Netflix

                                                  

     The company is clearly on a mission to ensure that I don't achieve anything in life.  If I had been a subscriber as an undergraduate, there is a possibility that I would not have gotten my Bachelor's Degree.  I'd either be still in pursuit of a baccalaureate or I may have withdrawn from the university altogether. As soon as I think I'm done with Netflix, up pops some other documentary, foreign film, chick flick, rom-com, or television show that I add to my Instant Queue.  I can't get anything done.  I can't be an agent of social change.  I can't make the world a better place.  Netflix takes up so many hours of my day, sometimes I barely do anything productive.  I still bathe, of course, but even personal hygiene might be compromised if it weren't for the fact that I stream Netflix on my iPad while I'm in the bathtub (I'm a Windows person, but God Bless Apple's long-lasting batteries). 

        After seeing the other day that they had all seasons of Ren & Stimpy, I finally gave up.  After months of fighting it, Ren & Stimpy was the last straw.  I have no choice but to succumb to the Power of Netflix.

Cotton Commercials: A Waste of Money

I've been seeing these "The touch, the feel of cotton" commercials since I was a kid.  And even then, I thought it was a total waste of money.  I don't see it as an investment.  Seriously, have these commercials ever made anyone run out and buy cotton products?  I mean, other than the ones that the viewer was going to buy anyway?  I get what the message is; it's in the tagline: "The fabric of our lives."  We use cotton products all the time.  T-shirts, bedsheets, cotton balls, Kleenex, denim, et cetera et cetera et cetera.  However, I'd wager that not a single purchase of any of these cotton-based items was ever a result of these commercials or their cute little Cotton song (many versions of which are not even remotely pleasing to the ear.)  And even if some idiots did buy cotton solely based on some commercial, I bet that this number was infinitesimal and therefore wasn't profitable for the bigwigs of the cotton industry. 

People have been buying jeans since Levi Strauss invented them.  People are not buying jeans because some 30-second advertisement made us exclaim, "Dude!  I gotta go shopping!  There is so much shit that comes from cotton!  It's... man, it's the muthafuckin FABRIC OF OUR LIVES, bro!  That shit blows my mind!" 

Is it cool that cotton serves so many purposes?  Yes.  Are these commercials necessary to keep the industry afloat?  Um, no.  The only reason they would need to show these ads would be if me and my people (the Blacks) got together and decided to boycott cotton because our ancestors had to pick it, so the industry started losing money.  I am not an angry Negress and will organize no such boycott, nor would most people participate in one.  But I digress (as usual). 

Bottom line, the commercials are a waste of time and dollars.  Nowadays, people are worried about their food, not about cotton.  I'm not concerned about finding traces of E. coli  in my white tee.

This commercial is the worst one I found.  Not only is it more boring than the other videos that came up in my search, but this particular version of the cotton jingle is sung by Aaron Neville.  I hate his voice more than people hate Fran Drescher's laugh.  Watch the offender below:

My Aussie Friend

I met a nice girl a few weeks ago.  She volunteers at the same place that I do, and we met at training.  We were the only young people there, and we bonded over our youth and boredom and current unemployment.  Anyway, we hung out and had a good time.  I never want this blog to be like a diary (I have a separate book where I record all my "today what happened was..." and all my deep stuff.  This blog is supposed to just be my opinions, nothing too deep).  So forgive me for telling you a "What happened on this day," journal-type of story but I just HAVE to write this here.  Ok, so me and the girl from Australia are hanging out and talking, and then somehow meat comes up.  So naturally, bacon (arguably the most divinely inspired of all man's creations.  Forget the Sistine Chapel) comes up in the discussion.  She was talking about how differently bacon is cut in Australia, and that one year her husband (who is Italian but grew up in Germany. Cool, huh?) wanted to try some.  So, this is what she did:

She smuggled bacon in her suitcase.  She smuggled bacon into another country, and risked getting into trouble with customs.  You can't bring food into another country, especially of you are traveling by airplane.  But she risked it all for her husband.  To bring the joy of bacon to her spouse.  And she packed, as she described, "kilos" of it.  Like criminals measure out their cocaine.  Only she had kilos of bacon.  Gotta love the metric system.


It was at that point in our three-hour talk that I knew she and I would get along just fine. 

The end of the world is nigh

A true sign of the Apocalypse.  (Click on hyperlink to witness the horror that awaits you)

Kill me now. 

I'm going to test The Fiance' and ask him if he'd still marry me if I were to wear those to our wedding.  If he says yes, I will forever question his standards and his sanity.

