Is anyone else tired of the election, and my smutty shopping

I’m so sick of the mudslinging and issues that really have nothing to do with THE issues. And to think . . . we have several more months of this until the REAL election.

Funny . . . I was in a sex shop the other night and the guy who was working the counter was a young, clean-cut guy — looked like he could have come from Iowa, or some such midwestern state. So, I couldn’t resist talking to him, and asking him how one comes to work in a sex shop. He said that he was recently released from the armed forces (can’t remember which one), and that working in a sex shop was the first job that he landed post release. Apparently he’s card-carrying Barack supporter, and he said that if McCain wins, he plans to move to Paris, but if Hillary wins, he’ll only move to Canada. I don’t know why I found that to be so funny, but I did.

As for the sex shop — because I’m sure you’re wondering — it was a newer one on Milwaukee in Wicker Park. I was walking by with a friend and couldn’t resist. Besides . . . I like to look at the products. Whoever comes up with the names of porn movies and dildoes are geniuses. My favorite porn title to date has been “E3 – The Extra Testicle,” although I’ve always thought that “Shaving Ryan’s Privates” would be a great title. As for sex toys, I’ve always been pretty grossed out by something called The Anal Intruder, apparently quite the enhancer for gay men — although it appears to be nothing short of a torture device (I’m sure there’s a pun in there somewhere).

They do have cute little novelty and bachelorette party gifts, in case you’re in the market. My friend bought a lollipop for his girlfriend, and it was rather innocent. It was heart-shaped, as opposed to the predictable suckers, shaped like male sex organs, and it had a very subtle sexual message (“Let’s fuck”). Love it.

Another Spears Meltdown

I don’t have much to say about this . . . except WTF???

I’ve had arguments with a coworker about this. This particular coworker and I get along — I would consider her a friend — but she grew up in rural-back-ass-bumblefuck in an area that might make the map in the next printing. She’s also ever-so-Republican, but for the sake of it. Anyhoo . . . not the point.

The point is that I have found a way to have sympathy for The Brit. My coworker thinks I’m crazy, but I do feel sorry for her. First of all, we all made adolescent mistakes. Whether we failed a class, dated someone we shouldn’t, got our hearts broken for the the first, second, or third times, and some of us even had the accidental pregnancy. Not me, thank God, but there were plenty secret “procedures” among the girls that I knew.

However, we had the luxury of doing all of that in private. There were no cameras. We didn’t have careers. We weren’t millionaires and certainly not anyone’s role model. We got the opportunity to make our mistakes in the privacy of our own bedrooms, and sometimes our own parents didn’t know what we were up to. (At least that was MY saving grace).

My point with Britney is that while, yes, she is fresh from the trailer, and a generally pretty trashy, talentless girl, she’s also a person, and one who deserves to suffer through her bad relationship and post partum depression without having stalkerazzi swinging from her fence, trying to get a shot of it. Yes, she is cracking down, but it’s somewhat disturbing that the general public is finding SO much pleasure in it.

I’m not excluding myself, because I’m certainly no stranger to clicking on the links that say “Britney Shaved Head in Public,” or “Britney Exposes Crotch” — although, admittedly, I was tired of seeing that girl’s vagina all over the internet.

I think that there should be a moratorium on Britney news for at least the first quarter of the year. Let that girl get herself together so that the next time she fucks up, it will at least be something socially salacious and not just plain pathetic.

Car-less? NOT

Well . . . that whole car-less thing that I was ranting about in my previous post is completely out the window. I was driving my father insane, so he demanded that I bring my car – alias the Death Trap – over to his house so that he could facilitate getting it fixed. Within 24 hours, the car was up and running – and for $400 less than the originally quoted price.

Good thing, too. I wasn’t taking to the CTA so well outside of rush hour. I was meeting a friend for a pedi last Sunday. We’d planned it for a few weeks, and I was looking forward to it. She volunteered to pick me up, which would have been ridiculous, since we live nowhere near each other, and she lives near the salon, which is up in Lakeview. I flat-out refuse to make people drive out of their way to accommodate my circumstances.

To make a long, irritating story much shorter, due to my lack of interest in football, I had no idea that the Bears were playing at home. I also failed to realize that the Red Line had been re-routed.

