How to Gain Self-Esteem for Less Than $2

Today I discovered something amazing.

Okay... I didn't discover it because it's probably been on the shelves of every grocery store for years, but today my taste buds discovered the greatest cake mix on the planet.

Kids, Betty Crocker French Vanilla cake mix is gonna blow your mind.

I know it's weird to think that a cake mix could blow your mind, but it happens sometimes... they just don't like to mention it on the news because it scares people.

If you make this and put homemade frosting on it no one will ever know you kinda sorta cheated and they will think you are incredible. People will weep. Dogs and nuns will dance in the streets. It will be amazing.

And if you act really smug about not giving up your top secret recipe they will ache with jealousy and you will feel really good about yourself.

Things I Have Learned About By Watching Crap Reality Television

I shouldn't admit this, but I sorta kinda like the 'Real Housewives' shows on Bravo.

I'm not going to even try to defend myself.

But I did learn about something handy on a recent episode of The Real Housewives of New York... The Skinny Girl Margarita.



I usually drink vanilla vodka and Diet Coke (My friends and I call it a 'Skinny Bitch'), but this is a really good option.

Plus, I think everyone should be drinking more tequila... just in general.

More Internet Fun... of the Serious Variety

I've devised a list of things for you to do on the internet machine in order to become more like me.

I'm going to need you to commit to doing this every single day without exception. I'm also going to need you to buy a pair of yoga pants that you will never take off no matter what.



First, you are going to play at least 4 hours of Alchemy.


Then you are going to log some time watching these great You Suck at Photoshop videos. Man oh man, you will be laughing and learning about Photoshop.


I think after you do that you'll need to play several more hours of Alchemy, though. And then some Bubble Shooter... and then maybe some more Alchemy, or Mozaki Blocks if you are sick of that.

After that spend maybe a couple of days intermittently reading the entire archives at Dooce and watching Season 1 of 30 Rock on Netflix.

Also watch this video of a baby panda sneezing at least 15 times.


Then maybe take a quick catnap for 9 hours and start over again.

Did You Know...

... that the BEST store on the internet is the Vermont Country Store?


I appreciate any store, brick and mortar or otherwise, where I can buy a can of scrapple, a makeup hood , and some lube in one trip.


Whadya need? I bet Vermont Country Store has it!

Granny panties? Check.

Lady Esther skin cream? Check.

A Vibrat... oops... I mean an intimate massager? Check.





Okay... I've expressed it in a very flippant way, but I seriously love the Vermont Country Store. It's probably my single favorite catalog to look through.

And one thing they have that I love are old lady nightgowns.

For years I slept in old t-shirts and yoga pants and then this past Fall I decided it would be cozy to have a flannel nightgown... so I bought this one (in Black Watch) from L.L. Bean. It was heaven.

I never knew looking like Laura Ingalls Wilder could feel so good.

I've had trouble finding other nightgowns because one of my absolute requirements is that it has to be at least ankle length... most places only have nightgowns that hit at around mid-calf or shorter.

This absolutely will not work because if I'm going to go all Little House on the Prairie.. well, I'm going to do it right, and I'm going to do it big.

So I found this great muslin nightgown at... you guessed it... the Vermont Country Store.

Seriously... you can't get much more Ma Ingalls than that.

They also have a lot of other really random, kinda old-fashioned stuff, and it's kind of a case of something being so uncool that it's cool, but in an ironic way.

Look into it.

Hipster Alert!

So a couple of days ago I was flipping through the channels, as I am often wont to do, and as I flipped past our local PBS station my attention was momentarily caught by a whole of crowd of people absolutely breaking it down on the dance floor.





I quickly flipped back and witnessed a whole pack of people grooving so hard to a band on Austin City Limits that I just had to stop and check it out. I mean, these people looked like they were at a camp meeting or something. It was awesome.








