I Hate My Message Board » Humor

I Finally Found It! The Jheri Curl Song!

Tracy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:33:54 +0000

Or, seriously where has this video been all these years?

Because every time I would try to talk to people about this song they would look at me like I was crazy. Maybe because I usually started the story “Okay, back in the early 1990s while I was in the mental hospital I heard this awesome song about Jheri curls and nobody else remembers it! Do you know what I’m talking about? Leave…leave…leave my curls alone? No?”

So, for ages I didn’t think about this song and began to think that perhaps I did imagine it after all but tonight, as I was taking my procrastinator’s shower, I was like dang, before I can write another word, I need to find this song. And I looked and whoomp there it was and then I realized I hadn’t frittered away nearly enough time so – and this is precisely the reason I have a blog – it became necessary to write this post and share it with you all.

Because after all, isn’t that what we all really want way down inside? For everyone to just step off and leave…leave…leave our curls alone.

Heck yeah.Similar Posts:

Dear Betty Crocker

Tracy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:16:37 +0000

Or, When did Kraft Food & Family buy Betty Crocker?

Dear Ms. Crocker and Friends,

When you send me an email promising “easy Irish dinners” and “easy Irish recipes you don’t need luck for”, I don’t expect this to be included:

Okay, so I’m not going into the whole “it’s not Shepherd’s pie if it’s not made with lamb, if it’s made with beef it’s cottage pie!” thing because I think we can both agree that it’s a bit precious to be so persnickety about such things. I mean, I put McNuggets into sushi so I’m certainly not one to be a slave to conventional recipes. In fact I think that it’s a super idea to mash up ingredients from different cultures and create awesome, amazing things like Nacho Cheese Doritos and French Onion Ruffles.

However, and this is the difference between honest, heart of the dadgum nation Americans like me, with good old fashioned values, and media-elites like you, Betty Crocker, when I stuck that McNugget into the rice and wrapped it in Nori, I never tried to fool anyone that it was anything other than what it was. I never said it was Japanese.

Never. Said. It was Japanese.

Yet you, two days before St. Patrick’s day and on Irish Mother’s Day to boot, claim that your Shepherd’s Pie which is made with:

Barbecue sauce
Mexicorn (MEXICORN!?!?)
One of those little cans of green chiles that aren’t even hot that my dad used to put on my nachos until I finally told him what time it was and that he needed to get some real jalapenos up in here.
Instant “cheddar” and “bacon” mashed “potatoes”
and one freaking CUP of CORN CHIPS

Is an easy Irish recipe! I mean maybe it is good, you know in that way that concoctions made of various convenience foods combined into a casserole, topped with cheese and baked are “good” but not really “good”, but how the hell are you going to say it’s Irish, Betty Crocker?

Honestly, and I’m not trying to start something here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just your recipe for Mexican lasagna minus noodles plus potatoes.

I do not know how you can sleep at night trying to pass off this lie of a Shepherd’s Pie off to the American public, very few of which claim any Irish heritage or knowledge of Irish culture and thus wouldn’t know any better, as a “dinner for St. Patrick’s day”.

Exhibit 3

Thank you for the coupons though, they will come in handy in case I need to buy some Lucky Charms to make cupcakes.Similar Posts:

I Have Career Goals, Y’all

Tracy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:37:42 +0000

Or, I have changed my mind for the 900th time about what it is I really want to do

photo credit: Stitch

Since family tragedies are, among other things, very expensive and I can’t spend the mortgage money to buy that new camera I’ve been wanting and I’ve been saying I’m going to start doing something productive with my time for the last three years, I am pleased to announce that I’ve started writing for other people in exchange for money. Which is cool and all but through random conversations with online friends I’ve realized that professional writing is not really what I want to do. It’s a pretty sweet gig in that it doesn’t involve a paper hat or finger condoms, but people can be so picky about trifling details like grammar and spelling and staying on topic and articles being in the form of words arranged in paragraphs and not a collage embellished with glitter and faux fur.

It’s a lot of pressure.

Then, the other day, my friend JD from I Do Things was talking about donuts on Facebook which got me to thinking about donuts and how much I like to go to the donut shop and it hits me, a really super awesome job for me would be to work at a donut shop. I don’t want to own a donut shop, mind you, I’m imagining it’s a pretty low margin business and you get a lot of huge orders from Churches and such and people expect free donations all the time for their blood drives and whatnot and while I certainly wouldn’t mind making a few when the mood hits me, I am not really about the physical labor of actually making more than 3 donuts at a time nor do I want to work the cash register because they don’t have the high tech ones like at McDonald’s and I don’t do retro like some dang hipster.

(okay that sentence went on for too long and I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it, that’s the kind of thing clients crucify you for in the writing business which is one of the reasons I’m trying to get out. I mean, if they wanted some sort of robot, why not hire a robot? I’m a person, it gets messy with me, that’s part of my beauty.)

What I really want to do is be the person that asks what kind of donut(s) or bear claws or fritters the customers want and give them to them. Well, ideally I’d have some sort of miniature assistant who I could relay the orders to so I wouldn’t have to bend down so much – I am very tall and have a delicate spine – but like I said, low margin business and I am Asian and a hard worker so I’ll make do. The reason I want to do this is so I can figure out a unified theory of donut personalities and use that to write a best selling self help book based on your donut personality and what sort of work would best suit one and ideal romance/friendship combinations, that sort of thing. Oh, and a diet plan, like working with your donut personality to design an eating program that will work for life because you’re working with your natural inclinations, not against them. For example, people who like jelly donuts should eat a lot of fruit as most filled donuts have some sort of fruit in them.

And by write the book, I mean pay somebody like me to write it for me because I’ve discovered people totally do that. I could just drop off my pile of collages and furious scribbling and glitter art and voila! They turn it into a book for me and I get to go on a whirlwind book tour and I don’t have to take my kids!

So that is what I’ll be busy trying to put together in the coming weeks. If you know somebody who has a donut shop and is looking for help or wants a keyword-rich multi-media collage optimized for SEO, feel free to give them my contact details.

Similar Posts:

I’m totally testing you

Tracy — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:09:17 +0000

Or, crap I realized I haven’t posted in a week, maybe more. Dang.

So, yeah, I’m still completely overwhelmed here and by the time evening comes around I’m so exhausted from the day that all I can do is collapse. I remember being a teenager reading a biography of Sylvia Plath and her writing to somebody and saying that after sunset all she was good for was brandy and the fire and the writing just wasn’t going to happen. Not that I’m comparing my grody food blogging to one of the greatest confessional poets, but we are a lot alike, I think.

I posted this video on my fan page and then realized, hey you know, this video is a good way to find out what makes people tick, I should send it to everyone I know! But I think they are all filtering me now, so I’m just going to post it here and see if anyone has something to say. Or nothing, because your silence, it says so much.

BTW, those people in the audience, in that moment they are awesome and I feel much love for all of them. How could they not be with Sweet Caroline and glow sticks?Similar Posts:

7 Song that always give me earworms

Tracy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:20:11 +0000

Or, spreading the wormy love

You know those songs that just stick with you and won’t get out of your head and eventually you grow to have a very complex relationship with them that is not quite love, not quite hate but very frustrating. You know what I’m talking about.

1. Dream Weaver by Gary Wright

Jonathan Fields mentioned this song on twitter the other day and I was like nooooo, that’s so unfair because I’d JUST gotten this song out of my head after it appeared in a very odd dream I had. I would tell you about the dream but then I’d be that person that bores everyone by telling them their dreams and having to explain who everyone was and what I thought it meant and nobody likes that person. Oh sure, they pretend to but that’s just so they can tell them their own dreams. In any case, the meaning of this dream was “you go on with your bad self” which is what all dreams mean when you get right down to it.

I should like this song more because it was some sort of inside joke between my husband and I when we first started seeing each other but now I can’t remember what the joke was and it makes me feel old.

2. Tiny Dancer by Elton John

Not sure this one belongs in here because I completely and without shame or hesitation admit to having it my regular song rotation, but after I said “nooooo, earworm!” Mr. Fields kindly mentioned that he’d moved on to this song and I realized, yup, this is another one that sticks with you. And then one is always tempted to sing “Hold me closer Tony Danza” even though that would out one as a Friends fan and one is far too intellectual for that sort of thing. But one does it anyway because one is alone in one’s kitchen.

3. Sometimes When We Touch by Dan Hill

My friend, Madame Fabulous mentioned this song the other day. I kind of hate her now. That’s why I’m updating my blog BEFORE I answer her email. That will learn her, learn her good. She’ll try to get me by mentioning Sweet Caroline but I’ll be all like HA! Can’t earworm me that because I did it to myself, my friend, I did it to myself.

4. Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

I want to like Bonnie Tyler, I really do, but I don’t know how much of my life has been squandered because I can’t get this damn song out of my head. The literal version assuaged this somewhat, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get over it. I think she’s probably the queen of all earworms, what with this and the Holding Out for a Hero song and It’s a Heart Ache. Part of my dislike might be because I am jealous that she’s been a more than one over dramatic wind machine video and I have been in none.

5. Fireflies by Owl City

A new song but no less insidious. It makes me feel like I’m getting a head start on my future career as a cranky old biddy.

6. Those Were the Days by Mary Hopkins

This one doesn’t come up much these days but when it does, it’s staying. And you like it at first but after day 3 or 4 it’s more “DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

7. Queen of Hearts by Juice Newton

I might be a little unfair here, because it’s not just the incredible catchiness of this song that vexes me so – way back in the late 70s/early 80s, not sure exactly when, Juice Newton was on Solid Gold an inordinate amount of times. I don’t know if she was BFFs with Marilyn McCoo or what, but she was always on. And every single time my dad would say “Hey, did you hear about Juice Newton’s brother? Fig?”

Every single time.

She’s also a semi-repeat earworm offender, she wasn’t the first to record Angel of the Morning, but she’s a big contributing factor to it being an earworm.

You may add your own earworms to the comments although you might make an enemy or two.Similar Posts:

Investment advice needed, please

Tracy — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:50:54 +0000

Or, I am surely the daughter of my parents

Vanilla Cherry Nyquil - Limited edition flavor!

I have a cold.

I need to sleep.

But I feel lousy (detailed accounting of all the ways I feel lousy upon request, even though I was saving it for an ebook)

My other bottle is empty.

We could discuss when they started marketing drugs like candy or just how much that bisque/bone color they used for the safety wrapper reminds one of very old women in the Miss Havisham mold, or if the green Nyquil works better than the cherry red one or why they market Nyquil in capsules when they are useless disappointments but what I really want to know is:

Do I really want to open this? I mean because it could be worth money some day. Everyone told me that the big money is in pharmaceuticals and I’d hate to be browsing through some drug con some day and see a new, safety sealed bottle of this going for $125 and kicking myself for never delaying gratification.

Your thoughts, please.

PS if anyone is in Canada and can get me one that says “new flavour” on the seal, I will reimburse you for cost, shipping and your time. Unless it’s ketchup flavoured, you can keep that.Similar Posts:

I have obtained a copy of Just Busted

Tracy — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:28:50 +0000

Or, come on, somebody had to look into this

Just Busted Dec 29th edition front page

My husband picked this up for me from Mapco last week. You know what the main benefit to being married to me is besides all the food experiments? Getting to go out and buy trashy periodicals that your wife is too embarrassed to be seen buying. In my defense, I usually have 2-4 small children with me and it really isn’t seemly to be buying such things while your children are running around like Tasmanian devils at the checkout. I don’t even like to buy soda or cookies when I’m out with them and they are in such a mood because I can just feel people behind us giving each other knowing looks and nodding.

I wonder how they pick the mugshots to put on the front page? I picture a smokey room with one of those old timey light tables and a bunch of slides and a couple of grizzled old timey newspaper guys wearing suspenders and smoking cigars while they try to get the right balance of pretty young things to wild eyed PCP users.

Just Busted Ad

One of the things I like to do when flipping through a new publication is note the advertisers. It can tell you a lot about who their readers are. This ad makes sense even though it cracked me up how it was plunked right down in the middle of the wall of arrested folks on the front page.

Just Busted Ad

Um, yeah, it’s good to know you don’t need a title to get cash for your junk cars. I am intrigued by Lou Jacks and their promise of tender and tasty food and might make a visit even though every time I go down Winchester Rd I swear never again because people just plain forget how to drive the minute they turn on to it. Memphis people, you know what I mean, right?

Just Busted Ad

It’s good to be reminded that redemption is possible. It would have been nice if they’d included a coupon like Lou Jacks. $25 is a lot of money to come to Jesus!

Holiday Drunk Tank

They had seasonal features like the Holiday Drunk Tank.

Sex Offenders Near Grahamwood Elementary School

I pictured this being read by Chris Hansen, sort of like this: They are ALL, however, registered SEX offenders. Something interesting I noticed, most of the arrests for prostitution were “prostitution near church/school”. I think there was just one plain prostitution arrest. I didn’t notice this distinction with any other crimes. I wonder if there is any difference in sentence? Does this apply to Temples and Mosques, too?

A couple of people were also charged with “Initiation Meth Manufacture Process” but nobody seemed to have made it up to step 2 of Meth Manufacturing Process. I guess it’s good they are catching them at the beginning of the process.

Just Busted Cash Reward

This guy seems like he stepped out of a 1970s era blaxploitation flick. I hope they catch him, assuming he is guilty. When you call in a crime stoppers, do you just go and pick up a bag of cash money? Or do they give you a blank check? I admit, besides getting dangerous felons off the streets, I’ve always wanted to call in a tip to crime stoppers so I could solve this mystery.

Fun Fact!

It wasn’t all grime and crime, there were little nuggets of information scattered throughout the paper.

Just Busted Giveaway

Oh come on, that’s just some crass, lacking in couth shit there. Plus, I can’t find the fake one although I hope it’s “pedestrian soliciting ride/business”. What, you can’t ask a fellow citizen for a ride any more? What kind of business? Any business? Be specific, you can’t charge people with these frustratingly vague charges!

I wonder if they run the contest as a kindness, to give those pictured in the paper an out. “Oh no, I wasn’t arrested. Ha! I was the fake mug shot. I can’t believe you didn’t pick up on that. Oh what a riot! Make sure you send it in for the drawing. I hope you win! Oh man, wait until I tell the guys you thought I was really in Just Busted. Classic!”

All in all I have to say this is a publication without much redeeming value. I’d wager most people don’t go into committing a crime thinking they’ll be caught or are in a position where they aren’t thinking clearly (drug addiction, impulsive acts of anger) and the prospect of embarrassment isn’t much of a deterrent at the moment where they are making the decision to commit a crime. I don’t really feel bad for the people involved, if they are guilty, but it just doesn’t seem to be in the best of taste. I won’t buy it again now that my curiosity is satisfied. Too much like watching Jenny Jones. You like it while it’s on, but after you feel somewhat filthy and subhuman.

P.S. I did not find my prosti-ganger in there. I bet she was just Asian and didn’t even look like me. Pabo cop.Similar Posts:

My personal policy on…

Tracy — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:02:38 +0000

Or Sesame Street inspired ramblings

My 2 year old has watched this video at least 100 times these past few days. The poor thing has been housebound with a nasty cold and has more than a touch of cabin fever, so I can understand why he seems to relate to this song so much. Plus it has Elmo, who is his favorite, even though I’ve been trying to sway him to Team Grover since birth.

It was somewhere around viewing 70 that he turned to me to let me know that “That guy left his laundry!” And from then on we chatted a bit about laundry and laundromats and the protocols for same during each viewing. I have to say it was nice to spend some time talking about my philosophy of laundry and guidelines for proper laundromat behavior with somebody who cared, even if he’d interrupt me every so often to demand I put back all the excess tissues that would fall out every time he tried to pull one out of his tiny personal pack of tissues.

Most of the time I try to avoid being that guy or gal. You know, the one that is always overly eager to share with you their personal policy on everything from parking to how to deal with credit card solicitations or finding cheap bananas. It’s as if there is some sort of Google-like keyword matching system in their brains that goes ding at the sound of the word “bananas” and out comes a detailed account of the price threshold at which they will buy bananas, their desired firmness and the methods by which they make use of the bargain priced bags of overripe ones. Sadder still, when you say bananas again after a week or two or three has passed, they’ll launch into the same monologue and damned if it isn’t word for word exactly the same as if they had no recollection of your previous conversation. Or maybe they do and they just can’t help themselves. I do not laugh at this because I fear I have these tendencies myself.

It’s worse because I blog and could easily indulge myself by giving a detailed account of the 7 signs I look for to determine when a bath towel is ready to be demoted to floor-mess towel status. Or the 4 do’s and 3 don’ts of deciding that a parking spot is the right one for me (here’s a surprising hint, it’s not necessarily the one closest to the door). While if you asked me, Tracy, do you think people who have a clearly defined personal policy for things they’ll do once or twice a year tops are a little nuts? I’d say “OMG, yes! YES! Thank you. YES!” the truth is I am a person who relishes having protocols and procedures imagined for any situation, no matter how unlikely.

Especially how unlikely, really, because that way it probably won’t happen and I’ll never know if I was horribly wrong in my thinking and can rest easy, safe from the knowledge that I am not particularly qualified to draw up a plan for safely evacuating my family in case a volcano rises up out of the Mississippi and an army of previously dormant aliens comes swarming out because they have received a sign that it’s time for the invasion to begin. Actually, I think my plan for that is solid, if overly reliant on my children choosing that time to become cooperative and obedient.

The thing I have learned in my life is that while it’s for the best I have such policies and procedures in place it’s best if I never, ever discuss them with anyone, particularly on the internet, because when policies collide, people very rarely merge the best of the two into one super policy. Instead they prefer to become ever more bullish and committed to their plan, flawed as it might be. Is it better to try to escape an army of invading aliens by foot or by car? I don’t know what the ultimate truth is, but I do know I am less wrong than all those other fools out there.

Usually though it’s not about something so important as how to escape an alien invasion and about something more mundane, like laundromat etiquette. As much as I’m annoyed by people who could write an entire manual on how to deal with clothes left in a dryer, I’m completely baffled by people who can’t or won’t. The way they shrug as if it’s a thing of little consequence, like they could just deal with it on the spur of the moment without putting in the time to evaluate the pros and cons of each possible course of action strikes me as more than a bit arrogant, as if they’d somehow transcended the human need for a plan and a philosophy.

Because really isn’t it a comfort to know that you’re the kind of person whose personal philosophy on squirrel management is X? That you have a strategy for avoiding the need to parallel park? To take joy, nay to exult in your 6 step procedure for getting 4 kids from front door to buckled into carseats in 3 minutes flat (2 if they aren’t wearing coats)? I think it is.

But I would because my personal philosophy is to try to find the good in everything.Similar Posts:

Stuff my Korean mom sends me

Tracy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:39:15 +0000

Or yeah, showing off my loot again

This is my favorite kiddy-chocolate, Yogurette. It's a strawberry yogurt filling with a milk chocolate shell. It's disgustingly sweet, but I can't stop myself from eating them, especially when my mom sends half a dozen bars every 3 months or so.

One of my favorite blogs, Stuff Korean Moms Like challenged her readers to send in Korean mom evidence. Now my mom lives in Europe so I thought I wouldn’t be able to participate unless I got my brother or sister to help, but lucky me a few packages arrived this weekend.

box of plastic bags

Bag used to prevent kid's Christmas chocolates from being crushed.

Of course, there were other things in the packages like Advent calendars for the kids, Stroopwafels, candy but the bags weren’t just there for packing material, it was also to replenish my supply of good plastic bags.

Because you never can have enough good plastic bags, see Stuff Korean Moms Like #42 Paper and Plastic Bags. You never know when I might have to send something to my kid’s school or something for my husband’s co-workers and you know, there is a difference between sending something in a regular Kroger bag and something like this:

Bag from Kaufhof, chosen to give squeal of recognition to my former FAHS classmates

A Kroger bag says eh, I’m an ordinary person doing my ordinary shopping at an ordinary store. This bag says I’ve been to Europe, baby or know somebody who has. It marks you as a person of distinction and good taste to have a wide variety of plastic bags to choose from and the sense to know which bag for which occasion.

And even if the recipient or people who will see you carrying the bag are not capable of appreciating the message behind the bag, that’s okay, because you’ll know. That’s how you know something is high class, you do it for how it makes you feel, not for other people. And if the message is “I find your personality only warrants this Family Dollar bag with a small rip in the side” well, even us fancy people are human.

Note to husband: Do not read anything into me sending your lunch to work in a Walmart bag, that’s just me being practical. Also, I think it wouldn’t do to look like we have too much money, because we don’t want the people who work for you to feel resentful and we don’t want your bosses to think you make too much. Also, I’m saving the Target bags for when we go to the playground, because those are some judgmental people up in there.

But wait, there’s more!

What could I have filled this bag my mom sent me with?

The other packing material, pocket sized packets of tissue! The funny thing is the morning before we got these packages, we were going on a family outing and I stopped at Circle K to get some tissues to carry around. They didn’t have the pocket size, only the small box that is meant for keeping in the car, so I had to jam that in my purse. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just pull out a wad and put that in my purse, well I didn’t think of it until I wrote “jammed the box in my purse”.

So I tell my husband, you know, I should have asked my mom to send me a case of Tempos. Because she’s totally packed a case into my sister’s luggage when she came to visit me and she’s also sent me gallon sized bags of ketchup and mustard packets swiped from fast food restaurants, so the joke made sense.

And then we come home and the postman knocks and it’s like she read my mind!

We won’t discuss the joy having German tissue packets gives me. Either you get it or you don’t. Let’s just say when I’m pulling my screaming, writhing, snot nosed child to me in public so I can wipe his face, pretty much the only comfort I have is that at least I am using fancy, imported tissue.

By the way, I asked my mom if I could post this and she said to go ahead, maybe it would make her famous. That is pretty cool, I think.

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Remember yesterday when I broke out the Corey Hart

Tracy — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:50 +0000

If not, read this then come back

Good news, this morning they came and everything checked out so our gas is back on. Hooray for hot water and heat!

Bad news, I’m not exactly sure what happened but I think it’s because the water heater got turned to high, but there was a build up of pressure in the tank and the relief valve started leaking water. Good news, this prevented the tank from exploding.

How did I find this out? I was trying to fix the clogged garbage disposal and heard an ominous water sound from the basement and thought maybe the pipes were leaking again like they did last time the disposal got clogged.

NOPE.

I did figure out the problem and the leaking is almost all stopped now, just a trickle. It seems we might need to replace the valve now that it’s been engaged but it seems to be a cheap diy fix. THANK GOODNESS FOR SUMP PUMPS. And I did get the disposal unclogged.

Of course, while all this was going on, they that must never be unsupervised were unsupervised and got into the hot pink spackle wall fix-y stuff.

So I am sorry but I’m going to have to break out the big guns here

When the going gets tough, the tough say screw it and turn their living room into a dance party. Well, first they clean their kids, then they have a party.Similar Posts: