Kelly Bensimon has a rude vagonia.*

While I should not have been surprised that traveling to Florida gave me some kind of Ebola virus, I was.  Apparently, eating ceviche and homemade sangria (which tasted like fruit-infused gasoline…I can only assume) from Roberto’s Cuban Restaurant and buying beer cozies and a puka shell necklace in Cocoa Beach are recipes for disaster.

 

And if you think I am not correlating my recent illness with buying a puka shell necklace at Ron Jon’s Surf Shop, think again.  God sees all, and punishes accordingly.

 

Anyways, back to my second near-death experience of the week.  I started to feel those horrible pangs of impending misery during my four-hour champagne brunch (This is no commentary on my fabulous brunch company, by the way.  Nor is my illness associated with the combination of the words “four” and “hour” and “champagne” in the previous sentence.  Seriously.)  I napped from like, 3pm to 9pm, then went back to bed at, like, 9:07pm.  By 4am I was in the vice grip of ceviche-puka-shell-beer-coozie-induced Ebola.

 

Because I have a huge heart (and no, I am not still confusing my heart with my ass), and did not want to infect my coworkers with Floridian Plague, I took the day off.

 

It had been so long since I did this, however, I almost forgot the Universal Law of the Sick Day.  Which is obviously the act of watching 17 straight hours of TV.  Preferably one show for all 17 hours, if you can swing it.  How else do you think I watched 154 episodes of West Wing?  Mono, duh.

 

Yesterday’s TV show du jour was the Real Housewives of Whatever-the-Hell-City-Stars-Kelly Bensimon-and-the-Mafia-and-That-One-Chick-Who-Filed-for-Bankruptcy.  New York?  New Jersey?  Anyways.  That’s not important.  What’s important is that I learned how to say useful phrases like “Joe is a re-tahhd” in Italian and that Danielle Staub wears a $5,000 hair weave.  And that Bravo programming features a 24-hour cycle of Real Housewives of Somewhere Trashy and Millionaire Matchmaker.

 

Wait, what?  The U.S. is in the middle of a debt crisis and people are predicting the precipitous downfall of American culture and education?  OMG, NO WAY! SHOCKING.

 

*And btw, the name of this blog post came from a line in RHONY (Oh yeah, after 14 hours of Real Housewives, I can use the acronym) that had to be clarified using subtitles because BITCHES DON’T MAKE NO EFFING SENSE on those shows.

Whoomp! There it is.

Growing up I strongly believed that, were I to possess any discernable talents, I would make the best famous person ever.  My personality had all the trappings of a late 80s/early 90s star.  I created dance routines to Jock Jams (Discs 1 through 5, obvi).  I forced my mother to sew matching scrunchies for every outfit  – this included cutting the sleeves off a hypercolor t-shirt in order to make said scrunchie (My God, I was a tyrant!).  In fact, I loved being the center of attention so much that in one single fifth grade talent show, I a.) Sang an Amy Grant song with my bff, b.) Danced to Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’, and c.) Forced my entire elementary school to watch me hula hoop through ‘Strike It Up’ (By Black Box – don’t ACT like you don’t know this).  [Ok, but in all fairness, they did hold auditions, so who’s truly to blame here?]

 

But that is neither here nor there.

 

My point is that Amy Winehouse died this weekend, and if my sweet scissor-kick during ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ had catapulted me into child-stardom, I totally would have pulled an Amy Winehouse already because I definitely could not handle fame.

 

Oh, and for those inquiring minds, ‘pulling an Amy Winehouse’ is a term I just made up today, which I will henceforth be using to describe famous people who do what they’re supposed to:  get pushed into pre-adolescent, reluctant stardom by Dina Lohan-esque parents; make shitloads of ca$h money; stop wearing underpants (if you’re a girl, in a car); buy lots of drugs from that Girls Gone Wild guy; and make terrible relationship choices like dating Kirsten Dunst or something equally repulsive.

 

And if you’re sitting there clutching your pearls thinking “too soon!  She just died!”, um FALSE.  If you hadn’t at least thought about betting on when she would overdose, then you don’t like money (and would, coincidentally, make a bad famous person).

 

The moral here?  Well, let’s see: due to the fact that I have no marketable talents, I have officially outlived Amy Winehouse and hold down a government job in which I send emails with words like “expeditiously” and “inter alia”.