So here I am today with my new favorite band that everyone else has probably heard of already, but since they are new to me they make me feel like a pioneer of new and interesting music.... Ghostland Observatory!


Ghostland Observatory consists of two guys... one plays the guitar and sings and the other plays drums and synthesizers and all kinds of malarkey. I call them 'Pocahontas Braid Guy' and 'Cape-y Guy'.

They are from Austin and they rock ass so hardcore you WILL NEVER RECOVER.... and you will never be able to get their songs out of your head... but in a really good way.


To me they sound like a combo of The White Stripes and Chromeo, but with extra awesome thrown in as a bonus.

My personal favorite song, so far, is Rich Man, which is the song that the hipster kids on Austin City Limits were getting down to... it's such a great song... I can hardly blame them.

A Song that Needs to Take a Dirt Nap

MacArthur Park

I fucking HATE this song. The second I hear this song it makes me want to start randomly punching people in the face.


"Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again"


I mean... my hands were literally twitching and trying to form themselves into flying fists as I typed that.


What a fucking douchebag of a song.

The Best Christmas Song You Can Ever Know

Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.





To be honest this isn't just my favorite Christmas song... it's in my top 3 favorite songs ever, and lately I've been listening to/singing it like a mental patient.



Go and illegally download this IMMEDIATELY. It won't be Christmas until you do.

A Disturbing Trend

Whilst perusing the WBJ (that's the Wichita Business Journal for those of you not in the know... which, p.s., what kind of loser are you anyway?), I started pondering a terrifying trend.

One of the weekly features in the WBJ is where they poll 5 or 6 local business muckety-mucks about a topical issue. This week the issue was what their company was planning for their office holiday party.

I'll be goddamned if most of them didn't say that they only had a party for their employees' children and a luncheon, or, even more mind-boggling, NOTHING until a party sometime in February or Spring.

What the fucking shit?

I'm pretty sure if you have a Christmas party in February or fucking Spring it is no longer a Christmas party! It's a party... and probably a pretty lame one at that.

My whole life I've been hearing about office party debauchery... and to be honest it has become one of the major reasons I've stayed in my current position as long as I have.

Apparently the law firm I work for is AWESOME. We have incredible Christmas parties every year... specifically designed around everyone's favorite Christmas activity: getting totally shit-faced drunk.

This year we had a catered party at the fancy schmancy restaurant on the top floor of our building. We had the entire place to ourselves. There was an open bar. There was no entertainment provided.

Why?

Because entertainment (like some jackoff singing Christmas carols) would have gotten in the way of what our parties are truly about: getting totally shit-faced drunk.

Then after a couple of hours of that we got on a bus and drank more and pretended to look at Christmas lights. It was awesome.

Mind you, no one ended up with a lampshade on their head or photo-copying their genitals, but that's really only a technicality because there weren't any lampshades or copy machines available to us.

We still had plenty of people make incredible fools of themselves. And some of those people I like better now... 1. because it makes them more human and 2. because it gave the entire office something to gossip about for the entire holiday season.

Besides people making fools of themselves is what Christmas is all about... well that and cream cheese.

Lady Porn

Or, as they are more popularly known, romance novels.



I think romance novels are the lady equivalent to Penthouse and Hustler.



Why, you ask?



Well because most all ladies love reading romance novels... they are fun and they make us giddy.



But most all ladies will never admit to reading them, and, in fact, may hide them in a box under their bed. They might also put the book jacket of a respectable book over the cover of a romance novel so that they can read it in public without embarassment.



I've never done this, of course... but I have heard that this is done.



Also, in the immortal words of Big Keith from The Office,"Men are turned on by what they see, ladies are turned on by what they hear."

Thus, reading a romance novel is akin to looking at T and A in a magazine.



I consider myself to be quite a connossieur of the romance novel genre. When I was 13 my best friend and I would scour the local thrift stores for old romance novels, and hole up for entire weekends reading and discussing them... good times.

