P.S. Ms. Bern (CEO of Charming Shoppes, Inc.)

Posted on 11 March 2009 | Leave a comment

P.S. If you would add a concession stand in each of your stores, you might see your revenue increase. I know I could do with a nice refreshing beverage after grunting and sweating in and out of clothes in your tiny little dressing rooms. Why do you install heat lamps above them?

P.P.S. You could sell beer, too, but not Rogue’s XS Imperial Stout. The taste of the beer isn’t worth the ceramics wasted on the cool container, although I do like the little rubber stopper. My dislike for the beer has nothing to do with my lack of testes or testosterone. I simply like my beer to taste like beer, not bourbon. I am a machine when it comes to drinking beer. I don’t need more crankcase oil, which is what this beer tastes like. This reviewer, Dan, must have had a bit too much to drink before writing. In fact, I am sure Dan had the entire $15 bottle. Dan, it is always a bad idea to drink and write.

So, Ms. Bern, you should offer Cabernet, Shiraz, Avery’s Old World Porter, St. Peter’s English Ale, St. Peter’s Porter, Guinness, and Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale. Maybe for the Scottish lasses you could offer a Wee Heavy. How about some foot-long coney dogs and nachos, too?

P.P.P.S. Did I mention that you need to teach your machines how to sew on buttons? Mine are always falling off at inopportune times, like when I am teaching.

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Posted in Beer, Fat, Just for Fun, Teaching

Dear Lane Bryant (Chairman, CEO)

Posted on 10 March 2009 | 2 comments

Dear Dorrit J. Bern:

I have enjoyed shopping at Lane Bryant since I was in high school, and I have always appreciated your selection of stylish, hip clothes for bigger women. While I sometimes feel that some of the styles of clothes you sell are better left to thinner women or to no one at all, I recognize that you are trying to be equitable in offering plus-size women many options for their dressing pleasure.

I do appreciate your attempt to stylishly clothe large women; however, I am appalled at the fact that you have been charging what can only amount to gross mark-ups for your clothing. No gauze shirt is worth $45. No ill-fitting pant suit is worth the $150-$200 total that I paid for pants, jacket, and button down shirt. I didn’t even get the job. I blame my current unemployment on the jacket’s tendency to creep up in the back, producing what I call the Dracula effect in which my ears are hidden by the collar as I gesture, cross my arms, or breathe.

I also wonder if you have taken into consideration the fact that not all fat women have large breasts. I weigh 240 pounds, but I am 5’2″ tall and wear a size 40B bra. I do not have the voluptuousness to fill out your clothing’s more than ample bust lines. Where cleavage should be, onlookers find glimpses of my bra or my sternum. Very attractive. And, the darts don’t help camouflage the fact that I am not breast-blessed. In fact, they amplify the space between the cloth and my breasts until the resulting flaps resemble front-side angel wings.

Similarly, I wonder if you have considered those of us who are fat-petite. As I have indicated, I am 5’2″ tall. Spending $55 or more for a pair of pants should prohibit the necessity for me to take them home only to spend an hour or so altering them to fit my short legs. I don’t mind my jeans dragging the ground, but I draw the line at dress pants. What about the shorties who can’t sew? Will you also open a shoe store specializing in high heels?

Now that I have spoken my mind in generalities, I would like for you to turn your attention to a specific situation. Today, I went shopping with a friend of mine and we left Lane Bryant in the Muncie Mall in low spirits. It appears that you no longer stock size 30 pants in your stores. In addition, we were informed that Lane Bryant no longer carries size 30 on their website or in their catalog. We were not directed to another store or given any advice about where to find size 30 pants. They did exist once upon a time. Surely, they were to be found somewhere.

When I got home, I discovered that Charming Shoppes, Inc. does, in fact, carry size 30, but at Catherine’s, Lane Bryant’s sister store. Had we been informed that we could simply go to another store that was nearby, my friend may have purchased five or six new pairs of pants. Since your company systematically and monetarily rapes fate women, knowing full-well that we have few other option, today’s little debacle means you lost about $400 in sales.

I would encourage you to carry bigger sizes at Lane Bryant, or at the very least, you could inform women who wear those sizes that they can purchase similarly priced and styled clothing at one of Lane Bryant’s sister stores. I mean, you shamelessly advertise Cacique on the radio as we shop. Why not advertise Fashion Bug and Catherine’s as well? As it is my friend was so upset, that she went home and ordered from Ashley Stewart. Your loss.

If you want us to continue to patronize your business, you could begin to heal today’s wounds with a few gift certificates. Perhaps a couple of gift cards, maybe $200 on each one, would help us to get over our ill-feelings and trauma.

Sincerely,

A Natty Heifer

2 Comments

Posted in Fat, Feminism

Roseanne and J. Alfred Prufrock

Posted on 6 March 2009 | 3 comments

At this point, your guess about why I am up at 4 AM watching reruns of Roseanne is as good as mine. I suppose there are worse things I could be doing right now than watching Darlene and Becky banter across the old brown couch. I forgot how funny the early episodes are, and I forgot how much they remind me of my family. Before the show started taking itself so seriously and before Tom Arnold came into the picture, it was a beautiful simply complex portrayal of blue-collar life in Lansford, a town not unlike Hartford City.

I am watching an early episode in which Jackie and Booker start dating. Most of the episode is filmed in a bowling alley, and the subplot is Becky’s first rendezvous with Chip. I remember why I love Darlene (Sara Gilbert). I think I might have wished she lived in Hartford City.  I look back now and think that she reminds me of my friend, Tisha: sarcastic, smart, and a little feisty. My life is better for knowing Tish.

