THIS!!!!!!!

It’s a Yule Ball at this amazing place, Whimsic Alley, right in the very heart of Los Angeles! And it combines two of my most favoritist things in the whole wide world: Harry Potter and Christmas!!!!!!! Whimsic Alley was brought to my attention by my lovely new friend Andrea, the amazing genius who was behind this

(that’s her on the right)

and this

and quite frankly, her attention to detail when executing anything involving a theme or a costume has me wondering where she has been all my life.

I am expecting with unadulterated hope that there will be another Yule Ball in 2011. I have no idea how this year’s managed to slip under my radar. But listen to this, witches and wizards: Full dinner. Open bar. Enchanted ceiling. Dance. Performance by a band called Wingardium Leviosa! And Christmas! All on one night! The only thing more wonderful that I can think of would be if an owl flew in my window right now and delivered my acceptance letter to Hogwarts.

Oh boy, I really hope that bartender will mix me a butterbeer!

Although I will say (in non-serious news), I’ve recently started watching TV again after about a year off, and of course, the first thing that sucked me in was The Bachelor (dang it!). I’ve seen two episodes, and I’ve seen Brad smile a total of ONE time. ONE time. He’ll even say things like, “Hearing you say that makes me so happy,” while sitting there looking like someone just died. I have no idea what those women see in him. He hasn’t said one single thing that was funny, relaxed, or that didn’t sound like he was trying to recite it from a memorized script. In fact, I’d say he’s just about the awkwardest thing I’ve seen all year. And wasn’t he already on the Bachelor once before? He should be comfortable with the cameras by now, so I think it’s pretty safe to say he simply lacks any kind of a personality. Well, anyway, despite all that I’m hooked, and we don’t even have TiVo anymore, so not only do I watch the show, but I watch all of those horrific Hometown Buffet commercials that go along with it.

And I wonder why I’m uninspired.

I guess you could call that a smile... in the same way you could call a horse a tractor. An awkward, uncomfortable tractor.

Update: I swear my Archives tab was working fine, or maybe I just imagined that, because now it’s not. But I’m still proud of myself for figuring out the upgrade. And how do y’all like this new theme? I like it for now. Can you tell that I like turquoise and red/orange together? How can you tell?

My laptop battery was sick last Friday, so I went to the Apple Store, not even considering that the guy at the genius bar who would be very, very helpful would also be adorable with sparkly eyes. I had not even considered it! But he was totally adorable. Possibly not my exact type, but it still made for a delightful genius bar experience — and the fact that his uniform t-shirt said “genius” on the front didn’t hurt, either. Hypothetically, if I wore one of those shirts every day, do you reckon it would help or hurt my dating life? Don’t answer that.

Anyway, so after my pleasant experience at the genius bar, my now happy, healthy laptop and I went downstairs to browse. As I was scanning the various iPod accessories, someone approached me and asked if I needed help. Well, I always say no when people ask me that, because I am stubborn and prefer to find things on my own — but as the “no” was coming out of my mouth, all slo-mo style like Annakin/Lord Vader’s cry of agony in Star Wars Episode III (see? nerd!) except instead of agony it was more like, “Nah, I’m fine, thanks,” I glanced up and realized that he was the hottest nerd in the whole place. Suddenly I really wished I needed help with something, and as he walked away, I realized I did need help, because I wasn’t finding what I was looking for, but by then he was across the store and I was forced to seek assistance from a nerd that was far, far from being hot. D’oh! At least now I know where they hide — and frankly, why am I telling you this? I should keep this little secret to myself! Next weekend instead of going to bars I want to get dressed up cute and go to all the Apple stores in town. And maybe the weekend after that I’ll be on a date with my brand new hot nerd!

*After publishing this, I realize I must not be nerdy enough to ever win a spelling bee!

Other things I did included not telling people what for when they were mean to me, or not speaking up when someone offended me. Like the time I was at dinner with a friend and her husband and some of his friends, and one of them kept saying to his male friend, “OH, come on, you girl. What are you, a girl??” And what I wanted to say was, “Excuse me, but I didn’t realize being a girl was such a bad thing.” But I didn’t; I kept quiet.

I started mulling over this around New Year’s, and I kind of made a vague, half-assed resolution that had something to do with not being afraid to be myself and admit to who I am, but I never put it as plainly as I just did, and never wrote it down. So I figure I’ll write it down now, here, on the internet — the World Wide Web, if you will — so that y’all can hold me to it. This year, I am not going to apologize in words, actions or silence, for who I am, what I like, and what I don’t like. If something bothers me I am going to speak up, to friends, aquaintances, and strangers alike. Not that I’m going to go around shooting my mouth off hither and nigh when anything goes against my grain, but if I need to, I will.

I think it’s easy to mold yourself to the people you’re around. I know I do it a lot. I kind of become who they want me to be. And I’m going to try really hard not to do that anymore, because I am freaking awesome, just on my own, without molding myself to anything. So there!

And you know what else? I’m listening to Kelly Clarkson right now, and I love her! And, I love the buttered popcorn-flavored Jelly Bellies. I know that makes me a freak, but I don’t care; they are so tasty! Also, I’ve never read a lot of the books you have, because all I want to read is Harry Potter! HA! I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK! I LOVE HARRY POTTER AND WANT TO ATTEND HOGWARTS, AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

And tomorrow’s my birthday!

Also, I posted a blentry days and days ago, but lo and behold, it wasn’t posted after all! I could see it when I was signed into my WordPress account, so I assumed it was there, but it was tricking me. So I have re-added it for your enjoyment. Scroll down a couple blentries to “Linkies, Not Minkies,” and enjoy. My favorite link today is the Brick Testament one. Click on “The Law,” and read all of them. They are awesome. Once you click a picture, be sure to click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of it to view the whole little story. Awesome.

And you could clip their mouths to their tails to hold them around your shoulders. Yes, sir, super creepy, but I didn’t really get the whole concept of where fur comes from. I just thought they were cute little pets. Cute little dead pets. He is kind of cute, you have to admit. And, dead.

Well, that was a totally random story, and the only reason I mention it is because I had already decided to do a blentry with a bunch of my favorite links, and I wrote “linkies,” which led me to remember the minkies, and there you go.

So: Unlike the minks, these links were not killed and clipped mouth-to-tail for creepy ladies’ fashion. These are simply links I’ve bookmarked over the last few months that I think are neat: Because sometimes people who work in offices get bored. Really, really bored. And sometimes those people become so efficient at getting stuff done, including wasting time, that they blow their wad right off the bat, so to speak, and have nothing left to amuse themselves, and the day has just begun. As evidence of such problem, refer to this IM conversation between a coworker and me (myself?) yesterday:

[12:25] Me: btw, i’ve become so efficient at wasting time that even though i have done several releases today and have only been here for 4.5 hours, i have already posted a blentry, checked all my email, both work and personal, researched and made a handwritten list of various makeup items i must try on at Sephora, have read all my usual blogs, and have visited every sight on the internet.

[12:26] Co-worker: HAHAHAHAH

So: To combat such boredom, I present to you: The links!

The Brick Testament
Art Pad
Ian’s Shoelace Site
Anamorphic Drawings by Julian Beaver
Astounding!
Unusual Hotels of the World
Paper Cut
One Sentence
The Simple Dollar – Free Open Source Software

OK, I think this is enough for today. I still have more up my sleeve (or clinging lifelessly around my shoulders, if you will), so get excited.

Happy Friday, My Little Minks!

In one especially dumb class I took Freshman year, a Communications class called “Environmental Advocacy” (Sounds cool, right? Wrong. That’s how they get you), they made the ridiculous mistake of letting us write GROUP papers. My friend Lauren and I wrote a paper together on animal testing for cosmetics (Side note: It is barbaric: They’re not just washing the bunnies’ hair — so go to here and look at what they do to bunnies, then go here to download lists of companies that do and do not test on animals). (Another side note: I hate S.C. Johnson (“A ‘Family’ Company”) with all the fiber of my being, because not only do they perform cruel atrocities on bunny rabbits, but they also have the most sexist, ridiculous commercials ever, with scores of dowdy women with horrible midwestern accents raving about all their housecleaning products. Do men ever clean? Of course not. Do women work outside the home or wear anything besides tapered kakhis and casual button-down shirts and loafers? Gee golly, next you’re going to suggest that women can vote!!! Just calm right on down and greab a handy Pledge wipe, don’tcha know!)

Anyway. So we wrote this group paper, and we kept finding ourselves using the same words over and over, prompting us to use the thesaurus, and we said, what if we just stuck any word from the thesaurus in place of the original word: I.E. we kept using the word “insert” in the context of “inserting chemicals into rabbits’ eyes.” One of the thesaurus’s replacements for “insert” was “thrust,” which of course we put in the paper like so: “This test involves thrusting chemicals into rabbits’ eyes.” In another place, after looking for synonyms for the word “stop,” we discussed various ways to motivate companies to “cease and desist” the unnecessary tests. It was hilarious, or at least we thought so.

On another paper, we had to invent a fake campaign and write about it. We had recently seen an episode of Veronica’s Closet in which Dan Cortese’s character, having already used the word “increase” too many times in their catalogue to describe push-up bras, made up the word “acribitz” (uh-CRIB-its) to use in their advertising. We made one slight adjustment: “acribit,” and based our campaign around it. We called it the Toxic Emissions Acribition Act, and that was the title of our paper. I believe acribit in our context actually meant decrease. If our law got passed, it would acribit toxic emissions by nearly 12%! When we got it back, the T.A. made no mention of the fact that the title of our paper and the campaign the whole paper discussed included the word “Acribition,” but instead just added a tiny red question mark next to the word “acribit” in one place. I think we got a B+ or something. Well, well worth it.

In conclusion, I love having a blog, because I can write whatever the hell fuck fart I want, and nobody gives me a bad grade. And I love the internet, which cannot be censored. Sure, some people might get offended or think it’s boring, but I’m not twisting anyone’s brazo to read it.

UPDATE: I have just heard from the aformentioned Lauren, who reminded me that throughout our animal testing paper we included made-up quotes from totally made-up people we “interviewed” at PETA and Proctor & Gamble, whom we named “Janice Bryan” (a loose interpretation of our high school chorus teacher’s name) and “Nancy Schaffner” (because we thought that sounded like a name we would not have made up).