Fall of the House of Mattel

no one looks good in bangs, not even Barbies.

Barbie gets home from work exhausted. Her oldest little sister Skipper blows past her dismissively, dressed like a trollop and, "off to work." Littlest sister Krissy is playing on floor by the couch.

Stacie, the third oldest, shouts from the kitchen, not bothering to decrease her volume as she attempts to exit past the disheveled Barbie.

"Hey," she speaks without taking a breath, "We're out of napkins so I didn't make dinner I'm going to the mall with Lea bye."

"Hold on there, missy!" Barbie calls out. "What do you mean you didn- is that a tongue ring!? When dud you get a tongue ring??"

Stacie is indignant. She scoffs. "Like you care…."

"You ungrateful little bitch! I work 108* jobs to put food on this table. Do you think dream houses just pay for themselves?? It's not like mom and dad left us anything, we got NOTHING! I have to pay for this house and your food and you go out and spend your money on a tongue ring???"

"Yeah, we'll Ken seems to like it!"

"KEN DOESN'T HAVE THE EQUIPMENT TO LIKE IT!"

Stacie emits a Frustrated grunt and then storms out the front door. "I hate you!" she exclaims before slamming the door on her way out.

Baby Krissy has stopped playing to watch this. Barbie glances at her and she cowers behind the couch.

End scene.

Moral of the story: having 9 kids will kill you and ruin your kids' futures.


*Actual job count via Forbes.com.

Does He Look Like A Bitch?

Happy I-Have-the-Day-Off Thursday!

A Vicious Revenge Plot You Should Never Employ

I licked an envelope the other day. This … isn't something I do a lot of, what with living in The Future and all.

I was a tad miffed with the person I was mailing. The rule about never upsetting the people who prepare and serve your food applies to any service industry. This includes being short with someone, being contrary, and just generally being a negative pain in the ass. You're requesting something, of someone who does not have to do it simply because you're offering your money up to a corporation.

The point being, when you rely on me, I am in control.

And then I had to lick an envelope for the first time in months. I didn't want my tongue on that. It wasn't even flavored. Not even lousy flavored. Plain flavored. I wouldn't wipe my ass with a plain flavored envelope, but then again I can help it.

So here comes the juicy bit:

If you really hate someone in your office, I mean really despise them to an extent you are willing to risk what is tantamount to physical assault, you could wipe your ass with their envelopes.

At the very least, it's gross and you laugh. Worst case scenario:they actually get pink-eye or some terrible stomach illness from ingesting your fecal residue. If they have an open soar, they could possibly even die of sepsis. Honestly, I'd strongly recommend against this.

If only because I'd be afraid to get a paper cut on my anus.

Visible Bra Lines

I'm not enjoying this trend of visible bra lines under loose-fitting t-shirts. Not at all.

For one thing, it's both provocative, and a boner-killer at the same time. Yeah, it's attention-grabbing, but I'm not going to get to see better than that V-line tonight, am I? No nipple, no side-boob, not even cleavage. At best, if I did get to see what's underneath, the shape's not going to be as pert, full, or rounded as what I'm already seeing, which–as just stated–wasn't all that alluring to begin with. It's not sexy and it's exploitative, but not exploitative enough that I become willing to ignore my higher sensibilities because "boobies."

For another thing, the style just looks terrible on men, and that's not fair and equal.

Photoshop Disasters: Badvertising

This is a car magazine. You will notice two things:

Secondarily, the girl does not fit on the hood of that car. Not unless she is a giant with a spine that is not constrained to three special dimensions or is otherwise elongated in such a way as to appear normal from this perspective but would for the side appear diagonally and bulbous.

More importantly, you would notice a sexy woman on the cover of this auto publication.

Why is she even there? Aren't gear heads supposed to already get a woody from photos of a vintage Woodie? Why implement the sex factor at all?

Because cars are boring, even to car nerds.

Do you know what's on the cover of Star Wars Insider? Star Wars characters. They almost never use bikini princess Leia. Because nerds nerd-out over over what they're into. They don't need assurance that they're manly and virile, mostly because they observantly doubt that.

Here's the simple equation:

If there's an attractive person on the cover, there's nothing in the magazine worth paying for.

Like Kids, the Best Pets are Somebody Else's

"Now is the winter of your discontent."

I'm not a dog person, but I love playing with pups so long as they aren't stinky pups.

Cats, same boat as long as I don't have to scoop that poop.

Kids, I mostly just like watching them like kindergarten is a zoo. No interest in touching one, or even really being noticed, just hang back with the pedophiles and angry dads restricted by the refs from getting too close to the soccer field.

I love my cats, but only when my mom was around to feed them. Dogs at my dad's house are a distant second, my cousin's kids and babies at work come in third an astronomical distance behind. Still, I get joy from these things.

Which is why I look forward to my roommate being able to bring her cat when we move into our new place. I love having a cat to pet and love and cuddle, I just hate fish smell and cleaning poop.

Let somebody else worry about sanitation and responsibility.

I'm going to be the "Fun Uncle" to animals everywhere.

Maybe to humans too, one day, but only once they're big enough to be cool.

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.