Category Archives: stuff i like

5 Ways My Kindle Surprised Me

Posted by plumpdumpling on April 6, 2010 – 3:45 pm
Filed under readin' and writin', stuff i like
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Now that the iPad has been released, several people have asked me if I wish I would’ve waited another week to buy my Kindle.

And my answer is always, “Are you kidding?” The iPad is great-looking and probably fun to use, but it’s not an e-reader. The Kindle is actually everything I hoped it’d be and more, for half the price of even the cheapest iPad (and almost $600 cheaper than the most expensive one). I feel like I didn’t know half of what it was capable of before I bought it, and I wouldn’t have hesitated as long as I did had I known what I was in store for.

• Built-In Dictionary: A small button on the front acts as a mouse that allows you to scroll around pages. When you rest the cursor beside any word, a text bubble pops up at the bottom of the page with the definition. I always thought I was a smartypants who was soooo good at figuring out words from their context clues, but it turns out that no, no, I am not.

• Free Wireless 3G Internet Access: Why is this not the main point they’re using to sell the Kindle other than, you know, the whole being-able-to-read-books-on-it thing? The Amazon store is of course built right in, but Google and Wikipedia searches are, too, and I was even able to view this very blog on it. It was the text version, like you might see on a BlackBerry, but still. Dedicated wireless!

• Highlighting and Notes: I used to carry around miniature sticky notes to plop down all over my book pages, but the Kindle not only lets you highlight the text itself, it also lets you type notes on the page you’re reading. It collects your highlights and notes in a file that lists them and includes a small excerpt from each one so you can find what you’re looking for at a glance. When you plug your Kindle into your computer’s USB port, you can copy the file from your Kindle to your computer and edit it from there. GENIUS.

• Text-to-Speech: Yeah, it reads to you. I’m not talking about playing audiobooks on it. I’m talking about a male or female voice (that’s not too robotic) that recites the text for you while you eat a sandwich with one hand and wipe your butt with the other. I will never use this, but I’m pleased with its existence nonetheless.

• MP3s: It plays them. While you read, on the subway, with the gangster-looking guy next to you listening to some sappy Beyoncé that you can be so thankful you don’t have to hear.

I don’t need a free hand on the train to flip the page, I don’t have to lug five paperbacks on the plane with me every time I visit my family, and I can catch up on (for free!) all of the classics I should’ve read in college but was too busy being a band groupie to take time for.

There’s one negative: the Kindle can read PDFs, but it can’t read them as well as the ebooks you buy from Amazon.com. Meaning that you can’t highlight or write notes in them. NOT A FAN. Luckily, there’s a free program called MobiPocket Creator that lets you convert your PDFs into a format the Kindle likes and can highlight/notate.

Of course, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, and all of these things were clear to everyone else. Anyway, are you convinced yet?

Materialistic and Proud of It

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 14, 2010 – 2:00 pm
Filed under holidays don't suck for me, narcissism, stuff i like
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You know when you get gifts from people that prove they really, really know you? And not only know you but actually get you and possibly even don’t mind you? Here are a few that I received at the end of the year that made me go, “Oh, crap, you actually pay attention to me when I talk to you, don’t you?”

In order of appearance in my life:

1) From Tracey, a pirated copy of The Peanut Butter Solution, which is probably my favourite childhood movie aside from Labyrinth. I don’t know why my mom would’ve taped it off of TV, but she did, and I must have watched that thing 700 times as a kid. It scared me to death, but it likely also cultivated my extreme taste for peanut butter as an adult. Having it back in my life feels like regaining a lost limb.

2) Also from Tracey, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Barbie. I don’t, like, collect Barbies or anything, I need you to know, but I do love the film, and I love that someone at Mattel is weird enough to suggest they make a doll WHO IS BEING ATTACKED BY PLASTIC BIRDS. I think she’s crazy-beautiful.

3) An owl locket ring from Kamran. Not two days before this arrived in the mail, we were discussing the steampunk movement on the way to work, and I told him that steampunk isn’t really my style. What I meant was that I like the aesthetics of it but that I’m too lazy to outfit my computer keyboard with typewriter keys and too conservative to wear goggles ‘round my neck every day. Having searched Etsy for the word steampunk to find the ring, he was worried I wouldn’t like it, but umm . . . it’s an owl on a locket with scrollwork on the band. There is nothing about this that is not me.

