Top 5 Celebrity Crushes

1. John Cusack
2. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
3. Zach Braff (predictable! Remind me to tell you my theory about how he's my generation's John Cusack)
4. Bruce Willis
5. Jennifer Aniston

What can I say? Girlfriend is fine.

Today

Today my dad and I decided that we need a new TV. We went to Gallery Furniture, which is a discount furniture warehouse place, and bought a 52 inch LCD flatscreen. It's HUGE (that's what she said)! We also bought a BlueRay/HD DVD player. It plays everything, and was - no, shut up - a worthy investment.
There's only one Gallery Furniture in the world, and it's in Houston, Texas. Its advertisements always feature its creator, Mattress Mack, waving a bunch of money. His motto is, "Gallery Furniture, SAVES. YOU. MONEY. TODAYYYY!!!" They have this fantastic policy of same-day delivery. And their delivery guys will take away/move your old TV! And they don't accept tips. Somehow I'm prone to thinking non-tip-accepting establishments are just a liiiiiiittle classier than the other kind. With their Tips. And their Accepting.
Don't you dare get me wrong; I've worked for tips before and they RULE. I mean, tips are fucking awesome. I was just speaking before from the consumer's point of view. Where tips are accepted, I like to be generous. Wow...backpedaling.
Anyway, I watched the 5th Element on Blue Ray tonight, and BOY, BRUCE WILLIS IS HOT. He's even hotter close up! His pores are DEAD SEXY. So is that supreme-being alien chick who only speaks gibberish. Who played her? WHO CARES, SHE'S SEXY TOO.

Struggling

I'm stumbling over a typical blogger problem.

I want to take my writing to the next level, and that means I have to open the hell up and quit writing exclusively about how much I hate everything. But I've been burned so many times for things I've written online (hey, dad!) that it's hard for me to even know where to begin. There's so much to tell. I should be honest and say here that in my life, I'm an extremely private person. I don't like to talk about my, like, "feelings". I feel compelled to put the word "feelings" in quotation marks. I'm not being mean; I'm just a prude. Why did I have to choose blogging?!
But that preface is to help explain why I forsee an extremely awkward few paragraphs in your immediate future...if you continue reading. I'm cognizant of my inner workings in high definition - I'm nothing if not self-aware - but I'm not good at stringing the phrases together when the subject matter means so much to me. So, I'm sorry. But I'm trying.

I would write about the last year of my life; the one where I left home and the support of my family for a life with a guy that *deep breath* I met through my last blog. There. I said it. Most of my opinions about what I've done since then are contradictory, but they're all controversial. I think it's the best growing experience I've ever managed to engineer for myself. I think it's a huge step back, in that I haven't been attending college. I think it's the life I want to live forever; poor and in love. I think that I couldn't possibly last another day in another dirty studio apartment in another city where I have no friends of my own. I think it's too hard; I think it's so easy.
The thing is that my relationship with Kyle, in a vacuum, is great...is perfect. I feel sorry for people who haven't dated him (or rather, someone spookishly like him). He treats me like a queen. He thinks it's cute when I'm domineering. He strokes my cheek with his finger when I'm about to fall asleep. Let's be honest...it's a great situation for me. When you take the relationship out of its theoretical vacuum, though, and put it in the context of our real-life life, I get scared. There are so many instances of people getting torn apart by money. I was raised to have whatever I wanted except my freedom. And now I have it...I want everything else. I want shoes, dresses, shiny pretty things.
I can do whatever I want if it costs a few bucks, but all I want to buy is the next new thing that costs four thousand dollars. I have expensive taste.
So, I'm struggling. I can go back and be rich but utterly alone; I can move forward and be poor forever, but with the man I love. Most people never have this stereotypical dilemma all laid out in front of them like this. I guess I'm one of the lucky few...

For Love or For Money?

Too Much Time on the Computer

This thing is like a new boyfriend; I don't want to seem desperately lonely by coming back so often, but I can't stay away.

The point of this post is that I'm taking a quiz (yes, I know) about whether I'm a good kisser (YES, I KNOW) and one of the questions is:

A "champagne kiss" involves taking a gulp of champagne, then letting a little trickle into your partner's mouth. This sounds:
Delicious, and you're speaking from experience.
Like a damn good idea.
Interesting.
Dangerous!

