16 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
juice and zest of one lime or lemon (about 1/4 cup juice)
Graham crackers, gingersnaps, or any cookie of choice
1) mix cheese, milk, and juice together in a bowl.
2) line cookies on bottom of glass dish (mine is 6.5″ x 5″) or loaf pan
3) spoon half of cheesecake mixture over cookies and smooth it out.
4) repeat with another layer of cookies and other half of cheese mixture
5) refrigerate until set
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these lists. Alright, here we go.
The New Hate List (or people who should be beaten 8 shades of soundly)
1. People who think having piss poor quality of anything means one should accept it as “better than nothing”.
2. People who think that crappy insurance that no doctor will accept is better than nothing. You might as well be in a third world country with no medical care access.
3. People who think a husband beating the living piss out of you every night is better than having no man at all. An eternal dirt nap is no way to go through life, sugar.
4. Those who think having abusive monsters for parents is better than having no parents at all. PTSD is a bitch to cure, and no, you don’t have to be an army veteran to catch it.
5. The “better than nothing” people.
For many years I thought and believed that the schizophrenic neighbor who lives in the apartment below me was single, because I assumed no one would want to hook up with such a mentally unstable person.
She’s crazy. She’s the “I can hear the toilets flushing and it’s making too much noise” kind of crazy. The “I can hear voices through my walls” type of crazy. The “your air conditioner is too damn loud, turn it off RIGHT NAO” crazy. The “could the handyman stop making all that racket!” (on a repair job during regular business hours) crazy. The 7:30 type crazy.
Then this morning I learned from condo management that Ms. Looney Tunes have a husband.
A husband?
Yes, and management had met him in the flesh. Apparently he’s just as nutty as she is.
So he’s not a figment of Ms. Looney Tunes’ imagination. Not “Drop Dead Fred” nor “Foster’s Home” imaginary.
Well, I’ll be damned. And impressed.
People consider me to be mentally balanced by conventional standards and I can’t even land a fucking date. The secretary at management has the same problem in the romance department. She and I are quite baffling mysteries to our friends who think we should’ve been hitched long ago. We were told by various folks that we’re good people and yet Looney Tunes manages to find someone to marry. She and I will be collecting cats in our old age. I could only laugh at the cruel cosmic irony of it all. Not really. I’m laughing more at my erroneous assumptions about Looney Tunes’ marital status. Ok, maybe a bit of both.
Hello, my name is Kieran and I am FAAF. I can’t get away from it and there is nothing I can do but embrace it. Wholeheartedly.
30 years ago:
I was 9/10 years old in 1984. It was a good year for music. Culture Club, Duran Duran, Dead or Alive, and Van Halen were some of my favorite bands. I couldn’t quite get the hang of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk.
20 years ago:
I was 19/20 in 1994. I was in a crappy minimum wage job that paid $4.50 per hour. I had to take a break from college after my sophomore year to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I returned to school in 1996.
15 years ago:
I was 24/25 in 1999. I was still in school working on my bachelor’s degree. I found some work doing web development. I haven’t moved out of my parents’ house yet. I think the American music scene has started to go downhill.
10 years ago:
Year was 2004. Several months ago, I graduated from college and got my BA after six years of juggling a full time job and part time school. My coworkers threw me a surprise party for it. I started to take up aikido. I also joined a local chapter for the No Kidding group.
5 years ago:
Year was 2009. I was still dealing with the fallout of an illness that sneaked up on me in 2007. I was on the track to graduate school when cancer came along and completely derailed my plans. Fuck you cancer.
2 years ago:
Nearly ten years after my getting my BA, I finally made it back to the classroom. ohai mental torture.
1 year ago:
I went on medical leave from work and school for 3 months to get gutted like a fish. Much to everyone’s disappointment, doctors declared me cancer free. I now have scars to show for it. I hear chicks dig scars.
Yesterday:
I was at the Coffee and Tea Festival with my sisters.
Today:
Just another day at the cube farm.
Tomorrow:
Cube farm and then school.
Ever played the “Telephone” game as a kid, where you whisper a message into a person’s ear, which is passed around a circle of people and see if it remains the same at the end of the line?
Boredom compelled me to turn to Google translate for amusement. Using the online translator as a “Telephone” game, I started with a sentence in English, ran it through the application in several languages and then back into English. It’s interesting to see how well the original meaning of the English sentence holds up through numerous translation swappings.
This is what happens:
English – “There is no good music here.”
German – Es gibt keine gute Musik hier.
Spanish – No hay buena música aquí.
