Gnumoon's Stuff

Swine Flu! (that you can eat)

I love customization. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to make these "Pigs with swine flu" cookies for a Pandemic Response Team of tired nurses who are working round-the-clock to combat the H1N1. Apparently they were a big hit, and rumor has it that the Chief Medical Officer of the company might have taken one to a meeting with some bigwig at the CDC. You can damn well bet that if I ever have a resume for this stuff, it will say, "Clients include: Maggie's mommie, Teagan's mommie, and the CDC."

My favorite part is the snot. Ewwww.

(I'ma get vaccinated now, because making this set has def. set me up for "ironic punishment")

Also, this view is much different now, but it's been a gorgeous commute for us this October:

EVERYBODY PANIC ABOUT THE SWINE FLU!

I was playing with CS4 yesterday (read: cursing at it and trying to find things), and whipped this up for the panicked masses. Enjoy!

Barack O-lantern

So it begins. As you know, I'm really only in my element in the autumn, paring knife in hand, carving up some pumpkins (or as Pookie adorably calls them, "pop-keys"). I decided to go with "Current events" for my first effort this season, so here is my Barack-o-lantern. Or just the Oblantern, if brevity is your thing.
It is Obama's profile, with the campaign logo cut (backwards) into the back of the pumpkin, so that the candle lights the front while throwing the logo-shaped shadow onto a wall. It was a reasonably successful effort, but I may try again in a few days and see if I can't get it perfect.
Note: Someone asked why I didn't use the smiling headshot as my inspiration, and it's because when you're doing a person on a pumpkin, teeth tend to look rather grotesque. Last year's King Leonidas from 300 was an exception. He was supposed to look intimidating.
I've submitted it over at www.yeswecarve.com, so we'll see what people think.

Grand Cayman sunrise, pre-Gustav

I have no idea what the view from Eastend is like this morning, but Sunday it was like this at 6am. Which is to say, perfect.

One more Caymans shot, this time of a green sea turtle:

I'd also suggest "ruckus" and "kerfuffle"

This story is really scary. But I was distracted from the horror of it by the overuse of a certain word.

Dear writers: there is a wonderful resource called a thesaurus. You don't even have to buy one, there are several available FOR FREE, ONLINE. A quick google tells me that in addition to "commotion,"
ado, agitation, alarm, bouleversement, brouhaha, bustle, clamor, clatter, confusion, convulsion, disorder, disturbance, excitement, flap, flare, flourish, flurry, fluster, fracas, fray, furore, fuss, heat, hubbub, hurly-burly, hurry, pandemonium, perturbation, pother, racket, revolt, riot, row, stir, storm, tumult, turbulence, turmoil, unrest, upheaval, uprising, uproar, agitation, disorder, helter-skelter, stir, tumult, turbulence, turmoil, and uproar are all alternatives available for your use. Certainly, all of them are not applicable, but this list should help you avoid the use of the same word FIVE TIMES in three short paragraphs.

Screenshot:

*facepalm*, the South Carolina edition

Dear Idiotic Backwoods Southern Church -
      Thank you so much for further solidifying the rest of the nation's opinion that we in the South are racist rednecks who haven't even two brain cells to rub together. While you're at it, can you please add to the other side of your sign that Jesus rode to temple on a velociraptor (since the earth is only 6,000 years old) and that insolent wimmins should be beaten for daring to wear slacks? Thanks so much.

XOXO,
A Southern Lady

ps- Shouldn't you guys be losing your tax-exempt status right about now for voicing political opinions? Just curious.
pss- Since the congregation is so behind you in this matter, perhaps you could just cut to the chase and put "We don't want no negro president" on the sign next time. Saves some time in translation.

Scary economics and good bluegrass

This is scary.
I'm increasingly afraid that anyone who says we've already bottomed-out is either 1. On Chimpy McFlightsuit's payroll, 2. Selling something, or 3. a moran.
*hugs modest fixed-rate mortgage tightly*

I'm all for taking the good with the bad, so here's a taste o' MerleFest. If'n you're thinking of coming, I'd highly suggest Friday as the best day to come.
There will be Avetts:

And Carolina Chocolate Drops:

JordanJonDonnieDannyJoey *squeal*

I will not lie. I will not be cynical. I will tell the truth:

I am excited about the New Kids on the Block reunion tour, and I will be there, singing along to every bubblegum saccharine song they lip-synch.

