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My co-worker’s wedding.

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

My co-worker Mili got married two weeks ago, and it was a hoot. It was on the beach in Long Island at sunset, the gods were compassionate and the sun shone and it was so beautiful. Here, a picture to show the beauty.

And right after the wedding, I took a picture of the seats with the ocean and the sand and the planks – see? SO beautiful.

As soon as they were pronounced man and wife, Mili did a “raise the roof” dance complete with some shrieking of glee, because Mili is a free spirit and that’s how she rolls. Apparently so does M., the groom. Remember that, it comes up later.

Anyway, the ceremony’s over. Time for drinkies, snakkies, ice sculptures, and melons carved as dolphins. Oh yeah, and if you’re looking to host an outdoor event with style, consider gazebo marquee hire perth for the perfect setup!

You need more melons? I’ll give you more melons.

Then it’s excessive dancing and dinner time. I sat with some of my other co-workers. I work with some lovely ladies. Look at how pretty they are.

So thin, so tan. And then there’s me.

There’s me and the Cricket. Note the super-awesome drag queen/Vegas dancer makeup. I was just ROCKIN’ the liner and shadow. The hell with the natural look. For me, the natural look is no makeup. If it ain’t bare, slap on the paint, boys, I’m going to town. Oh, and you can’t really see it in this picture, but I matched my nail polish exactly to my shirt. I’m so proud of myself I could spit.

Moving on. There were a few things at this wedding which caught my eye. First of all, I loved the glowing octopus of lights that softened the ceiling.

The other thing was this girl. She had nice straight hair but she had decided to crimp it, 80s style. I have nothing against crimping, it just… she just stuck the iron in her hair, clamped down and then moved on to a totally different chunk.

See? Confusing. I spoke to Mili later and it turns out that CrimpGirl’s a total Luna Lovegood whackadoo and everyone at the wedding who knew her was just glad she wore a bra. Pick your battles, I guess. But I think it was a wonderful wedding and the food was delicious and the band was UH-mazing (I think AC/DC should from now on be sung only by black women with shaved heads, because that’s what happened and it was phenomenal) and Mili danced with her father to a song I keep insisting on calling Buffalo Kisses, because I am not bright. Terrific evening.

The whole point of telling you about this wedding is so I could tell you about this honeymoon story I heard today when Mili got back. Mili and M. went to Aruba and stayed in a Hyatt because Mili’s brother works for Hyatt and got them a bit of a discount. So the second day they get tanked on the beach and go back to the room and M. decides to dance. But he could not fully express his dancerly needs on the floor, so he proceeded to dance on the bed, where he smacked his hand against the painting above the bed and shattered the glass in it. His hand was fine, but now there’s this painting with a gazillion cracks through it. Mili didn’t want to pay $1000 or whatever the crappity painting costs, and she didn’t want to get her brother into trouble either, so she put the “do not disturb” sign on the door for two days while she thought of a plan. Then, when Mili and M. were on the beach, a guy offered them a cooler full of Heineken. She saw the cooler and was like, “Hello, solution to my problems.” They drank the Heinekens (of course) and then went back to the room, where she moved the bed, then laid a towel down on the floor. M. gently shook all the glass onto the towel, which they folded up and shoved in the cooler. Mili was like, “Good, great, find a dumpster far away and throw it in.” M. complies. He comes back white-faced. Mili asked what was wrong and M. said he carried the cooler out to a faraway dumpster and threw the cooler in, with some towel hanging out the side. Some people walking by looked at him like he was crazy and said something about “Oh my God, a baby in a cooler.” Mili said, “Well, what did you do?” M. said, “I ran.” So they ended hanging out in the room for a whole day, convinced that the cops would be looking for M. as The Cooler-Baby Killer. PERFECT honeymoon story. PERFECT. You cannot write stuff that good.

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Cookie.

