Skittles

Sometimes I think that, when the skittles company was still in it's tender years of advertising, a wise marketer took it aside and said:

"Look, your catch phrase is a problem. Not only does it make no sense, a rainbow being nothing more than light refracted through a prism – tasteless and intangible – but it also makes the mind jump to unicorns. You don't want you're product associated with unicorns. Trust me."

And so the Skittle Company begged the wise marketer  to tell it what to do.
 "Change your slogan" he advised. But the Skittle Company didn't want to. They pleaded, groveled, and cajoled him to think of a way they could use their treasured catch phrase without having to bring in unicorns, until finally the wise old marketer said "There is a way, but it's dangerous. Not every product can pull it off."

"We'll do it," Said the skittle company. "For the sake of our rainbow of flavours, we'll do it"

And thus was born the skittle commercials: The men held by giant hands, the kid with the skittle tree, the blender angered at being replaced – all attempting to be so surreally fantastical that they make the slogan ("taste the rainbow") seem not only quite normal but safe and familiar.

At least, that's how I imagine it to be. But then again, I don't like skittles.

Cycles

아녱센요! (a-nyeong-se-yo, or my attempt at a hello).

It's nice to see everybody has survived their summers. I'm so looking forward to fall. Having only one class, I should be able to post more often, right? I guess I should warn you, I just published a post a few minutes ago, but I dated it August 15th. I actually wrote it on the seventh, but my pictures wouldn't upload, so twenty days later here it is! And yes, the power to alter my blogs chronology is some kind of scary cool. Should I say I wrote this when I was six?

Most of the things I alluded to in the previously mentioned post are actually still current. I did sign up for a class, I'm still following my study plan (loosely, but enough to make me wonder if I'm merely an alien replacement), and I haven't yet made my bento freezer staples. However, Snow White and her dwarves are scheduled to leave today for a week so I'm looking forward to a productive weekend at least. Maybe even an actual post?


I'll tell you all about my class when I have something more interesting to say than "I'm taking such-and-such at such-and-such a time." In order to distract you, can I tell you the latest news in sewing blog land? Ms. Casey, from Casey's Elegant Musings, is going to hold a circle skirt sew-along. I've watched her swing dance sew-along, and Ms. Gertie's one for Lady Grey (that was hard to watch, I love colette patterns), and I'm thinking this time maybe I won't just watch.

Desire. 

Dream.

 Do. 

The three steps of obsession. 

This, combined with my halloween costume, my language study, my class, my blog, and the fact that I do actually work now, should fill up my hours quite nicely. I'm hoping to get a lot of crafty stuff done now because, come November, I'm trying for Nanowirmo again. Last year I hit the humiliatingly low number of 5,000 words, which must not happen again. In recognition of all these plans, I'm ending this post with a sappy limerick poem. Enjoy!

My dreams sometimes seem like so much rubbish.

Like shiny candy wrappers,

Tossed away with glee.

In the sweetness of this swiftly fading present,

I give up a cloudy future

For hard and sure reality.   

In which we review some bento

I'm so glad it's August. The weather has finally started calming down, and I've begun to get those back-to-school-tingles that I love so much. Pretty soon the whole world will put on the most bewitching perfume, and we'll all start gathering "bouquets of sharpened pencils."

Here are the bento I've put together in the past two weeks. No need to squint at them, by the way, just click 'em to enlarge. 

Steak, rice, Nuts, cheese, and various veggies

Rice, egg soboro, cukes, cheese,  and zucchini cake

Rice, tamagoyaki, sausage, marinated cukes, and various fruits

You can see that I've used some unorthodox containers to accommodate my varying leftovers. I'm really happily embarrassed with my rice heart. Like a charaben bride . . . .  Anyway, to make it I placed the veggies around a cookie cutter before stuffing the thing with rice. And, yes, the rice held the whole day with the cookie cutter removed. I'm always interested in how other people's bentos hold up after being lugged to work, or even how they survive having the lid put on them – some people like to have everything popping out of the box when they take their pictures, which is striking but can hardly reflect what they see when they sit down to lunch. I know that when I use this particular bowl I have to be really careful about how I carry it, because, being a vessel of chinese take-out origins, the lid doesn't fit that securely. My other bento boxes I'm a lot more careless with, to the point where I have had to mop spilled vinegar off my blue case more than once.

Besides planning out my next round of bento freezer staples, and making an out-of-this-world study plan for my outer sloth's amusement, I've been toying with whether I should take an class at the community college. They have a folk dance class that would be a lot of fun, a digital photography class which I know I need, and various cooking classes. The cooking classes are easiest to say no to, they cost as much as seven weeks of dance class but only last one day. I can pretty much muddle my way through anything in the kitchen – though the canning and dumpling classes are really tempting – and I do need to be saving something for when I move out. More if I want to go somewhere on vacation next year. That leaves dance - bonus points for being healthy - and photography, which would benefit you all. Which would pick if you had to choose?