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Some things that have recently been brought to my attention.

Friday, March 8th, 2013

1. I am tired. While I was typing the title above, I wrote, “Some things that have breen to my attention.” Then I looked at it and thought, “That’s not right.” And it took me far too long to figure out what was incorrect. I need a nap.

2. Nowadays when people say something was decimated, they mean totally destroyed. Poof, gone. I just learned, though, that decimated actually means “reduced by a tenth” (deci = ten). That’s not totally destroyed at all. You got a thousand guys attacking a village and one hundred of them die, you still have nine hundred guys! How did this word evolve to this meaning?

3. I was watching The Jeselnik Offensive the other night on Comedy Central, and I think Anthony Jeselnik is a reptile. He says a joke, and then he slooooowwwwwly licks his lips and slooooowwwwwly blinks his eyes like a komodo dragon. I feel like one day I will turn on that show one day and he will be calmly and quietly consuming an entire waterbuck.

4. Speaking of antelopes and antelope-like creatures, did you know there’s a deer with fangs? Imagine a docile, pleasant deer. Now imagine it with those plastic vampire teeth you could wear at Halloween that never fit. That’s a pretty good description. Here, see for yourself:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdxozpT8T61rlhtaxo1_400.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/3e077b70d57151fb2deef602b1fc46fb/tumblr_mh1ydeKaDx1rmgx38o1_500.jpg

5. I saw The Patriot for the first time recently (Alternate title: Braveheart in the U.S.) and it was good and all that, but every time Jason Isaacs and Mel Gibson had a scene together, this is all I heard:

6. I finished all the frost around the edges of all my leaves! Yay and hooray! The tapestry now looks like this:

Now I will attempt to put extra points of frost extending out from some of the leaves to create the appearance of… more frostiness, I guess that’s what I’d call it. Extreme frostitude. Then Snorth will teach me how to finish the edges and I will have completed a project that has been a bother for well over a decade! So exciting.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., My Art/Design/Business, Nature, Stuff, The Telly | No Comments »

The Oscars.

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Normally when award shows roll around, I ignore them and continue my usual watching of whatever crap the glass teat horks at me. (Perhaps a show where people go to a swap meet to exchange taxidermied medical anomalies, like calfs with two heads? Sign me up!) However, this past award season I seemed to get caught up in the excitement of it all and I watched three, count ‘em, three let’s-congratulate-ourselves shows from beginning to end – The Golden Globes, The Grammys and The Oscars. The outfits were exactly the same as they are every year, the ladies all posed in the same position with the same half-smile on their face like Mona Lisas who have only been consuming juice and tapeworms for a month, same same same. However, throughout the cloud of who won what and who wore what I saw an article that said, “Nail art is officially dead” and I think I yelled, “The hell it is!” All the nice ladies at the Oscars wore either naked nails or a tasteful pale pink and that’s fine and all, but I loved the new surge of weird creative designs that people had been putting on their fingers and I don’t want to see it go, I don’t! Alas, the party nail, we hardly knew ye. In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, here are some examples. I made them the exact size of the blog entry so you don’t have to click on them, you can just scroll down slowly. Maybe put Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye” in the background while you do. It completes the experience.

Frankly, I blame Japan. Don’t get mad, I have a reason, I didn’t pick them at random. They took the idea of nail art and went to place that is not okay, not even if you don’t do much with your hands during the day. Their nail stuff made Gail Devers look reasonable, and that woman’s nails were unreasonable.

Again, I made these all blog-sized so you don’t have to click on them, you can just scroll down. If you would like music in the background for this, might I recommend a ten-hour loop of Nyan Cat?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZ7oFKsKzY

Yeah. Never mind the usual question long-nailed-folk get, “How do you wipe your butt?”, my question is, “How do you do anything? Like, at all?” You ruined simple tasteful nail art for everyone. I hope you’re happy, Japan.

In Oscar news not in any way related to nail art, this happened: Okay, I was not really familiar with Dame Shirley Bassey’s performance style. I mean, I could recognize her extremely distinctive voice anywhere, but I had never seen her sing live previous to the Oscars. I didn’t even know what she looked like. They did a “50 Years of James Bond” thing at the Oscars, and then Shirley came out and scared the crap out of me.

http://oscar.go.com/video/PL55266051/_m_VD55278494

“GOLDFINGUH!!!!!”

The other day I looked into her history a bit, and that’s not even the scariest she could get. Are you aware of The Beatles song “Something”? It’s a nice, placid, gentle sort of song. Then Shirley got a hold of it, and now I’m afraid again. That woman is terrifying. Super-talented, but terrifying.

http://youtu.be/AvWTYnc9vf0

I feel like she would hurl a dish at me if I said something that angered her. Yikes.

And that’s my wrap-up on The Oscars.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, The Telly | No Comments »

Television.

