Chicken Butt

My nephew is now in the habit of greeting me with the following each afternoon when I pick him up  from school. It is my least favorite game of all.

MY EYEBALLS!!!!!

Oh yeah, because I am going blind from all the floaters in my eyes, and the flashy things. 

I'm still not okay with it.

If they blind me with their eye touching machine, I am going to be angry.

And my drawings will probably not be as pretty as they are now.

Hanukkah 2011- 3rd Night- Spuna Snax!

A common Hanukkah present theme is bargain food items, and here I am representing. I even have recipe ideas I've drawn up  for you! Enjoy!

Baru hata adanoi... I don't know how to really transcribe Hebrew but that is how it sounds to me... probably a lot like the song Ken Lee to a real Hebrew speaker...

Nom nom click/scroll

Charming Thanksgiving Fun

As I said last year, I like to terrorize my Thanksgiving guests and make them DO things before they can have their dinner.  Because I use up all my creativity drawing stupid pictures and joking about horrifying genres of porn, my staple torture device is "The Hand Turkey." If you are unfamiliar with the hand turkey tradition, you are either not American, were home-schooled, or may have some sort of memory disorder.  Basically, you trace your hand, and make the tracing into a turkey. Very complicated stuff.

I tried really hard to come up with more Thanksgiving crafts, but it took way more effort than I was willing to expend and I thought googling would be cheating. If you have any, especially if they are really awful (not goatse awful, please... although... no, not goatse awful) do let me know.  In the meantime, I created an easy set of print-outs so you can share my Thanksgiving traditions with your families.

Extra llama points if  you post a hand turkey on the FB page... just so you know!

Also, PLACE CARDS!  You have to have place cards at family dinners, because, a) you certainly cannot trust people to pick their own seats, and b) actually telling people where to sit is out of the question. You are already flustered enough trying to get everything out passive-aggressively hot so Aunt Beverly doesn't bitch that the potatoes are cold again this year, and if you have to repeat yourself at all, you may just stab a ho'.

I've included one for if your family has a sense of humor, and one to keep you from being disinherited. Just print it out on card stock, carefully cut along the blue border and write your guests' name in the blank area. Or something like that...



*if you don't know what Goaste is and you look it up, it is not my fault. I'm not kidding. Curiosity/Cat/Yadda. Eye Bleach does not exist.

Why the long face?

Sometimes, really cheerful people say really inanely stupid things when they should probably not talk.

Happy Birthday, Cheeseblarg AKA How NOT to Make Cake Pops.

Today is da Cheeseblarg's FIRST birthday.  A year ago today, I started this here blarg to talk about my computer being a dick, which it still kinda is.  But to celebrate, I made us some cake pops! And I made us cake pops, mostly because making cake pops is one of my least favorite things to do in the ENTIRE world.

It was also to prove a point, because my mom thought that making cake balls might be a great idea for holiday gifts and having made them before (or well, cookie balls, which might actually suck more than cake balls) I wanted to show her that while we are good at A LOT of things, dipping shit just isn't in our skill set.

So here is a (partially) illustrated guide for how NOT to make cake pops:



1. Gather your ingredients. Take a picture. Forget ingredients.

2. Begin to make a cake which cues everyone else in your house to come into your very small kitchen to also cook. Get angry.

3. Mistake directions on cake box, read: mix on HIGH for 2 minutes, instead of MEDIUM and splatter entire kitchen with cake batter.

4. Fight the people in your kitchen to get to the oven to put the cake in to bake.

5. Remember to check how long you should bake the cake that is now in the oven. Take box out of garbage, consult, set timer (minus approximate amount of time it took you to remember that you should probably set a timer).

6. Wait a long damned time for cake to bake and cool. Begin writing and illustrating your hilarious blarg post on the subject in the meantime (optional).

7. Go to Bakerella.com and read the recipe because you realize you don't really know how much of what you are really supposed to use.

8. Crumble cake and mix in half a can of frosting. Roll into balls. Ask someone else to come in and set up a pan for you because your hands are now coated in cake and frosting.

9. Clean out fridge to make space for the balls to chill.

10. Take some prescription pain pills because this is going to suck, and also because you have been standing for hours and all of your joints hurt.

