Bloggy blog blog.

If you counted how many times I've said I was "resurrecting" a blog (across the many I've had), you'd probably start thinking that I was a cult leader. I mean, without context, that is.

To be fair, I've been busy since my last post. I:

• took the bar (NY and NJ)
• had a horrible time at both, but considerably worse at NJ
• got engaged!
• traveled to Asia for 5 weeks

And now I'm kind of half assedly dealing with my father's estate, thinking about getting a job, and playing World of Warcraft. I've said it before, but it just seems so apt. I am a first world bum. 

And in case you missed it, I got engaged. Marc proposed the day after the bar. So, quite possibly: wedding posts incoming. You've been warned, nonexistent readers!

Things I did today instead of go over New York civil practice. [video]

Britain's Got Talent won't let me embed this kid's audition video, so click here if you're curious. I think he's most adorable in the audition. The rest of these (or rather, the next two videos) that I could embed are lower quality than the ones you would get from the BGT account, sorry to say.

This (above) is a cover of the song below.

And this is what I did yesterday.

 PvZ action starts around :49.

Wherein I infantilize a 29 year old man and nag him like the terrible girlfriend I am.

I am so frustrated with Marc. He doesn't understand why.

Meandering thoughts on weight, body positive, and guilt.

Through the magic of the internets, I came across the tumblr site, Stop Hating Your Body. And I've come to a decision about my future weight loss plans.

I'm just not going to weigh myself anymore. I'm not dealing with the numbers well. I doubt I've ever dealt with the numbers well. The only gauge I care to keep track of is not measured by weight. The numbers are bullshit in any event. According to my height, my BMI would be "normal" even if I were down to 95 pounds. Well, you know what, BMI chart? Fuck you.

For everything else I'm about to say: honest to god, I know some websites would flag things as "triggering" and divide up the triggers -- self-harm, anorexia, bulimia, all that. To the best of my self-diagnosis abilities, I have never actually suffered from an eating disorder. Maybe some relatively minor anorexic tendencies in my early 20s, some compulsive overeating here and there in times of stress, but I wouldn't call myself a sufferer. I wouldn't normally consider myself to be "triggered" by, well, anything really. Which isn't to say that I'm not at least minorly affected by certain things. But I don't count myself among those so ill as to need counseling, therapy, intervention, etc.

So I'm just going to talk about what I'm going to talk about. I don't know if any of it is triggering. To be honest, a large part of me doesn't want to devote any more brain power to ED rules, so I'm just going to be honest and see where that takes us. If you're the kind of person who can be triggered (I suppose by anything), don't bother reading on.

Celebrity crushes: Hulu edition.

I may or may not have a serious thing for Clark Kentish types. And Sarah Shahi.

Tina Fey and normative beauty [quote]

A quote to share with you about gender beauty norms and, possibly, the real implications and message of Sir Mix-a-Lot's 1992 classic, "Baby Got Back."

"But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes."

-Tina Fey, Bossypants

Nabbed from rpg.net forums.

Nostalgia for anime that hits you at night (or morning).

I was browsing pages through people's links pages and found myself several clicks down the road, and staring at an anime screencap of what looked like Rurouni Kenshin. And I was hit with what I can only describe as a deep pang of nostalgia and pain. The kind you're only supposed to get when an old boyfriend calls up.

I miss that show. I miss many shows, and what's stupid is that those were some of the lonelinest moments of my life...college. I know I'm somewhat putting anime in a bad light here because I'm perpetuating a stereotype of some sort, but I really loved those shows. I got into them because I had a long distance boyfriend and no friends. Because I was unhappy at NYU and I was glad to be immersed in Japanese language escapist craziness. I had so few friends, but there was solace in running to AnimeSuki and looking at newly translated stuff I could delve into and get lost in. Some people in college did it with Jell-O shots and clubhopping in the village; I was an otaku homebody with an IT job.

And people wonder why I'm so sensitive about their fantastic Time of Their Lives college experiences.

I won't leave you hanging with just stupid achey nostalgia for a realistically-terrible-time-of-my-life. Here are the links of some of the fabulously geeky and talent-laden places I wandered to.

• Zac Gorman illustrations and blog
• my favorite: By Your Side
• I Draw Nintendo tumblr
• Mare Odomo 
• in particular, check out Letters to an Absent Father

Chrome's Lady Gaga commercial [video]

So here's a confession from me to you. I'm a little monster. And this commercial actually made me tear up. You know, by the time that amputee guy* is playing guitar around 1:10? KILLS ME.

*I don't actually know what's up with that guy, whether he's an amputee or what, but he definitely is missing half his right arm.

Oh, and just to add: I love Edge of Glory. Really.

Game of Thrones "spinoff" -- One and a Half Man [video]

I shared this over Twitter from my phone, but it shared the link formatted for mobile phones. Anyway, so I thought I'd cover my bases here and share with you the best thing on the internet I've seen all day. Seriously, I would watch a Tyrion-Bronn buddy show in a heartbeat. Or anything else Tyrion features in.



And if you haven't watched or read the (more?) serious Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, you're doing yourself a disservice. Fantasy's never been so awesome.

Death and other belated thoughts on Father's Day

For maybe the first time in my life, I wonder if my father knew me any better than I knew him.

My father died last month, as you may already know. We didn't have a good relationship. We barely had any relationship, considering that I lived under the same roof as he did for all but 2 of my juvenile years. My whole eulogy was about how we weren't very close and how I was comforted that he managed to build such a big extended family in the big wide world, even if the one at home was just as distant.

"Read more >>>"

Just to drop a quick note -- I felt I was writing too many tl;dr posts (despite comments!) and the blog was looking too long and skinny, so I went back and chopped some of the posts off after a few lines. So now if you see posts, make sure to check if there's a "Read more" link, because there should be another 4,000 more words hiding behind that. No changes to RSS feeds; those are full-article, if that's your bag.

I must confess, I think the only reason why I mention it is because I am one of those people who overlook "Read more" links when I near the bottom of a blog post and then feel very stupid when I find out days or weeks later that I missed about 75% of the post.

I was going to think about de-friending you anyway.

This post is going to be self-indulgent and petty, in that way that only Facebook friend politicking can inspire. And beyond that, there's no real lesson to be learned. It's just an exercise in intertubes, social networking, drudges-up-high-school-in-that-bad-way angst. You've been warned.

Dear Photograph [plug]

dearphotograph.com

I love this site and hope it gets tons and tons of submissions. I mean, look at the TREES and how they've grown!

Wake up, fuck up.

Often, there is no way around it; I fuck up. I fuck up but good. I think of all those people who seem to have it together: career, marriage, babies, all packaged together in a nice Facebook package.

I have a very basic problem, an extremely rudimentary flaw. It's a source of anxiety and shame, for the very reason that it's something that very few people get. And for good reason. It's a problem I shouldn't have.

Conan O'Brien's commencement address at Dartmouth [video]

This is the best graduation-related thing I've ever seen. Well worth watching.

Humor is easily the sexiest thing in a man.

(via Roger Ebert's Journal)

Post zero, for the umpteenth time.

The thing about "starting over" with the whole blog thing is that you, my random internet audience, probably don't know anything about it. My prior starts, I mean. And sadly, if you did know, you'd know that my blogging/website activity over the past few years started out as angsty Livejournal account-jumping (let's forget entirely about the old old old angsty/Sailor Moon fanpage Geocities and Tripod days, shall we?) and has slowly but surely dropped off as, well, angst decreased and quarter life crisis began manifesting itself as paralysis and then a three year hiatus into law school. What an expensive foray into Wanting to Make Your Life into Something that was.