Carl's Jr.'s Big Carl

I love Big Macs. I always have and I feel no shame for it. I think they're delicious, and I actually had one for lunch just today. So when I saw that Carl's Jr. had started making a Big Mac rip-off I was curious and decided I needed to give it a try. I did. [See photo to the right--image of actual burger eaten.]

First off, let me just say that I don't like the name Carl's came up with. "Big Carl" sounds like a plaid-clad (ha! it rhymes!) trucker whose diet is based solely on what he can get at the bowling alley snack counter. That being said, the Big Carl was actually pretty good. The meat had good flavor and the hamburger itself was pretty darn tasty and, obviously, filling. But marketing this sandwich as a Big Mac alternative is a pretty bold tactic. The only way this sandwich is anything like a Big Mac is that it has special sauce. Unfortunately, on the Big Carl you can barely taste it over all the meat and cheese. The sandwich would have been better with a bit more sauce. Also, I really like the chopped lettuce and onion on Big Macs. I find they add to the texture, which is half the battle as far as I'm concerned when it comes to food. As you can see from the photo, the Big Carl has big leaves of lettuce. Not a deal-breaker, but not my favorite, either.

So, the bottom line? The Big Carl was a very good hamburger in its own right, but really shouldn't be compared or offered as an alternative to the Big Mac. Both are delicious hamburgers but not really comparable. Oh, last thing: one thing the Big Carl comes with that Big Mac doesn't? A nasty stomachache--the calling card of all Carl's Jr. fare. Eat at your own risk.

Roku Box

I'm coming out of hibernation to give you... **drum roll**

THE ROKU BOX!

And here I thought my love for Netflix couldn't get any stronger... I was so wrong!

Aside from the iPod and cell phone, no piece of tiny technology has impacted my life more than the Roku Box. What does this Roku Box do, you ask? Well, I'll tell you: It streams videos from your Netflix queue right to your TV!

"Big whoop," you're sneering. "I bet it costs a fortune and the videos look like total crap."

Wrong, and wrong.

My box cost $115 (includes shipping), and I honestly can't tell the difference between images streamed from Netflix and plain old cable. I've had my box for about three weeks now, and I'm ashamed to say that I have logged a ridiculous amount of time in front of my TV thanks to my new, tiny friend.

If you're impatient (like me!) and like to get the absolute most amount of a product possible for a set price (also like me! [I call it all-you-can-eat Netflix videos]), then the Roku Box is for you. Unless you have an XBox, in which case you can sream your Netflix videos through that.

Seriously, Roku is ridiculously simple to set up and even easier to use. It's amazingly user-friendly with a simple interface that a two-year-old could use. You really can't get lost or confused with this thing. Case in point: the remote only has nine buttons. And of those nine buttons, I really only use, like, four. Easy peasy.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should tell you that the box is, in some ways, almost too simple. While you can delete titles from your queue via the Roku interface, there's no way to sort the titles, which would be a nice feature since they start stacking up quickly. (You can sort titles in your online Netflix queue.) It might also be nice to be able to view titles only and not just "album view," if I may borrow a term from iTunes. But the lack of those features isn't a hindrance, just a missed opportunity.

I should also mention that the Roku Box only works wtih Netflix's unlimited plans (the cheapest plan is $8.99/month), and not all titles available through Netflix are available to stream. But there is a ton of good stuff available, and they're adding more all the time. My Roku Box also took ELEVEN days to get here, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, especially since you have no option but to pay $15 for two-day shipping. But I'm still glad I bought the box--I'm not going to dog the product because the manufacturer can't its operations ironed out. Hate the playa, not the game, you know.

Long story short, I heartily recommend the Roku Box. High-quality video streaming, day or night. Thanks to Roku, I'm no longer limited to the amount of videos I can watch because of time wasted in the back and forth through the US postal service. Roku is one giant step in my quest to become a total shut-in.

Papa Murphy's Take and Bake Pizza

Welcome to my first unrecommended item! I realize this is a recommendations blog, so let's say I recommend that you don't get Papa Murphy's pizza. Why not? Let's begin.

First, let's start with the pros. Papa Murphy's is fast. Your order is ready to pick up in ten minutes. That's pretty awesome. Also, their pizza tastes all right. Not an explosion of mind-altering flavor, but better and fresher than frozen pizza*. Papa Murphy's is also cheaper than other large pizza chains, and I'd assume you're more likely to see a flaw (read: loagie from a disgruntled employee) on your unbaked pizza. Always a plus.

Sounds like a lot of pros, right? Well, I guess it is. But here's the thing: I'm lazy**. If I'm going to order out food, I want it to come to me already cooked. And Papa Murphy's doesn't bake your pizza for you. You have to take it home and bake it yourself like an animal. If God intended me to bake my own pizza, he wouldn't keep having all those Papa John's coupons sent to me in Monday's money mailers. Also, having to bake the pizza yourself adds about another 15-20 minutes onto the first-pang-of-hunger-to-stuffing-my-gullet continuum. This negates my "Papa Murphy's is fast" statement in the pros section.

But it still tastes okay, right? Well, technically yes, in that it doesn't taste like scab-covered dirt cakes. For those of you lacking in pizzeria experience (I worked for three and a half years at a local pizzeria when I was in high school/college, thank you very much), most of what makes pizzeria pizza so darn tasty comes from the giant pizza ovens that have been seasoned by the thousands of pizzas that baked before yours. Ask anybody in the food industry and they'll tell you your equipment is just as important to the flavor of your food as the ingredients. But Papa Murphy's doesn't have seasoned pizza ovens--they make you bake your pizza in your clean, unseasoned home oven. Now, I don't know about your oven, but my oven is barely five years old, and it only sees action about twice a month. And even then it's for break and bake cookies, not pizza. A cookie-seasoned oven does not a tasty pizza make. You should also know that by taking on the weighty burden of baking your own pizza, you're opening yourself up to the possibility of undercooking or overcooking your pizza. Tonight I did both. First I undercooked the pizza (the outside edges were cooked but the dough in the middle wasn't--gross!), then put it back in the oven, resulting in an overcooked pizza. I shake my fist at you, Papa Murphy, wherever you are!

