Personally, if I can kick my period the hell out of my life, I’m going to do it (and have in the past, probably will again). I’ve considered the physical and philosophical arguments on both sides — in my case, they don’t really know what it does to your body, but it might decrease your chances of some cancer, and I have *never* bought the “natural is better and healthier” argument for anything, so just because my body naturally produces a river of blood every month doesn’t mean I should or will deal with it. It does it for a purpose (reproduction) that I’ve chosen to have nothing to do with for now, so I think I’m fine without the side effects, as well.

I’m fine with my decision, so… boo to all of you who might disagree. It’s your body, you do what you want with it. I’ll do what I want with mine. That’s not my issue with any of this though…

The thing that pisses *me* off about these commercials is the fact that these birth control pills are absolutely NO different from the pills that are already out there. The pharmaceutical companies have just discovered that now that their patents have expired, they can either lose a lot of money when the generic versions come out (in some cases they’ve been out for a while), or find novel uses for their existing drugs that they can get approved by the FDA and use to sell their pills at full price for a while longer. All they have to do is sell several packs of birth control pills together as one pack, and skip the sugar pills altogether, or replace them with one week of a lower dose of hormone.

(By the way, Sarah… see the title of this entry. This is why the pills are marketed the way they are. They’re just advertising the novel use they presented to the FDA in order to get their patent, durr.)

Here’s a tip for those of you who might want to try Seasonale (three times one month of 0.15 mg levonorgestrel and 0.03 mg ethinyl estradiol plus one month with three weeks of the same shit and a week of placebos) but don’t want to pay full price… all you need to do is take a generic version of Nordette (there are several available) for three weeks, and immediately start a new pack. They have exactly the same levels of exactly the same hormones. This is exactly what I have done.

As Seasonique (same as Seasonale, but the last week of the first three months is replaced by seven 0.01 mg ethinyl estradiol pills), I’m too lazy to seek out a substitute for the fourth week of pills in the first three months of , and don’t know if an exact generic exists, but I would imagine you could manage the same thing by finding the lowest dose ethinyl estradiol only pill available out there (might not be FDA approved as birth control, but I will assume a 0.01 mg pill exists for something, since estrogen is used for things other than birth control — a doctor could figure this out).

You can pretty much do the same thing with any birth control pill — just skip the placebos. Probably works with the patch or Nuvaring as well. But don’t tell Duramed that I told you, and definitely don’t share this information with your doctor for evaluation. Those poor drug companies need their money.

Either way, Sarah Haskins, if drug companies can claim that their birth control pills are able to accomplish something other than birth control (and they sure can — personally, I’m not sure why they don’t advertise that they can make your tits bigger, because that’s definitely the effect they have on me, in addition to causing me not to be a weepy freakface), why shouldn’t they? Some people take birth control pills, even though they’re not sexually active. Because guess what… birth control pills are not all about birth control. Sometimes they’re about acne control. Sometimes they’re about crazy control.

And maybe you’re not forgetful, and won’t forget to take your pill on a daily basis. I not particularly, either (but I certainly don’t blame anyone that is — it’s hard to remember to take pills at exactly the same time daily if you have an erratic schedule). However, I also take medication that makes me nauseous and messes with my digestive system. I’ve used NuvaRing because I’m not confident that the pill will be metabolized completely or properly. Especially not if I puke the damned thing up.

So all in all, the only argument I have against any of this BS is the one she didn’t make. Which is more or less the same reason I get irritated every time I see this chick on TV. See, I’m also a sarcastic, dry-humoured bitch, but I make a point of knowing way the hell too much about anything I rant about before doing so. I don’t just say whatever random crap comes to mind.

pigs 1, originally uploaded by mariacaridad.

Sean and I are so over filthy, deadbeat roommates. We’re doing the post-filthy, deadbeat roommate cleanup this weekend. Pro-tip: do not live with filthy deadbeats! Even if they are (ostensibly) your friend, and they’re suddenly desperate for a place to stay. You will hate your life. Definitely don’t do it three or four times in a row, either. Fuck, don’t live with friends, period. You let them slip once, because they’re a little short on rent and they’re your friend, after all… you’ll never see a single cent on time again.

