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Review time! Now I will share my (unsolicited) opinion with you on a variety of products that I have tried recently (and not-so-recently). Unless otherwise specified, all products were purchased by me, and I did not receive any compensation from the makers of said products.

Philosophy Shampoo/Shower Gel/Bubble Bath in Vanilla Birthday Cake: This is the only product I’m going to review that I got for FREE. YAY FOR FREE! How did I get it for free? By being a Sephora Beauty Insider. Basically, if you sign up for Sephora’s emails, they send you offers for special deals and free samples, and you earn points on every purchase that you can use towards special freebies (which I’ve done several times). ALSO, you get a birthday present every year, and this year it was a choice of this shower gel stuff or some men’s Jack Black product. I picked the shower gel because a.) I love shower gel and b.) I love vanilla fragrance! This stuff had it in spades. It smells really nice, exactly as advertised (like birthday cake). I did not use it as a shampoo or bubble bath, so I cannot evaluate it’s worthiness for those purposes, but as a shower gel it kicked ass. Also, it made me happy for a month, seeing “Happy Birthday, Beautiful!” in my shower every morning (and the not-quite-full size bottle did last me a whole month of daily use).

Nivea Lip Balm in “Milk & Honey”: A little before Christmas I picked up a sort of gift set of Nivea products in the drugstore. It was kind of a steal: a gigantic shower gel, body lotion, and this lip balm, all for $9.99 or so. I like the shower gel and haven’t tried the body lotion yet, but I have mixed feelings on this lip balm. Plus: it smells nice, seems to moisturize pretty well, and feels nice on the lips. Minus: it is yellow, and actually leaves the barest trace of a yellow tint on my lips. Seriously! I guess I’m pretty pale; a person with darker coloring might not have this problem at all, but I definitely noticed it. Yellow is NOT a flattering color in a lip product, people! Anyway, I do like the balm OK and so I’ve been using it at night, at home, when I’m not going to be seen by anyone who’d be shocked by seeing me with yellow lips.

Nars Super Orgasm Lipgloss: I’m a little late to the party on the Nars Orgasm stuff, which started as a blush and then blossomed from there. I recently got a set of Nars stuff from Sephora that includes a multiple (sort of a cream blush in stick form), a blush duo (regular Orgasm and Super Orgasm), a nail polish (Orgasm) and this lipgloss. Man, this gloss is PRETTY. A beautiful shade of pink with lots of golden sparkle, and the texture is just right: pigmented without being thick, sparkly without being gritty. Big thumbs-up to this one.

L’Oreal HIP Kohl Eyeliner: I wish I had better things to say about this. I love a smokey eye, and I almost never, I mean never use pencil to line my eyes. The deal with this stuff is it’s a loose pigment, with a tiny pointed brush-like applicator that you pull out and use to apply it as a liner. Unfortunately, it makes a MESS. Pulling the applicator out: mess. Actually lining the eyes: mess. Attempting to clean up the mess made by lining: bigger mess. Because it’s a loose powder, it flakes all over the place. So disappointing. The only way I could see making this product work is to use a different brush, slightly damp, which sort of negates all the convenience of the built-in applicator. For me, this one was a loser.

Fresh Sugar Plum Lip Treatment: An expensive treat. I was a big fan of the original Fresh Sugar balm – it smelled divine and felt great on the lips. Now there are two new versions, a Rose which gives a bright pinkish tint, and this Plum version which offers a slightly deeper tint. It’s still very sheer though. While the color looks like it’s going to be Clinique Black Honey levels of plum, it’s actually a lot sheerer than that, so reapply without fear. It still smells nice (though not as nice as the original, honestly) and it’s a very good lip balm. It should be, for the ridiculously expensive price!

Dior Addict Lip Glow: I carry this in my purse EVERY day. I love it. This is another one in the “ridiculously good but also expensive lip balms” category. It applies sheer and glossy, and then turns pinker depending your lip chemistry, not unlike those gimmicky “mood lipsticks” of yore. The color, on me, is a bright but sheer pink, and gets pinker with repeat applications. A really nice option when I don’t want lipstick, but still want some color.

Clinique Chubby Stick in “Fuller Fig”: Bought this on a whim, and was surprised by how much I liked it. I love lip colors that come in crayons like this, because they’re sort of a liner and color in one. These Clinique Chubby Sticks are very glossy, and supposedly make your lips look fuller, though I can’t say that I noticed any difference in that regard. However, I did like the color very much, as well as the texture, which is a light glossy balm. I also love that the “pencil” twists up from the case, and doesn’t actually need sharpening or anything like that. I suppose it’s really just a gimmicky lip gloss, but I liked the gimmick in this case, so it gets a thumbs up from me.

Yes, it’s true: another two weeks has passed since my last (pathetic) update to the blog. You know what my problem is? I self-censor. I think interesting stuff all the time, but most of it is so judgmental, opinionated, and frankly inflammatory that I feel like it would be personal and professional suicide for me to post it here. I guess I need to start a more anonymous blog somewhere if I want to really rant.

Anyway!

Some things that I find really amusing lately…

1. People still don’t “get” Twitter. Come on, Luddites, it’s not THAT hard. Micro-blog? Sort of. Non-platform-specific status update tool? Sort of. An updated version of AIM designed for attention whores? Sort of. But confusing? No. It is not confusing, just go to twitter.com and look at it, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Most hilarious strain of this “Tweet what?” stuff (which usually is on display in mainstream media and rants by old farts like Andy Rooney) is the whole “the olds don’t get Twitter” meme. And, shockingly, guess who’s learning about Twitter now? MARY FREAKING WORTH. If an old biddy like Mary Worth (and her creators) can get on board with Twitter, ANYONE can.

2. Bank of America sucks. It’s been rumored for weeks now that the next dump that’s going to come out of WikiLeaks is going to expose wrongdoing (what a shock) by America’s largest, most loathsome bank. I’ve always felt they were skeevy, and the day that I paid off my BoA credit card and closed the account for good was one of the happiest of my life. They’re getting some attention from the law now; can’t wait to see what happens.

3. Douchebags being douchey. Tangentially related to the above, this firm called HBGary Federal got in some trouble recently when it was exposed that they were working with two other companies to come up with a strategy for targeting, discrediting, and otherwise victimizing people and organizations who are sympathetic to WikiLeaks. This summary is as good as any, but I really enjoyed this article, describing how “Anonymous” infiltrated HBGary’s systems. CEO of supposed “security” company uses (and RE-uses) an easily crackable password! Same company doesn’t install latest updates to their server OS! Uses a custom CMS with security flaw that allows one of the simplest hacks of all: SQL injection! I think the whole story is just hilarious, although I do feel sorry for the rank and file employees who probably didn’t know what a douchebag they were going to report to when they went to work for Aaron Barr. And as far as Mr. Barr: hubris, dude. Look it up.