I have so many things I want to do in the next year or so, and I feel stuck because I don't know what to focus on or what to pursue.

I love this man. And I've had this song stuck in my head for about a week because of this video. If I ever stop listening to non-stop a-ha, I'm going to look up more Vicious Pink.

So while looking up James Franco because of the previous post, I noticed something on his IMDB profile: under the in development are is something called "Mystery White Boy". I kind of looked at that for a minute, thinking, nah. Can't be. Could it be? Yes, yes it could: a movie about Jeff Buckley!

It doesn't say how Franco is involved, but I'd bet he's playing Jeff--with the right hairstyle, he's almost a dead ringer for him. Uh, no pun intended, what with the deadness and all. I first noticed it in Tristan + Isolde (left). Which is probably one of whinest, most emo movies I own, but I love it like candy. Kind of like those damn Twilight books, actually.

Anyway, I'm interested to see if this movie about Jeff actually pans out, there's been talk of it for a long time, but his mother's been against it. Apparently now she's taking an active part in it, so it doesn't depict him in an unflattering way. I sort of feel bad for her, her son's been dead for thirteen years and she's still having to deal with this sort of stuff endlessly.

One of the many things I miss about my life pre-school is disposable income. I used to be able to shop! I accumulated quite a few purses, and a ridiculous amount of clothing, and 75 necklaces, and shoes. Oh, I love shoes! I have a couple dozen pairs of them, which I now have nowhere to wear, but I love them anyway. I can't afford any more now, and I don't need them, for sure. But that doesn't stop me from browsing sites that have designer footwear for me to pine after.

Like this black shoe! Look at it! There's so much going on with it, it's crazy. Buckles and beads and netting and suede and a thin high heel that I wouldn't be able to walk in, and the weird double-sole thing in the front. But I love it anyway. Would I buy it even if I did have an extra $200? Well, probably not. If they were only $60? Yeah, I'd try it then. I'm just a sucker for pretty shoes. My mom always was too, and I resisted it for the first 24 years of my life, but now, well, I'm a shoe girl.

A seriously lacking in funds shoe girl, of course.

I'm sitting in the computer lab at school between classes, watching videos on Youtube. I was actually looking for the official music video, but stumbled across this. One of my favorite songs! Also, not like it's news, but goddamn Morten Harket is fine.

I love the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It's so adorable, and I kind of have a little crush on John Corbett. I was unduly excited when I was watching TV one day and heard his voice. I was then embarrassed that I was momentarily excited by an Applebee's commercial.

I got three hours of sleep so I'm totally rambling, but the point of this is that SkippyMom is have a V-Day giveaway! Check out her blog to find out how to win a copy of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and deliciousness to boot.

I have about five pillows for my bed, some I use and some I don't. The last time I washed them, I had one that was the odd one out. So for a while, it's been sitting on the floor between my washer and dryer, which the cats quite liked. Well, yesterday the big dog peed on it. Why? I have no idea. But I know it was her because she was doing that belly crawling, ears back thing.

To clean it (and one other), I used the "medium high" water setting and hot/hot cycle on the washer. I did a soak, with about a cup of white vinegar, for about half as hour, then a pre-wash to rinse that out. Then I soaked them in plain detergent water for half an hour and ran the wash cycle. One more wash cycle with detergent for good measure, and I popped them in the dryer.

I just took them out, and there's not even a stain! They're pristine and white again. And there's no smell--I stuck my face in both sides of both pillows and took a deep whiff. They're the same brand of pillow, and I can't even tell which one was pissed on.

Like I said, vinegar=magic.

(Sponsored post.)

As I've complained many times before, I have a ridiculous amount of general stuff. Some of it I'm going to eventually get around to selling on ebay--clothes I've never worn, stuff like that. Other stuff I'll just toss--do I really need that battered Nike shoebox I've been dragging around since high school, and have never properly emptied and sorted out? And some I don't know what to do with. Like a metal cookie tin my mom gave me ages ago, that I don't keep anything in, that's not worth selling on ebay, and probably wouldn't sell at Goodwill, but I don't want to toss it.

What we need is a free stuff repository--and hey, there is one! Lista.com has a headline of "auctions for free stuff"--which confused me at first. Turns out it's run on a system of credits, and you get credits for joining, for listing stuff, etc. So basically to keep getting credits you have to take part in the marketplace, giving away your own stuff, and then you get credits to "buy" other peoples' stuff. I should pass this along to a girl I work with--she had a baby a week ago, and they have a whole section of free baby stuff.

Right now, you can get 100 credits just for signing up and getting started. Neato!

Randomly, we'd listened to an Amadou & Mariam song in my French class a month or so ago. Otherwise I might never have listened to this song by The Magic Numbers. I heard it in New Moon, but it wasn't until I was looking at the soundtrack list looking for something else that I saw the familiar names. I freaking love this song. It's so mellow and beautiful.

I wanted to share with ya'll a couple of cool "get stuff free" sites that I like. Yeah, I get referral points if you join, but I also think they're cool sites in general.

