Book Review

If I were to write a book review on the craptastic "Fifty Shades of Grey", this would be it.

Please, pop over and check this out.  Save yourself the time and aggravation of actually reading this drivel.

Or go watch Ellen read from it.

Both of these are better than the book.

While I am on a roll (with the rants)

Dear Private Practice,

I was so excited when you were about to premiere!  Imagine!  A show about a wellness clinic that included a fertility doctor, a therapist, a midwife and an alternative medicine doctor who practiced Chinese healing and accupuncture.  What a refreshing change of pace from all the other cookie cutter shows about, well, about cutting, every chance they got.

But within the first couple of episodes I saw that you were not going to be all that you could.  And I was forced to write letters to ABC complaining about how that self-absorbed pain in the ass character of Addison Montgomery actually said the words "Midwifery?  Is that even a word?"  She belittled poor Dell, the midwife apprentice on that show and acted so superior that it made me sad.  And sick too.  But mostly, sad.

There's poor Dell on the right.  He got no respect.  Only from Naomi, who should be the second person from the left, only that person must have been replaced because that's not Naomi.  Front and center stands Addison Montgomery, and to her left is Tim Daly who we can all tell from the casual footwear is the "alternative" medicine dude.

And what happened?  Did things shape up in the mutual respect department?

Nope, not even a little bit.

You killed off Dell.

That's not exactly the way I thought you might handle the differences between care modalities.  So of course, the highly technical, interventive way has to be superior over the natural way of giving birth.

Then the last season began with Tim Daly's character leaving his herbs, his accupuncture needles, his calmer, less-invasive way of treating patients behind and all the sudden he is a

SURGEON????


wtf?

The births on this show are some of the least realistic births on television.

But last week?  Last week just took the cake.  I have resigned myself to the fact that you and I will never agree or see eye to eye on birth.

When the Addison character referred to post-partum depression or post-partum psychosis as simply "post-partum", saying something to the effect "many women experience post-partum", that was it for me.

Really?  Post-partum?  Isn't post-partum the word used to describe the period immediately following childbirth?  To demean that period in a woman's life and making it the equivalent to a psychological diagnosis is not only incorrect but inflammatory.

Shame, shame, shame on you.

I am done with you.  I am saying my good-byes now.

And good riddance.

Lockout Schlockout

Dear NBA,

We, your adoring and ardent fans, beseech you to get your shit together.  Enough is enough.  Everyone knows it's always the fault of the other party when 2 sides can't come together in peace, love, and harmony.

But, who is really paying the price for this dick-measuring debacle?  While you are waiting for the other side to flinch, blink and say Uncle, who is losing out?  Hmmm?

Would it be us, the fans?

Why yes, it would!

And here's a little heads up for you:

If you keep this shit up you are going to LOSE fans!  Left and right, people will quit caring.  


Right now, do I know where any of my beloved Spurs are?  Nope.
Do I care?  Just a little.  And a little less than I cared last week.  And less than the week before.

So, as a mom I have this to say, "Get back to work.  Get back to doing what you signed up to do. Quit being greedy bastards.  And if there are less asses in the seats for your games when you do start up again, that is the price you will have to pay.  And there will be major sucking up you will have to do to help your fan base remember why they liked you in the first damn place.  I will say this one more time, Get. back. to. work.  Enough is enough, already."

Most sincerely,

Lisa Pie who finds herself less and less of a fan as time goes by

T.V. and other stuff

It's the new fall T.V. season and the finales of all the summer shows.  Thank the good Lord that Big Brother is over!  I don't even care that the loud obnoxious Rachel won.  She was a better choice than the other two lame-os.

