Wildly Exaggerated

Boozy Monday #1

noreply@blogger.com (Kimbers) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:18:00 +0000

Sigh. I hate Mondays, don't you? Going back to work is such a drag, and everybody's tired and/or in a rotten mood...YECH. So today I've decided to start a new probably-not-at-all-regular feature in which I provide you with one of my favorite recipes for an alcoholic beverage with which to relax after your hard day's work! For the inaugural post, I've chosen the Big Girl Happy Drink (recipe© Clyde 2002, name© Kerri 2002)! The Big Girl Happy Drink is one of favorite drinks of all time, because it enables one to drink a hefty helping of whisky without having to make a series of hideously contorted faces! The secret lies in the spicy ginger ale which burns so much you don't even notice the burn of the whisky on your throat. As an added bonus, ginger is good for your tummy, and you're gonna need that later. So! Without further ado, here's the recipe for the Big Girl Happy Drink in the traditional 3 parts:

Part I: Safety Precautions

"It's all fun and games until someone gets emotionally devastated!" - my grandma

1. Buy yourself a cheap pay-as-you-go phone that is INCAPABLE of sending text messages.

2. Program in the contacts:

5 local taxi companies
any free community shuttles for lushes such as yourself
any family or friends who would be willing to give you a ride and/or bail you out following "The Incident"
your favorite mental health professional

3. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to include contact information for exes, coworkers, or your boss!!!!

4. If you know yourself to be the kind of person who gets hammered and orders 50 pairs of pajama jeans off TV at 3 in the morning, you should also destroy the phone's keypad, leaving only the navigation buttons to call numbers you've already programmed in.

Congratulations! Now you have a Drinking Phone*!

*Patent Pending

5. Put your regular phone, with all its texting capabilities and dangerous contact information, in an envelope addressed to someone you can trust to send it right back to you at a safe temporal remove of 5-6 weeks, like the Dalai Lama. Then drop it in any United States Postal Service-approved outgoing mail receptacle!

6. Throw the ignition keys to all available motorized vehicles (cars, boats, motorcycles, Hoverounds, etc.) in the nearest naturally-occurring large body of water.

Part II: Mixology

"I've never SEEN someone make such a mess!" - my Home Ec teacher

7. Obtain a bottle of Maker's Mark® Handmade Premium Kentucky Bourbon Whisky. If you use anything OTHER than Maker's Mark® Handmade Premium Kentucky Bourbon Whisky then you deserve what you get! Seriously, dude, don't cheap out on me.

8. Obtain a chilled 6-pack of Blenheim Ginger Ale. Gold Cap will do you just fine, but if you have some sort of vendetta against your digestive tract, you could always spring for the Red Cap.

9. Hm. Now that I think about it, you might should've done steps 7 & 8 *before* you threw your keys in the Pacific. My bad!

10. Get a massive glass and pour the two liquids in it until you've reached your personal optimum combination for maximum whisky with minimum discomfort.

Part III: Benediction

Now that we have made our drinks, let us give thanks with The Drunkard's Prayer, which our friend Amy Hernandez taught us to pray one time when recounting the story of her harrowing walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Inebriated Pedestriating, shouting:

LORD, LET THIS BUICK PASS BEFORE US!!!!

Amen. And cheers :)

Ch-Ch-Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Kimbers) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:13:00 +0000

Good morrow everyone! Today I have some news that may well make regular readers grumbly, so I'm going to take a page from the Corporate America Handbook and SCREAM FEIGNED ENTHUSIASM LOUDER THAN YOUR COLLECTIVE DISAPPROVAL UNTIL YOU'RE TOO TIRED TO FIGHT AND YOU RESIGN YOURSELF TO WHATEVER I WANT! THIS BLOG IS NOT A DEMOCRACY! CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE! IF YOU TAX US WE WILL NEVER HIRE ANYONE EVER AGAIN!

What was I talking about? Oh right - so basically, I'm hating Google pretty hard right now. Their new UIs suck, right across the board, and I'm sick of "sending feedback" and never seeing anything fixed cuz they're way too busy trying to figure out how they can profit from owning my entire life. I was in the process of developing a snazzy new fully functional webiary cage for myself anyway, and now Imma step up that process! And THIS blog will soon magically transform…into a snazzy Wordpress blog! OoooooOOOOOH! AaaaaaaaaAAAAAH! HOW EXCITING HOORAY FOR CHANGE ~~WE CAN BELIEVE IN~~ I CAN FORCE ON YOU!

I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to preserve the old posts and comments, but I'll probably tweak the appearance, which might make things go wonky for a bit. And before I can do anything, I have to finish sizing shelf liners and arranging the furniture in my new bit of virtual real estate, so I'll be surprised if this stuff happens in less than a month. I just want to prepare you in advance so you can get all the whining out of your system now and start preparing for The New Blog Order.

I'm hoping to set the current URL to point to the new site so this will impact you somewhere between "very little" and "not at all", but given Google's general tendency to scream "MINE!" and bite anyone who tries to leave, that may or may not be a problem. But whatever happens, don't worry; we'll get through this together.

*big bear hug*

Kimbers

Alternate Title: One Nap at a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:30:00 +0000

So I've been working on a novel I actually want to write for the last few weeks, and it's basically sucked my brain dry of any creative juices. But I don't want to neglect this here blog, as I have it on good authority that people do periodically stick their heads in to see if it's still alive.

It is. I promise.

So rather than try to write something original today, I've opted to bring back the ol' "as interpreted by..." fairy tale, which was last seen back in September. But this time, I'm tackling my favorite fairy tale of all time:

Sleeping Beauty

as interpreted by Kimberly "Snoozin' Kinda Pretty If You Squint Hard Enough" Welsh

Once upon a time, there was benevolent king who was beloved by all his subjects with the notable exception of an evil witch because hey! You can't please all the people all the time. Also the witch hated anybody being happy for any reason. She was like the religious right of the Middle Ages, except she did believe in science. But what they called "science" back then was actually alchemy, which turned out to be a total load of horsecrap when it came right down to it. ANYHOO! One day the queen announced she was pregant, and since Wendy's drive-thrus hadn't been invented yet, the king knew he was up a creek without a paddle when she started getting cravings! He decided to appease her by promising to hold the First Known Baby Shower once the kid was born, and the entire kingdom was invited *PROVIDED EVERYBODY BROUGHT PRESENTS*.

So the catering staff was summoned and some nice finger foods were laid out and all the king's subjects poured into the main hall bearing gifts under threat of death. FACT: if you don't have a volcano for your subjects to appease, a pregnant woman is the next best thing. It was a joyous occasion and the queen was thrilled with all her gifts, even the duplicates, because everyone had brought the receipt so she could exchange those for store credit at Heir Apparents to the Throne 'Beith' Us. Mostly it was just cute bibs and flannel footsie pajamas (because castles are very drafty), but the king had wisely asked some magical fairies to act as godparents and they gave her some bitchin' stuff! The only real hiccup was when one of the fairies wanted to grant her "the gift of beauty", and the queen was all "What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?" and the fairy was like "Nothing! I'm just sayin'. She'll just be even more beautiful!" But the queen was like "Whatever. I know what you meant." Luckily the king was wise in many things, so he said, "Give the kid a break, dear. She has my hideously bulbous nose!", which was a good point, so the queen backed off. It looked to be a glorious day indeed, but some people just CANNOT leave it alone so of course the evil witch showed up.

She burst into the main hall and shoved past the last fairy to give the newborn princess her "gift", which was a actually A CURSE (oh snap! see what she did there?) that would cause the child to die by pricking her finger on a spindle, thereby creating the first known case of hemophilia. But the last fairy had yet to take her turn, so she distracted the evil witch by tearing off her weave, then rushed forward to half-reverse the curse so the child would only fall into a deep sleep rather than dying, because we can't be killing off the title character, now can we? Even J.K. Rowling knows that. The fairy declared that the princess would only awaken to a prince's kiss, which says a lot about women's rights in this era, since everyone is basically agreeing that unless she has a boyfriend, there's no point in her ever waking up again.

After the party, the king made another wise decision to outlaw spindles throughout the kingdom and everyone wisely complied. Well, everyone except this one old lady because she was hard of hearing and the Sonic Ear also hadn't been invented yet. Occasionally someone would tell her she was supposed to get rid of her spindle, but she would just yell, "'EY? WHAT'S THAT, SONNY? I'M SUPPOSED TO GET FREUD'S THE EGO AND THE ID FOR MY KINDLE? IT'S THE 16TH CENTURY, NUMBNUTS!" Frankly, by this point the people had grown tired of "hasn't been invented yet" jokes, so they just left her to get arrested and executed. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the old lady lived and worked in a tower within the castle for reasons that the Brothers Grimm didn't bother to explain so why should I? The point is: after her sixteenth birthday the princess was wandering through the halls looking for her bauble or whatever rich kids do, and she saw the old lady spindling(?) So she stuck her head in the door...

"Pardon me, old hag, what is that?," she asked.

"I DON'T HAVE YOUR STUPID HAT!," barked the old woman. "LEAVE ME ALONE! I'M TRYNNA USE MY SPINDLE!"

"Oh!," said the princess. "A 'spindle', you say? May I try?" She stepped forward and motioned toward the machine in an effort to make herself understood.

