The Cake (And Everything Online) Is A Lie

A pretty common saying is “don’t judge a book by its cover,” yet we seem to all forget that particular wisdom tidbit when it comes to the internet. This can range from trusting a Wikipedia entry to believing that chick from high school is really as perfect and happy as she seems to be on Facebook. I’m not going to go all moral-high-ground ranty on you, but rather share a silly example of yet another thing not to always trust online – recipe gifs.

There is a subreddit devoted entirely to these things, and they’re popping up on my newsfeeds more often than not. It just so happened that one for a cherry recipe showed up right after I bought a bunch of cherries. The video, which you can see here, made it look super fast and easy to throw together. Since my boyfriend is a huge fan of cherry pie it seemed like fate. I hurried to the kitchen, eager to begin my gif recipe journey.

I had watched the video a few times, but had also grabbed the written instructions as that’s how I roll. I gathered my ingredients and my baking wine and turned to the first step with glee. Here is where things quickly fell to pieces.

Let’s back up for a second. Ya’ll know I bake. I do. A lot. Despite my tendency to never follow the directions exactly, everything normally turns out delicious. What I do not do though is bake pies or too many fruity desserts. I don’t really have a reason for this. I mean I’m not a huge fruit fan so that could be part of it, or it could be that I prefer time savers like jarred/canned ingredients and everyone always stresses how fruit desserts are better when they’re fresh fruit. I dunno. The point is that I’ve only ever made one or two pies in my life, so I am in no way a pie or fruit expert.

This became very obvious very quickly, as the first thing I needed to do was pit my cherries. The video showed a hack involving a bottle and a chopstick. I had both of these things. I washed and de-stemmed my cherries and got ready to pop out some pits real quick.

I’m not going to say this hack is a lie, because it technically works to get the pit out of the cherry. But the easy and clean way they present it in the video? FALSE!

I screamed a little when the first cherry pit exploded in a gush of juice. It was horrifically reminiscent of a certain Game of Thrones scene involving the Mountain. Yes, the pit was out, but my cherry was also rather deformed instead of the perfect looking one in the video. I thought maybe I was doing it wrong, so I tried a few more. Same result. I googled cherry pit removal tips and found several entries about the fail process I was already trying, and then another one involving a frosting tip. After several large gulps to harden my resolve, I switched to that method.

Eventually the cherry pits were removed. Almost all my cherries were basically torn in half, and my kitchen looked like a murder scene. There was cherry juice on the counter, on my wine bottle, and ALL over me as well.

I was a little discouraged that the first step had proven to be more difficult than the video indicated, but I continued on. The rest came together easily enough, and I popped my creation into the oven. I think it was the smell as it finished up that first alerted me that something was off from my expectations. While the recipe was called “pie” it obviously lacked a crust, and the description had called it a cross with a cake. In my mind, this translated as actually being a cake. In my boyfriend’s mind, this translated into being like a cheesecake. The actual end product was neither of these things.

Did it look pretty? Well, yeah. After an hourish of hot, sweaty, and mildly terrifying efforts it was nice to see it turn out looking good. As for the taste… NOT my cup of tea. It was neither cake nor pie but almost more like a flan, which I do not enjoy. I took it into work and thankfully my coworkers liked it so it wasn’t a complete waste.

Moral of the story? Do NOT always believe what you see online!

#TheCakeIsALie #NoReallyItWasThisTime #DontTossWordsLikeCakeOrPieAroundIfItDoesntTasteLikeFreakingCakeOrPie

37 Signs You May Love Books A Little Too Much

1. You have books stacked in front of books and are still running out of room on your shelves.

2. You are also running out of room on your counter.

3. And your table.

4. You are slightly in love with a fictional character.

5. You have cried over the death of a fictional character.

6. Pretty much all of your #friendshipgoals come from fictional characters.

7.  For that matter, most of your #relationshipgoals do too.

8. You have been known to lose track of time in a bookstore.

9. And in a library.

10.  And in bed when a good book is involved, which has probably resulted in more lost sleep than your entire sexual history so far.

11. You’ve ignored a call once or twice (or more) in order to finish reading the paragraph you’re on.

12. Two hours later, you realize you still haven’t checked nor returned the call because you kept reading.

13. Sometimes, you don’t even hear the call in the first place because you’re just so into the book.

14.  Several of your books have food stains from reading while you eat, because you can’t bear to stop.

15. They also have water stains, from reading in the bathtub.

16. One or two may also have lipstick stains because…. well that one is a long story.

17. You have ended friendships with people who refuse to return borrowed books.

18. You have ended relationships with people that say reading is “a waste of time when you could be out there, living life.”

