Category Archives: Random

Informercial Rehab

Posted on by

2

I need to stop watching infomercials.

Until a few months ago, I never really worried about myself.  Wait, let me restate that–I never really worried about myself when it came to infomercials.  I constantly worry about myself when it comes to…well, anything else.

For 30+ years, I could watch infomercials (though I generally changed the channel as soon as one came on the tv) and laugh at the cheesiness of the actors or the ridiculousness of the product.  Sure, some of the products seemed innovative and some even piqued my interest.  Watching them, though, I often wondered who would fall for the line “if you call in the next ten minutes you will not only receive Product X but also a ten day supply of Product Y!”  I mean, really, they play the same infomercials over and over again, so I’m pretty sure if I wanted Product Y I could call within the next 532 hours and still get it for free.

Not to mention the fact that as a psychologist, I’d sit smugly back and balk at the infomercial’s attempts to pull one over on me.  I’m keenly aware of the research indicating that the way information is presented influences whether one subscribes to it or not.

Yes, for the last 30+ years, I’d never worried that I’d fall prey to the subtle charm of the informercial.

Until a few months ago when I saw this:

Oh dear lord.  It took all the willpower I had not to buy this grass.  I’m not even kidding.  The grass just looks so lush and soft and plentiful.  I just want to take off my shoes, lie down, and make grass angels.  ”But Erin,” you say, “you live in an apartment and don’t even have a yard.”  Oh, I know, dear reader, I know.  But.  The grass.  It’s so luscious.

Luckily, I was able to conquer my impulse and refrain from calling the 1-800-lusciousgrassthatIdon’tneed number.  It was at this moment, though, that I began to question my infomercial defenses.  To yearn so deeply for something that I could not even use worried me.

“You’re just tired,” I told myself.  But then, just a few days ago, dang if my heart didn’t start beating faster when I saw this:

And this:

Can’t you just imagine seeing your spices so neatly organized and in HD?!  Admit it–you’re a little intrigued yourself after watching those videos.

I’m being completely honest when I tell you that I really, really want these things.  I’m also being completely honest when I tell you that really, really wanting these things makes me deeply concerned about myself.  In fact, I discussed my newly-emerging-infomercial-vulnerability to a friend of mine just this weekend.

It wasn’t until tonight, however, when I saw the following that I realized it was time for me to check myself into infomercial rehab:

Oh, Erin.  There are so many reasons why getting excited about that infomercial concerns me:

1. I don’t have a baby.

2. The acting is beyond terrible and not persuasive in the least.

3. Going to a baby shower at which something like that actually happened would make me want to claw my eyes out.

4. I don’t have a baby.

But, ooh, I want a Baby Bullet after watching that.  Also? I love the drunk grandma.

And so, as a person who’s on the verge of making some terrible shopping decisions, I ask you to please help me in my fight against the smooth-talking infomercial announcers.

Dear Men of Match.com

Posted on by

2

Hi All.

I’ve been neglecting this blogging business for awhile, but I’m happy to announce that since my last post, I’ve successfully completed my Ph.D., I’ve happily finished my first full year as an assistant professor at my university, I’ve dilgently shaved my armpits hundreds of times, and I’ve finally cleaned out the disaster that was the trunk of my car.

Now that my life has settled back down a little, I feel I can’t keep you, my avid followers (and, yes, I’m talking to you Aunt Johnnye, since I’m pretty certain you’re the only one who still checks my blog), waiting any longer.

I have many stories to tell, but today I’d like to present a PSA of sorts for all of you men out there either on or  contemplating signing up for match.com.

Over the last several of months, I have not had time to focus much on dating, and, while I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of incredible guys, I have not yet met Mr. Right.  I recently learned that a couple of girlfriends of mine are about to embark on their own match.com adventures, and, given that I haven’t actively perused the profiles in a long while, I decided to take a stroll down match profile lane to see who the lucky lads are the might get to meet either one of my friends or me.