Don't think any less of me though because as a rule of thumb I always read at least 5 real books for every romance novel. They're sort of like a palate cleanser... like a citrus sorbet after a heavy meal... or Die Hard With A Vengeance after you've watched 4 Fellini Movies.



Here is my list of the top romance novels I've ever read:



1. Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife by Linda Berdoll - This plot of this book really gets in the way of the real intention of the book: describing all of the different ways Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth have sex. It's slightly more classy because it's a sequel to a classic novel, but it's oh so wrong in all of the right ways.



2. A Pirate's Love by Johanna Lindsay - This book is ridiculous. It's about a girl who married off to some guy in the Caribbean, but on the trip over to marry him her ship is attacked by a pirate ship and the captain makes her his love slave and they hate each other and then they love each other and blah blah blah. It's hot though... super hot.



3. Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsay - I wish you could see the copy that I have of this book. It features a shirtless Fabio holding on to a red-head whose dress is about to fall off... it's awesome. The plot of this one is as convulated as the previous... if not more. It's about a plucky young woman who stows away on a ship dressed as a boy and serves the captain as his cabin boy. Captain discovers cabin boy is actually a cabin girl and they have lots of sex and they hate each other and then they fall in love.



4. A Rose in Winter by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss - Again... ridiculous. This one is like some bastard child of Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera.

5. Morning Glory by Lavyrle Spencer - This one is so sickeningly sweet it might as well be made of corn syrup and sweetened condensed milk. Your mom will love it, your grandma will even love it, and, as much as you won't want to, you will probably love it too.


Enjoy!... or don't because in truth every time you read one of these your IQ drops 10 points and it takes a lot of work to get those back. I speak from a lot of experience.


And, as a bonus, check out these hilarious fake romance novel covers.

Serious Internet Fun

Boredom at work.... it's a world-wide epidemic.

What does one do when one hates all of the tasks before them and, yet, has exhausted all of the possibilities of things to do on the internet machine?

Email... check.
Update Netflix queue... check.
MySpace... check.
Trolling craigslist... check.
Look up potential maladies at webmd.com... check.
Research James Purefoy via Wikipedia and Google image searches... check and check.


About the time that I've done all of these things and refreshed LJ Images so many times my head feels like it might explode and I come to the depressing realization that I might need to do some actual work... well that kids is about the time that I take a trip over to One More Level.

It's the best place I've found on the internet for fun little internet games, and I can waste literally hours, or, even, entire work days there.

My current obsession is a game called 5 Differences... and if you enjoy the sensation of feeling like your eyes are going to explode all over your computer screen... well then you will definitely like it too.

Another favorite is Bubble Shooter (which, btw, I got caught up playing in the middle of writing this). It seems very boring in concept and at first you will be skeptical... but then 15 hours later you will realize what a great time you are having.

Jackpot Recipes!

I got this pic by googling the word 'jackpot'. Who else thinks that this might have been drawn by the same person who illustrated every Encyclopedia Brown book? Just me... well okay.

Let's talk about Jackpot Recipes.

Well first let's talk about what Jackpot Recipes are and where I got the idea to call them Jackpot Recipes.

I love to cook. I especially love to bake. I also like to knit and watch re-runs of Wings. I also might be a 55 year old school marm.

Anyways, I have some recipes that I make over and over... that people have begun to associate with me ,and think of as my recipes even though I've probably stolen them from someone on the internet. And I'm okay with that. I call these my Jackpot Recipes.

Where did I get the name Jackpot Recipes? Well I stole it from the same place that I get all of my best ideas: Amy Sedaris.

So here is a small selection of my favorite Jackpot Recipes on the Internet Machine.

The Best Lasagna Ever from Ree at The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Vicki's Chicken Pot Pie from Trashy Eats

Marinated Cheese from Allrecipes

Cocktail Meatballs from Allrecipes (If you are delightfully white trash like me you will just use a bag of frozen meatballs and add a 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce to this)

The Best Banana Bread Ever from someone at Livejournal (I think it was posted in the Food Porn community there... also please take note of the very last two comments... Is it just me or WHOA did that just come out of nowhere?)

