Rock Me Around The Christmas Tree - Shopping Fairview Mall, Pen Center, Seaway Mall, Niagara Square - St Catharines, Welland and Niagara Falls, Flea Markets

rock-n-roll-santa-costume

I always enjoy the rush at the last minute when I’d be shopping like mad on December 24th for my last minute gifts.

The mall would have midnight madness at the Seaway Mall, Pen Center or Fairview Mall . Here you will find a website where you will find a phone directory, fashion, designer and La Moda Shoes.

It’s time for the ladies to go buy some lovely boots and coats for themselves.

I found some great deals at Winners and Zellers.

Coats are 30% off at Zellers and it’s just what Santa ordered.

I found some really nice boots there too.

As for my Christmas Shopping, I’ll be checking out the flea markets in several cities.

That’s the best place for deals on designer hand bags, hats, scarves and purses. (London rocks for Flea Market variety in this category)

There’s also unique furniture and custom made dressers, tables and bookcases. (Pickering Flea Market has a great selection)

The St Catharines Flea Market has specials on baked goods, meats, candies, collectibles, Betty Boop, furniture, pets (rabbit and bird food at a discount).

Fresh produce, furniture, tools, books, fishing gear, stereo equipment, cds, and records.

My favorite stand is Fuzzy’s.

She sells books for $1 and makes the best banana bread for $1.50.

Dave sells incense, special herbal products.

You can even buy a bunny for $10, finches for  $10, doves and budgies for under $25  including the cages and food.

We go to the Flea Markets all the time, and find all sorts of cool things to clutter our house with.

Sometime’s we’ll go there for breakfast or lunch, everything is under $5.

Some Flea Markets have a cover charge from 50 cents to 1 dollar.

While other’s charge nothing.

When times are tough you’ve got to look for the best bargains.

I was sad to see that my XPress chinese store was no longer at Niagara Square.

I loved buying Chinese art pieces for my home.

However there is a good gift shop at Niagara Square that sells meditation and classical CDs for $15. (everywhere else they are $30 to $35 for the same ones)

I’ll keep you posted if I see any more bargains out there.

Block, Punch.....What's That Smell?

My daughters have gone exercise crazy. Seriously. From the standard YMCA fitness machines to the latest craze, Zumba, they have embraced it all with more zealous than Sean Penn has for Hugo Chavez.

And, of course, they want to drag me along. So far, I have managed to resist (mostly by hiding in the closet or not answering my telephone when they call). It’s not that I don’t want to be fit. I do! I really do! And, when they find me a class that offers HD TV and Ding Dong breaks, I’m totally in and ready to squat/jump/shake my booty/etc. Until then, my plan is to stick with the Sit and Be Fit Class on PBS. SABF is the only enjoyable exercise routine that I have found so far. It takes only a few minutes and I can participate while sitting on my butt on my overstuffed couch with my Diet Coke, cigs, and Kroger Red Velvet cake on a nearby table.

It’s not that I have never joined a group of  obese overly enthusiastic  people women with good intentions of dropping that last ten pounds of baby weight (OK….what if my youngest child is of voting and drinking age?) and fit into a pair of sleek, tight Baby Phat (haha..I made a pun) jeans. I have done my share of jumping jacks, rolling on off around on an exercise ball, and yoga stretches. I use to be one hellova hot and fit mama. These days, though, I’m fairly satisfied to be a luke-warm earth mother. And, who wants an earth mother whose ribs stab ya when you lay your head on their bosom for comfort? I mean…COME ON!…it’s my turn to be the fat-but-jolly friend/sister/mother/neighbor/etc. I’ve served my time in front of  86 lb instructors with long blonde hair held in place by a fashionable sweatband and names like Rain or JuJu.

TrailerParkSkipper has joined a kick-boxing class and keeps urging me to join her. Hmmm….NO!

I’ve actually taken kickboxing classes. Brutal. Inhumane. And, stinky. Never in my entire life have I experienced so  many gassy woman. Yes, you read that right. Gassy as in farting. There has to be something about hitting a bag with all your might and then instantaneously turning 180 degrees to kick the same bag that releases farts. Whatever the cause, it manifest itself while doing the kick-boxing stretch warm-ups and cool-downs, too.

I remember, vividly, my first class. I went with TrailerParkMidge who was just starting junior high. We took our places on the floor. I looked to the left of me and saw a woman who looked very much like Paris Hilton. I turned to the right and lo and behold, there was a Kate Moss look-a-like. I wondered how long they had been in the class and how much time it would take me to resemble them. Actually,to be real about it, I wondered how many kick s and punches it would take me to look like a much larger version of them.

Those bitches! Skinny and lithe! I hated them. I loathed them….until they started FARTING! 

“poooooot” “pfsssst” “fffffftttttt”

OMG….Kate and Paris were regular pootie-tooties!