Here is my take on what is going on right now:

Biggest Loser - Two new trainers and Bob have teams divided by age.  The young group chose the new guy that looks like a cross between Taye Diggs (yum) and the Old Spice dude (look at your man, now look at me).  I don't know if I could work out and stay focused while looking at him.  The middle (40-ish) group won the first challenge and got Bob.  The old farts who practically strolled and sauntered instead of running, jogging, or even trying got stuck with Anna Kournikova. (and I know I just mangled spelling her name, but whatever. I will look up the correct spelling later)

I love Bob.  But I have to say I miss Jillian yelling at everyone and being all up in their faces.  She gets the job done.  I haven't picked out a favorite contestant yet.  There's one young guy named Ramon that I like a lot and some other guy that if I am not looking at the screen and just listening, he sounds just like John Goodman.  The older team lost the first weigh-in and it was between 2 of the ladies as to who was going home.  Now it was easy to see that the one lady with the bad knees who only lost 4 FREAKING POUNDS was going to be chosen because other people were losing 27 - 32 pounds and she only lost 4 FREAKING POUNDS!  But then this other whiney lady stepped in and started berating her and just bitched her up one side and down the other for crying and trying to garner support with emotions.

You don't need much more information to guess who got sent packing.  They would rather keep Ol' Weak Knees around for another week than some Whiney-Ass Mean Bitch.  It was another case of "don't let the door knob hit ya!"

Survivor - I am so happy Survivor is back!  I kinda wish we could have Boston Rob on every season.  He really makes for great television.  But we can't.  So this season we have Ozzie back!!  Yay!  I love that Ozzie.  For those of you who don't watch Survivor and haven't yet enjoyed Ozzie, check this out.

They also brought back that moron, Coach the Dragonslayer.  This guy is such a tool it makes my head hurt to even think about him.

So they put the returning Ozzie and Coach each on the two different teams.  And guess who Coach's new best little running buddy is?  Evil Russell's nephew!  And o.m.g.!!!  What a total d-bag the nephew is!

Get this, he is pissed at this chick Micaela for being really well-built and strong and running around in almost nothing (like every other person on this island) and "tempting" him.  And he is married and doesn't need her evil distractions around.  So he is trying to rally the troops to get her voted out.  What an asshole.  He is clearly just a little troll like his uncle.

No real clear favorites here yet either.  We shall see as the personalities develop and come shining through.

This season True Blood has just about Jumped the Shark.  Every episode we watch and just say "Really?  That's where they want to go with this?"

First season was vampires.  Then shape-shifter Sam.  Then werewolves. Then whatever it was that MaryAnn was. And now we have were-panthers, all sorts of witchcraft, and faeries.  It's getting to be just a little much to keep up with.

And they totally messed with Erik's character.  This season's Erik is such a pussy.  Last season's Erik would kick this season's Erik's ass.

Bill (who I never liked) is just an ass. Sooki is an idiot.  Jason is dumber than a box of hair.  There is some wonderful comic relief with that Bellfleur clan.

Arlene the red-headed waitress was getting on to her rotten kids at the diner.  They were all dressed up for Halloween and she told them "Now y'all better straighten up or I am going to make you go trick or treat at the trailer park!  Do you WANT to get empty Coors cans and food stamps?"

Ha!  Now THAT was hilarious!

The Big C - is some of the best writing and acting on t.v. Laura Linney, Oliver Platt and company deserve big kudos for this show.  It is really wonderful.

Sons of Anarchy - Holy Moly!  This season started out with a bang.  A whole lot of bangs, actually.  All the boys are out of prison and ready to get back to business.  But wait!  There's a new sheriff in town.  And he's black!  And he hates them!  And he is secretly working with the FBI!  And he didn't let them even drive through town without letting them know he is in charge.  Ooooh.  This is a great show.

Sunny's back!!!  Yes indeedy, It's Always Sunny in Philly is back!  This is such a great show.  I can't say enough good things about it.  A little tidbit I came across in an article on home birth is that Dee, played by Kaitlin Olson is married to Rob McElhenney (who plays Mac on the show) in real life, and they did indeed have a baby this year.  At home, all safe and sound with no complications.  Hooray for home birth!  Hooray for Dee and Mac being married in real life!

Oooh!  Here is what prompted this particular post to be about t.v. There is a new show coming out (no release date yet) called Celebrity Wife Swap. Like the regular Wife Swap wasn't shitty enough.  You will NEVER in a million years guess who are the first two "Celebrities" who are swapping wives!!!

Ted I-am-not-gay Haggard and Gary Nutjob Busey

Can you even believe that?  I will let you know as soon as I see that this trainwreck is airing.


And in other news:

I heard back from Con-Agra who owns the parent company who owns Ro-Tel.  Con-Agra sees nothing wrong with BPA leaching into our food and is continuing in their practice to do this.  They are now going to do it without my support.

I looked online at the Hatch products website and found an actual phone number to call and speak with an actual person!  (gasp)  Here's how that went:

Me: dialing, listening to the ring

Them:  Hatch  (that was it.  Not, hello you have reached Hatch products, what can we do for you?)

Me: yes, I would like to not necessarily complain, but voice a consumer opionion.

Them:  Okay.

Me: Who would I need to speak with?

Them: Oh, you can tell me and I will relay the information.

Me:  Okay.  Here's the deal.  I love your products, especially the Green Chile Enchilada Sauce, but I am learning more and more about the BPA coating inside the cans and I won't be buying your products any more until that changes.

Them:  Oh.  I don't really know anything about that.  But I will tell someone about it.

A few more minutes of this same thing and I hung up.  What you will notice is:

A. It was really refreshing to have a phone number listed on the website to speak to real people.
B. That a real live person picked up the phone and didn't appear to be outsourced to Bangladesh.
C. That she NEVER ONCE asked me for my name, number, address or any follow-up information.
D. She seemed really unprepared to do this job.

That's it for today.  Enjoy your Thursday and one last thing, I am still looking for a home for the teensy little Mama Kitty.  She gets her tubes tied on Sunday morning and all her shots and will be ready to go to a loving home.

I have tried so many names out on her and none of them stick.  I think maybe it is because I know she isn't my cat and my name for her isn't supposed to really be her name.  The other cats have learned to peacefully co-exist with her, but they aren't warming up to her.  She really has no one to play with or snuggle with.  It makes me sad for her.

Doing the Can Can

Recently I made a King Ranch Chicken Casserole which I love, but haven't made in a very long time. Partially due to the fact that it requires 5,233,739 cans to open.

Have I ever told you how much I hate a recipe that is really just "open 10 cans out of your pantry and mix together" type recipes?  This is why I hate, loathe, and despise that horrid Sandra Lee "Semi Homemade" travesty of a cooking show.  That is NOT a cooking show!!  That is a "let's justify being lazy" show.

Anyhoo, I was making King Ranch Chicken and opening up the  5,233,739 cans.  And what did I spy inside these cans?

Some of them have that crappy BPA plastic coating and some do not.  Those companies that do are going to be getting letters from me complaining, and those that do NOT will be getting Attaboy letters from me.

Do y'all know about the BPA stuff?  It stands for Bisphenol A, a chemical which can mimic human estrogen and which is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women.  You know how over the last 15 years or so people have been blaming the meat and dairy industries for all the hormones causing 9 year old girls to start puberty?  Well, the canned food people need to shoulder their part of the blame on this one.


What I am saying is this BPA is bad news.  We don't need it.


Let me show you my cans.

There are all sorts of brands of cans I used there, but the two that stand out as being bad in that they are lined with the dreaded BPA are two of my favorite canned products.


Ro-Tel tomatoes & chiles and also Hatch brand Green Chile Enchilada Sauce.


It is a sad day when I have to tell these two companies that if they don't change their process of adding white plastic lining to the inside of their cans, I can't buy from them again.  But there it is.


Does anyone know and can anyone effectively explain to me why on earth anyone thought we needed this?  Why do we need to take perfectly good metal cans and paint carcinogenic cancer on the inside of them?  Do my tomatoes care if they are in white or shiney silver metal?  Does my body care if my tomatoes come with extra carcinogens for free?  Why yes, it does!


I will let you know if and when I hear back from Ro-Tel and Hatch.  In the meantime, check your cans.  Do you use many canned products?  If so, how many of them have the BPA lining?  Do you care?  Do you care enough to write companies and demand change?  Or do you care enough to find an alternative that is packaged in a safer manner?

List of Six

I just got an email that talked about the List of Six.  I am over 50 flipping years old and am just now being told about this! What gives?  Why am I always out of the loop?

