I'd like to start a new segment today called:
Are you smarter than a Darcy?

Usually it would probably be on a Tuesday but factoring in hangovers from Monday night's trivia and general laziness- Thursday is also a good bet. What this will consist of is us posing the questions that we got wrong or that we got right and were surprised by and you can see if you would have been an asset to Team Spider Pig, or more recently Harry McPlopper. Or all of the question I can decipher my handwriting for...

I'll try and steal an extra picture round and list round next time so you can TRULY play along.

ANYHOO- here are the questions from last week. I'll post the answers ... tomorrow. Or maybe in the comments. Whatever seems logical.

Also this would be best played after drinking several beers on an empty stomach then eating a small amount of food and continuing drinking. BUT it's

1st Quarter:
1. [Music] What instrument was Miles Davis famous for playing?
2. [US Geography] What state is directly north of Nebraska?
3. [Foreign Language] What does the word "haute" in French or "Alto" in Spanish mean?
4. [Mythology] What lute playing Greek God lends it's name to a part of an instrument? (or something like that)

2nd Quarter:
1. [Poetry] How many lines in a sonnet?
2. [Anatomy] What part of the human skeleton has frontal lobes?
3. [TV] What show has Jill Hennessy, Chris Noth, and Paul Sorvino all been on? (best question ever)
4. [Saints] What patron Saint of Scotland has a feast on Nov 30?

3rd Quarter:
1. [Sports] Who is the only player to have won MVP in both the American and National Leagues one in '61 and one in '66?
2. [English] What is the literary term for "babbling brook" or "absolute authority"?
3. [Trees] What tree grown in Western Canada/Rockies is known as the Trembling Poplar?
4. [Anatomy] What part of the body is a nephrologist associated with?

3rd Quarter Bonus:
[Words with "OLD"]
I can't remember many buuuuuut:
1. A variety of flowers, usually yellow or orange?
2. To find fault with angrily, chide, or reprimand
3. A position usable as a base for further advance (two possible answers)
4. A temporary framework used to support people and material in the construction or repair of buildings and other large structures
5. Any of various alloys fused and applied to the joint between metal objects to unite them without heating the objects to the melting point


4th Quarter:
1. [Medicine] What is the general term for the group of medicines that treat cardiac arrhythmia like "lopresson", "tennerman" (I have no idea how to spell these and haven't had luck looking them up so you might want to ignore the names)
2. [Art] What two word french phrase is used for describing art that is outside the status quo?
3. [Movies] Who played the President in the 1999 movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me?
4. [Football] Who is the only player ever to win three Super Bowl MVP awards?

Final
1. I can't remember the answer to this and it gives away the answer to the previous question so... we'll skip it.
2. [Sports] Other than the Yankees or Red Sox which is the last team to win an American League title?

There's another question that was asked... maybe as a bonus... who knows? I can't find where it should have gone so A BONUS FOR YOU!
[Musicals] The long-running off-Broadway and Broadway musical "Godspell" is based on the Gospel of ... who?


I hope this took up some of your downtime at work today. If you want to know our score, if you can each question 1 pt we got.... 12 out of 23... wow we really sucked this week.

How is everyone. I'm busy for the next 26 days while I have a 30 day trial of Photoshop. I'm trying to cram as much in as I can b/f I have to borrow a pilfered copy.

Margeaux, how was the trip to Florida?

R.I.P. Heath

Sad, so sad.

-Scarlett

Yay Clem!

Scarlett's favorite song of the week:

Fortune Teller by Robert Plant & Alison Kraus

AHHHHH!!! I fucking love this song!

Yay Clem!!!!! This is now no longer you!!!!

............

At least the second part!

I didn't quite realize today was your last day until I was wandering aimless around the house getting ready to do cool things like watch Miss America Reality, hm, watch What Not to Wear hmmmmm to like, um, leave the house and do what cool kids do and I noticed it written on our calendar.

SO on behalf of all of 3 o'clock candy, we're very happy you have freed yourself from the shackles of the company that robbed us of small pieces of our souls but was at one time very conveniently located next to many good places to grab lunch.

Live dangerously and have another applesauce or any other quasi-solid food you may have worked up to!

According to Rhett, the screenwriter for Juno is a woman of our age bracket who admits to working as a stripper for a year. The script, her first, was virtually untouched by the movie studio which is almost entirely unheard of. The story was inspired by the writer's highschool classmate.

So the hamburger phone and the sweatbands were intentional.

-Scarlett

Hola senoras, senoritas and senors. That is how you say hello what you don't know the word in spanish for "everyone". Just a little tip.

I been drafting many a blog post in my head for y'all for awhile and since one goes off of Margeaux's post let's just jump right in.

Let's start with the religion WHICH I realized IS a movie post (per my comment for Margeaux) but not the movie post I was originally thinking of. Crazy, I know. So, Mr. Darcy and I love the DVR. And we stumbled upon one of those little clips in movies that plays during the credits which is the reason I make Mr. Darcy sit in the theatre until the very very very end to make sure we don't miss them...anyway we were intrigued. Intrigued by this "Jesus Camp" which we had totally missed. But with the DVR we could just search for when it was playing again and make it record it. Ahh what an age we live in. SO one night when the writer's strike was messing with our schedules again we decided to give it a whirl. [Aside: Hollywood- PLEASE PLEEEEEEASE just pay them more. My tolerance for crappy reality shows is threadbare at the moment.] Anyway within about 10 minutes we were so freaked out we needed to take a break. And to consult Scarlett ASAP. After some prodding we now WILL set foot in the state of Missouri BUT only if accompanied by Scarlett or Rhett and only with silver bullets, garlic and wooden stakes.

NOW I could go into many and rant here and then go into the data that I found that explains why I had never heard of anything like this before (Northeast has the fewest number of baptists) but instead...

I am for religions that don't make children cry; religions that don't knock fictional boy wizards; religions that don't embrace the "rat tail"; religions that don't have you baptize relatives that have already died; religions that don't impregnate katie holmes with frozen sperm; and religions that don't promote hate.

And lastly since much has been said, to answer a previous question posed by Margeaux, yes, I can imagine you in a bonnet for your new religion. It would look like this*:
Nextly, to make up a word, another movie review. Hm in retrospect I should have debuted my new movie rating before the last one but whatever.

The new movie rating is as follows:
I liked the movie ------------- Meh --------------- I did not like the movie

This is avoid the "oh my god this is the best movie ever i laughed/cried/thought/danced so much you need to go see it" which when you then go see the movie there's a 93% chance it won't live up to the Spectacular! Spectacular! you thought it would be.

Now there can be additions to the 3 ratings but only for certain types of films. Like "Jesus Camp"... I liked the movie- it made me think. And that works because I think it would be weird to unqualifyingly just "like" it. Bad horror films or spoofs are possibly another time this would work because there are many reasons you could like or not like them.

Which brings me to Juno. I liked this movie. I was worried b/c I usually am slightly wary of movies that involve quick witted teenagers since my sister can't even decide where she wants to eat/do/shop/etc even if given a half an hour to dedicate to thinking about an answer. I was also worried it would be a little too Napoleon Dynamite which fell somewhere between Meh and I liked this movie on my scale but mostly for the same reason I can't see Simon Cowell make fun of people in the first rounds of American Idol... but back to Juno. The cast was great. They didn't overplay Rainn Wilson which I was also worried about.

