So, recently a few of the celebrities I stalk follow have started using this app called Keek. Think Instagram but with short videos. So far I’ve seen a Teen Mom star, every single Kardashian spawn, Snooki and JWOWW¹ post tweets and/or screenshots on Instagram of their Keek accounts.

I kind of wrote it off as Keek trying to hype it’s service. I assumed that these folks were probably being paid to pimp the service, which I get. Make your money, yo. But then I started seeing more and more people post tweets about it and also Instagram screenshots so I checked it out.

Okay, let me be completely honest. I have absolutely no plan at this point on using the service but when I see any new service like this I grab the username Antigone as soon as possible. I get annoyed when somebody else gets there first because I’ve been using the name online for FIFTEEN YEARS so technically, it should be reserved for me anyway.

So I signed up and grabbed my username, browsed a bit, followed some people and closed the app. I started getting notifications on my iPhone IMMEDIATELY so turned off all that business but the emails were already hitting my inbox too. I had just been deleteing them as they came in but then saw one titled “Get Your Account Verified” so I checked it out to make sure that I hadn’t missed a step in the sign up process and this is what it said:

The Keek community is growing rapidly with millions of people signing up monthly. Keek account verification is used to authenticate the identity of users. The verified icon helps establish trust and makes it easier for users to find you and your content.

1. Post at least one keek to the account you want to verify.

2. Take a screenshot of your Keek profile and post it to your official Twitter, Facebook and/or Instagram accounts with this verification message:

Copy text below:
Go download the Keek app and subscribe to me! My username is antigone http://keek.com/getapp

3. Email us at verifyme@keek.com and include your Keek username along with links to the verification message posted on each of your official accounts.

• You don’t need all of the above accounts to be verified but your chances increase if you post the verification message to all official accounts you own
• Active Keek accounts with engaged followers and subscribers increase your chances of verification

Keek manually reviews all submissions and does not guarantee verification for any account.

And I was like YEAAAHHH. Hello spam! Post screenshots of us all over the place (FREE ADVERTISING!) and MAYBE at SOME POINT we’ll “verify” your account. Hey Keek, guess how I’ll verify that I am who I say I am, BY POSTING A VIDEO OF MYSELF FLIPPING YOU THE BIRD!

So I realized that the reason all those celebs were doing this was because branding is a big deal. Social Media is the best thing to happen to celebrities in a LONG time (obviously talking about celebs that choose to not be as private) and they want that verification so they fell into this trap. But for everybody else, this is Keek just cleverly using social media and the kind of idiots that like stupid shit on Facebook spam pages to garner themselves a TON of free advertising.

Seriously, just look at a search on twitter for “Go download the Keek app and subscribe to me! My username is”:

Why in the hell does _becky_w or royaaal_ need a verified account? Other than Keek’s want for them to make sure all their twitter, Facebook and Instagram followers know the app exists. Now MOST PEOPLE will open this email and realize this right away. But the same people that like photos to prevent cancer on Facebook will do this verify BS and pollute the internet with an app that SHOULD do what every other decent app does and know that if you build an excellent app, people will promote it all on their own and it will grow and thrive and become The Next Big Thing.

And I know this isn’t a BIG DEAL. It’s not even a Big Deal. But I hate that this is the direction the internet is going and I really wish all these young ignorant whippersnapper would get off my goddamn lawn.

This morning I laid in bed trying to nurse a wicked 24 hour sinus headache and was browsing Pinterest. Oh Pinterest, you suck me in and spit me out an hour later hungry and wanting to make All The Pretties.

So, while browing the Health and Fitness thread I happened across this image which I’ve acually seen quite a few times on Pinterest.