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

30 Rock is gone. It’s gone. I am so sad. I must now go on the hunt for new and exciting television items. Monday Mornings looks like it’s going to fill my House-abyss. Remember when House was good, like, the first three seasons? Everyone always tells me to watch The Big Bang Theory, but I can’t for a very specific reason. It has a laugh track. There’s nothing wrong with laugh tracks really. They make some people angry because they (the viewer) feel condescended to (“I know where to laugh, I don’t need a signal!”). My problem is different. This is going to sound like a humble-brag, but it’s not. I absorb information aurally very quickly. That’s great and all, but it means I cannot enjoy many things that I think I would. I can’t listen to audiobooks on tape because they talk too slow and I struggle to stay focused. I don’t like NPR for the same reason. I’ve actually looked into buying some kind of software that plays audiobooks at double-speed on my iPod so I can listen to them. Now comedy, I think, is so much about timing, and the half-a-second spent on inserting laughter into a show kills the flow for me. It can be so much snappier without it! Gilmore Girls is a good example of something written at the pace I like bestest and its speed has been commented on numerous times, but it makes complete sense to me. If anyone has any suggestions of brisk, well-written comedies, please let me know, won’t you? Thanks ever so much.

P.S. I hear good things about The New Girl. I will try to overcome my dislike of the twee-ness of Zooey D. and watch it.

Addendum to the P.S. to the whatever: The West Wing is streaming on Netflix (finally) and I started watching it. Golly gosh, that show is good. I don’t give two hoots about politics, but I am engrossed. Engrossed, I tell you! The characters, they are so well-developed. I am super-psyched.

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Things that chap my hide because I am an old grump now. Basically Liz Lemon.

Monday, February 11th, 2013

1. When people say “an historic moment”. I had to hear this over and over again when Obama got elected the first time ’round. Stop it. Stop it right now. You use “a” in front of words that have a consonant sound, and “an” in front of words that have a vowel sound only. OWN. LEE. It doesn’t mean it automatically goes in front of a vowel, just a vowel sound. For example, “eulogy”. Starts with a vowel, but since it has a “yoo” beginning, you say “a eulogy”. What the hell is with the “an” in front of “historic”? HHHHHHHHHHistoric. Unless everybody has a cockney accent and is saying “an ‘istoric moment”, it should be A HISTORIC. YOU HEAR ME, NEWSCASTERS??? “A historic moment.”.

2. When people say, “We are pregnant.” “We” are not pregnant. “We” are expecting a child. “We” have created a new person together. “We” are not pregnant. Only the lady is pregnant. You, my main man, are not pregnant. You are not sharing in the carrying of the baby. You might be doing everything else around the nice lady, like cooking and cleaning and helping her roll over in the middle of the night and rubbing her feet, and I commend you for that, but still, you are not pregnant. Stop saying that.

3. When Jackson Galaxy refers to people as cat guardians, not cat owners. I love Jackson Galaxy and I truly think he is doing work for good, but if I had a cat, I would be its owner. It would be my property. It wouldn’t even be my slave, because slaves actually do stuff like pull carts and build pyramids. Cats just treat you with disdain and poop in a box (which I, the owner, would need to clean). I would not be keeping this precious feline safe until the Gods contact it so it can save the world (guardian), I would just be someone who has a cat (owner). Don’t get me wrong, I would love this cat so hard its forehead would be bald from excessive petting. But I would still be its owner.

Posted in Stuff, The Telly | No Comments »

Superb Owl 2013.

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

Hey, did everyone enjoy that Superb Owl? I was riveted for, oh, I would say three-quarters of that game, which for me is unheard of. I care not for the American version of rugby. I amused the hell out of my co-workers today when I attempted to describe the game to my parents who are in Israel and therefore were not privy to the goings-on of the NFL. It sounded like this:

Well, it was the Baltimore Ravens, so called because Poe and Baltimore and all that, and the San Francisco 49ers… who are called that for reasons I don’t know. I was rooting for the Ravens because I adore giant crows. Remember those times at the Tower of London when I had a long conversation with those big ole birds? Yeah, so I was rooting for them because you gotta root for somebody. I got to Nya’s house at about five because I wanted to stake out a killer spot on the couch so I could work on my embroidery during the boring bits*. Nessa met me there and our butts became fused to the sofa. I don’t think we got up for two hours, and then we got up in turns so as not to lose our dope couch positions. Anyway, I had an embarrassing moment at the very beginning when the Newtown Chorus and Jennifer Hudson sang “America the Beautiful” and I yelled out, “Hey, I thought Alicia Keyes was gonna sing out national anthem!” Nessa had to point out to me that, ummm, “America the Beautiful” is not our national anthem, never has been. My excuse was someone was singing a sweeping patriotic song and I just defaulted. Not a proud moment in my life. Then Alicia Keyes sang the real national anthem which I decided to honor by getting wings because gosh darnit, I like Alicia Keyes as a person but I do not care for her yell-y singing style. She also sang it as slow as physically possible. Glaciers moved three inches while she belted it out.

