when I'm with you

hello



It took me forever to understand why everyone was so into Best Coast, but now i do, and I love this song.

It’s Monday and depressing as hell because I had the most perfect thanksgiving break I’ve ever had, and I slept so much. 12 hours a night. For this reason, I don’t suppose there’s an awful lot to report. I also wrote loads, caught up on Nanowrimo, which I pretty much cannot wait to end, listened to the yellow/green/blue Dear Hunter EPs a lot (all superior, astonishingly, to the black/red/orange record, which I loved). And I made a lot of english pancakes.

Was reminded on Thursday of both the good and bad aspects of being a non-Thanksgiving celebrator. First, like I’ve mentioned repeatedly, you feel isolated and everything’s all peaceful and strange. But you also realize that there’s kind of not a lot to do. I did go for a walk, it was very warm and I spent ages outside, which I haven’t got the chance to do in too long. Once that awful afternoon sluggishness goes away, it’s very very nice and I got to eat salmon and try to rewatch Dead Poets Society (I don’t know why—I don’t like it very much, but it’s just that sort of mood) while my dad sent electric drills through the front door for a good four hours. Yeah.

I didn’t go black Friday shopping. I never have, for all the reasons most people don’t go black Friday shopping, number one being oh my god all the people. All the crazy, manic people. And imagine being one of those few people who inevitably gets trampled to death during all of this? You just think you’re going out for a cheap iPad and that’s the last thing you do in your life? Morbid, slightly, but mostly just weird. At least, I didn’t go out shopping in the early hours of the morning. I did do so in the afternoon, I wanted to look at possible DVDs I could get for Christmas. I love watching movies on christmas day but at the moment I’m totally out of ideas. I’m not opposed to doing that teen Disney nostalgia thing where I ask for every single Disney movie I never watched or ‘got’ as I child, to be perfectly honest. But still, any other movie ideas are appreciated, if you’re willing to give any. I see pitifully few movies, so I’m basically up for anything. I feel stupidly obliged to watch some ‘classics’ more than anything else. If only I knew what those classics were. I rewatched Submarine a few days ago and anything similar would be appreciated. I went looking for the Submarine book a few days ago with no luck. Speaking of other movies, my favorite movie when I was about 8 was the musical version of Oliver Twist from the 60s. I was, uh, disappointed with how it shaped up now. I still really love a couple of the songs, but a great deal of it was very middle-of-the-road.

I was pretty miserable on Saturday, but I can't for the life of me remember why. One of those things. My dad made me go shopping for my mom’s birthday. He rushes through anything and I can never find anything good. It was fun in the evening, though. And the mall's just getting its Christmas vibes and everything seemed nice and warm. I got my mom a DVD. In the evening I watched Submarine (should start keeping track of how many times I do this) with some friends; it was their first time. For the most part, they seemed to like it. The following day I did all the homework I say I’d leave to do over the weekend, celebrated my mom’s birthday, and went shopping in the evening for candles with my mom, and drove around the town looking at christmas lights.

I’m still exhausted and today was nothing special, or good. I was given a book to read for English. It’s called A Lesson Before Dying, and it’s by Ernest Gaines. I don’t like very much so far. It sounds rather melodramatic, and I don’t find it very compelling to read. Shame. We also read a picture book, in pairs. I think my partner may hate me. The book was supposed to be about the dangers of conformity. It was called “The Bear That Wasn’t” and I didn’t know what to think. My teacher's a funny person. Have I mentioned she gives 20-minutes lectures on how she doesn’t talk much and wants to leave us to our own devices for most of the class? Yeah. Bio was awful, seeing as I feel asleep during a lecture and then had to participate in a group activity that involved blowing through a straw into a pink liquid which just happened to be an irritant. And the straw was about two inches long and I got the stuff all of me and, god, not pleasant. I also got the
highest grade on a math quiz and English quiz.

