Meg is feeling a little alone in the blogosphere; her love of the Patriots is shared by no one. She cannot understand how someone cannot fall under the spell of this one:

For the love of God, Meg’s friend Frankie used to deliver UPS packages to Tom at his sisters at Marina Bay in Quincy. He gave them two thumbs up for being nice and down to earth. Meg suspects legions of people really hate the Patriots because of this guy:

Yeah, I know he’s wearing Jennifer Beals Flashdance outfit, and it’s wrong on every level. He never smiles, comes off like an ass, and always has this trampy girlfriend on his arm. I get that, but Tom should trump Bill. It’s that the only trump you really ever want to think about.

Enough about the game though. What’s most important on a Superbowl Sunday? That’s right snacks, cocktails, and commercials.

Honda, what the hell have you done with my “let’s blow off work today” icon Matthew Broderick?

I cannot get over the fact he drives the SAME EXACT CAR as I do. Am I lame like him or is he cool like me?

Jerry Seinfeld tries to bribe a guy and get first in line for an Acura:

Somehow, I’m sort of glad he made Jerry work that hard. He could use a workout after sitting on his Seinfeld laurels for so long. (and can anyone tell me why the husbands of America still think Kramer and George are funny?)

Guess what, Tommy Lee and Motley Crue are starring in a car commercial, too!

The commercial was meh, but here’s the amazing part. Tommy Lee has a Twitter account and can type! That is bigger news than any Super Bowl commercial I can think of.

So Meg is going to end with the toughest bunch of broads that ever hit the internet, the Real Housewives of South Boston*:

(* disclaimer. The RHOSB are a bunch of actors in L.A. However, they are scarily like some real people in real life.)

Whatever you do this weekend, enjoy the game, the commercials, your snacks, and may the cutest quarterback win. In the meantime, Meg is headed to Jackie’s Packie on Route 34.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

Meg was listening to another one of her fake boyfriends the other day (NPR’s Tom Ashbrook) and his topic was disgust. Naturally, because she can’t help herself, Meg perked up and tuned in to see what things truly brought shivers down the spines of average citizens. She knows she cannot be alone in some of her top revulsions, so she her interest was piqued by everyone else’s Fear Factor.

By definition, these are the three components of disgust:

1) Core disgust: the “core” of the emotion, which is about defending the mouth from contamination by dirty or inappropriate things like body excretions, certain animals like rats and cockroaches, and certain foods, like ice cream with ketchup.

2) Animal-reminder disgust: things involving death, corpses, and violations of the external boundaries of the body, such as amputations. These things remind us that we, like animals, are mortal.

3) Contamination disgust: this kind of disgust is a defense of the whole body, not just the mouth, from contact with dirty or sleazy people

Ok, all this stuff is a no-brainer, so let’s get to all the weird stuff. So we hate rotting garbage and people that hoard, but did you ever hear of someone that hates buttons? Meg is trying to picture how someone could live without the benefits of a crisp button-down shirt with their navy blue blazer? That concept simply escapes her. She has a pink shirt with soft white stripes and pearl buttons, and LOVES wearing it.

The only thing that could make Meg hate wearing that shirt is if she has to eat lunch with someone that is a condiment fiend. Have you met one? My sister in law and her clan insist on piling everything Meg has in her fridge on the delightful burgers she grills. I think great meat, yummy cheese and a brioche bun is the cat’s pajamas and just add some red onion and tomato, thankyouverymuch.

But no, they ask for mustard, ketchup, and MAYO. All three. The most egregious being MAYO:

So God help Meg, she has to leave the room when they eat. If she sits there, she starts to gag and heave and find herself running for a bathroom. No matter how she steels herself, she cannot sit at the same table. And no, averting her gaze doesn’t work. She knows all the condiments sitting there.

According to “That’s Disgusting” author Rachel Herz, if your disgust phobia starts young in life and continues, you most likely will never conquer the yuck factor. One young lady talked about her fear of things with holes, likes sponges and swiss cheese. That made me feel kind of good as I thought about my next phobia, the fried egg:

Young Meg remembers fleeing the breakfast table crying because someone was trying to make her eat a fried egg. Ever since the early sixties, she has remained steadfast that this is the most disgusting meal ever.

Oh and don’t get her started when summer comes, because she’ll go all crazy when she sees one of these:

Right, I know it’s just a grasshopper, but if some little boy throws one at you when you are in grade school, you’re done for life. From time to time Meg occasionally has seen one on her deck, and do you know what she does? She gets a snow shovel out of her garage and slams the grasshopper into oblivion.

She would also love to slam frogs into submission:

Did you ever have to CATCH YOUR OWN FROG for a high school dissection experiment? Raise your hand? I actually conned someone into catching the atrocious amphibian, but I still had to cut it open. I rest my case on that one.

