Hey guys! PINTEREST OMG! Like all females on the internet, I spend my most useless hours navigating the brain cell gauntlet known as pinterest, carefully curating the most sophisticated of inspiration boards, travelling the self-righteous path of both CREATIVE and PRACTICAL, gracefully cataloguing the most tasteful of home decor, the most delicious of special-occasion deserts, and the quirkiest of outfits and accessories.

Just kidding. I mostly use pinterest to keep track of recipes and craft tutorials, though one of my favorite pins fits into neither of those categories. When I’m not adding recipes and crafts, I’m probably being a jerk to other pinners.

I can’t, for the life of me, understand why people keep repinning the same stupid things OVER AND OVER AND OVER even when they are wrong or stupid or fake. Because I’m both highly analytical and a glutton for punishment, I think I’ve found the three categories into which all of the worst, most awe-inducingly idiotic pins fall in. And, I think, beyond categorizing these pins, one can consequently use deductive reasoning to align all pinterest users into to one of three painfully stupid categories:

1. Pinner type one: Nutrition Idiot. Pins “OMG SO HEALTHY” pins with no nutritional evaluation.

The fact that someone thought that chocolate chip cookies, regardless of the dough ingredients, would have no white sugar or oil in them but somehow magically also have chocolate chips in them blows my fucking mind. Also, your nasty-ass oatmeal smoothie has 370 calories in it if you consume it as the two servings it’s supposed to be. Let’s be honest. You don’t. My eggs and turkey sausage and random fruit are more delicious because they’re not made out of COLD FUCKING OATMEAL, AND I get to have milk and sugar in my coffee.

2. Pinner type two: Research deficient. Pins “OOH PRETTY” pins without bothering to figure out if it’s real or not.

I think my comments speaks for all of us.

3. Pinner type three: PIN ALL THE THINGS, also known as PIN HOARDER. Pins everything.
I can’t illustrate this type of pinner, but seriously, there are pinterest users with THOUSANDS of pins. THOUSANDS. There are probably some with TENS OF THOUSANDS. I can’t imagine having so much spare time and so little motivation that I spend all day long pinning pictures of stuff and never doing anything.

So, there you have it. A random list of what thing on the internet is annoying me this week. Cheers, bitches!

So, this past weekend Beefcake and I made the very long trek up to the Gunflint Trail so I could participate in the Ham Run Half Marathon. It was a very adventurous time! This is part one!

We left Friday morning around 1030 or so. It’s a pretty straight shot up to the north shore from the Twin Cities, though driving through Duluth makes me dizzy. We stopped at a really neat rest stop just outside of Duluth, it had an awesome view and a map pointing out everything of note that you could see from on top of the hill. Next, because I realized about twenty minutes into the drive that I had forgotten to bring my knitting, we made an impromptu stop in Duluth at Yarn Harbor, where I bought some very pretty Colinette Jitterbug and some Cascade 150 Heritage, and a needle. Because I have huge brains, I managed to recall the lace pattern for the Sagebrush Shrug (which was my intended project) so I cast on for that with the Cascade.

We stopped in Grand Marais next to get dinner at Sven and Ole’s. We were told to get a cheeseburger pizza, which we did. It was served with pickles and was delicious.

Now, we were staying at a place called Way of the Wilderness, which is basically some bunkhouses WAY WAY up north. So the next hour and a half were spent driving, nearly by ourselves, along the Gunflint Trail up to our bunkhouse. People, this is for real “murderous hillbilly” country. When we got to the office, we saw this:

So, we just followed the directions. Got to the top of the hill and the view right outside our bunkhouse (sorry, “chalet”) was really nice:

We brought in all of our stuff, setting a few things up and taking in our surroundings. The bunkhouse we were in had a second floor, so we went to check it out, and that’s when we saw the biggest spider we’ve ever seen in real life:

Nightmare Fuel

Fortunately for this spider, we just released him outside instead of panicking and smooshing him. Spiders are good, they eat other bugs, but I wasn’t interested in this guy crawling into my mouth for warmth in my sleep.

Saturday, we slept in. The beds were remarkably comfortable and despite the frogs and bugs yelling at each other all night, we both slept really well. We went for a brief walk around the Trail’s End loop and checked out the view from some of the campsites. We then took a leisurely drive back to Grand Marais, and stopped at some scenic overlooks along the way. One of them was not actually a scenic overlook, and we walked for probably 20 minutes before giving up and turning around. I flipped off Canada too.

