Energy Drink Review: Rockstar Horchata Energy

Have you ever been like, "I could use an energy boost, but I'd really like there to be milk involved"? Well, lucky you! Rockstar is now selling a "tradicional [sic] dairy beverage with natural cinnamon flavors." HORCHATA ENERGY DUH OF COURSE THIS IS HAPPENING. I think horchata is yummy generally, but I am skeptical as fuck about this going well. The can says to shake well. I Taylor Swifted the shit out of that thing. Now, to try it:

SPOILER ALERT.

FLAVOR: Whoa. That is happening. Oh, god. At first you're like, "Mmm, it's like Cinnamon Toast Crunch milk," but then it's like, "Oh dear god, what is this awful over-cinnamon-y/metallic aftertaste?" I am not sure how much of this I can handle. Does Rockstar make a chaser for this drink? Oh no, the more I have, the less I hate it. It's still not good, but maybe you build up, like a milky chemical layer on your tongue and throat so you can't taste it as much after awhile. I'm almost done with it and it is less jarringly awful than the first few glugs, but my stomach feels a little bit weird right now, I won't lie. Also, still not good.

EFFECTIVENESS: It is hard to say since I am choking it down in large gulps, attempting to bypass most of my tongue. That seems to help with the metallic aftertaste. My legs were already shaking because of how I that is my jam, even when I'm exhausted, but perhaps a bit faster now. Well, I just photoshopped a data entry joke based on a shitty Craigslist ad onto a picture of Lars Ulrich and he's probably going to sue me, so at least the caffeine part of this drink isn't complete shit.

Oh dear lord, I finally finished. Lots of weird cinnamon/metallic on the last drink. If you like horchata or energy drinks, you should stay away. If you believe that humanity can do better, definitely do not try this drink.

OVERALL: NOT FUCKING RECOMMENDED.

Horror Classics: I drink and live-blog "The Thing"

I just watched the Breaking Bad finale. [This was on the actual day it aired, don't worry, guys.] It was good. Now it's time for John Carpenter's 1982 film, The Thing. The DVD menu looks like it's from the '90s! It also looks cold!

A spacecraft/flying saucer thing barrels towards Earth. Now a helicopter flies over some remote icy canyon or something. A guy on board looks at binoculars. A husky-type dog runs away. The guy in the helicopter shoots at the dog, but doesn't get him. What is he, Sarah Palin? Now we see some kind of base/building where the bros are hanging out. Kurt Russell, with a majestic beard, plays chess on some super-old computer game and drinks J&B. He loses to the computer and dumps his booze into some circuits and calls the game a "cheating bitch" (it has a lady's voice). COOL. The dog is still running away from the helicopter, which says LOKK on the side. Kurt Russell comes out with his J&B to look at it. It's a U.S. science base of some kind. They surmise that the helicopter is Norwegian. The poor dog continues to run as the Norwegians drop bombs or something? But then they land outside the science camp.

The dog runs up to the Americans, and the Norwegian accidentally blows up his own helicopter. He tries to shoot the dog, but hits one of the scientists in the leg. He yells some shit in Norwegian and an old guy shoots him from inside. The injured guy gets to drink some of the J&B. There's Richard Masur! The radio guy can't get a hold of anyone. Wilford Brimley (sans mustache) is not pleased. A black dude with an apron and a sweet headband roller skates down the hall. The dudes speculate about how the Norwegians went crazy after only being there for eight weeks. Kurt Russell (MacReady) is going to take the doctor to the Norwegian base, even though the weather's not so good. MacReady is wearing some sombrero thing. I hope he's sobered up since he's flying a helicopter now. The dog chills under the ping-pong table. Redbeard who got shot does not like Stevie Wonder, but Rollerskates in the kitchen DGAF. The dog wanders down the hall. Maybe he likes "Superstition"? I know I do.

The Americans fly up to the Norwegian headquarters and see that it's been burnt down, basically. I think this is Antarctica, BTWs. MacReady keeps referring to the Norwegians as Swedes. THAT'S RACIST. The building that hasn't been burnt is all abandoned and broken and frozen inside. Axe in the door. A trail of blood leads to a dead dude in a chair. He's frozen in the act of slitting his own throat and wrists. The blood has frozen into red ribbons dangling from his arm. MacReady finds a "portable video unit." Is that like a VCR? The doctor gathers up some papers, even though they're in Norwegian. What Isaac just aptly described as an "ice sarcophagus" lays empty. Lots of cans of kerosene and a body of some kind are all burnt up outside. Mac and Doc fly back to the American base, where they no longer have functioning chess arcade games. They brought the twisted, burnt body back with them. It looks pretty alienish to me. It's slimy and bloody. An autopsy is ordered. Mac glares. The dog stares. Nothing strange came up in the dead Norwegian's autopsy, but whatever this other thing is is pretty icky.

I guess technically this counts as a necropsy.

Brimley digs out some organs. No one's wearing a mask. The head looks like it's been pulled apart, stretched and frozen. These guys apparently just smoke pot and watched VHS tapes. Some of the others are playing pool and poker in the lounge room. Masur goes to put the dog with the others in the kennel. Is that other one dead? No, just sleeping. They have a bunch of dogs, just chillin. Once the guy leaves, the other dogs start barking at the escaped one. Oh, then its head splits apart and a giant bloody tongue comes out and big slimy/spiky legs come out of its body. Now it's spraying the other dogs with some purple shit. I'm no dog expert, but I don't think that's normal.

Masur goes back to check on the dogs and a couple of them run away. He sees the tentacles flying off that thing and slams them in the door. An alarm gets pulled. Apparently Mac wants the flame thrower, because that's how Mac rolls. That thing still kind of has a doggy head and screams and weird tentacles come out and wrap up another dog and there's a lot of slime. Mac shoots into the kennel a bunch. Now the thing raises up some three-fingered claws and lifts itself up towards the ceiling. A part of it opens up and another slimy head thing comes out and then another one comes out of that? They burn it, I guess?

Brimley breaks of pieces of it in the autopsy lab. it's like a mass of tissue and bone and tentacles and all the blood. He cuts it open and finds some kind of twisted slimy something else in there. I don't even know. Oh, I think it was trying to turn itself into a dog. The thing eats and imitates other lifeforms. Ruh-roh! Later on, the bros are bored by Norwegian video footage. They see footage of something big buried under the ice. The Norwegians blew it out of the ground, apparently. Mac puts on his sombrero thing and goes out (even though it's windy) to check out the blast site or whatever. KURT RUSSELL DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR WEATHER WARNINGS, BITCH.

Oh, now they've found the frozen flying saucer in a big hole in the ground. That's some X-Files shit. Oh, and they're going to rappel down and check it out, obvs. An ominous escape hatch door stands open in the middle of it. It looks kind of a like a man hole. One of the dudes estimates it's been buried int he ice for 100,000 years. They also find the rectangle where that sarcophagus was dug up. Mac has majestic '80s hair and the black guy "Cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit." Isaac calls him the Skeptical Negro. Ha! A really shitty old-timey computer animation shows how the cell/dog/imitation  assimilation thing happens. Nice programming, Brimley. Also, the computer says there's a 75% chance a team member's been infected already and that any "civilized" areas would be at risk. A lot of drinking goes on at this base, and not much science.

One of the other guys wants to talk to Mac. The radio guy always wears sunglasses. Sunglasses thinks they should burn the alien they brought back from the Norwegian base. Correct. Oh, it's not really dead, obvs. Slimy blood dripping situation. Mac wanted to go get drunkn in his shack, but this other guy is worried about Brimley, whose apparently locked himself in his room. His notes indicate the creeps aren't dead yet. Uh-oh the guy by the body has been attacked by a vat of sweet and sour sauce! Or rather, wrapped up by some tentacles. Sunglasses runs out and gets Mac and whatever.

Extra moisturizing is necessary in such a cold climate.

Benings, the one who was just attacked, is running away in the snow. They catch him and light up some flares. Benings has huge creepy hand thingies and alien screams. They burn him. Gary, the old man from before who shot out the window and always wears khaki is sad because he was friends with Benings. They realize they have to burn all the bodies. Is kerosene really that pink color? Or does it just look like that poured on snow? Mac lights that shit up with the flamethrower, because a match certainly wouldn't suffice. Brimley's still locked up in his room with his Smirnoff and handgun.

