Morning Oranges

I had this dream where I was upset for some reason in the dining room. In a fit of rage/or unhappiness, I walked through the kitchen and picked up four different oranges and carried them to my room. I think the oranges were supposed to be comfort food or something. Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I had pretty much forgotten my dream, and I walked into the kitchen to make some breakfast for myself. I paused at the fruit bowl and remembered part of my dream. I had this urge to pick up four oranges. So I did. Then I didn't know what to do with them, so I just left them on the counter.

Well, the point of that was that I thought it would be an interesting if someone recorded their morning routine with a camcorder. Then, every day for a week, they would try to repeat what they did the first day, and record that. And again and again and again. After a few days of recording, they could overlap the videos somehow, and see how close they were to repeating each day.

Maybe the first day they rinsed a glass before pouring milk into it, and the fourth day they forgot to rinse it and just poured in the milk. Maybe they would find out that each day, they put the milk carton in the exact same spot on the counter every day, or that they always left the cupboard door open after grabbing the peanut butter and remembered to close it while making scrambled eggs.

Yesterday, I finished reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. It's a really good book.

It starts off a little slow until you get to the pranks. I actually read this book a long time ago, and I always see it in the library. For some reason, I could never remember what happened in the book, so last week I decided to read it again. It was so strange because I had random moments of deja vu as I was reading it, but not the really familiar kind, where you know exactly what's going to happen next. I just felt like, "Oh, something bad happens next right?" or "She triumphs over something here, I think." I realized by the end of the book that the reason I didn't remember it too well was because the book didn't really have a happy ending. Not that I dislike all books without happy endings. It's just that I really disliked her boyfriend at the end. I liked Alpha. He seemed to be the only character that could think the same way Frankie could. I like her strategic thinking, even though she may be psychotic, according to some of the other characters in the book. Or misunderstood.

Anyway, I have some book recommendations for you. I also have some books that I want to read, and after reading laurapoet's other blog, The Plebicolar Library, I have decided to make a mini wish list for myself. This list is a list of all the books I want to read.

Book Wish List

1. Zombies vs. Unicorns by Holly Black and Justin Larbalestier - This book is an anthology. The two authors I listed are actually editors of the book. There are 12 short stories inside, written by 12 different, well-known authors. Even I recognize these authors, so they must be really well-known in the YA category, at least. Some of the stories support unicorns, and some support zombies. They are designed so that you can side with one side... For me, I don't really have any thoughts on either. I have a teacher that hates unicorns because they're "cliche", so everyone always gives her unicorn gifts, such as unicorn costumes, wall art, unicorn pottery, plushies, etc. She now has a unicorn shrine. As far as zombies go, I once found a dating site for zombies, and I thought it was funny.

Is plushies a real word? I've been using that word ever since I started playing Neopets, and even when I stopped playing, the word stuck. It's just such a nice substitute for "stuffed animals".

2. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender - Ok. You can just click on the link for the summary, since I don't feel like summarizing all that in my own words. This author has some really interesting ideas. I want to read her other books too.

3. Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue - This book is about 5 year-old Jack and his mom. They live in an 11 by 11 ft white room. Jack has never left this room. Now you can click the link to the summary.

Oh, a while ago, I began a list of all the books I have ever read, and it has about eight books on it so far, some of which are unfinished. Maybe I'll make a list of all the movies I have ever seen, and then all the stories-but-not-books I've ever read. Just for future reference.

Now for my book recommendations:

1. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender - This book has a really interesting concept. There's a girl who can taste emotions from the food that people make. The first time she realizes this is when her mother bakes her a lemon cake for her ninth birthday, and after she eats it, she can taste her mother's unhappiness. She tries to avoid homemade food after that. During dinner, which is unavoidable, she tastes her family's emotions and realizes that not everything is the way she thinks it is. The writing is really amazing. The only problem is that after a while, the book kind of swerves and goes off in another direction, and then it's all about her brother. He's interesting and all but... I wish the book focused on her tasting ability a little bit more. I didn't really like the ending either. Still, you should read it anyway! It made me want to read Aimee Bender's other books too, which have interesting titles.

2. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart - It's been a long time since I've read any of E. Lockhart's other books, but I'm pretty sure that this one is very different from those books. It has a nice cover too(I'm talking about the one with the blue envelope and the red basset wax seal). I already wrote a whole paragraph on this book in the beginning of this post, so I'm just going to skip this part and you can just click on the link to its summary.

Ok... So neither of my book lists are very long, but they will be, eventually, when I think of more.

As for music, I have a ton of music recommendations! Unfortunately, I just sent a long list of them a few days ago, so I don't feel like doing it again. I'm not going to copy it either because my comments on the list make no sense unless you have the same brain as the recipient. It would be so much easier to just write a list of recommendations, rather than a list of recommendations plus my thoughts, but it's hard not to comment on my choices.

