i am a black belt in gift wrapping.

ever wanted to design your own tote bag? now is the time! check out the jonathan adler site, where you can design your own rugs, pillows and tote bags. better than the personalized mug or mousepad gift! enjoy!

dino plant.

pretty sure i need this for my office. best part? you can forget to water it! that's how i take care of all my plants! but this one will just hibernate for 50 years until i remember to take care of it again. sweet.

too bad birthday/hanukkah is over...

ahoy!

basically what i look like today. ok no, i don't have a beard.

but otherwise, i am a fisherman in maine.

all lost, all the time.

yea, between now and summertime, that's about all we'll be discussing. a few items:

- NEW doc jensen post today
- check out the cool art from a recent lost art show. some really amazing work.
- here is my favorite, which doc tells us contains at least two spoilers on season 6.

wanted to share this exchange in lost, from the episode follow the leader in season 5, just because i love it:

MILES: Dr. Chang? What are you doing here?

DR. CHANG: I could ask you the same question.

HURLEY: But we asked you first.

DR. CHANG: Your friend Faraday said that you were from the future. I need to know if he was telling the truth.

HURLEY: Dude, that's ridiculous.

DR. CHANG: What year were you born? What year?

HURLEY: Uh... 1931?

DR. CHANG: You're 46?

HURLEY: Yeah. Yes, I am.

DR. CHANG: So you fought in the Korean War?

HURLEY: There's... no such thing.

DR. CHANG: Who's the President of the United States?

HURLEY: All right, dude, we're from the future. Sorry.

catch up?

how are you planning on catching up on all five seasons of lost in preparation for season 6? i've been rewatching most of the episodes (they're all on hulu right now), but then again i'm crazy. z is reading all of the episode recaps on lostpedia. while that doesn't sound as fun, it's definitely a plus that you can do it at work.

or, you can read some articles and recaps. as you know, i usually stick with doc jensen on ew (new every tuesday now) but zap2it has new lost theories, musings, articles and recaps every day. you'd think that would get boring, but you'd be wrong. they recently had 2 weeks worth of articles on free will vs. fate in lost. a recent article there that i really enjoyed discussed what season six might look like if time did reboot.

whatever your method, get prepared for feb 2! because you know i won't like it if people spend the first 10 minutes of season 6 asking me who miles is.

and, now im hungry.

z found an ice cream bench! im not sure if i want to sit on it or eat it. though i bet velvet is not tasty.

also -

Michael: Hey, hey, everybody, Ice-cream sandwiches! Aaaahh! Here you go. Take one, take one. It's all good. Phyllis, think fast. Oh, oh, I see Angela. Angela? Right? Waaaaah! Oh, hey temp. Why don't you take two? Because you don't get health care. And uh, faster metabolism.

truce!

doc jensen discusses all things lost! this week, the addendums to the letter of truce between the dharma initiative and the Others (starts on page 5 of the article).

ou est le bibliotheque?

has been stuck in my head all day, thought i'd share. thanks, z.

linguistic lunacy.

i'm pretty sure that this could be categorized as child abuse.

a linguist, d’Armond Speers, decided to only speak to his newborn son in Klingon. yea, you heard me right. according to wikipedia:

"Dr. Speers is known for having undertaken the endeavour to raise his child bilingually in English and Klingon; Speers spoke in Klingon and his wife in English. A few years into his life, the child began rejecting Klingon and gravitating towards English, as he could use English with many more speakers. At the time of Speers' attempt, Klingon even lacked words for many objects common around the house, such as "table". The experiment ultimately failed when the child refused to use Klingon when he got older."

of course, now this guy has been hired to help create an official Klingon dictionary. and i thought i was weird...

wah wah wah.

tis the season to make kids cry. i think one reason these kids are so upset is - some of these santas are really creepy!

can you feel the excitement?

i sure as heck can.

here is a new doc jensen article for you! so sorry if you just finished the article posted yesterday but there is a new season to discuss and get psyched up for!!

this week's article: is there any connection between lost and groundhog day? for those of you who may not know yet, season 6 of lost starts on february 2, 2010, i.e. groundhog day. and if you've seen the movie, you know what kind of time-reboot implications that might have (i.e.: "Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.")! (And if you haven't seen groundhog day, what the heck is wrong with you?!)

