Common Phrases That Sound Dirty and Make me Giggle

"Sour Patch Kids"


"The Golden Snitch" (Harry Potter)



"logging off"




Lolz. By the way, this isn't the super funny post I've been bragging about. It's still coming.

Iz in ur hed, meltin ur branez

I am currently working on a really funny post/photoessay that I think some of you will really love, but in the mean time, let me share some of my internet wanderings with you.

While learning all about the Animal Kingdom (yeah, my life is pretty much a first grade science class) yesterday, I happened to stumble across what just might be the cutest animal in the entire universe: the pine marten. Behold, and I dare you not to squeal like a little girl:
By the way, this album is taken from Flickr, which I am told is Creative Commons material. However, I will give the photographer credit anyway: Adam Lyon, and here is his Flickr page.
Anyway, at first, when I saw the word marten on the Animal Kingdom chart (under the Mustelidae aka Weasel family) I was like "what the heck is a marten?" but then realized I have heard of it before.... in The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman. It was the animal form that Lyra's daemon chose. And now I know why. Clearly Mr. Pullman was looking for the cutest animal in the world, and he couldn't pick say, a puppy or a kitty, because those animals had already been used in the previous books... so I'm sure he just google imaged a little bit until he found Mr. Cute. Enjoy!

On a kinda animal related note, I would like to share with you all an inspirational passage from the LOLCAT Bible. Srsly. Someone on this planet decided that it would be a good idea to translate the entire Holy Bible into Lolspeak, the language of LOLCATS. Once again, srsly. So without further ado, here is Exodus 2:1-4....

1 Sum guye wented to Levi's place an marryed hiz doter.2 An the doter hd a bayby who wuz a boi so she hided himm.3 So she decided to do wot Pharo saied an put hm in teh rievr but she maded a bukkit fur him sos he woudt drounz. An she sed pharo is liek rly laem 4 tellz us puts babyz in teh river An not sais u no can has bukkitz lol st00pid pharo.4 An his big sis miriam wuz tehr 2 An she hided An wotched him flote awai an she like kthxbai. An teh crocodielz An teh lolrusz did not eated him. wich wuz good cuz if dey did tehr wudnt b no mor storyz An htis wud b rly short bibul.

Links:
I Can Has a Cheezburger? (The LOLCAT page).
Lolcat Bible

The world is a mess and I just... need to rule it!

********If you read nothing else in this entry - go to this website: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and prepare to have your mind blown all over your face (Do it before the stroke of midnight on July 20th or you won't be able to see it for free)********

Since my blog sucks (don't try to argue, you few loyal friends who I have bullied into reading this), today I'm going to talk about a blog that EVERYBODY actually is talking about: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Of course it's not really a blog, it's Joss Whedon's new 40-minute movie/mini-series starring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, MD), Nathon Fillion (Capt. Mal Reynolds from Firefly) and Felicia Day (Vi from Buffy, Season 7). Umm yeah, I'm serious. The godlike Joss has descended from Mount Olympus and blessed us mere mortals with manna from his beautiful brain. After totally pwning the worlds of television, film, and comic books, the Chosen One himself has now been crowned the reigning Grand Wizard of the Internet. Let me see if there is anything more ridiculously grovelly I can say about the golden child of Whedonness: I would let Joss Whedon make a hat out of my ribcage (thats an obscure Buffy reference too!) if only it would be a "thinking cap" to bring him more glorious ideas to change my world.

But the real deal on this movie is that it was produced by all the aforementioned geniuses during the writer's strike and it is now being released for a limited time on Dr.Horrible.com (until Sunday at midnight I believe), after which it will be available for a fee on Itunes, and then DVD. I will certainly donate my hard-earned Galleons to the Whedon cause for the DVD, but you should try to check it out now so you can be one of the cool kids in the know.

A breif synopsis: Dr. Horrible (Harris) is a two-bit mad scientist wanna-be super villain. His plans are constantly being thwarted by a cheesy, muscle-y super hero named Captain Hammer(Fillion), and he can't get up the courage to talk to his dream girl (Felicia Day). Hilarity, songs, and Tarantino-esque monologues ensue. Neil P. Harris is so funny I ALMOST want to watch How I Met Your Mother. Seriously, check out his eye twitches in Act II, they're Oscar-worthy. You really should watch this, if only because it is probably the biggest pop-culture phenomenon of at least the next 2 days. Even if you're not a Whedonite, I think you will like it, and you will definitely develop a crush on Nathan Fillion, be inspired to buy Firefly on DVD, sales will skyrocket, and the show will be back on the air. Sorry bout that.

Anyway, I'm pretty drunk right now and still in post-Whedon afterglow, so I might find this all a little strange in the morning. Thanks for reading

Exclusive Pictures of the New Jolie-Pitt Twins!

Gotcha. I don't even know if I want to see these babies. From the way the press is yammering on about them, it seems that they are so beautiful and godlike that my eyes might melt in their sockets if I look directly at them.

I thought I was going to be the first one to point out that all the Jolie-Pitt boys have names that end in X: Maddox, Pax, and now Knox. But apparently other people have caught on to this trend as well.

Their girls are named Zahara, Shiloh, and Vivienne. I have yet to detect the pattern between these three names, but I'm sure that when I crack the code it will reveal the secrets to the Jolie-Pitts' plan for world domination. I remember after Angelina adopted her first child, I saw her on Letterman and she claimed that she wanted to have enough kids to field a "football team." I don't think anyone believed she would actually do it... but she's at least got a pretty solid offensive line so far.

By the way, I really, really do hate myself for writing about the Jolie-Pitts in my blog, but it appears that, like the rest of the world, I am physically incapable of not talking about them.

The Official Sandwich of Massachusetts

Let me tell you a tale, dear readers, a tale of sticky sandwich spreads and of tongues stuck to the roofs of mouths. The tale begins several weeks ago, when, tired of dorky salads and stews carted to work in tupperware, I began to search for the perfect sandwich: simple, portable, economical, and above all, dear readers, delicioso. As a non-meat eater (I hesitate to call myself a vegetarian, having not consumed a vegetable other than a cocktail olive in weeks), the search for a sandwich is difficult. There are not many vegetarian sandwiches: the grilled cheese (only good hot off the grill), the non-grilled cheese (for poor people), and the dreaded "vegetable sandwich" (let us never speak of it again). I was about to give up my search when lo, I beheld a youngster in my Museum, chomping down on a sandwich so delicious I couldn't believe I had forgotten about it: the Fluffernutter.

OK that's it for my medieval storytelling, but I am drinking Sangria as I type, so don't expect miracles. Anyway, if you've never had a Fluffernutter, let me explain: peanut butter on one piece of bread, and Marshmallow Fluff on the other. Fluff is a delicious treat that all Massachusetts kids grew up on. I remember having Fluffernutters, Fluff on smores (pre-melted!) and the piece-de-resistance: a spoonful of Fluff submerged in a mug of hot cocoa that would soon majestically rise to the top. Now the reason only Massachusetts kids have such fond memories of Fluff is that the Fluff plant is in Lynn, MA, making it one of the few small factory businesses left in this crap state.

Now here comes the incredible part: a 7.5 oz jar of Fluff is just $0.99, and a 16 oz tub is just 2 bucks. More on this later.

So for a solid week I enjoyed Fluffernutters at work every day (an added benny is feeling young again when you eat one!), and as usual, when I become obsessed with something, I Google the shit out of it. This lead me to some interested findings. It turns out, that in 2006, douchebag State Senator Jarrett Barrios (how did they let a man named Jarrett become a senator? Somewhere a boathouse is missing a surf instructor) tried to add an amendment to a bill that would outlaw Fluff in Massachusetts schools. Apparently, he was outraged that his son was served a Fluffernutter for lunch at his Cambridge school (read the article here). Let's not even get into the anti-junk food argument now (though I might, later) - lets just talk about how lame this guy is for flipping out over something that happened at his kid's school - and taking to the State Senate! Its like a parent going to principal over a kid's problem - but much, much worse. Let's also talk about how stupid this guy is for proposing a bill (the Fluff Amendment) so ludicrous that anyone who hears about it is sure to remember Jarrett Barrios as "the douchebag who hates Fluff" forevermore. Finally, let's talk about how out of touch with his state this guy is for attacking one of its oldest and most beloved businesses.


However, the Fluff thickens (or hardens, as tends to happen when you leave the jar uncapped for too long). Outraged by Barrios's douchebaggery, State Rep Kathi-Anne Reinstein fought back by proposing a bill to make the Fluffernutter the Official Sandwich of Massachusetts (read the article here). Now this was all two years ago, and I don't know what happened to either bill, but my sources (Boston.com message boards) indicate that Barrios dropped his proposed amendment in shame, but will forever be known as a douchebag by yours truly.

So that covers the Fluff side of the sandwich, now onto peanut butter. As some of you may know, I recently started trying to eat all-natural foods. One of the hardest foods to give up was Jif Peanut Butter. You may think, when you're chowing down on Jif straight from the jar, that you are enjoying a healthy, high-protein snack, but you are in fact consuming a whopping 16g of fat, 3g of sugar and 150mg of sodium. More importantly, you are consuming 144 calories from Fat, and both fully and partially hydrogenated oils (see Nutrition Facts here). So I made the switch to natural peanut butter, with that nasty separated oil at the top. However, I found that if you stir it up once, then put it in the fridge, you don't need to stir again, and it is, in fact, quite good.

Finally, to wrap up the story, I recently decided that the brand of all-natural peanut butter I was eating was too expensive, so I looked for a cheaper alternative. It turns out that the cheapest natural peanut butter available is Teddie Peanut Butter, which happens to be made in Everett, MA! So there you have it, a Fluffernutter made with Fluff and Teddie Peanut Butter is truly the official sandwich of Massachusetts. Now I just need to find a nice, squishy, locally made white bread.


But the coolest thing about this sandwich is how cheap it is. As I mentioned before, a jar of Fluff is $0.99, a 16 oz jar of Teddie rings up at $2.49, and if you estimate a loaf of white bread at about $3.50 - that adds up to a week's worth of lunches at $6.98 - less than a Caesar Salad at my cafeteria! Remind me to re-read this entry when I'm a poor single mother.

This cheap dining option has been really helpful to me in my recent broke state - man, I could have written a whole entry about the cheap living I've been doing lately, but, alas, another time, dear readers.

Links Galore!
Marshmallow Fluff
Teddie Peanut Butter

The Curve Makes You Cool

Sorry I've been AWOL for a while. What can I say? A lot of nonsense has been going down. There have been some interesting developments in my life and in the world at large... but that's not really the kind of thing we talk about here at Party Villa.

I was racking my brains for the most idiotic, pointless, and trivial topic to bring up next, when an old Chinese man on the train came to my rescue.

I have discussed 90's fashion faux pas on here before, but I have to admit there is one that totally slipped my mind for many, many years. I'm talking about the curved baseball cap brim. Of course most baseball caps' brims are slightly curved, but some of you may remember in the 90's that young bros wore them with a more extreme curve - it looked like there was a tube coming out of the center of their foreheads. I remember seeing boys constantly taking off their hats and pressing the brim into a tighter curve (probably thinking, 'just a little more and then I'll be cool!') That's where the old Chinese man comes in. I saw him across the aisle, wearing a totally old-geezer outfit, right down to his canvas baseball cap that said "South Florida" or something. Suddenly, he takes off the hat and begins pressing on the brim! At first, having not witnessed this action in several years, I had no idea what he was doing. When it finally dawned on me, I was struck with the desire to run over to him and tell him: 'No, don't do that! Its not cool anymore!"

Its just fascinating how something as simple as a baseball cap can change so much in the waves of trendiness. In the 90's it was those canvas caps from Abercrombie or your favorite Skateboard company, and of course, the extreme curved brim. Now no insecure young man would be caught in anything but an officially licensed MLB fitted cap with, apparently, a perfectly flat brim.

I checked out the website for Lids (the store that sells nothing but caps where many a young man has spent his whole allowance) and all of their official fitted caps come with a perfectly flat brim, so I guess they leave it up to the buyer to curve as they see fit. I even found, in the "Hat Science" (seriously) section of their FAQs, a primer, if you will, on how to achieve the perfect curve. And I quote:

# Can the bill curve to fit my style?

Yes, it's an ancient Lids and Hat World secret, the perfect curve. For starters, not everyone is qualified to pull off the perfect curve; it takes a bit of practice. Secondly, if you shop this Web site or pop into any Lids or Hat World store, you can actually pick up The Perfect Curve a device which allows you to adjust the curve of your hat - and store and wash your hat while keeping that curve.

But for now, a lesson. Because that's what Hat Science is all about.

* Hold your hat upside-down, brim facing you.
* Using both hands, curl each end of the brim upward until the ends meet.
* Turn the hat over and roll the cylindrical brim back and forth until you have the perfect curve.
* Practice, practice, practice!

Well thats it for now. If anyone has any pictures of the evolution of hat styles, I would love to see them, especially extreme curved brim.

Btw, if any of you are not watching So You Think you can Dance - you should be. They are really fantastic dancers and the show is actually really enjoyable. Furthermore, I have developed my first girl-crush of the summer on Kherington Payne.

Huge Balls!

Sorry I have been AWOL for the past couple days. Both me and my home computer have been on the DL for a while. Wow, I just used a military acronym and a sports acronym back to back in two sentences. But this post is about sports, so let the sports references roll.

Amid the hustle and bustle on my way to work a few days back, I couldn't help but notice a plethora (yeah thats right, I said plethora. look it up) of enormous balls all around me. No... not like that... it wasn't that kind of morning... I'm talking about sports balls!!!

First, just outside the TD Banknorth Garden, I felt compelled by my long-dormant Celtics pride to snap these pictures...





It feels great to see the trophy there and everything... but isn't this a little jinxy? I was blown away by the devil-may-care attitude they had with those TV commercials, where the players are holding/kissing the real trophy... I would never agree to do that if I was a player! But I guess since both teams are doing the commercials, and both have the giant trophy outside their stadiums, there's equal jinxing going on.

But I mean we all know that jinxing isn't our biggest worry... I think that, god forbid, if the Celtics fail to win tonight, I am going to begin to smell a rat. According to the Los Angeles Times, Game 3 was the highest rated NBA finals game since 2004. Why wouldn't the NBA and ABC want to extend this thing to seven games? I'm going to be watching the calls very carefully tonight. But lets try to be a little optimistic: GO CELTICS!!!!

Now on to America's Pastime. This giant ball shocked me a little bit:


I mean everyone knows their place of work is someday going to be turned into a giant ball, but it's still always a shock when it finally happens. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that ball is the Charles Hayden Planetarium, all decked out baseball-style for the new exhibit at the Museum of Science, "Baseball as America." It's got a really janky title, and the exhibit contains about as much science as the "theory" of intelligent design, but it's still pretty cool. If I didn't already get to see everything for free, I would probably pay admission price just to see Curt Schilling's Bloody Sock. They also have cool interactive pitching and batting cages where you can test your strength and your reflexes. And you won't be embarassed to give it a try because, heck, it's the Museum of Science. Anyone who can actually hit, catch, or throw a baseball is out there playing, not inside at a Museum.

But yeah I definitely recommend checking out Baseball As America, and while you're here, swing by the planetarium where you can find the most exciting exhibit of all: me, in my natural habitat.

Click here to read up on Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref accused of fixing the NBA playoffs in 2002.

Click here to read a fantastic Boston Globe review of Baseball as America, written by Mark Feeney, who comes up with some highly creative imagery regarding the aforementioned Bloody Sock.

Click here to read some sadder news about the Museum of Science. Last Tuesday, over forty of our employees were laid off. Luckily my immediate department was spared, but it was a terrible day for the whole Museum.