Attention: Doomsday Cults

I know there's a fair share of rants around about it already, but wtf is up with the Snuggie?  (Go.  Watch the commercial.  Be as mesmorized as I am.)

First, check out the poetic rhetoric of the ad:

You want to keep warm when you’re feeling chilled,

but you don’t want to raise your heating bill.

Blankets are okay, but they can slip and slide,

and, when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside.

The last two lines are my main issue with the product. 

1) Blankets slip and slide.  I've used a lot of blankets in my life, and they don't look like this.  They're not made of plastic material or the garbage bag nightmare Missy Elliot used to wear.  They're not vinyl or slick or slippery.  They're cotton.  Lightweight cotton.

2) When you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside.  Blankets also don't look like this.  Now, I get that the lady featured in the commercial is getting up in years, but she's no Golden Girl.  The mere prospect of having to push aside a layer of cotton - lightweight cotton - shouldn't be putting a stress on those tender wrist muscles. 

The Snuggie's implicit slogan is now this: Snuggie - 'Cause Blankets are Heavy and Shit.

Really, America?  Really?  Are we so weak and lazy as to not want to have to take our tiny frozen paws out of a layer of thin fabric for the half second it takes to pick up the phone?  Could we not also choose to ignore the call, as it's probably a creditor about to bust your ass for a recent pyramid scheme purchase of Snuggies?  Is that not what caller ID was invented for?

Okay, so blankets are now a "hard-to-use" product?  It's not a Rubik's Cube, people.  It's not brain science.  It's basic gravity: If you sit up, you don't even have to lift that shit away.  Gravity's gonna go and take care of that for you by pulling the blanket down off your princess-and-the-pea hands.  No fuss, no muss.  Just set it and forget it, babies.

So we're being pandered to like a pack of morons.  That's not the only freaky part this product has to offer.  What about the impact on your sex life?  "Self-love" is impossible in a product like this.  The new poem could be: Snuggies are great, but they conceal and hide.  And when you want to reach yourself, your junk is trapped inside.  Lifting up the Snuggie from the bottom like a dress seems like a violation of the product's terms of use (you'll most certainly lose heat that way.)  But that's not all.  Watch as the Snuggie commercial pans through the family.  Mom and Dad play a game in their Snuggies.  Grandpa sits alone eating popcorn.  Daughter sits alone reading.  Obviously, Ma and Pa were able to sublimate their sexual urges into a game of checkers, but check out Grandma.  She's holding a baby on her lap, and the voiceover says, "You can snuggle your baby in your arms."  Your baby.  Not your grandbaby.  Ah, here's the rub.  Get over the fact that it looks like Grandma's the one in the swaddling, and you realize that at her geriatric age, the Snuggie has actually reheated her ovaries into producing functional-temp eggs again.  An 80-year-old has had a baby...because of the Snuggie.  Doesn't that seem like a dangerous age at which to pop out another biscuit?  Whose gonna care for that child when you fall down some stairs, break a hip, and can't reach your med-alert necklace because it's "trapped inside" of your Snuggie, Grams?  Not me, that's who.

If you're not already sold off this simply unsellable product, consider the following pictures of doomsday cults.

These guys in NYC look awfully snug, too.

What about our friendly folks in Tokyo?  Doesn't their outfit look suspiciously similar to a Snuggie?

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with looking like the Summer Snuggie version of these guys:

But when you're resembling the two more pernicious packs of Doomsday cults above them, maybe it's time to get out of the game...or to start advertising closer to your niche market.

The point to me is: people wearing snuggies look like they're a step away from drinking the Koolaid and hopping on the spaceship.  Is this really the fashion message you want to send at your kids soccer game?  Snuggies may make punching the other team's kid's soccer mom in the face easier, but blood isn't easy to wash out of fleece, people.  Believe you me, I've tried.

Currently Once: Music from the Motion Picture By Original Soundtrack see related

Eff you, Craig.

So it's been a few years, and I'm no longer the fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked college undergrad I once was.  Now I'm the disenfranchised, unemployed graduate student living in one of the poorest states in the nation during major recession depression.  I've got an apartment whose shower wall is so ridden with rot, it's starting to grow a full-blown Porky's-style glory hole.  There's an unidentifiable leak that drips water down my "office" door, making me an official pots-and-pans-on-the-floor cliche.  The other day, one worker fixing the A/C in my crawlspace actually literally fell through my ceiling, making the claim "cracker-thin walls" legitimate.  And I pay $500 a month for these priviledges, though I've considered cutting my A/C and electric altogether to pursue a kiddy-pool and candles kind of summer.  I'm living off of Girl Scout Cookies, the ones that wouldn't sell so they had to be shipped out by a kind almost aunt-in-law for free.  Lemonades and Daisy-Go-Rounds, anyone?  I am officially the kind of poor they call "dirt" and am hoping for my "Yes, We Can" to kick in any day now.  Any day.

