Author Archives: Jena

Mama MiO!

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I have a problem. A drinking problem. It started about 6 months ago. I’d never had such an amazing drink before. I could mix it to my specifications, to my desired strength and flavor. They came out with more flavors, and I had to try them all. I keep it with me much of the time, I have at least a drink a day, often up to 3 or 4.

I am addicted to MiO.

This is my favorite flavor.

This is my favorite flavor.

Now, I know it’s a gimmick. I’m paying a lot of money for flavored water that I have to make myself. I’ paying for the pleasure of using that little sqeezy bottle. I mean, one bottle of MiO makes 96 fl oz of flavor water, or there about. That’s only a day and a half of flavored water according to the 8 glasses of 8 oz of water a day.

But we love our justifications, don’t we?

THERE’S A FLIP TOP! AND I CAN SQUEEZE AS MUCH OUT AS I WANT AT A TIME!

Uh huh. You just paid $4 for a little squeezy toy. Freezy pops are a better investment.

BUT ELECTROLYTES! VITAMIN B! NO CALORIES! NO SUGAR!

And synthetic sugar and flavorings and caffeine and red dye. Dumbass.

IT’S GREAT FOR ON THE GO!

You know what else is? Anything you think to take with you. Like water. That you didn’t have to spend the time adding flavor to.

I CAN USE IT TO FLAVOR MY DRINKING WATER AT FEST SO IT TASTES LESS LIKE DIRT.

It’s February. Fest isn’t for another 6 months.

IT’S KOSHER AND VEGAN!

You are not Jewish. And the MiO isn’t Vegan- it doesn’t eat things. You mean it’s animal product free. And that still doesn’t matter cause you eat steak. Lots of steak.

IT’S DAIRY FREE!

Well shit. You got me there. Almost nothing is casein free. Non-dairy creamer still has synthetic dairy proteins. so, I guess, drink up!

YEA! *squirt squirt squirt*

 

Dumbass.

A Phone Conversation. And Strippers.

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phone

“Hey Kitty? It’s Judy.”

“Well, hello Judy! How is your day going?”

“Oh, it’s going just swell. And you, Kitty? How are your boys?”

“They’re great, Judy. Tommy just came in second in the school wide spelling bee. We’re all very proud of him over here, that’s for sure.”

“Oh, well congratulations, Kitty! That’s just wonderful! He’s what, 14 now?”

“Just turned. Now, Judy, what can I do for you?”

“Well, Billy is turning 16 next week, and we’re going to have a little party for him. I was wondering if Tommy and Timmy would like to come.”

“Oh that sounds just wonderful! Of course they would, Judy!”

“It’s going to be a mixed party. You’re okay with that, aren’t you? We’re going to keep a close eye on them.”

“Well, of course I trust you Judy.”

“Excellent! It’s going to be at the Spare Time Family Fun Center.”

“What a good idea! But you’ll keep an eye on the kids… You know they serve alcohol there.”

“Yes, and we plan on getting several pitchers for the party. The kids do love to have a good time, Kitty”

“What?”

“Well, only cheap beer, of course. It’s not like kids at this age can tell the difference.”

“Uh…”

“And Kitty, we’re taping up the windows, and we’re going to have strippers come in from Tops in Bottoms.”

“You’re doing what?!?”

“Well, you should always have live entertainment at a party, Kitty. That shows your child you really care.”

 

A woman hired strippers and served booze at her son’s 16th birthday party. I can only aspire to be such an awesome mom. Because otherwise I might land in jail.

You Can’t Stop the Signal. Well, Unless You Can.

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Yesterday, the “hactivist” group Anonymous threatened to break up President Obama’s State of the Union Address. It didn’t happen.

This could have happened for a number of reasons. They could have tried and failed. I mean, the white house had notification that it was going to happen. Anonymous released a statement saying they were going to like 9 or 10 hours before hand. That gives other people plenty of time to figure out how and to make it not happen. They also could have NOT been planning to hack, or only a small subset was going to and the rest decided they shouldn’t and cut them off. Or, they could have been really intent in their Borderlands 2 campaign.

For whatever reason, SOTU did not get “hacked” last night.

Obamanous.

Obamanous.

Anonymous is a group of hackers. This means they circumvent certain technology  or programming to be used in ways different than the original intended use. As a programmer, I “hacked” systems regularly, meaning I developed programming as a “work around” to the original programming. I do it all the time with WordPress structures. Usually, you want to go in and change the structure itself, but sometimes you have a one off. Sometimes you’re working with third party and can’t change the structure. And sometimes site growth just demands you get it up quickly, and structure change is a lengthy process.

It’s not necessarily best practice, but it is how programming changes happen about 99.9% of the time.

Hacking has gotten a bad rep. I think it’s rather inventive by nature, using the resources and code around you in a creative way to work around a problem. But when most people think of “hackers,” they think of renegade nerds out to disrupt the system, causing havock for havock’s sake. They think of this guy:

WarGames

or these kids

Hackers

or even this guy

Serenity

Ah, the glorification of hacking. They never think of the poor computer programmer, trying to get something changed or updated because a client last minute wanted the product to do THIS instead of THAT.

Anyway, SOTU did not get hacked. Do you know who did get hacked? The state of Montana:

These guys hacked a television show to broadcast an emergency zombie apocalypse. Now THAT’s some quality hacking.

On the Fringes of Society…

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Last night, I was at the lottery drawing for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. This is the 20th year of the theater festival, and with it, the MN Fringe staff announced their new logo:

You see, the "I" in Fringe is an exclamation point, because it's exciting!

You see, the “I” in Fringe is an exclamation point, because it’s exciting!

Teasing aside, I love it. I mean, it’s no Wobbles, but that cat is gone, man. I need to learn to let it go.

For those who aren’t in the know, the Minnesota Fringe Festival is a large, unjuried theater festival that takes place in the Twin Cities every August.

Unjuried. Fringe throws that term around a lot, but let’s take a look at that. A lot of other Fringe Festivals have producers apply to their festival, and then a committee goes over the applications to decide which shows are going to get in. In Minnesota, instead of all that careful deliberation, we assign every application a number, put the number on a ping pong ball, throw those ping pong balls in one of those spinny cages, and randomly pull numbers out til all the spots in the Fringe Festival are filled. Then the rest are pulled and put on a wait list.

There are a lot of pros and cons to an unjuried festival. You get to see a lot of shows you might not otherwise get to see. Some of them might be utter garbage, but some might be hidden gems.

Also, our Fringe staff is pretty lazy, and deliberating over applications smacks of work. (Robin, this is a joke. Please don’t send that creepy penis guy from last year after me.)

This isn't the most penisy picture of him, but it's still rather dickish.

This isn’t the most penisy picture of him, but it’s still rather dickish.

But mostly, it gives us an opportunity to throw a party centered around the holy drawing of the ping pong balls. There’s boozing and schmoozing. It’s a decent sized elbow rubbing affair.

Jesse trying to rub elbows. Picture by Rob Callahan, who usually does a much better job with his investigative reporting.

Jesse trying to rub elbows. Picture by Rob Callahan, who usually does a much better job with his investigative reporting.

The lottery number were pulled, and a lot of my friends got in. Our Fearless Fringe Sponsorship winner Jakey Emmert got in (and I am ridiculously excited for him). Denson and Young got in. Rooftop Theater got in. Six Elements got in. Navel Gaze got in. Snikt! Bamf! Thwip! is 19th on the waitlist. The YoungNotions “not a musical” is #88 on the waitlist, so maybe.

In 2009, I first applied to the Fringe, and my number was pulled for a slot. I was sitting next to Ari Hoptman, who had applied for 4 years in a row without getting his number pulled. But this year, his 5th year trying, his number got called too! Hooray and excitement! We all get to produce! Everyone wins!

Since then, my ping pong ball has been so far down on the waitlist even Robin tells me there no hope. Usually somewhere between 20 and 7 from the end of the waitlist. It happened to me in 2010, but that was okay, as I had a wedding to produce. In 2011 when I didn’t get drawn, I ended up doing Highlander: the Musical instead. Last year when my number was at the end of the waitlist, I already had a couple possibilities lined up, and ended up participating in 3 different shows.

Every year I hope it will be different. But no. That solo show that I’ve put in for faithfully every year for the past 4 years? It’s #197 on the waitlist.

Who the hell doesn’t get drawn for Fringe 4 years in a row? I mean, aside from Ari Hoptman

Ari Hoptman. That sneaky son of a bitch. HE PASSED ON HIS CURSE TO ME!!!!!!!!!! When we were sitting next to each other, he gave me the curse so he could get in! And he seems like such a nice guy…

Ah well. There’s always next year.

Sex and Murder… Real Lady Killers

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I’ve recently been working with Six Elements Theater on their upcoming production of Zastrozzi.

I hate film trailers for live theater. It always comes across awkward to me. It’s like taking a picture of a painting and telling people to come to the art gallery. There’s just so much you’re missing, and what you get is so misrepresented. Trying to capture live theater on camera… It always feels so melodramatic to me.

Yeah… just a bit. But the play itself is so goddamned good. It’s evil and sex and murder and some incredible stage combat. I’ve seen the rehearsals. It’s pretty frigging amazing.

I got called in as a weapons specialist. The weapon, you ask? Feminine wiles.

