Two things I'm tired of seeing on television

1. Fat guy with skinny wife.
How many shows (on or off the air) can you count where the lovable, roly-poly fat guy has a perky, beautiful, skinny wife? Without even trying, I can think of six. And I'm sure there are at least a dozen more.

Now count how many shows there are where the fat wife has an adoring, handsome, trim husband. Go ahead, think hard... time's up.

At least there was equality on Roseanne (which, I'll freely admit, I loved). 
 
2. Smart wife with stupid husband.
Beau and I were watching TV last weekend when one of those annoying Kmart layaway commercials came on. The wife, a clear candidate for mensa, announces that she's on her way to Kmart for school supplies. Her husband, a man who can somehow figure out how to use a garden hose but nonetheless has the mental acuity of a banana slug (no offense to banana slugs), is flummoxed. Why would she go shopping for school supplies NOW? It's summer! She patiently explains Kmart layaway to the mental midget and is on her way, leaving him in awe of her genius. I'm including the Christmas version below (which begs the question, why do they keep having the same damn conversation?). I turned to Beau and asked Don't mental equals ever marry? 


Annoying.

Biker art show

Beau is showing a few of his paintings in an art show tonight. The show is mostly biker art, so Beau's crazy barfly aesthetic will fit right in. I'm very proud of him!

I thought about what I should wear to this show. Leather? No. It's hot and I don't have anything but perky little suede jackets anyway. Black? Eh, it just doesn't suit me. So I'm just going to wear one of my myriad bookish nerdy-girl ensembles. I'll be the only girl wearing linen and wedge heels and sipping wine.

I just realized that I've never posted any of his art. This is one of my favorites (posted with permission, of course).

Thank God, reason still exists

I got the Intern Project back today. I convinced them to get rid of the fork in the secret sauce line.

Though I noticed on this round that they still rave about Jeffco Pubic schools. :)

I weep for the future of this country

Remember the fabulous interns I wrote about earlier in the summer?

They're baaaaaaaack. At my desk. With their Final Project. I'm sooooo lucky I get to edit the whole thing! Not a waste of my time at all.

So far, I've learned that our company "pries itself on its people," and that "we believe an agency is only as good as the sum of its parts--its people." 

Whuck??

I've also learned that then and than are totally interchangeable, as are our and are! Knowing this cuts my workload in half, I tell ya!

But the cherry on the top of the shit sundae has to be this. They've created the term FORK (fun+work), and they call our company culture our secret sauce, culminating in this gem:

So send us your resume,
and get ready to dip your fork in our company sauce.

I. Give. Up.

Local Safeway waxes poetic

about its floral department. This made me chuckle yesterday.

In my heart, I believe

That people order fajitas for the attention. They order them for that moment when the tray rounds the corner out of the kitchen and everybody hears:

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

And, of course, when you hear that noise, even though you know what it is, you turn around.

And that, in my humble and silly opinion, is the moment the fajitaeater lives for. :)

I've eaten them. And they're good. But they're not that good.

Newbie nicknames

In this office, there are so many new faces that it's nearly impossible to keep up. I find myself giving these folks nicknames (in my head, of course, never out loud) instead of actually learning their names (which is lazy on my part, I'll admit).

So, as they parade by my desk on any given day, these are the names that go through my head:

• Girl who cut her hair (but shouldn't have)
• Girl who never smiles
• Girl who never washes her hands in the bathroom, yet is a maniacal toothbrusher
• Guy who couldn't possibly be old enough to work here
• Girl who might be pregnant, but who also might have just had a burrito
• Guy who wore a tie on his first day
• Guy who drives the wrong way in the parking garage during peak hours
• Snotty intern
• Deer-in-the headlights girl
• Guy who looks like The Dude
• Guy with the jingly pants
• Girl who wears stripper perfume

I'll never remember their actual names.

I have a date

with delicious Don Draper this weekend!!

Eat Pray Love... and Zombies

I kicked off a whirlwind of controversy when I used the following as a Facebook status:


Eat Pray Love isn't the life-changing experience everyone tells you it is. I'm just savin' you a trip to the bookstore, a couple of bucks, and hours of your life.

I know, of course, that I am in the minority on this one. The first response I got was "I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I am eagerly anticipating the movie!"

It went on and on. But I was pleased that there were folks out there who agreed with me. My buddy Chris thought it would have been better had there been more dagger fights and battles.

I told him that all of that would come in the sequel: Eat Pray Love... and Zombies.

In an effort to find herself, goes to Italy Elizabeth Zombie to feast on... Italians. Then in search of a soul, Ms. Zombie goes to India. But, upon realizing that zombies have no souls, she feasts upon Indians to satiate her great disappointment. Then she goes to Bali, where she...

You get the idea. Plus, why give away the ending? This has BLOCKBUSTER written all over it!

