ohno!

So, uh, I realized that my frantic random posting style may be more suited to a tumblr-style deal, made-up-word and all. I don't know yet. But I started one up, just to see how it goes.. if you want, you can check it out. No pressure, no pressure.
Here's my basic reasoning. I've lately been using this as more of a random picture, thought, quote, video spot. Which is all good, but I feel like blogger layouts are more about real insightful posting, whereas tumblr is for kids with add. Then I started actually checking out the uses of a tumblr blog. You can post songs (well, upload a song a day) and videos and quotes and other pretentious things that I kinda like. I'm going to give it a shot for a while, see if it makes me happy. If not, fuck it. If so, I'll probably keep this blog kicking around for proper post purposes (and amazing alliteration, apparently). If y'all know anything about tumblr, hit me up!

...and the nerds shall rejoice

(c'mon, he's sooooo good lookin' that he doesn't even need to sneeze for me to tell him so.)
Sir Patrick Stewart!
Favorite headline so far: "Make it sir!"

Want want want

Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Helen Hunt's sweet dinosaur hair clips. This movie is also awesome for the line "Velcro. Next to the walkman and TAB, it is the coolest invention of the 20th century."

This movie's stars are billed as Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker. I think they left this amazing hat off the credits, which is an abomination.

The Noble Sprout

I've gotten a little more into brussels sprouts lately. Since Christmas, I've had them at dinner 4 times. (That's in a week.) Trying new ways of cooking them to make them go with everything... next goal = brussels sprout pasta! Maybe with bacon?
In other food-related news, I made the best vegetarian broccoli soup I've ever made yesterday. If I like you, and you love broccoli and cheese, I might hook you up. It's stellar.
I had a nice week or so in Halifax, a couple great days in Moncton, and a couple days at my mother's on the south shore. (Also: why does Moncton come up as misspelled every time I write it, and why isn't it a recognized city for me to check the weather on my ipod?) I got a lot of lovely things, and I saw even more lovely people... not nearly everyone I would have liked, but I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with some of my favorite East coasters.
Today has been all about sleeping, staying in pyjamas, and eating (...brussels sprouts). I'm going to watch Wet Hot American Summer and hope to be in bed by 10.
Resolutions are bullshit. Why do people bother?

...and I don't feel any different

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self-assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

Sorkin'd

OK, so, I go on writer kicks. Most of the time it's actual writers - Palahniuk, Salinger, FItzgerald - but now it's a new one. TV writers! Right now there's a profoundly sad scene going on in an episode of The West Wing, which made me want to distract myself with something. And since I just finished a medium level of sudoku in 2:04, I felt this was the best place to put it.
I always loved The American President, since it came out in theatres in 1995 and my dad took me to see it. (No, I didn't get a lot of it then, but I still liked it.) It's one of those "always on TV" movies that I get a little excited about, even though I have it on DVD. More than one copy. Then I heard all about how great The West Wing is, but... well, I didn't think it'd be good enough for 13 year old me to enjoy. Now? Love. Love love love. I've burned through 3 seasons in about a month. I watched Studio 60 out of curiosity, and because I think Bradley Whitford is awesome. Now I just can't get enough. I know it's a completely idealized liberal white house setting in the West Wing, but whatever. It's fucking television. Isn't that the point? Some of it's too emotional, and some of it's just ludicrous, but it's damn enjoyable. Way to go, Sorkin. Way to go. If you're into ridiculous melodramatic white house shenanigans, it will also be for you.
Oh, and Oral Roberts died. I'd say finally, but I guess that's disrespectful. Good for him for believing in something, even if it was offensive and frustrating.

Best. Present. Ever.

So, uh, this is probably the best thing anyone could buy for anyone else. Yes, my friends, this is a TAUNTAUN SLEEPING BAG. Note the sweet already-there pillow, lightsaber zipper, and [I quote] "printed guts lining." AMAZING. Between this and the Darth Vader toaster, I would be the happiest girl in the world.

Edit: Adding a couple more amazing finds. Darth Vader slippers and DV digital clock. Fucking rad. Slippers size small; they'll be a little big but I can deal with it.

Stuff.

Like most relatively normal people, my house is full of crap. I've moved countless times in the past few years and I get rid of stuff every time, but man. I still have a lot of junk.

