New Year, New Banner

About damn time, too! Weird Al just wasn’t working for me. This one is “gacked” (and then edited, of course) from katespade.info.

Nerdgasms 2007 Year in Review

Because I lack both the originality and the recall necessary to recount my year without the constant prompting of a meme, I have “gacked” the following from one of my Livejournal friends. Don’t ask what “gacked” means or what its etymology could possibly be. (Actually, Urban Dictionary mostly describes it as being high on cocaine or meth. Stealing only comes into it by definition #5!) I’m sure we can all agree that internet speak is complete nonsense. I hope the person who came up with “gacked” is proud of themselves. Or perhaps they were so high that they don’t even remember their linguistic innovations.

So what did I get up to in 2007? The account in this blog is certainly piecemeal, so maybe I should remedy that. Or something.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
I moved abroad. Well, not “moved” moved, but enough of a move to be a hassle. To England specifically, to get my MA.

How to Cope with 24+ Hours of Intense Family Togetherness

It’s Christmas Eve babe, and if you’re not spending it in the drunk tank you are probably spending it with your family [1]. Come to that, you are probably spending all of Christmas Day with your family too. Heck, you may even be stuck with them on the 26th, aka Boxing Day! This is the day you unpack presents from boxes, or engage in a refreshing post-holiday round of fisticuffs, or watch the big match or something. I don’t know. I’m an American and we prefer to spend the day in the department store returns line with 340, 394 of our closest friends.

Well crap Kirsten, you’re thinking. How am I supposed to cope with all this family togetherness? I’m not here to expound on that (the answer is usually booze, by the way. Booze and of course the love and Christmas spirit we all carry in our hearts, thanks to the barnyard birth of that adorable, chubby Savior approximately 1,974 years ago. Hi Mom.) but rather to offer a cautionary tale of what not to do.

When you’re spending 24-72 hours with your family you have 3 options: eat, talk or stare at a flickering screen in companionable silence. Though we tend to ignore the physics of it around Christmastime, our stomachs have a limited capacity and there is but so much conversation you can have about Aunt Ida’s goiter surgery or your cousin’s hush-hush marriage and subsequent hurried divorce from that Balinese prostitute he met over Spring Break. This leaves us with TV Christmas specials! There are some you should definitely skip. Take a nap and sleep off that sherry; there’s no need to watch Mickey and Minnie galavanting around Orlando, Florida wearing fur-trimmed costumes in 90 degree weather. Sure, the cast of High School Musical might make an appearance, but some things are just more important than Zach Efron.

Some other holiday specials you should definitely skip include:

1. The Yule Log. Honestly, there’s probably something burning in the kitchen if you really feel the need to indulge your pyromania. Or you could go somewhere with a fireplace. Santa’s not coming via the TV, kids.
2. A Christmas Carol, starring Kelsey Grammar. This was a delightful Broadway play with music that didn’t make your ears bleed and acting that didn’t make you want to die with a stake of holly through your heart and be boiled in your own pudding. Then they filmed this atrocious TV adaptation, let Kelsey Grammar pretend to sing, and ruined it forever. And how often do I say bad things about anything involving Jesse L. Martin? Approximately never. That’s how bad it is. (If you need a Dickens fix, I recommend the best Christmas Carol adaptation of all, The Muppet Christmas Carol. We’re Marley & Marley, wooooOOOOO!)
3. Hogfather. A Terry Pratchett classic. It takes 4 hours to watch. Incidentally, it also takes about 4 hours to read. I recommend going the reading route, because it’s an excellent story but a terrible movie. I just watched it yesterday. It was bad. Don’t listen to the crazy people who’ve posted IMDB reviews; they’re crazy! I guess it’s a noble attempt. I guess it was made for TV. I guess you can sort of follow what’s going on if you’ve read the book. Whatever.
4. The Christmas Shoes. I haven’t seen it, but the song makes me want to hurl so I can’t imagine that extending those 5 minutes of listening pleasure into a 2 hour movie is anything but terrible.
5. Anything on Lifetime or the Hallmark channel. Unless you want your heart warmed by tales like A Grandpa for Christmas, A Dad for Christmas or A Very Married Christmas. Definitely not recommended if you are a sentimental drunk.

I hope this guide will help you safely navigate the schmaltz-infested waters of holiday television, even though I know I haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much out there! So much of it is bad!

But do you know what is good? Most of the other stuff about Christmas like Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, Jesus and cookies. Hooray cookies. So Merry Christmas to you, and I’ll probably update in another month or two.

[1] A million bonus points if you’re an American and you get the reference. Zero bonus points if you’re from a country where they play this at last call.

An update on what I am eating.

Today I added cinnamon and chili powder to my hot chocolate, thinking I should fake some Mexican Hot Chocolate since I certainly can’t afford to buy it ready-made. I’m pretty sure there were choirs of angels singing in my kitchen. It could use a bit more chili powder, but that might be because I have A Problem. (Just as some people think that all shortcomings can be resolved with the addition of More Cowbell, I feel most cooking dilemmas can be solved by adding More Chili Powder. Or cheese. The hot chocolate certainly didn’t call for cheese.)