Meg went on to take a disgust test and here were the results:

Meg’s scores are in green, so it would appear she scores higher than average on the contamination portion of the survey, no surprise there. Feel free to take your own disgust tolerance survey at the University of Virginia website, and see how you stack up.

And Meg would love to know, what disgusts you?

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

Meg is finishing up one sh**storm of a week, and saw this video of Tina Fey, which she could totally relate to:

And all she has to say about this week is what the what!@?

In fact, Meg has gone so far as to make up her very own blues name:

Please just refer to me as Jailhouse Jumbo Parker for the remainder of the month.

I love this guy channeling Samuel L. Jackson:

Lord. I just think I broke my own concentration.

I thought twinkly white lights were a nice thing to have in your house? Call me selfish, then.

Let’s end with a little Jon Stewart, who makes us all feel better.

This weekend Meg may listen to “Fly Me to the Moon” while she gets over her Jailhouse bad self. And see ya, January.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

Meg is a little gleeful, and yes, a little woeful over the Presidential debates. She sees all kinds of buzzwords being bandied about like “proud American” and “getting our rights back”. Excuse me, but aren’t we all proud Americans? I’m also pretty sure we have more inalienable rights than people in most countries. Yet people shriek and shout and then tell the Pillsbury Dough Boy they like him best. Yay, let’s pick the guy who brought government to a screeching halt in the 90′s!

Good Lord, President Obama, you must be kicking back and enjoying this:

Yeah, you showed him Newt. How dare he bring up the open marriage thing, it’s only all over the networks!

Mitt never gave a second thought to sticking his family pet in a carrier on TOP OF A CAR ,roaring down the interstate 20 years ago, but I bet he’s regretting that thoughtless little act now. Is that what a smart man would do?

Freddie Mac, Jimmy Mack, someone wants their money back! I assume you are all singing that to the tune of Martha and the Vandellas, correct?

I bet poor old Rick Perry didn’t think his foreign policy thoughts about Turkey would be his undoing:

And lest we forget the spouses:

Well, expect more fake tweets and unusual candidate avatars from Meg as the campaign rolls along. She’s here to make the election and the social networks a better place for all of us.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

It’s Friday, and Meg is thinking some football and yummy snacks for the Patriots/Ravens game this SUNDAY. Meg will not, however, be turning to Paula Deen for a casserole of cream cheese and a side of fried butter for her halftime snack.

Paula’s cooking never inspired Meg. Too much of everything. Too much fat, too much butter, too much salt. Most of all, TOO MUCH Paula. She is just too over the top with all the y’alls and and best wishes and dishes cornpone.

Now when Paula announced on national TV she had diabetes, she was not surprised. In fact, Meg must admit she had a case of schadenfreude when she heard the news, but she suspected someone who’s overweight and cooks like that may lean toward that type of condition.

Meg was also not surprised when Anthony Bourdain tweeted this:

Needless to say, all the Paula groupies hopped on Facebook and Twitter to diss Bourdain’s witty and astute observation.

Guess what Paula groupies? Paula partnered with a drug company and gets PAID by Novo Nordisk for promoting her disease. She also is all over their website touting alleged HEALTHY recipes with her two talentless sons, who are also promoting a HEALTHY cooking show. Oh, and guess what? If you want those HEALTHY recipes, you have to sign up and give them all of your personal information. Name, birthdate, address, phone number. Really? You need all of that for me to look at Paula Deen’s recipes?

“I’ve always encouraged moderation. People see me cooking all these wonderful, Southern, fattening recipes … it’s for entertainment. People have to be responsible.”

Here is part of Paula’s recipe for a HEALTHY lasagna:

OK, that contains 7 different types of cheese. Seriously, isn’t that like a whole herd of dairy cows? No wonder there are dairy shortages in Scandanavia, she’s hogging the world’s supply of lactose!

Here’s the deal Paula. You had diabetes for three years, and you are now monetizing your brand by being a spokesperson for a drug, and promoting a TV show with your goofy kids. Worst of all, in any interview I’ve seen, you haven’t said once how you changed your diet, how you modified your routine, or what kind of exercise you’ve incorporated into your life.

Meg suspects the only exercise she’s done is jump up and shout Hallelujah with her accountants about how much money she’s raking in.

This weekend, Meg is going to relax and tune into the Barefoot Contessa, where the soothing Ina Garten will melt Meg’s Paula Deen rage by gently saying “how good is that” and serving lunch in her garden of hydrangeas.

I usually include a relevant video on Friday, but I couldn’t bring myself to post any of the Deen interviews. Today, I bring you the President channeling Al Green:

I’m heading out to Pandora radio for an Al Green fest right now!

