Current Obsessions, vol. 1:

^This is exactly how I operate.

My obsessions come about quickly and sometimes get out of control. The good news is they change almost weekly, (this is especially the case with music) so things stay pretty interesting.

I thought I'd share some of my current loves with you, so you can jump on the crazy train with me, and we can obsess together.

(1) Kanye West's Black Skinhead

I already know how you feel about Kanye. I can't sit through an interview either. Dude is seriously full of himself.

But I still really love his music.

This song is on replay on my phone. I like to blast it when I'm by myself and rock my interpretive dance moves. It's very tribal. My favorite part is when he shouts "ahhh" after the bridge. Plus, I very much wish I could "black out on someone's ass," so there's that.

(2) Mei Lun and Mei Huan, the adorable twin baby pandas at the Atlanta Zoo

I am OBSESSED with these pandas. Are they not the cutest things you've ever seen in your whole entire life?

If you say "no," you have no soul.

I look at their pictures every single day, and I follow Zoo Atlanta on Instagram just so I can keep up their daily growth and development.

(3) The Rhonna Designs App

This is one of my very favorite apps on my Iphone. Its how you take your pictures from this:

To this:

Cute, eh? 

I play with it aaaalll the time. I think its free right now in the app store, but if not, its totally worth the $1.25. 

(4) Impractical Jokers 

Does anyone ever watch this show? 

A surprising amount of people have never heard of it. 

My family and I keep episodes on our DVR, and we watch them all the time. Its my favorite show to watch with people. And I really love that its not mean humor, because nice people are just better. 

As with anything on youtube, the more you watch, the more funny the clips get, but this is one of my favorites from the show. 

Preeeetttttyyy funny.

So what y'all got? Any "must have" media/products/mania I need to look into?

Coming clean about my clan

Do you remember this post of yesterdays gone by? (Two days ago to be exact.)

^That was what I said about my family. I called them "nice" and "good" people. 

Weeeelllll...... that's not entirely true. 

In fact, living with the Fullers is kind of what I imagine living with a small group of terrorists would be like. 

Take for example this video my brother sent me tonight. 

I received more than one clip, but I could never really tell what was bringing about Angry Neal. So I asked him. 

"What are you doing to piss him off?"

His response? 

Oh, that. Naturally. ... My bad. I should have known. 

Keeping the above in mind, lets talk about a bigger issue. 

It is somewhat of a well known fact that I am the least favorite of the Fuller children. That briefly went away when I was in law school, but since sinking back into a life of harrowing disappointment, I can once again claim that title without much reservation. 

Don't believe me? 

Check out this text conversation from a few weeks ago: 

As you can tell from reading, I was in the middle of the interstate when a pretty legit police chase went down. You can read all about here: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/high-speed-police-chase-on-i-20-westbound/ncgRG/. 

Now, as a precursor, here's what responding texts from my family should have looked like. This was a conversation with my friend Emlyn who received the exact same text above as they did. 

Here are four things that Emlyn did that I think would be a pretty basic response in such circumstances:

(1) She validated the insanity of the situation. 

     "OMG!!!!! Craziness!!!!!" (By using capital letters and multiple exclamation marks, she made certain that I knew that she was taking this ordeal very seriously.)

(2) She assessed the situation. She ensured my safety was secured. 

     "Are you ok? Are you moving yet?"

(3) She immediately looked to outside sources to gather information she perceived pertinent to my well-being. 

     

     "I tried to google it. Here's the link from ajc.com"

(4) And finally, she continued to safeguard my security. 

     She not only told me to "lock my doors," but also found local traffic updates to make certain that I could maneuver through the build-up of resulting traffic safely. 

What a picture of consideration and concern. 

Here's what I got from my family: 

Quite the difference in responses.

At least my brother had somewhat of enough decency to "hope I was strapped." (That's "strapped with a gun" for anyone who might be reading this outside of the southeastern United States. It's okay, we carry them here like a hipster with Starbucks outside a Bon Iver concert. Translation: We got this.)

Anyway, his unexceptional chivalry was soon trumped by his constant need to "one-up" everyone. And in my opinion, the FBI being in Sylacauga, Alabama doesn't upstage my police chase story WHILE ITS FREAKING HAPPENING. 

At any rate, at least Justin addressed me directly. That same can't be said for the people who produced me. 

Complete inattentiveness on their part. 

