Funundrum Wedding Horror Hall of Fame

I found this as I find most of the oddities on the Intartubes... a link to a link to a link. Without further adieu, I present the Site Most Likely to Keep You Awake Tonight -- Wedding Dolls by Barbara.

From the dead, dead eyes of the brides and their creepy-ass matching dolls to the terrible web design, this site has it all. For the faint of heart and for those who seriously hate horizontal-scroll websites that default to the RIGHT side of the page (grr), here's a small collection from Barbara's nuptial house of horrors.

The picture kind of reminds me of my mom's wedding pictures, though my mom was far more fetching. The bride doll, though, is just scary. I think Barbara's only found one source for glasses that fit 24" dolls. She should keep looking.

This doll commemorates everything that was wrong with the 80s, including giant floppy bridal hats, shiny shiny satin, and lace chokers. Please, people. Just because you saw it on Dynasty does not make it right.

In a darkened room full of bridal dolls, this is assuredly the one that would start moving first, fomenting a full-on rebellion against the human tormentors. Remember, these things are a full 2 feet tall. Tall enough to stab you in the knee and then scramble up to break your neck in their tiny porcelain hands.

What is this?

Poor thing. She knew she would never find a husband so she got a replica doll made of her white beaded prom dress. Better hurry up there with the flatiron, honey. Your brother's pulling the station wagon out of the garage even as we speak. I bet if you slip the DJ a fiver tonight, he'll play your favorite Def Leppard song. Go 80s.

The kicker is that these handcrafted minions of Satan will set you back $835 a piece. Get two, maybe that way they'll bicker between themselves and never hunt you while you sleep.

The human mind frightens me.

Remember Nintendo? Remember Nintendo back when it was a big grey plastic box with front-loading 72-pin game cartridges that worked for about a year before you had to start blowing in them to clear the dust out? Yeah, me too. It was my favorite game system ever. I only had about five games, but that's all I needed to be happy. I miss my Nintendo.

You can find emulators online that will let you play Mario Bros., but it's not the same. Without a little rectangular controller to hold that has buttons positioned just so, it's impossible to recapture the disturbingly accurate muscle memory attained at age 10. Chris solved that problem by finding a guy online who sells real live NES controllers that have been rebuilt with a USB attachment.

It works great -- the scary part is how good I am at Mario Bros. after ten or fifteen years off the horse. I made it through 15 levels (up to world 3-3) without dying once, and made it to world 6-4 before succumbing to the heartbreak of Game Over. It's almost frightening how my fingers found free lives, power-ups, and shortcuts that my brain had forgotten about, and how my brain bid my little man to move out of the way of dangers that hadn't even come on screen yet. Why can't I remember everything that well?

Back to jumping on walking mushrooms now, bye.

Stupid lazy Americans

After I saw the individually-shrink wrapped potatoes being sold because they're more convenient to microwave that way, I thought America's produce sections had reached the zenith of lazy stupidity.

Today, I saw something that made me reconsider my fellow countrymen's apparently boundless desire to reduce the amount of vegetable prep time as much as humanly possible.

Right there, next to the normal white, yellow, and red onions selling for $1.49 a pound, there were bins full of PEELED white, yellow, and red onions selling for $1.99 a pound. Pre-peeled onions. Assuming the average large onion weighs in at about a pound, that means I'm paying someone 50 cents to peel my onion. Scale that labor cost up to the rest of my dinner ingredients, and I might as well go to a restaurant and not have to cut up and cook my own damn food.

IT'S NOT LIKE ONIONS ARE HARD TO PEEL. THEY HAVE LAYERS, LIKE PARFAIT AND OGRES. *pant* *pant* Stupid Americans.

Excellent website of the day

I'd like to present to my readers a perfect little gem called Passive Aggressive Notes. Think of every brilliantly scathing note you've ever left for inconsiderate roommates, disgusting office co-workers, or even complete strangers. Don't you wish that the best ones could have been catalogued for posterity? I'm not saying every note on this site is worth your time, but it's a fun little project nonetheless.

