Marie Osmond looks like a drag queen.

In this post: Stinking checks, Heckle & Jeckle.

The long, tedious shlep to complete retirement presses on. This morning, for instance, I’m sad to report that my few remaining website clients are still lousing things up and giving me a brain hemorrhage. Second-quarter web hosting payments are due tomorrow, and seven of them — SEVEN! — haven’t bothered to send me their stinking checks yet. They all received two nicely-written reminder emails in March (one with an invoice attached) and none of them even bothered to respond. Are any of those weasles still alive? Looks like things will have to get ugly around here again. Late fees! EVERYBODY HAS TO PAY LATE FEES!

No longer news: Kate Middleton’s royal titties.

In case you haven’t noticed, nobody’s talking about Kate Middleton’s royal titties any more since they really weren’t that exciting from the get-go and nobody cares about them except her, anyway. And possibly the Queen. Thank you.

And now, dear readers, it’s time for another installment of our popular Holy Crap Gallery, featuring scary pictures of celebrities past and present.

While I have to admit that former French sex kitten Brigitte Bardot has NOT aged gracefully and Mark Hamill looks a lot like our mechanic at Pep Boys, I’d personally rather see a familiar face with wrinkles than a severely-remodeled version I wouldn’t recognize in a million years, such as Barry Manilow, with no lips, foam rubber cheek implants and a face like a Cabbage Patch doll, and Marie Osmond, an over-rouged Vegas drag queen who should consider suing whoever does her hair and makeup. The poor thing looks like a 60-year-old man who’s trying to look like Marie Osmond.

I’d better withdraw my claws now so I can continue typing.

I ordered another load of crapola this morning from Netrition.com, my favorite source for fabulous and surprisingly cheap low-carb products. Today’s treasures included Dixie Diner Low-Carb Instant Mashers, Low-Carb Pound Cake Mix and Low-Carb Muffin Mixes (Corn, Blueberry and Chocolate Chocolate Chip), two bottles of Guy’s Award-Winning Sugar-Free BBQ Sauce (original and spicy) and one bottle of DaVinci’s Sugar-Free Unflavored Sweetener Syrup to make everything I eat and bake taste like it’s exploding with sugar. Welcome to Diabetesland!

Tonight’s my night to fuss around in the kitchen so Sam can eat things when he gets home from work. I’ll be baking a loaf of caraway rye in my bread machine and a pan of Pillsbury Sugar-Free Fudge Brownies. (They’re so good you’d never guess there’s no sugar.)

Incidentally, tonight is also the big finale of “Top Chef Masters” on Bravo, where you get to watch very talented people preparing food for a panel of annoying judges. At the top of this list is Annoying Judge James Oseland (see right), editor of “Saveur” magazine, who constantly makes his sexual orientation a little too obvious for a show that’s supposed to be about cooking.

Thank you for reading this. All of a sudden I have a craving for tuna salad.

Marie Osmond, Paula Deen and ugly world leaders.

I’d like to talk about nice weather for a minute as we’re definitely having plenty of it here in north Texas, with lots of sunshine and temperatures near 70° for the next several days. The only reason I consider this such a big hoo-hah is because I spent the first 36 years of my life in Chicago, and the end of December (and New Year’s Day) always delivered the crappiest, coldest, snowiest weather of the entire year. I remember always going out in sub-zero weather on New Year’s Eve wearing 15 layers of clothes, trying to parallel park on frozen snow, wondering if I’d ever find a way to escape from Siberia. (I did, eventually.)

Breaking news! Sam went to Wal-Mart this morning to pick up a few essentials and called to tell me they carry sugar-free Pillsbury cake mixes and frosting. This is very exciting because Wal-Mart’s prices are cheaper than any I’ve found online, plus it’s instant gratification when you can have your cake and eat it, too ... all on the same day! (Whatever the hell that means.)