YES!

he's back. the guru of lost recapping is BACK.

a new doc jensen article to finally appease our lost appetite, and get us psyched up for the start of season 6!

happy pre-deceberween.

if you don't have a clue as to what deceberween is, you haven't been visiting my favorite site, homestarrunner.com. definitely, check it out.

also, please enjoy this thanksgiving cartoon from a few years back. one of my favs. happy turkey day!

ahhhhhhhhhh!

say it ain't so!

conserve.

in case you don't want to see any bits of this week's office ep, steer clear big tuna. head for open waters. (but - this made me very happy after a day of shit sandwich.)

i don't walk into your house and steal your hello kitty backpack.

new company, new holiday party. at least this year's invite is not on a powerpoint slide.

sunday.

i don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds illegal.

did anyone see fantastic mr. fox yet? i can't decide yet if i loved it, or if it was a bit too wes anderson, cutsey, hipster for its own good. pretty sure i'll land on the side of "awesome" though. you can check out the music at the movie's website and watch the trailer below, if you haven't seen that yet. additionally, i saw willem defoe (he plays Rat, of course) last night after seeing the movie. so, that was pretty cool. imdb also tells me that adrien brody (loooove) was in the movie, but i don't recall the specific Field Mouse that he played. then again, mario batali was also in it, so who knows?

enjoy -

bret & jemaine keep me company at work.

Bret: Yes, she's in Delta Force. She's been deployed to Fallujah.
Jemaine: But she works in the croissant shop.
Bret: Yeah well, she's got two jobs. She's a pastry chef and a sniper.

party genius.

during our lastest funco! meeting (i.e., the party planning committee, i.e., the committee to plan parties) we came upon the topic of finger food, and how it's always a problem of not having enough hands to eat and drink. apparently, a few products have attempted to tackle this age-old issue.

first, the fingerfood plate:

wear it like a ring, hold your drink in the same hand and voila! you've got a fingerplate. and its perfectly sized - small enough for your bagel-bites or tater-tots.


second we have the cookie dunk mug.

this way, your cookies are never too far from your milk. or coffee. or scotch. not sure how holiday-party specific this is, but i guess you can always use the shelf for cheese.... and your mug for wine! yay!

finally found the best candy at work.

it's chocolate. it's peppermint. it's delicious!

never ever leaving this job...

because this is what happens when you ask your friends in the warehouse to send you just 3 books.

dog halloween.

are you one of those people who insist on dressing their dog up for halloween? (of course, my parents are taking mimi to this year's dog costume dog parade at the chicago botanic gardens...) but whether you are a costumed-dog lover or hater, you will definitely love this nymag gallery of hilarious dog costumes (and accompanying captions). i guarantee it.

your brain esplode.

with most things lost, you really need to strain your brain to understand just what (and when) the hell is going on. here's another doozy, mostly because it is so far back in lost-time, you may have already forgotten this encounter.

check out this recent excellent zap2it article that ponders the mystery of how did ben (formerly know as henry gale, from minnesota) get into rousseau's net?

also, how is everyone feeling about the recent developments about lost, season 6? a few episodes in january, and then a hiatus for the winter olympics. as much as i love the olympics, i'm pretty sure i could spare it this year for uninterrupted lost viewing.

because...i'm awesome.

my work is ridiculous.

first off, there is a life-size cutout of this in our lobby.

maybe you need an excerpt, if this picture is not enough?

