Lunchables, Lesbians, And Loo-Trained Cats

I know you guys haven't heard as much as a peep from my corner of the world for what seems like the same amount of time that it takes for "Game of Thrones" to start season three. For that I am truly not sorry at all - I have a job and a life and you can't make unpaid demands of me because you aren't my parents or a sassy talking cat. Besides, about four people total read this blog and one of those four is me so it's really three but WHO'S COUNTING?

All of the other actors have headshots on the
Facebook page for Scissr. I should submit this right?

Anyway, since our last time shooting the shit, I've gotten a new job marketing for a startup wine e-commerce website (lotta words there, I know), became an iPhone user, gained about ten pounds in cookies and Jewish guilt, and signed up to act in a lesbian web-series called Scissr. I know you only really care about the latter, so let me inform you that it will be a homosexual, racially-inclusive version of "Girls" mixed with a financially-obtainable "The L-Word." I will play the co-creator/writer/actor's best friend, Taylor, because that outrageous bitch wrote the part FOR ME. She's one my dearest friends and for some twisted reason thought I was cool enough to disregard the fact that I have absolutely no acting experience or mass-appeal and asked me to play the role of, well, me. I'm excited and terrified and I only hope that I can muster enough confidence to just be myself and not become hyper-aware of the way I act and fuck it up (like how if you pay attention too much to your own breathing you're all "I. CAN'T. BREATHE." See, it's happening now). Who knows, maybe I'll hit it out of the proverbial park and become the next famous non-actress actress like Jemima Kirke.

Sassy twat.

I also purchased a new water bottle (LIVING LARGE) and am semi-successfully trying to toilet train Shadow the cat. I say "semi-successfully" because we're only at step two and so far she hasn't fucked it up with her stupid little cat brain. They say to give them positive reinforcement when they complete the next step without any issues so that they know they're doing something right. This meant that as Shadow came out of the bathroom after the first time that I rigged up her CitiKitty (I had to carry that home without a bag just FYI), I (very gently) applauded her and gave her a thumbs up while saying in my high-voice-reserved-for-animals, "You did it! Yay! So proud!" In retrospect, the thumbs up was probably unnecessary given that Shadow doesn't have thumbs and maybe thought I was flaunting them at her, but she seemed to like my enthusiasm well enough because about two minutes later she was galloping around the apartment as if to say, "I pooped and you loved it!" I wish I received as much praise every time I successfully defecated.

At this point you're probably thinking "This post has absolutely nothing to do with Lunchables! I was seduced with false hopes of round miniature ham slices!" I respond by using the previous sentence as a terrible segue to talk about Lunchables (so there!). This topic stems from an earlier conversation with my co-workers when we all realized that we had two things in common: our strong desire to put any and all Lunchables in our mouths and having parents who refused to let us do so. I don't know about you guys, but my dad preferred to make weird artisanal sandwiches that involved bananas and curried chicken (not at the same time...well...maybe) that I had to simultaneously consume and explain while I watched my (usually rich) classmates spread tomato sauce on their ice-cold, Lunchables pizzas and feel my heart shrivel up and die of envy. I'm sure it wasn't the $7 price tag or suspect ingredients that deterred my dad, but his utter loathing of my happiness. And that's why we still aren't on speaking terms (JK I talked to my dad the other day). Was anyone else deprived of Lunchables and do you want to carthart (this is now the verb form of catharsis so deal with it) about it?

There's no way to really end this post since it's pretty much a clusterfuck of awful, so consider this sentence me slowly bowing out while tipping some sort of hat with Mariachi music playing in the background.

How to Use Stairs in a Metropolitan Area (Even If They Move!)

The world of walking can be a scary place. Just ask babies, who postpone walking out of fear and not motor function maturation, as scientists would have you believe. The danger of putting one foot in front of the other gets even more imminent as the population increases and familiarity decreases. This explains why tourists visiting highly populated areas are so fucking stupid. Look, I made a graph:

I spent way too much time making this graph.

In order to try and curb this loss of brain function, I've decided to outline the area I think needs the most work when it comes to walking: stairs. Please note that these suggestions-to-live-by obviously exclude those who are not able-bodied. It's also important to note that just because you are native to a large city, does not mean you're exempt from today's lesson. Some of you are stupid too!


Stairs: You Climb Them

This is pretty basic. When you use the stairs, walk forward by placing each foot on the step in front of you. Sometimes these steps go up and sometimes they go down. What you don't do is significantly slow down or stop altogether when you reach the first step. These are stairs. You've done this before. Do not panic and just keep fucking walking. There should not be a clusterfuck of people waiting at the bottom/top of the stairs because you forgot how to walk.


The Rules of Driving Apply

Provided you are in a country where people drive on the right side of the road, such as the U.S, you must walk on the right side of the stairs. If you're in a left-side-driving country, then the opposite is obviously true. If you are from the U.K. and visit the U.S., you must follow the rules of our roads and vice versa. If you're going to walk on the wrong side of the stairs and force everyone to collide with you, I expect you to drive that way too. Good luck!


