LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics

While traveling over the holidays, I came across a delightful retail store: LUSH. Headquartered in Canada, LUSH sells a wide assortment of "fresh, handmade cosmetics" in stores across the US and Canada. They also have a great website with descriptions with each of their products including detailed lists of ingredients, user comments, and ratings.


Irreverent and quirky, LUSH has products like Sex Bomb (get your minds out of the gutter, it's bubble bath), Mask of MagnaMinty (a minty face mask), and The Big Tease (hair styling gel). Their core philosophies are environmental consciousness, no animal testing, and fun. Here's some information about the company from their web page.

A LUSH LIFE.......what we believe!
FRESH...We believe in making effective products out of fresh organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics, without animal testing, and in writing the quantitative lists on the outside. We also believe that words like FRESH and ORGANIC have honest meaning beyond marketing.
NO ANIMAL TESTING...We also believe in buying only from companies that test for safety without the involvement of animals and in testing our products on humans.
HAND MADE...We believe in making our own fresh products by hand, printing our own labels and making our own fragrances.
AMBIENCE...We believe in long candlelit baths, massage, filling the house with perfume and in the right to make mistakes, lose everything and start again.
GOOD VALUE...We believe that our products should be good value, that we make a profit and that the customer is always right.

I purchased Dream Cream and I absolutely love it. It's a rich hand cream that is very moisturizing but is somehow not sticky or greasy. Even better, the effects last for a long time. Most hand creams I've tried seem to last for about 10 minutes. Now I'm wishing I'd purchased more things when I was in the store.

Waiter Rant

If you eat in restaurants, you will be amused and/or horrified by Waiter Rant. In this blog, the unnamed waiter posts horror stories (i.e. rants) about his mostly ghastly experiences waiting tables at "Café Machiavelli" in an unnamed city.


Here's the beginning of Leave Home Without It

The quartet of chattering yuppies on table 24 have finished dessert and ask for their check. They’ve been running me ragged all night with special requests, menu substitutions, and water refills for glasses three quarters full. I’m glad they’re leaving.
“Here you are, sir,” I say, laying the check presenter on the table. “It’s been a pleasure serving you this evening.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” the host, a balding man wearing black framed designer glasses, says imperiously. “I’ll give you my card right now.”
The man pulls his wallet out of his breast pocket, peruses the dozen or so credit cards it contains, selects an American Express Platinum Card, and puts it on the table. Crap.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” I say. “We don’t take American Express.”
“What?” the host gasps. “Why not?”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s the restaurant’s policy.”
“That’s ridiculous!” the man says. “What would happen if I didn’t have another credit card?”

The posts are all well-written and funny. As a restaurant patron, they're thought provoking as well. Why are so many customers assholes?

Real Age Calculator

Would you like to know how old you really are? Check out the Real Age Calculator. I'm not any kind of health professional, so I have no idea how accurate the thing is, but it gave me an answer 10+ years younger than my biological age, so it gets a big thumbs up from me!

Rumor Has It

If you're like me, you frequently receive forwarded emails containing urban legends, myths, and rumors from friends and associates. Before forwarding these things on, PLEASE check them against The Urban Legends Reference page, Snopes.com.

If you do check the forwarded emails you receive, you'll find out that almost all of them are false. Snopes goes to great lengths to prove or disprove the validity of the claims found in these things. They cite references, such as newspapers and even scholarly journals. On top of all that, their writeups are usually really funny.

Remember: Snopes before you forward!

Urban Dictionary

I find it extremely annoying when someone uses an acronym, slang expression, or phrase and I have no idea what they're talking about. Fortunately, there's a solution to this minor problem: Urban Dictionary.

Full of R and X-rated content, this user-generated dictionary has definitions of every possible slang word. Since anyone can submit, some of the words and definitions are ridiculous. Each entry has a thumbs up and thumbs down count next to the definition to give the user an idea of how popular the word and its definition are.
The site offers a Word of The Day, which you can sign up to receive by email or by RSS feed. These words are usually pretty funny and actually useful. Here are a few current examples.

December 12
w00t
An expression of joy and excitement.
I just got an A on my test. w00t!

December 11
wi-five
It's a high five that doesn't involve actually contact, normally over a long distance where a real high-five isn't possible. Mix of "wireless" and "high-five", hence "wi-five", (wireless high-five)
Iain (yelling across the room): Dude, that mess was teh pwnz. Wi-five, brosef.
Eric (in response): You need to chill with that nano shit, son

December 10
compunicate
When you are in the same room with someone, each on seperate computers, and you talk via Instant Messenger instead of speaking to them out loud, in person

Even though they are sitting right next to each other, Jesse and Justin only compunicate when they have to tell each other something.

