Happy New Year already.

So sorry for the overlong vacation from blogging. It's been a busy coupla weeks. Went home for the holidays and all that. Saw the family, enjoyed Athiest Kids Get Presents Day. Tons of fun. Blah blah blah Anyway:

Now, let me start this post by saying that I think I have a... healthy fear of chainsaws.

Not that I have nightmares or anything, but I know to stay away.

Father, though, he loves 'em. He got two for Christmas. Like, who needs two chainsaws? And they weren't even normal chainsaws, they were gimmick-y chainsaws. Obsoirve:

Horror Tool #1: Chainsaw on a Pole.

I don't think Gramma's gonna make it.

Because what better place to put a whirring death machine than at the ass-end of a third-degree lever?

Seriously, as soon as he unwrapped this thing, I got out a sketchpad and started talking about torque and fulcra and moment-arms, because let's face it, Father is roughly sixty years old and the laws of physics just aren't on his side.

But then I got to make jokes about not touching things with a chainsaw on a ten-foot-pole BECAUSE I'M SO FUNNY LIKE THAT.

But that doesn't hold a candle to...

Horror Tool #2: the "Alligator Lopper"

Because how can you make a chainsaw that much more terrifying? Anthropomorphize it.

I just imagine some Black & Decker engineer coming into work one day, all, "I had the worst nightmare last night. I was being chased by a chainsaw beast with teeth and a jaw," and some other engineer being all, "Eureka! We'll make a mint!"

The good people at Black & Decker want you to think it's for this:

But everyone knows it's really for this:

PS: Who gardens in white gloves? That's creepy in itself, geez.

Discretion is the better part of valor.

So some big things are happening in Mr. T____'s Life.

The temping I've been doing between Sub days has finally come through, and I landed me a sweet job! Mind you, since the last time I mentioned my work on this blog, it ended up in the New York Post, I'm going to have to be extra oblique in the future.

So here we go.

I've been temping at Redacted, Inc., currently holding position n on the Fortune 500. I was just going through their files for storage, but I worked my way into their hearts and minds, and when I asked about open positions in the company, I was quickly whisked away in a whirlwind of career opportunity.

I'll be working right under Mister Redacted, the Executive [Title], which makes me Assistant to the Executive [Title]. I've got a friend who works in [the industry], and he tells me this is quite an important position and could be a great stepping stone on to higher things.

I guess I have to change my blog's subtitle, since I'll no longer be doing much educating. Feel free to offer your suggestions. I've been thinking "Asinine Urbanity from an Urban Assistant", but "urban assistant" is a tad redundant.

Flippity-Floppity.

Note to frightened woman walking in front of me on the sidewalk last night:

If I really was a stalker coming to brutally murder you, I probably wouldn't be wearing flip-flops.

Of course, why I'm wearing flip-flops in this weather, I've no idea.

Monday Vanity Update: Smoke Free = The Way to Be

This MVU is dedicated to the memory of how cool cigarettes made me look in pictures.

Not that cigarettes are cool THEY ARE NOT NO SIR.

I dug through my Picassa archives (love that Picassa), and found all the pics where I'm enjoying two lungfulls of flavor.

[Click through for the nicotine-fueled fun...]

Please to be ignoring the fluctuating hair.

Alveoli, alveoli, alveoli...

Spent all this week not smoking. Go me!

Withdrawal symptoms are supposed to continue for about three weeks, but I've already noticed one or two changes to my body since quitting, which I will relate here because I know you all care.

1. I'd read that within the first three-to-five days, my senses of taste and smell would return. Now, I had never noticed them missing, but suddenly I can smell the stank cigarette breath of all my friends, Un-Boyfriend included. It's foul. Did I smell like that? No one will give me a straight answer.

2. I have to huff and puff less when climbing around in the Escher painting that is the Atlantic/Pacific subway stop. (Seriously, if there's a way to get from the Q platform to the R platform without walking sideways, upside-down, and travelling through time, let me know because I've yet to have found it).

3. I'm convinced my skin tone is improving. No one else can confirm this for me, but since I probably spend more time per day looking into mirrors than any one person spends looking at my face, I think I should be the authority on this matter.

I don't get cravings often, but I've at least discovered what all my triggers are (in order of the day):

• First cup of coffee in the morning.
• After breakfast.
• Leaving my apartment.
• Getting off the subway to work.
• Midmorning break.
• After lunch.
• Midafternoon break.
• Leaving work for the day.
• Getting off the subway home.
• That bitch Rachael Ray.
• After dinner.
• Evening TV watching.
• Before bed.

