Brittney's Top 11 Beauty Tips From 2011

Well the year is winding down and so it's time to re-cap my top 11 beauty tips from the past year. I hope the new year finds you prettier than the last.

1. Wear makeup. It helps hide the ugly, or at least provides an interesting distraction.

2. Don't wash your hair. Everyone pretends not to notice it's greasy anyway.

3. Try to be younger. Not look younger, but actually if you can reverse time as it applies to your face you'll be prettier. Unless you rewind too far, amIright teenage years?

4. Sun-

5. screen.

6. Plus bronzer, duh. What are we vampires? Oh wait, those are popular.

7. Stop using facial expressions, they cause wrinkles. Plus everyone will be afraid of you.

8. It's inhumane to use horse-hair makeup brushes. Instead, use the wings of a live monarch butterfly.

9. To prevent clumps on your mascara wand, have your dog lick it first.

10. Use vagasil as a moisturizer on your face to prevent fine lines and wrinkles. Plus, no annoying facial discharge!

11. The eyes are the window to the soul, but your breath is the window to your lunch. Fight bad breath by taking a sip of your favourite perfume after meals.

Yours in Beauty,
B.

Fun With Epilepsy

Want to hear some epilepsy jokes I thought of while I was drunk last night? Good.

What does a person with epilepsy do after a sports injury?
Shake it off.

What does an epileptic in the 1960s love to do?
The hippy hippy shake.

What does a pregnant women with epilepsy crave?
Milkshakes.

What does a person with epilepsy say to a Holocaust denier?
Bite your tongue.

I love this country.

I do. But sometimes I want to grab it by its little chicken neck and scream at it until my eyes bleed.

I was in a Homeplus (think: Superstore) parking garage for the first time yesterday. On our way out I noticed my co-teacher's car was parked in a section, very close to the doors, where the concrete pillars were painted pink and had pictures of women in dresses, like on a bathroom door. Laughing, I said "What? Is this section only for girls?" And then I laughed again.  "Ha ha!" I laughed, "Ha ha, ha...ha. Oh no."

"Yes, this section is for girls only, for convenience. Men park farther away because they are better drivers."

.... I ... it's just.... I just.... I ... I mean... whaaaaaat?

If that doesn't make you want to burn your bra right there on the spot then I don't know what will. But pretty offensive gender stereotypes aside - one's ability to maneuver a motor vehicle into a parking spot in no way reflects how long of a walk they should have to the door. If anything these terrible women drivers should be parking further away in case their vaginas hit the gas pedal and send them flying into the store.

Untangle your fallopian tubes and give your head a shake ladies.

Holiday Cards

Tis the season for children's holiday cards and this year I've got some really winners. Allow me to transpose in case you can't read their writing on the cards:

(For reference these are grade 6 boys who sit next to each other, but they've copied the style of a penpal letter in their textbook so it sounds a bit strange.)

Dear Mr. Oh Kyun, 

Hi, my name is Gangmin Lee. When I first saw you, I thought you were just an ordinary person with weird hair. But when the time passed, I realized that you were creatively cruel. When  I say creatively cruel, I mean you know many ways to kill.

I hope we could meet sometime.

                                                                               Your friend, 

                                                                                                   Gangmin Lee

Now in case you're wondering what warranted Gangmin's high praise, here is Oh Kyun's letter to him:

Dear gang min, 


Hi. My name is Oh kyun Kweon. I live in Daegu. I'm thirteen years old. I have a knife (I kill you). I like playing computer games. Want to know about you. Please back to me. 


goodbye.


Alas, Oh Kyun shared only one of the many ways he knows how to kill, but I do believe Gangmin that there are more.

How to go to the bathroom: an idiot's guide

Step 1: Enter bathroom, take toilet paper. Do not forget toilet paper. If you forget toilet paper, go back, take toilet paper.

Step 2: Enter stall, tuck toilet paper in scarf to free up your hands. Roll up your pants to the knees to prevent dragging cuffs on the piss soaked floor / pissing on yourself when you soak the floor with your piss.

Step 3: Take the safety pin out of your ghetto casual pants. Stab the pin into your coat for safekeeping. Do not lose the pin. Do not lose the pin.

Step 4: Freeze your ass off for 30 seconds.

