The Awesomeness of Vampire Diaries
We will loudly and proudly admit that we like The Vampire Diaries. Doesn’t matter that it’s about vampires—they are totally not lame and there’s no sparkling. Doesn’t matter that it’s on the CW—we’ll always hold a grudge against them for canceling Veronica Mars, but we can overlook it for the sake of this show. It’s not just a guilty pleasure to watch—there’s nothing guilty about liking it.
Here’s why we like this show: shit happens. There is an over-arching mythology, sure. But in building the foundation for the mythology—the mysteries and secrets that give it depth—the writers haven’t neglected to answer the little questions. Take this season’s moonstone. First it was “What is the moonstone?” and “Why does Katherine want it?” We’re six episodes in, and we know what the moonstone is and we have a pretty good guess as to why Katherine wants it. (You could take some lessons from Vampire Diaries, Lost!!) We’ve also got werewolves this year. We know that it’s a family curse, and we know how the curse is activated. We’ve gotten background on Katherine, Stefan, and Damon that’s helped us understand what’s going on and helped push the plot forward. We’ve had permanent deaths, un-deaths, vampire-making deaths. We’ve had fake break-ups and real break-ups. We’ve had all kinds of juicy character developments. It’s twisty and twisted and dark but not dreary, all sharp storytelling and real, coherent plot development. You guys, it’s A Good Show.
And, seriously, the sheer amount of Shit That Happens in each episode is staggering. Most shows would stretch things out as long as possible, which doesn’t really create tension within the confines of the show; it just frustrates the viewers.
It’s almost too bad VD is on the CW, because it’s unlikely that any of the cast will get the recognition they deserve. If we gave out Emmy awards, Nina Dobrev would be high on our list just for the number of scenes she’s in (practically every one, if you’re wondering. And sometimes twice in the same scene. We get exhausted just watching her.) You never have to wonder if you’re watching Elena or Katherine—the differences between the two might be subtle, but they’re there and you know who she is.
Even if vampires and werewolves aren’t your thing, you should give it a try. It has consistently churned out solid story lines, thoughtful dialogue, and, uh, this and this.
We’re Marshall and Lily
The other day, amelie realized that we’re just like Marshall and Lily. Specifically the part of their relationship where they tell each other everything:
Ted: Trust me, not only do they tell each other everything, they want to know everything!
Flashback
Marshall: So after the shower I was brushing my teeth and I was like, oh man I wanted to have some orange juice I should’ve done that first! But I already had the toothpaste on the toothbrush so I just went ahead a brushed them anyway.
Lily: What happened next?!
That is totally us:
kegger: I didn’t get done with work until 5:30. Ugh. Not fun for a Friday. Oh well. Then I went to Friend’s to check on the animals. They’re good. Got home at 6:00, got some H2O (I was right, the soup was wonderful on my throat) and then watched that latest Robin Hood movie with Kurt Russell (it sucked ass) and then went to bed. Now I’m being lazy, but when Husband wakes up, I’m going to have him move Dog’s cage outside for me so I can mop the kitchen, since I didn’t do it last weekend.
How was your night last night? My cough is a little better. I can feel gunk breaking up in my chest, so that’s good, I guess?? I dunno.
amelie: My night was fine. I washed, dried, folded, and put away all my clothes. I even washed the duvet cover. There was nothing on last night, so I actually turned the tv off for a while. I was too lazy to turn on my Wii or put a DVD in.
So, yes, we like Marshall and Lily, but mostly we are Marshall and Lily, in a best-friend, non-married, tell-each-other-everything way.
Don’t worry. We’ll keep the TMI moments to ourselves.
Where have we been?
WordPress, I’m sorry. We’ve been unfaithful. amelie and I are having an affair with Tumblr. We’ll come back to you, I swear, but for now… I think we need a break.
In the mean time, amelie is here: www.lazygirlblogging.tumblr.com,
kegger is here: www.inwhichagirlwrites.tumblr.com,
and our joint efforts (which haven’t been much just yet, since we just got this started on Saturday, and amelie’s Mac has gone to the Apple Spa for the week), are here: www.thelikelist.tumblr.com.
Come visit us. Tumblr is seriously addictive. It’s like Twitter, WordPress, and Facebook had an orgy and had babies.
Stay classy, Mississippi
Or “Go fuck yourself, Itawamba County”
We don’t usually get too deep in this blog. We like what we like–tv, movies, books, and music–and neither of us are experts on, well, anything. But this really angers me. kegger and I are from Mississippi. We are die-hard Southern girls who love being Southern. We love the food; we love the people; we love the atmosphere–most of the time. Right now, I have to say that I’m embarrassed to call this state my home. I’m saddened and angered at the adults in Itawamba County who think it’s okay for their children to discriminate against anyone who is different. I’m furious at the parents, teachers, and administrators who thought setting up a fake prom would take care of the problem. This is not the lesson we should be teaching our kids. “You don’t like someone because of a superficial difference? That’s fine. Just set up a fake (insert function here) and don’t tell the people you don’t like. They’ll never know! It’s a win-win situation. You don’t have to hang out with the seedy underbelly of American society, and they feel like they were included!”
No. No, no, a thousand times no.
I don’t care what you think of homosexuality. I don’t care, and I don’t want to know. This is not that blog post. Whatever you think of gays and lesbians–of black people or Mexicans, of Muslims or Christians, of Democrats or Republicans–it is never okay to discriminate against someone because of his or her differences. I am disappointed in those leaders in Itawamba who, through their lack of courage, fear of the unknown, self-righteous indignation and lack of caring, showed those high schoolers that distancing themselves from people who are different–who hold different beliefs, worship different gods, wear different clothes, speak a different language, or love different people–is acceptable. It isn’t. We can’t grow as individuals and as a society if we keep to ourselves. We’ll never learn tolerance or love if we hide from others or force them to hide from us.
I love you, Mississippi. I do. You are a crazy place full of fist-sized mosquitoes, sweltering summers, and right now more pollen than I’ve ever seen in my life. But if you keep this shit up, if you keep showing the world that we are nothing but self-centered, backwards, close-minded, arrogant assholes, we’re going to have to see other people. I hear Canada’s nice this time of year.
I hope you’re proud of yourself, people in Itawamba County. Right now, I don’t even want to call Mississippi my home.
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The healing powers of Sonic’s Tater Tots
Basic Math:
Excedrin + a big, cold, fizzy (Diet) Coke + Sonic tater tots = the best headache remedy ever.
Someone should seriously research this. I bet Sonic and Coke could market the hell out of it.
Back story: I work with someone who has always SWORN that whenever she gets a headache, she runs to Sonic and grabs some greasy tater tots, and as soon as she’s done eating, her headache’s gone. I, of course, was a bit skeptical about this. However, when you have a headache from hell, you’re pretty much willing to try everything short of drilling a hole in your head. amelie was desperate. She tried it. And HOLY MEATBALLS! IT WORKED! So last Thursday I, too, had a headache from hell, and NOTHING got rid of it. Not Excedrin. Not caffeine. Not prescription pain meds. NOTHING. But GREASY FOOD WORKED, OMG!
It either works, or it’s the best placebo in the world. Either way? Awesome.
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PS: We’re not dead, we’ve been restin’. Pining for the fjords. Hopefully we’ll be back to blogging fairly regularly now.
Who Said That? All things Glee
So, there’s this show called Glee, and it has eaten my brain. I thought we could play a quick Glee edition of Who Said That. Since you already know the show, I want who said each quote and what episode it’s in. Remember the rules, and NO CHEATING.
1. Who’s Josh Groban? Kill yourself! He is an angel sent down to release platinum records unto us. And if he were here right now, I would club you to death with his Critics’ Choice Award.
2. Boy, the only thing missing from this place is a couple dozen bodies limed and rotting in shallow graves under the floorboards.
3. We’re planning on smacking them down like the hand of God.
4. Are you guys really that stupid? I bet you thought Bert and Ernie were really roommates.
5. Not everyone’s going to have the walnuts to take a pro-littering stance, but I will not rest until every inch of our fair state is covered in garbage. That’s why I pay taxes–it keeps garbage men earning a living…So they can afford tacos. For their family.
6. Kurt was drunk and he ralphed on me. Not really fessing up to how he got the booze just yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a fake I.D. because he looks like an eleven-year-old milkmaid.
7. You’re fired! And I’m taller than you.
8. Here I am, about to turn 30, and I’ve sacrificed everything, only to be shanghaied by the bi-curious machinations of a cabal of doughy, misshapen teens.
9. I don’t think any one decision makes your life…unless you accidentally invent some kind of zombie virus or something.
10. My father always said you become a man when you buy your first house. I’m not sure what he meant by that, since he burned ours down once after a drunken fight with Mom.
11. Bye, white people.
12. Are you an Eve who was born a Steve? Because if you are, I think there’s a special school that would better address your needs. And I think that school’s in Thailand.
13. This is where our daughter or gay son will sleep.
14. Do you want to captain the Titanic too?
15. When I woke up, I knew it was a message from God. Rachel was a hot Jew and the Good Lord wanted me to get into her pants.
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It’s official. Our kids are stupid.
This is an actual conversation between the night supervisor at work and a research associate, Brittnay:
Brittnay: I’m gonna leave for an hour to have dinner with family that’s visiting from out of town. I’ll be back, so can I just leave this call sheet at my cubicle for later?
Supervisor: Yeah ok. What area are you calling?
Brittnay: What do you mean?
Supervisor: What area of the country are you calling?
Brittnay: Oh. I don’t know. They’re nice though!
Supervisor: …you don’t know?
Brittnay: No. How do I tell?
Supervisor: ...(shocked silence)… Look at the state column on your call sheet.
Brittnay: (long pause as she studies call sheet) it says PA, whatever that means.
Supervisor: …(shocked silence)… Ok. That means Pennsylvania.
Brittnay: Oh really? I always wondered what those letters meant.
What’s ESPECIALLY awful is that this chick is 19 years old. NINETEEN. I learned my states–and their abbreviations and their capitals and where they were on a map–in freaking SIXTH GRADE! Sixth grade! How the heck did she graduate high school if she doesn’t even know what “PA” means under a column titled “State”? How does she send letters or pay bills?!
I think this is what’s wrong with America today. Our kids are stupid.
Also, her name is spelled B-R-I-T-T-N-A-Y. Brittnay. BRITTNAY. Not Britney or Brittany, the two most common ways to spell that name, but Brittnay. You don’t even freaking PRONOUNCE it that way. Ugh.
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From Dixie, with love
I woke up this morning to this lovely little ESPN article.
I’ll give you a little back story. amelie and I live in Mississippi. We’re Southern girls. We went to college at Ole Miss, and we’re very proud of that. We like our little town, we like being Southern, and no, we’re not racist. Not even a little bit.
But living in the South has its drawbacks. People walk on tip toes when it comes to anything related to race. We don’t want to offend people. And Ole Miss, particularly, has a bad history when it comes to race relations, so the administration tends to tread even more carefully than everyone else.
Before, during, and after every football game, the Ole Miss Band (“The Pride of the South”) plays From Dixie with Love, which gets all the students pumped up. A few years ago–I’m not even sure who started it or why–at the every end of the song, drunken college students started chanting, “The South will rise again!”
Okay. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can honestly say that I don’t think ANYONE who yells that is saying in any way that they’d like black people to be slaves again. I don’t think ANYONE means it that way. The way I take it is, one day the South isn’t going to be the armpit of the United States. One day, we’re going to be awesome [amelie: It already is, but it's a well-kept secret. Shh. Don't tell.] One day, people will acknowledge that the SEC has the best football teams [amelie: Word]. That the people in the South are really nice and not uneducated rednecks. [amelie: More specifically, uneducated rednecks live everywhere, not just the South.] One day, we’ll have salaries that compare with the rest of the country. One day, people won’t think of a Southern accent as a bad thing. [amelie: One day, Hollywood will learn that Louisiana accents ARE NOT THE SAME as Mississippi accents, which aren't the same as Georgia accents, and that Texas is West not South.] One day, the South will be equal to the rest of the United States.
It’s a nice dream, right? I think so. Probably won’t happen any time soon (if ever) but there’s nothing wrong with dreaming.
Having said that, I can see why people are offended. I don’t really care whether people say it or not. I’m kind of neutral on the whole thing. Mostly because I’m not very politically correct and I think it’s stupid to TRY to be politically correct, because you’re ALWAYS going to offend someone. But I can see why people don’t like it, and I can completely understand why people are trying to stop others from saying it.
(But why is replacing “The South will rise again” with “To Hell with LSU!” any better? Couldn’t that be considered hateful, too? [amelie: Hell fucking no. What kind of Rebel fan are you?!]) [kegger: I'm just sayin'. You're wishing someone to go to hell. Which, yeah, I know we say that EVERY FREAKING game, but still. Can't they both be considered hateful? Yes. They can.] [amelie: IT'S ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. Also: WTF--"To Hell with LSU?" Ew. Why not stick with the less-retarded, more action-packed "Go to Hell, LSU?"][kegger: Because apparently it doesn't fit and flow with the chant. Even though it has the freaking EXACT same amount of syllables.]
Anyway. I can understand why the University is trying to stop that chant. But you’d REALLY think that they’d realize by now that if you ask the students not to do something like that (remember the flag debacle? Or when they tried to get rid of Colonel Reb?) it’s just going to piss them off and they’re going to do it even more?
A lot of people didn’t even really know about the chant. You could really only hear it from the student section. So bringing it to attention (in the student newspaper, and in the Tupelo paper) just made it worse. Now, once again, we’re in the national news because we’re supposedly racist. And once again, people think we’re uneducated rednecks.
In reality, it probably would have gone away on it’s own (students had already started a whole grassroots movement thing to replace it with “To hell with LSU”–and it was working) [amelie: GO TO HELL LSU OH MY GOD. I will not chant "To hell with LSU." GROSS.] if people had just let it go. Now? It’s probably here to say just because they pissed people off.
Good job, university officials! Thanks for bringing it to everyone’s attention and making it worse!
Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. But I’m just so sick of only ever hearing negative things about Ole Miss. There’s a lot of great things going on there, but you never get to hear about them. Instead, you only hear about the occasional controversy.
Maybe one day we’ll get away from our past, but either way, we all know that it will be a VERY long time before the South rises again–if we ever do. [amelie: because, let's face it, in this economy, we're all poor. If there are two things America needs right now, it's sunshine and optimism. Also angels. Or hot guys in leather jackets.]
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Ten for Ten
With the recent release of pictures Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor and this weekend’s airing of “Planet of the Dead”, kegger and I are in a Doctor Who mood. Here are our top ten Ten moments from the past three years, in no particular order.
1. Rude and Not Ginger
Series 2, “The Christmas Invasion”
This one isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, but it does help set up important points in Ten’s personality: He’s rude and not ginger. Mostly we just like the way Rose calls him “sort of…brown.” Heh.
2. Timey Wimey Stuff
Series 3, “Blink”
One of the best explanations of time travel ever. It all makes sense in a total nonsense way.
