What is a Cougar?

Saw a TV commercial for www.cougarlife.com. It’s basically Match for hot older chicks (cougars) looking to hook up with young bucks (cubs). Can you say brilliant? Can you imagine how many 18-30 year old dudes are going to be flocking to that site just say say they hooked up with someone they met on Cougarlife? Quick, someone create a Facebook app for a “CougarLife LayCounter” that all of these men can proudly post to their FB pages for all their frat brothers to see…

AAAAnnnd, just in case you’re not familiar with the lingo, here’s some verbiage from the homepage:

Cougars are Women in their PRIME: independent, sexy and wildly successful. They enjoy men that are youthful, fit with the same zest for life. Cougars are classy, confident women that already possess many of the finer things in life — but now want the young, hot guy to go with it.

What is a Cub?

To snare a true Cougar a man needs to be youthful, fit, unintimidated and of course sexually driven! These men can range from athletes to intellectuals, and from technologists to entrepreneurs and all points in between; they can come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing they have in common is the desire to possess a sexually charged older woman.
AAAAAND in case you’re one of my buddies and you’re still reading this for some reason… maybe this will convince you to leave this page and get Cougar hunting…

Republican Scott Brown elected to Teddy Kennedy’s Senate Seat. I learned this from the pig who was flying outside of my window. He also told me that the temperature in Hell is 29 degrees (Fahrenheit) and that the Mayans were lying when they said 2012. Nice knowing you all…



Recently found myself watching Real World DC because even though I know that every Real World is the exact same crap, I like watching these tools run around some of my favorite (and least favorite) DC haunts. Plus, all that time passing by their house in Dupont and wondering “what does it look like inside there?!” Well now I know. And yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Between Real World & the outrageous Jersey Shore show that profiles Staten Island’s finest to the entire country in a light that has embarrassed Italian-Americans to no end, I didn’t think MTV could get much worse. Then I saw the preview for, and subsequently watched about 20 minutes of, Teen Mom, a show about being one, which my Facebook friends would later tell me was based on a UK show called “16 and Pregnant.”

First let me call something out: MTV is supposed to stand for “Music Television.” It no longer does, nor has it resembled such for years. That aside, I really can’t believe that they’d stoop so low as to create a reality TV drama documenting the lives of teenage girls with babies. Sure, there’s the “if you show the trials and tribulations of teenage motherhood, you’ll prevent others from making that mistake” argument, but let’s be honest, in order to keep it interesting, MTV has to glorify it a little bit, and their target demographic probably doesn’t gap into the whole “i shouldn’t do this” thing. Regardless, in the 20 minutes I watched, one of the girls goes to the doctor, baby in tow, to get birth control so she can keep having sex!!! I mean, hooray for safe sex but isn’t the first bundle of joy enough to keep you from risking another?

I tend to be pretty conservative in a lot of my views around the topic, but I don’t think I’m nuts here… people emulate what they see on TV, especially impressionable teenagers. Whether the intent of the show is to show teens the downside to teen pregnancy/parenthood or not, I’ve got to imagine that the opposite interpretation is just as likely whereby viewers say, “well if it’s okay for the girls who get to be on TV as a result, it’s okay for me too!”

I’m happy to report that I’ve yet to stray from my New Years Resolution of sound spending, eating, and exercise habits. In the past two days, I’ve managed to spend only $6/day on food and run an average of 5 miles/day. Today I broke that a bit by going to lunch w/ a buddy where I spent more cash, but I DID order a salad (and in case you’re wondering, no you should NOT order the flank steak caesar salad from Matchbox, unless you like eating romaine stalks with burnt edges).

