now painting rainbows on my ugly face

I don't really have anything thought out for this. It was nice to hear that someone appreciated something I did, yesterday. I like writing letters.
I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. Gallup recently released a poll, declaring my state the eighth most religious in the nation. And I don't know. Sometimes people think that me being atheist makes me automatically anti-religion. And sometimes I feel like I am. Like, the other day I was on the internet (like every other day) and I stumbled across jesus-is-savior.com. Let me just... if you don't laugh, you'll cry. Some of their brave viewpoints include women not wearing pants, reclaiming the rainbow for GOD!, and Taylor Swift is a lewd harlot. It's pretty bad. But other times I feel like religion helps people feel happy and belong to something. I sometimes feel like religion fills a void in people, that they wouldn't need it if they felt whole. Or maybe it's me who is incomplete somehow.
There are an awful lot of abandoned houses in North Carolina. I feel like if we added them all up, we would have enough for everyone to live in. Sometimes I think about the people who used to live in them. I wonder if they left anything behind. Once a house fell down near where I live. It just collapsed in on itself. I remember driving by and seeing the refrigerator outside on the ground with the alphabet letters in a jumbled mess on the door. It all seemed terribly sad in a vague way.
There are a lot of people posting on facebook about all the people they've lost. It seems a bit crass to post a memoriam on facebook, but I guess if you're just the sort of person who pours your heart into everything, it happens naturally. But what are you supposed to say? It just feels like those moments are meant to be private and they get cheapened somehow by using the same platform to wax poetic on your dead father as you do to play farmville. It feels wrong to scroll down a page and see RIPs mixed inbetween horoscope readings and sports predictions. It makes me a little sad and a little nervous because it feels like I've somehow dodged a bullet- I have four mismatched grandparents, and two parents, and no dead siblings.  It almost feels like I'm due for a tragedy.
I've been thinking about smells, too. I think they're a little interesting. I'm trying to dissect the smell of my house piece by piece. It's sort of impossible. Sweat, but clean sweat- not body odor. Sweat has a distinct smell. Cat. Possibly just the dusty smell of cat litter. Cleaning products. It sounds like it smells terrible but it doesn't. I guess the smell of outside, which I've heard described as 'ozone'. I have no idea how you actually know what ozone smells like, but sure. I guess it's more like the smell of rain. I love it when it rains, especially in these days with a thin layer of pollen on every surface. It feels like it's deluged my skin and there's a bit of yellow powder on my bones. Laundry detergent. I adore the smell of laundry. Sometimes I feel like nothing can ever be clean. It's impossible for me to clean everything as fast as it gets dirty. When I leave home my house is going to be a cesspool because I won't have my mother to help me. My mother is very helpful. Coffee, except not this week because my dad is away. He's in Texas. Garlic, because my mother is Italian.
We finished reading Romeo and Juliet today in English. It was sort of terrible because no one can ever read anything right, and our teacher never corrects them. How are they ever going to learn how to say something if no one ever corrects them? They aren't, that's how. If you're on a job interview and you think the word 'flow' is pronounced rhymes with cow, you're not going to get that job. No, seriously, that fucking happened. Because you're a dumbass.
I wonder what would happen if I just dropped out of school right now? I feel like pencil dust and eraser shreds have settled onto all my clothes. It's really not that much work, I think it just feels that way right now. I hope so.
I use the word 'somehow' too much. I have a particular friend who overuses words she's just learned and it annoys everyone. And by everyone, I mean me. I need to be more patient with everyone else. There are some days where everything annoys me a little bit. And I always have to stop and say to myself, 'these are people you care about. you have to like them.' and usually I do. I think it happens with everyone I know, but I think it's easy for me to rank how close someone is to me by how often it happens. With my two best friends, it only happens occasionally and passes quickly. I feel like that's not a normal thing to feel. Maybe it is.
Yesterday that same friend who overuses words told me about a mutual friend of ours overdosing on pain medication two nights ago and going to the hospital and throwing up blood. I haven't spoken to her in such a long time, I felt guilty somehow. Like if I had tried to maintain my friendship with her, she would somehow not abuse pain medication nightly. It scared me a little bit because we're so young. Like this isn't something that should happen to people like her. People like us, I guess.
I don't wear makeup except for concealer when I look particularly bad or I'm feeling particularly ambitious. Sometimes girls at my school don't wear makeup and it's startling to see their ruddy skin and flat eyes. I don't want people to look at me and think I'm ugly because I haven't taken the time to do what I usually do. At least if they think I'm ugly, they won't be surprised. There's a girl at my school who applies makeup so thick on her face that it looks like a mask. It's just a few shades too light for her face and the whites of her eyes seem to stare out at me from behind her skin. It looks like she took someone else's face. There's another girl at my school who curls her hair so tightly it looks like little sausages, but it's so stringy and lies so flat somehow still that it looks like ramen noodles. Privately, we call her noodle girl.
Sometimes I feel cruel. I feel like I shouldn't judge people because they're trying their best to get through everything, just like me. But then I think, hey, that means they're probably judging me too.

