Or, who says nature is perfect?

Deformed corn - is this how baby corn is made?

IMPORTANT! If you are here from Google having searched for information about your toe corns I am afraid I can’t help you but I do wish you a safe and speedy recovery! You too bunion and hammertoe sufferers! One day Google will figure out that I can’t help anyone, much less those suffering from valid afflictions and will remove me from their search results. Until then, it’s hardly my fault that deformed corns are a vegetable and a foot problem.

Anyway, this deformed corn kind of freaked me out. You know those shows on cable tv where people go around their entire life and one day find out totally by accident that they used to be twins but they ate their twin and now they have headaches because they’ve got their twin’s eyeball and toenails growing in their brain? This corn reminds me of that.

What will happen if corn evolves working arms?

Really, though, I’m a huge believer in Evolution. Huge fan. I think it’s just about the neatest thing ever. Just think, billions of years ago we just had some  primordial ooze and now look at us with our iPads and Tivos and ability to put anything in a can. It’s nothing short of breath-taking.

Until I really think about it and then I get a bit woozy. I’m just going to say it, anything to do with reproduction, sexual or otherwise, freaks me the heck out. Ever seen how slime mold grows?

I mean it’s pulsating. Pulsating!

I do have to admit that the mushrooms are kind of trippy though.

Now look at this.

THIS is happening in your body every day. Every single day. In your body. Whether you want it to or not. No wonder we feel so frazzled all the time!

And sometimes things mutate. Instructions go haywire. You accidentally absorb your own twin. And there isn’t much you can do about it except for eat a lot of antioxidants and pray.

Forget about trying to control your kids or your coworkers or the traffic, you can’t even control your cells!

So yeah, when I find some corn like this I have to wonder, what’s really going on here? Is this some tragic freak accident where we could have had three tasty ears of corn but instead just have one and two sad floppy ones that nobody wants to eat? Or are we watching evolution in action and this is the first step towards corn developing appendages and sentience and standing up and refusing to be the bad guys that everybody hates in our war against obesity?

I don’t know the answers. I don’t expect you to know the answers. I just think that maybe it’s time we started a dialogue about what’s going on with our vegetables. I for one would be happy if they took over and we could all become robots and I’d never have to sit alone in the dark thinking about my cells dividing again.

PS have noticed that the slime mold video has an ad for indoor hydroponic growing kits on it. What kind of sick freak would want to grow slime mold indoors?!?!

Or, I always find the best way is to just make things up. Luckily, my job allows for that.

Behold! The S'muffin/S'morffin! (It's relevant, I swear)

You might think that just because you haven’t seen much of me on this blog or Facebook or Twitter that I haven’t been writing, but I have. Oh boy, have I been writing. Just not for you guys, because – and this is awkward to bring up – I’ve yet to receive any cold hard currency from any of you. It’s not really a problem but you’ve no one to blame but yourselves for your position on my list of priorities.

So it’s been a week or something and I had big plans to write a right corker of a post tonight but then I totally forgot what that hilarious idea that I had in the store today was and all of a sudden it’s 10 pm and I’m panicking but then I thought to myself, you know what? You’re a pro. You sometimes write well in excess of 10,000 words in a day about all manner of subjects. If anyone can show other people how to beat writer’s block, it’s you.

The thing is, it’s a method, not a procedure. I can show you what I do, but you’re going to have to extrapolate from that what you should do. If you can’t extrapolate, well, I don’t like to discourage people but you probably need discouraging, as all great writers are excellent at extrapolating.

I really hope extrapolating means what I think it does.

But that’s not important, if you were really good, you’d know what I meant without us having to go by “standard definitions”.

