Love...

I don't know if I should be admitting this, but for quite some time now I've had a strange, obsessive love for alpacas. It's true, and it feels good to get it off my chest; "Hi, my name is Holly and I'm an alpacaholic."

For those of you who are alpacaliterate and don't know what I'm talking about, an alpaca is a South American herd animal bred for their lovely coats which is turned into fiber used for textiles. (Visit the Wikipedia entry here.) That's all well and good, but I love their little faces and the fact each one looks like they have bangs. Subsequently, I want to put glitter and makeup on alpacas the world over.

Fake eyelashes, pink blush, rhinestones, I want to dress up each and every alpaca like they were a ballroom dancer. Forgive me if you feel this is cruel, I want to do this out of love.

One day I hope to travel to Peru and see alpacas in their natural surroundings, which I picture might be something like this:
(Scene opens in a village marketplace resembling something between a Moroccan bazaar and a sidewalk sale at Fashion Place Mall. There are brightly colored dresses hanging on either side of the street, and lovely alpacas are mingling throughout the booths, politely saying hello to each other as they bat their eyelashes and shop for new clothes. And handbags. And shoes.)

Holly: (Wide-eyed and full of wonder, is taking in the sight when a lovely brown alpaca walks up to her.) Well hello there, Mr. Paca.

Alpaca: (Bows his head.) Please, call me Al.

Holly: Al, you are lovely. Might we go back to my hotel where I can plug in my curling iron and give the front part of your hair the "Farrah flip" made so popular in the 70s television show "Charlie's Angels?"

Al: Of course! (nuzzles the size of Holly's cheek with his fuzzy, little face) But don't forget the fake eyelashes and makeover!

Holly: I love you, Al.

Al: I love you too, Holly.

(And so it goes. The two walk through the marketplace, hand in hoof, into the sunset.)

Beautiful, isn't it?

Many people know about my love for alpacas. And glitter. And glittering alpacas. So this showed up on the dry erase board at work today:



I'm really glad that my co-workers support me so that one day I might hope to join AOBA and raise alpacas for fun and profit.

Just say "no"

In the 80s, we all learned it from Nancy Regan in regard to drugs, "Just say 'no'."

I'm here to bring that same "Just say 'no'" sentiment to foods that should never exist. Ever. I'm talking Morningstar Farms veggie bacon strips. When I saw it in the freezer case tonight, I thought, "It's fake! It's bacon! It's fakon!" What could be so wrong with a product made of VEGGIES that resembles something that is so bad for your health? I've already resorted to a diet of fat-free, fake cheese and now I could make a fake McMuffin with fake eggs and now FAKON!

Excitedly, I rushed home from the store ready to microwave a little fakon snack before hitting the gym. I opened the box, and was a little taken aback by the color and texture of the fakon. It looked like a mauve and cream marbled fruit-leather snack that might've been made by my grandmother out in her backyard. Despite the very un-baconlike appearance, I microwaved two of the floppy strips for exactly one minute and 30 seconds, hoping to give it that extra-crispness I so love in the real thing.

One minute and 40 seconds later I was prying the smoking fakon off the plate. The texture was like a thin piece of shingle one would affix to the top of a dollhouse. Sadly, this didn't stop me. I ate the first piece, and hoped it would sort of taste like bacon, but it didn't taste like really anything. I had to eat the second piece just to make sure, and while this piece had a slight hickory after-taste, I think it might've all been my imagination. I was disappointed in fakon, the fakon let me down.

Googling the fakon, I was promised a "delicious hearty flavor of smoked bacon with a crispy bite." But in reality I ate "very little flavor of smoked anything except for an out-of-the-microwaved-plate with a wafer-thin chunk of sadness."

Exactly five minutes and 30 seconds later, I was doubled-over in shooting pain from eating the fakon on an empty stomach. Strange, that food would be bad when taken without food, and still the fakon I had dreamt would be so tasty had been almost as nasty as the time I got food poisoning and ended up in the hospital for two days from a Smart Ones chicken alfredo pizza.

The saddest thing is that the fakon is not cheap, and so I will put it back in the freezer to try another time. Maybe after I've already eaten, the fakon could be a healthier dessert alternative.

Until then, I half expect some sort of gas pain, bloating and, perhaps, oily discharge could ensue. At least after this experience, those symptoms would be something to which I could look forward.

There was an article this last month in Wired about people who get paid to blog in a positive way about products. Since this blog is for free, baby, I'm here to give an honest look at the horribly disgusting:

Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper. Disgusting. Check.

Morningstar Farms "bacon." Disgusting. Check.

Lean Cuisine Asian-style Chicken Potstickers. Still tasty, however still only available at Wal-Mart. Now that's disgusting.

Nostalgia, part trois

Aaah, the Garbage Pail Kid, a 1980s staple that made me the envy of so many elementary school peers; and because I had the "cool mom," I had every single card in the whole collection.

To this day, I have preserved my old Garbage Pail Kids to the best of my ability-- I leave them in a shoebox hidden from daylight in our family storage unit located in some undisclosed place. I own two of the best cards available from the first series: Adam Bomb and Blasted Billy, both of which I acquired when I traded with a girl in my fifth grade class because she was too stupid to know they were in such high demand.