After scrolling through a portion of the available profiles, I came across a few that stood out to me not because of their romance and whimsy, nor because of their straightforward ruggedness.  No, these men stood out to me because of their glaring (at least in my opinion) online dating faux pas.  And so, I share with you the first installment of Erin’s What Not To Do On An Online Dating Site If You’d Like to Get a Woman (Or At Least A Woman Like My Friends or Me):

1.  If you are going to only spell one thing correctly, please, please , please make it your name.

Now, I realize that people have many different ways to spell their names, and I can’t know for sure that this certain gentleman actually misspelled his name, but when I clicked onto the profile of “Stepehen,” I had to wonder–especially when he referred to himself as Steve later in the profile.  I’ve known many great Stephens and Stevens and Steves and Stefans, but I have never met a Stepehen.   I checked in with Google about the matter, and even it was unclear:

(Sorry the picture came out so small–if you click on it, it will get bigger)

Did I mean Stephen you ask? I don’t know, Google, I just don’t know.  (Please, to all you Stepehens out there who may read this, tell me that I’m wrong and that this name does indeed exist.)

2.  It is never okay to discuss vomit, different sexual positions, or any other bodily fluid/function on your dating profile.

Unless, of course, the discussion is about the sweet sentimental tears you cry every time you watch those dang Hallmark Mother’s Day commercials (come on, I know I’m not the only one who tears up during those things).

3. The pictures you choose to post matter.

There’s a divide amongst women when it comes to the types of photos that should and should not be posted on these profiles.  Personally, I fall on the side of “one should not pose topless in front of a mirror when taking  profile pictures,” but I know of a few women who are either ambivalent or positive towards these pictures.

Look, I’m all about taking self-portraits to see what you look like when no one else is around to tell you. I do it all the time.  In fact, I’m pretty sure if someone happened upon my camera at any given moment, they’d find at least one of these embarrassing self-how-do-I-look-portraits.  I do not, however, make a habit of posting these pictures online (unless of course they are part of my OEBE–Of Erin By Erin–collection; but that’s a different story), and I definitely don’t use them as my match.com pictures.

I realize that some people don’t have pictures of themselves taken by people other than themselves just laying around the house.  Therefore, I’m somewhat okay with the picture-of-myself while sitting in a car/standing in the doorway/looking in the mirror.

What I am not okay with, however, is the picture of a half-clothed man in front of his bathrrom mirror making “sexy” eyes at himself.  Even if his self-tanned two-pack abs, his freshly shorn chest, and his soulful doe-eyes did for me, I’m afraid the crusty plunger and the dirty boxers strewn on the floor behind him ruin it for me.

Again, though, I realize that this opinion is not universal.  Some women like the half-dressed mirror shots, and, kudos to them for I have found that there are many potential suitors available for them on any online dating website.

Though we ladies divide on the appropriateness/sexiness of the shirtless mirror shot, I feel we can all agree that there is one photo that should just be saved for another time.  Like the second date.  Or never.

I’m talking about the picture in which the man wears a half-opened leopard-print silk robe.  Yes, yesterday I stumbled across this gem, and wow.  Just wow.

I’m not sure what the particular thought process behind this decision is, but I imagine it goes something like this:

How can I get the ladies to come crawling to my raunchy roundhouse (because I’m pretty certain that’s what these guys call their bedrooms)?”  I know!  I’ll get dressed up in only my whitie-tighties, and then I’ll throw on a silk robe and hold a rose in my hand.  I don’t want to ruin the mystery entirely, though, so I’ll delicately wrap the belt around my protruding pot-belly so that the robe just daintily drapes over my nether-regions.  And it can’t be just any robe.  Oh no.   I need a robe that signals my inner feline.  A robe that says ‘Raawr’ ladies, I’m available, I’m passionate, and I’m waiting for you!’  But what robe screams just that? Oh, I know!  A leopard print robe.  Perfect!  With a leopard print robe, there’s no doubt that the ladies will come a runnin’!

Now men, I realize that might sound good in your head. In fact, it almost sounds sexy in my own mind (not really).  In reality, though, this is never an appropriate profile picture.  Just don’t do it.

Unless you’re Jack Nicholson.  And then I say, bring on the leopard print robes.

Raawr is right!

