It’s easy.

1. Start 3 tablespoons of oil heating on medium high heat.

   If you’re only making enough for one, use a small pan, if you’re making a lot, use a large pan. I used a large pan the first time to be sure I had enough room, but for one small potato, as small pan would have been better and I will use that next time.

2. Grate the potato(es).

   We’ll get to the reason in a moment, but I grated a potato onto 3 paper towels. I have a recently purchase a box grater which I highly recommend.

3. Dry potato(es).

   I folded the three paper towels over so there were now three layers of paper towel on both sides of the grated potatoes and pressed down hard. I did this three times (nine paper towels). Apparently dry potatoes are essential to good hash browns. Of course they’re not going to be literally dry, you just want to squeeze all the excess water off so they won’t be soggy.

4. Turn down heat.

   When your water gets hot enough that a drop of water sputters, turn the heat from medium high to medium low. (For me personally, this was 7 to 3).

5. Cook the hash browns.

   Add the hash browns to the pan, add some salt and pepper, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Then flip them and cook for 8 to 10 more minutes. You may need to cut into smaller pieces to facilitate flipping.

I really enjoyed doing this and the hash browns turned out pretty good. In my case they were not burned at all but they were a bit overly crispy, so I’ll learn from that for next time. But I would highly recommend this exercise if you’re normally not much of a cook. It’s so empowering to realize you can cook things so simply. After this, I’m confused as to why companies even sell frozen hash browns, which you still have to cook!. I guess they are relying on the fact that people think that making hash browns is some mysterious process instead of being really easy.

For instance, today I was looking forward to the men’s parallel giant slalom event. NBC starts by showing the qualifying rounds, that’s great, almost complete coverage. But then they didn’t show any of the 1/8 finals, or quarter finals. The runs where US competitors lost or were disqualified were just mentioned in passing. This so they can show hours and hours of cross country skiing.

Last night they didn’t even show the gold medal race for the women’s parallel giant slalom? Huh?

Their fact reporting is bad too. After each run I want to see the standings and I want to be able to see at a glance what’s been done and what’s yet to come. But no, if you aren’t paying very close attention you will have no idea what’s going on and they won’t tell you twice.

They jump all over the place showing 2 minutes of one event, then 2 minutes of another, then 10 minutes of Bob Costas being a total dork. It’s truly ridiculous. I don’t see how they could be doing a worse job.

Furthermore, Bob Costas has had the worst plastic surgery I can imagine and he and the other football sportscasters are honestly horrible at hosting the Olympics. Wherever he is, it’s a giant room with a only desk in the middle and him sitting at it. Sometimes there’s a lone chair. It’s bizarre and feels like the twilight zone.

The Olympics need to be broadcast online so you can watch entire events and watch them at your convenience. I’m on the west coast and I have to wait for events when I could be watching them live or nearly live. NBC messed up the online experience in two ways. First, they don’t provide the opportunity to watch events live and in full. Second, even if they did, they require Microsoft’s stupid Silverlight plugin to watch video. NBC, I don’t want to have to install Microsoft Crapware on my machine to watch the Olympics.

My vote for the next “host” of the Olympics is YouTube.

Montalban Tomorrowland Sushi: click here

I have been sober for something like 2 years (I haven’t really been keeping track.) Since I’ve been sober I’ve spent a lot of time processing my alcoholism. When I stopped drinking, it was a big lifestyle change and it’s been taking quite a bit of time to get used to it, and I’m still working on it. It also takes time to gain some perspective on what was actually happening during the drinking phase of my life. Of course, I was drunk, so I wasn’t absorbing as much information at the time. As an adult I haven’t really ever had serious hobbies or activities, drinking was all there was. Ever since I started college, there had never really been a time where I hadn’t been drunk at least once a week so all told it was more than 15 years of drinking.

There are vastly different kinds of alcoholism, or at least alcoholism presents itself in vastly different ways. I was never physically dependent on alcohol. In fact quitting was quite easy aside from the fact that my entire life was turned on its head. Some people think physical dependency is the definition of alcoholism, and while there are many definitions that’s generally agreed not to be it. Here’s the definition from the Mac OS X dictionary:

an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency

I was a binge drinker, focusing on the “compulsive behavior” part of the definition above. If I had two drinks in me, I wanted to drink until the bars closed or until the party shut down. After the first drink or two I didn’t make a decision to drink further, it didn’t even occur to me as a decision, I just did it. I would keep the party going if I could.

Alcoholics always seem to avoid the behaviors we personally most associate with alcoholism. For me that meant I never had alcohol at home, I never drank during the day (aside from vacations), I never drank when I was sad (actually, I did, but I didn’t realize I was sad at the time), I never drank alone (in fact I sought out the largest parties I could find), and I rarely missed work due to drinking.

