Monthly Archives: July 2011

Gandhi’s Top 4 Tips On How To Have A Crappy Blog

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I realize it’s possible that a few of you might have been slightly distracted by the crumbling economy and possible impending doom of our country’s unresolvable debt crisis, therefore you might not have been tuned into the Discovery channel like I was last weekend. And that means, you missed the recent archaeological discovery of a lifetime.

Gandhi was so cool. Not only was he the change he wanted to be in the world, he was waaay ahead of his time. Yes, he might have been barefoot, but he knew things about the future. And it was no surprise to me when his list of  Top 4 Tips on How To Have a Crappy Blog were excavated. Obviously, when he wasn’t selling his quotes to card companies, he was busy documenting his wisdom.

My heart is too big and full of love for you just to let you sit there all non-educated. I inherited my mom’s sense of compassion. And maybe even a little of Gandhi’s too?

Here is what they were able to interpret from the hieroglyphics. Don’t ask me why Gandhi was writing in hieroglyphics. Some things aren’t meant to be understood in this lifetime. Lucky for you I took Intro to Hieroglyphics in college. Right before I dropped out.

1. “Felesnale eef  linxeicve bi w.aiven.a wefiengt!  slfiewh!”

Translation: Why in the name of my visible sternum do you make it so impossible to leave comments? Do you hate me? Why do you hate me when I am just trying to act interested in what your dog did yesterday? Cus it seems by the obstacle course you have set up that you’re trying to scare me away. Ouch! Is that an electric fence? (there’s the forward thinking again) Ah! I think I just gashed my leg on some rusty barbed wire!

Gandhi’s advice: Captcha sucks. Especially if it shows up after I have already submitted a comment. Half of the time, I have already left the page before it pops up, in which case my comment is lost and I’m too busy making up quotes to resubmit. The other half, I can’t read the captcha correctly, not because I’m a robot, but because it’s stupid. Also, if you have the captcha Nazis in place, why do you need to approve comments? You don’t. Comment approval cramps my style and the natural flow of conversation. It makes conversation and replying difficult. P.S. WordPress automatically catches spam without captcha, so maybe you should switch over. 

Hey, his words not mine.

2. “wao;ifwa #() frefwas fwal;ifaw;oinee fneifms e! wefiens!”

Translation: See these dreadful round glasses I have to wear? It’s because your black backgrounds and tiny fonts make my eyes hurt. After I read your posts, I have to close my eyes and meditate to alleviate the stress and ward off the dizzy spells. Which is okay, because it gives me so much more time to think of quotable quotes, but dangit.

Gandhi’s advice: If you must have a black background because you feature art, or cartoons (ahem, Bearman aka Mr. Hotlink) then by all means. But if you can help it, you should have a light background with dark text that is easier on the eyes – many people have issues with dark backgrounds and light text. Oh, and have text that is LARGE enough for me to see without my spectacle! Reading your blog shouldn’t be a struggle!

3. “stop being an idiot”

Translation: None needed.

Gandhi’s Advice: Posting every day will not make you famous. It will only annoy me because you have nothing quality to say. Although all of your words might not end up on a greeting card like mine, you should still put some thought into what you’re saying. My time is precious. I am busy making peace and I don’t have time to hear about what your kid left on his dinner plate last night. Plus, I cannot possibly leave a comment on all of those posts. Not that I would anyway, because your barbed wire fence got in the way.

4. “awoefne lfleell! fwlifweoi, flwiefw, wflieefjisisi!”

Translation: The Blogger commenting structure sucks. It’s very discouraging if you don’t have Blogger. I have been to some Blogger blogs where the ONLY option to leave a comment is to enter my Blogger ID or Google account. How very discriminatory of that blog. I know Google is taking over the world, but you do realize that not everyone has a Google account right? And even though I do, it doesn’t link back to my blog.

Gandhi’s Advice: If you choose to use the Blogger comment system, you must enable ALL options for leaving comments. This includes the name/url option, for those of us who have self hosted sites. Otherwise, there is no way for us to comment. And I don’t. And then you get all “where’s my comments?” and I tell you to shut it. My best advice in this scenario would be to install Disquis.

That being said, if you’re out there and you have a Blogger blog with a black background and captcha with barely any commenting options, you have the crappiest blog ever! If you have a blog with only a few of these things wrong, your blog is only a little crappy and there is still hope for you.

Peace be with you,

Gandhi

Wondering where I went? I have returned to blogging over at my whole foods blog Celery and the City, where we live so clean it’s like your insides took a bath.