I used to be a socialist, a sort of communist, now I'm a pessimist and I don't care at all

I'm sorry the last post was disappointing. The blog needed some color. I'm breaking the sixth wall!
I sometimes think I'm doing everything for no reason and I'm going to be unhappy forever. This happens often in moments of stress, which is pretty much always during school. I've always been an anxious, neurotic person- well, since third grade. I don't really know why. It could have something to do with the fact that my third-grade teacher caked on makeup and plastered on a smile and took dozens of pills at lunch. That year I used to fake illness so my mother would pick me up early from school frequently, which frankly I'm surprised my mother was not more concerned about.
I've been thinking about my life a lot lately because we got class rankings the other day and I am fourth in the class. Fourth. This is unacceptable. I think it's probably because all freshman have to take P.E. but only some people took it first semester and the rankings are only for 1st semester and obviously you can't take Honors P.E. so you don't get weighting for that. I think? I hope so. I can't not be the best. It is simply not an option.
I attended a baby shower for my childhood nanny on Sunday, who is now married to a video game designer. She is thirty-six years old, which is the exact age my mother was when she had me. I think if I have children I will have them a bit younger, so I am not older than all my peers, parenting wise. It was populated entirely by women- as is customary, I learned. They are all very rich and have immaculate houses and a couple of children and successful careers in psychiatry and husbands who love them and I thought to myself- This is what I want. Then I listened to them a little bit more. It sort of seems like they hate themselves. Every anecdote, comment, question, seems saturated with self-loathing and resentment of their kids, their husbands, their parents. They never have time alone, they feel trapped, their kids whine too much. It was sort of startling. I guess maybe it's human nature to complain. It just seemed like these women had everything I want, but still are unhappy. Is it possible that this isn't what I want? Maybe. Or it could just be that to seek happiness is a journey without a destination- no matter what we have, we always want more.
On Friday, our quizbowl captain and resident senior overachiever said I was a 'really good writer'. And it kind of made my life. He's the student assistant for my homeroom teacher, who collected Charger Challenges last Wednesday. (The prompts, by the way, were, 'Google
 and
 listen
 to
 the
 Martin
 Luther
 King,
 “I
 Have
 a
 Dream”
 speech.
 Respond
 to
 how 
it 
made
 yo u
feel.
How
does 
the
 crowd 
impact 
the
 mood?

' and, 'If
 your
 brother
 or
 sister
 were
 homosexual,
 how
 would
 you
 feel
 if
 they
 were
 being
 bullied
 about
 it?
 Should
 he/she
 be
 treated
 any
 differently
 than
 heterosexual
 individuals?

' They were dumb.)
 He saw mine on the top of the stack, read it, and went to the trouble of telling me that he liked it. I'm like Tinkerbell- I'll die without applause.
I have a 92 in Chemistry right now because we only have two grades in for this 6-weeks. But it's really. stressing me out. I cannot not have a 4.0 unweighted. It cannot happen.
Sometimes I feel like people only talk to me when they need something. For example, my friend who I have not talked to in months just facebook chatted me up because he needs girl help. I don't know what about me screams, 'NURTURING', because it sure as hell isn't anything I'm deliberately putting out there. I'd like to think I'm a good listener, but I think it's probably more like they can trust my discretion because I don't have any friends. I just sort of feel like I often have strangers seeking me out and spilling their heart out. I don't fancy my advice particularly good, either. This is a freakish phenomenon. I ought to be studied! STUDIED, I TELL YOU! But, at least I don't have trichotillomania. I'm obsessed with beckie0 on youtube. She's fantastic.
Sometimes I read or watch excellent things and I feel like everyone is much better than me. It makes me think of that old maxim- 'No matter how good you are at something, there will always be a million people who are better than you.' But for some reason, we keep trying.

