Happy Second Anniversary!!! (Or Happy Blogiversary!!!)

(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.

A Seinfeld Dilemma!!! Cereal Review Election!!!

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

2. Kellogg’s Mini Swirlz Peanut Butter

3. Kellogg’s Eggo Cereal Cinnamon Toast

4. Kellogg’s Berry Krispies

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.

New Look. Old K-Fed Jokes.

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.

300th Review Prize Drawing!!!

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.)

Hello Visitors From Kim Komando’s Cool Site of the Day!

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.

Thanks for visiting.

Marvo
Editor
The Impulsive Buy

PS – Where the heck are you folks coming from?