The Gospel According to the Interweb

"And on the fourth day, the Lord created Unremitting Failure, and he saw that it was good. And he commanded the people to go forth and read it. And the people read it, and they saw that it was good."

Other sites that the Lord thought were pretty good:

• Charm School
• Newer
• Julie Klam's blog (which the Lord thought was funny until she stopped posting and just did Facebook all the time)
  

Happy Thanksgiving

In honor of the Thanksgiving festivities, I give you the single greatest blog post ever written about this fine day, Big Daddy Drew's Turkey Day Itinerary from Kissing Suzy Kolber. It's a few years old, but as you can see, it hasn't aged a day.

I will now return my attentions to the bacon/apple/fennel stuffing. Enjoy your day.

It's Raining!

Holy fucking shit, it's raining! Call out the National Guard. LA's going to be a mess tomorrow.

This is Hot

I know I've got this thing for raw meat, but there's something else that's jumping out at me about this photo. Can you guess what it is?


Photo is by Mario Testino. I found it on this blog, which is so photo porn-ish, I can barely stand to look at it. I recommend that you do.

The New York Times is Stealing My Material

Sure, now they're all about Justin Bobby. (I gotta say, that is an insanely stupid look he's rocking in that photo.)

Happy Birthday, Andrew Carnegie

He was a wee lad, and he owned the world.

My Fair Share of Abuse

I went to the rally in favor of gay marriage at Los Angeles City Hall this past Saturday. The Metro was packed heading down, full of people carrying signs, people cheering. Each station, we picked up more and more people, the energy level constantly rising. Once we reached Civic Center station, the crowd exited, en mass, and trudged upward to the light of a hot Los Angeles day. One of the speakers at the rally said, "It's November in Los Angeles, which means it's 700 degrees." She wasn't far off. It was hot. It was unbearable in the sun, but the shade was alright, and nobody seemed to mind that I was sweating like Jason Giambi. It was that kind of crowd.

People spoke: Ricki Lake, Lucy Lawless, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo (Edan shouted "Take down those damn electronic billboards!"). I was surprised to find myself tearing up as people (not Lucy Lawless, who made that Xena noise) spoke about how important the issue is and how much it meant to them personally. I thought about all the people I know who are affected by the passing of Prop 8, and, well, I was glad I was wearing sunglasses. I saw Pink standing in the crowd. Everywhere people were holding signs. Some people had brought their kids. Some had brought their dogs, which just seemed cruel.

After about forty minutes of speakers, we started to march. This is what the crowd had come for, but it felt a little anti-climactic. Downtown LA isn't the most happening place on a Monday morning, let alone a Saturday morning. There weren't that many people out to see us, and those that were were definitely part of the choir, so to speak. Still, it felt important to be there, to be counted.

Anyway, I know this isn't my usual type of blog post (I'll write something about Kim Kardashian tomorrow to make up for it), but I did take some photos that I think are interesting. They are below.

If only we had this kind of a crowd on the Metro everyday. They might actually build some more lines.

The heavenly glow of Downtown Los Angeles (plus that guy's sweet paisley hat).


Indeed.


On the march.


This doesn't really have anything to do with the rally or gay rights, just, you know, No Age Weirdo Rippers.

Post-Election Wrap-Up

Fans of my long defunct food blog Apron, Napkin probably remember this feeling. "Patrick's run off, and we aren't likely to hear from him ever again." It's true, I've been known to be intermittent with my blogging, but it isn't because I don't have ideas. It's that I'm lazy. Very, very lazy. And occasionally too drunk to blog (That was the title of the now-scrapped Dead Kennedys reunion album).

I did have a few post-election thoughts to pass along:

• McCain-Palin lost, in part because they were the inferior ticket, in part because nobody who shared political parties with Bush (or really anything with Bush) would've had much of a shot, and in part because they were the party of Speidi.
  

• As a Californian, I'm pretty ashamed that we voted to pass a constitutional amendment specifically to take away certain people's rights. In fact, I'm very angry about this. What you are reading right now is me holding my temper. If this weren't a blog, I might see cause to raise my voice at certain religious types who believe in magic underwear and marrying multiple people at the same time and converting Jews after they're already dead. I might say something like, "While I'm not completely sure that God doesn't exist (I'm about 99% of the way there), I am damn sure that if he does exist, he didn't bury any sacred texts in Upstate New York." Have you ever been to Palmyra? There is nothing sacred about that shithole. So you can take your magic seeing goggles and your sacred texts and your enchanted salamanders and your prairie garb and go back to that alkaline flat of a state you call home. Anyway, this just proves that certain things are too important to be left up to the people to decide. One of the many reasons I really dislike the Californian form of government. (In all fairness, I should point out that Speidi were against Prop 8. No idea how they felt about that high-speed train we're building.)