Apparently there is a List of Six things that you are allowed to be as snobby about as you want to be.  But only six.  After that you are just being a snob and no one wants to put up with your triflin' ass.

This article gave examples of the perfect cup of coffee, hubcaps, head-turning boots, whatever floats YOUR boat.  You are allowed six items to be that particular about and the whole world will be with you and support this.

So of course I had to start thinking about what my perfect List of Six might be.  And as they love to say on DWTS, "here in no particular order" is my list.

1. Vosges Chocolate Bars

Have you tried these?  Oh. My. Freaking. Goodness.  The absolute BEST chocolate bars made.

The very first one I ever tried is the Red Fire Bar.

It's like letting all the best things about Mexico melt on your tongue at the same time.  Deep chocolate, vanilla, a little cinnamon, and then different types of dried chiles that wake up the back of your throat. Lordy, lordy, I don't even know what to tell you about this one.  It is still my favorite, even after trying so many others.

My second favorite bar from Vosges is the Mo's Bacon Bar.  Chocolate, applewood bacon and alderwood smoked salt all combine to make the perfect taste experience ever.

Until . . . . .  My sister bought me a box of Vosges Mo's Bacon Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix!

I know, right!!!

Some warm pure maple syrup on top of those babies and you will want to sit right up and slap your mama.  It's like a bit of heaven on a fork.

So yeah, I am gonna be a snob about the Vosges chocolate.  Check out their website to see all the outstanding flavor combinations and giftie stuff they have.

2. This one is going to be completely different, but I am going to be a pushy advocate here.  I have become extremely selective about how things are packaged, where they come from and how those companies choose to treat their employees and Mother Earth.  So if I have a choice of a product that is inexpensive but bad environmentally produced or an alternative that is much more sustainably produced and more expensive I am going to support the sustainable one.  Less often due to the cost, but enough so that they know to keep doing what they are doing.

Case in point; I was looking for some bay scallops for a recipe the other day.  Bay scallops are the cute smaller ones about the size of mini marshmallows, not the big ones you want to wrap with bacon.  The store I was at had 2 scallops, the big ones and the little ones.  I needed the smaller ones for my recipe (which I need to share with you) but on the sign in the scallop bin in the fine print it said 2 things that got me. 1. Farm Raised and 2. Product of China.  Ewww and Ewwwww.  There was so much wrong with that product there was no way in hell I was going to buy it.

If you don't believe me just go google factory farming of fish and seafood and see what you think.  Then think about doing that in China.  They are willing to put melamine in the baby formula, put almost nothing in their cheaper drugs so essentially you are wasting your money and NOT getting well by taking them, and to top it all off these scallops then have to be shipped all the way across the world to get here.  That sounds safe and appetizing, doesn't it?

By the by these farm-raised Chinese bay scallops were going for 5.99 per lb.

The other scallops that I ended up buying claimed to be wild-caught from the U.S.A.  They were 15.99 per lb.

I consider the extra $20. I paid for those 2 lbs. of scallops a bargain.  And if it meant that I couldn't afford the difference, then we would have had beans and rice instead.  Be selective and never settle for an inferior product.  I promise you won't be happy with it anyway.

So that is my number 2.

3. My Teva sandals.

I used to be a shoe-holic.  I had so many pairs of shoes it was crazy!  Like more than 100 crazy.  That's how crazy I was about shoes.  Love the shoes!  I still love shoes.

But if I look at my life on a day-to-day basis and what I do and where I go and what I wear to these things, I see a pattern of wearing the same 7 or so pairs of shoes on a more consistent basis and the others less often.

And I said to myself the other day, "Self, if you could only have one pair of shoes for the rest of your days, which ones would they be?"

My Teva sandals.  Hands down. Number one choice, no debate.  Love the Tevas!  Other than dressing up, there is nothing you can't do in these shoes.  Nothing.

4. Giant screen t.v., cable and dvr.

Oh please!  I know it makes me look like a wiener that watches too much mind-numbing t.v.  But have you met me?  I can't imagine any person that loves their t.v. as much as I do.  And t.v. combined with a great cable package with a dvr?  Well, you have just hit the motherlode!!

