I See A 6th-Grade Art Project.

The doctor draws two circles and says, "What do you see?"
The guy says, "Sex."
So the doctor draws trees. "What do you see?"
The guy says, "Sex."
The doctor draws a car, owl, "Sex, sex, sex."
The doctor says to him, "You are obsessed with sex."
The guy replies, "Well you're the one drawing all the dirty pictures."
-From What About Bob?

Noam Cohen wrote a really interesting article in the NYT about the ten inkblot plates from the famous Rorschach test being made public on Wikipedia. A doctor posted the ten plates on the website and included the common answers people use when asked to describe what they see, upsetting many experts who believe this destroys the purpose of the test. Some doctors fear that once people know the common answers, it will influence how they respond during testing.

I wasn't sure how I felt about this. The power of suggestion is strong, so I suppose if you had an idea ahead of time of what you should be looking for, it might skew the deeply-rooted mysteries of your subconscious, thus stunting your potential for overall growth and understanding. But it seems that most people just see bats, butterflies, or a face. I wouldn't exactly call that a cheat sheet. In fact, I think that's what's referred to in Jungian psychology as, "A-Doyeee."

Shout Out.

I have to hand it to the cotton candy vendors at sporting events for their vocal efforts. If there is one snack that you don't need to announce, it's cotton candy. When people see you walking around a stadium with 65 individually wrapped bags of cotton candy on your head, there's very little wiggle room for interpretation. It really takes a special type of person to carry around the most obvious thing in the world and still feel the need to yell about it.

Business Decisions Should Not Be Made At 2 A.M.

Professional golfer Phil Mickelson has reportedly put in an offer to buy 105 Waffle House establishments for 20.2 dollars in cash and later payments. Wait, I guess it's $20.2 million. Million?! Have Phil and his business associates ever been inside a Waffle House? They might want to check their math.

America has a long, proud history of serving the completely wasted. Members of The First Continental Congress were known to frequent Denny's restaurants late at night to discuss British economic sanctions and how crazy it is that you can't know what a strawberry tastes like to other people. While eating his fourth Moons Over My Hammy sandwich, Patrick Henry was famously quoted as saying, "Does my hand look weird to you?"

Waffle House became synonymous with drunk-feeding when it introduced the most disgusting list of preparation techniques for hash browns the world has ever seen:
Traditional
Scattered & Smothered
Scattered, Smothered & Covered
Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked

"Now are these how the browns are served, or how they'll end up?"

One time at a Waffle House in Florida, our waitress was wearing a button that said "I'm #2."
It sort of gave us an idea ahead of time, what we should be expecting.

My hometown is famous for a grocery store and a menu item known as the Garbage Plate, so I'm not judging here. Building a successful business on a food item that includes the word GARBAGE in its name is the reason I truly do believe that anything is possible in America. But buying 105 Waffle Houses is like buying 105...I don't know. I actually can't think of a worse example of something to buy. It's just a really bad idea.

Um, Not For Anything...

But I totally invented this! I called it Urban Glide, and yes, I did envision long ski-like skates to be worn, but come on! Same basic idea! Ugh, Nordic Walking! Why didn't I think to use Nordic? Everything sounds more official with "Nordic" in front of it.

Honestly though, I've had this idea since college. Because Syracuse is so effing cold, I used to try to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. My eye froze shut once on a walk to class. I'm not kidding. But, as you might imagine, running everywhere was hard to play-off.
-Why were you sprinting around like an idiot on the quad today?
-What? That wasn't me.

I found that if I held on to the excess material hanging from my backpack straps, I could use those as pole-type devices, swinging my arms as I walked, and thus increasing my normal walking speed. I wasn't running, I was gliding. Add in a nice layer of ice and I could literally slide from class to class. In the spring I always thought to myself, OK, some sort of skate should be involved here. And then I did nothing about it.

And now, years later, someone has stolen my idea about swinging your arms as you walk, and has thought to use actual poles instead of backpack straps, but same basic principle really, except that the poles have technology, design, and a trade association on their side, and mine were straps of nylon connected to a book bag. Whatever. I thought of it first.

Sisters Don't Shake Hands, Sisters Gotta Hug.

I think my mom looks like Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Please Return Your Seat To The Upright Position, And Stop Eating Your Poop.

Pet Airways, the first ever all-pet airline, made its first flight yesterday.

Here's how I imagine things went:

At check in:
Mr. BooBoo, has anyone asked you to carry anything in your bag for today's flight?
(panting)
Mr. BooBoo? Do you know what's in your bag, sir?
(panting)
Mr. BooBoo, I'm going to need you to come with me sir.