That’s not really the point of this post, so we’ll save my beef with the dictionary for later and just dive right on to my method:

1. Wonder if you can get away with a link up post, decide that it’s against your blogger ethics to come back from a week’s absence with a link up post, save for tomorrow.
2. Read email, go on an emotional rollercoaster of gossip, intrigue and pictures of spider bites. Wonder why you can’t just email all of your readers instead of writing posts for them.
3. Walk around house aimlessly, stand in front of husband and stretch until he notices you, when he asks what’s up tell him “oh nothing” because he really just doesn’t understand how much this blogging business takes from you and if he did, he’d make you stop. It’s like you bleed for it, man until you’re totally dry and still they take, take, take.
4. Wonder if you have the right ingredients to finally perfect the S’muffin/S’morffin recipe. Hope like hell Smitten Kitchen doesn’t steal your idea although really, she probably deserves it more. Hope that when the time is right, you can finally decide on one name.
5. Realize you can’t possibly come up with something until everyone leaves and you can crank up some jamming tunes like Skid Row or something really inspirational like that. It’s like you need to get pumped up and all they want to do is tone you down.
6. Read some more email but by now it’s well past 10 and everybody is asleep. Wonder if it would be somewhat manipulative to write about your abandonment issues for tonight’s post but realize you couldn’t stand the pain if nobody asked you if you were okay tomorrow.
7. Feel like you’re really tapping into some real emotion here. This is raw. This is powerful.
8. Feel slightest bit depressed when you remember nobody reads you for your raw emotions, only your overcooked chickens.
9. Exult in being a SEO rebel by not linking chickens to your chickens post. Fight the power!
10. Wonder if you could start a movement to get everyone to pronounce it “Say-oh”  so that your SEO song makes sense “Keywords make great anchor text, SEO helps you be number one! All that backlinkings never done! SEO helps you be number one” That so does not work with EssEeeOh, does it?
11. Remember list posts are good for SEO or Scan-o, something like that, and you can’t think of something to write so Bam! List post about Writer’s Block!

Bonus point: Feel just a bit like you’re cheating, like you did back in high school with your “modern free form” poetry. Decide to take the tack that if people don’t understand what you’re trying to do here, they just aren’t ready for you, the miserable sods. Wish somebody would make you a s’muffin/s’morffin.

Or, on beyond Schadenfreude und Angst!

photo credit: only point five

I’ve always been an admirer of the German language if not exactly a proficient speaker/understander of same. The problem, as I see it, is that way back in junior high school when we began to take our foreign language studies seriously, my German teacher was a rather gravely voiced Romanian gentleman named Mr. P. Now you’d think, as my jr high school was actually in Germany we could have had a German teach us the language, but it was what it was.

Now although Mr. P was a very nice man with a good heart, he had two major strikes against him when it came to teaching me. One, he insisted on using terms like “dative” and “transitive” and “noun” as if I were supposed to know what those meant and secondly, for some reason he had a cassette tape recording of him telling the story of Vlad the Impaler that he’d play for his classes around Halloween, which scared me so badly that I never did get up the courage to ask what a nominative case was lest I find my head up on a fence pole somewhere.

Oh yes, and I forgot, he recorded video of me being completely chicken shit and refusing to cross this bridge with my classmates during a class trip to Garmisch and I will never forgive him if it shows up on YouTube.

Marienbrucke in the Bavarian Alps

So, while I did learn some of the essential German phrases like “Scheisse” and “noch ein bier, bitte” my German skills are shaky and it takes me forever to say anything because I’m scared to death I’ll nominate the dative and somehow wind up insulting somebody’s mother. Even still, I have a deep love for the German language because of artists like Falco and because of words like these:

Weltschmerz

Weltschmerz translated into English means world-pain or world-weariness.

As I contemplated the existence of Nickleback, Weltschmerz washed over me like so many cliches over the lead singer’s lips.

Sehnsucht

Sehnsucht is a kind of longing or yearning , or as C.S. Lewis put it an “incurable longing”

Every week I wander the grocery store aisles, heart heavy with Sehnsucht, knowing that I will never find anything that tastes as good as the anticipation of Twinkies did in my youth.

Gemütlichkeit

Gemütlichkeit is a feeling of sort of cozy happiness such as one finds when surrounded by friends in a familiar environment.

My life could be summed up as a fruitless search for Gemütlichkeit; when then would I find my Carla? My Norm? My Woody?

Futterneid

Futterneid is a feeling of jealousy about food, particularly that feeling one gets when one feels the food of another is superior.

I’d grown used to the Futterneid of my coworkers and learned to ignore the greedy looks that passed from their ham and cheese on wheat to my homemade spam musubi.

Groll

Groll a resentment or grudge.

I guess you could say I have a Groll against Ice Cube for “Are We There Yet?”

Konkurrenzeid

Konkurrenzeid -  professional jealousy, as in you are jealous of/begrudge another’s career achievements, not that you are so good at jealousy that people pay you to do it.

My suspicion is that a lot of rappers had Konkurrenzeid against Biggie Smalls, being as how they were broke and he so paid, and that is one of the reasons he was shot.

I hope these examples help you to add more sparkle and flair to your writing by throwing in a bit of the Deutche Wortzschatz into your writing and speech. Do you think we would have considered Tim Gunn so darling had he not thrown Sturm und Drang into every other episode of Project Runway? Probably not, meine lieblings, nicht nein Frankenstein.

Or, more plausible explanations for inexplicable crap

photo credit: popmayhem

If you are new to this blog, you can read an explanation of what Plausible Explanations for Inexplicable Crap is here. Ideally, this would be posted on a Monday, but sometimes life happens.

This week’s question comes to us from Two Hands and a Roadmap:

I have one for you: What makes a person cut me off when driving when he’s just going to turn right in two blocks? Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until I drive by, so I don’t have to slam on my brakes (1) to avoid hitting his ass end when he pulls out in front of me and (2) when he turns 10 seconds later?

I can relate as a few days previously, I’d written on Facebook:

So, you’re driving to the left of me and need to get into my lane – you could either speed way up, cut right in front of me and brake hard to make your right turn, or slow down and slip in behind me, where there are no cars for miles. Which do you choose? Explain yourself.

The short answer is that they are cretinous doodyheads but everyone knew that and I like to think that you come to me for the answer behind the answer, which I will give to you using as many impressive words as possible so that you will nod knowingly.

So I thought about this and realized that there are two problems which cause people to act so illogically. The first is people tend to have a natural desire to compare themselves with others and come out ahead somehow. You know the saying “It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”

For many drivers, this translates to “It’s not enough that I should get to my destination safely and in a reasonable amount of time; others must yield to me.”

The second factor is that most people put blinders on when it comes to problem solving. They see your car coming and it becomes an obstacle that must be overcome and fixate on how to get in front of you without considering that going after you have passed is also an option.

When we think of problem solving, we tend to think in terms of more. More speed. More strength. More agility. We don’t think in terms of less when it comes to figuring out a way to get what we want. This can lead to some reckless decision making that doesn’t always work out the way we planned.

Many years ago at an AWANA meeting, we were playing a game that involved four teams of two people each holding onto a rope circle. There were four bean bags, each in one corner and each team was standing pretty much with one bean bag placed diagonally behind them just out of reach. The objective was to somehow tug and get your team to a bean bag and scoop it up.

Now, at the time, I was a scrawny young thing, not known for my strength or coordination or having any sort of physical skills, really. And I was partnered with an even younger, smaller, meek slip of a girl. The other three teams were much larger and stronger and it seemed inevitable that we’d just be pulled along helplessly while they duked it out.

I really hated losing anything but this seemed like something I just couldn’t win. But then I realized, they said a bean bag, not the bean bag closest to you at the time the game began, just a bean bag.

So I whispered to my partner that she should just follow along and do whatever I was doing.

“Shouldn’t I pray?” she asked. And I was like okay, sure, but really I thought my plan was sufficient. Still, couldn’t hurt to have a backup.

The whistle blew and as I predicted, the 3 teams were fighting each other hard, each trying to get to their bean bag. I waited to see which way we would be pulled and once I was close enough, reached over and grabbed the bean bag of the team next to us and won the game.

