myhell.com

I’ve been feeling like such an ass lately. And when I say "lately" I mean all the time, but especially today.

It's all myspace.com's fault.

There was a time when I had no interest in myspace. I only joined so I could check out my roommate's band's site (Check it out here). I had nothing on my site. It just sat there, empty, for months.

I was happy then.

But now...now, my myspace is filled with mypictures, myinterests, myfeelings. Now, I am using myspace. I am a myspace user. And what's worse, I am liking it.

I've been getting a lot of comments and messages on myspace lately from far-away friends and a few fellow Hamburg class of ’98 people, who, until recently, I thought were dead.

It’s been pretty cool catching up and I was really glad most of those people weren’t dead.

This is when I realized myspace is pretty all right. It’s the lazy way to stay in touch and see what people are up to. You don’t have to write an e-mail to somebody about a toilet in Taiwan when you can tell the whole world by posting a picture of it on myspace. That's lazy. I like lazy. I am all over lazy. And I am now all over myspace.

But today. Today, I have taken the myspace thing to a whole new level.

My friend Stephanie started her own myspace page recently. She invited me to look at her site and now we’re also friends in the myspace world.

For those unfamiliar, you can see pictures of people’s chosen myspace friends on each person’s site. One of Stephanie’s friends is Zach Braff, the actor of Garden State and Scrubs fame.

This struck me as bizarrely funny. I mean, he’s famous. He lives in LA. He makes movies. And yet, he is on myspace. And he is Stephanie’s friend.

So I checked out Zach Braff’s myspace page. I’m a fan of his work, I think he has immaculate taste in music, so why not?

I read about his new movie coming out. I read his blog. I listened to the music playing on his site. I looked at the movie trailers. I determined that I want to see said movie. I determined that I am a sucker for convoluted advertising. All good stuff.

Then I crossed the line: I requested to be Zach Braff’s myspace friend.

At last count, the man has 37,461 friends. What am I thinking? It’s like I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hi. I really like you.” I wouldn’t do that if I saw him on the street, why is it acceptable online?

But I did it. Against my better judgment, I did it. I did it and I was accepted as his friend. It made me giddy. Zach Braff accepts me. I am friend number 37,461.

My life is pretty full, pretty fulfilling. I have a lot going for me, a lot to keep me busy, a lot to do, as they say. So why in God’s name does being on Zach Braff’s friends list make me feel complete?

I don’t know. But now I want him to read my blog.

It's a small world, man.

The Internet has amazing stuff. No wonder it changed the world. Check this out:

loc.alize.us - Explore your world through everyone's eyes

This site morphs a satellite view of the world with Google maps and photos from flickr.com. You can search for a place, see it in a bird's eye view, find the street its on and see the photos of that place that people have uploaded on flickr.com.



To the left is a screen shot from the site. It's the satellite view of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. If you would go to the site and click on the little blue icon, you'd see the picture below. I have that same picture in my Taiwan photo album, but without those people in it.

The site isn't perfect of course. I wanted to put a picture of my street on this blog, but the satellite image didn't zoom that close to my small, backwards town. And depending where you are, sometimes the Google Map can't zoom in that far either.



I'm actually thankful for that. This site could take stalking to a whole new level.

Sucker Status: Confirmed.

You know that ridiculous rectangular nail buffer I bought a few weeks ago? The one that made my nails shiny and changed my life? Well, it's also made my nails even weaker and brittle and they keep friggin breaking, no, ripping off, and freakin hell it hurts. Jesus friggin boom.

...

I don't know what that says about my theory of world peace and shiny nails.

Adventures of Batboy

There was a bat in the front lobby area at work today. My brave co-worker Ryan tried to make him leave, armed only with a broom, an umbrella and a Halloween mask.

Ryan's plan was to shoo the bat out the front door, held open by another brave co-worker, Keegan, who is also my brave immediate supervisor.

But Ryan and his broom only managed to squish the bat, holding him hostage against the wall. The bat squeeled horribly. Brave Ryan ran, Brave Keegan shivered and shook the door and Brave Onlookers high-tailed it back up the stairs.

Meanwhile, the bat hid behind the emergency exit sign above the door. He's still there.

The battle in photos:




Ryan and Keegan descend the stairs to find the bat.







Ryan battles the bat.









I smile bravely for the camera and then run up the stairs as soon as the bat starts squeeling.




Batboy (aka Ryan) ascends the stairs, badly beaten by the bat, but still exuding greatness in his mighty bat-fighting garb.

Hummus anyone?

So the other day I get this photo e-mailed to me. I glanced at the thumbnail photo in the e-mail, and I could see it was a nice, homey group shot of my friends who traveled with me to Taiwan and our beloved James, who organized our month-long trip flawlessly. Good times, nice photo.

