Question:

When people like Tori Spelling write books, why do people buy them? Maybe it's misguided for me to think of Tori Spelling as a boring, unattractive 90's version of Paris Hilton because there are obviously people buying her books. So what's so interesting about her? I would actually be more interested in Paris's autobiography than Tori's, and I'm saying this with the expectation that Paris would just make a list of what's hot and defend her misuse of underwear for 90 pages before devolving into doodles of shoes and pink hearts.

Tori has written two books. I'm willing to put money on the fact that neither one of them explains why all that plastic surgery can't make her face less manly.

My Monthly Cycles

MyMonthlyCycles.com is a free website that enables women to track their periods. After you track a few cycles, it calculates your average cycle length and predicts your period start dates for you. You can also track ovulation and symptoms, if you want. Admittedly, this website has changed my life. I would never be able to keep track of hormonal crap like that without an email reminder-- I'm a little like Einstein that way. You know, if Einstein was absentminded about buying tampons instead of brushing his hair.

Every month or so they have a new poll topic about -- you guessed it-- menstrual cycles. Usually the poll is something like "You're headed to the beach and you realize you got your period! Do you: (A) Wear a tampon. (B) Stay home. (C) Go, but keep all your clothes on. (D) Cry uncontrollably until someone gives you a valium."

This month the poll asks us whether women should be compensated (with extra pay or extra vacation time) for their periods. UM HELLO!? No? Ladies, all you're doing when you menstruate is sitting around and bleeding*. I see no reason why you should be compensated for this unless your job involves swimming with sharks, feeding steak to bears, or playing in the nude with wild oranguatans.... Or maybe if you work for Bill Clinton.

*I can say this because I'm a woman.

I hate riding the bus

Yesterday I was riding the bus home from the grocery store. It had just begun to rain lightly and the bus was not crowded at all. In fact, there were many, many seats available. Two men boarded at the Credit Union. Instead of taking a seat, they decided to stand in front of me. Not only did I have to stare at their (unappealing) behinds for 15 minutes, I had to endure their wet, dripping backpacks hitting me in the face over and over again while I tried not to drop my armful of groceries.

Naturally, I began to contemplate whether I should speak up and cleverly chastise these bastards. Before I could make up my mind, the girl sitting across the aisle from me whipped out her cell phone and called a friend, saying loudly,

"These two white dudes just got on the bus and decided to stand rather than sit by me because I think they hate black people! That's so racist right! Can you believe how racist these jerks are for not taking a seat because it's next to a black girl? I gotta go, I don't want them to form anymore racist opinions about me while I'm on the phone."

Those two men completely ignored her, but I'd like to think that they will feel The White Guilt for the rest of their bus-riding days. I'd rather have them feel The Shame Of Douchebaggery for shaking their moisture onto me like smelly, wet dogs. I only wish I were bitchtastic enough to call them out on it.

AmazonFail, ConsumerFail

I recently learned that I have not been using the Internet correctly for years! Beyond the fact that I don't really like watching YouTube videos or creating sexy webcams or sexnetworking on MySpace, I'm apparently not shopping correctly either. I'm just a failure as a woman.

The controversy with Amazon.com and its "delisting" of media dealing with homosexuality and feminism brought this to my attention. To check the extent of this "AmazonFail," I went to Amazon.com and searched for gay and lesbian literature, only to learn that I was still able to find and purchase it. I went to Twitter and asked the world what the big f'in deal was.

The world told me (or rather, some random guy who happened to read my Twitter post told me) that "It's not that "objecitionable" [sic] content isn't for sale. Amazon delisting makes these books harder to find." So wait, I had assumed that "delisting" meant removing something from sale... but apparently, the big controversy is based on those annoying lists that pop up when you look at a book. You know, the ones where people who can't bother to spell right list their favorite literary works? I find those lists to be the least helpful and most self-indulgent things on Amazon.com. But apparently it matters a lot that we can no longer read JimBobTX1978's list of favorite lesbian parenting books. (Obviously that's discrimination, but maybe we should be happy that it's a small step toward getting rid of these lists completely.)

I've been shopping wrong for years, apparently. I should be buying all my books based on "Britneyz Favrite Russian Lit" because those lists are the most powerful component of Amazon.com's industry. That would have saved me a lot of time sifting through my own Amazon searches-- think of all the WORDS I had to read to decide what book to buy!? What was I thinking?

So hey Amazon.com... what you did was wrong and discriminatory and just plain ignorant. But hey consumers, how pathetic are you? Stop relying on the Internet to pick out your goddamn books for you!

Taxation without Misunderestimation

Why is it that that IRS can't steal, I mean deduct, the correct amount of money from my paychecks during the course of the year? I always get money back. I guess that's nice, but it makes me concerned about the math qualifications required to get a job in government these days. Maybe that's why this country's in debt, eh? Eh????

Confession

... I don't know how this is going to sit with you guys, but I watched Power Rangers: RPM this morning and I think I sort of liked it. It's so dramatic, with its cheesy catch phrases and moody lighting and acute camera angles. It's like baby!LOST. Just wanted to get that out there in the open. The first step to healing is admitting you have a problem.

Death by pollen

Last night, we were chatting with the bartender at a pretty funky establishment in Durham. Recently, he told us, he traversed the globe eating steaks and then reported back to the bar via his blog about how they were prepared. (Some blogs are useful). They had a special "Nate's Steak" item that changed according to his blog-- how cool! Someday I want to travel and find a feature of every culture to become neurotic about. Then you can have a themed laugh at me.

In other news, I am sorry to everyone for not respecting your seasonal allergies in the past. Though I may not have said it to your face, I thought you were being huge whiny babies. I now understand your pain. I have had a sore throat, itchy eyes, stuffy nose, and a cough for the past week and a half and it's all because of the damn pine tree sperm. Keep it in your cones, boys.

Synopsis of every spring since college:
Rainy day = I wish it was nice so I could go outside and enjoy myself
Sunny day = migraine and panic attacks about insects

Now that it's getting warm and flowers are blooming, my porch is swarming with hornets. I'm not used to gigantic hornets because I'm from Chicago, where bugs die in the winter and don't get a chance to grow larger than my thumb. I can hear them buzzing though my window pane and when they bump into my window, they make a tapping sound. It's giving me goosebumps, the scary movie kind.

I'm not saying we need to go back and revive the Silent Spring project, but maybe the size of insects here has gotten out of control. Are there any non-chemical ways to keep insects off my porch?? Keep in mind that I don't have half the hand-eye coordination to swat at them.

I'm pregnant

APRIL FOOLS! Oookay, that was lame, I apologize for the low quality of this post.

Yesterday, P and I were trying to dissolve a powered drug in hydrochloric acid, and somehow we ended up with about 5 mL of solution with a pH of -0.5. To give you an idea, lemon juice is about 2.5 and battery acid is 0.3 on the pH scale. Our lab safety manager had to call someone to remove "hazardous materials" and got pretty pissed at us for doing something so dumb.

Today, we poured some water on the floor and ran to get him. "We spilled 12 M hydrochloric acid on the floor!!" He looked at it, swore, and ran down the hall to call HazMat or whatever.... April Fools, safety manager, April Fools. He was pretty mad at us. I'm pretty sure that someday when I spill lye all over myself and my skin is burning off, this girls-who-cried-wolf prank is going to bite me in the ass, but until that day, me and my intact skin think it was pretty funny.

Did anyone out there do something incredibly clever today??