K.wolverine

Octo Friends!

2011-02-03T16:58:00.004-05:00

Meet my new octo friend! (and check out my greasy hair).

He doesn't have a name yet. He's gonna go live at e's house, so I'll let him pick a name. I've been looking for quick sewing projects to work on to break up my cover letter writing sessions, and this little cephalopod will be the first of many. I found the pattern on Craftster.org. I'm going to make the tentacles a little wider on the next one to make machine sewing and turning it right side out a little easier.

Ant Farm Costume!

2011-01-21T01:36:00.002-05:00

For Halloween 2010, I decided to be the classic Uncle Milton's Art Farm.

I love making costumes that are also wearable; I want to restrict my movement and ability to move through crowds as little as possible. For this one, I started by making a simple tank dress to use as the base.

To make the tunnels, I blew up a photo of actual ant farm tunnels in Photoshop and traced them onto a piece of white muslin. Then I used a paint brush to apply Sobo glue to the non-tunnel portions and poured white corn meal onto the glue. I let this dry, dumped off the corn meal and kept laying it with glue and cornmeal. When I had enough cornmeal layers to look like a real ant farm, I sprayed it with a fixative to seal in the grain.

As soon as the tunnels were dry, I hot glued the plastic ants marching through them. (I would've preferred to use a glue that dried clear, but I was running out of time. Hot glue saved the day!) In case you're wondering, I did have a queen ant. She's on the bottom right down in the tunnels; she's just a tiny bit larger than the rest of the ants.

I cut the farm silhouette and edges out of a thin, green foam. I hot glued the farm scene to the dress while I was wearing it so the placement was perfect. Then I hot glued the tunnels onto the dress, and covered up the fabric edges with the foam edge pieces. For the finished look, I wore gold sparkly tights with a pair of green boots, just about the color of the farm scene.

Sadly, I only got to wear my creation for about two hours. I decided to take it off so I could bike easily from Park Slope to Williamsburg. I hit a bump and it flew out of my basket, and I realized it too late. Eric, Sam and I retraced our path, but it disappeared. So guess what I'm going to be next year...

100% Organic, 2% Bile

2011-01-15T15:37:00.003-05:00

I saw a (presumably) homeless man sitting on the bench of an L Train car. His two bags were laying on the floor, the rest of the passengers had avoided sitting next to him. As I stepped into the car, I saw a jug of Apple and Eve brand juice sitting at his feet. "I hope that's actually apple juice," I thought as I stepped into the car, taking a whiff of the air to test. It was fine, so I sat on a bench several banks away from him. I could see him eating some sort of black twiggy thing from out of an unlabeled metal can. This lasted for several stops. The train doors opened at a stop shortly after he finished eating, and he chucked the can across the car onto the tracks below.

He stood when the train started moving again, grabbing the apple juice jug and facing the set of doors. I thought maybe he just wanted a view of the inside of the train tunnel while he drank his juice. But he never raised the jug to his lips. Instead, he lowered it further below his waist, right near the crotch of his pants. I saw him fiddling with his fly over the top of my National Geographic, and then the liquid level in the jug started to rise.

The Balsamic Incident

2010-08-03T13:44:00.004-04:00

As a general rule, I hate sandwiches. I do make exceptions. Lately my favorite has been apple slices with cheddar, mixed greens and balsamic vinegar on a fluffy French roll. Last week, I had the sandwich in pieces and decided I should drizzle the balsamic on the bread first so the flavor was evenly dispersed. As I grabbed the bottle of vinegar off our kitchen shelf, I hit our second bottle of balsamic, knocking it to the floor. When i stepped back to survey the damage, my foot landed on the broken bottle, causing me to drop the vinegar I was holding.

I ran my bloody foot under the bathroom sink before the vinegar could hit my open wound. I fashioned a band aid out of paper towels and electrical tape, finished making my sandwich and waited until my foot stopped bleeding to clean up the mess.

Hey Kids, it's Nipple Slip Barbie!

2010-06-02T13:38:00.007-04:00

"Barbie Basics" is a new line of Barbies who are supposedly wearing simple, everyday clothes. Somehow, I don't think this neckline qualifies.

If a real woman with boobs above an A cup wore this dress, her nipple would jump out with the slightest wrong move. I know Barbie is a plastic doll with completely unrealistic proportions; her cup size is one that most real women achieve through surgery. I'm no Puritan, and I think the Disney Princess franchise is far more detrimental to young girls than Barbie's wardrobe. But, here's the thing about big boobs, doll or human: you don't have to do much to emphasize them. It's as simple as avoiding turtle necks and baggy clothes, finding V neck T shirts and wearing a bra that fits well. Barbie's boobs would've looked just as supple in a white dress with a neckline that only showed a bit of cleavage. This dress is something you'd wear to a night club with bottle service, not to take your dog to smell other dogs at a park. (Unless you're the kind of terrible person who would buy a dog just to pick up dudes).

And speaking of nipple slips, a Chinese company put this bra on the market.
Why yes, those are slots so your nipples can be out on display. (Presuming your nipples are perfectly in the middle of your boobs). Maybe it's just me, but I like to choose who sees my nipples. And once again, the people who want to look at boobs will do it even if they can't see your nipples.

And then there's the clevaage caddy...

I can't lie. I think this thing is awesome.

Part one of an epic tale

2009-08-18T02:26:00.015-04:00

The Fifth Dentist Pretended to Cave --part 1

Ashley asked if I wanted to do something stupid. I said “Hell yes.”

She said it was once of those conventions with comic books, sci-fi stuff, and computer geeks salivating over superhero action figures, complete with celebrity guests and a bad party afterwards.

I once again said, “Hell yes.”

A month later, we got dumped by a bus from the train station to the city center in Milton Keynes, England, about an hour train-ride north of our study abroad home in London looking for Collectormainia. The city center wasn’t so much a city center as it was three malls that looked like they were sculpted out of the aftermath of a cement truck explosion. We knew the name of the room where Collectormainia was, but nothing else. Completely lost, we wondered into one mall with a rock climbing wall and an arcade, but no one dressed like a Lord of the Rings character. Then into a second, which was massive enough to eat the average American mall and still have room to snack on a movie theater. We wondered aimlessly and looked at a kitchen ware store, until we spotted our compass: a guy under the age of sixteen wearing a Star Trek uniform.

Just like four out of five dentists recommend Trident, four out of five members of my family like Star Trek.

I’m the fifth dentist.

I hate Star Trek more than any other TV show. I’d sooner sit down to a marathon of Tara Reid’s travel show, Taradise, than watch more than five minutes of Captain Whoever negotiating with ferengis or klingons or whatever alien species. I hate myself any time I accidentally exhibit any knowledge about the show. But thanks to involuntary exposure and osmosis, I know stuff about Star Trek. My parents and sisters watched an episode of Star Trek almost daily, thanks to syndication. It's the same reason why I know the all of the words to the several Backstreet Boys albums and the Eurythmics Greatest Hits.

I didn’t see any Star Wars movie until I was going into my senior year of college. Ok, that’s a partial lie; I saw part of Return of the Jedi on TV when I was in elementary school. But my parents made me go to bed. Luckily, the rest of modern pop culture is so riddled with Star Wars references that I had the Cliffs Notes to all three movies just by existing.

Video games and I never hit it off. When my family got an original Nintendo, I couldn’t get past the second level on Mario 1. The double Goomba at the beginning killed me every single time. My sisters stopped letting me play, and I’m not even the youngest.

I played Dungeons and Dragons once. I went home with my boyfriend freshman year of college for spring break, and it’s what his friends were doing one night. I tried to avoid it by baking cookies, but the game was starting just as I walked into the room with a finished plate of cookies. I sincerely tried to be interested in the game, but I wound up taking a nap instead. I don’t have the kind of patience to sit through: “Ok you’re an ogre with 6.4 killing power and you’re with this dwarf who’s riding a motorcycle and who has a staff and you have to get into this room in a building, are you going to turn the knob clockwise or counter clockwise? Roll the dice to find out.”

I hate outer space in general too. The vastness and size really freak me out, and not to mention I think it’s incredibly boring. On family camping trips, my sisters would always bring their star charts and telescopes. I’d always lie in the grass and play dot-to-dot with the stars, making up my own constellations named for what my star creations actually looked like. I named a triangle configuration, “Isosceles.” There were some chair shaped stars that I named, “Lazy Boy.”

But despite my hatred of most things sci-fi, I loved the movie Trekkies, the documentary about hardcore Star Trek fans.