All this to say that I missed my appointment, although I did have a fabulous dinner with her afterward.

Granted, my car is a piece of shit . . . but I really did miss it.

Weekend re-cap

Had a generally shitty weekend.

It started off okay with a pretty good play on Friday night, and digressed from there.

I was really looking forward to getting an estimate on some work that I planned to get done on my house. The bastard, who was a referral from a person who always gives him work, apparently decided not to show up or call. I called him about 3 times, sent him a text message, and by the time I realized that he had ruined my day, I left him a terse voice message indicating my displeasure at his rudeness, and ended with the supposition that he didn’t want the job. The nerve.

I also had a very difficult exchange with a person that I care deeply for on Saturday/Sunday. It embodied what I despise about being adult – having to make hard decisions and having to have difficult conversations. Not a great time, but I’ll get through it . . . I guess . . . or not.

Then , let’s discuss the goddamned Marathon, shall we? It seemed to be complete and utter mayhem from a weather/logisitics perspective, and unfortunately proved to be a fatal event for at least one person.

The rule of thumb, race planners, is that regardless of the temperature, people who are physically exerting themselves to the extreme ALWAYS need mass quantities of water.

I have another gripe (as usual) . . . would it be too much to ask for the planners to produce this annual event without totally debilitating the city and its traffic passageways????

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have road rage issues. I’m screaming, honking, flashing my brights, liberally showing my middle finger to anyone who does anything to get in my way. Compound those issues with thousands of people trying to navigate their way around the marathon, a course that isn’t in a straight line, and makes absolutely no sense from a zig-zag perspective, out-of-towners who don’t know where they’re going to begin with, at least 10 ambulances with no way to plow through the congested streets, and me, a person who’s already unstable from the disasters that were described earlier – it’s not a good recipe.

It’s a recipe for a bad disposition and raging headache, which I spent the rest of Sunday nursing. It’s also a recipe for a large glass of wine, which did nothing for the headache. No happiness to be had.

Maybe next weekend will be better.

Marooned The weather is SO bad tonight that any pl…

Marooned

The weather is SO bad tonight that any plans that I was trying to make have completely fallen through, which sucks because I was totally in the mood to dance tonight. So . . . an evening of being stuck in the house has turned into a perfect night for blogging!

I failed to announce the new column this week, so here goes — the new Gina Spot is all about dating for benefits, i.e. dating someone to enjoy the fringe benefits of his/her life. Check it out!

The only problem with being bored at home on a weekend is that I never want to do anything constructive. I find it much more exciting to ignore the piles of work that I should be doing, the mound of laundry that needs folding, the knitting projects that need attention, and the 3 books that I should be reading and opt for more fun activities, like downloading music and purchasing things on eBay.

Yes, there’s nothing like an idle evening to make me think of things to bid on that I don’t even need. I’ve decided to keep my spending down to $100 this evening, and I’m having fun deciding how to allocate it.

Typically, when I blog I have something on my mind — something venomous that needs to get out. Tonight? Not so much. So, this is a true stream of consciousness, and probably more dedicated to raves than rants — for a much needed change. It would be nice if I could get paid for the following endorsements, but hey . . . who the hell am I, after all?

First, I have to admit that I have an addiction to a menu item from McDonald’s — of all places. It used to be that the only enticing item from the Mickey D’s menu was the Egg McMuffin. And now, I’ve discovered this:

The fruit and yogurt parfait! For merely $1.00, one can have a delicious lowfat sweet treat that provides a few food group fulfillments and one gram of fiber (not great, but much better than what you’ll find in a pack of M&Ms).

Starbuck’s has a pretty tasty yogurt parfait, but it’s over three times the price. The upside is that it’s about three sizes larger, although it also has about three times the calories.

The other thing that I’m loving lately is 30 Rock. Sheer comedic brilliance.

As part of my morning routine, I’m also finding it pretty hard to live without these:

If you are like me, and the idea of a constantly reused facial sponge or puff completely grosses you out, these are great. They’re self-foaming, and have the perfect distribution of product to scrub your skin without stripping it, and leaving it feeling clean without that tight, lizard feeling. Click here or on the pic for more info.

Okay . . . eBay is calling my name. More later!

