Gross Things I Resort to Eating When I'm Poor

My Mum, who is cooler than anybody you've ever met or will meet, reads this blog. For her sake, I am going to try to avoid making this sort of post a habit. She worries! (PS. Love you Mumma! Xoxoxoxo).

Okay, disclaimer over, now here's some stuff I ate earlier this month when I had less money than I currently have. Contact me if you want the full recipes for these meals, which require no more than two steps to prepare, and much desperation to actually ingest.

SPLIT PEA "SOUP"

I know what you're thinking: "Becky, a lot of soups come out of the can that way." Sure, but do a lot of soups stay that way once they're out of the can? I took this photo after this gelatinous cylinder had been cooking for five minutes. This is the closest my life has come to being an RL Stine novel since my hamster became some kind of slime zombie in grade school.

WATERY BEANS ON SPINACH TORTILLA:

I don't think I need to elaborate on this one.

I am leaving my job in September, so more of these easy-to-make, hard-to-swallow, unemployment-appropriate monstrosities are to come!

Snooki Provokes Deep Inner Conflict

The Dionysian, Rampage-loving, impulsive, indulgent, "let's set the basement on fire then get drunk and stoned on the roof" side of me (aka my "Bender" side) is really at war with the workaholic, responsible, to-do-listing, chart-making, "we have a moral obligation to heed obvious cries for help" side of me (aka my "Turanga Leela" side) over this picture:

PS. Is she by herself?

Johnston, Redux

Dru Johnston is less wrong than originally thought. Still, don't fear aliens. For every Sith, there is an Ewok.

Aliens, Redux

The day after my last post, Stephen Hawking went and said that he thinks we should fear aliens as opposed to trying to contact them, since they're more likely to be aggressive than peaceful.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."

I think it was the wrong thing to say, not only because that it's super presumptive but also because it casts a huge shadow on SETI and all their efforts. Kevin Hines agrees with me, and I'm pretty sure he's the person that makes assertions into facts. So now, it's a fact that Stephen Hawking said the wrong thing.

That's why Dru Johnston should be especially embarrassed to take the side he took. Observe the victory of peaceful aliens:

I Will Find a Way to Kill Carrie Bradshaw

I had a conversation with some girl with different priorities than me about what we'd most like to happen in the world in our lifetimes. Hers was woman President: totally noble and good and stupidly likely. Mine is hands-down making contact with aliens; unlikely, but I would be so unbelievably grateful to have been alive for such a momentous event.

She looked at me like I was the alien, though, and laughed very condescendingly. It was that sort of uncommitted laugh, as if she was putting out feelers to test whether I was actually serious. Well, I'm sorry, boring-face, but if you're not excited by the prospect of communicating with extraterrestrial life, that's not a problem with me, that's a problem with you. I bet when you see the word "cosmos" you think it's short for cosmopolitans. That's a lame cocktail and you're a lame person, and the first female President is going to think you're lame too. Despite what Sex and the City 2 tells you, simply being female is no longer enough to give you social currency. There are far too many super-cool girls out there for that to work anymore.

Parents: please indoctrinate your daughters with The X-Files, Star Trek, Futurama, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, E.T., Star Wars, etc., so that more girls end up emulating Turanga Leela, Dana Scully, Deanna Troi and Leia Organa (I don't like calling her "princess") instead of four grating, shallow women who are going to Abu Dhabi for some reason in a sequel. Or just indoctrinate them with Pixar movies, even though Pixar's blockbusters remain pretty boy-centric as far as main characters go. Whatever, girls will figure out how to use Wall-E as a role model, regardless of his robot gender.

Yes, I am being weird and militant, but ever since seeing the Sex and the City 2 trailer, and in anticipation of all the stupid promotion that is to come, I am basically on a mission to excise Carrie Bradshaw and all her stupid clothes from existence, using some kind of black hole missile strapped to a T-Rex.

Books on Trains

I saw someone reading a book called The Witch Doctor's Wife on the subway today. It reminded me of the first time I heard about The Time Traveler's Wife. I have not read the book, so I won't trash it even though the title makes me desperately want to. Indeed, few titles have filled me with more immediate rage. You have a time traveler on your hands and you're going to deal with his boring old wife?! That's like making contact with extraterrestrials and worrying about whether you forgot to turn the oven off (you're a scientist, so you probably did, and anyway: ALIENS!).

Can we just agree to name our books after their most interesting characters from now on? Just call it The Time Traveler or The Witch Doctor, and if you want to be feminist, make said interesting characters female. That's why the working title of my novel is The Capricious She-Huntress of Arcturus: A Rocket Saga.

I also saw a very old man reading one of the Twilight books, which warmed my heart. I wonder whether he's an Edward or a Jacob man.

Birds With Attitude

Rife with Meaning

One of the awesome things about my new apartment is that it is within walking distance from the Creek and Cave, where I spend a lot of my time eating fries, drinking beer and telling poop jokes on and off stage.

Plus, there's some weird stuff on the walk home from the Creek, such as this piece of artwork on the Pulaski Bridge.

Without the vandalism, this would look like parents abandoning their child, which is almost as disturbing than the picture post-genital scrawlings. Now, to me, it looks like a horny couple that are about to have unprotected sex, while the specter of their as-yet-unconceived child follows shortly behind. THAT'S WHY I SAID "ALMOST AS" CREEPY!

I also like that you get to the middle of Pulaski Bridge and are suddenly hit in the face with a big Manhattan. Not like, punched. Lovingly slapped, like, "Hey, did you forget you live here?! That was stupid of you!"

Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me About Robot Dinosaurs?

I haven't posted for a while because I just moved to Greenpoint and won't have internet in my apartment until Saturday.

By the way, why did you all let me live in not-Greenpoint for so long? Jerks.

Another reason that I haven't posted is that I have been utterly obsessed with getting a Pleo. Please send one or two or many to me. They will be so well-cared for! I am still deciding on what I am going to name my first Pleo, but it will be really hard not to name him/her Little Foot. And after that, the next challenge will be accomplishing anything except cuddling wid my wittle robot dinosawr.