Tag: humor

13 Reasons To Stay Single

/ Alessia / 11 Comments

Don’t get me wrong; I love being married. But sometimes I miss the little things about being single…


Thirteen Reasons To Enjoy Being Single

1. Everything in your home is yours — and remains yours — until you die.

2. You can come home after a long hard day, strip off your clothes, leave them where they lay until you feel like putting them in the laundry pile, take a long uninterrupted soak in the tub, get up and walk around naked — all free of any complaints. Or being accused of “teasing” when you aren’t in the mood.

3. Your career is the only one that matters.

4. Breakfast can be the last slice of blueberry pie — ala mode, if you wish. Or left-over Chinese take-out. No one is there to take it — or judge you.

5. You dress for yourself — and you don’t need to justify your quantity of shoes, either.

6. Lunch can be a trip to the mall.

7. Dinner can be a bowl of cereal in milk — snarfed down the minute you walk in the door because you skipped eating lunch.

8. Your closet is yours & yours alone; the only need to squeeze things in is because of your last “lunch.”

9. No annoying in-laws or significant other family members &/or friends of your partner to put up with. (Just the annoying coworkers to deal with now — and see #2.)

10. You can sleep alone in the center of the bed, in one snoring, drooling pile, without being outed for it.

(Don’t worry, you can still have sex. Just kick him or her out; one person can easily avoid the dreaded wet spot. Better yet, have sex at their place and let them worry about avoiding the wet spot.)

11. In fact, you can sleep wherever (and whenever) you wish, including the couch, after another bowl of cereal, watching your favorite movie.

12. Things are where you left them — including the toilet seat in the down position.

13. You will always like & trust the person you live with. (You!)

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Jerry Seinfeld Wants To Referee Your Relationship Arguments. Maybe.

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Variety announces that the U.S. arm of British shingle Shed Media has won the contract to produce Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming NBC reality show The Marriage Ref. You can read the Variety article to get the skinny about which producers got in bed together (or at least rubbed elbows) to solidify the deal — sans pilot; me, I’m just more interesting in the show’s concept: Seinfeld’s plan isn’t to play Dr. Phil to your relationship arguments, but to mock you. Maybe even mock some sense into the two of you.

The official logline is, “Jerry Seinfeld is back and in the producer’s chair for a funny and revealing series about the unpredictable and hilarious institution we call marriage. Married life takes center stage as celebrities, comedians and sports stars candidly comment, judge and decide who’s right and who’s wrong in real-life disputes between real-life spouses.”

If that sounds intriguing… But you’re tempted to dismiss the pitch as, well, a pitch, Broadcast reports the following juicy gossip details:

A tiff with his wife Jessica prompted Jerry Seinfeld to create The Marriage Ref. The comedian was entertaining at home and asked one of his guests to “referee” the argument, stumbling upon the show’s central concept.

The studio show will be recorded in front of an audience and hosted by the Marriage Ref – a comedian who has been signed but not yet named.

VT of the couple rowing is played into the studio and three celebrity guests debate the rights and wrongs of the argument before the referee has the final say. The emphasis is on comedy, with silly prizes awarded to the ‘winning’ member of the couple – such as a golden vacuum cleaner if the row is about cleaning.

If you’re interested in airing your hysterically dumb but true arguments to an NBC audience (while comedians take whacks at you like a piñata until silly prizes spill out, yet!) casting is open until July 10th:

“The Marriage Ref” casting team is searching the country for outgoing and opinionated couples in long-term relationships, willing to appear on national television, who have a long standing argument or issue that must be resolved. No problem is too small!

Is there an object, a person, or a habit (e.g. computer, pet, a friend, the remote control) that is a third wheel in your relationship and causes a problem?

Or does your partner have an annoying obnoxious habit or item that causes fights?

Whether you argue about parenting, pets, fashion, money, in-laws, weight, housework, chores, communication, neatness, jealousy, past history, friends, sex… Whatever you argue about, we want to hear from you. Tell us why you absolutely NEED a MARRIAGE REF to weigh in and decide who is RIGHT and who is WRONG.

…we want to hear what absolutely makes you nuts when it comes to your partner!

(Don’t forget to tell ’em Alessia of Relationship Underarm Stick sent ya!)

Making Giving & Getting STDs Cute?

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herpes-simplex-virus-2I’ll be honest; I’ve got herpes. Yup, down there, not on my mouth. It’s not a relationship or sex death sentence — and should presenting such facts to a potential partner be a deal breaker for him or her, just count your blessings that you didn’t have the chance to catch their rigid, unforgiving, inflexible, judgmental-ism.

My husband and I joke around about herpes a lot — we have to because herpes and other STDs are often the punchlines in many jokes. Sometimes, when it’s in the context of assuming that a person with an STD is indiscriminately promiscuous, it’s hard to laugh…

But hey, even this rabid feminist has a sense of humor.

So when I found stuffed plush Herpes, I just had to laugh.

herpes

Herpes is part of the the Venereals line of GIANTmicrobes® by Drew Oliver.  GIANTmicrobes® are stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes — only a million times actual size!  The Venereals collection also includes The Clap – Gonorrhea, The Pox – Syphilis and Chlamydia too — each in their own little Petri dish!

chlamydia-petri

Sure, the Venereals are in kitschy; and I certainly don’t recommend using one of these alarmingly cute plush to announce your condition to a potential mate. But it might be a cute and funny way to alert your partner who alredy knows to infestation, inflammation, etc. Because as the website says, “Breaking out is hard to do,” so why not have a little something to make it a little more fun?

These plush critters may not cure you, but they will help you with your dis-ease!

Putting Singles In Their Place

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PlumParty.com calls this set of 8 placecard holders singles placecard holders:

But with labels such as “tease,” “high maintenance,” “gold digger,” “drama queen,” “damaged goods,” and “on the rebound,” I think they are perfectly wonderful for any good old-fashioned get together. Sure, for girls’ night, but how much fun to use as a party game in mixed company –with couples too — where you either…

A) turn the moniker away from the chair, facing the rest of the dinner guests, and have each guest guess what their label is

Or, B) you hand one to each guest as they enter, and have them act out their label, making the other people guess what their personality/circumstance is.

Naturally, all your guests will need to be both secure enough with themselves not to take anything personally as well as have a good sense of humor about the whole thing. But you’re cool like that, so you must have friends that cool too.

(Or at least you are wise enough to know better than to get these placecard holders to begin with.)

Alone Today? Valentine’s Day For Singles

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You didn’t think I’d ignore you today, did you my lovelies? Of course not. Real friends don’t ignore their friends just because they are one part of a couple, and years of being alone on Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and other holidays has left me ever-sensitive to the needs of my single friends on such days.

The folks at Lifetime also must have spent a few holidays alone because they’ve put together a collection of 13 “worst breakup stories” — two-minute videos of women (and a few men) telling their once-heartbreaking-now-funny breakup stories. The series, called The Breakup Diaries, has classics — and some scenarios that might make Paul Simon want to revise the count in 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.

One of my favorites is the story of Beth’s break up — it involves maple syrup, but that doesn’t make the story any sweeter. Her story combines three of the classics: The No-Show, The Walk-In-On, and He Comes Bearing Gifts.

Lauren’s story involves “Shmen” making — and sharing with her — a list of reasons why he was breaking up with her. This one is probably my favorite one. Not just because it’s funny, but because Lauren found the silver lining, which is what we all need to do when we’ve lost a lover.

Reassured by Lauren’s story and remaining ever hopeful, you will now download the free Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye MP3 from Amazon. You can mock its smarmy sex-fest mentality with your bitterness today, and then save it for play again on another day when you’ve got a partner to groove in the bedroom with. And yes, dear, that day will come.

13 Reasons To Hate Cosmo – In Just One Issue

/ Alessia / 10 Comments

Gawd I hate Cosmo. It’s like they simply cannot fathom that we see they’ve been running the same articles over & over again since Helen Gurley Brown became editor-in-chief in 1965, and began using the mag as an extension of 1962’s Sex and the Single Girl.

Don’t get me wrong, Sex & the Single Girl was wildly wonderful for the time (and holds up much better than you might think); but it was one book in 1962 and if we’re supposed to have come a long way, baby, then why the hell are we operating off a 1962 manual?

Plus, you can only recycle so much.

Even if you think, “There’s new chicks aging into woman’s mags every year,” you have to accept the fact that they know — or should frickin’ know — that old news is not only old news but hurtful and dangerously inaccurate.

Thirteen Examples Why I Hate Cosmo
(All from the February, 2009, issue.)

1 On page 50, In The Best Times To Impress Him, under “When his buddy gets dumped,” the advice reads as follows:

If your female friend suffers a breakup, you bring over Sex and the City DVDs and talk about how she “feels.” If your guy’s male friend gets the ax, however, he has only one job: to help the dude get laid. So give your man the green light to spend more time than usual acting as a wingman when out with the boys.

Ugh. So A), couples only have same-sex friends, they are B) stereotypes. (My friends and I — male and female — have a strict code that should any of us own &/or view Sex & the City, we are to drive them to the closest impatient care facility & destroy the DVDs.) And C) pimping is good for your relationship, so to hell with the scars on either “your guy’s male friend” or his sexual conquests.

