nonsense at the groceries

Yesterday: I went to the grocery store on my way home from work to buy body wash and ketchup; the use of these two items are unrelated. I was in line at the cashier when I noticed I was standing behind a guy who didn’t look married. Living where I live, this is rare. He was buying two cases of beer and one container of ice cream. Hip looking glasses, a navy blue beanie on his head, a jacket I can’t remember, fitted dark blue jeans, and nice brown boots. This may have been the one of the few times in my life I have wanted to follow someone home in their car. Who are you? I want to be your favorite.

autumn is (unofficially) here

This line popped into my head as I as driving to work the other day.

Via mariadahvanaheadley: 

"Sarah Goodridge, Beauty Revealed. Self portrait miniature on ivory. 2 5/8th inches by 3 1/8th inches. American. 1828.

Let me just type that year again: 1828.

A variation on a Lover’s Eye, this was a gift from Goodridge to Daniel Webster (he who bargained with the devil in Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story) and discovered in his possessions after his death. Most descriptions of the duo’s relationship depict them as “friends and correspondents.”

Right. She painted 12 portraits of Webster over the years. He burned her letters. She kept his, and never married.

Here’s the rest of Sarah Goodridge, in another self-portrait from a couple of years later.


This little piece kills me. Cell phone porn and texted seductions are nothing new. We just keep reinventing ways to tell each other we’ve fallen in love."

I found this story to be beautiful, fascinating, and heartbreaking. I now feel the need to read anything and everything I can about this. There has to be some kind of historical version of UsWeekly, right?

for all my squares

bits and pieces

 The past few months have been challenging. I've been so stressed out from work (mainly, among other things) that my sister confessed that she was worried about my mental state, which she never does. What else could she think after I've called her in the middle of a workday (this never happens, everything is email email email), and busted out of my bedroom door past midnight yelling "BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT. BULL-SHIT."

Pity party aside, here are some tidbits I've collected over the past few months.

On work IMs and emails: The copious amounts of overtime everyone in the office has been working has turned us into wild sweatshop animals; cagey and ready to go for each others' throats at the smallest trigger. The other day I received a very polite IM from a coworker asking me if I had a moment to help them with an order. And despite the nice message, I could not help thinking for a split second, "why YES I have a moment. I have LOTS of moments and no fucks to give." Thank goodness I have self control.

On suicide: FIRST off, I'm not going to off myself. I know it's bad and selfish, but we'd all be lying if we said it hadn't crossed our minds once or twice. Anyway...thank God I am TOO lazy to suicide myself. If I ever decided to suicide myself, I would want to organize my belongings first; donate clothing I don't need (well of course I wouldn't be needing them anymore) and throw away all the trash I have accumulated in my lifetime. I couldn't bare to leave so much work for my family to do in addition to arranging my funeral. Alas, I am too lazy to do ALL these things, especially with all the overtime going on at work. So I will say this: when I was growing up, my father would always lecture me, saying that "laziness is a disease", but in this case, laziness is actually a lifesaver.

On Yelp: They need to have Yelp for people, all people. Before I come into contact with a new restaurant, I want to study the menu and read past reviews in order to avoid any feelings of disappointment and reduce the risk of heartburn.

On bad dreams: It must have been a lulu. A few weeks ago (during one of the busiest weeks this season at work), I had a dream that I was in my childhood house and my mother was breaking the news to me that for the past six years I had been living a delusion brought on by severe depression and that IN this delusion, I was severely depressed...in the delusion brought on my severe depression...and now was the time to consider voluntarily committing myself. I remember being upset and panicking because this meant that I had been doing all this work for fake college and had no degree to speak of. Should I capitalize and underline and bold and italicize "VOLUNTARILY" on my resumé?

On manners: Last week I was feeling somewhat better, so I bought ice cream for myself and three other friends/coworkers. We were outside enjoying the sun and eating our ice cream when I noticed a guy walking towards the entrance door carrying a CPU. I walked over to the door, which was a good distance from where I was standing and I held the door open for him. This guy, this swell, this ne'er do well had the balls to give me the stink eye and huff and puff his way through the door without saying a word to me. I have never wanted to punch a guy in the dick so much in my life.

On the bright side: I know I've been whining, so I keep telling myself to stop crying like a little girl because things are still so great. I've been told that we're never given anything we cannot handle, so I would rather work harder at better handling whatever is coming next than sail through life all fat and happy with everything handed to me on a silver platter and never learning anything. <3

10 minute poster. The song "I Need You Tonight" by Elkland came on, and this line just stuck to my brain until I released it onto this hipsterish picture.

