Blueprint Cleanse - Day One of My Captivity

A few weeks back at 2am, I ordered the Blueprint Cleanse, which is one of those juice cleanses where you pay $195 for bottles of magical elixir that allow you to drop weight while also achieving the highest levels of spiritual enlightenment. I ordered three days of the cleanse, because I figured doing one day was for losers and doing five days was for absolute maniacs, and I ordered "Level 2 - Renovation Cleanse" which is the middle level for people who on the one hand don't have martinis and fries for breakfast but on the other hand don't repulsive eat SoyJoy bars and birdseed for every meal. The drinks were delivered in neon coolers and I was instructed to immediately transfer these holy juices into my fridge so that the "antioxidants" or whatever made these juices miraculous would not be destroyed by heat and their healing properties would be preserved for all time.

In any event, I started the cleanse on Monday when I rolled out bed at 11am and was told by a friend that I was already "late" in starting my juices. I drank some warm tap water, as instructed by the Blueprint instructions, in order to "awaken" my system and then dove into Juice One, which was a spinach-colored green and included kale, celery, spinach, green apple and a bunch of other disugsting ingredients. The juiced smelled like new magazines and tasted like spinach mixed with sewage, but with a sickly sweet aftertaste. I nearly threw up and had to chug the drink and chase every sip with water and immediately brush my teeth afterwards. Juice Two tasted like mint Mentos dissolved in lemonade and I put off drinking Juice Three for a few hours because it was the same as Juice One. Juice Four, which was tasted like a weakened margarita minus the alcohol, Juice Five was rancid Juice One, and Juice Six was a "cashew milkshake" that appeared to be made of Aveeno oatmeal bath for use on chicken pox.

The Blueprint site, as well as two friends who had done the cleanse, told me that at no time would I be hungry, and in fact the website says that I could even go to the gym because I would feel "engergized" and "clearheaded." Let me assure you that I was absolutely starving and my hands were shaking by 2pm, and if I had gone to the gym I would have had to be medevac'd out of there. By 4pm I was enraged and delirious and jealous of Perry eating his food. After I had finished my Aveeno bath milkshake at 9pm and I realized I had nothing left to drink for the day I became murderous and as an anti-crime measure, I ate two tortillas located on the refrigerator shelf directly below the juices and a bag of gummy bears at 12:34am, 24 hours into my cleanse. I obviously did not bother drinking that crap for the two remaining days.

Some, such as Megan, might argue that I took $195 and essentially flushed it down the toilet, but I say that the learning experience I got was worth much more than any money could ever buy. I've never been able to make it past 12pm on Yom Kippur, and I have absolutely no idea why I thought I'd be able to go THREE DAYS drinking sewage, but this confirmed to me that it is far preferable to punish myself at the gym for 15 hours and be able to eat anything I want, than in any way limit or deny myself Thai, Mexican or gummy bears at any time or in any amount as I see fit.

P.S. If for some insane reason you want to try Blueprint yourself, they're having 25% off till July 2nd, probably because people don't feel like ruining their July 4th weekends by being angry and starving. Use code 4JULY25 when you check out.

ATM Account Balances

Maybe it's just me, but recently I've noticed that when I withdraw money from my TD Bank (nee Commerce Bank) account from ATMs at the bodegas near my apartment, the machines display my total account balance on the screen for what seems like an inordinately long time. Like I'll go to the machine, make sure no one's spying on my PIN, check "withdrawal," press the button for $80 and then as my piles of money are spitting out of the machine, the screen will change to my total account balance and will stay on the screen for 30 seconds before it kindly thanks me for the transaction, so that I'm forcibly confronted with the terrible news of my balance even when I purposely do NOT select "View Account Balance." I'm not sure who at the ATM company thought it would be a good idea to humiliate and enrage ATM users by forcing them to see their balances upon each withdrawal when it's pretty clear that people who do not affirmatively select "View Account Balance" would prefer to not ruin their days by having their balances thrust in front of them for 30 seconds which is an outrageous amount of time to be confronted with bad news. The only sense I can make of this entire situation is that the people who own the ATM machines are disgustingly wealthy and want to revel in their balances and brag to bystanders who might accidentally see the screen, while at the same time making everybody with low balances feel bad, which is a strategy I can respect and strongly agree with.

The New Trend

Ugh, today ANOTHER one of those dad-orchestrated-ponzi-scheme-and-then-killed-entire-family-before-killing-himself stories was in the news. Can people stop doing schemes and killing their families? It's getting really annoying at this point. Like if you're going to commit a trendy crime, pick EITHER a ponzi scheme OR killing your family, but you can't have both because that's just being greedy. If you kill your family and then yourself, that's tragic, or if you defraud investors, that's kind of lame, but put them both together and it's just a total shitshow because people have lost money and now there's no one to imprison for it.

Because I sincerely hope no one gets involved with someone who will murder them later on, I have developed the below checklist that you can use to determine whether your sig oth is involved in a ponzi scheme and plans to murder you and him or herself in the future:

1. Person you're dating owns a gun.
2. Person you're dating always clears his or her cache on Google and not just because they're trying to hide their porn trail.
3. Person you're dating does Publisher's Clearing House and sincerely believes that they've just won $25 million dollars.
4. Person you're dating likes going on dates to remote cliffs or hotel rooms in other cities.
5. Person you're dating gets defensive while playing Clue when you accuse Colonel Mustard of doing it with the wrench in the conservatory.
6. Person you're dating seems normal.
7. Person you're dating likes money more than usual.

Plastic Surgery to Look Like Demi Moore?

Yesterday, People.com had an article about how Demi Moore wishes that she could discourage a terminally ill fan named Lisa Connell who plans to have $60,000 of plastic surgery to look like Demi. Demi says that Lisa doesn't need to have the breast implants, lipo, brow lift, and skin overhaul that she's planning because she's already beautiful. Well, I agree with Demi, not only because Lisa is beautiful, but also because Demi Moore's own plastic surgery has supposedly cost around $300,000, so $60,000 just won't cut it. This is exactly what happened to the Octo-Mom: she wanted to look like Angelina Jolie, but she only had about $10,000 to finance it so she ended up looking like an Angelina Jolie wax figure as seen through old prescription contact lenses.

If you want to look like a celebrity, you can't put a number on the amount you're willing to pay in order to finance it. $60,000 may only get Lisa to look like Demi Moore in Ghost, but as we all know, since that time, Demi may have had jaw-realignment surgery (which I will be getting shortly), two sets of implants, ab liposculpture, lip collagen, improved veneers, and luxxxurious hair extensions washed exclusively in Kabbalah water. It's the equivalent of me saying that I want to look more like Kate Hudson (if that is even possible) but only springing for the surgeries where they chop off my boobs and make my ears stick out. Not a good scene.

You're Only Stealing From Yourself

As I was browsing the headlines on CNN, this story caught my eye about another hedge fund jerk who turned himself in after stealing money and overvaluing the investments and doing other things involving lying. Are people retarded? You would think that after all the press on Bernie Madoff and Marc Dreier, other people who have been stealing money from hedge funds would either take the money out of their mattress and put the money back or just knock it off with the stealing until the coast in clear.

Like if this Arthur Nadel guy just put the money back now and waited two years until Madoff was out of the press, he could've started stealing again but he wouldn't have to be so paranoid. The lesson to be learned here is that if you're stealing from hedge funds, you need to put it in an ING Savings account and not spend it all immediately on toupees and yachts so that when things like Madoff/Dreier happen, you have money to fall back on and get you through until the next available time for stealing.

Penny Arcade

The temple has been rebuilt

One of the reasons that I am loyal to Commerce Bank which was voted #1 in customer service 3 years in a row is because of the Penny Arcade. The Penny Arcade is basically a Coin Star machine with the exception that Commerce doesn't steal 15% of your hard earned change unlike Coin Star and Penny Arcade is actually the name of a cartoon character in the machine who introduces herself as Penny and counts your money for you while you stand there as your worthless coins are converted into ice cold cash.

When I was in law school and was deciding which bank was closest to my apartment had the best interest/exchange rates and gave away free pens, I was HEAVILY swayed by the presence of the Penny Arcade. Whenever my checking account went down to $20, rather than ordering a Gold Kit, I acted like a drug addict and hunted around my apartment, searching my couch and bags for loose change, which I then put in a bag, rolled up to Commerce looking like Santa with a sack over my shoulders, and then put in the Penny Arcade and watched as my checking account grew from $20 to $38.27 and I was once again rich. It may sound ridiculous, but Commerce literally allowed me to eat for those last days of the month until my balance once again gloriously replenished itself on the first of the following month, courtesy of Daddykins Warbucks. Commerce and Penny Arcade taught me a valuable lesson, which is that even if you run out of money, you can always find coins in your clothing, and I'm not sure why it didn't occur to anyone at like Lehman or those other places to just search their office carpeting/couches and peoples' pockets and see what comes up rather than just jumping to conclusions that they were bankrupt.

Economy Not That Bad, Calm Down

Andrew Jackson's crisis was worse

Everyone seems to be having a heart attack about the economy these days, and every day on CNN the lead picture on the homepage is another corny picture of a guy in a stock exchange jacket covering his face with his hand to indicate he's panicking/sad/stressed out/doesn't know how he's going to make ends meet. People are like saying that it's the worst financial situation since the shit hit the fan in 1987 or since the Great Depression, but frankly I think there's no need to panic until they say that it's worse than the Andrew Jackson Savings 'N Loan Crisis of 1832, which was REALLY bad according to my 10th grade final.

In any event, just to prove to people that this latest bank thing is not Armageddon and that there are ways around this mortgage crisis crap, CNN had this article about some 90 year old woman who shot herself in the chest when she found out that her house was going to be foreclosed on. When Fannie Mae heard about the attempted suicide, they stopped the foreclosure proceedings and just deeded the home to her outright. So if you're wasting time worrying about your mortgage going up and like not being able to make payments, time to calm down because worse comes to worse you can always shoot yourself and get your place for free.

More Robbery from the Bar Assocation

Scales they use to measure the money which they steal from you

By way of background, all lawyers have to keep their lawyer license "current" by getting something called Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits. CLEs are exceedingly boring seminars about boring legal topics that often have zero relevance to whatever field you practice in. You have to fulfill certain credit areas (like ethics, professional practice and "skills") every year before the anniversary of your admission to the bar, my anniversary naturally being 9/11 (not kidding). In any event, before I left my firm, I tried to stock up on CLE credits by going to the free CLE seminars offered at the firm, but it still wasn't enough so I just planned to ignore it after I quit my job and felt confident that the problem would just go away.

Well, unfortunately the problem DID NOT go away, so last week I had a goddamn panic attack because I started searching online for CLE classes that were being offered before 9/11 and pretty much there was absolutely nothing in NYC which meant that I would either have to apply for an extension and pray or just get my license suspended and then calmly proceed to the nearest bridge and jump off. Luckily, resourceful Megan found some free skills credits for me, but literally the ONLY ethics credit class available before 9/11 is a $355 NYC Bar Association class entitled "Ethical Considerations for Corporate Investigations - Updates 2008" a topic that anybody know knows me knows I'm passionate about. IN NARNIA.

That's right, they're requiring me to show up with an Us magazine, read it for 3 hours during the class, following which they will grab me and turn me upside down so $355 falls out of my pockets, and give me a piece of paper apparently made of shards of the Heart of the Ocean which then entitles me to renew my legal license for $360 per year, and which will then give me the privilege of paying $360 per year thereafter until I die or get disbarred. Basically what this means is that unless you're a millionaire (which I luckily am), might as well stop wasting time, write your own disbarment letter to the NY Bar counsel now and start panhandling ASAP. Is this a joke.

The True Cost of Dog Ownership

Picture of Perry during happier times

Um, yesterday I took Perry to the vet for the second time in two weeks to deal with his raging and incurable ear infection. You see, last week, when I was on vacation, Perry helped himself to both an ear infection AND a bacterial skin infection which resulted in AIDS lesions all over his skin and which requires that Perry and I awkwardly stand together in the shower for 10 minutes a day while I slather his fur with $34 antifungal shampoo, feed him grapes and then dry him with the gentle breezes of a palm frond and I pray that the police do not barge it at any moment and arrest me for bestiality.

So we rolled up to the vet and some how it was determined that Perry's current medicine regime was ineffective against the "rods" bacteria in his ear, and that I should only bathe him 3 times a week, throw away his other oral and ear drop medications and give him DIFFERENT more powerful antibiotics and a magical elixir mixed only at the Tribeca-Soho Animal hospital that was so rare and precious that I would have to come back next week to get a fresh batch, which was I was to put into his ear twice a day and hold it there for 5 minutes at a time and wash out his ears with special cleaning solution three times a day. They also informed that Perry was due for "all" of his 27 vaccinations, his heart worm test, "cytology" samples and various other made up Scientology procedures. The total cost for this was $353.60. Is that a fucking joke.

I then asked the vet if she thought it would be a good idea for me to quit my job and care for Perry's health full time and/or if she would be interested in renting Perry for a reasonable fee in order to cover the completely extortionate price of his medical care, and then she looked at me like I had ten heads and then I explained that I was joking, and that I was actually unemployed and so $353 was no big deal because I am made of money and despite the fact that I personally haven't seen a doctor in two years and have no health insurance, the most important thing was that Perry receive top notch medical care for his fleas and that he remain at all times covered under his ASPCA Platinum Advantage Pet Insurance plan.

Bills, Bills, Bills

Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Do you pay my automo'bills
If you did, then maybe we could chill
-Destiny's Child, "Bills, Bills, Bills"

Megan just gchatted me this article talking about how Comcast is now monitoring blogs for people complaining about their services and then "helpfully" suggesting to the bloggers solutions to their Comcastic problems. In the hopes that Verizon Wireless is also monitoring blogs, I have a serious bone to pick with them.

So today the spirit moved me to pay my Verizon phone bill because I felt like I hadn't paid it in a long time. So I dial #PMT (HAHAHA) and they tell me my account is past due as usual and that the CURRENT AMOUNT DUE IS $416.92 . IS THAT A FUCKING JOKE. I obviously throw out my bills without looking at them/paying them so it's not like I can confirm with 100% certainty what the hell happened here, but it appears that I have been calling Greenland 7 times a day, texting 987 votes to American Idol, handing out my phone number on the street and requesting people use up my minutes and accepting collect calls from all my friends in prison. I have never heard of a $400 phone bill and I'm pretty sure it's technically illegal to charge that much and rest assured there are going to be some MAJOR changes around here unless Verizon people read this blog and send me a formal apology along with an explanation of the charges and a $400 credit valid at Verizon or Ebay.