Mac, all alone outside now, thinks he sees somebody run out of the helicopter. He investigates. All the instruments have been torn up. Mac runs back inside when he hears a gunshot. Brimley insists that no one can leave and shoots indiscriminately and chops up all the radio equipment with an axe. He's killed the dogs and fucked up all their transportation. Sunglasses cowers in the corner of the radio room, his sunglasses sadly displaced. Various team members attack Brimley and Mac punches him out. Masur is all sad because of the dog murders. They lock Brimley in some shed and put him under sedation. Brimley tells Mac to watch Clark, but I don't know any of the other guys' names, so that means nothing to me. The doctor thinks they may be able to do blood tests to figure out who's infected. All their blood in storage has been drained. Gary's the only one with a key, and he lets the doctor borrow it when he needs it. Nobody trusts each other and now all the dudes argue. Sunglasses is running away suspiciously and breaks into a gun safe. Good, good. Gary decides to step down as leader, so Mac is going to take over, I guess. They burn the empty blood bags outside.  

Mac decides to figure out who's who. They drug up Gary, the Doctor, and Masur. Mac drinks more J&B and makes a tape for posterity. There's some dirty clothes he keeps looking at, apparently shed by an imitation. Some beard guy gets startled by Mac. He suggests they prepare their only meals and only eat out of cans for some science reason. His light goes out. He sees someone (something?) walk by, and chases it outside with a flare. DRINK REFILL TIME. This movie is kind of boring me, I won't lie. We're an hour in now, though, and it's too late. Beard guy finds a torn-up MacReady shirt. They're going to split up and look for him and they argue about who goes with whom blahblahblah.

Mac checks on Brimley, who's casually sitting next to a noose. He tries to convince Mac to let him back inside. Ugh, I've SEEN this episode. They find bearded guy all burnt up mysteriously. Mac and Rollerskates go up to Mac's shack because the lights are on when they shouldn't be. They still haven't come back after 45 minutes, so the other guys start to barricade themselves in. Hapless blue sweater guy is hapless. Rollerskates comes back. He found the MacReady shirt and now all the guys are fighting. The doorknob creepily turns, but it's deadbolted. A window breaks in another room. Skeptic chops his way into the locked room.

MacReady's inside with a lit flare and a stack of dynamite. They should just let him blow the place up since they're all clearly going to die. Hapless blue sweater guy is maybe dead suddenly? Mac insists they all stay in the same room. The doctor, now apparently no longer drugged, elbows hapless guy in the chest and starts CPR. One of the guys grabs a scalpel surreptitiously. The doctor, trying to shock hapless guy alive, gets his hands eaten when hapless guy's chest collapses. And now a fake him comes out of him and then he's all stretched out and his detached head launches his tongue to pull himself across the room and under a chair. They put out the fire, and his head spurts legs and antennae. Ew. Mac flames it up and it sounds like a digital goat while dying.

Mac has formulated a test now that involves rope. As in, he tied everybody up. Skeptic challenges Mac, but it's Masur who ends up shot. Mac thinks that the Thing's blood will act as a separate entity. FINGER SLICING! LOOK AWAY! Mac heats up a wire to poke at the blood samples with, I guess. It's not Sunglasses! It's not Mac. The test isn't working on anybody, even the dead guys. The denim vest guy with the ZZ Top patch apparently was one. The flame thrower isn't working as the Thing bursts out of him. It gets Sunglasses while the other guys, still tied up, scream. Eventually Mac flames ZZ Top, who walks out into the snow. Mac blows him up with a stick of dynamite, I guess. Sunglasses has been turned, so Mac flames him too. With a bookshelf that looks like it might've had some board games on it.

More tests. Rollerskates and Skeptic are both clean. Only Garry's left. Apparently he's clean, too. They're all untied now. Aaaand, our DVD player decided to malfunction right now. Okay, we got it to work again, and we may have missed a few minutes. Now they're all outside and they decide they can't let the Thing freeze again and that they're all going to die anyway. Now a hole is being blown up and Rollerskates drove a snowcat thing into a hut? I guess they're just destroying everything now. They're all blowing up the building. Mac takes a couple dudes to the generator room and now he's wearing a white sombrero? Or maybe it just looked white during the last explosion. They find that the generator's been stolen. Oh well, they'll just plant their charges and burn this mother DOWN. Wait, I think we're missing a guy. Maybe he died in the few minutes we missed. Oh, Brimley shows up and sticks his fingers in Garry's face. Ew. Rollerskates suspects something's up with Garry and goes to investigate.

