Drive Him Wild! The Thirty, Dirty SECRET Sex Tricks Your Mama Never Told You About
As part of our ongoing Soviet-funded effort to subvert the social norms and ideals of 1950s America, I do all the grocery shopping in our family. I stay home with the kids, I don't work, I cook dinner, I refuse to initiate sex, all of it and we get a handsome payment from the People's Central Bank for our part in the internal erosion of American commie-fighting masculinity.

Really, there are lots and lots of programs out there available for enterprising young people to exploit. The bureaucratic time-lag that afflicts/afflicted all Soviet institutions means that you can get your name on the rolls for some kind of hand-out if you're clever enough about it while legally outlawed or discontinued Soviet organizations still hurtle forward through time, coasting on pure, awful institutional inertia.

The only downside is that they only pay out in beets.

It sounds lame, but that's one less thing to worry about buying when I'm grocery shopping. Fuck you, John Wayne!

Also, the state of American public education being what it is today, odds are that the people "helping" me at the grocery store check-out will be confounded by the demands of their terrible beeping Scan-O-Tron taskmasters. Dragging things through a field of criss-crossing BAR-code reading beams seems simple enough, you'd think. But alas, while in line, I invariably find myself with plenty of time on my hands to stand and ponder life's deeper mysteries or compose blogposts in my head.

Or, if I find I need time and I recognize only the competent stripe of check-out person working, I'll throw in a star-fruit or a kumquat just to fuck with their heads. Whenever they have to break out that book of codes to price my fruit, somehow I always feel like I've won.

These little pauses are how I remain a vibrant, vital dynamo, a whirling dervish of pop-culture references: by reading the headlines of check-out line periodicals.

Did you know that Oprah is NOT GAY?! I did. Or do you know who (and this is my favorite regular headline now) LOOKS PREGNANT!? Or that Regis Philbin was about to be replaced by... DANCING WITH THE STARS CHAMPION EMMITT SMITH?! I knew that too. Although I don't know if they mean Regis will be replaced on his show by Mr. Smith or in all aspects of life altogether. I hope the latter is true, if only for Mrs. Regis Philbin's sake.

Anyway, amongst the various copies of Star and the Enquirer and Us Weekly and In Touch and Cosmo, I saw a copy of something called SHAPE (just like that in all CAPS) magazine. I thought at first it was odd to have a magazine in a check-out rack devoted completely to geometry, but on closer inspection, it's a magazine about a very specific shape: the female human one. I flipped through it just to be sure, but the only reference to π I could find had to do with pubic grooming.

I love SHAPE magazine. Not just because of the subject matter, but because of the cover I saw.

Now, to preface this, I don't really watch American Idol. But I listen to a radio show where grown men will on occasion discuss it. Yes, it's just as excruciating as it sounds; like it was an out-loud AOL IM conversation between thirteen year old girls. It gets really awkward when they have to talk out the emoticons.

This is how I knew the name Katharine McPhee and how she was totally hott (no idea how they managed to verbalize the second T in that word, but they totally did) AND that she also at one time had an eating disorder. Anorexia or bulimia, I forget which.

How this is relevant is that Ms. McPhee was the cover girl for this month's SHAPE. Here was the little headline blurb about her story inside:

Awww. Sweet, right? Girl in the grip of horrible, debilitating, self-destructive cycle of intentional malnourishment makes good, comes through other side seeing the benefit of round, supple thighs and a heaving, full bosom not backed by unsightly xylophone ribs. Mix in a guy whose junk she has to cut off and you got yourself a Liftime Movie of the Week.

Now here's the rest of the cover. Note especially the surrounding article teasers, especially the one right over her head:


You won't believe me, but the burgeoning turgidity I'm experiencing is all irony-inspired.

And the best part? They probably digitally altered the fuck out of this picture.

Man, I love America. Almost as much as I love the beets I accept in exchange for my part in its demise.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.0


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:34 PM