Then there was some coin-tossing and some running and hitting and I vaguely paid attention while Ravens annihilated the 49ers. The score was like 26 to 7 or something. I was actually really impressed with the quarterback for the 49ers. He has a name similar to that NSync member, Chris Kirkpatrick, something like that. Anyway, he’s really tall, like 6′ 5″ and he’s slim which is unusual for a quarterback. He was running like crazy, throwing the ball, doing all kinds of stuff. CBS did a whole little special on him, turns out he’s adopted. He had a 4.0 GPA. He’s devoted to his religion. But wait, it gets better. I found out he was also on the Cubs (baseball) and I think he also played basketball really well. HOW super-bummed are his birthparents for giving him up? I mean he’s a magical sporty forest creature beamed down from Mount Olympus, for crying out loud! And he seems very sweet as a person.

So after the first half ended (score a billion to two in favor of Baltimore) Beyonce came out! And sang! And danced! And looked amazing! I must say I am totally content to live in the United States of Beyonce, as it has become since the Inauguration / Super Bowl. I am happy to be a serf in her fiefdom. She performed approximately 3.14 lines of each of her big hits, she wore a black lace doily on her butt, it was wonderful. Then the second half started aaaaaand the lights went out in the stadium. Like, out out. It was dark. Since the game was happening in N’Awlins, Nessa took this opportunity to play the unfortunate clip of Wolf Blitzer saying poorly chosen words. The athletes seemed pretty chill about the whole lights-out thing, they just did stretches and jumpy exercises to keep their limbs… limber. It took fifteen minutes for the lights to get bright enough again, so CBS had a few thousand commercial breaks. Did I mention there was a Doritos commercial with a screaming goat? And a cars.com commercial with a bebbeh wolf? Combine that with the Clydedales in the Budweiser ads and it was a good year for me. The lights came back on, and then the craziest thing happened. A player, from the Ravens I think, got the ball in one endzone and RAN ALL THE WAY TO THE OTHER ENDZONE. No one tripped him, no one thought to trip him, it was very odd. Then the 49ers woke up and came to and got a bunch of touchdowns and the game got pretty close near the end. Finally it ended and the Ravens won and one of the players made a snow angel in the confetti on the field. I got three-quarters of a leaf embroidered and ate a pile of seven-layer dip, so I was happy. It was a good game all around.

*Photographic proof.

Posted in Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz, The Telly | No Comments »

Unrelated things.

Monday, January 28th, 2013

1. I went to a cowboy-related bachelorette party. All the other ladies tried really hard to remain lovely and feminine. I did nothing of the sort and put on a Tom Selleck mustache without haste. I think me and my hot-pink leggings look dope.

2. I finished frost-embroidering five of my leaves. That’s all the silver stitchery around the edges of each leaf. My journey to finish this tapestry in the next 300-odd days is well underway. Five more leaves to go and then I do extended frosty pointy thingies. I know that doesn’t really make sense, but when I do it I will take pictures and perhaps that will be clearer.

3. I was riding the ole Metro-North the other day and I saw a poster for The Americans. Now, it’s not just me on this – look at Keri Russell’s neck. It’s, like, crazy-long, right? Is she a member of that tribe in Burma that puts the rings around their neck and compresses their collarbones? It seems like a weird choice. Good poster design otherwise.

Addendum: I did a little photographic research, and my girl Keri does indeed have a long neck, but she is not an ostrich. Definitely some Photoshop in play.

Posted in Advertising, My Art/Design/Business, Stuff, The Telly | No Comments »

Important stuff.

Sunday, January 13th, 2013

1. Rocks bouncing on a frozen pond sound like a laser gun. That’s cool.

http://twentytwowords.com/2013/01/01/rocks-bouncing-on-a-frozen-pond-sound-like-a-laser-gun/

2. Ask a Mortician. This very nice lady teaches you about the oft-taboo world of death (which is odd to me, since it’s one of the only things we all have in common). Watch the Hawaiian episode first. Super-interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/user/OrderoftheGoodDeath

3. I was watching the season premiere of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo the other night which had a Halloween theme. At one point, the family traveled to a farm to pick out a pumpkin and there is a corn maze. Alana asked what a corn maze was and Mama June said, “A corn maze is um where they grow corn to make it like … like a corn maze.”

Okay, two things. First of all, this is GOLDEN opportunity for a pun. Did no one think of a Corn Maize, or a Maize Maze??? It’s so easy! Number two, I started yelling at my television, “No! That is a crap description! A corn maze is like a labyrinth, or a series of walls creating corridors and dead ends where, through a series of turns, one can navigate out the other side! Didn’t any of you study the story of the Minotaur?! Probably not, because none of y’all are worthy of sacrifice ’cause none of y’all are virgins. Boom! Greek mythology burn!!” What we have learned from this situation is that puns are being wantonly abandoned where they should clearly be, and I remember more from my sixth grade mythology class than I thought I did. See? Honey Boo Boo can teach you the most important things – things about yourself.