Actors in bad jumpsuits did nothing for me, but a dentist trading his scrubs for a bad jumpsuit? Sign me up. That made me laugh in the same as bumper stickers that say, “Happiness is being a church secretary.” Going to the comic book convention and the bad party afterwards meant I’d get to see Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and assorted other Sci-Fi and fantasy fans fighting for autographs by day and drinking by night, wearing costumes the whole time.

Ashley said she was oddly attracted to one of the Hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies, so she was planning to wait for his autograph. None of the celebrity guests had me shaking in my boots with anticipation. I was mildly excited for the Weasley twins from the Harry Potter movies because they’re my favorite characters from the books. The joke “two of them, two of us” never got old, either, just like saying, "That's what she said."

My limited Star Trek knowledge includes two of my dad’s favorite characters, Data and Warf, and they were both of them were on the guest roster. Troy was there too, and my dad takes most opportunities to point out how much she whines. So being the good daughter I am, I was going to stand in line and get autographs and pictures with his little Star Trek friends and surprise him for Christmas.

Maintaining a discreet stalker distance, Ashley and I followed the Star Trek kid to Carrie Fisher, magic cards and people dressed like Darth Maul. We thought we were ready for Collectormainia. We both had our cameras. I had a notebook and a tape recorder so I could practice being a freelance journalist. We said “bring on the trading cards! Die cast metal spaceships! The lunch boxes! Mint-condition ninja turtle happy meal toys! The people who have passionate opinions of which was the best Stargate season!”

But Collectormainia was a sensory overload like we never expected. There were people dressed up like storm troopers, girls wearing shirts that said “Viggo Mortesen Fan Inside,” three girls with bunny ears and tails, eight year old boys slipping their autographed pictures of mini-me into frames, a girl in a Little Bo Peep dress, wookies, trekkies, grown women with pokemon backpacks, a teenage boy wearing a penguin puppet, all wading through a sea of vendors who were peddling She-ra action figures, Spiderman bobble head dolls, Simpson’s animation cells, Tarentino posters, Lord of the rings Replica swords, comic books and trading cards, and fans waiting in the lines for the autographs surrounded the merchandise section. Ashley and I were the most attractive people in the place for the simple fact that we would never even consider wearing a fanny pack.** Since it was Saturday and there’s nothing else in Milton Keynes, everyone in town was apparently at the mall and decided to pop over to the exhibition space after hitting the kitchen ware store to see what was going down. So on top of people in fairy wings, we were dodging families, preteens, and people pushing the fashionable baby strollers of the day, which happened to be a throwback to the Victorian era, i.e. little rolling coffins. The traffic pattern made me want a pair hipwadders, and I probably would’ve been able to pass it off as a costume.

We fought our way through the masses to find our celebrity autograph conquests of the day…only to find out autographs cost twenty pounds each, which was forty dollars with the exchange rate. Ashley and I numbed our disappointment with cookies, and stepped outside to the open air market portion of the mall, where I stared at lawn ornaments to recenter. (And only in Europe would you find a meat truck in the center of a shopping mall).

Instead of talking to her hobbit, Ashley and I made like middle school girls and casually walked by his spot, hoping to catch a glimpse. As much as my dad loved Star Trek, he appreciated frugalness more. So I opted for the cheap bastard version of his Christmas present: stand on the benches and zoom my camera as far as possible and take blurry pictures of Data, Warf, and Troy before the nerds in “Crew” T-shirts told me to keep moving.

**I’d like to note this was before any sort of designer fanny packs made a comeback, but I retain my statement despite any newfound chic. I can’t get behind a bag I carried to the roller rink in elementary school. I would carry a shirt tales lunch box as a purse before I strapped another fanny pack around my waist.

The biggest bagel ever...

2009-08-18T01:36:00.002-04:00

...Is so large that it pooped out lit votive candles.

I Break Everything including annelids

2009-08-12T16:53:00.005-04:00

My old house had a huge backyard, a medium front yard, and two smaller side yards. In one of the side yards, there was an abandoned flower bed that was then just a flat hunk of dirt in the middle of grass. I turned it into a worm house. I built them a kitchen, with grape hyacinth juice boxes, a swimming pool out of blue paper, a living room, and everything an annelid could need. I dug in the ground next to the house to find some worms to live in it. One of my residents managed to tie itself in a knot. I tried to untie him, and accidentally ripped it in half instead. I put the two ends together, but it would stick together and it was still in a knot. I chucked both pieces off to the side. A few years later in school, I felt relieved when I learned that broken worms could regenerate themselves.

Update

2009-07-31T16:25:00.003-04:00

I wrangled all of my belongings a few weeks ago.

And I found this

And I've started to use it again.

Tonight on 16 and pregnant...

2009-07-31T02:33:00.003-04:00

Most hilariously inappropriate Halloween costumes for an expectant teenage couple: Maci as an electrical outlet and Ryan as a power cord.

Guidelines for biking in New York

2009-07-31T02:15:00.003-04:00

I've recently fallen in love...with the road bike my roommate is letting me borrow. It's built for speed, doesn't make me curse when riding uphill, and is easy to carry up and down stairs. I will always have a special place in my heart for my Free Spirit three-speed cruiser and the time we shared, but its gears and brakes no longer suit my needs. My new love for the road bike has brought me to my favorite time of year: riding a bike as my main transportation. Admittedly, New York is not the easiest city to ride in, but it's easy if you follow four main guidelines:

1. Wear a helmet
Looking like Toad from Super Mario Brothers isn't cool, but it's way cooler than cracking your skull open or getting a spine injury.

2. Ride with traffic
If cars and pedestrians know where you're coming from, they are less likely to hit you.

3. Assume everyone else is going to screw up
This goes for drivers, cabbies, pedestrians, puppies, other bikers...swerve to avoid hitting them, because they won't. Oh, and watch out for car doors.

4. Watch out for potholes
There are some big enough to swallow a small child. They will send you flying into the sidewalk or mess up your tires/wheels.

It's that kind of store

2009-07-25T22:33:00.003-04:00

In the fourth grade, I asked for a gift certificate to a store called Craft Warehouse on my Christmas list. I typed up my list in Word, because it had better penmanship and spelling abilities. I trusted everything that spell check told me. I didn't even read the suggested words. It was a computer; I assumed that it was smarter than me. I kept clicking "change" when spelling errors popped up, including for the word "warehouse." My family and I still call that store "Craft Whorehouse."

And now for something painfully adorable

2009-07-24T16:12:00.001-04:00

Take a vote

2009-07-21T05:00:00.002-04:00

Which is more terrifying?

Weapon one:

or

Weapon two:

Light saber added by Joe.

A printer/scanner/copier should do all three right?

2009-07-14T03:16:00.004-04:00

How I feel about the my computer not recognizing my printer, but not the scanner:

I can't wait to see what the pictorial representation of my mood will be while I'm on the phone with tech support tomorrow!

Shameless promotion

2009-07-08T16:53:00.002-04:00

My friend Joe's animated short "Star Wars Retold" is a finalist in the Atom Films Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge. He needs your vote! Today's the last day! So, take five minutes and vote for STAR WARS RETOLD.

Oh, and watch it if you haven't. It's pretty awesome.

Long lost comics drawn on notebook paper

2009-06-24T04:22:00.004-04:00

Here are comic strips I drew in the fifth and sixth grades. One of them even has a complete punchline!

Not a monkey on a rock

2009-06-03T02:51:00.001-04:00

Autumn done be gettin' hitched. I done be makin' flowrs.

Putting my brain back together

2009-05-29T13:20:00.005-04:00

Birthdays are fun to drag out; moving is not. I had to get a storage unit when I moved last month, and then I was a hobo for about a week. I got everything out of storage yesterday, so I am now surrounded with chipboard furniture and wine boxes full of my books, fabric, knick knacks, and who knows what else.

Step 1: get belongings in order. step 2: rebuild brain. step 3: build a fort with the empty boxes.

Everybody look at me, because I'm sailing on a boat

2009-05-25T13:47:00.001-04:00

Guest column! K10 learns things

2009-05-25T13:45:00.000-04:00

K10 learns things so you can too!

Today's subject: Temp jobs!

K10 says...

Sometimes you can get paid by a 501c3 to stab the belly's of piñatas.

Easiest piñata belly to stab successfully: The bull
Most difficult piñata belly to stab successfully: The horse

No unicorns were harmed in the stabbing of piñatas.

Simplified

2009-05-13T04:45:00.001-04:00

No need for left or right at the New York Botanical Gardens.

Miss California

2009-05-10T04:47:00.002-04:00

The news cast on my taxi screen the other night said, "Will the runner up be ready to take Carrie Prejean's place if she is forced to give up the title of Miss California?" I hope this other girl is ready to step up to what Miss USA runner ups usually do: fade into obscurity. But with all the Miss California-gay marriage-free boob job-racy-photos hype, does anyone remember who is actually the current Miss USA?

