Would you like some merlot? I make it in the toilet.

A large’ish morning post. Disjointed, because the Red Bull hasn’t kicked in yet.

A trillion thanks to stephaniegray for showing these to me:

http://digg.com/celebrity/Commemorate_Paris_Hilton_s_incarceration_through_perfume#c7048480

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/06/the_sweet_smell_of_chokey/

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Ted and I went to the jewelry studio last night to our engagement and wedding rings started. I was a nervous wreck, but in the end, it all went wonderfully. As much as I secretly make grabby hands at diamonds, my brain cannot justify the cost. Love shouldn’t have to ring up to the tune of three month’s salary. Anyway, so we’re having ours custom made by the utterly fucking fantastic people at Skinny Dog. Ted is getting a garnet set in white gold, and I chose a black diamond flanked by two small white diamonds (thank you, Meg, for the diamond advice!) set in antiqued red gold. One of the best parts of the experience for us… is that when the molds are completed, we get to cast each other’s rings. Its such a meaningful gesture. I found a compromise for myself. I love black diamonds, they’re reasonably priced, and both the black diamond and the white diamonds are free of the taint of conflict and blood. We’re not spending a ton of money, yet the symbolism (and the clear conscience!) is worth a million fucking bucks to me.

Did I mention that I love the guys at Skinny Dog?

Some examples of their work:

Wow, I just totally pic-spammed you. Sorry!

Scott and Jen at Skinny Dog are amazing. Honestly, the images on the web site don’t do their work justice. They do all the fancypants jewelry designs for Disney, including the original jewelry designs for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. A million thanks to Scott and Jen, and to Clay over at Studio City Tattoo (arr, matey!) for introducing us!

The rings should be ready in about a month. I’ll post pics of the engagement ring when its finished, and I’ll post pics of the wedding rings after the wedding. 😉

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Something creepy happened to me a few days ago. In a reply to one of my LJ posts, I get the following:

Hey. I don’t suppose you could be prevailed upon to make your userinfo display your friends-of list could you? I’m currently interested in studying what kinds of rates of return serial adders get, and I’m assuming you’ve been doing that, as its very rare for anyone but a serial adder to have as many friends as you do. If not, sorry for the miscategorization. Anyway your livejournal is of particular interest as it is a rare continuously updated serial adder and one of very few that I’ve been able to find that has been active within a year.

Also if you (or someone else who happens across this comment) know of any other serial adders I would be pleased if you would point them out to me.

I do nerdy things like this with the information.

I haven’t a clue what a serial adder is, so I ask. I get this reply:

Serial Adding: Friending people with the main purpose of thereby causing them to friend you back.

Seeing as you already have three more friends than you did yesterday, if you aren’t, you must be meeting people at a really astounding rate. Not that serial adding is necessarily a bad thing – I’m hoping you are, because thats what I’m trying to study at the moment. Either way your rate of friend-growth is unprecedented and I am extremely curious to see your friends-of list to complete the picture.

What irritated me is that this person, while doing this research, —

A. is hawking my friends list – which gives me the heebies
B. is asking for my f-list info under the guise of research, but hasn’t bothered to even read my LJ info page

This person also added me to the friends list of their mock account, emo_snal, obviously just to see if I’d add back. Am I the only one that thinks its offensive that someone would create a bogus account full of drivel just for the sake of experiment? It strikes me as deceptive. I mean, I post a lot of drivel, myself, but at least its real drivel. 😉

The whole thing rubs me the wrong way, and I don’t feel that I need to justify my account or my self to a complete stranger. Maybe I’m old and don’t “get” the interweb, but why the fuck would someone make an account just to collect the names of people that they don’t know, even in passing? I get a lot of weird adds on MySpace (not really at all on LJ), and the weird ones are inevitably bogus accounts set up – not by friendcatchers – but by fucking shitbag spammers. So I guess that my attitude towards this whole concept is likely sour because of that. I also secretly hate MySpace, but that’s a different story altogether. I assume that the people that add me on LJ are customers, people I know from LJ comms (usually BPAL ones) or the forum, or people that I’ve met at will call or other events. Personally, I think that given the fact that I do, admittedly, meet a lot of people whose RL names I probably can’t match immediately to their LJ names, it would be rude of me not to add someone back if they add me… unless, of course, they have shady intentions towards me or towards the shop. It sucks, but it has happened.

I’ve had people watch my account for weird reasons in the past, but I dunno… being asked for information under a weird pretense like this just makes me feel all gross. If I want to sit under a petrie dish, I’ll sign up for a clinical trial at USC Medical. I’m certainly not going to subject my friends to this sort of bizarre scrutiny.

– – –

In other news, I suck at bowling. We’re trying to get a team together for this year’s Punk Rock Bowling Tourney in Vegas. Hopefully I can get my game above FORTY before then.

Did I mention that I had never bowled until last week?

All of this bowling stuff is likely a thinly-veiled excuse for me to buy a kickass, tacky bowling ball. I found two that I love… one is leopard print, the other is an 8-ball. No one can ever accuse me of good taste.

Aaaaaand… no more writing for me. I’m picking up Brian and Jacquelynn’s dog, and we’re going to work.

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EDITED:
http://kebechet.livejournal.com/174774.html?thread=1582518#t1582518

No harm, no foul. =)