August 2008 – Page 2

Bad Hair Bad Chinese Food

While Bozzio and I were strolling to Williamsburg tonight I decided that if I found a salon that was still open I would go in and demand a haircut.There was not much risk involved being that it was after 7pm but I still think that if I had found one I woulda:

The Beehive Salon
115 N 7th St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Phone: (718) 782-8376
Reputation:I hear good things
Clients:It’s in W’Burg and wburg is for the hip children

I have over-long hair.It’s a disaster.It frizzes up in humidity and makes me feel messy and uncool.I’d like to have the kind of hair that makes me look dressed up even when I am not.Ha ha.I have always had messy hair.I can put all different kinds of goop in it but it will still do whatever it wants.
Now that I often go out wearing glasses I feel even more self conscious about my hair,strangely enough.I think that having messy hair and wearing glasses does a lot of not good things to my appearance.
Recently on Saturday night I was walking home in my disheveled glory: no make up,glasses,messy hair and a rather butch outfit of a tee and cut off men’s cargo pants.I did not look nice.I did not have to look nice.I was just going up to the corner store and then going back to my house.I might have even been cleaning or something.I passed the bad Chinese restaurant where there were a few guys waiting for their chicken wings.
Recognizing an easy target when they saw one they began to call after me “Miss, miss I have to do a photo shoot and we are short a model!’ “One thousand dollars an hour!”
I didn’t think this was very nice at all.Not everyone has the time to put on nice clothes and brush their hair and put in contact lenses just to go to the corner store!The joke was on them because they were eating dogfood Chinese in one of the worst Chinese restaurants ever known to mankind.
Here is how to spot a restaurant of poor quality.
Look out for bullet proof plastic separations between you and the register.This means you are in a bad neighborhood and do not deserve to eat good food.Another sign of low quality is the faded pictures of good Chinese food dishes on the wall.You wish you could eat at the restaurant those dishes were prepared in but you live in a neighborhood once famous for crack and gunshots.The fact that you moved to this neighborhood means that it’s cleaned up it’s act but the people who own the restaurant remember the bad old days.

New Dragon Restaurant
47 N Oxford St
Brooklyn, NY 11205-1006
Reputation:The Worst Food You could Possibly Ever Eat(but you eat it anyway)
Patronage:The Very Very Lazy,People with dead taste buds,people who think chicken wings are a food staple.

In my Fort Greene,Clinton Hill neighborhood we only have bad Chinese food.
We have Sapolo,Yummy Yummy(Yucky Yucky, I call it) and a lot of others.Sapolo may be more edible than the others around here but not by much.They are not even really a Chinese restaurant because they serve Arroz con Pollo and Papas Fritas. We do have one Chinese restaurant better than the others; Kum Kau Chinese but they do not deliver… ever heard of a Chinese restaurant that doesn’t deliver? Now you have.
When I first moved here from 36 st and 9th avenue I was thoroughly used to the dogfood Chinese restaurant problem.But if the places closest to me were gross I was still near enough to a good neighborhood that I could order good Chinese food if I wanted it. I do not have that luxury here in fort Greene/Clinton Hill.Even when I was still living on 9th and 36th back in 2005 the neighborhood restaurants began to step up to the fact that it wasn’t all about drunks and crack and guns anymore.And sure enough some real cooks who knew how to prepare Chinese food without a single chicken wing on the menu came along and opened a decent establishment right between 38th and 37th on 9th. Sigh. Gentrification. Can’t live with it can’t have good Chinese food without it.

Worst Album Covers,Ever

Chicken Coupe de Ville has it all. The mullet and the mutton chops,the pick up truck and the hay in his mouth,the pale,skinny shirtless chest and the Dixie flag design peeking through in the title.I want to hear the smash hit “I Seen Her First”,don’t you? Being White Trash is an art and Chicken knows this.

And then he goes to the Optometrist and the Dentist.
For more go to Chicago Tribune’s photogallery

Wp-Ecommerce and nextGen Gallery

For WordPress Users

If you have both nextGen and wp-shoppingcart installed but don’t have the gold cart files.
If you have nextGen and wp-shoppingcart installed and do have the gold cart files but don’t like the row of thumbs in the pop up thickbox window.
If you want to get the Full Size link back in the thickbox pop up window.
If you want the pop up images to get resized less in the thickbox pop up window.
If you prefer nextGen’s thickbox to wp-shoppingcart’s.

Having both plugins used to create a mess but the authors seem to have reached a compromise:if both plugins are detected,nextGen will *use wp-shoppingcart’s javascript(thickbox).

