The Advice Your Mama Never Gave You

So...I have a younger sister. In a lot of ways, we're exactly the same, and in a large number of other ways, we couldn't be more different. She's basically the best...so in the least dicky tone possible, I will describe her as a well-dressed, liberal, semi-intellectual, recent college-grad douchebag who reads BBC rather than CNN because she just doesn't trust American media to cover America accurately.

She's brilliant and hilarious (both traits we share, obviously), and she's also the single least competitive person I've ever met. This is precisely where our personalities separate. While I will break someone's leg in 7th grade PE soccer in order to ensure a victory (yeah...that happened...my sincerest apologies go out to that girl, who recently friended me on facebook and brought back that tremendously embarrassing memory), my sister will yog around after the ball only because she has to and then be unsure of who won the game when she's finally allowed to go inside. Also, totally unrelated, my sister's ideal summer vacation would be to an air-conditioned bunker with one window (so she could see the sun but keep it from turning her porcelain doll skin bright red), where as mine would be to a cancer-causing beach somewhere in the Caribbean, where I'd preferably be allowed to sleep outside, eat outside, play outside in the sun....I think you get the idea.

Aaaaanyway, I spent my last semester of college and the summer that followed sooort of coming up with job prospects, but mostly looking on Craigslist for the most absurd things around (i.e. American Girl Store doll hairstylist or Reality Show Contestant: Make-Over Your life). I figured I would move home for a while regardless, so what I did with my time was of no consequence. My generally nonchalant, comedian counterpart on the other hand re-signed her lease in Pittsburgh, and knowing that our huffy, puffy, generally disgruntled/non-nonchalant (...so chalant?) father wouldn't be too pleased about financing her existence, she became panic-stricken about finding employment.

I've asked her to tell me/you all about that process...so...read on. Thanks Relaxed/Better-Dressed Other Half. You're the best.

***

I graduated from college in April of this year. The months leading up to this ceremony were particularly stressful, due to the fact that the lease I had impulsively signed for the next year and the lack of job prospects I had were staring me in the face...searing holes into my soul. As the summer wore on, I became more and more anxious because I couldn't even get hired at Chico's...and why would ANY respectable organization hire somebody who couldn't even sweet talk old(er) women into buying expensive bedazzled summer blazers?!

Then I had an epiphany. Why do I need to stress? I'm not more likely to get hired just because I am basically giving myself an ulcer worrying about it. At this point I started to refer to myself as a Lady of Leisure and went out to lunch a lot. Just as I was hitting my stride, I ended up getting hired for a job that I was not only perfectly qualified for, but that had good pay and great benefits.

This whole situation goes to show that I am incredibly lucky and things keep managing to work out for me despite my rather passive approach toward achieving success. My advice to the rest of you sorry fuckers who have to graduate during a recession? I have none because I am the exception, not the rule. I am going to take my hour-long lunch now and maybe leave early.......just because I can. You can employ the Lady, but the Leisure shall remain.

-Your Resident Lady of Leisure

P.S. It is NEVER a Chico's kind of day

A New Workplace Low on the Irresponsibility Scale

At this moment, I am sitting in BWR's cube a) because it is invisible from the hallway and mine is in plain view of anybody walking by and b) because he disappeared a couple of hours ago and may or may not ever return.

I have finished all of my work for the day, and it's just past lunch time. Foreseeing that this might happen, I brought a book to work this morning. I am not joking. So...I am sitting in BWR's veritable Room of Requirement reading This Is For the Mara Salvatrucha, a gift I received from perfect love interest before he left town to live the dream with my best friend and without me.

It's fascinating and I am going to get back to it, but tomorrow, I have things to share.

1. The worst haircutting experience of my lifetime.

2. Perfect Love Interest makes a surprise visit.

3. The whole family comes to town.

Perhaps I will name tomorrow's entry "The Wednesday Weekend Wecap." Yes. It's settled. I'm brilliant.

Now, I'm off to learn more about the sweetest, coolest, most fascinating gang EVER. Happy Tuesday.