I remember "discovering" them, I remember buying their tapes at the convenience store, I remember my dad standing outside East Town Mall all night long to get me tickets, I remember being completely convinced that Jordan Knight was saving himself for me.

So many memories, most of them embarrassing as hell. Some so painfully embarrassing that I can't even blog about them all these years later.

Some of the "less" mortifying ones (and if these are the ones I deem OK, imagine what I'm hiding?):

- When I was 10 or 11 we went to Gatlinburg, and I went to one of those photo-kiosk places where they superimposed a photo of ME with JORDAN and then printed it on a T-Shirt. I never actually wore the shirt, but I treasured it. Even back then it wasn't cool to be an obvious fan. (I think my brother found the shirt recently and wears it regularly.)

- For the aforementioned concert, there was a poster contest through a Knoxville radio station. Draw your best poster, and the Kids themselves were going to come to the station the day of the concert and choose the best one, then the lucky winners would get to MEET THEM OMG.
My best friend (at the time ... we had those heart necklaces and everything) and I worked for weeks on our poster and were SURE that no one had anything quite as special or as glittery or as fetching as ours. We got all dolled up, carefully trundled our precious cargo to Knoxville, and stood in the station parking lot all day with about a thousand other preteen poster-makers, squealing when anyone appeared in the station window. We, of course, did not win.
I still believe that we were robbed.

-  For some reason, I thought that my fluorescent orange and blue NKOTB tshirt went really well with these shoes. (My brother also found that shirt and wears it. He's a skinny hipster kid, though, so he gets to be "ironic" instead of "retarded")

- NKOTB is the reason I'm a Rush fan. Srsly.
At some point my older cousin had just had enough of the poppy madness, and one day we were driving around in his white convertible Miata, and he said something along the lines of "You're too smart to listen to such bad music" and handed me some Rush tapes and the Moving Pictures CD (one of my first CDs).

- My mother did not approve of my shirtless Jordan Knight poster.
Come to think of it, my brother has that too...

- I had the Jordan and Donnie dolls. Screw you, rest of the Kids. Who in the world would want a Joey doll? as if, gah.

The anatomy of an April Fool's Day joke

There is no one Loki in my family. We all are merry pranksters, but probably the head of them is my aunt. So if I get the snot beat out of me today, it’s all her fault.

Check your calendars.

Got it? Good.

So today I took a cake in to work. A homemade German chocolate cake, with buttercream icing. Yummy. Just for our student workers, vultures who descend upon anything left in the break room with terrifying speed.
Yeah.
Except it’s german chocolate Zatarain’s cake with mashed potato icing. Mmmmm.

Step 1: Make the cake.
I chose german chocolate because it smells very strongly, to mask the smell of anything else I might put in it. After mixing it all up, I added 6 tbsps of Zatarain’s. I hate to waste lots of spices, but I’m an Old Bay kinda girl, and someone once gave me a huge jug o’ Zatarain’s. I also hate to throw things away, so it’s been sitting there on my spice rack ever since. It promised to “Jazz up” my cake, so I let it. Then I added about 4 tbsps of red pepper for good measure.

I could have gone all out with the additions, but I didn’t want the flavor/smell to be so overpowering that my victims understood immediately that they’d been duped. I wanted a slow realization, fork in hand, mouth kind of hanging open, eyes starting to water kind of reaction.

*Note – although I knew damn well what was in the mix, I had an almost an overpowering urge to lick the bowl after I put the cakes in the oven.  It was just like that passage in “On the Beach” when the guy almost smokes the radiation cigarettes when he’s on the submarine.

Step 2: Make the icing.
I boiled a metric shit-ton of potatoes, because I wasn’t sure how many it would take to ice a cake, and also I made potatoes with dinner last night anyway. After removing those that we were actually going to eat, I let the Kitchenaid Stand mixer prove its worth. I, as my dad would say, “Cranked it up to 10 and let it eat”. Just so you know, potatoes, when overmashed, get really sticky and gluey and not unlike cake icing. Aces.

After a bit I checked the potatoes and was shocked to discover that despite looking like icing, they still smelled like potatoes. So I added some vanilla extract. And then some more.

Step 3: Ice the cake
Surprisingly simple. It went on easier than actual buttercream.

Step 4: Decorate the cake
I made some actual icing and decorated the cake as if it was a birthday cake for my buddy. Isn’t she a lucky girl?