Why is there no choice for "Fucking Gross"? I think a champagne kiss sounds fucking gross.

Top 5 Movies of All Time

1. Jurassic Park
2. High Fidelity
3. 10 Things I Hate About You
4. Say Anything
5. American Pimp

Mussolini

It appears that I have already mentioned Mussolini twice on this blog. This is not due to any sub-surface obsession. I mean, I wrote about him quite a bit at itsfunny as well, but...he's just so compelling, I guess.

I'm sorry, does this make me sound like a history nut?

...And this is also the third time I've had to use the "metablogging" tag.

MIND EXPLOSION!

I can see that I'm starting to get excited about blogging again, because I'm posting multiple times a day. Maybe I just have less to do, and more time to sit around and stew in my own juices and come up with stuff to write about. The following is a train-of-thought post. Be prepared: there will be lots of these in our future together.

I just applied for about 7 jobs in LA on craigslist. I thought I was pretty much done with this back in March, but since I've been out of the loop for two months I don't know how "available" my position back at the magazine will actually be. They said that I should just call as soon as I get back and we could start then, but my estimated date of arrival has been pushed back for 2 weeks. I wonder how (un)happy my editor will be about that. This whole job-seeking procedure is so damn depressing to me. I know it's the nature of this exercise to cast a net wide and catch so few fish, but it never fails to get to me.
It doesn't help that I usually somehow end up with the first job I apply for, and this time that job was for a DOG WALKING POSITION. Fuck!

My permanent crown should be arriving from the special-crown-making-place in the next couple of days. And the couple of days after its arrival, I should be heading back to LA. I can't wait. I'm going nuts here.
I love my friends in Houston, but I've already seen all the movies that are in theatres (i mean, except "disturbia", but...come on), some multiple times, and, in the last two weeks, have eaten at indian, asian fusion, sushi, american (southwell's grilled cheese!) and four different kinds of mexican restaurants. I'm starting to get fat from all this restaurant eating. And I guess all the unmotivated sitting around on my ever-increasing ass has something to do with it.

Celebrities that Kyle has seen since he began working at Whole Foods (West Hollywood) a month ago:
- Sandra Oh (out with scruffy director type)
- Julianne Moore ("looked famous")
- Jason Statham (wanted albacore tuna, has come in twice now)
- Jeanne Tripplehorn (has come in multiple times, toddler son insists on calling kyle "little penis" whenever they see each other)
- Drew Barrymore (well, someone else saw her right before he walked in)
- Joelle Carter ("terrible shopper")

Which gets me thinking about High Fidelity, my Number 2 Top Movie of All Time (Number 1 being Jurassic Park)...
Custmer: You guys are snobs.
Dick: No, we're not...
Customer: Yes, seriously; you're totally elitist. You feel like unappreciated scholars, so you shit on people who know less than you...
Rob, Barry, Dick: No!
Customer: ...Which is everybody.
Rob, Barry, Dick: Yeah...
Customer: That's sad.

I got that out of the IMDB. but honestly, I'm pretty sure I could quote that entire film (more or less accurately) from beginning to end. I've seen it that many times, have loved it that much. My list of "memorable quotes from high fidelity" would be a transcription of the movie.
I'm not very selective about properties of things I love. If I love a movie, I'll develop a definite emotional bond to every change of expression, to every cheesy turn of phrase. On the other hand, if I hate something, I will hate it unconditionally. Jason Statham, for example, drives me crazy. I hate that he only has two facial expressions. I hate his accent. I hate that he's always agreeing to be in movies that were presented at the studio with this introduction: "Imagine Bruce Willis (cue Mission Impossible theme)...in a car/bus/plane...SPEEDING OUT OF CONTROL!!!!"

Kyle's comment about Joelle Carter being a bad shopper got me thinking. I consider myself to be a bad shopper. I'm always polite to the people that work in stores (which is what he was referring to; Carter was apparently kind of cranky), but I never go in and just, ugh, accomplish what I was there to do. Grocery stores are my mortal enemies. I write a list and invariably escape with only a shred of my dignity left, after pacing the aisles for an hour and 1/2 trying to find alphabet soup. I used to think Target was my enemy too, but that was due, in part, to my own incapacity. Whenever I admit even partial fault for my hatred of something (this applies to the previous paragraph), it's only so I'll look capable of having a productive conversation. But in my head, I will roundly perceive the thing I hate to be completely without merit. Jason Statham, for instance, or Tiffany Pollard. Look that shit up, I dare you. WITHOUT MERIT.

