31 January 2010

Now the Face of BCBG Max Azria in Their SS 2010 Campaign!

And as a glamorous supermodel, I can now become a jet setter and escape my life of daily toil...

Just kidding! When in Austin with Elizabeth and Sara, we went to the outlet mall and found the most amazing dress in the BCBG MA shop. I tried it on and Sara took these pictures.

Midnight blue, great lines, great price (designer dress under $100)... I didn't buy it because I really had no reason to own it. Maybe someday!
Great for dancing!Am I fierce?!?!

Elizabeth also modeled the dress and it was fantastic on her, but sadly, my pictures of her did not turn out as well. She looked gorgeous.

21 January 2010

I'll LOL you into a false sense of security...

Despite my assertion that my awesome picture does not NEED a caption, it has received a few anyway.
From Frisbee Guy at work:
From me:

Got a better punchline in mind? Post it in the comments! Or post the captioned picture on your blog and put a link to it in the comments here. In fact, let's have a contest. The creator of the best and funniest caption will receive a small prize of some yet-undetermined nature (Picture of Nathan? Genuine buckeye artifact?). Have at it!

20 January 2010

Delurk

Someone, somewhere, made it so that January 14 was National Delurking Day. Obviously, I totally missed the boat on that one, but since it's not actually a law or whatever, I'll just do my own delurking event. It can last as long as I want.

So, readers! If you read this blog, however rarely or frequently, just go ahead and leave a comment. Please! It will make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Mad Skillz

I haz dem.

I just managed to cut my finger while using a blunt table knife to make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. How is that even possible?!

I'm just naturally klutzy, I guess.

18 January 2010

I Want Candy!

Or, It's Like a Party In My Mouth... And Everybody's Throwing Up!

I have, in the past, waxed nostalgic regarding Asian and European sweets and their availability (or lack thereof) in the United States. I miss a lot of those often offbeat treats, and definitely think that the US would be a better place for having more tropical fruit. However, I am definitely convinced that there are a number of confections that will simply never find much of a market here in North America. There's a story to back that up, of course.

A dear friend of mine recently traveled to China, and she brought back an assortment of candy and gave them to me last week. I'm not sure how much she understood about the candy, which is no reflection on her, since all the information on the package was written in Chinese, and while she is fluent in a few languages, it just so happens that Chinese isn't one of them. Her train of thought was basically, "Asian candy... Deb is from Asia and likes candy... I'll give it to her." This is all well and good, for the majority of the candy (coconut milk or tea flavor? yum), but included were some oddities that even I found a trifle offputting.
Meat Candy: I could not get to the website listed on the packaging (the only English writing there, in fact) of this confection, but I was clued into the probability of the content of the candy bag by the picture of an overly perky cow on the front. Meat is a luxury in many parts of Asia, so making a meat-flavored candy makes sense from that perspective, but meat candy is an odd concept to most of the western world (although a lot of people eat jerky, not to mention recent fancy bacon stuffs, which are not far off). While I was somewhat familiar with it, I am very nearly a vegetarian and generally eat white meat if I eat meat at all (mainly at restaurants and other people's houses), so beef candy just did not appeal to me, straight up.
Durian Candy: Durian, nicknamed "the king of fruits", is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing for most people. It's a not-that-bad-but-I'm-really-not-fond-of-it thing for me, primarily because (unlike a lot of westerners) I can handle the smell well enough but I'm just not a fan of the taste or texture of the fruit. Durian is popular enough in Southeast Asia that it has its own sort of subculture, and it's not surprising that people make durian-flavored candy, too.


Anyway, in the spirit of generosity (and, I confess, hilarity), I opted to bring the candies in to work and share them. Cookie Boss, in particular, is quite fond of Japanese food and delicacies, so I thought he'd appreciate a chance to relish some other authentic tidbits of Asian cuisine. I gave him the durian candies (there were four in total), and he tried one after his lunch. Never one to mince words, he responded thus: "It was like somebody punched me in the taste buds with brass knuckles made of horribleness. It tasted like what I would imagine the inside of a toilet in South America would taste like." Likewise not one to let a good opportunity go to waste, he then set about tricking other people into trying them. One of the unlucky victims exclaimed, "It's like a mix of phlegm, vomit, and some other bodily fluids." The other declared, "Like a mix of pineapple and rotten onion," which, by the way, is as good a description of durian flavor as I've ever heard. [My opinion, for the record: "I am not a fan of durian, but come on, it still tastes better than beer!"]

Cookie Boss would not even sample the meat candy, but he got someone else to eat one of them, and that person spit it out and proclaimed it to be nasty, best described as tasting rather like bullion. I kind of thought more people could handle the meat candy, seeing as how most folks in the US eat meat all the time, but I guess the concept was still too extreme.

The moral of the story is, of course, that if Cookie Boss is handing out candy, don't eat it!!

17 January 2010

BESTEST PIKCHER EVAR!!!

Rural Central Ohio.
Any further captioning would just be superfluous, don't you think?

15 January 2010

Street cred...

...for Ellie and Fred!



Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire do a little hoofing in Broadway Melody of 1940, aided and updated by one DJ Erick E. The music added to the clip is inspired and precisely edited. The dancing is, quite simply, amazing (and notice how he is clearly working to keep up with her). The best of the best, viewed in a new way. File this one under awesome!

Happiness is contagious

At least, that's the message I received from the wrapper on my Dove's Dark Chocolate Promises candy.

Is happiness contagious? I don't know, really. I suppose that happiness could be contagious, sometimes. But my general impression is that isn't necessarily so. The Declaration of Independence* asserts that all individuals possess the right of the pursuit of happiness, but makes no statement whatsoever regarding the actual state of being happy. I'm guessing the question of attaining happiness made even the founding fathers a little bit uncomfortable.

*Of course, one's judgement on whether or not the Declaration of Independence serves as any sort of authoritative document, whether philosophically or otherwise, is entirely subjective.

13 January 2010

Happy (Late) Birthday, Luise Rainer!

Born on 12 Jan 1910, Luise Rainer is 100 years old yesterday AND the oldest living Oscar winner! She won back-to-back Best Actress awards for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937), but her career soon foundered due to her inability to conform herself to the Hollywood ideal of what a movie star should be. I've never been a fan of Luise's style of acting, but learning about her life story has given me respect for her, and while her contemporaries have spent the past half-century or so dying off one by one, she is still around, getting the last laugh (literally, if she chuckles about anything at all).