Wanted — Sleep Bandits My sleep was severely imp…

Wanted — Sleep Bandits

My sleep was severely impaired last night. Largely because of the sleep bandits that I live with:

America’s Most Wanted

Name: Phoebe B.

DOB: 5/15/96

Height: 9″

Weight: 7lbs

Aliases: Feebs, Feeble, The Pooh Bear, Feeble Boo

Wanted for: Midnight marauding, cavorting with imaginary friends, breaking and entering bedroom closets, several attempts to suffocate the person who kindly feeds her by sleeping on her head.

Name: Bailey B.

DOB: 4/??/05

Height: 11″

Weight: 16 lbs.

Aliases: Bailey-Boy, Senor Bay, The Bay, Bailey-Bad-Ass

Wanted for: Disturbing the peace (by decided to play with belled toys at 3:00 am), begging, howling

These criminals must be caught before they strike again!!!

This explains a lot . . . Anger linked to women’…

This explains a lot . . .

Anger linked to women’s heart problems

Here’s an excerpt:

“Researchers found that women who tended to outwardly express their anger had a higher risk of artery blockages if they also had one of several other heart risk factors: older age, diabetes or high cholesterol. Other measures of hostility, like suppressed anger and hostile temperament in general, were unrelated to the risk of coronary artery disease.”

No wonder I have heart problems. I rarely discuss this, but several years ago I was diagnosed with three individual heart problems: a heart murmur (likely the result of a high fever that I had with a childhood illness), mitral valve prolapse (pretty common — although I have to take 9 antibiotics when I go to the dentist for any procedure. I’m skeptical as to whether the antibiotics are really necessary, but I’d rather take them than have a heart attack during a cleaning), and finally, the ever ominous vacillating aortic valve block. The latter is the most serious one, and the one that I’m most reminded of when I feel small random tremors. At this point there could be more issues, but I’m not excited about getting strapped up to another EKG machine to figure it out, only to give myself something else to worry about.

Funny story — during the course of my diagnosis, the MD sent me for a chest x-ray to make sure that there wasn’t a hole in my heart. (Which would ALSO explain a lot). I was sitting in the waiting room, and way across the room, there was a guy who was coughing so hard that I thought he’d spit up a lung. He began talking to me from 50 feet away, and asked me why I was there. I told him about the potential hole in my heart, and he casually mentioned, between hacks, that he was being tested for tuberculosis. Yeah . . . nothing like catching TB in the hospital. Needless to say, I kept my distance. Oh, and turns out I didn’t have a hole in my heart (I only behave as if I do. ).

The irony of the article about anger and heart trouble is that, after a severe betrayal by a “friend,” I made the decision that I would express my anger instead of keeping it bottled up inside. I used to stew in my own juices over something that pissed me off — just smile and take it — and finally decided that it wasn’t a good idea because I was creating toxins in my body. My herbalist told me (in Chin-English) that excessive toxins in the body can be poisonous and cancer-causing, so I decided to make a change.

Ever since, my policy has been to let it out . . . express everything, and give some ownership to the person that caused your anger. Honestly, it was the most liberating decision that I could have made. At first, it felt good just to let it out. And then I developed a reputation for letting it out, which meant that people were far less likely to do stupid stuff, because they knew they would hear about it. One of the things that’s so great about this blog is that it’s my own personal forum for bitching about things that I don’t always verbally express.

As an aside, although I love having an audience and receiving comments, the only problem with having an audience for this blog is that I still feel like I censor myself from time to time, based on who I think might be reading it. Sometimes I forget that people actually read this thing until one of my friends calls and requires clarification about something that I’ve written here. The good news is that my parents aren’t technologically savvy enough to read this blog — it would give them FAR more information about my life than they need. Obviously my co-workers know nothing about the blog. The BF rarely reads it, or at least he doesn’t tell me if he reads it. If I had to guess, I would assume he’s not a regular reader.

Anyhoo . . . back to the point . . . so, based on the posted article, it seems that it might be better to remain quiet about my anger. I don’t really see that happening anytime soon. I’ve grown accustomed to extreme expression — particularly when I’m behind the wheel of the car, driving my usual breakneck speed, and a PT Cruiser (i.e. mini-hearse) cuts in front of me only to putt along at a mere 25 mph. I’m getting road rage all over again just thinking about it.

Yep, I’m going to have to risk heart disease.