Friday, February 20, 2009

Dude. Let's Shred.

TGIF! My friend Karolina put it most succinctly:
"I thought you might enjoy this link becuase it has three things you like in it:

MGMT
Jackson Hole
Snowboarding"

She was so right too! I love watching these dudes get air over fresh powder in Jackson...love, love, love it!


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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Jen is on Safari and So Can You!


My amazing roommate from college, Jen decided a little over 6 months ago to volunteer at an orphanage in Kenya. I'm so impressed with her for having followed through on this dream and now she's documenting her work and travels in an insightful blog, read-up at Jen Goes to Kenya.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

How Madoff Effed Me.


So I really have no idea who funds the Birthright Israel trips, or how many donors give money in order to sponsor these totally free (yes, completely gratis) trips for young Jews (under the age of 26 - and who have never been there before-) but since the collapse of the Madoff ponzi scheme, lotsa Jews are hurting. And many of those people were former donors and sponsors of the Birthright Trips, so now even I have Madoff to thank for the collapse of my summer vacation. I might still get on a trip, but they're scaling back quite a bit because of the financial hit so many have taken. My cousin and I still might get to go, but it will likely be one of the late-August-it's-so-hot-nobody-wanted-to-go-anyways trips... boo hiss!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Site of the Day: Warning this might make you feel a little ill.

I honestly don't know if people actually eat these things, but something tells me they probably do...

Please see full site below, and while I take this Oreo tower (obvi accompanied by a gallon or so of milk) to the face; some of the other creations on the site are beyond heart-attack-in-a-box proportions. They're sometimes just down right disgusting and some probably top out at around 8,000 calories. Mmmmmm

This is Why You're Fat

Bailout.

There's been an ongoing push by GOP to frame the stimulus as a pet project loaded "with pork barrel spending". Well yes, be that as if may, if you think about it, almost everything is a pet project it just depends on your values. I personally love the fact that so much money is being channelled to education, public transportation and renewable energy. I am perfectly happy to have this money ear-marked for said projects. Let's be honest, when compared to what the Bush Administration has thrown at the DoD, we're talking pennies in comparison. The GOP has been combing through the bill, as everyone should, but they've spent so much time trying to find wasteful spending, they seem to have forgotten why we need this money in the first place. The unemployment rate in America is steadily rising and yet the elements Republicans are claiming to be wasteful don't make much sense to me. They've deemed elements such as "$500 million for state and local fire stations" as wasteful spending. Why would you NOT want your local fire department to be as up-to-date as possible? I mean my local fire dept does a helluva lot more than just save kittens from trees, I would hope that they are able to have a nice facility and the most recent advances in fire protection! We're talking lives here-

The more time spent trying to discredit this effort, the more the market's failing. While I am not expecting this stimulus to be the end of this recession (I mean by now it's global), unless completely mismanaged, even these "pet projects" will be creating much needed jobs! I'm holding my breath to see how many more projects GOP pulls out and highlights just for kicks...but I kinda like seeing what they deem "unnecessary".

Monday, February 9, 2009

JIC you forgot: "I found this deficit when I showed up."

Dayum! This speech by Obama last week pretty much calls out those who are opposing the stimulus package, nicely stated by fellow blogger Jon:
"Nice blend of righteous indignation with dismissive sarcasm that actually exposes the ignorance of a lot of the critics of the bill."


Sunday, February 8, 2009

Good on paper, Bad in...yea...actually that'll never happen...

So I love being a single gal, but sometimes (like last night when every creeper at the bar decided they wanted to have an intense convo and share life stories and/or awkwardly grind up against my back) or when we decide to give someone a chance only to have an evening like the one described by a friend posted below things get a little out of hand...

So I went on a date with the "good on paper" guy. Harvard undergrad, went to private school in the DC area, grew up in Chevy Chase, in his last year of medical school. I had met him on jdate in JULY - SIX months ago. We had never met in person before tonight. He always gchatted me - I eventually deleted him from my gchat list - so he then found me on facebook chat. The last "chat" conversation we had I explained to him that my number of facebook friends had reached a dangerously low number to have extra riffraff hanging around and if he was to stay on the list, I would need to meet him or he would be deleted. As a result, he set up a date for tonight to go to trivia night at Wonderland Ballroom.

He wanted us to get there "early" (7:15) to ensure a table before the 7:30 start. As I was driving there, I was thinking - what am I getting into? The only trivia I know consists of topics found on Perez Hilton, LNS forums and the Facebook newsfeed. He, on the other hand, was really smart, not just based on his education, but based on the way he communicated on gchat and used "big words." I decided it was my best technique to blurt out that I hoped he wasn't expecting anything as soon as we met and exchanged an awkward hug. I explained that I would only be really good at "pop culture." Yes, I know, the true way to a man's heart - useless D-list celebrity knowledge, such as how many stints in rehab Kelly Osbourne has had (3).