Wholesome Wear

2009-05-06T03:43:00.008-04:00

I've had the same swim suit for about four years, and I've been considering replacing it or buying a second. After watching tonight's 18 Kids and Counting..., I've decided I can't live without the stylish number from Wholesome Wear that Anna wore on her honeymoon with Joshua. I thought I'd never a swimsuit that was both Spandex and a throw back to Puritan fashion, but the Wholesome Wear outer garment converts from swim-ready shorts to a land-appropriate dress with quick and easy snaps! (I also never knew how to make soap from previously existing soap before the Duggars). Apparently, only the favorite daughters in giant families like the Duggars get to go swimming; each Wholesome Wear is $80.

I understand that Anna doesn't want a swimsuit that makes her look like a common whore, but she found a suit that leaves more to the imagination than the Burqini.

Roundworms ruin everything

2009-05-04T14:40:00.004-04:00

A teenager is blind in one eye and an infant brain damaged after contracting raccoon roundworm. They're both from Brooklyn, so I'm going to have to give up stacking raccoon feces into piles and quit using feces as sprinkles on cupcakes.

Babies are prone to eating things they're not supposed to, but I haven't seen a raccoon in the two years I've lived here. Where did this baby find the scat? The teenager apparently eating feces is like the ten year old who got roofied from eating Aquadots; they were both old enough to know what's edible and what's not.

Knives out, records down

2009-04-28T05:18:00.002-04:00

Jokes turn into efficiency.

I always used a putty knife to take down my 45s, but my friends are smarter than me.

Yeah, I've been slacking on posts due to finishing up work and now getting ready to be out of my apartment by early on Friday. Have I mentioned that I'm not a minimalist? And this fills me with rage every time I move? I've gotten better, but I come from a long line of packrats...besides, I like my stuff.

List of things in my purse that are not chapstick

2009-04-21T23:52:00.002-04:00

*subscription card to National Geographic
*three children's books respectively titled: Ostriches, Orangutans, and Old World Monkeys
*a tiny stone turtle that is missing a foot
*dead AA battery
*coupon for Malox
*the spare key to my apt
*electrical tape
*moisturizer
*wallet and phone
*microphone case with tampons inside
*lysine ointment
*several pens
*glasses case

Ewoks are real!

2009-04-21T02:50:00.001-04:00

Guest column! K10 learns things

2009-04-20T03:02:00.004-04:00

K10 learns things so you can too!

Today's subject: Baby Gates!

K10 says...

Did you know that at Fred Meyer baby gates are considered "Apparel" and that only stores that sell clothes have baby gates? We went looking for one today, because we wanted to have the front door open without worrying about kitties going in or out. But no! Apparel!

Prepare for a cheesy pageant production number

2009-04-19T23:59:00.007-04:00

Not going to lie, I used to watch beauty pageants all the time. Grandma Sis would tape them for me, and I specifically remember watching the Miss Teen USA 1990 on her Beta VCR over and over again. Tonight, I had to watch the Miss USA pageant at work. The format hasn't changed much since the 90s, but the hair is smaller. Also, they make a point to note several times that the crown is made from synthetic "conflict free" diamonds. Translation: really high quality rhinestones. The crown is kind of like fake fur: an old status symbol updated with contemporary collective morals.

Miss Arizona gave a really great answer about health care in which she did not say the word "health care." Instead, she just talked about having integrity, no matter if you're on the left or right. Excellent stock answer, Miss Arizona, but we still don't know if you're for or against universal health care in the United States. I may disagree with Miss California believing that marriage should only be for heterosexual couples, but at least she voiced her concrete opinion on the issue. Even though she completed contradicted herself saying that she thought it was great that people in America could chose between same sex marriage and opposite sex marriage, but then said "In my country, in my family, I believe marriage should between a man and a woman." (Also, Perez Hilton didn't ask what she thought, he asked if other states should follow Vermont with legalizing it. She could've just said, "It should be left up to each state.")

And now, the video I will never get tired of watching, the greatest moment in all of pageant history...Miss South Carolina from Miss Teen USA 2007 answering the final, and most crucial, question of the night:

Abstinence gave me herpes

2009-04-17T03:36:00.001-04:00

I will never have a better titled essay than this one.

Scrapbooking

2009-04-17T03:33:00.002-04:00

Here's another essay I wrote for Buzzsaw Haircut while I was in college. Click the image for the readable sized image.

My roots

2009-04-14T16:42:00.002-04:00

Click for the full size readable version!

Ode to Vinnie's on Bedford

2009-04-13T19:39:00.010-04:00

I go for the pizza, and stay to giggle at the garbage can.

I've never gone through a blue period

2009-04-13T19:39:00.009-04:00

After the nation had forgotten the cancer scares sparked by red dye number four and other colorings, red M&Ms returned to the pack of plain M&Ms. I remember thinking that it was the perfect new color; a bit brighter than the other colors without being obnoxious. Then in pre-internet days, the Mars company opened a phone hot line so people could vote for a new color to the pack in 1995. I was gunning for purple, but blue won. M&Ms were not Skittles; they did not need to be neon. To me, the new blue M&M stood out from the rest of the earth tones and fall colors to the point of clashing. Eventually, the tan M&M was eradicated from the regular pack, and I'm still a little sad about it.

It's not that I actively dislike the color blue. I've always felt completely indifferent to the color, with one exception: my favorite Crayola crayon color has always Cerulean, a shade of blue that cars are painted on "The Price is Right." I've recently learned that Crayola seems to have followed M&Ms' lead; their 24 pack of crayons has four shades of blue and one brown. Sure, there are a lot of oranges, some decent purples, and reds and red violets, but none of them helped when I was coloring in a picture of Pioneer Square. My lack of brown options meant that I couldn't duplicate the square's redish-tan bricks. Normally, I'd have no problem coloring the bricks purple or something. But there was already a pink squid fighting a green Portlandia in the middle of the square, and I wanted a balance of absurdism with reality.

I bought the 24 pack on a whim a few months ago, and I've started coloring in books when I need to recenter and using crayons when I pretend like I can draw. I like the waxy feeling and look, and being able to control the intensity of the color. I bought a 64 pack, so I'd have a wider variety of earth tones. I recognized a few shades, like "Purple Mountain's Majesty," "Tickle Me Pink," "Macaroni and Cheese," and "Timberwolf" as winners of the naming contest Crayola had when I was in third grade. But then, the new shades only came in the Big Box of 96. But I was still more excited about the collection of tan, burnt sienna, raw sienna, etc. As I was working on a crudely drawn comic strip (that I may or may not post sometime), I found a color called "Cadet blue" that is the exact color of my eyes. I thought I was content with my crayon collection, until K10 got me a 150 pack that came in a plastic container and included glitter and metallic shades...I'm now officially slightly intimidated by my color options and may never have to use either of my built in sharpeners.

Judging people by their pets

2009-04-12T19:23:00.009-04:00

Jesse and Josh were shooting safari animals, and I stood close by scanning the few people at the Levee on a Wednesday night. I accidentally made eye contact with a short guy with curly black hair, wearing an unbuttoned collared shirt over his T shirt. He smiled, shot me the "hey baby" eyes and walked up to me, and asked "Is one of these guys your husband?" I said no. "Is one of them your boyfriend?" I shook my head no. He asked, "Do you have a boyfriend?" I asked, "Is that really your best line?"

He told me that he liked to ask about boyfriends before talking to girls to avoid getting beaten up. Jesse and Josh were done playing Buck Hunter and Jesse agreed that starting with the boyfriend question was ok to do sometimes. I told them both that the best way to talk to girls was just starting a conversation, that opening with the boyfriend question makes girls feel gross. It's not that I'm offended by being hit on; I just don't like the feeling that any conversation attempt is made with the sole intent of trying to nail me.

Then our new friend said "I have a cobra," and pulled up pictures of his pet cobra on his iphone, talking about how he used to have a mamba and fed his cobra fresh freeze dried mice. I said that was an oxymoron. He told us about his the special gloves he wore to play with his cobra, and how he punched a guy with brass knuckles who tried to break in and steal his cobra. I had no interest in the guy to start with. But if I'm gonna give a snake owner my number, I'd want a guy who is sensible enough to have a boa or something that kills with strangulation and not a snake equipped with venomous fangs. More importantly, I'm also only interested in guys who are smart enough to realize that saying "I have a cobra" is a far better way to start conversation than asking a girl about her dating status.

(Note: I've been searching through venomous snake discussion boards to try and see if cobras are legal to own as pets in New York City...research is so far inconclusive.)

East end boys and west end girls...

2009-04-10T06:26:00.004-04:00

PETA asked the Pet Shop Boys to change their name. Are you really that bored, PETA? Sure, "Rescue Shelter Boys" does have better moral connotations, but rescue shelters don't have crickets to feed to pet lizards.

Anti-salmonella frog

2009-04-09T16:14:00.002-04:00

Hip hop watches

2009-04-09T15:32:00.000-04:00

Don't settle for anything less.

Open source sewing!

2009-04-08T12:51:00.003-04:00

Not to sound like a commercial, but this site is pretty awesome. One of my favorite skirt patterns ever was made by Burda, and they've officially kicked McCalls' and Simplicity's asses. Burda Style is a site with downloadable patterns (priced free to cheap), sewing tips, a blog, photos, etc. You can share your projects with someone besides the old ladies at the fabric store who question why you'd do something so crazy as buy remnants right before closing.

Postcards I never sent...

2009-04-07T16:34:00.004-04:00

To the guy who started to proposition me at at First Thursday,

Just because a girl is friendly with you (like if you approach the table where she’s selling melted plastic creations), doesn’t mean she’s wants to make out with you. I’m sorry you’ve been forced to be celibate for six of your eight years of marriage because of your wife’s injury, and I can see why you’d want to end this streak. But you have a specific need that talking to random girls at gallery openings is very unlikely to fulfill, especially since you’ve been off the casual dating market for a while. Portland is a friendly city; if you initiate conversation with someone, they’re more than likely going to talk to you. But you can’t jump from “hi” to “you look nice” to “I haven’t had sex in six years.” Also, kissing a girl’s hand when introduced isn’t charming…it’s archaic and creepy. Most 20-somethings aren’t in a place in life where they want to be a married man’s surrogate vagina.You should post or respond to a personal ad on craigslist or the in the Mercury. Surely there’s a woman in the Portland-metro area in the same situation, looking for someone to get it on with because her husband can’t.

I break everything...the continuing ballad of face stitches

2009-04-07T16:25:00.004-04:00

During a scuffle over the hockey puck in gym class, one my classmates high sticked right into my chin. I clutched my face and screamed before I started crying. My teacher calmly told everyone to sit on attendance order and then walked me up to the nurse. She gave me a bag of ice while they called my mom. I thought I'd just gotten a fat lip, but then I looked in the mirror and saw the quarter of an inch dent right beneath my lower lip. When I went back to school with seven stitches in my face the next day, I reminded my friends that I was more like a real hockey player than they could ever dream of being.

Saftey First!

2009-04-06T19:11:00.005-04:00

The theme of mine and Kenny's joint party was "Safety First!"

I sewed the majority of my dress on the day of the party. We decorated with caution tape that Set found on a construction site. Sam put the helmet on me while I stood on a wooden box hanging the tape. Then a fifteen song play list created...

EARTHQUAKE DANCE PARTY

Now, the west coast and Texas visitors are gone and my 2.5 week long fake vacation is over. Back to work! And I'm making up for not posting anything for almost a week with multiple entries in a day. Also, I've decided it's time to start doing things like sewing dresses in a night again.

Excellent pick-up lines

2009-04-06T17:01:00.006-04:00

The day after I got my driver's license, I got reached another formative moment of my teenage years: getting blatantly hit on my a sleezy older dude. I drove my dad's GTI to the little locksmith shop in the parking lot of the Fred Meyer in Gresham to make copies of the car keys. As I was parking, a guy in a large pick up pulled around back, and excitedly waved at me, and looked like he was saying, "Hey! Hi!" from behind his wheel. I half-waved, and shot him a look of confusion. Then I saw him walk into the back of the locksmith shop and thought, "Oh great."

When I walked around to the front door, he ran over to open it for me. I looked at him and asked if they were closing, and he said no, and walked next to me for the ten feet to the counter. He was at least ten years older than me. His shirt was wider than it was long, he had facial stubble, and used some kind of hair gel. I stood up at the counter, waiting for this guy's buddy to get off the phone and make my keys. The guy tapped his hands on the counter and nodded his head, and said, "So uh, gettin' keys made?"

From watching TV and movies and reading books, I had been expecting a way better pick up or attempt at conversation. I was so taken aback by his lack of creativity that I couldn't think of anything to say except, "Yeah. Just got my license yesterday."
"So you must be about 16 then?" he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Well, let me tell you. You look a whole lot older than 16."
"GET OFF THE PHONE LOCKSMITH GUY," I yelled in my head.

When he got off the phone, the locksmith guy asked what kind of cars I needed keys for. I said "Volkswagon and Toyota," and the guy said, "Yeah, she's got a Volkswagon," as if he was my translator. As my keys were cut, locksmith guy asked his buddy if he was still dating some girl. And the guy said, "Nope, I'm not dating anyone. I'm completely single."

The girl who was behind the counter shook her head and laughed and said, "You guys are stupid." Then she looked at me, pointing to the guy and said, "He came walking in saying 'major hottie just pulled up in back.'" I said nothing, and just ran away with my new keys.

Williamsburg is scenic

2009-04-06T15:18:00.005-04:00

Impromptu solo dance party.

Vicarious pet owning at the dog park.

Who'd want a fruit prince?

Q: Where do toys that don't make it to Salvo go?
A: A lot on N1 and Bedford.

Learn how to pluralize. I'm judging you, flea market.

I know I like a fruity aftertaste while swigging booze on the street.

New slang

2009-04-06T00:21:00.002-04:00

Baby bird: What you say to a person when you want to try a bite of what they're eating. I wasn't hungry enough for a full piece of pizza, so I just looked at Bailey and said "Baby bird, baby bird" until she let me steal a bite.

More odd combos

2009-03-29T01:26:00.007-04:00

Hello Lion.
Hello other Lion.
Why are you sad?
I want to eat a salad, but then I would have to take a break from scratching off lottery tickets and playing video poker.
Don't be sad, Lion, there are restaurants that cater to your desires:

What a girl wants...

2009-03-27T03:30:00.002-04:00

...is clearly a puffer fish and soy sauce.

(And happiness can only be multiplied with the addition of an onion, trial size museli and cooking oil).

Speaking of animal genitalia...

2009-03-25T19:46:00.002-04:00

I have nothing else to say.

(the raccoon is one of many fine pieces of taxidermy in Evolution on Spring Street in Soho).

The running of the bull and a quarter century

2009-03-24T17:27:00.008-04:00

My great aunt asked why so many people took pictures posing with the bull's backside, where the testicles are just as detailed as the face. I shrugged, when I was secretly resisting the urge to take a photo of the balls myself. The answer to my aunt's question is that deep down, everyone is a twelve-year-old boy.

When I turned twelve, I decided to have a retro party. My mom stapled hideous fabric up in the striped room. I wore Bailey's tye-dyed tee shirt that was three sizes too big for either of us. My friends showed up in polyester and we ate red vines out of a tub from Costco. I turn 25 tomorrow. I'm not going to say that I'm old, because in the grand scheme of everything I'm quite young. But I do feel weird and anxious; it's a substantial chunk of time. Mackenzie asked me if I knew what I wanted. I had no answer because I never know what I want for my birthday or Christmas anymore. My parents got me a new camera, which turned out to be exactly what I wanted. It has "food" and "museum" modes. So far, food mode just gives things a yellow tint.

Right now, I'm trying to finish up a batch of quizzes for work, so I can actually relax and have fun tomorrow. Bailey gets here on Saturday, and while there are many reason I wish she were here now, I really wish she were here to help me with fake answers about the plant books I have right now. I can think of tons of things that salamanders don't do, but my knowledge base of plants has dwindled since my days of teaching at Outdoor School. I meant to finish the quizzes this weekend. Instead, I finished my taxes on Saturday afternoon and starting vomiting for the next twelve hours. Today, I made an attempt to eat something besides English muffins and Gatorade. So far, it's working. But having no appetite makes picking a restaurant to go for your birthday dinner rather difficult. (I'm also really distracted by my extreme desire to go buy a pair of pants that aren't falling apart or off of me. Maybe jeans are something I should buy more than once every year and a half).

Tonight, I'll wear my gold boots. Tomorrow night, most likely my gold flapper dress. Next week, I'm going to buy safety goggles to make people wear at the joint birthday party.

Here's a list of how I spent the last milestone birthdays:
16--Great Grandpa Britton's memorial service.
18--running around Portland to places like the smutty comic book store, a headshop, to buy lottery tickets...and didn't get carded at all.
21--We Vs. the Shark played Ithaca. My friends and I bonded with them over bottles of cheap champange.

No looking down

2009-03-23T03:52:00.002-04:00

I can suck up my fear of heights when I have to, like when my relatives from Texas want to go to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. It was a great fluffy cloud picture day!