As for my claim that Papa Murphy's is cheaper than other chains, it's true. But they're not that much cheaper. I would honestly rather pay 20% more and have a hot, good-tasting***, properly baked pizza delivered right to my doorstep than cheap out and have to bake my own pizza like a Nazi****.

Order Papa Murphy's Take and Bake pizza at your own risk. If you're dead set on ordering pizza from a Papa, I recommend Papa John's. (They have really good crust and killer parmesan breadsticks.)



*Totinos pizzas are freaking tasty. (And they're only about $1.00 each!)

**I have chosen where to eat out based solely on whether the establishment had a drive-thru or not. I have also driven past one restaurant (say, a Panda Express) to go to the same chain restaurant (another Panda Express) because the latter had a drive-thru and the former did not. Yes, I'm American.

***Little Caesar's is an odd exception. Sometimes you want fast, cheap, kinda gross pizza, and Little Caesar's is much better suited for this craving than Papa Murphy's. It's awesome drowned in ranch dressing.

****Every other simile I came up with was potentially offensive to some group or another, given our country's obsession with political correctness. But everybody hates Nazis, right?*****

*****If you like Nazis, I don't really care what you think.

Speed Dating to The Smiths

Ok, how come we don't have Smiths speed dating in Salt Lake City?! New York does it, I don't know why we don't do it. It's a well-known fact that Utahns love 80s music; I think Smiths speed dating could be a huge success here.

This idea is absolutely brilliant: speed dating to Smiths songs. One song equals one date. So you start talking to someone when "Panic" starts, and then switch tables when "How Soon Is Now" takes its place (praying, I would imagine, that your next date isn't a total dork, because "How Soon Is Now" clocks in at about six minutes). Would I go to a Smiths speed dating event? Absolutely. Even though Smiths/Morrissey fans abound online, I have yet to meet a true fan in real life. To be quite honest, I'd like to meet one. And if it was a non-mutant guy who wanted to get all sarcastic and go to Morrissey shows we me, so much the better!

Go check out the NY Post article here.

Green Cheek Conures

I'm the first to admit that I'm a huge sucker when it comes to cute animals like birds and bunnies and puppies and, well, you get the idea. Snakes, lizards, and spiders, not so much. But you throw a mini parrot in front of my face and chances are good that I'm going to go "Awwww!" and eventually buy it. Because, as I stated earlier, I am a sucker. My latest act of suckeritude? A green cheek conure. I saw one of these little guys at my local Petco and was instantly hooked. You see, he didn't just sit innocently on his perch, as so often birds do. He climbed down to where I was and he bobbed. Furiously. Bobbed! Up and down! Repeatedly. It was, needless to say, adorable. I pulled myself away from the little guy and went home to sleep on the idea. In the morning I still thought he was awesome and went back to buy him. Yes, I impulse purchased a bird. Because that's just the kind of girl I am. So now I'm the proud mother of a lutino cockatiel (Chauncy) that I've been too lazy to teach to whistle cool stuff (which was the whole reason I bought him in the first place. Oh, and to love.) and a little green cheek conure who likes to lick my fingers and climb like a monkey all over his cage.

This newest addition to Rachie's Private Zoo is named Jiles, after The Big Bopper. 'Cause he bops. Get it? Get it?! Honestly, though, I wouldn't have named him Jiles if I didn't think it was an awesomely stodgy name that fits perfectly with a super-stodgy name like Chauncy. Chauncy and Jiles... They hate each other. Mostly they can sit like nice boys on their matching play gyms, but every so often (okay, only twice) Jiles gets a hankering for some cockatiel feather and goes and rips him out a beakful of Chauncy's. A little antagonistic, yes, but when you see him all snuggled up in his Happy Hut (see image), you can't help but melt a little. He also croaks like a little frog and you can teach him to do tricks. Right now, though, I'm just trying to teach him to step up onto my finger consistently and not to bite great chunks of flesh out of my hands. Is that so much to ask? Wait, that doesn't help recommend green cheek conures... Okay, here are some things that I like about Jiles:

• He's surprisingly quiet. I've only heard him go into full-blown sqwak mode about four times in two weeks, and even those were instigated by the big, scary orange garbage can. Otherwise, it's just little frog croaks.
• He likes to be petted (unlike Chauncy). Jiles will let you snuggle him up a bit and scratch him anywhere you like.
• He's a quick study. Homeboy went from not having any idea that you were even supposed to step up on a finger to stepping up like a champ in three days. Of course I went through a lot of bites and swearing and frustration during that time, but really it probably only took him about four non-consecutive hours of training to turn him from a baby bird with ZERO training (he wouldn't even step up on a stick if you put it in front of him and gently pushed him with it) to a nice baby bird who almost always steps up and rarely bites.
• He holds food with his foot!
• It hurts like $@%! when he really bites, but I bet it's a fraction of how bad it would hurt if you got bitten by a larger conure or a macaw. Great for people with a low pain tolerance!

So, do I recommend green cheek conures? Yes. But not for children because one good bite would really hurt their small fingers. Get them a cockatiel or parakeet, which have much smaller beaks. But if you're an adult and you'd like to have a parrot, but don't want the noise or mess of a big parrot, go grab yourself a green cheek conure. Big fun in a tiny package.

I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris

It is an absolute understatement for me to say that I love Morrissey. There is no verb strong enough to express the emotions I feel for that man. And having just heard his new single, "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" off of "Years of Refusal" (not sure what's taken me so long to get around to watching it when it dropped about a month ago...), I love him all the more. This new single sounds so Morrissey, a distinction that I can't describe any further than that. All I know is that I love it, I love him, and I can't wait for the whole CD to get here. My friend and I will possibly be in France on June 3 when the Moz will be performing in Lille (north of Paris), and I'm really hoping now that our schedule allows for us to attend the show. Ah, Morrissey, if you ever need a womb to carry your child, mine is on perma-reserve for you.

Sorry, embedding for the video for "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" has been removed, so go see it here.

Morrissey: Years of Refusal

dkfjsdkfjk 1j3lkej1kjlvjdskhvsjdflsjdf!!!!

