Friday, March 28, 2008

Tip #329 On How To Avoid Becoming The Crazy Cat Lady

Do not Google Image search "pile of kittens".

Viva Vibrator

You've all seen the Viagra commercials I assume? Bunch of middle-aged dudes sitting around with their guitars, jamming in someone's garage, singing a parody of "Viva Las Vegas"? In the newer one, they've doubled in number and moved into a recording studio, ostensibly to lay down tracks for "Viva Viagra". In all of them they are smiling smiles of great joyness. I ask you, who is the advertising genius who thought this up?

REAL MEN DON'T ACT LIKE THIS. And I don't mean that as in "No macho guy's guy would behave in such a manner", I mean it as in "Human males regardless of their relative masculinity or effeminateness don't sit around singing to each other about erectile dysfunction". It's just not something you discuss with an entire roomful of people. Nor is it something you write songs about. It is especially not something you record songs about. Regardless of the quality of instrumentation, no such song will ever be aired on Casey's Top 40, I promise.

And another thing, I would not sleep with any of those people. It's not because they need Viagra and it's not because of their age relative to mine. It is because sitting around merrily singing about Viagra makes them look like a bunch of goofball idiots, and goofball idiots are not attractive (think Tom Greene. See?). It's also likely to end any such budding musical career through cause and effect:

Sing asinine song about Viagra --->Look ridiculous--->Become completely unattractive--->No one will sleep with you--->No need for Viagra--->Nothing to sing about

Just a little feedback from someone in the secondary target group for this product.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Even Mr. Rogers Would Be Aggravated

The occupants of my six flat building are as follows: Nice couple with annoying dog, nice lady with cat, nice girls who take a lot of baths in the jacuzzi tub, nice couple with no dog, the bartender and me, and Crazy Next Door. It's a miracle, really, that I've managed to get this far into my lease without blogging about Crazy Next Door.

Crazy Next Door is a petite, probably alcoholic (based on the case of Old Style she hauls up three flights of stairs daily), apparently independently wealthy (based on the food she has delivered daily, also the fact that no one has ever seen her go to a job) woman who smells like a walking ashtray and vacillates between creepy and weird, mean and weird, and drunken psycho. In the summer she enjoys browning her already crispy leather skin on the back porch, to the bartender's horror. In the winter, she tends to favor passing out drunk while forgetting to let her animals inside. All year round she entertains a handful of questionable friends.

A while back I had ordered a shirt and a bracelet from the internets because they were on sale and I hate all my clothes. I tracked my shipment with my handy FedEx tracking number, and on March 5th my package was deemed delivered. Except when I got home there was nothing there. I called FedEx, who again told me I had it even though I didn't have it. FedEx did their best to look for it on their end but couldn't find it. A week passed. Deeming the package lost I filed a claim with FedEx and waited. This past Tuesday I came home from work to find a Macy's bag hanging on my doorknob. It contained the skirt and bracelet I had ordered, which were without their original packaging and now reeked of smoke. While I went around lamenting the incompetence of FedEx, here Crazy had stolen my package, opened it, kept it for THREE WEEKS and then attempted to anonymously return it without bothering to try to mask her scent. And most disturbing of all, no one in the building was surprised.

No one was surprised, of course, because previous to this she had:
  • left a bag of dog shit at couple with annoying dog's back door. The shit was from her dog not theirs;
  • gotten caught by the building engineer throwing her garbage into the yard from her third floor porch;
  • deliberately or accidentally poured a bottle of whiskey out on the porch, which ran down to the two proches below it and cause our entire backyard to smell like Maker's Mark for a week;
  • yelled at couple with no dog when one of HER friends wandered into THEIR apartment because they'd forgotten to lock the door;
  • accused the agent and me of spying on her when I opened the door so he could leave and she happened to be standing in the hallway;
  • etc. etc.
I look forward to wearing my new clothes once they've been fumigated and disinfected.

Amberance Is Not A Nice Person

Greenpeace volunteer soliciting people on the street: It will only take 60 seconds to help save the trees.
Me (without breaking stride): I hate trees.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Tiny Tiny Update

Ladies and germs, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Jonah, my new tiny tiny (stuffed) whale:


This is, I think, the closest I will ever get to my dream of a real tiny tiny whale. As you can see, he fits perfectly in my hand, and he even has his tail turned up just the way I like it. I do wonder why Ty, Inc. didn't find it important to sew a dorsal fin on him, but I suppose since he won't actually be doing any swimming he'll be fine without it. I am filled with near-joy.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

It's the Little Things In Life...

Sea World is fucking with me.

You know how I said I will suddenly declare that I want something I can't have, either because it's not at all practical or (more likely) doesn't exist? Yeah. Well. I am driving the agent crazy, but it is not my fault this time.

Sea World has this new commercial out (which I can't seem to find anywhere on the intertubes otherwise I would link to it so you could see exactly what I'm talking about) in which, I've concluded, they are deliberately fucking with me. What it does is to play around with reality, like you see dolphins swimming through the loops of a roller coaster and the sizes of things are all out of proportion and what not. It's the disproportion thing that's doing it to me. Right about the middle of the commercial, there is a shot of a little girl. She holding out her hand palm up in front of her and sitting on her hand is a tiny, tiny killer whale. As if this is not cute enough, the whale then proceeds to cheerfully lift its little tail up in the air behind it to the delight of the little girl (and more importantly me) before the commercial moves on to the next shot.

