Another reason I am getting old

Another way I can tell I am getting old is that my parents are coming into town this weekend...

AND I AM SO EXCITED!!

Like really seriously excited to see my parents.  And it's not just because they are bringing me birthday presents.

I like my parents, and I like spending time with them.

Go back 10 years and tell 16-year-old Karin that and she would have had the most sarcastic manipulative answer for you.

Something along the lines of "Oh, I am surprised my parents are even acknowledging me at 26, the way they treat me now its like I am some sort of criminal who has to "check in" when she is going somewhere and has a curfew. I thought by 26 they would have disowned me altogether."

Because I was a bitch! And insecure!  And I took it out on everyone around me.  But not now, well maybe I am still a little bitchy, and still super insecure, but I don't take it out on my parents any more because I am an A-DULT.

Fake Comment Friday!

Fake comment friday is back!!! I am so sorry about the lapse.

Also here is a picture of Cat snuggling this morning:

Two pictures that made me tear up today

Today, two pictures brought me to tears.

The first is form the New York Times story on the Obamas:

Barack and Michelle Obama in 1996. She was hesitant about his campaign but became his most energetic volunteer anyway, and she warmed everybody up — including him.


The second picture is a pumpkin that has been carved to look THE Death Star:

Life is so awesome today.

Stump the Punner!!

[Sorry for the delay on this, apparently I have a real job that takes up time.]

Jello there, Jigglers! (This was cheap, and I admit that!)

This week's entry is short and sweet & sour because I'm stuck in work-life balance purgatory BUT lucky for youze guyze, I made a list of wordplays, worksheet-style. I apologize for the extremely Stretch Armstrong (he makes bracelets just like Lance...really flexible ones!) nature of this post:

On Feb. 14 this year, I'm toasting to Bobby Valentino, a British man who polices (definition 2: to make clean and put in order ) music, after my own heart! 

(Interesting side note: Bobby Valentino, the American R&B artist goes by Bobby V or Bobby V-tino in the UK because there is another artist there who has been recording under the same name since 1975. Wikipedia said so! )

The McDonald's crime scene was covered in ketchup with fries buzzing all over the tender stripped chicken victims. The detective started to feel sick as he questioned the Hamburglar so he snapped, "We know you're responsible! Nugget to the point!"

I would imagine that a high-rollin' but family-oriented baller would write, "I do it for de guts & and de-lore-an  also my mama but also my wunnerful, one-in-a-million girlfriend, de Laurie Ann." (Even I de-groaned loudly at dis one!)

The temperature in the room is at the Fahrenheit of blistering heat. I Smellcius something burning. Oh. It's my face. Time to read some Kelvin & Hobbes comics to get my mind off the pain and cool off.

Before he passed, Aaron Spelling named a highway after his daughter called Motori Spellway, but the DMV changed it to Motori Speedway after several Hollywood-you-please mo-tourists complained. (They also complained about this sentence.)

[Leave your challenges in the comments for next week and be prepared for results done in a touchy-feely, new-age (there is no wrong answer), time-crunchy granola way!]

Ask Boyfriend

Dear Boyfriend,

Should I give beggers money?

Thanks,
Concerned

Dear Concerned,

If by "begger" then you mean a beggar, or a penniless wretch, then no, you should save your money for spelling lessons. All kidding aside, there is one thing that gives an uncommon perspective into just what level of squalor a human being has delved, and it is the shoes. In determining whether a mendicant is deserving of your alms, check out their footwear. Chances are, a guy with grimy nikes on is just a shady wino determined to find his next drink, whereas a man with swollen, mushroom-like appendages scantily swaddled in befouled rags may actually have a practical use for your spare change, like, and I'm just riffing here, surviving the onset of winter. This is not to belittle the plight of the homeless in general or set up a preferential hierarchy of needs amongst addicts on the street, but honestly, if you are going to give money to someone, it might as well be the one who looks as though they are barking up death's thorny bush. There's no telling how they will use it, or that their purple elephant feet will take precedence over their dipsomaniacal thirst for inebriating ambrosia, but there's always that chance.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

Ask Boyfriend

Dear Boyfriend,

Any good book recommendations?

