good comedy, good food, and killin' digital stuff

Some things that I may or may not be doing this week:

* Playing Halo on a day other than Wednesday. Shocking, I know! (I usually play every week on Wednesday nights 'cause sticking plasma grenades to digital people prevents me from needing to stick plasma grenades to real people. If you ever want to join me, friend me on Xbox Live and drop me a note -- gamertag: your emo kid. With spaces, yes. You wouldn't know it from being on Live, but Xbox does allow grammar to happen in gamertags.) This is because I'll be:

* Cheering for my friend Thomas Jenkins at the Laughing Skull during the first night of the Dogwood Homegrown Comedy Binge tonight. Which is going on at The Vortex Midtown from 7:30 to 10:30 (or thereabouts), with a $10 cover. I'm glad it's at The Vortex 'cause I've been craving tasty beers in general and tripels specifically, which I won't need in order to sit through Thomas's set (I'm so. blessed. that all of my performer friends are actually talented), but will certainly welcome after what feels like a 2-week-long first half of a work week. You should come!

* Making reservations for dinner at one of the restaurants participating in Inman Park Restaurant Week. It goes through Sunday the 14th! I love gigs like this 'cause they encourage me to try new places and actually get a sampling of the menu -- usually when I'm out to eat, I'll have my entrée and maybe try a bite of someone else's, but won't go for the apps or desserts. Smaller portions of more things for reasonable prices = The Ultimate Lauren Dining Experience. (If you're thinking of going, I personally recommend Wisteria, which does really lovely things with pork and, separately, chocolate.)

* Avoiding spending my entire day Bejeweling on my phone. Guys I never should have bought that game. I have a Bejeweled problem. When I close my eyes, I see the afterburns of gem stacks on my eyelids. [Which is still better than how I get when I've been playing too much Bioshock (i.e., dreaming about being armed only with a length of pipe and having, as my only plasmid, the power to grow a length of pipe out of my arm, which is useful right up until I'm not Wolverine and run into a splicer wielding a machine gun) or Katamari Damancy (i.e., driving around thinking that I should be rolling up the pedestrians and street signs)].

What've you got goin' on, gentle readers? Anything in Atlanta that I should add to my list?

consumerism wow: motivations

Another side effect of my trip to visit my family in upstate New York is that I have fallen hopelessly, tragically in love with Ojon's Hydrating Conditioner -- hopelessly because it smells wonderful (like musky vanilla, and the scent actually stays for at least a day) and leaves my hair & scalp neither greasy nor dry, and tragically because it costs way more than I'm willing to pay for a conditioner. Hair & skin care products occupy such a terrifyingly steep & slippery consumer slope. 'Cause. Sometimes expensive products work really well. But. I like not spending 22 bucks on a bottle of conditioner. But if I'm willing to spend 7 bucks on a bottle of conditioner, then why not 10? And if 10, why not 15, why not 20? After all, I'd drop that much on a round of drinks any night, and those drinks last significantly less long than a bottle of conditioner would.

This is why I'm not allowed to go into Sephora.

This is also (partially) why I've been thinking lately about how I assign value to things. I mean, consumable things: food, experiences, media, beauty products, wearables. I blanch at the idea of spending more than $20 on a piece of clothing, unless it's something nice that I can wear to the office (where I care much more than usual about how I look) -- but I'll gladly pick up the $40 check for a nice dinner with a close friend. I won't buy an $8 paperback book (~400 pages) if I don't have a coupon or can't find it cheaper used -- but I'll buy $15 worth of comic books I've never heard of (~70 pages) because they look weird and funny. I'll order a $12 cocktail but search out the cheapest entrée on the menu. Sometimes I won't buy an entire album on mp3 for $10 because I can pick & choose the songs that immediately strike me as likable for only $7 (even if I enjoy the artist and know full well that I feel differently about songs once I've warmed up to them), but I'll order 5 samples of perfumes I've never smelled for $3.50 apiece.

Do you do things like this? Surely I can't be the only mercurial spender out there.

