'Hi Stranger' is the creepiest thing I've watched in a long time

This video was shared on Digg with the headline 'Hi Stranger' Is A Weird, Relaxing And Life-Affirming Video You Need To Watch Right This Second.


IS THIS SOME KIND OF PRANK???? This is the creepiest thing I've EVER watched. The naked humanoid figure, the rubbing of the ground next to him/her, the whispered "I feel like I can really be vulnerable around you", "I just want to sit here and relax with you", "I love looking at you. I want to remember all your shapes."

EW EW EW EW EW EW EWWWWWWWWW!

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Watermelon Sangria: Reality vs. the lifestyle bloggers

A little while ago I came across this magical-looking DIY for watermelon sangria! Of course, it was dreamy and picturesque on the blog, like a hipster cooking show with a sweet little baby (by the by, I kind of love the prominence of the baby in this post where, I choose to imagine, the mama went on to drink an entire bottle of wine out of a watermelon. That kind of attention to detail really brings the retro vibe to life.)

It seemed beautiful AND remarkably easy: just hollow out a mini watermelon and blend it up with some mint and lime, strain the mixture, and pour it back in the hollow watermelon with some wine. Done! Summertime bliss!

Since I don't have a man to fan me with a giant palm leaf while I sip luxurious beverages, I invited a few friends over to partake in my summertime fancy and got to work.

Needless to say, my execution looked nothing like this fine lady's.

Here are some shots from what it looks like to make watermelon sangria in a normal, human kitchen:

Step One: Cut the watermelon in half and hollow it out, then blend it with mint and lime.

This is easy enough, and at first I felt like a lifestyle blogger goddess! I was only missing the adorable baby gnawing on watermelon chunks.

Here's the tricky bit: one mini watermelon is just a tiny bit too much for my food processor, so it kept leaking down the sides. I took to blending a bit, scooping some out, and then doing it bit by bit. So the task was technically easy, but slow and methodical to do without making a huge ol' mess, and even then, it was messy. I even tidied up a bit before taking this picture of the mess:

Here you can see the watermelon junk all stuck around the top of the food processor from past blending. The pink and green look pretty together though, don't you think?

Step Two: Strain the mixture.

This was harder than I expected. I had to pour it bit by bit into the strainer and really squeeze it through, otherwise I got barely a dribble of watermelon juice.

This gorgeous mint sludge was left behind:

Step Three: Mix in wine and pour into watermelon halves to drink.

More (mostly expected) challenges! Watermelon halves are round and squat. This shape is ideal for tipping and spilling, making it less than perfect as a drinking vessel. Of course, half the fun of watermelon sangria is drinking out of a watermelon, so this was a non-negotiable. Instead of pouring them into glasses like a total chump, I put the watermelon halves into bowls for stability. The problem was solved, but it wasn't very picturesque.

Step Four: Enjoy!

This was the easiest part, and is best achieved with some people to help you drink yours.

Oh, and you don't have to leave your pregnant friend out of Watermelon Sangria night! Instead of mixing it all up together, mix individual drinks and then she gets watermelon and fizzy water. Still good.

In fact, I wound up mixing a little soda water into everyone's watermelon sangria to make them a bit lighter and add some bubbles.

Finally, I may not have had an adorable baby to lend to the domestic goddess-ness of my experiment, but I did have a cat who desperately wanted to drink out of our watermelons. I can confirm that she did, indeed, get some watermelon sangria spilled on her.

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wrong laforge

I just got followed by "Dr. LaForge" on Twitter and got REALLY EXCITED thinking maybe it was Jordi LaForge from Star Trek.







It wasn't.

how to avoid being perceived as an odd fool: the 'know your words' edition

Sometimes I use words without quite knowing what they mean.  You know, like when you can recognize a word in a sentence, have a general idea of how it's used, but couldn't actually define it.  Unfortunately, this practice can lead to instances of using words that mean something totally different than you ever intended.

For years I've been using the word "finangle".  I used it in the context of sort of haphazardly putting something together to make it work.  Example sentence: "Can we just finangle something together to make this work?"  (Great example, right?  I know, I know, I'm a wordsmith.)

Then, not that long ago, I was trying to type that word into an email.  A professional email.  But the super-annoying autocorrect kept changing the word to "finagle".  After trying to change it back three times and having it forcefully correct itself back to finagle*, I finally figured maybe my computer was on to something.  Maybe I'd been misspelling/mispronouncing this word for years.  As a person who likes to be slightly pretentious about her use of the English language, this would be horrifying.

The result, I'm afraid to admit, was much worse.

Here is what I learned when I looked up "finagle" in the Miriam-Webster dictionary.

Okay, that's not what I wanted to communicate when I used this word. I never meant to imply trickery or dishonesty, but more of a bumbling "let's just figure something out so this doesn't fall apart right now" intention.

Then I thought, hey, maybe "finangle" is still a word, but my computer is being stubborn. Let's look that word up too.  The only definition came up in the Urban Dictionary.

Hmmmm…. yeah, no.  Ick.  No.  Creepy.

So when I suggested that we finangle together a solution for a kitchen device that wasn't working, or that we finangle a new option for an advertising campaign we couldn't afford at work, what I was actually suggesting was that we stroke (or pluck?) at it in a decidedly and weirdly sexual context.

Do people really do this?  Give each other a fro of pubic hair on the rear end?  I know that the generally accepted idea in the world of kinks is that if you can think of it, someone enjoys it, but, well, hmmmm….

So today's lesson in not being perceived as a odd fool is to look up what words actually mean if you don't know.

*Do you ever imagine our computers giving over-the-top sighs and eye rolls when we keep making the same mistakes over and over?  Because I do.

Stupid baking

Know what's the worst part of baking cookies?  Getting used to being able to go to the kitchen and just eat a cookie, or even better, some leftover cookie dough you saved in the fridge, and then having none left.

Then you have no choice but to eat yet another handful of your roommates chocolate chips that she probably actually wanted to use to bake cookies and you hope that she doesn't try anytime soon or notice that her supply is slowly going down, and she is moving out soon so maybe she'll just leave them?  Then you remember that she at least read your blog once before and might still read it and might now know that you just ate a handful of her chocolate chips and have probably done it at least one other time in the past.

Sorry, roomie.  Hugs?

Mascara FAIL

I have been wearing mascara every day for the past little while because of The Rules.

The Rules, if you didn't know, is an entirely offensive and ridiculous set of rules that some desperate women imposed on themselves so that they could get husbands.  Then they wrote a book about it and a whole bunch of other women were all like "We want husbands TOO!  GIVE US THE RULES!!!  If we don't have a husband yet the only thing that can be blamed is the fact that we have been too busy selfishly having a career and a life of our own and dumping our neuroses* on men instead of being beautiful roses for them to carry around on their arm!  THANK YOU RULES, YOU'VE SAVED MY LIFE FROM THE HORROR OF NOT BEING MARRIED!!!"  And they followed the rules and all got married.  Or at least bought the book and talked about it a lot and made it really famous.

Then 15 years passed and it's today and I am trying to follow the rules as a sort of personal challenge/project that wasn't supposed to be an exercise in masochism but probably will become one.  There's an explanation but right now you'll just have to trust me that I am not trying to hustle a man into marrying me by crushing my personality, because there are greater issues at hand: The Rules is making me go blind and ruin my eyelashes.

Here's how: one of the rules is that you're supposed to always wear make up.  Specifically, they say to wear lipstick all the time, even when you go jogging.  Problem #1 with this rule is that I don't jog and never will and they can't make me because this is not supposed to be a masochistic project.  Problem #2 is that I hate wearing lipstick because it makes my lips feel all greasy and it always rubs off the middle of my lips and gets gummed up around the edges of my mouth making me look like some kind of slack-jawed crack stumpet.  Not pleasant.  So I have chosen to wear mascara instead of lipstick, since, you know the eyes are the window to the soul and all that crap.

