Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, Which is Next to Pompousness

This note was left for a manager where I work yesterday. Since one was not available to speak to immediately.

Dear Manager,

Please forward this to the CEO:
I can tell by your lack of Godly cards that this company in not long for this world. When you try (as our whole nation is trying) to take God out of the picture, He eventually takes you out, instead. Turn back to God, and it will go well for you.

Prayerfully,
Joe [something I can't make out]"

 Alright, some commentary:

First, "Godly cards" refers to greeting cards. We apparently do not stock enough religious Christian greeting cards.

Secondly, I would point out that we have a reasonably large Baptist population in the tri-town area. This also explains the frequency with which I have to explain to church returnees that "All Christian bibles contain both Old and New Testaments."

Now, this person actually is not included in this bunch. If I may be a little Sherlockian for a moment:

The missive itself is properly formatted, addressed, signed, and grammatically accurate down to superfluous serial commas, implying both a secondary education and practice, as well as a relative lack of experience with text messaging and email. The mostly cursive text seconds this, but the printed acronym tells us the writer worked in relation to business enough to make logos important, graphically, even when personal handwriting is less than ideal. The idea that a major chain store manager could forward a message through any proper channel to the CEO of the entire company reflects a dearth of any knowledge of big business and corporate environments, and a implies a significantly sheltered world view. These two factors in tandem would indicate a older gentleman remembering small-town economies and conservative values including education and a predominately Christian-led society where religion was a fact of life and not an option with a plethora of possible answers. The vague connotations and threats of failed business, death, and judgement imply a righteousness likely acquired early in life but a willingness to be politically outspoken likely acquired later, this is cemented by the use of the "prayerfully" sign-off, which is bordering on the archaic. "Our nation" shows a sense of ownership, of which the directed are either not a part of or may not necessarily consider themselves to be so. The only trusted men placating religious and racial fears in media while encouraging their followers to be outspoken are preachers and forcefully FOX News. Handwriting says Joe is right-handed and meticulous. His confidence in his identity and validity are expressed through large, swooping, letters and commas and strong strokes, but not rushed.

Thus we can surmise that Joe is likely white, between the ages of 55 and 70 and worked in small-business for his entire career, possibly self-employed but has been retired for more than 6 years. He was probably the patriarch of his family, though he bares weight from his own father's dominance before him. He watches Bill O'Reilly and has at least one televangelist he openly finds appealing.

He also has nothing better to do with his day,  and makes the poor decision to shop for greeting cards in a book store.

On Rosy Outlooks

I made one of these at work a couple days ago to jokingly describe the experience of customer service, then promptly forgot about it.

Apparently it went over very, very well in my absence.

Days off are good for morale, but so are t-shirt sales. We may have something here.

The Problem with Nice Weather is it Brings Out the Shut-Ins

"Bugger this, lads! It's Spring! Let's all run into the streets and arsed!"

Pretty much since Easter I've been dealing with the most insane customers I've ever come across. Today, it was explained to me that the reason for this is the recently clement weather patterns: basement-dwellers, those fearful of intemperate climes, and just the generally too-anal-retentive-to-handle-Winter pour forth from their hoarder caverns and venture out into the wider world to bring misery and madness to the naturally more sociable denizens of their provincial realms.

In fancy talk, "all the crazies come out."

Let's see, today I had to argue with a woman that $49 and a $50 gift card, regardless of to what or when they were applied, will always total $99. When I was done, another customer gave me the middle-aged woman equivalent of Mad Props for beating math into another living creature. (This of course caused the Universe to send the original client back for Round 2, but I was expecting this.)

Earlier this week, a woman called and demanded I wander into a particular section of our store to look for a product that may or may not have been there, but refused to think hard enough to try and remember a title, or an author, or any information at all. When I took so long, with help of the department lead mind you, to find said product, she called back, and immediately said to who picked up the phone, "I just spoke to some jerk named David." She then went through the same process with this employee, admitted the product was not in the store and was a special order, but then refused to give her name or contact information because "She runs her own business." Then she used her daughter's name instead, got no result obviously, demanded to speak to the manager, and then hung up in the intervening 30 seconds.

