I Bleed Americana

If anyone even bothers to look at this time wasting page of the Internet anymore (because seriously, thirteen days on the Internet seems to be five years in actual life. Don't these people ever do anything else?) (I am productive occasionally am a hypocrite who also rarely never does anything else.)
Except I went to ORLANDO and other places that pale in comparison to ORLANDO and the only reason Orlando makes these places pale is because The Wizarding Freaking World of Harry Freaking Potter is in Orlando.
And it was glorious.
But we're not going to talk about things like that (in other words, things that will MAKE QUESTA CRY TEARS OF JEALOUSY).
Instead, I prepared a special treat for all of you today. *rubs hands together gleefully*
BAM!

The Interesting and Cool Story about the Day of Mind-Blowing Internet Superhero FRAS

(The Story for which Generations have Waited, Cried, Killed, and Pleaded and WILL NOW HAVE...FOR FREE)*

I spent four hours in a boiling minivan this morning, because it was the last leg of our road trip. My family members were mutually kind of sick and tired of each other's company, and glad to reach home. My brother K actually hugged the house. Which was overkill. But he's little(ish) and allowed to overkill like that.
I unpacked the car and my suitcase, watched Hairspray for the fifty-thousandth time (because I am a huge sucker for that movie, and it has a much better plot than the 1988 version. I mean, in that version, Amber von Tussle acts like she's five years old. Get some real insults and then you can open your idiot mouth), and then started catching up on my Internet content, and there was a lot.

YOU HAVE BEEN SLAPPED BY BRILLIANCE. FEEL FREE TO GROVEL AND/OR LEAVE MONEY.**

Topic change without transition: There are two reasons this post is called "I Bleed Americana":

1. I have been trying to use this title for a post for a few weeks now because
2. I like the cadence of "Americana" but
3. I wanted to use it at an appropriate time, and what better time than when I hear fireworks outside my door? It's American Independence Day. The day when we were deprived of British accents because our forefathers wanted freedom. *coughs, straightens nonexistent tie, reminds self about how she is not bitter*

Lord, this is a messy post.

But I went and saw this really nice fireworks display two nights ago at Stone Mountain, in Georgia. It was really bright and loud and Southern and completely unlike any sort of fireworks I have seen. Georgians know how to do the Fourth of July. Even though people outside my house have been setting off fireworks since two o'clock this afternoon, Southerners Do It Better.™

I just don't generally identify myself as American, although I was born here and have never been raised anywhere else. A girl, a teenager, a student, an aspiring writer, a reader, a fangirl, all of these tend to come before American.

I don't know if it made me feel more patriotic. But it was something interesting to consider.
Happy Fourth of July, self. And everyone else, because even if your country didn't become independent from Britain today, we can all celebrate because we're not dead yet.

*Slight exaggeration DID NOT OCCUR. The author is a pillar of gorgeousness and doesn't have any self-esteem issues that she feels she can fix by writing nicely about herself on the Internet. Nope. Nope. Not at all. No way. No.
**The author may actually be is a complete narcissistic fool.