I figured out a better name, though. Are you ready for it??

Eat PREY Love

It's good to realize that my nine years in marketing has been good for something.

More book weirdness

When I'm selecting a book to read/buy, I always look at the first review blurbs on the cover and on the back.

If the top reviews are from warm-weather cities, I'm less likely to buy/read it.

There's something in my heart that doesn't completely trust book reviewers in always-sunny places. They never have to find electricity-free entertainment during a blizzard. They don't wear corduroy, the most professor-like textile in the world (don't tell me you don't feel a little smarter when you wear it). They never get that pasty-white complexion from being indoors for months that the rest of us get during the winter (and which, I'll admit, I have year-round). I have a sneaking suspicion that constant 80-degree temps soften the old noggin a bit.

Chicago, New York, Boston, London, Minneapolis, (what the hell, but to a lesser extent) Denver? Fetch my reading specs and bring it on!

Miami, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Diego, Houston? Meh.

This is how rough my weekend in the woods was

I was forced to spend hours on this deck in 70-degree weather with a good book. Woe is me.

Because I'm not a gamer

Help me out on this one.

Final Fantasy XIII.

How can you have thirteen FINAL fantasies? Semifinal, yes. But final? Final is.... well, final.

I can tell I've given this entirely too much thought.

I'm too sexy for my shirt

So sexy it huuuuuuuurts.

(courtesy of poorlydressed.com)

Here's a query

When you step on a poison thorn, you immediately stop, remove the thorn, and clean and dress the wound, right?

But when that poison thorn is a person and the foot is your life, why is it never as easy to make a clean break?

I don't understand the popularity

Of those Who's da Baby-Daddy? episodes on Maury Povich and the like.

Either way, the baby's daddy is likely a loser and mommy's kind of slutty.

Big apple fake butt update

Beau arrived back from NY yesterday.

Because it had plagued me all weekend, I asked him what he meant when he saw a girl with a fake butt.

He said she was wearing padding or latex under there or something because it looked completely unreal.

Somehow, it felt like a letdown. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was something more fantastical than that.

And those butt-padding women apparently don't have what it takes to develop one of those big behinds naturally. I should put out an instructional video. ;)

Hot-button issue (for me)

Reading a book and listening to a book on tape are two different things. One is reading and one is not. This commercial drives me batshit insane. ESPECIALLY the part at the end where the woman is sitting in a chair, doing absolutely nothing, and is listening to a book instead of actually picking one up.

Big fake plasticky apples

Beau and his best friend Jay (they refer to each other as my heterosexual life partner all of the time) are terrorizing New York.

And they're doin' it right with fancy hotel rooms, tickets to events, and great meals.

I got a text message from him in Times Square with this news flash:  
There are a lot of plasticky, fake women here.

Not surprising (and nice to know that's not what he likes, because, with me, that's definitely not what he gets), but the next text was the one that made me chuckle:
I just saw a girl with a fake butt!

Sooooo many questions. :)

A weekend in the woods

A couple of girls and I are going to a cabin in the mountains for the weekend. Wine, conversation, wine, sweatpants, wine, sunscreen, and little or no makeup. Bring it on.

Plus, it'll be about 30 degrees cooler up there; a welcome respite from the 100-degree temps forecast for the weekend.

We vaguely planned out meals (which gets harder as you get older because one of us doesn't eat beef, one can't eat white flour, one won't drink Merlot, one won't eat American cheese, etc.). So there's quite a bit of shopping involved.

Luckily, I got a message yesterday telling me that the other two had done most of the shopping (chicken breasts and salad makings) and could I just pick up a few other items and some wine (no Merlot). COULD I?? A weekend out of town constitutes vacation, and vacation constitutes NO DIET. I went to the store and shopped like a 16-year-old whose parents are out of town for the weekend:

• Salsa
• Chips (multigrain, but come on, whom are we kidding?)
• Natural Cheetos (so we can pretend they're good for us)
• Two kinds of cheese (American and un-American)
• Two Pinots (no Merlots)
• Diet Pepsi (because we're watching our figures)
• And, one of the best reasons I can think of to get up in the morning..... Entenmann's donuts

Me and my fat ass are lookin' forward to a weekend of roughin' it in the woods!

There's got to be a better way

to advertise casinos than using the term LOOSE SLOTS!

Yuck.

There's always one

I was sitting in the kitchen reading and having a little lunch today when I looked up at one of the big screens (the kitchen here at the office has come to resemble a sports bar lately--four ginormous-screen TVs, all tuned in to ESPN all. day. long.) just in time to see somethin' special.

The Tour de France is on. The cameras are following one of the lead bikers (I'm guessing... because why would they follow the stragglers at the end of the pack?). Ardent fans are cheering on the roadsides. And then one fella steps out of the crowd to mug for the camera.

