Keeping It Real, Again

I might as well get this out there right away:  I have been working HARD this past week to resurrect and update this site and the motivation for that has a whole lot to do with Facebook.

Or, more specifically, my intense disdain for Facebook.

Yeah, Okay.

Here are some things from this week that made Kissy Pissy again:

Schmoogaly Woogaly Overload. 
I don't know what the hell is going on but suddenly everyone is on some kind of cutesy, saccharine-ish bandwagon.
Example:  on Facebook, some of my 'friends' are constantly typing messages to each other like this:

I love you!
No, I love you!
Nope, I said it first - I LOVE YOU!

Nice, if it's once in awhile, but I read this kind of thing several times a day since I joined Facebook a year ago and I'm getting seriously creeped out by it.
You're saying..."but Kissy, love is wonderful!  Why would people professing their love for each other bother you so?  Are you some kind of hater?"

Maybe it's because I run with a different kind of crowd and we just don't sit around talking to each other like that (unless alcohol is involved)...

I love you, man.

But, whatever...all I know is that I'm not getting the warm fuzzies when I have to read the love messages these middle-aged people are sending back and forth to each other 6+ times a day.
Get a room!
Or ease up on the meds.
I think what really bugs me about this is that I LOVE YOU - the three greatest and most powerful words ever - becomes ordinary when it's said or read incessantly.   It becomes tedious, gratuitous, trite, cliche' and even worse...cheap.

Don't toss this around too carelessly.

Being Told That A 16-Year-Old Girl Traversing The World Alone On Her Sailboat Is Some Kind Of Trailblazing, Rite-Of-Passage Thing. 
Yeah, no...it's just a stupid thing.  I don't care how mature, able-bodied, smart, savvy or otherwise other-worldly this girl is...she's 16.  Hello, pirates?  Hello, rogue waves?  Hello, her dad is shopping a reality television show but is denying that by saying it's actually a tool to get kids off of their computers (and in front of the television instead)?
And if one more person writes one more sappy, coming-of-age, rite of passage article about this debacle, I'm slapping them.  I am fully aware that there are very young people the world over who engage in all sorts of cultural/religious/traditional adventurous rites of passage...yet there are no news reports...no television coverage, etc.  Male Australian Aborigines go on walkabouts in which they undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. In this practice they would trace the paths, or "songlines", that their people's ceremonials ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.  Where is their news coverage, their television show?
Real Aborigines of Outback County?
Boonga Woonga and Matoonga Faloonga Plus 8?
19 Aborigines and Counting?

Did you know you can buy merchandise via this girl's website?  Since when does merchandising have anything to do with trailblazing?  With a rite of passage?  With anything other than being opportunistic?

"Honey, we want you to set out on this journey...we want your soul and your mind and your heart to expand...we want you to grow in spirit and come to know and rely on yourself through circumstances both calamitous and joyful...we want you to learn that you are truly capable of anything and everything...and, oh yeah, we're going to "commemorate" this important moment in your life by selling shirts, sandals, boots, sneakers, stickers, posters, etc to the general public..."  

Puh-leeze. 
(Here's an actual realistic/technical article about this story, for anyone interested)

Bloggers Who Are Being Paid To Hawk Stuff.
Ever go to a website because you think you might be interested in whatever it is that is on that website and then you have to sit through some kind of pop-up advertisement before you get to the content you went there for in the first place.
Maddening, right?
More than once this week I have come across blogs whose blog posts are reviews of products that they are being paid to review. I know that they're being paid for the review I am inadvertently reading because there is a disclaimer somewhere in the post (usually at the bottom in really small print) that says, in essence, that
"I am being paid for this post by XYZ Company and it is entirely 100% my opinion".
Maddening, right?
I read blogs for the blog writer's opinion, yes; I don't read blogs so that I can read their paid opinion of the latest and greatest Pop-Tart flavor or whatever.  I don't begrudge anyone making money however they need to - particularly when it's a clever or an unorthodox method of doing so - but there's something about this that leaves me with an inauthentic, misleading feeling.  Plus I don't believe a single glowing word they're writing about the product.  Come on, now...you're being paid to sit at home in front of your computer reviewing the free product(s) you're being sent...and you're going to give a bad review?  Yeah, right.
Oh, you might say something like:

"the color of the lemon Pop-Tart's filling could be just a bit more yellow to give it a more genuine lemon-y appeal" 

But you are not going to say:

"holy crap, don't buy the new lemon Pop-Tarts because they suck and even the dog wouldn't eat it".  

We all know that one does not poop where one eats.

I think that if you are a blogger who is going to sell out be paid to post about products, then you should consider a secondary page/link where your readers can opt-in to go to that page to read your reviews instead of having to opt-out.
And by opt-out I mean stop reading your advertisement blog altogether.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again and again...):

Stay tuned...next post up will be stuff that DOES NOT make Kissy pissy.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does.

I was lying on the couch yesterday afternoon contemplating a do-it-yourself hysterectomy

 image courtesy of Cake Wrecks

on account of having bitchin' cramps significant discomfort in my lower abdominal region...and was flipping through the television channels when I came upon the Dr Phil show.  The show's topic was, in essence, incredibly-stupid-young-people-doing-incredibly-stupid-"stunts"-in-which-they-took-on-dares-that-caused-physical-harm-to-themselves.  (Like that aptly-named show/movie JackAss...are you familiar with it?)  People doing the most idiotic things like jumping off roofs and crashing into buildings...and one speechless-inducing activity that might actually give new meaning to the word 'imbecile', lighting one's underwear on fire while wearing them.

