Eat Pretzels For Health

This picture was on the back of a vintage Dandee pretzel truck.

Is the white space on the pretzel dandy supposed to be his shirt? Or is it blank space, but you can't see the background through him so instead of blank space, maybe it's a whirling void? If you dive through it, do you enter a wormhole to another dimension? Or, just irritate the pretzel dandy? You'd likely dislodge his monocle. Oh my stars and garters, he would say. You've dislodged my monocle.

Have I mentioned I'm obsessed with old-tymey things/expressions from the late 1880s through the early 1910s? If I could, I would wear my hair like a Gibson girl and ride to all my appointments on a pennyfarthing.

Anyway, I think Cheez-Korn is my favorite of these three people, although his cornstalk penis makes me sort of uncomfortable. Also, why does he have sleeves and pant legs but no shoes? I think Pretzel Dandy is freaked out by Cheez-Korn and is about to poke him with his stick, which is pretty rude. Or maybe Cheez-Korn said something unflattering about Pretzel Dandy's potato wife, who after all is wearing a skirt and sleeves but no shirt. Also, Pretzel is the only snack with a human head.

Oh wait, it says they're a family. Which makes it even stranger that a human/pretzel hybrid and a potato woman produced a corn child. Although, I suppose he could be adopted.

Aren't you glad you stuck around for stuff like this? There are a couple more pictures of the truck starting here.

Briefly

One of you recommended this site to me a while ago. I thank you every day.

I Feel Like I've Said This Before, But Whatever.

So, posting may be pretty sporadic for a while. I have not been very good about it for a long time now, so this isn't really news, but I felt it was the responsible thing to let you know.

My boyfriend and I launched a web project last week, and no I am not going to say here what it is, not because it is such a big secret but because I like to keep that kind of thing separate from rants about Taylor Swift. Anyway, a number of people that read this website have either figured out who I am (because they know me) or I have told them (because I was drunk), so it's probably not all that important. I hardly care anymore, anyway. This is who I am and if someone figures out that I say the F word an awful lot, well then, so be it. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. There are many worse things to see on the Internet so if the F word knocks you off your lily pad, you have many other, much more devastating discoveries ahead of you.

So as it turns out, working on the Internet (um...not in the porn way) leaves you a lot less time to fool around on the Internet. The more I blogged, the less I had time to...blog? Also, I have been unemployed/underemployed since May. I was hired for a job that fell through, which sucked, and now Mommy needs to make money. It's one of life's sad and unavoidable truths.

And, sort of off-topic: A while ago I took down a lot of my archives from this site, 2003 through 2006 to be exact. And while I'm sure everyone regrets not having access to my infamous indictment of Aaron Gell's Elle cover story on Natalie Portman, it seemed like the right decision at the time. There was a period of a few weeks where I got some very random hate mail, the kind of stuff that um...probably everyone on the Internet has gotten at one time or another, but it bothered me enough to take part of my life off of the Internet. Then about nine months ago it happened again, and it made me...I guess take a look at what I am doing on this website and what I really want to get out of it. Also, if that was you and you are still reading...well, go fuck yourself, I suppose. THERE'S THAT WORD AGAIN.

Then there was the whole kerfluffle with The Blog That Shall Not Be Named, and that made me very pissed off at the Internet. Because I used to feel like...I don't know, like I had something in common with all these women who were blogging. But as with anything it comes down to a popularity contest. I mean I am no Internet pioneer by any stretch, but I've been doing this for six years and I've been a helpful and peaceable little cabbage, and I didn't deserve to get treated like fishwrap for stating an opinion. I just think that is some bullshit, if we're being real. I didn't grow up and graduate high school so that, at the age of 36, I could feel like I did in the tenth grade.

Yes, I have a complex about this.

So, back on topic, I guess? What I am trying to say is that maybe for the last several months I've just been taking a break all along, without knowing it. I still do enjoy the Twitter and of course I love...I love anyone who comments here (except that mean person...go suck an egg) and I love reading everyone else and I'm sure this isn't, you know, the end. I just haven't been making the time and I think maybe when you aren't making the time your subconscious is trying to tell you something.

Apparently my subconscious has also been telling me not to work out, but my subconscious and I, we're going to have a talk about that.

Don't delete me from your feed readers, I'm sure I'll have something ridiculous to say about television soon enough.

This Is Way Shorter Than It Could Be, For Everyone's Sake

I really just do not even know where to start.

(I can't post song lyrics on my blog, I just can't. It's yucky.)

