Things I'm Embarrassed to Like: Cosmo

It's mostly advertisements and pretty pictures. It's stupid. It's repetitive. It preys on your every insecurity and probably kills hundred of brain cells if you look at it.

It's Cosmo, and I like it.

I'm not exactly sure how I got into reading Cosmo, but around the middle of each month I start hunting the grocery store racks for the newest issue. When I get home, it always goes in the bathroom to be browsed at my leisure.

Cosmo: For me to poop on.

If you've ever read Cosmo more than once, you've probably noticed that the magazine is kinda short of fresh ideas. Most articles involve the same old crap:

1. Stuff about how to get or keep a man

2. New sex positions (which are really the same ones over and over again with different names)

3. Stupid interviews with a marginal celebrity (what's your favorite body part?)

4. Some sort of story about rape or stalkers or kidnapping or disease that's designed to scare the crap out of you.

5. Picture of a dude without his shirt on

Of course, besides the tiny articles, there's a ton of ads for clothes and makeup. My favorite feature is usually the embarrassing 'confession' stories which generally involve a) getting caught having sex b) expelling your own bodily fluids or gases in public, typically while on a date c) doing something mean to a roommate. Heh heh, stores about getting your period and ruining your new boyfriend's parents' couch are ALWAYS FUNNY, damnit!

The thing is, the entire magazine is designed to make you feel like a totally unsophisticated, unsexy, ugly troll. As in, you dress like a hobo, here's what you should be wearing instead. And your face would make small children cry, so plaster it with all of these cosmetics, for the love of everything good and holy. Plus, you couldn't get a man if you had Super Bowl tickets and a ribeye steak stapled to your forehead, so here are some totally desperate ways to find a dude. And once you get him, here's some nearly impossible sex positions you can try that pretty much guarantee several trips for at least one of you to the chiropractor. But the worst part is, they hide all this under a 'you go, girl!' guise.

But in spite of all this, I still read the damn thing! In fact, I feel so bad about it I got a subscription to BUST magazine (which is kind of a grrrrl 'zine) just to offset the grody feelings I get every time I pick up an issue.

It could be worse, I guess. I mean, I could be reading...um...shit, I can't think of anything worse. Damn it all.

I hate everyone: People on the road today

It's a good thing that I don't have a laser mounted to the hood of my car, or else I'd have been tempted to use it on some fellow travelers today. Here's a select few who should be thankful that they didn't end up suffering my vengeful wrath in the middle of I-85:

• The guy who was reading the paper while driving in the fast lane at 80 mph.
• The 16-year-old kid driving the HUGE truck who decided to go 20 mph on Sugarloaf because he was so obviously scared to be driving such a gigantic vehicle
• The girl who was turned around and trying to slap her kid in the backseat from exit 104 to 96
• The two people who cut off an ambulance with its lights on
• Everyone going to the Falcons game

No idea why I thought of this today

You've seen 'The Sound of Music" right? The one with Julie Andrews. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Right. Anyway, you know who my favorite character is? The Baroness. She's such a great villain, shrewd and back-stabbing and ice-princess beautiful, but when she saw that Captain Von Trapp preferred Maria's vanilla pudding of a personality, she very gracefully took her leave. That's classy! Plus, she was a Baroness so she wasn't a gold-digger or anything, I guess she just really dug her some Christopher Plummer. Also, I know people think that she was horrible to the Von Trapp kids, but damn, there were SEVEN of them! And they were total brats, I can't blame her for wanting to send them to boarding school. I mean, they ran off all those governesses with spiders and snakes and frogs and whatever, and most disturbingly, they never once mentioned their poor dead mother, as in 'gee, I miss Mom.' Not once! Plus good God, they sang all the damn time once Maria got a hold of them.

I still hate my neighbors

Oh look, my neighbors decided to decorate for Thanksgiving, and they went for a poop-sachet theme this year!


So very, very classy. I don't know how I'll ever top that, unless I get a drunk bum to squat outside my front door for the duration of the holiday season.

This is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about

I've lived in Atlanta for about 14 years, and for the last 10 I've driven almost daily through the middle of downtown, and every time I do I never fail to look at the skyline and think damn, that's so cool.

Coffee-mate pisses me off again

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson last time I decided to try a new flavor of pussy-ass coffee creamer, but oh, how wrong you were. The good people over at Coffee-mate have some 'limited edition' creamer flavors out just in time for the holidays and I just had to have them.

