Todays brain fart occurred on the way out from the movie theater. We'd just been released from Hell Boy II and while we were inside, it had rained. Coming down the line of cars in the parking lot I eyed our beautiful pepper red Saturn then turned to Shawn.

I said, "Now our shar looks ciny!" Actually no fooling really said it aloud, just like that. Then blinked. A lot.

I had meant to say, "Now our car looks shiny!"

Yeah, I don't know wtf either!

Dear Madonna,

I admit that when I first heard about you, I wasn't impressed. Probably because I was too young to understand what Like a Virgin was all about, anyway, and too interested in cutting my barbies hair and doodling all over them.

You stayed at the fringes of my musical tastes, however. You came out with some pretty decent stuff, such as my favorite, Frozen:

Frozen, from your excellent album Ray of Light (Which I need to get a hold of again <3) Which pretty much cinched me from sitting on the fence and actually admit I liked you.

Then...Then you released Hard Candy.

Now, the controversy seems to stem around the fact that you're fifty something and parading about in a pair of undies, see through top and push up bra. I don't ...really see the issue here. I mean, I remember your little pr0n momma phase and that doesn't bother me. Look, you've got the money to do whatever you like, Nanna Madonna. If you want to be half naked and prancing about at 70, well go for it.

What I can't stand is how ridiculously awful this new album is. Were you talking to Britney Spears when I wasn't looking? Who told you this sound was a good one for you? A touch of it isn't bad, you pulled it off really well in Ray of Light--but this is just...Augh.


I know, I know. Most artist's stuff is so edited and computerized and edited again to sound perfect. But most of them don't sound so mechanical and so devoid of any emotion when singing, which, Mads baby, you sound like in the last two song releases of your new album, Hard Candy.

Watching the videos wasn't too rough really. I can see that some movements aren't as smooth as they used to be and in some places, stuff just looks awkward. It happens, right? Everyone gets on in the years--but Mads, Mads, your sound is...Bad.

You'll have to forgive me if I pass on Hard Candy this time around. It's just not to my taste. You sound about as inspired as cardboard and frankly, that doesn't inspire me to spend my money to listen to you.

Maybe next time, right?

Love, Mel.

Over at 2phatgeeks.com, I recently posted a tribute to my mother for mother's day.

According to one commenter, Seien, my mother's antics were disgusting and she feels sorry for my children and hopes that they get away from me as soon as they possibly can.

Feel free to read her kick ass commentary on my mother's parenting skills, because obviously, I turned out to be a child-raping-frothing-at-the-mouth-murderer.

Gosh, I just love you, Internet!

I don't know how I continued living my life without knowing these existed.


I saw one of the figurines, I think posted on wtf_inc and like any little girl raised in the Jareth-tight-pants-era, don't see the issue with this, despite the spectacular effort and attention paid to the crotch in the first one. (Or...maybe because? Anyhoo--)

I want them. :s I wantssssss them. I covet them for no reason other than what it stands for, the fact that David Bowie in spandex, a wig and eyeliner is still hot damn it, and because I haven't had a figurine collection since...Since I had my unicorns years and year ago before they all broke.

I never really thought I'd want to start collecting again--but these can certainly change a gal's mind.

Do you have a collection? What's it look like? :D

Why are they using Sephiroth's theme song for their Thundercats adsadasdadkdkd?

Courtesy wtf_inc, bringing me the wtf's since...whenever I signed up with them.

I'd be so lost without them!

Plug alert: As you may or may not know, Shawn and I have got our WordPress blog up and running over at 2phatgeeks. We've recently won ourselves a premium theme given away by Blog Oh! Blog, and two reviews, one from The WWW Observer and the other from The University Kid. (If you're wondering, reviews are a great way to get visitors.)

That's not exactly the funny, but it is the kick-ass.

What's funny are the random google terms people have used and stumbled upon our site by mistake. A plug in I use there, called stat press, keeps a list of all the search terms that bring visitors to 2phat geeks. Here's what's brought people so far:

blind folded rolling on the floor for money
boob cake writing
cockatiel
3d carpentry design software
cockatiel egg cracking :(
triond
2phat wikipedia
i eat my own words means
walmart fucks the economy
yapb theme
carpentry, finding the correct angle
yapb wordpress themes
elf fu triond
blogs diving
computers internet blog
shawn
can i trim my cockatiels beak
"sloe-eyed man"
honibe
joomla
adagio teas
phat black mommas
carpentry sucks
tweezer
mintywhite.com
AOL Roleplay
mintywhite windows guides
phat women online chat room
cockatiel poops on me
Drow sighting

I think the blind folded one is the best so far.

He said, "This movie is horrible!"

I heard, "Shit monkey is whore-able!"

Yeees, horizonchaser I've cleaned my ears out!

We used to shop at Walmart when Shawn worked as manager for a call center. His hours were from 4 pm until 12:30 am. He was usually in the door at 1am, and while it was super odd hours—it was when we had super, when we watched shows we’d recorded earlier. We had our ‘evenings,’ when most of the world was dead asleep or just getting up to start their day.