11. Read the directions on the candy melts, follow directions, spend 17 minutes melting stupid candy melts. Think using a blow dryer might be faster.

12. Begin dipping cakepops. Have an argument about dipping methods. Result in cakepop that looks like this:

13. Add Crisco to candy melts because Montana weather makes them harden up in approximately 1.75 minutes.

14. Give up on cakepops, turn to cakeballs.

15. Give up on cakeballs, dipping is too hard.  Roll rest of the batch in powdered sugar and call it a day.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how not to make cake balls. You should probably not follow it. But, while I knew it was going to be bad when I started, I did manage to make one cute one.

I'm not cute.

I'm really not cute.  I know that I draw cute stuff, and it is all adorable and shit, but seriously, I don't know where it comes from. I suspect I may have a precious darling alternative personality that comes out when it is time to draw things, because in reality I am coarse, and vulgar, and get in trouble all the time for being inappropriate in public.  I mean, not in legal trouble or anything, but my mom gets on my case all the time for cursing, and talking about rude things, and generally being "un-cute."
I suppose being regarded as cute (and creating cute things) is not the most horrific thing that could happen... but it is not totally representative of who I am. My allusions to ridiculous porn and people pooping out of their mouths, that is much more me.

And now for something only slightly different.

I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually, but in the meantime the sentiment holds.

OMFGNOTBBQ!

I came to a terrible realization today.

Hanging out at my friend's house, we keep lamenting that the neighbors are ALWAYS barbecuing and it smells so delicious. We've even joked about showing up at their door with a plate for dinner. Then, this morning I walked out in the backyard and saw this over the fence:

I'm so sorry, Mr. Fluffypants. I'm so sorry.

The Grand Canyon Incident

I've become convinced, over the years, that my parents were enrolled in some sort of incentive program with the US Government or possibly a secret military experiment* in which they were paid to do crappy things and then send in detailed information on how I reacted to said government agency. Perhaps some sort of psychological warfare deal.

 My parents are generally good people, did lots of volunteer work, were supportive of our extracurricular activities, helped us with our  homework, threw some of the best birthday parties ever, but every once in a while, they did things that were so crappily out of character, I just cannot explain it any other way than to say someone was encouraging them to fuck with me.

One of these times is now referred to as "The Grand Canyon Incident."  I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I spent a year living in Arizona with my grandparents when I was in first grade; we lived in the suburbs of Phoenix while my mom and dad were stationed in Okinawa, Japan.  I am fairly certain that I wasn't aware of its existence then, because if I had been, I probably would have pestered people to take me, immediately.

However, by the time I had finished 10th grade, I had totally seen the episode of the Brady Bunch where they visited, one time when I was home sick from school, and I had also seen National Lampoon's Vacation, and at some point I had gotten my hands on 1950s postcards of the Grand Canyon and goddammit, I wanted to go. So, when it was announced that we would be visiting my grandparents in Arizona and I was told that we would be driving a rental car across the state to sightsee, I immediately put in my bid to go visit that amazing giant hole... (I don't want to say Grand Canyon over and over again but all of the descriptive stand-ins I can think of sound like dirty dirty euphemisms) and my request was met with whole-hearted consent. "No problem! Sounds great! We'll go!"

Now, I must divulge that, in my family, nagging is the main cause of plans being canceled, and I know this, and I have a problem with getting excited and talking about something ad nauseum and so, after having been met with "You had to go and say something and ruin it for everyone!" many times prior in my life,  I was VERY careful to keep my big mouth shut after I was told that my vacation request would be fulfilled.  I, of course, wanted to sing songs of joy at the top of my lungs at getting to go, as we drove through the desert, which would have sounded a lot like:

( Come on, sing along! "OMG THE GRAND CANYON! HOW I LOVE YOUR RUSTY HUES! YOU ARE THE BEST HOLE THAT I'VE NEVER SEEN, BUT I WILL SEE YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOON!")

 But again, I knew I could only chance about 1.75 mentions before I pissed off my parents enough that they would snap and cancel the plan, so I sat in the back of the rented white Ford Taurus and swelled with very quiet excitement inside, while listening to Skid Row tapes on my off-brand Walkman, as signs began to appear announcing the distance to my vacation Valhalla.

And finally, I knew it was safe! I was in the clear, and so I pointed to the right and said "DAD! IT'S THE NEXT TURN OFF! THE GRAND CANYON! 2.2 MILES! OMG YAY!" and my dad looked over at my mom as I bounced in the back seat and squealed silently, and then, studying the look between them, I said "Aren't we gonna go?" and I was met with, "Eh... I don't really feel like going," and then we drove past the turn off, and then I died inside.

And it didn't occur to me at the time, but surely it was an experiment.  They probably got the crappy rental car comped from the government, and it was most likely wired with cameras so they could study the reactions of the 15 year old female subject experiencing the effects of complete and total devastation and confusion, because the government are the kind of assholes that would do something like that. Right?

And I've yet to see the friggen thing. I want to.  I need to. I will... or else.


(* since I did grow up on a military base and spent a lot of time in Naval Hospitals early on- they say it was because of Agent Orange, but I know better...)

GET IN MY MOUTH!

For some reason, when I see an exceptionally cute little animal, my immediate reaction is the desire to put its head in my mouth...  For example:

Japanese Flying Squirrel AKA one of the cutest known animals on EARTH!

My immediate reaction.

It's not that I want to eat it, or harm it, or bite it, or scare it, it just... belongs in my mouth.

And I know, for a fact, that I am not the only weirdo who has this reaction, because in college, my friend Norwiener and I went to visit my friend Rian to see his adorable new itty bitty kitten, and the first thing that she said was, "OMG, IT'S SO CUTE! Do you think its head would fit in my mouth?" and then she put its head in her mouth. Or maybe I am just really weird and so are my friends, but I am not alone damn it. I'm not alone.

She's Crafty!

So the other day, I became very motivated and spent several hours aggravating myself by doing crafty projects for the blarg. I say I aggravated myself because, at heart, I am a painter or at the very least, a drawer... one who draws, not a sliding receptacle for your socks, underwear, and shirts (yes, yes or any of the other things that people put in drawers, I am not a drawer, I am a draw-er).  What this all means is that I am a complete slob when it comes to art, and so, trying to get things to actually look neat and ordered pushes the boundaries of my boundaries, and by that, I mean my patience.  And I am pretty damned patient, unless I am trying to sew things and the thread ties itself into knots to taunt me, or I think, 'oh, yes, I need to put the needle through here though I am not completely sure it will work... oh, no it won't work, that looks like crap... FFFFFFFfffffuuuu... undoing needle stitches through felt now results in me sewing backwards, awesome.'  Or something not nearly as specific.

And then I switched to clay... I took classes in pottery in college and my teacher asked me if I was planning on taking any more. My resounding "No!" was met with a not too nice, "Oh, thank goodness!" Now, that is work with cups and saucers and teapots and all that crap, and I have a great respect for people who can and desire to do that, but I can't and don't... mostly because it is beyond my boundaries of patience (I feel like we've been through this before), and so I just slap things together and hope not to fail (if I am being graded). I am fairly good at figure work, and animals... though again, my sculptures do show my special touch of impatience, which I now declare as a stylistic choice, if things don't go exactly as I expect them to.

So without further ado, my cheesy crafts (which will be placed for sale later, once I am able to procure a ruler, because there doesn't seem to be one in this house, and having the knowledge that you had a green see-through ruler, once, when you were in fifth grade, 20 years ago, while interesting doesn't really help me much when I want to measure something for a proper description now):

Narwhal Magnet (heart not included- except for in the picture where it obviously is)

Mini Narwhal Figure Thingy (man, my thumb is wrinkly)

Felt Narwhal Barrette (the clippy good kind)

Llama Magnet (it's stylistic, not sloppy!)

There will be more coming in the future... there has to be, because I bought all the things to make more so I am determined to use them and get better at things I am not great at, which is the theme of my year.  And I take suggestions... though, unless you're actually paying me, I'll make what actually strikes my fancy.

Not the Flu.

I'm not convinced I have ever had the flu, at this point.  I've been sick for a week now, no end in sight yet, but alas, the doctor says it is just a "virus syndrome" and totally not the flu.  They should probably work on a vaccine  for the virus syndrome.