They have four flavors: pumpkin spice, egg nog, gingerbread, and peppermint mocha. I decided to curb my crazy OCD impulses and just get two of them, so I got the gingerbread one and peppermint mocha. I figured pumpkin spice, egg nog and gingerbread would all be pretty similar anyways, tasting like cinnamon and nutmeg and sweet, sweet sugar, so gingerbread won out by a blind grab. Peppermint mocha got to come home with me because Starbucks makes a killer peppermint mocha for the holidays and I was hoping to find a worthy replacement for my $4-a-day peppermint mocha smack habit.

As you can see, the offending creamers have been banished to the No-Man's Land that lies behind the Gigantic Tub O' Margarine.

But lo, I partook of each of these non-dairy products, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, for both of them were not the tasty bursts of yuletide goodness they had proclaimed, but an unholy alliance of sugar and my bitter disappointment.

Really, how can you mess these up? First of all, both of them required almost double the amount of creamer I normally use just to taste it, and then the taste wasn't all that spectacular. Peppermint mocha was almost completely devoid of chocolatey goodness, I'd have gotten the same taste if I'd squeezed some super-sweet toothpaste into my coffee mug. Gingerbread was even weirder because it tasted almost exactly like nothing, I had to use a ton of it to get even a faint hint of any sort of flavor, and even that little tease was totally disappointing. It tasted like cheap birthday cake frosting.

So, once again, Coffee-mate incites my rage with promises of coffee nirvana. Damn youuuuuu!...though, maybe egg nog would be good. I do love me some nogs.

NaBloPoMo, mofos!

According to some people who think they can tell me what to do, it's National Blog Posting Month, and to celebrate you're to update your blog every day. They even came up with a cute logo for it!

They have a list of prizes for people who do this, but oddly enough, none of these includes the bear that is so prominently featured on the NaBloPoMo seal. What gives? I would certainly be more motivated to post on a daily basis if there was a the threat of a bear attack. Or better yet, they could reward you by giving you the use of a bear to maul your enemies and smite them but good for a day.

Gnome mojo

For anyone who has known me for more than five minutes, you're well aware of Franklin. For those of your poor, unfortunate souls who have never had the pleasure of my company, Franklin is my Travelin' Gnome. Yeah, I stole the idea from 'Amelie'. Whatever.

Anyway, Franklin's been with me for a little over 4 years, and we've been everywhere together: Florida, Seattle, New York City, Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, Boston, the Caribbean and, of course, all over Georgia. Franklin's recent trip was to the city of Macon, where he met NASCAR driver Tony Stewart.

Incidentally, Tony Stewart tried to sign my gnome at first. Duh.

After meeting Franklin, Tony Stewart has gone on to win the next two NASCAR races. Coincidence? I don't think so.

All hail the power of my gnome!

I Hate Everyone: Tall Dudes At The Concert

I went to see The Decemberists a few days ago, and they're my favorite favorite favorite band right now, and I very much want to have lead singer Colin Meloy's babies, and the album they are touring on (The Crane Wife) is super-good, so I was totally stoked. This was the third time I've seen them because I'm just that much of a hardcore fan, yo.

Anyway, they were playing at The Tabernacle, which is a cool venue and doesn't have that claustrophobic fire-y death-trap feel that The Roxy or Variety Playhouse has. I wound up standing about in the middle of the floor, which really isn't that far from the stage (balcony seating is for losers!) So the opening band comes up and plays for a (mercifully) short time, then as they're setting up for The Decemberists people start pushing forward. This is standard procedure, so it's all good.

At this point, though I'm not as ear-searingly close to the stage as I'd like to be, I can see very well, mainly due to the fact that this is an all-ages show and a lot of people here haven't really got aboard The Hormone Train to Pubertyville yet, so they're all pretty short. But then, three guys start pushing through the crowd and decide to stop directly in front of me and watch the concert whilst sipping on their cans of Coors Light.

Look at us, we're a bunch of gimpy dorks! Let's stand in front of this short girl and crush beer cans on our heads!

HATRED! They're all good 6 inches taller than I am and they're totally up in my personal space. I know it's close quarters at a concert where it's standing-room only, but if you got there late then you have to live with the fact that you've got to stand behind that big control-room desk thing with all the switches and lights at the back of the room.

Don't try to shove your way all the way to the front five minutes before the damn show starts, decide you aren't going to be able to get all the way to the stage, so stop in front of me so the only parts of the concert I can see is the glimpses I get when I jump up and down and peek over your shoulders. Plus one of them had earplugs in, and though I'm all for hearing conservation, The Decemberists aren't exactly gonna rupture any eardrums while they're rocking out the mandolin and accordion. As an extra added bonus, because they were so up in my personal space, I got elbowed in the boobies and stepped on repeatedly.

So I will concentrate my powers of hateration on you three tall guys at The Decemberists concert. Curse you for preventing me from staring longingly at the suave emo visage of the future father of my children, and for bruising my chest and toes.