Guess what. I think I’ve figured out how to ramp up the number of Howdygram visitors. As I mentioned in a post back in November, according to the Howdygram’s statistics on SiteMeter.com our three biggest attractions have been my posts about Paula Deen, Marie Osmond and the ugliest world leaders of all time. So I’m thinking maybe if I type “naked pictures of Paula Deen,” “Marie Osmond is a drag queen” and “ugly world leaders” somewhere in every post I’ll get a million hits a day. Stop laughing ... it’s possible! (I actually might try this.) My first post about Marie looking like a drag queen — way back in August 2010 — was quoted by at least four other blogs that sent 125+ new visitors to the Howdygram in one 24-hour period. That’s huge.

Talk about luck! In an effort to illustrate the previous paragraph I just discovered a new photo of Marie in her finest drag queen get-up — rhinestones, gargantuan earrings, ostrich feathers and those new, exaggerated “trout lips” from some lousy plastic surgery — plus a crazy shot of Paula Deen and the late Kim Jong Il together in the same picture. Damn, I love the Internet!

Sam phoned from work a couple of minutes ago to ask if I had any plans to leave the house today. I lied and said “maybe” even though it’s extremely unlikely. Yes, it’s a gorgeous day. Yes, it’s 68° and sunny, and yes, I’ve got a nice clean car waiting for me in the garage with a box of Altoids on the front seat. But there’s nowhere I really need to go and nothing I really need to buy, so frankly it’s hard to get motivated to put on shoes and a bra for no reason whatsoever. Don’t tell Sam but I think I’ll just stay home. However I might eat cake.

Thank you for reading this.

Here comes winter and other observations.

I guess we won’t make it to Blue Mesa for Sunday morning brunch after all. I just checked Weather.com and there’s a red-alert winter storm warning — in SCARY GIANT TYPE — for overnight tonight and all day tomorrow. This includes: 1) rain for a few hours until the temperature drops; 2) an obnoxious layer of ice; and 3) up to five inches of snow. I can tell you right now that I will NOT set foot out of the house until Thursday at the earliest, which is the first day next week the temperature here will finally get back up to 40°. I don’t do winter. Sam, however, LOVES this stuff. After he makes his snowman tomorrow I’ll post a couple of pictures. It’s MY plan to hang out in the kitchen making homemade potato salad (see my recipe).

Back in August I wrote a post about Marie Osmond that generated a lot of attention online and quadrupled the Howdygram’s visitor traffic for at least five days afterwards. Basically, I commented that I was suffering from Marie Osmond overkill on TV, that her teeth are too damn big and that she looks like a graduate of the Drag Queen Institute of Fashion and Design. Apparently most of the universe agreed with me, validating my undisputed status as the style maven of Mesquite. In any event, I ran across yet another frightening photo of poor Marie yesterday (see below) alongside an article that says she’s currently desperate enough to remarry her first husband. He must be desperate, too. Marie looks like a transvestite who just finished a 90-minute workout.

I’m going to hunt around for something to eat and watch a movie now with Sam. A sugar-free popsicle and William Powell would be perfect. Thank you for reading this. Send a snow shovel.

Marie Osmond is trapped in a time warp.

I’ve got nothing against this woman personally, you understand, but I’m suffering from Marie Osmond overkill.

First, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing Marie Osmond’s face. If she’s not promoting NutriSystem or her latest book, she’s on “Dancing with the Stars,” appearing on “Oprah, “Today,” “The View,” “Good Morning America,” “Ellen” and “Letterman” to talk about post-partum depression, her weight loss or her son’s suicide (and — what a coincidence! — also to plug her show at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas) then she’s taking up space on QVC selling Marie Osmond makeup, Marie Osmond costume jewelry and her overpriced line of Marie Osmond dolls.

Second, maybe it’s just me, but Marie looks like she recently graduated with honors from the Drag Queen Institute of Fashion and Design, which is I believe is headquartered in Provo, Utah. I’d also comment on the fact that her teeth are too big, but big teeth run in her family. (The Osmonds ALL have big teeth.)

In other news, we’re suffocating here in Dallas this summer, and today is our 18th consecutive day with triple-digit temperates and a heat/humidity index near 110. You absolutely, positively do NOT want to go outside for any reason unless you run out of Coke Zero or your dog has to pee. Thank you for reading this.