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I love you Quizno's, but sometimes love hurts. Like when I got a side salad the other day and cut the inside of my mouth on your unnecessarily sharp plastic fork... twice! Ow Quizno's! OW. I knew that shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and a couple of sliced onions in a black plastic octagon wasn't going to be heavenly or anything, but I didn't think it would be OUCHY. Geez.
An open letter to the phone book companies:
Dear Phone Book Giver-Outer,
Please stop leaving piles of phone books on my door step. It's not that I don't appreciate your generosity. I know it takes a lot of care and hard work to create the endless listings that compose a phone book. To repeat the process six more times just so that I could be sure of having at least one phone book for every room in the house? What thankless generosity!
But seriously, this has got to stop. To be honest, I don't really ever use phone books. If I need a phone number I just Google the damned thing. Believe it or not, it's actually QUICKER than: locating which of the 6 books is most likely to have the correct information, figuring out which room that particular book is in (remember we are supposed to have one book for every room in the house), thumbing through the book looking for the applicable category, THEN sliding my finger down the neatly alphabetized list until I reach the actual number. I realize that there are plenty of people who prefer phone books or do not have online access. That's all well and good for them, but why not limit your phone book patrol to those residents? Or leave a pile at the grocery store for willing people to pick them up? Why leave piles of phone books on every porch in the world every single year only to have them all discarded one year later? (IF they make it that long?) It seems awfully wasteful to me.
Phone Book Giver-Outer, I'm beginning to think you have an ulterior motive. Could it be that you are wasting the trees, energy, space and time of the world only to make a quick buck on advertising? Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for quick bucks, money-making schemes, and good honest business, but consider this:
-On average, 1 ton of 100% virgin (non-recycled) newsprint uses 12 trees
-One phone book weighs about 5 pounds. I received 5 books this year, totaling 16 pounds of book.
-In my small town, the population in 2006 was: 26,985 - Lets assume that an average home has 3 people.
-That would give Newtown, CT about 8,995 homes.
-This would mean that 143, 920 pounds of phone books were delivered in one town alone, this year.
-That's almost 72 tons of paper equaling 864 trees.
The massive amount of resources that go into leaving PILES of phone books on EVERY porch in my small town alone is just ridiculous. Imagine these numbers on a city scale? And remember, this happens EVERY year. Seeing the giant dumpsters overflowing with phone books from the previous year just makes me sick. There is no reason that a company that has everyone's phone number can't take a telephone poll for people who WANT a phone book. Or, as I suggested earlier, phone books could be made available in grocery stores or libraries for people to pick up. It is completely sick for massive resources to be spent on the creation and destruction of obsolete telephone directories on a yearly basis. And every year the number of phone books that they send gets higher!! How many blasted phone books does one home need? I can't imagine that the number of phone books in a household has any reason to exceed the number of people!
Stop sending me phone books!
Yours Truly,
Mary Helen
And one of the saddest things to ever befall it. 
There are many words nowadays that cause the vast majority to immediately recoil in fear or disgust. Often these words bring to mind various buzz words, urban legends, exaggerated stereotypes and stories involving said stereotype and a friend of a friend's bad experience with them. Words like communist, socialist, activist and witch have been on the wire for some time. The latest additions to list list of hot button words include liberal, tree hugger, religious and to approach the topic at hand, feminist. Naturally, when anyone attempts to slap a single label on a hugely diverse group someone is going to get it wrong. The word will become associated with hundreds and thousands of hideous things and, mis truths, accidents, and self-contradictions. Obviously, anyone working against the group that is being labeled will make every attempt to hype up all the bad publicity in the world, never forgetting to shout out your label every time they mention one of these scandals. Labels are never fair representations of real people. They are just words to generalize political movements, desensitize the public and most importantly - make somebody somewhere look bad. I am the last person who would advocate for people running around tagged as one thing or another. "Hi, I'm Mary and I'm an eco-vegan femiliberal" . I don't think so.
It does, however get under my skin that soooo many women and girls recoil when the word "feminist" is uttered. Like I said, I'm not about to give myself some screwball title and have it tattooed on my forehead BUT if someone was to ask me whether or not I was a feminist I wouldn't even blink before I said, "well of COURSE I am." What woman in their right mind wouldn't believe in at least the fundamentals of feminism? Do these women, often YOUNG women and GIRLS really believe the following:
-Women deserve to be paid less than men
-Women deserve to have less rights than men
-It's OK for women to be considered someone's PROPERTY?
Hello!! What are you little tarts THINKING when you say, "Oh I'm not a FEMINIST or anything." Wha wha wha!?!?! Bitch, are you serious?! I don't want to sit around and play the blame game about whose fault it is that women's rights are no longer a "hip" thing to fight for, but ladies this is getting ridiculous. Ten years ago nobody but nobody could get away with cleaning ads that jabbered on about how women should "get excited" about this new mop or some other bullshit cleaning product. WTF? Since when did we decide to go back to a world where women did all the dirty work while men paraded around like the cocks of the walk? (Pun intended.)
For the record, I think it's all well and good if cleaning gets you hot and bothered. I'll admit the IDEA of cleaning does that very thing to me. (Not the actual CLEANING so much) I believe in freedom. Period. I believe that womankind should be a flock of free birds who can pursue glamorous careers, birth babies and stay home or jet set around the world just for the hell of it. If you want to play Saint Suzy Homemaker than my hat goes off to you. If you'd rather seduce men and toss them out like old socks the next morning then I'd like to shake your hand! Maybe you just don't care for men and you'd rather swim in a sea of lady love? That's cool!