I don’t have the power to stop drinking once I start. This is complex, and it took me a long time to see it, but I don’t have the power because my brain no longer even considers stopping drinking as an option. It literally never enters my mind. If someone mentioned the idea to me, I would think, “Why on earth would I stop drinking?” Right up until before I quit drinking, I thought I had that power, but when I got older and more self aware I looked back I realized it had never happened. I had never once chosen to stop drinking. I saw how I lost my control over drinking, even after alcohol stopped being fun.

Alcoholics protect our alcoholism by trying to be responsible in the places we have control. For some, they drink every night, but they always are home and in bed by 11pm. For others, they always make it to work on time. It’s kind of a classic movie moment to see two obvious drunks and one of them telling the other, “If I’m ever walking around with a lampshade on my head like that, then I’ll know I’m an alcoholic.” For me, I could control myself as long as I didn’t drink, so I wouldn’t go out as long as I had something important to do the next day. But if I didn’t and especially if it was the weekend, I wanted to go out all night. Also unlike more traditional alcoholics, I didn’t want to fix my hangovers with more alcohol, so I only drank multiple days in a row if there were parties going on, and there often were. Gay Pride could easily lead to four nights of heavy drinking. Traveling to circuit parties offered four nights of drinking with little responsibility.

What finally made realizing I was an alcoholic important was that really bad things kept happening. Almost every time I drank something horribly embarrassing or unfortunate happened. Then for two days after a night of drinking and the related issues I was filled with self hate and misery. I started to see that my personal life was a disaster. I was completely and totally wasting my life, spending most of my free time either drunk or hung over.

I have a lot to say on this topic and there will be more posts to come, but that’s a good start. Declaring my alcoholism gives me the same power that coming out of the closet gives me. It allows me to own it and it releases the stress around it. I’m not ashamed of being a recovering alcoholic, it’s just what I am.

Brown rice tastes so much better than white rice.

The ads this year, although some were mildly entertaining, were pretty boring. Even the GoDaddy ads were boring. They kept trying to be risqué but they were the most corporate version of risqué. Oh how dirty, a girl rips off her shirt to reveal… another shirt!!! The girls didn’t even have big boobs. Boring.

Nobody took chances this year, and I kind have to say, I’m not really looking forward to next year. I usually like to watch the Super Bowl because I feel connected to the other watchers, but this year it was just blah. It will be interesting to see what other people think on the topic.

By the way, I would post the lame GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial here just to make a point but all the Super Bowl commercials have embedding turned off. What a brilliant marketing idea: prevent distribution of your advertising! The Super Bowl Sucks!

Jersey Shore ended tonight and it was a really good finale. I am actually really sad the show is over. When I first heard about this show, I thought it was ridiculous, but soon enough I wanted to see what it was about. After watching the first episode, I was hooked.

While everyone else was aghast at the happenings on this show, I felt these people were more real and down to earth than any reality show people before them. It really wasn’t trashy. I think people who led boring lives may have been a bit shocked that these people would go out and drink and try to get laid, but that’s what I did when I was their age. Heck some of my friends are still doing it, and it wasn’t that long ago that I was too. The people on this show are nice normal people.

I think people also confused their adventures with Italian stereotypes. I didn’t see many Italian stereotypes on this show, beyond the fact that they were all actually Italian. A lot of the things they try to “own” as Italian are things everyone does. All people their age do that.

I don’t normally watch award shows but I’m watching the Golden Globes because Ricky Gervais is hosting and I’m hoping it will be funny. Since I’m watching I decided to record the red carpet as well.

It’s a major mess this year. First it’s raining, but second NBC has decided to have their correspondents in the middle of the red carpet. From what I can tell, normally the correspondents are on the side leaving the main carpet to be an actual walkway. But now, it’s like the correspondents are being pushed around and tripping over everyone and it’s kind of a mess. Umbrellas are releasing water onto everyone.

I like the fact that Billy Bush is comedically hitting on all the men, but everyone seems to dislike him (regardless of that fact that he’s hitting on them.) I don’t particularly like Billy Bush, but I don’t hate him either. Anyone that’s not Ryan Seacrest is fine with me.

Project Runway Season 7 started to tonight on Lifetime. I almost missed it, I actually saw the news about it on TiVo while I paused another show. I’m surprised they weren’t on any talk shows or anything to promote the show. Maybe they were, but I guess I missed it. Leave a comment if you saw Heidi Klum or Tim Gunn on any talk show recently.

This season looks pretty good, though. And I’m so happy that the show is filmed in actual HD now. I also hope this means they’ll continue doing more than one season a year, although I feel like the last one just ended. Are they going to be doing even more than two seasons a year? Not that I’d mind.

But hold it, don’t the designers always show at Bryant Park? Doesn’t that limit them to one season a year? Hmmm…

The other night I was watching Guy Fieri’s cooking show and he made mashed cauliflower and presented it as a healthier alternative to mashed potatoes. For some reason, I really got into this idea. I bought some cauliflower and planned to try it.

Tonight I did it. The recipe is basically boil the cauliflower then stick it in a food processor. There are a few lessons I learned during the process, and I plan on making it much better next time.

Lessons:

Should you boil the cauliflower in milk? No, water will do fine.

Guy Fieri did this, and I tried it, and while it was fine, most of the milk goes to waste and you have to be more careful about it scalding in the pan. I was aware of that and it didn’t happen to me, but the pan was still harder to clean. The nice thing about this is you have nice hot milk to mix in while processing the cauliflower, but the microwave would do that easier and cheaper if you feel you need warm milk.

Does a blender work as well as a food processor? No.

I don’t have a food processor, but this one dish really needs one. The cauliflower gets too firm in a blender and it was a pain in the butt. I had to add too much liquid to get it to blend and it was frustrating. I actually have my eye on a Cuisinart now. We’ll see.

What’s the best way to get the cauliflower out of the water and into the food processor?

Well, for me it was tongs. I hate cleaning strainers and I use tongs all the time so they’re always around.

Be sure to add a little salt, pepper, and butter while processing.

Because of my blender crisis I forgot and added it later, but it would have been marginally better had I remembered it.

So do they taste like mashed potatoes? Yes, the taste exactly like mashed potatoes. It’s pretty amazing. Almost too much, I was hoping they would be a little lighter. But I’m sold. I ate them with chicken and the meal totally worked. I did not use gravy, but I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t be fine. I think even kids would like this. Furthermore, I think you could not tell them and they’d never figure it out.

Making your own tartar sauce is easy, tastes better, and is potentially healthier (if you choose) for a number of reasons.

Just for the record, you may have thought, like I did, that cream of tartar must be an ingredient of tartar sauce. But it is not, and while these two things may have similar names, they are totally unrelated.

Here are the two main ingredients in tartar sauce, and even if you use only these two ingredients you would technically have a tartar sauce.

Mayonnaise

You can use whatever kind of mayonnaise you like, regular, light, low fat, or even homemade. Here’s an opportunity to save some calories. I personally use light mayonnaise. Since there are other flavorful ingredients in tartar sauce, it almost doesn’t matter.

Pickles

Use whatever you have that you normally keep in the fridge, there’s no point in buying special pickles for tartar sauce. In fact, one rule of tartar sauce is that you should almost always be able to make it without a trip to the store. Some recipes recommend sweet relish or something like that. Don’t fall for it, use whatever pickles you like best. I use the Clausen dill pickles that I like to eat plain and I always have around.

I’ll get to the rest of the ingredients in a second, but to get your base sauce throw some mayonnaise in a small mixing bowl. Maybe a quarter cup per person. Then try to imagine how much pickle would be right to mix into that. You’ll probably have to experiment with this, but a good way to start is to chop the pickles then add a little bit at a time between mixing and stop adding pickles when it looks right. The pickles are certainly about flavor, but they’re also about texture. Since we can adjust the flavor with other ingredients, it’s okay to worry mostly about texture and how the tartar sauce looks with the pickles at this point. You will probably use less pickle than you expect. If you want to be able to recreate it, go ahead and measure things, but I don’t. My tartar sauce will probably come out slightly different every time.

Chopping the pickles is the hardest part of making tartar sauce, which means it isn’t very hard. However, you will want to chop them smaller than you’ve ever chopping anything before, at least if you’re a novice cook like me. So this is a good chance to learn to delicately chop. I only use about a quarter of a pickle anyway, so take your time. You’ll probably chop the pieces too big the first time, and you’ll learn for the next times. My pieces are less than 3mm square, which still adds texture but doesn’t make the sauce chunky would make it difficult for dipping. Having said that, there’s no wrong answer here, do whatever you like best. You’ll learn a lot from your first batch.

As for other ingredients, this is where you can get creative. If you look up tartar sauce recipes on Google you will find all sorts of ideas. Ignore the recipes, just look at the ingredients.

My favorites:

Salt

This is a pretty important ingredient, we’ll talk more about it when we talk about overall flavor next.

Pepper

This one’s also pretty important.

