Novada

I just saw the title "Brothels in Nevada Ask to Be Taxed" on the front page of the New York Times and almost lost my pineapple upside-down cake. Apparently George Flint, the director of the NBA (National Brothel Association...lolskies) wants to provide a safety net for the industry floundering in a Red State filled with intact hymens by bribing Nevada with money that will eventually support a penal system devoted to keeping O.J. Simpson's 61 year old simper behind bars for the next double lifetime.

Flint: "Let me give you free cash money."

The State of Nevada: "No thanks, Gizmo doppelganger. We'd rather be the conservative bastion of gambling and drinking than be paid off by whores."

Sick.

I'm sicker than a Great Dane right now. My lymphnodes are bigger than a Great Dane right now. I'm burning more flu calories in my chest than Michael Phelps would if he made love to the energizer bunny. There are all the typical Saturday night bumps of exuberance in the boxes surrounding my dorm room, and I'm completely miserable.

Purdy

Gemma Ward is purdy

Thanks, Caleb.

7 Things

I didn't think I would ever deign my blog to the level of the Jonas brothers, but after I read this awful article about the metrotrio titillating the new First Daughters Sasha and Malia, my choler was sufficiently dandered up enough to put pads to plastic and eke out a little treatise on these horrible teen idols. Now put on any David Cassidy song and I'll headbop with the rest of the front row fainters, and I have been known to steal an occasional N.K.O.T.B. listening sesh every few weeks. I am in no way against the teenage heartthrobs as an established/serious genre in popculture. BUT these curly-haired putti troubadors with their promise rings and glottal love anthems and their faces plastered on the page of every Tiger Beat (along with that dental hygienist's nightmare Miley Cyrus) and ambiguous 80's filtered fashion (srsly how many Wayfarer styles does Ray Ban make? Follow up question: how many scarves from H&M can one manchild actually sport in one week?)...allow me to say I'm NOT A FAN, JBROS. Look at the above picture. Kevin, "The Ugly One" in preteen circles, is trying to appear intellectual in that awful vest. And those sideburns! Then there's Joe in the middle with his typical Farah Fawcett mane and Tom Ford fashion sense. Then Nick on the right, who is a cross between Samantha Ronson and GnR's Slash.

Just give me MmmBop and leave me alone.

Sumthin Fishee

So I'm looking at a Goldfish bag I'm munchin' out on a Friday night in my bedroom and there are a lot of things about it that confuse me.

First, Finn (the mascot) is blowing orange bubbles (!) and "riding" a bike (with a safety first helmet). He accentuates his "Now Made With Whole Grain" message with a pedophilic grin that's wider than the Mormon Tabernacle. This message is essentially meaningless, because one serving provides a measly 2g of Dietary Fiber. That's about enough for a worm to poop with ease. Another disconcerting fact about this package is the ingredients list, which is preempted by the phrase, "Made with smiles and..." While this kind of cutsy marketing works for Trader Joe's, Peppridge Farm is too far down the mainstream pipe to handle creative deviation.

A Milli

I heard that song the other day for the first time (I know, right?!) and when this lyric came up:

"I'm a venereal disease/like a menstrual bleed"

I went through a full spectrum of emotions, ending in amusegustment, a personal portmanteau that describes a facial contortion in between the stages of laughing and throwing up. I kind of want to know what Lil Wayne means by this, though. Clearly it cannot be temporal, because I've never heard of a venereal disease that shows up every month like clockwork and then fades away when you're 50 to hot flashes and irritability. And surely it cannot mean "a force of nature," because the former is incidental to sexual activity, both male and female, and the latter is the effect of the cause of womanhood.

So the best explanation I have of it is "I'm really, really annoying."

Pomp n' Circumstance

"Inauguration" comes from the Latin verb inaugurare, meaning "to take omens from birds." In a purely etymological world, Barack Obama should either a) get someone to help him read the entrails of an eagle Dick Cheney shot in the backwoods of Virginny or b) stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial and wait for a bird to fly by, poop on his head, and consecrate him into office.

Wiggity wack.

MasScary

Umm...I don't know what language this is.

Iona Rozeal Brown

Grumble in the Jungle

There are a few things about our federal government that annoy me (panacea "bailout" sentiment when things get sour, bureaucratic desk goons with a disconcerting amount of de facto power, federalism's blithe treatment of universal health care, etc.), but nothing comes close to my annoyance at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Only they would make a circa 1994 brainwashing website to prevent little Suzie from jamming her pinkie into an outlet and little Tommie from getting gonorrhea from a urinal in Bithlo. Only they would title a press release: "Ryobi Corded Circular Saws Sold Exclusively at Home Depot Recalled By One World Technologies Inc. Due to Laceration Hazard." Saws? Laceration hazard? Say it isn't so!