Okay, I've been composing this thing for about an hour now. I'm going to go downstairs and eat a Toblerone.
Rock on, Rock out!

Old Bloggers

i'm tired of reading mommyblogs. and i'm tired of reading SAHD (stay-at-home-dad) blogs. and i'm tired of reading the misadventures of sardonic "omigod-i-was-so-wasted" college freshmen blogs. what i want to read now are the weblogs of old people.

and i'm not being ironic here; i'm not interested in skimming through a thousand entries detailing the lives of someone's grandchildren. i want to read about old people that have traveled the world, that have taught a college class, that have fought in a war.

i wonder if the lack of these writings in the blogosphere - as they call it - is due to a lack of technical knowledge, or the desire to impress anyone. i know that when i'm 65, i probably won't give a damn either. but i can solve the first problem. if there's some savvy elder out there who wants to write often but doesn't have a computer, there's a way. what if i were to interview them?
but another problem is: what would i ask? if all old people are the same as the ones i know, then conversations would go something like this:

Priya: Hello, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Smith, how are you?
Mr./Mrs./Ms. Smith: Just fine, thanks.
Priya: What did you do today?
M.S: I taught my Tuesday/Thursday class on European History.
Priya: And how was it?
M.S (vaguely irritated): It was terrible. Students today are just as purposefully uninformed as they were twenty years ago. I was asked three times how to spell Mussolini.
Priya (we might be on to something!): And how does that make you feel?
M.S (getting impatient): It made me feel bored.
Priya: And...
M.S: Would you make me some warm milk?

this is probably because i don't give the old people credit. i imagine them to be just as uncreative and uncooperative as i am.

Dreaming

Sometimes, I have nightmares that feature
various crises
in which my sidekick gets broken.

These dreams always end with me sitting
with my elbows on my knees,
cradling my phone with the screen
dangling
pathetically to the side.

In this moment, I dream that I'm trying
to imagine myself
making the best of it,
but I know deep inside that I will never love my phone the same;
I'm already plotting ways to get a replacement.

I sincerely hope to god that this is my brain dealing

with a metaphor

for some other struggle.

ugh...FRIENDS.

Marion posted on my facebook wall about how she would rather read on itsfunny because my template here was white text on black, whereas my diaryland template was, admittedly, much easier on the eyes. well, now she has no damn excuse. LEARN TO EMBRACE CHANGE, PEOPLE.

keep in mind this will just be a temporary template - it took me about a year to figure out how to do this on diaryland, but i was 15 and probably in history class learning about mussolini. points being:

1. now i have lots more free attention time,

2. said attention will now be undivided in the search to find a pretty picture to write on,

3. i'm 20 and have already figured HTML out once; this should be at least a little easier, and

4. it's midnight and i'm still fucking around on the internet. some things never change.

on other keys, i just watched saving private ryan for the first time. i know, i know. it makes me wish i had seen it when it first came out (no, not because my street cred is suffering right now, thanks) for the social impact it had at the time. now it's pretty much a myth unto itself...i'm trying to say something but i can't put my finger on it.

wow, this bodes well for new readers. i'm going to leave now while i'm ahead.

I <3 Blogger

I'm totally thrilling in all the stuff Blogger lets me do. For example: MOBILE BLOGGING. and what I mean by this is not accessing Diaryland through my little sidekick web browser, but writing an email to go@blogger.com and pressing send. WHERE SEND = PUBLISH oh my god. I'm just a beginner here, but I can't wait to learn more.

I Love New York 2

I just saw an ad for I Love New York 2, telling us that anyone (males only!) who is completely disillusioned with life and wants to end it all can submit his video to her website for consideration to appear on the show. Could that sentence be any longer?

Anyway, I was shocked to see New York reading from a teleprompter - reading? - that she was recently rejected on national TV for the 3rd time, and that she "handled it pretty well". Anyone who saw the I Love New York reunion knows that she did NOT handle it pretty well. There was nothing that happened on that show that led me to believe that New York could handle anything pretty well. The idea that screaming profanities and gesturing wildly, then bursting into tears and throwing oneself at a rejected suitor could be perceived as "handling it well" is downright offensive. I was also dismayed to see that her gargoyle of a mother would be making her appearances on the show, as well. Christ.

omigod, i just used the word "ennui".

