About Annie

Annie Barrett website

TV commentary

Joint Custody
(The O.C., Jan. 26)

Double-Wide Trouble
(The O.C., Jan. 19)

Annie's O.C. page

Past updates

Dec 2005
Nov 2005
Oct 2005
Sep 2005
Aug 2005
July 2005
May 2005
Apr 2005
Mar 2005
Feb 2005
Jan 2005
Dec 2004
Nov 2004
Oct 2004
Sept 2004
Aug 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004

Features

Alert level: Cuddly

Blogs are so, like, stupid.

iCan't believe iHave one.

Misery loves danish

Subway: drink fresh

Can you believe I only know three people who have blogs? Lame.

Ask Why Not
Insomnia Haiku
Your Treat

  Annie Barrett is a writer living in New York City. Annie Barrett. Annie Barrett is probably insane. Annie Barrett doesn't care. TH

I dislike the president for many reasons, but one of his possibly improv-ed lines today really threw me over the edge. In the middle of my Ellen recording, just before Allison Janney was supposed to come on and entertain me with her wit and tallness, an NBC Special Report interrupted the show and one of the first things W. did (after using a swinging viedocamera to stall for time) was sputter out this: "I'd like to remind everyone that we're living in historic times..."

No. You asshole. We're living in one year. It's obviously going to be part of history, but so are all those other years with numbers you may or may not be able to count. What does that even mean, "We're living in historic times"? Maybe these years have been so "historic" because you've f----d them up so much. Maybe they're "historic" in your life because they are the years you're the president. Whatever. Eff you. I can't believe someone so blatantly stupid is in office.

I know that sounded cliché, but I've never said it on my super-cool blog, so I thought I would.

I'm thinking of switching domain names and starting a new site called "The Peeve". It would just be me bitching about things. I think it'd be great. Ooh, or maybe it could be called "Diminishing Returns." That's also catchy.

By the way, I should take this time to apologize to all the innocent people who land here because they searched the Web for "diminishing returns." You're probably doing some lame-o high school assignment or tracking the definition down at work because you should have known it before but you weren't paying attention in class that day. You really want nothing to do with me or this site. I'm sorry you had to land here. But I'm more amused by this phenomenon than weirded out by it, so... Yep, that's it. Hi, sorry, and you should probably leave now. Maybe I'll keep apologizing once a month for shits and giggles.

Does anyone remember a cookie manufactured during the '80s called Giggles? I asked Dee last month but she didn't know what I was talking about. Look, Dee! I loved these cookies and thought they were both adorable and my special friends when I was really little. I'd carry them around in the box and occasionally eat one, but there were about six different varieties of faces in the box so I'd be sure to leave one of each face in the box. Then I'd lay them all out on the counter and study them quizzically, trying to decide which one I liked the least and therefore deserved to be the first casualty of my final round. I did this until all that was left were crumbs. <--- Kind of Cute or Sick and Pathological? You make the call. I already know my vote.

Besides, it's not like I walked around giggling like that doofus in the commercial. I wonder if he turned out screwed up. That was insane. Rather, I was very methodical about the whole process. It was almost as if carrying around the box of Giggles was my full-time job for that day. I was so intent on executing the job correctly and fairly. Wow, my professionalism shone through at such a young age. I wonder what happened to it.

Breaking news: I love Pink. My favorite part right now is when she tugs on the "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, PULL" tags in between shooting dirty looks to stupid girls.

Seth smoked pot on The O.C.! And Sandy bought churros on a pier. I love those fetish items. The show's getting back into my good graces. They just need to hire me as a stand-in eater for Mischa Barton (more on that at a later date) and I'd be all set in terms of life fulfillment for awhile. Like three days, maybe, but still! That'd be progress.

This morning I made a beeline down the long corridor of my huge apartment in the direction of the new box of Froot Loops I'd recently purchased for something like $4 at the Hudson Street Rite Aid. I was all prepared for the uphill battle I always manage to face during the simple process of opening the box so that the little cardboard section can tuck neatly into the little crevasse provided.

GET THIS. The box had been OPENED. Weird, I thought, still not putting it past myself to have unknowingly snuck a bowl while fast asleep dreaming about something better, like Reese's.

Nope. Not only was the BAG open too, but the "sell by" date was August 2005! YES, I am a moron for not noticing this in the store. But Rite Aid is much worse than me. DR thus proclaims a BAN on Rite Aid for all of 2006.*

The worst part of the sort-of story is that for about 30 seconds I considered eating the Froot Loops anyway, before I remembered that according to logic and general folklore, they might kill me. Then I threw them away like the good little sucker I've grown up to be.

Hmmm.. Bart?

