Fanged Vegetables are Awesome

House pictures of the house!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:57:00 +0000

I am moving to Philly! Here are some pictures of the house I am buying on Friday. Hopefully.

Awesome banister in the first floor. This is looking from the street towards the back of the house.

Looking the other way. The carpet. *sigh* It's not a great picture of it, because you can't see that it's blood red. And that is it stinky.

Kitchen. Very small. It's a row-home.

The dead teddy bears in the basement. I swear to you that I did not do anything to these bears except take a picture of them. If they are still there after Friday, I will give them a decent burial.

Basement. In the background you can see the dryer that is "included" with the house but is not able to be hooked up at all b/c it's a gas dryer and there's no gas hookups. Awesome. And a random table.

Extra bedroom and more awesome red carpet.

I apologize that this pic is upside down. In my defense, it is kind of hard to tell. These are shelves. Sort of.

MORE awesome carpet! Yes, there is pink too.

Netflix Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Zombie Honeymoon

Imagine the WE, Oxygen, or Lifetime networks producing a made-for-tv movie about a wife trying to cope with her husband becoming a zombie. Then, cross that with what seems like an independent, Canadian film student's freshmen try at movie making with a small budget. And then, stare at a blank wall for 15 minutes. Now, you have an idea of how tedius and horrible this movie is!

Bad Movie Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:17:00 +0000

Found on Netflix--

Every bad movie that was ever made or that will ever be made is safe from getting the title of "the worst movie ever made," because of The Crow: Wicked Prayer. THIS MOVIE WOULD HAVE TO GET BETTER JUST TO SUCK!

Please don't make the same mistake I did and watch this total piece of crap. In fact get a video camera and make your own Crow movie and I'll bet it will better than this movie.

I beg you, please don't rent this, it's horrible. I think it's so bad that Brandon Lee might come back and kill Edward Furlong to makes things right.

What is it all about?

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:45:00 +0000

Fabric shower curtain

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:07:00 +0000

This is my old shower curtain. It's a CBGB's shower curtain, which I really liked. But my one cat, Tifa, is deeply insane. She likes to chew on stuff, especially plastic. So she has pretty much destroyed the bottom of this shower curtain. It's all punctured with catty teeth marks. Plus, I'm pretty sure she's going to start tearing bits off of it and eating them. Which means another expensive vet visit and me being really worried. Tifa would just be angry and try to bite the vet again.

You can see the ripping a little in the picture.

The people at the vet's office call her Plastic Cat.

Materials- I have fabric left over from the Ikea curtains I bought last summer cause the curtains from Ikea are crazy long. So I kept the fabric once I hemmed them.

If you wanted to just make a shower curtain, you could just attach loops to an old bed sheet or any fabric you have. I probably could have just used one of the fabric panels by itself to be a new curtain, but I didn't want to be too matchy-matchy. So I decided to go with a patch-work thing.

I cut off a section to use as the top of the curtain. One of the panels was about as wide a the clear liner I already had so I just used that.

Making a hem. Straight pins are key with using a sewing machine. Pointy ends should point out. Then you can run the fabric thru the machine with the pins in it.

This is a broken sewing machine needle! Sigh.

Needles break. This is why you should have extras. This machine has a pretty easy way to change them, so no big deal.

After I hemmed the top, I'm attaching loops to put the shower curtain rings thru. I cut off the already hemmed part of the other fabric so I didn't have to hem it myself. I put the loops on with a zig-zag stitch. I overlapped the zig-zag several times on each loop. This is to give it some extra strength. I don't want the loops to fail, cause that's what's holding the curtain up.

You attach the blocks of fabric together like you would sew anything together with the machine-- put the good sides together, pin, and run through the machine on a straight stitch. Then you want to iron the seams down. This makes your seams look nice and locks everything down.

So I just keep going, attaching blocks together to make the patchwork go.

This is where I got kind of annoyed and headachey. So I left and got some Chinese food and sat down away from it for a bit. Then I put on a Mystery Science Theater episode and finished up. (Cave Dwellers! I'M HUGE!)