Lemon Juice or Vinegar

I use lemon juice, but either will do. This serves two important purposes, the first of which is to add some tang. Even if you aren’t thinking you want “tangy” tartar sauce you still want this because the tartar sauce will be too bland without it. It won’t necessarily make your sauce taste “tangy”, mine doesn’t.

The other important purpose of lemon juice is to thin the sauce a little bit. With just mayonnaise the sauce will be way too thick and not very dip-able.

Garlic Powder

This one’s sort of obvious. Garlic is good in everything, right? Well, mostly.

Parsley

This will add some really nice color and some flavor to the sauce. Recipes always recommend fresh, but a sauce is a perfect place for dried parsley because it will hydrate it, so I wouldn’t worry about using fresh parsley unless you happen to have some.

Other interesting ingredients I’ve seen are capers, anchovies, green onions, and chives. There are many others and there’s really no wrong answer as long as you like it.

Flavor. The reason we have tartar sauce is to add flavor and a little smoothness. Usually tartar sauce is pretty bland. Have you ever had the experience where you want to put about a tablespoon of tartar sauce on each bite of fish? This is because the tartar sauce is bland, and it’s a regular occurrence. This is the best part of making your own tartar sauce, you can finally break the cycle of blandness.

You want your tartar sauce to be flavorful enough that you would not want to eat it plain. Just like salt, you wouldn’t want to eat it plain, but you love to put it on things. So go ahead and add extra salt to your tartar sauce. No need to go to extremes, but while tasting your sauce by itself for flavor, your reaction should be “oh, that’s a little too salty” which will make it perfect when it’s added to the actual fish.

This is also a great way to save calories. The main ingredient of tartar sauce is mayonnaise, so we need to be careful. One way to reduce our total mayonnaise intake is to need less of it. Adding plenty of flavor to the sauce will help a lot. I think you’ll be surprised because with a flavorful sauce you’ll require much less of it than you ever have before, and you’ll enjoy the actual fish more too. But don’t worry, you’ll still get all the pleasure that tartar sauce brings, and more than ever before.

Good luck!

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/10/easy-and-healthy-homemade-tartar-sauce/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/07/2010-pga-tour-debut-sbs-championship/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2010-pga-tour-debut-sbs-championship http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/07/2010-pga-tour-debut-sbs-championship/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:00:07 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=2028

I’m currently watching the SBS Championship at Kapalua in Honalua Bay Maui, Hawaii, on Golf HD and I’m really enjoying it.

The Announcers: Kelly Tilghman and Nick Faldo

The announcers on Golf HD are the best. They have easy voices to listen to, and they are funny. Watching golf is about relaxing. I really don’t like it when they try to have a football type announcer for golf, it’s really annoying.

Golf Club Grooves

In 2010 clubs are not allowed to have the v-shaped grooves that put more spin on the ball. The feeling was that people no longer had to be accurate driver’s because even from the rough these clubs would allow them to hit and stay on the green. The fear was that people were just whacking the ball off the tee as hard as they could without worrying much about direction. With the new groove rules they hope to reward the better golfers with more skill instead of people who can whack the ball harder.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is missing by his own choice. When I first heard the story I wasn’t too surprised as I expect all professional athletes, especially ones as rich as Tiger, to cheat. However, after it has set in, I realized the extent to which he cheated really affected my opinion of him, probably permanently.

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/07/2010-pga-tour-debut-sbs-championship/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/01/30-rock-reunion-and-nascar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=30-rock-reunion-and-nascar http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/01/30-rock-reunion-and-nascar/#comments Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:34:16 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=2021 Last night (New Year’s Eve 2009) NBC played four favorite episodes of 30 Rock which I recorded on my TiVo and am watching today. The first episode was Reunion which takes Liz Lemon back to her 20th high school reunion. Jack Donaghy rents a jet and through a long list of Vietnamese immigrant related antics ends up joining her at the reunion.

Jack is feeling disenchanted with his life as an executive and catches the bug of just wanting to be normal. Jack ponders the simplicity of normal and even comes up with a saying he feels envelopes the concept, “Beers, Boats, and Buds”. Jack decides to impersonate one of Liz’s classmates, Larry Braverman, who hasn’t shown up to the reunion and was popular and in many ways like Jack himself. As Jack quickly finds, being normal is actually really messed up when one of Larry’s ex-girlfriends presents him with a boy who is supposedly his son.

My connection to this relates to both Liz and Jack’s characters in that I felt like a nerd in high school who escaped and became successful, and like Liz didn’t realize that being a nerd in high school was only a symptom of my attributes that would later make me successful. Like Jack, I quickly fall into the romanticization of normal and just as quickly realize normal is quite scary and tragic.

