Oh, I guess I did have a review for you today.

I wrote a review for my favorite microwave meal review blog, Heat. Eat. Review. My review subject: the Hungry-Man Hearty Chicken Parmigiana.

Click here to read the review.

Sorry, no review today due to the time spent doing my taxes. Instead, I decided to post what I wrote for my Match.com profile and embarrass myself by showing my tender, Lifetime Channel side. Since a bunch of you voted on which online dating service I should try for a future review, I figured I’d show you guys what I’ve been up to. Enjoy.

I have an English degree with an emphasis in creative writing, so there is pressure on me to write a good profile. If I don’t write a good profile, I’m afraid my former English professors will come after me and take away my English degree, which took me three years of goofing off and two years of hard C to B- work to earn.

As you might be able to tell from the previous paragraph, I’m kind of a goofball. Not in the sense that I’m not serious about things, but I just like to have fun and I like to make people laugh. My sense of humor is my best attribute, because I have nothing else to offer besides that.

Only kidding, there’s actually a little bit more.

Another one of my personality traits is the willingness to try new things, whether it be restaurants, things off of store shelves, or experiences. As a matter of fact, earlier this year I went snowboarding for the very first time and I’m glad I did because it was whole lot of fun, despite the fact that I slightly pulled my groin, and now I hope to take a snowboarding trip every year.

However, perhaps the attribute that women will find most appealing about me is my ability to stay patient whenever I go shopping with a woman. I thank my twin sister for teaching me this ability and over the years I have come up with techniques to make shopping with women as fun as possible. My main technique is to find the most hideous item of clothing I can find — usually in the clearance racks and has multi-colored sequins — and convince the woman I’m with to try it on.

Now if you happened to have laughed at anything I wrote in the previous paragraphs, you definitely have the number one thing I look for in a woman — a sense of humor. Having a sense of humor — the ability to laugh and/or make others laugh — is unbelievably sexy to me, because as I wrote earlier, I love to have fun and to make people laugh.

Another characteristic that I find appealing is intelligence. Not in the sense of remembering complicated chemistry formulas or the ability to do a triple-bypass surgery, but having the desire to experience things, having opinions about topics, and just being someone I can have a good conversation with.

Now I could fill all 4,000 characters for this profile if I really wanted to, but I figure the more characters I leave out, the more I can tell you if we meet.

There are TIB readers all around the world.

Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Philippines, New Zealand, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, Israel, and Canada are most of the places international TIB readers are from. But this product review poll is dedicated to the TIB reader(s) in Mexico.

Anyway, two friends of mine went to Mexico late last year and brought me back some foods from the region for me to try. You, the readers of TIB, will be able to vote for which one of these products I will review for the TIB reader(s) in Mexico.

Here are the foods from Mexico you will be able to vote for:

1. Hot Nuts

3. Con Jalapeño SPAM

The food from Mexico with the most votes will be declared the winner. The winner will be eaten and reviewed, while the other foods from Mexico will sit on my shelf and wish for a better life in the United States.

To vote, just leave a comment with this post with your choice. Only one choice and vote per person.

I’ll be accepting votes until Saturday, March 17th (11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time) and the review will be posted soon after, but not written in Spanish.

Final Results:

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Now go vote like you’re at a local PTA meeting and deciding on whether or not it was appropriate for Sisqó’s “Thong Song” to be played at a fifth grade dance, then come up with ideas about where Sisqó’s career went.

Sorry for the lack of posts here recently.

I was in California/Tahoe this past week and did some snowboarding, sledding, freezing my ass off, gambling, wearing thermal underwear, eating an In-N-Out burger, recovering from a little groin pull, shopping at Target, and very little shaving. I bought a lot of things to review, especially at Target.

Hmm…I wonder if I should review the thermal underwear — and include pictures.

My mom always tells me that I should hang out at bookstores to meet a nice, smart girl, but I haven’t had any luck, probably because I hang out in the Sex & Relationships section a little too long.

Now some of you are probably saying, “Why not meet someone at a bar or club?”

I’m a busy person and I don’t have time to hang out at the bar until three in the morning waiting for a woman drunk enough to say yes to a date.

So I am pretty much left with the internet. Fortunately, there are many people out there using the internet as a way to get a date. It’s as common as YouTube videos of dudes being hit in the cojones with a wide variety of items. There are many dating websites out there, so I thought I would narrow the choices down to three and let you guys determine which one I’ll sign up for in a new product review poll.

