give me a jingle.

gentle reader.
what is the haps?

ok.

gentle readers, you'll be ambivalent-at-least (gentle author hopes) to know i've oodles. and i mean, just scads, of time now to keep up with you. the uh, other side to this happy news is: that's because i've been laid off.

i wonder if this is going to be like woodstock - "you get laid off in the recession? do any kooky jobs? no? too bad, you missed out."

and i think, that now is the perfect time to get a kooky job. going back to school is not an iron that's not in the fire. (all double negatives point to: i might go for my masters?) and also make lists. but also some of these lists are about the kooky jobs i want to try my hand at. they range from editing and journalism work to apprenticing as a butcher, being a bookshop girl (mostly for the sweet, sweet employee discounts and also so i can spit in all the copies of harry potter & twilight...) to the most mundane of handy tasks.

see, i'm wondering what the results would be if i print up some posters for handy-type jobs, but with a writer's spin. see below:


"prefer your dog to be walked by an erudite, witty logophile? writer interested in trying hand. give me a jingle."


"want a housekeeper who can make pristine beds and leave book recommendations and mixtapes? neo-renaissance hipster girl w/housekeeping and mixtape-ing experience interested. give me a jingle."

if you can think of any fun job ideas - let me know. i am game, and game again dudes.

at the very least, now is the time to (re-)read betty macdonald's Anybody Can Do Anything.

just so you know...

"The Spring Peeper Frog makes a sound like jingling sleigh bells, and the Green Frog resembles the twang of a banjo string."

"srsly", dudes.

don't turn up your nose when i say:

this summer, i hardily encourage you to use "txt" & "meme"-driven lingo in your day-to-day dialogue. if you don't get the inherent fun in saying "L-O-L" and "O-M-G" out loud - you're not doing it right. dig a little - the fun is there. i promise.

you just have to find that certain inflectional sweet spot...

i mean, i "heart" grammar as much as the next copywriter. but this trend won't last forever (ideally)... so take advantage of this brief window of opportunity. shoo off your druthers and take a moment, tell someone that you heart them. whisper a little "oh em gee." squint your eyes and indulge in a sweet little "el oh el".

when you can comfortably drop the weighty sound of implied quotation marks, you'll find that a friendly "whatevs" policy becomes you.


srsly.


here. you can use this to practice:

there comes a time in every young woman's life. . .

...when she has to fill out an annual self-assessment form for work.

survey says: "yuck."

in a perfect world - a world where i could simply follow my heart - following my heart meaning, cutting out & pasting these aspirational wolf pictures to apply where appropriate:



in that perfect world, i would happily fill out my self-assessment.

in the real world, where it means half-contemplating words like "leadership" and "timeliness" and trying to turn them into applicable vocabulary words... my enthusiasm falls a little short.

maybe my HR & my performance manager just won't believe how well the wolf pictures work, til they see it with their own eyes.



(dear readers: i'm not gonna lie. i miss you, but i've been on twitter.)

they so pretty.

hey chicago art institute - you know how i know you're gay?

and finally...

Paco Underhill science-math facts about Paco Underhill.

also, i really really like his name.

applicated

the most delightful thing about iphones is the application store. a veritable orchard of juicy entertainment fruit. apples for the mind. the beauty of it is: anyone can make/submit an application. which means there exists a wealth of applications ranging form the very tidy and complex to the very simplistic (for instance, the bubbles app), to the very, very baffling.

most useful to date:
wikipanion (one-touch access to wikipedia. awesome)
dictionare (dictionary)
showtimes (locates where youa re with GPS, tells you what movies, where they're playing, their proximity to you, directions, etc etc.)



most entertaining:
this one belongs to hangman. my personal favourite. the only app i visit so regularly, besides the weather bug. simple, engaging... recently updated with a 2-player mode and cateogires - whereas previously, everything was one mysterious, generic mish-mosh.




most baffling:
Knots
by far, knots is the most nonsensical game i've downloaded. and there are no game instructions or help information to speak of. i've spent an inordinate amount of time trying my darnedest to figure it out. so this is how it goes:

you have a blank screen with a dot.
you put your finger on the dot and another dot pops up.
you put another finger on the second dot. if you let go of the first dot, you lose. holding the two dots, these bouncy rings ripple out from one of them.
and then nothing happens.
sometimes you can move a finger and a new dot pops up.
but sometimes, this makes you lose.
no rhyme. no reason. no instructions.


2nd most baffling prize goes to: JumbleSolvr. now i was under the impression this game gave you a mix of letters which you had to solve. my kinda game. unfortunately, this is not the case. you have a field where you can type letters in and the app tells you what those letters could be, if un-jumbled. the redeeming feature is, they know it's useless and that seems to be their whole developer strategy.


simple & noteworthy:
bubbles touch the screen to make a bubble. touch the bubble to pop it. make as many as you want. the bubbles float away, who knows where.

light saber pick a star wars character (though they all kinda suck). pick a light saber color. it makes an electric hum and wooshes/clashes when you swing your iphone around.



couldn't hold my interest
cookie bonus solitare (basically solitare, but with cookies. also the cards have cookie pictures on them. too bad, it sounds like something i'd like.)

JumbleSolvr (see above)


downloaded today:
pacman lite; free translator; touch hockey; mazefinger; & jellycar ("driving a squishy car through squishy worlds")