Guest Blog Salad

I guest-blogged in turn over at a lovely person's cooking blog. I rave about salad!

Also, here's the Armenian cucumber I used:

Yeah, that's right.

Vagina Toadstools

Thoughts for a Sunshiney Morning has something very special for you today: a guest-poster, Ivy Wilson! (Found here and here). This post involves Germany, yeast, and mushrooms. Or, as Ivy Wilson deems them, Teutonic Toadstools:

Vagina Toadstools

I’m not a great baker, but I know that bread is supposed to rise.  Now that I live in Germany and no longer have a full time job, I spend more of my day cooking that I did back in America.  When my bread dough didn’t rise, I blamed myself for getting the cheaper of the two yeast brands at the super market.  I promptly returned to the grocery store and purchased the more expensive yeast.  It was made by a well-known, high quality German brand, but it was dead too.

I consulted my most Martha Stewart of German women friends.  “Oh – the dry yeast in Germany is crap,” she said.  “Go for the fresh yeast.”  I don’t know what fresh yeast is, so I said to hell with this nonsense and baked a chicken instead.

But, there was one place that day in Germany where yeast was alive and well.  It had become itchily apparent that there was an overgrowth of yeast in my females.  I’d had a few yeast infections before, and I was well aware of the symptoms.  So – what’s the big deal – you might think.  Surely women in Germany have vaginas that occasionally get a little yeasty.  Surely they have drug stores in Germany.  Just go to one and buy a German yeast infection treatment.  Well, not so fast.  

Thrift Store Male Objectification!

Another one that's a little too saucy for Hello Giggles, but Bad Cholla sent me a picture of this epic poster for sale in a local thrift store: 

 Although...really...a woman's touch? Won't any touch at all do, really?

Tragic Lost Opportunity for more 30 Rock clips

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate...ack!



When posting about my party below, I completely forgot to include this 30 Rock clip, which sums up my attitude to entertaining:

Supernatural 7.4 Recap: Ghost Cars Not Scary; Everyone Feels Guilty, Except Sam

If there's one thing I've learned from watching Supernatural -- and never let it be said that time spent watching this show has not taught me anything useful -- it's that haunted cars are not scary. 

Arguably the worst Supernatural episode ever (Yeah, yeah, I know) is "Route 666" from Season 1, in which the villain is a racist truck. Yes, a ghost truck. A ghost truck that is racist. A racist truck.

It's so bad that they even refer to it as the "racist truck" when they get all meta in Season 4 and discover that Supernatural is a series of cult books.

Dean: Everything is in here, from the racist truck to me having sex. I'm full frontal in here, dude.

When the Impala gets possessed in Season 6's episode "Mannequin 3: The Revenge" (yup, it's actually called that -- also the villain in that one is a haunted kidney!), they at least play it for laughs: 

  "It possesses sex dolls! This is not a sex doll!" 

Thanks to here for gifs

  So, you'd think if there was ONE thing anyone involved in Supernatural would know, it's this: haunted cars. Not scary.

Guess how S.7 episode four, "Defending Your Life," begins? 

 

Yup. Ghost car. 

Even the guy getting chased by the ghost car thinks its lame:

A ghost car? Really? It's not even a meta episode!

tl; dr intro to Supernatural recap

Okay, so I've been totally failing at recapping Supernatural. 

Why? Well... 

30 Rock: I want to go to there.

I tried to find two clips from 30 Rock today for a Hello Giggles post: either the one where Liz Lemon is caught wearing a bathing suit as underwear or the one where she says, "I'm not sure you want to take advice from me on this. I ate a Three Musketeers bar for lunch and my bra is held together with tape." I could find neither, but I satisfactorily wasting time looking at 30 Rock clips and now I have them book marked for the right occasion!

So to celebrate 30 Rock coming back soon, here you go.

A reminder of why Jack Donaghy is the best ("It's after six. What am I -- a farmer?" is the moment I knew I was in the love with the show).

And now -- 30 Rock clips for any occasion!

Reasons I Love This Blog Very Much

• The ads google is currently displaying by my blog are for Wayne's World merchandise. HOW DID THEY KNOW????
• I finally made $100 dollars from ads on this blog (after several years of blogging), which I reinvested in another writing project (details to come!). So thank you, anyone who has read this blog and/or clicked on the ads. You are awesome; you enable my babbling here, and support my babbling elsewhere.
• Someone apparently found my blog by googling "I spilled buck urine on my phone." I love knowing that I'm the go-to place for urine plus electronic equipment queries!
• Also, someone found my blog by googling "accidentally." Just "accidentally." 

Here's a picture of me making a kissy-face while trying to raise one eyebrow: 

Here's a picture of me making a kissy-face but LOOKING ANGRY ABOUT IT:

Hello, Hello Giggles

Hello and welcome there, anyone reading this who came over from Hello Giggles. I have Julia Gazdag to thank for hooking me up there (the beautiful story of our meeting is documented here). Anyway, I'm writing a column there called "Adventures in Thrifting," in which I document (mis)adventures in the glorious seedy underbelly of secondhand shopping. My last column was about winter coats; I caused some very minor controversy by suggesting that warmth shouldn't be your #1 concern while picking out winter coats. As an "outtake," here's a picture of me in one of my winter coats that didn't make it into the post:

Supernatural 7.02 and 7.03: Everything Was So Awesome and Then Everything Sucked

Alrighty-roo, so obviously I'm waaaaay behind on Supernatural recaps. I'm going to do a compressed recap of 7.02 and 7.03, which is basically going to be a recap of just 7.02 because I REFUSE to do a full recap of the third episode. 