Shambles Friday (Volume 2)

Well, as I spent the day yesterday furthering my "get the dumb/lazy girl canned" mission, I again failed to write. I intended to do so last night when I got home but, as it turns out, that never happened. So there you have it. As usual, it's Friday and I'm in shambles.

Usually I can rely on BWR to make me feel better about being an irresponsible person who occasionally (ok, maybe more than occasionally) drinks on weeknights, but he is not the slightest bit hungover today and I'm all alone! ALSO, we're not going to Greek Deli because everyone but me has too much actual work to do and doesn't want to sit around and gain weight and talk about debauchery. What is wrong with kids these days?!?!

Anyway, in addition to feeling like my picture (see below) should
go in the Encyclopedia Britannica (because I'm sure that still exists) as a visual depiction of "Deathy", I am currently dressed in someone else's clothes. I don't happen to keep an extra work outfit in my purse, shocker, so when I go out with friends who live far away from me in a place far from my home aaaand I don't make it back to my place of residence, I find myself in a wardrobe crisis come morning. The friend whose house I slept at weighs 100 lbs soaking wet, holding a Chipotle burrito...so the dressing thing this morning was mildly troublesome. To add insult to injury, she wears size 4 shoes (I am not joking about this...she has hooves more than feet really), so my only footwear option was the pair of heals I wore yesterday. They weren't comfortable the first day, they're not comfortable the second day, and they don't happen to match a single thing that my pint-sized, firecracker host owns. So, in case this wasn't made abundently clear before, I am a mess.

I took rail tequila shots last night and ate one trough of queso on my own. I also played the dumbest game i've ever heard of, where everyone eats a package of sugar or salt for a reason that I don't understand...there's no winner and no prize, and everyone wants to vomit at the end. Oh and I nearly got my car towed, but we saved that shit.

Anyway, to make matters worse, my Girl Work Roommate (GWR) has been on the phone all morning, and her voice is legitimately making me want to hang myself with the chord from the blinds on my window. She speaks at the volume I would use in a crowded bar AT ALL TIMES, and she is seemingly incapable of forming a sentence that sounds like she has a command of the English language. I simply cannot deal with this shit in my current state.

If I don't write on Monday, you will know it's because I've ended it. If I do, you're in for a treat because my mom's entiiiiiiiiire extended family is coming in town for the family alcoholic's 90th birthday, and it's guaranteed to be a doozy.

The Story Of and Reason For My "Doing Nothing" Bellyflop

I'm sure you all noticed with absolute dismay and horror that I failed to write yesterday. First, my sincerest apologies. Second, my explanation. This might take a while...

My teammate (semi-boss/semi-coworker) started on Monday. I didn't talk to her much, but in the few moments I spent with her, I found that she's a relatively average-looking, awkwardly-dressed, makeup-less, unforch monster. To add to the already gleaming mental image I'm sure you've developed, you should know that her FB picture is of her making out with her boyfriend--a discovery which almost instantly caused me to vomit all over my pretty dress. Essentially, I knew within 45 (ok 15) seconds that this was not going to be a brilliant partnership, but I swear I tried my best to like her anyway. In case you don't already realize this: Fail.

This situation is already relatively awkward because she's the senior person on the account that we work on (from now on referred to as Old Dudes' Party Group or ODPG), but the people at ODPG for whom we work would rather have us function as equals than as a boss and a subordinate. Sooooo...I feel like she's my equal and she feels like she's my boss...that's tre awk, right? Yes.

Anyway, no big deal. I mean, I assume someone will set one or both of us straight on that front eventually, so why worry in the meantime? Clearly, the thing to do while I wait for our roles to really be established is to make sure that everyone thinks I'm perfect and she's mediocre at best. Hence my inability to sit and do nothing yesterday and today. This is now a competition of popularity/brains/greatness, and I will win.

Since my competitiveness is now a factor, I did a bunch of things yesterday....everything that needed to be done then and everything that needs to be done ever, as far as I know. I've been a machine. I will win.

