What to write when you have nothing to write

Some days I think I have something I want to write about and then I realize that I really only have one or two sentences to say about it and so it doesn't seem worth the post. (Is this why Twitter is so popular?). Normally, I let these things die or else pad the post with photos of my cat, but today, I'm just going to throw them together incongruously in a single post. This post.

Websites like this one make me wonder if I'm not under-utilizing Dinah's incredibly tolerant nature and willingness to be photographed. I think I should start a line of greeting cards with her image.

I went for a hike in the Palisades in New Jersey this weekend. It was a beautiful day and the trail was surprisingly empty, but for a group of teenage girls. We saw them fleeing the scene after they spray painted a heart on some historic stone tower thing at the start of the trail. You give teenage girls everywhere a bad name, teenage girls of Bergen County.

I recommend the book Sea of Poppies. It's one of those books with a number of characters whose lives all intersect, but remarkably you still are able to care about all of them. It also offers some very compelling evidence for why you should never succumb to opium addiction.

I saw the movie A Dangerous Method this weekend purely because my friend wanted to go and it was showing at a movie theater that served movie themed food to you while you ate (a phenomenon which is apparently slow to reach the East Coast). I got "Jung's Beaten Biscuits" which I didn't really understand because do you really beat biscuits? Wouldn't there have been a better food to put on the menu if you wanted to draw on the S&M aspects of the film? Also, if they were beaten it was probably a bit too much because they were not fluffy and delicious, but rather the type of biscuits I imagine they gave to sailors on overseas voyages in the 1800s. I ate them only because I paid for them and because the apple chutney they came with was tasty, but it likely would have been just as good with something like "Freud's Over-analyzed Pork Sausages" had they but been on the menu. The movie was only so-so.

In other movie watching news, I finally arrested my attention from watching Law & Order episodes on Netflix long enough to actually watch a movie. If you like satires of college-kids-killed-off-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods type slasher movies that still have a fair amount of gore (albeit comedic), I recommend Tucker and Dale Versus Evil. Actually, you can really get the whole movie just from the trailer, so maybe just watch that instead.

Another near-victory at trivia night was thwarted by not knowing any of the noble gases other than neon. The only thing I remember about high school chemistry (being the last chemistry class I took) is that my teacher would go out to his car on lunch and smoke cigars.

Have a happy Mardi Gras readers!