Live Blogging: VH1's Top Videos of 2009 (29 - Uh Oh)

#29: Run This Town: Is this 300? Jay-Z is working his best Facebook Pout and Rihanna has the "I Can't Sing At All" scream going, which can only mean one thing: Billboard #1 hit. I don't know, there's a lot of ambiguous "rebel" outfits, from bandanas on faces to black mesh eyewear. I guess I don't get it. There's no apocolypse, and if there was, I don't see what Jay-Z and Ri-ri would have to do with it.

#28: Oh shit, Pink is still around? That's it.

Yeah, Pink is still around and still has the same affect on me as always - her excessively theatrical video and vaguely melodic whining has driven me to leave the room. I guess I'll have to catch the rest of this countdown on one of it's billiondy reruns.

Live Blogging: VH1's Top Videos of 2009 (40 - 30)

I'm starting with Pearl Jam at #39, because #40 was (who cares) Muse. Blah blah British alt-rock and angry teddy bears blah.

It's fitting that PJ's video was directed by Cameron Crowe--both he and the subject can exploit this 'I peaked in the '90s but won't give up' gumption, and it's even more fitting that the whole video is comprised of the thicker-in-the-middle members performing in a dive bar, the only place anyone hears Pearl Jam songs anymore.

38 - Creed - Something vaguely about Jesus and mostly about coming up against demons. Shouldn't even be on the countdown, but I guess middle America still exists. (Same goes for car-keying Carrie Underwood coming in at #37. Blond, accentuated twang and bust-region. Zzzz.).

And here's where you stop reading: I kind of like Rob Thomas, in at #36. He's like grownup Jason Mraz with his optimistic tunes that only touch on his deep-down-identity of a sad guitar guy. This vid makes you want to believe that life really is like parade-time Manhattan with peace marches, hippie buses and aviator glasses for all.

Foo Fighters? What is this best of 1997? The talking heads say Foo don't need to bring the silly in this video, that the straightforward performance speaks for itself. I want to agree because I'm a longtime Foo appreciator (I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a fan) but the Wheels Come Off video looks and sounds sort of like they're giving up. It's like old dude rock. Tame. And, yes, I realize that sentence has zero credibility after admitting to liking Rob Thomas.

34, Whitney's new album is a comeback in the sense that it makes me want to come back and listen to "I Will Always Love You" again. Million Dollar Bill, though? Not so much. Crack is whack, and Whit's now gravelly voice will never be able to fly like it once did. The video, since that's what this is about, has a cool Tina Turner in a teeny sequin dress vibe, which is alright.

#33, John Mayer - another attempted NYC anthem - but it ends up looking like a night out in LA. Too many skinny blonds in unnecessary scarves and people never taking off their sunglasses. That's not New York, John Mayer. I also think the precarious bridge walk is a little too much. Most people, on a cool night out in New York, don't lean over the edge of the Williamsburg bridge for a few pensive minutes before jumping into a pool with their clothes on.

#32, Happy by Leona Lewis. There's a cool movie quality to this video. The bride-switching gag is kind of clever, and let's be honest, Leona is dead-fucking-sexy. I could stare at her in the heather grey off-the-shoulder sweatshirt for at least the duration of this song. Which is also just OK.

#31: Plain White T's "1,2,3,4." I love the When Harry Met Sally device used in this video. You see all these real couples and you read a little caption with their love stories like "took him 9 months to ask her out," or "married 27 years." At the end you meet the singer's girlfriend and read that the song was written for her. Sweet and simple. Which is a nice lead in to #30.

Mariah Carey looking hids in drag. Um, take that, Eminem?

Make Ya Say Mm

Rose scents can be a bit grandma-ish, I know. Or, as a friend put it, "a bit bowl-of-potpourri-in-the-bathroomish," but the Stella McCartney Eau de Parfum is a delightfully light floral spritz that I'm dying over right now.

