I Googled myself, and apparently I've been written about in The Village Voice. I was never informed that my website would be featured in this article, but there I am anyway--and not really in a good way, depending on how you look at it. The article itself is about how blogs are the new porn, and the writer seemed to be genuinely confused, and a little hostile, about the fact that my website has sexual connotation in the title, but alas, nothing pornographic. It's quite hilarious.

Better yet, I'm featured on Electric Pen, which lists me as one of the best literary zines on the web. Dude, had I known all this information, I could have inserted these juicy tidbits into my cover letters when I was looking for a new job.

I'm also featured on a site called Best and Longest Sex Clips Links, which is ironic because the description that goes along with me is so taken out of context. "Full Motion Video clips, ambient music, believable ... without being a sex object. There have been other ... be produced. Perhaps the point best taken with The Longest Journey is that it ..." That is taken from an article I wrote regarding the state of women roles in video and computer games. But it sounds so dirty.

A couple other websites have me linked. Lauren the Sarcastic and NiceDyke.net.

Anyway. I had enormous fun Googling myself. Ooooh. That sounds naughty.

( 1comments )

at March 7, 2005 4:27 AM  perry said...

hi sarah,

thanks for paying me a visit and mentioning me etc :D

My site is severely in need of a good deweed and replant because I have not had time (working 135 hrs in 2 weeks, moving to a different country every year, moving house every 3 months) and resources (no internet at home) but cheers for the mention, your welcome, keep it up.

/perry

 

This reponse is due to something Ish posted here, in which he discusses road rage. And also he makes a more recent post called Road Rage Revisited, in which this poignant thought emerged: There are people out there who are trying to kill you, and they're not doing it because they're evil or because they want to take your money or because they hate you. They're doing it because they're 3 minutes late for yoga class, and that, to me, is truly more terrifying than murder.

This got me thinking.

Yes. 40,000 people die a year from car accidents. But what does that mean to me? When I was 18, I was rear-ended twice in 3 weeks. The first accident was minor, however, the second accident was me waiting for a school bus and a truck slamming into my car at 55 mph. Luckily, no bones were broken (I drove a 1964 Buick Skylark, a tank of a automobile), but I still couldn't walk for over a month. This knowledge (that 40,000 people die a year from car accidents) should terrify me. But it doesn't.

Upon further reflection, I have decided that this statistic doesn't scare me because I don't really know what 40,000 people is, even more, I don't know what 40,000 people dying is. There was the Asian tsunami, and entire island populations were wiped out. With headlines like these on local news stations, and on MSNBC, "Over 250,000 people died, including 35 Americans" it's no wonder that I feel disjointed from the numbers and slightly out of touch with reality. And if I feel disconnected from the magnamity of the situation, then I'm sure millions of others are disconnected as well.

Yes. 40,000 people die a year in car crashes. And it truly is scary that no one seems to be afraid of driving. Perhaps some people handle the knowledge with ease because they realize it's a necessity of life, and it's pretty much out of your hands if you need to drive to work every morning. Even if I'm the safest driver, there's about a million other people who are not. And so, every time I get behind the wheel, I am physically putting my life in the hands of my fellow Americans. These are the same people who got Bush re-elected, and these are the same people I wouldn't trust to babysit my cat, but I'm suddenly trusting these same people with my life. The sad thing is that even though I realize this, I know that most people probably do not think about it in such a way. And yet, I trust them anyway. I have no other choice.

I often think that our society does not deal with death in a serious way. When I'm watching Total Recall on the WB, like I was earlier this evening, I get bummed out that they won't show my beloved governor, Arnold, shooting Sharon Stone in the head. I remember that bullet hole being so perfectly formed, and it's a crime against the special effects make-up department to not air that footage. I could blame the violence in movies, television and video games for desensitizing the American public. But the fact still remains that Americans, as a whole, do not take death seriously. The only time it is taken seriously is in war movies, or during war-time, and even those deaths take on a life of their own.

War deaths are glamorous. Remember Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump? Every single male member of his family fought in every major war and died. It was supposed to be an honor. That is the kind of propaganda our heads are filled with on a daily basis. "3 more GIs were killed in Iraq? What? One of them was from Long Beach! Dear lord, that's a tragedy! What a hero! What a martyr! Well, at least he was fighting the good fight. For freedom!" It reads like a bad Irish toast.