It started off as a bit of a joke. One of the actresses and I were playing with a specific scene, and I suggested a movement to help make everything sexy dangerous. The director wanted me involved for my skills in movement and playing seductive. And we came up with that fantastic title for my theater resume.

I’m incredibly excited to pair it up with this headshot:

It's not the sword that you should be worried about...

It’s not the sword that you should be worried about…

Turns out, feminine wiles is a very real and dangerous weapon.

Let’s start with the murder attempt that keeps YoungNotions at the “adult” level of entertainment. A woman from Brazil tried to kill her husband by putting poison on her cooter and convincing him to go down on her.  He said that it almost worked, too. But when he was there, he thought something smelled fishy.

Not that fishy. The other fishy. Gross.

Sensing something not right, he brought her to the hospital and told staff there about the strange odor. They ran some tests, and found traces of poison.

I have a vilification tennis insult that goes “The last man to eat you out died of food poisoning.” I never thought someone would take that as a suggestion.

That’s not the only attempt on a mans life with lady bit this month. A couple weeks ago a woman actually smothered her boyfriend to death with her boobs. They had been drinking and fighting, and apparently she just climbed on top of him and buried his face in her heaving bosom.

She had a chest that could take your breath away.

Good Grief, Peter Robbins

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Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts creator and super cartoonist of doom, was born and raised in St. Paul. Being one of the most exciting things to happen to St. Paul ever (being a state capitol is boring), the city launched the “Peanuts on Parade” tributes to Charles. These “parades” were a different character every year. The first year, 2000, featured Snoopy. I know this because after my son was born, my Baby Daddy posed with one of these statues on display at the hospital where I had just spent the past 12 hours in back labor.

Not the actual picture respecting BabyDaddy's privacy. But this is the statue.

Not the actual picture respecting BabyDaddy’s privacy. But this is the statue.

There have been other characters in years to follow. Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus… and Snoopy’s dog house. Do you know who wasn’t featured? Charlie Brown’s crush. The little red-haired girl.

We hear about her all the time in the animated cartoons. That little girl that Charlie brown has a crush on. Everyone knows except her. And you have to think that if EVERYONE knew, she probably did too. She probably had no interest in Charlie Brown, and just kept making herself unavailable, meeting up with other friends when it looked like he was getting close.

He tried, poor Charlie Brown. Trying to get up the courage to talk to her. Manipulating events around him just to get closer to her. Not actually saying anything to her… just, you know, being near her.

It’s a little creepy. Like he’s stalking her.

In a completely unrelated note, Peter Robbins, the voice of Charlie Brown, was arrested on charges of stalking.

I wonder where he learned that from?

A Warm Greeting in a Cold State

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For the readers not in Minnesota, it’s cold outside. I mean, really cold out. I mean, it’s holy shit balls cold outside. The temp is -9°F with a wind chill of -31°F. There are severe wind chill warnings and suggestions in red to limit outdoor exposure.

Look, Canada. We get it. You’re tougher than us. You’re so tough that you had nothing to prove and named your towns things that sound silly in English but mean things like “majestic eagle” and “dancing doe” in other languages. You’re so tough that Wawa, Ontario (Ojibwe: “wild goose”) has the same exact temp and windchill, and historically speaking, today is “a little on the chilly side.”

The town of Wawa, as seen from the other side of Lake Wawa.

The town of Wawa, as seen from the other side of Lake Wawa.

But to the rest of America, Minnesota right now is the frozen wasteland that we imagine Wawa to be. Minnesotans cultivate this “tough as nails” persona because it’s the only way we can justify staying here. While California today is complaining about 33°F, Minnesota is shouting Minnesota nice (there’s seriously a wikipedia article on MN nice) at them, like “do you need us to bring you a sweater?” secretly hoping they say yes so we have an excuse to go to a place where the temperature is above freezing.

Minnesotan’s also have a habit of saying the phrase “cold enough for ya?” It’s like we’re daring each other to give up and go back to nicer climates. And because we’re stubborn bastards, we’re all still here, on a bet that we can’t hack it.

If you can't take the cold, get out of the freezer!

If you can’t take the cold, get out of the freezer!

I used to live in North Minneapolis. It’s known as a “bad neighborhood” which is unfair to the good parts of North, but there are some pretty scary pockets. I was living in one of these scary pockets, possibly the worst (Jordan neighborhood, for those in the know) and one particularly bitter winter day, I needed to go grocery shopping. So I went to my local store, purchased the needed items, and headed towards the exit. On either side of the door were two urban youth. And by that, I mean young men dressed in the kind of clothes you picture when I say “gangsta rappa.”

And only one of them was black. Way to be racist on Martin Luther King Jr day, asshole.