Actually, don’t live with anyone. Hell is other people. So true. Sartre knew what he was talking about.

We’ve rented a steam cleaner to prevent weeds being able to grow in our carpet due to the layer of topsoil that has accumulated. (I still don’t understand the whole American shoes on in the house thing. Is this attitude somehow perpetuated by Stanley Steemer?)

Last night I washed, dried, and then bleached the walls in the empty room — and they’re still grimy as hell. Looking forward to paying to have this place repainted when we move out.

Just a while ago, I started (but could not finish without a sand-blaster) washing the sink full of dirty dishes that was lovingly left for us, all with food baked on and burnt on. Hadn’t even been soaked. Awesome!

(Side-note: I grew up with three siblings, and these days I don’t have many possessions. Both of those factors make me very aware of the things I do own. In doing the count putting those dishes away today, the missing items are as follows: two plates, a bunch of spoons, the lid to a sugar bowl, four shot glasses, quite a bit of Tupperware, and exactly eight forks — including every single dessert fork I had).

I’m about to go clean out the fridge, because it’s full of crumb-filled, squished-up margarine wrappers (ew, can’t believe I even let that filth in my apartment in the first place), “mystery” items, and coffee grounds. I hate everything about coffee. Especially the smell. Especially the taste. Especially cleaning up the coffee grounds from every inch of the kitchen, and the coffee ring and splatter stains on the counter (with bleach — the counter is white). But I won’t have to do it every single day anymore. So one last time only makes me mildly livid.

All this BS (plus cleaning the bathroom, floors, and well… everything else, all the time, because nobody else was ever going to do it), and we still haven’t gotten October’s rent. Definitely worth the hassle… I’m so happy we won’t have to deal with this anymore! And I’m so happy that now that I’ve got a job, I’ll be able to spend some money on buying nice things to put in our apartment without having to worry about them being ruined. Hells yes to no longer living in an apartment that looks like a dorm room!

Here’s the only tip that matters: have a blog that doesn’t suck. Then make money as an afterthought. Preferably by supplementing your excellent content with more excellent content, in a form that people might potentially pay for.

Or just do as everyone else does… Have an entire blog entirely about making money with your blog, for other people with blogs about making money (with your blog). Have fun with your little optimization clusterfuck of optimal lameness, and keep your shit off of the rest of the internet. Thank you.

I dunno. Do you really want readers who are lame enough to stick around as regulars to read your PayPerPost BS, anyway? I don’t like lame readers. I don’t have a terrible lot of readers, but the ones I do have are typically not idiots, or at the very least, are smart enough not to make stupid comments. I could never tolerate the kind of reader who might actually believe that I was motivated to try out such and such a software package on my own, or that I’m seriously looking into a vacation at some dumbshit resort. Or worse, to know that it wasn’t the case, and read with interest anyway. You dopes with sites like this might not be lying, but at the same time, you certainly don’t come off as genuine, and reading your textual diarrhea makes me textually vomit (as seen here).

Bleh bleh. Fuck, I can’t wait until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own stupidosity. Does anyone visit any of those sites with any regularity, other than people trying to do the same shit? Oh, wait. I might be doomed to deal with it a little while longer, until people smarten up (riiiiight). Because while you’re looking for regular readers to visit on a regular basis and comment with regularity (and they will — but only because they want the regular return traffic), what you really want is organic traffic. In other words, hits from people who are probably looking for something other than your dumb shit site, but are too dumb to find it, and miss their target. In which case, your entire website is a giant hunk o’ spam. Shit they weren’t looking for, and don’t want. They might stick around, because like attracts like, but the ones that click your ads are looking for a way out. Hopefully one that leads them to what they were looking for in the first place. Please delete. Your niche-garbage is polluting my internets with stupid. And ugly.