We also got to see it at our local movie theatre which serves alcohol in their big old main theatre which is like going to the Uptown in Cleveland Park (which was our favorite theatre in DC). And on the way to the bar after I realized why I did like this movie. It was because it was written by someone our age or slightly older. It had to be. It had mid-80s written all over it. And not the Fast Times at Ridgemont High which has some how become all the vogue but 80s like Ewoks. Not that there were any Ewoks in this movie but there was a toy robot that I'm sure I had and that I went looking for a name and picture for 2 hours ago and subsequently forgot I was writing this. And there was a hamburger phone. And sweatbands. Now it's POOOOOSSIBLE they could have figured she was into "retro" in an 80s sense but more likely it was written by someone who thought of old school things s/he might have had lingering around his/her house. Now I could probably look this all up but then I'd probably forget what I was doing all over again.

Also by the looks I was getting from Mr. Darcy in the movie I fall somewhere between the witty nutjob titular character and the yuppie Jennifer Gardner character with more than a whiff of desperation around her. Woo!

Ok i need to finish cleaning now that my new found cash cow seems to be pulling back after a nearly full week of work last week.

-TFMD
Reporting from hump day.

*edited since original post to protect Margeaux's true identity.

Normally I think I would try to add my thoughts on the whole religion topic. However I am bed-ridden and look like a very fat chipmunk due to wisdom teeth extraction. Not fun at all. I wasn't really expecting this type of discomfort.
I would sort of like to be put into a medical induced coma until I can open my mouth again, and when I can eat more than applesauce. That would be just lovely.

Ok time for another pain killer and nap....

Well this seems like a post that I can respond to!

First off, you all know my beliefs. Raised by an agnostic father, a mother who never spoke religion but believed strongly in God and I learned of her faith at like 18 or 19. My father's extended family (sister and cousins) are devout Pentacosts. My mom's bat-shit crazy extended family is some melding we'll call non-descript, non-demoninational protestant branch with Baptist roots that believes fossils test mans faith and gays are going to Hell.

I baptized Sophie. For no other reason than I thought it would make Rhett's parents happy. As two agnostics / aetheists we have discussed our beliefs ad nauseum. One recurring question for us is how to raise children with a sense of right and wrong without the moral context of religion. It's not an easy topic to tackle. For us, we feel that by raising them around people of faith, whose faith is tolerant and open like the Beldings (who by the way are Catholic light Episcopalians) and having constant dialogue with what others feel, may or may not produce someone with a belief in God, but at the very least they will be a member of society with apathy and a rooted sense of humanity.

I have found, Margeaux, that it's the people who can't believe the answers who feel most profoundly the need for answers. We probably think about it more than those who's beliefs are well articulated. I am constantly saying, "I wish I believed in God," because deep down I truly do wish for the grace of God, but my inability to suspend my disbelief gets me everytime. The thought that someone could be out there pulling the strings is simultaneously attractive and maddening, especially in hard times when it has filled me with "why me" mantra which does me no good. It is a question whose scope is too wide to even begin to answer. The question of why good things happen to bad people is a topic philosophers have spent lifetimes studying.

All I can say to you is this, if you don't believe in a soul, then what's wrong with a humanistic ritual that brings comfort to your husband and his Mom? That one act will have less impact on his / her religious outcome than the lifetime of dialogue between parents.

These are just my opinions. Take it for what it's worth which is not much, after all.

-Scarlett

Losing My Religion and other fun stories

So lately Mr. K and I have been having a discussion, often times very heated, about what to do when we have kids. It's the age old question "to baptize or not baptize?" I am not a religious person, never have been and don't believe I ever will be. While my mother is Jewish, and therefore technically I am as well, my father is Catholic. I went to a Jewish Sunday school like thing when I was young. I don't remember a thing. I have always had a Christmas tree but we have also lit the menorah for Hannukah. We colored and hit Easter eggs and I probably even ate a ham on easter. I have even gone so far as to follow my friend up for communion when I was 12. I had NO idea what I was doing. I had slept over at her house the night before and went with her and her family to church the next day. When she got up to take communion I just followed her. In hind sight, perhaps someone, anyone, should have told me to sit my ass down. But nobody did so I took communion. In late high school I started going to a passover seder with my mom. It was at her friends house and I went to be a good daughter. Overtime they became good friends of the family and in some ways like my second set of grandparents. I continued going through college, again to be a good daughter, and to now see the people I had grown close to.

