If My Apartment Were Burning...

What the heck is this?! you may be thinking.

Well, if my apartment were burning down and I could only carry one thing out, I think it would be this sculpture. (But it's so damned heavy I'd have to strap it to a rollerskate and roll it along.)

Once upon a time, it hung above my grandparents' fireplace in their ultra-mod house. Then it was wrapped in packing material and living in my mother's laundry room - for shame! She eventually decided she had no place to hang this modern monstrosity in her sort of traditional, sort of contemporary home and gave it to me. I seem to get all the rejected family art, which is just fine by me!

After much weighing, measuring, stud-finding, drilling, shrieking and screwing, my partner and I successfully hung the piece in our bedroom. I feel so fortunate to own this piece of art by sculptor Julie MacDonald.

Hello Kitty with Alligators Tee

I received this yellow cap-sleeved tee shirt as a reward for a perfect dental check up! It has a vee neck and green alligators all over it, making it look kind of like children's pajamas. There is one Hello Kitty riding an alligator on the chest. The tee shirt is a bit long, which is good if you wear low-rise jeans.

Get yourself one...

Kamio Happiness Animals

I picked up this little notepad with different animal face sheets of paper inside at
Kawaii Corner, a tiny, jam-packed little shop in San Francisco's Outer Richmond area. At first I thought, all this stuff is so cute, but how can anyone afford the rent on this shop and make a living selling nothing but items at less that $5 each?! Then I saw that the young woman who owns/runs the shop had a huge pile of packages she was getting ready to mail out. Probably most of her business is through the website. God, I want to have a store where I get to pick out and write descriptions for all the cute stuff!!! I need to have rich parents like Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - that wicked brat who said, "DADDY, I WANT A TRAINED SQUIRREL!" and ended up going down the garbage chute in the chocolate factory...

I think my mom would be a better bet than my dad, actually. She's much more the spoiling type; my pops is kind of cheap.

Maybe I'll try that on her. "MOMMY, I WANT A HELLO KITTY STORE!"

Something tells me that will not fly.

Hello Kitty Barrettes

These are both cute and sturdy! (I have another, older pair that have lasted three years now.) I don't see them at the Sanrio website, but I found them at the Sanrio "flagship" store in downtown San Francisco. The downtown San Francisco store is not as impressive as the Los Angeles (Beverly Center) store. But it's still really fun.

PS Everthing got dusted and my mom declared my apartment "nice and clean"... whew...

FREAKING OUT!!!

My mother is coming to visit this weekend.

My house is always pretty clean. My mom's house is always IMMACULATE. You could do surgery on yourself on her floors with her knives and sop up your blood with one of her kitchen towels and then sew yourself up with some thread from her sewing kit and there is no way you would get an infection. IT'S THAT CLEAN! The smell of my childhood is not Nestle Tollhouse cookies baking - it's Windex, Listerine and a slight whiff of bleach! She seriously would inspect my bedroom each week (when I was a kid) after our Saturday morning house cleaning, and she would run her fingertip along the surface of my dresser. I know this sounds very Mommy Dearest but she's a really cool mom. She's just... extremely clean.

Behold the weird, outdated and useless heater unit in our wall! I think it's from the 60's. It has all these LITTLE SPACES which catch dust. In order to clean them, I must wrap a cloth around my fingers and run my finger along each little slat. It's a little like flossing, only instead of 32 teeth, there are hundreds. And it's double sided! One side faces the living room and the other side goes right through to the hallway. It's a nightmare!!! Cleaning house before my mom gets here IS A NIGHTMARE! Look at my lamp... it's made of dust-catching STAIRS for Pete's sake...
everywhere I look there are DUST HOLDERS... mini blinds... everywhere... I'M FREAKING OUT!!! I'm in a horror movie, and the villain is covered with little dusty slats and steps...

Mamegoma

Mamegoma is a little seal-like creature character. I'm in love! This cute, tiny memo pad came from shopkawaii.com, currently my favorite source of made-in-Japan paper cuteness.

My Old L.A.M.B. Baby Barrel Bag

When Gwen Stefani did these L.A.M.B. bags in partnership with LeSportsac a few years ago, I went to the LeSportsac store at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles and they were sold out. (This was in Aug/Sept of 2003.) When I returned to San Francisco I wandered morosely into Macy's one day during a lunch break and their handbag section was fully stocked! I bought this one, called the "Baby Barrel" style. At the time I liked the black and white print (and I love blackletter calligraphy and "type") but I thought the bag was trendy and that I would only use it for a few months. It turned out to be one of my favorites for the next few years! It's such a tiny bag, and I now wish I'd gotten a larger one as well as this one. I wish I'd known then how quickly they would sell out everywhere, that L.A.M.B. was only partnering with LeSportsac for a limited time, and how much I'd love the bag...

especially the "limited time" part... I would have purchased several and jacked up the price and hawked them on horrible Ebay like everyone who is selling them there...
I'm always missing out on money-making schemes...

Pizza Orgasmica

We sometimes order pizza from Pizza Orgasmica.

I was mad at them for a while because we once ordered a pizza, and it still hadn't arrived an hour and a half later, so I called to see if our driver got into a car accident or what. "YOU GOT YOUR PIZZA," a guy with a New Zealand accent screamed at me. "WE DELIVERED IT!" Turns out they delivered my pizza to apartment "C". We live in APARTMENT "D".

How freakish are the people in Unit C, that they accepted, paid for and ate a pizza they didn't even order?!


Apartment D, dammit. D as in DOGGIE STYLE, which is the actual name of one of their pizzas. I've never had the Doggie Style, since I eat meat rarely, and it's covered with five different meats.

Well, I got over the mis-delivery, and we can order from them again. They do have some clever names and you can get the pizza with this delicious, thin, crisp cornmeal crust. I like to think up really vulgar names I would use if I owned Pizza Orgasmica...like "The Big Throbbing Sausage"...that would be my first one.

Pink Head by Tarina Tarantino

This necklace was quite a shopping "score" - if you will. (Oh, how I hate sports metaphors, and yet I find myself using them. I blame it on my mother - super jock and former PE teacher. And she's coming to visit this weekend. AAAGH!)

Well, Tarina Tarantino is a designer who put pink hair on Hello Kitty, added some Swarovski crystals and a high price tag, got skinny-weird Paris Hilton to wear her designs, and basically reeled me in like a fish hopelessly hooked in the gullet.
I love it.

I love TT's Hello Kitty jewelry because it's whimsical, it's adorable, It's well-made, or at least much better quality than any cheap necklace sold at Sanrio prior to TT's arrival. (And I have several cheapies.) I do think it's overpriced.

The reason I consider this necklace a score is that it's from the Tarina Tarantino "Bambino" line. It was designed for a child, so the items in the Bambino line were the same as the ones for adults, but with shorter chains, and were priced much lower. This necklace was less than $50, whereas many of her pieces are around $170 - $200. The drawback is that the chain doesn't fit everyone, but if you're small-ish, it will fit like a choker, the way you see it on me here. Maybe TT's people realized the Bambino line was too good of a deal, because it's no longer available. It may still be available on Ebay.

(But you know how I feel about Ebay, right?)

IKEA Madness

What did I say? IKEA is a nightmare! Yes! I did find the mirror tiles I wanted, and a nice-looking houseplant, described by my pal Meagan as "green and firm". Hmm.
Here is Meagan holding the firm, green plant in the backseat of my car, and non verbally telling us what she really thinks of wandering around IKEA.

Seriously, the thing with stuff from IKEA is that everyone (of a certain age and income bracket) has it, and everyone recognizes it. "Oh, you got that at IKEA! I have the same one!" is the twenty-something/early thirty-something refrain. HORRORS!
Okay, now my house is fully furnished and I'm never going to IKEA again.

(Anyhow, our place looks more like Crate and Barrel threw up in it than IKEA did.)

IKEA

I'm dragging two pals across the Bay to IKEA tonight. It's only noon and I'm already cackling with evil laughter.

Yes, IKEA is huge, confusing, and migraine-inducing. A college girlfriend and I literally broke up over the assembly of a cheap IKEA dresser that had the holes drilled into the wrong side of the plywood. (I called her F*ing incompetent and she called me a bitch. If I remember correctly, she was foaming at the mouth. Ah, those were the days.) And yet...they have really good houseplants sometimes. And a few months ago I bought sixteen mirror tiles there and affixed them to the wall in my bedroom and they look AWESOME, and I've decided that I need eight more to make this mirrored area larger. I hope they still have the mirrors. I think my friend Esther is just coming with me for the IKEA meatballs. And Meagan wants a shower curtain. I hope our friendship survives the maze that is IKEA!