So I'm a jerk now. A jerk who can't do maths.

And screw it. The day after Easter, a woman called in and accused me of being racist. On Easter. Said I helped a white woman before her. Yes, because she rounded a table and got two inched from my face to ask me to get her something instead of waiting on line for my return from the previous customer.

She called me "white boy with curly hair" to my manager. (My other manager was "Tall Skinny Girl.") Called us "those type of people." Said we had no idea what she was feeling.

No ma'am, the two Jewish men have no idea what it's like to be discriminated against. At Easter. And somehow, I don't think she would be consoled by the notion that my family is a smidge African. Had she asked for special treatment I wouldn't even be upset, really; that's just file suit culture. But instead she wished only to yell and complain and to have been victimized.

I have no tolerance for people wishing to play the martyr. I don't even have pity. If you want to self-flagellate, have at it, kid. Go crazy. All I'm going to do is ignore you, and maybe make you out to be a batshit character in a long joke somewhere down the line, and everyone will just assume you're entirely fictitious. All you do is make my life better. So have fun making a scene. I can take any abuse you throw at me, and all I have to to is take three aspirin and a ten minute sigh-break after you leave.

Because your life's so sad, the greatest thing you can aspire to be is a victim.

I'm, just a racist jerk who can't do math, and tells long-ass stories.

The Walking Dead: Less Zombie Killing, More Talking, Already!

I find it hilarious and earnestly disappointing that the only criticisms I hear from anyone online or on the couch concerning AMC's The Walking Dead comes back to the idea that all that ever happens is a lot of talking and then yelling, and then not killing zombies. It's a zombie show without very many zombies.

Except it's not supposed to be.

The point of every good zombie movie since "Night of the Living Dead" has always been that zombies are nothing but a force of nature. They're empty, useless nihilists. The living are always more dangerous than the sea of corpses at the door.

They never would break in if some idiot didn't shoot out that one glass pane. They'd never notice you had that asshole not started shouting about wasting food on the weak. They'd never have gotten that one guy had it not been for the dumb bitch too scared to raise her gun and squeeze the trigger, and now her throat is missing.

It's always the ineptitude, the infighting, that splintering of groups and the conflicting ideologies and power struggles of survivors that limits the lifespan of a group. Zombies are slow, simple, predictable. Zombies never lie. They don't entrap you. They reach and grasp and gnaw.

People will smile at your face and shoot you in the back. People will look for the easiest way out, survive until the next day with no pause for long-term strategy beyond that. Survival, yes. Rebuilding, never. Because people are afraid. There's no social contract with a zombie, or a wolf, or any man with sufficient cause to believe he is unbound by laws. And people fear this most of all, even now.

So don't complain that there aren't enough beheadings in The Walking Dead.

Every time a zombie dies on-screen, it's a mop-up operation. Every time a man dies it is a coup d'état.

On Cute Animals

I don't know how I didn't see it before, it seems so obvious in hindsight. The clues, the emails, the links I'd get sent at three in the morning….

Every corner of the internet that isn't reserved for porn is designed to cater to a person's every need for adorable, furry animals. (And in some cases, even the parts of the internet that are also for porn.)

Photo Blogs - Obviously design to showcase pictures of adorable animals.

Flickr - Designed so you can show me your photos of adorable animals.

Facebook - So we can learn more about each other's adorable animals. (And give them their own pages.)

Livejournal - To blog about our animals. Hell, they even have "LiveGerbil." It's adorable.

Twitter - Tell me about the adorable thing an animal did.

FourSquare - Where did you see an adorable animal?

BBC/(lesser news services) - Who was recently saved by an adorable animal?

eBay - I would like to buy toys for my adorable animal.

Craigslist - Has anybody seen my…?/I would like to adopt a…/Where can I go to have sex with … an adorable animal.

4chan - Can someone draw me a picture of myself as an adorable animal?

Honestly, that all just makes LOLcats the most derivative and yet somehow also most direct and honest thing on the internet. Let's just imitate it shot-for-shot with hipster, call it LOLpeoples and go meta as hell and call it a night?

'Tis The Season

A lot of people don't know this about me, considering my usually dower, sarcastic demeanor and the widely known information that I was raised Jewish, but I am all about Christmas.