He's wearing boxer shorts, shoes, and a mask... with a big rubber dildo hanging out of the front of his boxers.

And he was doing the kind of dance that you might expect a gentleman (a Frenchman at that!) in such a getup to do.

I love live television.

Petty annoyance

It irritates me when someone pronounces asterisk as astrick.

(I told you it was petty.)

The "maladies" of our times

You've seen the commercials. Poor Brooke Shields and Claire Danes. Two beautiful actresses who have seemingly perfect lives except for one. horrible. problem.

Their eyelashes were too short.

What a shame. They could have had it all. 

But wait! Luckily, there's a new mysterious chemical you can spread on your eyelids that stimulates your cells (!) and makes your lashes grow and grow! Sure, there are side effects (eye redness, eye irritation, permanent darkening of iris pigmentation), but just look at that beautiful fringe!

As long as you're spreading chemicals on your eyelids, you might as well shoot botulism right into your forehead to get rid of those gawd-awful forehead wrinkles.


And if you're cursed with thin lips, you can have chemicals or the fat of your own ass injected into them to plump 'em up!
 

You can bet that women are lining up to ask their doctors about these procedures without batting an eye (yep, had to go there). And their doctors are whipping out the needles and prescription pads to dole out the appropriate treatments.

There's just one thing everyone has forgotten in this medical quest for beauty: short eyelashes, forehead wrinkles, and thin lips are not medical problems.


They are the genetic cards we're dealt. They are what set us apart from others. We're not all supposed to look alike. Who says that having short eyelashes is bad?

Where is it written that women must all have line-free skin, long lashes, plump lips, and thighs that don't touch? That men must have washboard abs, 1% body fat, a full head of hair, and erections not lasting more than four hours? 


WHO SAYS?

Ugh. When is it ever going to be enough?

There's a special place in hell

for That Guy who zooms to the front of the line and cuts in when the rest of us have merged and waited patiently as two lanes merge down to one in a construction zone.

I loathe That Guy.

I am a television marketing GENIUS

Here's THE IDEA of all ideas for a new reality show:

Lock Mel Gibson and Lindsay Lohan in a windowless room, turn on the cameras, and let the magic begin.

Call it Celebrity Trainwreck Deathmatch! (And totally use the exclamation point. So few television shows use exclamation points in their titles. Lost!, Seinfeld!, and 60 Minutes! would be so much more entertaining than their expressionless counterparts.)

I'm not old but...

This morning I remembered that on my senior-year T-shirt in high school, our mascot was wearing Hammer pants and the phrase was "Class of '91. You can't touch us."

One of those things I hate myself for laughing at

But I do. Every time.

Garage-door update

The door is unstuck, but damaged.

A formal assessment of the damages happens on Friday.

Sigh.

At least I get to park in my garage. 

(Oh, and my door is the ONLY ONE in the entire neighborhood that got glued to the ground.)

One of the many annoyances of my HOA

They hire the keystone cops to do any and all maintenance work.

Last night, I came home after a long day, ready to bake Dad's birthday treat (that's become The Thing: I make my folks any dessert they want on Father's/Mother's Day, holidays, and birthdays). I drove into the alley, hit the garage-door opener, and... nothing.

I pushed it again. Nothing.

Hmmmm.

Well, maybe the electricity is out and that's why the garage-door opener won't work. I got out of the car. Phew! What is that awful smell? Tar. They've repaved the alley.

I went inside, hit the garage-door opener and saw the door struggle to open and give up.

It was stuck.

Or perhaps glued is a more adequate word.

The geniuses who paved the alley let tar pool under my garage door, effectively sealing it against all of the elements (including my car). I pushed and pulled with all of my might (and jacked up my shoulder in the process). It wouldn't budge.

Dad came over with two crowbars. No dice.

Sigh.

Muthaf....

Now I have to track down the company and get them to fix the sticky situation. I'll keep you posted.

I've never read anything of James Patterson's

But I have to assume that if you need to take out ads on TV to promote your own book, it simply can't be that good.

Ran across these babies over the weekend

You'll be SHOCKED to know that they were 60% off!

While I was out shopping with Mom (owner/operater of the plaid legs pictured above), I tried on multiple shirts because Mom was determined to buy me a new T-shirt for the 4th (we like to be bedecked in new finery during the holidays--don't ask). In the dressing room, we're both very honest about whether or not something looks good. I'm sure many folks have been shocked to overhear me telling her that something ages her or her telling me that something I've put on does nothing to camouflage my problem areas. But if your family isn't going to tell you, who is?

But even I was a little taken aback by her reaction to one shirt (it looked really pretty on the hanger; it turned into visual poison once I put it on). She took one look and screeched: Ew ew! Get it off! Get. It. Off!!

Thanks, Mom. :)