Some songs I am horribly embarrassed to admit I love, but not too embarrassed to confess to all y'all

Britney Spears
Hit me Baby One More Time
Crazy

Pink
Just Like a Pill
Don't Let me Get me

Hanson
Mmm Bop

TLC
Unpretty
Waterfalls

Nelly
Hot in Herre
Ride Wit Me
EI

Celine Dion
It's all coming back to me now

Look at me! Look at me!

I've been quoted.

Bawk Bawk

Is there anything more gross than chicken? Seriously, even if you eat it, don't you gag when you come across gummy grey parts? Just a little? I got what promised to be a yummy salad for lunch today (not that I normally use the word "yummy" when describing salad, but since I can't fit into the bridesmaid dress I have to wear in two weeks, I thought I'd give myself some encouragement). Anyway, spinach, spicy chicken, broccoli, chick peas, French basil dressing -- I was nearly bursting with excitement. Then I got a bite of chicken that was composed almost entirely of grey gum. To spare myself the embarrassment of hurling on my desk, I swallowed it whole. Chicken is no longer a part of my life. It has let me down again and again.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure my five years of vegetarianism were based solely on one bad chicken experience.

Crash into this, hack

I am so happy that someone else hates Dave Matthews with every fiber of her being the way I do. Amy Blair, I love you. And Dave Matthews, "hike up your skirt a little more...and show your world to me" remains the creepiest phrase ever committed to music. Ya perv.

I'll be back, for hours and hours on TNT

I crack up every time I hear the promos for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie marathon on TNT. They show muscles! Explosions! Menacing Looks! They call him a man of action! He wields guns!

The movie kicking off said marathon?

Twins.

No girl-on-girl love pour moi

I never realized how much I dislike girls. Not only does it make me a bad feminist, but it probably means I'm never going to have sex with a woman. Bummer.

Abra abra cadabra

I was tickled pink to learn that the cute new bartender at the cute new bar Croxley's is the cute roommate of the cute magician Magic Brian, who Holly and I had a big crush on back in his Bindlestiff days. Because he's so...cute.

In other news, I'm still waiting for the knowledge that tequila is never, ever a good idea to kick in. Apparently, it still hasn't. And much to my chagrin, I have developed a raging allergy to red wine.

An update and an announcement: I'm still not smoking. Whee! And don't forget to come to Williamsburg this Saturday and stop by North 7th between Driggs and Bedford, where you can stalk me and buy my bracelets. Read the testimonials!

I wish they weren't so girly - I want one! ~ the boyfriend
OMG Jess, they're so cute! ~ the roommate
I want to chew them up and pee on them! ~ the cats

Fall cleaning

This used to be over there <-----, but I decided it was time to take it down. I don't want to totally lose it, though, so read it here!

insults used by my roommate in one half-hour period:
suck doctor
suckologist
disher outer but cannot taker
sucky mcsuckstein
planner breaker
big bully
superavoider
bully with soft, soft underbelly
basketcase
ass hat
napoleon

It's girly and it's pink and that makes me happy.

Redesign Phase I has launched. Do you hate it? Tell me why. There will be more fun and exciting things coming soon. Mail-order brides! Porn! Mail-order brides starring in porn! Muted colors! Soft jazz! Midgets! Sounds pretty exciting, huh? I know I can hardly contain myself.

Day 3: A crutch

I'm pretty sure yesterday was the worst of it. I was an anxious, moody, crying, screaming monster of a girl. After drinking two gin & tonics and three glasses of white wine, I was DYING. So I went on a quest (hehe) for Quest nicotine-free cigarettes. They taste like ass, but they'll calm a craving without disrupting your withdrawal. I had two. I still like Tati's quitting smoking method. She locked herself in her room alone every night and drank until she passed out. She missed her physical withdrawal completely. Since I live with the boyfriend, though, I think I should spare him a sloppy 3 AM fight about andirons.

A tip for the ladies with the bad habits

Don't try to quit smoking during PMS week, unless you can lock yourself in a room with sedatives and whisky and have no contact with other human beings and small animals until it's all over.

Because I never get sick of Law & Order

So SVU is now in reruns every night on USA. Splendid! I jumped onto the SVU wagon way after the fact, way after Mariska Hargitay had chopped off all of her hair and Ice-T had joined the force. So it's interesting to see the first season, and how much the show has changed for the better.

Even though I'm a woman, I have to say I continue to be baffled by the fact that, for the most part, guys don't dig L&O. I think the entire fanbase is women. And it's missing all of the elements one would assume make a "woman's" program, or that Lifetime assumes makes a woman's program. I think the creaters might have caught on to this before they launches SVU, because the early episodes feature a lot about the detectives lives outside of the precinct. We see Stabler at home with his daughters, or making whoopie with his wife. While I've always hungered for any little morsel about the detectives' real fictional lives, the whole thing bored me. I stopped caring. The importance of any one of those scenes could have been illustrated in one sentence spoken between Stabler and Benson, the way the show's namesake has done it fabulously for years. Thankfully, they pulled all of that crap.