The first is Swagbucks.com. I'm new to this one and haven't gotten enough Swagbucks yet to get a reward; I found it through SavingDiva, though, so I have confidence in it! There are a lot of ways to get Swagbucks--for example, as a reward points sort of thing for purchases. My chosen method, though, is the totally free Swagbucks toolbar search engine. As you search, you randomly get award SBs. I have 58 right now, most just from searching for stuff and a couple from Swagcodes (a code you enter and POOF! free Swagbuck!). I'm almost halfway to a $10 Barnes & Noble giftcard, just for searching for stuff (although it is tempting to hold out for 3700 Swagbucks for a $300 Apple gift card!).

If you'd like to join, please click the banner below! (Open to people in the US, the UK, and Canada .... except Québecois, weirdly!)



Another site that's fun is MySurvey.com. I've been doing this one for a while; mostly you take surveys. For each survey, you get anywhere from five to 2000 points, and when you have enough points you get prizes. I'll be buying Divine Misdemeanors, the latest LKH book, with a gift card from MySurvey--I'm super stoked about that, because I didn't think I was going to be able to get it for months due to budgetary constraints! I'm so proud I've taken a picture of it, see?

I've also product-tested some stuff. Several months ago, they sent me two bags of dog food to try and take surveys on. My schnauzer doesn't eat that much--I haven't had to buy dog food since then, and I still have about half of the second bag. So that's saved me about $40! Hooray!

Again, if you're interested, please click the banner below! (Unfortunately it's a U.S. only thing.)

A few days ago at work, one of the managers had put on the local college radio statio. I didn't really pay much attention until I heard what I thought was The Beatles ... and Trent Reznor at the same time. Mashups are hilarious. I actually kind of like this one.



But what's truly funny is what I found on Youtube while looking for the mashup. Enjoy!

A couple of months ago, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to go see Anthony Bourdain. I didn't know who she was talking about. She said he was a chef and did the show "No Reservations"--I recognized the title but still didn't know anything about it, and certainly didn't understand what a chef was going to do in a theater. I also didn't want to spend $70 on it.

Well, yesterday somebody else found out that she couldn't go, so she gave me her ticket. I'm glad, too; it was a lot of fun! I'm going to have to read his books and start watching his show, he was absolutely hilarious. I even went up to the mike and asked a question, and managed to embarrass my friends in the process. It was great.

I was also checked out by several guys--including one who was super obvious about it. That was a nice ego boost. It's been so long since I wore anything other than work clothes or t-shirts that I forgot that tends to happen when I wear low-cut things.

I probably shouldn't laugh at this, but I do every time. I think it's the little tinkling bicycle bell that does it.

This is freaking hilarious! Excellent satire. I think this is my favorite part:

"Sorry to you Hillary Clinton and the entire women’s rights movement, but according to the bible you are “[not permitted to teach], nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness”. In other words, the Bible says you need to shut the fuck up. That is unless, of course, you’re a dirty wicked sinner. Then you can be president all you want."

(This is a sponsored post about a product I like.)

I've always been a reader, for as long as I can remember. I remember being hysterically upset at about five years old when I threw up on one of my books--I guess I didn't understand it could be replaced. That was around the same time that one of my teachers read "Little House On The Prairie" to my class, and I was captivated. I got the rest of Ingalls' books from the school library and read them obsessively. When we went to the family reunion in Missouri, my parents made a detour to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. I was in heaven. I still remember the smell of the place, and the gleam of light on her father's fiddle. My dad bought me a complete set of her books, and by the time we'd driven home to Colorado, I'd read every one. I still have that book set, actually.

Since then I've been addicted to reading, but I've been somewhat limited by real-life obligations and money. There are a lot of books that I got from the library, or from Booksfree.com, that I couldn't afford to buy. I've thought about finding them online, but that's always been a ridiculous headache. For example, I've read Kim Harrison's "Dead Witch Walking", but I don't own it. A couple of times I've wanted to look up something in it, while reading later books in the series, but I wasn't going to go buy it just for that. I've looked online a few times, but it was almost impossible to find it.

So I was pretty excited when I read about the pdf search through ebook-search-queen.com. I didn't find the whole of "Dead Witch Walking"--the pdf files weren't in place anymore--but I might have if I had an excerpt from inside the book. Most handy is the fact that you can limit the search by pdf, txt, ppt, doc, or rtf results, so I was able to eliminate the millions of pages that mention the book without containing it.

Overall, it was a pretty interesting search site, and I'm bookmarking it!

The other day when I was at the store, I realized I've never tried gouda cheese. No particular reason, I'd just never gotten around to it. I'd used it in Mousehunt, but never eaten it. There are a lot of cheeses I've never tried, actually; I've pretty much stuck to cheddar, swiss, and mozzarella most of the time. Oh, and parmesan, I love me some parmesan. But I was bored at the store and decided to try something new. Quelle suprise!

So I got a half a pound of lightly smoked, thinly sliced Boar's Head gouda cheese, and it is freaking heaven. It's incredibly creamy; I've never eaten just cheese on bread before, but gouda is creamy and moist enough that I ate the entire half pound on slices of shepard's bread. So amazing. This particular type had a very, very light smoke flavor, which I don't always like, but in this case it was just freaking perfect. There are no words for how much I love this cheese. I'm going to have to start going to the grocery store during regular business hours, when the deli is open, just for that cheese.

God I love Family Guy!