Mac finds himself alone with some Molotov cocktails and one of those old-timey charge plunger detonator thingy. Just blow that shit up, bro. He lights some dynamite. The ground does a whole Tremor-thing at him. The Thing comes up, steals the plunger and now it's giant and again has heads and bodies within it. It's so DAMP, you'd think it'd freeze. MacReady: "Fuck you, too!" or "Fuck you two!" because it's got two heads. And he throws the stick of dynamite at it and the lab blows up a lot and maybe Mac got away? That majestic beard could've protected him from infection. Now he sits down in the snow with his J&B. Skeptic shows up, claiming he chased Brimley and got lost in a storm. Mac clearly doesn't trust Skeptic, and neither do I. They should just sit in the snow and fall asleep. That's Mac's plan. He shares is J&B. Even drunks can save the day, you guys! There's an intense bass line and the base burns and that is the end.

That movie was too long and there were zero women in it. Awesome.

Energy Drink Review: Monster Cuba-Lima

If showering were anything like laying on a warm beach, I wouldn't even need to drink this.

Apparently an energistic take on the Cuba Libre (basically a rum and Coke with lime in case Wikipedia is too arduous for you), this new Monster drink should be, um, interesting. Isaac picked me up some random drinks and since I'm not very motivated to shower or do anything but play Sporcle quizzes all afternoon while listening to Taylor Swift, maybe some Cuba Lima will help me. I hope they brewed it with roasted Castro beard hairs or something.

FLAVOR: It really does taste like Coke and lime. This could really go either way. It's not too lime-y, just an edge. I keep expecting it to taste like an energy drink, and it does not. It tastes like Coke and lime. I'm trying to drink it in big gulps because I'm not that into it.

EFFECTIVENESS: I'm about halfway through, though I've downed that half pretty quickly, and I'm starting to feel the inklings of an energy buzz. Now I've had a bit more and I'm definitely slightly more jittery than usual and have become more conscious of how many days it's been since I last showered. IN MY DEFENSE, our shower has the WORST water pressure ever and it dribbles out of one of those handheld showerheads but it also gets REALLY hot pretty quickly so you have to spend like at least three full minutes making sure you're not scalded and in the first place taking off your clothes takes effort and it is COLD when only like 1/9 of your body can be in the water stream at a time. So showers are hard, is what I'm saying. But I'm going to do it, thanks to this weird Coke lime energy drink thing.

I am jamming to TSwift and I do believe that as soon as I finish this bev, I will sing this to the empty can:

 I don't have my own Furry jam band/dance party crew, but it'll still be awesome.

OVERALL: My energy level is good, but the flavor is just not what I'm looking for in an energy drink. NOT RECOMMENDED unless you're into that kind of thing.

A Cup of Coffee: A Live Blogging Experience

This sassily be-pearled lady doesn't seem to hate coffee as much as I do. Via.

That energy drink I had earlier is not going to keep me going for the next few hours, so I'm going to give a cup of coffee a shot. I poured in a bit of creamer and a bit of sugar and mixed it with one of those fun wooden stirrer thingies. Let's see how this goes:

3:00: It tastes like coffee! There is very little redeeming value to coffee as far as I can tell.

3:02: Bitterness. Like the depths of my soul! Coffee and I should probably be BFF because of this. This is generic office coffee pot coffee, but lest you tell me that I should wait and have "good" coffee, I would say, "Pish-posh, you impertinent lad (or lass)," because I've always wanted to say that. Also, it's like me and beer: I have to try it once in awhile to make sure I still don't like it. I still don't like it. People are like, "This kind is GOOD," and I will be like, "This kind is BEER." In fact, the lighter and crappier the beer, the less I dislike it because of it just tasting like watered-down beer.

3:08: I'm several sips in, and I'm kind of getting used to it. I just have to not think about the aftertaste lingering on my tongue.

3:13: Oh god, I waited too long between sips so I tasted the bitterness all over again. Yuck.

3:16: Yep, still gross.

3:18: Halfway through. I can do this. Oh lord, it's like the particles of bitterness have all congregated on the bottom of the mug.

3:21: I think it's getting worse. How is it getting worse? It's so bitter.

