Buttery Nemesis Takes Ham at Mach One, and Other Things on My Mind

 

It’s not really in the generous spirit of Thanksgiving, but my God do I laugh at this video of chicken-fried purveyor of heart-attacky Southern buttered villiany Paula Deen, taking a charitable ham to the face.

I’m sure Paula Deen is a super nice lady, and if it were a video of me getting face ham’d, she’d laugh too. It’s human nature. She got hers. I’ll get mine.

Trying to think a lot in a “What goes around come around” (Thanks, Timberlake) kind of manner. This would mean, that hopefully I’m due to come back around on the upswing any minute now. Maybe I’m deluded, but sometimes, especially around the holidays, delusion is a good thing to cling to.

Should I cut fringe in my hair?

Can I convince Priceline.com to essentially give me a free plane ticket?

What do you do when the person keeping you together starts to fall apart?

If you have the answers to any or all of these questions, keep them to your goddamn self. Unless you can get me a free plane ticket. I will be gladly accepting those.

 

Here is a picture of a tattoo of Wolverine riding a My Little Pony. It’s not my tattoo, though sometimes I wish it were. Sometimes.

 

Oh My God!!!!

1. My laptop is really really warm. I’m a bit scared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Why won’t someone stop Nicolas Cage from making movies?

3. How does Shakira make having roots look so damn good?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. If a guy says he wants to date you, shouldn’t he just do it properly or not do it at all?

5. Ok, laptop is still really hot. And I have to finish these applications before it bursts into flames.

 

Barnes & Noble FAIL

This morning I scooted over to  Barnes & Noble to take advantage of their free WiFi and not-horrible coffee. I made a special trip, just to do some computing! I have lots of computing to do! Blogs to write, emails to answer, programs and jobs to apply to. So when I arrived at B&N, imagine my HORROR to find that there was ONE GODDAMN ELECTRICAL OUTLET!! In the entire store! And it was being used by a dude who looked just like this:

and that guy wasn’t giving up the precious outlet anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now I’m down the street in a Starbucks, PAYING for internet (probably my least favorite thing to do) and writing. But I’m here, writing (Ta-da!) to you, for you, and maybe even sometimes about you. Also, this is the creepiest Starbucks in the entire world. The woman next to me is not wearing shoes. And everyone seems to know each other. And there’s this guy in a complete jogging suit who keeps going up to order things. I feel like I’m in some really ghetto-ass rip-off of Twin Peaks.

 

I’d Like To Make The World A Mix…..

Although treating all dozen readers of this blog to a Coke would be more fiscally viable, I really love sharing music with people, and have been told (puffs chest with pride) that I’m pretty damn good at it. Mix tapes = a cheesy “I love you, man.” and a nice accompaniment to any road trip. Since it would take me too long to try and burn a lot of CDs (and mail them) I will just post a short list of the jams I am loving at the moment.

1. Zero – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2. Scream – Michael & Janet Jackson 

3. Daylight – Matt & Kim (whom my best friend is obesessed with)

4. We Walk – Ting Tings

5. Give It To Me – Madonna

6. American Boy – Estelle and Kanye West

7. Wild Wild Life – Talking Heads (CLASSIC OLD SCHOOL)

8. In This City – Hartley & Iglu (sounds like MGMT)

9. All My Days – From the “Away We Go” Soundtrack

10. Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas (I’m the only person I know who likes this song)

11. In My Arms – Kylie Minogue

12. Run – Leona Lewis (her cover of Snow Patrol reduces me to a blubbering blob of blubber)

13. My Eyes – Travis

Lucky 13. Listen and enjoy. Or not. But I would if I were you. But I’m not. I’m me. So there.

 

Ummm…What?

Apparently during a dust-up in Toronto, Perez Hilton (the bloggy guy who makes tons of money while I make none) got his large teefs slapped outta his face by Will.I.Am (or his manager) of the Black Eyed Peas. Damn. Is it because PH didn’t like “Boom Boom Pow”? (I love Boom Boom Pow, don’t hurt me!) Or is it because PH called him “a fucking faggot”?

Wait…PH is gay himself…..and a big advocate of gay rights…..

Now, obviously I wasn’t there (because if I had traveled somewhere, you would have heard about it) but if the tables had been turned and Will.I.Am had called PH that, it would be UP IN ARMS and Will.I.Am (let’s call him Will, that’s such a bitch of a name to type) would be the new Isaiah Washington and get in tons of trouble. I really don’t understand PH, you said you hate that word! I wonder how this will reflect on the future of his blog? Probably not much, but I bet he’ll lose a bit of support from the GLAAD community.

On that note, I was running late to work yesterday and this tiny adorable girl with a clipboard said “I need to stop you to talk about Gay Rights” but I was running so late that I just had to blow by her and holler back “I LOVE GAY RIGHTS! I support them 100% I am late for work!”

Just doing my part. Some call me a civil rights leader.

 

UPDATE: PH has just issued the following apology, and I believe it is sincere and heartfelt. However, I also believe that my co-worker was just borrowing money from the drawer, so what the hell do I know?

“People make mistakes. I have made many in my life, but this past week I have made more than I can count on one hand.

I am sorry. And I mean it. No one is forcing me to write this. I am not feeling pressured to say this. I am speaking out because I realize that the last few days have been more hurtful to me – and many others – than the repeated blows I suffered to my head in Toronto this past weekend.

I have been filled with incredible sadness and regret.

I am sorry that any good work I have done for promoting equality may be tainted by me reclaiming a hurtful word – that’s been personally used against me and the gay community – to hurt someone that was verbally attacking me. It was stupid.

Apologizing for me is not easy. Writing this was not easy. Life is not easy. But everything happens for a reason and I will take away a lot of valuable lessons from this experience.

Violence is never the answer. Never.

Victims should not be mocked.

The “F” word will never be uttered from my lips again. Just as others use the “N” word to insult and hurt – or as part of their everyday speech – I challenge them to remove it from their vocabulary as well.

Hindsight is always 20/20, they say. I should have been the bigger man and walked away from an unfortunate situation. Instead, I chose – in a very misguided way – to stand up for myself and only made things worse by how I – under pressure, anger and extreme emotion – handled the situation.

I am sorry.

I am NOT apologizing to GLAAD. I could care less about them, my former employers.

I am apologizing to the gay community, to anyone who was hurt by my choice of words, and to all the people who have ever emailed me to thank me for all that I have done to fight for gay rights over the last few years.

I have reached out to Isaiah Washington, someone I incorrectly labeled a homophobe in the past, despite his own public statements that he was not.

I will be donating any money collected from my lawsuit against Polo Molina, road manager for the Black Eyed Peas, to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

And I will continue to speak out for equality and support the great work done by LGBT organizations, such as LAMBDA Legal and HRC.

Sincerely,

Perez”

 

Gearing Up For 9 Hour Shift

Checking my emails and nonsense before my 2pm to 11pm shift. I love keeping the hours of a McDonald’s drive-thru window.

 

Great Moments In “Oh Shit, I Spilled On Myself” History

Last night, my dear friend accidentally dropped a chicken wing on her beautiful sundress (if that’s not a classy sentence, I don’t know what is). Being very smart and savvy, she knew just what to do in order to make sure it didn’t stain…water, dab, dab, dab, don’t rub! But it made me think about a few other great moments in “Oh shit, I spilled on myself” history, including:

1.) 2 nights running of spilling both red and white wine on my white and black dresses respectively. I even made a joke about it the following night saying “Make sure you co-ordinate what you wear with what you intend to spill on yourself.” However, the audience was a different one than the night before (A blatantly obvious fact my brain just didn’t even factor in) so I had to quip “If you were here last night, that was really funny.” Truly, just to see the look of horror on my tutor’s face as I spilled the red wine on my white dress….which cleaned up fine, for those concerned…..was worth the price of admission alone.

2.) A birthday party years and years ago where I saw my beloved sibling drop a huge piece of pizza on the front of his nice white button down shirt. Maybe he has blocked the memory out, but just the look of defeat on his face as the pizza sat on his chest was so heart-breaking. I mean, I laughed my face off (because I am a little sister and that is what I do) but still, I felt for him. He changed shirts and the party continued to great success, but the pizza on shirt incident is burned into my memory forever more.

Got any great moments?  Share them with us!!

 

A Day Late, But The Love Is Still There

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!!!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!!!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!!!

We at A Tapered Mind Salute the Great Dads of this world

*Most importantly our own*

Whom we love very much

And also really really hot dads

Like Jason Bateman

 

Beware….The KILLER TAN!!!

Now that it’s finally summer (though judging by the weather in New York, you cannot bloody tell) everyone and their mother is suddenly obsessed with the pallor of their skin! “Oooh I’m so pasty” “Look at my legs, I’m like a ghost.” and so on and so forth. I even work across the street from a tanning place that is open 24 HOURS!! Who in the world thinks at 4am “I’m going to get myself a tan!” My boss said “Ooooh I’m gonna go” and I nearly slapped the teefs outta her mouth! Friends don’t let friends tan drunk. In fact….friends really should let friends tan at all, and I’ll tell you why (in a hopefully non-offensive and non-preachy manner….but I will not hesitate to smack your teefs out too, if you say crazy things like you want to lock yourself in a sunbed at 4am).

