The fish stick incident
I think I am now fully recovered from eating six Gordon's Fish Sticks on Sunday night. I have spent the past 36 hours trying to forget about the foreboding queasiness in my stomach that may erupt into full-scale projectile vomiting at any moment, and to distract my mind so that I don't accidentally visualize or think about fish sticks, which would definitely trigger the aforementioned projectile vomiting.
It all started when J. and I were hungry and had run out of all of our usual dinner fare. We rummaged through the freezer and came across a box of fish sticks. Fish sticks, what fun! we thought. We'll have them with ketchup and milk, just like when we were kids! Looking back on it now it's like watching a grainy, black-and-white flashback sequence in a horror movie, where you want to jump up and yell at the screen, "Nooo, don't do it!"
I had forgotten that fish sticks are the hot dogs of the marine world. They're made with all the byproducts that are left out of the fish that sophisticated consumers unlike me purchase. I don't know exactly what the ingredient list is, but I'm sure it's something like, "Gills, eyeballs, fins, bladders," etc., all deep-fried in old oil for about ten hours.
At first I was wondering why they didn't at least try to make the sticks slightly less oil-drenched or at least put a healthy-sounding spin on it like "Good source of protein!" or "There may actually be some Omega 3's left in here!" But after seeing the recipe suggestion on the back of the box it quickly became clear that their target market is people who just don't care anymore.
The picture you see above you is for what Gordon's calls "Fish on a Log." This recipe is made by combining fish sticks with Cheez Whiz and Goldfish crackers, thus creating the holy trinity of processed foods. (Something tells me that people who actually make this recipe are going to go ahead and skip the tomato and lettuce garnish pictured in the photo.) Although, to their credit, what can you actually make out of fish sticks? I pity the intern who had the job of coming up with that one. Cans of soup can offer recipes for interesting sauces and pasta packages lend themselves to endless possibilities, but fish sticks? It was a wise man who just decided to say screw it, throw in some Cheez Whiz and Goldfish and call it a day. At least those are two ingredients you can guarantee the purchasers of fish sticks will have in their pantry.
Anyway, the moral of the story is this: don't eat fish sticks, ever. You may have fond childhood memories or some other nostalgic reason for wanting to try them once again, but don't. Your stomach and intestines will thank you.
Norton AntiVirus vs. actually having a virus: a feature comparison
90% of the time my computer does something that drives me insane and/or makes me think I have a virus, I eventually discover that the annoyance in question was actually caused by Norton AntiVirus. (The other 10% of the time the culprit is my wireless card, the Netgear WG511T -- NEVER buy this.)
Just this afternoon I spent an hour sifting through arcane server logs to try to determine why I had no access to email. Alas, I disabled Norton and my email problems disappeared. It seems that Norton had detected that one of the emails on the server contained the MyDoom virus, so it shut down access to email with no warning or message explaining what it had done.
That got me thinking...so what if I actually got the MyDoom virus? Would it be that bad? Hell, if it didn't shut down my access to email I might prefer it to Norton. I did a bit of research and put together a feature comparison matrix for Norton and two popular viruses, SoBig and MyDoom.
| FEATURES | W32. SoBig.F |
W32. MyDoom.B | Norton AntiVirus + Internet Security |
| Blocks random images in IE and Netscape by making them look like broken image links, thus causing you to look like an asshat when you email webmasters to tell them their images aren't loading |  |
||
| Disrupts workflow by popping up message box every time an email is sent | |
||
| Causes email to lag while sending; this delay is noticeably longer when the email is important and must go out immediately | |
||
| Occasionally disables email altogether with no warning or explanation, making your sys admin hate you after repeated calls telling him that the server is down when it is actually just fine | |
||
| Subtracts $60.00 from your checking account | |
||
| Occasionally disables internet connection with no warning or explanation, leaving you to wonder what the hell's going on | |
||
| Pops up warnings every time you open an application that accesses the internet | |
||
| Causes 20 - 30 second delay each time Windows starts up | |
||
| May slow browser | |
||
| Contacts remote servers | |
|
|
| Tries to crash Microsoft and SCO's websites | |
Was it something I said?
Last month the British magazine The Face bought and published two of my Buttafly articles. One was an insightful treatise on Friendster in which I reference obese bisexuals and "keepin' it gangsta." The other is an analysis of Friendster profiles in which I accuse users of being pirates, unemployed, or hirsute based on their photos.
This month The Face was shut down after 24 years of publication.
Coincidence?
Thoughts while flipping channels
I've been flipping channels for the past two hours while sorting through email and doing some work on my laptop. Some thoughts:
- Kelly Osbourne: There is nothing sadder than a fat drug addict. The only perk of getting strung out on drugs is that most people get that tragically hip, heroin chic look. How can you fail at that too?
- Clean Sweep: I used to like this TLC show until J. pointed out that it's a show about people cleaning house. I initially tossed out some weak arguments about families getting a new start and home makeovers, but he's right. It is 30 full minutes devoted to watching people dust, sweep, vacuum, and throw things in the garbage. I want that 30 minutes of my life back.
- Iron Chef: This is the best show that has ever been created. I demand an Iron Chef Channel. Iron Chef Chen Kenichi was up against his old apprentice. Clearly, his honor was at stake. In an epic sweetfish battle the Iron Chef saved his honor and defeated the young challenger. Television just doesn't get much better than this.
- OnStar Commercials: More than one of these has gotten me all choked up. I'm such a sap. However, I'm not sure that these commercials make me want an OnStar system in my car. While it was touching to hear the recording of OnStar checking in on a person whose airbag had just gone off, it also made me think: Do you have to press a button to talk back to them, or can they just hear you? I'm not sure if I want Big Brother listening in to the first things I might say after being in an accident. What if I blurt out, "Bwahahaa, that'll teach you to drive slow in the left lane!" You know someone has gotten screwed by that:
[recording begins]
OnStar: Sir, I have a notice that your airbag just went off. Are you OK?
Driver: God, is that you?
OS: Uhh, no. This is OnStar.
D: Oh, right. Damn, I'm high as hell.
OS: Sir, are you OK?
D: Man, I knew I shouldn't have drank those seven Schlitz after I smoked that crack rock.
- "Decorating on a Budget" Shows: Look, I can go get a bunch of crap from the flea market and put it in my house any day. Nobody cares about watching people try to figure out how to give their living room a new look for less than $1,000. If I wanted to see broke people on a budget I'd set up a video camera in my living room. You're a major television channel. Shell out some cash and let's see some cool stuff.
Insomnia 1, Me 0
So today marks the end of my Week of Getting My Shit Together. My goal was to be more productive, step one being breaking free of my natural schedule of sleeping from 6:00am - 3:00pm. No luck. Now that I'm pregnant I don't handle fatigue very well, so I just couldn't force myself to get up at 10am when I'd just drifted off to sleep four hours before.
My body is just hardwired to this schedule and without a job or school forcing me to change it, it's virtually impossible for me to go to bed before midnight and wake up before 11am. It just never happens. Even when I'm exhausted and skip a nap in an effort to go to bed early, I get a second wind around 10pm and end up going to bed sometime in the middle of the night.
We're meeting friends for an early dinner tomorrow night. Before I go to bed I'm going to have to set an alarm to make sure I wake up in time to get ready beforehand. Yes, I am a freak.
Maybe I'm a vampire
Lately I've been going to sleep at 6:00am and waking up at 3:00pm. It's a weird way to live. I am asleep the entire time my friends are at work. It's difficult to run errands because everything closes three hours after I wake up. By the time I'm really awake and alert the sun starts to set. On the bright side, it's no problem to communicate with J.'s business partner in London. (All together now: "Enjoy it while it lasts. You won't be able to sleep all day after the baby's born." Got it, thanks.)
We have an amazing view of the city from our 19th-floor condo which serves to reinforce the fact that I am the only person in Austin who is on this strange schedule. Right now, as I'm thinking about trying to go to bed, I see the number of headlights on MoPac highway slowly increase. The streets below our building are starting to rumble with traffic as early risers come downtown to go to work. I'll probably drift off to sleep as the sun rises.
Today was supposed to be day one of living my life on a normal schedule. I had big plans to get up at 11:00am and be asleep by 2:00am. Clearly, that goal was too ambitious. Considering that it's past 5:00am and I'm wide awake I think I can write today off as a failure. Tomorrow I'm going to try for a 1:00pm wakeup. I have big goals, I know.
How I'm going to get rich
I happened to see America's Funniest Home Videos recently for the first time in years. The last time I watched this show I recall wondering how long it would it last. I mean, people will eventually get sick of shaky footage of kids putting things in or taking things out of their noses and men getting hit in the balls with fast-moving objects, right?
Wrong.
I just saw a family win $10,000 for their video of their toddler son hitting his father in the crotch with a t-ball bat. The second-place contestants pocketed $3,000 because they documented their baby accidentally sucking a piece of spaghetti up its nose. Fantastic. We give away enough money to feed a large family in a third-world country for a year to reward someone for getting a video of a guy being hit in the genitals.
Oh well, I'm done being irritated and am now just going to use this observation to increase my family's income by $10,000 a week. My blog entries from now on will be posted from the Mediterranean resort where I am about to take up a full time residence, living large off of my AFHV winnings.
All I need to do is make a bunch of videos that have some or all of the elements from the list below.
Things that are always funny to AFHV viewers:
- Man getting hit in the groin
- Object coming in or out of child's nose
- Pants falling down
And to cinch up the big $100,000 prize given away to the Funniest Video of the Year, I'll trot out my footage of a child shooting an object out of his nose which hits his father in the balls and causes his pants to fall down. The great thing is THIS NEVER GETS OLD. It is evidently endlessly funny to AFHV viewers, so all I have to do is have my actors change clothes and just re-shoot the scene over and over again.
See you in Venice, suckaz.
Why I love Texas
J. just told me a great story from one of his old law school professors:
Professor Ratliff was screening potential jurors for a criminal case out in west Texas. A tough old farmer came up to the stand. Ratliff asked him if he would have a problem participating in a case that might involve the administration of the death penalty.
The man was quiet for a moment, then asked, "The executions are in Huntsville, right?"
Professor Ratliff told him he was correct.
He thought for a moment more and finally answered, "Well, I guess I could get up there if it was on a Monday."
Time to go to the pregnancy hut
Just got off the phone with my friend T. She called me because she had just downed her seventh rum and coke and wanted to let me know that she "really, really, honestly loves me." No, she means it. Seriously, man, she -- are you listening? She's not just saying this because she's drunk -- really loves me. Dude, seriously.
She had to go because she was at a raging party and the noise was making it too hard to hear. Plus, she had to head out to go downtown because she had some VIP tickets to the grand opening of a really cool bar. These are the kind of phone calls a pregnant woman likes to get when she's sitting on the couch alone on a Friday night.
But it got better. Before she got off the phone she had one more question:
Looking for a secretary for my husband...
My husband is about to open an office for his business (which he currently runs out of the house) and is about to start hiring employees, first and foremost a secretary. Because I’m insecure and neurotic, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear this is all the stories I’ve heard about husbands having affairs with their secretaries.
Luckily I completely trust my husband, and because I’m ultimately a mature, rational person I’ve put my insecurities aside and have even offered to help him write the help wanted ad. I thought a lot about the type of person who could really be an asset to the business and work closely with my husband to help him succeed. Here’s what I came up with:
Come join the J Inc. team! J. Inc. is looking for a smart, motivated P/T administrative assistant. Must have a drive to succeed, strong sense of ethics, and unsightly excess body hair. Acne a plus. Basic computer skills, database experience, and morbid obesity preferred but not required. Commitment to teamwork and celibacy a must. Email resumes with photos (full-body, headshot, and profile) to Jennifer at jennifer@jenntonic.com.
I showed it to my husband but he didn't immediately respond. He says he'll get back to me.
Low-fat tofu: let’s think about this for a moment
I went shopping at Whole Foods yesterday. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Whole Foods, it’s a chain of grocery stores where suckers like me buy overpriced groceries because they have the word “organic” on the box.
After picking up some free-range omega-3 eggs and a bottle of sugar-free, unprocessed, organic orange juice I headed over to the faux meat section to grab some tofu. While there I realized that they now have a fake version of every kind of meat: burgers, sausages, bacon, corn dogs, turkey, even meatloaf. What’s next? Soy sheep’s brains and tofu pigsfeet? But I digress.
As I was marveling at what all you can do with soy protein these days, a pinched man with wire-rimmed glasses reached in front of me and picked up a package of low-fat tofu. After examining the label carefully he placed it in his cart.
Let’s think about this for a moment.
Tofu is already not exactly the food of longshoremen and lumber jacks. It’s chunks of pulverized bean curd that supply a little bit of protein for people who are afraid to eat real meat. This I understand. Some of us get squeamish at the thought of eating dead animals. But low-fat fake meat? Have you no joy? If you won’t even let yourself indulge in regular bean curd you need to think for a moment about whether or not your life is worth living. (Hint: the answer is no).
Besides, no one has ever gotten fat eating tofu. EVER. I can’t believe they even make a low-fat version. Do they do cross-marketing with the manufacturers of nonfat rice cakes and diet water?
Anyway, bottom line is that if you’ve ever bought low-fat tofu it’s time to stop and reevaluate your life. Go out and have a low-carb nonalcoholic beer and a gardenburger and ask yourself how it came to this. It’s time to get the help that you so desperately need.
The most embarrassing moment from my wedding
I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and look through all the hundreds of photos from my October wedding. Seeing the images of everyone having such a wonderful time brought back great memories. I spent time happily gazing at each shot to relive the moment, with one notable exception. One picture captured a scene that I had completely forgotten about. My merciful subconscious must have blocked it out. It’s a photo of my cousin Jason and I standing awkwardly next to each other on the dance floor with his mother, my aunt, looking on and pointing excitedly at us…
Continue reading "The most embarrassing moment from my wedding"Alanis has changed the way I feel about censorship
 |
We need more of it. Specifically, I would like to censor celebrities protesting censorship. It’s just too much to bear to see these idiots wallow in martyrdom because they aren’t allowed to say “asshole” or flash their genitalia on national television.
Morissette, the woman who wrote an entire song about a word she doesn’t understand (1996’s Ironic), claims that there is less censorship in her country because “[Canadians] are not afraid of the female breast.” While I admit that I am slightly afraid of Morissette’s breasts, that is not my motivation behind not wanting to see breasts in general on national television. I’m not afraid of sphincters, clitorises, or scrota, but that doesn’t mean that that’s what I want to see when I turn on the TV.
Some things are just inappropriate and deserving of censorship, and anyone who disagrees is being intellectually dishonest. I think we all agree that running Sesame Street and Hot Wet Lesbians II back-to-back on morning programming would be inappropriate. Or that having Hustler and Barely Legal displayed on the grocery checkout aisle is not anything anyone wants. So I don’t think it’s much of a stretch from there to say that bare breasts and profanity should be censored on major TV stations during normal viewing hours (I can see making an exception for late-night, cable shows). Yet when the public expresses their desire for this, celebrities and liberals act as if they’re living in Stalinist Russia.
Clearly the only solution here is to give celebrities something real to complain about. Just for fun we could make folksy, soul-searching feminist ballads punishable by death or require female performers to wear burkas on stage. Hmm…I think I’ve finally found a political cause I can get behind.
Hungry Like the Wolfowitz
My husband and I stayed up until 5am the other night trying to think of titles for this blog. In my tired deliriousness I settled on Jen N Tonic. A pretty damn good decision, considering the alternatives:
touched by an angle
jen n juice
kill me now
giddyup
dolphin sandwich
disgruntled ninja
lemme holla at y'all for a minute
it doesn't take a village
15 minutes of lame
i did not have sex with that womyn
hate is sometimes a family value
hungry like the wolfowitz
ouch! that's my ear!
i have some bad news for you...
catshit surprise
good with the lady-boys
I don't know if I'm proud or embarrassed that there was no alcohol involved in the creation of this list.
Nesting
I am now into the fourth month of my pregnancy and am quickly learning that any action I take relating to my house or surroundings will henceforth be classified as "nesting." It's pretty interesting to see this phenomenon applied to me since I am not known to be the most meticulous housekeeper, to say the least. I have never been accused of being involved in anything concerning the establishment of order or tidiness in my life, so I suppose I should enjoy it while it lasts.
The first time I heard this was a couple of weeks ago. I was on the phone with a friend and spilled my Coke on the couch.
ME: "Oh shit, hang on, I need to go get a towel to clean this crap up. I hope it doesn't stain."FRIEND: (With glee) "Ohhhhh, you're NESTING!!"
Yes. The fact that I don't want to marinate in old Coca Cola is a decision driven by pregnancy hormones alone. Continue reading "Nesting"
I just adored intestinal worms before I was pregnant
I've long wondered why pregnant women are warned not to eat sushi. I've been avoiding it but could never get a straight answer about why exactly this food is a danger. I knew it wasn't mercury levels since those are the same in cooked or raw fish, so I decided to do some research.
I finally found an article about it on Columbia University's site. Pregnant women should not eat sushi because it may carry "hepatitis A, worms, parasites, viral intestinal disorders, and other diseases." A bunch of other sources said pretty much the same thing. Ah, yes. Those are things that just don't concern non-pregnant people.
That's like saying that only pregnant women should avoid playing around with guillotines because being beheaded is bad for unborn children. If there's really a significant chance that you'll get some free intestinal worms and a case of hep A with your next tuna roll, shouldn't everyone avoid these things? What if you eat sushi before you're pregnant and get all these illnesses? Surely they'd still affect your pregnancy.
Something's not adding up here.