These are My Confessions

Dear Blog,

I have an admission to make, a confession of sorts. I am cheating on you. I know, I know, I did it once before with my travel blog, but I came back to you! I always do. Yes, sometimes I'm gone for days on end and you turn around and there I am blogging for Xfilesnews.com. I just can't help myself! My latest indiscretion may be my worst though. I have started a new blog. One that I plan on keeping for the long term. I'm not leaving you though, I promise. I just need a little suttin' suttin' on the side. It's a totally different blog than you, there's no comparison really. And you'll always be my first. Plus, where else could I possibly go to be so sarcastic about so much? Only here.

Your new rival blog is very topic-specific. It is only chronicling my current switch to a vegan lifestyle. It's interesting, really. I think you'd like it. There's articles about vegan news I find, books I'm reading, recipes I'm making and waiters I'm pissing off at restaurants. And it's on Live Journal so there's fun things like "what mood I'm in" pictures and "what music I'm listening to". Crazy, I know. What can I say? It's kind of a party over there. And you're invited!

So, if I'm absent for a little while you can always come visit me over there. I promise not to make you eat tofu. Okay?

Think about it.

Love Always,

Me

The Blog is out There

I am now a contributing blogger to the site XFilesNews.com. You can check out my first blog here. And if you're a fan of The X-Files or just interested in information about the movie coming out this July, check out the rest of the site. It's a great news source for anything X.

Blogygamy

I am sad to say that for the next two months I will be neglecting this blog. Instead, I will be writing in the aforementioned travel blog I have begun in order to keep track of the trip I am taking to Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. So, please join me there to read of my adventures. And don't worry, I have enough love for both blogs.

TravelBlog!

I have officially started a blog for my upcoming Quarter Life Crisis Tour 08. I'm not leaving until late December, but I thought I'd start off my travelblog by doing a few posts on the preparations necessary for such a journey. And maybe also to vent my mounting excitement just a little. =)

For those that don't know, I will be leaving in December to visit my best friend Nicole in Japan for a month, another friend Kevin in S. Korea for a week and then after a quick stop over in Sydney I'll head to New Zealand for a two week guided tour. It's the trip of a lifetime and I feel so fortunate to have this opportunity. I hope you will also journey with me through my posts and pictures.

Where are you going? Create your own travel map!

View Chariot13's TravBuddy Profile

Pimping Myself

Just thought I'd share my excitement that Showtime has quoted my blog review of Californication!

Check it out here, and if you don't trust my judgment, read other people's reviews of the pilot for yourself. Some of them don't even have my DuchovnyBias and they loved the show too.

I couldn't make this up if I tried

This morning I opened up my email inbox to find an email titled: "Invitation to Join MLB Bloggers." My first thought was, "Hey cool, a blogging group might be fun!" Then I read the email and laughed more than I thought humanly possible at 9am on a cold, snowy work day.

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, invinciblesummer13.blogspot.com, while searching for bloggers who blog about Major League Baseball.

That's really all you need to read. If you know me, you are already laughing. If you don't know me, please refer to the ONLY post I've ever written that has to do with baseball: a man in uniform.

Now, if you're not into sports as much as I clearly am, you may not realize that the picture I linked to in that post is not even a real baseball player! True story. It's actually David Duchovny in an episode of The X-Files (*sigh, baseball spooning*). And if you didn't know that, we can't be friends.

So, in conclusion, a note to Craig Cantin at MLB Bloggers:

I wish you all the luck with your blogging group and I am quite flattered by the (obviously) personally tailored invitation I received. However, it is with deep regret that I must decline your offer. I just don't see us as a very good match at this time, unless you want me to blog about hot guys who have worn baseball uniforms but aren't in fact baseball players. If that's the case, sign me up!

Otherwise, thank you in the very least for the good laugh.

Your friend in baseball (sort of),

Allison

Stop, Hey What's That Sound?

I hope you enjoy the newest feature on my blog. It's no iPhone, but this ain't Apple.com either.

The smartest thing a man has said about women since.......ever.

"Females are generally not encouraged by society to be super-smart, at least, not overtly. And ESPECIALLY not in the techie/geeky super-smart way.

