Have you checked the mail today? If so, there’s a decent enough chance that somebody somewhere wants to give you money. Banks are clamoring for you to transfer your balances to them for 0% APR (for the first 12 months or however long it takes you to read the terms and conditions, whichever is longer) or buy a car (as long as it’s new and you take out a 60 or 72 month loan) or refinance your house and pay less each month (conveniently leaving out loan costs you’ll incur by doing so). Continue reading
How To
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Keeping your cuticles “picture perfect” is an easy way to make your home manicure look professional, Even if you don’t polish your nails, keeping your hands looking well-groomed is a really easy way to look put-together without taking that much effort. Alternatively, if you’re like me, and you like to post pictures of your manicure on the internet, you may have noticed that the macro setting on your camera makes your cuticles look like an emery board.
Moisturize! Dry cuticles peel but moisturize, and they will look fantastic within a few days. The trick is to moisturize them with something whenever you’re thinking about picking at them. I carry Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Balm. Because I’m a reformed nail biter, whenever I get the tense urge to bite my nails, I moisturize my cuticles instead. (Think: smoker who tries to replace with gum-chewing.)
Mango Mend
Wear gloves when you wash your dishes (and other things)! Water will destroy your hands. Don’t listen to that dish soap commercial where the sponge thinks that the soap makes the lady’s hand sexy. It doesn’t. It just dries it up and makes you smell like dish soap. Do your dishes—that’s important. But just, invest in some plastic gloves. I also recommend dishes for gardening.Humans use tools! Please don’t use your nails to open things or rip off packaging. You will break your nail. And if you’re really unlucky, you will break it so it exposes skin and that will sting like fire the next time you try to make lemonade from scratch.
Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream
Speaking of tools, the best nail file advice I ever got was to use a glass file. It’s less damaging than a metal file and less wasteful than an emery board. File in one direction (this is a lot harder than it sounds) instead of sawing back and forth. It’s better to file than cut but if you want to get rid of a lot of length all at once, it’s helpful to soak your hands first so the nail is a bit softer to cut. The other trick to filing your nails is to file your nails with nail polish on. It makes it easier to see if you’re shaping it the way that you envisioned in your head.
If you have any questions or nail polish requests, feel free to post them in the comments and I will use some of those (as many as possible, I’d love to answer all of your questions) as material for future posts. I also like trying nail art and will work on making some easy to follow tutorials for you. So consider this (first) post, “Total Request Tunamelt.”
I’ve seen a great deal of sadness these last few days as people have joined the site. Some assholes took our screen names in Intense Debate before we had to create accounts!
Pitifully confined to one identity for all eternity, unable to mockingly change our names to add “peasant,” “ghetto,” or “entitled” as our designations change, we are bound to suffer a fit of depression.
But wait! There’s hope!
If you want to change your display name (which is not necessarily your username, though it can be), you just take a couple simple steps.
Log into Intense Debate, click on “profile” under “edit profile,” and change your display name. Add a description that will pop up if you hover over your icon in the comments if you’re feeling extra inspired.
See the graphic below – it’s so easy. In other servicey news, it seems that the upload image problem dealing with gravatar is tied to Firefox. It worked for me when I switched browsers.
Great news, folks! Now you can embed YouTube videos in your comments. All you have to do is click the little “Embed Video” button right above the reply box and paste in the video’s URL.
Enjoy!
P.S. If you’re still having trouble posting images in your comments, know that it’s SUPER easy. All you have to do is type in:
<img src=”URL OF IMAGE”>
That’s it!
In this edition of not dressing like a slob we’ll look at professional attire. I have compiled a very simple list of things any gentleman can do to avoid looking like a complete tool while not spending and more money on clothes than he otherwise would. Each of these items I see gentlemen doing wrong on a regular basis and feel the need to help.
Rule 1 – Know what to match
- Shoes match your belt
- Socks match your pants
Rule 2 – Your pants should not be from the 1990s
- No cuffs
- No pleats
- Good length (people should not be able to see socks while you’re standing up)
Rule 3 – Know your size
- If you are a gentleman of a larger girth or height you may need to shop where sizes are well stocked for you
- If your shirt buttons are straining then your shirt is too small
Rule 4 – Know your age – shoes
- Your shoes should not have tassels unless you are over 60
- Timberland work boots are not dress shoes no matter how clean they are
- Learn the pleasures of a good shoe shine
Bonus Round – $5 word
- Haberdashery – A clothing and accessory store that specializes in the needs of a gentleman
Now, help out with your own wisdom in the comments.
