So I’m back in school. It looks like I’m taking 4 classes: Global Climate Change (booo), US History: Gender and Sexuality from 1630-1850 (yaaay), Spanish 3 (booo), and Intro to Russian Culture (yaaay).

I love my Russian professor. She actually taught my brother Russian, so it’s pretty cool to finally have a teacher in common with him. I am quickly falling in love with Russian culture, and here are two paraphrases from my professor that indicate why (please read with a heavy Russian accent for full enjoyment):

“Russians have very different sense of time. For them, history is very close to them still. They say, ‘Of course we’re behind all the other countries, we were under the Mongolian yoke for two centuries!’ That was in 1240, get over it already! Or do you know of any country that is still mad about Napoleon’s invasion? They see a man in the street with mismatched clothes who is very cold, and they say, ‘Ah, must be a Frenchman!’”

“In Russian Pravda [early set of Russian laws], the fine for severing a man’s arm is not that much more than it is for damaging his moustache. Russian men love their beards. Peter the Great wanted Russian men to look more like the French, so he demanded that they shaved their beards. Oh, the men wept. They were so sad, it was the worst thing for them. Afterward they would keep their beards with them so they could be buried with them. If they did not have their beards, they thought, how would they be recognized in Heaven?”

I consider myself to be a connoisseur of procrastination. It’s astounding how many ways I can find to distract myself from what I should be doing. There are obvious and easy distractions–video games, knitting, television, etc. After I can no longer justify doing those things, and the ticking clock starts to exert its pressure, my shifty mind tries to trick me out of doing work by leading me on quests that I’ll be 2o minutes into before I wonder why the hell I’m doing them. I’ll start re-organizing my computer’s folder hierarchy, or decide that making sure every song on my iTunes has artwork CANNOT wait. This can go on for hours.

But tonight I found a whole new way to procrastinate. My English instructor is a TA, who mentioned in passing (as if TAs ever mention their accomplishments entirely in passing) that he’d had an essay in a book that one of our other essays was from. Curious (and procrastinating), I Googled the book and his name together to see what it was about. I found not just the title of his essay, but his personal/professional site, a literary journal/podcast he used to do, and several media blogs that he contributed to. I haven’t read or listened to any of this yet, because it’s 2 am and I need to write, oh, 5 more pages and figure out how to properly use footnotes, but I’m still astounded when I find the digital footprints of someone I know. It’s voyeuristic and intriguing, and I’m not sure that I’ll ever get used to the fact that people are so easily trackable online just through Google alone. But anyway, had I known he was such an awesome web geek before, I probably would have paid more attention in class.

Except when he was lecturing on Freud. Don’t even get me started on why English academics have such a hard-on for Freud (and yes, I realize how that sentence lends itself to Freudian interpretation).

I’m not quite sure why 3-4 am seems to be my magical writing time, but hey, whatever works, right?

I just needed to say that sometimes, nothing makes you feel better than a couple of good conversations. As an introverted person, I spend the majority of my time wrapped up in my own head and avoiding contact with other people. It’s easy for me to forget that talking to others doesn’t always result in being socially and emotionally exhausted–in fact, sometimes it’s just the opposite and I feel reinvigorated by the connections I’ve accidentally managed to form with some truly amazing people.

So thank you, Universe, for reminding me of the importance that other people play in my happiness and well-being.

Just when I think I’ve reached the pinnacle of frustration when it comes to America’s overly consumptive culture, I find that a new low has been hit.

They’re taking books now.

According to this article, product placement is quickly becoming common in teen and tween fiction, not only through casual references (which, incidentally, are in no shortage), but to whole series and characters being built around preexisting brand sponsorship. I think this quote from the article best sums up what’s at stake for literature:

In “Mackenzie Blue,” on the other hand, a new series aimed at 8- to 12-year-old girls from HarperCollins Children’s Books, product placement is very much a part of the plan. Tina Wells, chief executive of Buzz Marketing Group, which advises consumer product companies on how to sell to teenagers and preteenagers, will herself be the author of titles in the series filled with references to brands. She plans to offer the companies that make them the chance to sponsor the books.

Ms. Wells said she would not change a brand that she felt was at the core of a particular character’s identity merely to cement a marketing partnership. “Mackenzie loves Converse,” she said, referring to the series’s heroine and the popular sneaker brand she favors. “Does Converse want to work with us? I have no clue. But that doesn’t negate the fact that Mackenzie loves Converse.”

However, when asked what she would do if another sneaker company like Nike (one of her clients) wanted to sponsor the books, she said, “Maybe another character could become a Nike girl.”

I ask you, is nothing sacred? American culture is already so entrenched in advertising, marketing firms are searching for any way they can to capture the attention of unsuspecting consumers. In the midst of this commodity chaos, books have been the one safe haven when it comes to media and publications. But aside from the annoyance of being constantly inundated with brand names and not-so-subtle advertising–oh, and the death of real literature and the lingual arts–I’m more concerned with what it will do to the next generation that’s coming of age. At the risk of sounding old, it worries me that kids will grow up preoccupied with this rampant materialism, instead of looking to themselves and their relationships with the world around them for fulfillment.

Clearly, these issues have already been affecting us for years now. But now, when a child who looks to books for comfort and direction, as I did (and admittedly still do), will they find only vapidity and make-up brands where there were once morals and lessons? Instead of finding reassurance in literature, will they only find a reflection of themselves as consumers, existing only as potential customers? I can’t help but feel like our last refuge from commodity culture is at immediate risk.

If blogging is an act of narcissism, does having two blogs mean I’m totally self-obsessed? I was starting to think so.

So, I think a brief review is in order. This site was once (and in some ways, still is) the “official” website for my musical endeavors. However, as of late I haven’t been very productive, music-wise, and I doubt if I’ll have the time to be productive any time soon. Letting this webspace just sit here and collect virtual dust seems rather wasteful to me, but I like having it around. I also had a craft blog that I didn’t update very often. So, I decided to move the craft blog over here (all the entries from my old craft blog are archived behind this entry, which is technically the first written for this blog), in hopes of having a more active blog that encompassed all of the things I want to write about.

What do I plan to write about? Probably a little bit of everything. Random things, music things, life things, obviously crafty/knitting things, college things. . . it’s all fair game.

Part of me is concerned with maintaining the separation between myself and my musical product, since most people who navigate to this site will be directed here from my profiles on music sites; as a listener, I’ve learned to be wary of knowing too much about the person behind the songs, as that can taint my interpretation and even my enjoyment of an otherwise decent song. I haven’t quite got this part figured out yet. Since this site has been linked and bookmarked as my music site, the lines have already been blurred. So for now, just take heed if you’d prefer to experience my music on its own.

In the meantime, on to blogging!