So as a result, by the time these super-smart young girl geeks have grown up to be women, society will have managed to inject them with all sorts of serious self-esteem issues. Which rarely comes in handy in the mate-choosing department."

Ingenious theory written by hugh macleod on his blog.

The low self-esteem part of me wants to put some sort of disclaimer here that by posting this on my blog I am not implying that I'm one of those super-smart girls. But fuck it, you're damn right I am! And I will now constantly fall back on that explanation for why I can't get a date. You other super-smart women out there, feel free to do so as well.

No no, don't thank me. Thank hugh.

Big Ideas

If you're interested in marketing, viral messages, or just some random bits of information, then you should definitely check out this blog I found recently called Gaping Void. It's written by a guy named Hugh from the UK who does marketing for a South African Vineyard and also creates interesting drawings on the backs of business cards. Many have to do with working in the advertising/marketing/creative world, but there is something there for everyone. Check out his gallery.

I'm particularly fond of this new one:


Think I'll have it put on the back of my business cards.

I have also added the Gaping Void widget to my sidebar, so you can check out a bunch of them.

Which one would be yours?

Strange Phenomenon

Can anyone tell me why I had a huge influx of traffic on my blog yesterday? There were people coming in from all over the place and I'm wondering how they were getting here. Maybe you're one of those people and you came back. If so, how did you find me?

I'm interested in knowing what I might have done so maybe I can do it again. =)

Some Pre-Halloween Creepiness

Every Sunday, I like to go to the Post Secret blog to take a look at the new postcards that have been put up on the page. They are artistically and emotionally interesting, as well as shocking, sad and funny. If you've never been to the site it is worth a look.

Anyway, I went there today and at the end of this week's new card listings there is a postcard that I remembered from the week before that was just a brown piece of wrinkled paper with coordinates on it. Below it, the Post Secret webmaster has now posted an image he got through an email that seems to be a picture of what is at those coordinates (they must have been in the email as well). Posted above it are the coordinates and when you click on the link, it brings you to a Google Maps look up of that coordinate. It shows it to be somewhere near Germantown, Maryland. The closest things to it are farms and parkland. Frank from Post Secret said that he would post more as soon as he knew anything about the pictures.

So I don't know if he's thinking what my twisted brain is thinking, but my initial reaction was "Oh my god, someone buried a body there and sent in the coordinates as their secret!". Maybe being a criminal justice major and watching too much X-Files, CSI and Forensic Files has warped my mind and made me immediately jump to the worst possible conclusions, but did this cross anyone else's mind?

If what I'm thinking is right, we could have the new generation in creepy murderers on our hands. It would also be the most scandelous secret on that site to date. And maybe the worst part about my theory is that it wouldn't surprise me a bit if it were true. People are crazy and people do crazy things. If I've learned anything about life so far, it is not to underestimate the possible loonacy capable of the human race. I know. I've taken abnormal psychology and I ride public transportation every day, plus I've spent time in the south.

Happy (Belated) Blog-Day to Me!

That's right, on Monday, October 9, 2006, Invincible Summer officially turned one year old! Who actually thought I'd still be writing in here a whole year later? Certainly not me. In leiu of the extremely long and very witty post I was writing the other day that got lost when my web browser decided to freeze up (grrrrr!), I have made a list of some of my favorite posts from the past year for you to check out.

If you are a loyal reader (aka blog stalker) I invite you to tell me what your favorites have been or, if you rather, you can tell me that mostly this blog sucks. Either type of comments will be appreciated. =) This would also be a great time for those of you who just blindly stumbled here for the first time and those who read and never comment to say "hi!". Think of it as my blog-day present.

And if you are thinking to yourself - "Hey, I read this crappy blog all the time, what do I get?", here is a gift just for you.

And on to the favorites...

Procrastinating
October 9, 2005
The post that started it all and an explanation for the name.

The Happiest Town on Earth?
October 11, 2005
Post numero dos. A rant on how 5 major media outlets own everything we see and hear, and a little town named "Celebration". Plus there's a picture of the Hamburglar.

Here's an Equation for You
October 21, 2005
Short and (not so) sweet.

I'm a Fucking Genius
November 17, 2005
I still think this is a great idea.