The conclusion I've come to is that what I'm really shopping for isn't the product, but the experience of that product. Of appearing responsible and capable to my coworkers and bosses. Of sharing conversation and plates of good food and not having to clean up afterwards. Of feeling like I'm cultured and supportive of independent artists. Of drinking something I'd never conceive of on my own. Of finding out exactly what roses mingled with graveyard dirt smells like when applied to my skin.

Why I value these experiences more than others I'm not sure. It's probably one of those highly individual, annoyingly unsaleable, unique-snowflakey things that drives advertisers to drink. Although it's true that somewhere in my motivation to purchase these things and experiences lies the concept that they'll make me more attractive/loved/happy, my personal idea (anyone's personal idea) of what is is to be attractive/loved/happy is necessarily strange, even to myself. But because self-awareness is awesome, I'm working on sussing out the particulars. I'll let you all know how that goes. I just hope you'll forgive me for not having the softest, flowingest, musky vanilla-scentedest hair while I'm at it.

wordbits & editbobs

Just a quick bit of news about Stays Crunchy, which is that book I edited for Adam P. Knave: Adam's publisher, Creative Guy, is running a contest to thank people for purchasing the book! Just take a picture of yourself, your cat, your photogenic friend, etc. holding a copy of Stays Crunchy in Milk, and post a link to it as a comment on this post of Adam's before December 18th. On the 18th, they'll randomly draw an entrant to win the complete series of Farscape on DVD. Because Farscape was awesome, and you are probably also awesome, and awesome things belong together. (If you haven't purchased a copy of the book yet, there should still be time to allow for shipping & handling! And it'd make a good gift for the 80's-pop-culture addict in your life. It's available on Amazon.)

In other edity news, I'm helping Adam and one D. J. Kirkbride with a particularly exciting comic pitch, which is particularly exciting because it involves pirates and other stuff that I'm not allowed to talk about. (Stuff I'm not allowed to talk about is often the most exciting kind of stuff.) I'll let you in on it as soon as I'm able.

Also, in holy-whoa-sometimes-Lauren-reads-things-for-fun-that-aren't-comics news, I'm finally reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and it's just ridiculously charming. If you ever thought that snarky 19th century British tea-party literature would be much improved by elements of urban fantasy, this book proves your whimsy to be absolutely correct.

no fate but what we make for ourselves

Okay, my post title is a Terminator 2 reference. And it doesn't even apply that hard to what I'm trying to get at. AN' WHAT. I like that movie. It's about family and Linda Hamilton's awesome arms and a mixture of practical and digital effects that continues to hold up to my aesthetic discrimination.

Perhaps you should forget everything I said after "family".

Families are mutable. Members are born or grafted in, and others pass or branch away. My closest friends & I call each other family nouveau, though at this point I feel like the "nouveau" is superfluous. When I spend time with them doing the most human things -- cooking, laughing, holding their children's hands, sharing our stories -- we are family.

This has been a strange, difficult year for me. I've come to virtual emotional fisticuffs with depression, anxiety, new loves and loves past, and sudden loss. But, luckily for all of us, the universe doesn't revolve around me & my tribulations, nor around any of my family members or their own troubles. For as much awkwardness and hurt as any of us experience, there are still days bright & brisk, grandparents lavish with hugs and gifts, favorite movies and games to re-experience, technically and calorically hazardous new recipes to attempt, dessert tables, espresso and sambuca, comfy pants, ready smiles. I will save these things up to remember when everything seems terrible, because the world is every bit as beautiful as I'm capable of helping make it.

thanksgiving panic planning

Thanksgiving is next week! I'm shocked, frankly, shocked. And trying to come up with something to bake.

Traditionally I've done a linzer torte, which is like a very large spiced almond cookie with raspberry jam-type filling and pain-in-the-tuchus latticework on top -- but my dear family nouveau includes a child with a nut allergy, so I figure that probably, grinding a bunch of almonds into airborne powder in their kitchen would be rude.

A couple years back I made my other favorite holiday dessert, my mother's apple cake (which I posted a pear riff on awhile back -- most of my friends dislike cooked apples). I'm bored with that, though! Hello, my name is Lauren and I am Short Attention Span Theater.

