McNuggets Make You Fat & Delicious

Biting into the hot, tender Chicken McNuggets while on my late lunch break a few days ago was a magical experience that transported me back to my childhood. When dipping the nuggets in the green lidded sweet ‘n sour sauce containers I made sure to cover every square centimeter of nugget in the sticky sweet sauce. The nutritional value must have been akin to dunking a stick of salt encrusted lard into liquid caramel. But I enjoyed every morsel.

Why was I eating this nasty little guilty pleasure? It’s a pleasure that I hadn’t indulged in for years – but perhaps that was mostly due to the fact that I’m convinced a nugget I bit into back in ’94 was a deep-fried human toe. Basically I chose the meal because it was a quick food alternative to my workplace cafeteria – nutrition be damned. But, equally relevant, I just can’t afford to eat anywhere pricy in my current economic situation. And according to new studies, I’m not alone in whoring out my nutritional health during this economic downturn. In fact, with families making less, they’re eating out at fast food restaurants more and more, earning McDonald’s a healthy profit over the past few quarters. Healthy being an ironic term. I pondered this fact as I sat and felt the future-fat gravitate towards my belly, ass and currently-dormant man boobs. Dollar menu, anyone?

So while American’s 401k’s and stock portfolios take a nose dive, they are vigorously investing in the Fat Ass Fund. So is this worth it? Of course this is rhetorical – unless maybe these people are subconsciously onto something. If the pessimists of this world are right in thinking the market will never improve and food prices continue to rise and we can’t afford to eat, perhaps (subconsciously) forward thinking fat-ass American’s will be able to go into hibernation and live off their extra burger blubber. Hey, it worked for the Donner Party survivors, the chubbies survived…and bears have been doing it for years. And nobody fucks with bears. They are the world’s most terrifying omnivores. Nothing scares me more than a creature that will eat both humans and blackberries. It’s as contradictory as a venomous pony.

Back to  the point, albeit a foggy one. I refuse to give in to the bulge. My Fat Ass Fund has fully matured, and I’m ready to cash it in, to make a change for, um…rigorous, challenging exercise and bland, healthy eating? Wait…what the fuck am I doing? Damn it, where is that Tony Robbins book when you need it. That guy is a motivational marvel. I wonder what his diet plan is. With those chompers he could probably eat slabs of marble and mahogany two-by-fours like they were carrots and celery.

Okay, the truth is, I have ballooned to huskiness in my current living situation – that situation being at home with mom…in my mid-twenties. Don’t laugh cruel reader! This would be completely normal if I were living in India, Thailand or Mexico. So don’t be so ethnocentric. Back to ballooning. How bad has it gotten? Okay, from my weight after my one year stint living in Costa Rica I have gained poundage in the double-digit range. Ambiguous, right? Basically that leaves the figure anywhere between a woman’s bowling ball and a bodybuilding dwarf. I’ll let you marinate in the mystery.

Basically, it’s time to either get serious about a fitness regimine or go up a pant size, seeing as the last time I went shopping I almost split myself in half trying to fit into a pair of pants that should, theoretically, be my size. Thank god for elastics. And pleats. I am totally kidding.

Online Dating Photos - WTF Are People Thinking?

Online dating sites, once holding the stigma of being a bastion for pervs and desperate fugly folk, have now entered the mainstream. If you’re not actually using a service like Match.com, LavaLife, or eHarmony, you probably know someone who is. Or perhaps even more likely, you’ve cruised the sites in voyeuristic glee, mocking people’s profiles in passive aggressive tirades

I participate in this exact activity that I have described. I cruise the singles sites, looking for easy targets to make fun of or ogling women well out of my league. One thing you come to notice if you spend much time on these sites is the variety of online dating photos potential daters have selected for display and I have to say, if I were taking this whole Internet dating thing seriously, I would have some serious qualms with some of the profile pictures that daters have chosen. In fact, there are quite a few categories of photos that have made me wonder WTF are these people thinking? I plan on outlining those particular photos in this piece. Come along for the ride…

The Scanned Photo: The scanned photo – obvious for it’s crease marks or grainy finish due to a dirty scanner bed -  is one of those online dating photos that draws some serious red flags in my book. First off, if you’re such a troglodytic techno-phobe that you either don’t have a digital camera or don’t have access to one, what the fuck are you doing looking for love on the Internet? Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I took an actual film photo, and unless you’re some sort of art student there’s no excuse to have a scanned photo. On the other hand, this also makes me ask the question: was the last great photo of yourself really taken eight years ago, before digital cameras were mainstream? And if so, a follow-up: if you died tomorrow, would it require the Jaws of Life and a crane to excavate you from your bedroom? Or did you grow an ass shaped tumor on your face? I’m not trying to be cruel, but agreeing to an online date with someone is like leasing a used car without driving it – it pays to have excellent photos and up-to-date information. There could have been some serious shit that happened to that car in the last few years. I simply want what is fair and just: full disclosure, i.e., a current fucking photo.