Step 5: Accidentally throw the toilet paper down the hole. Don't even feel bad about it.

Step 6: Pants up, pin in, cuffs down, flush with your foot. Everyone flushes with their foot, right?

Step 7: Icewater, cuss, soap, icewater, cuss, dry hands on the pants you were painstakingly keeping dry. Sit on your numb hands for 10-15 minutes until the feeling resumes.

Repeat 3-7 times daily as per your hydration needs.

I love google translate

Oh sure, yeah, I've got one of those. I do my best breeding in a shed.

Ursula makeup tutorial

Step 1: Lose those eyebrows, then add white shiny eyeshadow all over your face. There's no sun under the sea after all. (ps. don't worry, I'm not naked)

Step 2: Realize how important eyebrows and skin pigmentation are. Take a photo of yourself looking like a sad albino alien baby.

Step 3: Watch drag queen youtube videos for inspiration, then draw on eyebrows and eyeshadow while your sexy kitty boyfriend dances in the background.

Step 4: Lipstick, 8 pounds of hairspray...

 Step 5: Attitude

Le final product:

Happy Hallowiener!

Dreams

Student: My dream is to be a tae-kwon-do player or a soccer player. What is your dream teacher?

Me: Ummm, I want to go to the moon! Do you know what the moon is?

Student: Yes. Ummm, teacher, not possible.

Me: What? Why?

Student: Teacher...too old.


Too right.

Yesterday I was marking grade six midterm exams and the answer to number one of the written portion of the test was 'lion,' but I came across one paper where a student had written 'sulsa' instead. I had no idea what that was, so I asked my co-teacher if she knew what it meant. Turns out dear little Jun Ho, confused by which animal was stronger, the lion or the rabbit, decided to write the Korean word for diarrhea, but with English letters. This is, after all, an English exam. Points for creativity Jun Ho.

It's Friday Bitches

And I'm going to sing this in my head for the next 3 hours.
Oooh I wanna drink with somebody
I wanna feel the heat of some whiskey
Yeah I wanna do shots with somebody
With somebody who's thiiiiirsty

Happy happy weekend!

Sun comes out, I get burned. Never a miscommunication. Proof of God.

Classtime

Sometimes I call on random students to answer questions. Today a boy was reluctant to stand up, which is not unusual, but then he kept trying to pull his t-shirt down, which is less so. Everyone started laughing and I feared it was a puberty related embarrassment, but no. Rather, this boy had rolled the legs of his shorts up and tucked them in so it looked like he was wearing little denim underpants. An effective use of class time if ever I've seen one.

Conversation with a Douche

Douche: Where are you from?

Me: Canada.

Douche: Or as I like to call it, Amer-i-can't.

Me: Actually, I prefer Amer-i-won't.

Douche: (deadpan, with hint of disdain) ...witty.

Exit Douche stage left.

Strongly Worded Letter

I often write strongly worded letters to people who deserve strongly delivered kicks to the ass, but I rarely send them. Today is different friends, today I stand up to the man. Well, some of the men. And probably several women in fairness. Let's just call them the Evildoing Men and Women of the World, or "banks" for short.

(The backstory is that, in my newly acquired financial awareness I would like to review the transactions made on my credit thus far this year. BMO Mastercard "Making Money Make Sense" has a different idea about how and when I can view my own damn money.)

Good morning,

I am trying to review my transaction history with BMO Mastercard for my own records and I do not receive paper copies of my statements as I live overseas. If I am to understand your website correctly, it will costs me $5* of my own money simple to SEE the charges I've made with my own aforementioned money (and the interest payments to you no less) prior to the last three months as you choose not to make those visible via online banking.

If I am correct in this understanding please let me know as I would like to cancel my credit card as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding,

B-tang

*To clarify that's five (5) dollars FOR EACH FUCKING MONTHLY STATEMENT, which cannot be viewed online if it's older than 3 months for god knows what arbitrary reason so will cost additional money to mail the paper copy.

This is my line in the sand. The only thing I will be spending $5 is to have my shoe cleaned after I remove it from their ass. Good day sir. I said good day.

This awkward looking photo is of me modelling a dress I MADE! Well mostly made, with a ton of help from the terrific and terribly talented Tina.

