Archive for the ‘Stuff’ Category

Gibbon and Sedlec. Like Simon and Garfunkel, or Hall and Oates.

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Since nothing interesting is going on in my life right now except work, work and more work (with some work on the side), I figured I’d show you a video that has captured my interest right now. It’s of a baby gibbon who sounds like a cross between a songbird and R2D2. First of all, the gibbon is all kinds of creepy-looking, with extra-long fingers and spooky, wide-open eyes. And then it makes the beeping squeaking noises. I can’t get enough of this video for some reason.

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

Also, I just booked tickets to go to Prague and Budapest at the end of March. Mainly Prague, but I’ll be hittin’ up Budapest for a couple of days, which will be a cool additional bit on my trip. I’ve wanted to go to the Sedlec Ossuary located right outside Prague for about fifteen years, and now finally I’m going to get my chance. Decorating with the local dead people, how can I not? I mean. really.

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Meet my deviated septum.

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Everyone who’s ever slept in a room with me thinks I have a horrble sleeping disorder – a lot of thrashing and grunting and snoring and violent spasms – and I always wake up feeling just as tired as I was going to sleep, so I finally decided to get a test for sleep apnea. Whoo boy, is that convoluted. I met with the family ENT doc who set me up with a cat scan, an allergist, and a sleep study program. Then he’s going to view the results and probably give me a Darth Vader-like machine that I will have to wear while I sleep because apparently my raw sex appeal was too overwhelming and they needed to tone it down. Anyway, I had my cat scan today and I learned an important lesson about myself – I am crookedy. Let me explain: If you were to bisect a person down the middle of their body, from the top of their head, right through the center of their ribcage, most of the things on one side would mirror the things on the other side very closely (liver and heart and a bunch of other stuff excluded). Today I had my sinuses scanned, and I expected to see one nostril/sinus look very similar to the other one, and I was WRONG.

deviated-septum

Never mind that the nostril cavities look like they’re from different people, notice how my septum just scuttles off to the side there. There’s no straightness or symmetry to be found anywhere.

Two things.

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

1. Publicis had its annual meeting followed by its annual holiday party, which this year took place at Avenue. That’s some swanky club that Lindsay Lohan tends to frequent. I spent the whole evening sitting in an armchair lip-syncing and vogue-ing to the music blasting out of the speakers and being so thoroughly embarrassing that the CCO turned his back on me in order to hold a normal conversation without having me in his line of vision. ‘Cuz I’m CLASSAY. Anyway, whoever decided the decor of Avenue clearly wanted the place to resemble a dungeon, or maybe Hogwarts. There were all these portraits all over the wall – I expected them to ask me the password to the Griffindor common room at any time.

hogwartz

2. I understand the the White Power people are very angry and they would very much like this to be a country of pasty-colored people, I get all that. What I didn’t know was that they were such big Lisa Frank fans. Let me explain: This is some of Lisa Frank’s product. Those of you that owned Trapper Keepers in the ’80s will be familiar with her work.

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And this is a tattoo I found during my daily viewing of various blogitoriums.

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Except for the swastika armband and the poorly written “white power” near the top of the buttcheek, it’s like my elementary school folders come to life. I don’t think this is what Hitler had in mind.

I have completely run out of “care”.

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Oy, I am so very very tired. I worked all through Thanksgiving, and last weekend, and all this week I worked 14-hour days. My computer desktop is usually very tidy, like maybe five folders neatly arranged on the right, but because I haven’t had time to deal with anything, my desktop now is an accurate representation of my mind.

desktop

However, the last meeting has ended about an hour ago, so the tempest has died down. I shall blog something vaguely interesting tomorrow, I promise.

Utah Baby Names.

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

I just found a website with all the popular Utah Mormon baby names, and wow. I mean, wow. I had no idea. I mocked Jason Lee for naming his kid Pilot Inspektor, but I should really send him an apology note because some of these names are… definitely a personal choice.

Some of my favorites for boys:

Antrim Zeezrom
Daxson Ekewaka
D’Frank
deRalph
D’Loaf
El Myrrh
Marvelous Man
Shannon doah (dude’s name, just a reminder)
Vernal Independence
Vilar Bodily
Welcome Exile
Zaragrunudgeyon

My picks for the girls:

Abcde (note: that’s the first five letters of the alphabet – as a name)
Apathy
Blessing Ream
Chinchilla Zest
Confederate America
DeFonda Virtue
Desdedididawn
Gneiss
Hereditary
Jennyfivetina
Kaysional Tempest
Nafeteria
Placentia
Trauma Anne

Real names, people. These are real names.

An observance.

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

As we all know, the home arts are back in a big way (knitting, anyone?), and that means people are exploring all kinds of previously undiscovered terrain. People often associate crocheting and knitting with blankets and scarves, and cross-stitch with cute little samplers, but I’ve noticed a great many people going beyond that. Here are a few examples I’ve seen lately that I think are beautiful handiwork, or cool concepts, or both.

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Halloween Part II.

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Went to NYC for Halloween this year to see my friend Jon Riedel’s annual dance performance. You know how a lot of ballet companies do The Nutcracker? Jon does a choreographed interpretation of several of Edward Gorey’s short stories. He does The Evil Garden, The Doubtful Guest and The Gashleycrumb Tinies, as well as others. If you’re around next Halloween, I highly recommend seeing them. Here’s a link to his site:
http://www.riedeldancetheater.org/

The Riedel Dance Theater was in Soho, so I got to see quite a few terrific costumes. There’s a problem with Manhattan and Halloween, which is that the normally weird and slightly “off” people you know to avoid just blend in, and you can’t tell the people dressed up as freaky people from the truly freaky people. Like this woman I saw at the train station. I took a picture surreptitiously from behind a sign, so it’s not so great, but I’ll walk you though it.

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Okay, so she’s got the big sparkly red hat with the feathers, fine. But on her body she has a tuxedo jacket and a black boa over something that resembles a fat suit for her knees, or a flesh-colored mushroom. She gave me the impression that today was just another day to her (“Ho hum, it’s Monday, time to put on the Vegas headdress and the goiter pants”). Had this not been Halloween, I would have had the crazy radar go off BEEP BEEP BEEP and I would have known to stay away. Such a confusing day.

I saw two costumes that were terrific. One was a poke at my heartstrings, because it was one of my favorite Muppets: Beaker.

beaker

The mouth flapped and everything! You can see his eyeholes right under his collar. The second costume, well, that was just special. And if you’re of a delicate nature, maybe you should stop reading right now. At Jon’s party, someone was dressed as a full moon. Here was the front of his costume:

full-moon-front

Aaaaaand here was the back.

full-moon-back

Yeah.

Halloween. And the fishtank. Mainly the fishtank.

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

It’s Halloween again, as it seems to be every year, and this year due to a truly psychotic work week (I enjoy working 36 hours in three days, no, really, I do) I did not have an opportunity to make or even care about a costume. So I did not. I did, however, get a great idea for next year’s costume (the tooth fairy, but not how you’re thinking, a more creepy-like tooth fairy). But back to the story: my friend Neenernator had her annual Halloween party a week early this year because she wasn’t going to be around this weekend, so Cricket and I went. And it was lovely. Out of the many vaguely steampunk slash gothic sluts at the party, Neenernator was by far the best one.

nina

She actually took some time to decorate her house for Halloween, which really doesn’t take a ton of effort for her because Neenernator’s house is already pretty macabre to begin with. There’s deep maroon and mustard-colored walls, and that slate wall with the antique wood stove you see there in the picture (also the red velvet curtains, please notice those as well) and Bob the Real Human Skull sitting on the mantle keeping company with the small shark in formaldehyde, and the light that resembles an alien brain, all that stuff is permanent house fixtures all year round. So for Halloween she could pretty much hang that creepy bat thing from the chandelier and call it a day. But no, she really made it unpleasant (she had a gross fake decomposing severed head as a knife block and red Jell-o with eyeballs in the blender) and I spent a lot of time not in the kitchen with those things. Honestly, I spent very little time socializing and most of my time with the fishtank. I have an unhealthy obsession with Neenernator’s fishtank. I’ve mentioned it before. Sadly, one member of her giant blue fish couple died, so now only one is left. But she got new different fish, so I ended staring at them for three hours. I also learned an important life lesson, which is that it is incredibly difficult to take pictures of fish in a fishtank. The tank blasts the flash right back at you, and the fish are constantly moving around, and the camera doesn’t know what to focus on, it’s an opportunity rife with failure. Here are my best attempts.