Another 10 minute poster I did last Sunday.

today

This accurately describes my mood today. Also, my conversation with Sarah P. that led me to seek out this picture:

"holy f**@k...i feel like stuffing five million things into my mouth right now."
"LOL"

random

Today I wore and orange dress.

oops

I was taking a mental break at work and I realized that I was looking at a bunch of beautiful food pictures while listening to a sad, sad Fiona Apple song (it came on random, not my fault!). This proved to be a very sad three minutes of my Monday.

don cheadle on a bed of rice

This kills me every time.

we are young

we are young / fun. feat. janelle monáe (live acoustic)

Ok, I've succumbed to this song. It hit me at just the right moment. I was pleasantly surprised that he has a really strong, clear voice that I admire.

it's hard...

Enough said. :D

gaggy but cute

Some of the things I come across on the internet are just TOO gag-inducing to post on my tumblr, but we're all friends here, right? This pic is a little eyeroll-worthy, but I thought it was too cute to pass up :D

this is too accurate.

and so...

craving community

i've got a hive full of honey...

This is probably one of my favorite scenes from "Calamity Jane" I love to reenact. It is hilarious.

spring fever on the tumblr

Whenever I come across a new tumblr that has so many things I love (i.e., food food food), my mind wanders back to this tweet from Donald Glover a while back.

the pause that refreshes

what to do with my growing collection of argo iced tea glass bottles? fill them with cashews, miscellaneous snacks, and use them for either water or making refreshing cold tea in the mornings.

jumping the gun

It's only March, but I've already switched to summer scents, despite my common sense. But who cares? The weather as of late has been sunny (with bits of rain here and there) and for the most part, in the 70's. Usually I use Bobbi Brown's "Beach" during the summer, but I passed by Bath & Body Works this weekend, which I haven't been to in a few years. I happened to come across a mango scent and was immediately taken back to my college days when I wore a specific discontinued mango scent every single day from spring through summer. It made me so nostalgic, I had to pick it right up again to start wearing immediately. Summer is back (scent-wise, at least)!

beautiful

next on my list...

these. want~!

sunday flashback

Sade's "Love is Stronger Than Pride" is one of my favorite songs of hers. I had forgotten how much I loved it until I came across a cover on YouTube. This song is perfect to listen to late at night, especially if it's raining. So cliché, I know. But it really is a beautiful song, especially once you understand it and have the patience to appreciate the slow build.

dreams

I've finally found a picture that almost exactly matches the type of house I want to live in one day (although it looks like it may just be a pool house, but I don't mind). A little cottage or a bunaglow with a little pool and patio area for evening dinners. Pink flowers, of course. I would like a one-story, but I wouldn't mind two stories either. Here's to dreaming!

Rough Week

FAT KID MOMENT: Did you know that eating mini peanut butter cups with fresh strawberries is like Valentine's Day in your mouth?

I call this recipe "Poor Man's Valentine".

treat yo self friday

It's Treat Yo Self Friday, y'all. CHERISH.

the first time i ran away / m. ward

i am officially already in love with m. ward's new album.

sparkle, neeley, SPARKLE!

Besides thinking about how much I love them so much, whenever I see glitter and the like, I always hear the line from "Valley of the Dolls": "Sparkle, Neeley, SPARKLE!"

Highlight of my day: bought a black hoodie at H&M with hot pink detailing. Something new to wear with my hot pink Puma's. Normally I would be annoyed that everything is coming up pink this season, but I love the color so much, I can't be TOO too mad.

Also, I painted my nails similar to the technique in picture below. Instead of black, I used a dark turquoise. I've also observed I've built up a collection of nail polish over the past few months and it reminds me of when I was a young girl. My mother kept a mauve basket filled to the top with different nail polishes and anything you could think of to use for a manicure. Like mother, like daughter I suppose <3 <3 <3



the full how-to at: what i wore.

simple pleasures

I love it when it's time to start a new tube of liquid eyeliner. The brush...it's incredible.

i tell you what.

First of all, I less-than-three joan rivers. I once met her very briefly at a dinner where I volunteered to hand out pamphlets and she was probably the nicest celebrity I came across the entire night. Second, I don't know if I'm hanging out on the tumblr too much (but can you REALLY do that too much?), but I'm starting to roll my eyes a little at all the "typography" posters with "inspirational" quotes telling us that it's going to be OK, everything is going to be great and amazing, etc.. The first twenty times I saw them, it was nice, but I suddenly feel that a swarm of Pinterest-type, wishy-washy, feel better, teenage emo, typographic posters are slowly invading my territory. And no, I'm not cynical. I just don't need a handwritten-yet-very-designed bosom of a poster to cry on.

