Kitten brothel! Like, not sexual, you perv. Like for people who can't commit to pet ownership but want to hang out with kitties in their homes, offices, or school. Or convalescence home, whatever. Rent time with kitties by the hour or day. I think this idea has legs. Four cute, fuzzy legs!

So, I hear a lot of you kids like to use this "Skype" that I hear so much about. Well, I now have this "Skype." So you can "do the chats," in the vernacular of our times. If you would like to do "the chats" with me, my username is "ladybot" and I do not (yet) pay for extra services, so you can't call me at a "Skype number" or any of those "things."

Please be my "Skype friend."

♫
... and let a winner lead the waaaaaay?

HERE'S WHERE WE SEPARATE THE NOTES FROM THE NOISE
THE MEN FROM THE BOYS
THE MARA WHO HAS LOST 10% OF HER STARTING WEIGHT FROM THE MARA AT THE BEGINNING OF MARCH 2009
♫♫♫♫♫
✌

My latest creation on Polyvore:


Look at these crazy boots! I would totally buy these.
http://www.buycostumes.com/Carnival-Pink-Gold-Adult-Boots/38779/ProductDetail.aspx

There's a rain/thunderstorm going on outside, and it's incredibly dark in my office. Creepy! Happy July 1, indeed...

Sure makes me glad to live in an era of such great workplace parity! Visually, it's lovely... the furnishings, the clothes, the offices, the use of color, even the film's saturation levels! Less lovely are the characters themselves. Now, I'm only 5 episodes into the first season, but man, are there any characters who are decent human beings aside from Peggy? Maybe Campbell's wife?

Mirrored from Supermeow!.

Why doesn't anyone else but me and some guy have "Chev Chelios" as a shared LJ interest, hmm?

GET ON IT, PEOPLE

ATTENTION!

This is easily the most important thing ever said on the internet. Please drop what you are doing and give this post your full and unswerving attention. Even if you messed your pants just now, suck it up until you’re done reading. I urge you.

ONLY THIS PETITION CAN SOLVE THE AGES-LONG CONUNDRUM OF EXPLAINING WHO SOLID SNAKE’S FAVORITE BAND IS, ONCE AND FOR ALL

Every year, millions of Solid Snakes can be found on the video output of various gaming consoles. Every incarnation of Solid Snake has yet to ever declare a favorite band. We, the undersigned, wish to designate the band Cheap Trick as the official canon favorite band of video game hero Solid Snake of the Metal Gear franchise.

Just imagine the possibilities!

Or how about a little of this?

Think how rad it would be for Snake to impress Meryl with his first edition Japanese pressing of Cheap Trick at Budokan! He and Campbell could have codec conversations about what a dark time it was when Tom Petersson left the band to go solo in the early-to-mid-eighties! Imagine the conflict when Otacon borrows and loses Snake’s precious signed 7-inch of Baby Talk!

WHY?
Why not?

IS CHEAP TRICK YOUR FAVORITE BAND?
Actually, no. To be honest, I’m really not that familiar with them. I just thought that it was a good idea. My favorite band is The Clash, but they’re too political to really be an appropriate favorite band for Solid Snake.

REALLY, WHY CHEAP TRICK?
Again, why not? Given that a lot of people stay loyal to the bands they liked best in high school, it makes sense that a character who would have gone through his teenage years in the eighties might like Cheap Trick best, a band known for good power-punk-pop songs. I mean, really, why not? I don’t think he’d have been a hair metal guy, mullet or not. He doesn’t seem like he would’ve been a fan of Top 40 pop music. Maybe he liked Zeppelin a bit, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to think of a pimply, teenage Snake with like two scratched LPs that he’d play all the time.

Mirrored from Supermeow!.

I have gained like a little over half a pound in the past week. That's not so bad. Maybe it's steroids, maybe it's a correction for losing a little more than I should've in the past two weeks? Either way, not complaining. Yeeeah... I think it's time to admit to myself that I didn't just gain weight from steroids but from being depressed from having to take steroids and self-medicating with food... I've been on 1000mg of Solumedrol for four days, and only a 1/2 pound compared to, like, 20 lbs. the other two times? Maybe it's waiting to be all SURPRISE FAT! when I don't expect it?

Prairie and Christian went with me to get steroids today. I will be going back for two more days since I'm not quite totally better, but definitely a little better. My ass is no longer numb! It feels like I have a wooly sock on my left leg/calve, and my right leg feels like I have a wooly thigh-high sock on it. Still losing my balance. Definitely doing a bit better, but I'm not opposed to more steroids and neither was my doctor. So, two more days. Prairie is taking me tomorrow and Thursday and promises to show me lots of videos to keep me entertained while I get 'roided up.

Speaking of Prairie, she took fantastic pictures of me getting injected with hummingbird food. Go see:
http://twitter.com/hoover_dam

Lots of fun!

Today is a good day in tweets because Daryl Surat is also now my Twitter pal, as is Skeets. A good day indeed! Oh, after steroids, we went to the farmers' market in front of the Science Center at Harvard. I got amazing dessert sauce that I totally shouldn't have bought, amazing freshly-made-that-morning mozzarella cheese, a half-dozen farm-fresh eggs ("laid this morning!" the guy with no teeth told me, kinda pricey at $2.50 but worth it in deliciousness), and what might be the best baguette I have had in some time. It wasn't too crunchy on the outside, which I don't like, perfectly wonderful and soft and tasty in the inside. It tasted like... like quality! When we got home, I made sammiches for Christian and myself using the eggs, cheese, some fresh basil from the Aero Garden, and the baguettes. I brushed them with a little garlic oil and grilled them in one of my grill pans. Oh my god, those eggs... those eggs are incredible. thrives, do your parents still have chickens? I will pay them in American dollars for some dang eggs. WOW.

6 Weight Watchers points. Probably less if you use fat-free soy and skip the PB.

Recipe time! I’m currently undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis. Said treatment involves taking steroids intravenously for a few days. It is suggested that you stock up on fluids (though expect to retain them a bit) so that it’s easier to find your veins for infusing. It’s also suggested that you eat potassium- and calcium-rich foods. I decided to make a banana smoothie for myself.  Bananas are a great source of potassium, and yogurt is a great source of calcium. Put them together, and you have the base of a beverage! I used soy milk because I didn’t have any milk (that wasn’t expired, lol). Using cinnamon and cardamom came from a desire to give it a vague chai spice. Any of the spices can be omitted, you can add choco syrup, cocoa powder, whatever. I like to keep it just plain old bananas as my fruit base. In general, I don’t really like more than two fruits in a smoothie-type beverage. I’ve been making similar beverages for myself since I was little. Uh, like other recipes I’ve posted here, I’m naming this after myself.

Maranana Smoothie

2 servings

• 2 bananas, ripe to your preference (I like them a little green)
• 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt
• 1 cup soy milk
• 1/2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• 1 vanilla bean, split (optional, but if you have one, what the hell, use it)
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom, optional
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Put everything into a blender. Wait. Don’t put the entire vanilla bean in the blender. Scrape out the contents of the pod with a paring knife and dump it in. Cover the blender and process on highest setting for about a minute. Pour into glass. Enjoy. It’s tasty!

Mirrored from Supermeow!.

Louis Rich/Oscar Mayer turkey bacon is not bad at all! Not a bit! It's nice and smoky and salty. The texture is weird - it's more like the kind of thin, cheap, shitty bacon you might get someplace, but the taste is great. It's a reasonable substitute for the real deal, I think.

Does anyone else have turkey bacon experiences they'd wanna share? This is my first time using this stuff. My favorite bacon to get is Nodine's bacon; you can get it at Peaceful Meadows in Whitman. Holy crap, it is the most amazingly delicious bacon in all of the world. Maybe the only better bacon I've had is the bacon at Peter Luger's.

One of our Anime Boston staffers (there from the beginning) and a very dear friend of Andrea's passed away this morning. Todd MacDonald was known first to me as one of Andrea's friends from UMass Boston. While he wasn't my friend, he was Andrea's good buddy and pretty dang important in that regard. He was in the hospital being treated for pneumonia, and he was in pretty bad shape at the time of his passing.

Todd wasn't my pal, but the memories are certainly benign and even funny. He was really good-natured about being teased, I can't think of him ever doing any devastatingly horrible thing to anyone else, even when fun was had at his expense. Not everyone takes a joke well, and he'd sometimes get flustered, but he would never flip out, and if anything, I'd say that he would take it gracefully on the chin. He was a good guy and I'm really sad to hear that he's no longer with us.

I guess if there's a lesson to be learned, and I always think there is a lesson to be learned from people leaving the planet, it's taking a joke gracefully. Take care of your well-being.

Yeah, the trouble I'm having walking? It's not a herniated disc - it's MS.

While it likely means my jeans won't be fitting so loosely after I finish taking whatever steroids they give me, it's better than the alternatives, I guess.

So, let that be a lesson, you kids with MS - take your meds consistently and maybe your back and legs won't get fucked up.

Christian has told me that I need to get out on the corner so that I can earn money to buy him a Macbook.

(Song is “Big Fat Fuck” by Ween. Turn down the volume. NWS.)

Mirrored from Supermeow!.

Go go Gadget GAY MONTH!

Yaaaaaaaaaay! LGBT Month!

Speaking of people who have historically been treated like shit, I am even more eager to see this damn movie based on this quickie review, given by a slacker guy on a slacker website (I can relate to loafers all too well). Inglorious Basterds sounds fucking brilliant. Jews who take delight in scalping Nazis? COUNT ME IN.

I can tack on something else that I learned recently about my grandmother. While I knew she narrowly escaped imprisonment at Auschwitz, she did get sent to a labor camp. That wasn't something I knew about until this past Sunday. So yeah, despite our family's non-Jewishness, they were still filthy Ukrainians, still good enough for forced labor. Scary. I look forward to this movie.

I really enjoyed these links posted by alicemeichi:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
(I like this one a lot)
http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2005-11-22_72
(of the two links posted, I think the second is heavy-handed at times, not as keen on it as I am the first list)

If I was a guy posting this, I would clearly be looking for tail. As a lady, I'm in line to be called a feminazi.

Yesterday, I said that I didn't consider myself feminist. By what definition? I liked Alice's simple explanation: any woman who wants to be treated the same way a man is treated is a feminist. Food for thought!

This mysterious countdown to the announcement about the next MGS game is doing a perfectly fine job of creating buzz.

Ooooh oooh oooh maybe it's a remake of Metal Gear, as in Outer Heaven Metal Gear? Maybe the Raiden-looking guy is Grey Fox? Maybe it is hijinks? Shenanigans? Who is to say?!?!?! I am falling for the ploy, whatever it is! The sexy ploy.

Hurry up, June 1.

I'll bite. Here, these are things you must want to know about me and Anime Boston.

➊ Arriving?
☆ Tomorrow night.

➋ Driving?
☆ Yes, in the car w/Christian and Doug.

➌ Staying?
☆ In the Sheraton with Christian, Doug, and Jenna.

➍ Thursday?
☆ Babysitting the dealers' room and answering questions correctly that will then be given the same answer by Christian because I'm not credible, apparently.

➎ Friday?
☆ Babysitting the dealers' room followed by babysitting the swap meet.

➏ Saturday?
☆ See above. Also going to Christian's panel, at least.

➐ Sunday?
☆ See above, but add in the charity auction. GO AND BUY THINGS FOR THOSE WHO ARE SCLEROSED IN MULTIPLES

➑ Policy?
☆ Trying not to swear at the wrong people.

➒ Drunk?
☆ If no other evening, then at least on Sunday.

➓ Leaving?
☆ Monday afternoon, probably.

I bought a zillion pork tenderloins a couple of weeks ago, waging on a suspicion that pork would be on sale because of the swine flu. I was right! Four pork tenderloins later and two weeks to payday, I needed something to cook for dinner. I’ve been making pork in sherry marinade and am ready to try something different for preparation. I decided to make barbecue sauce. Last year, I made my own barbecue sauce a couple of times and found that it’s pretty easy to do and fun to make. Thus, I present a barbecue sauce recipe of my own invention with nods to a recipe found in Cook’s Country as well as some recipes from Martha Stewart. Cook’s Country proposed a layer of Chinese five-spice powder underneath a Coke-based barbecue sauce, which intrigued me. I wanted to keep it somewhat traditional with stuff like molasses and ketchup and mustard powder, though.

Anyhow, read on. It’s really effin’ good and should yield about two cups. I named it after myself in total modesty, roflololol.

Maracue Sauce!

