“I must look approachable…was asked by a dad at Target if he picked the right feminine products for his young daughter. He did.”

Wait, no he didn’t!! You steered him wrong! Not tampons, you idiot, pads. With belts. Thick, thick pads that make a girl feel like she’s wearing a diaper. Huge pads are the way to go. The kind of pads that make wearing your skinny jeans impossible. The kind of pad that makes wearing a short skirt seem scandalous and obscene.

Alternately…

What a sad pick-up line. “Hey, you look like a lady who’s enjoyed a robust estrous cycle or two. Would you wear this tampon? You would? I have a young daughter and she needs some tampons… I became a dad when I was really young. Didn’t work out with the mother. Now I’ve got a teen and I’m still in my prime. Would you like to go to dinner sometime? Do you enjoy Steak-And-Ale?”

Categories: Annoying Tweet Of The Day
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The back cover of City Pages is filled with disconcerting questions… I guess this is the latest technique used to get people to read your classified ad. Ask a probing question!

Are YOU looking for Meaningful Work? (is “Meaningful Work” capitalized because it’s an official category of work or a profession or what?)

Drinking Problem?

Need Cash?

Have a 10-17 yr old child?

Do you fear and avoid social situations?

No Where to go? Know Where to Go!

Need a Lawyer?

Are you a SNUFF user who is interested in volunteering in a research study? (I assume we’re talking the tobacco product here and not the porn product)

Categories: General Weirdness
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“It’s National Happy Hour Day and from 5-6pm we’ll be serving FREE Budweiser.”

For one hour today we will serve up FREE piss.

Because we hate National Happy Hour Day and want everyone to die.

Categories: Annoying Tweet Of The Day
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And, yeah, probably the new black as well. Although that’s such a tired joke.

Minimalism is where it’s at today. It’s more than a trend, it’s a lifestyle.

Let’s start with fashion. Not just paired-down style but a paired-down wardrobe. There are all kinds of sites online extolling the virtues of making due with less. In these uncertain times, etc.

Last year, Sheena Matheiken launched The Uniform Project, in which she wore seven identical black dresses every day of the week for a year and did a hell of a lot of accessorizing. However, the accessories were all vintage, thrifted, donated items so she wasn’t out shopping for new stuff. She also raised money for children living in Indian slums by putting aside a dollar each day and asking blog visitors for donations. Now through with her year, the Uniform Project has moved on to some other “pilot projects” of what seems to be other women taking the challenge.

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Categories: Trends
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I enjoy you. I’ve enjoyed our time together.

I’ve enjoyed staring at the back of your low-riding Buick in traffic, your license plate telling the world you’re physically disabled… or is it mentally disabled? Because you are only going 40 miles per hour. And your children are bouncing around in the back seat, throwing things. And you have your hand up in the air, fingers open, as if to catch something, fingers grasping air… but you wait for several minutes before finally one of your children tosses something at you. A puppet? A stuffed raccoon?

You take it and throw it on the seat next to you. That’s that, I think. Now we can get to the business of driving.

But no.

Because now it’s time to merge onto I-94 while you comb your long, 1970s locks with a brush. I suppose it does make your hair look better. Silky instead of a snarled mess.

Brushing, brushing… swerving. Swerving… you merge. I have to merge behind you. I want so badly to get away from you. No offense. I understand. Two kids, a broken down Buick, those disabilities to contend with. I get ready to make my move to the next lane to the left and then… your enormous, laborious red signal light comes on. You want to get over too! In front of me. Maybe you want our little caravan to go on just a little while longer. You feel safe with me behind you.

But no. I step on the gas. Sorry, you’re not getting in front of me again. I look over as I pass by your car. You are so short. Your glasses are so enormous. Like big magnifying glasses strapped to your face.

How do you ever get anywhere?

Categories: General Weirdness
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“Was called a ‘do gooder’ today as if it’s an insult. I’ll take that label over ‘do nothing’ or ‘do nothing but complain about everything.’”

I like to be called a Do-Nothing-Who-Makes-Pithy-Comments-About-Do-Gooders.

Do gooder IS a bit of an insult. It means please stop being such a Pollyanna and let us live our lives the way we wanna live them. As Bobby Brown would say, “I made this money, you didn’t. It’s my prerogative.”

Speaking of do-gooders… you may remember this little rant from a week or two ago.  Well, today I discovered who that “turn the light off and save some pennies” do-gooder is. A sad-looking older woman who frequents the bathroom and always wears a black cardigan. She is very frail. She sighs a lot. She works for some architectural/engineering firm down the hall. I should have known all along! She looks as if she spends her free time washing homeless people’s feet. By that I mean, of course! Of course she’s the one who is turning off the light. And I can’t really yell at Mother Theresa. So I must abide.

Categories: Annoying Tweet Of The Day
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Today I embark upon a new series called Where Everybody Knows Your Name, which will make its appearance whenever I feel like it, and explores my connection to TV shows and how they marked my place in, and understanding of, the world. Today I begin with a look at the game show Love Connection.

Making The Connection

My acquaintance with the TV show Love Connection began in the mid-1980s, when I was in my early teens. I spent my summers working at my father’s produce store in rural Wisconsin and if I took my lunch break early, say 11:45, I could walk home in time to catch the second half of the show while I made my lunch and ate it at our kitchen counter. Today, I still associate Love Connection with chicken sandwiches composed not of chicken meat directly off the bone, but of a pressed chicken sandwich roll, thinly sliced and packaged as an oversized puck of lunchmeat. It was the sort of thing you didn’t want your friends to see you eating, much like the old-time German favorite braunschweiger (pork liver sausage). I ate my pressed meat on wheat bread with lots of mayonnaise and some cheese. I also frequently ate cottage cheese, potato chips and finished things off with cookies and lemonade. It’s the kind of meal that defines a certain rural, Midwestern way of life.

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Categories: Where Everybody Knows Your Name
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The scene: a table at a networking/”learning” lunch for marketing/pr/communicator types

The menu: dried-looking chicken breast on top of a salad, rolls with tiny balls of butter by their sides, cookies

Gregarious Woman With Crazy Eyes: Hi! Hi everyone! What’s your name? Where do you work? Let me give you my card.

Hands cards all around from a stack of 100.

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Categories: General Weirdness
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“Tonight’s story has us all talking… tune in at 10 to hear why a local dentist says certain candies are close to battery acid!”

Oh, I’m tuning in. All this time they told me me to stop drinking battery acid, have some candy instead, and now this? I COULD HAVE HAD MY ACID ALL ALONG!!!!

But, wait a minute… is this the top story? Is this your lead because you think people will stop eating this acidic candy? Ain’t gonna happen. We’ve all heard for 25 years about how Coke will take all the rust off a nail and all the carrion off a mouse carcass but that hasn’t stopped us from drinking it. In fact, we want more of it. We want to clean out our insides, make them shiny and new. We like chemicals that sweep through our bodies destroying rust and mildew and healthy, pink tissue. If your guts are perforated, you haven’t lived!

Categories: Annoying Tweet Of The Day
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Here are three things I have a very difficult time with:

1. Band-Aids floating in swimming pools. Maybe the little white pad is smeared with just the faintest hint of blood; maybe its been bleached out entirely by the pool chemicals. No matter, it still ruins a good time. Here’s the thing: Band-Aids in pools are a social equalizer, like taxes and death. I’ve seen them floating in city park pools, at water slide pools, in the pools of very nice resorts, even a few times in the ocean. Band-Aids are in all bodies of water in which one can swim. If you see one, it’s best not to dwell on where it may have come from, which body part it covered. All the Band-Aids I see I pretend came off a nasty paper cut. All the Band-Aids that float by me were simply being used to hide a bruise. They were NOT covering up a weeping, infected facial wound. They were not being used to cover a recently-lanced boil. Nope. Definitely not.

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Categories: General Weirdness
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