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

Meg always speculates about people that are named after cities and states. She wonders whatever happened to the tried and true baby boomer names like Jane, Janet and Janice? (actually three of the most popular names in her high school!). What can the parents be thinking when they say, “I love the name Tampa Bay. Let’s go for it!”

Meg is always suspicious when she see a major broadcaster named Savannah. She pictures lush deltas, boiled peanuts and fried chicken, not someone with a brain in their head. For awhile it was de rigueur for a Hollywood celebrity to name their child Dakota. Was the mom to be channeling Mount Rushmore during her epidural?

She sees Brooklyn is a new fave, and she knows a tree grows there.

Vienna is an awesome city for waltzes and sausages, but did it really fit the ho-bag Bachelorette from last year?

Meg thinks not.

It was with trepidation last week that Meg let someone named Alexandria take blood from her arm. Meg saw she was sporting Betty Boop scrubs, which irked the living shit out of her. She promptly started thinking of her as Constantinople instead, because she knew she was in for a battle. She sat in the chair and offered up her left arm, which she often does to spare her go to all purpose right arm. Constantinople wanted to go for the right, because she was all like, this is no problem.

She tied her arm off and tapped for a vein, of which there are plenty, and in went the needle. The minute Constantinople went in Meg knew she was toast, and as the needle came out, so did a bunch of blood.

Meg would have loved to fight Constantinople to the death as she left the building, because she IMMMEDIATELY knew her arm was going to be f**ked up. Sure enough, 30 minutes later, a soup bowl sized black and blue started creeping up and down her arm, and she couldn’t lift her appendage for 24 hours. She wonders if Constantinople thinks because she was named after an ancient city, that she must leave all of her patients battle fatigued and wounded as they leave the lab.

In any case, Meg will be on the lookout the next time she has blood drawn, and her technician better not be named Newark, that’s all she’s sayin’.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

It’s January people, and let’s face it, it’s a boring month. Meg’s excitement over the holiday weekend consisted of re-grouting her bathroom tub (a joint project with the husband), shopping on-line for laptop batteries, and continuing her lucky streak of not having to shovel a single inch of snow so far this winter. Good times!

She doesn’t have much on her mind today but feel free to play low stakes Potpourri Jeopardy with her anyway. Shall we?

Meg is fascinated with the Bachelor, who reminds her of a cross between Owen Wilson and Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is assuredly NOT a good thing.

Isn’t he so deep? Can someone explain to me how skiing with a group of ho-bags in San Francisco is worthy of a bucket list life experience? That’s all the shallow Meg needs to know.

Wait. There’s more shallow:

That right kids, the Bachelor has about 18 girlfriends right now. Why would a group of 8 year olds even be aware of this show? Moms, would you let your kids watch this? Not sure what ABC genius thought this promo up, but they should be fired, pronto.

********************

Meg loved the Elton John/Madonna feud the other night at the Golden Globes. Elton’s hubby got into the act with some nasty Facebooking:

But honestly Elton, shouldn’t we be more upset about the dress she was wearing?

Madge, when a designer gives you a sample dress, it doesn’t mean wear it. Get the right size.

********************

Want to see something cute and adorable?

I know! Squeal! Adele Enerson took a cheap pocket camera and arranged everyday household items around her sleeping baby to create adorable little montages!

In other baby related news, it turns out babies can read lips while they are learning language. Oops! Parents, better not let them catch you reading Go the F**K to Sleep.

Stay tuned for Meg’s next Potpourri post, where she caulks all the bathtubs in her house.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

Meg was on Facebook this week and noticed everyone was posting the number one song the week they were born. What viral fun! What could be more exciting than saying you were born the week the Stones Gimme’ Shelter went number one? Or We Are the Champions by Queen was rockin your Mom’s delivery room?

Meg excitedly Googled a few web sites and started to eagerly look for the hip cool song that was topping the charts the week she was born. It had to be a good one, right? After all, she was lucky enough to be born on the Feast of St. Margaret and named after said Saint, so surely she could score with a happening tune?

Here’s what I came up with:

October 14, 1958
“It’s All in the Game”
Tommy Edwards

What the hell? What is that song? And Sweet Jesus, who is Tommy Edwards?

OK, I have to admit, I don’t remember this song. Not at all. In the least. I’m sure it was perfectly nice to listen to while having a Manhattan or a Martini at the end of a long day, when Donna Reed brought her husband a drink, but it wasn’t the cool I was expecting.

Meg eagerly looked to some other weeks to see if she could capture some 1958 love:

February 3
“At the Hop”
Danny & the Juniors

Great, paging Mrs. C and the Fonz, anyone?