"YOU WANNA DO IT?" The old woman shrugged. "YEAH SURE WHY NOT." So the young lady took her place at the spinning wheel, but just as she reached out for it, she pricked her finger and passed out. The old woman panicked and hobbled to the window calling, "HELP! HELP! OH, HELP! ALSO: I DIDN'T DO IT!" So every quack in the country was summoned to treat the unfortunate girl, but the king was wise enough to recognize that trepanning and leeches weren't the way to go here. Instead, it was decided that the entire castle should be put to sleep in order to spare them the pain of going on without their princess. The king's loyal subjects, who never really saw the princess on a daily basis, politely agreed to this plan because they were too nice to point out that they would be perfectly fine going about their lives without her spoiled little butt using up all their tax dollars to buy more baubles. So the people were gathered once more in the castle, and the kind fairy godmother magically installed flat screen televisions in every room so she could play a Grey's Anatomy DVD. Soon everyone was fast asleep.

Many years went by, and before long literally every major character on Grey's Anatomy had slept with every other major character, such that it was now only a "medical" drama in the sense that everybody had a venereal disease. In the meantime, a handsome prince came through the nearby forest with his hunting party, but he drew to a halt as he got close to the castle.

"Hark!," he said to his entourage. "Do you hear that? It sounds like... Yes, it sounds like a series of unrealistically attractive people whining about their love lives in a hospital! But I can't...quite...make it out..." He craned his neck further toward the castle. "It's being partially drowned out...by snoring! By Heaven, I would swear someone up on that hill is suffering from sleep apnea!," he shouted. He grabbed his medieval CPAP machine and raced up the hill at a canter to rescue the snoring victim and also to find out what had happened on Grey's Anatomy.

Arriving inside the castle, he was shocked to find room upon room of sleeping peasants and servants. The stillness was eery, and he had to hold mirrors to their faces to check that they were breathing. After some time, he came upon a room where only one person slept - a beautiful princess who appeared to be roughly his age (she'd been asleep a hundred years but it's really true that sleep keeps you young!). Thinking back on a letter he'd read in an issue of Ye Olde Cathaus, he decided to try to make out with her. He leaned over her gilded bed and pressed his lips softly to hers.

Suddenly her eyes opened and she sat bolt upright, banging her forehead into his.

"OW!," he yelled. "That hurt!"

"Well well well," she said, wiping his spit from her face, "If it's not the Handsome Pervert! I was ASLEEP! Do I even know you? GUARDS!"

At that very moment, the last episode of Grey's Anatomy played on the DVD and it went back to the menu screen. The sound of the same two bars of theme music repeating over and over annoyed the sleeping masses into wakefulness, and they heard the princess's cries of distress. Within minutes, the whole of the kingdom had come to her aid, and the prince was being dragged down to the dungeon, where he would be made to inscribe his name on the First Known Sex Offender Registry. Meanwhile, the fairy godmother rushed back to the castle to make sure everything was OK. When she arrived, she magically created Listerine because HELLO KINGDOM-WIDE MORNING BREATH, and they all lived happily every after.

THE END

Crimes Against Suspension of Disbelief

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Forgive me, Twitter followers, for I have sinned. I have become utterly and completely obsessed with the #hemyneumantrial, and have subjected you to weeks of endless prattling on about it, though the vast majority of you probably didn't give a crap. But now the trial is over, which means that you won't have to hear about it anymore. Unless there's an appeal. Or unless more information comes out. Or unless you keep reading this post, because I'm about to give you...

My Review of "EVERYBODY Has to Stand Up: the #hemyneumantrial" brought to you by Nyquil: the trial time sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so you can snooze right through relevant testimony before deciding a man's fate medicine!

by Kimberly Welsh, Exaggeratress in Chief

February 2012 saw the beginning of one of the most gripping ~~dramatic web series~~ murder trials in recent memory. Hemy Neuman was being tried for the November 18, 2010 murder of Rusty Sneiderman, a shooting which took place in the parking lot of Dunwoody Day Care just after Rusty had dropped his son off for the day. In the intervening year and a half, the community at large had learned that Neuman was Sneiderman's wife's boss (draw a diagram if you need to), and that he and Mrs. Sneiderman were potentially having an affair. Now that you're caught up on the background, let's look at the trial itself...

Leaving aside necessarily poor production values and disappointingly conservative camera work, the biggest obstacle between this trial and greatness was its inconsistency. Indeed, I believe this will be held up for generations to come as an example of what happens when two conflicting production teams are left to bicker over the same project, though we must give credit where credit is due - Judge Gregory Adams' direction was a valiant attempt at fluidity and effective pacing. District Attorney James and Assistant DA Geary handled Act I ("State's Evidence") and Act III, Scene 1 ("Prosecution's Rebuttal: the Revenge") with dignity and aplomb, giving them the feel of an expertly edited documentary. I attribute this to the fact that, by and large, they took the courageous risk of using real people who were telling the truth to tell their story. The notable exception here is, of course, Andrea Sneiderman (née Greenberg and hereafter referred to as such because it irritates me to use the same name for her and the innocent victim) with her scenery-chewing Bobble-Headed Unsympathetic Confrontational Sarcasm™ approach to her role, but the DA made even this dramatic abomination fit, through a graceful and seamless mise-en-abîme, by which the very fact that she was acting paradoxically added to the realism of the other testimony. Honestly, the only other fault I find with this portion was the ham-handed advertisement for Coldwell Banker on the witness stand - highly incongruous, in an otherwise very serious scene.

But in Act II ("Defense Evidence"), viewers were subjected to a jarring shift in tone, from the world of the sober, truthful documentary to a parade of spinning pyrotechnics and flashing lasers, framing a tale of passion, 12-foot demons in the guise of 80s pop culture icons, domestic violence, globe-trotting, and the sordid story of two people who made the perverse decision to watch "The Goodbye Girl" voluntarily! At times, I wondered if this was indeed the same ~~mini-series~~ murder trial! At best it was confusing, and for most viewers it proved downright disorienting. In addition to the lack of continuity, a remarkably inept casting made this portion all but unwatchable! I must've heard acting teachers say it a hundred times: if you cannot actually make tears come out of your eyes, DO NOT ATTEMPT A FAKE CRY ON STAGE! And if I ever doubted the wisdom in that, there was no shortage of poorly-acted defense witness testimony to drive home its point. Meanwhile, the majority of the witnesses called to testify on behalf of the defense came across as confrontational, indignant, arrogant, and (in some applicable cases) utterly biased and unprofessional. Overall, it was a disappointing mishmash that meandered aimlessly, though I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge Dr. Marx's brilliant comic turn in Scene Two ("Cross Examination"). Well done, Dr. Marx!

What we saw in Act III was largely more of the same - gritty, believable reality from the Prosecution and an imaginatively written but poorly acted psychological thriller from the Defense. Act IV brought significantly more drama as the action mounted to its climax. The monologue of Attorney Doug Peters was difficult to watch, owing to the frustration of seeing a clearly accomplished performer with great potential so harshly constrained by the gaping holes in the plot he must advance. Thus it was ultimately District Attorney Robert James who stole what was left of the show after Andrea Greenberg's jaw-dropping performance. His speech, and his visual aids, were set to reveal the surprise ending: this was not a psychological thriller or a true-crime reality show, but an honest-to-God murder trial.

A man is dead. And all the belligerent witnesses, fanciful demons, and friendly Coldwell Banker agents in the world can't change that fact. I honestly think most of the people who watched this trial so obsessively (like me) did so because we were so appalled that anyone would expect Neuman's story to be taken seriously - that's what was funny. The death of Rusty Sneiderman wasn't funny. At all.

In his statement at sentencing, Hemy Neuman began by saying that no one had won; "everybody lost". I can certainly see where he was going with that, and there's no doubt he was standing in a room full of sad people, all of whom had lost something. But Rusty had lost more than anyone else, and there was only one thing anyone could still offer him: justice. And his family, with the help of the DA and his team, got that for him. It's a hollow victory, to be sure. But actually, Hemy: Rusty won.

So rest in peace, Rusty. And rest in peace, #hemyneumantrial hashtag. And rest in peace, this horrible, horrible story.

Unless...

I Got SERVED.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:55:00 +0000

In the last few weeks, I've felt exponentially more optimistic about life in general. Maybe it was finally getting enough sleep. Maybe it was the Girl Scout Cookies. Maybe it was the discovery of a K-Cup I can finally love. Maybe - maybe - it had something to do with the meds that balanced my brain chemistry so I didn't feel *quite* so much like lying on the couch until I starved to death. WHO CAN SAY?

The point is, I was flying way too close to the sun, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do. The only thing that would bring me back down to the level of abject misery on which the rest of the country lives 24/7. I did the thing...that could irretrievably destroy a good mood.

I called Customer Service.

I love Customer Service. I love everything about it. I love the dystopic sound of a robot on the verge of tears as it starts every sentence with "I'm sorry..."! I love the even more dystopic sound of the human being who finally picks up where the robot left off, terrified, knowing I'm already seething as she reads from a script that requires her to thank me for literally everything I do or say in the course of our conversation! But the thing I love most is that the end of a Customer Service call is never really "Goodbye", but merely, "I'll call you right back, even more pissed than I already am, since you've routed me to this dead-end and refuse to fix my problem".

It all started when I decided to switch from AT&T to Comcast, because I wanted faster internet, and Comcast could give me that *plus* a more useful cable connection for less! Wonderful! I signed up online, which was super great, because who's gonna give me better customer service than ME? Nobody, that's who! And I can prove it! The process of finalizing my order with Comcast involved a quick little live chat with a New Account Specialist Or Whatever. He informed me that my number could be ported, but not yet, because AT&T needed to "release" it. I was assigned a temporary interim number, to be replaced with the old one once it was free. So I called AT&T!

Here's what you experience when you talk to the AT&T Robot:

ROBOT: Thank you for calling AT&T! I see you're calling from [your phone number, read out in a slow voice that takes only ten short minutes of your life]! Is that the number associated with the account you are calling about?

ME: YES

ROBOT: Great! Now can you tell me, in a few words, what it is you're calling about today?

ME: I NEED TO-

ROBOT: You can say "I want to sign up for U-Verse TV" or "I'd like to order another U-Verse box"

ME: (muttering to myself) Really? Can I also tell you where you can shove U-Verse?

ROBOT: It sounds like you're calling to set up U-Verse! Is that correct?

ME: NO!

ROBOT: (long pause) Now can you tell me, in a few words, what it is you're calling about today?

ME: I NEED TO GET-

ROBOT: You can say "I need technical support" or "I'd like more information on U-Verse"

ME: I NEED TO GET MY NUMBER RELEASED FOR PORTING

ROBOT: Hang on while I get more information... It looks like AT&T just received a payment from you! Would you like to hear the details of this payment?

ED NOTE: This is by far the dumbest part of the whole stupid spiel. Obviously they've done this because most people are calling about their bills(?) but if you're going to assume that's why I'm calling, WHY DID I HAVE TO TELL YOU WHY I'M CALLING? Also, I don't know what the rest of you people are doing, but when I make a payment, I already know the details of that payment. Because I made it. I don't need it read to me. I'd also like to point out that in two days, I called AT&T FIVE TIMES, and I got to hear the "recent payment" crap EVERY SINGLE TIME.

So when the robot first passed me to a person, I told her what I needed and she gave me a different number to call. She conveyed the number with an air of authority and unshakeable confidence, so it never crossed my mind that this might not be the right number. I thanked her, hung up, and called the number. I'd provide a transcript here, but I can't. Because the robot at that number only spoke Spanish. I let it run through its options, waiting for the English equivalent of the standard "Para Español, marque el numero dos!" message. Nothin'. So I hung up and, figuring I had misdialed, tried again. Same result. I began to wonder if the friendly AT&T lady had somehow gotten the impression that I spoke Spanish, despite my accent-free English in our entirely English-language exchange. Finally I gave up and called the standard AT&T Robot back. We went through the same song-and-dance as before, in which he read me my phone number in the same amount of time it took to build the pyramids, asked what I wanted twice, didn't know what the hell I was talking about, offered to read my last payment aloud to me, and finally offered to hand me off to a human being. When the AT&T Robot picked up this call, it was 5:57pm. By the time he offered to hand me to a human, it was 6:01, and instead of hearing a human, I heard the Robot saying, "We're sorry, this office is closed for the day. Please try again tomorrow."

So I did. I tried again the next day. I let him pat himself on the back for knowing my number, I yelled gibberish at him when he asked what I needed (makes no difference to him!), he told me I had recently paid an obscene amount of money for this crappy service as if this information might come as a surprise to me, then connected me to a person. I told this person that I needed my number liberated for porting. She said, "Please hold while I connect you". There was a click. Silence. Another click. Silence. Click. Hold music. Click. Silence. Click.

ROBOT: Thank you for calling AT&T! I see you are calling from...

So we did it AGAIN, with me now screaming unintelligibly at the Robot, who moved unperturbed through his script, not registering my bloodboiling rage because why would he? He hasn't listened to a word I've said EVER! This time, when the human picked up, I was ready. "DON'T HANG UP!," I yelled before she could speak, like a kidnap victim who's finally gotten through to an ex-friend who is now her only hope of rescue. I explained my request once more, but this time I added, "I have talked to your robot four times, but he DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO HELP ME! And the last lady I talked to just gave me back to the robot. Please. Please. I don't want to talk to the robot again." (Yes, I literally said this. That is how crazy Customer Service makes me.)

Fortunately, this nice lady was able to help me, insofar as she could tell me that the number is free for porting, and Comcast has their info screwed up. In other words: Call Customer Service! And I will. As soon as I get approval to quadruple my psych meds.

You Turn Right at the WHAT Now?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:00:00 +0000

For years, I've driven through Midtown Atlanta for a variety of reasons, and more often than not, I exit the freeway and enter the city via 17th Street. And in the course of these years, I've seen this one landmark at least 200 times. And each time I see it, I think the exact same thing.

It's part of the exterior design of a restaurant, you see. And this restaurant is always busy, it's been there for years, and I just googled it to find that every review site shows it having an average of 4-5 stars. It appears on numerous "Best Of..." lists as well. For these reasons, I am absolutely certain that the food is wonderful, the service is friendly and helpful, and the ambience is unbeatable. I don't know that firsthand, because I've never eaten there. I doubt I ever will. This is partly due to my being a massive cheapskate, partly due to my not especially loving Thai food, but mostly due to this landmark they've erected. Actually, I may be the only person in the world who would call it a "landmark", but it's so unique! So unignorable! So far in the forefront of my mind! Because people are always eating there, and it is always busy and I don't know how that can be, because

COME ON, MAN! HOW IS THAT NOT A GIANT BRONZE GORILLA TURD?

Image shamelessly yoinked from the in-depth (and very complimentary) review at Atlanta Restaurant Reviews

Wii're Not Gonna Take It.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Fun fact about me: I like to ask for awesome things for my birthday, receive them, then tell myself I'm not allowed to open them until I do some God-forsaken chore. As a result, I don't start raving about birthday gifts til months after the fact. Personal record: the Neato XV-11 I received in early January and finally unboxed IN JULY. (The chore was cleaning my room. I still hadn't done it, but more than 7 months just seemed ridiculous.) (Also: the Neato XV-11 is highly recommended.) Anyway! This year I asked for a Wii! And I got it! In January!

Naturally, I did not open the box until 2 days ago (when I finally got rid of the chest of drawers which had substituted for an entertainment center for the past five years).

The Wii is part of my Master Plan for Living Room Domination, which is exactly what it sounds like: my personal mission to reclaim my living room from all the crap and junk mail that buries me over and over again. Sometimes I look back at the pictures I took of this place while I was still trying to decide whether to make an offer, and I sigh wistfully at all the space, the shiny floors, the unobstructed windows... It is my dream that someday I might show those pictures to someone else, tell them "that's my condo", and have them actually believe me. So in anticipation of opening the Wii, I culled my electronics collection. I donated my DVD player and my VHS player (yes I still had one, though I hadn't touched it in 10 years), and gifted my Xbox 360 to my brother. My reasoning was as follows:
1. There is not a single Xbox game I have any interest in playing. I was just using the Xbox for Netflix, Hulu+ and DVDs. But...
2. I don't need the Xbox for DVDs, because I have a PS2. And obviously I won't be getting rid of the PS2. I lived 19 long, boring, tedious, joy-deprived years without Crash Bandicoot. I don't intend to lose him again now.
3. The Wii could do Netflix and Hulu+ and do it wirelessly ("Xbox 360: because everybody loves having ethernet cords running all over the damn place"), and there are quite a few Wii games I quite like. And it can play some old Nintendo games from my childhood! And the menu screens play soothing elevator music, which I also quite like! And if - God forbid - my PS2 should someday go on to a better place, the Wii could be THE home base for internet-based TV, games, and DVDs!

EXCEPT OH WAIT A MINUTE WHAT?

The Wii doesn't play DVDs. I'm sure I'm the last person on the face of the Earth to learn this, but give me a break - it was hard to justify buying one when I still had an Xbox and a PS2, so I'm just now getting around to it. When my beloved Flight of the Conchords Season 1 Disc 1 failed to play after the 3rd try, I sat down at my laptop and, chiding myself for asking such a stupid question, typed "Does Wii play DVDs?" Imagine my astonishment! My consternation! My disappointment! My RAGE! ...when I learned that no, it does not. I did some additional looking around and came across a number of articles claiming that the Nintendo corporation essentially felt that a DVD drive on the Wii would be overkill because "there are already so many other components that play DVDs", citing not only other game consoles and dedicated media players, but laptops, desktops, and...oh wait those are all the things that play DVDs. This is the Dumbest Corporate Decision since Suntory handed Kim Kardashian a Midori bottle and took her picture* (YES I AM STILL MAD ABOUT THAT), and I will give you both reasons why:
1. "We aren't gonna do this because other people already did it" is just bad business. That's like Pepsi saying "Nah, let's not introduce a crappier version of every single product Coca-Cola makes." It's unheard of! And I bet people will read this and say, "Um, I believe it's COKE that copies PEPSI, stupid Atlantan Coke freak." And I will say to them, "Oh GO DRINK SOME PEPSI TOILET WATER!" And they will threateningly brandish a Mountain Dew pop top at me and yell, "DON'T MAKE ME CUT YOU!" And I'll grab a frozen Coke and be all, "You try it and I'll give you a brain freeze you'll NEVER forget!" And then they'll be like, "Did you even see Pepsi's Superbowl commercial? Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?" And then Elton John and Flavor Flav will come running up, and the three of them will start coming at me like a West Side Story dance sequence to kick my ass, but then I'll snap my fingers and a bunch of bloodthirsty polar bears will rush them and when all the screaming dies down, the polar bears and I will sit down with a Coke and they'll put their paws on my shoulder and we'll watch the Northern Lights, BITCH!

What was I talking about? Oh right: the Wii. My point is that businesses are supposed to try for customer loyalty and a cornered market. The [theoretical] ideal Wii consumer is a person who says, "I'm buying a Wii, and I'm not buying any other console or media player, because the Wii can do everything I need!" Then you've got the revenue from the initial purchase and you have that customer cornered for any number of services you can dream up to roll out in the future! Instead, they said, "We won't make our product do all the things it could do, because people can buy someone else's product for that." Thanks man! That's a great idea! I'll just get an Xb...OH WAIT I NO LONGER HAVE ANY USE FOR THE WII WHATSOEVER. Business FAIL.