My dad told me today that he read somewhere that the one tangible reason for today's twentysomethings' overwhelming sense of futility is that global warming video of a polar bear drowning because it can't find an ice floe big enough to support its weight.

I wonder what the last set of twentysomethings excuse was? Oh, just the general ennui associated with accepting responsibility and grasping mortality?

GIRLPLEASE.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure my constant dismay has more to do with New York's appearance on Charm School than anything else. Bitch is contaminating all that I find acceptable in the world! Pretty soon that list is only going to include: chocolate, jurassic park, and cuddles. And chocolate is on notice.

the older you get, the more there is to get drunk about...and the harder it is to get drunk.

Will Burke: let's do something fun tonight.
Priya: heck yes. Like what?
W: I think we should crash an episcopal party.
P: oh, uh -
W: we could reminisce with them about teachers that quit when we were freshmen, or about students that graduated before we did.
P: we could get crunk and dance to songs that were popular 4 years ago.
W: we could show them how terrifyingly sad it is to be old.

A Post About Morrissey

kyle and I were talking about morrissey (this happens almost never, as there is very little about the moz that compells kyle to speak at all, let alone at length) and kyle said that "morrissey sounds like the last choirboy," and proceeded to sing a very morrissey-esque tune of his own devising, the lyrics to which went something like this:

I am the last choirboy
Everybody else left
I'm hanging out in the church
All alone.

And I have to admit, the whole thing made me fall in love with him ("him" in this case referring to kyle) all over again.

Sappy!

And in YET ANOTHER morrissey related conversational tangent...
Kyle and I were talking about the morrissey show I'm apparently covering for LA's The Place and he said "ugh, you're going to meet sooo many potential boyfriends there," as is his wont, and I told him that I wouldn't be interested at all in actually speaking to anyone there. Kyle said, "except morrissey." Which, duh. But also, no.

Anyway, he said that morrissey and I would be a perfect pair. I said that that was patently untrue, and he countered that we were practically the same person, which made me shudder, because moz is such a categorically miserable person and probably exhausting to be around (not that I'm not in favor of making the lives of others unbearably difficult), but also made me feel very pleased (paraphrasing marc spitz...morrissey : me :: jesus : christians). But then I had to ask: why do you say that? And here's what he said.
"Well, you're both incredible writers, you hate the world, and if it wasn't for my intervention, I'm pretty confident that you'd both be celibate."

Then he elaborated, "if you and I hadn't met in the weirdest way possible, you would be completely celibate. Because you're not socially awkward, you're romantically awkward. You would regard physical contact from a distance and then curl up with a book and a warm cup of tea."

So that comparison pleased me because I do like to give the impression that I'm a nonsexual being - I dunno, something about deep-seated insecurities spawned when I was, like, 9 and a distinct prude-y quality to my physical and emotional interactions with others which may or may not be the product of said insecurities - and also because it's pretty much true, and I heart that kyle's so intuitive.

For the five people out there that saw American Dreamz, I direct your attention to the scene where Mandy Moore's character regards Hugh Grant's character and says, "um, I'm not physically attracted to other people, but if you want me? I'm yours."

Do You Got Love for New York?

You guys,

My head is about to explode. I just saw the Reunion Show for I Love New York. And (spoiler alert): TANGO. WHY YOU GOTTA PLAY A SISTER LIKE THAT???

Though, in all fairness, I hate new york and everything her ignorant, righteous, obnoxious, saggy titted ass ever stood for, and actually, tango kinda had a point. Well, not kinda. I was really just looking for an excuse to shout the words "play a sister".
And though I doubt his basic premise that he was in love with Tiffany, not "New York", if he were telling the truth, he would be right. The latter, as we came to know her, never was - and never will be - a loveable person. Tiffany...maybe, but the jury's out and getting irritated at New York's overblown sense of self-as-full-celebrity skipping hand in hand with her complete failure to comprehend dolphins.

"Where do they keep their brains", indeed.