4. I buy craft supplies all the time. Really, all the time. I saw this today on Facebook and I’m a little bummed this has never happened to me.

Posted in Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Teh Intarwebz, The Telly | No Comments »

Wow. Just, wow.

Monday, January 7th, 2013

While everyone with an ounce of taste and culture was watching the Season 3 premiere of Downton Abbey, I spent the day watching a Honey Boo Boo marathon and don’t you judge me. I’m just starting Season 2 of Downton and I didn’t want to jump ahead so shushit. After the season premiere of Honey Boo Boo there was a one-hour special called “Best Funeral Ever”, about the Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas, Texas. Apparently, a portion of the Southern African-American population observe something different than a funeral, something called a “homegoing”, because the deceased is going home to Heaven. And an even smaller portion of that group takes their homegoings to a new and special place, a place I have never been before, frankly, an insane place. I’m all for celebrating the life of the dearly departed, but this was crazypants. Please understand everything I say after this point is what I saw. I am not making any of this up.

The show followed around various Golden Gate employees. One of them was an out-and-proud homosexual named Trendnard who wore gloves that only covered his fingertips. He was forced to work with a lady named Eplunus on a Christmas-themed funeral where there was a nativity scene and farm animals. The coffin was brought in on a sleigh pulled by pallbearers wearing reindeer antlers. The ushers were dressed as elves. One of the attendees was a giant gingerbread man. It started snowing in the middle. But that wasn’t the most epic event. The mind-blower was the homegoing of the guy who wrote the Chili’s baby-back ribs jingle. His homegoing’s theme was a barbeque. There was a BBQ sauce fountain. All the funeral employees wore tall chef hats. The coffin was shaped like a smoker. The family was encouraged to get up individually and dip a rib in sauce in memory of their loved one. Then, THEN, a troupe of dancers dressed in white came in singing “Go Tell It On The Mountain” while carrying enormous Styrofoam racks of ribs on plates. It took four of them to hold one plate, that’s how big the ribs were. They would tip over the Flintstone car, they were huge. The least crazy was the guy who had spina bifida and therefore couldn’t go on any amusement park rides, so they brought his urn of ashes to the state fair and took him on all the rides. Big golden urn on rollercoasters. That was the least wacky. And I’m just going to say two words: professional mourners.

This show is supposed to be a one-off, but if it becomes popular enough they may make it into a series. And while I’m appalled by some of the aspects of this show, if the people who are in grief get solace from this, I wish them only the best. They are not hurting anyone. I imagine TLC will play it a bunch more times, so tell your DVR to tape it. Amazing.

I found a snippet of video on the BBQ homegoing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/best-funeral-ever-singer-bbq-theme-video_n_2422725.html

Posted in Stuff, The Telly | No Comments »

Fun bits.

Friday, November 9th, 2012

1. Alcoholic spirits are called that because when they distill them, the alcohol (“spirit”) is separated from the fermented base (“body”). When you drink liquor, you are drinking the ghost of potatoes or wheat or corn. Incidentally, “Potato Ghost” would be a cool name for a vodka. Thank you, Modern Marvels.

2. I went to go vote in my district for the first time even though I have lived in White Plains for six years. The last time I voted in my old district. I found out I needed to go to a church down the street from from my apartment. Lovely church. Built in 1923. Everything was going great until I saw their sign.

Does everyone see that?

What’s… what’s with the itty-bitty “h”?! There’s a full-size “h” four letters before! I’m really glad I don’t see that every day because that would really chap my rump. Stupid tiny “h”.

3. It’s really great that I am not a thin fashionable woman because I would spend all my monies on clothes. For example, these sequined pants. Sequins in cool stripes on a nude background. They are SHNAZZY. If I wore them I would feel like I had the backdrop to “Solid Gold” wrapped around my legs.

Posted in Apartment, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, The Telly | 1 Comment »

I may go to hell for this…

Friday, September 21st, 2012

… but I love the Honey Boo Boo show. I do. It’s great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect by any means. I would like to see a little more book-readin’ from all the kids, and maybe not so much eating of sketti (recipe: pasta topped with equal parts ketchup and butter melted together in the microwave). But as opposed to the horrid pageant moms one sees if one watches Toddlers and Tiaras, Momma June really cares about her kids and wants them to feel loved and supported. She insists on doing things as a family even though three of her kids are teenagers and are probably not keen on doing familial activities. Alana is a really likeable kid, weird and fun, but really smart and sweet too. Yes, Momma June does look like a human thumb: