I Hope You All Know A Good Photography Major

Does anybody remember taking rolls of film to be developed at a photo hut in the mall? Or even your local Walmart or pharmacy?

Do you recall paying so much extra for double prints or trying to avoid the watchful stare of the developer, in your shared knowledge that he has already seen photos of your girlfriend naked? Even before you got to see how they came out?

I ask you this, because I realized I don't have photographs in my room. I've have art – pop art prints, a signed-and-framed movie poster, even a few original paintings. All my photos are in albums next to yearbooks and whatnot in my night stand. The last, maybe half of those are just printouts of facebook pics.

Pics. Not photos, but "pics." One or two might even have little neon hearts and dates on them, but a few are just cropped. All are on standard, bleached white printer paper.

I own photo paper, what the hell? I could make a real photograph out of any hi-res image on my drive. Why didn't I? Why don't I?

And I'm in a better predicament than most. Half of my friends don't own a printer. Several don't own a working computer. Several are without cell phones. In 2012.

And that may be the problem. It's 2012. I've seen this movie. We don't grab our digital photo frames. The kids grab their GameBoy 6GS-X's and John Cusack grabs the kids and throws them in his plane. Everything is connected, and everything is in the cloud. Hoarding physical media collections is considered an eccentricity, and I can see why. We have fewer things in physical space, just as we expand our presence out into cyberspace. There's an infinite world a half-dimension away from us, and we're just expanding laterally.

Except none of us have any faces of friends and family on our shelves.

So for everyone with adorable children on the horizon and fantastic adventures in your spyglasses, I encourage you to invest in a stack of high-gloss Kodak paper.

Either that, or make nice with your friends from high school who ended up buying $3000 Canon Rebels, because they're going to be the only ones who'll be able to hook you up with eight-by-tens or know what stop bath is.

On Quality Photography

I have a 3.5 megapixel camera sitting in a donation pile because my phone has a pinhole that makes its predecessor look like a disposable click-wheel. An iPhone has an 8MP built in, with autofocus, austoexposure,autoflash, face detection, and self-stabilization.

So how the fuck are you still taking blurry-ass, low-light mirror shots for your profile picture?

Did you just select Instagram's "whore" filter? Or maybe it was the "aging barfly sepia tone" that caught your fancy, polishing over your dimpled adult acne and pale, sweaty club rat complexion.

Listen, it's 2012. Hoverboards are only three years away, Optimus Prime first died eight years ago, and has come back like four times, and we've passed John Connor's Judgement Day trice already. We live in the future, and you no longer have an excuse for not having quality headshots on your LinkedIn profile.

The least you could do is Windex your bedroom mirror, god damn.

So you turned off the flash, stood in a shadow, deadjusted the RGB levels,
and–I'm guessing–stood about 15 feet away from the mirror and used digital zoom.
Before cropping the photo to hide your filthy living room and the dog's second bowl?

Teen Fiction Is the Stock Art of Literature, Except When It's the Stock Art of Stock Art

I came across two books today. The first when I was asked if it was available in paperback. A little girl handed it too me. The second book came just three minutes later, off a cart of brand new books that had yet to see a shelf.

The first: "You Have Seven Messages" by Stewart Lewis. Here's the GoodReads page.

The second: "These Girls" by Sarah Pekkanen. (Its GoodReads page.)

One by a man with two first names, the other by a woman with a surname that makes one wonder why she didn't just pick up a nom de plume. And in her defense, "These Girls" is listed as adult fiction, but I would surmise in the same way that Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Leo DiCaprio vehicle Romeo + Juliet was an adult movie made for adults and not for teenagers but for really adult adults.

But maybe I could be forgiven for thinking they are the same book.



No, these aren't the same book at all.

Not in the slightest. Nope. Uh-uh.


However, yeah, the back covers both credit GettyImages after cover designers and photographer.

Apparently, in book publishing, this is nothing new.

Oddly, it's the teen fiction on the left that I feel has the better design, with sharper focus and more saturated color.

Plus, with the higher contrast, the girl doesn't look like she has a big square crease in her ass. No teenage girl wants to empathize with a flat-butted protagonist. Although it shows the woman's foot, and we all know that pretty women hate their feet.

On Modeling Contracts

A dear friend of mine recently was offered a "modeling" gig. Perhaps "gig" is better suited towards being the word in quotation marks. The offer was real enough, and I suppose whatever the photo shoot actually consisted of constitutes modeling. It's just that the offer itself was phrased in the least legitimate manners possible.

