My life is made of win, Pt. 1

First-year finals are sucking the marrow from my bones, so this update is just going to be tidbits from my ridiculous life -- musings and events over the past few weeks. Read them. Ponder them. Meditate on them. And, go to bed feeling superior because you didn't brain yourself on a drawer while doing push-ups. Yeah, I did.

• I may have eaten a moldy tortilla. I make yummy veggie wraps. I was enjoying one recently when I noticed a blueish spot on the tortilla. I picked it off and finished the wrap. Shut up, I'm poor.

• Last week I engaged in a slightly uncomfortable stand-off with a spider in the bathroom. Before I had the chance to notice his presence in the corner, I became momentarily occupied. I made a shaky peace pact with him, promising the I would not kill him if he didn't move from his spot on the wall. I grabbed him and flushed him immediately upon standing up. Better to be feared than loved.

• I have recently begun getting emails from Plow & Hearth. I have no idea why. I don't even own a horse.

• I discovered a new workout that makes me bust out my katana for choreographed movements to build balance and strength. I did a little fencing in college. This is nothing like fencing.

• This website (Texts From Last Night) makes me laugh. And cry a little, because I know some of those submissions are from my friends.

• My friend has decided that she's going to try to get pregnant during her second year of law school. I try not to look at her as if she's grown a second head. In fact, I think I would enthusiastically cheer a second head. It would definitely be more helpful in law school than a baby.

• You should be watching Dollhouse Friday nights on FOX.

• My voyeuristic squirrel has been mysteriously absent from the roof next door. I kinda miss him. I have notice a cat prowling that roof, though. If he doesn't show up in a week, I will avenge him.

• I was shocked to find out that my local Wal-Mart doesn't have a gun section. Nor did it have roller-blades. What the fuckity fuck kind of Wal-Mart doesn't have guns and roller-blades?

Cheers...B

Hump Day Hype

I'm going to start a tradition. Today is Hump Day which marks the halfway point of my week's worth of bad decisions. So, every Wednesday, I'm going to promote something that saves my ass on a regular basis. Hopefully, someone out there can learn from my poor judgment. Power through the learning curve.

Being a tremendous music snob, I like to go to live shows at smaller venues to see relatively unknown bands. A few weeks ago (here comes my shameless plug for good souds) I saw Hot Leg, and last night I saw The Hypo Twins for the second time. But the next morning, as I am picking up the mess of clothes that I just threw on the floor in my rush to get to bed, I notice the same smell emanating from the mountain of fabric: a mixture of my perfume, gin, smoke, and sometimes the Eau de Douchebag body spray of whatever lonely-heart was trying to air hump me on the dance floor.

So today, I am hyping laundry day.

-Because I am convinced that hot water heals all things.

-Because it gives you a chance to appreciate your neighbour's drug addiction when you have to lug your shit down the street to the laundromat because he's cracked open the coin bank again. Seriously, dude! I will pitch in a dollar a week and take up collection with the other tenants if you'll just leave the machine alone.

-Because it's like baptism without the tears and salvation. It washes away your sins (unless they're really, really bad), and makes your wardrobe feel new...ish.

-Because it reminds you that you're an adult and therefore, some parts of your life must suck.

-Because the long-sleeved, white blouse goes well with jeans and with your suit, but the bar stamp ink from your wrist is not part of the hire-me look.

-Because wiping down your clothes with dryer sheets is no longer a rung on the hygiene ladder. Shut up, I mourned its passing.

-Because it's only sexy to wear your boyfriend's jeans around the house. It's bad taste to wear them around the town.

-Because down-time waiting for the cycle to finish is a perfect excuse to catch up with trashy celebrity gossip.

-Because it gives you a chance to sing this awesome song:

So fresh and so clean clean...B

This is why I shun educational programming

I spent Saturday night sitting at home alone on the couch watching television. The sad-sack is not my typical routine -- my sitting alone is usually a result of the social incapacitation of being buried under mountains of case law and the fear of failure. However, this weekend, I was recovering from a bout of Hantavirus, or bird flu, or SARS and my friends were not done shunning my contagious ass like the Amish kid who refused to come home from Rumpspringa.

As if I didn't feel bad enough about myself, what with the shunning and Saturday night loneliness, the Discovery Channel was there to gut-punch me with a two hour program titled "The Science of Sex Appeal."

NOTE: Science has not yet found a cure for cancer or solved the world hunger crisis, but it has pinpointed the essence of sexiness. Science has shit for priorities.

Since I'm always up for activities that will subtly chip away at the fragile self-esteem I spent two years in the gym building up, I sat down with a bottle of wine and a jar of Nutella and said, "Bring on the pain."

After telling me that my Yeti-like gait and husky alto are not at all attractive, and that my above-average height will cause men to question my estrogen count (I have assholes for genes), the very feminine-sounding and thereby likely skinny narrator told me that none of this matters...once every month.