At that minute, I felt happier than I had in a long time. With every turn-and-kick, “Paris” made pootie sounds. And, “Kate” was emitting the kind of sounds that 10 year old boys make blowing on their arms during detention to amuse their fellow detainees. Week after week, the Farting Duet made kickboxing bearable for me. They both smelled like rotten poultry and I may  that sweating like a ho’ in church but at least, I was not gassing everyone around me. I think it was their diet of bean sprouts and carrot juice that turned their butts into a heavenly choir of poots and toots.

“rooty-toot-toot”

One week, the fashionable farters didn’t show up for class. Then, the next week, they were absent, too. I inquired about their absence and the instructor told me that neither had renewed their kickboxing fees. So, I quit, too.

Hmmm…..maybe, I’ll have TPSkipper check for squealy participants in her class. If she reports that there are some in attendance, I might just join! Afterall, I do still have my gloves.

Paris Hilton ameaça processar firma por outdoor

Paris Hilton ameaçou a companhia de outdoors Billboard por sugerir que ela era uma “desocupada”. Uma empresa da Nova Zelândia imprimiu o rosto da loira em um espaço publicitário ao longo de um sinal na estrada.
A palavra “desocupada”, que irritou tanto a moça aparece em letras grandes na frente de uma foto em que ela está em uma festa.
Seu empresário, Jamie Freed disse que a companhia não tinha a permissão de usar a imagem da moça e afirmou para a mídia local que a “ocupadíssima” Paris tem planos de resolver a questão no tribunal.
Porta-voz do Media5, Adam McGregor descreveu o caso como uma “diversãozinha”.
“Paris tem uma capacidade comprovada de rir de si mesma”, disse ele.
“Presumimos que a agência tem tido o cuidado de direitos de imagem de Paris (…). Nós não estamos tentando ofender ninguém”, afirmou McGregor.
Ele disse ainda que a empresa não estava utilizando-se da imagem de Hilton para comprovar o que estava escrito e sim para chamar atenção para seus cartazes.
No início de 2009, Woody Allen recebeu R$ 3 milhões pelo uso não autorizado de sua imagem em uma campanha publicitária para o outdoor gigante de vestuário da American Apparel.

NEW ZEALAND VIEWS PARIS HILTON AS VACANT SPACE

My  country of origin, New Zealand has managed to p*ss Paris Hilton off because she doesn’t  get the Kiwi’s sense of humor.

Earth Times reports that Media 5, a Wellington-based advertising company, could be sued as “Paris Hilton’s Los Angeles-based manager has threatened legal action against a New Zealand publicity company that is wooing advertisers to its empty billboards with a photo of the hotel heiress and the word “Vacant” below her face, a newspaper reported Sunday.”

New Zealand doesn’t really have a sue-happy legal culture like America, so this story will be tickling the New Zealand people’s funny bone, no end today adding fuel to joke.

In New Zealand, people just laugh when parodied, grab tickets to the rugby, havve a cold one, take the hit and move forward. This is called entertainment and being a good sport.

So, Hilton’s management team are going about it all wrong. They are missing the Kiwi sense of humor that is alive and well in New Zealand.

For example, New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key described the moment when his wife Bronagh Key and him had the privilege of meeting the statuesque Obama’s as being a moment that made New Zealand’s first couple feel like “a couple of hobbits.” The joke is usually always on Kiwis, no harm intended to Hilton. When a Kiwi disses a person of another culture and country outside of New Zealand,  it  is one of the best compliments an international star can receive in New Zealand.

This billboard is really a gem, in Paris Hilton’s heiress crown, all the way down under in paradise (New Zealand) if Hilton could take a minute and see the humor.

In New Zealand, Paris Hilton is often perceived as “Airhead America” not an ‘American Heiress Ambassador’ in New Zealand, like she would want all her fans and ’subjects’ to believe and think.

George W. Bush was too from the minute he won a second term in office, so Paris should not feel that she is special on this billboard and be getting her knickers all up in an uptight knot.

Paris is a big star in New Zealand. Hilton still ranks in the Top 20 celebrities searched for in New Zealand on google each year, so she should see this as a backhanded compliment to her fame, which is just “famous for being famous.”

If Hilton’s lawyer is upset about this use of Paris image, wait until the billboard goes up that gives Hilton the Green-Thinking Treatment, that New Zealand is famous for all throughout the world.

The new billboard response to Paris’ uptight lawyers claims will be updated into a double-billboard advertising campaign that says… “Paris Hilton: A Waste of Good Oxygen On The Planet? …. cut to Billboard 2…. or just a Vacant Space?“

Hilton as ‘just a waste of good oxygen’ to explain her sense of entitlement in the world, is a term I have heard at a local New Zealand bar to describe  America’s famous blonde heiress.

