beauty ain't cheap

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Before I can present this post, I must include this message from our sponsor. Bert the Beagle would like to inform you that she wants attention. She wants attention right now. When you left for the grocery store, at 11:45, and told her you'd be back in "like ten minutes", and came back in half an hour, she felt deeply betrayed. Not because she understood what you said, or could tell time, or indeed was tall enough to see any of the clocks in the house. No... Because you left the house. Bert does not like it when people leave the house. She feels abandoned, and is forced to immediately seek out and destroy anything remotely edible anywhere in the house, including metal tubes of cat hairball remedy and vacuum cleaner bags with crumbs inside. She will, if neccessary, eat the vacuum cleaner to get at the bag.

And so, before I can compose this post, Bert had to climb onto my chest, lick my mouth and chin, put her wet paws down my shirt, and shed an entire dog's worth of hair onto my corduroy pants.
Thank you, Bert. We are all richer for the experience.

You may now continue with your regularly scheduled blog post.
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Dave and I just made a midnight run to Wegman's for beauty supplies. It was fun. I love grocery stores that are open all night.

The straight razor he ordered arrived today, so we had to run out and get some shaving soap and aftershave-- and a stiptic pen, one of those freaky things you use to make shaving cuts stop bleeding. ("If you slice your jugular, I don't think this will help," I said. "It's worth a try," Dave answered with a careless shrug.)

In the meantime, I picked up normal shave gel for myself, some new face wash because the stuff I'd been using for like five years is suddenly too drying for my skin (am I suddenly old? Then why do I still get zits? Feh.)...

It sounds simple, right?

Well, first we spent twenty minutes in the organic stuff aisle staring at the Burt's Bees products. They're the only shaving soap in the store, but they offered a startling array of other products. None of which were what I needed, however. But they were smelly, and that is somehow a good thing.

I considered buying Just A Big Old Tube Of Vitamin E, and forgetting about all the other anti-aging bullshit, but then I figured, you're only almost 25 once for an extended period, so I'll wait until after I hit my quarter-century mark (in 2 days less than a month) to start worrying about that stuff. I just thought it was amusing to contemplate Just A Big Old Tube Of Vitamin E, in topical form. Fuck Oil of Old Lady and its miniscule tubs of miracle cream! I'll just buy the concentrated stuff in bulk! Yes!
It's vanity, the hippie way. I am a consciousness-raised consumer of luxury goods.

Then we went on to the non-organic, normal skincare aisle. ("Man," Dave said, "I want my stuff tested on animals first!") And I stood for twenty minutes absolutely paralyzed by the massive selection of Stuff To Clean And Moisturize And Tone And Exfoliate And Resurface Your Face With.
Holy Lord, what IS all that?
"Ha," Dave said. "That's why I like men's skincare. Check this out." He turned around, and was instantly reduced to a gibbering wreck because the men's side-- was just as bad. Yow... it was the Wall O' Manly-Man Pore Refiners And Toners. Scary.

I finally bought something, anything, because it was on sale for thirty cents off with my Shoppers Club card. Fine! It's pink! It says "cleanser"! I'll buy it!
And then I bought another facial cleansing thing, just in case. Why not! It's not pink, and says "deep cleanser", so if the first one doesn't work, I have a backup! Also, it was also on sale for thirty cents off! Because thirty cents off of six dollars is thirty cents less than Fucking Ridiculous, which means just Third-Base Ridiculous, I suppose...

Then I thought, I might get some shave gel. Turned around. Dizzying array. There was a sale sticker. Twofer. "Man," I said, "I don't even know what I want one of, much less what I want two of..." The girl standing next to me (yes, I was, actually, not the only person looking for shave gel at midnight) laughed and agreed. We'd each settled on something when I noticed that of the five flavors (scents, colors, whatever), two of them were considerably larger, but they all cost the same. ?? We were both boggled by that. We both had to reconsider. We didn't know what we wanted, but surely more of whatever it was, for the same price, was better.
Right?
Sure.

In the meantime, Dave had discovered that Wegmans was selling a disposable "All-Terrain" razor. I shit you not-- "All-Terrain" was seriously what it said on it.
Yes, an SUV for your cratered face!
Go marketing! It was a need I never knew I had. I didn't know I had rough terrain actually on my body. But man, that razor looked manly. Yes. Because other people will see you shaving, and will judge you by your razor.