Best,
Needs something to read

Dear Needs Something to Read,

Are there any good recommendations out there, do I have any good recommendations, or are there any good books? The answers to your three possible questions, in that order are, probably, keep reading and most definitely. Let me offer you some suggestions in a few different genres along with a professional critic's take.

If you are at all into Tolkienesque "High Fantasy" (I shudder at the popular connotations of that label, being a devout reader of this type of thing) and not adverse to deep pits of familial depravity and sanguine gobs violence, consider reading George R.R. Martin's 'Song of Fire and Ice' series, and hey, you'll at least be ahead of the nerd-turned-cool curve because HBO is going to make it into a no doubt wildly successful television series. Time's Lev Grossman wrote this about Martin's series:

"What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil. Tolkien's work has enormous imaginative force, but you have to go elsewhere for moral complexity. Martin's wars are multifaceted and ambiguous, as are the men and women who wage them and the gods who watch them and chortle, and somehow that makes them mean more. A Feast for Crows isn't pretty elves against gnarly orcs. It's men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love."

For those interested in more "literary" works, I would direct you towards the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño's '2666', a dense, 1000+ page novel of mystery, violence, and a modern degrading world tottering on the brink of mystical apocalypse centered on the fictional small town of Santa Teresa, Mexico. It may be helpful before reading 2666 to note that Bolaño wrote it in a race against his own death as an attempt to provide for the future of his family, then again, maybe not, although it acquires yet more subtle flavors of darkness in its contemplation of wealth and pain. Adam Kirsch from Slate puts it thusly,

"2666 is an epic of whispers and details, full of buried structures and intuitions that seem too evanescent, or too terrible, to put into words. It demands from the reader a kind of abject submission—to its willful strangeness, its insistent grimness, even its occasional tedium—that only the greatest books dare to ask for or deserve."

Lastly I will leave you with one of my personal favorites, which is often classified in the Gibsonian "Cyberpunk" genre, Neal Stephenson's 'Snow Crash.' Thematically, it incorporates computer programming, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, and cryptography, themes which anyone who knows me can attest that I will, when slightly intoxicated, expound upon at length. Stephenson actually popularized the term Avatar as a digital representation of the self with this book. The following is how Timothy Leary described it:

"A fantastic, slam-bang-overdrive, supersurrealistic, comic-spooky whirl through a tomorrow that is already happening. Neal Stephenson is intelligent, perceptive, hip and will become a major force in American writing."

Thank you,
Boyfriend

Ask Boyfriend

Dear Boyfriend,

When is the appropriate time to let your parents know about a new boyfriend/girlfriend in the relationship?

XOXO,
Gossip Girl

Dear Gossip Girl,

Unfortunately the answer to this question is influenced by a number of factors that I can't easily discern from an anonymous internet comment, such as economic class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, parental sanity level, weather, homeopathic tendencies, pets, and cereal preference. That being said, your question is "When is the appropriate time..." which is essentially asking for a temporal estimate as to when your parents will be least likely to disapprove of your relationship. My simple answer to that is you should do so when they are most busy and least emotionally distraught. For working parents this would be at 3:28PM on a Thursday, when they most likely have a fair amount of work to finish before the weekend but are in that blissful state that is only achievable towards the end of the week when there is a leisure day in sight. For the retired parents out there, let them know via email at 7:39AM on a Saturday, coincidentally when they are tooling around a Sicilian harbor in a hired dinghy, trust me, at this point they haven't given less of a shit about you since before you were born. For those with a parent/parents who have recently been laid off the aforementioned busy/distraught strategy isn't viable as they are never busy and always distraught, so just wait until 11AM on a Sunday when they've sunken into that drunken stupor of melancholy and self-recrimination, and they will tear up just thinking about how, really, anyone out there can really find happiness and (hiccough...) self-worth doesn't have to come from gainful employment, so you go out there an you love, please, do it for your old man, please, at which point they've fallen asleep and won't remember a thing.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

Ask Boyfriend

Dear Boyfriend,

What should I be for Halloween? The previous two years I went as Clark Kent and the "Brawny Man" (the lumberjack on the Brawny brand paper towels).
 
Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

In order to properly answer your question, I need to know if you went as Clark Kent or as Superman, and if the former, did you have a superman costume on underneath your unassuming suit and contraceptive eyeglasses? Your answer will speak to your dedication to costume minutia, not to mention adherence to Metropolis cannon. In any case, there are certain extrapolations that can be made on assumptions about your previous choices. I commend you on choosing costumes that are easily achieved without veering from the contents of an average man's closet, and will attempt to offer an option that won't necessitate any additional purchases on your part and will fit with the musclebound Caucasian everyman theme you have been running with. I propose you go as Ray 'Tiny' Jackson(Donald Gibb), the irascible giant sidekick of Jean Claude Van Damme's character in the seminal film "Bloodsport." This costume requires only blue jeans, a vaguely yokel black t-shirt (Harley Davidson would be best), a light blue Jacket and an unrelenting willingness to bodily reinforce the stereotype of Ugly American upon a melange of hackneyed ethnic types from every corner of the globe. For the especially intrepid costumer, consider going in a wheel chair as Tiny Jackson post near-fatal-encounter-with-

badass-Asian-dude-of-culturally-indeterminate-origins.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

Weekend!!!

This weekend the girl who sits next to me got engaged.

I got an HD Flip Cam!

You decide who wins.

25 going on death

Last year, when I was turning form 24 years old to 25 I fought it so hard.  25 took me dragging and kicking and screaming and maybe even crying.

Now, here I am again, another October.  And I am going to turn 26 at the end of the month.

And you know what?  I give up.  I have accepted this slow march towards death. 

I bought some eye de-wrinkler the other day just as a full embrace of my oldness.

I get really bad hangovers now.

And I have aches and pains I can't explain.

I am obsessed with my fiber in take.

I see teenagers being loud, and I want them to knock off that racket.

Boyfriend and I played cribbage over the weekend.  And we do crossword puzzles.

I AM OLD. And that is life. 

Ask Boyfriend

Dear Boyfriend,

How do you carve a pumpkin?

Thanks!
New to holidays

Dear New to Holidays,

You have hit upon one of my favorite yearly traditions, perhaps second only to the wanton gluttony of Thanksgiving. While my skills as an artist are debatable, I am a passable draftsman and inevitably, when All Hallows Eve rolls around I tend to get quite excited and overly ambitious about the impending squash dissection. Each year I conceive of ever more complicated designs that have ended in abject failure as often as resounding success. Take my last three years of pumpkin perforation.  2007 was a logo of a sports franchise, replete with all artistic flourishes that in the end undermined all structural support and thusly created a yawning abyss dead center, failure. 2008 was a cherubic little demon with barbed trident, pointy tail and adorable horns, and with extensive planning (more on this below) it turned out perfectly. This year I contemplated a few options; first, a logo of a different sports team, but decided that the gaping-void syndrome that plagued my earlier efforts was bound to repeat itself, not to mention the somewhat unimaginative quality to such a choice. My second thought, which struck when I was at the pumpkin patch, was a lovingly crafted map of the world reaching around the entire pumpkin, necessitating a plump, globular canvass. I picked just such a beast, weighing no less than 31 lbs. Had I done the prep work that I did last year, this would have been an entirely feasible idea and undoubtedly been sung of in dulcet tones of awe for generations to come as part of Boyfriend Lore. Unfortunately I did not, but the good news is I believe my pumpkin came out fine this year albeit not as I had originally anticipated.

The key to success in pumpkin carving is all in the planning. Well, planning along with an unwavering hand, uncompromising faith in one's own skill and a conviction of preeminence among humankind's pantheon of artistry, to be precise. My 2008 success hinged upon a few steps and some essential material considerations. I first created my vision in photoshop, contemplating carefully what parts would be negative space, thus lit by the candle, and essential to the design coming out properly. Once done with that, I determined what size print would fit well on my pumpkin, printed it, cut out the relevant portion and affixed it to my pumpkin with a series of pins. With a smallish marker, I then outlined the paper and subsequently removed it, leaving a trail for my intrepid hands to follow with the edged weapon of my choice. For the occasion I had purchased a relatively inexpensive but ultimately fantastic tool for carving, an art knife with removable blades, along with a selection of curved and straight blades. The straight blades were essential for getting the initial cuts in, where I cut from different vertices along straight lines within the bounds of the portion to be cut out, then followed the outline with my rounded blades to effectively remove the negative portion in small chunks. Viola! With some minimal cleaning of ragged cuts you are done.

