when good ideas go bad...

Whenever I see something like this it makes me pause to think about how many design meetings went by...

and no-one thought to ask;

"Hey guys, don't you think the disembodied hands lifting kids' shirts and skirts is a little... molest-y?"

(This window wasn't the worst I saw either.)

Brevity/shopping win

See this handsome man in his suit? Yea, I bought him that. I love it when actors buy the costumes I find for them.

Book shops

To purchase a book at a local bookseller;

1. locate book (oh look a section for Drama)
2. take book to counter
3. cashier will usually comment on the book such as
"oh good book", "I haven't read this one" or will ask you "Did you need anything else?"
4. pay for book
5. leave


To purchase a book at a large national chain book store;

1. walk in store to realize that they've swapped everything around and you've just spent the last five minutes walking to the complete opposite end of the store.
2.locate employee to tell you where Shakespeare is...
3. Walk past African American history, turn left at poetry into "Literature" (don't get me started on how I don't believe plays qualify as literature)
4. Locate book
5. Take book to counter
6. cashier will ask you
"do you have our discount club card?"
no
"Would you like to sign up for one they have all sorts of fantastic bla bla bla"
no
"can I have your email address?"
no
"can I have your zip code?"
Could you just sell me the damn book?!
7.pay for book
8. leave store


---ugh I hate giant business.

My 50's era Shop

My latest acquisition this week; a Fosteria Steam Iron! $5.
It's odd how happy I am about finding this old beast and it's kind of funny thinking about how horrified my grandmother would be about me getting all of this "old" equipment on purpose. All I can say is they don't make things the way they used to. You may or may not know that I personally own three sewing machines; two Singers made in 1950 and 1951 (you can look this information up if you have the serial number HERE) and a Kenmore, probably made in the mid-1970's.

This iron needed a little cleaning on the front but it's a gem. You plug it in and it's hot within seconds. If you drop it, it does not shatter into tiny plastic pieces. The steam comes pouring out almost imediatley, and although it lacks a steam on demand button, such a feature isn't really missed when you have an iron that just Works!
The only down side to this old beast; takes a long time to cool down and won't automatically shut off when not in use.
The disposable culture that we've developed is horrid when you look at these old machines built over 60 years ago that work better than any top of the line equivalents made in 2009. This is the reason that we're drowning in landfills and consumerism. I for one would gladly pay extra to get an iron like the one I just bought for $5 if I thought it would last for another 60 years! However that is not where we are right now and I will just have to revel in good fortunes like this finding me at the "junk" store.

Bargian?

I found this in Oakland...

Pinkies in the air please,
this is a fancy town where $50 scarves are in the "Bargain basket".

$200 socks!

I haven't been posting much because I'm up to my eyeballs in theater work... today I was shopping for knee highs and found these;

Ok so my headline was a little misleading, since it's three pair to the order these socks are *only* $80 each... I assume that on top of being regular socks they also cure baldness, make you look ten pounds lighter and emit a soft musk that makes everyone around you like you just a little more. Who buys these things?

Eating like a hippie

When I embarked on this no-dairy experiment I did so with a great internal sigh. Picky eaters are so terrible. When I worked at a restaurant I was always irritated by the people who would order something like penne primavera; "but could you take out the zucchini, and use manicotti instead of penne?". Even worse are the people who go to some place like McDonalds and ask for "a hamburger happy meal, but make one of the hamburgers a cheeseburger,only three pickle slices, and give me extra fries with no salt and an extra toy". I'm not exaggerating, I've met these people, they are the ones who hold up the line in the grocery store telling the baggers how to bag their milk "in plastic and then in paper but not with the ice cream!". That is a little how I imagined a diet with a major restriction to turn out. Not eating dairy for a month (and still going) has reinforced the fact that Those People are just difficult and disagreeable and it has nothing to do with any kind of dietary restriction. It's pretty easy to just say "hold the cheese" and not make it into a theatrical production.
What is hard, but will probably get easier, is grocery shopping. Shopping is slowed significantly because of the necessity of reading through ingredients trying to spot "whey" "casiene" "vanilin" and other code words for "Milk". Today I finally just went to the Berkeley Bowl (a mega-hippie supermarket with the most amazing produce section ever). I bought soy milk, soy butter, soy creamer, a few products labeled "vegan" and a ton of veggies.

The new diet has forced me to think harder about my food choices. Just look at how many veggies I ate tonight;

I also bought a book called "The Joy of Vegan Baking" which I love. The recipes are fairly simple and explain how to "veganize" any baking recipe. I tried using these recipes with eggs instead of egg substitutes but they weren't as good. The most surprising egg substitute that I loved was in the muffins I made today. Instead of two eggs you whip together 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed with 6 tablespoons of water, e voila!

For a dozen muffins I used a half cup of sugar and a third cup oil. Those were the only not-so-good-for-you ingredients, everything else was flour, flax, seasoning, fruit and nuts... actually they're really tasty. You'd never know that they're made with twigs and dirt.

So I'm accepting that I'm not becoming a terrible picky eater, I'm just being a more conscientious eater. Thank God I don't have to do this in Ohio.