19. When visiting friends, you have been known to become so intrigued with books you find at their house that you have to borrow them.

20. That’s the best-case scenario. You have also been known to visit a friend, find an interesting book at their house, and start reading then and there.

21. Three hours later you realize it’s three hours later and you’ve been completely ignoring your friend.

22. They may have even gone to sleep at this point. You don’t know until you start searching for them.

23. Amazingly enough they are actually okay with this, because you’ve done it before and they’re awesome enough to be understanding of your book problem.

24. Almost everyone you know has gotten you a book for a present at some point.

25. Or a gift card for a bookstore.

26. All of your good friends know there is at least one book (if not more) that they should never, ever mention unless they want to hear you rant about it for hours.

27. Actually, several of your coworkers know that too.

28.  In fact, so do some of the random people that you see every day on your commute.

29. Your ideal vacation is going to the beach, because then people are cool with you spending most of the day reading.

30. You love rainy days for the same reason.

31. Also winter… basically anything that can be an excuse to stay in with your books.

32. If you didn’t need to get food and more books, you might never leave the house.

33. You legitimately like books clubs.

34. For the book discussion, not for the food and wine.

35. You love jokes about how much people love books.

36. You also started a blog mainly to convince people that reading should be a sport.  

37. And to give you an online forum for all of your book rants.

Perfume: Not for the Weak

In case you didn’t know, later this month is National Celebration of the Senses Day. As a Taurus, known lovers of sensual pleasures and luxuries, I will be honoring this holiday to the extreme. For those of you that are a little less inclined to overindulging your senses, I offer a guilt-free alternative. Watch Perfume.

What, you’ve never heard of this movie? I’m not surprised. It’s entirely possible the only reason I know about it is that in college we made a habit of looking up Alan Rickman movies (for Alan Rickman movie night, duh). The full name is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It is based on a book, but I only brought myself around to reading it some time after first seeing the movie. I didn’t particularly care for the book. I believe my friend Jenn prefers it though, so don’t take my opinion as a reason not to read it.

Perfume is an interesting movie. I shy away from terms like “good” for this one, but there are things about it that I find very compelling. There are also parts that are a total mind screw, just to warn you. I happened upon a post the other day that notes Perfume “both suffers from and subsequently plays with the fact that film is still a medium that cannot engage all of our senses, such as smell,” which I consider both remarkably accurate, and one of the main reasons I (somewhat) enjoy the movie.

The main gist of Perfume is that there is a character, Jean-Baptiste, who has such a heightened sense of smell that he experiences the world in an entirely different manner from the rest of us. He fears losing wonderful smells, and becomes a perfume apprentice in order to learn how to capture scent. His goal evolves to try and create the perfect perfume.

While this is an interesting premise, I can’t say the storyline is the draw for me. That’s probably why I didn’t really care for the book. What I find fascinating is the way the movie tries to get the viewer to experience what Jean-Baptiste experiences. Obviously, we can’t. We can’t smell things through the tv. What they do instead is use visuals and audio to pull us into the same mindset. This is what I so thoroughly enjoy about the movie.

The other interesting aspect of the movie is the ending. While I’m not going to give away any spoilers here, we used to make people watch Perfume just to see how they reacted to the end.

This is a movie that I feel like everyone should watch at least once, and then I’d enjoy discussing it with them, but there’s a good possibility you may dislike it or be morally offended. So since I like lists, here are some reasons to either watch, or not watch it.

Reasons to Watch Perfume

5. Dustin Hoffman wears a wig. What, that’s not a good enough reason for you?? His scenes are plenty great without the wig, but it’s nonetheless a source of delight.

4. The dark humor is amusing if you like that type of thing.

3. The visuals (in my opinion) are stunning.

2. If nothing else, it raises tons of great questions about life, meaning, beauty, sociopaths, and so on and so forth.

1. Alan Rickman portrays potentially the fictional world’s best father (Liam Neeson is probably winning that contest); very appropriate as Father’s Day is also coming up.

Reasons Perfume May Traumatize or Offend You

5. There’s violence.

4. There’s nudity.

3. There’s a casual disregard of humanity.

2. There are religious references and some religious figures involved in unseemly behavior.

1. The ending, pardon my French (that’s a joke by the way, since the movie is based in France. I knew you didn’t know that so I was nice enough to clarify), is a total “what the f*ck” experience.

This will take on a whole new meaning...

If you do watch it, or have watched it before, please find me (that can be virtually, we don’t need to get into a stalking scenario) and tell me your thoughts! I will say this, the movie left such a strong impression on me that I spent several subsequent days with trash cans placed in front of my door. This is actually my friend Jenn’s top reason for why you should watch Perfume, and it will make more sense once you do!

Long Hair = Death

Personally, I’ve had longish hair most of my life, with the exceptions being when I was a baby, and a few random times when I chopped it off and immediately regretted it and had to wait for my hair to grow out again. Some people, like my father, think everyone should have short hair. Some people, like Laurell K Hamilton’s characters, think everyone should have long hair.

The truth of the matter is not everyone can pull off long hair. Of course, not everyone can pull off short hair either. I’m not going to comment either way on who does or does not look good with a certain hair length, but I will say that with long hair comes great responsibility and danger.

You see, long hair is a secret death trap. It’s true. Besides all the known issues around maintenance and increased risk of heat stroke in the summer, there’s the constant possibility that long hair will lead to your early demise.

Now in everyday life you’re probably okay to wander around with your long hair let down, but you should be wary if weird situations come up. Don’t believe me? Here are 4 examples:

1.     Missed it by a hair

I’m starting these examples with the world of sports, which you might think to be the least likely to have issues with long hair. However, my beloved Steelers have a player that is known for his luscious locks, and has also demonstrated their vulnerability.  In case you weren’t watching every Steeler game back in 2006, I’m sharing a video clip. Polamalu had intercepted the ball and was nearing the end zone when he was tackled by… wait for it… his hair. Now this isn’t really a near death situation (although it could be, I feel like that’s doing bad things to your neck) but in some games those 7 points can make all the difference, so close enough.

2.     Safety protocol

The next example comes from a book series. Specifically, this is a zombie trilogy written by Mira Grant that starts with the book Feed. I’m about halfway through the third book (I can only read it while it’s light outside) and I will say it’s definitely my favorite zombie series ever. While none of the characters have died YET (because again I have half a book left) from their long hair, in this post-zombie world it clearly has happened because one of the main characters talks about it ALL THE TIME. When she briefly has long hair she is freaking out about it, due to the potential hazards. So clearly, at some point someone was caught by their hair and munched on. Definitive proof.

3.     Trimmed down

Of course one can hardly talk about long hair without mentioning anime, where everyone and the aliens have ridiculously long hair (here’s looking at you Sailor Moon). In most situations it’s magically not a problem, but in Naruto we have another fine example of the potential dangers. While trapped in a death forest with her teammates unconscious, Sakura is attacked by another team. Eventually she is held by her hair, about to watch her teammates be killed, when she decides to cut her hair off and escape. For years she then keeps her hair short, because obviously she realizes the hazards in her line of work (it’s also symbolic of her being more dedicated to her craft than trying to look pretty and blah blah blah, but let’s focus on what matters to my discussion).

4.     DEATH, so much DEATH

So you might have noticed that no one has really died yet in my examples. Well, prepare yourself then for the ultimate proof – Piranha 3D. In Piranha 3D there is not only one but TWO girls who die due to their long hair. The first girl is innocently swimming in the lake with everyone else when the piranhas attack and it becomes a madhouse. While a certain jerk is trying to escape, her hair gets caught in the boat’s propeller. Suffice to say her face and scalp get ripped off (I think, to be honest I was hiding for a good portion of this movie and have mentally blocked other portions).

Sadly not being there to learn a valuable lesson, the second girl is stuck on a sinking ship and trying to crawl across a rope to make it to safety. Several people crawl across the rope. They make it successfully. This girl does not. You know why? Because the twat didn’t put her hair up before starting across. The piranhas jump and catch hold of her hair, and pull her to her death.

What have we learned here? You can have long hair. It’s gorgeous, it’s sexy, it’s a wonderful defense mechanism in SOCIAL SITUATIONS, but damn it be smart and put it in a ponytail before engaging in potentially hazardous activity. The Green Ranger knew to do this. Are you better than the Green Ranger? I think not.

Thus It Will Be: Grudge Who Grudge

You know all those people (including me) that say they’re in love with a fictional character? Well, there are also those of us that are in love with a historical figure. I know, I know, but it happens.

There are several different historical figures I have a bit of a crush on. I can read about people like Caesar, Cleopatra, and Marie Antoinette until the cows come home, which since I don’t live on a farm means I do a lot of reading. But while their stories are interesting, and even though I have a bit of a vendetta against Octavian, it’s nothing like the way I get about my true historical love.

Who is it, you may wonder. A great American like George Washington? A prime man specimen such as Marc Antony? No, my love is none other than the glorious and misunderstood Anne Boleyn.

I’m not entirely sure why I love Anne quite so much. Henry VIII’s wives and scandals are certainly fascinating. Sometimes I’ll read about the other wives or about Henry himself, but it’s not really the same. I want to scream with frustration when Henry starts to stray to that simpleton Jane Seymour. Nor can I ever bring myself to deal with anything that is sympathetic to Catherine of Aragon.

Which is actually a fascinating example of what my mother calls my “delightful inconsistencies.” By all accounts I should be on the side of Catherine. She did nothing wrong. She was a faithful wife, a wonderful person, and she stubbornly refused to submit. Why do I hate her? I don’t know! But I can’t stop myself!!

If it wasn’t for Catherine, Henry would have been able to marry Anne much earlier. If Anne could have married Henry earlier instead of having to draw him on for years (and years… and years) she would have been less stressed and probably could have given birth to a son instead of having a miscarriage. If she had given Henry a son, he wouldn’t have killed her. Yeah, he probably would have gotten tired of her eventually and had more mistresses on the side, but he wouldn’t have needed to get rid of her because she would have provided the one thing he wanted.

Not only was my poor Anne killed over the ridiculous whims of a fat, stupid man, she has been horribly slandered since her death. The rumors of her time that she was a witch continue to pop up again and again. There are websites that list her having a 6^th finger and a huge mole on her neck as FACTS that caused the witchcraft charges. Um, what? You really think a spoiled brat of a king would pursue a “deformed” woman for years?

Even popular novels like The Other Boleyn Girl malign Anne’s character. They make it seem like she was a selfish, ruthless girl that didn’t even care about her own siblings.

Anne wasn’t a saint. She had to make some sacrifices to make it to royalty and there’s some evidence she may have some vendetta issues (which I totally support). I believe she was a good person though, and if you look for it there is just as much evidence on her side too.

Why do I love Anne so much? I don’t know. Some of it is so instinctive I can’t really explain it well. When my love loses her head, I lose my mind. Want to see my cry? Any movie/show that shows her being beheaded is guaranteed to make me start tearing up. And disclaimer, in case you don’t know me that well, I DO NOT cry easily.

On the other hand some of it is more apparent. Anne Boleyn was clever, pretty, and intelligent. Instead of accepting society’s role that she could be the king’s mistress or nothing, she made it so she could be queen. She managed to keep the king enthralled for years despite the easy availability of so many other pretty, easy women. It wasn’t magic like they claim, but it was still damn impressive.

A Year in Books

I realized today as I was memorizing my parking spot number (D2) that I’m probably more of a Star Wars fan than I thought (I visualized R2-D2 to remember it of course). However, my primary geekdom remains and will always be my bookworm habits.

Last year my friend Erin revealed that apparently the average American only reads 4 books a year. She decided to track how many books she read during the year to see how it compared. Given my own love of reading and obsessive tracking habits, I decided to do the same.

Now I didn’t actually start tracking the books I was reading until April (since Erin’s post wasn’t until the end of March to give me the idea), so I don’t have a full year’s worth of data. Even with missing a few months I realized there are actually a lot of interesting trends I could determine from the numbers.

Let’s start with the simple logistics. I had two sheets I used to track information. One was my number sheet where each month I tracked the numbers of books I finished reading during the month. Initially I had broken this down in two columns, print books and iPad books. I quickly decided I wanted a third column to track which books were actually re-reads that I had read at some point before. On the second sheet, I simply listed for each month the name and author of each book I finished reading, highlighting in blue any re-reads. 

As the months passed I realized there were some issues with my tracking mechanisms. Because I didn’t add a book to the sheet until I finished reading it, what would happen frequently is that I would read the bulk of the book one month but finish it the first or second day of the month where it was actually tracked. This shows especially in November. I didn’t do any reading in November because of NaNoWriMo, except that I had a book I was reading that I finished on November first simply because I only had like 40 pages left.

The other main issue is that this setup doesn’t capture all of my reading, only the books completed. I’ve discussed before how I don’t really read in a linear fashion, and many times I start a book and then give up. The thing is sometimes these are VERY large books, and I read 200-300 pages before I give up. That’s a lot of reading that’s not being accounted for!

Still, while keeping that in mind, I think nonetheless I gathered enough information to start identifying some of my reading trends in a year.

Let me throw some numbers at you. I read a total of 65 books from April 1 through December 31^st. Not bad for a year. 40 books were print, 7 were on the iPad, and 18 were actually re-reads.

Typically I read about 6 new books a month. I had a least 1 re-read a month as well, although technically it might average out to 2 per month.  

There were 3 months during the year that bucked the trends a bit, and I find it very interesting to consider what happened during those months.

In July, I actually read 12 new books. My first thought was maybe I had started a very engaging new series, but looking back at which books they were, actually only 2 were in the same series.

