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Mobile Posting?

Posted by Teija on May 09, 2013
travel / No Comments

I recently downloaded an app called “Poster,” which is a fun and in-my-pocket way of posting to my blog. This is, theoretically, a great thing for my blog. I’m one of those people who always has their phone on them except in the moments during a day that I am asleep, in which case it is certainly within arm’s reach. I am known for (relatively) quick responses in email and text, which is almost entirely due to the fact that I seem to have been trained by the fell creatures that created mobile data to react to an alert with impressive speed.

I am not entirely sure this is a good thing. However, I am not yet to the point that deprivation feels like despair – I spent the full two weeks of my honeymoon disconnected and didn’t think much about it at all. It may be more of a minor compulsion to keep things clean as it is the need to respond quickly. I am not pleased when unanswered things sit in my inbox too long, and too many red notification badges make me cranky.

we don't need no stinkin' badges!

But back to the point. I downloaded the “Poster” app thinking that I had been neglecting my blog, and having the ability to update it from my phone may be just what I need to keep content moving regularly. I’ve had it for a week now, so I’m not entirely sure it is going to work. However, blogging from the passenger seat as my husband and I start our trip to visit family in Shreveport is kind of nifty, don’t you think?

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Recovering from Surgery in Recipes

Posted by Teija on March 23, 2013
food, personal / No Comments

I recently had my gallbladder removed, and I thought writing about it would be kind of dull. Honestly, reliving the experience of being in a hospital isn’t super compelling reading, really — at least not for something like a gallbladder. Perhaps it would be interesting if I’d been seriously injured while Indiana Jones-ing somewhere, but really I just needed a failing organ removed, so it just looks like this: “Nurses came in. They stuck me with needles and took my blood. Then they knocked me out and removed my bad parts. Afterward, they kindly sewed me up. Then they sent me home.”

Whoop de doo, wasn’t that exciting? Anyway, I thought the recovery was way more compelling, in that I can tell it in cocktails.

Equal parts pain meds and sleeping through TV shows.

Equal parts heavy pain meds and sleeping through TV shows.

1. Day One: The Thortini

3 parts heavy painkillers

3 parts napping

1 part Thor on DVD

1 part pain from forgetting you can’t use your stomach muscles

Shake well, pour into couch cushions.

2. Day Two: The Snoozemopolitan

2 parts heavy painkillers

1 part sleeping

a dash of the Food Network

Serve in a martini glass left on the coffee table untouched while you snore beside it under a throw blanket.

3. Day Three: The Kingmaker

2 parts heavy painkillers

1 part season 1 of Scandal on Netflix

1 part being allowed to shower again

Serve in a shot glass and take before dinner. Enjoy the brief moment of feeling alive.

4. Day Four: The Zombinator

2 parts heavy painkillers

1 part abdominal bruising

1 part House of Cards

Serve in a lowball glass; have about eight of them.

5. Day Five: The Dragonborn

1 part Skyrim

1 part Aspirin

1 part belly button irritation

Serve in champagne flute ’cause you’re feeling fancy enough to actually interact with your media rather than just absorbing it by osmosis.

6. Day Six: The Socializer

1 part Aspirin

1 part coffee

2 parts bracing yourself for social interaction

a dash of patience

Serve with breakfast on  your first day back to work.

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Recent Things

Posted by Teija on March 17, 2013
books / No Comments

1. I’ve updated the header on the site! Lately, I’ve had a real itch for the color yellow — I wish I looked good in it, because then I’d likely have bought a few clothing items in a sunny canary color and really gotten it out of my system. But alas, I’m so pale that  yellow doesn’t suit me, so I’m having to find other ways to use it. So all my headers are yellow!

2. I finished Richelle Mead’s The Indigo Spell last week, and man. I am so sad the next one isn’t out yet, because I would have picked it right up! Adrian Ivashkov really is a magnificent creation.

3. Next on my list are Code Name: Verity and The Book Thief. These seem to go together a little bit, as both take place during World War II — and as we all know, that’s my historical era of expertise. I’ll likely be done with both by the end of the week.

4. The Swede has been extra busy at work lately, not getting home until late every evening, so I’ve been experimenting with meals and packing him leftovers every night for the next day (he’s eating dinner at work). It’s been a lot of fun! It does, however, make me yearn for a nicer kitchen…

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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The Greatest Playlist I Have Ever Created

Posted by Teija on March 06, 2013
music, personal / 2 Comments

I created a playlist so magnificent, so glorious, that I felt the need to blog about it. You will all have opinions, I’m sure, but for the exact purpose for which this playlist was created (blasting in the car) and for a person with exactly my taste in music, this is the Perfect Playlist.