Here are the three dating websites you will be able to vote for:

1. eHarmony.com ($30.00 per month)

3. Yahoo Personals ($25 per month)

As you can see, they all cost a bit of money to join, so I thought about adding the free Honolulu Craigslist personals with the choices, but I’m afraid that because it’s free, I will end up with someone who either has a penis or wants to steal a kidney from me and trade it on the black market for a Nintendo Wii.

The dating website with the most votes will be declared the winner. The winner will be reviewed and the other dating websites will not be getting my money and the women who are on those other dating websites will not be getting my heart. To vote, just leave a comment for this post with your choice. Only one choice and vote per person — especially you Calvin.

Current results (as of 10:00 pm 2/11):

Thanks to everyone who has participated so far!

I’ll be accepting votes until Valentine’s Day, Wednesday, February 14th (11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time). Since the product is something that takes awhile to test, don’t expect a review here on TIB for several months, but take consolation in the fact that you might be responsible for possibly helping me either find true love or a crazy psycho bitch who will make me play with her fifteen cats with names like Socks, Mr. Twinkle Toes, Buttons, Fluffy, Meow Meow, Twitchy, Stimpy, Gingersnap, Kitty Poo, Tootles, Hairball, Mandrake, Fantasia, Patchy, and Fuzzbutt.

Now go vote like your friend is running for student body president, because you don’t want either the head cheerleader or the captain of the football team to win, since they’re both self-centered snobs.

Limited Edition candy bars are as common as Paris Hilton nipple slip pictures. With both of these things, you know you’re going to see them, but you just don’t know when.

Anyway, I recently picked up THREE limited edition candy bars from the convenience store down the street and I thought this would be another great opportunity to have another product review poll, where you get to vote for what product TIB reviews next. Your vote is like a puppet string telling me what to do.

Here are the three limited edition candy bars you will be able to vote for:

1. Snickers Xtreme (Note: When you say “Xtreme” you have to say it while holding a rock ‘n roll hand sign)

3. Snickers Dark

The candy bar with the most votes will be declared the winner. The winner will be reviewed and the other candidates will just be added to my gut or ass — it’s really up to my body. To vote, just leave a comment for this post with your choice. Only one choice and vote per person.

I’ll be accepting votes until Sunday, January 21st (11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time). Sometime shortly after that, I’ll post the review of the winning product.

Now go vote like you’re a member of Congress voting for an increase in the minimum wage.

Final Results:
Snickers Xtreme - 35
Twix Triple Chocolate - 33
Snickers Dark - 10

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Oh yeah, one last thing for those of you in San Francisco.

I’m going to be in the San Francisco area from February 15th to February 21st and I was wondering if there are any TIB readers who would like to hang out one night. Right now, I don’t know what my entire schedule is going to be like. I’ll be spending some of my time in Tahoe, but I’m hoping that I’ll have a few free nights in San Francisco.

If you’re interested in hanging out with a quasi-product review blog editor, let me know using the contact page.

Okay, I thought about doing that email on the french fry thing, but then I thought about all the trans fats I would consume if I decided to eat all the fries or if I gave it to some random homeless dude. After all, my New Year’s Resolution is to eat healthier and to help homeless people eat healthier.

So I did the next best thing — pick numbers out of my sweat stained cap that I use for running. Here are the ten winners of the 2006 Holiday Fast Food Prize Drawing:

Comment #38 - Brie
Comment #6 - Ellen
Comment #168 - Scott
Comment #80 - t0rs0
Comment #27 - kagai
Comment #77 - Kari
Comment #25 - Josh
Comment #165 - Peggy
Comment #16 - catboy17
Comment #184 - Badtz-Mari

Each winner will receive a gift card from one of the fast food establishments I’ve reviewed products from over the years. The winners will get to decide which fast food gift card they will receive.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Giving and receiving is plentiful this time of year and is what makes this season fun, except when it comes to illegal campaign contributions, sexually transmitted diseases, and David Hasselhoff albums. The Impulsive Buy is in the mood of giving, so it’s time to hold another prize drawing.

TEN lucky Impulsive Buy readers will each receive a gift card from one of the fast food establishments I’ve reviewed products from over the years, like McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Jamba Juice, Wendy’s, Subway, and Quiznos.

To enter this prize drawing, just leave a comment for THIS post with “Happy (insert favorite holiday here)!” (for example: Happy Kwanzaa!) and whatever else you would like to say.

Please fill out the email field, because I’ll be emailing the winners for their mailing addresses. Don’t worry about the shipping, I’ll take care of it.