August was the next month that was a little off. I read far less in August (only 4 books tools). Most of the books were re-reads, I only read 1 new book in the month.

The last month that didn’t match the normal pattern was September. September was split evenly between new books and re-reads, but all the new books I read that month were on the iPad instead of print.

Those 3 months just so happen to be part of our “busy season” at work. Given what I remember of the year and what I see on the spreadsheet, I’ve drawn some interesting conclusions about what happened.

The first conclusion is that when I’m stressed/unhappy I read more. Although August was a little lower that was partially because of people visiting and things like that, but both July and September were higher than the average. As the stress/unhappiness continues, I tend to fall back on re-reading. Looking through the specific books I chose to re-read, I realized I have some “comfort books” and that I turn to them to cheer myself up.

The second conclusion is that despite all my complaining about e-reading, when push comes to shove it works. Why did I have more iPad books in September? I had started the Mortal Instruments series, and I decided to download them on the iPad as other people in my family were going to read them too (we share an account). Plus when I finished one I wanted the next in the series instantly - none of that driving to the bookstore stuff when wincest is on the line! And despite the fact that I was reading on the iPad, which I always say doesn’t feel like a real book and I can’t do it easily at home, I managed to get through 4 books on there in one month.

All in all I think I did pretty good for a year of reading. I’ve started tracking my books for 2014 (2 finished so far), but I still need to think through if I want to make some edits to the spreadsheet. It might be interesting to start tracking the books I abandon and maybe later figure out if there is a pattern to that as well. Plus at some point I should look for a method of tracking non-traditional reading, like fanfiction and manga. I’m also excited to see if trends change year by year. Maybe I start to read less, or read more. Who knows! 

We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

So I’m a little late to the game with this, but this evening I happened to find the “documentary” Megalodon and decided to watch it. I remembered that a few weeks ago when I was traveling I saw my Facebook feed blow up with mentions of megalodon but had no idea what was going on, was too busy to find out, and was so exhausted by the time I got home that I forgot all about it.

I actually had a little bit of background on megalodons before watching the show. Why? Well, remember the 5 Ways I Definitely Don’t Want to Die and how I’m crazy terrified of sharks? As I mentioned I’ve ALWAYS been afraid of sharks. It’s not something that developed after watching some movie or tv show. It’s an instinctive fear. In fact, I am mildly convinced I was eaten (or bitten) by a shark in a past life.

But anyway, my parents realized pretty quickly that I was a little insane on this issue, and they tried various approaches to handle the situation. Clearly, none of those attempts were effective. However some of them, like the “suck it up” method, at least taught me to try and act normal in public. Others might have actually made things worse. See my parents thought it would be a good idea if I learned more about sharks. After all, the facts prove how unlikely it is to be attacked by a shark, let alone die from an attack.

My mother got me an adorable kid’s book about sharks. It had very nice drawings and all sorts of important facts. She pointed out that baby sharks were called “pups” to make them seem more loveable. She highlighted the sharks that can’t even bite people, like the whale shark. We even bought a few “baby sharks,” which were fish that looked like little sharks, so they’d be in our fish tank and I’d get familiar with them.

The problem was this didn’t make me any less afraid of sharks, but I developed a strange addiction to learning more about them. I did a project on sharks in high school. I buy books on shark attacks. Every time I see an article online about sharks I read it. I draw the line at watching shark week, because seeing them in action is terrifying.

Megalodons were mentioned in that first book from my mother about sharks. Of course it highlighted the fact that they were extinct. Over the years I’ve read a few articles when people have new theories about megalodons. Then, I foolishly read the “Meg” fiction series about megalodons still existing in the trenches of the ocean. So it’s fair to say I’m familiar with them.

When I saw the “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives” listing I assumed it was just a documentary talking more about the shark and their theories on it. I jumped in almost an hour into the show. You can imagine my confusion when they were talking like there’s really a possibility the megalodon is still around, and possibly tied to some recent whale and boat attacks.

Due to the way I was lying on the couch, I happened to have my hand resting against my throat, and not even 5 minutes into the show I could literally feel my pulse going wild. Within 8 minutes, I had to text my father because I was already starting to panic about the idea that maybe megalodons were swimming merrily around the coasts. Thank goodness he pays more attention to life than me and knew it was a hoax.

Even knowing it wasn’t real for the rest of the documentary, I almost had a mild heart attack when they decided to try and tag the shark near the end. I was doing my fair share of screaming at the screen. I mean seriously, you’re trying to catch a megalodon and you don’t have like a battleship?? Not only did their main boat seem way too tiny to me, but they put people in a CAGE and then had to rescue them in tiny little speed boats. OMG are TRYING to make me die of panic??

This is why I don’t watch Shark Week.

The good news is that there’s no current evidence of megalodon. Phew.

Should there ever be even a hint that megalodons are still alive, I may never enter the ocean again.

It’s been an ongoing struggle just to go swimming at the beach, and that’s in places like Rohobeth that aren’t really known for their shark attacks. I refused to go on a cruise for years because I hate being on boats in the water. It’s not that I think a shark is going to capsize the boat (that’s just crazy), but what if it sinks for some other legit reason? I’d still be in the water in the middle of nowhere.

I was heavily impressed with myself when I did a cruise with friends a few years ago. Even better, I managed to talk myself into snorkeling, which was an absolutely amazing experience. I’m so glad I did it.  Of course you may wonder, how exactly did I get over my fear for this? Well, I made all my guy friends going in the water with me swear that if a shark attacked they would drag me back to the beach no matter what, and I stayed near someone at all times, and still was in a constant state of anxiety the whole time in the water. Honestly, I’m amazed I’m alive.

But if I even start to suspect there’s megalodons running amuck, you’re going to have some work convincing me that even something like a cruise ship is big enough for safety.

P-p-p-poker Face

Last night I was playing poker with some of my boys, which let me tell you I haven’t done in YEARS. We went through a big poker phase in high school, which continued a bit into college, and then I just stopped. Possibly because I am the worst poker player in the history of the world.

Seriously, poker is complicated. I hardly ever remember what beats what (it seems to me like 2 pair should be better than 3 of a kind, because there are 4 cards involved, but they always tell me I’m wrong on that). I have this issue where the 6 and 9 cards look the same and confuse me. Not to mention I continuously forget the denominations for the chips.

Even worse, as they tell me in Jennifer Crusie’s wonderful book Faking It, poker is actually about knowing the other players. You need to know who’s bluffing and who’s actually got something good. The idea is you learn everyone’s “tell” and use that to better play the game. If you’re not a reader, you can see excellent examples of “tells” in movies like Maverick and Casino Royale.

This is a good (and sexy) poker face.

I find this just about impossible. I’m not particularly good at reading people. I’ve discussed before how I’m constantly missing the conversational subtext. You can imagine how well I do reading the subtleties of the poker table.

The amazing thing is that I do sometimes win at poker. Last night I was one of the last 3 playing. Probably would have finished 3^rd, but we just quit the game. How do I explain this? Well, because of my horrendous poker face.

To be clear, ideally you should have a GOOD poker face. Also to be clear, I’m talking strictly about your face at the moment (none of the Lady Gaga muffin-bluffin whatnot is under discussion). A good poker face is like a mask. No one knows what you’re thinking; no one knows when you’re bluffing.

A BAD poker face gives everything away. Every emotion - from when you pick up your cards, to the moment of the flop, to when you’re betting - makes it entirely clear what you’re doing.

I have a BAD poker face. But my saving grace in poker is that half the time I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I’m bluffing, and my face tells everyone thus, but meanwhile I didn’t realize I have a straight in my hand. This has happened multiple times (although not always specifically with a straight).

My hysterical laughing prolly didn't help matters.

Honest and true time, this is something I should probably work on. Not specifically for poker (I don’t play that often, and worst case scenario I could cover up like one of my friends last night... see example to the left) but more so for life. I sometimes worry that I have overly expressive eyes and face. We used to play a game in college where we would cover the bottom half of our face and guess emotions just based on the eyes. When they were looking at my face, my friends had a 100% success rate. My sign (Taurus, for those that don’t pay attention) is known for our “bedroom eyes.” Well that’s fine and dandy except that I have no control over it whatsoever. So at any given point I do not know what my face is telling you.

This is especially dangerous because my thoughts are all over the place. What shows up on my face may have absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. I swear almost once a month I get in a situation where someone’s like “what’s THAT look about!?!?” and I don’t even know what they mean.

Now if you haven’t realized this already I’m about to reveal something super useful for dealing with me. What this all comes down to is I can’t lie worth crap when it matters.

I have to clarify, “when it matters,” because for really stupid stuff I can lie awesomely. I can look you straight in the eye and convince you I grew up in Russia on a beet farm. That’s not even an exaggeration; I totally had a guy from work believing that for like 5 minutes. Then I realized he was taking me seriously and I had to clear it up. I only have this ability when I find what I’m saying so absolutely ridiculous I don’t think anyone will believe me.

So when I seriously need to lie, such as for surprise parties, or when I’m talking about people I’m interested in, it doesn’t actually work. I’d be a horrible spy. I blame this entirely on my stupid face. Because even when I try to control it, the best I can do is a lack of emotion, which apparently looks so completely different from normal that no one believes it anyway.

