File This Under Things Literally No One Asked For ...

 . . . And that yet somehow now exist and are being marketed for $75 because . . . Gwyneth Paltrow? Here's how the actor and lifestyle guru's latest gift to female humanity went down:

NO ONE:

LITERALLY NO ONE:

LIKE, ZERO PEOPLE:

GWYNETH PALTROW: Here is a $75 candle that smells like my vagina, which I will literally call "This Smells Like My Vagina."

NO ONE: What does your (and by your, we mean "Gwyneth Paltrow's") vagina smell like?

GWYNETH: I'm glad you asked! It's a "“funny, gorgeous, sexy and beautifully unexpected scent”, a mix of “geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with damask rose and ambrette seed."

SOMEONE: Oh, it's unexpected, alright.

NO ONE, ONCE AGAIN: What does it cost? 

SOMEONE: Please say Nothing.

GWYNETH: Oh, you. No! I'm selling it for $75 on my website.

Not since the jade egg--which is the last thing Gwyneth told us to shove up our coochies and thereby bought herself a hefty legal sum in damages--have I thought about Gwyneth's vagina. Actually, scratch that, I have NEVER thought about Gwyneth's vagina, or imagined what it would smell, look, or--God forbid--taste like.

First off, I don't like vaginas. Not one bit. Vaginas are the one and only reason why I am regrettably 100% heterosexual and also not a midwife, doula, or OBGYN. I have no interest in anyone's vagina--not even my own. I am like the Dr. Seuss/Sam I Am of vaginas. I do not like them in a park, I do not like them in the dark. I do not like them in the rain, I do not like them on a train. I do not like them during childbirth, I do not like a single vagina on earth. 

So why would I buy a wax facsimile of Gwyneth's vadge? Maybe I would, if only to confirm that, as advertised, it is "funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected" with a "mix of geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with damask rose and ambrette seed." 

Because let me tell you something: I don't believe it. 

Unless this candle comes with Chris Rock, I promise you it is not funny. It is also not gorgeous or sexy, at least not to me, because as noted above, I find vaginas gross, but also even if I liked vaginas, it is a fucking CANDLE. 

Also, not for one minute do I believe that Gwyneth's vagina or anyone else's smells like geraniums, lemonade, roses, and cedar absolutes. What the fuck is a cedar absolute? Is it different from a cedar uncertain? What is an ambrette seed? And what is bergamot? I don't even know what these things are. I had to Google every single last one of them and you will too. I think you need a total household income of over $500K per year before the Illuminati makes you privy to this kind of information.

Regardless, I don't/won't buy it. At BEST, Gwyneth's vagina smells like soap. At worst, it smells like the crotch of her Lululemon Bikram yoga pants mixed with Chris Martin's junk. But "post-Bikram yoga crotch sweat juxtaposed with that dude from Coldplay's ball sack" just doesn't have the same ring as "ambrette seed" and "cirtrusy bergamot," and I don't think people would spend 75 cents for that, much less $75. Most people could probably accomplish almost the same thing by sticking a Hanukkah candle in their 'na for a minute and sparking it up.

But even if this candle and Gwyneth's vadge both smell as good as advertised, I just think it's a little . . . um . . . weird? To light up a candle like this? Like how is this date going down? "Hang on a second, hand me a lighter . . . let me dim the lights and set the mood here by flooding my apartment with the stench of celebrity poon?"

I don't think so, people. I don't think so. In this case, it is much better to curse the darkness than light a candle.

These Old Timey Tobacco Ads are Giving Me LIFE Right Now!

I've been off the long-form blog post grid for a couple of days. My parents are visiting, the kids finished up school and are buried in end-of-school activities, I've been working a lot on my free time, and I've been super depressed about the latest Trump human rights violations: separating kids from their parents at the southern border and the ACLU report documenting these atrocities. It's like Trump's America is a failed state that conscripts child soldiers or something. I've only been able to manage a few tweets about it, that's how mad it makes me, though eventually I hope to gather my thoughts and write something longer.

So I welcomed a distraction from a friend of mine who works in tobacco cessation in the form of these COMPLETELY HYSTERICAL old timey tobacco ads. They're a little hard to read, so I've retyped them below with a few questions as follow up.

Should a gentleman offer a Tiparillo to a marine biologist? You're swimming along, admiring a purple parrot fish and a red coral reef when you spot something truly breathtaking. A pink leg. A marine biologist. Discovering new things under water. Maybe, you pause, she'd like to discover a Tiparillo? Or a Tipraillo M with menthol. She could classify them as the thin, elegant cigar with neat tip. Mild taste? Well . . . she'd have to try one, wouldn't she? But should you offer her one? Or shouldn't you? Think fast mate, your face mask is steaming up.

FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS:

1. Why is a marine biologist working with no shirt on?
2. How do you know she's a marine biologist since you only have her pink leg to go on?
3. How do you have two (much less one) packs of cigarettes on you as you're swimming under water?
4. Won't they get wet?
5. Why would a marine biologist smoke at work?
6. Why is a marine biologist wearing makeup at work, under water?
7. Do you think the ocean is a pick-up bar?
8. What is she going to do with the butts when she's done smoking? 
9. Drop them in the water to poison the subjects of her research?
10. Did your mother drop you on your head?



Should a gentleman offer a Tiparillo to a violinist?  After a tough evening with the Beethoven crowd, she loves to relax and listen to her folk-rock records. Preferably, on your stereo. She's open-minded. So maybe tonight you offer her a Tiparillo? She might like it--the slim cigar with a white tip. Elegant. And, you dog, you've got both kinds on hand. Tiparillo Regular and new Tiparillo M with menthol--her choice of mild smoke or cold smoke. Well? Should you offer? After all, if she likes the offer, she might start to play. No strings attached.

FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS:

1. Why does a classical violinist find "the Beethoven crowd" "tough"?
2. What do you mean by "open-minded?"
3. Like freaky in the sack, I assume?
4. What makes you a "dog?"
5. Having two types of cigarettes on hand, or just actually being a little bitch?
6. What do you mean by "she might start to play" with "no strings attached?" You mean down to fuck for one night, right?
7. Does she prefer Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell--which is more fuckable?
8. How did you manage to get her into your apartment with this trash-ass game?
9. What if she DOESN'T like the offer?
10. Did your mother drop you on your head?




Dipping or smoking? Dipping. Why? Better for my sex life. What do you mean? While some are outside smoking, I'm inside working. It's really not work when you enjoy what you're doing. Skoal: Welcome to the Brotherhood. (Warning: This Product May Cause Mouth Cancer).

FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS:

1. Is brown, tobacco-drenched saliva really better for your sex life?
2. Is your job getting mouth cancer?
3. Do you enjoy getting mouth cancer?
4. How is it a job if you actually pay to buy a product and it gives you cancer?
5. Do you think she likes the taste of brown, tobacco-drenched saliva?
6. Who is in this brotherhood? Other men with tobacco-drenched brown saliva and mouth cancer?
7. Is she paying any attention to you anyway?
8. What's up with that one raised eyebrow?
9. Do you really think chewing tobacco is going to lead to your getting fucked tonight?
10. Did your mother drop you on your head?

The Brat Pack and Dirty Dancing are Now Precious Moments Figurine Collectibles and I Maybe Just Crapped My Adult Diaper

I had to double check to make sure it wasn’t fake news, and I’m both sorry and delighted to report that it’s APPARENTLY not. There really IS a Limited Edition "Precious Moments" figurine collection of the cast of the Breakfast Club AND of Baby and Johnny from Dirty Dancing. 

They could be unauthorized knockoffs, but that’s far from clear and it’s more fun to assume for the purposes of this blog post that they’re not.

For the uninitiated, Precious Moments are cute little dolls made out of porcelain, created some thirty years ago by a dude named Sam Butcher. Sam was “a man of deep personal faith and conviction,” who, when he saw his characters rendered from two-dimensional paper drawings to 3D figures, “fell to his knees and wept” over his art which “combined his heartfelt emotions with his abiding faith.”

FELL TO HIS KNEES?! WEPT?! REALLY?! This dude sounds pretty intense, does he not?! 

Anyway, these little collectibles have now found their way into every Hallmark store and octogenarian’s living room in flyover country, and indeed there is an entire park and chapel in Carthage, Missouri that you can visit. 

For real. There is a Precious Moments religious Disneyland!

There, you can see how—and this is a DIRECT quote—"Sam used his beautiful and innocent Precious Moments messengers to bring well known and loved stories from the Bible to life in dozens of murals – all hand-painted by Sam himself. From the story of creation to the promise of the resurrection, the Chapel tour guide takes guests through the many stories of God’s love for us.” 

In other words, Sam was the Leonardo da Vinci of the Midwest. The Sistine Chapel's got nothing on Sam Butcher. Of COURSE, you can also go to the gift shoppe. Not shop. SHOPPE, because God wants you to spend your money on a Baby Jesus and cherub figurine instead of insulin for your type 2 diabetes or catheters and such.

Which brings me to the Limited Edition Breakfast Club and Dirty Dancing stuff. 

Full disclosure, I could not find these on the actual Precious Moments website, I think because they were limited editions and are now out of circulation. And again, they might be knockoffs.

Regardless, I’m not sure Sam would be super psyched to have his wholesome brand associated with these two films, and I KNOW that most children of the 80s--who are not yet actually IN their 80s--do not particularly relish the thought of being the target demographic for these.

I'm not sure if Sam is aware that in the Breakfast Club, Molly Ringwald smokes a butt and applies lipstick using only her cleavage, and Judd Nelson discloses his physically abusive home life while accusing Mr. Vernon of raiding Barry Manilow's closet, and Ally Sheedy describes the perpetual girls' dilemma of being a prude if you haven't fucked a dude and a slut if you have.

But Dirty Dancing?! That seems EXTRA misaligned with Sam's piety. Surely Sam or his heirs and assigns realize that Dirty Dancing is low key about abortion, no? As in, a Jewish girl fucks P. Swayze in the Catskills all summer (we secular/reformed Jews don't prize chastity, fortunately), and Dr. Dad helps another dancer fix a back alley abortion while Baby carries a watermelon and stays out of the corner.

The worst part of all, though, is that I'm old enough for my nostalgic cultural icons to be made the subject of a Precious Moments schlock tchotchke. "What's next," asked the friend who alerted me to this treasure. "Bronzing our Doc Martens?!"

Yes, yes it is. Bronzing our knee-high Docs is what's next. That, along with a commemorative plate of Madonna's face and Billy Idol rebel yelling for Viagra and a line of fanny packs from Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper talking about her osteoperosis and doody-yogurt.

FML.

What the Dick is Happening Here?

Like I am legit so confused by this.

An alert reader who frequently travels to Maui sent me this screenshot from a Maui buy/sell/trade Facebook page and it is a serious what the fuck. Which just auto-corrected to “dick,” which is apt, because what the actual dick is happening here, is my question.

