Some advice

The next time you're at the grocery store, you may see single servings of frozen fish being sold for about $1.00 a piece. This may strike you as a good idea, and you might decide to buy a couple of these.

For the love of gawd, don't. Seriously, don't.

You'll buy it, and cook it, and get ready to eat it with some steamed vegetables, and feel all smug that you're eating a healthy meal. Then you'll take one bite and spend the rest of the day wondering if you're going to vomit.

You'll repeat this on a later day with a different type of fish. Just because the tilapia was horrible doesn't mean the salmon will be too, right? Right?

I don't know what made me you think that a $1.00 piece of salmon would be good, but, it's not. You shouldn't expect it to be.

The package is notable for it's lack of contact information. I suppose if you were to call the company and complain, they'd just tell you "It only cost $1.00." and then hang up. And they'd be right.

Don't buy the salmon. Also, don't buy the tilapia, the flounder, and especially not the scallops. And, if you happen to see some sort of fish/veg kabob thing, just keep on walking.

From tragedy comes something

Recent events have put me on the wrong end of the funeral receiving line, and I’ve spent the past two weeks wanting to do nothing more than eat an entire cheesecake, smoke a couple cartons of Marlboro lights, and drink my volumetric equivalent in gin & tonics. Although I had the perfect excuse, I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I dragged my ass back to work, and have been chewing so much nicotine gum that my jaws are constantly sore.

Anyway, my horrible tragedy can be your gain, as I’m offering up some funeral etiquette:

• Anything you say to the bereaved is going to sound weird, but nothing’s weirder than “Please accept my condolences”. After the fourth time, I was tempted to respond with “No, you go to hell”, just to mix things up. I know that “I’m sorry for your loss” seems trite, but at least it makes some kind of sense.

• No hugging. Okay, if you’re a close friend or relative, go ahead and hug. However, if you have to introduce yourself, complete with explanation of how you know the deceased, you don’t get to hug. Every time I heard “I haven’t seen you in years” or “You may not remember me, but…” I knew that a hug would be imminent. Handshake? Sure. Shoulder squeeze? Um, okay. Hug? Hell no.

• For gawd’s sake, don’t wear perfume or cologne. Every man seemed to be wearing the same bergamot-based cologne, and every woman had doused herself in something that was either a synthetic-vanilla or a heavy overbearing floral. And there were a lot of people there. Seriously, the place was packed. And there weren’t any windows or doors to open to let some air flow through.

• I don't care why someone couldn't make it. Really, I don't. I'm glad that you're here; I don't need or want a drawn out explanation of why your spouse/child/special friend couldn't be here. Really. See that line of people behind you? They're all waiting to introduce themselves, hug me, and offer their sympathy. And this thing only goes until 4:00.

• Choose an appropriate eulogy. If someone died of a horrible terminal illness, please do not make a little speech about all that your merciful god did for the deceased. It's kind of incredibly tasteless. If you have to mention god, find a better way. It's an odd feeling: wanting to beat a minister to death with his bible.

Five for 5: Lobsters

Lucky Lobster on Kids in the Hall – This sketch from the fourth season was one of my favourites. I couldn’t find a clip online, but basically, Dave licks a lobster for luck. I guess I'm not the only one who likes this sketch, as the pre-sale gift for the fourth season DVDs was a lucky lobster. I have no idea why I find it so funny, but I think lobsters are just inherently funny. Would licking a penguin be as funny? Perhaps, but I choose to believe it would pale in comparison.

Mr. Pinchy from The Simpsons – Homer’s pet lobster who was kind of a pussy (“You don’t have to take that from some punk-ass crab!”). I frickin’ love this episode. The A-story is Lisa-centric (not necessarily a bad thing), the B-story is Homer & his lobster. Plus, it had that list of ice cream names (Candy Warhol, Xavier Nougat, Desmond Tutti Frutti). While I wouldn’t touch a lobster with a 10-foot pole, this almost made me want to go out and adopt my own bird-chasing, risotto-eating free-range lobster.

Red Lobster – Yes, the restaurant chain. Growing up in a middle class, midwestern family, this was looked at a “nice” restaurant for many years. Then, I turned 12 and realized, um, not so much. I’m still dragged there once in a while for a family dinner, but spend the meal picking at a plate of something that’s not shellfish and making jokes about the white trashiness of it all. So, why is it on this list? On Project Runway’s second season the recurring “Tim Gunn & Andrae go to Red Lobster joke” is what saved the season for me. One of the few true facts of life: Red Lobster jokes are never not funny.

Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama – Jewish doctor lobster alien thing. On a show where all of the characters were deficient in some manner, he was easily the worst. He was a doctor who didn’t know anything about human physiology (aside from stuff he learned from TV commercials), and was miserably poor and pathetically desperate for attention. His attempts at acting, stand-up comedy, mating, and even suicide were spectacular failures. When he met his parallel universe double, he was still the bitch. He was always entertaining, in a schadenfreude sort of way.

Cooking Lobsters – I was originally going to use the clip of the Swedish Chef cooking a lobster, when my YouTube search turned up the Giant Lobster Battle from Iron Chef. Are lobster puppets with guns better than live lobsters used in an over-the-top Japanese cooking show? On the one hand, there’s something to be said for Japanese actors calmly watching as a recently-butchered lobster tail wiggles out of its own shell. On the other, lobster muppets with guns. Watch and decide.





Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Hell fucking no

I just saw an ad for the straight-to-TV/DVD/$1 Bin: Beethoven's 4th.

My first thought: That dog's gotta be long dead.
My second: Wait... what? They've already made three of those crapfests? Goddamnit, somebody needs to get beaten to death with a sock full of nickels.

While checking IMDB for verification that this was real, and not some sort of hallucination caused by the Cinnabon I had for dinner, I saw that there was a 5th sequel. GodDamnSonsOfBitches.
The question, now, is not "Why?", but "Who do I set on fire for this?"


In other disturbing movie news: Dead Silence

First, I saw the banner ad for this on I Watch Stuff, and it scared the shit out of me (when you move your mouse over it, the fucking eyes move). Then, I saw the television ad and I wanted to bleach my brain. And, just now, I saw this picture. I'm sleeping with the lights on for the rest of the month.

If you're anything like me, you're afraid of old women and dolls/puppets* (it's those cold, dead eyes). There is no way in a million years that I would ever be able to watch this film. It could be the cheesiest piece of shit ever made, and it would still scare the fuck out of me. Well done, Saw guys.

*The puppet fear probably started with these guys. Goddamnit, they freaked me out as a kid. At least now I can see that they're just unbelievably spooky wads of chenille with ping-pong balls and pipe cleansers glued to them.

Whiskers on Kittens and Something on Something

A few of my favourite things. *

Red Velvet Cake - Despite being aggressively not southern, I have a deep and abiding love for this. Sort of chocolatey, moist, and topped off with cream cheese icing. I've considered making it from scratch, but you can get it in a mix from Duncan Hines or William-Sonoma. Note to my bakery: Adding red food colouring to your dry-ass vanilla cupcakes and frosting them with cream cheese icing does not Red Velvet make.
Still, if you're like me and could do with the further embiggening of your ass, Philosophy makes a 3-in-1 that almost smells as good as the real thing.

The end of the black nailpolish trend - The new hot nail colours for spring are going to be soft metallics and pastels. Excellent. I'll finally be able to wear black again without someone seeing my nails and saying "Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton/Some other stupid spoiled whore was wearing that in People." Right now I've got Chanel Noir Ceramic on my left hand, Urban Decay Perversion on my right, and my new Lippmann Hit Me With Your Best Shot just came in the mail.

"Second Cousin" - Performed by John Tartaglia (of Avenue Q), written by Gary Adler & Phoebe Kreutz. I found it on a bootleg I got on the internets. It's a song about the special kind of love a man has for his second cousin (If we were British royalty, she'd be my perfect match, you see). So wrong, but it never fails to put me in a good mood. If there were any justice, this song would be properly recorded and played every Xmas.

Grapefruit-based fragrances - The second we get some weather over 40 degrees, I'm sending the vanillas back into storage and whipping these bitches out. I don't know what happened, but these suddenly smell really good on my skin. Scent of Peace, Baby Doll, and Addict 2 are all at the top of my list.

Cadbury Mini Eggs - To think I wasted all those years choking down those disgusting Cream eggs when these were available. After a co-worker introduced me to them last year, I waited in anticipate for Easter. Now that they're here, I'll do what I did last year: Eat a 1-pound bag in the space of 48 hours, and then swear to never touch them again. Good times.

* It should be assumed that Diet Coke, Men's Pocky, and Fight Club are automatically included on any future lists of this nature.