354: Bling

The Grand Duchess Vladimir Tiara
source

I lost at least an hour to The Royal Order of Sartorial Splendor this morning, after a commenter on Tom & Lorenzo linked to it.  I'm a total magpie and fascinated by all those royals, so...it's kind of the perfect storm of casual interests.

Also, shiny.

352: Gondor needs no GPS

File this under "things that have amused me today":

1) Go to Google Maps.
2) Get walking directions from "The Shire" to Mordor"
3) Profit:

316: Beautiful Portals

by Derek King on Flickr
via Beautiful Portals on Tumblr

I've been hanging out on Tumblr for a while (and appreciating television with a friend).  I always like when posts from Beautiful Portals come up on my dashboard, because they're always nice to look at (see above).

294: Timesuck

THIS GAME IS SO ADDICTIVE.
SEND HELP.

284: Curb alert

I did a Craigslist "curb alert" today for an old bike we've had in the garage for years.  It used to be my mom's, but she quit using it when a dent in the chain ring started making the chain fall off anytime you tried to change gears.  I stuck it out by the mailbox after lunch and it was gone in about ninety minutes.  I don't know if Craigslist people even got a shot at it, or if someone in the neighborhood picked it up.  I'm still shocked it was gone so quickly.  Never underestimate the allure of the word "FREE" on a piece of cardboard.

223: New old stuff

More shameless self-promotion. I've updated my Etsy shop with some 1960s-1980s clothing. Take a look!

188: Shameless self-promotion

Having gone from temporarily employed to unemployed to self-employed (part-time) within the last two weeks, even my deep-seated Midwestern modesty can't make me feel bad about promoting my newly-back-up-and-running Etsy shop.  If you like vintage and/or handknit goods, you might like this:

I'm trying to list, on average, an item a day.  All vintage items are available for four months, then get cycled out and donated to various charities in the Twin Cities, so at least someone will profit from the overabundance of stuff we have around.

170: Sunday success

Not only did I get writing done in spite of myself and my household, but I also solved a gift-giving dilemma I'd had for a weeks.  So my day can basically be summed up in the following GIFs:

(via FYCB)

(.gif of unknown origin)

(via FYLL)

And now we'll be having a veritable Chinese food feast for Father's Day as soon as my uncle's family gets here.  Sunday: win.

167: Sync

This is pretty darn cool:

166: Cheesecake coma

I'm about to pass out from cheesecake, having eaten with friends from high school at Cheesecake Factory tonight.  So I'll just toss up this video, which I described to them during the obligatory YouTube-recommendation part of the evening, and call it a night.  I've got a couple thousand math papers to score tomorrow before my three-day weekend.

144: Apropos of nothing

Sometimes you just want to post some unrelated GIFs.

From Downton Abbey via Period Drama Love

I love those two old broads.  The sight of Dame Maggie Smith's character discovering the horrors of swiveling desk chairs is priceless.  Also, Harriet Jones, Prime Minister.

From 30 Rock via F*** Yeah Liz Lemon

And this, which I do constantly.  I really am Liz Lemon.

140: Rapturous

So rumor has it the world's ending tomorrow.  I'm skeptical, but I am enjoying the Rapture-infused tweets, especially from Mike Augustyniak, WCCO's morning meteorologist and my very favorite:

And then there's Damon Lindelof, executive producer of LOST:

Now, I have my own opinions about what will probably not happen tomorrow (i.e., I will probably still be throwing random photos up with pathetically minimal commentary come next week), but in the event that the Rapture does not, in fact, occur, I can't imagine how awkward it's going to be for family profiled in this New York Times article.  I hope they get some college scholarships.

But I also hope the world sticks around for a few more millennia; after all, we've all been promised a Star Trek sequel and I'm still on the library waitlist for Mockingjay.  These things are important, really.

104: Excuse my drool

 My friend Sasha cruelly sent me a link to Grub Street (NYMag.com's food blog)'s rundown of 101 of the best pastas in the country.  I have a genetic predisposition to going weak at the knees for pasta (I assume, since my mom and I both eat disgustingly huge portions on spaghetti night), so sending me a hundred and one gorgeous photos of mouth-watering pasta is terrible enough, but I haven't even had dinner yet.  So click over and enjoy some photos of pasta while I pick myself up out of this puddle of drool and shuffle off to eat.

092: Favorite Things X

You know, X, as in ten (10). Anyway.  Things I liked this week include:

via We Heart It

Baseball
Thank goodness for the season opener, even if my Minnesota Twins lost the first game of the season to Toronto.  They're on the road, so it's okay...right?  The start of the MLB season means winter is definitely over (even if we're due to get more snow) and it's time to dust off the old Joe Nathan jersey that went unworn last year while #36 was out for Tommy John surgery.  Plus, Justin Morneau is back from his season-ending concussion!  Provided Morneau and Joe Mauer can stay healthy, Nathan is back on form, and the bullpen keeps its act together, it should be a fun season for Twins fans.

Skype
After using meebo for a year or so in a desperate attempt to avoid downloading any more IM programs, I switched to Skype and I'm not looking back.  As Wil Wheaton says, I love living in the future; you can talk to friends on both coasts at the same time without spending a penny.  It's fun even when you don't have a camera!

@BronxZoosCobra
Once missing, now behind bars.  Reliably entertaining, which is more than can be said for most parody Twitter accounts.  I was actually a little bummed when zoo officials announced they'd found the snake because I knew it would cut short the snake-on-the-town adventures.  However, the snake did manage to hijack Ryan Seacrest's Twitter and website yesterday, so hopefully the shenanigans will continue.  The account even got name-checked by NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg -- and I'm pretty sure that means you've made it.


