I've been wiping my ass with puppies.

More specifically, jungle puppies.

It all started the other day at my local market. I was out of toilet paper, and they were out of Charmin Basic, my preferred brand not only because it's the perfect thickness (not too rough, but not so soft I feel like I should be upholstering my freegan chair with it), but because it doesn't hide behind words like "original" or "super" or "nacho cheesier." It's just "basic," and that's OK.

But I digress. One Stop Market was out of Charmin Basic, so I picked up some Cottonelle. But this wasn't simply Cottonelle, it was Cottonelle for kids, which, if I am reading the graphic on the package correctly, supposedly shows kids how much toilet paper to use by putting a picture every 4 squares.

"This is hilarious!" I thought, and what normally happens after that I utter that phrase once again happened, as I smacked down money for something that was decidedly less funny once I got home and remembered that no one ever comes over.

What gets me about the Cottonelle for kids, besides the uncomfortable feeling of shoving a dog into my yammy, is that the puppy is pictured in two poses. One, with his tongue out next to a parrot, and the other, in a canoe with a monkey. No, seriously, in a canoe with a monkey:



As someone who works in a creative field for a big corporation, I am really trying to picture the meeting that occurred before these illustrations were commissioned. There must have been a lot of excitement about this thrilling new product, the downer of the group must have mentioned that they could only spend the money to have two different illustrations done, everyone immediately thought puppies should be involved...and then here is where I am drawing a blank. Jungle puppies? Jungle puppies in canoes steered by monkeys? Sgt. Joe Friday used to come after the type of people who would think up such things.

In the meantime, I have almost four whole rolls--"double rolls" even--to get through. Someone drink some prune juice and come over!

Afternoon Movie Review: Project X

Project X is not only one of the best movies ever made, but may be THE best movie to stumble upon on a weekend afternoon when paging through your Optimum Online Channel Guide (or what-have-you). For the uninitiated, Project X is a 1987 film starring Matthew Broderick fresh of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Helen Hunt fresh off of Girls Just Want to Have Fun (If they ever get together for lunch with SJP, can some pap PLEASE photograph it? I want to hang it on my wall). Not only does it star these fine actors, it as stars the greatest monkey cast ever assembled.

I have many favorite parts of this movie, which centers around monkeys in an Air Force experiment who are being taught to fly airplanes by a cigarette-smoking Broderick, but the part that really means a lot to me personally is when MB throws his bomber jacket over a barbed wire fence to make it more safe for the monkeys, who are escaping the compound, to jump over. It was this very scene that gave me the confidence to drunkenly throw a jean jacket and a sweater over the coils of barbed wire on top of the fence behind my apartment when I was breaking in at 3 in the morning last fall.

Because this was filmed in the days before you could just CGI a smile onto a monkey, all of the delicate emotions of the chimps had to be achieved with brilliant camerawork (i.e., the slow zoom-in) and a little “African-themed” music in the background (by none other than Oscar-winning composer James Horner). The movie has at least 10 monkeys in it, and they all have separate personalities, like the monkey who blows raspberries and the monkey who makes monkey faces.

It’s worth it to try to catch this movie from the beginning, in which you will be treated not only to some of its most heart-warming moments like Helen Hunt teaching Virgil the Monkey sign language, but also to a bit part by 24’s Jean Smart. When she has to break the news to Helen that the monkey she’s been dressing in polo shirts for the past 3 years (condensed into 15 min in the movie) has to be given away, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t tear up a little bit.

And when those monkeys fly away in the plane at the end, I challenge you not to do the same.


P.S. I would like to thank the Fox Movie Channel for not only airing this movie without commercial interruption, but airing it unedited. It had been years since I’d heard the controversial line that brings Jimmy and Teri together: “Your ass is nailed to the wall!”

I'm Back and More Interesting than Ever

It finally happened. I bought a computer. And subsequently purchased the internet and cable, and now I never have to leave my home.
The great thing about a new mac is that it comes with a camera. There are a lot of things you can do with the camera, like have a video conference or take pictures of your boobs and put them online. I, however, have just taken a million pictures of myself...in front of the computer.
Now that I've enabled myself, expect a lot more posting, a mini-revamp of the site, and of course, more photos of yours truly

Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak making out...again!

Stuff in My Cubicle, part one

I have an excerpt from an article in Harper’s tacked up in my cubicle. It reads:

A baboon group, in short, is an unlikely breeding ground for pacifists. There are some interesting exceptions, however. Although aggression does have something to do with attaining a high rank, it turns out to have virtually nothing to do with maintaining it. Dominant males are not particularly aggressive, except when they are on their way out: the ones that need to use it are often about to lose it. Instead, maintaining dominance requires social intelligence and impulse control—the ability to form prudent coalitions, tolerate subordinates, and ignore most provocations.

Think about it.

Confession: I find Tony Soprano hot

I'm deep into the third season of The Sopranos (via Netflix), and I just saw the episode where Tony and has mistress go at it at the zoo. And I realized, I can try to deny it all I want, but I really do find Tony Soprano to be totally hot.

This is kind of embarassing because my friends recently busted me secretly thinking Treat Williams, the bearded nerosurgeon dad on Everwood, was totally hot. But I'm gonna come out and say it: I wish my boyfriend was a well-dressed, gun-toting mob boss who could have practically anyone he wanted killed. But I don't think it's just that...I have no desire to do Pauly, or the guy from Springsteen's band who owns the strip club. And I find Christopher hot only in a drug-addict kind of way. No, I think Tony Soprano is intrinsically sexy, and therefore I am not ashamed.

Granted, "Tone," as I would call him, would probably smack me for opening my big mouth at some point or another, and then I'd have to leave him, leaving me with no place to get my heroin. Guess I'll have to find someone else to have monkey-house sex with.

My juicy personal life

Today I recieved an email:

I think your blog would benefit from some juicy personal stories or fantasies or regular updates about how you're not getting "super" sex. Let me know if you're open to these kinds of things, because I want to be amused. Amused on a daily basis.

The "super" sex, of course, being a reference to the strangely attractive Eastern Europen Super of my building. And no, we're not doing it. But he did give me a fan yesterday. A dirty, dirty fan. (And I taught him the word "oscillate")
Unfortunately my life is just not that interesting. Like today, the best thing I did was go and put funny pictures next to the address book listings of business contacts I don't like, like this monkey one. Also, my weekly TV Guide came. We get them free at the office. Apparently Marcia Cross met her husband at a flower shop shortly after having lunch with Lori Loughlin. File that one under "information I am stupider for knowing."