Fast forward to lunch today when Urban Princess noticed a new series of Garbage Pail Kids at the store. We each bought a pack, and as I delicately opened mine, I had a twinge of disappointment. Things just aren't what they used to be. I don't know when Topps took out that horrible-tasting, waxy gum that lost its flavor three minutes after touching saliva, but it just wasn't the same not having it there. It wasn't the same not brushing the gum powder off the card faces, they seemed too new, too shiny. Too glossy for politically incorrect cards that sport names like Dung Beetle Baily and Manuel Labor.

Though I did get a specially inserted and random Loco Motion card (a Garbage Pail that is one of those ribbed, illusioney things that look like they're moving when you hold them differently in the light), I still felt something was missing. My youth? The envy of kids in the class when I was allowed to own these cards and they were parentally banned? The fact I finally blew my own money on them?

I feel like I felt the day I realized that the special effects The Neverending Story actually really sucked.

You're Killing Me!

Unless you've spent the weekend inside a refrigerator box, you're probably aware that Lindsay Lohan will be spending a little time working in the LA County morgue to use up some of that nasty public service time she got sentenced with her drunk driving arrest. Upon learning this (from a crawler at the bottom of the screen when I was drowning my sorrows in a Girls Next Door marathon on E!) I actually audibly laughed, then wondered, "What will Lindsay do in the morgue? Seriously?"

I envisioned Lindsay putting makeup on the cadavers, accessorizing outfits for the newly deceased, maybe stopping to take a hit or two of formaldehyde; then I started obsessing, "What will Lindsay do in the morgue?" I can't imagine the work a morgue worker could create for an untrained child star with a propensity for drinks, drugs and fast driving. In fact, if I were a creepy morgue worker, I wouldn't want a Disney Channel princess messing up my dead people. 

After a Google search of morgue, I got scared, and quit reading about decomposition and autopsies.

Then I found it, I found the perfect job for Lindsay Lohan-- The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office (morgue) where Lindsay will do her time has a gift shop! A gift shop! What better place for Lindsay to work than in retail? It's like Kitson for valley girls no longer walking this mortal coil! Let LiLo explain the fashionable benefits of purchasing a "Women's Fitted Tee" (Features "L.A. County Coroner" and "Body Logo" on front chest area, imprinted in silver glitter) or model a yellow sports bag featuring the Coroner's logo like the little Gold's Gym rat that she was last summer while trying to get through rehab in Utah County...

As much as I can't wait to see blackmail-worthy pictures of Lindsay elbow-deep in corpse goop, I am now far more disturbed that any coroner's office would have a gift shop. And to all my friends, I know what I'm getting you for Christmas next year.

Direct Marketing?

It's that time of year where companies inundate us with their catalogs, with the hopes we'll spend our hard-earned money with them. I'm okay with getting the giant Victoria's Secret holiday panty catalog, because I'm sure I'll wear the cover's hot pink "naughty Santa" outfit everywhere I go from now until the end of the year. I'm even okay with the occasional Harry and David catalog since I did order Moose Crunch from them several years ago. But I draw the line when I get a catalog to something that just does not apply to me. Not. Even. Remotely.

I don't know how I end up on some of the mailing lists I'm on, but in this era of getting and staying "green," I wish some companies would just save their money. Here are just a few of the catalogs I've received in the last week:

The Catholic Company- I knew I shouldn't have ordered that statue of St. Joseph when my mom was trying to sell the house last Winter. We're not Catholic. We've never been Catholic. But my mom really needed something to help get the house sold and if something as simple as burying St. Joe upside-down in the backyard gives a little inspiration, I was willing to give it a shot. Now The Catholic Company won't leave me alone. Maybe that's the penance I must pay for not being a follower in the first place.

Plow and Hearth- Products for the home, garden and hearth, which sound very nice if you have a home, garden and/or hearth. I live in an apartment, I don't have a yard and my fireplace is encased in wood paneling, circa 1972.

Cabela's Fly Fishing Catalog- Last time I checked, I don't like hiking, I don't like camping and I certainly don't like fly fishing. Even the people for whom I might buy gifts that like hiking and camping are too busy drinking at the end of a trek to fly fish. I've never stepped inside Cabela's, and have heard their famed "mountain of dead things" within the store is a little creepy. 

The Alzheimer's Store- Complete with products to help promote independence and memory, along with helping out pesky incontinence, The Alzheimer's Store is the perfect place to order gifts that are new every time you look at them (presumably because you've forgotten you've received them in the first place?). For the life of me, I can not figure out why I would get this catalog in the mail.

Having worked in a past life at a direct marketing advertising agency, even I am schooled enough in the trade to know that you should research your mailing list. If the profiles do not fit what you're selling, then you lose money by marketing to them. The practice of marketing is not rocket science. This holiday season I have but one request for the many companies trying to make a buck: Save your money plus save a couple of trees in the process by sparing me unnecessary junk.