For one thing, she was approached through text-only contact over the cam chatting site stickam.com. By a "woman." (Who just claimed to not have a webcam.)

Second, when they emailed her (under a fake name she gave them until she tested their veracity), they were somewhat unconvincing. Let's take a look:

Hello Angela:


A great friend and former model of mine, Sienna Baker, found you on the chat site and sees some real potential in you.  Sienna is a great judge of talent and has already helped a couple girls get some great pro work with a couple top magazines and thinks you could be very good too.


MY big concern is IF you are serious and I truly hope you are.  We are anxious to find models for various projects.  Based on what Sienna has told me you seem interested.  This is a highly competitive business and commitment is everything.  Plus we are on a major time crunch and need to make a selection within weeks for future modeling assignments over the next 12-18 months all over the world!!  That is why I think it important, if Sienna thinks you do well enough during her training sessions, we get some audition pictures of you ... specifically in lingerie and/or swimwear and other ways that show off your body and figure... so we can make some assessments of your potential.  Do not be concerned with having a "perfect" body.... we need ALL shapes and sizes for many different magazines and catalogs.


She specializes in artistic work for mags like Maxim, Allure, and has done some work with Cosmo Girl... and with Suicide Girls on occassion.  Mostly swimwear, lingerie and other sensual fashion.  The work we would want would be very much the same..   Being totally uninhibitted is the key.  Sienna does her initial interview and mentoring and training program online.  We do the audition shoots in person if you do well enough that she recommends you.  There are many BAD agencies out there that lure innocent girls in and then do things that are not polite to discuss.  Sienna never screen caps any of her training work; she is a huge advocate of models' privacy rights.  As far as our audition shoot is concerned, the one we will do in person, we will both sign a mutual release that states we can only show those pictures/videos to potential magazine clients so they can make their selects of models for various shoots.  Nothing will ever be displayed publically without your expressed written permission.

Sienna will expect a lot during her training, Angela.  More than you'd do for an actual photo shoot but she wants to open up, step outside the box but mostly she is wanting the prospect to have fun with what she does.  Just go with the flow.  Being shy will not make the cut.


I have worked with her for a long time and she is very professional and does great work.  Let her teach you and listen to her and you'll do great.


I wish you the best of luck!!

Cheers,
William Simmons

VP of talent Coordination
Tempting Sensations Modeling Agency

(formerly Attitude Models Ltd, UK)

Liverpool England (UK)

P.S.  We are a low-key behind-the-scenes modeling agency and, to prevent being bothered by thousands of girls that only "wish" they could model, we do NOT maintain a web site or publish any photos we do on the web.  We work strictly with the magazine and video industry.

Okay.

1) This guy must be really unprofessional, what with not knowing the name of the website a worker was scouting, double-spacing after sentences randomly, using CAPSLOCK instead of italics or even–god help us–bold, and of course not bothering to spellcheck his emails.

2) They want you to train (on camera) first, then take audition photos in lingerie and/our swimsuits. To show off your shape (but then assuage you that shape isn't everything). If you do well in all this, they will book you for up to 18 months of gigs they desperately need filled.

3) The "company" specializes in magazines you've definitely heard of, despite these magazines not having anything in common when it comes to the type of women they generally shoot. Also, they do softcore porn for a well known company which prides itself on open auditions through their own site. (Don't ask how I know that.)

4) "Sensual" is a word photographers use to describe shoots when they don't want to scare off naïve models with the word "nude." "Uninhibited" is likewise the word they use when they don't want to say, "just go with it if one of us gets naked too."

5) This is followed by very improperly mentioning that there are "BAD" companies out there who do these above things to naïve young models and then promises not to do any of those things or any other things of which you could conceivably think. They go on to promise that when they actually molest you on camera, you will sign a piece of paper they claim keeps them from ever showing it to anyone other than prospective "clients." Because you are a lawyer and you will know what it says.

6) 'Listen to what Sienna says and follow direction blindly or you will not become a star.'

7) The company is based in the UK despite agenting for models in US magazines.

8) The company does not have a website or contact information. Basic Googling reveals that neither version of the company's names actually exist. They are not even mentioned online outside of references to a London gazette from 2007. Also, even more typos.

9) What kind of modeling agency doesn't want young girls applying at every opportunity? What kind of business model is that?

Now, I can hear you thinking, "Man, that crane is never going to be able to lift that whole thing!" I hear you thinking this because nearly everyone who started reading this blog bailed a long while back, but if you're still reading or skipped all of the above, I can hear you thinking something different, and that thing is, "Well, maybe that guy's just bad at writing emails. He's a VP after all, not a recruiter."

