More New Favorite Things

These are the side benefits of spending long hours staring at my own writing while outside the sun is shining, birds chirping, and so forth. I assuage my desire to tear my hair out in bloody handfuls by surfing the internet. It's a measured reward. Whenever I get past five pages, I get to spend a few minutes clicking and browsing. Finding new and interesting webpages is like heaven after staring for ten minutes at a paragraph that simply isn't doing what it needs to do. Or agonizing over whether or not an additional source, which one of my committee members tells me I need to deal with, has to be integrated *somehow* into the body of the text or whether I can tuck it away into a tidy footnote. God, I love footnotes. Never thought I'd say that.

No other news, really. As per usual, just my whineyness, checking in now and again. I am mildly excited about making cupcakes for a co-workers upcoming birthday. I'm mulling it over a bit, since this is finally an opportunity to make something other than the Mexican Hot Chocolate. I'm thinking seriously about Bittersweet's Root Beer Float cupcakes. I considered the chocolate stout cupcakes, but I must own up to a slight prejudice against the whole crumb topping thing. I really feel, in some control freaky place in my head, that cupcakes should be covered in mounds of creamy lusciousness. I can't help it. I feel that way. If I can't find any of this ridiculous substance called root beer extract, though, I'm shit out of luck. I'll have to regroup.

Before I get too out of control, I give you the following awesomenesses.

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations.

Just what it sounds like. "Quotations": They're not for "emphasis."

Contrariwise: A blog devoted to literary tattoos!






Lovely and, oddly, inspiring. I've been thinking about something like this for myself. Not the same poem, of course. And not on my back. I am surprised, though, at how many of these tattoos are the same. Lots of Plath (I am I am I am), Vonnegut (everything was beautiful and nothing hurt), and Cummings. Who knew?

I have to fess, though, I found this via Slog, like everything else. The slogger, I don't remember who it was, was particularly fond of this one:

Now, if you need me, I'll be over here feeling sorry for myself.

Oh My Gawd

Rock of Love 3. Yes, they did.

How will Bret find a woman to ‘rock his world’ when his world is always moving? VH1 is loading up a tour bus filled with beautiful babes and taking them on tour across the country. Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels takes contestants out of the mansion and on the road in true rock star style. This season will feature all-new ladies vying for Bret’s affection while traveling across America following Bret on a month-long tour. The contestants will face new challenges to see if they can handle the rock star life on the road.

This time as the bus pulls into each new city, the girls will engage in challenges specifically revolving around Bret’s life on the road. Whether it’s greeting aggressive groupies with a smile, enduring grueling schedules, dodging the advances of the warm-up band or even stepping in last-minute to fill in for delinquent roadies – these girls will be put to the test. This season, as the Rock of Love Bus heads into America’s heartland, the show will be taking the viewer to a whole new level with crazy, fun, over-the-top challenges- imagine Truck Stop Olympics or a dance contest on top of the St. Louis Arch or even a BBQ cook-off beneath the World’s Largest Thermometer. And also, back by popular demand…Mud Bowl 3. Americana at it’s finest!

So things didn't work out with Ambre. Nobody's really surprised. I think I even heard that New York and Tailor Made broke up, of all the absurdities. But seriously, season 3 promises all the glorious, trashy insanity of the first two seasons plus that key ingredient that will make it all fresh and new and so so much worse: claustrophobia! I can't wait. When the hell is Tila's third season going to be announced?

Three seasons has to be the death knell. Flavor Flav has pioneered all this nonsense, and I doubt anyone will be giving that poor bastard a fourth season. Right? I'm not sure what logic this is, but there does seem to be one.

In other news, I'm currently immersed in different levels of revisions on my third, fourth, and fifth chapters. I haven't yet summoned the nerve to look at my conclusion. It's amazing to be at this stage, though, and I'm even feeling waves of something I can only describe as elation. Even if I don't get a job this year, at least I'll be done. With this project. (Cue the hysterical laughter.)

New Favorite Thing

Deliciously wicked photos by Joshua Hoffine. Check out his website for many many more. Click the first image to enter, obviously. Via Michael Strangeways.

Birthing Pains

Ugh. I've had the worst writing week trying to crank out my conclusion. Who knew this bloody thing would be so fucking difficult to write? I spent two or three days hammering away at it very slowly (and between shifts), and I only managed to produce about eleven pages that I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to use. I went to work very much on edge yesterday, and vented (with much restraint) my frustrations to one of my co-workers. Poor guy. He responded initially by saying, "Oh, yeah, that's like, the most important part of your dissertation, right?" When I was like "Ahhhhhhh!" he changed tactics and said, "Oh, yeah, nobody will read it anyway." "Ahhhhhhh!" Like I said, poor guy. Seriously, though, I hope neither of those things is true. At least I need to believe that right now.

Anyway, so today I screwed myself up to try again. I sat down and started writing the thing from the beginning. Between 9 and 3 (with a break in there to take C to the mechanics and eat lunch with her) I wrote sixteen pages. Now I'm as done as I can be for the time and very much desirous of a reward of some sort. So far, I've decided to skip pilates, since I'm not feeling it today and ran eight miles yesterday. (On a side note, I didn't really intend to. It just so happened that the jerks at vh1 decided to get the maximum mileage out of the first episode of the new reality tv show, "I Love Money" and stretch the bloody thing out to 1 1/2 hours with loads upon loads of commercial breaks. So, of course, I ran the whole time. And, yeah, today, I'm not feeling it. If it doesn't make me too sweaty, I might flounder around on the living room floor for a while doing some of the moves that like best/find the most difficult. C is suffering through sad tv movies, so whatever I do, I can't be very disruptive.

Other things I'm considering: 1) Driving to Weggies for some more of the Purely Decadent Coconut Ice Cream. This time I'd get the cookie dough flavor, because I'm fat like that. Last time I got the Mint Chocolate Chip, because C's fat like that. 2) Hunting for a pastry blender. I dearly want one and have vowed not to make any more recipes which involve cutting fat into flour until I have an adequate one in my possession. So far, I've only really looked at Target, and the ones there looked very chintzy indeed. I want one that can really cut the cold cold vegan margarine (not room temperature, because, as we all know, pastry is all about coldness. We do all know that, right?) into flour. I feel like getting a substandard one would be like buying it just to throw it away. In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have some serious cherry pie on the brain. I made a pie a week or so ago that was quite good, but not perfect. And now I have the need to try again using the sour cherries that are newly in season. Farmer's Market. Saturday. Here I come. The pie crust, incidentally, and not that anyone cares, is the kind made with vodka and ice water. The idea here, which I would have appreciated more fully if I hadn't kind of fucked it up by preparing the fruit too early, is that the vodka evaporates during cooking eliminating forever the problem of the gummy pie crust. Exciting right? 3) Cleaning the fridge. The only good thing about this is that I don't have to drive to do it, and it fills up some of the time between now and when I can have a glass of tequila without feeling...strange. 4) Calling my mom. I'm going to do this for sure, and it has the advantage of fulfilling part of the requirements of number 3. While I decide, check out this pie via www.thenibble.com.