Category Archives: goodness

goodness, life

Secret friends

super gay 🙂

I got pulled into Little Mole Boss’s office today to get an earful about how she’s heard that I’m not “friendly” enough, and that I’m not “giving 100%.” She recognizes that my part-time position here is not super mentally stimulating, but she still expects top-notch work, which is an enigma as far as I’m concerned.  I was also instantly annoyed at the assumption that women should be ‘friendly’ all the time.  There’s a guy in our office who is terse and occasionally downright rude, and he’s worked here for six years or so.  I’ve never said an unkind word to anyone in this office in the two years I’ve worked here, so why… *sigh*  It was not a good start to the day.

But then it got better. Grabbing lunch around noon, I noticed the black woman running the register had two linked female symbols tattooed to her arm. I’m a huge supporter of gay marriage and the gay community in general, so I said, “I like your tattoo.”
She froze with her arm out so I could get a better look. “Thanks, you know what it is?”
“Yep.”
She smiled back, “Are you one?”
I gave her a big smile and said, “Nope, but I got your back.”
She gave me a tiny salute and said, “Thanks for your support.”

And that is why today was a good day.

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badness, goodness, humor

Topical costume, 2012

I cannot express how pleased I am that this is a thing.  I love that people suddenly care about art restoration enough to poke fun at a botched up job to the extent that it becomes an internet meme, and a fantastic Halloween costume.  Go on, humanity 🙂

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anime, goodness, martial arts

Oh, Yoshimi

I’m addicted to a new (old) song: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots part 1, by The Flaming Lips.  It’s a hilarious, adorable, excellent song, and it’s about me!  Get it?  I’m a black belt, I defend my man with my awesome karate skills, and I might as well be Asian (what with all the food, anime, manga, martial arts stuff I do).  Bam.  I’m thinking the pink robots are a metaphor for something.  Ex-girlfriends maybe?

workin’ for the citeh

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goodness

Halloween time!

what a cutie

It’s almost October (the best month), which means it’s almost Halloween (the best holiday)!  I’m pretty excited.  I’m hosting a pumpkin carving and game night at my place, the house where I’m living in sin with Boyfriend (it’s been awesome so far).  Speaking of whom, Boyfriend never dresses up for Halloween.  What a jerk.  Honestly.  So this year I thought of a great costume idea for him, and he’s on board!  He’s going to be a hipster.

We live in Silverlake, and we go to this great pho place nearby that’s like hipster flypaper.  It’s really fun to people-watch.  So he’s gonna wear his tightest pants, a loose v-neck shirt, pointless large-rimmed glasses, and one of my scarves.  I’m going to draw some ironic wolf/YOLO tattos on his arms, and maybe a feather on his neck or behind his ear.  Should be an easy, hilarious costume that he’ll be comfortable in, and our friends will enjoy.  He’ll probably change out of half of it before the end of the night, but who cares!  It’s still progress.

Meanwhile, I’ll be dressing as a lady!!  I’m wearing my Renaissance Faire costume, which I love, and I bet my Ren Faire buddies will wear theirs, too.  I’m wearing it to work too, and if my boss doesn’t like it she can just suck it.  Halloween is for dressing up.  So there.

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badness, goodness

I’m turning ingredients into food!

how could it possibly be that bright orange color? did i forget to add the unicorn shit?

I’ve never really tried to cook anything ambitious, so imagine my surprise when I made a soup from scratch the other day and it turned out crazy delicious.  It’s a butternut squash, corn and lemongrass soup, and it’s not difficult (assuming you have something that can puree soft vegetables).  Sister’s really big on healthy food right now, and she loves vegetables (apparently, who knew?), so she went nuts on this soup, which pleased me to no end.  It’s also really pretty, and super healthy.  My first soup made from scratch: Win!

After this one success, I thought to myself, “Self, you can cook anything!  Let’s make something else!”  At which point I started to fail.

Goal: make a delicious pumpkin-themed drink for my pumpkin carving Halloween party next month.  I landed on something called Pumpkin Cider. (see picture)

Actual outcome: brown, slimy, over-flavored, alcoholic muck I was reticent to pour down the drain for fear of angering it. (see picture)

I got all the ingredients together, and read the comments on the website (one person actually complained about it being too thick, but didn’t seem to follow the recipe).  I followed all the instructions, except for the one that said to add the spiced rum after the whole concoction had simmered on the stove for 20 minutes.  That batch quickly turned the consistency of snot, and was unceremoniously thrown out.  I added everything in the right order the second time, and the result was… totally overwhelmingly unpleasant.  It was a combination of things I love (pumpkin flavor, spiced rum, home made whipped cream, pumpkin pie spice, apple cider) that combined to create some kind of diarrhea-colored dream-killer.

Naturally I had boyfriend try it first.  He said something very kind and diplomatic like, “…I wasn’t expecting that flavor.  Let me try it again.”  Then he stopped trying it and said, “It doesn’t know what it wants to be.”  I could not agree more.  Epic Halloween drink fail.

win!

Then I got kinda depressed.  I really wanted this to work out.  I really want a cute little treat for my friends when they come to carve pumpkins and play spooky games!  The pouting went on for a good 24 hours, but I wasn’t about to give up because FUCK THAT.  I LOVE Halloween.  I was going to create something delicious for my friends for my favorite holiday, and they were going to love it, dammit.

So I tried again, this time with something called Liquid Pumpkin Pie.  It used a milk base and significantly less canned pumpkin, which was already a good sign that my ineptitude as a cook would not be manifested a second time in the form of some kind of brown sludge and disappointment.