March 31
“Tequila”
The Champs

Getting warmer, I do like myself some tequila!

June 16
“The Purple People Eater”
Sheb Wooley

I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t even mention this, but the Chipmunk Christmas Song that makes everyone go batshit came out as the year ended. Sigh.

Meg took herself on over to the 1965 hits, to see if she might be jealous of her little sister, and guess what was number one on her birth week?

March 6
“My Girl”
The Temptations

Bitch. The baby always get the good stuff.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

From time to time Meg writes about her fear and loathing of mathematics. She knows she has never used a polynomial, solved for x in any way shape or form, and she is clueless regarding the origin of a hypotenuse. In fact, her math experiences could be described by this cartoon:

Recently, Meg read about teachers in a Georgia middle school, who tried to make math a little more meaningful to students by blending it with history:

Uhh, really? Combining SLAVERY and MATH? I think the only reason the solution might stick in my brain is it is so distasteful that I wouldn’t really forget it. What next, Holocaust problems? Rwandan genocide geometry?

Well, certainly there *could* be a way to make math more fun in the Boston area. If Meg had seen word problems like this, she might had a more keen interest in solving such things. Shall we?

1.If Sully and Fitzy drink three beers each at the L Street Tavern in one hour, than how many more minutes will it be before they are doing shots of Wild Turkey and Red Bull?

Trick question, no more time will elapse; they will immediately down shots.

2.If Monica is 3.5 miles away from Dunkin’ Donuts and driving 35 MPH, and Eileen is 4.2 miles away and driving 38 MPH, estimate how many minutes will they be fighting over a pahhking space?

What, you don’t think people fight over Dunkin’ Turbo?

3.Bob is shoveling the end of his driveway after the January blizzard. It’s 7.p.m. and the plows are due to come by. Please calculate in number of feet the snowdrift the town plows will leave . Extra points for the height of the pile, and triple points for the number of f-bombs that will fly from Bob’s frozen lips.

Sorry, it won’t be possible to calculate the amount of profanity.

4. If Kimberly and Amanda start their tennis match at 10:00 a.m., how many minutes will they have to warm up their Cadillac Escalades and make it to the Saks by 11:15 am? Bonus: Guess how much time they have to get back to Winchester and hide their purchases?

Another trick question, they each have a chaffeur.

Let’s hope the schools teach math more productively, or everyone will end up like I did.

I refuse to do the math.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.

As most of you know, Meg does NOT live on the frontier, but in a suburb right outside of Boston. Yesterday, she did have a rather close call in her little hamlet that made her know for sure she was neither Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman nor Barbara Stanwyck on the Big Valley (look that one up, kids. I need to keep you on your toes with old cultural references).

Yesterday the family was walking Jack in the Town Forest, and SOMEONE decided it would be much more interesting to take
the Boy Scout trails in the woods because they were “more adventurous”. Meg likes the traditional wide trails herself, as you don’t have to fields streams and climb over trees. Nonetheless, Meg agreed to hike along the ridge of the yellow trail.

The family trooped along with Jack off-leash as he bounced and leaped over trees; looking back every once in awhile for some approval and a little smile:

(typical Jack attitude in the woods)

Suddenly, Jack’s amazing tracking ability kicked in, and he took off like a jet, leaving his 2 masters in the middle of the woods whistling for him like a couple of fools. Anyone pity the fools?

After about 10 minutes the fools agreed to split up and each take a direction in hopes their little dog would listen and come running. Soon Meg spied something moving in the distance, and thought the objects looked rather LARGE. As the objects came running toward her and became GINORMOUS, she realized they were a pair of whitetailed bucks, thundering toward her.

All of her camping expertise and backwoods experience kicked in (and that would be NONE people, Meg doesn’t camp anywhere except at a W or a Westin) and she hugged an oak tree for dear life, whereupon the deer sprinted within 10 feet of her mighty oak hideout. She saw the sharp hooves and sinewy hindquarters up close and way too personally, and her heart friggin raced. Raced, she tells you!

Out came trotting Jack, COVERED from head to toe in mud. In fact, he looked like an exact replica of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, complete with pirate boots and dreadlocks.

Meg bravely grabbed his collar and shouted for the person who had the leash, and everyone safely made their way to the nearest watering hole to get Jack to clean off.

You think that dog would step a paw over that one inch of ice on the shore? No. The family went back home, where they managed to turn their garage utility sink into an impromptu grooming salon. Little Jack rested in his crate for the remainder of the day, all proud he chased deer, and a lot peeved he had to get a bath.

Meg thinks she’ll just walk him around the block next weekend.

©2012 The Members Lounge. All Rights Reserved.