T1-11?

In my mind, the names of these items are completely interchangeable:


 
                                                          source                                                                                                         source

Hanukkah 2013: 5th Night- Festive Llama

On the fifth night of Hanukkah, your Cheeseblarg gives to you:

A llama with a snowman blanket.

Cómo-se here was the second needle felting piece I ever did. He has been waiting patiently to be introduced to you all.

Blah blah...comment... win dinoball, etc. 

And remember, I am happy to make felt animals and creatures for pay, just email to inquire!

Following "The Following"?

                            It's a raven. This is a clever tie in to the Poe theme  source.

How many of you are watching The Following?

It is a show about a serial killer who gets a cult following while in prison who carry on his work for him.

I started watching it with the first episode, excited for it after all the promos, and my immediate thought was TRUST NO ONE. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE.  At this point, all I can be relatively sure of is that Kevin Bacon's character, Ryan Hardy, is not part of "The Following." Not even sure about the wife. Certain that young FBI guy is a follower and that I am supposed to think he is, then think he isn't. Seriously, I SUSPECT EVERYONE!!!

        Nope. Don't trust you at all.    source.

Is his 10 year old kid in on it? Maybe?! Who's to say? I wouldn't hand him a pistol, or a letter opener. If they had a dog, I would be wary of it also.

This all stems from me being right about 90% of the bad people in the first episode. I get one bit of confirmation and I can't be dissuaded (not to be confused with dissueded, which would be what Nazis did to Jews in the holocaust). (I know a parenthetical should not be a whole a paragraph on its own but I would like to apologize for that pun. It was really bad. In my defense, there is no defense, but I'm Jewish so I am really only being insensitive to myself, and every other Jew ever, that is, if anyone actually gets it -I digress).

I don't actually know how much I really like the show. I mean I do, but it's a little slow paced, because really, I just want them to show killings and then reveal each episode that another person I knew was a follower is in fact one, which they do. I am also predicting that this will happen each episode until they finally reveal that OMG EXPERT ON THE SERIAL KILLER THAT THE SHOW IS ABOUT IS ALSO A FOLLOWER... no shit Sherlock. But I imagine it would be more exciting if I were watching episodes in rapid succession instead of waiting a week, at which time I have forgotten the series exists all together. So if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to wait until it comes out on Netflix or something and then show binge.

        EVERYONE. EVERYONE IS!!!    source.

It is good though, but predictable to me, because I have predicted that almost everyone is bad. And my confirmation bias doesn't count it when people are good because we still have possibly umpty-clutch  seasons before everyone on earth is dead by the hands of Joe Carroll's followers and by then I can shrug and say, "Oh, I guess the kid wasn't in on it."

Life Lessons: That's What She Said

"That's what she said!" is, somewhat unfortunately, one of my favorite jokes.

Although my mom is very smart and I got a good part of my sense of humor from her, she found my seemingly random outbursts of "That's what she said!" to be very confusing.

And then, I explained it to her... and then she said it in a doctor's office, and in front of my nephew.

And the lesson is: There's a time and a place for "That's what she said!" and some people just can't be trusted with it.

Musical Interlude: Kiss Off!

I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record.

If you are lost, I highly recommend you listen to this, one of my favorite songs EVER.

Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes

Why the long face?

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

Cheeseblarg's First Official Scavenger Hunt

I was talking to my friend, Kim, because she's awesome, but also because she has been having a crap-filled couple of days, not literally, at least I don't think so, but stressful as all get out, and she suggested that she needed to get out of the house to clear her mind.  Being the awesome and creative friend I am, I offered to create a scavenger hunt for her, because adventures are more exciting than moping in public. But then, the point of scavenger hunts, as I understand them, is to have competition, so that is where you guys come in.

While you could go the cheaty route and just google crap (especially if you are stuck in an office building and aren't allowed to leave your cubicle because you are chained to it until the whistle blows-- yeah, I have never actually worked in an office setting so I imagine that is how it works, right?) there are some items that will require actual photos, and really, actually taking the pictures yourself is more fun... but if you do google, against my will, it better be super creative.

Photo sets can be uploaded to http://www.flickr.com/groups/cheeseblarghunt with a link to your images in a comment here.  You can also, alternatively, upload your images to a post on your own blog and paste a link in the comment section.

Prizes
First 3 people to post completed hunts (that are not googled/binged/searched for on the internet and show that you actually left the house to do it), win an envelope of happiness from me in the mail.

Next 3 people to post completed hunts win a special personalized scavenger hunt winner badge.
And since only six people actually read this regularly, that should cover it.

No, no, all others will receive a scavenger hunt badge for their blog, or wall, or refrigerator.

Winners will be announced in a separate post and I will request addresses at that time to send out prizes.


Now, on to the hunt!

Remember, you can be as creative as you like, as long as one could reasonable associate your photo with the item on the list.


