I recently received a free sample of Tide's Swash Fresh it Up. The directions on the side of the bottle, "lay flat (the clothes, not you!)," cracked me up, but other than that nothing special came from the experience of using it.  The idea of "refreshing" last night's clothes just doesn't turn me on...

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine Uncle Frank (played very well by Steve Carell) calls high school "your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that." I'm not sure I'd go that far (my bet is with middle school if you want to kick the whole suffering thing up a notch.)

There were moments in high school I actually enjoyed...times with friends, certain parts of class (both humorous and academic) that made up for the more painful stuff (trig, geometry, algebra...the whole math thing).  We'll skip the unrequited crushes, the out-of-sync-with-the-rest-of-the-world cloud that often followed those of us who were mostly loners and that horrible melodramatic overload of hormones and mixed emotions.

I mention high school because of what I'm currently reading. Elizabeth Berg's newest book (aptly titled The Last Time I Saw You) captures some of what makes high school reunions both scary and utterly fascinating. I just started it, but hope to return soon with thoughts on it...

...A few hours later and I've had time to read more. I love this passage: By the time she was in high school, she spent all her money on record albums and on paperback books--she couldn't get enough of either. Why moon about not being invited to a party when you could listen to Bob Dylan? What date could compare with Nine Stories?  The major reason I usually end up liking a book is because there is a least one character so relatable to you it's almost eerie...(except, when I was in high school I didn't listen to Dylan.)

So I've been battling a cold this past week and last night I think I might have taken just a little too much NyQuil (best thing ever for trying to sleep while sick!) 'cause I got to thinking how great Die Hard 2 is (it was my first time watching it so I'm not sure if it's the cold medicine or the movie)...Though I'm sure my liver won't thank me for all the OTC medicine I've been using lately, I love that numbing feeling that spreads through your limbs and mind once the NyQuil takes over...thankfully, though, I've never reached that point where I take NyQuil even when I don't have a cold...

some sorta scary NyQuil facts

that explains those feelings...

The "in between reality and sleep realm," whether induced from NyQuil or a sleep aid or that moment right before you fall asleep, has always been fuzzily pleasant for me....neither conscious or un...just "there." Sometimes, when little things are all you can really count on, that kind of buzz is just beautiful...

"Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People is one of the catchiest songs I've heard in a while. I must have hit repeat at least four times while driving around today (it's a great car song!) and now I'm dying to dance around in my living room to it, but it's almost one in the morning and I don't want to disturb the neighbors.

The words don't really matter, though I can imagine it has some kind of theme. It's the beats (oh God, the beats!) and the haunting, fading vocals (wish I knew the technical term for it) and the whistling (that makes the huge 2007 hit "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John sound just a little too quaint). And no matter how often you play it, it always sounds so fresh and invigorating.

Incredible stuff and you can hear it here....wish I knew more about the band. I first read about them on NME magazine's website but as far as I can tell there's not much talk of them here in the U.S.

"You gotta be kidding" read of the day (via Mother Jones magazine)...an anonymous blogger calling himself the Vigilant Citizen believes Lady Gaga videos are part of an elaborate plot (involving the CIA, Freemasons and possibly the occult) to brainwash the public...into doing what the article didn't say, but now those outfits in "Bad Romance" make a little more sense to me!:)

My favorite line from the article : "A superstar clotheshorse who is unwittingly the tool of an evil yet very silly conspiracy...wait, isn't that the plot of 'Zoolander' ?" MJ gives the theory 5 out of 5 on their "kookiness" meter!

Ah, Conspiracy Theorists...people with WAY too much time on their hands!!As someone somewhere has probably said before about mindless, but catchy, beat-driven music: just enjoy the music and dance!:)