Sausages, Sausages, Sausages, Sausages [Second Verse, Same As the First]

Not to be a lady who keeps her audience dangling (penis pun alert!), I must dutifully report that I am now the proud owner of the March 1995 Playgirl featuring Scott Bakula.

Exhibit A:
Ooh la la, indeed! I have dutifully read my first-ever piece of purchased pornography (say that five times fast!) cover-to-cover and I have a few findings to report:

1) 1990s Playgirl maintains an almost pathological insistence that the sole audience for this magazine is women. Every letter, every submitted fantasy, the editor's comments, everything was female-centric. There is no acknowledgment of a gay audience whatsoever. Which is funny because when I see a naked dude doing some artistic back bends in a jungle in front of a tiger, gaygaygay is all I can think. Well, that and Dude, sweet tiger!

2) It distresses me that so many of the fantasies in the reader fantasy section start with "I said no, but really meant yes" premises. Oy, ladies. Oy.

3) Also tragic was the fact that every bio on every naked dude in there did little to mask the career desperation of the wannabe A-list actors of the world. Every one was a star in the making back in 1995. And in 2008? Even their certified cover star Scott Bakula is a cult favorite at best.

4) I really do feel for the plight of male nude models. Looking at these photos it became resoundingly clear how philosophically complex the question "Where should I rest my junk?" really was. Where, indeed. Where, indeed.

Only on a dreary rainy day like today would I find such tragedy in a racy nudey magazine. Ah well--to cheer us up, here is a very apropos (and disturbingly hilarious in its own right) clip from The Kids in the Hall called "Sausages":

My Dreams Are Alive With The Tedium Of 'The Hills'

The other night I had a horrible dream: I was hanging out with the kids from The Hills. Or at least in my dream-mind I knew these were the kids from The Hills though they took the shape of Generic Blond Girl and Generic Rich Boy. Which yeah, if you're familiar with the show at all, that's pretty much dead on.

In this nightmare I was forced to accompany them to the bank while Generic BG withdrew some money from her daddy-fed bank account. We may have actually walked through a drive up window--it was all very harrowing. And boring: very very boring. This is how I knew I was on The Hills.

The moment of dramatic tension occurred with Generic BG realized 'OMG! There's like, barely any money in this account! What will I do???!!?'

To which Generic RB suggested, 'You could get a job.' In that flat, the-producers-just-fed-me-this-line kind of way.

To which Generic BG replied, 'Yes! That's a great idea! Now I just need to find a job that makes $20 an hour and work for that whole hour so I have some money to put back into that account so Daddy doesn't get mad!'

Even though I was living in this dream reality with them, aimlessly wandering around the streets of LA as they tried to 'problem solve!' it struck me in that moment--even though there were no cameras or crew in sight--that this existence was horribly, horribly fake. Who exactly thinks working for one hour to put $20 in a bank account is going to solve their money problems? And like, yeah right a girl on The Hills is having money problems to begin with. Clearly, the 'conflict' was a simple ploy by producers to keep the show 'interesting.' Yay! Let's watch Generic BG make a spoiled ass out of herself for one hour on 'the job.'

Thankfully, I managed to wake myself up before we actually got to the job. Though I had other dreams that night (one ending with me jammed into a window trying to squirm my way through to avoid some falling logs that were determined to crush me, and one in which my family ditched me to go to New York on a vacation and I had to completely move out of my apartment for no particular reason as fast as humanly possible), The Hills dream still troubled me the most in my waking hours.

I've been spending too much time talking about Nihilism recently to handle thinking about what it means to dream you're living in a fake reality show.

And after reading this interview Hills 'star' Lauren Conrad gave to Entertainment Weekly, capturing the 'reality' of her fake life seems horrifically tedious:

We're not filming The Truman Show, we don't have cameras set up all around our apartment, and they're not with us 24/7. Basically what they're doing is taking our lives and telling a story...the cameras stopped rolling...I went home and called someone [Brody], and the next day talked about it. [MTV] was like, Okay, well, we need to get that on tape, and since they're trying to tell a story the right way, I basically had to go and call [Brody] again, have the exact same conversation on camera.

