The thing is, I can’t turn off my editor brain when I’m reading regular, non-work stuff. Editor brain is the only brain I have. So I read everything — books, magazines, blog posts, tweets — critically. By “critically” I mean like this: “exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation <critical thinking>.” I don’t mean it in a negative way at all, although sometimes, it can get tricky. Sometimes editor brain = bitchy brain. It happens.

As a person who suffers from editor brain, it’s hard for me to find things I like to read. It’s especially hard on the internet. In theory, I like to read blogs (and there are some blogs I like reading a whole lot). In practice, many blogs I find don’t stay in my Google Reader for long because I can’t enjoy reading something if it offends my editor brain. And there are myriad things that offend my editor brain, and they go way beyond just poor grammar. There’s bad writing. There’s shilling. There’s too much blogging about blogging. There’s name dropping and awful nicknames. I have so many blog dealbreakers it’s not even funny.

Because it’s so hard for me to find things I truly enjoy reading, what sometimes happens is I end up reading blogs I hate. Sometimes I make fun of those blogs, usually with other people on the internet who are also making fun of them. It’s something I’ve done for years, since the glory days of LiveJournal, where people willingly joined communities where the members would harshly and maybe cruelly on occasion (but also hilariously) critique their writing.

To some extent, I enjoy a good trainwreck. For example, there’s a blogger I’ve been sort of following, from a snark perspective, for years. This blogger has thousands of fans and admirers, and has written books that have been published and purchased by actual people who have read them, as well as another book deal. Her writing is, without question, some of the most atrocious, offensive writing I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading in my life. But still she somehow continues writing and having fans and makes a (modest) living at it.

As an editor, a reader, and a person who enjoys writing and expression (when done well), this kind of thing fascinates the hell out of me. On the one hand, I want to understand how anybody could read this drivel and like it. On the other hand, I want to understand how it happens that a terrible writer who seems like a pretty dreadful person makes money writing and basically selling herself as a brand, while awesome bloggers who are putting out good, thoughtful, interesting posts (don’t worry, I’m not referring to myself, I promise) aren’t. I want to understand the intersection of quality content, self-promotion, and connections and why, more often than not, self-promotion and connections trump quality content. I want to understand the people who put forth bullshit and the people who reward bullshit. I want to understand why people in power tend to stay in power even when they suck and everybody still kisses their asses. I guess this is a long way of saying I want to understand human nature as expressed in the blogosphere.

The problem is that for a while now, what I’ll refer to as my nice, hippie brain has been at odds with my bitchy, editor brain. Let me be clear — I don’t think there’s anything wrong with responding critically (or even bitchily) to anything on the internet. If you put it out there, people are free to think and say whatever they want about it. But lately I’m just feeling like I don’t want to do it any more. Like, honestly? Although I’m fascinated by the success of the blogger mentioned above and I’m curious about what crazy shit she’s going to spew next, when I really think about it, the truth is that I don’t actually have a fuck to give about this sort of thing any more.

So I thought I’d try an experiment. For the month of February, I’m going to focus on the positive on the internet. I won’t read any blogs I don’t actually enjoy. I won’t read or contribute to any internet snark. Instead, I’ll do, well, something else. I don’t know what — I guess we’ll see. I don’t have any big, noble goals — I don’t think my mental energy is like a valuable piece of downtown real estate that must be put to its highest and best use or anything. And I’m not going to be all positive all the time or anything, because that’s always fake. I’m just not going to seek the negative.

I’ll report back to you on how this turns out. My hypothesis is, well, that one of two things will happen: (1) I’ll realize that I miss the snark, which is a harmless diversion that keeps me entertained; or (2) I’ll realize that I’m truly a hippie who is into other stuff now that I have more free time. Either way, it’ll be (marginally) interesting (to me).

“Booooooop!” he says, smiling.

“Wanna see?”

“Yeah!” (The way he says “yeah,” now, instead of just repeating “Wanna see?” is awesome.)

I go over to our alarm system keypad and push buttons until “self test” appears and enter our code, then return to the kitchen, where I sit on the floor and Soren sits on my lap.

“It’s gonna be loud,” I say. “Really loud. Be ready for it.” The self test has kind of freaked him out in the past.

After a few seconds, the alarm goes “Boooooooooop!”

“Ge-gain?” That’s how Soren says “again.”

“No, we can’t do that all the time. The people who monitor the alarm see that we’re testing it, and it’ll annoy them if we do it too much. Only once in a while.”

Surprisingly, he seems satisfied by my answer. This sort of thing never works for bedtime stories, although now that I think about it, I’ve never invoked the alarm-monitoring people. It’s always “ge-gain” and you read the story two or three more times before you can distract him by asking if he’s going to give everyone a hug.