There are many reasons why you might be reading this sentence. You're obviously curious about me, or you wouldn't even be holding this book. That's cool with me, I'm happy about that, Mr. or Mrs. Whoever You Are. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that curiosity might kill cats, but it doesn't kill people. Unless you're curious about doing things like bungee jumping high on crack to see if you really need that harness, curiosity will not kill you! I tell you what will kill you—people will. We've got a long way to go to change that around, but I hope we do. For now, I can say this and I know it's true: Curiosity makes you smarter. Don't fight it! Learn to learn, learn to ask questions. Clearly, you've got questions about me. In this book you'll find some answers.

there's a new mug in town.

or, on my desk. go blue!
and thanks to the sister for a terrific weekend.

hot dog.

just not the same.

have you heard about this new version of the classic board game clue? this one is called clue: secrets and spies. the cool part of it is that it uses "text-messaging technology" (really advanced stuff). you text hasbro at the beginning of the game and throughout, they text you with "spy clues" and presumably stuff to help you along in the game. it all sounds cool but then again, it's just a board game, not the matrix. once colonel mustard is out of the billard room and loses his rope, it's just not fun anymore.

krap kids.

just saw this ad posted on fb for kiddie kandids. my question is: who gets halloween portrait pictures taken of their kids? though i guess if you were going to do it, you might want to take part in this deal (buy 3, get 3 free). just enough for home, office, car, grandma 1, grandma 2 and your bffae!

fyi....

no, i'm not dead. work has simply completely consumed me. and if anyone at my company wants salary increases this year, i better keep at it.

just wanted to let people know that i recently discovered that hulu now has all episodes of all five seasons of lost (ok fine, all aside from the second half of season five - but that is coming soon!). and you better catch up on your lost, because you know come january, that's all i'll be blabbing about (and you'll want to be in the know).

eek!

does this scare the pants off of anyone else???

for real....?

so we ordered in last night (too much to talk about with all the excitement going on - mazal tov L & A!!!). here was the receipt that came with our food (personal info concealed to protect precious roommates):

notice anything odd? i'm not sure if they were messing with us, someone got lazy, or this is unfortunately someone's real name (i really hope not).

dum-b.

even though they reportedly made thousands per episode on jon & kate, this is what happens when you live well beyond your means.

note to the gosselins: maybe try cutting back on your number of houses, kids, crazy parties, hair-do appointments, stupid clothes and bickering? just an idea. then you won't have to get a job at mcdonald's (as kate apparently claimed she'd have to do to pay their bills).

it's october...

and that means candy bowl at my desk!!!

it really was no miracle/what happened was just this.

considering it's my all-time favorite movie of all time, it would have been pretty embarrassing if i hadn't gotten 10 out of 10 on this wizard of oz quiz. since its the 70th anniversary of the wizard of oz, take the quiz and see if you can do as well as me! if you get at least a 7, i'll let you into the lollipop guild.

family math.

though it's no surprise to any of us, tlc has finally decided to axe jon from his family's show, and continue with (mostly) just kate and the kids - kate plus eight. i suppose jon was just getting in the way of the show, and his bad behavior was not sitting well with the tlc folks. it's pretty sad that kate has managed to turn america over to her side. in previous seasons of the show, she's looked like a horrible bitch and we all felt bad for jon. personally, i'm glad to see him go. i'm sad for the kids, but they are really the reason i watch the show anyhow. hopefully now we'll see more of them, and less of jon's antics.

prep.

now that RH is behind us, it's time to start mentally and spiritually preparing for YK. and if you are immature like me, you should check out this article from tabletmag - some good ideas for getting you through the fast.

you could also just listen to shlock rock's yom kippur song "tefillah"...

obsessed.

