Less Than Complete

So I’m standing in the middle of the toothpaste aisle looking at all the choices, and I’m completely and totally confounded. Colgate Total. Crest Complete. Ok. Toothpaste that has all the things you want from toothpaste in it. Yay! Finally! Our search is over!

Or is it?

Ha. Joke’s on you.

Apparently those two are not complete or total enough, as a quick glance down the aisle will make that abundantly clear. Observe:

• Colgate Total Advanced – so the original Total is somehow inferior?
• Colgate Total Advanced Deep Clean – are you implying that if I use the regular version, I will get only a superficial clean?
• Crest Complete Whitening + Deep Clean – cuz the original apparently doesn’t do these things already?
• Crest Complete Extra Whitening + Tartar Protection – hmmm… even more whitening but not as clean? The Sophie’s choice of oral hygiene.
• Tartar Control & Tartar Protection – since when does tartar need protecting? Did it anger a loan shark? Make bad choices? Is that why we need to exert better control over it? I had no idea. What’s next, Tartar Rehabilitation?
• Sensitive – cuz your teeth are PUSSIES, that’s why!

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. After all the hard work of overwhelming us with a dizzying array of choices, they were still unsatisfied. They stepped it up to the next level… or should i say “dimension?” Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

• the Crest 3D White range in the options of Vivid, Advanced and Glamorous – Glamorous!? dafuq?
• the Crest Pro-Health range – because all other toothpastes are still in little league, apparently.
• Crest Pro-Health “for me” – for those who never learned to share.
• Crest Pro-Health “for life” – for the prison demographic? or the overcommitter mayhaps?
• Colgate Optic White – um, is this for your eyes or your mouth? I bet there’s at least one person out there who has tried putting this in their eye. You know I’m right.
• Colgate Sensitive Pro Relief – for help getting rid of the touchy-complainy professionals in your life.
• Colgate Luminous – again I’m thinking this sounds a lot like a product for your eyes. Like perhaps there was a mixup with L’Oreal?
• the all-new, super-exciting Crest Be flavor line – I have no words.

I would like to mention at this stage that I actually spent a non-trivial amount of time on each of these companies’ web sites looking at their product lines. It’s really quite amazing to me how much we, as a species, have chosen to throw an unfathomable amount of research, development, advertising and just plain effort into something as specific and first world as toothpaste. I mean, I’ve only chosen to cover 2 of the major players in the field and I’m already exhausted. It’s also quite amazing to me the amount of time I’ve spent writing this post looking at toothpastes online.

As a side note, Colgate Total has this wonderful product chooser feature on their site which, if you check all the boxes for the features you want in your toothpaste, will recommend their plain ol’ Colgate Total Advanced. I find this hilarious. Maybe I’ve been looking at toothpastes too long. Maybe I should go brush my teeth.

At this point I feel like you’re all dying to know what I use. My current toothpaste of choice is Crest Pro-Health something. I’m too lazy to go look and tell you what variant. I vacillate between that, one of the Colgate Totals and a ridiculously hippie, super hard to find in stores, orange flavored fluoride-free toothpaste. Also, I prefer gel. I have no idea why.

And now you know.

My Cats Are Not Picasso

Dear An Post,

please stop kicking the ever-loving SHIT out of my packages from zooplus. i understand that 14kg of cat food and 28kg of cat litter IS an unreasonable amount of crap to haul around, but you don’t realize the havoc that you wreak upon my life when you deliver my goods.

also, please stop arriving at a quarter to effing 8 in the morning. while i appreciate the thoughtfulness of your trying to drop by as early as possible to ensure that we don’t waste our day waiting for you, what you don’t realize is that i don’t normally go to sleep until around 3 am most days. given that i am, thankfully, still under the age of 60, i really need a few more than 4 and a half hours of sleep a night.

i’m beginning to think that perhaps you really like my unkempt crazy-cat-lady hair, swollen eyes and shockingly red bathrobe.

this morning, not only did my packages arrive looking like they’d been dropped out of an airplane, the litter bags contained within one of the boxes had split open. what ended up happening is that instead of simply dragging the boxes into the house and shutting the door stumbling upstairs to bed, i ended up attempting to dead-lift a box which had one side torn 3/4 of the way off. i then ended up dragging a 5 foot long trail of cat litter across my entryway, turning the floor into 40 grit sandpaper, which i then had to walk on.

i shuffled into the kitchen and got the dustpan thingy and swept up the largest pile, leaving a small amount between the two boxes to deal with later. i swept off the litter stuck to my cold, bare feet and shuffled upstairs to bed. i tried failingly to go back to sleep until about an hour later when i woke to became aware of some sounds of cat revelry downstairs (cat owners will know what i’m talking about). i again groggily stumbled downstairs in bare feet to find the following Rorschach test left to me by my cats:

it was very sweet of you to try to give my cats an outlet for expressing their innermost artistic desires, but perhaps you might have chosen a less abrasive medium to offer them. perhaps it’s time for me to order 15lbs of play-doh.

