Something Smells Rotten on the Emperor's New Clothes

As much as I adore fashion, I am by no means unaware of the yawning gulf that exists between the glossy pages of most women's magazines and the way in which really real women actually live out their lives.

But it's not the clothing that makes me angry. After all, even the most outre outfit can be deconstructed down to a manageable level in terms of both wearability and price. That's why God invented consignment shops, eBay, Zappos, and Banana Republic.

I'm also not talking makeup. There hasn't been a culture in existence since the Big Bang that hasn't in some way decorated their faces to heighten or broadcast their sexuality, power, or social status.




And I'm down with that. After all, one of the half dozen things the coming Fascist Regime is going to have to pry from my cold dead hands is my ever present tube of Mac Lip Glass in Fluster Rose.

No. My beef is with the ridiculous amount of shit shoveled in our faces by the segment of the $20 billion a year cosmetics industry specifically geared towards keeping us youthful. It simply amazes me that women living in the 21st century remain stuck in the dark ages when it comes to believing the hype surrounding the ability of facial serums – many of them priced into the stratosphere – to turn back the tide of aging. Without going all Chemistry 101 on y'all, let's just say that there's not much difference between what's packed into a $130 jar of La Mer and a tube of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly.

Then again, I guess it's easier to slather on a potion and cross your fingers than it is to do what it actually takes to remain wrinkle free, which is:

A. Stay out of the sun forever and ever, amen.

B. Don't use your facial muscles. That means, no smiling, frowning, yawning, or making kissy-kissy noises at infants and puppies.

(This Catholic monk, who has never seen the light of day or whistled Dixie, is fifty million years old!)

Also:

C. Eat.






















Oh, and maybe, just maybe, smell. Because, according to a U.S.-based fragrance company by the name of Harvey Prince, all you have to do to appear younger is spritz yourself with a hearty dose of their new perfume, Ageless Fantasy ($120!!!!), which, says the company's prodigious amount of "research" and "clinical trials," will make those of us who wear this frag appear up to ten years younger by the opposite sex!

Gah.

As if, when it comes to male/female relationships, we're not all already deluded enough.

I Am . . . Not Doll Parts

(pssst: not a real baby!)

You know, I should have based this week's Mute Monday on the ultimate F-Word: Fake. A condition so prevalent in our society it's become the New Real. Fake boobs. Fake nails. Fake fat. Fake flowers. Fake feelings pasted on politicians hoping to make us think they care. And, of course, one great big gloriously fake economy.

So it was no surprise to me when I turned on the Today Show this morning (I know, I know, but it's like a train wreck. Can't help but look.) and saw this:

Women who luv up fake babies : http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26970782


They’re called “reborns”: incredibly lifelike baby dolls that sell for up to $4,000 to adult women who collect them, change their clothes, and in some ways treat them like real babies.

“It fills a spot in your heart,” Lynn Katsaris told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Wednesday in New York as she cuddled “Benjamin” and “Michael” in her arms. A realtor from suburban Phoenix, Katsaris is also an artist who has created 1,052 reborn dolls and sold them to women around the world. She was one of three grown women visiting the show with five of the the bogus — but eerily realistic — babies cradled tenderly in their arms.

Now, is that creepy or what?

Watching these deluded women, I was reminded of my own brief experience caring for a fake baby. Junior high, 1978, third period Home Economics. I thought we were there to learn how to make pancakes and design a smashing pair of velvet bell bottoms. But, no. Our teacher had another idea in mind. She presented each of us with an egg onto which she'd carefully drawn a cutsie baby face and glued a lacy baby bonnet. We were then given very stern instructions to keep this egg with us at all times and treat it with the utmost care to make sure it didn't crack. For the entire ding dang semester.

I guess the point of this exercise – other than making us all bat shit crazed with worry about what would happen to our grades if we happened to, oh, let's say inadvertently leave our egg on the crosstown bus while on the way to the mall to buy a pair of Candies – was to teach us the seriousness of parenting. Which is kind of ironic if you think about it, because when it comes to a bunch of hormonally-infused 13 year olds, isn't that kind of putting the cart before the horse?