Maybe I want to get poisoned from my polycarbonate Nalgene filled with stroketastic Sparks. Maybe I want my baby to wear a vinyl bib. Maybe I want to lead a lead-exposed lifestyle. It's my prerogative. I don't need no CPSC to tell me what to do.

Aaaaand I promise I'm not a Republican. Gross.

There are 10 different words meaning "fruit dessert" in this post

Betty was an ordinary girl, except when she would buckle under the pressure of her Tourette's Syndrome and yell obscenities like "Claflouti!" at strangers. Though her occasional coprolalia embarrassed her, her father, the town cobbler, would rather crumble kitty litter than pay for medical treatment.

One crisp autumn morning, Betty greeted her father in their kitchen. He gave a cold grunt and returned to the shoe in front of him. She tried to talk about her school day ahead and her plans for later on that evening. "Enough of your flummery, Betty," her father replied. "I need you to stay in the kitchen all day and make me a delicious pandowdy, and then maybe you can go out." Betty was so angry, she took out a gun, shot her father in the chest, and watched him slump to the floor.

Aged like cheese, wine

I can't wait until I'm really old, like 70 or 80, when I can yell offensive things at younger people like "Screw off, whippersnapper!" as I pass them in a bikini on a periwrinkle beach bike, cigarette teetering on my lips, my wrinkled, leathery flesh rippling in the wind as I go 2 miles per hour through the streets of Boca Raton, the humidity seeping through my dentures and moisturizing the lone piece of hair that trails off the top of my scalp. I will be accompanied across the street by younger men. I will gloriously remember nothing but things that happened before I turned thirteen. I will eat only chocolate and maybe some prunes to keep balanced. I will walk around nude and pretend it's my dementia acting up.

I also want to become this woman, because setting a Guinness World Record in the last five days of one's life sounds weirdly satisfying.

ouch

Yesterday an Airbus 320 crash-landed in the Hudson River after leaving La Guardia. It rose 3,200 feet over the Bronx before swerving down to the river with 155 people bracing themselves for impact. The cause of the emergency landing? BIRDS getting caught in the engine.



There's a fine line between totally funny and totally depressing.

This is not a joke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAB

Wedgie

I just got an email. Subject line: "FW: Auditions for the Underpants."

That would be a great cardboard sign for a hobo prostitute.

Sucks to Your Assmar

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/world/europe/29heathrow.html?_r=1&hp

G'Day Mate

Forget Nicotine. Forget Crystal Meth. YERBA MATE IS THE MOST ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE EVER. Over winter break I went into my parents' tea cabinet looking for a hot bevvy to sip whilst I knitted some psychadelic socks, and I found some weird stuff called "Matte Leao" that they got in Brazil. I steeped one cup and then two cups and then two bags per cup and then by the end of break I was averaging a box a day. Someone make me stop plz.

Git It

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Altarwrap Supreme, no sour

When I first saw the headline "Couple Gets Marries at Taco Bell" I thought to myself, "Yet another gimmicky online human-interest piece to consummate USA Today's position as #1 most widely read newspaper in America (thanks to color-coded sections and giant pictures that make the paper look like a Monopoly game)." And then I thought, "That's the first time I've ever thought with a parenthetical aside, and now I hate myself." Of course I read the article (those enticing color codes!), and I must admit, the article was good. An Internet couple with the incidental SAME LAST NAME marry in a Taco Bell in NORMAL, ILLINOIS, with the WILL YOU MARRY ME? sauce packets nearby and an ONLINE-ORDAINED minister presiding. The total cost? About TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. USA Today had enough nerve to print that the bride's hot pink dress cost FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

• "I would never have expected in my life in working here there would be a wedding," restaurant manager Carl Hamlow said.

• "We have the same brain, just in two bodies," Paul Brooks said. "We think alike in virtually every manner. We have the same interests, viewpoints."

• "This is the way to go — there's no stress," said the groom's mother, Kathy Brooks.

Last one, I promise

I couldn't resist. This is the cutest lil thang I ever did see.

post script...

...to a day full of blogging. I have one final question before I go to bed: what is up with this picture?! It makes me feel dirty inside.




Whisper those sweet nuthin's somewhere else, Mr. President.

Sound

No Sound

A quick quiz to test your knowledge

Identify this picture:

a) A William Blake watercolor etching of his character Urizen from his created mythology

b) An image from 1971's Led Zeppelin IV

c) A picture of Howard Hughes, the late years

Middlemarch On

I've spent the majority of this week in an uncomfortable Scan Design chair (the kind that makes your butt feels like hardened ice crystals of carbonation after an hour of continual noisy readjustment) reading Middlemarch, menstruating, and staring at this picture on the back cover of my book, which makes me wonder every twenty pages if George Eliot's transgendered pseudonym is really not just an ironic fabrication by a modern world that refuses to admit: "Yes, this ugly woman truly was a man." I looked up the 1994 miniseries to see if it was worth ditching the torture chair, and I unhappily happenchanced across this disgusting fan website about Rufus Sewell, the slightly wall-eyed Brit who plays Will Ladislaw. But if that's not pathetic enough, I decided to compile the sum total of things I've learned reading this Victorian behemoth:

1. I cannot pronounce Bildungsroman after many tries. I remain unsympathetic towards the plight of George W.


2. I wonder if I will ever be able to appropriately use the word "energumen."


3. The phrase "at sixes and sevens," does not make British English more endearing. Nor is "British English" as "tautologous" as John Bull might think.