My Jade Ring

This is my jade ring, which used to be my grandmother's, and her mother gave it to her. It was bequeathed to me because I'm the only person in my family who likes jade, and I'm definitely the only person who likes cabochons.
("Eeewww. Old-ladyish!" says my mother and my aunts.)
When my aunt Maria gave me the ring it was so dirty I didn't even know there were diamonds on the sides. I scrubbed it with a soft baby toothbrush and there it was, all beautiful and green and gold and sparkly. I wear it on my middle finger because it's too big for my ring finger, and since it belonged to my grandma, I don't want to get it sized. I call it The Incredible Hulk. It's not very comfortable, so I only wear it for dress-up. It makes me feel like I'm a different person, in a different time.

Goodbye, Downstairs Neighbors!

I was sitting at my desk with the living room windows open yesterday, when I heard a masculine voice outside saying, "Yeah, well Carol got a U Haul... yeah... there are three really heavy things; there's a king sized bed..." I practically snapped my neck I turned so fast to look out the window! Carol is my downstairs neighbor.
I looked and saw Carol hugging a gigantic cardboard MOVING BOX. Yes indeedy - my downstairs neighbors are moving out!

I've always said I wish they would - they annoy me. They have two televisions (at least) on which they seem to only play war movies, and both TVs are on all the time. I always hear gunshots coming from my floor. I WANT to hear the waves crashing outside... that's why I moved to the damned beach. They never go outside and exercise, so they have all this pent up energy and they wrestle, run and stomp like a herd of elephants late at night, which wouldn't be so bad, except that they rumble our apartment, too. (Plus I go to bed super early because I have to be at work super early.) They drive a huge-ass Chevrolet SUV and they scraped my car door with it and neglected to tell me, so I had to confront them about it and tell them they were sneaky and dishonest. Oh, and they leave their little dog alone and it barks and barks out of loneliness, which I think is just cruel.

On the other hand... there's always a worse neighbor***, and at least I'm on speaking terms with these two. I gave them ornamental pumpkins for Halloween (unacknowledged) and a big plant at the new year. To our shock, they reciprocated with a bottle of wine. When I got mad at them about the car, Carol said she wanted to fix the situation and offered to pay for the damage, and she made her friend (who apparently was the one who hit my car and didn't tell anyone)march upstairs and apologize to me. And when we once had to tell them to please shut up they apologized and said they were trying to clean house (it was 1 am!). So, at least we're on decent terms.

Well, the unit will be vacant for months! That's MONTHS of utter peace, and months that I will get to hog two parking spots and not have to park my car one inch from the wall to give them their much-needed SUV space!

*** Worse neighbors - like the lady with dementia who lived next door to us when we lived in Oakland, who would scream "Goddamned F*ing Shit!" over and over again through the adjoining walls... and the guy who lived above me who would watch the same porn movie over and over again and creak his insanely creaky bed while he jacked off to the movie... even on Thanksgiving morning at 5:30am...oh yeah, and we can't forget my old roomie in LA who had months worth of fast food trash on his bedroom floor and who spent my half of the rent at Gucci one month. (I came home and found an eviction notice on the door.) Oh, yes... there are worse people to live near and with.

Pocky Gone Wild

These are straw-like crackers dipped in either chocolate or some kind of strawberry-flavored white chocolate, like the stuff that coats yogurt raisins. At least they were when I was a child and they were one of my favorite treats.

We went to an Asian supermarket this morning and I was surprised to see the zillions of Pocky permutations. There's one called "Pocky Men's". I got one called "Pocky Chocolate Coconut" with little flakes of coconut all over it. This one is Pocky Chocolate Mousse, only the "chocolate mousse" is lavender colored. I don't know how I feel about that... it's a little scary... I can't think of any foods that are naturally lavender-colored, except maybe the inside of certain figs. Of course, no one pretends that Pocky is a natural food, but still - lavender food is weird!