So how's my campaign going? Allow me to explain the course of events of the last 26 hours. But basically, I will win.

***

Yesterday, I invited this semi-boss/semi-coworker to lunch because I realize that she has no friends (and may never have any friends unless I help to create social acceptability in place of her awkward mediocrity). You see, I'm a caring soul. Since I knew I would not be able to pass one full hour speaking with her on topics about which I could not possibly care less, I forced my mentor (read: the girl assigned to show me the ways of the place, who's 2 years older than me and really good at her job, but also a frequent maker of the poor life choices and therefore my favorite person in the building) to come along. This could not have gone better, because it gave me fuel for my competitive fire against the semi-boss/semi-coworker, started with the following conversation.

Mentor: So, I can't figure out how old you are. When did you graduate?
SB/SC: From high school or college?

(Zach Morris time out: Who the fuck cares when anybody graduated from high school?!?! Why would that even be a question someone asks? Oh...you'll see.)

Mentor: College
SB/SC: Oh, I actually haven't graduated yet. I should have graduated in 2006 though...I graduated from high school in 2002.
Mentor: (Nearly chokes on diet coke, fortunately feels her "Your Panera Lunch is Ready" buzzer go off, and jumps up and leaves the table).

My buzzer goes off at this time as well, so I also get up and leave SB/SC by herself with her awkwardness and her high school diploma. Everyone is shocked and apalled. Nobody knows what to do. So we talk about nonsense for the rest of the time, while I try to figure out how it's possible that this girl got a job at a place where all but like 5 of us have a graduate degree or list of credentials at the end of our nametags, when she couldn't manage to finish college. This is still unclear to me, but I've made my mind up that she somehow avoided the schooling talk altogether in her interview, and these people hired her not knowing that she probably has less education than the chick who poured my soup into a hunk of bread with a crater cut into the middle yesterday afternoon.

I spent basically the rest of yesterday upset that this girl has an office to herself while I share one and also determined to a) make sure the bosses are aware that I'm better and b) find out how the heck she pulled this one off, since I know it wasn't with the always successful cup of charm mention last time. I was pretty sure i would win the cotest at that point, and then....

***

Today we had a new hires lunch involving the two of us, the guy leading our client's transition, a new kid in accounting, the head of accounting, and the CEO. Just time for a little bonding, discovery of common interests, education about everybody's background, etc. A perfect time, I think, for everyone to find out that SB/SC couldn't be bothered to go to college, but I decided before we left that I am not a big enough ass hole to bring it up. Thankfully, the CEO is an inquisitive dude, so he took care of that for me. Read on...

CEO: So, SB/SC, where'd you go to school?
SB/SC: [Insert local high school]

(Zach Morris time out: This chick is a retard. It is only acceptable in professional athletics to claim your high school as your place of education. It's fine to hear "LeBron James: St Vincent-St. Mary High School" when a sicknasty NBA player introduces himself on national television, but it simply isn't when a businessperson introduces herself at lunch.)

CEO: Huh? ...followed by an awkward pause...
SB/SC: Oh, you mean for college?
CEO: Yes, college. ...implied DUH...
SB/SC: Oh, I went to Virginia Wesleyan for a semester, but then I came home and I've lived at home ever since.
CEO: (Audible gulp. Look of confusion and terror.) Oh, I see.
SB/SC: I've been going to the community college since.
CEO: Still plugging away then?
SB/SC: Yup.
.....awkwardness......
CEO: So how'd you like Norfolk? That's where Virginia Wesleyan is, right?
SB/SC: Honestly, I didn't really like it.
...Well no duh! You left before you even managed to get 15 credits under your belt! Nobody assumed that you thought it was the greatest place on earth...he was just buying time because he didn't know how to respond to the fact that you have no education, when he is an educational snob who requires employees to seek graduate degrees or accredidations during their employment at his company and he unknowingly approved your hire becaue he wasn't informed!!!!...

