why I love card games

I am not going to lie: this is a pretty straightforward post about why I love card games.

1. Nature. My grandfather was super great at all kinds of card games, and my mom and her sisters (and all of my cousins in turn) inherited not only these skills, but also a great appreciation for the games. At family gatherings, Spades, 7 Up, more Hearts, and Michigan Rummy are all staple games. We take them pretty seriously, though at the end the winner as well as the losers all get to eat dessert so there's not much at stake aside from bragging rights.
2. Nurture. I was raised to play card games, especially late at night and most especially in the summer. I was never super into Go Fish past the age of like eight, but my family played Hearts hundreds of times. Since my dad went to bed at normal times, it worked out pretty well for my mom and siblings and I (pass to the left, pass to the right, pass across, keep). We also played Euchre and Rummy 500 as we developed more strategical skills.
3. I love winning. Specifically, I love winning games that aren't just based on luck. Card games are a good balance of luck (the deal) and strategy, because sometimes it's nice to blame losing on the cards you were dealt (which is sometimes completely legitimate and sometimes because you made the wrong call re:your spades/hearts, but nbd).
4. They are universal. Ok, maybe if I went to Neptune I would not find it easy to play a card game there, but for the most part you can play with anyone and everyone should be able to agree on common rules (see BS or ERS for all kinds of crazy variations that make no sense unless you've always played with marriage sandwiches). It's just a great way to spend time with friends and family and strangers, too!
5. Convenience and multiple possibilities all in one box! It is so easy to store and transport cards, especially when you consider traveling and dorms and picnics and everything. And even then you're not locked into one game or even a family of games...there are probably a thousand games you can play with one deck of cards (ok, some of them may require multiple decks).
6. Collectible cards. There are so many cool decks of cards you can get. Some of them teach you things, like famous writers or inventors (yes we have these decks) and some of them are just commemorative, like the APO deck. I personally have like five decks of Coca-Cola cards because I am super into commercialism...but actually they have really good graphic designers. Anyway, different decks make all kinds of games more fun. I really like a deck my family has of Looney Tunes characters, just because they're so cute and have individual pictures for each face of the card.

That all said, if I lose a card game to you, you'd better have a way to get my mind off of it real fast or else I'm going to be a grump. I may or may not have a grudge against both of the people I played Hearts with last night.

my favorite spreadsheet

I am obsessed with organization. In seventh grade I spent the time to write out my schedule down to fifteen-minute increments...which is really weird because I was homeschooled and literally had no external pressure to adhere to a regular schedule (as long as I got it done, I was good). I also predicted at the beginning of the year that I would be capable of waking up at 7:00 every morning which was a very inaccurate belief, as I regularly woke up around 11 regardless of my schedule.

The trend of me making schedules, lists and other charts with no real interest or motivation in sticking to them has continued from that early age. Sometimes I make them with every intention of using them, though. For National Novel Writing Month, my favorite part of the process is not writing or planning or even commiserating with other novelists about how terrible my writing is and how much homework is weighing me down. My favorite part is calculating how many words I have left to write per day to keep on track and how my hourly pace is comparing to my total words per hour average. I have an excellent spreadsheet which enables this, and I probably spend a quarter of my writing time fiddling with it (I can make my word counts red if I've yet to reach my daily goal!).

But others I have abandoned within mere hours. I have tried numerous times to create a budget spreadsheet that works for me, but since I don't really have strict ideas of what I should spend and not spend (owing to the fact that if I don't need something, I won't buy it, and I already feel guilty enough every time I pay to see a movie), I have no incentive to keep up with a budget. It's easy enough for me to figure out how much money I have so there's really no point in this extra work. This doesn't stop me from longing for an interactive and useful spreadsheet to manage my money, but I'll just have to wait until the day when I actually have bills to keep up with and budgeting to do.

My favorite spreadsheet is a true work of art. It is my schedule. I'm not just talking about when I have my classes. I'm talking seven-sheet, color-coded, gpa-calculating all out what-if analysis of my college career. I know exactly which courses I would take if I were to, on a whim, decide to change my major with not one, not two, but four alternatives (and five minor options), all of which work together to create a unified study plan. I know how many A's I need to get in order to compensate for any number of lower grades and maintain the gpa that I think I should have. I know what classes I would take if I decided to drop math but still have 12 credits every semester in order to remain a full-time student. It has seen many changes throughout the past two years but it has become essentially an extension of my brain, enabling me to process multiple bits of information at once. This is why technology is so awesome. This is also probably why course registration is both very easy and very stressful to me...I know exactly what I would like to take about a year in advance, and I also know several alternate courses which would also be useful. On the bright side, when I don't get the classes I want, I get to adjust my schedule, which is like a really fun and important puzzle.