Two days of nanowrimo left and things are looking up. Also, I uploaded the Submarine soundtrack to my ipod, and it is perfect. Excuse the either frustratingly or refreshingly short post. I think I write too many lengthy posts here, but a couple of people have told me otherwise, god knows why. Anyway.

days off for thanksgiving are the best

Hi everyone



Once you get over the fact that this song is ballad-like and that the singer has the most whiny, nasally voice of all of the whiny, nasally singers in indie bands of this ilk, this song’s a nice one.

Guys, guys, guess what? It’s Wednesday and the week is over! At fucking last. Woke up today feeling very sick (5-6 hours of sleep for about a month or so, I would imagine is the main factor) even though I didn’t have much homework yesterday and basically sat around watching old Peep Show episodes for a few hours and eating food and not caring in the slightest.

I love thanksgiving. I don’t celebrate it, since I’m not American, but I love it. I don’t really know why my family don’t celebrate thanksgiving cause we see fireworks on the 4th of July and stuff. Bit complicated to get together, I suppose. And the rest of the family is a couple thousand miles away. The good thing about not celebrating thanksgiving is that it gives you much more free time. While everyone else is travelling and eating and being lazy and doing whatever it is people do on thanksgiving(ooh such a mystery to me), I get to stay in my house all day and eat and be lazy, but to a lesser extent I suppose to the thanksgiving-celebrators. Also a lot of people complain of crazy families at this time of year, same with christmas, which I don’t have. At all. Ever. My extended family’s so small, anyway. Additionally, no one in this family is particularly concerned about getting in the car at four in the morning the next day in order to buy half a dozen plasma screen TVs or whatever it is you crazy people do on black Friday. I’m really not sure. Is my foreignness showing too much? I’ll reel myself in. Point is, although it more or less works as the latter bookmark to the much-appreciated loveliness that is autumn, it’s still a holiday that really fascinates me, and I really enjoy this week even without celebrating it. Plus, I totally cannot wait to show my love for Christmas wholeheartedly without looking manic and weird. Much appreciated.

Naturally, not an awful lot’s happened this week. I’ve taken an English test and my now my teacher’s brought out her specialty: a crappy low-budget sap story with minimal relevance to anything we’re doing in class. Guys, it’s about overcoming adversity against all the odds. Try as I like, I cannot both watch this film and not be judgmental.

My algebra teacher has been out for some days now and the entire class has taken up their favorite in-class hobby again: mocking her. She’s...difficult to like, at least the way she presents herself in class. Also she does things like tell kids in class they have cute dogs, and then continue with “wasn’t there a dog in your car this morning?” when they act totally baffled. When they say that no, they do not have a dog, she continues with “oh. Guess I was looking in the wrong car this morning”.

Over the weekend I had to write a few paragraphs from the perspective of a holocaust survivor. We had to share them in class a couple of days ago. This...is not an activity that sits well with me, for some reason. Especially the inane ways in which sharing partners are decided. I don’t really know why it’s of such great importance that we should share with someone of the opposite gender. I would have chosen someone of the same gender, yes, but as we’re not editing I don’t see the big deal. Silly teachers and their silly teaching things. Oh, and we did a debate! The day when we were planning, news had broken that our much-hated interim principal is getting rid of coffee machines. God, I make this sound important. But still, that was all people seemed capable of talking about that day, as opposed to the validity of atomic bombings. (if this caffeine purge happens, how will the teachers react? At the moment they’re picketing in the mornings for better teaching conditions and stuff. I’m awaiting the day their slogan changes to “Contract & Coffee Now”). Ahhh aren’t I just painfully unfunny. Whatever, the debate was just catastrophically awful, although somehow our side managed to cobble together a winning argument. He did that thing where for five minutes only the quiet people can talk. And did I talk? Guess. He will never wear me down.

