A running list of funny things that have happened to me lately

1. I saw a guy that I knew in Atlanta, who I went to the Carter Center Christmas party with.... in DC, on the metro, on my train at midnight on a Saturday night. Apparently we both live here now.

2. I have just moved to MD and the guy who works the late shift at Target already recognizes me.

Me last night checking out: Silence.
Cashier: Weren't you here last night, two nights ago?
Me: Pause. Yes.
Me (inside): SCREAMING- OH MY GOD.

3. My cousin was laughing hahaha, when we pulled up behind a car that had the plates HAHAHA.

4. As I was leaving to meet my friend for dinner, I opened the front door to exit just as my cousin was walking in = in the dark. I nearly passed out, then I screamed.

5. I bought some cheap ass panties in my efforts not to do laundry, and because it was late night at Target and I was bored. I bought the cheapest ones, which were on clearance. It turns out, when I opened them that they had been replaced with bigger, uglier, granny panties. AH! I've yet to return them, but I'm not sure what I can even tell them.

6. My aunt asked me if my laundry basket wasn't more suited for kittens or perhaps puppies.

I posted this picture because who doesn't like a cute baby?

Name Yourself

If you could re-name yourself, what would it be? Names each hold their own connotations - some trashy, some classy, others just plain....fat. I don't know why I believe these things, some of obvious, some have to do with the people that I know, and what I associate with those names, but others... completely created from my imagination. These have nothing to do with the meanings of names that you can find with a quick web search, these are just pure synesthesia.

For example: Louise to me is not a pretty name. Worse would be Louisa - who I associate to Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women. Louisa/Louise to me represents a fat lonely spinster.

Being able to name yourself is also a strange step. People are born with one name, it's interesting to see what people come up with when they create their own. Many times, their new names are linked with their actual personas. Think Portia di Rossi, whose real name is Amanda Lee Rogers. Who sounds hotter?

What I find most amusing, are Chinese people who name themselves. See, with people who do not have English as their first language, they are not hindered by only choosing names as names. Why not choose animals as names? or even create your identity as one half of a pair, for example - if you have a best friend - why not name yourself Peaches, and your friend? Cream, of course.

Watch this clip from Sexy Beijing. Make sure you watch to the end and meet Samantha.



A girl from the States goes around Beijing interviewing people their thoughts. This is her website. I think she has pretty interesting observations and she has a gift for catching people in China on video. From my experience, people in China are often loathe to be caught on video because they do not like the idea of being caught in perpetuity.... although they don't seem to have any problem with being in pictures with foreigners........ BAH. That's another article all-together.

If I could name myself, it would be Autumn.

Christine's Fall TV Watch List

I created a list of to watch tv shows and when they premiere and I thought I should share. I fully admit that I watch entirely too much televee but I can't help it. Feel free to make fun of me for what I enjoy but I love what I love and I'm not sorry. Obvi, many of these shows are at the same time and all I can say is TGFH - Thank God for Hulu!

Here we go:

ABC
Castle - Monday, Sept 21, 10.01p

FOX
*Fringe - Thursday, Sept 17, 9p
*Glee - Wednesday, Sept 9, 9p
Lie to Me - Monday, Sept 28, 9p
Dollhouse - Friday, Sept 25, 9p

NBC
Community - Thursday, Sept 17, 9.30p
30 Rock - Thursday, Oct 15, 9.30p
Heroes - Monday, Sept 21, 8p

CBS


*How I Met Your Mother - Monday, Sept 21, 8p

CW
*Gossip Girl - Monday, Sept 14, 9p

FX
*It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Thursday, Sept 17, 10p

I also can't help but love USA shows - Psych and Monk (Fridays) which are already on along with rando episodes of Project Runway (Thurs@10) on Lifetime and Top Chef: Las Vegas (Wed@9) on Bravo... oh and Bourdain (Mon@10) on Travel.

*Shows that I will need to watch day-of. The rest, I save for hulu.com, Sunday binge-watching.

My Local Wal-Mart: Cruel to Children

First and foremost, I want to tell you that this is DEFINITELY THE WAL-MART by my house. This is the Wal-mart that I've gone to in the middle of the night since high school and that I go to when I'm bored.

According to CNN via Dlisted, a man allegedly slapped a toddler at Wal-mart because she wouldn't stop crying.

I don't want to get this wrong, so I'm going to quote this man exactly: "If you don't shut the baby up, I will shut her up for you."

THIS IS INCREDIBLE. How many times have I encountered a crying baby that I've really wanted to discipline myself? Put the hurt on and teach them a lesson! RAWR!

After this strict, disciplinarian warning, he allegedly grabbed the girl and slapped her 4 or 5 times in
the face. Following this awesome act of excessive violence, "See, I told you I would shut her up."