Ooh, I love how they positioned the question right next to Jessica or Lisa's eyes. It's like she's daring us all to take a gander at her name. I'm sure she also really wants us to get new ringtones, with participation.

*Except if I'm right near it, or need cheap beer.

I find it incredibly fitting that when I hurried to pause my TV right before this week's new episode of LOST (I wasn't ready to dive in just yet because there was Thai takeout to be picked up) I happened to pause it on precisely this image (right). McDonald's' (wow, that's awkward) new addition to its Dollar Menu is a sixer of McNuggets. This is huge. They warn that this will only be the case until January 31, so DR encourages everyone to go out and reap the benefits of the deal so that McD's will have no choice but to continue the big moneymaker, now and forever and ever, amen.

The commercial reminded me of another hand-centric pause I captured during the iPod Nano commercial (left).

"Uh huh... I guess all those hands look the same to you, Annie."

OMG, you're right. I'm so racist.

No, I just like the whole "reaching for the unattainable" theme present in commercials today. Keeps the dream alive, eh? Then, when you're sitting at home with your Nano and dollar pack of nuggets, you'll feel more triumphant. You just beat all the odds, and yet what you did was entirely ordinary and shallow! See? It's better for us all. Deception is key.

I should point out here that until this week I was partial to the 99-cent menu at Wendy's. Cheaper, more to choose from, and Frosty-inclusive. Can't go wrong. Unless you get the chili, I guess. (Which I constantly do. Sorry. It's excellent.)

Hey, that's my mom!

Currently loving: Soft Baked cookies, this time in "Sugar" variety
Currently hatin': NYC deli prices on beer. WTF? I miss my independent supermarket down the street (Strawberry Fields, awww...), even if I was their only customer, hence their shutdown.

Thought it was high time I posted the first Web-ready pic from my new(fangled) cell phone:

No, but I wish you were! You're totally cute.

Sorry. I'm not one of those people who goes around bragging about her awesome new phone, if that's what you think. I hate cell phones. I hate the idea of them. Who needs to be in touch that much? I just can't get into them; something about my wiring. I like COMPUTERS. Namely this one. Which is what some people blurted out to me in earnest after I told them, years ago when cell phones were getting "really big," (this happened, right?) that I hated cell phones. It was like this:

Annie: I hate cell phones!

Person: But Annie, you're like... in love with your computer.

Okay. I don't really get this. Who makes the connection between normal people's affection for cell phones and applies them to Annie's nerdy obsession with her computer (which, by the way, was at that point a grainy Dell laptop that buzzed 23 hours out of the day, the one buzz-free hour being the hour during which I finally shut down the comp and got some shut-eye). And also, in what world does someone else think that I'll even respond to the ridiculous comparison that she just suggested? Who would hear that and be like "Yeah, you're right, I forgot I was really into technology. I'm obsessed with my phone now"?

Not this girl, I tell you!

My new phone is awesome, though, and if I was that type of person, I would have bragged about it by saying"my new phone is awesome" on my blog. But I'm so above that, so I didn't. Because:

Tuned in tonight to James Frey on "Larry King Live," defending himself against The Smoking Gun's sensationalistic claim that some of the facts in his book don't add up.

At first I didn't warm to Frey's demeanor. Kind of cocky, kind of repetitive. We get it. Your book is so lofty that it holds an "essential truth." Shut the fuck up! Wait, no, say it again, just so I can feel a little more talked down to. This is really fun for me.

But then I saw the dude from The Smoking Gun, livin' it up during his 15 minutes, and I just wanted to curl up and die. You just could not get any more smug than this guy. You could try -- you could even devote years of your life to a training regiment in smugness -- but you would not even come close. I'm serious. It was sick.

My general opinion on the whole ordeal is that an author can write whatever he wants about things that are strictly personal. For instance, I don't care that for the purposes of the story, Frey decided to move the huge gash on his face from below his lip (where it actually existed) to his cheek (where it existed in the story), because that sort of thing fell completely within his jurisdiction. On the other hand, I will say that looking back, I feel especially duped and a little stupid for spending many minutes peering into his tiny headshot on the back of the book to see if I could make out the scar on his cheek. I know I'm not the only person who did that, so that kind of sucks.

I also don't care that he probably fabricated most of the conversations he had with people in rehab. Those are his personal acquaintances and family; who am I to question or care if they're accurate?

I fabricate crap all the time. I think on Halloween, I posted that I went downstairs to Bleecker Farm deli and told a bunch of cops "Hey, great costumes." I wrote that they laughed at me because sometimes I like to give off the impression that I am funny. Neither of these exchanges were accurate. What actually happened was that I stared at the cops, imagining how funny it would be if I said they had great costumes, and in return, the cops stared back at me, probably amused because I had blue yarn wrapped only around my left arm and leg and it made no sense. See? No harm done, and the scenario I wrote about was (arguably) much better than reality.