• 1 sweet onion, minced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 Tbsp crushed red pepper flake
• 1 tsp celery salt
• 1 tsp ground mustard
• 1 Tbsp Chinese five-spice powder
• 1/2 Tbsp chipotle chile powder
• 2 Tbsp Coca-Cola (Pepsi is for a-holes)
• 1 cup vegetable stock (Trader Joe’s is carrot-centric and works really well; I would try to use a carrot-rich broth. Meat broths or stocks would probably work, too)
• 1 cup ketchup
• 1 cup Chinese black vinegar (see below)
• 1 tbsp maple syrup (I had no brown sugar, so I used maple syrup since it was around)
• 1 tbsp blackstrap molasses

Heat olive oil in medium saucepan. When oil is hot, add onions and garlic and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes

Add crushed red pepper flakes, mustard, celery salt, ground chipotle, and stir until fragrant.

Add Coke, vegetable stock, and ketchup. Stir to combine and taste to adjust spicing if necessary. Add vinegar, syrup, and molasses. Taste for flavoring and adjust as necessary. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Can be used warm on meats or vegetables or can be cooled and stored. Should keep in refrigerator for 3-5 days.

Yield: about 2 cups.

Weight Watchers points: 12 pts for whole recipe, 1 point for 8 “servings.”

Black Vinegar

About black vinegar:

What is black vinegar? I first encountered it at the New Shanghai restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown and if I’d had it before, I didn’t realize what it was. Black vinegar has a really complex taste that comes from the fermented grains that it’s made out of. I guess a lot of people who are familiar with cooking with it (more than I!) say it’s somewhat like balsamic vinegar. I found a pretty good description of it elsewhere on the internets that I’ll copy and paste because it’s way the hell better than anything I could say. From wisegeek.com:

Black vinegar is a type of vinegar which originated in China and spread across much of Asia, along with many other originally Chinese foods. It can be made with a wide assortment of ingredients, and an array of formulas produce black vinegar, so there is an immense variance in taste. Like other vinegars, black vinegar is made by fermenting something, in this case grain, and then allowing the resulting liquid to age. After aging, the vinegar is bottled for sale.

Many cooks compare black vinegar to balsamic vinegar, since the two foods have similar flavor profiles. Both are typically aged, leading to a more complex, rich flavor. Both are also dark in color, with black vinegar ranging from reddish brown to true, inky black. However, the base ingredient of black vinegar is grain, not grapes, and this leads to a different end flavor. In addition, high quality balsamic vinegar is usually fairly uniform in flavor, while high-end black vinegar varies widely in taste from nation to nation and province to province.

Rice, wheat, millet, sorghum, and barley are all fermented to make black vinegar. Many people prefer black vinegar made from rice, since it has a slightly sweet flavor to compliment the familiar acidic note found in vinegar. One of the most popular varieties of black vinegar is Chinkiang, which is made with glutinous rice and malt, leading to a sweet and complicated flavor.

Mirrored from Supermeow!.

Like everyone else who was planning to attend it, I'm bummed that Volks has decided to postpone the NY Dolpa this July because of concerns about the ham-sick. On the other hand, it sounds like the situation and mood in Japan is pretty different than it is here, as are the responses. I'm not too surprised after taking that into account.

I'm not buying that it's a way to back out of this event after last year's event. Somehow, I get the feeling that they would convey that if that's what was really thought. Maybe I'm being naive to believe in Volks' refreshing honesty and the tone set by other Volks events that make me think they really do want to have good times with the Americans. They're reacting to this hamthrax in a different manner than us, it sounds like. Japanese guests are cancelling appearances at American anime cons left and right because of swine flu fears, so this action's certainly in line with what's been happening with the anime con circuit, at least. Que sera sera.

What I'd like to see come out of this? Nobody cancels their hotel reservations or plane tickets. Everyone gets together to find a place to do their own DIY meetup, has fun, goes to do some karaoke, and mobilize something that way. Volks doesn't have to throw the parties all the time. It's not hard to make a reservation at a hotel for a function room for a few hours. Not hard to organize catering and get people to prepay for meals via the PayPals or something. I think it could be done if there were people willing to do the legwork. Think about it!

(and I'm glad to see people on Den of Angels talking about doing just that)

Edit: For the local ladies in the MA/RI area who were gonna go, I am putting my money where YOUR mouths are and calling that weekend the weekend of the TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF MARA PARTY. Mara Party III: The Reckoning! No losers allowed. Details to follow on dorrie filter to spare those of you who couldn't give a shit.