The right puppy eyes could take over the world!

Maybe this should be a goal for next year, learning to control my expressiveness. There’s a scene in Memoirs for a Geisha where Chiyo learns how to use her eyes to make a delivery boy drop his packages. Granted, she had awesome eyes, but the idea appeals to me nonetheless. If I could learn to use my expressiveness who knows what I could do?

Game of Thrones - One Family's Obsession

What kind of neek would I be if I didn’t talk about Game of Thrones at some point? I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised at how popular it’s become. I don’t want to pull an “I liked it before it was cool” move, but I totally did. Well, at least before the show was cool. There are many others who liked the books before me, as I didn’t jump in until 2009.

Really, I owe it all to my friend Fitzwilliam. He had the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, but he didn’t particularly like it. Being a clever and insightful friend he realized it was probably something more along my lines, as he noted when he gave it to me “Hey you want this book? It has incest and dragons.” Score (although one should note that neither of those reasons are why Fitzwilliam disliked the book, he didn’t care for the constant politics, which I also enjoy).

Seriously we're obsessed, this is my brother's wall.

Eventually my family got involved and now it’s our new Harry Potter -  with everyone reading and discussing and threatening each other if they reveal important plot points.

Initially, this wasn’t so much an issue with the television series. Sure, the first season I didn’t watch on a regular basis as I didn’t have HBO at the time. Instead every few weeks I’d go to my friend Chloe’s house and we’d have a lovely day lounging around, catching up on episodes, and eating a lot (so basically all our favorite things). My parents and brother were both watching more often than me, but as the first season stayed very close to the books they couldn’t truly spoil anything.

The second season was a bit more of an issue. The second book was longer than the first, but not as long as the third. So it didn’t break down as easily into the television episodes. They had to start making some drastic changes to the material. Not changes on the level of say, True Blood, but enough that I wasn’t always sure what exactly would happen next.

The biggest challenge was when the family first started reading the books. SOOO much can happen in a single book that when my mother would say she was halfway through A Feast For Crows I couldn’t always remember what happened exactly when. This meant that when the family was happily discussing events I generally stayed quiet.

Then the tables turned. I have this thing with reading. I want to read books. I’m still not sold on reading electronic copies. I do it sometimes, but not often. I also don’t like hardbacks. They’re expensive, and they’re giant. I don’t have enough room on my bookcase as it is. So when A Dance of Dragons came out, my entire family what with their lack of book snobbery downloaded and read it while I impatiently waited for the paperback release. Then for months they tried to talk about it without giving anything away. My mother isn’t particularly good at that (a trait I inherited) so eventually I just gave in and read it on my iPad.

Because by this point, a large portion of the conversation in my family revolves around Game of Thrones. We discuss our favorite characters. My mom, for instance, has a huge crush on Jon Snow. We talk about the characters we don’t like. For months one of my brother’s chief joys was to describe Tywin Lannister to his friends. He calls him the ultimate troll dad.

My family both does and does not identify with the characters from Game of Thrones. Like I said, my brother now calls Tywin Lannister the ultimate troll dad. For many years we thought our father was the ultimate troll dad. In fact my brother even created a comic depicting how our dad got a bit confused on the definition of “trolling” after we kept saying he was “trolling” all the time.

Based on real events!

Now if you’ve ever watched Game of Thrones, or read the books, you probably know that Tywin Lannister is a cruel person, and a horrible father. Don’t be confused and think my daddy is anything like that. Tywin Lannister trolls as a way of controlling those around him, and doesn’t care who he hurts. My father trolls in a more good natured way that doesn’t hurt anyone. He’s probably got much more Ned Stark in him, but with a more realistic way of viewing people.

As for me? My brother has called me a Lannister (which I’m a little insulted by). My dad thinks I’m a Sand Snake (which you haven’t seen on the show yet, give it time, and more seasons). My mother thinks I’m a Targaryen. Probably the best of the lot, considering how much I love Daenerys.

We talk about Game of Thrones so much because we care about the characters. It’s a big deal when they kill someone off. And the problem is based on the newest episode, I’m starting to question if they’re going to kill off more characters in the series that are still alive in the books. You can’t do that to me! I thought they were safe!

A Reader's Rant

There are many things in life that irritate me – airport delays, people that tell me what to do, people that tell me what not to do, people that wear peach lotion – just to name a few. If you’re noticing the pattern (typically it involves people and their actions), yeah I’ve noticed that too. I have very low tolerance for stupid mistakes that could easily be corrected. This is why I go absolutely BONKERS over the fact that almost all written articles these days contain typos.

