Back in a flash!

I've been missing in action as of late, and unfortunately that will continue as I relocate from crazy London to crazy NYC. I'll be back soon with more ridiculous insight and harsh judgements. Be patient and I'll be sure to make it worth your while!

Because every once in a while, your vagina goes haywire

I was checking my email this morning when all of a sudden I was distracted by one of those annoying pop up ads. I normally ignore these, but the words vaginal testing sheets caught my eye.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Fem-V, The Vaginal Infection Test--because not all vaginal infections are yeast infections!

I have mixed feelings about this one.

While I think it's great that there's now an over the counter solution to finding out whether that stinging sensation is the result of your own crazy vagi or your boyfriend giving you a little bit of that nasty stuff, I'm just not convinced that the general public is ready to be diagnosing vaginal diseases. According to the ad, 80% of women can't differentiate between a "simple yeast infection" and something more serious. If this is actually true, that means the vast majority of women walking around with itchy and odorous woman parts have unsuccessfully treated their Chlamydia with Mono-Stat 7. In which case, Fem-V is definitely in order all across the globe(especially in large teen populations and parts of the Caribbean and South Pacific). But on the other hand, I'm not all that comfortable with a glorified maxi pad telling me that my vagina is malfunctioning on serious levels. Call me crazy, but I'd rather pay to have Dr. Jones poke around my privates and tell me officially that Billy has burned me...it's more humane that having a panty liner silently mock you as you stare at it in disbelief.

Let oil glisten all over their bodies

This past Monday, a Japanese tanker spilled 1.4 million gallons of oil into the Indian Ocean. That's the equivalent of 4,500 tons! But sadly, that spill isn't nearly as bad as the spill that happened in Lebanon a few weeks ago. During the first few days of the new war Israel has waged on Hezbollah, Israeli fighter jets accidentally on purpose bombed a power plant in Beirut causing 15,000 tons of oil to leak into the Mediterranean Sea. The spill this week by the Japanese was apparently caused by a collision with a cargo ship.


The big oil companies responsible for these spills are usually very slow to react to these situations. I guess they figure that since humans aren't directly affected, they can figure out what to do about it later. Who cares if a crab or seagull is disoriented and close to death because it's covered in oil?! I care. And so do a lot of other people, so I propose a very drastic solution: Take 10 million gallons of old chicken grease and dump it on Washington, D.C.

I would say we should use crude oil, but that would probably kill a bunch of people. Chicken grease is equally annoying without those pesky side-effects of death and medical problems. I would love nothing more than to see all of those oil company lobbyists struggle to carry on their day-to-day activities while covered in chicken grease. And by covered, I mean COVERED! Completely soaked to the bone. 10 million gallons of grease is a lot after all, so pretty much every available surface in D.C. would be glistening with that good stuff. Imagine a horrible hurricane or monsoon, but instead of water...it's chicken grease. People would be falling down stairs, no one would be able to drive, public transport would be out of the question, you wouldn't be able to eat or drink anything because it's covered in chicken grease, and there was absolutely nothing you could on your own to get rid of it. The city would completely shut down.

I know this all sounds very silly, but this is exactly what marine animals go through when humans cause oil spills and then are very lackadaisical about cleaning it up. I realize that cleaning up oil spills is a very expensive and time consuming process and everyone wants to point fingers on who is going to pick up the tab, but at the end of the day the important thing is that it gets done. And quickly! The more time people spend on trying to figure out who, what, when, where, and why, the salmon that could be someone's dinner is floating in a puddle of oil instead.

Covering the good people of D.C. in chicken grease is the only logical way to make people understand how horrorendous these oil spills are and how important it is to do something about it once it happens. As individuals citizens, there isn't too much we can do to help clean up the spills other than taking to the effected beaches and scooping up buckets of oil. But if you don't happen to live near the coasts of the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea, and you are near Washington, D.C., I highly suggest that you pour a container of melted Vaseline on the first politician that crosses your path. Just to show them you mean business!

Run for Jesus! (Not Christ, but that Mexican dude)

It's summertime so that means that every organization on the planet is having a marathon, triathlon, decathlon, etc. It all started with Race for a Cure. You wore one of those cute pink ribbons in support of finding a cure for breast cancer and you either ran in a 10K marathon or sponsored a more physically fit person to do it for you. A very worthy cause. But then all these other worthy causes like AIDS/HIV, prostate cancer, etc. wanted you to wear ribbons or rubber bracelets and run for them too. Now, it's just getting out of hand.

