Of Blips and Blobs

You're doing your makeup wrong.

You might think this is not a particularly big deal, but it is. There are so many online articles about the myriad mistakes you are making: your black eyeliner makes you look older, your blush is too dark, your foundation isn't blended properly, your lipstick makes your teeth look yellow, your concealer is caking into the fine lines under your eyes, your mascara is blobby, you're overplucking your eyebrows and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO.

These articles are penned by actual Makeup Artists (because makeup is an Art, and without Art, Life is Meaningless) and they should know.

Oh, also, the solutions for these problems only cost $89.50 and are available by clicking on the link in the article.

I guess it's important to believe in your work. Certainly I like to feel that what I do matters, although of course it's all a matter of context. When you consider that the total sum of human endeavors is an imperceptible blip adrift in an infinite void thinly strewn with cosmic dust, even the noble cause of stimulating travel and tourism in Texas seems a little insignificant.

My junk-food reading habit, though, is to scroll down to the comments threads. If only there were some way to harness the incendiary force of online comments! I mean, talk about your sustainable energy source. Figuring that out is an innovation that will make me rich and powerful someday, along with the invention of the toaster you don't have to tip over on its side to get your bagel out.

People get angry about makeup. So very angry. As angry as they get about the George Zimmermann verdict or Obamacare or food stamps or light rail or Wall Street or Wal-Mart or Syria or Auburn's rather spectacular final touchdown yesterday.* And it just seems like such a vast expenditure of energy. Couldn't something useful be done with it?

Not that people shouldn't be angry about injustice or speak out against wrongs, but I'm not sure that yelling at strangers on the internet about lipstick is terribly productive. Certainly not as much so as a good cleansing regimen.

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*I might not know a football from a rhinoceros suppository - and, unlike the rhinoceros, I don't really care - but that was impressive.

You Think You've Got Problems?!?

Katie and I are watching, I don't know what. "I Love the 80's" or something on VH1. Or the 90's. Or the Aughties. Whatever.

A commercial comes on which at first I think is a mascara commercial, except you know it's not, because mascara commercials always show women with what are clearly fake eyelashes; nobody on Earth has eyelashes that thick and long - the girl's packing nylon, hello! This commercial has a woman with what looks like fairly normal eyelashes with a lot of mascara on. Clearly NOT a mascara commercial, then.

"Are you suffering from inadequate eyelashes?" asks the voiceover. It then goes on to tell you that there's a new prescription medicine available that will actually lengthen, thicken and darken your natural lashes! Results in just a few weeks! Clinically proven! By prescription only!

Okay. By prescription only means you're going to your doctor; you're looking him or her right in the face; you're telling this person, in a world with starvation, polio, cancer, swine flu, fungus-infested toenails, and liver damage, that you want medical attention lavished on your eyelids so you won't suffer from inadequate eyelashes.

"My God, Katie!" I said to my daughter, said I, although she was looking at me a bit oddly by this time. "What the hell is the world coming to?!"

"I don't know," said Katie nervously.

"That reminds me," I went on more calmly. "I want to run by Walgreen's this weekend and get some tooth-whitening stuff."

Katie hesitated. "I really don't know what to say to that," she told me.

"Good," I said. Because the last thing I need is a mouthy teenager. God knows I've got enough problems as it is.

Scrooge Says

It's about that time of year again, where I get to bitch about how people are acting like it's Christmas when it isn't even Thanksgiving yet. Can you wait?? Can you wait a few lousy weeks??? Because, the thing is, I went to some serious trouble last April to take my Christmas lights down. I'd really like to wait as long as possible to put them up again.

Nonetheless, it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, inasmuch as I had to bring in all the plants today in anticipation of the first possible killing frost tonight.

There are kind of a lot of plants.

These are just the ones I put in that end of the living room. There's another big plant at the other side, two hanging plants in the kitchen, several more in the utility room, and sheets draped over the ones that live outside - much to the crazed befuddlement of the cats, I might add, who don't seem to know if they're supposed to pounce, sit on the sheets, crawl underneath, or just yarf on the kitchen table. This is going to be a long winter.

Walgreen's is all decked out with Christmas stuff today. I may stop shopping there. I go solely for primping supplies, but they've phased out the cheapo brands of makeup, and now only carry such big names as Revlon, Maybelline, Cover Girl, L'Oreal, and Almay. I myself am partial to NYC, which they have now stopped carrying. NYC has perfectly good mascara that you can get for $1.99. Maybelline wants twelve bucks for the stuff. Is there a difference? Not as far as I can tell. It's black goo you smear on your eyelashes; why drop a lot of money on it?

Especially when you consider that, back when I was in college, mascara came in all kinds of fun colors like hot pink, electric blue, navy, teal green, and purple. Do you see what this means? You could actually color-coordinate your eyelashes to your outfit. How cool is that?? And none of it ever cost more than a buck-fifty, either. Nowadays it comes in four shades: brown, brown-black, black, and very black. And it costs a fortune.

They have also, I don't mean to gripe too much but this is really a serious problem here in my world, discontinued my shade of powder makeup base at Cover Girl. They have Ivory, which is too pale. They have Classic Ivory, which is dark enough but has no pink in it. They have Creamy Natural, which has pink tones, but is too dark. And they have Natural Ivory, which is exactly right. Guess which one they discontinued?

Before anybody starts complaining about the female problems enumerated in this post, I'd like to point out that Bill Gates paid me a particularly rough visit this week and I have plenty of choice things to say on the subject, and you know what? I haven't.

Not going on about intensely personal feminine problems on my blog: there's my gift to you. Merry Christmas!

First Vibrators, Now This

You're minding your own business, peacefully shopping for mascara and flip-flops at Walgreen's with your teenaged daughter on a lazy Saturday afternoon, when you suddenly stumble across something so wrong, so terrifying, that the only possible explanation is that demons have broken through into our dimension and replaced the pleasant, friendly, mundane reality we all knew and loved (more or less) with Engrish.com:

The clerk gave me a funny look when she came across me taking this picture with my cell phone, but come on. You're stocking the shelves with these, and I'm the one with the problem?!? I don't think so.