The above was not meant to be a rant, but just an observation. It's also a set-up to one of my favorite tv spots Joan Rivers made, and it was on Louis C.K.. One of her first great lines in this bit was "You don't know when you're lucky". As I watched that, I thought to myself, "Oh, she done told me." But then my favorite came along...her words (and the writers) of wisdom:

"It doesn't get better. YOU get better. I've gone up, I've gone down, I've been bankrupt, I've been broke, but you do it. And you do it because we love it more than anything else. What we do is not a job. Sounds so stupid. What we do is a calling, my dear. We make people happy. It's a calling."

realtalk.

strange girls...

I would love a print of this.

the layover

I caught Anthony Bourdain's new show "The Layover" tonight and I went BANANAS because Sir Eats-a-Lot was in Rome, which is only one of my favorite cities. When I studied there, my favorite thing to eat on the go was the pizza al taglio. I was fortunate enough to live around the corner from a pizza place that had the BEST pizza in the whole entire universe.

While I was watching the pizza al taglio, I had to text Vina saying that the "pizza looks so goddamn good it's making me take my hair down." true story.

i less-than-three butter and i less-than-three vegetables

Lurpak - Lightest from Blink on Vimeo.

CHECK! CHECK! CHECK!

It's eleven thirty-six in the evening and I've just yelled out "CHECK!" three times with my arms outstretched. No, I'm not playing chess with my imaginary friend. I'm still being nostalgic and reading through old journal entries and came across this:

name three things you want to do before you do before you die:
1. see the pyramids
2. travel across the country
3. touch the trunk of a huge redwood tree out thar in cali

so far, I've completed one out three. I AM GETTING SOMEWHERE WITH MY LIFE!!!

le sigh.

the more things change, the more they stay the same

Tumblr is over capacity yet AGAIN. Refer to your prayer books, everybody. I am reminded of a similar scenario. Picture it: Xanga, July 25, 2006. I wrote a blurb entitled "What is the world doing while MySpace is down?" and compare the child of Friendster to heroin. MySpace was a social media gateway drug for sure.

Highlights from that entry: went to a gay bar for trivia night and one of the team names was "Can't Drink You Pretty". I hereby resurrect that term and I am determined to use it as much as I can.

downton abbey

For quite a long time, I've been hearing good things about Downton Abbey, and it sounded like it would be right up my alley (bum DUM bum). It's your typical English period soap opera with an Upstairs Downstairs Remains of the Day Gosford Park sort of thing going on. Let me tell you, LOTS of bitches running around that house, both upstairs and downstairs. Villains, villains, villains, simpletons, and the rest caught in the middle. I love it. I was planning to check out two or three episodes at the most, but ended up watching the entire first season for seven straight hours.

It reminded me of all the snow days that I have spent bundled up in blankets and watching a Pride and Prejudice marathon. After Christmas, these are the only comforting memories I have of winter.

And the above picture? Yes.

shenanigans

The above photo taken by a coworker. It started with a simple stack of cups on a desk while a coworker was away. I suggested hiding their monchichi doll in one of the cups, causing the culprit to be caught. I felt a little guilty and suggested we build a cup fort around their desk as payback. It. Was. Beautiful.

nature boy

It goes without saying, nat king cole's version of this song is my #1 favorite, but let this be my obsession for the rest of the week, month, season.

FACT

watching english period movies and television shows helps in writing very painful annual reviews about yourself. thank you to the king's speech and downton abbey.

yacht rock

this song has been stuck in my head for the past week. i heard it on jimmy fallon's yacht rock playlist and it was game over. funny enough, i found the 45 of this in the stack of records from my youth.

p.s. i promise this is not becoming a video blog. it's just...the blog wants what the blog wants.

uh oh spaghettios

i'm a joan ranger all the way.

one day, you will be mine

i am aware that i have expressed my distaste for the cupcake perversion, BUT one day i will eat this croquembouche cupcake from the yellow leaf cupcake co. in seattle. i think this cupcake might deserve a standing ovation.

yuppies...yuppies in line

I was reminded of the yuppies anecdote tonight while I was perusing through twitter feeds. I'm not sure why some of my friends find the yuppies-in-line anecdote amusing, but I have to admit, it was fun times. It was almost as funny as the time someone's friend woke up in a ditch with their wallet in their mouth, when someone got the shets on the metro, when a pair of innocents were locked out all night in NYC, or when someone got so sick after a food party, they threw up racing stripes on the side of their car on their drive home. I digress.