When it comes to deaths of loved ones, how are we supposed to react? How are we supposed to cope, and grieve, and mourn? We don't know. Now talk about 40,000 strangers. Or even better, how about 250,000 foreign strangers. How are we supposed to react? Are we supposed to grieve? Are we supposed to mourn? But let's say we do mourn, let's say we do shed a tear out of sympathy for the loss of life, and *gasp* that tear is shed in public! What is the public reaction? I can tell you. I was at the grocery store and a lady walked by and said, "Quick yer crying. You've got nothing to be sad about!" and she proceeded for, oh, about 20 more seconds along those lines. I was dumbstruck. And believe me, she wasn't reprimanding me in a "Cheer up!" sort of fashion.

America is a melting pot of culture, and we don't have a foundational culture that unites us as a whole, or inparts moral wisdom, the way most countries have their own specific culture. Culture is what you, your family, or your community believes in, cherishes, and holds sacred. The problem is that even the special ones (the ones who actually have a culture), even those traditions get absorbed over time. (For instance, right now it's very trendy to be Indian in Hollywood.)

As a people, we are not really united at all. And I think that perhaps the corporations like it that way. If we all had a stronger belief system, or a uniting factor behind us, we would not be as susceptible to consumerism. I think the conglomerates realized this a long time ago, and have taken a "Divide and Conquer" approach. It's easier to market to people who have no built-in belief structures. Heck, for some people, marketing is their belief structure. It makes Star Wars Episode 3 a whole lot easier to sell that way.

Americans don't realize it, but we're in a war every single day of our lives. It's a silent war. It's a subtle war. Instead of a noisy war in Iraq, there is saturated fat and sodium clogging my arteries and product placement in television that brainwashes me. How will my death be mourned? Will it be mourned at all? Will my loved ones know how to mourn? Will they understand that I will never be walking, talking and playing Katamari Damacy again?

Until that day, I have to just have to get in my car and hope...

( 2comments )

at February 27, 2005 10:16 PM  Ish said...

You'd have been welcome to write it as a comment, but I like it better here where more people will see it.

Really American culture *is* the consumer culture. And we're exporting it around the world.

Thanks for your thoughts and this post.

 

at February 28, 2005 2:25 AM  Samantha said...

You know, you're right. America does have a culture. Consumerism. It's the only culture we've developed as a whole. Wow. That is so depressing.

 

You decide: click here

( 0comments )

I hate musicals.

I can hear the shock of surprise coming all the way from Michigan.

But I do. I hate them. I hate them all, except The Wizard of Oz and Damn Yankees, and if Doctor Dolittle (the 1967 version) counts, then that one isn't so bad.

I didn't use to hate them. In fact, I used to enjoy them once upon a time. I don't know why I enjoyed them, though. I must have been hopped up on the magic juju beans, or just exceptionally bored (remember, I grew up in a town of less than 60 people in the zip code, and where NBC was the only fuzzy station that came in). I have re-watched some of them, and they're downright stupid. West Side Story, in particular, rubs me the wrong way. I get that back in 1958 it was revolutionary because of the subject matter and the choreography and how it ushered musicals into the modern era. But whatever. "I Feel Pretty" makes me want to kick someone in the balls.

Another one that annoys me is My Fair Lady. Eliza Doolittle's voice is so obnoxious, I often feel inwardly glad that Audrey Hepburn's own voice was so horrendous that the director was forced to hire some unknown singer voice-over Audrey in the final cut. It makes me glad to know that the director didn't even warn Audrey of this fact before the premiere, so that she was utterly horrified--not to mention "robbed" of an Oscar (Grace Kelly deserved it that year far more than Audrey did anyway). Furthermore, when Eliza changes her voice to something pretentious and, if possible, even more obnoxious, Audrey Hepburn's whole tiny-waisted, doe-eyed, classy mystical balloon is completely deflated for me. She becomes a kind of horrible monster whose beauty is meant to carry the movie. Also, her beauty just makes the men in the film fall in love for her for no other reason than they want to get a handful. And what about the final freakin' line in the movie, when Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) says, "Fetch me my slippers!" I hate that this film is inherently chauvinistic and misogynistic. That just makes me want to kick another person in the jimmy.