I can think of many, many things I would, and do, give up to keep that t.v., cable, dvr combo going.

5. Customer Service.

I am fanatical about great customer service.  If you as a company don't care enough to put your best people in the front lines dealing with your customers, you don't deserve to have my money end up in your profits.  That's it.

Treat me with respect, consideration and above all, do what you say you will do.  Have some integrity, for heaven's sake!  And I will be a loyal customer forever.  But you fuck me over and treat me badly (speaking directly to YOU dickweeds at Home Depot) and that's it.  We are done.  I will never, never darken your door, I will never drop another penny into your coffers and I WILL tell every single person I ever come in contact with about your shoddy excuse for customer service.

Oh hell, now I have gone and gotten on my high horse about the jackwagons at Home Depot again.

I treat my clients with the respect that I expect to be shown and can't imagine why it should ever be otherwise.  And this is why I am happy with T-Mobile.  They are always, and I mean ALWAYS, great to deal with.

Yay T-Mobile!!  (boo, hiss on the Home Depot)

6. My Borsa Bella Bag.

I have shown you my Borsa Bella bag before.  (Good Lord, that was alliterative!!)

This is the fabric I chose.  It's called Kleo Pink.  Isn't it gorgeous?  I have the larger Kindle DX and so I have the larger eReader bag to house it.  In the front zipper pocket I have room for the headphones, the little reading light, the charging cord and any other little things I need to have with my Kindle.

If you have an electronic device of any kind , an iPad, an eReader, a laptop, whatever it is, if you want to carry it around with you safely and in style you should have a custom-made Borsa Bella Bag.   I truly love my Borsa Bella bag.  Enough so that I called Melissa and had her custom make a particular bag with a certain fabric and do custom monogram on it for my mama for her birthday.

So go check out Borsa Bella Bags and tell Melissa I sent you.  She had a deal on facebook for a while that if you liked her page she would give you a code for a discount.  Check it out and see if it is still running.

Okay, that's my List of Six for today.  I am sure if I made it again next week it might be different.  Maybe not.  But it's a woman's perogative to change her mind.  Just ask Bobby Brown!

Please do share your List of Six here, I would love to see them.

HUGE Rant coming here! Prepare yourselves!

Gird your loins!  or whatever it is that you do to prepare yourself for a really big rant and some really bad news!

I was reading the news on the internet this morning as I am wont to do.  And what did I spy?  An article about a new Monopoly game!  That's what!  OMG!  Guess who loves herself some Monopoly games?  I have more than I can count on one hand, but not more than I can count on two hands, cause that would just be weird and hoarder-ish, wouldn't it?

Or would it?

Anyhoo, back to said article which you can read Here 

Take a look at this horrific thing:

(pssst, did you notice that I figured out how to put a pic up in my blog again??)  : )  Soo happy!!

Here is what they did:  

1. They took the guts out of the game.

2. They took the money out of the game.

3.  They made it ROUND.

4.  They took away the houses and hotels.

5. They took away the cute little metal tokens!!!  

6. They put shitty plastic tabs in place of the metal tokens!

7. There is no way to do side-deals, no way to put income tax, etc in free parking.

8. There is no way to learn to count out money.

9. Basically, they took the game out of the game.  

Grrrr.  Rat bastards.  I am so ticked off right now that I am highly pissed off!  WTF is the point of the game now?  Nothing to hold, nothing to count, it doesn't even seem like a game at all!

I have already sent a scathing email to the rat bastards at Hasbro.  Shame on them.  Imagine coming up with a new game idea in the idea meeting that is basically "Here is a new twist on an old game about buying and selling property; there will be no money to handle, there will be no cute little race cars or slow little irons, no way to negotiate, and let's just squeeeeeeze all the fun right on out of this classic game".  How the hell did this idea make it out of the idea room?  Were they all high?  Were they all "bored"  (get it? BOARD games???)  All I know, is they are all RAT BASTARDS!

And not only will I not buy this travesty piece of crap, I will boycott all of their games if they don't shape up.  Shape up back to a square board game, not a round one.

Update, my ass.  Hhhmmmmppphh.