“See how that goes with the other part of the alarm? When we leave, we push a button and it goes ‘Beep.’ When we get home, we push buttons and it goes ‘Beep beep beep beep beep.’” He looks over to where the control pad is because he knows this. When arriving at home, he used to pretend to input the code, his fingers moving in the air. (The way toddlers pretend to do stuff is just about the cutest thing, ever. The other day, he kept giving his stuffed broccoli a pretend pacifier so he could go ni-night.)

“So,” I tell him, “the alarm goes ‘Beep beep beep beep beep’ and also goes ‘Boooooooooop!’”

“Boooooooooop!” he says.

“Yep.”

I love this part of parenthood — the explaining and, really, the learning. He’s learning how things work and, I hope, that it’s good to be curious and inquisitive and that mom is always willing to answer his questions. And I’m learning, I hope, how to provide the right environment and support for him to grow into the awesome (yeah so I’m biased) person he’s going to become. You don’t really think about how important stuff happens when it’s just the two of you, sitting on the floor in the kitchen, but I guess it does.

Then I remembered that pretty much any time I’ve ever experienced any sort of minor pain, there’s one way to reliably get rid of it — trigger points. Do you know about trigger points? I don’t want to get too woo woo hippie new age bullshit or anything, but trigger points are totally a thing.

Trigger points are, in my decidedly non-technical terms, pretty much knots in your muscles that make you feel pain somewhere else. Trigger points in your neck, for example, can make your shoulder hurt or give you a headache. If you have the kind of headache I had yesterday and today, which I refer to as a “mini migraine” (this is a headache on one side of your head, in front behind your eye, that gets worse rather than better after physical activity but isn’t as bad as a full-on migraine), it’s probably because of a trigger point in your neck.

Specifically, it’s a trigger point in the sternal division of the sternocleidomastoid muscle (see image here). The good news is that trigger points in this muscle are really easy to get to yourself. You can grab the whole muscle between your fingers and squish the hell out of it. This will hurt and you might feel shooting headache pain, but seriously, after squishing the whole muscle from one end to the other today for a few minutes, my headache finally went away. It was amazing.

If you ever have random pain that isn’t, like, a heart attack or anything, I recommend trying to find the related trigger point and massaging it/having it massaged. At best, it’ll make the pain go away or at least improve it, and at worst, it won’t do anything and you can do something else or go to the doctor or whatever.

I have this book, which I really like because it’s easy to look up whatever pain I have to find the responsible trigger point, but you can find the information for free online, too. (I’ve used this site and this one.)

Sorry for the lame post, but I wanted to tell you about this and am not dedicated enough to try to make a post about trigger points, like, fascinating or anything.

As you may know, this is why I usually do “Photo Fridays” — because I’m too tired and lazy to inflict what I’d write on innocent people such as yourselves.

None of that explains why in the hell I’m writing a post tonight, by the way.

The other day while watching The First 48, which might be my favorite tv show of all time, I got kind of bummed out that I don’t have a street name. I assume you only have a street name if you’re heavily involved in criminal activity. That way, when homicide detectives call in a potential witness who will be faced with the terrible snitch-or-no-snitch decision, at the very least, if the witness does snitch, she’ll be all, oh, I heard it was Lil Jackrabbit (or whatever) but no, I don’t know his real name. You’ll at least get an extra few minutes to get out of town while some detective puts “Lil Jackrabbit” in the database and finds your real name, although in reality you’ll probably just go to your mom’s house, where they’ll find you later. Eventually, you’ll be convicted of murder even though you were just there to rob the guy, because nobody tells kids these days about felony murder.

Anyway, on this particular episode, we found out there was a witness known as Fat Mama. That’s freaking awesome. First of all, that’s one of the nicknames for our cat, Xochitl. And then you picture, well, someone who would be called Fat Mama, right? And then when they finally find Fat Mama, she’s totally not fat at all — she’s a skinny little thing. And that makes being called Fat Mama even better. (I’m operating on the assumption that people are not still using the term “Phat,” by the way.) And then you’re all, yeah, I want people to call me Fat Mama. Okay, maybe you’re not, but I kind of thought that for a minute.

Then today I found out something about Ice Cube and something about Ice-T. For the record, I know that Ice Cube > Ice-T. Ice Cube’s Good Day was January 20, 1992. Ice-T’s real name is Tracy, and he has a son named Ice Tracy, who, not that this has anything to do with anything, was born in 1992. How did it take me this long in life to know that Ice-T and I have the same name? And why have I never developed any sort of nickname involving ice?

So then today I’m watching the Winter X Games, because that’s what I do, and first of all, Torstein Horgmo (he’s like the best snowboarder of all time). I would not have minded naming my child Torstein Horgmo, because that’s one of the most awesome names of all time. But then there’s also Halldór Helgason (I had to copy and paste to get that “o” with the thing over it). He’s from Iceland. Also, turn on ESPN right now! You can still catch Torstein Horgmo in the snowboard big air finals!

The point to telling you this? There is no point. This is just the kind of stuff I think about when I don’t have anything else to think about.

If you don’t know, Danilo Gallinari is from Italy and plays for the Denver Nuggets. As we speak, the ink is drying on the 4-year, $42 million extension he just signed with the team. He’s also on my fantasy basketball team, which appropriately and lamely is named the Galloping Gallinaris (in my defense, it’s only named this because I was totally messing with the guy who kept trying to trade some dude I’ve never heard of, a melted Snickers bar, and a bag of Fritos crumbs for Gallo, but goddamn if I didn’t know better than to take that deal).

Danilo Gallinari also apparently has some killer dance moves, if by “has some killer dance moves” I actually mean something else entirely. I hate when people post videos and tell you to watch them, really, they’re hilarious, but that’s exactly what I’m doing here even though it fills me with the existential angst that results from doing what you hate people doing. I’m not only speechless, I’m also incapable of conducting myself in accordance with the standards to which I hold others. I hope you’ll forgive me, though, because I make the party start.

Much love to @nuggetsnews for bringing this to the world’s attention.

Next time I go to a Nuggets game, I’m going to bust out the Gallinari.

The best musical entertainment my car has to offer is a CD player and a random selection of CDs from many years ago when I still bothered putting anything on CDs, plus one I got from the face-tattooed artist himself outside the liquor store by the Unsafeway  (which, for the record, is no longer unsafe). I’ve discovered that it is in fact possible, after many years, to get tired of Wale remixes, as well as pretty much everything else.

The one CD I haven’t been tired of lately is labeled, in Ben’s handwriting, “TRACY THINKS SHE’S THE SHIT.” If I recall correctly, it features songs I picked out from his music library in the early 2000s. It’s a lot of deep, housey stuff — Mark Grant, Maxwell, Naked Music NYC — I seriously can’t get enough of It’s Love (Joshua’s Mo Luv Vocal).

Because this is what I’ve been digging, this is what I wanted to put on my January 2012 playlist. But I can’t make a whole playlist of old stuff. So I took a little disco and mixed it with some Crisco and brought it back — no wait, that’s not what I did. I took a little early 2000s housey stuff, mixed it with some space disco, and threw in a few new things I just discovered today. Playlists (the exception being very meaningful playlists) are always better when you include new stuff you just found and think will fit but aren’t totally sure. I also advocate including at least one song that really doesn’t belong at all. (I was thinking about this today while pondering the anatomy of a good running playlist, which I’ll share with you as soon as I get it all figured out.)

Sidenote: How do you discover new music these days? My two favorite sources are Ben and Hype Machine. Hype Machine can be a little like looking for the perfect dress in a thrift store full of dubstep, but I always end up finding some good stuff.

Anyway, for a limited time, get the whole thing here. Here’s the tracklist. Enjoy!

Update: I forgot a song! Duh! Here is the updated playlist with the song (Stuck by Peven Everett). The tracklist should be amended to add that song at #25, then change Polish Girl to 26 and Contact High to 27. Sorry about that! Attention to detail = not my strong suit.

I hit up google and found this Smitten Kitchen recipe, which seemed good because she shared my issues with red velvet cake. Then I clicked the “adapted from” link to check out The New York Times red velvet cake recipe, which is exactly the same, word for word. (I noticed the same thing with her pineapple upside-down cake recipe, which, aside from omitting the cardamom, is an exact copy of the Gourmet recipe.) I thought it wasn’t cool to copy a recipe word for word, even if you link the original. What’s up with that?

Anyway, I followed the Times recipe exactly but for switching cake for cupcakes and using cupcake liners instead of butter and made the following high-altitude adjustments: decrease sugar to 1 1/2 cups plus 3 tablespoons and decrease baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons. I used this creamy vanilla frosting, which was kind of a lot of work but really good. Don’t cut this recipe in half — it didn’t result in the tragedy some commenters indicated but it wasn’t enough frosting. Also I recommend beating everything for longer than the recipe says — just a minute or two for the butter and butter and sugar and a good 5 minutes more at the end. The sugar granules went away after the 15-minute (exactly!) refrigeration.

So, if you’re in the market for good red velvet cake and coordinating frosting recipes, there you go!