Vinnie!

Frequent readers* of this blog may be aware that I'm something of a Vincent Price fan. Imagine my delight when the guys at Tank Riot took it upon themselves to record a three hour episode on the subject. (Granted, this three hours opens with their opinions on the election, political candidates, politics in general, and shooting the shit about random stuff.) I especially love that they give props to Theater of Blood, one of my favorite VP movies.

Tank Riot: Vincent Price!

Go and listen!




*All one of you.

Happy Birthday, Nathan Fillion!

This morning NPR informed me that today is the birthday of "Castle star" Nathan Fillion!

While I do love me some Castle, I have to confess that like most Fillion fans, my love began in a much earlier, frillier place.

from Can't Take the Sky's OMR gallery

He is king of the gag reel. Serenity...

 Slither...

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog...(okay, so this one is for real, not a gag.)

So much so he occasionally gets slapped around a bit.

He is unabashed in his geekery, as evidenced here on the Daly Show...

 and here...

 ...and on the Nerdist podcast:

Nerdist no. 65: Nathan Fillion!









He even did evil.

But even with all my Fillion love, I never knew his humble roots till I sought them on the preserve of youtube.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Fillion! You have made me laugh many, many times, and your hair and vesty goodness in that last clip shows me that your ability for hilarity abides.

Neil, oh Neil

credit link

In case you missed it, Twisted Sifter put up a list of Neil deGrass Tyson tweets. They are, obviously, fantastic:

50 Awesome Quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Some of my favorites:


"If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy."

"Just an observation: I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever, heard a female voice as the narrator of a movie trailer."
(Miranda July's voiceovers for The Future could possibly count, although it's A) not an IN-A-WORLD narration in the traditional sense, and B) it's also a woman doing a creepy-ass cat voice. So. NGT still wins, I guess.)

"Ages for which you're in the "prime" of your life: 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 73 79 83 89 97 101."
I'm prime, baby!

"I've come to conclude that Fettucini Alfredo is just Mac-and-Cheese for food snobs."
Not just any food snobs, Dr. T. Cheese snobs. We are a wild and wary crowd with voracious appetites for curdled milk. Do not underestimate us.

This is the greatest and best soup in the world.

For real. Not a tribute. I love this soup. A.'s mom makes it every time we visit them, and I just inhale it. Not sure where the recipe originated.

Italian Sausage Soup

Ingredients:

• 1  lb italian sausage (I used mild. Obviously. Spicy would probably be tasty, too, if you have bowels of steel, or at least, happy healthy guts.)
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2  14 oz cans beef broth
• 1  14.5 oz can stewed tomatoes
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper (I used more)
• 1  14.5 oz can Northern beans, undrained
• 2 small zucchini, cubed
• 2 cups spinach, packed, rinsed, torn (I took this to mean fresh and packed tightly into the cup. I did and it turned out nice.)

In stockpan or dutch oven, brown sausage with garlic. Drain fat, stir in broth, tomatoes and carrots, and season with salt and pepper to taste. (I didn't add any salt and it was fine, probably because of the salt in the broth.) Reduce heat, cover and simmer 15 minutes.

Stir in beans with liquid and zucchini. Cover and simmer for another 15 minutes or until zucchini is tender.

Remove from heat and stir in spinach. Cover tightly allowing heat from soup to cook the spinach leaves. Soup is ready to serve after 5 minutes or so.

Despite the fact that this is probably not a good flare-up soup, what with all the sausage and roughage and general veggie presence, it is perfect for a chilly evening because it. Is. DELICIOUS. Enjoy.

Woohoo

Good news! The weebly wobbly not-a-flare is finally, finally dead and gone. I am once again crapping like a normal lady.* I think it may have something to do with my leaving the state for a quick summer respite.

(pic courtesy of A.)

The pup liked it, too.












*Which of course means NOT AT ALL, right, ladies? Bahahahaha

Pregnancy, fertility, lookin' sexy and other "ladies-only" stuff

Okay, you know I really don't believe that the above subject line is really "ladies-only" stuff, especially, I might emphasize, the "lookin' sexy" part.


My shocking revelation:
I don't know if I want to have children. Wild-and-crazy, right? But seriously now, I see some of my friends getting pregnant (because we're just at that fun baby-making age, apparently) and I see other friends raising their children, and I see still more friends dealing with their grown children and their new grandchildren.

A. and I wrangle back and forth about it ("Do you want to talk about it?" "I don't know. Do you?" "I thought you wanted to talk about it." "What do you think about adoption?" And sometimes, a day after I've proclaimed thoroughly and loudly my desire that we should A|remain childless or B|have lots of kids for C|whatever present reasons, I come out with some argument for the opposition, which leads A. to grasp his head and make loud unintelligible noises) but ultimately, we're still undecided.

One of our big recurring discussion pieces revolves around the ulcerative colitis. I'm worried (as I repeatedly hash over via keyboard on this blog) about passing on the nasty stuff, or about flaring during pregnancy. I worry about being unable to calm a flare without resorting to crappy meds. I'm incredibly worreid about my meds affecting the fetus during pregnancy and with breastfeeding, especially since breastfeeding has been shown* to increase a person's defenses (so to speak) against developing IBD. I'm worried about needing A. to look after both me and the baby, if I'm all incapacitated after the birth. And I am stupidly worried about all this nonsense when lo! I am not even pregnant and I AM on birth control.