4) OMG, a vintage mink stole. Like, for real. It was fate, too, because mere hours before it arrived in the mail, Kamran and I saw this girl in the elevator wearing a fur, and I was like, “Why does she have that and I don’t?” And he totally goaded me into talking for ten minutes about why I love fur so much with absolutely no regard to animal life, knowing that I’d be getting one from him later in the day. It has a giant minky button in the front over the closure, and it’s so soft I no longer care to think about–let alone touch–kittens and bunnies.

My dad also got me a copy of Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government for Christmas, but I prefer not to discuss that.

Less Blogging, More Work

Posted by plumpdumpling on December 7, 2009 – 12:20 pm
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My four favourite blog posts from the past week:

1) Amy doesn’t need to douche from Unapologetically Female.

2) How to be, like, a real writer from Bachelor Girl.

3) An animal body to keep you warm at night from Belly Shirts.

4) Who brought this guy? from Awkward Family Photos.

The rest of you were either boring or have locked journals that can’t be linked to, but that doesn’t mean I love you any less.

Cry Baby

Posted by plumpdumpling on November 30, 2009 – 4:00 pm
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It may have been that I was overwhelmed by the joy I was feeling just from being in Ohio, but the following two things made me cry for no good reason last week:

1) The scene in “Glee” when the kids from the deaf school perform John Lennon’s “Imagine”. I generally find the show cheesy and overproduced, but I was unexpectedly emotional about the unconventional solo and the sappy joining together of the two rival choirs.

This is where my video clip would be if Fox wasn’t overly protective of their stupid show, didn’t hate free publicity, and hadn’t ratted me out to YouTube. You are dead to me, “Glee”.

2) At a screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox, my best friend and I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie Babies. I don’t even LIKE babies, but everything about this is wonderful. Especially the part that says, “THE BABIES ARE COMING.”

10 Things I Try Not to Take for Granted

Posted by plumpdumpling on November 24, 2009 – 2:10 pm
Filed under holidays don't suck for me, stuff i like
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Every Thanksgiving, my stepmother-who-I’ve-known-my-whole-life-and-think-is-the-best-possible-stand-in-for-my-actual-mother-who-died-of-brain-cancer-in-2000 puts pieces of dried corn next to each person’s plate at the dinner table and tells us we have to give thanks for one thing for every piece of corn we have. Her kids, who are adults and not 14-year-olds as you might expect, seem to think this is a real challenge, even though there’s usually only two pieces of corn at their plates. Every year, I want to scream, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST SAY YOU’RE THANKFUL FOR JESUS AND REGULAR BOWEL MOVEMENTS!!” But their grandfather is always there, and you know how hard it is to get geriatrics off the topic of bowels once it comes up.

Anyway, to prove how totally easy it is for me to come up with things I’m thankful for, here’s a short list:

1) My dad, who I look forward to seeing at every holiday gathering both because he always eats more pie than I do to keep me from looking like a fatty and because he’s totally fine with discussing right in front of everyone what a disappointment I am for not bombing abortion clinics every chance I get.

2) My best friend, Tracey, who pretends with an uncanny level of believability that she misses me when I’m not in Ohio with her and who doesn’t mind if I steal all of her Vanilla Coke Zero when I’m in Ohio with her. And also who doesn’t have sex with her husband for entire weeks at a time when I visit because I’m latched on to her at all hours of the day.

3) Kamran.

4) My best New York friend, Beth, who wears Prada shoes but totally doesn’t mind my Chucks, who drinks artisan cocktails but will totally buy me a Woodchuck or a Magners, and who only listens to Madonna but will totally go see Sufjan with me. If I buy her ticket.

5) Bachelor Girl, who posts things like this without any consideration for the fact that I’m building a stalker case against her publicly in case anything bad happens to me. You are my BBFF, baby.

6) The fact that at some point in our nation’s history, it was totally okay to exploit freaks of nature. (from Anthony)

7) The part of Band of Horses’s “Ode to the LRC” where he says, “The world is such a wonderful place.” Because it really feels that way at that moment.

8.) Mind-blowing hyperrealistic sculptures. (from Kamran)

9) Everyone who reads this thing, including the people who find it by using Google search terms such as “never thought i’d be a homewrecker” and “i scraped off a mole with my fingernail”.

10) Regular bowel movements.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. I’m off to Ohio!