4. I need to curtail my no strings attached sessions with Wikipedia, because I end up finding articles like this that test the strength of my gag reflex.


5. There are human limitations to coffee consumption.

Women's Lib

According to Tyra "Rip 'em off!" Banks, this is probably why Hillary didn't get elected...she just didn't throw her weight around in proper-fitting jeans.

Grrr

This post is less a coattail off of my post about tamping, and more about a traumatic childhood event that left me questioning reality and my will to exist (hyperbole, but work with me here). Remember the nascence of our teen years, when we were shelling out our hard-earned lawn care/babysitting cashola for the Slim Shady LP and newest S Club 7 cd, when Cheerios came out with a version of Frosted Cheerios called "Millenios," the highly-coveted collector's item that now retails on Ebay for SEVEN DOLLARS AND NINETY-NINE CENTS?! Yeah, I totally had a box, unopened, complete with holographic imaging splashed on the cereal container that doubled cleverly as a year 2000 time capsule. I kept that piece of cardboard for five years, only to discover that not only did my mother have complete disdain for it, but she threw it away without a care, a keepsake that was so important to a budding antique connoisseur that she took it out of her closet thrice a year and whispered as she held it to her tender-nippled girl bosom, "One day, one day..."

Thanks, mom.

50% De Agave

Why do none of America's finest rappers deign to rhyme "Patrón" with anything? For example, in Missy Elliot's "Touch It" featuring Busta Rhymes, the lyric goes:

You can hit it like a game of ping-pong/if you give me two shots of Patrón

and in the next line, she tries to rhyme the word with "home," which is a clever oblique rhyme when you're Emily Dickinson, but sad if you're a yo-yo diet, "progressive" rap artist.

Or let's look at Bubba Sparxxx's wonderful "Ms. New Booty (feat. the Ying Yang Twins)" version:

"Sippin' on Patron (glumb glumb glumb)/Shorty in a thong (woah woah woah)"

Yung Joc has the cojones to actually get the rhyme right in his eponymous song "Patrón":

"This ballers zone/J’s on my feet/Im on dat Patron/so get like me

But unfortunately, "feet" and "me" still are only an oblique, kind of lame rhyme. Is it me, or does "MC" these days stand for "Major Contriver?"

UNGUIS

Some people claim that fake nails are "tacky," but they've never experienced the raw feeling of power that comes from having a hand punctuated with five polyresin acrylic weapons. Sure, they limit the range of a woman's abilities much like Chinese foot binding, and probably cause the soil to churn above Betty Friedan's grave, but typing has never been more of an adventure in depth perception!




But these are effing disgusting.

Cutest animal ever

A much needed warmandfuzzy buffer between you and the horrors of lingering holiday relatives.

Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine

I need to amend an earlier post in which I disparaged diet sodas. The brunt of my vitriol should go to that effervescent turpentine, Diet Coke. I hate the way people order it at a restaurant, especially when the waiter says, "What would you like to drink with that [fattening entree]?" and the person says, "Oh, I'll just have a diet." A "diet?" As if someone can be so chummy with a drink to give it a cute abbreviated nickname. If you want your innards embalmed by aspartame, can you PLEASE at least say "Diet Coke?"

But I will not deny that I do indulge in the king of all diet drinks, FRESCA. By "indulge" I mean the New Year's Eve bender in which I drank between 12-15 in the course of 8 hours. I woke up this morning feeling my duodenojejunal flexure pulsating, angry and irritated that I consumed a product that, according to the ingredients, contains:

Carbonated water, citric acid, concentrated grapefruit juice, potassium citrate,
potassium benzoate and EDTA, aspartame, acesulfame potassium,
acacia, natural flavors, glycerol ester of wood rosin, bromated vegetable oil, carob bean gum.

Glycerol ester of wood rosin is a fantastic name, but the thought that I'm drinking something that is also in the composition of eyeliner (and presumably guyliner)? No thanks. The worst is that little "natural flavors" clause, which is about as telling as a catatonic deaf-mute. According to Title 21, Section 101, part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

"The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting,
heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional."

Once again the bureaucratic desk writers of the federal government win my respect. They can't teach that kind of superb rhetoric in schools.