Gooey Funk

Recently, I've been in a funk.
The kind of funk where you are just angry at everything, and feel completely purposeless, and want to finish everything but simply don't have that kind of motivation, and all you want to do is lie face-down on the floor, not moving, and wonder why you even exist at all.
I am a lazy person in an astounding number of ways, but I am rarely lethargic, and I hate being this way. It's frustrating.
Most people (the kind of people who still say 'funk') would describe this kind of a mood as a blue funk, but I think my funk is more a squishy, lurid purple kind of funk that is horrible to be trapped in, and a sad sight for those who aren't in any sort of funk at all.
(Funk is starting to be a semantic satiation in this post, isn't it? No. Wait. Don't answer. Yes, it is.) (You're so endearingly charming, FRAS! Talking to yourself like someone cares!) (*blushes in the most endearingly charming way possible* Oh, stop it!)
It's times like this where I forget to do stuff that I love, like bake food or talk to my friends or work on my stories or read books that I've read fifty thousand times. I just end up focusing on how much my life sucks and looking up sucky bands on purpose (which is a deviation from my normally much more impressive pursuit of good music) and abandoning books in the middle because I hate everything and watching (I'm not even kidding) five hours of Glee in a row because I want to indulge in an activity where my legs and mind don't move.
Skip the parenthetical sentences if you'd like to see me reach the point! *attempts dashing grin that just comes off as creepy*
(I had a Season One box set because I decided to start watching the show finally after two years. The plot line has a lot of holes and it's a little stereotypical and, quite frankly, the show doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes, but it's a good show to watch when you are doing an excellent impersonation of someone in a screen-induced coma. Also, they can sing. Sometimes, I wish they would leave certain songs alone [I don't care if you're Vocal Adrenaline, you do not TOUCH Bohemian Rhapsody], but they all have stunning voices, and Quinn's and Rachel's make me especially jealous.)
(I'm so sorry for all of you who don't watch Glee. Here. I hope this makes you forgive me. It is soap that looks like food.)
It's so easy to fall into this kind of anti-creative funk. Unbelievably easy to just give up, especially when it's summer vacation and you live in the kind of town where I live. And I think that hoisting yourself out of a funk is completely dependent on you, and how you work. In my case, I just need to stop doing all of the things that are detracting from my creativity and focus purely on one thing before I can even begin to work on anything else.
But sometimes that is so, so hard to remember, and even harder to attempt.
In even more FRAS-related news, I am going on vacation! So, posts will be infrequent/nonexistent until July 4. I only say this because I've been better about posting lately, and this hiatus is NOT me slipping into my ways of yore, just me being in Orlando. At the Harry Potter theme park. Yeah.
Also, since I probably won't be blogging on the day, a happy early birthday to my cousin Questa, whose birthday is on Friday!
And also a happy birthday to Sonic the Hedgehog, who is twenty whole years old today! I never played your games, Sonic, and I probably wouldn't even know it was your birthday if it wasn't for Alex Day putting up a video about it.

One MILLION!

If you had a million *enter plural of currency here*, what would you spend it on?

I am fond of making lists, and I always always always think about this question. (I think in dollars because do I really have do explain this anymore?)

I am still on a bit of a happy buzz because ENGLAND IS ADVANCING after they WON a couple of hours ago, so I'll make a more cheerful list than my usual pessimism would permit.

(Sorry. World Cup fever. Normally, I hate organized sports, especially on the wretched box, but my father and brother don't like the English team, so how could I resist rooting for them? It's an effect of living in this house.) (Yes, the United States is advancing, too- but shut up, Sarcastic Susie.)

So. England.

What would I do with a million dollars?

• Go on a trip to England
• Gloat to my brother that I have more money than him
• Buy myself enough sandwiches for the rest of my life
• Save at least a quarter of it
• Buy myself The Beatles Box Set
• Give maybe about half to my parents
• I would go and buy up a Barnes and Noble (or at least all of the decent books in there. I would also save money to buy books online.)
• Donate some to the library/cancer research/are there any orphanages around here? Then I could donate there/The Nature Conservancy/PETA/a science lab/anything else that comes up
• Buy that ridiculous number of nice t-shirts from Threadless
• Buy jeans. I need some jeans.
• Buy some magnetic chalkboard paint (because I'm not sure if it exists) and paint the wall in my room with it
• Go to visit my cousins
• Buy a guitar (so that I can carry it around and look cool, even though I'll probably stop practicing three minutes after having it)
• Bribe someone into giving me a copy of The Lost Hero early, because I made the mistake of reading the excerpt and now I can't wait for it to come out!
• A microphone!
• A black light
• Whipped cream- enough to swim in. And then I'd swim in it, and it would be amazing. But there'd still be enough to eat.
• Music? (I'm actually running out of things to write. I can't believe that.)
• I'd leave it aside until I thought of other stuff to buy. Or save all of it.

My conclusion? Money can't buy most of the things I want, like to actually finish that story that I started two years ago. Perseverance and determination can! *heroic music plays in the background*

And I don't have too much of those, so...

*Music fizzles out*

So.

What would you do with a million dollars?

A Trying Feat

Look! I am back!

(Although you probably had no idea that I was even gone, since my posting is infrequent at best.)

I really am back, though. I just came back from a trip to Arizona yesterday. But more on that later.

I am trying to orchestrate something marvelous. It has almost been one year since I started this blog, and this is my ninety-second post. I am trying to have my one-hundredth post on this blog's one-year anniversary. This, however, requires more posting than I am used to.

So. It is now June 10th. I have a month and eight days to post eight times.

GRRR. It's not like I ever have anything useful to say, anyway. I mean, just blather on and on all of the time. I'm sure I can make it. I hope.

So. Arizona.

F.R.A.S'S Rules for Visiting Arizona:

1. Bring a water bottle. Honestly. We went in June, and that's not even the hottest month of the year. And it was really, really hot.
2. Bring chapstick. Arizona is one dry state.
3. Go there for kind of a long time. DO NOT try to squeeze all of the sights into one or two days. You will be half-dead by lunchtime. Spend all day at the Hoover Dam, all day at the Grand Canyon, all day at Montezuma Castle, all day at wherever-else-you-are-going.
4. Jeans are a bad idea. Especially if you're hiking all day- they start sticking to you. I saw this fate in most of the hikers we saw at the Grand Canyon. Yuck.
5. Make sure your camera has a wrist strap. Actually, make sure that you have a camera before you buy a wrist strap. There are lots of things to take pictures of, and lots of places where you can lose your camera.
6. Do your research first. There was this great place called Oak Creek Canyon. It's called the 'cousin to the Grand Canyon.' (Why?) Well, my parents read about it in an outdated guidebook that didn't mention how you can swim in the creek. There's this bit that is all slippery, and people sit on the current and just slide. K and I didn't bring swimsuits. So we just went down in our clothes. It was really, really fun, but I do not recommend it because it took all day for my clothes to dry off. So plan ahead! Make sure you know what you're doing, and bring everything you might possibly need.
7. Bring lots of books and notebooks. This is only if you drive around a lot and like reading and writing. My family and I had a lot of time in the car, so I read and wrote. Just bring something to do, like a music player, for the driving.
8. Bring a camera charger. Actually, bring a charger for everything. Battery runs out fast.
9. Don't go on a plane. Where did the peanuts go? No snacks? Only drinks? They charge you for blankets and pillows ($8). It costs twenty-five dollars to check in one piece of luggage. Flying on planes in America used to be fun. Now it's just vaguely annoying.
10. Bring lotion! My mother and I snuck into a Bath and Body Works at an Arizonian mall so that we could use the testers of lotion and perfume there on our hands and dusty feet. Planes don't allow the full tubes of lotion, and hotel lotion stinks. So bring the sample sizes. You'll need it.
11. Don't go with your brother. He will drag you into stadiums and cry when they aren't open. LEAVE HIM AT HOME.

I hope those rules helped.

Quote for Thursday, June 10, 2010:

Richard: His head is shaped like a football.

Emily: It is not.

Richard: If he fell asleep in the park, someone would try to punt him.

-Gilmore Girls: Season 2 (Sadie, Sadie)

(

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gilmore_Girls/Season_2

)

Muse for Today:

Twitter. How can such idiots be on Twitter?

Where in the World is Freedom R.A.S.?

Guess where I am? If you're smart, you should know, seeing as you are, you know, smart.
I am going to New York with my family! YAHOO! *dances merrily*
Right now I am in a hotel lobby in Pittsburgh, right after breakfast. Nothing much has happened so far, but I will try to do my Tom Levin picture gallery. Have I explained this? If not, when I get the pictures on here, I will explain. New York promises to be fantastic!
I've got to go- K is being crabby and saying my blog posts are way too long, just because he wants to use the computer- so I will tell you more once I get to a computer next and K is not around.