We observe our heroine browsing through her old MySpace blog, checking it over for important tidbits she might not want to be lost when MySpace goes the way of glass eating, Wacky Wallwalkers, and the hi-top fade. Miraculously, she spots a blog entry of such high quality that she simply can't make that double-layer click-through then CATCHPA entry to finally see the entry deleted from 2007's favorite website.

Peering over our heroine's shoulder, we read...
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June 19, 2006

KR

One balmy summer night, I found myself on a train headed nowhere in particular. On that train, I met a man who made his living playing cards. It happened that we were both so exhausted we could not rest. Instead, we both stared out the window into the dark night. Eventually, we both tired of the monotony...of the silence...and the man started to talk.

He told me that he had built his career, even his existence, on studying other people's expressions. He could tell what cards they had by how they fixed their gaze. He said he hoped me didn't mind him saying as much, but he knew that I held no aces in my hand. In exchange for a drink of my Crown, he offered some guidance.

I passed the man my Crown, and he drank the last bit of it. He asked me for a cigarette (which struck me as odd since I don't smoke) and then he asked me for a lighter (which was even more odd considering I didn't give him a cigarette). Complete silence fell over the night and the man's face became expressionless. Then he told me, "If you're going to play cards, it's essential that you learn to do it right."

He said, "You've got to learn when to keep your cards and learn when to get rid of them." He said I'd have to know when to saunter away from the table, and when to race away. Then he told me to not ever add up my chips when I was seated at the table, because there would be plenty of time for that when the game was over. He said, "every card player learns the skill of staying alive in the game: recognizing which cards to throw out and which to hang on to." He went on to tell me that any hand could end up winning, and that any hand could end up losing. Mysteriously, he added that the most a card player could strive for was to depart this life while sleeping.

When he was done talking, he looked again to the window. He put out his cigarette (which I still have no idea where he got), and quietly nodded off. True to those cryptic words, sometime during that dark night, the card player met his goal. From his last words, I gained advice worth remembering. His words echoed in my head three more times.

We observe our heroine browsing through her old MySpace blog, checking it over for important tidbits she might not want to be lost when MySpace goes the way of Trapper Keepers, the kangaroo ball, and guys with one earring. Miraculously, she spots a blog entry of such high quality that she simply can't make that double-layer click-through then CATCHPA entry to finally see the entry deleted from 2007's favorite website.

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November 20, 2006

Super Feminize Me!

I was cleaning out a "catch all" file in my desk today and came across an article I had photocopied from Bust..magazine a year or two ago... It's a light-hearted look at what's fed to women by..society, the media, and other women, in fact, regarding what it is to be a woman... It cracked me up then and I was laughing out loud today reading it again... Enjoy.

SUPER FEMINIZE ME!

The road to excess for the female sex

by Wendy McClure

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Thanks to this year's gross-out documentary Super Size Me, we all know what happens when you eat nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days. ..Or rather, when a guy eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days... We knew what would happen, and given the venerable male traditions of Jackass, Tom Green, and lad-mag beer-bong experiments, we knew it was gonna be disgusting. Still, a guy honking down Double Quarter Pounders at every meal is an exposé on American culture, whereas a woman honking down Double Quarter Pounders at every meal is either a.) in a TV movie about binge eating, or b.) Cameron Diaz. Belch! She's sexy! In other words, a woman couldn't have pulled a stunt like the one Morgan Spurlock did in Super Size Me and have it mean the same thing.

Then again, women have long known the effects of fast-food consumption. We've known, ever since we started reading YM at the age of 12 or so, that fast food totally makes your skin break out, and your prom dress too small, and that the nasty, icky, grody feeling you get inside after you break down and eat some fries at the food court thereby breaking your diet and ruining all your highly ambitious sophomore year makeover plans most definitely means McDonald's is bad bad bad! So that movie was not exactly news to us.