After takeoff:
Ladies and gentlemen this is your Captain speaking. Yes it is! Who's the Captain?! Huh?! I'm the Captain, yes I am! Who does the Captain love?! Who does the Captain love?! (cough) We'll be climbing up to our maximum altitude shortly. Sit back, feel free to pee on something, enjoy the flight.

During the flight:
Ma'am while the light is on I'm going to need you to sit in your seat. Siiiit. Sit. Siiiiit down. Sit down please. Sit. Good girl! Hey! Sit please!

And when they landed half of the bags had been torn or eaten.

I'm only basing these scenarios on the last few domestic flights I've taken.

i(don't care)phone.

My older sister has joined the masses. Soon she will be tapping at every surface she encounters waiting for a menu to appear, her attention span will shrink to milliseconds, and she will become one of those people who constantly say things like, "Oh, I can look that up for you!"
Sometimes people just throw a question out there to start conversation. They don't actually care about Guam's major export. Put your phone away.

Remember when you used your phone to call people? Remember when the world clock function seemed freaking amazing?
-Hey look what time it is in Jakarta!
-Do you know someone in Jakarta?
-No. But cool, right?

And a few years ago when my dad lost his cell he went into an impassioned speech about how there should be a place where you always left your phone so you could never lose it.
"There should be a holder on the wall where you have to keep your cell phone. So every day, it's there, right on the wall, waiting for you."
"You mean like the phone, dad?"

When cell phones were first going mainstream the only way we could convince my grandma to get one was by telling her that her car could break down at any moment. That was a big selling point for the first cell phones. Your car could break down! Then what?!
My grandma bought a new car before she bought a cell phone.

The cell phone used to just be a convenient way to get in touch with people. Now your phone can know more about you than anyone in your contact list. You're just a phone, little iphone. You're not allowed in my head. Plus, as something of a time-waster savant, I'm offended by all these high-tech downloads that help regular people kill time. Talk to yourself in the mirror, stop downloading restaurant apps.

Obviously, there's an app for anything. Apparently people even exercise off their iphones. 6-minute apps? Soon there will be iphones with elliptical arm handles or apps that call you at random times to yell, "RUN!" making you drop whatever you're doing and start running.
-Excuse me, I have to take this.
-Run!
-[sprinting out of a meeting] I'm sorry! I'm on a program!

Brina was telling me about the Moron App, which is a quiz that helps you figure out how big of a moron you are. Right. If there was ever a reason for me to NOT spend 99 cents on something, it's the moron app. I LIVE the moron app.

There's even an app that uses the GPS in your phone to allow other people to see where you are. This is also called, "THE WORST IDEA IN THE WORLD App." Who in their right mind would sign up for this? If you want people to know where you are, you tell them.

It must be written somewhere in the small print of an iphone contract that as soon as you buy an iphone, you must mention it in every conversation you have for the first month. I want to invent an app that counts how many times iphone users say "iphone." Sabrina might be world champion.

Live A Little.

A newly published study suggests that calorie restriction in diets can extend lives. Mice given 30% fewer calories lived up to 40% longer and rhesus monkeys on the diet were able to avoid certain diseases associated with aging.
The older, thinner mice and monkeys were also miserable.

Scientists hope to prove that calorie restriction in human diets will have similar effects in terms of delaying aging. Although, unlike the controlled experiments, humans can eat an effing cupcake whenever they want one, so researchers believe the study may be flawed. Also, most people agree that spending 99% of your extra 10% of life shouting things like, "I'm hungry, idiot!" just isn't worth it.

It's The Climb.

I like listening to Miley Cyrus sing about struggle.

Keep on keeping on Miley.

Here Lloyd, This Helps.

With the arrival of the summer heat, so enters the makeshift fan. Magazines, newspapers, pieces of scrap paper folded in half, or the ambitious frenetic waving of your own hand in front of your face--anything that can create a slight whisper of a breeze for your head. Which, when you think about it, is always where you're super hot, right? What's the one thing people are constantly saying during the summer? "Ugh, I need to cool down my face."
Exactly.

One of my favorite forms of people-watching involves large groups of people using whatever booklet they've been given as a fan. Graduations are great for this. So are theatres with weak air-conditioning. It's sort of an uncoordinated piece of performance art. Some genius thinks, "Hey, it's hot in here." and starts waving his program in front of his face. Others catch on, and agree. Eventually all you'll see is flapping programs. I love it.

Of course, wherever there's a makeshift fan, there's always the person who chimes in with, "You know, that's just going to make you hotter." These people weigh in like they've conducted numerous scientific tests, dropping phrases like "energy exertion" and "heat creation."
These are also the same people who 3-minutes later, start to fan themselves with their Playbill.