I put these on shuffle, but here they are:

1: “Overture,” Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Stage version, not film) I started with this one because there is literally no better song than this one to start your drive home in Atlanta traffic. It is loud, it is boomy, it is epic, and it is the perfect way to tell if your volume is loud enough, because if the first chord doesn’t knock your socks off, you need to turn it up.

Toothless, a.k.a. Togo

Anyone with a pet knows that Toothless is the greatest digital rendering of what an actual pet can be in the history of digital animation.

2. “Test Drive,” How to Train Your Dragon, John Powell. This is the most triumphant, most joyous sounding piece of movie soundtrack I think I have ever heard. If you’ve seen the film, you know it’s the point where Hiccup and Toothless finally get the prosthetic tail piece to cooperate and manage to go out and do some seriously epic flying. If I’m in the right mood when I’m watching (or even just listening), this piece makes me tear up a little bit. The bit at the key change, right after the “they lost control for a second” segment (1:53 on this Youtube version) is seriously the most epic thing. I want to watch it again. I love this movie. I love this movie so much. Thank you, Dreamworks. Thank you.

3. “Over Hill,” The Hobbit, Howard Shore. Honestly, I only included this for a grand total of 15 seconds of soundtrack. On the linked Youtube clip, it starts at 0:43 and ends at about 0:56. It’s the “Misty Mountains” theme in full orchestral grandeur. It is the part of the Hobbit soundtrack that corresponds to the emotional string-pulling the other film excerpts on this list do — it’s the part of the movie that makes your eyes go wide and your heart stop for a second to think, “Yes, surely Howard Shore was sent to us by the Valar themselves.”

4. “Buckbeak’s Flight,” John Williams, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakban. What’s funny about this one is that I’m not a huge fan of the drums in the beginning at all, but the climbing theme and then the broad, sweeping, glorious chords of Buckbeak’s main theme that start at 0:27 on the linked YouTube clip are more than enough to make up for the rest of it. It’s just so damn pretty. From there on out, this is one of the greatest musical themes to have come out of that entire eight-film franchise. When those sweeping chords come back around and slam into you right around 1:23 or so, it’s just… it’s one of those things that makes me wish I had majored in music after all.

5. “This Land,” Hans Zimmer, The Lion King. I am of the mind that the Lion King is the greatest thing Disney has ever done. It’s Hamlet with lions and a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. It came out in 1994, blew nearly everything Disney had done before it out of the water, and has yet to be topped by anything that came after it. “This Land” is, in my opinion, the greatest part of the entire soundtrack. First, you get that gorgeous melody up front, and at the end you get the African themes that come in and out throughout the whole movie. It’s probably just about as perfect as that bit in the movie where Adult Simba finally gets up on Pride Rock and roars his big liony heart out (which may be, actually, the thing that initally broke me and made me into the wibbly movie crier that I am today. That part makes me leaky every time).

6. “The White Tree,” Howard Shore, The Return of the King. Of course this pieces is on this list. How does a woman create a list of “things to blast” without including her favorite theme from her favorite films? That, by the way, would be the theme for Gondor. “The White Tree” is the music that accompanies what is probably the most gorgeous part of The Return of the King, the lighting of the beacons. The Gondorian theme can be heard in glorious surround sound brass chorus starting at 2:36 on the linked YouTube clip, but the buildup to it is essential to the proper enjoyment of the piece. It’s a climax and release situation.

Norringtoooon!

I’ve surprised myself, really, by concluding that the Pirates of the Caribbean films are as dear to me as they are.

7. “He’s a Pirate,” Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt, The Pirates of the Caribbean. So while Lord of the Rings is my absolute favorite thing in any medium, book, film, video game, performance art, you name it — Pirates of the Caribbean comes a surprisingly close second. And the soundtrack is a huge part of the reason why. When I set this playlist up this afternoon and put it on shuffle, this came up right after the Phantom Overture, and the entire way through it I had a big, goony smile on my face, because apparently this bombastic piece is exactly what I needed after the day I had at work today.

8. “Main Title/The Ice Planet Hoth,” John Williams, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Honestly, I could have chosen any of the six “Main Titles/Something Something” ones, but I picked Hoth because Empire is my favorite of the Star Wars films. Whatever! It’s the overfamiliar blast of the Main Titles I really wanted on this playlist, anyway. It brings back to mind the first time I ever saw the full trilogy all the way through. We’d borrowed the VHS tapes from our next door neighbor, and I holed myself up in our basement, however young I was at the time, and watched the entire trilogy over and over and over again until those neighbors demanded them back because they were moving out of the state and didn’t want to give them to me, the jerks (ok, ok, honestly, I should have just asked my dad to buy a set). Anyway, I was hooked, and after that I was unstoppable. I had all those PC games — Tie Fighter, X-Wing, you name it — and by the time BioWare came out with Knights of the Old Republic and they started making even more movies, I was beyond salvageable.

9. “Coronation,” Andy Brown and Ilan Eshkeri, Stardust. This is another of those that is just so triumphant and happy that I can’t help but love it. This one also has the extra bonus point of being one of the songs on my shortlist for the “wedding party enters the reception” song at my wedding to the Swede this past November. We eventually went with Cake’s “Love You Madly,” because this one would have required timing it to the second to get us in right at the climax of the main theme at 1:50. Which would have been freaking amazing, but alas, kind of hard, because it would have meant introducing our rather small wedding party for two solid minutes — which is way longer than you think it is, in that kind of a situation.

10. “Wrath of the Lich King (Main Titles),” Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. I just told you guys the story of how I became a total nerd, so stop staring. Yes, I’m including titles from World of Warcraft. Listen to it and try to argue with me that it doesn’t deserve some seriously epic blasting. It starts with that pretty awesome, halloweeny effect that it has, and then just turns into this marching battle drone, which is how I really got to know the World of Warcraft. I started playing when Burning Crusade was the only available expansion, and so for me, Lich King was the first real “new big thing in Warcraft” that I got to experience in real time. It was really exciting for me! I had a lot of fun back then, and I associate this music with that — as all good WoW players know, the Main Theme to any expansion is what plays when you’re logging in and loading up the game, so you get really familiar with it really fast.

11. “The Blood of Cu Chulainn,” Mychael and Jeff Danna, The Boondock Saints. This maybe seems a little out of place considering the rest of the music on this playlist so far, but I will guarantee you that to me and my dorky ears, this is perfect. I have a huge — maybe huge isn’t a big enough word, really — soft spot for anything Irish or even vaguely Irish-sounding. I even get all grinny when there’s something horribly stereotypical, like some dude in a green hat with a shamrock on it shouting “Ay she-shay it’s Saint Paddy’s Day!” and shilling green Guinness to you on the 17th (it’s SO CLOSE!). I’m sure real Irish people look at me and go, “Oy, you’re one of those people,” but hey. I am one of those people, I can’t exactly blame them. Anyway, this song punches me right in the gut of that part of me, so it always makes me smile real big.

Still sends chills down my spine.

One girl, in all the world…

12. “Chosen,” Robert Duncan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This has to be the long version to count. It’s the theme to the final battle between good and evil from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is one of my very favorite TV shows of all time. It has a vaguely celtic feeling up front, thanks to the use of all those tripolets, and then it slows down into one of the more magical “get you right in the feelings” genius moves ever done by a scorewriter, which is that thing Robert Duncan did at the end where he took the chords from the main theme to the TV show and planted them squarely into a poignant strings-and-piano finale closer-upper. It gets me every time. I am such a sap when it comes to this stuff, and this particular piece of score wrapped up a seven-year-long obsession that literally built more than one of my best friendships through high school, so it holds a lot of extra special soft-spotty meaning for me.

13 and 14. “Olympic Fanfare and Theme,” John Williams, and “The Olympic Fanfare: Bugler’s Dream,” by Leo Arnaud, both from THE FREAKING OLYMPICS. To know me is to know an Olympic obsessive with no plans to find help. Winter or Summer, when the Olympics roll around it is really, really hard to get me to think about nearly anything else. The 1996 Olympics were probably the peak of my obsession, because they were the first ones to take place during my own time zone (hell, they were in my own city) and also during a time in which I had literally nothing else to do (being an elementary school aged child, I was able to stay at home all day and do cartwheels pretending that I was a member of the Mag 7. You know, back when the gymnastics teams were seven and not five people strong).

15. “Main Title (UK Version),” Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica. This one has this great “two personalities” thing going, where it starts off all calm and beautiful, and then turns into something bombastic (and let me just link to the horrible US version, which replaces the bombastic amazingness with something bizarrely sterile and… vaguely patriotic? I don’t even know).

SKYRIIIIM

My love for this theme is such that it’s getting a photo, despite only being the honorable mention.

16. “One Day More,” Claude-Michel Schönberg, Les Miserables. I have spoken here before about what I think this song can be at its most powerful, and that is precisely why I have included it on this playlist. It stands out as the only song on this playlist with lyrics (unless you count operatic chanting in Sanskrit, which appears in 15), but hey. Every playlist needs an oddball.

Note: There are songs I can think of that I would certainly have included if I had owned them at the time of this playlist’s creation, the most notable being the opening titles for Bethesda’s Skyrim, which is currently one of my very favorite things in the entire world (hello, second playthrough, I’m going to do every single quest you can give me, don’t try and stop me, so have a listen! I really need to get my hands on this soundtrack…

Like, really really.