I hate all things Andrew Lloyd Webber. You name it, if he wrote it, it disgusts me. Evita: boring. Starlight Express: my brain feels like it's going to melt--what's with the rollerskates! Jesus Christ Superstar: bleech. The only version of JCS that I ever liked was when Lorie, Des and myself made our own lyrics out of it, with many references to poo. The poo strangely matched exquisitely with the score as we parodied.

It gives me a great amount of satisfaction that The Phantom of the Opera movie completely flopped at the box office. If there was any justice in the world, George Bush would be impeached, Donald Trump would make his new wife donate her $200,000 wedding gown to some poor family so they could auction it and buy a house, and Andrew Lloyd Weber would have to refund every sorry fool who purchased tickets and mistakenly sat through his emotional pandering sentimental garbage. "The Music of the Night" is one of the worst songs ever written. It reads like my broody high school boyfriend wrote it in a fit of romantic depression. I think Roger Ebert says it best, though:

But what I am essentially disliking is not the film, but the underlying material. I do not think Lloyd Webber wrote a very good musical. The story is thin beer for the time it takes to tell it, and the music is maddeningly repetitious. When the chandelier comes crashing down, it's not a shock, it's a historical reenactment. You do remember the tunes as you leave the theater, but you don't walk out humming them, you wonder if you'll be able to get them out of your mind. Every time I see Lloyd Webber's "Phantom," the bit about the "darkness of the music of the night" bounces between my ears, as if, like Howard Hughes, I am condemned to repeat the words until I go mad. (I have the same difficulty with "Waltzing Matilda.") Lyrics like:

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world/Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before/Let your soul take you where you long to be/Only then can you belong to me.

Wouldn't get past Simon Cowell, let alone Rodgers & Hammerstein.

I know that Rodgers & Hammerstein are the institution of musicals, but I never liked Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I or The Sound of Music. They're all too cutesy in the end. Except maybe Carousel. I mean, the father is French white trash, is murdered, and comes back to somehow help his daughter, but ends up slapping her instead. It's awesome. It was interesting because it wasn't perfect and gleaming and happy, but ultimately the storyline ends up really boring.

The last musical I'll rail against is Grease. Why is it that every single teenage girl I knew wanted to be Olivia Newton-John. But they never dressed like her when she was sweet, they always chose the trashy version at the end of the movie. Which leads to why I hate Grease almost as much as I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber: the only way Olivia Newton-John could get John Travolta to be interested in her again was to dress like a slut. That is such a horrible message. And apparently an effective one as well, judging from the numerous girls I knew growing up who idolized her.

The only good things to ever come out of musicals: John Travolta's dancing machinations and ruby slippers.

( 3comments )

at February 25, 2005 7:43 AM  Ish said...

I'd agree with you about most of this. I tend to like Sondheim. My Fair Lady is a travesty. I' don't have any of your problems with Audrey (although I'll admit to possibly wanting a handful) but the ending is a total sellout. But you must have read Pygmalion, right? It was a bullshit ending that wasn't in the source material added to send the audience home happy, but it doesn't work because Higgins can't change and despite his attempts to fool others he's really a brute at heart. And Eliza can (and did) change and became a much better and stronger person than he was. You can't go back to what it was before.

This is a peculiar pathology with men in the modern era, that Bernard Shaw got almost picture perfect. Many men want a woman to serve them, the way they were raised, but they want to respect her too. And so long as she serves them and remains dependent, they can't respect her, so they push her to become more independent, and then when she does they wonder why the laundry isn't done. Twisted and broken, but it shows up over and over. Bernard Shaw nailed this, but in My Fair Lady they turn it into an exploitive fantasy that somehow these things can live together. And it never works that way.

 

at February 25, 2005 8:19 AM  Nicoli Ivanovich said...

Guys and Dolls is good for a laugh. The songs aren't really all that catchy though. It's more like Fraiser, on stage, with an audience, with musical numbers.

