Local Munchtime: Dragon Phoenix in Tyrone and why you should call them.

Being that I have three jobs — one of which I don't even get paid for — it's no surprise that when Saturday seeps in, it's five-star Lazy Time. When my favorite boy arrives, Lazy Time morphs into Slugville, where the most strenuous activity obtained is screaming at Crash Bandicoot on my Playstation 2 while waiting for pork fried rice to drive itself to my door step.

Don't get me wrong — chinese take-out will always remain a total carb salad with a side of sodium. But sometimes Sweet-n-Sour meat and Krab Rangoon is the only cure for... anything. As most chinese restaurants and platters tend to overlap with similar taste and options, it can be hard to find that one establishment that steals your heart while putting you at risk for heart disease regularly (but you like it). 

The answer, my friends, is Dragon Phoenix on Bay Pines Boulevard.

Sweet-n-Sour is my jam all the way, but sometimes I have a hard time choosing between chicken or pork. I've asked places to make exceptions for me, offered to pay nonsense upcharges and have even been turned away from the dinner combo I so desire. Dragon Phoenix will give me both in one dinner, as well as a spring roll instead of an egg roll. I usually ask to switch my egg roll to a spring, but Dragon Phoenix just knows. 

Their side of Krab Rangoon comes with TEN pieces. Ten. Not four or six. But actually enough to split with someone and enjoy as the integrity of a side dish should be comprised. The dinner comes perfectly compacted in a microwavable tray, with pork fried rice that wasn't rushed in the kitchen; when I get pork fried rice as a pile of firm, separated tidbits inedible with the prongs of a fork, it makes my soul die a little. And the bites of pork are actual bites that you can stab and put in your mouth instead of bacon bits spray painted like pork. 

Not only are the standard dinner essentials present, but Dragon Phoenix dinners also include soup (the egg drop is killer) and those crunchy noodle-chip things that resemble Fritos but don't make me feel like a fat American after consumption. And for thirteen bucks? Sign me up. Forever.




Dragon Phoenix
9621 Bay Pines Boulevard
St. Petersburg, FL 33708
727.399.8646

I'm not embarrassed to say I'm a Friends fiend.

I am embarrassed to say that I've seen so many reruns that Rachel and Ross have given conflicting birthdays in different episodes. For example, in The One With Joey's New Girlfriend, Rachel tells Gunther her birthday is May 5th, but in the episode where she's pulled over in Monica's Porsche by Sergeant Sagittarius, it's stated that she is in fact an Aquarius. 


When Ross starts to mention his birthday to Gunther, he only gets to "December..." before Gunther storms off, blatantly caring only about his creepy infatuation with Rachel. Episodes later, Ross claims his birthday as a specific date in October that would make him a Libra. I can't remember the exact date at this millisecond in time, but when I heard it, I cross-checked a Zodiac website to see if that would make him a Libra because I'm sick and need help.


I know I blame a galaxy full of problems on my mother, but I'm not going to dismiss this opportunity to blame this one on her as well. As my friend Brian would say, "Here's some deep-seated psychosis, ya'll! Pull up a chair." 


I remember clapping along (well, the four claps) to the Friends theme song with my mom before I was even old enough to understand the condom jokes. When Chandler regretted buying that 12-pack of condoms is when my mom explained, "it's a balloon thing that the man puts on his penis to have sex." I still laugh every time Chandler has his regrets about the dozen condoms. And now, I even understand why men need balloon things to have sex. I also know that thinner balloon things are for the better, but that's besides the point I'm making here people. 


The point is, not one person should know that Friends airs on CW, TBS and Nickelodeon every weekday, nor should they be able to recite the lineup. I won't recite the lineup per channel, but I will say that I am strangely proud of being one in a crowd that realizes when Nickelodeon stops airing Friends 11:00 pm - 1:00 am, so it can start airing That 70's Show 12:00 am - 1:00 am instead. That shit only lasted a week before the two-hour Friends mini-marathon returned every night. 


And that's why there should be sitcom psyche wards.

Why the new Facebook Timeline is another shining example of privacy invasion that people will continue to put up with

Once again, a new Facebook feature is clogging the intellect of my Twitter newsfeed. I like Twitter because I can follow things that actually stimulate brain activity, versus mindlessly Liking things for a millisecond of satisfaction via clickery. I enjoy tracking news sources that can teach me things or people that have mastered the art of 140 character quips. Unfortunately, Facebook is of great public interest because the universe is tied into it, so whenever a new feature breaks through and stirs the ant farm, I still have to hear about it.

