2013-01-31

No Means No

Hey,

If the last time I saw you was several years ago when you were sleeping on my couch and I woke you up by throwing a traffic cone at your head and continued to scream until you left my house because I was livid you had just raped my black-out drunk friend and ruined my life in a separate but also awful way, odds are I am not currently interested in adding you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

But thanks for the invitation.

ARGGGGHHH!

2013-01-30

Being a Hero Is Pretty Easy, Actually

The up-escalator at Target stopped working as I approached it. Two tiny, older women were about halfway up the escalator at the time and screamed when it stopped moving - maybe they've seen Family Feud. Rather than continuing to walk up the escalator like a staircase, they walked back down to the bottom, which couldn't have been their desired destination. As I cut in front of them to model what walking up an immobile staircase looks like, they dramatically whined about how they lost all of their stuff and would have to start shopping again.

Indeed, their cart was stuck in the middle of the escalator. Target has these devices where shoppers can ride up the escalator alongside their shopping carts (if you've never seen what that looks like, here's a no-frills Youtube video) and that had stopped moving, too.

My first thought was to alert a Target employee to help them, and then I chuckled at the thought of a helpful Target employee. Those suckers will try to hide from you. Instead, I decided to help the theatrical customers myself. When I reached the halfway point, I reached over the banister on my tippy-toes and into the stranded cart to retrieve a few of the items at a time.

I brought the first of three armloads back down to them and they were ecstatic. "Oh thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!" I guess if you're the type to get hysterical over small things, it's important to counter that with being overly grateful when someone tries to assist you. I went back up and got another load, which they were also giddy about. By the time I brought them the last of their items, they squealed and each gave me a big hug. "You're our hero! Our hero!"

Hero seemed a little far-fetched for someone who stretched a bit to grab some items, but I can't pretend I didn't sort of like it. I mean, if the escalator had started up again while I was leaning over, I could have lost my balance and gotten hurt. But if there's anything that's worth risking your life for, it's retrieving fabric softener that these women could have just as easily gone back to the shelf for.

After I walked back up the escalator to resume my own shopping, the women finally followed suit, struggling to carry armloads of goods up to the top. I could have just delivered the items to the top in the first place and saved them the trouble, but I wasn't about to argue with their logic. Their logic had decreed me a hero. And the rest of you probably should now, too.

2013-01-28

Girl Meets Jail

I’m sorry, but I can’t see an impending Disney star without my mind flash-forwarding to her mugshot seven years from now.

It shouldn’t be so easy to predict It shouldn’t be so easy to look at an 11-year-old and think, “Teenage alcoholic in legal battles with her parents.” It shouldn’t be… but I’d put the odds at even money. It’s a bet I hope I lose.

I’m rooting for you, lil’ girl. Maybe I’m just feeling overprotective since I know the woman who could have been Ben Savage’s first baby mama.

2013-01-25

White Privilege and Macklemore

ramou: Finding other people who aren’t on Macklemore’s dick has, so far, been my favorite part of 2013. #THAT SONG IS SOME PRIVILEGED BULLSHIT AND CAN SUCK MY TEAT
I rarely disagree with Ramou, but I have to take exception in this case. My beef is actually with the Spin article that is contained in her link. I read that piece yesterday and could not get behind his thesis at all.

I like Macklemore a bunch, but truthfully I don’t care for “Thrift Shop.” The song is an anomaly on his album and anyone who likes/dislikes the artist based on this single has a very incomplete understanding of his music. He made a silly radio-friendly single, which I guess you can fault him for if you want, but that’s standard practice in contemporary music.



“Thrift Shop” is tongue-in-cheek! Playful! The lyrics are too ridiculous (“I wear your granddad’s clothes/I look incredible”) for him not to be spoofing on hipster culture. Rather than being “above” hipsters, however, he’s essentially embodying hipster culture by both participating and mocking simultaneously. Yeah the young audience that propelled the song to #1 probably reads it as literal, but I’ve similarly known people who don’t pick up on the obvious oral sex references in Flo Rida’s “Whistle” - that’s just the mainstream’s relationship to pop music for you.

It’s important to discuss white privilege on the regular, but I wouldn’t make Macklemore a main target of these conversations. He’s an intelligent man who raps about white privilege in his songs (check out the lyrics to “Claiming the City” and “A Wake”). He’s not only aware, he ruminates on the topic. If Brandon Soderberg thinks that a white guy can’t rap about thrift stores because he doesn’t understand the associated hardships of shopping at Goodwill, then maybe he’d agree that a white, liberal-arts educated man shouldn’t be covering hip hop for Spin. (Nah, he probably wouldn’t. Ride the privilege that helped get you that gig, Soderberg!)