The packaging of Pocky has certainly changed since I was a child. It used to be really plain. Pocky only came in strawberry or chocolate; and I can't remember the chocolate packaging, because I only ever chose strawberry, which was plain pink with the word "Pocky" on it. What's the world coming to? I guess I'm getting old. Soon I'll be like my grandparents, "When we were your age, Grandpa woould take me to dinner and dancing at the Claremont Hotel for five dollars! Five dollars!"

The Astounding Art of Fafi

The banner art on the blog is by a French woman graffiti artist named Fafi.
Her artwork is amazingly colorful, and her "fafinettes" (what she calls the girls she draws and paints) are strange, sexy, dark, and fashionable. To me, they're oddly futuristic as well. Tour her website when you have some time... it's like entering another world; a skewed fantasy world where girls have pink and aqua hair, enormous eyes, otherworldly animal companions, and lots of striped socks and armwarmers.

Click to visit Fafi!

Aqua Necklaces

I've got a real hard-on for this color family - turquoise, aqua, green, blue-green. These are some of my necklaces.
The second one from the right is a favorite. I bought it for myself on impulse, right before Christmas. I was going to a holiday dinner with my boss and some of my co-workers - we were going to the famed Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. I was super-excited. I planned to wear a black flowy skirt, very 40's-styled heels (Charles David), a black dressy camisole with little black seeds pearls on it, and this gorgeous sort of green-blue velvet jacket. The outfit was pretty, but so simple - it needed something funky and unusual, like a fantastic necklace.

Usually I don't buy myself ANYTHING between Halloween and Christmas. I've got an enormous extended family (with lots of adorable small cousins who all need cute presents!) and a PUNY income, which means I really have to aggressively save for Christmas gifts. Plus, my mom's birthday is December 27th, I'm her only child, and she's got expensive taste.

Filled with that mixture of pleasure and guilt which comes with overspending on something you really, really love but cannot really afford, I took the new necklace to work to agonize over whether I should keep it or return it. I polled various femmes at my workplace, who had lots of interesting ways to weigh the value of the necklace - "Will you wear it a lot?"
"Are those real pearls?" (One even scraped a pearl against her teeth to ascertain its real-pearlness!) "Is there something you want more that you've been saving for?"

I kept the necklace, I happily wore it to that holiday dinner, we ate the most delicious roast chicken with tiny little french fries and Ceasar salad (and about twenty different desserts), and I've worn it many times since, so I'm happy I got it. The pendant part is handpainted wood and the dark green bead things are dyed freshwater pearls. I curse myself for not being able to remember the name of the designer.

I've Got a Brand New Pair of Rollerskates... You've Got a Brand New Key!

A visitor to Femmetopia liked my rollerskates so much that she posted a photo I took of Skeepants inside one of my skates in her blog! (braehoward.covblogs.com/)


My skates were a gift from my boyfriend, who had them custom-made for me. He bought the sneakers (Saucony sneakers) and then turned them over to a fellow he knows whose family started a skate shop in Chicago fifteen years ago, which they still own and operate.
There is a metal plate connected to the sole of the shoe, and smooth-rolling, hot pink wheels were added. Whee!

Hard Candy "10 Years of Gloss" Lipgloss

I put a regular-sized Lush brand lipbalm next to my Hard Candy "10 Years of Gloss", lipgloss just to show how freaking ENORMOUS this Hard Candy gloss pot is! Pink gloss in a clear container with a giant plastic sparkly-faceted baby blue heart on the lid - this is a ten-dollar cure for the grown-up blues; with it, you can escape back to 7th grade! I'm a sucker for the cute packaging. The color isn't sickeningly sweet - it's a nice, neutral semi-sheer pink, and the texture is smooth and creamy rather than sticky. It feels almost like a balm, and smells like cake batter.

Galaxy Granola

At my work there is a huge-normous unlabeled tub of granola, which a lot of people eat with some bananas or berries on top.
I too like granola, but I am allergic to nuts, and the work-provided granola has nuts in it, so I bring my own Galaxy Granola, which I really like. People with nut allergies have to be really careful about things that have lots of ground-up, MYSTERY INGREDIENTS in them, such as breads, cookies... granola. Most of the Galaxy Granola flavors don't have nuts, and if they do, they say so clearly on the label. Galaxy Granola is really crunchy and tasty, and it's made with organic ingredients. If only all problems in life could be so easily solved! So far I've tried Mocha Fudge, Not Sweet Vanilla Munch, and Gingersnap, and I plan to try the Banana next.

