Are you…

• Ugly “Model-like”?
• Between the ages of 18-30?
• Shaped like a washboard?
• Freakishly tall, disturbingly skinny, and boringly bland?
• Dating someone and willing to compromise the relationship by “accidentally” making a “mistake” with one or more of the hot male models during the episode where the girls get to spend a day with the men who aren’t gay?
• Impossible to live with, making this show a hit because America loves to watch 13 girls fight over who’s food is who’s and who gets to open TYRAMAIL!!1! ?

Can you…

• Be bitchy?
• Act holier-than-thou?
• Fake a health-related crisis (dehydration, exhaustion, fainting spells, etc.)?
• Have morals and refuse to do nude shots?
• Fake a fear of one of the following: Heights, deep water, reptiles, etc.

Do you…

• Like your hair, so we can cut it all off during the makeovers episode and have you cry over the loss of it for an hour? (Hey, we’ve got to pass the time somehow!)
• Have a heart-wrenching story that will fool the viewers into thinking YOU should be America’s Next Top Model because you had a Very. Traumatic. Childhood.?
• Have a tendency to talk back to the judges people who offer criticism of your photos?
• A poor family back home who is counting on you to win (wink wink, nudge nudge!) so they can make their next meal?
• Adore Tyra and worship the ground she walks on?

If so, you might have what it takes to be in the running towards becoming America’s Next Top Model. Auditions for cycle 287 start in two weeks - apply now!

Last month on Craigslist.com, someone who described herself as a “spectacularly beautiful” 25-year-old placed a personal ad seeking a husband who made at least $500,000 a year, because “$250,000 won’t get me to Central Park West.”

As her post hit the blogs, it received a scathing response from a man who said he fit her description and told her that her proposition was a bad business deal. “In economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset,” he wrote, because “your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity.”

(Taken from the New York Times)

Her Ad: What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200- 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics - bars, restaurants, gyms

- What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings

- Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

His Response:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament. Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful” as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way. Classic “pump and dump.” I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Can you say ‘owned‘?

I love his rather useful suggestion towards the end of the reply: “By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.” Wise words well spoken.

Actually, if you really look at her “proposition”, she isn’t merely just a depreciating asset; she’s a liability. Not all people agree with this, but author Robert Kiyosaki redefined the definition of assets and liabilities in his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, stating that “assets are anything that generate money … liabilities are anything that consume money.”

Gold-diggers? Definitely liabilities.

Let this serve as a stellar exemplary warning to all gold-diggers and women wanting to marry for money—they’re getting smarter. Just so you know.

Meet Aye-Aye, the love-child-gone-wrong of Gollum and a Cornish pixy:

Now excuse me while I have nightmares.

Last night, a mosquito took advantage of me in my sleep.

He (because I unconsciously associate despised insects to the male gender) no doubt watched me sleep before deciding to strike—and just shortly before 3am, strike he did. Three times on my back and once on my cheek in fact. Bastard? I think so. Your sucker needle in my cheek was uncalled for.

In other fluttery creature news, my brother has found a new hobby: scaring living daylights out of me. It all started one sunny day not too long ago when we were out in the yard. I was taking pictures for layout ideas (incidentally, the header image of this layout was taken in this shoot) and he was… doing something else.

I should halt the progression of this tale to inform you that my fear strong dislike of moths is not limited to the ugly brown variety. As far as I’m concerned, anything even slightly resembling the moth is a moth. This, naturally, includes butterflies. They might be prettier than their night flying relatives, but they’re just as scary. And dangerous. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

So I’m minding my own business, looking through the lens of my camera and happily clicking away when I spot a white butterfly coming straight for me. Purely by natural instinct, I scream and duck. My brother laughs at my behavior. “You’re afraid of BUTTERFLIES?” He asked in tone only a younger brother can use when he has seen his older, fully grown sister duck and scream from something an mere two inches big.

I shoot him a nasty glare, but shake it off and go back to photographing things. Not too long after, I feel a fluttery sensation on my bare shoulder.

A fluttery sensation.

There is only one thing I associate to fluttery, and it starts with a big, ugly, brown ‘m’. This is not good.

Naturally, I let out a blood curling scream, jump to the side and turn around accusingly. I was ready to beat that butterfly into oblivion for using me as a landing pad, so imagine my surprise (and rapidly increasing anger) when the “butterfly” in question is actually a bamboo leaf being held by my treacherous brother, his face displaying a huge grin that suggested he found the whole situation amusing.

I was sorely tempted to sock him one.

You see, I have a very sensitive back. I’ve never had a back massage that didn’t cause me pure anguish. When people touch my back unnecessarily—particularly my spine—I get all skirmish and highly sensitized. The idea of something as disgusting and foul as a moth landing on my bare back is utterly revolting.