3:25: I'm nearly done, but as it continues to get more disgusting, I'm not sure I'll be able to choke it down without gagging. I have committed to this experiment for SCIENCE and DENTAL HEALTH, so I must finish. I must!

3:27: I'm telling myself it's caffeine medicine. Yuckyuckyuck. I should probably just start drinking that Mio water shit, even though the anthropomorphic animal commercials creep me out.

3:29: Apparently I should've put like 3000x more sugar in it. Though that would kind of defeat the purpose of drinking coffee to save my teeth.

3:30: Okay. Done. Oh, that was gross. I'm shuddering at the grossness. Update: I still do not like coffee. Coffee is gross. Experiment over. Thank god I found a stash of Andes mints in one of my desk drawers so I can help erase the aftertaste. Also, I have a headache now. Probably from all the cringing. Thanks, coffee.

Energy Drink Review: Mr. Brown Iced Coffee

The Caffeine King was also seduced by this silly can.

So I got into energy drinks because caffeine is the best and coffee is gross. I've had roughly two cups of coffee in my entire life, but I know that I don't like the flavor because sometimes people are like, "Let's make a delicious chocolate cake WAIT JUST KIDDING, LET'S MAKE IT MOCHA COFFEE ESPRESSO WHATEVER-FLAVORED JUST TO MESS WITH LAUREN. And I'm like, "This is kind of bitter and gross." All this said, I saw Mr. Brown Iced Coffee for sale in the foreign foods section and I was like, "You are so dapper, Mr. Brown! What with your three piece suit and hat and beard and enthusiasm!" This is a product of Taiwan. Now I am trying to non-racistly figure out what ethnicity Mr. Brown is supposed to represent or whether that should be significant at all. Is he meant to be Colombian? Or is he supposed to look like Pavarotti? Because he looks like Pavarotti:

Am I right or am I right, people? Ranjit agrees.

The Mr. Brown line of ready to drink coffee is distributed by King Car, which calls its energy beverages "functional drinks" on the English version of the website. The company's mission is to "Always be graceful and care for the society." Apparently King Car has an educational foundation that  "promotes better social morals and preserves traditional values which are core elements in building a harmonious society," which sounds like some Republican claptrap to me.* They also sell whiskey. OBVIOUSLY. But anyway, I'm going to try to drink this drink for science. I suspect it will taste like cold coffee and I will not like it. Luckily it is only 8.12 ounces.

FLAVOR: Okay yeah, it tastes like coffee. Though cold it is easier to take big gulps and I am not minding it too much. I didn't get the black coffee one, so I think the sugar, milk powder, and "emulsifier" in this drink are helping it be a bit more palatable. The flavor itself isn't terrible, but the aftertaste is like, "Oh hey, your mouth tastes like old coffee now." And that just reminds me of public school classrooms, which always smelled like old coffee because DUH if you had to wrangle bratty teenagers at 7:30 in the morning, you too would brace yourself with as many legal stimulants as possible.

EFFECTIVENESS: I feel like it's doing a little something for me, but since coffee is the standard by which most energy drinks measure themselves as far as caffeine strength, I am not sure it will impress me, what with my obscenely  high caffeine tolerance. Okay, I drank it all. It gave me a minor boost, but I'm glad I've got a couple of Cokes* with me today. I should be adequately alert until my 2:30 break and then I'll open one of them.

Hey guys, how cute/weird is the little "drink responsibly" symbol from the Kavalan Whisky website?

Do not drive your car or scooter into a giant wine glass!

Overall: LUKEWARM RECOMMENDATION--like the temperature of the coffee if you let it sit too long. I disliked it a lot less than I thought I would, but in the end it's not strong enough or tasty enough for me to consider drinking regularly. However, if you like coffee and making it is, like, hard or whatever, it may be a decent substitute. And how can you resist Mr. Brown? He's a classy opera singer who somehow manages not to spill coffee on that all-white suit of his.

*Remember when I told you about the origins of "claptrap" in a footnote?
*Diet, OBVS.

That Old Chesnut: Red herrings: probably not actually related to fox-hunting or whatever

Cuter than Benedict Cumberbatch?

Hey kids, do you ever wonder why people talk about deliberately misleading clues as "red herrings"? No? Okay, move along then. Anyway, now that it's just us nerds left, let me talk to you about ye olde* red herring. So people eat fish. Which is objectively gross and fishy, but whatever, especially in olden times, they couldn't go to the store and buy mac and cheese, so they had to take what they could get. Also, people would dry and smoke meats and fishes and such in order to keep them from rotting immediately because, you know, there were no refrigerators back in the day. Apparently some of these processes turn herrings red. Because usually they are like this:

I would be depressed too if I were a dead fish.

Also, these smoky salty processes make the herring not just red, but take on quite a distinctive odor--apparently one above and beyond the horror that is just regular "fishy." According to Michael Quinion, the semi-folk etymology of the figurative sense of red herring--something deliberately meant to throw you off the correct scent--involved stories of hunters trying to train their horses or hounds or something. It's not interesting, but mostly probably never really happened, but was basically invented in an 1807 story by "radical journalist" and pamphleteer (best job title EVER) William Cobbett, who claimed to have, as a child, used red herring to distract his own hounds from the trail of a hare. Apparently the idea caught on though, and people starting throwing around "red herring" as a synonym for something that is intentionally misleading. Which is all to say that I wrote this nerd post as my own red herring to make people think I still care about things besides caffeine blogging. So TAKE THAT! Distracted yet?

*Oh, I'm sorry, have you been pronouncing it "ye?" Guess what, that y has just been confused with old-timey lettering that used a thorn for "th" sounds. It was spoken as "the" all along, you silly geese!

Energy drink review: Rockstar Coconut Water Energy + Hydration

I was pulled in by the neon blue can.

I have a compulsion to buy all new energy drink flavors. I'm a pretty big fan of the other Rockstar energy + hydration drinks, so I decided to take a risk on this one. I've got a lot of academic Lifetime movie research to do this afternoon (seriously) and I thought today would be the day I'd try the coconut water can that has been sitting in my fridge. Initial impressions: It's very coconutty. This should not really surprise me, I suppose, but since coconut beverages largely make me think of poor decisions involving giant rum-themed beverages, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to drink the whole thing. We'll see. The can tells me this drink is made with "real coconut juice," which I first read as "red coconut juice," which I thought was interesting since the drink itself is clear. So this last sentence was basically just a waste of typing.

This guy has feelings about this drink. The coconut is not so strong that it's making me sick (yet), since it is supposed to be watery. However, I'm not sure the caffeine kick will be worth it. Maybe I should go pick up a snack to eat with it to mitigate its flavor like I have to do whenever I try to drink beer or non-sparkling white wine.

Update: I've been working on the drink for about 20-30 minutes now. It's worse as it gets warmer and the sickly sweetness of it is kind of starting to build up in an unfortunate way. I'm going to power through for energy purposes, though. I will not let you down, dear readers!

Further update: This is really getting gross, people. I'm drinking it in the largest possible swigs and trying not to taste it. Though I was inspired to draw an inspirational stick figure picture for a friend already, so I'd say the energy part is working all right. It might not be worth it.

Final recommendation: Gross, not worth any energy boost. It could be the fact that I drink it fast so I wouldn't have to keep tasting it, but I mostly just have a bit of a headache and want to wash away the flavor fast now. Yuck.

The Inescapable Addiction-Blighted Hellscape Known as Pluggers' Lives

I know I recently talked about Pluggers and not prescription drugs, but lest you think a group of junior pluggers got together and held an intervention and Grampa went to rehab or something: WRONG. Pluggers don't believe in that shit. The way they live their lives is CORRECT and AMERICAN and DOWN-TO-EARTH and very, very CHEAP. (Gramma Plugger is always talking about how that Betty Ford should be ashamed herself, but the kiddies don't really know what she's talking about). And besides, if pluggers weren't pathetic and strung-out, I'd just have to read the comic to be enraged at the faux populism, anti-intellectualism, and conspicuous patriotism. So here's a few recent gems: Pluggers, though they are pretty sure Jesus would strike them down if they actually euthanized their pets, are pretty sick of taking care of the little shits. So they just get their dogs as high as they are, so they won't have to listen to them bark during the quaaludes-tinged excitement of "Deal or No Deal." (Howie Mandel's head is SO SHINY, you guys...) When your grandparents say they are going on a guided bus tour with some other seniors, they are not really going on a tour. Sure, they stop some places, but nobody really remembers much about the trip because they spent the whole time getting completely wasted on each other's prescriptions. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Susan Owen of Frisco, Texas: EW. Gary Brookins: EW. And not just because this panel made me contemplate pluggers having had had sex at some point in the distant past. No, instead I have been forced to imagine the contents of that tube of kind of sketchy and generic-looking Bengay being rubbed all over the hairy back of a DOGMAN by the four-fingered paw of a DOGWOMAN and all that matted fucking fur and the stench, people. THE STENCH. Ew.

