Wal-Mart Canada offers super-extra-strength feminine products

Wal-Mart Canada's website is offering a unique new feminine hygiene product. I really don't think they are singling out Canadians - this product should be available in Chicago as well to make the public transport experience a little better.

TD Canada Trust - a/k/a Tittybank

I spent the weekend in Toronto. I have lots more to write about it but too tired now. This (or rather, these) had to see the light of day.

My friend banks at TD Canada Trust. After I saw their marketing material - they should change their name to Tittybank.

So we're standing in front of a teller and she's doing the transaction - and this marketing piece literally POPPED out at me. For shit's sake you can see the nipples!

I said to my friend, "Holy shit look at this, what bad taste! You know that these float in the hot tub or someone got bored with photoshop or something."

"I think its photoshop," he said.

"Mmmmm - I'm not so sure... whoever photoshopped it would have had to have left such definite nipples."

She asked if I was American. I admitted it ;) which I don't often do abroad. She said, I'm glad you think its gross - here, take the whole lot back to the states and get 'em out of my sight.

My friend was quite shocked when I giggled and put the whole STACK (hahah) 23 of them in my pocket. 21 made it back to Phoenix because he asked for two of 'em when we walked out of the bank.

Remember, you can click on the picture to make it (cough) larger.

An "orientale" in Texas - not wasting any time

For those of you who aren't familiar, Uruguayans sometimes refer to themselves as "orientales."

A good friend of mine from UY is in Texas since yesterday morning and has already gotten laid twice. He confirms that yes, so far, everything IS big in Texas.

Impressions of Uruguay

Why on earth am I writing about Uruguay? For right now I will leave that out. Not important. :-)

But anyway... The country is less TITS-up than it was.

See?

I think 50% off means you only get one.

But seriously, it's a women's clothing store. They just call it TITS because its got shock value in English and is really just a sound in Spanish. They would pronounce it TEETS.

Levity

Ok, deal. I'm having a shitty week so you're all gonna suffer with me.

Virtwual Weality gone Vewy, Vewy Wong

Not safe for work, really... I don't advocate the activities she speaks of. This is the logical result of spending an entire afternoon editing a flash template... some webvertising just SCREAMED "misuse me" so out came my DV-Cam and the MacBook... I wanted to see if/how much the webvertisers were editing her spoken words.

The result? Very little filtering, if any. This sick artistic expression (unfortunately not funded by the National Arts Foundation - any grant writers out there want to lend a hand?) was the result of spending the day generating some very plane-jane commercial pablum.

YES, there was a clip using the word "orange" but it landed on the virtual cutting room floor.

"Put on your party hats!"

OMFG. California is advertising in Arizona to get snow skiing tourists. The slogan is, if you were snow, where yould you want to fall?

But there's a hidden message in the commercial. It's not even necessary to play it backwards. A woman says "Put on your party hats!"

In Chicago "she got her party hats on," is the way to say that a woman is visibly cold and you can see it through her shirt.

more Chicago craziness

So this woman we're sharing the elevator is talking with her friends and she says quite bluntly, "Tomorrow I'm going all the way. Both ways."

Somehow my friend and I found that quite funny and we burst out laughing.

Oh, and the definition of Web 2.0 has now changed. Stay tuned.

the vaunted Q phone and its reputation for low battery life

So this afternoon I get an email from a friend in Florida apologizing to several people that her Q phone went nuts and possibly made a bunch of calls before going totally dead.

I know its like her 4th Q phone, almost everyone I know who has one needs to take the charger with them and be aware of where the outlets are in the places they frequent during the day.

The Q is really the perfect landline replacement in that regard because its tethered all the time. You get the portability of the cellular but the landline experience of a wire.

Anyway I jokingly emailed her back saying I could hear the heavy breathing of the energizer bunny as it coughed its last gasp.

My cellphone lit up with a number I'd not seen before in that same area code where she lives. "Did you really get a heavy breathing call?"