I guess my other point, to a lesser extent, was that we're supposed to have multiple products that do similar things. The fact that you can say "Mello Yello is Coke's version of Mountain Dew" or "Sierra Mist is Pepsi's version of Sprite" or "Aquafina is Coke's version of Dasani and by the way THEY ARE BOTH 'WATER'" is not "proof of a redundancy in the market". Rather, it is the purest form of American capitalism, tapping into our cultural DNA's tendency toward irrational "My Team is Better Than Your Team and...What Did You Say I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!" behavior and using it to screw all of us out of our money. Just like politics!

2. The Nintendo people are absolutely right - we have a lot of products in our homes that play DVDs. Until 2 days ago, I had a DVD player, an Xbox, a PS2, and 2 laptops, and all of those things could play DVDs. I guess that's probably why my mindset, here in 2012, is: if I see something that has a DVD-sized slot on it and can be connected to a screen, I assume it can play DVDs. Or at least, I used to make that assumption. But the Wii people took a world where one could reasonably say "Everything already plays DVDs!" and used that logic to create a world where we say instead: "Everything plays DVDs...except the Wii." Way to go, guys! Way. To. Go.

*Seriously, are crappy decisions the new "in" thing for Japanese executives?

On Helping My Brother Move

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:53:00 +0000

ME: You're giving him my headboard?!?
MOM: Well you didn't want it, and he needs a headboard...
ME: OK fine. But he's gonna have to put his own notches in it!
MOM: *is not amused*

Who You Callin' Beautiful?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:28:00 +0000

A few years back, my favorite beauty-product mecca made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: membership in something they called the Very Important Beauty program. All I had to do was spend $300/year there, which is what I was already doing anyway. As a member, I get special deals, offers, and samples throughout the year. It’s very nice and I’m not complaining, but I’ve never felt 100% comfortable with this program. For one thing, if I really believed myself to be beautiful, I probably wouldn’t spend $300/year on cosmetics. They don’t want me to look in a mirror and think, “Beautiful!” They want me to look in a mirror and think, “Needs improvement!” For another thing, all the emails they send me start with something like “Hey there Beauty!”, which I can’t help reading as sarcasm. It reminds me of the day on the middle school bus when the 8th grade girls started calling me “cool girl” and complimenting my outfit while their friends were putting boogers in my hair. That’s a flashback I don’t need. But I’ve always heard you should never criticize something unless you have a solution, and luckily that’s just what I’ve got! I hereby officially propose the creation of the VIP (Very Insecure Person) program. Let me break it down for you…

Instead of a sexy font calling me "Beauty", all VIP communications will be written in purple comic sans, and the salutation will read: “Hey there Annie Average! How was the tub of cold fried chicken you had for breakfast?”

As a VIB, you are occasionally invited to special pre-sales for the latest seasonal colors and formulas. Rich teenagers and amazonian glamour models in designer dresses mill around oohing and aahing at “jewel tones” and “prismatic colors” at 30% off while house music pounds out of the speakers. As a VIP, you would be occasionally invited to special after-midnight VIP-only shopping hours, where regular women would wander in wearing huge t-shirts, hospital scrubs, and mud masks. The soundtrack would be all 80s soft rock, anti-aging products would be 40% off, and there would be free milk and cookies in the back.

As a VIB, you get free samples of things like hot new perfumes, whatever bronzer Jennifer Aniston’s currently endorsing, or the hot pink lipstick that looks AMAZING…if you’re a tan, skinny 18 year old model who lives in Miami. Let me tell you: I have no use whatsoever for hot pink lipstick. As a VIP, you would still get samples, but they would consist entirely of either the latest high-tech way to violently rip out body hair, or value-sized tubs of Face Caulk® Facial Crevasse Filler.

VIBs get a special treat on their birthdays - usually a birthday-cake scented bath gel. Fun! But VIPs don’t need fun; we need functional. So every year we would get a bottle of Wide Load® Fat-Eating Concentrated Sulfuric Acid Soak instead! It might not smell like cake, but it will allow us to eat our birthday cake without feeling guilty, which is much more fun than just having cake-scented armpits.

New initiates to the VIB program are given a 10% discount off any one purchase, so they can use it to buy the hot new mascara made with gardenia essence and real dolphin tears. But the VIP demographic will tend to be buying such big-ticket items (the Beauty Cocoon® At-Home Face Transplant System - only $2,000!) that 10% is more than the store can afford to lose. Instead, people like me will get an XXL t-shirt that says “I TRIED, OK?” and a coupon for 50% off their next purchase at Dairy Queen.

I truly believe this program is in the best interests of everyone involved - I’d be spared the paranoia of constantly being called “beauty”, and the store could rest easy in the knowledge that I’ll remain sufficiently insecure to keep them open for years to come. I hope to see you all at the 2am Everyone’s a Beauty in the Dark Sale & Pajama Party!

Not Very Nice Quiz: Are You a Brick Wall?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:06:00 +0000

It's the not-at-all eagerly awaited return of the Not Very Nice Quiz! Today, we will be conducting an in-depth psychological test to determine whether or not you (yes, YOU!) are a brick wall. Enjoy!

1. You've decided to raise money for herpes awareness by swimming through shark-infested waters in a replica of Lady Gaga's meat dress! You tell 3 different friends, and each of them has the same reaction: "That is in the top 1 worst ideas I've ever heard." How do you respond?
a) My life coach said I'd face naysayers like you. Dream killer!
b) Wow, you guys are so jealous. Seriously, it's pathetic.
c) You really think so? Can you maybe explain why you think it's a bad idea?
d) I'm so glad you agree about what a great idea it is! Thanks for supporting me.

2. You met the GREATEST GUY on vacation in South America! He's cute, young, foreign, and rich! You mass-email your friends to tell them all about it, and one of them writes back suggesting you Google him IMMEDIATELY. Something about a girl who disappeared in Aruba or whatever. What's your next step?
a) Roll your eyes. She's so bitter about relationships; she's probably got him confused with a different Joran Van der Sloot.
b) Google him! Your friend has your best interests at heart and...OMG! He looks so hot in these pics!
c) Google him, freak out, thank your friend, call the cops, and GO HOME immediately.
d) Terminate the friendship. If she can't be happy for you, then she's not a real friend anyway.

3. It's Christmas vacation time!!! Hooray! As you go to board your flight home, the gate agent informs you that your carry-on bag is far too large and will have to be checked. Whose fault is this?
a) the gate agent! What a bitch! Why can't she just be cool and let you get on the freakin' plane?
b) the ticketing agent. You were standing right in front of her with that bag! If it's so far outside the acceptable size range, why didn't she say something then and save you this hassle at the gate?
c) you hate to say it, but...it's yours. You had plenty of chances to check the size of the bag. You could've asked any number of people at the airport.
d) who cares? This bag WILL be coming on the plane with you. It's not about assigning blame, it's about finding the right person to scream at to get your way.

4. Is anthropocentric climate change real?
a) No. I haven't really looked into it, but Glenn Beck says it's fake, which is good enough for me!
b) Um, I think you'll find that climate change, like Santa Claus, is a theory, not a fact! Duh.
c) Probably. Modern science requires a HUGE quantity of data to say anything for certain, but most scientists who aren't on retainer with Exxon agree that it's real. And even if we aren't 100% sure, we should take the steps to curb it anyway. Surely nothing but good can come of diversifying our energy sources and doing what we can to keep our air and water clean, right?
d) No because it snowed in Alaska last week. SO MUCH FOR SO-CALLED "CLIMATE CHANGE"!

5. Oh noes! Your job is being eliminated due to outsourcing! Whose fault is this?
a) Your stupid dumb boss who didn't fight hard enough to save your job. What a jerk!
b) Damn foreigners.
c) It's a complex issue which reaches far beyond your own company and into the most basic laws regarding corporate behavior in the United States, including but not limited to the very concept of the fiduciary duty to shareholders. Bottom line: no one is going to reverse any of this in time for you to keep your job, so best to just get on with the search for a new position!
d) OBAMA (if you're a Republican) or BUSH (if you're a Democrat)

SCORING:
Mostly A: Yeeeeaaah. You need to work on looking beyond what you want something to mean and seek out some objective reality.
Mostly B: You're not really a brick wall, but you tend to only get halfway to the truth of the matter. Just try to ask a few more questions and dig a little deeper.
Mostly C: You aren't a brick wall, but you already knew that, since you have at least some superficial contact with the real world.
Mostly D: Yes you are. No really, you ARE. ARE YOU READING THIS? DON'T STOP READING JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT! HELLO? ARE YOU STILL THERE? Crap.

Love is Stronger Than Kim Kardashian

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:29:00 +0000

Today I'd like to tell you about one of the longest, most fulfilling, and most fruitful (specifically: melon-y) relationships in my life: my relationship...with Midori. I discovered Midori shortly after my 21st birthday - a simpler time, a more relaxing time, a time when I believed there would be more to my future than endless decades just biding my time waiting to fall into the gaping black maw of death. We were all so very young then. And Chili's was offering something they inexplicably called "Meltdown Floats", which were essentially little test tubes of designated fruity liqueurs that would be brought out with your margarita so you could add them to the margarita. I always thought it would be more appropriate to call them "Here, Mix Your Own Damn Drink". But I digress (often and with gusto). So I learned early on that Midori takes an ordinary margarita and makes it a magical candy-flavored journey to a land where fully functional inner ears are for losers. And in the intervening years, I've learned that Midori can do much the same thing to Sprite. Or seltzer water. But I still like it best in margaritas.

