Foul!

WARNING: this post is about things that smell bad. If you don't want to read about the things that I think smell bad, just stop reading now. I won't judge you. In fact, I'll never really know, right? So if you've just eaten, or if you have a weak stomach, come back in a few days and I promise you can read about puppies or puffy clouds or something innocuous.

OK... now that they're gone...

Good smells and bad smells are subjective. My brother likes the smell of gasoline, which, although not repulsive to me, is a little weird. Bradford pears, in flower? I think they smell like stale sex; a far-off skunk, however, is pleasant to me and evokes memories of summer nights spent with friends (a far-off skunk, mind you; nearby skunk is gross). Hot trash, sweaty teenagers, and vomit are among the top of my list of things that smells bad; clean hair and Thanksgiving dinner are probably my top two smells.

I've discovered what is, to me, the worst smell ever: the subtle combination of poo and toothpaste. Poo is in and of itself a bad smell - we can probably all agree to that - but when you mix poo and mint together, it is truly and wholly disgusting. Sometimes I can't brush my teeth at night if I've just utilized the bathroom for toilet matters, because the residual poo smell mixed with toothpaste makes me want to hurl, so I just forego clean teeth altogether. I'm telling you, it's naaaaaasty.

I also really hate the smell of baby wipes.

Tell me about smells - what are your likes and dislikes?

bad smells - F, obviously!

A New Vision

I got new glasses today! Wheeeee! I love them. They make me feel like Superman. See, they're sweet-ass blue on the outside - and red on the inside! Don't eff with me, my glasses are awesome! I might just have funky enough glasses to tool around the mean streets of Ann Arbor now. Can you see me, walking down State Street, popping by Michigan Book and Supply, maybe getting a latte at Amer's, in THESE babies? I think you can!



new glasses - A

Rollerblades

I totally saw a guy on rollerblades today. I didn't even know people still used (wore? rode?) those anymore.

Immediately after I saw the guy on rollerblades, I thought I saw a lady on a Segway, but it turns out that it was a lady on a bike with one of those rolling kid tents on the back.

Things on wheels are funny.

rollerblades - B+
rolling kid tents - B- (convenient, but weird)

An Open Letter to American Idol

Dear American Idol,

Why do you suck so hard? There was only really one acceptable outcome for the top two singers this season: Melinda and LaKisha, and yet you have forsaken them both. Why? Why? I will believe that is has to do with the teenybopper vote, silly twelve-year-olds who want "one of their own" (Jordin) or a super-cute boy (Blake, who's not really that cute aftet all) to be the next American Idol. I hate twelve-year-olds. Nut you, American Idol, you have to bear some blame. You know what Dancing with the Stars does? They give the judges' votes some weight, and those get COMBINED with the votes of the American public. Think about it.

I am sad and disheartened, AI. Of course, I'll be watching the season finale, to see which sub-par singer wins a recording contract and the title of American Idol, but I will be watching not with excitement but with resignation. Fine, AI. You win.

a Melinda- and LaKisha-free American Idol finale - D (points awarded because they'll probably both go the Jennifer Hudson route and make it just fine without being the American Idol winner, thankyouverymuch)

Another Reason Why I'm Going To Hell

I am not making fun of stutterers. Stuttering sucks. I am glad that I don't stutter, and I am happy when people (such as James Earl Jones!) can overcome their stutters and become non-impeded members of society.

But this is National Stuttering Awareness Week - and there's something really funny about that to me. It's similar to the ribbons that people wear for every cause, even causes most people have never heard of - so you've got to have a week to go along with every cause and every ribbon. Do the stutterers really need a NATIONAL awareness week? Do they even want people to be aware of them, or would they rather be ignored? At any rate, when I read an editorial in a newspaper that was blowing across the vestibule at work, and when I read that it was National Stuttering Awareness Week - I laughed. The end.

me, on the bus to Hell - F
saving seats for all my homies - A+!

