Chinese rap at 3:30 AM

I applied for a lab job today and I really want to get it because I will get to use fluorescent proteins and work with plants in a real scientific setting. I have been having a very can-do attitude because I have a pretty respectable GPA in college and I realized that I should probably not freak out as much as I do. I have a good head on my shoulders.

I also realized that people like me more than I think even though people are not creatures that communicate easily and they won't just say, "Aarushi I think you're amazing and funny." They will do things to express it like laugh at your jokes and smile at you when they see you and mention things they remember you saying at later dates. Also, it is really easy to get my boyfriend to watch a movie if I just turn it on for 4 minutes.

Also, Firefox underlines everything I type because I set the spell check to French so that I could write legit emails to my french teacher.

The only reason I started writing this blog post is because a Chinese rap song randomly came up in my iTunes and it got me really excited. I'm making a CD for Crystal and it will have songs with the word Crystal in them.

Life Lessons from the naughtiest Stroke

I love the music video "11th Dimension" off of Julian Casablancas' solo debut "Phrazes for the Young." This song/video seems to talk straight to a young me.

I think it is very reflective of real life thought processes, which is weird because it's so trippy. I really want to be able to make something artistic like this in my life.

I think he's singing about our reactions in life, and how we can choose the way we react more than we can have control over what happens. As he coos "forgive them, even if they are not sorry," I am reminded of all that I have not yet let go.

Yes, there are mean people and bad people in the world, but it is us who are hurt if we allow ourselves to give into those impulses and not forgive.

Sin is valuing desire over what you know is right.

Anger is weakness, Patience is Strength.

Every positive action has a reward.

I should've known

Things I wish I hadn't done:

1. Let my dorm room become messy as it has, just so I could put everything right again in 24 hours before I have to vacate the premises for a month.
2. Eaten summer sausage as a child.
3. Bought a Naked drink that was enriched with powdery protein supplement just because it would allow me to say that I "got Naked."
   
4. Said that one thing that was really awkward that caused someone else to feel awkward and made it so that no one knew what to say for like, 30 seconds.
5. Stayed up later than 1 tonight.
6. Let others pay for me a lot of different times when I really don't like having others pay for my things.
7. Been unmysterious to begin with. Mysterious people are super intriguing, but I am not one of them and I am therefore not that intriguing without the mystery element.
8. One time in 6th grade, I sang on the loud speaker as part of my campaign advertisement for getting onto student council and of course, no one appreciated the effort and it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my little life. But I don't really wish I hadn't done it. But there were other moments having to do with my being in middle school that I regret a lot.
9. Broken my N'sync + Britney Spears CD I got at McDonalds with "I thought she knew" on it, because that was my favorite song off of it.
   
10. Not stuck with piano. Not stuck with guitar. I wish I had been more serious about voice. I would have had more sticktoitiveness in the words of Becca.
11. Made a big deal out of anything ever.
    
12. Let "Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger" leave my sight.
13. Let myself be upset for many days at a time at the hands of a boy.
    

I think a lot about style

So I wandered into this article, recently posted on this Hipster blog I found on blogger's suggested sites that said that this girl was part of "the Emo Redux" in the evolution of Hipster.. This one particularly interested me, because I used to own that very Death Cab shirt when I was in 8th grade, and I thought I was sooo cool.

If it wasn't too short, I would probably still wear it and think I am so punk. Coupled with an un-matching turquoise sequin skirt that I still wear in and a pair of chucks that I threw out, after finding they were unsupportive of my flat feet and unbearable in rainy conditions, I was the coolest person in school, and no one knew it but me.


Also, I watched Gilmore Girls.

As I stare into the depths of the computer's face...

I get mad at people for not fulfilling me


and then I get mad at myself for not fulfilling myself.


Also, I hate the internet, when you're alone at night in the computer lab and your roommate is asleep and you haven't taken your weird narcotic cough medicine yet for fear you'll never wake up.

I don't mean to be grim. It's just that I feel as though when someone looks at me and the diminished thought processes I undergo having stared at a computer with no clear goal in sight for so many hours, I can only imagine that they see some kind of ugly gorilla who eats bananas off the ground and poops everywhere.

Perspective

I knew this guy who I thought had his life under control and that he didn't care what anyone else thought and that he could conquer the world with his art.

And then I got to know him

I found that he had things that continually bothered him just as I did,

he struggled to find meaning for his existence just as I do

I guess, life's not really as easy for any of us as it seems.

This is why I like to take store of the little things. I try to look at people, I try to smile when I am happy, so that someone else can share in my day. I worry about the moments when I am not the person I want to be and worry that the people I love the most get the brunt of my worrisome, panicked student-self.

I have always thought that if I could write a song and record it and have it bring others as much joy as I get when I listen to music, then I would be fulfilled at least for that moment.

But it's hard to see the effects of your own actions. Sometimes I read people's work, and I never tell them that they touched me, sometimes I see people's faces and wonder if they will ever know that I want to understand them, that I wonder what they're thinking.

I will have to learn to trust in my own influence.

Lists as a window into the soul

Having been touched by Becca's recent list related blog and to take a page from an older blog of mine ("Aarushi's Freaky Little Lists" which I deleted in a fit of embarrassment) as well as an attempt to write anything not too serious in subject matter, I've decided to post some lists.

People to Whom I say, "Really?"