2 Page 54, “How I got him to…” is an ode to man-ipulation. It starts with the “men are easily distracted like babies” — so change his cell phone ring to his favorite tune to keep him from answering it (hey, he’ll like listening to the small clip repeated so much that he’ll totally ignore a call from work, his mom… maybe even you). And then ends with stuff you already should know how to do, like if he says it’s natural to flirt with other women so you’re free to do the same, feel free to do it. (We know it may not make him get jealous and stop like “Chloe” wanted; but hell, neither of you are dead; so why the hell not flirt? Flirting is not picking-up or cheating.)

3 page 67: Beauty News. It’s not “ads” but the usual editorial serving as ads; and even worse, it’s stupid.

When you pull off your tights, a cloud of dust pops up. Cold temps plus indoor heat zap moisture. Switch to a hydrating body wash, like Caress Glowing Touch, $3.50.

4 Page 74: Beauty Q & A:

Q: When I wear heavy fabrics, I sweat a lot. What can I do to prevent it?

A: “Layer a cotton tee under a sweater — the natural fibers absorb moisture,” says NYC derm Doris Day. Also try a stronger sweat blocker, like Secret Clinical Strength Anti-Perspirant, $7.99.

‘Cuz A) believing the “derm” wouldn’t sell Secret ad space and B) asking why she wears sweaters in the first place is out of the question… Because “Q” is a made-up question from struggling editors.

5 Fun Fearless Males 2009, page 83. Heavens, if they are so fun & fearless — and celebrities — why don’t I already know about them? And why would I care? It’s not like I’m so deluded to think that my discovery of them (should I even agree with their sales pitch selections) makes me frickin’ eligible to date them.

6 Page 98: What Sex Feels Like for Him. Yeah, we can count on Cosmo to tell us how our man feels about us & with us; so there’s no need, should we A) actually be curious or B) not already have him telling us what he wants and why, to actually ask our real, not pseudo-Cosmo-guy, ourselves.

7 Page 103 starts 50 Guy Phrases Translated, in which Cosmo rapes other written works, distilling them to hysterical uselessness. Cracking the male “cryptic code” includes translating, “Can we talk about this later,” to, “I never want to talk about this again.”

Gee, really?

I suppose next you’ll tell me that when he says “We should go out sometime,” that he’s just afraid to really ask me out… And “You look hot” means he wants to have sex. Oh wait, that’s #2 & # 29.

8 We are not to be “alarmed” by our “freaky sex dreams, we are soothed (starting on page106).” Sex with the ex, girl-on-girl action, and dreams of sex without condom use aren’t what we fear think they are — nope, they aren’t even hot dreams we should just enjoy.

Cosmo, you’re worse than a wet blanket; at least then I’d have a wet spot & be damn happy for it.

9 In Love & Lust (apparently a regular feature) the Cosmo skinny is that playing hard to get (but not too hard to get) is phat. Yes, it’s 2009 and we believe women don’t know that the thrill of the chase is thrilling to both chaser and chasee. I mean, come on; this is the stuff we all miss when we ‘settle down’ and, if we take each other for granted, end up in divorce court for.

But thanks, Cosmo, for telling the women of today who paid $4.50 for your rag that “texting him your location at all times” is “not hard enough”, that waiting to reply to his text a day later with “Who r u?” is “too hard” but that “sending short texts and resisting the urge to engage in volleys” is “just hard enough.”

10 On page 112, more of Love & Lust, has the classic, “he lost his class ring in my pussy” story. If you don’t know it, ask your dad to tell you a sex joke.

And then work on your freakin’ Kegles for gawd’s sake.

11 Page 192, in Cosmo Weekend Living, we are advised not to make our rooms too girlie &/or paint our rooms pink because “guys don’t feel comfortable in estrogen-heavy rooms.”

Yeah, unless our estrogen-heavy bods are naked; then, like they notice — let alone care.

12 Page 52: Cosmo for your guy — “show this to your man!” Two problems here: A) the whole mag is an ode pandering to negative male stereotypes, so if you’re going to encourage him, why stop at one page? and B) if your guy needs help to know that whispering “Remember that time on the kitchen floor?” is sexier than whispering “I’m so drunk!” to you, I doubt reading it in print in Cosmo will be of any help — to either of you.

(And then he might just flip through it and start thinking about your pink duvet and why you programmed the ringtone on his phone.)

13 Oh, are we at thirteen already? But there’s so much more… OK, I’ll give you just one more & then I’ll stop. For now. The perfumed ads reek. As if I didn’t have a headache already.

PS I didn’t buy this copy of Cosmo; I liberated it my sister-in-law from it. And yes, she heard all of this as an oral presentation as I took it.

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