It would be great if there were a simple life where you were just a good, honest person and had a simple and yet wonderfully fulfilling job. But the problem is, anyone who’s successful knows that just doing a simple job is never enough. These people want to make a difference. As soon as they reach a plateau, they want to move forward. In some ways being a good and smart person means never having a simple life.

I think as a culture, we are all going through this. But as I look back on my life so far, I see that actually getting rid of normal has been a requirement for making my life better, and in fact, a little simpler as well.

But I still watch football every once in a while, or even watch NASCAR to feel like I’m a part of something that I’m really not. Like Jack, I enjoy fantasizing about the simplicity of a normal life which I will never have, and which is would not be good even if I could have it. I think, to some extent, even the people who are a part of the NASCAR scene are faking it. It feels good to be a part of something, and when we’re less mature, holding ourselves back to fit in can feel like the right thing to do. I’m as guilty as anyone of trying desperately to fit in when I really don’t. As I get older though, I know that trying to pretend I’m normal only leads to heartbreak and hard realizations. Luckily there’s always a jet waiting to take me back to the “New York Citay” of not being normal.

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2010/01/01/30-rock-reunion-and-nascar/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/31/eastwick-has-been-cancelled-abc-sucks/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=eastwick-has-been-cancelled-abc-sucks http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/31/eastwick-has-been-cancelled-abc-sucks/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:43:38 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=2017

Well, again, a new show comes out that I love, Eastwick, and gets cancelled in the middle of the first season. Not only that, they skip an episode before showing a last episode. I guess it was so we would now Daryl Van Horne is still alive.

But in this last episode we see that Jerry O’Connell has joined the cast, and more importantly Jennifer Elise Cox (Jan Brady) has also joined the cast and is hilarious in what little we see of her. We don’t know why she’s there because they won’t show the episode that introduces her. It’s probably too entertaining and would make them change their mind about canceling the show.

I don’t think the networks realize that even if they don’t have the number of viewers they want, they still have a lot of viewers and they piss a lot of people off when they cancel a show like this. And how stupid are the executives to not have any tricks of their sleeve to boost a show’s popularity. It’s the executives that should be “cancelled” because they obviously don’t know how to run a network.

At this rate, they should just stick to making 13 week shows and cancel them all, then at least we’d have our expectations set and we’d get to see the end of the story. That’s pretty much what they’re doing anyway, but they just leave shows hanging.

I am so sick of Ugly Betty. What a stupid show. If they are canceling Eastwick to make more shows like Ugly Betty, CSI, NCIS, or any other random letters, I’m just going to stop watching TV altogether. At least you know a book won’t get cancelled while you’re reading it.

Another great move from the network that cancelled one of the best shows ever created, Boston Legal. ABC sucks.

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/31/eastwick-has-been-cancelled-abc-sucks/feed/ 1 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/29/the-post-office-printing-postage-and-requesting-a-pickup/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-post-office-printing-postage-and-requesting-a-pickup http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/29/the-post-office-printing-postage-and-requesting-a-pickup/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:19:11 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=2012 United States Post Office is offering now.]]>

The post office of my dreams.

While it was quite a day yesterday, by the end of it, I managed to find some practically revolutionary features that the United States Post Office is offering now.

Let me tell you first how the day started out, which will make you see why I would do almost anything to never go to a post office again. I had a package to send so I went to the post office closest to my house. There was a line blocking traffic out into the street and it wasn’t moving, just to get a parking space. After waiting ten minutes will little progress, I left.

Next, I went to the next closest post office, which did have parking, but the line inside was long and not moving. The same thing happened, ten minutes and the only movement was people in front of me in line leaving out of frustration. I decided to join them.

I had heard some things about how the post office will allow you to print postage at home, so I looked it up. I have a scale, so I could weigh my package, and the rest is fairly easy. I love it. But you still have to go to the post office to send it, right? No! There’s another feature called “request a pickup” where you tell the post office where you left the package and they will make a special trip to come pick it up for you, at no charge. I don’t even have mail delivered directly to my house (I have to walk to my mailbox) but they still came to my front door to pick up the package. You can tell them in detail where you leave it so you could potentially even hide it someplace sneaky, or if you know you’ll be home, they will knock on your door.

This basically makes the post office, as a place, obsolete.

One trick though, if you have a Mac. Even though the post office just needs you to download and print a PDF file to print your postage, and there’s not really a security issue (because if you don’t pay for it, it won’t work), they have messed up the process. For Macs they should just give you link and say “download and print this file.” Instead they say you need Adobe Acrobat Reader (you don’t, and it doesn’t work even if you get it.) But for some reason you do need to use Firefox for this step. From Firefox follow the post office instructions. When it asks you what to do with the file, say save it, and select a convenient location. Next find this file and give it a .pdf extension. Then print it and you’ll have your postage. Then say that everything worked fine so it will charge you for the postage and activate that particular postage. Save the file because if you mess up taping it to the box you can print it again to get it right.