Two thoughts came into my head as I watched the show.

1.  A couple of the idiot parents of these idiots kids were on the show alongside them.  Some were even smirking, in a "wow, I'm on the Dr Phil show - yuck yuck" kind of way...and I'm talking about the parents, not their kids.  Let me tell you something.  If my kid was going around throwing himself off of roofs and setting his wing-ding on fire he would be immediately placed in either a mental institution or military reform school.  He would not be on national television displaying his idiocy for all the world to see.  And I certainly would not be beside him, displaying my own idiocy as I blubbered about how "I keep asking him to stop doing it" blahblahblah.  Step up, stop wanting your kid to think you're 'cool' and be a parent, plain and simple.

2.  You know how when we were kids our parents thought we did stupid stuff?
And remember, too, how our parents would shake their heads and worry about how our generation, who were all doing all kinds of stupid stuff, would one day be running the country?  Yeah, that's where I'm at now.  I'm fearful of these idiot kids one day being decision-makers and having their decisions affect me.
Clearly, I'm getting old.

Speaking of stupid, here's one more thing for you to try and wrap your mind around:  did you know that kids are now pouring vodka into their eyes? 
Yup, it's called eyeballin':

One optometrist told the Washington Examiner that eyeballing can  get “you drunk a lot faster on a lot less alcohol,” because it works much like an injection. But he cautioned against the practice (ya  think?) as it can essentially melt the cornea.

I'm starting to really believe that maybe our parents were right in worrying about our generation running the country because, well, look at all the crap that's happening now in our country...and the stupid stuff we did back in the day was tame and far less stupid compared to what kids today do!

It all makes my head hurt.

Bloggers WITH Makeup Day.

One of the first things I read when I woke up this morning when I set down at the computer with my the first dose of personality in a cup (coffee) is that today is Bloggers Without Makeup Day.

Sorry if you're participating, but...
What a bunch of redonkulousness!

Apparently the premise of the whole thing is that you, dear reader of blogs, are not seeing the 'real' author of the blogs you read because in their profile picture or whatever they are wearing makeup.

huh?

For the record, I, for one, have not ever been in the act of reading a blog and suddenly started wondering what the blogger really looked like under her makeup.  I have never once thought to myself, "gee, that was a terrific post I just read by one of my favorite bloggers but, ya know, I'm not sure I can trust what she was saying because in her picture she clearly is wearing blush".  

And what's with the 'really' thing?

I can get someone to take my picture one morning at the exact minute I wake up; hair piled on top of my head and all confused and bleary-eyed and use it as my profile picture - because once a day that's what I really look like.

Or how about a picture when I'm cleaning my house?  Sweaty and disheveled in that ancient, holey t-shirt I wear when cleaning and post it as my new profile pic...because that, too, is what I really look like sometimes.

Better still, why not a picture of me at that time once a month when I'm a raving, crying lunatic who may or may not be simultaneously gorging on salt and chocolate?  I'm really that person, as well.

I'll take this even further and say that the "real me" has hairy legs and underarms if I don't shave them and might even have a Frida Kahlo unibrow if I didn't pluck/wax that area. 

So, next up there should be a Bloggers Without Shaving Day?   

Ugh.

What's so wrong about wanting to present your best self to the public? 

I happen to adore makeup.  I'm obsessed with mascara.  My eye makeup is 'smoky' which involves the application of several shades of shadow and a good deal of liner. 
This is my 'look'.  This is how those who know me, know me.
(And if I didn't have to hide out from my stalker behind my Kissy Lovestuff pseudonym I would be proudly sporting my full-makeup profile picture here)

However, very often I actually do go without foundation or mascara or liner but that's a choice usually based on something like being lazy or wanting to get some sun and is not at all based on me trying to make some kind of pointless statement.  I'm not a feminist (but that's a topic for another day - no emails, please); I have no problems whatsoever with all of things out there that are available to enhance and beautify.  I love how they make me look and how they make me feel and all that is stirred together in the pot of stuff that makes up the real me. 

Bloggers Without Makeup Day and other such proclamatory days that involve sheep mentality group participation feel to me like an ever-so-slight erosion of credibility and individuality.

Kind of in the same way that something like Hawaiian Shirt Friday does, you know what I mean?

Please forgive me if you are at work reading this today, Friday, 

and are wearing a Hawaiian shirt so that everyone thinks you are a 'team player'.

"When you look at me, I want you to see the real me."
Good Lord, that sounds like a line straight out of a soap opera or cheesy romance novel.
Call me crazy, but if I'm thinking that by showing you a profile picture in which I'm wearing makeup that I am somehow not showing you the me I want you to see, then I should just take a picture with no makeup, upload it and call it a day.
No?
Too understated?
Too undramatic?

In revolt of all of this nonsense, I am proclaiming today to be Bloggers WITH Makeup Day.

In fact, you know what?  I think I'm going to channel my inner Mimi and wear extra makeup today just to prove a point!

Viva la L'Oreal!  MAC!  Clinique!  Maybelline!  Revlon!  Lancome! etc...