As you can see, I was a bit on the heavy side.

At least I now know that I am perfectly capable of ignoring every cell of my body crying out for satisfaction, my subconscious screaming "Accio nicotine!", and my mouth chewing on all of my pens until they explode into my mouth AND INK IS NOT TASTY LET ME TELL YOU.

Sigh.

One week down, two to go.

Morose!

So two of my roommates work for the City Morgue, identifying 9/11 victim remains.
Did I never mention that before?

Yeah.

It's pretty depressing work, I'm sure, and kudos to them for doing it, but they're both cute girls with ponytails and sometimes they'll say or do something that just makes me laugh inappropriately for hours.

Like, when one of them is fucking her boyfriend, and they both emerge from her bedroom wearing scrubs emblazoned with "MORTUARY".

And the "dead bodies smell" jokes never get old. Obsoirve:

Me: [describing the stench of something in the fridge]

Roommate 1: I know! I opened it up yesterday, and it was the most horrible thing I had ever smelled. And I work at the morgue.

And that's with emphasis added. She was being quite matter-of-fact about it.

Anyway, I bring it up because I was talking to one of them about one of the few perks about not smoking: no more Party Hair.

(You know, when you're out late some night hanging around smokers, and you skip the next day's shower because you're late for work, and don't realize until much later that your hair has been trailing around this big cloud of ash odor at work all day.)

Anyway, I was describing this concept to one of my roommates, and it resulted in the following exchange:

Me: [Describing Party Hair]

Roommate 2: Oh my god, I know! The same thing happens to me, but with decomposing bodies.

Heh. Heh heh.

Oh, I'm going to hell.

Cold Turkey: Not just leftovers anymore.

Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I've decided to give up smoking, and I've been ten kinds of cranky and not-care-y for the last little while.

Luckily, I've successfully replaced my addiction to nicotine with a selection of other addictions.

Namely, alcohol and ice cream.

At least for the time being. I'm told I'll get over that within the week.

So why did I decide to quit? I made up a budget for myself, and realized that I spend twice as much per month on cigarettes than I do on groceries. Fuck that noise.

Also, reading up on all the cool things my body will be doing to repair itself really steeled my resolve. Apparently, my alveoli will be regenerating for the next couple of weeks and my neural pathways will have to restructure to compensate for the lack of pleasure response nicotine gave me.

Neat!

If nothing else, quitting smoking is made worthwhile because I get to say "Alveoli" a lot. I mean, how often in my life do I get the excuse to use "alveoli" in conversation? Alveoli. Alveoli.

I just said it out loud, and it was good.

Monday Vanity Update: Napa

Mother and Father are back in Texas, but they left with me their collection of pictures from the Golf Course Wedding, and I think I look dern cute in some of them.

And yes, my mother took that killer picture of my ass. Thanks, Mom!

[The rest under here...]

Blind Item Guessing Game: Fertility

So Un-Boyfriend and I go to a Trivia Night every week. We do very well. Second place, mostly. First every so often. Our rivals are generally good people. Excitingly, though, one of them works at some local hospital/clinic/whatever, and happens to have looser lips than Brooklyn.

So let's play a game, shall we?

Ahem.

This medical professional claims to have personally verified (as in, under a microscope) the infertility of:

Which Canadian chanteuse?

Which adoption-happy aging sex symbol?

Which recently-married crazy person?

HINT: These are pretty easy, if you have half a brain.

I will neither confirm, nor deny, but have at it in the comments.

Thanksgimme.

So my parents are coming into town for Thanksgiving. After the success of last year's dinner (see above), they decided that dinner was on me this year. I'm hella excited.

I got all my shopping out of the way yesterday. Made up a handy-dandy spreadsheet to take to all my local supermarkets and price-compare. You know, so I could get the best deals. And I'm not even Jewish!

Wait, was that racist?

I'm currently thawing the turkey in the tub in a bucket, so I can brine it all night long. Thanks, Alton Brown, for teaching me the methods of mafia-style turkey-drowning.

...using the Culinary Brick of Science!

I've also made one of those schedule spreadsheets so I can be nice and efficient come Turkey Day:

Because when cooking meets nerditry, I am unstoppable.