Evil Allison
November 23, 2005
The holidays always bring out the best in me. I like this one mostly because I am a sarcastic bitch in it and also because it's the one post I have where Jess leaves a comment. Big ups to the Bear.

Who's a Ho?
December 6, 2005
Another sarcastic gem. I feel I have gotten soft in the past year and I'm going to have to step up the sarcasm again. Time to have a Lewis Blackathon.

CLR Tribute
January 3, 2006
Love to my girls.

Things I (Still) Miss
February 9, 2006
Life is sad when you don't have a job.

Why I (Still) Love Heather Gould
March 30, 2006
This just has to be reposted for anyone else who graduated in 2004.

The FCC Can Derelicte My Balls
April 1, 2006
I just realized I did this post on April Fool's day. Maybe that was Comedy Central's joke to us - bleeping out "balls". Hehe, yea Bevis, you said balls.

Summer
July 16, 2006
I chose this one because it goes with the blog theme and I actually still like what I wrote. Usually with poems, I go back a month later and hate it. Also, I realized I had 10 favorites listed and decided that a top 10 list is SO overdone. So that was my top 11 list.

Take that David Letterman!


Thanks for reading folks (all 5 of you).

a message to my favorite blog-stalker, aka Janet

i am still here, i swear. i have not formed a secret blog away from your stalker-eyes but have instead been busy packing up my apartment to move this friday. plus there hasn't been anything ridiculous enough going on for me to make fun of. it's quite unfortunate actually.

instead i will tell you about a dream i had last night that i found really amusing upon waking. i don't really remember most of the specifics, but what i do remember is sitting on an old rug with my roommate erin when it suddenly became a magic carpet and started to fly us into the sky. so we decided what better thing to do on a magic carpet than to sing ALL of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin in our best (aka worst) singing voices. i sang aladdin's part and she jasmine's. we even did cheesy arm motions. it surprises me that we make fun of ourselves even in my dream.

all around it was like a normal night at the apartment.

well, except erin usually sing's aladdin's part.




i hope you enjoyed janet. this post was all for you. sorry i didn't talk about Hanson. oh, there, i just did.

what the dooce?!

i admit it, i am a daily blog reader. besides the few friend blogs i read (shameless plug here for becky, sara and steph), , i also read industry blogs (like this one for movie marketing), celebrity blogs (hello zach braff) and blogs of people i do not know at all. however, the blog that actually started it all, and the one i check almost every day is dooce. you can see that i first talk about this blog here (are you getting sick of the links yet?).

for most of you who won't follow that link and see what i already wrote about dooce, basically it is written by a woman named heather from utah who is a suburban-living stay at home mom (SAHM) or, as she says, a slutty ass ho motherfucker. just from that you can tell she's a housemom with an edge, and that's the reason why even as a young, non-married, non-mother i have still managed to get sucked into her life. it also helps that her husband is geeky-cute, her daughter is precious and her dog is adorable. but that's where the sweetness ends. the rest of the blog is real life. it's about being depressed, or constipated, it's about disappointing parents with your religious and political affiliations, and it's sometimes about being sick of your family and even your own kid. what it almost always is, is funny. it's the humor found in everyday life and crises that keeps me coming back and what, most likely, has made dooce an extremely popular and profitable blog.

i find myself looking up to this woman and thinking i'd kinda want to be her someday. she might be considered a strange role-model to have because she did get fired for writing inappropriate stuff about co-workers on her blog. but since you need to have a job to be fired from one, i think i'll be okay. plus, i'm not much for writing insulting remarks about people; i much rather bitch to a live audience (it's more interactive and there's no paper trail). anyway, what does make me admire her is that she has made her mistakes and not only learned but profited from them. she is a full time blogger who is able to support her family by writing about and taking pictures of her everyday life. that is amazing.

i've always said i want to do freelance work from home once i have kids (i don't imagine my income will come from blogging), but some people look down on this and think that it means giving up a part of your life and who you are, and rolling back years of women's lib. work. however, what i think the best thing that women's lib. has given us is the right to choose what's best for us. if that means climbing the corporate ladder for some, great. if it also means i get to someday work in my pajamas, watch sesame street and smell like peanut butter and jelly every day, that's perfect too, because i know there are people like heather out there who have proven that you can be a stay at home mom (or a slutty ass ho motherfucker), and still be funny, sarcastic, potty-mouthed, a kick-ass graphic designer, and lead an interesting, crazy, fun, fulfilling life.