This year I had something of a Halloween revelation, that I should simply freehand a whimsical if somewhat scary face and go at it with a steak knife, something of a childhood renaissance complete with all the sliced fingers and immediate regrets. This is also a completely viable alternative to the measured approach I described before and would have saved you all the time it took to read it.The following are a couple of pictures of my pumpkin (left) beside that of the blogess, both in light and darkness.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

[ED Note: I made a CAT!]

Morning

You know you are well hydrated when you are taking your morning pee, and Boyfriend asks if you are taking a shower.

What? I am on this cleanse diet where I need to drink a lot of water!

NEVER too much information!

You guyses are lucking out that I haven't been telling you about cleanse diet poops.

Lunch

Just found what appears to be a hair, perhaps pubic, in my soup.  So, that's the end of that.

Ask Boyfriend!

Dear Boyfriend,

How long should I wait to kiss a boy so Karin doesn't call me a whore?

XOXO,
Newly Single

Dear Newly Single,

In light of your question, I suspect it is somewhat disingenuous of you to so casually direct a string of amorous signifiers at someone who's very appellation speaks to romantic inaccessibility due to prior commitments. Speaking of X's and O's, I find it hard to believe that Karin would call a friend a whore in any situation except one where the term was explicitly accurate (pun intended Punner, pun intended), i.e. one where said friend was literally exchanging sexual interaction for money. With that cleared up, your question becomes: what is the time span required to wait before becoming intimate with a stranger lest your compatriots deem the interaction unseemly? The answer is how much you desire someone relative to the value you place on what your friends believe of you also taking into account how long you were with your previous significant other. I have developed an equation to deal with this:

PHSMS ÷ CIJFFI x YR = AWBA

This may seem complicated, so let's put into practice.

Say you place a person at a 7 on the Please Have Sex with Me Scale (PHSMS, 1-10, 10 being highest), and you rate your Consciousness of Image as Jezebel with Friends and Family Index at a modest 5 (CIJFFI, 1-10, 10 being least concerned). Given that you had been with your previous lover for let's say 3 years (Years of Relationship, YR, positive integer), the equation to determine the Amount of Weeks Before Appropriateness would be:
 7 ÷ 5 x 3 which equals 4.2 AWBA or 29.4 Days Before Appropriateness.


Thank you,
Boyfriend

Ask Boyfriend!

Dear Boyfriend,

What is the best type of Halloween costume: Slutty, Scary, Funny, or Current Event?

Thanks,
Slutty Pumpkin

Dear Slutty Pumpkin,

While I am tempted simply pick one of the options you present I believe that such a response would not adequately address the veritable cornucopia of Halloween costumes out there. Truth be told, there is no best choice available in your list, rather a not so subtle blending of all four is called for to reach the apex of costuming. One such melange for the women out there could be a zombie Tina Fey as Sarah Palin wearing lingerie, perfectly mixing all four aspects into one shambling, hilarious, sexy parody of a costume that would be discussed in hushed awe around the water cooler for nigh on a generation to come. For men not averse to airing out their junk perhaps a Mark Sanford look, replete with Argentina flag thong, southern twang and politico-wife with some semblance of a backbone. For those of you doubting the horror involved in this costume, please acquaint yourself with the fine pelt of hair decorating the average man's buttocks.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

Ask Boyfriend

Yes okay and hello there boyfriend and I have a question okay; what is the deal with all these hollyworthnothins getting record deals? Isnt it bad enough that we have to see them on our motion picture boxes? Cant they just shut up and get going and leave and go and get out of here and get already?
   
