Manage Your New Year's Resolutions

Here's another post to help you enter the New Year. Not less than three links from Lifehacker's excellent article "Free Tools to Manage New Year's Resolutions" have made it to a place of honor in my bookmark's folder. New Year's resolutions won't keep themselves, and these nifty gadgets help you manage and keep track of your favorite goals' progress. Some of them, like "Daily Plate", and "Mint" I have blogged about before, but other's like, "Joe's Goals", "Don't Break the Chain" mentality and "Benjamin Franklin's Progress Chart" are pure gold. While you are resolution making, read the article on Benjamin's way of reflecting on his personal virtues every week (Between you and me, I'm pretty sure that "chastity" tab wasn't often ticked off).

A Year's Worth of Books

Yesterday we talked about music, so it only makes sense that today we look at the notable books of 2007.

A friend commented yesterday on how she was slowly and inexorably replacing all the books in her life with reality television. It was not that she wanted to, but rather there had been an unlikely dearth of book openings in her life that was cause. And she didn't mean new books premiering. She meant the demise of the physical act of lifting a book's cover.

One of my own New Year's resolutions is to finish reading all the books on the reading shelf beside my bed (it’s a long shelf, believe me). So, in the spirit of getting us all reading again, the NY Times has a delightful article of picks from 2007 including "10 Favorites from 2007" from all of their book critics, a "2007's Ten Best Books" list and "100 Notable Book of 2007" list.

Best Albums of 2007

My opinion of Yahoo music is usually summed up by the word "meh". However, much like how monkey typists eventually turn out poetry, this article on the "Best Albums of 2007" rings so very true. Spend some time at work at Project Playlist listening to tunes from these albums and downloading tracks from itunes. Never heard of Project Playlist says you? It the quickest way of listening to other people's music on the internet, and everyone knows the quickest way out of a musical slump is to listen to other people's music.

5 things I learned from Marjorie Hills

In the spirit of New Year's, I've devoted a week of posts to reinvention, end-of-year examination, and methods of achieving goals. And I can't think of a better way to start than with one of my favorite books. "Live Alone and Like It", by Marjorie Hillis can't come with a high enough recommend. It is a stern, yet witty treatise on the human existence (especially from a female perspective) and though the content is dated, the wisdom is eternal. It should be essential reading for every female teen through tween on the planet.

Marjorie Hills has the uncanny knack of finding the trick of how to suffer through yourself from day to day by using a grain of salt and a touch of humor. Her grandest lesson being, we can be our own best friends if, when you are alone, you treat yourself like a guest. Here are five other life changing pieces of advice from her:

1. On Loneliness and Ennui:
   

   If you are bored and lonely, blame it on your own lack of initiative. If you are interesting, you'll have plenty of friends and if you're not, you won't, unless you're very, very rich. Anyone who pities herself for more than a month on end is a "weak sister" and likely to become a public nuisance besides. The role of a martyr may be appealing to the player, but a terrible bore to everyone else.



2. On Being Interesting and Making Friends:
   

   Being interesting does not depend on income, but on cultivation. Being well read and well informed, learning to listen and how to draw people out, taking the trouble to refine one's taste and develop one's ideas about painting, plays or politics and is the duty of any sensible, intelligent human being who wishes to have a social life.



3. On Loving Yourself:
   

   Don't economize on flowers and beware of the dispiriting effects of snacks on one morale. It takes a genius to make an impression in run-down heels and an unbecoming hat. You need good clothes and grooming. Our vote is for a little pampering--as much, in fact, as can be squeezed out of your schedule and your budget. Really smart clothes can cost as little a dowdy ones and it is not the ladies with the uncrowded schedules and large budgets who look the best. Go in for cosmetics in a serious way. A few good strokes with a hair brush, a bit of cuticle oil and a lotion on the hands, cleansing cream and whatever other cream does the most for your face, are just as important as brushing your teeth. A glass of sherry and an extremely special dinner can be served on a night when you are tired and alone. Bath slats, toilet water and a trim little cotton frock that flatters you can be worn on the morning when you are feeling violently domestic.



4. On Self Sufficiency:
   

   Never, never, never let yourself feel that anybody ought to do anything for you. Once you become a duty, you also become a nuisance. Be surprised and pleased at gifts, invitations and other attentions.



5. On Loving Your Surroundings:
   

   It is a good idea to give some extra-special attention to your surroundings. The place you live should reflect your personality-- and it will, whether you want it to or not. It will give you away to everyone who comes in, and it will influence your moods and your morale. But after all, it should be comfortable according to you needs and peculiarities. This is your house and it is the one place in the world where you can have things exactly.

A while ago, upon reading my Amazon wish-list my sister wanted to know why I wanted to read a book with such a title about "living alone". "Is there trouble in you marriage?" she inquired.

"Everyone dies alone," Captain Malcolm Reynolds of FireFly once said and the sentiment of that statement is true in the converse. Everyone one lives alone, because at the end of the day (until we evolve into telepathic beings) we think for ourselves, we hope to please ourselves and we try to make something of ourselves. No matter how hard we try to live for others, our lives are seen most acutely through our own lens and weighed most delicately by our own scales. Whatever you do, don’t let yourself become a burden to yourself and try to inject a little gaiety into our weary world.

Bionic Fashion

Well, sugar lovers, it's the New Year. Time for long, thoughtful thoughts on your way to work. Time for long, thoughtful walks at lunchtime and that long, thoughtful talk with yourself, where you ask, what the Hell am I doing?

Thinking about makeovers, I have a dear, dear friend who needed a fashion
intervention. I currently have a team of specialists rebuilding him to make him faster, stronger and better dressed than he was before. Part of the experience, I think, has to do with examining yourself, Proust style, to make sure that your clothes and surroundings reflect your creative vision of the world.

To that end, I have enclosed the worksheets I created to help one appraise themselves and their clothing. (Warning: Reinventing your fashion personality is hard work that should not be undertaken alone. Follow these steps with a brutally, honest friend (or two or five) to insure you don't buckle under the pressure).

1. Step one: Go into your closet and remove everything that you haven't worn in the past year. Now, remove everything that doesn't fit you properly. This is going to take some time and I recommend reserving a weekend for this task. You will want to try things on, deliberate, then, much like summer camp, you will get depressed when you have to say goodbye. You may cry. Let the tears fall on the trash bag you will place the clothes directly into. Do not pass go. Do not let yourself see the clothes again. Do not save more than 8 pieces for a rainy day, or for when you loose/gain weight.


2. Step two: Go into your bathroom. Remove everything in to that has mold on it. That includes old shampoo bottles and hair clay. Now, remove everything that makes you uncomfortable including fragrances you can't stand, scratchy towels, and uncomfortable toilet seats. You will be replacing them with things items that make you comfortable and happy in step four.


3. Step three: Download and fill out the enclosed worksheet "About Me". This is designed to help you rediscover what images and styles of clothing and personal care make you happy. This process should also take two days. Fill it out. Then sleep on it and revisit the form.
   


4. Step four: Buy some fashion magazines. Be creative! Try going to the bookstore and finding some fashion magazines from other countries. Rip out every image and/or product and/or fashion item that appeals to you, (after you buy the magazines, of course) even if you would never wear it, have no place to wear it, and will never look like that. Figure out why you like the images. Are they colorful? Are they sexy? Do they remind you of a certain period of time? A country? A movie star? A fictional character? A comic book world? A fashion icon? Use this information to help you fill more in the "About Me" worksheet.


5. Step five, the finish! Now, its time to spend some time and money on yourself! If you chose your feet as one of the body parts you like in the "About Me" worksheet, you get to spend serious money on your feet. Shoes, pedicures (even if you are a guy), nail polish, foot scrubs, socks, whatever. Why? Because the truth about beauty is that it is all about confidence. That's why the fat chick has a skinny boyfriend and that's why the short guy gets the beauty queen. Anyone who thinks otherwise has low self-esteem and is a public nuisance. If you put on an outfit that fits you and take care of your personal hygiene you can be gorgeous. If you were honest about your prominent body parts in the "About Me" worksheet, you get to spend time and money on them, too! Why? Because some thing you can't hide. Or more aptly, flaunting them hides them just as effectively. If you said you like rocket ships in "About Me", you get to buy things with rocket ships on them, just because you like them. If you admire George Washington, you get to own things that make you feel a little bit like George Washington. Just. Because.

What is inside your body means much more than the outside, of course, but this can be an excuse to pity oneself. It takes a genius to make an impression like Will Smith did in the "Pursuit of Happyness". Smart clothes can cost as little as expensive ones and no one's confidence can overcome an outfit that is all wrong. And there are a million ways to make yourself feel pampered and polished. And this is the type of pampering that really pays off. Your body IS a temple and it is just as important as your mind. I'm not talking about working out. I'm talking about using things on your outside that reflect the things you want to put inside. You want the best education for your mind, right? You want to read the deep books and listen to the music that affects your emotions, right? You want to be treated with kind words, patience and caring because that affects the state of your mind, right? Well, fragrance, cleansers, facials, cosmetics, and clothes can affect your body (not to mention your moral and state of mind) just as keenly. And to quote Marjorie Hillis, so does a glass of sherry and an extra special dinner on a night when you are terribly tired and alone. Good luck my heroes!