everything looks perfect from far away

'a scenic tour of north carolina', or, 'my weekend'.

damn, look at those bitch's asses. (pluralization? i don't know.)

we'reeeee off to see the wizard!

trespassing. thar be dragons.

the road less traveled! god, i hate robert frost.

this is a van in the middle of the woods. i bet there's a dead body, but i was too scared to check.

the majestic haw river!

is there something in estrogen that makes us all love sunsets?

yes.

interestingly enough, the haw river is one of the most polluted rivers in the state. so. that's fun.

did you know that that these strips of land with power lines are called easements? fact.

what a most unnatural shade of blue.

and, one more sunset picture. for the road.

moments after i took this picture, an enormous gray dog bounded out of that trailer, barking. it was terrifying. luckily, we escaped with our lives. 

forsythia!

here we are in scenic durham. 

i think everyone has a secret fascination with graffiti. 

secret crack house?

dandelions. they were originally called the much less appealing, 'piss-a-bed.'

gentrification.

north carolina is renowned for it's tobacco processing plants. what a legacy, amirite?

we had just passed a homeless person. people are really awful to homeless people.

ridonkulous ranunculus.

no seriously, that's the name of the flower.

these people are crazy. they also sell pumpkins in the fall.

i meant for this to be a wordless wednesday, but i couldn't wait for wednesday and also felt the need to add captions. because i'm a caption whore. what? i'm sorry for being lazy and not writing a real post.

cause she's... a... star!

It's funny, I never really much know what people are going to like and what they aren't. I think it's sort of a part of human nature to seek other people's approval. Sometimes I feel like I do it to an unhealthy extent. But other times I feel like I'm not as bad about it as a lot of the girls I know, at least externally.
I don't have any idea what I'm even talking about here. My mother keeps telling me that I should submit something to a literary magazine for teens. Or something. Which is sort of hilarious, because my writing is generally terrible. I don't usually have my mother read anything I write because, quite frankly, it's a bit too graphic for her tastes. I prefer for my mother to still think I'm sort of a child, generally.

"Honey, I'm home," he calls ironically into the shadowy darkness of their kitchen.
There is no answer. For a moment, he wonders what he will do if his wife is lying dead on the bathroom floor. He imagines her wrists slit all the way up the sides to her elbow- a suicide. He imagines how he would hold her in his arms and it would look like he loved her, more than he ever did when she was alive. He would smell her hair.
He walks into the bathroom. There is no one there. He realizes as he flicks on the lights that for a moment he almost wished she was dead so that he could miss her. He stands in the doorway for a while and listens to the steady buzz of the fluorescence.

Like, what the hell is that? Would you want your mother to read that drivel? Of course not. Sometimes I feel like my mother hardly knows me at all, and the way she sees me is just sort of a taller version of the person I was when I was a child. But I guess, in the rough words of Anne Frank's father, 'I was very much surprised about the deep thoughts that Anne had, her seriousness, especially her self-criticism. It was quite a different Anne than I had known as my daughter. She never really showed this kind of inner feeling.' And I feel like this goes to how a parent can never really know their own child, because it is a child's innate desire to please their parents. Maybe I'm getting a little Freudian here.
Things that made me happy today:
-Alex Day writing a song about Lady Godiva.
-My British homeroom teacher calling my report card 'smashing'.
-Reading Lady Capulet histrionically.

It's a pretty short list.
Also, mailing letters is a lot of work. My mother doesn't want me to put my letters in a mail box because 'someone could steal it'. So we have to drop it in the post... box? You know. Post office box? It's blue.
I think I'm going to put them in the mailbox anyway.
Additionally, when an adult woman talks about a beauty product and says it has 'just the right amount of sparkle', it's kind of embarrassing. For everyone.

