In the taste section of the newspaper a couple days ago, there was an article on making homemade bagels, so my sister and I decided to take on the (fairly time-consuming) recipe.
Before we even spent 5 minutes on the recipe, I had poured water into the flour, yeast and salt mixture, neglecting to heat it beforehand (to activate the yeast) as the directions stated, and thus clumsily scooped out the water from the mixture and  nuked it.   Minor fail 2:  I added all the flour at once rather than keeping a half cup out as I was supposed to.
The recipe went fairly smoothly from here on until I left the kitchen to shower.  Unfortunately, I don’t listen to my mother when she says to ALWAYS make sure to keep the stove top clear even when it’s not on.  I don’t think I can be an adult yet, since I nearly set the house on fire.  I also have yet to learn to check that the correct burner is on, and these two idiocies resulted in my house filling with smoke and the smell of plastic burning.  So after a short hiatus from baking to air out the house and scrape the melted plastic kitchen-aid mixer cover off the stove top, (leaving a few slight dents on the stove) we formed the bagels and topped them with various flavorings:  parmesan garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, poppy seeds, chocolate chips, honey and almonds, and cinnamon-sugar.  They look lovely and taste even more delicious, and thanks to my mom’s professional catering camera and lighting, they look nice in pictures too:

Squinto’s last post ended with a link highlighting the recent uptick in porn watching by women.  I myself can attest to the validity of this statistic, as I recently made my own first foray into the porn world.  I now know I am not alone, thanks to this bit of news.  No more Porn Watchers Anonymous for me.  I mean, who has the imagination to script their own masturbatory fantasies anymore?  Imagination is for the pre-Information age.  Penn and Teller’s Bullshit did a nice episode on the War on Porn as well.  You can watch the adult version, like I did while browsing netflix online my dad, without knowing what I was getting into…or the censored one.

Even Oprah (who recently announced the end of her show coming in 2011, just in time to prepare for the end of the world) dedicated two entire shows to the subject this past week.  One purely on the popularity of porn for women these days, complete with a Jenna Jameson interview.
Jenna:  ”Obviously I am not a professional, it’s just something that I love doing.  I felt very sexual all my life and I just applied it.”  Uh huh.  Not a professional.

Anywho, I would still advise against letting your kids watch porn.  There may be long term harmful effects.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I saw this on my RSS and thought I had mistakenly clicked on TheOnion instead of a legitimate new story.

But on to my point.

Dear Media,

Please shut the fuck up about Sarah Palin. She’s not going to be president. She’s not even as good of a Sarah Palin as Tina Fey.

Thanks,

America

For most celebrities, it’s fun, it’s cute, it’s hardyharsillysillyomghaha to see them mess up or make themselves into icons. Not Sarah Palin. It’s just a reminder that this woman was actually that close to being our vice president. It’s horrifying.

There are only a couple exceptions to this. Slate.com decided to make a contest to see who could write the best Sarah Palin sentence in response to her book, Rogue. We should all do this.

The other, of course, is Nailin Palin. You shouldn’t feel bad about watching videos like this, as research shows. And Don’t worry, girls, you can look, too!

We all know what crappy writing is and there is plenty of it out there, since everyone and their mother with access to internet and a delusion about their ability to write will start a blog. So there isn’t much point in outlining that.

However, some blogs just fail hard for their content.

Example 1:  Blogs of anorexic girls talking about how much better their lives would be if they were skinny, how much they admire other skinny girls, and reaching out to find others like them to support their anorexia (mind you, not support them in fighting it).  They realize they have a disease and yet instead of going to get some fucking help from a therapist or doctor, they blog about it.  Their ‘about me’ blurbs claim that they do not encourage anorexia, yet they blog Thinspiration, mantra for fellow ‘ana-girls’ and tips staying paper-thin.

Then there are the girls who perhaps do not realize they are anorexic (they don’t outwardly state it) yet their blogs show they obviously are, such as the blog called xthinforthewinx.  Great name.

I think Xanga is one the biggest offenders in hosting terrible blogs, as it generally attracts all the self-absorbed high school ditzes.

Example 2:  Blogs written by students with the purpose of advertising a college to prospective students.  They’re often cheesy wholesome students who must either be censoring themselves in order to make their college look good, or simply have lives that are boring enough that the college felt safe publicizing them.

