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Archive for May, 2008

Poisoning Your Way To Happiness

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

Okay, here’s a newsflash for you. A new study just came out that says when Botox is injected into your face, the poison has been found to ENTER THE BRAIN. Really? I am astounded! You mean, when you stick a needle into someone’s face, less than a half an inch away from the brain, and inject POISON, some actually travels there??? Wow! Stop the presses! How could this possibly happen?

Obviously, very few people took science in school. Including me, but even I figured out that if you stick a needle in someone’s body and inject poison, the stuff doesn’t magically contain itself to the injection site. There are these things called veins and capillaries and neurons that ACTUALLY CONNECT to other parts of the human body. Ever heard of the circulation system, people? Freakin’ kindergarteners seem to have a better grasp on the human body than most adults, especially the ones who think they’ll look younger with their faces frozen like mannequins.

I just can’t believe that anyone believed the manufacturer when the Purveyors of Poison told them that “studies had shown” that the neurotoxin completely broke down at the injection site into innocuous compounds and didn’t go beyond it. Wait. Let me get this straight. Poison—a compound used as a bioterrorism weapon—is injected into the muscle, kills some nerve endings and then somehow magically transforms into pixie dust or something? After destroying tissue, poison turns into rainbows and unicorns and pretty pink clouds? How the hell could anyone buy this BS? Even doctors believed it. Probably because their golf trip to Scotland was funded by the drug companies. And where did they do the testing on Botox originally? Greed Labs?

Doesn’t anyone realize that these corporate bastards don’t care if their product kills us? The Botox guys are the same kind of corporate creeps who told us Vioxx was safe. All they want is MONEY. And people are so gullible, they watch an ad on TV that says sticking poison in your face is completely safe and will make society like you more, so they grab their credit cards and rush to their nearest plastic surgeon.

The underlying message from these corporate jerks is that aging is a character flaw. If you don’t poison yourself, you might actually commit the horrible sin of LOOKING YOUR AGE and you will end up friendless and alone. Yeah, every time I see my grandmother, I think, wow, what a hideous troll, she should hide herself away. I mean, what is wrong with people? When did aging become something to be ashamed of? And just whom are we trying to please with all our Botoxed looks?

Which brings up the entire reason people get cosmetic procedures and inject their faces with poison: to make some stupid superficial people like them more. I mean, how dumb is that? No friendship is worth shoving a bunch of poison into your system. Women are spending money poisoning themselves so some fat middle-aged idiot won’t divorce them for a trophy wife. Why would anyone risk life and limb to stay in a relationship for the rest of your life with some creep who wanted you to look like a freakin’ twenty-year-old at forty? Why would you risk brain damage or death for some narcissistic freak? How could you be this desperate to stay with an idiot like that? For God’s sake, spare the injections and buy yourself a vibrator.

I realize some women are forced into cosmetic procedures to protect their jobs. If I were in that position, I’d tell my corporate masters to take a hike. What? Poison myself so I can keep my bloody job? Screw you, I’ll start my own freakin’ business. I mean, if you put Barbara Walters next to her wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s, there is no way you could tell the difference. Her face is a mask of surgical Botox wonder. And let’s not even go into Joan Rivers, she doesn’t even look human any more. Do these people look better than they would if they’d left their faces alone? No. They look like circus freaks.

Which brings us to the other problem with Botox: it doesn’t work. You don’t look younger after you get injected. You look like a stroke victim. Part of your face reacts to my jokes, part of it remains frozen. You can’t even raise your freakin’ eyebrows. And when you smile, your face goes all lopsided. You look freakin’ weird. Like some character out of a horror movie. I mean, whenever you run into anyone who’s had a bunch of plastic surgery and Botox injections, you don’t think, hey, they look good. You think, wow, they had a lot of work done. I think, jeez, there’s someone without any self-esteem. And lack of self-esteem can only be cured with therapy not surgery or poison.