Pin-up What?

Christmas was a wonderful time for CandyBuffet. Among other things, Santa brought me an all inclusive book about the history of "The Great American Pin-up", which reminded me of all of you commenters who have been frickin' begging me to add a discussion section to the "Pin-up of the Month".

So here you go, just in time for Christmas (well not really, but in time for the New Year). The new section links to the comment thread for this post, which is now the home for Pin-up discussions in the Candy Machine. You can also find the new link just under the Pin-up for the month.

Amazon Casts a Spell

Our little Christmas gift from Amazon.com is a posting of photos and synopsis of all the tales in their recent acquisition, “The Tales of Beedle the Bard”. First, I am not one to be swept up in a general, trendy furor. Second, I’m not even one to post twice in one week about the same subject (namely J. K. Rowling), but the photos of this volume are…stunning. Handwritten and hand-illustrated by the author, I felt it resembled some monkishly illuminated labor of love. Only seven copies of the book were made by Rowling, six given to friends and this last auctioned for charity. After purchasing the book for a mere 4 mil at London auction, Amazon wasted no time in posting photos and information for its web.

If you do not know the significance of this collection of Fairy tales from the Harry Potter World to the Harry Potter series, well I you obviously have either not finished the seven books (or perhaps not started them). I certainly won’t spoil you here (and regret to say I have nothing to help you with your disease). All I can say is, you’d better get a move on before Amazon sends the book on a tour of libraries and schools.

Candy Girl

For the holidays, my in-laws and I are obsessed with seeing the witty, smart-mouthed “Juno”, the small screen film about an unexpectedly pregnant high schooler and the humors and traumas of teen-age life written by the brilliantly funny Diablo Cody. The funny thing is, Cody, whose real name is Brook Busey-Hunt, was more than a little abashed when telling her parents about her first publishing success, “Candy Girl”. You see, Cody spent a year stripping in clubs and the script of Juno contains more than a little of her own past.

I find it a little odd that our own American culture is complicitly and silently obsessed about sex. A few years ago I saw “Sin City” in the theatre. I expected a darkly fantastic, noir adventure but felt cheated when treated to a graphically violent novella. On leaving, Peter gamely suggested that there should be two R ratings for movies. “RV” for violence and “RS” for sex, because “Full frontal nudity? I can see that all day. Seeing a guy castrated five times? When does that get fun? “

I, for one, am looking forward to one of the first pop-culture treatments of teen pregnancy without the usual of tirade of shame, guilt and humiliation. You too can read more about Cody in the LA Times Article “Diablo Cody: From stripper to screenwriter”.

Girl Powah

Artists Tiffany Ludwig and Renee Piechocki, who collaborate under the name "Two Girls Working" have been interviewing women about clothes, make-up, self esteem, and power in order to create art installations, an online multimedia archive, and a new book called "Trappings: Stories of Women, Power and Clothing."

Many a New Year's Eve ago, I had an intense conversation with a friend of a friend. He despised make-up, declaring women only used it out of a lack of self esteem. I was convinced of quite the opposite and tried to reveal to him my deep connection with cosmetics. Especially in the US, cosmetics are so deeply ingrained in a woman's culture and considered a territory outside a man's culture that he found the concept difficult to digest. I tried to explain how, when I'm looking in the mirror, applying eyeliner or mascara, I oftentimes imagine I feel an invisible connection with the thousands of millions of women before me who have done the same thing. Just imagine, Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, Alice Paul, Josephine Baker, and Lady Diana all applied their make-up with the same minute strokes, the same half-opened lips, the same deadly concentration and somehow each of us is connected to the others in an infinite femininity that is a little bit ritual, a little bit sacred and a little bit fun.

Read for yourself how women speak about their emotional connections with a little black dress and pearls or THAT pair of perfect red shoes in the Seattle Times article “Two women explore "Trappings" of power clothes”.

What She Hath Wrought

Candybuffet doesn't usually succumb to these awfully trendy food trends, but a recipe for butterbeer inspired by the Harry Potter series happens to be intriguing, geeky, and candied all in one bite (and utterly takes the cake).

