The Wittery Blog (The Witty Writer Marketplace)

Guest Blog courtesy of Christina-Marie Wright (aka The Gonzo Mama)

Let’s admit it ladies – hair removal is no fun. I’m not even talking about our “down THERE hair…” I’m just talking about our legs. If you’re like me, you routinely find yourself in the shower, one leg propped up on the edge of the tub, with a deadly weapon in your hand, thinking: There must be a better way.

If there is a better way, I haven’t found it yet.

Sure, a myriad of products have promised to make my shaving woes a thing of the past, but seriously, it’s just propaganda. By propaganda, I mean villainous lies of Hitler’s Third Reich caliber – an organized campaign to promote the suffering of women throughout the world.

Consider the original Epilady. Do you remember that little coiled device of demonic origin? The coils were supposed to painlessly remove hair at the root as the unwitting user stroked it over her leg. If you missed the fun, let me boil down the net effect for you: The only way it could have been more painful would have required using red-hot coils from a toaster oven.

How about depilatories like Nair or Neet? I have been documented to have perhaps the most sensitive skin in the known universe. Nonetheless, I bravely decided to try such a product about three years ago. I am happy to report that the depilatory did, indeed, remove the hair from my legs, along with three layers of dermatological tissue. I am equally happy to report, today, that the skin grafts are hardly noticeable anymore.

Hot wax? Ouch. Cold wax? I tried it, using a do-it-your-damn-self home kit. I never did figure out how the wax could remove the hair from my legs, since I couldn’t remove the wax from my legs in the first place. It kept melting into a sticky, sap-like coating on my skin and never set up. I tried using a damp cloth to rub it off. I added soap. I soaked in a bubble bath. No luck. For a week, I had legs that doubled as fly strips.

Why do we subject ourselves to these inconvenient – and often painful – rituals, ladies? Why? Would it really be so bad to just… go for a “natural” look? Revolt, I say! Rebel, I urge you! Let your leg hair sprout. Encourage its growth by taking vitamins. Cultivate a shiny, healthy leg of hair!

Think about it! Did Eve have a razor in the Garden of Eden? Dare I suggest that Cleopatra may not have shaved her legs? (Well, okay, she was the self-proclaimed “king” of Egypt, but a rumored lusty lady nonetheless, who had no trouble attracting powerful men.) Joan of Arc was a badass. Do you really think, on her way to the battle, she was thinking about the stubble on her stems?

I don’t think so. Nor will I be stressing over my unshaved gams as I head to battle the oppressive laundry dictator.

Christina-Marie Wright is the mother of seven children and author of The Gonzo Mama newspaper column (TheGonzoMama.com), where she chronicles her adventures in “extreme parenting.” Wright specializes in parenting humor, political satire and cuttingly honest confessions about being a woman. Sadly, she still shaves her legs every single day.

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(Unless of Course They Don’t Win)

Guest Blog courtesy of Mike Reynolds

The pending arrival of the Olympics in Canada and our country’s subsequent success or failure has become all-consuming. Not just for me, but for every single one of us igloo-living, plaid shirt wearing Canadians.

It really should come as no surprise that come winter Olympic time, we all start to care about sports most of us have never heard of and that in a month, we will mostly forget exist.

We glue our eyes to the television screen as two men lie atop one another and fly screaming down an icy maze on a sled that doesn’t look sturdy enough to safely carry a twenty-pound beaver.

We watch with tears of pride in our eyes as human beings with the ability to turn off the sanity portion of their brain, willingly throw themselves hundreds of feet into the air on a pair of skis without a safety net, hoping they land safely, but still silently wanting to see a dramatic crash.

But most importantly, to Canadians at least, we sit in our luckiest chairs to watch grown men strap on armour and then skate about an ice rink, punishing a small piece of rubber with wooden sticks.

Hockey.

We’re crazy for it and might be the only ones in the world that are. If you live outside of Canada, chances are you at best have a casual, don’t need to know more about this sport, or an I know some National Hockey League teams and their uniforms are ugly kind of relationship with our national pastime. Here, we question the existence of God if even our local beer league team doesn’t win their midnight game against the neighbouring blue collared gentlemen.

So imagine what we’re like come Olympic time when our supposed ‘best’ come together to lace up the skates and take on the world.

We’re sick. We’re all losing weight as the first faceoff nears because we’re so nervous. As badly as we all want to see the outcome, we’re afraid to actually watch. As the NHL readies itself for the Olympic break, we pray that our Canadian boys get pulled from the lineup for fear they might take a puck to the ear or a stick to the nether regions.

We can’t lose to the Swedes, and we can’t lose to the Finns. God forbid we lose to the Americans, and our country will literally blow itself up if we come out on the wrong end against the Russians.

As hockey-friendly as these countries might be, their athletes haven’t nearly the same pressure put on them to return home with a gold medal around their neck or to not return at all.

I’m no different from my fellow Canadians. In fact, love hockey more than most. I have extra stores of spray paint and dog poop at the ready to redecorate the homes of our hockey heroes just in case the impossible happens and they let us down.

When it comes to hockey, it’s simply not enough to ‘give it your all,’ or ‘to leave it all on the ice.’ They’re heroes to us all, unless of course they happen to leave the gold medal in the hands of the Russians. In which case, they had better give it some thought on whether or not to change nationalities.

(Mike Reynolds is a writer from Ottawa who is well-known for writing in his sleep. Well-known that is by his wife and baby. He’s always looking for more writing opportunities and always looking for material with humour-me potential.)

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By Joe Donnellan

Having spent two weeks in Boston with my girlfriend over Christmas, I feel that I should share one of my experiences with you, one of my wholesome, family-friendly, non-sexual experiences. I had never been skiing before and foolishly believed myself to be the next *insert famous skier’s name here*. We gathered all our gear together (i.e. cash ) and headed off to an out-of-the-way ski resort where 4 year olds are taught how to ski.

The slopes were less than daunting and moods were high as we set off to rent our skis and whatnot. It was only when putting on the boots that I realised the first problem. I couldn’t stay upright – and this was before I attached the skis or tried to hold my poles. It is one of my deep regrets that we didn’t, at this point, take some pictures before my spirit was not only broken, but dismembered and left holding its guts as it bled to death on the crisp, pure snow on the incline.

My boots were sore to have on in the first place so no time was wasted. Straight up the conveyor belt and when I reached the top I turned around to go down the hill. Christina was struggling to keep herself from going sideways as I hared off downhill at break neck speed. I was really getting a feel for this skiing thing until it dawned on me that in all the time I was there, I never thought to figure out even the blueprints of an idea as to how to stop myself from hurtling into the almost perfectly laid out 10-pin children at the bottom of the hill, through the fence behind them and sprawl myself on the bonnet of the rather expensive-looking car that the rather burly-looking gentleman was taking great care to lock.

I tried to stick my poles in the ground. No success. I tried to stick my poles in the ground again. Astonishingly, still no success. In the midst of an all out panic attack which threatened to consume me, I had a moment of immense calm, where I inhaled deeply and everything seemed to become slow motion.

It became embarrassingly apparent in that instant what I needed to do and I was bewildered as to why I had not thought of it earlier. I threw myself to the ground with all the zest of a 15 year old who was after drinking his first 7 cans of cider, and I closed my eyes. I prayed to the God that I don’t believe in to let me stop on time. I bargained with him. I swore all forms of good deeds and prayers in his name if I could just stop on time. I did. Thank you God but I’m not following through on any of those promises.

My next major problem was that I had just embarrassed myself in front of my girlfriend – who had been skiing before so she was going to be good. I stood up and turned around just on time to see her ski face first into a tree over the opposite side of the slope from where we started. We both agreed never to discuss our skiing adventure in each others presence again. Needless to say we both left the slopes quite Piste off with the whole experience.

(Joe Donnellan is a witty blogger who can find humor in any situation and is willing to give most opportunities a trial (within reason). He also really likes waffles. If you would like Joe to fix you a piece of his funny blog, get in touch.)

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Guest Blog Courtesy of Tony Goriainoff

(Tony Goriainoff is a financial journalist working in Europe, originally from Texas. He is available to do freelance work most of the year (except when he is on vacation, which is not often enough). His favorite topics are things like culture, politics, art, music and life & relationships in general.)

“Outside” is different

What does this normally mean? Well, for starters, it means that everywhere you go, it is going to be different. Different? You may say, But of course!

Well Little Miss Smart Ass, you don’t know different until you see a French toilet up close and personal. Or until you enter a rest area on a British highway and marvel at the dried up and insipid food. You never knew sausages could taste like rope did you?

Yes, forget America’s obsession with hygiene and smells and get ready to enter the smelly world waiting for you just outside your local international airport terminal.

