April 11, 2013 · 11:58 pm

A good sign that the cashier is stoned

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Coming out of the supermarket the other day I started loading the bags into my car (don’t judge me for not carrying reusable bags, I am lame), when I came across this bag with the eggs and…

canned goods.

Please tell me in what universe this made sense to a cashier?

I am very proud to say that I was a supermarket cashier in high school and I took great pride in bagging like items so that unpacking the groceries would be easier. Yes, even as a teenager I was an OCD Virgo.

Since having this job I understood the importance of putting like items on the belt together so that the bagging task would be easier. A little pay it forward for the poor cashiers who work their butts off on their feet all day.

Except for this guy, who was obviously getting high on his break .

What do you think the people in the parking lot were thinking when they saw me taking a picture of my groceries?

Don’t answer that.

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April 10, 2013 · 9:42 pm

Crazy People

crazy-people

 

I could not love this picture any more. I crossed the street to take a shot of this canvas hanging on the back of a truck on West Broadway, and this guy stopped in front of it just as I was taking the picture.

Art is so often created by happenstance.

Walking down the street with me is not a bargain. Those who know me well know my famous, “Go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Those who love me unconditionally (AKA, offspring and BFFs) smile and know this is just the price to pay for hanging out with me. I make up for it in other ways. Those who are married to me (the subset of one) are incredibly tolerant and will even stand in a situation for my amusement (and theirs later on).

So, this image begs the question, “Why are crazy people such good lovers?” Here is a little exercise. Jump out of lurking mode (I know you are all there, I check the stats) and feel bad enough for my sorry ass to leave some comments answering to one or more of the following topics:

  1. Define crazy.
  2. Decide if this makes you more likely to admit that you are.
  3. In your experience, is there a direct correlation between being crazy and being a good lover?

Amuse me kiddies, I have had a tough few months!

 

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April 8, 2013 · 9:50 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – Disappointment

disappointment

Disappointment… such a lousy emotion. It comes tethered to expectations and rears its ugly head out of nowhere when you think you have ‘it’ all handled.  I have tried my best to manage expectations to avoid this nasty sucker. But sometimes shit happens, you are at its mercy, and it takes you down.

Big time.

To make it short and avoid a pity party, I have managed high blood pressure. It has been controlled for a long time, went a little wacky back in the fall and got back on track. Then I had a reaction to some meds that made me feel very ill and caused my ankle to swell (of course the one I sprained a while back) and the switch of meds set me on a BP roller coaster I do not wish on my worst enemy.

The net: I could not fly. And what was I supposed to do… you bet. Fly. To Spain. To see my boy who is studying abroad. Who I have not seen since January. On a trip we had planned forever. At a time when we really needed a break. On the first real vacation in many, many years. That we can’t reschedule. Not life shattering, just a piece of life that I can’t get back. One of the really fun pieces.

I am coming out the other side of this huge disappointment and all I can do is run through my head all of the things I have told my kids over the years when their expectations were shattered:

  1. Sometimes you just have to feel like crap.
  2. Misery gives happiness context.
  3. Everything happens for a reason and sometimes we don’t find out what that reason is for a long time.
  4. Who you are when things suck says more about you than who you are when they are great.
  5. Sometimes its not fair. Period.

On the other end of that wisdom I was fully aware of how annoying that wisdom could be. (sorry kids)

Until a friend of mine posted a favorite Maya Angelou quote that made me smile and think about who I really want to be:

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

Even a Jewish girl gets the last one.

So if you see me knocking on a christian neighbor’s door asking to borrow their christmas lights in the rain wearing the same thing for 2 days in a row, you will know that it is just an exercise.

As is all of life.

 

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April 7, 2013 · 10:15 pm

Just pee on it and walk away

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We came across this piece on the street and I am still wondering why I did not buy it. I am thinking I need to go back next Sunday in the hopes the vendor will be there.

I have read a lot of dog philosophy over the years, but none is quite as perfect as this.

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April 7, 2013 · 8:58 am

You CAN pick your friend’s nose

Corbis-nose picking1

Remember that stupid saying,”You can pick your friends; and you can pick your nose; but you can’t pick your friend’s nose”?

I never really got that. I mean, people do all sorts of weird stuff with orifices (or is that orifici?), I would imagine a little nose picking amongst friends might be going on out there with the non-germphobic crowd.

I digress, this post was spawned by an email from the stock photography site, Corbis. I have been a Corbis customer since the olden days of graphic design when they would send out these delicious print volumes of stock photo images and we would flip through the pages to choose the right image. And instead of emails, we would receive teaser postcards with images like these to get us to call and do a search. Yes, I am aware this is the Art Director’s equivalent of the ‘I used to walk to school 10 miles in the snow’ story that my dad used to tell us. All you youngun’s, you will have these stories about archaic, clunky handheld mobile devices instead of the chip behind their ear that your kids will have.

Ughh… digressing again. The point is, the other morning, on a particularly difficult day for me (stay tuned for more on that on Tuesday), the photo above showed up in my inbox. It had that Sleeper-esque feeling about it and just the visual made me laugh. Their 20% headline was excellent for their purpose, but this headline popped into my head:

You CAN pick your friend’s nose.

I know, I am brilliant. What a lovely promo for a plastic surgeon… maybe a 2 for 1 deal! It made me laugh on a morning that laughing was the last thing I thought I would do, so thanks Corbis. But, the best part was yet to come when I clicked over to their site (yes it worked, they got the click-through from me and put Corbis top of mind), I found this photo… the pay off.

The proverbial ‘picked nose’.

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Yeh it could be time to pitch a plastic surgery team. Anyone in? Other headline ideas?

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April 1, 2013 · 1:38 am

Bacon Flavored Condoms

bacon-flavored-condoms

Oddly enough I have written about both bacon and condoms in a single post before. I suppose no one who reads this blog finds that odd, actually.

Does a post like this really need any commentary? Doesn’t the actual existence of bacon flavored condoms speak for itself.

Not on your life.

Ok, the tagline… ‘make your meat, look like meat’. The second part in bold, no less. Um yeh, we get it.

Lame.

I would prefer something along the lines of – ‘because you’re smokin’. Or maybe something as simple as ‘the meat lover’s protection’. Or something corny like ‘because you never know who you might meat’ Or maybe, ‘because you can never get enough protien’

And the snipe on the top left of the box ‘it never look so good, it never tasted better’. You know… IT. Like “he took IT out” – Elaine Bennis.

But the tagline and the snipe are not the big winners on this baby. Oh no. What really puts this product over the top is that unbelievable line ‘lubricated with baconlube’. Do you think this is authentic?

Ughhh! SO not kosher!

Would you buy this product?

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March 28, 2013 · 12:30 am

Jewish Hippies Rejoice

Matzolah

If you are celebrating Passover and are sticking to strict dietary laws of no leavened products, this matzoh-style granola will surely give your little hippie heart a thrill. And it’s made by Foodman! Does he have the help of Foodwoman?

I love the description:

Matzo (everyone spells it their own way, like Hannukah) Granola Breakfast & Nosh.

It’s sort of like my grandmother wrote that.

Thanks to my bro for sending me this one today. It made me smile. And oddly gave me a craving to stick my hand in that container and walk around barefoot in the streets with flowers in my hair singing Grateful Dead tunes…

in hebrew.

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March 26, 2013 · 6:04 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – Marriage Equality. Period.

392718_10200358975272346_1487629080_nTuesday, March 26, 2013. The Supreme Court of the United States takes on the right to marry.

Incredible. If someone predicted this 10 years ago it would be followed with a roll of the eyes and an utterance of, “If ONLY!”.

Well… ONLY.

All sorts of polls are floating around out there, The NYT posted a great roundup here. In short, those in favor of same-sex marriage have risen from 30-40% range in 2003 to the 49-53% range depending upon who is doing the polling. A Pew Research Center report described the increase in support for same-sex marriage over the last 10 years as among the largest shifts in American public opinion on any policy issue.

Amen.

If you were on facebook today you might have noticed people changing their profile pics to this red equal sign box in solidarity and support. During the course of the day more creative, personalized versions started to pop up. I thought this would be a great place to do a round up.

Grumpy cat fans

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Equal time for dogs (btw, Iko is a big supporter)

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And Unicorns!

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True Blood Fans

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Members of the Tribe Celebrating Passover (subtitle: I found the “Afikomen”)

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Red Velvet Chumetz for the goyim… from Martha, of course.

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A crafty little play on symbols

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Lion King (one day we will look back and say this is where we drew the lion) Hey, don’t blame the corny on me, it was not my lion.

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C’mon, we all thought it…

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Dumbledore for you Harry Potter fans.

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Equality for statues!

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Rothko for equality.

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My friend Rina (hi Rin!, love it!)

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And most dear to my heart… my ‘gay husband’ who waited WAY too long to be a husband to his true love.

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FYI, I am updating this post as new ones show up, feel free to send me any a2zdes(at)gmail dot com.

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March 25, 2013 · 10:59 am

Seder Snowstorm

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If you listen carefully this morning, you can hear a collective sigh of women throughout the midwest and east coast pondering pounds of brisket and gallons of chicken soup, wondering who will make it to their seder tables tonight. To think that our past worries were whether there would be an egg shortage due to the Passover/Easter proximity.

Here we were – certainly those of us who work full time – thinking how brilliant it was that the first seder fell on a Monday. We partook in leisurely shopping over the weekend instead of the midnight run to the all night grocers. We cooked in our pajamas and workout clothes and our phones were spared the gooey matzoh ball mixture of conference calls past. We set tables with extra care and woke this morning able to still put in a fairly decent day’s work before the reheating begins.

We plan and G-d laughs. A pending spring snowstorm that doesn’t even have the decency to show up early enough for any of our guests to be able to make a show/no-show judgement call before early afternoon is sort of the big Mother Nature FU.

My phone started buzzing with texts last night: “Weather update?”, “Any cancellations?”, “You changing yours to Tuesday?”

Holiday misery loves company.

Tonight, instead of the Four Questions there will be only one… will anyone be sitting at our seder tables?

In case not, anyone interested in a boatload of Jew food?

 

 

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February 20, 2013 · 10:35 pm

Lady Anti-Monkey Butt

anit-monkey-butt

I saw this the other day in the oddest of places… the hardware store. I am still unclear why it was on the shelf next to the Duck Tape (not to be confused with the Duct Tape).

Perhaps this was the animal shelf.

I had a vague memory of this stuff and went back into my archives to find that I had written about the male version back in October 09. Yes, I have been writing that long… much longer actually; about stuff like anti-friction powder, so yes, you could say I have an impressive body of work.

I simply love the hot pink butt on this monkey. The pink bow, the thumbs up, the crazy grin of anti-friction relief, the pearl earrings for G-d’s sake… she is just fabulous.

I think I was drawn to her human stance because I just finished a 582 page book about a talking chimp. I have this odd feeling that all the animals around me can really talk but they are clamming up because they don’t want to make a scene.

No, I don’t think I have snapped.

Back to the powder. Anti-friction? Is it me, or do I just not feel that there is so much butt friction in my daily life that I need something to counter it. Perhaps it is this – my son always complains about a condition he calls swamp ass. So the first thing I thought of when I saw this was how great it would be for lady swamp ass. You know, like the Virginia Slims of ass relief. And then I read that post from a few years ago and I had the same thought (sans the Virginia Slims).

So now I am snapping AND losing my memory.

Who cares. The thing that counts is that I am blogging again. And after a long period of being serious, I feel compelled to be absurd again. That can’t be bad (not as bad as butt friction, anyway).

So, for those of you who missed me and were starting to complain…

You asked for it!

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