2009/2010

It’s New Year’s Eve and all over the Internet people are posting their regrets for the past year an their resolutions and hopes for the new year. People are examining what kind of people they were last year and what kind of a person they would like to be next year.

I’ve never given this whole new year celebration a great rap. This year I’m ringing it in my family, ginger ale, and what could possibly be Staph infection on my back*. Last year I was at, quite possibly, the dorkiest party in Tennessee.

Said party was held for all the marching band students that came to play at the half game show during the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. It was sort of like a Homecoming dance, except the same twenty songs were played back-to-back** and the lights were a lot cooler. It was pretty uneventful.

Despite its slightly lame beginnings, 2009 was kind of a red letter year for me. Sure, a lot of crappy things happened, but a lot of good things happened too. And I’m sure that’s how next year will be. Slightly good and slightly bad. Because that’s how everything is.

Obviously I’m having some problems. So here are some lists.

Things I did in 2009:

1. Turned sixteen.
2. Started a journal.
3. Kissed a boy at the Renaissance Festival.
4. Got my learner’s permit.
5. Lost my learner’s permit.
6. Paid to get my learner’s permit replaced.
7. Got a new piano teacher.
8. Ran.
9. Went to Cedar Point.
10. Visited my dream school.
11. Learned about zombies in preparation for any future zombie invasions.
12. Thought that my friend’s “Michael Jackson is dead” text was a joke.
13. Discovered my love of penguins.
14. Saw No Doubt in concert.
15. Almost failed calculus***.
16. Was disappointed by the new Harry Potter movie.
17. Got my braces off.
18. Bought a pair of giant sunglasses.
19. Saw a flamingo poop.
20. Cried during Where The Wild Things Are, but thought the movie wasn’t that great.
21. Watched Superbad with my parents.
22. Learned that I was scary.

Things I Didn’t Do in 2009:

1. Dye my hair.
2. Get my nose pierced.
3. Paint my room.
4. Read enough.
5. Completely fail calculus (technically).
6. Get my driver’s license.
7. Throw up.
8. Get a job.
9. Die.
10. Keep a plant alive for more than a year.

2009 Related Things (for me, anyway):

• Chipotle
• Penguins
• Ukuleles
• Haydn
• Braces
• Stephen Colbert
• No Doubt
• Simon & Garfunkle
• 500 Days of Summer
• 16 & Pregnant
• Glee
• Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
• I Love the New Millennium
• Angelica Pickles
• Half birthdays
• : – )
• David Foster Wallace
• Netflix
• The Donnas
• FML/MLIA/Texts From Last Night
• Snapple
• marching band
• boyfriend(s)
• Napoleon Dynamite
• Surprise parties
• Team Jumanji
• Starbucks coffee
• Sword swallower
• EHH/V-Nip/Blast-Ended Skank
• Mika
• Gap, the stylishness of
• fortune tellers
• ****
• RAT-G
• HTMK
• laptop
• lying
• Ratatouille
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Presidential Inauguration/Fighting with someone I barely know about the speech (and winning)

2010 Related Things (probably):

• Prom dress (specifically making the purchase of one using mostly change)
• Being yelled at for not taking a math class
• applying for colleges
• not getting into colleges
• hopefully getting into at least one
• AP Lit
• A specific English teacher I may or may not have a crush on.
• Maybe breaking a bone. That would be exciting.

Resolutions:

1. Run half of a marathon. I think that’s reasonable enough.
2. Write every single day. It doesn’t have to be a substantial amount, but enough.
3. Get my driver’s license.
4. Apply for a fancy-schmancy summer writing thing. (Part two: Don’t kill yourself when you get rejected.)
5. Buy a plant and keep it alive for a full year.

And with that, I leave you. Goodnight.

-Laura

PS- So, uh, happy new year. Am I the only one that thinks “2010″ looks kind of awkward?

Realization: I’m going to be seventeen really really soon. That’s a little…mind blowing.

*It’s probably not a Staph infection, but it’s definitely an infection of some sort. It’s not pleasant. This may account for how bitter I sound here, though probably not.

Also, according to the sounds coming from my stomach right now, I’m having some digestive problems. Awesome.

**If I remember correctly “Play That Funky Music” and Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” were played several times during the night.

***Though technically I’ll do this in 2010.

****I had orginally put “Being almost asked out while wearing my marching band uniform” but then I realized that that happened last year. Unfortunate. That’s a really good story.

Christmas.

Reader, I am not what you would call a “cook”. Just last month I screwed up making instant mashed potatoes from a box. The first time I made toast I cut the bread in half before I put it in the toaster, causing the pieces to get stuck and burnt.

But there is one thing I know, and that is what I am going to say to you now: proportions are important.

Too much mayonnaise ruins the sandwich. Too much sauce ruins the spaghetti. Too much salad dressing ruins the salad, etc.

Where I am going with this…I am not exactly sure. I think I was going to complain about the improper Lindoor truffles to Butterfinger bells in my stocking but then thought it sounded to ungrateful/douchebaggy. So. I’ll tell you what I got for Christmas.

