Happy holidays, my little pirates!

I'm not gonna lie oh readers of TP, I've been feeling pretty festive lately. I decided to put together a little jazzy holiday mix to thank you for your sweet sweetness over the two and a half years npp and I have been regaling you with the minutia of our lives.

Thanks ever so much, and best wishes for a happy holiday season.

(give her a minute to load up, she's a big one)



Or, listen on Grooveshark here.

Woot for small hands!

A coworker crocheted these gloves but they ended up being too small for her. My freakishly long and skinny hands luckily fit them, well, like a glove.

Oh feeble typing hands you shall be chilled no more. Come warmth!


(Though in a weird way I feel like Madonna meets your grandma meets an Easter egg.)

My pics for the Current's "Top 89".

I know not everyone that reads this blog listens to MPR's indie rock station but here are some of my favorite songs that were new this last year. I have to say, it was a great year for music.



Cage The Elephant: Ain't No Rest for the Wicked (Cage The Elephant)
Bon Iver: Brackett, WI (Dark Was The Night)
Brother Ali: Good Lord (The Truth Is Here)
Camera Obscura: Honey in the Sun (My Maudlin Career)
Dirty Projectors and David Byrne: Knotty Pine (Dark Was The Night)
The Bird And The Bee: My Love (Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future)
Ben Kweller: Sawdust Man (Changing Horses)
Alexi Murdoch: Towards The Sun (Away We Go Soundtrack)
Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks (Veckatimest)
The Big Pink: Velvet (A Brief History Of Love)

You can listen to a playlist I have made of these songs here (give it a second to load on this page):



Or if you don't like the widget, you can listen here.

We've got a code 70 on isle 6.

I just witnessed an attempted shoplifting!

I was in Walgreens. Just a regular day at Walgreens, right? I was checking out at the pharmacy department, picking up a prescription and some gum. Classic Walgreens purchase, right? RIGHT?

Then, all of the sudden, the employee that was checking me out calmly but fast like lightening picks up the telephone receiver and says over the loudspeaker "We've got a code 70 on isle 6. I repeat, code 70 on isle 6." I spin around to see 4 blue-vested employees speed-walking toward isle 6 from all angles of the store.

My vision is blocked, but I hear a slight scuffle. Next thing I know, an armload of goods is slammed down on the counter next to me. One of the vested speed-walkers brushes the bangs from her face and says "he had quite the night planned, didn't he?"

I looked over to see what the man had attempted to shove inside his coat: Not, one, not two, but EIGHT two-packs of single-shot energy drinks, and what else? You guessed it. A bottle of lube.

Facebook Defriending Flow Chart

How many times have you rolled your eyes when Fratty McDouche fills up 90% of your news feed with misspelled musings about minutiae? How often does Susie Shallowstein's CONSTANT updates of her photo albums with yet another picture of her adorable puppy/hubby/druid make you lose the will to live?

You know it's time to weed out the bad apples in your friend list, but you just don't know how to go about it. Neenuh to the rescue. Click on the above image and use the completely scientific method I spent entirely too much time tonight perfecting to make your friend list one you can be proud of.

White girl can't rap.

I recently joined a small vocal ensemble and last week was my first performance with the group. The song we performed is Mercy by Duffy and it would be accurate to describe my role in this song as one of the "yeah yeah yeah" girls, with one exception. Halfway through the song there is a vocal percussion breakdown where every member of the group except the soloist and myself repeat different vocal beats, thus denoting the breakdown. My part includes 8 bars of rapping. That's right. Rapping. Having a little experience in the karaoke Gangsta's Paradise realm, I wasn't really nervous or anything until I realized that the audience we were performing for was about 100 students from the Black Student Union at the University, and maybe a handful of others (mostly consisting of our out-of-place ultra-white group)*. So the first stanza of my ridiculously non-sensical rap goes like this:

You look at me and think we're the same kind
'Cause you don't know what I got and
I want a bit more than I'm asking for
but I just don't want to waste my time

Pretty easy right? Theoretically. But for a rowdy theater full of yelling, snapping, clapping, boisterous college kids, they were essentially silent when we got up there. The lights were blinding, the mood was one of full-on skepticism. From them, it was probably skepticism over "who the hell are these kids coming to our show to perform in a format we're not used to", and from us, it was skepticism over whether we would perform well, mess up, be accepted, etc. Most of my group was calm and ready to rock. But something came over me when it was almost time for me to rap. I locked up and I got so worried about forgetting the words that this, to my horror, is what came out of my mouth:

You look at me and think we're the same kind
'Cause you don't know what I got and
I want a bit flim flattadata dat
bada blip blop bee boop dip dap dap

I finished the stupid rap unable to look anyone in the audience in the eyes, which meant, since it was stadium seating, that I had to stare at the floor until the song was over. I would like to think I can rap...but scat-rapping is not something I hope I never have to face doing again.

*Truth be told, one of us is 1/18 Hawaiian. That counts towards diversity, right?