My mirror at home is shit, so I took this photo on vacation which is why I'm wearing my vacation hat and my vacation sunglasses and doing my vacation awkward-mouth-expression, it's classic "Vacation B-tang."

The top is actually a t-shirt that I sewed, very crookedly, onto a piece of fabric that used to be a rectangle but is now a skirt shape. I cover up all sewing mistakes and muffin tops with a belt. My motto in life is "Just put a belt on it!" which comes from a lifetime of shopping at Value Village and sales racks with weird sizes, but I think it's applicable to a lot of other things.

This might be the only photo of China that makes it up because I do so hate uploading photos.

Try saying no to those eyes.

"Ruv me prease!" he says, adorably, with a hint of pitiful.

I'm puppysitting what is possibly the cutest little guy south of the dmz. He never, ever barks or whines and when he gets so excited he just can't contain himself, for example whenever I walk in the door, he does a little spin around in a circle dance. I can't blame him, I walk in the door pre-tty well, thanks for noticing Oli.


I thought all dogs merely tolerated being put in clothes, but as I was going through his bag he started doing his spinny dance. Oli! I already walked in the door, what else could be so exciting? Well that would be this sleeveless striped little number, for that jaunty-Parisienne-nautical-puppy feel.

The lighting in my house was terrible, but rest assured this is not the last puppy photo shoot you'll see.

Ch-Ch-Ch-China

All it takes it the right pair of outrageous sunglasses to convince yourself you should be a celebrity.

Off to China for 11 days!!!! Peace out, China town.

Beautiful Beer Bread

This is the same bread recipe as before, but with rosemary in the dough and red onions, roasted red peppers, parsley and tomatoes on top. It was basically an open face sandwich by the time I finished adding stuff.

Lentils a go-go

Dong-A start carrying lentils! A joyful foreigner celebrates!

- olive oil

- onion

- mushrooms

- crushed coriander seeds

- cumin

- paprika

- red wine vinegar

- lentils (these were canned, but c'est la vie ici)
- assorted colours of peppers

- parsley

- tomatoes

- salt pepper

Add everything to the pan in that order, leaving the tomatoes on just long enough to warm them and then top with a poached egg. I also added some plain yogurt after, in an effort to increase my yogurt intake 200%.

Untrue Things

Last night a Korean girl told me I was Malibu Barbie, (not that I look like, but that I am Malibu Barbie) which is both awesome and the least true thing ever said about me.

Badass

Pierre Trudeau, while travelling in Jerusalem, was mistaken for a spy and imprisoned for a couple days in the same place historians say Christ was locked up.

And he looked, like, this:

So, so badass.

Women's Medi Park Hospital

Reading an advertisement for women's hospital conveniently located in my neighbourhood:

The gynocology clinic offers your standard laser surgery for labium minor, as well as "hymenopi asty," female phimosis and "fragidity" operation as well as G&S&Z spot "fragidity" operation. (S & Z? WTF?)

The obese clinic offers "Micro self fat graft" as well as the "Making baby face project." I'm so curious and so afraid of what the making baby face project could be. Making women look like babies? Making babies more beautiful? Making a baby that's all face and no body?

The clinic also offers limousine service, in case you were wondering.

Ma Belle Jardin

I've recently had some unwanted bugs attaque mes belle plantes, chomping big old holes in everything, but I took some photos before they arrives, which I will now display proudly as though this were some sort of virtual wallet and these my precious offspring.

The whole ensemble:

These are my radish bebes I plucked and ate. I sauteed the tiny little guys with other veg and used the leaves (combined with parsley) to make pesto. I call it Spaghetti a la Jardin de la Fenetre.

These are new basil bebes coming along nicely, hopefully the bugs spare their precious leaves.

From left to right: thyme, basil, one lonely bean, more basil. There is never enough basil in my life.

My pride and joy bok choy! I plucked some outer leaves for a millet bowl (see bisforcookie2point0.blogspot.com) and these ones rose up to replace them.

Aren't they wonderful? Aren't they just tres tres magnifique and belle and fantastique? Oui, je sais.

Tappa Tappa Tapas

My dinner this fine humid eve.

An assortment of meats, olives, red and golden tomatoes with a fresh loaf of crusty bread and a roasted eggplant dip. Simply, divine.

This is the best bread recipe you'll ever use. Instead of mucking with yeast which can be fickle, you use beer! Beer!