And yes, I’ve heard the “pro” arguments for Botox. Medical uses like with cerebral palsy and stuff like that. Okay, so that makes sense. But other than for a disease, I don’t get it. Some shrink friend of a friend had some bad stuff happen to her earlier in her life so her neutral expression made her look mean. It was off-putting to her clients, so she got Botox. How dumb is that? Yet another example of someone poisoning themselves so crazy people will like them better. I mean, this is the reason everyone gets injected with Botox, so crazy people will like them better. What solid reasoning!

Of course, I’m sure the new warnings won’t scare off the die-hard plastic surgery junkies. In fact, I’m so sure of it, I’ve started a new company. Forever Beautiful: Embalming For The Living. I’m gonna make billions.

©2008, Janet Periat

Weasel-On-A-Stick: My Recipe For Success

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Hey People!

This just appeared in CoastViews and I thought I’d share it with you folks, too. Even though if you are here, you already know about this part of my new evil plan to dominate the publishing world. But here this is anyway.

Hugs,  Janet

For eighteen years, I wrote novels, submitted them to large publishers and got… nothing. While most writers dream of The Big Publishing Contract (me included), the truth is writing is a crapshoot. You can write hundreds of novels during your life and never get published. But with the aid of the new advances in technology, anyone can now publish a book.

Which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good for those of us who can write, but don’t have million-plus readerships that attract the attention of the Big Guys. Bad because now Grandma is publishing collections of her favorite colonoscopy anecdotes and Jeb, the guy who works graveyard at 7-11, is publishing his belly-button-lint art books. Which, I suppose, for the sake of diversity isn’t a bad thing.

But for me, these advances in technology have been amazing. I am now selling books. Confessions of a Pink-Haired Lunatic (a collection of my columns) and How To Make Your Life Suck (a parody of self-help books) are available through my website; Lulu.com; Stage Road Shops in Pescadero; Coastside Books, Moon News, and Bay Books in Half Moon Bay; and Barnes and Noble in San Mateo. By the time you read this, my books will be available on Amazon.com and for special order at all bookstores.

I have been considering self-publishing for years. But in publishing circles, when you say you’re self-published, it’s like virtual toilet paper on the shoe. No one takes you seriously. Well, until you sell big numbers and then suddenly, they always loved your work and you’re a star and here’s your contract. (Think The Celestine Prophecy.)

But when I attended the Romance Writers of America conference last summer, I took a workshop for published authors called Shameless and Shocking Self-Promotion that completely changed my mind about my career. At the time, I assumed my latest sci-fi novel, Tastes Like Chicken, would sell to a publisher faster than photos of Brad Pitt naked (ahhh, denial) and I wanted to find out what my next step would be. What an eye-opener that seminar was!

When you get your first publishing contract for fiction, you get an average advance of around five grand (varies WIDELY from $300 to double digits). Basically, the large publishers buy bunches of these first books and throw them out there to bookstores and see what happens, like throwing cooked spaghetti on a wall to see if it sticks. If you sell, you get another book contract, if you don’t… you go back to the end of the line and hope someday you get another shot.

When a publisher spends five grand on a book, they do no promotion for you. Which dollar-wise makes sense. Like they’re gonna spend three grand on an ad in Romantic Times for a book they paid five grand for? So basically, you have to spend your own cash and energy and time promoting your work.

The agent who taught the workshop, Jessica Faust of Bookends, LLC, said authors need to “think outside the box” and utilize any and all of our special talents to promote our work. At this point, I realized that I could do a lot for myself while I was waiting for The Big Contract. And so began my journey.

So far, I’ve self-published two books, had three websites built (www.janetperiat.com is one), started two blogs and now, I am working on the promotion of my projects (yes, this article is part of my evil plan to dominate the publishing world, one reader at a time).

For self-publishing, I chose Lulu.com, basically because the service was free and relatively easy to use. Lulu.com along with several other Publishing-On-Demand companies utilize a new technology: a sophisticated printing machine that spits out one finished book at a time, cover and all. On Lulu, you upload the text of your book, choose a cover (the free ones are pretty limited, but doing your own is as simple as taking a photo and uploading it) and whammo, you are published and can buy/sell your books. While the service is free, we paid a hundred bucks per book for distribution so my books would be available on Amazon.com and for special order at all bookstores.