Entertainment Weekly suggested a version of the wizards’ pick-me-up made of Michelob Light and Butterscotch Schnapps was becoming a frat party staple, but finding little evidence of any such thing on the net, I decided to test drive a version of my own consisting of

12 oz Michelob light (1 can)
1 1/2 oz (shots) of Butterscotch Scnapps

(Yum! And it even passed a FreshSnaps flavor test) and will be serving it up for the New Year’s Holiday. You can try it out as soon as you dare, otherwise check out the Entertainment Weekly article on Rowling naming her the "Entertainer of the Year," preceeding a nice anaylisis of Rowling impact on modern culture.

Planeguage

The above is not a little known word in the English vocabulary. Instead, it is a new program launched by Delta Air Line's, Inc to raise awareness of good behavior in the air through animated videos. The humorous in-flight videos show passengers confronted with delicate social situations like "Middleman" (those guys who hog all the arm space in the middle seat), "Kidtastrophe" (doe I really need to explain this one?), and "Shady Lady" (passengers who raise or close window shades without considering other passengers. Exponential growth in air travel has meant thousands of new passengers who have never been in the air, and I for one am relived that Delta has stepped up to the plate to educate customers about what it means to be a good travel companion.

Read the USA Today's Article "Flying the Friendlier Skies" for an overview or take a look at the online version of the videos at Delta Air Lines' blog, Under the Wing.

It was the Worst of Openers

When I was a wee lass, we subscribed to Games Magazine. Well, I use the word subscribe to mean, poured over, tore pages out of, fought over, scribbled upon and basically defaced each issue into an unrecognizable pulp of paper. Inside each magazine were hours of word, logic and visual puzzles that would make your hair stand on end. And (very often) in December there was also the results of the world's best-known bad-writing contest, the "Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest".

The name of the contest hails from author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" opens with the sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night". The contest's founder acknowledges that writing badly on purpose is hard work, something like "impersonating a drunk on ice skates." That's why BLFC winners make world headlines each summer with such overworked sentences as:

She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . .though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon. (2004 Winner)

or

The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their
pints. (2000 Winner)

To view the 2007 contest winners, runner-up and dishonorable mentions visit the 2007 winners circle at their homepage. To try your hand at attainable foulness, you can also check out the
contest rules.

Park on the Grass

Hailed as the solution to erosion and urban runoff, which poisons our lakes and rivers, grasscrete consists of 47% concrete and 53% holes.The idea is to let grass grow between the surfaces of the concrete allowing for the same kind of rain and flood water absorption that occurs over natural soil...in a parking lot.

Developers pour concrete over 2' by 4' blocks called "formers" that biodegrade. As they degrade grass grows into the holes. Cool, huh? It can even be used in reservoirs and Drainage channels. Unfortunately, grasscrete is currently 30% more expensive than concrete. But as the price comes down, I think it is more exciting and innovative than plastic.

Take a look at the website for more pictures and case studies, one of which shows an English Manor house that had had its grass verges destroyed by overflow parking and country fairs, but has now been laying grasscrete for the past 15 years, providing hard parking for cars and natural graze land for the estate farm's sheep when not in use.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Went to a house warming this weekend, where the host pulled out a wacky version of Dutch shuffleboard, heartily enjoyed by adults and children.When it came near to my turn, there were only two people who hadn't had a go, so I gamely offered a quick Rock, Paper, Scissors throw down to determine who goes next.

Here's the thing, on reflection, Rock, Paper, Scissors is universal.Almost every civilized human being over the age of four knows how to play and would agree that the results are fair. The action is cyclical, understandable and almost karmic.

This morning, it seems that the New York Times agrees with me. Check out their article, "Rock-Paper-Scissors is Universal", regarding how the three-pronged nature of Rock, Paper, Scissors applies to nature and, indeed, seems to be one of its primary methods of stability. The article is part of a larger section, "The 70 Ideas of 2007", which is well worth a read too.

Interesting Web Browsers You've Never Heard Of

Is it sick, sick, that I only recently installed FireFox? And that was because my Internet Explorer kept crashing for unknown reasons and I finally got it up just enough to Google FireFox and wrestle the download URL from the browser. I'm not old-fashioned by any sense of the word, but I do like familiarity. Still I'm surprised at how compatible, customizable and, well brilliant, FireFox is (hello, instant spell checker! Are you listening Microsoft?). I feel guilty for my late and trepidatious behavior. Afterall it was named by Forbes.com as "the best browser" in a 2004 and "product of the year" by PC World in 2005.

For you others frightened of change, take a closer look at some rather unknown, forgotten, advanced or experimental browsers reviewed by Smashing Magazine in "Web Browsers You Have Never Heard of". You maybe surprised (and exceptionally needy) one day.