Of course, now that my brother has discovered this, he has been pseudo-moth attacking me at every given opportunity, and dammit to all, I can’t help but scream every single time. After having my room taken over by moths last summer and being attacked by several others a year later I am prepared for anything. The prospect that a seemingly innocent light fluttery sensation on my bare shoulder could, in fact, be a five inch month waiting to suck out my soul is not all that far fetched to me.

In other news, I’m buying an IKEA mosquito net canopy to go over my bed as soon as the workers at the closest IKEA decide to end their strike and go back to work. I’m done with being molested in my sleep or getting up at ungodly hours of the night to kick moths out of my room in fear of accidentally swallowing them or something.

So moths? Bring it, bitches.
(Just wait until I get the mosquito net first)

My mother is an amazing person. She’s smart, talented, highly independent, very sociable, driven, hardworking and very funny when she wants to be, among many other things. This coming from her daughter is saying a lot, because c’mon—I have to deal with her when she’s worked three night shifts in a row and literally hasn’t slept since. If anyone has seen the good, bad and the sheer awful and can still think know she’s amazing, it’s me. Plus, she’s my mother - Of course she’s going to be amazing. People can’t live within the same house as me and not be transformed by my sheer awesomeness!

She’s all that and more, so naturally it totally baffles me (or used to, anyway) how she can be so smart and yet say the stupidest things ever—at the same time. I say ‘used to’ because I now firmly believe that her moments of stupidity are a direct result of me, as a fetus, snacking on her then-brilliant brain.

Taken from a radio interview with Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of national bestseller “The Female Brain“… and I quote:

Q: Now, I saw you quoted in the New York Times, speaking of pregnancy, that the female brain shrinks about eight percent during pregnancy? And doesn’t return back to its normal size until about six months after delivery?

A: Yes, Debbie, that’s a surprising study that uh has found eight percent shrinkage, even after you account for any increased water weight. And scientists don’t know really why that happens, except that the female brain is doing all kinds of rewiring during that period, to get the mom ready to do maternal behavior. And also remember, the fetus is more like a parasite, and [that] it gets fed whatever it wants, and lots and lots of lipids and special fats exist inside the brain cells, and some scientists speculate that the fetus is sort of snacking on the mother’s brain.

I know that when my mother reads this, she is going to be happy. Because it’s all my fault. She will find some way to translate that into “everything that goes wrong with me is ALL. HER. FAULT!” I think her brain will erroneously translate that quote because as a fetus, I probably ate the part of her brain labeled “REASONABLE THINKING” and in turn, all the excess oxygen started flowing to the part of her brain labeled “DENIAL - IT’S STILL JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT NO MATTER YOU SAY”. I know, I’m a genius. They should make me the brain doctor.

But back to my mother. I have one “outrightly stupid things my mother says because I ate her brain cells as a baby” moment to share, and even though it’s more attributed to a lack of sleep on her part rather than a strange appetite I had as a fetus, I will still share it. It took place yesterday afternoon while my brother and I were discussing (read: betting) who we thought would die in the last Harry Potter book…

I will mention one spoiler in the following conversation below, so if you don’t want to find out anything about the latest Harry Potter book I suggest you lock yourself in a dark cave off the coast of god-knows-where and subject yourself to several years of dedicated reading (the time it takes the average person to get through 759 pages of Harry Potter) before you submerge yourself in a world where you can’t watch TV, surf the internet, read the newspaper or talk to your dog without hearing about Harry Potter.

Denzil: I can’t believe Harry doesn’t die. I WANTED HARRY TO DIE, DAMMIT.
Me: How do you know Harry doesn’t die?
Denzil: I scanned through the ending. It said something about “Harry’s children”.
Me: … Harry’s CHILDREN?!
Mom: … Harry gives birth?!

I’m sorry mom. I guess I ate the part of your brain labeled “FACT OR FICTION?” too.

It has been almost a year since I killed their army and thrawted their plans for world domination. Bitter and revengeful, they plot again…

Let me backtrack. Some of you may remember a particular incident last summer where I left for vacation and returned to find that and moths (literally) took over my room.

For those of you who haven’t heard this disgusting tale, well.. I’d love to tell it, but alas, my mother reads my blog. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be to have your own daughter tell the story—in public no less—about how she left food and garbage in her room for two weeks and came home to find that her bedroom no longer belonged to her, but to an entire army of lepidopterans?

Oops.

In any case, this entry is not about how the moths kicked me out of my own bedroom that summer and forced me to sleep on the couch, nor is it about how I gutted everything in my room out into my backyard and got dressed out there for two months.

It isn’t even about how I eventually get tired of sleeping on the couch while the moths had my bed, nor is it about that triumphant day towards the closing of summer where I got on my double-layer gloves, goggles and mask and marched into the battleground (aka my bedroom) armed with clorox beach wipes, a towel to whip the moths, a broom to kill the larvae on my ceiling, and a dust pan to collect their disgusting little bodies. Nope, this entry is definitely not about that.

On the contrary, this entry is about how they are at it again.