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Nostalgia is all the rage, chapter 2

Posted by Teija on March 01, 2013
Uncategorized / No Comments

Not too long ago, I posted my top 10 boy band songs from my formative years (which I designated as roughly the pace between 1995 and 2004). I also said in that post that it was going to have to be the start of a series, because I listen to all kinds of music. So here we have part two of however many parts this ends up being: Top Ten Girl Group Songs!

TLC10. TLC, No Scrubs

No, I don’t want your number – No, I don’t wanna give you mine

This is one of those songs that still works really well, 14 years later. Every time I hear it, I sing and dance along, because it’s just the right level of catchy with a heaping dose of attitude.

9. The Spice Girls, 2 Become 1

I need some love like I never needed love before (wanna make love to ya, baby)

I have to admit, I love this song as much as I do because of the chords that hit right after “Set your spirit free, it’s the only way to be.” This song also has a side dose of mild teenybopper scandal to it, since it’s a sweet sounding song about sex.

8. Destiny’s Child, Say My Name

Say my name, say my name – when no one is around you say, “baby, I love you”

Another earworm! And not the last of Destiny’s Child you’ll see on this list. This song reminds me of high school. It came out right around when I started driving, so it was on a lot of the mix CDs that I had in my car.

7. TLC, Waterfalls

Don’t go chasing waterfalls – please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to

TLC’s songs still hold up so well. This one, I believe, was on VH1′s Pop-Up Video, though I can’t find the pop-up version anywhere. I used to tape that show so I could watch it over and over again. That was a great show. And this was a fantastic song.

The Spice Girls6. En Vogue, Don’t Let Go

What’s it gonna be? ‘Cause I can’t pretend – Don’t you wanna be more than friends?

This is one of the greatest singalong songs in the world for road trips. It is so waily and dramatic, and it’s so easy to learn all the harmonies, that in a car full of ladies, you can make some serious magic happen.

5. Destiny’s Child, Bootylicious

‘Cause my body’s too bootylicious for you, babe

This song was so popular that they added “bootylicious” to the dictionary, and there’s a good reason: it’s freaking CATCHY. It may be the biggest earworm on the whole list, really. Also, has anyone mashed it with “Eye of the Tiger” yet? Because these songs open with a very, very similar guitar riff (OK, turns out a few people have tried, but none of the results are good enough that I want to link them).

4. TLC, Creep

So I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low, said nobody is supposed to know

The music video for this one is really memorable to me. The three of them dancing around in those satin pajamas somehow just stuck in my head. The song itself brings me back to a very specific homecoming dance with very specific friends, which was fun. We all went solo because none of us had dates and danced with each other to this song, among others. Fantastic.

3. The Spice Girls, Say You’ll Be There

I’m giving you everything, all the joy you bring, this I swear

Another fantastic music video, another fantastic song. It’s also one that my sister and I would sing into hairbrushes to an audience made of stuffed animals.

Destiny's Child2. The Spice Girls, Spice Up Your Life

Slam it to the left if you’re having  good time, shake it to the right if you’re going to feel fine

This is a mindless dance song and it is so much fun. By far, it is my favorite of the songs the Spice Girls put out in their time. I love the dance beat and the chorus is just the catchiest thing.

1. Destiny’s Child, Survivor

I’m a survivor, I’m not gon’ give up, I’m not gon’ stop, I’m gon’ work harder 

I’m still mad they didn’t do this when they reunited at the Super Bowl this year. This is the greatest song Destiny’s Child ever made. This is probably the greatest song from that entire year.

Top Ten… Thursday?

Posted by Teija on February 28, 2013
book chatter / No Comments

This week has been quite a week for me, so I’m posting my Top Ten Tuesday a bit late. My excuse is pretty good, though. I had my gallbladder removed yesterday. All went well, and now I’m home to recover. However, I still wanted to do this past week’s Top Ten Tuesday. The topic is The Top Ten Authors on My Auto-Buy List, or authors that I am so fond of that I trust that I can go into a new book of theirs without having heard anything about it.

From the Broke and the BookishSo here we go!

1. Stephen King. At one point in my life, I owned every last book he had put out in his career. After a few moves, I seem to have misplaced a chunk of my paperback collection, so now I have to figure out which ones I’m missing and reorder them. King has had his ups and downs, but I still read every book he puts out. The only one I have been so disappointed in that I put it down was From a Buick 8. Otherwise, I’ve enjoyed everything.

2. J.K. Rowling. She proved herself with Harry Potter, and I’m not done with The Casual Vacancy yet, but I am enjoying it so far. I’ll buy anything she puts out. She’s kind of my hero.

