Katz draws his favorite animal eating his favorite food.

From The New Yorker's "Cartoon-Off: XKCD"

Flash mobs!

Do yourself a favor. Visit YouTube and search for "Flash mobs." Hilarious!


UC Berkeley Cal Flash Mob 1/25/07 - Ninja Battle
Flash mob definition courtesy of Wikipedia: "flash mob describes a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disperse."

I learned it from watching you, dad!

Before getting down to the business of business school homework (finance, to start), I decided it was time to run a Google search for that fabulous anti-drug PSA from the 80s. If you grew up in the U.S. in the 80s, you likely saw the commercial. As I recall, a haggard man walks up to his son holding a crack pipe and confronts the young man about his drug use. The son's reply: "I learned it from watching you, dad! I learned if from watching you!" Sadly, no one has uploaded the PSA to the web. I did, however, find this:

How to safely swim with piranhas

Just in case you were wondering...

How did I miss this?

So I am at Lynn's house in New York right now and Lynn is making a pop up book while I am reading RollingStone magazine for the first time in forever and surfing the web. Well, I just read about The Gray Kid spoof on Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" from RollingStone. When I mentioned "PaxilBack" to Lynn, she said, "Ooh. I love that song! My favorite line is 'mattress on the floor.'" I can't believe I didn't know about this. Am I not with it anymore? Arghh!

The Oracle of Starbucks

Once upon a time, I worked at Starbucks. In fact, I worked at many Starbucks... DC, New York City, London, Boulder... I worked them all. Really, though, my Starbucks history has nothing to do with the point of this post. What I want to tell you about is The Oracle of Starbucks. Oh Oracle, you are wise in your ways. Please tell me what my drink of choice says about me... What?!?!

Mail order husbands

Once at a holiday gathering, my friends and I were trying to come up with viable business ideas. Most of the suggestions were pretty normal (good pizza place in Columbia Heights, wine and cheese store in Columbia Heights) and then my friend exclaimed: "We should start a mail order husbands service!" That was years ago but I've been seeing the idea pop up elsewhere recently. Here's where:

• I received this mail order husband link in an email from a person who was not at the gathering.


• This morning, I came across this post about a store for husband-buying in New York City at Avert Your Eyes.

If you've got a few minutes, both these links are well worth a visit.

Chef Elise

I just cooked chicken for the first time ever! It's not for me to eat (I made it for a friend who just lost his mom) but I'm still very excited.

I've never been much of a cook. In high school, I tried making these yummy Quaker Oatmeal cookies from scratch (there was a recipe on the side of the box) and I forgot the flour both times I made the recipe (In my defense, I figured out the mistake much quicker the second time).* In college, I made lots of burritos (I do make awesome burritos), pasta, and mini pizzas on crackers. When I lived in Mexico, I made lots of tortilla sandwiches (having a fresh produce guy around the corner was awesome). These days, I pretty much subsist off of yogurt, cereal, granola bars, fruit leather, frozen meals (primarily Amy's brand), food that other people cook, and restaurant food.

I've always said that I need to either marry a man who cooks or get rich enough so that I can hire a personal chef. Now that I've gotten to the age (nearly 27!) where get togethers are often dinner parties and potlucks, perhaps my habits will change. At the beginning of February I cooked my first-ever lasagna for my potluck (you may have read about that in my pinata post). Two real meals cooked in two consecutive months. Maybe I will finally learn how to cook!


* For the first time since high school, I made these cookies (Choc-Oat Chip Celebration Cookies) again this January and brought them to work to celebrate the end of my business school applications. People loved them. The day after I brought them, a co-worker stopped by to check if I had anymore (I didn't). Over a month after I made them, another co-worker mentioned how great my cookies were. In a way, that's three real cooking experiences in three consecutive months. Whoa!