Why are you insulting my intelligence and goodwill?

I hate Cosmopolitan. I have hated Cosmo for at least a year, but it doggedly continues to show up in my mailbox because I'm not sure how long I subscribed to it. I have now acheived the level of hatred for Cosmo previously reserved only for Rolling Stone. I may be the only person with strong feelings for magazines, but there you have it.

I was flipping through the latest Cosmo so I could throw it away before anyone saw it on my coffee table. I bashfully present to my readers, in its entirety, the most offensive paragraph in magazine history. Its holistically terrible nature prevents me from editing it.

COSMO GOES GREEN
We're all concerned about protecting the environment, but sometimes the problem seems so huge, it's hard to know where to even start. Well, Cosmo is taking an easy step toward a better planet, and I hope you'll join us. Beginning with this month's issue, you'll see a Please Recycle logo in every Cosmo as a reminder of the simple effort it takes to make a big difference.

Okay, I left off the last couple of sentences as they consisted of recycling statistics calculated to make me feel like a terrible person. But before that -- really? Printing a "Please Recycle" logo is all it takes to "go green"? That's the best news ever! I'm off to the craft store for a stencil and a can of Krylon! There are a few Hummers in my neighborhood that could stand to go green. Could someone recycle George Bush? That would do a great service for those of us wishing to go green.

Also, what terrible writing. Cosmo takes the "easy step" of printing a logo, and they want you to join them? In... what exactly? Printing a logo? Please refer back to my can of Krylon to determine what a fantastically useful idea that is.

Okay, I've got the spins from that little bit of stupidity. I'm off to throw away -- check that, recycle -- my Cosmo before anyone sees it on my coffee table.

Bad translation goodness

I just found this piece of paper on which I had written the customs allowances for handicapped people arriving in Mexico:

"Handicapped travelers may introduce items for personal use, useful to have a better performace of their activities."

We chuckled. That is all. Please enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Bad vendor of the day

I'm starting to look at photographers for the big day, and let me tell you that they are not cheap. At least the good ones aren't. And I'm willing to pay for quality, seeing as how pictures are the only things that last beyond the wedding day. For my several thousand dollars, however, I expect a certain level of talent and an attention to detail.

It was a bad sign when I spoke with one of the aforementioned expensive photographers on the phone for a good 20 minutes, and she then sent me an email afterwards that began like this:

"Dear Christine...."

Remember that attention to detail I mentioned? Yeah, it's the number one reason I won't be going with this particular photographer. Thanks for weeding yourself out the easy way, lady.

Beside myself

According to television's warm glowing warming glow, Carl's Jr. now has a teriyaki burger complete with a big slice of pineapple, the way teriyaki burgers are meant to be. This is an enormous breakthrough in the field of cheeseburger technology, as I can't think of any other fast food joint that has a teriyaki burger.

I have to wait until Saturday to try this delicious new menu offering because eating cheeseburgers whenever I damn well feel like it disagrees with the concept of fitting into an attractively-sized wedding dress.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of abandoning my wedding cake entirely. You know how now it's trendy at some weddings to do stacks of cupcakes or Krispy Kremes instead of cake? Yeah, well I was thinking of going in a slightly different direction and offering my guests a slice of an In-n-Out 100x100 (pictured -- probably not 100 patties, but close). I think my Southern hemisphere correspondent, Craig, would agree that catering by In-n-Out would be worth the trip for any wedding guest. Just a thought. I would even break down and offer 5 or 6 patties without grilled onions for my weak-stomached guests, though I would have to stop recognizing them socially. Because, seriously. Without grilled onions, a Double Double is just a mind-bendingly good cheeseburger, rather than the heartbreakingly scrumptious taste sensation we all know and love.

Damn, I want a cheeseburger.

Wow.

It's seriously been 12 days since my last post. That's just terrible. You can't really blame me though, as nothing interesting has happened for several days, then the internet tubes at our house were broken for several more. Life in the suburbs really isn't too good for Funundrum, people.