I posted this to Facebook right away and pretty much everybody agreed with me that the second price listed is pretty much unrealistic for anywhere in the country. Less than $2.00 for chicken is just ridiculous! Somebody pointed out that some of these are Wal*Mart brand but even then, I just don’t buy that you can get all this food for $19.54. So today when Cassidy and I went to do our big weekly shopping trip I looked for all these thing to see how much it would ACTUALLY cost. I picked the cheapest, non-sale price and this is what I got (pre-tax):

$10.04 – 2 pounds chicken breasts
$2.99 – 10 pounds potatoes
$3.00 – 8 ears corn
$2.99 – 1 pound peaches
$3.89 – 1 gallon skim milk
$3.99 – 1 pound 96% lean ground beef
$2.99 – 32 oz 99% fat free Yoplait yogurt (didn’t have Yolpait, chose the cheapest brand)
$2.49 – 18 oz canister of oats
$1.98 – 2 pounds frozen sweet peas
$1.99 – 1 pound dried kidney beans
$36.26 – Total

Now, this is not to say that you can’t eat healthy AND cheap (the Shakshuka recipe I posted awhile ago is $6.85 and feeds 4 people with leftovers for 2!) but this list is completely unrealistic which annoys me because we DO need to encourage people to eat more healthy but we need to do that in a realistic way.

ANYWAY, I was annoyed, even more so since it came from SparkPeople which is supposed to be a reputable site. It also reminded me that I previously planned to post more of the recipes I make (before my hard drive died and I was without it for over a month) so I’m planning on getting back to that THIS WEEK.

PROMISE!

So.

If you read blogs or have twitter or facebook or any account anywhere online I’m sure you’ve seen the cast of Glee half naked in GQ today.

I couldn’t quite place my finger on what was wrong when I woke up today but I realized when I opened up Google Reader that it was the wrath of a million angry mommybloggers collectively sighing that was sucking the air out of THE ENTIRE WORLD!

There is OUTRAGE! There is DISGUST! There are groups out there comparing it to PEDOPHILIA!

And I’m sorry but ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!?

Parent’s TV writes:

“It is disturbing that GQ, which is explicitly written for adult men, is sexualizing the actresses who play high school-aged characters on ‘Glee’ in this way. It borders on pedophilia. Sadly, this is just the latest example of the overt sexualization of young girls in entertainment,” said PTC President Tim Winter. (source)

Lea Michele and Dianna Agron are both 24 years old! Posing in GQ magazine! This isn’t Teen Beat, it’s not even 17 magazine, it is GQ.

GQ: Gentlemans’ Quarterly Magazine

Equating 24 year old women to pedophilia is about as lame as this “wholesome” label I’ve seen applied to Glee on blog after blog today.

WHOLESOME!? REALLY!? DO YOU PEOPLE WATCH THIS SHOW!?

In season one, the head cheerleader (and president of the celibacy club) got pregnant by her boyfriend’s best friend but lied to her boyfriend and told him that his sperm had swam from his penis into her vagina when he had pre-ejaculated in the hot tub. You see, that time he wasn’t able to stop “arriving early” by thinking about his mom while getting a hang job as he had in previous “sessions” which were all brilliantly played out via flashbacks and in thought bubbles.

Also, a teacher is trying to talk himself out of kissing another teacher. Oh, and he’s married. And is wife is pregnant. Except she’s not really pregnant, she’s faking and trying to convince the cheerleader to give her the baby of her boyfriend’s best friend so that her husband doesn’t find out.

The two great themes in American TV.

1) Teenagers are oversexed dumbasses.
2) Marriage is a joke.

THIS is the wholesome show that you are SO SURPRISED allowed pictures like these to be taken.

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!?

All these parents say how much they love the show but now aren’t going to watch anymore because of these pictures. Not the pre-ejaculating teenager! Nope! That was totally okay but these pictures? Not so much!

Here’s an idea: Stop blaming TV shows and magazines for your children’s faults. YOU are the parents. Not the TV shows. Not the magazines. YOU. Communicate with them what is okay and what isn’t. They are much better at understanding and rationalizing this stuff than a lot of you are giving them credit for.

According to most of the tweets, facebook and blog posts I’ve read today, they are also much better at rationalizing it than a lot of PARENTS are.

When I Rule the World, if you walk out of the break room after having drained the VERY LAST DROPS of water out of the dispenser and don’t:

1) Put a new jug on yourself, or
2) ASK SOMEBODY that has more upper body strength than a FIVE YEAR OLD to do it for you,

You will be banned forthwith from EVER DRINKING WATER AGAIN YOU LAZY FUCKING ASSHOLE.

Also:

“I’m a girl” is not a reason not to change the water. It’s a bullshit cop out that further promotes the fact that women are helpless pussies that might BREAK IN HALF under the weight of a 40 pound jug of water. Seriously. I’ve seen the purses you all carry around on those fragile little arms so just don’t go there.

You may view all of my rule changes here.

Last Satruday morning Ben woke me from a beautiful and blissful sleep to tell me that I was snoring. This doesn’t seem so abnormal except that he had been UP AND OUT OF THE ROOM FOR AN HOUR. I’m not sure the exact face I made at him at that time but I know what I was thinking. It was something along the lines of “I wonder how far into his ass my foot is going to be before it starts to register how terrible a mistake he’s just made”. Turned out he just woke me up to see if I wanted to go to Home Depot with him.

I should have stayed in bed.

When we got there we had two goals in mind. 1) Get him a set of calipers to measure my brake roters 2) Pick up a wallpaper remover tool and spray and some paint swatches, both for Cassidy’s bathroom. Other than a slight snag when the tool guy didn’t know what calipers were, we made pretty good time and I even got Ben to detour down the lighting isle to scope out some fixtures for ALL the bathrooms.

Then we got in line to check out.

Then 45 minutes later when we were still in line, actually the THIRD LINE, Ben’s cooling system broke and his rods reached critical mass and I had to slowly step back about 15 feet to avoid becoming collateral damage.

See,the computers were down. The were running around FRANTIC and OMG WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO THERE ARE NO COMPUTERS HOW DO WE FUNCTION!? Because, you know, it’s not like you can actually SELL something if there’s not a touchscreen monitor in front of you telling you how which step of the check out process you are on, what to do next, and the amount of change you need to dispense.

So because they couldn’t use their fancy machines to hold their hands through the process let me tell you the genius system they devised.

Step 1: Stand in line so that ONE girl at ONE counter could write all of the items on a triplicate form while the 24 people in line behind you groan loudly.

Step 2: Stand in another line so that a girl can add prices to the form, then manually add them up, calculate tax and total it.

Step 3: Stand in ANOTHER line to pay using one of the old school swipe style credit card machines.

Step 4: Walk to power tool isle, pick up nail gun, place directly against head, pull trigger.

Of course we were in line #3 and next to pay and get the fuck out of there when… suddenly all the computers started working again! I slammed my stuff down, almost turned around and spit venom directly into the face of the man that tried to line cut me after he’d spent 45 minutes in line behind me and CERTAINLY should have understood that based on line hierarchy, my shit was getting checked out first and if you try to get in my way I am allowed to backhand you with a sledgehammer.

Then the check out lady took the receipt we should have gotten and slid it into her register before she realized what she was doing EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD A COMPUTER TELLING HER EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND WHAT TO SAY AND WHEN TO HAND ME WHAT AND WHEN.

So it was another 15 minutes of standing there because she had to finish the next sale to open the drawer. Only the machine wouldn’t take the guy’s debit card. And then it wouldn’t take his credit card. So he had to go out to his car and get his check book. And write a check. With his hand. And a pen.

It was sometime between the failure of the credit card and the check writing that Ben’s head started to actually steam and I had to move further away because he was radiating enough heat to melt the plastic bags holding my nifty new $5.00 wallpaper removal tool. From 15 feet away.

When we finally got our receipt and got out of there we weren’t sure whether we should go to Starbucks and treat ourselves for not actually reaching critical mass or drive straight home and start drinking obscene amounts of tequila to forget the entire experience. We opted for the Starbucks.

My love affair with Home Depot is OFFICIALLY OVER.

At least until later this week when we go in to price flooring for downstairs.