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

I have decided to go on a diet, which began yesterday. Snorth has been having great success with her diet (go Snorth!) so I too am making a go of it. I do not which to be mistaken for a large ghost anymore. A more slender ghost, maybe, but not a poofy one.

Day 1 was okay, I was all hyped up, but today I just feel… well, I think this video will tell you how I feel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrPeQ14n5tE

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A Taste of White Plains.

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Today I finished the tasks I had set for myself by 2:00, so I headed into White Plains for A Taste of White Plains: Food and Antique Car Show. It was delightful, a real home-town kind of event. They had gigantic inflatable castles and slides for the kiddies and live music. I got to try some Indian food from the Indian place in the neighborhood that I was unfamiliar with (channa saag, how I love thee) and see a variety of nifty ancient vehicles. They were all lined up in the street, and as I was sauntering by I noticed a particular one. It was a navy blue 1937 Chevy with the phrase “Meet Mr. Floatie!” on it. Underneath that was a character I can only describe as a jocular turd with a yellow sailor’s hat on. My incredulity drove me to investigate. I kept thinking, “Oh, this is just a clever marketing ploy to draw me in.” Nope. Mr. Floatie is indeed a turd. And the Floatie-mobile is from my hometown of Rye, NY. I’m so proud. However ooky you find the whole thing, it is for a good cause: to clean up a bit of the harbor that has trash and raw sewage running into it and ruining the ecology. A nice lady handed me a square of toilet paper with the web address and the phrase “Because Fecal Matters” on it. Dear God, enough with the poop references, guys. But wait, it gets worse. I’m going to copy and paste the most horrifying part from an article I found.

According to Tartaglione, Mr. Floatie, a “a seven foot turd that will soon be walking up and down on Purchase Street greeting residents handing out Hershey bars and business cards, bringing attention to all the issues on Hen Island that have been ignored for years.”

I am so glad I don’t live in Rye anymore. I could not deal with a giant mascot excrement wandering around Main Street handing out food that vaguely resembles excrement. And while I didn’t bring my camera, thx to the Nternet, I found a picture of the Floatie-mobile.

Please help clean up the harbor in Rye, only so they stop with Mr. Floatie. Let us give them so much money that the Mr. Floatie-mobile can have the decals taken off and it can return to being a nice vintage vee-hickle. Please. Make the bad men stop.

www.healtheharbor.com

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Which is worse?

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

A tattoo of a dolphin smoking a bong in a ripped Laz-E-Boy chair surrounded by totally unrelated and crappity tattoos…

– OR –

A tattoo of a croissant reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee located on some guy’s butt cheek?

I will now post both choices for you to look at. Then you can make a decision for yourself. And cry yourself to sleep.

(Also, I pixelled out the butt-crack because, frankly, no one needs to see that.)

Thanks to gigglesugar for the pics.

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Blogs I think are nifty.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I often peruse the Ntarwebs for new and exciting bloggery and whatnot, and I figure you do too. So I will share some sites I frequent that maybe you will like as well. Some have strong language, so be forewarned.

The Impulsive Buy
“After sucking on it a little bit, the smooth texture of the lollipop turned into coarse sandpaper, which was kind of off-putting. It was like the lollipop grew a five o’clock shadow in my mouth.”

Izzle Pfaff!
“An American Girl. That is a really awesomely white cast. It’s like staring at a glacier.””

One Good Thing
“There’s gonna be a Thomas Kinkade Christmas movie this winter. I just hope all the buildings in the movie appear to have raging conflagrations within their walls.”

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Mental bits and pieces.

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Thank God the Olympics are over. At last, I can get to sleep before 1:00 in the morning. It sure was fascinating and engrossing. I got sucked in like a dust bunny to a Dyson, I tells ya. Now I can return to my normal schedule of obsessively watching Forensic Files as I fall asleep. I am lulled into dreamland by “…and this thread from John’s blue sweater found in the vehicle led investigators to conclude he was Debbie’s killer…” Ah, unsolved murders are so soothing.

