Annoying Ways In Which Annoying People Use Twitter

1. People who are on Twitter to promote things, probably for pay, who think they are being clever in the way they do it:

“Just flattened my hair with the new Blacksmith Iron by Hair Thing Maker and it’s fabulous. My hair hasn’t looked this good since my senior picture.”

“Made a sandwich and didn’t know what to put it in and then saw my new box of ZIPLOC  Super Zip sandwich bags!”

“I love the indie band SOFT PALETTE and their new album KNOCK YOUR TEETH OUT. Got it at WalMart for $8.99.”

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Some phrases and words that bother me a great deal…

Event listing descriptions that begin “Get thee to XXX tonight…” Yeah, I don’t know why this is common enough that I’ve noticed it. Drives me mad. Like, ha ha, I’m funny and Olde English and I’m doing a take-off on the line, “Get thee to a nunnery!” Which might have been effective once but not 234 times. Get thee to the Jagged Edge Bar tonight for the wet t-shirt contest. Get thee to the feminist spoken word slam. I just received an event announcement via email with one of the listings beginning, “Get thee to Uptown this frigid January eve for a hot, hot set by melodic indie supergroup, Communist Daughter.” Get thee to Uptown? Snort. And get thee to Uptown on this frigid night? No fucking way, anyway. I’m not even going to touch “melodic indie supergroup.” OK, yeah I am. Indie or supergroup… which is it? Supergroup makes me think of Boston or Air Supply. Or… Aerosmith. Communist Daughter… not so much.

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Joy To The World... Without Pants!

Mark my words: 2010 is going to see the revival of Ziggy. Hipsters everywhere are going to begin donning Ziggy t-shirts, mailing each other Ziggy cards, drinking lattes from Ziggy mugs. It’s enough to make me want to run out and start raiding the thrift stores right now!

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I don’t usually feel very comfortable talking about my truly personal life on Not Shallow. Usually that’s because my personal life just isn’t that complicated or even interesting except to me and those directly involved in it. I don’t want to bore my 30 regular readers to tears. But this may help other people, so here goes.

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I recently bought Betty Crocker’s Cake and Frosting Mix Cookbook from 1966. This was a time when cakes from a mix were still considered a big deal – although mixes had been on the market for awhile, Betty Crocker believed women might need some coaching in order to get the most out of them. Because mixes are complicated.

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We said good-bye to our cat, Ella, last Thursday. Ella, also known as Big Brown, E the C, Ella Bella and Big Michigan, is missed greatly. Her presence and willfulness just took up so much room at our house that it now feels empty. My catharsis in the last couple of days has been shopping. Not retail but antique malls and garage sales.

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I’m not going to name any names here but I must put this out there: Men, pay attention to what you wear on your feet! Especially in summer.

Men and sandals… the age-old problem. Some wear socks with their sandals. Some wear leather sandals with so many straps and buckles, you can’t tell what’s going on down there. And then… there is the “sport sandal.” The sport sandal has its place. Like, outside when sporting. I think the same rules apply to sport sandals for men as to flip flops for women. Outside, going to the store, in the backyard, at the beach, cleaning the car… etc.

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I went into American Apparel: The Store about a month ago. While there, I felt very uncomfortable. It could have been the blaring rap music with lyrics that went something like this: “When you see a fine nigga, holla, don’t trip!” Wow, that gets me in the mood to spend, spend, spend! Apparently, AA hasn’t heard about the market research that’s been done on what kind of music makes people want to open their wallets.

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Saturday’s Craftsavaganza event at the State Fairgrounds was cold. I mean wicked. The Fine Arts building has no heat. Of course, organizers couldn’t possibly have known that we’d still be in winter at the end of April but it made for brisk viewing.

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Lucky Magazine is completely ridiculous. And I read it. Well, “read” might be going a bit far. Is there anything to read in this magazine? No. I look at the pictures. Lucky is a picture book for adult women. Sometimes, if I’ve had a stressful day, I can feel my blood pressure go down as I ogle its pages, much the way they say petting a dog or cat can do. I guess this is one of the pros for Lucky. Also:

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