Everybody Poops...now with added Fiber!

What the hell is up with all the fiber lately? All the...."probiotics"? When did it become so trendy to take a shit? Haven't we all been doing this for years now? Now it's "in" to be regular, and to let everyone know that we are, or aren’t...by what foods we choose to purchase. Getting a colonic is not a new trend, but you may be as suprised as I was to learn that more than one person thought it would be interesting to tape themselves getting one and post it on youtube? I am all for finding this type of relief, and if I weren't a girl, I would totally poo. It is a natural bodily function, and man does it suck when you can't. But these products are getting out of control! Am I the only one who still feels slightly embarrassed when ordering a raisin bran muffin, because everybody knows that the main reason we make that choice is to facilitate a poo? Not that bran isn't delicious, because I actually kinda dig it, but there is generally only one reason I start to crave it. It is not longer a secret that Jamie Lee Curtis poops...and all because her yogurt has "probiotics"...whatever the hell those are. We see in the Benefiber commercials that it now comes in little flavored drink powders that gorgeous "Sex in the City" type women pop into their water bottles and drink 'til they poo (we don't see that part). You can order a fiber "shot" in your Jamba Juice. Splenda is including "a little boost of fiber" now. Fiber One is making all sorts of new treats which I am promptly trying. Generic labels in the stores are even creating their own cheaper versions of these "Chock-full-o-fiber" delectables. I am antsy with anticipation for the day I learn that Fiber One is partnering with McDonalds for McFiber Fries! Eating too much McDonald's already makes some people poo...but now you will be assured instant relief. Is it all just clever marketing? Is there really added fiber? Or is it like when I see "New! Creamier milk chocolate!" on a candy bar and want to buy it to see for myself. Sure enough it tastes creamier, but is it only because I read it on the label? Will we start pooping more because our Slurpi claims "added Fiber shot!"? Here is what really worries me. Why does our culture need so much fiber? Are we just the most horribly irregular generation? This has clearly reached a moment of supply meeting demand. There is obviously a huge need for all of these products, and every one is jumping on board. What about eating the natural foods that have always had fiber in them? Maybe if our country didn't over process and mass produce everything with high-fructose corn syrup in it, our bodies would function normally. Maybe if the water we drink didn't have traces of prescription drug residue that, as most of their side effects includes constipation, we wouldn't need to pay someone to stick a hose up our ass and flush ourselves out. Why is it so much more expensive to eat foods that keep our body working rather then back them up so that they only thing flowing is our money into more and more bullshit? Why is it so much more convenient just to pick up a granola bar with fiber added (never mind everything else that is)? If I weren't a girl, I would totally change that about myself...but I am a girl, and girls don't poo.

Surveillance Camera

There are times I really wish I had secretly installed a surveillance camera in my own room. Like the time I was startled awake by my terrified cat projecting himself off me via his back claws in my arm startled by my having accidentally kicked over of a table with a bunch of stuff on it next to my bed. Or like yesterday when I caught myself sleepily putting on two winter coats by mistake on my way out the door.

Melting Asian Snow Woman

Here she is folks...this is our creation from yesterday...her yellow yarn hair (which we had used to hoist pasta pots of snow up to the balcony to make her) blew away....and her fig newton asian eyes are drooping, her fig mouth melted off (she likes to bask in the the sun)....but we still love her!

The Twilight Zone....

I think when you turn 25, you are tossed into a new reality. This belief has been validated several times since then. Today was one such time.

I am in a room full of strangers, gathered to work for a small hourly rate promoting a brand on the streets of New York. I am surrounded by squeaky girls commenting on which clubs in NYC are good for picking up guys while contradicting eachother's agreements that you can't pick up good guys in NYC clubs.

They speak over each other and nod excitedly, all of their opinions magically coinciding to provide immediate bonds, for the moment. The topics range from "all the hot guys that were coming off the subway this morning!" to "guys, do any of you have fake IDs??".

They discuss circumsized/uncircumsized penises and their recent trips "studying abroad" in foreign countries. At some points I feel like I'm sitting in a bizarre episode of "Sex and the City" in which the stars' much younger and less experienced understudies have taken over. I am silent.

As I hear a few connect over the shared experience of just turning 19, another comments that 22 is such a 'cute age'. Just as one poo-poo's 25, another makes a pathetic attempt to redeem it by boasting that you will then be able to rent a car. They responded to that just as boisterously as I did on my 25th birthday. The original poo-poo'er defines 25 as an age that means "marriage" to her (she has just turned 19). I observe quietly along with the sweet brazilian girl whose english makes her a weak contender for their astute commentary.

I am trapped in some strange reality where everyone around me is at a COMPLETELY different point in their lives than I. Their realities are as real to them as mine is to me, yet they all seem like strange little giggling aliens! I find myself envious of their trips to Europe that I keep saying I'll take. That is all I am jealous of. I feel like I'm sitting in glass box at the end of the table witnessing an experiment to see what happens when you toss several '22 and unders' in a room with one 28 year old just to see what happens. All I could do was sit there, restrained within the reality I understood in my box, and appreciate everything on the outside as my excruciating amusement.

We continued the rest of our day and I made friends with the brazilian girl, partially because she too had felt a little left out of the ambiguously intimate lunch we had all just shared, and partially because Kate Winslet took one of her flyers!! Although I am now aware that I should have respected my initial reservations about taking this low-payed promotion, I accepted my having agreed to do it. I did this because, like these bizarre giggling aliens, I need the money.

It will only be a few short and quick years before at least half of these girls are in my position, far from marriage after 25 or having had their first baby already. I hope by then I will have experienced my travels abroad and we will ALL be very far from needing a job like this. Until then, I will still be baffled that one of them, born and raised on Long Island, now living in the city mentioned that she voted for Bush last year. She said she had faith in him. She thought John Kerry was evil. This is why I never voted in an election until last year, because when I was young and dumb like that, I knew I had no business being in a voting booth. In the world we are living in right now, though, I can't imagine still being THAT dumb.