I’ve also been tracking my daily intake through Livestrong.com, which acquired a nifty little site called Daily Plate, which I discovered years ago during one of my many unsuccessful dieting stages. It’s somewhat tedious to track everything you eat, and downright difficult when you’ve been bad and don’t want to admit it, but it keeps you honest and for the most part provides accurate nutritional information on just about any food product out there, as well as solid calorie-burning data for tons of exercises and activities. For instance, did you know that the average 145-pound person will burn 230 calories/hour saddling horses? Disappointingly enough, that same 145-pound person will only burn 52 calories/hour during (moderate) sex. And although vigorous sex burns nearly double that, sadly it’s still not as good for your weight loss goals as saddling horses…

Yeah I know, it’s been ages since I posted to Darmonation, but I wasn’t receiving any angry e-mails, so I’m guessing my silence went unnoticed. 2009 has been one hell of a year and I’m really looking forward to 2010. Last year around this time, I:

• Was single
• Was 270 unhealthy pounds
• Was bored out of my mind and counted the days, hours, minutes to being laid off from a job I didn’t like or want
• Lived a pretty unhealthy lifestyle of partying, bad food, and irresponsible spending

Today I reflect on where I am now. In the last year, I have:

• Found a wonderful girlfriend whom I love very much
• Lost 35 pounds, slimming down to a post-college low of 233 (I gained some over the holidays . I plan to get to 200 by 2011
• Landed an exciting, challenging, fulfilling (albeit sometimes stressful) job at an internet company that’s poised to explode in 2010. Best part about it, I’m learning a ton from smart people who I genuinely like and have great respect for.
• Toned down my John Belushi party ways significantly, adopted a healthier eating and exercise regimen, and while my spending is still out of control, I plan to work on that in 2010 like I did on my weight in 2009.

Other highlights of the past year include:

• Getting laid off from my former employer in the 5th round of layoffs (at least I made it that far!)
• Traveling to England, Ireland, Scotland, France, and Italy on my “Unemployed World Tour”
• Fighting the negative feelings that creep into ones mind from waking up jobless each day and the challenge of looking in the mirror, telling yourself that it’s who you are that’s important, not what you do or how much money you make, and actually believing it. May I never forget that…
• Ignoring my ego and suppressing my pride by taking an internship 4 years out of college that enabled me to prove myself and turned into a spectacular opportunity.
• Listening to my heart over my head and developing a great relationship with a fabulous woman
• Finally getting a personal trainer after promising to do so for the last decade
• Becoming a full-fledged American Citizen and securing my 3rd passport (US, Canadian, Italian), thereby making me one step closer to being an international man of mystery like James Bond.
• Spending quality time with family, friends, and colleagues.

Resolutions for 2010 and beyond:

• Get to 199lbs for the first time since 2001
• Create budgets and actually abide by them
• Pay off all credit card debt
• Work smart, play smart
• Continue to nurture the positive relationships in my life
• Live each day a little further outside of my comfort zone, realizing that only then will I achieve true success as a person

I’d like to think I’m going to start blogging heavily again on here, but time is limited these days. Either way, I feel good about what’s transpired in the last year and never thought I’d do a 180 like I have. The best part, it all just kind of happened and seemed almost effortless. I’ve learned that achieving a lofty goal happens step-by-step, day-by-day, minute-by-minute, and that attitude is what I’m most proud of adopting this year.

Happy New Year!

The woman in front of me in line at the coffee shop, who was about 250-300 pounds (ballparkin’ it – she was BIIIIIG). She had a 32 ounce fruit punch and two 3 musketeers bars. For breakfast. She was also covered in make up.My question is: why bother with the make up, sweetie?

So I’ll tip my hat to Palm for somehow pulling the magic rabbit out of its hat in the form of the Pre – that’s a sexy little smartphone they’ve come out with. I wouldn’t be caught dead owning one, simply because Palm was so late to the game – I mean, up until now they thought the Treo was still “in” and that the Palm OS was competitive. Think again, dumbasses.

So now they’ve got this really sexy device that looks like it was designed by Apple or some other manufacturer that isn’t Palm (reminds me of Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! commercials, only I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Palm!), but they are running these TV ads that almost make my skin crawl – I’m not joking you! They’ve got this one commercial with this strange music that sounds like the intro to a cheesy 80s sitcom, or the kind of music your elementary school teacher used to pop in some outdated shitty VHS about something I can’t remember, or a crappy corporate america training video that HR plays in new hire orientation. Then, this pale, anemic looking redheaded woman who appears to be wearing a nightgown turns around and starts talking to me about street lights and going “bing, bing, bing” while she plays with her Pre and talks about how she’s having one of those days where life just “flows.” Woulda thought it was an ad for Always if she didn’t whip out her little clamshell phone. But seriously, she looks like a cross between McCauley Culkin and those freakish translucent robots from I, Robot with (Wiki-Wiki) Will Smith. See the video below.

