The Sad Amputee

I, too, would be this emo if I was a one-legged Hot Topic goth disaster accompanied by a little sporty sidekick in all my photos. Thank goodness for that pillar to lean against. Not sure what's going on with the distressed details on the photo, though -- does Photoshop have a filter that traces all the stitching on your pants? Looks vaguely like you're a depressed Cyborg/Transformers bot to me. One with a boy band haircut that even Nick Lachey would make fun of. Life is so hard. Good thing we have pockets to hide our hands and shame.

The Loop and Lean

Maybe this is a common Turkish Facebook custom I am wholly ignorant of, but I am not familiar with this pose other than in the context of Jostens/Lifetouch school portraits and JC Penney Studio photos. I shall call it "The Loop and Lean."




How to achieve the Loop and Lean Total Package:
Lean oh-so-casually against an invisible wall or white backdrop, because it says "I'm not as stiff as Al Gore." It makes you look open and approachable, and -- this is super important, especially if you end up using this as your photo on eHarmony, match.com and international dating sites -- completely non-threatening.

Loop your thumbs into nonexistent loops on the inside of your waistband (preferably that of medium-wash denim jeans, like the ones preferred by Al Borland of Home Improvement but dark rinses will do). Just tuck your thumbs into your pants near your belt buckle, but not so deep that it looks like you're trying to scratch your balls.

Finally, angle your hands downward so they make a triangle surrounding your package. For the particularly brave, such as our friend Erden here, feel free to place your fingers directly onto the family jewels. This is very important as it accentuates the sock you have pre-emptively wadded and stuffed into your tighty-whiteys and draws the eye downwards towards your unit. Don't worry, it doesn't make people feel uncomfortable at all.

This versatile pose can be used anywhere, anytime. At parent-teacher conferences, at church, at weddings, at AA meetings, at the local gun show, at your kid's super sweet sixteen as you begrudgingly watch her squeal over her new Range Rover, at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after your Caribbean cruise ship has sunk -- anywhere, I said.


Al Gore utilizes a Loop and Lean fairy and CFLs to reduce his carbon footprint. What have you done to save the environment?



You'll never be stumped for a pose at the Happiest Place on Earth again!


Early adopters and tween catalog models are doing it. In this case, our Hannah Montana Fantana doesn't have a package to emphasize, and demonstrates the innocent, happy-go-lucky variation of the Loop and Lean. But don't worry, parents, she'll be whoring it up in just a few short years right about now, with the suggestive variation (topless, save for a wrinkly bedsheet, with tousled sex hair and a red harlot pout, a la Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair this month).


Finally, our pal poses with the master of the Loop and Lean, Al Borland!

The Snail

"Time and Patience would bring the snail to Jersualem." -- Irish proverb

Wait, why the hell is this an Irish proverb? Someone enlighten me, please. I have to go sit down and think about what it means to suddenly get friended by snails. (It's a female snail, by the way.) It really changes my whole perspective on the world and the meaning of life, because maybe I'm meant to be some Pied Piper of tiny animals, like the episode of The Simpsons where Lisa grows an entire itty-bitty civilization in a tub.

Maybe this means my next pending friend request will come from a koala or a baby seal. Sweet.

The Catman

Catman! Dada dada dada dada Catman!

This guy is either getting pumped for Andrew Lloyd Webber Tribute Week (it's this week!) on American Idol by riding the BART while decked out in feline finery, or a struggling, tapdancing mime on the pee-scented streets of Berkeley who is an English for non-native speakers teacher by night.

But he is most likely an insouciant San Francisco transplant en route to an ironic costume party in the Mission that will involve barhopping to places with names from a pre-Berlin Wall-falling down era, like Walzwerk and Gestalt Haus, reapplying the cat eye makeup while stumbling into a taxicab with 8 friends, taking lots of polaroid pictures that he won't remember until the next day, and eventually ending up at an all-night karaoke bar where he will warble "Memory" from Cats, the musical.


"If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is."

Dude, I totally found your mom.



How can you resist cats with names like Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbleshanks, Munkustrap, and Jellylorum?! I know I can't.

The Horny High Schooler, Revisited

When I'm craving a good bowl of ramen, I go to Shin-Sen-Gumi Hakata Ramen in Rosemead. It's no Phở (which fills the void when I'm feeling homesick or missing my lost childhood or something a shrink would surely make me deal with), but it leaves you feeling warm and toasty and full of MSG. In the good way. What I'm trying to get to, in a roundabout way (hey, it's 3:43 am, my mind is not as concise as it'd like to be at this hour), is the Shin-Sen-Gumi Ramen extra noodle deal. So you inhale your bowl of hakata ramen with spicy miso and chashu pork, but there's still plenty of broth. Do you slurp the rest? No. For only 95 cents, you can get extra noodles -- they'll plonk a heap of gluteny goodness cooked just the way you like 'em into your broth. So it's like a whole new bowl of noodles for less than a buck.