***

The rest of the lunch passed and SB/SC did a botchjob of the bonding and of the making herself look good/seem like she fits in. I did fine. The accounting boy also did fine, and I think he and I will be friends, as he's also cool enough to be part of the Friday Greek Deli crowd and he did go to college.

I have devoted all of my time since then being a great employee and making SB/SC look like a retard in hopes that those things combined with the mediocrity that she provides on her own will cause her to get the axe and me to get her job and her office instead of my own. Wish me luck on my new venture. Now, back to work.

A Workplace Dilemma

Well, today is a sad day because perfect love interest left town this morning to go back to school (that lucky bastard) and therefore will no longer be available to help create awkward situations with coworkers or tremendously epic, drunken performances by me...or, come to think of it, perfect/adorable dates :( ...sorry if you just threw up on your keyboard....but that is upsetting.

Fortunately though, the day is not a total negative because, for the first time (note: this is the beginning of week 5 at my new job), I actually have work to do! I'm not sure where the work came from or why it's shown up now, but I'll take it to help keep my boredom/mourning state from becoming soul-crushing. I'm taking a break from my mountain of responsibilities (read: two things, each of which will take less than two hours) to write for the day because my new found responsibility has left me wondering how to address the list of tasks with which I've been burdened.

You see, I have a couple of things that need to be done today and a couple of things that need to be done some time before September 1. These tasks could very easily all be completed by COB with a little bit of diligence and focus, but I'm just not sure that would be the right course of action. At my old job, I was really on top of things, and I found that it caused massive life misery. Turns out that when everyone knows you can get things done quickly, they come to you at 9 am with a stack of bs and say "I need you to take care of this by 9:02," fully expecting that you'll get that shit handled even though 1) it's most certainly not your job, 2) it's impossible to complete their bs project within their bs time frame, and 3) some other douchey boss came by 45 seconds before and gave you the same type of project on the same type of time frame. This was a tremendous cause of strife for me for my entire tenure with my old organization (lovingly referred to as Asstard), and I'm sure that I never want to be in that position again.

So, my new plan is to make sure everyone thinks I'm proactive and helpful and smart and funny and nice and whatever else people at places of business value by using my charm, but not actually ever produce anything for a while. This way, I will set expectations at a mediocre level, but everyone will be tricked into thinking that they really value my contributions to the organization. Then, one day, I'll start working at a respectable rate, and they'll be doubley impressed!

As you can tell, I've really thought this one through. I'm just not sure how to go about it. I mean, I've got the not really working thing down. I even took a nap in my office last week after a hell of a night out that involved a women's professional soccer game, chinese food sitting on the street in chinatown like a hobo, being asked to leave a bar, and $60 worth of shots to end the evening (which nearly caused me to vom), but I'm not sure where the balance between that and the seeming work ethic should sit.

How does one seem proactive and helpful without actually being proactive and/or helpful? I think this is likely something that many people have mastered (because if your bosses knew that you played bubblespinner enough at the office that you could get your high score up to 24,000 like me, you would have been fired by now for being a waste of oxygen). But everyone does stuff like that, so how do you look like a model employee without actually having to assume the responsibility of one? I think it's all about charm because I'm relatively certain that a solid helping of charm can get a cute 23 year-old girl basically anywhere in life, but I could very well be wrong about that. So...I want help figuring this out. Please submit thoughts to thedeathytimes@gmail.com. They will be tested and the results will be reported (although I predict now that I will receive zero suggestions and therefore have only one set of results to report: the effects of my charm).

In the meantime, cry a tear for the loss of perfect love interest (even though I'm going to visit in three weeks and will most definitely have tons of debauchery to report), and think of ways to spice up my work day. The only suggestion I've gotten so far is to go streaking through the office. I've taken it under advisement and will probably follow through some time before Christmas and therefore be out of a job by the beginning of 2010. Check back to find out. Peace late...I have work to do.

A Run In With the Authorities

I've just returned from the soon-to-be-standard Hangover Hunger Obliteration Fest sometimes called Friday lunch at the Greek Deli. This is the second occurrence of said lunch hour spent consuming 5,000 calories' worth of gyro meet, french fries, tzatziki, and spinach rice and sharing stories of whatever debauchery we young bucks have been getting into. I now bring to you the winner of today's "Who did the most ridiculous thing?" contest, courtesy of my boy work roommate (BWR)....not to be confused with girl work roommate (GWR) who doesn't seem to ever do fun(ny) things.

A little background first. BWR is a champ of a 23 year-old gentleman working in his first job since graduating from an undisclosed ACC school last December. He lives at home, in what I'm sure is a nice mansion with such ammenities as a long, winding driveway to keep the clammor of the busy suburban streets out of his parents' ears, jacuzzi tubs in every bathroom, curtains that open/close with the push of a button (think The Holiday), and a maid. This means that BWR's entire salary can be put towards booze and debauchery, and he takes that responsibility pretty seriously. Today, as is the case every Friday, BWR's life is in shambles, and he's barely functioning. He proposed to his girlfriend hundreds of times last night and doesn't remember, woke up stark naked with his head at the foot of the bed and his feet on his pillow, and actually said during lunch, "I really wish I had peed the bed because that would've taken the night from plain epic to historical." Basically, BWR is perfect fodder for this irresponsibility-focused publication. So now, the day when BWR almost got tazered and his friend spent the night in jail.

***

It's a cold December evening in the D.C. suburbs, and BWR and his mix of frat buddies and childhood friends make a trip to one of the area's hot spots for a few (read: 20) beers. The bars close down at 2 am, but the boys are just not ready to call it a night, so rather than splitting up and heading to their respective homes, they all take a cab back to BWR's place to have his maid serve them Natty Light and Chili Dip until the sun comes up. Afforementioned long, windy driveway presents a problem for the taxi driver, who's not particularly intersted in backing all the way out in the snow, so BWR asks to be dropped off where the driveway meets the street. He and his buddies apparently can't all walk together in a "Left, Left, Left, Right, Left" type of line led by BWR, so some friends run/skip/cartwheel through the snowy yard while BWR strolls leisurely up the driveway to the door. When he gets there and everyone goes inside, he asks Lolita (the maid, duh) to bring out 7 Natty Lights for his gaggle of bros...only to realize that someone's missing.

CUT TO.....

BWR's friend, Kung Fu Panda, gets out of the cab and decides that, since it's freezing, he will run up to the house through the side yard, arrive at the door first, and get Lolita to let him in. He jogs for a while, feeling like maybe it would have been a better idea to stay on the driveway to ensure ultimate arrival at the front door rather than a go through the woods in the middle of December, but he decides that there's no turning back now, and he must trek on. Finally, after what seems like hours but is more like 3.5 minutes, Kung Fu Panda arrives at the front door and starts banging.

"Let me in, Motherfuckers, it's freezing out here!!" he yells, at his friends who are clearly too belligerent to care about his needs.

...Nothing happens.....so he bangs some more, cursing their names all the while and then institutes Plan B: Call BWR.
"Dude, I'm outside your house, what the fuck?"
"Dude, no you're......"
--CLICK--

...A light has come on in the house, so Kung Fu Panda assumes he's about to be let in. He bangs again, spouts off a few more obscenities, and expects to be wrapped in the warmth of a beer in no time. Instead though, he finds himself being yelled at.
"Who's there?" a man with an accent yells from inside.
"It's Kung Fu Panda you stupid [insert explative of your choice], open the door."
"Please go away."
"[explative again]...Let me in, I'm freezing."
"Go away or I'm going to call the Police."
"[Explative, explative, explative]"
...Man with accent calls the police.
...Kung Fu Panda starts to think that maybe he's not at BWR's house after all. He looks around, curses again, and runs across the street (also to a stranger's house), triple flying roundhouse kicks the door in, continues running into the kitchen, falls, and passes out face down on the floor.

CUT TO.....

The people who actually live in the house hear their door essentially explode at 3 am and decide they're being robbed and will most likely die. They also call the police (but only after baricading themselves in the master bathroom of the house, which drunk Kung Fu Panda probably couldn't even find if he lived there).

CUT TO.....

BWR mounts a search party because he is concerned that his friend has curled up in a ball in the snow and will be found in the morning having turned into a 200-pound block of ice. He walks down his driveway to the street, thinking that he might get a better view of the neighborhood from there and, as a result, find his friend. He looks to the right and sees car headlights. He looks to the left and sees more car headlights. He looks back to the right and discovers that there are county police cars approaching from both directions at a rapid pace. He flags one down, almost gets tazered by a cop who thinks he's likely the bozo who's tried to break into two houses within yards of where he's standing in the last 15 minutes. When the cop hears the description of the culprit over the radio though ("6'4 giant asian monster), he realizes BWR doesn't quite fit the bill. They let him go and find his friend passed out in the kitchen of the neighbor's house and take him to jail.

In the morning, he gets bailed out and goes over to the neighbor's house to help nail pieces of plywood into the doorframe to keep the below-freezing winds from making their home unliveable until their new set of gorgeous wooden double doors, imported from Italy probably, can arrive. He pays for them. Now, when he drives by, sometimes he admires them from afar and says: "Those doors are so nice. I bought them," but he does not go touch them, because he's not allowed.

THE END.

Work Outing Causes Life Disaster

It's 9:08 am, and I have been at the office for just about 45 minutes. I've spent most of that time (and the other two hours that I've been awake) deciding whether this is going to be one of those days when I vom in the morning. This would not be the first time that's happened at work, but I really try to keep my tremendously messy mornings restricted to the weekend, so it's also not a regular occurrence. The cause of this morning's dismay: last night's work outing.

Sounds like a lot of fun, right? "Hay Staff: Let's all get together at a professional baseball game, watch the horrific home-town team get whooped, drink a few beers, eat food, bond, meet each other's spouses and children, and not pay for it!" Well bossman, I will see you there!

Actually though, an event like this is a recipe for disaster. You know it's going to be uncomfortable, so you'd prefer to experience it drunk. But you can't be noticeably drunk in front of your coworkers or your boss or the CEO (even if it is a sufficiently relaxed occasion that he's wearing the classic SigEp-style plaid shorts, bright polo, and boat shoes). So...how do you handle such a thing? Well, if you're me, you bring your perfect love interest and his hilarious friend along to ease the pain, and you consume a flask-sized bottle of bacardi essentially on your own. You also show up about an hour late and leave early, and you try, however unsuccessfully, to avoid talking to any figures of authority.

Mostly, this plan was a winner. There are enough young, interesting, socially acceptable people employeed at my place of business that outside-of-the-office functions aren't all the same small-talk conversation over and over. I kept to that group (+ perfect love interest + perfect love interest's friend), and the night was going well. But there's always someone out to ruin the children's fun, and on this night, that soul-crusher was Meeting Man, the VP who runs the meeting-planning portion of this operation. Keep in mind, please, that I have worked here for three weeks, and I basically don't know anybody in a position of authority because I hide (sometimes sleep, usually play video games) in my cube and don't make a point of being particularly friendly. Meeting Man is not my buddy and, to be honest, I was impressed that he knew my name when he walked around saying hello to everyone and requiring that we introduce him to our guests.

"Hi, ****," he said, "are you enjoying yourself?"

"Absolutely!!!!" I replied, far more excited than was necessary, considering that I had no idea whether we were winning or losing, and I was mostly gossiping and making fun of people's clothes/hairdos/boyfriends/beer choices.

"And who have you brought with you?" he queried, in a way a curious person like me might ask, right before heading back to sit with my friends and make fun of people's clothes/hairdos/boyfriends/beer choices.

"Well, Meeting Man, this is Boy 1, and this is Boy 2." And I left it at that......and I thought it would suffice.....you're welcome. But Meeting Man was befuddled, and he needed titles for clarification. Rather than asking for them though, he stood there with a puzzled look on his face. He seemed unable to decide whether the gentlemen were dating one another and I had brought them to show them that baseball pants were really designed for ladies and gay men, or whether I was dating one (or maybe both...?) of them.