And since that dead old doucebag Emerson once said, "...when a man or woman is driven to the wall, the chances of integrity are frightfully diminished," I'd like to prove him right and start a rumble.  With who?  With you, Craig, and your fucking scam of a list. 

Who me? 

Yes, Craig, with you, though my beef isn't technically with your invention, which was meant to be "a means of better connecting to people by letting them know about cool or useful events happening around San Francisco."  I get that the 90's were a euphoric time where you could "surf" around without "protection" and you wouldn't end up with a "virus" or an obligation to make breakfast the morning after.

But still, man, someone's got to be at the end of my pointing finger, and it might as well be the man the list is named after.  You hang out with some unscrupulous muthas, Craig.  I've met "Dan Mark" from Denmark who wants me to tutor his seven-year-old son in English as long as I'm willing to pay the nanny from the larger "cheque" he'll cut me.  I've met the Dianes and the Elizabeths and the Debras who claim to be desperate for an office assistant (something that, with five years experience, I'm fully qualified to do) but then want me to fill out their quick "online app" which sells my email to Wal-Mart, Parents Magazine, Free Auto Quotes, Brazilian Girls Pet Camels, and TimeWarner Books all in the five second interval since I've started this post.

Is this what's happening in SanFran, Craig?  I find these events neither cool NOR useful, but I do find preying on the American Poor© a pretty ignominous (the kids say "shady") occupation.  I've already got an involuntary glory hole in my apartment, Craig, and I don't need you double dicking me through it by claiming to raise my bank balance while instanteously just raising my spam count.  (Though I've heard the Yellow-5 in Mountain Dew can help to lower spam count, so I've been guzzling that shit like water.)

Don't the unemployed have more important things to do, Craig, what with the job-hunting and the cleaning up after wet dreams about OddTodd, than to have to choke down your stale spam?  I believe we do.  Haven't we all had enough fun scamming the poor already?  It's like peeing on the littlest kid in class, Craig. Does Gary Coleman really deserve any more golden showers than he's already shelled out his last shiny nickles for? 

Here's my scam, Craig.  Let's mess with the rich a bit.  Let's get together, as a list, and sugar some Hummer gas tanks.  Let's offer them a 10 year old Indian boy and really ship them a 40 year old White woman.  Let us fill the inboxes of anyone who believes wal-marts sell walls with some grade-A, gourmet, caviar-quality spam.  I know, Craig, it's a hard job to pick on the Monty Maxxes and Uncle Pennybags of the world, but I'm in an Obama state of mind, and I'm thinking it's time for my Yes We Can to kick in right now.  Right NOW, Craig.  Your move, dude.

Currently Reading A Dame to Kill For (Sin City, Book 2: Second Edition) By Frank Miller see related

Ding Dong, My Blog is Dead.

Okay, not literally.  Put away your black pansies and pull back up your mourning veils.  

But there are currently more bats in my belfry than there are Snakes on a Plane.

You know that old phrase, "A family is a dictatorship with every member ruled by the sickest one"? 

Well, the matriach is on her deathbed and it's bringing the Hulls to their genetically similar knees.  Now, I don't mean this in any sort of a cruel way.  She was no Flowers in the Attic kind of grandmother, feeding us cookies baked with the secret ingredients of Love and Arsenic.  But neither was she your Give me your fraying, your tattered skirts and I will crochet them together again kind of dame.  She was just an old Pollack who held her family together the only way she knew how - the ties that bind. 

It doesn't help that my family has a long, bizarre, history with death.

I had a cousin (whom I'd never met) die while reaching across his car to grab a pack of cigarettes.  In order that the family pay him a truly Egyptian homage, someone slipped a pack o' cigs into his front jacket pocket as he lay in the casket during the viewing.

My Uncle Wesley (whom I don't remember meeting, being as I was two when he died), was killed in a crash in his private plane.  Spectators to the falling aircraft called police who then, assuming it was a prank, promptly ignored the call (dating his death firmly in a pre-9/11 America).  Days later, when his burnt body was pulled from the wreckage and buried, my family displayed a prime macabre irony as they had the figure of a plane chiseled onto his gravestone.

And now, my grandmother is falling apart.  It's not funny, but it is literal.  She has become riddled with MERCA.  I couldn't tell you what all it stands for, but its meaning is essentially "antibiotic-resistant infection."  It is, I kid you not, gangrene.  My grandmother is dying of swamp foot.  Her toes are turning black and falling off of her body.  I thought these things only happened in WWI movies. 