I'll let you work that one out.

Anyhoo.

This particular story also got me to thinking that if I ever found myself faced with having to fill some holes in my heart? Well, it's not going to be with a facsimile of the real thing, you can bet on that.

I Hate Myself For Wearing You

Three months ago, stooooooopid ass Dish Network went and canceled their contract with Voom Network, which also effectively canceled one of the highlights of Moi's week: Thursday evenings on the sofa with Fresca and Cheetos deconstructing the latest hideousness to ooze its way out of Marc Jacobs' brain. Yes, I hate Marc Jacobs. I find his "designs" to be overrated, condescending, and terribly butt-ass ugly. No, I realize he is not the only designer to commit these sins. He's just the one I love to hate the most.

Take this dress. You know, just know, when this thing came down the runway, the fifty bazillion fashion mavens perched in the front row bobbed their bobble heads at each other in dim-witted Emperor's New Clothes-like fashion and tittered, "Dahlinks, this is genius, pure genius." When, instead, someone should have immediately jumped to their Louboutined feet and screamed, "Dudes, somewhere in Manhattan, a daycare center is missing its DRAPES."




Anyway. Back to Dish Network.

I even wrote a letter to the company's head muck-mucks, and when no response from that was forthcoming, stated my case in a carefully elucidated over-the-phone protest to one of their Pakistani service reps who, despite her limited English, totally understood where I was coming from and tut-tutted along with me in a touching show of allegiance. Sniff. Fashion truly crosses all borders. But, alas, she was unable to offer me any hope of Voom's reinstatement. So, as of this moment, I remain, terribly, tragically, Fashion TV-less. Which means I have to log onto New York Magazine and suffer through the teensy videos. But suffer, I do. And aghast, I am. Marc Jacobs aside, there are two other fall 2008 trends that have the smoke rising from my ears.

Suck Ass Trend #1: Plaid

Can you freakin' believe plaid is still in? Look, I don't care if you dress it up and call it Betsy Johnson OR Oscar de la Renta (who would, of course, never stoop), the ONLY justification for this material's existence is to make kilts for hot Scottish dudes who regularly neglect to don their tightie whities underneath. If all that was left in my closet was a pair of high waisted jeans with tapered legs and a pair of day-glo orange Crocs, you couldn't crowbar me into any of these outfits. Yes. I said it. I would rather be caught out in public in Crocs than hiding out in my living room in plaid.

Bottom line: No. No, no, no, no, no. And, one to grow on: HELL NO.

Suck Ass Trend #2: Jumpsuits

Yes, you heard me. Jumpsuits are in for fall. Jeezus, I thought they went the way of The Runaways, who, regardless of their playful pushing of the jail bait envelope, terrific eye makeup, and totally cool songs, still managed to look NOT SO HOT in the jumpsuit.


And while today's interpretation of the trend are thankfully baggy enough to take care of any potential camel toe issues, they are also heartbreakingly free of even a whiff of Studio 54-like fabulousness or tongue-in-mechanics-chic. Maybe, just maybe, you could justify the jumpsuit if it were all part of an elaborate ploy to get a little something something by appearing to be all helpful when your guy does whatever it is he does when bending over a car engine or tucking himself underneath the bathroom sink and then afterward, you slowly unzip the thing to reveal – ta da! – a sexy bit of Agent Provocateur. Nah. This stuff is too grimly utilitarian, too Soviet-style sexless to inspire any fun of that sort. Instead, it's as if Nikita Khrushchev himself rose from the grave to design the ultimate outfit for standing 12 hours in line at the state-run grocery store under grey skies vomiting industrial disease.

No lingerie here, folks. Just TWO kinds of shoes: black or blacker.

I Did Not Have Sex With That . . .Wait. What?

I knew it.

I mean, look at him.

Man's got cheating hair.