My company hosted a party at the Stella store in New York's Meatpacking District and, of course, there were goody bags to be had. Inside? A tubular (literally and figuratively) roll-on of the scent, in a sultry black-to-purple ombre, like the full sized bottle shown. Throughout the event there was a pro-perfume spritzer infusing the air with the effervescent floral smell and I was immediately hooked. A schizophrenic perfume user (my collection ranges from a limey Jo Malone cologne, to Philosophy's laundry soap like spray, and beyond), I'm about ready to pull the plug on the other parfums and make this my signature scent.

Added bonus, the atomizer also helped when a fellow subway rider seemed to have soiled himself on my commute home. All I smelled was roses.

Where the Wild Things Are: Sneak Preview

Oh wait, that's Lady Gaga looking like a damn fool at the VMA's. Not gonna lie, I thought she sounded great in the live rendition of her paparazzi love/hate ballad. But her costumes looked like one major wardrobe malfunction after another. I also was not feeling the crazy wheelchair girl and bloody chest stunt. It looked like a mash-up of the True Blood season finale (disappointing) and an old Madonna performance (but way less good).

That Soft Focus Ain't Foolin Anyone

By my calculations (random guessing), the members of the backstreet boys are well into their late thirties. Some may be hovering around 42. And this new vampire-themed video of theirs reeks of riding the coat-tails of a pop-culture trend to get a little attention.

One of the "boys" is almost entirely bald, but you'll have to look closely, as he never takes center stage. (the cue ball can be glimpsed in their I-youtubed-old-New-Kids-concert-footage dance sequence.)

Backstreet Boys - New Music - More Music Videos

I'm feeling a little depressed for my "generation," even though, ahem, I'm way younger than these douches, it was my cohort that brought them to fame. I may have even played a song or two of theirs in my car on the way to school. I said MIGHT.

I don't know why they can't just catapult one member to fame, one to homo outer space, and the rest into self-hating obscurity like N'Sync? It seems the logical thing to do.

In Other News from 1996, Oasis Splits.

Noel Gallagher resigned from his band of brothers, Oasis, citing "violent and verbal intimidation," a story on MTV.com says. Um, just wondering, didn't this already happen?

Who even knew these morning glories were back together, and what fans are expecting an apology for the breakup? I think anyone who still cares is probably like "yeah, great, finally." The split brings some bittersweet relief, like watching your friend's on-again-off-again relationship finally end.

"Oh really, it's over? Cool. I'll be waiting for your Sears Family Portrait x-mas cards."

Word of the Day

Parental Bailout.

Def: When you make like GM and bankrupt yourself with poor decisions, undeserved management bonuses (aka shopping sprees and Starubucks stops) and need a higher power to step in and set things right.

Sure, kids have been getting money help from the 'rentals for ever. But in these trying times, such bailouts are coming in some interesting forms and figures.

Like a "we'll help you pay off your debt, but the second you step into Starbucks, the deal is off." It's almost like congress determining that Bank of America can not continue to raise interest rates on all their loan recipients, if they're using the Gov's money to "help" these people. Right?

Have you ever gotten a parental bailout before? How did it work? What kind of conditions did it come with? I'm sure having fiscally irresponsible children is exhausting. To all the p-rents out there, how have you dealt with it? Hmm.

Erykah Badu at Governors Island

On Tuesday, August 4, AEG Live presented Erykah Badu as the first summer show at The BEACH at Governors Island. The sometimes flaky Badu was on time, and no worse for the wear after the birth of her third baby (in her Brooklyn home) this February. With the exception of sound issues during opener Janelle Monae’s set, the kickoff went smoothly.

Added as part of a reinvention of the historic island off of Manhattan, the new waterfront venue is hoped to bring tourists and New York fun-seekers out to green space, with a beach-like plot of sand, beer venders, full bars, hot dogs for days and a capacity of 3,000. With skyline views and sweeping lawns long forgotten by the city folk, Governors Island provides an idyllic summer concert location, one that AEG plans to utilize from May to October every year.

Erykah Badu brought her sig smooth-jazz-meets-rough-soul sound and toothy grin to the stage, while attendees sat on sheets-cum-beach blankets in the sand. Perhaps a function of the ticket price ($72 once water taxi and ticketmaster fees were added), the crowd was decidedly older and calmer than one might expect, and even while she belted out “Puff,” the air was clear. Most didn’t even seem to get it when she quipped about hitting a drive-through to order “a large everything” in the middle of the song.

As is her wont, Ms. Badu jumped from song to song, sometimes mid-verse, or by swapping one song’s bridge for another, but stayed mainly in her melancholy set including, a favorite among couples in the crowd, “Love of My Life.” The melee she’s known for (songs like “Bump It” and “Bag Lady”) were saved for the encore, for which barely a third of the crowd stuck around.

The young ones who lasted to the bitter end were treated to Badu’s rendition of the Jackson five’s “Nine to Five,” and soundbites from Slick Rick’s “Ladi Dadi,” adding “I knew y’all were some conceited bastards!” to the “mirror, mirror” line. Aside from donning a “Bite me I’m vegan” T shirt, Badu stayed away from her sometimes preachy rants. She did thank her band profusely, saying “they make my thang come together,” right before reminding the audience that “one smile can make a mill…” which blossomed right into the hook “a millie, a millie, millionaire,” from Lil’ Wayne’s hit of the same name. The crowd erupted into the first moshy dance fest all night and, as if through a puff of smoke, Erykah disappeared.

N.E.R.D., Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco are also on Governors Island’s summer lineup, along with a Sublime tribute band and hipster dance-anthem group, Brazilian Girls, to provide an intentional variety of sounds. I'll be at all of them, in my dreams. But at $72 a pop, I may have to copy the folks who pulled a motorboat up to the side of Govs Island to watch the show from the water.

What do you think? Another great green space for New Yorkers, or exclusionist, elitist day-cation spot?

Call me Betty

"What's your favorite song" is a question that has haunted me most of my life. Seriously. Choosing one to love and honor above all others was just something I couldn't do. But recently, on several long walks to work, I've figured out what I think the BEST song is, factually speaking.

"You Can Call Me Al." No, I'm not kidding. I realized while doing all I could not to participate in the whistling interlude that this is the peppiest damn song that ever lived, and it manages not to be obnoxiously happy.

"He doesn't speak the language, he holds no currency, he is a foreign man, he is surrounded by the sound. The sound. Cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages," These lyrics are no "Barbie Girl" (possibly the other most peppy song alive, and one that makes me want to incite violence). The lines magically flow into one another like a poetic collection of really vivid scenes. For example, "Angels in the architectures spinning in infinity" reminds me of that building in Salamanca, Spain with all the gothic relief work that some witty restoration artist added an astronaut to in the mid nineties. And the song was written well before that happened, though I guess the "angels" were still spinning in infinity. It also has a bit of angst which I may or may not be projecting, but when I want to hear it in a sad way I just focus on the verse about a man in the midst of some kind of crisis who, spurning his wife and family, ducks back down an alleyway with a roly poly little bat-faced girl. I'm not quite sure what roly poly and bat-faced actually mean, but it feels plenty sad when I need it to.

The tune also has a healthy dose of nostalgia for most of my cohort because it was on heavy enough rotation in our childhood homes, you'd think payola was involved. I've seen so many copies of that vinyl, each worn down like the back pockets on your best pair of jeans, with Garfunkel's orange 'fro hovering in between taupe and sienna instead [ed. note: I realize this song was on Graceland, not an S&G record. What am I thinking of, Bridge Over Troubled Water? Eesh. I hope not). And I've danced in friend's livingrooms to it when we got to that year in college when we first really started appreciating our parents' taste in music. And I've brought it on uncountable roadtrips. And I walk to work with it, and let it put an obvious bounce in my step. And I whistle, outloud. And I feel like I'm privy to some kind of inside joke when the backwards bassline blurs past and I know that's exactly what it is.