It's been a couple of weeks of daily mascara-wearage (as opposed to my usual a-few-times-a-week mascara habit) and suddenly my eyes are getting all itchy towards the end of the day, but not in the usual-for-this-time-of-year allergenic kind of way.  More like when you are wearing a bodysuit with sequins around the arm holes for your dance recital and it's the dress rehearsal and you've been dancing in it for 3 hours and you can't take it off so the sweaty skin and sequins are combining into a scratchy/itchy death and you spend all the time when you're not actually dancing trying to pull the sequined arm holes away from your skin for some momentary relief.  That's how the tender edges to my eyelids feel right now, and the problem is that there is nothing I can do to get relief!  There is no arm hole to pull away from my skin - what am I supposed to pull away in this scenario?  I'm pretty sure the end result here will be crippling blindness.

Also, I'm pretty sure that my eyelashes have gotten thinner, weaker, and more sparse since I've started wearing mascara daily.  This smacks of a conspiracy theory.

I may have to take a day off mascara tomorrow.  Sorry Rules, I may be dedicated enough to my project to risk driving away any guys that I might actually like by acting like an idiot around them because I'm doing what you say, but I will draw the line at a blindness/skinny eyelashes combo.  That is TOO FAR.

*The Rules seems to assume that every woman is neurotic and has all these psychological problems and anxieties to weigh a man down with.  It's constantly telling me not to plague a beau with my neuroses or burden him with my abandonment issues or phobias or problems that I should be talking about with my therapist.  They're one scalpel short of just cutting out my uterus and taking care of the root of the problem.  Probably the only reason they don't is because the husband they help me find will inevitably want me to have his babies, and a woman without a uterus, while joyously relieved of her natural hysteria, is an empty and useless shell unable to bear children.

Lindsey Lohan, why?

I am literally awash in shame.

First of all, I'm watching Just My Luck, that horrible horrible Lindsey Lohan movie that (I think) was the last one she made before descending into that sad alcoholic stupor where she kept bleaching her hair.  If that wasn't bad enough, I actually just teared up.  Don't worry, as soon as I felt the tears welling up I punched myself in the face so I could pretend that was the reason for my tears.  I think I fooled any ghosts in the room with me.

Oh crap, now I'm imagining ghosts in the room with me.  This night just keeps getting worse and worse.

Okay, now Lindsey is all torn up because she loves the man and can't kiss him, lest she mess with luck.  It's so hard for her because she can't kiss him and she can't not kiss him either.  I am feeling the comfortable, old judgmental attitude come rushing back and am ready to face the world once again.  Unfortunately, with a shiny new black eye.

Joe Cantari is a Jerk

Actually, he's a douche-toque.

Actually, he doesn't exist.  I just wanted to write a post about a fictitious person, saying that they're a jerk.  That way if this person actually does exist then they'll google themselves and be all "Oh no!  Someone thinks I'm a jerk!"

Hopefully he won't actually read the post and find out that I made the whole thing up.

Looking for Plausibility in a Sandra Bullock Movie (aka- looking for an evil wizard that can defeat Harry Potter)

I passed this afternoon watching Miss Congeniality 2 on TV.  Okay, here is your moment to judge me.  ...  Are you done?  It was just on, okay?  And I didn't really feel like doing anything else because it's Sunday and I have had a very busy week and I just want to relax and I will probably be working tomorrow even though it's a long weekend so LAY OFF OKAY???

*ahem*

As I was saying, I was just watching Miss Congeniality 2 on TV and realized that it's really a very logically implausible movie.  Yes.  I realized this part way through.  Do you need more time to judge me, or can we move on?

A good example is that scene at the drag club when they are trying to find the Dolly impersonator (oh, and by the by, there is only ONE Dolly Parton impersonator in ALL OF LAS VEGAS?  Really?  This is plausibility error number 1 - or probably number gamazillion) and they can't get into her dressing room because they are pretending to be performers but no one gets into the dressing room until they actually perform.  So then what do they do?  They perform!  It's hilarious!  A reluctant and uptight FBI Agent has to let her hair down and rock out to Tina Turner and be a convincing drag queen.  What a great scene in a movie!