Morrissey's newest album, "Years of Refusal" is dropping February 16! Have you bought yours yet? Hurry and get a man on it! Here, I'll make it easy for you--click here--and buy it! I'm going to go ahead and recommend it album-unlistened because HELLO, it's THE MOZ. You know it's gonna be fawesome. Sure, "Ringleader of the Tormentors" wasn't his best album (although, how can you not love an album with a song called "TheYoungest Was the Most Loved"? [If you're the youngest--which I am]), but that just means that he's saved up all the goodness for "Years of Refusal." I'm seriously psyched for this new album and have already pre-ordered my copy (JUST $9.99!!!) along with a couple of books--a Morrissey biography and a guide book to Smiths songs. I cannot wait for it all to get here. **rubs hands plottingly**

Of course, a new album means a new PROMOTIONAL TOUR! We fans in Salt Lake City were lucky enough to get TWO dates in 2007 (I shudder in ecstasy just thinking about it), but so far we haven't scored a single date yet for 2009. This makes me sad to no end. My friend and I are planning to vacay in France sometime in May, and I'm trying to talk her into lopping over a bit into June so we can hit the Lille date on June 3. **crosses fingers and prays really hard**

Guitar Hero World Tour

Since I have not only the sense of humor of a 14-year old boy, but also the entertainment tastes to go with it, it's my pleasure to recommend Guitar Hero World Tour. It was the only thing I could think to ask for for Christmas, which is why I didn't run out and buy it myself when it came out a couple of months ago. Sadly I've been so busy working since Christmas, I haven't really had as much time as I'd like to play. But what time I have dedicated to it has been thoroughly enjoyable.

It hasn't even been a year since my friend G-Mac introduced me to the awesomeness that is Guitar Hero, but in that short time I have logged some serious hours rocking out first on a plastic guitar (from Guitar Hero 2), and then on fake drums (from Rock Band). My living room has become an experiment in hiding video game paraphernalia in more respectable, grown up accessories (a wooden box that holds my game console, games, microphones, controllers, kick pedals, and drum sticks) and a padded ottoman that houses three toy guitars. I have resorted to hiding my two drum kits in the hallway behind the bathroom door. It's all very classy.

But creative decorating is a small price to pay for the hours of enjoyment that have come from Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and Guitar Hero World Tour is pretty awesome. The thing that really sets World Tour apart from Rock Band is the wicked awesome drums that have a kick pedal, three drum pads, and two cymbals. If you've exhausted the challenge in Rock Band drums, the GH drums will give you a run for your money. The only downside is that the sensitivity seemed to be off and the red drum pad wasn't registering the way it should have. I did a little looking around online and found out that Red Octane is offering a free software download that allows you to adjust the sensitivity, which is actually really cool of them. I filled out the little warranty thing and had the necessary cord FedExed to me, for free, within a week.

The only other complaint I have with Guitar Hero World Tour is that the songs are either really awesome or really stupid. I can appreciate them including some songs for the older crowd, but if I were a teenager I would probably hate this game--there's hardly anything on there that would, in my opinion, appeal to the 13-18 crowd. Some great stuff from the 80s and 90s, but not a whole lot after that. Strangely enough, there's a ton of crap like CCR and Ted Nugent and other old stuff that would appeal to my dad, but I find a chore--a burden to get through to reach the next level. Of course, I'm on PS2 which doesn't have the networking capability of PS3, XBox, or Wii, and I'm sure you can buy and download a bunch of games that better suit your tastes if you're on one of those formats.

So, Guitar Hero World Tour runs about $180 and comes with the game, a microphone, a guitar, and a drum kit. $180 might sound like a lot for a game, but seriously with the amount of time you're going to spend on it, you'll more than make up for the cost. Of course, you could always just wait a few months and see if the price will drop. That's what happened with Rock Band once Rock Band 2 came out. Either way, you totally have to buy this game. Tons of fun and totally fawesome.

Archer Farms Sea Salt Pretzel Caramel Ice Cream

Normally I'm not one for mixing my sweets and savories. There's just something wrong about chicken slathered in sweet mango salsa that makes my stomach want to churn. But I have been known to make an exception for chocolate pretzels and kettle corn. However, if I had been sauntering down the frozen dairy aisle of Target and seen kettle corn flavored ice cream, I probably would have kept on walking. But this--this just caught my eye and wouldn't let go.

Sea salt?! Caramel?! Preztles?! Surely you jest, Archer Farms!

I pulled down a pint and cradled it in my arms. Would it really be as good as I thought it would be? I mean, caramel ice cream with swirls of fudge and caramel with chocolate-covered sea-salt pretzels mixed in it? HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG? Not much later, I found out that you couldn't.

I love pretty much everything Target, and their ice cream did not disappoint. The perfect blend of creamy, caramel-y ice cream with just enough salt to be tasty without making you wonder if somebody accidentally poured salt into the sugar container. And since the pretzels were enrobed in their protective chocolate coating, they didn't get all soggy, as pretzels in ice cream are wont to do. On a completely arbitrary scale of recommendation, I'll give this three prancing unicorns, one lame, lying down unicorn as the lowest score, and three prancing unicorns stabbing a clown as the highest score. Is it the absolute best ice cream I've ever had? No. Is it really close? Yes.

Had my ice-cream buying experience not been marred by the completely inept, mouth-breathing checker with THUG tattooed across his knuckles, I could have possibly thrown a clown onto the score. I bought this ice cream with my friend Kiki (after we gorged at Five Guys Burgers and Fries--hey, if you're going to gorge, you might as well go whole hog [pun intended]) I was buying just the ice cream and she had several other items which she placed behind mine on the moving belt thingy--divided very obviously by one of those separator bar things. (My shopping vocabulary isn't very extensive apparently.) Mouth-breather rang up my stuff and, while I was busy wrestling with the credit card machine, he breached the demarcation line and started ringing up Kiki's stuff with my solitary pint of ice cream. Thankfully she caught on eventually and told him I was buying "just the ice cream." He then proceeded to delete everything except for my ice cream and hers and then rang the sale through before I could correct him. Kiki and I then spent the rest of our time at his register trying not to laugh at his disheveled hair (think Harry Dunne from Dumb and Dumber), THUG tattoo, and utter incompetence. I mean, doesn't he know what that bar is for? Later we determined that he really worked at the Wal-Mart one street over and was lost.