It's not so much that he looks like a human Ken doll. It's that he looks like a male Barbie. Glossy and kinda dumb. But, mitigated with enough aw shucks Southern Fried charm to save him from being a complete dolt. I blame much of it on the accent. As someone who was snagged by one herself, I'll tell ya, a couple of whiskey slurred vowels and dropped consonants and things can get out of focus real quick.

Still, this makes me wonder: why do the Demochromatics get all the sex pots? Huh? Where are the equivalent Republitards? If you know of any, let me know. In fact, I'm going to put y'all to the test: which current denizen(s) of the Republican party would make you chuck all common sense and go tripping through the tulips?

And don't say Andrew Sullivan.

Yes, he's a hunka, hunka burnin' hawtness.
But he's not actually IN politics.
And he pitches for the other team.

So Shocked, No Title Comes to Mind

New York City's Chrysler Building is one of the most hands down beautiful things ever constructed. Not only is it an American architectural icon, it is symbolic as well of a kind of clear-eyed economic and artistic vision that is in woefully short supply today.

And now Prudential Financial has sold its 75 percent stake in the building to the Abu Dhabi Investment Council. The business arm of Abu Dhabi's gub'ment.

What was that line in Blood Diamond, where Leonardo di Caprio responds to Jennifer Connelly's request for an interview? "No thanks, I usually like to get kissed before I get f - - - ed?"

Uh, huh.

One of Our Fifty Is Missing

That's the title of the back page feature in New Mexico magazine, and it refers to the fact that even in today's 21st century, many people around the country and the globe still seem to think the Land of Enchantment is, in actuality, part of Mexico and not the United States.

I've been getting this as long as I can remember. As a kid, my NYC born 'n' bred cousins used to ask me if we had indoor plumbing and running water. Oh, and if the local Indians lived in tee-pees. Never mind that New Mexico farmers have been moving water across vast distances of land in a sophisticated series of interstate acequias long before the Pilgrims even touched their tacky-ass buckled shoes on the shores of the New World and that only Plains Indians did the tee-pee thing. To the contrary, New Mexico's native peoples have been living in highly organized townships called Pueblos for over 1,000 years and, before that, in highly organized cliff dwelling communities for gah only knows how long.



In fact, one of those pueblos, Acoma's Sky City below, is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States, believed to have been established sometime in the 9th century AD. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jamestown.



Makes you wonder what in the heck fire we're teaching kids in our schools, huh? Because people are still confuzzled about New Mexico's official status. Witness this over-the-phone exchange, reported in New Mexico magazine, and relayed by a secretary of a Los Alamos, New Mexico (you know, where the nuclear bomb was invented?) firm, trying to order something from a company located somewhere on the civilized Eastern Seaboard:

Customer Service Rep: And where would you like this order shipped?

Secretary: 123 Main St., Los Alamos, New Mexico.

CSR : We don't ship out of the country.

Secretary: That's fine, but this address is in the country.

CSR: No, you said to ship it to New Mexico.

Secretary: Yes, New Mexico is a state in the US.

CSR: Sorry, but we can't ship out of the US.

Secretary: Do you have a supervisor I can talk to, please?

[Long pause.]

CSR Supervisor: This is Tim. Can I help you?

Secretary: I hope so, Tim. Your employee doesn't seem to understand that New Mexico is a state in the United States, and so refuses to ship me your product.

Supervisor: Well, that's true. We can't ship out of the country. I'm sorry ma'am.

Secretary, raising her voice a little: Have you never even heard of the state of New Mexico? It's one of the big, square ones? It's right between Texas and Arizona? It's one of the 50 United States?

Supervisor: I'm sorry, it's just our policy not to ship out of the US.

Secretary: Tim, let me get this straight. Your company is going to lose a $14,000 order because the people in your customer service department are too moronic to know or comprehend that the state of New Mexico is a part of the United States?

Supervisor: Yes, ma'am. That's our policy.

Secretary, completely exasperated: Well, I guess there's nothing more to be said, is there?

Supervisor: No, ma'am. Have a nice day.