I WANT ONE.

And I have not shut up about it since I first saw it. It's a huge conundrum. I can't have one because they don't exist, but it is obvious that I can't live without one. At first I wanted a whole menagerie of tiny tiny animals. "Animals are so much cuter in miniature," I told the agent. "If they existed, I would get a tiny tiny elephant, the size of a medium dog and it would follow me around the house and make little trumpet sounds with its trunk when I came home...oh! And also a tiny tiny rhino, like a cat sized rhino. Yeah, a cat sized rhino would be a perfect rhino. But I would love my tiny tiny whale the best."

I elaborated on my plans for the whale. "See, cause they're mammals you know. And they breathe air. So as long as I kept him wet I could take him out of his tank and carry him around. We could watch tv together, or I could carry him into the kitchen and feed him...what do whales eat? Tiny tiny fish I guess. I could feed him tiny tiny fish and ooo you know what else? If they made miniature seals I could feed him those too! Killer whales love to eat seals. Who is that guy that the whale ate in the bible? Jonah. That's what I would name him. Jonah." I frequently demonstrate how his little tail would flip up when I held him in my hand.

Last night, right in the middle of Die Hard, I turned to the agent with a pressing question. "Do you think, if I did have a tiny tiny whale, (here he rolled his eyes) I would be disappointed if he didn't do the tail thing?"


The agent says he dates me because I am always entertaining*. Hmm.


*Just think how much more entertaining I could be if I had a tiny tiny whale!

Friday, March 14, 2008

Meat and More Meat

Today is the long awaited Steak and Blow Job Day. Treat your man to some filetio.



P.S. I am extremely pleased with myself for coming up with filetio. No one else I've checked with thinks this is even remotely funny.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Cookie Proofs

The agent: I don't know what I should have for dinner.
Me: Cookies! You should have Girl Scout Cookies!
The agent: Cookies are not dinner.
Me: Cookies are too dinner!
The agent: No.
Me: Listen. Tagalongs are made with peanut butter. And peanut butter comes from peanuts. Peanuts have tons of protein, just like meat. Therefore, Girl Scout cookies count as meat. Girl Scout cookies are dinner.
The agent: Girl Scout cookies do not count as meat.
Me: They do! Girl Scout cookies are meat!
The agent: Maybe Girl Scout cookies are made of soylent green, which would mean they are really made out of people.
Me: People are also filled with protein. So they would still count as meat.

The whole thing seemed perfectly obvious to me.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Cookie Follies

It's that time of year again. The time that causes me much anxiety as well as the time that makes me both broke and fat. The little green demons are at it again. Yep, you guessed it: it's Girl Scout Cookie time.

It is clear to me that the Girl Scouts are secretly adding MSG or cocaine or some other highly addictive substance to their cookies, as evidenced by the fact that I can't stop eating them. Regular Bizzybiz readers will recall that I've encountered this problem before. When I mentioned my complete lack of self control in regards to Girl Scout cookies to MrSteve, he told me about a thing called drunkorexia, by which people (I'm assuming mostly the vagina kind) starve themselves in order that they can "afford" the calories in alcohol. He jokingly (I think) suggested I might adapt this unhealthy, malnourishing behavior to my Girl Scout cookie problem, ergo Cookierexia. I, of course, thought this was brilliant.

As it turned out I almost didn't have to. Last year, I discovered a website which listed the places and times Girl Scout cookies would be for sale in and around the city of Chicago. It's a great idea except for one small problem: Girl Scouts are apparently enormous fucking liars. On Saturday I wrote down four places near my home that the list claimed had my precious cookie treasure for sale and went to all of them to find ABSOLUTELY NO GIRL SCOUT COOKIES. I was heartbroken. The next day the agent and I tried again. I did find a little Scout sitting on the side walk outside of Trader Joe's, who told me the cookies she had available were: Trefoils and some shit lemony things (ok, she didn't say "shit lemony things" but honestly, ew). No Tagalongs, no Samoas, not even any Thin Mints. Just as I was about to throw myself off a cliff into the pit of despair, the agent found some Girl Scouts selling the appropriate cookies at a school near his office and I was saved.

My cookies will finally arrive tonight. I can't wait to get home and fix. I really and truly NEED the cookies now, as I'm pretty sure I'm now hypoglycemic from the cookierexia. It is obvious that they are now a nutritional necessity.

Friday, March 07, 2008

I Am Only Slightly More Hip Than MrSteve

Some strangers in Tai's are playing horrible horrible pop/dance music on the jukebox. MrSteve and I eye each other, dismayed.

MrSteve: I feel like I should break a move, but I'm not sure how it would go over.

Me: (confused) Do you mean...."bust a move?"

MrSteve: Oh yeah! That's it!

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Poetry Corner

A little something I penned while writing a shopping list this morning, for which I am entirely too pleased with myself to justify:


Roses are red
Violets are blue
In Soviet Russia
Flower grows YOU!