I'm glad that when I was in it I didn't have a singing part though because I can't sing well, and quite frankly I wouldn't want to be grouped with the people that did have singing parts in it either. Most of them sounded like they took turns sucking off a donkey.

 

at February 25, 2005 1:46 PM  Lorie said...

I actually enjoy Evita. (The movie, because I've never seen the stage version or even listened to a soundtrack of it.) The Spanish language connection probably lured me in. But "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" was one of my favorite songs for quite a while.

I have a couple of good quotes from Orson Scott Card about how much Phantom sucked that I shared with B once, so I don't know if he shared them with you, but I just posted them in my Livejournal so that I wouldn't have a five paragraph comment here.

 

I've started an online novella. I don't know if anyone else has ever done this before, but I've tried to start writing with friends, but since we live so far away from each other, it always manages to fizzle out. I've elicited the help of fellow Gossip Girl fan and my close personal friend, Lorie, to co-write with me.

So far, it's title Dead Sexy, but the title is subject to change often and at random.

( 0comments )

I had three cavities filled today. It was slightly depressing because I've never had a cavity in my adult teeth. I also have permanent gingevitis, but I knew that already. What I didn't know what that it is due to the fact that my crowded teeth are putting undue pressure on my gums and causing permanent inflammation. So no amount of obsessive brushing, flossing and Listerine use is going to fix it. The cavities are all in-between my teeth, and even flossing isn't preventing my cavities because the teeth are crowded to the point where flossing can't get at all the plaque. So I'm going to be prone to cavities and gingevitis until I can get the crowding fixed.

I need braces. That didn't come as a shock. I've known I needed braces since I was a teenager, but my mom gave me a choice: I could either get braces or get a computer, and like all good little nerds I chose the computer. And if I hadn't, I wouldn't know Brad, or any of my Michigan friends today, which if you think about it, is a little creepy to contemplate. Even though I had to have cavities filled today, I still stand by the choice I made. The computer brought people into my life, who have brought more joy to me than I have ever known. And that's totally worth the 3 cavities.

( 2comments )

at February 23, 2005 4:50 PM  Lorie said...

I've never been able to understand you "I've never had a cavity (before) in my life" people (Josh is one of them, too). I guess I just had too much candy and Kool-Aid in my childhood.

 

at February 23, 2005 10:35 PM  Gungy said...

Dude, I'm totally worth three cavities all on my own!

 

I'm watching a special on TLC all my byself. A Haunting in Connecticut. It's so scary. But I'm captivated. I can't change the channel. I'm so scared. I made Zhoul sit on my lap and watch it with me. And she was being so nice. At a commercial break though, she got up. And I begged her to stay, and she curled up next to me and nudged my hand so that I would start petting her. So I'm typing most of this post one-handed.

7:05 pm:
So the house was a funeral home before this family moved in, they moved there because their eldest teenage son got cancer and they needed to be close to the hospital. They weren't going to tell the children the history os the house because they had enough potential death hovering in their life. But Paul, the son who had cancer, felt like the house was evil and voices kept calling his name, and he's seeing apparitions, and the parents think it's his mental health deteriorating. But Paul was able to guess what the house really was and he told a brother. And the other siblings are seeing things as well, but the parents are convinced that it's just sibling hysteria.

7:23 pm:
What's really weird is that most of this is happening in the basement, where the embalming equipment was originally found. And they're making the son, Paul, and his brother, sleep down there. And they get irritated when they find the boys sleeping on the couch upstairs. Why not just let the kids sleep elsewhere?

It's too scary.

7:37 pm:
So the medication does not induce hallucinations according to the doctors, so the parents think Paul has a psychological problem now. And the bills are piling up, and the family is running out of money because of the medical costs. And their electricity bill was hundreds upon hundreds of dollars. So the dad gets it in his head that the high electricity is due to the light bulbs. And he goes around and unscrews all the lightbulbs and takes them away, leaving the boys in the basement with one desklamp. Oh my god, how cruel is that! They know how terrified they are. Why not just let them sleep somewhere else?

