Eat Pray Love My Ass

(image taken from the World Market Explore website, I refuse to link it keep reading and you'll know why)

I dropped into Cost Plus World Market today and Eat Pray Love greeted me at the door. It seems that Elizabeth-fucking-Gilbert has completely sold out while jumping the shark. There’s a picture of Julia Roberts as our plucky and adventurous but albeit heartbroken hero all set to explore Italy, India and Bali. And a big sign about taking a look at the Eat Pray Love shop!!! And it really makes me mad. I mean irrationally stabby. Like I was so mad I left the store and forgot my purchases, mad. Gilbert’s nickname at the ashram was well earned: “Groceries” given to her by a well meaning fellow pilgrim who did not return to the US to sell out. Her nickname was funny in India because she was always hungry but now it’s fitting because obviously she’s still perpetually hungry for more more MORE! MORE MONEY! MORE MEDIA ATTENTION!!!

What pisses me off most about Groceries is not that she is another Oprah enterprise or she sold the rights to her book as a film or is now shilling crap made in Malaysia, Italy and India under the guise of “folk art” but rather she is reducing the spiritual aspects of her journey. Everyone from her Master in New York to that woman entrepreneur in Bali (I hate this book so much I refuse to look up the name of this character because god forbid Groceries gets another hit through Google or Wiki) is now reduced to a cash enterprise for her. The way she is exploiting them, their own spiritual journeys and experiences make me sick. It’s like Judas selling out Jesus with a kiss for a gold coin. I really do wonder how her Master and those people at the ashram feel about her. I hope they shun her for the money grubbing cow she is. The other thing that makes me angry is I was completely fooled by her until I realized--while she was in India--she was nothing but a whiny assed baby who thought her life was over because she was divorced at the ripe old age of thirty and couldn’t hold a yoga pose or meditate longer than 30 seconds. She couldn’t hold the yoga poses because she was too busy practicing her selling out poses and she couldn’t meditate and clear her mind for longer than thirty seconds because her monkey brain was too full of herself. Cow.

The other thing which makes me crazy angry: if she’s so damn perfect, why isn’t she announcing to the world she is starting a micro loan program in Bali for women to start their own businesses? Why isn’t she selling her crap through Global Exchange an online free trade shop which sells scarves and stuff? Which leads me to another point of her hyprocrasy that crap in World Market isn't free trade but it's made my child slaves in sweat shops. Again: if you are going to be so extremely spiritual and extremely conscious of the world around you. Put your money where your mouth is.

I hope she chokes on her super special basket of Italian goodies or gets tangled up in one of her scarves made by child slaves. What would really be great is if Hell froze over and somehow she heard about my rant and contacted me just to prove to me I was wrong and she had invested money in the people who have propelled her to cultural stardom hasn't sold her out and she is only selling free trade items. That would rock. And I could also tell her directly how much I hated her overly self-conscious and facile book.

So I’m raving at The Girl about this today when she came home from lunch. (That will teach her to come home for lunch, now won’t it?) Nice Jesus and not the angry-turning-over-the-merchant’s-tables in the temple Jesus was living in TG’s heart because she offered up this excuse:

“You know her last book wasn’t very good so maybe she needed the money.”

“Dude, not an excuse. Who could blow through that much money--maybe Lindsey Lohan (enphasis on "blow"--besides it's is a movie starring Julia Roberts. Maybe she could have…you know…WRITTEN A DECENT BOOK if she needed money. Or a compilation of photographs from her travels. Nope she came home and became Oprah’s Toddy.”

Unfortunately, TG couldn’t come up with any more reasons for this travesty of marketing and self promotion. And so in the true fashion of a hypocrite I started shooting off ideas for products which would be appropriate for Edgy June Cleaver:

Edgy June Cleaver Dictionary and Thesaurus
Edgy June Cleaver aprons or dish towels with embroidered pictures of my retarded dog.
Edgy June Cleaver Vodka available on those really hard to face parenting days and if you aren’t a drinker: Edgy June Cleaver moleskin notebooks to hurl in the general direction of your rotten kids.
Sharon Stone will play me in the film, too. Really it's the only obvious choice.

So when the time comes for me to become a Global Enterprise remind me of my little rant before I put Oprah on speed dial and start touring sweatshops in Viet Nam and Cambodia.