How Lame I Am...

My roommate has started having to travel for her job, and so I'll be living solo for the next 3 weeks. 3 weeks of having everything in my house exactly the way I want it. I can make curry, and not have to worry about the smell bothering someone else! I can watch whatever I want on TV. I can leave my jammies on the bathroom floor! The toilet will always be closed. And just for the record, I don't prefer the toilet closed because of germs, but because I don't want to drop things into it. And because an open, gaping toilet is a little bit like an open, gaping mouth, and it brings back that primal fear all children have of being eaten by the potty.

And speaking of fears, to celebrate my first night living solo--and on Halloween, no less--I decided I would lie on the couch and watch all 5 hours of Bravo's 100 Greatest Horror Movies.

I love scary movies. I love being scared, particularly when I know it's all not real and when I turn on the lights I'll be nice and safe and all the monsters/psycho killers will be gone. Of course, I'm home alone, so to temper the fear of film, I was watching the food network during the commercial breaks. Nothing is less frightening than watching Guy Fieri eat.

But at some point, I realized, damn, I'm going to have to go to bed. By myself. In the dark. After watching hour after hour of the scariest scenes in the scariest films ever made. And I actually suspect my roommate's bedroom may be semi-haunted.

So, over the last half hour, which good old Guy on my TV, I made sure all the doors were locked, I brushed my teeth, and washed my face. I turned out the light in the living room, watched the scariest clip from the scariest movie (disappointing spoiler alert--it was the opening sequence from Jaws), watched another 10 minutes of Guy, and then went to bed.

On my way to my room, I switched off the kitchen light, leaving my house completely dark. And then, a noise.

I heard a rattling, thumping sound. So there I am, in the dark, completely frozen. What the hell was that?? Probably not Jaws, but maybe it's Freddy or Jason or Pinhead. What am I going to do??

It's the ice maker.

I nearly peed my pants because the ice maker dropped a load of ice into the bin. I am that lame.

But, in honor of this experience, my next posting will be the ten movie moments that most deeply terrified me. And all y'all feel free to play along.

Logic Should Be Mandatory

So, I was reading this article today about why people were (or weren't) voting, and this one woman said something that frankly convinced me that we do need the Electoral College to protect us from ourselves. A young woman from Chicago said that she thought health insurance should be mandatory. Okay, that's maybe a strong way to word it, but yes, everyone should have health insurance.

But here's where it falls apart. Her line of reasoning was that if having auto insurance was mandatory, then having health insurance should also be mandatory.

A couple of reasons this makes no sense...


1. Having a car...not mandatory. Being alive sort of is.

2. How do we enforce this and what is the penalty? If you're caught driving without insurance, you pay a fine and/or lose your license. If you're caught living without health insurance, should we kill you?

3. Most people who don't have health insurance don't have it because they can't afford it and are spending the money they have on other things. Like food. I guess if health insurance is made mandatory and people have to do without food to get it, then they'll have the best of care when they show up at the emergency room suffering from starvation.

Okay, I am a rational person, and I know what this girl was trying to say was that everyone should have health insurance, not necessarily that everyone should have to buy it and maintain it and there should be penalties for being without it. But the way she worded it, she came out looking a wee bit stupid. Although this is compounded by the fact that she is in her 20s and said her dad helped her fill out the form. I don't know about other states, but in Illinois, you pretty much have to know your name, address, date of birth, phone number and social secutiry number. If you need your dad to help you with that, then I don't want you to do anything that might somehow affect me. Like voting.

You've got crabs!

Okay, so you've just broken up with your girlfriend and/or boyfriend. But what's this? It burns when you pee? You have a firey itch in your nether regions? Dammit, and you swore you'd never speak to them again!

Well, this website, which has been getting some pretty controversial press lately, has a way to tell them without having to see or speak to them. You can send them an email. Anonymously.

InSpot.org, a website developed by Internet Sexuality Information Services, enables people who have discovered they've caught an STD to inform all their partners in an email, with the option to either identify yourself or send the information notice anonymously. Because there's nothing I'd like better than to find an email from God only knows who in my inbox telling me I may have a dose of the clap.

Of course, I do have to appreciate the fact that, although you don't have to take responsibility for your actions, you are able to responsibly inform people that you may have either given or gotten an STD from. But, I can think of a few other benefits to that anonymity.

Say, for example, you're a cheating bastard and one of the bar hoes you hooked up with while your girl was out of town gave you syphilis. You can tell your girl to get tested without her knowing she may have gotten it from you. And, as a bonus, she'll feel awful when she tells you that she may have been exposed and you should get tested too!

Or, you've slept with your upstairs neighbor/landlord and he turned out to be a slimy jerk. What better revenge than to send an anonymous note letting him know he needs to get tested for chlamydia? I hear that's a particularly painful test for the lads. (Not naming names, but you know who you are.)

By the way, the author of this blog does not encourage casual sex, excessive promiscuity or contracting an STD. Nor does she condone having sex with a slimy neighbor/landlord and taking revenge on said slimy neighbor/landlord, unless he truly deserves it. Which he probably does.

Wow, do I feel bad for this kid's family...

So I watched episode 2 of How to Get Crotch Rot--I mean, The Pickup Artist 2 on VH-1, on which Brian, faced with the prospect of having to choose 2 of the other douchebags-in-training to be his "wingmen" (i.e. people he would share his talent win with to make them safe from being eliminated) said the following:

"I know it's only been 2 weeks, but I feel like these guys are really like members of my family. They're like a hair on my butt."

Okay, what?

If you regard the members of your family with all the love and respect as a hair on your butt, something tells me you either undervalue your family or overvalue your ass hair.

And frankly, although I will never stop wondering what kind of women actually respond to the techniques "Mystery" is teaching, perhaps Captain Butt Hair here shouldn't be taught to pick up women on the off chance one will actually sleep with him and spread his genetic material to another generation.

In other news, Mystery gave one of the contestants a "special tool" to help him pick up women in the club--a fluffy black boa. And the special tool who got this accessory from Mystery (you see what I did there?) had no idea what to do with it. He just kind of put it around his neck and pretended he wasn't wearing it. According to Mystery, however, that accessory is "magic in [his] hands."

Okay, show of hands, who amongst us would not run from a man in a club wearing a fluffy boa?

What Stinks? Not Subtle Butt!

There's really nothing else to say.

Oh, to be dead...

If you've ever met me, you know how obsessed I am with television. Honestly, having television shows available by the series to rent on DVD is like discovering you can get crack from a vending machine--sweet, decadent and hopelessly addictive.

I am currently obsessed with Dead Like Me, a show that once aired on Showtime, but, alas, is no longer being filmed. It follows George Lass (played by Ellen Muth), an 18-year-old girl who was killed by a toilet seat falling from space and goes on to become a grim reaper. The show also features Rube (Mandy Patinkin) who plays the boss/father reaper, Daisy (Laura Harris) a reaper who died while an extra in gone with the wind, Roxy (Jasmine Guy) the takes-no-crap reaper who invented leg warmers and was then killed by her roommate for the patent, and Mason (Callum Blue) a British reaper who drilled a hole in his own skull while on drugs in the '60s.

These reapers are in charge of violent deaths--murders, suicides, accidents--so the souls they reap tend to go in some pretty interesting ways, but the reapers get themselves into some pretty interesting predicaments. They work crappy dull jobs (reaping doesn't pay), they steal, they run cons, they constantly eat at the same waffle house. Except that every character is depressed about helping other souls move on while being stuck un-dead, they almost make being dead seem like a fun job!

This show is hysterically funny, but with some very real, human, touching and poignant moments. George is grumpy and sarcastic, like someone else we all know, and we are treated to her inner monologue when she's thinking the things we all think but don't say out loud. It's a bit like being in my head...but that's not the point. These reapers are definitely not angels (in one episode Mason smuggles drugs in his rectum and ends up very, very high), so there's no sort of creepy/preachy religious overtones.

The show is just smart and funny and, like its main character, tragically short-lived.

Lunch



No Wonder People Think Women are Stupid...

Ladies, do you see this man, right here, on the right? Would you let this man take you home with him? Would you let him kiss you? Hell, would you let him speak to you?

No, neither would I. But for a second season, VH1 is allowing him to teach sexually/socially challenged young men how to pick up women. And his advice isn't, "Find the one so drunk she can barely stand and drag her out by the hair," which surprised the crap out of me.

His name, in case you weren't clued in to the fact that this loser is a complete ass hat, is Mystery, and he's the host of The Pickup Artist. And his method of teaching men to pick up women involves changing everything about the men (creating avatars) and wowing women with childish parlor tricks and asinine riddles. And in every episode, he goes into a bar (albeit after his students when the girls are waayyyyy drunk) and picks up girls left and right.

I cannot be the only girl in the world who, upon seeing this guy approaching me, run as far and as fast as I can away from him. He's wearing a fur hat and has Tommy Lee's lip-print tattoo on his neck. And this is one of his less objectionable outfits. He wears goggles. GOGGLES!!! But no on his eyes--oh, no, this fashionable fellow puts them on top of his cowboy hats and his ski caps (which he is wearing in Arizona, in the middle of the summer). And you can't see it, but he has a ponytail. A friggin' PONYTAIL!!!

So he's not attractive, his conversation is just pointless inane bullshit and he dresses like a freak. Why is this man able to pick up a woman, much less teach someone else to do it? And I'd love to see the quality of woman who falls for it. I imagine her to be slightly classier than Tila Tequila, but not quite as classy as any cast of Flavor of Love.

Fail

So, knowing the people who read my blog, I suspect I may not be the last person alive to have seen this, so I'm going to share it around with all of you. Please meet FailBlog.org.

While I really hate to be around people who are stupid, I enjoy the fruits of stupidity's labor. And these fruits are all ripe for harvest on FailBlog. So please check it out and enjoy.

I have posted my personal favorite here--a favorite not just because it's the worst possible spelling mistake one could make when trying to attract minor boys to a softball team, but also because when I saw this for the first time, the girl sitting next to me says, "I wonder what that was supposed to say..." Mmm...creative thinking fail!