I was out for lunch today and I walked past a poster that said "Run for Trees! Join the annual tree-atholon. Everyone needs to do their part to save our trees!" I was a staunch environmentalist as a pre-teen so I know how important it is to protect and care for our environment, but I'm still scratching my head as to why anyone would pay money to run for trees. I'm a little afraid that more "worthy causes" will start asking us to run for them.

"Run for Paris Hilton! Help that dumb bitch get a clue!"

"Run for Irritable Bowel Syndrome! Put your money where your bowels are!"

If these marathons continue at the rate they're going, I have no doubt we will see these ridiculous "runs" in the near future. Which has got me to thinking, maybe I need to start my own run...

"Run for 'Coco Stasia'! Help her broke ass get a new job!"

The joy of waiting rooms

Many people hate going to the doctor for routine visits. You know nothing is wrong with you, so it seems pointless to go, right? While you're there, you have to sit in a waiting room for up to an hour listening to babies cry and neurotic women complain about their seasonal allergies and migrane headaches. All that aside, I'm one of those bizarre people who actually like sitting in waiting rooms; There's always something interesting going on! As a child I was thoroughly amused by playing with the toys and building blocks in the play room as I waited for the doctor to tell me and my mother that I had chicken pox. As an adult, I like trying to figure out what's wrong with everyone and reading all the different magazines that waiting rooms have to offer, especially the ones that I ordinarily would never read on my own free will. It's an excellent opportunity to broaden my horizons and learn something new and interesting.

Yesterday I went to the doctor for my annual check-up and I arrived about 30 minutes before my appointment in the hopes of getting caught up on my reading. While sitting in the waiting room I experienced the usual--resisting the urge to smack a toddler because he was verbally assaulting his own mother, a man coughing so hard that I thought he was going to spit up his soul, and of course I had all the magazines a girl could possibly want. House & Garden says "Renew, Revive and Refresh Your Personal Space!" You magazine says "Bad Love: Why Kate Moss Always Chooses the Wrong Guy" Cosmo magazine says "Make Him Beg for More--Get Down and Dirty the Right Way!" Time magazine says "Shanghai Pooches Get Pampered While Country Dogs Get Slaughtered." All very riveting headlines I must say. There were at least 5 magazines that caught my eye, but I knew I wouldn't have time to read them all. As I was shuffling through the mags trying to figure out which one to start reading first, a man wandered into the waiting room and screamed "I need some help!" Of course everyone stopped and looked at him, wondering what was going on and where he came from.

"He said I was fine, but I'm not! He has to see me again. I demand to see the GP (doctor) again!"

The man kept screaming this over and over again while the receptionists tried unsuccessfully to shut him up and get him out.

"Please, I need to see the GP again! He was wrong!"

Anytime someone is shouting and generally acting a fool, I take them seriously. Most people will just say they're nuts and brush them aside, but it has been my experience that crazies know what's really going on before us normal people get wind of it. I was tempted to pull him to the side and ask him exactly what the GP was wrong about, but one of the nurses directed him to the doctor's office before I worked up the nerve to do it.

"Coco? Coco Stasia? The doctor will see you now."

"Already? B-b-but I didn't even get to see why they kill the country dogs," I thought to myself as I walked back to the examination room. I was kinda upset because the crazy man in the waiting room distracted me from reading the magazines. I felt jipped, like I went to a backyard bbq and they ran out of meat just as I got there. So after my exam I picked up the latest issue of Tatler magazine and stuffed it in my bag on my way out the door. Yeah, I know it's wrong to "steal," but it's also wrong to mis-diagnose crazy people too. Let's just say that taking that magazine was my way of balancing out the universe. I hope the doctor was right when he said I checked out normally. I would hate to find out next week that I have measles, mumps and rubella! But at least then I would get to go back to the waiting room and read more magazines. I've always wondered why Kate Moss dates such losers!