Not super sure this was actually Canada, but I flipped off every bit of land over a large body of water I could, just to be thorough

The next site we went to, Beefcake scared some ducks with his Mountain Dew and we found a sign for a picnic site that was probably made by wolves to trick humans.

Yeah, right, wolves TOTALLY didn't make this sign. Whatever.

We finally got to Grand Marais, and took a stroll across the break wall by the harbor. It was super windy and cold, but we were just gearing up for the next stop…
…PASTA FEED! They held a spaghetti dinner as part of the race the night before the run, so we went and ate a gross amount of spaghetti. Because I’m a terrible blogger, I did not take a picture of my spaghetti, so you’ll just have to believe me.

We drove back to Way of the Wilderness and spent the rest of the night playing Pandemic which was awesome (we bought it just for this trip) and listening to the Nerdist podcast. Up next: The race and the rest of the stuff!

Okay, so if you are either a relatively healthy person, a “healthy living blog” hate-reader, or a pinterest user looking at the food boards, you know that oatmeal is a big deal on the internets right now.

Well, cool. I don’t put a million gross things in my oatmeal to make it not taste like oatmeal, and I sure as shit don’t EAT IT COLD OUT OF A MASON JAR because that’s fucking gross. I do like oatmeal though, preferably the paper packet variety, and if I’m feeling fancy, a few cranberries.

I recently procured some Roundy’s fruit and creme variety of oatmeal and took a packet to work. I noticed something odd…

Is my oatmeal going to judge me if I get it wrong?

So, this is pretty strange. Why in the world someone designing food packaging for a generic-food company decided that what that oatmeal packet really needed to stand out in the world of oatmeal packets was some trivia is completely beyond me, but I’ll play along. What DO minnows have in their throat?

AAHHH! NO NO NO!

WHO in their fucking mind thought that having a trivia question about FISH WITH TOOTHY THROATS was appropriate reading material for someone trying to make and eat their breakfast? Oh, you were going to eat that, well instead how about you enjoy some HORRIFYING MENTAL IMAGERY OF FISH WITH TEETH IN THEIR THROATS?

I haven’t eaten the oatmeal yet. And I’m kind of terrified to check the other packets.

One of my employees recently commented to me that making one’s own clothing seemed like an awfully hipsterish thing to do. Now, I didn’t get too upset with him because he’s clearly stupid, but I thought “well, if he thinks this, there are probably other people who think this too.” As someone who has invested a lot of time, thought, patience, blood, and money into making stuff, including my own clothing, and as someone who fucking hates hipsters, it is in my best interest, and also to the benefit of innocent crafters, artisans, and artists everywhere that I lay out some distinctions between us, and worthless hipsters making stupid shit. I refuse to sit by and let myself, and my compatriots, be painted with such a broad brush. Should you be in question of whether you are a crafter/artisan/artist or a worthless hipster, simply follow the below guidelines to steer clear of being mistaken for a grubby shitshack of a human being. If you find that you are, in fact, a hipster, kindly fixie-bike yourself into the nearest ironically painted set of deer antlers. As a side note, a lot of this has more to do with someone’s “online presence” than real life presence. This is mostly because the idiot youth of today learn more about people virtually than actually, and as such the proliferation of instagramming, blog writing (see that? IRONY), amateur video tutorial making blowhards are giving all of us a bad name. What you do in your own house all by yourself without sharing (or only sharing within your real life social circle) is your own business and you can feel only the feelings you want to about it.