3 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tbsp baking powder

3 tbsp sugar

1 can of your finest, cheapest beer

Then you can add flavourings as you like. Here I mixed onions, black pepper and parsley into the dough but I've also done rosemary and I'm thinking of doing an Indian inspired number next. Add some garnishes on the top and shower with olive oil. Bake on an oiled tray for 10-12-15ish minutes? I wasn't counting, just when it's cooked through and not doughy.

Served with a cold lime perrier because aren't we in Europe?!

No, we're not. We're in an Asian shoebox but Homeplus had a sale.

Buenos noches!

Not Quite the News

Or is it?

This morning my mom read an article in the trusty Edmonton Sun about women who are getting surgery on their "genitals." Who says genitals? Doctors, sex ed teachers, and my mother.

"They're getting their labia...Libya? Labia? Well whatever, they're getting that cut right off! The government's probably paying for it too."

No mom, no they're not, that's ridiculous, stop talking about this... HOWEVER, being the investigative journalist that I am, I frickin checked. Well what the fuck do you know? Women are getting their labia (minora) cut off in the aptly named procedure called The Barbie.

A quote in the article by Dr. Red Alinsod: "Women did not want to live with unflattering, sagging, and large labias, nor did they want to live with gaping open vaginas..."

Great use of descriptors doc. Really fantastic visual imagery. Tell me Red, how are your old balls looking this morning?

(Tight, taut, smooth and shiny.)

How many days until vacation?

34. And counting. Until then I'm google-image dreaming. My vacation pre-req is that it must look like a middle aged office worker's computer wallpaper.

Hainan Island

Wuzhizhou Island

Oh, and we're also going to Beijing....but that's less computer wallpapery, more interesting historically.

I come from fine stock

For some reason, I'm now able to see my aforementioned cousin 's facebook profile, and thank god too or I would have missed this.

Is it the grammatical atrocities? Is it his friend who coincidentally has court on the very same day? Is it his granny wishing him luck? Also in bizarre grammatical form? Is it his son in his profile pic? Does it matter? No. It's hilarious and I'm a bad person.

This looks familiar

30 degrees and thundershowers for the foreseeable future with a 70% chance I'll freak the fuck out if I don't get a fan or air con or a god damn ice bucket to shove my head in.

My classroom is a great place for a hands-on religious studies class because if this is what hell feels like then Hail Mary, full of ice, chilly be thy name. Thy aircon come, thy cool will come, like ice cream and I'll be in heaven.

(I had to recite the Lord's Prayer in public school in Canada, which seems so crazytown, but, there it is.)

Ve can go vegan!

Vegans can be pretentious (no offence, but really, check yo self) and this meal is vegan but I assure you I am as salty as the earth I come from. And my father's a farmer, so I totally know about the salt level of soil.

I'm sure millet is a wonderful thing; several holistic naturopathic well being practitioners on the internet say as much. Fact: millet is high in vitamins E, C and BS. However, if you've eaten plain white rice every day of your life but really only the past year and four months even though it seems much longer...millet is the fucking bomb.

Millet cooks just like rice, but if you toast it in a dry pan it's better and also you can use chicken stock for flavour. Unless you're vegan, in which case just use tears collected from fois gras geese. Or, if you add just a titch more water and some cinnamon you can enjoy millet as a delicious breakfast cereal.

My fancy new computer doesn't have an sd card reader (tf mac?) but I put together a photo booth montage of how to make a millet based dinner.

Start with a base layer of cooked milet. It looks like something between chunky vomit and wet cement here, but not in real lyfe:

Add your veg. I roasted some peppers, eggplant, onion and garlic, but you could do anything. I also had some dried portobellas that I rehydrated and fried (the stems on mine never fully rehydrate, is that weird?).

Here I've added some raw bok choy leaves I picked from my window garden, as well as parsley, sunflower seeds and a mustard vinagrette. I never considered raw bok choy, but I didn't want to cook them because they looked so pretty and I've been waiting months to eat them. They were amazing! I hate to use 'buttery' to describe anything without butter, but they were! Buttery bok choy! Who knew! !

Then mix it up real good.

Eat dat shit!