I also enjoy checklists, and I approach my homework much like this. At the beginning of a semester I compile all of my syllabuses (I actually think this is correct, instead of syllabi) into one spreadsheet so that I know all of my due dates and test dates right off the bat. I make tests and hard due dates red, while readings and other unessential items remain black. In class tests are also highlighted. Then, as I complete an assignment, I change the text to a calming blue. If all of my work for a certain subject for a certain week is complete, then that row gets to be blue! Similarly, if all of my work for a given day is done, then the column turns blue! And if a whole week is blue, then I put it into a second sheet which contains an archive of all of my assignments in case I want them for reference, and then the next week moves to the top of the first sheet. It is beautiful. This is also helpful because I know from day one how my final exam schedule is and how likely it will be for me to have free time on a given weekend considering my test schedule.

My most recent spreadsheet is one for my summer goals. I'm using it to track my progress in rereading Harry Potter, planning my summer trips and doing all of my Super Top Secret Craft Projects. Though not my favorite, I like that it has general goals and also daily goals (in different sheets for June and July and eventually August). It is super motivating.

summer reading

What I read last semester:

• Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
• a lot of the Bible
• literally nothing else

What I'm reading right now:

• Harry Potter, for the 5th time. I know I read them in 8th grade and then again before the 4th movie came out and again before the 5th movie/7th book and then before the 6th movie (but mostly because I wanted to read them that summer) and now must be the 5th time (but only the third for the seventh book, the main reason I wanted to reread the series). I'm on a strict regiment of 5 chapters a day, except I get two free days so that I can catch up (or just skip...erm). I am finding so many things I forgot that I loved, like the centaurs and Peeves! And also they are still so entertaining. And Ron is way funnier in the books than in the movies where they give all the smart lines to Hermione.
• Out of the Salt Shaker & Into the World, an IVP book about evangelism with a lot of examples from college life/ministry but with a focus on examining the life of Jesus as Christians so that evangelism isn't a chore but a natural result of our faith (and not an uncomfortable, oblivious sermon, either). I need to finish it soon but I am getting distracted with all of my Harry Potter.
• Readings from Unquestionable Stewardship, a devotion/bible study thing through YouVersion which means that I can read them on my phone! It is super cool and I can't wait to find a new study plan when this one's over.

What I want to will be reading after July 15:

• Predictably Irrational
• Animal Spirits
• Buy-ology
• The Gospel According to Starbucks
• The Return of Depression Economics
• Nudge
• Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (I've read three of them)
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• The Tempest
• Sense and Sensibility
• Hunger Games, but only if I feel like succumbing to mass pressure and only if I finish everything else first

Yes. I am a super econ nerd and need to catch up on some classic literature. You can see why I decided to reread Harry Potter...I need to give myself a break once in a while.

perfection

I am always trying to be perfect. I think that this is ingrained in me not by my parents or society but as a deeper part of my core being. I would just like for everyone to have a job that they like and for everyone else to respect that; I would like for everyone to have food and a family and for jealousy and gossip to be unheard of.

I would also like everyone to think like me. I would like everyone to spend some time with other people and some time with themselves, and I wouldn't dictate an exact percentage here but I would like everyone to spend healthy amounts doing each. I would like everyone to care about learning and safety. I would like everyone to appreciate Pushing Daisies and stop fawning over Mad Men. I would like it if everyone drank Coke so we didn't need Pepsi or even Diet Coke because everyone would be happy with the way that they looked and could enjoy an occasional 90 calorie drink. I would like it if they stopped casting 25 year olds to play teenagers on tv.

When I picture heaven, I still see clouds and white robes. Now, there aren't any ferocious angels in this mental image, but everyone is happy and I mostly focus on a blond family who sits down to dinner except they don't have a table or chairs or food, and all they do is smile at each other. They are so happy to be with each other and in the presence of God that nothing else matters. I don't know if this is a realistic image or not (though certainly there are other cultures and ethnicities unrepresented in my mind which at least slightly invalidates my model), but I know that my imagination of perfection on earth is never going to be the case.