This pear-butterscotch pie, which The Kitchn kindly pointed me towards, is a serious contender. The only Thing about it is that I hate pastry crust. Hate. Seriously. Don't tell me it's not that hard. The salt in my pie crusts comes from my tears of suffering and humiliation. Yes, even the storebought kind. Hate. Pastrycrust.

This is also the Thing about this s'mores pie, which also sounds wondermous.

Perhaps I shall grow some lady-balls and make one of these happen.

Unless you have any better, non-pastry-crust-related suggestions?

[pink ribbon goes here]

I try to walk a tightrope of a line when I'm writing this blog -- I talk about things and people that are quite dear to me, but for the most part, I don't like writing about my own life here. I've got Twitter, Facebook, and other personal outlets for that. So I'm not going to (re)post the bit I wrote about my mother's breast cancer here. If you'd like to read it, it's over at A Southern Fairytale, where the wonderful Rachel hosted a whole month's worth of guest bloggers for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Many thanks to her for providing a space for so many stories and so much empathy.

And, folks: Do a breast exam on yourself, or on boobs that you love, once a month. Every month. Constant vigilance applies to more than just watching out for Voldemort & poisoned pumpkin juice.

A Fight to the Death Recording Studio

So I've got this friend George Wallace. I know him through Phil -- he was one of Phil's roommates. George is one of those maddeningly intelligent people who genuinely enjoys reading Thomas Pynchon novels and can, without particularly exerting himself, play your guitar way better than you can.

It would be more than a little tragic if George weren't in a band, but luckily for all of us, he's in A Fight to the Death, which is in fact a band. Specifically, they're an Atlanta-based band who wear classy suits and think you'll like some accordion, ukulele, banjo, keyboard, and pedal steel with your rock'n'roll. Guys, I am here to tell you that, even accounting for your individualized taste in music, A Fight to the Death is totally correct in this opinion.

Now, it's possible that I'm biased because Mark, CJ, Nathan, Daniel, and George are all awesome guys who are my friends on Facebook and sometimes even in three dimensions, or because they've occasionally used their band tab to keep me in the concert-venue lifestyle to which I have become accustomed (ie, full of whisky&cokes), or because George always says nice things about my snickerdoodles. But mostly they just rock out. Allow me to demonstrate via the use of a bullet list and several Internet hyperlinks.


Audio & video evidence of rocking out (which is important for a music band, am i rite?):

• Download & listen to one of my favorite songs from their LP, "Killdear".


• Preview every song on their LP on cdbaby.com, and maybe pay special attention to "My Name" if you like pretty, moody, heavy songs that remind you of thunderstorms and "What a Great Idea" if you like dancing in your living room and/or breaking up with people.


• Watch a video of "This Fear Is Irrational", which provides evidence that at least some members of the band were probably gypsies at some point, recorded live for haveyouheard.net.


• Watch a recorded-live-from-Corndogorama video of a song, "Echoes", from their upcoming album.

Pictorial evidence of rocking out, captured by Kevin Griggs and with quasi-interactive mouse-over captions by me:





I told you, classy suits.

Now, If you've enjoyed these examples of rocking and are aurally hungry for more, you could purchase their current CD, and/or you could come out to one of their upcoming shows, and/or you could fund the creation of their new album in return for logical & badass thank-you gifts such as a download/physical copy of the currently hypothetical album once it's finished, behind-the-scenes footage of the recording process, previews of new songs, a cover song of your choice performed at a show, or even a private performance from the band (which sounds dirty to me but probably won't be unless you provide them with a great deal of alcohol, and maybe some fancy pasties to match their ties).

They're using Kickstarter.com as a home-base for their fundraiser, and it seems like a pretty hip site! As of right now they're only four hundred and sixty American-Earth dollars away from reaching their goal of $2,000, and they only have 11 more days to raise it! And I want to hear their new album soon, so you should really drop them a couple bucks if a couple bucks is something you've got sitting around.

shine on, Philip Clippinger

One of my close friends in town, Phil Clippinger, died in a car accident on the evening of Saturday, September 26th. He was probably on a Target run, getting reading to drive to a Decemberists concert in Athens, but had only gotten a mile away from his house when he was caught in a downpour on a tricky curve of highway on-ramp, hydroplaned, and ran off the road.

That guy dressed as the Joker in the picture of me as Harley from last Halloween? That's Phil.



I'm so glad I have this silly picture.

We're a tight group, my friends here in Atlanta. [We have a group name (the Nexus) and a battle cry (call: "Dekalb living!" response: "WHAT WHAT!"). Yeah, we're those people.] The amount of support that everyone has given and received has been quintissential of how a family acts. We are a crazy, dysfunctional, kinda incestuous family, and I don't know how I would've gotten through the past few weeks without every one of these marvelous bastards I call my friends.

It still doesn't make any sense to me that Phil isn't a present, local part of that family anymore. That he's not going to call me about coming out to Fellini's on his dinner break, that he's not going to keep me on the phone for an hour describing details from his new Joker Batman video game, that he's not going to try to convince me how much fun I'd have at Bonnaroo, that he's not going to show up late to whoever's party with a case each of Sweetwater 420 and diet Coke.

I love him, all his faults and mine included, and I'm not sure that I ever expressed to him how much I do.

A thing that everyone seems to have been saying is that there isn't enough time, that we need to make more of an effort. To be with each other, to celebrate the things we share, to find joy where we can.

Phil was such a joyful person. When I think of him, the first thing I think of is his laugh, frequent, free, deep, and a little bit sly. Despite being disappointed by the (many) things in his life that didn't go quite as he wished, he found a way to laugh about pretty much everything, and I don't think I ever heard him say anything negative about anyone. (With the exception of Shia LaBeouf, who, to be fair, costarred in three films that stomped all over some of Phil's favorite things.)

Phil's Facebook page has a lot of lovely stories and pictures that've been posted by friends and family. His obituary was in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday the 29th, and they're currently keeping a guestbook online.

A few friends have posted memorials on their own webspaces: Merlin, Matt Anderson, and CJ. If anyone else posted one or knows of another one, post a comment with the link and I'll publish it, too.


In lieu of flowers, Phil’s family has asked that donations be made in Phil’s name to Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, The Faustman Lab of Massachusetts General Hospital, or the charity of your choice.

I’d recommend a donation to Child’s Play, the gamers’ fund & toy drive for children’s hospitals. Phil loved playing games, especially ones that involved messing with his friends’ minds, and he didn't get the chance to teach the next generation the simple, Machiavellian joy of screwing their friends over hardcore within the context of a game, where said friends can’t be too pissed about it. (Hypothetically. I’ll tell you a story sometime about a game of Munchkin). A donation in Phil’s name to Child’s Play is a small assurance that sick kids will a) have fun distractions, and b) learn to be clever dicks. He would've appreciated that.

Phil's flickr -- myspace -- facebook -- livejournal

recipe: snickerdoodles

I visited my mother's parents every summer when I was growing up. My Grandma Lou baked every day: loaves of butter bread, cinnamon rolls with walnuts and maple icing, fruit pies, angel food cakes, oatmeal raisin cookies, snickerdoodles. My memories of her bright, busy kitchen are a huge part of why I find baking and baked goods such a comfort.

A good friend of mine, Phil Clippinger, died in a car accident on Saturday, September 26th. (I've had a memorial post in the works for weeks, but haven't been ready to talk publicly about everything yet.) The week after his death, I spent a lot of time baking -- it kept me busy and fed my friends -- but on the morning of his funeral, I found myself with a kinda hilariously Jewish need to bake. The funeral was a huge Catholic mass, with a choir, and kneeling, and billows of incense smoke pouring through the thick slant of sunset that fell over his coffin. It's not like his family was sitting shiva. And it's not like I'm really that Jewish -- only half my family is, on my father's side, and I don't even observe the high holy days unless someone else does the planning. But when I woke up on the morning of Phil's funeral, I had to make something to bring to his family. And snickerdoodles were the most comforting thing I could think of.

This recipe makes ~3 dozen chewy, buttery, cinnamon-spiced cookies, and can easily be doubled if you need to feed everyone.


Snickerdoodles
Adapted, as usual, from smittenkitchen.