Josephine


Dear Josephine,

In point of fact, you have three questions, okay, all pertaining to the pandemic rash of actor-turned-musician syndrome, including but not limited to such notables as Kevin Bacon, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Costner, Robert Downey Jr., and this one is completely baffling, Wayne Brady. Your first question deals with "the deal" of these actors getting record deals, and succinctly, the deal is just that, a deal. Struggling music labels are more than happy to ink contracts with celebrities in order to foist such tripe as "White Knuckles" by The Bacon Brothers on an unsuspecting public with the hopes of reaping financial windfall through the dubious and decidedly one-sided relationship between name recognition and musical talent.

The second question in your trio deals with your perception that the entertainer's "music" will be as categorically awful as their celluloid work, specifically whether or not it is "bad enough" that we must consume the latter and are subsequently confronted by the former. My problem with this assertion-disguised-as-

question is that you assume that "we have to" do anything. You, my dear, are not constrained by any natural law dictating that you must watch The Postman in its entirety, much less listen to all twelve tracks of "Untold Truths" by Kevin Costner & Modern West. I understand that there are some special scenarios wherein one is forced to ingest their nauseating goulash and I can commiserate. Take for example this past week when I was unfortunate enough to be out sick from work and perforce required to watch daytime television for several hours. I caught an episode of the now ubiquitous Ellen Degeneres' show, and sat through a performance of material off the new co-album by Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson. Whatever else might be said about Mr. Yorn, he has at least a modicum of musical aptitude, the same however can not be said of Ms. Johansson. I have never seen such a beautiful woman look and sound as though she were a mangy jackrabbit struggling vainly in the clutches of a ravenous harpy eagle. I'll be frank here, there was no pathos to be found, only the eviscerating schadenfreude of natural comeuppance.

Your third question is somewhat hard to decipher, but is actually easily answered. Nope, no way, uh-uh, never, at least not until we as a culture stop feeding fuel to the raging infernos of celebrity ego and doling out currency in exchange for sub par musical manifestations of that very ego.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

STUMP THE PUNNER!!!

Aten-hut Bravehearted Soldiers on a Fantastic Voyeuge!

So I must address the stickler-in-the-mud who hip checked me last week (i.e., checked up on whether I am hip) as to my broad usage (and I don't just mean female) of what does and does not constitute a pun.

Our founding fathers, stepdads, sugar pops, and papi chulos did not put all their paychecks and child support into this nation in order to see the English language massacred, in the process removing the mass 'o cred it's built up o'er the years and throughout the high school yearbooks (KIT! Have a great summer! Stay sweet!).

ThereFORE! (*wild swing in attempt to regain focus*) I fully sadmit that I have been operating under a Amazon-wide definition of wordplay, wherein all paronomasia derivatives, second cousins, and ex-godbrothers (now atheists) can apply for permanent good citizenship under the pseudonicknym of "pun."

If you would claim that this citizenship (the Lady Liberty) is sinking your good graces, then let's heave ho, and anchors away, me boys! No need to Ti-panic. Let's all hold hands and hope we make it back to the Kumbayou in time to join Gumbo and friends.

That being wheel-spoken, here is a textbook crumb for the birds:

The sparrows and crows use pigeon language to communicate, which mostly involves one of two responses: "coo" or "uncoo."

And a flying saucer of milk for the traditionalist kittens:

The alley cats prefer their fur rumpy and arched to prepare for street fights while the deli cats prefer their fur soft and smooth to prepare for petting.

Time to put away the hobby horse and return to less animalcontent trivial pursuits! TTY haterz!

Parnold SchwarzeNAGGER

[REMINDER: Leave your words for next week in the comments!]

Quick Note from Josephine

Jopsehine apologizes for the brevity today.  Her sciatica is acting up again.  And she has been waiting at the doctor's office all morning.

Okay, yes okay gang so in the middle of the yuck factory known as Los Angel-less there is one glimmer of hope in a young man named Zac Efron. Okay, talented. Okay do yourselves a favor and check out a delightful little picture called 17 Again http://17againmovie.com/. Yes, heartstrings are pulled okay and in no small thanks to this young, fit, charming, polite, hearty young piece of lad, okay right. So. Well he was obviously raised right, that much is clear. Okay. Well the rest of you jerks could really learn something from him okay! Ya numbheads. 

