Objets D'Crap

Um, I think something dripped down your neck

Well, wouldn't you know it, as soon as I completed my list of "don't wants" for the holidays, one of my favorite sites, Neatorama, posted some rather "unusual" items that I also do not want but were rather intriguing. One in particular, the "pearl necklace," I had to research further. I found that it was designed by artist Leah Piepgras and is described as an "amorphous cast silver shape...that is actually an accurate representation of semen. It is a visual marker of chaos turned perfection through an act of beauty and lust...." I see. So, it's not just an overpriced blob of silver splooge on a chain! How unsophisticated of me not to recognize the artistic merit in the piece!

In case wearing silver representations of bodily effluvium doesn't float your boat, Ms. Piepgras also offers some lovely objets d'art of the dinnerware variety. Entitled "Consumption Dinnerware," this five piece place setting is for the "mental, physical, and spiritual act of consuming," by which I assume she means eating. The plates feature a "map of the digestive track from mouth to anus" and promote mindfulness. If I were served on these plates, I believe they would promote nausea and perhaps vomiting and several days of fasting. 

 

When I'm through fasting, however, I will need a caffeine fix. What I won't need (or want) is a cup of Kopi Luwak or Civet Crap Choice Coffee. Yes, there is a coffee more expensive and more exotic than Starbucks! The Asian Palm Civet Cat eats only the best coffee fruits, and the coffee beans partially ferment inside its digestive track. It then poops out the coffee beans, which are collected and cleaned and sold to YOU for a unique and delicate coffee flavor experience. Perhaps Ms. Piepgras could serve Kopi Luwak coffee at her next art installation or exhibition. Seems fitting somehow.

All I (Don't) Want for Christmas

When is bigger not better? When is more too much? I’ve been pondering these questions as the holidays approach and as I see increasing evidence of the eagerness of the American public to buy into every ridiculous fad that is offered up in the name of beauty, luxury, or pampering.

With this blatant over-the-top consumerism in mind, I offer you a sampling of some of the items that are NOT on my Hanukkah or Christmas lists this year:

      Collagen enhanced lips: When did it become sexy to look like you're having an allergic reaction to something you've eaten? Or maybe it's that "I've just been punched in the mouth" look that you're going for?  If you want to look pouty, just pout. It’s not that hard. If you really want that swollen lip look, come on over to my house and I’ll hit you for free. I enjoy hitting really stupid people. 

      Beach ball boobs: Okay, I get it that if you’re in the entertainment industry and you have little tits, you’re going to get a boob job. I understand going from A to C or even D or maybe even larger. But have you seen some of the boobs that are NOT bouncing around these days (real boobs bounce, people!) They look like over-inflated beach balls! Not only are they huge, but they’re perfectly round! Natural breasts are not spherical!  Why do men ogle these monstrosities? I don’t think I’d find it sexy if a man had tennis ball sized implants in his testicles, so why are freak-of-nature breast implants so effin’ drool-worthy? 

Flesh eating fish pedicures: I am so not making this up! There is a species of fish that eats human flesh.  Someone has seen the money making potential in this weirdness and thought, "Someone will pay for this!" and he  was right! There are nail salons where you can pay to stick your feet into a tank full of these little flesh suckers (they technically don't have teeth) and have them eat your feet as a part of your pedicure. Sounds like bliss, no?                       

                                                                                                                           

Vajazzling: Somehow I didn't get the notice that pubes are now "out." When did this happen? Seems that once a woman is old enough to have any hair "down there," she goes in for a Brazilian to get it waxed off. Ouch, I say. Ouch. Certainly, one doesn't want rogue hairs poking out from a bathing suit, but totally bare? I don't quite get this trend. If the guy I'm with insists that my lady parts be totally bare, that seems a tad pedophilic to me. But I digress...Vajazzling. Once the canvass is blank, so to speak, Swarovski crystals and glitter are applied to decorate. Why I would need my nether regions to sparkle is beyond me, but apparently Jennifer Love Hewitt made this stupid trend popular. Kathy Griffin had it done on national TV before her PAP smear, so at least hers was a "public cervix" or "pubic service" or, oh, forget it! 

