Your Daily Diversion: Or Why I <3 The Internets

From the Filipino prison that brought you the much-forwarded Thriller (a must-click if you haven't seen it), I now present you their dramatic recreation of Sister Act:



All I can say is amazing. Who wants to try to get busted smuggling drugs into the Philippines with me? I bet we could do a pretty hot rendition of A Chorus Line.

Freedom to Protest Farting on Airlines: Or Why Cary Tennis Should Be Your Favorite Writer Too

If you've never checked out Cary Tennis' Since You Asked column in Salon, consider this my plea--nay, demand!--that you to do so immediately. Upon first launching into the dark unknown of the blogosphere with my Google Reader's engines pinging away, Cary's column was one of the few stars I found myself orbiting around more than once. Now I find I can't miss his answer to a single question whether it be what to do when you realize you've stopped doing your job, how to deal with an intense hatred of buzzwords, or what it means when a man farts in your face on a crowded airplane and you say nothing.

That's right, Cary Tennis deals with the tough topics--the farts in your face--pulling from the (pungent) air greater truths than the questioner ever imagined learning. Take for example, his response to the airplane question:

But let us get beyond the farting, the rudeness, the olfactory assault, my fellow passengers, and ask the larger question: Are we not sitting idly by every day as powerful people fart in our faces with impunity? Is there not a terrible stink in the national air about which we are saying nothing? Why are we filled with outrage and yet unable to raise our voices in protest? Are we not feeling mute and discouraged in our daily lives as we watch the news? Why is that? Is it because we feel vulnerable to the commands of the captain, fearful of being incarcerated if we raise a stink, pardon the pun, fearful of the consequences if we simply call attention publicly to the fact that a man is standing in the aisle farting in our faces?

Every day a new question, every question another attempt at seeing life's bigger picture. It's amazing really, the work that he does. There is no ivory tower here, no shack on a Greek isle completely removed from his audience while he creates his work. No, Tennis rides the bus like the rest of us: face pressed up against the window, teaching us how to focus our eye on the once-blurred beauty before us.

Because I--and The Hoff--Love You

Here, my friends, is the most important link you'll click on today:

The I *Heart* The Hoff Super Fantastic Activity Fun Book


I can't imagine a better use of the company printer than having these 12 pages for your very own. My personal favorite page (though they're all gems): The one where you get to poke his eyes out.

If your office has a laminator, you might want to spring for the pretty sweet "Don't Hassel The Hoff" doorknob hanger on Page 9. I bet The Hoff would look mighty sweet tacked up to the outside of your cubicle wall.

Hat tip to Ms. Liz Welsh for forwarding this one along. :-)

My Morning With Accounting

Suffice to say, no one is getting paid this week.

My Brain in Google Images

The following topics, translated through a Google Image search, have been what's taking place in my brain at night instead of sleep. Psychoanalyze away!

I Choo Choo Choo Choose You!

I love choose your own adventure books. My favorite growing up was about these kids trying to fight off this evil logging company from dumping toxic ooze in the woods (at least I think it was... that memory is suddenly starting to sound a lot like a hybrid Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Captain Planet and the Planeteers fantasy--toxic ooze must have been a hot topic in the late-80s/early 90s).

So when I stumbled upon a Boing Boing post about a real-life choose your own adventure game using sidewalk stencils it was almost enough reason for me to hop a plane to San Fran to check it out:

It's a love story with 2 characters who start in different locations. His story starts at 16th and Valencia, in front of the Crown Hotel / Limon Restaurant with the text "He Leaves his Lonely Apartment." Her story starts at 21st and Guerrero in front of a stunning mansion with the text, "She Leaves her Lonely Apartment." Eventually their paths merge, at the point where they meet, and their paths travel together until drama pulls them apart.