1. Don’t make shit out of nasty old bedsheets or “vintage” sweaters. There is a time and place for reusing almost any material imaginable. There are a number of t-shirt crafts out there, many of which are cute and easy, and can expand your wardrobe at little to no cost. There are in fact many people who solely create out of old items which have outlived their first iteration. And there is fundamentally nothing wrong with this. However. Old bedsheets are gross, and are often ugly. Because of this, hipsters love them. Old sweaters are gross, and are often made of nasty yarn. Old sweaters that are not gross and are made of quality yarn *rarely* make it to the thrift stores because they are passed along, in the family, or to friends or other loved ones. Sometimes idiots cut up nice sweaters to make felted stuff or stupid legwarmers, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Hipsters genuinely truly love nasty disgusting things and hipsters of a crafty inclination will take something terrible like crusty old bedsheets stained with the horrible secretions of the so-called “greatest” generation and make an ugly blouse out of them. They will unravel the sweat-stained, moth-eaten reject sweater found in the discount bin of their favourite “vintage” store and unravel it to make themselves the world’s most hideous cardigan. Don’t be like this.
2. Don’t half ass things just to be able to say “OMG I’m so DOMESTIC/CREATIVE.” Listen, everyone starts somewhere. There are very, very few people who pick something new up, a sewing pattern or a pair of knitting needles or a paintbrush or a lathe (yes, I know you don’t actually pick up lathes) and are immediately good enough at it to show off. That’s okay and expected. The wonderful thing about the information age is that you can find resources to learn how to do almost anything. And if you have a job and some disposable income (or if you’re a hipster, if you can trick your idiot boomer parents into cashing out some of that 401k and dropping it into that gaping black hole you call “self-discovery”) you can get quality materials from almost anywhere, to make almost anything. So why in the world are you content to slap some glitter glue on twigs, glue those to a canvas covered with melted crayon, and call yourself an artist? For real, there was a pinterest pin floating around a few weeks ago to make a watermelon skirt, and the whole deal was a pink skirt with green ribbon sewn around the bottom and black faux leather seed shapes HOT GLUED on to the skirt. Someone painted an upholstered armchair with LATEX PAINT mixed with fabric medium. What the actual fuck? Hipsters like to brag, and like to talk about how smart they are and how good they are at everything, including “crafting” and “being domestic.” Don’t be that asshole that makes one chunky garter stitch scarf and then says that they could “totally knit that” every time you’re out shopping with a buddy. Take some pride in to learning how to do something and developing actual skill.
3. Stop putting chalkboard paint, antlers, and owls on fucking everything. For good measure, let’s also ban Navajo prints (unless you are actually Navajo), huge bows, and dreamcatchers. Seriously:

My above statement holds doubly true for chalkboard paint. I used to like chalkboard paint, until people started putting it on their cheese trays and coffee mugs and EASTER EGGS. And PUMPKINS. AND FUCKING PIANOS.
Here’s a clue hipsters, if everyone is doing it IT’S NOT UNIQUE ANYMORE.

Point

A: “I had this drink at the bar last night, called Sex with an Alligator.”

D: “What?”

A: “Sex with an Alligator.”

D: “Why would you name it that?  You can’t have sex with an alligator!”

A: “Listen, I didn’t name it that.  Don’t blame me.  The bottom is cherry whatever…”

D: “Cherry…whatever?”

A: “McGillicuddy’s or whatever.  Then Midori, then coconut rum.  Not Malibu, it’s kind of creamy like coconut milk.  Then Jag.”

D: “That sounds revolting.”

A: “You know what?  It kind of is.  I need to find a new bar.”

Counterpoint

D: “Right now I’m sourcing food-grade lavender, I found a recipe for honey-lavender simple syrup, and a recipe for a lavender-syrup rusty nail.”

A: “Gross.  Isn’t lavender a smell?”

Can I just say, first, how awesome it is to get a pile of spam comments telling me how much useful information they found in my Conversation with Beefcake Mansteed 2 post and that they’ve bookmarked it for reading later? HAHAHA.

So, yesterday we were just hanging out when my brother in law alerted us to a roaming group of hipsters that had taken up temporary residence in the middle of the street near our house. We could tell they were hipsters because 1. they all looked like douchebags with expensive film equipment, and 2. one of them had a boom mic attached to the end of a broom (SO IRONIC OMG SO CREATIVE). We watched as one of them spent about 10 minutes taking photo after photo of our intersection street sign and another one put some stupid sticker on the back of the stop sign (which I took down because I hate hipsters). They then spent another 20 minutes standing in the middle of the street (as cars had to go around them) congratulating each other on how awesome and creative they were. I almost went into full on “get off my lawn” mode. Seriously, these snowflakes/assholes (hey, every asshole is unique too, there are no two identical assholes in all the world!) are not from around here, stop photographing my intersection so that more hipsters come stand outside my house being smug and blocking traffic.

Maybe I sound like a bitter old spinster, but when did it become ok to be a hipster? Did society somehow decide that the best way to achieve all of the human races’ most noble desires was to act like a spoiled, condescending, entitled twat who is somehow better than any normal person without having any actual talent or adding any value to society? It’s now a positive personality trait to talk about how much better you are than everyone else without any ability to back it up, then get whiny when someone calls you on it?

Shit, I fucking hate hipsters. I can’t wait for goth to make a comeback. Or emo. At least those kids keep to themselves.

D: Hey, you have to get up, your alarm went off and today is a workout day.

Beefcake Mansteed: I know, I’m so tired though.

D: I know, I am too, but you gotta do it.

Beefcake Mansteed: I’m really cold.

D: I will for real blow cold air under your blankets if you don’t get up.

Beefcake Mansteed: That’s really mean.

D: Suck it up. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Beefcake Mansteed: Except herpes.