Women's Magazines

I was recently in line at the local Food Cat (hint: that's what I call the grocery store chain Food Lion), and while I was waiting for the person in front of me to figure out how to operate the credit/debit card scanner and pay for their dozen or so boxes of Hot Pockets, Pizza Rolls and carton of Pediasure (we'll discuss why this person shouldn't have children some other time), I noticed the magazine rack. Nearly anyone who has ever been to a grocery store, supermarket or general store (hell, any kind of store really) before knows what I'm talking about. That little rack filled with stale chewing gum, lighters, candy bars and various flimsy publications.

Only the finest news about Britney Spears for our customers.

Has anyone actually ever really looked, and I mean really looked, at the magazines that are on sale there? Naturally your thoughts jump to those bastions of free press and investigatory journalism like the National Enquirer or Star Magazine. No. Those venerable publications deserve nothing less than our respect, if not admiration for their selfless investigation of the potential links between President Obama and the Lizard People, not to mention letting us know which aging celebrities had an embarrassing day at the beach.

Who are we kidding? Fox News would probably run this story.

No, dear reader. The ludicrous publications of which I speak are those magazines that masquerade as "Women's Magazines". Tripe like Seventeen, Elle and Cosmopolitan. I am unable to understand how or why these ridiculous magazines exist. Allow me to take a step back and declare that this article is not based on any sexist notion about women, or female empowerment, or the capabilities of the lady "journalists" that contribute to these publications. No, I simply cannot understand the how and why of these magazines.

Exhibit A

This is the particular magazine cover that caught my eye. It is the March, 2011 issue of Seventeen Magazine. The fairly attractive (yet still jail-bait!) young lady on the cover is one Miranda Cosgrove. She's best known for her titular (ha, ha! see what I did there?) role in the Disney series iCarly. In addition to wanting "people to see the real me", Miranda will also let you know "Who's talking behind your back?" and how to "Get silky hair and smooth skin with zero effort!" Also, "659 New Ways to Look Cute Now!"

Wait...what?

Are you fucking kidding me? Six hundred and fifty nine new ways to look cute now? Let me break this simple sentence down into three parts, each of which I have trouble believing. 659, new, and now.

First off, the numerical part of the sentence. Six hundred and fifty nine? That's a shit ton of ways! There are only three hundred and sixty five days in a standard year. This magazine promises to give you nearly two tips for every day of the year. And it's only March! God knows how many secrets the editors of Seventeen will divulge in the April publication. At this rate, there could be several thousand ways to "look cute" by the time you end the year.

I've seen how this ends. And it's not pretty.

A quick search of the interweb databases will tell you that Seventeen has been in publication since 1944. 1944? That magazine has been printed on a regular basis for nearly seven decades. It has always been a monthly periodical. Mathematically, that tells us that in some top-secret underground vault there might very well be nearly eight hundred separate issues of Seventeen, all containing numerous tips on how to look cute! This staggering, mind boggling amount of ways to look cute completely overwhelms my level of comprehension.

Also, there are six hundred and fifty nine ways. I don't know which is worse: the thought that there are actually that many ways to look cute but the editors of Seventeen simply have no standards, or that they managed to cut a few of the less fabulous tips. If these tips didn't have to pass any pretense at quality control, how useful are they going to be? If they did, then why pick 659? Why not 600 even? Why not 650? Better yet, why not 666? Because clearly the editors had to make a deal with some sort of demon in order to get access to such a plethora of new ways to look cute now.

"659 new ways to look cute, huh? I'll sign!"

Not to mention that they're all new! Am I wrong in assuming that "new" means "previously un-used"? Perhaps I am. Perhaps in this case "new" simply means that the methods are previously unknown to the girl reading this particular magazine. Because that girl has been living in a fallout shelter for the past sixty years, or has complete amnesia or some shit, and so is unaware of any potential "ways to look cute".

Okay. Even granting these most lenient of circumstances (the odds of which are nearly infinitesimal), that is still a ridiculous amount of information about how to look cute. How have the editors of Seventeen managed to compile this veritable encyclopedia of beauty tips? More importantly, how does this magazine manage to turn a profit if the only people who could realistically benefit from its wisdom are amnesiacs?

