Cripes

Dear Arizonans,

What does one buy when one’s state representative was, along with several other people, gunned down in a shocking mass shooting? Hint: the answer should not be “the type of gun used to commit the attack.”

I fully expected that there would be a run on Bibles or something, but not guns. Silly, naive Nicole.

Here comes the hat stalker

The title of this post should be sung to the tune of “Here Comes the Hot Stepper” by Ini Kamoze. It’s what plays in my head now when I’m out in public, since I am now always on the lookout for cute knit hats. It’s like a sickness. I haven’t yet reached the point where I’m zoning out on conversations, but I can tell that it’s only a matter of time. The more hats I knit, the more I want to make.

Sometimes looking isn’t enough, and i have to take pictures. If I can do it unobtrusively, so much the better, but I’m not above explaining that I am a knitter and asking a particularly squirmy person to sit still while I photograph his or her headwear.

I saw this hat on the bus the other day and liked it for a point in the future when I am looking to make a simple project. The woman whose hat it was looked flattered, amused, and slightly creeped out, all at once.

Someone else will put it back

Those are the words that you say to yourself when you’ve put down an unwanted item in a different part of the store than where you found it. Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, somebody went and (as you do) made a web site about it. There are some pretty hilarious juxtapositions there, and the captions often make them even funnier. The picture below is from that site.

Admit it, every scenario you can come up with for these items being together is pretty damn creepy.

I just don’t know

Elton John and his husband have a new baby. Yay! Their new baby lives next door to them…yay?

On the one hand, I totally get it. Babies are so freaking cute, but they’re also loud and smelly. So I get not wanting to be in close quarters with them. But putting the kiddo and his nannies in the apartment next door? Seems a little cold-blooded to me. Still, I’d be lying if I said this option wouldn’t tempt me if I had a baby.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everybody. And happy 2011, if I don’t find anything to post about between now and then!

I can haz oversight?

Or, why it’s not a good idea to display unmoderated tweets in any sort of official setting. Like, say, during an EU summit where dirty old man Silvio Berlusconi is going to be front and center?

It’s not enough to know that a technology exists, if you have no idea how to use it effectively.

Blast from the past

This video was probably the best forward I ever received while in college, and it still makes me smile. It was viral, before that term had even been coined.

Do not approve

I’m not as sick as I was during the latter half of last week, but I’m hoping that my weakened immune system is also responsible for lowering the threshold for what makes me cry, otherwise I am at a loss to explain why BOTH of these videos made me teary-eyed (and they aren’t remotely sad).

The dangers of tv knitting

All in all, not bad for something I started after work on Tuesday

For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching Eureka as I knit. I tend to watch comedies (or really mindless dramas) when I’m knitting, because they require less attention on my part. I started a new hat today, and I’m feeling a wee bit victorious, since it’s stranded knitting, a style that I haven’t done before. I was finding it surprisingly easy, and really enjoying how fast this hat was going. I said was, because I ran out of Eureka episodes to watch, and switched to Damages. I spent the first half of the first episode watching intently and knitting on autopilot, and now have been unraveling my work for the next hour. Note to self: serious drama and Fair Isle knitting do not mix.

I read the season arcs/spoilers on the wiki, because I suspected that this show was too mean for me. I’m pretty sure it is. Ever character on that show is vile, and I don’t care enough about them to overlook it. I did see that the 5 most recent episodes of Eureka are available on Hulu, so I will catch up and then watch the remaining episodes there.

What is “Something I’m going to regret faster than I would have expected,” Alex?

The answer: Legally changing my name to the ridiculous nickname of a television character.

Although Castle has recently supplanted Chuck as my favorite still-running tv show, I am still really enjoying this season of the nerd/spy dramedy. Chuck as both a show and a character had been getting on my nerves ever since the most recent, and probably final, death of Agent Superman (whose actual name I have aleady forgotten).

His abs I remember just fine.

Luckily, the show somehow turned around for me over the last several episodes, and now I’m firmly back on Team Chuck. Even at its worst, Chuck is a smart and funny show that turns its minuscule CGI budget (I guess they’re not too flush after paying all the cool guest stars like Richard Chamberlain, Summer Glau [reunited with her Firefly co-star, the delusional Adam Baldwin], and Nicole’s Future Husband Isaiah Mustafa) into a selling point, instead of a reason for despair.

I guess I’m  not the only one whose life is enriched by Chuck. I watch it for the lulz, and the former Douglas Allen Smith, Jr. watches it for…motivation? I say former because this man’s legal name is now Captain Awesome, which is the nickname of Chuck’s ridiculously good-looking doctor brother-in-law.

Another shirtless/towel pic, merely for comparison's sake. You're welcome, comparison.

I get why this show is so cool and Captain Awesome in particular is pretty special, but why would anybody do this? The real-life Mr. Awesome’s new signature, which is a smiley face bracketed by arrows, has been rejected by his bank because it’s too easy to forge. I can’t even imagine what other stupid consequences he may have to face because of his new name. I think that the judge who granted the name change was smart to allow this; sometimes you have to do really stupid things in order to learn valuable lessons. Unless the world is nicer than I suspect it to be, I give this name change 5 years, tops.