At this point, I panicked. I had to assign perfect love interest a title, and I had not planned ahead! I feel like the term boyfriend is only used in the adult world by 45 year-old divorcees who live in trailers, smoke a pack of Marlboro Menthols a day, have fake fingernails from CVS, and wear midriff-bearing shirts that expose their belly button piercings and heart-shaped tramp stamps. That's not me, so boyfriend didn't seem like the right choice even though Boy 1 is, in fact, my boyfriend. Grown-ups should/do use different words for these things than 7th graders...so what was I to do?! Grown-ups are engaged or married, which we are not. Or they're dating, which seems too casual for what's going on here. Or they're lovers? Gross. Or they're seeing someone...? YES! Boy 1 and I are seeing each other! But that's not a title...EFFER!

Basically all of these things went through my brain in the space of half a second, and I came up with "Oh...um...Boy 1 is my...uh...b..bu...bu...boyfriend. Boy 2 is his friend." At this point I returned to drinking my skeezy rum and coke in a coke bottle from the Sausage Shack or whatever they call the snack bar at a baseball stadium, and Meeting Man walked away satisfied.

Perfect love interest/Boy 1 was not nearly as satisfied with my response, though. He said something to the effect of "well-played, retard," and the debauchery continued....and it continued.....and it continued....until the rum bottle was empty, the Sausage Shack cut us off, all the old people left the game, and we went back to my place to eat gross chips/chili-dip, drink more beers, pass out too late, and cause me to feel vomitrocious all day...AND still not know what title I'm supposed to attach to Perfect love interest/Boy 1. Basically: Life Disaster.

THE END.

How to repair your child, if he's a shithead.

Last night, while I was driving back into the city from my weekend vacay in the suburbs, I heard the most disturbing infomercial on the radio. First, let me say that I'm not sure why such a thing would play at 11 pm on a Sunday, when only irresponsible miscreants are still driving around instead of lying comfortably unconscious in their beds, but that's neither here nor there. This five-minute spot, which I could not manage to turn off, as I was completely appalled, was for a new program called "The Total Transformation."

You're probably thinking this is some sort of weight-loss plan or get-rich-quick scheme, but you're wrong....oh so very wrong. The Total Transformation is a behavior modification program for children who can't get their shit together.

So...does your child run out into the street when you've explicitly told him that his play time should be confined to the yard? Go ahead and get yourself the Invisible Fence Total Transformation. Does your child interrupt you when you're reprimanding him? Get yourself an electric shock therapy machine, available on eBay The Total Transformation. Does he not have enough respect for your authority? Send him to a rice paddie in China, where they'll set him straight Get yourself The Total Transformation!

The saddest thing about this is that it's not a joke. And clearly this company's already made enough bucks that they can afford national advertising. Does this or does this not make you feel a little bit queasy? Moms and dads create 8 year-old monsters and then Dr. James Lehman turns them back into well-behaved robots, for the bargain price of everything in your bank account. This dude has got to be kidding me! Some highlights of the program include "How to Stop Any Argument With Your Kid Instantly" and "Ten Words To Say When He Gets Mouthy." I'm nearly tempted enough to sign up for a FREE TRIAL of this thing....but not quite.

Raise your hand if you think this would have kept you from stumbling in at 6 am after the prom, trying to climb in your window so as to not wake anyone up, and getting the police called by a neighbor who thought you were an intruder? Would it have kept you from taking your parents' car to get Five Guys with your friends when you didn't yet have a license? How about actually legitimately keeping a 15 year-old girl from thinking her mom walked out of the womb of the devil? Fat chance.

So, a bit of advice. If, one day, you become substantially more responsible than you are now and even close to capable of raising a child, please try to not raise a monster in the first place and expect a number of disasters along the way...but if you run into trouble, turn to me and my alternative tactics rather than James Lehman, the mustachioed zombie, for help. Good talk.