Here's the problem.  Don't you think that FBI agents could just walk into a dressing room?  I know they're trying to be be subtle (as subtle as a showgirl in a drag show) because they don't want to scare away their source, but as soon as they walk in they tell her that they're FBI agents anyways, so why not announce it a few minutes earlier?  Or at the very least they could just walk past the queen sitting by the door to the dressing room.  I mean, I'm pretty sure FBI agents are supposed to be assertive.

Also, can we talk about this performance?  They pull off a totally cohesive live song-and-dance including surprise back-up dancers with no rehearsal whatsoever.  I won't even begin on the plausibility issues there.  Instead, let's look at one isolated moment.  The no-nonsense agent (can't remember her name) who is being Tina wants the back-up dancers to lift her up for a big finish.  She turns so her back is to the audience, flashes her badge, and orders them to lift her up.  They do it and it's a very well-executed lift.  The fact that people actually need training to pull off a lift isn't even the major problem here.  It's the fact that any civilian who is given a surprise order by an FBI agent who looks like Tina Turner will probably take a second or two to react to this new information.  I mean really, if you were dancing on a stage in your favourite drag club and then a Tina Turner impersonator turned to you, flashed a badge at you (where was she hiding it, by the by?), and ordered you to pick her up, wouldn't you think twice?

Come ON Sandra!

Also, this gem of a lyric popped out at me from the song playing during the credits:

"I get so excited feeling her anatomy"

Yes.

Sleep?

Lately I have reverted to what you might call "University Andrea."  University Andrea stays awake completely unnecessarily.  Right now it is not what you might call obscenely late, but it is late and I have absolutely no reason for being up.  I should go to bed.  All I have to do is get myself out of this chair.  If I get out of this chair I will have no choice but to put my snack dishes in the sink and brush my teeth and wash my face and lie down in bed.  That's just the way it works.  All I have to do is stand up.

That's it.

Stand.

Up.

Up?

Well, let's be honest, I'm never going to stand up as long as I'm typing.  It's not like I can get up and get ready for bed and write about that while it's happening.  I would have to either write about it in advance and thus be lying about what I'm doing and possibly still not get up after I'm done, or do everything and then sit back down to write about it and thus be back exactly where I started.  There is absolutely no way for me to tell you about getting ready for bed as it happens.

This, by the by, is the fundamental problem that arises in any novel written in journal or letter form.  They always end up giving far too detailed accounts of events, written as if the person is experiencing them at the time.  It's just not POSSIBLE.  Real letters contain abridged descriptions of conversations with the occasional direct quote, but only if it was something particularly hilarious.  A letter of a few pages or more actually takes a pretty long time to write.  Same goes for journal entries.  THIS IS JUST THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS, AUTHORS OF THE WORLD!  Let's try for some realism.

YEESH.

Okay, maybe I'll go to bed now.  Or I'll look up Wind Mobile to see if their cell plans really are cheaper or not.

PS: Speaking of novels written in journal or letter form, when are there going to be novels written in blog form?  Oh wait, there probably are.  I bet they're YA novels.  And terrible.  Wait, I'm going to look it up...  Okay, I didn't find any novels written in blog-entry form, but I did find a blog that is posting all the journal entries that make up the story of Dracula on the day they actually happened in the story.  Dracula is also a perfect example of a novel that has this problem, although they try to explain it by saying that Mina is an expert at shorthand, I don't really think that's a good enough explanation.

Update: The Wind plans seem complicated and not so much cheaper.  Canadian cell phone plans continue to be sad shadows of their global counterparts.  Sad shadows that rip you off, probably to compensate for how sad they are.

How a Stolen Jacket and a Bloody Foot Somehow Ended Up Being Components (but not causes) of an Awesome Night.

Last night, I had a Night on the Town.  Yes, it is an event that deserves a capitalized title.  Me and some lady friends decided we hadn't seen each other in too long, and we instituted a Plan.  A Plan that we followed, to the T.