• Speaking of the high-speed rail: "But Main Street's still all cracked and broken!" "Sorry, Marge, the mob has spoken." Monorail!
  

• Can we all agree now: Sarah Palin wasn't that hot. I mean, I know at least ten moms who are way hotter than her (and whose politics I can tolerate a lot more). I swear that liberal guys have this thing for conservative women, that they want to be attracted to the hate they feel or something. Repulsion confused with desire. Ann Coulter's been trying to make a career of it now for about a decade, except that she's not attractive.

• If I were Michelle Obama, I wouldn't let Oprah Winfrey anywhere near 44. Did you see the way she was looking at him during the speech?

• Can we all take a minute to worship at the feet of the amazing Nate Silver. Turns out PECOTA is pretty good with elections, too, although he did have Dustin Pedroia winning the state of Massachusetts (If you got any of these reference, it's time to pack up and move out of your mom's basement). Is it any wonder he's a University of Chicago grad?

Okay, so, I'll see you in, what, a month and a half or so? Well, I'll try to make it a more regular thing.

Say Cheese...

If you're like me, you'll enjoy this photo gallery of celebrity mugshots. Courtesy of Sam Zell's shell corporation. Happy Monday, everybody!


Of course they finish on the best celebrity mugshot ever (You know who I mean, but you'll have to click through to get to it).

Letter to the Editor

When I lived in Iowa City, I shopped at the New Pioneer Co-op, a fine little grocery store that sold all sorts of good things, including organic produce, vegetables, and an ass-load of soy shit. As Edan is still technically a member of the Co-op she gets their amazing newsletter every month. This month featured a letter to the editor from a longtime New Pioneer Co-op member. It reads as follows:

"Dear Members:

I stopped drinking cow’s milk and started drinking soy milk about five years ago. Because Silk brand soy milk is the most available throughout the country that is the one I started drinking.
And all that fancy California advertising on the box also helped me decide. But then, after I learned more about Silk soy milk, I switched brands. I understand that the soy beans used to make it come all the way from China, in powder form, they tell me, to be made into soy milk in California to be transported all over the country. The cardboard container shows the picture of
a soy bean field being irrigated with water from a windmill. I am waiting for the picture showing a gigantic cargo ship transporting the soybean powder from China to California being powered
with windmills. Now I buy the Organic Valley kind, although this kind is only in the Iowa City store not in Coralville.

Thing is, the soy milk that comes from China tastes better than the one from ... Wisconsin? And I will never understand... how can they grow the soybeans in China, transport the mall the way to here, and still be able to sell the milk for a lowerprice than the more local one?

After thinking about it for about two years, I finally bought a slice of cheesecake at the coop. The first bite was okay, but I couldn’t eat it all. The taste of boiled egg is too strong for me.
I have been a member of New Pioneer for about fifteen years, and I have been thinking ... I would like to start a campaign to get us to stop selling bottled water at the stores. We are just not
practicing what we preach on this.

Yours,

A fucking lunatic

Holy fucking shit. Come clean, dude. You're actually Sam Lipsyte, right? There's no way that letter is for real, right? Right?

The Bewildered Father

I've been thinking about this for awhile now, and having been on Facebook and seeing how many of my old friends have kids has only intensified it. There's a certain type of character, usually fictional although there's one example of it that I can think of in 'real life,' a father who's sort of aloof to fathering, at least as the previous generation did it. Usually, these characters are trapped in a sort of arrested development, a permanent adolescence, and yet, as the audience, I think we're suppose to believe they're good fathers. I'm thinking of Paul Rudd's character in Knocked Up, someone who, when asked to watch the kids, says "Oh, good, we'll watch Taxi Cab Confessions." Being a parent seems almost like a joke to them, or that it isn't really happening.

The Platonic ideal of the bewildered father is Jeff Tweedy as portrayed in the documentary I'm Trying to Break Your Heart. There's a scene (a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the YouTube clip of this scene) where the tour bus stops at a rest stop, the kind of place that features a Roy Rogers restaurant, a shop selling souveniers of whatever area it is, and a TCBY that's never open. Tweedy carries his crying kid into the Burger King where he finds his wife waiting in the line. The scene plays out something like this:

Tweedy's wife: "What happened? Why's he crying?"
Tweedy: "It's not my fault."
Tweedy's wife: "Well, what happened?"
Tweedy: "The claw machine." (Gives kid to wife and makes a claw with his hand.) "The claw machine ate his quarter. He had the little Spongebob guy all lined up, and the machine..."
Tweedy's wife consoles the child, then: "Jesus Christ, Jeff." (Walks off to do some real mothering.)
Tweedy stands there, looking like he isn't completely sure that what transpired actually happened, and that maybe he'd like some curly fries.

Other examples of this phenomenon would be Moe in Beautiful Girls, who shuffles around the ice rink looking like a doofus, and watches helplessly as his kids pour mustard on each other's laps. Another good one is David Duchovony (sex addict) in Trust the Man. There's a certain nonchalance to his character, maybe due to the fact that he doesn't have to work, and he brings this same attitude to his parenting. He buys porn with his three-year-old daughter, happily takes mid-morning naps, and lets his son struggle to get down an art project that he shouldn't be taking home yet anyway (If you haven't seen this movie, you ought to. There's at least ten really good lines, which is all you need to have a rentable movie.).

My question to you, fair reader, is this: why is this type of character suddenly becoming so prevalent? Is it the case, as my wife believes, that such a character can only exist in the imagination of the fatherless man? Is this the natural reaction of our age -- already so tinged with irony to begin with -- to growing up? I'd love to hear from some folks with kids.

Past to be Prologue for Republican Party?

I don't ask much, and I don't ask often, but a repeat of this performance during this year's vice presidential debates would be wonderful:



The sound kind of sucks, I know, but you have to give credit to the director on this one. He (or she) cuts to a two-shot of Quayle and Bentsen just as Quayle is mentioning Kennedy. The look on Bentsen's face is just incredible. "And I'm going to be on a first-hand basis with these people because I will be the Vice President, and I will be in charge of drugs and space and things."

Of course, the Democrats lost the '88 election. Think about that for a second...for four years, the United States was 'a heartbeat away' from that glorified lemur running the country. Hail to the Chimp indeed.

Again with the YouTube?

Yes, again. But not Eddie Money this time, stuff that's actually good. Or at least, stuff that I think is good. First up, I would like to meet this teenager and buy him a drink. The backstory, for those who haven't seen this clip before, is that this kid's school was looking for a new "ring tone" for the bell they use to signal the end of a class. Somehow, they settled on his suggestion:



Male a capella groups are generally pretty square...except when they're rocking Beirut:



For those who know nothing of Beirut, I present some footage of a show from the Avalon Ballroom that I went to last fall. It was nowhere near as good as the show at the Troubadour the year before (that show ended with the band in the crowd, letting strangers play their instruments), but this encore (even the part where he forgets the words) redeemed an otherwise eh show:



Speaking of great live performances (that's what we in the blogging business call "a segue"), this Jeff Tweedy performance of "Gun," one of the early Uncle Tupelo songs, is pretty god damn great:



Does that make up for subjecting everyone to Mr. Money? I hope so, because I'm too drunk tired to post anything else.

Eddie Money: The YouTube Chronicles

I'm a little buzzed, which means it's the perfect time to talk about Eddie Money. My obsession with Eddie Money goes all the way back to high school, when he would regularly perform at a nearby racetrack with local star Benny Mardones. For those of you who don't reside in 1986, Benny sang the song "Into the Night," which was a big hit for awhile. It was about statutory rape, as best I can tell ("She's just sixteen years old, leave her alone, they say."), and he was never heard from again...Except in Upstate New York, where he passes for a celebrity and doesn't have to wait in line at the fashionable discotheques. Anyway, about Eddie Money.

By far, the best Eddie Money song is "Take Me Home Tonight." I mean, it's got a classic hook, some really incredible lyrics, and Ronnie Motherfucking Spector sings the refrain. Seriously, Ronnie Spector! But have you seen the video? Oh man, the video is first rate. Check it out and then we'll talk about it:



What's not to love about that video, right? First, can we talk about the lyrics? Now, Chuck Klosterman has famously pointed out that many Bruce Springsteen lyrics are pretty bad, with the strapping of hands across engines and whatnot, but I don't think the Boss ever wrote a line quite as dumb as the first line of "Take Me Home Tonight." The first line, which is repeated later in the song, is "I feel your hunger, it's a hunger." That's not even a metaphor, that's a tautology. And yes, he goes on to talk about how his lust is so strong that it could take over the city and that it isn't "safe to walk the city streets alone." And then there's a car reference that is vintage Springsteen, and then Ronnie Spector sings.

But about the video. First of all, how about that hair. Feathered and fabulous. Guys I know like to brag about how they don't have to spend a lot of time on their hair in the morning...Eddie spent some time on that hair. And you know what, it paid off. His jacket...well, the rest of his wardrobe is back in style (ah, fashion, you cyclical bitch, you), but that jacket...If I live to be 100 years old, that jacket will never be back in style. It's that bad. I recently saw a picture of myself from eighth grade on Facebook in which I was wearing a sweater that was sub-Cosby level, but compared to Eddie's jacket, it was chic.

And how about the mise-en-scene of this particular masterpiece. He's on an empty stage in an empty auditorium. It could be anywhere, but let's imagine that it's the Utica Aud. The great irony now is that the only way they'd let Eddie into an auditorium of that size is if he bought a ticket. Or maybe won tickets from a radio call-in show. At the beginning of the video, Eddie's not real sure he wants to sing. He's a little hungover -- hence the Ray Bans indoors -- but the rhythm starts to take hold of him, and he can't stop. He's a slave to the groove. He pops his collar, the Ray Bans come off, and before you know it, we're finding keys and turning engines on.

The set is appropriately spare, Eddie being a no-frills rocker and all. Just a simple ladder. And where exactly is that ladder going? It's going up, of course.

Then there's the sax solo. I used to play the saxophone, and I can tell you from experience, Eddie never did. He plays the saxophone like a crackhead with Parkinson's. Why have the saxophone there at all? Why did the director of this video think that particular fiction was going to play? If you're going to have him impersonate a saxophonist, why not have him and Ronnie ride off on a winged horse at the end of the video? Both scenarios are equally ridiculous.

The more I see this video, the more I wonder how hard up Ronnie Spector was to be associated with Mr. Money. There aren't ten people with more important voices to rock history than Ronnie Spector, and here she is in a video with a cut-rate Huey Lewis. It's sad. And yet I watch it 2.5 times a day. Go figure.

The Hater

For a while, I was thinking of starting a blog called "The Hater," in which I would write a post a day about something I hated. In the end, I think this is just way too much bad karma to put out into the world, so I think instead I'll just dole out the hate from here. So, fueled by a hearty dose of Joshua Brook, the best bourbon $11.75 can buy, here is a list of things I hate (Oh, and if there are people on this list, it's not that I hate them per se. Like Sandra Bullock is on the list, but I've never met her, and I've heard nothing but nice things about her. She just doesn't do it for me, and I really, really dislike her movies.):

Sandra Bullock. See above.
Reggae. I might be the only person in the world who hates reggae. It's taken me a long time to admit it to myself, too. I used to bob my head, try to feel the groove. Now, I just turn the station. No reggae for me.
People who live in LA who talk about how much they miss New York City. If you love it so much, move back. It'd be one less jackass on the roads.
Guys who say "bra." But who doesn't hate those guys?
American cars. Let's see: poor fuel efficiency, boxy design, shitty safety ratings--what's not to hate? If I ever drive another Chrysler product, it will be cold day in hell.
Drivers who don't turn into the first available lane. Someday, when I'm king, these people will be the first to be rounded up and shot. I know you want to make an immediate right turn after turning left, but turn into the middle lane, then change lanes like the rest of us law abiding citizens.
Joe Morgan. If there's a worse guy broadcasting sports today, I haven't heard him. His war against on-base percentage is the most troglodytic stance since creationism.
My wife's delusional rants. Seriously, honey, you are crazy.
Picky eaters. Will you just try the chicken liver crostini? Please?

It's a very incomplete list. I'm filled with rage. Add your own in the comments.

Fun with Spam

I get about 200 spam emails a day, mostly at work. While the majority of them tell me I've won the lottery in a country I've never been to, or that I can get Viagra for very little money, there are occasionally spam emails of a more mature nature. One thing these emails have in common, other than their sexual content, is a difficulty with basic American idioms and with the English language in general. Here are a few I got recently:

Email 1.

"Hi im Maria im 28 years old.
Opening the vagina.
Look it now!"

Email 2.

"Salma Hayek Stunning presentation.
The pornos is Shocking!"

Email 3.

"Hi, I'm Tatiana. I'm a nice Russian girl.
I'm tired tonight. Want to chat?"

There's nothing technically wrong with this last one, but why would I want to chat with a tired Russian girl? Am I going to chat her to sleep? (I'm pretty sure they mean 'bored' or 'I'm in bed' and just misused a thesaurus.) I realize these are emails sent by the Russian mob to try to get my PayPal account or get me to click on some malware or something, but, seriously, Boris, hire a copywriter. I can't believe there isn't one guy in the Ukraine who went to college in the states and desperately needs money who could look these over and be like, "Guys, it's not 'making fuck.'" Try harder, you silly foreign gangsters!

Question of the Day

One of the great things about working at the bookstore that shall remain nameless is that I get to hang out at a lot of author readings. Now, not every author event is fun. Sometimes nobody shows up, sometimes the author is a dick, sometimes the audience is full of dicks, etc. But sometimes the author is cool and the audience is cool, and the event ends up being a total blast.

Such was the case when David Sedaris visited the store. For those who've never been to a David Sedaris event, they can get pretty wild (for a book event, at least), as Sedaris is prone to saying whatever the hell he feels like to pretty much everyone and anyone in attendance. At our event, he told one well-endowed female fan that he loved the way she had chosen to display her fabulous breasts. I've heard stories of him encouraging teenage fans to have sex with paralyzed people ("Do you know any paralyzed people?"..."No." "Well, maybe you can meet some. I recommend hanging out near ramps.") and telling a female fan that she was attractive enough to be a prostitute.

At our event, he had something else in store. He asked everyone who got a book signed (quite a few people) whether or not they thought Barack Obama was circumcised. The results are shown below:



As you can see, the vote was evenly split, with circumcised winning by a nose, which is kind of ironic, really. I'm not sure who voted "1/2" or what that could possibly mean, but I'm quite sure I never want to find out. Sedaris himself said he thought Obama wasn't circumcised, and he had some rationale for it. He thought that, while Obama's mother would probably have wanted him to fit in, she was decidedly a free spirit, which might've made her more inclined to buck tradition in this case. I'm voting uncircumcised, but I don't have a reason. Hell, that's how most people decide to vote for a president, so it ought to be reason enough here.

As Sedaris noted at the event, though, the reasons people gave for voting the way they did were truly, um, illuminating:

"Well, I know he's a Muslim, so..."
Really?
"Well, he was born in Africa..."
Um...

No opinions were offered on the state of John McCain's foreskin because, well, nobody wants to go there.

Even More "Hills" News

I got my two contributor copies of Barrelhouse today, which was very exciting. Even though I've known my essay was being published for awhile, it's still a great feeling to see it there in print, with all the other incredible stuff in this issue. Did I mention its for sale here? And maybe at your local newsstand, if you live in certain select places that value quality periodicals.

(See. I'm serious about this Hills business.)

My mole among the teenagers (thanks, Sarah!) tells me that word on the street has it that Lauren Conrad now makes $70,000 per episode with "Speidy," the Spencer-Heidi combo, bringing in a reported $65,000. Audrina makes somewhere in the $25,000 per episode range, while poor Lo somehow survives on $10,000 per show.

Further proving my point about Lauren's career ambitions, the boutique Ketson dropped her clothing line, citing "complaints of poor sales and a lack of promotional work from the star."

You know, if I had a job where I made about a million dollars a year to drink cocktails and flirt, I'd probably be stoked to be a stylist, too.

Tomorrow, I'll write about something other than "The Hills." I promise.

Thoughts on "The Hills"

One of the reasons I started this blog is so I can write about "The Hills," the MTV reality soap opera starring Lauren Conrad et al. I wrote an essay about "The Hills" called "This is Not Their Job: The Never-Ending Reality of "The Hills." It won the Pop Culture Essay Contest at Barrelhouse Magazine, and was just published in their most recent issue. Buy it here! Buy it, I say!

Since the text of the essay isn't currently available online, I'll summarize the argument here. "The Hills" represents a new type of TV show, one in which the actual "text" of the show, the content of the episodes themselves, is less interesting than the extra-textual content surrounding the show, the blogs, gossip sites, and tabloid magazines that cover the "characters" of the show. This gives the show a unique dramatic irony, in which the audience knows all about the characters yet the characters themselves can rarely acknowledge that the audience even exists. The unprecedented overlap between the show and the world around it also makes it difficult for the show to continue certain fictions, namely that Lauren needs to work at Teen Vogue (and now, People's Revolution) for her career (while she's making $25,000 an episode). There. The essay is much better than what I described so, again, I suggest you buy it.

While it's terrific that the essay is out there and people can read it, there's one problem -- it's old. I wrote it in, I don't know, October of 2007, and as the title of the essay suggests, "The Hills" never stops. Coverage of Lauren, Audrina, Heidi, Whitney (mmm, Whitney), and Lo (ah, Lo) continues unabated. On that subject, I no longer have cable. I would be missing The Hills except, well, you can watch it here. All the same, I only saw about half of last season, but -- here's where The Hills is great -- I'm still pretty much up to speed. You really just need to read Us Weekly and The Superficial, and you're all set. It's kind of similar to how I follow the Red Sox when I live out of market and won't pony up the cash to buy a TV package. I read about them online and watch the games online.

In any case, I thought I'd post some thoughts on what's happened on the show since I wrote the essay. I think, if anything, my thesis has largely been confirmed.

1. Heidi and Spencer have started posing for obviously staged "candid" photos like these:


Are you following me here? These are real people who play themselves on a TV show, and even though paparazzi follow them around and would probably take real candid photos of them, they stage these fake real photos. Is there any other show like this? I think not.

2. Heidi made a music video for her song "Higher" that was somewhat amusing...Oh, who am I kidding -- it was fucking hilarious. It's spawned a page worth of spoofs, reaction videos, and such on YouTube. In terms of unintentional comedy, it ranks up there with the "Boom Goes the Dynamite" guy.

3. Lauren, Audrina, and Lo bought a house in Los Angeles. That would've been hard on the salary of a junior stylist at People's Revolution, but, you know, Lauren has other means of income.

4. Audrina got huge fake boobs. If Whitney does one thing to her body, I will drive my car into an office building.

5. Heidi's office buddy, the one who actually hated her, quit her job and went out in style, sabotaging Heidi's plans like a modern day Iago. Did Heidi lose her job? Of course not. It's not like Brent Bolthouse has another way to get on TV.

6. Lauren and Brody Jenner never quite got off the ground, and Jason got engaged to a random girl named Katya, so what happened? Stephen from "Laguna Beach" suddenly started appearing on the show. But we're supposed to believe that this wasn't the idea of a producer? Right.

Also, I never really got a chance to comment on this, but where did they find these two people to host "The Hills" aftershow? The first time I saw it, I thought it was a spoof of some kind, like MTV was showing a Saturday Night Live skit. The male host acts like Jimmy Fallon doing an impression of a hipster. Every time they cut to him, he looks more and more ridiculous. It's almost a talent.














Anyway, I will continue to follow the show from afar, while taking in the occasional episode online. If you have thoughts on the show or if you've had a chance to read my essay, feel free to comment.

This is Me

One of the reasons I'm starting this blog is so that those of you who are out there reading some of my more professional writing (it exists, I swear) will have somewhere to go when you say, "Man, that essay on amateurism kicked ass. I wonder where I can find more of that guy's stuff?" If you're one of those people then, hello. You've found me.

Currently, I'm blogging at a bookstore that shall remain nameless. What I write here has nothing to do with my day job, and the views I express here are mine and not theirs.

You also might have seen me hanging around The Millions from time to time. I'm no longer officially a contributor there, but I still turn up in the comments from time to time, kind of like how Jon Lovitz was always on Saturday Night Live the season after he quit. You also might have read some of my writing on food at Apron, Napkin, my now defunct food blog. If you found me because you've been obsessively checking Apron for the past year, then, wow. You should email me or something. If you've never read Apron, Napkin, well, you're not alone. I've left it up on the off chance that someone should want to know what I thought of AOC (It's divine. Go there tonight, if you have the means), or what it's like to rub jalapeños on your genitals (um, invigorating).

The other reason I'm starting this blog is that I find all kinds of incredible things on the internet that I just can't, for whatever reason, work into a post at my day job. This blog will serve as a good dumping ground for that, and you, dear reader, will benefit.

So anyway, thanks for reading, welcome, and I love you.