INGREDIENTS

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour (use a full 2 3/4 cups if you're doubling)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar (If you don't have this, omit the baking soda and use 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder to substitute for both)
1/8 teaspoon salt

8 tbps (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg, room temperature

1/8 cup sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon

METHOD

A half hour before you get started, set out your butter and egg to allow them to approach room temperature.

When you're ready to start, preheat your oven to 400° F, and prepare a cookie sheet with butter, parchment paper, or a silicone baking mat if you're into that kind of thing. (I've got a nonstick sheet that things come off of pretty well all by itself -- I've found that greasing it just makes the bottoms of cookies burn, and putting down parchment or a silicone mat prevents cookies from getting good & crispy on the bottom, so I leave mine alone.)

Measure out your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt) and whisk them to combine.

In a larger bowl, measure out your butter and sugar. Beat them with an electric mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes, or until they've begun to lighten in color and increase in volume (this is called creaming and it's how air gets into the batter, and thus what gives cookies their awesome chewy-tender texture -- if you creamed the mixture for a couple minutes more, you'd end up with a more airy, cakelike texture in your cookies). Scrape down the bowl then add your egg, and beat the mixture on low until the egg is fully incorporated (1 minute or so).

Pour your dry mixture into your wet mixture and stir manually until everything's incorporated. If the dough seems too sticky to work with, add an extra tablespoon or two of flour.

Combine your cinnamon and 1/8th cup of sugar in a small dish, bowl, or ramekin -- something you'll be able to roll balls of dough around in. Stir to combine.

Use a table spoon (like, a thing you'd eat with) to scoop out a bit of dough -- think something maybe 1 inch to 1.5 inches in diameter, or a bit smaller than a ping pong ball. Roll it between your palms gently to shape it into a ball, and then drop it into the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll it around to coat it with awesome, and then place it on the baking sheet. Flatten it into a disc maybe half an inch thick and ~2.5 inches in diameter. Repeat with a bunch more cookies! They shouldn't spread too much, so you can place them ~2 inches apart or so on the sheet.

Pop the sheet in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes (or until ~1 minute after your kitchen starts to smell like awesome, or until the cookies have puffed up and then deflated, or until poking one gently on the top yields slightly springy resistance). Allow the sheet to cool for ~5 minutes once it's out of the oven, and then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack until they're just cool enough to serve.

To mix ahead: This dough freezes better if you don't coat it in cinnamon sugar first (the sugar coating may melt when the cookies defrost). So if you're mixing ahead, just roll the dough into balls and freeze them: Either wrap them in plastic so they aren't touching and seal them in a baggie/container, or freeze them on a sheet pan for ~1 hour before tossing them in a baggie/container. Defrost them in your fridge for ~1 hour, roll them in cinnamon sugar, and bake more or less as usual (you might need to add a minute or so to the cooking time).

it's always sunny in Lobsterdelphia

Hey, so what's shakin' in Philadelphia next week that I should check out? Or, what's generally shakin' in Philadelphia that I should check out? [Note: By "check out", I mostly mean "eat", but I'm certainly interested in arts & sciences other than the culinary ones.] I'm gonna be in town on a business trip for a few days, and have never been there before! So if you are a person in the know about Philly, you should tell me what I should see and do. And eat.

In return I offer you a photo of what I will not look like while I'm there 'cause the foam rubber lobster suit was a single-time bad idea for rheumatology convention promotion. NEVER AGAIN THE BUTTER SAUCE.




(My organization, for which I generally edit medical journal articles, throws a big convention for practitioners every year in a different city. The first year that I went to help run it, we were promoting for the next year's convention, which was going to be in Boston, and all of the promotional material featured these cute little cartoon lobsters. And one of the higher-ups decided to give away a free pass to the Boston convention each day via giant costumed lobster. And when the First-Chair Lobster Girl backed out one day, I took up the lobster mantle.

I made this photo into a Christmas card that year. On the inside it said, "And you thought I'd never do anything with my English degree.")


But yeah, so make with the recommendations, folks. And the first person who compiles a list of places that serve surf & turf gets a claw upside the head.

Girl Talk Any Day I Please: halloween costumes

Aside from a couple years in high school when I was clearly way too cool to dress up for Halloween (I was on the yearbook staff so I'm not sure how I came to that conclusion), I've always kinda reveled in Halloween costumes. And costume-party costumes. And Rock-Band-party costumes. And hay-we're-bored-let's-play-dressup costumes. I have way more costume pieces than shame, folks.