"this is a book that i'd love to read" - dan brown

yesss!

handed out in the lobby today:

we've got dan brown fever!

i'm sorry. what?!

as i was rushing home today, i breezed past the gap on 57th street. since gap is making a huge push for jeans these days, perhaps its no surprise... but in the window of the baby gap section i saw - skinny jeans for toddlers. i kid you not. the description online is "cool skinny jeans for your future fashionista." whatever happened to kids just being kids? the days when children had separate types of clothes, and not just shrunken adult clothes?

fyi - gap is also selling "boyfriend" jeans (which look insane on even the adult models... how do they look on normal sized adults?! let alone toddlers!), boot cut jeans, wide leg jeans..... basically everything on the adult side, just shrunk down for the kids. gap? stop it!

will my kids kill me if i don't let them wear skinny jeans? (or the future equivalent... skinny spacesuits, maybe.) i don't want them to be forced to be "future fashionistas." just let them work on being kids.

spoiler?

not going to even post a pic of who this may be about in case you really don't want to know details. but if you care about a potentially very good lost spoiler, check it out and see who you think it is!

what up, random house!

ever wonder how a book is made? ever wonder how a super awesome book is made (and 5 million copies of it)?? wonder no more! watch the superb video below that features the random house warehouse in maryland as they show you how they assemble and print (and protect) dan brown's new book, the lost symbol, in stores september 15th!

un-fun.

bought this on the street today.

book seller man: "usually when people buy books from me, i tell them to enjoy the book. but...."

first few pages were quite depressing, and i was reading in washington square park in the sunshine. i better finish this before fall really sets in....

you know you are a true new yorker when....

...a taxi is on fire and you don't walk the other way but go in for a closer look.

A taxi burst into flames today at 53rd and 7th Avenue. Of course, as firefighters tried to put it out, cars slowed down, and walkers stopped to check it out. Too bad I didn't know sooner, otherwise I would have gone outside to check it out! Z - this is what you're missing in NY!

what would tim say?

so, i'm a fan of skinny jeans. most of my current jeans are of the skinny variety. but this i just don't understand. why in the heck would i want "black ankle skinny jeans that feature sheer mesh panels"?? nymag suggests this means that either true pants are on their way out, or this is a way to ease people back into pants who haven't worn them in a while.

sidenote: who decided that the back should be normal skinny jean? would these make more sense if they were mesh all the way around, like jean shorts attached to mesh leggings, or do they then lose their "skinny jean" appeal?

you heard it here... probably not first.

what we're (that is, me and l) listening to this morning:

rebloga recommends.

looking to escape whatever terrible weather climate change has decided to bestow upon you (perhaps it's extreme heat, wildfires or sudden chill)? here's a suggestion - go to the movies! maybe you haven't been all summer in an effort to be outdoors as much as possible? i understand. but allow me to recommend two movies that we've seen recently that were quite, quite good.

1. Moon
I can't say too much about the plot in this one. To say more than a few sentences would give it all away. But here's the premise: It's sometime in the future, when we have figured out how to harness energy from the moon. So now all the energy we use on Earth is harvested from the moon. Sam Bell is an astronaut at the tail-end of a 3-year stint as the lone energy harvester on the moon. We see him interacting with GERTY (voiced by the awesome Kevin Spacey), a computery robot that is his sole interaction (other than viewing video uplinks from his wife). Basically, things get kind of crazy for Sam as loneliness sets in, and he mentally prepares to finally go home. Hopefully that set-up interests you enough to check out the movie. And if none of that got you, does it help that the director is David Bowie's son (Duncan Jones)?

2. District 9
So, you've seen the previews, right? At first, it seems like it will be an interesting documentary about South Africa. It will have cool footage and you'll hear about humanitarian aid efforts and firsthand accounts, and what the government is/is not doing right, etc. And then you see the space ship that is hanging over the city like an ominous gray storm cloud and you think to yourself, "...this is not a documentary."

Well, if you haven't seen the preview, that's what you would have thought. (And if you haven't even seen a preview yet... I anticipate that this is not your genre of movie.) That being said, the preview does not even touch the surface of the awesomeness of this movie.