"No, it was a joke about your shitty Q phone."

"Oh I was panicking when I saw that - because I put the Q in my bra when I went for a 3 mile bike ride and you very easily could have heard that."

Sweat killed it evidently...

She went on "A few minutes ago it was like the aliens, they took it over and they made a bunch of calls."

I pointed out that "they" could have been what the phone was in between :)

taking a stand against rude orange people

In my last job we had an insufferable arrogant orange person to contend with and it looks like I've got another one. I really think the orange dye soaks into their skin and makes 'em unstable. We're in Arizona... why in the fuck can they not just sit their ass out in the bloody buggery sun and then moisturize afterwards?!

This is going on my car as soon as I get it.

the same 9 year old on beavers

After lunch and the conversation about the 9 year old with a friend with benefits - read the post to get up to speed, eh?

We were reminiscing about Web 2.0 - which I will now idenfity as IT Toolbox. The orange dude is their pompous CEO who's such a prince that when you offer him some bit of advice that is VERY related to a question he's asking you - his response will be a clipped "That's not what I asked you."

He'll also want his horsey-looking girlfriend's macbook looked at "at once" but then throw you under the bus when your boss asks him if the work had been requested during business hours. The specific request was verbatim "call her right away." However, when my boss asked him about the repair being done he changed his tune and said "Well of course it was to done outside business hours?" That tacky spray on tan must soak into your head and alter your memory or something....

But I digress... One of my blog posts was about our former admin assistant at the toolbox. She did an awesome job putting up with the pompous ass she worked for and outside of the office some called her Larry Beaver. (See also a recent post called "Busy Little Beavers" in a different context, that got brought up too in vague earshot of Madeline)

Madeline caught the word Beaver but didn't understand the connotation. She announced that this morning during the triathlon in Tempe town lake that she'd seen beavers in the water. Dara's fiancee started laughing first and said, "Yeah, they were all over the place."

I think I laughed for the next two to five minutes. It was great.

9 years old and has a friend with benefits

I was hanging with my friend Dara and her daughter Madeline today for lunch. Madeline is nine and she has some very interesting 9-year-old ideas about life. For example, puberty is a virus you should avoid catching at all costs because it will give you a fever. And she recently came home from time spent at her dad's house having followed a recommendation from her cello instructor to have a pad in between the instrument and her shirt.

The poor dear, her step-mom improvised with a maxi-pad. What's more she sent the poor child home with it stuck to her shirt! But I digress.

So Dara was trying to get a rise out of her daughter about a boys name written on a notebook with hearts around it. Dara wanted to know if he was Madeline's boyfriend.

Madeline vehemently denied having a boyfriend.

Those of you who know me know that I like to throw the occasional cinder block in the proverbial koi pond.

So I asked the Madeline this: if he wasn't a boyfriend, was he therefore a friend with benefits? I kept a poker face and watched Dara's reaction as she swallowed HARD to keep from bursting out laughing. I was awaiting the response. Madeline looked pensive and said "friend with benefits."

She clearly had no idea precisely what I meant.

Dara was maintaining good self control over either bursting out laughing or I don't know what, but her voice wavered a bit and said, "Well, Madeline, what kind of benefits do you get from (name)?"

And Madeline answered, "Oh, he carries my books, holds the door, stuff like that."

GREAT RELIEF crossed Dara's face and she put her head in her hands to giggle a second before moving on with lunch.

Busy little beavers...

Once there was a time when kids would write "wash me" on the dirt of a car window. Today in Tempe, AZ that time has passed - at least for one cunning little runt (or was that running little... well you'll see)

This little tyke (we'll assume Jordan is a boy and thus she's not a dyke) wrote in the dirt:
Hi Jordan. I'm 14 & wet. I am on birth control. U can blow it in me.

The latter part is hard to read due to my quick photography in bright sunlight, I couldn't see what was on the camera screen real well.

They grow up so fast... Precocious little bastards.

Will they use a circular antenna so the wind blows through it?

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin

K-WHAT? Unbuilt Maui TV station lands questionable call letters
byline: Erika Engle

THE call letters KUNT have landed at a yet-unbuilt low-power digital television station in Wailuku, Maui.
Alarmingly similar to a word the dictionary says is obscene, the call letters were among a 15-page list of new call letters issued by the Federal Communications Commission and released this week.

The same station owner also received KWTF for a station in Arizona.

From Skokie, Ill., comes a sincere apology "to anyone that was offended," said Kevin Bae, vice president of KM Communications Inc., who requested and received KUNT and KWTF. It is "extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately."

He thanked your columnist for bringing the matter to his attention and pledged to, "make sure I don't fall asleep on the job when selecting call signs again."

One might understand how Bae's eyes could glaze over during selection, as KM has some 80 sets of call letters and alpha-numeric callsigns for TV and radio stations in several states.

No KM station is yet on the air in Hawaii but its mainland TV stations carry programming from America One Network, My Network TV and the CW.

The call letter snafu was a source of great mirth for Bae's attorney.

"I can't tell you how long he laughed at me when he learned of my gaffe," Bae said.

Broadcasters for generations have joked among themselves about call letters resembling off-color words or acronyms knowing the FCC would never approve their assignment -- but that was before computerization.

KCUF-FM near Aspen, Colo. got its F-word-in-reverse call letters in August of 2005 and has been on the air since December, "Keeping Colorado Uniquely Free," its Web site says. Uh, yeah.

Station officials could not be reached, but the automated pop-music slinger has been written about twice in the Aspen Daily News. The paper said radio regulators "blessed the call letters."

However, assignment of call letters actually is an automated process, according to Mary Diamond of the FCC's Office of Media Relations. Broadcasters use the FCC Web site to request and receive call letters with no oversight from Beavis, his partner, or any FCC regulator.

Dude, seriously. Even after years of concerns over broadcast indecency and the debate about fines for fleeting profanities that hit the air.

The Code of Federal Regulations allows applicants to request call letters of their choice as long as the combination is available. Further, "objections to the assignment of requested call signs will not be entertained at the FCC," it states.

Want some *ssy?

No, I'm not writing about my dog. (She understands those words as "Let's go outside.")

It seems that the co-chairman of Senator John McCain's Florida campaign was arrested for soliciting a sex act.

Yes, Florida state Representative Bob Allen is facing charges for solicitation of prostitution - in a Titusville, FL city park that "...he helped build." Ergo, he would know where to look then, right? This statement probably won't be a feature of his legal defense.

According to CNN, he offered an undercover officer $20 for an unspecified act. Now at U.S. prices the most likely "act" was a blowjob and probably copping a feel - the price is a little low for any other services.

This is an area where undocumented Mexican immigrants almost definitely have not put downward pressure on wages, as they tend to be very Catholic.

There's an AP photo of Rep. Allen leaving the Brevard County Jail after his arrest. His heavy five o' clock shadow likely rules out cunnilingus as the unspecified act - you'd think that would raise the price beyond $20.00 because with that sandpaper it'd put her out of commission for an evening. And you can definitely see why he'd be paying for it. Not great to look at, this fellow.

He stated that "This is an ugly and unpleasant situation that has been thrust upon me..." - and to think a few hours before his mental picture had included him doing the thrusting.

The McCain campaign has not commented. They'd issued a press release in March saying, "Allen will serve as a House co-chair for Sen. McCain's campaign." Perhaps its a chair that includes a face to sit on?

In Uruguay prostitution is legal (but medically regulated - they've just not found a practical way to tax it) and this would be a non-scandal because the arrest just never would have happened. Every day I saw the same prostitute as I turned off of the dirt road onto the highway and we would exchange friendly waves. Of course if she was negotiating an important business deal with a (usually) Brazilian truck driver I wouldn't wave.

That twenty bucks would have gone a lot further there.

Maybe his legal defense could be that he was creating a job?