Such a Succulent Sound

It is my greatest hope that now that über-gold-digger-cum-nasty-ass-bitch Heather Mills has received her divorce settlement from Paul "The nookie made me do it" McCartney, the first thing she does is go out and hire a good stylist.

Paging Heather: 1977 called. It wants its leisure suit back.

* * *

STUPOR TUESDAY

How utterly ironic that a woman who supports gun control has absolutely no problem shoving the barrel of a great big fat one in the smalls of our backs to force us to do something against our will.

Pop a Fresca, grab a bag of Cheetos, and see if you can stomach all eight minutes of this horseshit. Or, scroll over to time stamp 4:23, where she says it clear as day.



If you're really ADD, basically:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC's "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."

Bitch even has the balls to say that the means, no matter how uncomfortable, forceful, or downright unethical, are not as important as achieving and end - one unproven to do any ding dang good at that. Hmmm . . . can you think of any other regimes that regularly use the ol' End Justifies the Means argument?

Smells like Brave New World to Moi.

And I simply do NOT have an outfit for that.

Smells Like Vacation To Moi

Every year out here in the Rocky Mountain Southwest, winter storms blow in from the Pacific, gathering force as they move along across California and Arizona with the result being that, by the time they reach Colorado and New Mexico, more than a few hapless outdoor adventurers manage to lose themselves among all the sound and fury.

Far from being tragic in IMHO (can you say, thin the herd?), these incidents instead inspire mucho chuckling and head shaking from the denizens of this here household. ‘Cause look, Party People, in this day and age of insta Internet access, anyone who ventures out into the wilderness without first checking the forecast on weather.com? Well, Room For Rent simply must be tattooed across their foreheads at the first available opportunity. Just so those of us who encounter these dimwits have sufficient notice to give them wide berth.

Of course, the press just lives for these kinds of stories. Take this recent incident in which a six-person, two-family team of merry funsters got lost snowmobiling in the mountains north of Chama, New Mexico this past Friday. Everyone was in a panic for days.

But yesterday morning, the news broke: Thank gah and glory be. The two families have been found! enthused a shiny-eyed CNN reporter, bundled like an overgrown papoose in her $5 bazillion North Face puffer parka. They put all their survival skills to the test and made it through!

Uh-huh.

Which prompts Moi to ask this Zen-like question: If, in getting lost in a blizzard, you find your way to an abandoned cabin, break in, discover a propane grill, blankets, food, and thus proceed to whittle away the hours cheerfully playing Pictionary and stuffing your face with popcorn until one of you eventually hoists himself out of the cushy cabin sofa to climb the hill at the back of the property to suss out a cell phone signal and call for help, well, now, can you honestly say you survived anything?

I think not.

Bees Obscene and Not Heard

If there's anything I hate more than crap science, it's crap journalism. Gone are the days of Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, savvy observers of the American political, social, and cultural scene who before ever putting pen to paper, first totally and fearlessly immersed themselves in the topics they were covering, whether those topics included California car culture, Russian revolutionaries, or the inner workings of the Hells Angels.
Today, we rely primarily on television "news" shows to bring us investigative stories and in depth profiles. And for ages it seems, 60 Minutes has been considered the cream of the crop. But over the past couple years, the show I've been watching has slowly devolved into something with all the journalistic integrity of The Tyra Banks Show.

Witness last night's coverage of the collapse of hundreds of bee colonies across the United States. Most of us know the gist of what's happening: over the past several years, millions of bees have simply up and left their colonies. Not died, but just, well, left.

While no one has as yet discovered the reason our bees are disappearing, no one is in dispute that they are. (I don't dispute it, either, although, oddly, my own garden has never been as lush, as healthy, and as overrun with bees as it has been these past 2-3 years. Hmmm . . . )

Like almost all of the newspaper, magazine, and online coverage of colony collapse, last night's show focused exclusively on the disappearance of honey bees from commercial colonies. That is, those colonies which are cultivated by professional beekeepers – like Dave Hackenberg, profiled in the show – to travel across the country to pollinate commercial farming operations. Like the bazillion acre pumpkin farm owned by Brian Campbell of Berwick, PA. When asked by reporter Steve Kroft what would happen to his operations if he didn't have tens of thousands of bees on the job, Campbell answered: "Well, my business wouldn't be as profitable." AS profitable, Party People. In other words, he wouldn't be able to grow mass quantities of pumpkins. Pumpkins headed not for our dinner tables, but for Wal-Marts throughout the eastern seaboard as eventual Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween.

