sexy. It's like you're in a club surrounded by people and all of sudden, he notices you and wants you and then you dance together and get close. As Claud would say, "HOT." And then the song turns into the interlude and your out of the club and gettin' busy. UGH. I'm such a shameless ho.
I'm going to take a cold shower now.
"and now i walk around without a care.
she's got me hooked, it just ain't fair
i'm lovestoned and i could swear
that she knows. i think that she knows."

5. Iron and Wine: Such Great Heights (2006)
So poetic and cozy. And yes, this is technically a Postal Service song but this version is so lovely. It sounds like snuggling on a rainy day.
"and true, it may seem like a stretch, but

its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
head when you're away when I am missing you to death"

Runner-ups:

Coldplay: Yellow
Billie Holiday: All of me.
Cat Power: Sea of Love
The Beatles: I Will
311: Amber
The Rolling Stones: Under My Thumb


I'm going to puke now.
HAPPY SINGLES AWARENESS DAY!

Got your tape and it changed my mind

Mixtape Challenge: Chelsea






Okay, Claudia stole "A Case of You," but I bartered with her for this first one:

• Jeff Buckley "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" (1994)

This song breathes sex. The whole album is liquid love, but this song in particular just drives it home. The thing is, though, that the lyrics are also poignant and haunting. I know that word gets used a lot to describe Buckley, but come on, folks. I have to thank Claud for introducing me to this song during college. I know I've fallen asleep to it 1000 times.

It's never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder

It's never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her

It's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter

It's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever

• Jim Croce "Had to Say I Love You in a Song" (1974)
  

Any long-haired man or woman from the 70s with an acoustic guitar is always going to have a special place in my heart. I blame this on my parents. I've been listening to Jim Croce since the cradle, and this might not even be my favorite song of his, but it's just stunning in its simplicity and honesty. Here's a guy who can't get the words out to tell his beloved how he feels, so he wakes her up in the middle of the night to sing her a song he wrote. And it's A FORKING TRUE STORY!! Croce really wrote that song for his wife and woke her up with with it! And then it wasn't released until after he had died in that plane crash. Can you imagine being her? Jeezum. Anyway, it's perfect.

Every time the time was right all the words just came out wrong

So I'll have to say 'I love you' in a song.

• Frances Cabrel "Je t'aimais, je t'aime, je t'aimerai" (1995)
  

I think Andrew West is actually the one we can thank for putting this on a French CD he made for us after we all got back from Nova Scotia after my second summer at French camp, the summer I turned 17. The lyrics just make the heart ACHE, y'all. I know they're in French, but it's worth your time to look up a translation, believe me. The love story is epic! The title translates to "I have loved you, I love you, I will love you" (not "I love the door, I love the floor, I love you" as Jenny Byrd once believed). We all used to say we'd have this played at our weddings, but Claud's the only one of us who's actually had one of those and she totally fell down on the job.

Mais quoi que tu fasses / L'amour est partout ou tu regardes

Dans les moindres recoins de l'espace / Dans les moindre rêve où tu t'attardes

(But whatever you do / Love is everywhere you look)

(In the tiniest corner of space / In the smallest dream where you linger)

• The Counting Crows "Anna Begins" (1993)
  

I have loved me some Counting Crows since the 6th grade. I have to thank Katy Allgood, wherever she may be, for introducing me to them during a lip-syncing contest at her slumber party that year. And Lauren has a point that Adam Duritz is the sexiest ugly man alive. On a somber note, I have seen the Crows live twice, and they have never played this song. But it's everyone favorite! It's about falling in love way too fast, and realizing it's happening, and freaking out a whole lot, but staying in it because something in your brain says this. is. it. So thanks, Adam. Before I really knew about anything, you taught me about true love.

Every time she sneezes, I believe it's love

And oh Lord, I'm not ready for this kind of thing

• Billy Joel "She's Always a Woman" (1977)
  

This is, again, going back to my childhood years. My dad is a HUGE Billy Joel fan. It's hard to pick one Joel song about love that's better than the others, but I have always had a huge affinity for this one. It's kinda trite, it's kinda played out, but you know what, I still wish that someone could look at me with all my faults and all my insecurities and all my complex attributes and say, "Fuck it. I love her anyway." My best friend in high school, Gregory, used to play this on the piano and my heart would melt.