So I searched for the worst colleges to see if I could find some bad blogs from equally bad colleges, and found that Radar Magazine does an annual list of the worst colleges in America. Perfect. They describe their list as “an exhaustive, semiscientific guide to the most substandard schools in America, incorporating statistics on academics, graduation rates, and student life from a diverse array of sources, including the Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report, and the U.S. Department of Education.”   Ret’s take rooksee:

Worst Christian School – Liberty University Blog: This girl is an interior design major turned elementary education major when she realized there was “nothing I enjoy more than being around dozens of little kids all day long!” She writes about arts and crafts and God and kids. Her blog highlights another meaning of Christmas not mentioned in kiyp’s last post:  To spread the spirit of giving and send snow globes to little Romanian children to make them believe in God. Not the worst example of a blog ever, but I’m limiting myself to blogs from the “worst” colleges, and this girl is certainly the worst from LU.

Surprisingly enough, I couldn’t find any student blogs worse than my own.  Thank you internet, for reassuring me that I wasn’t the most hopelessly boring person freshmen year.

That was a lot of words for this blog, have another link.  Here’s a nice thought from Fox news.

Character Name: Shaniqua

Bio: Dropped out of school when she was 15 due to constant abuse as the ugliest girl ever to grace the halls of McKinley Highschool. After she drops out she is forced to live at home with her two african american lesbian parents named Sandra and Shanaynay who adopted her as a baby. Shaniqua fights on, though, and devotes her life to singing showtunes to her two cats. Fastforward like 40 years and Shaniqua finds herself summoning the courage to come back to McKinley highschool and get her diploma. Her courage stems from her watching british internet phenomenon Megan Doyle on the show “Britain’s hidden and totally unsuspected talent”. Suffice to say, Shaniqua joins the Glee club and hilarity ensues.

Three possible plotlines involving Shaniqua:

1) Shaniqua and Mercedes (the exceedingly talented african american girl in Glee) feud because Shaniqua feels she has better ghetto moves. They have a sing off in which Mercedes sings “Bootylicious” and Shaniqua counters with “I Will Always Love you”.

2) Shaniqua thinks lesbianism is genetic (and she retardedly stlll thinks her adoptive parents are her real parents) and sings “Tale as Old as Time” from Beauty and the Beast to the insanely hot Rachel (aka Lea Michelle). Rachel plays along cuz that is just what she does.

3) Glee club has a contest where each member has to pull songs from a hat and have to perform it for the rest of Glee club. Shaniqua gets “Party in the U.S.A.” and knocks it out of the fucking ball park where the Glee cast sang the national anthem for the world series this year. Rachel sings “Always be my Baby” by Mariah Carey and I hopelessly fall further in love with her.

Anyways, obviously I have too much time on my hands.

If you have never thought about killing yourself then you will after watching this. Its harder to watch, all the way through, than “2G1C” or “Salsasnack.”

I listened to a lot of music today. I discovered that a lot of Indie music is a piece of shit. Bad vocals, mediocre instrumentals, and emo lyrics don’t equal a good song. I don’t care how raw and edgy it is. Indie lovers – stop being so snobby and realize that top 40 is top 40 for a reason.

k, peace yo

Here is a play on the last song I posted.

Prompt: are the holidays now dependent on shopping? The economy requires that we buy stuff – cuz if we don’t – we’re gonna be in trubble. I don’t have any monies – which r bad. And I think that people are going to spend even less these holidays than they did last Christmas – which is something economists are concerned about.

Anyway – here’s the meaning of Christmas:

1. To expose children to the disappointment of fantasy – i.e. Santa Claus isn’t real – and destroy our children’s hopes for our own amusement.

2. To indulge in awesome things in case ur gonna die soon (selfish bastards)

3. To [obligatory asian joke using 'r' instead of 'l'] HERRO PREASE

4. To spend time with the people you love

5. To spend time with the people you’re supposed to love – i.e. parents, parents, grandparents

In conclusion, Jews can’t celebrate Christmas because Jews can’t be the President of the United States.

songs of the day:

1. http://hypem.com/#/track/756611/COSMO+VITELLI+-+I+LIKE+TO+MOVE+IT

ALSO: Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me, and fuck the new Christmas Carol movie – the Dickens part of the story is the only part of the story that makes it amazing. Jim Carrey is officially jumping sharks. Ass.

• A hip minimalist lay out
• Lots of posts with little content, but lots of cool links
• Links to good songs
• No moral compass
• Tons of guest posts, like so many that it won’t even seem like its your blog
• Its not (always) about cooking
• Its not about one’s amazing travels around the world as a Watson Fellow
• A good dose of Meta
• An un-moderated comments section
• At least one post a week that substitutes the letter L with R

That is all I can think of for now. I assure you that most of these qualities will be contradicted.