Tuesday, April 28, 2009

in which she uses lots of parentheses and confusingly long sentences

my new blog friend and first official blog crush, extranjera (we have to talk about that screenname (tho' frankly, since she's finnish, it could be her real name, they spell stuff kinda weird sometimes), by the way, as i have to pop over to your blog and look at it every single time to get it right and even still, i probably have it wrong) of the hilarious what will i ever do with my life? bestowed upon me the honest scrap blog award, i guess because of all the brutal honesty encountered here on MPC.


as with all of these blog award thingies, there are rules:

1. List 10 honest things about yourself, and
2. Pass it on to seven five cool people who embody the spirit of the Honest Scrap (tho' there is strangely no information about what that spirit might be...)

although i'm not big on rules, i am big on lists, and as husband says, i'm very often brutally honest, so this should be easy...
  1. i'm not a fan of photoshop. there, i said it. so many times people's pictures were surely beautiful before they played with them. and while i understand the allure of pretty technology, i think people should trust themselves and their cameras more.
  2. i can talk pretty mean, but when it comes down to it, i'm actually a pretty nice person (blatant attempt to lessen the blow of the photoshop comment).
  3. i really, really hate making phone calls. loathe it. 
  4. i am worried that there is an elderly greek woman inside me, trying to get out and she has sent out feelers to check the conditions. feelers in the form of three dark hairs that sprout out occasionally on my chin. i try to be vigilant, but what if that old greek woman really wants out and one day i accidentally indicate that conditions are ripe by forgetting to check. bam, i'll suddenly be wearing all black and those thick, sturdy woolen stockings...
  5. we have a really old toyota carina that we don't treat very well, but which remains loyal to us anyway. we never wash it (husband was just wishing for rain yesterday so it would be rinsed off--there's a lot of pollen on it at the moment). we never change the oil (it uses it so fast anyway, it's surely not in there long enough to need changing). we can't remember if it's a '96 or a '94. it's grey. the carpet on the driver's side is a real mess--lots of holes from years of wear. but there's no rust and it starts every time, despite having 400,000 km on it, with taxes at 150% on cars in DK, we're just loathe to replace it, so we'll keep it going 'til it won't go anymore. however, i never, ever leave my cameras or computers in the car, because they're worth more than the car is. sometimes i do leave the key in, hoping someone might steal it, but they never do.
  6. i would like to blog for a living. (as if y'all hadn't sussed out that one.)
  7. sometimes i wonder if i exist if i'm not online. this makes me wonder if all of you exist when i can't see that you're online. and this in turn makes me wonder if we aren't already in the matrix. 
  8. i sometimes wonder if carbon trading schemes really work. isn't it just robbing peter to pay paul and still no good for the environment in the end? (oh wait, this is one of the questions for my interview later...)
  9. i'm uncomfortable with the whole susan boyle thing and wasn't really going to say so (what, a lack of honesty? (gasp!)) 'til i read what gwen said about it. i feel that while she is clearly an excellent singer, there's something in it that's somehow taking the piss with her anyway and that makes me feel squirmy. and i don't really believe that simon cowell didn't know what was coming. it was all so staged and although i enjoyed seeing his face, it might be that he's just a good actor.
  10. i really love and admire what tangobaby is doing in reaching out to help a woman and her three children who have fled from an abusive home and are awaiting a spot in a shelter. she met them one day on the street and because she's such a caring, wonderful person, she's issued a plea from the platform of her most excellent blog and set up a paypal account and is spending a lot of her own time helping this family. what i have to be honest about tho', is that i have been unable to write one of the letters of support to kelaya, the mother, that was part of tangobaby's plea. i have stared at an open, new, fresh email several times and it just won't come and i don't really know why. i did, however, make a small donation via the paypal button (please go check out tangobaby's blog if you are intrigued by the little bit i've written here. and i hope that you're more able than i am to write a letter of support to this woman who has bravely left an abusive marriage and forged out on her own with three small kids.) the best we can do is well, the best we can do, isn't it?
and as for those honest bloggers, these come to mind:
  1. amanda of sucker for marketing (who i hope triumphed in her half marathon on sunday!)
  2. starlene of return to myself (i just love when she goes all deep thoughts...)
  3. mal* of turning*turning (she makes me see things in a new way every time i visit her)
  4. kristina of vigdis et al. (she speaks in honest pictures)
  5. clare of this and that (you gotta love anyone who thinks grover is the best muppet)
and i think that, like extranjera before me, i will name only five to pass it along to (in fact, i even took the liberty of changing the rule above--mostly because i like using that strikeout thingie). 
i know you're all busy bloggers and might not have time or the inclination to come up with ten honest things (this took me much longer than i thought it would and i was much less funny that i meant to be).  but some days are like that.

32 comments:

d smith kaich jones said...

Thank God you are honest. The fear of becoming an old Greek woman just cracked me up, and I thank you for that. :) Ditto the phone calls & 150% taxes on cars?!!!! WTF??? Am I misinterpreting that? 150%??!! Dang! But Photoshop? Oh, okay. . . if someone is using it because they're too lazy to learn how to correctly take a picture, and relying on Photoshop or their lab to "fix" it, I agree with you. But I love it as just another weapon in my arsenal for making art; I use it the same way I would use a brush or paint. But that's just me. :) Loved this list. Oh, and ditto Cap & Trade (I think you know in your heart it's just a political game, and being the honest person you are, that disturbs you) and double ditto Tangobaby. What an incredible saga.

:) Debi

will said...

I think Photoshop is simply an extension of digital camera photography.

Even when film was all there was, a negative was manipulated ... dodging and burning were common printing practices and prints were regularly touched-up, air brushed, etc.


Photos are never really totally honest - and never have been.