"Out of my way! I've got to go buy a new handbag!"

And they promise to work now? I don't expect "now" to mean "instantaneously", I just expect it to mean "quickly". In like a week. Tops. Not next month. Not next year. So that means that all the possible tips exclude any form of serious diet or exercise. So basically, you can't be slimmer or more toned in order to look cute. Except for perhaps getting your hair cut or your nails done, all these proposed tips will only help you out for about one day a week. Unless you're the type of girl who wears the same outfit every day.

I'm looking at you animated girls...

You can see my objections to these women's magazines. Based on these preposterous claims, I have reached two conclusions.

The least likely conclusion that I thought of is that the people who contribute to these magazines are geniuses of the highest caliber. They have not only discovered which shoes make that floral patterned sundress you bought this spring "work", they have also found a way to circumvent the known laws of of our universe. Laughing in the face of what a bunch of frumpy looking physicists think they know about the time/space continuum, the editors of Seventeen Magazine are clearly our intellectual superiors.

Like this, but with a wig. And that goblet is a margarita.

The other possibility is that they are so overtly (nay impossibly!) inane, incompetent and ill-researched (more words starting with the letter "I" that denote outright failure) as to have crossed the line from good to bad, and then back again. This possibility denotes that the people who write, distribute, purchase and read these publications are all massive idiots for believing in the words they see printed on the pages they foolishly purchased.

"So bad it's good" includes Shake Weights and nearly any Steven Seagal film.

Now, far be it for me to limit the spectrum of capability to "masterful omniscience" or "abject stupidity". You can probably decide for yourself. Perhaps you already have. But in any case, I think we can all agree that women's magazines are either falsifiers of information, have no standards, are deluded about the definition of some words, or at the very least are just really, really bad at math.

The previous sentence is not an exaggeration, nor is it a sexist remark. They are seriously just bad at math. They seem to pick numbers at random, like the editors are naturally drawn to high numbers, like a crow to shiny objects.

Allow me to present exhibits B through F. All of these are magazine covers from 2011. I didn't even have to search further back than few months to prove my point. They are listed in descending order of magnitude of numbers.

Do they give out bonuses for higher numbers?

Sometimes they have lists that are sort of believable. Sometimes they manage to create lists that don't reach triple digits. For example, did you know that there are only sixty sex tips available to the editors of Cosmo?

But I'm sure that they're worth reading. Ladies...

But they graciously share all of them with us. Since roughly 73% of the internet is porn-related, I think it is safe to say that there are more than sixty positions, techniques, fetishes, seductions, helpful exercises, dirty talk, foreplay and what have you out there. With a little bit of research, I'm certain that the editors could have given us 1,293 ways to spice up our sex lives.

But they didn't! They picked the sixty (allegedly) best tips to share. Because they care about helping their readers have fulfilling sex lives. They used a system of standards and quality control. They picked an even number. It's still not as reasonable as the "8 easy exercise tips" touted by one magazine, but it's definitely a start.

Sometimes though, they don't even actually know how many tips they have included in this month's issue. Whether that's just sloppy editing or the inability to actually count, I'll let you decide.

"There's, like, lots of tips! OMG!"

Totes.

Crazy Room Mates

It's been a really long time since the last post, but frankly things have been really quite as of late. I'll try to get back into the groove over the holidays, but no promises. Hopefully when the semester starts back up there will be all sorts of new, funny things for me to tell you. Till then, let's begin with a post about crazy room mates.

*Disclaimer* This post is in no way an indictment of my room mate. He is one of the sanest people I know, and I'm thankful every day that I get to live with him. If the reverse is true or not, I have no way of knowing.

We're like these guys, but without the gay vibe.

Since I've never had a crazy room mate (eccentric at best) I figured I should share some stories about crazy room mates that I've known through friends, as well as one or two of the oddities that my otherwise sane room mates might have. Hopefully you will chuckle a bit, either because you've been through these things, or because you just think it's funny.

First off, we'll begin with the incident that inspired me to write this post. A good friend of mine lives in an apartment with three other girls. What she didn't know upon moving in was that one of the girls is apparently bat-shit crazy. Now, when I say "girl" I really mean fifty three year old menopausal, unemployed ex-Marine. She also has a history of violence, mental instability and a mild drinking problem.