3. Rachel Maddow. She’s only written one book so far, but her TV show and her documentaries have more than proven to me that her brain is an astonishing thing and whatever she puts out is worth listening to.

4. Peter S. Beagle. He is my favorite living author. Whatever he writes, I buy. I even have multiple copies of my favorite of his books, The Last Unicorn.

5. Diana Peterfreund. I have loved everything that I have read from her so far, and on top of that, she is one of the nicest people I have ever met. I had the pleasure of meeting her at Dragon*Con this past year and she is just a total delight. Her enthusiasm for writing and reading is fantastic.

6. J.R.R. Tolkien. Yeah, he’s been dead a while now, but every now and then his son releases never-before-seen stuff, and every time he does, I buy it without a second thought. Middle Earth is the greatest, and I want to know all there is to know.

7. John Green. Honestly, his books have been hit or miss for me, but the hits are such good hits that I buy all his books anyway. His youtube videos with his brother are also some of my favorite things online (see the most recent one, in which he and his three-year-old son Henry cook together).

8. George R.R. Martin. Because I need to know what happens to everyone in Westeros. That is exactly the reason.

9. Tamora Pierce. Her Tortall series has no flaws, as far as I’m concerned. Everything I’ve read by her is amazing. I will continue to devour her books and reread them as long as she puts them out.

10. Books Written by my Friends. I have a lot of friends who want to be authors, and who are working on books. Some have even already been published. I will always, always support my friends in their goals to become published, and so I will always, always get their books.

If I Were Batman

Posted by Teija on February 21, 2013
commuting / No Comments
It's entirely possible that his boss is a jerk.

Maybe Batman just had a bad day at work.

I called my sister today on the way home from finding out that I have to have my gallbladder removed next week (that will be super fun!) and she, as a good sister will always do, helped to take my mind off my medical woes with a tale of other woes: traffic woes.

This led to both of us saying, “If only I had a Batmobile.”

First things first: this requires (yes, requires) that the Batmobile in question be the one Christian Bale’s Batman drives. All the other iterations of Batmobile wouldn’t be able to do the things I would want to do in the Batmobile without seriously ruining the aesthetic of the Batmobile, which would make me feel sad, not awesome.

So keep in mind that when I’m talking about the things I want to do in a Batmobile, I’m talking about this thing:

Unless, of course, you flipped it off a cliff.

This beast could flip over and you probably wouldn’t really notice.

I’m pretty sure that unless you flipped this mother off a cliff you probably aren’t going to have a bad time in traffic if you’re driving one of these.

I’m going to start with something that happened today. On the way to my surgical consult, I was driving along up I-85 when a woman in the lane beside me started drifting into my lane. I had to brake quickly and lean on my horn, because otherwise she would have slammed right into me.

If I’d had the Batmobile? I’d just have kept going. Slam into me all you want, woman, I’m not the one who’s going to take any damage.

Getting cut off would be a breeze, too. Cut me off in my Corolla, I’m going to hit the brakes, because I don’t particularly want to go through the process of getting my car damaged and then repaired and blah de blah de boring. But if I’m in the Batmobile? I’d just keep going. You’re the idiot that cut off the Batmobile, the resulting damage to your car is entirely your problem.

How about those people who gridlock intersections because they just had to make that light instead of waiting for the next one? Not a problem for Batman! Just drive right over them! See if your gridlock will stop me now! Boo hoo, I drove over your car? Maybe you shouldn’t have parked it in the intersection, jerk! Muahahaha!

It’s a good thing I’m not Batman, really, because let’s be real: I’d never bother with the vigilante justice stuff. I’d just abuse my gadgets for my own benefit.

Nostalgia! It’s all the rage.

Posted by Teija on February 10, 2013
music / No Comments

Lately, there have been a lot of posts going around the internet with a nostalgic feel to them. “You may have had the best childhood if…” type posts. And I figured, why not join in the fun? I decided I would do mine via music, which then posed quite a dilemma. I never quite fell into the “this one genre is my type of music” crowd. I listened to a little bit of everything. Whatever sounded good to me went into my collection, and I am apparently not picky even a little bit.

The 90s: Fun songs; awful hair.

So Totally 90s.

So my “I’ll do a nostalgia post!” idea turned into “I’ll do a series of nostalgia posts!” A series I’m going to kick off with my picks for top ten boy band songs.

Now, before I get to the songs,I have to get into how I picked the boy bands. First and foremost, since I’m being nostalgic, I’m picking stuff that reminds me of my formative years — everything from middle school to early college (for me, that’s roughly 1995 to about 2004). This boy band collection includes New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men, the Backstreet Boys, NSync, and 98 Degrees. I will note that I discovered New Kids On the Block and Boyz II Men later than they actually came out — both bands formed when I was in diapers, but in my teenybopper years I collected them in with everyone else.