Amie and I went to a happy hour...or something. It might have been the time that Mary wanted to go to a random house party where a number of bands were playing, one of which was a Smashing Pumpkins tribute band with a lead singer who looked JUST like Billy Corgan (Amie later told me that Billy Corgan was Mary's Andrew Bird). No, wait...it must have been a happy hour since I had gotten a little a lot tipsy. On the way home, we passed the Clarendon Ballroom where I spotted a long line of people. For some reason this annoyed me, and I rolled down the window and yelled to them,

"YUPPIES!!! YUPPIES IN LIIIIIIIIIIIINE!"

Drunk drive-by and then we went to IHOP.

So the next time you see a bunch of people in line for something preposterous, feel free to yell this, i.e., Georgetown Cupcakes. But I won't get started on that perversion of a dessert fad.

hello?

Hello from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.

movie clips molded into lionel richie's song "hello".

oh grandma, you so fly

josh anecdote

A Josh story popped into my head an hour ago. Sometimes I think about him and really miss that guy. A couple years back during school, I met up with Amie and Josh at an IHOP and as I sat down, they seemed very, very excited.

"Josh assigned you a new ringtone!"
"What is it?" I was very intrigued to see what he had found. But before the reveal, Josh had to set it up.
"WELL...I was going through the ringtone selections ANNNNND I heard this, and I thought it was TOTALLY YOU!!"

He held up his phone so I could hear. It was "Hava Nagila".

Throughout the rest of the night of our gallivanting, they would sporadically starting singing to me "YA-DAAAA da dee da DA-DAAAA!" Best ringtone ever.

Below, please enjoy Dick Dale's surfer version of "Hava Nagila".

so she did

nostalgia saturday part two: record party for one

Nostalgia Saturday turned out to be an all day event. After seeing "Beauty and the Beast", I met up with my parents at a used book/dvd/records, etc. store and poked around to see if I could find anything interesting. I found a few jazz albums, a vintage Israeli record with a shockingly pink cover, and a one dollar kitschy vintage Hawaiian record with an instruction booklet on how to dance the hula.

Two more resolutions: learn to hula and collect as many record albums with pink covers.



I also collected a stack of old 45 records from my parents' garage that they had been safekeeping for me. I played the entire stack when I got home and it brought back one particular memory: back in elementary school, I had been sick with strep throat. I was depressed and bored from staying home for so long, all I could do was play these records on my little Cabbage Patch Kids record player. Someone please tell me why I have a copy of "Nadia's Theme" aka the theme song to "The Young and the Restless"?

sh!t filipino moms say. sunday interlude

nostalgia saturday part one: stockholm syndrome

You may have missed the millions of commercials out about this, but Disney re-released "Beauty and the Beast" in theatres AND in 3D. Be still my...no. I am not a huge fan of this 3-D fad, especially since I experience 3D all day every day, but since it was "Beauty and the Beast", I was willing to take one for the team. Like any typical young girl, I was enchanted with "Beauty and the Beast" when it first came out more than two decades ago. My cousin took me and my sisters to see it in the theatre, and a week later, I convinced my other cousin to take me to see it again.

The scene that had THE biggestt visual impact on me was probably during the "Be Our Guest" number:



I was mesmerized as the rows of moving dishes replicated into step-and-repeat-extravaganza. Apparently, I was a fan of "things organized neatly" at an early age. This was also the very first time, as I was experiencing this scene, "Oh my God, I better savor this moment because I know I will never feel this way ever again." I realize now that this thought came before I realized that this movie would come to video, television, dvd, blu-ray, and the theatre again. Still, I was curious to see how I would feel about this scene when I saw it as an adult. The result? I loved it. Thoughts? This bit which played for days long in my mind only lasted about two to three seconds. It was a slight "Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine" moment.

But overall, it was a lovely time catching the film with Vina and Ginnie, and a million other kids. I laughed a lot more than I remembered...and I wanted to see if I would cry during the parts of the film that I remember my older cousins crying through, now that I know more about life (/sarcasm). Annnnd...I didn't cry. It was very nice, though.

And to even further the image of being a complete dork,, I was reminded of how I received the piano book for this movie, learned every single song and played and sang to it, doing all the characters with my sister. And when THAT was done, I traced and redrew each picture from that book.