Why? If perfect were based off of what I wanted, everything would be terrible. There would be very little free choice. The free market system would fail because everyone would want identical products, so there wouldn't be many opportunities for manufacturers or actors or even creative innovation, because unless your product expedited a process I was already a fan of (like making bacon cook faster or making color-changing post-it notes), no one would spend any money on it. Also, money would be a problem...because though I said that everyone would have a job that they liked, really they would have a job that I liked because everyone would have the same tastes as me (otherwise the whole lack of competition thing would be oppressive and cruel). So then there would be no one to raise the pigs for my bacon consumption, and so on. (According to Jack's Mannequin, "sometimes perfection can be perfect hell." True that.)

So what would perfection actually look like here on earth? Well, it wouldn't be what I would choose on my own. I would selfishly want everyone to be like me. But I would recognize and choose it, knowing that it would actually be great - and here's what it is. Jesus prayed a few times throughout the gospels, but the most cited and most recognized is important for a reason. The Lord's Prayer tells us how God himself would have us pray...here are two translations.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:9-13, NIV)

Our Father in heaven,

Reveal who you are.

Set the world right;

Do what's best— as above, so below.

Keep us alive with three square meals.

Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.

Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.

You're in charge!

You can do anything you want!

You're ablaze in beauty!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

(Matthew 6:9-13, The Message)

God knows what's best. Only by asking him for what's best can we actually get what we need and want - only he can fill that ache inside of me. That's why I have a desire for perfection. It's not really perfect grades that will complete me, but a perfect world.

And Jesus also gives us insight into what that perfect world looks like, in case I still had doubts and still thought that my plan was better. He is the most perfect thing that this world has seen. His interactions and relationships are the closest things we have to perfection. If I were God-born-as-man I would be sitting up on some mountain all the time, enjoying the view, having some priests bring me food occasionally, and I'd wait for people to come to me to give them sage advice about their lives. It would require as little effort as possible and everyone would love and respect me. Jesus didn't come to get these things...he gave them away. He valued every person, especially those looked over by society: children, lepers, the blind, the sick, the crippled, foreigners, widows, prostitutes, tax-collectors (who were pretty sneaky...though I recently realized that this is like the first example of a franchise; how cool is it that even back then they recognized the efficiency of this economic model?!). Why? Because these things which society says define us don't really define us. Our social status, jobs or even our physical well-being don't diminish our worth, nor do they enhance it. Every person is a lovely creation of God, and his love can't and won't be denied to anyone who wants it.

So in this perfect world, we all treat each other not as equals but as betters, submitting ourselves to God's will, hiding in Christ, putting on a new self, becoming a servant. Fortunately, we don't have to wait until heaven to do these things: we can start to become perfect right now, just by loving and respecting others. In fact, we should start this now, as this is God's will (according to Matthew 22:37-40, the two core rules to live by, on which the 10 commandments and other laws rely, are to love the Lord and to love your neighbors). This is not exactly what I would choose, if I could pick a way to be perfect: my way would be a test that you pass once and you're done, and there's no daily process of dying to your own desires. But faith is not a decision you make one day only, and my way skips over the need for Christ and his forgiveness in my life and leads only to death.

productive procrastination

I am one of the most ingenious procrastinators you will ever meet. By disguising my distractions as important I can trick even myself into thinking that I am being productive. Here are some of my favorite creative ways to divert my attentions from actual tasks like homework.

