Ten Thing Thursday

1.  Love this Whole Foods Parking Lot rap, and love it especially that he name-checks Humboldt Fog cheese, the best cheese in the world. (via @floridagirlindc)

Sample lyrics: “I’m about to check out/Pay my 80 bucks for six things and get the heck out”

2.  Grammar pet peeve: When I was a child, my father relentlessly corrected me when I said things like, “Do you want to come to the store with Johnny and me?”  ”It’s Johnny and I,” he would say. I have always enjoyed my superior position as a grammar snob, so I absorbed this lesson deeply.  Unfortunately, it’s wrong, and now every time I have to use that sentence construction I trip all over myself in an effort to remember which one is right. Tip: If you would just say”me” if you were doing it alone–”Do you want to go to the store with me?”, then it’s “xxx and me” not “xxx and I.”  Duh. Also, you are not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition (“Where did you eat at?”)  In Ohio, this is not a rule.

4.  This article is so incredibly creepy and awesome: Your Head on My Shoulder: Parasitic Twins and Other Half-Formed Siblings.  Not for the squeamish, but the morbid should dive right in.  One of my college roomate’s mothers had a mass removed that turned out to be a teratoma–a chaotic mass of tissue that can have hair and fingernails and shit and is the remains of a twin that never develped–removed as an adult and it was all I could think about when I met her.  I’ve always wanted a twin, though not a dead one growing hair inside me.

5.  My favorite song this week, again courtesy of my sister:

“If I made it through Christmas without smoking
‘Til your parents went to bed
If you made it through too
Without sticking your nail scissors in my neck
I’ll buy you bras instead of pickled eggs
Chocolate instead of chutney
Good red wine instead of bad red wine
Next time I remember your birthday”

6.  Can a Computer Ever Give Good Book Recommendations?   The article is diplomatic, but the site they are talking about is terrible. You know who is really good at giving book recommendations though?  Me.  It’s my superpower.  Go ahead, ask me.

7.  I was going to do an earthquake post but this one from Lemmonex sums my experience up perfectly.  For a split second when the shaking started, I just knew a bomb had gone off in my building’s parking garage and I was furious at myself for not having sneakers and a change of clothes handy in my office, breaking a promise I made to myself after fleeing the same office on 9/11.

8.  Now, however, I can appreciate some earthquake humor.

8-23-11: NEVER FORGET

9.  I have never flown out of Logan Airport on time.  I’ve had flights mysteriously cancelled there when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  This week, coming back from New Hampshire, I waited 5 hours at the gate and and 2.5 hours on the runway with nary a raindrop in sight.  It was worth it, though, because I was reading a really good book, The Dirty Life, and because while I was in NH I had my only beach day of this interminably sad summer, and in the middle of it I ambled across the street to sit in the shade and eat this obscenely abundant and delicious lobster roll:

10.  For some reason, this old post had a mini traffic spike this week, and when I re-read it I decided it was still funny.  No one read this blog back when I posted it.

Your Guide to Online Dating: Decoding the Email Address