Not the Jesus-y stuff, mind you, though my mom was Christian and he was at the bare minimum a wise Jewish scholar with some pretty sweet ideas about Buddhism. No, I tend more to prefer the pretty commercial aspects of Christmas more firmly routed in Danish, Germanic, Roman, commercial and Coca-Cola-ist culture. Trees and presents and big parties and the spirit of giving and whatnot.

How adorable is that?

I enjoy the spirit of the holiday. I'm trying this new thing where I'm nice to everyone and start personal interactions with the premise that people are intelligent, interesting and inherently good natured. I know, I'm surprised too. But the amazing thing is that around Christmas, people just start accepting this kind of behavior as a seasonal blessing, much like a good harvest or the breakup of an icy river which prevents roving packs of wolves from thinning your herds come early Spring.

Or those pesky ewoks eating up your campy berries.

Christmas is the one time of year when random acts of kindness aren't seen as something duplicitous. Sometimes they're even passed on. I like to think every time I flag down a passing car to receive the choice parking spot I am about to vacate, somebody has a pleasant surprise and that makes them happier throughout the next portion of their day. Maybe then they do something nice for someone else, or maybe they just won't be dicks to other people like usual. Even monsters can be nice at Christmas time.

I named him Bruce.

So this is my promise to you, Internet: I will honor Christmas. It's past, present and it's future, both in my heart and all the year long. And should I turn into some kind of deranged, soul-searching Charlie Brown, well I've already got that covered and I'm okay with it:

On Just Your Everyday, Regular Guys, You Know?

"I want to ask this question, but I don't want to- I know it'll make me- I don't want to sound like an asshole."

This is what a very dear friend said to me a few hours ago. It was somewhat leading, based on the conversation we had been having, but the question itself was in no way obvious from context. Given two normal, everyday people alone in a room, I would not expect one to know where this discussion was going more than, say, 30% of the time. It is precisely this issue that allowed me to know exactly what question I was about to be asked, because it's not normal and I've already wondered countless times, but I've never asked because it does make you feel like an asshole.

"'What the hell do normal people think about all day??'"

It was a good minute before I could hear anything but raucous, almost disbelieving laughter coming through the receiver in my cell phone–that and occasionally a few syllables of "DAA-AAAAVEEE!!"–but this was enough to tell me I hit the nail on the head. With a sledgehammer.

You see, there are two types of people in this world, as loath as I am to use that simplified stance on anything. There are people who with great consistency wonder what other people must think about at all hours, thinking, "Well I think of these things, but I'm considered weird, so normal people probably don't think that. Maybe they think about football? Or hockey. Maybe people think about hockey.It's already Fall. They play hockey on ice all year but I thought hockey season would be in Fall and Winter since they traditionally must have started when there was ice out. Crap. What was I thinking about? Oh yeah, 'what do normal people think about?'"

The other type of people are normal people, and I have no idea what they think about because as far as I can tell they're not inclined to ever wonder that. The only people who seem to ask that question are the type of people who ask that question. Somewhat circular logic, I know, but frankly you just have to split the difference when you can. Some people ponder how introspective other people must be, while other people don't wonder about wondering.

Which is not to say they're incapable of it. I avoid asking the direct question because I don't want to come off as a complete douche, but my friend Dean has answered once or twice. He seems to indicate that he thinks about whatever it is he's been tasked with doing, then maybe thinking about what he's going to do on the weekend or something. If he's at work and bored, he might check Facebook to see if anyone's RSVP'd to do whatever it is he wanted to do this weekend to spend the money he has earned by working. There's a correlation of thought processes.

I asked Dean once, "What do you think about when you're going to bed? Right before you actually fall asleep but the lights are out and you're actually trying to become asleep, what thoughts are going through your head? What do you think about, right then?"

Dean indicated that he didn't. He just goes to sleep. I asked if he thought about what he had done that day or try to plan out what he has to do tomorrow. He seemed to indicate more towards the latter, but it really petered out around 'go to work, have dinner with dad Thursday."