The only thing Frey shouldn't have done (on the off-chance that he'd become an Oprah associate) is blatantly lie about details like his jail sentence, his involvement in murders -- things that have public records accessible to fame-hungry bloggers who decide to spend inordinate amounts of time hunting them down. He shouldn't have done this because he had no reason to. It's pretty simple. I'm not offended as a reader that he did it; I just don't get why he needed to. His story was powerful enough as it was -- why lie for no reason?

Here's what I found fascinating about the Larry King show: the whole time, for 55 minutes, people watching could have gone either way in their assessment of Frey. Larry was asking tough questions, Frey was being a real flake on many of his answers. I'm sure a lot of idiots out there were clutching their seafoam paperbacks, wondering what they should tell people their own opinion was in the morning.

ENTER OPRAH!

Suddenly Oprah was on the line. (Unscripted? I think not. That was a cute "I was on the line forever!" quip by her, though. Very humanizing, very plebian-chic. Nice work there.) Oprah spoke emphatically in Frey's favor, and suddenly it was like the entire show up until then didn't matter. All that mattered were the words of the prophet.

Hurrah, for all is well! We can keep on loving the book! Even Larry King felt great after that happened. I watched him during her call, and he was genuinely thrilled. "This was the perfect show!" he was thinking.

Thanks Oprah!

Currently loving: Anderson Cooper's colored contacts
Currently hatin': blisters... as if I needed another excuse not to exercise

The most productive thing I did today was screen-capture Madonna humping her boom box in her "Hung Up" video and crop it into an AIM icon for a friend. My life is rich and satisfying. And I was just being serious.

BREAKTHROUGH: I need to stop conceiving of the term "screen-capture" as something that should be allowed in my blog.

I think the week I get back to New York (two days and counting), I'm going to wear a bandana around my entire head each night and count how many people say "Hey, your hair looks really good like that." They invariably do, and I don't get it.

Check back in seven days for the grand total!

Currently loving: the prospect of an all-sugary-cereals diet
Currently hatin': plain rice. WTF?

Spent much of today making small changes to this site (none of which will ever be detected; awesome!) and trying to figure out why the hell the e-mail address I'd been using for the site worked about 3% of the time. There's a new one now, called diminishingreturnsdotnet@gmail.com. I chose that name because I like long, nonsensical words and because I apparently don't derive enough daily pleasure from Gmail as it is.

Also Google-related: (I am a Google machine! Google, check it out! Now improve my rating.) In my mostly uninteresting data-prowl through a nifty program called StatCounter, I came across this fun chart about my October 2004 archive. It's a list of queries people made that resulted in them clicking on the link to DR in Google.

I find most of these terrific, especially "funny reindeer sweater," "diminishing returns pizza," and "manhattan mini storage crotch," the latter of which is proof that at least one other person in this city was completely dumbfounded as to why an ad for rentable space needed to involve a plate of spaghetti and a crotch.

"Swishing process" was a surprise. I'm guessing this person (who lives in... Korea?!) wasn't referring to the "mouth-swish," a savoring process involving expertly paired food and drink with which I'm particularly obsessed. Did he want to know how to brush his teeth? Drink wine? Intriguing.

As far as I know, Pepperidge farm doesn't make danish, but kudos to whoever decided to google that. I'm guessing he or she had "Entenmann's," the obvious brand, on the tip of the tongue, but it happened to come out "Pepperidge Farm." Gross. I found most of their products dry, tasteless, and packaged in way too small of serving sizes, until they came out with the Soft Baked cookie series.

Hmm. Just Googled (again!) those cookies and found this review site. It's called Phoood. Um, cool. Is that like Phiiish? Click on that and check out the plea from the dude who seems certain that he loves Soft Baked Snickerdoodles but can't find them in his native France. I feel seriously horrible for this guy. He's begging people, none of whom will ever respond to him, for "help" in acquiring the cookies. And his name is SLY! I'm dying.

The only query I have a problem with is "diminishing returns weight loss." That's just not right.

CL: Google!
CH: Anything Google hasn't conquerred yet. It should, soon, because it's a great company!

In the interest of Keeping It Fresh, DR presents The Most Annoying Web Ads of 2005 or, more accurately, The Few Annoying Web Ads Annie Managed to Screen-Capture in 2005. The first title just sounded more official, like obnoxious police sirens or Annie's recent adoption of the title "Media Critic" on MySpace. That title is arguably groundless; the following commentary is not.