So.

After listening to about half the story, it occurred to Moi that maybe the bees are disappearing because they are continually being carted thousands of miles across the country on flat bed trucks, plunked down in the middle of hundreds – many times thousands – of acres of one single crop, and forced to spend the whole season pollinating not just said single crop but also one most likely treated with God only knows what kind of chemical(s).

In other words, the very industry that relies on bees for its profit may be stressing its main workforce right the hell out. And we all know what stress leads to. It leads to the fight or flight response. And the last time I checked, honey bees don't wear little honey bee boxing gloves.

Surely, if that theory occurred to lil' ol' Moi, it would occur to the Powers That Be at 60 Minutes. Right? Uh, that would be a big NOPE.

Never once in his report did Steve Kroft point out this irony. Never once did he wonder aloud at industry-wide reports suggesting that, unlike traditional industrial beekeeping operations like Hackenberg's, organic beekeepers, even those who operate at the same commercial level, are experiencing NO instances of colony collapse. Never once did he point out that this particular practice of beekeeping is still in its infancy, and we are only just now beginning to study it's implications for bee health and behavior. Finally, Kroft never once wondered if feral bee populations in non-agricultural areas (like the one that includes Moi's garden) were undergoing the same colony collapse (it seems they are not).

So, a story that should have been inspired and of-the-moment ended up just feeling kind of shabby and way too much like yesterday's news. Yes, we all know the bees are splitting for parts unknown. But tell us something new, why don't cha? I have a feeling that someday soon, you'll see 60 Minutes reporters undergoing their own kind of collapse: from boredom, disinterest, and lack of ideas.

There is No Other Pill to Take?

Because I simply refuse to swallow the same ol' one that makes me ill.

For instance:

Same pill, different Armani suit. The woman is beholden, beholden, beholden.


Same pill, only meaner. I don't care that the man is a lapsed Catholic and cheats on his wife. I care that he's a jack-booted fascist pinhead who delights in dreaming up ever more clever ways to whip us into blind obedience.



Kinda the same pill, only much, much cuter. But we all know what happens when we elect cute guys to office, right? They're either assassinated or their names are forever stained by naughty sexual misconductivities. Or both. Barak, honey, go save the world some other way. But stay cute, 'kay?

Gah, then there's THIS guy:

Forget the fact that he's a moron, er, Mormon. I simply refuse to vote for anyone who spends more time on his hair than I do.

But, wait . . . what's this?


Huh. What do you know? Okay, give Moi a glass of Pinot to go with that pill and yeah, I'll swallow it.

I Want Your Sex – But Only if You Can Spell It

This ever happen to you? You meet someone new and you're discussing your likes and dislikes and the person tells you they just love to read and then you go over to their house and the bookshelves are filled with nothing but Danielle Steel and Harlequin Romance titles?

Okaaaaaay, not really what I was talking about . . .

So, what is it with us women and this stuff? Men have porn. They need, like, 1.5 seconds of it – literal or visual, doesn't matter. Women on the other hand, we have bodice rippers. We need 250+ pages and pirates and lusty wenches and increasingly clever ways to describe one's body parts and all the things you can do with them. Only with a back story.

And this literary trend is only getting worse.

Recently, my buddy Bob the Copy Editing God sent Moi an email about the possibility of him working for a bodice ripper-type purveyor.

Apparently, the Internet has set the genre ablaze. Suddenly, the virtual world is filled with scads of POD (print on demand) publishing houses that also serve as on-line bookstores for readers rabid for a seemingly endless stream of bodice ripping yarns. Unlike traditional publishing houses, these companies contract with writers to produce X number of books a year and pay them X amount (sometimes up to 50 percent) of the retail price of a book whenever X number of readers log onto the site and place an order for their book(s).

