Happy Birthday

Cheese!

This is kind of an iLike entry (Lord, even though I don't have an iPod or iPhone, Apple has still influenced my life too much). Because I've been thinking a lot lately about the things which make me very, very happy, as simple and mundane as they might be. Call it my cream-cololored-ponies-and-crisp-apple-streudels entry :)


MUSIC

CHEESE

Oh, cheese, I love thee. I love you like the moon loves the Earth, like that rich chick in Titanic loved the poor guy who died to save her, like star athletes love steroids. It's impossible to describe just how much I love you. I think I love you even more than my phone.

I mean it.

Queama Mahon Cheese from Spain

Beemster with Field Garlic (Dutch cheese)

Havarti cheese with herbs and spices (Danish cheese)


A nice cabernet with any of these cheeses will promise happiness for a few sweet shining moments.

WEBSITES
http://www.fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/
and
http://www.caloriecount.about.com/

CIGARETTES
I'm not gonna lie; I miss Gauloises cigarettes.

MOMENTS AT WORK

This teenage guy asked me the other day, I know I'm not old enough to ask, but how much are your beers?
Later, my favorite Italian customer: What means this word? He points at a pamphlett, his finger snuggling against the word "sigh." I show him, It's like {I put the back of my hand to my head and let out a heavy breath}
He says Ah! Sospiro! I say, Yes! Yes like the Mozart piece 'Voi Che Sapete' and sing Sospiro e gemo senza voler! He smiles.
Ebony shows me how to do my hair: Girl, don't you know what you're doing?

MEN

Men who take me to see the symphony. I like that.

* * * * *

Lucky Indian Ocean Dwellers!

Obama Loves Good Food

We Likey Him. 68% approval rating so far.

The Plan. Will it get Bipartisan support?

YouTube taking the Hulu route. They have to; they really don't have a choice.
New Poe Biography He would have been 200 years old January 19th.
Mr. Freud, Women Are Still A Total Mystery. This study on male/female sexuality is pretty fascinating. But still just goes to show neither sex seems to know what women want.
But Chivers, with plenty of self-doubting humor, told me that she hopes one day to develop a scientifically supported model to explain female sexual response, though she wrestles, for the moment, with the preliminary bits of perplexing evidence she has collected — with the question, first, of why women are aroused physiologically by such a wider range of stimuli than men. Are men simply more inhibited, more constrained by the bounds of culture?
...“The horrible reality of psychological research,” Chivers said, “is that you can’t pull apart the cultural from the biological.”
* * * * *
Listening to: Maria Taylor

:)

The most boring blog entry ever in the whole history of the world.

"Christina's World" Andrew Wyeth

So I've been a bit rocky over the last week or so. Mood swings and such, terrible dreams, the revisiting of awful memories. It makes me wonder - how much should we process and how much should we bury? It also made me think I either

a) need to get on meds
or
b) need to make a serious assessment of my life.

I've always been a windblown, zany kind of person and the notions of order and structure are kind of foreign planets to me; but I think I'm a good person with a good heart. Just horribly irresponsible and dareIsayit messy. I lack ambition, but have a lot of talent; I've just never known what I'm supposed to be doing here. I know I love my family and friends, and the poetry of people like cummings and Plath and Neruda, and Fellini films and Steve Martin, and, god, music. Music is EVERYTHING. And it seems that's all I need to be happy in life. Shouldn't there be more? Why are my aspirations so limited? Why am I content with so little? Why this blog such an utter bore today?

And why do things like THIS make me so happy?

Ah, well...

* * * * *

Despite his {epic fail} of a "press tour" in the last weeks:
Bush Still An Idiot

THIS is all I had to do to pay for college??

These folks must feel like the luckiest people on Earth.
And some Images to go along with that :)

Marie Antoniette never said let them eat cake.

The sad state of foreclosures.

RIP Andrew Wyeth
The greatest living American painter dies at 91.

* * * * *
Quote of the Day:
New York Magazine: Is there anything about the new New York that's better?
Woody Allen: Uh, well, it’s safer. But, you know, I think change of this sort is almost always negative. Things degenerate.

Deeper Shade of Snark

Film critic David Denby has a new book out called Snark.
Here's USA Today's soft-toothed interview with Denby
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-01-11-snark_N.htm

In contrast, here's Adam Sternbergh's snarky review of Snark.
http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/53159/

Given Denby’s age (65) and position in the firmament (film reviewer for The New Yorker), he could have written the most concise, insightful, artfully balanced, and expertly argued book about snark and still come off like an Internet-age Andy Rooney, wagging his finger from his rocking chair at the boisterous kids on the lawn. And he has not written the most concise, insightful, artfully balanced, and expertly argued book about snark.

ouch!

My favorite -

Did we simply transform overnight into a nation of venal assholes?

I don't have much else to say, except that I love Nate Silver's blog FiveThirtyEight
HERE read his recent entry regarding Obama's stimulus and Greg Mankiw's trashing of said stimulus. I found it very educational!

and

NYT article about the controversy surrounding new surgeon general Sunjay Gupta

You Know Why!!!

I can't stop laughing when I watch this clip. Maybe it's because now I will forever think of la flor when I see it!

The Bad Girl Planner and Other Stories

Even though it has only been a week since my last post, I'm assessing my resolutions.

