Soccer Mom Tastes

If someone asked me to make a playlist for Soccer Moms I'd be sure to include little ditties like Marilyn Manson's "You, Me, and the Devil Makes 3," Korn's "Freak on a Leash," and Revolution Mother's "Switchblades and Urethane," just to name a few. I can say this because I used to ref soccer. Soccer Moms and Dads alike would spit out their car windows at me after a game as 14 year old me would walk out of the park.

According to the actual "Soccer Mom Chillout" iTunes Essentials Mix, I not only missed the campaign to clean up the Soccer Mom image, but apparently have become one as I like most of the songs listed.

The most random song on there that I still have trouble associating with "Soccer Mom"? Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" underneath The Basics tab.

Burqini

Perhaps when some people look at Ahiida's line of Burqinis they see women's oppression. When I look at Burqinis I see SPF 50+ protection and zero body issues when I'm swimming out to the end of OB's pier with my pal, Lauri.

(Thanks for the tip, L)

Pedi-Unique

Dear Amazon,

The lead picture on this product is not selling me on it.

Regards,
Kellinahandbasket

Relationship Saver #2

We just got a Roomba. And last night we cracked open a beer, turned off the TV, sat on the couch, and watched it work its magic.

Relationship saver #1? The Garmin Nuvi.

I'm anxiously awaiting Relationship saver #3, the Pooba, which will clean your lover's skid marks the toilet for you.

A Creationist Christmas

In case you're still looking for gift ideas...
Update: This item is sold out.

Side note: I'm probably way late on the pickup, but I've heard all this buzz about Etsy. And while I'm not a big shopper, I could spend hours looking at all the cute, weird, and awesome handmade things for sale here.

Black Friday Tips

I, myself, am not a huge ebay fan, but I know others who swear by it to get the biggest bargains there ever were. Well, ebay bargain hunters, your bargains may have just gotten better.

I recently came across a site called Auction Intelligence whose schtick is to find misspelled or mistyped listings--the theory being that very few bids will be placed on that item since the people using a normal search won't be necessarily landing on the same search results. There's a little mistrust on my part of a seller who can't spell...for some reason I suspect a bad speller might not get my item shipped to me in a timely manner, but the truth is I know A LOT of bad spellers who are more responsible than me. I mean, if the bad speller seller is misspelling like crazy and mentions that his uncle in Burkina Faso has esophageal cancer, you might want to exercise a little caution and pass that one up. Otherwise I like the idea.

And if you know you're going to be giving restaurant gift certificates, don't even think about purchasing them until you've checked Restaurant.com first. I don't understand how it's possible to buy a $10 gift certificate for $3 or a $25 gift certificate for $10, but I won't ask questions. Some of the restaurants in, say, Cincinnati or San Diego seem kind of random in there, but there are also a few gems (whose certificates sell out fast--I guess they're allotted a certain number per month). Best advice there is not to wait if you see a deal, even if you're getting it for yourself.

Now back to my Palm Springs getaway...

My Long Awaited Amazon Package Arrived...

and it looks like they took awesome care of it:

Just When You Thought

White Castle couldn't get any worse, there are these.

Moo

Finally. I found something cool AND productive to do with all that photography over on my Flickr account. Introducing, Moo. This London based company lets you directly access your photo account (which eliminates the hassle of uploading), select and crop your picks, and then print them on cards half the size of your average business card; complete with all the info you wish to include on the back. I just received my pack (within four days!) and people, they are NICE. Thick. Awesomely unique. And affordable. They use recycled material, but be forewarned that the satiny finish doesn't agree with most pens in the event you want to include some spur-of-the-moment extra info on it. Thin Sharpies do the trick, I've found.

Moo currently only works with Flickr, Fotolog, Bebo, or Habbo but I suspect they'll expand. I've been cutting slits into the card stock I use for sending thank yous to my potential employers to hold the card (much like the example in their blog); we'll see if that touch helps me out any...I've been going through the interviewing gauntlet more recently.