I expect more from you, Target.




Aw, but I can't stay mad at you...

The Silver Seas

My friend Brick, the knower of all things good-music, once gave me a little nugget of wisdom: "Good music can often be found in commercials." Indeed, it was in a commercial that I found today's offering, proving once again that Brick is pretty much a genius.

I was watching TV, goofing around on my laptop a few months ago when I heard a cheerful little piano tune venture forth from my TV speakers. I sat bolt upright (yeah, like you don't slouch when watching TV and wasting time on your computer) and declared, "I must have it!" Not the Kenmore Elite washer and drier being sold by the adorable elven boy with the white skully, although I'm sure they're fabulous and very high quality(the washer and drier, not the boy... But he's probably cool, too). No, "Imaginary Girl" by The Silver Seas.

Let me just take a minute to praise Al Gore for inventing the internet. In under ten seconds of Googling, I had what I needed--song title and artist name. I plugged them into Amazon, clicked a few more times, and my very own Silver Seas "High Society"CD was on its way to my doorstep. A shipment which proved to be the longest ten days of my life.

Since I work at home and really don't have much to live for anyway, I live each moment in breathless anticipation waiting for the mailman. Every day around 2:00 (it used to be 11:00, what gives, mailman?) I see his little mail truck bouncing down the street in front of my house and I give a giddy little clap. The mail has come, the mail has come! Whilst waiting for my Silver Seas CD I'd run down to the bank of mail boxes and...! Nothing. Big fat nothing. Sigh. I just wanted my CD so I could listen to the song I loved over and over again!

Finally, a week and a half after placing my order, my CD came. I ran back to the house, ripping open the package so as to get my CD into my computer all the sooner. As it uploaded, I noticed a song in my iTunes library called "Imaginary Girl" by The Bees. "It can't be the same song," I chuckled knowingly to myself. "It isn't even the same band." But for kicks I played the song by the Bees, and... !@#@!#!!!! It was THE SAME SONG!! The Silver Seas USED TO BE THE BEES! This is exactly the kind of crap that only happens to me...

But there is a happy ending to my little, figuratively kicked-in-the-knee story. "High Society" turned out to be very enjoyable--very much worth what I paid for it, which I'm sure was under $9-10. It's an awesome, kickback collection of mellow deliciousness that I've gotten a lot of listens out of. (I may or may not have listened to "Imaginary Girl" 20 times the day I got it.) The great thing about "High Society" is that it's completely impossible to nurture a bad mood while listening to it. Go ahead, I defy you to do it. You might be able to get all storm cloud through a couple of the songs (if you're a jerk), but there is no way "Imaginary Girl" will let you stay jerkfaced. It's just not possible. So give it a listen! I've even embedded it below so you don't have to turn your TV on and wait for the Kenmore commercial. I'm just thoughtful like that.

Robert Downey Jr.

I'm not quite sure what happened, but this year I wound up having a very Robert Downey Jr. Christmas. Somehow the planets and stars perfectly aligned and a bunch of Robert Downey Jr. movies all lumped together in my Netflix queue. Over the past three weeks I have watched five Robert Downey Jr. movies, which is strange because on my celebrity-obsession scale old Rob is only about a 6 (on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being an internet stalker).

But I am a fan of the RDJ. He's a phenomenal actor and, let's face it, he just keeps getting better-looking with age. (Parenthetical prayer: Pleeeeease don't let him get all Mickey Rourke with nasty, unnessecary plastic surgery, rendering him terrifying to school children and elderly immigrant women.) I'm super psyched he's cut back on the nose candy so he can give more of himself to the world. That unpleasantness is better left behind us.

So, because I like to think that I leave my two readers with at least some useful information, I'll list the RDJ movies I watched as well as a brief opinion. Because what's a recommendations blog without an opinion? Or any blog for that matter... Anywho, let's get started.

Iron Man -- Seriously fawesome. The only fault? Not a fan of Tony Stark's finely trimmed mustache/goatee combo.
Good Night, and Good Luck -- Let's keep this positive... I'll say it's great if you need something to help you fall asleep.
Chances Are -- A good movie if you can suspend reality and get into the 80s cheese mode. It even did the freeze-frame ending of the main character smiling at the end before the credits roll. I waited for the classic ending and it did not disappoint. Also, when has Mary Stuart Masterson not been completely adorable?
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang -- Hi-larious! This movie has what might be my favorite line of all time: "West-coast girls are crazy... It's like someone took America by the East Coast and shook it, and all the normal girls managed to hang on." Seriously, his delivery of that line is perfect, and he even does the shaking motion (like he's shaking dust off a big rug) with his hands. Brilliant AND hysterically funny. Look out if you're delicate, though--it's rated R.
A Scanner Darkly -- I still don't know what that movie was about. I learned more from the synopsis that came on the Netflix sleeve than I gleened from the whole movie.

What's weird about this whole Robert Downey Jr.-fest is that I didn't even know he was in Good Night, and Gook Luck or A Scanner Darkly until he popped up on the screen. His unexpected presence was a delightful surprise seeing as those two movies were both boring and completely impossible to understand, respectively.

As long as we're talking about Robert Downey Jr., I have to throw a mention out for Tropic Thunder. FU-NNY. If you didn't know, in that movie RDJ plays a white guy playing a black guy (he underwent very controversial surgery to make the change). I kept forgetting it was even him since it neither looks nor sounds like him. Again, if you're not delicate, this is a thoroughly hilarious movie that will probably make you wet your pants just a little.

Ah, Robert Downey Jr. You've given me so much and asked for so little. How can I ever repay you?

Lady Gaga

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I first heard about Lady Gaga when I saw her live opening for New Kids on the Block (I was indulging my inner child, all right? And they were comps.). Normally I refuse to show up for concerts before 9:00 because the "special guests" usually suck out loud. I can only think of three instances where this wasn't the case: The Village People opening for Cher (shut up, I had comp tickets)(they were way better than Cher, too); Elkland opening for Erasure; and Lady Gaga opening for NKOTB.