It's not my favorite because I'm just not capable of that kind of commitment. But it's definitely the best.

Seriously?

There are certain things we stop congratulating ourselves for in adulthood: reading a chapter book, distinguishing between print and cursive, and using the potty to name a few. So why is it that this crop of children's (OK, I'll give you "young adult") books have come out, taken the adult world by storm and all of a sudden everyone's proud of themselves for reading.

Harry Potter. I'm sure it is "way different from those other fantasy novels," but since when is anything written in 20-point font acceptable reading matter for grownups? It's not. There are plenty of folks who just want to be a part of whatever's big at the time, but then do we need to boast about it? "I read a book [written for eight-year-olds] IN TWO WEEKS FLAT!" Seriously? Get a life.

And now Twilight. If my practically un-researched assumptions are correct, this one's about an underclassmen living out her "bad boy" fantasies with one who happens to be a vampire. I'm pretty sure high school protagonists are best suited for middle school readers. Remember Sweet Valley High and The Babysitter's Club? Even the Babysitters Little Sister Series was tailored to like 7 year olds. Why? Because you can't sell the rest of us on how awesome high school is. We've been there. And we know that the bad boy plays out more like a depressing after-school special involving an "apartment" above your parents' garage and making weed butter to melt over ramen noodles.

Maybe it's because so many of us stop reading when the requisite summer book lists stop coming from English teachers, but we never let go of the "reading level" we're handed in grade school. Oh wait, that can't be it. You read Shakespeare and Richard Wright and the Odyssey in highschool. So... I can't think of a single reason for this crap. Let's be done with it.

Why am I actually mad? Because blithering idiots become millionaires on the sales of a single book (that sucks). You know who you are, people. Stop buying into the hype and make me some ramen.

In the Clouds

Magazines are biting it and blogs are taking over the world, right? Well now a team of publishing devotees wants to bring to books what blogs brought to the web. User-managed, small press magazines, for us by us (and I'm not talking about that heedious ghetto gear, FUBU). Now anyone with a computer can have a magazine and MagCloud will print, bind, ship to "subscribers," and send you the money (that you've deemed your mag will cost). The best part? At just under $.20 a page, it's actually accessible. I really hope this company takes off and we start seeing well-made mags for social groups, protests, community newsletters and anyone else wanting a voice.

Sure there's the whole tree-killing aspect of physical publishing, but what other harm is there? These self-made mags won't need to subsist on advertising dollars so it's safe to assume they'll be devoid of content that favors big spenders. (How many D&G spreads do we really need to see in every magazine, right?).

Do you think this is good for publishing or bad? Do you think it's blogging for the "real" journalists who won't let print die, or is it just another way to get words out?

Either way, I'm a fan. Look forward to "3 Pages on Why Laura Rules Magazine" any day now. I'll sell it to you at cost for 60 cents.

What's your sign?

I'm a gemini, which means I'm fickle and always want to be (and have) the best. So sue me. Or, shoe me with a pair of the Dolce Vita Aries Flat Sandals. I know I've been anti the open-toed boot look, because it's kind of silly. But this pair is way more sandally and spring-friendly; something about the casual slouch and luxe suede seems so...perfect.

Picture them with leggings and a denim mini, or no leggings and a light, bright summer dress. They come in a few colors so if you're boring and stick to basics (like me) you'll love the black pair which was the start of all this lusting. And the reason for this. If you're a bold leo, reach for the "turchese," (pictured) and sad sags can brace yourselves with the beige option. Need a little more glitz? I don't know which star sign I'd condone this for, but there's a metallic silver pair, too.

The $125 price tag isn't insane, but you can bet I've been looking for these pretties to pop up at DSW.

What's your verdict: to boot, or not to boot?

Simpsons Chic

I know there are a bajilliondy fashion blogs out there, and I don't want to bore you. But holy handbags, this spread from Harper's Bazaar in 2007 is unbelievable. They place the Simpsons in high fashion to show the looks of the time.

Homer as Karl Lagerfeld? Marge in Chanel Haute Couture?

There's really nothing else I can say about this. Please look at the whole spread on notcouture.com, my all-time fave site of all time.

This is OK news.

For some reason, hearing that the unthinkable is now reality is comforting. What I mean is, in this blog, called "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable," the author explains that journalism as we know it is over. It's ok, though, because whatever will come next to replace our current news world will work for us. We'll be OK.

He compares us to 1500 when the printing press was first coming into use. Not 1400 pre-press or 1600 after. We're in the middle of a crazy revolution and we don't know what the other end will look like. The nut of the story, buried all the way down at the bottom, says:

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

It's long for a blog, but really, really worth the read. It basically tells all us writer folks to get our tails from between our legs and keep thinking. Any one of us could be imagining the next, necessary thing.

Speaking of necessary things, I got this link from Julian, on facebook. Ahh the future.

King Me.

[Ed. note: this show was canceled after like 2 episodes because it was totally boring and stupid. I take back everything I said here.]
In the pilot episode (aired Sunday, March 8th) NBC's Kings managed to check off nearly every item on my list of deal-breaking clichés.

1. What's that? Someone's GAY?!
2. Here's my delicious, blue-eyed daughter. Please discuss business with her. WHAT, YOU'RE FALLING IN LOVE?
3. Hi, we're kings and queens in a fictional land. Based on the bible.
4. Bombs! Blood! Camo pants!

So here's the weird thing, I really liked the show. Nearly all two hours of it. The only thing I didn't get was the royal priest who talked like he was from Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. I guess royalty and medieval locution are a sensible mash-up, but the rest of the cast seems to be be in modern times. The king holds court in a boardroom overlooking a quasi central park, with a wall of windows and a boomerang-shaped (not round) table, full of congressman-like cohorts, and no men in tights.

His queen loses a cell phone, his princess is involved in health care reform and the prince? The king-to-be? Not so fast on that one. He's gaaayyyy. The family uses their royal sway to force the media to publish stories about the "play boy prince" to up his straightness cred so he has a shot at the kingdom. That is, until King David comes along. (Obv that's not who he is yet, or else the show would already be over.) I think the king's personal reporter is my favorite detail of the story. He tags along with the king and rewrites history per his request. It's funny and not overblown.

I'd summarize the show like this: a down-home boy does the right thing and saves our prince in war, only to later find out who he is. He gets a shitload of press and, subsequently, a role as royal defense secretary, more or less. Then, after watching his brother die in battle (via webcam) he turns anti-war and tries to end the whole thing which will severely screw over the king's ties to an arms dealer, and the whole country's economy (sound familiar?). THEN he's caught canoodling princess prettyface (not her actual name, but it should be) which clearly pisses off the big man.

I guess what I'm getting at is, clichés are such for a reason. They are tried and true formulas that work and, when handled correctly, can work really effing well. This show is a mishmash of tons of things I hate to see on TV, but I'm already looking forward to the next epi. My advice? Start watching now so we don't have a Lost calibur dash to the DVD set before season two comes out.

Added Brooklyn Bonus:
Some castle scenes are filmed at the Brooklyn Museum. Yay!

Adventures in Eavesdropping

Last night over a lovely dinner I was surrounded by two tables. Table #1? Spoiled college co-eds talking about the apartments their dads had bought for them, their amenities, the first time buyer tax break "daddy" was getting for listing daughter as the owner. I almost puked in my pork-heavy kimchi.

Table 2? An excessively emotional set of paramours practically breaking up. "What if I said I wanted the last dumpling?" she inquired. "Would you say, 'I want you to have it, too,' or would you stand up for yourself and say 'Well I'd like to eat it.'" That's a real excerpt. Puking pork turned into wincing and cringing, mixing with loud sighing to combat the collegiate cocktail hour at decibel 10. "So I had sex with Adam's friend and he was like 'did you do that just because you can,' and I said YEAH, DUH." Another real excerpt.