The Impulsive Buy will start accepting entries for the drawing on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 and stop accepting entries on Sunday, December 24, 2006. Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is ONLY open to those in the United States since the cards are valid only in the US. To TIB’s international readers, I’m sorry.

The winners will be determined by attaching the email of each entry to a golden McDonald’s french fry. All the entries will be placed into the bag that the McDonald’s french fries came in. The contents of the bag will be shaken. Then the first ten entries I pull from the bag will be the winners of the gift cards. The rest of the fries will either be eaten by me, eaten by birds, or given to the crazy homeless guy who yells at everything.

Good luck!

Fine Print: The Impulsive Buy promises your email address will not be used to send you spam about dlkfjlasjoeroafd. The Impulsive Buy also promises your mailing address will not be used to send you a variety of mail order catalogs. Bribes will not be accepted. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for lost mail, you receiving a lump of coal, or Santa getting stuck in a chimney.

I’ve been thinking about changing the Impulsive Buy a little bit.

For years, I’ve been doing a long format review, which was great when I was unemployed, had no girlfriend, and had no life, because I could post three or four reviews a week. But now that I’m employed, still have no girlfriend, and still have no life, it’s been hard to post more than two reviews a week.

I try so many products every month and get many requests to review a number of products, but at a rate of two reviews per week, it’s impossible to review everything I buy. In order to change this, I’ve been thinking about doing much shorter reviews, perhaps less than half as long as they are now.

But I’d like to know what you folks think. Should I stick to the long format and continue to have two reviews a week or should I try doing significantly shorter reviews and possibly have 3-5 reviews per week.

Please let me know in the comments.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!

With it being Election Day here in the United States, I thought it would be awesometastic if I gave you readers the opportunity to vote for something here at the Impulsive Buy. I thought about doing a product election, which would’ve allowed you readers to vote for what I review next among a selection of five or six products.

Instead, I decided to do something a little bit more interesting.

Last week, Britney Spears’ favorite “hardcore rapper”/husband/baby batter provider Kevin Federline released his not-at-all-anticipated “rap album,” Playing With Fire. Now I would hate to contribute to the Kevin Federline Needs A Razor To Shave So He Doesn’t Look Like A Punkass Fund, but sometimes sacrifices need to be made in the name quasi-product reviews.

So what you’ll be voting for this Election Day is to determine whether or not you’re going to make me suffer by making me purchase and listen to Kevin Federline’s Playing With Fire. I’m pretty sure me listening to his “rap album” is going to end up winning in a landslide vote, but I’m curious to know how many of you want me to be miserable.

Now here are the voting procedures:

If you would like me to review K-Fed’s “rap album,” just leave a comment with this post with the word “Popozao” and whatever else you would like to say.

If you have compassion and don’t want me to review Playing With Fire, just leave a comment with this post with the sentence, “When Webster’s decides to add the word ‘wigger’ to its dictionary, they will put a picture of Kevin Federline next to its definition” or whatever you want to say to prevent me from reviewing it.

Voting will start immediately and will end at 12:00 a.m. (Hawaii Standard Time) on Wednesday, November 8th.

Now go vote, because I know you want me to squirm.

I’m Marvo and I approve this message.

(Editor’s Note: I thought with it being The Impulsive Buy’s second anniversary today, I would take the time to let you know more about The Impulsive Buy via an interview with someone who knows me quite well. As a matter of fact, I’ve slept with this person so many times that this person knows the ins and outs about me, The Impulsive Buy, and a couple of sexual position that I cannot physically explain without dislocating something. The person I’m talking about is…myself.)

Marvo: First off, let me congratulate you on reaching the two year milestone at The Impulsive Buy.

Marvo: Thanks, it’s been an awesome two years.

Marvo: So let’s start at the beginning.

Marvo: Let’s.

Marvo: How did The Impulsive Buy start?

Marvo: On a dark and stormy night, I was celebrating the fact that I was unemployed and my girlfriend broke up with me by eating a half gallon of ice cream and Salt & Pepper Pringles, while reading The Onion online. I was reading The Onion because I believe that humor is the bandage for emotional wounds, I was eating ice cream because I believe it is the aloe vera for emotional burns, and I was eating the Salt & Pepper Pringles because they were new. While I was eating the Salt & Pepper Pringles, all I could think about was how crappy they were, but at the same time I was trying to prevent myself from laughing while reading some story at The Onion. That’s when I had my “you’ve got your chocolate in my peanut butter and you’ve got your peanut butter in my chocolate” epiphany and decided to start up The Impulsive Buy.

Marvo: Where did the name “Marvo” come from?

Marvo: Well, as you probably know, my first name is Marvin and I shortened it to Marvo, thinking no one would read my blog. But people began reading and the name just stuck. Thank goodness I didn’t use my original Yahoo! account name, sexxxycollegeboy1993.

Marvo: Did you know that “Marvin” means “great lover of the ocean?”

Marvo: Yes, I did, but I’m not a big fan of the ocean. Also, I like to think of myself as a great lover…period.

Marvo: I believe all your ex-girlfriends would say differently.

Marvo: You’re probably right.

Marvo: You’ve done 314 reviews so far, which one is your favorite?

Marvo: I don’t like to play favorites. I consider every single review to be like one of my illegitimate children from dozens of mommas. I sort of feel like Kevin Federline…Times twenty. I love every review equally, except the Rice Krispies Treats Kazaam Crunch review, which I wish I could drop off at an orphanage’s doorstep.

Marvo: So how are you going to celebrate the second year anniversary of The Impulsive Buy?

Marvo: I’ll probably be doing the same thing I did when it was born, eat a half gallon of ice cream, eat a can of Pringles, and cry my single lonely ass to sleep. Oh, also I’m going to have a frickin’ prize drawing. Booyah! Oh, wait. I mean, Yahtzee!

Marvo: What do you have as prizes for the Second Anniversary Prize Drawing? A date with you perhaps?

Marvo: A date with me would probably be the worst prize ever, because I would probably just take the winner to McDonald’s and only allow them to order stuff off of the Dollar Menu. Instead, three lucky Impulsive Buy readers will each receive a mystery box containing various products the Impulsive Buy has reviewed over the past two years. The contents of each box will vary.

Marvo: What do readers have to do to enter? Is there nudity involved?

Marvo: Thank goodness, no nudity…This time. To enter the Impulsive Buy’s Second Anniversary Prize Drawing, just leave a comment for THIS post with whatever you want to say. Please make sure you fill out the email field because I’ll be emailing the winners for their mailing addresses. Don’t worry about the shipping.

Marvo: Are you going to be a dick and not allow international entries?

Marvo: The Impulsive Buy will start accepting entries for the drawing on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 and stop accepting entries on Wednesday, August 16, 2006. Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is open to EVERYONE.

Marvo: So how are you going to determine the winners?

I haven’t decided that yet. Although I could just do what I did last year.

Marvo: Hey aren’t you forgetting the fine print?

Marvo: Fine Print: The Impulsive Buy promises your email address will not be used to send you spam about sexy, single males waiting for you. The Impulsive Buy also promises your mailing address will not be used to send you letters that say “Do Not Discard” on the front of the envelope, which you eventually discard because it’s just a damn credit card application. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for lost mail, damaged mail, or Britney’s second child becoming the Antichrist.

Marvo: Well thanks for taking the time for this interview.

Marvo: Thanks for having me. Now if you’ll excuse me there’s a half gallon of ice cream and a can of Pringles with my name on them.

For those who don’t know, comedian Jerry Seinfeld is a big cereal fan. Every morning, I imagine he gets out of his bed made of money, goes down to his gold plated kitchen, and has to decide which cereal he will eat among the dozens of choices he has in his pantry. I also imagine the cereal is served on a silver platter by his butler in a stainless steel bowl and accompanied with a silver spoon and someone who reads the New York Times to him.

Being a cereal junkie myself, I sometimes feel like Jerry Seinfeld in the morning, except without the bed make of money, gold plated kitchen, silver platter, butler, stainless steel bowl, silver spoon, and someone who will read the New York Times to me. However, I do have about a dozen cereals to choose from in my pantry, and recently I added five brand new cereals from Kellogg’s.

So with this plethora of new cereals, I thought it’s a good time to have a good ol’ fashioned product election, which allows you, the readers, to vote for the product The Impulsive Buy will review next.

In this product election, you’ll be able to choose from five new cereals from Kellogg’s:

1. Kellogg’s Caramel Nut Crunch

5. Kellogg’s Organic Raisin Bran

The cereal with the most votes will be declared the winner. The winner will be eaten and reviewed, while the other candidates will just be eaten.

To vote, leave a comment with this post with your choice. Only one choice and vote per person.

I’ll be accepting votes until Friday, July 14th. Shortly after the 14th, I’ll post the review of the winning cereal.

Now go vote like you’re a senator voting for net neutrality.

