Down with Redbook!!!

You know what I hate? Women's magazines. I am a subscriber to a couple of them for one reason or another. Some I got free; some as gifts. I read them from cover to cover so that I can realize what a zit-faced, sexually incompetent, frizzy haired, poor dressing fatty two by four I am. Come on -- you know it's true. You read those magazines and realize that you're doing EVERYTHING wrong. You thought you could apply eye liner right after 20 years? You moron -- you CAN'T. But thankfully, Redbook is there to teach you how.

You know what really bugs me about these women's magazines? That they are pretty much exclusively about men. It's as if all we females care about is learning more about our alternative species. I don't know about you, but I don't sit around all day thinking, "I wonder what my husband REALLY thinks of these thighs" or "I wonder how I can make my husband even more horny." Bleck!

This month in Redbook, there is a lovely feature on "what your husband is really thinking when you're having sex." I don't know about you, but I don't give a rat's ass what he's thinking. I just know I want him to think it fast so I can un-pause my TiVo'd Little House on the Prairie rerun.

How come men's magazines aren't filled with crap about women? Oh, that's right. CAUSE THEY WOULDN'T BUY IT. This is one area where I give men some credit. They know what they like, and they are always sure to fill their magazines up with this stuff. Men's magazines have stuff like boobs and guns and golf. All the stuff men actually like. Do you think men would buy magazines that made them question themselves as much as women's magazines do? Let me draft up some teasers and let you be the judge.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR PENIS LOOK LARGER
...cause you can't make love for shit and you need something in your favor

CHECK OUT THE LATEST RUBBER CELEBRITY MASKS
...cause your wife is tired of looking at your ugly ass face

INCREASE YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
...to as high as a third grade level with these easy tips

THE MYSTERY OF THE G SPOT
...You idiot. You actually thought you found it?

LEARNING TO LISTEN
...cause you are one dumb asshole and everyone's tired of hearing you talk

Now, I ask you: would a man buy a magazine like this? NO. He wouldn't. So why do we women buy magazines that make us doubt ourselves? Magazines that promote our insecurities? Magazines that prey on our low self esteems? Well, I really think it's time to...if you've been reading this blog faithfully you know what I'm going to say here...it's time to BOYCOTT lame women's magazines. Bon voyage, Redbook. Hasta La Vista, Cosmo. Toodle-doo Women's Day. The bonfire in my backyard is just about ready.

Truth in Advertising

You know what I hate? False Advertising. This particular advertisement came in my weekly Val-U-Pak. I was checking out all the fancy checks this place offers, and trying to decide whether I'd rather have Betty Boop or the Smurfs.

Then I noticed the lady that is pictured next to the 1-800 number. Come on, now. Let's get real. That lady is NOT sitting in the Checks Unlimited call center making $6.50 an hour.

If you've dialed into a call center lately, you know what I'm talking about. It's always a treat, isn't it?

Here are some pictures of some of the people whom I've talked to lately when I've dialed into various call centers.

I often get this guy... He could give two shits about customer service. FU&% Yo Customer Service, lady!

And I also sometimes speak to this lady... She's really happy to be working. And sitting on the phone all day is way better than greeting people on their way into Walmart.

And I even get this guy...particularly when I call really huge credit card companies... His name is Jack Nelson, but I could swear that I heard someone in the background yelling "Samir, Samir!" He is really nice, but I have no fu&*ing idea what the hell he's saying.

If you encounter any of my friends on your phone lines, please say Hello from me!

American Tardol

You know what I hate? Kevin Covais. He's like a bad nightmare that just keeps returning each Tuesday night on American Idol.



Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall the show being called "American Tardol." Cause if it was, then I'd be expecting to see Corky Thatcher from the show "Life Goes On." He's my favorite tard in the world. He also has impeccible pitch. If you don't believe me, listen really closely for his little tard voice during the family's chorus of that "oob la dee, oob la da, life goes ooooooooooon" song that introduced the show each week. He totally rocks.

And while I'm on the subject, I don't recall the show being called "American LISPol" either. How is it that someone who sounds like Sylvester the Cat is in America's Top 10? What's next? "American Cleft Palatedol?"

I used to like Kevin Covais -- but that was when he was the underdog of the show. When he was still humble -- like the geeky tard-like kid who's somehow managed to stop the camera at the Idol auditions ought to be. Lately, however, the power has clearly gone to his head. The little perve suddenly thinks he's hot because Paula more or less molests him each show. Disgusting. Kev's bloated father even seems to find fault with Paula's overt violation of his little boy. He's always beet red.

Kevin Covais reminds me of those kids in grade school who act like they're proud to be a nerd, and who pretend to hate all the jocks, but if given the opportunity, they dump their fellow nerds in a heartbeat to be part of the jock crowd. And this usually on happens because one of the jocks is porking their older sister. That's Kev for you. Pre-Hollywood, he probably had a frumpy, little pimply girlfriend who liked to play Magic The Gathering. But ever since Kelly Picklar pinched his cheeks, the Magic the Gathering girl probably hasn't heard two words from him.

