Because you never knew you needed a Toothpick Holder, but you do

My favorite collection of cheap mail-order crap is the Harriet Carter Catalogue. In it, you will find a fair amount of useful items as well as many things people clearly buy as jokes. But what truly makes Harriet Carter special is their selection of completely unexplainable, fantastically ridiculous products. In my sincere affection for the five people who are reading this blog, I shall now share a few of my favorites.

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Tree Face










You put this on a tree. In your yard. For people to look at and laugh heartily and say, "Oh, that Wilson family, they're so whimsical! Let's have them over soon for Parcheesi and decaf."

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Football Hat

Because guys aren't stupid enough when they're drinking massive amounts of beer and watching football, they need accessories.

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Lawn Ass










This delightful cherub lawn ornament comes in three separate parts, which means you could choose to just display the center piece. Yup.

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Boobercize

When you're just not bold enough to buy real porn.





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Cell Phone Bracelet










Through some sort of wizardry, the "jewels" in this bracelet light up when your cell phone rings. For the hard-of-hearing and those without any concept of what constitutes compound annoyance.




And last but certainly not least...
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Toilet Golf





















I'm just glad they used a drawing for this one.

Mom, Dad...I'd like you to meet Eeyore

I just found this eBay posting, where this guy is asking for people to donate $1 to him. He's hoping 10,000 people will play along, thereby netting him $10,000, (see, I can do math), with which to pay his bills. (He claims he'll give the leftovers to charity.) This jackass is quite possibly my soulmate, as he seems to honestly believe that this just might work. How enterprising and selfish! How endearing and annoying! How delightfully wacky and just a little bit sleazy!

Our life together will be funded entirely by this winning combination of charity, pity and "oh what the hell it's only a dollar" finance. We will buy a fine home, take lavish vacations, eat at the best restaurants, and send our kids to college all with one donated dollar at a time.

My dad is actually going to be relieved.

And yes, I just sent him a dollar.

I'm so excited! I'm so...scared!

Happy 33rd birthday, Elizabeth Berkley!

Sunrise.





Sunset.


Okay, I fully realize that making note of the Jessie-Spano-to-Nomi-Malone transformation is old hat at this point, but as this woman starred in two of the most craptastic pieces of entertainment of my formative years, and as it really is her birthday today, I couldn't help myself. Besides, she's a totally legit actress now. In fact, I recently saw her on an episode of Without a Trace, (which is ironically exactly how you'd describe her career), where she played the "after"-version of a woman on a Swan-like reality series. I'm telling you, she was entirely believable as a fake human being.

Oh, Ani (or, Look! I Figured Out How to Add Pictures!)

So, last night I went to see the fabulous, FABULOUS, FABULOUS Ani DiFranco, who I hadn't seen in quite a while. I actually forgot what an insanely amazing performer she is. Awesome crowd, too. I particularly enjoyed the high-school hippie chick with brand-new dreads who stood up the entire time and did that trippy finger-pointing, arm-waving hippie dance that those high-school hippies are prone to do. She was awesome. I'm just glad I wasn't sitting behind her.

A-Lunch Alone

So, I decided to fight (one of) my (infinite number of social) fear(s) and go out to lunch alone today. This was helped by the fact that I work in a town which, at least until 5p.m., is inhabited almost entirely by working stiffs, many of whom also eat alone. Still, it is not my favorite thing to do. Usually, when I am without a lunch companion, I eat at my desk while reading Go Fug Yourself, but today I decided that I had breathed the same 100 cubic feet of air long enough and should go out, (where it is 9,000 degrees with a 100% chance of sweat-your-fat-ass-off, by the way).

So, I went to a local eatery, bought me a trashy magazine, ordered the fish, and sat down.

A note about People magazine: in my defense, I used to have this policy where I would only read it in doctor's offices, which was perfect because those human interest stories about disabled children who write poetry often make me ill, anyway. Lately, however, I have been on a journey of self-acceptance, (not really, but play along), and part of that journey is to embrace the star-fucker side of myself. See, I am obsessed with celebrity. Not celebrities, mind you, celebrity, as in the entity of celebrity. Of course, celebrities play heavily into this, but whatever. I don't know why I find this crap interesting, and I frankly do not care. I am still an intelligent person with meaningful things to say, (this blog notwithstanding). Besides, while it is not nice to make fun of people you actually know, (and I never do that), low-rent famous people are fair game.

So, there I was, happily reading about Jude Law's wandering penis, when I came across the following review of the new Rob Zombie flick (let's all get tickets!), The Devil's Rejects:

"Blood, gore and nasty, sadistic folk fill the screen in a sly slasher pic about a sicko family of killers in writer-director Rob Zombie's follow-up to his earlier House of 1000 Corpses. It's self indulgent and rococo, but Zombie is inarguably born to the genre."

Excuse me, but "rococo"...in People? WTF? If I want to read words that I pretend I know the definition of, I'll go back to school, thank you very much. And the whole tone of this review is just insanely high-minded. I can't help thinking of the poor bastard who wrote it. I imagine a frustrated literary genius with an MFA who, in order to make ends meet, is now forced to view Rob Zombie movies and write encapsulated reviews of them for magazines most people keep in the bathroom. What a waste of talent.

Oh, and the fish was delicious.

So, Here We Are

I have decided to start a blog, and here are my reasons:

1. I am entirely obsessed with myself/live inside my head/have a doctored-ordered need to externalize.
2. Why the hell not?
3. I am funny, opinionated and a good writer. These are facts. Shut up.
4. While I may lack the self-confidence and smokin’ hot bod to move to Hollywood and become the celebrity I was clearly destined to be, I do have a computer. Therefore, I can use this medium to indulge my fantasy of self-importance.
5. I am often so bored at work that I contemplate, (and sometimes enact), major life changes, and making major life changes should not be a hobby.
6. I am writer who does not write. Well, I write at work, but the window of creativity in which I operate there is smaller than… something really small. Just the fact that I cannot think of something really small with which to describe said window is proof that I am stifled.

So, I have high hopes for this thing. I believe it will start me on the road to writing the Great American Novel, or gaining me the fame that will inevitably lead to my being that sparkling, amusing and beautiful talk-show guest I have already been so many times in my head, or perhaps it will just fill up my free time in a mildly amusing way. Whichever.

Here we go.