1. Cleaning. This can take many forms, from doing laundry to taking out the trash to going through old folders to using cleaning products like Windex or Clorox wipes. There are always things that can be cleaned. I find that I can't do anything until I've cleared off my desk and put away my dishes. I am especially good at cleaning at school, since living with another person makes me feel like I shouldn't leave clothes falling out of my drawers, which I oddly don't mind at home...until I have to do something else.
2. Excessive planning. This can be super fun! If you're not a plotter and you write things without thinking about them ahead of time, I understand where you're coming from...but it is super effective to spend lots of time planning if you don't want to actually write something (this also applies to other life situations, but I prefer talking about writing). For National Novel Writing Month, I don't really plan things before I start writing because I know I will deviate from my plan when I get bored with it on day 3. What I'm talking about is not plot planning, but character planning. I can spend hours looking up name meanings and origins to find the best fitting name for every single character. I will figure out their Myers-Briggs type (you can tell now that I am actually obsessed with this measure...deal with it). I will figure out how many siblings they have and what their relationship with their family is, and I will list about 30 adjectives to describe them (because one will never do). I am super good at writing out a calendar and having a general idea of what happens when, not in terms of chapters or anything (I couldn't keep a pace like that because I get bored and skim over long periods of time, but then since I describe things forever, one scene may go on for like a quarter of the novel)...but in general plot terms. I color code a lot. I know what day of the week every main character was born on. I spend so much time doing this that the novel is almost peripheral.
3. Calculating things. In general, a good way to eat up an afternoon is to pull out your calculator. It can be your gpa conditional on your planned schedule and expected grades. It can be number of words left to write and the expected number of hours to completion. It can be the pace at which you are reading a given book, and how much faster you're going to have to read if you want to finish a whole series before July 15 (I have to read 5.5 more chapters today to stay on pace; if I don't I'll have to recalculate everything). It can be the correlation between the rating you gave a song on iTunes and the number of times it has been played (this is very interesting, but given such a large data set and the fact that it is always changing it is also very time-consuming). Basically, I am a super nerd. Speaking of which...
4. Playing Pokemon. Just kidding, this is an important task!
5. Alphabetizing or other sorting techniques. There are several applications of this - not just sorting books on a shelf. You can also organize on your computer! I make tons of folders so that I can categorize everything easily and find it when I need it. I've also created 20 different lists of friends on Facebook so that I can easily contact someone from a specific organization (or filter to invite friends to an event), and in general it just makes me feel less random in my life. I also really like updating the lists as I see fit. Other ideas: separate your shirts by solid and patterned and then arrange them into a spectrum of colors; make playlists for any number of different occasions; clean out your email inbox until there are no more than 50 (or however many fit on your main page) - archive the rest, but be sure to do so in colored folders/labels; color-code your life on a google calendar; organize books by the same author in not alphabetical but chronological order (obviously your Harry Potter books should already be arranged this way, but be creative...I did this with Shakespeare).
6. Making things! I am already planning my Christmas presents. You can try a new recipe or look up crafty things or make a card for a friend (or just write a letter, no assembly required). Some baking things take a long time and that is great for avoiding work.
7. Blogging. This has a perfectly legitimate justification, right? I want to keep my friends updated on my life and I love talking about me. Perfect. But though productive, it keeps me from doing the writing I would like to find the motivation to do and more importantly it is keeping me from reading Harry Potter.

I think I've made my point.

As you can guess, I am doing a lot of these things this summer. Note that they are mostly free and require no transportation. You can even do them with friends! I literally do not understand people who get bored because there are so many things I don't have time for, even now when I don't have a job or a car. So be creative in your procrastination, now and during school, and I predict you'll enjoy life more than if you just watch tv and stumble across the internet randomly. Though fun, these are not nearly as good at appearing productive as my ideas, and I am all about reducing cognitive dissonance.

night marisa

I have this theory about myself that I developed last year and which I have since shared with multiple people. It goes like this: there are two parts of my personality. Normal Marisa....and Night Marisa. Normal Marisa is normal...but Night Marisa is AWESOME. She likes to go on adventures and philosophize and can write epic stories and be super crafty. She appears almost every night between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., though sometimes I (normal Marisa) get tired and am just useless at night. I think she appears more frequently when I have deviated from my nap schedule, whether that be taking extra naps or falling asleep at like 8 or not getting any naps all day (horror!).

I first noticed this in high school when I realized that my writing was way more natural (and funny and good) at night. For my creative writing class, I would try to write poems or short stories in the afternoons when I got home from school but they were literally the worst things ever. So then I learned to put off all of my assignments until the night before, and I would write them around 1 a.m. and then print them and then go to sleep and wake up like 3 hours later (this led to my nap addiction). Of course, everyone in my class confessed to doing the same thing, leading to my belief that all writers are best at night.

Looking back on my life after I came up with this theory, everything made sense. A lot of my friends noticed that I became super talkative at night. My whole family (minus my dad) stays up late to play games or watch movies (this is fodder for another topic entirely, so I'll leave it for now). It seems to be a learned behavior but also somewhat genetic.

To get into the psychology of it, I (normal Marisa) am an introvert and I strongly subscribe to the theory of Eysenck that introverts experience a higher baseline level of cortical arousal than extroverts. This implies that long, large or new social situations, which raise cortical arousal (ie activate parts of your brain which connect to heart rate, vigilance and other physical things related to alertness and make you read faster, more creative, more focused, etc.), put extroverts at a comfortable level but stress introverts out. Some theorists predict that introverts would be morning people because at that point their cortical arousal hasn't been too elevated so they seek out more interaction in the morning and isolation in the evening. I can see this.

