For quite some time I had been bumming around the internet with some shoddy-ass webpages for my crafts. But no more will I suffer the indignity of frames! No more will my shopping cart be constructed from a PayPal hack and internet-based duct-tape! This weekend my dear friend Mark and I hunkered down and, thanks to Shopify, rebuilt the entire thing from scratch. It looks pretty snazzy.

On a related note, Gladys Sells Things is dead and gone. The name "Gladys Sells Things," while logical, was kind of stupid, and trying to hock other people’s wares just wasn’t a good idea for me, who already has 1,000 projects going at any given time. The Gladys Makes Things site now has its own store! The Gladys Makes Things site will reign supreme! The Gladys Makes Things site is the website equivalent of E. Honda doing the Hundred Hand Slap in Street Fighter II!

So, um, here: Gladys Makes Things

I'll get into phases when I obsessively check the search terms that bring people to my website. Most frequently they have to do with SNL, and I've also been getting a lot of hits from people searching for "Kristen's story archive," which turns out to be an erotica site. But here's what might be the best search term that has ever pointed to me:

"Can chopped up liver move on its own"

This phrase pointed to my website because of the Levels of Liver post from a couple of weeks ago. But let's think about this for a minute, think about the process that went into someone typing this search phrase. Someone has some chopped up liver. I'm pretty sure this is actual liver because it says "chopped up liver," not "chopped liver" like the saying. So this person has chopped up liver, and it moves. It goes somewhere else. I can only dream of where it moved. Like the person chops up the liver, goes to talk on the phone for a bit, and when he returns, he discovers the liver is on the couch watching Dr. Phil. So the person stares at the liver for a bit (which sighs happily when Bobby and Cindy apologize to each other for being shitheads), then goes to the Google, and types, "Can chopped up liver move on its own," hoping to learn about the phenomenon of "liver feet," tiny hair-like structures that grow only on chopped up liver and cause it to travel towards the comforting glow of daytime TV.

For anyone else who comes to this blog wanting to know if chopped up liver can move on its own, I'm going to venture a guess here, although I'll warn you that I'm no liver scientist: no. An organ that has been removed from a dead animal and chopped into pieces is probably not moving on its own. It probably has worms. Don't eat it.

One of the websites I write for, Not For Tourists, is throwing a party in Philly Saturday night at the Khyber at 9 p.m. If you print out the invitation (PDF) and hand it in at the door, they'll give you a free pint of Yards and a free copy of their 2007 guide to Philadelphia. These are good things!

As you may know, I find the G.O.A.T. products to be a hilarious and chilling glimpse of our future. During my lunchtime walk a few days ago, I ran into a girl handing out some G.O.A.T. Rumble, which I hadn't tried yet. We had the following conversation:

Me: Is that some of that ridiculous G.O.A.T. stuff?
Girl: Yeah, would you like some?
Me: Yeah! I find that stuff hilarious!
Girl: That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me today.

The boxing-themed wrapper noted that the "Fruit Fight Rumble" is part of the last round of eating, round six, the round when you "treat yourself." Now, I may not know a lot about the sport of boxing, but I thought that the last round was when your opponent beats all of the muscle mass out of your face and you wake up thinking your name is Madeleine L’Engle. As if this discrepancy wasn’t warning enough about the terror that lied inside the wrapper, when I held the product it was apparent that the food was a small, phallic rod. Mmm, thanks G.O.A.T. That’s just what I want to put in my mouth.

Upon opening the package, I could smell the Rumble immediately. It was that sick smell of Hawaiian Punch, the general fruit aroma that is not traceable to any actual fruit. The texture wasn’t any help either. Rather, when I was chewing it felt like someone had poured that Hawaiian Punch in a bowl of Rice Cripsies and let it congeal for a month, then served it to me in rod form. I imagine that if I just finished boxing and someone suggested I enjoy a soothing Fruit Fight Rumble as a treat, I’d spit a tooth in his face. Just sayin’.

Here's an excellent live clip of Kristen Wiig and Melinda Hill as tooth fairies:

First of all, it helps if you are not driving a car. Same goes for riding a bike or one of those lawnmowers with a seat. If you are on or in any of those things, you are not running. It's easy to get confused sometimes, because when a car's motor is on, one might say it is "running." But this does not mean that you are running. This means you are being a lazy slob.

Secondly, pick a good surface for running. Any surface where you have to go directly or almost directly up is not a good surface. Examples of this are steep mountains, recreational rock walls, and buildings. If you are traveling up these surfaces, you are climbing, not running. Similarly, if you are in water, especially water where you cannot touch the bottom, you will most likely not be running. You will be swimming. Swimming is okay, but your skin will prune up.

Third, you need the proper attire. It is best to run while wearing shoes. But not all shoes are alike! Believe it or not, bad shoes can be even worse for running than no shoes at all! Poor examples for running shoes include stilettos, crocodile loafers, and anything purported to be designed by Jessica Simpson.

Clothing is a bit simpler. Wear something that will not restrict your movements. No clothing is okay as long as you don't mind the dreaded "naughty bits jiggle." The one thing most runners agree on, though, is that sweatbands make you faster. The fastest runners in the world, in fact, wear clothing made entirely from space-age sweatband material.

As for the actually process of running, you need to move your legs. You can also move your arms if you feel like it, but only moving your arms will not help. If you are only moving your arms, your activity might actually be bench pressing, knitting, or "raising the roof"—certainly not running! When you do move your legs, make sure you are bending your knees more than when walking, but less than when "high steppin'" (unless, of course, you are one of those "high steppin'" show runners). Also, you need to be moving faster than when you are just walking.

Holy shit! You're running now!

...for when you want to look just like everybody else.

Here is something you might not know about me: I used to work at QVC. Recently one of my old coworkers, who creates all of the Joan Rivers promos, asked me to make puppet versions of Joan, host Lisa Robertson, and the two models that Joan works with. The video on QVC’s site can be kind of slow, but behold: Puppet Joan!

UPDATE: They pulled the commercial from the site after the show aired, so unfortunately, you'll have to make due with the tiny picture to the right.

Did you ever think that there might be other liver-based signifiers for what someone thinks of a person besides "chopped liver"? I mean, we’re all familiar with the phrase, "What am I, chopped liver?" used when a person is considered to be insignificant. However, there are a number of other states a liver can be in, and thus I propose this new system: