consumerism wow: the further misadventures of Mitty Matt

In a completely failed attempt to do a double-super Consumerism WOW holidextravaganza, Adam and I have posted dual (dueling?) January episodes! The followup to my post has been up for a whole week and I'm a bad consumer-friend is up on Adam's blog! Here's a preview:


Thing #1


Lauren: You are teaching your cat to speak and read English with help from a kitty that she’ll identify with! ….Adam, this is a very bad idea.

Adam: No, it’s a great idea! Then she can stop just mindlessly whining and actually communicate her wants and needs and… all right perhaps this will end badly. But I must try. For science!


Thing #3


Lauren: Is – is this why you’re teaching your cat how to read? You did not tell me that kitty had to get an eye patch.

Adam: Kitty does not need an eye patch, I would never let my cat be harmed like that! No this is for, uhm, my good friend… Mitty. Mitty Matt. He, uhm, was walking around, pacing really, while I was doing experiments and now he needs an eye patch. Mitty Matt. Who already speaks English and can read because he is human and not a cat.


Click through to Adam's blog to read the rest! I can very nearly promise that no cats were harmed in the writing of this episode. It's likely that at least one was severely annoyed, and that a dog who was raised in the wild by cats felt slightly neglected for having not been mentioned again, but c'est la vie d'un chien instruit dans le sauvage par des chats. (I got that translation from babelfish. I don't know any French that isn't food & cooking vocabulary. I hope I haven't just inadvertently called anyone's grandmother a transitive sausage or something.)

And hey, the book featured as Thing #1 is no longer available in print, but it's being offered as a digital download for only 2 American dollars! Friends, this is the future of the publishing industry we're looking at right here.

feliz el too-busy-to-update mes!

Faithful readers! Fear not, for I have not abandoned you (entirely)! The past few weeks, I've been quite busy traveling to Boston again, doing that aforementioned job-what-makes-me-work thing, and making Halloween happen (I mean, not for everybody, but for some 80 people, anyway).

While in Bostontown I ate here and here, and had a tasty cocktail here. More about that later on when I have fewer wines and encroaching bedtimes the wherewithal to serve up proper foodpr0n.

Here in Atlanta I've been living the questionably glamorous life of a Social Media Nomad, which comes with an 80s-Saturday-morning-cartoon-style theme song, frequent visits to coffee shops with patient baristas & free wi-fi, and a really psyched dog (see illust., right). One of these days I might post a whole entry about all the coffee shops in town, and about how I'm spending too much money on Jeni's Ice Creams at Star Provisions and on sandwiches with Vietnamese-style pickles at Bocado now that I'm occasionally hanging out around the West Side. Until then, you can count on me to be fading in and out of shadows, a loaded MacBook on my back.

Somewhere among all that dull "necessary" stuff, Halloween happened! Through careful planning and wonderful friends, I managed to make this calavera Catrina costume go (please excuse the mess):



A seamstress friend, Jennifer, made the Edwardianish dress for me -- and if anyone else out there is looking to commission a garment (not necessarily Edwardianish), contact me and I'll get you in touch with her 'cause she's fabulous. The crucifix was cobbled together with bits from the jewelry-supply sale rack at Michael's, the makeup is Ben Nye cake and grease pencil, the gloves are Leg Avenue fingerless things from Sock Dreams, and the hat is all the spray paint, ostrich feathers, 50-cent ribbon, and hot glue that you can apply to a straw hat while in a mild state of hat-panic on the afternoon of your Halloween party. Both the makeup & hat were completed with the gracious assistance of a certain dreamthrum, who I guess I like pretty well.


So! What've you been up to?