I mean, I like how he’s calling for gender parity. Like LADIES, we stuff the bra(h) (I actually don’t, and in fact want to reverse stuff my “brah” by securing a fully insurance-subsidized breast reduction), but that’s beside the point.

But he’s selling underwear, right? I mean that’s what this is? Underwear with a compartment for a sock? Or a strap-on? And hopefully it’s new? Totes unclear.

Also unclear is whether this is for fake dick sock-stuffing or for “guys that are hung?” It’s a “cock sock fo days” ... m’kay. But is the call for “no bluff ‘em just stuff ‘em” implying that you need the goods or that an actual sock will do?

This is SUCH a mystery.

True story: Once when I was in law school I went to see a friend’s band, and the woman I was with was so convinced the bassist was stuffing his pants, that we spent all night studying his crotch and he forever thereafter was known as “[Name Redacted] Sock-in-the-Pants.

That’s where this will get you, my dudes. These are a fool's errand. Trust.

I Wish I Could Have Been in the Room Where That 1989 Juicy Fruit Gum Ad Was Written

I don't mean to brag, but I was on the cusp of puberty in 1989 when this commercial for Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum came out, and all I can say is that this 30-second ad for chewing gum has LEGIT the most suggestive jingle and shots EVER WRITTEN! 

The commercial comes in two versions--a snow skiing and a water skiing version I believe-- but here are the lyrics:

Get your skis shined up

Grab a stick of juicy fruit 

The taste is gonna move ya

Take a sniff, pull it out

The taste is gonna move ya when you pop it in your moooooouth

Juicy Fruit is gonna move ya

It chews so soft 

It gets right to ya

Juicy Fruit

The taste the taste the taste is gonna mooooooove ya

Like here's how I bet the first meeting went.

JUICY FRUIT EXEC: Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. Sex sells, as we all know, so here's what we think the commercial should say. [Takes paper out of pocket--remember, this is the 80s]

Get your dick lubed up

Grab your junk out of your pants

And come and get a blow job

Drop that fly, pull it out

You're really gonna love it when I jizz inside your mouuuuuuth

Chew this gum, you'll get a blow job

A really good and awesome blow job

Juicy Fruit

The gum the gum the gum that gets you bloooow jooooooooooobs!

AD AGENCY: We like it. BUT, it's a little explicit, I'm afraid. Can we rewrite it to be, um, a little more subtle?

JUICY FRUIT: I don't know. I'm not sure anyone will want to buy this gum that tastes like fake fruit for three seconds and then like cardboard the rest of the time unless they think it will somehow result in sex or at least a blow job.

AD AGENCY: I think I get what you're saying. Let us work on this and develop a few more signals and suggestive shots and concepts and let's see what we think. It'll be a huge hit!

JUICY FRUIT: Okay, sounds good.

And the rest, my friends, is history.

Martin Luther King is Like, a Huge Inspiration to My Multi-Level Marketing Scheme

Have you guys been on social media this morning? I have, because it just so happens that I needed to check the status of my various wrinkle creams, scented candles, essential oils, baby books, health shakes, and cooking gadgets--both the ones I bought from my girlfriends AND the ones I sold to my girlfriends in my living room last night with like, so much wine!

So. Much. Wine. LOL.

And the first thing I saw trending was that today is Martin Luther King Day! And OMG. He was SUCH an inspiration. You can read all about him on Wikipedia but he was like, a seriously big deal.

ICYMI, Dr. King was the leader of the American civil rights movement and best known for his role in advancing civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. He won the Nobel Peace prize and was famous for saying "If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."

SO TRUE!

If Dr. King were alive today, he would probably have this quote printed on a bumper sticker that he would stick on the Nutri-Bullet™ that he'd use to mix his chocolate protein Isagenix™ shake on his way to pilates. He'd feel SUPES inspired to stay on his plan of five small meals a day, three of which are shakes, one of which is a handful of almonds and half an avocado, and one of which is a sensible dinner low in complex carbohydrates and high in protein!

MLK also helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, and notably said at some point in his career that "darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." 

But you know what else can drive out darkness and bring the light, is Scentsy™ candles, specifically The LOVELY smell of warm vanilla sugar lighting up your bathtub for some well-deserved ME TIME or maybe a romantic date night-in with your honey?! Hmmm? HMMMM??? You'd have to have like, ICE in your veins not to love the huge variety of colorful florals and scents available at Scentsy.™

But one of MLK's BEST known quotes is "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." 

Good thing Rodan & Fields™ and doTerra Essential Oils™ are great for removing and healing blemishes on your skin so that your friends and colleagues can better focus on the content of your character without being distracted or put off by unseemly wrinkles or weird smells! 

When Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 by James Earl Ray in Memphis Tennessee, it was a national tragedy, and a good time to remember Dr. King's words: "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

And let me ask you what matters more than a 7 piece set of stainless steel cookware from the Pampered Chef?™ (That was a rhetorical question btw). So speak up and get yours from ME—your local Pampered Chef™ consultant TODAY—before they sell out!

It's 2018, and the best way we can honor a human rights hero like Dr. Martin Luther King is to emptily co-opt and use his inspiring words to sell crap no one needs.

Death of a Salesman

I’m going to rewrite this play for 2017 and call it Death-of-Myself-After-Everyone-I-Meet-Tries-to-Sell-Me-Shit-I-Don’t-Need-or-Want-and-That-Collects-Dust-the-Second-I-Buy-It.

It’s not like I haven’t tried. I have tried. But I just can’t deal, and I feel kind of bad because I’m truly not trying to drag anyone’s hobby or business model. But there is a reason I’ve worked in the public sector for almost 20 years. 

I suck at sales, and I am super uncomfortable when people try to sell stuff to me. I don’t need more stuff. I don’t want more stuff. To the contrary, I want to conflagrate at LEAST 75% of the stuff I already have in a controlled burn in the cul-de-sac outside my house, and dance around giddily as I watch it all go up in smoke.

To paraphrase George Carlin and also Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything, I hate stuff. I hate buying stuff. I hate selling stuff. I hate having stuff sold to me. I hate the stuff I have. I hate the stuff I don’t have. I hate the stuff I don’t know about. I hate the stuff that doesn’t even exist yet.

I even and especially hate selling stuff for my kids’ school or activities fundraisers, which is just as bad in my opinion and is absolute torture. At least then, however, I can force my spawn to troll the halls of my office by themselves and/or go door-to-door with their grubby little palms out for (arguably) a “good cause” or whatever and hope they can skate by on cuteness.

But truth be told, I would way rather just fork over the value of the coffee or wrapping paper or cookie dough or raffle tickets or whatever the fuck it is and be done with all of it immediately in one fell swoop. In fact, I just want the school and activity fundraiser sales tax to be withheld from my paycheck so I can stop thinking about it forever.

Can we do that? Can this please just be part of the tax overhaul maybe? Upon presentation of your kids’ birth certificates to the IRS? Or must we all be salespeople now?

Like I honestly can’t think of a single thing that would ever arrive in the mail or that I would buy in someone’s living room that I want, much less need. Yet these “opportunities” are everywhere. 

Frankly, I am beginning to feel like the last person left on earth who: (a) isn’t leading a direct marketing scheme; (b) isn’t participating in a direct marketing scheme; and/or (c) totally can’t deal with direct marketing schemes.

It’s super awkward, because it forces me to be kind of a dick when I don’t mean to be a dick or want to be one. But I can’t rub peppermint oil on my face and I can’t put special wrinkle creams on it and I don’t need candles that smell like warm vanilla sugar brownies or scarves or health shakes or leggings with floral patterns or any of that shit k thx bye.

I’ve got 99 problems, and wanting to stick my head in an oven over buying and selling stuff to and from everyone I know when I’m not even voluntarily in a store is definitely one of them.

Acceptably Pious Starbucks Cups?

Ah! ‘‘Tis the season for self righteousness, when the holiest among us crow about THE GAY AGENDA soiling their venti pumpkin spice macchiato with whip. Per the Advocate:

There are maybe lesbian hands on a coffee cup you guys! So I came up with some Starbucks cups that will make everyone happy:

Attention 2017 Females: You’re Gonna Piss Yourself Laughing at the Snake Oil for Sale in the 1900 Sears & Roebuck Catalog

I love old-timey snake oil ads for women, whose insecurities have for centuries been a lucrative business. What's amazing about these ads from the Fall 1900 Sears & Roebuck catalog, which a friend sent me snapshots of, is really how little has changed. 

Check it out:

Freckles are very annoying blemishes, especially for those with pretty complexions. Time to render that skin soft and white! And of course, nothing disfigures a woman's face so much as an unnatural growth of hair.

Looking for a cure for "female weakness" and "all female disorders?" This is the greatest remedy of the ages! Especially if you're suffering from a "dread of some impending evil" or have "a craving for unnatural foods."

Do not be without an electric belt (WTF?!) for a hundred little aches and pains, including "weak nerve pains."

FAT FOLKS: Too much fat is a disease of great annoyance to those afflicted. Also, don't let your headaches turn you into a "martyr."

Oh look! Some guy named Dr. Worden is going to give you "female pills for all female diseases," especially "all forms of female weakness." WOMEN CAN BE BEAUTIFUL. Note: these pills are not a cure-all, yet two paragraphs down they guarantee a cure for any case. M'kay.



Constipation: that most hideous and deathly demon of sickness.

American Girl Now Has a Bernie Bro Doll

The only good thing that ever shows up in my mailbox is the American Girl Doll catalogue. Everything else is bills, credit card offers, and pleas from politicians for money. For the most part, my mailbox is just a bucket I go to each day to remove some papers and put them in a different bucket. It's sort of a bizarre ritual that no one seems to question the ongoing necessity for.

But the American Girl Doll catalogue is the BEST because it is invariably hilarious. These dolls have cocoa stands and braces and trundle beds and novel-style life stories in this expensive, elaborate, and oddly compelling consumerist toy universe.

I opened my mailbox yesterday and was like YAAAASSSS KWEEEEEEEEN!! The American Girl Doll catalogue was here and I was stoked because the very first boy American Girl doll is a Bernie Bro named Logan Everett.

LOGAN EVERETT YOU GUYS. Check out the summary of his story as told in "Logan Takes the Stage," the third (!!) novel starring him and his Taylor Swift-alike:

In this third novel, Tenney has signed a recording contract and is ready to make the album of her dreams—she just wishes she didn’t have to do it with moody Logan Everett! They’re supposed to be songwriting partners, but Logan doesn't even seem to be trying. Just when it looks like they’ve found their harmony, Logan suddenly disappears, and Tenney wonders if he has bailed on their act. A couple of months ago, Tenney would have gladly taken the opportunity to go solo. But as she learns more of Logan’s story, she begins to wonder: Do she and Logan need each other—and their music—now more than ever before?

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is so amazing! I'm starting an American Girl Doll book club today and this will be our first assignment! It's okay, I've heard you can read them out of order and won't get lost if you skip "Tenney" and/or "Tenney in the Key of Friendship."

Logan looks like he just got friend-zoned by the girl who stole the band he started. As Jack Black sang in School of Rock, "HOW CAN SHE KICK ME OUT, OF WHAT IS MIIIIIIIEEEEEENNNEE?"

I haven't looked at all the accessories Bernie Bro Logan comes with, but I am guessing that for the sake of authenticity he at least needs to come with the following:

--Pour-over coffee setup & stovetop espresso maker
--Allllllllll the Bernie merch, including Feel the Bern bumper sticker magnets on his Leaf
--100 different troll accounts all over the internet
--Vast collection of trucker hats
--A bangin' Insta

I want to write the next novel starring Logan Everett and I will call it "Tenney Maybe Ghosts Logan." This is the summary:

In this fourth novel, Tenney is sick of late-night drunken bootie calls and flirty texts like "hey wyd." She just wants to get on with her life. She and Logan just finished their album, but he kept talking about the Man the whole time they were in the studio and wasn't even a very good drummer. They're supposed to be songwriting partners, but somehow she wrote all the songs and his name was the only one in the credits! Just when it looks like she's never going to get ahead, her album hits Platinum. She works harder than anyone in the band yet the whole crew thinks she's a bitch and somehow Logan still makes more money than her. A couple of months ago, Tenney would have gladly taken the opportunity to go solo, and now she knows she should. She begins to wonder: Should she ghost Logan? Is Tenney ready to sling her guitar over her shoulder and swipe-delete Logan from her life forever?

Justice is Served, and it Tastes Like Sour Milk and E.T. Bait

What ever happened to the 95% of dudebros whom I sized up--correctly I might add--as hopeless douchenozzles on the very first day of law school? 

Well, at least some of them wound up on the other side of every case I've ever litigated. Others churn out cease and desist letters for banks all day long, trying to bully little old ladies whose homes are being foreclosed on out of 28 cents.  And the rest are suing Hershey's for under-filling candy boxes. 

In the legal profession, candy-based class action litigation is a calling.

That's right, my fellow citizens. It should cheer you immeasurably to know that, FAKE NEWS notwithstanding, the sweet, chewy center of American justice is tasty, fresh, and currently being munched upon by a Missouri man who claims that 41% of his sour-milk tasting, freeze-dried chocolate-flavored moth balls and 29% of his E.T. bait are full of room temperature air. 

As the Washington Post story notes, "you're not killing me fast enough with the amount of garbage food I paid for" is the frontier of plaintiffs' claims, and Hershey's is just one of many companies to at last be held to account for these affronts to our economy.

Let me be clear: Not for a NANOSECOND do I doubt that Subway, Wise Potato Chips, Mike & Ike, and Barilla pasta are fleecing drive-thru America with the Fritos equivalent of that scam in the movie Office Space. The one where quietly shaving a penny off every transaction adds up to millions of dollars in the pockets of the scammers. 

At the same time, I am also glad that a-lawyer-with-even-less-self-respect-than-me is willing to fall on the sword of holding Jared Fogel's former employer to account before Noble Lady Justice.

She may be blind, but her nose works just fine, and she can smell bullshit right through its plastic wrapping. So now, as part of a class action settlement, Subway workers are required to use "a tool for measuring bread" to ensure that their foot-long and six-inch subs measure up to their names.

Based on the quote below, the lead attorney on the Subway case seems to have a sense of humor about the fact that he's not exactly defending Darwin's theory of evolution in the Scopes monkey trial or prosecuting genocide the Hague. 

"It was difficult to prove monetary damages," he quipped, because "everybody ate the evidence." Note that he says nothing about equitable damages, such as the scarring emotional distress borne of discovering that you just gobbled down one less inch of sponge bread than you paid for.

Usually in settlement agreements, there is some sort of definitions section, and I can only hope that "a tool for measuring bread" is explicitly defined as "anything but a human dick." For I have worked in food service, and know all too well that boredom, monotony, and contempt for one's lot can breed a certain insidious creativity during any given McShift.

Best of luck to the named plaintiff in the Whoppers/Reese's Pieces litigation. This is sure to be a landmark consumer protection case, and I'm certain Ralph Nader is done changing the course of history by helping to hand the presidency to war criminals and back to consulting for a tidy fee on these important matters. 

O.H.M. will be watching this litigation closely as it winds its way through the courts, and will keep you apprised of any important developments.

I Need a New Duffel Bag so I Guess I Should Join the NRA Now

This ad popped up while I was reading Talking Points Memo, which means the NRA doesn't really know its own target demographic. But they scored with me, because it just so happens that I need a new duffel bag, and joining the NRA for $30 in order to get one is an offer I cannot refuse.

Holdup. Maybe I can.

They don't say what comes IN the duffel bag. I feel like this offer would be more enticing if there was like, a prize inside. Remember when you could get prizes out of a cereal box? Or mail box tops to some random P.O. Box in Kentucky and receive a so-called prize 32 weeks later? 

I think that's how I ended up with the Snoopy Sno-Cone Maker. A close cousin of the E-Z Bake Oven, this "machine" was a suuuuuuper ghetto way to make shave ice. You stuck ice cubes down the plastic chimney of Snoopy's dog house, and ground them up using with a manual hand-crank until you developed blisters on your fingers. By the time you made enough ice shavings for a tiny Dixie cup-sized sno cone, the whole fucking thing was water.

But I digress.

The point is, I think the NRA would have more takers on this if it offered several prizes INSIDE the duffel bag, particularly to readers of Talking Points Memo. For example, I would be MUCH more likely to snap this up if the NRA was offering to send me:

• A Wayne LaPierre pillow pet.
• Guns, guns, and more guns!
• A Unabomber style getaway-survival-in-the-woods-militia-prepper kit.
• A 12-pack of urinal cakes with Alex Jones' face on them.
• A SNOOPY SNO-CONE MACHINE

Come on, NRA. Make me a serious offer here. My luggage needs can't go unfulfilled forever.

This Dancing Exotic Pole on Juneau Buy-Sell-Trade is FIRE!

If you live in Juneau, I don’t need to tell you, because you already know.

The Juneau Buy-Sell-Trade Facebook page is FIRE. It’s even better than Juneau Community Concern, whose page administrators once excoriated me for linking my blog posts there, prompting an indignant, Kanye West/Wiz Khalifa-style Internet beef of which I relished every moment.

Fast forward to last night, when an alert reader urged me to “please do something with this,” and by “this” she meant this ad on Juneau Buy-Sell-Trade trying to unload a “dancing exotic pole.”

Without the benefit of pics (which are not readily available per the seller), I’d hazard a guess that this is technically a stripper pole, though as you can see, the ad does not use that word because “exotic dancing” is the preferred term for “stripping” in the lingua franca of the pole arts.

As I’ve said before, I have nothing against the pole arts, be it getting naked and humping a pole for one-dollar bills in your thong, or rocking some foreplay in the privacy of your own bedroom. But I do have something against euphemisms, and let's be honest: "exotic dancing” is to “stripping” what “extreme vetting” is to “ethnic cleansing.”

Returning to the matter at hand (or boob), this “dancing exotic pole” is a STEAL at a $75 discount. Particularly if it actually dances, like some Hermione Granger-type shit? Sadly, it seems likely the advertiser made a grammatical error here as opposed to being in possession of an exotic pole that magically dances on its own in a Harry Potter meets Hooters-type scenario. If I’m wrong, then the seller of this pole is sitting on a gold mine and someone needs to snatch it up, stat!

Juneau has a pretty transient population, with people moving in and out all the time for any number of reasons, which makes for a lively free marketplace of depreciable goods one might rather leave behind. One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure, as they say, and this exotic dancing pole certainly fits the bill.

PLUS a how-to-video, extensions, extra parts, and a mysterious “tool," all of which are included for the low low price of $175? The only thing missing is the Cotsco-sized container of 200 Clorox wipes you will need to wipe this thing down.

Talk about a package deal.

Individuals with Diarrhea Shall Not Use the Sprayground

This is maybe the most specific warning I've ever seen on a public sign, and it happens to be at the playground near the water features (or "sprayground") near my sister-in-law's house in Missoula.

You have to think that something very bad happened to prompt this highly descriptive warning. Like someone took the term "sprayground" too literally and unloaded on the daisy-shaped sprinklers and brightly-colored pipes, and it was so dramatic that it became seared in the collective memory of Missoula Parks & Rec.

Otherwise, why "diarrhea?" If you're an "individual" who is at the point where you're tempted to shit on a sprinkler, I feel like you shouldn't have to be told not to engage in water play.

I had a torts professor in law school who was fond of saying of warning signs and labels, "at a certain point, you can't learn everything you need to know about life from the back of a peanut butter jar."

The same holds true for this I think. At a certain point, you can't learn not to have explosive diarrhea all over a public water park from a sign telling you not to do that.

Pro Tip: If You Want to "Triple My Business," Find a New Spokesmodel

Sometimes I just have to stop and thank God, Country, and Facebook for the gifts that rain down on my life. (Hashtag gratitude, Hashtag thankful, Hasthtag Zuckerberg).

In between cracking my knuckles, tweezing my eyebrows, bouts of crushing nihilism over fears that a fascist cantaloupe is poised to overtake our sizzling planet and ship me and my Jewish family off to a 'Murican concentration camp in East Texas in the back of an 18-wheeler, and disbelief that five pounds won't come off my ass no matter how many kale smoothies I drink, I like to scroll aimlessly through the non-neutral "content" on offer from the internet. 

I'm talking about all the stuff (yes, ALL of it) that is very cannily and consciously curated to the masses to make us all think we're free agents with real choices, as opposed to disembodied cash cows seeing only what a boardroom on the Google campus in Mountain View wants us to see.

But whatevs duuuudes, 'cause if THIS is what Google, Facebook, and the rest of Silicon Valley's Evil Corporate Overlords want me to see, then Bring. It. On., 'cause I am PSYCHED, bitches.

Clearly The Googs/The Book/The Webs know I'm a lawyer in a small town. That much they've figured out. I don't work for a "small local law firm" though (you guys listening for next time?), so I don't need to turn the small local law firm I don't work for into Andre the National Giant/Hulk Hogan. What does this look like, Jack and the Beanstalk? 

But even if I was working at a "Small Local Law Firm" that I wanted to turn Into a "National Giant," the first thing I would do is remove bold, italics, and underline from my keyboard commands, since the most crucial lesson you learn on Day One of law school (after "99.9% of the people you see before you are unmitigated douchecrackers," of course) is how to use these font enhancers with discretion. DISCRETION, people. It's called discretion.

Anyhoo.

The second thing I'd do is call up Big Mouth Marketing and tell them they need a different spokesmodel for this campaign. Because "Sketchy McSketcher Courtroom Sketch Man" just isn't cutting it. 

Who is this mysterious-in-a-bad-way Sketchy McSketcher Courtroom Sketch Man supposed to be? Is he one of my clients? Is he a pedophile? Is he a white collar criminal defendant? Is he facing charges at an American version of The Hague in 2020 for genocidal crimes against humanity committed under President Trump? Is he sad because he was once rich but is now bankrupt due to a large punitive damages award just handed down at my request? Is he all of the above? WHO IS THIS MAN AND WHY DOES HE HAVE A 5:00 SHADOW DRAWN IN CRAYON? And WHO THE FUCK IS THE GUY BEHIND HIM? That guy looks like what would happen if Voldemort and Donald Trump, Jr. had a baby. Where are his eyes? Are his eyes actually just eyebrows, or vice-versa? And why are both of these guys standing against a backdrop of pastel green grass?

So many questions, Big Mouth Marketing. So many questions.

It makes no fucking sense. So all I can say is that Big Mouth Marketing needs to get a clue, because the only thing they tripled today was my contempt for advertising and marketing, and inspiration for my ad-free, Commie blog.

When I Go Camping, I Look Just Like This

My camping trips look exactly like the cover of this Cabela's catalogue, and I'm certain everyone in Alaska can relate. 

There's always a beautiful sunrise in shorts-and-t-shirt weather, and brand new, undamaged gear. But most of all, my camping trips are always romantic getaways that look like the set of a Viagara or Cialis commercial, minus the two bathtubs in a field of course, (because although soaking in two separate bathtubs in a meadow while holding hands is totes normal foreplay for "mature" adults, I usually leave my clawfoot porcelain bathtub at home when I'm heeding the call of the wild).

Look at the gentle yet authoritative and protective way this silver fox is pouring wilderness tea/coffee for his woman next to a perfectly controlled and warming fire while seated on a log-shaped sofa/sofa-shaped log.

Look at the woman's body language: how she's turned into him with her legs crossed and her perfect braid. Her demeanor says fit and confident, yet still appreciative of chivalrous kettle use.

Note too the ambiguous race and ethnicities of this couple, which is a bold move by Cabela's, I must say. Considering that Old Navy got hate-trolled by bigots for featuring an interracial couple in a recent ad, I'm certain the core customer base of Cabela's will be much more receptive to diversity as they flip through page after page of game-hauling carts and enough cammo to outfit every backwoods militia from Maine to Idaho.

Yup, when I go camping, it looks just like this Cabela's catalogue.

Alyssa Milano, Paper Towel Designer

Well, here are two things I never thought I'd see together: Alyssa Milano and paper towels. Peanut butter and jelly, popcorn and peanuts, bongs and a Cypress Hill record, and, OF COURSE, Alyssa Milano and paper towels!

Far be it for me to hate on anyone else's hobby, considering my hobbies are (1) snark; (2) self-hatred; and (3) judgmental sarcasm, in that order. But of course this is why I simply couldn't resist engaging in my own hobby at the expense of Alyssa Milano's hobby of designing paper towels. 

Paper fuckin' towels, yo!

I learned of this when an attentive reader posted a pic of a roll of "Viva by Alyssa Milano" paper towels that she'd snapped at the grocery store. Sharing my friend's incredulity that Samantha from Who's the Boss's career had come to this, I immediately set about some interwebs sleuthing.

It was true! 

The illustrious Daily Mail U.K. confirmed that as of 2015, Alyssa is taking a break from acting (in something?) to collaborate with Kleenex and "design signature prints for the brand's Viva paper towels." Even the plastic wrapping is "pink and purple and features the actress' imprinted signature." 

Well now. Fuck Brawny and Kirkland brand. How can I buy any other roll of paper towels now that I know there's a roll of paper towels out there with Alyssa Milano's IMPRINTED SIGNATURE in purple and pink plastic wrap?

I can't.

TBH, if Alyssa's signature hadn't been on this roll of paper towels, I can't say I would have known that a very regular looking roll of paper towels with "bright and vibrant patterns in a mix of coral and green" were in any way different from any other roll of paper towels I've seen marked with patterns and colors I can't remember because THEY ARE FUCKING PAPER TOWELS AND I USE THEM TO BLOW MY NOSE AND MOP UP BABY VOMIT, KID BOOGERS, AND APPLE JUICE BEFORE IMMEDIATELY THROWING THEM OUT.

I think this is where the celebrity-designed product finally jumps the shark. Paul Newman's salad dressing and George Foreman's grill were okay, but then came Adam Levine's signature fragrance, and we should have seen this coming.

If (and hopefully when) threats of a Trump presidency turn out to be the political equivalent of Y2K, I'm hoping he'll get smart and parlay his quest for the White House into the greater good by designing urinal cakes and toilet paper with his face on them.

Now there's a design I could get behind, so to speak.

This is Totes How I Roll With My Squad, a.k.a./feat. Can I Buy Some Love?

I was aimlessly scrolling through my Insta last night when I came across some sponsored content from Athleta, noted purveyor of yoga pants, bikinis, and now, I guess, Girl Power (TM)?

These two ladies give new meaning to flexing for the 'gram. It's time to "join the movement," and I don't mean a bowel movement. Cuz the lifestyle brand that brought you Gap Kahkis and Banana Republic blazers and pencil skirts is now done with commodifying clothing and is moving on to commodifying THE FEELS.

They're "encouraging women and girls to lift each other up." And what better embodiment of that concept than two Beckys With the Good Hair with low BMI doing some platonic-esque acroyoga in designer spandex on a tropical beach?

This is exactly how I roll with my whole squad! 

Forget FaceTime calls to each other from bed all over the world, half-dead and crying over various personal and professional slights. Forget driving to rescue your friend whose car battery died. Forget driving to someone's house in the middle of the night to help her fill out divorce and custody paperwork. Forget about telling off someone's asshole family because they aren't down with her being gay. Forget helping your friend with cover letters and resumes and telling her she deserves this promotion. 