Freshman year of college I did I fairly half-assed Trinity costume for Halloween -- happily, no photographs survive. (I won Sexiest Costume at my dorm's party, but had already left to go dick around online, so they gave it to the runner up. Did I mention not-cool-at-all?) Sophomore year I did Death, from Sandman:


(I was baking cookies for Kate-the-probable-photographer & Gabe's Silent Hill-themed party.)

Junior year I didn't dress up 'cause I went to signing Bruce Campbell was doing for his autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, in Orlando. He stayed until everyone got through the line, which took longer than they'd suspected 'cause he was being awesome and chatty and taking pictures with people:


(That's Steve [dressed as Arthur Dent], Bruce, Gabe, and me. I guess I'm dressed as a crazy fangirl?)

A few of us went to visit friends at FSU my senior year, and I reprised my Trinity costume with my still-not-quite-short-enough haircut:


(A Matrix tableau: Steve [as Nightcrawler] impersonating Neo, schoolgirl!Aaron impersonating an Agent, and me impersonating, y'know, Trinity.)

In '05 I had quiet, noncostumed hangouts with my family nouveau, and in '06 I was a goth fairy, which I can't find any photos of. In '07 I went as Becky, from Sin City, but again photo evidence is scarce. This is the best I can find:


(I'm on the couch, not the nice blond lady. Perhaps obviously?)

Following the theme of costumes for which I don't have to wear wigs, I was Daria Morgendorffer in '07. And can't find any photos! But there's lots from last year, when a few friends and I did Dark Knight-style (less cartoony, more scary & realistic) DC comics villains. I was Harley Quinn:


(With Phil as the Joker... photo by Matt, I think.)

And I have no idea what I'm gonna do this year! I've always wanted to do an Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors, or Elvira, ooor lots of stuff that I can't think of right now. Anyone have any suggestions?


Hey, I wrote this entry for the new, shiny Girl Talk Thursday, even though it is totally not Thursday anymore! Come join the conversation:

Girl Talk Thursday Friday: girltime

The topic for this week's Girl Talk is What You Do With Your Chick Friends. And it made me go, "....Oh, crap. I am possibly a terrible friend to my chick friends."

Which is just My Hilarious Social Anxiety talking, mostly, I'm sure. It's not that I don't see my chick friends, or that I never talk to the ones who live out of town! Just, most of my chick friends Do Things. Like take care of their two babies and also do a lot of freelance writing. Or work full-time for an art gallery and also do crazy grad-level work for their Bachelor's degree. Or run around L.A. being awesome and filmmakery and in a different time zone. Or go on tour playing and promoting their music. They're a hard bunch to get ahold of!

Also, girls scare me. Seriously, they intimidate the extra X chromosome out of me. I care a lot more about what they think of me (no offense, guys), so I get all anxious about interacting with them and cope by ignoring them. Because I'm secretly a third grader? Le sigh.

When I do find my girl-nuts and work out scheduling issues and hang out with chick friends, I feel like mostly we do the same things I do with my dude friends? Except maybe gossip/perv about boys a little bit more while we're doing them? Here are some of my favorite girltime activities:

Ladies who brunch/lunch/dinner/booze: For some reason, food that's terrible for me seems like a better idea around chick friends. And adding tequila or sparkling wine to the mix equals more better giggling and boner stories. In college Don Pablo's was the best place for this, a few years ago I spent a lot of time at Flying Biscuit/Doc Bombay's and this Mexican place out in Tucker, and recently... I haven't done this recently!

Terrible late-night movies on someone's couch: Depending on the tastes of the exact chick friend in question, these will probably be musicals, movies featuring pretty boys who are probably French and/or cross-dressing, or Japanese sex & splatter flicks. Favorite titles include the goofy 2000 production of Jesus Christ Superstar (we usually skip the boring parts where Judas isn't crying or wearing vinyl pants), Transfixed, and Stacy. Recently, True Blood has been rad for this. Again, sparkling wine really only makes this awesomer.