So Gosh Darn Cute!

Tenorikuma is a new Sanrio character. He's a little coffee-making bear. This is a plush coin purse! Some of the stationery has a smiling little milk foam puff and a happy sugar cube. I think what I love most about silly made-in-Japan kawaii stationery is the anthropomorphization. I love thinking that little sugar cubes, sushi rolls, cups of coffee and various fruits and vegetables have cute little personalities.

Some of my Japanese Tea Cups

I don't passionately collect anything, but I do have a collection of Japanese tea cups. Most of them are from Rafu Bussan in Los Angeles. My old dentist was right next door, and somehow I got into the habit of browsing Rafu Bussan's vast stock of Japanese porcelain and always buying a pretty tea cup after my biannual teeth cleaning appoinment. Not very romantic, I know.
These Japanese tea cups are different from American coffee cups in a lot of ways; they're thick, they're often artfully glazed down the inside of the cup as well as on the outside, and they're often textural, so they feel bumpy or ridged or curved or whatever in your hands. My favorite one was blue and curvy, and I loved drinking coffee with cream out of it. I nabbed it from my dad's house, actually. Somehow it cracked, so I don't have it anymore. That's kind of what I get for taking the cup without asking, huh?

Saponaria

They have a lacy, wildflower look, and are long-lasting. There was also a beautiful white color, so white it was almost blue, but I'm in a pink mood today. Next time I see Saponaria, I'll buy blue-white.

Not Your Average Ice Cubes

Before moving to San Francisco, my sweetie and I lived in a charming little part of Oakland, California known as Piedmont.
One of the first things that impressed me about Piedmont was that there is an always-full coffee independent house called Gaylord's on one corner, and right on the opposite corner is a nearly-always empty Starbucks. We took a break from unpacking our belongings on a hot September day and wandered down to this Gaylord's for an iced coffee.
"Ice cubes or coffee cubes?" the woman working there asked.
"Can you repeat that?" I said, startled.
She gestured toward the ice cream freezer, in which there was an empty ice cream bucket half-full of dark brown ice cubes - cubes of frozen coffee.
"Oh my GOD!" I exclaimed. "I'll have the coffee cubes, please!"

GENIUS!!!

Since we've moved away from Gaylord's and their coffee cubes, and discovered the joy of Blue Bottle coffee, we now make our own coffee cubes at home. (I could also wax poetic about Blue Bottle's New Orleans-style iced coffee, and I will... another time.) If you like iced coffee, I highly recommend making yourself some coffee cubes. Instead of your iced coffee getting weak and watered-down as the ice melts, it gets stronger! Once you use your ice trays for coffee, though, they become stained and you cannot use them for plain water again - the ice will taste like coffee. So get two separate ones and dedicate them to your coffee cubes. Brew the coffee and let it cool a little, but don't let it sit around and get cold and stale. Pour it into your ice trays (leave a little room for expansion at the top) and refrigerate the rest of the coffee. Drink the cold coffee soon; don't let it sit around in your fridge for days. Add whatever sugar and milk you're going to add, and enjoy!

My Old Friend (Florence Arnold)

This weird piece of modern art has a lot of sentimental value for me (I'm a very unsentimental person). It belonged to my grandparents, who gave it to my mom. I can remember falling asleep on the couch, staring at it, when I was younger than kindergarten-age. My mom gave it to me when I was fifteen and moving out of her house, and it's been everywhere from my college dorm room to the apartment I share now with my partner. It fell down in the Northridge, California earthquake in 1994 (I lived in Northridge at the time), the glass shattered, ripping part of the paper, and it was the one thing I carried out of that apartment when the fire department and cops escorted the residents in for ten minutes - we had ten minutes to salvage any valuables or documents!

The artist's name is Florence Arnold. Her style is called hard edge, or California hard-edge. I have two other lithographs and a sculpture also made by her. My grandpa and she were friends, so there's a lot of her artwork floating around the homes of my aunts and uncles, but I don't think anyone actually likes the art but me. They should give it all to me! I love mid-century modern! I love Florence Arnold's work, and I love this piece especially. My mom and I irreverently call it "the toilet bowl" because that's what I said it looked like when I was just a wee brat.