Oh gutter mittens I left the toaster on. Great. Okay well get outta here and goodbye then.

Ughles

You guyses, I think I may have made another classic Karen Hammberry poor decision.

I am signed up to do stand-up tomorrow. AH!  What was/am I thinking?

Well, I'll tell you what I was/am thinking.  That I will be a smashing success and then get my own sitcom, IMMEDIATELY.  Off of my 5 minute set in the basement of a hotel. 

No, not really.  I know I will probs bomb, and then Boyfriend will tell me that I did great and that I am pretty.

But I am turning old at the end of the month.  And life is about taking risks, right?  RIGHT?!

Love!

You know what I love more than anything?  Using hyperboles.

Ask Boyfriend!

Dear Boyfriend,Are skinny jeans a passing fad or a new fashion staple?
Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

If by "skinny jeans" you mean pants made of denim that taper down to size at the ankle thus making the entire extent of the leg tight to skin, then no, I do not see them fading entirely from our collective closets in the immediate future. Whether or not they will remain à la mode is somewhat more uncertain, but I suspect that so long as thinness is a desirable quality in appearance, articles of clothing that bestow a measure of such will retain their allure.

Your question does, however, deserve further critical inquisition on a broader scale. Fashion, as a cultural phenomenon, shares much with the concept of glacial ages, with certain inevitability in rise and fall, albeit on the much more minuscule scale of human existence vis-à-vis that of earth's geological history. Not only do trends in fashion wax and wane, the overall import of appearance in a given culture is inexorably linked to that societies' level of leisure beyond day to day subsistence, a measure of "civilization" if you will. Like the next glacial age, fashion is endangered by global warming. In the scenario of apocalypse as brought on by the myriad symptoms of global warming, fashion will initially fall away as a concern of the survivors. Not only fashion, but our cultural love of thinness shall be cast off, replaced by a need to carry a certain amount of life-giving energy about our persons in the form of a layer of fat. We shall indeed look up to those with the cunning and wherewithal to find enough food to put on weight. If these intrepid remnants of our once-proud social order manage to stave off death's chilly grasp and mutant wombats long enough to reassert some semblance of society and viable progeny, then at some point fashion will again flower in their minds. Although at that point fashion may manifest itself more in the ability to successfully rediscover the lost art of loom-building and covering of our collective naughty bits than in distinctive physical raiment, but I digress. Furthermore, nature, once free of the cancerous legions of humanity, shall heal itself eventually and one day bring about another ice age, thus tidily tying up my fashion-as-cyclical-natural-process-not-unlike-glacial-ages theory.

Thank you,
Boyfriend

Website everyone already knows about

xkcd.com

yeah, i am going to say it

This Polanski shit is blowing my mind.

Rape is rape.

Should we go through all the prisons in the United States full of convicted rapists and decide whether or not they could make wonderful art?  And then release the ones we think have potential?

No, we shouldn't because they are rapists, and guess what?  So, is Polanski.

Grow a pair, people, and admit rape is rape .

Here again

Oh look, here we are again.

Another week has gone by.  And here we sit again.  Me in my cube at my desk, you where ever you are when you read this.

So another week, another seven days of our lives have gone by.

I accomplished:

getting sick
watching tyra
some work
obligatory poop comment

What about you?  What did you use your seven days of life for?

Also Fake Comment Friday, biiiiiiiiitches.

It only gets worse

Not only am I still sick, but today on Tyra the topic is "Girls kissing in bars."

And now this one girl is in love with this other one because they triple kiss in public for free drinks.

AAAAAH!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!!?!?

STUMP THE PUNNER!!

Hello Fellow Hot Tamales,

On this auspiciest occasion of the fourth pun blorgy, I would hope that you are wearing your most business-casual bibs because we are nothing if not Professionals (think Natalie Portman, pre-Star Wars).

 

However, due to a deficit of word subMission Impossibles (think Tom Cruise, pre-couch jumping), I will be deliciousting this tasty blog from its sock puppet throne and bidding high on the Goodbye at the BooHoo auction.

 

Better luck next crime!

 

Toodles Poodles,

Arfparna

[REMINDER! Leave your challenges for the next week in the comments!]