Phone calls while driving: None of these would ever pass the Bechdel test but they're the best way for my nonlocal chick friends and I to catch up with each other. And are possibly the only chick activity I can think of that isn't improved by sparkling wine.

Have I mentioned sparkling wine? My favorite right now is Sofia 'cause you can get it in little Tab-sized cans. That are pink. And come with a pull-out bendy straw.

That's maybe all I can think of? mrr. I miss girltime.

In conclusion, if you're a lady and you've ever pinged me for hangouts/phone calls and I haven't gotten back to you, it's 'cause I'm eight and you seem nice. HOWEVER, I secretly want more hangouts/phone calls with you and am gonna try to put more effort into that soon like nowish. Perhaps I shall start today.


Hey, I wrote this entry for Mommy Melee's Girl Talk Thursday! Come join the conversation:

the littlest zombie

Things that maybe you're not thinking about when you're trying to make a relatively healthy banana bread-based, raspberry-filled, red crab-themed birthday cake for your just-turned-one-year-old daughter to have a traditional cakeSMASH photo-op with:

• Red food coloring is incredibly insidious for something that's water soluble. Sure it'll wash off, but first it will get everywhere.


• Banana bread has a sort of lumpy, spongey texture. Like zombie-flick flesh.


• Crushed raspberries have a definitely lumpy, clumpy texture. Like zombie-flick brains.


• Giving your generally low-sugar'd child free reign to eat cake is like giving a tiny lady who doesn't drink often a pint of hunch punch: drunkenness will ensue.


• If Lauren is the photographer, she'll think the carnage is hilarious.

From Aurora's First Birthday Party

Glad I could be part of your bash, Aurora. Happy birthday! And congratulations to your mom & dad for making it through your first year with their brains intact.

side effects may include cute

I think I've mentioned that I work as a copyeditor for a medical journal? Yes. So sometimes (mostly when I'm bored, which is mostly a lot) I read a lot of medical periodicals. It's a strange sort of self-educational roulette for the squeamish (ie, me). I think overall I'd prefer a job where I have a <50% chance of randomly tripping over a photograph of necrotizing tissue, but the whee-science stories are worth the risk of the totally gross ones.

Ph34r my stalwart dedication to technical medical language.

Things that make all those close-ups of advanced scleroderma worthwhile include the story I found in my Inbox this morning that I will now share with you. Folks, this is BREAKING MEDICAL NEWS:

RATS ARE ADORABLE WHEN THEY'RE BLUE
WTF IS IN FOOD DYE ANYWAY
FOOD DYE 'MAY EASE SPINAL INJURY'



I forgive you all your wrongs, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and would totally ask you out if you weren't an inanimate object.

go Team Girl

Life is being all contrary right now which means less writing around here, but haylookit: My dearest ladyfriend Maria is trying to pack for BlogHer (I'm either jealous of or terrified for her), so she asked me to guestblog over at Mommy Melee today!

She has, like, a readership. Of grown-ass, possibly responsible adults. And I wrote about some t-shirts I kinda want. Hiiiii.

It's weird! I've known Maria since... for a long time? Since mid-college. Mostly when I think of her, the top of my brain is still filled with visions of tequila shots and 80s nights at Market Street Pub, of so much awful André and Jesus Christ Superstar, of playing Halo until 4 in the morning and roadtripping to anime conventions and continually losing games that involve karaoke.

And we still dabble in most of those things when I visit her & her family in Florida (though we spring for slightly better sparkling wine during our schmoopy JCS screenings). But from underneath my memories of all that, it always bubbles up in my mind that these days, Maria has shaped herself a career out of freelance writing and design, and of loving her two ridiculously photogenic & funny boys and husband, and of having some sixteen-hundred people be really fascinated by all her Tweets, apparently.

I'm so proud of her.