I wish I hadn't overheard them. But I couldn't stop listening. What brand of elyptical DOES her TriBeCa loft have? And, my god, how DID he feel when she discussed their relationship in the past tense? But I wanted to stop. I wanted nothing more than to enjoy a delicious date with my honey, with whom I happily rent a modest appartment. In the present tense. Anyone know how to turn off the eavesdropping ears?

This morning, it got worse. Equipped with an iPhone now, I felt I'd be able to mind my Ps and Qs through the commute. No such luck. A young woman with a new baby sat next to me. Her husband hovered above, talking about all the great opportunities for Navy divers. "See, if there's a plane crash, I'd be the first team deployed. We save people. We look for down pilots immediately, when there's a chance to save them." Minutes later the conversation turned into how he felt about the job interview he just had. At a restaurant. Unsure of where she'd be living with her baby, or what kind of income her husband would be able to produce, the woman looked terrified. And I felt for her. Not the feeling you get when overhearing gossip. But the feeling of knowing someone, and knowing their struggles. Again, I wished I hadn't heard.

After exiting the train and abandoning the headphones (for walking safety, of course) I passed by a couple of down-and-out looking fellows having the following exchange:
guy 1: Well you're not behind on payments or anything are you?
guy 2, as if to say of course, how could you ask that?: Yeah man. I owe for February and now March, too!

When times get hard, people talk. Maybe they need to use a friend as a sounding board, or they know misery loves company. The problem is listening in to strangers' convos now isn't an appealing glimpse into a different life, but a collection of gut-wrenching, sad-sack tales. Too real, too widespread and too close to home to ignore. I'm starting to think this eavesdropping issue is no longer nosiness, but coming face to face with where we all stand. Which, apparently, is a very precarious place.

I Live in the Best Borough

I don't really have a blog to write about this, I just want to share this awesome article about Brooklyn's changing demographic, and the delicious artisenal food that follows.

A financier-cum-chocolatier says in the story, “Brooklyn is always in beta testing.”

Please read and salivate.

Obama Says

This morning President Obama told a crowd of Marines at Camp Lejune, NC that he's ending the war in Iraq. For serious.

“Let me say this as plainly as I can," he was quoted in Peter Baker's NYT story, "by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

That's really awesome, but I have to say I get a little nerviosa when presidents make definitive claims like that. Call me a scaredy-cat, but I still get shivers down my short spine thinking about the ol' "Mission Accomplished" fiasco. "War will end" is not that far off.

Of course I still have faith in President Obama but, let's be honest, he was handed a giant shit-pile and no pooper scooper. Could anyone actually clean it up in that specified chunk of time? Even if he DOES make drastic strokes towards withdrawal of the troops, if the war is not completely dunzo by August 2010, he'll be called a failure.

Do you think the President is promising the moon, to just look like a really great astronaut? Or do we think he's wearing space pants (cuz he's outta this world)?

What? I don't get it either.

Obama says sit down.

[ed. note: given the soldiers' faces in the photo pasted above that accompanied the New York Times story (Doug Mills), they're definitely saying hm.]

Wow I'm a Hater

Sitting on the train last night, a tall, posey guy in nice jeans was leaning his jutted pelvis too close to my face (to achieve maximum posure). He was also canoodling his teeeny, skinny girlfriend whose royal-blue legging-clad legs were swimming in her tall, slouchy boots. With dissheveled, stringy hair she looked like a drama geek that grew up to be "hot" according to hipsters. I note a pair of wedding bands. More canoodling. More crotches close to my face. More posing.

I think, "I bet SHE has an iPhone. Bitch...

Yeah, but she also has an eating disorder and a gay husband."


That was, literally, word-for-word my thought process. What is WRONG with me?

This is real.