Even when I called them out for being the worst people on the planet, I was met with wordlessness. The whole thing is even more despairing, because its not like they were so busy at work they didn't have time to respond to the situation. They obviously found time to respond to Justin. My mother even found time for cynicism and ridicule with her echoing of Justin's sentiments... which I think were pretty self-evident in the first place. 

You know, I even gave them the benefit of the doubt, thinking they were waiting to hear all about it in person once I got home safely. 

When I finally did arrive home, I was so excited to tell my story. (It was a pretty ridiculous thing to witness, and my adrenaline was pumped sky high the rest of the day.) 

When I walked in the house, no one even mentioned it. 

I waited and waited. 

Nothing.

Finally when we were in the car on the way to dinner and the conversation had stalled, I brought it up. 

"So about that police chase today..." 

My father's response? 

"Oh, God. Not that again." 

This was immediately followed by my brother cutting in with his own story of a could-have-been car accident in a vehicle he was piloting where only his master and superior driving skills saved the entire group he was with from impeding and most certain doom. 

My parents hung on the edge of their seats. 

Sadly, after years of experience with this rigid group of people, I don't expect much different. And unlike Drake who "started from the bottom, now we on top," .... well, I'm still just very much on the bottom. 

Thank God I at least have Emlyn. 

White is my new favorite color

Today it snowed.

As a southern girl, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen snow falling. 

It was something extra beautiful today. 

And it still seems as magical and wonderful to me now as it did the first time I laid eyes on it.

Today the south was stunning, and I hope I never live in a place where the charm of it all ceases to exist.

Oh, I didn't notice that.

[I really wanna test out this blogger app I just downloaded and try to figure out how to post from my phone. Thought this was worth sharing.]

Background Info: My car had been in the shop since before Thanksgiving, and they just got through with it this week. I'm in Atl driving my mother's car around, and I have not laid eyes on my car in months.

Sadly, my humor is wasted on my mother. 

#justleaveherbe

Dear Brittany,

Que the blog lovin' love fest:

I woke up to the *best* surprise this morning- a text from the most authentically hysterical person I know telling me that she had written about MY blog on HER blog.

I jumped out of bed and couldn't wait to see it. There's nothing I love reading about more than myself.

Here are her sweet words:

Y'all... Words of Affirmation are my love language, so you don't even know what something like this does to my psyche. Plus, I am always genuinely floored when people find me funny. I mean, I think I'm funny, but everyone thinks that about themselves. So to receive something like this, where a FUNNY person thinks you're funny... its like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler asking you to be their best friend. 

Day. Made. 

(And Yeah, I used the word "funny" four times in that paragraph. *funny* *funny* *funny* My blog. House rules. Nothing you can do about it.) 

But let's just clear this up now, my "situation" (which sounds a lot nicer than the profanity I normally use) is nothing like Lena Dunham's character from Girls. I mean, I enjoy a good Girls viewing as much as the next person, (that sounds wrong) but to be straight, Girls is a show with #whitepeopleproblems. And I have never once gotten a Q-tip stuck in my ear. 

I think my current state of affairs is a lot more Will Smith in the Pursuit of Happiness. There really are only three major differences separating me from the former fresh prince... 

(1) I have nice people who take me in. 

My family houses and feeds me. They're good people a lot of the time, but mostly I think they just like having someone at home to let the dog out to pee. 

(2) I don't have a cute kid to tow around. 

Some people might see this as a win, because Will Smith probably would have been a lot less stressed in that movie if he didn't have a second mouth to feed. But the truth is people with kids get all the empathy. 

People just like them more. 

Maybe its because they're a safer bet than people who haven't reproduced. Someone with a child obviously found at least one other person who thought they were okay enough to spawn offspring with. Meanwhile all of us who haven't taken the old reproductive system for a spin are totally alone with our crazy. People don't trust that there's no one out there who thought we were stable enough to make babies with. 

I'm not saying this theory is 100% accurate, I'm just saying how many of those 45 year old baristas working at Starbucks do you think have children? I'm convinced we all would have jobs/*better* jobs if we had regular play dates at the park. 

(3) I can't solve a Rubik's Cube. 

Aaaand that's it. In every other way I am exactly like Will Smith in that movie. 

Also, can I just say that real life Lena Dunham grosses me out. I don't mind that you're always naked, but do you have to be on a public toilet eating cake while you're doing it? 