I guess, first off, let's say this. I know it is not groundbreaking to not like Taylor Swift's songs. I know that songwriting allows for some creative license in terms of phrasing and accuracy, and I also know that she is a young girl who writes songs for young girls. I mean, when I was in 10th grade I thought "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles was the best song in the world. I had a whole daydream fantasy worked out where I would wear a super rad outfit from The Limited and Chad Rhodes would kiss me and then let me wear his leather bomber jacket, and "Eternal Flame" was the soundtrack to the whole scenario. So I get that some teenage girls are maybe not the most discriminating when it comes to music, but then I sort of wonder if maybe that's because most of them only hear crap music with crap lyrics like this. And you know, kudos I suppose to Taylor Swift who is obviously talented but maybe could use that talent to write way better songs. Because this one in particular is terrible.

The first thing that made my head explode was: "'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter." Uhhhhhh. I do not think Taylor Swift means to say that she couldn't go out with this boy because she was being publicly shamed for fornicating with another woman's husband. It is just so willfully ignorant of, oh I don't know, the last three to five hundred years of literature. There is also the persistent use of the phrase "my daddy," which...just...well.

So, anyway, then we have this image of...a princess? Or something? In any case a young girl and boy who meet at a party where there are ball gowns and then they instantly fall in love. Except they never see each other because her dad is mean, and she cries on the staircase, only sometimes they sneak out together, to the garden. During these times they don't speak to one another because they will be murdered if they're discovered. It's extremely dramatic. And for some reason it really pisses me off when she says, "This love is difficult...but it's RE-EAL!" Oh yeah, it's so difficult to sit silently next to someone in a garden and moon at them all night long after blatantly disobeying your father, who after all probably has good reason to forbid you from seeing a boy that throws pebbles at your window and wants you to sneak out at night.

Kids.

But the end of the song is the grossest part, because here is where all! Her problems! Are solved! With a ring! Just when she's starting to think -- hey this is sort of some bullshit, me sitting around being sad about a guy I'm not allowed to date and who never shows up to see me anyway, saving the pebble-throwing garden booty calls -- he fucking goes behind her back and, man to man, negotiates her release from her father. Good thing that's settled! And don't worry honey, pick out a white dress, I've saved you from being alone.

Vomit, okay? Just vomit. I realize this probably makes me a shitty person, to be so mean about a harmless little love song, but I really think the less a bunch of 15-year-olds listen to garbage like this, the better. I think 15-year-old girls are probably smarter than this song, and I think they deserve music that is way more rad.

Blogger, Please.

So yes, for those of you who asked, I do have my insurance coverage back. The bigger point of the story really is, "mail your shit in early." I find that avoids a lot of problems, just in general.

Hm, what else. Well, I'm working my little head off over here, mostly in segregation from the rest of humankind other than my boyfriend. So we joke that we've developed our own language, which mostly revolves around repeating the Mandarin word for "carrot," and that we probably shouldn't be allowed out in public. And yeah, hahaha and everything but also: probably sort of true.

Speaking of my boyfriend, he was sick for a few days last week. Not OMGSWINEFLU like everyone else, but a head cold, and we were pretty much shut-ins for most of the week. Him by necessity since he felt like crap and me by choice so I could take care of him and be a nice girlfriend but also, the better to stay away from the sneezing, snotting hordes of the general public. I haven't had my flu shot yet and this panics me in a way that I don't find completely sane or attractive, because there is nothing I hate more than those people who hear you are sick and instead of saying, "Oh, bummer, that sucks," they leap away from you and screech "EeeEEWWWWWW don't get me SICK!" Okay well don't shake my hand and stick your fingers in your mouth, then.

Except -- I have sort of become one of those people. I went to have dinner with my family Sunday night and I have a seven-year-old cousin, and god love him, but children are hotbeds of sickness, and I'm crossing my fingers that whatever little pathogens he may have brought home from the playground were good and dead by Sunday night. So far, so good...but I can't help but continue to view the world around me as a giant petri dish.

I have this post brewing in my head about how furious Taylor Swift's song lyrics make me, she sets the women's movement back to Lancelot and Guinevere, but I think it should just stay in my head. We're all safer that way, probably.

A Falsehood.

Allow me to tell you a little story about my health insurance.

So I'm still unemployed, or I guess you could say "underemployed," because I'm working but the pay is not steady or guaranteed or all that great. That means my health insurance is through COBRA, which allows people to continue the coverage they had with their employer.