To my utter surprise, it turned out fantastic. (see picture)  Boyfriend tried it, and nodded furiously with huge eyes, then asked for a mug of it to drink while playing WoW (pandas, ugh).  It even remotely resembled the recipe photo.  Success!

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goodness, life

Live, damn you!

totally appropriate

Some content on this page was disabled on October 2, 2016 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Nick Armstrong. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

https://wordpress.com/support/copyright-and-the-dmca/

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goodness, humor, nerd, school

A guide to online comics

I realized I’ve been referencing a lot of online comics to friends recently, and it’s super awkward.  “In this one online comic I read, there’s a character who’s a troll with really terrible gas, and he’s hilarious, but anyway…”  Not what I could call a quality, two-sided conversation.

Flow chart to the rescue!  This is the last week of my first semester in my online Master’s degree program.  I made this during class.  In fact, class is still going on as I type this.  I still have a 10-page paper to do for this class, so I don’t feel too bad about making time to do something fun.

i made this

 

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goodness

Widow, murderer, heroine

Oh hey Judith, whatcha got there?  A loyal dog?  A warm winter coat?  Why no, it’s the head of Holofernes, that belligerent dick who threatened to invade and massacre your village.  Nice violence, Judith.

widow, murderer, heroine, in that order

Seriously, this is why art is awesome.  This could just be another portrait of a lady, but that subtle whisper of hair behind her, and just a smidgen of face underneath it suggests death at the hand of a beautiful woman, which is always a little fascinating.  It makes you want to stare at this picture and try to figure out what else you may have missed.

Also, don’t mess with Turkish women.  If you rape them, they will channel Judith and chop of your head and show it off to the locals (like this one Turkish woman did just a few days ago).

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goodness, life

I am a Professional Citizen

Yesterday I had adventures!

i like to think Steve Jobs would be proud

I had to drive all the way across town from where I’m now living with Boyfriend in Silverlake to my old place in Marina del Rey to give my apartment keys to Teacher Roommate, so she could hand them in today.  When I got in the elevator, I discovered a piece of gray luggage, unzipped, so I took a peek inside and found men’s clothing, some fancy cowboy boots, and an iPad.  An iPad?!  Why yes, an iPad.  I waited in the elevator for about five minutes waiting for the owner to come back and breathlessly exclaim, “Whew, it’s still here, I almost forgot my bag!”  But no.  So I took it into the apartment with me to keep it safe, at which point I got a phone call from Teacher Roommate.  “Heyyyyyy, can you help me with somethiiiiiiiiing?”  She had found herself in a typical sitom scenario after accidentally dropping her keys into the dumpster.

gross, smelly success!

I took the elevator back downstairs to the garage, found an old towel to drape over the edge of the dumpster, laid a recycling bin on its side, and watched the hilarity ensue (and took pictures, of course).  Back upstairs, we spackled up some holes, I grabbed whatever I had left there, plus the mysterious luggage, and drove away.  I reached the freeway before I realized that I had forgotten to pass of my keys to Teacher Roommate.

After pulling U-boat and correcting my lapse in memory, I jumped on the freeway and managed to make it all the way downtown before encountering my next adventure: a car stopped in the right lane on the interchange between the 110-N and the 101-N.  I pulled over, followed by a bright  green Jeep.  A guy in his early/mid-twenties got out of the Jeep and said he saw someone slumped over the wheel.  “Woah!  Is he dead?” I asked, pointlessly.  We went over to investigate, and with a few loud, EXCUSE-ME-SIR’s, managed to rouse him.  The old car was still running with this old man literally asleep at the wheel.  I walked over to the driver’s side, mindful of the oncoming cars, and told the guy to put it in park, which he did (with some difficulty).  I had just told him to scoot over when floodlights lit us up from behind: the cops had arrived!

i’m gonna pretend they looked like Erik Estrada from CHiPs

They unceremoniously told me to get out of the road (and rightfully so), which I did.  They got the guy out of his car and pulled the car onto the shoulder.  I told the man to step back from the road, and sit down, which he did, like a drunk.  I gave one cop my contact info and a quick rundown of what happened (not much) while the other cop chatted with the old man.  The cop (who was CHP I think, given the khaki uniform, right?) thanked me for pulling over, and wished me a good night.

I do stuff like this all the time.  If I see a broken down car, I push it.  If someone looks lost walking around, I stop and try to help them.  When I see a kitten, bleeding to death in the road, I rescue it and nurse it back to health.  Helping people (and kittens, apparently, but that’s new), makes me feel awesome.  It makes the day worth while, no matter what else has happened.

And THAT is why I am a Professional Citizen 🙂

UPDATE: I found the owner of the iPad’s phone number in his email signature when I attempted to email myself from the iPad so I could contact him somehow.  I left him a message last night before going to bed, and got a call back today!  He said thanks, and we’re still figuring out when he can come by to pick up his bag of stuff.

And just for the record, this is still going to happen.

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goodness, humor

MS Paint, my first love

My coworker (let’s call her Hollywood Coworker for her constant mention of how she used to “work in the industry,” and watches a lot of TV) often laments (read: hates) being older than the college students we’re inevitably surrounded by (working on a college campus and all), and the other day was no different.  I told her how a lot of my childhood drawings were done on MS Paint, and showed her my favorite new drawing tool: crayon!  She complained about how she used to use actual crayon, and how it’s so much better (having never used MS Paint).  So I decided to show her the ropes.  Then this happened:

“Ok, guess what I’m drawing.”

that’s it

“… alligator.”

“… HOW DID YOU KNOW?!!”

Seriously, how did she know?  This cracked me up.  OH LIFE.

UPDATE: This website dedicated to using MS Paint is adorable.

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