The Intellectual Poison Guide to Fashion
Having immersed myself in such quality programming as Clean Sweep and What Not to Wear and for living in Santa Cruz, the town that fashion forgot, and for being an overly opinionated wanker, I would like to present a few fashion do's and fashion don'ts.

Do wear form fitting clothes and belly shirts but only if you've actually got a figure that someone would have any interest in viewing. If you've got a roll or two of fat spilling over the tops of your Sassoon jeans then perhaps you should reconsider.

Do wear clothes that make you comfortable. Do not wear clothes that either look like they were made or were made from curtains (no, this is not a joke and no, its not a slight against the von Trapp family either).

Do pull up your damned pants and quit showing off your boxer shorts by having your pants halfway down your thighs. Whatever message you are attempting to send with the half pulled pants isn't getting through and people just think you're a moron.

Don't ever wear socks with sandals unless you particularly enjoy the ridicule of, well, everyone.

Do highlight your best features. But you might want to check with an honest friend to identify what those features are. If you're five feet two and weigh 160 pounds then it is almost certainly not going to be your waist or belly.

A good rule to keep in mind is: Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Apply this rule to everything. Just because you can wear a beret doesn't mean you should. Just because you can stuff your fat ass into a pair of jeans three sizes too small doesn't mean you should, for your health and ours.

Don't ever wear a deliberately shredded t-shirt, the week that that hideous fashion was in style was more than 20 years ago now and its time to burn these fugly shirts and move on.

Do wear clean clothes. Don't wear clothes that were cleaned by osmosis on your floor, it just doesn't work. Do wash your body before putting on clean clothes, clean clothes cannot mask up your body stank but they can create a olfactory feedback loop that will cause people to recoil in confused disgust at the combination of sunshine fresh and three day old BO.

Don't go to great lengths to show off your g-strong undies. Interested parties will sneak a peek on their own and its far more fun. Don't wear exposed thongs if you're older than 40, wear what you want but don't let the world see it, its just unseemly and kind of sad.

There are plenty more but they should hopefully be more self evident. Like, don't wear a speedo to the beach, ever. Don't assume that coveralls cover all of you, if you're a girl then you should probably still be wearing a shirt underneath unless you don't mind the free boob look and stares. Unless you're Stevie Nicks, stay away from flowy clothes, the kind that make you look like you're a ghost. You'll thank me when you don't knock over your coffee with the excess material.

This is by no means comprehensive, though it could be better if Blogger's stupid draft setting was working but its not so what are you gonna do? I may update the post as the day goes on and my mind slowly churns up more chum but we'll stick a fork in it for now.

Web Finds

While I was looking around on Limewire for some new african stylee music I came across the term, africando, for a style of music that's both latin and african. Very cool drum beats combined with upbeat Latin rhythms and you get africando. Good stuff and I will try to post an example or two. I can see Sedalina looking for some electronica africando and I'm sure there's some out there.

A cool idea to really see how much money you're really saving.
Coupon savings - take the money you save from using coupons and put that cash into its own account. You'll very quickly accumulate a substantial savings account.

And a good site for gardening supplies that I've been meaning to order a watering system from for a while but, since we're moving to a place with a yard I won't be needing the small patio watering system. Gardener's Web

And major apologies to Kat for not getting the dashboard critter video posted today. I tried to get it loaded up last night but had some issues with the connection between Clie and laptop. I have a back up plan but it'll take until this evening to implement. I hope it will end up being worth the run up. If not then you can come to Santa Cruz and yell at me until we get drunk.