There are times, rather more frequently than most expect, where I’m basically fine with high school. I mean, if you ignore things like group presentations , early mornings, overcrowded cafeterias, and those knee-high socks all the jock guys wear, going there most days is fairly painless. However, one day a year I’m reminded of the existence of pep rallies. Certainly I’m always aware of pep rallies, it’s just easy to allow them not to feel real every other day of the year. And then you go to one and it’s as if when, at that point where you considered skipping the pep rally and you asked yourself ‘how bad can it be?”, that all the forces of darkness in the world combined their efforts to create the single most painful 90 minutes you’re sure to experience in a very long time. Is there a single person, cheerleaders and football players included, who feels any semblance of happiness from these things? I don’t know if this is customary for all high school pep rallies, but at our school there’s one crazy old lady in a clown costume who I’ve never seen anywhere else before going around shouting at people to plug in the fucking inflatable animals; she’s pretty into it. For everyone else, it’s another wasted period of time where the only things you can think about are about how unnecessarily loud the crappy school band are and how you really wished you’d just got the nerve to skip the damn thing. This year we even had pie-eating competitions and failed dance routines! Oh, it was a train wreck. I feel like when we warn incoming freshman against things like being scared and wearing their backpacks too high, we should mention pep rallies with similar warning. That or we let them suffer. I don’t mind.

Tonight I’m going to go to my friend’s house and watch American Horror Story. And, uh, that’s it. I look forward to sleeping a lot over the course of the next few days.

i want christmas already, dammit

I'm just such a holiday person. I was talking about Halloween last post, and then my mom dragged me along to this craft shop to find pumpkin carving things, and of course they already have decorations and tinsel and stuff out, and I just remembered Christmas is one of my favorite things in the world. This year, I'm gonna buy Surfjan Stevens' collection of Christmas EPs and also watch all the Christmas movies I never saw when I was younger. Also, the Snowman every day in December? Absolutely.

I think from now on, I'm just make my life easier and put a song in each post to segue with even less effort. Knock yourself out.




I forgot this song existed until about five hours ago when it came up on shuffle.

Today was a half day for reasons no one in the school district is entirely certain of. However, it's wonderful cause we get these once a month for the rest of the school year, give or take a month or so. All I had was an english quiz, average algebra, a 20th century video(which I thought was mildly interesting, but then my 20th century teacher thought it was horribly boring. not to be someone who shouts about their nerdiness to anyone who'll listen, but that says something), and average bio stuff. Then me and my friends hung around the school for a little while and walked downtown. The place was full of middle schoolers, also when we had pizza a random clump of other sophomores evolved outside. We also looked in a book store and CVS, and went to the library. It was a good way to spend that part of the day.

I'm not exactly sure what's going on around me a worrying amount of the time at the moment because I'm so tired. If I ever go to sleep the day before the day I'm supposed to next wake up in, it's considered a good night's rest, even if it's like 11:45. I don't think I need much sleep relative to some people(which I hear is not a good thing--brain power needs sleeping power, and my lack of any need for sleep worries me, but I digress). It just occurred to me recently, reading back on things I wrote/did this time last year, how much more free time I had then. And I didn't even know it. I was told thins would get easier in sophomore year--perhaps not. Content might be easier--I have too many horribly flashbacks about stress caused by physical science work last year that nothing at the moment can really compare--but it takes up more time(see: my experiences spending multiple hours writing about cell membranes or bacteria or things each night). Also, I don't become interesting or creative or anything when I'm exhausted, let alone the much-sought after place where incoherency meets quirkiness in the face of pure fatigue. No, I move in quite the opposite direction, I develop this obsession with being hyper efficient. If I'm awake and there's time, I can find something to do--this tends to end up in things like me playing piano at midnight, and my mom wandering into the room to ask why the hell I'm playing piano this time, and I tell her how busy I'll be specifically over X number of days and about the perfect time slot available and everything. It's sort of a toned-down Dean Moriarty type thing I have going on at times like this. No matter. I think this contributes a great deal to my current inability to remember things, not little things, but 'vibes' and everything, autumn vibes, normal things, all sorts of stuff. True, Irene did rip most of the leaves off the trees in August so it's not quite as pretty as normal, but all the same, not to whine anymore about this when I could just, you know, skip some homework and sleep but I do miss having a marginally higher state of consciousness, if only so this time in my life doesn't seem like a total blur to me. Sigh.