Here's Williamsburg:

And here's Greepoint (I wouldn't have recognized it without the large silver things):

Macy's

2009-03-20T23:58:00.007-04:00

Today, I went to the flagship Macy's for the first time since the eighth grade. And I got a reminder of eighth grade social studies with the bill of rights stuck on my bathroom stall.

Operation glitter pores has started

2009-03-20T01:07:00.004-04:00

*There was a merkin reference on 30 Rock tonight! Jenna said she was donated her hair to "Merkins of Hope" after Locks of Love rejected her hair...The more I watch the show, the more I wonder why it took me so long to get into it.

*Part 1 of me leaking glitter from my pores started yesterday: I've been playing tourist with my Great Aunt and cousins visiting from Texas. I'll post some pictures when I'm home long enough to upload any. I've realized that I know my way around Manhattan enough to satisfy my own aimless wandering, but knowing a bit more about directions would be good when leading other people around.

*My golden birthday is in five days. I'm not too weirded out about turning 25, but I keep realizing weird milestones in my head. Like, "I've had this Queens of the Stoneage tee shirt for ten years."

*I was up, dressed like a human, and out of my apartment by 9:45am today. After parts 2 and 3 of me leaking glitter from my pores, I hope to have killed some of the bat-like sleeping schedule I've adapted.

*My roommate gets back tomorrow. Yay! Alone time's nice, but it's way better to have someone to yell at the TV with.

*Part 2 of glitter pores starts Monday when Autumn gets here. Part 3 starts when Bailey and Sean get in on Saturday. I will most likely poop out a rainbow when their visits overlap for a day.

Postcards I never sent...that would not actually fit on a postcard

2009-03-16T05:47:00.015-04:00

Dear Ranger McNofun,

You assured me there were no silly questions, so I asked if you had any "JR Beaver Jr. Ranger" buttons. You said, "Yes," and then smugly tucked your hands behind your back, making your elbows point out and said, "But they're for six to twelve year olds." I offered to give you a dollar. You smirked and grunted out a noise in a feeble attempt to feign amusement, but you refused to give me the button.

I still don't understand it, Ranger.

Fine, you don't want to give the buttons to every random twenty-somethings who ask you for one, but how many of us actually ask? And I offered you a dollar that you could've pocketed or put toward a bottle of fox-pelt cleaner or polish for your badge. I'm not a little kid who was going to lose the button after a week; I'm old enough to decide that I wanted the button to go with the others on my purse (not to mention old enough to pay for our campsite with my credit card). What do you do when kids look five and a half? Do you ask their parents for their birth certificate? Do you take a sample and count the kids' rings? What about the day after a kids' thirteenth birthday? I mean, I'm not a whole lot taller now than at age twelve and I'm way less likely to stab my sister with the pin for my own amusement. I could've tried to convince some kids to grab an extra one for me, but there is such thing as a creepy question. However, I will never be like you, Ranger, and be morally offended by a silly question.

Sincerely,
Kwolverine

Fun facts about hedgehogs!

2009-03-15T18:44:00.003-04:00

Paraphrased from The Book of Animal Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

So many hedgehogs in have died in the UK from getting stuck in food containers that McDonald's redesigned the McFlurry container to be hedge-hog proof.

Badgers are strong enough to pry open hedgehogs when they roll up into a ball. Foxes instead pee on the hedgehog to make them unroll.

It takes more chloroform to knock out a hedgehog than it does any other animal due to the hedgehog's high tolerance for poison.

"Goodness sakes those are definetly gold"

2009-03-14T03:58:00.004-04:00

Dear old gold heels,

Stay disappeared.

Love,
new gold heels.

p.s. we have buckles, suck it.

Consider this your warning

2009-03-12T09:01:00.002-04:00

One day when I don't work a night job, I want to start going to bar trivia nights again because I love beer and random facts! I'd also like to run a bar trivia game, even just once, so I could have a category called "Guest stars on Pete and Pete."

Finest moment on television tonight...

2009-03-11T23:27:00.003-04:00

From the Exterminators on A&E...

Billy's gotta remove a family of opossums from a bathroom wall. He cut a hole in the outside wall and figured out that mama and babies had been living under the tub. "Opossums are pretty cool," he says. "They're great for the ecosystem because they're scavengers. They eat insects and things they find on the ground."

Then Billy sits on the deck next to the hole, a cage in his lap, saying, "I put some, uh, some nachos in there. I think the opossums are going to like that," and pulls 7-Eleven style nachos on a deli paper out of a Styrofoam container, and places the pile of chips and fake cheese into the hole in the house.

Sure enough, the baby opossums come running and Billy snatches them up.

Cantaloupe

2009-03-05T01:16:00.005-05:00

I was holding a half a cantaloupe in my hand after scooping out the seeds, and I used a steak knife with my free hand to slice the melon into edible chunks. I sliced the diagonal of my palm and threw the melon into the sink.
My dad watched the entire thing and asked if I was okay. Then he rolled his eyes at me and said, “I was just about to say not to slice it that way because you’re going to cut yourself."

Tombstone? Fresh baked bread?

2009-03-04T18:08:00.004-05:00

I finally decided to go to Cho's Variety on Graham Ave that serves Stumptown Coffee. The coffee is perfect, but there are no tiny cokes in glass bottles and I wonder if the barista would cut up watermelon for me if I brought one in while dressed like a snow leopard hanging out with a zebra. (Then again, it'd be more like a member of the weasel family and a dinosaur 'cause we're adults now).

More importantly, the place down the block that makes monuments for grave stones (like tombstones, giant angels, etc) has a sign that they now have fresh bread. There's a rack of bread near the window in the store full of stone carvings and slabs.

My first reaction to the snow storm in the North East

2009-03-03T07:32:00.003-05:00

That's a partial lie. I started wearing the blanket like a burka as soon as it came in the mail four days ago.

Bits of wisdom

2009-03-03T04:55:00.007-05:00

Out of my group of friends in high school, Liz and I were the first to get our wisdom teeth pulled. Both of us were pretty special cases: I got knocked out by the anesthesiologist from the actual hospital and she somehow grew six wisdom teeth. K10 joked about our teeth hanging out together, and then the next day I drove to Liz's house to borrow her wisdom teeth. Instead of going with Bailey to see Botch play with At the Drive-in, I spent the better part of a night taking this series of photos...

Wisdom

Picnic of Wisdom

Wisdom takes a holiday

Oh sweet wisdom!

Believe this superlative

2009-03-01T04:28:00.009-05:00

Meet Joan of Arc, my favorite statue ever. Photo credit goes to Paul Em, who likes silly hats.

She sits in the middle of a traffic circle to commemorate the time Joan of Arc led the French army to defeat the English in Portland during World War I. Her flag got stolen a few years ago. K10 and I devised a plan to replace it with a pirate flag, but it was during the freedom fries period of history, so we didn't it to come across as another form of anti-France. The next plan involved us getting a bunch of pinwheels and planting them in the ground, along with a sign that said, "We love Joan!" But apparently no stores sell pinwheels in September. Not even our favorite toy store, where we'd go in high school and spend equal time looking at the toys and the attractive male sales clerks.

Joan had her flag back next time I was in town, and we showed our love by yelling "Joaaaaan!" from inside of my car when we drove past. I always keep my eyes on the road while driving, but it takes some self-control not to get completely distracted by her peaking out from behind the trees and bus shelter. Joan is so gleaming gold that she even shines through the shrubbery when its dark. The goldness is even more blinding up close. My golden birthday is in twenty four days, and I wish Portland were a bit closer so I could go eat cupcakes and/or cookies in the tuft of grass around Joan. But it'll be just as awesome to dart across the awkward crosswalks when I'm back west in June.

Slow news day?

2009-03-01T01:49:00.001-05:00

Here's an article from the Oregonian explaining the Portland area's love for Perry Mason.

Jack Daniels hurts your feet

2009-02-26T18:22:00.007-05:00

My goal for my elderly years used to be sitting on a porch in my long johns, chasing children with a pitchfork. I think I now want to be like this woman, and hit hooligans with cooking pans.

Study time with Set

2009-02-24T01:00:00.002-05:00

Set and I took a break while she worked on her thesis and I worked on stuff for work.

Dyslexic gazelles for dinner.

Heart failure.

Burning our tongues. Photobooth flips my kitchen.

Digestion.

Back to work recording our album.

I guess they'd also be crushed by high heels

2009-02-22T18:59:00.003-05:00

Oscar Commentary:

K10: But why aren't there centipedes at the red carpet?

Me: Too hot. Their bodies would dry out

K10: They need to get it together!

Plywood graffiti...

2009-02-21T19:17:00.000-05:00

...reaches a larger audience than a bathroom stall.

