Updated labels

Just a quick note with the purpose of directing your eyes to the right of the screen: I've finished de-cluttering my labels. I'm sure I might think of other stuff to put in that list, but for now this is a much better way of organizing the labels (tags) for my posts than what I had before. Now things are separated into clutter and life and stuff in between. Enjoy.

Some days I love the Internet every day

Out of Reach
Originally uploaded by stephaniedan

Super awesome, thought-provoking link spam, for your everyday health. Some of these are via iCiNG, naturally.

♦ 1000 Awesome Things: Watching Something Download Really Fast. Remember the Internet in the 90s? If yes: Don't you love remembering the Internet in the 90s? If no: how fricking old are you anyway.

♦ In 10 Words. This is an interesting linguistic exercise. It reminds me of this book my French translation/"voices of the projects" prof told us about that was written in French and avoided use of the letter e. Language is amazing, if entirely frustrating*.

♦ More Music, Less Bullshit: Why Dudes Dress Bad. Hilarious and stylish. It also opened my eyes to the fact that, as a girl, I probably dress bad a lot out of laziness of the time too, without realizing it. Owning good clothes doesn't mean you are fashionable haha.

♦ Si Dawson: These Are Not Your Stories. For your own peace of mind, I'll let you read it for yourself, and decide if you agree or not. Sometimes it's hard to remember that, on the Internet and elsewhere, no matter how convicted people sound or how retarded they seem, they might be smarter or less astute than their words make them appear.

♦ jouez. Although a bit feminism- and politics-heavy for my taste, there are some really intelligent, debate-provoking things in this girl's blog. For the record, I don't know her.

♦ Fathering On. It may be creepy that I'm reading the blog of jouez's father, but whatever, I like his idea, and I find it a really interesting concept: a "solo" father (not single, per se) trying to enlighten society's ignorance of the dad's experience of single parenting. It's a really interesting sociological question that really is not treated in the media.

♦ CNN: Catcalling: creepy or a compliment? I've always felt uncontrollably offended when this happens to me, partly because of my upbringing, partly because of my own personal psychology, and apparently, partly because of a more general psychological female trend.

* - Another story for another day.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, goes my Friday night.

Oh, the scattered contents of a college kid's brain

lapalomafuelaquesecruzó
Originally uploaded by suprises

Lately I have been essentially consumed with two very different thoughts, and they alternate. One is a general sense of awe and overwhelmption (sure, why not) about the essence of life and how the main themes in my academic life are all colliding and exciting and blah blah blah. It's getting a little too pretentious even for me, I can tell you, so I can't imagine how annoyed the rest of the world is with me.

The other thought is a general, fretful feeling about how loud my CPU fan is on my laptop. :( I have this computer, a Vaio VGN SZ270P, to be exact. I even bought a can of pressurized air so that I could be all macho-nerdy and unscrew the back of my laptop and blow that canned air through the provided straw into my stupid fan. Anyway, I decided that when this computer completely dies, I would like the latest Macbook as a replacement. I'm sure there'll be a newer, more expensive version out by that time, but my point is that the Apple kingdom is really winning me over.

Anyway, I also wanted to share a lovely link with you fine people. It is called SelfAbsorbed.me and has provided me with many minutes of entertaining reading about real life written funnier. Also one of the writers apparently went to NYU, because I found the site by Googling the 11-person suite at the dorm I want to live at next year. Read the article in question here.

Blogging

flowers in december by °°k°°.

Blogging, all of a sudden, has as many strange quirks and customs as the real world. There are "right" ways to blog and "wrong" ways, and there even seem to be formulas for how to become rich and successful while blogging. It's kind of silly and kind of maddening. You're supposed to have a theme for your blog if you want to attract more visitors and readers, apparently. You've got to be organized and to only just divulge enough of your life to be enticing but safe.

I guess my problem with blogging "success" (aside from my gratuitous use of unnecessary quotes) is that I always thought of it as a personal journal that happened to be open to the public. That was all. And a personal journal doesn't necessarily have a theme. I mean, perhaps posthumously, with some knowledge about the author, you could summarize the thing sort of generally, like with Anne Frank. She was a girl who matured very quickly during an extremely arduous period both historically and personally. But when I blog or journal, it's generally not with these sort of themes in mind. 13 Years of Clutter was definitely the exception, because I had a specific project to document. But otherwise, my thought process does not work in a way conducive to these themes.

However, I do very much admire people who can channel their intriguing thoughts into this format and garner attention and well-deserved praise for it. With that, here are some of the blogs and sites I have been admiring lately. Some may be repeats, but let's just say it's for the purpose of list-making.

• iCiNG: Inspirational, fashionable and upbeat, Gala Darling's site is everything I could ever want lately. She always links amazing things/people and has a lot of optimism to share.


• Project: Happily Ever After: This lady has decided to create a "project" for the things in her life that cause unhappiness. I like this approach a lot, and the idea that you can consciously change what you don't like about life is appealing to my current mindset.


• Debauchette: NSFW, generally. There is a lot of sex writing in this call-girl/"courtesan"'s blog, but the mystery woman is truly intelligent and sees the world in such an interesting way that I do recommend it, in spite of its inherent controversy. Judge her all you want, judge me for valuing her writing - if you shed your expectations for this blog you may find some really hard-hitting insight about human nature and society.


• Decorating Nature: Less a blog than a quick collection of some amazing, creative photographs. :)


• an aesthetic feast: Fashionable and food-loving, this girl posts such cute things and has a strangely captivating writing voice.


• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks: Just for fun. :) I love hilarity and irony.

Salon

De-cluttering is slow going. Mostly because I'm afraid of incurring my mother's wrath if I should throw away something she hasn't approved. I continue to be overwhelmed by how much crap - namely, storage bins and boxes - can fill this place and how little it will be possible to shut it all away for the purposes of a streamlined home look.

Anyway, my biggest plan for the break, other than de-cluttering, was thinking and reflection. I have indeed been doing a lot of that, but ironically enough, it's been mindless in form. I sit and read articles and the occasional blog online all day, pause to read a bit of a book or two, then eat awful food. So I thought I would share, over the next few posts (if I can be bothered to stay invested enough in the theme for that long), the links I've been frequenting.

Salon.

I'm not entirely sure what I enjoy most about this online mag thing called Salon. It could be the Life section dominated largely by advice from Cary Tennis. Or maybe their end-of-year book recap that has left me with plentiful new literary recommendations, ones I will probably never have the time to finish. Their movies section is also getting a lot of traffic from me because I'm real into the ideas of lots of movies right now. That was a dumb sentence.

Anyway the article that really made me interested in Salon was "What your loneliness is telling you," not because of any particular home-hitting value in the article, but because it is intelligently written and reminded me, in the second-to last paragraph, of the very thing I am striving to do this winter.

One of the things that our culture really tries to discourage is thinking, reflection, seriousness. I think that we have to have more confidence in our ability to be thoughtful people.

Denying Responsibility

It sure is annoying how a boy can make you think about him constantly even when you no longer want to, isn't it? I'm actually pretty pissed at him, but we don't need to go into that.

This excerpt about the subversive nature of love is pretty interesting. Despite having never been in love, it makes a lot of sense to me, because of the way I imagine love to be.

Here in the dorms it seems like love and relationships are the only things on the girls' minds. How bittersweet, seeing as we'll be leaving for a long break in about two weeks.

"Rabbit rabbit"

Happy December! I have not been posting much, not for lack of exciting material. Thanksgiving was a really great break for me. I went to D.C. and had a very cathartic, enlightening conversation with my good friend S on the bus back to New York at 10 p.m. Saturday. The two of us discovered, among other things, that the present does not exist - only the past and future - and felt very wise/deep.

But the most valuable thing I took away from the conversation was something S imparted to me while we were discussing our respective, overwhelming levels of stress. She said, and it is so simple: Thinking about the things that stress you out is not going to help you. I told you, simple! But it's something that has helped me immensely in the past few days to control my stress level. For the first time, I am really taking things one step at a time. This morning, I woke up with that familiarly vague sense of panic that my day ahead was going to bring chaos and stress, but I murmured, "First things first. Get up and eat breakfast." And it soothed me.

It remains to be seen whether this attitude is a false sense of security about all the stressful things I still have to accomplish. But whatever it is, it's a quick fix that seems to be working.

Anyway, here is a really cool song that LJ user binsybaby, a very talented artist, posted today. It's a 8-bit Nintendo version of You Can't Hurry Love. !! I loved that song already, but this makes it even more awesome.

Positivity

I was just about to write a moany, bad mood sort of post about fashion in New York and at NYU, and how I feel inadequate and poor. But then my brain, already having jumped into procrastination mode, told me to check iCiNG and lo! She has written an article (or a "reminder" as she titles it) about not comparing yourself to others in a negative sense. I'm so happy I found her site; I think I stumbled upon it over the summer, and it is wonderful. I highly recommend it. I may even start "Things I Love Thursday" on this blog, because I think it is a very positive way of looking at your life, and that is something I do far too seldom.

New York: IOU

I wanted my second post from New York to have pictures of my apartment-style dorm (the photo on the left is Madison Square Park and the MetLife tower, not my dorm!), but I haven't gotten around to taking the photos, and I have also been kind of busy. I had three interviews for internships, two of which were crappy, and the third of which I scored but then lost because of my hectic schedule. I'm kind of upset about that, because they were offering $15/hr. But it would have made my life hell to have that job and my other job (I was planning to work both), plus classes, music and the AAWA (I'm on the E-board :3).

So this is just a quick post to tide you over until I can prepare a feast of fabulous photos for your face. In fact, here's an interesting New York related article for you to read in the meantime: Secrets of a Hipster Hooker. Warning for content, language and sex talk. I thought it was really interesting, but of course I would never consider living that life for myself. The article is via iCiNG, which I'm really starting to love.

The girl who writes iCiNG, Gala, is from New Zealand and she spent some time in New York. Her enthusiasm for this place really makes me appreciate it more. I honestly think she has helped me change my attitude from the typical NYU state of mind - "Oh I'm going to a super rich school in New York and I'm so awesome I should never smile or be useful" - to my own pleasant state of mind - "I really like where I am, and I enjoy all these people being around me in this fantastic setting."

Thanks to IGoUGo for the photo. :)

Poll

For me, in this personal project, I like the visuals of my progress. The visuals really stimulate my anticipation of a clean and comfortable home. I'm so glad we have the before pictures (and even some afters now)! For other projects that I follow, I am surprised and glad to find that I have something in common emotionally with other "children of hoarders" for example. Before this whole project, I had no idea other people were experiencing the same thing I was.

Please share your thoughts through the poll and/or comments!

I am leaving for New York tomorrow night, but I'm trying to think of a video to film now and post once I arrive in the city. Any brainstorming ideas before Thursday night would be appreciated and credited. :) I'm aiming for simple shots with an expository voiceover, but what should it be about? Hmm...