I find garbled apostrophe usage extremely irksome. "Your" is NOT the same as "you're." To illustrate, if I may: if you write "you're an asshole," you are calling someone an asshole, but if you say "your asshole" you are, in fact, directly referring to their actual asshole. Notice I said "their," which is possessive, and means the asshole in question belongs exclusively to them; rather than "there," which refers to a place their asshole might be, somewhere in the vicinity. Of course, technically "his" or "her" asshole would be correct, unless I were referring to a collective asshole.
I realize that, although most of us learned grammar and spelling in elementary school, not all of us retain all that info after a certain point. I suppose it depends on the kind of info your brain tends to keep, and the kind it discards. I learned algebra years ago too, but now I couldn't calculate an equation for all the hunks in Hollywood. And for some reason, my brain has hung onto grammar and basic sentence structure, but I find myself needing spellcheck more than I used to. Spelling is apparently one of the first things to go after 40 or so, soon to be joined by one's lips. We seem to lose our lips after 40. Where do they go? Do they get swallowed up by our teeth? Perhaps they go to that mysterious place where lost underwear goes. Somewhere in an alternate universe, there are all these young body parts floating around with someone's boxer shorts.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Barbie Envy
Do we still aspire to Barbie? To be blonde, svelte, perfect, with a tall dark man with thick hair and a perfectly muscled body by our side? Barbie manufacturers have come up with revised versions of the original Barbie, that more accurately reflect the current reality of most women’s lives. Barbie can now be found in various sizes, shapes and ethnicities, and wearing business attire.
I say they haven’t gone far enough. How about PMS Barbie – Barbie with her hormones run amok? Or Bleary-Eyed Barbie – at six in the morning after a night on the town. Or how about Erotically Challenged Barbie – just not interested anymore. Or her alterego, Nympho Barbie. Then of course, there’s Self-Validated Barbie, who doesn’t need a man to feel good about herself.
Do little boys aspire to G.I. Joe? Personally, I think perfect-looking men are boring as hell. Why a kid would want to play with a Hollywood-handsome action hero is beyond me. I think GI Joe should have a beer belly or a few long hairs flung over his balding scalp (not that I find either of these attributes particularly alluring, but at least they're real).
Of course, little boys don’t tend to obsess about how their hair compares to Aqua-Man’s, or care if their ass is bigger than Superman’s. But still, I would think that a chubby pre-pubescent boy with braces and glasses would feel some sense of inferiority when faced with the physical perfection of Batman. Even his sidekick is good-looking in a vanilla-Republican kind of way.
As far as inanimate role-models go, the glorious imperfections of a Barbie with a crooked nose and a bit of cellulite co-habiting with a bald Ken sporting a few acne scars would certainly be a refreshing sight. They could be marketed as “Reality Barbie and Ken,” and have their own show on NBC. I wonder what their ratings would be like.
I say they haven’t gone far enough. How about PMS Barbie – Barbie with her hormones run amok? Or Bleary-Eyed Barbie – at six in the morning after a night on the town. Or how about Erotically Challenged Barbie – just not interested anymore. Or her alterego, Nympho Barbie. Then of course, there’s Self-Validated Barbie, who doesn’t need a man to feel good about herself.
Do little boys aspire to G.I. Joe? Personally, I think perfect-looking men are boring as hell. Why a kid would want to play with a Hollywood-handsome action hero is beyond me. I think GI Joe should have a beer belly or a few long hairs flung over his balding scalp (not that I find either of these attributes particularly alluring, but at least they're real).
Of course, little boys don’t tend to obsess about how their hair compares to Aqua-Man’s, or care if their ass is bigger than Superman’s. But still, I would think that a chubby pre-pubescent boy with braces and glasses would feel some sense of inferiority when faced with the physical perfection of Batman. Even his sidekick is good-looking in a vanilla-Republican kind of way.
As far as inanimate role-models go, the glorious imperfections of a Barbie with a crooked nose and a bit of cellulite co-habiting with a bald Ken sporting a few acne scars would certainly be a refreshing sight. They could be marketed as “Reality Barbie and Ken,” and have their own show on NBC. I wonder what their ratings would be like.
Friday, June 26, 2009
HOLIDAY HAIKU
HOLIDAY HAIKU
Holiday snowflakes
Ice clings to silver flagpoles
The dog’s tongue is stuck.
Hanukkah Harry
Brings gefilte fish and socks
Dad faints from the smell.
Holiday spirit
Scents of pine and cinnamon
Cat barfs on the rug.
Scent of Christmas pine
Angels, stars dance on branches
Why big shiny balls?
