When I decided to be a Zebra for Halloween this year, it was a thinly veiled rouse: I really wanted a reason to purchase a completely horrifying zebra-print Snuggie and then to laugh and laugh and laugh when I wore it. Snuggies have been the punchline to pretty much every joke I’ve made in 2009. Shipping issues foiled my Halloween plans, but it’s been worth the wait. With my imperfections masked by Snuggie, I have taken the best picture of my life – the picture that I definitely want to run next my obituary:

Phil thinks it’s popularity is because Snuggie can accompany oneself to the restroom (we do not do nor endorse this).  I think it’s utility: once Snuggie’s joke wears out, it’s still useful as a blanket.  I’m also excited by the prospect of Snuggie Pub Crawls (wearing your Snuggie to a bar without likeminded individuals), and but not so much by the Snuggie Sutra.

Isn’t it such a drag to do endless chores for your pet?  Don’t you just wish you could be 6 years old again and just fake promise to take care of the animals?  Great news!  I have discovered a secret that will save you literally minutes a day – freeing up your schedule immeasurably.   It’s called “automation” – setting up systems so that you can put in the least amount of effort while still keeping your pets alive.   This guide is more about cats because cats are more emotionally secure and easier to automate.  

Playtime.

Personally, I find it too much effort to actually move the laser pointer.  First you have to create interesting and varied patterns to make sure your pet is extremely confused and bites themselves.  Really cerebral.   Then there is the monumental effort of moving your hand around.   Not to worry.  Set this Cat Laserbeam Toy on the ground and the machine thinks up ways to plays with your pet.  You get to work on that ham sandwich over there.  No one’s suddenly pretending to be your new best friend.

Food.

This Automatic Feeder gives you 8 blissful days before they start screaming incessantly.   I have heard that most pets can be trained to walk to the store with a $10 bill tucked in their harness.   You must explain repeatedly to make sad faces so that the grocery clerks will understand what they want.    Don’t fool yourself – your pet will seriously never speak English in front of other people.  After a few days of gnawing hunger, your pet will also automatically figure out to bite a hole in the package, and nudge the food into the container.

Waste.

Cats especially love loud noises and rapid movement, so they will love Litter Robot.   Any time you can introduce something noisy and made of unnatural materials, the better.  As an added perk, Litter Robot looks futuristic which is important to animals.  It’s a steal at $315.   You’d end up spending that much on Oust spray and scented candles to cover up that scent.

I have something for dog waste too: Poop Freeze.  This product makes the worst of the worst ice cold so you can pick it up.  Actually just kidding.  We both know you’re totally leaving that on the sidewalk.  The person who steps in it will be grateful you make it rock hard, once they realize it’s not a rock.

Keeping them out of your business.

Pets are nosy and many are actually thieves.  My cat just takes things.  He doesn’t even ask to borrow them. Animals don’t realize that your stuff belongs to you.  They’re selfish, yes, but it’s okay because there are ways to keep them out of your stuff.   Pet Trainer Alarm works by creating an invisible barrier they don’t know about – when your pet moves closer, the most horrible sound possible is emitted from the device, sending your pets flying to shiver somewhere else.   Indoor Pet Barrier works similarly, except it makes a jolting warning noise when your pet first enters the forbidden zone and then eventually produces “a mild static correction” if your pet pushes his luck.   It probably doesn’t hurt that much.   And if it really smarts, at least your pet will never figure out that you were responsible.   They’ll just assume they were electrocuted by karma. They will ultimately move on, becoming the fiercely independent pet of your dreams.

Please note that opinions expressed in this article are not intended to substitute for proper pet care.   Please treat your pets well. Special thanks to Sky Mall for being an exceptionally easy target.

Unless you still think it’s called Facemask, you’ve probably seen a bunch of status updates about FarmVille (or it’s predecesor Farm Town) on your Facebook feeds. I’d like to think I am immune to being infected by Facebook apps, I’m usually able to ignore things like Mob Toss or Mouse Wars, but I wandered into FarmVille and I kept wandering back into it.  How did this happen?  I seem so smart.

It’s probably because I live in an apartment, and my palatial garden is more like 3 potted plants: the survivors of at least seven plants I have killed. ( Plants crave electrolytes right?)  But I can effectively garden on FarmVille.  In fact, I’m a property owner.  I have fancy pink animals that never leak methane.  Not to mention that there’s plenty of opportunities for my favorite activity: decorating! With graphics!

I guess a few years ago I would have been more embarrassed about tending a virtual garden, but it’s not the end of the world.  It’s soothing and kind of… sweet.  And I’m not alone either.  I’m noticing among my friends that the more urban their location, the more likely they are to enjoy dominion over FarmVille. Are we all feeling pangs toward a pastoral life we can’t have in our glittering cities?

FarmVille love probably won’t last forever though.  The New York Times, notoriously behind the times on technology trends, has a feature on FarmVille.   And garnering attention from the NYT this early definitely means that FarmVille is no longer a secret vice for urbanites.   I’m not sure I’m ready to say farewell to my mansion, tea house and strawberry cows!

Oh, so today I stumbled across a dream job: $10,000 for one month’s work, during Christmas time in Manhattan. The duties? Discussing toilet paper with restroom attendees in Times Square. Sign me up! I love nothing more than discussing minutia. On a whim, I applied with a cover letter that I am pretending is witty and not at all a blight on my reputation. I believe, if selected to be one of the 5 Charmin Ambassadors, I would be the dark-humored, brainy one. It would be the roll of a lifetime. Check out EnjoyTheGo.com and of course, join me in applying.