Let's see. Yesterday we decided to see a bit of Denver that we hadn't gotten around to yet, so we trundled downtown and went to the Wynkoop brewery for a couple beers. I had a good red ale and an interesting weiss, and Chris tried an IPA, mostly based on my recommendation of "It's called Monkey's Fist IPA! It has to be good!" It was, especially after the bartender dropped a pallet of glasses on the floor behind the bar and tiny glass shards went flying everywhere. We couldn't tell whether or not any got into our beers, so we stirred the head with our fingers and just left the last 1/2 inch of liquid in case there were pieces at the bottom of the glasses. Neither of us was about to abandon nearly-full pints of microbrew just because there might have been a little glass in it.

We were also thinking of driving up to the top of Pike's Peak because it's the only Fourteener that you can drive to the top of, but then we did a little research and discovered that it's a 2-hour round trip drive (4 if you include the drive to and from Colorado Springs) and they charge $35 a car to get up there. Lame. I don't need to see the top of a mountain that badly. Interesting fact, though -- Pike's Peak is the mountain that inspired the author of "America the Beautiful." Really. Just read that the other day. Now you know.

We're saving up our gas money for something way better than Pike's. We're dead-set on driving out to see the famous Iowa State Fair, which was first held in 1854 and is hailed as America's classic state fair. Why not? We're pretty damn close to Iowa -- it's only a 10 hour drive to Des Moines. How could we be this close and not go? Plus, there's the Butter Cow (pictured). So that's in August.

In keeping with the theme of "poking around the bellybutton of our nation" that we're apparently taking up this year, we're also seriously considering driving to Kansas City for the country's largest barbeque contest. Believe it or not, that's an even shorter drive, at just under 9 hours. The possiblity of attending such an event makes my head spin. You get to wander around and eat pieces of barbequed animals all day. Again, how could we not go? If nothing else, imagine the people-watching at both these events. Oh my god.

Right, I had better go and eat breakfast now, though cereal doesn't look so good after writing about smoked beef brisket and caramel apples.

Snorkel Leg

Apparently I've coined a term that pleases Chris greatly, so I can only hope to serve my other fans by posting it here on Funundrum, the source for all the news that [still working on my tagline].

Snorkel Leg: n: That thing you do when you're in bed and you're kind of hot, but not too hot to throw off the blanket entirely. You know, when you stick your leg out and curl it back over so it's on top of the blanket. Snorkeling for cooler air.

I believe that Snorkel Leg might have been around number 6 on the Top Five Things That Jesus Probably Looked Forward To Doing As A Human Being.

Happy 2nd Birthday Funundrum!

I was out of town this weekend, so I couldn't commemorate the day exactly, but May 12 marks two years of Funundrumy goodness. We've covered a lot of ground, this blog and I, and I can only hope that the future will see Funundrum devoted to what it covers best: monkeys, stupid people, and bad copy. Not necessarily in that order, and certainly not only those three things. Thanks for coming along with me, people.

A question for Funundrum readers

Am I the only one who takes it personally when the automatic air freshener thingy in the bathroom at work decides to activate when I'm the only one in there?

Yay vacation!

Chris is about to start a new semester of school, so to ensure his head doesn't explode we're spending a long weekend in Bucerias, a little town north of Puerto Vallarta. Let's all band together and hope some funny stuff passes my way, because Funundrum has gotten boring. It's my blog, I can say that. It's not necessarily that my life has gotten boring, the univers just happens to be throwing me less weird crap these days.

Okay, seeing as how it's 10:30 and we have to be up in 7 hours, I better get started packing. Adios, kids.

Maggie's new body modification

We couldn't help it that Maggie came to us with tattoos in each of her ears. Her previous parents obviously weren't strict enough with her. So when she wanted to get a third tattoo, we tried to reason with her by pointing out that she's only four years old. That didn't work, so I played the vanity card and asked her what that tattoo would look like when she's older, like 9 or 10. Nobody wants to see a 10-year-old with a saggy tattoo.

She went ahead with her plans anyway.

The next day:

Actually, this is a temporary tattoo my dad gave me while we were out visiting in California. It's the logo for the Catalina Island Conservancy, where dad works. Our dog is so eco-aware.