The Day I Met Tom Cruise And NBC

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Sometimes she will say, “I think I’m losing my mind, Brit. I don’t know up from down anymore.”

Then I’ll look at her, smile, and ask, “Which way is up?”  She points to the sky; I call her a liar and she laughs.

It’s the most appropriate human response I have to fact that she is, indeed, losing her mind. The other option is running away. The most tragic and heartbreaking part about Alzheimers is the moments when they realize their mind is going. As hard as it is for us, I cannot imagine what it’s like for them.

A couple of days ago, I took my grandma for a walk. It was hard for her to even move her legs considering she sits in a chair all day long. Since I couldn’t bare the thought of going back inside the sterile rehab facility where she is temporarily staying, we sat down on the bench to talk.

She still remembers who we are, but rarely knows where she is and always looks scared. My grandpa takes care of her; unfortunately, he was admitted to ICU last week and most likely won’t make it out. She constantly asks where he is.

Out of nowhere, in a moment of perfect clarity, she looked up at me and said, “My how the tables have turned.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, I used to take care of you…and now you’re taking care of me,” she responded with a somber face.

It’s the kind of full circle you never want to happen. I quickly distracted myself by eavesdropping on the conversation between these two men:

I heard one of them saying he has been married for 65 years, but his wife hasn’t recognized him for the last two. I empathized with him and struck up a conversation immediately.

I asked them what their names were. The 60 yr-old African-American guy turned to me and said, “Tom Cruise, ‘cept I ain’t got his money.” I laughed and was trying to determine in my mind if he was joking or if he actually legitimately thought he was Tom Cruise. “That’s funny,” I said, simultaneously rolling my eyes.

“No, that’s really his name,” his friend said with all the authority of Dwight Schrute. “I eat with him and I’ve seen his ID card.”

“Well then, that’s easy to remember,” I remarked.

“And I’m NBC” he affirmatively added.

Ok. Yep, these guys are officially nuts.

“Niles Baldwin Claussen,” he continued.

“Like the pickle?” I asked.  “Yes, but you can call me NBC.”

I learned that he had beaten pancreatic cancer 17 years ago. “But that has a 99% fatality rate, right?” I asked.

“Correct. I’m Mr. 1%,” NBC replied. “Well, well, maybe someday I’ll see you on a Smuckers commercial when you turn 100,” I said.

He was currently at the rehab facility while he was undergoing chemo for bladder cancer, which my grandma also battled several years ago. He said the reason he didn’t have any friends to take care of him was because he had outlived them all.

Tom Cruise kept interjecting into the conversation with little comments. “My wife died last year,” he mumbled under his breath. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I been married three times… But she was the best I ever had.”

Oh, that Tom Cruise. Such a character.

Although he was completely debilitated and confined to a wheelchair, he kept saying, “Blessed to be alive. Fortunate to have lived this long.”

On the way home, it occurred to me how rarely I remember that just being young is something to be thankful for. To have empty pages. Quality years ahead, where health problems are nothing more than just hypochondria. To be starting a life with someone, not anticipating the end. To have the opportunity to try things and fail.

To even have the ability to remember.

Wondering where I went? I have returned to blogging over at my whole foods blog Celery and the City, where we live so clean it’s like your insides took a bath.

 

Fun Fair = A Loose Interpretation Of Both Fun And Fair

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I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a fair or not. Here in the Midwest, fairs are kind of a big deal. It’s all the farmers and corn and cows and stuff.

Thus, I have very specific expectations in mind when a “fair” is involved. There needs to be a hint of funnel cakes mixed with farm animals in the air. Questionable Carnies lurking in the shadows. A poorly assembled, rusted out Ferris Wheel. So you can imagine my disappointment when I helped my friend Jo out with a local fun fair for her workplace.

When you add “fun” in front of “fair” it apparently takes all of the awesome things out of a fair and substitutes it with cute, sticky, and greedy children who are attempting to eat their body weight in snowcones – which we were supplying along with cotton candy.

Anyway, we rose early on Saturday morning and loaded up the box truck to head out to the fun fair.

P.S. Nothing makes you feel quite more like a pedophile than driving around in a big box truck with a snowcone and cotton candy machine in the back.


I don’t know when she’s gonna finally realize that I’ll never stop taking pictures of her.

As we were circling for about and hour trying to find the place, I may or may not have noticed a Big Kmart with a Little Caesars blow up man out front. This information came in handy when we reached our destination and realized we had an hour to kill. Don’t even think we didn’t polish off a large hot n’ ready at 10:30am, while sitting next to the men’s underwear section.