1. A cat in a window
2. Bare feet in grass
3. Bacon
4. A squeaker
5. 3 people holding cards
6. Cheese on an entire family
7. Someone wearing a hat
8. A bird, not in a tree
9. The color red, only the color red
10. You holding a sign referring to Da Cheeseblarg
11. The cutest chocolate you can find
12. Velcro
13. An upside down book
14. Something I write about all the time but have not put in the list
15. Ice cream
16. A chance
17. Something nerdy
18. A yellow flower
19. A crack in a sidewalk
20. The inside of a grocery store
21. A person wearing a barrette
22. A scavenger

I will also accept drawings/painting for each item, but they must be done by you, and stick figures don't count!

The Rock

The worst part about walking is getting rocks in your shoes.

The Value of Pie

There are a few books from my early childhood that really influenced who I am as a person (and a writer, I suppose). Each taught me things that formed my personality and sense of humor.

The King Who Rained by Fred Gwynne

One of my very favorite books EVER.  Beautiful illustrations, and very funny. The King Who Rained is full of homophone humor that instilled in me a love of word play and of picturing things in the funniest way possible. I guess I stole my whole schtick from this book, looking back at it.

Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel

This book appealed to me because it had such beautiful stylized illustrations and a cute story based on repetition. I remember it being read to us in the library, possibly by my mom, possibly by the librarian;  It was a long time ago. I learned from it to be succinct in my writing and speech, to get my point across when it was most important.

Where the Sidewalk Ends 

So many people love this book by Shel Silverstein, so I do not really have to expound upon its appeal. I did learn from it, though, that poems are better funny than serious, and dear lord, if I had only remembered that lesson in my mopey high school and college years when I wrote terrible embarrassing beat poetry that I, at least, had the decency to avoid reading aloud at the many awful and painful poetry readings I attended.

Amelia Bedilia by Peggy Parish

I never actually read this book, but it taught me a very important lesson.  And that lesson is, some people are total jerks and suck at their jobs and will shirk their own professional responsibilities off onto first graders instead of actually taking responsibilities for their own mistakes.

Obviously, there is more to this story.

When I was in first grade at Maryland Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona, I loved reading and I utilized the school library as much as I was allowed.  Being the nerdpants I have always been, I was very respectful of the rules and always made sure I got my books back on time, because that was the rule of checking things out in the library, and you're supposed to follow rules.

Now this was a time when computers were things that took up entire rooms and were not available for frivolous things like library catalogs, and so everything was done by hand. You would write your name on the book's call card and the librarian would take the card out of the little pocket in the back and she would replace the card with a brightly colored piece of paper that was covered in rows of date stamps, and you would look at the last stamp on the page and that would be when you had to have your book back by... or else!

And so it happened one day, when the library sent their little slips to the teachers that kindly reminded the students that they had clearly not paid close enough attention to the OR ELSE caveat of borrowing books, and imparted to them that in their joy of reading, they had forgotten to bring back their books on time, that I found myself totally confused at receiving a slip that called for me to return "Amelia Bedilia" immediately.  I had never heard of this woman nor the book telling of her, and so I may have just ignored it, knowing it was quite obviously a mistake.

Until I went to check out another book.

The head librarian at Maryland Elementary was not the nicest lady in the world which is a nice way of saying, she was kind of a heinous bitch.  She was, in fact, the very same librarian who had been a terrible ogre when my dad had attended Maryland Elementary school 20 years earlier  And the problem was, she seemed to hate children, which is not the greatest personality trait for someone who works almost entirely with children, but these things happen.

Standing there with a book in my little hands, I pushed it over the checkout desk, eager to devour its story, only to have the crotchety old librarian cruelly tell me that I was banned from checking out books. I stood looking at her bewildered and then, she pulled out a call card. "Amelia Bedilia" she said, waving it in front of my face. I screwed up my face not understanding how this happened.

"But I never checked that book out.  I wouldn't know Amelia Bedilia if I fell over her!"

"Well, here is your name, in your handwriting on the card!"  And it was, it really was.

"But I didn't check that book out! The wrong card must have been put in the back of the book I checked out. I meant to sign for that one, and I returned that one, on time. I really did!"

And she looked at me, only considering what I said for a split second before she told me that it was my responsibility to check the call cards in books I checked out and that I would have to pay to replace Amelia Bedilia before I could check out any other books because I had signed for it, which seemed ridiculously unfair to me.  Even at that young age, I recognized that it was her responsibility, as the adult and the librarian, to make sure her library was in order, and her mistake was now costing me actual money (that is hard to come by when you are six) and was denying me the ability to fill my head with fanciful stories and beautiful illustrations and important information about narwhals that I would need later in life.


For many years, I held a grudge against Ms. Bedilia, which is a shame, because it was just the sort of silliness that I should have loved- a series based around a maid who had no grasp of idioms and so did exactly as told "dress the turkey for dinner, draw the curtains, etc." And THEN she manages not to get fired each time by making a super tasty pie.  Imagine the life lessons I could have learned from that!

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.

Let My People Go!

It's Passover, which means, it is time for Matzo-related injuries.  If you've never had Matzo, let me clue you in... it is some stabby shit. Think 'stabbing power of Doritos if Doritos were twice as thick.'  And I am not talking about the rounded-edged Doritos that they likely switched to because they were undoubtedly getting sued for injuring so many unsuspecting customers, I am talking old school, 'put it in your mouth wrong and bleed for half an hour' Doritos.

