Happy Towel Day, the Internet

This is my virtual towel

will post more later. maybe

made here: candy hearts generator

I was answering an online reference question and stumbled across this Wikipedia article on the interrobang. Isn't that a great name for a punctuation mark?! It's my new favourite thing! I declare January 19th Interrobang Day, in addition to Martin Luther King Jr. Day (I think!?) and National Popcorn Day (allegedly). Oh, and my dad's birthday.

I have instructed iTunes to play only Tori Amos until I give it new instructions. This is because today is not a day I can take chances with music. I had a project for the afternoon (a work-project, not a fun project) but I finished it (I know, right?!? What are the chances?) so now I'm looking apprehensively at the next two-and-a-half hours, giving them a little squinty-eye, making sure we understand each other.

I'm almost finished my Christmas shopping, because I'm crazy like that; and yesterday James and my sister came over and we decorated our tree. Isn't it fine?

James sang a little song about its decorations coming from IKEA, and Kristen and I corrected him in unison: "And Winners!" The little pink disco balls come from Winners. Yep. We also watched The Nightmare Before Christmas because we're good at staying on-theme.

Now the box the Christmas tree came in is sitting in front of my couch, and I'm pretending it's an occasional table so I don't have to find a place to store it in my apartment. I may put some decorative candles on it later, or a table runner with pointsettas on it. This is a very clever approach, one I suggest for anyone living in a small space. I also pretend that the empty Land's End box holding up the tree is a tree stand, and that the pile of dishes on my kitchen counter is one of those little temperature-contolled wine fridges.

festive

I wrapped my first Christmas present tonight, because I'm just insane like that. It's how I roll.

deletia loves made-up holidays

Today to April 5th: discardia. I like the sound of this holiday: "Discardia is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load." I also like how it moves around every year according to the dates of the moons and equinoxes. Whimsical!

[I genuinely will be doing a big sort and cleaning this weekend, getting rid of stuff. I had a weird moment this morning when I realized I have lived in my apartment for a year and a half now, and I felt this crippling fear at the idea of moving and having to pack up all my crap. When you're thinking about that at 7am, that's a call to recycle and throw away and donate to Goodwill. Particularly since a good deal of my crap came from Goodwill in the first place. Flamingo lamp, I am looking at you.]

Tomorrow, wear a sweater in honour of Mr. Rogers. ("Sweater day"?) It would have been his 80th birthday. I never watched Mr. Rogers' Neighbourhood, but I like both wearing sweaters and participating in random holidays, so I'll be celebrating this one as well.

Towel day is also coming up in May.

Happy Pi day.

It's also Albert Einstein's birthday.

VD Roundup!

Lovely, hi-res version of Ralph Wiggum's "I Choo-choo-choose you" Valentine.
Pamie does her usual yearly VD poems [I like the OCD ones]
Funny ecards from DieselSweeties

It is only 1:12, and already 3 kinds of chocolates and a rose have been deposited on my desk! This is the best VD ever! (The rose is propped up very attractively in my Nalgene water bottle. It looks SO ELEGANT.) I will, on principle, eat any chocolate left on my desk. That's my guarantee. Let it never be said that I lack principles.

Tonight I am going for dinner at a romantic Italian restaurant with the man I love... and my dad, and my sister. Who I also love. So really, what could be better than that? TRUE LOVE AND GARLIC TOAST!

My dumb dead plant, TBA, has been confiscated from me and given to one of the receptionists for resuscitation/palliative care. Apparently she has a way with plants. I have a way with nothing.

Also I printed a "NO JUNK MAIL PLEASE" decal from the red dot campaign which I am going to affix to the inside of my mailbox. Unaddressed advertising mail is for CHUMPS and TREE-KILLERS. I didn't know this, but you can opt out of receiving it and Canada Post will honour your request! Hot!

I am done all my work, and I face the challenge of filling the next 3 hours with something semi-meaningful, so that I don't get really depressed, without spending any money online. I don't think it can be done.

May I suggest you buy this - VD edition.

This year, my valentine's day involvement, such as it is, will consist primarily of referring to "Valentine's day" as "VD." I find this so amusing, I'm surprised I didn't think of it a long time ago. I don't really care about VD, but I do care about Etsy, and buying things on the Internets. Therefore, what amounts to a special "viscera" edition of MISYBT:

heartfelt felt heart : $18 from catherinette

i anatomical heart you cards [set of 4] : $6 from pish posh paperworks

my beating heart shirt : $20 from various & sundry

heart on your finger ring : $56 from ehme glass

and my personal favourite is this heart of hearts necklace : $32 from nanopod

I'm not sure where this obsession comes from. I think I like the romantic notion of valentine's hearts (like this super-cute set of vintage valentines on flickr) juxtaposed with the goriness of actual, blood-dripping hearts. How did we manage to separate the idea of "heart" into the twin concepts of the organ that circulates blood and the part of our selves that has the capacity to love? To solve that mystery is my VD wish.