Blogging Scared

"Famous" blogger Perez Hilton has been slapped with a 7.5 million dollar law suit that claims he's been using pictures without paying for them, costing a certain Hollywood photo agency millions of dollars in lost advertising. Or something like that. Law is a mystery to me.
But what's not a mystery to me is - I've been using pictures that I procured from various Internet resources for the almost two years I've been writing this blog. Now, I don't think anybody's going to come after me - much as I'd like to think so, my blog doesn't have a worldwide, millions-a-day readership. Perhaps more importantly, I don't have any ad space on my blog, and Perez was charging $9000-$16000 to place an ad on his blog (hence the photo agency's lost advertising dollars). Nonetheless, I'm a little concerned about procuring pictures from the Internet. When I started this blog, I asked my mentor Chargenda where he got his pictures. I love him, so I won't tell you exactly what he said, but I'll say that he encouraged me to use Google. And so I do. Almost every time I write, unless I use a picture that I took with my own camera.
What's the point in telling you this? I might start carrying my camera with me, so if I want to write a post about, say, a certain book, I'll have to take a picture of the book cover - but won't that be even shadier than procuring a picture from the Internet? I guess the other thing that could happen is I could ask all my readers to contribute to my legal defense fund. I don't have seven hundred dollars, much less seven million.

pictures from the Internet - A-
getting sued for using pictures from the Internet - D-
my chances of getting sued for using pictures from the Internet - 7,500,000:1

News from the HELL NO! Department

Have I ever told you how much I love pickles? I love 'em! Dill pickles are best, followed by sweet pickles, and I'll eat a bread-and-butter every now and then. One of my favorite snacks when I was a kid was dill pickles and chocolate cake, and one of my top five taste treats of all time is the deep fried pickle at the Hofbrau in Interlochen (dill pickle, wrapped in cheese, ham and a wonton, deep fried, served with ranch dressing - you can eat it once a month and then your arteries harden beyond repair). I put pickles on my burgers, in my tuna salad, on deli sammies, next to fried chicken; my FILs bring me a jar of Nathan's Pickles every time they come visit (because I can't find them around here). I effin' love pickles, OK?

But this? This is not OK.

Kool-Aid Pickles Are New Taste Sensation

By JOHN T. EDGE

The New York Times

GREENVILLE, Miss. (May 9) - A gallon jar of pickles sits near the register at Lee’s Washerette and Food Market, a mustard-colored cinder-block bunker on the western fringe of this Mississippi Delta town.

Those pickles were once mere dills. They were once green. Their exteriors remain pebbly, a reminder that long ago they began their lives on a farm, on the ground, as cucumbers.

But they now have an arresting color that combines green and garnet, and a bracing sour-sweet taste that they owe to a long marinade in cherry or tropical fruit or strawberry Kool-Aid.

Kool-Aid pickles violate tradition, maybe even propriety. Depending on your palate and perspective, they are either the worst thing to happen to pickles since plastic brining barrels or a brave new taste sensation to be celebrated.

The pickles have been spotted as far afield as Dallas and St. Louis, but their cult is thickest in the Delta region, among the black majority population. In the Delta, where they fetch between 50 cents and a dollar, Kool-Aid pickles have earned valued space next to such beloved snacks as pickled eggs and pigs’ feet at community fairs, convenience stores and filling stations. And as their appeal has widened, some people have seen a good business opportunity. Even the lawyers have gotten involved.

Children are the primary consumers, but a recent trip through the region revealed that the market for Kool-Aid pickles is maturing.

At Carver Upper Elementary School in Indianola, students in Jodi Sumner’s third-grade class have no reservations about the propriety of cucumbers flavored with vinegar and drink mix. When this writer, lugging a jar of tropical-fruit-flavored pickles, recently asked the 29 students who liked to eat Kool-Aid pickles, 29 hands shot up.

The names came fast: Ladarius, Fredericka and Kobreana, among others. So did the impressions: “It’s a candy pickle.” And “I like it the same as dipping hot Cheetos in ice cream.” And “Have you ever tried one with a watermelon Blow Pop?” followed by a pantomime of how the Blow Pop stick can be inserted so that the candy appears as a knob at one end of the pickle, allowing the eater to alternate between bites of sour-sweet pickle and licks of sweet-sour Blow Pop.