I'm way better at bike riding now

2009-02-20T04:18:00.007-05:00

Aside from two blocks on a yellow commie bike in Copenhagen, I hadn't ridden a bike in at least two years when I found one in my rental house. (I also found cans of Diet Rite Root Beer and a fine collection of spices from the 1980s in that house). While biking around Ithaca, I immediately developed a new trick while frantically pedaling to catch the bus when I was late for class: slipping, smashing my heels into the metal pedals and tearing the skin on my heels. The key to the trick was repeating it as soon as the wounds were healing.

One rainy night, I thought riding my bike the opposite way down a one-way street seemed like the best possible route, or at least fastest, to go home quickly before I had to work at the bar. I was paying attention to the cars in the actual street, and failed to notice a minivan that was parking until it was too late. I screamed, let go of the handle bars, allowing my bike to drop but still caused me to crash into the hood of the van. A little kid standing on the sidewalk asked if I was ok. The driver asked if I was ok. I muttered "yeah." The little kid started pointing at me and laughing. I decided walking my bike home would be a good idea. Later that night, I was digging through my bag and panicked when I saw that my glasses case was completely smashed. My glasses were fine, and whatever impact they suffered made them slip down my nose less.

Where cheese comes from

2009-02-18T04:37:00.000-05:00

Venturing out of the ferry terminal on Staten Island

2009-02-18T03:57:00.022-05:00

I do love art, but when it comes to museums I'd much rather look at pickled animals in jars.

The Staten Island museums delivers! Not only do they have dinosaur footprints, Native American artifacts, but they have glass jars with squid eggs, a flying squirrel, a hammerhead shark, and many more...

Oh sweet irony.

Staring like the Care Bears.

Never leave home without your matchbox full of rabbit droppings. These were on a shelf with the rind of a giant lemon and...

...a four-footed chicken. The chicken and magnified rocks were both pretty hypnotizing, but the minerals were more sparkly. (Though while talking to K10 later, she and I decided that rating how things ranked against a four-footed chicken is a really great way to measure awesomeness).

The entrance has a wall of several hundred insects, near a display of the horrors of the Asian long-horned beetle. These butterflies will not decimate forests...or will they?

Shadowboxes full of taxidermy animals is probably the only tradition I'd like to bring back from the Victorian era.

Cousins' and mythical beasts

2009-02-17T04:17:00.011-05:00

The allure of the stumpy cow statue was too great. We wanted a hot meal, and it was coming from a restaurant named Cousins'.

Marcie, Cody, Garrett and I were heading back to Portland from the Sasquatch music fest in George, Washington. It was the year before Sasquatch turned into a four day fest, when it was just a standard festival show with two stages and lots of bands. Six years later, I'm still trying to figure out why Coldplay headlined over Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips or Jurassic 5. The venue is called the Gorge, and it's completely worth the five to six hour drive from Portland.

As much as the town "George, Washington" screams "booming metropolis," The Gorge is surrounded by absolutely nothing. You have to spend the money to camp at in the official venue campground, which is just a field with banks of port-o-potties. There aren't even old logging roads to park on or a terrible state campground. The only thing around except the venue are farms where Jethro's wife comes out to tell you not to park on her property to eat cold pizza out of the cooler that's jamming into your side while you're shoved into the back of a Volkswagen.

We drove up the night before Sasquatch and the four of us crammed into a two-person tent that Marcie's parents got as a wedding present. (Garrett only made it into the tent for a night and a half--he fell asleep face down in the grass in front of the tent for part of the second night). When we were about to crash the first night, we stared in disbelief at the tent door flopping over. I dug through the trunk and found my duct tape, wrapped a piece around the front pole, pulled off a long strip, slapped the tape down to the hood of my mom's Golf, and said "Everybody in."

On the way home, we stopped to frolic around the concrete Stonehenge replica at the Maryhill Museum.

About a half hour after crossing the bridge back into Oregon, we were in The Dalles, where the gas station bathrooms sell Love Kits for a quarter. We noticed Cousins' on the way up to Sasquatch, and on the way back, we couldn't deny the towering roadside sign or the livestock statues.

The hostess said, "Howdy Cousins!"

When our waiter came to the table, he said, "How are you cousins doing today?"

The menu told a convoluted story about the restaurant's origins: There was a group of cousins who were close and opened Cousins' together to serve up homestyle food and make everyone who came there feel like they were one of the cousins too...I hoped the wait staff didn't cheat at board games like my actual cousins. I let the story of the founding slide, but I had a pressing question when the waiter came back to get our order.

"Random question: Why is the word "halibut" in quotation marks on the "Real 'halibut' fish and chips?," I asked and pointed to my menu.

"I don't know," he said. "But yeah, that's weird. I promise it's real fish."

We ordered veggie burgers and salads.

Abe Lincoln loves going to the food court

2009-02-17T03:57:00.005-05:00

Circa March 2003, here is an Abraham Lincoln impersonator I saw walking through a mall food court in Boston like it was no big deal. The picture is small and blurry because I was going on stalker mode, but I totally saw him.

Three days before this, I worked a the "Lincoln Days" dinner at my catering job for the Republicans of Tompkins County. I walked back into the servery, and Abe was sitting at my boss's desk eating dinner before going out to give the Gettysburg Address.

(I've got some more recent photos the world needs to see, but I'm having technical difficulties...mainly that I need to find batteries for my camera and figure out how to upload pics from my phone. I haven't tried that hard to solve either problem. Yet.)

Cat Fancy

2009-02-17T03:26:00.005-05:00

In the sixth grade, the girl sitting next to me spent a bit of free time in class pouring over an issue of Catmopolitan, Cat Fancy, or one of those other magazines filled with pictures of kitties that are a step above dressing the cats up as people. Out of curiosity and confusion, I glanced over her shoulder.

With her eyes still focused on the magazine, she said, "My cat's in here."
"Really?" I said. "That's pretty cool."
"Well," she said, "I just pretend. But she should be because she's a princess."

I said nothing. This continued to be my tactic with this girl through the rest of middle school and high school.

I found a llama

2009-02-12T15:38:00.001-05:00

Things I despise more than I should...

2009-02-12T01:51:00.004-05:00

Chapter 34: VARIATIONS ON REGULAR COOKIE RECIPES THAT JUST ARE JUST COOKIE CUTTERS

In most cookbooks, there are recipes for shaped cookies like krumcakes or madelines that require special pans for their trademark shape. But within the same section are recipes for cookies like "Peanut butter dinosaurs" or "Alphabet cookies" and other things to snack on while doing paint by numbers. Guess what? Peanut butter dinosaurs are just peanut butter cookies cut out with a T. Rex cutter! You know the ingredients needed for alphabet cookies? Sugar cookie dough and alphabet cookie cutters.

I freaking love shaped cookies (see "Really important decision making"), but the word "cookie cutter" is a euphemism for "painfully boring and standard." Even if you're not that artistic or creative, you should have enough of a grasp on the world to think, "Oh hey! my kid likes butterflies and chocolate cookies! Maybe I should combine the two!" or "It's Christmas, so trees would be appropriate and festive " or "I'm gonna make bird and hammer shaped chocolate chip cookies just 'cause it'll be awesome." This year, slipped some Christmas bunnies into the standard holiday shapes, what 'cha gonna about it, Better Homes and Gardens?

Things I am missing

2009-02-12T01:02:00.003-05:00

Since moving into my current apartment last May, the following items have completely vanished:
*my gold heels
*my gray heels
*my brown leather jacket
*most of our small spoons, we're down to three.

"When you are engulfed in flames"

2009-02-10T02:34:00.007-05:00

I finally finished the newest David Sedaris book, When You are Engulfed in Flames. His twisted sense of humor and snarky asides are what originally got me hooked on his writing. But what makes it "kick ass" vs. "just funny" is his ability to meander while talking about a subject and ending with a single sentence that somehow ties every tangent into the main point in a natural way.

My single favorite sentence from the book will most likely stick out in this passage from his Japanese class while he and his bf were staying in Tokyo:

"In New York or Paris, these machines would be trashed," I told him.
The Indonesian raised his eyebrows.
"He means destroyed," Christophe said. "Persons would break the glass and cover
everything with graffiti."
The Indonesian student asked why, and we were hard put to explain.
"It's something to do?" I offered.
"But you can read a newspaper," the Indonesian said.
"Yes," I explained, "but that wouldn't satisfy your basic need to tear something apart."

(quote is on page 281 of the book)

Alex Trebek doesn't care anymore

2009-02-09T23:06:00.003-05:00

Tonight, there was a "Jeopardy" category called "Rhymes with Dora the Explorer." The questions were things like: "If Dora makes rough breathing noises while taking a nap, she might just be this new character" and the answer was "Dora the Snorer."