What does this have to do with driving? Simple. If only other drivers were able to evaluate the situation from all sides and come up with a solution that didn’t involve putting everyone around them in serious danger then they would be smart like me and not cretinous doodyheads.

And because it’s now stuck in my head, enjoy the AWANA theme song:

Or, once again I am my mother’s daughter

Sadly, I am not the Tupperware Ninja, see end of post for more on this picture.

photo credit: svensonsan

Today was my five year old’s last day of preK and to celebrate his school held a picnic for the families. We were to bring our own lunches and the school provided lemonade and dessert. I knew my kids would be too excited to eat much and they aren’t big on sandwiches anyway, so I decided to bring some cheese cubes, crackers and fresh fruit.

Okay, let’s back up a bit, I was going to bring homemade kim bap so as to increase my mom status but that just wasn’t happening today so I had to make due with blackberries and pineapple to send the message that I am a good mom that cares about good nutrition. (bold mine, for emphasis because it’s really important that you get that considering I’ve been known to bread and deep fry McDonald’s cheeseburgers.)

So, I’m rinsing the berries, cutting the pineapple and then had to dig through my container cabinet to find suitable containers, with matching lids, to bring to such an important event as a kindergarten picnic. I have a lot of containers, but obviously one can’t bring the ones that are red with tomato sauce, have white, rough bits (does that mean the carcinogens were released?), have previously contained kimchi or very obviously once held nitrate-laden inexpensive prepackaged deli meat.

Your containers say a lot about you, just like your plastic bags, and it’s important that you realize this and act accordingly.

When my mom was here in August, we went to the Winchester Farmer’s Market, source of many of my grody foods – by the way, total tangent but they have banned photography in the store. That is so not my fault, I was discreet, y’all -  and there’s a little section of the store devoted to household goods from Korea. You have your serving platters and training chopsticks and those rough sloughing towels and containers. Lots and lots of containers.

And ohmahnah my mother went nuts! Nuts, I tell you. Obviously not giddy jump up and down screeching nuts as is my wont to do but she was pretty dang pleased to see all of these containers at such a reasonable price. She told me the ones with the rectangular lids with the fold down wings to fasten them shut were very popular in Korea as were the glass ones with the rubber seals in the lids but she prefers the plastic for practical reasons although now that I realize that those white patches are probably the carcinogens bubbling free, I think I want to get glass ones.

So keep in mind, my mom lives overseas and had to fly back home but she still bought about a dozen containers, in various sizes so as to facilitate packing them inside each other to save space.

And you know why? Because having an ample supply of containers is just that important. I am not mocking. I am telling you this because I care about you and want you to live the best life possible.

Then a few months later, after my mom discovered Ebay (which has been awesome for me because I never know what she’ll bid on and have sent to me) I get this box in the mail completely filled with a bunch of her favored style of container. Only they are red and have Christmas trees subtly embossed on the plastic, but still, awesome containers. I use them to send my husband’s lunch to work so that his bosses will appreciate that we have a taste for the finer things in life and they should try to accommodate that with raises and bonuses. You can’t even hardly see the Christmas trees unless you’re really looking closely.

But that’s my husband’s career and the picnic was an opportunity for mom status so the red tupperware was out and I finally decided to use the new set of square gladware that I’d purchased a month previously and were still looking new as I’d had the forethought to keep them on dry sandwich duty only.

And you know what? The people, they were impressed by the loving way in which I packed nearly 2 pounds of fresh fruit (not organic, but they couldn’t tell that) which everyone came by to admire as our children camped out by the sno cone machine and ran around in hyper little high fructose corn syrup and red dye 40 inspired circles all around us.

Oh, and this is how you can tell I’m not just some pretentious twit, I packed the containers of fruit into a Sugar Smacks print reusable grocery bag that I got for free buying two boxes of Mini Wheats. I like to mix it up, zig when they think I’m going to zag. Never let them think they have your number!

By the way, the picture at the top of the post was found on Flickr doing a creative commons search on Tupperware. I followed the link under the photo to this blog post.. It’s in German, but Google translate will do an absolutely hilarious job translating it for you:

The insanely popular and seemingly unbeatable PENG Bowl ®, which I just had to buy. Resourceful American housewives have the bowl PENG baptized, since they allegedly beat Peng when you go to the dough in the bowl packed with lid.

My German is not the best, but it does seem like a very funny post in the original and I think I would like this guy to be my new German friend.

Or, making a list of things not written is totally still a post

photo credit: late night movie

Like most bloggers, I don’t have time to write a tenth of the posts I’ve dreamed up in my head. Usually it’s a simply a matter of not having enough time to sit down and do a good enough job.

Other times I’m just chicken shit.

But for whatever reason, these posts are still in my to do pile.

1. 15 typos that other people make that totally make me feel good about myself - you know, because ABC (always be copy-checking) is totally my motto.

2. The world is full of jealous, hateful doodyheads - but we must rise above it, my friends, and carry on and never, ever stop letting our light shine. And if it makes them choke on their own bitterness, so be it.

3. 10 wacky and creative ways my mom punished me when I was a kid – or, this one time my mom made my brother and sister stand with their arms straight up to get them to confess to something and I mocked them by lying on my back with my arms and legs straight up in the air and she made me stay that way for what felt like three days and that’s why nothing those jealous, hateful doodyheads say can ever really hurt me.

4. 10 things my dad told me that I later found out were complete fabrications – it turns out that he didn’t, in fact, go to the television station to tell them to put on Wizard of Oz for us, he was just going to lunch without us and didn’t want us to whine to be included. Also, he is not the boss of the entire US Army. And eating pecan pie doesn’t make your hair grow back overnight.

5. 7 wild animal attacks that my sister survived -  well, some of them were domesticated animals. The girl survived stepping into a fire ant’s nest, wading into a swarm of jellyfish and trying to pet a wild raccoon all before the age of five. It’s somewhat uncanny and that’s why I try not to go to the zoo with her.

6. My brother’s Ko-Fro is a thing of beauty – let’s start a campaign to get him to grow another – seriously, if I didn’t think my husband would leave me, I would shave my head and see if I could grow one because it’s just that awesome.

7. Everyone I was going to marry as a teenager turned out to be gay - one of those deep, think-y pieces. I’ll probably use adjectives and metaphors and crap.

8. 20 Inspirational quotes that don’t even make no kind of sense – self explanatory.

9. People who mock Spam and but eat turkey bacon are totally hypocrites – I am not totally clear on what a polemic is, but I think this shall be one. Damn skippy.

10. My kick ass recipe for Tex-Mex ramen – the secret ingredient is salsa!

11. Popular Songs that I sing when I make or eat Korean Food – oh what the hell, why don’t I just write that one now?

We get a bunch of rice now
Put a bunch of junk on
Eat it up with hot sauce
Bi bim bop!

Mmmmmmm
Mmmmmmmmmm
Kim bop
Yummy yummy kim bop
Yummy yummy kim bop
Kim bop kim bop kim bop

I just sort of repeat that over and over. Too busy stuffing my face with kim bop to really sing any more.

Bul-go-gi
(bulgogi)
Fire grilled beef
(fire grilled beef)
Eat it up
Now it’s gooooooone

And there you have it, the posts that the world is being cheated out of because I’m really pretty lazy and inefficient. Sorry about that.

Or, I suppose the real question is why I abandoned it

This is what I got when I searched Flickr for "inexplicable". I think it's neat and it also fits in with a recent conversation on the I Hate My Message Board Fan Page

photo credit thievingjoker

On Saturday’s post, my friend Alisa gave me some questions in the comments to help jump start my writing. This reminded me of a series I started last year called Plausible Explanations for Inexplicable crap, which I explained in depth here:

There is a lot of inexplicable crap in the world. You just see something and go “WTH?!? WHY would somebody do that?!?” and you tell somebody else and they are like “WTH?!?! Seriously???” and all you can say is “I know, right?!?” Well you wouldn’t if you knew me because I am here to give you:

Plausible Explanations for Inexplicable Crap

Simply send me your inexplicable crap and I will offer in this blog a plausible explanation, drawing on my expertise as a layman sociologist, amatuer internet detective and born intuitivist.

I wound up answering these three questions then didn’t answer any for a while, then it seemed weird to start again but now, hey, I’m in a blogathon, the old rules don’t apply anymore and anything is possible, so I’m going to start again, answering one question a week on Mondays. You can leave your questions in the comments here and I’ll pick one to answer for next week.

Here are the three I did to give you an idea (by the way, I’m not sure where my images are! Eeek!):

Where do all the millions of dead birds go?

By the way, birds also go into seclusion when they are feeling depressed. That’s why “When Doves Cry” is such a poignant song, nobody really knows what it sounds like because the doves hide so nobody will hear them weeping. Isn’t that a tragic and touching image? Wasn’t Prince a genuis? By the way, all birds do this, not only doves, but it’s only poetic when they do it. When an ostrich does it, it’s just kind of stupid because the dummies only stick their heads in the sand.

Money Money Money MONEY

No lie, I think the last time I checked my mom had like $500 in two dollar bills tucked away in her china cabinet. These are slowly put back into circulation when their friend’s kids graduate from something/have a baby/get married where they are then presented in a nice card. If the friend is also Korean, these bills are bought back for the other Korean mom to save, but if they are other than Korean, they just let their kids spend them willy nilly even though they are SPECIAL and might be worth MONEY some day.

Why Do People Eat Too Much?

So, you realize you’re 5-10 lbs over capacity for your pants and the first thing you think is, dang, I need to go on a diet! And that’s when it begins, you start thinking about what you can eat, what you can’t eat, how much to eat and when to eat it. You buy books and magazines filled with pictures of food to help you decide and you actually read email forwards that start with “OMG, you can totally make a cake out of fat free whipped topping, carbless flour and a diet Pepsi!”.

So yeah, I think my quotes speak for themselves and you’ll all be tripping over yourselves to put your questions in my more than capable hands. You want accurate? Get an expert. You want plausible and free? I’m your gal!

I guess since I’ve some space free I will answer one of Alisa’s questions and save the rest for some other time.

What was the message board that inspired you to start a blog and message board titled “I hate my message board?”

It was the forums at breastfeeding.com, which are still in operation. You can read part of the story here. Long story short, I wanted to make a blog first but there was a privacy issue at the other forum (since resolved) and many folks were talking about leaving. Since I’d already bought the domain and my husband had given me an IPB license as a present and was already installing it, I invited everyone to come on over and use that as their homebase.

I don’t regret hosting the forums for the time I did but it became increasingly apparent to me that it was causing me a lot of unhappiness and holding me back from going for what I really wanted so I made the decision to shut them down. This did cause some folks to have ill feelings towards me but it was the best choice possible. One of the other forum members set up a new forum that is more private and I occasionally check in.

In the beginning I thought a lot about changing the name of this site because Hate is such a loaded word and it probably causes some double takes since it doesn’t have much to do with most of what I write, but I sort of look at it like a band name that doesn’t have to make sense.

Oh, and there were 11 reasons that I hated my message board, you can read them here:

#11 A Lack of Clear Titles

#10 I Have to Run It

#9 It’s All About Me

#8 Intentional Attempted Derailment

#7 Lazy People

#6 Content Free Posting

#5 Viral Words

#4 When Grown Folks Tell Other Grown Folks Not to Whine

#3 When Grown Folks Whine

#2 Signatures Gone Wild

#1 Message Board as Blog

I hope that provides some clarity on the matter of why I hate my message board.

Remember to leave your inexplicable crap in the comments for me to answer!

Or, like everything else unsavory that I post, blame JD

I’ve been meaning to review What’s Your Poo Telling You? forever but the time just never seemed right. Then three things happened:

1. I became a partner in Potty Training Power
2. I heard tell that #poosday or #fecalfriday were going to become the next big hashtags, although we might not be participating anymore since we heard that Chuck Berry is still alive and may or may not be on twitter.
3. I committed to a Blogathon and now everything looks like a good post idea to me.

Like I said, I’ve had this book forever and even given it as a gift which proved to be most popular. It’s a light and hilarious reference guide to what secrets your poop is trying to tell you, if only you’d listen.

Shelf toilet, very popular in Europe, particularly Germany, helpful for poo analysis

photo credit chriswatkins

Who would NOT enjoy What’s Your Poo Telling You?

Okay you know how some people say they can’t understand how people could not want to get married or have kids or think cats are cute or could want to schtupp the same sex? And people look at them like they are some sort of judgmental monsters that lack imagination? I kind of feel that way about this book; I can’t conceive, fathom or wrap my mind around somebody not wanting to flip through it. Oh ja, I can imagine people denying that they want to go through it, but I can’t believe that if you left them alone in a room with this book that they wouldn’t take a peek. And then another.

But I’m not going to say that because I, for one, do not like my ass handed to me on a platter.

Instead I will say if you are prudish, priggish or anally retentive you will not like this book. Everyone else will find it a delightful little volume.

Who WOULD enjoy What’s Your Poo Telling You?

Oh duh, everyone. The awesome, the intellectually adventurous, the folks that like to take care of their own health, Chuck Berry, the open-minded, people who like the game Scatagories, folks who are trying to get on Jeopardy, your Grandma and Grandpa, pretty much everyone would enjoy this book.

Or even if they don’t enjoy-enjoy it, they’d kind of like that funny-naughty feeling they get while reading it. If you feel that way, it’s okay, it’s a way to be. It’s not my way to be, but it’s yours and that’s okay.

What I liked:

• Creative,”punny” names for the different varieties of poo
• I am not sure, but it seemed like actual medical science was consulted.
• Small size, easy to fit into a handbag or BDU pocket, much like Reader’s Digest
• Not too dumbed down, not too intellectual
• I did not get the sense that the authors were being too ironically hipster with me. I hate it when people do that.

What Could Have Been Improved:

• I would have liked laminated, easy to sanitize pages so that I could feel comfortable keeping this in the potty for handy reference
• I think they could have used some more cheerful poo based colors on the cover
• It seemed like most, if not all, of the illustrations used were of men. Hello, it’s the 2000s!!!
• The postpartum poo chapter brought back many painful memories and I would have appreciated some sort of warning.
• While I wouldn’t have wanted all the pictures in color, it would have been nice to include a color chart in the appendix for comparison purposes

In short, I can’t recommend this book enough and putting aside the fact that my affiliate link is all over this post, I think it’s the kind of book that you’d want to purchase brand new for your own personal use rather than borrow from the library or buying used from Goodwill. Remember – Father’s Day is just around the corner!

What’s Your Poo Telling You? by Josh Richman and Anish Sheth, M.D. is available to purchase at Amazon and other book sellers.

Or, They should be paying me for this valuable advice but they are not, the cheap bastids

Go ahead, like my page, you know you want to

Okay, I’m just going to go ahead and say we’re not going to talk about a dislike option today. Everyone always says “oooh we need a dislike button” so not only are people well aware that this is something many people are looking for, I, for one, am not sure we really need a dislike button if we adopt my suggestions which provide ample options without resorting to the simplistic yes/no dichotomy that like/dislike offers.

My suggestions provide for a much more nuanced, rich social networking experience, allowing users to express complex thoughts and feelings with a simple click of the mouse.

1. I concur

For when you agree with what is said and wish to sound like the distinguished gentle(wo)man from South Carolina.

2. True, that

When you wish to acknowledge the veracity of what was said but pride yourself on never resorting to slang or netspeak and your slavish devotion to prescriptivist grammar.

3. Love

For when you wish to agree in what you imagine is a breezy, cosmopolitan manner.

4. IDWYBWSAIWBAYBYB

For when you disagree with what was said and would get into a debate about it only you are going to be the bigger person by yakking about it behind their back.

5. Pity like

When nobody else has liked it and you feel sorry for the poster but not sorry enough to make an actual comment.

6. Hello, I exist!

When you like status after status to remind your friend that you exist and they should acknowledge that by commenting or liking your junk. Hello! Don’t act like you can’t see me because you know you can!

7. You owe me one

Even though I didn’t read whatever inane thing you just linked from your blog, I did press this button so now you have to pretend to read mine. Social proof: it works!

8. I should probably pretend to care about your kids

For when you friends post yet another 150 photo album of their darlings. Note 1: this should come with an option to randomly comment “They are getting so big!” on one picture in the album so it looks like you clicked through. Note 2: This has to come with an algorithm to insure it’s not applied to a picture of the friend’s bazoongas.

9. Sad-ish

This post made you a bit sad but you will be strong and commence with going about your every day business and talking about eating a cupcake in 3..2…

10. Drool!

For when friends post about some sort of fattening ooey gooey food and if there is one thing the Food Network has taught you is that you must loudly express my approval of same. IMPORTANT: Facebook can’t be held responsible for any face slaps if you click this in response to a friend talking about how engorged her breasts are now that she’s breastfeeding. For food use only! Adult food!

11. Quote

When you want to encourage people to continue posting quotes so that they don’t bother writing their own inane drivel.

12. Participant

For when you want to seem involved but don’t want to put forth any effort.

13. Good for you!

For when you are happy that somebody is enjoying their day but it seems kind of dorkwad-eqsue to post “I’m so happy you’re sitting on your butt in your back yard!!!!”

14. Sad Trombone

For those occasions when your friends are having a Charlie Brown style day.  I know he had rainclouds and not sad trombone, but I think it’s about time Facebook added sound effects.

15. Invisible Snarking

To allow you to make comments that are quite rude and uncalled for on the post where only a designated group of friends, minus the original poster, can see it. Of course, you will probably eventually screw up and include the wrong group of friends on the snark – there’s an easy way to avoid that but I’m not going to tell you, you backstabbing bitch.

These are just the first 15 I can think of; what options would you like Facebook to give to you to enhance your experience?

And while you’re thinking of that, I’d like to invite you to join Dang Y’all, my Facebook group for the swapping of grody and astonishing links.

Or, Amazon Women on the Moon is the defining film of my generation. That, and Bill and Ted.

Let me just start by saying that I’d already decided last night that I would write a post about my dream, my awesome dream only I had to make some tacos first and couldn’t get around to it right away and then I go check my email and see this:

I Had a Dream

By Ms. Alisa Bowman, who was my friend but now I think she is my friend that I am wildly competitive with and constantly measure myself against. This will either spur both of us to higher and higher heights until we are the dadgum queens of the MediaDrome or end very badly with both of us winding up being the spiteful old lady at the nursing home that nobody likes. It’s okay though, eventually some small child will wander in and teach us to love again.

So there is no way we can lose.

But back to me and my awesome dream. You know that lately I’ve been super busy because I’ve started freelancing and working on a variety of writing and marketing projects. I know, it’s crazy, right? People PAY me for this. ME. For THIS.

I’m working with a friend of mine and he’s got a pretty good sized client with a large project that I’m assisting him with. And yesterday, it hit me, would it not be the most amazing, awesome thing if we just tossed out everything we had been doing and start over modeling the whole thing on Amazon Women on the Moon. You know, so all of our ads and content are a tribute to AWotM which is a spoof.

A tribute of a spoof. Think about it. Making fun of things is so over, sincerity is the new irony. See now why people pay me?

Now, I know we’re on a “budget” but how expensive could it be to hire Rosanna Arquette and Arsenio Hall these days? David Allen Grier would do it for scale I think after he sees my blog – big fan of grody food, DAG is. Anyway, I think we could make this work.

Hehehehe, lamaze graduates.

PS of course that’s an affiliate link. I’d recommend AWotM for free, and have been for years, but you know, dude. Easy money. Win win. All right!