Also, a sidebar: Boyz II Men is totally a boy band, guys. I did an informal twitter poll and nearly everyone that answered said, “No, they are not a boy band.” But no one had a good reason to back the assertion up. I’m going to go ahead and go with Wikipedia’s definition of a boy band, and Wikipedia goes so far as to list Boyz II Men as a headliner for their 90s section. It’s true they weren’t marketed to teenagers in the same way that BSB and NSync were, but they are still a boy band all the same if you go with “A boy band (or boyband) is loosely defined as a vocal group consisting of young male singers, usually in their teenage years or in their twenties at the time of formation.” Every last one of these groups fits that description, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Onward! This list is actually ranked, and of course, everything here is my own opinion. Full bias disclosure: I didn’t always have favorites, but when I did, their names were Kevin Richardson and Justin Timberlake. Also, it occurs to me that I tended, at least back then, to prefer what ended up being released as singles anyway — but back then, they tended to pick the best songs from each album to release as a single and you got the rest as part of the package deal when you bought it. Nowadays you can buy one song at a time off the thing so they try to round the albums out a little more to make the most money. I guess times have changed.

10: 98 Degrees, Because of You

You are my sunshine after the rain / You’re the cure against my fear and my pain / ‘Cause I’m losin’ my mind when you’re not around / It’s all because of you

I have to admit, 98 Degrees wasn’t my favorite. I was never a big fan of Nick Lachey, and you sort of have to be, really, if you’re going to love 98 Degrees. That said, this song always got me dancing in my seat. It’s just one of those sweet love songs they were all so good at back in the 90s.

(They're both.)

Boyz? Men? Either way, very pleasant for the ears.

9. Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey, One Sweet Day

And I know you’re shining down on me from heaven / Like so many friends we’ve lost along the way / And I know eventually we’ll be together / One sweet day

Apparently, this song is Mariah Carey featuring Boyz II Men, and not the other way around. All my life I’ve just thought of this as “that time Boyz II Men let Mariah Carey come over and play,” but apparently it’s the opposite. Curses. This, of course, renders this song a stretch when it comes to including it, but you know what? There’s enough Boyz II Men here for me to count it (and seriously, I can’t help singing along every time I hear it, I have to count it).

8. New Kids on the Block, You Got It (The Right Stuff)

Oh oh oh-oh-oh / Oh oh oh-oh / Oh oh oh-oh-oh / The right stuff

Welcome to what is likely the strongest earworm on the entire list. This song came out in 1988. I was four years old, and yet I still — TO THIS DAY — do the classic “oh oh oh-oh-oh, oh oh oh-oh!” when it strikes me. Sometimes it just comes out of thin air. I might be in the kitchen making dinner, and suddenly, my brain goes, “Oh oh oh-oh-oh!” and I have no choice but to complete the phrase. That’s lasting power.

7. Backstreet Boys, Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)

Am I everything you need? You better rock your body now.

This is one of those many, many boy band songs that is absolutely impossible to NOT dance along to. There’s a freaking ‘raise the roof’ whoop-whoop in the intro. Come on. How many of you guys blasted this on repeat-one on your discman until you went slightly deaf and had to stop for fear of maybe doing permanent damage?

6. Boyz II Men, I’ll Make Love to You

I’ll make love to you / Like you want me to / And I’ll hold you tight / Baby, all through the night

This song is likely the reason I’m so prone to melt when I hear a good bass voice. It’s also likely the most sexual song on this entire list. I don’t have too much to say about the song, just listen to it. It’s good for your ears.

5. Backstreet Boys, The Call

Listen baby, I’m sorry / Just wanna tell you don’t worry / I will be late, don’t stay up and wait for me

This counts as the only BSB song on the entire list that I still have not managed to break all the harmonies from. There’s some vocal noodling at the end that I’ve almost worked out, but it’s just so well blended that I can’t yank it all apart. Which makes it the Everest of my boy bands list, really. Also, of all the BSB songs, I’m pretty sure this one has stood the test of time (for me) as far as “still able to repeat-one it without getting sick of it” is concerned. I have done entire commutes to just this song as recently as a month ago.

No Kevin = No Bueno

Those empty shoes represent the absence of Kevin, also known as “the period of time in which the BSB was DEAD TO ME.”

4. Backstreet Boys, I Want it That Way

You are my fire / The one desire / Believe when I say / I want it that way

Tell me why-ee!? Of course this song is here. Of course it is. Fun story: on the way to my bachelorette party, I was in the car with my best friend, Sarah; my little sister, Jenni; and my new sister-in-law, Kim, and this came up on the shuffle on the way there. We all took our own parts… based on who our favorite Backstreet Boy was. Poor Nick got no love, but otherwise we spread our love equally for these guys. Now that’s a good setup.