Kick social butt in Chicago, Marialady. And if anyone from Project Runway doesn't appreciate your bowling chic, don't worry, I'll be there in spirit to sneak up behind them like the pinkest, sparkliest ninja there ever has been and stick plamsa grenades to the backs of their heads for you.

a different form of awesomancy

So, usually I'm an Editor. I capitalize that because I have no editor telling me that it's silly and I shouldn't, and 'cause I'm trying to make a point here, Dickinson-style. When I was a kid, I read My Teacher Is an Alien and The Hobbit and I decided that wanted to be a writer. I wrote daily, continually, from second grade through a year or two out of college -- daily diary enteries, (bad) poems, (worse) stories & scripts, essays, blog enteries, and etc. I was in journalism through middle & high school, and then, when I realized that I hate journalism, I took 8 creative writing workshops in my 4 years at the University of Florida. All of which taught me that I enjoy editing far more than I enjoy writing.

I still write! Obviously, hi. I've got this blog, a couple personal & private ones, a notebook in my bedside stand and another that always lives in my purse. But I in no way consider myself a Writer. When I talk with friends about this, they make noises about how ohnono I'm quite good at writing, I could do it if I wanted, I should [implied: gather up my balls and] try more/harder. And hey, maybe I should... there's still a tiny monkey of hope inside me who wants to run around with leather jackets and sunglasses and crazy hair, being a literary rockstar. But, kids, writing is hard. It requires ideas and self-esteem and follow-through, all of which are weak points of mine and none of which are gonna be strengthened without a lifetime-worth of mental workouts.

So, as I said, usually I'm an Editor. It's all the skill of writing, and all the payoff of seeing good work hit print, without all those parts that I'm still working on. And I love editing. My really good days are the ones where I get to edit medical articles for seven hours and then take breaks and go home to edit fiction or scripts. But I sometimes I practice at being a writer -- here, in my notebooks and personal blogs, and, for the next two weeks, on Burrito Blade. Adam & I switched roles for six pages to see whether our dance would still work with me leading, and although it was odd working in someone else's universe, I'm fairly proud of the result.

If you'd like to read from the beginning you can start here, or if you'd prefer, you can read the following summary for the lackadaisical and then go straight to my first page as the writer: A couple of gods are battling for the fate of humanity in NYC using food-based magic, and have dragged a couple of humans into the havoc. And a building just collapsed on our protagonists.


I hope you like the result, too! Huge thanks to Renato for turning my rambling narrations into such pretty pictures. And oh hey, to Adam for being just as rad an editbuddy as he is a writebuddy. Lemme know what you think?

it was a wiley cheesecake

The kid I'm dating, D, is from Huntsville, Alabama -- his father was a rocket scientist back in the '60s -- and he's the kind of person who has kept up with his best friends from elementary school on. (This kind of person mystifies me -- I'm terrible at long-distance communication. I feel productive when I keep up with my roommate.) One of these friends of his owns a comic book/video rental/porn store in Huntsville (and also practices law, awesome), so he comes into Atlanta once every few months with a wagonload of merch for collectors' shows. He stays at D's and we usually all go out for dinner, which always strikes all of us as odd because D is such a good and enthusiastic cook.

So the last time his friend was in town, D and I cooked up a three-person feast: duck, chard, mac & cheese, and a raspberry-swirled cheesecake. The duck & chard were perfect as always (D uses Alton Brown's recipe Mighty Duck, which is fatty and bone-gnaw-worthy), the mac & cheese (a recipe from Paula Dean) was overbaked but worth revisiting with fewer eggs and more cheese than called for, and the cheesecake was surprisingly rad -- the graham crumble crust needed something (less butter? More pre-baking? Parchment paper rather than emergency-subbed wax paper? Better-quality graham crackers?), but the filling was cohesive, creamy, and light, just sweet enough, and with just enough acid from the raspberries.

I asked a couple days later for the cheesecake recipe, and D was like, ?___? recipe whaa? This is the difference between cooks (D) and bakers (me): I would've been scribbling everything I was doing on post-it notes or the backs of receipts or y'know my own arm or the cats or whatever was handy so that I could repeat the chemistry experiment later. D is not a baker: he just MADE the thing, with no fussing or worrying about how precisely it happened. Honestly, I have a lot of respect for that. I also dearly hope that we'll be able to reproduce it from collective memory the next time we want cheesecake!

Have you ever made something that you lost the recipe for, or created in a fit of brilliance and promptly forgot how to reproduce afterwards? Did you ever work it out, or is it The Recipe That Got Away?