My reactions to the two episodes can be summed up by: 

Supernatural 7.01 Recap PART TWO: Villains That Will Kill You But Are Adorable

We then transition extremely subtly from Crowley's scotch glass to the cup of a blind beggar. A burn-y hand put money in the cup, so we guess that it's Cas, who earlier seemed to have had an Uncomfortable Burning Sensation in his hand.

Cas explains that the beggar is a true believer. "People say I'm wrathful, but I
only punish liars and those who forsake me. I am a just God." He then grants the beggar his sight.

Cas comes into focus, and the beggar spends a split second rejoicing over his miraculous restoration of sight before getting all judge-y on Cas, saying, "Your face! What's wrong with you?"

Supernatural 7.01 The pre-recap RECAP. (Recap implies spoilers, obvs)

Okay, so let's be honest. There were three things any good Supernatural fan was looking for in the Season Seven premiere:

Favorite Things!

Every time I saw the title to this blog entry, I'd get this song stuck in my head:



Yeah, that's Jane Horrocks! From Ab Fab! On this classic British television programme, she plays my Soul Twin, Bubble:




Here's a picture of me dressed up as Bubble for an Ab Fab themed party in college:

An alarmingly large chunk of the average day

Okay, so, like I said -- Imma try and do Supernatural recaps when the new season starts up. We'll see. There's like eighty billion things I could say about Supernatural but I think it's vital to the success of this endeavor that I not say as much as I'd ideally want to. Nick Hornby has this great moment in Fever Pitch -- he's says, when you're really obsessed with something (in his case soccer, or "football"), often when you're asked, "What are you thinking?" you have to lie:

At this point I lie. I wasn't thinking about Martin Amis or Gerard Depardieu or the Labour party at all. But then, obsessives have no choice; they have to lie on occasions...If we told the truth every time, then we would be unable to maintain relationships with anyone from the real word. We would be left to rot with our Aresenal programmes or our collection of original blue-label Stax records or King Charles spaniels, and our two-minute daydreams would become longer and longer and longer until we lost our jobs and stopped bathing and shaving and eating, and would lie on the floor in our own filth rewinding the video again and again in an attempt to memorize by heart the whole of the commentary including David Pleat's expert analysis, for the night of 26th of May 1989 (You think I had to look that date up? Ha!) The truth is this: for alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.

Substitute "Season 2 DVD commentary" in there and you get the picture.

For instance: complaining. I could do a lot of that; for instance, about Season Six. But there's already plenty of complaining out there, some of which I agree with and some of which makes me feel like this.

So, I'm going to limit myself. For instance, in this blog entry I'm only going to complain about promotional materials! No biggie. Everybody thinks about that stuff, right?

Things!!

So forever ago, I was like "Here are all the things my next blog post will include!" And since then I've been blocked, because I realized I wanted to write about a bunch of things that...didn't really relate together so well. So I thought I'd talk you through my thought process. 

Okay, here goes, deep breath, etc. etc. etc.

I'm trying to get used to Blogger's new interface and not feel all old-fogey-y and resistant to change. Dude, Blogger, I use Blogger! I'm probably not exactly quick on the uptake in the ol' technology/web department, ya know?

I mean, I've pretty much just discovered gifs! Have a gif!

Awesome Things My Next Blog Post Will Include

Received a text from Jason, saying, "Also stop reading this text and update your damn blog, slacker. Surely you could post about the wedding! Or weddings in general!"

I have indeed been to TWO awesome weddings recently. And I do have a long blog entry planned, which will include many awesome things: recipes, my ex-vegetarian back story, thoughts on leather jackets, bacon cupcakes, Julia Gazdag, who I met at the Portland wedding and who writes for Hello Giggles, which Pamela Ribon whom I have stalked written about writes for omg world so small etc etc etc. and more!

That's right. Bacon cupcakes:

But right now I'm busy blah blah blah grading book reviews novel revisions articles about weddings interviews etc etc etc. It's not like I'm sitting around in a Twilight t-shirt putting a Storm Trooper helmet on my head.

Oh wait.

Signs of Life: Politics in Arizona

Awwww! I miss my blog. I haven't updated in FOREVER. I miss being unemployed.

[This is hardly a revolutionary theory, but I'm pretty sure there's a direct relationship between "underemployment" and "amount of time spent blogging." Similarly, I'm pretty sure there's a inverse relationship between "amount of sex someone is having" and "amount of time spent blogging." No, I don't mean to say that bloggers are underemployed and sexless. I think they're underemployed AND/OR sexless]*.**

*Don't hate! Imma blogger! This applies to me too!

**Also, obviously doesn't apply to professional bloggers, who, like, blog for food and shelter.

Anyway, I've got a backlog of blogs I wanna post, but most are of the long/ambitious variety.  So I decided to go with a Signs of Life Photo Essay. Presented largely without comment, Politics in Arizona: A Photo Essay.

Okay, so lately I've been actually "busy," which is totally annoying. And personally, I hate it when a blogger I like to read is all, "Sorry I've been too busy to post!" because it produces a vast swell of existential angst inside of me, like, "Well, why haven't I been too busy to check the blog? Should I be busier? IS THEIR LIFE MORE BUSY AND IMPORTANT THAN MINE??"

Of course, 1) It doesn't take a great deal to produce a vast swell of existential angst inside of me; 2) This is very conceited and assuming lots of people are going to be sad/annoyed that I haven't been posting as much/am apologizing for not posting. OH MY GOD MAYBE NO ONE CARES EXISTENTIAL ANGST!

So in the spirit of being busy (WHICH I PROMISE IS NOT FOR INTERESTING OR IMPORTANT REASONS), I decided to post Really Old Pictures of Food: Five-Minute Ice Cream.

The Punner in Me Is Happy

A certain philosophy grad student I know has a food blog!

Guess what it's called? 

I know. Awesome.