Ultimately, even if “Thrift Shop” isn’t too my personal taste, I like the fact that there is now an anthem for thrifting. I am all about second-hand economies (so much that I’ve been trying to mainstream the phrase “second-hand economies” for years) and would love it if this song inspired people to buy more used goods. Firsthand consumerism is a system that generally fuels the already rich and depletes the earth’s resources. I buy used whenever practical out of a sense of social responsibility and community. I’m not even going to pretend that I don’t also get a thrill out of finding cheap and/or ironic things like Macklemore’s song references, but if more people got the same high from dropping $2 on a secondhand treasure as they do from putting themselves in credit card debt on material goods, then I view that as a positive. Maybe that’s just the opinion of a white privileged hipster, but if it is, I’m going to own it.

2013-01-23

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

It's funny how my childhood affinity for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has blinded me from ever thinking critically about the cartoon. As much as I want to respect it as an art, it is nothing if not a blatant commercial attempt to appeal to as many kids as possible:

Teenage - old enough to be looked up to, but not old enough to be uncool adults
Mutant - supernatural in a slightly creepy but inoffensive way
Ninja - kids love karate and fighting
Turtles - reptiles are kind of the best at that age, and turtles are probably the least "disgusting" reptile around

Oh and if the turtles title characteristics weren't enough, they also exclusively eat pizza and lived in a sewer. What kids don't love pizza and bathroom humor? They just piled on as many things as they could think of that would pander to children.

I don't care if I was just five, I'm kind of belatedly ashamed that I fell victim to such an intense marketing campaign. I bought tickets to the movies, the action figures, and even the breakfast cereal. Shame on them for playing into my youthful lack of media savvy.

It no only makes me angry, it makes me want to make my own cartoon. Preteen Radioactive Astronaut Cheetahs. Sure, it's a muddied concept that lacks integrity, but I'd make millions.

I guess I've been right all along: the Ninja Turtles are super gay.

2013-01-22

A Concerned Mother

A frantic mother came looking for her missing son at my compound this weekend.

It may seem like an alarming story, but there are two important details you need to know:
1. Her son was my thirty-something-year-old neighbor.
2. "Missing" meant that he hadn't called her in the past 12 hours.

It was Sunday morning. She had last spoken to him on Friday evening. She called him again on Saturday night and he didn't return her call right away. This wasn't like her son, you see. Apparently he always calls her back quickly. So now she was concerned for his safety and she drove out to his home to check on him.

Yikes.

He wasn't home. Or he wasn't answering his door anyway. Had we seen him? Did we know where he was? No and no. His car wasn't parked nearby. Where could he be?

My roommate's reassurance that his phone is probably either dead or did not have it with him did not seem to calm the mother. Instead, she obtained my landlady's phone number so she could have her let her in the house to verify whether he had left his phone in his house. My landlady apologetically said she was unavailable - hopefully for no other reason than she has no legal grounds to a let a crazy lady into her tenant's home simply for briefly ignoring his mother.

She finally left, but was no less convinced that her son wasn't dead. Oh, and no one was to tell her son about this visit. It would probably "embarrass" him.

You don't say.

Give your mom a call today (unless this is your mom, in which case make her sweat a little bit, it'll do her some good) if only to thank her for not acting like this.

2013-01-21

Beyond Race

Beyond Race: 8 Other Important Lessons from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We’ve made strides toward racial equality, but most of the other problems Dr. King spoke about have only gotten worse. On his holiday, I’m pleased to have the opportunity to share an article I wrote of some of his less remembered but equally important perspectives. It may sound trite, but I’m genuine when I say he is more relevant today than ever.

2013-01-20

A Disarming Mime

Five years ago I had a conversation at a bar with a mime. A verbal conversation, mind you. She wasn't in makeup or character, but she did a lot of talking about traveling to different countries to perform with a troop of mimes. It was all pretty bizarre.

And then it got more bizarre. When the mime excused herself to the bathroom, my friend made mention of the mime's missing arm. "What? She's not missing an arm!" I said. "I swear!" my friend said.

Sure enough, when the mime returned, I noticed that her right sleeve was just dangling with nothing in it. She had successfully hidden her missing limb from me in plain sight. I had noticed her gesturing a lot ("That's just like a mime - so expressive with her hands!" I had thought), but failed to pick up on the fact that she was only using one hand.