If you're a guy and polish off 5 bowls, you only get charged for the original bowl (7 bucks, plus price of toppings), not the 4 refills you had. If you're a chick, you only need to eat 4 bowls to achieve the Hakata Ramen Challenge and get charged for your initial bowl. Awesome double standard, I know.

So -- what I'm getting to is that when a Pending Facebook Friend Reject (TM) suddenly changes their Facebook profile photo (once or multiple times), it's like that second, third, or fourth refill. It's the gift that you don't want and you desperately want to regift to someone else, but you can't, because you're stuck with it and you'd totally be caught if you passed it off to another friend. It just keeps forcing itself upon you until you wail and tear at your hair and give in.

The whole diminishing marginal returns thing, like in the world of endless ramen, means that the friend request isn't as creepy or ROFLMAO-inducing or as awkward as it was when you first set eyes on it, but it can sometimes be better. Because you've sated your hunger to know who the hell this random freakazoid is and have a greater appreciation and understanding of your FB Friend Reject. You've gotten to know them, sorta, and you've learned as much as you can by stalking them (as much as you can with however their privacy settings are set, anyway). Maybe it's the Stockholm syndrome talking, but our horny high schooler looks almost endearing in his new Facebook photos. Remember him?

Here he is upon our first meeting in the purgatory that is my Facebook Friend Requests inbox:


Creepy, right? Especially since you don't know if it's the shaggy Scooby lookalike on the left or the albino with the Flowbee'd hair on the right. Or maybe they are conjoined twins (joined at the head, obviously) and together make one person, Jake being the first kid's name and Grogan being the second's. The disparity in their sizes means that Jake ate part of Grogan in utero, and then proceeded to steal all his food once they got outside the womb.

Take 2:


Hmm. Well, now we've eliminated that it's the short-bus riding bowl cut kid. How can a girl say no to a kid who's trapped in the stocks?

Statuatory rape laws, of course.


Take 3:

Alright, now you're just starting to look like an asshat with a smack of smug. I guess this means you're growing up and applying to colleges, reading HotChicksWith Douchebags.com, and we're growing apart. I feel like I don't even know you anymore. Did I ever?

We're so over, Jakey-poo.

XOXO

The Delight of a Child is Contagious

I love kids, I really do. They're whimsical little people who think I'm a giant (I'm an intimidating 5'3" in shoes). They never protest that they're on a diet when I bake cookies for them. We can nap, pretend that the floor is made of lava, and eat Play-Doh together. It's natural that they think I'm awesome -- my favorite time of the day is snacktime, I can fit in their crib with them, I still think toasters are magical, and I have retained my sense of wonder. But my biological clock isn't ticking, and I look barely old enough to ovulate.

So why are these fetuses trying to friend me on Facebook? They're definitely not able to eat solid foods yet.

Yuksel with the uumlauts up there is either playing peekaboo with himself and a blue blanket or is gazing adoringly at a giant nipple that's been cropped from the picture. I don't know, that's the expression babies get when the boobies filling station is open for business.

Alaa here has been abandoned in a field of red tulips (Holland, perhaps?) with a floppy yellow bucket hat on her head and puffed sleeves that Anne of Green Gables would totally covet. She also appears to age in reverse, growing younger with every passing year, like Merlin in The Once and Future King. Because this fetus is 41, people, and appears to have limited motor skills. It's a long way back to Egypt, baby. Did your mom pimp you out to Anne Geddes, hoping to cash in on your adorableness in a animal/vegetable/mineral-themed photo extravaganza?



"But I am a scrapbooking mommy's wet dream!"

Yeah, well this sunflower kid is so hot right now, you really can't compete.


"I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking."

Also, it doesn't help that you look just like Baby Sinclair from Dinosaurs.



"I'm the baby, gotta love me!"

The Geraldo

Even though his name is synonymous with "muckraking journalist" and "Michelle Malkin spit controversy" in America, it's kind of nice to see that Geraldo Rivera's legacy lives on in Iraq.

Meet Mumtaz, president of his local Geraldo Rivera Foreva! fan club. He'd like to share some of the framed photos and posters he has in his bedroom.