There's the usual litany of childhood relics. Books I loved (Annabel Lee, A Little Princess) but never read anymore. Cards from my 2nd birthday. A million pictures of my dog. These are things that I'll eventually have to part with, but until it becomes absolutely necessary they're moving with me. Report cards, love letters, the usual bullshit beginning-of-the-relationship notes and scrawlings about work meetings on napkins that remind me of a specific day or memory. I'm pretty sure this is something other people do. Right?

But I realized today that while most of these little old relationship reminders are hidden in piles of papers and tucked into books as placeholders, there are a few that stand out in the open. As much as this might be a TMI moment, this came to me today when I got dressed and noticed that I still have a pair of underwear from a 3-pack of an old boyfriend I lived with. (No, I'm not saying who.) We bought them at Wal-Mart or something, he took 2 pairs and gave me the third. I don't remember why - I can actually go for about 2 months without running out of clean underwear, not like I was desperate for a new pair or anything - but it struck me as cute and kind of silly and I kept them. They make me smile and think of the little things he used to do for me. He had a knack for pissing me off (often on purpose because he thought I should lighten up) and always knew how to catch me off-guard with some stupid little gesture (like the underwear thing). It struck me that he also gave me a little troll doll (why were those things ever popular?!) carrying a flag that sits out on a shelf with my favorite lamp. Beside that is another weird Jamaican hot sauce doll (you'd have to see it to understand, even I don't really get it) from another guy I was with for a while.

Then I looked around the rest of my living room.. whoa. band posters on my walls, more lamps (also remembered that I never use any of my lamps...), random pieces of art, foreign cigarette packages, hats, toys. Things I would definitely have thrown out ages ago, were it not for the way I think about the men who made me so happy with them at the time. I'm not super cluttered; maybe because I have a bigger apartment now so I can spread this shit around, but I don't feel like I'm at that hoarder stage. So is it weird that I keep all this ex stuff? Is it weirder that I didn't notice until today? Funny, right now I just remembered that this was part of a plotline in a How I Met Your Mother episode. Are you supposed to get rid of ex stuff after a relationship's over?

FACT.

Places I could drive that are about the same distance away as Halifax:
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Chesapeake, Virginia
Dayton, Ohio

...all of which sound like way more fun. Less than the distance to Halifax:
New York City, New York
Boston
Philadelphia
Washington

...even better.

Saturday night, 6pm. Trying to decide if I should finally get dressed and do some of the 8 billion loads of laundry hanging out in my bedroom. I think it's time.

Tonight, Tonight

In case you're wondering what I've been doing with my ever-precious time, here are a few answers.

I'm in school, or at least registered in classes that I occasionally attend. I dropped one more today. Why do I suck at school?

Working more: I love it, my wallet loves it, but it's turning me into (more of) an alcoholic. I do love my work people though.

I found every episode of Law & Order online. Nerdy? Yes. Essential to my knowledge of the character development of Lennie Briscoe? Absolutely.

I've watched this about 8 times, trying to get the Russian down word-for-word to the English text. I know the first page or so of this book by heart, and I wish I could read Russian to see how it plays in Nabokov's first language. The thing about this dude is that he speaks English as a third language, and he has a vocabulary waaaaay beyond anything I can ever dream of having. (How's that for an awkward sentence? But you get my point.)


Found a tumblr blog randomly, I think from The Superficial, and I'm reading through archives. Kindacarsick, if you're interested. Hipster alert, but in a fairly un-irritating way.

I'm thinking about going to New York for Christmas instead of back out East. I figure I'm only there for a few days, I'll see a few people and stress out about the people who I don't have time/the schedule to see, and it's hella expensive... then again, Manhattan on Christmas day will probably be quiet and boring. Maybe good for wandering around and taking pretty pretty quiet(ish) New York pictures though. Any input is appreciated.

Hymn For the Newly Departed

I'll put something better here when I'm not trying to navigate a weird french keyboard, but for now here's a video of a bunch of people I am very fond of when they made a music video. I was in town for the original date of the shoot, but they had to switch the date. Balls. Anyway. Enjoy.

birthdays.

One's a day late, and one's a couple days early, but it's birthday weekend for 2 of my very best girls.