Anyhow, tomorrow Dave's going to mow his face with the new straight razor. I've got 911 on speed dial, just in case the three digits are too hard to remember.

moderates

Does anyone remember when Clinton was running for office the first time, and it was this big deal that he was a moderate?
Moderates were this sort of revolution. Everyone was a moderate. It was so cool to be moderate. It was a big trend. Compromise, trying to please the great silent middle majority, etc.

Whatever happened to that?

What I hate about all the extremism that's so faddish today is that it dehumanizes the opposition. Think about it.
I strongly, strongly disagree with what Ann Coulter has to say. I am highly displeased with her hatemongering in such a delicate time. There is no call for that, and I think it's deeply irresponsible. In short, I really dislike her.

But if she were sitting across from me in a restaurant, and got a piece of food stuck in her throat, and was choking, I would administer the Heimlich maneuver and try to save her life if I could.
Why?
Because she's a person. I dislike her professional habits and I find her beliefs repugnant, but she's still a person, for all that. And she has a perfect right to say what she believes. I can at least respect that.

I don't know if she'd save my life in her turn, in this deeply hypothetical situation, but that's beside the point. I am, after all, hirsute and slightly fragrant and braless. (Actually, I just shaved my legs last night, and I'm only not wearing a bra because I just got out of bed. I'd never leave the house without one.)

Well, she might-- I think I'm a moderate rather than a liberal.

But my point is, there are no officially recognized moderates. It wouldn't matter to her. I'm not her ally so I'm not a rational, intelligent human being-- I'm a spawn of Satan.
Nobody seems to want to cater to the great silent masses of the middle, who just want their country back-- from terrorists, from fear, from radicals, from zealots, from this strange undefined God that the President keeps throwing around (I had a God of my own and was quite happy with him, and I don't know who the President's God is because he never said, but I have a suspicion he's not the same as mine).

And you have to wonder, how long until someone takes the inevitable view that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? I mean, shit-- maybe it's better to let Al Qaeda destroy the U.S. because they're the enemy of the liberals. Maybe it's cutting off your nose to spite your face, but you'd be defeating those damn Democrats once and for all if you blew up Congress, now wouldn't you?

Not that I believe that, because of course the Republicans are all humans and I would be sorry to see any of them hurt, just as I would be sorry for the Democrats.

But please, I beg all of you who hold extreme viewpoints-- please be considerate, please think what fiery rhetoric can do, and please don't try to dehumanize your opponents. We are all just people. It's irresponsible to imply otherwise, and drags the whole debate down into meaninglessness. Start from the assumption that your opponent, while frustrating, is also probably a rational human being with the same basic values as you-- wants to eat food, doesn't want to get shot-- and behave accordingly!

comment spam

Jesus. I'm deluged with it. it's everywhere. I deleted 50 spams today. They're not even interesting. They read like this:

It side these calledan {link to incest site} mother and son incest. I've the DV chris {link to porn site} sister real incest [expletive]. Tips it in thatpackets {link to porn site} incest story. Write part its bestonion" {link to porn site with misspelled URL} mom son sex. Should another and itof {link to porn site} incest sex stories. Allows the will waycan {link to site} jpg lips girls. Address double character writtenfew {link to porn site} real lesbian cartoon. Just to th! e variablebut {link}anime rape.

And so on, for 300 words, with 50 links to different subdomains of the same site, not making ANY sense, repeated 30 times, from 20 different IP addresses, all within two minutes of one another.

WTF?

I've just gone through and disabled comments on all my entries over a certain age. I'm going to have to disable all the comments on almost every entry on my MovableType site. I don't know what to do; banning IPs isn't going to do me any good if they're coming from all over like this.

I'm guessing it's a virus. I'm guessing it's installed itself on the computers of a number of users at varying IP addresses, and is running itself according to some central command. Unless some spammer has managed to get himself accounts at 30 different IP addresses, or something.
I don't really understand, but I'm going to have to admit defeat and close comments.

Fortunately, not on livejournal. I've only ever gotten one comment spam on lj. They patrol that, and besides-- my livejournal isn't ranked so highly in the search engines, so the spammers' bots don't find that site. My MovableType site is ranked very well in search engines for all kinds of phrases, and so it's much more attractive to spammers.

So, I will replace comments on the one blog with instructions on how to email me so I can post your comment myself, and I'll simply direct readers of the personal MT blog to come see LJ, where it's mirrored. I can close comments and not lose too much reader feedback.

But it still feels like defeat. Curse you all, you motherfuckers (apparently literally... Eugh).

electoralation

Check this out:
www.electoral-vote.com: shows in electoral votes, according to the latest polls, who's ahead in the upcoming presidential election.

Interesting links, too. :)