7:43 pm:
And then that night, after the bulbs had been taken away, the boys' sister came down and was flipping the lightswitch in their basement bedroom. And the lights were coming on without bulbs. And one of the brothers ran after the sister, and when he got upstairs his parents were upset, and said the sister was asleep in bed. The thing had taken the form of someone in their family... oh my god...

7:47 pm:
He's confronting the voice that keeps calling him... oh my god...

All the crucifixes in the house (they're Catholic) are disappearing.

7:57 pm:
And now Paul is insisting to have his own room, he's not afraid of sleeping the basement by himself. And as soon as he starting alienating himself from his family, Paul's cancer went into remission, but he didn't seem to care.

8:00 pm:
A cousin, a goof friend of Paul's, came to stay. They hoped that she would help him come out of the depression and alienation. He's sharing a journal with her about all the things that it is saying to him.

8:02 pm:
The demon, this man in a suit with black eyes, keeps telling Paul to do something bad to his family. And Paul is trying to resist it. ANd now the cousin is telling his parents about the things Paul confided in her.

8:25 pm:
They took Paul to a psychiatric ward. And then the demon attacked the family. It was strangling the mom in the shower. It took the covers off the cousin and levitated the rosary she wore to bed. Then the dad went to work, and his truck rammed through the dad's office, and he was the only one there, and he had the keys. And then the mom and the cousin were huddled in the kitchen. And a blackness swept over them, and it levitated the crucifix again and broke it apart.

8:36 pm:
They brought in demonologists from Rutgers University, and they suggested to get a Catholic sanctioned exorcism. And then a team moved into the house to record the paranormal activity in order to prove they needed the exorcism. Because they had already asked the priest for help and he said, "Okay. Now I want you to take the story you just told me and forget about it. Because once you forget it, it will stop happening." Is that their stance on statutory rape as well?

( 3comments )

at February 22, 2005 10:34 PM  Princess Blogonoke said...

Tell me you made this up. Please?

 

at February 23, 2005 12:31 PM  Samantha said...

Nope. I am not making it up, scarily enough. That special on TLC will most likely be re-run sometime this week/weekend. I highly endorse it. If, for other reason, the scary factor is better than most movies. But don't watch it alone, man.

 

at July 7, 2005 1:25 PM  Anonymous said...

I watched that last night!! It was sooo scary!! your right about not watching it alone...I couldnt..I had to watch it with my dad..and I couldnt sleep that night..I dont know I guess theres just something about men with black eyes!! I hope it reruns though!

 

This may be inappropriate, considering that a lot of my male friends read this thing. But I need a girl's opinion, and not just friends here, so any woman's observation would be great:

My breasts are huge. I'm like bursting out of my B-cups. I seriously think I'm pushing a C-cup here. And the sudden gain in my chest is not due to the fact that I'm gaining weight or something, because quite the opposite is happening. I'm shrinking actually. I've been a size 7 for about 3 years, and I'm starting to be able to fit in my size 5 pants again, and I have two pairs of size 3 shorts that also fit quite nicely. So I'm definitely not gaining weight. But my boobs are scarily big. I've been noticing this, strangely, ever since I got fired from Aero Film (about 3 weeks ago--oh yeah, did I tell anyone that they fired me earlier than 2/11? Yeah, I trained the new chick on a Monday and I went home, and they called me that night saying that I didn't have come back, I still got paid for the week, which was awesome).

But the fact remains: My breasts are huge. And it's starting to freak me out.

Has this happened to anyone else? Sudden increase in breast size, I mean. I realize that breasts can get tender when Flo comes to town... But I've never experienced them getting bigger.

Other good news: I recently went off sleeping pills (but only since last Wednesday). I wonder, if among other things, hindering the potentional of breast size was a side effect. That seems like a weird one, and besides I've been noticing the steady change for a few weeks.

Ever since Wednesday, though, my energy and happiness has increased exponentially. I am not as serious or as grave anymore, which is such a relief. It's like I'm my old self from the year 2000 (In the Year 2000!--if no one watches Conesy, that joke was just lost).

Anyway... please comment. I am actually scared that I may have some sort of thyroid problem or something. I don't know. My period has been really erratic since we moved to California as well. It hasn't been consistent since last June, and consistent is not the best way to describe it, but I don't think gory details are appropriate. No one wants to read that... and I don't want to type it. So we'll leave it at that.

( 5comments )

at February 21, 2005 11:04 AM  Gungy said...

A friend of mine once had a problem where the size of her breasts fluctuated wildly. When she was at school, she was sporting an A-cup, but when she went on breaks or summer vacation, they'd plump up into the C-range. As soon as she got back into the school routine, though, they'd start to go back to A. Her weight or waistline didn't change, either. I wonder if it could be stress-related?

Or maybe there's a girl-part aspect to it she didn't tell me about... I dunno.

 

at February 21, 2005 2:38 PM  Princess Blogonoke said...

As scary as this may sound, you might be pregnant. Most women in their first trimester will gain a size or two from insane hormonal changes.

There are other things it might be, like a breast abscess, but that wouldn't happen in both at the same time unless something really serious is wrong.

Then again, you might just be a girl who carries extra weight in her booblies. I'm not one of those people. Extra weight on me tends to hang out around my hips, ass and thighs :-(. If you've been losing weight and can fit into your smaller clothes again, it's possible you're just losing the weight in the rest of your body before you lose the weight in your breasts.

Are your mom, grandmother and aunt big-breasted women? It could be hereditary too. The women in your family just might do that at your age. (I think that's another hormone thing.)

In any case, I don't know if it should be anything to be worried about, unless they hurt or continue to grow to gigantic proportions.

You also might want to check out that pregnancy thing too, just in case.

 

at February 21, 2005 3:58 PM  Samantha said...

First: My Nana is big-breasted. She got her period when she was 9 years old at the orphanage. The nuns beat her because they thought she was a slut--at 9 years old! *sigh* My mother and my Aunt do not have big breasts. Well, my mom has big breasts right now because when she gains weight, she carries it all over and thus, her breasts get bigger, which is normal. My Aunt, whom everyone said my body was a lot more similar to than my mother, does not have big breasts. Although there is a family story that when she ran off and moved ot Hawaii when she was 19 and went on birth control, her boobs sprouted almost out of control, and everyone has a good laugh thinking about such a tiny woman with like double-Ds.

I, myself, am not on birth control, or else I would just chalk the increased breast size as a side effect. And I don't know about the whole pregnancy thing. I mean, wouldn't I have more symptoms than an increasing breast size? Besides, we use condoms. Every time. No matter what.

I'm sure everyone is so happy to know that now.

 

at February 22, 2005 10:33 PM  Princess Blogonoke said...

Well, if you're sure you're not pregnant :-), then I would guess it's the change in your medicine. Either that or large breasts skip a generation in your family.

 

at February 24, 2005 1:10 PM  Anonymous said...

Condoms are only 97-99.7% effective. So I guess the real question is, have you and your hubby been going at it like bunny rabbits? If so, the statistics might catch up to you, and you might find a bun in the oven.

Sheman

 

I have been fighting with this design for almost 24 hours straight, although I did take a 2 hour nap somewhere between 9 and 11 am. At first I couldn't get my posts to post. I could get only the first one to post. But I figured that out, and then I had this awesome design set up where every entry was going to be encircled by a retro-mod swurvy border. But it wasn't working. So finally, I took the easy way out, which is the simple title border. It's easy.

By the by, Presidents' Day is awesome. It is awesome because I went to Robinsons-May, which is California's version of Hecht's (in Maryland) or Marshall Field's (in Michigan). I had always admired this white suit with orange pinstrips--I am sucker for two things: orange and pinstrips. And when you put the two together, I can't help myself. But the price of the jacket was $34.00 and the pants were $28.00 -- and then I could help myself. But I happened to be waiting for Brad, because he wasn't done working yet, so I went to peruse the clearance racks. I hardly ever buy anything anymore, but I like to look. And I saw the orange-pinstrips I had been coveting since October at 75% off. They ended up only being $6.60 -- the cashier used some store coupon which gave me even more off. So I also bought the blazer, and this other skirt I had been dying for since it was only $6.50 (marked down from $26). I bought three items for like $24--the combined total of which was lower than the price of a single item originally. I love Presidents' Day!

So there has been a recent smelly situation in the apartment, and no, it does not involve poo, Josh. I know you and Brad must be very disappointed.