Two choices: Be a conformist or an asshole

Despite my love of toilet humor and swear words (among other inappropriate, non-ladylike things), I am actually quite cultured and shit.  Whenever I am attending a play, an opera, a ballet, an orchestra performance, etc., of course there is the arrival of the denoument/climax and the standing ovation that almost always follows the conclusion of the performance.  I hate the unspoken but very real taboo that can come with remaining in your seat while everyone else in the audience rises and gives a thunderous applause that reverberates around the entire building, sometimes even throwing in a few "Encore!s" for good measure.  I always give praise when praise is due, and this almost always equates to me giving a standing ovation.  But every now and then, what I see onstage is only mediocre.  Or maybe it's good, but not worthy of a standing ovation.  I always clap, but a standing ovation should be reserved for the truly exceptional; I suspect that a lot of people just do it because that's what we're supposed to do.  It's like when I blogged about tipping at restaurants a while back.  I always leave a tip, at least 15% but usually more.  However, I don't like the fact that I must tip if the service was only so-so (I've heard some argue that you should tip even if the service was bad).  Again, I always tip, no matter the conduct of waiter/waitress  (sorry, the "server."  Everything is so fucking P.C. nowadays).  But why do we reward that which does not merit reward?

Anway, I digress.  Let's move away from tipping and back to standing ovations.  I used to always stand up if other people were standing up even if I wasn't particularly moved by anything I saw or heard.  Now, however, I stand my ground.  I'm going to be an individual.  Though you wouldn't know it from my rantings in cyberspace, I'm actually very, very nice, so it is not without reservation that I remain seated if I heard another shitty rendition of hackneyed pop lyrics.  I will not rise and expel the unnecessary energy of putting my hands together to laud a future reject on an American Idol audition episode.  I'm a kind person, but in this case, I'm an asshole not only in thought, but in practice.

I think I'm missing the point....

Yesterday I kept obsessing over the fact that I think Mother's Day should be called Mothers' Day.

I really need to get a fucking life.


Update:  6/5/12--This post just happened to come to my mind and, while i was thinking back on what I wrote, I thought "Cool, 'I really need to get a fucking life' is written in iambic pentameter!" 

Concrete proof that I really do need to get a life....

My bridesmaids

One lives in Newark, one lives in Baltimore, one lives in Milwaukee, one lives in Washington, D.C., one lives in Dallas, one lives in New Orleans, and only one currently lives in Detroit (where I live). However, she will be moving several hours away to Michigan's upper peninsula, so even though we'll be in the same state, she won't be close by.

This sucks.

Music Monday

Didn't post last week (lately there seems to be a pattern developing here), so I'm posting two today.

Desire, "Under your spell"

Blackalicious, "Make you feel that way"

A facebook message from 2009

I was going back through old facebook messages and I came across this one that I received a few years ago in my inbox:

U.r. beautiful and i luv the glass. u give me hope that maybe there stile innacent in this world. that 4 add me as a friend.but anyway was ur new years. do u have a resalotion. 

I think what he meant to say was this: You are beautiful and I love the glasses.  You give me hope that maybe there is still innocence in this world.  Thanks for adding me as a friend.  But anyway, how was your New Year's (Eve/Day)?  Do you have a resolution?

Needless to say, I spurned his advances and did not respond.  This was not the first message he had sent, and I was polite in my replies before but was tired of keeping the conversation going.  I always accept friend requests because I think it's mean not to.  And unless someone is ultra creepy, I won't un-friend them.  And I'm always very nice if men send me messages, but I make it clear that, though I am flattered that they are interested in me, that I am in a long-term, committed relationship.  If they persist (like this guy did), I just start to ignore subsequent messages.  But even if I was single, the spelling carnage would be more than enough to keep me from writing him back.

Spitting game on facebook is NOT what's up.  Especially if said game needs translating.

Don't. Do. This.

A guaranteed way to tick me off is to text me really early in the morning, unless it's important.  I hate being woken up unnecessarily at some ungodly hour.  ESPECIALLY on a Saturday, but it applies to any other day as well.  If you need to text me, or respond to one of my texts from the night before, do me a favor and wait a few hours.  People can be so inconsiderate.  Just look at your gotdamn clock.  If it's 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday, chances are, most people in this age group will be asleep.  I keep my phone on all the time (usually on vibrate), even at night, in case of emergencies and in case The Fiance' calls.  He's the only person who can wake me up without me getting annoyed.  So listen, if I wake up bright and early to a text message, it had better not say "LOL."  or "Wanna hang out next Saturday?"  It had better say something like, "I just got carjacked.  Help!" or "I'm losing a lot of blood."