As I write this, he's probably performing some dorky uptempo song and thrusting his little deflated pelvis all over the stage. I've TiVo'd it so I can fast forward through the LESS appealing parts of the show!

BTK Barbie

You know what I hate? Dollies. Almost everything having to do with mothering two little girls is fantastic. Except the dollies. Yesterday, my idiot cat peed on a couple of 'em. He pees on everything, except litter. I think he has some type of genitically-defective penis.

I proceeded to do what I always do when he soils our goods: I threw the dollies in the washing machine. When the spin cycle stopped, I reached in and started pulling out a vareity of piss-stained items. I gasped when I pulled this out:

Yeah, I know. You thought Linda Blair's spinning head gave you nightmares. Wait until you go to bed tonight. It won't be pretty; believe me. I woke up 3 times last night hyperventilating. This is no Malibu Barbie. It's more like B.T.K Barbie.

When snapping this shot of B.T.K Barbie, I also decided to let you have a glimpse into the floor of our garage. Not so you could see the mounds of dirty clothes and miscellaneous junk with no other place to go, but so that you could see this:

It's another dollie. One who appears to be the victim of BTK Barbie. Look at her creepy pink face. Why is she designed to look like a strangulation victim? She also has boobs and a navel and though you can't decipher her scale by this picture, let me tell you that she stands about as tall as my 7-year-old. Creepy? You bet. In fact, I suspect that if we're ever investigated on serial murder charges, we'll be gassed based on this grizzly image alone. This is what our garage floor will look like after the investigation:

My daughters refuse to leave dollie's clothes on her. And I'm pretty sure my dogs have had their way with her. I suppose it's time to throw her away, but I'm too scared to put her into my garbage can. You never know what type of perve will take her and torment her. Boy would I love it if our life was more simplified by tonka trucks, plastic guns and green army men!

Rainbow Spray

You know what I hate? When you are at work, and you sneeze, and you decide not to cover your mouth and nose (because it's YOUR space) and then your computer monitor has a bunch of little snot drippings on it and these nasal specks turn the monitor into a rainbow of colors (in the areas where the driblets occur) and then you try to wipe the whole thing clean with the fleshy side of your little sweaty hand, which really smears it all into a bigger rainbow, and then the guy in the cubicle next door to you who hasn't "visited" over the wall in 2 months decides he needs to ask you a question and you're caught, red handed (or rainbow-handed as it were), and even though the guy in the cubicle next door is fat and ugly, he scowls as if he's just learned you have crabs or something.

Granted, now that I've been unemployed for 5 months, this hasn't happened in awhile, but I just sprayed a good one all over my flat-screen at home (it looked like the monitor had rainbow measles) and was reminded of what can happen when you're NOT in the comfort of your own home. Hallelujah for unemployment!

The '80s -- My Undignified Decade

You know what I hate? Memories of my adolescence. I mean, I'm sure there was a good time or two to be had in there somewhere, but in general, looking back on the time period between roughly 1980 and 1990 is painful. The problem with this decade-or-so interval in my life is that I was an imbecile. The worst of it all is that I really, truly thought I was cool.

I was reminded of how shameful the events of this decade were as my family and I were stuck in traffic on I-17 for an hour the other night. Have you listened to radio in Phoenix lately? Yeah, let me save you some time: you can have either spanish, christian or the 80s. We chose the '80s. As we suffered through the the Pretty in Pink soundtracks and the one-hit wonders and the glam rockers, I found myself reminiscing about this most despicable point in my life. Here's what stuck with me most:

1) Senior Prom. I decided to wear a spaghetti-strapped gown. I had never worn anything sleeveless, and found myself wondering what would happen to any perspiration that might accumulate in the underpit area. In my typically freakish way, I came up with a plan to outsmart the sweat. I would start layering deodorant upon deodorant early in the morning, so by the time my date picked me up at 6 p.m., I'd have an anti-perspirant shield that nothing could penetrate. The name of this game was 'variety.' I combined roll-ons, sprays and solids until my pits were invincible. The problem was that at about 6:30 p.m., just as my date and I were arriving at dinner, I could feel my pits tingling. I also started to smell a strange aroma. I quickly excused myself to the restroom to take a sniff. IT WAS MY PITS!! In creating the anti-sweat shield, I had apparently activated a chemical reaction that gave me the worst BO that I'd ever had, or ever smelled -- even on bums! Needless to say, the evening was cut short by my insisting that I had a tummy ache. I'm sure my date was glad to get rid of me. He probably had to get his car fumugated.

2) My Gross Boyfriend. You know the phrase "better to be alone for the right reasons than with someone for the wrong reasons?" Yeah, apparently I hadn't heard that one yet in 1984, when I got my first high school boyfriend. He was my "sure thing" -- a greasy, more-or-less illiterate, pimply jock. His good qualities were that he said "yes" to going with me. "Now I'm cool like the seniors," I praised myself. "I have a jock boyfriend." Meanwhile, I'm sure I was the laughing stock of Tolleson High. That guy was of Special Olympics-quality for sure. Most disgusting is the fact that he loooooooooooved hamburgers. He'd buy 2 or 3 of them every day (thus the pimples). One day, when making out by the lockers (PDA = cool), a juicy hamburger wod that had been making its home in between Molars #8 and 9 of my disgusting boyfriend was passed from his mouth to mine. It was so incredibly disgusting. Soooooooo disgusting. I eventually got it swallowed down. Then I dated him for another 2 years.