Seriously, it’s getting to be ridiculous. Especially considering that technology will now even catch some of our errors, and the rest could be caught with a quick edit.

I'm allowed to laugh, I'm an English Major

For the most part it’s not even grammatical errors, or if it is, it’s one that looks like it was just overlooked, not that the author lacks a basic understanding of grammar. Despite assumptions from friends, I’m really not that much of a grammar nazi. Some grammar and writing conventions are outdated or restrict the sentence flow. Especially the rule about ending with a preposition.

I had a teacher in high school that actually started trying to follow this rule, and would reword his sentences to make sure they didn’t end with a preposition. We thought it was funny, because half the time the sentence ends up weird.

Personally, I prefer writing to flow the same way a person talks. I still think there are different levels of writing, just like there are different levels of talking. I don’t use the exact same phrases with friends as I do with clients. But I don’t completely change my style of talking either.

If it sounds like I’m being hypocritical, complaining about writing errors and then excusing ungrammatical writing, I understand. Actually I have a few areas where I totally admit my hypocrisy, but this is not one of them. You see, what annoys me with writing errors are the stupid mistakes that could have been fixed if somebody had just checked for them. It’s not even the writing I’m mad at, it’s the laziness of not having someone proofread.

I’m talking about obvious errors here. I’m not even too hung up on things like “to” instead of “too.” Those sort of things are actually easy to overlook if you’re rushing (although why someone is rushing through instead of taking the time to properly look over their work is a good question).

When you write, you get in a certain mind frame. It’s quite simple to misread your writing so that you don’t catch errors. In fanfiction, most writers have what they call a “beta.” It’s basically an editor. Somebody to read through your work and check for those types of errors before you post.

Now sometimes a writer will post a new story, or a new chapter, without their beta checking through it. Some writers never use a beta (which actually includes me, I’ve never had a beta for my fanfiction). Typically they will include an acknowledgement or apology for any errors that do come up.

But that’s fanfiction, it’s not published, it’s just people screwing around for fun.

I’m more concerned with accredited media. I check Yahoo and MSN articles fairly often. It is becoming ridiculous how often I find simple errors in the articles. Seriously isn’t somebody getting paid for this writing? How can they push out news stories without doing a simple check of the article??

Again, I’m not even talking about little things like whether or not the Oxford comma is being used (although while we’re on the subject – if you do not support usage of the Oxford comma we should no longer be friends. Just saying). This is an example from earlier this week on yahoo. 

Somehow a random stream of words ended up in the middle of an article. Twice. Was this supposed to be a link? HOW DID THEY MISS THIS!?

Granted, with an online article I suppose they figure they can always edit it later. You have no idea how furious I get when this happens in printed materials.

Last month I borrowed a book from my friend Kevin called Armor. It was pretty fabulous. I think of it as a nice mix of Starship Troopers, the book, and Starship Troopers, the movie. But the typos. OMG. Every time I talked to Kevin about it (he actually hasn’t read it yet) that’s all I could talk about. There was a bajillion of them! All over the place! Like huge, glaringly obvious errors. More than once it actually duplicated an entire section of text further down the page, in the middle of a different paragraph. You can just guess how disconcerting that made the reading experience.

I’m currently in the middle of an excellent zombie book. It may be my new favorite zombie book ever (although actually I don’t have a current favorite zombie book, as I get halfway through reading them and then freak the heck out of myself and have to stop). It’s brilliant, as it explores the world 20 years after the zombie outbreak, and how it’s changed the way the news is reported and accessed. It’s called Feed by the way if you want to check it out. But even in this book I have caught more than once random question marks appearing in the middle of a sentence.

So if my sentence is supposed to be “people are sucking hardcore and not catching these stupid mistakes” it instead becomes “people are sucking hardcore and not? Catching these stupid mistakes.” These are not questions, just sentences, and the question mark doesn’t even appear in a logical place.

Now with fanfiction, an author can choose whether or not to use a beta. With published material, I always assumed that before investing good money in publishing a story, someone at some point would invest in a proofreader. Am I wrong? Are we sacrificing edits in order to deliver results faster?

I give you free reign to laugh at me now when my posts have little typos. It’s happened before, and I try to fix them whenever I can. I do check through my own writing at least once before putting it up, but I can’t catch everything. It would behoove me to have someone else check through as well, but this is just a blog for me to play around. I promise if at any point in life I’m going to have something published for real, it will be read over so many times that at least the informal proofreaders (me, plus friends and family I guilt trip) will have sections memorized.

After all, my momma raised me that if you’re going to do something, you don’t do it quick, you do it right.