The planet is different from us. Not better or worse just different, and I suggest you strap yourself tightly, darling, because the great “unknown” just beyond our borders is going to smack you in the face like a wet fish and no, it won’t say sorry afterwards.

Start with Europe, one of our acknowledged cultural homelands (for what else is our country but an amalgamation of XVIII European Enlightenment thoughts and ideas sprinkled here and there with some good old fashioned social and religious persecution and a shameless excuse for slavery and world domination?).

Europeans feel superior to us. No, I can’t explain it. They just do. It does not matter that we tend to earn more, have bigger and longer hair, that our waistlines are expanding like mount Krakatoa on acid, or that we live in larger homes. It does not matter that the price we pay for gas is half of what they pay, or that anything the Japanese invent, we get first.

It goes beyond that.

Europeans have a certain knack for keeping old things around which we either lost along the way, or, quite frankly, never acquired. And yes, we must admit, that is why we go to Europe.

No one in their right mind travels seven hours from JFK to stare at London’s Canary Wharf, or eight hours to be marvelled by La Defense, in Paris.

No.

We jump into those flying tubes to get what we don’t get in America: old stuff. Sometimes, very old stuff. In the case of Greece and Italy, even ancient stuff.

And here’s where their dislike of us begins. Once, in Southern Spain, I overheard a group of American teenagers as they were being addressed by their tour guide.

“We will visit the Roman ruins of Italica”, she said.

And what did Miss Blonde Bimbo say to her friend within earshot of yours truly?

“Oh, we have those back home, how boring”.

In case you are wondering, la Bimbona was from Texas.

The tour guide overheard her and started to laugh when she glanced over towards the airhead section of the group and saw me trying to gnaw my veins off in disgust.

Europeans, I must confess, don’t hate Americans, they just hate stupid people.

Unfortunately for us, we do have an inordinate amount of those within our borders. Sometimes they even make it into the White House, so imagine how superior Europeans feel!

In Europe you will find old everything: homes, cars, clothes, people, museums, streets, jewels, neighborhoods, cities, bridges, and, interestingly, customs.

Europeans like their tradition even more than we do, the difference being that they have so much of it!

Like their tradition of keeping poor people poor. An age old tradition that one. Why help the poor better their lot in life when they will only multiply and produce more smelly poor people? Like I always say, you can’t rape the willing!

Harsh, but very much how many European governments treat their population, and they then, in turn, say things like “please Sir, can I have some more?”

Unless they are Scandinavian. These are probably the only countries on Earth which have worked tirelessly to ensure everyone is middle class, and poor at the same time.

Poor? You may ask. But I heard they have a great social system!

Indeed they do. Everything is paid for…out of their salary. What is the point of earning 60K when half (or more) of it is going to the State? So ok, they are not exactly Brokeback Mountain poor, but they are sort of lower middle class on state aid poor… ish.

But they drive Saabs and Volvos! You say. Yes, but they tend to be cheaper there. And subsidised.

Unlike their alcohol, which is taxed to death and controlled unlike in any other place on this planet.

Which explains why Scandinavians like to visit Southern Europe so much: booze is cheaper there, and like the Vikings they really are at heart, they love nothing more than getting wasted on a Mediterranean beach after (or even whilst) “fertilizing” a local lovely.

Ah…Europe…so civilized…and yet…so not!

Like I said at the beginning, “outside” is different. Be prepared, yes, but bear in mind that our way is not the only way, nor the best way.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve Frenched a drunken Adonis on a Mediterranean beach under a star lit sky with Europop blaring nearby. Or until you discover what a foreskin is. You thought you had, but I assure you, you haven’t.

Pack your bags my lovely, it is going to be a bumpy, yet thrilling, ride!

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Guest Blog courtesy of Kate Bailey

(Kate Bailey is an advertising copywriter who is leprous in her inability to get hired but is now working on a documentary proposal and will do event make-up.)

Earlier this year my hair started to turn red. In the natural scheme of things, soon it would start to fall out. But there’s nothing natural about it. Any blonde of the bottle persuasion will tell you that there is an unfortunate predilection for the tresses to tend toward the ginger. Not a fine hearty Celtic ginger either; a hectic brassy shade only to be created by the interaction of numerous corrosive chemicals, found in a box from the chemist or very occasionally, via the ministrations of a sub-par professional.

I thought it best to visit my local salon, promisingly named ‘Hair Heaven’. The place was seething with young girls undergoing the most painful-looking procedures in order to achieve the approved be-ringleting for their Communion, and all the staff’s hair was done to the same ‘frying pan’ colour scheme – light on the top, dark underneath.