No one knows if it works, and honestly, no one really cares. When it's hot and there's no breeze outside, fanning yourself with whatever you happen to be holding is just the universal response to the heat. It's the pee-dance of the summer.

Michael Jackson.

I read an article a few weeks ago in which a chef described the importance of food by saying that "everyone has a story about food." I loved this because it's so true. Ask anyone you meet and chances are, they can give you a detailed food memory. They can probably give you ten.

I think the same holds true for Michael Jackson's music. You'd be hard-pressed to find a person of our generation anywhere in the world who doesn't have at least one strong memory tied to a Michael Jackson song. That's pretty amazing if you think about it. Plus, probably every person who has ever closed their bedroom door and turned on some music, has tried to moonwalk. That's what I call a legacy.

These are my top 5 Michael Jackson memories:
-My cousin Jonathan showing up to Christmas one year when we were kids wearing a red leather jacket and a sparkly glove. Without exaggeration, I was so jealous I almost started crying.
-Listening to the "Bad" tape on my first Walkman.
-Pretending I wasn't terrified by the Thriller video.
-Michelle Garren busting out the Thriller dance every time we drank in college. The first time I saw her do it is in my Top 10 Hardest Laughs list.
-Dancing around my great-grandma's basement with my sisters and my cousins, trying to do the moonwalk. Who are we kidding? I'm still trying to do the moonwalk.

Oh, Ina.

I was watching a documentary on PBS about chickens and one of the stories was about a farmer who thought he killed a chicken but it ended up living without its head --for like, a long time. Eventually that headless chicken (named Mike) toured with side shows and became sort of famous. Someone they interviewed said, "And that chicken traveled all the way to London, England."

I'm serious.

If the documentary hadn't been on PBS, I definitely would have thought it was a joke. I get the same feeling when I watch The Barefoot Contessa on The Food Network. It really seems like a perfect parody of a cooking show, but it's on a channel dedicated to cooking shows, so it's probably just about food. However, there are so many ridiculous subplots on Barefoot that I can't help but think that Ina Garten is a satirical genius who has us all fooled.

Ina always speaks like she's popped a few muscle relaxants, so no matter how many people she's having over for dinner she keeps repeating things like, "How easy is that?" or "Who wouldn't like that?" as she slowly floats around her kitchen making coq au vin and setting the table using some kind of whimsical theme. "I need to go to the store and get sailboat rope for the table."

When I cook I start by opening a bottle of chef's juice and then swear a lot.

Ina and her husband Jeffery have an incredibly weird relationship that centers around Paris, what Jeffery likes to eat, awkward kissing scenes, and celebrating benchmark moments in Jeffery's life. Apparently Jeffery is the most wonderful man in the world despite the fact that he can never quite get off his ass to make his own sandwich. Jeffery has 30,000 favorite meals and Ina makes some version of them for seriously any occasion, while he stays in his study doing whatever it is he does. "Today is Tuesday and when we lived in Paris, Jeffery always loved Tuesdays. So I thought, what better way to celebrate Tuesday morning than to surprise Jeffery with Beef Bourguignon for breakfast? Now who wouldn't like that?"

Her Hamptons lifestyle keeps me glued. Running errands consists of going to three over-priced speciality food markets and then stopping at the beach to drink a split of Veuve. I like when she calls a friend and tells them to pick up one random thing before a party. Those completely planned scenes are amazing.
-Oh hi Ina!
-Hi! Listen, can you pick up a jar of jam?
-Jam? Sure.
-Thanks! Actually, I'll make my own jam. Can you pick up a case of Grand Marnier?
-A case? Sure.
-Oh, you know what, Jeffery has a case in his study. Can you buy 5 throw pillows for the table?

And then every episode ends with a dinner party where the guests laugh maniacally at nothing. Watch for it. It's actually really scary.

Not everyone is a fan though. Someone on Youtube described different clips from her show like this:
"Ina Garten shows where her stupid friend will be staying."
"Ina's stupid old friend tries to take over The Barefoot Contessa."
"Ina and her stupid friend have a midnight snack and claim that it doesn't count."

But if you're bored and making dinner anyway, it doesn't hurt to pretend you're Ina while doing it. Make up an elaborate backstory about why Jeffery loves frozen veggie burgers, call a buddy to have them pick up 3 organic peaches, and put something that doesn't belong on a dinner table on the dinner table.

How bad can that be?

That Was Fast.

Suggestions for speed-dating:

1) As soon as the clock starts say, "Staring contest. Ready, Go!" and then bug out your eyes while keeping a straight face.