As soon as I got past that, his presence really started to weigh in immediately followed by my "how am I going to get out of here" thoughts. Three things I initially noticed: unusually large head, unusually latino look for a Jewish boy (it was like he was Sephardi versus Ashkenazi Jewish) and unusually bad breath.

As soon as he started talking, I realized why it took him six months to contact me. He was the most socially awkward human being I had ever encountered. He was also REALLY cocky when he shouldn't be. He spent 20 minutes talking about himself, med school, Baltimore (did I mention he lives in Baltimore and drove 45 minutes for this date?), etc. He thought he was really cool and looked down upon my PR career (fair), my lack of caring about when the trivia would begin (fair) and my insistence that our trivia team name should be "we just met tonight" (unfair).

He finally absorbed that the trivia hadn't started, realized there was a second floor and led us up there. When we got up there at 7:40, the entire second floor was packed and I think he was annoyed that we hadn't realized that the trivia was occurring on this floor sooner. Only feeling partially bad that he drove 45 minutes to meet me, I got my hopes up that he would decide that it wasn't worth it to stay and we could leave. He didn't. He kind of then stood in the middle of the crowded bar not really knowing what to do. It was confusing to me. He just didn't know what to do. He was lost and couldn't make a decision. He was overwhelmed by the new situation we were in. Basically, he would not be a doctor I would want to count on.

I then took control (like I love to do). I walked up to the " stage area," grabbed some chairs piled up together (he insisted I ask permission before grabbing them - what a fool, doesn't he know I do what I want?) and carried them to the exact middle of the room to set them up. He then went to grab drinks (he gets credit for not judging my drink choice: "hard cider, if they don't have it, diet coke with lemon") and I set up the chairs in the small empty space of the middle of the room, which was clearly a fire hazard. I decided to ask the band geek group (pimply greasy haired trench coat boy, african american dwarf, round persian boy and long blonde hair giant man) to move their table slightly so I could move my chair over and wouldn't be in the middle of the room. The long blonde hair giant man then gave me a lecture. Some highlights: "We got here at SIX PM to reserve this table. Why would we help YOU when YOU got here SO late?" He ended it with "I don't mean to be an asshole or anything." I replied, "You are an asshole," with a strange bitchy monotone combination tone, which did its job of portraying how much I HATED him (and the situation I was in). He will end up alone.

Eventually, I decided to join a table: fat girl who was bossy and wanted to be the only person who wrote for the team, awkward pimply long hair glasses guy and unfortunate girl with eyes too close together who had the name, I am not making this up, "Jess." There were 7 rounds. The only round I really contributed to was the "Political Sex Scandals" round where I had to match the call girl (or boy) with the politician. I also knew the bonus question to which my answer was "full frontal male nudity." All we needed was "pornography" to win.

Also, those "drinks" he offered to get in the beginning, he never got. I don't know why. Finally after round 4 of trivia (aka hell on earth), I asked him if he was going to get the drinks. He then seemed annoyed that I asked when he had offered in the first place. They had Woodchuck Cider. I scored. It was the big moment of the night.

At the end of the night, we awkwardly hugged and he told me to drive home safe. That was it. That was 2.5 hours I will never get back. The only fortunate part was that I spent the majority of my time talking to a table of losers (the date, fat girl, glasses boy and "Jess") instead of just one loser (the date). I also enjoyed exchanging death looks with the band geek group, especially the long blonde hair giant man.

Site of the Day

Is George W. Bush President?

Friday, February 6, 2009

The District

I don't know about you, but I cannot stand MTV's "The City" and yet, living with 5 other gals I find myself each week staring transfixed by the idiocy of Whitney, the snarky bitchiness that is Olivia and Jay, who's just a total douche.

And yet, Newsweek hits the nail on the head with "The District", this parody even gets the "long meaningful looks" that end each scene of "The City"...ch-ch-check it!

I love Jesus, but I drink a little.

Ellen, I love your show and I'm regular...I mean, a regular watcher.
Just watch this clip. It's awesome.
Keep on keeping on-

Sorry Mom!

Another amazing time-suck for your day...

It should be noted though, that you should feel free to send your own stories to both these sites! God knows I should!

Sorry, Mom (I bang the worst dudes)

F%^$ My Life.

Ok so while I'd like to be purely political, sometimes there are certain things I find online that MUST be shared, such as this site...gifted to me via a coworker...
I think we'll all be able to relate. And as a result, I now follow every statement with an "FML".

For instance:

"Today, I took a picture for my photography course of a random adorable couple kissing in the snow. Later, upon closer inspection, I realized that the guy was my boyfriend. FML"
or

"Today, I found some porn videos in my parents room. I put them in and began to toss off, but as the camera moved up I realized it was my mom and my step-dad. FML"

Please see the link.

http://www.fmylife.com/