Anyway, I see these two guys, and I’m thinking “well shit. I’m about to get harassed.” Not because they’re men, or even that they’re urban youth. But because they are dudes in that particular neighborhood at that particular store where I had been harassed by dudes 100 times before on exiting. Somehow they always seem to know that I have a sweet ass, even under my 20 layers of winter clothing and knee-length winter coat.

So I brace myself. I walk out the door, and sure enough, I get hailed by one of the urban youth. “Yo,” he says, and as I turn to look him in the eye, he adds “cold enough for ya?”

Slacking on the Job Taken to a Whole New Level

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My job isn’t very easily defined. I’m 1 part homemaker, 1 part learning coach for an online student, 1 part YoungNotions managing person, and 2 parts Fearless marketing director.

As a marketing director, I spend a lot of time online. On our website, on Facebook promoting events, on Twitter. For YoungNotions, I’m doing the same, but only promoting 1 company, not 7. On top of writing half the articles (ahem). As a learning coach, I log on to my son’s online school to record attendance and keep up with his classes. Even as a homemaker, I’m online looking up bread recipes.

My point is, I have found ways to spend the majority of my time on the internet that I love.

I made it myself!

I made it myself!

What I have NOT tried in my quest for more internet time is to outsource my job.

ABC (which is fast becoming my favorite in wacky news) reports that a man (ABC calls him Bob) was caught personally outsourcing his job to China. He was getting rave reviews from his managers on his incredible work. All the while, some dude in China was getting a 6th of this guy’s paycheck for doing all his work.

It was going so well, Bob started doing the same thing with a couple other companies. So when he got caught at this one, several other dudes in China lost their jobs.

And what was Bob doing with all that free time? Stellar reporter Julie Gerstein from “The Friskey” found the answer:

9:00 a.m. – Arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours. Watch cat videos.
11:30 a.m. – Take lunch.
1:00 p.m. – Ebay time.
2:00 p.m – Facebook/LinkedIn updates
4:30 p.m. – End of day update e-mail to management.
5:00 p.m. – Go home.

This is absolutely deplorable. He should be ashamed of himself. All that free time, and not one minute of Twitter or Steam.

Rural Urban Legends

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Cow tipping. You’ve all heard the stories about some southern rural yokels, drunk and bored, going out late at night to tip over some poor, unsuspecting cow for their amusement. In fact, it’s such a well-known story that Pixar did a parody of it with a pick-up truck and a bunch of tractors in their tear-jerker “Cars.”

Tear jerker? Well, *I* cried. I mean, I had just gotten back from either the doctor or the dentist and was on some very good medication, but I bawled like a baby. Don’t judge me.

I asked a friend of mine who grew up on a farm if he’d ever been cow tipping before, and here’s his response:

Never tried myself. Only folks I know firsthand who claim to have witnessed or participated are not folks whose stories I trust. The physics always seemed dubious to me. Cows ain’t particularly precarious. If they really slept that deeply, and if their physical response to such startling was to either lock up or buckle… then okay, sure, it’s at least feasible. But none of my experience with cows inclines me to expect any of those conditions.

And he’s right. Turns out that cow tipping isn’t a real thing. According to the article, some scientists at a Canadian University did the math, and it is impossible for one person to tip over a cow. In fact, it’s incredibly unlikely that you could find *three* people who could do it. Four incredibly well built people could conceivably do it, *if* the cow didn’t move for some reason.

Cows

And even if 4 people could somehow sneak up on a cow without their knowing it and tip it over, it would just get right back up again. Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of a truck full of cows tipping over. Watch as the cows spill out onto the road, and, totally unfazed, get up right and start wandering around.

All those stories about people tipping cows? Made up by rural folk to make us city folk look dumb.

But just because you can’t tip over a live cow, doesn’t mean you can’t tip over a fake cow. Two students from University of North Carolina tipped over a cow sculpture. The art piece entitled “Cow House” for the house the cow was carrying on its back (to show how cows support humanity, according to the artist) was anchored to the ground by a 400 pound concrete block.

But these two art critics tipped that sculpture over. They tipped the hell out of it. They showed that cow who’s boss. Proving that you can do anything you put your mind to.

As long as your standards are low enough.

What We Find Amusing

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We have all gotten down with the sickness in our home, so you will not be getting your typical classy and intellectually stimulating YoungNotions article about genital cannibalism or the trajectory of fecal matter.

What you get is three YouTube channels that Bill and I find amusing as hell on the internet.

Epic Rap Battles of History

This one is my personal favorite, ’cause it gets extra nerdy at the end. But watch them all. Seriously.

Jenna Marbles

Even though she spells her name wrong, I have a bit of a crush on her. She’s kind of a master at underplaying the comedy to bring it forward.

Cracked

Love the articles? Did you know they have a Youtube channel? My favorite below.

I’d post more, but I have to go empty my nose now.