But what about the rest of the stuff that our culture feeds women? Are there other things out there that are bad for us when not taken in moderation-besides fast food, and also besides tanning, Diet Coke, cardio, ginkgo biloba, exfoliation, earth tones, accessorizing, flirting, spray-on butter flavor, highlights, carbs, cyber chats, lipliner, energy bars, conditioner, gossiping, fragrance layering, and vibrator use? There have got to be more things that women's magazines can warn us about, right? And if we're stupid enough that we need to be chastised for abusing salad dressing, then what the hell else might we be susceptible to? That's why I recruited a team of volunteers to investigate - ordinary women, like the ones on The Swan, only less, you know, dumpy. Each one would set out to over-consume an especially feminine pop culture offering and examine its physiological and psychological effects.

I knew there were dangers: after all, most of the girliest pop products out there are intended for occasional use only-as "indulgences," "escapes," "guilty pleasures," "treats," and "splurges," meant to give us girls a break from a world made of steel, made of stone. What would happen when these things were taken in decidedly non-"oh, just a little something" amounts?

My first volunteer, Cassandra L., read nothing but "chick lit" for 30 days, at the rate of approximately four and a half titles (256 pages average) a week. By day 11, she developed a bizarre tendency to fall down in high heels, especially in the presence of male employers and potential suitors, though by day 14 she began to carry a Marc Jacobs handbag, which she used to control her balance. By day 20, Cassandra needed special electromagnetic spectrum therapy to relieve the eyestrain caused by overexposure to the color pink on book jackets. By day 28, she slurred in a unique dialect that consisted of endearments like "crazy sweetie kitten" and weird British-isms like "naff." On her final day, she appeared disoriented as she stumbled up to the counter at a coffeeshop and tried to order something called a "cosmojito."

In order for Jennifer R. to peruse Playgirl every day for 30 days, five years' worth of back issues were needed to provide maximum muscular manpower. The effects set in as early as day six, when she went to her gym, glimpsed actual chest hair under a male patron's tank top, and began shrieking in terror. The routine physical examination at day 15 revealed she had developed an unusually strong right index finger as a result of hooking it through the belt-loops of male strangers whom she'd pull with considerable force into coat closets. She did this with great enthusiasm, though she reported having no idea what to do with them next, other than rip off their shirts and lick their pectoral muscles. By day 21, it was discovered that Jennifer's diet now consisted of only penis-shaped pasta, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce; it was at this point that she elected to end her portion of the experiment out of health and sanitary concerns.

Our third subject, Margaret P., was a fascinating case: she watched five TV movies a day for 30 days, a steady diet fed by channels such as Lifetime, Oxygen, and the Women's Entertainment network. She required intervention as early as day ten, after she began to frantically search for her baby in a supermarket. When well-meaning friends attempted to remind her that she never had a baby, she screamed, "That's just what you WANT me to believe, ISN'T IT?!"

Extra volunteers were called upon to provide in-home supervision for Margaret. This was difficult only for the three days she believed she was under house arrest for smuggling smack for her man; things went much more smoothly after day 17, when apparently she decided the women keeping an eye on her were fellow call-girls. On day 26, she turned to them and asked, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" She then reportedly asked one of them if she could "sleep with danger."

Danger indeed, we decided. Do not try these experiments at home, girls. No, really, we're warning you - we're a magazine, after all, and we know what's good for you.

We observe our heroine browsing through her old MySpace blog, checking it over for important tidbits she might not want to be lost when MySpace goes the way of Hammer pants, Dorothy Hamil haircuts, and The Macarena. Miraculously, she spots a blog entry of such high quality that she simply can't make that double-layer click-through then CATCHPA entry to finally see the entry deleted from 2007's favorite website.

Peering over our heroine's shoulder, we read...
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August 14, 2007

On the road again

Today I drove from Charleston to Union, West Virginia and then on to Roanoke, Virginia in an attempt to find a man that my firm wants to give tens of thousands of dollars. Actually, we're not giving it to him, more like holding it for him. He was a class member in a big class action involving mortgages and the case settled. He's my last missing class member and it is absolutely required that we find him. But he's a hard man to find.

Nonetheless, I don't mind a road trip too much. A four-hour drive is totally do-able. Sometimes I amuse myself with my observations and stream of consciousness. Here is some of what I thought about and saw in my four hours of driving today:

I am unable to hear the song Three Times a Lady without singing the chorus, out loud, as: "Unce...tice...fee tiiimmes a maadaayy." What can I say? As a child, The Little Rascals and Saturday Night Live were two of my favorite shows!


On the way through Lewisburg, I saw signs that said, "fair parking," and "no fair parking." I can't imagine that the "no fair parking" gets much business. Honesty in advertising is great but maybe they should just get out of the business.

Do you notice that, with every really good song that comes on the radio, or from your CD, or iPod or whatever, you turn up the radio? When the volume finally reaches its limits, it's a real downer. Then you're just stuck and your hearing is, of course, depleted and permanently damaged, so now you can barely hear your favorite song!!!!

When I get to a spot with bad radio reception, I either hook up the iPod or search for a CD. Today, I found a CD. It was a CD of love songs that someone had made me when he was overseas with the military. (Aawwww.) That reminds me of another time in the van...I found an unlabeled CD. I put it in and the first song was something really cool like Al Green or something. After that, Kung Foo Fighting. (Also cool, but odd.) After that, another really cool song. After that, the MoviePhone bit from Seinfeld (audio only...duh):

It was like a hilarious mystery!! The pattern went on like that for the whole CD...one great song, then something funny. I still don't know where it came from. Eric probably made it and then just forgot.

And perhaps the three sexiest songs in the entire universe are Crazy for You (Madonna), I'm on Fire (Bruce Springsteen), and Every Breath You Take (The Police). I mean, they're ssseexxxxy. Oh, yeah.... Excuse me for a second.



Ok. I'm back.

I have never driven down I-64 across Sandstone Mountain when it did not smell strongly of burning brakes. That stretch of road must be absolute hell on the truck drivers.

To the lady in the red Corolla: that white pick up truck with a yellow, flashing light in the middle of the grassy median is not, as you fear, a police officer in the wrong kind of vehicle and with the wrong color flashing lights. It is, in fact, a Division of Highways vehicle. There is absolutely no need to slam on your brakes. This causes me to slam on my brakes and annoys me greatly as you'd been playing the "I'm not going to use my cruise control" game with me for about 20 miles. Moreover, there is really, really, really no need to slow your speed down to 55 on the Interstate..cop or no cop. The speed limit is 70.

Somewhere just over the West Virginia border (in Virginia), I saw a tree with maybe 100 coffee cups nailed to it. They were all over the half of the tree that faces the road and went all the way to maybe 15 feet up the trunk. How cool! I wonder if it was Outsider Art or if someone hung their coffee cup on a spare nail one day (so they could carry a package from the mailbox, or a stray goat or something) and just thought it looked damned cool.

I saw this sign when entering the Interstate in Virginia:



I wonder what it means. I bet they don't like The Fonz.

If I ever accidentally leave my cell phone on after talking to someone and while I'm driving on a road trip, they'll be treated to a non-stop Karaoke-like, bad-singing fest like they've never heard before. In fact, if this ever happens when you and I are talking, you'd best just go ahead and try to disconnect the call. My singing voice could seriously break your phone otherwise.

And whatever happened to Eminem? I haven't heard anything new from him since before he remarried Kim and then sort of lost it.

When I got to the Monroe County Courthouse, I walked in and asked the first person I saw in the clerk's office if they knew the guy I was trying to find. They did (they always do in small towns) but they hadn't seen him for years. They gave me his daughter's phone number, though. This reminds me of walking into the Lawrence County, Ohio courthouse looking to find the birthmother of a client. (I had already found her name...now I just needed to find her.) The first woman knew her and sort of knew where she lived. The second guy drew me a freaking map to her house!!! (Here's a nice tidbit: when I drove out to her house and talked to her, she was, of course, wary of me. She asked what her supposed son's name was and I told her, "Brian." Her face softened. She knew that was right. Her voice was very sad when she said, quite simply, "I never wanted to give him up...but my parents made me." She went on to explain that she had been so distraught and inconsolable that the social worker had broken the rules and told her her son's adoptive name.)

When you drive through very, very rural areas...like where cars don't come along but maybe once a minute on the road...and when you do pass someone coming the other direction, the proper and accepted etiquette is to raise your four fingers (on the hand nearest the window) in a sort of modified wave. Everyone does it and I love it!! Okay, this may only apply to West Virginia. I've noticed it now in Monroe County and Pocahontas County.

That is all.