Done!

Tifa is pondering this new curtain. No eating it, Bad Cat!

Also

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:29:00 +0000

Is it wrong that I find the Geico Eyeball Moneys to be so very funny and awesome? I know the caveman commericals were dum dum dum. But it's moneys! With eyeballs on it!

I like putting eyeballs on things (like vegetables) so I approve of this.

Plus, let us not forget Geico made Tiny House.

Sometimes I pray--

Oh, Jesus, Buddha, or Santa--

PLEASE let there be Tiny House!

But there NEVER is.

Did you know?

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:27:00 +0000

Obama signed Equal Pay legislation!

OMG! LOOK! It's Obama!

He's in yer White Howse! Making yer pay be more fair!

Rehabbing a Ottoman

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:36:00 +0000

Or how to do your own upholstering-- the sort of janky way I made up.

I have been sewing since I was a little girl. I have been applying what I know about regular sewing to upholstering lately. I inherited a really awesome couch that had some pretty severe cat damage. I fixed it. I patched it up, which no one seemed to believe I could do. And now it looks awesome, and is so much nicer than the couch I had before.

I don't like throwing things away that are still good. And I didn't have the money to get a new couch either.

I wanted to do the same thing to my ottoman foot stool thingy that was totally broken. I thought some people might like to know how to do such a thing. So this time I took pictures while I was doing it.

How I re-upholstered my ottoman and how you can do the same--

(If you want your upholstery to look pristine and professional, this is probably not for you. But if you want it to look kind of cool and arty, and you don't care that people can tell that you patched it, then this is the guide for you.)

This is my ottoman. It's made of vinyl. I could probably get another one for not too much, but I like this one. It's got the right amount of heft, and it's a nice size for me to rest my feet on while I'm sewing.

And this is why the ottoman needs to be recovered. Because it's got splits in the vinyl. Scratchy splits that itch at my legs while I'm trying to sew. Not very relaxing.

My materials. I had originally planned to get some batting like you would use for quilting, and then use that and the pink swirly material I use to patch the couch. The batting would give the ottoman a nice squashy feeling, and I felt like the swirly material, which is actual upholstery material, would be a little too flimsy and not thick enough on it's own. Then I saw this old towel which I was using to cover the a/c unit. And I thought, hell, why not just use that old towel instead of batting? Then I don't have to drive to the fabric store.

I cut the towel down to be a little bigger than the ottoman. I wanted to leave the rolled over lip at the top, cause I like how it looks, so I had to mark off where I wanted to cut. Which I did with a Sharpie.

Detail view. (Hi, mom! See, I'm wearing the slipper things you gave me at Christmas.)

I am also using straight pins stuck into the ottoman to keep the towel on straight. At this point, I was going to cut out the towel in a circle and then cut out the other fabric in a larger circle and do a bunch of other stuff I decided not to do because I really like the feel of the old towel on top of the ottoman. I think with something like a foot stool, how it feels on your feet and legs is really important. Also, I think that matching is overrated, so I don't care that I didn't use exactly what I used when I did the sofa.

This is a picture of me fake putting on glue with my left hand even tho I am not left handed. I took the pins out (but not all of them-- I want to keep everything straight and not twisted around) and spread glue on the ottoman. I took my finger and smoothed it out so it wouldn't soak through the towel and be gloppy. The glue is meant to act like interfacing would with a liner-- you're going to sew down the edges, but you want something to prevent the middle from getting weird and bunchy.

This is me sewing the edges down. I was looping over the lip of the ottoman and pushing up back through the vinyl. This is what I mean about people being able to tell that you patched it. I consider the stitching to be decorative. I'm using a straight needle here. I tried using a curved upholstery needle like I used for the couch, but it didn't really work. Also, and I cannot stress this enough-- if you are trying to push a needle through something thick like vinyl, use a thimble. If you don't, you will probably end up with the back end of a needle in your hand somewhere. This is painful.

I also had to ease the towel around the edge of the ottoman. If you're not super familiar with sewing, easing is something you have to do when you're dealing with circle things. Cause fabric doesn't tend to want to lie down in circles. Squares and straight edges are easy. Circles not so much.

So when you're sewing a circle thing down to something else circle-ish, you will have to adjust the fit as you go around, making micro-changes while you are going, because the process of sewing the circle down changes the fit of what you're doing, while you are doing it. If this makes any sense.

You can also run a basting stitch that you can pull on the tail of to adjust while you're going. I didn't do that. I could have, but I figured I could fudge it. And I did.

The finished product. Yay! I like it so much!

You might want to do this in sections over a couple of days. It took a not short period of time to do.

Foxy likes it!

Hearse

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:41:00 +0000

This is a hearse. This hearse has been parked in the same spot at my apartment complex for 3 weeks. I don't have a lot else to say about that, other than it's kind of weird. So I went out and took pictures.

The car next to it is my car. Hello, my car! I'm so glad you're paid for! It's making the recession easier for me.

Ow

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:12:00 +0000

Also, I have an enormous, horrible headache.

I wanted to get a couple more things done today, but with my brains going all painful, I think I am basically done.

I've been pretty pissed off too, at Apple of all people. I'm having problems with my iTunes account, and they've been jerking me around pretty hard. I think I may be onto a solution at this point, but it makes me sad to get the same awful customer service from Apple that I get from almost anyone else. Come on, Apple. You're better than that.

Can I just say?

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:39:00 +0000

It totally infuriates me that while practically the entire country is either out of work or worried about their jobs, Still President Bush had the time to go to a goddamn football game last weekend.

Cause it's not like anything important is happening in the world.

ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I was going to compare waiting for Obama to be the actual President to other horrible waiting times-- like waiting to see if you're pregnant or if that biopsy is cancer or if your dog has to be put to sleep. But do you know what it is actually like?

It's like waiting to see if you're going to have a job still. Cause that's what it actually IS.

George Bush is the worst President EVER. HATE OMG THE HATING.

And in addition? I had to sit at the toll booth on the Ben Franklin bridge for like 20 minutes, while his Excellency Dipshit got to the fucking game on time.

Netflix and Xbox

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:31:00 +0000

My Netflix is now hooked up to my Xbox.

This is the best thing to happen since Tivo.

I love you, Xbox! I loveded you SO MUCH.

Best! BEST!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:08:00 +0000

BEST episode of Survivor- EVAR!

Ever ever ever ever EVER!

I know so people are going to be all, omg you still watch Survivor? Yeah, I know. I wasn't going to, but my Mom was all, nooo what will we talk about, so I did. And I am SO glad.

This is the season I have always wanted to see.

Ok, so you know how horrible people are always all Oh, we're soo awesome and great and horrible, and we'll be horrible to people and then ask them to vote with us by lying to them about how we are going to obviously vote them off in the next episode when they will be totally helpless?

Yeah, I hate that. The nice, awesome people totally buy it, every time. Except this time! The nice people (and the sort of nice, sort of crazy and holler-y people) are banding together! And they are totally surprising the awful people by kicking them off. Their see-thru lies of horribleness aren't working this time!

It's delicious. I adore it.

The pin-up model, Sugar (LOVE her! Call me, girl. Let's get drinks!) she found the idol-thingy on the island they make you go to by yourself. And then they set Awesome Bob to the alone island and he couldn't find the idol, cause Sugar still has it. So he totally faked up a fake one. Because he is Awesome Bob and is awesome.

And then when Horrible Troll Randy knew he was going to be voted off, Sugar convinced Awesome Bob to give his fake idol to Randy. Which he then tried to use, and Probst is all, dude, no. And Sugar laughed in his face. Which he deserved. Because he is horrible.

Love it!

OMG!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:35:00 +0000

Chinese Democracy is going to come out! For really real this time. (I think.)

omg. A new Guns and Roses album. It's like being back in high school.

Don't forget, free Dr Pepper! Except for Slash.

So...

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:43:00 +0000

Now that Obama won, we're cool for socialism, right?

Top Design

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:28:00 +0000

Nathan won Top Design! Yay! Crazy razor-blades-and-Jesus Nathan!

I don't usually really love anything people do on the interior design shows. I like some of it, but I never love. But I have LOVED some of the things he did this season.

Nathan, come over and make my apartment crazy and fabulous, and we'll have vodka drinks and be BFF!

OMG!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:39:00 +0000

There is a song about Valerie Plame on the radio. Wtf, YRock?

It's very upbeat too.

I am pretty sure this random hipster dude did not meet her when she was undercover and give her a ride on his Vespa.

Just a hunch.

Dude, this stopped me cold from what I was doing which was blogging on the S&S main page. I'm all typing typing typing... WTF?

Ok, I just had to tell someone.

This is what happens when you can't sleep. Weirdo crap comes on the radio.

Sink Kitty!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:02:00 +0000

Kitty in the sink!

Sink Kitty supports Obama. How can you tell? Well, she hasn't eaten his sign in the window. Yet.

Sink Kitty loves to bite peoples! Except for Ryan. She loooves Ryan.

WE WON!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:33:00 +0000

Thank GOD. I feel like I can breathe again.

I voted!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:15:00 +0000

I am so glad I went out at 6AM, cause it still took a little over 45 minutes, cause they only have 2 machines in my district.

Also, omg New Jersey. Wtf confusing ballot questions. I am glad I researched that beforehand, cause otherwise I might have been in there for a long time. The last time it was all, who wants money for parks? Who wants clean air? And I'm all, yay parks! Yay air!

This time it was very confusing. Like hey, the governor appoints the judges, do you want your township to do that instead? And I'm all, hells, I do not know. It's the difference between having it mobbed up at the Trenton level and mobbed up at the township level. There was not a Don't Mob It Up choice.

Stop your crazy mobbed up politics, New Jersey!

I did stop by the Dunkin Donuts and get an Election muffin. Cause I got up WAY early.

215 Fest

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 03:28:00 +0000

So we tabled at the small press/book arts thingy at the 215 Festival today.

Total bust.

There could not have been more than 20 people that came thru. And we were there for MANY hours.

I got to wear my new long-arm stapler shirt. Even tho it was totally wasted on all the not showing up peoples. I shall wear it again anyway, because whatever. And also it is cute, and expresses my total love for long-arm staplers.

The one chick who bought a copy of Revelations seemed pretty excited about it, so that's something.

I swear, you guys, a poetry reading broke out, so we were forced to flee. But, there was a local printer there. Our last experience with a printer was so FILLED with SUCKING, so if we can get a decently priced new printer out of this I consider it not wasted time.

And they were letting people play with the letterpress printer, which I loved.

Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:37:00 +0000

There's some new and exciting stuff going on behind the scenes at Sugar and Spite, so I've been busy.

Plus, this is the last, oh I'm busy so sorry for the infrequent posting. Posting will probably be pretty infrequent. And sporadic and other words that mean not on a schedule.

Keeping the comics and the store and the craft shows all going is a lot of work.

And Stupid Palin woman DID get totally booed at the Flyers game, so YAY.

BOOOOOOO!

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:38:00 +0000

I take it back. Sarah Palin dropping the first puck at the Flyers game is going to RULE.

Why the change of heart, you ask?

Well, I remembered that Flyers fans like to boo things. Like Santa and small children. And that the last time McCain was here in the Reading Market, people were totally shouting at him that he sucked.

So I think it's pretty likely that she will get totally booed. And that would be really funny, cause she thinks she like, owns hockey or something. Well, she sure as shit doesn't own hockey in Philly.

BOOO!

You guys, there's nothing in the world like thousands of people booing and chanting "Asshole". I heart you, Philly.

Sarah Palin is dropping the first puck for the Flyers

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:23:00 +0000

NO! You get away from my Flyers, you crazy hoor!

OMG

noreply@blogger.com (Ali) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:17:00 +0000

John McCain fundamentally does not understand how mortgage payments work.

Not surprising as he doesn't know how many houses he owns.

More on this later.