4.  Just Say No to Text Speak.

This is a personal pet peeve of mine, but I see it so often, and it drives me crazy.  Sentences like:

“IMHO, I rlly think U R gr8! I h8 gurlz who R dum. SMH.  LOL!”

will earn you an automatic “x” in my book. Sorry.

To be fair, I haven’t yet seen a profile that is quite as bad as the previous sentence, but many have come too close for comfort.  (Oh, remember that show? Too Close for Comfort? With the one guy who lived upstairs and was always a celebrity star on the old Hollywood Squares? And the cow puppet?  That was a good show).  Anyway, the point is that good grammar and good spelling will get you a long way.

Thankfully, there are a lot of decent and even especially interesting profiles out there to balance out the bad ones.  I’ve come across some doozies before, but never so many at one time.   I realize that there are many things about my own profile that may be off-putting to the opposite sex (though I’m certain every man loves the picture of my cat in a baby bonnett and kitten-sized t-shirt that says “I love my human-mom”.  Am I right guys? What….? I’m not?), so I try not to be too picky and too judgmental.  Still, though, the  aforementioned profiles made me leary of what’s out there.  At least I have my friends to help wade through the odd-ones and search for the right-ones.  And in the meantime, the odd-ones provide some good stories.

Exhaustion

Posted on by

1

So, this promise I made about posting every day until Christmas is about to be the end of me.  I literally spent all day finishing up my grading today (yay!), and I just got back to my apartment just a little awhile ago with little left of my mental ability.  Grading 60 essays in one day is too, too much.

I worked straight through dinner, so I was quite hungry on my way home.  I don’t have much food left in my house, as I’m trying to eat up what I have before I go home for the holidays.  I was too tired to go to the grocery store and had no desire to go out of my way to a fast food place, so I made a quick stop at the gas station right next to my apartment.  Now, I don’t know if you frequent the gas station for your dinner time options, but if not, let me tell you, the options are sparse. As a result, my dinner tonight consisted of a hot pocket and an ice cold bud light.  If that doesn’t say healthy high-class, then I just don’t know what does.

Sitting here trying to digest my food, I’m reminded of why I don’t make a habit out of eating hot pockets.  They’re really gross.  The things you’ll do when you’re too exhausted to go to the grocery store.

Hot pockets do, however, remind me of that one Jim Gaffigan sketch.  Haha, I just looked it up and re-watched it, and it absolutely cracked me up, because it’s exactly how I feel right now:

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that I truly cannot keep focused long enough to write a legitimate post, so this will have to do for today.

Hope you all are enjoying your Tuesday evening!

6 Days

Posted on by

1

On this sixth day until Christmas, I currently have:

6 boxes of contacts that need to be picked up from the eye doctor.

5 (times 12) final exams left to grade.

4 people left for whom I need to buy presents.

3 friends IMing me on facebook.

2 socks soaking up all the water in my cat’s water bowl (thanks to her odd sock habit).

1 toilet that won’t stop running no matter what I try.

And that, my friends, is the lamest attempt at a last minute blog post ever made. But hey, at least I got it done, right?!

Better stories coming tomorrow.  For now, though, I’m off to bed.

Patience is a Virtue

Posted on by

0

In an effort to keep my promise about posting every day until Christmas, here I am.

Unfortunately, I’m not here with my post about Clyde & Curly.  I had big plans to get my camel post finished today, but, as it always does, life got busy.

I have a great friend from grad school in town visiting me for the weekend, and soon after she arrived, I got a phone call from two friends from my New York days who happen to be in Dallas this weekend as well.  I haven’t seen my NY friends in years, so we’re all meeting up  tonight for a girls’ night out that will include nothing short of lots of fun, fancy bars, great friends, a burlesque show, and many cute boys (or at least I’m hoping, haha).  It should make for a super night!

I’ll get the second half of my camel post up sometime tomorrow for sure. For now, though, I’m off to reconnect with old friends and take Dallas by storm.

Hope you’re all having a safe and happy Friday night!

A Little of the Every Day

Posted on by

1

When I started this blog three weeks ago, I swore to myself that I would update at least four times a week.  One week and three posts later, I decided that maybe I should lower my criterion to twice a week.  After over a week of no posts, however, I think that maybe I should start promising a post a week and then build from there (though, really, my goal is still to get 4 posts a week).