You look like Scrabby Doo

2009-02-09T01:56:00.005-05:00

My stand-in Scooby seemed indifferent to my mystery solving skills.

Zoos

2009-02-05T14:55:00.012-05:00

The Bronx Zoo

Posing for a cereal bag.

Nature walk through The Bronx.

I can keep them away with a two foot fence.

Broken rules.

A little girl asked me about taking the tram. I told her she had to get tickets someplace. Then I realized that she must've thought I worked at the zoo because of my brown dress. But I thought the "Bug Carousel" was going to be the insect zoo, and not a carousel with insects instead of horses. I was still excited.

The zebras had no animal shaped cookies. Nor did any other place in the zoo.

Tigers actively hunt humans.

In the butterfly garden, I told some little kids what Eric Carle had been lying to them about: butterflies come out of a chrysalis and moths come out of cocoons.

I got inducted into the pollination hall of fame, no big deal.

The National Zoo

I went to the National Zoo in DC on one of the hottest days of the year. I didn't even want to be outside, so I didn't blame the animals for hiding.

Lion impression

So that's a panda. It looked animatronic.

Real animals=too hot to see. Statue animals = too hot to touch.

Panda pose.

Abstinence Only and Chaperoned Dates, part 3

2009-02-05T05:12:00.003-05:00

Last night, the fine people of TLC brought their normal Tuesday night line up of two (!!) episodes of 17 Kids and Counting and Toddlers and Tiaras...that's two full hours of watching life decisions I'd never make for myself or anyone else! The Learning Channel, indeed.

Toddlers and Tiaras, "Miss Georgia Spirit"

Little Marleigh is two years old, and her mother Amy said she called her a pageant girl right after she was born. "She just loves it," Amy assures us, as Marleigh kicks and screams and refuses to stand while Amy tries to get her to stand on Xs in the backyard to practice. Amy said she'd keep entering Marleigh in pageants until Marleigh said she didn't want to do it anymore.

Six year old Kayleigh was my favorite. Her mom, Natalie, refused to put make up on her. Kayleigh had no coach, no hair dresser, no custom made clothes. She just walked onto the stage on competition day with an attitude like she she was going to the zoo. She actually looked like a kid playing dress up, versus a kid trying to be a creepy, stylized version of an adult. When Kayleigh had on her shiny blue dress for the evening wear competition, she said the crinoline was uncomfortable. She refused to smile again until her mom helped her take off the stiff petticoat. Guess who won in her division...

Meanwhile, on competition day, Marleigh squirmed and tried to run away every time Amy changed her clothes or brought her out on stage. After the casual wear portion, Amy tried to put lip gloss on Marleigh, and Marleigh screamed and smacked Amy in the face. If those tiny fists of fury don't translate to "I don't want to be in pageants anymore," then nothing short of a heroin addiction is going to get through to Amy.

Abstinence Only and Chaperoned Dates, part 2

2009-02-05T04:38:00.003-05:00

Last night, the fine people of TLC brought their normal Tuesday night line up of two (!!) episodes of 17 Kids and Counting and Toddlers and Tiaras...that's two full hours of watching life decisions I'd never make for myself or anyone else! The Learning Channel, indeed.

17 Kids and Counting, "O Come, All ye Duggars"

It's a very Duggar Christmas in February! The Duggar family enters a local parade and and creates a living nativity scene as their float entry. Not to give away the end of the episode, but they win first place for the religious category. But how can you beat a float that had twice the number of characters as any fake nativity scene, plus a monkey, a donkey and several camels.

While Michelle took a van load of offspring to sign up for the parade, little Johannah sprinted down the driveway after the van, screaming that she wanted to go. I know you do, Johannah. I know you're going to run away by age twelve because you're already over this at age three, like when you screamed inappropriately in Central Park, hoping that someone would hear you and take you to a family where your father doesn't go through two cans of Aqua Net a month and where you won't meet your future spouse at a home schooling conference.

The oldest Duggar child, Josh, and his new wife Anna played Mary and Joseph on the float. As they curled up next to the donkey, holding the plastic baby Jesus during the parade, Josh gave Anna a kiss. Anna had the same look of "What have I done" on her face as she did on their wedding day, when they shared their first kiss at the alter. It's the look of a woman who went from holding hands to losing the V-card in the span of a night, and still has no idea how to process the feelings, sensations or thoughts about the physical aspects of her marriage.

Abstinence Only and Chaperoned Dates, part 1

2009-02-05T04:21:00.003-05:00

Last night, the fine people of TLC brought their normal Tuesday night line up of two (!!) episodes of 17 kids and counting and toddlers and tiaras...that's two full hours of watching life decisions I'd never make for myself or anyone else! The Learning Channel, indeed.

17 Kids and Counting, "A Duggar in the Rough"

The Duggars loaded up the bus and traveled to Murfreesboro, Arkansas to the aptly named Crater of Diamonds State Park to...dig for diamonds in a crater. All eight girls were properly dressed to walk through the muddy crater, meaning they were decked out in their ankle-length skirts. Joy Anna frowned when she saw all of the mud, telling the camera crew that playing in the mud was "more of a boy thing." I'm so sorry JoyAnna, that you were expecting a big pile of diamonds like it was star sprinkle mountian, not that you've seen Rainbow Brite because your parents limit your access to TV. Finding diamonds requires sifting and digging, and it beats being lowered into a tiny cave like Penny had to do in The Rescuers, not that you've seen that either.

Instead of blaming JoyAnna for her automatic disgust of getting dirty, I'll blame the science lessons she gets during home school from Michelle. In the episode "Trading Places, Duggar Style*," Michelle talks about the family's gender stratificaion in the division of labor, and how the biological differences between boys and girls which dictates what kind of chores and activities a person enjoys doing. This means that girls love to clean bathrooms, while boys are better suited for working on cars. So you're right JoyAnna, you're a girl, you have the "harp playing" gene instead of the "searching for buried treasure" gene.

Jim Bob and Michelle talked about what a great educational opportunity learning about how diamonds are made was for their children, until the park rangers told them that the Crater of Diamonds was several million years old. Jim Bob and Michelle both laughed and told the cameras that sometimes they encounter information that goes against their beliefs, like the one about the world being seven thousand years old. After all, the bible is a far more accurate system of measurement than the fossil record or carbon dating.

*Duggar-style is also the term for when a man has to please himself manually during intercourse because the woman's vagina is so stretched from popping out children.

Future golden girls

2009-01-28T05:59:00.004-05:00

Sixty to seventy years from now, an assisted living community will rue the day they had openings for the four of us and the rest of our posse.

Really important decision making

2009-01-28T04:01:00.005-05:00

For years, chocolate has been my favorite flavor of Teddy Grahams. But I've officially switched my preference to either chocolate chip or honey. Cinnamon remains the only Teddy Graham flavor I dislike.

Ok, that's a lie. I won't eat mixed berry or banana Teddys, but I also refuse to acknowledge their existences. Actual bananas are tasty, but banana flavored anything tastes like the erythromycin I had to choke down whenever I got bronchitis as a kid (which was frequently). Honey Maid had these great cinnamon bees for a while, but now they only come in banana...and I declare banana-flavored graham crackers the worst new food trend of 2009 so far.

Quotes on post-its

2009-01-27T03:45:00.004-05:00

Quotes I've written on post-its to stick on the wall in front of my desk, so I have some inspiring words when I take a break to stare into oblivion:

"Goonies Never Die." --the goonies

"You are not a robot. You are a real person." --friendly reminder to myself

"Up off your knees now and shatter the average." --Buck 65

"I'm better than you." --self riteous club promotion postcard

"Indifference is never creative." --Elie Wiesel

"Maybe we aren't really supposed to know what we're supposed to do yet. Learning stuff is good enough for now, despite personal conflict." --Marcie

"I believe in whisky, and very little else." --Sam

"Poets have been mysteriously quiet on the subject of cheese." --G.K. Chesterson

"Grey's Anatomy is about people who can't get their shit together. You hate that. So do I." --K10

"You have to drive to Eugene to see if you can get Tool tickets, ya know?" --Bailey

"What I'm going to do is I can do whatever I want because I am special." --One of the two coolest five year olds I know.

Also, there is a black and white picture of a duckling and another one of a wolf. The stuffed frog holds down the fort.

My cliche refrigerator

2009-01-27T03:18:00.005-05:00

Before I left for work, my fridge was looking sad and neglected. When I got home from work with some groceries, 3/4 of a cake had appeared.

The cake complimented the tubbed frosting, leftover take out, and condiments well, but when did my fridge turn into a Cathy comic?