Wow. No wonder the whole thing sounds so damn awkward and scripted! Can you imagine the call the next day?

'Oh, Hi Lauren? ...Oh yeah? That conversation we had last night where you spent half an hour angsting about our pseudo relationship? Yeah, I remember that. ...Oh really? Not on camera? You mean we get to do it over again? Super!' [Insert finger-gun to brain shot here. Pow!]

For those of you fortunate enough to have never visited The Hills, whether in real life or dream, I give you this brilliant James Franco & Mila Kunis reenactment from FunnyOrDie.

(N.B.: This is not an exaggeration. This is exactly. how. it. really. is.)

My (Facebook) Love Affair With 'Nihil Ism'

After trying my hand at finding love via cheese puns on Craigslist with marginal results: eight wow-that-was-scary/funny! responses, one brief email penpal session, and one quick, awkward meeting at a liquor store later, I've decided to reveal my true relationship status on Facebook.

I'm dabbling with Nihil Ism.
And, while I previously was wary of letting the public know my relationship status in their mini-feeds, the attention-seeking drug that is the internets kicked in and I couldn't help myself.

But I soon learned relationships with philosophical concepts are not always as simple as they seem...


Though initially hurt by learning my relationship was "...complicated" via email, how could you deny the 'stache, the appreciation of Love Actually and spooning?


And such inspirational wall posts!

I wasn't lying in my 'About Me' when I said I'd go to great lengths to amuse myself.

Freedom to Protest Farting on Airlines: Or Why Cary Tennis Should Be Your Favorite Writer Too

If you've never checked out Cary Tennis' Since You Asked column in Salon, consider this my plea--nay, demand!--that you to do so immediately. Upon first launching into the dark unknown of the blogosphere with my Google Reader's engines pinging away, Cary's column was one of the few stars I found myself orbiting around more than once. Now I find I can't miss his answer to a single question whether it be what to do when you realize you've stopped doing your job, how to deal with an intense hatred of buzzwords, or what it means when a man farts in your face on a crowded airplane and you say nothing.

That's right, Cary Tennis deals with the tough topics--the farts in your face--pulling from the (pungent) air greater truths than the questioner ever imagined learning. Take for example, his response to the airplane question:

But let us get beyond the farting, the rudeness, the olfactory assault, my fellow passengers, and ask the larger question: Are we not sitting idly by every day as powerful people fart in our faces with impunity? Is there not a terrible stink in the national air about which we are saying nothing? Why are we filled with outrage and yet unable to raise our voices in protest? Are we not feeling mute and discouraged in our daily lives as we watch the news? Why is that? Is it because we feel vulnerable to the commands of the captain, fearful of being incarcerated if we raise a stink, pardon the pun, fearful of the consequences if we simply call attention publicly to the fact that a man is standing in the aisle farting in our faces?

Every day a new question, every question another attempt at seeing life's bigger picture. It's amazing really, the work that he does. There is no ivory tower here, no shack on a Greek isle completely removed from his audience while he creates his work. No, Tennis rides the bus like the rest of us: face pressed up against the window, teaching us how to focus our eye on the once-blurred beauty before us.

I Think, Therefore I Am Sanjaya

I know I'm a little behind the curve on posting this video of Sanjaya...ahem Bill Vendall... talking about the "self-referencing nature of progressive evolution" or as I like to call it: The "I am aware that others think I'm a cheeseball, therefore I am a more highly evolved cheeseball than the rest of the cheeseballs who don't realize they're cheeseballs" post-mondernist meta-ironic phenomenon.



That's right. One day, he might be appearing as YOU.

He's already appeared as me, as I have appeared as him (ohhh mindfuck!):