Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A Little Schmaltz

The moon must be singing Barry Manilow tunes to my ovaries again because I've been feeling kinda schmaltzy lately. But I went into full-blown PMS mush when I read a quotation from an interview in Oprah magazine where Oprah and her best pal Gayle defend their close friendship and insist that they're not gay.

To be honest, I don't give even the tiniest bissel dreck whether Oprah is straight, gay or having a hot polyamorous relationship with a herd of goats. But when she describes the way she feels about her closest friend, I gotta admit I got more than a little verklempt.

"I understand why people think we're gay. There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it - how can you be this close without it being sexual? How else can you explain a level of intimacy where someone always loves you, always respects you, admires you? Wants the best for you in every single situation of your life. Lifts you up. Supports you. Always! That's an incredibly rare thing even between the closest of friends."

Oy, that Oprah's like buttah. Talk amongst yourselves.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Which Came First, the Chicken or the Ad?

There's a new trend in marketing that just, er, cracks me up. Eggvertising. Apparently CBS is having messages printed on more than 35 million eggs to attract viewers to their televsion shows. And who knew there were companies like EggFusion that specialize in egg coding?

Starting this fall, we won't be able to throw together a simple frittata without finding such pithy phrases as "CSI, crack the case on CBS" when we open a carton of extra large grade A eggs. And that's just what I want to see when I'm making breakfast - a reference to a really gross televison show about scraping blood samples off dead people.

Now I'm waiting for Godiva Chocolates and Motrin to place ads on tampon applicators.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Cuckoo for Sudoku

Let me just start out by saying I am not cuckoo for Sudoku. But a lot of people I know are just plain addicted to this puzzling pastime. It sort of reminds me of the Rubik's Cube craze 20 years ago. I'm told Sudoku has nothing to do with math, but it's all about numbers and logic, and to me, that's like being math's first cousin.

And I'm someone who thinks cooking (the combination of calculating complex oven temperatures while measuring using the metric system) is equivalent to cracking the launch codes for those *secret* missile silos in Nevada, so anything even remotely involving numbers is, well, not my idea of relaxation.

Plus, I barely have enough RAM in my little keppe (that's "head" for you non-Yids) to store all my PINs, passwords and account numbers now. There are too many numbers in our lives as it is. Come to think of it, every Hebrew letter has a numeric equivalent. It's amazing Moses didn't invent the compass and get our people out of the desert years earlier.

So will someone please explain to me the allure of putting a bunch of random numbers in little boxes and having them all add up to the date of your grandmother's birthday? I just don't get it.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Sharper Image

A few months ago one of my good friends finally made the switch from the Evil Empire (Windows OS) to Mac. She bought a MacBook, Apple's latest and greatest new laptop. Finally, I thought, she'll see why the rest of us love our Macs to the point of obsession. The new MacBook has all the bells and whistles that make geeks like me go all drooly and glassy-eyed. And, like all Apple products, this laptop is one sharp-looking machine.

In fact, if you saw "The Devil Wears Prada" you may have noticed that on every desk in the too-chic-for-real-life offices of "Runway" magazine sat a sleek white iMac. The only desktop computer slender enough to wear a size zero.

But the new MacBook not only looks sharp, it feels sharp, too.

Its edges are so sharp in fact, they rival deli meat slicers, and avid Mac users are complaining to Apple about bruised wrists. Some online forums offer suggestions like sanding down the sharp edges or wearing wrist bands. Other people are trying to get refunds or (gasp) switching back to their klunky old PCs. It surprises me that a company with the design savvy to come up with the iPod Nano could overlook such a simple element of user comfort.

Monday, July 03, 2006

All-A-Merkin Girl


Thanks to my good friend and word maven Martha Barnette I now know the meaning of the word “merkin.” It’s a pubic wig.

But it gets better.

How about a hands-free merkin flashlight? Just think how convenient this would be on a camping trip when you’re looking for a place to pee.