In any case, the whole thing was a lurid, lurid affair and I'm glad that it's over. It was like a slow motion train wreck in the truest sense of that expression; there was a concept. It derailed. There were casualties. One of whom was ME.

I was actually quite amused by the sickly sweet pleasure watching I Love New York gave me (like People and Us and OK! But without the troublesome matter of having to turn pages or Read) until I realized how the show came to be.

Behold, the most pointless and rudimentary pop culture flow chart Ever.

Surreal Life (wherein the inexplicable love between Flava Flav and Brigitte Nielson first rears its rather awkward looking head) begat

StrangeLove (a mindfuck of a chronicle of the love between Flav and Brigitte, wherein Brigitte fluctuates between a younger, italian lover and flav, ultimately choosing the former) begat

Flavor of Love (wherein Flav chooses a rebound biatch from a batch of 25 - one wonders how it feels to be the silver medal to brigitte's gold - and whittles the number to two: Hoopz and New York, who has professed to be in true love with Flav since, like, episode 2. He chooses Hoopz and...) begat

Flavor of Love 2 (+side note: the first season also spawned Charm School.+ wherein Flav invites New York back, she makes it to the top two again, and is again rejected, proving graphically to the world that doing the exact same thing twice and expecting different results really is the definition of insanity. I managed to miss this entire season somehow. Sadly, I attribute this to the approximately 6 months this year when I didn't have cable in my apartment.) begat

I Love New York. (Wherein...ahhh, fuck it. Wherein I am spared the effort of slitting my wrists when tango proposes to - and then shits all over - New York and makes her cry big showbiz tears as big as lightbulbs on national televison, as detailed above.)

So the geneology of the Show, if you will, its pedigree, makes me angry. It makes my head wanna "spinoff" my neck.
The other day, my dad gave me a big lecture about my not wanting to contribute to society, and I thought of the spin offs. That's what society values, I thought. Skinny waists and a desire to degrade oneself with one's inability and lack of desire to form complete and coherent sentences. It makes one feel hopeless and alone.

But...movies like Stranger than Fiction are being made, too, and though it does feature a skinny waist or two, it also makes the point that when one is feeling helpless and alone, comfort can be found in the little things.

But that's not the point. The point is that some people don't deserve to be celebrities, and I get the sneaking suspicion that some of this is Paris Hilton's fault.

memories:

when i was in 7th grade, my english teacher stood up in front of the school during chapel time and made an announcement. "i regret to inform you that shel silverstein has died."

a hush washed over the room as people mulled over the name and decided they didn't care. i guess i decided that i had had enough of holding it back, and in the middle of this sea of silence, i yelled,

"NO!"

and proceeded to have no friends for the next three years.

getting older...

the worst thing i've noticed about getting older is that my precociousness seems more and more like plain old acquired wisdom.
i mean, i'm still the smartest person in the room, but now it's somehow less impressive because i've had more time to get that way. dammit! damn time and its unhalting march into the future!

'fessing up is hard to do.

I wish there were easy ways to do painful things. I mean, easy ways that were just as acceptable as the hard way.

PRIYA SAYS: yo mom/dad just wanna say hi im alive n jus chillin. I mite call u l8r lol ths is lame neway g2g l8r.

Then again, well...

A New Beginning

Hi, my name is Priya.

You might know me from http://itsfunny.diaryland.com, which I started when I was 15 and in the throes of high school. I've been wanting to start a new blog for a while now because I still love the format of writing informally, but hate that everything I write now as a 20 year old is still in context of the terrible syntax and life choices inherent with my writing back then. I guess this first introductory paragraph is one of the main reasons I've been postponing this move - I can never decide what to say about myself. I know I could just jump into the posting part, but it just wouldn't feel right.

I chose blogger for my new site because I love how easy it is to edit one's preferences. Interestingly enough, there's an option to write all my posts in Hindi, which makes me wonder if they offer this option to everyone signing up nowadays or if they're doing it 'cause I'm brown. Also, the lack of loopy flowers and childlike illustrations of kitty-cats on the sign-in page makes me feel less like I'm writing in my diary about my painful crush on a biology partner.

I realize this doesn't give you much tangible information about me, but I like that. I'm going to start this off by posting some stuff from itsfunny, stuff that never really felt like it belonged there. You can glean whatever conclusions you will about me from my future writing; you'll probably be right.