I wish I had had the guts and/or lack of social grace to ask her a pointed question about her disability. I mean, the choice to be a professional mime in itself is pretty intriguing, but you've really got to wonder how someone takes on a role where she must silently communicate with her hands when she's missing one essential limb. On the one hand, it doesn't make much sense. On the other hand (an expression which seems particularly inappropriate given the subject matter), I bet there's something beautiful about performing within these limitations.

I don't know that I have a point to this story, but I just thought you all should know that, honest-to-gosh, there is an armless mime out there in this funny world of ours. Also, if anyone knows David Lynch, I have a story to pitch to him.

2013-01-17

Le Mis? More Like IS LAME!

You see what I did there? I just inverted the syllables and got an accurate critique of the film.

It wasn't entirely bad. Some of the music was cool. Plus, with my activist tendencies, I started getting really excited whenever they featured the French Revolution -- too bad that kept getting pushed aside to make room for more love stories. But what was with the non-stop close-ups? The point of turning theater into a movie is to add some amazing visuals - but this was largely just a bunch of talking (or more accurately singing) heads. And if we - as the audience - aren't supposed to believe that Hugh Jackman is a child molester, then they should have done a better job of establishing that. I mean, I'm pretty sure he wasn't a ChiMo, but it's best not to leave that lingering doubt about your main character (unless of course we're talking about the movie Doubt, which is a way better example of adapting a play to cinema.)

I have no problem acknowledging that Anne Hathaway is pretty darn good. But then she dies really quickly. AND THERE'S STILL TWO HOURS OF THE FILM LEFT! You can't ask people to stick around for 120 minutes after the best part of your movie bites the dust. 

The main criticism I've read about the film is that Russell Crowe really sucks. But honestly, I fail to see how he's measurably worse than most of the cast. Like, you're going to call out Crowe for having a poor singing voice when Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter have multiple musical numbers in the film? And do you really think he's worse than that inbred looking kid who seems to have taken voice lessons from Kermit the Frog? 

Also, when you're promised that everyone in the film dies, make sure you actually kill everyone. Because the young couple left standing at the end? I didn't really care for them. It didn't seem fair to let them live when everyone they know and love dies, particularly since Ginger Kermit played a big role in the demise of all of his friends. 

I was told that even if I don't like musicals, I would get caught up in the tragedy and cry. I fully expected to cry, actually, because I was already crying a lot that week. That was another side effects of being covered in hives - I kept crying at the smallest things. It wasn't the pain, but I felt so vulnerable and hormonal that even the stupidest, sappiest things could provoke a few tears. Here's a list of things I remember crying about while be-hived (not to be confused with beehived): 
  • Searching for Sugar Man
  • two consecutive episodes of The Biggest Loser
  • The Sessions
  • The Other Dream Team
  • merely thinking about a previous viewing of Beasts of the Southern Wild
  • Won't Back Down (and no one should cry over Maggie Gyllenhaal unless they're asked to spell her name or endure a conversation with the woman) 
  • this flash mob at an unemployment office in Spain  

And yeah, shut up I watched a lot of movies last week - you try thinking of another way to spend your time when you can't use your hands. 

Anyway, the point is that I cried at just about everything indiscriminately, yet I did NOT cry at Les Miserables. That should say something. Heck, that should say everything. Worst Best Picture nominee of the bunch.

2013-01-16

Holmes Is Where the Heart Is


Uhhhh...? No, Facebook, I'm pretty sure I don't know Aurora shooter James Holmes. Is my online profile so troubling that an algorithm thinks we might be friends?

For the record, I don't know Alfred either.  

2013-01-15

The Opinions of Morons

@Boring_as_heck, aka Stefan, might be one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. He does this shtick where he retweets people who make moronic political statements and follows it up by immediately retweeting something else that person recently said that either directly contradicts what they wrote or makes it absolutely clear what a dimwit the person is.

Like when people hate on unions/welfare:
(For maximum comedic effect, it is best to read the tops from bottom to top)




Or when racists started flipping out on Election Day:




Today, some "SANDY HOOK IS A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY!" video has gone viral. A cousin of mine is very concerned about the video's content, and my own sister found it believable enough to ask me whether I thought it was true.