She can ruin your faith with her casual lies

And she only reveals what she wants you to see

She hides like a child

But she's always a woman to me

Runners up include

• "Elevator Love Letter" by Stars
  
• "You're the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me" by Ray LaMontagne
• "Feels Like Home" by Chantal Kreviazuk
• "Strangers in a Car" by Marc Cohn (which I put on EVERY SINGLE mix CD I made in high school and college. You girls remember that.)

(I cut a tape of my favorite songs...)

Mixtape Challenge: Claudia

via ableandgame

1. A Case of You - Joni Mitchell (1974)

The best version (in my opinion) is off of Miles of Aisles. I dare you to listen to this song and not feel something. Lauren first introduced me to this song (and all things Joni) our senior year of high school. This song in particular struck a chord with me due to its references to Canada (where we had just spent the summer) and my memory of a certain someone I met there. Now I just love it for what it is: one of the most achingly beautiful songs I know...
I remember the time that you told me, you said/ "Love is touching souls"/ Surely you touched mine/ Cause part of you pours out of me/In these lines from time to time

2. Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon (2008)

As the name suggests, it's hot and sexy. Hot as a fever, rattling bones/I could just taste it, taste it/If it's not forever, if it's just tonight/ It's still the greatest, the greatest/ You, your sex is on fire/Consumed with what's to transpire. Lead vocalist Caleb Followill puts it best, "there's always been an element of sex in our music, so I thought I'd just wrap it all up in one song..."

3. Let You Down - Dave Matthews Band (1996)

I know some of you are so over DMB, but you cannot deny this is a great song. To this day, it is my my all-time favorite of theirs. Both the lyrics and Dave's singing voice are playful and seductive: I have no lid upon my head, but if I did/ You could look inside and see what's on my mind/ Oh, it's you.

4. I'm on Fire - Bruce Springsteen (1984)

This song is almost as old as I am, but you can't argue with The Boss. Such a great ode to forbidden love (or lust.) Hey little girl is your daddy home/ Did he go away and leave you all alone/I got a bad desire/ Oh, I'm on fire/Tell me now baby is he good to you/ Can he do to you the things that I do?/I can take you higher/ Oh, I'm on fire

5. Under You - Better than Ezra (1998)

This song will always and forever remind me of college. I'm sure Chelsea, Lauren, and I drove around the lakes singing this at the top of our longs as we did with many, many songs. I love it because of the whole "love is all you need" vibe (And Ramen noodles at 4:30 in the morning/Where we barely could survive,/I was never more alive) and because of the way he lets her memory overtake him completely (Under you, I feel your blood flowing out slowly/Under you, let go completely feeling you take over me/Take over me.)


Runners up for the mixtape are: "Sway" by Bic Runga because it is such a "loving you from afar" ballad (I'm practicing your name so I can say it to your face...) and "Secret Smile" by Semisonic because of that whole "behind closed doors" vibe -- Nobody knows it, but you've got a secret smile, and you use it only for me...

Feel free to comment with your own suggestions and/or reasons why my picks rock/suck. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

The V-Day Mixtape Beat-Down

All right, ladies.

It's time to compose our first-ever High Fidelity-style mixtape.

This is in honor of Valentine's Day tomorrow.

You have 24 hours.

Challenge: Issued.

Guidelines:

1. Submit 5 love songs, any genre
   
2. Give the name of the song, name of the artist (preferred, not original), and year of recording (preferred, not original); do not use an artist more than once
   
3. Tell us your favorite line, the one that drives the point home
4. Give us a little background on when you fell in love with the song or why you think it's perfect
5. Tell us if you love this song because of or in spite of a particular person or time in your life

And DO NOT try to use any Jeff Buckley or Joni Mitchell, as Claud and I have already come to blows over these two artists.

Let's try to minimize the redundancies.

This will result in the greatest 20-song Valentine's Mixtape Ever!!!

And we can put this on the cover.

Looks like it's off to Borders at lunch

Beirut's new album is out!

And Very Short List describes it as: 

The Smiths Meet Mardi Gras

So, really, how can you go wrong?

"Led by the 23-year-old grandson of jazz great Eddie Condon, Beirut is known for its fusion of indie rock and Eastern European folk music. But the groups' new double EP flies off in two unexpected directions: Mexican funeral music and old-school synth-pop.