Peter!

I know it might be a little early for most people to start thinking about Christmas, but I start thinking about Christmas on or about December 27th every year.

Yep... I love it.

And one thing that starts getting me really excited about Christmas is when I start seeing Christmas commercials popping up here and there on television.

Yep... it doesn't take much to get me excited.

My favorite Christmas commercial of all time is the classic Folger's commercial where Peter comes home for Christmas and makes coffee.

Oh man is it great.

I dare anyone to watch that commercial and not want to put up a Christmas tree right that second. It's just not possible.

So anyways... Enjoy!

Jarring Something Loose

So I've got a teeny tiny, weeny wootie case of writer's block currently rocking my world.

Usually when this happens I just throw my hands up in the air, whistle and read magazines until it goes away.

This weekend I decided to be proactive about it.

The first thing I did was to spend $50 at a craft/hobby store buying construction paper, glitter, colored pencils, sketch pads and fancy scissors that cut zig-zags and wavy lines.

My thinking was that any act of creativity, no matter how small or ridiculous the attempt, might jar something loose.

The second thing I did was read How To Be Creative at Gaping Void.

Gaping Void is possibly one of my favorite websites/blogs on the whole internet machine. It's clever, it's funny and it's much smarter than me. Hugh, the author, spends a lot of time talking about the internet and blogs and marketing and what it all means, and, to be honest, for the most part I have no idea what he's talking about... but, hey, he draws some great cartoons (on the back of business cards), and it makes me feel smarter just for having tried to be so engaged.

Here's to you Hugh MacLeod... and your marvelous blog.

I name you The Awesome Blog Internet Person of October 2007.

Fattoush Salad

Holy God do I love Fattoush salad.

Fattoush, if you've never experienced it, is a salad made of romaine, tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers (sometimes), olives (sometimes), feta (sometimes) and these ridiculously delicious broken up pita chips and is all smothered in this super delicious lemon vinaigrette that is seasoned with something called sumac.

It is incredible.

What a lot of people don't know is that my hometown (Wichita) has a ton of great Lebanese restaurants. Totally random, right? I mean most people would expect us to have nothing but ground beef and cream of mushroom soup or a big pot of beef scraps from the butcher boiling away, but it's really not true. Since there isn't a whole lot else going on (i.e. concerts, theatre, or culture in general) what most people do for fun is go to restaurants... so we have a lot of restaurants. And a lot of them are Lebanese... or if not specifically serving Lebanese food they are, at least, owned by Lebanese people.

But the Lebanese restaurants aren't even my favorite places to get Lebanese food.

Nope... that's because every year in October a local church ( St. George Orthodox Cathedral) has this giant fundraiser where they serve a Lebanese meal for $15 a person. It's pretty much the highlight of my year outside of my birthday and Christmas... in fact, it's like Lebanese Food Christmas.

Anyways... this year my mom got me 3 tickets.

That's 3 tickets... JUST FOR ME. I'll be eating cabbage rolls and kibbe and pita bread and baklava morning, noon, and night this weekend.


I'm so effing jacked.

Jess' Guide to Great Lebanese food in the Wichita Area

1. Bella Luna Cafe (the best fattoush ever)

2. N & J's Cafe (authentic and they have belly dancers!)

3. Nouvelle Cafe

4. Cafe le Monde

5. M.I.F Deli

6. Po Boy Pizza (this place doesn't serve Lebanese food, but it's a pizza place owned by the nicest (Lebanese) people in the entire world. Try the pizza roll... it'll probably change your life.)

Anti-Awesome

Here we encounter an Awesome phenomenon.... a dichotomy, if you will, wherein something that is awesome (Henry) does something that is incredibly not at all awesome (peeing on my leg).

My mother thinks it's sign of his love and devotion for me... that he is, in fact, marking his beloved territory.

I think he's still pissed about the bee costume I made him wear on Saturday (don't worry... there will be photos... oh my will there ever be photos).

Claw Money, You Guys!

I am pretty much in love with Claw Money.

What is Claw Money you ask?

Well, the simple answer is that Claw Money is a lot of things.

It is a person... a girl, actually.

This girl is a revolutionary graffiti artist known for her signature three-toed claw tag.


She is also a clothing designer who makes awesome shit that all of the pseudo-hipster kids will be wearing very soon.

How do I know this?


I know this because, as I have previously stated, I am awesome. Also because of a recent incident reported in the celebrity gossip columns that super crazy awesome rapper M.I.A was bummed because she lost her favorite pair of Claw Money sunglasses during a performance.

And if M.I.A. is doing it, then it's only a matter of time before those crazy kids start doing it.

My favorite thing that she does is taking something very high-brow and make it very street.


My personal faves are the Claw Aviator sunglasses, but M.I.A's Nugget sunglasses are pretty sweet too.



To be honest, there are about 20 things I want off of the Claw Money website. So if anyone has a spare $250 dollars lying around maybe keep me in mind because I'm in the market for a new pair of shades ;)

Internet Fun

So I dare anyone to visit LJ Images and not hit refresh 750 times.

LJ Images is a deceptively simple concept. Every time you refresh the page it shows the latest 50 images uploaded onto Livejournal.

I don't know what it is... I guess it's voyeuristic, but it's also kind of like a treasure hunt and a freak show all wrapped into one... but it is scarily addictive.

Maybe don't be a fool (like me) and look at it at work, because the chances of seeing something highly inappropriate are very very high.

Awesome Movie - Inside Man

I'm positive that I am absolutely last to the party on this, but Inside Man is a fucking awesome movie.

Who doesn't love a fucking heist movie?

One of my greatest wishes in life is to be involved in a heist... and I felt this way long before Dane Cook happened to bring it up.

The Thomas Crown Affair (both the Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan versions) is one of my favorite heist movies ever... and this is, like, just as good except that it also has a moral or something.

I also love a movie that has a plot tricky enough that I have to watch it twice to fully get it... not everyone loves this (which I totally understand), but to me it is super fun... and to be honest I can tell this is going to be one of those movies that I can watch over and over and over like a mental patient.

My Current Mental Patient Movies - 2007
What About Bob
Ocean's 11 and 12
Inside Man
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
M*A*S*H

Anti-Awesome

Kids, you have to do more than one exercise when you work out. Maybe try to switch it up every once in awhile and work on your legs a little.

Just an idea.

Also... take it easy on the eyebrow pencil.

Everton!

So it's pretty much not a secret that I love soccer. It's like a totally irrational love. It's the kind of love that makes me drive down Soccer's street 15 times on a Friday night trying to imagine what Soccer is doing and what it is thinking about.

Anyways... so initially (when I first became a soccer fan) my biggest criteria in determining which teams I like best was to assess which teams had the cutest players (which... btw is Chelsea or Liverpool in England and Real Madrid in Spain), but as I learned more about the game the more I learned to appreciate other things... like... oh... I don't know... skill.

This is why Everton is my favorite team in the ENTIRE WORLD.

Maybe you've heard of them... maybe you haven't because they aren't Chelsea or Manchester United.

They're based in Liverpool and they pretty much have it all.

• Skill: Meet Andy Johnson. He is incredible. God bless him and his perfectly round bald head.


• Looks: Meet Mikel Arteta. He's Spanish. Sweet Jesus. Oh... and he's pretty good at soccer too.


• Underdog Status: God knows I love an underdog... I mean I'm a Cubs fan for Christ's sake.


• Great Nickname: The Toffees. I don't think it's possible to not like a team named after one of the great candies on the face of the planet.