 

Where the hell is Joe Francis when you need him? (I sincerely hope you had to Google that).

 

P.S. The only reason I can say things like that is because actually l-o-v-e- Amy Winehouse and have all of her music.  It’s the same principle that allows me to make fun of people from Minnesota or blondes with big booties.

Oh, hayyyy.

So, instead of telling you where I’ve been for the past year and a half, I figure I’ll just get back to doing what it is I do best (besides throwing sweet theme parties) – being a snarky betch.

 

Because my forefathers decided that the best greatest nation on earth’s capitol (that would be Amurrca, btw) would be best situated on top of a giant swamp, summertime for me revolves around air-conditioned activities or, conversely, cursing about my face melting off when forced outside during daylight hours.  A list of acceptable activities during this heinous season includes shopping, swimming, movie-going, TV-watching, indoor sports (take your mind out of the gutter), and eating at chain restaurants.  Luckily, my Sunday involved many of the aforementioned activities.

 

After loaning my impeccable taste to a friend for an afternoon of shoe shopping, I convinced him to see the new Rom-Com, Friends With Benefits, by promising that it starred neither Matthew McConaughey nor Katherine Heigel (I mean, knowing that you’ll see Mila Kunis’ ass shouldn’t involve a lot of arm-twisting, let’s be serious).

 

I have to say that, for realz: funniest (real word) movie ever.  Justin Timberlake absolutely kills it – a little to my chagrin.  Every ounce of talent that ever existed in Tennessee must have been funneled into J.T.  Who would have thought that someone who used to share the stage with Chris Kirkpatrick* would ever have a chance at EGOTing**?!  And if you don’t know what EGOTing is, that means you don’t watch 30 Rock, which consequently means that I judge you, which should not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.

 

Now that I finally got permission from On High (no, I have not turned to Jesus in the past 18 months of my blog hiatus) to re-start my blog, I will resume writing about all things fierce, not-fierce, and whatever else that strikes my fancy.  Because if there’s one thing I am, it’s fancy.

*Yes, of course I had to Google “N’Sync+Members” to remember what the ugly dude with braids’ name was.

**EGOT=Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.

O. M. G. Hiiiiiiieeeeee.

Whoever made the rhyme committed the crime.

I’ve navigated the halls of Congress, spent the majority of the past year reading about nuclear weaponry and terrorist networks – I broke my glasses running face first into a sliding glass door, for chrissakes – all the while remaining unscathed.  That is, unless we’re talking about the one  subject that terrifies me most – farting.

The mere mention of flatulence and I revert to my inner-teenage-Korean-girl, giggling and shifting uncomfortably in my [fabulous] shoes.  The way I see it, there is just NO socially acceptable way of dealing with passing gas [even having to write the turn of phrase ‘passing gas’ is humiliating].

Take, for example, the gym.  Yesterday was a rare occasion in which I found myself both a.) wearing a matching outfit and leftover make-up from the day [thereby rendering my face non-scary], and b.) running next to an open treadmill that was promptly taken by an extremely good-looking guy.  Motivated to up my MPH to 6.0, I was already imagining the scenario that was clearly going to happen: we’d finish at the same time, he would ask how I was able to run such long distances while looking adorable, and insist that he take me to dinner.  Obviously.

But no, instead some whore running near us decided to let out an absolute whopper.  Which is so unfair, because gym farts are inherently mysterious.  I, of course, made it clear that I was appalled by the stench, to no avail.  Hot guy promptly got off the treadmill and disappeared into the weight room.

Another no-win situation is the first fart of a relationship.  Not only does it signal the end of the honeymoon period, but for guys it also seems to be the green light for openly farting with such pride that I feel obliged to remind them I, in fact, am not their fraternity brother.  Like, just because I laughed when you farted, doesn’t mean that I will want to kiss you after you dutch-ovened me.  I will not.

Finally, I must address the baffling phenomenon of people who are not embarrassed to fart in public.  It happens about once a year that I find myself walking with a mere acquaintance, when they start warting [Walk-farting.  VOMIT].  After I become unfrozen with fear and panic, I am immediately saddened that our relationship has been irrevocably changed.  I will a.) no longer be able to look you in the eye, b.) not take you seriously, and c.) tell everyone that you farted.

Because who am I kidding when I say I’ve moved past seventh grade?

Your Prius Just Ran Over My Ray-Bans.

The two words that most aptly sum up my weekend are “liberal” and “elite”.   It started with my being in San Francisco with two gay boys and and a girl who works for Twitter and culminated in a trip to Whole Foods.

Side Note:  I grew up shopping for groceries at the Hy-Vee in Rochester, Minnesota.  The salad bar [the term ‘salad’ is used loosely in Minnesota] boasted two items:  ‘Oreo Salad’ [Oreos and Cool Whip] and ‘Jello Salad’ [you guessed it - Jello and Cool Whip].  Cereals ranged from Lucky Charms to Cookie Crisp, to be coupled with any one of the twelve kinds of flavored milk.  Sushi was an urban legend, and there was an entire aisle devoted to canned meat products [including, but not limited to, Spam].

So, Whole Foods tonight.  I pulled into the parking lot, thankful for having left my ‘Obama/Biden’ sticker on my 2003 Camry, yet feeling distinctly like an outsider for possessing neither an a.) Subaru, b.) BMW, c.) ski rack, nor ideally d.) a Subaru or BMW with a ski rack.  Oh well, at least I brought my own reusable grocery bag.  Those lend instant street cred to any aspiring liberal elite [FYI].

Once inside, my senses were overpowered with the scent of $5 organic bananas, pre-cut carrots [the thought of grating, then cutting my own carrots makes me shiver], and South American tomatoes [because the tomatoes grown 15 miles east in Salinas are so much less satisfying, and nothing says ‘I <3 Mother Nature’ like flying your fruit 8,000 miles on an airplane twice a week].

I made my way to the soft drink aisle, hoping to find some Diet Coke.  Silly me.  I did, however, make it past the forty contiguous feet of different varieties of Ginger Beer [which, incidentally, is not a beer] to find a new brand of soda called “Me”.  The flavors I could choose from were “Uninhibited”, “Curious”, and “Vivacious”.  All sounded equally slutty, so I went with “Vivacious”.  Unsure if it would taste like tree bark, as nowhere on the label did it hint at the actual taste of the beverage, I picked up some Hansen’s Sugar-Free, Caffeine-Free, Non-animal Tested Pomegranate Soda just in case.

Past the Chlorine-Free toddler training pants, I stumbled upon the soups.  I hadn’t planned on getting any soup because I had already spent my extra cash on Icelandic yogurt, but I was mesmerized by the Moroccan Chickpea Bisque.  Logically, this meant watered down hummus, yet it sounded so fancy.  Intoxicated by liberal elitism, I threw caution to the wind and got two boxes of the Bisque [Yes, boxes.  Cans are for people who read USA Today].

Fearing my debit card being declined, I scooped up one six-pack of Pranqster Beer [beer isn’t elitist if it isn’t cleverly misspelled] and headed for the check out register. There, I was denied one of my favorite grocery store practices – reading the newest US Weekly fast enough while in line to avoid actually having to buy it.  My only choices were The Economist, National Geographic, and Organic Living.  How is a person expected to read about the Socio-anthropology of Maori Tribesmen in seven minutes?!

Finally, after swiping my card and mentally calculating how many months of student loans this grocery trip will take to pay off, the grocery bagger has the nerve to ask if I would like to contribute $10 dollars to the Planet Earth Foundation.  Which sounds to me about as legitimate as Vandelay Industries.  Stupid liberal elites.

Well, I must be off.  Better consume those pre-diced organic butternut squash cubes before they realize they’ve been sitting in the same fridge as Trader Joe’s frozen burritos.

Nancy Grace, Amateur Detective. No wait, that was NANCY DREW.

I always thought when people told me, “the greatest discoveries happen when you’re not looking” it was a thinly veiled attempt at consoling me for not having a boyfriend.

Until tonight.  When I unlocked the key to why America teeters precariously on the edge of a cultural abyss while accidentally watching Nancy Grace on mute.

[Note: If I stopped to answer questions like, “Why were you watching Nancy Grace?” or, “Why do you watch TV without sound?”  I might a.) remain single indefinitely; and b.) have to explain to the world why I watch Nancy Grace without sound.]