Now, lest you believe the hype of my Twitter account and/or this blog, I should point out that I'm truly not the alcohol-soaked lush I pretend to be. I like booze, but that's largely because it's still kind of a treat for me - I don't drink every single day, so I see it as a special occasion! This is also why my last Midori purchase was on July 4th of last year, fully 9 months ago. In fact, there's still a little of that sweet green nectar in the bottle, but it's not enough to make a full midorita. Plus I'm trying to run up my credit card bill at the moment so I can earn more reward miles and/or murder the bothersome party of my choice*. So I figured, "What the hey! I'll pop into my favorite boozitorium and pick up a bottle of melon-flavored bliss!"

This is pretty much the only liquor store I go to, so I know exactly where the Midori is. I went straight to the shelf where my emerald green love awaited me...and I froze in my tracks. Because I saw this:

Blurry photo due to enraged shaking/screaming "AWAY FROM MY BOTTLE YOU OVERINFLATED AIRBAG!!!"

In case it's not clear (and why would it be, as that may be the blurriest picture ever), that's Miss Kim Kardashian, endorsing MY booze. I was livid. I was confused. I mean, I believe in voting with my dollar, and I would love nothing more than if hiring that woman as a spokesperson was guaranteed to lose any given company at least 10% of its usual revenue. But could I walk away from Midori? After all we've been through? I agonized. I stood in the aisle, staring at the bottle, thinking, "If I pick that bottle up, and I take it to the counter, and I pay the man, I will be a person who has bought a thing that Kim Kardashian told me to buy. And people might see it in my fridge! And they might think, 'OMG she bought something because Kim Kardashian told her to?' And then I won't have any more friends!" It was a serious dilemma, to be sure. Thank God grade school had prepared me for this moment: the moment I looked Kim Kardashian in the little bit of her face that was still visible around all the eye makeup and said, "Kim Kardashian! Imma buy this bottle of Midori, but I'm gonna do it because I want to! NOT because you told me to!" And I needed to tell all of you that, because if you come to my house and see the Midori in my fridge, you need to know the whole story.

*This is a reference to the ongoing trial of Hemy Neuman, who did his murdering less than 2 miles from my house, so I've been watching the trial with great interest. Basically, on Thursday, a Psychiatrist Who Actually Expects To Be Taken Seriously After This Is All Over testified in front of God and everybody that Neuman didn't know right from wrong when he shot Rusty Sneiderman 4 times at point blank range, and this was due, in part, to the fact that "he had $75,000 in credit card debt". By this logic, if you owe Visa at least $75k, you can kill whoever you want and not be held responsible. Therefore, MOMMA'S GOIN' SHOPPING!

Don't Drink the Water Eat the Queso

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:16:00 +0000

I've been back from my vacay for a couple of weeks now, and while I don't want to turn my whole blog into a travelog, I had two pictures I wanted to show you. Be warned that they depict the Best Thing That Happened...and the Worst Thing That Happened. I'm gonna do the Worst Thing first, so take a moment to brace yourselves:

DON'T LOOK AWAY! We have to confront these things.

Sigh. I had Mexican food for lunch ~~one day~~ every day. And on the day when I ate at this place...I mean, I'm not gonna name it because the people were incredibly nice and the margaritas were the best I've had, but...but...

THERE ARE ROOT VEGETABLES IN THE QUESO! WHAT? Seriously! I ordered queso, and I got queso...plus carrots and radishes. RADISHES! Is this a Mexican restaurant, or a Beatrix Potter story? As you can well imagine, I was appalled. And naturally, I got up and stormed out immediately. *OR* I only ate some of it and just ordered another margarita and wouldn't have been able to "storm" anywhere without falling over. Who can remember?

OK, deep breaths. Let's switch to happier thoughts, shall we?

What are you doing...the reeeeeesssst of your life? North and South and East and West of your liiiife....

My Dream Vacation Fridge. See, I bought this bottle of wine because what'm I supposed to do? NOT have a glass of wine no further than 6 feet from my bed? But it's a rosé (oh shut up you snobs), which meant it had to be chilled. I figured this was going to be a pain in the ass, so I was so happy I nearly burst into tears when I found that my room fridge had a custom-made wine slot! Right there in the door! Not only that, but as you can see in the picture, there is also a dispensing slot for fermented liquid yeast drinks, if you wanted to drink those for some unfathomable reason. At this point, I'm seriously starting to question the footprint and energy use of my massive 2-door fridge/freezer. What is it all for? All I need is this tiny booze-slot fridge. I guess what I'm saying is: I've finally found love. Happy March everybody!

[REDACTED]: More Than a Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:10:00 +0000

As some of you may know, I recently took a week-long vacation. And it. Was. Awesome! I learned a little history, a little geography, a little about myself, and a lot about terrible horrible writing for which the author should be tried at The Hague.

You see, when I take a relaxing vacation, I like to bring along a book that's set in the city I'm visiting. It's fun to be able to see the actual settings of specific scenes and it helps bring the story to life...if the story has any life in it to begin with. This brings me to the book I read on my trip, [REDACTED]. I've decided not to actually name [REDACTED] here because, as a person who has attempted all kinds of different writing myself, I can appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that went into writing it, and I'd hate for the author to Google his or her "book" and find what I have to say about it.

I can't say it was the most awful thing I've ever read, because that honor will always, always belong to Pierre Drieu de la Rochelle's les Chiens de Paille, unless I someday decide to read something by Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly. Actually - no, scratch that, because if I ever find myself confronted with reading anything by one of those two, I really will literally kill myself. So yeah, it's always gonna be les Chiens de Paille. But this "book" is easily the second worst thing I've ever read. And I've read The Fountainhead too, so that's saying something!

The story was OK. It was a murder mystery, and I didn't know whodunit til the big reveal, which is something. Of course, that might be because I got so little actual information that I had no basis on which to hazard a guess. Or maybe it's because I did not care one iota about any of the characters, so I never bothered to wonder who did the murdering, though I did kinda wish the murderer would just randomly take everybody out with an M-16 so the last 100 pages or so could just be pictures of kittens. That would've been better.

You might be wondering why I bothered to finish the thing, and believe me, it's a question I often asked myself during that week. There were 2 reasons:
#1: I paid $2.99 for it and I couldn't get my money back.
#2: It was so badly written that it was hilarious.

I want to be very clear about the phrase "badly written", because this is important. I'm not talking about the plot, or the dialogue being unrealistic (even though a lot it TOTALLY WAS), or anything like that. I'm primarily talking about an author who couldn't be bothered to write any kind of transition whatsoever, so that everything in the book "seemed to happen suddenly". There were sentences like: "Suddenly she realized she no longer wanted to dust in the study, so she went to bed." Translation: "I AM BORED WITH THIS SCENE AND I ALREADY TOLD YOU WHAT I NEEDED YOU TO KNOW SO IT HAS SERVED ITS PURPOSE AND I'M GOING TO BED." My absolute favorite was the phrase: "Later she would wonder why she did what she did next, as there was no logic to her actions." SERIOUSLY? Translation: "I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO THINK UP AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS EVEN THOUGH THAT IS THE VERY ESSENCE OF MY JOB AS A STORYTELLER AND BESIDES 'MURDER SHE WROTE' IS ON SO LET'S WRAP THIS UP!" When I read that sentence, I was thirty five thousand feet above Arkansas, and it was all I could do not to hit the Flight Attendant Call button and say, "Yeah, I need you to show me how to open the emergency exit door because I do not want to live in a world where I've paid $2.99 to read this sentence."

Thankfully I'd had the forethought to pay $11.99 (well spent!) on a Margaret Atwood novel before takeoff, so the second I finished [REDACTED], I could crack that one open and be reminded how English is supposed to work. And hopefully it will only take another week or two to heal all the welts on my head from banging it on cafe tables, park benches, walls, and passing seagulls in frustration as I plodded through that God-awful book. So please, people, learn from my experience: don't buy [REDACTED] ($2.99 on Kindle).

Not Funny Not Bitter Holiday Post of Luv

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Good morning, class.

Today I have decided to give you all a Valentine's Day present, in the form of a handy (and uncharacteristically serious) Guide to Love. I will share with you - FOR FREE - the most important lesson I've ever learned about love. Am I saying it's the most important thing to know about how to love people? No. I'm saying it was the lesson that I most needed to learn. Your mileage may vary.

Our lesson today comes to us, as all great lessons do, from the ~~Book~~ Movie of Forrest Gump.

I was going to embed the scene here, but it doesn't appear to exist anywhere on them internets. It's the very very very very very last scene - not the one with the title "Final Scene" on all the YouTubes, the ACTUAL final scene right before the credits. Where Forrest and Little Forrest are waiting for the school bus. Little Forrest starts to get on the bus, and Forrest, looking concerned, yells, "Forrest, don't..." Then he pauses momentarily and says, "...I wanna tell you I love you." Bust out your DVD copy and re-watch for full effect.

The lesson comes in two parts, and it's all clearly stated in Forrest Sr's parting words to his son:

Part I: "Forrest, don't..."
THIS IS ME. THIS IS HOW I ALWAYS AM WITH PEOPLE. My side of a relationship ends up disproportionately filled with:
"Don't go"
"Don't drive too fast"
"Don't forget to call me when you get there"
"Don't date that jerk"
"Don't leave me"
You get the idea. It's all well-intentioned, but it's also all clinginess or bossiness or worrywarting. And the truth is, people do what they want to do. Every time, no exceptions. If they want to stay out late, they will. If they want to date guys who take advantage of them, they will! If they want to leave you and never look back, they will. If they want to do drugs, they will. And if they want to harm themselves, they'll do that too. Not saying there's anything wrong with trying to help people, but when you've passed the point of helping and become a broken record, you need to say something else. And when that happens, you have to be sure you say the right thing.