But I am kind of the opposite...when I wake up I want some time to do my own thing and schedule out my day and figure out if my crazy dreams meant anything and figure out when and where I'm eating and catch up on everyone's lives via Facebook. By the time dinner has passed and I've been as productive as I'm going to be, I want one of three things: I want to do my homework for real and if anything gets in my way I will silently fume (or get really mad...this is not a good trait); I want to work on a really tangential and unimportant task with all of my energies, like sorting the Myers-Briggs personality types into the Hogwarts houses then trying to use the percentage of the total population who are supposedly each personality type to figure out if the fact that the students at Hogwarts are evenly divided into the houses means that the wizarding world is significantly different in its personality type makeup than the general population (it is); or I want to have an adventure slash meaningful conversation and I am super spontaneous. All of these are manifestations of Night Marisa.

I think it has to do with my inhibitions being lowered after being up so high all day. I am exhausted by the time 10 rolls around but I do get a second wind, probably because my mom does and makes me do things with her at night (like that time I had to construct bookshelves at 3 a.m....not that I'm complaining; I was raised with this and find it mostly normal).

HOWEVER, I was watching an episode of Seinfeld on Memorial Day because they had like an all day marathon and I was too lazy to get up or find the remote to change the channel, even though I knew what happened in all of the episodes (because I was partly raised on it...yes, this seems strange in retrospect). And one of Jerry's stand up segments was about night guy and morning guy, who gets so mad at night guy for staying up and making him want to sleep in and do poorly at work. And this is when I realized that I am way less insightful than I often claim to be.

codes and keys

First, you guys should by now have realized how big of a crush I have on Death Cab for Cutie's music. It's like there's regular music which I have ordinate amounts of respect for and interest in...and then there's Death Cab which I can't compare to other music on the same plane because that would feel like blasphemy. I'm not sure why this is, but Ben Gibbards' voice just doesn't fit in with everything else when I hit shuffle. SO I obviously have very high expectations for new Death Cab music. I also rate their songs on my iTunes thusly: 5 stars for my favorites as in I am constantly playing these songs in my head, 4 stars for really really awesome songs that I listen to regularly, 3 stars for songs that I can sing along to, unrated if I don't have strong feelings on them.

I will say that this is a band for people who like sitting and listening to music through their own headphones. It's always weird for me to hear their songs at the Daily Grind because I think of them as such a personal musical experience. It's all very introspective and thought-provoking and I am such a fan of all of their work. I was really pleased on my first listen through their latest album though it is so short. It will definitely be listened to a lot - I listened through four times in the first 48 hours of owning it. (Side note...music is way better when you listen to it a full album at a time.)

Also, Death Cab has a couple of distinctive sounds. Sometimes they're poppy, sometimes they sound more electronic or distorted, and sometimes they are slow or repetitive or just have long stretches without vocals. I love it because I can put all of their music on shuffle and get all kinds of songs without any super jarring shifts. This is the best way for me to start studying for finals...once I've gone through all of their songs I know I need to get serious about my work.

Why am I SO into them? This is a good question deserving more than a portion of a post for its answer, but I will be as brief as possible. Basically I think they can cover any emotion. The lyrics kind of grow up with you and you can get more out of them as you experience more things in life, but the songs are still enjoyable even when you don't have a huge emotional connection to them. But the more I listen to them, especially when I'm going through emotions (which is, to be clear, a very rare occurrence...you'll recall I'm about half-Vulcan), the more the songs will play in my head and the lyrics will come up when they fit my situation much later on. And I swear, I took like a year break from listening to them (not intentionally, I just didn't listen to a lot of my own music during senior year), and they would still be coming up in my head, even the obscure ones that I couldn't actually remember listening to. Every time I listen to any of their songs it's like revisiting a memory. They just paint these distinctive pictures in my head because the lyrics are so oddly specific in places, the metaphors are crazy, and I can picture a sunrise in most of them.

I don't know, I know there are other really good artists out there and I don't mean to sound like I don't appreciate any other groups or individuals, but I haven't found any other music that makes me feel the same way. Some of it has to do with my exposure to it at such a formative age (probably 14?) in terms of making my own decisions and deciding what my tastes were and then it being there for me throughout the changes in my life. Although these new songs obviously haven't been there...except for this week...there's something great about this band that makes me feel like I'm home even when hearing these songs for the first time.