So that part needs to improve, but the rest is awesome. They picked up my package and left a note saying they did. Good luck!

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/29/the-post-office-printing-postage-and-requesting-a-pickup/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/25/merry-christmas-2009/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=merry-christmas-2009 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/25/merry-christmas-2009/#comments Sat, 26 Dec 2009 07:51:05 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=2004 It’s 11:30pm on Christmas and I’m sitting here working on my laptop listening to Christmas music. Earlier today I was feeling like I was starting to be done with Christmas. Then I set my Christmas music to shuffle on my Apple TV and the first song it chose was my favorite most meaningful Christmas Song. (Aspenglow by John Denver).

I realized, I’m not ready for Christmas to be over yet. The day is nearly done, and that’s what I was feeling, but I’ll really miss the season. This was a really good Christmas, I did a lot of things right this year to have a good Christmas and both the season and the day were great. It made me think seriously about how to keep that Christmas Spirit alive for the whole year. I don’t mean listening to Christmas Music for the whole year, but trying to make my life happier and keep that honest and fresh and pure feeling that Christmas brings.

There have been a lot of change in my life in the last few years, and here I am again at a point where I realize even more change needs to happen. Not of location or even job, but of me, of how I look at the world and what I bring into my life. I like how I feel after a month of watching of movies and listening to music about good things happening.

Christmas is a special time of year, but this year I’m going to work on making its effect last a little longer.

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/25/merry-christmas-2009/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/21/sideways-character-a-perfect-example-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sideways-character-a-perfect-example-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/21/sideways-character-a-perfect-example-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:16:00 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=1993

I had always meant to see the movie Sideways, but I hadn’t until recently. I thought it was pretty good movie, and then I realized that the character played by Thomas Haden Church, Jack Lopate, is a perfect example of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He’s so right on, that I’m sure the writer must have had plenty of experience with these creatures.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a very tricky thing. Even the definitions of it in psychology are misleading because it’s understood better by some of its victims than it is by psychologists.

People often claim that people around them have “Narcissistic Personality Order”, usually because they are mad at that person. But unless you’ve dealt with one (or more) people with NPD you really have no idea. A person with NPD may be arrogant, selfish, self-involved, greedy, uncaring, (little-n) narcissistic or any number of things, but those traits by themselves do not guarantee a person has NPD. Someone who is (little-n) narcissistic is still very unlikely to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

When talking about NPD, everyone gets nervous that they have it. A person with NPD would never even think to worry that they have NPD. In fact, they would probably be confused by the topic or blow it off completely. Talking about yourself and having your own issues is the furthest thing from NPD. Being concerned with your own life, and even your own needs first, is human. Everyone is like that, and that’s okay.

People like me who have an unfortunate natural attraction to these people, which itself is a thing, know that people with NPD have the capability to destroy your life if you let them. They are hard to describe, and that’s why I’m so excited that Sideways built a movie around a character with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

It’s hard to define NPD. I think of it as a person who lacks any stable real emotion and certainly lacks empathy. For instance, a person with NPD may cry hysterically making you think they have one emotion, but a minute later will have a completely different emotion. The character in the movie spends his time cheating on his fiance to the point of “falling in love” with someone else and thinks about canceling his wedding, but then when things start to fall apart in his life, he starts desperately crying at the thought of losing his fiance.

One way to identify people with NPD is by bizarre little characteristics that they tend to have in common with each other, but that normal people don’t have. Again, these things alone are not enough, but in addition to everything else, they help identify people with NPD. People with NPD tell people they love them incredibly quickly, within days. This applies to both friends and romantic interests, and they tend to end phone calls with “I love you” even for their friends. I know, it’s a weird thing, but it’s absolutely true. People with NPD tend to make a lot of bizarre unimportant empty promises that they don’t follow through on, in fact, they often don’t even remember them. For instance, one of my NPD guys would say he would call me that evening when I saw him every day. I didn’t know why he would be calling me, but I didn’t say anything. But then he wouldn’t call and wouldn’t even say anything about it. He did this every weekday for an entire month before I asked, “You know, you say you’re going to call me every day and then you don’t. I don’t care because I don’t know why you would call me, but why do you do that?” He became quite confused, it was clear that he was not entirely aware of what he had been doing and I rocked his world a little. Weird, huh? That’s the thing with people with NPD, their life is not consistent or stable. 1 + 1 does not equal 2. When you point this out to them, they get momentarily confused, sometimes angry, blame you, and then quickly move on. The problem is, they say 1 + 1 = 3 with such conviction that if you’re not checking yourself, or your math skills are a bit rusty, or you’re even just being easy going, you’re likely to go along with what they say assuming they know what they are doing.