You have probably wondered what Weasel-on-a-Stick has to do with any of this. Well, Weasel-on-a-Stick.com is one of the websites I had built. WOAS is a fictional, intergalactic fast-food restaurant featured in my latest sci-fi novel, Tastes Like Chicken. While WOAS almost a throwaway in the book, the name gave Frank and I the giggles, so I decided to use WOAS as a promotional tool to sell Chicken. I hired cartoonist Randy Cleveland to do the logo and musician Glenn MacPherson to do the jingle.

Frank put the logo on CaféPress.com (an online t-shirt and promotional schwag printing shop—you upload images, people buy the stuff and you get a small cut of the proceeds) and put up the one-page website. So now, at www.weasel-on-a-stick.com, you can read an excerpt of the book, buy schwag and hear the jingle. All to promote a book I haven’t quite finished yet… Yes, I got the weasel ahead of the cart, but hey, at least I’m selling some t-shirts. I’ll be self-publishing the book soon while also promoting it to large publishers.

Coming up this summer, I’ll be using my performance background and starting a new venture: podcasting. Podcasts are videos or radio-type broadcasts you upload to the Internet, like YouTube videos. I’m going to perform some stand-up routines, film them and upload them to YouTube and my website/blog thingy. In September, I’ll be taking some of this material and performing it live in Pescadero at Harley Farms for a special event to promote my books.

While I’m not a household name and I don’t have a huge publishing contract (yet), I feel so good about myself, I can’t tell you. Actual movement in my career other than collecting rejection letters! And I have made Weasel-Wear available to the globe at large! Such worthy endeavors!

So check out my websites and listen to the Weasel jingle. If you’re feeling generous, please visit your local bookstore and pick up a copy of one or both of my books. The bookstores and my mortgage company would greatly appreciate it.

©2008, Janet Periat

A Sticky Situation

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

I just spent the last twenty minutes trying to remove a giant sticker from my new step ladder. Two giant stickers, actually. I got so mad, my head started spinning around and I began screaming things like “These stickers suck socks in hell!” I am still frothing. Twenty full minutes. Count them, twenty. I timed it. And I’m still not done! Not only did I waste twenty minutes of my precious time today, I have to go back and sit there and rip off teeny tiny minute pieces of this nasty evil sticker, one match-head sized piece at a time. And the stickers are freakin’ HUGE. One foot by eight inches big. No lie! They’re vast, each covers an entire step of the ladder. Fully half the ladder is covered with these insidious stickers. Infuriating!

Who are these morons at the ladder company who order these things? “Oh boy, I’m gonna save the company a whopping two tenths of a cent per ladder with cheap paper and army surplus glue. That will win me my promotion!” If they’re gonna adhere a billboard-sized sticker to their product, they could at least have the decency to use thicker paper. This sticker is three quarters adhesive and one quarter paper. The only way to get it off is to pry itsy-bitsy pieces off with a fingernail. Maddening! And there’s no one to scream at! What have I done wrong except for buy this manufacturer’s product? Why do they hate me so much? Why must I be submitted to this kind of torture? Someone contact the White House. Forget flushing the Q’oran down the toilet, make those prisoners at Guantanamo do ten hours of sticker removal. Better yet, send them my ladder! That chore would break anyone.

Sometimes I get so frustrated, I just give up and leave the damn stickers on stuff. Makes the objects look like hell, but how much time do I actually have for sticker removal? Last time I looked, making money, fixing food and getting the oil changed in my car took priority over sticker removal. I checked my To Do list for the week and sticker removal wasn’t even on it. This is not something I plan for. It’s a job that sneaks up and attacks me like some sticky stealth bomber. I hate the manufacturer of the sticker, I hate the person who made the decision to order and adhere the cheap ass sticker—a GARGANTUAN sticker at that—to the entire step of the ladder. I’d love to leave it there, but the sticker is printed on shiny, glossy stock and I don’t want to slip off and break my neck. The manufacturer added insult to injury when they printed this on their diabolical sticker: “Please Remove Sticker Prior To Use.” Bastards! Taunting me! What they need to say is this: “Prepare To Waste Hours Of Your Precious Time Removing This Sticker Because If You Don’t And Slip Off And Hurt Yourself It’s Your Own Stupid Fault And You Can’t Sue Us For It Because We Printed This Warning Here And We Used Cheap Glue To Make Sure You’d Be Spending Quality Time Looking At It”.