3. N’Sync, Tearin’ Up My Heart

It’s tearin’ up my heart when I’m with you / And when we are apart, I feel it too / And no matter what I do, I feel the pain / With or without you

N’Sync has had a lot of good songs, but this one is pretty high up on the list because of the simple fact that every time I hear it, I have to stop everything to sing along. And you know what happens when I’m with a group of girls my age and this song comes up?

We all stop to sing along. And we all take separate parts, and we always rock the crap out of this song. This song is only not #1 because the two songs ahead of it exist.

2. Backstreet Boys, Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely

Show me the meaning of being lonely / Is this the feeling I need to walk with / Tell me why I can’t be there where you are / There’s something missing in my heart

This is my #1 very favorite BSB song. There’s a pretty good reason: Kevin has a sizeable solo section in it. I also think it’s the prettiest song they’ve ever written.

1. N’Sync, It’s Gonna Be Me

Baby when you finally / Get to love somebody / Guess what? / It’s gonna be me.

This is, hands down, the greatest boy band song of all time. It’s funny, I have long believed that in the longstanding “N’Sync or BSB?” argument, the overall better group is the BSB, but N’Sync had a better collection of individually nameable songs. And this is the best example of them all. I’ll be 85 and arthritic with failing hip joints and bad memory, and still I’ll want to dance when this one comes on.

Now, there are tons of songs that didn’t make this list that I had a hard, hard time cutting — Cover Girl, Bye Bye Bye, Step by Step, As Long as You Love Me, Larger than Life, Yearbook, Quit Playin’ Games (With My Heart), and about a million more — but I had to pick ten. So there you have it. My top ten boy band songs.

Next time? Girl groups (boy howdy, that’s gonna be a tough one).

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The Top Ten Most Frustrating Literary Characters

Posted by Teija on January 29, 2013
book chatter, books / 3 Comments

It’s Top Ten Tuesday at the Broke and the Bookish, and this week’s theme is the top ten most frustrating literary characters! I have encountered quite a few in my time, so hopefully coming up with ten won’t be hard!

Of course, some of these are frustrating in the sense that I hate them and wish they didn’t exist, but others (like Frodo Baggins) are frustrating and I love them still, so keep that in mind as you read.

From the Broke and the Bookish1. Marianne Dashwood, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

Even Kate Winslet couldn’t make Marianne tolerable to me. Sense and Sensibility is my least favorite Austen book specifically because it contains Marianne Dashwood in it. Worse is the fact that it also includes Colonel Brandon, who is quite possibly my favorite Austen creation (yeah, I know, “not Darcy!? GASP!”). But I can’t stand Marianne enough to reread for Col. Brandon. It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.

2. Lavender Brown, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series

I know she was meant to be the stereotypical overclingy teenage girlfriend but that’s also exactly what makes her so frustrating. “Won-won.” Ugh.

3. Hope Adams, Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series

This stupid character is the reason I am stuck in this series. Armstrong’s WotO series is one in which the narrator changes from book to book, and I was on a roll until suddenly, I was seeing everything from Hope’s POV. I seriously haven’t been able to move through Personal Demon in this series. I got stuck about three or four years ago, at this point. I probably just have to start over with the whole series if I want to barrel through these doldrums and get to the books afterward, where I hear some of my favorite narrators make comebacks.

4. Bella Swan, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series

There is nothing about Bella Swan that isn’t frustrating. She literally cannot picture a life without Edward in it, so after she meets him her life is defined solely by how well she is revolving around him like some kind of pathetic, clingy moon rock around an uninhabitable ice planet. She actually says multiple times in the course of the series that she doesn’t see the point of going to college or making friends or anything else because her goal in life is to become a vampire and frolic around in the Washington wilderness with her sparkly precious boyfriend. Gag me.

5. Kai, Diana Peterfreund’s For Darkness Shows the Stars

He is frustrating, yes, but in the most fantastic way (READ THIS BOOK).

6. Robert Langdon, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons

This man is just too freaking put together, he’s completely unrealistic. It’s frustrating because if if he was more realistic, these books might be a bit more tolerable — but as it is, you’ve got Mr. I’ve Got All the Answers walking around and explaining everything to everyone around him, with clever little winks and nods while he does it. There’s a reason I pictured Jeff Goldblum as Langdon when I read the books initially, and it’s because Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm is exactly this guy, but in brown tweed instead of black leather.

broody mcbrooderson

Pretty he may be, but boy is he frustrating.