The corn refiners of america approve this message: high fructose corn syrup is GREAT.

Apparently people started being too "health conscious" and "reading nutrition facts" and the corn refineries (read: places that remove nutritional value from our corn surplus so it can be liquified and used as a sweetener in... EVERYTHING) are struggling.

If you haven't been lucky enough to catch their commercials, here's a link to the "branding site" which, incidently is called sweet surprise dot com. A sweet surprise, indeed.

Well, corn refineries, I would just like you to know that I'm trumpeting your cause: I just ate fritos and canned soup for lunch. And I'd like to think I'm keeping your operations open and layoff-free with my love of gummy candies alone.

You're welcome.

Laura is twitterpated.

I love the word twitterpated.

It means all lovestruck, googly-eyed and is a slightly (really, only slightly) less embarrassingly girly way to admit to being a smitten kitten. I've always loved this word. One could say I'm twitterpated with "twitterpated," but then one might be overdoing the use of the word, and I hate redundance. Unfortunately something's been putting my use of this fave word on pause; FUCKING TWITTER.

OK. I get that I wasn't on board with facebook when it first came out, but that's because I was in college and pretty annoyed with everyone in all of my classes. So I didn't want to join their "groups" and have them all in my photo-essayed life. I was on myspace. I was a party girl with flashy slideshows and emoticons and theme songs to my daily collegiate angst. What fun.

Now I've grown up, gotten over murdock's spyspace and become healthily obsessed with facebook. It's fine. Whenever I feel like it, I can update my status to say something about how stressed I am at work, or how I just realized that Nesquik spells kiuqnes backwards which means nothing, but it's still delicious. I'm OK with people occasionally having a look into my life, and am realistic about how much (little) they will care. I know that when I update my status, it will show up for a shining 15 seconds on everyone's home page, and in my 15 seconds, friends may notice what my status is, and they may even click through to my profile and respond (ugh, I wish).

What I'm not, though, is so narcissistic about my causes, my hobbies, my quipy third person descriptors, that I think these "friends" want to know what I'm doing/saying/thinking every second of the day. This is also why I so loosely maintain this blog, and why it's pretty much just ranty streams of consciousness aimed at distracting and entertaining myself only. Thanks, self. Keep up the good work.

So I'm you-know-what-ed with facebook. I can't even say it because that word I love to use to sum up love is on hold because its first half (twitter, are you keeping up?) is so annoying; in part for it's sudden proliferation, and part for how invasive it will become as a direct result of this spread. Mainly it's annoying because people are annoying, especially when they think everyone else wants to know what they think all the time.

With that, I present a makeyasayhm double whammy:
1. Should I maybe not have a blog?
(My take: So what, I'm a gigantic hypocrite. Back off.)
2. In what childhood-scarring Disney movie did my fave-o word originate?
('cause I know you won't wiki it: BAMBI!)

Leather and Lace

Ok, there's no leather. But I'm OB-sessed (like an all natural tampon) with these cast lace rings. I don't know if this is some weird conflict of interest, but I wrote about these joinks on julib.com a while back. I just can't get enough. I go to Masami Kelly's website like I'm visiting my husband in jail. Cast lace rings still online? Been shanked by an adversary? Phew. Seeya next week, shiny, pretty things.

It would be one thing if I had designs on buying one. But after consorting with the artist, and finding the seventy-or-so-dollar pricetag, well, it's probably not possible. As you know from my jaunts to dunkin' donuts, I neither have the funds, nor willpower, to save up for anything valuable. And if I did, I'd blow my wad on an iPhone in two shakes of Milkyway Hot Chocolate.

Jealousy doesn't look good on anyone, and envy's one of the seven deadly sins. But, come on. Who am I hurting by just plain WANTING SHIT? And if it's the obvious answer (noone but myself) do you think another genius bailout--wherein checks are sent to restraint-lacking shoppers--is in the works so I can put myself out of my misery?

Le sigh. I just looked at the rings again.