Old hoes in new clothes

In the September issue of W magazine, there is a feature story called "Cover Girls" that has a spread of some of the original supermodels of the 80s and 90s. I think it's great that they're profiling these women because they were trailblazers in the world of fashion, however, I wish they would have been styled/photographed in a different way. Those chicks are old! I know that nowadays middle-aged women are looking much younger and healthier than generations of women in the past, and many people say "40 is the new 20" and "50 is the new 30." No, it's really not. 40 is the new 40 and 50 is old. So put your clothes back on! If you're 40+ and you think it's perfectly ok to wear as much hair and make-up as a a young co-ed and prance around in outfits that are more appropriate for club hopping twentysomethings, let me assure you that it's not! As much as I loved Cindy Crawford back in 1995, I really have no desire to see her half-naked in 2006. Don't get me wrong, she looks wonderful but the days of wearing dresses and swimsuits that are held together with chains are long gone! I think readers would be much more interested in seeing them photographed in a way that shows how they have grown and matured since their days on the catwalk--not reliving their glory days and trying oh so hard to be hot and sexy. It's the equivalent of The Supremes going on tour with Destiny's Child. A good idea in theory, but somehow it just doesn't work. I'll let you be the judge...

Oldie Brinkley

Christy Oldington

Oldy Crawford

Oldomi Cambell

Too damn old!

And the love keeps getting stronger

Following up on my last post about my love for Starbucks and Dubai, I am pleased to announce that Starbucks will now be selling books in their cafes! I never quite understood why they were selling cds and dvds, but selling books makes perfect sense because many people go to Starbucks for the sole purpose of reading a good book while enjoying a good cup of coffee. Well done SB, you've made mama proud! Now all we have to do is do something about their choice of books...I don't know too many people who want to curl up with a steaming hot mocha and read "The Little Engine That Could." Unless of course they're downsy. In which case you have to wonder why they're in Starbucks to begin with. But maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about because it did sell 25,000 copies of the book in just one week. I was about 8 years old the last time I read that book and even then I didn't think it was too much of a page turner. Either I'm really missing something, or Starbucks was invaded by 25,000 downsy people in the course of 7 days. But hey, Starbucks is selling books!

Dubai & Starbucks -- A Love Story

For the past year I've been saying that if I woke up one morning and a garbage bag full of money had magically appeared under my bed, there are three places I would go:

1. The bank
2. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
3. Starbucks

The bank is an obvious first stop, but I'm sure you have your eyebrows raised at my other two destinations. Last August I was putting together a list of all the places that I wanted to travel to over the course of the year. I included all the usual suspects of Europe, with Egypt and Morocco thrown in there for fun, but as I was talking to co-workers many of them told me about these "absolutely fabulous holidays" that they took in Dubai. Even though I'm pretty good with history and geography, I had never heard of Dubai before and I was very intrigued. After doing a bit of research I realized it was in the United Arab Emirates and not too far from Abu Dhabi. I had definitely heard of Abu Dhabi because my friends and I got into a habit of saying things like "I'm going to ship you off to Abu Dhabi!" or "She acted as if I asked her to go all the way to Abu Dhabi!" So needless to say, I was pretty excited at the prospect of going to Dubai and possibly making a pitstop in Abu Dhabi along the way.

Even though I'll be leaving Europe in a few weeks, I've still been looking at vacation packages online, just in case I run up on something that's too good to pass up. I've had my eye on Dubai but this is prime season for tourists so the prices are out of the water. I ran across a story about Burj Al Arab, the world's only seven star hotel and the world's largest Starbucks inside the Mall of Arabia, the world's largest mall.

Anytime I see something described as "the world's only, the world's largest, or the world's best", it becomes my mission to see it, have it, or experience it. Just like any girl, I love having the best of the best so seeing those phrases really draws me, even if I don't necessarily want to be drawn in. For some odd reason, jellied eels is a popular dish around England. Just the thought of it makes me queasy, but I was walking down Oxford Street one day and saw a restaurant with a banner saying "Voted world's best jellied eels by Time Out magazine." I tried them, hated them, but if I saw another restaurant saying they had the worlds best jellied eels, nine times out of ten I would try them. That's how much I like having "the best". So imagine my excitement when I was reading about Dubai and saw that they had not only the world's only seven star hotel, but also the world's largest Starbucks! If I had a spare grand laying around in my savings account I would have been on the first place to the UAE! Dubai has the world's tallest building, the world's largest indoor ski resort and the world's largest amusement park. With the addition of SB, I need to find my way to Dubai ASAP.

Starbucks and I have a tumultuous history. I never really liked coffee until I got to college but occasionally I would drink it during finals week. We only had one coffee shop on our small campus called The Buzz and it had been around for generations. Starbucks came in, completely took over the coffee business, and within months The Buzz had to close up shop. I hated Starbucks because of that! I had never gone to The Buzz before, but I've never liked the idea of big corporations driving away smaller business; which is one reason (among many) that I won't shop at WalMart. I went on a tirade about how much I hated Starbucks to anyone that would listen and gained a reputation for being very anti-SB. But then I had one of these and my life changed forever...

