The Vulture of Shame

Ok, go read this.




Shaaaaaame


This is maybe my new most favorite concept. After reading that article, I continually refer to the "Vulture of Shame" in conversation.... and no one understands me. I don't care- they'll figure it out eventually.

I just felt the need share this. I love it. ♥

Today is here!

Well, it's time, ladies and gentlemen. Time for the big, bad, final graduate recital. T-minus 3 hours until I need to be at the school setting up the crap for the live stream of the recital I'm hoping against hope works like it's supposed to. I am going to be very, very sad if it doesn't... but what can you do?


Ok, gotta go curl my hair... or eat a Cadbury Creme egg or something...

Recital Time!

So, for all of you wanting to watch this crazy recital thing, go here Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 6pm CST. HOPEFULLY (crosses fingers) it will work as planned, though I can't be sure simply because technology sometimes hates me.

Also, I occasionally hear songs that are exactly perfect for a situation... then I hear another song that is also perfect for the same situation. Isn't funny how that works?



but then...




So yeah. That's kind of how I've been feeling lately: completely pulled in two directions. We'll just have to see how it goes, eh?


Hope you can tune in to the recital!! :D

Ads

I'm sure everyone is going to be posting about the Superbowl today, and I am no different. I just want to share the cutest ad ever. I saw it before the Superbowl, and loved it then, so here it is for your viewing pleasure:






CUTEST. I may or may not have gotten choked up the first time I saw it...... (of course I did)

Love this song.

Sorry I'm so lame and never post anymore. I have... oh my GOSH so much to do. And... basically no time to do it. Ugh.

Anydisasterthatismylife, I love this song and, obviously, have to put it on here for you guys. :) If the voice sounds familiar, it's because it is. I have posted stuff by The Weepies before and Deb Talan is the lady half of that duo. (Also, there's a little blip noise right at the beginning that I can't get to go away. It's clearly NOT part of the song, but just deal with it.)


How Will He Find Me - Deb Talan



pic via so much love

Oh my holy heavens.....

So my friend Dustin sends me this link and I have since shared it on every possible social media outlet.. because it is amazing.


regretsy.com


Hold on to your hats, folks. It is INtense.

Some of my favorites:

Unicorn, Fish wearing a squirrel suit, or generally anything in the Dead Things category

Corset Jeans

Kitten Head Amputee


Oh my.

New musics!!!

I've been on a sort of different music kick lately that consists of two new, groups, I guess you could say. One group is largely Britney, Lady Gaga, and Ludacris related, and the other is a lot of Modest Mouse, The Sounds, MGMT and Bloc Party. But this isn't about them.

I was listening to my Weepies Pandora and The Wailin' Jennys came on. I listened to their song two or three times.... and then bought 2 of their albums on iTunes. They sound like Allison Krauss and The Weepies and something else that I can't place, but wow their music is gorgeous.



Long Time Traveller - The Wailin' Jennys

Dear Old Love indeed

I read Dear Old Love as often, or more so, as I read TFLN. I find it both interesting and ironic that I have had several published only recently, since I have been submitting them for a while.

Kudos to you, Dear Old Love, for being able to tell when I was making it up and when I really meant it.

Dating in the Dark

Oh my goodness...


Smitten blogged about this show Dating in the Dark and I am so hooked. I haven't even finished an episode yet... I am actually blogging on the commercial break on ABC.com. Though, I confess, I will more than likely watch it on the hulu.com site from now on because I hate ABC's player so much.


Either way, I'll be watching it all day, I'm sure. I suggest you do the same.


Update: OH MY GOSH!! SOOO GOOD!! Season premiere=BRILLIANT. Lovelovelovelovelove....

To all you geeks out there...

...this is for you:






Yeah, I'm pretty sure I want to BE Felicia Day.


If you're into nerdiness, you can watch her Web Series The Guild and laugh harder at the video because the characters will make more sense. And for even more Felicia Day genius, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a must watch (It also has the amazingly talented Neil Patrick Harris and the equally talented and deliciously handsome Nathan Fillion).

Wendy or a Tinkerbell

Holy crap, internets. Sometimes, you up and produce some utterly intriguing stuff.




"The way I see it, every girl has to deal with a Peter Pan at some point in her life. A man-child, if you will. They’re fun, charming, witty, intoxicating and have such a magnetic personality that you don’t notice you’ve fallen completely in love with them until 4 months later. Then you have to decide which type of girl you are.

Are you a Wendy or a Tinkerbell?

