Lists

Get the gunk out

Day 2: Environmental Working Group – Americans are gradually waking up to the chemical bath that is their daily existence, and EWG is their greatest ally. EWG helps you find out about the nasty stuff in your moisturizers, toothpaste, deodarant, cleaning products, and food. And they’re starting to turn the tide, as even my father, a man whose foreign policy approach can best be described as “nuke them all”, has switched to a lichen-based deodorant rather than the pore-suffocating aluminum in mainstream brands.
They’ve led the way on toy recalls, Bisphenol A, and agricultural reform. Check out their cosmetics database and guide to saving money on organics.

Honorable allies: Wired’s “What’s Inside” section, Seventh Generation, the granddaddy of the clean green category (and still the only green brand, I think, that actually lists their ingredients on the back of the bottle).chemicals

What Subway Considers a Vegetarian Sub

  • 1 tomato slice
  • 1/2 slice cheese
  • 1 cucumber slice
  • shredded iceberg
  • 5 black olive slices
  • 2 pickle slices
  • 1 banana pepper

I’m not even vegetarian, but for a chain that obsessively promotes how healthy it is, you’d think they’d have more interesting vegetarian options than the ‘everything bagel’ approach.

Of course, this is the same company that is trying to get people to switch from potato chips to raisins.

25 Signs That You Have Grown Up

We stumbled across this while checking out Scribd at work today.  Haven’t decided yet whether Scribd is a cool online library or, as Tom put it, “finally, a way to publish a document on the Internet”, but regardless, a fun and startingly accurate list:

1. Your houseplants are alive, and you can’t smoke any of them.
2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.
3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
5. You hear your favorite song in an elevator.
6. You watch the Weather Channel.
7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of “hook up” and “break up”.
8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.
9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as “dressed up”.
10. You’re the one calling the police because those %&@# kids next door won’t turn down the stereo.
11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
12. You don’t know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.
13. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.
14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonald’s leftovers.
15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.
16. You take naps.
17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.
18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset, rather than settle, your stomach.
19. You go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.
20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer “pretty good shit”.
21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.
22. “I just can’t drink the way I used to” replaces “I’m never going to drink that much again”.
23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.
24. You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.
25. When you find out your friend is pregnant you congratulate them instead of asking, “Oh shit, what the hell happened?”

Bonus:
26: You read this entire list looking desperately for one sign that doesn’t apply to you and can’t find one to save your sorry old ass. Then you forward it to a bunch of old friends ’cause you know they’ll enjoy it too.

Attempts at Coining a Name for My Generation:

There’s the Greatest Generation, then the Baby Boomers, Generation X… And there’s my generation, which has been conveniently encapsulated into a cute little phrase by everyone trying to be the next Douglas Coupland.

Generation Y
Generation M (multi-task, media, or mobile)
Echo Boomers
-Millenials
Generation Next
-Net Generation
-Reagan Babies
-MTV Generation
-Millennials
-Echo Boomers
-iGeneration
-Nintendo Generation
-Generation 9/11 (Applebee’s America)

I like Generation M. Media, multi-tasking, mash-ups and mobile are pretty important identifying features of my generation. And Matt begins with ‘M’.

Ways to dry my hands, in order of preference

  1. Holiday hand towels (preferably after using scented soap)
  2. hand towels, nondenominational
  3. paper towels, recycled
  4. paper towels
  5. brown paper towels that smell when they’re wet and don’t really absorb anything
  6. on my jeans
  7. hand dryers (see #6)
  8. those tri-folded towels that you need like 4 of and you have to reach up to get while water goes down your arm

5 Things Your Dentist Doesn’t Mention While Selling You an Electric Toothbrush

5. He’s taking a big cut (although you could probably assume this)

4. The stretching your jaw must do to allow the brush access to your teeth is ache-inducing when you’re not lying back in a chair having someone else do it.

3. Without that previously-unappreciated spit-sucker, your saliva drools out your mouth the entire time you brush your teeth.

2. You’re not going to travel with it.

1. You will never, not once, use the “polishing”, “flossing”, or “tongue-scraping” head attachments

Spam Subject Lines in My Inbox

  • impale Westchester
  • Celebrity Baby Naked Ambition
  • He said she won’t even show him her ass.
  • Christmas are coming!

There are actually a number of tributes to the sentient / poetic nature of these randomized lines, such as the Spam Subject Line Museum.

Remember when spam actually tried to sell you something, and didn’t focus on just getting through your spam filter?

Cartoons inspired by spam subjects: Spamusement.

spamuse.gif

(She has a surprise in her pants!)