Celphlapods rock my world

2009-01-23T20:48:00.005-05:00

The Soho Bloomingdale's cosmetics counter is hard to miss--it's gleaming white and positioned right in front of the store. It especially pops on a street full of stores with stripper style mannequins, Forever-HM-qlos, and discount shoe stores. I was distracted by shininess while walking past it today, and noticed a gigantic, blue octopus statue, covering the majority of the ceiling. Its tentacles flowing down and grabbing onto a mannequin, and draping its, suction cup-covered arm over the window mannequin's shoulder. I paused on the sidewalk to stare briefly. As I stared from the sidewalk, I decided that if I was going to start wearing make-up, I'd totally buy it from Bloomingdale's just to stare up at the sea monster.

Things that can never be listed on a resume

2009-01-21T04:03:00.005-05:00

Here is a short list of completely useless skills I have mastered:
*Bruising easily
*Sleeping through alarms
*In a double door situation, I always pick the one that's locked
*Buying lotion bottles and breaking the pump two days later
*When guessing directions, always picking the opposite of where I'm going
*Spilling glasses of water
*Breaking spatulas (they're the thing I'm best at breaking)

Remember that time it was the 1990s again?

2009-01-20T17:29:00.005-05:00

I felt old. It was perfectly aware of how stupid it was to feel old, but I couldn’t help it. I was watching “the Real World” at the gym. While I was mesmerized by the amount of hair gel and lack of clothes on the Hollywood cast, I realized that at the young age of twenty-four, I was out of the casting demographic for it and all other MTV reality shows. (Given the maturity level of roommates on recent seasons, I think I was mentally too old for them at age nineteen).

Normally, I subscribe to the Frank Zappa philosophy of aging, which is essentially “Wowie, zowie you’re a whole year older,” but I was also going to a 90s-themed party that night. Ironic party themes had finally reached a decade I was alive for the entirety of. Sure, I remember parts of the 80s, but I was six when they were over. I remember swiping my dad’s Whitesnake and Bon Jovi tapes, and him telling him me I wasn’t allowed to sing with “Once Bitten Twice Shy” or probably any song by Great White. I remember all of the 90s, grunge, flannel, Bob Packwood, Tonya versus Nancy, line dancing, Offspring, OJ trial, Weezer, etc…I listened to Local H and Rage Against the Machine while I ran, attempting to channel inspiration for my costume. I had knee high Doc Martens. I thought about wearing those and adding um to every pause like they did on “My So-Called Life.” I thought about pretending like I was myself at a middle school dance, which would mean being a stubborn little snot refusing to dance to the music because it wasn’t alt or classic rock...

Instead, my roommate called while I was leaving the gym with the suggestion of dressing up as the Spice Girls with three of our friends. I definitely remembered the Spice Girls, and hating them. I remember being in the eighth grade and wondering what unplanned pregnancies had to do with “Girl Power.” But I agreed with the plan. I had no flannel, no poet blouses, or slip dresses, but I had hair I could pull back in pigtails to be “Baby Spice.”

Posh, Ginger, Scary, Sporty and I tried to encapsulate the 90s as best we could, along with Kurt Cobain, who just threw on a flannel and looked a bit emaciated from the night before. The problem with decking ourselves in tube tops, leopard print, booty shorts, cut-off fur jackets and platforms is that we just looked like we were trying to be hookers. The party had “Full House” and “The Secret World of Alex Mac” books and slap bracelets scattered about while we danced with members of Kris-Kross, Aladdin himself and Blossom in a sea of vests and neon windbreakers. This time when I lived in the 90s, I didn’t deny that I knew every word of “Another Night” by The Real McCoy when it played. The Spice Girls and I stayed in character by dancing harder and singing louder than the rest of the forgotten icons. I'm no longer the stubborn little snot who denies the occasional need to rage it to terrible pop music.

Showers are way safer

2009-01-19T21:03:00.005-05:00

I was taking a shower at my friend Lisa’s house in her 100 year old cast iron bathtub with feet. There was a small hose with a shower head, but it wasn’t very long so I sat most of the time. When I did stand up, one of the feet popped off, causing the tub to sit lopsided on the drain, spilling water everywhere, making the water collect without being able to drain, and I was still covered with soap and conditioner. I did my best to rinse in the crooked tub, and then threw on a towel. I walked into the kitchen, dripping the entire way, and said, “Liiiiisa….I broke your bathtub.”
“What?”
“I broke your bathtub. I stood up and the foot just popped off….are your parents going to be mad?”
“No,” she said while laughing, “but my dad may get you a can of slim fast.”

Textile projects in McDonaldLand

2009-01-15T02:28:00.004-05:00

I skinned Grimace. Thanks to the magic of staples and sewing machines, I turned the skin into a awesome couch cover back in November/December.

I was really excited when my roommate and I both agreed on purple; I've always wanted a purple couch. My goose and I are pleased.

The bird on fourteenth street

2009-01-15T02:24:00.006-05:00

Today, I was walking to back to Union Square after buying some cheap plastic necklaces at a party store. There was a middle-aged guy standing on the street, flipping off the other pedestrians. But not just standing there with his middle finger out; he kept pulling his hand down, and readjusting his middle finger to point at each time someone passed him. I found the personal touch a little bit heart-warming, but still avoided eye contact with the guy.

Food for Purchase

2009-01-13T23:30:00.003-05:00

I flew Delta when I went home for Christmas. In an effort to make their "Food for Purchase Program" seem exciting and different, the menu items all had flowery descriptions. I can understand long summaries for foods like salads and fancy breakfast sandwiches, hell even the hummus and veggies. But do you really need the following to understand a bagel:

"Bagel: prepared in the old world method, this bagel is simple and satisfying. Served with cream cheese and strawberry jam."

I learned on the flight back to New York that "the old world method" means "slightly chilled, uncut, and in a plastic bag."

Cheap thrills that make me love this city

2009-01-13T18:58:00.009-05:00

New York City is a money sucker. Two dollar ATM fees at places that don't take cards. Five dollar boxes of graham crackers. Six dollar well drinks--I could get the same taste and effect for cheaper with a bottle of Windex. I occasionally get resentful that groceries and the subway cost money, usually the week when rent's due. I hear people on the real estate porn channel say they pay $1,200 a month for a mortgage on an actual house, and get a little bit jealous. Then I remember the homes featured are usually in the boonies of Montana, Wyoming, and other states where there are less free concerts in parks.

And despite the high cost of living, there are still so many things that make me want to yell "I love New York" at the top of my lungs, like I'm on some cliche poster of a cityscape set in Times Square. Drop-off laundry service is number one on my list of loves. I set my overflowing bag on the scale, and it's in a neat little, huggable cube when I pick it up the next day.

They even match socks and put underpants in stacks...I would never do that on my own.

"What a lazy sod," you might say to yourself. "Wouldn't having peopled do your laundry be more expensive than washing your own damn clothes?" It's not! Drop-off service is the same price! Laundry has always been my least favorite household chore, and it's worth every penny spent to avoid waiting for towels to dry while sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair while watching E! News.

If I knew you were comin'...

2009-01-12T17:32:00.003-05:00

I'da fed a plastic kitten to a plastic T. Rex when the kitten tried to eat your cupcakes.

Why I don't eat Lucky Charms anymore

2009-01-08T16:41:00.006-05:00

Flip flops provide little protection against blades meant for chopping wood. I was camping at the beach with my family, and rolled out of the tent with the mission of foraging for food in the trailer. My family's trailer wasn't so much a trailer as it was the back of an old pick-up with boards on the sides and a trailer hitch, but it hauled supplies that wouldn't fit into the Jeep just fine. I reached over the side in my half-awake daze to feel for the box of Lucky Charms. I didn't see my dad had left the ax propped up against the wheel, uncovered, blade side out, and the side of my toe grazed against, cutting out a sizeable slice. My mom bandaged up my toe while I stared into my paper bowl of marshmallowy bits.

Gaff tape holds the world together

2009-01-05T02:31:00.003-05:00

The battle between gaffers tape and 60mph wind gusts is currently 1 to 1.

I liked the governor who bought hookers

2008-12-19T02:23:00.008-05:00

New York State governor David Paterson has proposed an "obesity tax." He says:

I completely agree that public health programs should promote nutrition and healthy eating as way of avoiding long-term health issues. However, avoiding heavily processed and artificial foods in my own health-related decision. Diet sodas are full of chemicals like phosphoric acid and artificial sugars. Sure, they have fewer calories, but I fail to see how drinking a beverage sweetened with sweetened lab chemicals is a better choice than a natural soda flavored with cane sugar or a no sugar added juice. I should not be monetarily punished for not drinking diet.