7. Angel, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer

OK so technically he’s a TV character, but they wrote novelizations, so I’m going there. Angel was such a freaking party pooper! I’m still really peeved at him for the way he talked down to Buffy during their breakup. Just say “I’m a selfish knob,” don’t put it all on her like, “You deserve better than me, you need to live these normal teenage things,” as if it’s not exactly the worst thing to say to the girl who has been picked by cosmic powers that be to be the CHOSEN ONE. “She alone in all the world” isn’t exactly followed by “…will get to do all those normal things she’d love to do all the time if not for having to save the world every fifteen minutes.”

8. King Haggard, Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn

“I hate myself and the world I live in so I’m going to ruin life for all the pretty unicorns, they are mine, mine, MINE, I refuse to share them with ANYONE, and I will not rest until I HAVE THEM ALL, and even that won’t make me happy, because my heart is a shriveled raisin.” Someone never got birthday cake as a kid.

9. Voldemort, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series

You know, for someone who is supposed to be the big, bad supervillain of a seven-book series, he’s awfully bland. there are worse villains in this story by far. Nearly everyone at the Ministry of Magic during book 5 is a horrible, corrupt, Muggle-hating drone, and Umbridge is the worst of everyone by far. So while you’ve got Voldemort swanning about trying to kill Harry Potter (which, granted, is pretty uncool of him), it’s the people around him and the people who support him who are truly terrifying. Which is great, great storytelling on Rowling’s part, but it makes Voldemort not so much scary and evil as it makes him kind of sad and one-dimensional.

10. Frodo Baggins, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

He’s literally a walking, moping hanger for the ring. Everyone around him, down to the background elves and orcs that he meets along the way, is more interesting than he is. I mean, we get a little bit of Frodo here and there during his long, arduous, seemingly-never-ending travails through The Two Towers and The Return of the King with Sam, but there’s a reason everyone in the history of reading things for funsies thinks the Sam and Frodo parts of these books are the dull parts, and that reason is Frodo.

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Tales from the Past: U Mad, Bro?

Posted by Teija on January 25, 2013
England, personal, tekkah history, travel / 1 Comment

In the fall of 2004, I went to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, to be a part of the British-American Cultures study abroad program hosted by my alma mater, Georgia State University. When I arrived in England, there was a lot to get used to. Our housing was in college flats, cinder-block buildings in which seven people shared one toilet and one shower (separated, thank goodness, so that you could still use the facilities while someone else was showering). The difference between Atlanta and Newcastle was striking, weather-wise: we left 90 degree sunny heat and arrived in 50-60 degree grey wetness. Everyone spoke in a Geordie accent, which is so thick that it took many of us a while before we could understand it (don’t believe me? Have a rhyme).

Also patron saint of running around with arms out like a plane and going 'brrrrrmmmmm.'

Angel of the North, patron saint of those who leave their homelands to find a second homeland.

For many of us, joining this program was also the first time we were away from home, and upon arriving only a few of us knew each other. I had the great fortune of arriving in Newcastle with two friends who were also on the program, so we had each other to rely on for moral support in times of crisis. Homesickness was definitely a problem in the early days there, particularly because the accommodations were so cold and unwelcoming. Small cinder block (or “breeze block,” as they called them) rooms with nearly nothing in them, thousands of miles from home, and surrounded by complete strangers, some of whom spoke with such a heavy accent and with so much unfamiliar slang that you questioned whether or not you were accidentally dropped in the wrong country. It seriously did not sound like English at all in those early weeks.

So those of us on the program, in an attempt to get to know one another (and joyful at the opportunity to drink legally whilst still under 21, which was a novelty for a bit there at the beginning), went out one night to bar-hop. We all got thoroughly hammered, and in wandering back to our flats late that night, we went full-on stereotypical American: loud, boisterous, giggly, and obtuse. And some of our British neighbors were not all that amused.

One leaned out his upper-floor flat window. “Oi! Americans!”

We stopped, peered upward, and yelled back. “What?”

“Are you pissed?”

“No, we’re quite happy, actually!”

This is where the laughter started. We weren’t aware yet, at that time, that “pissed” in English slang means “completely drunk.” We were used to it meaning “angry.” But when the Geordie dude hanging out his window explained it to us, we turned into a chorus of “oohhhhhh.” Learning! Our first instance of it!

Classes started not soon after that, and thankfully, there was a boatload of orientations and freshers’ meetings and, most importantly, a poster sale. Those cinder block walls were far more welcoming when they were covered in pictures of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and the golden trio from Harry Potter. By the time we left a year later, we’d come to consider it home — and we’d learned to say “pissed” when we meant “drunk,” and that “love” and “pet” were all-purpose nicknames.

I miss it all the time.

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Reading


    Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson The Archived (The Archived, #1) by Victoria Schwab 

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