Last night, I made Beef Teriyaki. I had purchased one of those frozen dinner meals, where all the veggies and meat is in the bag, and all you do is thaw the sauce and simmer the package of food over medium heat. It smelled good while I made it. It tasted good while we ate it--although I do admit I could only eat half because I suddenly felt ill. This was at 6:30 pm.

12 hours later, I kid you not, I was wide awake. I was reading Trading Up by Candace Bushnell (the lady who wrote Sex and the City, it's definitely entertaining, Lorie think Gossip Girl for the 30+ female audience). So it's 6:30 am and I am feeling nauseous. I have been feeling nauseous all night. Why? It wasn't because of what I ate... it was because of what I cooked. The smell of beef teriyaki, broccoli, watercress chestnuts, carrots and cheapo teriyaki sauce had permeated the entire apartment. We're talking it had thoroughly planted itself in the living room (of course), wafted down the hall (obviously) and was maliciously encroaching upon our bedroom. The smell was so frickin' strong that I kept having dry heave reflexes that I could no longer control. And I had done everything in my power, at this point, to try to thwart the smell. I washed the dishes (thank you dishwasher), I scowered the kitchen, washed the floor, lit candles, opened windows and turned on fans.

The smell would not dissipate. The truly awful thing was that my nose wasn't gettiing used to the smell, like normal. Usually when something offends one's olfactory senses, it tends to absorb it and then forget about it, that way you can live with it. But the smell would leave for a bit, and then come in for the suffocating kill. I suppose this was due to the fact that i had fans stupidly circulating the air. So just when my olfactory senses had gotten used to the fact that I was not going to be able to escape the horror of Beef Teriyaki, the smell would smother and make me want to regurgitate all over again.

This went on until 9 am when I finally passed out. At 11, Brad woke up to get ready for work, so I packed him a lunch, and I drove as quickly as I could to CVS Pharmacy to pick up some defense weaponry. First, there was Lysol Neutra-Air. Then a Glade 3-in-1 candle. Also, Febreze for the carpet, in the case the particles of Beef Teriyaki and somehow managed their way into the carpet fibers.

I came home, armed and ready. Brad had found the source of the smell. Apparently a small pool of water and sauce had escaped the pan and was on the burner (we have a gas stove, so it was emanating all night long). Even so, I had just spent $25 on my olfactory defense system, so I went to work spraying and coating and wiping and lighting and airing out. And I'm happy to say that I haven't smelled Beef Teriyaki in at least 4 hours.

Ah... the little joys in life.

( 0comments )

Love is...

Using Biore Pore Strips together.

( 0comments )

It's Chinese New Year, and it just so happens that it is the year the Rooster, which is just a fancy way of saying cock. And I happen to be born in 1981, which makes me one, too. Apparently:


Road Ahead of Roosters


This Chinese New Year could be the first day of the rest of your life. In Rooster years, people born in this sign must plan the next dozen years with utmost foresight. You have been longing to change your life, waiting for the chance to unload responsibility and finally feel free to be the person you know you really are. Get started now. Change of residence is likely. You will dissolve a partnership to break new ground on your own. Watch your pennies. You'll be needing them when you move to Paris or New York or even back to Squedunk where you came from. Hook up with a wise Snake or marry yourself to a stolid Ox. You'll be needing some ballast for the long haul.


Most of my friends are either cocks or goats, and my husband is a goat, so here's what it says for goats:


Dreamy Goats


The Rooster year is challenging for dreamy, whimsical Goats. Harsh directives, rigid dictates and tight schedules are your worst enemies. Don't even try to tow the line. It's useless to fight your own sweet nature. Stay out of the line of fire. Use this year to build better castles in the air. But don't neglect your love life. There is a mellow Pig or cozy Rabbit lurking out there who longs to support you in style while you concoct even the zaniest of schemes.




I think that's about right... although, I am interested to know where we'll be moving, considering I've applied to grad schools in Boston, Michigan and in various places around Southern California. Although, I have to say this, I feel like my cock fortune is pretty reliable, while the goat fortune seems way too flighty to represent any of the goats I know. Except maybe Desmond.

( 0comments )