Less cats; more knives, booze, and pills.

This old lady was already in the apartment before the three younger girls moved in, apparently all alone because the previous room mates had "complained about her, not gotten along with her and made her really angry". That happens right?

Warning sign? Possibly.

So yes, perhaps this was something that could have been foreseen... Oh wait! I forgot to mention that my friend does card readings (kind of like Tarot cards, but with regular cards, not reliable, but creepily accurate at times), and she wanted to see if the old lady would stay. The cards said that she would not stay, and that it would be a big deal, with lots of strife.

"Miss Cleo say run! That bitch is crazy!"

When I was visiting, I went out with the three younger girls and some of their friends. We went to a nice restaurant, then a hookah bar. My friend and I left the bar early, and stopped by a graduation party that one of my friends was throwing. We got back to her apartment around 1:30 in the morning, and were the first ones back to what turned out to be the scene of the crime.

As she went to put her leftovers in the fridge, we notice that there was trash all over the kitchen, and the chocolate chip pancakes that we had cooked earlier were all over the floor. Turning into the living room, the furniture was disheveled, with the couch leaning up against a chair lying on it's side by the door. A pot of cooking oil had been splashed all over the floor, and the curtains and rod had been ripped off the wall.

It was either robbers, or a really big puppy.

As we noticed that the room seemed to have been ransacked, we quickly checked my friend's room, but it was still securely locked. Going back out to the living room we began to see oddities that had escaped our attention earlier. For one, the television and wireless router were still sitting right where they should be. So it was probably not a robbery.

Even stranger though, the small Christmas tree that had been by the window was missing. There had been a jar of red and green M&M's that was now empty except for one lonely green M&M. The festive candle sets on the kitchen counter were gone, along with a miniature nativity scene. All this pointed to one obvious culprit.

Jim Carrey, or Jane Lynch. Both work.

But seriously though, it was the crazy old lady. My friend tried calling her other room mates, but they didn't pick up for some reason. We took photos, and then went to her room and called the room mates again, and they finally picked up. They came home quickly, and a quick council of war was called with all the friends. We tried knocking on crazy lady's door, but she was unresponsive except for one "yeah!".

The decision was made to call the police. Just a few minutes after we called the police, the private security staff for the apartment walked by on patrol, so we roped them in as well. They knocked on crazy lady's room, still with no response. We briefed them on the fact that the old lady was crazy, had a drinking problem, was on medications, and possibly had a gun. And then after about twenty minutes the actual police got there and took charge. That's when the stereotypical domestic disturbance episode of COPS begins.

They were very professional.

She finally responded to the police, after a good minute of knocking and them saying that they will break the door down to offer assistance if she is blacked out drunk or hurt. She's polite to the police, but raging against the girls. Apparently they've done nothing but piss her off lately, a fact that the other three room mates were unaware of. She wasn't drunk enough or belligerent enough for the officers to arrest her, so basically the girls all left as she began laughing maniacally to herself.

"Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

I imagine she then puttered around the apartment for a few hours, talking to herself, and thinking of ways to exact her revenge. But not cleaning up the grease or trash, because that was all still there the next day apparently. How my friend is going to get out of this one, I don't yet know. But I'm sure it will provide some rather interesting stories for the next month or so.

Hipsters! Gosh!

The topic of today's post, with a little help from Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame, is . . .

What's the deal with them?

After my recent post about bicycles, I realized that I do actually need to get a post out there about hipsters and why they suck.

Now, I know what you're thinking, provided of course that you're thinking the following sentence: "Gee, Doctor Woofers, what are hipsters and why do they suck?"

Stay tuned for the answer!

*Disclaimer*

This post isn't meant to hurt the feelings of anyone who identifies themselves as a quote-unquote "hipster", merely to vent some of my irrational hatred in a humorous fashion for the entirety of the interweb to see. If you think it might hurt your feelings to find out that hipsters are what's wrong with the world today, you probably shouldn't continue reading this post.

Sums up my feelings on hipsters.