I woke up at 3 AM—I laid in the bed for about 45 minutes before I gave in and finally got up—in order to begin memorizing “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I am sure Bec will be thrilled that I am trying to memorize another poem. I think she got her fill of “A Supermarket in California.” I can’t imagine I woke up so early for T.S. Eliot, although the beauty of the poem does not escape me. Here is the opening, a loose interpretation of a sonnet:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

I am sure my early morning can be attributed to the stress of the coming two weeks. Or the stress of the next few months. I am take my comprehensive exams in August. While I realized they were looming around the corner like a teenage tranny at RuPaul’s dressing room door, making my book list and going over it with Debbie yesterday really hammered it home. I have six months to prepare for the biggest test of my life. And I have to pass it.

Because I have to break up my serious study time into small chunks, I tend to spend a lot of time stumbling around on the Internet. I have decided to stop calling it procrastinating, because I have learned some interesting facts and been able to find some helpful websites during these mini-breaks. I found this site last night. I couldn’t resist reading some of the other posts on the blog, but the one I originally stumbled onto was the best. This morning I found this: F*** My Life. You, the viewer, actually get to vote: does the person’s life really suck or did they deserve what happened? Genius.

It’s now 4:44 and the episode that’s on—Dan wants to get a family photo to send into their high school reunion committee and it just so happened that when he and Roseanne broke up for a week their senior year, he slept with the woman who is organizing the reunion—reminds me of how I feel about high school reunions: they are a mechanism by which some people reassure themselves that their lives turned out better than others. I am not sure this is how reunions function for my class. Maybe I am naive. Maybe when I finally get my PhD, I will go back to a reunion. Maybe I won’t.

I had a couple of good beers last night with my delicious chicken etouffee.  The first one was an oldie but goody: Skullsplitter Scotch Ale. I am finding that I really love Scotch Ales. They have some body and nice complex taste. I also had a nice Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. Usually, okay sometimes, Chocolate Stouts are too sweet, but this one was particularly tasty with some nice coffee undertones. Brooklyn’s was the chocolate equivalent of Breckenridge’s Vanilla Porter.  I would drink it again. And again with HomeMade Peppermint Chip Ice Cream.

Maybe I am awake so early today because I am excited to get Minerva out of the garage, give her a bath, fill her up, check her tire pressure, and ride her all over the countryside. I mean I can’t go too far today, but I a girl can dream (funny Freudian slip I accidentally typed cream to begin with). I have until one o’clock when I am supposed to meet Julie at the Blue Bottle for coffee. Maybe I can talk her into beer at the Heorot.

Adult swim is really weird at 5 AM. Is it idiotic or genius? Frequently, the line is very fine, like one pixel fine.  And, I think Drew’s cat pooped over by the fish tank again. This is why I don’t get up early as a rule. This is why I am glad we are going to pull up this carpet this summer.

Oh, and I cut my hair last night.

Also this.

3 Comments

Posted in Beer, Literature, Motorcycles, Reading, School

Another Gift Idea

Posted on 2 March 2009 | 1 comment

Buy one of these for someone you love. A friend of a friend makes them with her own two hands.

1 Comment

Posted in Gleaning, Grace, Writing

Dear Lifetime Channel

Posted on 2 March 2009 | 4 comments

To whom it may concern:

I am writing about your recent decision to change the morning program line-up. Ever since The Golden Girls aired for the first time in 1985, I have been a great fan. I did not miss one episode in the entire seven years they were on air, and I watch a full hour of reruns on Lifetime each morning.

Lately, I have used the program as a tool with which to unwind each morning before doing my homework. Sometimes I used it as tool of procrastination to be sure, but I could always count on The Golden Girls to brighten my day. I have been feeling especially frazzled the past couple of weeks because I have not been sleeping well, so I look forward to Rose’s long inane stories, Blanche’s sexual escapades, Dorothy’s quick sarcastic wit, and Sophia’s old-world charm to prepare me for the long days I face as a graduate student.

Imagine my shock and disappointment this morning when I carried my freshly French-pressed Sumatra coffee with clove, cinnamon, and cardamom and my perfectly toasted bagel with cream cheese and habanero preserves into the living room to watch my girls. I laid out my breakfast, having eaten my banana in the kitchen while the water for the coffee boiled, and sat on the old, floral print couch. Holding the remote in my hand, I savored what would come next, but someone in your programming department had played a cruel trick.

“What the hell is this?” I asked myself when I saw Reba McEntire’s face looking out at me from the squarish frame of my old tube television set. I quickly—read frantically—scanned the programs before and after Reba. I thought maybe I had just been mistaken about the times, but my searching was to no avail. I am positive that The Golden Girls showed at 9:00 AM and again at 9:30 AM, and your website says they show from 8 AM-10 AM and again in the afternoon. However, this morning there was no sign of my special morning friends. You should update your webpage, because it is misleading and contributes to the already unstable psyche of the people (mostly women) who watch your channel.

So, here I sit, watching the History Channel and Billy Ray Cyrus as he hosts a program called Hillbilly: The Real Story, and trying to choke down my otherwise delicious breakfast. While I enjoy learning the true story of the Hatfields and the McCoys, the serpent handlings Appalachians don’t hold a candle in the wind to Dorothy, Rose, Sophia, and Blanche and their Miami shenanigans.

In closing, I would appreciate it if you would please return The Golden Girls to their rightful place on weekday mornings, and possibly for my pain and suffering, you should send me a photograph of The Golden Girls with the autographs of the remaining three golden girls. My very sanity hangs in the balance.

Sincerely,

A Fan

4 Comments

Posted in Just for Fun