My knowledge of religion is in most ways nonexistent. If someone asked me what I was I'd say agnostic. If I was forced to make a choice, you know, in those all too often life and death situations, I'd pick Judaism. Not because I necessarily feel like a Jew but because I like what I know about it and again, my knowledge is minimal.

I feel that even with this limited knowledge of religion I have turned out ok. My mother raised me with good morals and values and ethics and while I may judge people, a lot, I am a good person. What this all comes down to is that I don't see the point/purpose/reason to have my children, whenever the day is that I have them, baptized. Mr. K however feels very strongly about it. He was raised Lutheran. His church is fine but I don't think that being a Lutheran is for me. I think that we should raise our children with good morals, values, ethics and faith and expose them to different religions and then let them decide what works for them. Mr. K is ok with this plan BUT he still wants to have the children baptized. When I protest, telling him that having our kids baptized in the Lutheran church means they are Lutheran he tells me I am wrong. So, I pose my first question to you, the loyal readers of 3:00 candy - am I wrong? If someone could please shed some light on this for me it would be greatly appreciated.

Mr. K and I have also discussed the possibility of picking a religion different from the ones we were raised with and going that route. I am ok with this, I think. I say "I think" because if you'll refer to the rambling above, I don't see the need to raise my kids in a religious way. Adding to all of this is of course the issue of how do we make a decision that doesn't piss off our parents. Probably mine more than his. Did I mention that my cute, adorable nephew is now Catholic? Yep, he was baptized just after Christmas. That should be fun to watch. He has one catholic parent and one absolute atheist. I predict a lot of fun in that family in the future. Back to the topic at hand, my mother seems very upset by having a catholic grandson even though her son is atheist and wasn't exactly raised Jewish. We never had bar/bat mitzvahs. Mr. K's family is just as confusing. While his one sister tells me how happy it would make his mom to have our kids baptized Lutheran, because that's a good reason to do it, Mr. K's father seems more laid back about it and just wants us to something, anything. Well, almost anything. He did mention it would be bothersome if we joined something cult like. Can't you see me doing that? Suddenly I'm pentacostal and speak in tongues or we are born again and super self righteous. Don't think that's a problem we'll have to deal with.

So we both kinda know that for me to get behind this I have to be comfortable with what we eventually choose. While I certainly don't want to insult anybodies religious views, I personally cannot belong to a church that believes Mary was a virgin. I just can't get behind that. I believe in Darwin and creationism and while you may be reading this and thinking "that's fine, you can still be (insert religion here) and have those views," you have to understand I can't. I take religion very literally so it's hard for me to separate what they say from what I believe. If they say something I don't agree with I write it off as something I can't belong to. I'm not that way with other stuff in my life but if I'm going to suddenly pick a new religion, I don't want to half ass it. I believe that religion should be open and accepting and not say that gays are bad or that if you have sex before you are married you are going to hell. If that's the case, there has to be a deep dark corner of hell for me.

What this leads me to is that I am probably more confused than ever before in my life. I have been doing some research (via Wikipedia b/c it's reliable of course) and Mr. K and I have talked about the possibility of maybe someday joining a Unitarian church. Obviously we have to go and check it out and make sure we are comfortable with it but we've got some time.

So if I have so much time before I have to make a decision why bring this up now you might ask? Good question. Basically it's b/c 1. I think about it, a lot, 2. I could use your insightful, witty input dear friends and 3. because sometimes it really bothers me that I have to do this at all. I know, I know, compromise is what marriage is all about and I'm willing to compromise but normally Mr. K put up a fight for a little bit and then gives in. I think I was hoping he'd do that with this too. Apparently this is actually important to him and because of that I am willing to compromise.....I think. :)

Other side notes - I believe that mangoes are the best fruit ever and I would eat one every day if I could afford to. However, I would probably get sick of them but for the sake of argument, let's just say I wouldn't get sick of them.