The Hard Way

Keeps the additional row of thumbs
I opened the wp-shoppingcart plugin folder in plugins and found in js, thickbox.js.
The structure looks like this:
wp-content/
plugins/
wp-shoppingcart/
js/
thickbox.js
I opened up the thickbox.js that nextGen supplies and found the code for the full-size link.

[javascript]"’ id=’TB_FullSize’ title=’Full Size’>Full Size</a>  "[/javascript]

Then I opened thickbox.js in wp-shoppingcart/js and added it to the block which begins at line 189 and ends on line 191. If you aren’t comfortable splicing in code you can just paste this entire block from lines 189 to 191 in the file (the line numbers refer to the numbers in the .js file not this snippet)

[javascript]// TODO empty window content instead
jQuery("#TB_window").append("<a href=” id=’TB_ImageOff’ title=’Close’><img id=’TB_Image’ src=’"+url+"’ width=’"+imageWidth+"’ height=’"+imageHeight+"’ alt=’"+caption+"’/></a>" + "<div id=’TB_caption’>"+caption+"<div id=’TB_secondLine’>" + imageCount + "  <a href=’" + url + "’ id=’TB_FullSize’ title=’Full Size’>Full Size</a>  " + prev.html + next.html + "</div></div><div id=’TB_closeWindow’><a href=’#’ id=’TB_closeWindowButton’ title=’Close’>close</a></div>");
[/javascript]
Be sure to comment out the old block or just cut it
Optional other changes
Pop up images are resized too small. Thickbox.js resizes your images with our old friend math.
Stop it from resizing them too much by editing lines 110 to 111.
Original
[html]
var x = pagesize[0] – 150;
var y = pagesize[1] – 150;[/html]
Edited
[html]
var x = pagesize[0] – 50;
var y = pagesize[1] – 50;[/html]
I am not smarter than the people who wrote this resizing code, so act accordingly.

The Easy Way

But without that extra row of thumbs on the left
Because messing with thickbox.js can lead to trouble (if done wrong your pop ups won’t work) an alternative is uploading nextGen’s thickbox.css and thickbox.js to the wp-shoppingcart folder.
In the end that is what I did. I was very happy with the result. I always thought having the additional row of thumbs on the left of the pop up window was swanky but redundant. If you come to a page of thumbnail pictures do you really need even more thumbs in the actual pop up window?

Instinct
nextGen

These edits or file-switches will be wiped out when you upgrade.
*Apparently you can pick another effect besides thickbox like highslide or smoothbox in Gallery Options>>Effects tab.

Summer Vermin

We’ve lived in this loft since Spring 2005.Until this summer there was only one incident of a massive roach being in close proximity to me.That time I was at the computer desk when it strolled up the wall behind the monitor.I used a combination of broom and oven cleaner to kill him.That was 2 years ago.I thought it was a fluke and was getting pretty darn relaxed.Our summer vermin seemed relegated to flies and mosquitoes. And I was OK with that.

But this summer is proving that no matter what those f**kers are going to find me and make my life miserable.It’s taken them 11 years but they’ve tracked me down from my lower east side apt and have decided to step it up a notch and fly while I am looking at them.The ones in the lower east side place by comparison were much more low key.They only looked like they could fly. I never actually saw them take to the air.

Why do they disturb me so much? Is it because they are 2 inches long?It’s not so unique to hate roaches because everyone dislikes them.People also don’t like mice,rats and spiders and snakes.I don’t mind those at all.We have some mice and when they scurry around doing their thing I just say hi mouse.I don’t feel the need to stand on my couch with a broom screaming oh s**t. I actually like mice although I am aware they spread germs and there was that Hanta Virus.

So with the MFMR, massive flying mutant roach,my problem must be with their ability to fly.Think about it.Something you really really do not like and it can fly.This means it could possibly land on you.

Last night I was watching disc 3 from season 1 of My Name Is Earl and a MFMR flew from the TV and landed on the speaker four feet away.I got the broom and thwacked it a good one and it fell out of sight.Then I stood on top of the couch and waited for it to run out from wherever it was.I heard some rustling noises and looked at the trash.We have a small trash bin on top of a chair next to the speaker because Bozzio tends to raid any trash that isn’t elevated. So when I hit it with the broom I knocked it into the bin.Awesome.All we had to do was tie up the liner! He’d be trapped in there and we wouldn’t even have to kill him. My boyfriend’s brother was home and I told him to tie up the bag and take it down to the street.
I’m grateful that this episode was over much faster than the previous one. But 2 massive bugs in 2 weeks is beginning to look like a trend.