And good gawd, what all you can order! Everything from lite romance to full on, out-and-out smut of the smuttiest kind involving everything from – I kid you not, Party People – space aliens to vampires to house pets. All with, you got it, actual story lines.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against romance books. Or smut lit. Or pornography. Or erotica, or whatever you want to call it. After all, I wrote my senior history class thesis on the Marquis de Sade. Well, okay, not really because of the smut. But because, in addition to his filthy little mind, the Marquis was quite the literate libertarian and had some interesting things to say about personal freedom and responsibility and the tyranny of gub'ments: "Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain." for instance. So naturally, I felt a bond with the man.

Anyway.

Even when not couched in scathing political allegory, smut is fine with me. So long as it's written well. Which most of this POD stuff is not. Where, in today's churned-out-by-the-pound bodice ripping set is Erica Jong's ribald humor? Sidney Sheldon or Jacqueline Suzanne's über hip renderings of a specific time and place? Henry Miller's fluidity? Hell, even half of a sixth grader's dexterity with the most basic of adjectives? Way, way too much of this is an embarrassment and not because of the subject matter but because of the poor way in which it's conveyed. Bottom line: sucks the big one applies in more ways than one.

But what really puzzles Moi is this: why do so many women gobble these tales up?

All I can say is, let's hope Bob gets put on the job. Then at least then the stuff will be spelled correctly.

Kiss Kiss, You're Dead

Remember when you were a kid and you were afraid to go to sleep at night because you were sure, just sure, that within that cavernous space under your bed lurked a hideous monster lusting to make you a tasty mid evening treat just as soon as you escaped to sleepy-bye land? Or that those creaky noises you heard in the hallway outside your bedroom were the spectral footsteps of long-dead former denizens biding their time until they could suck the life out of your quivering pajama-clad body?

Then you grew up. And realized that there was nothing lurking under your bed except perhaps some dust balls and a few misplaced Barbies or G.I. Joes and that those footsteps outside your room were simply the noises of a house settling as the night air cooled. You came to realize all that because your rational faculties were developing. In other words, you were coming out of the Dark Ages that is childhood and into the Enlightenment of adulthood.

Funny thing, though, many adults still hold onto their myths and their hysterias as tightly and closed mindedly as they did when they were children. And our media, government, and so-called consumer advocate groups just love to feed that hysteria. The result being that behind every dark skinned fellow airplane passenger there lurks a bomb-toting terrorist, behind every block headed-dog, a child chomping beast, etc., etc., into infinity and beyond.

This is the latest frenzy:

For years, an organization called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has made it their job to ferret out the chemical boogie men lurking within our lotions, eyeliners, and lipsticks. Their latest findings? Unsafe amounts of lead in our lipsticks. Not all of them, mind you, just 33. They don't know about the rest because you know what? They admit they simply cannot test them all.

So how safe is unsafe? Well, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics' report uses as their baseline, and I shit you not, the amount of lead found in candy. That's because in order to keep the kiddies (and junkies like Moi) safe, the FDA has placed an allowable limit of lead in candy at .01 ppm. More than half (61 percent) of these 33 lipsticks tested contained detectable levels of lead, with levels ranging from 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million.

But then the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics goes on to state that in their professional opinion, NO AMOUNT of lead in any quantity is safe. So, uh, that would mean NO AMOUNT of candy is safe either, right? The report doesn't touch that with a ten foot pole.

Reading all this led Moi to ask the following:

1. The report's assumption of danger relies on the assumption that women ingest lipstick like it were candy. Which simply isn't true. I mean, yuck! I'm willing to bet that your average child is exposed to more lead during this upcoming holiday than I'm ever likely to be exposed to via my lipstick, despite a lifelong, die hard devotion to its use. And, again, no one's suggesting we reformulate candy . . .

2. Further, the report's assumption of danger relies on the assumption that lead molecules are small enough to penetrate the layers of our skin with regularity. Which simply isn't true. Otherwise, we'd all be long dead and gone from the way higher amounts of lead we're exposed to on a daily basis when we touch a myriad other lead-laden substances.

3. It would seem to me (Pirate?) that we're exposed to more lead by working in our offices and sleeping in our homes, hell, even walking outside or drinking municipal tap water. So wouldn't it behoove us to regularly test our paint, soil, and drinking water? Oh, yeah, we DO.

4. Why didn't the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics do a really real scientific study? I.e. take blood samples from x number of women who have regularly worn lipstick for, say, the past ten years and blood samples from the same x number of those who have not? Then test both groups' blood for lead, and, voila, compare the differences? Perhaps it's because such a test most likely wouldn't show a statistically significant difference between the two groups.

Bottom line question? Why is a consumer advocacy group pedaling misinformation? Is it deliberate? Or is it simply bad science?

The clue lies within their very own Web site:

Personal care products like shampoo, conditioner, after shave, lotion and makeup are not regulated by the FDA or any other government agency. It is perfectly legal and very common for companies to use ingredients that are known or suspected to be carcinogens, mutagens or reproductive toxins in the their products. (Not true. the FDA does not regulate what a cosmetic company can claim about their product. But they do set limits as to what is safe to put in them. In fact, there is a very effective sunscreen that has been used in Europe for years that the FDA has yet to approve for use here in this country.)

We are asking cosmetics and personal care products companies to sign the Compact for Safe Cosmetics (also known as the Compact for the Global Production of Safer Health and Beauty Products), a pledge to remove toxic chemicals and replace them with safer alternatives in every market they serve. (What are these alternatives? By whom are they manufactured? The site doesn't specify. And if you're thinking, no, not more chemicals, the advocacy groups wants us to use natural products, well, natural doesn't necessarily mean safe. Poison ivy is natural, but I don't want it in my moisturizer. And safer according to whom? The FDA? Again, the site doesn't specify.)

Ah, here's the clincher: The Campaign works with endorsing organizations and individuals so that together we can ramp up the pressure on companies that have not signed the Compact and continue to sell us toxic products, including Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Avon and many others. Our founding organizations also work closely with other allies to reform the chemical policies that allow for toxic ingredients in consumer products in the first place.

Sigh. It seems that behind every motive, and no matter which side of the Party Line it falls, lies one thing and one thing only: $$$.

She's Praying to the Aliens

One of these days I will sit down and suss out why, oh why, I am so obsessed with Posh Spice. But this is not that day. Instead, I leave you with only this: proof positive that the woman is, indeed, from an entirely different planet.



P.S. And those shoes? Totally NOT fabulous.

Yo Ye Pharoahs, Let us Walk Through this Barren Desert, in Search of Truth and Some Pointy Boots

I'm not going to pussyfoot around here. This fall's supposedly fabulous footwear fashion? Uh, not so much. Which has made me stomp my feet in indignation at the butt ass ugliness of it all. And swear off all purchases in favor of a single, trusty dusty pair of multi-purpose boots that go with everything.


And la, la, la, la, la myself until spring. 'Cause NO amount of sex or candy could persuade me to subject my feet to any of these Fall 2007 "trends."

Butt Ugly Fall Trend #1: Dressing Like A Dude

This according to Fashion Windows: Yes, the powerful woman is back, only this time we don’t have to prove it with shoulder pads. This season a huge trend is the powerful woman, weather [sic] it be biker style or menswear inspired [yikes!] the message is the same. We are woman and we are strong!

Spare Moi.















Nor should I have to feel like a target for Jack the Ripper.
Butt Ugly Fall Trend #2: Brocaded Shoes

Nor like Hell is for Children or Love is a Battlefield.
Butt Ugly Fall Trend #3: The Booties That Just Won't Die

Nor do I want to wear anything named after a beast of burden.
Butt Ugly Fall Trend #4: Mules






























Mules are a close second to booties for the Cockroaches of the Shoe World award.



Finally, look, just look at what they've done to my beloved peep toe pump!