First up: this. Hmm. What IS wrong with that toenail? It's a tough call, especially when there's only one option and it's helpfully checked off for you. I'd appreciate at least a fakeout answer or two -- at least throw a box in there that just says "Nothing." or "Other." or "If you want to get the question right, don't check this box." If I'm as successful a trendspotter as I think I am, Internet ads these days are supposed to be fun and interactive (see below), but this one doesn't even pose a challenge.

Then there's my personal least favorite, the ubiquitous "Love Happens" ads that show up in the same pop-up windows as the colorful geometric-pattern challenges for which people are apparently expected to drop everything. Do these advertisers honestly think that people on a serious quest to check e-mail or download porn are going to just take a "timeout" in order to solve a remedial puzzle? Even with the promise that their brains will be "tickled" if they take a likely invalid IQ test? Actually, maybe. That sounds kind of hot.

Sorry. Those puzzles are generally harmless. Shit like this (left) is what I really can't stand. This young woman is promoting an online dating service called Love Happens, an outcome that couldn't possibly derive from the question presented here. "Interested in her?" Um, why? Is she spying on me? Will she call me in five minutes for a date if I say yes? What is the point of this question?

The question wouldn't bug me so much if it wasn't so blatantly rhetorical. You can tell the people at the Love Happens marketing meeting scoured their databases for the girl who looked the most like a common slut, and just went with her. Wait. Actually, no, that's ridiculous. My guess is she's not even a client. They probably found her in some younger assistant's spring break photo album that happened to be lying around the office and just cropped her out of a "friends forever (or until graduation!)" group hug in front of some cheesy, overpriced bar in Acapulco. With her sexy messed-up side braid and dreamily vague look of accomplishment, she honestly looks like she just participated in some mild amateur porn.

The "yes" and "no" options are, like the rest of the ad, really insipid. I'm intrigued, though, by the presence of the "maybe" link. What kind of person takes the time to look at an ad like this and ponders the question long enough to say "You know, I'm still kind of up in the air -- I'm gonna have to go with a 'maybe'"? I'm torn between wanting to meet this person and wanting to slap him, hard.

Moving on to the "Sponsored Links" table prominently featured next to every single inbox message in Gmail. First of all, I'm aware that I'm not the only one who hates these -- in fact, someone even created a site dedicated to how creepy it is that the G-robots basically infiltrate Gmail users' lives way more than they know.

Whatever. It doesn't bother me so much that these sponsored links exist. I think it's hilarious to go through all my messages -- especailly the ones I send to myself about eating and food, which can be vastly different entities -- and check out the suggested links. I never click on them; it's just amusing to see the term "Nachos History" to the right of my message.

Sometimes, though, I just don't understand the yielded results (case in point: right). In the e-mail message sent to me that prompted these links, someone mentioned he liked the first 2006 episode of NBC's "Scrubs." Fine. So I get some generic links about scrubs. Obviously, no one in her right mind would ever actually click on the three links offering "Free Scrubs info" or "Your complete reference for Scrubs." These are laughably ridiculous and therefore fine.

The Sarah Jessica Parker bit? That's severely annoying. I scoured this e-mail exchange for any trace of something that could possibly invoke my favorite character (but least favorite character-voice... just imagining the voiceovers makes me cringe) on "Sex and the City," and I found nothing. The name "Zach Braff" was even in the e-mail, but apparently not detectable enough to get its own sponsored link. There was also the phrase "go food shopping," but that has even less to do with SJP than "Zach Braff." I give up.

Up next is something that has literally given me nightmares:

I defy any company to come up with a more disgusting premise than this. The image is animated, which means that not only are there SPIDERS on your screen (one of which is RED) but that they are racing across the window past, towards, and into each other with no other intention than to get you to click basically anywhere in said window.

As absolutely vile as this little game is, it provoked some really profound insights for me a few nights ago. While lazily following the ants with glazed-over eyes, I ended up dealing with all sorts of deeper philosophical questions. What really makes the spiders run? When will their sick and twisted crawling routine stop momentarily and then repeat itself again on a constant loop? Or does that even have to happen? Holy crap -- what if I was willing these computerized insects to move?

Watch this ad long enough, and if you're like me (which hopefully no one is), you'll eventually get terrifyingly freaked out over the idea that maybe someday technology will be advanced enough that you the beholder, and not some gadgety little appelet (do you like my attempts at tech-speak despite any knowledge whatsoever of programming jargon?), will be in ultimate control over the spiders.

Think about it!

No, don't.

Currently loving: lighting candles with an unnecessarily large torch
Currently hating: Doteasy.com Web hosting and e-mail. You ****ers.

Send me pics of annoying ads you find! I am rather enjoying myself. Maybe DR: Version 2006.0 should consist of only Internet-ad analysis. I'm cool.