Also, I used to use playlist.com, but I discovered Grooveshark a few months ago, and I really like it. The graphics are nice, and there's a giant collection of music. The scrollbar on the bottom is kind of shifty, but I don't use it that much anyway. I have included a link to it in the sidebar. I still visit playlist.com sometimes though, just because my playlist there has a three year span of my music choices. And all my friends use it.

Ooh, a glint of sunlight just shifted into my eye through the blinds. I don't really like glaring sunlight, but I do like those times in which bits of sunlight shine into your eye in a way that probably makes your iris look transparent. It makes everything sparkle, like those circle sun flares that appear on sunny photos. You should try it. It makes you feel like there's glitter on your eyelashes or that your eye is a crystal and it's refracting a rainbow of light on the wall behind you. That would be so cool. If we could actually refract rainbows of light, I would line up a bunch of people in the sun and let them refract rainbows onto my wall until it absorbed the light and glowed at night.

Hmm. I'm going to go get some oranges now.

For the First Time by The Script - Here's a good song.

Music

Music. I think it's interesting how sounds affect people so much. A lot of times I hear people ask other people whether they would rather lose their sight or their hearing. Usually they say sight. I guess this is because our world is so based off of what everything looks like, and so we use sight to figure out where things are and how they work. If we decided to go back in history, and instead of focusing on building a world where sight is so necessary, we decided to build one based on sound, we would be like bats.

We would read books by speaking and hearing our voice hit the page and reverberate off the words. And then people would have iPods for portable art. We'd just plug the eyephones into our eyes and we'd buy all kinds of scenery for $2 off of iTunes and it would be like we were transported somewhere else for as long as we were plugged in.

That's what happens with music, right? We listen to it and it feels like it means something, and when you close your eyes you don't have to be anywhere. If you do it long enough and forget that you're sitting in a chair in front of your computer, doing homework at 3 in the morning, you can convince yourself that you're floating. It's like those times in the morning when I know I need to get up, but it's just so much more comfortable to be snug in my bed, so I imagine that I'm getting up and turning off the alarm. Then, since I'm kind of half asleep and half awake, I start believing it, and I'm so proud of myself for forcing myself to wake up. And then I suddenly realize that I imagined that entire thing and I still need to actually get up. It's kind of funny. At the time, it's actually kind of disappointing, but at least it's one of those weird things that everyone experiences and it's just funny because it's such a random experience for people to share.

Anyway, back to the subject. For some reason, I'm trying to monopolize the world into a tiny little city. So I'm just going to continue with my city analogy since it's already rooted in my head. And hearing-city sounds silly, so that's why it's bat-city. Anyway, we have a sight-city, where sight is the most important part of our everyday lives. In bat-city, however, hearing is everything. So logically, every situation involving sight and hearing is reversed. iPods blast art, galleries showcase music, cinemas are for symphonies, etc. I think it would make sense that iPods blast scenery too, not just art, like gallery art. Music moves people, so in this city, art should move people too right? A change of scenery would obviously make you feel like you were somewhere different. And musicians and singers would no longer be the big celebrities; instead, traditional artists would enjoy the fame and fortune.

There are the other senses too. Ghosts always wish they could taste food. Animals/vampires/creepy villains use their sense of smell to find their victims. And then there's touch, which always seems like an afterthought to me because it's the only sense that's represented by something that is not directly attached to my head.

Touch is actually pretty vital. If I lost my sense of touch, would I lose the ability to feel too? Like, I wouldn't be able to feel papercuts or velvet, but would I be able to tell if I bent my elbow or turned my head? Without touch, you can feel pressure, but not surfaces, which is kind of scary. If I couldn't feel anything, I wouldn't know whether I was standing or sitting or falling. If I closed my eyes and fell off a ladder, I would think, "Hmm, there's this strange pressure all around me," and then I would hit the ground and be like, "Oh, I must have hit something." My organs would probably feel like they were dislocated or something. And maybe I'd accidentally put my hand over the stove without realizing it and it would only be when I turned around that I'd see the damage and freak out.

Ok, since I've been talking about music(or was), I think I shall conclude with a song! I've been wanting to share this song for a while anyway. Don't listen to it on Youtube. Really. It doesn't sound as good on Youtube because it hasn't been amplified and it was recorded outside and has not been cleared by computer technology and there is just no magic. Listen to it on Grooveshark! The link is below, so just click on it.

Demons by On The Rocks - So... This entire song is voices only, without instruments. As far as I know, OTR does this with all their songs. It's kind of a sad song, but it's nice to listen to anyway. At first, when I saw the title, I was like, "Hey, demons. That sounds like a song that might be a rock song that I don't feel like listening to at the moment." But just in case it turned out to be incredible, I listened to it anyway. And it was totally incredible. So listen to it.