Cheese. That’s the other thing I’m eating a lot of. What can I say, I like to pack on the pounds before the holidays. I’ve also been eating the potato in all of its forms, and gallons of soup. English cuisine is about as varied and healthy as  any good consumer of popular culture might assume, though I’m certainly no health-nut and am coping admirably. Maybe the food is the reason why English girls seem to think clothing is a bad idea when going out at night; shivering burns more calories.

Excuse this nonsensical entry. I’m practically asleep.

I’m nerdy in the extreme, whiter than sour cream

Another new, incredibly shitty, header. The other one was too dark, but I think this one might misrepresent the type of nerdiness readers can expect. Plus you can see the pixels. Those two factors lead me to believe that this header won’t last long either.

Any nerdy images that you’d care to recommend for me?

Always protect your banana!

My computer is malfunctioning and it takes me about 20 minutes to maneuver my mouse to the point where it can accurately click anything, but this was too good not to share. It was an ad in my Gmail inbox, because Google knows me and it knows what I like. So this ad was selected especially for me, as it were. That just makes it even better.

http://www.safebanana.com/

From the FAQs:

Q: Bananas are not all the same size and shape so how can the Banana Guard fit them all?”

A: The Banana Guard was specially designed to fit the majority of banana sizes. Highly curved bananas can be slightly straightened without harm to fit the Banana Guard. Curved, straight, big and small bananas will usually fit inside the Banana Guard keeping them safe at all times.

It’s pretty much as great as it sounds.

And I wonder why people find my blog with pornographic search terms.

Wahunsonacock wore WHAT?!?

The title of this entry is the title I wish I could give my first essay of grad school. Unfortunately in England, or perhaps just in the University of Leicester Department of Museum Studies, we have to title our essays with the question that was set. Thus my title will be: ‘Choose one object now in a museum. Describe, analyse and critically discuss the object’s biography and social life since its production.’

Somehow it just lacks snazz in comparison.

The object I’m doing is this little beauty, aka ‘Powhatan’s Mantle’, an object that is so exquisitely documented that it is referred to with quotation marks in half of the official literature. I saw it in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and became kind of obsessed with it, mostly because I’d never heard of it before and the way it’s presented in the museum is as if it’s 100% real, no doubt about it, Powhatan sooo totally wore this like OMG. I was originally doing an essay where I was grappling with the big questions like ‘What is material culture?’, but then I saw that I could do this and immediately reverted back to academic type. I get to write an essay about cabinets of curiosity and cultural imperialism and Jamestown. If only I could have worked Catch-22 in there somewhere (I admit, that would have been a long-shot) we might have hit all the essay g-spots.

I think it’s time for a new Nerdgasms banner. I’m sure I only think this because I need something else to do to procrastinate now that I’ve written this entry. Still, stay tuned. Or just come back in a month, which seems like a more efficient use of your time.

Edit: Or you could just look now, as apparently I felt compelled to change it immediately. It’s a bit dreary, but yay cabinets of curiosity!

Search Term Inversion

Given the two search-terms most commonly used to find this blog (why, God? Why?) I’d like to return the favor to teh internets by posting the two search terms I’d rather see:

1. suck my ponies
2. My Little Penis

I think Mattel should hop on that right away. There’s still time to market those for the Christmas rush!

Back to procrastinating on my 1,000 word essay that doesn’t count towards our grades…

“Make a sentence out of the following words: Face. Sodding. Your. Shut.”

Socially awkward though I may be I have (thus far, mostly, at least while sober) controlled my overwhelming desire to blurt out the first thought that springs to mind, no matter how offensive it is. So far I have caught myself in time to prevent the utterance of these gems:

1. “Wow, I used to be really obsessed with the ethnic conflict in your country!” (Points to anyone who can guess the country.)
2. (While discussing an article about repatriation of artefacts to indigenous groups.) “But that’s like Indian giving!”
3. More to follow as they come and I marvel over my glorious self-control.

Most of my social awkwardness has actually arisen out of not finding anything to say to people. I can’t make small-talk for long without disengaging. This is entirely my own fault, as I frankly just don’t care about what your dogs names are or which breakfast cereal you prefer. Then, once I’ve disengaged, it’s hard for me to pick up the part of the conversation where I’m supposed to be speaking because I have no idea what you’ve just said.I think the point of this entry is that I’m kind of an asshole. Sorry about that.

Real Englishman or Merely a Delightful Name I Made Up?: The Answers

I almost forgot all about this, which I suppose is par for the course with my blogging habits. Nevertheless, here are your answers.

All the men mentioned are real.

How crazy is that?

However not all of them are Englishmen.

1. Alfred James Hipkins - British artist 1826-1903
2. Edwin Horatio Fedarb - Real. Incidentally also unremarkable enough that my previous entry is the second result when you search his name. I’m very sorry Edwin; that is the epitome of tragic.
3. Wenceslaus Hollar - Czech! Hollar at me, Wenceslaus.
4. Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot - Real! Doesn’t it make you feel good to live in a world where that’s a real name? I think this may actually be the greatest name I’ve ever heard. (Politician who worked with Churchill, by the by.)

All of these men were either buried or commemorated at Westminster Abbey/St Margaret’s Church, which is how I came by their names. And what names they are! Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot’s parents had to have been wonderfully absurd individuals to saddle their son with a name like that.