This one's been kicking around a while, and I can't get through a day without talking to her at least 4 times. Thanks for being as big a weirdo as me, and leaving me fantastic messages I always listen to at least twice. (The first time I'm usually laughing.) Here's to many, many more years of watching ridiculous movies and trying to fake our way through the classics.





You might hate this picture, but it sums up some of the best times we've had. Pushing the questions of our burgeoning alcoholism aside, we've never lived in the same city but always manage to stay in touch.I can say anything and you always manage to know exactly what I'm talking about, even when I figure it's such an obscure irritation or love of something that no one could possibly share. We're older, and you're probably wiser, than when we met, but I think the basic idea of 2 awesome girls who love good times has stayed the same.

xoxo!

on repeat

It's old, but it's so good that I don't care.

Welcome Back, Kotter!

Okay. It’s been a while. Backing up, I went to New York and had an amazing time. We walked for days, met some (ahem) interesting people, ate some great food, and saw some really fucking cool shit. (Taco Bell and late night drunken McDonalds aside, of course.) One thing I’d never done before was the NBC studio tour; it was a lot more historical than I thought it would be, but super neat. We saw Brian Williams’ set (!!! See above photo, of course) and checked out the SNL studio, took a ton of cheesy pictures, and accidentally flirted with tour guides. (Sort of accidentally.) This was also when I decided I am officially too old to be doing shots. At 22, I’m hitting that “I’m too old for this shit” Murtaugh stage. Sad? Maybe. But don’t worry; I’m not quite ready to be a responsible grownup yet. A pleasant mid-20s limbo will suit me just fine for the next few years.
Last week – wait, 2 weeks ago – I went out East. It was great to see a bunch of people, but I didn’t get to see everyone I would have liked and even those I did get to see felt a little rushed. Some of my closest friends were unavailable during the only times I could see them (people I know who have kids in Halifax, when I was only free in the evenings because of family and work stuff; people in Moncton who were working nonstop), which sucked. It was bad timing for me to be down there, but family reasons made it the only time I could go and not get yelled at by my mother. Very few people have met her, and those who have are generally unnerved and/or a little scared of her. This afternoon I had a scary dream about her, actually. So I know that the rules dictate I do not cross her. She was already ticked that I wasn’t staying in Chester with her for more than a day, I wasn’t going to risk anymore of that animosity by changing the dates I was coming down to not coincide with her vacation. Like anyone who knows the feeling of having to visit home, it was alternatively stressful, frustrating, pleasant, boring, and filled with days of trying to hide every bad habit I have. I was glad to get home.

Chester, last summer. Pretty. Too quiet.

For the past 6 months or so I’ve been borrowing (yeah, borrowing) internet from my upstairs neighbor. She doesn’t know well enough to lock her network, what does she expect, right? Problem is, now she’s moved to the Bahamas to marry some old friend of hers and work for a windsurfing company or something, and now I need to make a decision about my internet. While this may seem like a simple thing to deal with, I’m completely wrapped up in it. I could get digital cable with a PVR receiver that lets me record shows that I’m out for, and watch them whenever I want. Think of all the Law and Order and Simpsons episodes I can’t download that would become available to me! I’m not a big TV person, in the watching-it-for-lack-of-something-better-to-do sense, but at the same time it’s something I can see being a really fucking enjoyable luxury. Also would decrease the need for me to have super high bandwidth and a large download allowance. I can get this package for roughly the same that I was paying before for basic cable and internet that didn’t even work well with my router, so it’s pretty tempting. On the other hand, I can just get a really high speed connection for probably less money and use that to download whatever I want to watch, which is what I’ve been doing for the past few years anyway. But then there’s news programming, and hockey games, and shows that are un-downloadable. Then there are a bunch of contracts that are involved in all these deals, which is even more confusing. Yeah, this is probably only interesting to me, but if anyone’s got insight I would love to hear about it. I want to make this decision as quickly as possible, because going to the café down the street for hours at a time is starting to get old.
I registered for some classes today. I basically went through and quickly registered for anything that looked interesting that had availability. My registration days opened up back in April, but I couldn’t finish paying off my tuition from last semester until the end of July so I couldn’t go for anything. I know I really need to get a bunch of prerequisites out of the way, but I also want to really think about if I should switch my degree from English and history to just history. Today I downloaded the requirements, I think I remember what credits I have, and I’ll see what I can do in the least amount of time. As it is, I think I might have some interesting classes if I can stick with some of the current choices. Maybe a shitty schedule, but whatever. I’m also thinking of getting more work – I know that part of the reason I completely lost interest last semester is that I just wasn’t busy enough. I’m used to working part/full-time, going to school full time, and keeping myself busy; when I don’t, I get totally lethargic (and stop using words like lethargic, opting for 2 syllables or less). I think the number of semicolons in this show my renewed enthusiasm in being productive and not as brain dead. I hope it works.
Ooh. Back to TV, it’s Mad Men day! Season 3 starts tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll be at the Concordia library by 8:30 to find a streaming link and watch. If it’s anything like last night, I’ll be passed out by 9:30. PARTY.
(Posting this morning, that is exactly what happened.)