And if I play my stencils right, I just might meet the man of my dreams instead of meeting this grisly fate:


Which reminds me of one of my other favorite choose your own adventure books from when I was growing up:

I kid, I kid. So, readers' poll: If I wrote a choose your own adventure book, what should it be about? Person with the best suggestion gets written into the book! Person with the worse suggestion gets written into the book only to die a painful death in every choice! Test your fate and comment away!!!

Reason #1-Kazillion Erin and I Are The Coolest White Girls You Know

Forget white chicks and gang signs: White chicks rapping in the office kitchen for a coworker's goodbye party is the new coke.

Interesting that all the crazy things I do that make it onto YouTube happen in my office. I love my job.

Big ups to Ms. "E-unit" K-to the-inney for writing and performing that hot rap while I provided moral support/mad beats.


For those who aren't from the white, suburban hood, here are the lyrics:

Hey Luke we know its time to say goodbye
Because you're kind and smart and lots of fun
And you also like to get lots of work done
But its time, for you to depart
Heading to cali for a fresh new start
Stanford will be his hot new school
Seventy degree weather, for he's no fool
Studying developmental psy-cho-lo-gy
Researching in labs and playing frisbee

Luke's a cool kid, wearing all the fresh styles
He shoes look snazzy - let him walk for miles
He's got great bumper stickers and will give you a lift,
And what's more impressive is he drives stick shift!
he can score he can code he can organize
he can even throw a toy frog to win a prize

When he goes to study across the nation
we can use his work for a proposal citation
So in closing we thought we'd compose a list
Of all your favorite things that you're gonna miss

Summing up papers, looking into studies,
editing documents and also making copies
using html to update our website,
have you seen it lately, man it's hella tight

Endnotes- we know it's easy and fun
and before you go please just add this last one!

Peace!

Hometown Strange Love or: How I Learned to Stop Being Pretentious and Love My Florida Roots

That's right: I'm beginning to love my Florida roots. Though being so close to sea level, those roots can't grow too deep before hitting water (which also explains to all you northerners why I'm more excited about your basement than your backyard swimming pool). So picture me growing long, snaking roots like St. Augustine grass.

After work had turned me into an 100-word-per-second 4am infomercial conspiracy theorist, it was time to go home and detox in the bliss that is napping on a cool leather couch with the air conditioning pumping away in the dead of a Florida summer.

What else is there to do in the middle of a Florida summer? Hang out by the pool? Check. Go to the beach? Check. Go shopping? Check. Check. And double check.

My mother and I pretty much had two ways of entertaining ourselves when I was growing up: go to the movies and go shopping. But times have changed. Now my mom is on a permanent boycott of the Regal Oviedo Marketplace 22 Cinemas because the theaters smell bad--which is a topic I love bringing up because it launches her into one of my favorite rants of all time: she swears the smell comes from boys peeing on the carpeted walls by the theater entrance so they don't miss a minute of the movie they're watching. (I personally think the smell most likely comes from the fact the carpeted walls don't dry properly when they're washed which causes them to mildew and smell--but I will concede that her explanation is infinitely more entertaining than mine.)

So shopping and more shopping it is. Now this might sound all expensive and materialistic to you folks unfamiliar with Florida shopping. But in a land where neighborhoods grow wild around strip malls and the urban sprawls over the marshland like kudzu, the concept of "shopping" exists in an entirely other world.

On Friday, I made a pilgrimage to FleaWorld, America's Largest Flea Market:



Check out that wide selection!

FleaWorld is my brother's favorite spot to buy weapons and t-shirts that ironically imply I'm retarded (see below, right).

(For the record: I am special, damnit!)

After spending over 2 hours walking around FleaWorld--just to see everything!--I ended up walking away with one fake tattoo that said "Bad Girl" on a banner across two hearts that peeled off in 5 minutes and 4 trashy romances novels that I bought for $1 (half what my tattoo cost!) one about werewolves, one about a diet that makes you horny, and two that are straight up written pornography (as the woman who sold them to me more or less assured me, since she's read them all). I can vouch for the one called Heatwaves about a call-in radio sex show--that shit is D to the IRTY.