The point is that if we would like to continue enjoying the freedom to live all of these wide and varied lifestyles than we have to keep our self respect! We have to stick it to the man when he tries to stick it to us. Most importantly, we've got to stick together. Anyone who has lived through middle school knows that there is no sense in being caddy bitches who stick their noses in the air concerning which clic is which. So admit it. You are a feminist, and its very likely that your husband, or brother or male buddy is one too!
1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, liposuction and air conditioning.
2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could
never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars,
the service-sector economy, or longer life spans...
---
Re-post this if you believe in legalizing gay marriage
I've recently taken to writing to company's with my many complaints. Usually after a letter I recieve money saving coupons on the item I swore to never purchase again. I may even get free samples of a brand when I inform them of how they have emotionally crippled me or dashed my heartfelt expectations of their quality. But every now and then I get nothin but sass! 
The following is a record of my unsatisfying correspondance with the folks at Dentyne Ice.
To: Them
From: Me
I have recently had the severe displeasure
of viewing your new ad for Dentyne Ice. The ad
showed two young men at a dance club or some such
place "scoping out" two considerably younger girls.
Now this situation is a bit disturbing on its own,
as the girls appear to be around 18-20 and the men
appear to be more like 25-30. Ew. But what really
disgusted me was the line that came out of the dark
haired man's mouth. "Knock knock. Daddy's home."
That is absolutely repulsive. Obviously your company
has decided that it does not want to sell gum to
women. In their attempt to portray "coolness" both
literally and figuratively they have thoroughly
alienated me and I'm sure many other members of my
gender. Although your marketing department may think
so I personally don't think child molestation,
rapists, greasy seducers or even frezzing someone
with your breath is funny or cool. This commercial
was beyond low brow. Needless to say I am now
boycotting your gum.
And now they're sassy response.
To: Me
From: Them
Thank you for contacting us about our recent Dentyne
Ice advertisement. We are always interested in
hearing from our consumers.
We regret that you were unhappy with the
advertisement. The decision to run any
advertisement is made only after we test it with a
large sample of consumers. In the case of this
particular advertisement, the test results were
quite positive, though we understand it may not
appeal to everyone.
Again, thank you for sharing your views with us.
Your input helps us gauge consumer reaction to our
advertising which is always helpful in creating
effective campaigns. Please be assured that we will
continue to monitor consumer response to this
commercial and your feedback will be shared with our
marketing department.
Sincerely,
Consumer Relations
Sure I may be over reacting, but I call that sass! And nothing but! So I replied.
To: Them
From: Me
I'm sorry. I know this is going to sound quite rude. But I have to ask. Where do you find your focus groups? Prison yards? Sexual offender rehabilitation centers? I find it extremely disturbing that a large sample of cunsumers would find this comment suitable for a gum commercial. I could see it as a suitable line in some kind of serial killer chop em up detective thriller. "Knock. Knock. Daddy's home." That's creepy as hell! I ran this by my own sample audience and the results were quite the opposite to your findings. Maybe you should consider testing a larger more varied group of people next time. Also, the music on your website is very annoying. I think you should change it to something more likeable. Maybe some soprano sax?
Truly Yours, Mary
Let's see what they've got to say to that!
So I just subscribed to Rhapsody. It's kind of a neat program. For ten dollars a month you can listen to all of the music they have available (while it is by no means a complete library it is very extensive. Kind of random what you can and can't find) You can also watch videos, listen to pre-programmed radio stations (skip songs you don't like) and burn tracks for 79 cents a piece. It's pretty nifty. I don;t know if I'll keep it yet, but we'll see. I just burned a CD and WOWEE what a ripoff. It is more expensive than Itunes, DIRT SLOW and you don't even get the music file. PPLBBLLLT :P. I fart on their music purchasing options. So the moral is, I guess, that if you want to actually own the music you are better off with Itunes which is super quick and 9.99 an album. Does anyone else know any good places to download music? One prerequisite is of course that they will not search my files for licenses. That happened to my Dad with one program (can't remember which one) and he couldn't play any of his old mp3's!! Yuck.
My apology to the world. See mine and everyone elses at SorryEverybody.com
Zachariah recently comented "What do you make of the criticism of Michael Moore, i.e. intentionally misinforming his viewers and making himself inaccessible to the common man?" Here is my response:
Anyone who puts themself out to face the criticism of the public and the media will be found to have flaws. You can either judge the artist or judge the product that they create. For example, it is hard to deny that Michael Jackson is an odd ball to say the least, but that doesn't change the fact that Thriller was, and always will be awesome. Are you going to keep yourself from impersonating a zombie every time you hear the song start because you don't like what the person who created it does at home? You may as well give up on liking anything, because 9 out of 10 celebrities will not be what you'd like them to be. Michael Moore has made some of the most thought provoking films and televison programs of our times. No matter which side of the fence you are on, when you see them, you will think. You will be inspired to shout. Shouting is what we need, and if he had held back his opinion from his doctumentaries they would not get to us the way that they do. Obviously this leaves him open to the most serious accusation for a documentarian, that he is making a film to make people think ONE way as opposed to make their own choice. Personally, I do not think that is what he has done. I think that the natural response to seeing a truth that is so unsettling will more often then not be to deny it's credibility. I love my country, and I don't like the truth either, which is why I am glad that Michael Moore is doing what he does. If you love your country, the idea of your country that you had as a child, the land of the free, a great melting pot of understanding and culture, than you will understand why it is so important that we open our eyes and see that it is no longer ours. And we are no longer free. Go to Http://www.michaelmoore.com and READ the Patriot Act. It HAS BEEN put into effect and it is monstrous. The only weapon we have in this fight is education. So I say again, God bless ya Michael Moore.
"He serves the state best who opposes the state most."-Henry David Thoreau
