And here I was going to hand him a self-united one.

His loss!

2. Two new lists about Pittsburgh!

• On Frommers, you have Best of Pittsburgh: 10 Things Behind the Steel Curtain, including “ascend an urban mountain” (when the worker monkeys don’t take naps to stop cranking the giant wheel), and “see the Monet that got away.”
• And on USAToday.com: 10 Reasons to Travel to Pittsburgh.

My God, we’re going to have egos the size of Antarctica soon.

(h/t Jen)

3. But then we remember that Dance Moms is filmed here and our egos go PSSSSSSSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhhhh.

That’s the sound of deflation. I’ve never typed it out before. There you go.

4. Love Benstonium’s video parodying the Clint Eastwood commercial:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can’t wait for their first Buccos video of the year!

What?

5. Speaking of the Buccos of Suckitude!

I’ve featured this shirt before, but this is my husband’s favorite shirt in the world right now mostly because of how freaking soft it is. I think I’m going to hand these out on the bandwagon this year.

You can get one here at Fresh Factory!

6. Speaking of the Buccos some more!

Going to send that to Clint Hurdle.

(h/t Charles)

7. First ever craft beer week in Pittsburgh?!

I will DRINK ALL THE THINGS!

8. My self-united husband, future NBC star, and future best friend David Conrad narrates UNDAUNTED: The Forgotten Giants of the Allegheny Observatory:

UNDAUNTED: The Forgotten Giants of the Allegheny Observatory Official Movie Trailer from Dan Handley on Vimeo.

(h/t Cari)

9. The Knitting Lady has been BUSY!

Taken January 6:

Hi, Mario. Will you marry me? Or maybe I can just hand you a self-united card if I ever see you again.

Taken Saturday in Buffalo:

Lucky girl!

I’ma hand all those boys a self-united card.

You too, Knitting Lady.

The freaky soul-sucking animatronic lottery-shilling groundhog is dead!

He is being forced to retire. Gus’ tag line was “the second most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania. “Part of the lottery’s decision was cost.The state reported it cost between $300,000 and $400,000 to produce a commercial with Gus.More recent lottery ads without Gus have been running $150,000 less.

Three to four hundred thousand dollars?! FOR AN EAGLES FAN?!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m pretty sure we can get Juanita the Weasel for cheaper.

Works for me, Juanita.

– Valentine’s Day flowers

– My kid’s science project

– My kids

– A banana

– A passive aggressive note hanging in the office at Las Velas

However, we’ve waited long enough and it’s time to show you something else I took 47 pictures of.

Would you like to see 47 pictures of my new Moo Minicards? Which I ordered because I got tired of people I meet asking me for my email address and I’m all, “Do you have a scrap of paper or some bare flesh I could write it on for you?”

Problem solved!

Your new goal in life? Get handed an “I just self-united to you” card.

If I hand you a jagoff card? You can interpret that any way you wish.

(I am LOVING Wayno’s illustrations of me. Cannot wait for April’s.)

As you know if you follow me on Twitter, I’ve been recently obsessed with the correct pronunciation of certain words and also how we identify certain items here in Pittsburgh.

“Root” or “rout” when pronouncing route?

Spigot or spicket?

Crick or creek?

Sub or hoagie?

Buggy or shopping cart?

CAR-a-mel or CARE-a-mel, or even car-mll?

I lucked out when my friend Goob directed me to a study done by a former Burgher, Dr. Bert Vaux who taught at Harvard and who now teaches at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He ran a dialect study while at Harvard and was good enough to send me all of the anonymized data for all 100+ questions on the survey. I got to work and learned how Pittsburgh compares to the rest of the country in various phrases, words, and pronunciations.

The results are fun and eye-opening and I’m going to share more of them on my Pittsburgh Magazine blog this week, since I couldn’t fit them all into one column. In the meantime, go have a read! Here’s a snippet:

Coupon: Fifty-seven percent of us say “coop-on,” and 42 percent of us use “cyoo-pons.” Contrast that with the whole country, where the clear winner is “coopon” (67 percent). Then there were eight ’Burghers (1 percent) who indicated they have “another” way of saying it. I’m guessing “discounted goods vouchers.” UNFOLLOW.

Crayon: Most Pittsburghers favor the “cray-awn” pronunciation (56 percent), followed by “cray-ahn” (32 percent), which is actually how the majority of U.S. citizens say it (49 percent). I am one of the 10 percent of ’Burghers who was raised using “crans” because that’s how Mister Rogers said it!

Go read about spigots versus spickets and PLEASE go read what the rest of the country calls a traffic jam caused by rubbernecking and how they refer to it when the sun is shining while it’s raining.

You’ll never guess in a million years.

_____________________________________________

In case you hadn’t heard, on the night of February 15, a group of about 50 bandana-clad anarchists descended on East Liberty, wreaking havoc, running amok, jumping on cars, trying to break windows, littering, destroying property and generally just being asshole nuisances like some anarchists can be.

P.S. I said “SOME.” Please don’t send me threatening emails claiming Anonymous is going to hack my computer and spill my secrets to the world. Let me do it for you … I watched a solid hour of Whitney Houston videos last week and then another solid hour of Kevin Costner videos and then I decided I had a new crush on Kevin Costner and then I spent about five hours trying to find the best deals for a trip to Mexico and then I went cross-eyed so I started checking out Craigslist for cool local finds and then I paid some bills and watched a Debbie Gibson video and then I realized what a loser I was and I ate a fistful of sheet cake and went to bed. Now you know my secrets.

OMG. Biggest digression ever.

Where were we?

Right. So here’s the statement from the police:

“It was reported that many of the people were affiliated with ‘Occupy Everything’ and were celebrating their escapades in The Shadow Lounge. There was info that some of the individuals may be occupying a vacant/abandoned building nearby on S. Highland where a sign was hung. The building was checked after access was gained through an unlocked door on Penn Circle. The building was found to be uninhabitable but there may possibly have been people staying there. Officers found computer generated notes inside which stated ‘ATTN: PLEASE FIND AN ALTERNATE LOCATION TO SLEEP: 2/14 – 2/16 This building may not be safe. Thank you.’ Miscellaneous literature was found scatter on the street.”

Now, before you assume that everyone involved in “Occupy Pittsburgh” would support “Occupy Everything,” the person who brought this to my attention was an “Occupy Pittsburgh” protestor. There may be some crossover, but I don’t imagine much.

So, who is “Occupy Everything?” Surprise! Asshole nuisances! AKA “Children of the Damned.“

Man, I bet their parents are LOVING that moniker. Let me try to decipher this drivel for you:

What they said:

It would be exultant to hear the indistinct sounds made by the distant whispers of our detractors, to repulse in the fetid smell of the reporting that is produced and reproduced across the bourgeoisie media outlets, or to directly encounter the faces of the people who are behind the ever-increasing entanglement of wireless communication devices, profile pages, and the virtual personalities that abstractly connect us.

What it means: “We want to hear ourselves talked about! We want attention for the illegal and childish crap we do in the name of anarchy! MEMEMEMEME! Even though we pretend we don’t want the attention, we crave it. We bask in it. We adore it.”

What they said:

But this is where we are, capitalism has left us with these detached words written on some web pages. We hope that you can forgive us for continuing this ineffectual medium. On the night of February 15th we chose a departure from the flat and barren void of normality. We chose to clamor in a field of one another’s bodies and have experiences that moved beyond the static script of our controlled psychology. We chose to express ourselves in the tiniest of all ways – with a toss in the air, a confetti like flurry of words fell in to our hands and from the thunderous roar of the crowd, a banner dropped from a building: “occupy everything”. This is how it started.

What it means: “We use all of the products that our evil capitalistic society has generated, but we don’t like being forced to use them. But WE ARE FORCED! Our skin burns each time we turn our iPods on; our eyes water each time the glare of our iPads reach our irises; we pray our cellphones give us brain cancer as punishment. We hate our MacBooks and our clothes and our shoes and our cars. We really really do. So we chose to party like assholes because we had nothing better to do and because we needed attention and because EFF YOU.”

What they said:

The silly fun of bouncing caution cones off of Starbucks windows, dragging signs and dumpsters into the streets, pushing each other in shopping carts down Centre ave while listening to some weird unknown genre of music on a loud speaker provide some of the lighthearted pleasure needed to turn East-Side into our play-thing. Years of development, gentrification, and social devastation have eroded what was once the diverse and magnificent community of East Liberty into a few square blocks set back behind the monstrous endgame of urban planning.

What it means: “PARTY PARTY PARTY IN THE USA! GET HIGH! GET WASTED! ACT LIKE ROTTEN CHILDREN OF THE CORN! DESTROY THINGS! FOR NO REASON. EFF EVERYONE WHO EVER WORKED TO BUILD ANYTHING! EAST LIBERTY IS FULL OF SUCCESS! WE HATE SUCCESS! THROW A CONE AT THAT STARBUCKS WINDOW WHERE I ORDERED MY VENTI SKIM DOUBLE SHOT CARAMEL LATTE THIS MORNING!”

What they said:

We did not act on behalf of others, we acted on our own behalf, and we acted in solidarity with others near and far. The consequences of our actions may not have carried the same gravity as the dignified struggle at claiming a social center in Oakland, CA or as the hundreds of hurled Molotov cocktails on the streets of Bahrain and Athens these past few weeks, but we look to these movements as inspirations. We chose to interrupt the dominantly held position that “we are victims” and that “nothing matters” and instead try out possibilities and at least have some stake in living.

What it means: “ME ME ME ME ME. ME ME ME? ME ME ME. ME ME ME ME ME. ME? ME ME.  LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE!”

What they said:

In this estranged society we choose to manifest a commune and we will continue to develop, learn, and grow as we always have. Our strikes at the state, capital, and society will spread for we are the children of the damned.

What it means: “This is as mature as we will ever get until one day the money runs out and we ‘succumb’ to capitalism, make a living, make a life, make a family, cut the cord from our ‘damned’ parents who dared to spawn us into this evil evil corrupt world. But until then, LOOK AT ME ME ME ME ME ME! Look at my hate for you and your life! Look at my hate for money! Look at my hate and bask in it the way I do. And then let me know what time I’ll be on the news so I can set my TIVO.”

P.S. This post is in no way directed toward Occupy Pittsburgh. This post is entirely directed to Occupy Everything.

(h/t Bram and also to City Paper’s Chris Potter on Twitter who found the statement)