See the resemblance? Crazy right? Then there’s the other commercial where Palm apparently hired the entire fleet of Chinese dudes who performed that freakishly mechanical number at the opening to the Beijing Olympic games that reminded everyone in the world that the Chinese are precise as hell and can collectively do some pretty mindblowing things. This is supposed to entice me to realize how the Pre can help me manage all the different people who “flow” in and out of my life seamlessly. I mean, I like this commercial better than the one where she’s looking at me – rather see a bunch of Chinese people proving displaying evidence that North America is going to someday be their bitch in the form of a dance routine than have this woman stare into my soul as if she thinks my heart is a Palm Pre and just wants to reach out and grab it. See that video here:

So what do you think? Is it just me? or are these supernatural, peaceful, magical “flow” commercials actually a job well done by Palm? Here’s CNet’s video review of the phone – something “useful” for you in this blog of random ramblings

http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/palm

I’m not a religious man, per se, but I was baptized a Roman Catholic. I once told my grandfather, who is extremely religious (church every day, prayer 3 times/day, no meat on Fridays kinda guy), that my girlfriend is also Catholic and he said, “is she a real Catholic? Or is she like you.” Ouch.

One of the reasons that I’m not particularly religious is because I’m still a brazen young guy who hasn’t been tested with really devastating challenges that result in me losing hope in things. I’m confident/arrogant enough to believe that as Marley said, “every little ting…ees gonna be alright, mon.” But another reason is because the Catholic church tends to be so somber and it’s all about feeling shame and apologizing for everything you do so that you are guaranteed better a good seat inside the pearly gates. At mass, people drone on and on with the prayers, and the priest will preach and pontificate to the disciples who hang their head in shame. Personally, I like the way the Baptists do it – celebrate Jesus and God by dancing around, singing your ass off, and actually CELEBRATING.

This all came to mind for me when I saw the video below. I’ve been to a few weddings this summer and this reminded me just how blah the Catholic church is – even at joyous occasions like weddings, there’s a somber tone to it. Check out this video from a wedding in Minnesota that truly represents the joy that is supposed to be a wedding day. I want you to pay attention to the halfway point…you’ll notice that you’re smiling pretty much throughout the whole thing – it made my day yesterday. And for those of you who know me, pay attention to the 1:09 and 2:50 minute mark…I think my doppelganger is in Minneapolis.

Wasn’t that just about the happiest video you’ve ever seen? Sheer, unadulterated joy. The way a wedding SHOULD be.

Can someone please tell me why the public is obsessed with motorized boxes? I can understand the functionality of a minivan, as it is a practical way for families to travel; but what is the point of buying a compact car shaped like a massive square box? I mean, why not buy either a) a compact car like a mini or Scion xA; or b) a honda element or minivant type thing? What’s with the hybrid of the two? Look at some of these things – aren’t they hideous? I find it especially funny when people “soop” these cars up – I mean really, what are you doing? that’s like me putting spinners on the 1990 Toyota I drove in college…I don’t understand the trend that is forming around these boxy ass cars…someone, please explain!

I don’t know what all the fuss is about but as soon as Dos Equis’ recent campaign for the “Most Interesting Man in the World” launched, I started seeing quotes from the video on my friends chat statuses and in general just realizing that the Mexican brewer is aggresively marketing its beer online now. Looks like someone’s tired of letting Corona have all the fame and glory, and a good ol’ fashion cockfight is brewin’. Personally, I’d love to see Negro Modelo or Tecate get into the mix – let’s turn this brew-battle into an all out Mexican wrestling match, Nacho Libre style…I just don’t get it – it’s not that great of a commercial. Kinda stupid, actually. I’ll take the Geico Gecko or eTrade baby anyday.