Santa Claus legend
Endomorph delivers gifts
What’s with the reindeer?
Christmas lights dangling
The kids short-circuit the wires
Oops - the house goes dark.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
JOB INTERVIEW DON'TS
When the employer says, "Tell me about yourself"...
...tell him about how your divorce has made you a more spiritual person.
When the interviewer asks you about weaknesses...
...tell her you need to be jump-started in the morning.
When asked why you left your previous job...
...say your supervisor caught you loading office printers into the trunk of your car.
When asked how you handle stress...
...say you tend to hold it in until you explode.
When the employer asks you for an example of your problem-solving abilities...
...tell him you figured out how to sleep with your eyes open to appear awake during staff meetings.
When asked what you know about the organization...
...say, "I heard you have a lot of hot men who work here."
When the interviewer asks you why there's a 3-year gap on your resume...
...tell her you're going to plead the fifth on that one.
When asked about your greatest strengths...
...say you can bend your pinkie finger back 180 degrees.
When asked where you want to be five years from now...
...respond, "On a yacht in the middle of the South Pacific."
When the interviewer asks, "Why should I hire you?"
...answer, "Why indeed?"
When the employer asks you what you enjoyed the most about a previous job...
...say, "The Friday morning doughnuts."
When asked what questions you have...
...say, "Who was that cute guy we passed on the way to your office?"
...tell him about how your divorce has made you a more spiritual person.
When the interviewer asks you about weaknesses...
...tell her you need to be jump-started in the morning.
When asked why you left your previous job...
...say your supervisor caught you loading office printers into the trunk of your car.
When asked how you handle stress...
...say you tend to hold it in until you explode.
When the employer asks you for an example of your problem-solving abilities...
...tell him you figured out how to sleep with your eyes open to appear awake during staff meetings.
When asked what you know about the organization...
...say, "I heard you have a lot of hot men who work here."
When the interviewer asks you why there's a 3-year gap on your resume...
...tell her you're going to plead the fifth on that one.
When asked about your greatest strengths...
...say you can bend your pinkie finger back 180 degrees.
When asked where you want to be five years from now...
...respond, "On a yacht in the middle of the South Pacific."
When the interviewer asks, "Why should I hire you?"
...answer, "Why indeed?"
When the employer asks you what you enjoyed the most about a previous job...
...say, "The Friday morning doughnuts."
When asked what questions you have...
...say, "Who was that cute guy we passed on the way to your office?"
Saturday, January 31, 2009
IT'S MY JOB AND I'LL SCREW UP IF I WANT TO
When you think about it, it’s funny how baseball players’ records are displayed on a huge electronic board and seen by thousands of people. “Batting average .342, 18 home runs, 74 runs batted in.” Imagine if the media kept track of everyone’s job that way. “Dr. Goldstein removed the correct organ 256 times out of 260 operations. Made six incorrect diagnoses.” “In 1969, Joan Baez sang 684 notes without going flat. Bob Dylan, who was in a slump that year, sang three.”
In some careers, imperfections don’t really matter. You can often be an actor if you’re not that talented. If you’re good-looking, it’s okay. That doesn’t work for a pharmacist, does it? “He can’t see the labels on the bottles, but he’s hot, so we don’t care. We love coming in for those pills.”
You can’t screw up too much if you’re a surgeon. When you’re poking around in someone’s brain with a sharp instrument, you don’t have a lot of room for error. “Oops, my hand slipped. Oh well, he doesn’t really need the left side of his brain anyway.” Doctors sometimes leave the operating room during long operations. It must be scary to be lying there while the surgeon’s poking around in your intestines and suddenly hear her say, “Well, I finished reconnecting about half her mucous membranes. I have to go pee. Dr. Taylor, you could use the practice since you’re pretty new at this. Why don’t you take over.”
Some people have jobs that must be hard to disclose on a first date. “I work in a slaughterhouse. Nice to meet you.” “I’m in sludge removal. Can I kiss you?” “I work for the Serial Killer Task Force. Want to come over?” “I train telemarketers. Why don’t you give me your phone number?”
I always thought making balloon animals would be a fun job. Except your hands would smell like a condom factory. How did it occur to someone to make balloon animals in the first place? Someone must have been really bored to be staring long enough at a balloon to start thinking, “I bet I could make that balloon look like a rabbit.”