we know you love us and you probably do

I've spent the last three hours delving into the underbelly of the artsy corner of the internet. I'm not really sure how this started out, probably Jezebel.
First I read an article about Terry Richardson being creeptastic and sexually harrassing models. This led me to think about that shoot he did with Matthew Gray Gubler that one time and then I watched a twenty minute mocumentary about Matthew Gray Gubler. I then went to Terry Richardson's sporadically password protected website, where he has photographed such lovely specimens as John Waters and Jon Hamm. I realize that refering to people as specimens has a distinctly lecherous and possible serial-killery sound to it.
Speaking of serial killers (SEGUE! Interestingly enough, in spanish, the infinite for 'to follow' is seguir. I tried to explain this to my classmates as a handy pneumonic but in order for it to work, one would have to have a good grasp on what a segue even is. So. It didn't work.) I just downloaded 'How to Be a Serial Killer' on Itunes, which stars some guy and also Matthew Gray Gubler. I'm sort of obssessed with Matthew Gray Gubler. It's a comedy. about serial killers. I'm thrilled. I first heard of this movie a few weeks while trawling the fanfiction archives- there's a certain subset of fanfiction which sort of blends the actor that plays a character and the character's lives? So I didn't actually think that this movie existed. But it does! So. That. I rarely watch movies, not because I dislike them, but just because I never get the chance to watch them. I also have a terribly short attention span when it comes to visual media. I can hardly get through one day's worth of sourcefed in one sitting. As a result of my sporadic ADHD, I have accumulated a mile-long of movies I intend to see. To whom it may interest (no one), this is the list: Fight Club, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Donnie Darko, Girl Interrupted, A Streetcar Named Desire, Pink Flamingos, The Good Life, Serenity, The Virgin Suicides, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and, just now, How to Be a Serial Killer. So, not too long. It seems longer when I space it in proper list format. I also feel like as a result of my movie avoidance and also compulsive wikipedia-entry reading, I have pretended to have seen all of these movies on at least one occasion or another. I don't even know why. I guess to seem worldly and learned. I don't know.
And then, I read yet more Jezebel articles, leading me to several grievances on Vogue's various semi-inadvertant PR fuck-ups. A spread that seemed to be spoofing Latina and black cultures in Italian Vogue, a spread in Indian Vogue that involved putting extremely poor people in disgustingly expensive designer clothing in rural India, taking a picture of a model wearing 'slave earrings', as the article called them- actually just hoop earrings-, Italian Vogue putting white models in blackface, and most interestingly, a spread featuring Lara Stone being vampire-y and brandishing guns and killing guns and being bathed in red light. I was sort of fascinated. This led me, somehow, to a website called 'Homotography', which, miraculously, features only soft-core pornography- mostly just male models making out with each other. Against my better judgement I watched this video, which is sort of art porn and features an old woman ballerina made up like a corpse and three submissive male models washing a car, undressing, and having weird black water sex. Or something. I don't know. Watch it. I promise you won't get a virus.
And then I read about a trend of girls posting videos of themselves on youtube asking if they're ugly or not. And it was strange and made me uncomfortable. I briefly toyed with the idea of making one myself, which is obviously not the article's intention. This led me to another article about one of the videos featured in the first article being actually made by a twenty-one year old artist who makes videos that impersonate a teenage girl's behavior and hopeless nostalgia. The artist also made this piece of art which is sort of creepy and interesting. It makes me think of rape, but maybe I'm just watching too many procedural dramas. She does an eerily good job of impersonating a young woman- she reads fake diary entries about wanting to use drugs and feeling ugly. I'm not sure what her goal was with these videos, but it made me feel very silly about my real diary entries about feeling ugly and wanting to use drugs. She also kind of looks like me. But prettier.
Also, today I bought black water. It is literally black. I'm sort of terrified to drink it.
AND THAT'S HOW I SPENT MY SATURDAY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

was it a mecca dobber or a betting pencil?