I'm always thinking. Weird thoughts, too. I cracked the meaning of Donnie Darko's time vortex in the shower. The Terminator time travel. I came up for a mode of faster-than-light telecommunication that is scientifically sound but can't possibly exist for at least 50 years, also in the shower. I do a hel of a lot of thinking in the shower. Before bed, my life tends to swing between feeling so contented in my nice cozy sheets that I drift lazily to the most restful sleep reserved usually for new-born babes and the cruelly, psychotically remorseless … or I just think about every mistake I've ever made and how stupid I am for it and why my inability to not fuck up will leave me forever ruined and without love. One or the other.

On the other hand, Dean has the most amazing ability to fall asleep anywhere, doing anything, and fight through every possible stimulus against waking. Last Sunday he fell asleep at the movies and a hard slap across the face only managed to wake him gradually.

So maybe he's not the best source to ask about pre-sleep thought patterns.

On Language Recall

I went out today to look for signs that someone nearby has lost the kitten which recently showed up, literally, on our doorstep. I found none. So she's ours now. Awesome.

But what I did find was a family of deer grazing on somebody's backyard shrubbery in the middle of the day. Also, a generic Latino family having a barbecue. I thought about asking them if they'd misplaced a kitten, but they were all busy having a good time. The closest guy was on the phone, turned away from me, in fact.

But I wondered, if it came to it, could I ask them in Spanish? My Spanish is terrible. I mean truly, frighteningly bad. If it is of any importance, if it would not be completely useless, I cannot say it. Ask for holy water to put out a cow fire in my pants? Sure. Not a problem. But something simple? Screwed. Royally. "Tan que el rey." Pretty sure that meant, "As the king." You get the idea.

But I thought to myself. Quickly, so as not to over think it. "¿Te buscando para un gato pequeño? ¿Todo negro, pero con blanca aquí?"

Holy crap, that wasn't terrible. Granted, that was a grammatical nightmare, but it could have been far worse. The last time a Spanish guy asked if I could speak Spanish, not only did I forget the word for "a little," but I forgot the word for "no."

I'll give you a hint. It's "no."

So I can talk about cats, still. At least if I ever get stuck in Spain I'll always be able to order Chinese food.

Defining Moments In A Young Girl's Life

This all stemmed from "Her First iPhone" which didn't even end up on the list. Went a completely other direction with the entry. On a side note: never do a Google Image search for "young girls [anything]." The results will not in any way be what you were looking for, unless of course you were looking for porn of questionable legality. Then, yeah, you'd get what you wanted.



Defining Moments In A Young Girl's Life:

• Her first slumber party
• Her first Party Dress
• Her first kiss
  
  
• Her first cell phone
• Her first cell phone with unlimited texting
  Her first SmartPhone
  
  
• Her first date
  
• Her first boyfriend
  
• Her first strapless dress
  
  
• Her first formal dance
• Her first time
• Her first time pretending it's her first time
  
• Her first time that doesn't suck
  
  
• Her first proposal
  
• The proposal she accepts
• The proposal she accepts which actually leads to her wedding
  
  
• Her first time imagining someone besides her husband during sex
• Her first time imagining that someone is Becky from the gym
• Her first time calling out Becky's name in bed
• Her first time being confused when her husband isn't upset with her calling out Becky's name in bed
• Her first threesome since college
• Her first book on cuckolding
  
  
• Her first roleplay
• Her first vinyl corset
• Her first riding crop
• Her first rope-and-pulley system
• Her first time with a large black dude she found on Craigslist while her husband is forced to watch
  
  
• Her first strap-on
• Her first piercing kit
• Her first time not hearing their safety word
• Her first time pretending she didn't hear their safety word
  
  
• Her first offense
• Her first deposition
• Her first cross-examination
• Her first manslaughter acquittal
• Her first negligent homicide conviction
  
  
• Her first time with a very different Becky
• Her first time snitching
• Her first time getting shanked
• Her first time shanking
  
  
• Her first parole
• Her first time seeing her kids in nine years
• Her first tell-all memoir
• Her first million
  

Things Which Can Grow Inside A Person

Things Which Can Grow Inside A Person:

I recently read from the BBC a story in which a man in Massachusetts went into the hospital expecting a cancer diagnosis after suffering from emphysema for an extended period. It was not a tumor growing inside him, but rather

• A pea:
  
  
  
• A watermelon seed:
  
  
  
• Worms:
  
  
  
• Bamboo:
  
  
  
• Syphilis.
  