SO.  Back to Nancy Grace and her freedom hating ways.  When her image filled the screen tonight, I felt like my eyeballs were somehow able to take LSD separately from my body.  Nevermind her eyebrows penciled in like the fat, mean octopus from The Little Mermaid, she may have in fact invented the now-famous ‘white trash bob’.  [The white trash bob, for those unfamiliar with Kate Gosselin, or conversely, familiar with taste, is when the hairstylist at Great Clips angles your hair from short-to-long - the longest part being in front.]  Her jacket – a red, black and white melange of geometric shapes – was accented with an offendingly large metal necklace that most likely dyed her neck green during the broadcast.  To top off this visual blitzkrieg, her senior-prom length acrylic nails matched the red on her jacket.  How fancy.

Moving onto actual content.  Having been spared actually listening to Nancy’s IQ-sapping voice, I was able to pay more attention to the clusterf*#$ of everything else happening on screen.

Apparently, the dude who writes the news ticker items for her show is that same guy who makes powerpoint presentations by copy/pasting his entire paper onto a few slides and reading them aloud verbatim [while I doodle 3-D boxes on my notebook and secretly wish sterility on him.]  I mean, there were like ten different ‘information’ boxes about crazy shit on the screen at once, though at times mercifully blocking Nancy’s face.  “Baby Daddy: Murderer or Innocent Bystander?” and “Police Find Suspected Abductor in Florida” and “Jessica Simpson to Speak Out About Weight Struggles”  ALL ON SCREEN AT THE SAME TIME.  My mind can’t even process Jessica Simpson stringing enough sentences together to form an interview, let alone all the other child-abducting madness happening, too.

Which leads me to the scariest part of all.  That there is an audience somewhere in America who keeps Nancy Grace on primetime television.  Sitting in their living rooms, refreshing their coozy with Coors Light during commercial breaks, and caring about this shit.  Is there any wonder that our once-great nation is steadily falling in international standing when people spend their nights learning about 22 year-old drunken moms who murder their children [in Florida, always in Florida]?

If the answer to the previous question is not immediately evident, I urge you to do one of two things: 1.) move to Florida, or 2.) stop procreating.  And you can do both.  Americans love overachievers.

Who are you, Bob Costas?

Due to my general fascination with all things subpar (i.e. things that suck), I feel it to be my duty to write about the Olympics.  The Winter Olympics.  In Canada.

While this should be an adequate explanation for most people, I will elaborate tonight because I am feeling charitable.

Wow, Ok.  Where do I start?  How about with Bob Costas.  This man may just be the second most dull person to walk this earth, preceded only by the guy who ran the planetarium in my high school.  One sentence about the Orion Belt and I felt like I had taken Mexican rhino tranquilizer in the jugular.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Bob Costas signifies all that is wrong with sports commentating/Olympics/ageless TV personalities.  Plus I’m always skeptical of a person who literally disappears for two years at a time.  Where the hell is Bob during odd numbered years?  Very suspect indeed.

Moving on to the Winter Olympics.  No one cares about any of the events, save figure skating, to which I say:  rent ‘The Cutting Edge’ and call it a day.  Luging?  Curling?  Shaun White as a serious athlete?  Fail, fail and double fail.  The only people who even have a shot at making the Winter Olympics are rich kids from Lake Tahoe, Aspen, and Canadians.

Which brings me to the most vexing part of the 2010 Games.

Their general Canadian-ness.  This is a huge problem not only because k.d. lang is suddenly everywhere I look, but also because if I want to watch the figure skating finals, I am involuntarily subjected to an hour of Canadian trivia and tourism ads.  Thanks, Tourism Board of Canada, but if I wanted to see your country I would go to my preferred frozen tundra – Minnesota, where the people are brazen and fries come with ketchup.

Stick that in your half pipe and smoke it, eh?

Victoria’s Secret is the Bomb.

Because I spend my days ranting about/pondering the general state of international affairs, it is a subject often overlooked in my blog.  Luckily today has been the perfect storm of 1.) a shopping spree at Victoria’s Secret [did I mention I got my financial aid check and tax return?], 2.) thought provoking classes, and 3.) wine.

Which brings me to tonight’s topic:  Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab.  Or as the Urban Dictionary might say, the Underwear Bomber [UB for short].

[Btw, I know what you’re thinking - wasn’t that in like, December?!  Way to jump on the political commentary train two months late, eejit.  Whatever.  I’ve been fashionably late my entire life.  Get used to it, bitches.]

Back to UB.  What disappointed me most about the whole fiasco wasn’t the near terrorist attack [potentially disastrous, no doubt, but all’s well that ends well - right?].  Or the exposure of a scarily high level of miscommunication/lack of intelligence sharing between executive agencies.  Or EVEN the plain old misinterpretation of evidence.  All these annoyances I took in stride.

What really bothered the sh*% out of me was the lack of capitalization by news networks and journalists on the potential for what I consider to be the pinnacle in hilarity:  potty jokes.

[Aside: Why did I bleep out ‘shit’ in the previous sentence as though I normally exercise restraint when cursing?  What the f*$k?!]

There were dozens of amazing headlines/one-liners to be had!  Here are some missed opportunities, as I see it:

Journal of International Security – “Abdulmuttalab Smuggles Bomb on Plane in Undergarments: The Dirty Underside of Terrorism.”

That’s What She Said Weekly – “Airplane Passenger Carries Large, Explosive Device in Pants.”

Bowel Movements International – “Devastating Underwear Explosion Averted Aboard Overseas Flight.”

GQ – “Abdulmuttalab’s Ass was the Bomb.”

American Idol Digest – “Pants on the Ground, Pants on the Ground – Abdulmuttalab was Lookin’ Like a Fool with His Pants on the Ground.”

For godsakes, people!  I realize journalism is in the shitter [See?!  THAT is how you properly use a pun], but DAMN, how could you let this golden opportunity pass you by?  Tsk, tsk.

And there you have it, folks.  Another hard-hitting piece of journalistic excellence from yours truly.  Oh don’t worry – there’s a lot more where that came from.

To Do: 1. Make To Do List. Check!

As a product of the 80s, it’s only natural that I blame other people for my shortcomings – right?  That’s what I thought.  My current deflection of blame goes to every guidance counselor I’ve ever had in school.
Because of this crazy, middle class world I grew up in [Palo Alto, I’m talking to you], school counselors always told me to “set goals” and “reach for the moon because even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”  Some even had the violence-inducing poster of a cat dangling from a branch saying, “Hang In There,” in their offices.  Or maybe that was the school nurse.  Either way, it did not make me set goals.
[Note: For those unaware of the evil vortex from whence the aforementioned poster comes, educate yourselves.  It is one of the only surefire litmus tests for people who suck.  These people also tend to have Anne Geddes calendars, decorative sweaters for holidays like Halloween and Secretary’s Day, and eat their emotions at Cinnabon in the mall.]
Anyways, the point of this tirade is that I am terrible at setting goals.  I’m the queen of To Do Lists, but they never really go beyond “get quarters for laundry” and “spend financial aid check at Target.”  [That last one isn’t so much on my To Do List, as it is a fact of life every semester, FYI.]
So last week I had some down time, and decided to set some real goals for myself.  Attainable goals.  Here we go:
First, I vowed to join Netflix and order/watch every season of Lost so far.  I feel like such a loser when I’m not invited to Tuesday night Lost parties.  I almost wish I would come down with stomach flu so I could spend a week on my couch watching the DVDs.
Next, I aim to become friends with my cafeteria crush at school.  [A cafeteria crush is a leftover term from college.  Basically, it’s a cute guy you see around campus who gives you a reason to not wear sweats to class.]  The best part is that he apparently joined my gym over Winter break and has been on the treadmill behind me everyday this week.  Now we’ll have something to talk about when he inevitably asks me to go hiking in Point Lobos.  To which I’ll lie and tell him I love nature, camping, and baby animals.

Finally, I’ve promised myself that I’ll stop buying salads from Trader Joe’s.  Here’s my routine: make grocery list [salads appear nowhere on list], go to TJ’s, spot pre-made salads, think to self it’s a good idea to buy five salads, put them in fridge, never think about them again.  Or at least until they’ve gone bad and I throw them out.  I estimate having spent $500 on this lost cause and I’m putting and end to it.
Yeeeeeeehaw, bitches.  How’s that for some goal-settin’?!  Eat your heart out, Mr. Dunlap.