2) Go on six-minute mini dates. Actually run out of the speed dating venue, walk down the street laughing, sit on a park bench, eat an ice cream cone, and then run back to the venue to do it all over again with the next person. It'd be like a movie montage date. Note: Did you ever notice that relationship montages in movies ALWAYS have a scene with ice cream cones? Movies would have us believe that we can't really know someone until we've seen them eat something with sprinkles.

3) Wear a prom dress. (Nessa's idea)

4) Share something about yourself and then randomly shout out, "You don't know me!"

5) Use a memorable handshake. I suggest the ennie-meanie hand clap routine that ends with "ochi cochi liverochi, we are friends."

Or, do none of the above. I don't know.

Manners.

Have you ever bumped into a mannequin and then apologized to it?

What About Bob? The Musical.

I'm not the best person to comment on the stage. My favorite Broadway moment involves a pre-show party for Mary Poppins where Nessa enjoyed one too many complimentary cocktails and proceeded to pass out during the first number. She finally woke up just as Mary Poppins was flying around the theatre on wires and her exaggerated facial expression of confusion, headache, and fear was just about the funniest thing I'd ever seen. Then she went back to sleep.

But after watching the Tony Awards last night I've decided to turn What About Bob? into a musical. Obviously, anything can be turned into a musical--Next To Normal is a rock musical about depression and drug abuse. Pardon me if I don't tap my toe during the chorus. Reminds me of the wonderfully catchy show tunes from that musical about Fibromyalgia. But movies on stage seem to do quite well, and I think What About Bob? would be awesome. The book is basically written, I just have to work in the musical numbers. Here are a few:
-I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful
-Baby Steps
-New Hampshire?!
-The fam
-A vacation from my problems.
-I sail now?
-He can borrow my slicker
-Tourettes
-Good Morning America is here
-Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic... and so am I
-Death Therapy

I'd see it anyway.

I Don't Want To Tell You How To Do Your Job.

But if I were a musician I would introduce every song by saying, "And it goes a little something like this."

I used to think that if I were a drummer I would start every song with a verbal count-off while hitting the sticks like, "One, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten... to like 65, just to see how long I could go before people started to get mad. But I've decided that "And it goes a little something like this" is a line almost exclusive to musicians and really shouldn't be wasted.

Just think of how many people can't use that opening line while working.
-Surgeons
-People designing bridges
-Trial Attorneys
-Accountants
-Pharmacists
-Pilots (except On Southwest because they always make jokes like that. I prefer my air travel to be joke-free.)
-And basically anyone who uses some sort of laser on the job.

I would probably attend every live performance of a drummer who opened each show like this:
"Thank You! I'd like to start with a song I wrote called 3,032. And it goes a little something like this. One, two, one, two, three, four, five..."

Killable Hours.

I've wasted most of my day watching this.

Greek To Me.

So this happened:

-Hey, can I get three chicken souvlaki pitas to go with roasted potatoes and a greek salad?
-3 pitas with potatoes and 1 greek salad. Anything else?
-Actually, a greek salad for all three pitas. Roasted potatoes and a greek salad for each pita.
-You want potatoes and a salad with all of them?
-Yeah, thanks.
-But the pitas only come with one side.
-That's fine.
-So which do you want?
-Both. For all three.
-But you can only have one side.
-Right, I get that. Sorry. This is kind of funny. [girl not laughing.] So it's 3 pitas with a side of potatoes and then 3 side salads.
-I'll have to charge you for the salads.
-I understand that.
-OK. 3 pitas each with potatoes as a side and 3 salads but not as the sides.
-Wait, what? Now I'm confused. I do want side salads. Did you say that?
-But not as your sides. I'm charging you extra.
-Right, OK.
-And did you want roasted potatoes for all 3 pitas because they actually come with french fries.

And then my head exploded.

First Impressions.

Someone who met my mother for the first time over the weekend described her as "a rebel with a gentle kindness."  That has to be the best description ever, and if you know my mom, it really does sum her up perfectly.

It'd be nice to make such a good first impression.

I remember being introduced to a new person at work one time and upon meeting me, she turned to my boss and said, "I see what you're saying. Long arms."

Drop The Basket Yogi.

Congress completed a bill yesterday that will help protect credit card customers from interest rate hikes and rate increases on already existing balances.

"It's great," said a man I made up solely for the purposes of this post. "I feel safer already."

The bill also included a provision to allow people to bring loaded guns into wildlife refuges and national parks. Seriously. It's in the same bill. When reached for comment about this addition, a moose from Denali National Park said, "Well, shit."

I thought the whole idea behind credit card reform was to put an end to those huge surprises that show up when you open your bill.

zing.