I catch up on Pluggers

No blatant prescription drug abuse references recently, but still, here are some gems from the last month in Pluggers: This panel literally activated my gag reflex. You're welcome. Though this building APPEARS to be an outhouse on a frozen lake, I believe it is actually supposed to be what is called an "ice shanty"* utilized by those participating in "ice fishing," which is pretty much a combination of the two worst things in the world: winter and fish. BTW, does anybody else think walking on frozen lakes/ponds/water what-have-yous is pure devilry and just tempting fate? I've seen Little Women, people! It's unnatural and the universe is in the right avenging this breach by pulling people through the ice. Between the paper and their street pharmacists, Pluggers could teach Congress a thing or two about lowering costs. AMIRITE, people? . . . Pluggers are going to die. Very soon. *Thank you for that bit of redneck knowledge, Wisconsin.

I'm coming out... about David Lynch

No, I don't sleep at night anymore, David Lynch. Thanks for asking.

Guess what, people? I've officially decided I don't like David Lynch. I'm not saying I won't ever give his work another try, but I'm not going to pretend to get it or even want to do so. David Lynch sucks. I've seen a good bit of Twin Peaks, and it was weird and fucked up, but I always meant to get back to it. I saw Blue Velvet, and kind of wanted to cry a lot about the fucked-up-ed-ness of it all. Especially naked Isabella Rossellini in the front yard. And I saw Mulholland Drive, which was like, WTF? I heart me some Naomi Watts and whatnot, but seriously. You're really just fucking with us now, right? And then recently Isaac and I watched Inland Empire. DAVID LYNCH HAS STOPPED TRYING. I have a certain appreciation for people who push beyond the formulaic in film. It's not that I'm anti-art or whatevs. I just feel like David Lynch is only successful because people who are too smart for their own good think they should learn to appreciate or embrace his non-linear storylines or characters switching bodies or S/M creepiness or Kyle McLachlan showing up over and over again or long, drawn-out, nonsensical monologues and/or flashbacks or maybe parallel universes or maybe just people wearing donkey (rabbit?) masks, sitting in silence. I felt this way for awhile. I was like, "I don't really get the appeal of David Lynch. I mean, somebody has to push the envelope, but do I have to watch it? Because it just makes my head hurt." This was before Isaac rented from the Netflix gods Eraserhead. NEVER SEE ERASERHEAD IT IS TERRIBLE. If you want to be scarred for life by creepy snake/fetus baby things that get killed by the main character in long, terrifying, gory death scenes, then go for it. I'm just saying I hated it, and would have broken up with Isaac over making me watch that if, you know, I wanted to break up with him or something. Also: the title refers to a stupid tangential dream sequence that I also hated. What I'm saying is: just because I'm smart and can think critically doesn't mean I have to like David Lynch. He is an asshole who wants me to have headaches. FUCK YOU, DAVID LYNCH. FUCK. YOU. PS: See my sister's review of Lynch's 1984 film version of Dune. She is smart and probably hasn't been traumatized by Eraserhead yet.

Unsettling but apt comparison of the day: sperm in the face and weddings

Amanda Hess explains how the fact that some ladies apparently enjoy "facials" is totes like getting married:

[B]ecause even though we all know it’s sexist as fuck, weddings—like facial ejaculation—still make some people happy.

I'd really rather not think of them as analogous, because EW. Have I mentioned that I'm getting married, BTW?* Because I am. Next summer. To Thrift Store Champion/Isaac/the I-Man/Beardface/that dude I'm always hanging out with. No creepy patriarchal property-transfer type traditions will be enacted. Also, no facials. See: Semen Facials Are Like Weddings (The Sexist). *In case you are one of the .23 people who I don't talk to frequently in real life who also happen to read this blog.