Landings Aren't for Landing

And neither are the stairs themselves or the area right before and after the stairs. I know that cell phone service sucks, for the most part, when you go underground to use public transportation. Do you know what that means? You should finish your unimportant phone call/posting a photo of your cat to Instagram/sexting your boyfriend BEFORE you decide to begin your stair-y adventure. If you need to wait for somebody, the stairs are not a good place to do that. If you've just gotten off the stairs and have not figured out your bearings yet, walk a couple feet before you pull out your compass and/or check the skies for the North Star. Don't stand right at the top or bottom of the stairs, waiting for someone or looking like a lost idiot puppy, only to have innocent people ram helplessly into your back over and over again. And do not, I repeat DO NOT, throw them shade when they run into you. You're the problem, not them.


Moving Stairs: Same Rules but in Motion

The thing about escalators that makes them different are twofold: they move and everyone on them is going the same direction. You may think that this means you can stand anywhere on the escalator and ride up, carefree with the wind blowing in your hair. You would be wrong. Some people, for whatever reason that is none of your business, also walk up or down on the escalator rather than just standing in place and letting the next floor come to them. Perhaps they're late for something or dig the extra exercise. Whatever the reason, nobody deserves to be trapped when trying to get somewhere. The left side of the escalator is for walking while the right side of the escalator is for standing and being a lazy bum (like me!). Do not stand on the left side and do not try to walk on the right side. You will fail miserably on both accounts. It seems that while 100% of Washington, DC has figured this out, only 80% of New York City has. All it takes is one dope standing on the left side to block everyone from their destination. Don't be that guy.


If you don't want to follow any of these rules, that's fine...but I'll push you. I really will. Hard. I think that's really all I have to say. Maybe I'll also throw in a general "Try to be aware of those around you and understand that you're not the only person on this planet." just for good measure. Any questions about walking are welcome in the comments!

How to Make Your Living Room Look Pinteresting

SEE WHAT I DID THERE?! Anyway, I just used four tags on this post that have previously never been used on my blog EVER. Boy oh boy are you in for a treat.

When Sam and I first moved into our new place, we had some problems agreeing on what should be hung on the wall and where. This led to me scouring Tumblr and Pinterest for ideas and him vetoing all of them which, in turn, led to a big empty wall of nothingness behind our couch.

This feline anatomy scroll was my dream.
A dream that was crushed by a $90 price tag.

I was mostly obsessed with anatomical illustrations of animals, specifically cats and rabbits. I thought maybe if I hung them on the wall, they would serve as a warning to Shadow and House and curb their misbehavior. You'd be horrified to find out just how expensive prints that show animals guts or flower parts are. For small ones it can be anywhere from $30-$100+. I wanted to make a framed photo collage, but I didn't, and still don't, have 1k to spend on stamens and shit. If I did, do you think there'd be ads on this blog?

So I brainstormed and came up with a thrifty solution. You will need the following materials:

♥ This book
♥ An exacto knife
♥ Frames of various shapes and sizes (you can find these at thrift shops)
♥ Colored paper if you'd like to mat the pictures
♥ Hardware for hanging them up
♥ The patience of a saint
♥ Snacks, always snacks

I only had to buy the book because I'm a lucky duck (read: spoiled brat) and my dad has a home-staging business. This means he not only has a ton of thrifted frames just laying around, but he knows how to crop, cut, mat, mount, and frame the hell out of some pictures. You'll want to go through the whole book and pick which pictures you'd like to use. Much to my ecstatic surprise, they had a print of the above cat anatomy scroll. I peed a tiny bit.

Example of the smaller illustrations which can be
cropped to fit into eency weency frames.

Next, take the exacto knife and as precisely as possible, slice those pages out of the book. You'll want to slice as close to the binding as you can. I can't tell you how my dad managed to cut all of the pages out perfectly straight, but he did. I'm also glad he did because just the abstract thought of cutting up that book gave me psychosomatic chest pains. You'll want to crop some of the smaller ones so that they'll fit into tiny frames. You want to have a mix of large, medium, and small frames and the amount you should buy depends on how much space you need to fill. We used ten.

Next, start putting your pictures into the frames. For some of the larger frames, you'll need to use matting so that they don't look dopey. As previously mentioned, I didn't do any of this shit, so here's a tutorial I found with Google. When all of your pages are in their respective frames, find a space on the floor to lay them all out. You don't want to make them too symmetrical, but try to keep the spaces between each picture pretty even. Make the arrangement your own and mess with it for a while. When you find a mock-up that pleases you, start putting them on the wall one at a time (remembering where they were on the floor). To make your life easier, you can take a picture of them on the floor before you start hanging them up so that you can reference the picture throughout the hanging process. For the love of all that is holy, be careful to not start too far right or left so that the collage doesn't make it all the way across the wall and then you have to do it all over again and your boyfriend starts responding sarcastically to everything you say while he pulls nails out of the wall only to rehammer them in two feet from their original spot. HEED MY WARNING.

If you read and followed this vague, discombobulated tutorial, you should end up with something like this:

And my apartment is that much closer to becoming a hipster apothecary.
Sorry for the phone-quality pictures but also, deal with it?

Edited to add: my friend is an amazing and talented artist who is an experienced scientific illustrator. So, if you'd like to support her by purchasing some of her work instead of using that book, that'd be awesome too!