It was the same term Kiwi’s used to describe George W Bush for 4 years too, to make sense of a crazy American decision to re-elect him into office a second term. All Kiwi’s  knew America was in major trouble from that second onwards.

Kiwi’s are very politicly savvy, accepting, forgiving and funny with it, while they wait for a nation to ‘pull their sh*t together’ like America showed recently by a  change of government in the last US election.

This is the Kiwi spirit. They just patiently amuse themselves with billboards like this, in the interim. The billboard company was actually kind here in their humor. And again, a huge compliment in New Zealand, who promotes their own celebrities on all billboards, and an American celebrity on rare occasion.

Paris Hilton is just who she is. Love her or  hate here,  she’s here to stay. So is New Zealand’s sense of humor in Wellington City, New Zealand’s capitol. What a great billboard. Sorry, Paris, like you… it just is!

~posted by Horiwood Hollywood California USA,  11.08.09~

Meghan McCain: The "Paris Hilton" of politics

Andy Warhol was just a few decades off when he said everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. In the age of youtube and Twitter, we are now witnessing that of which he prophesied… sort of. More precisely, we are witnessing desperate souls trying ever so hard to achieve that elusive “15 minutes” through a combination of social networking sites, Blackberries, and shameless audacity.

Meghan McCain takes a page from the Paris Hilton play book.

Paris Hilton, of course, is the poster child for being famous for no other reason than having a famous name and oodles and oodles of mailbox money. But even with those huge advantages in her corner, she still needed a little extra “oomph” to catapult her to her current status as reigning Paparazzi Diva: she needed a scandal. So like any enterprising young woman with ambition and some appreciable physical assets, she made a sex tape that just happened to get “leaked” onto the internet. A few feigned moments of embarrassment and a couple of lawsuit threats later, and viola! “Fifteen minutes” that has waaaay over-stretched its shelf life.

Which brings me to Meghan McCain. Young women like Megan McCain owe Paris Hilton a bit of gratitude. Hilton, after all, pioneered the method of achieving some measure of fame through use of the internet. Up until recently, Meghan had primarily exploited her blog and Twitter to achieve her modest status as a young Republican pundit. For example, in August of 2008, after her father and presidential candidate, John McCain, had just named Sarah Palin as his running mate, she posted this:

“Yesterday was incredible. Again I got to witness history in the making, from a front row seat. Starting out the day with Dad’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his nominee for Vice President is a moment on stage I will never forget. She and her family are so down to earth and so much fun. I could not be any luckier to have these wonderful people join us on the road.”

But while she may have gushed over witnessing this historic moment and her admiration for the Palin family in the heat of the moment, the ordinarily critical and outspoken McCain has since been mostly silent about Palin, instead taking aim at Bush-era Republicans like Karl Rove. Shortly after joining Twitter, she posted this:

(Twitter’s) allowed me to share the less serious aspects and humorously uncensored moments of my life. But there’s a downside: I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits. We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people.”

That little “tweet” led to numerous articles and soon Meghan McCain had developed a feisty reputation as a repudiator of many in her own political party. Now having Twitter in her arsenal, and a willingness to publicly disparage a much-maligned Republican like Karl Rove, McCain got a new taste for just how useful the internet can be in garnering widespread attention. Soon she was dusting it up with conservative darlings Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter, garnering even more favor with the mainstream press.

But alas, “fame is a fickle food,” and rather than finding herself to be a political commentator to be taken seriously, Meghan seemed to be more of a “fly in the ointment,” useful to the media on a slow news day when she had something provocative to say about a fellow Republican. So what does a self-respecting, ambitious young lady do who wants to be thought of as more than just “provocative” in political circles? Why, she posts a provocative picture of herself on the internet, of course!

Meghan boasts over 60,000 followers on Twitter, so naturally given the odds, there would be a few who would respond negatively to the photo… and they did. Some called her a “slut,” to which she feigned great indignation and posted this:

“When I am alone in my apartment, I wear tank tops and sweat pants, I had no idea this makes me a ’slut’, can’t even tell you how hurt I am. This is why I have been considering deleting my Twitter account, what once was fun now just seems like a vessel for harassment.”

She then later posted this about-face:

“I do want to apologise to anyone that was offended by my Twitpic. I have clearly made a huge mistake and am sorry 2 (sic) those that are offended.”

Uh, yeah

Personally, I find it not so much coincidental as ironic that she would pose in said picture holding up an Andy Warhol book. Is this Meghan’s not-so-subtle way of telegraphing to us the exact purpose of posting the picture? Time will tell.

chi il più stupido?

Filmava i suoi rapporti sessuali con le amanti-modelle e poi le ricattava.

Carl Hirschmann, noto playboy svizzero (molto stupido) di cui vengo a conoscenza ora della sua esistenza, rampollo di una delle più potenti famiglie zurighesi (suo nonno, Carl Hirschmann senior, fondò circa 40 anni fa la compagnia Jet Aviation) è stato arrestato martedì sera in una suite del Dolder Grand, lussuoso albergo svizzero divenuto da tempo la sua seconda dimora.

La tattica per adescare le modelle era sempre la stessa. Le invitava con un pretesto in una stanza riservata del Saint Germain, locale notturno di sua proprietà frequentato dalla giovane élite zurighese. Poi con navigata abilità le seduceva e filmava di nascosto i rapporti sessuali. Più tardi mostrava le immagini alle ragazze e iniziava a ricattarle.

Nel 2003 avrebbe avuto una relazione con Paris Hilton (ma chi è più stupido lei o lui?), l’ereditiera più famosa del pianeta.

Tra le sue conquiste anche la top-model israeliana Bar Refaeli, l’attrice americana Tara Reid e l’ex miss Svizzera Whitney Toyloy, una più tonta dell’altra.

Tema: ma possono esistere al mondo degli imbecilli simili?

Tema2: ma possono esistere al mondo donne che si fanno abbindolare da un imbecille simile?

ALL SAINTS DAY (aka the day after Halloween)

Happy All Saints Day, Y’all. Why is this such a special day?

In related, All Saints Day news:

Happy Birthday, New Orleans Saints. On Nov. 1, 1966 – All-Saints Day – the NFL awarded a franchise to Nola. They called the team the Saints.

Enough with the Saints talk since I promised Nidhi.

Happy Halloween, Chimp.. you're oh so clever you don't even know that gourd you're eating is decorative

So… last night was Halloween! YES! What did y’all dress up as? Please tell me in the comments, I’m dying to know (not literally also I don’t really care, c’mon it’s November 1st- we got 365 days till the next time I’ll really care what you’re dressed up as! but still need to know for archival purposes).

What did Katnawlin’s dress up as, you ask… I was Vida (Patrick Swayze) from the film To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar. My friends Kim and Sheri were Chi Chi (John Leguizamo) and Noxeema (Wesley Snipes). This is how we looked:

Fierce! Sorry for the quality of the photo taken on an iphone, but you get it! My dress looks straight up like a Mardi Gras Float, but in the best way possible!

And this is how the original drag queens looked:

Obviously We'll Never be as Fabulous, but We Did Try!

Los Angles is crazy during Halloween. The city was by far the most congested I’ve ever seen it. Halloween is apparently very big here especially where we were most of the night in West Hollywood.

Here’s a picture just to get an idea of how packed West Hollywood is for their Halloween Carnival:

WEHO Halloween Carnival. Everyone was Dressed to Impress

My friends and I had planned to go to multiple spots/ parties in the WeHo and Hollywood areas, but the people and car congestion was not cute at all. A typical 4 mile/10-15 minute drive took almost an hour and $50 (not each) cab later. So, we got out, and just started walking. The people watching was amazing of course. So, the night didn’t go as had expected, but all of us are new to Halloween in LA, and learned if we wanna do it right that we’ll have to start out a lot earlier than 9:00PM and we’ll have to realize that party hopping isn’t going to work. But it was still fun!

HAPPY ALL SAINTS DAY and HAPPY GET AN HOUR ON THE CLOCK DAY!

and now on to…

DIE-HARD FAN PORTION WHERE Y’ALL GET TO ASK ME QUESTIONS

You can e-mail me or leave questions for me to answer in the comment section. I love to answer questions- a favorite pass time for me.

1. Great post about Farmville. I share your addiction. How can I resist the brown cow that makes chocolate milk. It’s like my heart is going to explode from all the love of these cute little critters. So, how is your farm doing, and what level are you on? And oh, umm can we be neighbors? Thanks! – Roy (Dectaur, OK)

Thank you, Roy. I’m at level 11 (wow, just the other day I was at 8! I’m a loser). We can definitely be neighbors but you have to fan me on facebook first (here). Also I love the animals obviously on Farmville, but why no dogs? Don’t the sheep need to be herded? Just a thought.

2. Katnawlins, you’re advice is sometimes all over the place, but I figured what do I have to lose asking you for some? My family and I can’t stop fighting over what we should have as our main protein at Thanksgiving this year. The obvious and traditional protein would be a Turkey, but that’s so traditional and boring. What do you think we should make? – Duncan (from Rochester, NY)

Duncan, I understand, and that’s why my Southern Ass thinks you should get a TURDUCKEN.

“a dish consisting of a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The thoracic cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are stuffed, sometimes with a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.” – wikipedia

My family has this often for thanksgiving and even for Christmas usually with a crawfish stuffing (my favorite part, and this year I’m not eating meat, so the stuffing will have to do). I know you find my advice suspect, but this is actually legit and delicious advice. So, Yankee try this southern concoction!

That’s it for today! See y’all later. Oh and “Who dat? Who dat say they gonna beat dem Saints”