Why are these people smiling????

Roommate is no longer allowed to watch infomercials.

Okay, that's crap. I can't control her or her choices of television entertainment---yes, infomercials do so count as entertainment---and I certainly can't stop her from purchasing things like...

This:
Yes, it's the marvelous, magnificent, magical Brazilian Butt Lift!!!!!

Well. Roommate is who she is, after all. How could she resist this? This is the same person, if we recall, who hired a personal trainer for us. On purpose. And she does love to shop, even if it is via the TV. And look! Look! Look at all the neat-o stuff that came with this new and exciting torture device!!!



Oh, it's the Brazilian Butt Lift exercise system! My former coworker Paula, a revoltingly hot blonde Brazilian herself, was wildly amused by our experiences with this. [NB: The term used in Brazilian Portugese to name the bottom is bum-bum. That's pronounced boom-boom, not buhm-buhm. Mispronunciation of this term may cause wine to shoot out of the nose of nearest Brazililan.]

Six fabulous workout DVDs, a booklet on foods that "burn fat," a supermodel six-day slimdown plan, travel workout cards, a tape measure, exercise bands and a pencil! Yes. A pencil. For performing the pencil test.

Hm? Oh! The pencil test. Well, it's a clever and low-tech method of determining how rotten one ought to feel about one's body, particularly one's derriere. The idea is to place the pencil at the point that butt connects to thigh. If the butt cheek holds the pencil in place, one may safely conclude that her butt is horribly oversized and adversely affected by gravity.

I, myself, do not feel the need to perform the pencil test. I have eyes, after all, and can see the land mass that is my rear end. And frankly, if I put a pencil in that region of my body, we may never see said pencil again. That's like sending a plane into the Bermuda Triangle. During a storm. On Friday the 13th.

Anyway. Roommate has used this "exercise system" three times already. I have participated, whining and yowling the whole way, twice. Twice. Let me tell you, darling invisible friend, that our personal trainer, the tiny blonde sadist, would delight in the torments this man has inflicted upon us.
He looks like a nice enough fellow, doesn't he? Yeah. He's not. Not even a little.

Because! He doesn't ever pause. EVER. It's ghastly. He's all, "Four more of these really hard and painful moves!! Three! Two! Last one-and-now-let's-do-this-other-really-hard-thing-immediately-without-taking-one-freaking-second-to-breathe!!!!"

It doesn't matter that there's a little counter on the screen, telling you that there's only eleven seconds left of the squat-down-then-reach-up-for-no-damn-good-reason move. Immediately afterward, he's going to yell at you to kick your leg out in back while simultaneously reaching upward, balancing and filing your taxes.

And the cool down? Um...

This is a pretty darn difficult yoga move, my friend. Not a freaking cool down. And ow. Ow. OW!!!

When it hurts to sit, hurts to stand, hurts to step, hurts to climb stairs, hurts to breathe, it's not an exercise system, it's a cruel and unreasonable thing. Where the hell do these people get their training to do this stuff??????????!!!!!!! Oh. Right. Of course.

Sorry.