Part II: "I wanna tell you I love you"
Everything from "Don't do drugs" to "Don't date that jerk" to "Don't drive too fast" is just code for "I love you". And when you just say that instead, everything - everything - gets a lot clearer, really fast. So now, every time I hear myself about to say "Don't..." or "I wish you'd..." or "You should..."; I try to stop myself and say "I wanna tell you I love you" instead. Because I do wanna tell them that. And maybe you do too. Because even if they go and do something stupid that means I never see them again, that is the thing I will never regret having said. Ever. Happy Valentine's Day :)

via workisnotajob.com

Kimberly Welsh Must Be Stopped.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:54:00 +0000

If any of you sees Kimberly Welsh, could you please pound her stupid face in for me? Thanks.

I know what you're thinking. You're all like, "WHHAAAAAAT? But you're Kimberly Welsh!" And to that I say, "I KNOW RIGHT?!?!" But sadly there are a lot of people who don't know, and therein lies the problem. Because it is often said that the only thing you have in this life is your good name. And mine has been stolen.

I don't mean it's been "identity-theft" stolen (not recently, anyway), but I mean I have a name-doppelgängerin, and she is a law-breakin', bill-not-payin' MACHINE! I know this because I started getting friendly phone calls for her in the first month I lived in my condo. This period in my life is also referred to as "That Time I Spent 4 Straight Weeks Walking Around Wild-Eyed Screaming 'WHAT HAVE I DONE?'" Homeownership was not an easy transition for me. Just to paint you a picture: my cat tore the blinds down in my bedroom within an hour of moving in. On the first night, the smoke alarm malfunctioned, which is why I ended up standing on a chest of drawers trying to knock if off the wall with a broom (I succeeded). The next morning, the cat perched himself atop a box, which was sitting beside an open box full of measuring cups and other cookware...and then he puked directly into the box with the measuring cups and cookware. On my way to the kitchen to wash cat puke from my cookery, I noticed that the ratio of ants to food in my dog's bowl was approximately "so many ants that you can no longer see the food". That afternoon, I heard a strange noise and realized that the microwave had turned itself on and was gleefully heating itself up, completely empty, as it continued to do every few hours until I finally just unplugged it.

In other words: things weren't going well at 7pm, when I received my very first phone call on my shiny new phone and a VERY angry VERY pushy person wanted to know how and when I intended to pay off the balance on my Sears card, which I had incurred by purchasing a $2,000 sofa over a year ago. This confused me, because:

1. Do I look like a person who buys furnitureat Sears? I have no need for a Craftsman sofa.

2. Do I look like would rack up $2,000 of debt for anything other than pizza, Midori, or eyeliner? Girl, please.

I was even more confused when the person on the phone insisted that I was definitely the person he wanted to talk to. The issue was only finally resolved when I gave him the last 4 digits of my social security number, thereby confirming that there are, in fact, multiple (2) Kimberly Welshes living in this town.

In the intervening years, as that Sears card debt has been passed from shady collection agency to shady collection agency, and they have taken turns calling me every 3-5 days, threatening to take a baseball bat to my kneecaps. Over a sofa. From Sears. I've learned that when they say, "Are you Kimberly Welsh?", the correct answer is, "I am a Kimberly Welsh, but I doubt I'm the one you're looking for." And then I take the earliest opportunity to do my SSN trick and escape, Houdini-like, from their bullying nonsense. (Sidenote: Seriously - those bad debt collection agencies are SHA. DY. The government should do something about them, as soon as they're done beating the living crap out of the credit reporting agencies, but that's another issue.)

I never understand why they call me. The debt is now at least 5 years old, and she has evaded them this long. Do these people genuinely think they're the first ones to search her name in a phone listing? Why has no one thought of this before? Do you really think that after all this time, it's as simple as calling that number? Really? Do some work, lazyface.

But this isn't nearly as perplexing as the one (and only) (knock on wood) time I got pulled over. I had allegedly rolled through a stop sign, but it's very a much a he said/she said, to be honest. Anyway, I dutifully gave the officer my license and waited patiently for him to run my information. When he returned to the car, he said, AND I QUOTE, "I thought I was going to have to arrest you." And I thought, "Wow. They're really cracking down on rolling stops on barely-trafficked surface streets." He continued, "I ran your name, and there's a warrant out for your arrest." And I thought, "Damn overdue library books!" And then he said, "Yep, you're wanted for...

[WAIT FOR IT]

driving without a license."

Pause.

"But, um, sir...you're holding my license. That's my license. Right there. In your hand."

"I know. That's how I figured there's a different Kimberly Welsh..."

"Oh you have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!"

So please. If you are on Team Law-Abiding Bill-Paying Licensed-Driver Kimberly Welsh, and you know someone who can put their hands on Law-Breaking Deadbeat Pain in My Ass Kimberly Welsh, yank her deadbeat butt of that Craftsman sofa and turn her in to the authorities.

Let's Talk ABOUT the Bathroom

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Ah, the ladies room. There are exactly 8 things you're allowed to do in there:
1. Use the potty
2. WASH YOUR HANDS
3. Do yo' hurrrrr
4. Dance
5. Sob uncontrollably
6. Transport yourself to the Ministry of Magic
7. Steal TP
8. Sleep it off

You'll note (OH YES YOU WILL) that "have a long, involved, whispered conversation in the corner" is not on that list. Furthermore, you'll note (OH YES YOU WILL) that the items on this list would make for some incredibly bad background noise for your precious conversation, if you were dumb enough to try and have a conversation in there. And yet. AND YET! There are women in this world who take their private pow-wows directly to the ladies room! WHY? Actually, you know what? I don't care why. "Why" is not the point. The point is that it's WRONG WRONG WRONG. When you insist on having your little chit-chat in the potty room, it means that everyone who comes in for one of 8 perfectly legitimate reasons has completely lost her anonymity from the moment she walks in the door. Because as she walks by, you and your interlocutor are gonna glare at her like she's interrupting, like she has no right to come and pee where you are TRYING to have a conversation. And then she gets to try to do whatever she needed do knowing you are judging her the whole time.

I don't tolerate that crap, and you shouldn't either. But the problem is that most offices still refuse to designate a Bathroom Enforcer, so when you try to evict the chattering class's potty party, you get slapped with the old "YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY HERE!" nonsense. Don't waste your time. Here's what you do instead:
1. Make eye contact with your foes as you walk in; they need to know you are aware of them and their foul, foul nonsense.
2. Enter the stall even if you only came in to do numbers 2-4.
3. Close the door.
4. Lick your inner elbow
5. Stick your open mouth on your inner elbow and blow, thereby making the loudest, wettest, nastiest fart noise you can.
6. Wait for the Talkative Tinas to beat a revolted retreat.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

For the record: YES, I do this. And you should too. Making gross noises in the stall is not shameful; it is arguably THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BATHROOM. But standing in a restroom to have a conversation? That is shameful. And it needs to stop immediately. Stay strong, people.

OBLIGATORY POST ABOUT PINTEREST

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:33:00 +0000

The internet has been all atwitter (no pun intended) about Pinterest for a few weeks now, and as per usual, I took it upon myself to get out in front of the trend to figure it out for you, both of my dear readers. Because the phrase "online corkboard" is kind of meaningless, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what the point of such a thing might be...until you've used it for yourself.

After a few weeks of intrepid testing, I'm ready to explain

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Pinterest But Didn't Care Enough to Ask Because Honestly? It Sounded Kinda Dumb

First things first: It's not actually that dumb. Pinterest, like pretty much everything else on the internet, is as dumb as you allow it to be. It can be put to good use for planning things, collecting ideas, finding book/recipe/movie recommendations, etc. But Pinterest, like pretty much everything else on the internet, is also heavily abused and misused by morons. For the most part, these morons are harmless, and some are even amusing! I believe the key is knowing what to expect going in. To that end, I've created some handy descriptions of the most common pins you'll find on the ol' homepage:
Blue Balls for Crafters: This is one of the funnest games on Pinterest, in which someone finds a really cool/cute/fun/quirky project and posts a picture with a comment like "DIY cold fusion! Neat project for the kids!", but because they've pinned the picture from Google Images (rather than any kind of instructional page), you will never ever figure out how to actually do the damn project, ever. Find the one where you knit a beard for your baby and show your favorite crafter and watch her rip her hair out! Neat project for the kids!
Memes: Pinterest is ground zero for memes. One of the most common is this bizarre thing where Ryan Gosling's face gets pasted behind something that starts with "Hey girl..." and ends with some supposed fantasy man phrase, usually about how awesome her hair looks or how much he loves shoe shopping with her. This is officially stupid until it looks like this:

Wedding Porn: OH MY DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN ENOUGH WITH THE WEDDING PORN! Pictures of brides, pictures of veils, pictures of hair, pictures of seating, pictures of wedding cakes, pictures of dancing couples, pictures of tuxes, pictures of lighting ideas, pictures of invitations... STOP. JUST STOP. Oh, and let's not forget the most common of the wedding porn pics:

Source: weddings.theknot.com via Katie on Pinterest

It would be one thing if it was primarily pics that said "This is my engagement ring!" But most of them say something more like "I want this to be my ring someday!" LADIES! THE RING IS NOT THE REASON WE GET MARRIED! WRITE IT DOWN! And just to be clear: I'm not hating on the women who are planning their actual weddings, for which they already have a groom lined up - my issue is with all (and there are A LOT OF THEM) the teenage (or younger) girls who are investing all this time and effort into compiling ideas for their ideal wedding. Trust me on this, girls: you need to find the guy first. He's kind of important and finding him WON'T be the easy part. I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT HERE.
Depressing Bucket List Crap: The "Bucket List Board" is very popular, and not a bad idea! Some of them are full of genuinely awesome ideas like this one:

Source: weheartit.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

And some of them are more like this:

Source: perfectbucketlist.tumblr.com via Kathryn on Pinterest

I can no longer find my all-time favorite, but thankfully I found it shocking enough to save to my drive when I first saw it:

Really? REALLY? Is that an "achievement" or a "biological coincidence"?