As I've said for over a year, Facebook is the ultimate invasion of privacy. Malware that looks like fun. Spyware that comes in a fun package. Like buttons, games, a vortex of photos that your friends and friends of friends of friends who you haven't spoken to since high school can see, unless you have your privacy settings tweaked perfectly (and sometimes even that doesn't matter).

And here comes the Facebook Timeline. The definitive archive of every move made by each Facebook user, in a neat package to sift through with ease, stapled to profile pages. Don't like the idea? Too bad, so sad. 

In a nutshell, the Timeline will organize everything that's ever touched your profile, in chronological order, starting the day you birthed that Facebook profile baby that you now wish you could smother to death with a squeaky giraffe pillow. 

Before the new Timeline feature "rolls out" or "goes live," users are given a seven day period to activate the feature themselves, allowing them to edit their personal information before others can see it. 

Isn't that sweet? Mark Zuckerberg is allowing users to be proactive with their own information before Facebook does whatever it wants with it. Cool.

Aside from the FTC investigations and gargantuan contradiction that Facebook is as a whole, I keep hearing the same arguments and reasoning from users alike.

"What's the difference? It's all out there anyway." - Everyone

              "Well, people should be more careful about what they post online." - Everyone

     "What? That's crap! I'm leaving Facebook. 

       Wait, who just liked my status about Pita Chips? Oh yeaaaah!" - Everyone

Minus the guy with the Pita Chips, both are valid points. However, the word we're looking for here is control. 

Control within a personal, social website that encourages you to have fun with it. Control of your online identity. Control of what people see and how they see it on your own page. To say people should be more careful about their posts is irrelevant. If I've posted nothing but photos of kittens and smiley faces since the day I subscribed to Facebook, then that is my information to control on Facebook. Until now.

Facebook has morphed into a monstrous online trigger for omnipresent cognitive dissonance. People find themselves hating it, threatening to leave it, dealing with it, learning to love it once more and moving along until the next uproar. To compare Facebook to a domestic violence case would be a little ridiculous; I'd prefer the term rape. Rape that starts in a back alley of Palo Alto that permeates through your veins, eyes, guts, ears and keyboard until they spill onto the screen of a friend of a friend of a friend's iPhone. You're Liked. Tagged. Notified. Poked. Messaged. Invited. Requested. Information sequestered. 

The Facebook Timeline is coming and it's here to stay. For those of you who give your profile no permission to be used in advertisements, wake the fuck up. You are one.

Learn to Like it. 

My my life is a bad comedy. And I'm tired of starring in it.

From now on, I'm going to act on my predictions and ideas when they come to me, instead of spending a month+ wavering between whether or not my idea may or may not be stupid for the may or may not be... intended audience. Today is the pickle on my shit sandwich of journalist motivation and pace of work. Here's why:

For months, I've been mulling over an article idea about cereals. It started at a grocery store in La Spezia, Italy, where I spotted my new favorite cereal that I would never see again in this country. I won't go into specifics, but this one cereal was intended to be the "star" of the article - delicious morsels that aren't, in fact, available here in the United States. I was going to accompany my words with a sweet infographic and even t-shirt ideas for the publication I was pitching this to - a great magazine in New York. My article plus extra mile of face-melting graphics and ideas for the company were going to come with a side of desperation and a plea for that once in a lifetime internship, the one that could put me on the map or at least give me a good beginning for the memoir I would write when I'm 75 and have gone nowhere due to my lack of haste. But excellent ideas aside, today I decide to go shopping at Target, an establishment which has earned my utmost respect in terms of bomb-ass deals on juices and snacky food (and even frozen veggies if you catch them on a good day).

This is the point where I will ask one question and those who formulate a correct answer can move on. 

* At Nicole's trip to Target, did she:

A). Run into an awkward ex 

B). Run into an awkward ex who had the same idea for a story pitch to the same magazine

C). Purchase a giant plastic bear filled with animal crackers for $4.97

D). Stroll down the cereal aisle only to find that the United States is now mass producing the intended star of her magazine pitch and selling them everywhere.

Sorry, the correct answers we were looking for were C and D. For those of you who are moving on, I know you Christmastree'd it. Be ashamed. 

As a Capricorn with an estranged sense of intuition, I know what you're thinking, so don't worry. Yes, I could still continue with my pitch idea minus the cereal that I was most passionate writing about. Yes, I could think of an entirely new idea and try to work on that. Yes, life will go on and within the next hour I will have changed into my fudge-stained Candy Kitchen t-shirt and be on my way to lift waffle cones into walking corpses' faces like a programmed cyborg. Yes, that will be $2.90 and $3.10 with tax. Two singles? $6.21 with tax. No we don't have senior discounts. Why should you pay less just because your skin is fucking ancient? 

Life is gross.