Time for some beautiful!  Kristin Chenoweth is so darling, so amazingly gifted (and pretty!).  Glitter and Be Gay (Candide) is gorgeous coloratura aria – largely too difficult for even well-trained sopranos to sing – and there she is bouncing about the stage and making you feel at ease with her breathtaking talent.   Even if you’re not into Opera (Ha! I tricked you, this is Operetta),  give it a try.   It’s wonderful.   Those insane top notes – ah!  Have a happy weekend.

According to this document, an unnamed agency released a list of artists and songs that were used on U.S. terror suspects, held at Guantanamo Bay, in ways in which I can only infer were meant to cajole suspects into blurting information. You know, torture. Surely, that’s not the most annoying music we can use to capture Osama bin Laden? The Meow Mix jingle? Are the terrorists dog people?

Most people aren’t excited by their vacuums, but having had the world’s worst, cheapest maroon behemoth violently spit kitty litter and dirt back at my feet for several years, when I finally purchased a Dyson – my life actually changed. It was worth the shocking sticker price to vacuum and later walk across wooden floors that felt like silk, instead of an emery board. I almost love vacuuming now. Almost.

However, Dyson apparently does more than vacuums: they’ve ventured into fans.  Strange, round fans with no blades that seemingly don’t blow air. It’s chic though, and certainly isn’t as fugly as the Vornado, even though my small, small brain doesn’t understand such cooling alchemy. Also good news: it’s only $300! Whee! I look forward to owning one in a decade.

If you like knowing about the future, like I do, peruse away: Dyson explains the face-melting abyss created by their new fan with pictures and video.

I confess: I have a thing for stories about eccentrics, mansions, cats, dilapidated glamor and makeovers – so I am pleased to see numerous Emmy wins for the gorgeous and haunting “Grey Gardens” tonight! I’ve been fascinated by the Edie Beales and Grey Gardens for quite sometime. And of course, HBO and I are not alone. There’s the devastating and charming Broadway musical, well decorated with Tony awards. There’s Rufus Wainwright’s song Grey Gardens. Then there’s Rugrats, the Nickelodeon cartoon where everyone’s crotch is suspiciously, upsettingly wide. You probably watched it if you were born sometime after 1982, or the battery died in your remote at very inopportune moment.

While not exclusively parodying Grey Gardens (dominate themes are ripped more from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Sunset Boulevard), Rugrats namechecks Grey Gardens and certainly captures the creepy. Did I mention wide crotches? What is going on down there? [Edit: YouTube videos were taken down due to a Terms of Service violation - if you search, you may find it]

But the best is by far, soap opera One Life to Live’s twisted fantasy daydream, which is a surprisingly well done and direct homage. Everyone could have phoned it in per usual, but if you know anything about Grey Gardens, you can see that many, many people did their homework.

My husband and I were in the mood for a movie last night, but having seen the majority of films on demand, we really scraped the bottom of the barrel with Swordfish. I had seen it, he hadn’t – but I guess my tastes were less refined back when it was released because I didn’t remember it being so horrifyingly stupid (a bus being picked up by a helicopter and banged into several Los Angeles skyscrapers). In case you’ve also blocked it out in order to live, it’s the movie where Halle Berry hoodwinked a million dollars for a completely gratuitous flash of her breasts.

Once the credits rolled, I was expecting to see “Directed by Alan Smithee” but it was some guy I had already forgotten in the last 20 hours (I googled: Dominic Sena).  We joked that the director never worked again. Well, that’s not entirely true. While he  laid low for three years, ducking back into music videos, the director of Swordfish is apparently inacting his revenge with the upcoming Whiteout, the poster of which has quickly turned into the very bane of my existence!

Los Angeles is a place filled with movie stars, so consequently, there’s an unholy saturation of billboards, bench ads and bus stops featuring film and television projects. It’s an overkill you can’t even imagine until you cruise down Melrose, La Brea, Beverly, Hollywood and Sunset boulevards. Why? When the stars and executives are out on the prowl, drunkenly wrecking their careers and not wearing panties, they can see their projects plastered everywhere. This way, they really can’t point a finger at the studio’s marketing as the cause of the project’s poor success. The Los Angeles marketing cleverly presents the illusion that the entire country is blanketed in advertisements, when it’s not even remotely as dense in any other market.

So there’s not just one or two Whiteout promotions around town, there’s about 80,000 of the most hideous one sheet featuring the usually lovely Kate Beckinsale looking like Jennifer Aniston with blue acne. Did the designer die in the middle of making the one sheet?  I can’t fathom how this happened. Equally mystifying: stars can veto unflattering promotions.  Beckinsale didn’t care what she looked like. While I’m annoyed by the eye pollution, I respect her cool attitude. In her place, I would have grabbed the Wacom stylus right out of the designer’s hands and stabbed the “creative” executive who thought to do this to my beautiful, beautiful face.  Maybe stabbing is a bit dramatic, but you know: actresses are just passionate people.  (I would never actually stab someone – just lightly poke)

We’re teaching Leonardo di Kitty to come to us when we have treats so we can fetch him from under the bed at any time. With light whistling and bag shaking and exclamations of “treat! treat!” he’s learned to come to the kitchen and pretend he’s a starving orphan.  However, we noticed when we played the song below that he would fly out from the bedroom with the same expectant look and pace the cabinets where we keep the treats. There’s something in the song that sounds like we’re begging to unload treats.  Hence this is Kitty’s treat treat song.

I know: Cool story, bro.