The Science of Shopping

I am sure most of you have seen this picture emailed to your inbox by your tech un-savvy aunt Gilda who can use that 'forward' button like a pro.  Or maybe you saw it on a Facebook feed. But if you have never seen it, look at, study it, and find the truth in it. I was going to explain the graphic to you but it is so simple and intuitive and if you don't get it, then you have never been to a mall and you have never met a woman with fake nails. It's a graphic depiction of what happens when a woman goes to the mall verses when a man goes to the mall, both with the same mission: to buy a pair of pants at the Gap.  Most non-vegetarian men can do this.  But as soon as a women walks inside a mall, time becomes relative.  Much like when a guy says there is only 10 minutes left in the 4th quarter and the game is tied and he's pretty sure the referees are corrupt.  The women has the intention of sticking to the original plan of buying the pants and leaving, but those sales signs in front of the stores are no different than that stupid snake that tempted Eve to take a bite out of that apple.  If Adam was into fashion, he would take out that snake for his skin and replace that tacky leaf with a snake skin underwear.  Temptation wouldn't win, just like those glorious sale signs.  Women see the sale signs and we don't think about spending money.  We think about saving money. We usually don't need most the crap we buy but a purchase is an analytical decision.  Do I like it?  Does it make me look skinny?  Could I see myself in this as a repost on Pinterest? Does it make me itch or accentuate my love handles?  What am I going to make for dinner? How long until the next gifting holiday? What should I make for dinner? This shirt makes me look hot.  Is there a Groupon on botox? People who shoplift are horrible.  Mustard. I need mustard.   What's that smell?  Ugh! Someone farted.  I don't wanna be gross.  I am buying the shirt.  This AD/HD thought process happens with every store that has a sale sign. That's why women just can't go to a mall to buy that one thing and leave.  Our shopping process puts us in a warped reality of time (like the last 10 minutes of a football game) and we enjoy every second of it.

Being in a bad mood.

This morning I woke up in a pretty neutral mood.  I followed my usual morning routine:  Alarm off at 5 am; stick one leg out to the bed so that the weight of that leg slowly pulls me out of bed; bathroom; shower; a glass of not-from-concentrated OJ for breakfast; hug cat; dry my hair; put on makeup; hug cat again- she is very needy in the morning; get dressed; check myself out in 3 different mirrors to get 3 different opinions.  Yes, mirrors are very subjective and it’s important to get the average of 3. By the way,   I am not sure if I am using those semicolons correctly but the comma didn’t look and read right.  Anyways,  I hop in my car and drive to work.  But all the sudden, I found myself agitated with mean thoughts and I couldn’t understand why.  Why were all my random thoughts laced with profanity and the desire to destroy a person’s reputation by giving their business a bad Yelp review or using my intermediate Photoshop skills to create an embarrassing image of them?   How apparent is it that my level of cruelty is ‘nerd’?  By the time I got to work my thoughts were neutralized and boring.  But, now I know why I got all pissy for no reason.  On my way to work, I drove by an acquaintance’s house and by acquaintance I mean a person who I see at parties from time to time and who has recently stuck her little pig nose up at me. I remembered that she had a huge Christmas party and left me out of the Evite list.  I don’t care who you are but everyone feels a ping of rejection when they are left out of a party.  It could be a cats and crochet party or a Polka music dancing party and it would

still scratch a weak nerve.  What really bugged me is that it bugged me and I knew the only way to get over it quickly is to repeat this affirmation: “I am smart.  I am beautiful. I am smart and I am beautiful.  I am smart and I am beautiful”.  Nothing.  I was still chaffed.  So I had to tweak my affirmation:  “I am smart.  I am beautiful.  I can do anything I want.  I too will have a big party and not invite her”.  Ahh, much better.  Just like that, I was fine. 

I am not going to have a big party but just knowing that I can do it is enough to get me through these stupid thoughts that creep in and try to ruin 5 minutes of my life.  Sometimes just knowing that we have the power of some useless revenge is enough to make us move on.  Now I am not talking about revenge in terms of someone burning your house down or spreading vicious rumors about  your feminine problems, but about high school issues that still haunt you.  It all boils down to rejection.  And what is rejection?  Rejection is when someone doesn’t accept you for who think you are. At that point you just have to accept that no matter how awesome that person is perceived to be, he/she will never be that fit for you.  If that’s not enough then know that if you could ever be a recording iPhone on their wall, their everyday problems would make you laugh like an idiot and maybe, just maybe, love them.

