Oh Me Oh My

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Snapple, da dadda something something

A few years back there were some radio ads: some guy introduced himself as Tim or Todd or something, and then proceeded to sing a song about Snapple, usually with one of those pre-programmed keyboard beats in the background. They were f'in hilarious and there were at least 3 or 4 of them, and I can only sorta remember the tail-end of one of them (which I have included below to help jog your memory). If you can remember any others or (be still my aching heart) have them recorded somewhere I would love you forever (and yes, in that way):

Snapple, you should really try it,
Snapple, it also come in diet
not that you need it, you look perfect, did you cut your bangs?
Snapple!
Thanks.

Monday, March 27, 2006

You Know It's Time for a Career Change When...

When I have nightmares I do it like a champ. Most people have one that they remember the next day while I have a succession of images or vignettes one right after the other. Last night was one of those nights and two of those mini nightmares stick out in my head: In one I am drying my face with a tea towel from home when I look down there is all this blood on the towel and I am aware that something has bitten me. The pattern on the towel is sorta zigzag and I realize that they are jaws which have cut up my face.

In the second dreamette I am in a dark room and there is this baby that just won't stop crying and it just gets louder and gurglier and then it's just screaming like sharp sirens, so out of nowhere I get this jug of ether (as seen in the photo, triple x and all) pour it on a towel (the tea towel from the previous dream?) and cover the baby's mouth so it will fall asleep. Then the lights come on and I'm at a party where everyone now thinks I killed the baby instead of making it pass out. Disturbing to say the least right?

Well apparently not disturbing enough because the alarm wakes me up at 7:30 and the fact that my psyche still believes my face has been cut up, or that a room full of people believe I smothered a kid pales in comparison to the overwheling sadness slash bitterness I feel that I have to go to work. I want to start sobbing or vomiting, or both at the same time, an action I have dubbed "Cry Heaving". Is this what the first day back is like when you have the whole weekend off? Is this the Monday blahs I've heard so much about? Of course when you get to work it's not that bad but man is it a challenge to get your ass out of bed.

So to recap, I would apparently rather get my face eaten by a tea towel and accused of infanticide then come to work on a Monday morning.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Everybody Into the Pools

I am a reality show junky. It's not the shows themselves that interest me, but my belief that all of them except perhaps Amazing Race are fixed from the start. Shows whose formats stay the same like America's Next Top Model or Survivor or The Apprentice will eventually develop a certain pattern; certain character archetypes that reek of producer or editor involvement, and eventually despite a few deviations they will become very predictable.

My habit has extended into the world of office pools. I usually have at least 2 or 3 going at once ranging from two player, $40 dollar pots, to 8 player $160 dollar pots. I have won big (Yeah Nicole Cycle 5) and have lost big (Stupid Lluvy Cycle 4) but the fun is in the playing--rooting for people you might normally loathe, hating your colleagues for taking your favourite (Damn You Gary for taking Chris Daughtry!) Oddly enough I miss quite a few episodes of the shows I have money on, but most of the fun is in the results anyway, except for America's Next Top Model of course, to which I have an almost religious fanaticism.

Below are the three shows I currently have pools going for:


America's Next Top Model

It's too bad this picture turned out shitty as ANTM is by far my favourite pool. It is exclusively between Sacha and I and the selection process is a hoot. I print out all the girls' pictures before the show begins and lay them out. We rock, paper, scissors who gets to go first and then schoolyard pick (they are in order of selection in the photo) until only one mutually disliked girl remains, and she is labeled the "Charity Case" (in this case Brooke) which means if she wins no one gets the money and the runner-up decides which charity gets the pot.

You can't really make it out in the picture but the losing girl's face is crossed off on her headshot while tears are drawn on the face of the other picture depicting how much of a crier she was upon being eliminated: Kathy got welling eyes and a slow full single tear running down her cheek, while Wendy has water gushing out of her eyes from every angle. God I love this show.

American Idol

We drew numbers to see which order the 3 of us got to pick in. I had to go last which means I lost Chris Daughtry to Gary. I pretty much think Chris has got this competition as well as my undying stalker-like love in the bag. When someone is eliminated their torn portrait is added to the pile of broken dreams. There is only one face there now, but 10 more souls have yet to feel the brutal slap of rejection and get tossed in the pile. Man, I take way too much pleasure in seeing reality show contestants topple.

The Amazing Race

This show got the most effort I have ever put into an office pool: colour profiles printed at home, 11 players each of which I took both a triumphant happy photo and a defeated upset photo to be exchanged if their team is eliminated. As you can see two teams have an eliminated stamp on their faces and both Marie and Gary look very distraught over it.

This is a pool where people choose their teams by lottery which means you often get people you'd rather see lose but hope win since it means a cash prize. I got Lake and Michelle in the pool. Lake is a complete asshole who is emotionally abusive to his wife and yet I still hope they win, and maybe Michelle can use her half to get a really good divorce lawyer.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

I Spy With My Abnormal Eye

As anyone who has ever tried on my glasses can attest to, I am one blind mother fucker. I have both myopia and an astigmatism so severe I have yet to visit any eye care professional who doesn't double take or "whoa" when they see my prescription. At today's optometrist appointment I was told that I should be wary that the hardcoredness of my astigmatism could be a symptom of keratoconus: which arises when the middle of the cornea thins and gradually bulges outward, forming a rounded cone shape. This abnormal curvature changes the cornea's refractive power, producing moderate to severe distortion. Awesome.

There is nothing to worry about yet but when I asked how bad it can get she told me that in really bad cases it may require a "corneal transplant". Needless to say I pooped a bit when I heard those words. It also got me thinking about the attachment we make with people's eyes. We see so much in them and they reveal so much about other people. My eyes are the only part of my body I like dammit! I may have thin girly fingers, a facial bald patch that prevents me from growing facial hair and a set of man boobs that has me one step away from shopping in the junior miss department for a trainer, but I really like my eyes: they change colour with the weather, I can make my pupils grow at will, and most of all they are the one physical feature I get complimented on (mainly because they don't require any kind of maintenance and I had nothing to do with them). And for a sucker with a need for the occasional ego-boost, they have always come in handy.

I don't want new corneas, so I will do my darndest to keep these healthy. She told me hard contacts (smaller and more easily lost than the soft lenses that everyone else has) may actually help me see better, plus I'd get to see without the shield of glasses; the catch being the few months of getting used to them "bulging under your eyelids when you blink". The choice for vanity is also the choice for better vision. The choice for laziness is also the choice for comfort and financial savings. I'm torn.

Creepy example of coincidence - the theme on American Idol tonight is Stevie Wonder songs.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

The Bloody Ties That Bind

Only in the world of pirated movies can Dawn of the Dead be a “feel-good romp” while Siskel & Ebert give movies “An Enthusiastic 2 Thumbs Up!” 6 years after Gene Siskel passed away. Part of the joy of pirated movies is the fuck-ups you get on the cover art. From the description of King Kong being in what I believe is Lithuanian to the barcode on the back actually scanned cut and pasted from a chocolate bar, the attempt to make the covers look real is almost always comically screwed up.

This was at its most hilarious last night during the gayest evening in the history of time that didn’t actually involve anything directly gay. A friend and I got together to watch America’s Next Top Model (both glorious hours). We then bought 2 pints of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream at Rabba ($3.99 is unheard of, so we had to get two) and ate them while watching the Girliest of chick flicks imaginable, “In Her Shoes”. Yes, there’s nothing like 2 dudes watching a touching film about sisterly love.

Ladies if you ever want to trick your boyfriends into sitting though this with you be sure to borrow my copy. On the cover is a large “Mature Audience Warning” label. We thought this was weird that one or two mild expletives and vague sex conversation would warrant a mature audience label. This was until we looked at the explanation beside the giant “M”: “Adult Themes and Frequent Battle Violence”. We just about shit our pants trying to picture Cameron Diaz leading a platoon or Toni Collette assembling an assault rifle. I kept picturing a voice over an image of Shirley Maclaine looking forlorn out a rainy window while cutting some dude’s hand off, “Two sisters learn that some ties are not so easily severed”.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

It's Neat to be Obsolete!


Everything old is cool again. I’m not talking about fashion or music but actual old crap. Everyone is obsessed with getting the newest, the latest, the most up-to-date, but personally I think obsolete stuff has its merits.

Take digital cameras for instance; more megapixels, more digital zoom, more money frankly and in the end we take the same still photos of our friends posing we would have taken with the old family Pentax. I almost never take my digital camera anywhere—that shit was expensive and I am terrified of dropping it or getting it wet or having it stolen, why the hell did I buy it? The best pictures we got from our cruise in May were from disposable cameras that we tossed back and forth, while most of our digital cameras snapped the same pictures from 19 different lenses, but boy were those pictures high quality.

Another great example is cars. I drive a 94 Toyota Tercel. When I finish a bottle of water I toss it into the backseat. If my car takes a hard hit from a speed bump or someone bangs my car when they open their door I just shrug my shoulders. I can pretty much guarantee no one will ever steal my car. Hell I could leave the keys in the ignition overnight and solid chance my Grannymobile will still be there come morning. Sadly my dear car is on its last legs and I may soon have to look into purchasing a vehicle I might actually have to care about. I’ll worry about security and keeping it clean plus my insurance will be way higher, all this for a shiner paint-job and a driver’s side window that closes properly—hardly worth it.

Cell phones are a crazy case of buyer fatigue. Each new marketing campaign makes your old phone seem like shit. Now they record video, identify music, administer insulin, perform CAT Scans, allow you to teleport and make you live forever. That’s pretty much how we react to each new generation, like we couldn’t possibly survive without the changes that have been made. In the end 99 percent of what we do on our phones (calling and text messaging) we could have done on the old Clearnet models from 1995, not to mention the fact that those clunkers could withstand being dropped from the CN Tower while today’s phones break at the drop of a dime. My previous flip phone broke because apparently the very fragile wires that run through the phone snapped when I flipped it open too hard! Sacha’s phone went on the fritz because she takes it with her into the bathroom where there was apparently “too much moisture in the air”. The Zack Morris phone seems more legit everyday.

This brings me to my computer. It’s old. Like, crazy old. Like Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” was still huge when I bought it. This is okay though. Having a crappy computer means I can open attachments from people’s e-mails, I can download music and movies and not care if they have viruses because frankly my computer is a virus hotel. I think I have so many viruses they cancel eachother out. There is no stress regarding reformatting or updating to the latest software because frankly it couldn’t handle it anyway. I just kick back and let my Celeron processor do it’s thang.