See, if you’re a Wendy, you realize that the novelty of running through the neighbour’s lawn sprinklers at 3am completely naked and stealing bags of chips from 7-Eleven while one of you distracts the clerk, has worn off. So you pack up your bags and go off to grad school where you meet a nice young dentist that you can take home to your mom. Sure, sometimes you sit in bed with that perfect man lying next to you, thinking back on that one time you stole a couple shopping carts from Walgreens and raced them down the empty street. And you’ll smile, but you won’t regret moving on and taking responsibility for your life.

Now if you’re a Tinkerbell, you stay with Peter. Because you love one another and you both have an unspoken understanding that you’ve got too many psychological issues between you for it to work with anyone else. You thrive off the excitement and silliness of everything he does and it never gets old. You know why? Because you’re the only one who really “gets” him. And vice-versa. If you’re having a bad day he’ll put on Life Of Brian because he knows it’ll make everything ok, if only for a few hours. And that, my friends, is true love."


How totally genius is that?

via Sade

Booze.

When some people get in a funk, they have to blog. They need to write down all of their emotional tribulations and get the feelings out onto the proverbial paper (or blog-o-whatever). This is not me.

Others need to physically work through their stress. They get on a treadmill and just run and run until they can't run any more and then they go lift weights. This (obviously) is not me.

Others still need to go out. They liquor up and party and either get out of their funk or at least forget about it for a while, since unless your problem is a pressing need to get wasted, drinking isn't going to solve anything. This is not me.

That forgetting for a while thing is pretty nice, though. However, I have come to discover that booze is expensive. I know. *Shocker*. But in my recent stretches of relative poverty, expensive isn't good. So I have to confess my current personal booze to you all. It costs about the same as 2 or 3 mixed drinks, and I can indulge for an entire month. When I get sad or in a funk or lonely or whatever, I can partake and lose hours to my inexpensive and delightful friend. And best of all (well, other than that it's cheap), even though I'm not reeeally, I at least feel like I'm accomplishing something.


If you haven't guessed by now, World of Warcraft is my booze. And let me tell you, a year ago, I would have been the first to say that it's stupid and awful and way out of my league of nerdiness. But last summer, I let a boy talk me into it, so I caved. It was actually my birthday present to me ("I'm so happy..." name that movie!!). He doesn't really play anymore (lame), but talk about the gift that keeps on giving. And the game is fun, actually. What's really interesting to me is the number of people that play that I would have never guessed. Once you give in to your inner nerd, you'll find so many more out in the world. It's like we can smell each other or something....


However, I feel like there's a line. A nerdy line. Like, if my Alyssa friend and I go to Taco Bell and discuss dungeons and gathering professions over cheap tacos, that's one thing. Or if I go to Tulsa to see some friends I made through the game (AND a mutual friend) and hang out for a day, that's cool. But you know the people... the ones that make you uncomfortable with their commitment to their own exhaustive nerdgasms. These are the kids that have a picture of their character as their Facebook profile picture. Just because we both play this silly game does not mean that I want you shouting it across this room filled with people. Too much, kid. Just calm down.



Anygeek, I would just love to be playing now... but Tuesday mornings are dark because they do maintenance on the servers. It sucks especially on days like today when I both want to play really bad, and have a lot of time.

So instead, I'm going to watch some South Park! This episode is so spot on.


Voidwalker, Warlock and a Healthstone

pic via http://blog.sina.com.cn/maidemao (I can't read a word of it, but her little figurines and pictures are SUPER cute!!)

YATTA!!!

This was me about 20 minutes ago

Y'ALL!! Ok, so I'm a bit of a big ol' nerd and I just have to tell everybody that I feel like a frickin' genius right now.

I have been trying to get SimTower to work for quite some time. It was sort of a cycle where I would remember how much I love to play old DOS games and I'd play the one or two that I have made work reliably (either with the CD I still have or that I downloaded) and I get on a mission to make SimTower work again. Like I said the other day, Dosbox has been the coolest thing to work with because it seriously is taking me back 15 years to when I was a kid in the 90s playing on my dad's computer. Everything from the way the directory structure and navigation handles to the sounds (oh! The sounds!!) is just totally perfect. But I could never make SimTower work because it would give me an error message that said it needed Windows to run. I use a MacBook Pro, and I wouldn't have had access to Windows installation disks... ever, much less have a way to run them now. My mom inadvertently gave me the idea to try to find the game FOR Mac, but because I have an Intel based Mac, it doesn't have the Classic OS already installed, so I would have to run Classic OS through an emulator, too. After barking up that tree for a while, it was back to the drawing board (read: I came home and took a 4 hour nap, which is really more of a baby-sleep than nap, anyway).


Well, ladies and gentlemen, after my nap, I resumed the quest and while reading forum after forum after thread after whatever, the knowledge was bestowed upon me that I can INSTALL Windows 3.1 (My 1990s original OS) and run it through my Dosbox.

this is incredible.

The best part is that I can sort of manipulate the file structure from OSX, since it's all housed in there anyway. What would have taken FOREVER in a copy, paste command cycle just takes a second. And I can back everything up... like the entire OS. Shoot, I FUBARed it up the first time I tried to install SVGA drivers and just delete the whole folder from OSX and started over. It's GREAT!! I figured out how to make the sound drivers work and everything. I installed and ran SimTower and it WORKS!! Suffice to say that tomorrow at work will be consumed by this game.

so. excited.

Sorry about all the technobabble. I hope at least some of you out there will be able to get what I'm talking about.

I'm not, however, sorry for the Heroes 'ence.

What? You don't know what "ence" means? I'll blog about that later. The rest of this was too important to wait until morning.

A message...

[push play before reading entry]



*psst*

NO! Don't look at me! Act like you're refilling your coffee. I don't have much time...

*Looks around*

There is an order. A large one. It is already in the office and it will likely take all of my morning, so this is the last we'll speak for quite some time. Continue to investigate every corner of the internet until I return. If I'm not back by Sunday, don't come looking. It will be too late.

*doors opening, noises in hallway*

They're here! Quickly, I must appear to be working... OH! One last thing before I go: be sure and find whichever dumbass McDonald's employee forgot to include my damn hashbrowns. That's my favorite part of the whole frickin' breakfast. I was really looking forward to that this morning, too. That employee: they need to disappear. Make it happen.



Good luck, readers.





This blog will self-destruct in 5.....





4.....




3.....




2.....




1.....

Little lights

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

-Edith Wharton

New music and my beef with bloggy photos

As tends to happen, Joel said I ought to listen to a band called Parachute because I would like it and... I did. (They sound like a more palatable Gavin Degraw, but anyhow). The video for "She is Love" is VERY cute (watch here), but I prefer the acoustic version on the album. So here's today's pretty picture and song post!


She Is Love - Parachute

I think this is pretty!
But it does contain obviously "bloggy" elements: tree, sky, blurred edges, birds


On an unrelated issue: why are balloons such a popular item in bloggy photos here lately (Exhibits A, B, and C?) I am not gonna lie, I like bloggy photos (you know, the ones that are arty and original and blurred on the edges with the saturation down and the focus on one specific and usually ironic thing?) and I have even posted arty photos, because they are bloggy. And arty. Anyhow.
There is just some typical subject matter in bloggy photos (flowers, sky, trees, lens flares, birds, skinny girls with flawless skin, disheveled hair and billowy short dresses), I just was mildly curious how balloons got into the mix. And typewriters? And cameras.
It's also funny to me how formulaic some bloggy photos are. I can make a bloggy photo in about 3 steps: reduce saturation, up contrast, add blurred edges/vignette. Ready? Here it is:


This is actually a photo from a college with a degree in landscape design. Truth be told, it was hard to find a landscape photo that wasn't already bloggy.


Blogified. Caption possibilities:
"My heart is here..."
or
"silence breaks me"

(Create your own!)




Well, this was longer than I expected it to be... (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!)

Ok, enough harping on the bloggy world. As is obvious, I like 'em, too, but that doesn't make them any less predictable. :)



photo here

Pictures and such

I have recently started following a ton of blogs that I simply have in a category of "Pretties" in my Google Reader. They are just exactly that: blogs that post pretty pictures and quotes and whatnot. I found them through either other people's blogs or actually from other pretty picture blogs, as they like to reference each other with some frequency.

I put these links (for whatever reason) in a draft blog and I forgot what they were, so I thought for today I'd just post them, no matter what they were. Let's see!




via so much love



via The Many Faces of Zooey Deschanel



via i can read


“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want… a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
- Shana Abé

via restart my heart



via restart my heart



via paper tissue



via so much love

F*ck Yeah! Ryan Gosling

This seems to be like LOLcats for pictures of Ryan Gosling... I felt the need to immediately post this:



Baahahahahaha


via ....erm... here.

Gchat Fail.

Ok, I feel like one of two things right now (perhaps both):

1) One of those old people that pushes the buttons on their phone with one finger.

or

2) One of those needy people on social networking pages that is all, "Plz leave comments on my page so I feel looved!" (even though this is about Gchat and not about comments)


I don't know how to work Gchat, and being the most technologically savvy person in my immediate social circle, I have no guidance and I sort of feel like I'm missing out on some fun internet thing (even though it's basically just AIM).


Still, if there are any Gchat Veterans (I'm sort of looking in your direction, GingerMandy or potentially LiLu) that would be willing to take me under their wing, I would be forever thankful (or at least until the next internet thing comes along...)

The year 3000

Conan = brilliant.

(Quick link courtesy of Seester:)





This will undoubtedly happen.