On Real Life Conversations IV: Dialogue, Real Life & Kevin Smith

"Man, there will never be another band as good as Savage Garden, amiright?"

When I was in college, one of the compliments my writing seemed to get a lot was about dialogue. People always seem to think that my writing style is very real, with little stresses in the word which make me feel like the "edgy" character on later seasons of [insert name of current live-in reality show]. This always seemed to come out strongly in the dialogue.

"I read this the way people actually speak."

Great job. So what you're getting at is no one else ever writes dialogue that sounds like two people speaking to each other? That's what you're honestly saying?

I'm not going to even attempt using Kevin Smith as a good example of life-like dialogue. Frankly, he just sounds good. Kevin Smith writes apropos, swear-laden dialogue the way George Lucas wrote techno-babble into Star Wars. Sure, it sounds cool, even fits into the story well without being clichéd, but for the love of Jeff, no one can say those things in daily life. People get beaten up for talking like that on the schoolyard.

I can't talk to you without wanting to express my love for everything you are. And I know this will probably queer our friendship - no pun intended - but I had to say it, because I've never felt this way before, and I don't care. I like who I am because of it. And if bringing this to light means we can't hang out anymore, then that hurts me. But God, I just, I couldn't allow another day to go by without just getting it out there, regardless of the outcome, which by the look on your face is to be the inevitable shoot-down. And, you know, I'll accept that. But I know...I know that some part of you is hesitating for a moment, and if there is a moment of hesitation, then that means you feel something too. All I ask, please, is that you just, you just not dismiss that - and try to dwell in it for just ten seconds. Alyssa, there isn't another soul on this fucking planet who has ever made me half the person I am when I'm with you, and I would risk this friendship for the chance to take it to the next plateau. Because it is there between you and me. You can't deny that. Even if, you know, even if we never talk again after tonight, please know that I'm forever changed because of who you are and what you've meant to me, which - while I do appreciate it - I'd never need a painting of birds bought at a diner to remind me of.
- Holden McNeal (Ben Affleck), Chasing Amy

Who the fuck talks like that? Seriously! Beyond the simple fact no one will ever let you speak that long without interrupting, unless is just waiting for you to be done with it so she can get the fuck out of there, no one speaks that coherently in-the-moment. Sure, maybe you've rehearsed your own speech a dozen times in your head; in real life you blow it. Your heart hurts of you get scared and you fucking blow it. That's why we pause so goddam much when we talk nowadays, either we're afraid to say the words we're thinking or we're afraid that thinking isn't smart enough to say in words.

Even Chasing Amy's tagline says it: "Finally, a comedy that tells it like it feels." Not "how it is," "how it feels." The kind of telling you come up with two days later thinking, "That's what I should've said!"

Would you like to know the secret to creating believable dialogue?

Write it out like your friends would say it.

Regional dialect isn't just for hillbilly characters and wise old bluesmen, it's the diction that makes "Where are you going?" into "Where're you guys headed?" There's something to be said for correcting spelling and grammar in a text, but I live by the rule 'Write it like you'd say it.' (This includes things like the word "you'd.") Here's some dialogue from an actual conversation with an actual person:

Me: You'll just have to get creative with my belated Christmas gift now. Sorry.
Jo: Ugh, you know I'm not creative.
Me: Well, slap some macaroni on a card and staple it to a hooker or something.

I think what I'm trying to get at here is, "you can write quality dialogue by having ridiculous friends." Not sure if that's what I was getting at, but that's where I ended up.

Nineteen Profile Pictures That Need To Be Retired

The Four-Square - Have an uninteresting photo? So did Andy Worhol! Until he resized it and made prints side-by-side with different colors! Now you've got a brand new kind of crappy art all your friends will be clamoring over. Bonus points for including another person in the picture, more if it becomes impossible to tell who is who. Final bonus for having 20+ similar shots all in a row.