1. Still a procrastinator. Some things never change.
2. Working out every day and eating vegetables - woo hoo!
3. Social, but tired.

Regarding #3, I feel like an old person. All I want to do is stay home and drink hot coffee under a blanket. But I'm trying! I've actually left the house more than twice this week! See? Now that's progress.

The year has just begun, and it has already brought such change with it. A few days ago, my best and favourite cousin had an 8 pound, beaming little boy - he's absolutely beautiful. I grew up with her, and I consider her a sister; so the idea of her pregnant and in another country is overwhelming. If all goes well, I'll trek over to Korea this year to visit her and baby.

My friend Vanessa bought me the Bad Girl's Planner :)


Which leads me to believe that I have given someone the impression that I live an exciting life, in which I actually do exciting things.

I'm stuck working a ten hour shift today, which inspired me to draw a powerful and well-crafted, walls-of-the-Louvre quality drawing depicting me crying next to a warm, comfy bed. I will have to upload this photo later, as I obviously don't know what I'm doing today and can't show you now. ****




My brother has an awesome YouTube page with videos recounting the time when San Antonio's BEST record store Hogwild was involved with the Anti-Censorship League in the 80s. He's also got some incredible playlists set up - watching them is like watching MTV circa 1982 (he's even included the astronaut on the moon station identifications which aired between videos). It made me ache for classic MTV. I blame the current bland, commercialized, why-are-we-still-called-MTV-when-we-don't-play-music-anymore inanity of the current station on the very first Real World, which led to the reality t.v. hot-tub entertainment that I despise SO much. Anyway...

Here, have some amazing photography today why doncha?
In Design class, I was slightly obsessed with perspective, so this collection is a joy to me.

COBRA, you are useless to me.
For those without insurance, COBRA is meant to be a cost-effective alternative, but I know from personal experience it's hogwash. This article also tells us that unemployment has jumped from 7.2%.
"For every 1 percentage point rise in unemployment, the number of uninsured Americans climbs by 1.1 percent."

Fred Kaplan's Best Jazz of 2008.
And HERE is a link to his fantastic Jazz blog :)

Blagojevech finally gets the bye-bye.
About damned time.

Al Franken named senator of Minnesota.
About damned time. Coleman brings on the lawyers. {sigh}

And finally, ex-evangelist Ted Haggard tells us all about how 'complicated' his sex life is in new documentary.
Yes, living a lie is definitely complicated. God forbid we embrace who we are sexually AND spiritually. I'm curious to see what insight he may offer in this HBO film.

Currently reading: Trash magazines and a month-old copy of Newsweek.


**** EDIT: Ha! Here's the picture

I even procrastinated in posting this entry!

So the new year has started and I'm already behind on my New Year's resolutions, which brings me to my first resolution:

1. Stop procrastinating.
I am the WORST procrastinator known to man (or would that make me the Best?). I put off EVERYTHING. And, I mean, everything. My whole life is on hold right now, because I refuse to make a decision about anything. There is currently a museum display case at the university I no longer attend (done, finished, finito - took me ten years to graduate - I was on the procrastinator's plan), which I STILL have not returned to our local art museum. Because I am a BAD, BAD person. Even though I swore to a nagging professor on MY LIFE that I would return it. Which means any day I will be struck my lightning. All because I am the worst procrastinator known to man.

2. Lose ten twenty pounds.
God, I'm so typical. Aaargh.

3. Stop being a social hermit.
I really don't know that I'm entirely sincere about this one, because in the last few months I have been treasuring my time alone. I have never been so comfortable sitting by myself reading or watching movies. I LIKE being alone. If anything, my Netflix subscription will be the death of me (if not the lightning attack caused by lone museum display case), as it makes me never want to leave my house. But is there really anything wrong with that? I'm not so sure. I'm just not sure real, actual people can be as entertaining as flashy Busby Berkeley dancers and the rocker vampires of Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark (though a part of me really hates that movie, I still prefer it over a dinner party or a night out at a club).

Well, that's pretty much it for now, because I'm too lazy and tired to think of anything else.

Oh, wait - One More! Find new non-slacker job. I love my job, I do. But it pays horribly and my favorite, favorite boss is leaving, so I'm kind of feeling whats-the-point. It's time to move on. Kind of glad boss is leaving, because if she stayed, I probably would stay here forever ... that really makes me sound like a stalker, but I'm not - I promise, I've just known her a very long time (70 years in dog-time).

* * * * *

I found this blog through someone else's blog and I LOVE it so much I want to marry it. Come to think of it, it probably would not make a very good husband, but I don't care.

http://fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/

I never thought hating on animals could be so much fun.

* * *

A pretty mess in Illinois.
Well, it's not so pretty really. Actually, it's not pretty at all.

Obama's in Washington now!!

Michigan's Green Jobs Initiative

The last moments of Columbia.
This article made me cry.

Lastly, I am so, so sorry for the actor John Travolta and his family. I've read so many blogs (it seems reading blogs is all I do with my time, well other than watch Busby Berkeley musicals) which detail and criticize his religion, his sexuality, the manner of his son's condition and death. But none of this matters. The man lost his child. There are few things worse than that experience, no matter who you are or what crazy religion you practice.

Happy New Year!!!