Whoa, baby, is she FUN! How can a woman sport skin-tight vinyl and not look slutty? I don't know, but somehow Lady Gaga pulled it off. I was so impressed by her music and performance that I actually bought three of her CDs--one for me, and two as Christmas gifts for friends I knew would absolutely love her. Her debut album "The Fame" is a super-fun dance CD that doesn't disappoint in any way whatsoever. This is one of those rare albums that you can play all the way through and not have to skip that weird, crappy track. Lady Gaga kind of reminds me of solo Gwen Stefani only (I can't believe I'm saying this because I love Gwen) better. Yes--I said better. Seriously, you should pick yourself up a copy. Currently only $8.99 at Amazon, an absolute STEAL for the amount of enjoyment you're going to get out of this totally fawesome album.

You can watch the video for "Just Dance" here and the video for "Poker Face" here. Sorry--youtube turned off the embedding on these videos. They're worth the click-through, though.

Monitor decorations

I, my friends, am a woman of action. I see something, decide I want it, and go get it. Such was the case with the great whistling cockatiel fascination of 2008. Unfortunately, none of my local pet stores carried birds that came pre-loaded with sound bits, so I had to buy an empty one and try to upload selections to it myself. So far I have been successful only at getting him to step up onto my finger on command, and even then only when he's already come voluntarily out of his cage. He refuses to be told what to do in his cage and still bites ever so nastily at the inter-species olive branch that is my right index finger. I can't blame him, I guess. I'd be pretty annoyed if somebody walked into my house and started ordering me around. But once he's outside his cage he is a bundle of somewhat bitey, sometimes jerkfaced fun!

I mean, check out the picture! He likes to sit on the screen of my laptop while I work! It's like having a bossy little four-ounce supervisor who never speaks but just stands there yelling, "Get back to work!" with his hateful, judgmental eyes. As you can see from the aforementioned picture, I work on the couch in my pajamas in front of the television, so I do kind of need the motivation.

Disagreeable personality aside, Chauncy makes a pretty good monitor decoration. He's super cute with his orange cheek patches, but he throws in some emo spunk with his wicked awesome fauxhawk/pompadour (channeling the totally hot Brandon Flowers and Morrissey, respectively). The bird's got style, you have to admit. "But, Rachel," you're saying. "Aren't you afraid he'll poop on your computer or your lap?" To which I'll just chuckle and remind you that I am much cleverer than a simple, literally bird-brained cockatiel. To enjoy a poop-free cockatiel adornment for yourself, all you need to do is slide a paper towel or piece of paper (I use those junk-ad mailers) under your computer so that a few inches of it are hanging out over your lap and under your bird's rump (I use a lapboard to keep my computer from getting too hot). Then tilt your monitor back ever so slightly, so if your bird does get vengeful and decide to poop, it will fall on the disposable paper. Ha. Sucker.

Now don't say I never taught you anything.

The Kooks

In May of this year, my friend Brick changed my life. He didn't give me a kidney or help me find my birth mother or anything like that. No. He introduced me to The Kooks, a band who quickly rose into my top-ten favorites of all time. Everything about The Kooks is oh so right (aside from their greasy, tight-pants look--ew). I can't even describe how awesome their music is, but I can tell you that I seriously considered flying to Vancouver for a long weekend when I found out they were doing a show there a few months ago. My cheapness ultimately won out, but if they ever come to Salt Lake City I will be first in line at the ticket window.

Here, for your consideration, are a few of my favorite Kooks songs. But seriously, all the songs on both of their albums are excellent. I love albums where you can play the whole tracklist and not have to skip forward and back and blah blah blah, and both Inside In/Inside Out and Konk deliver in that respect. Oh, and their songs are really fun to sing/yell along to in the car. At least that's what I've heard. Because, you know, I don't sing and dance like a rock star when I drive or anything.

Battlestar Galactica

If you've never watched Battlestar Galactica you're probably laughing, pointing at your screen, and yelling, "NERD ALERT!" at this post. But I'm proud to stand up and say that I am a Battlestar Galactica fan. I never thought I'd like the same stuff as Dwight Schrute, but for this show I'm willing to make an exception.

I do have some nerdish leanings (and by "some" I mean "ridiculous amounts"). I like sci-fi and fantasy, particularly Orson Scott Card novels. But I don't speak Klingon, I don't play World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons, and I've never watched a single Star Trek movie. That stuff is for geeks. But Battlestar Galactica, it's for cool people. At least, it was cool people who finally convinced me to give it try. I was hooked after the first episode. I put every available season at the top of my Netflix queue and watched them as fast as I could. It. Was. AWESOME!

Where BSG differs from the Star Treks and other sci-fi series is that it's not a storyline based on science-fiction themes. It's a story that just happens to take place on a giant spaceship. It reminds me of LOST, but without that aggravating, going-nowhere plotline. The series starts with the thirteen colonies of the human race being attacked by the Cylons, a robot race created by humans who ultimately rebelled and evolved into more advanced models. After the attack the only survivors are the inhabitants of a newly decommissioned battlestar (Galactica) and travelers aboard a few other spaceships. They all have to work together to flee genocide at the hand of the Cylons and search for a promised land called Earth. Pretty cool, no?

What's super crazy about BSG is that every single episode looks like a big-budget movie. Everything about this show looks amazing, including the actors. For example, there's Jamie Bamber (as Lee "Apollo" Adama) and Tricia Helfer (as "Six).

See? Hot, right? So what are you waiting for? What more do you need? Get your hands on the DVDs and get to watching. Christmas is coming up--plan a BSG marathon for your time off. You'll be hooked. But here's a bit of advice I wish somebody would have given me: DON'T BUY THE MINISERIES IF YOU'RE GOING TO BUY SEASON ONE. Season one includes the three-hour miniseries so there's no point in buying it separately. And yes, I said three hours. A bit on the long side, but with the rest of the episodes coming in at about 43 minutes each, you'll be itching for the next installment.

Life-sized stand-up posters of teen hearthrobs

What do you get the Twilight fan that has everything? Why, his or her very own life-sized stand-up poster of Rob Pattinson (aka Edward Cullen), natch! Now you can sleep under the watchful eye of your own brooding but morally conscious vampire. Unfortunately this version is made of cardboard, not marble, and I doubt he'll be taking you on any forest fun runs where you don't have to do both the running and the lifting. But if all you want is to sit and stare at beauty personified, this is the guy for you.

