Teeny Manolo

From a swear-to-god true craigslist ad: 

BOWS FOR DOGGIES OR BABY- SO ADORABLE – $1

I AM STARTING A BOW BUSINESS FOR PETS AND WILL BRING THEM TO YOUR SHOP

$1.25 EACH ( MIM – OF 10 )

SO CALLING ALL GROOMERS – CALL ME FOR THESE ADORABLE HANDMADE BOWS

LIL*DJ* LOVE IS LIFE – DOGGIE JEMS

If you are going to go for some sort of dual marketing ploy, at least do it in a different ad! Just imagine how embarassed my daughter would be to have the same bow in her hair as the Yorkie down the street.

I’m feeling the pressure to list a “greatest hits” list of ‘09 just like everybody else, and I’m busy enough to cave.

So, feel free to take a look back at the year that was here at Teeny Manolo.  Here’s a sampling of some of our most visited/most commented/most popular posts.

Oh, to be a man today.

A child molester is a child molester, period.

Sex toy or baby toy?

Raincoaster’s Five Fingers of Fug.

Teeny Manolo channels Samuel L. Jackson.

What 45,000 British Pounds will get you, which is not a lot…

Winner of the most digusting recipe EVAH.

Did Jesus start this way?

The debate on the evils of capri pants.  Who knew the topic was so heated?

Jackman versus Craig, a feast for the eyes!

What is McDonald’s thinking?

Now listen, before y’all go judgy-judgy on me for eating McDonald’s, I’ve got a two month old, a seven year old, and I’m moving residences next week. So yeah, we got some McDonald’s because I didn’t feel like cooking after spending a day wrapping up all my fragile glass items. Which happens to be a lot, which in turn makes me wonder how the hell I got so many fragile glass items.

Anyhoo, it seems that the new Happy Meals are Avatar-themed, to which I say, WTF?

If I’m not mistaken, Avatar is rated PG-13 and I have the feeling that there isn’t a large contingent of 13 year olds that still eat Happy Meals. So why is my kid receiving a toy from a movie in which he has at least five more years until he can even think of seeing it?

The figures have extremely limited play value, and they mean absolutely nothing to him because he doesn’t even know the movie exists. So why force the marketing onto a demographic the movie by all indications shouldn’t even be attempting to reach?

I’ve got lots of questions in this post, to which most of them only McDonald’s can answer. I say most because even though they are a rich, powerful company, I don’t expect them to know why I have so many lead crystal vases.

Courtesy of SketchySantas:

That’s the question Details magazine wants to know, and it seems that in most cases, it’s the parents.

Well, actually the title is “Are You Raising a Douchebag?”  According to the article, your child might be a douchebag if he labels his friend’s birthday party as lame, is the one in charge of picking the weekend brunch spot, and “asks how the branzino is prepared.”

But what it all boils down to is basically parenting, or lack thereof.  The magazine points out the recent trend of wanting to be your kid’s friend rather than their actual parent. 

I don’t understand parents like that, to be honest.  I’ve got plenty of friends my own age, I don’t need my kid to be one.  And more importantly, he doesn’t need a 38 year old “friend” either.   I know someone who was so attatched to her mom that she wanted her mother to accompany her on her honeymoon cruise.  That, my friends, is just all kinds of wrong.

What I want to know is, do the parents who are raising douchebag kids really know that they are raising douchebag kids?  My guess is that they are too involved in their own little worlds to acknowledge the all-around douchebaggery of their family.

Because let’s face it, parents who are truly cool don’t raise douchebag kids.  Being a truly cool parent has nothing to do with your Bugaboo stroller and everything to do with how you teach your strong morals and ethics to your kids, hopefully by example. 

However, as an example used in the article, I totally cop to wanting my son to appreciate Roxy Music as much as I do. 

If that makes me a fractionally douchebag parent, then my apologies in advance.

You know, normally I am the very last person to dislike a child.

But for some reason, I dislike the character this child plays in this commercial. I’m very tired of the “precocious redhead” type, thank you very much.

Even Welch’s Grape Juice got the picture after a while. Have you seen an ad of theirs lately featuring a wise-beyond-their-years preschooler? Nope, I thought not.

I’m all right with a kid just being a kid, not some sort of wise know-it-all. Because nobody likes a know-it-all. Especially a crabby woman with a newborn who isn’t getting enough sleep.

You guys,  I just bought this new, super-cool cradle for my soon-to-be-arriving daughter.  I happen to think it is just perfect!

You love it too, right?

Well, you would think we were talking about snakes by the way people are reacting to the fact that a supposedly unruly 2 year old and his mother were kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight.  Southwest has since apologized, but it hasn’t changed the way people feel about it.

Here are some letter writers on the website Salon, who wrote in reaction to the news:

F*ck Her and F*uck Her Brat
I am goddamn sick and tired of screaming, misbehaving children making my time in public places a misery. Kudos to Southwest for having the intestinal fortitude to do the obvious thing: Boot their asses off the damned plane. If I’d been there, I would have given the flight crew a standing ovation.

The world doesn’t revolve around your spawn
People need to realize that. don’t get me started on people who bring their little beasts into movie theaters.

Keep the Kids Home
I was recently on a NWA flight, in first class, suffering through a kid screaming at the top of its lungs for the last 45 minutes of the flight. We surmised that the kid was sick with an earache and was basically being tortured for the latter part of the flight. The parents should have been charged with child abuse.

I applaud SWA. I wish them and other airlines would apply a very stiff surcharge to anyone under 12, in order to discourage flying with kids.

Throw Them from the Plane (at Altitude)
Sorry, I’m childless which apparently makes me already at risk for being an asshole, but having flown recently in a plane with a six year old kid who apparently was autistic and screamed the whole way? Fuck’em. If they can’t shut up, I don’t want them on the plane. That’s what driving was invented for.

I’ll have to write Southwest an email applauding their efforts.

It’s about time!!!
Finally! Throw mama from the plane and the screaming brat too. It’s about time someone got one of those lousy mother’s attention. Make your kids behave. This should happen more often!

All I can say is wow, there sure are a lot of bitter-ass childless people in this world.

I feel sorry for them.