thanking science for roombas,
the crazy cat lady in #63

Sessy Nes Pah ‘Omeopathy

say the title outloud and it might make more sense 🙂

i hate small talk. one of the main reasons is that i hate the “where are you from” question because the answer takes about 45 minutes and involves a lot of other questions which also annoy me to have to answer.

the second reason is that i hate the “what do you do” question. as some of you know, i’ve been studying Naturopathy and Herbal Medicine for the past… mmmm… 4 or so years. so my “what do you do?” conversations often go like this:

n00b: so what do you do?

me: i’m a recovering web designer

n00b: huh? oh, haha. so what are you doing now?

me: studying Naturopathy

n00b: Naturo-waa-huh??

me: Natur-o-pa-thy, you know, like natural medicine

n00b: OH, you mean like homeopathy!?

—

NO. NOT LIKE MUTHAFUCKIN HOMEOPATHY!!!

—

the remainder of the conversation goes one of several ways:

me: no. sigh. no, like herbal medicine

n00b: oh! my cousin / uncle / mom used to always give me [herb name here] when i was growing up for [condition name here]…

me: oh, that’s nice. yeah, it’s great for that.

OR

me: no. sigh. never mind. i’m studying herbal medicine.

n00b: oh! i heard [mispronounced herb name here] destroys your liver!

me: those scientific studies are usually falsified by the pharmaceutical industry or based on bad batches where the producer used poor farming or harvesting practices; much to the detriment of the consumer and the herbal medicine industry. and by the way, tylenol / panadol (acetaminophen / paracetamol) kills far more people every year.
…
at this point, they become very interested in some lint. across the room.

OR

me: no. like herbal medicine. you know, plants and shit.

n00b: oh yeah! so what would you recommend my mother / cousin / uncle use for her asthma / rash / gout / dandruff?

me: well, there are a million things… sigh… lemme email you
…
i usually never email them. not because i don’t love what i’m doing, but because they really don’t care that much about my answer and their mother / cousin / uncle will never get the message or if they do, they won’t listen to them anyway.

OR

me: no, homeopathy is something different and completely unrelated to what i’m learning. [lengthy description follows]

n00b: oh, that’s fascinating

me: excuse me, i need another drink now to get over having to enlighten your dumb ass for the past half hour.

—

so yeah, pretty much all of these scenarios make me want to stab someone. it’s very un-naturopath-like and not very PLURy. it makes me sad. and also angry. yes. so very angry.

and that, hopefully, makes you smile.

Link Your Damn Links!

Luddites of the interwebs, it is 2012. The dub-dub-dub has been around for like 2 decades. It’s time for you to fucking cop on. please for the love of all that is good on this earth, please do us the courtesy of linking the URLs on your web pages. I know that most smartypants phones out there do automatically do this for you in emails, but please don’t rely on this magic to carry through to your web browser. It doesn’t. and it infuriates us. It causes us to click maniacally in the general area of the URL until we realize you’re one of those people whose hand should have been slapped away and all Internet privileges revoked denied all computer access until you at least read Interwebs for Numbnuts or took a night course at your local adult education center.

Once you have mastered the art of creating one of these mystical “hyperlinks” do us the additional favor and please do not use “click here” or “follow this link” or my current favorite: “Website: website” with the second “website” being the link with no discernible difference in formatting from the first. We will understand that we should click your goddamned link because it will be obvious to us that it is a link. Because we are not morons.

also underlining shit that isn’t a link makes me want to reach through my computer and strangle you.

—–

update: I could just cry. Not only do these guys not link anything, they’ve actually gone through the effort to use CSS to create the bleakness that is their home page. I might just have to call and cancel my internet connection now.

I Told You So

So I’ve got a cold.

If you know me at all, them you know that I never get sick. So you might also guess that when I do get sick, I am super unhappy.

[oh god crying baby. I’m writing this on a plane.]

Where was I? Oh yeah, unhappy. If it were just a matter of “oops, I was on a 4 day meth binge,” or “gee, I work in a giant petri dish” (Keating, 2012), I might have a better attitude about it. But no, it’s not due to any fault of my own; it’s due to all the coughing asshats that plague me on the bus and out in the world. Thanks, asshats. Now I’m on my way to a nice romantic weekend getaway with Husband in Lisbon, and I’m trapped on a plane with a screaming fucking baby and a river of snot coming out of my head the likes of which makes the annual flooding of the Nile seem like a minor inconvenience.

[Someone please stuff a sock in that baby. Seriously, parent. I have some industrial strength knock-out pills in my bag. Row 13. Purple hair. You only need ask.]

Yeah, prior to this head plague, I’d been eating well and juicing (the kind with vegetables) and generally being very good to myself. In fact I’d actually managed to lay off the booze for a whole 2 or 3 days. Yeah, I know! So how does my body reward me? By sitting idly by and allowing a stupid little virus to set up housekeeping. ON VALENTINE’S DAY. Right before a 4 day weekend in one of the loveliest cities in Europe.

Feh.

Waste Bag Indeed

Dear Airlines,

I am writing to you today on the subject of waste management; or creation as it might be more appropriately named in this case. I would like to understand why, in this age of sustainability, conservation, and other eco-buzzwords, you think it’s a good idea to actually INCREASE the amount of waste that is generated during a flight. Is there some sort of sick joke of a competition going on between all the airlines to see how much of a pile of shit you can create? Does the winner get to have the name of their airline spelled out in GARBAGE so large that it can be easily read from an altitude of 30,000 feet?

The only other reason I can think of for creating such a huge amount of trash would be that you are collectively saving up to use all the… uh… proceeds to build more airports or pave runways in less developed parts of the world. This might be acceptable if you’re trying to build runways in places which are sorely lacking in natural plastic reserves and which you will then use to deliver medical supplies.

But honestly, how can you justify giving me not just one cup with my tea in it, but one additional plastic cup, one plastic pouch with a plastic knife/spoon (kfoon? spife?), a napkin, and a sugar packet inside, two of those small plastic milk thingies, AND a small plastic bag labeled “waste bag” inside another little plastic bag? Are you fucking kidding me?! Do you expect me to spend the rest of my flight MacGyvering a solution to interstellar flight with all these items? Why can’t you just ask if I want milk and sugar and just premix it for me before handing it to me? Is your time really that precious? Is that not worth just a minor portion of the €2.50 you are charging me for it?

Please help me understand your ways.

Sincerely,
Concerned Flyer in 13E

Cover your damn mouth!

i am SO SICK of people walking around town, sitting behind me on the bus, in front of me at the till, pushing their stupid babies around and COUGHING their bleedin’ heads off! all the damn time and all around me. ok, i’ll admit to being a touch germ phobic, but i’ve realized lately that my immune system is supercharged and as a consequence, i don’t often catch shit that’s going around. case in point, Husband has been down with the man flu at least twice in the past several months and despite smothering him with love and sharing close quarters with him, i’ve been spared the plague.

but back to my violent bitching…

ok, i do understand that it’s winter, in ireland and 90% of irish people seem to get “winter cough” which they consider to be completely normal and something that happens with the seasons (seasons? hmmm). i know this from working in a naturopathic clinic as part of my edumacation. i have also heard not one, but several people talking about having PLEURISY. what. the. ever-loving. fuck? is this the middle ages? are we living in damp, dank, drafty castles with no sanitation?! i suppose if you think “winter cough” is a completely normal thing and that going on antibiotics several times a year isn’t cause for alarm, i guess then you might not be too shocked to develop bizarre antiquated diseases that the rest of the civilized world no longer even thinks about.

i don’t know at what point in human history, people decided that it was ok to cough their heads off in public without making the slightest attempt to spare us from their lung plague. i mean COME ON people! from the sounds of things, what you have ISN’T GOOD and I DON’T WANT IT. from the sound of things, you probably don’t have long to live. by golly, why are you even OUTSIDE?! jaysus, go the fuck home and eat some chicken soup! or get thee to a hospital!

i’ve noticed this starting at a very young age with useless parents (probably had the kid by mistake because they’re too useless to use a condom, or they’re too high on meth or heroin… but i digress) walking around with their kids coughing incessantly and not turning around to bitchslap them for not covering their mouths. back in my day if i so much as cleared my throat without a hand in front of my face, i’d get a speedy backhand to the mouth from seemingly nowhere. i guess this is what happens when you’re not allowed to beat your kids. complete social anarchy. and the rampant spread of disease.

i see why the asians wear face masks everywhere.

Effing Delivery Drivers

why can’t delivery drivers fucking use fucking google maps to find my house? is it so fucking hard? every. single. time. i order take-out, i inevitably get the completely unintelligible phone call from the delivery guy (it’s always a guy) who is (at the risk of sounding racist) very foreign and is speaking into his phone through a combination of memory foam and a mouth full of grapes. it really isn’t that hard to find my house. really. if they would just use fucking google fucking maps.

my favor(u)rite one was when the delivery guy was calling me from the shopping center in the middle of city centre (yeah i know i switched between center and centre, i’m international) asking me how he was supposed to get to my “apartment” when the shopping mall was closed. obviously, i don’t live in a shopping mall.

now i’m sure half of you are going “but you might have been wanting a delivery to a place of business” to which i would say “i would have PUT the business name ON the order IF i was hoping to get something delivered to a BUSINESS”

gah.

i wonder when my food will arrive.

so HANGRY.