If you look on the bottom of this photo, this is my county of original residence! (I now live in DC!) I love that Mr. Stephens, a man of Gwinnett County, has acted on his primal desires in beating up on another person's kid. Baby knows not to act out anymore. (Correct use of baby.)

And speaking of Wal-mart, have you seen www.peopleofwalmart.com? Definitely awesomely bad.

Terms of Endearment: A Critique

In the history of its uses for me, terms of endearment have come and gone. I admit, I've used darling in the recent past, as well as baby, for the occasional man.

Now, my issues with terms of endearment come when girls call other girls excessive terms of endearment. Including but not limited to: baby, babe, sweetie, honey, sweetheart, hun, all in one conversation. When I receive these endearments, instead of feeling closer to the person - I feel slightly dirty, cheap and way awkward.

There are only 2 real occasions for using the term baby, other than referring to an infant. One is sassy, like.. "NO one puts baby in a corner" or "Baby didn't know who she was talking to". The other is more condescending like.. "Ooo, baby, I'm sorry you didn't know any better." The acceptable use of baby is of course, when talking about your significant other, who you're probably sleeping with. If you sleep in the same bed, baby is fine.

The term sweetheart, when not used sincerely, such as: "What a sweetheart for ordering me that Edible Arrangement!", can normally be replaced with the word, BITCH. For example, "Sweetheart...what do you think you're doing?" - replace sweetheart with bitch, and you get what the person is really trying to say, which is "Bitch, wtf do you think you're doing?"

As for the other terms, honey, sweetie, babe - those can be used sometimes but the problem is the over-usage. An occasional, "What's wrong, sweetie?" is always appreciated, but when overused, it's just plain creepy. I stopped using babe in middle school, but perhaps that was just a personal preference. I've heard it used before satisfactorily.

Terms of endearment should be used in cases of warm comfort and a heightened sense of feeling close to your close friend, but constant use - my blog is here to warn you against just that. Please calm that shit down. I cannot handle being called several terms of endearment at once because it frankly freaks me out.

Thanks, my dear. I appreciate your time.

Jabberwocky

Faster than a cheetah, more powerful than... another cheetah.

The term Jabberwocky may seem familiar to you if you've been a fan of America's Best Dance Crew, as one of the crews had a twisted form of the name. After some research, the term Jabberwocky originated with Lewis Carroll, who mentioned it in his Through the Looking Glass. Essentially the term means nonsense and this video is greatly defines the word.

From Better of Ted on ABC, which I hope doesn't get canceled:

Drake: Breast I Ever Had

If you haven't been living under a rock this summer, then you have definitely heard Drake's song, Best I Ever Had.

What you probably haven't seen is the video. Yesterday, while surfing youtube with a friend, she showed me the video of Best I Ever Had, it's more like.. the MOST AWESOME GLORIFICATION OF HUGE NATURAL BREASTS I HAVE EVER SEEN.



Whoa. Those thangs hit you in the face, literally. AND, for the sake of all that is holy, please go to 4'06" ...................Here's a taste:

Drake: When you're out there, and they put that D on you, TAKE THAT D. Take that D like the champions you are.


OMG. I couldn't stop laughing. This is truly hilarious. If you don't have sound in the office, just promise me you'll go back home and watch it at some point. OMG.

........'You all know good and well what we can do in two minutes." BAHAHAHAHAHA!

Kim Jong's house of Ill!

Thanks to modern technology, one can learn about the world without actually having going there. Now, if you were curious, you can see the most private world of one of the world's greatest leaders in possession of women's sunglasses. According to new satellite photos, the residence of Kim Jong Il may include a sweet water slide.

Even world leaders need time to cool off.

You have to look very closely. The swirl = some Il fun!

Thank you, BBC.

The Grammar Slammer

I have to say, Stuff White People Like is right. #99 is totally my jam.

"When asking someone about their biggest annoyances in life, you might expect responses like “hunger,” “being poor,” or “getting shot.” If you ask a white person, the most common response will likely be “people who use ‘their’ when they mean ‘there.’ Maybe comma splices, I’m not sure but it’s definitely one of the two...

...Though they reserve the harshest judgment for professional, do not assume that white people will cast a blind eye to your grammar mistakes in email and official documents. They will judge you and make a general assessment about your intelligence after the first infraction."

Grammar. It's not a big deal; I hardly ever talk about it, nor did I know what an Oxford comma was until I wikipedia'd it and realized that it truly was a problem that I had considered before.

My own brand of slamming on grammatical errors comes in the form of apostrophes and spelling mistakes that should have been corrected ages ago. These mistakes are usually revealed casually, while g-chatting or from say.... album titles on Facebook.