Ahem.

Considering all that, I'm not sure why I still have a sometime-urge to start a family. It could be a mystical maternal instinct. It could be the Neverending Poke of Conformity. (It's a sneaky Poke, that one. Always getting you just before you fall asleep, or as you're admiring a pair of red pants.) It could also be that I am constantly channeling John Locke because I don't want any damn autoimmune disease telling me what I can't do!**

I don't really have the time to research the pregnancy/UC stuff, I just occasionally talk to my gastro or read an article or happen upon some alarmist shit on the Internet. But luckily, there are doctors who do research this stuff. And without further (endless) (seriously, infinite) ado, here's CCFA's webinar by two doctors on IBD and the lady population:

IBD & She
^{(I know, it took me a while. But I got there.)}

If you can't access the webinar for some reason, here are the slides and transcript:
Slides
Transcript

I loved this, cheesy name and all. Not only did it give me more solid hope that I could have a biological kidlet of my very own without irrevocably damning them to ulcerative colitis, but I also learned that screwing up a fetus with my UC medications is more difficult than even I imagined. I feel a little less like a freak after listening to this. I still don't know if I want a baby, one that's biologically mine or not.

A note: UC/Crohns ladies even less interested in the pregnancy/fertility discussion, you should still check out this webinar, because the docs also discuss menstruation and menopause, self-image and self-confidence issues, birth control, and intimacy/sex life problems. All these topics should probably have individual webinars and discussions, but this is a great start. Thanks to CCFA for sponsoring this, and I heartily vote for more to come.






<sup>* Mentioned in the webinar! I suppose I need 3 sources, though. Damn it.

** Eh, double negative, waaah. DON'T TELL ME WHAT I CAN'T DO, grammar nazis!</sup>

Anatomically incorrect.

My email spam filter catches most of the stuff, so much so that I usually forget to check my spam folder on a regular basis. The last time I remembered, I got an eyeful of this:

They're all so upbeat, I instinctively love them and the beautiful schlong-stretching product.  In order to instill such feeling in others, I'm going to start saying "have a cool penis!" when I leave work for the day.

In other news, A. and I are watching Great Expectations on TV.  Thanks, MyTX, you're just like having cable, if cable channels edited profanities and blurred out nudity. That's probably why I'm enjoying GE so much; there's nothing offensive to cut in a 1946 film.

Have a cool penis, y'all!

Are you by chance a vicious criminal?

Follow this link to listen to This American Life's archived episode, Poultry Slam 2003. They ran it on the podcast last week. Why am I linking to this?

A) It has a bit of Chickenman. (Bockbockbockbaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwck)
B) I UNEXPECTEDLY get to hear Ira Glass say my maiden name. Dude! I had to rewind/reverse/whatever it is we call going backwards in digital media these days.
C) Sorry, the above reasons are it. Pretty sad, I know.

Today it's my sweetie A.'s birthday. He started the celebration early by not coming to bed last night in order to finish a paper. What a crazy guy. However, because he is very lucky he got some presents and he will also be getting this later:


(A fresh one. This one is a couple years old.)

Mmmm, delicious. Happy December, everyone. Can you believe it's December already?

The horror, the horror.

The Guardian lists their top 25 horror movies:

The best horror films: the full list

I've seen most of them, and I'm making a list of the ones I haven't. I hope to add them to my annual horror movie marathon this year in addition to my live-bloggin' build up. Last year I carved pumpkins, made ginger snaps and spiced cider, and stacked up all my Vincent Price movies to watch while eating fun-size Kit Kats.



It was a hammier horror fest than normal.

Anyway, for my own personal favorites, I'd add Black Christmas, Carnival of Souls, The Descent, Dawn of the Dead, A Tale of Two Sisters, and for fun Just Before Dawn.

What would you include on the list? What would you exclude?

What a fascinating life you DO lead.

Still swamped in homework. Today's infuriations (also known as Information Policy class lecture and discussion topic) include:

- Data Privacy - We should all be either very afraid or very pissed. Oh, and ready to move to Europe, where they DON'T consider their corporations/organizations as individuals in a court of law.

- The freaking undead Patriot Act (too late for Halloween). Seriously. The official name, which never fails to crack my shit up, is: the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Lame, old white men. So, so lame. Besides, that mnemonic acronym shit only works in Music and Science class. Oh, damn, you knew that.

- COPA. Actually, I don't know why this one pisses me off yet, past the initial freedom of speech smushing. I guess that means I should be doing homework. Oops.


Today's Happy Thingies include:

- Leftover Halloween candy. A. is the best partner EVER - he lets me eat all the caramels! Goodbye, teeth.

- A giant crap that looked like I passed my entire intestine. Yes, it's absolutely disgusting to write about that, I know. But this baby had form. It so rarely happens I can't bear to let such an event pass without mention. Also, it's interesting to note how Happy Thingies can sometimes resemble Infuriations.

- The realization that I've successfully cut myself down to 2.5, that's 125 milligrams, of azathioprine, rather than the 150 I've been on for the past two years. This is still in addition to all my other meds, obviously, but WOO! My immune system might be jumping up and down, screaming, waving its arms to warn me that hey, dipshit, what are you doing? But I feel great, and have felt great during the taper-down. We'll see what the doctor says next week, apart from "How are you feeling?" and "See you in six months."

- Cold weather. I love it.

Back to the homework.