I haven't watched it - it's not that I'm anti-conspiracy theory, I'm just not about to waste my time with something dumb like that when there already hundreds of legitimate (and indisputable) acts of fraud and deception that people should already be enraged about. Don't trust your government? I'm with you. But to think a whole town to put on a violent play for the purpose of taking away your guns? I'll believe it when I see any meaningful gun reform actually occur. At most, I suspect we'll see required background checks for people who want to own grenade launchers or buy enough ammo to kill everyone in the state of Rhode Island. And, like, boo hoo to that. If you think you need protection from your government, start protesting against drones. With the killing machines we've created, if the government wants you dead, a gun won't help you.

But, um, as @boring_as_heck found, there are plenty of people who took the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory at face value:






And that's all that needs to be said about that.

2013-01-14

Alyssa's Heaving Bosom

Wahoo! After a month of holiday absence, our pub trivia team, The Fucking Catalina Wine Mixers, is back in action. Jared was really taken by one of the answer sheet's pictures of the heaving bosom of Alyssa Milano, so I tore it off the sheet so he could keep it. The host thought this was hilarious. Even though we've had our name for over nearly three years, we were momentarily entranced enough by the rack to flirt with changing our team name. A lot of other teams use puns on celebrities as their names (my favorite being QuizTeama Aguilera), so I searched my brain for an appropriate way to mix up Alyssa Milano into something funny and the best I came up with was...



"The Allyssa Mulattos". Yeah, inappropriate, but half the fun is pushing the boundary so far to see whether the trivia host will actually read the name aloud. Shout out to 18th century slave owners for the inspiration! (And by shout out, I mean "shame on you, you old dead racists.") In the end, we lost by one point. Maybe if we had actually adopted that bigoted name, we could have pulled off the victory.

2013-01-13

Nuts!

Hey, guess what! I appear to be allergic to tree nuts! Or, you know, so say the painful red hives covering half my body for the past week.

If you've noticed I haven't blogged more than a couple of sentences this past week, for once it's not because I'm lazy. My hands were swollen and covered in tiny bumps. I wasn't even aware that hands could become incapacitated in such a way. For a while, it gave me great discomfort to type. I even had to call in to work to say, "Uh, I can't type those articles for you because my hands really hurt." I'm just assuming my bosses believed my story because who would be dumb enough to try to pass that off as an excuse unless it were true?

It started with itchy hands. The bumps hadn't even formed yet and I couldn't figure out why I had an unceasing urge to scratch my palms and fingers - parts of my body that I don't usually need to itch. Then a rash appeared on my arm. Then my thighs. Then all over the place. The only experience I could compare it to was when I went for that dream vacation in Hawaii and then got intense heat rash and had to hide from the sun the whole week. Yup, I live a cool life, bros.

In this new case, my best guess was that I had gotten poison ivy on my hands and it spread as I had incidentally touched other parts of my body. Meanwhile, my friends said it looked more like I was experiencing an allergic reaction, a notion I loudly dismissed. I'm not allergic to things! That seems so wimpy!

All the while, as the hives kept mysteriously intensifying long after most rashes would subside, I kept eating this new brand of pesto sauce I had just bought. It was yummy and I ate a generous portion of it every day. As I researched what could aggravate my condition, I was oblivious to the obvious: had I recently changed soaps? Detergent? No, no. Had I introduced a new food to my system? No… well except for that jar of pesto, but… NOOOOO, NOT THAT YUMMY PESTO!

I really hope this is a mistaken diagnosis. Down the road, I'm going to have to test it to be sure because I'm not giving up mixed nuts "just to be safe". For real, you're going to have to pry cashews from my red hive-y hands because I love me some cashews. I mean, they're hella expensive and I still buy them, which should say something.

In addition to being painful, it's been a boring week. Given that I can't help but itch vigorously at my crotch all day, I've had to back out of most social interactions. Plus, when you can't use your hands, you really can't do much of anything. Quick, name three hobbies you can think of that don't involve gripping things with your hands.

It's also been a naked week. Though my penis avoided getting hives, the groin area at large was covered in red splotches. Merely wearing pants further aggravated the already irritated skin around my waist, as did underwear. In an effort to not sit bare-ass on the communal couch, I sometimes wore a loosely tied sarong that Andrew got me in Indonesia years ago. It's been the only good thing to come out of the experience. If societal homophobic masculinity is the only thing keeping men from wearing skirts, it's time guys fight against that because it feels really nice to let your balls dangle free like that. 

Moral of the story? Don't eat nuts, just liberate them.

This has been yet another chapter in "Kevin Babbles: A Pathetic Life." Please don't tell your friends.

2013-01-10

AIDS Quilt

As a kid, I thought that AIDS quilts worked in the same way as smallpox blankets. In other words, your risk of getting the disease wasn't about who you slept with - but WHAT you slept with.

Yeah, that is some ridiculous misinformation, but with this AIDS coloring book as my guide, what more do you expect?

2013-01-07

Forbidden Love


Forbidden Love

I stare at her longingly
Desiring to possess her
Yet I'm always told
Don't bother

The agony of seeing her
And being unable to hold her
My hatred towards society
And their silly viewpoints

I should be able to have her
We connect in so many ways
Who feels so elevated
That they dictate conditions
Of true love?

I happen to believe
That blood relation
Makes our spiritual bond
Even closer


Susan unearthed this poem I wrote as a teenager. For a while, writing inappropriate poetry was a pastime of mine (making me an inappropoet?) and I especially got a kick out of "Forbidden Love"'s last stanza incest reveal. I submitted it to my high school literary magazine where it was initially rejected. So then I intentionally became friends with the editors, and without me having to ask, they reconsidered and ran it anyway.

I did have some reservations about publishing the poem because, in a world where people take things at face value, particularly when it was presented alongside other angsty and unironic teenage poems, I wasn't sure that my peers would get that it was a joke. But then I figured, heck, I graduate in three weeks. The real fun would be knowing that if a scandal were to arise, my sister still had two years of high school to go.

Love you, Alison!

No really… LOVE YOU!

2013-01-06

Hot!


The feeling is mutual, Pizza Hut.

2013-01-05

The Queen of Versailles and the American Dream


IMPORTANT NETFLIX INSTANT (or DVD rental) RECOMMENDATION: The Queen of Versailles

The Queen of Versailles is a documentary about the Siegels, the family that is constructing the largest, most expensive (~$100 million) home in America. I like laughing at dumb 1%-ers, so I figured it'd be right up my alley. Indeed, I found those laughs when the protagonist fails to realize that it's demeaning to dress her nanny up in a full Rudolph costume to entertain Christmas party guests, when she gives a tour of her lavish home and says seemingly negligent things like, "This is the staircase I would come up if I was going to visit the children," and when she goes to an average car rental business (think Enterprise) and is surprised to learn the vehicle doesn't come with a chauffeur. In addition to the laughs, though, I was surprised to discover how much depth the film has.

Yup, there's depth to be found even in the shallowest of subjects, namely Jackie Siegel. She survived a childhood of poverty and an abusive first marriage and later became a beauty queen and trophy wife to a time-share tycoon. Jackie's new lifestyle has made her a pretty ridiculous person. You can't help but judge her dress, decor, priorities, and interactions. Jackie's so clueless, however, that she fails to realize anyone would judge her for such things… or feel anything but admiration for her wealth, for that matter.

It all plays out sort of like an episode of Bravo's The Real Housewives, although you need not be a fan of the franchise to enjoy this film. That's because it's not just about superficiality - it's about the American dream. It's a critique of how we idolize wealth and material possessions and assume our lives would be so much better if we could literally have it all. The Siegels have accomplished what most Americans aspire to… and they are no happier for it. If anything, they seem pretty unhappy.

This is evidenced by the Siegels' niece, who the family takes in after learning she's been living in squalor. The way she changes in the transition from filthy poor to filthy rich are mostly discernible through subtext, but she does a decent job of explaining it herself: She was initially appreciative to have a more secure life, but then she "got used to" getting everything she wanted so now she just finds new reasons to be miserable.

The niece is one of nine kids, by the way. The other eight all came out of Jackie's own (well, plastic surgery-enhanced) body. She said she initially only wanted one kid, but when she was able to hire a slew of nannies, there was no incentive to stop reproducing. In that sense, her breeding practices mimic her shopping habits: she just keeps buying anything and everything (even duplicates - how many Operation board games does one family need?) because she doesn't have to take on any responsibility. Meanwhile, the kids are adopting similar tendencies - collecting dozens of pets and killing some due to neglect. 

Partway through the film, the economy crashes and the time-share business takes a major dive. Even (near?-)billionaires like the Siegels are suddenly put under financial constraints and their pricy mansion goes into foreclosure. While selling their dream home would be the best option, as you might expect, the market for $100 million homes is non-existent.

Suddenly, the Siegels are just like us. The movie even helps draw the parallels for you: one of Jackie's childhood friends needs just a few thousand dollars to save her home from foreclosure, but even when she gets the funds, the bank decides to repossess the home anyway. And then there's one of the Siegel's domestic workers whose lifelong dream is to be a homeowner. By her own suggestion, she settles for taking over a cramped kids' playhouse in the backyard and could not be happier to have a place to call her own. 

One thing I appreciate about the documentary is that they don't make Jackie look like an asshole. It'd be easy - probably even tempting - to have done that, but you can still tell that she's well-intentioned even if she's too out-of-touch to be of much help to anyone. She's just a victim of her circumstances. Yeah, I know it's funny to call someone who is insanely wealthy a "victim", but in Jackie's case, I believe it to be true. I also believe her when she says she would be just as happy to scale back and live with her whole family in a one-bedroom apartment. Or well, I believe that she really believes that anyway. Old habits die hard. Understanding that she must now live on a limited budget, Jackie starts shopping at Walmart… yet still drops thousands of dollars on frivolous items.

Even though her ideals are drastically different from my own, I couldn't help but root for Jackie - maybe not to become super rich again, but to figure it out and pursue genuine contentment. I can't say the same about Jackie's husband, David. He does come across as an asshole, but I wouldn't blame the edit for that. It's hard to like a guy who refuses to spend time with his family, sexually harasses the Miss America contestants he invites to his home, tells his wife that he's going to trade her in for two 20 year-olds when she turns 40, and boasts that he illegally rigged the presidential election for George W. Bush.

Though we see less of David, he may be even more fascinating than Jackie. The man is corporate America. Due to his own humble beginnings, David was motivated to succeed later in life, assuming it would bring him the joy he was missing. When that didn't happen, rather than trying to find a different route, he figured he just needed to succeed even more, despite the fact that he already financially accomplished more than 99.99999% of people ever would. Alas, in pushing for even greater profits, David winds up gambling it all away.

Although David feels superior to his loyal wife and openly shows contempt for her, he's really not that much different than Jackie in that he is also entirely about appearances. He builds a gigantic house not to live in, but to impress others. He amasses a big family not to love, but to show off. He expands his business not because it's strategic, but so he can put his name on more buildings. Undoubtedly, David initially invited the film crew into his home because he knew he could convey an enviable life even if he didn't really have one. By the end, however, David is openly miserable, in large part because the narrative has evolved to that of a family that was formerly successful. When a man focuses on establishing a legacy rather than living a life that brings him actual joy, he is bound to become hostile when that legacy is exposed as a mirage. What good is being elite if people realize they wouldn't want to trade places with you after all?

What an accurate representation of the current, misguided American dream. And what a compelling argument for why we need to finally wake up from it. 

Look Out, Heaven



Look at this shitty thing my mom received for Christmas from one of her friends.

This is what happens when she regularly gets together with her friends to drink wine and make crafts. I mean, I know it's a good time for her, but someone must have drank and crafted too much if they thought that this was a reasonable present.*

Firstly, what does that text even mean? Are there people who get really sad when snow melts and need to be comforted? Like, "There, there, that snowman you built is with God now. He's a snow  angel." I'm also not sure how to go forward. Should I be making more snowmen so that there will be more snow angels? Or should we stop making snowmen altogether so that there's room enough for the rest of us in heaven? I don't want to get to St. Peter and have him say, "Sorry, there's no room at the inn, we've had an influx of snow angels."

Secondly - and I know I started over-thinking this, but the blame for that rests on that ridiculous poem - I have to nitpick about how the design of this thing spits in the face of physics. I don't know if you've ever built a snowman before, but a snowman doesn't melt bottom to top. The head is actually the first thing to melt: It's the smallest ball and the one that the sun has the most contact with. So, like, as cute as this craft is supposed to be, I suspect foul play was involved. For the head to be so intact, someone must have come and attacked its torso with hairdryers or something.

It all reminds me of a question (inspired by the Simpsons maybe?) I asked my Sunday school teacher as a kid: "If you're decapitated on earth, do you get your head back in heaven?" Given what remains, is this new snow angel going to have a head? Because if heaven is full of headless snow angels, that sounds terrifying and I don't want to go. I might start murdering snowmen just to avoid that.

* All of this criticism is moot if this was a regift. Because I would pawn that crap off on someone else pretty quickly, too. 

2013-01-03

Which I Ate Directly from the Bag


  • Her: Did you eat dinner yet?
  • Me: Yeah.
  • Her: What'd you have?
  • Me: A bag of salad, which I ate directly from the bag, a slice of bread, and a plain rice cake.
  • Her: [gives disapproving glare]
  • Me: Yup… did I mention I'm writing a cookbook?