Back to Sideways. Jack, the character with NPD in the movie takes a small vacation with a friend, Miles Raymond, before his wedding. This was supposed to be a trip for the two of them to bond and a sort of bachelor party trip. Soon into the trip Jack informs Miles that he intends to get laid before his wedding and doesn’t want Miles to ruin it for him. Miles is shocked, a little confused, but complies uncomfortably because, well, what do you do? Jack quickly falls in love with another woman and is almost completely ignoring Miles even though the trip was originally supposed to be a bonding experience for them.

A couple of days into the trip, Jack talks about canceling the wedding because he’s so in love with girl he just met, Stephanie. But Stephanie ends up finding out about Jack’s wedding and breaks his nose, she’s angry because he said he loved her and also because he was getting to know her daughter. When Miles is talking to someone about Jack’s bizarre behavior he says, “I’m sure he believed everything he was saying.” This is true of people with NPD. They aren’t lying all the time, although they do a lot of lying, their emotions and their behavior or just all mixed up. This is why he would get to know the daughter, which most people on a fling would not, he wasn’t thinking about ever breaking it off at the time.

Jack recovers from his breakup quickly, as people with NPD always do, and hits on a fat girl, describing her as “the grateful type.” Jack gets caught and chased out of the house by the fat girl’s husband. At which point he needs Miles to risk his life to get his wallet back out of the girl’s house. Miles is in real danger here, because the husband is violent, but Jack doesn’t really care. On the way home, Jack says he feels like driving. Then without even talking about it with Miles he purposely crashes Miles’ car into a tree to explain his broken nose. Classic NPD. He offers to pay for it, but you see how this situation is very bizarre and paying for it does not address the landslide of issues he has created.

This is one of the primary traits of those with NPD. They create one issue after another, taking you further and further into the negative, and there’s no way for the “victim” to ever deal with them all and get back to zero. The person with NPD isn’t interested in discussing it, because they have what they want, and there’s no point in it for them. Jack went on to marry his fiance, and if there were a sequel, he would have undoubtedly put that poor woman through hell.

There are so many similarities to my own experiences. I’ve never had my car crashed, but I’ve had financially worse things happen. I had an NPD guy cheat on his wife, pull me into the situation as an alibi, and I was thinking we were going to be hanging out. Then he ran off with a girl, which had clearly been the plan all along, and I’m trapped with nothing to do. Interestingly, I actually was told about the grateful fat girl theory by him, isn’t that bizarre? When he was cheating on his wife, he was ready to get divorced. But when his wife was pulling away he claimed she was the most important thing in his life and the tears came out. But then he would ignore her anyway. She asked for a divorce, and he acted like he had no idea why that would have happened. Then him and I got into a huge argument because I listed out exactly why it happened, said that it was obvious, and basically said I didn’t blame her, which I didn’t.

During this time of mourning his marriage, I brought up many conversations I had witnessed where his wife had indicated concern, not so subtly, with his behavior. He couldn’t remember any of them. He would say, “Where was I when you had this conversation?” I would say, “I just told you, you were in the car with us, all three of us were in the car having this conversation.” He would say, “I don’t remember that.” And he honestly didn’t, entire parts of his life seemed to be missing from his memory, including entire stories that his wife often told as humorous anecdotes about her crazy husband. I know he was telling the truth because I could see the fear in his eyes that he wasn’t remembering these things, and he trusted that I wouldn’t have any reason to lie about them. With all of my NPD people I’ve witnessed this kind of scary memory loss, and their confusion when it’s pointed out to them.

The movie is great because it so accurately portrays someone with NPD. It shows how a friend can get sucked into their issues and it quickly becomes a huge mess. By the end of the movie, even the viewer can’t list all the things that are wrong with this situation. The victims of someone with NPD are forever trying to just get things settled, and the person with NPD is constantly messing them up.

If you’ve read this far, you see that NPD is a serious psychological disorder. It’s not a condition you claim someone who’s being selfish has, it’s a mental handicap that destroys the life of the person with NPD and unfortunately everyone around them as well.