Anything Sepia - Half of us are barely old enough to remember how to load a roll of film into a non-digital camera, let alone have decades-aged photos lying around. For that matter, those photos weren't designed to be that color, the faded from a better version. To put this on your wall says, "I have neither smarts nor class, but I'm pretty sure this fakes both pretty well." Congratulations, you've cemented yuppie photography as an enduring art form.

The "Up, Up and Away!" (Sideways) - This image can be said to do nothing more than confuse the eye. It's a bird's eye, at an angle, rotated such that gravity is pointing to one of the image's corners. This allows for increasing visual cleavage, decreasing belly rolls, thinning the hips, hiding the jowls, augmenting height and can even be combined with any other digital effect on this list for the most intelligence-insulting images imaginable.


The Baby Picture - We get it, not only were you cute once, but you've just had the stunning realization that you have to grow up and be an adult now, fully culpable for all her own screw-ups. Also, you seem to think your childhood was so much better than your life now, but you know what? You can drive now. You can feed yourself and get up to poop all on your own. You can open a credit card and rent seasons of Firefly off the Netflix. Unless someone close to you in the photo has died and it is the anniversary week of his happening, I don't want to see your dad's skinny man-legs in '80s cutoff shorts.

The Tagger - It's one image, posted 837,000 times by 837,000 people. Half the time it is unsolicited and reposted simply because people who weren't included in the image felt let down and did it all over themselves, slighting the people who slighted them with tags like, "the little slut," or, "the ditzy one."






The Eyeball - "My Best Feature" might be more accurate, but 'The Eyeball' has broader recognition for everyone. A single shot of somebody's sense organ, eye, nose, mouth, ear, even random body parts like a shin bone. Someone snapped a picture they thought would look "artsy," hit soft focus and called it a night. We're tired of looking not at a picture of you, but rather some weird selection of part of you from which we're supposed to infer meaning other than,"I'm apparently friends with an artistic plebeian."

The Beach-Bound Attention Whore - Seriously, this exact posed is utilized in a rather well known internet meme simply titled "ATTENTION WHORE." The very fact that searching for a real-life counterpart to this image through actual Facebook profiles yielded three different women and a dozen or so attempts at a handstand is nothing short of horrifying. This particular image is a particularly striking doppelganger to the original, the only difference being I believe the attention whore in the original was wearing a red bikini. Also, it read, "LOOK AT ME I'M AN ATTENTION WHORE!" But you're all whores.


The Overly Hopeful Celebrity Look-Alike - I don't want anyone to think I'm leaving the men off this list. Frankly, if every redhead on the net wasn't tagging herself in pictures of Scarlett Johansson, men would be the primary perpetrators of this face-crime. I'm light skinned with dark hair and a goatee. Do you see me tagging myself in pictured of Johnny Depp? No. Why? Because I don't fucking look like Johnny Depp. My jaw isn't sharp enough, my hair is too wavy and I refuse to wear black-rimmed glasses and a tiny fedora. (Rimless glasses and a full size, sure.) The point is you do not look like any of the celebrities who are often only famous for being good-looking. Stop it. This is hurting your chances with the ladies by making them think of all the differences between you and more sexified celebs. If you wanna score, through up a picture of Seth Rogan pre-weight loss. Make the ladies realize you are more attractive than someone famous!

Lemon Face Mmmn!! - Lion Face Arrrr! Also called the "superpucker," this does about as much to turn guys off of super-fine ladies as the overachieving celebrity profiles hinder decent looking men. Ladies, you have lovely lips. I can guarantee you that some time this week a guy will want to make kisses with. It's just nature. However, every time you make that ridiculous kissy face in photos we respect you a little less, and not in a good way. We just want you to look nice for us. It's simple of us, but it shows that you take pride in your appearance and that you take pride when we perceive you positively. Moreover, it gives us something to look at in our "alone time."

The "Photoshopped Beyond All Recognition" - Jebus Christy, what the hell were you thinking!? Was this one not even worth trying the Four Square on? Did you just say, "Oh, it's completely out of focus, but I can't bring myself to hit the DELETE key?" You had to save it anyway and play with it so much in Photoshop that it lost all semblance of an image of a human being? Picasso, for Pete's sake, would see one of these and tell you that it resembles only the mad watercolorings of a deranged impressionist grappling with his own hang-ups about breaking classical rules of shape and contour. Also, he'd tell you they weren't very good watercolors.