Those are the boring, lame, non-acroyoga-based and uncommodifiable expressions of "#sisterhood" and "#powerofshe."

And guess what? No matter how hard a boardroom tries to market that to me, I'm not buying it, because duh...it's not for sale.

Things I Need According to Facebook (Including "This Stuff")

Facebook is full-on next LEVEL with the shit it tried to sell me on today you guys! 

Check it. 

I'm solo traveling, en route to a friend's wedding in Rhode Island for the weekend. So what better time to think about joining a lawsuit over "vaginal mesh?"

What is that? Good question. I didn't know either, but I pride myself on intellectual curiosity, so I set about the task of finding out.

Apparently vaginal mesh is a "net-like implant used to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence in women." 

Cool. Cool, cool. 

Ok, so why the class action? Ohhhh, "the product design and implantation technique led to serious complications and organ perforation." 

DOH! 

Looks like I'll need to find another solution to that pee-when-I-sneeze thing my kids gifted me with, but bummer I didn't have vaginal mesh before the FDA was all like, not so much. I could have made a mint as a plaintiff in a class action!  NO WAMMIES NO WAMMIES NO WAMMIES! I mean, NO HERNIA CASES PLEASE! (The all-caps makes it sound like the vaginal mesh lawyers are getting fucking SLAMMED by hernia cases).

Then there's this. How can I resist a hoodie with my OWN NAME ON IT?! I might be 38 and look 48, but I'm actually 8. And speaking of looking old, check "this" out.

Because now you can buy "this stuff." You gotta admire the balls of a cosmetics racket that tries to sell you its snake oil without even saying what it is. Would have loved to be in that focus group. "What should we call this? Stuff. Let's just call it 'this stuff.' Those dumb bitches will buy ANYTHING to look 27 again!" Also way to phone it in with the testimonial. "I got sad looking in the mirror?!" 

Don't we all, bitch. Don't we all.

But that was before "this INCREDIBLE" stuff" came along. "This stuff" which is not incredible can Suck. My. Dick. I'm gonna take a hard pass on "this stuff" and buy "this incredible stuff" instead.

C'mon, I wasn't born yesterday. "This stuff" might work for a 35 year old, but I was born almost 40 years ago, and I need this INCREDIBLE stuff. According to the ads you apply them the same way, but "this stuff" looks like diaper cream and "this incredible stuff" looks like meth. 

So I'm going with the meth. Obv.

You Sort of Have to Appreciate the Ballsy Irony of "Dawn Helps Save Wildlife"

The very fact that I have Dawn dish washing liquid in my house should tell you that the needle on my greenie meter skews relatively low. I'm not proud of it, but it's true: I often let laziness interfere with doing 100% right by Mother Earth. Because also not pictured here are the innumerable rolls of paper towels and the disposable diapers (Seventh Generation, people, Seventh Generation) that we have used in the past decade. 

Even with the best environmental intentions--and mine are mediocre at best--if you produced a human being in the industrialized world, your carbon footprint is instantly enormous. So I'm the last person to get on a soap box (badum-dum-chh) about dish detergent.

But I do love me some rich irony and a presumption of my stupidity. Especially when that irony is marketed to me and the rest of the world on a sketchy household product made by Proctor & Gamble, the ginormous multinational consumer goods company besieged by scandals including price fixing, toxic shock syndrome, and controversial animal testing programs.

But it's okay, because everyone knows that when an environmentally catastrophic oil spill happens like the Exxon Valdez or the Deepwater Horizon, scientists, veterinarians, and volunteers turn to DAWN to scrub all that nasty crude oil off the little birdies' feathers and the cuddly otters' fur. 

There's a near universal consensus that nothing works quite like Dawn, which proudly brags that it donates tons of its soap every time a sweet, twenty-something Greenpeace volunteer from Seattle with her hair in braids shows up to wipe the gasoline off a pelican's beak.

And this is when you just have to stop and appreciate the ballsy irony of Dawn's campaign to bill itself as the solution to a problem that it indisputably helped create. It took me precisely three clicks to confirm what I suspected was the source of this irony:

What the company doesn't advertise — and these days is reluctant to admit — is that the grease-cutting part of the potion is made from petroleum.
"To make the best product out there, you have to have some in there," says Ian Tholking of Procter & Gamble. He says less than one-seventh of Dawn comes from petroleum. "To say Dawn's horrible because of this, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense," he says, "and that's what we're trying to avoid. Because we're not trying to do something evil here." "I think it's extremely ironic," says Martin Wolf, a chemist for Seventh Generation, which makes a dish liquid without petroleum. "Here we are trying to squeeze every last drop of oil we can out of the Earth, and it's despoiling the Earth. And we're using that same product that's messing up the Earth to clean it up."

Looks like Dr. Martin Wolf, PhD beat me to the punchline of this joke. It's a circle of life to rival Disney's The Lion King: drill for crude oil that Dawn puts into a detergent that is then donated to clean up the animals covered in the crude oil that spills on the animals on its way to market . . . for Dawn to put back into its soap. 

Whether you're a tree hugging hippie or a lobbyist for BP, I think everyone with any critical thinking skills can appreciate this as some straight-up LOLZ. It's like the equivalent of Philip Morris sponsoring a lung cancer wing at Sloan Kettering, which whoops, haha, has basically already happened.

But back to that cute little baby duckie on the bottle. Look how cute he is! Look how Dawn cleans his fluffy feathers! That's all you need to know. 

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . go back to sleep.