Half-Naked Women: The interesting thing about the half-naked women is to note whether they were posted by men or women. Women post WAY more half-naked lady pictures than men do, and where the men are posting with a note like "she's hot" or "gorgeous!", the women's remarks are more along the lines of "I wish I had her [fill in body part here]" or "I WILL be this thin", etc. Basically, the men are making deposits to the wank bank, but the women are using these images to remind themselves of everything that's wrong...with themselves. C'mon, girls, get it together.
Psychologically Damaging Quotes About Thinness: This really just follows on from the above.

Yes. Hey, are you gonna eat that cake, Skinny McStarvingson?

I'm all in favor of health, and Lord knows I could afford to lose a few pounds. But I worry about the mindset of someone who trawls the internet all day looking for images and quotes with which to beat him/herself up for being fat.
Pictures of Fried Food/Pictures of Desserts: Just for the sake of irony, you'll often find these flanking the thinness quotes on the homepage. But you have to look quickly in order to see it before your head explodes.
Simple Wisdom: Not "simple" like "homespun profundities"; "simple" like "idiotic nonsense". There are a lot of meme-generators on the web these days, and there is no IQ test to prevent morons from using them. As a result, you will periodically find pins featuring a generic stock photo in the background, and a really profound observation like "sometimes people will be mean to you even though you like them". And you will think to yourself, "Someone on this planet actually had nothing better to do than spend their time creating that. We should reinstate conscription."

All of this said, Pinterest does not have to be a huge waste of your time, so long as you understand from the very beginning that a lot of it is useless. Like all social media, the problem with Pinterest is: people. But you can get on there yourself and make it better! Pin something useful! Or at least something funny! See if you find something other than breasts and knitting patterns on the internet! I know there is more out there! Let's find it together! SPECIAL BONUS FUN: If you think you're up to the challenge and you want a Pinterest invite, feel free to shoot me an email (see link on the ride sidebar) with your email address, and I'll send one along :)

Blubber and the Burbs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Wanna know a secret?

I'm not Carrie Bradshaw.

I'm not even close. When that God-forsaken crap was on the air and every woman in America was yelling "OMG! Her life is EXACTLY LIKE MINE!!!", I was licking orange Cheeto salt off my fingers and dumping Midori in my margaritas by the quart so I could get good 'n drunk before completing my work on "Little Matthew Vance", a rhyming children's book I wrote and illustrated, about a kid who has no friends and never gets invited to parties, so he tells his parents he's going to a party (so they won't think he's pathetic), but really he just goes into the woods and talks to an amphibian for fifteen pages. Hey - they always say "write what you know"!

Aaaannnnyhoo. My point is: there was never a moment, ever, in my entire life, when I saw a single parallel between Carrie Bradshaw's life and my own. And yet, the Cult of Carrie seems to have become such a basic part of American culture that everyone else thinks there must be something wrong with me if I'm NOT Carrie Bradshaw.

Hi. My name is Kimberly. And this ain't Sex and the City.

See, I am currently taking a hiatus from the improv theatre where I perform. I needed a little mental health holiday. But somehow, every time I say "I'm taking a break from the theatre", every woman within earshot hears "I AM NOW DEDICATING EVERY WAKING MOMENT TO THE HUSBAND HUNT AND WILL GLADLY MARRY THE NEXT PIECE OF PRIMORDIAL SLIME THAT LOOKS AT ME SIDEWAYS! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE ME ANY TIPS YOU HAVE ON HOW I CAN LOOK SEXIER, BE MORE APPROACHABLE, OR, MOST IMPORTANTLY, FIND AVAILABLE MEN!!!!"

I appreciate what these women are trying to do, but it's just not gonna happen. As a point of reference, I should tell you now that while no one has EVER said "Wow, you are so much like Carrie Bradshaw!" to me, a dozen different people who do not even know one another have said: "Holy crap. Tina Fey owes you royalties for basing Liz Lemon on you."

I don't want a purse dog, I'm not gonna go to church just to meet men, I would sooner go to an AA meeting than a "running group", I have a policy against straying more than 2 feet from the food table at parties, I categorically refuse to read The Rules, I don't wear makeup to the gym, I think the editors of Cosmopolitan should be tried at the Hague, I don't shoe-shop recreationally, I HATE dating, and no, thank you, I will not stop putting mayonnaise on everything.

Look, I'm not completely anti-men or anti-relationship. I've been in some downright pleasant relationships in my time, and even now, there's a guy out there I would not mind sharing my Cheetos with. But you know why I like him? It's because: he's fun to watch TV and/or shoot pool with. That's it. I don't like guys who hit on me when I'm out at a bar wearing a metric ton of eyeliner with a headful of gorgeous curls that smell like burnt hair (because FYI boys, that's what gorgeous curls are made of: acrid smell-of-death burnt hair). I don't trust guys like that. They don't like me. They like my eyeliner and my burny hair. Those guys would have no appreciation for my favorite pastime of yelling "EEEWWW!" and laughing hysterically while I run a neti pot through my nose. I want the guy who joins me in making fun of 2am infomercials. Because he can't sleep either, and neither one of us is getting up at 6:30 to go to the gym.

And I'm not going to spend my month looking for Mr. Right. Because the kind of guy who really puts the mayo on my tater tots, so to speak, is precisely the kind of guy you DON'T find by looking for him. So IF IT'S ALL THE SAME TO EVERYONE, I'm going to get back to doing what I want to do, boring and shut-in-y though it may be. I may not be Carrie Bradshaw, but at least I'm not a walking petri dish like she would be, and you can take that to my local American Red Cross blood donation center. Where they will vouch for me.

Lemon OUT!*

*copyright Tina Fey, no infringement intended

How To...Say What You Mean

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:40:00 +0000

Lately I find that more and more people seem to be talking just to get attention, or to start a conversation without explicitly showing that they want a conversation to start. This irks me; if you want to start a conversation with someone, just say, "Oh, I was meaning to tell you..." or "Guess what!" or "Do you have a minute?" Because when you just start talking and wait for the appropriate person to join in and say exactly what you want them to say, it's inefficient, and it may not even yield the desired result! I'll give you an example...

WRONG WAY:
Person A: Gosh, I really shouldn't eat this entire sheet cake.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH, I REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT THIS ENTIRE SHEET CAKE.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH I REALLY SH-
Person B: Oh, are you on a diet?
Person A: Yeah. It's this new diet I saw on TV...

RIGHT WAY:
Person A: Gosh, I really shouldn't eat this entire sheet cake.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH, I REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT THIS ENTIRE SHEET CAKE.
(pause)
Person A: GOSH I REALLY SHOULDN'T EAT THIS ENTIRE SHEET CAKE!
(pause)
Person A: GOSH I REALLY SH-
Person B: (shoots Person A in the head)

Up in the Air

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:49:00 +0000

I like travelling, but I don't get to do it very much. And when I do get to travel, I find that I am generally doing so in the company of my parents. I love my parents, but there's an age at which you start to think it *might* be pathetic to have your parents as your sole travel companions. And when you reach that age (33), you have some choices:

Option #1: Meet an awesome member of the sex to whom you are attracted, who finds you irresistible, and get married! Now you have someone to travel with and you'll get a tax break! This option is favored by my mother, my married friends, and the more meddlesome members of my extended family. And to them, I say: OF COURSE! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!?!? *irritated glare* Next.

Option #2: Travel with a friend! This is a perfectly legitimate option, provided you have a friend who meets all the crucial Travel Buddy Requirements and is interested in going to the same place you want to go and can get the time off from work and has no outstanding warrants in your country of origin or destination. That's a pretty tall order. And it gets a lot tougher when your best Travel Buddy options start going with Option #1.

Option #3: Travel alone! This can get pricey, as there's no one to share costs. And it might get lonely. It might even get boring. On the other hand, no one else gets a vote on what you do with your day, no one will know if you choose to have ice cream sundaes for all three meals every day of your trip, you can spend your whole trip in character as your alter ego (Mitzi Wong, international plus-size model and wine reviewer), and you don't have to go to a *single* modern art museum if you don't want to. WHERE DO I SIGN?

So this year, for the first time ever in my whole entire life, I am opting for #3. I have booked plane tickets and a hotel room. I've also booked a day tour, but I think I'm going to leave the rest of my itinerary open and see where the days take me. I expect it'll be something like this...

9AM: "I have deduced that these important cultural and historical landmarks are all in the same neighborhood, so I'll walk over there and spend the day enriching my brain!"

9:45AM: "There's a IHOP here? Hmmm. My brain won't get very enriched if I don't at least feed it first..."

Noon: "Crap! It's noon! I gotta stop reading Twitter and get up to that other neighborhood."

Noon 15: "Wait - there's a Little Italy here? Is there a Little Italy in every city? I can't believe I didn't know there was a Little Italy! HEY PIZZA!"

4:30PM: "Screw it."

6PM: Back in my hotel room with a bottle of wine and my leftover pizza.

