Monthly Archive for January, 2010

I give you…the Meta-List!

This is a lazy, lazy post: a list made up of other lists. These are some of my favourite McSweeney’s lists. (I have a big website crush on McSweeney’s. McSweeney’s is cool.)

1. Things Not Overheard at a Conceptual-Art Gallery Opening (“Well, that’s obvious, but what do the other three midgets represent?”)
2. Actual Superheroes From the Pages of International and Obscure Comic Books Who Are Unlikely to See Their Origin Stories Developed Into Movies (“Canadian Ninja”)
3. My Attempt to Further Depress a Particularly Unfunny List, Sent to Me by Someone at Work, by Making Random Remarks (“Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, the woman who delivers your mail is into S&M, and your Mary Kay rep is a guy in drag. This would make an interesting TV sitcom.“)
4. YouTube Comment or e.e. cummings? (“stunned. i. am. stunned. every question speaks to us”)
5. Things Koala Bears Would Say (“No, you’re the cutest ever.”)
6. Terrible Poetry Jokes (“POUND (to Whitman): Shut the fuck up.”)

…and some of my favourite Book of Ratings lists. (O Lorre! Whither have you departed? Come back and carry on rating my world!)
1. The A-Team (“If you’re going to name yourself after a body part, make it one you can hit people with.”)
2. Artificial People (“Remove their heads so we can see what we’d look like in an Old Navy jacket after the revolution comes and we’re beheaded for wearing an Old Navy jacket.”)
3. Hobo Signs: part 1, part 2, part 3 (“You’d think the symbol for ‘man with gun’ would have something at least vaguely resembling a man or a gun. This looks more like the symbol for ‘moose in a tent.’”)
4. Canadian Snack Foods (“It’s like really gross food, only made by Jesus.”)
5. Apes and Monkeys (“Excuse me, Mr. Rampaging Killer? Why don’t you put down the gun and take a look at this hand-held monkey?”)

Favourite pressies 2009

…aaaand by “later this week”, I of course meant “next week”. Bad, bad blogger! Anyway, here are my Top Three Favourite Pressies for Christmas 2009:

1. Satchel satchel satchel! I am never without a messenger-style bag, and my trusty Hello Kitty bag was starting to look a bit Goodbye Kitty after nearly four years of faithful service. Simon got me this handmade leather satchel, which brings me to OCD orgasm with its myriad compartments and pockets and pen holders. Pen holders hooray! Also it is gorgeous. I feel bad for the cow and all but…GORGEOUS.

2. Butterfly bookmark. My stepdaughter picked this out – isn’t it so pretty?? A bookmark is one thing guaranteed to get a lot of use in my vicinity, and I lurrrrve this one. Although I’ve developed a bad habit of storing it down the front of my top. (Classy.)

3. Decoupage tulip necklace. This one’s from me mum. Lord bless her, she sends me a necklace I LOVE every single Christmas. I don’t usually wear gold, but I really, really like the buttery yellow colour of this necklace, and the tiny delicate decoupage tulips. I’ve been wearing it nearly every day.

But I have to admit to being Most Envious of one of Simon’s pressies: a pair of warm fuzzy slippers from John Lewis. We have a stone floor in our very large kitchen, and despite the best efforts of the Aga, during the winter it radiates cold like an iceberg. Man, you know you’re over thirty when you think a warm pair of slippers is the best present EVER.

Here are a couple of new collage sheets…


Beware the dog-golem

Christmas was…Christmas. It happened. We spent the day itself in Wales, lounging next to the fire on my father-in-law’s UNBELIEVABLY enormous and comfortable sofa, occasionally rousing ourselves to fuss the two matted mudballs with eyes that I think may have been collies, or else possibly some species of dog-golem. Well. I say ‘we’ – I relaxed, and Simon cooked all sorts of food. As usual. He likes it, OK? At least I think he does. Anyway, it was all fine and festive; at about four o’clock the FIL started playing his punk records, and we had a real Christmas moment when we realised we both know all the words to ‘Jet Boy Jet Girl’. Magic, baby.

On Boxing Day, Simon and FIL were both stricken down with some sort of horrible intestinal bug. But I was fine! And so I laughed! I laughed until the next day, when fate wreaked its hideous revenge. I will spare you the extremely gory details, except to say that it was the least fun I’ve ever had lying down. There was a bucket beside the bed. I used it. It wasn’t pretty.

So I spent a fun couple of days trying to keep solids down, and was mostly recovered in time for New Year’s Eve; not that you could tell, as I spent the holiday horizontal on the sofa looking like shite, much as I’d spent the previous week. (Much as I’d spend my entire life if I wasn’t forced to go to work now and then.) We tried to watch It’s A Wonderful Life, but the copy we’d downloaded purchased didn’t work properly: boooo! So we watched The Big Lebowski. I’m happy to watch TBL anywhere, anytime. It has become part of the wallpaper in my brain. (“‘Fuck the tournament?’ OK, I can see you don’t want to be cheered up. C’mon Donnie, let’s go get us a lane.”)

Simon did manage to get It’s a Wonderful Life working the next day, which was ace as he’d never seen it before and I really wanted to see the film work its magic on a newcomer. NOBODY can resist the evil heartwarming mojo of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. In fact, I think the word ‘heartwarming’ should be redefined to apply ONLY to It’s a Wonderful Life, because Frank Capra owns the de facto copyright on heartwarming, and also because the word in any other context makes me want to sick up.

I did get some fairly awesome pressies, which I will try to take some pictures of this week. In the meantime, here’s a new collage sheet of one-inch circles, available now in my Etsy shop