Updated 1:55 pm (Sunday) - Emailed the developer of the theme and we tried a couple of things, but couldn’t get it to work. So I switched back to the old theme, until something can be figured out. Oh yeah, Contact Form emails are being delivered again, so you can feel free to tell me how much I suck.

Updated 12:59 am (Sunday) - Still haven’t figured it out. I’ve been tweaking things all f’n day. All I need to do is figure out why I’m not getting emails to let me know someone has commented, why I’m not getting emails with the Contact Form, and why my frickin’ sidebar drop to the bottom on some posts. Maybe I need a different theme. Anyway, emailed the developer of the theme. Hopefully, he gets back to me.

Updated 11:58 pm - For some reason post with tall images will force the sidebar to the bottom of the page. I think it’s a CSS problem, but I’ve been messing with the CSS for about two hours and haven’t figured it out. Right now, I am TIB’s bitch.

Updated 3:34 pm - Emailing reviews is now available in pop-up form, because I couldn’t get it to work in the original way. Just like the efforts women go through to look prettier, the efforts I’m going through to make TIB prettier are time-consuming, except without the complications of trying to keep fake eyelashes on.

Updated 1:40 pm - I think my RSS feeds are working again.

Updated 1:22 pm - Um, my RSS feeds aren’t working ever since I tried using Feedburner. I think it’s because my permalinks are screwed up. Right now, almost everything looks good in Firefox and Safari, except that damn “Email Review” page. The contact page still doesn’t work. Also, if you’re running IE6 or IE7, please let me know if anything doesn’t look right.

Hi there. As you can see, the look of The Impulsive Buy has changed. If not, clear your browser’s cache. Anyway, there are numerous things that don’t work here, like the ability to email reviews and contacting me.

If there are other things that don’t look right or are broken, please let me know by posting a comment. Hopefully, I can solve all the problems over the weekend.

Wow! 300 reviews!

I can’t believe The Impulsive Buy has reached this milestone. But what’s more impressive is the fact that I didn’t need illegal performance enhancing drugs to reach it. All it took was hard work and dedication.

Some of you might say, “Well isn’t caffeine a performance enhancing drug? We all know you’ve done a lot of caffeine.”

My response to that would be, “No, caffeine is a legal, unregulated substance, and according to the Food and Drug Administration it’s safe for consumption. Now leave me alone, before I get all Barry Bonds on your ass and starting whining and complaining about the media.”

To celebrate the 300th review, The Impulsive Buy will be holding a prize drawing.

Three lucky readers will each receive a $25 gift certificate to Threadless, which The Impulsive Buy reviewed several weeks ago. So if you’re naked because you lost your clothes at the club while the DJ was spinning Nelly’s Hot in Herre, this would be your opportunity to no longer be naked.

To enter the 300th review prize drawing, just leave a comment for THIS post with the words “I’m drug free, check my pee” in it and whatever else you would like to say. Don’t worry, you don’t have to mean it.

Please don’t forget to fill out the email field, because I’ll be emailing the gift certificates to the winners.

The Impulsive Buy will start accepting entries for the drawing on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 and stop accepting entries on Wednesday, June 21, 2006. Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is open to EVERYONE!!!

Good luck!

Fine Print: The Impulsive Buy promises your email address will not be used to send you newsletters from Taiwan in Chinese. Bribes will not be accepted. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for expired gift certificates, lost gift certificate codes, or the extra facial hair or enlarged forehead caused by the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs.

(Editor’s Note: If you’re interested — or bored — please check out the new review blog I started up called Cereal Mashup.)

Right now, The Impulsive Buy is being bombarded by visitors from somewhere unknown Kim Komando’s Cool Site of the Day. I just want to welcome those visitors from somewhere unknown Kim Komando’s Cool Site of the Day and hope you enjoy your stay here.

The Impulsive Buy is dedicated to providing humorous quasi-reviews about various consumer goods. Each review goes off on some tangent, but almost always comes back to complete the review. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be a quasi-review website. Instead we would be some quasi-babbling website.

The Impulsive Buy USUALLY posts two or three reviews a week. About one in every fifty are actually any good.

The staff of The Impulsive Buy are not experts, but they do like to try anything that has any of the following words on the product: new, improved, new and improved, better tasting, reconditioned, less fat, fat-free, best-selling, less calories, reduced for quick sale, limited edition, free toy, 50% off, or now with Olestra.

If you want to take a look at the complete review archive, click here.

Thanks for visiting.

Marvo
Editor
The Impulsive Buy

PS - Where the heck are you folks coming from?