You know what's really boring?
Good taste.
For as long as I can remember, I have been mysteriously attracted to tackiness like a moth to a flame. Take me to a street fair or flea market and point me in the direction of the booth selling tasteless home furnishings, sequined vintage pumps, or, above all, gaudy jewelry, and I am a happy girl.
In my opinion, very few people can scrape by on good looks and boring attire. Those people are...er...actually, nobody. Except perhaps for Audrey Hepburn, whom I will always love despite her somewhat bland outfit choices. After reading Molly's insightful post on her, I think I see that her style is not quite as revolutionary as I thought it was, but still, j'aime her regardless.
Really, though, who would you rather hang out with on Friday night- the girl in sparkles and sequins, draped in gypsy scarves and pirate earrings and beads and baubles, whose heels make loud clickety-clack noises on the pavement and whose bangles clang together every time she laughs? Or the whiny, lactose-intolerant, buttoned-into-a-cardigan girl with her hair severely pulled back and her J.Crew prepster favorites firmly fastened on? Then again, some people manage to make preppiness and cardiganosity (if that's not a word, it should be) awesome, but only a precious few.
So, to celebrate the general feeling of this post- which I believe is "Everybody likes a walking fashion disaster nutjob!"- here is, in my humble opinion, some of the greatest jewelry in the whole wide world.
These earrings are so deliciously junk-shop. They look like microcosms of American pop culture. They look like a representation of...okay, can I stop with the pontificating now? They look like EARRINGS, really great earrings that I love with every bone in my body.

If I ever decide to become a pretentious photography student who talks excessively about sepia tones and only drinks espresso, I will be set for life with this ring. No offense to any pretentious photography students out there. But you should get this ring. Because it kicks so much ass. The lens is a tiny rhinestone! Doesn't that just make you happy?

These are tortilla-chip-shaped earrings. And, in all fairness, there is an excellent chance that people will think you are mentally unstable if you exit the house in these. I mean, they look real. But frankly, there are worse things to be known as than Girl Who Wears Tortilla Chips On Her Ears.

God, I love this necklace so much. It's Gothic in a way that I can handle- too much Gothica (real word? Emmaword? Who can say for sure? I don't feel like looking it up) scares me, but this necklace is the perfect amount. It's classy in a chilling way. And, it's basically the polar opposite of those tortilla chip earrings, right?

A Lego ring with a tiny diamond! This satisfies both my inner child, who just wants to go build toy forts, and my deeper, more mature side, who...likes shiny rocks.

I know owls are so played out right now (oh my God, I cannot believe I just typed that sentence. I should probably delete it, as it makes me sound like SUCH an idiot, but I can see the humor in it. What am I going to write next, "Marsupials are sooo the new amphibians!"?), but honestly, I am in mad passionate love with this necklace.

Awww, peas in a pod! This necklace is adorable, and I don't mean in the way normal people use the word, as in "Yeah, that skirt is adorable". I mean it is ADORABLE, as in come-here-sweetheart-let-me-pinch-your-cheek-look-how-much-you've-grown.

These earrings are fantastic because they remind me of the weird parts-of-a-face magnets I have stuck to my toaster, combined with a miniature pink-and-purple gumball.

This is a bracelet made entirely of pulp-fiction buttons. Nothing else really needs to be said.




Ah, America. The best way to express distaste and revulsion with the fast-food dependency of our nation is to display it proudly on your ears. These are probably some of the funkiest earrings I've seen so far.


I MUST HAVE THESE. They're from the Betsey Johnson website, and I may have to devote my life to making them my own. You know, I can probably just order them. But still, I love the drama.


Wouldn't these earrings kind of put a positive spin on rainy days? And, for that matter, on every day?

I think I would be very content to spend my life assembling crazy jewelry like this. I could be a batty shut-in jewelry vendor and peddle kooky charm bracelets to the mailman, sparkly thumb rings to the UPS guy who comes to deliver my supplies of gaudy knicknacks, and so on and so forth. In all seriousness, though, the other day I was thinking about what my dream job would actually be...hmm. I had a two-day phase where I wanted to be a doctor, until I remembered a. I don't like sick people, b. I don't like coughing, c. I don't like hacking, sneezing or viral infections, d. I suck at math and science, the two courses that most pertain to medicine, e. doctors are not nearly as hot in real life as they are on TV, and also, they're not usually quite so promiscuous, and f. I'm really most likely not a very comforting person to have by your deathbed (I'm the type who would try to break the tension by cracking awful, awful jokes, i.e. "Why were the suspenders arrested? For holding up a pair of pants! HAHAHAHAHA!" Come on, you know that's maybe just a little bit funny...no? Really? Ok then, mull it over, let it sink in.) So perhaps doctoring is not the profession for me. I love clothes, mostly vintage, but I don't really have any interest in the fashion magazine world, nor enough talent for the design world (ooh, maybe I could be like the fledgling young sucky contestant on Project Runway and Tim Gunn could whip me into shape? I seem to be mentioning Tim Gunn a lot lately. It's not a little disturbing. Oh, all right, you caught me. I'm a closet Tim Gunn lover. I LOVE HIM, people. I do. I want him to be my bitchy disapproving gay man who trashes what I'm wearing every morning). I have an odd knack for impressions yet no acting talent whatsoever. I'm not brave enough to be a stuntswoman, nor athletic enough to be an athlete (I skipped that whole jock phase completely. I'm one of those girls everyone hates because she gets hit in the head by the volleyball and then runs giggling off the court to fix her hair. Look, I can't help it, all right? That stupid ball hurts! Er...of course I am speaking metaphorically, and it's not like I get hit with volleyballs as a matter of course. Yeah.) I love my current part-time job, but I'm too much of a bitch for retail- I have not the patience necessary to make it a full-time thing. I like to write, and I enjoy eating, and making fun of people. I could be...a critic of something? Who eats a lot? Okay, I'm getting nowhere. Please, if you have suggestions for my future career, do tell me. I'm on tenterhooks (what does that mean, anyway? Sounds painful).

THE TV CORNER- Due to extenuating circumstances (really, when am I going to use my newfound knowledge of World War 1? Outside of Jeopardy, perhaps? God, I love Jeopardy. Challenging questions, hideous contestants in pleat-front chinos who are just ripe and ready to be mocked, a vintage game show host- that's my polite way of saying Alek Trebek is old, y'all- what's not to love? Plus, it makes me feel smart to know the answers) I was unable to watch ANTM tonight and have TiVoed it. If anybody so much as breathes a WORD as to what happened...swift and painful, the death shall be. I have already sworn everyone I know in the 3-D world who watches this show to keep their traps shut. Don't laugh at me, I get VERY emotional about television, even Tyra's Next Top Puppet. I mean, I love the girls an' all, and praise be to the CW for that all-tranny episode, but the girls are completely Ty-Ty's bitches. To borrow a phrase from the brilliant CountrygirlCitylife, they are her little hamsters and she is the...er...Petco employee who is in charge of feeding the hamsters? See, this is why I shouldn't steal other people's turns of phrase- I don't know how to make them work in metaphors. But my point is, I really want one of the girls to man up, seize the day and tell Tyra to hush. Really, sometimes when Tyra is being "witty" I just want to quietly take her aside and say, "It's okay, Tyra. You don't have to talk ALL the time. Like, sometimes it's perfectly okay to just...sit there silently. You might even say it's...preferable, at times". Mais non, I love La Banks really, I just hide it deep down inside. Okay, so on an unrelated note, should I start watching The Search For The Next Doll? I feel like I might be missing out on a beautiful thing. And on a MORE ADD note, I've seen a few episodes of House recently, and all I have to say is...I used to think people were retarded for getting all bent out of shape about all the medical dramedies stealing from Scrubs, but it might actually be a valid point. I would be really pissed off if I were the Scrubs people. Anyway, my Thursday nights have now been wiped clean of Grey's Anatomy and look a little something like zees- The Office, 30 Rock, Scrubs, Ugly Betty (not in that order, obviously). Pure hilarity. As it should be.

CURRENT ATTIRE- Very, very faded Beatles tee, black jeans that are hopefully slimming, funky pumps in bright turquoise, Pucci-print silk scarf belt (sounds fug, but I think it looks kind of cool as an outfit. Or else I'm grievously wrong. C'est la vie.)

SIGHTINGS- A girl wearing earrings shaped like little pink plastic watering cans gave me the idea for this post. Also, a dude in a really amazing corduroy coat which was not all that special but looked cool. This other chick in Haagen-Dazs (crap, you haven't LIVED until you've had one of their dulce de leche milkshakes. Alex Richards, in answer to your question, THIS is my ice cream drug of choice, outside of my twin Vermont lovers' classic Chubby Hubby. It never gets old.) had the greatest navy blue patent leather ballet flats. The rest of her outfit was nothing special, but those shoes...so great.

Last, I feel like I should write something about Virginia Tech, but it seems like it would be inappropriate, seeing as I didn't know anyone there (Thank God, I feel so bad for the families and friends of those kids) and it would look like I was trivializing the subject if I just tossed it in after a rant about reality TV and jewelry. So I'll just say that I cannot imagine how those poor families and friends are feeling right now, and I won't pretend I do. My heart goes out to them (I know how lame that sounds, but it does).

<3