Geraldo, circa 1972, before he went on to investigate the real reason why Elvis died. No, it wasn't the deep fried peanut butter banana sandwiches double-dipped in lard and bread crumbs.


The Man, The Legend -- looking vaguely like a Puerto Rican Alex Trebek.


Can't get enough of the pompadour and hypnotic facial hair? Here's Geraldo interviewing John Lennon. No, not Jhon Lennon, John Lennon. Before Geraldo had his own self-titled talk show with such episodes as ""Men in Lace Panties and the Women Who Love Them" and got his nose broken by skinheads. Oh, and don't forget the Satanism special that rocked America!




Cocktail Fact of the Day: Geraldo was married to Kurt Vonnegut's daughter, Edith. They divorced in '74, but Vonnegut still made fun of Geraldo in several novels, including Palm Sunday and Fates Worse Than Death.

Viva la Moustache!

The Dyslexic HaitianPrince

Welcome to So You Think You Can Type! I am your reluctant host, and today's performance will feature Jhon, who is not only an anagram of J-O-H-N, but a real live Haitian prince, despite Haiti being a presidential republic and all. Minor detail. I am informed by multiple credible sources that Jhon is the true spelling of the biblical name John, but that Jhon is reserved only for self-proclaimed royalty and ballers who go to Vegas with 7 frat brothers and shell out for one room with two double beds. Because that's how Jhon rolls, yo.

Oh, it's also reserved for dyslexics who can't type.

Let's meet the judges. What do our Jhons think of thethehaitianprince?

Jhon Lennon:

"Imagine all the people...spelling their own name...living life in peace...yoo hoo...One world, one name, one Jhon."


Jhon E. Cash:

“Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money. And proper spacing and capitalization.”

Finally, our contestant speaks!

thehaitianprince:

"This photo is cropped and all, but I totally had a ton of hot chicks hanging on me in the original pic. You just can't see them, but they were there. I swear. What do you think of my fresh white shirt, popped collar and stunna shades? Also, I am trying to spell out 'Free Tibet' with my fingers. "


"The hot chicks, they looked kind of like this. Thanks, Wikipedia!" - thehaitianprince

ESTETICA MAN

The top Google search result for "ESTETICA MEN" is this. Like the caption on our Turkish friend Sedat's profile photo, the site's title is also fond of SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS.

MORE MEN THAN EVER ARE COMING FOR COSMETIC SURGERY AND PLASTIC SURGERY

Coming where, exactly? And what type of "coming" are we talking about? Coming in to the offices of board-certified medical professionals? Or is this a site devoted to fetish videos like "Botched Botox Face...shot" and "2 girls, 1 Collagen Cup" ?

I'm scared to click.




Okay, I clicked. It's the former, but is possibly worse than the fetish site it could have been.

"The reasons for this are complex. It probably reflects an increased awareness of cosmetic surgery and a growth in decision making by men in health care issues. In the past it was known that almost all decisions about health care were made by women. An old joke was that if a man needed a urologist he asked his wife who to go to and she would ask her gynecologist! Times have changed. Men now take increasing responsibility for their own choices in health care and one aspect of this is the growth in cosmetic surgery."

In the past, it was known that women were treated as the property of their husbands, and your friendly neighborhood blacksmith was also your dentist.

Here are the top surgical procedures that are "special for man" according to the site:

1. Gynecomastia - large breasts. Also known as MANBOOBS, moobs, man cans, bitch tits, bro tits, or fat kid
2. Penis - self-explanatory. I assume this only pertains to enlargement, not reduction. You probably don't get too many patients whining, "Doctor, my member is so large that my girlfriend is in another area code when we have special cuddle time! It needs to be smaller so I can spoon her without stabbing her!" or "My giant dick is causing me back problems and I have this marathon to run..." See also: the burning male desire to be a human tripod
   
3. Hair transplantation - when Rogaine just doesn't do it for you. Dangers and side effects include Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). See also: Arrested Development, Tobias Fünke, for what happens when your body rejects your transplants

I also learned this little gem, although there were no references or studies to back it up: In general, men tend to be less happy with the results of cosmetic surgery than women.

What do you think our Turkish pending friend has gotten done? He looks rather unhappy with his results, a little around the eyes, I think. Why so pouty, Sedat? Do you want some lip plumper?

Rob Zombie's Turkish Cousin

He comes from the grave, his body a home of worms and filth. No life in his eyes, no warmth of his skin, no beating of his breast. His soul, as empty and dark as the night sky. He laughs at the blade, spits at the arrow, for they will not harm his flesh. For eternity, he will walk the earth, smelling the sweet blood of the living, feasting upon the bones of the damned. Beware, for he is the living dead. -Obscure Hindu text, circa 1000 B.C.E.

