ButtercupPunch – “La clique, c’est chic!”

I live in Vegas now and one thing Vegas has a lot of is nudity.  I was reminded of this (as if one could forget) last night as I was sitting about 10 feet from the stage at a middle-of-the-pole strip joint.  The girls were alright looking, all had put some effort into hair and make-up and kept their skin looking fairly smooth (red lighting is your friend, girl) although I would say the ratio of Buttahfaces to Hotties was about 4 to 1.  There seemed to be a lot of the Tiger Woods Selection of strippers on deck last night, and the ones who didn’t make you want to put on your beer goggles all looked hella aggravated.  Lookit, it’s not easy to be up there all night, night after night, trying to look ‘exotic’ or ‘ravishing’, especially when you consider what working conditions the average stripper has to put up with.  So this is what I was thinking about as I waited; the ugly expressions so commonly found in strip clubs and the usual causes of them.  I reached back to my days in a thong and came up with Top 5 Complaints of a Stripper:

-  Losers that camp out in the front row and grease up the rail with their skeevy, sweaty hands while carefully parsing out 17 dollars in singles.  Wow.  Hey.  Careful.  Don’t hurt yourself putting that one dollar bill out there for the girl who’s been dancing 3 song sets all night.

- This one used to annoy me purely out of principal – strippers that hit the stage looking fine as hell until you get down to her feet and her toes are hanging on for dear life to those Bakers platform heels, looking like swollen shrimp cocktail.  Get those bear claws outta here, girl!

- So you get a lapdance from a stripper and sit back to enjoy the show.  You know you can’t touch her but you’re so convinced that what she secretly wants is for you to palm your grimy, ragged hands all over her ass so instead you think you’re slick and you slide your finger under the band of her thong and tug on it.  Then when she whips her head around to see what the fuck your retarded ass thinks you’re doing, you smile all stupid like and ask her, “You like that, huh?”  No, fucker.  She didn’t enjoy a band of elastic cutting her in half while you eyeballed her asshole – surprised?

- You know what’s creepy?  You calling a girl over to your table of 4 with no extra seating available and expecting her to perch on your knee while you bounce her up and down against your balls and try to play patty-cake on her tits with your face.  Either pay her for a dance or follow her back to VIP – she’s not a fucking accessory.

- Oh, you REALLY think you’re being crafty, don’t you?  You think you’re a fucking genius when you roll up to the club in commando mode, or wearing some silky shorts, figuring that when she grinds on you it’ll be just like her rubbing on you naked.  First of all, you ain’t slick, she knows exactly what your game is and secondly, you putting your tiny dick front and center sans padding only confirms what she already knew – you’re hung like Jon Gosselin and too cheap to pay for a booth.  Fuck off.

This concludes the community service portion of my probation (I’m lying).

There is a video after the jump that will save your life, but first, I have to introduce it.

Do you remember when you were a kid, and you would pretend to speak Spanish (or French or Swahili or Mandarin), and approximate a bunch of sounds that seemed suitably foreign and, to your ear, could passably compare to the language you were imitating?  Heck, I practiced this at a bar recently when a dude I didn’t really want to talk to approached me and I pretended to be Russian, and quickly mentioned that I “no speeek Eeengleesh” (I thought it was a reasonably muddy Eastern Bloc accent at the time).

My mistake.  “Как поживаешь?” He asked with enthusiasm.  “Ahahaha!”  I said, nervously.  “Yur agzent… bery gud.”  Then I hightailed it to the bathroom to hide.

Anyway, if you have ever been a child, you know what I’m talking about: the pleasures of gibberish and linguistic imitation.  When I attempt the broken, ungrammatical Spanish I sometimes inflict on folk today, I can’t help but give it a little extra UMMPH, a little rrrrroll of the “r” – una pequeña mas pasión! – than I would making the same ungrammatical statement in English.  “I no go… THE BED!” for example.  My Spanish is slightly less sophisticated than that of a very emphatic toddler, but just as intense.

In the same vein, I have wondered before what The English sounds like as a gibberish language to foreigners.  Surely kids in Mexico and Spain and Chile were pretending to speak English in the same insane-o manner I was pretending (still do!) to speak Español.  Turns out, I was right, and there exists a grown-up person music video from Italy (very close to Spain) from 1972 that nicely illustrates the point.

I can’t possibly list all the reasons you should watch this video, but I will start with: (more…)

When I moved to Scotland over two years ago, one of the things I purchased on my very first trip to the grocery store was a bottle of Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whisky, aged 12 years.  The handsome green bottle was encased in a tall, serious, emblazoned tin, with the prestigious history of the whisky detailed in gold lettering on the back (for quickie course of the proud tradition of whisky/whiskey, the Wikipedia entry is as good as any a place to start).

I stocked up on a number of basic necessities that initial trip – it was a new home, never mind a new country! – but the bottle of whisky still made the list of must-haves.  I was already entertaining fantasies of newfound friends, colleagues, and yes, gentleman callers, popping round for a chat, a smoke, and a civilized drink.  I was ready to embrace Scotland, and if Scotland would embrace me, I would greet it with a glass of decent Scotch and amusing banter!  I was ready for this new life, and eager to partake in the cultural mores of my new home.

Ignoring the fact that I was never actually swept up in my envisioned social whirlwind (due to my inherent loner tendencies and the reality that it was so freezing cold six months out of the year that I left my apartment only to go to work and Blockbuster), the whisky did not go down as smashing a treat as I had imagined.  Oh, I did have people over, but I quickly discovered that the offer of whisky was far less compelling than the offer of beer, wine, or a vodka mixer (all of which I fortunately kept on hand).  It turned out to be a good thing I never sprung for a proper whisky tumbler, after all, as I couldn’t convince anyone to drink the stuff. (more…)

Catastrophic weather events and tax-payer hell are admittedly superior nuisances to one of my latest first-world problems, but I’m not going to let that prevent me from sharing a little recent frustration.  Actually, “recent” isn’t strictly accurate, as this is an annoyance that’s been plaguing me for the last year, and my irritation is down to my fellow citizens rather than the faceless powers that be (as far as I know…).

When I moved into this flat, one of the first things I did after sorting out the bills was to contact the council and ask for a recycling bag.   This was straightforward.  My liberal guilt is not assuaged by the fact that I use only public transport (my black soul yearns for my old Subaru, and if I were richer, I would have it), but it is somewhat appeased by my rabid recycling habit.  Glass, plastic, and aluminum are all lovingly washed out and dried next to the sink, to be placed with smug reverence in my Recycling Bag.  I rip the plastic windows out of my junkmail to recycle the envelopes, and take anything with my name on to work to shred and return to the holy green bag.  I take pride (yes, pride!) in the fact that my two-person household produces half a 13 gallon bag a week of trash.  If I had a garden, I would have a compost heap and grow my own herbs, and your eyes would water in the face of my fuckin’ halo.

Basically, recycling not only makes me feel righteous, it just feels right.  As a person who actually has apocalyptic nightmares about the world drowning in mountains of trash, this is my last and weakest defense against the coming garbage tsunami, and as a drinker, it is solace.  We may consume the contents of the beer and wine, but by god, the packaging is to be used again.  Ditto for the oven-ready meals.

As a liberal consumer with liberal culpability, I have to recycle.  Just as Hitler was a vegetarian, whatever else I am responsible for inflicting on the environment, I can comfort myself with the fact that at least I am a Dedicated Recycler.

So, I ordered my recycling bag and saved up my recycling for two weeks.  When the bag came, I was pleased to hoist up my contributions on the wrought-iron fence outside my flat, representing my own milk and canned-soup habit in the face of my thoughtful neighbors.  Despite the fact that I didn’t know any of them, I felt like a part of the conscientious community.  It barely registered that I appeared to be the only recycler in my corner-block of four apartments.  I was part of the whole solution, after all, and felt a soft glow of togetherness throughout the day, until I returned home that evening after work and my bag was gone. (more…)

So.  Last week I set aside a morning to do my taxes.  I have used H&R Block’s online products for several years now and have not had any problems.  I noticed when I logged in that the interface had been changed and I now was being asked to select from various products which carry a fee or the free online option.  I choose the free online option as my return for this year is very simple and will require no more than a 1040 and some state returns.

First problem:  None of my information from the prior years imported.  Okay.  I’m a fast typist and I can re-key it.

Second problem:  I try to file the federal return and there is an option page where you select how you will make your payment to the IRS.  If you want to pay online there is a link to a third-party pay site called ‘PAY1040′, except the link doesn’t work.  Okay.  I manually open the site in another window.

Third problem:  I make my payment and receive a confirmation code.  The H&R Block software REQUIRES this confirmation code in order to proceed with the actual filing of the return, but when I key it into the online system, I get an error message that the code is not valid and it stops me from filing.

Fuck.  Okay, well, I need to contact H&R Block’s support department and get this fixed.  Off I go to open a chat window and await one of their support people.  This is what happened next, note that there are no time stamps but trust me when I tell you I had to hold for almost an hour for this bullshit: (more…)

That’s right. I am Canadian, overly familiar with brutal winters and major snowfall. If someone had told me when I moved from Canada to south of the Mason-Dixon line in the United States that I would experience the worst winter I had ever seen here, I would never have believed it.

But guess what? This is the worst winter I have ever seen.

Allow me to give you a little rundown of the past week, and the thoughts that were going through my mind.

Friday afternoon: Hey, it’s mild! The snow is starting to fall, but they’re big, fluffy flakes just gently swirling to the ground and they aren’t sticking. No way are we going to get 30 inches. The weather forecasters are bananas!

Friday night: Hmmm. It does seem to be sticking a bit now, but there’s no WAY we are going to get 30 inches. The weather forecasters had it ALL WRONG! I am going to go to bed and when I wake up, we are talking a minor shovelling event. It’ll take me 20 minutes.

Saturday morning: Holy shit, 30 inches of snow have fallen. The doors have yard-high drifts up against them. I can no longer see my back fence. I can no longer see my front walk, my driveway, or my street. It is just one vast snowfield with houses sticking out. Holy shit, 30 inches of snow has fallen. The weather forecasters were right.

Saturday afternoon: Holy shit, those sweet wet gentle flakes I thought weren’t sticking have stuck and formed a foot of slushy, heavy muck underneath the two feet of fluffy snow. Shovelling this shit is a serious ordeal. This is going to take me hours  if I do my front walk and the walks of all my helpless elderly neighbours, who are frightened and calling me. Apparently, because I am Canadian, I am now the Winter Expert. (more…)

From: The Blemish

I….What……This?…….

Seriously though, help a bitch out, what the fuck is this look?  Concrete dust and packing peanuts?  Are those pearls or pustules?  Did someone just unwrap her from cold storage?  Did she scrap with a giant geisha on her way in?  Suck on the biggest sugar donut in the world?  Even Cyndi Lauper back there knows her Max Headroom speed skating turbo dance tights are no match!  Someone hand me a rolled up twenty, stat!

*UPDATE: The other day I observed my girlfriends having a friendly debate over their love/hate of LGG and I found it interesting.  So I am genuinely curious about why you all either think she is a genius or a sad Marilyn Manson impersonator.

Speaking of giant colons…  According to news sources, including Minnesota Public Radio correspondent Bob Collins (who personally witnessed the eyesore), this is an actual billboard overlooking I-45 in Minnesota and not, as was originally posited, a Photoshop job.  The sign was allegedly rented by a group of Twin Cities small-businessmen who wish to remain anonymous, although I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to publicly proclaim themselves purveyors of such topical wit.  Collins is on a mission to identify these fun-loving scamps, and were I a local resident, I would indeed be curious as to which businesses I should no longer be patronizing.

So while my response to the question at hand would be an unwavering, “hell no,” I will admit that it was jarring to see the original rube, that charismatic, nonsensical man-of-the-people, after so much recent overexposure to his sociopathic heir apparent, Sarah Palin.  The more things change, y’all…

In order to educate the public and combat the prevalence of colorectal cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer death in the country, Canada has taken the logical step of constructing a 40-foot-long touring colon.  The interactive colon, which according to this AOL report, resembles “a disturbing take on the traditional bouncy castle,” features informative video lectures on a variety of colon diseases as well as an (Italian?) muppet named Dr. Preventino.

If you would like to see a giant, inflated polyp, you can take a video tour here.  I can imagine that thousands of bored schoolchildren have forcibly toured the inflatable colon in the few years it’s been traveling through Canada, but I have a hard time imaging adults, who should be the real targets of colon health education, voluntarily spending a Saturday afternoon this way (“Hey, Hon!  Dr. Preventino and the giant colon are in town!  Let’s have an early lunch of leafy green vegetables, followed by a single aspirin and then walk briskly over to city center to check it out.”).

Of course, I haven’t been to Canada, so this could  be makings of a heady weekend, for all I know.  I don’t think it’s a bad idea, actually, just that they could have gone farther with it.  Why not tie it in with a waterpark, and construct a Journey Through A Urinary Tract Infection Slide, for example?  A cancer-cell versus radiotherapy shoot-’em-out game?  I see no reason that if South Korea can have a sex theme park, Canada couldn’t have an awesome public health theme park.  Everybody wins!

If you would like to get in on my public-health theme park, please submit your medical tie-in ideas for roller coasters, log chutes ,vertical drops, etc in the comments.  Canada’s Ministry of Health?  Have your people call mine and let’s make this happen.

Happy Friday, Y’all!                                       

I hope you all have excellent plans for the weekend and if you don’t then you better get you some.  As for me, I have an incredible weekend planned in San Francisco with the fanciest of gays known ’round here as SkinnyBoneJones and The Dashing M, with a special guest appearance by my homeskillet, BritneyCanadaWhore.  I know, I know it’s tough but try not to hate, you’ll just make wrinkles.  Ahhh, but don’t worry your pretty faces about it, I have some alternative weekend action JUST FOR YOU!

Allow me to present; Liberator Bedroom Adventure Gear!  More realistically known as: The Fanciest Sex Pillows You Will Ever Need!  (aka ‘Pushin’ Cushions’ if you’re hillbilly like that) (more…)