On the first night of Passover, while eating a buttered piece of Matzo, I managed to puncture my mouth, and my throat, as well as stabbing myself in the face with it when I missed my mouth whilst I was complaining about stabbing myself in the mouth area.

Of course, I like to think that the sharp edges are part of the lesson.  "You think being stabbed in the mouth by a bland cracker made of only flour and water is bad... try being a slave.. try wandering around the desert for 40 years... now complain about a freaking piece of unleavened bread, you ungrateful bastard!"

But my people are well known for making the best of a bad situation, so, to take advantage of their natural properties, I think I will work on fashioning my own line of self-defense items made of Matzo... Jewish Throwing Stars, anyone?

It's really hard to nibble the hole out of the center though...

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On another note, I have lost one of my followers in the influx of other awesome followers and I want to find you again.  Your blog is pink, it might have princesses in the title. You once dressed as Rita Skeeter for Halloween, and it was your profile image for a while but not any more... You have great recipes. I need the link to your blog again, please!

Happy Pi Day!

Mmm, 3.1415926535!

Dear Valentine v.2

Okay, granted, yesterday's Valentine's cards probably are not appropriate for everyone.  Today, I have some cute ones that shouldn't get you slapped or blocked.

Confused? See IT'S A DOG!

Super (Sad) Bowl

I've spent my day cooking a ridiculous amount of food for my family for the Super Bowl.  We don't follow any teams, especially since our state doesn't have a football team, but I like excuses to cook and be ridiculous, and I like the commercials.

And I wasn't going to post anything, but I wanted to bolster the self-esteem of this poor bowl in my kitchen, the Super Sad Bowl, or I assume it must be because it attempted to jump out of my hands and plummet to its death EVERY time I picked it up.  No other kitchen implements did that, so I have to guess it is really unhappy and has given up on life.

But I want it to know that it doesn't have to feel so sad, because I really care about it.  Bowl, you were VERY helpful while I was cooking.  You did a really good job and I appreciate you a lot. It's not just when you are working though bowl, I appreciate you all the time, even when you are just sitting there on the shelf. So, cheer up little bowl;

I LOVE YOU!

Dare I say, WE love you!

Survey Says!

I've mentioned before that I am utterly uncool and play games on Facebook for entertainment.
Growing up, we watched a lot of Family Feud but, while my mom was very good at it, I was never really good at it all, as is evident while playing on Facebook, and I think the reasons for that are multifold.

The first being, I'm uncool.  I don't pay attention to the majority of popular culture so I have no chance at all of answer the questions about celebrities. Nor do I have the ability to answer questions pertaining to parties or social activities. My main goal at a party it to get through it without having to interact with anyone I don't already know... I'm too busy avoiding people to notice what other people are doing to enjoy themselves.

If you've ever watched Family Feud, you know that they obtain the answers by surveying 100 random people. I'm fairly certain not all of them are the brightest llamas in the pack, because when asked "Name a way you know your wife is turning into a chimpanzee." you end up with answers like, "She grows a tail," which makes me want to smash my head into my desk until I pass out (for those of you not familiar with the anatomy of chimpanzees, they don't have tails because they are apes, not monkeys, and apes don't have tails... 'cause they're not monkeys).

I also tend to over think the questions.  When you have 10 seconds to answer something, it doesn't help to consider the existential ramifications of the question. I often find myself thinking "Oh, yeah... fruitcake is something people don't like receiving as a Christmas gift.. I guess that makes more sense than 'severed pig's head'." When most of the thoughts that go through your head are vastly weirder than your peers, you are going to have problems with getting "most popular answers."

I usually do much better at Fast Money, for what reason I don't know... maybe the questions are more focused since they are in a rapid fire format, but even still, I often times end up sending irritated notes to my friend when I complete their Fast Money saying things like "Oh, apparently dogs don't count as pets now!?!" only with slightly more capitalization to express my true outrage.

The true joy of playing though, comes when you realize that your friend doesn't need your answers to win because they have already exceeded 200 points, so you can go for comedy over score.

Sometimes, fearing the shadows is a good idea.

I've been accused of being pessimistic before, and I really don't think that I am.  I always hope for the best, I believe good things can and will happen, I just think that you have to be realistic in regards to what you might be facing, instead of blindly optimistic. The actual interaction below is an example of my "constructive pessimism."


"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby." ~ Ruth E. Renkel

 "Yes, the light the rapist needs to see you walking by as he lurks in the shadow." ~ JRose

Cake is a lie.

It is shameful to say that it wasn't until I was in college that I knew what the phrase "You can't have your cake and eat it too," meant.  Mostly, because it was never taught in any class I was in, and the phrasing makes no sense.  I mean, the only way you CAN eat cake is if you have some, right?

I would like to petition that the phrase be changed to "You can't eat your cake and have it too," because then, it would actually say what it means and make sense.