A Skin Cream made from Foreskin

Recently my sister introduced me to a skin cream that has the circumcised foreskin of a baby's wiener.  The cream claims that the cells of the foreskin contain this human ingredient that will help your skin with...come on everyone, say it with me...wrinkles, fine lines, uneven tone and texture in 30 days.  It also costs well over $100.  I can't tell you how much money I have spent on face creams with the main ingredients being something totally odd that only a hallucinating scientist can concoct that are supposed to make my skin look better.  I have tried creams with snail slime, emu oil, tomato acid, ashes from a deadly volcano, fish eggs, cow urine, a plum that only grows in Australia and a whole array of funky acids.  Since I had spent so much money on it, my mind and I really wanted them to work.  I would look in the mirror and try to convince myself that it really was working.   I even went as far as marking the longitude and latitude of all the wrinkles and discolorations of my skin so that I can have a tool to measure my success.  Did any of those creams make me look like the photoshopped girls in beauty ads? Yes, they all did, but only for that period of time where I had to justify spending one month of wine money to help my skin look flawless.  It's like if someone tells you that repeating the letter 'D' 10 times mimics the mating call for human lice and it's a sure way to contract them, you're going to wake up in the middle of the night itching like crazy.  The mind does crazy things.  These companies that sell expensive skin creams with wiener skins or butterfly snot are banking in with the fact that you will temporarily believe anything they claim.  But let's just get analytical for a moment and think about the process of obtaining baby foreskin to use in a skin cream.  To get the skin in the first place, the representatives of the company would have to supply Ziplock baggies to the neonatal unit to collect the foreskins.  I am assuming there is not a market for this among Jewish hospitals.  At some point, some crazy nurse is going to ask a lot of questions which will ultimately involve lawyers to represent the babies and demand compensation for the 'parental voluntary removal of a human fiber for the purpose or purpose(s) of obtaining financial investment and returns containing or claiming to contain the beneficial results of such modifications exempifying elaborated efforts of the proclamation of declaration by emancipation as stated in 85th Amendment of Pennsylvania ruling'.   I swear I think lawyers go to law school just to learn how to confuse people, but that's why no one questions class action lawsuits. 
My point is, it's not that simple collecting baby foreskins.  I am sure if  you read the fine line, which is always written in a .000000001 font size, it will say that the main ingredient is cabbage which is suppose to have the same properties as a baby foreskin.  I just don't believe any expensive cream will be any better than the grocery store ones. I guess I am just a jaded lover of expensive skin cream. 

Be careful of the sample lady.

I hate walking through the make up section in fancy ass department stores.  One time as I was making my way to the 75% off red sticker tag shoe rack in Dillards, I passed by the Keihls skin department. I probably spelled Keihls wrong, but you know the line of overpriced skin care I am referring to.  I noticed a jar of cream sitting out very close to the isle with little ice cream spoons in it.  Without thinking, which I don't do much at department stores anyway, I grabbed a sample of the cream and out of no where, a sales lady with NASA grade jetpacks landed in front of me.  She started telling me about how awesome the cream is with the complete line of facial stuff that imprisons moisture into your skin and wanted to demonstrate the whole process to me.  Now I am not witty enough to think of an excuse to escape this service to get suckered into buying some overpriced crap that never delivers what the photoshopped models look like.  She also claimed that it's her favorite product, yet I can still tell from her looks that she smokes, doesn't get enough sleep, and is probably going through a dysfunctional relationship with some a-hole she met online.  So if she is using product line, which costs half of an average monthly mortgage; or two months of workman's comp pay if you're trailer trash, that it doesn't work.  How could I tell her that her face is proof the creams don't work?  Still, I am polite enough to allow the presentation while looking from the corner of my eye at the size 7 rack of shoes.  If you have ever been in this situation, here is your out.  Commit this to memory because it is literally your 'get out of buying overpriced skin crap' card:  "I have major skin sensitivity which puts me in a mild cardiac arrest.  I would like a sample to test out with a team of doctors on alert in the in event that the ingredient's don't agree with me.'.  I promise you it works like a charm.  They won't even ask you to elaborate because nobody cares about your medical problems.  Or, maybe you're cup is half full and you look at the positive and decide that ramon noodles for dinner ain't that bad, so you blow your grocery budget on a 1.75 ounce of face cream. Good for you.  You gotta love a woman or man who holds tight to the pant leg of their youth. 

What can smoking to do you?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/health/smoking-aging-identical-twins/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

A CNN article about aging twins shows photos of the puffing twin compared to the non-puffing twin.  At the time of this writing, there were only 4 to 5 photos. 