The Official Seals of the United States Federal Executive Departments

...presented in order of ascending coolness.

	1. Department of Agriculture There's just nothing cool about the DoA's seal. Grain is not cool. Plows are not cool. Stars can be cool, but not when there's exactly 44 of them. That's just confusing.
	2. Department of the Interior Now, if you ask me, buffaloes are cool. Look over there to the right. That buffalo is one cool customer. Somehow, though, this seal remains decidedly uncool. Maybe it's the exploding sun in the background. Freaks me out.
	3. Department of the Treasury So they tried to find something to symbolize all the fun of money and money-owning, but all they could come up with was a scale and a key. If you squint at it, it looks like a face. And even the face looks bored. And just so you don't have to count: Stars: 13
	4. Department of Commerce Same here. I'm pretty sure the boat is supposed to represent mercantilism somehow, but still. Lame.
	5. Department of Justice This one almost made it onto the cool side, but check out the eagle's expression. This is not a happy eagle. This is not an angry eagle. This is a tired eagle. This is a fed up eagle. This is an eagle that has been posing, wings up, for the last three hours while that damned engraver finishes. Just wait til he turns his back, he's thinking, then he'll see what justice is all about. Stars: 3?
	6. Department of Labor This one's just confusing. The only close-ups I could find online are rendered in the strange hieroglyphic style to the right. Anvil, sure, I get that. Plow, too, tools of the workin' man (of the 1800s). But what's all that in the red row? I think the pinwheel is supposed to be a milling stone, but I can't be sure. And don't even ask me about the triangle and more-different triangle.
	7. Department of Education This almost made it onto the cool side. Modern design? Great. Evocative imagery? Awesome. Exploding sun? Love it. But that acorn is just silly. Boo.
	8. Department of Defense This one seems pretty uncool at first. That eagle imagery is just tired, and olive branches and arrows have been done to death. What makes this one so special? Claws, baby. Check out 'dem claws. Stars: back to 13
	9. State Department This one ups the ante by making the eagle look fucking pissed off. Plus, the flag-shield-thing appears to be censoring his genitals. Spread-eagle, indeed. Stars: 13 (+2)
	10. Department of Veterans' Affairs This eagle has clearly just spotted some poor, slow-moving veteran, and is about to swoop in for the kill. Plus, the bunching up of the flag is clearly a violation of Title 4, Chapter 1, §8 of the United States Code. Because veterans can do what they damn well please. Stars: 50 + 13 + 5 = 68. Winner!
	11. Department of Energy This eagle isn't angry or bored, just disapproving. In fact, I think it's a cameo by Sam the Eagle from The Muppet Show. The symbolism in this one is tops. Atomic energy is awesome. Hydroelectric generators are awesome. Even the windmill, which not usually awesome on its own, is rendered awesome by its proximity to the lightning bolt, sun, and oil derrick. All of which are awesome.
	12. Department of Health and Human Services At least we're finally getting into more modern design. In this one, a child is transforming into an eagle. And it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Girl Scout's logo, which is never not awesome.
	13. Department of Transportation Getting more and more futuristic. Reminds me of the symbol of the Klingon Empire. But, then, I'm a ridiculous nerd, so it might be just me.
	14. Department of Homeland Security I had no idea Homeland Security had such a cool official seal. It's the Robot Eagle of Counter-Terrorism! I can totally see this thing swooping down into Afghanistan and shooting lasers out of its eyes at Al Qaeda ne'er-do-wells. We're finally moving into the era of futuristic military design, like how the Air Force adopted their awesome new symbol (right) a few years back. And I know I'm not the first to point this out, but doesn't the Air Force logo look strangely similar to the Deceptacon symbol...? Do a side-by-side, it's eerie. Stars: 22? The hell?
	15. Department of Housing and Urban Development This one is the coolest of the bunch. So future-y! So dystopic! It's almost like it was ripped from the pages of 1984 (of course, I always get the INGSOC symbol mixed up with the Atkins symbol, anyway. Again, do a side-by-side, you'll be pleasantly surprised). HUD wins. They somehow found a way to make a Violet-and-Pine-Green logo look totally kick-ass.

Yes, I'm a big vain nerd.

A few more pictures from this year's Come Out & Play Festival have turned up online.

I present them here mostly because even though the first three give the impression that I am really quite cool, the last one confirms that I am, in fact, not.

[Continue reading for the nerdy truth...]