Available now from Amazon!

Hiring a person to do a person's job

Automation is great. Yay for technology and everything else that makes life easier! But there are some things that technology will never improve on: cutting hair (sorry, Flowbee), pedicures, translating, and indexing to name just a few. For these actions, it is far better to forget the lazy and/or cheap way out and just hire a person to do the job. We don't repeat the adage "You get what you pay for" because it's a load of garbage. It's true. Cheap out on your translation or your index or your bikini wax, and you'll be regretting it sooner or later. (I'd guess you'd be regretting the automated bikini wax sooner rather than later.)

In my former life as a groundhog, living in an expansive prairie of cubicles, I was a translation coordinator. Knowing that I can string a few French words together, people would often bring me a short translation and ask me to "make sure it was all right" or "give it a quick look" before they emailed it out. I can honestly say that each and every time I got one of these translations I would read it for about two seconds (maximum), look up, and ask the person to please send me the English text so I could have it properly translated for them using our team of utterly awesome English-to-French translators. "I don't understand," they would say, "I ran it through Babelfish" (or some equally insufficient online translator). "Online translators aren't good enough for what we need," I would have to nicely explain, once again. Not that I'm badmouthing Babelfish. If you need to get the gist of a sentence in a language you don't understand, it might help you. But if you're looking to portray a positive, professional image with a large amount of copy, online translators aren't even close to adequate.

If you speak a second language even somewhat fluently you know that context is everything. Translation software probably isn't going to know that ma blonde means my girlfriend in French, for example. So you'll get a translation back saying something about "my blond-haired girl," which will leave you visibly surprised when you see the girl in question is indeed a brunette. Online translators aren't able to decipher the context accurately enough, so they might give you the wrong translation or a couple of wrong translations to choose from, framed beautifully in parentheses, like, "My blond-haired girl (girlfriend) is coming to dinner with me." In that case, you can probably figure out yourself what is really meant. But what happens if both of the offered translations are wrong? Laugh, but I've seen it more than once. The more specialized the source text is, the greater the chance for error.

Indexing is the same. Unless you have ridiculously simple text, automating the index isn't going to work. Yeah, you can get a macro to pull out and assign a page number to every instance of Abraham Lincoln. But what happens when he pops up twenty times? Is the macro going to know that page 10 is talking about his assassination and page 122 is the Gettysburg Address? Nope. You're going to have to go through each and every entry yourself anyway and assign it a subheading. Boooring.

So why not just skip all the macro mess and Babelfish hullabaloo and find somebody who knows what they're doing? I mean, why try to do something yourself when there's somebody who's already an expert at it? After all, you probably wouldn't bother trying to mess with your house's electric system or conduct your own colonoscopy. No, some things, like translating and indexing, are best left to the translators and indexers. And I happen to know a great indexer. Ahem.

House

When it comes to music, TV, books, and pretty much all forms of popular entertainment except movies and concerts, I tend to be about two years behind the curve. There are a few exceptions, but mostly I'm the dorky kid running to keep up with the cool crowd. Thankfully, I have do have friends who take pity on me and try to show me the ways of the in crowd, even if it does take me a while to fully grasp the coolness of what they're trying to get through my thick skull.

House is one of those things.

My friend Rachel introduced me to this TV show about two or three years ago. Being the ultra-hip chick that she is, she already knew the genius of the writing, the brilliance of the characters, and the je ne sais quoi of Hugh Laurie in his role as moody Dr. Gregory House. She tried to share it with me, but being squeamish, I turned it away. To be fair, I am, shall we say, of a very weak constitution. I was never desensitized to gore and yuckiness, and I have a severe phobia of needles (the therapist rated it a 7-8 on the phobia scale!). So when the first episode of House that I ever saw revolved around a patient whose body parts were EXPLODING, I was more than a little freaked out and turned off. I mean, I'm delicate! I can't watch a man's eye explode out of his head, even if it's just special effects. I just can't do it. So I added House to my list of too-scary-to-watch TV shows (a distinction that currently belongs to Fringe and Dexter) and didn't think too much about it.

Then the USA network picked up House and it was on all the time. A few weeks ago I was bored and there was nothing good on TV, so I settled on House, keeping my hands safely near my face should I need to sheild them from the scary stuff. But there was no scary stuff! And it was good! All this smarty-pants stuff about auto-immune diseases and toxins and people's lies that were ruining the diagnoses! So intriguing! I was hooked. As addicted as Dr. House is to his precious, precious vicodin. Luckily, House was on all the time, and I was getting two- to three-hour fixes a night. The episodes were out of order so I had to kind of piece them together like a puzzle, but that just added to the awesomeness of it.

Now is probably a good time to tell you (if you don't already know) that House is about a brilliant but asocial diagnostician who gets all the impossible-to-solve cases. He had surgery on his leg that left him in constant pain (that explains the vicodin) and unbelievably ornery and rude. He heads up a team of bright and impossibly good looking doctors, who, along with Laurie's handsome features, make the show all the more fun for everyone. (Here's where I insert a special shout out to Dr. Robert Chase [played by Jesse Spencer], the unbelievably good-looking blond Aussi. Holla!)

House is a bit formulaic--the patient is sick; duh, it's this simple illness; oh wait, something crazy just happened so it can't be that; run tests; it's this; wait, something else happened, no, it's not; more tests; it's this; oh wait, look what we found, it was this after all--but that's not really what makes the show good. The interaction and incredibly slow-moving plot between the main characters is what's really interesting. All of them are complex and extremely interesting, especially Dr. House. Which is why it's still hard for me to believe that this:


Is the same guy as this:


Ah, how I loved Black Adder... But I've blathered on enough. Watch House. Love House. Start from season 1 and get caught up so you can watch House on FOX, Tuesdays at 7:00 (MST), or sporadically on USA. It's addictively good.

Penelope

I'm a girl who is true to her celebrity crushes. A movie can be a giant pile of craptastic rubbish and I'll still sit through the entire thing because I want to see my celebrity crush in action. James McAvoy is one of those crushes, but Penelope is not a giant pile of craptastic rubbish. I was pleasantly surprised by this cute little movie that was, well, all right I'll say it, delightful.

