BaRou is the New Bklyn

Friday Roundup: grody, gallant, parsimonious and faux-Sapphic edish

This is so narsty. Read this before lunch if you're trying to lose weight.

From BoingBoing comes possibly one of the most disgusting sentences I've ever read:

A curator at NY-MOMA had to euthanize a living leather jacket made from human mouse stem-cells -- the art-work had grown out of control and threatened to overflow its containment unit.

Only enlarge this photo if you dare.

This brings to mind the New York Times article about Peta offering $1 million prize to the first person who invents commercially viable in vitro meat.

Technology is getting out of hand--don't they know this is how horror movies happen?! That curator may think he euthanized the mouse jacket. But now it's crawling out of some Dumpster outside the MoMA, and it's not happy. Working title: My Mousy Jacket Euthenasia Gone Wild. Also, how exactly does one euthanize a mouse-meat jacket, if it doesn't have a central nervous system, heart or brain? Chop it up? Hope it's not like starfish!

Jazzfest: all that

This weekend f and I went down to New Orleans for the final night and day of Jazzfest. It was a rare 24- hours-plus of fun together. We spent most of the time hidden away from the rowdy French Quarter crowds in a private courtyard of the cottage our friends rented at a great little hotel, which had a leafy canopy thanks to trees growing out of the wall.

Friday Randomness Roundup

I haven't updated good old Abandoned Baton Rouge in almost a month, but yesterday I finally visited a site I've been meaning to hit for ages: D-Jay's School of Beauty. Do check it out.

I also became an even more official Louisiana resident, of course to my dismay.

 

Because nothing says class...

...like a Mother's Day gift purchased at the pawn shop.

Sometimes I can't contain my excitement and I take a really crappy cell phone photo. But if you can't read it, this banner on ye olde neighborhood pawnne shoppe says, "Give her the gift she deserves. Mother's Day SALE."

It stirred this writer's imagination.

"Hello Mother. Happy Mother's Day."
"Well, I'll be...it's a Fender Stratocaster with no packaging and a bullet hole in it."
"I love you, Mama. Thank you for bearing me from your loins and doing all that gross pregnancy stuff."
"And I'd do it again--but next year, can you get me a .357 Magnum?"

[both laugh, freeze frame]

~ Fin~

Awwww.

Ever get a parking ticket that was so cheap, that when you discovered it, it actually cheered you up?

I did, on Friday, after not realizing I had to pay a meter.

This is such a welcome change, coming from a city where I had to plan my life around the local street parking regulations, or pay the steep price. Stupid meter maid/meter man...still hate them so much...

I'm beginning to see the light

...at the end of the tunnel, that is.

The end of the fiance's first grueling year of grad school is so close to being over that the landscape architecture program had an end-of-the-year party on Friday! One academic year down, two to go. 

But before that hoedown, Jonathan and I met up to catch my favorite local radio guy Tabby Thomas performing at an outdoor plaza downtown. Yet another occasion where it's OK to walk around outside with a beer.

(This castle building behind the stage is the Old State Capitol, which was declared by Mark Twain to be the ugliest building on the Mississipp. I am not a fan either.)

You know how DJs never look the way you pictured them?

It's Friday so here's a bunch of stuff

I'm pretty sure this snapshot I took is some bugs getting their freak on. Or else there's been a terrible accident.

*

So the f and I both just renewed our passports, and since he needs his sooner, I decided to do a little experimente. We went for the expedited renewal on his for an extra $60 and chose regular processing speed for mine. Guess what, we both got them back on the same day anyway. Bye bye, $60! And I imagine spring is a pretty busy passport-renewal time. So we got hosed! Don't pay for the expedited service.

These new, age-of-terror passports come with extra freedom. That means a few things: they are "electronic passports" which have an embedded computer chip (so your comings and goings can be tracked, like with EZ Pass). Your portrait photo is now embedded in the page rather than laminated, and every page is bursting with extra multicolored illustrations of freedom such as eagles, mount Rushmore, and buffalo.

She sells sanctuary

This is the time of year that back in New York I'd start to feel trapped by bricks and concrete. I'd wish for a country-house retreat, fantasize about having my own yard, and plan my first camping trip of the season. As spring became summer, I'd grow even more anxious to get back to nature.

And now here in BaRou, where it's already been spring for two months, I finally have a yard. My first impression of our lush, semi-tropically appointed back yard last year was sanctuary, and during this past sad weekend, that observation rang true. It helped to be out there with the dog in my own parcel of green and flowered space. (That's one reason I'm so jazzed about my fiance's future profession of landscape architecture; humans bound by concrete, without enough green space, are probably more prone to aggression. Just look at New Yorkers. Another reason I'm jazzed about it is that his chosen profession is not "musician." Don't get me started--am I right, ladies?!)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled jackassery: Vernon RamboGuy

It seems like we're always hearing about the latest fads to come out of South Africa, but have you heard about the Internet sensation Vernon Koekemoer?

He was spotted (and presumably named) by some sharp-eyed jerk at the H20 rave in South Africa, basically standing around like a brick shithouse outhouse, beer in hand, totally ready to party.

Well, the party found him...on the Internets.

Gypsy Kane, 1995 - 2008

Gypsy Kane was born on St. Patrick's Day, 1995. We met her a month later, just about 13 years ago today. We don't know for certain that her true date of birth was March 17th, but we decided it was because Irish Americans get a little overzealous with pride, however tangential their connection may be to the auld sod.
Adoption people: "She was probably born about a month ag--"
Us:"--St. Patrick's Day!"

I went with my mom to a PetCo on Route 22 to pick out a kitten. Our last longtime cat Snowy had gotten hit by a car the previous November and had been left to die in the street. We were a one-pet family, and it was quite a shock, but we were ready for a new pet by the spring.

We picked Gypsy because she was saucing about in the cage like a little sassafrass.

This spirited kitten would later grow to become what many of my friends would misunderstand think of as one of the bitchier old feline curmudgeons they knew, but as a kitten, the attitude worked well on her.

After the jump, a tribute. You can't sum up the life of a friend you've known for 13 years in a few paragraphs, but when it's a cat, you kind of can.