For starters, take a quick visual survey of what constitutes a hipster by checking out the website "Look At This Fucking Hipster" at http://www.latfh.com/. The people who run this site have been bringing the issue of hipsters, that plague upon humanity, to the attention of anyone who has access to a computer with internet capabilities (and now to anyone who can find a book store with the release of their book).

Hipsters.

They probably knew about this pic before it went mainstream...

I am not alone in my distaste for these unwashed masses, but perhaps I am alone in how irrationally I despise them. I mean, sure it's culturally acceptable to have a bad opinion of Hitler, but hipsters are surely nothing like him, right?

Wrong!

Look at those ironic mustaches!

I'm going to organize this rant against hipsterdom into three categories: belongings, clothing and personality. Each of these three categories is nearly enough to earn my undying antipathy towards hipsters, but together they create a trifecta of annoyance.

Material goods such as bikes and headphones.

Hipsters are defined by their possessions. As much as they wish that they could go all "Fight Club" and be liberated from their belongings, they actually go the opposite direction, and are seemingly incapable of realizing that they are their pair of skinny jeans, they are their Buddy Holly frame glasses.

Even though they like to dress like they shop at a thrift store, or scavenge their clothes directly from the dumpster, all hipsters love to buy things that help create their image or give them "hipster cred".

How hipster marriage ceremonies probably look.

Things that give them acceptance by their peers include, but are not limited to anything that Apple has ever made or will make. You name it, Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, if you tell a hipster that Steve Jobs was involved with developing it you could probably sell him a large steaming pile of cow feces.

Old vinyl records of obscure bands. Nothing screams "I am a hipster!" more than having an obscure version of a particular song on a largely obselete form of technology. It would be like if I really wanted to have a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special on Beta-Max or some shit. It makes no sense, and is often more expensive than just getting the mp3 of your favorite Clash song.

Plus you have to deal with people like him.

Also, fixed gear or antique bicycles. Hipsters fucking love these things. If they can't have one of these to get to their independent record store on, they might have to settle for a 1980's Volvo or something else suitably retro like an AMC Gremlin or a Ford Pinto if they can find one.

It just screams "I might be legally retarded!"

You might have already read my blurb against fixed gear bicycles in the previous post, but if now, here's a brief summary: they suck. Not only are the frames usually expensive, the tires fragile and the brakes non existent, they don't allow coasting. Not having to exert physical effort is the best part about using wheeled transportation.

Getting a regular bicycle and turning it into a fixed gear bike is like getting a car with power steering and then cutting the lines just so that you'll look cool for your friends. It makes no sense what so ever, yet hipsters flock to fixed gear bikes and the shops that service them like homeless people to an underpass.

I'm sure that there are other things that hipsters possess that I just am not currently annoyed by, but will remember at a later date.

True fact: All hipster closets are replete with skinny jeans.

Perhaps the easiest way to spot a hipster (aside from hearing an obscure band blasting from their over sized headphones) is by their clothing. Unless said hipster is attempting to fit in with the rest of the world, whether because they have a real job or they think it'll be ironic, a hipster will instantly be identifiable by the mismatched articles of clothing that they drape over their often androgynous bodies.

I'm going to start at the feet and work my way up with things that annoy me about hipsters.

Feet: Individualized Chucks or Rainbows. My dad wears Chucks, not because he's a hipster, but because he's almost fifty years old, and has a right to wear old style shoes if he wants to. Now, I'm not putting down Chucks, because they are nice shoes. But hipsters take them and cover them with sharpie, and sequins, and alternate lacing patterns.

WTF? Honestly, I've got no beef with Rainbows either, it's just that hipsters wear them when there's snow on the ground. What is that about? Is frostbite cool again?

I could have sworn that went out of style with dysentery.

Legs: Skinny jeans or ridiculously short shorts. Alright, without the adjectives in front of them, jeans and shorts sound like what normal people wear. Unless of course you combine them to form the almighty pair of jorts. And that's cool with me. However, I would gladly let gun control laws become lax enough to allow assault rifles for fourth graders if there was some way to have stricter clothing restrictions.

Men should not wear skinny jeans. End of argument.

Be grateful I didn't use a fat guy.