Anyhow, the movie starts out similar to the trailer - interview footage, documentary-style footage. It sets up the scene for you, which is: 20-some years ago, this huge spaceship just sputtered out over Johannesburg. A review I read said that unlike the classic alien movie that explores "what would they do to us" this movie shows "what would we do to them." And we see that what we did was put the aliens in a camp (District 9), take away their rights and basically otherwise bully them around and ruin their lives. Our story starts when they decide that the camps have gotten so overrun, they are going to relocate 1.2 million aliens to a camp outside of the city. To do so, they need to get every alien's signature on the eviction notices (I know, it sounds ridiculous, but just hang on). Our hero is Wikus Van De Merwe (yea, I'm not sure how to pronounce that either) who heads up the committee to go into District 9 to get these signatures. After he has a run-in with a particular alien (Christopher Johnson - of course we'd dole out stupid generic names to the aliens), who seems to be suspiciously less drone-ish than the others, his life is never the same, as they say... There's really something for everyone in this - biology, science, aliens, family, betrayal, heart, and explodey bits (i.e., the alien guns don't just kill you, they explode you and everything around you).

Let me know if you go see/have seen either of these, and what you thought. Any others that I should make it my business to see?

confusement.

did anyone else see this story on tmz today? btw, you may need to avert your eyes, or look really quickly. it's that bad. jon - we were all on your side! and now you have forced us to root for kate. that's how bad of a person you are.

questions:
- where is this?
- why is jon up in a window/booth? is he handing out the chips?
- what is this girl wearing (my vote is that it's a sparkly pillowcase)

SPOILER alert!

when we last saw our heroes, jim and pam were at the hospital waiting to get some test results back, while dwight was doing his best to stall the volleyball game against corporate. want to know the rest? nymag is glad to spoil it for you. i'll remind you again that this is highly spoilery, but i doubt you'll be surprised if you do take a peek.

vomit-fest.

thank you to tlc for inundating me with commercials about the time traveler's wife movie, coming out this friday! even though i previously said i was "excited" for this movie to come out, that was only because it's one of my all time favorite books of all time. unfortunately, the trailer makes me want to stab my eyes out, and makes me so sad for its suckiness. here it is, but don't say i didn't warn you...




if you see it, let me know what you think (especially if you read/enjoyed the book).

that being said - i will remind you all that i will be away for the next 2-ish weeks. i will be sure to look out for goo blobs, and do bucko updates when i return!

faraday plays evil??

first off, it's really difficult to imagine my man faraday in any sinister role. on lost he plays a nerd-tastic scientist, he's in love, he's loyal to his mother. not the meanie type.

but according to ew.com, this same man (well, the actor anyhow) plays charles manson in a 2004 tv movie! manson AND jeremy davies?! this i must see. and if you click on the ew.com article, you can barely tell who is the actor and who is the real manson. scary stuff. apparently his performance is on fire, so this is a must see for me. has anyone else seen it? do tell!

love and love it.

only wish i had ever thought of this project. but as the deb said, it's a good opportunity to clean out my closet (which it has needed for approximately 10+ years.)

YES.

for the first time in my life, i'm right about something sports-related. check out the "pronounced" section.

that's boss.

it's august, and that means that the boss is back from her month-long sabbatical. to officially welcome the newbies to her team, she got us all initial mugs. i love presents for no reason! woo woo to the c&b team!

science nerd.

yes, i am. and when i found out yesterday that they might be giants is coming out with another (who knew they had any?!) kid's cd/dvd called here comes science, i knew i had to have it. not only do i just love science. and music. and sciencey musicians who also make kidlet music. BUT - it reminds me of one of my all time favorite books, science verse. observe:


















and equally as good as some of the titles in science verse - "amoeba" and "mary had a little worm" - are on the here comes science cd - "meet the elements", "electric car" and "roy g. biv". did i mention that I'm excited??

bah!

had to tape up my phone due to false message indicator lights. how did that come on if no one called me, and i have no messages?! more importantly, how do i turn it off??