Symptoms of a Larger Problem

An impending trip back to the Nasty this week gave reason to go wallet shopping today to replace the crap that was my Kate Spade wallet (perhaps her trademark gazillion dollar nylon products are better...NEVER buy or accept Kate Spade leather). And wallet shopping gave reason to sanitize all the contents of my wallet with a good alcohol swabbing. Credit cards. IDs. Maybe even my loose change. Which maybe even led to my cell phone. And keys. For the heck of it I took the Q-tips to the scissors as well.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't playing the scenario out in my head: I walk in the airport entrance, searching for my ticket counter when an investigative news report team stops me and asks to swab my aforementioned items for germs. You know these guys--the ones with the local news teasers in commercial breaks warning, "You THINK you are smart because you do/eat/buy ________, but you will not BELIEVE how we've uncovered how dumb and wrong you are. Tonight at 11." So they're swabbing, thinking they're going to uncover how I'm actually a non-glove-wearing proctologist for Satan, but then their special, speedy petri dishes reveal not one. single. microbe or bacterium. And they're all like, "Unbelievable! We've tested 9 billion people and you're the only one with these results!" And then I'm all like, "That's right. I'm CLEAN."

Hershey's Milk Chocolate Lip Balm & Other Candies Turned Balm

(April 17, 2006)
I can't say candy cigarettes led me to pick up a real pack of tobacco, but I can say with 100% certainty that Hershey flavored lip balm would lead me to pick up a real bar of Hershey chocolate within a half hour of application.

The power of suggestion, people, in full effect right here.

Related posts: Labello

Things I'll Miss From Germany: Labello

(April 13, 2006)


I don't know if I believe in all that marriage stuff where they say, "When you find the right person you just KNOW." But I do believe it applies to lip balm.

Much like every other adolescent, I noticed a "change" in my body...my lips became chapped and it was time to get yet another product in stick form for yet another part of my body. And what do you know then? I thought chapstick was chapstick so I didn't pay much attention to my choices. What was a generic Kroger brand cherry stick one weekend and a Carmex jar, the next? Take care of your needs, right? Well, it wasn't until a random flirtation with a friend's medicated Blistex that I realized that maybe all lip balms weren't the same. In retrospect I realized that Kroger chapstick wasn't a stretch from using a taper candlestick. It was that waxy. Plus it seemed to have a weird curdling reaction in really cold weather. And the Carmex jar? Despite its being "For-Cold-Sores" I was lucky I came out of that experience without the herp considering how many people's fingers dipped into that jar. I liked the way Blistex made my lips feel. They tingled for minutes after I parted ways with it.

Anyhow, time passed. And even though I settled on an old ChapStick SPF 4 for a while, I still experimented with others here and there in search of my Blistex. Burt's Beeswax came close to fulfilling that void. But oh! the fantasies I'd have about bringing the medicated Blistex to my lips instead of the flavor of the week...Why didn't I just go out and get the Blistex? You know how it is: balms come and go. One turns up in an old coat, another when you're cleaning out the car, and another in your laundry. Or your Avon-selling aunt won't stop gifting Avon chapsticks with mini calendars on them for every damn holiday there ever was. So now, you see, this surplus of lip care doesn't justify going out and getting a new one. These half-used ones need to be finished. They need closure. And I became afraid that I over-idealized my first experience with Blistex.

Several moves later I suppose I dumped all my old chapsticks, though I suspect that I may have stored them away in a squirrelly fashion, to be refound at a later date. All I know is I ended up co-habitating with the owner of a Blistex. And I was happy. Content. A peacefulness in my lip care washed over me. We brought Blistex to Germany and lost it from time to time, but with holidays came more Avon mini calendar sticks to create the surplus problem again. Right about the time when our American friend's recent Labello purchase caught my eye...ipod-ish with its sleek design and curves, and Italian-sounding name, I was curious. But I didn't dare buy it. Again, not a fan of wasting.