Okay, returning briefly to The Batman Movie of Recent Recentness, something occurred to me. If you live in Gotham, and the bridges and ferries are blowing up regularly, and people are getting held hostage left and right, and people are shooting each other in the street, MAYBE YOU SHOULD MOVE. I’m just saying. I was watching a program on the Son of Sam (while waiting for Forensic Files to come on). He killed six people. Just six – and all of New York flipped the freak out. People wouldn’t go out at night, women dyed their hair blond (SOS tended to kill brunettes), there were 300 cops on the case, etc. The Joker kills, I don’t know, like, 100 people in this movie, and not one “Moving” sign in the whole film. Not one character says, “Hey, screw this whole thing, let’s go to Montana. I’ll homeschool the kids, we’ll grow some vegetables and milk some goats. Enough of this already.” My empathy well for the inhabitants of Gotham is pretty much dry.

So I gave my mom the purse tonight and she looooved it, which was great. I’m so pleased that she was so pleased. Hooray on that front. I must now paint a onesie for my co-worker. She’s having a little girl and I’m making her a black onesie with a skull and crossbones on it. Because that’s the kind of people we are. And little pirate girls are so precious! I’ll keep you posted on that.

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

Olympics.

Friday, August 15th, 2008

I’ve been watching the Olympics almost every night for the last week, and gosh darnit, it’s exciting. Right now I’m watching a bunch of pudgy Belgians give the Americans a real run for their money in women’s beach volleyball. Go Belgians with the poochy bellies and thighs like Clydesdales! I think the best moment so far is the woman from America, the swimmer in the relay, who’s 41 and just had a kid and then kicked copious amounts of ass and broke the world record and got us the silver medal. What’s that, agist Olympic pig-dogs? I spit on you.

I am amused by the quantity of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s commercials. I find it funny that the world’s most important sports event is sponsored by sugar water and deep fried mechanically separated chicken. Oh, and I just saw a commercial for Budweiser, proud sponsor of the American team. Please add “caloric alcoholic beverage that many of the athletes are too young to drink” to that list. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gravy fries, I’m not pure of heart. It’s just, it’s a major athletic event. It seems contradictory. I wouldn’t want to be an author going on a book tour sponsored by Kingsford Charcoal, perfect for all your paper-burning needs.

These athletes are freaky, by the way. One of the lady gymnasts performed extremely well on the uneven bars, did one of those hard landings, and we the viewers find out later that she had a broken bone in her foot the whole time. Dear God, I get a hangnail and I consider taking a sick day. She had a broken foot-bone and she’s flinging herself off of high things to slam down on that foot with all her weight… see what I mean? Freaky.

So hooray and yay for Michael Phelps, you’re clearly part eel and we’re all very proud of you and your size-fourteen feet. May you grow gills and disappear under the water to marry Ariel and live on the ocean floor with dancing singing crabs for all eternity. It is your destiny. Good luck on your twelfth (!) gold medal tonight and may all your full-body shaving not be in vain.

Posted in Advertising, Stuff, The Telly | 1 Comment »

The Happening, Back to School, and Nudibranches, oh my!

Friday, July 18th, 2008

1. I saw The Happening, the new M. Night Shamalamadingdong film. (Side note: who here cannot stop thinking of “The Bloodening”, the fictional Simpsons horror film, every time they hear that title? Just me? Okay.) For anyone living without the benefit of the internet, newspapers, television or semaphore, The Happening is what happens when plants have had enough of humans and their crappy destructive ways. They release a pollen/spore/icky airborne that causes people to kill themselves (in super-creative ways, a guy runs over his own head with a combine). I know I’m supposed to be rooting for the humans, but I was, well, not. If I was a plant, I would be testy about humans as well. While this was not M. Night’s best film, he sure does know how to increase tension with creaking branches and rustling leaves. I came home and said to my houseplants, “If you don’t start nuthin’, there won’t be nuthin’, k?” Gotta keep an eye on those houseplants.

