Boats!

I may have just bought a dress bearing a Jessica Simpson label, and that may be shameful, but goddamnit it has sailboats on it. And it was very on sale.

Tower of Bread

Tower of Bread, originally uploaded by helenlikesyou.

I spent most of my Sunday afternoon in the company of my friends and loved one, pounding McSorley's and loudly demanding more beef. Yes, I was at the Brooklyn Beefsteak, and yes, I believe the hipster-servers were personally avoiding serving me specifically. Also, we built the best damn tower of bread ever.

How Nerds Brine Meat

In the grand tradition of my (in)famous attempt to determine via math the amount of zest you can get from a grapefruit based on the amount of zest you can get from a lemon, the inimitable Francis Lam dives into the question of exactly how much salt your meat picks up when you brine it. It's over at Salon.com, and reading it felt like taking a vacation into my own mind.

By the Numbers

There is this one particular shopping website that I love, which I will not name here because I don't want to embarrass it. Somehow (for the life of me, I can't remember where I heard about it) I was one of the very first people to visit this shop when it opened over the summer, and I wound up buying a very cute shirt, for which the email confirmation was sent to me with the header "New Order # 100000032." And I was like SO EXCITED that I was only the THIRTY-SECOND PERSON to order something from this neato torpedo site.

That was in July. Just now, eight months later, I made my second purchase from this site. And my order number was 100000201. You guys, is that not so tragic? This great website — which did I mention I LOVE? Like they donate a portion of your purchase to charity, kind of love? — has only made 169 sales in eight months? I mean I guess that averages to one every business day but still. This site deserves better. And also maybe I wasn't one of the very first people to visit it back in the day, maybe I was just one of the very first to buy from it. I feel so much less cool.

Okay, fine, it's Tra Tutti, an online consignment shop that has surprisingly good wares (though, ew, some Ed Hardy) and gives 20% of the purchase price to the charity of your choice.

Big Star, Soul Deep

Alex Chilton, terrific musician who everyone should love, has died at the age of 59.

Special ways I am connected to Alex Chilton: he was the lead singer of the Box Tops, the group that sings "Soul Deep," the song I have always misheard as being "so deep"; one of Chilton's later groups, Big Star, was the inspiration for the name of Paul Kahan's Chicago taco joint, at which I have eaten seriously spectacular pork belly tacos.