With some jobs, it’s hard to understand why anyone would choose it. What’s the thought process that leads someone to decide to become a prison guard? “Yeah, now that I made it out of high school, I think I’ll spend 40 hours a week in a gray concrete building with 200 murderers and rapists who’d love to kill me.” Yep, that would be a fun job. Although it wouldn’t be as bad as being President, especially during the last decade or so. Now there’s a great job. Working twenty hours a day for four years straight, people with guns following you wherever you go so no one kills you, being blamed for everything - kind of like that wimpy kid in third grade who always got in trouble because he was too dumb to know what was really going on (I am, of course, referring to our previous Idiot-in-Chief). And imagine turning on CNN and hearing about the blow job you had the night before. As far as career choices go, I think I’d prefer sludge removal.
In some careers, imperfections don’t really matter. You can often be an actor if you’re not that talented. If you’re good-looking, it’s okay. That doesn’t work for a pharmacist, does it? “He can’t see the labels on the bottles, but he’s hot, so we don’t care. We love coming in for those pills.”
You can’t screw up too much if you’re a surgeon. When you’re poking around in someone’s brain with a sharp instrument, you don’t have a lot of room for error. “Oops, my hand slipped. Oh well, he doesn’t really need the left side of his brain anyway.” Doctors sometimes leave the operating room during long operations. It must be scary to be lying there while the surgeon’s poking around in your intestines and suddenly hear her say, “Well, I finished reconnecting about half her mucous membranes. I have to go pee. Dr. Taylor, you could use the practice since you’re pretty new at this. Why don’t you take over.”
Some people have jobs that must be hard to disclose on a first date. “I work in a slaughterhouse. Nice to meet you.” “I’m in sludge removal. Can I kiss you?” “I work for the Serial Killer Task Force. Want to come over?” “I train telemarketers. Why don’t you give me your phone number?”
I always thought making balloon animals would be a fun job. Except your hands would smell like a condom factory. How did it occur to someone to make balloon animals in the first place? Someone must have been really bored to be staring long enough at a balloon to start thinking, “I bet I could make that balloon look like a rabbit.”
With some jobs, it’s hard to understand why anyone would choose it. What’s the thought process that leads someone to decide to become a prison guard? “Yeah, now that I made it out of high school, I think I’ll spend 40 hours a week in a gray concrete building with 200 murderers and rapists who’d love to kill me.” Yep, that would be a fun job. Although it wouldn’t be as bad as being President, especially during the last decade or so. Now there’s a great job. Working twenty hours a day for four years straight, people with guns following you wherever you go so no one kills you, being blamed for everything - kind of like that wimpy kid in third grade who always got in trouble because he was too dumb to know what was really going on (I am, of course, referring to our previous Idiot-in-Chief). And imagine turning on CNN and hearing about the blow job you had the night before. As far as career choices go, I think I’d prefer sludge removal.
Friday, January 30, 2009
DO MEN HAVE MORE PHLEGM?
I'm fascinated by the habits of men. Why is it that they're compelled to expel their phlegm in public places? Do they have an excess of fluid above the waist? Perhaps they're marking their territory. And why do men grab their genitalia in the middle of a conversation? Do they need to reassure themselves the equipment's still there? Maybe it's a power thing. I wonder what a man would think if I grabbed my crotch while chatting. Women usually acknowledge our power in more subtle ways, though a woman with her hand between her legs would indeed be a force to be reckoned with.
Men have a tendency to sprawl. You're sitting on a train next to a man, he spreads out all over the place while you're squeezed into the corner. Hence the term, "spreading his seed" (imagine explaining that one – "It wasn't sex, it was the subway!"). Maybe because men come with three attachments, they need more space.
Colors are simpler for men. Their wife or girlfriend might say, "Honey, should we go with the mint green or the chartreuse drapes?" His response is, "Yeah, green's good." A lot of men have selective vision. They can see a tiny ball a quarter mile away under a layer of dirt, but they can't see a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor.
Men tend to be more visual, while women analyze and verbalize. Men don't seem to need closure. We need to say stuff at the end of a relationship. "Well, I guess it's better this way, since you don't like camping. I also didn't feel comfortable making a serious commitment to a perpetual adolescent who wears seersucker. I wish you the best, and I hope you have a good life. Maybe someday we can be friends." To which the man responds,"Yeah, bye." A man gives a woman a look, and she tries to figure out what it means, what he's thinking, and what's behind it, when what he's thinking is, "Wow, nice boobs."
Women say I love you by saying, "I love and adore you more than anything in the world." Men say I love you by cleaning the bathroom. Many communication issues can be resolved when a woman understands that she's rejecting a man's attempt to express his feelings when she complains, "Honey, why did you move my tampons?!"
Men and women handle the beginning and end of relationships differently. The beginning of a relationship for women is like wading in cold water. We inch our way in, and when we've reached crotch level we're committed to getting wet. Men plunge in, flop around on their bellies like spastic fish, run back to shore for awhile, decide to go for it and dive back in headfirst.
Men grieve differently than women when a relationship ends. They stagger around in a bathrobe, haggard and unshaven, with pizza stains on their beard stubble and beer cans piling up in the corner. This goes on for a couple of weeks, then they sleep with somebody, and they're over it.
Or so they think. In reality they're a blight on womankind. Believing they've tossed their emotional baggage out the window, they're oblivious to the fact that it's landed on some unsuspecting woman's head. Eventually they emerge, relieved everything still works. Women will go about our business as usual, squashing our feelings until we explode in a psycho-superwoman episode. We may build a bonfire with his discarded toiletry items. We may dye our hair blue. We may run for President. We may remain celibate for months, maybe years, afterward. We may even contemplate what life in a convent might be like. Then we say the hell with it, screw somebody's brains out, buy a douche and put it in his medicine cabinet, and we're healed.
Men have a tendency to sprawl. You're sitting on a train next to a man, he spreads out all over the place while you're squeezed into the corner. Hence the term, "spreading his seed" (imagine explaining that one – "It wasn't sex, it was the subway!"). Maybe because men come with three attachments, they need more space.
Men have to pretend to have big egos even if they don't. They might be as self-conscious as a redneck at a Maya Angelou poetry reading, but they have to act like they think they're hot stuff. Especially in a bar. "She's looking at me. "No, she's looking at me." "She thinks I'm hot." What she's really thinking is, "I wish those two assholes over there would quit staring at me."
Colors are simpler for men. Their wife or girlfriend might say, "Honey, should we go with the mint green or the chartreuse drapes?" His response is, "Yeah, green's good." A lot of men have selective vision. They can see a tiny ball a quarter mile away under a layer of dirt, but they can't see a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor.
Men tend to be more visual, while women analyze and verbalize. Men don't seem to need closure. We need to say stuff at the end of a relationship. "Well, I guess it's better this way, since you don't like camping. I also didn't feel comfortable making a serious commitment to a perpetual adolescent who wears seersucker. I wish you the best, and I hope you have a good life. Maybe someday we can be friends." To which the man responds,"Yeah, bye." A man gives a woman a look, and she tries to figure out what it means, what he's thinking, and what's behind it, when what he's thinking is, "Wow, nice boobs."
Women say I love you by saying, "I love and adore you more than anything in the world." Men say I love you by cleaning the bathroom. Many communication issues can be resolved when a woman understands that she's rejecting a man's attempt to express his feelings when she complains, "Honey, why did you move my tampons?!"
Men and women handle the beginning and end of relationships differently. The beginning of a relationship for women is like wading in cold water. We inch our way in, and when we've reached crotch level we're committed to getting wet. Men plunge in, flop around on their bellies like spastic fish, run back to shore for awhile, decide to go for it and dive back in headfirst.
Men grieve differently than women when a relationship ends. They stagger around in a bathrobe, haggard and unshaven, with pizza stains on their beard stubble and beer cans piling up in the corner. This goes on for a couple of weeks, then they sleep with somebody, and they're over it.
Or so they think. In reality they're a blight on womankind. Believing they've tossed their emotional baggage out the window, they're oblivious to the fact that it's landed on some unsuspecting woman's head. Eventually they emerge, relieved everything still works. Women will go about our business as usual, squashing our feelings until we explode in a psycho-superwoman episode. We may build a bonfire with his discarded toiletry items. We may dye our hair blue. We may run for President. We may remain celibate for months, maybe years, afterward. We may even contemplate what life in a convent might be like. Then we say the hell with it, screw somebody's brains out, buy a douche and put it in his medicine cabinet, and we're healed.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
THINGS NOT TO SAY AT WORK
"Man, did I get wasted last night. I jumped on the bar and danced in my jockstrap. Wanna see the pictures?"
"The CEO is so hot. I'd love to hit that, wouldn't you?"
"I just took this job cause my trust fund dried up."
"Wouldn't it be funny if I sprinkled some pot into the coffeemaker?"
"Hey, Jin got a raise. No fair! I bet it's because he's Asian."
"The boss is out today. Want to sneak out the side door an hour early?"
"Yeah, I always take the credit for Katie's ideas. She's banging the director, so what can she say?"
"I always delete my online history so the MIS guy can't tell I look at porn sites all day."
"Good, another meeting. I could use a nap."
"It's 4:59. I'm outta here!"
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