Not to say that we couldn’t finish the rest, but we did start feeling like pigs a little bit. The confused looks from the cashier weren’t helping.

Back at the Fun Fair, we became cotton candy and snowcone making afficianados.

We may or may not have eaten all of our mistakes.

Seriously, she just needs to stop trying to hide.

That is an expert at work, my friends.

I don’t know if you’ve ever made cotton candy. I don’ t know why you would have, unless you ARE a Carnie (in which case I apologize for previous statements) but it’s probably the grossest, stickiest, cobwebbyest job ever.

Then someone came by with free ice cream sandwiches. I was taught never to turn down free treats from strangers.  The universe just didn’t want us to win that day.

By the end of the day, my cotton candy was so fluffy and perfect that the kids didn’t even want to go near any other forms of air-blown sugar.

Wondering where I went? I have returned to blogging over at my whole foods blog Celery and the City, where we live so clean it’s like your insides took a bath.

WANTED: Gray Haired African-American Man With Saxophone Skills

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[Because it’s was my birthday, and because I’m refinishing cabinets and I started a new job, I’m recycling an oldie. If you remember this post, congratulations. You’re two years older and still like reading pointless stuff on the INTERNETS.]

I’m currently babysitting my best friend’s 6 month old.  Yes, the same best friend who pumps breast milk in my car and leaves it in my fridge, okay?  This is the first 10 minutes I’ve had all day and I find myself exhausted on the couch, drinking coffee that I poured five hours ago, and watching an Oprah special on loveless marriages.  Somehow I feel that I’ve just been given a glimpse into my life in about five fifteen twenty years.  I’m sorry, will you excuse me while I wipe the squash residue off my glasses?

Ok, I’m back. As you can deduce from its title – this blog ends with us pondering matters of Destiny, but first, it’s going to stop at the gas station and pick up some snacks while we avoid the subject.

Somewhere around 2am last night I was like, what the crap?  So I proceeded to pop in one of my all time favorite movies: Only You.  Stop scratching your head –  you’ve never seen it.  And if you have, you wrote it off within the first 5 mins or as soon as Marisa Tomei said, “He’d kill tigers for you.”  And you’d be justified. But I love it to pieces and that is just something you’ll have to live with. 

The reasons why I love this movie out number the reasons why I hate Neil Diamond. And no, it’s not just Robert Downey, Jr. speaking Italian. Or the runaway bride fiasco. Or Marisa Tomei. No, definitely not her. In fact, just ignore her the entire movie.  The main reason is because it is set in Italy, for which my obsession grew exponentially when I actually visited. Then my camera broke right in front of the Colosseum and ruined my trip.

Needless to say, I cannot express the beauty of this land. It’s magical. And I never use that gross word. Not only the scenery, but the people.  It’s a place where people actually care about something more than money.  They enjoy life.  They can’t understand you, but they’ll laugh with you and hand you some gelato.  Or a plate of pasta.  Go as quickly as you can.  It IS as beautiful as it looks. It WILL change your life.  And I PROMISE to stop talking about Italy now.

Anyway, I’ve never been a gooey person.  Shocker. I can’t even accept a compliment on my hair much less someone telling me that they can’t live without me. I hate receiving flowers or any other impractical gift that dies or has an expiration date; I would never dance in the middle of a street; I don’t want a fairytale wedding, and I certainly don’t celebrate “anniversaries,” whether they be actual legitimate yearly milestones or fake excuses to go out to eat, like, say, 7 months.

Although Only You may be a chic flick, the sheer beauty is that it actually makes fun of the concept of “destiny” and preconceived ideas that there is one true soulmate for everyone.  Because would I watch it if it didn’t?  Absolutely not.  I think when I was younger, I believed that your whole life was a search for “your other half,”  and now, I believe you could be happy with any number of people.  Just in a different way.  I’m not sure which conclusion is the right one, and I have a feeling I never will.

However, there are exceptions to every rule. 

And this is my exception:  if I should ever find myself strolling along a rainy, cobblestoney, Italian street, while being serenaded by a gray-haired African-American (note: he HAS to be African-American for this scenario to work) playing the saxophone, while talking to a charming and dangerously witty brunette who was able to quote Goethe  – I just might dance in the middle of the street.  Under the right circumstances, anything is possible.

If you’d like to witness this exact scenario, please skip ahead to 1:35.  If not, please watch the entire thing anyway. 

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny.   

 – Goethe.

Wondering where I went? I have returned to blogging over at my whole foods blog Celery and the City, where we live so clean it’s like your insides took a bath.