See it in context.
See the other two pieces.

My XXX Rated Hamster

In general, male hamsters are a little smaller and more mellow than female hamsters, so I decided to get a male hamster. All well and good - I love my little hammie. The funny thing about male hamsters is - they have enormous balls! It's really kind of gross.

I Love Fashion Twins

I saw these women, with the same Vera Bradley quilted handbag in different colors and just about peed myself with happiness.

Shortly thereafter, I saw two men together, each with khaki shorts and a bright blue tee shirt, with the same build and coloring, and SO wanted to take their photo, but I had used the last bit of my camera's memory card taking a stupid picture of the driver of the shuttle I was on. Dang, I could have had two in one day.

My obsession with Fashion Twins has now surpassed my obsession with low-rise pants and butt cracks. And something in me has changed - now, instead of looking down my nose at people who are dressed alike, I feel happy and giggly when I see them. Maybe that's why they do it! Does it make them feel happy?! (I will have to ask my mother, whose style is normally so severe and tailored that I almost fainted from shock when I saw a photo of her and three friends, smiling, and ALL WEARING THE SAME HIDEOUS CELINE DION TEE SHIRT.)

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I Love These Flowers

These are called Montbrecia. I hope they last for a long time; I love their alien-wildflower look and the brilliant color.

They are the same flowers that Heidi on Vashon is growing in Vashon, Washington.

By the way, that is my goldfish, named Ping, in the bowl on the coffeetable.

Men in Low-Rise = BUTTCRACK!

I'm glad that the "Low-Waisted Pants + Short Shirt= My Buttcrack is Showing" issue is not limited to women's fashion. No one is exempt!

It's True - the 80's Are Back

I've been complaining to anyone who will listen that the 80's are back, I hate 80's fashion, boo hoo, what am I going to do, and so on.
I remember the pants I wore in middle school, and they were really tight Jordache or Guess jeans, with zippers at the ankles and sometimes little denim bows at the tops of the ankle zippers. I also wore pink Reebok high tops and I usually had on a pile of jelly bracelets and a thing called a "banana clip" in my hair; hair which I had laboriously crimped at 5:30am each school day with a super-hot crimping iron. My mascara, which I had to hide from my mom, was electric blue, and I had a pair of cheap pink high heels she didn't even know I owned, which I would change into at school, shoving my Reeboks into my locker.

All this makes me shudder; it was cute then; I was thirteen. It hardly mattered if my jeans were tight - I was a child - I had no curves. The thought of SQUEEZING myself into pants like that NOW makes me really scared.

Still, there are some fashions from the 80's that make me smile to see again, like dolman sleeves, boatnecks, sexy open-backed tops, wide diagonal and chevron stripes, polka-dots, pink-and-gray, navy-and-kelly green, and those freakin' little candy-colored hearts and stars that seemed to cover EVERYTHING in 1988. And another thing I didn't get my fill of in 7th grade - candy-colored plastic beads.

This week I've purchased two rather 80's-style tops; one navy blue with kelly green dots and a criss-cross of fabric in back, and this one; a cream tunic with blue diagonal stripes, and three giant-bead plastic necklaces - one red, one pink, and this aqua one, above. All right. so I've given in to the 80's comeback! I can't exactly run around naked and unaccessorized, can I? So that's my excuse. Hey, a girl can change her mind.

STOP! This Post is Rated NC-17!

One of these handfuls of teeny-tiny clips came from a sex toy store. The other pile came from an office supply store. At one store, they were twenty cents each: at the other, $1 each. The pink ones were purchased about six months after the black ones, and the black ones were purchased six months ago. (HA HA.)

All right, I'll stop being silly.

The moral of this story is: all the world's a stage and every object is a potential sex toy!

Have a good weekend!

A Pot Rouge for Lips and Cheeks

I like my two new Bobbi Brown pot rouges for lips and cheeks. I got colors "Flushed Pink" (the more natural one) and "Pale Pink" (the more candy-like, blue-pink one). They're creamy and soft, not too greasy (I think the Convertible Color by Stila feels too greasy) and I like the wide, round jar. A lot of round makeup items wear down only in the center because of the ways they're sized and shaped; like your finger can only get to one spot easily within the pot. This stuff comes in a really wide-mouthed, shallow jar so you can get to all the product easily. Too bad I didn't take the photograph BEFORE I stuck my grubby finger in there, right?! Well, you germophobes can use a lip brush.

If anyone remembers the cream rouge that Chanel used to make, which was tragically discontinued; with a fine-mesh screen that covered the actual product; this stuff is similar in feel and performance. I loved that stuff!
So this is great: we can all look like we've been running through meadows and eating cherries and getting stung on the lips by killer bees!
Hooray! Sexy bitches!

Gingerbread Cream Cheese Cupcakes

These pretty things are two gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese icing, from Miette Patisserie in San Francisco. They also make this same gingerbread in a lovely cake that serves 6-8 people. Even without the cream cheese icing, the gingerbread itself is rich with spices, not-too-sweet, amazingly moist, dark and full of molasses, and dense. It's heaven in a fluted paper cup; it makes the eyelashes flutter and the eyes ROLL BACK IN THEIR SOCKETS!

(Unfortunately, the cakes are too fresh and delicate to ship, but Miette does ship their wonderful macaroons, which are tiny, round, delicately-flavored things that just melt in your mouth. They're kind of crisp, kind of chewy, and very complex-tasting.)

Shopping for Flowers Is Competitive. Who Knew?

Each week my partner and I go to the Farmers Market at the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco. People who go regularly know to go early; later it gets very crowded with tourists and the kinds of people who go once in a while, wander around looking lost, bump into others, and exclaim, "OH WOW! WHAT'S OVER THERE?! WHAT'S THIS?!" These people are also likely to ask really stupid questions of the vendors and farmers, such as, "Do you have any peaches?" (in the dead of winter), and "Do you have this nonfat, with Splenda?" to the French guy who makes organic whole milk yogurt with local honey from his family's recipe and sells it in little terracotta crocks.

Unfortunately, this week we went a little late, so I got elbowed and jostled and stepped-on by aggressive yuppies trying to get the VERY BEST BUNCH of flowers.
Yes, make sure you spend your four dollars WISELY. (And watch out for my ribs; I kind of like them the way they are - UNBRUISED. Jeez!)

It was so crowded that I was unable to see the label on the bucket; so I don't know what type of flowers these are. I like their sweet candy-colored blooms.

Insanely Spicy Ginger Hand Cream

Enough about the sexploits of my neighbor. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Friday, I obtained a jar of Pharmacopia Ginger Hand Cream. This stuff is so gingery, it practically bites your nose when you open the jar. It smells incredibly good to a ginger lover like me. It's made with 70% organic ingredients, it sinks in fast, and it's super rich, but non-greasy. The jar is brown glass; very heavy and elegant. LOVE IT!

(My thanks to Kathy at my work for the recommendation.)

Gamers with Game?

I'm the stereotypical crotchety, nosy old lady neighbor, except that I'm not old. (Yet.) I get mad when people wash their cars in the parking area (because their soapsuds run into the drains that say "no dumping" and have a little picture of a crab on them, because we live by the beach and the goddamned soapsuds go right into the ocean), I get mad when people overfill the recycling bins because they don't break down their stupid IKEA and Budweiser boxes, I get mad when neighbors let their dogs trample around and shit in the native plant restoration areas around our apartments. Call me crazy.


One of my favorite neighbors to spy on is a quiet guy named James **.
There's really nothing interesting about him; he's geeky but not geeky enough to be endearing, he has no style, and he has no charm. (He did used to have a roommate who had plenty of charm. The ex-roommate offered to help me carry my packages upstairs one day, and would always say a very friendly hello.) James is in his early thirties, he's pale as a ghost, he's got a big bald spot, and he walks like a robot. He's your stereotypical aging video gamer. The thing that always made me want to spy on him was his girlfriend - a pudgy, brown-haired white girl who wore a ton of stinky, gag-inducing perfume all the time. (I call her Ross because she smells like a Ross Dress for Less dressing room.) Ross was over so often that I was starting to wonder if she had moved in, and they were at the stage of their relationship where they would order pizza and Chinese food and watch movies at home. And I was happy for them.


Saturday we heard her loudly saying goodbye at the door. She sounded oddly fake, as if she were saying goodbye to a salesperson at Nordstrom instead of to her boyfriend. Then she trudged downstairs, wearing one of her trademark thin cotton skirts, tennis shoes, and a full backpack that made her look like a turtle. "He's such a jerk," I complained to my boyfriend. "He doesn't even walk her to her car." My boyfriend peered out the window. "She looks sad," he said. She walked to her car, opened the trunk, put the backpack inside, and left.


Cut to this morning... James was leaving at the same time I was leaving for work (VERY early... 6:30am) with a new woman, a thin, ugly version of Ross.
My God, I'm in shock. I feel like I've been cheated-on. Saturday, Ross was sent packing, and by Sunday James had an Ugly Girl sleep over. And he's so damned milquetoast... so bland... so plain... how is it that HE dumped one woman and hooked up with another one in the span of one weekend? Did he even have time to wash his sheets?! Pig. God, I hate heterosexual men. God, it just makes me wanna spray Ross' horrible Clinique Happy perfume all over the stairwell and also into his mailbox.

** names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Another Pair of Fashion Twins

Sigh.


They jogged past us today, less than 24 hours after I snapped the photos of the Red Jacket Twins.

Curse of the Red Jacket Twins

I was futiley trying to take photographs of some cormorants flying in a perfect V formation yesterday evening on the beach, when I saw this person in a red windbreaker and long olive green shorts.
A moment later, when the person somehow split into two right before my very eyes, I realized it was actually a COUPLE DRESSED EXACTLY ALIKE.
Nope, these are not identical twins who have been dressed by their parents - that would be forgivable. No, indeed - one person here is a woman and one is a man, and they appear to be romantically or sexually partnered. They CHOSE to buy these matching outfits, and they chose to wear them TO THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME! EEEEEW!
I have to go. I'M GONNA PUKE!

Disclaimer:

A lot of people have told me that some things I write, and that photographing people unawares for the sole purpose of mocking their fashion is shallow and mean.
To this I say: Dear Pollyanna, Go collect some eggs from the henhouse, and suck on them!

Please - your government is mean. Your boss is mean. And I can hazard a guess that you're probably not sitting around translating philosophy from the original Greek all day, Mr. Deep Thinker. Are you never shallow? And we all make fashion mistakes... I am not exempt. I too own a boring black hoodie and I'm sure that at some point, I will ::gag:: tie it around my waist.

If you by some chance ever find a candid photo of yourself (and your hideous outfit) on my blog or my flikr photo site, simply email me and I will remove you.

Carry on!

AntiPanti

One of my dirty secrets is that I love lowbrow humor: toilet humor, bodily functions, Austin Powers, South Park the Movie, Beavis and Butthead - you name it.
(Okay, so it's not such a secret. Whatever!) And something that really tickles the immature 7th grade boy in me is when I see someone's panties rising out of their low-rise pants or jeans. It ALWAYS makes me laugh. I'm not judgemental about it, and I'm pretty sure it happens to me, too. I just think it's hysterically funny.

Some entrepreneur has come up with a solution to this panty situation. It's a round disc with cotton on one side and sticky stuff on the other side. You stick it in the crotch of your pants and put your pants on without any panties. it's called the ANTIPANTI! One antipanti is $2 each.

Perusing the website, two questions immediately came to mind:

1) Why bother wearing panties or an ANTIPANTI at all, then? If you're that worried about your thong showing, just go bare. It's not like your sweat or possibly a little vaginal secretion is going to BURN A HOLE through your pants.

2) Isn't this just basically a round panty liner, like you can get at the drugstore in a pack of fifty for two dollars? Why buy a pack of ANTIPANTI (I've decided that the plural of antipanti is also antipanti ) at five for ten dollars?

Ah, but the people at ANTIPANTI have anticipated my questions! They reply that the antipanti allows you to wear your pants several times without washing them! You leave your bodily junk on the antipanti instead of in the crotch of your pants! And as for my second question, the antipanti is different from your mainstream panty liner because it's not "institutional" (what the Hell does that mean???) and because it's sticky all over. Sort of weak arguments, I think, but in the interest of research, I plan to buy a pack of ANTIPANTI, distribute them to pals, and get feedback. I will report back! Stay tuned for ANTIPANTI ADVENTURES.