There is no cure for NPD, despite what the official descriptions may say, and it tends to worsen as the person ages. For the victims near the person, the only way out is to get away. Believe me, I’ve been burned badly by trying to fix that situation before I finally realized it was unfixable. That’s another trait to look for, someone who has a lot of very close friends that they mysteriously aren’t in contact with anymore. Everyone has friends they’ve lost touch with, so it’s just one more thing to add to the list of traits to look for. A person with NPD will usually blame those people, “He was the best man at my wedding, and then he just stopped calling. I’ve had such bad luck with friends, will you be my friend? …”

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/21/sideways-character-a-perfect-example-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/20/the-jersey-shore-on-mtv/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-jersey-shore-on-mtv http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/20/the-jersey-shore-on-mtv/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:53:45 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=1989

Tonight I did the unthinkable. I started watching The Jersey Shore on MTV. My first impression is favorable because the people are a little more real. It appears all or most of the guys are on steroids, which is fine. Tonight they went to the gym and they were doing all this fitness exercise, and I was like, “really?” Please, these guys all pump iron to look like that.

The girls are a little messy, but they represent more realistic personalities than on the other reality shows. Removable hair extensions are definitely part of their playlist. Those always creep me out a little. Both the guys and the girls are extremely tan.

I’m so tired of stupid spoiled rich kids. I think one thing we’ve all learned from shows like The Hills is thank god we’re not like that. They’re all so desperate to be famous. I think that rich kids definitely lack life training.

Having said that I don’t really trust that reality shows are real anymore, especially on MTV, but The Jersey Shore is definitely a fresh look at reality TV.

Oh, and about Snooki getting punched in the face, I really like that MTV showed an announcement saying that violence toward women is not acceptable in any form. That guy was a real asshole. It turns out he was found guilty of “simple assault” whatever that is.

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/20/the-jersey-shore-on-mtv/feed/ 0 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/19/how-to-rip-wall-e-using-handbrake/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-rip-wall-e-using-handbrake http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/19/how-to-rip-wall-e-using-handbrake/#comments Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:09:44 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=1985 I wanted to rip the Wall-E DVD so I could watch it using my Apple TV because I don’t actually have a real DVD player hooked up to my TV. Because the crazy people at Disney think that putting copy protection will somehow result in their customers not hating them, they put special protection on the DVD that makes 99 titles show up only one of which is the real title. The others will all skip chapters or have the sound be miscalibrated or something like that.

Well, the solution to this problem is easy. I’m using a Mac, so I just opened up the DVD using the DVD Player app and started playing the movie. Once it got to the main movie, you click on the word “TITLE” in the faux LCD (not the “title” button) and it cycle through information about the title that’s currently playing. As you cycle through you’ll see that it’s currently playing title 30 of 99. That means, this is the correct title and the one you should select in Handbrake to properly rip the DVD.

If you don’t have a Mac, I read on the Handbrake forums that you can use a real hardware DVD player which will also show you which title is currently playing.

Furthermore, if you ever see this again on another DVD you know how to deal with it. So what did Disney accomplish here? They ticked a whole bunch of their customers off. Too bad Disney isn’t in the business of ticking people off, maybe their stock would be higher.

]]> http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/19/how-to-rip-wall-e-using-handbrake/feed/ 1 http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/18/the-sunitha-krishnan-effect/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-sunitha-krishnan-effect http://natalietootie.com/2009/12/18/the-sunitha-krishnan-effect/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:06:57 +0000 Matt http://natalietootie.com/?p=1978 I want to say right off the bat that I’m not encouraging you to watch this video. It’s extremely hard to watch and think about the things Sunitha Krishnan talks about in this video. I have heard many of these things before, and while it is of course still painful to watch, it no longer sends me into the days long head between my legs rocking back and forth shock I was in after the first time I heard about similar things on NPR.

But I want to make two points. One is that the audience in this video applauds at a point in the middle of her talk, and again at the end. While of course, it is polite, both applause breaks are inappropriate. The appropriate response to witnessing this talk is complete and utter silence. She talks about how badly people treat the victims of abuse, they don’t want to be around them, but these victims need support and they need to be able to live a better life. She makes a great point, instead of guarding yourself by facing the fact that you can’t solve these issues (which you alone certainly cannot), think of the one thing, the one small thing you can do to help. Just one small thing.

Finally, when I was watching this, I couldn’t help thinking about Michael Vick. Here is a man that we know abused animals horribly for his own sick enjoyment. In many ways the dynamics are the same as the even more horrible crimes described in this video. And yet, stadiums full of people are now cheering for him when he plays football. What is wrong with us? Michael Vick brutally tortured and killed dogs, and most of us seem to be okay with that. How can that be?

We are so uncomfortable thinking about atrocities that we would rather pretend they don’t exist. Sex slavery exists, and it’s horrible. Dog fighting exists, and it’s horrible. Don’t watch this video, I understand why you wouldn’t want to. But please, try to find it in yourself to stop pretending these things aren’t happening or they aren’t horrible. Then the next step, as Sunitha says, is to try to find just one very small thing you can do about it.

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