I try to watch the
Posted by: Liz
I try to watch the weather channel in the morning to get all the weathery details for the day. I like the calm music, the unobtrusive and clear pictures and descriptions, the sheer amount of information they provide you with (wind speed? dew point?). The only problem is waiting for "the 8s,"-- the local weather coming up only when the time ends in an 8. So often I'm forced to switch to Fox news, which has the weather scrolling across the bottom, along with traffic and sports, every few minutes.I guess I check the weather around the same time every day because lately I've been popping on just in time to catch this awful anchor woman's light news segment. It's always on some kooky craze or wayout attraction like dog clothes or wax museums or something. In any case, this morning's segment was on some costume store that had a lot of costumes worn in famous movies. Like Home Alone, and Titanic, and Alien 3, and Titanic again. It ends with the owner of the costume store saying that the reason they have to make new costumes instead of using vintage clothing is that people are bigger now than they were then (lots of shots of Kate Winslet. She's huge, lumbering around: a mammoth!). They come back to the studio and this is stupidhead anchor woman's response: "You know it's true! Marilyn Monroe was a size 14! Actresses could never be a size 14 now!"
Of course, I've heard this weird statement before and it has always baffled me. What is one supposed to deduce from it? Marilyn Monroe was actually fat? That if you're a size 14, you look like Marilyn Monroe? But this particular anchor woman's use of the "fact" drove me up the wall. Poor J. He was trying to brush his teeth and use the bathroom as I was yelling through the door at him that what the hell did that have to do with vintage clothes! And of course there are size 14 actresses! And why is this woman on the air!
Lesson learned: mute button should be employed on all Fox programing before I've had my coffee.
But coffee in hand, all is well now: my weekend is starting off with a half day at working and growing into a Bryant Park movie night a la Abby's backyard.
This is my new favorite dessert/breakfast:
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup dried cherries
1 vanilla bean, pulp scraped
1 1/2 cups steamed couscous
1 (8-ounce) container vanilla flavored yogurt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Heat milk, sugar and cherries in medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring to simmer, remove from heat, cover and let steep for 10 minutes. Add pulp from vanilla bean to milk and whisk to combine. Pour mixture over couscous in bowl and add yogurt. Stir to combine. Divide evenly among 4 custard cups, sprinkle with cinnamon and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Also, Haloscan comments are back because the inability to delete double posts with Blogger comments was driving me up the wall. I need clean, accutate information!
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This may be the most
Posted by: Liz
This may be the most dangerous party idea ever. --------If I'm going to be
Posted by: Liz
If I'm going to be sitting here with my eyelids drooping and my mind a lethargic lump, it would be nice to have an all-night party or few dirty martinis to blame. Because I'm pretty sure it sounds lame to say I'm wiped out due to staying up late watching the finale of Colonial House. But watch it I did. This is great reality TV, people. Nothing better than 21st century midsets coming up against 1700's reality and then grappling with which one to go with. Inevitably, there were concessions people were unable to make, be it religious or personal. No one was there to step in and tell them they couldn't do or say something, but the British voice over lady was omnipresent for us viewers to chastise the participants. It would go something like this:Young Irish guy: Oh man, I'm feeling claustrophobic here. I'm just going to throw my pack on and go wander around like a real explorer. And also stop in this pub and have people buy me beers. Ar, I'm an explorer!
British voice over lady: Exploration was a dangerous thing for people in the 1700's and people who wandered off would have most likely been mauled to a bloody death by the native animals.
Mayor's wife: I'm going to start a weekly gathering at my house for the women of the colony so we can chat and discuss our ideas.
BVOL: Meeting between women was discouraged in the early settlements. Bertrude Miller did start a discussion group for the females in her colony in 1701. She was sentenced to death.
Gay guy: I'm totally gay and am telling you all this in the town meeting. I have to express my gay self!
BVOL: In the 1700's he would have been strung up and left swaying.
And because we can't get enough of the Houses in our apartment, we're also watching a dvd of 1900 House, which is entertaining for entirely different reasons, namely this weird humiliation factor that the family has to interact with the real world while living in their house. That is, the kids have to go to school minus hot baths and with lunches made from 1900s food. And they have to ride a carriage through throngs of people in Nikes and fanny packs.
Email correspondence:
Jennie: N says I should ask about J's organ grinding career. What? That sounds disgusting.
Me: Think hurdy gurdy, not meat packing.
Jennie: Ohhhhh. Yeah, that's much better. Was getting some bad imagery.