Step 5: Complete the illusion
I cut out a big chunk of the cake, then put candles on it and lit them, then blew them out and took them off and put them on the plate in an attempt to make it appear as if we had a party, the birthday girl blew out her candles, and then the cutter of the cake removed the burned candles and placed them to the side.

The cake is now in the break room, with festive little plates beside it. Updates soon, hopefully.

UPDATE - 1:13 pm:

The first victim was Chandler, and I knew it would be, because that kid loves cake. He was wandering around his office muching on it, and apparently even got HIS boss to eat some to see if it tasted weird. Then he came back to my office to see what kind of recipe I'd used. I was in the loo at the time, and my officemates convinced him that it was a family recipe and that I was very sensitive about my baking abilities. So when I came back, he KEPT eating it.

He finally figured it out when I almost fell over laughing.
Then he got in on the action, telling everyone how great the cake was, and at lunchtime it got even better.

I've duped four other people with it so far, and each of them became part of the prank, telling others how fantastic the cake was and how they MUST try some. One guy even ate a SECOND PIECE to convince someone else that it wasn't an April Fool's Prank. That's taking one for the team right there.

Ahhh. *laces fingers behind head and leans back in the chair, savoring the moment*
That was well-worth the price of a 5-lb bag of potatoes and 2 hours of my life in prep time.

Long weekends and mental days off

I just finished a huge, hulking, beastly project, it's 60 degrees outside, and I'm on the front end of a 4-day weekend. Ah, spring.

What should I blog about today? I have several thoughts knocking around in my head.

- March Madness? My bracket is already busted, and I have Duke in the final. Considering last night's debacle against Belmont, the Dukies have long miles to go.

- I still haven't reshot the Easter pictures. I may do that tonight, or I may go hang out with friends and tell them how I'd planned to reshoot them. That sounds less work-intensive.

Oh, there is one thing. You ever see Arrested Development, and there is that whole plotline about the beautiful girl who he thinks is a spy, but it turns out she's mentally challenged? Something like that happened to me. I was talking to someone who I'd consider a "friend" (although since I don't worry about them reading this post, perhaps they are merely an "acquaintance") and made some mention of the flooding in the midwest, followed by me making some blanket statement about climate change making stories like that more common.

"Oh." he said, "That isn't true."
"What isn't true?"
"Global warming. I don't believe in it."
"Why not?"
"My preacher said it wasn't true."
"Have you read anything about it?"
"No, I don't have time."
"So you believe a statement made by someone who is in no way an expert or even degreed in any field of science?"
"Yes, he's my preacher."
"And you believe anything he says? He isn't Jesus Himself, he's just a guy."
"I believe that Jesus told him that global warming was a media conspiracy."

wh-wh-what? wow.

All the things I wanted to say, all the questions I wanted to ask. In just 5 seconds, this guy managed to change my entire opinion of him. I now think that he is stupid, lazy and ignorant, because he willfully chooses on a daily basis not to use his brain. I more subscribe to the "God gave me a brain so I can THINK CRITICALLY AND MAKE DECISIONS" way of looking at the world (but it is admittedly a lot more work than being force-fed your opinions). 
I knew the guy was a Republican, but I didn't know that he'd tripped his mental "off" switch. I thought he was more of the "small government and fiscal conservative"-type, not the "Scientists are de debbil, evolution is de debbil, Obama is a radical Muslim (and probably de debbil), so let's go all glass parking lot in the middle east"-type. I just did not see it coming.

I mean, I know certain people who are hardCORE one way or the other. These people are generally hard to carry on normal conversations with, but at least you know what you're getting into. For example, I know a guy in advertising (let's call him "Robert") who thinks Sean Hannity is pure genius, and that Limbaugh is an angel anointed with a dusting of Oxycodone by God himself. But you can just look at Robert and know that he is a purebred dipshit- if they had papers and registration for being a dipshit, this guy could sweep the Eukanuba Tournament of Champions. So you are never surprised when he spouts off some idiotic incendiary junk he read over on Free Republic.
He hates Snopes because it debunks so much of his blabbering- he may be the actual patient zero on all that "muslim Barak" bullshit (I showed him a photo of Barak being sworn in ON A BIBLE, and he told me it was an obvious photoshop).

I don't even know where this post is going. Apparently all the things I know about science are wrong. Perhaps I'll spend the weekend contemplating that and mulling over how much simpler life would be if only I would swallow the blue pill.