But with our impending move to San Diego, I broke down and got one. I cheated, I guess you could say, but the Blistex was always at Ryan's work and I couldn't handling the blandness of the Avon mini calendar stick. If nothing else it just reminded me how long I had gone without lip love. And I'm glad I broke down because aside from the stick design and name, the lip care formula, itself, turns out to be amazing. This is what lip care should feel like. Too many other formulas feel like they're simply smothering your lips with wax and you develop a dependency on them, but this feels like natural moisture and I like that I don't need the tingle thing to feel that. It helps my lips be what they naturally are without the dependency. And while the Avon mini calendar attempts to be a neutral flavor/aroma unisex lip balm product, theirs is just gross and smells like plastic in wax form going on your lips. Labello isn't scent-free, but is a vanilla or aloe-vera scent at best. Nothing dramatic, which I like as well.

Turns out, others agree. And while I'm happy to see it's available on Amazon, the slightly different label makes me wonder if it's a slightly different formula in the States much like Coca-Cola isn't quite the same in Europe as it is in the States. It's certainly cheaper in Europe...

Happily every after,
Lakello

Related Posts: Hershey's Milk Chocolate Lip Balm

Free Sharpie!

I *know* I have readers in the US that might be interested in getting their hands on a free Sharpie, even if it's a mini.

Now all we need to do is get the people at Pilot to give away my favorite writing tool of all time...the Pilot Precise Rolling Ball V5. I also see that Pilot has developed the Precise Zing, which has an "Airplane Safe Writing System for smooth writing at any altitude." Interesting because the V5 *has* exploded on me aboard Aer Lingus (my favorite airline name for various reasons that are easy to guess), and it wasn't pretty.

Wait, I'm confused...

Are you supporting the Lance Armstrong Foundation, our troops, Katrina relief, Jesus, or Live, Laugh, Believe?

Map Shopping

Who knew it could be so hard? As far as cartography goes, we're still as clueless as when we thought the world was flat. We grew up on Mercator Projection maps, which major map companies like Rand McNally and Hammond still publish despite their distortion of country sizes and shape. Imagine how a larger than life or pea-sized United States of America might affect, for instance, an American's patriotism. Based on this map, though, I'm surprised Greenlanders haven't been a little headier.

Then came the Peters Projection map which attempts to correct the distortion and in turn our impressions. But this wasn't working out so alternatives to both have come up, though the trick to the Upside-down map is realizing that they're not saying, "Fuck this crazy map debate," rather, "We, on the Southern Hemisphere are the ones who are right-side up."

Ryan and I, however, are saying, "F*** this crazy map debate," and probably opting for a globe that allows us to put on our beer goggles so that we can see the world as a beautiful beautiful place.

Express Lane Combinations

A friend of mine used to be a cashier at the grocery store and when I asked her what the weirdest combination of items was that she scanned, she said without hesitation, "Neosporin and Cheetos."

So Ryan and I have been thinking of funny combinations including:

1. Five bottles of Coke and some Fruity Pebbles
2. Five 2-liters of Mountain Dew, some diapers, and a road map
3. A pack of mild Italian sausages and a tub of vaseline
4. Habanero peppers and Preparation-H
5. Vaseline, Preparation-H, and a mop
6. A can of Pork 'n Beans and a lighter
7. A pack of suet (because you just reeeeally want to feed the birds)
   

It's by no means a novel exercise and seems to fall into various categories of humor...mostly bathroom and sexual. Though I think Preparation-H or ointments in general could hold their own category. I just like the non-verbal stories they tell.

Big Boys Balloons

I'm confused. I'm not sure if there's an innuendo here or not. Something tells me that these guys are actually innocently selling big balloons. (be sure to browse the photos)

How NOT to do Business

Fire Hazard
You have to wonder what the insurance company is thinking when I walk out of their office with a box of matches advertising themselves...renter or home owner's insurance, anyone?

The Fox Blocker

Thank God. While I'd love to hijack everyone's TV and install this, I think we should start by marketing these toward gyms and autoshop waiting rooms...

Categories: Politics, Links/Miscellaneous