Butt Ugly Fall Trend #5: Camouflage

She Needs a New Toy to Keep Her Head Expanding

According to recent news reports Angelina Jolie (shown here greatly improving the plight of yet another underprivileged child by gifting her a matching mother/daughter Valentino handbag) is severely depressed by her inability to change things for the better in the Third World.

I know, huh? We all had such high hopes for her, believing she was the answer to ending world hunger, human rights violations, and child slavery, just by wishing it so.

So I guess I understand the shopping therapy tactic.

But for handbags, Party People.

Not for children.

Friday Funnies

Because I'm on a short leash today regarding time.

Mmmmm . . . tastes like chicken: http://www.miamiherald.com/466/story/236592.html

A species known for its extreme docility, the nurse shark was, apparently and in this instance, pushed way over the edge: "I've had it with these mother flippin' kids on this mother flippin' plane – uh, beach!" It was heard to say after being beaten silly into submission by a paramedic.

Maybe he should spend his time indoors, like this kid: Sure, he's lip-syncing to a Will Ferrell sketch, but it's still the funniest thing I've heard/seen in a while.



Thanks, Doris Rose!

And thanks for coming over yesterday and ministering to Moi's messed up knee. It's feeling much bett-ah and I think I can safely say, in the words of da Pirate, "Meh."

Revenge of the Nerds

I don't think there's a single one of us who at some point during our childhoods didn't feel bullied or ostracized or inadequate. It's the way of the world and while at times unfortunate, a necessary element I believe in our journey towards adulthood.

For those experiences are not supposed to teach us to lay down and die. They're supposed to teach us stick up for ourselves, figuratively as much as literally, so that we grow up to become people of strength and integrity and compassion. Okay, so some of us grow up to become whiny grump asses, serial killers, and presidents of the United States, but you get my general point.

Like diamonds and steel, those things forged under pressure and fire can become our strongest, most brilliant elements.

Remove the fire and what do you get?

You get Colorado. With my sincerest apologies to Stepherz (who I know had no hand in this), how in the holy heck can this former bastion of the untamed west be on the one hand so breathtakingly wild and on the other so downright lame?

What's next? Banning grades? Outlawing extracurricular sports?

Used to be, you were a nerd, you got revenge by growing up to do something spectacular with your life. Now, you grow up demanding lawyers, guns, and money to get you outta this.

The Summertime of their Lives?

Karl Rove and Al Gonzales
Sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love
Then comes matrimony
Then comes retirement
In a South American country.

I don't know about you all, but I'm having a Miss Teen South Carolina moment. Just where in the friggin' hell is Paraguay anyway?

This is Not My Idea of a Good Time

What in the feckin' hell was Vogue editor, Anna Wintour, thinking? The only way I'm going to get this puppy on a plane is to book a separate seat for it.

Coming in at a whopping 1-3/4 inches and a bazillion and one pages – the vast majority of which feature ads for clothing that 99.975 percent of the global population cannot afford – the September issue of the world's most popular fashion magazine is a daunting and downright grim tome, indeed.

Now, no one loves fashion more than I do. But that's because it's supposed to be fun (unless you show up to a funeral in flip flops, in which case you should be beat silly about the head with an Hermes scarf) . Yet to take it THIS seriously that you have to create what amounts to a virtual King James Bible out of a few ads for some Tod's sweaters and an article on making friends with brooches (I shit you not, but that's Plum Sykes for ya – that airhead I want to beat about her entire body with a sledgehammer).

I won't bother to comment further because the witty folks over at www.glossedover.com have performed a brilliant, nearly page-by-page deconstruction of the entire mess. I will only reiterate just a couple observations:

1. The Groucho Marx Eyebrow trend for fall sucks the big one;

and

2. Enough already with Sienna Miller. I'm sure she is a very nice person, but fashion icon? Puleeze.


No one should be caught dead out in public in this outfit. I mean that. If your HOUSE were burning down and this was what you were wearing and you couldn't put on a robe or coat to hide it, you should just give up on life and burn, baby burn.