I immediately consult Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide. When dealing with a pending friend request from a zombie, assess how easy it would be to lop his head off should you ever meet in real life. I will certainly need both hands to do so. After evaluating the contents of my kitchen drawers, I decided that Crate & Barrel silicone spatulas and whisks would not be very effective against someone who has literally no nerve receptors and can't feel pain. And I'd like to keep my spatula use limited to frosting cakes and mixing waffle batters.

"What changes do occur are in the way this new, reanimated body is used by the now-infected brain. There is no way a zombie could fly unless the human it used to be could fly. The same goes for projecting force fields, teleportation, moving through solid objects, transforming into a wolf, breathing fire, or a variety of other mystical talents attributed to the walking dead."

So the only way Hakki could get here is by hopping on a plane or cruiseship. Good to know. But with the sagging US market economy at an all-time low and zombie Internet skills being at an all-time high, what's stopping them from booking cheap tickets on Orbitz for a coast-to-coast uprising? They can afford real estate!

Upon closer inspection (it's always good to know your enemy), I uncover a curious fact about my zombie. He's a she. Or she's a he. A shemale, if you will, or a shim. Someone's been taking testosterone supplements, because my zombie claims to be female.



Does this mean there are zombies out there who decide to switch teams after reanimation? Or is it more like Jurassic Park with the sex-changing frog genes? Are zombie trannies marginalized for their flamboyant clothing choices and cosmetic surgeries as RuPaul and Dolly Parton are here in the living world? Why would my zombie tranny resign herself/himself to the beginnings of an aggressive unibrow and molestache + beard combo? Perhaps I will drop her/him/shim a little note about the miracle of Nair and waxing. Wait, how does this zombie even have such lustrous hair? All his/her follicles are supposed to be dead!

Oh, and here is Hakki's American cousin, Rob. He's always grouchy in his pictures because it's super hard to juggle being undead and directing/producing so many shitty movies every year that go straight to DVD. It really wears on a zombie.

Anyone got a hockey stick I can borrow? Blades never need reloading.

---

On second thought, my zombie could totally be a vampire soccer hooligan. Please advise.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Blue

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint? - Repetition, S. Kierkegaard


Is it raining in your soul? Are you looking off to the side because you have an eye disease that causes your eyes to wander, or are you just that deep?

What's that, you say? Ohmygosh, I love Nietzsche, too! I carry around Camus' The Stranger in the original French in my back pocket, next to Sartre's Being and Nothingness and the ball of lint I gather from my belly button each day. It's so existential, belly button lint. Where does it come from? What does it mean? Does existence truly precede essence? Can we ever truly love? The world is just so...blue. But is the blue that I see the same as the blue you see? Or are you just that bad at using Photoshop?

God, I'm so fucking deep.

P.S. God is dead.

The Magical Mullet Man

I knew Jostens was acquired by Lifetouch Photography in the world of school photo monopoly-empires, but I had no idea you could add an 80's/early '90s theme to your portrait session. Minor photo touch-ups to hide that embarrassing acne flare-up or oilslick of a forehead, yes. Awkward poses requiring you to rest your chin on your hand or fold your arms on a desk or do a leg lunge on a white metal bench? Yep. The world's largest selection of spackled/splatter paint backdrops? Hell yeah! But digitally-created hair that can turn this bald foreign guy into the poor man's Duckie from "Pretty in Pink"? I was not expecting that. Astonishing!

Rate his hair in the comments! Is he still a virgin?

Is this why speed-dating in complete darkness should be an option? Or is this a photo cribbed from a directory of foreign venture capitalists who want to buy an Asian internet bride?

In the beginning, there were underage horny high-schoolers

Dear Facebook: Create a filter for inappropriate friend requests

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into this, but this is his second friend request and it suggests that he wants to be deflowered by what he considers a semi-successful college graduate/older woman. Gross.

In between coaching Luddites to overcome their technology anxiety, consoling FB stalkers who realize that their crushes can track some of their stalkerish actions through Feed, and gently chastising kids who type e-mails that sound more like texts (idk, my bff Jill?), I fend off underage high schoolers and middle-aged Turkish men (some with profile pictures that clearly date back to the mid-'80s) who attempt to friend me. They cannot type coherent sentences. I feel like the hottest girl at the world's most grammatically-challenged, greasy prom. It's not a good feeling.

I figured I would share some of the Greatest Pending Friend Rejects with you.