Twat kind of fuckery do you speak of, Discovery Channel?

The pixie-like Austrian scientist eagerly told of these magic "copulants" that a woman gives off during ovulation that cause men who get a whiff to be rendered incapable of distinguishing the relative physical attractiveness of a large spectrum of women. That's right. For about two days out of the month, women are the walking equivalent of a dark bar, a rockin' jukebox, and free-flowing tequila.

Why hasn't The Vagina Monologues jumped on this? I can hear it now. Scripted between the group chant of words to which I've always been ambivalent and the horrifying soliloquy of the woman who accidentally impaled herself on a bedpost could be this masterpiece:

MY VAGINA IS A HOMING BEACON! It lures you in with my siren song. Breathe deep my seduction and perish upon my supple cliffs.

Oh My Jewish Carpenter! I was ready to forward this information and a few spontaneous girl-power haikus to my feminist friends (all two of them), but then I realized that this was not news worthy of celebration. This was one big cosmic joke on the female sex.

God the Father, who created mitochondria, who knows the square root of Pi, who designed the platypus, and who paints in TrueColor rather than 256 bit, couldn't make us all look like Angelina Jolie, so He decided to make men blind?

That's some bullshit right there!

After that, I decided to forgo the next Discovery Channel program -- and probably every other show on the Discovery Channel hereafter -- when the teaser promised to explore the anatomy of sex by voyeuristically watching two people doin' it in an MRI machine. For the sake of science, of course.

Fuck you, science!

I may now return to my regularly scheduled programming...B

Vegan, eh? Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Over the past couple weeks, I've been transitioning to a vegan diet.  However, I've been very reluctant to share this information with people, which may strike my friends as strange considering I have no compunction about labeling myself a Republican and a Jesus-lover (but I drink a little).  The problem is, if I say I'm vegan, I usually get one of two reactions.

Ohhh! *sideways glance*  Oh.

This is the reaction I got from my sister when she asked what I was having for dinner one night, followed the next day by a cordial email from my dad with the non sequitur "So, I hear you've gone vegan" nestled between casual questions about how school is going and if I'd found a job yet.  I can just picture my mom standing in the kitchen with her coffee in-hand telling my dad, "I knew this would happen when she decided to move to California!"

ZOMG! IKR! Have you seen what they do to those poor chickens?!

No, I don't want to sign your petition.  It's not that I don't care about the chickens, it's that...well, yeah, I don't care about the chickens.  Or Natalie Portman and her line of hemp shoes.  In fact, I'll risk gout eating a 64oz. steak and a side of foie gras if it'll send Ms. Portman into a pearl-clutching frenzy.  And, yes, I did read the whole vegan starter magazine that PETA sent me.

The truth is, I'm not looking to make a statement -- I'm just poor and lazy.  When I bought meat, I did all the prep work, portioning it out in Ziploc bags, but I'd never remembered to defrost it for that evening's dinner.  So, it'd just get crammed into the back corner of the freezer, little ice crystals

forming on the flesh.  Wasted.  

It's much easier to just come home, throw together a salad and toss some tofu or garbanzo beans on top.  Or, to pop a frozen veggie burger in the broiler (8 minutes, each side).  I got home early today, and decided to make a pasta dish.  It turned out so pretty, I took a picture.  For the record, that's whole wheat penne tossed with pesto, tomatoes, basil, green onions, and Tofurkey Italian sausage.

Not every vegan is a bat shit-crazy, crystal-gripping hippie with a sheeps-over-peeps mentality (not to be confused with Peeps®, which are not vegan), and even PETA has had to admit that it does take the more practical route (WARNING: graphic images) rather than clinging to its zealotry.  (Sea kittens? Really?)  But, I just want to eat my arugula in peace, and I can do without the judgy looks and thinly-veiled commentary.

Meatlessly yours...B

What a CSSpool!

When I decided to start this blog (36 hours ago), I had the lofty notion that I would brush up on my HTML coding and learn CSS so that I could properly design my personal space on the interwebz.  I was not deterred by the fact that I barely have time to read my 50-page Contracts assignments or memorize the rules of federal procedure.  Just as my lack of photo editing software would not stop me from creating a mediocre work of banner art, I was convinced I could overcome the time constraints and learn a new language.

Three hours into my banner art project on a Sharpie-high, I started pouring through online tutorials and practicing my new knowledge in TextEdit.  At 2AM, I finally shut down the computer resolved to pick up where I left off following Monday's classes.  But, after a sleepless night being chased in my dreams by tags and floating elements, I decided it really wasn't worth it.

So, here it is.  I salvaged my banner, I settled on a pre-fab template, and you're going to read it or you're going to starve...intellectually.  There are children in Ethiopia who don't have access to this blog!

And, yes, I was channeling my mother for that last bit.

Hyper-Textually Marked Up...B