There's really just no excuse for ever sitting on a public toilet, no matter how ironically cool you're trying to prove you are. 

In summary, Brittany Gay, eeer, *Land* (I'll never get that right) is the best. I never would have made a blog if it wasn't for her trailblazing. If you're going to read just one blog post today (other than the one you're currently reading) it should be this one: http://brittanygayland.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-little-personalwarning-tmi.html. I read it every other day, and it never gets old. 

Love you, B!

#ihategemma

[Warning: No real spoilers to follow, but if you're behind on your Sons of Anarchy, you may want to wait to formulate your own opinions before getting jaded by mine...]

Anyone still with me?? 

Ok, so... I watch a lot of TV. 

like A.LOT. 

It's kinda embarrassing. Blame it on the lack of employment if you will, but I just really love good TV. If this blog thing keeps up, my obsessions are bound to carry over in to it, and you're going to see a lot of these types of posts appear here. 

I was late to the Sons of Anarchy party. A show about middle-aged bikers and their motorcycle club did not sound like my kind of thing. But I gave it a try, and I liked it. Okay, mostly at first I just liked Charlie Hunnam. Any girl that watches that show and tells you she doesn't like him is LYING. Greasy hair be damned. 

(Sidenote: I'd never head his name before the 50 Shades of Grey casting, and when I found out he had been cast, I was one of those annoying people that just could not get on board. Now, after watching him on this show... well, girls, we were wrong.) 

Back to the show, I'm not going to lie and say it's the best in the world, because it has a lot of inherent problems. Mainly, it's gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous, and the violence has become more of a shock factor instead of being used to power the story along. It's sad, because what could be really great TV comes off only being sub-par. Oddly enough, that doesn't make me love it any less. And I will say, this show is one of the best I've seen at ending the episode on an "oh my god! no she didddn't!" cliffhanger. 

Case in point: the season 6 finale. It originally aired in December, but I just watched it a few nights ago. The ending has been in my head all week long, and if you watch the show, I think it's safe to say I'm sure it's stuck around with you, too. 

If you happened to catch the title of the post (or the giant picture of Katey Sagal under it) then you already know where I'm going. 

I freaking hate Gemma Teller.

To the point where I'm going to be totally unsatisfied with the entire series if she doesn't get the major comeuppance she's due. 

When the show started out, Gemma was my favorite character. I liked that she was the main female lead in a very testosterone driven world and that she handled her business like a boss. (When she pointed that pistol at the soccer mom who refused to stop honking for her spot in season 2, I was convinced I was looking at future Katie post-menopause.)

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I developed a burning rage of hate every time Gemma's face came across my screen. 

Here's my issue: Gemma is, in my mind, the most horrific character on the show. Heck, I'd even call her the most horrific character on TV if Game of Thrones and it's twisted little characters didn't exist. (I'm looking at you, Joffrey.) My problem is that I don't think we, the audience, are supposed to feel that way. I'm scared the writers are trying to make Gemma this very confused and sad person who acts on impulse, but it's totally okay, because her insanity comes from a very deep place of loyalty to the club and her family. 

Well, I'm not buying it sista'! 

Gemma is evil. Villain to the core. And I don't think there's anything Kurt Sutter can do to make me feel any different. I want it on record here and now that if the writers try to make Gemma redeemable in the final season airing in the fall, I'm going to have a come apart! Girl is too far gone.

I would like to make a motion now that Gemma meets Mr. Mayhem as soon as can possibly take place. I know they'll drag it out. The show probably can't sustain itself without the acting prowess of Katey Sagal. But at some point, before this series is over, crazy lady better be dead.

Any takers?

Our little family tree

In honor of the Grammy awards last night, I wanted to share a little family secret with y'all.

Actually, it's not that little.

It's a pretty big bomb I've been waiting for some time to drop.

Ready for it?

........

........

........

........

........

Macklemore is my half-brother.

That's right. I'm convinced Macklemore is my mother's illegitimate son. She won't own to it, but I'm sure giving up a child is difficult, and not something you're readily ready to share with your other offspring.

The family resemblance is uncanny though, even if you can only really see it when she's not wearing makeup. Not to worry, I found pictures of her freshly naked face for you.

You see it, right?!?!

I'm so glad people finally know the truth. Its hard to stay humble when your family has such impressive credentials. 

And shout out to big bro on his four grammy wins last night! You make our family so proud!