Nobody knows just who first decided that pickles would be improved by a bath in sugared drink mix, or when, but the invention seems to be of fairly recent provenance. Typically, Kool-Aid pickle fans were born some time after Bill Clinton moved into the White House.

Billie Williams, 56, a special-education teacher at Carver Elementary, never saw one when she was a child. But she did eat dill pickles impaled on peppermint sticks, and she remembers how friends sucked the juice from cut lemons through peppermint sticks repurposed as straws. “That’s the same kind of taste,” she said. “Same as how they used to dip pickle spears in dry Kool-Aid mix for that pucker.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Blah blah blah - the article goes on to give a general recipe for making Kool-Aid pickles at home, and closes with the mention of a store manager trying to patent the name Koolickle. I have a feeling that the word Koolickle will haunt my dreams for many nights to come.

Kool-Aid pickles - D- (don't knock it 'till you try it, I guess)

Kids

I had the luckiest day off EVER yesterday. My good buddy T-Mama called me to see if I ws free to have lunch - and I was! Yay! So me, T, and New Mama had lunch at Panera yesterday (Panera gets a B+. Everything was delicious). But today, I'm grading the tiny friends who came along for lunch. Because they're kids, and I didn't ask their parents for permission to put their pictures on the Infernet, I'll give them code names. Let's see... on the left, you have Ariel, and on the right, you have Jasmine. Right? Disney princesses? Works for me. Ariel is T-Mama's littlest, and she's hilarious. She definitely wants to be spoken to like a grown-up, so I always ask her the same question I ask everyone who I haven't seen in a while - How's your life? Yesterday, she nodded, and showed me her earrings. Jasmine is Ariel's friend. We'd never met before, but we were good buddies by the time our day was over. Ariel and Jasmine certainly kept us entertained, and they were VERY well behaved during lunch and at the scrapbook store afterwards. Five-year-olds - A-

But alas, Ariel and Jasmine couldn't compete with Peanut, New Mama's baby. This bun is still supposed to be in the oven - he was six weeks early, and he's a month old now... carry the one... right, he's supposed to cook for two more weeks, and he is just the littlest thing. Granted, he's not very interesting right now - he mostly just lays around - but every now and then his little arm would shoot up like he had a very important question to ask. Super cute (and before you ask, no, I'm not ready for a baby. I just like to hang out with them every now and then).
Peanut - A

mid-week day off - A+

The Host

When you have the option of numerous free movies, you sometimes think, Pah. I will see nothing. But every now and then, a Korean horror comedy comes along, and you think, You know, it's been a while since I've seen a good Korean horror comedy - I think I'll check this out. Such is the case with The Host. From the moment that poster went up in my lobby, I knew I had to see this movie. Tiny girl being taken by an enormous watery tentacle? For free? Bring it on!

The Host was fun. The creature effects were great - until the very end. I won't ruin it for you, but trust me, the last time we see the creature, it looks pretty dumb. As for the characters, the main characters were all great, but the supporting cast was worthless. And as far as Korean horror comedies go, it's by far the best one I've seen. But something was missing for me, something unexplainable. I didn't love The Host. I liked it, but I didn't love it. However, you should all add this to your Netflix queues, because something like this doesn't come around very often.

The Host - B

This Blog Is "Awesome"

Last night I ate at Senor Lopez. I don't like the name of this restaurant and will henceforth refer to it as Rancho Grande.
Rancho Grande might have the best Mexican food in Ann Arbor, but in general, A2 has really bad Mexican food, so Rancho Grande doesn't really score bonus points. What I did like about them was their menu. They erroneously used quotation marks around things that really didn't need them - for example, Rancho Grande serves "authentic" Mexican food. Does this mean it's not authentic? And how about the tamales, which are made with "pork?" This almost made me not order them, because if it's "pork," then there might be all kinds of other shit in there. There were lots of other bad quotations marks, too many to keep track of, but I think there was some "Mexican" food and a wish that we "enjoy our meal." Non-native speakers trying to be hip, or sarcastic bastards? I "don't know."

misplaced quotation marks - "C"