For all intents and purposes, when one is posting photos online, please be aware that it could be acceptable to call them pics or pix but pic's, a bright flashing red light goes off in my brain. What is pic is? What is the possessive of pic?

I don't mean to judge, but subconsciously the level of respek (yeah respeK) that one previously might have had was just dropped slightly when I discovered such a glaring misprint. Stuff White People Like was totally right, I didn't mean to, but I did judge and make an assessment of intelligence based on this one error. Oops! I promise to reform my ways if you promise to think before you place your apostrophes please!

Occasionally, I see someone spell weird - wierd, but I assume that it's simply because they're typing in a hurry and simply typed too quickly and was too lazy to correct their error. Just seeing the wierd misspelled irks me. Eeck! I prefer to believe in carelessness than to even consider that someone who is beyond the age of 20 misspells weird.

Other than apostrophes and common misspellings, other basic peeves include:
their, they're and there,
affect vs. effect,
making plurals out of things that don't have plurals in a non-ironic way (sheeps),
slightly strange abbreviations of words that don't make logical sense that force me to think about what you're typing for more than a split second (frds),

[Did you just think about that one for a second? Yeah. See.]


and last but not least, people who spell grammar, grammer.

Boo.

Fashion Miss

I don't know about you, but I generally shop at the same stores based on their rotating cycles of style. You know.. for a few seasons, Gap or J. Crew might be off, so I don't buy their stuff, but eventually I do return. I have always been a fan of H&M but today, when I was browsing through their TOP 5 trends on their website, I was told these things:

UH, what? Shoulder focus? As in pads? Did you know that I used to confuse pads for the breasts for shoulder pads? Actually, I must have thought that everything was a shoulder pad, because they were so prominent in the 80s, that I still have nightmares about wearing them. Do I have prominent shoulders? Prominent enough that the only thing that I should want to pad, is my boobs.

I zoomed in on this screen shot. It is bad when I cannot distinguish between a dress and a shirt, and that the shirt may or may not have super shiny/ pointy spacesuit inspired look. Looks like I will have to pass on browsing at H&M for the next month. Consider yourself warned.

BTW, on a more positive note, H&M is going to carry a line of shoes designed by Jimmy Choo later this fall. I will definitely participate in that action. (All images captured from www.hm.com)

Apparently some people really can sleep less

According to this article in the NYTIMES, a gene was discovered that unlocks why some people only need 6 hours of sleep while the majority of people need 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep. They say that people who do normally sleep less do so with the help of alarm clocks and stimulants like caffeine, and what I think... crack.

The gene mutation is rare. Out of 70 families tested, only 1 was found to have the gene. The scientists hypothesize that this gene probably covers less than 5% of the population. If you line this up with the rich moguls and owners of conglomerates around the world, I think this probably makes sense. People who have found success really do have more hours in the day to work with!

As I recall from Diddy's recent show on looking for an assistant, he would often say, in reference to those weaker, in need of sleep - "What rhymes with tired? FIRED." Wise words, indeed.

Needless to say, I will not be working for the D- the I- the D- the D - the Y......

The Korean dude from the Hangover

Ken Jeong is his name.

He was actually a practicing physician before he starred in the Hangover, Role Models, and Knocked Up. He's kind of AWESOME.

My favorite part is him talking about his parts. When he shakes his head, his face shakes too. We love your ding dong!

GG Teaser!!

So I don't remember what blog I first saw this on, but perhaps I've seen this teaser about 25 times. I thought I'd share it with you if you haven't seen it already.




I love Blair's expression at the very end. "You're crazy." She nods.

Things I see in my car that I like

I saw this at a red light off of Jimmy Carter when I was driving to meet a friend for lunch. I saw it, did a double take, then fumbled in my huge purse for my camera. What the FUCK is this sign?


It might be awesome, except for the fact that my grandmother lives less than a mile from where this sign is posted. IS THIS FOR REAL?


Ok, what constitutes a high grade gun? and who buys high grade guns from JC BLVD? If you ever drive this way, feel free to investigate for me!

A Tribute to R. Kelly

R. Kelly feat. Nas: Did you ever think?: R&B at its glory, you can really tell that they are rolling in money because why else would Nas be dancing in nothing but pants and a heavy gold chain? That's right. That and the fish-eye lens spell RICH.



Puff Daddy feat. R. Kelly: Satisfy you. This video doesn't really show anything except the fact that Diddy used to put down really awesome songs.



R. Kelly's Fiesta: Fiesta. After the show, it's the after party, after the party, it's the hotel lobby. I'm not gonna lie, I've never gotten past the after party.