The Pet Photo: Oh wow, a cute doggie. Two cute doggies. And a cat! WTF are you thinking people? I couldn’t give two shits about your pets. Unless you have a tiger or a llama, I’m not interested. I don’t want to have intimate conversations with your pet, I don’t want to take long moonlit walks on the beach with your pet, nor do I want to get naked with your fucking pet. Seriously, if you like dogs or cats or badgers, and that’s an issue for you and your future love, write it up in your profile. I don’t need a slide show. Looking at people’s pets is about as interesting as looking at your neighbor’s vacation photos. I’d rather get my thighs waxed. In my humble opinion, the worst-case scenario for a prospective online dater is to pursue anything with someone who has a profile with multiple pictures of that person’s pet. This basically means, at the end of the day, you mean nothing compared to that person’s dog/cat, and you have to earn your place in her household and the pet is your competition: a creature that is cute, cuddly and will take all the shit she can dish out without much more than a woof-woof or a meow. If you think this is ludicrous, trust a man with true-life experience. My ex-girlfriend was one of these types and I am seriously convinced at the end of our relationship her pussycat was getting more pussy than I was.

The Kissy Face: Okay, so this is more of a girl profile related problem, but it may very well affect gay men too, who knows? Anyway – enough with the kissy faces, ladies! I don’t know what slut-turned-celebrity-socialite is to blame for this trend of picture posing with pursed lips and squinty eyes, but I am sick to death of it. It’s not cute. I find it self-absorbed and trite, a “look how cute I am” declaration with all the originality of Zoolander’s purposefully satirical ‘Magnum’ modeling pose. In all seriousness, I have scanned through a girl’s profile that featured upwards of ten versions of the kissy face. After seeing so many in a row it makes me think you girls are suffering from some sort of palsy or you are experimenting with turd flavored cough-drops, because there’s no other excuse for so many asshole-lipped pictures.

The Ugly by Comparison: As someone with a degree in business and marketing, this one offends me on an academic level. Do not post pictures of yourself with people who are much better looking than you are, this should be simple common sense. You don’t put BMW’s in a Hyundai commercial, because it sure as hell doesn’t help you sell Hyndais. I’m no dog, but if my BFF was George Clooney there’s no goddamn way he’s going to be in any of my profile pictures – the second a girl sees that picture she’s thinking to herself, “Screw this mutt, I’ll take the upgrade.” Rule of thumb: don’t post pictures with friends that make you look ugly by comparison. Stick with friends that are equal to or less than your level of attractiveness.

The Look at Me and My Hot Platonic Friends: Another common online dating photo is the one in which the profile owner is posing with numerous attractive friends of the opposite sex. The issue with these photos is that there is a fairly obvious subtext at work. In fact, I think you could name these photos Look at Me and My Hot Friends (That I Could Have Sex With Whenever I Want). As a potential dater, this makes me think that this person doesn’t really need a date except to perhaps inflate her ego a little more. To paraphrase Chris Rock, these platonic friends are really just dicks in glass boxes: break in case of emergency. Who wants to compete with a harem? You can’t help but look at the other guys and wonder which ones she’s slept with – and this goes equal for girls in a guy’s photo. Guys avoid parties that are ‘sausage fests’, and you can bet your ass they’ll avoid a girl who seems to be a walking sausage fest – they know they’re better off searching for an unoccupied bun for their own frankfurter.

The Eyes: The eyes are the windows to the soul – it’s this type of rubbish that has led to the awful eye-close-ups that are so frequently included in people’s profiles. The eyes are the most overused ‘artsy’ online dating photos…ever. I can tell if you have pretty eyes from a regular portrait photo. If the picture is so close to your eye that it might reveal the early stages of glaucoma then this is too much. You’re not doing a Visine commercial, so zoom the fuck out. I want to see the whole face. The only exceptions I can possibly fathom for an eye close-up are as follows: you are a traditional Muslim and wear a full burkha, you are an Eskimo and wear a balaclava to keep your mouth from freezing shut, or you are a ninja and need to protect your anonymity because you’re a career assassin.

The Who’s Who: I just came across this one a moment ago – a girl’s profile with four photos, each one with two girls in it, none featuring one girl or the other more prominently. Who the hell is who?? Unless your username is MenageATrois or HottieConjoinedTwins, this makes no sense to me. If you’re not a package deal, get your friend the hell out of your photos! Is it that hard to take a solo picture? Do you ladies go potty together too? And hold hands? How about a little independence… Oh, and if you are the ugly one in the photos, that’s deceptive advertising. Don’t make me take you to court. And do you really think that ruse will work offline?

