Virtual Dumpster For Ephemera

Bad pick-up line

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:08:13 -0600

You’re a lawyer? You used to work at Firm X? I used to be represented by someone who worked at Firm X!

Whenever you start to feel bad about race relations here in the U.S., it’s always nice to remember that Europe is approximately one million times more f’d up.

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:09:00 -0600

Whenever you start to feel bad about race relations here in the U.S., it’s always nice to remember that Europe is approximately one million times more f’d up. :

Zwarte Piet: Even more fucked up than the Krumpus.

Putting together a “Phuket Bucket” January trip.

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:56:28 -0600

Putting together a “Phuket Bucket” January trip.

Movie time!

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:23:24 -0600

thenelsontwins:

If you didn’t like pineapple express, you are a fool. “Safety first! Safety first, then teamwork!”

Also, “I may act tough, but I got a lot of feelings, and you hurt damn near every one of ‘em”

molls: First Look: James Franco In Howl I think James Franco...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:34:15 -0600

molls:

First Look: James Franco In Howl

I think James Franco was invented to keep me hungry.

(thanks Carrie for sending over the link.)

Depressing Movie Standoff!

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:47:23 -0600

I want to see Precious, but he wants to see The Road.

Single Ladies (Put a Chipmunk on It)

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:02:58 -0600

According to my 5-year-old son, Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” is being used to advertise the new Alvin and the Chipmunks (or “Chick-munks” as he calls them) movie. This seems odd…

Last night he spent some time singing to himself a song that went like:

All the single lay-dahs

It’s Alvin and the Chick-MUUUNKS!

The 30something Curmudgeon

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:43:51 -0600

Do you know a 30something Curmudgeon? These are the people who most likely do not have children themselves, but expend much time and energy complaining about how easy children these days have it, as compared to when they were children in the Dark Ages of the 1970s and 80s. Most of there information regarding modern children seems to come from TV commercials or “this total brat they saw at the mall.”

I recently heard one complain about that Gap commercial where the little girls chant that their old wardrobe is “officially retired” saying something like, “if I told my parents my wardrobe was ‘officially retired’ they would have punched me in the face and told me to go back to stirring the lye!”

Where was this? In Sarajevo? I call bullshit on this stuff. If you grew up in the 70s and 80s in the U.S., you were obsessed with getting consumer goods that made you look like everyone else. Maybe you got them, maybe you didn’t. But you wanted them. I know you did. And I bet sometimes you were a jerk to your parents about it. You know what else, 30something Curmudgeon? I’m going to venture to say that you had a pretty damn good childhood, as evidenced by your Grandpa-like nostalgia for it!

I’ll tell you a story that took place probably in 1983, and maybe we can start the healing, 30something Curmudgeon, and start keeping it real. In 1983, everybody had a stonewashed jean backpack. It was just like a regular backpack, except made of stonewashed denim. Everybody had one except me, and I wanted one. Because my goal in life was to be exactly like everyone else, so much so that I ceased to be an individual and merely became one of the Guess-wearing, fruit roll up eating masses. I harassed my mother constantly about the jean backpack. For Christmas my mother SEWED ME with her OWN HANDS—like Caroline Ingalls on the fucking frontier—a jean backpack.

I did not appreciate it. I didn’t appreciate it AT ALL.

She had apparently never seen the jean backpacks every damn kid was wearing when she picked me up from school because this is what she did: She took a pair of old jeans and cut off the legs. Then she sewed the leg-holes together. Then she cut the leg fabric and made it into two straps which she put on what used to be the front of the jeans. Then she took a cord and put in through the belt loops so you could pull the wasteband tight and that was the top of the backpack. She also sewed one of the back pockets of the jeans (now the pockets of the backpack) into a pencil holder.

Now, I don’t know about you. Maybe you were a more polite child than I was. Maybe you loved homemade things and were a proto-etsy trendsetting 8-year old with so much confidence in herself that you just wore and did whatever you wanted. I was not. I was a hyperliterate dork who’s mom was gay but was still the last person on the bus to know what the word “lesbian” meant. Carrying my books in a big butt strapped to my back was simply not an option.

I pulled the jean backpack from its box and I was like, what. the. fuck. is. THIS. I wasn’t a HUGE brat about it, actually. I just said it wasn’t really like what the backpacks the kids wore were like. My mom suggested some alterations but I said no.

And I never did get that fucking backpack and it pissed me off all year.

S refused to sit on Santa’s lap (smart boy!). He handed...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:44:35 -0600

S refused to sit on Santa’s lap (smart boy!). He handed Santa a written list and then shook his hand.

"I almost wanna slap that douche bag of Dr. Phil, here in Hermosillo, Sonora, México hate that kind..."

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:11:36 -0600

“I almost wanna slap that douche bag of Dr. Phil, here in Hermosillo, Sonora, México hate that kind of people who think they are Doctors, but not.”

- Comment on blog regarding recent Dr. Phil show. Best quote about Dr. Phil EVER.

Building a Baby, With Few Ground Rules

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:41:28 -0600

Building a Baby, With Few Ground Rules:

I can’t stop thinking about this article. It is so incredibly messed up in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin.

I’m loving sitting at this bar alone waiting for my friends (who all are coming together??)...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:20:52 -0600

I’m loving sitting at this bar alone waiting for my friends (who all are coming together??) and checking out all the heterosexual couples surrounding me.

Maybe an intervention is in the cards and they’re helping me to hit rock bottom.

Stephen Colbert just had a thing on the Krampus, the Austrian...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:57:50 -0600

Stephen Colbert just had a thing on the Krampus, the Austrian monster who goes around with St. Nicholas and flogs bad kids.

When I was 5, my dad taught in Salzburg, Austria for a year and this Krampus character was, and still is, my nummer Eins memory. Christmas time in the land of The Sound of Music was almost disgustingly picturesque. The town was covered in snow, chocolate was everywhere, and my mom was busy every day sublimating her bitterness at being taken to a country where she didn’t speak the language or understand the customs and stuck with two kids by sewing us cute Christmas outfits. One night, we put on some of those clothes and went to a big Christmas party at the University. The adults drank Beir and Wein and the kids ran around and ate cookies and candy.

But suddenly, a commotion. Was it St. Nick? NO! A seven foot devil stomped into the room growling and shaking chains! I just about had a heart attack. The adults laughed—although my parents were just as confused as I was—as he made his way, swinging his switches, towards us kids. I was good! What the hell? I had been ridiculously good! I started running, straight up terrified at this thing. I hid under a table and he put his red head near my face and growled and tried to grab me. I’m not ashamed to say, I was crying. Hard.

It was fucked up, you guys!

Nonplussed

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:41:48 -0600

Nonplussed means:

to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do : perplex

It doesn’t mean “not bothered.” So stop using it that way, goddamn it!

Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer discovers the internet and he makes a website and at...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:32:33 -0600

Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer discovers the internet and he makes a website and at first its just all these crazy internet icons making noise and engaging in repetitive movement? That’s sort of like this website, in its 2.0 version.

Jay-Z feat. Ja-Rule & Amil, Can I Get A… I am huge,...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:23:22 -0600

Jay-Z feat. Ja-Rule & Amil, Can I Get A…

I am huge, prissy, white, dork, and I fucking LOVE Jay-Z. This is the first Jay-Z song I ever heard and its still my fave. The story behind my introduction to Jay-Z could not be whiter: In 1999 my friend Kristen, on a drive from her parent’s soybean farm in Ankeny, Iowa to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she was in graduate school, purchased a “Hip Hop Hitz” cassette tape at a truck stop in Northern Iowa. All the songs on it were shit except this one. I took Air Tran from Chicago to Minneapolis and she picked me up from the airport, put this mo’ fo’ in the tape deck of the red convertible Chrysler she had since her parents bought it for her on her 16th birthday and we fucking BOUNCED*. We loved this song and we listened to it with our friends all weekend, and analyzed the lyrics on email for weeks afterwards. When my friend Kate got married, we made sure to play it at the reception (after her Grandmother had left, as Kate was worried she would be offended by the musical style and the profanity).

Anyway, who’s willing to drop $50+ to see Jay-Z with me at the Scottrade Center in STL in March??? I’m serious.

What what?!

*I’m assuming that means “rocked out in a hip hop way.” That’s the way I’m using it. If it means “had sex”, that’s not the way I’m using it.

Disturbing Childhood Memory

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:05:19 -0600

I used to think I dreamed this memory, because it couldn’t possibly be true. But then I confirmed with another St. Louisan my age that it did, indeed, happen.

When I was maybe 9 years old a new “fancy” downtown mall opened called St. Louis Center. For a couple of years it existed as the high end, downtown mall where you would make a special trip for holiday or birthday shopping. Quickly, for reasons unknown to me, it became the mall filled with stores that sold “Stop Snitching” t-shirts, wigs, and large carpets featuring tigers. Then it just shut down entirely.

But, when it was good, it was very very good. One of the things it had at Christmastime was “Santa’s Magical Village.” It was a Macy’s-New-York style fake snow village complete with gingerbread houses and candy canes and elves showing you the way. You wound your way through the magical village and finally got to a little cabin in which Santa resided.

The strange thing was that there were two different lines, leading to two different Claus residences.

I remember my mom and brother and I took the elevator up to the 7th Floor of Famous bar and were blinded by the glitter and snow of the village. We ran to the entrance and went for the shorter line.

“Wait,” my mom said, “get in this line.” She pointed to the other, longer line.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because that line goes to the Black Santa.”

Then I noticed, all the kids waiting for Santa in the line I was waiting in were black, and all the kids waiting in the other line were white.

Lessons Learned from Hoarders

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:21:20 -0600

Adult children of hoarders tend to move to Washington State.

My son rejected the name Mario for the dog as “too girly” because “M is a...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:40:16 -0600

My son rejected the name Mario for the dog as “too girly” because “M is a girl’s letter.” Who knew?

"There's Feces Everywhere"

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:22:04 -0600

tesslynch:

OKAY DON’T WATCH HOARDERS TONIGHT.

Feces is the secret ingredient in Hoarders’ second season.