Positively medieval

I swear, there are days....

Look for the English subtitles near the bottom of the video.


Just goes to show ya, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
 

When I grow up

I love Dooce®. I know, I'm late to the party. Heather's already famous (been on the Tee-Vee and everything!) and pretty much lives off the income from her blog now and has an ® after her blog name and everything. Yup, she's pretty much as commercialized as a blogger can be. And boy howdy, do I envy that.

You may be surprised by my fondness for Heather's blog since she definitely does not fit my typical favorite-blog profile. She's not a food blogger or a smart-ass guy in a technical profession. She's quite a bit younger than I, and sometimes it bothers me that I can't get into the music or some of the other things she says she loves*.

But she's smart and funny and edgy and says bad words in her blog. Her photography and design sense -- both of which I am congenitally incapable -- are amazing. I'm a sucker for all of the above. And that's why I love her blog.

As a tribute to Heather, I'm going to blatantly copy-cat and blaspheme the shit out of share my interpretation of her Daily Style. Please prepare for a dose of:

Random Liz-ness


Black Shoes
RANDOM LIZ-NESS FOR 9.28.2008

These are the shoes I wear almost every single day to work, rain or shine. Because I can. I suppose I get partial credit because they're Skechers; at least they aren't Easy Spirit. Or White Stag. They willingly accept my benign neglect and overuse and keep on tickin'. When they finally decompose off my feet I will be very, very sad.

(Don't look too closely -- I haven't shaved recently. And hey, why do my ankles look fat?)

* WTF?!?!
 

But it's a dry heat

Now that you mention it, I am feeling a little parched.
 

My loony bun

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet! I gotcher Grade-A Guaranteed Friday Rocker! right here.


Kalluri Vaanil by Prabhu Deva, 'translation' by Buffalax

Young Son & I have been enjoying the hell* out of the Indian music videos we're finding on YouTube, both the real ones and the fake-English-subtitled ones.

The whole Bollywood thing is such a different aesthetic than we're** used to. I find it charming that many of the men in the Indian music videos would not exactly be considered hunky here in the Ol' Yew Ess of Ay-uh.

I admit, I'm a little bit smitten with Prabhu Deva and his crazy mad dance moves.

Don't get it? Check this out. Puts it all in context. So g'won wi'cho crazy hobo sef, Prabhu Deva!

* To be precise, Young Son has been enjoying the heck out of them. I, on the other hand, have been enjoying the shit out of them. I figured 'hell' split the difference.

** That would be us Amurrikins
 

Phukitol!

OK, stand back -- she's gonna blow!

Top ten things pissing me off this week:

10. Whatever the hell is going on with the economy. I'm trying not to make direct eye contact with it (lalaLalaLAAAA... I can't hear you....) but it's still scaring the shit out of me. I'm considering stuffing my garage full of dried beans and rice. And canned peaches -- lots of canned peaches. But even delicious canned peaches won't help my puny-ass, pathetic retirement funds. I will never be able to retire.

9. Walking into the bathroom at work this morning to find both toilet paper rolls empty. C'mon, people! If you have to scrape the last square off with your fingernails, it's a good indication that you should reach out the two feet in front of you to grab a fresh roll and change it out. You can lay in a darkened room with a cold cloth on your forehead afterward, if you must.

8. Me vs. me: Left brain vs. right brain. Some weeks are harder than others. Especially when there are other people that need to be taken into consideration. Makes things so complicated....

7. The election. I haven't watched national news in months and won't until November 4th. And then I will be watching with my hands over my eyes, peering through my slightly-splayed fingers, whispering pleaseohpleaseohpleaseletitend....

6. My car required $400 worth of emergency surgery yesterday. I was also advised that there's another $1000+ of work that MUST BE DONE STAT if it is to survive. It is cheaper than buying a new car. It is cheaper than buying a new car. It really is. Really!

5. Sarah Palin. Puh-leeze! How stupid do they think we are? But in her defense, she can see Russia from her house. I admire that in a woman.

4. My shoulders. Last year I went to physical therapy twice a week for 12 weeks to treat my left shoulder for a complaint 'common to older women'. Now my right shoulder is giving me grief, to the point where shaving my right armpit presents a challenge. Considering I'm so blind I can hardly see my right armpit anyway, bringing a sharp blade anywhere near it could constitute a health hazard. And the measly 14 hours of leave I have left for the year is not gonna cover 12 more weeks of prescribed torture.

3. School fundraisers. I paid $30 for two pieces of cheap plastic shit I neither need nor want so Young Son can 'win' a tub of plastic snot.

2. The other day I caught a guy at work watching porn on his computer. I could have lived the rest of my life quite happily not knowing that this 65 year old guy liked to watch a Lesbian MILF Seducing a Teen on YouTube. This is the same guy I walked in on in the restroom a few months back. Ew.

And the Number One thing making me say 'Fuck' this week is....

1. Money. 'Nuff said.

Is it Friday yet?
 

Wreck-tastic!

Have I told you about Cake Wrecks yet? No? How could I possibly have overlooked what has become one of my go-to blogs for quick laughs at the expense of others?

Jen was inspired by the very same cake that caused me to snort coffee out my nose last fall. Except she did something about it. That one unintentionally hilarious wreck spurred her to round up and broadcast cake disasters that someone, somewhere, actually paid cash money for.