3) My "Drug Habit." Okay, this one is a stretch, because I never ever took drugs. But, I sure got some mileage out of pretending I did. This particular event happened around 1982. I had a seventh-grade crush on a kid named "Cody." I wrote his name EVERYWHERE -- on folders, desktops, bathroom mirrors, my hand. One day, my older sister (Julie -- the one who bullied me into the Sperry Top-Sider knock-offs) saw his name plastered all over my skin. "His name is Cody? You should call him Codeine," she said. "What is codeine?" I asked, naively. "A drug," she said. "A drug", I amused myself. "How cool is that." (I didn't realize that it was a legal drug used to treat headaches.) The next day, I plastered the words "I love Codeine" all over the grade school campus. My parents got a phone call that evening. Their suspicion never waned after that day.

Throwback Fashions

You know what I hate? The disdain with which this country treats our homebound citizens. We shun them, trick them, laugh at them -- then put them in really ugly clothes. What I'm referring to is something that you and I don't have to deal with. We have cars. We can leave our homes to shop for the latest fashions. But for a homebound citizen -- whether that be someone who is elderly or someone with no legs -- there is no Kmart. No Walmart. No Old Navy.

Which leads me to this:

What is it? It's a culotte ad. It came in the Sunday paper; in the coupon section to be exact. At first, I looked at it and laughed. "Nobody has worn these things since the early 80's," I humored myself. But then, my frown turned upside down. I remembered how my Granny, who was too frail to drive, loved to shop through mail order. She was a huge fan of Fingerhut, and every Christmas, we were thrilled to receive some of the most innovative gadgets around. I do believe the AM radio/toilet paper holder combo was my favorite.

Granny would have succumbed to the culotte ad. Moreover, she would have purchased them in every color. She would have looked ridiculous in them.

I have no issues with companies selling marketable, stylish items to homebound citizens through mail order. What I DO have an issue with is selling the remnants of the massive Yellow Front closures of the early 80's. Come on -- you know those culottes were not made in this century. They were sitting in some wherehouse for 30 years when some over-achieving corporate idiot decided to pull them out, blow the dust off of them, and place them in the coupon section of Sunday's paper. I bet that invalids and relics all over this country are clogging the phone lines trying to get an order in on those Culottes. Shame on that company!

There were some other items in the paper, all equally shameful. Check out this thing:

Is it a bra or a straight jacket? Read the wording towards the bottom of the ad -- "No More Hooks Front or Back." How the hell do you get it on then? Imagine the guy trying to get to second base with the lady wearing this contraption.

As if putting our nation's homebound citizens into uncomely clothes isn't cruel enough, these evil entrepreneurs have also rounded up an overstock supply of home decor. Collector's item is definitely the right word to describe this montage of Collies! Because I bet only a handful of people purchased them the FIRST time around when they set up a display table at the release of "Lassie" in 1978. If you look closely at the description, they are boasting that these saucers are plated in 23-karat gold. 23 karat? What the hell happened to the other karat?

Granny had a very similar plate, only it featured about 10 owl faces. I think she got it at the T,G and Y. At least when she bought it, it was somewhat in style.

Kleenex Kriminals

You know what I hate? How easy it is to break the law these days. I mean, you don't have to be schlepping around sawed off shotguns or crack pipes to be in violation of the law anymore. In fact, if you've had a cold this winter, then you're most likely a criminal without even knowing it! Here is a picture of what I'm referring to:

Look at the 'Directions for Use' and note that it is indeed a violation of Federal law to use kleenexes in a manner inconsistent with their labeling. What this means is that if you do anything with this tissue other than wipe your nose, you could be LOCKED UP. Think about this the next time you're in the car and your 2-year-old gets chocolate all over his hands and the only thing you can find is your little container of tissues. Is it worth it? Do you really want your little one to have to grow up and tell his friends that his mama is in the slammer all due to the fact that she used a hankie illegally? The stigma!

I'm particularly vulnerable to this situation, because my husband is a cop. I think his allegiance is to me, but you just never know. His quotas might be low and he might see me use a paper hankie to rescue an injured cricket, and he might just whip those handcuffs out and haul me in.

Since when do hankie companies get to make federal laws? I think it's time to boycott Kleenex! And while I'm on this rant, I'll pay $1,000 (in Monopoly dollars) to anyone who can make sense of the sentence that is written on the package next to the red letter "B" in the photo. It contains so many (tons and tons) parentheses (the little things you're seeing here) that you (reader) get all confused (bewildered) and then the end of the sentence comes (finally) and it has some misplaced modifer that makes no sense within the tissue in 15 minutes.

Last, apparently, I've been storing my tissues incorrectly. Store in a dry place, the package says. Dammit! Is that why each time I take them down from the rain gutter where I've been storing them, they have formed into a gooey paste? I'll know better next time. Thank goodness for those handy directions!