The Over-Captioned - This is a minor infraction spun out of control. Like lax enforcement of jaywalking or litter laws. First there's the main image, then someone plays with the brightness because it was shot at night at a party. Then it gets forgotten about for months and posted only on a fairly arbitrary month-iversary, tagged with a date, the original time stamp, a title card in curly-cue font and a message of love. Sometimes, the guy will have died of cancer or a car crash and "R.I.P." will be added next to a diminutive of his name, like Rickie of Robby or Johnny. Maybe there'll be glitter.

The Somebody Else's Baby - This profile says, "I have replaced my own desire for having children at a young age with babysitting for the same families for twelve years." Either that or, "My friends and family are all incredibly fertile sluts, but at least I get to play with one of these without spitting it out of my own happy-hole."
Odds are it'll also scare away any guys you are or will potentially be dating. Why? Because our biological clocks tick down to 'power usurped by younger, stronger males.' Not 'baby o'clock.'


The "Money Shot" - It's like Lemon Face gone awry. Why would you do this to yourself, girls? Why are you teasing us with this image and, more importantly, why are you putting twelve of them up at a time for everyone and your grandma to see? I could maybe understand it if you were doing the angry face tongue, or throwing up metal hands at the same time, but no. No, you're always smiling away and rolling out the red carpet to your esophagus like you love it and goddamit you know damned well you never act like you like it when we suggest it so why? Just why?

The Open Invitation/The Open For Business - What did I just get finished explaining to you?!







The Negative - This is either a mediocre picture made increasingly disturbing or a moderately whorey picture made fappable through inversion of color and reduction of the mind's ability to discern all the gross parts of you.





The Digital Polaroid - What? (Often combined with Sepia, Captioning and Beach Whoring.)










High Contrast Harlotry - Turn up that contrast, turn up that tan! Make your bleach-job look blonder, those intimately stained tank tops brighter! Hide your face under some insect-eye Prada sunglasses and a ventilated trucker hat and no one will know that's you showing off her underwear through the bottoms of her cut-off jorts! Sunny day? Even better! Now every item in your room that wasn't already black or white fades demurely into the background to allow for near-total anonymity, perfect for when all those pictures you're posing for and sending to your boyfriend up at school get passed around the internet like a bad case of gonorrheal Windows Vista.

Feet In the Sand - I'm tired of seeing your feet in the sand. I know I've said this a hundred times, yes, women are disproportionately angry at their feet the more attractive they are. It's something she can fixate on because feet really are just plain weird looking things. However, feet do look weird and I don't want to look at them either. There's nothing artsy about feet in the sand. Even the Christians have a poem and associated photograph about footprints in the sand. I think it's called "Footprints in the Sand." This is not a great accomplishment for anyone. More annoyingly, the types of girls who are fine with how their feet look generally have far greater issues with themselves to pick at. I don't need to be seeing your false bravado. I need to be seeing either good beach art or bad art of you at the beach in a bathing suit. Either way, everybody wins.

Your Farmville Photos - The worst offender of all. I really need to see what your farm looks like. Or what you look like on your farm. Or what a frigging pig looks like on your farm. It's not even restricted to Farmville, anymore. Tons of games are adding inane photo albums, which pisses me off. And you know what? This shouldn't even need an explanation. I don't look at pictures of farms in my spare time, and I don't play very many video games. The times I do play video games it's for entertainment and escapism. I don't need to be spending all my free time down at a fake farm growing nothing and earning nothing for all my efforts. If I really wanted to milk a cow, you know what I would do? I'd go out and find a real fucking cow and milk the fucking shit out of it. That cow would be like, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT YEAH, THAT'S A MILKING, ALRIGHT!!!" and then I'd pasteurize the milk myself and drink it with fucking cookies because I earned a real, tangible fucking reward after all that work.

