Monthly Archives: August 2013

You Should Know How To Do This: Be a Morning Person

The entire point of being a morning person is so that you can be a complete and total jerk about it all the time.

I am a morning person. I am a complete ass about it. Like, “oh, you just got up? I went to barre class, made some scones, did all my laundry, and read six chapters of Ulysses. Also, they were not sold out of maple bacon doughnuts when I got there. I wish you’d be there! Would have saved you one! They’re super good. One day!”

This is the beach at 5:30 AM. Look, you don't have to share.

This is the beach at 5:30 AM. Look, you don’t have to share. There are no kids trying to bury you in sand, and no drunk people/gross catcallers ruining your run, swim, or lounge.

It was not always this way. Back in the day, when I was a baby Kentucky, I would sleep until noon, no problem. This might be because I was a teenager and apparently teenagers’ circadian rhythms are on like, 27 hour cycles or something. One time, my dear grandmother woke me up at like, 9:30 and I complained bitterly for about a month.

When I was in college, I needed to work in addition to taking classes, so I scheduled all my classes on Tuesday and Thursday so I could sling overpriced lipstick the other five days. This effectively means that I was in class from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. on those days, which is kind of a feat for most students. It’s not ACTUALLY a feat, but if you’re in college and you tell someone you take 8 a.m. courses, they think you’re some kind of sainted freak. After that, I got a job that started at 7 a.m. where they would fire you if you were late, so I just kept the ball rolling. ANYWAY. I learned a lot about getting up early and its benefits.

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ME WANT [recipes for] COOKIES

These are my favorite cookies ever, but getting the recipe would be on par with the Ocean's 11 heist.

These are my favorite cookies ever, but getting the recipe would be on par with the Ocean’s 11 heist.

So, I’m trying to do something cool for some nice friends of mine who have been deployed to Afghanistan for the next year. I want to send them cookies every week, but I don’t want to just send Toll House chocolate chippers every couple days. Would you be willing to share your favorite recipe with me? All the different ways to contact me are in the About column. I’m hoping to get about 50 and I’ll make a little booklet at the end!

Video

Caitlin Rose- Piledriver Waltz

I’ll admit to being angry that she’s so pretty that she looks pretty in CLOWN MAKE UP and that she first tried to make it as a punk-rocker. This is the same feeling I get when I watch 15-year-olds at the Olympics.

Lazy Sunday: 25 August

Here are some things to read so that you’ll have something insightful and meaningful to take to brunch.

  • Girls who park in cars with boys aren’t really popular.
  • Turns out, you probably do know how to make meth after watching all that Breaking Bad. They have a real-life consulting organic chemist for that ish.
  • Here’s how to open a champagne bottle with a sword, you know, for the next time you need a mimosa while astride a horse.
  • The real question this article posits is “how would YOU better squander $100 million?”
  • Maybe you were wondering about Filipino seamen’s junk. Wonder no more. I can’t believe this is still a practice, in this, the 21st century.
  • Stop eating food.
  • This is seriously a business model I have considered and I’m so upset someone beat me to it.
  • Last week, I realized that some people probably confuse my enthusiasm for Southern culture for some kind of pathetic neo-Confederate sympathy, and that made me really sad. Turns out I’m not the only person who feels like that.
  • Alternate title: Some good tips for flying and several ways to be a complete and utter jerk (you are not very important, okay?).
  • I do love a good story of successful social climbing.

You Should Know How To Do This: Look Good On Skype

The phenomenon of the webcam girl is perhaps the most baffling of all things in the modern world. How is it possible that there are people who look so good on webcam that there are other people willing to give them actual money just to look at them on webcam? I feel like the weird lighting of your house, the graininess, and the requisite sound delay make the whole thing unsexy by default. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven that you look 87% less hot on Google Hangout than in real life.*

This is my "pre-doing all the advice" look. This is what you will look like if you do not follow my good advice.

This is my “pre-doing all the advice” look. This is what you will look like if you do not follow my good advice. I took this about 10 minutes before the “after advice” one, so do with that information what you will.

But in this, our rapidly shifting universe, there will come a time when you need to make yourself presentable via Skype or something like it: Friends and lovers move abroad, get deployed, or decide having a cell phone is a racket, you decide you want to look at your sister’s face and she’s off at college in Vermont, a company in Seattle wants to make sure you don’t have a face tattoo before they hire you sight unseen, whatever. It’s incredibly stressful, because not only do you have to look like yourself/professional/hot, you also have to give the other person your undivided attention and make eye contact, unlike phone chatting. That said, there are some steps you could take so you can feel confident and attractive.

My first, and best, suggestion is to be really good looking in real life. That will get you pretty far in this whole Skype game. Barring that, check out some ideas after the jump.

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Gestures & Sounds

As your friends pair off, some of them are going to pick better partners than others. I know this is a joke an all, but this it’s rock-solid advice for how to not say something you don’t mean, but not be a jerk, either.

Cold October: Escondido

It got down to about 70F this weekend in Charleston, and it just hit me: autumn isn’t coming to the humid subtropical zone.
Still, a girl can dream of sweaters and apple cider, right? Escondido is a Nashville-based band (not chilly there either), and their sort of washed-out, bare-like-the-desert-but-glittery-like-the-Opry sound is perfect for imagining the onslaught of Facebook updates about pumpkin-spice lattes.