I have one freakin’ block of ads on my site, and I use it to cover the whoooole $5 that my hosting costs (in fact, I’ll probably start taking it down after I reach that point each month), and I really do hope that the majority of you are using an ad-blocker, because really, I only want the people searching for vagina and fucking vagina and penis fucking vagina and gay penis fucking vagina (what?) etc. to see the darn thing. If I knew that any of you regular readers were stupid enough to move their mouse-cursor anywhere near it… (hm, is it against the rules to tell people not to click my ads? I’ll have to check into that…)

I liked the internet better in 1994.

How about we start calling this shit what it is, though. If making money is the first thing on your mind… if you’re picking a “niche” specifically because you think it will earn you cash… if you’re optimizing things for search engines first and regular, intelligent readers second (or as often seems the case — not at all)… You’re not monetizing, you’re blogetizing. And I don’t like you.

I don’t care about your iPhone. I don’t care that nobody else cares about your iPhone. I was sick of Web 2.0 five minutes before I ever heard of it, and I’m sick of hearing about how sick everybody else is about hearing about Web 2.0, and about how ironic it is that everyone, in talking about how sick they are of hearing about Web 2.0, is contributing to the overabundance of bullshit on the Web 2.0 about Web 2.0. I’m not going to attend the Web 2.0 panel at the Web 2.0 conference, and since I’m not cool enough to attend anyway, I’m not going to use Web 2.0 applications to experience it vicariously, because I’m too cool for that. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to read Tweets about your lifecast while watching you read Tweets about lifecasting on your lifecast. Lifecast is a misnomer, anyway. There ought to be more lifecasts by people who actually have lives.

I don’t want to read eight million blogging blogs about how to blog about blogging about blogs about blogging. I’m pretty sure the best way to start a money-making blog these days is to make sure it tells other people all about the best way to start a money-making blog. I’m not going to read your blog carnival of blog carnival carnivals, and that is one carnival I would certainly not spend an afternoon. I’ll stick to the sort where they serve funnel cakes, thank you. The only thing I can be paid to post about is how lame it is to be paid to post. This shit is self perpetuating. It’s cheesy. It’s phony. It’s boring. You’re all a bunch of big, fat, boring, cheesy phonies. I can’t wait until this non-industry crashes, or at least evolves into something else that I can rant about with renewed vehement vigour using whatever new overrated emerging technology emerges. Until then, ceiling cat is watching your circlejerk, jerkoffs.

When did cynicism, sarcasm, snarkism become negative things?

P.S. “Negativity can be treated by several types of intervention strategy, including cognitive-affective stress management and progressive muscle relaxation.”

P.P.S. I do have one productivity tip to offer. Stop reading so much about productivity tips. You’ll find you’ve got at least 17 extra hours a day to devote to figuring out where to stick your widget. (I have a few tips about that, too.)

Reddit ready for the summary? Suck my Digg dick.

Don’t use Publisher, either. I know it’s meant for that sort of thing, but it’s worse than PowerPoint. Don’t use anything by Microsoft, in fact. PDFs plz. Thx. If you can’t manage that, just make sure to link your images to the file so I don’t have to call you about the big red exes. And make sure that those images are bigger than 150 pixels wide, because I don’t want to have to explain pixelization yet again. Better yet, get somebody who knows what they’re doing to do all of this for you.

Why oh why aren’t there decent, compulsory computer classes for everyone?

It’s the one where some girl answers the phone only to realize that a friend of hers has dialed her number accidentally from her purse. She spends the remainder of the ad yelling at her friend, trying to get her to realize her mistake, so that she can hang up the phone. The point of the commercial is supposed to be that US Cellular (I think that’s the company) offers free incoming calls, so that your friends can’t waste your minutes. Even if you’re too stupid to realize that it is in fact possible to disconnect a call from either end. Bitch in the commercial just needs to hang up. Problem solved. What. The. Crap.

“There is one circumstance where a Chicago Card Plus cannot be used to pay for up to seven customers: If six or fewer customers begin their trip while using one card, and they attempt to transfer to another bus or rail line with customers who were not present at the origin of the trip, the card will not be accepted for fare payment of the additional customers.”

So basically… if Sean comes home from work right now, and we wish to go out together before his transfers have expired, I need to use a different card because passback won’t work.

We already experienced this once, last week. I had just come home, and the two of us needed to get to State Farm to sign some forms and turn in my car key (since I no longer had the car and all — don’t know why they didn’t try to get that from me when they came and towed it, or why they didn’t try to let me know they were in fact planning to tow it — but I digress). We didn’t have any cash, and I just had the one farecard, but I thought — gee! There’s that nifty passback feature. We can share.

Nope. Doesn’t work that way. The farebox just flashes “invalid” or somesuch when you try it, and the driver gets all uppity.

I found this ancient discussion about the passback “feature”. I’m glad to see that the annoyance has carried over to the new Chicago Cards… Do people not use passback, or something?

I guess we’ll probably buy a second (non 30-day pass) card just for this purpose. Dumb. Since you can’t get transfers with cash anymore (also dumb).

I know that many people in the United States are retarded and pronounce one-syllable words with two syllables (and I’m from Canada, so people think I’m slow… eh). But I also blame the Northern Cities Shift. Or maybe it’s just the in~en shift. Either way… I’d just figured out how to understand what the hell people in Indiana were trying to say to me, and drifted my Bob close enough to Bahb so as to not confuse anyone. Can’t any of you Americans pronounce your vowels properly (or at all)??? Do I have to say CAY-ehn-dice (three sylabbles) for anyone to understand what I’m saying? I refuse to pick up any more drawl! Refuse!

Who is Dean Payne? I know that my handwriting can be a little bit messy sometimes (although I’m pretty careful about it in cases where I would like people to copy something down accurately). But if anything, half of my letters are scribbles that look like esses (at least gee, wi, dee, bee, pee, jay, and duh… ess…) I’m reasonably sure that I couldn’t possibly have made the name Sean look like Dean. And it’s a curious fact that the letter dee is right next to ess on the keyboard…

You bastards didn’t even bother to change the address on the account. You have the street number wrong. You have the apartment number wrong. It’s probably a fluke that the bill wound up in the right state. It took three weeks to convince you that my apartment existed, and even then, your customer service representatives could not figure out how to enter it into the computer. The only apartment at this address on record is “basement”. There is no basement here…

I confuses me why the account is in my husband’s name (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in the first place, since apparently you were unable to open an account using his SSN when we called you and tried. You told us that Sean was already in your system, and that he owed you several hundreds of dollars. I wonder whose number is now incorrectly associated with us.

I look forward to paying you unnecessarily large sums of my money every month for what I hope will continue to be sub-par service.

P.S. - Metric system, plz. WTF is a “therm”. People that aren’t stupid measure in joules.

…

Speaking of idiotic organizations, my green card arrived today, miraculously. The address on the envelope doesn’t exist… The USPS, in a freakish episode of competenceness managed to get it to its destination. And the mailman, in a freakish episode of paying attention to what the hell he was doing managed to put it into the mailbox instead of onto the floor beneath it as usual. Thanks, mailman! That was nice of you!

That’s my big complaint. The little one is this: do you know how many damned papercuts you wind up with if you work at Kinko’s? Carl Sagan would be able to tell you… (Billions and billions).

(A search for “run pedestrians over” on Google leads to an image on Flikr with the title “Please don’t run over pedestrians. They cross here.” I disagree. The crosswalk in the photo leads to a Church of Scientology branch…)

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist”, says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

“But”, says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”

“Oh dear”, says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Ah, Douglas Adams… He was very much ahead of the times.