and speaking of crazy, check out her latest post . HIlarious. behold, the power of photoshop to corrupt even the most innocent of things. =)

the sweet spot(s)

i just finished watching the movie house of d and i want to recommend it to anyone looking for a small, sweet movie with a lot of heart. it does not shake the world, but it's a genuine movie and a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours. i will, however, put up this disclaimer: it is written and directed by david duchovny, and if you have read my blog before you will know that i have a soft spot for the man and it could be clouding my objectivity (p.s. go to that link, and no i didn't write that). so, take the recommendation for what you think it's worth, but i'd like to believe i would feel exactly the same about the movie, whoever was involved.

anyway, this movie did not have a voice when released in limited theatres, and like many small movies with little advertising backing from its studio, it got lost. so, watch it. if you enjoy it like i did, pass it on. word-of-mouth has power. (or, if you hate it, come back and yell at me. at least i'll know for sure that someone is reading this. you lurkers out there must have something to say.) also, if you're interested, david has his own director's blog on the lion's gate film website.

while i'm at it, here are a few other recommendations i have to pass on:

music: raul midon, joe purdy, motion city soundtrack

book: the turn of the screw by henry james.

perfume: soul by curve


yea, that's about it. good night. =)



"A man is only a man when he can be himself wherever he is."
-House of D

Drugs are bad....mmmmkay?

wow, i just read my last post. i think i was on crack. if you haven't read it yet, here's fair warning that it's slightly manic. i'm just high on life, i swear.

tonight i went a huntin' for a good blog to read and write about every day for my contemporary mass comm. class. we have to keep a journal on one blog for a week and write about how it's written, the content, the author etc. it's a pretty good assignment i think. anywho, i searched forever to find the perfect blog, aka one that would be interesting, updated frequently and pretty. the one i decided on is called Dooce and is actually ranked #7 on some big site's top 100 blogs. the site is linked to over 10,000 other blogs! and the craziest part is that it is just a woman's journal. it is not centered around a cause, political stance, specific interest, it is just her day-to-day thoughts and life. and people eat it up. to her credit, she is a very talented designer-turned stay at home mom (a very noble choice), extremely well-written, sarcastic (my favorite), witty, interesting and truthful. but it just floors me that so many people would find her site and become caught up in her life. it is like watching a reality show, without the whole scripted manipulation part. which means it may actually be good.

two thumbs up for well-written blogs
two thumbs down for drugs

and a whole lotta love to puppies. just because.

procrastinating

i ran out of things to do to avoid my theory paper. so i thought, 'hey, why not make a blog!' and here i am.

first i guess i should explain the name of the blog. it obviously comes from the quote by albert camus that i wrote in the description, but as for what meaning it has in my life i will explain.

like a lot of people, i have found that winter is a hard time for me. winters in boston are incredibly cold, windy and the worst part, gray. as my idol lewis black aptly put it: "you wake up and it's the grayest day you've ever seen. and then next day it's even grayer!" i love lew.

but anyway, the gray days and the long nights = the blahs for me and i become a useless, listless, sad case, eating cookies and wallowing in coldplay, counting crows and radiohead. and while a day here and there of depressing music and introspection is not a bad thing, a few months is not so good. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that i get super depressed to the point where i close myself off from the world and don't want to live, i just get in a rut and i don't like it.

so as winter dragged to a close last year and spring finally seemed on its way, i realized what i had been doing to myself all winter. and now that i know what can happen i am determined to enter this winter fighting the blahs and reminding myself that i am responsible for the way i feel. no weather, no person, no music should be able to control my life so easily because overall things are good, i am lucky and to top it off, i now have the memory of 3 months L.A. sunshine to get me through.

so this will be a place where i can complain and share the shit if i want to and then be able to let it go. it will also be a place i can write and remember the good things in my life - the everyday random shit that makes my day, things my friends do for me and the great experiences i have. the things that always bring warmth and light into my life.

let it snow. let it snow. let it snow.