Step #1: Attend a Girlie Movie that I Would Be Embarrassed to Admit to Seeing But Will Now Talk About on the Internets and Eat Lots of Popcorn Instead of Dinner

We saw The Back Up Plan.  It was terrible.  I mean, hilarious and awesome, just not in the way they intended.  I know what you're thinking, you're thinking did you really need to actually see the movie to find that out?  It's about J-Lo getting pregnant and then dating a guy who didn't get her pregnant!  How else could this turn out?  You are correct in saying this, but the fact of the matter is that a Night on the Town with lady friends is like Fight Club.  You don't ask questions.  (Is that even a rule of Fight Club?  I don't know, I saw that movie 10 years ago, which makes me feel really old now because suddenly things I did 10 years ago weren't that long ago in the grande scheme of things.)

There were many many problems with this movie that I would like to itemize because I think it would be hilarious, but I feel I should move on for now because I am using way too many words already on this post.  Needless to say, I left the movie being so glad to be alive and with awesome people (read: I was incredibly relieved that the movie did not kill me and that I did not have to spend any more time with the movie people, but was still glad I had gone through such a bonding experience with the real people I was passing the evening alongside.)

Step #2: Go to Restaurant Where Lady Friend Who Could Not Join Us Because She Was Working Works and Have a Drink

This was, need I say it, awesome.  I seriously considered suggesting we abort Step #3 of the plan because it was so awesome.  Why?  Because my Lady Friends are amazing and we got to talk about all sorts of Lady Friend-like things (note, they were not all "lady like" things.)

Step #3: Go to Nineties Night and Dance and Pretend We're Still in High School and Maybe Look at Cute Boys But Mostly Dance

This was where the night went somewhat awry, but managed to maintain good levels of awesomeness.  If you have never been to a Nineties night and were a teenager in the nineties, go find one and go to it now.  I don't care if the club is closed right now, just go.  Go because normally at a Nineties night, the club will be filled with awesome people just like you (I say you assuming you are just like me): people who are in their mid-twenties, like dancing, enjoy theme nights and nostalgia.  The proportion of gross people, girls who wear skirts that show their vajayjays, and lecherous dudes is much lower, and the proportion of really really cool people dancing and singing their faces off without caring if they look ridiculous is much much higher.  Also, somehow there is a much higher proportion of dudes who actually know how to dance, which pretty much makes me the happiest lady in the world.

Unfortunately, this night proved my previous paragraph entirely false.  Everyone was 20.  Everyone was trying to hook up and spending more time looking at other people than dancing their faces off.  Finally, EVERYONE was on the dance floor, which is normally an awesome thing, but this dance floor was particularly small so that meant there was no room to dance like it was 1999, and there was only room to wiggle around looking suspiciously like someone who is trying to be seductive whilst looking around for a spot with a little more room to move, looking suspiciously like someone looking for a cute boy to dance with.