Oh right, stockholm syndrome. Even though I enjoyed the story very much, I always wondered why she fell in love with a beast who had taken her father as prisoner and later took her as one. As I remember, Belle was quite pissed when Gaston had her father locked up and ready to go to an asylum. I suppose Gaston should have bought her affections with the world's biggest personal library...?

i'll just leave this here

I just saw this via a coworker's fb. An egg baked in an avocado half. Positively sinful to look at for some reason.

moonrise kingdom

Hey, let's go see this.

good for you, good for me, good for all of we

Good For You by BIGkids

Whenever my pal jph from Yew Nork sends me something to watch or listen to, I know it's going to be good. I woke up to this gem on my Facebook this morning and was not disappointed. This is definitely a lovely way to start the day~!

you got that?

I love thorough breakdowns like this. Whenever I hear dancehall, I think of food shopping at Global Foods.

all day long

ay-ohh river!

IFC just announced that additional dates for this tour. How excited am I that DC was added?? Oh, I can't wait to see all the hipsters.

my eyes are starving for beauty

Lest we forget.

It is a line that I find both very shallow and quite profound. I love me some André Leon Talley.

imitate a cat puking

A scene from my favorite Parker Posey movie, "Party Girl". This dance scene alone is responsible for my almost more than decade long obsession with wearing black, wide legged pants (which were, for a short time in Rome, creased as was de rigeur at that period). Whenever I reorganize anything in my house, my sister is quick to point out the scene in which Mary rearranges Leo's thousand album collection according to the Dewey Decimal System.

This movie is also why I call out the following phrases:

"DADDAYYYY!"
• used when the DJ plays a bad song or drops the needle

"Yo, what's up with this guy, all he plays is House?"
• I like House, so I usually substitute this for "Yo, what's up with this guy, all he plays is ___(insert bad music)___?"

"Imitate a Cat Puking"
• I, or someone in my party, have committed an embarrassing faux pas.

"Oranges and Peaches / Origin of Species"
• Totes did not hear what you just said.

"Yo, Betty Crocker you ain't."
• Something is amuck with this food we are eating.

"What's up Buttercup?"
• This is self explanatory.

"Can I have a falafel with hot sauce, a side order of baba ghanoush, and a seltzer please?"
• What's up Buttercup?

Another fond memory I have of this movie was JPH becoming obsessed with the one song playing in this clip after I had lent the movie to him. He ended up finding it on someone's profile on MySpace (yes, it was during the mispacio days) and aggressively emailing them asking for the music file. That made for a great mixtape later on.

The movie is pretty cheesy by today's standards (i.e., my age) BUT I still love it to death. It captures the proverbial hopeful, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed period during my youth. To my now daily "adult life", it makes me stop and say "Yo, Betty Crocker you ain't."

it's the little things

Not to sound like a very girly girl, but one of my favorite parts of my day is sitting on my bed, running one of my favorite movies on television, setting up my lap desk, opening its little drawer full of makeup, and putting on my face. it's probably one of the most relaxing times of the day...second to putting on moisturizer before sleepytime.

This drawer contains the few items I could not leave the house without on my face: champagne eyeshadow, my two shades of blush, pencil eyeliner (for the lower lid), and the most important of them all, my liquid eyeliner. My liquid eyeliner has been my bff since high school, and I should be sad if we were to ever part.



And this box of goodies was a real treat...a Christmas present from my aunt. I remember wanting one of these very badly when I was a little girl; my older cousin had boxes and boxes of these and she would spend hours taking out the little compartments and rearranging them to her liking. They seem to have come back in fashion and I can't help loving them because, as everyone knows, nostalgia has a way with getting the best of me. LOVE!

sometimes i feel like...

this.

sick day

Apparently there is a stomach bug going around the office and I was fortunate to participate in this event. It was a blur of a night filled with weird dreams (But pleasant because for some reason, James McEvoy was my boyfriend; except while he was James McEvoy, he was also the lead singer of Beirut...I don't know what happened to Zach Condon though. This is fine, since I think I prefer JM over ZC.)

I woke up early this morning feeling a little better but still a little weak. I was hesitant to call in sick, since I detest wasting personal days spent in bed. At least it gives me time to catch up on my new interest in knitting scarves.

And...sometimes nothing hits the spot like veggie broth with quinoa and kale when you are feeling unwell. So goes my boring post about a boring sick day filled with knitting and soup.

i'll be your mirror

I'll Be Your Mirror / The Velvet Underground and Nico

This song has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks. Such a lovely tune.

new year, new blog

Happy New Year! It's about a week or so later, I know, but better late than never. I'm beginning to notice that almost every new year, I start a new blog or tumblr, etc., and I said to myself, why break that tradition? We'll see how it turns out ;-)