Of course, this costs money. And really it is much easier to have COBRA this time around, at least a lot easier than it was the other time I was laid off. Now there are new laws in place that make it much more affordable (though for a shorter period of time). Still, it's much easier to keep it now. So that's nice. Also, there is a pretty long grace period in which to elect the coverage. So really, it's hard to fuck up keeping your coverage. I feel obligated to say that, because a lot of times people complain about shit that's their own fault.

I mean...I do that too, but this is different.

So, I didn't elect COBRA coverage right away because I wasn't sure I'd need it. But not having insurance is simply not an option for me, not after the infamous Gall Bladder Incident of '95, when on my SECOND DAY without health insurance, I suffered the first of a series of painful gallstone attacks, turned jaundiced and promptly needed surgery. This lesson, which cost many many thousands of dollars, is not one soon forgotten.

Finally last month it came time for me to elect the coverage or lose my chance, so I wrote a big fat check to An Insurance Company Which Shall Not Be Named and took it to the post office (this is important for later) two days before the required postmark date. Because here's the thing, if you want something postmarked with a specific date and you don't have access to a postage meter, you take it to the fucking post office. So I mailed it and then I went on vacation.

Periodically during vacation I would check my bank balance and it seemed awfully large. I chalked it up to bureaucratic inefficiency and didn't worry too much about why the insurance company hadn't cashed my check, but then the day after I got back from vacation I got a letter from them that said YOU ARE FUCKED. Actually it said my coverage had been cancelled due to non-payment. Which was just silly because I had taken that stupid check to the post office! Moreover...where was my check? Because if someone isn't going to cash it, and doesn't want any liability in relation to that uncashed check, shouldn't they mail it back? Or tear it up?

So I called The Insurance Company Which Shall Not Be Named and I inquired as to the cancellation and my check, which had to my knowledge been mailed in a timely fashion, with the required postmark. I said I wondered why my check hadn't been cashed? And the representative on the phone said, "Oh we kicked it back to you because it was late." And I said...but it wasn't really late, and no you didn't "kick it back" to me, because I don't have it. So then he said, "We destroyed it." Okay so...which one of those things was it, because those are two different courses of action which produce two different results. I was told to file an "appeal" over fax, which sounds to me like something very much designed to not get anywhere. But I did it and I waited...

And waited. And then one day not long ago I checked my bank balance and the check had cleared.

How...

...mysterious!

The check had maaaaagically been cashed, this incredible check that had been mailed back to me and then destroyed. What a talented and unusual check that was, that check should probably be in a fucking museum somewhere. Don't you think? Because the only other explanation is that someone lied about that check. Because...if they destroyed it...then how would they have it...to cash it...only after I complained?

I guess the lesson here is to never take no for an answer. Particularly if you feel you are being screwed.

A Belated Project Runway Post.

Uh-oh, someone's starting to look like the Jeffrey Sebelia of this season.

"Yeah, I just got word that I'm better than everyone else? Like, not even on this show but in general."

Okay, so that's not a real quote, but I think it's fair to say Irina wouldn't have a problem with the gist of that statement.

The other day I was watching the latest episode of Project Runway on my DVR and I started to get very tired of hearing Irina take haughty, gorgeous, shiny-haired shits on everyone. Nicholas does it too, but he's funny. Also he has no problem admitting other people are talented. Irina refuses to believe she exists in a universe where this is even possible.

Also, she's "not here to make friends." SURPRISE.

I am a little surprised that Shirin got kicked off rather than Christopher. I like Christopher, but he designed a pair of silver Little Bo Peep hot pants. Actually I think this is exactly the kind of garment Christina Aguilera would have no problem wearing, but I guess she was having more of a VH1 Divas moment than a Lady Marmalade moment. Divas! Who can predict what they'll do next.

In other reality show news...I am praying for the day Robin gets kicked off Top Chef. Not because I have strong feelings about her one way or another, though she is a little annoying, but because the pack behavior toward her makes me uncomfortable. At this point Eli and Mike Bugeyes have to be grinding their teeth into ineffectual nubbins over the fact she is still on the show; undoubtedly at some point next week we'll hear one of them lament that "more talented people" have gone home.

But that is a stupid thing to be mad about, because why would you be bummed about the competition being eliminated? Actually Mike Bugeyes and Eli should be ecstatic Robin is still there. Presumably they will outlast her, whereas the lamented "more talented" cast members might actually challenge them for primacy, something these sad little men obviously can't bear to contemplate. I don't hear Jennifer or Kevin or the Robot Brothers crying about it, probably because they are quite comfortable with their chances of winning. Of course...the Robot Brothers are not known to experience emotion, so maybe that's it. Maybe they have no access to an Inadequacy Chip that would tell them how to behave.