1. Books

• Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
• Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
• The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer
• The NYT’s Guide to Essential Knowledge

2. CDs*

• Fall Be Kind- Animal Collective
• The Blue Album- Weezer
• Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo- Rivers Cuomo
• Grand- Matt & Kim

3. DVDs

• Ratatouille
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. Other

• Couple of dresses
• A clock necklace
• A sheep that sounds like Darth Vader

And some other stuff. Socks. I got socks with penguins on them. Wearing them RIGHT NOW.

So yeah. That was nice.

Hopefully I’ll have SURPRISES next month. Hopefully. Maybe. Can’t make any promises.

That’s all for now. Goodnight. Merry Christmas and stuff. If that’s what you do. Even if it’s not I hope you had a good day at least. Okay. Bye.

-Laura

*I’m always so nervous to put down what CDs I got for Christmas because I’m afraid someone is going to make fun of my music. So don’t. It will make me feel bad, and I know a lot of you would hate to do that**.

**That’s sarcasm

“Social Networking”

Reader, I am a simple human who does simple things. I wake up at noon, I check the Google homepage to see if there’s a different logo*, I browse the Facebook feed and the Twitter-sphere and the YouTubes. I log on to my email and immediately get bogged down by the thousands of college emails, shrug my shoulders and say “not worth it”, and go back on reminiscing on what a simple life I lead.

And I think it’s weird, that for all the “social networking” sites I’m on, I only interact with four, maybe five, people everyday.

So that leads me to my question: is it just me? How many people do you generally interact with each day?

That’s all.

-Laura

*I collect Google logos. Yes, I know that there’s probably an archive out there somewhere, but whatever. I’ve done it for the past year and it’s not stopping any time soon.

: )

Good evening.

I took a little sabbatical from blogging, but, as you can see, I have returned. So you can all breathe a sigh of relief. Laura Dean is back, bringing joy, self-degradation, and meaningless drivel into your life once more.

Let’s move on to the topics at hand.

So during my sabbatical, I found some pretty sweet blogs.

The first one I want to talk about is 1000 Awesome Things, which is exactly what it sounds like. It gives you an new awesome thing every day and a little explanation on why such thing is awesome. Yes, some are silly, like the awesomeness of the broccoflower*, but yesterday’s** was actually quite…I don’t want to use the word “poetic”, but I’m struggling to find a more appropriate adjective.

And I was thinking about it today while I was laying in my bed this afternoon, in some kind of half-asleep, half-awake state and I was thinking about a line that’s been in my head for quite some time, and then I was thinking about that, about how we’re all spinning…

But often I have these epiphanies and realize that it’s just a result of my addled brain, and that other people don’t see things the same way as I do. Meaning, not everyone makes an elaborate metaphor out of everything. Gosh, those crazy writer-types.

Next I want to point you in the direction of The Grammarphobia Blog. It’s written by the same people that wrote that grammar book Woe is I, if any of you are familiar with that. It is brilliant, especially if you’re an incredible grammar/linguistics dork like I am. It’s so good. I can’t even explain it.

The explanations are clear, the references are solid, the amount of information that you get on a single word is just…invaluable, really.

Moving on.

As I speak, The National Book Awards are happening. Award announcements don’t start until nine-fifteen (it’s eight-thirty right now), but right now they’re doing the whole dinner thing and there are presentations and oh my God I would give anything to be there right now.

This is probably another one of those things that only I will ever get, but can you imagine the amount of talent in that room right now? This is, like, a gigantic convergence of minds all talking to eachother and just existing at the same time and the same place. I can’t explain why I find this such a big deal to me. I’m just letting you guys know, there are a lot of smart people in one concentrated area at the moment. They’re probably not even discussing literature, though.

And that’s all I really have to say tonight. Goodnight.

-Laura

PS- I’ll be back tomorrow, don’t worry.

*A green cauliflower. Really, it’s just green on the outside. I was a little disappointed. It did make me wonder what the difference between cauliflower and broccoli was, besides the obvious.

I just Googled it. It’s not really that interesting. You can to, if you want to. Notice that when you start typing “What’s the difference between-” the first suggestion is “What’s the difference between peanut butter and jam?”. I can understand asking the difference between jelly and jam, but isn’t the difference between peanut butter and jam pretty obvious? Seriously, if you have to Google that, you shouldn’t be granted an Internet connection.

**Not yesterday’s. I wrote most of this a long time ago. Like, last week. I’m too lazy to fix anything. Really shows my dedication.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

(It’s two in the morning after a band competiton. I may regret writing some of this in twenty four hours. Bear with me.)

Part one: Being a teenager and being grown up.

I think the struggle (or one of them…if you can even call them “struggles”, whatever) with being a teenager is trying so hard to be mature and grown up. That’s how you end up with your grown up serious relationships, your grown up existential crisis, your grown up music, and your grown up haircut. You want so desperately to be seen as grown up that you just…overdo it.

And I think we’ve all heard our parents remember their teenage years, wanting to relive the experience. We all want what we can’t have.

Part two: NaNoWriMo

Finally figured out what I’m doing. It’s kind of the same thing I always write, but whatever. I’m doing it.

Really, I’m doing the same thing but in a totally different way.

This was a bad idea. I need sleep. I just wanted to put those thoughts out there.

Goodnight.

-Laura

Pandora

Poetry

1) And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day by Michael Blumenthal

I’m not particularly crazy about this poem. The first time I read it I thought it was pretty good and it just gets worse and worse as I read it. This is pretty much how I feel about all Michael Blumenthal poems, really. See: Light, At Thirty-Two. I mean, it’s pretty and everything but I feel like he’s just rambling and then going in and putting some line breaks in it.

I do like that one line though.

“Nothing
I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man
as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets

and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know
is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape
of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed

so easily.”

2) Crow’s Elephant Totem Song by Ted Hughes

Kind of a weird one, I know. There isn’t a particular line in this poem that I really like, but I do like all the descriptions. The “half-rotten stumps of amputations”, how they “vomit laughter”. That one especially is so good.

Weird, but I like it.

3) Mirror by Sylvia Plath

“I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.”

I love Sylvia Plath.

Admittedly, I’m not that attached to The Bell Jar. It’s not that it’s bad, it just didn’t really interest me as much as I thought it would. I love Sylvia Plath’s poetry though. It’s just so good. All the time.

4) Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Probably my favorite poem of all time, and I think it might be just because of that last stanza.

Poetry is awesome. Seriously.

That’s all. I’m done. I can’t think lately. Like, I can’t think about anything to write here. I’ve been writing like a mad person lately, but nothing I can put here yet. Mostly because it doesn’t exist in the digital world, but also because it’s not done. And I take a long time to finish things.

This was an effort to start doing this again. I feel like this is good for me. It’s like social interaction, but not like social interaction at all, so it gives me some kind of illusion of social interaction.

Anyway, like I said, I’m done.

Goodnight.

-Laura

A Few Words

On September 12, 2008, David Foster Wallace killed himself. Yesterday was the first anniversary of his suicide.

I didn’t know David Foster Wallace existed before he killed himself, so he’ll always be dead to me. I didn’t lose anything. But I have to wonder what I would’ve felt if I did know about him before he died. And honestly, I think I would feel the exact same as I do now.

Because I didn’t know him. Reading what someone’s written does not equate to knowing them. It’s still edited, and you’re still showing the parts of yourself that you want other people to see. Everything a person writes is written with the intention of someone else reading it.

So I don’t miss him. I can’t miss something I never had.

And because of this Infinite Summer thing, I get to watch this whole community of people miss and miss someone that they didn’t really know. You know he wrote a great book, and maybe those words changed your life. Then miss those words. Miss the words that no one will ever get to hear. Miss that feeling you got when you first read them. But don’t miss him. You can’t.

Goodnight.

-Laura

Things are better out here than they might seem.

I don’t have anything to say.

English Class

So recently I was in a car with some friends (I use the term lightly) because I was getting a ride home. One of these people said that they like their English teacher because “she understands that kids don’t like reading”.

There are multiple things wrong with this. (1) some kids like reading, i.e.: ME. (2) IT’S ENGLISH CLASS. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO READ.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I’m sorry I complain about this so much, and I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it, but I can’t help it. This is my biggest pet peeve.

I don’t like math class, but my math teachers don’t “understand that I don’t like homework”. They don’t do it for me. And if they did, everyone would think that’s ridiculous. So why is it somehow acceptable for English class? It’s part of your work. The teacher apparently reads out loud to the class and explains every stanza as she goes (it’s Beowulf). Yes, reading out loud is beneficial, but mostly to seven year olds.

It’s part of an English teacher’s job to teach you how to read properly, and reading out loud, practically spoon feeding them, is not going to help. The truth must come out: literature is a dying art. Go to any bookstore and see what people are reading, what’s being put up on the shelves, what’s venerated as being “good”. It’s not literature. People aren’t taking books seriously as they have in the past, and one could argue that it’s because of this crappy teaching.

I’m not targeting this particular teacher. I have another friend whose English teacher said that Animal Farm was about talking animals. It’s a travesty.

I just don’t see why people, high schoolers in particular, take math and science so seriously, but snub English. It’s important. Take away literature, and what are we left with? Words are the only ways in which we can communicate feeling*. Can you tell someone how much you love them through a parabola? Does emotion pour out of your balanced equation?

The answer is no. You can program any machine to figure out practically every math problem in the world, but no machine can understand Robert Frost**.

In math class, I can’t say that the teacher is thinking too much into the Pythagorean theorem or something, so why should you be able to say that an English teacher is thinking too much into Huckleberry Finn?

That’s all I have to say.

Goodnight.

-Laura

*Not entirely true, I know. They’re the only ways in which some people can communicate feeling.

**I told this to my brother and he responded with, “not yet”. I maintain the opinion that we SHOULD NOT do that. Hasn’t anyone read Isaac Asimov?