My dad is an actual bad-sitcom dad.

Dad, in a crowded family restaurant: I'm really enjoying my new Magic Bullet, I'm using it every day -

Me: Dad! No!

Mom: Dear...

Dad: What? What?!

Me, growing more southern under stress: I swear to god we have talked about that term so many times -

Mom: Can you please just call it a "blender"...

Ketoacidosis: insufficiently hilarious.

When I was in high school I read an X-Files fanfic where someone "was dying of ketoacidosis" and Mulder had a sobbing monologue about his parents also having "been stolen away from [him] by ketoacidosis."

Obviously people do die because of ketoacidosis. But, like, linguistically we do not say that. We say either "diabetes" or, probably more commonly, the name of the other condition(s) that hecked things up to the point that treating the diabetes became lost in the shuffle or impossible?

So it was a funny term to randomly choose out of the "K" section of the Merck Manual, but not the funniest possible term. Imagine the ideal world which would have resulted if the kid hadn't flipped quite so far. Fox Mulder's entire family, dead of keratosis pilaris.

I am posting this because my arm-spots are gross and I just looked at one that's bleeding and thought, sadly, I am probably dying of keratosis pilaris.

$1 Knock-Off Eternity Review

Pleasant light jasmine and/or ylang ylang-ish scent that disappears within five minutes.

no subject

Because I am wasting money lately, I also ordered two well-reviewed $5 knock-offs from here: I got the Silver Mountain Water one (Silver) and the Flower by Kenzo one (Red Rose), since I've wanted to try those.

They apparently got shipped to Mom and Dad's house, and Dad called today to say the he has "your weird box. Were you expecting a weird box, because one's here? It came in the mail. It's here, I've got it. It's a weird box. Should I open it, honey?"

"It's perfume, so I mean, not unless you want to smell fancy -"

"I can't hear you, honey, you're breaking up [garble]."

I have concerns.

On the subject of wasting money: the Weird Eyeball Rocks.

They've all shown up now, and... yeah. Don't order green or blue "ghost eye jasper" or "choi finches" stones off eBay, or the stuff labelled as malachite or chrysocolla that look the same. I made a Mistake.

I knew they were going to be dyed, and was prepared for them to be ceramic or resin or something (doesn't look that way, actually). They're pretty, and I don't care about "realness" in terms of pretty rocks!

Alas, the con I should have been prepared for was this: literally all of them, from every seller, were photoshopped.



In the manner visible above - the saturation and contrast were bumped way, way up. Since all but one of them showed up on the same day, it seems likely that the sellers are all the same company, and the "newer" ones with fewer reviews are dump accounts.

Welp. It wasn't like I spent much on this investigation, but I'm honestly pretty sad - I really liked the photoshopped rock pictures! I may look into bleaching/dyeing them if the eBay disputes don't pan out.

I will post more photos once I’ve taken some in sunlight with a real camera, but they all do look like this, unfortunately. A sad rock story.

$1 Knock-Off Tommy Cologne

Pleasant cucumber/melon-y "aquatic"/"clean"/"cold" scent, with some light floral stuff underneath. Basically, smells like a men's clothing store at the mall, or one of those "cooling" facial toners.*

I'm not sure whether this is what the actual stuff smells like or not, but it's basically what I'd expect from an okay scent marketed to young guys.

(* Never, ever spend more than like like $2 on that, by the way. It feels nice if it's hot, but it has no real benefits skin-wise, is actually irritating to most people with acne, and costs like $0.10 to make. You could probably figure out how to manufacture it by the gallon if you look at the ingredients label and then spend a while browsing The Perfumer's Apprentice.)

$5 Silver Mountain Water Knock-Off (Silver by Al-Rehab)

This is the strongest perfume oil I have ever worn. I touched the roller lightly to my wrist and am now permanently a teapot.