Japanese – ここには良い音楽はありません。
Russian – Там нет хорошей музыки здесь.
Greek – Δεν υπάρχει καλή μουσική εδώ.
Polish – Nie ma dobra muzyka tutaj.
Bengali – এখানে কোন ভাল মিউজিক পর্যন্ত.
Slovenian – Ni dobra glasba.
Vietnamese – Không có âm nhạc tốt.
Portuguese – Não há boa música.
Swedish – Det är bra musik.
Chinese – 這是很好的音樂。
Arabic – انها الموسيقى الجيدة.
Hmong – Nws yog zoo suab paj nruag.
Gujarati – તે સારા સંગીત છે.
English – It’s good music.
(D00d, I actually remembered one after who knows how many years?!)
————-
I was in a record store looking to buy Malmsteen CDs. Birdman was there and the store was unusually organized. The store had an alligator for sale. Only 25 bucks. He was a cute little 3 foot critter and I thought it would be cool to have a pet alligator. So I paid the cashier and took him home.
After I got home, I found a baby onesie laying around and thought it would look cute on the alligator. It was a beige number with a red heart in the center. As soon as I slipped it on the reptile, he became agitated and started snapping at me. I jumped back and he lunged for my calves. I grabbed some kitchen twine, tackled him down and managed to tie his jaws shut. I was planning to remove the onesie when the now pissed off gator tore off the twine. Smart fellow.
He chased me around the apartment and got hold of my left ankle. Strangely enough, his teeth were not sharp enough to break the skin. But the pressure from his mouth stung. I pried him off, climbed on his back and held his jaws closed with my bare hands. I needed to toss the gator out the 6th floor window so I can buy myself enough time to call animal control so they can help contain the scaly beast with proper equipment.
I saw my middle sister sitting in the armchair doing needlepoint. I yelled for her to open the window so I can toss the alligator out. She got up begrudgingly only to walk the pants-on-the-ground slow walk to the other side of the room and shuffle some papers.
There’s an enraged alligator in my hands, and I was equally irate as the poor beast at my sister’s nonchalant response to the danger at hand.
“WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”, I roared. She slowly walked back to her needlepoint project to finish off that last knot.
“THE FUCKING NEEDLEPOINT CAN WAIT! OPEN THE WINDOW NOW! LIKE RIGHT NOW!!!”
The alligator was clawing at my thighs, all the while thrashing his body against my weight in an attempt to escape. My sister got up, slowly walked to the window, tapped at the curtain, and sat back down.
“WTF IS THAT SHIT?! CAN’T YOU SEE I HAVE NO HANDS?! YOU DIDN’T EVEN GO NEAR THE GLASS! OPEN THE GODDAMN WINDOW! OPEN. THAT. FUCKING. WINDOW. NOW!”
There was no calming the alligator down and there was no moving the slack-brained sister into action.
Then I woke up.
Tumblr users, I dare say, are stupid, derpy, and illiterate. Their blogs, 100% of the time, consist of images with no captions, no origin credits, no mention of photographer, and no mention of background story on any given image. It’s as if they have zero ability to string a few words together to form sentences. It’s essentially the digital equivalent of point and grunt.
During a random wandering on the interwebs, I came across a picture of a rooftop with windows that look like eyes. This is the picture:
There are many questions.
This image, what is it?
Is it real?
Is it Photoshopped?
If real, where is this house located?
Who designed this house?
Who lives in that house?
Why was the rooftop built like that?
What’s up with the eyes? Was it intentional or accidental?
What’s the back story?
Of course, the Tumblr post has no accompanying text to explain this picture. *Rage_Guy_FFFFFUUUUUUUU.jpg goes here*
Praise be to Google image search which lead me to this Facebook post.
Since I can’t read Portuguese, Google translation revealed that the rooftop with the creepy eyes is located in the city of Sibiu, Romania.
HUZZAH! That’s all I wanted to know. Now I can finally do a real Google search for “roof eyes Sibiu Romania”.
The existence of these rooftop eyes have been confirmed: http://ayearinromania.blogspot.com/2012/11/sibui.html
Now I know that one of those structures with the rooftop eyes is called the Haller House: http://www.patrimoniu.sibiu.ro/index2.php/cladiri_en/piata_mare/85
The Hecht House is another structure with those creepy eyes. ^_^ http://patrimoniu.sibiu.ro/cladiri_en/piata_mare/83
But damn, it took me some 15 minutes to uncover the real story behind that aforementioned picture. For this, Tumblrs users can go die in a fire.