The Aerial: One of the sad results of small digital cameras and camera phones is the advent of the aerial photo. Girls will hold a tiny camera up over their heads and shoot downward towards some lamely coy facial expression, sometimes sultry, sometimes wounded. Almost never is this angle complementary. You know what people generally use aerial photography for? Shooting air-force bases, power plants, aircraft carriers, massive factories, towering mountains and expansive islands. You know, stuff too enormous to be seen in a normal ground level pictures.  These pictures inspire awe at the size of their subjects. I’m not sure you girls are intending for this effect. Big girls with large breasts are especially fond of this photo since their twin endowments eclipse their equally large bellies. The geometry of these photos is like three bowling balls mushed together. It’s misleading and honestly, whether or not someone is drawn to this pose is irrelevant unless you ladies plan on dating someone three feet taller than you are.

The Ex: Another species of online dating photos that kill me are the ‘me and my ex’ pics. These are usually photos of a couple that is intimately posed – embracing each other and beaming at the camera or sharing a wistful look – but one of the faces is blurred out. I must ask: has it really been such a short time since your last relationship that you can’t find any other picture to put on your profile? Is there really any more blatant way to say, “I’m on the rebound!” Are you expecting your profile viewers to imagine their faces in lieu of the fuzzy spot where your ex’s mug used to be? I just think it seems tacky and makes me think the person in the photo isn’t quite over their last relationship…that they are thinking, I’ve never looked so good as when I was in his/her arms. Personally, at this point, I crack a few jokes and move on to the next profile – I’m not interested in being the rebound guy. Check your emotional baggage at the door.

This shit is so good it doesn’t even require jokes…

I was looking on the Internet for some underwear, because I’ve squeezed all the life out of my current collection and it’s getting time to replenish the stock. So I type in ‘men’s underwear’ on google.

The first thing I see is this men’s underwear blog, so I figure I’ll check it out and read up on the trends. In my experience, ladies like a man in nice undies. Bill Murray’s character in Stripes, a lovable-loser/ladies-man, is one of my heros and there’s this great scene when he’s walking through the clothing supply line after joining the army and the supply guy asks him: “Boxers or briefs?” Murray replies, “Do you have anything in a low-rise bikini…mesh, if possible?” He also says at one point, “Chicks dig me because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual.” Words to live by.

Besides, I figured that maybe in my research I’d find some new idea in underwear that trumped the boxer-brief hybrid, maybe the joxer – boxers with a built in jockstrap for sports. [I admit, I’d thought of that idea before, but couldn’t manage to raise sufficient venture capital.]

Anyway, back to the blog. The first entry I read referenced this underwear with a built-in ‘ball lifter and cock-ring.’ Ball lifter? Cock ring? Obviously, I had to click the link, if only to satisfy my mind which was agonizing over this feat of garment engineering. It was definitely a WTF click, and well worth the index finger exercise.

I’ve provided a link to the website it led me to – a self-proclaimed ‘gay underwear’ manufacturer – describing this male-enhancement technology. And trust me, it’s worth the read. [Oh, and I didn’t believe there could be such a thing as ‘gay underwear’, but this is, admittedly, pretty fucking gay. ]

But first, a quote to whet your appetite: “For some men, their balls act as a natural step-ladder…”

—> http://http://wildmant.com/shop/balllifter.cfm <—

And here is – drumroll – the ‘ball lifter.’ [By WildmanT]

So basically it is a pushup bra for your dick and balls. An interesting concept…that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. However, as the text on the site states, men have actually been using plastic codpieces for a while now, and I’ve heard of this for male underwear models.

Most guys have had the experience of buying some underwear that seems to have a yard of extra fabric for the crotch area. Unless you’re packing a boa constrictor that you can coil into a ball, you will never fill up that space, and so that’s why male models will use the prosthetic. It’s how they achieve that bulge that looks like a boob in a tube-top.

It’s like those silicone chicken cutlets that girl’s stuff into their bras for a more ‘full’ look. [On another note, there are these microfiber underwear you can buy that are virtually pouchless and make you look like a eunuch. And in the words of Paris, that’s not hot.]

The reason why the bulge keeps on growing is because gay men are the only ones designing men’s underwear. So they have naturally created the demand for something unrealistic, just like straight-guy created comic book vixens with gravity defying double-D tits. And just like lingere manufacturers who have created the push-up bra so that women can live up to these fantasies, gay men have also created the solution for their own battle of the bulge: the Ball Lifter. This particular underwear manufacturer has an even more advanced model called, ever so discreetly, ‘The Protruder.’ Funny how I spent my entire adolescence trying to avoid having a ‘protruder’…at least in public. Every school dance was another chance at humiliation.

As with the chicken cutlet, one must wonder at the repercussions of actually interesting a member of the opposite sex while wearing this apparatus. Just as I’m sure a girl would be mortified if a guys’ hands slid under her bra in the heat of passion and then recoiled in horror holding a jiggling flap of silicone, how would a girl react if she stripped off your underwear in ravenous lust and found you wearing the Ball Lifter. What would she say? If you had to speculate, would it go something like this…

“WHAT THE FUCK is that?! Is your dick depressed?”
“Um, no…why?”
“Because it looks like it’s trying to hang itself…”

I can’t know for sure if this is what would happen…but you can be sure I’ll never find out…

Or at least I’d never tell.

[As a caveat - ladies, don’t feel bad about the cutlets. I’m fine with them. As long as your boob has a nipple, I’ll probably like it. Besides, if it makes you feel good and look better in a particular top, I'm all for it. And I promise not to stuff them in my Speedo the next time I head to the local pool to do some laps.]

So I saw on the news this morning that Clay Aiken has officially come out of the closet. Is this really news?

I will try not to make a joke about the “microphone” in this photo.

*struggling* argh… ok, I’m good.

But seriously, this is a very duh moment. I think even People magazine, which is featuring him on the cover this week, knew it was pretty obvious for a storyline. And so they decided that it wasn’t enough to say “Clay’s Gay!”, but decided that since he also has a new baby it was okay. Because then in terms of celebrity trash news math: Newly Gay Fizzling Pop Star + New Baby = Cover Worthy Enough For A Slow Week.

Honestly I was expecting more for this story to make the cover of People Magazine or show up in TV headlines.

Maybe a story like “I’m Super Gay,” an article revealing that Clay Aiken is so gay that he can fly.

Or that Clay Aiken is so gay he has the power to turn straight men into ad hoc homos, like Chris Kattan’s Mango character on SNL.

Or that he is a Gay Midas, and everything he touches turns to gay.

Now that would be interesting and newsworthy! Not this Captain Obvious bullshit.

But rather, Captain Gay Pop Star!

Gay superpowers – they’re no joke. In fact he alluded to them in his hit song “Invisible” for which the chorus goes:

“If I was invisible
Then I could just watch you in your room
If I was invincible
I’d make you mine tonight”

For a second just ignore the creepy, perversely voyeuristic overtones of the lyrics and think: Is Clay foreshadowing something here? Is this the real news? Clay is not just gay, he has the power to turn himself invisible? And invincible? Like he was wrapped in an impervious pink kevlar body-suit? Being a pop star would be such a great cover story…

Screw American Idol – this shit is huge! Ambiguously Gay Duo move over, the Obviously Gay Solo is here to save the world! But that’s just my speculation. I’ll let you read between the panty lines.

For me, Infomercials are a love/hate relationship. Often they sneak up on me when I’m rocked back in a barcalounger in some sort of late night trance, one hand on my crotch, the other on a tepid beer. Seventeen minutes will pass by until I snap out of my hypnosis and think, “What the fuck am I watching?”

I’ve seen Chuck Norris pump his carrot-hued mullet up and down the TotalGym so many times that I think I’ve actually gained muscle definition. I’ve sat through so many Real Estate infomercials that I could open a school tomorrow, scamming insomniacs across the country into buying no-money-down investment strategy programs. On the technical side, I now have the knowledge to fully automate a kitchen with salad shooters, blenders, mixers, slicers, dicers, rotisseries, penny chopping knives, fat melting grills, and loaf launching bread makers. By pushing fifteen buttons I could put Mario Batalli out of a job.

Sometimes though, the infomercials offer some good, campy fun and I have to give credit where it’s due. Watching testimonials from male septuagenarians cured of erectile dysfunction by some ancient herbal remedy from Malaysia or some new fangled device ranks up there among the best. And that’s precisely why I didn’t change the channel when an infomercial for Pos-T-Vac came on the TV.

The Pos-T-Vac is touted as a non-surgical, non-medicinal treatment for erectile dysfunction. In fact, they have created a product that treats ED through a process of vacuum therapy. Okay, as the fact behind that statement sinks in, I’ll cut to the chase. The truth is, the Pos-T-Vac is a penis pump. That mid-life crisis novelty product of the eighties has finally made a comeback through clever re-marketing as a therapeutic tool for sagging, wrinkled, and flaccid phalluses.

Basically, you stick your wang in a clear plastic tube and by way of suction, blood starts flowing to your man parts. Think of it like a cock kick-starter. Or better yet, a dick-starter. I just copywrited that, so I better not see any Dick-Starters on the market this coming year. Seriously, I’ll hunt you down and beat you to death with with a cock-shaped mallet. Anyway, back to the point. Once your man-meat is full with blood and hard enough to dent steel, you put a ring around the base of your penis so the blood doesn’t slip out like air leaking from a deflating balloon. What comes next is up to the customer, whether it be chasing granny fanny in a power scooter or simply staring in amazement at the paradoxically virile monument standing proud between your legs.

What’s possibly most perplexing about this penis pump is that it’s covered by Medicare. Through research I found that hearing aids, most prescription drugs, and eye examinations, however, are not covered. So it doesn’t matter that the old man driving in front of me can’t see and can’t hear and is probably suffering from some other untreated malady, as long as he has the equivalent of a Reebok Pump for his dong, all is good. I find this to be a mix-up in priorities. But seeing what the Congressional record is on extracurricular boning activities, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Don’t get me wrong though, I think if people had more sex we’d be a happier nation. I’m just not sure that we’re prepared for the backlash of vacuum therapy. What backlash? The one where grey-haired men across the country begin volunteering to take over domestic responsibilities, saying to their wives with a wry grin and a twinkle in their eye, “Honey, I think it’s time we upgraded to a Dyson, don’t ya think? You know that they never lose suction.”

Allergies are killing me slowly. With each sniffle and wipe from my aloe infused Kleenex I feel the life force slowly draining from my body. Pollen floats about brazenly in puffs of dust and even giant cotton balls that take flight from our cottonwood trees. Stupid plant sex. Just seeing this stuff makes me cringe, it’s like living in a motel room illuminated by black lights – mystery spunk everywhere.

What pisses me off though is the supposedly effective theory of evolution. I really don’t understand how allergies slipped through the cracks.

I imagine my cave-dwelling Cro-Magnon doppelganger; we’ll call him Dug (‘cuz that’s how my name reads in cave paintings). Dug is a hunter, not a gatherer, basically because he has a penis so spears make more sense to him. One day Dug is out on the prowl and spots a boar. Dug smiles, baring a nightmare set of teeth that would wake a dentist in a cold sweat. But Dug is happy. He has found dinner.

The boar still has not seen him, so Dug raises his spear, obsidian tip glinting in the sun. Then out of the corner of his eye he sees movement. Dug spins his head and crouches, a sudden spike of adrenalin causes sweat to instantly bead at his temples.

Holy fuck! It’s a saber-tooth tiger.

Dug in trouble, he thinks to him self. The saber-tooth pounces on the boar, sinking its scimitar teeth into the swine’s neck, snapping vertebrae and severing arteries. Dug panics and runs for a rocky outcropping to his right that is riddled with fissures and holes, and he dives into one of the cracks and wriggles his way through a series of openings. But he has already been seen.

The padding of the tiger’s paws is amplified as the beast lopes up to the rocks. Dug obscures himself in a shadow and watches in horror as the tiger enters one of the adjoining fissures. Dug smells something funky and looks down. He has pooped. Dug thinks to him self, perhaps for the first time in all history, “I scared shitless.” He smiles at the thought. Poop is officially funny.

Time passes slowly, with Dug trying to stay as quiet as Cro-magnonly possible. Scraping sounds from claws probing the rock eventually fade away. Dug thinks he is safe.

He scales his way to the top of the fissure, noticing a pretty flower growing out of a crack. Dug is easily distracted and forgets the dangerous beast from before. He notices an appealing smell coming from the flower, bends his head and inhales deeply. Uh-oh. An annoying yet slightly pleasurable tickle forms in his nose. Dug’s face crinkles.

Ah-choooooo!!

Dug giggles. That was funny, that flower made my nose go boom, he thinks. Then he hears a roar, looks up and sees the sabertooth tiger in front of him. He smells that same funky smell from earlier. He smiles and it’s the last thought he ever has as the tiger’s two massive canine’s plunge into his skull and Dug’s world fades to black.

Now Dug doesn’t have a head. It’s a fucking bowling ball.

This all leads me back to my previous contention. How the hell did allergies make it past evolution? Hundreds of thousands of years to weed out this ridiculous over reaction of the immune system and now we’re stuck with shitty drugs that don’t really work, unless you count the fact that they at least prevent you from gouging out your itchy, watery eyes or cutting off your nose to spite your evolved, flat foreheaded face.

So that’s it. It’s not the simple degrading experience of having a botanical money-shot popped up your nose, it’s the fact that we even have to deal with allergies after all this time.

Oh yeah, and Allegra is way too fucking happy of a name for an allergy cure. Has anyone on the marketing team at Pfizer even had allergies before? How about Pistofftra. I’d buy that.

Well it turns out that PT Barnum was right, a sucker is born every minute. That “miracle cold buster” Airborne has finally been proven a fraud and taken to task with a class action lawsuit that has resulted in a $23.3M settlement. Turns out you can’t make those kind of claims without accurate and extensive clinical data. (Unfortunately that also means I must remove the title of world’s greatest lover from my resume, though I will be citing any and all anecdotal evidence to my favor. Er, if I ever get any. Not to say that I don’t “get any”. I do. Seriously.)

Anyway, back to the point. I can’t say that this news regarding Airborne comes as a surprise. From the first moment I saw this product I have been extremely skeptical that a cure for the common cold had been found. Especially since the product is, as the box so enthusiastically states, “Created by a school teacher!” Now call me a cynic, but somehow I don’t find this pedigree trustworthy. Creator Victoria Knight-McDowell is, in fact, a second grade teacher. No, not a biochemistry professor, nor doctor slash lecturer. Now I’m sure that between finger paintings and teaching the fundamentals of cursive writing there is lots of time for innovative thinking, but I find it difficult to believe that she was able to create a cure for something that has stumped pharmaceutical scientists and viral disease transmission experts.

Now in case anyone does not know, an education in, well, education, does not exactly qualify someone to create a drug or “dietary supplement” (aka: bullshit drug) as it is referred to on the box. This should be a red flag to the scrutinizing eye. Those credentials make it obvious that Airborne is no more likely to prevent you from catching a cold than that packet Spanish Fly next to the cash register at your local 7-11 is likely to make your dick hard.

But in the defense of Spanish Fly, at least it doesn’t claim success in clinical trials. See, Spanish Fly accepts its role as a goofy placebo. Airborne instead made an effort to appear legit through clinical testing. This is great in theory, but unfortunately someone didn’t tell Mrs. Knight-McDowell’s R&D team that clinical trials require an actual clinic and real scientists. Not two underpaid flunkies in a back room.

I can see the trial team now. Two guys, slamming back fizzing cups of Airborne like Alka-Seltzer after a heavy night of drinking, then running in and out of a 10 degree meat locker with nothing on but a wife-beater saying to each other, “You feel sick yet?” “Um, no. You?” “I don’t think so.” “Are we done?” “Yeah, sure. I bet we can still make happy hour O’Reilly’s.” “Cool, lets jam.”

With an ingredient list that reads like a multivitamin, Airborne should have been obvious as a scam. And guess what? Airborne was determined to be, basically, a highly overpriced multivitamin. There’s even 1,667% of your daily allowance of Vitamin C in there. It’s amazing how many people still believe in Vitamin C is a cold blocker, even though this belief was debunked by scientists a few years ago. Airborne claims that it “busts colds”, when in reality it’s as effective as practicing safe sex with a condom on your head. Now save that image, because buying Airborne will make you look just as stupid.

Unfortunately, this does not change the fact that Airborne is on track to bring in around $1 Billion in revenue this year. Perhaps that is the largest source of inspiration for this rant. I am awestruck by the audacity of dietary supplement companies’ claims and their innate ability to take advantage of gullible consumers, always on the search for miracle cures. Believe me, if a real miracle cure for our ailments came out, it sure as hell wouldn’t be over-the-counter. And they’d be displaying the data openly and enthusiastically.

I guess my other source of inspiration is my jealousy over the copious amounts of money made by Airborne. That said, I am officially making my foray into the miracle “dietary supplement” category with my new product, the Magic Bullet ™. I am very proud of this new item and I am confident that you’ll love it too. In my opinion, why take multiple pills when you can get every miracle you ever wanted in just one easy to swallow tablet. During clinical trials performed by my 7th grade science-lab partners Barry and Terry Liebowitz, both straight A students I might add, the Magic Bullet ™ has proven to remove stubborn belly fat, reduce wrinkles and other signs of aging, make your dick bigger, make your tits bigger (don’t worry it’s a smart pill, it’ll know which you want), help increase your intelligence, and of course, prevent the common cold. The main ingredient is found in the root of a rare Chinese plant called Ha Ha Ga Cha and the chemical extract, which we synthesize into the Magic Bullet ™, is called inyerfukindreemzadextrine.

And if you believe that, then operators are standing by.

I picked up a Men’s Fitness today and read through the same regurgitated crap they print every month, sucking in my gut the entire time. It’s just a depressing rag to read, especially when you are compelled to eat junk food faster than our dog Maggie gobbles the cat shit in our neighbors yard. (Which I’ve read is normal because cats can’t process all the protein in their food. So, they crap doggie Powerbars. Doesn’t make it right though.) Anyway, that comparison got me thinking about dogs, and all their idiosyncrasies. Things we grow to love despite their ridiculousness and how their cuteness allows them to get away with extremely questionable behavior with nothing more than an admonishing chuckle.

Our dog Maggie, the Golden Retriever with a cat shit eating grin, has another addiction. They’re round, green, and fuzzy. And no, they’re not hanging between the legs of Oscar the Grouch. I’m talking about tennis balls. Life to Maggie is food, sleep, and tennis balls. I can honestly imagine her working the corner, turning doggie tricks for a tube of Penns or Wilsons. She kinda looks like a crack head now too since she’s worn her teeth down to nubs by gnawing these balls like they were a rack of babybacks from Chile’s. She’s an addict and she needs to be in rehab just as bad as Lindsey Lohan. She’s also an intense dreamer and sleep-howler and when in the throes of rem sleep will often break out in a banshee like howl that subsequently wakes up all of our family as well as herself. We all try to get back to sleep, but are stuck with images from Pet Cemetery running through our minds.

Chaz, our West Highland terrier mix, has a white mustache that is alway cockeyed making him look like an albino cross between Wario and Salvador Dali. His vices are uber sexual in nature. An example would be what happens on our afternoon poop run. See our dogs are on a strict schedule – they eat at 4:30pm, then they go out to take a dump around 5pm. But we know exactly when to take them because Chaz gets horny. He bull charges Maggie’s front leg and all 21 lbs. of him starts power humping like a tiny Ron Jeremy after four Rockstars. (I just barely caught him on video here).

Maggie stands giant, stoic, and rigid like a sedated Brigitte Nielsen. Actually makes me think about what it must have been like with her and Stallone in the bedroom. He’ll do his hump routine three to four times before you can get a leash on him for the poop run. This always makes me think about Kingpin when Woody Harrelson is forced to sleep with his land lady and she says, “What is it about good sex that makes me have to crap?” Anyway, immediately afterward they hit the field and pop out yesterday’s kibble. Chaz’s other turn on is hot, sweaty, fresh-out-of-the-sock feet. You pop off your shoes and socks in front of him and he’ll start licking like he was trying to get to the center of a tootsie pop. I’m sure if he were smarter I’d catch him on the computer cruising German foot fetish sites.

Sofie, the toy poodle bitch that resembles a rat with a perm, has a deviated septum. The result of this is that when she falls asleep her breathing sounds like a liposuction pump slurping its way through John Goodman‘s fat ass. She is also a compulsive licker and is not as discriminating as Chaz. If left unattended she would literally lick a hole in our leather sofa. And I’ve licked the sofa. Doesn’t taste like anything. Honest. I think maybe she has a taste bud disorder and can’t taste anything, so her behavior is like a paraplegic stabbing himself in the leg trying to get a reaction. Sophie is also a major shit disturber and will bark at anything and everything, including much larger dogs, apparently not realizing that to a Rottweiler she looks like a Milk-bone on four legs. I imagine her like a hyper bitchie Rosie Perez starting fights that her boyfriend is forced to finish.

Beau, our Yorkie, is mustachioed like Pancho Villa and has an under bite of Sling Blade-like proportions. He’s a real sweetheart of a dog, and he’d be perfect except for one thing. With Beau I have the Midas touch. I can’t give the dog a scratch behind the ear without him giving himself a golden shower and shooting piss everywhere. Even once he gets comfortable and stops his submissive urination he seems to constantly check his wee-wee for leaks, like you would check your drawers after any fart following Indian food.

Despite the strangeness of these things, they are what we love about our dogs, what set them apart. What it represents is unconditional love. This reminds me of a scene from Good Will Hunting:

“Sean: My wife used to fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of wonderful little idiosyncrasies. She used to fart in her sleep. I thought I’d share that with you. One night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up and went ‘ah was that you?’ And I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Oh!
Will: She woke herself up?
Sean: Ah…! But Will, she’s been dead for 2 years, and that’s the shit I remember: wonderful stuff you know? Little things like that. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about: that’s what made her my wife. Oh she had the goods on me too, she knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but there not. Ah, that’s the good stuff.

~ Robin Williams as Sean Maguire, Matt Damon as Will Hunting.”

And I suppose it’s true. We’re just as weird as our dogs on many levels. The thing is, they’re just silent observers, well, if you don’t count all the yapping.

But hey, don’t think I’m getting to serious on you. I still don’t approve of eating cat shit.

Rambo at heart…Ok, ok, I hear the snickers already. People I know, my close friends included, sounded about as enthusiastic for the release of the new Rambo film as they would about having a colonoscopy, if that colonoscopy were performed with a twelve-inch bowie knife! I, on the other hand, could not help but be excited. The idea of Rambo transported me back to my youth, a magical landscape populated by the likes of Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Segal, Chuck Norris, and even Dolph Lundgren on particularly desperate nights: Men who became like second fathers to me over the years, teaching me lessons of manhood in compact, easy-to-swallow one and a half hour capsules. I flash back to age eleven, and see myself standing in front of a mirror with a red scarf tied round my head and a cheap, jade, Buddha pendant from Chinatown hanging from my neck. I’m flexing my little muscles to David-like marmoreal hardness and glistening with a fresh coat of my mother’s bath oil slathered on my skin. The plastic, orange tipped ak-47 water gun I brandish and my snarled lip complete the ensemble. John Rambo would’ve been proud.

These tough guy movies, or ‘dude-flicks’ as I call them, are often frowned upon for their violence and general stupidity. But they’ve taught me many things about life, the power of love for example. In the climax of Commando, Schwarzenegger kills over 150 bad guys in order to get his kidnapped daughter back. I can’t offer a specific number for how many he killed because I lost track – Arnie would need an autistic sidekick on par with Rainman to keep up with the body count. It’s like trying to count the number of times “around the world” is said in that Daft Punk song titled, well, Around the World. It’s just not possible. (Side note: It’s songs like these that keep my dreams of being a lyricist alive.) But back to the point: this is a perfect example of how love can triumph against overwhelming odds – M-16s and twenty-three inch biceps are really just backup.

I also learned that if you want to be taken seriously, you shouldn’t say much, but if you do say something, it should be either profound, or a primitive grunt. The scripts from these dude-flick movies offer superb templates for getting started on this philosophy of communication. Take the tagline from the new Rambo trailer, “When war is in your blood, killing is as easy as breathing.” This could just as easily be adapted to the playground: “When dodge-ball is in your blood, tattooing people in the face with a red rubber ball is as easy as breathing.” Or corporate America: “When downsizing is in your blood, shit-canning people is as easy as breathing.” Think about the respect you’d garner dropping these knowledge-bombs on your peers. Just be sure to drink some whiskey before hand to get the desired gravely voice; kids, just swallow some Pop-rocks and take a shot of Robitussin. Otherwise, if words would just convolute things, go with the grunt. For reference, see Schwarzenegger removing the bug from his brain in Total Recall, or Stallone about every other second in an action sequence. Primitive grunting and groaning existed well before the written word and complex languages muddled things up. A true action star can convey an entire array of emotions through these guttural vocal bursts. Remember, grunting speaks louder than words. Ungh!

Finally, I learned sometimes you need to be bad to be good. You know that old adage; you attract more flies with honey? Well, there was another saying that was born in the muck of the jungles of Southeast Asia, and that was: “You kill more flies with napalm.” This is the proverb that our dude flick icons live by. Besides, why the hell would you want to attract flies? I never understood that. Anyway, the pearl of wisdom to extract from this golden oyster of thought is that to kill a schizoid, sometimes you have to become a schizoid; or in other words, fight bat-shit crazy with bat-shit crazier. Going out of your mind is quite an effective way of dealing with difficult situations. It’s like thinking outside the box, but more literally like thinking outside of your cranium. For example, like in Missing in Action when Chuck Norris goes buck wild on the Viet Cong after he decides to rescue a group of old POWs by himself. In the process he teaches us that sometimes one crazy-ass mofo is just as effective as an entire army. Who would have known this unless someone had tried? Thanks Chuck.

In sum, I just want to offer thanks to these honorable modern day demigods. They’ve taught me about being a man and about power of the human spirit. Collectively they have become my surrogate fathers and I have suckled their rock-hard, growth hormone injected teat of knowledge. They have brought me enlightenment and more chest hair than originally deemed possible by heredity. I salute them and suggest you give them a chance to impart wisdom to you and your brood. So next time you think about popping in Sleepless in Seattle for yourself or Baby Einstein for the tots, consider swapping it out for Predator, Rambo, or Bloodsport. Trust me, it’ll make being a real man “as easy as breathing.”

Nostril HobbitsPicture this: You’ve just sat down down to a lovely meal of pork tenderloin covered in a fabulous mango chutney. Pop goes the cork on a bottle of Pinot Gris and you fill your glass a third of the way, swirl, and sip. Perfection. Then you grab the remote and turn on the TV. It’s 20/20 and you feel like a very informed citizen as you prepare to learn about Chinese oppression in Tibet. After the first segment, the commercials roll in. Then there, on the screen, is a giant, gelatinous blob of green. No, you have not sneezed on your television set. You notice the blob is wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt stretched to the limits. He is watching TV in a little circular living room. Then the camera zooms out and shows someone blowing their nose and you realize the blob is a snot goblin that is living inside your nostril, and his name is Mr. Mucus. You then proceed to wiggle around a particularly gooey chunk of the mango chutney on your tongue with a nauseous sensation growing in your belly and spit it out in your napkin.

What the crap?! Is this really necessary? Do we really have to personify illnesses now in order to sell drugs? And I thought the rapidly read drug side-effect list – which sounds like it was developed for an SNL sketch – was bad.

This Musinex booger boy is just part of a disturbing trend though. First it was Digger, the “dermatophyte” who told you he lived beneath your nails and who after introducing himself proceeded to spin into a whirling dervish and burying himself into your flesh. Now don’t you want some Lamisil – now that you know you have a colony of creepy little creatures partying underneath your nails? Honestly, what’s next. Are we going to be looking forward to the following commercial characters one day?!

Preperation H – Meet Harry Hanger and the rest of his red-headed family of ornery hemorrhoids.

Pro-activ – Say hello to Poppy Whitehead, the curmudgeonly blind zit that lives under the skin of your pockmarked chin.

Exlax – Introduces Pluggy, the quirky five-pound colon blocking turd.

I’m sure a marketing team could come up with scores more. I just don’t want to hear it. This shit gives me nightmares, like when I watched a Discovery Channel special on exotic parasites and learned a fish could swim into your penis and live there if you go wee wee in the Amazon (now that’s what I call cock blocking). I have enough trouble worrying about contracting some disease crapping on a public toilet. I don’t need to imagine illnesses as little creatures getting ready to invade my body. Besides, for me on a advertising level their ads aren’t working. You make me nauseous and I’m not going to be looking for the Mucinex. “Pass the Pepto, please!”