I wish the sticker manufacturer reign of terror was limited to the rare purchase. But no, businesses are now covering more and more products with permanent stickers and price tags. Yes, I understand the need for protection against shoplifting, but these people have gone too far. This week alone, I removed stickers from a credit card, two lamps, four shirts, ten apples, four bananas, one lemon, seven zucchini, a watch, four bowls, six glasses, a planter box, two garbage cans and now, this freakin’ stupid step ladder from hell! That’s waaay too many stickers. And over half of them had to be removed one atom sized piece at a time. I wonder how many billions of dollars are wasted each year in lost productivity due to sticker removal. Countless, I’m sure!

While I almost understand the placement of stickers on non-grocery items, the one thing I cannot fathom is the advent of pricing individual pieces of produce. It’s criminal. When I was a kid, the only produce with stickers were bananas. I still have Chiquita Banana stickers stuck to some of my childhood books. But those came off easy. And damn, with bananas, you can just leave the sticker. Peel the banana and you’re fine. But zucchini and apples have edible peels. And the stickers on both my zucchini and apples were tenacious little buggers. Unremovable. I finally just dug the stickers off the outside of the zucchini and threw away little chunks of vegetable with the stickers. But the most egregious offenders were the stickers on my apples. The paper came off, but not the glue. I got so frustrated that I ended up just eating chunks of glue. Or I ate all the way around the stupid apple and left the part with the adhesive. Which wastes perfectly good food, all because some chemical engineer can’t come up with a good glue. We can cure cancer, we can give people new hearts, we can fly people into space, but we can’t come up with a good removable sticker for apples? Come on, people! Get with the program! Stickers are not part of the food pyramid. Stickers provide no nutritional value, taste bad and stick to your teeth. Last time I checked a menu at a restaurant, they didn’t serve the fruit and veggies with a side of sticker. My Joy of Cooking doesn’t even have a section on how to cook stickers. And Martha Stewart has never featured stickers on her dinner menu. Because stickers are not food and therefore have no place on produce!

So now I find myself seriously thinking about returning the ladder to Home Depot to make a point. Which, I know, would be an exercise in futility and aggravation. Home Depot is the closest thing the US has to an East Bloc market. You wait in long lines, there is only one kind of whatever object you seek, it’s not what you want, but there are vast quantities of it, and it’s cheap so you buy it anyway. Home Depot is a big, nameless, faceless totalitarian dictatorship. This is what we offer! You will buy! If I went in there complaining about stickers on products, I’d end up talking to a minimum wage employee who is more victimized by the corporation than I am. Home Depot doesn’t care. I think they intentionally buy products with permanent stickers. They probably train their people to pick the product with the most permanent sticker. It’s probably one of their markers for a perfect product. “Which sink do you like Mabel? This one or this one?” asks Harry. Mabel replies, “Which one has the sticker that’s hardest to remove? That’s the one we want.” If I actually pulled a Michael Moore on a Home Depot executive and ambushed them regarding their sticker policy, they would probably give me some BS line about how their stickers help with theft prevention. How many billions are lost to shoplifting each year. Which is actually a valid point. I know hundreds and hundreds of people stash ladders in their pockets every year and just walk out the front door. Millions of dollars are lost every year to ladder theft. It’s an epidemic.

I just figured out that the thirty dollar ladder has cost me an additional twenty bucks in sticker removal time alone. And I’m not even done yet. After I get done ranting here, I have to go and take off the rest of that stupid sticker from that stupid ladder because I’ve got half of it off and it’s a big sticky mess. By the time I’m done, a thirty dollar ladder will cost me seventy bucks total. Not to mention a healthy portion of my sanity. I’m not sure it’s all worth it. After all, I bought the ladder so I can change some light bulbs. Which will enable me to see better. So I can remove the stickers from my purchases more efficiently.

I bet the manufacturers of stickers make Prozac.

©2005, Janet Periat

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