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| Recipe for: Kettlecorn
Prep/Cook time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
1/2 cup unpopped popcorn kernels
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Directions:
Get a nasty craving for kettlecorn while working from home.
Notice hurricane-like weather outside, abandon any notions of going to
Safeway to buy some. Remember newfound interest in cooking, be
reassured by success of teriyakki chicken, butter cake, various
cookies. Then remember the "peanut butter fudge" incident and
momentarily reconsider, but regain your courage as kettlecorn craving
grows worse. Look up kettlecorn recipe on the internet and obtain
the necessary ingredients from the pantry. Substitute a package
of microwave movie theater popcorn for cup of kernels, because who has
a jar of unpopped kernels lying around the house? Pour vegetable
oil into the bottom of large saucepan. Wonder if you should have
decreased the amount of oil as the microwave popcorn already contains
oil and butter. Screw it. Add sugar and microwave popcorn,
cover, and turn on the heat to medium-high. Check email for words
of encouragement from boyfriend, but find none. Watch saucepan in
delight as tiny kernels drenched in oil begin to pop into fluffly
popcorn. Wonder if this is what it is like to experience the
miracle of birth. Shake saucepan often as requested in the recipe
in order to keep oil from burning. Seriously consider abandoning
all forms of employment to pursue career as domestic goddess.
Grow slightly concerned as you notice the popped kernels drowning in
oil while the other kernels are waiting to pop. Shake saucepan
desperately. Feel heart skip a beat as fluffy white
children-of-the-corn begin to turn brown. Watch stray squirt of
grease miraculously jump through the lid and burn your forehead two
days before Valentine's Day. Run away from the kitchen until you
hear the popping slow; remove saucepan from the heat. Remove lid
and, using ladle, scrape sticky brown mass from sacepan and let cool
until the apartment no longer smells like burning. Try to salvage
a few light-brown pieces; suppress the urge to vomit. Cry.
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| 
Amy Sedaris- Horse Girl
After my friend Jessica sent me the link to this video, I started thinking, why do many young girls go through a "horse phase"? You know what I'm talking about: that time in a female's life when her body begins to change and suddenly she looks like a horse. Or, perhaps more universally, that prepubescent obsession with all things horse-y.
There was this one girl in middle school who had a bad case of Horse. She talked about them all the time, drew pictures of them during class, and smelled like a rotten mixture of hay, manure, and general lameness. Now, I was not exactly the "Queen Bee" in middle school, or even the "Worker Bee" or the "Indentured Servant Bee" for that matter, but I knew enough not to make my situation worse by describing my dream date as a rugged Palomino.
But even I was not immune from the bite of Horse Obsession. I may or may not have owned a series of horse-themed young adult books that I read approximately 7,345,679 times before they turned to dust and fell apart in my hands. There was also the time that I actually rode a horse at my friend's birthday party, which was possibly the best fifteen minutes of my life until the horse went ape-shit and tried to crush me against a tree.
My own theory is that girls of a certain age yearn for the freedom and strength that these four-legged creatures embody. Or maybe they're just looking for a friend who is not going to stab them in the back, because is is difficult (although not impossible) to grasp a knife with hooves.
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| A few weeks ago, my roommate and I decided that it was time to move the trash bins indoors. It had been about three days past pick-up, and honestly we would have waited longer but I needed to throw away a large bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper and we were afraid that someone steal our bin if we did not reclaim it.
This exact situation had happened about a month ago when someone decided to liberate our blue recycling bin over by the Safeway, where apparently the bin was attempting to create a new life for itself among the homeless individuals who hang out there. I was like, "Recycling bin, what do you think you're doing?" and it told me to f*** off. But sooner or later it got hungry, and I got a phone call at like three in the morning to come and pick it up, and against my better judgement I did.
So we walk downstairs and open the gate and realize that once again we have only one bin instead of two, and the remaining bin is not empty. It has a large styrofoam crate inside of it. At just that moment my roommate spots the blue bin down the block, so we leave the trash bin and go to reclaim Ol' Blue.
Now here's where things get good: as we walk back up the street we notice a man in a business suit rifling through our trash bin. I shout, "Hey! That's our trash!" and he pulls the styrofoam crate out of our bin and then escapes into a car that was waiting a few yards away.
I don't know what was in the crate, but I can guess: pot, coke, crack, boom, pow, poof. And I don't know who the guy in the suit was, but Jesus, why did you have to choose our trash bin as the site of your shady exchange? It's too young for a life of crime. I mean, sure, we have our arguments, but basically it's a good bin with a bright future.
So these days we have a curfew: no leaving the bins outside for more than a day after trash pick-up. There are complaints, but I think the bottom line is that the bins like a little discipline-- it shows that we care. And if you're out there, Mr. Shady Business Suit, if I ever see you around my bins again, I swear to God I will cut you. I will cut you with bottles of Diet Dr. Pepper and whatever else we have lying around the kitchen in piles. | | |
| I am attempting to write a letter to my grandmother in Spanish. This is a terribly painstaking process because 1) despite several years of language instruction (and blood ties to the culture) I speak Spanish like a fetus and 2) The Catholic Saint-themed greeting card I am using seems far too serious for your average how's-it-goin' message. Plus, as the back of the greeting card informs me, Gabriel is the patron saint of postal workers, teachers, parents, and THE COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY. Forget the mailman: lets keep Gabriel happy so I can get better cable reception.
The problem is that I can no longer think in Spanish instead of English. Thus various idioms, grammatical rules, and vocabulary are being mistranslated with terrible and occasionally hilarious results. Currently the letter reads like this:
I want you Granny,
How are you? I am very well. You are a stranger to me. I live in San Francisco in an apartment with three of my friends from the college. I like the apartment, but it feels very cold in San Francisco! I want to visit you very soon. My best friend will marry herself soon in the July. I want to visit you in the July. I am a teacher and I like God. St. Gabriel is Catholic! He is also an archangel. Please tell him not to scissor my cable.
Kisses,
Marie | | |
| My roommate and I had this great idea for a Halloween costume: going together as an iPod commercial. You know the commercials I'm talking about-- the ones where a silhouette dances against a neon background.
I bought a piece of neon pink poster board and made this bitchin' iPod, complete with a click wheel and screen display. And then I painted my roommate black.
It worked great when we were walking down the Castro together, with both of us dancing around. People stopped us on the street to tell us how creative we were. Then there was a shooting in the Castro and we had to run in order to escape being stampeded by the mob. Navigating the increasingly frantic crowd became nearly impossible with the iPod, so I had to abandon it on the side of the road.
Unfortunately, without our prop we had no costume. So we spent much of the night running through the streets of San Francisco desperately trying to get back to our apartment. Meanwhile, strangers saw my roommate in blackface in apparently the most politically incorrect costume of all time and yelled, "What the f***?" | | |
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