What Donal can expect to receive on Valentine's Day:

A Modest Proposal: Let's Have a Picnic!

hahahahaha! more.

Also Swoon-Worthy:

John Hodgman, professional writer, in: The Areas of My Expertise.

That is all.

More Swooning, and this time for the Other Half

Yes, the Pipettes look a bit like Lisa Loeb exploded into three British women. Perhaps this is the origin of my attraction. (That was my first huge crush, by the way; Lisa Loeb, her glasses and her guitar. Her voice twisted up my fourth-grade insides like no other girl had before.)

Abby mentioned how swoon-worthy Luke Wilson is, and there are days I'd have to agree.

Therefore, I present the original Wes Anderson short film, Bottle Rocket. It was adapted into a full-length (and vastly improved, I believe, though Anderson had yet to develop the beautiful quirks and eccentricities/intricacies that make his last three movies (Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, for those NOT keeping count) so great and re-watchable.

Thus, swoon:

The Swooning State of My Apartment

Indeed, I have retained control myself. I remain the master of M(A.S.S.)ters of the Universe. The fate of the blog is in my hands! Mwa ha ha ha!

I'm actually pretty good at maintaining control. Except when (and this is why I'm posting at the moment) we're talking about really good girl groups. Then I'm fawning all over myself and swooning. And then I feel weird because they're so much older than me. Still, I think it's awesome that Mary Weiss from the Shangri-Las is working on a new(!) solo record with the great Memphis garage-soul band, Reigning Sound. But then, swooning still creeps me out.

Which is why I absolutely love the UK's reigning champs of girl group/rock history/pop, the Pipettes. Swoon with me, people:



They're so pretty. And talented. And British. (Swoon.)

Listen: The Pipettes: "Pull Shapes"

Also, I'm thinking of having a party for the State of the Union tomorrow night. Beer will be involved. Also, I am likely to be yelling at the TV as though it were a football game. Going badly for my team. ("Privatizing Social Security!?! HE TOTALLY FUMBLED!!! What the hell?!?! They're going to let him get away with that!! Fucking ref! He should have been impeached!") I will probably need more beer afterwards.

Five bucks he says "the state of the union is strong."

On the other hand, my apartment is a wreck, and I'm already about two days behind on homework. So I'll probably just watch it myself. Unless I can convince someone at Scotty's to change the channels away from ESPN for the duration. I wonder how much goofier the President looks in hi-def.

a convenient time for an inconvenient truth

just FYI if you hadn't seen this announcement. i've been meaning to see this, but just haven't. so might try to make one showing or the other:

an inconvenient truth

The Muncie Branch of the AAUW will present this important film at 4 pm Saturday and Sunday January 27th and 28th at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church - 900 W. White River Blvd. Muncie, In

GET INFORMED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND TAKE ACTION !

also, matthew really did give me administrative rights. it just occurred to me that that's what those funny symbols that have popped up on my screen must mean. so, um. i guess if you have troubles you can let me know also. not that i'll know what to do about them. i'm hoping he's retained control himself as well, otherwise we might be in serious trouble.

I made it out!

I didn't even meet the guy, which is fine, 'cause I was totally freaking out. Wondering why I decided to meet some guy from a website for a drink. Thinking I was going to get kidnapped, raped, and killed. But yeah, he didn't show, and I got some other people to show up. So I'm all good. (I am happy.)

slammajamma!

this:


is cool.

Only, not so much for anyone who isn't insured. 'Cause I can tell you, that will just about wreck the next three years of their lives. Insurance: it's for the rad.

Also, I'm going to the Heorot tomorrow night, around nine. Anyone else is welcome. I'm meeting someone there, and I'm honestly a little terrified to show up by myself. That's the last time I ever agree to meet someone for a beer off the internet.

I'm giving Abby administrator privledges for the blog in case I don't come back.

8 Important Lessons Learned from 80's Cartoons.

it's like a snapshot of my childhood. makes me want to ransack my parents linen closet for my old smurfette sleeping bag, get out my "gem and the holograms" doll, put my she-ra action figure up against GI joe in a duel to the death, and run over my model mystery machine with optimus prime. clearly this list was made by guys though, since rainbrow brite and the carebears are noticeably missing. and what about the super friends? everybody knows they're the coolest. anyway. here's the article.

inadequacy

My favorite living (prose) writer has more MySpace friends than me.

I don't know why that surprises me. If anything, I'm surprised there's not a bigger difference.

Everybody cool looks like Levar Burton

But you don't have to take my word for it.

Spiders on Drugs

Fascinating piece...

karaoke anyone?

sarah wanted me to let you all know that there will be a karaoke outing in anderson this friday, beginning in the neighborhood of 9pm. contact her for more details.

ps. she wasn't able to log on and post here after switching to the "new" blogger. this may be something for matthews attention. that is all. ;)

You're Welcome

In Memory of The Place - the first home I made my own.

See if you can guess the two movie stars

I'll give you the first one. It's Henry Fonda.

The brilliance of hardened children

I'm sure few of you (excepting Matt, Scott and myself) count "media commentary" among your favorite interests, but this last week's episode of NPR's On the Media includes a great parody of Public Radio, rife with the greatest stereotypes of NPR listeners you'll ever hear coming from NPR itself.

This brilliant bit of radio theatre features Janeane Garafalo, Fred Willard, Tony Shaloub and a brilliant little girl, whose name I haven't quite figured out.

Seriously, stick around at least long enough for the interview with the Girl Scout. I had to stop walking up my stairs, grab the side rail, and just let myself be embarrased by my uncontrollable laughter.

It's here.

Redesign Rationale

UPDATE: I noticed a lot of redundancies between this post and the previous one; for the sake of archiving this for future reference, I am combining the two.

Happy New Year's fer REALZ you guys!

I'm have upgraded our blog to the new version of blogger here; you'll need to sign up for a Google account in order to continue to post on the A.S.S. blog. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

The advantages of doing this:

1. We get to "Label" our posts. If you use flickr or del.icio.us, you'll be familiar with the idea of "tagging" bits of information. This is, essentially the same thing. The sidebar on the right hand side of the page includes a list of labels we've used, and the number of posts tagged with the labels.

2. The very template will be more customizable. fonts, point size, all that will be more flexible. As you can see. The original template was simply black and white, with a tiny bit of orange.

I was content to simply tweak the previous template for the A.S.S. Blog, but it occured to me that the last theme shared a color scheme with my bathroom. So I chose instead to go with a fairly muted color palate based on Blogger's "Minima" theme.

My tastes run towards the clean, the simple. Bauhaus, International Style, Le Courbusier, Van Der Rohe, all that.

Simple. Classy. Modern(ist). With some orange.

For those of you with more ornate aesthetics, let me know. Give me feedback, and the next time I see fit to overhaul the blog (it's WAY easier with the new version of Blogger), I'll take your opinions into consideration.

The sans serif font used for body text and post titles is Trebuchet; I wanted Helvetica, but all Blogger offers is Arial. I hate Arial. It has something to do with its capital "R." It's as though it can't decide if it wants to be a Realist or Humanist typeface.

The serif font is Georgia. It just looks better in titles than Times.

I hope my choices are legible to all, and render nicely (for once, Gecko seems to be rendering this text better than WebKit. Meaning it'll look better in Firefox or Camino than it will in Safari or Shiira.)

Here's to fresh starts.