*All images have been utterly stolen without permission (the fun kind of stealing) from people on Facebook and then altered to protect those guilty of these Facebook Infractions. In order to browse photos I had to keep it within a few degrees of separation from my own friends and have already been informed I circuitously snagged one person's photo, but her big sister said she shouldn't mind because it was funny. If I have used your picture and you do not think it was funny, please contact me directly a dzucker1@gmail.com and I shall remove your photo and replace it with something much more offensive.

On Hot Chicks

My friends have raised an interesting question:

Where the hell do hot chicks go in the winter? Do they just disappear? And how is it that as soon as the weather turns even remotely nice they instantly appear in their booty shorts? Is it magic? Are they familiars to a secret cabal of wizards?

But they're right. When the weather turns cold, attractive girls just seam to fade into their parkas. Guys subside on t-shirts and the occasional polo all year long, so by the time Spring rolls around and we're thinking about breaking out a baseball because–face it–we haven't seen anything else worth our attentions for six months, BAM! That's when the sluts appear.

And no, they're not exactly sluts. Not all of them, at least. It's just after such a dearth of toned shoulders and bare skin we're suddenly inundated with it as every woman even halfway attractive immediately jumps at the first chance to show off what she's priming for beach season.

Still, we know some of these women. Someone knows them, at least. They don't transform into disfigured monsters like Dr. Jekyll that first chilly week in October. They have to go somewhere.

So this is my theory:

Hot chicks are like bears.

Yes, you can make a kind of "they're cool to look at but stand next to one and you'll just yammer and stammer and wet yourself in terror and then run away" analogy. Or, sure, you could equate her BFFs to a she-bear's little cubs and realize that to in any way get near them will result in Momma Bear going completely feral and mauling you into a bloody stump what was once a man.

But here's the real truth: attractive women hibernate. Every fall the gorgeous girl you mooned over all Summer returns to school or work or wherever it is she spends the part of her life that isn't a vacation and she prepares for the Winter months.

If she is in college she puts on what is called the "Freshman Fifteen," approximately seven kilos of pure Hot Pocket and wraps herself in a warm bed, surrounding herself with blankets, snacks, multiple seasons of "progressive" women's television shows on DVD and possibly an ill-conceived Walmart beta fish which will die within six weeks. The few times that she does wander out of her nest in the Winter, it will be grudgingly, angrily, and hungrily, lashing out at those around her and fighting willingly for even the meagerest scrap of high-protein sustenance.

Towards the tail-end of Winter, Hot Girl will begin to stir in her hovel, the last episodes of her Grey's Anatomy boxed set drawing to a close without that one perfect kiss between McDreamy and that chisel-faced blond twig the show is named for. She will slowly start to spend more time outside of her cave and interacting with other creatures, even taking physical care of herself again. She will refuse to be seen looking like a looser in over-sized hoodies and track pants, unshowered and unkempt. Eventually–and usually secretly–she will begin the arduous process of "getting ready for the beach," which is actually a bizarre ritual comprising poorly-executed remedial components of yoga, aerobics, cardio and awkward giggling, followed by a massive calorie burn through all the complaining she'll do about not being able to eat [X] anymore.

However all of this is worth it, as come the first sunny day of Spring, Hot Chick will shed her outer layers of gosling-down pillow puff and slogan-ized ass sweat pants for a pink tank top and a pair of slogan-ized ass short shorts. Who wears short shorts? Sluts wear short shorts. But that's fine. Hot Chick is not actually a slut.

What she is doing is called "peacocking," or "presenting." She is showing off absolutely all the goods at once, putting the milk up on the auction block to see who is interested in actually buying the cow. She only looks like a slut because she wants your attention like a slut.

Mostly, she is actually very selective in whom she will go back to another cave with (hers is still in disarray), though the first few prospective mates each season will more readily be able to tap into her absolutely disgusting, filthy bed-lust through sheer virtue of not being the eightieth suitor to approach her that week.

Prairiedogging like Punxsutawney Phil from their burrows of sloth and unattractiveness, Hot Chicks reemerge each Spring to flaunt and taunt men with their hotness, gaining some sick, twisted joy that will alleviate the many months of feeling like a fat, gross cow sitting alone in her room and wondering why she doesn't have anyone to treat her like McDreamy would or her father never did and mommy said she'd never find.

Either that or they all migrate South or something.

Like geese.