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Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
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10:45 am - Scary hairy
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Armpit hair on girls is gross. I know that it is unfair for girls to have to work twice as hard to hide something that is natural and part of human nature, but I’m sorry. It just is horrifying. Social expectations of women are always foolishly high. Be thinner. Be prettier. Have bigger boobs. I think it’s ridiculous that thin is fashionable, and yes, I do think you can be too skinny. Now. I feel I’ve established myself as a fairly undisputed woman supporter. But these hairy girls have just got to go.
No one likes to have a conversation with a girl wearing a tank top and get eye full of Paula Cole. I just couldn’t get into Dawson’s Creek because every time I heard the theme song I felt dirty. Seriously ladies. It’s like you’re proud of it. ‘Look how hairy I really am!’ It’s no contest. You don’t win a blue ribbon for having sweater pits.
I don’t know what men can do to stress the importance of a simple shave. Maybe it’s archaic. Maybe it symbolized the oppression of women. But I think our misogynistic forefathers were onto something. Men probably haven’t done anything for you in the past few decades. You’re still trying to get paid the same for the same job we do. But growing Bob Ross from out your underarm is not going to convince them that you’re one of the boys.
If I could do something to really prove the worth of a clean-shaven lady, I would. But it just wouldn’t win praise for me to go shaving my body in unnatural places the way you girls do. We can’t bear children and we can’t look good in short skirts. Just be thankful that you can make yourself look so good. We gave up a long time ago. We’re a lost cause.
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| Sunday, July 2nd, 2006
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10:04 am - Furry desserts
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Many apologies for the hiatus. Work and my week at the beach have been taking priority. But now the silence mut end. ..... I also must end (yay for proofreading).
I'm driving to the beach which means I have 3 hours to spare while I try to avoid all the grannies going 45 on I-40. I read funny license plates, debate whether to stop at Wendy's and get a frosty (again), and try to figure out who reads the billboards for the Doll House and actually takes the exit. It's a grand old time.
Most mac trucks are entirely uninteresting. No advertisements on the outside to read and make fun of. Most of the time, I just try to avoid looking up at through the driver's window because they are always looking back at you. Every time! How do they know!? However, Bimbo desserts is one company which has invested in mac truck advertising. Bimbo desserts is kind of like Little Debbie but much lamer. On the side of their truck they have larger than life pictures of the delicious snacks you might find in a gas station or your local Doll House. Just kidding. But they should think about it. I sure was craving chocolate doughnuts after my lap dance.
The one area where Bimbo has clearly out smarted Little Debbie is with their mascot. Sorry Little Debbie, but you inspire me not to eat your pecan pinwheels or ho-hos. It's a good thing they're delicious. Bimbo, however, has a cute little bear like the Snuggles fabric softener bear. But the Bimbo bear is a polar bear, as you might have guessed.
Now, unfortunately, Bimbo's excellent marketing strategy of huge deliciously looking dessert on the side of its truck and the Bimbo polar bear has foiled itself. Two rights do occasionally make a wrong. The Bimbo bear is holding up what appears to be a coconut covered doughnut. Picture if you will a polar bear holding in its fuzzy paw a white doughnut with soft shavings of coconut matted down on top of the now suspect snack cake.
Marketing suggestion for the Bimbo dessert company: "Come and eat our furry doughnuts! They're sprinkled with magical goodness."
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| Sunday, April 30th, 2006
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12:33 pm - Toilet seat etiquette
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Tinkle sprinkle is a huge complaint from women. As it should be. Guys have to sit occasionally too, and why should anyone suffer from someone else's bad aim? Guys: it's not a shooting range. There's no extra points for keeping it in the center. Lift the seat. With that said, what if we leave the seat up after we're finished? Is it terrible that the seat not be down and ready when it's the woman's turn? It's certainly not a bad thing to be considerate of the opposite sex. But all women are saying to us when they complain about the toilet seat being up is, "I'm afraid I'm going to fall in if the seat's up!"
...So, if you ladies want the seat down and expect a guy to prepare the john for your next nature call, you should do the same thing for him. I say let's keep it territorial. Why should you leave a toilet seat down at a guy's apartment. It's his apartment. I say when you finish squatting at his place, lift the seat for your guys, and guys, set it down for the ladies in their places. It's the new toilet seat etiquette.
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| Friday, March 24th, 2006
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11:31 pm - Trekkies with cell phones
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Cell phones are cool. I will agree with that. You can download songs to be your ringtones. You can take pictures, send text messages when you're bored, and it's the only time guys will be brag about who has the smallest one. But why, oh God why, do we need earjacks? I thought it was a little strange when the first earjacks came out that ran a cord from your waist to your ear, and you could talk into a little microphone in the middle of the wire. But I was okay with it. I thought, hey.... maybe this will make driving safer. Two hands on the wheel. No punching little tiny buttons instead of watching the road. These are all good things.
The only thing I may find more annoying than the actual earjacks themselves are people who take a bad idea and keep running with it. So now, someone out there said, hey, this wire hanging from my ear is really wack... let's just hang a big piece of plastic from our ears instead--Good idea guys. Seriously. You all out there with the space-age hearing aids you call earjacks, get a life right now. You look like someone from Star Trek. And if I had to pick a character, it would be Lavar Burton. And he did Reading Rainbow. Not the toughest of Star Trek personas to persue.
Cell phones are not heavy. You can lift the 2.3 ounces up to your ear for ten minutes at the time. But what about driving safety? If you're "advanced" enough to have an earwig-cellphone, you probably have speaker phone. Answer the call, press speakerphone, and set the cell phone in your lap. Voila.... handsfree cell phone. I understand that it is just too inconvenient for some people to hold a phone to your ear, but isn't the trouble of holding a phone to the side of your face better than looking like a nut job. Seriously. Every one of you looks like you're talking to your invisible friend Winky and you're about to have tea time. And that's just not cute.
Ultimately, no one uses a cell phone so much that they need a hunk of plastic hanging off their ear 24/7. And if they do, they're going to get cancer, and we're probably all better off without them.
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| Sunday, March 19th, 2006
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5:25 pm - A video game rant
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Parents complain that the video game companies are creating more violent and explicit games which are deliberatelycorrupting young gamers. This is a misconception. Video game companies don't make "mature" rated video games to twist the minds of the innocent, they create them for the adult gamer. The boys who used to give themselves thumb cramps over Joust and Galactica need more interesting secrets than up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-start.
Video games are seen as a childhood hobby, and they are too quickly written off as another toy. Video games have transcended toys into a broader category of entertainment. Although Mario Brothers was great for a while, the twenty year old gamer doesn't appreciate the idea of a teleportation flute quite the same as he did when he was eight. And so enters "mature" video games. But, adult video games are not a sign of our youth growing up too quickly. And it's not a sign that our adults don't want to grow up either. I think video games have gone beyond age groups. And instead of focusing on how games are directly affecting our children, we should be focusing on how games are changing the relationships between our children.
There are two different type of gamers. The nerds and the jocks. But thanks to video games, the two have a strange, but undeniable common thread. At least it's a more clear link than any other movement in pop culture could provide. The jock gamer who might have started out on games like Tekken and Madden Football, have started to explore RPG games. And while RPGers thought they could never play Madden, they've found out that Halo isn't so bad after all. The vehicles for entertainment have found a middle ground between two groups seemingly forever divided. And now, thanks to online gaming, any remaining division between jock gamers and nerd gamers has been entirely erased. The captain of the basketball team from one high school and the head of the debate team at another high school can now fight side by side playing Halo Live or fight against the evil empire in Knights of the Republic.
Hooray for video games. I dub thee the missing link.
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| Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
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9:55 pm - Chapstick addiction
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That bulge. It's either a pack of rolaids, a battery, or a tube of chapstick. I don't know about you, but my stomach feels fine and a Duracel has never really worked in my pocket (despite many attempts). Chapstick has been in my pocket almost everyday since late high school. And it won't leave me alone.
I get a little scared if I leave for a long day of work and I forget my chapstick. What if my lips start to hurt? What if I can't buy any during the day. And it always happens. Leave without chapstick, especially for extended periods of time, and your lips will turn on you. Its starts out as you licking them to try to substitute that silky goodness that is chapstick. But that only leads to drier lips. And the vicious cycle continues until you have full blown chapped lips. I can't explain to you how many times I've gotten home from a day without chapstick, run to my bedroom, grabbed a stick and curled up in my bed continuously applying for over an hour. Maybe two.
It seems to be a more common occurence today. And it's not just women. Men are reaching for the Blistex as well. They even have a line out for men claiming to be invisible. And for guys, it's much harder to be an addict. Girls, you have the excuse of lip gloss and lip stick and whatever else Beyonce and makeup companies tell you to wear. But for those of us who prefer to retain our masculinity, we must chose carefully.
There are two main brands to chose from as I can tell. Blistex and Chapstick. And Blistex wins by leaps and bounds. Every tube of "Chapstick" I've ever owned has never been treasured like my Blistex. Chapstick never lasts longer than two seconds on my lips. Not to mention it feels like nothing. I could rub a little flour on my lips and it would make me happier. And worst of all, it's bitter. Something about that chapstick (especially the lemon "flavor") gets in the back of my throat and almost gags me. Blistex is by far the much more reliable and satisfying choice. Any Blistex chapstick will do, but I prefer my original and the medicated kind.
With that being said, I realize that this makes Blistex a prime suspect for adding addictive substances to their balms. I've heard rumor that some chapsticks have ground fiber glass included that cut your lips just slightly, so you keep coming back for more. But not Blistex. I just can't believe it. I won't believe it. I love you too much.
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| Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
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10:48 pm - You can't pick your nose in your car.
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It's tempting. You're alone. The radio's drowning out your own thoughts (which would probably remind you that picking your nose is gross). Why not do it, right? The problem is that a car has something to let you see out of it so you can operate these giant hunks of metal along the road. It's called a window. And the trick with these "windows" is that you can see through them from the outside as well as see out from them. And until cars have one-way-mirrors for windows, you'll have to tame your picking finger.
I've actually started looking for things that people do in the "safety" of their cars. Make up is a good one. I've never seen shaving, but I hear that is exciting. Reading is another. In fact, the more I think about it, you people are even worse than the nose pickers. I don't feel like I might die when I'm watching a booger diver go at it behind the wheel, but if you can't put down the Da Vinci Code for 20 minutes to get to Starbucks, I start to get a little shaky. I see you. You're holding the book up on the steering wheel like you think your peripheral vision is adequate enough to be able to drive. My peripheral vision fails me if a stray soccer ball is flying at my head. How are you supposed to avoid that guy on the moped. Actually, nevermind. Hit the guy on the moped and then have your license revoked. Two birds with one stone.
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| Monday, March 13th, 2006
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9:59 pm - Boat shoe ladies
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For as long as I can remember, the girls around me have been highly concerned with what they wear and how it makes them look. This is not to say that guys don't do the same thing to a certain degree, but I think even most girls would agree with me that you ladies win this competition with one hand tied behind your back. (Especially if one hand tied behind your back was the newest advice to be super cute from Cosmo Magazine.)
So why do you girls chose to wear boat shoes? Are a lot of girls these days feeling especially nautical? Are ya going sailing with the Gordon's Fisherman crew after you get back from the shopping mall? Whether you're into frozen fish sticks or not, let me tell you: Boat shoes are no good for the ladies. Personally, I think they're pretty awful for guys too, but my dad's worn them since I was born, and he's super cool. So you guys get a free pass on these for that one personal flaw.
When you put a boat shoe on your foot, ladies, it ends a normally exciting sentence with a phrase like "wood chip." This is, in my opinion, why girls are often obsessed with shoes. They know that their legs are an exciting body part. So they want to end their sentences with things like "safari hunt" or "sparkling diamonds" or "threeway." Sorry.
Now, some girls can pull off a boat shoe (even though I still say there are a hundred better shoes). These girls are often tall and skinny. Yes. The girls that every other girl hates. But what most of you don't realize is that a lot of guys don't like them much either. If I wanted to feel up a broomstick, I'd take a walk to the closet.
The real trouble here is sororities. Now I understand that there is some weird need to conform and wear a lot of the same stuff so everyone will know you're in a sorority (big black sunglasses around your neck, polo shirts with the collars flipped up, etc.). But not all trends are for the benefit of all.
If you find yourself looking in the mirror, and words like "wood chip" pop into your head unexpectedly, maybe it's time to slip on a pair of Nikes.
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| Sunday, March 12th, 2006
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6:56 pm - First and formost
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What is this blog?
I'm not really sure just yet. But that was the first question that came to my mind. So maybe I'll figure that out. Knowing me, this will probably have absolutely no direction to begin with. Maybe eventually, it'll have some purpose or goal. But for now, you can listen to me rant and ramble and try to be funny.
Who is this guy?
I figure if you're going to read stuff about me, I should list a few informative facts about my life (names and places mostly). I live with my cousin, Nathan, in a cooperative living apartment in Carrboro, NC. And I'm close friends with his girlfriend, Bibis, and her sister Katie. I am still in school at UNC-Chapel Hill. And I'm 23. (You can do the math on how long I've been in school.) I've also worked at Banana Republic for two years now. To sum it up, I'm a kid who lives in the middle of hippie-town working in a high-end clothing store who can't quite graduate college. But I love it as much as I don't.
While driving through Carroboro, do I turn down the volume while listening to top 40 radio?
Yes I do.
Am I sad that Nick and Jessica split up?
No I'm relieved for Nick.
Do I think the war in Iraq is about oil as opposed to terrorism?
I love lamp.
Do I think Dave Chapelle really checked into a mental health facility in Africa?
Yes. If the mental facility is a giant mansion where the couches and pillows are stuffed with money.
Am I about to leave for the grocery store to buy a frozen pizza?
I've actually already left and my bathroom monkey is finishing this blog.
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