On outlet shopping, and New Year's resolutions

On my trip to Washington last week, I went on an outlet-shopping-trip. We have outlet stores in Canada, but not the way they have them in the US of A: consolidated in long, efficient strips parallel to the highway, their loading doors facing the passing traffic, interspersed with the occasional fast-food restaurant for sustenance. We could probably develop outlet shopping experiences like this if we took it a little more seriously, but personally, I prefer to think of it as an American Thing: go to the States, go outlet-store shopping. It adds to the experience, giving it a polito-cultural bent I like.

Anyway, outlet shopping is sort of fun in an isolated, surreal way, but it also tends to spoil one for normal clothes-shopping. I bought a blazer from Eddie Bauer*, for example, for $8.99. This is all well and good, and I'm going to wear it to work tomorrow with a scarf I bought for $7, but it sort of provokes the question: so, why would I ever pay $95 for this? And since, as I mentioned, outlet shopping is an American Thing as far as I'm concerned (and not for frequent or regular exposure), this means that normal shopping is thus held in lower esteem.

But anyway, we had a coupon for 20% off a purchase over $75 at the Eddie Bauer outlet store (which my mother very cleverly found online), and with James's jeans and my blazer and dress pants and librarian cardigan, we were almost there. So I grabbed a couple of pairs of socks almost at random to push us over the $75 mark. Well, let me tell you about these socks, Internet. These Eddie Bauer outlet-store socks are made of ANGORA. They have snowflakes on them. They are the nicest things I have ever had on my feet. They make me want to take a greyhound bus back to Washington (or Montana, or wherever) to see if there are more. The thought of wearing other socks just makes me sad, now. I actually think of these socks as pirate socks, because they don't have skulls and crossbones on them, but do you think pirates like socks with skulls and crossbones on them? They don't. They're pirates; they don't need to be reminded that they're pirates. Instead, they loot the very best sock-booty, and you can bet those socks are freakin' angora.

That was all a very long way of saying: I have these socks I really like. I made a delicious potato dish in my crock-pot, which I also really like. I went to see Juno, which was a delight: I really liked it. I got my paladin to level 62 today, and I watched some of season 2 of Fraggle Rock, which I got for Christmas from James (who I really, really like). I'm almost finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which makes me want to change my life. I'm going to make some card-catalogue-esque desk storage, which is a good place to start. Lots of things are making me happy, and it feels like a good day for a new year.



*I love Eddie Bauer, which I am well aware is weird. I'm looking forward to being old because then I will be able to stop there with complete impunity, and not question whether the things I am buying are making me look like an old person, because I will be an old person. See what I mean?

*She immediately changes the subject*

Merry Christmas, Internet! Remember a few minutes ago, when I posted about the banning of His Dark Materials and how sad I was about it? Well, that's all in the past! It's the last day of work before Christmas holidays, I'm eating little Toblerone triangles for breakfast, and everything's coming up Jocelyn!

Everyone in my office is hilarious today. I'm wouldn't be surprised if there was kahlua in the metaphorical office coffee. (I say metaphorical because my office doesn't HAVE coffee of our own--instead we have Tim Horton's contingents and Starbucks contingents and people like me, who are coffee sluts and will go on any coffee trip.) People are wearing goofy fur-lined hats and talking about Torchwood and forwarding endless funny Christmas-related emails and basically doing everything but working. Me included--I'm not one to ignore the importance of corporate culture.

Seriously, I had my dear friends Courtney and Meghan over last night for some pre-Christmas Bridget Jones's Diary and pizza, and I got some presents because it is almost my birthday! It was very exciting! I don't think I'm a hard person to buy presents for, but I'm always touched by the things people find for me that I love.

Tomorrow I am going to Tacoma to visit all the mail that has been arriving there for me. Oh, and my family. I'm taking a giant MEC duffel bag full of presents. I feel like Santa! Only, as Willow would say, "Smaller. And female. And Jewish."