The first EP, March of the Zapotec, was inspired by Zach Condon’s 2008 trip to Oaxaca — it was recorded with a 19-piece brass ensemble from Teotitlan del Valle and sounds like a hazy night out on the town. Its companion,Holland, sounds like the retro-disco afterparty: Credited to Realpeople (a.k.a. Condon solo), it’s built around burbling synthesizers, along with the occasional accordion or trumpet. Condon’s swooping, swooning voice fits both settings perfectly and makes us wonder what the next stamp on his musical passport will be."

--Very Short List, 13 Feb 2009

Friday the 13th begins in disappointment.

Okay, when I saw this on my little brother's Facebook page, I got all excited.

Then I clicked over to the event and...well...it's still pretty cool.

Freeze the Quad

I thought it was going to be a bunch of people doing THE FREEZE. 

You know, the line dance.  Ronnie Millsap.

But it's more of a flash-mob thing.

So, it's not quite as cool as I had initially imagined.

It's going to be kinda like this, but in the LSU Quad...

(Sadly, I could not find a good video of people doing "The Freeze" on YouTube.)

Aw, BOLLOCKS!

Damn Everything.

Original posting

Go go gadget EVERYTHING!

This futuristic and oh-so-pretty 

Pomegranate NS08 phone 

can do it all!

No, really.

It can fix you a cup of coffee.

AND you can play it like a harmonica!

There's only one catch.  

Click on 'release date' on the website.  

*Le sigh*

Go see Coraline

Or, as I call it:

Shut Up, Kid, You're Not Bored.

(website)

It is art.

It is a fright.

It is a delightful way to spend some time in 3D.

I was looking for a book to read on my upcoming trip...

... I didn't buy this one, though it was on sale.

this is why you gots a fat ass

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

I like to think of saying this like the rap song, 

"This is why I'm hot."

"This is why I'm fat. This is why I'm fat. 

I'm fat cuz I eat. I'm fat cuz I eat. 

You skinny cuz you don't. 

You skinny cuz you don't."

Calling all captions!

i9.photobucket.com/albums/a66/viciousliar/70b60310.jpg

I'm singing in the, the major key

I love the song,

I love the dancing,

I love Pat Wolf's outfits,

and I love how the entire thing is just this side of crazytown.

So we can all be the Terminator

Geekologie Blog posted this item yesterday about a "Sixth Sense Device."

"The device...can turn any surface into a touch-screen for computing, controlled by simple hand gestures. The gadget can even take photographs if a user frames a scene with his or her hands, or project a watch face with the proper time on a wrist if the user makes a circle there with a finger. The device can recognize items on store shelves, retrieving and projecting information about products or even providing quick signals to let users know which choices suit their tastes."

Needless to say, I both fear and desire it.

Somehow, miraculously, these are sprouting...

Who'd a thought?

speaking truth and filled with joy

Chicago is thawing out. On our way to do some art. Coffee is love. Windows are down. Regina Spektor is on. 

"TRUTH ABOUT TO GO DOWN":

This is how it works You're young until you're not 

You love until you don't You try until you can't 

You laugh until you cry You cry until you laugh 

And everyone must breathe Until their dying breath 

No, this is how it works You peer inside yourself 

You take the things you like And try to love the things you took 

And then you take that love you made And stick it into some 

Someone else's heart Pumping someone else's blood 

And walking arm in arm You hope it don't get harmed 

But even if it does You'll just do it all again 

Fiona Apple Time.

"I've been a bad, bad girl."

Sick Truth

C'est Trop...

French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy:

"People always think that loyalty is laudable.  People are always saying that we must remain faithful to tradition, to family, to our class, to our ideas.  Of course not!  That would be equivalent to zero brain activity.  If you really want to think, to seek truth, to advance intellectually, you must turn your back on clichés, on preconceived ideas--even those belonging to your spiritual family.  For an intellectual, his true duty is not to fidelity, but to infidelity. 

...

What is the use of thinking if it is not to see what the world is trying so hard to hide from you?"

--from his interview with Olivier Zahm

Interview Magazine, November 2008 

Holy Crap, Flubber is Real.

As seen on the Geekologie Blog today...

Non-Newtonian fluid on a speaker.

Weird Science, indeed.

1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list

photo courtesy of Met Home (?)

Go here and let's just see who's got bragging rights.

movies do not count as books, people!

I've read 32 (and seen 42 as movies.)

Emo-mocking Quotes of the Day

From our own Lauren Michaud:

"I could just write a continuous blog about the activities that go down in the Emerson library.  This place is an awkward emo shit show."

Also...