But my grandmother, classy lady that she is, is going out with style.  Piece by piece.  And my family has gone to pieces.  My Uncle Chuck (who, if you've read previous posts, you may remember as the OCD-plagued dinosaur dung collector) has retreated into his private Taj Mahal that he is building a la Virginia Beach.  My Aunt Donna holds bedside vigil and my Uncle Will has only recently joined the circus.  My father spent days states away from his law office scheduling a hospice nurse for my grandmother which my incoherent grandfather promptly cancelled as soon as Nanny was delivered via ambulance.

And they all fret and bray like a troop of wounded circus animals and I wait at home, emotionless.  This is, after all, the woman who told me my father's domestic abuse was "none of my business."  This is the women who, when we'd come to visit, would refer to us, the black sheep grandchildren of the black sheep child, as "You People."  This is the women who slaved for hours over a hot oven making the best nutroll, vegetable soup and meatloaves you ever ate - and didn't hesitate to guilt you for it.

This is my grandmother, dying.

I'm not handling it well, mostly because I'm not handling it at all.  I'm going into my father's office to work while he's going into an even hotter state to deal with the details of what happens when Marie Hull (formerly of the Novaks) goes cold at age 85.  I'm bitter that my last week before college will be spent answering phones and packing up file boxes.  I'm disappointed in my selfishness at being bitter.  I'm frightened of seeing my grandmother packed up in a box.  I'm not sad.  Not yet.  I'm stressed. 

In the immortal words of Brittany - "So...feeling bad...about not feeling worse...is good?"  Man, I hope so.  Because right now, atleast feeling guilt over not feeling sad is keeping me from feeling crazy.

Pardon the intermitent absences during these times of familial insanity.

Currently Watching American Beauty By Kevin Spacey, Thora Birch see related

Occupational Hazards

"...my job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off, while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble hell." ~Lester Burnham, American Beauty

Tyler Durden did it.  Lester Burnham did it.  Hell, even Milton did it.

Face it, the American office job often makes us want to turn the switch from Drone to Kill. 

I could try to puzzle out all the reasons why jobs suck, but the Dilbert creator makes a pretty sweet living off of doing just that, and far be it from me to tangle with the big dogs. 

Suffice it to say that I think it's something like the Clerks guidance counselor phenomenon.  For the poorly educated, in Clerks numero uno, there is a scene where a high school guidance counselor comes in to the Quick Stop.  Said counselor proceeds to take eggs and smash them up against the glass of the freezer section, frustrated that he can't find a perfect dozen.  A woman explains the phenomenon as "Shell Shock," a condition that only happens to someone when their job is thoroughly meaningless.

And, for most of us, let's face it.  Our job is pretty pointless. 

Kahlil Gibran said to perform every job (from artist to cook to what-have-you) as though you were performing that job for your lover.  But then, Gibran wasn't a product of middle management.

I myself work under three bosses.  One of which is incredible and kind.  She is overworked and underpaid and amounts to not much more than a glorified secretary.  I am the secretary's assistant.  Above my immediate supervisor is the assistant director.  She, too, is overworked.  She comes in even when it's not paid.  She has a great sense of humor and is always laughing.  That is, when she's here, which isn't as often as my supervisor.  Then, there's the director of where I work.  She Never comes in.  She's paid to delegate all the work she could do to Asst. Director who delegates it to Supervisor who delegates it to Me.

And I'm the schmuck making a buck over minimum wage to do all this stuff.  Now, granted, I don't do everything.  I open and close, I lock up and shut down.  I file, I answer phones, I enter data like nobody's business.  I calculate all the hours for the yearly report, but I am not high enough in status to write the yearly report.  I am, in layman's terms, a gopher.  As it should be.  I'm a student worker paying no federal taxes.  I live off the land. 

And I like what I do.  I live in utter chaos in my own home (cds and dvds scattered to the four corners of the floor, laundry piled to the stature of Mount Vesuvius.)  I like the mindless numbing of tedium.  I crave alphabetizing.  I have organized and reorganized our filing system.  After I "crunch the numbers," I like to blow on my fingers like I have just shot an imaginary gun.  Am I a dork?  Yes.

Do I want to go to work?  Hell no.

Work isn't the place where I gain any kind of personal satisfaction.  My first job consisted of working in a nursing home.  It was the job that scared me into wanting to go to college.  My grades were fairly mediocre at that point in high school, and I was thinking of persuing immediate work force action.  But then, I went to Manor Care every day for the dinner shift.

I worked in the kitchen and came home feeling like I'd worked in roofing.  My back was sore.  My feet were tired.  My mind was so numb from lack of use that it actually hummed. 

I learned several key lessons at this job, though:

1. I can't do this all of my life. 

2. Shasta cans explode when you put them through the 300 degree dish washer.

3. I can't do this all of my life.

4. Old ladies are not above knife fights in the cafeteria.  Sure, it's about stuff as stupid as one lady not moving her walker for the other lady.  Sure, their only ammo is butter knives.  Still.

5. I never want to go to a nursing home.  Nurses park the screamers in front of walls and ignore them all day.  The old smell like fecal matter that's spawned armpits under which they pour deoderant and baby powder.  The kitchen staff will send you the desert plate regardless of whether your ticket says diabetic or not.  They'll also send you the sharp metal utensils (though they're supposed to use plastic) if you're on suicide watch.  They will throw away (after playing with) old dentures you leave on your tray. 

6. I can not do this all of my life.

Fortunately, I didn't have to.  The food service company that kept me under its employ went out of business.  I went from one extreme to the other - from seniors to toddlers.  I began my new life as a toy peddler. 

A toy store is its own seperate bunch of bullshit.  Here's a hint to parents out there - a toy store is not a free babysitting service.  If you set your child down in said store and then you wander off to drool at the new cell phones in Radio Shack, I will not know where your child has gone to when you come back.  You say she's about ye high?  And she had pigtails?  And osh-kosh-by gosh on?  Well, you've just described all of my clientele.  Why don't you just pick up any of the ones left pissing on the carpets.  (True.)  You can begin yours and their life anew.  Be a better parent this time.

Then, this toy store went out of business. 

Then, I just applied to a clothing store.  Shortly after receiving my application, it went out of business.  I was beginning to feel like the Corporate Angel of Death.  It was hell on my References section, I can tell you that.

Finally, I began employ at Best Buy.  Where they care about customers.  Or, you know, just customer's money.  They called their checkout "The Front Lines."  It makes sense, as you were expected to batter every buyer who came through your line.  At one point, I was expected to suggestive-sell four items to every consumer who came through my aisle. 

1. Your item comes with a Best Buy warantee called a PRP (Product Replacement Plan).  It's only $Rip0.ff much.  Would you like it?

2. Do you need a Best Buy gift card for anything you might have missed during your shopping today?

3. I see you've purchased a media item (cd, dvd, etc.)  Would you like to sign up for a free (strings attached) trial of Entertainment Weekly or Sports Illustrated with today's purchase?

4. We now offer a Best Buy Rewards card.  For every million dollars you spend, you'll earn a penny.  It's a great value.  Would you like to sign up?

Every time we forced one of these spectacularly stupid ripoffs down the throat of one of the unsuspecting, we were to page a code number across the store for the manager to come congratulate us.  He never came.

The point is, all jobs are pointless.  Doctors?  Not so much.  Firefighters?  Huh-uh.  Retail and Clerical?  So soul-sucking you almost won't feel like touching yourself to remove the sting of medocrisy when you get home.  Almost.

Why do I rehash the obvious?  Because tomorrow, I go back to work for Beelzebub.  Only, B. will never actually come into the office.  He'll just leave me to do all the paperwork and take all of his complaints.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that B. is my father?  The man I didn't speak to for almost two years?

And the last time I did this, it turned out horribly?

You can't sure as hell bet I won't be whistling on my way to paralegal temping.  I'll most likely be missing the old folks.  And the screeching children.  And even the bullshit bureacracy of Best Buy.  If you will, wish me luck.  I am going to need it.  In spades.

Currently Reading Collected Poems By Philip Larkin see related

And Now for Something Completely Ridiculous

After yesterday's pity party (and much thanks to everyone who commented - everyone gave me great perspective into that little diatribe), I thought I'd put something absolutely abominable. 

For the first time, I tried to do a CreativeWriting104 challange.  It came out as just about the silliest thing I've ever written, but I thought, what the hell.  In the name of posterity, here is the ode to the mole on my foot.

Podiatry

Compare it to

a tiny brown

moon which will not

ever come in

crescent. Say it

is the distant

cousin of the

dalmation. Ye

damned spot even

Ms. Macbeth could

not remove. Or

could it be the

aerial view

of one small (read

microscopic)

coffee cup?  It

sits on my foot

like an eye that

walks.  It looks in

my brown eyes and

says, Do not let

the scalpel breathe

on me.  I lie

lonely but for

toes who do not

speak my language. 

I do not know

how I speak the

language of my

body’s parts (so

fluent in flaw.) 

My thighs, you know

they snicker each

time I tongue kiss

cake.  Even my

fingernails dread

being bitten.

But, right on my

right foot (the one

I often put in-

side of my mouth)

it does all the

talking.  It says,

I build up your

character.  I

make you whole as

human.  I say,

But I put words

inside your non-

existent mouth.