It's almost impossible to pick a favorite post, since each new freakish edible is more astonishing than the last, but I do particularly love the Fan Wrecks. These are intentional Wrecks, made by fans to honor the spirit of Cake Wrecks past. The last cake in that post was particularly inspiring, as it combined the absolutely worst elements from several Wrecks. It's positively inspired!

As a recovering cake decorator, I find Cake Wrecks to be both painful and hilarious. What more can one ask from a blog, really?
 

Big head

I reached into the back seat of the car to get my purse and found this staring up at me. Eeeeeek!


Even better, it's a bobblehead! After some quality time spent shooting it across the living room floor and giggling, I gave it to Lovely Daughter to take back to NYC to share with her actor friends. It's good to know that if you really hit the big time, you too can have your likeness crafted into a freakishly proportioned bobblehead on wheels.

I wonder if these things give Natalie Portman nightmares?
 

Chicken Chronicles: I did it!

After a couple of years of chickening, we* decided to adopt a couple of retired racing greyhounds. No, the two events are not connected in any way. I am just random and arbitrary like that. It's the Shiny -- I'm powerless in its grasp.

Greyhounds are sighthounds, bred to chase small game. They are, as you might suspect, irresistibly attracted to motion. Especially racing dogs, where this instinct is honed to a fever pitch during training where they chase the white, furry thing around the track all day long**.

The chickens were kept in the shed/coop at the far corner of the yard, surrounded by a 7+ foot high chicken wire fence. They were, for the most part, secure. Oh sure, there had been a few escapes early on before we realized that a) chickens can fly, kind of (especially the Leghorns), and b) chickens can move an amazing amount of dirt, especially when they scratch too close to the fence and create an apparently irresistible egress***. I guess even a chicken's walnut-sized brain can discern the apparent disparity in the hues of grass from one side of the enclosure to the other. But with a judicious application of chicken wire, plywood, and large rocks, we considered those issues resolved. And, as you can probably imagine, our back yard looked simply fabulous!

Now Cosmo, the male, was the larger dog and therefore the most cowardly. Upon his arrival, I'd taken him out by the chicken yard to see what would happen. He seemed slightly interested and tentatively stuck his nose out to sniff, until one of the chickens fussed, at which time he balked and bolted to the house. Wanda, the more compact hound, was one cool customer. Although she seemed to have a pretty decent prey drive (at least where cats were concerned), she showed no interest in the birds whatsoever.

(I'm pretty sure you know where this is going but I'm pressing on, mainly because I love to hear myself talk... er, type. Whatever.)

One afternoon I look out the kitchen window to see Cosmo tossing something around the yard****. It looked like a white plastic grocery bag. He seemed to be having a good time, but then I realized he'd probably ingest it, whereupon it would block his intestines and cost me a thousand dollars at the vet. I decided I'd best go relieve him of it.

By the time I reached him, he was standing over his booty (Ha! Snort!) with an unmistakable expression of purest and most radiant joy on his face. He was positively beaming with pride. And I swear I saw a thought bubble appear over his head:

' Look! I did it! I caught the white fluffy thing! I really did it!'

No, that was no simple bowel-obstructing plastic bag laying on the ground between his front paws. It was an Ex-Leghorn.

I felt genuinely sorry for him as I swallowed my bile, grabbed his collar, and dragged him away from his moment of glory incarnate. The expression on his face as I shut him in the house was heartbreaking.

Until I had to go pick up the bird. Luckily he hadn't managed to eviscerate her. And did I mention my unreasonable fear of dead animals?

Whitey, safely double-bagged, followed her compatriot to the giant landfill in the sky. Released from captivity, Cosmo stood over the site of his greatest achievement, obsessively combing each blade of grass for any signs of his moment of conquest, to no avail. Was it a dream? But it had seemed so real....

We never did figure out how he got at her. Nor did we figure out how he got a hold of the next one. He must've stood by the fence, willing them to come out with every fiber of his being. Or something.

I tried to deny it, but I realized even then that was probably the beginning of the end of the Chicken Chronicles.

Be sure to check back for the next and final installment, where Hubby utters the timeless quote: 'If I saw one rat, I saw fifty....'

* And by that I mean I.

** Or not. I could be making up that whole paragraph.

*** I was going to say 'glory hole' but that would be inappropriate.

**** Wait for it...
 

Really?

Is this song really almost 30 years old?? Maybe so, but on this Friday it still Rocks!



Yeah, it's old -- old enough that there isn't an Official Video on YouTube. I guess since it still gets fairly regular airplay on my favorite radio station, it doesn't feel old.

Then again, neither do I. But I got married that same year so you'd think I must be, too. Except I was 8.
;)
 

Tell me it isn't so

Is there really a large enough market share in the universe for beer, clam juice, and tomato juice cocktails to justify this?



In case you can't read through the reflection* that's Budweiser and Clamato. Or, if you're watching your waistline, you can opt for the Bud Light and Clamato.

Even the thought of Clamato weirds me out. But throwing Bud on top of it? I'm obviously missing something. At $3.50 a pop, it better either taste freakin' amazing (color me skeptical...) or deliver a buzz that would knock Ken Kesey on his ass.

Urp... I think I need a Tums.

* Once I realized what it was, my stomach started rebelling. By the time I did a cartoon-worthy triple take and grabbed my cell phone, I didn't spend too much time composing the shot for fear of hurling in the grocery store. Sorry.