Reee-mix

I'm pretty sure 2/3 of the people who check this were on this trip, but still.

That is Meredith's fancy picture from the Brooklyn Bridge; I had a dead camera and a fear of bridges, so I didn't go up as far as they did. Even though it rained for the first day, we had an amazing time. I drank too much and enjoyed the company of random cowboys, but still had a blast. One of the best birthdays ever.
I leave for Halifax tomorrow morning at 11. I'm trying to get to the airport via the STM for the first time ever, because I totally don't trust it, but since I leave hideously early anyway I figure I'll be okay. I'm leaving my house at 7:40 to get to the airport by (theoretically) 9:04, which leaves an hour for fuck-ups on my end and on the metro/bus' end as well.
I'm totally going to do the 5 favorite places thing, but I think I'm going to wait until I'm on the plane tomorrow. Or in the airport, I hear they're fancy and have electrical outlets these days. For now, I need to get cash to pay my rent and probably do 8 million loads of laundry and dishes so my apartment isn't super depressing at messy when I come home next week. What will help get this party started?

(I don't know, it got in my head earlier and now I can't stop. And this is the only decent video that I can embed, sorry for the shitty quality/random editing of "questionable" language.)

north american scum

I'm leaving for New York tomorrow morning, for my birthday. With some amazing friends. It's going to be wonderful (even the 8 hour bus ride is going to be great), and I'm stoked to drink copious amounts of champagne on Wednesday. I actually have a note on my computer saying "blog post: 5 favorite places in NY" that's been there since October that I never got around to writing...I guess that'll be done when I get home on Thursday. Right now it's time to clean my apartment and pack and give up on the procrastination I've been honing for the past few days.

Passive Aggressivity

Oh man. I love Passive Aggressive Notes. I really do. Some of them are just the funniest things in the world, and some are ridiculous, and some are just pathetic... but they're just about all super entertaining. A recent entry included this gem, from a string of p-a facebook status updates. It made me laugh. Out loud, as the internet is saying these days. I'm uploading it from the Flickr stream from the site, check it out if you're as amused as I am. (They're not all this sad/pathetic, but they are almost all this snarky.)

O Captain! My Captain!

It's Patrick Stewart's 69th birthday today. Here's to the best damned captain Starfleet has ever known. (Yeah. I said it.) In honor of Capt. Picard, I bought a new pair of jeans. And I watched this a couple times.

Weather Fail

PostCrazy

Get it? Like PostSecret? But mine's just about the fact that this is post #3 in 24 hours. GO INTERNET.
When it's this sticky and gross out, I tend to stay inside and avoid dealing with gross sweatiness outside unless completely necessary. (Side note: someone just knocked at my door at 8:30 on a Sunday night. Am I alone in refusing to answer the door unless I know someone's coming over?) That equals a lot of internet party time.
I've been having nightmares about secrets coming out, and just nightmares in general a lot in the past few days. Do you think that means anything? I generally fall into the "dream interpretation is bullshit" camp. But I'm open to suggestions that will make me feel better.
Since I know a few people who read this when they're at work and need something to do, let me throw a few things out there for more time-wasting fun.
Slate's Top 25 Bushisms of All Time. Still makes me giggle.
If you're a fan of JD Salinger and have read Franny & Zooey, I suggest this short review by John Updike from 1961. Simply because he's kind of an ass.
I don't know if these are as funny if you don't watch 30 Rock, but here's everything Tracy Jordan said in Season 3, completely out of context (and still hilarious).
Top 10 Food & Drink Hacks from LifeHacker.
World's Weirdest Animal Babies!
...enjoy.