But, wait. Nevermind. Intelligent Design has nothing to do with God, religion or faith. It’s a good thing, because if they screw up one of these days and accidentally stumble upon some real facts or evidence, it would denigrate their presupposed beliefs to the level of despicable, despicable science…

[EDIT]: Okay, well. Ack. Douglas Adams was ahead of his time, and is probably also rolling in his grave. I’ve seen people quote the passage above to make fun of Intelligent Design before, but a Google search reveals that these IDiots are also using it as an allegory to demonstrate their argument (they really don’t know a joke when they see one, huh). Asshats. Hands off! You have your Good Book, and I have mine.

Also, they struggle with the very issue DNA pointed out. What is God without faith? And OMG! What would happen if Intelligent Design actually did prove God! Wouldn’t that undermine Christianity? There are more than a few people out there that think this, and if they’re going to believe something stupid anyway, I fully support this viewpoint, because at least they’ll stop bullshitting about science. Because seriously. Proof is dangerous! Belief that isn’t based on irrational superstition doesn’t count, because faith should be enough, they say. And I’m sorry, but once I’m given facts, they’re going to take precedence over everything else. Therefore, evidence for ID would prevent me from ever having faith, and probably condemn me to hell. They don’t want that, do they?

Yeah, I’m not going to read any more about this right now. I hate the “we don’t need no steenking facts” argument. This is why run away from preachy religious types. Even if you finally get them to accept that there’s no way they’re going to convince you of anything without facts to back things up, and to admit that they really don’t have any facts, they just start ranting about how you’re being stubborn and shallow to require them in the first place. And how do you argue with someone who’s essentially saying “Hi! I’m full of shit, and I’m better than you because of it!”

I have to return that DVD now, anyway.

So, yeah. Nice new apartment in Chicago. In a residential parking zone. I just moved here. I do not have a city sticker. I do not have a residential parking permit. I do not have any of the 87 other things my car needs to be legal in this state. I am not required to have these things yet, because there is a 30 day grace period. There is no way for anybody looking at my car to know that, though. Those stickers are what keeps cars on this street from being ticketed and/or towed. So everytime I go outside, there’s a happy orange suprise waiting for me on my windshield. I would gladly pay for the darn stickers, but it’s a long weekend. I would have paid for them first chance I got, on Friday, but the paperwork I needed was still buried in a box somewhere. I will pay for them sometime in the near future, but in the meantime… please to not be towing my car, thx. Luckily, this street is only a tow zone during speicial events. Unluckily, Jimmy Buffet counts as a special event, and he’s playing just down the road. I guess it’s okay, unless they decide to tow me in the next two hours or so… but still. Very lame. Maybe I’ll just go sit on my hood until then. Or maybe I’ll just stick a copy of my lease and a note in giant magic marker letters with lots of exclamation points on my window. Or maybe I’ll just sit here eating ice cream and not watching TV or using the internet at any acceptable speed because our cable isn’t hooked up yet. Yes.

This is my favourite part of the infomercial:

There are health freedoms in this country that are being taken away from us. There are more people sick today than ever before. There are more people that are overweight. There are more people that have diabetes. There are more people that have cancer. There are more people that have heart disease. There are more people that have migraine headaches. There are more people that have arthritis. There are more people that have virtually every major health abnormality.

Yes, Kevy. There are more people. Period. Point, plz? He sounds like enough of an idiot here even before anyone gets around to pointing out anything about better diagnosis or treatment of these diseases (i.e. nobody had epilepsy in the 16th century, when it was so obvious at the time that the symptoms were caused by demons (also the cause of just about every other disease, I’m sure), and that the cure was exorcism — that’s an increase in the number of cases of oh… infinity percent), or that people are also living longer than ever before… Yes, it’s so obvious. Modern medicine is failing us. Miserably.

Which reminds me how happy I am that I no longer work at Fox. I will never again have to watch 12 infomercials over a weekend, Fox News Sunday, or The 700 Club. We all know that I still will, because I just love getting myself angry… but I don’t have to anymore. I am doing a little dance of joy right now, but you can’t see it.