Weirdo

For a couple weeks now this grade 6 girl has been pointing at my head and then making a gesture as though her hair was coming out of her head. I thought she was insinuating that my hair was thin, or she thought I was balding or something, which is not unlikely because she is a child sized jerk.

Today I was wrong though; she wasn't being a jerk, she was just being a plain old weirdo. She did the hair falling out gesture again, but this time on my head, and I understood that she was requesting a piece of my hair. Strange, but I have the mystical yellow hair so I thought maybe she just wanted to see it up close so I ran a hand through my hair and found an already detached strand. As I showed her, she grabbed it from my fingers and, after inspecting it, tucked it safely away in her pencil case.

I hope she's cloning me and not framing me for murder.

That's happening.

Checked the weather forecast for the week....Yeah, 32 and red lightning bolts tomorrow. Red! So, obviously looking forward to that.

Languages are Offensive

When learning a new language I like to use mnemonics to help memorize new vocabulary words. For example:

onion: 양파 This word vaguely sounds like 'young pa' (actually more like 'yang') so I picture a teenage onion with a baby that he can't take care of.

blue: 파란 Following on the father theme, 'pa ran' away from his baby who was turning blue. Onions are terrible parents.

eraser: 지우개 This is pronounced 'ji-oo-gey' so I think "Gee, you're gay for using an eraser."

orange: 주황색 The first part of this word sounds like 'joo hwang' so I think "Orange as a Jew's wang."

So yeah, my Korean's coming along fine, thanks.

Top Tall

Yesterday at a visit to the back doctor I found out that I have an extra bone in my spine. The doctor says most people have only 5 lumbar vertebrae but I have 6 and that's why I'm tall. I thought maybe he was intuitively aware of my desire to be both tall and unique and was just flattering me, but the internet says only 10% of people have 6 lumbar vertebrae. I guess what I'm saying is that medically speaking, I'm awesome.

Of course the disks around my special 6th vertebrae are inflamed and pressing on a nerve, but maybe that makes them more awesome? They really wanted me to know about them and the good work they do at getting me well up and over the national height average of most countries (and exactly on par with the Dinaric Alps, which in full disclosure I've never even heard of) so they started making a little fuss to call attention to themselves. Well played, special 6th. Much respect. But after this shout out please stop being inflamed because it's kind of a bitch.

Also: the doctor said as part of my therapy I can't do sit ups. Can't do situps. Are you freaking kidding me? Trust me, I've experimented with this idea in the past and it turns out I have the body shape of a walrus, so I'm just going to keep doing situps untill the sea cows come home mmmkay.

Bedroom? Never heard of it.

Grade 5 Chapter 12: This is a Bedroom.

This is a great chapter for teaching the kids how to talk to martians or hut dwelling jungle people or any other manner of imaginary people who have never been inside a house before.

"What's a bedroom?"

"This is a bedroom, Mwanajuma Clickclick. Notice how we don't sleep on a pile of banana leaves? We call this the first world."

This is a also great opportunity to teach the kids how to scream at people like they're stupid:

"THIS IS A BAAAA-TH-ROOOM, COMPRENDE? YOU CLEAN THE TOILET IN HEEERE, OKAY?"

Either way I'm going to have fun with it.

Yes I realize this is getting out of hand.

Any day now the photo-booth novelty will wear off. I promise.

Today I thought about going up to the roof to read, which is generally pretty nice unless my presence surprises a neighbour lady and causes her to scream and run away. That is less nice. So instead today I opened up the windows in my laundry roof/storage closet, to be known hereafter as The Solarium, and parked my keister in a patch of sun. I'm thinking of decorating The Solarium in a nautical theme, blue and white stripes and maybe a lemon yellow accent wall. Deck chairs with cup holders and a big umbrella. Or maybe I'll throw out the empty bag the toilet paper came in and call it a day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a jar of coffee to drink and some looking cool to do.

Fall Out Boy Really Gets Me

Yesterday Kyle saw my photo bucket vanity fest and told me I was too old for that. So I told him you're never too old to emo.*

*I didn't say that. My wittier alter ego would have, but she might've also said something about the video game habits of men in their 20s so I try to keep a lock on the bitch cage.

Photobooth!

I have a mac!

I HAVE A MAC!

God I love my mac.

Do I look like I own a mac?

Oh, hi.

Do you have a mac?

Oooh, that's too bad.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some garage band to figure out.