Next time you're reading something on the internet, whether a website, a blog, a forum, or whatever, and you come across an unfamiliar word or acronym, give Urban Dictionary a try.

Happy Bloody Holidays

I went in for a routine blood test this morning. No big deal, right. Poke my arm, take my blood, get me outta there so I can go to Starbuck's (or better yet, Peet's). Man I hate this "nothing by mouth after midnight the night before" stuff. So I'm in the waiting area looking at the corny, corporate holiday decorations and I'm completely floored when I notice this on the wall behind me:

The first two things are standard-issue junk; fake poinsettias and a plastic "Season's Greetings" sign. Nothing celebrates the joy of the holidays like plastic. But wait. What is that below it? A bunch of stuff scotch taped directly to the wall. Here's a close-up.

Those are the vials they use to collect your blood. Somebody in that medical office has a sense of humor. I love it.

Confidence

How's that for a vague post title? Here it refers to the title of a film (normally I call 'em "movies", but I watched this on the Independent Film Channel, so I guess this one is a "film"). Confidence, released in 2003, stars Edward Burns and Rachael Weisz, with Dustin Hoffman. The film plays like a foul-mouthed version of The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford (according to IMDB, the word "fuck" is said in Confidence 130 times).


The film starts with a voiceover: Jake Vig, played by Edward Burns, says "So, I'm dead." This reminded me of the end of the other movie when Robert Redford was "dead" at the hand of the "FBI agent." So already I'm thinking "Jake is SO NOT DEAD." Fade to black and "Three Weeks Earlier ..."


Jake and his team of grifters run a con. The mark turns out to be an operative of The King, the local big-shot crime lord. The King is really, really mad that his money is missing and has one of Jake's guys killed.


So far, we're about 30 minutes into the movie and they've practically copied The Sting's screenplay.


Jake visits The King (played to the hilt by a scenery-chewing Dustin Hoffman, clearly having a great time). The King, eccentric and possibly off his rocker, tells Jake that he'll stop killing Jake's friends and let him repay his debt if Jake manages to con Morgan Price, a banker with deep ties to organized crime. Of course, Morgan Price is The King's biggest enemy and The King wants nothing more than to humiliate this guy (and of course, The King thinks all that money would be nice, too).


The Sting again -- this is the Setup. Just like they dangled lots of easy money in front of the mob boss in the earlier movie, they're doing it here. There's even a scene were one of Jake's team says "Nobody pulls that con anymore," and somebody says something just like that in The Sting. The idea is that this con is so old it's new again. Brilliant.


I'm not going to give away the rest of the plot, because from this point on the movie, er film, is actually pretty absorbing. It gets pretty twisty and complicated and there are lots of crosses and double-crosses. It's very entertaining and it does keep you guessing from the middle onwards.


Ed Burns does an excellent job playing the smooth operator. There's something kind of blank about him in this film, by necessity. I'd like to see him in a role with more depth. Dustin Hoffman was both hilarious and frightening as the omni-sexual, brutal and eccentric crime boss.


Overall, I'd recommend this film.

A Christmas Story: A Generation X Thing?

A Christmas Story has been my favorite Christmas movie for a long time. I don't remember seeing it when it came out in 1983, but then again, most people don't, because it was something of a flop in the theaters. It became a cult hit 15 or 20 years ago, and now that TBS runs it "wall-to-wall" (24 hours straight) on Christmas day every year, it's pretty much mainstream.


In case you're haven't seen it, here's a brief synopsis. The movie is set in Indiana in the 1940's. Nine-year old Ralphie wants only one thing for Christmas: a Red-Ryder BB gun. All the adults in his life tell him the same thing: "you'll shoot your eye out."


If someone asked me to name the funniest moment in A Christmas Story, I'd have a very hard time coming up with just one. All of Ralphie's dream sequences, especially the ones where he has his Red Ryder and he gets the bad guys. The scene in the Chinese restaurant. The time Ralphie got to help The Old Man change a tire, lost the lug nuts, swore and got his mouth washed out with soap. In fact, any scene with The Old Man is golden. Probably best of all is the "major award" and the mother's reaction to it.


How anyone could say A Christmas Story has "attitude" is beyond me. It is just like a real childhood. I could never relate to It's a Wonderful Life. It strikes me as forced and preachy. When Donna Reed looks at Jimmy Stewart at the end, all dewy-eyed, I want to shout at the screen, "Oh for goodness sake, woman, get a life!" To each his own - if that's your favorite Christmas movie, please watch it. It just doesn't work for me.

A recent article in Time laments "A Christmas Story's attitude is superseding It's a Wonderful Life's earnestness" and goes on to say that this change is caused primarily by Generation X and Y.

In a 2006 Harris poll, respondents from 18 to 41 years old named it (A Christmas Story) their favorite holiday movie, while their parents and grandparents picked Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.

That's not to say Christmas Story or its viewers are cynical. It's nostalgic--but for the past's faults, not its imagined perfection. It's the nostalgia of its Gen-X and -Y fans, who remember childhood in terms of divorces and bad haircuts.

I agree about the nostalgia part. Here's a big problem about the demographics: I'm 52, well out of Generations X and Y. Many of the people in my ancient age group also love A Christmas Story and watch it every year. Please respond to the poll have at the top of the page and let me know if I'm alone on this. I'd love to hear your comments, too.

Always Love

Moving out of my self-imposed box of websites, TV, and movies, this post is about something new: a song. I heard a song on Radio Paradise today that "blew my mind." (Oh no, my 1960's are showing again.) Normally when I listen to the radio, the lyrics of a song that I haven't heard before form a pleasant blur in my head. As long as the song is musically pleasing, it's all good.

"Always Love" by Nada Surf jumped out at me, though. Video.

Here are the lyrics:

ALWAYS LOVE

to make a mountain of
your life is just a choice
but i never learned enough
to listen to the voice that told me

always love
hate will get you every time
always love
don't wait ‘til the finish line

slow demands come around
squeeze the air and keep the rest out
it helps to write it down
even when you then cross it out

but always love
hate will get you every time
always love
even when you want to fight

self-directed lives
i want to know what it'd be like to
aim so high above
every card that you get dealt you

always love
hate will get you every time
always love
hate will get you


and i've been held back by something
you said to me quietly on the stairs
you said hey you good ones
always love


The song is plaintive and sweet and yet full of retribution. Hate will get you every time. Karma is a bitch. There's a symmetry to that that really speaks to me.

Moonbeam McQueen

The short description I have given to Moonbeam McQueen is "a uniquely literate woman's take on life," but that doesn't begin to do it justice.

MBMcQ blogs about whatever is on her mind, and she has a lot on her mind. Her posts range from thoughtful to gut wrenching to hilarious. Today, for example she ruminated about the technological challenges of blogging vs. her aging mind in a post called I Can Has Feedburner? In a world where "LOL" is so overused, the title of the post alone made me truly laugh out loud.

It's silly to explain a joke, but subtlety has never been my strong suit, so I'm going to explain anyway. "LOL Cats" have been a phenomenon on the internet for a couple of years now. People have taken pictures of cats and applied silly captions to them and these have been passed around by email and collected on various websites. One of the largest collections of these pictures appears at I Can Has Cheezburger?, so named after one of the first pictures on the site.

Feedburner is a tool used by bloggers to, well . . . burn their feeds. I have no idea what that means. I've heard of it, I've seen their little firey logo on other blogs (belonging to bloggers presumably smarter than me). That's why I thought Moonbeam's post was so doggone funny. I highly recommend her site.

Paul Bettany

While Christmas shopping in Target, I happened on the $9.99 DVD rack. I grabbed a copy of 2003's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe. There's no question that this is Crowe's movie, as he is in fine form as Captain Jack Aubry, commander of the H.M.S. Surprise, intent upon his orders to "sink, burn or take as a prize" the French privateer Acheron. Crowe swaggers, shouts orders, and swash buckles.

For me, however, the best part of the movie is Paul Bettany's portrayal of Dr. Stephen Maturin. Bettany brings a quiet dignity to the role of ship's surgeon and captain's friend and confidant. He truly is the heart amid all the noise and bluster of this movie. He's no warrior, but he's no wimp, either. At one point, he must perform abdominal surgery on himself while looking into a mirror because there was simply no one else qualified. Yikes.

Dr. Maturin's dream was to spend time in the Galapagos, discovering new species, but "the requirements of the service" (that is, chasing after the Acheron, Capt. Aubrey's white whale), seem to always prevent him from doing so. He bears this disappointment with great dignity and stoicism but it is clear how greatly he is crushed by this loss. Bettany never oversells any of this; his performance is clear, yet subtle.

I first became aware of Paul Bettany in the anachronistic but very fun movie A Knight's Tale, in which he played Geoffrey Chaucer. This is a silly movie about a lowborn boy (Heath Ledger) who dreams of becoming a knight. Chaucer (yes, the famous poet Chaucer) becomes his herald in order to settle a gambling debt. The speeches that Bettany, as Chaucer, makes before the jousting matches are unbelievably funny.

Another one of Paul Bettany's famous roles was with Russell Crowe, in A Beautiful Mind. He played Charles, John Nash's friend who turned out to be imaginary.

He's an excellent actor that always brings something extra to his films.