This is the relative timeline of the night from arrival at the dancing location:
-Got into the club without paying cover because one Awesome Lady Friend is friends with one of the DJs.  Still had to wait in line though, after bragging to the dudes in front of us in line that Awesome Lady Friend would totally get us in ahead of them.  Then had to stand in line behind them.
-Chose to save $3 and not pay for coat check, because these small expenditures always seem really important even though I had already dropped $12 on a movie, $9 on movie snacks, and $5 on a drink, and would later spend another $17 buying drinks for friends.  Logic is awesome!
-Saved said $3 by stashing my coat on a windowsill instead of in a corner or on a chair where it would actually be inconspicuous.  Reasoned that it was a light spring coat with used kleenexes in the pockets, so no one would steal it.  More logic!
-Tried to dance, ran into problem of full dance floor.  Awesome Lady Friend offered to buy us all a round, mostly I suspect, as a means of escaping the claustrophobic wiggling.
-At bar stepped on what I thought was a piece of ice that got stuck to the bottom of my shoe.  Tried to scrape the ice off the bottom of my left shoe using the top of my right foot (logic?).  Felt painful scraping.  Felt wetness on my foot.  Realized it was one of the kazillions of shards of glass on the floor and I had just cut myself.
-Chose not to say anything about the growing pool of blood in my shoe, because the night was still young and I did NOT want to be responsible for turning a night of dancing to nineties music into a night of searching for disinfectant and band-aids.  Reasoned that the floor was probably soaked in alcohol and that would prevent my foot from becoming gangrenous.  (Note: I was not even drunk when I made this awesome decision, I am just that awesome.)
-Danced in the non-dance floor areas with Lady Friends because there was actually space there.  Was awesome.
-Met some friends of Other Awesome Lady Friend who joined us, chatted, danced, and chatted some more.
-Danced with a 20 year old.  Felt really old.  Did The Robot.  Felt better.  Kept dancing with the 20 year old because he was hilarious and despite his age seemed to embody the spirit of nineties night.  Had a Robot competition with someone else.  Met people who are rich.  Thought it was hilarious to meet people who are rich (because are people ever actually rich or does that just happen on TV?) but didn't say it.
-Felt good about all the awesomeness I was taking part in.
-Finally decided it was time to leave the club.
-Went to spot where I stashed coat.  Saw it wasn't there.
-Saw piles of coats nearby, reasoned someone may have thrown mine into that mix.  Searched through coat piles.  Did not find my coat.
-Asked coat check girl (who was watching my fruitless hunt) if there was any chance someone had given her my coat.  She said no.  I asked if it was probably stolen.  She said yes.  Felt less awesome.
-Had to tell my friends my coat was stolen because I was too cheap to pay $3 to check it.  Tried to reassure them that I didn't care because I was overheated from dancing and also I had gotten the coat for free, even though really the fact that it was free actually makes me more sad about losing it.  Felt less awesome.
-Decided to feel awesome even though I was coatless.
-Went back to restaurant from Step #2.  It was closed/closing, but friends who work there were still hanging out.  Sat around and talked to people who talked about doing drugs and pretended like I knew what they were talking about.  Realized that this is a regular thing to do for people who work in restaurants (hang out after hours in restaurant, probably having drinks from the bar) and felt like an anthropologist discovering a new world as I have never worked in a restaurant for more than one day.
-Remembered that my foot was bleeding.  Checked out the damage.  Foot looks okay, not gangrene, shoe is not so good, lots of dried blood on the inside.  Everyone exclaims things like "oh no!" and "look at your foot!" and "how did that happen?!?"  Tried to decide if this makes me trashy or super cool.  (I still haven't decided.)
-Realized it was painfully late and I am an old lady and don't stay out late like this anymore and I needed to get up early the next morning.  Made sure friends would get home safe and drove home (it's cool, I only had 3 drinks in the whole night and this was like 3am!  I was being responsible!  Except for the fact that it was 3am and I was not in bed.)
-Went to bed without washing foot, mentally composing threatening letter I could write to club owner if my foot did wind up getting amputated as a result of this glass-shard cut.
-Woke up and disinfected it.  Still no gangrene, declared victory over shard of glass.  Halted mental composition of threatening letter.

So now the only thing to do is ask if anyone knows how I should get the dried blood out of the inside of my shoe?  It's really cute, I will be way too sad if I can't wear it anymore, and I will feel unfortunate if I wear it with the blood and go over to someone's house and take off my shoes and then everyone can see my bloody shoe and will wonder what on earth I actually do with myself ever and how I can think I'm taking care of myself when clearly I'm not.

The Closet Project - follow-up

Yesterday I told you about my Closet Project.  Now I have a confession to make.  I totally cheated.  Not long after posting I realized that I was going out for a Night on the Town (which you may get to hear more about this at a later date - TEASER: the night ended with my jacket stolen and my right foot all bloody!  Whoa!) and that NONE of the clothes left to me were appropriate for a Night on the Town.  I'm not kidding!  I had, like, a semi-businessy blouse (the only one I own?), a dress that I can only wear with a shirt underneath it because it's all scandalous otherwise, and a black vest that I don't know what I'm going to do with at all.  That's IT.  And don't tell me I should have worn the dress with or without the scandalous-ness, because that just wasn't an option.

So I cheated.

I took an item of clothing out of my pile of "don't use again unless all other clothing has been worn" clothes when I had not yet worn all other clothing.  And I wore it.

This is a picture of said pile.  I know it actually doesn't look that big, but there's a month's worth of wear in that stack!  That green skirt on top?  That's the one I cheated with.  

I am sorry.  All the integrity of The Closet Project has been nullified in one fell swoop.  I don't know what else to say.