When he got his job working at a bank, all of that changed. He had to be up to be able to get to work at 8:30am and home about 6:30pm. It almost goes without saying that these past ten months have been quite an adjustment. Shawn’s doing well, honestly, it’s me that’s still having issues.

I miss a few things about staying up late. That’s the chance to catch a lot of my online friends from all over the world who seem to be able sign on just when I should be going to bed, catching television shows that I might not see during the day, (no, not porn. I AM connected to the internet, after all.) and the sort of quiet that the night brings without the harsh glare of day.

But I don’t miss the shopping at Walmart.

We’ve been shopping during the day at Publix. Sure, it’s a franchise, but it’s presented as a small time grocery store, and I have never had an issue with Publix. The people that work there have often gone above and beyond what I expect in grocery stores—then again, I was used to shopping at Walmart.

Walmart sucks every little iota of happiness out of my very being. From the moment I get out of the car and struggle through the parking lot filled with women yelling at their spouses into cell phones, to fighting to get into the door behind the slow-assed family busy thinking the world’s going to slow down for them—I begin to fill with hate and dread.

We went to Walmart tonight because Sunday is Shawn’s day off and we needed groceries. A mistake that will haunt me for several moons. Gaining entrance into the bloated consumer paradise called Walmart was much as I described it above. As we crossed the threshold from sanity to the realm of insane, the harsh, florescent lights blinding me—I was immediately bombarded by the noise of the checkouts. (All of them full and right by the doors of course.) The Walmart greeter was a young sloe-eyed man that watched us enter with all the enthusiasm I imagine a roach would watch our feet pass by his dark little domain. When I offered him a hesitant smile, all I got in return was a quirk of the brow and a half-smirk that seemed to mock me for, oh, I dunno, being amicable.

We quickly grabbed a cart and went on our way as I was beginning to sense foreboding already. Shawn wandered off toward the deli to get sandwich meats for his lunch this week, and I took the cart to go pick up the rest of the groceries. (Deli’s are notoriously slow where we are, I can usually get our shopping done by the time they’ve cut our meat and cheese.)

As I was wondering about, there were several differences between Walmart and shopping at Publix that stood out for me. All the people in the Walmart store simply looked…deflated. Everywhere I peeked about there was hard beady little eyes and tense, shut tight mouths. A mother fed up with her child tearing a scarf from it’s hands and balling it up angrily into her purse—a gaggle of children running past me, screaming about candy and a very tired, pregnant mother listlessly telling them to stop knowing that they wouldn’t listen to her anyway. In the poultry aisle, a husband and wife spent the entire time arguing over the fact that he said told her he liked thigh meat, and well, she’d obviously over heard incorrectly.

Wheeling my cart down the canned foods to grab some canned mexi-corn to add to my special burrito mix—there was an old man dully standing by himself near the beans. He had watery eyes and thick glasses and for some reason I wanted to place a wife beside him, but she wasn’t there, obviously.

People walked fast and did their best not to meet me eye to eye, while in Publix, I’ve been known to make an offhand comment to Shawn and actually get someone to respond to it—or make a joke and have people laugh. Down these aisles, I feel like if I would I’d just get stared at or mothers would pull their children from me.

The floors were filthy here and there. There was a particularly interesting splatter stain in the coffee aisle when I went to pick up the no-name chocolate creamer for my coffee. It looked like a spill of some sort that, instead of being cleaned up, was left to congeal. And then several customers just kept running over it with feet or cart, with no one caring.

Things on shelves looked as if they had exploded or a pack of rabid humans had gone by to fuck everything up and leave in that cartoon ball-of-dust-and-arms-and-legs fashion. Everyone I encountered wearing the obvious blue vest or shirt looked weary, heavy-lidded and simply devoid of any human pleasantry what-so-ever.

And I remembered that this is pretty much how it’s always been. That it hadn’t changed.

It made Publix shine in comparison. There’s a manager that works at Public that knows Shawn by name. We went in one day for a few pieces of papaya. What we were confronted with was the whole thing, and it was pretty damn large; we would have wasted it. Just as we were going to put it down one of the girls that was working produce must have overhead us, because she offered to take the whole papaya and cut a few slices of it for us. We were so impressed, really, that we wrote up something positive for her and gave it to the manager.

He’s never forgotten Shawn’s name since then.

The aisles are always spotless, the floor has never been messy, there’s never a messy shelf or exploded produce that looked like a riot for carrots had come and gone. When Shawn goes in to pick up things without me, they ask him where I am. When we go together, the service is always awesome, even the people shopping there seem brighter, more colorful and certainly far more pleasant.

Don’t get me wrong. As middle to low class as we are, we love Walmart for offering us cheap, we really do. We know they’re selling their soul to the devil to do it, and we’re grateful to be able to go to stores like it to get nice things at affordable prices, but god damn, the environment in which they’re doing it in makes me want to forgo the chance at cheap just to save my sanity.

I think I’d rather stick to shopping at Publix and pay that extra cent or two on my toothpaste than brave the horde at Walmart anymore than once or twice a year or during extreme emergencies from now on.