Teeny Manolo

Now, regular readers will know several things about this blog. They’ll know about Listmania. They’ll know about the Friday Caption Contest. They’ll know, if they’ve got the right hormones, about the Celebrity Dad Face-Off.

And they will also know that if you’re looking for practical parenting advice, you go to Glinda. If you’re looking for attitude with or without a side of tentacles, you come to me.

But today Glinda has her hands full making fun of neurasthenic Desperate Housewives, so we must look elsewhere in the blogosphere for a good, stiff dose of sense. Where do we find it?

Ask Aunt Fattie! Seriously, this may be my second favorite advice column, right after Ask Sister Mary Martha (She had me at “Home Depot.” The only way to make Home Depot more awesome is to add nuns). The question o’ the day is, how to look for a job when you’re quite obviously pregnant, even if you’re not actually pregnant. A fraught question indeed. Let’s see what she’s got to say:

Dear Aunt Fatty,

I’m a college senior, about to enter the big wide job market, and I’m looking for some advice on how to handle my Ultra Super Special Body Shape.

You see, I look like I’m about 5-6 months pregnant, despite a complete and total lack of fetuses in my stomach…

Response:

Dear Imaginary Fetus,

Aunt Fattie’s first suggestion would be a T-shirt reading “No, I’m Not Pregnant.”

Her first serious suggestion would be “no empire waists.”

In truth, this is a poser. It is reprehensible but undeniable that firms and companies are reluctant to hire pregnant women because they don’t want to immediately pay for an extended leave of absence. Due to both social and legal restrictions, you can’t solve this with words — they can’t ask, and it’s awkward to answer unbidden. And so, you must solve it with clothes…

Finally, please remember: the “problem” in this case is not your belly, but widespread discriminatory hiring practices. Unfortunately, changing the latter is a huge project, and you shouldn’t have to go unemployed while it’s being undertaken. But even though Aunt Fattie’s advice involves hiding your belly, your belly is NOT the problem here.

And so it goes, with practical advice, witty phrasing, and motivational delivery, and with many amusing and several actually very useful suggestions in the comments. Did you know what happens to your ladyparts when you wear a spandex bodysquasher when you’re actually pregnant?

YOU. DON’T. WANT. TO. KNOW.

Note that the recommended outfits would not include this:

via JudithJane

Welcome to Cthulhu-ville, where the overlords are unspeakable, the architecture is non-Euclidean and the natives are eldritch.

This is the garage sale sign you pass on your way to a playground that looks like this:

And after you’ve take the spawn to the playground you drive home:

(are those bloody handprints? Charming!)

And tuck the tadpoles into bed in an apartment block that looks like this:

Sweet dreams! Fhtagn!

Carrying on from Glinda’s Teeny Poll: What causes art? In this case, it’s simple: a child’s desire for mutilation.

Do 13-year-olds really need to be saving their babysitting and paper route money for breast implants? Cheryl-Ann Webster wondered that herself, when her daughter told her that a friend was already socking away money for the boobflation job she felt would be an absolute necessity, sooner rather than later.

So Cheryl-Ann made a few synthetic boobs herself; she made The Beautiful Women Project.

To demonstrate that beautiful bodies come in all shapes and sizes, she wanted to surround young girls with sculptures of real women’s bodies…

The Beautiful Women Project is a touring art exhibition of life-sized torsos of real women aged 19-91.

Aims:

* To challenge socially-constructed images of beauty
* To raise awareness and open a dialogue about the link between self-worth and physical appearance
* To be a teaching and healing tool

In the artist’s words: “Our bodies tell our life story. They are portraits of our journeys and experiences. Knowing that our body is beautiful just as it exists, is a message more people need to see and hear.”

In a shocking revelation that should rock the Democratic horserace to its very core, New York media scene blog Gawker (who seem to be baiting me lately with all the kid stuff) reveals that person or persons unknown have been posting on Craigslist, looking for a few multi-culti children to connect with the Obama campaign, having apparently run out of minors who will associate with him of their own free will. And that’s not the worst of it: No pay!

Shock! Horror! What does Hillary have to say about this?

Help Obama get elected/Need parent with small child

---

Reply to: gigs-621146478@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-03-27, 5:17PM PDTWant to help Obama get elected? Looking for parents with a small child to be in a commercial. African American, caucasian, asian, hispanic, anyone and everyone. Will only take a little bit of your time and it’s a huge way to help Obama’s effort for equality in this country.

Guess these people wouldn’t take his calls:

KidsForObama

AndTheOtherKidsForObamaSite

I can certainly understand why he wouldn’t want to use his own children.

Forgive me if you’ve seen this already. Cover the eyes of your tender young and gaze, if you can, upon the unmitigated malignity which is The Real Easter Bunny.

Via Defamer

This is what it’s like to work for a celebrity. In limos, you are the one stuck on the jump seat while the boss gets the whole back to himself. In restaurants, you get the table by the bathroom door while the owners ply the celeb with Champagne and truffles. And when it comes to reader-submitted vintage YouTubes of Texans endangering their chillens for the sake of a tawdry few moments of fame, you get sloppy seconds.

So go over to The Manolo’s place for the very best in Baby Hater news. I’m going to drown my sorrows in Ovaltine…

You would not believe the furor this picture has caused on the internets.  I won’t bother linking to any of them, if you’re curious you can simply Google something with Angelina and Cheetos.

The gist of quite a few snarky posts were that ohmigod, Angelina Jolie feeds her kids junk food! Bad mother alert! Bad mother alert!

You know what I say? 

Fabulous!

As long as junk food is eaten in moderation, I don’t see anything wrong with it. And I highly doubt that these kids have Pop Tarts for breakfast, Cheetos for lunch and hot dogs for dinner every day.

Kids like junk food.  Should they be fed junk food at every meal? No.  Should they get junk food every time they want it? No.

But.

If a mom can’t relax and let her kids have some now and then, then it becomes the forbidden food that they want to have all the time.  It’s basic psychology that to deny access to something makes it all the more attractive.  And trust me, they will find a way to get it without you knowing, all the while pretending to crave your special brown rice and broccoli recipe.   I know this from experience.

So the self-proclaimed food police can have their macrobiotic diets and whatnot while the rest of us have a little snack.

Ice cream, anyone?

We’ve tried to be clear. We’ve tried to be polite. We’ve tried to be firm.

We have warned you.

And yet, some poor, deluded souls out there continue to insist on purchasing vile replicant homunculi modeled after the Grover-crushing, drug-smuggling, twitching, giggling, porn-starring megalomaniac known as Elmo.

What is it going to take before the madness ends, people? What taboos must this loathsome imp shatter in his writhing orgy of unslakeable ravening before you say No. No, it has gone too far.

Death Threat Elmo, perhaps?

A cuddly, programmable Elmo doll revealed its dark side to a Lithia family yesterday after fresh batteries were installed.

Instead of singing songs or reciting the favorite color of its 2-year-old owner James Bowman, the doll started making death threats.

With a squeeze of its fuzzy belly, the Sesame Street character now says, in a sing-song voice, “Kill James.”

Exchange it! you say. Take it back! you say. Reverse the polarity! you say. But no, there is no amount of abuse that the public will not accept as long as it comes wrapped in a fuzzy red package. James loves it. James wants to keep it. James must be a very special child.

…the malfunctioning, death-threat-spouting Elmo Knows Your Name doll is now being kept away from her son, Bowman said.

“This is his absolute favorite toy,” she said. “So we’ve been going through a lot of hassle because he’s trying to climb up the counter and up the closets to get it.”

The family plans to return the doll, but a fat lot of good that will do.

Kid, Elmo doesn’t just Know Your Name, he Knows Where You Live.

A for-real charity donation box from Vietnam. Photo by Mullenkedheim on Flickr via Neatorama. Only question is, do your donations go to support especially difficult children, or to fight them?

Cast your minds back to last Friday and recall with us, the spine-tingling tale of The Devil’s Pool.

Have you noticed you never see any black people doing this, even though it’s in Tanzania? I have a theory that most tourists are travelling not because they enjoy it, but because their own countries got sick of them and asked them to leave. Perhaps we should point them in the direction of this awesome gene-pool-refining tool.

In any case, after a highly spirited round of captioning in the comments section, the time has come to declare a winner.

gemdiva Says:
February 16th, 2008 at 10:00 am

3 with apologies to Edward Gorey

1. Daddy, the world’s biggest fool
Took little Andre to the Devil’s Pool
Andre slipped and took a dive
Now he’ll never see the age of five

2. Little Willy told his father
That the edge of the falls would be no bother
Daddy fell to his death down there
Now Willy’s Mummy’s only heir

3. Mr. Brown, a real raving git
Thought the edge was a good place to sit
To the rocks down below Little Timmy fell
Mr. Brown said “so sad, but the picture is swell”!

gemdiva Says:
February 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Two last and final………….

4. Mycroft, a precocious lad
Went to the falls along with dad
He tripped and fell into the creek
Mum rents his room now by the week

5. The family outing went out of whack
When Dad went to the falls with Jack
His last words, it would appear
Were “I can see our house from here”.

Despite some brilliantly amusing competition, gemdiva’s Edward Goreyisms slaughtered the competition (in convoluted, morbidly Victorian ways, of course) and emerged as the winner. We crown gemdiva Queen of the Devil Pool and hereby award her something suitably zany and old-fashioned: The John Fluevog Madly pump!

For extra sizzle, imagine Alan Rickman buying them for you, dressed as an Edward Gorey character (as, indeed, he often is).

PS: Seen the Edward Gorey posthumous take on that classic Star Trek tale, The Trouble With Tribbles?