If you argue against my statement, then you are obviously someone who wears them and as such have no place in this argument due to your deteriorated mental state. Also, wearing the same style of shorts that YMCA youth did in the 50's does not make you cool. All it does is make you look gross, because your legs are usually pasty pale and excessively hairy. As somebody who has hairy legs, I am not suggesting you shave them, merely wear shorts that are closer to your knees than your crotch.

Pictured: A hipster who knows how to wear shorts (anomaly)

Torso: Up above whatever studded or sequined or random object used as a belt any given hipster wears around their waist comes the ridiculous shirts, jackets, vests and other things used to cover up their top half if they aren't flaunting their ripped physique.

Fact: hipsters love terrible shirts. Whether it's a sweat stained v-neck plain t-shirt,


a horrible sweater,

some sort of plaid/stripe combo

or just a massive dosage of their all time favorite word.

(Hint: it's irony)

After this we get on to accessories. Accessories like ironic fanny packs, or ironic sunglasses, or weird piercings, or the ever classic "culturally signficant piece of clothing until we got ahold of it" things like those omnipresent keffiyeh used as scarves.

Yes, I said it. Kanye is a fucking hipster.

That's pretty much all the space I have for complaining about the way hipsters dress, so it's on to the next category!

The most insidious trait of the hipster.

On a scale of bad personalities, ranging from angsty teenager (best) to Sarah Palin (worst), hipsters score a Snooki (previously thought to be an unachievable low). And no, that is not a compliment. The danger posed by hipsters is greatest when they are not easily identifiable via their belongings or appearance. If you see someone dressed like they were dressed by aliens who had no actual understanding of clothing, you might either assume that they are Japanese, or just a hipster.

Either way, don't take anything they say seriously.

The key character traits espoused by hipsters include, but are not limited to "irony", "individuality", "retro", "enlightened" and "pretentious". (Editors note: I know that they don't think of themselves as pretentious, but such a majority of them subscribe to that personality trait that I felt bad leaving it out.) For some reason the best way to exemplify these personality traits are drinking PBR, having terrible hair cuts, weird tattoos and listening to bad music.

First off, you may have noticed that I've used the word "irony" or "ironic" like a couple dozen times in this post, almost always incorrectly. That's right bitches, I know what the word means and the proper usage of it! Because I happen to be terrible at grammar and punctuation, you might not gather that I know a lot of words, and what most of them mean, if not how to spell them. Hipsters, on the other hand do not. This does not stop them from applying it to every single facet of their lives.

"I have a tattoo of PBR, isn't that ironic?"

No! Perhaps the toxic levels of douchebag that you are attempting to shield your eyes from have corrupted your vocabulary usage!

Irony is when you do one thing and an unexpectedly opposite result occurs, or when you say one thing and mean something contrary to what you said, or even when you're a character in a book and your words mean something more to the reader than they do to you.

Ironically, the term MILF was invented the next year.

The only way the PBR tattoo turns out to be ironic would be if he died from being hit by a can of PBR dropped from off the top of the Empire State Building. Aside from the irony, that whole situation would be totally fucking awesome... I mean... sad. Right. Sad...

Last time I checked, a PBR loving hipster and a tattoo getting hipster are often one and the same. What an amazing coincidence that this person would conceive of getting a tattoo of something he loves! I, for one, am astounded!

Philosoraptor's mind is blown!

And so we conclude this chapter on hipsters. Both because I have momentarily run out of things to type, and because my co-host needs to leave.

This joke brought to you by www.thedoghousediaries.com

For a bit more reading on the subject, check out these links, or just search hipsters in Google to see how they don't believe in the census or some stupid shit.

Wikipedia entry on Hipsters

Hipsters Desperately Seek New Anachronism to Claim as Their Own

Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization

The Ballad of Crazy Crazy

One of the constants in my room mate's life seems to be that girls he's interested in turn out to be a little bit crazy.

Surgeon General's Warning: Results may vary.

Although I haven't known him for too long, and don't exactly ask him for stories about girls that he has been involved with over the years, several examples of crazy ex-girlfriends come to mind. However, today we are only going to discuss the one whom we call "Crazy Crazy". (cue ominous music)

So, he met this girl at a cousin's wedding over the summer, and thought that she seemed really nice. She had made her own sun dress, was an attractive young lady his own age, and seemed like an overall classy girl. I later pointed out to him that anyone can seem classy if you meet them at a wedding.

Okay... "almost" anybody.

So he begins texting her, talking to her on the phone, all the things that people today do when they like somebody. They seem to hit it off. In fact, they would talk/text for hours almost every night. And I mean hours. Like, start at 11:00 and finish at 3:00 in the morning, talking about nothing in particular. That is either really sweet, or really crazy. I'll let you decide, because honestly we've all been there before.

Eventually he goes to visit her one weekend, at wherever it is that she lives. Somewhere in Georgia or South Carolina, I'm not really sure, and it's not really important to the story. They have a great weekend, watch one of the "Saw" movies (typical date fare), it turns out she's creative in the kitchen, and you know that my room mate loves fancy cooking stuff.

Funnily enough, he doesn't like most sociopaths.

So, after this she decided to come visit him. Now, I don't have a problem with my room mates having girls stay over, especially since now I live in a place with separate bedrooms. I could hang out with them in the living room while they watched "Se7en", and then just give them space the rest of the time.

However, there was a fundamental difference between her and us that was quickly made apparent. She didn't do shit as a grad student! Literally, she could take a whole week off just to do whatever. So while both of us have real work to do (me reading 700 pages of history books a week, him memorizing cancer terminology or whatever it is that medical students do), she would just sit around, bored.

Artist simulation. Baby used for comedic effect.

He would go to the library to study for a couple hours, and she would just sit there. Staring at him. Like a puppy dog who really wanted you to play with it. Because she didn't have anything to do, she couldn't seem to spend any time away from him. You just couldn't leave her alone. As I told a friend of mine, it was like babysitting a small child.

There's no telling what kind of trouble she'd get in.

My room mate and I used to go to an undergrad environmental biology class with a friend of ours (for various reasons, including but not limited to messing up the grade curve and meeting girls) We invited Crazy Crazy, but she didn't want to go. Afterward, we hung out for a bit and decided to get some dinner. Again, my room mate checks to see if she wants to come, but she says no, she's fine.

She is not fine. This is when Crazy Crazy starts to have a meltdown. She calls, upset to the point of tears. It is so bad that my room mate has to leave to run damage control.

This is the last baby picture, I swear.

Crisis averted, he decides to make that night a quiet affair by staying in and watching a movie. She wants to watch "American Psycho". You may have noticed a trend over the course of this post. This girl only likes movies that involve fucking dismemberment and murder. This is a warning sign, for reals. It's alright to like these movies, but when you don't like comedies, action movies, comedies or even chick flicks there is something wrong.

Picture this, but replace the cats with chainsaws.

Sunday rolls around, and it's time for her to leave at last. My room mate is a little bit relieved at this point. She seems a bit mopey, and doesn't really want to go. She toys with the idea of skipping her classes and staying longer. Tactfully, my room mate tries to persuade her that this is not a prudent course of action. She leaves. Whew!

Oh wait. I forgot that she is crazy! As my room mate and I begin discussing how the visit went, she calls from the road. Hysterical. She's now crying her eyes out, talking on her cell phone, while driving. She's also not the best driver to begin with. My room mate tries to calm her down. She decides that she's just going to come back.

You know the quote, so I won't insult your intelligence.

Realizing that we don't want to be around her, we decide to go to the gym to play basketball. As we drove back home, we began joking about how she's more than a little bit crazy. "Ha ha! We should check to make sure all the knives are accounted for when we get back." We're so funny.

But seriously, when we get back and my room mate is walking towards his room to talk to her, I go to the kitchen to check the knives. We have a pretty awesome magnetic knife rack, so it makes counting knives pretty easy.

We're missing one. Fuck! Quickly, I motion frantically to my room mate to abort.

"Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"

It's too late for him to pull away, he's trapped. He can't just do a double take, can he? Well, you'll be happy to know that the missing knife was merely in the dishwasher. Whew, close one!

And after that night, she finally does leave. But do not be disheartened dear reader, for Crazy Crazy is not a girl who quits easily. If we have time, the saga will continue.