This Baptist church I drive by twice a day replaces their sign every month and their message always seems equal parts ominous and sarcastic. This month's is,
       WELL-GROOMED
          "SIN"
      IS STILL SIN!
The fact that they only have capital letters makes it seem a lot more angry than it would otherwise, I think.  It seems oddly specific, though, as though they are pointing to a particular event. I like to think that a businessman who goes to Southern Baptist is cheating on his wife and this is a very pointed message to him specifically. Or, sometimes, they're references to cultural events, like, 'LET GOD "OCCUPY" YOU!' a few months back. I don't know what they would be referring to with this one, though.
Sometimes I have this friend, the one I had a falling out with a while back, and she just tries so hard. I don't know. She never sits with us at lunch because she sits with the well-liked kids. I think it's because she knows we (or at least I) will always accept her and be there for her while she has to work for these kids to like her. That's my theory. All I know is that she tells me all her problems and I bet it's because she knows I'm not going to tell all of her 'judgy' friends. It sometimes feels like she secretly hates half of them, too. And she should hate at least one of them, because this girl steals her boyfriends, talks shit about her behind her back, and never hangs out with her unless she has nothing better to do. Yet still, my friend keeps coming back to her.  I don't understand why people do this to themselves. I sometimes feel like I am the only half-sane person on the planet.
Also, I've been messing around with iphoto and photobooth on this lovely new mac of mine, and I have to say: you know girls who take a thousand photos of themselves by themselves and edit them until they look like this?

Well. I am becoming one of those girls. What can I say? It's addictive.

I can't say I have much else to say, but I like to keep my readers up-to-date on the latest in Southern Baptist church news.

well, i'm writing 'cause i miss you

I was walking by Whole Foods and there were these kids sitting outside and the instant I walk by they explode into this too-loud laughter. And it's so obvious to me that they're trying too damn hard and they're faking it, but I guess maybe they can't tell with each other because they're all faking. Sometimes, I feel like I've gotten so good at fake laughing that I don't know which one is my real laugh anymore. Because I don't ever have like, uncontrollable laughter, except for occasionally. But sometimes I find myself fake laughing even when I'm alone. Because, if I don't find something funny at all, I'm not going to even smile. But I often find things funny, just not funny enough to involuntarily laugh, so then I have a sort of fake laugh. But it's become so reflexive that I fake laugh before I process that I'm doing it, so I can't even tell. I sort of feel like this is something only women have to think about, but I could be wrong.
Speaking of gender dissonance, on Thursday a kid I know just didn't wear a shirt to school. And he just wore a sports jacket, but he unzipped to the end of his sternum. And everyone was like, 'what?' and he was like, 'yeah, my laundry wasn't done.' And he did this the entire day. And no one. Yelled at him. You have to understand that our school is incredibly strict on dress code, but really the only violations are too-short skirts and shorts and then too-thin shirt straps. And pretty much all of my friends have gotten in trouble for it and had to sit in the office until their parents could come and bring them a change of clothes. Which, by the way, is completely ridiculous because these people are constantly babbling about preserving the integrity of the school day and maximizing classroom learning time. But anyway. I simply cannot believe that this boy did not get in trouble for pretty much baring his entire upper chest. I. Cannot. I don't know why, because it certainly was more distracting to everyone than some girl wearing a tank top.
Today it was very foggy and while we were driving through the dark the fluorescent lights in the parking lots we drove by made everything look like it was on fire.
Also, I'm trying to write creatively more often? I guess? Or something? And I'm always just like, 'I'M GONNA WRITE A NOVEL.' and then I write a page. And I can never think of a plot. Plots are always the most difficult part, for me. And also connecting things. Like, connecting one little scene to another little scene? I feel like this sounds really pretentious. I don't know. I'm serious about this. Serious. So, what I did was, I wrote a scene about a guy during class. I like to try to write from a perspective fairly different from my own to minimize the risk of creating a Mary Sue, which everyone hates. Another thing I find in my writing is that my characters are sort of flat, but like, deliberately. It conveys a sort of emptiness, I think, that a lot of people feel. I don't know. I feel like I use a lot of qualifiers in my speech. Apparently I always have, according to my mother. I have only ever succeeded in completing one story, because it was required for school. But I thought it was pretty good. But then I get sort of seized with this fear that everyone thinks it's terrible, but instead of hiding it I force everyone to read it and I feel like they all hate it even if they say it's good. And I bet they think I'm just fishing for compliments, but I actually legitimately am interested in what they think, I guess? But no one ever really said, 'you need to eliminate this part.' or, 'you should change this line.' And it frustrated me. I don't know.
So the point is I made a little account on fictionpress. And I'm terrified. Not that people won't like it, but that people won't read it. Because no one will. There's a thing, though, where you can't post anything until two days have gone by. And it makes me angry. Okay, goodbye!
Also, this is my LAST POST... from this piece of shit computer. Because I got a used macbook proooooooooooooooooooooooooo. This. I cannot even. I am so happy. I am elated.