2. I was at Target the other day and they were all kinds of hawking back-to-school supplies. I realized at that moment how blissful it was to not care about going back to school. I went to school for seventeen years of my life (kindergarten, 1 through 6, middle school, high school, college) and I do not miss it one bit. If I want to read the collected works of Bloom County and Foxtrot all summer, I can. I don’t gotta write no paper at the end either. Oh, and when I was a kid my mom would make me go to summer camp, so I would have to get up early every day anyway. Now, I get paid to do that. Oh yeah. Being an adult rocks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still take classes periodically in various programs so I can be a better designer. But it immediately causes me to make more money, which I can then spend on books which contain pictures of Opus the penguin wearing a sun hat. Kids? Stay in school. So that you can earn a decent living so you can buy a computer and only read blogs if you want to.

3. Every time I think I’m a crazy wacky artist coming up with crazy wacky ideas, something comes and knocks me off my crazy wacky pedestal. National Geographic ran an article on nudibranchs. What’s a nudibranch, you ask? Here’s a description:

A nudibranch is a member of one suborder of soft-bodied, shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks, which are noted for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms. The suborder Nudibranchia is the largest suborder of heterobranchs, with more than 3,000 described species. The word “nudibranch” comes from the Latin nudus, naked, and the Greek brankhia, gills. Nudibranchs are often casually called “sea slugs”, a non-scientific term which has led some people to assume that every sea slug is a nudibranch. However, while it is true that nudibranchs are very numerous in terms of species, and are often very attractive, there are numerous other kinds of sea slugs belonging to several taxonomic groups that are not very closely related to nudibranchs. A fair number of these other sea slugs are colorful and thus are even more easily confused with nudibranchs.

Nudibranchs that are toxic often have rather festive coloring and horns and feathery things and a variety of other components to convince you that they taste like reheated poop and may also kill you. Here are a few of my favorites from the NatGeo article:

I don’t care how creative you think you are, you cannot top this. I will never make anything that interesting or fascinating to look at. And I’m alright with that. And you should be too. Let’s all hug.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Nature, Stuff | 1 Comment »

Two songs that are forever altered in my mind.

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

1. I do not, as a rule, care for Mariah Carey’s music. It’s just not my cup of tea. However, I listen to a great deal of pop or R&B stations, and they play her stuff. So I know it. I know some lyrics and everything. She has a cover of a song called “Without You”.

“American Idol” is not unique. Bulgaria has “Bulgarian Idol”. And they have the same audition process, with the talented people. And the not-so-talented people.

This is a video of a woman auditioning on “Bulgarian Idol”. “Without You” is ruined, RUINED, in my mind forever. The phrase that she is massacring that causes me to crack up every time is, “Can’t live, if living is without you…”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo

2. If you remember back a ways, there was a song on the radio every fifteen minutes called “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia. You could not avoid it. You could not hide from it. It was all-pervasive. A British comedian heard the song and came up with a mimed act based on the song that is BRILLIANT. Now, I can be falling asleep and my clock radio will play that song and I have to roll over onto my back and mime all the motions I can remember. Every time. Luckily the song doesn’t come on the radio very often, but when it does, I must mime. I cannot resist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUQMeVw-ck

And a bonus: Here’s Natalie Imbruglia performing the miming with him! What a good sport.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TM3GbxaNLI

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NPR and Jonathan Coulton.

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

I was going to write this past week about my travels to Israel, but I got slammed with a project that ate my head and digested it from Monday to Friday until I was a crispy frayed exoskeleton of myself. I was so busy I didn’t even get a chance to check my emails all week. Brutal, I tell you. But the project got done and went nicely and all is hunky-dory, so now I can return to the world of the living and tell you about my recent activities. And I’m editing my Israel photos to share with you as well, so there will be a plethora of posting in the next few days. Rejoice, three readers, rejoice!

