Oscar Bingo

Everything below comes from How About Orange.  Seems like a pretty neat idea.

Looking for extra entertainment during the Academy Awards on March 7? Back by popular demand, it’s Oscar bingo. I made cards for our party last year, and it was really fun to play. You can download this year’s bingo cards right here; it’s a PDF with 12 different sheets. My big disclaimer: I have no idea if it will be possible to win at all, or perhaps someone could win ten minutes into the telecast. If it’s a bust, please don’t send me hate mail. To supplement your bingo game, you can download and print out the official ballot of nominees right here. It’s always fun to see who guesses the most winners. And who guesses the least, so you can make fun of them.

Random Quotes from Blogs I read tonight

“although I’m sassy in text, I am ridiculously timid about making requests. My askus requestus muscle is highly underdeveloped.”  — ProBlogger

“It is juju love and cupcakes or nothing, baby.” — ProBlogger

“I’ve itemized and analyzed what I did differently in the last two months just so I could whisper sexy blog secrets in your ear.”  — ProBlogger

Yeah, I was pretty limited in scope tonight.  Hopefully all this reading about writing will yield some improvement.  Then again, the main reason I write is to get down on paper the winds that are blowing through my mind as is, so… any investment must be a good investment.

De-clutter

I know that one of my traits that drives Anie at least a little nuts is my faux-minimalism.  This usually manifests itself in my ideaology, and in my purchasing habits.  It’s not that I buy a lot less stuff than the average person; my bank account is solid evidence that I definitely stimulate the local economy.  

What I do do, however, is audit my purchases before I get to the register, asking myself if a really need/want each item more than the equivalent number of dollars it will cost.  (This has to be a habit I picked up from my mother, though I know she was doing it to make sure she could still pay for everything in the cart.) 

After spending more than enough time in the store, I will go through the cart and decide to remove a few items (sometimes the only items I contributed to the cart), and will get the “well why did we just waste the time picking that out, then” look from you-know-who.

The other probably-weird-to-outsiders manifestation is the ease with which I can part with items.  I’d like to say that this stems from a childhood of limited resources and having to get over losing things when they break/get lost, but it’s probably more likely that I have such an easy time deleting people from my life that regular old objects never stood a chance.  When I recent thought “what would be the one item I’d grab in case of a fire”, the thing I needed besides my phone is the Yankee Stadium Baseball I plan to use to teach my future-son how to patch catch with  (thank-you Anie).  Other than that, I can pretty much shrug off everything else I own. 

This, I thought, was a pretty solid accomplishment, until I ran across this guy’s blog.  Dude is living his entire life from the road, in supposedly random countries, as voted on my his blog readers.  As a necessary evil of this everyday Rick Steve’s lifestyle, one can’t carry much with them, especially with shipping/luggage costs. 

As a minimalist, it’s important that my possessions do not own me and that what I do own serves multiple purposes, is high-quality and as sustainable as possible. . .  So as part of my effort to further reduce and optimize my possessions, here is a list of everything I own and photos of those items.  Already many items on this list are on the chopping block, as I haven’t used them in the 2 months I’ve been in Buenos Aires and doubt I’ll use them for the rest of my stint in Argentina.

Seriously, 72 things.  Whoa!

That got me thinking about how much stuff I have that really could stand to organize or obliterate.  Just looking around me, here’s a list of things either on, or within 12 inches of, my desk.

1. Computer (monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, speakers, headphones)
2. copious random papers
3. never used candle in a jar
4. pens
5. envelopes & stationary
6. random cd’s
7. unused gift cards from x-mas
8. several Yankees Startling Lineup action figures
9. hookah my brother gave me for X-Mas 2008 (thanks Eggs)
10. olde tyme wind-up alarm clock from IKEA
11. windex  (no lie)
12. iron
13. empty photo frames
14. afore-mentioned Yankee Stadium Baseball
15. cordless drill
16. drill bit set
17. old computer (no longer working it seems)
18. cushion to a chair I no longer own
19. iPhone stand & charger
20. vase full of corks from wine bottles I’ve drank while living here
21. massive corkscrew (I need the one with the levers on the sides, otherwise I shred the cork)
22. Globe-shaped liquor decanter (empty)
23. random 3″ action figure/keychain bought at Red Hot Robot.
24. Cigar cutter

So, 24 things within 1 foot of me, and that dude only owns 72 things on the entire planet.

