Shopping Hazards

Classified Ads are Often Nuts

1. Plague bike

This guy is selling his bike with the romantic notion of being able to ride to places with dead cheetahs AND dead skunks. Also the cheetah has been lightly shaved.

2. Demon bike

This guy’s bicycle sounds demon possessed. I imagine it in the garage with its gears spontaneously clattering away, and things breaking off of it without warning…

3. Bile bike

This guy has a bilecycle. I’m not sure what that is, but I don’t think I want it. I like how he had two stabs at the word ‘bicycle’ without success.

Fashion. Why.

1. Choose your battles

This guy’s girlfriend has obviously forced him to wear this hideous garbage, because he clearly looks miffed and a bit embarrassed (and totally whipped), and she looks cross but slightly exhilarated, like she just won something. “You will stand here for this photo, or so help me…”

2. Someone has to pay

Just so we’re clear, the shirt is emblazoned with a HUGE shiny decal that says, ‘Young, Reckless, Wild, and Awesome’. Because you shop at the mall. Right. Even the mannequin can’t believe he has to wear this.

If you have to praise yourself on your own t-shirt, especially using some drunk 50-year-old clothes-builder’s idea of how young people hope to be seen, then you’re probably the opposite, and you deserved it when you were bullied as a child.

3. Wow you look like the man of my dreams

This mannequin reminds me of someone that I usually associate with the nightmare of clothes shopping.

I can’t quite put my finger on who…

Child’s Play

1. Costume that is everything

My kid wants a tiger birthday-party this year, so we’re on the lookout for tiger dress-up outfits.

This costume-hire Website must have some interesting employees.

Boss: ‘Describe a tiger.’

Designer: ‘It’s really long-haired, and looks like a novelty brown shag rug that’s been given peroxided highlights all over.’

Boss: ‘Describe Chewbacca.’

Designer: ‘He’s really long-haired, and looks like a novelty brown shag rug that’s been given peroxided highlights all over.’

Boss: ‘Wonderful! How about werewolf?’

Designer: ‘It’s smooth and orange with black stripes. Looks like a cat.’

Pictured left: Zebra. Pictured right: George W Bush

2. Sapiential

Happy study wisdom pullulate.

3. Use your Illusion

Here’s your stupid fairytale carriage, Kid, but you’re living in an illusion state.

4. Butt injection baby

This baby laughs when you push its stomach and cries when you inject things into its rectum.

More Eastern Knockoffs

1. Michelle-Pfeiffer Man

2. Flower story

3. Plainboy

4. Boo!

Photos from the Shop

Here are some of my favourite photos from some recent shopping trips, kicking off with a bang:

I don’t know what these baby wipes are meant for, but they sound painful, if only for the boys. If I read the label correctly, I believe it says that if you administer a Dong Bang, it’ll make the baby tender. Not sure what the kid in the picture is doing with his left hand, but I’ll bet he’s holding some sort of shield. Poor little guy. That stuff will make…

This department in a clothing store seems more concerned about making a statement concerning the prevalence of bad language among our youth than telling shoppers what’s for sale. If someone gave my dong a bang, I also might swear.

The toyshop carries some beautiful Chinese toys, with inspirational messages, such as ‘Become a Rock Who’, which of course makes perfect sense.

A rock Who

 

The Chinese also would have us pause to consider the environmental impact of our purchases.

You can talk, China!

 

And finally, while we should be able to forgive the Chinese for their inability to speak sense in a language not their own, what excuse does this guy have??

I love you too, Universe, but I just don't see you in that way.

 

Buddhists have spent centuries trying to persuade us that desire keeps us chained to the wheel of futility, and that enlightenment is all about forsaking self and realising your oneness with everything (and then poof! you disappear in to Nirvana forever — nothingness, that is, not the band).

That’s bad for selling books, apparently. There’s no buzzkill like desiring the heck out of a book about Buddhism only to read it and discover that your desire has angered Buddha, and he plans to chain you to samsara reincarnated as a baby wipe. So to avoid this paradox, the author of ‘Notes from the Universe’ has decided that a universe that wants to kill your desires and absorb your individuality is not so enlightened after all. On the contrary, the actual universe is the dribblingly sentimental love child of corporate America and Santa Claus.

'I'm making a list, checking it twice!'

Also, why is it good to learn that all my dreams have the real possibility of coming true? Have these people never had dreams? I am horrified to learn that the universe intends to make me sit an impromptu make-or-break science exam the next time I visit my old high school. Plus I may not be able to find my pants, and I may be chased by a dinosaur. I’m also distressed to discover that the universe loves me too, too much to let slide an opportunity to create that world made out of human innards for me that I dreamed about some time ago. Thanks a lot, Universe, you can be a real dork sometimes.

Creapy…

The Chinese put out a phenomenal amount of stuff plastered with a language and character set that is not their own. Still, some attention to detail would be nice…

This is a tiny toy coffee creamer tub. Creap pouder is definitely going to bring down the tone of my daughter’s imaginary tea parties.