Under close questioning from ‘Lorna’ I allowed that I had upon occasion (when skint) undertaken the colouring of my own hair. This elicited a sharp intake of breath and sucking-in of Lorna’s bottom lip. “We couldn’t do your hair if you’ve been at it; it might be damaged and break off.” This seemed a logical possibility but I put it to Lorna that such an outcome might be preferable to going on with The Great Gingeration. She was having none of it. “It’s just that if we try and fix it and something happens…” The possible repercussions for the salon seemed too awful to utter. In vain I tried to persuade her that, far from affixing blame to the salon, I would accept any outcome – even moth-eaten baldness – since if the colour couldn’t be fixed, I’d have to shave it all off in any case.

In the end it was a stand-off. Sadly I trailed out. The only L’Oreal ‘Castings’ I’d ever see would be ‘Outcastings’.

So unnaturally I turned to “Multilights” Crème Formula” from a well-known high street store that shall remain nameless. In defiance of the advice proffered on the box, I highlighted first, then applied the ‘Tonal Low-Lights’. The resulting alarming shade of lemon was relieved only by some startling hanks of electric turquoise.

Panic set in while numerous foul-mouthed children rioted outside the window. The only course seemed to be to revisit the treacherous high street store and purchase an unseemly number of new mid-blonde shades. Each was applied in sequence. The bright blue fistfuls of straw-like hair remained. Back to the high street in low-level hysteria after a brief but telling wrangle with kids, who had ventured onto my very doorstep, ostensibly looking for their cat but really hoping to make mock.

This time I bought “Light Golden Brown” from the respected L’Oreal stable (having given up on the favourably-priced but satanic high street brand). Applied in a fervour of desperation it yielding a straggling seaweed-y mass, as dark as the heart of a Spanish whoremaster. With pale green highlights, of course.

At that point I gave up and allowed Nature to take its course. This involved lots of irritating Facebook commentary along the lines of “has your hair gone green or is it just the light?”

All I have left now is this sage advisory for anyone thinking of blithely correcting the ravages of peroxide – dying by your own hand will see you denied Hair Heaven.

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(Looks like my sandwich situation has been sorted. Witto.)

Guest Blog courtesy of Amie Steffen

(Amie Steffen has been writing mostly serious things for newspapers since 2006.)

I don’t know why so many people have their underpants in a twist over this whole “who makes the sandwiches” business. So many crying people, mad people, women getting huffy. In short, craziness. There is a simple solution:

Women, let’s just make the sandwiches!

I have just about every recipe for every sandwich ever invented, courtesy of Meek Housewives Monthly (MHM) and of course from my own trial-and-error archives — oh the fun I have in the kitchen! If there’s a man around, he’s gonna get himself a delicious sandwich, I can tell you that!

Oh, I’ve heard a lot of marriage advice over the years, but in the 27 years I’ve been married to my Octavius I can tell you there is only one thing you need to know:

Behind every great man is a woman… making sandwiches.

Laugh all you want. I’ve seen your type. “Oh, why does the WOMAN have to make the sandwiches? Why can’t he make his own damn sandwich?” I will tell you, that kind of talk will not ever get you that emerald necklace you’ve been eyeing down at Kay’s.

But more to the point, it won’t get you the man. And, if you keep refusing to make delicious sandwiches every time he so much as glances toward the kitchen, you won’t keep your man, either.

Why sandwiches, you may ask? You might as well inquire as to why the sun is hot, or why women get pregnant: It’s the only damn thing that matters.

But, if I must spell it out for you, and since I do not have anyone requiring sandwiches at the moment, here goes:

1) Sandwiches are food, and all men love food.
2) When made properly, sandwiches are delicious.
3) Men hate preparing food. They especially hate preparing and then assembling food.
4) Women love preparing food for men, and they are in the kitchen a lot.
5) Men love it when women do tasks for them, unless they are manly tasks where a man would feel silly if a woman did it for him.
6) Women love pleasing their man.

Ergo, vis a vis, heretofore — sandwiches!

I am not a love doctor, a marriage counselor, or Dr. Phil. And of course,I did not go to college. But I have made approximately 2.5 sandwiches per day for each of the men in my life, and all of those men are still in my life, including my adoring Octavius.

Coincidence? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to roll those dice.

I’ll just keep making sandwiches for men. Women doing so for going on 250 years now can’t be wrong.

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