Now I am not a smoker. I have other bad habits but smoking is not one of them.  When I saw the headline of this article, I expected to see the smoking twin look like a bad DUI mugshot.  It didn't.  I didn't see a dramatic difference in appearance.  The smoker did have a few more wrinkles, but nothing Retina-A and botox can't fix. The smoking twin did look a bit angry, but one can imagine why.  Undocumented studies have shown that twins are very jealous of each other.  So you can imagine the mood at the photo session.  Hey twin A, lets take a side by side photo of you and your healthy twin so the we can see how ugly your are because you smoke.  If I was R.J. Reynolds, I would sue for slander if someone said my product made them ugly.  Yes, it is true that smoking causes cancer and birth defects like Michael Moore, but to say it makes one ugly is taking it too far. 

Like I said, I am not a smoker.  I don't have anything against smokers unless they blow that crap in my face.  But I do think we are making it life more stressful for smokers by banning them from anywhere that has four walls and making them stand ten thousand feet away to have a puff.  Are we not suppose to be helping them as a society? Do we actually think a gum and a skin sticker solves all their problems?  We are just adding to their stress by shunning them and what does stress do to smokers?  It makes them smoke more.  And for them to smoke, they have to go somewhere far far away like in the woods.  That's why California has all these forest fires.  It's because of their strict smoking policies that bans smoking from everywhere expect under the ocean and in the woods.

If I was a smoker, the CNN article would be good news to me.  So smokers, puff away if you care more about your appearance then your health.  Sure your life expectancy decreases, but that just means you won't ever have to worry about paying loans off completely.  Your short life will be good.

Frye boots are an investment!

By investing I mean investing in your comfort, looks, and health of your foot. First let me tell you I have bunions that make shoe fitting worse than a bikini fitting. I mean imagine trying on bikinis after New Years with all the extra turkey pounds and unshaved bikini line...yes, that ugly. So when I first slipped on these boots I felt an instant love and connection that is only experienced when a puppy falls asleep on your lap. I walked over to the full length mirror and the world stopped. It was just me and the boot on. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I walked around thinking that my feet would hurt or something, but it did not. Instant love, instant comfort. I wasn't even heartbroken when I saw the $350 price tag because I knew a boot this awesome is not for everyone. Only for people who like to be treated like a queen from a boot. I purchased them a few weeks later since I had to make the case to my husband (who buys his shirts from WalMart) about WHY I had to have these boots. I wear them all the time with just about anything. They are extremely comfortable, even after hours of walking. I get so many compliments and jealous looks from them that I have to be careful not to wear them around unmedicated bi-polar drama queens. Now, I said these boots are an investment because of the comfort and you won't be wasting your money paying a podiatrist to fix your feet. Trust me when I say you won't regret purchasing these boots. Maybe your utility bill might be late or your might go hungry for a few days, but it's sooooo worth it.

Apple Cidar Vinegar

I started the ACV drink a couple years ago, but never stayed regular with it because of the straight taste/smell. Yeah, I know I KNOW...add some honey, sugar, blah blah blah...but I just got too lazy. I told my friend about it and she has been taking it regularly since because it keeps her healthy, where as before she was always getting sick with something nasty.
But since I started working a 8 hour desk job 2 months ago, my weight is slowly creeping up, even with working out 3 times/week and being fairly healthy in my eating. So I am giving this ACV a try in addition to all the other stuff I am doing to see if my love handles will stop loving me so much.
However, I have been reading these Amazon reviews on Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar and they all sound the same (This stuff cured my dandruff; my face is clearer; heartburn is gone, I no longer spit out fire like a Shanghi dragon; my pants are fitting better; I took it to the middle east and now there is peace there). Seriously, they all sound the same. Not only that, the grammer is the same. I have read enough Amazon reviews to know there are alot of people tht r just too lazy or dumm to rite sentences that are at least acceptable on a third grade level. All the positive reviews have the same good grammer, enthusiasm about the product, and some Heinz bashing as well. I just hope it's all true and it's not some scheme by Braggs to boost their reputation.
I gave the product 3 starts. So why 3 stars from me? The first star is for my friend who claims it keeps her healthy, and she is a hypochondriac. The second star is because I actually like ACV on my food...I just don't like it straight. The third star is because I did drink it today with lots of water and it didn't taste as bad as I remembered it. It tastes like distilled purified water that came from a sewage plant in Bangladash. I know that is confusing because I say I do like ACV on food, but then I get images of Deepak Chopra's childhood neighborhood when I drink it.
With all that said, I promise to drink it every day for the 3 weeks starting Monday. Why Monday? Because this Sunday is superbowl and I plan on drinking lots of alcohol. I will also update at the end of the 3 weeks and let you know if my love handles have dumped me.