And if shopping around a flea market--with great joy and enthusiasm no less!-- for fake tattoos and trashy romances doesn't confirm that I'm truly a Florida girl at heart--like it or not--I must also confess... I went to Walmart. And loved it. In the eyes of my northern peers that may condemn me to hell, but I am not sorry. It's my culture. And I am proud.

New York Fringe Show Dates Are In!

The dates for Deliberate Motion's production of Better This Way have been announced!

LOCATION!
Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street - The Lafayette Street Theatre
45 Bleecker Street (at Lafayette Street)
One block north of Houston Street and one block east of Broadway (Off-Broadway! Gasp! We've really made it to the big (little) time now!!)

BY PUBLIC TRANSIT!!
Step 1: Get to New York City
Step 2: Find the subway
Step 3: Take one (or all if you've got some time to kill) of the following trains
6 to Bleecker
B, D, F, V to Broadway/Lafayette
N, R to Prince Street

TIMES!!!
TUE 8/14 @ 10:45pm – 12:15am (gotta love a killer opening night slot like that!)
FRI 8/17 @ 7:15pm – 8:45pm
SUN 8/19 @ 3:15pm – 4:45pm
SAT 8/25 @ 9:30pm – 11pm
SUN 8/26 @ 2pm – 3:30pm

Tickets are $15, which is also--coincidentally--the price of a Fung Wah bus trip from Boston to New York City. Hint hint Bostonites.

For more details (if you can find them) check out the official New York City Fringe website.

*Juicy postcard design by the one, the only, Kevin Michael Keating.

Umm... Wasn't There A Blog Here That, Like, Posted Stuff?

For those of you who were wondering if this blog (and/or I) are dead...

This blog definitely isn't. My existence is more questionable, but steadily improving. I can't pretend this is going to be coherent, having just worked 32 hours of overtime in 4 days to churn out 2 annual reports and 2 proposals (I'd say, over 600 hundred pages of formatted, proofed, edited, reedited, re-reedited, re-proofed, re-what the fuck is wrong with this header?, re-WHY WON'T IT ALL FIT ON ONE PAGE?, re-re-re-WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????? text).

So last night (Sunday), I got home from work at 3 a.m., hopped up on a pot of coffee I drank at 1 a.m. (pretty much entirely by myself in under 20 minutes), I found myself watching an infomercial entitled Russ Dalbey's Winning in the Cash Flow Business. I became obsessed with figuring out how this get-rich-quick scheme was a scam. No, seriously OBSESSED--ask anyone I talked to today and trust me, they've heard this already (and those of you reading this now, go ahead, shake your head and laugh... or, more accurately, shake your head an call a local mental-health provider because seriously? seriously! she's bringing it up again).



So the 3 easy steps to make money, according to Russ, are to 1)Find "notes" 2)Post these notes online on his webpage 3)Wait for your check to come in the mail.

You don't need education, money, talent--hell, you don't even need to know how to read as long as someone can read it to you!

The notes were ever-so-briefly described as "IOU" notes between lenders and sellers in the real estate business, the point apparently being--and super circumspectly explained--as having something to do with connecting sellers with buyers, which allows people to opt for quick cash payouts instead of prolonged (though higher) payments over time.

So go to the site, or better yet, watch E! at 4 a.m. on a Sunday night and post in the comments what you think the hell is going on with this "Cash Flow Business" scam. And maybe one day--when I have more hours of sleep under my belt than cups of coffee consumed--I'll get over trying to figure out the "mystery" of the cash flow business.

I'm off of work for the next week (and taking an impromptu trip down to Florida to celebrate my independence from workoholism) and me and Mr. Francis Ford Coppola Pinot Noir are working on my coffee/stress/insomnia problem currently. So you can expect more (posts, coherency) from DivMo--your favorite little blog that could--in the near future.