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JK Rowling has her own
Posted by: Liz
JK Rowling has her own site now. A bit on the addicting side... --------Are you feeling litigious? Did
Posted by: Liz
Are you feeling litigious? Did you overpay for some cosmetics? Do you deserve some free face cream or something. Yes! --------Here are some people who
Posted by: Liz
Here are some people who are going out of their minds for want of a gmail address. Who knew? So if you've got an invitation to spare, here is a good chance to get that free box of cereal, pencil drawing of a monkey, or foreign chocolates in exchange.And I could be wrong...but can't wanting parties just sign up to blogger and get one? And then perpetually invite themselves under different names and collect invites for their friends? And isn't this just an email address?
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Burger Bill is Vitamin Nil.(Thanks,
Posted by: Liz
Burger Bill is Vitamin Nil.(Thanks, co-worker!)You may not like this site if that one episode of Trading Spaces where the designer made meat scuptures creeped you the hell out.
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I am having a grand
Posted by: Liz
I am having a grand old time playing with the iPod that we gave J for graduation. We don't have internet access at the apartment, so I'm here at work on a slow Friday trying to make everything work the way it should. I have to say there is something incredibly gratifying about creating a whole music library with just a few clicks. (Although, if we're being completely honest--and 'cmon, we're always honest up in this joint--I'm having some issues with the library letting me drop fresh albums into the iPod, which just goes to prove that all advances in technology come with their own set of time-consuming elements).Last night I went on a little crusade through the apartment, turning everything upside down in search of a handful of cds that had become lost. They finally turned up in a tin box I had shoved under my dresser, and as I was sorting all the scratched cds and trying to find their broken jewel cases, I just kept thinking how OUTDATED it all seemed and how I couldn't WAIT to have all the music at our fingertips in digital form. We were a generation raised on mix tapes, who saw the advent of cds overtake them, and now we're moving swiftly into the digital age. It's insane we're moving this fast! The period movies of the future will depict us carrying around huge iPods and bragging about how we got them on sale for $300, while the $25-saltine-sized-mp3-player-toting audience just laaaughs.
Also, I wish my scanner was working so I could share the most glorious deodorant ad that ever was. Picture if you will a princess-type model who has her arms above her head in a wide V to welcome down the shower of pears and jewels. There is a crown floating above her head. Her dress turns into a grassy meadow in which baby bunnies are playing. And the piece de resistance is the unicorn leaping through the air behind her. Two unicorns, actually. I don't know who hired Lisa Frank to design Secret's Pear Illusion Sparkle Collection Deodorant, but damn. She went all out.
Some recent closures my co-worker and I have encountered at the end of work-related emails from people we don't know at all:
Very truly yours,
With affection,
Love,
My co-worker also got a spam hatemail in her real mailbox. Her guess is that someone found her Jewish-seeming last name in a phone book and proceeded to send a cart load of anti-Semitic letters. Although I don't think I exaggerate by calling it hatemail, the letter is not so much hateful in tone as it is "repent now" and "here are some very logical reasons why your religion is wrong." It is also, clearly, the rantings of someone two nuts short of a sundae. It baffles me that someone out there (probably a lot of people) who honestly think they are doing the lord's work by sending out half-baked crazies to random people in a phone book. And that they'll get to heaven and God will be all, "Hey dude, niiiice work with the phonebook spam mail. That was genius! I should have sent out personal letters AGES ago."
Ug.
Anyway, I know you all are excited that it is soon to be summer time mostly because you are excited to indulge in Tasti-D every night. I know I am. I'm a sucker for the toppings though, and it is always fun for me to watch the high school kids squirm when I ask them to put jimmies on the soft serve ice cream cone. Because, really it takes quite a bit of dexterity to plop the cone into the topping container and roll it around sufficiently. Though I've never seen the top of the cone just slop off into an irretrievable mess in the container, it is not unreasonable that it would do so. One night, Krista licked all her sprinkles off and was wishing she could get more. I thought she could just go up to the counter guy, go slackjawed, shove the naked cone at him and ask him to jam it in the jimmy hole. Now "jam it in the jimmy hole" has grown into a phrase that can embody just about any situation involving jamming and holes. Go ahead, try it out.
Ok, have a nice weekend. Drink something icy and pretend you're on a beach. Or if you just got back from the beach, screw you because I hate you and your tan.
Apparently Anne Rice is writing my life. Which author's fiction are you?
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Singapore baby-making reality show. Please
Posted by: Liz
Singapore baby-making reality show. Please note the "for economic and defence purposes" reasoning. --------Whew, it is already Wednesday
Posted by: Liz
Whew, it is already Wednesday and I am only just now feeling like I'm starting to catch up with things. And I come baring presents: updated pics of Pinky and Max! Gorge on the sugary cuteness.The graduation was a lot of fun, though it is hard getting used to calling J "Master J," as is now deserved. To think it will only be a short while before we'll have to use "Dr. J" and then people will expect him to be a basketball legend, which will be difficult. Unless of course by "basketball" you will mean "cultural consumerism".
This day is sucking the life out of me. The gray clouds, the dreary light, the no-hope-for-sun feeling...New York is dressing up like Tacoma today. If the city stank was replaced by papermill aroma, we'd be all set.
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Damn. I was playing around
Posted by: Liz
Damn. I was playing around and now I have this blog. --------Shameless plug Do you love
Posted by: Liz
Shameless plugDo you love They Might Be Giants? Do you love Sarah Vowel, David Cross, and Todd Barry? Do you love kids and want them to learn and have access to superhero supplies (we will be the only Brooklyn Superhero Supplies Company in the metro area)? Do YOU want access to superhero supplies? Well, if you have answered yes to these questions, you should be going here right now and purchasing a ticket to our little benefit. There will also be a bbq and you can come see the storefront afterwards. See? I'm here to show you fun things and tell you how to direct your money into worthwhile non-profits. Planned Parenthood has plenty of donors--give it up to us! We even toss in a concert.
There is a new Gillette commercial out that is for some reason going for "inspirational." There is some man singing "Gillette!" inspirationally over some inspirational string instruments and the inspirational voice over starts listing all the things Gillette razors and products are like. Then comes the line: "Like having an angel by your side." What tha? Who wrote that copy? And who read it and thought, yes, shaving with Gillette, is strikingly similar to having a celestial being hovering about me, ah.
I am also mad at Gillette right now because I bought this pretty little razor and do you know what's happened? All the lovely ridges for comfort gripping have become clogged with disgusting mildew. This happened within weeks of getting the razor. For some reason I am (comfort) gripped by embarrassment every time I see it and I keep trying to remember to get a new one. Which I will probably do soon, since we have a guest coming and that guest will be using our shower and I can't have him seeing the gross mildew razor because, seriously, then what?
This guest is actually J's brother. Shall we call him N for familial conformity? We shall. N will be the first relative I will meet that shares some of J's DNA. This is quite exciting for me as I'm dying to see how all the genes arranged themselves in a different person. He's coming in for J's graduation, which is on Friday (woo, four-day week!), and will be sitting with Krista and I on the lawn chairs as we wait with the bullhorn for them to announce J's name. Also we will listen to James Earl Jones and Joan Rivers who are the guest speakers, although each presumably booked by two completely different people who have nothing in common and who couldn't bare to cancel one or the other. Because JEJ and Joan Rivers? I'm pretty sure the only thing they have in common is the homonymous last and first names.
Ok one last question: You know how Junior's chocolate cheesecake has all those mini chocolate chips that act as an outer crust? How would one do that if one was making said cake from scratch?
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Whenever Cinco de Mayo rolls
Posted by: Liz
Whenever Cinco de Mayo rolls around I think of a song we used to sing in elementary school that went something like "Cinco de Mayo is holiday time, holiday time in Mex-i-co! lalalalala Mex-i-co!" So, feeling nostalgic, I did a little google dig and came up with...nothing! There is no internet record of this song. I don't know how that's possible, since I managed to pull up the lyrics for the entire Tall Tales musical we did in fourth grade.Ah, elementary school musicals. Looking back, I see that everything we did was either an awful glomming together of cheesey songs with a loose narrative thread, or it was a carefully orchestrated serenade to our teachers. There is something weird that happens when a bunch of adults have access to a group of kids that they can control vocally. They may make them sing silly songs (giving the impression that the kids are being silly and having fun and what's more fun to watch than kids having fun? Nothing! Oh, the simple joys of childhood! To be young again!) Or they make them sing songs TO an intentioned audience: the parents, old folks, other kids, or, in the case of our school, to the teachers themselves. At various graduation ceremonies we had to sing (no joke): To Sir With Love and Wind Beneath My Wings. As though WE were so touched by our teachers' hard work and dedication, we could think of no better way to honor them than with these inspirational songs.
This is a weird perversion of narcissism, no?
In any case, Cinco de Mayo was fun except for the super crowded bars, losing Krista (sorry!), the price of margaritas once happy hour stopped, and sparse food. But, besides that: good times.
I should be going to our first McSweeney's softball game of the year tonight, but I'm playing hooky. I may even be watching the Friends finale. I know.
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I have been typing on
Posted by: Liz
I have been typing on this bitty webpage for a year now. I'd advise you not to go back to the beginnings because, really, it's pretty awful.Tonight I am off to some alumni event. I don't really think there will be anyone there I know, though Kelly and I did run into Nick Williams on the subway once. So he might be there. He's the one Ahe did not kiss, but I managed to remember it wrong for long enough that quite a few people at our school may have been misinformed about that for awhile. Oops.
I also have a feeling about too little hors d'oeuvres and too much asking for money. But I'm counting on the plenty of wine.
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