But I couldn't find myself in the picture. I knew I was supposed to be there. I remembered standing there. So I clicked on it and opened it up nice and big on my computer screen.

And there I was, right in the front row. In all my chubby glory.

See, when I first glanced at it, I had unconsciously dismissed the short, portly chick in the front row as not me. But it was me.

Why didn't anybody tell me I was portly!?

I know what you're thinking. Something along the lines of, "Shut up Mandy."

But you don't understand.

That picture is the most unflattering picture I've ever seen. I look really wide, like I'm standing in front of a fun-house mirror, the kind that make you look short and stout and flattened. But there's no mirror my friends. The pixels don't lie.

I thought about posting the photo on here so you could see what I mean, but I just can't do it.

Instead, I'm ordering a print of it and putting it on my fridge so every time I go to get something to eat, I will see my wide-angle ass and be motivated to eat something tasteless and therefore healthy.

You think I'm kidding.

That picture has motivated me to lose weight like nothing else. It's good because now I have some willpower. It's lunch time, there are brownies in the breakroom, and I don't even see them. On the other hand, it's bad because now I'm obsessed. I turn down invitations for fun things in order to go to the gym. I rip crazy diet plans out of magazines and impulsively "call the number on my screen" to order $50 worth of Yoga Booty Ballet DVDs. I eat salads when I go out. I eat red peppers for dessert. My new favorite food is hummus.

I am eating hummus, people. Why? Because the magazine diet told me to.

On the bright side, hummus is pretty good. Plus, my lose-weight obsession has led me to some really easy recipes that are low fat and taste good too. And I'm actually cooking, which makes me seem civilized.

I used to subsist on boxed mac and cheese and frozen pizza. They were not low-fat and they tasted AWESOME. And there were no civilized cooking skills necessary. Mac and cheese and frozen pizza were my best friends. They're the enemy now.

They are venerable foes, but I will beat them. And I will beat them with hummus.

This is...

...so much fun it's ridiculous.

Create your own South Park character

My character is a self-portrait. Only within the world of fine art can I possess the hair and eye-patch I've always longed for. sigh.


Many thanks to Dan Saytar for introducing me to this fine website.

Local goon turns into old hag

Yesterday was my first official day of being old.

The day started out normal enough. I woke up to the radio, like I usually do. I searched blindly for the snooze button, like I usually do, face still firmly buried in my pillow, arm flailing. I fell back asleep, like I usually do. The alarm went off again.

Then things went awry.

I tried to reach behind my headboard to once again smash the snooze, but I couldn't. A horrible shocking pain ran from the side of my neck down into my shoulder. I immediately dropped back to the bed. I thought I was dying and moaned accordingly.

I laid there on my back, helpless, unable to move. Every time I tried to lift my head from the pillow, the monstrous pain was back. So I moved sideways, gingerly rolling and wincing to my side and resting the side of my head in the molded hole of my fancy new ergonomic pillow.

It worked! It didn't hurt! I laid there for a while, thinking my magic pillow would cure me.

It didn't.

I managed to get up though, using a rolling technique that I plan to patent.

For the rest of the day, I moved and walked around like Frankenstein, stiff and moaning. I couldn't even hold my head straight; it was tilted at a slight angle all day, like a dog that doesn't understand. I couldn't turn my head at all. I could barely lift my left arm. When I wanted to turn to look at something, I moved my entire upper body with it.

It was so bad, I decided to skip my hip-hop dance class last night. (Yes, I am taking a hip-hop dance class. I refuse to explain myself further.) I can't dance when I'm healthy, let alone when I'm paralyzed from the neck up.

So I called my sister. She's taking the class with me and I thought she'd wonder where I was if I didn't show up. So I called her and explained my pain.

"I can't move," I said.

"Did you take Advil?" she asked.

"I've been sucking it down all day," I said.

I told her how it started with my snooze button.

"I'm such a freak," I said.

"No," she said. "You're old."

I laughed it off. I've been told I'm old before. Old age is a joke, everybody knows that. I'm only 26 and I have a bad back and a stiff neck. See, age jokes are funny! HA HA!

But then I tried to turn my head and the pain made me see stars. And I realized, this is unlike anything I've ever experienced. This is no ordinary pain. This is geriatric pain.

Suddenly, other geriatric instances flashed back to me:

My clothes don't fit me well anymore, which means my metabolism is slowing.
The bags under my eyes are getting deeper and darker.
And I simply don't understand why that song "Promiscuous Girl" is popular. It's not a good message to give to young girls and the music is crap, if you can call that music.

All of these observations point to one thing: I need life insurance now due to my inevitable early demise.