Reading Gatsby in English isn’t as great as I expected, not that I really knew what it was I was expecting in the first place. I suppose it’d be alright on a first-time read, it just gets a little tedious being talked at for a full 90 minutes. That’s more or less it. Occasionally we’re put into groups and told to analyze something, only no one really tries(not usually including me, mind), and we talk for 45 minutes and finish everything in the remain five or ten. It usually gives me a nice opportunity to do homework or something, though. Gatsby’s definitely a book you need to read more than once, at least for me. I don’t often re-read things, so the opportunity in itself is good. Even if I have spent most of the in-class Gatsby discussions reading JD Salinger talk about the Glass family from the back of the room. Which i suppose is pseudo-rebellious in a way that makes all the literature buffs shudder. I apologize.

In biology we’ve begin given another—another!—project, this time about diseases. I’m assigned the West Nile Virus. Can’t complain exactly, but at the same time after just finishing a previous bio project I’m not overly enthusiastic about it. Also, it doesn’t seem to have any particular relevance to anything else we’re doing in class, so it really does annoy me all the more. The class has too many labs, and my lab group is bothering me more and more by the day. I really am not proud of being someone who anonymously complains about their classmates online, really I’m not, but my god this girl in my group is insufferable. She thinks of herself as being uber scientific. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but she can be really obnoxious when she needlessly attacks the other members in our group. No one in our group is incompetent—however, we don’t pretend to have more of an avid interest in these things than we normally do. I’m sick to death of being ridiculed and sometimes practically verbally abused if I do one thing wrong or don’t get a sufficient grade, and even more I’m sick of her bluntness being excused as a side-effect of the superior intellect she claims to possess. And I’m basically cool wit being a total hypocrite—yeah, yeah, if I really am sick of her as much as I say, why don’t I just go join a new group etc. I don’t know. I get along well with the others in my group! There—my excuse! This whole thing really is making me hate these labs, though. Even cutting up pink pH-receptor jello which should be relatively fun, she has to draw out to feign some interest and grab attention from the teacher. Ugh, guys, psuedo scientists. Let’s all write free verse poetry instead.

This week I watched In The Loop, the movie based on the Thick of It, which I’ve mentioned countless times but only because it’s absolutely brilliant and hilarious and everyone should watch it no matter how little they know about British politics. It’s genuinely wonderful. The movie, too, you should see—it gets patchy and the plot line tends to drag a bit, but other than that it’s just about the perfect comedy movie. I don’t have as much time for music as I’d like, but I’v been listening to Smashing pumpkins and Manchester Orchestra and people, nothing particularly noteworthy.

Right, since tonight is gonna be an especially late night, finishing a 10-page research paper and all, and nothing really interesting has been happening to be lately, I'll end this now.

I Got A Day Off.

Hello there.

Thank God for Judaism and its holidays. I needed a break. Not just because school is physically and mentally tough at the moment, but because I've been having difficulties the last couple of days. I really needed a break. I'm not saying the sort of pointless nervousness I experienced in middle school(which was, frankly, extreme) is comparable to high school but like...Tuesday and Wednesday were tough. Well, just Wednesday, but still. it rained in the morning. pretty in the sunrise, but hell, it's rain and I don't want autumn to come. Winter officially terrifies me. It's so miserable. But anyway, we had an essay in the physical science class from the summer reading we did. Question; "Is the main character a hero?". How am I supposed to answer that without diving into some big swimming pool of cliches? answer; I've no idea. So I did the cliched 'a hero can be many things' route, sixty minutes, a page and a half. Crap but not difficult. Geometry my teacher's a narcissistic bitch and had a go at me for doing the wrong side of a worksheet, not that she actually specified which side to do, naturally. I don't know why that got to me, something about the almost public humiliation of it, but whatever way I panicked and couldn't do much else and went my usual route of internal self hatred and anger. This plus a really, really bad Spanish lesson didn't help. I got a C on a quiz. Okay, so that was actually pretty middle of the road, I did hear of Fs, Ds, and Bs, but no As so it's not like a tragic grade, but still, C. And then we played this conjugation game and I suck at Spanish so the public humiliation continued, and then I had to review homework with the girl next to me. I couldn't do half of it. She didn't think much of me, and after my performance in that class, I do not blame her. But it still hurt like hell. it's weird that gym would be some sort of hi light, but so it was--one game I looked like a total fool, and I heard we get graded down for not bringing gym clothes(which I will not be doing, FYI, because the rule is pathetic and because I don't like getting changed), but otherwise it wasn't bad. The whole thing just got a bit much.