… Only this time, bigger.

Read the rest of this entry »

VANCOUVER, BC—The local dog community is left speachless over the sudden arrest of a Mr. Winkey Wood.

Wood, former head of the K-dog mafia, was caught red-pawed today at approximately 13:30 after he stole multiple carrots from his homestay family’s kitchen and proceeded to eat them in their living room, right on the family’s persian carpet.

“I don’t know where I raised him wrong!” Wood’s mother said in a tearful interview with Modern Dog. “He was always so into meat! Why CARROTS? Where did I go wrong?! Next thing you know he’ll be calling me from prison and telling me he’s GAY!”

“It was quite a sight” Admits the daughter. “He never showed any signs of a vegetable addiction.”

Exclusive to chanelwood.com, we managed to get the official mugshot from Wood’s booking officer “Atos”, a giant Schnauzer. Wood (pictured right) had a solemn look on his face as he was carted off to the slammer.

“Strange little thing,” The booking officer said when asked about Wood. “Didn’t say much, only whined like a little girl.”

Speaking of girls, Wood’s long-time love interest, a pretty West Highland Terrier, was available for comment. “What kind of respectable dog eats carrots? Not just eat, but I saw the humans luring him in with fresh carrots—and he came.” She said, appalled. “I’ve never seen something so shocking before. Don’t rabbits eat carrots?”

Upon hearing the Terrier’s comment, Wood’s mother promptly burst into tears. She is currently at VGH where officials there say she is suffering from a mental breakdown.

Wood was not available for comment.

In our line of business, we get to meet a lot of people. We sponsor life mastery seminars in both the US and Canada as well as health shows. Among the tons of people we meet at these events, “Ernie” was one of them. His real name is not Ernie Flipflop, but that’s what we’ll call him.

Ernie is neither American or Canadian, nor does he live in Continental America. He called us once at 1AM here (apparently he forgot about the eight hour time difference) and when I woke up to look at the caller ID it showed a long string of numbers and no name. And by ‘long string of numbers’ I really do mean a lot of numbers—like 15. Ernie is currently in Africa, and this is where this story begins.

Several nights ago the phone rang at something like 3 or 4 in the morning. I saw the caller ID and saw the 15 digit long string of numbers and ignored the call. My mother (whom the I presumed to be Ernie would be calling for) was working a night shift that night and therefore was not home.

Two days ago, my mother decided to call the number back. A woman answered, and this is how the conversation went:

Lady: Hello?
Mother: Hi, is Ernie there?
Lady: Who?
Mother: Ernie Flipflop?
Lady: Who?
Mother: Sorry, I think I may have the wrong number..
Lady: Just hold on a second.

{Silence while the lady hands the phone over to the man}

Man: Hello?
Mother: Ernie! It’s Renee from (company name here).
Man: ..Where?
Mother: {city here} at the {seminar name here}
Man: OOOOOOH, Renee!

My mother and this “Ernie” (whom she soon realizes is not the real Ernie, or the at least the Ernie she is looking for) start to talk. Whenever mother asks specific questions, like “how are you enjoying the juice?” he evades the question. She asked several specific questions he never answered, and that’s when she started realizing something very weird was up.

Then, the turning point: “My dear Renee… My late father just died.”

Now, if any of you have ever heard of the Nigerian scam or its spinoffs you will imediately know where this is going. But my dear mother had never heard of any Nigerian scam, nor did she know where this was going. After a couple minutes of conversation, Ernie asked if she would be “online” (meaning in her inbox) - She said yes, they hung up, and she sent him an email as he requested.

The email conversations are included below if you’re looking for a long, terribly written read. But in a nutshell, my mother has two phone numbers (he gave her different one than the one she had called back) of a scammer. She talked to one of them–on the phone!

If you do decide to read the emails below, keep an eye out for the following:

HOW TO SPOT A NIGERIAN SCAMMER, OR ITS SPINOFF:
1. BAD SPELLING AND GRAMMAR.
According to Sillicon.com’s special report on the Nigerian money scam this is a common factor in these scams. You’d think that after swindling the US alone of $100 million they’d learn to write in English properly, or at least try a bit harder. Geesh.

2. THE “GOD” CARD, IF YOU USE IT FIRST.
Overused to the point where you want throw up.

3. IDENTITY CRISIS.
A lack of consistancy in his various names.

4. HOW HE CAN’T EVEN SPELL THE NAME OF THE PERSON HE IS IMPOSTERING RIGHT!
He goes from “Desire Adams” to “Enrie Desire Adams” to finally “Ernie.”

Now, on to the emails..

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi, I'm Chanel, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur, writer, photographer, life-long student, sister, daughter and lover. Welcome to the place where my free time goes to die. Follow me on twitter and tumblr.

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Ate enough cotton candy at the fair to throw up a whole sugar cane. Rode the coaster enough times to make that a reality. Survived both. 1 week ago