Possible, but remember that he is a faceless dude on the internet promising lofty rewards for trust and showing some skin. Now consider that a Latino music producer approached this same friend for some acting work the same week and provided links to his Facebook, email, company, YouTube account, and the name of the artist for whom he was directing the music video in which he was offering a part. He also spoke with this friend at length. Dear Will didn't do much beyond send an obvious form email (unproofed) on the word of an underling who only has one name and some still photos for credibility.

And what happens when you blow off their stickam-based training session because they're unconvincing? Do you get written off because they don't want to waste their time on spazzes and flakes? Do they send a single email informing you that they're regrettably moving on? Or even checking to see if you are okay?

No, they get angry and threaten you back into stripping for them:

Angela....


I just got off the phone with Sienna.  I was VERY disappointed to learn that you never appeaed for your scheduled training appointment.
My time -- and Ms. Baker's time -- is very valuable.  Both of us have gone way beyond our normal functions to absolutely reassure you that we were seriously interested in you as a possible model and our legitimate belief you have that "it" we were looking for.  Emphasis now on the word "were"... we can NOT waste time on anyone that is as, apparently, unreliable as you have now proven yourself to be.
Unless you contact Sienna sometime within the next 24 hours with a reasonable reason why you missed your scheduled time with her we will totally remove you from any future consideration and pass along this information to the Studios' Network that you cannot be trusted as a legitimate modeling prospect.
I hope Sienna hears from you today.


William

That's right, more typos, more extraneous CAPSLOCK, and a huge guilt trip about how hard theyve worked to make you feel comfortable. You know, save for any form of contact more legitimate than a private message over a third-party cam site and promises of eventually sending binding contracts.

And yes, that second half is a threat, actually an ultimatum with a deadline, to blacklist a prospective, possibly hospitalized client from not only their company, but from others within the shadowy, ambiguous "Studios' Network."

This network, I assume, is William's mother's Linksys WiFi. The sultry "Tempting Sensations Modeling Agency, UK" is his room in her basement, and "Sienna" is the name he gave his polyurethane playmate, the one he keeps next to him as he goads young girls into removing most of their clothing for him on the internet, cackling maniacally as he violates both their dignity and his vow not to screencap their exploits, with the ever-crooked intent of blackmailing further seductive photography out of them with the black fruits of this initial endeavor.

Trust me, Angelas out there. I'm from the internet. I know what lurks.

UPDATE!

Sienna has responded in the comments below! But here's the text larger and in-line with the above correspondence:

Great piece of b.s. here, Dave. It's too bad that your alleged "dear friend" actually was just one of thousands of girls try to get into the industry that turns out is a WANNABE model ... like all the tens of thousand wannabe singers that try out for American Idol. It's too bad for her that she has no commitment... and pretty pathetic for you that she had you post this fluff nonsense to defend her honor.
Oh well, if it gets you off that you came to her defense thats kool for you!!!

Also, she gave me a shout-out on facebook, though not by name, which would have been fun.

I'm not really sure why I bothered to hide her surname or picture, as she used her full name below and linked to her Facebook, which seems to reveal that she frequently engages in the unprofessional behavior of calling girls who decide not to sign up with her as "wannabes" and unfriends them, (leaving her with just 22 friends).

Her position is "freelance photographer" and her job is "Finding new model talent for my old studios." No further specifics about any company are given. She studied "In England." A quick search reveals that her profile photo is actually a thumbnail of CURRENT runway model Ali Carr, taken by photographer Rupert Tapper for agency Elite New York's Fall 2010 fashion season. In fact, here's the comparison, since I now know it's neither a photo of nor by her:

In her defense, she could have easily been freelancing in the art department that week, which would explain why she has access to the thumbnail file of another photographer's work before it went to print. Or maybe she's just showing off her success story.

She calls me a loser, attacks 'Angela,' and erroneously assumes that I must her be her boyfriend to defend her. She also says I'm posting "false shit about me," which is very interesting considering at no point did I actually comment on anything Sienna did. All correspondence was with Bill Simmons and is documented. That this is a real company and a real agent seems somewhat more plausible now, since I can't imagine a creeper sitting home alone Googling his own fictitious persona to see if anyone's seen through it or railed against him. Currently, the most reasonable explanation is that this really is just an incredibly unprofessional company.