Just Jules said...

random thoughts generated by this post-
thank you for mentioning number 8. A person could cut down the rainforest if they bought credits to save the polar bears.

congrats too on winning the giveaway

I see that you saw the new pink merfish ..... cute

your honesty is what keeps me coming back.

Extranjera said...

Old greek women give the best evil eye. I think they actually have monopoly on this. So that one is really a good thing unless you mind scowling.

I have photoshop, have had it for a year now, and every time I open it it want's to give me a tutorial which just sounds way too patronizing for my taste so I always end up closing the program, and thus have no idea how to use it. Can barely work a camera.

Awesome honesty.

CC. said...

extranjera means ¨foreigner¨ in spanish, so perhaps that is the root of her blog name :)

great blog, ive enjoyed gettng to know it the last few days!

kristina said...

thank you :-) for the award and the great motivation! yay!
if someone asked me to describe your blog in five words, honest would certainly be among those. and funny! you're very good at putting your thoughts into words.

Liz Fulcher, The Fragrant Muse said...

Me too on the Susan Boyle phenomenon. My first reaction was "...well isn't that nice." Now, the more the media plays it up, the creepier it feels and I am starting to have a sense of being played by the media.

Congrats on your Ruthie Pearl bags! Such a month you're having...go out NOW and play the lottery. Do they have lotteries in Denmark?

julochka said...

i've learned something...that my menu spanish is working and thankfully, i've never been served a foreigner in a mexican restaurant. at least not that i know of. :-) thanks for the tip about "extranjera."

and now, i've got to go buy some lottery tickets...

:-)
/j

Extranjera said...

Yup, was initially gonna blog about Mexico, but wrote nothing for two years.

croushe - a year (or two) when one has intended to become an acclaimed author, but gets horribly sucked into running a dubious charity organization instead.

julochka said...

i would like to croushe (and i thought it was making clothes for rocks), how do you get a gig like that?

Char said...

the thing that bothers me about the singer is that if she was beautiful and sang beautifully - this would not be a story.

Extranjera said...

You show up at a meeting, and don't pay attention, because you're either thinking of the shortest way to get to Starbucks or how many bottles of Casillero del Diablo are left in the pantry.

And how poetic: verify nelict (this is the shit)

Magpie said...

150% tax? So if the car costs $20,000 you pay that and another $30,000 to the government? So the car really costs $50,000? Yikes.

(verify = fented)

julochka said...

didn't anyone notice that blogger published this post in the future? i scheduled it to go up tomorrow morning and here it is...what's up with that?

Tess Kincaid said...

That same old Greek woman has been stalking me.

Photoshop can be used creatively. I like a bit of it here and there.

I also wondered if the whole Boyle thing was staged. Hmm.

r. b. said...

eu gosto do photoshop mas acho que tem que se saber usar e não ficar aplicando assim, muito em todas as suas fotos :D

ser uma pessoa ou bonita na sociedade conta muito mas pra vocês acho que é o que menos importa, eu gosto de ser assim como sou e ponto. :D

Clare said...

Thank you for the mention. Gosh, how I love making lists. I will do this soon!! GROVER RULES!!!!

kristina said...

julie: how weird about the publish date. someone broke the time-space continuum?

julochka said...

i think it's just that google is controlling time now as well as the weather. :-)

Bee said...

Big YES on 3, 8, 9 and 10.

Enjoyed the list.

Pattern and Perspective said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Pattern and Perspective said...

I'm with you on 2 (especially when I don't feel good), 3 (hate receiving them sometimes) and 8 & 9. The vehicle blurb is quite hilarious, as is the old Greek woman one. For your own sake, I hope one day you aren't wearing "thick, sturdy woolen stockings". Itchy --

#6? Really. Just kidding. I would love to write for a living, but it would take me ages to put something together. I once sat and wrote 18,000 words on my computer one night --wonder what happened to those pages?

I write like a talk (fast) and I always correct things. I'm a correcter!

beth said...

I loved your list and your honesty...there's just not enough of that around lately !!

and to do what we do for a living and like, ummmm, that means getting paid for it...yeah, my dream too !!!

Unknown said...

I wanted to tell you what extranjera means but someone has already said! I wanted to have my Spanishness validated!
Your list made laugh! But no, no, no to number 9! I want to believe in the Susan Boyle thing. And I really don't think Simon is such a good actor. Please don't burst my bubble!

Unknown said...

Great list : )

One of my best friends is brutally honest. If we're shopping and I try on a dress, she'll say, "You look wicked fat in that." However, I know that, when she says something nice, it is the absolute truth. She's made me learn to appreciate brutal honesty : )

Also, thanks for all the neat links you give. It makes for a lot of fabulous reading!

Nancy said...

I absolutely adore your Greek lady story! I have never heard the fear of facial hair described so perfectly!

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K. said...

you have a great style of writing...very engaging and conversational...happy blogging!

Laelah said...

Honesty is something missing these days and I thought this post was amusing in it's own little way. :)

Will be visiting your blog again soon,
Laelah.

Anonymous said...

i totally understand about the phone calls. If there was anyway I could avoid making a call, I would go for it. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

philly5113 said...

Great lists. There is something very refreshing about honesty. Thanks for sharing. I must say that I agree with you that making money on blogging crossed many minds, including moi. I also spend so much time online that I am sleep deprived but I dont care, I love it!
see you around the 'sphere.

Pia K said...

Oh, I'm so glad to hear someone else not liking PS!! Whatever happened to the pride in learning photography and the appreciation of natural beauty, light and colours?

I'm totally with you on the phone calls thing, I'm an odd phoney and these days I'm not really keen (as I used to be) to talking to freinds on the phone either, email or irl that's my melody.