First, the gigantor tank.

aqaurium3

Shy iridescent gray fish.

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Albino pleco (suckerfish).

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One of them cool new fishies. It’s a golden striped iridescent something-or-other, with catfish whiskers. I heart them big time.

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And here are two pictures Neenernator during the daytime that are far better. You can see the lonely blue fella. You see the vertical version? You see those diamond-shaped ones with the stripes and the little orange ones underneath them? I bought her those. I’m very attached to those ones.

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Wedding in Lake George.

Monday, October 19th, 2009

My co-worker C. got married, and I got invited to her wedding in Lake George Village. Lake George, for those of you who don’t know, is in the upper part of New York State, approximately 90 miles from Montreal. On one of the banks is Lake George Village. It was quite the summer resort town back in the 1950s and 1960s, and a great deal of the buildings are still left over from then.

This is the lake from our hotel room. The area is heavily peppered with hotels and motels, apparently the population goes from about 1,000 to 15,000 in the summer. Ergo, many hotels.

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And the stores/restaurants/amusements are charming and quaint and delightful. I took some pictures of the more dated and adorable elements.

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You can’t really appreciate it because I was zipping past it in a car, but off to the left of that shot is a wax museum. You can see a bit of it.

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And this is supposedly the oldest minigolf course in… someplace, maybe the Adirondacks, maybe New York, something like that.

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And I couldn’t get a shot of it, but there is a Tiki Resort right near the minigolf course.

lakegeorge-tikilodge

The town just screams, “No one puts Baby in a corner!”

So, the wedding. It was lovely, except for some poor teenage boy who had to read a passage from the Song of Songs that was clearly written with a woman’s voice, so Poor Teenage Boy had to read this whole passage:

Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.

My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.

My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.”

Okay, first of all, if I was a socially awkward male heterosexual teenager, this would be torture for me. Second, every time he said, “lover,” how was I not supposed to think of that Saturday Night Live skit? I mean, really. Then the next kid got up for a reading and said it was St. Paul speaking to the Phillipinos. I found that endlessly amusing as well.

The rest of the wedding went smashingly, C. looked gorgeous, and everyone went outside and posed for photos while actively freezing to death.

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We all shuttled to a lovely castle on the side of a mountain, where there was dancing and consuming of food and beverage until late into the night.

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The best part of dinner was that it was a buffet, so there weren’t herds of waiters tromping around with large trays of food, passive-aggressively deciding when dancing was to cease (“Well, you can keep dancing, but you’re food will get cold. I’m just sayin’…”). You could get what you wanted when you wanted. And they also brought out The Meat.

themeat1

It took two people to carry it out. It reminded me of those ribs that Fred Flintstone gets and they put it in his car and his car tips over. It was enormous. Really.

Here are children in awe of The Meat. Or perhaps they got sucked into it’s gravitational pull. Can’t be sure.

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And then the wedding ended and we went back to the hotel for the afterparty. Here is the beautiful blushing bride playing beer pong with one of the groomsmen, Ham.

beerpong

It was a lovely wedding experience all around. I went to bed about 1:30 a.m. because I am weak and frail, but from what I understand, the revelry didn’t end until way after the sun came up.

Addendum: Apparently, at 3:00 a.m., C.’s 80-year-old grandma played beer pong as well… with scotch. Gramma is hard-core.

The internet has neato things. I feel the need to share them with you.

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

1. I visit CuteOverload every day for my daily dose of cuddly happiness, and it appears to have spawned a similar site, totally devoted to cute food. How marvelous. It’s called EpiCute, and I have posted some of my favorites.

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Did you see that gingerbread house with the red birds? OMG, that is so very awesome.

2. There’s an artist/graphic designer who goes by the name Lunchbreath. He designs some really stellar infographics and charts. Some of them have rough language, but they are very clever and very funny and you need to see them. Right now, in fact. He also has terrific handwriting, very distinctive and charming. Here’s his flickr stream where you can peruse his entire graphic collection: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchbreath/

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