MAC Spanish Fly, you have returned to me!

It happens to every girl sooner or later.  You find The Perfect Color.  Maybe it’s a lipstick, maybe it’s a blush, maybe it’s an eyeshadow.  It makes you look fantastic.  It may be the perfect neutral that makes you look like you’re wearing nothing but a healthy flush, or maybe it gives you the perfect smoky eye to rock at night.  Maybe it becomes your signature color.  And then it gets discontinued.  The discontinuation is always incomprehensible.  What kind of business decisions are these people making?  But there’s nothing you can do about it but curse your fate and nurse the tiny remnant of your color that you have left.

For me, that color was MAC’s Spanish Fly lipstick.  Spanish Fly was always sort of a weird color, which is what made it so difficult to find an adequate substitute.  It was a brownish red, maybe a little orangey, and with a metallic green frost.  You heard me right, green.  On paper, it sounds like the strangest color in existence, but it worked on me like a dream.  I’m not a big believer in “my lips but better” lipstick, but I don’t want to be wearing red all the time either.  Spanish Fly was the ideal compromise.

MAC discontinued some years ago, and I’ve been nursing two remaining stubby tubes ever since.  Until now.  read more »

Oh, you spambots.  You get more creative every day.  Spam is one of the scourges of our technological age, but sometimes I almost have to admire the lengths you’ll go to in order to sell dating services in Poland or illegal prescription drugs.

Now, I’m not talking about all spam.  The ones that are straightforward ads — links to search engine optimization plugins and programs that Norton 360 tells me in the gravest of terms not to click on — there’s no artistry there.  Anyone can post a link saying “Cheap Prozac!!”  It’s the creative ones that I kind of enjoy.  I don’t mean, for instance, the comment in response to my recent post about publishing that suggested “jaw loosening” exercises in preparation for activities whose nature I’m sure you can guess.  Again, no subtlety.  I’m talking about the ones that thank me gravely for the important and useful information that I have conveyed to them in a post talking about how someone should invite Bruce Campbell to the Marine Corps Ball.  That, at least, is a nice try, if not actually convincing.  (I’d love to pretend that someone really finds that “information” invaluable, but, well, even I am not quite that deluded.)

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