Lastly, I have started taking yoga. I've only had two classes so far and they are beginner level but I really enjoy it. At the beginning of class it's a bit difficult for me to lay still for 10-15 minutes and just breath (perhaps ADD???) but by the end of class I could fall asleep on that floor and am so relaxed and my spine is so stretched it's marvelous. I look forward to moving up a level after this class is over in March. Now I know why TFMD loves yoga so much. Granted I am quite a few levels behind her I really truly enjoy it and someday hope to be able to have an educated conversation with her about it.

So that is all my fair friends. I have successfully wasted enough time at work and now the work day is almost over. I am off to see Atonement with my mother tonight but first must stop at home and make sure that Mr. K is still alive as he stayed home from work sick today and didn't answer when last I called to check on him. On that note, I'm out.

Margeaux

4 lost pounds prompted my doctor to ask if I'd been exercising. Ummm, exercising or replacing food with vodka?

Here is my special post-holidays binge cocktail recipe for the Scarlett Martini:


1 shot Three Olives Cherry Vodka
2 shots Lemonade*
1/2 shot of Triple Sec

*First, make a simple syrup on the stove. Mix 1/4 cup of both sugar and water Dissolve under medium heat until the liquid thickens. Add the juice of two lemons, strained really well to eliminate all pulp and seeds. You can adjust this to ratio of sugar to lemons to taste. It's best to then chill this lemonade.

Next, pour measured ingredients in a shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously. Pour into two martini glasses garnished with a maraschino cherry. I'm telling you I'd pay $7 bucks for this.
Of course all the pomp can be avoided; I've been caught doing shots of this, my new favorite vodka, straight from the freezer.

Cheers,
Scarlett

Okay so maybe I more than occasionally drift above the speed limit. And yeah, sometimes I talk on the phone or change radio stations while driving my manual speed, but I swear I wasn't doing any of those things.....okay so maybe I was talking on the phone, but for the record that is a perfectly legal task while driving in the great state of Kentucky, AAANNNDDD.... it was only because of some acronym of which TFMD labeled some old mix cds and I couldn't remember the name of that I was on the phone in the first place, trying to identify the acroynm "GSIAA parts 1 & 2," but I swear that had NOTHING to do with how that semi side swiped me. Honestly.

I was not passing on the shoulder. I was in a proper lane with the blinking indicating my direction of turn. I was perfectly in the right. Then KEEEEEEE-RUNCH.

I have learned the following things:
1.) It is not necessary to preface emergency phone calls home with "Are you busy?"
2.) Kentucky state troopers are some of the most polite police officers I've ever met.
3.) Progressive provided excellent customer service thus far.
4.) Mitsubishi Eclipse is a death trap on the highway.
5.) GSIAA stands for: G.S. Is An Asshat! (Clue: think I.T. of our old office)

-Scarlett

An open letter to the 3:00 Candy girls and occassional male contributors

Dear Potential Party Go-ers,

Why, why why must you tempt me so with thoughts of travel. You all know that I feel an urge to leave P-town on 3 month intervals. My "moritorium on travel" didn't even make it past the first week of January. People, we HAVE to buy a roof. Roof = No New Orleans. I hate the roof.

-Scarlett

Things you know after a bottle of wine:

If you (being me) drove to an airport got on a plane got to New Orleans, took a cab to the Vieux Carre it would only take an hour less than it would take Scarlett and Popodopulous to drive from their houses to New Orleans........... say for Mardi Gras next month.

[Mr. Darcy and I end up looking at airfare on non-tv nights]

Click Here

Scroll to the bottom and watch. I almost peed myself.

Check out the band Grand Old Party.....NOW! Trust me!