The Frappuccino, or frappy as I affectionately call it, is one of those amazing creations that only comes along once or twice every 6 months or so. Even though I had heard so many people singing the praises of these magical little drinks, I refused to try them because of my anti-SBness. But while spending a summer interning in NYC at a high-profile fashion designer, a very famous bootylicious singer was kind enough to give me a SB giftcard for helping her find a dress for a red-carpet event. I couldn't walk more than 5 minutes without seeing one of those crack dens perched on just about every street corner in midtown, I was slowly being drawn in like a moth to a flame. Finally after two weeks and the giftcard burning a hole in my pocket, I gave in and joined the long line of fiends waiting to get their daily fix. My order: a grande mocha frappuccino. My love affair had begun.

As blissful as it was, the love affair quickly came to an end when I looked at old bank statements from my whirlwind summer in New York and realized that I spent over $300 in three months at Starbucks. And that was just from my debit card, that doesn't include the times that I actually had cash in my wallet and used that instead! I was addicted to the stuff in a bad way. I went cold turkey and stopped drinking my beloved frappies for 5 weeks, but once I got back to campus, they started calling me again. I couldn't help myself! It was hot, I was bored, so I started drinking and before I knew it I was drinking 1-2 per week. I had it under control though, it wasn't nearly as bad as my old habit of 5-7 per week. I wouldn't let it take over me like I did before. I had went as far as to purchase a very artistic black and white photograph of the first Starbucks branch in Seattle and even changed the words to 50 Cent's song "Magic Stick" to "Mocha Stick". I was a fiend I tell you, a fiend!

As time went on, I kept drinking my beloved frappies. I saw new flavors come and go...banana caramel, strawberries & cream, toffee nut, mint chocolate chip, green tea (disgusting!), etc. I've had every flavor and I get a little annoyed when new ones are introduced because nothing can top the classic Mocha. This past weekend I had one for the first time in almost a year. I had stopped drinking them in an effort to consume healthier foods. Even when my healthy food kick came to an end, I has successfully resisted the urge to go back to my drink of choice. It was hot as hell on Saturday and I hadn't had any chocolate yet so I thought to myself "Ok, just this once. It'll be fine." But it wasn't...I'm hooked again.

As I was looking though travel sites and seeing all of the beautiful sandy beaches of Dubai, all I could think about was the fabulous hotel that leaves $400 worth of Hermes goodies in each room for you to take as souvenirs, and lounging in a five-story Starbucks reading a good book. While one love is very much within reach (just a 10 minute walk to be exact), the other love is quite far away and I may not be able to see if for another year or so. But in the meantime, I always have my frappy:-) The love affair will go on.

An uncomfortable conversation

Just like Cocoa Girl, inappropriate conversations at work are happening all over the place!

Me: Good morning Steve.

Co-worker Simon: Ah, good morning "Coco", how was your weekend?

Me: It was great! Me and a few friends went to Wales to see the Madonna concert.

Co-worker Simon: Really? Oh that sounds like fun! How was the show?

Me: Amazing! I had such a good time. I love Madonna!

Co-worker Simon: Yeah, she's quite a performer.

Me: So what did you do this weekend?

Co-worker Simon: Not much. My wife and I got into a fight. She's been pretty testy lately.

Me: (On the verge of giving him The Crazy Look) What happened?

Co-worker Simon: She's upset because I've been working long hours and we don't spend as much time together as we used to. We spent most of the weekend going back and forth about it. It got quite nasty!

Me: Oh I'm sure it wasn't that bad!

Co-worker Simon: Actually, it was. I was a little afraid of her.

Me: (Trying very, very hard to suppress The Crazy Look) Are you a man?

Co-worker Simon: I'm sorry, what did you say?

Me: Are you mad? I asked are you mad? (Snickering under my breath)

Co-worker Simon: Me? She's the one that's mad!

Me: Oh no no no, I meant are you upset. Not "are you crazy."

Co-worker Simon: Oh, I misunderstood. I wasn't upset in the beginning, at least not until she got violent. She hit me a few times and threw my mum's silver all over the flat. She beat me pretty badly. My body still aches a bit.

Me: Um, yeah. (Uncomfortable silence) Ok well I'm going to go grab some coffee. Enjoy the rest of your day!

Annnnnd scene!