      Botox: I know it's bothersome. You look in the mirror and see smile lines, creases by your forehead, wrinkles, etc.  Add those to the gray hairs and you don't look quite as young and nubile as you used to. Sigh. "I know!" you think to yourself. "Why don't I pay hundreds of dollars every few months and have a known toxin injected into my face to make me look younger?!!" What asshat sold this to the American public as a viable option and why do so many people blindly buy it? It's Bo-tox, people. The -tox part stands for "toxin." It just stuns me that so many folks are so desperate to retain their youthful looks that they are willing to have poison injected into their faces, no once, not twice, but on a regular basis! And, frankly, most don't end up looking youthful; they end up looking like victims of Medusa, with faces frozen in stone.

And by the way, I don't want a Chia Pet, a Snuggie, a Ginsu Knife, any type of cleaning appliance, or cheap-ass scented candles either. Cash is always good. Happy Holidays!

Give Thanks That This Isn't Your Dog or Amazing But Totally Disgusting Dog Tricks

As some of you know, we adopted a 4 year-old Maltese about 2 weeks ago from a local humane group. The Maltese was described by his foster mother as friendly, housetrained, and completely non-aggressive with both people and other dogs. After meeting him twice, we liked him, brought him home, and named him Robin Goodfellow aka "Puck," after the mischievous spirit in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

Oh, how names are fate! Our little Puck has turned our home into his own private urinal as well as leaving us several other more materially substantial "gifts" on our carpet. He has a penchant for chewing, whether it be dog toys, chew treats, napkins, grass, trash, Chapstick, or hands. His preferred manner of greeting new people is to growl menacingly, which considering his diminutive size, makes him sound like Gizmo from Gremlins (another name we considered and luckily rejected; Gizmo tried to kill people!) Both my husband and I have been bitten several times by our little non-aggressive dog for the unpardonable sins of 1. attempting to remove garbage from his mouth before he swallowed it  2. trying to move him from the top of the couch to a cushion so he wouldn't fall  3. leaning over him to kiss.  In other words, if we do anything to irk this dog, back off or prepare to be bitten. If we had a small child in our house, he would have gone back to the rescue group already, but I am trying to study up on dog training and have contacted the group to see if someone can help. I hate to send him back and have the abandonment cycle start all over again.

Today, our little doggie wonder displayed a new talent so truly awesome and amazing that I was speechless. We were having family over for Thanksgiving dinner and the table had been set on Wednesday evening. Today, my daughter, bless her observant nature, asked me, "Mom, did you put something in one of the glasses on the table?" Odd question. Why would I do that? Then, slowly, a thought formed in my brain. I tried to fight it, but it kept reaching for consciousness. Puck. "No effing way," I thought. Then I went in the dining room, peered into the glass in question, and the evidence was indisputable. PEE. IN THE GLASS. Mind you, there was no disturbance of any china, no wet spots on the table cloth, nothing else amiss. This was truly incredible. Somehow he had managed to jump up on the table, lift his leg, aim his little pecker, and pee directly into my glassware! It was just like giving a urine sample! If it weren't so absolutely disgusting, I'd be proud of the little guy.

For those who don't believe this story, I have the pictures. Yes, I took pictures because I'm that type of person. And yes, I washed and disinfected the glass and all the dishes around it.. And no, I didn't tell any of our guests!

Wondering what to drink with the turkey? Monsieur Puck has a suggestion.

Is The Pope Catholic? Redux

My Hanukkah gift came early this year with the Pope's announcement that some condom use was morally justified, for example, to prevent the spread of AIDS by male prostitutes. Today, I feel like I spun the dreidel and got gimmel for the jackpot! Benedict XVI outdid himself by further stating that condoms are "the lesser of two evils" when used to curb the spread of AIDS even when their use may prevent pregnancy! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Vatican, in a stunning shift of policy, has put human life before church dogma! What's next? Women priests? Nah, that's way too radical!

