#basically this middle school girl crush of mine had this perfume and i loved it and i was like girl what's the nameeee

[bylrndgm]

i think the most canon event as an italian teenager is going to a drugstore and buying one's first tesori d'oriente perfume.

[caveatauditor]

My favorite albums, days 1-10

Friends have requested that I share my favorite albums on social media, preferably with vaguely autobiographical blurbs accompanying them, so to avoid polluting the wholesomeness of my Facebook timeline with music geekery, these are they until I change my mind. I excluded albums from this decade because the decade isn’t over, so the ten gems that follow represent an attempt to make history conform to me.

1. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3

Two discs of Wayne freestyling, bloviating, and holding a conversation over a bunch of sampled and/or stolen and/or obscure music, arranged randomly because in theory the mixtape goes on forever in both directions, a gorgeous tapestry whose details happen to consist of delectable beats and wild free-associative blather. Wayne raps like a child in a candy store, eschewing parsable semantic content in favor of puns and stray impulses and improvised phonetic twaddle and whatever he feels like saying in the moment; likewise, the beats don’t cohere, sonically or in sequence, instead sticking as many hooks as possible wherever possible as often as possible; the overall result comes off like a transmission from the filthiest corner of the id. The ultimate triumph of mid-‘00s mixtape culture, Da Drought 3 is fabulous aural wallpaper and hardly an album at all, so of course it’s my favorite album.

2. Joni Mitchell, Hejira

Given how beloved this album is among a surprisingly large number of my friends, I almost went with the equally astonishing Hissing of Summer Lawns, but let’s be real now--Hejira is flawlessly, magnificently beautiful like nothing else I’ve ever heard. The guitar lines lap and peal over breathtakingly wide, sweeping expanses of empty space--space like the open road, like the southwestern desert in the winter, like the urge to travel and stay on the move, like the empty human heart. The lyrics use the familiar musicianly trope of going on tour as a springboard for a set of travelogue meditations on solitude and perpetual motion, a condition imposed partially by circumstance and partially by internal existential need; she’s moving before the ringing opening chords of “Coyote” and she’s moving after “Refuge of the Roads” pensively winds down. The latter song in particular contains several moments that always, always make me cry, especially during the first verse (“We laughed at how our perfection would always be denied”) and the third (“A thunderhead of judgment was gathering in my gaze”). I’ll never use “relate” as a verb, but I’ve often taken refuge in the road. I always take this album with me, though.

3. Jandek, Blue Corpse

I’m cheating here: Jandek is a relatively new discovery for me, and I’m still working through his ridiculously massive catalog, but I’ve listened to him with sufficient fascination enough over the past year and a half that he deserves a spot. Fans say that Blue Corpse is a good starting point because it’s his most accessible album, but accessibility is a relative concept when we’re talking about experimental atonal lo-fi acoustic quasi-blues fuckery, so let’s just call it his most carefully sequenced--side two builds the way a second side should, starting with an extended harmonica solo before leading into his cover of “House of the Rising Sun” and the album’s ten-minute centerpiece, the lonely, furious “Only Lover”. I love this album so much I could easily imagine a better one lurking in some dank, unexplored discographical corner.

4. Janet Jackson, The Velvet Rope

As a sophomore in high school I heard The Velvet Rope and immediately decided this was the sexiest and most sophisticated music I had ever heard. I was right! To this day I hold a special place in my heart for R&B that confounds the traditional banger/ballad distinction--there are no ballads on this album! With its swirly synthesizer and xylophonesque keyboard chords, “Empty” sounds like a conventional slow song until you notice the second layer of hyperactive drums clicking maniacally atop the core rhythm track: nervous energy disrupting and complementing preternatural spiritual calm. “Tonight’s the Night” is a great cover because the act of covering an established hit mirrors the act of initial erotic exploration, of navigating your way through a series of gestures you knew about before trying yourself; the way she sings “Cause I love you girl ain’t nobody gonna stop us now” is defiantly blunt, unshowy, matter-of-fact. Those are the lyrics! She’ll sing them. Breezy, mechanical, exquisite, The Velvet Rope captures the fragility of intimacy.

5. Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree

I first became aware of Fall Out Boy in middle school, when the girl whose locker neighbored mine put up a bunch of Pete Wentz posters on the inside of her locker door. I envied her brilliance and poise, since she was obviously way smarter and cooler than me, and I’m pleased to say she was right: this daft, idiotic, magnificent album captures a world of teenage crushes, fixations, stupid feelings poorly rationalized, awkward proclamations blurted out and immediately retracted, aftershave clumsily sprayed on to impress a special someone, the scent of cheap perfume, lipstick stains on your pillowcase and friction in your jeans. It’s so flushed and clumsy it automatically enters the realm of hormonal teenpop utopia, with the crunchy guitars mirroring the anguish in eternal adolescent Patrick Stump’s heart. Pete Wentz writes solecistic, self-aggrandizing lyrics because teenagers in love are supposed to utter howlers like “The only thing worse than not knowing is you thinking that I don’t know” and (sigh) “Turn off the lights and turn off the shyness”. It’s an ode to the enduring power of romantic absurdity, in all its most entertaining guises.

6. Duran Duran, Rio

Like From Under the Cork Tree, only glitzier. Occasionally I play a game with select friends of mine where we try to guess whether a random snippet of doggerel is a Fall Out Boy or a Duran Duran lyric. “It’s just like a scene out of Voltaire twisting out of sight”? Obviously Duran, for citing French philosophy is such a New Romantic move. “We’re well-read and poised/we’re the best boys”? Self-defeating self-objectification is Pete Wentz’s favorite rhetorical device. “The sun drips down bedding heavy behind/the front of your dress all shadowy lined/and the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart”? Too florid; gotta be Duran. “Couldn’t cut me deeper with a knife if you tried/just take a look before you run off and hide”? No clue--blood and betrayal could go either way. “Let’s fade away together one dream at a time”? “Some people call it a one-night stand but we can call it paradise”? Well!

7. PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love

As a senior in high school I heard To Bring You My Love and immediately decided this was the sexiest and rawest music I had ever heard. I was right! To this day I know no harsher or more beautiful approximation of what it means to yearn for the sublime. The tiny guitar figure in “Working for the Man”, half-concealed beneath the drums and muffled, thumping bass, devastates because it’s creepy and horrible; the maximalist guitar roar in “Long Snake Moan”, almost as loud and thundering as her distorted vocals, devastates because so would getting run over by a tank. On the rest of the album, she hits every mood between those two extremes, including rapture and delight in addition to all the abrasive ones.

8. Fleetwood Mac, Tusk

I almost went with Tango in the Night, given how my generation seems to have discovered and reclaimed it, with “Seven Wonders” popping up in Balearic dance mixes and American Horror Story. Tusk, however, is a giant compendium of whirring gears and rotating spokes and plinky keys and strummed acoustic guitars and tinkly music boxes and billions of other moving parts, and the totality of the sound correlates with a draining, overwhelming emotional extremity. Lindsey Buckingham fills the space with a bunch of tightly crafted miniatures, distilling his imagined ideal of the Fleetwood Mac sound into the searing anger of “What Makes You Think I’m the One” and “I Know I’m Not Wrong” (Lindsey Buckingham in a song title), but Stevie Nicks gets all the big statements: the thundering “Sisters of the Moon”, the incomparable breakup ballad “Storms” (“Never have I been a blue calm sea/I have always been a storrrrrrm” always makes me cry), “Sara”. Meanwhile, Christine McVie’s “Brown Eyes”/“Never Make Me Cry” couplet is the axis on which the album’s sequence turns. Tusk resonates because it conflates the singer-songwriter confessional urge with the band’s collaborative dynamic, creating a communal space for them all to bask in their shared hate for and exhaustion with each other.

9. Crunk Hits

I needed a compilation, and this magnificent one brings to life my favorite radio format: mainstream hip-hop in the mid-‘00s. Crunk and R&B were everywhere back then; to me this album sounds like New York in the hot, lazy summers of ’05 and ’06, when these songs confounded with their unprecedented hedonism and aggression and delight. Definitively singles-oriented, this music saturated a subsequent generation of hip-hop fans, so that album artistes in this decade like Young Thug and Playboi Carti have internalized crunk’s valuable lessons about shamelessly exposing the id. I couldn’t omit an album whose first five songs are Usher’s “Yeah”, Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz’s “Get Low”, T.I.’s “Rubber Band Man”, Chingy’s “Right Thurr”, and Ciara’s “Goodies”--damn! It’s practically a greatest-hits album for the entire decade.

