Steampunk

I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. —Groucho Marx
Or this guy. —TIWTPITF


I like imagination. I like creativity. I don’t like this Victorian goth take on the renaissance faire. Instead of a jongleur in a jester’s cap, steampunkers strap on leather goggles and embrace a good Rube-Goldberg machine or Tesla coil for shits and giggles.

The thing is, the good old days weren’t always good, as Billy Joel would say. If you’re going to fire up some steam-powered contraptions using your erector set, you’d best showcase the tuberculosis and smallpox that rocked 19th-century Britain as well.

You aren’t edgy or alternative. You’re just a former LOTR/Star Wars/D&D fan dressed up as an H.G. Wells’ wet dream. Doff the leather waistcoat and travel back to the present before I engage in a little time travel of my own and sic a Morlock on you.

(photo: flickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego)

Non-prescription eyeglasses

Guess what? I’m selfish.

I’m also blind as a bat. I’ve worn -13.5 Coke bottles over my eyes since second grade. Combine these two and it makes me blind with rage when I see hipsters trying to look emo, ironic, brainy, sexy librarianish, or Weezery by donning a pair of frames.

If you don’t need them as your third and fourth eye, if your peepers don’t look like tiny blinking specks or giant dilated saucers behind your lenses, back way from the Oliver Peoples and pass by Pearl Vision.

Buy a hat or get a tattoo, and let me have this.

(photo: loulove22.wordpress.com)

Pinky rings

Are you in da mob? The universal sign of mafia d-bag, pinky rings are the older generation’s equivalent of Ed Hardy gear. Klassy with a K, which come to think of it, also stands for kielbasa. Have you gotten so bloated that you have to wear your wedding ring on that sausage that doubles as a pinky?

Grease that digit up with some olive oil and yank that ring off and put it where it belongs: on the finger of a small, malnourished child.

(photo: luxury4play.com)

Naked pregnancy portraits

You’re gorgeous and juicy, ladyfriend, but you’re not Demi Moore. I don’t want to see you naked when you’re not pregnant. I sure as shit don’t want to see you drop trou with a bun in the oven.

I don’t have a problem with you hiring Annie Leibovitz to capture this oh-so-important period in your life. Just don’t ask me to pore over the album, attend the portrait unveiling, or suffer your new two-for-one Facebook photo.

Treacly pregnancy photos bring navel gazing to a new level. Literally. In fact, your new outie is all you can see. Don't get me wrong: I can't wait to see the new addition to your family. In the meantime, just show me the sonogram.

(photo: virginmedia.com)

Boob sweat

It’s hot. I can tell this by the thermometer and by the sweat pooling under my breasts. Guys have their equivalent of this, which a friend nicknamed “ball soup.” I’m pretty sure no one would voluntarily choose to order this unappetizing dish off the men-u.

Bras help lift the ta-tas away from skin-on-skin action but if it’s hot and humid, they tend to chafe and add their own sort of frilly hell to the problem. Maybe the thing to do is create a new take on the headband. A band of absorbent terrycloth or newfangled wicking fabric around the torso could mop up tit sweat and keep my melons from rubbing me the wrong way.

(photo: guidespot.com)

Adult face painting

We get it. You like your team…a lot. In fact, we can tell that your blood runs maize and blue/red and white/dumb and dumber by the fevered look in your eyes. There’s no need to put any frosting on your crazy cake.

Unless you’re a five-year-old at a petting zoo, put away the warpaint. And kookaloo: You’re not Darth Maul, either. You’re just greasepainted gob who’s not Comiconning anyone.

(photo: terezowens.com)

Stuffed animals for grown-ups

When Jenny was a wittle gurl, she had a whole plush menagerie, including a stuffed lamb with a bell in his ear that she would prop next to the door when she went to bed. A makeshift alarm, she figured it would alert her to any monsters who might want to intrude on her Shawn Cassidy dreams.

Then she grew up and moved Lambie to the back 40 to make room for the plushies that errant boyfriends thought were a teenage dream. She got two different penguins and even a stuffed Cartman for a 30th birthday present. She repressed the memories of the giant crap-ass gorillas and ponies won at various county fairs and boardwalks. She developed a baseline criterion: If it had been touched by a carny, it went straight into a hazmat bag, not onto her bedspread.

Along with her nickname, Jenny’s stuffed animals are long gone. Call her crazy, but when she hugs something, she wants it to have a pulse. When she spies stuffed animals and squishy doo-dads lined up in someone’s rear window, her pulse quickens and she wants to bean that baby…bad. An animalcontent, she wants to punch the stuffing out of the grown-ups who think it’s cute to obscure their view with lions and tigers and bears, oh Ty. Speaking of which, she's going to go work out her aggression on the only sensible stuffed thing an adult should have: a punching bag.

(photo: makethelist.net)