The moral of the story is, when you have a formula that works, don't fuck with it. And when you have a detective that hot, no one cares about his wife.

Day 2: A false sense of hope?

Well readers, I made it through another day without smoking. I must confess, I did make a half-hearted attempt to find the pack hidden from me somewhere in my bedroom, but I didn't find them and I only thought about it for 10 minutes or so. And in the interest of not sitting home, where I am used to smoking, I went to the gym and then bought healthy things to feed my face with. Of course, I had to watch TV in bed because I used to smoke in the living room but not in my bedroom, but it's okay. The bed is comfy.

On living together

On my lunch break, I went to H&M in search of underwear and silver ball earrings. I successfully found one bra, 4 pairs of underwear to match it (this is a very good underwear buying strategy, by the way) and then I saw it - a pink dress with black polka dots. I snatched up the dress and bought it, because the boyfriend is taking me out to dinner in celebration of a clean bedroom, and dammit, this girl needs a new dress for the occasion.

When a couple begins living together, they are faced with two sets of problems. 1) Relationship problems and 2) Roommate problems. If both parties are not careful, the latter will turn into the former and before you know it, you're breaking up over a plastic cup that's been in the sink for three days. For the boyfriend and I, it was the bedroom.

I have a clothes pile. He has a clothes pile. He keeps throwing the stuff that belongs in his pile in my pile. There are piles of change next to the piggy bank. There are button down shirts hanging on my closet door and they fall off every time I open it. There are no less than four empty glasses on the dresser beside the bed. I explode one day, talking about respect for sharing space, blah blah. He snarks back about not having space, blah blah.

The solution? I clean the bedroom when need be and once a month I get dressed up for a fabulous night out and leave my wallet at home. The results have been astounding.

Day 1: Survived

Despite my frustration over not being able to find the right directory on the server at work to upload images into, and also despite a three-hour PMS-induced crying jag that was sparked by feeling generally uninspired by my life, I made it through Day 1 with no cigarettes. I nearly murdered my kitten Mulder, aka the morning aggravator, during my AM routine today, but both kitten and lungs escaped unscathed. Yee haw!

Put the credit card down and slowly back away

There comes a time in every girl's life when she spies a tiara in a store window and thinks, "I must have it." Then she thinks, "But do I really need a tiara? What purpose will it serve? I'm not yet living that fabulous lifestyle, the one where I get paid to sit home in flannel pajamas and a tiara and write, write, write the day away while watching Law & Order reruns, like, the ones with Chris Noth, who was hot even before he became Big on Sex and the City. And my upcoming Halloween costume doesn't require a tiara and I bet it's expensive and can I really justify a purchase that will be seen by only me when I look into my bedroom mirror when the boyfriend's at work and sing, 'I feel pretty'?" And then, deflated, she puts the wallet away and walks back to the office, hoping that one day she will have occasion to adorn her head with rhinestones.

Okay, there's a very slim chance that I might be alone on this one.

I will hate you all by the end of today

So, in the interest of my health, I have decided to quit smoking. I smoked myself silly last night and am embarking on this journey starting today. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks, I can shape my withdrawal, pain and general hatred of the world and everything in it into amusing anecdotes for you.

Stalk away, ex-boyfriends

So I've noticed my site frequently comes up when poeple type in things like "jason lewis sex", world's biggest penis" and "free kiddie porn". Much to my chagrin, it does not come up when one googles my first and last name. So I headed over to Gina's site, which is chock full of tech info. And often amusing and sometimes heartbreaking anecdotes. I couldn't find the info, but I emailed her and got a couple of suggestions. As soon as the Googlebot catches wind of this, I will be 100% stalkable. Bring it.

Gina is my hero.

Remembering 9/11

That's the headline I put on the front page of the website I'm responsible for updating on a daily, timely basis. The thing is, I don't want to remember 9/11. I don't want to go down to Ground Zero. I don't want to go to Union Square. I don't want to be anywhere that large people of groups are grieving. I don't even want to be anywhere that there are any people at all. I just want to go home, pet my cats, not watch the news and then go to bed at a decent hour. I don't want to relive it, and part of me feels like that makes me a bad person.

Some tips for getting your point across over IM

Let's face it, kids. It's easy to have a misunderstanding over IM. Without facial expressions, voice inflections and flagrant passive aggression, it's hard to tell what the person on the other end of the window really means.

For example, "k" instead of "ok" might cause the recipient of said agreement to respond with "are you mad at me?" or, even worse, not respond and spend days, weeks, even years silently obsessing until your friendship disintegrates. And who wants that?

Then there's sarcasm. That's a toughie to get across with such limited resources. And if you're like me, you dig the sarcasm in a big way.

So what's the answer, you ask? Well, there are several. The first is a matter of etiquette. If you have to leave your computer, tell the person you're talking to. I know it's not always possible, but it's not always impossible either. This is especially important if a heated exchange has just taken place. We don't want any hurt feelings, people.

Next, be clear. If you want to stress a word, put it in caps. Put it in italics. D-O T-H-I-S or don't, because it's obnoxious, frankly. If you think someone might not get that you're kidding, put a little winking face at the end ;-) or get mad geeky and write an end sarcasm tag (I'd put an example but blogger is reading it as an actual tag and won't display it.) If you're happy for someone, say "cool!" not simply "cool", because that sounds insincere. Congrats! should also have an exclamation point. Awesome, fabulous and spectacular are fine on their own (if used sarcastically, see above).

Use questions marks. If you respond to something I write with "huh" I don't know if you mean "huh?" or "huh!" (as in, "Who knew." or "Ain't that a pisser!") "Hmm" is very hard to decipher, unless it is in response to a question seeking advice or ideas and you got nothing.

Now, there is an exception to every rule. The exception in this case would be flirting. Because really, isn't it more fun when the other person can't quite figure out what you're trying to say? In that case, do the exact opposite of everything I've taught you here.

Happy IM-ing, kids!

Food nostalgia

Is it weird that, at age 28, I still really love the taste of potato chips in my sandwiches?

Stalk me. Or buy stuff. Whichever.

If you live in the NYC Metro area and like cute, girly things (or have a girlfriend, sister, mother, daughter or "friend" that you really want to sleep with that likes cute, girly things), then by all means come on out to Williamsburg on Saturday, September 27th where I will be selling my fantastic felt bracelets that are all the rage with my close friends who have gotten them as presents at a flea market on North 7th between Bedford and Driggs. More on this later.

The Make Jess Hold the Baby Game and Why it's No Fun

I've never been a fan of babies. In fact, I loathe them. I am repulsed by them. The baby smell that everyone goes gaga over makes me want to hurl. I don't even want to see a child until it's about four years old. This includes my own, should I ever decide to have one. (Note to the future father of my children: I will make those four years up to you. I promise) My lack of love for babies has never really been a problem, because I haven't had many occasions to be around them. Until, of course, Amy went and had a baby.

Friday night, at the bachelorette party at Foxwoods which Amy could not attend, the bride-to-be made a point of telling everyone about my baby-love deficiency. The next day, at the shower, the bridal party started playing the Make Jess Hold the Baby game. I was not amused.

I finally succumbed when Amy looked longingly at the food table, baby in her arms. I rolled my eyes, said "give me the damn baby" and sent her to the food. She, of course, made several stops along the way to say, "Jess is holding the baby!" The bridesmaids crowded around to poke fun and compare me to an awkward dad. Little Dominic screamed. I quickly handed him off to Cindy, terrified.

Girls, I know you want me to love your babies. But I don't, and I never will. Your baby is not going to turn me around with his cuteness. More likely, he'll spit up on me, or scream in my arms, or steal the rice from my plate of food. Much like an unruly boyfriend, I cannot be changed. If it's any consolation, I probably won't even like mine.

In other news, I won 80 dollars playing Video Poker. Yee haw!

Ahem...

I have already staked my Scott Speedman claim on Craig's List, bitch. Now I think you better just back off. We shared a moment. You hear that? A MOMENT.

Also seen on television last night

Those wacky Japanese have a television show that features naked women peeing. On long tracks, where the pee falls on a pinwheel and it spins. It's a competition of sorts, but I didn't quite catch what the judging is based on. If I could find a link that didn't go to Japanese Urination Porn, I would share. Really.

On anorexia and teenage girls

So the boyfriend and I briefly tuned into The Amanda Show on Nickelodeon last night. Well, cute little Amanda Bynes has suddenly become on-her-death-bed anorexic Amanda Bynes. Seriously. She's worse than Calista Flockhart minus Lara Flynn Boyle. She is, by far, THE grossest-looking female celebrity out there. And she's only 18. Why Nickelodeon feels this is a positive image for 10-year old girls to be seeing is beyond me.

Even more disturbing, I did a google search on "amanda bynes" anorexic and there is actually such a thing as anorexia porn. Umm, eww.

My sordid past

KittyAcupuncture: i had a bolt-like experience today
baconordeath: you slept with half the staff?
KittyAcupuncture: hey!
baconordeath: sorry, that was too easy
KittyAcupuncture: bastard
baconordeath: I apologize
baconordeath: slut