Fashion forward, me.

Today I am sporting a glamorous ensemble of:

• vintage polar fleece top with custom grubbiness at cuffs and pockets

• mildly distressed t-shirt

• sweatpants with delicate all-over pilling, subtle remnants of the original screenprint motif and drawstrings gently chewed by a feline stylist

• sneakers wittily inspired by the stylings of rather more expensive sneakers, and accented with"paint-splatter" detail

All this paired with the fresh, natural "no make-up" look and the "messy" bun hairdo seen on runways throughout Fashion Week!

What's your Sunday best?

The Blogisferia Chronicles: Chapter the Seventh

Please note - all Chronicles are stand-alones, you don't have to read any previous chapters to know what's going on.

Indulge me on this one, it's long but heartfelt.

Previous Chapters:
Chapter the First
Chapter the Second
Chapter the Third
Chapter the Fourth
Chapter the Fifth
Chapter the Sixth
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The Candysoda Tavern was cool & dark, even in the middle of the day. Princess Soda was sitting at the bar, grimly chugging drink after pink frothy drink and demanding more with a small fist slammed into the scarred wood of the bar-top. She glared belligerently around her and muttered foul imprecations under her breath.

A few stools down, Tennyson ee Hemingway the philosopher, in a battered leather hat with a band made of crocodile teeth, was nibbling thoughtfully on a huge slice of pavlova. He turned to the man next to him and said "Strewth Mo, what is the Princess doing in here? I didn't think she was a drinker!"

Mo was a dapper English fellow with a small sticky person in an orange & pink striped onesie clambering about his person. He replied "I only come in on Mo-days, but I heard she's been in here constantly the past few days and has to be carried out at closing time... The odd thing is, those are Shirley Temples she's shotgunning." Having imparted this wisdom, Mo sagely sipped his pint and returned to his favorite task of observing the colorful parade of people passing by the tavern.

Suddenly, down at the end of the bar, there was a puff of smoke and a loud bang. Mjenks the alchemist sat behind the now charred and smoking bar, a maniacal grin on his face. As the smoke cleared, he turned to the curvaceous redhead at his side and murmured "Vix a te videor posse tenere manus!"

Everyone politely averted their eyes from what occurred next.

As a lucky distraction, a commotion occurred that very minute. Outside the tavern, an oddly charming three-wheeled vehicle staggered to a halt in a sputtering cloud of fumes. An elderly gentleman with an impressive beard alighted and shuffled in to sit at the bar.

"You!" shouted the Princess, looking daggers at the old man. "She is lost to us because of you, Simon! Princess Teacup is gone because of your carelessness!" Princess Soda jumped down from the bar-stool, clenching her fists and stamping a tiny foot against the dark hardwood floor.

"I know," sobbed Simon. "And she was the most profitable, er, I mean sweetest, of my myriad illegitimate daughters as well."

Upon seeing his genuine grief, Princess Soda's rage evaporated. She and Simon embraced, and toasted to their dear lost Princess Teacup with huge foamy steins of Byron Bay lemonade.

And to make up for her ill humor, the Princess ordered a giant platter of Tim Tams for everyone in the bar.

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Tennyson, mo.stoneskin, INdefatigable mjenks & Simon: please accept this fine shield as proof of your Chroniclage.
Teacup my dear, I know you've quit blogging, but please continue to drop in here whenever you want.

I don't know what you heard about me...

I just invented an award, y'all!

May I present the Straight Pimpin' Award for Excellence in the Field of Showcasing Other People's Excellence.


I must stress that in this sense, pimping does not refer to touting the services of ladies of negotiable affection*, but rather to the blogosphere sense of the word, which is the promotion of another blog via your own.

Basically, this award is for bloggers who have alerted me to other awesome bloggers. Now this only works if you like the blogs they introduce you to, but I must say I have found some of my most favorite blogs this way.

This award is kind of memey, but only if you want it to be. What that means is, I will award it to people who I consider to be excellent blog-pimps, but:

1. you may nominate yourself or another blogger by commenting here with a link to a relevant pimptastic post.

2. If you are a winner, you may choose to pass on the award to other pimps. But please let me know (with a link) if you do.

The winners of the inaugural Straight Pimpin' Award for Excellence in the Field of Showcasing Other People's Excellence are:

the girl with the pink teacup for this post on BILFs, with the promise of more pimping to follow...

katrocket for this post which pimps some of my favorite bloggers - I'm pretty sure it's how I discovered the third winner...

and Eric the Bored NeoClassical Guy for this ultra-subtle pimpage which introduced me to the newest addition to my blogroll!



*Thank you, Terry Pratchett.

Somebody please make this now. Kthx. UPDATED. AGAIN.

So the other night as I was drifting off to sleep I had the best idea evs.

Luckily for you I hopped out of bed and quickly made barely legible notes on the subject so I could blog about it.

Prepare to have your mind blown...

They should make an IM program (like iChat, or whatever PC users use) with a little paint application attached so you could draw messages.

It would be especially awesome if it could be in real time, sort of like sketchfu.com, so your buddy could see as you drew.

If anyone can invent this, I bet God can (are you there God? It's me, Soda & Candy).

UPDATE: Rudimentary Googling reveals that scriblink.com seems pretty close to what I'm after even though it is a website not a program but I haven't actually tried it yet. Anyone want to test it out and let me know what they think?

Update Update: Fine. It's already been invented by like a million people. Lucky I had no idea how to go about making it so I can't be disappointed at the millions I missed out on making. Sheesh.

To Boldly Go...

Captain Kirk: We don't know what terrible dangers may lurk down on this strange new planet. We'll need to assemble an away team. Let's see... of course I will go, my second in command Spock, Chief Medical Officer McCoy, Lieutenant Sulu... and you there, in the red shirt, what's your name?

Ensign: Jenkins, sir.

Captain Kirk: All right, Ensign Jenkins, you're coming with us. You too, Ensign Kowalski.

Ensigns: Aw, crap.


As soon as you saw some poor schmo in a red shirt (who you'd never seen before) in the away team, you knew who was going to get crushed by styrofoam rocks or atomized by unconvincingly plastic lizard-people. My mum and I coined the name Ensign Expendable for these unfortunate fellows. I wonder if Starfleet Academy had a course on Not Getting Picked For the Away Team, aka Survival 101.

The Blogisferia Chronicles: Chapter the First

All right people, you've been wondering what the super special secret reward was and here it is. The two bloggers who won the most recent Mad Blogs have won the honor of being the first characters to be featured in my new series, The Blogisferia Chronicles. I hope you enjoy it, and if you don't, you can suck it, because I really enjoy writing it!

Here is the first chapter - it's a little long but it requires some set-up; I don't anticipate future chapters being quite this long!!!


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Once upon a time, there was a fairy princess named Soda, who lived in the magical land of Blogisferia.

Princess Soda ruled over Candysoda, a small kingdom within Blogisferia. It was a delightful place with cobbled streets and a fountain in the town square that bubbled all day long with every flavor of soda (or soft drink) you could wish for.

The people of Blogisferia liked nothing more than to share their innermost thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes, and the minutiae of their daily lives with each other (and anyone else who happened to be within listening distance). They were also addicted to entering competitions and winning awards, which they displayed prominently around their dwellings.

Princess Soda was no exception, often inviting people from all over Blogisferia to visit her and devising competitions to entertain them all.

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One day, Princess Soda was walking in the woods just outside Candysoda Castle when she came upon a knight sitting on a rock. He was rubbing dirt into his suit of armor and banging it with rocks.

"Sir Words... words... words...? It is you!" cried the Princess. "Whatever are you doing?!"

"Everyone thinks being a knight is so glamorous." grumbled the knight. "It's not. It's all interminable round-table meetings and lots of boring hard work. But my damn armor never gets a scratch on it. It comes out looking as shiny as the day I bought it, and that just doesn't help my case."

"Well, never mind about that, Words. What I want to know is, why in Blog's name did you get your horse in such a horrible color?" asked the Princess, to whom such matters were of vital importance.

"Sivvick is a great steed!" said Sir Words defensively. "He runs beautifully, and is very reliable."

Princess Soda regarded the mustard-colored horse dubiously.
"Still, are you sure you wouldn't like me to enchant him into a lovely rose pink, or a mint-green perhaps?"

Sir Words was saved from having to reply by a rustling of nearby branches.

There in the clearing they saw a Gnu. It was gently biting a small cube of rainbow colored jelly and giggling to itself.

"Hello Gnu," said the Princess, "what is your name?"

The Gnu spoke:
"i'm biting on the dessert
i'm a gnu with no name
it feels good to get out of the rain
... was i talking in verse again? sorry about that, mate!"

"'Mate?' Oh snap!" cried the Princess delightedly. "You're from Straya? I grew up in Straya!"

"that's ace! here, have a lamington." replied the Gnu.

"Ta very much." Princess Soda accepted the small cake graciously.

As she took it from the Gnu's hoof, an amazing transformation began to occur, and soon, standing in front of them, right where the Gnu had been, was a beautiful fairy with rainbow-colored hair.

"it's me, amplified!" cried the fairy happily.


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