Solo vacations are awesome. Also: I've just checked, and apparently there really is an IHOP less than a block from my hotel, so every day of my trip may literally go exactly as I have described above. Except Little Italy won't surprise me anymore after the first day.

So I'm pretty stoked, and I'm open to any suggestions or ideas anyone has. I'm not going to tell you where I'm going, because I don't want to be followed around by mobs of adoring fans and/or angry creditors. Let's just say that this place where I'm going has more than one modern art museum (WHY?), and I will not be setting foot in any of them!

Oh - and let's also just say that I'm not leaving for another 13 days, so it's not like I'm leaving immediately. Not that you could tell whether I'm home or not, since I've been so bad about blogging lately. Who knows? Maybe I'll think of something worth telling you in the next thirteen days! But just in case I don't...

Ciao!

Mitzi

The Email You Wish You Could Send

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:57:00 +0000

It's weird, being a human person. It's even weirder when people get offended at the idea that we are all descended from apes. Apes are very much a step up from most human people we interact with on a daily basis.

Take me, for instance. Yesterday I decided I wanted a book from the library. (How quaint!) I probably went to the library's website 5-10 times over the course of the day, trying to work out which branches had the book I wanted, which one I could most conveniently stop by, what the hours were, whether I might want to pick up another similar book at the same time... And every time I went to the library website, I saw this:

ATTENTION! ALL BRANCHES WILL BE CLOSED ON MONDAY JANUARY 16TH IN OBSERVATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

And every time I saw that, I thought, "Ugh! I KNOW! I get it! You're closed today! Just take me to the stupid catalog page!"

And yet, at 5:30pm, having battled ridiculous rain-induced traffic past my condo and all the way to the other side of town, I found myself standing outside a darkened library building, scratching my head (like an ape!) and saying, "But the website said it would be open til 8! Oh wait... SON OF A!!!!"

Given that breathtaking display of oblivious stupidity, you might think I would be a very compassionate person with an infinite well of patience for those people around me who are similarly oblivious. WRONG!

Take today, for instance. I'll have to modify a few things to protect ~~the innocent~~ a guilt-ridden harlot (yours truly). Let's say I sent this document to someone today:

The Nebraska River Beaver is a very friendly creature. Despite its large teeth, which are ideally suited to eating delicious crunchy snack products, its digestive system is unable to process salt & vinegar flavored potato chips, making it the saddest member of the animal kingdom.

A few hours after sending my masterpiece, I received a reply from the recipient:

To: Me

From: The Get These Beavers Lay'd Initiative

Subject: Document

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Your document bites (STOP LAUGHING THAT'S NOT A BEAVER JOKE). We specifically asked you to stop using the letters Z, Q, and J as of six months ago (see attached). Please revise accordingly and re-send.

ATTACHMENT:

I stared at the attachment, scratching my head, but not like an ape. More like Albert Einstein watching Jersey Shore. Then I pulled up my document and searched for the letters Z, Q, and J. Finding none of them, I figured the search function wasn't working and I myself went through letter by letter, searching for the offending graphemes. After wasting about 15 minutes of my life on this, I came to the inevitable conclusion that The GTBLI was perhaps having an "off" day, and had hallucinated any errors they believed to exist. But how to tell them that, without seeming mean or sarcastic?

To: The Get These Beavers Lay'd Initiative

From: Me

Subject: Re: Document

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi again Gordon!

I am so sorry for failing to observe the instructions you never sent, but I really appreciate the completely unintelligible email and attachments you sent today to provide me with guidance going forward. After carefully reviewing the document using both 21st-century technology and good old-fashioned eyeball grease, I realized that the document I sent you is already completely in line with all of your requests. Naturally, I immediately travelled to an alternate dimension where these mistakes did exist and corrected them. If you reopen the document now, I think you will find it to your satisfaction. In the event that you see any additional glaring errors, please don't hesitate to ask a reliable adult if said errors really exist before asking me to fix them. Also: if anyone hands you a stamp with a picture of the Mad Hatter on it, DON'T put it in your mouth.

Hugs and Cuddles!

Kimberly

This Pepsi Brought to You by Coke

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:53:00 +0000

Good news, everybody! Internet advertising is still insanely creepy! Case in point: I decided a few weeks ago that I might like to take a little vacay in sunny (not really) San Francisco. So whenever I've had a little down time on the ol' laptop, I've been playing around with airfares, hotel selections, etc., trying to decide if/when I might want to go. I figure that's probably why I saw this ad on one of my favorite not-my-blogs:

Firstly, this irritates me because I am still such a naive moron that when I first saw it, I thought, "Oh wow! It's kismet! I want to go to San Francisco, and here's Delta, practically TELLING me to go to San Francisco!" Then I remembered that The Internet (aka multinational internet and software corporation Google) is always watching my every move, and has essentially done away with kismet and coincidence in the 21st century. Nothing is ever "a sign" anymore. It's just "proof that Delta paid Google some money so Google would slip them a sheet of paper in a back alley that said 'Kimberly Welsh wants to go to San Francisco'". How depressing.

It also irritates me because HELLO?!?! What is being advertised? When I see a tailor-made ad, I expect to see some sort of special offer or discount! Is it really supposed to be news to me that Delta flies to San Francisco, bearing in mind that I have recently searched the Delta website on more than one occasion to ascertain the departure times and airfares for said flights? I already know you go to San Francisco, people. I'm not going with you until you give me a good reason.

But my absolute favorite part is the tiny tiny print at the bottom. You could enlarge the screenshot to see it, or you could just take my word that it says "Travel may be on other airlines". Obviously they're referring to codesharing here, and in 2012, I doubt anyone is surprised by this clause. I just enjoy the contrast between that and the much larger font at the top. It reads "FLY DELTA TO SAN FRANCISCO", but what it really means is "FLY WHOEVER YOU WANT TO SAN FRANCISCO, BUT BE SURE TO PAY US!"

Oh WHAT THE HELL!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:05:00 +0000

2 blog posts in one day! And neither of them worth a crap! You must've been good boys and girls all year.

I was assigning "labels" to that last post and I saw "John of the Week". I am genuinely sad that I haven't been naming my Johns of the Week lately; it's good to be gratitudinous, and I feel like such an ass for letting so many people go unthanked.

But I'm FAR too lazy to do some sort of ginormous catch-up post, so let's just assume that if you:
- saved my life
- loaned me some of your meds
- complimented my Christmas party outfit
- brought me food
- gave me a present
- wrote "Happy Birthday" on my Facebook wall
- listened to me whining
- held my hair while I puked
- let me crash at your place once I was done puking
- refrained from letting your impending baby steal my birthday thunder
- loaned me a wig
- presented me with a page full of authentic Disney™ character autographs
- declined to press charges
...then you know who you are, and I'm grateful.

On a related note, did anybody else find that 2011 got a little weird right at the end?

Well 2012 is starting off on a weird foot too, because guess who the John of the Week is! That's right...

IT'S HANNAH MONTANA, Y'ALL!!!!

I'm not even kidding either. I heart this song so GD much that it is now the default ringtone on my phone. That is how weird shit has gotten. And you thought I was crazy before. The 2012 version of Kimberly...y'all don't even know. BUT YOU'RE FIXIN' TO FIND OUT!!!

Blah Blah 2012 Blah Blah New Leaf Blee Bloop Mud Wrestling.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:49:00 +0000

Sorry I've been yadda yadda it was just that [YAWN!] (insert empty promise of more regular blogging here).

There! Now that that's over with, I can tell you about the thing I really wanted to tell you about, which is this:

As you can probably tell from the font and format, this is a Facebook ad. It has been shoved down my News Feed's throat for a couple of weeks now, though for the life of me I can't figure out why. But I might have a clearer idea of its relevance to my life if I understood what the hell it was advertising. I mean, they've employed the word "race" here, which means it's either some sort of speed-based athletic competition, or they're holding open registration for a new subset of humans which would ordinarily be determined by common heritable phenotypic characteristics/geographic ancestry/physical appearance/ethnicity*, but in this case will be determined solely by who gets in under the wire for open registration!

I'll tell you this much for free: I really hope it's the latter! Racial differences, whether real or imagined, define so much of our interaction in such a negative way, and people die every day in their name. It would be a massive improvement for humanity as a whole if we could all just sign up for whichever newly-made-up race we want to be. Then no one would be jealous of anyone else, someone's physical appearance would tell you nothing whatsoever about their racial affiliation, and we'd all be far too busy inventing our own unique cultures to bother fighting with each other. And as the ad implies that there is a cap on the number of people who can be a part of this race, I'm guessing we could also cap all races at roughly the same number, thereby completely doing away with the concept of "minorities" altogether! We would all be equal! FINALLY!

...but it seems far more likely that this is, in fact, just an advertisement for some lame-ass trail running race that's been given a hefty helping of the oh-so-trendy messy/muddy obstacle course component that seems to be springing up all over the place. I never understood the appeal of that sort of thing, to be honest - it's bad enough being sweaty and nasty; why would I also want to be muddy and grimy? But this ad has cleared a lot of things up for me, as it chooses to advertise an allegedly serious athletic competition using a picture that makes it look like something between a wet t-shirt contest and some sort of bizarre solo mudwrestling exhibition. I still don't understand why anyone thinks this would be appealing to me, but I imagine there are a fair number of adolescent boys who'd love nothing more than to run a 5k through a field of writhing half-clothed women.

Sigh.

*Wikipedia for the win

Nothing Weird About That!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:42:00 +0000

From the BBC iPlayer Radio homepage today. Just look at it for a moment and bask in the concept of the dance season. On the radio.