1. Home is a Fire (4 stars)

Sounds like Different Names For the Same Thing (one of my favorites)

On the first listen I was not a fan. I watched the video and thought it was kind of artsy, but it sounds a lot better without it in my opinion. It's one that grows on you (I think this is the case for all of their songs). The vocals are distorted and shift between this and a more clear bridge, which is kind of cool and experimentalist of them (as that's what they say they're doing with this, their seventh album...).

2. Codes and Keys (4 stars)

Sounds like an upbeater Title and Registration mixed with Brothers on a Hotel Bed

Kind of epic and soaring, fits in well with Translatlanticism or Plans. Though I like its sound, its lyrics are nowhere near as good as the older albums. It's too generic...and it's kind of positive, which is not a bad thing but it's a little out of character lolol. Very echoey. It starts strong and continues to build in intensity, and the end is definitely worth it musically but like I said the lyrics are just kind of...what are you doing.

3. Some Boys

Sounds like You Can Do Better Than Me and I Was a Kaleidoscope

Very energetic, has an electric undercurrent. Interesting lyrics - definitely something that makes me think in a Death Cab-y way. It could super grow on me or it could just be decent. It's kind of infectious but forgettable at the same time and I think it's really a very subjective song (not that all songs are objective...that would be weird). The sound effect that is not drums is really weird and it reminds me of someone breathing creepily. But otherwise it's got a nice keyboardy part and Ben's voice sounds like one of the very early albums.

4. Doors Unlocked and Open (4 stars)

Sounds like Meet Me on the Equinox (but better) and We Laugh Indoors

Good long musical intro, which granted sounds a bit elementary, great pulsing chorus, but the part between these two is very much like We Laugh Indoors though not quite as good. The lyrics are kind of cute. When we get to the actual heart of the song, it is wonderful...it's just catchy and makes me want to jam in a Death Cab way (which is to say with my headphones in and no one judging me).

5. You Are a Tourist (3 stars)

Sounds like Your New Twin Sized Bed or (vaguely) A Move Script Ending or (maybe) Marching Bands of Manhattan

A little bit too repetitive (which is usually one of the things I like about Death Cab). It's pretty standard Death Cab so obviously it's not a bad song. I think I just haven't listened to it enough to appreciate it...? Maybe it will go up in rating later.

6. Unobstructed Views (4 stars)

Sounds like I Will Possess Your Heart

Awesome slowly-building-in-intensity intro...though not anything really new, I still like it a lot. By my third listen I already knew which parts I was anticipating, and then it was very gratifying to hear them. It's just like musical funfetti cake. So delicious. However, it probably won't go up in rating as I listen to it because it doesn't quite have the depth or uniqueness of a 5 star song.

7. Monday Morning

Sounds like a happier Death of an Interior Decorator or Expo '86

Very poppy, very Transatlanticism-y. The chorus is kind of funny, but I like that it has a distinct voice (though not necessarily a unique style compared to older songs). I like the authenticity it offers (I mean this is a plus for any of their songs...).

8. Portable television (3 stars)

Sounds like The Sound of Settling or No Sunlight except way amped up

Great melody, starts off fast and keeps its momentum throughout. Overall I really like it, though it takes a pretty stark departure from more traditionally Death Cab sounds in that it is a very happy song though I still get the feeling that no one is happy.

9. Underneath the Sycamore (3 stars)

Sounds like Marching Bands of Manhattan (my favorite)

Though this is a good song, in comparison to Marching Bands it is not that great. It has a nice familiar sound, but it sounds a bit like two different songs glued together...sometimes this works really well, but I'm not a huge fan of it here.

10. St Peter's Cathedral

Sounds like Grapevine Fires or the end of What Sarah Said

Starts off with minimal music and grows into an epic song - but not in like a legit epic way, like epic in the actual meaning of the word. It ends on a weird ethereal note and doesn't go as far as it could have. It's also about how there's nothing more to a church than its architecture? It's not painful to listen to by any means but it's definitely not a favorite.

11. Stay Young, Go Dancing (5 stars)

Sounds like no other Death Cab song everrrrr

This does not sound like Death Cab at all, but I love it! It's a little bit like Owl City, a little bit reminiscent of Lord of the Rings for some strange reason to me. It's very cute, authentic, folksy almost. I love it! Also, it's about Zooey Deschanel (Ben Gibbards' wife). Perfection.

(It took me five days since I started this post to finish it...I love this album and didn't want to do it injustice by merely stating that and nothing more. But seriously. Go listen to some Death Cab.)