Why do only women have guilty pleasures*, like watching Grey’s Anatomy or eating a cup full of peanuts with chocolate sauce poured over it, having sex with the UPS guy, spitefully viewing America’s Next Top Model?

Is it that men don’t feel guilty about pleasure?

Or am I wrong about the gender difference?

So what’s your guilty pleasure? What fun, food, cheap fiction or flight of fancy do you like to indulge in? (God, I love alliteration. Sorry about that.)

Me? I like to go into the kitchen and sneak marshmallows from the cabinet and pop one in my mouth when I’m passing through. I suppose what does it for me is the sneaky secretiveness and the eating something that has absolutely no nutritional value, real or imagined.

*I did a google search for “guilty pleasures” and found that a lot of people, by the way, are very close to mentally ill and I don’t think, technically, that being obsessed with weighing your own poop is a guilty pleasure. I was going to link to the place I found that, but on second thought… umm… no, I won’t. I tell ya… google is a scary place sometimes.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

Reporters keep asking, “Is American Ready For A Woman President?” And even though 92% of Americans polled by CBS say yes, dumbass journalists keep asking the question.

My favourite response to this question comes from Elayne Boosler when she said, “Go To Hell. ” But then there are others who say that America isn’t ready, because somehow a person capable of running for office isn’t capable of dealing with accusations of being a lesbian . Now I’m not a big Clinton supporter, but you have to agree that it says something for someone when the worst insult they can come up with is to say you’re tough, bitchy, and probably a lesbian. Note that among those “insults”, nobody has called her stupid.

So it’s journalists that are asking the dumb question, and not “real” people, but just to play along, what would they, the voting American public, have to do to get ready?

I suppose it depends on what you think might happen when a woman gets elected. We’ve had female leaders in the UK and around the world, and I don’t think it required that they reprint all the ballots in pink, nor did they have to close down the government one week out of four. Amazing, huh?

I suppose the biggest thing that needs to be decided before an American woman can become president is what to call her husband. The First Gentleman? That sounds… ridiculous. However, considering that there is only one woman running for president, and were she to win, her husband will be called, as he is entitled to be called for the rest of his life, President Clinton, then it really isn’t something we need to struggle with for a few more years.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

In general, unless you’re a schoolteacher (and at the moment in the process of executing that job), I find it pretty rude to correct other people’s spelling. (Probably this has something to do with the fact that I’m not a good speller myself.  Case in point: I had to look up persuer for this very article.)  Not everyone can spell. Not everyone has English as a first language. So as long as their idea comes across, I don’t care how people do it.

However!

Sometimes it matters.  The following are all examples I’ve seen recently, and… seriously… it’s worth a mention.

“I’m waiting with baited/bated breath.”
Baited means you’ve been eating worms.
Bated means to abate, to lessen, to hold back, i.e. “I can’t breathe.”

Example #2:

“I am tired of looser/loser old men hitting on me.”
Looser means un-tight.  In other words, they might have bowel problems.
Loser means un-winner.

Example #3:

“Please bare/bear with me.”
Bare means naked.  So it turns the phrase into a proposition.
Bear means “hang tight”.  More or less.

Learn these. Trust me.  Unless of course you’re a worm-eating, naked-lovin’ person with bowel afflicted persuers.  In which case, as you were.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

             A guy named Mitch Altman invented  the gadget of our dreams that he calls “TV-B-Gone” — countless frequent travelers before him have surely wished for a way to turn off all those obnoxious TVs yammering away at us in bars, lounges, and waiting rooms.

            Remember sitting on a sticky plastic couch, near death’s door, eyes running, head throbbing, chest aching—in the doctor’s waiting room only to be assailed by “The Jerry Springer Show” featuring two fat women from Arkansas or Tennessee pulling each other’s hair, whilst revealing a bit of butt-crack during the fracas, arguing over who done whom wrong with whose “man?”

           Or, you’ve nicely handled the news that still another flight had to be cancelled due to whatever, decide to console yourself with a small drink and nice meal, only to view–in living color–an autopsey on one of America’s proliferation of CSI shows. (How they can scheduled them to fit the dinner hour is uncanny.)

           Well, it had to happen! Mitch had all he could stand, marched right out to the garage, down to the basement or the workshop and whips out a “TV-B-Gone.”

           Manufactured by Cornfield Industries and available through Amazon.com and your nearby Target store.

           Life just doesn’t get better than this (unless, of course, all masters of all Jerry Springer-like shows vanished into the ether….as though someone had invented, say, the “Garbage-B-Gone.”)  Imagine how much fun it would be at home – if you happen to be married to a Remote-Hog–even if you can’t change the channel with it, you can turn it off.  Failing that, just buy yourself a universal remote, program it and keep it behind that little pink cushion you use behind your behind. He’ll never find it there.  Cheers, girl friends.

Like This? Then Show Some Love:

From my last article where I mentioned control freaks, I found there was at least one person who disagreed that such a concept was bad. Then I ran across this, and just had to share it with you.

I can’t decide if it’s funnier that this is listed on a site for Valentine Gift Ideas , or that it was actually my husband that showed it to me.  Oh and if you’re serious about wanting one, it IS a British site, but I checked.. they will ship to the US. 

The buttons are a tad hard to read.  According to their site, they say things like:

• Listen,
• Stop Snoring
• Talk about Feelings
• Tell the Truth
• Propose

Personally, I’d like one that was a tad more universal, because if I was going to get to push buttons that would make people do things, I wouldn’t limit it to men, and I’d want to say things like:

• Shut up
• Ummm, shut up
• But mostly: shut up.

If I could control just those three things about people, I’d be in heaven.

Like This? Then Show Some Love: