Feel Like Shit or Shit Your Pants or Both! Why Choose?

I think it’s time to talk frankly about Wynonna’s “Alli” ads.  Wynonna is fucked up.  I don’t say that having some great insider knowledge, because I don’t.  I say that as someone who tries to pay as little attention to her as I can and even I can tell you all about her contentious relationship with her mom, her problems with men, finding out her husband was a child rapist, and her laudible efforts to reimagine herself as someone who is not fucked up every couple of years.

But let’s be frank.  She’s fucked up.

She’s not fucked up because she’s fat.  Her life doesn’t suck because she’s fat. She’s been fucked up for a long, long time.   And taking a pill that carries as its most common side effect making you shit yourself might make her less fat, but it isn’t going to make her less fucked up.

I say this because I just want to point out how self-loathing and fucked up it is to take a pill that, if you eat wrong, will make you shit yourself, as if somehow shitting yourself is less disgusting than being fat.  And yet, the premise of Wynonna’s ad campaign seems to be “Join me on this journey, in which we take this pill (that might make us shit ourselves) that will help us loose weight which will lead to us being less fucked up and more (emotionally) healthy.”

Yes, I swear, every ad I’ve seen with Wynonna in it for Alli sounds more like an ad for Cymbalta.

And I just want us all to be clear on what they’re doing–selling weight-loss as a key to emotional health–and who they’re using as the spokesperson to aid in that–Wynonna.

Shoot.  It’ll probably work.  But before it does, there should be just one moment where we all sit back and laugh long and hard at the audacity of that.

My Favorite Thing

The Butcher made me watch the whole episode last night, but this is the best part, I think.

For Those of You Who Did Get the OA’s 10th Anniversary Edition…

Answer me this.  Is it just me or does Vic Chestnut’s “Very Friendly Lighthouses” sound like Juice Newton to anyone else?

Witches in Cornwall

The kind of ongoing debate in European-religion-based pagan circles goes something like this “We are a part of a long, unbroken chain stretching back to pre-Christian times, the latest in a line of persecuted people who practice the old ways.  We are Witches like they were Witches”  “But Gerald Gardner made your religion up fifty years ago.”  “That is true, but still, we are a part of a long, unbroken line.”  “That doesn’t even make any sense.”  “Plus, it’s bullshit to equate ‘witch’ with ‘Wiccan’.”  “Okay, well, we are trying to accurately reconstruct the beliefs and rituals of our ancestors, so can we say ‘broken line’?”  “Thirty million women killed in the Burning Times!”  “Oh god, no they weren’t.”  “Well, I am from a long line of witches but we’re all oathbound and secret so I can’t tell you anything about it.”  “I need a drink.”

And so on.

But there comes a point on most folks’ spiritual journeys when they come to accept that there is no long, unbroken line of belief from pre-Christian times through now.  Or even an unbroken line of practice.

And then you read stuff like this and are reminded again that we really often don’t know shit about shit.  It’s a little story about a woman who finds a ritual spot in her yard that has been used for spell-casting on and off for, oh, 8,500 years, with documented activity as recent as the 1950s.

We Should All Be So Lucky as to Be So Well-Regarded After We’re Dead

Courtesy of The 9513 (who I assumed were all crusty 50 year olds, but I hear through the grapevine are actually all child-prodigy bloggers) we learn:

A book released at the beginning of December, Pure Country: The Leon Kagarise Archives: 1961-1971, showcases rare photographs of classic country and bluegrass artists on the small backwoods stages of rural America’s outdoor music parks. It’s a collection that historian Charles Wolfe considered one of the richest discoveries in the history of American music.

And I was all “Charles Wolfe?!”

But sure as shooting, they’re using Wolfe’s good opinion of the project as a selling point.

In Which Our Hero Raises an Eyebrow

Me, yesterday.

Pith, today.

Two things.  One, if you got the idea from me, give me credit.  Two, if you didn’t get the idea from me, doesn’t this whole thing just prove you ought to be paying more attention to me?

Ha.

Or three… Maybe I’m psychic.  Ooo.  Spooky!

My Lakefront Property

Well, the neverending rain has made it abundantly clear that I have to reslope part of my front yard, and probably sooner rather than later.  I don’t know how soon, but I know you don’t want water pooling up by the house and right now, the only thing standing between me and the small pond are some raised flowerbeds.