Corey Stoll's mustache, "Poseidon"
Alas, the 'stache is no more.  I'm still not sure why I liked Poseidon so much.  Perhaps because it was just such a cop 'stache, which made me cringe and laugh when I first saw it, but when I actually started watching Law & Order: Los Angeles, it just looked right on Detective Jaruszalski's face.  In any case, I will miss the partnership between TJ and his mustache (certainly more than I will miss the partnership between Bald and Boring, as we called Corey Stoll and Skeet Ulrich in my household).  Even if Poseidon had to go, I'm glad Stoll is hanging around; he is, by far, the best part of LOLA. (video via All Things Law & Order)

074: Pod people

via We Heart It

I don't listen to a lot of podcasts on a regular basis.  I just don't have the space on my iPod to dedicate to them, and I got tired of the weird looks I got at work when people saw me sitting alone at my desk, snickering at the podcast from Russell Brand's defunct BBC Radio 2 show.  However, on the advice of a friend, I started listening to the Nerdist podcast recently, and it's rekindled my love for the format.  There's just something about listening to a bunch of guys sitting around, making fun of each other and talking to celebrities that warms the cockles of my bitter heart.

Last spring, while I was working a couple of temp positions at my former employer/alma mater/current employer, I would stream Made of Fail and Wil Wheaton's Radio Free Burrito and Memories of the Futurecast to pass the time while I puzzled over how to organize Swedish newspaper clippings (a difficult task, as I do not speak Swedish).  Made of Fail was nice, since their marathon-length episodes would cover almost the entire time between my lunch break and quitting time (and one of my favorite snarkbloggers, Cleolinda Jones, is a frequent guest).  "The Official LOST Podcast" with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse was a source of amusement and frustration throughout the run of Lost, while the BBC's Doctor Who commentary podcasts during Russell T. Davies' tenure were well-intentioned, but basically pointless by the time the DVDs came out.  Almost all of the programs I've mentioned so far 1) talk about the things I like, 2) have interesting and amusing people talking about the things I like, and 3) don't take up too much of my time having interesting, amusing people talk about the things I like.  Make me laugh and I'm sold, podcasters.

Nowadays, I'm subscribed to a handful of news podcasts -- the Anderson Cooper 360 podcast, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, and CBS Evening News with Katie Couric -- that I watch as soon as they're posted, while Chris Hardwick and friends from the Nerdist tend to pile up until I have a few hours to spare.  Sometimes it's more important being informed than being amused.

Any favorite podcasts you'd suggest, random internet reader?

068: So say we all

So I got an email from Twitter this morning:

click to view bigger

...which was cool.  I'm sure he just reciprocates any follows that aren't bots, but still, it was pretty fun to see that in my inbox this morning.

022: Bright copper kettles

These are a few of my favorite things (this week):

Anderson Cooper 360° Daily podcast
We don't get CNN, so I can't watch AC360.  But CNN cuts together the best bits of the show and offers it as a daily podcast.  Although I inevitably have to mute Dana Loesch whenever she's on (just to maintain my own sanity) and sometimes the topics covered on the podcast aren't the stories in which I'm most interested, it's always reliably informative and entertaining.  And Anderson Cooper will occasionally say things like, "[my name sounds] like a nineteenth-century law firm" and "I'll be all alone here tomorrow, trapped under the vending machine."  Besides, it was on the podcast that I got to see this:

"Who's the bunny? ...  I'm the bunny?"

And you just can't beat Anderson Cooper in a bunny suit.


We Heart It
Essentially a repository for pretty pictures, We Heart It has sucked up more of my time than I care to admit. 

from page eight of my favorites

It's an easy place to just plug in whatever your current obsession is and scroll through page after page of aesthetically-pleasing photos accumulated by We Heart It members.  On any given day, I can start with "library" and end up at "puppies" by the time I realize I should be doing other things.  Today's search: breakfast.


Cleopatra: A Life

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, and I'm shallow enough to admit that the pretty cover was what first drew me to Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra (yes, every English major I know judges books by their covers).  Admittedly, I'm terrible with dates and I have only a vague idea of when various monarchs reigned, or who comes before whom -- I am extremely fortunate that there was no "Historical Figures by Date" category on my Jeopardy! game board -- so the fact that I can follow Schiff from point A to point B through ancient history is a testament to her writing.  Compelling and entertaining, it's more like reading a story than historical facts; it's creative non-fiction at its best.  I wish Schiff could write all history books; if she had, I might have attempted the AP history classes in high school.


Things Organized Neatly
Does what it says on the label.  Anyone who saw my childhood bedroom would laugh until they cried upon hearing me say that I like organization (an aunt once loudly proclaimed it a sty), but there's something very nice about the (mostly) minimalist photos.  I don't have the patience to organize my shit stuff this meticulously, but I enjoy browsing the blog.



Looking okay in photos
Seriously.  It's a rare thing for me, but I was fortunate this week, and -- as Shakespeare would say -- I am glad of it.

018: Bleeping brilliant

I don't know how familiar you are with Tumblr, random blog reader, but it's basically the easiest blog platform out there.  The only reason I don't use it is that I've had this one for ages and neglected it, and I'm loath to sign up for yet another thing I'll end up abandoning for months at a time.  In any case, there is a phenomenon on Tumblr that, in an effort to be PG-rated, we'll call the "Eff"-Yeah! blogs.  Essentially a catch-all for a particular topic or fandom, it's usually one-stop shopping for your own peculiar obsession.

Below is a screen capture of my Google Reader subscriptions.  I may have a problem, I don't know.  (Warning: profanity ahoy.)

How sad?  So sad.

And I've also given the internet a peek into the odd assortment of men I find aesthetically pleasing.  You're welcome, Internet.  You're welcome.