What's Penelope about, you ask? Penelope Wilhern is the target of a horrible family curse that can only be broken by finding true love with one of her own kind (a fellow blue blood). So her mother spends years tracking down rich bachelors and trying to get them to marry Penelope in order break the horrible curse (which seems to bother her more than her daughter). Unfortunately, Penelope's suitors all run away screaming the second they lay eyes on her. All but one--the hot Scot, James McAvoy.

I've never been a huge Christina Ricci fan, but she was actually pretty cute in this movie. It definitely could have benefited from more James McAvoy (duh), but overall it was fun with a unique look and feel. And, in the grand tradition of Muriel's Wedding, it has a nice message of acceptance and living life to its fullest in spite of the obstacles that get put in your way. But unlike Muriel, Penelope rocks a PG rating, so you can watch it with your mom without shifting uncomfortably in your seat.

So I encourage you to add Penelope to your Netflix queue and give it a watch. At only about 85-95 minutes, it doesn't overstay its welcome. And did I mention it co-stars James McAvoy?

Singing cockatiels

I always knew birds could talk and do neat tricks, but I never had much interest in them until I watched Ace of Cakes last week and saw Mary Alice's pet cockatiel that whistles the emperor's theme from Star Wars, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," and Europe's "The Final Countdown." Once I saw that, it was all over. "I must have one," I said to myself. "I must have a Star Wars-theme singing cockatiel!"

I have two chihuahuas (my reasons for living) and five fish. They're all swell, but they don't sing movie themes or even crappy 80s songs, which is tragic in its own way. I can get the dogs to howl in unison from time to time, but they mostly spend their days sleeping and begging for treats. Actually, Daphne acts as spokesperson and begs treats for both her and Roxy. Come to think of it, Roxy's only pulling her weight by sheer cuteness alone. And don't even get me started on the fish. Sure, they're cool looking, but there's no real return on investment there. I mean, I spend about a half hour each week cleaning the aquarium and making sure everybody's healthy. I even order their specialty, hoity-toity goldfish food online because my goldfish are too good to eat Wardley fish-food-like flakes from Petsmart. And what am I getting in return? Zilch. Big, fat nothing.

Lousy freeloading animals.

But a singing, talking cockatiel! Now there's a jewel for my menagerie! With a cockatiel that whistles theme songs from beloved childhood movies and television series, I could throw the wicked-awesomest parties known to man! Forget alcohol or paid celebrity endorsements. Kiss goodbye karaoke smack-downs and social interaction. No, a cockatiel that performs on command like a trained trick monkey could be just the ticket to raise my social status from failure to fawesome.

The only reason I haven't dashed out and bought a cockatiel yet is because I'm trying to figure out what to teach it to sing and say. You'd better believe the Star Wars theme is on the list, as are the theme songs from The Office and The Simpsons. I'm also tempted to try to get it to yell, "My haaaaaaaaand!" after whistling the Star Wars theme. And you know I'm going to have to teach it to swear in French. I'm so excited for this new bird I can't even tell you! It will be like having a little kid but with a fraction of the responsibility and guilt! Bring. It. On!

Melatonin

I divide my life into two categories: times I can fall asleep and times I can't. I'm currently running strong in the can't camp after a long, hearty romp in the can camp. But this can't camp... It kind of really sucks. I go to bed and lie there one hour, two hours, three hours... Then I finally get annoyed and trip to the bathroom, pull open the top drawer, and feel around until I wrap my stubby little fingers around the bottle of sweet, sleep-inducing melatonin.

Why melatonin and not Ambien or Lunesta? I have samples of both those drugs on hand and they indeed do a dandy job of getting me to sleep. But I look at them as the heavy artillery. Something to ration until the armageddon of insomnia hits and no amount of melatonin or relaxation exercises will do. Also, melatonin is a chemical your body produces naturally, not a drug, although you wouldn't know it by how effectively it works. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for drugs, but when I'm rocking the insomnia for months on end, I don't want to have to take a prescription medication every night.

I have friends who recommend the gentle, calming embrace of alcohol, but that's just not an option that's going to for me. Nor is regular cardiovascular exercise or weight training. I know from experience that they work, but who wants all the sweat, showering, and weight loss that come along with it? Nah, popping melatonin is easier and it doesn't make you sweat. But if you're sweating in your sleep, I think you probably have bigger problems than insomnia.

Chicken salad sandwiches from Cheesecake Factory

A little over a year ago Salt Lake was graced with a Cheesecake Factory located just west of the Fashion Place Mall. I had heard great things about this restaurant, this Cheesecake Factory, from several of my more world-wise friends, and I decided that I would eventually need to find out what all the hype was about. Why was Salt Lake in such an uproar over a factory that wasn't really even a factory?

Well, it turns out the Cheesecake Factory actually is pretty tasty. I haven't tasted anything from there that was just out and out gross, but I have tried a couple of things that were just meh. Their chicken salad sandwich, however, does not fall into that category.

I've never met a chicken salad sandwich I didn't like, so I might be a titch biased. But you have to believe me when I tell you that you would quite possibly consider wetting your pants when you take the first bite--it's that good. First of all, the actual salad part is made with small, sliced pieces of all white meat chicken, not chunks, which keep the sandwich from falling apart too much on you. It has just the right of mayonnaise and includes the perfect amount of slivered almonds for texture and nice, bitey green onions for flavor. Then it's topped with sliced tomato and shredded lettuce. All that would be ftasty on its own, but let me tell you about the bread they put it on. THE BREAD!

Basically, the Cheesecake Factory went to God's personal baker and asked the head baker to bake up the world's best brioche bread, which he did. They then proceeded to slice it, drench it in butter, and grill impossible, buttery deliciousness right into every spare inch. Then they put their wicked awesome chicken salad on it, ran it through with a toothpick, and called it dinner. (It also comes with a side of salad, which is, quite honestly, pretty darn ftasty in its own right. But I'm not going to describe it for you here because I want this to be all about the sandwich.)

