More Signs of a Post-Grad Summer

11. Embarrassingly high Text Twist scores.

12. You finally learn those life lessons/heed the advice that would have been more helpful months ago, when you were too busy staring at your thesis and drinking on Wednesdays to pay attention.

13. Those few words about Lady Gaga? Maybe after I get around to actually opening my GRE book and finishing unpacking (yes, from Vassar).

14. You're blogging at 2:15 am, and it's not because you're awake avoiding homework. In fact, there's no real reason you're awake, and you're kind of tired, but you probably won't go to bed for another hour or so. That would involve moving.

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!!

Perfectly timed for my reading of Ulysses, even if I'm not that far along.

World's Largest Cupcake?

Okay, I know I promised Lady Gaga, but first: cupcakes, a subject very close to my heart.

Last night, I happened to catch a rerun of the Ace of Cakes episode where Duff makes the "world's largest cupcake" (certified by the Guinness Book of World Records!) for a charity bake sale at the Mall of America. There are a lot of things wrong with this, but let's focus on the major two:

1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a cupcake is a "small iced cake in a cup-shaped foil or paper container." According to Alton Brown, the term cupcake came into use because back in the day, a cup was the most convenient container to bake a cake in. So, if a cupcake is really just a small cake (and I think we can all agree on that), then the world's largest cupcake is...a cake. Just a cake. Not a cupcake. Duff, as a baker, should understand this. I missed the beginning of the episode, but I'm pretty sure Geoff (the best person on the show) agrees with me. And the "cupcake" didn't even meet the second part of the definition! It was not in a cup-shaped paper container, but just had fondant mimicking the folds of a cupcake paper.

2. So maybe Duff doesn't agree that a large cupcake is just a cake. But he should at least know that a cupcake is a single entity. Not a vaguely cupcake-shaped shell filled with cakes and frosted on top to make it look like a cupcake. It's just a whole bunch of cakes put together to masquerade as a cupcake. Luckily, the Guinness Book of World Records agrees with me, and took away Duff's claim to the world's largest cupcake because his was made in multiple parts.

Common sense, Duff. Stick to your cakes.

The best, snarkiest quote about celebrities that I've read this week (in reference to Katy Perry):

You look like what would happen if someone dipped Zooey Deschanel and a funfetti cupcake in a vat of toxic waste and topped it off with a few hundreds pounds of high grade trucker meth.

Coming soon: a few words about Lady Gaga

10 Signs of a Post-Grad Summer

1. You set your alarm for 10:30 so you can be "productive," wake up at 11:15, realize you don't really have much to do, get up anyway, and need a nap by 12:45.

2. You kind of relate to a Ke$ha song... and it's not Tik Tok (Note: If you relate at all to any Kes$ha song, it may be time to reevaluate your life. Good time the summer after you graduate is the perfect time for that!).

3. A glance at your bookshelf prompts 45 minutes of Wikipedia-searching about the author of your favorite YA novel, which leads to more internet searching to see if they are in fact making one of her books into a movie. Even though it wasn't your favorite book of hers, this would be the most exciting thing to happen since graduation. (This was followed by hearing Lifehouse's Hanging by a Moment on the radio... Hello, middle school!)

4. Unpacking one suitcase took almost a week, and there's still more to be done.

5. At an awards night for high school seniors, hearing how special the Class of 2010 is makes you simultaneously want to cry, run away, and throw things.

6. Job applications are generally filled out in a 1am frenzy.

7. The absolute last question you want anyone to ask you is what you're doing in the fall, but you can't seem to start a conversation that doesn't somehow bring up next year.

8. Number of daily Perez Hilton visits? Too embarrassing to admit.

9. Your only real summer plans are applying for jobs, studying for the GREs, and growing out your bangs (and reading big books, of course).

10. Coming up with a tenth sign of a post-grad summer is too daunting. So are most other things.