1. Those who walk up Bascom Hill or any other hill smoking a cigarette.
2. People who pack up very very loudly five minutes before the end of lecture, ignoring the teacher who is raising his voice to be heard.
3. People who pay the extra 2 dollars to have their pizza carried up the stairs for them in campus housing.
4. People who spell people's names wrong, or pronounce them using letters not present in the spelling itself when reading it
5. The person who decided not to put flaming hot cheetos in the inventory for Rheta's. (see photo. Hot fries are not a suitable substitute.)
6. The person who put the "for sanitation napkins" waste basket right next to where the person sits down on the toilet so that it is dangerously close to touching the person's arm.
7. Whoever invented finals.
8. Low-rise jeans innovators and the people who name the styles(e.g. "the lowest rise")
9. Anyone who gives someone flack for breaking a "fashion rule" when they are obviously pulling it off.
10. Social conservatives who waste funds just to ruin someone else's life.

(Amendments to come at later dates)

Even better than watching Planet Earth,

is watching others watch planet earth, occasionally asking "Who's Winning?" and getting answers such as "The Seal, the Echonodermata, the Great White Shark."

I am attempting to study.

Since then it's been a book you read in reverse

I am sitting in my room in relative nudity underneath the blanket of a warm robe postponing the life I will have tomorrow.

Surreally, we had our first snow day.
Also, surreally, I spent the night in Becca's room with Jason and Becca watching Ugly Betty as part as some sort of fake apocalyptic daydream. It was like a dream as everyone ran down the halls of her beautiful old dormitory celebrating the wonder that is nature given snow.

I thought about college and how it is kind of like the brochures that they give you except that you're not skiing or even studying outside half the time. It has been my goal to live in one of those brochures.

I have come to the realization that I like living a quiet life, that maybe I will never be famous, and maybe I never want to be.
This is the antithesis of what I used to think when I was younger. I wanted to be a star. I recorded an album of myself singing songs (that I wrote, a cappella) and distributed it to my peers. I wrote a newspaper and distributed that too (I got in trouble for being too honest-- it was justified). Maybe I made up this realization about the quiet life. Maybe that was complete and utter denial.

Today my father saved us from the winter by driving to Adams and helping us excavate Becca's car as a mini-avalanche had decided to make it their abode. He took Jason and me to Swagat. He told Jason the story of me singing the national anthem at India Day in library mall when I was 9 and how I made some lady cry because she was moved by my voice. I think I stopped thinking I had that effect on people when I stopped being able to see it, or when the people I was trying to be that to obviously didn't have a stomach for such things.

I wonder why I never write about anything light-hearted. I wonder why I consider things so thoroughly and forever, when I ought to consider each instant individually. This is why I like moments. I like having an ephemeral moment to myself rather than the grueling hours that prepare me for the future that I constantly worry for.

I think I built up these walls in response to how I was as a child, I was radical and inquisitive, and excited about life, and I believed in chemistry and love. No one liked that. I think I only want to be back to who I was then, minus the bad judgment.

Except it's kind of weird, that the Shins always applies no matter what situation I'm in.

One day, I'll make a non-contemplative post.

"Next semester, I will"

I always say that next semester I will do this, and next semester I will do that.
Today is set in stone and I will not be able to change what has become.

Well that's not true.
Today I will be a better person, today I will do my work, today I will update my blog which truth be told, no one knows about but me.

I'm not going to do things with the help of my peers or whatever. I'm going to do things on my own by myself.

Anne of Green Gables said (in the movie, not the book); It's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it.

Well, let me tell you, I'm gonna bring it.

But speaking of next semester and the remainder of this semester.

I'm going to get things done. I'm going to make good on my goal to make noise in the Mills Music Library.

Here is some more information on the Mills Music Library:

Located in the B162 Memorial Library, the Mills Music Library is tucked away from our general field of vision. We walk past it every day and do not know that, in the ground below us, there is a little world of repertoire displaced from its original settings. You can open up a record and be transported to 18th century Austrian countryside or a luau in 1879.
I first went there with a friend for an AP World History project. For two days, we frantically scoured shelves for Eastern European music to illegally compile a tape of while dodging the suspicious looks of librarians, only to find that we had burned CDs full of computer shortcuts instead of songs. Needless to say, I had less than jovial feelings toward the library. But it's always bugged me that I wouldn't like something with the words "music" and "library" in its title. So I decided to go back again to give it a chance.

Upon walking in, I was met again with the deafening silence that accompanies the inner layers of Memorial Library. My friend and I were greeted by a man with a debonair Buddy Holly look, who asked us if we had any questions at all. He was a little surprised when I took up his offer.
His name was Tom Caw, and he was what people would call "adorkable." He deadpanned interesting facts. For example, the Memorial Library is underground for the simple reason that the collection is too massive to be supported by any above ground floor. Its contents have outgrown first the Music Hall, and then the Humanities building. We walked around the Hawaiian music exhibit, which from far away seemed rather simple. As we stepped closer, we were faced with a set of shiny beautiful ukulele derivatives, each from a different style and juxtaposed with sheet music and records of the era. A testament to the care taken by library coordinators, the accompanying web site has a host of audio clips and videos of each instrument in the set.
Tom admitted that he was unnerved by the lack of music in the Music Library. "I think someone actually shushed me once." Occupants of a nearby room even complained that the piano used in the lounge by a composition class nearby created a disturbance. The last library he worked at had been a hub of entertainment, sometimes hosting live music. He said that he wishes that people knew that the Music Library was not intended to be a silent place. So I quickly volunteered to return with friends and make as much noise as would be tolerated by the silence lovers upstairs. I've since made it my life goal to bring sound to the Music Library.

Silhouettes when our bodies finally go

I will spend less time shopping for shirts
and more time wearing them in

i want

not be a people person.
i want to sit alone in my room and be myself and create my own ideas from scratch

i want to begin my own world in my own image
i don't want to be your god. i want to be my own god.

i want to change myself without any interference on anyone else's part
i want to be the change i wish to see in myself

and that's my emo thought for the day