<

What's so funny, you say? Why, this is the house next door to ours! Listed by Mean Agent! Would we like to buy the house next door to the one we just sold? Sure! It's a smidge closer to all that dune buggy and dirt bike action! Here's my $80,000! Sign me up for 300 square-feet less space than what I just ditched!

But! But! But! It gets even better, if you can believe it:

Thinking about buying or selling, you say? You want to sell my house, you dumb bitch? The one that you described in words worse than my beloved "crapshack"? Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!

No, I'm not thinking about buying or selling. I've bought. I've sold. But I am thinking about sending her junk mail back to her with the URL of this post, as I can't be bothered to write a mean letter to her. And if I do happen to do such a thing, I have a message for you, Mean Agent: you're dated, your brain is obviously cluttered, you're lazy, and I'll just bet your underpants are dirty.

Speaking of being old and dried-up, we got another piece of junk mail that has B.'s (clean) underpants in a twist. You see, B. turned 37 six months ago and for the first time, he's having some age anxiety. "Do you know how close 37 is to 40?" he's asked over and over since November. To which I have to say, "Three years. You're an engineer; I'm surprised you couldn't figure that out all by yourself."

This anxiety wasn't helped one bit when a brochure - not a coupon or a flyer, but an actual tri-fold brochure - arrived in his name from the makers of Just for Men Haircolor:

If anything arrives in the mail involving weenie dysfunction or injecting poisons into ones face, I'm afraid it might kill him, old and gray and frail as he's become.

This brochure, I must say, is a piece of marketing brilliance. Beauty ad campaigns have been making women feel shitty for years. It's high time men parted with their money and did things to their bodies in the name of low self-esteem!

It should be noted that, in another part of the brochure, there's a small (too small to be effectively photographed with my camera, sadly) illustration on how this product only dyes the gray hair and leaves the virile, manly, natural hair alone. Because coloring hair that isn't gray makes you gay.

It's romantic. Translation: no lay if you're gray!

You know, B. does have a fair amount of gray hair. Maybe that's why only fat chicks will do him.

Your dad was a geezer with gray hair, dried-up nads, and he never got any sweet, sweet lovin' after the age of 32.

Speaking of nads, I wonder what kind of warning this product has regarding the coloring of down-there-hair. I know that hair color products marketed to women contain a small warning about not using the product there. But think about this: if there are men as insecure about gray hair on their heads as this brochure indicates, the idea of other gray hair likely contributes to at least 37% of the stress-related cardiovascular disease in the male population. I'm estimating, of course. But if the degree of insecurity is so high, the desperation to do away with that gray hair has got to be strong enough to merit a warning like this:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DUDE, DO NOT PUT THIS ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR PUBES!!! ARE YOU AN IDIOT? YOU'LL BURN THE WHOLE WORKS OFF!!!

So that's where we are. Clara Jane's afraid to leave the house because the flies are going to kill her. I'm raging at a real estate agent I've never met. B.'s huddled in the corner with a pair of tweezers, plucking grays from every square inch of his body. We're shuffling emotional basketcases.

1. Merry Go Round - The Replacements
2. The Well and the Light - Arcade Fire
3. Way Down - Tori Amos
4. Hot Cha - They Might Be Giants
5. Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
6. Time to Get Ill - Beastie Boys
7. Steal the Crumbs - Uncle Tupelo
8. Be Real - Bottle Rockets
9. Stairway to Heaven - Dolly Parton
10. Doin' My Time - Johnny Cash