Thank Christ for this break. Five days straight will be a nightmare. I keep waking up at four in the morning for no reason. also, homework is too much. I could handle today's, not that we were supposed to get homework, but a whole four days straight is difficult.

One day I need to write something more conclusive about Peep Show. I was getting upset at the silliest things earlier, like my height, which may not be much(five two, if you're interested, not that you are) and I got into this nightmarish loop of miserableness(wannabee emo lyric of the day?), and I was like 'I need Peep Show now'. Not only is Peep Show realistic and genius and clever and possibly the most genuinely witty and funny Sitcom there has ever been in my opinion, it's comforting. Everyone's a bit like Jeremy, a bit like Mark, some more to one than the other. I'm about 5%-95% on the Jeremy-to-Mark scale. Watching Mark makes me laugh and makes me feel better. I am Mark Corrigan. It's okay. He can relate. He can relate about a lot of things. And it's okay Mark is wonderful, not that I am, and you're not on your own, Naomi. I need that quite a lot, just like everyone I suppose. Sometimes Peep Show is all that comforts me. Right now I find it more comforting than music and reading and playing piano and blogging combined. Wednesday I had a bad day and I just had a late-night Peep Show episode. Mark's public humiliation, self hatred, embarrassment, fear, and anxiety is endless; and it's so wonderful to see because our days are so similar. it makes me feel so much better about myself and about the world in general. That is why Peep Show is so brilliant. That is why I watch it so much. That is why I have greatly over exaggerated about a lightweight comedy show.

In other news, today I went to Concord which is one of my favorite places. All quirkiness and history, I love it. I went to one store that was dedicated to stuff that was meant to look antique, largely things centered around birds and eggs and nests. When I look at antiques, first I feel very angry about myself for being overly sentimental, feminine, simple, and easily tricked by stupid things. And then part of me goes 'oh my god. it's an old fashioned weighing machine! I need that!'. Then part of me wonders if I have the money or the means to take something big home. So I go looking for something small. And then I realise I can't pick one small thing that I love more than the others so I pick up the first cutesy thing I find. Then I leave with an expensive notebook with the picture of a worn-out newspaper and a butterfly on top and I wonder what exactly happened in the last twenty minutes. But it's fun, right? Concord is so wonderful and it was so good to relax and do nothing.

Apparently a theme for this blog is choppy paragraphs, so that is the way it will stay. Have you heard of Perfume Genius? He's a music an. I generally avoid the word 'lo-fi' because most lo-fi sucks and I hate the term. But his song Learning is cool and it has quite good lyrics. there are a couple of songs I want but they're not on iTunes USA. Also, I need to add my Pretty Reckless, Editors, National, Skunk Anansie, and Kings of Leon CDs to my iPod but somehow I don't see myself having the time.

Two things, one, 'redundant' is my new favorite word, because I always go for the obvious ones. Two, I have last period Friday study hall which I see as sort of...redundant? That doesn't actually really work, but that's the closest I've got so far. I'm looking forward to it. Shamefully, I haven't been keeping up with reading at all, except in the mornings at school when I've been sitting outside my science class(which happens to be in the freshman hallway) with some other nerd. I need to keep up if I hope to reach fifty books. Also I have a science quiz tomorrow, my first in that class, and the stuff we're doing is more my style than most of the stuff in that class will be, but still, I like my teacher because shes something of an evil genius. Emphasis of evil. I'm expecting another C. Thanks high school; rather than reading fifty books this year, I will get fifty quizzes with C grades. Cheers.*

Well, it's that time of the night where I choose between reading my crap WWII novel, playing Song of India for the millionth time on piano, watching TV, or studying. Oh, it's a tricky one. See you another time, blogsophere.

- Naomi

*that is possibly the first and only time I will ever use that word in that context.