And the super awesome thing about this sandwich besides its perfect taste and texture (because seriously, what good is taste without the texture to go with it?)? It's less than $10. Most everything on the Cheesecake Factory menu is $15 - $20 (all their entrees come with at least three rounds of leftovers, but still), so to have an option that is ridiculously delicious at such a rockin' price is downright awesome. The sandwich also holds in the fridge really well and is still good the next day (I'd say it goes from a 10 to a 9.7), so you can enjoy all that buttery, chickeny goodness for a second or third time, depending on your appetite.

Is the chicken salad sandwich worth a three-hour wait? Well, no. Nothing is worth a three-hour in my book. But if you're going to the Cheesecake Factory, you're going to have to wait no matter what. And you must be some kind of superhero if that 40-page menu doesn't intimidate you. So next time you hit the Cheesecake Factory, I highly recommend the chicken salad sandwich, the cheapest yet most delicious item they offer. This sandwich is so good, it comprises two things I absolutely despise--mayonnaise and butter--and I still love it. That's saying something.

Netflix

I have a testimony of Netflix. First of all, it's pretty much one of the coolest ideas ever conceived. "Let's rent DVDs to people through the mail. And we'll let them keep them for as long as they want and they won't even have to pay postage to send them back." Brilliant, I tell you! I thoroughly dislike paying to mail stuff, I hate rushing to get DVDs back to the rental place on time, and I'm also unbelievably lazy, which means more often than not, I'd rather sit on the couch and flip through channels while thinking about possibly getting up and going to the video rental place. Seriously, this is really a no-brainer for me or any of my fellow self-enforced shut-ins.

Netflix also shamelessly sucks up to my frugality (read: unbelievable cheapness). For around $12.50 a month, I get two movies at a time with no limit to how many I can get. I've tapered off to about eight a month, but for the first three or four months of my subscription I'm pretty sure I was costing Netflix money. I could easily breeze through twenty-four DVDs a month, especially when I was on a TV series run: Battlestar Galactica, Freaks and Geeks, you name it. I'd come home from work and chug through a DVD a night. Thanks to Netflix, I no longer need to see movies in the theater. If I saw something that looked interesting but I knew I could wait to see, I would just log it away in my subconcious and then add it to my Netflix queue when it came out on DVD. Considering that it will run you about $8.50 to go the movies, $12.50 a month for unlimited movies is a downright steal. And unlike going to the movies, if my Netflix movie is crap, I don't mind so much because it really probably only cost me about a buck to watch.

Along with their too-good-to-be-true price, Netflix also has unbelievable service. Since Netflix has a mailing center right in Salt Lake, I can return movies and get two new ones in their place in exactly three days. If I mail movies on Monday, I'll get the replacements on Wednesday. Not as fast as going to the video store, but I'm lazy and don't have any desire to see what lies beyond my mailbox anyway. If you find yourself in that one awkward day between movie deliveries, they also have a bazillion movies available to stream online, which I have done before. It's not as satisfying as watching a DVD, but it probably would have been if I had had cables to hook up my laptop to my TV. That and if the movie hadn't sucked. (Rachie does NOT recommend La vie en rose, about the life of French singer Edith Piaf.)

Mailing fragile DVDs through the mail in nothing but a flimsy envelope, it's inevitable that you're going to get a scraped or broken DVD. I once received a DVD that was split down the middle on one side. Already upset that I was going to have to wait for my next installment of Battlestar Galactia, I dreaded contacting customer support because I thought they would try to blame me for the broken movie or make me wait until they received the faulty DVD before they mailed out the replacement. Neither was true. I notified customer service of the broken DVD. They apologized for the inconvenience and immediately shipped the replacement. That was where they had me. I hadn't had to talk to a person and I was getting gratification as instantaneously as possible. Love it.

Netflix also offers a neat little networking tool where you can link up with friends and see what each other has in their queues. I like the idea in theory but will probably never participate in it myself because I don't need people seeing that I watched something like Nanny McPhee. Sure it was delightful, but what's it going to do to my street cred?

And so I heartily endorse Netflix for both personal use and as a gift. I have given limited subscriptions to friends and family for birthdays and holidays, and many even opted to sign up as regular customers because they like it so much. I really can't think of a downside to Netflix unless you just have no patience at all or you think your OnDemand will cover all your movie-watching needs, to which I ask, Does OnDemand have the 80s cartoon series Jem? Because Netflix does. And it's next in my queue.

Splenda

Forget introductory paragraphs, I'm just going to jump right on in and tell you that Rachie recommends Splenda! I honestly believe I was saved to come to earth in the 20th and 21st centuries specifically to take advantage of the mind-blowing evolutions in food science and portable technology. Until they add a seasoning shaker my iPod, Splenda fits into one of those categories.

The Splenda commercials tell us it's "made from sugar." I don't know if that's true, but I sure know it tastes close enough to sugar to make me want to mix that powdery goodness with a two-liter of Diet Coke and mainline it in both arms at once. I'm no chemist, but I'm crossing my fingers that Splenda and the aspartame from the Diet Coke will form a molecular bond (Tastonium? Nom-nom-olecules?) and take me to a heightened state of awareness and uphoria where I'll witness pink, sparkly unicorns frolicking with Big Foot dressed as a ballerina.

But the super awesome thing about Splenda is that it's all the sweet delectability of sugar with, like, a fraction of the calories. I'm assuming it took black magic and funding from the KGB, KKK, and MSNBC to achieve the final result, but it was well worth the souls and selling out. Tonight I made pancakes for dinner. Pancakes are good, but to me they're basically just a syrup-delivery method. Society tells me it would be wrong and gluttonous to drink syrup straight from the bottle, so I make pancakes and dump syrup on them. Then, once they've reached maximum saturation, I pour a bunch more on just for good measure. The problem, though, is that regular syrup has about a bazillion calories in it. But this syrup I used tonight? Made with Splenda! Only 35 calories in 1/4 cup! That means I could pour the whole bottle in a mixing bowl and float the pancakes on top like delicious, starchy lily pads, and I'd only be consuming 420 calories (not counting the pancakes). How freaking awesome is that?! That, my friends, is cause for celebration.

So proverbial hats off to the fine folks who developed and sell Splenda--giving anorexic hummingbirds everywhere a reason to flap their skinny wings in excitement. It's an exciting time to be alive, isn't it?