Another Saturday Summary!!

Diving right in...


Squeaky Clean: Have you ever had two liquids next to you, one drinkable the other probably poisonous, so you keep one on either side of you so you don't get confused, but one time you reach for the wrong fluid and either drink it or think, "Oh, no, have I been drinking the wrong one?" I did that the other day with iced tea and Windex. Scared the crap out of myself- "I would've noticed if I've been drinking Windex, right?"

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Amish Fostered Prison Baby: Oh, man. There was a prison special on Oprah's network, OWN, called Babies Behind Bars, all about being pregnant and giving birth while in prison. This one woman's family couldn't take her baby, and she couldn't keep her baby because her prison's baby-keeping policy doesn't allow violent offenders to enter the baby-care housing unit and the woman had been to juvie as a young teen for a violent offense she technically counted-- which isn't entirely fair, but kind of makes sense because what if she was 20 and had gotten busted at 15 or whatever, that's only five years. Anyway, so this lady was giving birth but her family couldn't take the baby and she couldn't keep it, so she was put into contact with this Amish family that takes inmates babies and raises them as foster children until the mother is released. The craziest part of this, besides the fact they were actual electricity-free horse-and-buggy Amish, is the mother was like, "Oh, they don't seem that religious. I mean, lots of people go to church on Sunday."

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Lies in Advertising: Ever see those commercials for Almay Smartshade makeup? There's a new one with Kate Hudson. Let me tell you about the bullshit they're shilling there. I'm very, very pale and I really, really hate makeup and I have strange combination skin. So I get the Smartshade Smart Balance or whatever it was called, it was supposed to match my skin tone exactly then dry the oily spots and moisturize the dry spots which, I mean, really, too good to be true. I do attempt to be pretty on occasion so I thought I'd give it a try. Lies. The stuff itself is plain white lotion which, okay, yeah, whatever, it's not going to dry anything but whatever. As I was "blending" I realized that there were tiny bits of pigment in it that got broken by the "blending" action and that's what made it change color. Clever, but it was still too orange and not remotely what they claimed it to be. It also made me break out. So screw you, Almay.

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Elton John is probably the coolest guy ever. That's all.

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Creature Feature: My dad's been doing battle with the local wildlife. To hear me say that you'd think I lived in the middle of the woods, but I live in the suburbs and we are freaking overrun with creatures. Because they're doing so much construction it's taking away the natural habitat for skunks, and because nobody really locks their garbage cans the skunks go through the neighborhood like it's a smorgasbord. We didn't really mind at first, it was kind of cool to sit on the porch and watch everything run around, but it became war when the creatures started eating the vegetables out of my dad's garden. Opossums, skunks, and squirrels have been having a grand old time eating our tomatoes and corn so my dad's been trapping them and driving them away and letting them loose in the woods a couple miles away so they don't come back. Not like it makes any difference.

One squirrel was eating my dad's corn-- and this is the first time he's ever grown corn-- and leaving debris all over the yard. Kernals, leaves, the cob, it's hilarious because it's so bad it almost seems like the squirrel is doing it on purpose. My dad made little cages out of chicken wire to keep the squirrels from getting to the ears as they're growing so the little critters actually gnawed through the stalk itself, knocking the whole thing down and the little cages off.

Every once in a while, when I walk by the back door, I tell my dad a skunk or squirrel or whatever is eating out of the garden and he gets all mad and stomps out, ready to bust some rodent rear. It makes me laugh. A lot.

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Danish Invasion: Last Monday Salami & Orchids had, for the first time ever, another country beat the United States in page views. Congratulations, Denmark! In one day we had 20 page views from Denmark alone- the US only had 14! Tak Danmark- kom igen!

...is that right? It seems too much like English to be another language, like it's just English words spelled wrong...no offense intended, Denmark. Blame Google Translate.

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I'm an Animal Lover, But...: On a darker note, I'm really sick of these ASPCA and Humane Society commercials showing images of abused animals. If I can't comfortably eat and watch your commercials at the same time, I'm not giving you any money. Not even-- if I can't comfortably watch your commercials period, I'm not giving you any money. Especially if some of that money is going to fund more, and similar, commercials.

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Good News: Project Runway is back! They really need to make a bigger deal of season premieres, man, I had no idea it had already happened. Expect more Project Runway posts.

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Upcoming Posts: I'm almost done the Fight Club analysis, it's going better than I thought it would so I want to make sure I nail it. It'll probably be up Tuesday or Wednesday. Also coming is a review of Janet Fitch's novel White Oleander...and I'm going to Gayle's house tomorrow as she's throwing a party for a friend of ours, Lisa, who moved to Florida after graduation. In all it'll be six hours worth of travel, so I may be doing several mini-posts from my phone tomorrow just detailing things seen and heard on NJ Transit. During The Internship from Hell I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the rails and I can tell you it's always eventful.

Tak igen, alle. Hold dig smuk.

...I think Google Translate is playing a trick on me.

The First-Ever Salami & Orchids "Saturday Summary"!

Discovered where the phantom posts were if, by any chance, anyone was wondering about those phantom posts, which I doubt, but whatever. They were drafts that the nifty blogger editor had saved for me. Nice of it. A little annoying, but nice of it. 


I also discovered the font changer thingy. Not the best selection but I found a good serif that wasn't Times New Roman. I'm a serif kind of girl. Book Antiqua. Garamond. Palatino Linotype. And now Georgia, apparently. 


SO. I made an email address last night to tie to this blog because my only email address is my full name which, while professional, poses certain problems when dealing with strangers. No offense, strangers, I just have a unique name so it wouldn't be hard to track me down and rape me. Not like you would. Or anyone would. Or would want to. But it could be like that scene in The Jerk, where the crazy guy picks Steve Martin's name (well, Navin Johnson's name) out of the phonebook randomly and decides to kill him. It could be like that. ANYWAY, yes, the point of all of this is that I made an email specifically for contacts from this blog so feel free to email me at PlummyJo@gmail.com and I'll get right back to you :)


Oh, and get this. While I was trying to connect my two gmail addresses- which is harder than you might think and I still don't think I did it right- Google was like, "You have suspicious activity on your account. Please verify you're human." Gee, thanks, Google. Make your shit easier to figure out solo and maybe I wouldn't look like a robot. And even if I was, wouldn't I know what I was doing? You could just program me to work and I would instead of screwing everything up. 


So there. 


Changing subject:


I have a one-off comment about Edible Arrangements that's too long for Twitter (LandofGilli) so it's going here. They're really pretty and all, but unless you're having a party you've got a ton of fresh cut fruit that has a very short shelf-life. Recognizing this problem when we got one after my uncle died we came up with the only solution to this problem: Sangria. And it was delicious. It wasn't one of the ones with the chocolate-dipped fruit because whoever sent it to us was cheap (just kidding, I don't even remember who it was or if those were even available at the time, really), but if it had been the chocolaty kind of course you wouldn't put the chocolate in the wine. I'm just saying it's a lot of cut fruit all at once. 


..."Chocolaty" looks wrong but it's right. I hate that. 


What may become a regular feature until it's completed...The Great Room Reorganization!! Seeing as job prospects are...nonexistent...my childhood bedroom is becoming my early adulthood bedroom. The first thing I need to do is put my memory foam pad over my mattress pad because I think the mattress pad is too tight over the memory foam so it's smushing it when I'm supposed to be the one smushing it. But then I want to move my bed and my standing lamp and my TV and my bookcase...I'll have to post before and after pictures because just about everything is going somewhere that it isn't currently.


Another could-be regular feature...The Great Curl Project!! This is a disaster. My hair and I do not get along- its nature is quite unlike mine...I imagine my personality to be less wild than my dark red tangle (speaking of, the new Pixar/Disney Princess is a redheaded curly archer! I'm a reddish headed curly archer! It's called Brave and I'm sure it'll come up again) So I've been reading through and posting in the Long Hair Community's forums (here) and it turns out that part of the reason my hair and I disagree is because I was, essentially, raised to mistreat it. It's not some hippie thing (though be sure you can find it on there), it's just that all of my copious curls come from my father- and men are not generally wealths of information on proper hair care. I imagine my father would use a bar of Irish Spring in his hair without a second thought. My mother's hair is pin straight, so she doesn't know what to do with frizz and ringlets. So, of course she did my hair when I was little- and she did it just like her's, with a brush. Apparently (as my frustrations made abundantly clear) brushes are NOT GOOD for curls, and is the reason why my hair feels like cotton candy every time I run a brush through it. 

                                                                      Brushes are bad. 


So...now I'm learning how to take care of my hair properly. "But Jo!" You say, "Shouldn't you have figured this out, like, a decade ago? You're 23!" To which I say to you, when I was sick and depressed and lying in bed for 10 years I didn't care what my hair looked like. I was too depressed to care and on the odd day that I needed to look nice for something (concert, wedding, funeral, what-have-you) I didn't know how to make it happen and would be miserable and feel hideous which only furthered my determination to not leave my bed ever. 


So, yes. I'm a 23 year-old college graduate learning how to be a teenage girl. And it's not going so well. Granted it's only been 2 days, but those 2 days have been miserable failures. Sigh. Perseverance. 


What a mess this post is. 


*Ting!* Brilliant idea. Saturdays are henceforth to be Saturday Summaries on Salami & Orchids. A round-up of my random thoughts and plans for future posts. I'm awesome. 


And now it's naptime. Have a lovely evening.