Sweet Dreams

Has anyone seen Carrot Top lately? Is it just me, or had this man become the biggest yoked up freak in all of humanity? He is so scary!  I think he was always a little less than average looking – what with the Sideshow Bob red hair and the albino skin and the frightening look of a burn victim, but I dare you to Google him now because he has become the stuff of nightmares.

I give you exhibit “A.”

I don’t even know if he is still doing comedy (or what he loosely referred to as comedy), but he is obviously juicing up with roids and visiting Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon on a weekly basis. Take a look at the difference between him in 1994 and 2007 – yikes!

If you ran into Carrot Top in public (or God forbid in a dark alley), would you not run for your life? I think that if you look him long enough, he may use his powers to eat your soul to absorb your muscle mass. And your eyebrow height. And your eyeliner.

 

I have to go read Goodnight Moon now so that I can go to sleep and not see his terrifying face. Sweet dreams.

Suck it Saveur

I have a serious problem with deceptive marketing. There is something inherently wrong and seedy about tricking the public – especially those of us who aren’t complete assholes.  I used to be a marketer – I sort of still am (sales/marketing), but I used to actually write marketing copy. I worked for a consulting firm and a bank, so all of those letters you get in the mail about no interest for six months – I used to write those. You’re welcome.

There is a huge difference, however, between provocative marketing and deceptive marketing. Provocative marketing is something that captures you’re interest and attention and makes you think or buy something based on how intriguing it sounds. For instance, have you seen those brochures in your doctor’s office that are black and white and have a bright pink lipstick on them? They’re advertisements for Guardasil, the HPV vaccine, but just based on the artwork and title of the brochure, I walked across a doctor’s waiting room to pick it up and see what it was all about. That is provocative.

This week was the first in a long time where I have fallen subject to deceptive marketing from the food magazine Saveur. In case you aren’t aware, I love to cook and read recipes. I get all of the most famous food magazines and a few months ago I received an advertisement offer from a lesser known food magazine, Saveur. The offer was to receive two issues and if I liked it enough, I could pay the subscription fee and receive the next 12 months. Or so I thought. I decided to try it out with the real intention of purchasing if I liked it – I wasn’t just scamming for two free issues.

I received the first issue and I didn’t like it. It wasn’t terrible, but it definitely was a few steps below Gourmet, Bon Appétit and Food and Wine, so I didn’t renew. In fact, I never even received my second free issue – I just started receiving bills. I thought I had maybe misread the ad – maybe it was only one free issue, but I ignored all of the solicitations for money to continue the subscription because I wasn’t interested. That is until I received a letter this week from a collections agency.

I have awesome credit. Even in this economy, I could probably open a business if I wanted to (which I don’t). And now I have a collections agency after me. I am a relatively intelligent consumer; I understood the ad to mean if I received and like the first two issues, I could pay and continue to receive them. I only ever received one of the issues and I no longer have the original offer letter (mistake), plus when I called the collections agency, it is naturally, an automated system with no human beings available. Hopefully, by hitting “option 5” to let them know that I never renewed the subscription, I will be off the hook with the collections agency and the magazine. I don’t even know what the dangers of being “in collections “are since I haven’t missed a payment on anything since college. But, I now hate Saveur even more – not just for being a subpar food magazine, but for tricking a marketer into their stupid fake deal. Fuckers!

I will be writing a letter to the editor in chief as well as their head of marketing if it is not resolved quickly, but in the meantime, I suggest we all boycott this garbage magazine. Who’s with me?

Suck it Saveur!

Travelling

I haven’t posted in two weeks because I have been travelling for work – San Diego and Fort Lauderdale. Don’t get excited, I only left the hotels for a total of six hours in two weeks for my evening meals. Otherwise it was working the booth at a conference in a company golf shirt with terrible black pants (they have that zipper issue where enough of the zipper is visible that it looks like it’s partially open – or worse yet, that my ass got too big and was stretching the zipper open), or stuck in a conference room going over “strategy.”

There were, however, a few highlights to my trips:

1. Reuniting with two of my first cousins (Katie and Mackenzie) for dinner and copious wine tasting. All families should do this – getting drunk together is a great family bonding experience. It’s hard to imagine that we used to spend all of our holidays and birthdays with each other as children, but since we’re adults now and everyone lives in different states and goes “home” at different times, I hadn’t seen one of them in five years.
2. I met up with a friend of mine from elementary school who I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Thanks facebook!
3. Eavesdropping on conversations in airports that shouldn’t be taking place in airports (or pretty much anywhere in public for that matter) – two, in particular, were unusual:
   1. Two women were sitting and eating at a (crowded) Wolfgang Puck airport café drinking wine and eating pizza. I was sitting at least three tables away when I overheard, “God, I wish I brought my vibrator with me!” Oh yeah? I feel closer to you already.
   2. A woman and a man (I assume they were husband and wife) were in the airport bookstore browsing at the new releases when she casually drops, “If anyone says anything, I’ll just lie and tell them that Dad promised that I could have the car before he died. I have the keys anyway.” Doesn’t that touch your heart? Nothing says familial love like conspiring to get a larger piece of Dad’s estate.

Anyway, I am back for a while – so I should be able post more regularly.

Neither Hear nor Their

I have come to the point in my life where I don’t want to just correct people’s grammar – I want to ridicule them until they feel the level of shame I feel is justified by their particular grammatical offense. Sounds harsh – but why doesn’t anyone else seem to care about sounding like a complete moron? While I may be getting more persnickety as time goes by, everyone else is definitely getting more stupid.

My Facebook friends already know I detest people who misuse the word “literally.” For example, “I literally died when I wrote that.”  Wrong!  Also, I hate the pervasive "supposably." Isn’t it unsettling how many people believe that this is a real word?  Below are a few examples of recent violations that make me want to bang my head against a wall:

The Archie Bunker Syndrome (aka Michael Scott Syndrome for those less cultured) is one of the most common offenses. This is the constant misrepresenting, mispronouncing, or misusing of vocabulary words – usually for dramatic effect. For instance, a close friend and coworker was recently trying to tell me that someone we work with was regurgitating information, but instead he told me they were “reverberating” information. Verdict: Guilty. Sentence: Slap across the face.

Another example happened a few weeks ago while I was having lunch in an office with clients and one told us all about a generous philan–trophie-ist.  I couldn’t help myself: "I think you mean philanthropist."  After a brief discussion about the word’s true pronunciation and definition, one of the clients still asked if it had something to do with the making of trophies. 

I hosted a work dinner recently and there were three entree choices, one of which was salmon.  The server pronounced the "L" in saLmon (like Salmon Rushdie).  Now maybe this person didn't eat salmon – and I know that when words aren't spelled phonetically, they can be difficult to pronounce the first time you read them - but this person worked at a fine dining establishment, and there are two salmon dishes on the regular menu.  This person was also working a private party, so they couldn't have been brand new - and I know that she must have overheard the word used frequently in the kitchen that very night. The best part was when I discreetly gave her an out and repeated, "Oh, salmon," and the server corrected me at full volume, "yes, saLmon" and proudly added, "it's a fish."  Thanks.

Like our poor server, it seems that most people have simply given up on mastering even the most basic principles of communication. Further, they have no fear in coming off as an absolute idiot in a professional setting. I’ve typed my share of LOLs but I can also speak and write in a manner appropriate for a business setting (or just a grown up, average setting). During one of my husband's graduate programs he worked as a teaching assistant and was responsible for grading various undergraduate assignments.  This included a large undergraduate business class assignment requiring each student to draft a cover letter and resume. The results were so appalling that we started playing a little game.  We went to another couples’ house and we would divide the work into stacks of four.  Everyone would get a glass of wine and we would read them aloud to each other for entertainment.  Whoever had the worst/funniest one, won the game.  I’m willing to bet you’ve never thought to yourself, “I hate all the rules regarding the proper use of commas, so, I’ll just insert a comma every three words.” What about the idea of listing running as a special skill on your resume? Why not highlight how under qualified you are by leading off your experience with, “Types 18 Words per Minute”? - or should you hide that – and - is it really an “experience”? The prize winner of the night was the resume of the Texas resident who advertised speaking two foreign languages: English and Spanish. Personally, I just don’t think you should be allowed to graduate high school if you use a comma every three words.  Rather than lower standards to make sure everyone gets a worthless degree, I think we should be raising standards so that my degree still means something in ten years. If I was in charge, instead of no child left behind, the program would be called most children left behind.

I don’t expect everyone I meet to be knowledgeable on Flemish paintings of the Golden Age, but I was talking to someone the other day who hadn’t read a book since high school - and she was 29! She hadn’t read a book in more than 10 years and she laughed about it.  You don’t have to read Dostoevsky, just pick up some Dr. Seuss or something to exercise the mind every once in a while.

I’m not perfect.  I make mistakes.  Who couldn’t use a brush up course on sentence diagramming?  I also realize that there are different kinds of intelligence. I still ask my husband to load programs on the computer and fix my phone- and  I still have to think before using the word "plethora" to make sure I’m about to pronounce it correctly as opposed to the way I did until my junior year of college.  But is it too much to ask that everyone try a little harder?  Is it wrong to want people to understand whether to use there or their?  Am I a bad person for feeling violent towards people who don’t know the difference and, worse yet, don’t care?

I don’t think so.  Literally.

Winnie the Poop

I used to work with a woman whose child thought the beloved character’s name was Winnie the Poop instead of Winnie the Pooh.  You’ve probably already guessed that this child is a boy.  Men are not just fascinated with poop, they are obsessed with it.  And they start so young – anyone who has potty trained a little boy can attest to that.  I went to an engagement shower two weeks ago and reunited with a friend from college who now has two adorable little boys, one of whom was recently potty trained. 

All of the adults were sitting at a long table talking when her son comes running over and screams, “Mom I have to poop!”  We all snickered while she hurried him off to the restroom. She came back about 10 minutes later totally red faced.  Apparently the ladies’ restroom was packed and her son decided to give everyone a play by play of the process. “Here it comes, it’s coming out!” All of us at the table were laughing our heads off when her husband chimes in and one ups her with a story of their son’s first time using a public restroom.  It was also packed and they had forgotten the travel training seat, so he had to use the real seat “like a big boy.” When he was finished (15 minutes later), his father grabbed the toilet paper to clean him up.  Well, his skin had never felt anything but baby wipes, so the public restroom toilet paper was a new sensation for him. He started crying and yelling at his father, “Daddy, stop doing that, it hurts my butt!”  Awesome.  But, I digress.

My husband occasionally shocks me with stories of events that go on in men’s rooms.  Men’s restrooms are places of disgusting mystery to me.  Bizarre and weird activities take place there – it’s a natural fraternity that the entire sex belongs to.  A few months ago, my husband came home and told me about an anonymous repeat offender that they had in the men’s room at work.  All of the guys were trying to figure out who the culprit could be.  What was the crime?  He would poop and not flush.  “Why?” I asked my husband.  To which he replied, “Sometimes guys do that.” Why would anyone do that?  I asked my husband that exact question and you need to prepare yourself for the answer.  “Because they’re proud of it, “he told me.  What?!

They are proud of it.  So proud, that they want others to witness it as well.   My husband claims that size is usually the biggest motivator – they want to show off how big they can do it.  So size does matter after all. 

When my husband was in law school, he and his friends would play a game they called pooh dollars (he only told me about this recently even though we were married during law school).  They would take a $5 bill (they really wanted it to work, so they would use a $5 instead of a $1 bill) and coat one side of it with dog poop, and then leave it on the ground.  Then they would move a little ways off and watch as people would pick it up and then drop it in horror when they realized it was covered in poop.  Laughter ensued.  These were men in their late twenties at the time.  But, when it comes to poop, all men are four years old. 

They even have their own language about it, which I know of because they love to talk about it.  One of my husband’s friends says, “I have to two.”  And I’ve heard lots of them use the very popular, “I’m going to go rock a deuce.”  Read that last one again because the semantics are critical to understanding their relationship with poop.

1. First of all, why announce it?  Keep that shit to yourself (pun intended – I’ve been waiting to use that since the first sentence).  They announce it because they want to talk about it and they are opening up the discussion.  I’m assuming they want others to know they are regular.  And I’m guessing it’s also a warning to others that if they need to use the restroom, now would be a good time to go because they are about to turn the bathroom into an unsafe place.
2. Notice the word “rock.”  They’re going to rock it – they are going to own that deuce.  Master it.  They are establishing their dominion over their own poop.
3. The word “deuce” is evidence that their ongoing discourse about poop needs more colorful nouns.  They want to diversify the lexicon.  They wouldn’t want their discussion of the subject to become boring or inane.

And we marry these creatures.  No wonder we’re so desperate for girls’ nights out.  With the exception of occasionally talking about their kids’ digestive troubles, almost none of my girlfriends would attempt to engage me in a conversation of what they just did in the bathroom.  Women understand the etiquette of a closed-door policy.  And I promise you that if an occasion did arise where it was necessary to talk about it, pride is the last emotion women would be feeling. 

So what have we learned in our attempt to understand men’s enchantment with poop?  Boys are gross.