From the Desk of Fuck You, Penguin:

"I (almost) respect the effort, but I don't care that your horns kind of match the tree, that emo haircut of yours is not botanical."

Continuing on the Unicorn Theme

OH MY GOD PEOPLE. RAINBOWS AND UNICORNS.

ON. DE. MAND.

Prepare to get nothing done for the rest of the day, for all the sparkly glitter ponies on your desktop.

My fave is the one who looks like he's majestically jump-surfing over a wave. It's like something off one of those shirts they sell in gas stations & gift shops "Out West" with the coyotes howling off a cliff into the moonlight. Which I only remember so vividly because my dad BOUGHT IT.

I'll stop now... Enjoy.

SERIOUSLY.  CLICK THAT BUTTON ABOVE.

(and refresh the page to get rid of 'em)

Who has HBO?? Who has it?

Seriously, I need a place to be watching this...

"Quirky French director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) teams up with HBO’s equally off-kilter series, The Flight of the Conchords,and the resulting episode — “Unnatural Love,” which airs February 15 — is pure, unadulterated pleasure.

The Conchords, of course, are a New Zealand folk band. But the love interest here is Australian, and that allows for endless, over-the-top Aussie jokes (expect plenty of references to the continent’s criminal past). As for Gondry, his distinctive, dreamlike touch turns both of the episode’s musical numbers into surreal showstoppers."

--From Very Short List, 6 Feb 09

ladies, let's not go to this place

WTF?! Seriously, ladies, let's keep the CRAZY in check, ok?!

One-night stand man wakes to find lover has carved her name into his arm

A drunken fling ended in disaster for a man who woke up to find his lover's name carved into his arm.
Dominique Fisher, 22, used a Stanley knife to write her name on Wayne Robinson's upper arm.
She inflicted the injuries on the 24-year-old at her home in Blackburn, Lancashire.

I am so happy right now. Even though my heart is bound by hot wires of regret.

ALLY

I met this guy once, this fellow I met, not really met, but, you know, "saw a lot of in a short span of time."  It's difficult to sort this part out, difficult and, now that I talk about it, a little...painful.  Saw a LOT of, like all of.  And he saw me.  All of...but the time was really short, I had to check out and get to a conference.... (long pause. She is frozen, lost) and he had to go to work... at a slaughterhouse.  Anyway... he wasn't right for me and I sure wasn't right for him... but we SAW A LOT OF EACH OTHER IN A VERY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME... Anyway... the part I wanted to say is how this guy was sitting across from me and smiling down at his hands and I could see that his face was frozen in this huge smile.  He kept looking down, and i watched for a while and I thought, God, I have made him really happy.  I didn't even have to touch him to make him so happy he smiled like that for a long time.  He smiled right through till it was time to go.  Then I noticed his eyes were really wet.  His eyes got really wet and started to drip.  He dripped into his hands like that right in front of me and I said: what is behind that smile?

from Fuckjoy, a play 

by Chicago playwright _______ Kelley

Part 2

omg times 5.


Watch Married To The Eiffel Tower [Part 2] View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

no words.

omg you guys. my eyes are bugging out of my head and my jaw is dropped.
wow.


Watch Married To The Eiffel Tower [Part 1] View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Please choose an interesting plotline

via http://blog.oneplusinfinity.com/?paged=2

A Great Quote from the Daily Routines Blog

Kingsley Amis

INTERVIEWER
Do you have a daily routine?

AMIS
Yes. I don’t get up very early. I linger over breakfast reading the papers, telling myself hypocritically that I’ve got to keep with what’s going on, but really staving off the dreadful time when I have to go to the typewriter. That’s probably about ten-thirty, still in pajamas and dressing gown. And the agreement I have with myself is that I can stop whenever I like and go and shave and so on. In practice, it’s not till about one or one-fifteen that I do that—I usually try and time it with some music on the radio. Then I emerge, and nicotine and alcohol are produced. I work on until about two or two-fifteen, have lunch, then if there’s urgency about, I have to write in the afternoon, which I really hate doing—I really dislike afternoons, whatever’s happening. But then the agreement is that it doesn’t matter how little gets done in the afternoon. And later on, with luck, a cup of tea turns up, and then it’s only a question of drinking more cups of tea until the bar opens at six o’clock and one can get into second gear. I go on until about eight-thirty and I always hate stopping. It’s not a question of being carried away by one’s creative afflatus, but saying, “Oh dear, next time I do this I shall be feeling tense again.”

--The Paris Review, Winter 1975