The clothing situation had hit the point of no return, with me literally regurgitating the two sweaters I own every other day of the week, keeping them clean and tidy but nonetheless confident that I've been building a solid reputation as a skeezer.  This was the Day of Remedy.  Because of my severe shopping phobia, I insisted that the woman stay home as I trekked over to the Woodbridge Mall in Jersey to take care of business.  Otherwise, I'd use her as my social crutch, only comfortable browsing my wearables while she helped pick them out, and that never works.  I felt like I was marching off to war.  Pull up, park, smoke a cigarette with more dramatic drags than even before, and finally head on in.  I am now the proud owner of seventeen different sweaters that all look the same, and five new pairs of jeans that also all look the same.  But at least now I can get Dorito dust all over myself without having it become an international incident.

It's becoming more and more impossible to not love Jones Soda.  The company recently introduced their own line of lip balms patterned after some of their most notable soft drinks, including what you see above: Turkey & Gravy.  To be honest, it's more disgusting in theory than practice, as on a test, the stuff tasted more like "nothing" than "turkey."  Then again, I didn't really get all up in there like I do with cherry-flavored Chapstick.  I eat those fuckers like grapes.  The balm itself is virtually colorless, unless we're assuming that they were going for the look of "white meat" and not "turkey skin."  If you're a vege, there's plenty of fruit flavors available as well — check out Jones'ss's lip balm site for details.

R.I.P., Eddy.

It's Saturday night.  And the mood is right.

Well, I knew going into work today that it was going to be a long, bad day, and indeed, it was a long, bad day.  We all have 'em, but you'll have to pardon me when I say that my bad days mean more to me than your bad days.  This was the kind of day that had me aging a year by the hour and, by 5 PM, looking into a mirror to see not myself, but a tired creature more closely resembling Amy Monkey of Congo fame.  The kind of day that required a solid thirty minutes of chewing dead skin off my fingers when it finally ended if only to curb what was a decidedly larger appetite for destruction.  And the worst part?  Throughout the day, all of the various stresses and things-going-wrong slowly manifested into a solid vision of a half-done bottle of tequila on top of our fridge.  I was banking on this tequila.  My one shot, literally, of coming home and simmering down without any explosions.  There was no such tequila when I got home.  The woman says that there was never any tequila there to speak of.  My migraniousuper stress made up this wonderful used bottle of tequila as a coping device.  It worked, I guess, but I really wanted that damn shot tonight.  At least I had Nerds.

God, I love Christmas.  It's even better than made-up tequila bottles.  This here thingy is a Nerds "Fun Book," which expands on the idea of selling multipacks of Life-Savers in book-themed holiday boxes with better candy, better graphics and better French hens.  There are 200 things I like about the Nerds Christmas Fun Book, but to meet my personal quota for brevity bonus points, I'll limit myself to telling you only six of them…
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It's pouring out and I couldn't be happier about it.  Pouring rain, bright lightning, thunder that I swear is trying to form of coherent beat…I LOVE it.  The rain tacked on about an extra 25 minutes to my already hideously long bus ride home from work, but for what I'm experiencing now — an open window with wet wind blowing at my head — it's totally worth it.  Because storms mean holidays in some roundabout way, I couldn't resist the temptation to steer my filthy car towards a pharmacy before heading home, because only during Christmastime can a person like me conceivably spend half an hour browsing a pharmacy.

I picked up many fine items that will be covered in this very fine blog on a regular basis between now and whenever I get sick of Christmas, but it seemed fitting for no specific reason to give the first nod to Glade's Glistening Snow room spray. The can's been done up all purdy with snowy pinecone graphics and whatnot, but even when I bought it, I couldn't help remarking to the 94 yr old woman standing behind me on line that "there was no way this shit smelled like fucking snow cause snow don't fucking smell like anything," to which she replied, "snow smells like water."  This situation may have played out more in my head than in real life, but that's immaterial: It doesn't smell like "snow" at all.  It doesn't even smell like anything the part of my brain most familiar with my nose might make up as a "snowy smell."  It doesn't even smell Christmassy!

Though it does sort of remind me of Macy*s, and Macy*s reminds me of Christmas.  I hate to go all Six Degrees of Santa on your asses, but considering the 2-for-1 special price, I'm giving Glade's holiday effort an A+ with absolutely zero notes reading "you'll spray your eye out."

In other news:

I don't have an encode of it made yet, but my latest spot is a sweepstakes tying in with that Zathura flick.  Note the name of the shuttle — "X-E 79."  It's spoken in the voice-over, too.  Finally snuck a reference in!

EDIT: Here, now you can download it.  Video is choppy and low rent, but it's the best I can do at the moment.  You'll get the idea.

I've been trying to "be good" when it comes to buying Christmas stuff this year, partly because we're moving to a new apartment in a few months, and it's become an "everything must go" situation during our preliminary packing.  On the other hand, when you're walking through the junk food aisle of your local supermarket and spot plush Marshmallow Peeps dolls, whatever convictions you have just turn to mush.

It's the latest chess move in Peeps' plot to take over the world.  The dolls come in a small, plushy size (called "Bean Bags") and a larger size ("Squeezes") using materials more akin to a pillow.  The dolls reflect some of Peeps' greatest Christmas entries — a snowman, gingerbread man and the almighty Christmas tree.  They're perfect stocking stuffers, and I'm not entirely sure if there's anything in the world I enjoy more that stuffed stockings.  Incidentally, the store also sold Christmas Peeps stockings, so you can stuff the Peeps into Peeps and, all told, finally have an avenue to use the word "Peeps" five times per sentence without being at all redundant.

EDIT: WOOO!  Jones Soda Regional Holiday Pack in my hands!  WOOOO salmon soda!

Yeah, of course I was all over this.  It's the second coming of a new Yuletide tradition: The Jones Soda Holiday Pack, 2005!  You should remember the review of last year's edition — this year, I've bagged up our old pal Viv and four other brave taste-testers to embark on an adventure filled with Brussels sprout soda, and herb stuffing soda, and turkey soda, and all sorts of soda that will MAKE YOU CRAZY WACKO WACKO.  It's worth noting that the review reflects the national version of the 2005 Holiday Pack.  There's also a rarer regional version hitting select stores this week, with even grosser flavors.  I might not shoot my wad or whatever on two big Jones Soda articles in such a short period of time, but you can bet that I'll be tracking that sucker down, and when I do, you'll hear.  Enjoy!

It's SNT…delicious!