So, for the record:

• Sienna has a wonderful grasp of grammar and punctuation–she can properly space an ellipsis!–up until the final two words, but that's facebook speak for you.
• This just keeps getting more and more unprofessional.
• It's still kind of hilarious. Even if she were legitimately angry about anything previously posted, it's fairly easy to recognize this is A) a humor blog and B) doesn't particularly matter in the grand scheme of her company. I'm not flaming her wall posts and I'm certainly not going to actively seek out this company to berate them. If they didn't want people laughing to themselves about their unprofessionalism, they should strive to be more professional in the future.

This was a very interesting development for the day. Thank you, Sienna!


And it continues:

Dave, I could not resist responding this one last time to your latest post and comments about my reply. I just had to help you with some of your mistaken assumptions but dan you have soooo many!!!
First off, I am NOT an "agency" and have never worked for one. I modeled professionally in Europe when I was an exchange student and back here in the U.S. during college and after for a total of 12 years. As I tell prospects, I have done it ALL and seen it ALL so that is how I can help them get involved in the business with knowledge that an "agency" will never give them! Agents, agencies, and managers will suck you dry and take your money for their "services" and charging for portfolios and other things. If I feel a girl is truly serious I will not charge her (or him) because the studios pay me a finders fee...
Which leads to the second thing, I work with (not for) the actual photography studios...
and the third thing, yes, I do de-friend a LOT of girls!! Just like I said in my first reply, thousands of girls "wannabe" models just like all those sick-sounding wannabe singers that try out for American Idol. less than a few are truly serious and committed. My time is to valuable to waste on them so once I know they are wannabe-types. (BTW, your "dear friend Angela" is only a "wannabe LOSER" because she decided to use you to try to discredit me instead of just hanging her head and going to work quietly at the Hollister store like the rest of her kind.)
Next, although I look amazingly similar to Ali I am definitely NOT her. We all have a "twin" and I'd love to meet her sometime I guess but i usually stayed away from runway models. They always thought their va-ja-jas did not smell. Personally I was always told I looked more like a young Gwyneth Paltrow.
Last thing, Dave, YOU have actually done quite a bit to steal the dreams of some potentially VERY good prospects! They find this blog and actually think I am not for real and bail. That's sad because I truly thought a couple could have made it BIG... but that's on you now.
Please excuse any bad grammar or typos or whatever else you feel special about pointing out. I am not perfect nor do I want to be. And I am not a "pro"... we all know what girls that are "pros" actually are.
Luv and kisses, Sienna. 

I'm glad there's a dialogue going, at least. It's much more transparent.


I'll go ahead and accept that the profile photo is a "celebrity lookalike" picture, but not that it is a separate individual. It is clearly the exact same photo, pre-production. I found it via an identical image search. The fact that it's low-res implies (though does not prove) it is not widely available for distribution.


I'm also starting to wonder if Sienna is Bill Simmons, because she seems genuinely, personally affronted by my criticisms of his email comments, and that makes me sad. Why work for such a company? Why deny working for any company?


For that matter, why say I'm ruining young girls' dreams by defaming Sienna when her own comments are the only thing tying her to this blog? The only person critiqued originally was Bill Simmons at "Tempting Sensations Modeling Agency." In fact, checking my site analytics, I see only 1 6:16 viewing of two pages, with the search query being:

"william simmons vp of talent coordination tempting sensations modeling agency"

So yeah, think we're done here.

Impressionable girls trying to make it in the business: Sienna seems like a lovely girl. I encourage you to ask many questions of anyone offering you fame and fortune. Get business cards, check websites, ask your parents' opinions, look for reviews. Bill Simmons? Kind of seems to be a scumbag in his interactions, but that has little bearing on who else a freelance agent can work with. Find people who are wonderful and professional and if it is what you truly want to be doing with your life, go for it with gusto. I believe in you.

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 Tabloid Journalism

So I was standing in the check-out line at the supermarket today and spent my time looking over the tabloid pickings as usual. Since the Weekly World News and Bat-Boy ceased printing it's been mostly SOCCER MOM ABS and BRAD AND ANGELINA: THE END, but today was a special kind of hell.

This week Sarah and Bristol Palin are featured on the cover of In Touch magazine holding Bristol's babies.

As horrible a person as I am, I figured in my own head I was safe from retribution. I thought I could ask myself, "I wonder if you can tell which baby is retarded?"

Yes, I am a terrible person, alright? But yes, you can totally tell which baby has Down Syndrome and it's not even remotely funny. It looks like the baby is half-Asian. Look at the two babies and you'll say, "Alright, that's a baby. And … that's a retarded baby … huh."

If they weren't exploiting this for a story, I'd think In Touch's art director most likely shot a photographer in the face over this.