This is the time of the semester when everything gets crazy, and the last two weeks have been filled with endless grading, student meetings, and long-distance dissertating.  By the time I get home and put aside my work for the day, I’m ready to veg out and/or sleep.  As a result, I’ve been neglecting my blog.

To be honest, it’s not just my crazy schedule that has kept me from updating (though that’s definitely the primary reason).  I’ve been wanting to update, but I began to worry that I had nothing interesting to say.  It worried me that if I wrote something that was too boring or mundane, then people might not want to read my blog.  But then I realized that (a) some of my favorite bloggers write about their everyday experiences, and (b) writing something boring might run off a few readers, but writing nothing at all will run off all of them.  Plus, I reminded myself that I started this blog because it’s a good stress-release for me, it’s fun to keep my family and friends updated with my life, and it’s nice to have a written account of some of my thoughts and stories–whether or not they’re entertaining.  Anyway, I decided that I needed to just get over myself and post something instead of worrying and not posting.

So, here’s my post with no point. I figure it can only get better from here.

Before I hit publish, though, I thought I’d share the highlights of my day.

* My beloved Conan O’Brien is back on the air.  I’ve been a fan of Conan since his early Late Night days, and he’s been a staple in my nightly routine for at least the last 10 years.  Needless to say, these last 9  Coco-free months have been rough.  As a gawky Irish Catholic girl who’s tall and pale, Conan’s sort of my hero.  We’re practically twins.

As if the fact that he’s back on the air and back in my bedroom wasn’t exciting enough, his comeback brings with it my Conan O’Brien shirt prediction game. This, my friends, is the highlight of my week.

You see, every night, right before Conan first appears on stage, I guess what color shirt he’ll be wearing.  I’m not sure when I started doing this exactly, but it has to have been at least 6 years ago, as I can remember doing it when I was still teaching in Lawton.  Anyway, I have about 85% accuracy overall, and it brings me the silliest feeling of pride whenever I correctly anticipate his shirt color.  Given that over 90% of the time he wears either a white or a blue shirt, it’s not that hard to guess correctly.  This fact doesn’t deter my excitement, however.  No, I still get giddy every time I’m correct in my prediction.  I recognize that this is just another indication that I need to get a life, but I’ve really missed this nightly tradition. Luckily, Conan’s back (and better than ever), and I can recommence my game. As it stands tonight, I’m 2 for 2.  I dare anyone to try and do better.

*I love my blog’s “site stats.”  Wordpress tells you how many views you have per day, what links people click to get to your page, and what words people type in search engines to find your blog.  While I don’t know who’s reading my blog, I can see that people continue to check my blog regularly, and I genuinely appreciate that.  It’s always fun to see how many people click on my blog per day–it definitely provides motivation for me to keep posting!

I haven’t had time to log onto my blog the last few days, so tonight when I got on, I checked the stats for the past couple of days.  When I clicked on yesterday’s stats page, I saw that someone typed “pale is awesome” into a search engine to find my blog.  I can’t tell you what a bang I get out of this.  I don’t know why exactly, but this search makes me laugh.  I don’t know if it was someone who was actually trying to find my blog or if it was just a random person who wanted to find other super-fans of paleness, but whoever this person is, he or she made my night.

*I bought some pears this weekend at the farmer’s market, and they are the most flavorful pears I’ve ever eaten.  I don’t really have anything exciting to say about them except that I can’t get enough of them.  Delicious.

*I took this picture of my cat yesterday morning, and it just cracks me up. This was the first time (as far as I know) that she’s ever just hung out in my bathtub, but she took residence there as soon as I got out of the shower and continued to sit there for the entire time that I was getting ready for work.  She just seemed so tiny and sweet, so I had to take a picture. (Please ignore my messy bathtub).

I guess that brings my post about nothing to an end.  It’s late, and Craig Ferguson (one of my other late night staples) just started, so I think it’s time for me to head to bed.  Hope you all have a happy hump day tomorrow!