This has led me to think that maybe I should institute an Items Per Room (IPR for you analytics nerds) limit to each room of my home.  I’d have to exclude artwork and books/movies, as those things should really be wall-based.  Maybe limit to 50 Items Per Room?  That sounds achieveable.  Maybe start at 75 then audit down again in a month? 

I’m going to mull this over and see what kind of numbers I can come up with.

Krantz may be my new hero

Exhibit A:  Dude got a TV show made about him and his friends that is A – Not on MTV and B – Pretty damn funny

Exhibit B:  Dude blogs, like actually blogs, and regularly.  Clearly got me beat there.

Exhibit C:  Dude plays poker for a living.  A very succesful living.

Exhibit D:  Dude quotes HIMYM in his blog.

Here’s an excerpt from his blog Dangerlion, and the subsequent HIMYM scene that goes with it. 

8:15:12 PM jay: so its decision time amigo
8:15:18 PM jay: just how important is star wars to you?
8:15:28 PM jay: + we’ll prob get epicly drunk
8:15:32 PM chuck: pretty important
8:15:38 PM chuck: but there is 0 chance that i cna commit to that right now
8:15:44 PM jay: how come
8:15:50 PM jay: what are the issues at hand
8:15:57 PM chuck: no idea what’s going on this weekend
8:16:05 PM jay: THIS IS WHAT IS GOING ON
8:16:11 PM jay: this is not like a
8:16:23 PM jay: yah ill do this if nothing else pops up kind of thing
8:16:31 PM jay: this is one of those times that fate aligns
8:16:52 PM jay: and you throw down your gloves and watch all those goddamn movies

****While writing this post, I was eliminated from a multi-table hold’em tournament online.  This is the shortest I’ve ever lasted.  Clearly the Kratz-skills aren’t absorbed from blogging alone.

Dave Adey, Craft Puncher

lifted from www.woostercollective.com, home of the awesome @marcdshiller

Dave Adey, Craft Puncher from Brad Kester on Vimeo.

New Words, New Sites

You know that saying “friend of a friend”? It usually goes something like this:

Average Person 1: “Soooo….. How’d you meet that sweet catch of your’s?”
Clearly Awesome Person 2: “Oh, friend of a friend.”
Average Person 1: “You’re so lucky! Why can’t I have that happen to me….”

Well, world, I give you a new, equivalent term: “Blog of a Blog”

One of the things I like best about using Blogger is the way you find things that you probably never would have seen otherwise, even with regular use of Yahoo or Google. For example, I was thinking about the sites that I have linked to my blog (the short list of them on the right-hand sidebar), and decided to see what was up with each of those blogs today. Then I thought I’d see what kind of other people they were linking two. Found out today that I am two degrees of separation from the following hilariousness:

Subversive Cross-stitch

OMG this shit is bananas! I’d say I need one of these for my (as-yet-unnamed) home, but it’d be tough to decide, sorta like picking a puppy from the pound and having to leave the rest there….

What Sucks….

I think the name says it all, but the guy’s post about FaceBook was redonk!

So, when you’re proudly displaying your “shut your whore mouth” needle-point artwork in your home, and your friend asks you “where did you ever find something like that”, you can crisply retort, “Oh, Blog of a blog”.

Quick Words of Wisdom

admittedly, sometimes I want to write but don’t really know what to say, so I end up scanning through random blogs looking for cool stuff to jack. Totally stole this image below, but I think you can borrow it, too.

I’d also like you to apply this idea to any “faults” of mine you may be thinking of. Trust me, it works.