It’s marketed as period control for patent purposes!

Does anyone ever catch Target: Women with Sarah Haskins on Current? She’s consistently annoying. I just got linked to (by this story on TimeOut Chicago’s site: Online Gambling: Sarah Haskins tries to make her own luck by Steve Heisler) one I’d forgotten about, and had to rant about it. Here, watch this shit:

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.

This is why we [couldn’t] have nice things.



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!

How to Blogetize Your Money

How to Make Money With Your Blog. Blah. SEO. Blah. Monetization. Blah. Boring. Lame. Gay. Gay gay gay gay super gay.

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.

One big Ponzi scheme.

When did the internet turn into a combination of a bad self-help book, an infomercial, a get-rich-quick-scheme? It all leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. I don’t want to hear from self-proclaimed, critically-acclaimed, experts in expertise about positive affirmations, efficiency tips, monetization techniques, optimization approaches, best practices, self esteem, keyword research, passive income, active participation, proactive marketing, secrets of happiness (least of all “the” secret), life hacks, usability measures, productivity skills, synonyms of synonyms of synonyms. I’m pretty sure those are all alternative terms for Fucking Gay, anyway, and yes, there is something wrong with that.

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.

“What day is Halloween on this year?”

Why does this question ever have to be asked? Apparently, the answer is any day from tomorrow until Tuesday. And there are specific hours, too.  WTF, Americans. Is tomorrow the 31st? No, no it isn’t. I’ll have you know that only one of those days is the 31st. And who goes trick-or-treating before dark, if they’re older than 5 years old? What’s wrong with you people? They got the date right in Chicago, at least. But 1pm-7pm? ONE FUCKING PM??? That’s it, kids. You’re all getting razorblades from me. Not that anyone visits our apartment. But if they did, and if they buzzed at 1pm before sensible people are even AWAKE… Poisoned candy. Hear me? Don’t think weirdos like me won’t kill you bastards before dusk. The daylight WILL NOT SAVE YOU. Okay? Being “safe” is for suckers. Correct way to do trick-or-treating: all black outfit, 10pm, jaywalking from house to house, still not getting run over because you’re not a fucking moron who doesn’t look both ways, even if you’re only seven. Wah wah wah. Babies.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned

I don’t think that the comment box is the place for conversations. Conversations belong in e-mail, on e-mail lists, or on forums. Maybe that’s just me. But the format just doesn’t really… work… properly. Bleh. I hardly ever check back to old posts to see if anyone has replied. How good do you think my memory is? My intention probably wasn’t to be responded to, anyway. I have coComment installed, but I don’t make use of it. I hate weblogs. If you’ve got one that gets more than a couple of comments per entry, you need to integrate it with a forum, kthx.

Attention scientists

Your PowerPoint files are a pain in the ass to print out at 60″ wide. Why would you use PowerPoint to design such a thing. If you’re going to insist upon doing this, at least set the page size to something other than 8.5″ x 11″. Especially if the final size you want is not proportional to 8.5 x 11. You do know what proportional means, right? Scientists?

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?

Blogger Account Information

Here is some information about your Blogger account: your user name is not Candice. I know this because my user name is Candice. All of you other Candices, stop trying to reset the password to an account that is not yours when you realize that you cannot remember that password (because you never knew it) (because the account is not yours). I’m sick of getting several Blogger Account Information e-mails every day. I mean, it’s cool that I joined so long ago that I was able to register my first name, but this is just freakin’ annoying. Okay, not really. Junk filter, go!

A stupid commercial? What are the odds?!

If I don’t complain about this now, I’m going to explode. I don’t know why I am so irritated, but every time I hear this commercial on the radio, I get increasingly more hateful towards the universe.

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.

Fie on you, CTA farecards

“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).