Nnekay Vs. The Dirty South

FYI- I'm a librarian. Shocking I know... and recently all the magical book wizards of the nation gathered for their annual Libros Fiesta. This year it was located in Fiesta Central New Orleans... NOLA... 'nawlins... you get the point.

Being the extra special book wizard that I am, I managed to get a grant to the gathering. So I packed my bags, grabbed my roommate, Heather... and scooted on down to the nether regions of our great country.

Since, Stephanie the blogger, mommy, feminist, and friend extraordinaire was just as excited about this trip as I was, she suggest various challenges for me to complete, to which I said, "BRING IT ONNNNNN!!!"

Challenge 1: Dance to zydeco in the street

Okay... so I thought this would be an awesome idea to document, because I have wildly skinny noodle arms that kinda waggle around when I try to "dance". Zydeco music sorta lends itself to herky jerky feet scootn' movements... Wut? Ya don't know zydeco, baaaby?



Okay, now that's been establish... I didn't do it. I know, you're super bummed that there isn't footage of me do si do-ing with some swamp man. I'm sorry, but I'm lazy... annnnnd I didn't want to gather more attention from the already leery eyeballs of old southern "gentlemen".

Strike one Nnekay.

Challenge 2: Have a beignet for breakfast, po boy for lunch, and a Pimm's cup at dinner

Bam Sucka! Did this 'ish!

For the beignet, I went to the legendary Cafe Du Monde. Which. Was. Pack. Good lord that place was packed. I've never seen so many people lining up for some doughnuts and coffee with cream... wait, wait... sorry a beignet and cafe au lait. That said- it was GOOD. I love me some fried food, and I love me some sugar. This was if Sugar and Fried had a baby, then gave it steroids. Fried food is basically the official food of the south, and I can't quite grasp how people aren't collapsing left and right from the heat/ grease combo!

Here are some pigeons enjoying the local fare:

Speaking of fried....

I didn't have a po boy... I wanted one, but for some reason all the spots we went to eat didn't offer them. Which is kinda insane, but instead I will use up this space to talk about something I did eat, and is often times the content of a po boy: A Fried Oyster. In short, it tasted like a fried piece of sea jell-o.

Oh Mr. Pimm and your Pimm's Cup. This is a drink that taste so old time-y that after your first sip, you feel like slapping on a curled mustache and tossing around a medicine ball.
I wasn't too pleased at first, but like weird Swedish black licorice candy, it was super addicting... I sucked that puppy down. Yet, it didn't taste like a drink, more like a fancy soda pop. Could also be due to the fact that I was drinking this electric nonsense the night before:

Challenge 3: Eat Gator

Gator was the very first food at the very first restaurant in New Orleans. Why I didn't take a picture of it, and why I have so many pictures of me drinking is a mystery I will never solve. The way it looked was nothing to shout home about. Small nuggets of bouncy ambiga-meats served in a dish. I have to say it was super mild in flavor, chewy, and actually very delightful. Until I ate an extremely fishy bit and remembered what I was consuming was neither, fish, nor poultry, nor hooved meat... but rather something that was like a giant jumbled piled of all of it.

Challenge 4: Go to a Voodoo Shop

I walked passed one. It was sooooo touristy, that I refused to go in. Ladies with faces painted as skulls shaking things at drunk dudes. So instead, I will talk about the time I entered a Voodoo store here in the Bay. Mariposa Botanica may not be exactly "voodoo" but in my little hokey-doke opinion a New Orleans voodoo shop would probably have the same amount of stuffs. Candles... dried fish things, a cranky old lady, a black cat, and a weird bird just chilln'. There were little vials of potions and such, some were even labeled "dragon's blood"-- (which is totally not voodoo) When I went to go sniff at some potions the woman screamed at me to not get so close... so I hustled out the store scared that the tip of my nose might spring a boob or something.

So there you are, A challenge lazily completed. I could write many a posts on librarian wear (teva and hoop skirts), the racial tension of the south (you can cut it with a knife), and the weather (I felt like a glazed ham the whole time there), but instead I will leave this post with the most important parts of New Orleans:

The Food


The Music


and The Beauty

Nnekay Vs. Daggers of Death

I like knives.

I know it's kinda crazy, but I do. My mom is probably looking at this post right now and going, "What the hell?!Who is this carnival kid I raised?!"

Yes, Mom... I like knives.