In the spirit of the holiday, a link to holiday cocktails inspired by Charles Dickens novels. [via bookslut]

If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak

I wish I had more time before Christmas so I could use these vintage Soviet Christmas cards for something. They're delightfully puzzling and retro--anything with Santa on a rocket ship is fine by me. I guess I could still make some gift tags...

Previously linked: the square America Christmas Spectacular

In case you don't have the firelog channel, or are at work

Heh.

PS LINK + PET PEEVE

The Square America Christmas Spectacular is an astonishing collection of family photos, custom Christmas cards, and other ephemera memorializing square Christmasses past. SO AWESOME.

And while we're talking about Christmas: No, Virginia, there is no Santa, but if there was, it would be spelled "Santa Claus." Spelling it "Clause" manifests a dumb Tim Allen movie. If that's what you want, go ahead, but you're dumb, and Virginia agrees with me, and we're going to put hot sauce in your egg nog.

I just wish I had something to eat besides shortbread cookies

Good afternoon, Internet! Are you having a nice weekend? I sure am! I already cleaned my kitchen, ironed a shirt, and made some "hot apple cider" (heated up apple juice, 9 months past its best-before date, with a cinnamon stick) and it's not even 2 oclock yet! And yesterday was a craft-, movie-, butter-chicken-, christmas-shopping-a-thon. In a good way. Tonight I am going to a Non-Denominational Potluck (NDP). I have to pack as much activity, and as much non-activity, into my weekends as possible.

I finally went to see The Golden Compass last night. I have to tell you, Internet, it sucks. Here are a few things I thought of while I was watching the movie, which I would write in my film review if I were a film reviewer for an arts weekly:
"The movie seemed like one long trailer for itself"
"Every scene contained only enough dialogue to establish the basic plot and characterization, with no thought given to depth, nuance or naturalness"
"Lots of ingredients for a good movie--epic music, good casting, pretty sweeping shots of geography, and talking animals--somehow fail to add up to a good movie"
"I liked the GandalfBear"

It wasn't like The Golden Compass had no redeeming qualities. I liked the acting for the most part, but it's probably hard for even good actors to act when their material is some kind of MadLibs-style kids' movie script. A number of the actors who I was really looking forward to, and who I thought had been perfectly cast--Eva Green, Daniel Craig, and Sam Elliott--have such tiny roles it seems deceptive to list them as stars. I liked the kind of steampunk aesthetic that the sets and props seemed to have, and I would have liked to see more of it. The bear was a strong point, in my mind, although even there the CGI was ludicrously clumsy in a few places. I didn't mind the changes to the story, or I wouldn't have minded them if they had made a good movie, but they didn't. What was maybe the most annoying about this adaptation is how damn inspirational it was--the non-stop epic music, the reeling aerial shots, and the characters saying things like "We have to fight for freedom!" (well, ok, not really, but I'm only exaggerating a little.) Those messages are in the book, but they're not written in 20-point font, which would be the stylistic equivalent of their prevalence in this film.

What with this dismal adaptation showing at the box office, and my sick compy, it's a one-two punch of pathetic. I'm going to watch X-Files. Oh, and next week I'm so going to see I am Legend, because I loves me some post-apocalyptic ANYTHING. I even liked The Day After Tomorrow, and that movie was TERRIBLE.

Holiday countdown: 5 days. I can make it, even if 30 boxes tells me I have a million things to do in those 5 days. Oh, and uh, I turn 25 in 1 week. Yep. That's not freaking me out at all. As my mom cheerfully said, "One-third of your life could already be over!" Thanks, mom!

A Christmas miracle, II.

I'm fascinated by that looped burning fire log that shows up on TV every year at Christmas-time. Slate has a video about its inception. So meta!

we won, or we think we did...

The music of my unconscious right now is Stars' In Our Bedroom After the War:

All the living are dead
And the dead are all living
The war is over
And we are beginning...

I develop these crushes on songs that last hours, days, weeks.

I wrote my Prime Minister and Member of Parliament letters today. I also went to IKEA and purchased some awesome, nuclear-esque fabric. I love the promise of a little bundle of fabric with no set purpose. I love, also, in no particular order: the organic smoothness of new bamboo knitting needles, waking up in a warm bed in a cold room, the view of falling snow and Christmas lights out my window, and Bollywood music.

I put up my Christmas decoration, singular, this week:



It is approximately 200% more festive in my apartment than it was before.

I'm totally downloading a bunch of Christmas music. Yep. That just happened. Standard-response cynicism be damned!

Wait, am I even cynical? I wrote that and then hit "publish" and then I realized I might not even be. Sometimes I'm the downright opposite of cynical. Hmm.