Deep under our desire to be beachy, bronzed summerboys and girls (I sort of blame the influx of sexy Brazilian models for this…Gisele, I’m looking at your absurdly perfect face), lies the frailty of our own tender epidermis. Yes, a little vitamin D on the skin is essential. I’m not saying go become a shut-in. But when you think about it, too much sun exposure, or even worse concentrated frying UVA/UVB rays is insane. Why do we wear sunglasses to shield our eyes, and leave our skin to fend for itself?Think of sunscreen like Ray-Bans for your skin. Hip, fashionable, and necessary. Check out this super interesting article:

http://www.dermanetwork.org/news/news_details.asp?ID=550

Frankly, I love the idea of limiting sunbed use by minors. Not only do I believe it will drastically cut the number of young people diagnosed with melanoma, but hopefully there will be fewer orange, wrinkly fourteen year olds scaring the crap out of me on the streets. You haven’t screamed from the depths of your soul until you’ve seen a fourteen year old who looks more like a forty year old. Or a forty year old who dresses like a fourteen year old. But that’s another issue altogether.

The majority of skin damage happens in our youth, when we don’t think much of our quick pre-prom tan, or that sunburn we got at beach week. We’re young, we’re invincible, and we bounce back. But even those of us who have never lain upon a tanning bed end up with irreversible damage. And I’m speaking from experience. Three years ago I had a misshapen mole appear amongst the freckles on my back. My father, having also undergone extensive (and hugely uncomfortable) treatments for his own melanoma, told me to see a dermatologist right away. The mole was easy to spot as one of the “evil” kind and I’ll let you know what you need to be looking for, so you can check out your own skin with the facts on your side! In the May 2009 issue of GLAMOUR magazine, they issue an excellent (rip-out-and-keep-good) list of skin irregularities to watch out for, including Atypical moles, Basal Cell Carcinoma, Squamous Cell Carcinoma and Melanoma. The article also encourages readers to check parts of their body not usual exposed to sun (chest, underarms) and crazy places you would never guess (under nails! under eyelids!) Look for spots:

*Changes in color, most often much darker than others

*Changes in texture, most often a feeling of being “bumpier” than others, with ridged edges

*A mole that appears quickly and grabs your attention

Examples of these can be found on many health-related websites, and are important to check out. Even if you think “It’s probably nothing”, GET IT CHECKED OUT ANYWAY. Even now, I have a standing appointment with a dermatologist next month to get another suspicious blotch on my skin dealt with. And I’ll be honest, it’s scary, it sucks, and it hurts. But if it is something that could save my life, then you know I’m going to do it!

As for your need for a tan (because I am not entirely cruel) I suggest two options.

1.) Fakey tan. There are so many good brands that don’t make you oompa-loompa orange. I’ve gotten good feedback on the Neutrogena and Jergens brands. And ladies, if you are tanning because you think your boyfriend will dig it, I can 100% guarantee that he won’t be able to tell the difference between “tan” you and “regular” you. 

2.) Embrace the paler you! English rose is hot right now. Think Keira Knightley, Rachel Weisz, Emma Watson beauty. Not bad, right? I’d like to look like that. 

Enjoy the sun. Enjoy your freckles (they’re my favorite feature). Just remember to keep it SPF’d like whoa, and that tanning beds lead to a lot of unnecessary troubles.

 

When I Grow Up

When I was a young girl, I wanted to grow up to be the following things:

*A dancer

*An actress

*A veterinarian

*A mermaid

*A fairy

Life deals cards accordingly as we get older, and it becomes clear we can’t possibly hold down all these professions. In fact, I have had way too many jobs I didn’t like. But the other day it suddenly hit me, what I can be when I grow up that encompasses all of these dreams, minus mermaid and veterinarian.

When I grow up, I want to be like Kylie Minogue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Singer. Actress. Dancer. Showgirl. Fairy (in Moulin Rouge, she’s the embodiment of their absinthe trip, which is quite a compliment when you think about it). Cancer survivor. Powerhouse.

And besides, I would like to be adorable and talented and stylish. And I hang out with enough gay men that I’m sure they could teach me how to be fabulous. I can be disco, I swear. Just give me a chance!