I drove my parents to the airport on Saturday so they could fly out to California, and on the way back I listened to their radio. My dad has two stations in his presents: WQXR, the classical music station, and NPR, the… NPR station. On Saturday WQXR plays opera all afternoon, which I really don’t care for at all, so I listened to NPR. I realized something that I’ve been fighting for a long time. I don’t like NPR. I want to like NPR, I really do, it’s just they’re just such drowse-inducing intellectuals, I crave to listen to all of Eminem’s albums back to back afterwards. Traffic was backed up so I got to listen for two and a half hours. Because Albert Hofmann had just died (the inventor of LSD), they played an hour of psychedelic music, all of which I could name in the first two beats (yay me!) The songs were: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Magic Carpet Ride, Purple Haze, White Rabbit, and White Room. The DJ talked about his magic mushroom trip where he discovered the meaning of life in his vomit, and that was all fine. Then came on All Things Considered. Here’s where NPR proved themselves (once again) to be the most grating thing on earth. Andrea Seabrook did a ten-minute piece on the tomato salmonella outbreak where she interviewed… her mother. And they chatted about tomatoes being a pivotal part of their lives. For ten minutes. In those voices that they speak in. These voices. I wanted to shoot myself. Patton Oswalt (my most favorite comedian in the whole wide world) does a thing about NPR on his DVD, Feelin’ Kinda Patton, that is just BRILLIANT. Rent the DVD if you can. It’s about fifteen minutes in. He sums up my response far better than I can.

Addendum: I found a clip of the Patton Oswalt NPR thing on the YouTubes! Hurray!

On Saturday evening I went into the city to see Jonathan Coulton with B. and his wife D. and their son K. It was in the Highline Ballroom in the Meatpacking District, which is one of my least visited parts of Manhattan for three reasons: One, even though they hose down the sidewalks, you can still smell the rotting blood faintly in the air; Two, it’s become very trendy so everyone is young and hip and thin and I feel like a troll doll with fluffy orange hair whose ass is impaled on a fifth-grader’s pencil, and; Three, there are cobblestones all over. I am super-clumsy and I fall down on plain old asphalt, so I suppose on cobblestones I fall down, shatter and then burst into flames or something. But I like Jonathan Coulton very much, so I braved the hipsters and meat-funk and cobbles and somehow made it to our dinner destination, and I’m glad I did, because it was phenomenal. Really. It’s called Highline, and it’s a Thai fusion restaurant. The decor was lovely, the food was delicious and plentiful and not expensive, the iced tea with lychees was nummy, the waitresses were nice and friendly, it was just great. I also recommend that if you go there, go early, because we went at 5:00 and by the time we left, it was half-full. One can only imagine how packed it gets at 8:00. It’s on Washington Street between 13th Street and Little 12th.
Then we went to the concert. I don’t much care for live music (uncomfortable chairs, loud, etc.) but this had to be one of the best concerts ever. Really. Everyone had a good time: the audience, the performers, everybody was just thrilled to be there. The opening act (Paul and Storm) performed for about an hour and were amazing and funny, and then Jonathan performed for a hour and a bit and was terrific as well. He had eight people performing behind him playing ukeleles (the Kristen Shirts Ukelele Army, I believe they were called) and at one point they also played kazoos. And you could sit at tables and have dessert items and no one stood and blocked your view, a fantabulous time was had by all.
If you are a geek, especially a computer programmer/video game player geek, you must discover Jonathan Coulton. Here are some of his finest works:

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/primer/listen/

I recommend “Code Monkey”, “I Crush Everything” (I found out at the concert it is a song about a squid who hates himself, which might be the greatest idea for a song in history), and “Mandlebrot Set”. They don’t have my favorite song there, “I Feel Fantastic”, but you can buy his music on his website, you don’t even have to brush your hair or interact with other humans. Bonus!

Major shout out to one of my newest readers, J. George, who is on bed rest for the next bunch of weeks due to ultra-uber-pregnant with twins. Good luck J. and enjoy this nice quiet time to yourself.

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