In honor of our new book club, this edition of Let’s Get Boozy will be focused on the favorite drinks of some of my favorite literary figures.
Well, it is that time of year again. Even those of us who don’t regularly indulge usually toss a couple back, and for those of us who do it can often end like this:
No matter how good our intentions, New Year’s Eve is an invitation to taunt the liquor gods, and that means paying the price the next day. In the spirit of kindness, I am posting my time honored method of easing the hangover pain so that the first day of your new year won’t be utterly painful.
I know that there are many so called “natural” and vitamin remedies that are supposed to help a hangover, but they are all bullshit. Hippies don’t know shit about drinking, put down the crystal and let a professional help you.
Get all of this stuff together tonight. Once you are in the throes of a hangover you won’t want to leave the house and you probably shouldn’t because you will look like shit anyway.
For this method you will need the following:
36 oz. of water
2 anti-inflammatory tablets of your choice (I like Alleve).
2 pieces of bread
2 grams of decent weed
One comfy pillow and blanket
A cable TV hookup or a Netflix account
Phone number to a good pizza place or really good leftovers that are easy to reheat
2 cans of Coca-Cola (absolutely no substitutions on this)
The Night Before
It goes without saying that you can avoid this by not drinking excessively in the first place, but that is for little 
girls and it is a long time until the MLK weekend, so fuck it. I can also tell you to stick to one type of liquor, but you inevitably will mix bourbon with champagne and will end up doing a shot of absinthe that someone brought back from a holiday in Europe. Again, fuck it. You should drink some water before you go to bed, but if given the chance to get some nasty from whomever you wind up with, skip the water and go for the sweet loving. Rest easy knowing that you will survive the consequences of your foolish behavior. Again …
The Day of Battle
Step #1: Try not to sleep more than a couple hours later than your usually waking time because that makes your body confused and you’ve already pissed it off enough. If you are sleep deprived you can nap later.
Step #2: Shower, or at least wash your face. You smell awful.
Step #3: Drink one of the Cokes. It should be ice cold. Drink it slow.
Step #4: After 15 minutes, toast the bread and eat it (use butter if your stomach isn’t too upset). Drink 12 oz. of water with it.
Step #5: Wait about 20 minutes. Smoke some weed. If you smoke cigarettes you should have one at this point. I know, I know, you are going to quit, but today is not the day. Leave that shit for next week.
Step #6: Now is the time to take a tylenol or whatever. Your stomach will appreciate that you waited.
Step #7: Watch a couple of hours of TV while snuggled in your blankey on the couch. I recommend Law and Order, Futurama, the Twilight Zone, or Star Trek. All of these will probably be on marathons tomorrow or you can get them on Netflix. Avoid porn, horror movies (this is not the time to finally see Hostel), anything really sad (alcohol is a depressant). If you must watch sports you are going to have to choke down a couple of cans of mid-priced domestic beer to make watching your favorite team blow another great season possible.
Step #8: Take a nice nap. Try to keep it under an hour so you won’t fuck up your sleep schedule and turn into a vampire.
Step #9: Take the second anti-inflammatory with 12 more oz. of water. Return to the couch for more movies (maybe there is something good on Lifetime).
Step #10: Drink the last Coke and smoke some more weed. At this point you should be ok to eat some real food. Try cheese pizza, chicken soup, or pasta with a red sauce. Avoid carbonara, salad, Indian food, anything too spicy. Don’t make your stomach even angrier.
Step #11: Return to the couch and slowly drink 12 more oz. of water. See what Benson and Stabler are up to. Check in on CT and make fun of everyone else for a having a hangover.
Step #12: By this point you should be able to go on with your day, but if you can stay on the couch do it. Avoid phone calls from family, annoying internet arguments, or anything else unpleasant. This is the first day of the New Year, you have 364 more days to be irritated.
Step #13: Profit! You win at drinking. Now don’t do that again!!!
Have a wonderful New Year!
If you’re looking for some simple cocktails to make this New Year’s you’ve found the right place. With four ingredients or less these classic cocktails are quick to make, and easy to cater to personal tastes. Perfect for when you’re serving a crowd. Fair warning, while these drinks may seem easier to assemble than more complicated cocktails, they can actually be much harder to master. Everyone knows what they should taste like, and you have high expectations to live up to when serving them. So before starting to assemble your drinks make sure you have the appropriate hardware, and high-quality ingredients. So go make some ice, grab you cocktail shaker, THROW AWAY those pre-made mixes, and join me for this classic edition of Let’s Get Boozy. Continue reading