Now, I've never indulged in the act of getting anything really that dangerous, because I'm a weenie. I've dabbled in a fake Swiss Army knife in college, during my hippie phase. While other kids danced to Sublime and tossed a crocheted hacky sac around a quilt, I perched myself by a tree, loosened up my overalls, and tried my hand at whittling.

I kid you not.

This mostly just resulted in a smaller twig than the one I started with, but the activity was fun for the short amount of time before I decided to pick up the harmonica.

My tiny foray into the wild world of dull blade twig cutting did not calm my knife fascination. I've always been scared of the freaky giant jagged doom daggers, but the ability to stick a knife into a counter and demand service has always been a hidden passion of mine.

I wont ever do it, because I'm a sane person.

Yet, I do linger when walking past the weapon counter at a sporting good store.

With my new blog activity challenge in place- My awesome ass boyfriend suggested that I learn to throw knives. Which sounded mysterious and dangerous at the same time. Being the lazy person that I am, I said, "THAT'S COOL!" Then promptly made a lazy plan to get throwing knives in the indeterminate future of laziness.

Then last night, he surprised me with my very own pair of jet black ninja style throwing knives. To which I said "GAME ON!"

I ran out to the backyard, with the look of crazy in my eyes... my poor boyfriend now realizing the insanity he ignited carefully looked at me with caution as he set up a wooden board for me to try my hand at. As soon as he managed to get slightly out of the way.... WHAP! WHAP! I threw the knives at the board. They collided with a heavy thud against the wood and lay lifeless on the soft dirt. I hustled up to the board grabbed the knives and started again. WHAP! WHAP!

This continued for 45 minutes. I lost the knives a couple times in the bushes... where my fear of a hidden dead animal took over my knife created badassness... and had to solicit the help from my now concerned for my sanity bf. I continued lunging the knives at the board until...

WHAP!

One actually stuck to the board! TRIUMPH! I jumped and pumped my hands in the air, then went to go drag my bf out to check out the damage like a deranged 5 year old.

Now, this oddsey is faaaar from over and I plan to continue to document the process of me learning the ins and outs of knife throwing, so I will try to do some smaller challenges in between this one. Hopefully, I will end up a Jedi master of throwing sharp things at wooden non-alive objects.

Defensive Shyness

If you know me-(and I bet you do since you are reading this and I'm not like some insanely cool hip blogger about town... yet) then you know that I'm kinda the opposite of shy.

But that's fake! Fake I tell you, 'cause in actuality I'm super shy but can do a bang up job trying to pretend that I'm not. Here are three tricks I've learned to hide my shyness:

1. Keep an open happy face- so when non shy people spot me they get fooled that I am from their tribe- so they come to converse. This unfortunately has a backlash known as the Crazy Quadrant. Crazies spot happy faces and are attracted to them like moths to a flaming death. Due to my happy open face, crazies tend to think that I'm the bees knees. Usually, I can escape a crazy, by immediately shutting down my face into a stone cold angry woman- but sometimes I get fooled into a 45 minute conversation about Fern Emotions with someone who seemed normal. Sigh...

2. I try to think of things to continue a conversation. People might mistake this as actual conversation, but if I don't know you... I'm basically just trying to stay one step ahead of you.

3. I nod and say 'yes' a lot- people like it when you agree with them. Unless it's nazi propaganda or some other wackness- but I usually don't have to deal with racist folks- me being black tends to weed them from the bunch.

Those are my three tips... they work as long as I don't say anything weird, and as a result people tend to place me in the extrovert box.

The only time my shyness completely overwhelms me is at mixers, specifically work mixers. I have no idea why, but I can't seem to work up enough nerve to march up to some and be like, "hey what's up, yo!"

Maybe because my money is on the line. Hmmmm.

Anywho- yesterday I was at one... with wine. The booze factor always ups the shy, because, I don't want to get drunk and booze = fancy. So, as I gripped my wine glass I watched the others mingle. As they slowly revolved around each other- sniffing and feeling each other out as we humans do, I found myself slowly drifting to the cheese table smiling along the way. I dropped the knife and smiled as people eyed me. I tried standing by a clump of people- just outside of the circle- smiling and listening... no room to jump in. So I smiled and slowed melted my way back to a table. Where I stood, gobbled cheese, and guzzled wine. Smiling all the time as the service staff flashed nervous glances in my direction. Eventually, I busted my way into a couple conversations, but man did I hate that initial feel of being a weirdo as I stood there nervously watching people getting to know each other.

Later that night over dinner, my boyfriend casually mentioned an article detailing certain personality traits which helped survival in olden times.

"shyness."

"really?!"

"yea... cause if you look in the eyes of a wolf you might get attacked."

I smiled to myself this time, because I felt a little bit less like a weirdo.

YA Fiction is Addicting

I can't do challenges all the time.

So in the meantime, I'm going to talk about how I stayed up until 5am reading a book.

A book for teenagers.

This damn book


How nerdy is that?! Very nerdy. So nerdy that when I finished the book, I couldn't go to sleep because I imagined that I was in the story- which involves being apart of a to the death game of survival in the forest. I could hear leaves crunching under the feet of some blood thirsty teenager out to send a dagger through my sleeping body.

Then I realized I'm 1 1/2 years from turning 30.

So I decided to fall asleep.

Nnekay vs. The SpaceCookie

Being that I named this bloggy-blog 'SpeechCookie' I thought it would be appropriate to start my new challenge theme with a cookie related task. Thanks to Dan S. who gave me the most excellente challenge of:

Baked Goods shaped like your favorite science fiction/fantasy characters.

I saw that 'ish and I was like 'HELL YEA MO-FO, I GOT THIS'- so I got busy researching how to make cookie cutters and sugar cookie recipes. I wrote all the info down on neat little pieces of paper with those tiny golf pencils the library seems to only have, and considered myself golden with the task at hand.

As soon as my little digital computer clock ticked 5pm- I got the hell out of work and zoomed to the grocery store, where I discovered I left all my notes and instructions... so I kinda winged it. When I wing it I end up buying things like this:

So I can do stuff like this:

Anydoodle, To make the cookie cutters I bought a regular aluminum pan, and cut strips from it:

I'm so hip, that I used a flyer from the Ace Hotel to measure my strips... rulers are for lames. After almost cutting myself about 3o times with these hell strips, I shaped them into blobs.


Look, I can line all my crap up like a bougie cooking blog too:

I took all this crap and turned it into this giant turd looking thing, which I dumped in the fridge for 20 mins, 'cause Martha Stewart told me too. When it was time to roll it out so I realized I don't have a rolling pin- but I do have a giant empty beer bottle:

Which worked just fine.

So I cut out the cookies using my incredibly dangerously sharp cookie cutters. Slapped them in the oven for 12 mins, and eventually these cookie blobs came out:

Can you tell what they are yet? Elf shoes and Pac Man ghost?

WRONG.

With a little creative frosting I ended up with... drum roll please...

R2D2!!!! (if you squint)

And....

Jabba the Hut!!! The bottom one is an experiment in arms after I realized the others looked like they had droopy boobs.

So there you have it, my first foray into doing things that you guys make up. I'm gonna try to keep this going cause it was super fun. I'm always open for more suggestions! Keep em coming in the comments!!!!!


In the mean time look how sad this cookie is.

What do you want me to do?

Omg what's wrong with me?!

I tried to keep up a good pace with this thingy-thang and you know what I got? A heaping pile of procrastination slammed directly into my noggin. Trying to write is haaaaaaaaaaard. I feel like I'm an adequate scribe, but I have nothing really that interesting to write about. Sure there's fiction, but that's for the semi off kilter. I mean they create this giant complex world filled with imaginary people who seem real. The better and nuanced the book is, the freakier the author. I'm being dead serious. If someone ever gives you a book of theirs to read and it's crappy fiction, be happy you don't have a nut job for a friend. That being said, I'm only sorta crazy... I guess you can call me lazy crazy. I get all freaky and into my imaginary worlds, but then one day the normal sets in and I'm like..."what the hell is this? I'm gonna watch some tv and drink a beer."

So that being decided, I tend to stick to the self indulgent essays of the memoir variety- buuut I haven't had anything truly interesting or heartbreaking happen to me (thank god). I've never had to saw my hand off from a boulder, no cancer (once again thank god- sheesh), and I'm no major celebrity. I could do something that would warrant some interesting chronicles. Like that damn woman who cooked recipes from the Julia Child's book. Her dumb ass got a boring movie. I was thinking I could run a marathon- which could be interesting from a lazy person's point of view. I was thinking I could also just ask a bunch of people to tell me things to do, and I can chronicle me (a lazy person) trying to do them. Yes. That is what I will do.

What do you guys want me to attempt? I'll try my best, and take pictures of it... as long as I don't have to show my boobies, don't be gross ya'll.

Post in the comments!