10. Steely Dan, Gaucho

When I bought this album in seventh grade, I wasn’t aware I was buying the fleetest, shallowest, most efficient howl of anguish ever set to music. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are only ironists insofar as they’re romantics who mask their feelings in inscrutable form. The question with any of their albums, which are basically all flawless, is to what degree they’ll reveal their bleeding hearts, and on Gaucho there’s such a gash in the fabric the blood spurts out everywhere, staining the shag carpet, dripping through the singer’s sleeve onto his fancy leather shoes. The modest functionalism of their slick California studio-rock, the tasty licks and glossy keyboards and sparingly deployed saxophone and sudden sharp bursts of guitar, hardly enters into a dialectic with the desperation and horror of the songwriting--it’s the perfect musical expression for these feelings, as perfection that’s slightly disfigured is so much more devastating than total abrasion (when critics use “Bret Easton Ellis” as shorthand for the demented luxury porn we’ve enjoyed and suffered through this decade, what they really mean is “Steely Dan”). No matter how many glass tables you smash, how many ashtrays you inhale, you’ll never feel as shitty as this record.

[witchybitchys]

Another get to know me post bc i’m hella bored & why not.

 What is you middle name? My middle name is Lauren - God knows why, I think my parents plucked that name out of thin air.

 How old are you? I’m 21 (But I look about 12)

 When is your birthday? April 19th 1995. I’m so old.

 What is your zodiac sign? I was born on the Aires/Taurus cusp! but I relate more to the traits of a Taurus. 

 What is your favourite colour? I really love dark colours. I’m a little bit obsessed with dark green at the moment. Black has to be my fav tho.

 Do you have any pets? I have a little tabby cat called Lulu! she is the apple of my eye. I’ll never forget the day we rescued her and welcomed her into our home!

 Where are you from? A really boring town Called Barrow, located in the North-West of England. seriously tho - never come here.

 How tall are you? I’m a smol bean. I’m exactly 5″1. But that means I’m the same height as gaga so idc ;)

 What shoe size are you? My feet are odd! there are times that I’ll fit into a 3 and times I’ll fit into a 4??

.What talents do you have? *cries internally* I suck at most things... i’d like to say that I’m good at being a domestic goddess?? 

Are you psychic in any way? I don’t think so! although yesterday I predicted that I’d get an email of UCAS & I did... SOO MAYBE I AM.

Favourite song? Marry the Night OR born this way??? both songs have such meaningful lyrics that have helped me through so much crap.

Favourite music artist? LADY GAGA OFC. THAT WILL NEVER CHANGE.

Favourite movie? I can’t really think?? I watched the curious case of Benjamin button the other night & i really enjoyed it. 

 Who would be your ideal partner? I’m already with my ideal girlfriend! she’s my best friend & the love of my life. I’m so lucky to call her mine.

Do you want children? Yes! I’d like two children - bc I grew up as an only child & it sucked so much.

Do you want a church wedding? naah, I’d like to get married somewhere fancy. Tbh, churches kinda freak me out.

 Are you religious? My only religions are Lady gaga, cats and Chicken nuggets.

Have you ever been to the hospital? Too many times. :’)

Have you ever got in trouble with the law? Not really... I’ve been told of by the police for trespassing and underage drinking (i was such a badass)

 What colour socks are you wearing? I’m not wearing any bc wearing socks in bed is sickening. 

What type of music do you like? I really like 80′s music along side Lady Gaga, Lana Del Ray & lots of other stuff that I cba typing.

What do you typically have for breakfast? I usually skip breakfast but, sometimes I’ll grab a cereal bar or smth.

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? I was once awake for a solid 24hrs and it was gross. I was awake at 5am for work & that same night I went out drinking with becca... but she drank too much & was throwing up / passing out SOOO I had to stay awake and look after her until like 5am.

Do you have any scars? yes! I have a couple on my head from when I was younger, a few on my legs from falling out of trees & one on my wrist from the time I got it caught in a suitcase :’)

Have you ever had a secret admirer? YES... an old man left me a cactus and some chocolates at work once. He always asks me to go out for drinks too :/ i stg he’s like 90.

Do you have a strong accent? I’ve been told by multiple people that I sound very Northern. Its always the first thing people comment on when I open my mouth.

 What is your favourite accent? I love, love love the Australian accent. It does things to me.

 What is your personality type? INFJ.

 Are you scared of spiders? Totally depends on the size of them... I can handle little ones BUT NOT THE FAT ONES.

 Favourite food? Probably has to be pasta or sweet chilli chicken wraps? OH, or chicken nuggets.

 Favourite foreign food? I’m really fussy when it comes to foreign food. I’d say I like Chinese food... but that’s basically chips, rice and curry sauce. I want to try more tho. 

Are you a clean or messy person? I’m pretty clean tbh. I enjoy cleaning?? I often clean Becca’s room for her bc i’m the best.

Most used word? .... LIKE.

Do you talk to yourself? ALLL the fucking time... and I even answer myself sometimes.

Do you sing to yourself? yeah, i can’t sing for shit tho.

Biggest Fear? Being abandoned by the people I love (welp that was deep)

Favourite school subject? I really enjoyed science.

Extrovert or Introvert? It all depends on who I’m with!

Are you ticklish? Yes and anyone who knows me v well will know they will get a foot to the face if they try and tickle them

Have you ever drank underage? Yeah, i got caught by the police tho. It was the last day of school and we broke into this huge abandoned hall and it was pretty cool tbh.

Who was your first real crush Lmfao I had a huge crush on a girl who worked in a coffee shop??? how tragic :’) but then I went on a date with a girl to that exact coffee shop & I fell for her and forgot about the petty coffee girl crush.

 How many piercings do you have? I have my ears, my helix and my nose pierced atm.

How fast can you run? hahahaha. i cant run for more than 30 seconds without losing my breath

 What colour is your hair? Dark brown atm. It’ll no doubt be 50 shades of brown in a few weeks tho.

 What colour are your eyes? My eyes are really blue. 

 What are you allergic to? *laughs* I’m allergic to scented shower gel & basically anything that has perfume in it. I hate my skin.

 Do you keep a journal? Yes, I like to journal whenever I have time. I journal no matter what mood I’m in however, I write more if I’m in a bad mood or I’m stressed / anxious - its a great way to reduce bad feelings.

What do your parents do? My mum is a theatre sister & my dad is a health and safety manager at b.a.e systems (not bae systems) 

What makes you angry? I fucking DESPISE it when people cough too many times in a short period of time (I know that sounds petty af) but it goes right through me and idek. 

Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? I really like the name Imogene for a girl & Harrison for a boy.

 Do you want a boy a girl for a child? If the baby is healthy, that’s all that should matter!

 What are you strengths? I make a mean soft boiled egg. :’)

What are your weaknesses? I get jealous too easy and I find it hard to control. I also find it difficult to express my emotions - i bottle things up for too long and then I lose control.

 How did you get your name? My dad picked my name bc my mum wanted to call me Olivia & my dad hated it. 

Color of your bedspread? Black & white.

 Color of your room? White and a really, really deep red. I decorated my room as a little project to help pick me up during depression - i really wanted to paint it black but I wasn’t allowed fml.

[suckitsurveys]

What song are you obsessed with right now?: Good Grief by Bastille.

Last thing you bought online? Did you like it?: The last thing I bought online was a gift for Kayla, which I am jealous of and I am probably going to buy for myself. She should get it today and I am SO PUMPED for her, assuming she doesn’t already own it.

Do you go to clubs? If so, what’s your favorite to go to?: Nope. Not my scene.

Are any of your friends old enough to drink?: Yes, I am pretty sure all of them are. I keep forgetting Ellen and Kayla are both a few years younger than me so I had to double check if they were both over 21 yet hahahah I’m a terrible friend.

What’s your favorite flavor of gum?: Watermelon.

Be honest… do you chew gum like a cow?: I haven’t really chewed gum in a while but I don’t believe I do?

Ever had braces? If so, did you still eat popcorn and chew gum and do all those other things you technically weren’t supposed to do?: --

What was the last perfume you used? What about the last lotion?: I used one of my body sprays from Bath and Body Works. I can’t remember which scent but I am almost out and I need wintery scents! Also the last lotion I used was some eczema lotion with oatmeal in it at my sister’s house. I need to pick some up for myself because I’m like 90% sure I have eczema on my hands.

What are your favorite makeup brands?: I don’t wear makeup enough to have favorites.

Do you shop at WalMart? Why or why not?: I don’t often, because there aren’t any close to me. I’d have to go out of my way to go to one.

What’s your favorite mall? Now, what are your three favorite stores inside that mall?: I literally just talked about this in the previous survey.

Would you rather buy books new or used?: Either or.

Do you ever wear a watch?: I don’t even own a watch.

Do you still use Myspace?: Does MySpace even exist anymore?

Have you refused to jump on the Facebook bandwagon?: This survey is confusing because the question before asks if I still use MySpace, which lead me to believe this was a newer survey, but now it’s asking about the “Facebook bandwagon” which is odd because Facebook has been around for a while now...

Who was in the last dream you can remember?: Lydia was in the last dream I can remember, from the other night. We went out for sushi and they brought me the wrong roll and I was upset and then I woke up and I was upset haha.

Favorite television shows when you were a little kid?: Tiny Toons, Pokemon, and Garfield and Friends.

What is a "90’s kid” to you? Is it someone born in the early 90’s, or someone who was born in the early 80’s and had their teen years in the 90’s?: Why not both? As far as I can tell, if you have memories of the ‘90s, you’re a ‘90s kid. <---Yeah.

When people still don’t know the different between YOUR and YOU’RE, do you get angry and correct them?: I don’t really care. It irks me, but not enough to say anything.

Describe how you dressed in middle school.: Basically exactly how I dress now hahaha.

Do you know any couples that lasted all throughout high school?: I literally paid no attention to that sort of thing. I do know that a girl in the grade above me ended up marrying and having a baby with her high school boyfriend, though.

What are your thoughts on one night stands?: You do you.

Are your friends mostly virgins or non-virgins?: I’m gunna go ahead and take a guess that most if not all of them are not virgins.

I know someone who thinks giving a blowjob makes you not a virgin anymore. Do you believe that?: Whatever, the concept of virginity is dumb.

Would you rather eat gummy bears or chocolate?: Either is good with me.

Milk, dark, or white chocolate?: Milk.

What’s your favorite thing to have inside of chocolate (crispy stuff, peanut butter, etc.)?: Caramel and nuts.

Do you have any co-workers you just want to punch in the face?: OH MY GOD almost all of them. I work with a bunch of old white men it’s awfulllllllllllllll.

How old were you when you made your first Tumblr site?: I was 22?

When you were little, did you do all that stuff (like wearing your pajamas inside out, a penny by the window, etc.) to make it snow so there would be no school?: I totally did all of that. Putting a spoon under your pillow was a popular one in my area too. <--I have literally never heard of this! Is it an East Coast thing? @tapiooocasurveys

Ever had a crush on a best friend? How did it go?: Nope.

What are you planning on doing for Valentine’s Day this year? If it passed already, what did you do?: Probably nothing special. Order sushi in and get wine and just chill. Unless his anxiety isn’t bad and then we might go out to eat. But either way I’d be happy.

How often do you use public transportation?: Very, very rarely. I use it only when I don’t have access to my car OR if we are going to Cubs games because it’s so much easier.

Could you date someone who didn’t drive (and didn’t show an interest in ever getting their license either)?: Yeah, easily. I have no interest in learning either because driving is terrifying.

Do you like discussing the future with other people (what job you’ll have, where you’ll live, etc.)?: Sometimes.

Do you plan on going to college? Why or why not?: I already did.

Best class you had in high school?: Ceramics. One semester my “free period” was the last class of the day, right after ceramics, so I could technically go home early. I usually stayed because I had friends in the ceramics class right after mine and it allowed me to complete a lot of projects quickly so I had free time to just make stuff of my own.

Do you shop at dollar stores frequently? What do you usually buy there?: I shop there a lot around Christmas, or if I need multiple of something for a party or something.

What color is the pair of slippers you use the most?: I have a pair of slippers that are red with racoon faces on them. Mark’s mom got them for me for Christmas a couple years ago. I rarely wear them.

How often do you wear chapstick?: When I need to.

Are you comfortable with your cup size?: No. I mean I am used to them but they cause so many issues.

What did you get teased for the most in middle school?: Being chubby.

Did you ever think the real spelling for “okay” was “OK”?: I have no idea. They are both actual words, so?

Favorite month of the year? Least favorite month?: My favorite month is September and my least favorite month is March.

Do you want any tattoos or piercings right now? If so, what’s next on your list?: I want to get the words “Love her, but leave her wild” above my To Kill a Mockingbird Tattoo.

Do you like your job?: It’s okay. Speaking of which I should probably “return” from my lunch break now oops.

Did you ever get a ticket? If so, what was the last thing you got a ticket for?: I’ve gotten a few parking tickets and a speeding ticket once oops.

What town do you live in?: Chicago.