The Catholic Church hastened to add that condom use is still considered immoral as is any means of artificial contraception. By making this announcement, however, the Pope is opening up grounds for debate on the issues of condom use, birth control, AIDS, and other urgently significant topics. Lest we liberals don our party hats too soon, George Weigel, a conservative Catholic writer, wanted to make clear that the Vatican was certainly not endorsing condom use as a method of AIDS prevention. Weigel stated, "... someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way — which is not an endorsement of anything." Uh, okay, George.

Whatever the Pope's detractors and George Weigel may say, this is HUGE! The Vatican is now declaring that a form of contraception is more morally acceptable than possibly passing on a potentially lethal virus to another person. Of course, this is just common sense to most of us, but to strict Catholics, this is a seismic shift in their way of thinking. Now, about those women priests....

Is The Pope Catholic?

Is the Pope Catholic? I had to wonder this myself when I heard that Pope Benedict XVI recently stated that some condom use may be morally justified. Jewish girl sez, "WHAAAAT???" It must be my early Hanukkah gift this year that a reasonable statement has emerged from the Vatican! Maybe my liberal, Jewish juju infiltrated the place when I visited Rome this summer!

In a move that has mortified conservative officials at the Vatican and in the Catholic Church, the Pope has declared that condom use may be justified in order to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, such as AIDS. He cited the case of male prostitutes as an example of those who may be morally justified in using condoms as a "first step" in living a more moral life. The Pope made no mention of female prostitutes and continued to assert the Church's opposition to artificial means of birth control (some progress is better than none, right?) Some Catholics fear that Benedict has now opened up debate on the issue and that this ruling could lead to other "justified" uses of condoms, to which conservative Catholics strongly object.

I cannot fathom how anyone could possibly object to something that has been shown to prevent a deadly, infectious disease.  If you personally feel that condom use, or any artificial contraception is morally wrong, then abstain from sex. But how can you call yourself a moral person if you would prefer to condemn someone to a preventable death sentence than allow him or her to use the means to prevent it? It heartens me to see that the Pope is beginning to see the gray areas in these moral questions and allow for some real world reasoning to balance out his moral absolutes. There's still a LONG way to go as far as I'm concerned, but I give a big AMEN to Pope Benedict on his latest call. I hope it's just the beginning of the Catholic Church entering the 21st century with moral guidance that real people can actually use in today's world.

How Do You Know Whom God Hates?

Maybe you've heard of the Westboro Baptist Church led by the Rev. Fred Phelps. If so, you know that they don't deserve to be called a "church," for they are a pack of hate mongering wing nuts who believe that American soldiers are being killed overseas as God's punishment for the acceptance of gay people. No, unfortunately, I'm not making that up. If you haven't yet heard of these cretins, you probably will, because they are on a mission to disrupt military funerals with protests and placards with messages such as "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God For Dead Soldiers." Rev. Phelps claims that it is his First Amendment right to express his beliefs as he sees fit. No matter that it is disrespectful, unpatriotic, and terribly hurtful to the bereaved families of these soldiers, Rev. Phelps believes that military funerals are the place to express his hateful ignorance. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with all of the publicity he gets by making such a pathetic spectacle of himself and his lemmings by disrupting what should be solemn ceremonies with his homophobic tirades.

Well, Rev. Phelps was foiled this past Monday in, of all places, Southern MD. He and his minions showed up for the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Terry Honeycutt in La Plata, MD. According to the Washington Examiner, "the hate group's parade of absurdity received quite a response: More than a thousand counter-demonstrators showed up early, established themselves on the rights-of-way around the church, and prevented the "God Hates Fags" crowd from getting anywhere near the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Terry Honeycutt." Holly Smith, one of the organizers of the counter-demonstration, described the scene: "I was surprised to hear no shouting or noise in the background. American flags as far as the eye can see... And the Westboro crowd? They are up at a gas station probably a mile up the road, because they couldn't get any closer. We're in the shoulder for probably ten deep for at least 300 yards."  I couldn't be prouder of my Southern MD neighbors if they had dressed in drag and thrown a gay pride parade! Way to come together and stand up to blatant ignorance and idiocy!

Phelps and his fanatics are also being challenged in the Supreme Court. The Westboro Baptist Church was sued by Albert Snyder of MD for emotional distress and invasion of privacy after they disrupted the funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. Snyder initially won a 5 million dollar verdict against the church, but it was vacated by an appeals court. Phelps claims the issue rests on his First Amendment right to free speech at public funerals, while Snyder claims that the church engages in harassment and that free speech is not absolute. It will be interesting to see how the Court decides this case.

As preposterous as his ideas may be, I am hesitant to say Phelps does not have the right to express them, as long as he is not preventing the bereaved from assembling and participating in the funeral. I think the folks in La Plata had the right idea; outnumber the whack jobs and beat them at their own game. Let the homophobes have their signs and their hatred. We'll fight back by supporting our friends and neighbors with love and acceptance. We'll comfort the bereaved, welcome the outcast, accept those on the fringes. If we can do this, there will be so much less room for those who spew hatred.

Teach Your Children Well

In other McDonald's news, it seems our favorite fast food corporate giant is getting in the business of nutrition education. Your child's class can now visit the local McDonald's on a field trip and learn all about "nutrition." This is exactly what a class of sixth graders in Connecticut did recently. I guess there aren't any museums or historical sites in Stratford, CT, so a field trip to McDonald's seemed like a good idea to someone. A local store marketer brought the children into the store to give them information on the "health benefits of certain vegetables" and "tips on making healthy choices." Nutrition education at McDonald's?!! This makes about as much sense as bringing children to a "professional wrestling" match to give them information on conflict resolution! How about bringing them to a NASCAR race to teach them about safe driving? Why don't we have Bristol Palin promoting abstinence to our kids? Oh, wait, never mind that last one!

But let's not underestimate the intelligence of our sixth graders. Maybe they were able to glean some sound nutritional nuggets from this marketing maneuver. One 11 year-old student stated, ""I learned that McDonald's can be very healthy for you if you make the right choices. I usually have lots of cheese, but I had less cheese and more lettuce...." Another said he "planned to get an Angus Deluxe, but chose a Big Mac because it had 210 fewer calories." Okay...A Big Mac still has 540 calories, 260 of which are from fat. This accounts for 50 percent of an adult's recommended fat intake for an entire day. It also has 1040 mg of sodium, which is almost half of the daily recommended salt intake for an adult. Saying that you chose a Big Mac because it's healthier than an Angus Deluxe is sort of like saying you chose a screwdriver over a martini because there's orange juice in the screwdriver.

Now I am aware that McDonald's offers some healthy choices, such as apple slices, juice, and milk, on their menu. Healthy options comprise only a very small portion of McDonald's menu choices, however. And let's be real; how many kids are going to go to McDonald's and order only healthy food, especially if Mom and Dad are cramming  Quarter Pounders and large fries down their gullets? Nutrition workshops, like Happy Meals, are just another ploy by McDonald's to promote brand awareness in children and create lifelong consumers for their products-lifelong consumers whose lives may be shortened by obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure caused, in part, by the very products McDonald's serves up!

I am not one of those greener than thou parents who won't let food touch their child's lips unless it has been harvested by non-oppressed workers on a totally organic, local farm run by a member of my women's studies book club. I do, on occasion, eat fast food and allow my child to do so also. I am not, however, delusional enough to believe that I am making sound nutritional choices when I do this. No matter how McDonald's tries to dress it up, a Big Mac, fries, and Hawaiian Punch are not a healthy protein, vegetable, and fruit choice. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And it's absolutely indecent that school systems are using taxpayer money to send kids on field trips to learn this hogwash!

Bad Mommy!!!

Have you seen the latest commercial for PediaSure Sidekicks? I'd like to sidekick whoever wrote that insulting piece of crap! Aside from the fact that the hucksters at Abbott, who own PediaSure, are trying to get us to buy an overpriced liquid nutritional supplement for healthy children (this is a different product than the therapeutic PediaSure that is used for medical conditions), they decided that the best way to market this totally unnecessary bilge water was to trash mothers.

How many times do we have to see this tactic? If you're a good mother, you'll buy Product X for your child. Bad mothers don't care enough to buy it or buy the cheap, generic knock-off. "Choosy mothers choose Jiff." I use Skippy peanut butter; what does that make me? Some sort of negligent, alcoholic who doesn't care if my kid eats the dog food off the floor?

The PediaSure Sidekicks commercial begins with a mom telling her daughter, "Gotta be on your game today, honey!" Gee, way to put some pressure on the kid, mom! She's getting ready for a youth soccer game, not the World Cup! But you know how soccer parents can be! Gotta start them young; scholarships could be at stake! Then we see little Brittany killing the competition on the soccer field while Mom cheers her on. Good Mom! You must have given her PediaSure Sidekicks (and those steroids probably didn't hurt either!) Now we see Bad Mom, who looks rather distressed and asks whether little Tyler (love these suburban, middle class names!) looks a little slow. Well, no shit Sherlock! Poor Tyler has turned into a container of french fries! Hard to run like that! Bad Mom fesses up to feeding Tyler FAST FOOD before the game (gasp of horror!) Good Mom says, (looking very pleased with herself) "Well, kids are what they eat." Here's where I think Bad Mom should punch Good Mom in the face and say, "Eat my fist, you sanctimonious bitch!" but alas, that doesn't happen. We get blah, blah, blah about PediaSure's vitamins and protein.

What kind of moron thought that this commercial would help sell their product? Furthermore, what kind of person would buy this product after the company so blatantly insults women and their childrearing skills? I'm so freakin' sick of women being portrayed as either catty, uppity know-it-alls or dumbass, abusiveness whores. The truth is that most of us are doing the best we can, and we all have our good days and our bad days. We all know our kids should be eating healthy, nutritional meals. We also know that sometimes a trip through the drive-through is the best we can do on an overscheduled day. Give us a friggin' break!

And that donut goalie at the end of the commercial just makes me hungry! If her mom had fed her a Cinnabon or even a jelly donut instead, she could've blocked that shot. No hole!

And Speaking of Adoption...

We had so much fun adopting a word the other day that we decided it would be fun to adopt something else. Here he is: 
We named him Robin Goodfellow but call him "Puck." He's a Maltese, and we got him from a rescue group. He's estimated to be about 4 years old. We had assurances from his foster mom that he is completely housetrained and nondestructive.  As soon as he was left with us, he proceeded to urinate in our kitchen and bedroom and this morning he christened our living room with a lovely poop! He's been scratching up the furniture and carpet as well! But he's cute as can be.

"You're on my blanket dude-prepare to die!"

Our resident dog, Soni, seems to be tolerating the intruder fairly well, with only mild complaining. Right now, he's hiding from him under my computer desk and groaning! We're sure they're going to be best buddies soon (as long as Puck doesn't try to take Soni's spot on the couch again!) If this adoption goes well, next month we're off to China for twin girls (just kidding; it takes longer than that to adopt a baby from China!)

Thank you to Mrs. Hyde for the shout-out in her blog! Check her out at  A Bitch Called Mom
for some honest, funny, and thoughtful stuff.

Adopt a Word

Who knew that there were so many unwanted, unloved words just waiting for homes? So many locupletative vocabulary words with which to enhance our blateration that may go the way of the ten-cent store if we don't take a stand with our sospital acts on their behalf. "How?" you may ask. By adopting a word! Go to SavetheWords.org and you can adopt your very own word! You can use your word in your everyday speech, in your writing, emails, texts, or poems. You can use it to name a pet or a boat. You can even get a tattoo of your word to help you remember how to spell it. Your word doesn't care how you use it. It just wants to be needed. It doesn't cost any money, and you'll be making a huge difference in the life of a neglected word. It takes only a minute. Just a minute of your time to save a word. Please. There are so many words just waiting for your love, and many of these words have so little time left. Please act today.

Thanks to M.A.S. at http://scribbledit.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-adopted-word-today.html for alerting me to these words' terrible plight.

My daughter and I adopted the word "snollygoster" today. We're so proud.

Say "Squeeze!!!" Redux

"Do it to me one more time, once is never enough...." Oh, for shit's sake, I have to get another mammogram and an ultrasound of the ol' girls now. I just knew they didn't smile pretty and cooperate for their pictures this last time! According to the highly personal, warm, and fuzzy radiology report I was sent, I have "heterogeneously dense parenchyma which could obscure detection of small masses. There is nodular asymmetry in both breasts." From what I can gather, this means that my boobs are dense and lumpy, kind of like overcooked oatmeal. The good folks at American Radiology Services don't want to just come out and say, "Hey, lady, we can't see for shit through your tits! For all we know, you could be hiding not only a tumor but a kilo of cocaine in there! You're full of more lumps than my grandmother's Thanksgiving gravy!" So, it's back to the squish machine for me and before they're done with me, it'll be boob scallopini all around!

C'Mon, Get Happy!

What has the world come to? First Florence Henderson struts her wrinkled, old hoochie stuff on "Dancin' With the Stars," and now my former pre-teen crush David Cassidy has been arrested in South Florida for DUI!!! My innocent memories of "The Brady Bunch" and "The Partridge Family" may never recover after this double whammy! And, tell me, how did David Cassidy get to be 60 years old?!! That's old, dude! How the heck could I have a crush on an old dude? Of course, he claims that he wasn't drunk but tired from an early morning funeral he attended. He also admitted to taking a pain pill for his back. UGH! Attending funerals and back problems! That's no way for a teen idol to behave!!! And have you seen his mug shot? It makes Lindsay Lohan's look like it was done at Glamour Shots!

not a good look for David

 

This is how David should look

David, David, David. You went from a psychedelic bus to a white Mercedes, from a groovy hippie kid to an alcohol abusing, pain killer using old guy. How could this happen to one of my very first crushes when I've managed to remain so vibrant, youthful, and sexy this entire time? Ah, the mysteries of the universe...

Awesome Awesomeness!!!

Our Halloween pumpkins this year were most awesome, if I do say so myself (and I do!) Here they are for you, my pets, to behold their most awesome awesomeness. 

OUR HALLOWEEN TRIBUTE TO TIM BURTON AND HIYAO MIYAZAKI

Jack Skellington

   


                       

Totoro

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 

"This post is an entry for Fickle Cattle's Very First Fabulously Fantastic Giveaway!"

Say "Squeeze!!!"

Had the girls' pictures done today. Couldn't get them to smile, though! Oh, how I do love the annual mammogram! I know I need to do it, and I'm thankful the technology exists, and blah, blah, blah, but I still can't help but think that there's a Nobel Prize waiting for the person (who am I kidding-it's got to be a woman!) who figures out how to x-ray our boobs without having to shove them between two metal plates and compressing them into a booby panini! Hold the cheese on mine please-I'm lactose intolerant!

I remember the first time I went for a mammogram almost 2 decades ago.  I was mortified to see what that horrible machine did to my poor little breasts. I had been warned about the discomfort, which honestly, was just that-discomfort, not pain. When you've been a migraine sufferer for nearly your whole life, it takes a lot for you to call something "pain." But, what, dear God, was happening to my boobs? Never very rotund to begin with, they were getting flatter and flatter by the second! I honestly began to doubt that they'd ever spring back to life!

Now, of course, I'm an old pro. I warm up for the annual ritual by standing sideways next to the refrigerator with my upper body unclothed and slowly closing the door tighter and tighter while grasping the hinges on the other side. This method is much more sanitary and draws fewer odd looks from neighbors than my old method, which involved lying naked on the garage floor and closing the garage door on my boobs. Since we installed the child proof doors, I haven't figured out a work around for that method.

So today, well-prepared, I bravely strode into the mammography suite to wait my turn. Have you ever noticed that when you're waiting for a mammogram, all the articles in the magazines you pick up are about cancer? Do they do this on purpose?!! I think they should only allow cooking and Cosmo mags in waiting rooms. My turn arrives, and I have my girls' pictures taken. Lefty was being a pouty bitch this morning and wouldn't smile nicely. At least the tech's hands were warm this year! I should hear the results in 7 to 14 days (I call this stretch of time the "Days of Diazepam.") Maybe if the pictures come out good, I can order extras for my holiday cards!