You see, it's perfect

This about broke my brain.

Why talk about the actual faire?

It is probably a sign that you have reached past the point of a lush into a determined drunk when you purchase a cup strictly for you alone to drink from. We went to Scarborough Faire today and while shopping for a birthday present for my sister (Sorry Ja', it won't arrive in time! Forgive me!!) I found this nifty little cup and decided it would be for rum/whisky/scotch. There is a random texture all around it (I'm all about texture on ceramics) and the glazing was very nicely done. The picture does not do justice to the colors. And, rather than most of the artists out there, this place was not pretentious enough to think it was worth 15-30 bucks per cup. And while it is a small gesture, the niftiest part is that there is an indentation for you to put your thumb while holding the glass. Yes, it is an ergonomic cup. And tonight, it is filled with Dalmore scotch whisky. And it is yummy.

Crafts for lazy days

"Enjoy taxidermy? Yeah, me too. This project is the sick, sick work of Instructables member canida and company. It is a real mouse, gutted and fitted with parts from one of those small laptop mice. PETA members may want to look away, or go jump off a bridge, but I'm sure the mouse died from natural causes."

I've got a few birthdays and weddings coming up I need gifts for, wonder how fast I can crank these out?

..via Gizmodo

I accomplished none of my goals thus far today

She was young, slightly overweight. Hair dyed/lightened to a dirty blonde with a bad perm, creating permanent waves that look weighed down and over-processed. A checker at Walmart, she was smart enought o be efficient and bright at her job, trained other employees to also do well, knew how to sort products by type instead of mixing the soap with the bread. Either lacking the intelligence or the drive to work elsewhere, she'll most likely continue on at this job and be promoted a few more times before trying her hand at another company or ending up with too many kids and a useless husband. The only words spoken between she and myself or the customer in line before me was the customary greetings dictated by social norms. But then, between telling me my total and giving back my chage, she just looked up at me and told me that I was 'very pretty'. It did not seem like any sort of advance or line, just an opinion from her head she felt the need to share in a way that most people never do.
--
He was an elderly black gentleman with short white hair and goatee. His brown trousers looked crisply pressed, black shoes polished so much they relflected the sun back onto his shins. He wore a brown and white sweater that looked to have been manufactured 30 years ago, a sweater like Cosby would wear back when we would watch his show every night before dinner.
He carried a rolled up canvas bag with indecipherable writing across one side. On his head was a powder blue baseball cap that contrasted the rest of the image quite severly. And he walked along the sidewalk as I sat at the light, and he kept lifting his left arm as if to gesture or show his point as he quite audibly argued with himself. Or perhaps with another person that was just not currently present.
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He was tall and blonde with dreads mixed into his hair, a large hat on his head. Less rasta/stoner, more the type that normally works at a comic book store. But, with just enough style and cool points he can work at Starbucks instead.
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She was incredibly bored, holding her clipboard sideways as she leaned against the railing instead of trying to engage in conversations with passer-bys to try to gain research for whater company she worked for.
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For someone who dislikes people as much as I do, I find myself watching their movements rather intensely. And shut it about Walmart. Find me somewhere else that sells unbuttered popcorn 6 bags for 2 dollars and I'll buy there.

Facing the Facts

Psychoanalytical account of neurosis

As an illness, neurosis represents a variety of psychiatric conditions in which emotional distress or unconscious conflict is expressed through various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances, which may include physical symptoms (e.g., hysteria). The definitive symptom is anxieties. Neurotic tendencies are common and may manifest themselves as depression, acute or chronic anxiety, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, phobias, and even personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. It has perhaps been most simply defined as a "poor ability to adapt to one's environment, an inability to change one's life patterns, and the inability to develop a richer, more complex, more satisfying personality." [1] Neurosis should not be mistaken for psychosis, which refers to more severe disorders.

The term connotes an actual disorder or disease, but under its general definition, neurosis is a normal human experience, part of the human condition. Most people are affected by neurosis in some form. A psychological problem develops when neuroses begin to interfere with, but not significantly impair, normal functioning, and thus cause the individual anxiety. Frequently, the coping mechanisms enlisted to help "ward off" the anxiety only exacerbate the situation, causing more distress. It has even been defined in terms of this coping strategy, as a "symbolic behavior in defense against excessive psychobiologic pain [which] is self-perpetuating because symbolic satisfactions cannot fulfill real needs."

So tonight I couldn't stop myself from cleaning things at work. It started with Rebecca's phone, was followed by Nick's and a spare, then cleaning my desk. Rubbing alcohol should be a mandatory product kept by each person working in an office. But I think i might have gone a bit overboard and a bit on the OCD side when I popped off all my keys from the keyboard and cleaned each one and under them. Sure I had work to do, but who can work in a place that is grungy and disgusting? (disgustimapated? I don't remember the other word)

Turns out, everyone but me can deal with this. When I worked at Starbucks, I was so obsessed with making things clean i used to get down on my hands and knees and clean the floor with a deck brush, drains were immaculate, bathrooms pristine, etc. The only thing that kept me from taking apart the pipes and cleaning the inside was I couldn't figure out how to keep the store open and still have water. Way back in the day, Brendan and I would have cleaning parties at the store, where we would gather a few people to come up after work and attack the place from ceiling to floor and clean everything we could. All without pay, just so as to suprise out boss when she came in the next day and saw everything shiny.

Yet somehow, in the place I spend most of my time, I can't seem to make myself finish laundry or clean the bathroom. I want to devote such care to it that unless I have about a good 5 hours, I can't bring myself to clean even just the top floor of the apartment.

And it is the contrast that really bothers me. Like tonight I know that if I hadn't been running areas and it was slow enough, I would have started to clean other people's phones and keyboards, anything that looked really gross. Not that they would notice, but it would make me feel better. The only thing stopping me was the necessity of keeping my job and the overwhelming desire to go home and drink,

Which, as always, wins out over all cleaning or other disorders. Yay alcoholism!

Food for Thought

"Thinking is not an automatic function, In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or avoid that effort....He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free ti avoid the abyss he refuses to see....Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his conscoiuness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know....Just as a man is free to attmept to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment-so is he free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences."

- Ayn Rand, The virtue of Selfishness

Creativity with Smoke

Smoke photography by Mehmet Ozgur. More available here

Something had better be chasing me for the same

Woman runs entire length of Long Island.

And yet Boris the Blade complains if we make him drive 15 miles. This tells me we need to start hiring Polish immigrants, not just Russians.

Ikea on crack

Because it must be awful to live in a space larger than a dorm room that is actually full of light and modern design/furniture/architecture. Austria's Justizzentrum Loeben Jailhouse

Another reason to hate diamonds

When opulence equals ridiculous. Diva Vodka is one of the most expensive liquors ever bottled, more from the packaging than the liquid. "The Scotland based company Blackwood Distillers is producing the triple distilled Diva vodka. Through a sophisticate process, it gets ice-filtered, filtered through Nordic birch charcoal to purify then passed through a sand of crushed diamonds and gems. But what is really outstanding is the product’s price. In every single bottle you’ll find semi-precious or precious stones, including diamonds, which will make the product price range from US$ 70.00 (£35) up to astonishing US$ 1,060,000.00 (£540,000)"

..via Knuttz