I love the 21st century

Please forgive me. I get a bit ranty up in here, but I'm so excited to see the internet being put to its God-given use. Thank you for your patience.

We may not have flying cars, but based on their theoretical energy requirements I don't think I want one anymore anyway. What I do dig about living in the 21st century is when technology catches up to my unreasonably high demands. I'm a proud member of a generation that hates talking to other people. People screw things up, people make me wait, people are surly... so what's the point of talking to someone if I can get the job done via automated phone menu, or better yet, the tubes of the Intarwebs?

Take appointment-making, for example. I wanted to get my eyebrows waxed, something that I've not done since moving to Colorado. I called the salon where I usually get my hair cut and asked about waxing. "We do that," the receptionist told me, "but you'll have to talk to Sandy. Her number is 303..." I interrupted her and told her that I wasn't anywhere that I could write down a phone number. "Well, let me see if she's available." I was put on hold for a while, which would have been all right had this salon abided by my Rules for the Universe. If that would have been the case, I would have been listening to "Girl from Ipanema" rather than unclassifiable Bon Jovi.

Sandy came back on and after a lot of shuffling through her calendar, she told me she didn't have time for me.

My point here is that I just wasted 5 minutes with nothing to show for it. I arrived at my office for the day and remembered that the last time I was downtown, I had seen a waxing place with a cutsey name that had a location near my office. So I checked out the Wax in the City website (I told you it was cutsey) and was able to make an appointment online for the very next day. Within three minutes I had a confirmation number, an appointment time, and the name of the person who would be servicing me.

I can't believe more places don't have something like this available on their website. People, websites can be genuinely useful, not just a lame outdated list of your office hours and advertisements for last year's Christmas specials.

Best mailbox. Ever.

Now, I knew that the US Postal Service was putting out Star Wars stamps soon (Chewbacca on my wedding invitations? Mucho gusto!) but I didn't know exactly how far they were going to promote them. Here's how much:

I didn't even recognize it at first, but this is a standard blue street mailbox, covered in a layer of AWESOME. For my two non-American readers, here's what a regular mailbox usually looks like. Sometimes they have legs like in the R2-D2 version above, but I don't think that ruins the effect as much as I thought it would.

I am tired.

We both are. We just spent four days in California driving all over four counties, which in southern California means something. Here in Colorado, you could sneeze across four counties. Not sure why they're all bunched up.

At any rate, we spent most of our time visiting possible wedding venues, attending Andy and Jennie's wedding, and failing to get any sleep. It was good times. We're just tired.

Nothing much happened that could be described as bloggy, but I'll try to get back on the horse here pretty soon.

Handkerchiefs -- the wave of the future

You might be surprised at the number of people out there willing to pay top dollar for a 12 inch square piece of linen. I speak, of course, about vintage handkerchiefs. I started looking for vintage hankies at estate sales after I poked around on eBay and discovered the slightly inscrutable world of handkerchief collecting. Back in the day, hankies were sold as souveniers right next to collectible spoons, thimbles, and shot glasses. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why the spoons are still around, but hankies aren't. At least you can use a handkerchief, while a small metal spoon with an enamel rendering of the Empire State Building is not as handy.



At any rate, hankies from specific states and tourist attractions, as well as those that pin down a specific point in the distant past, are hot sellers on eBay. If you'd like to get involved in the exciting, gut-wrenching action of handkerchief collecting, check out my stuff for sale. Or just scroll down and look at my hankies that will hopefully end up selling for $10 a piece.

Worst shameless plug. Ever.

By now you've probably read about the massive shooting at Virginia Tech, where some guy killed 32 people or so. The ensuing media frenzy has been swift and all-encompassing, reaching its dizzying zenith with an article on CNN.com (I know, I shouldn't bother but where else to get material like this?) entitled "Student Shot Video of Campus Shooting."

First of all, that's an incredibly uninspired headline. Using two entirely different meanings of the verb "to shoot"? CNN = lame. The body of the article went on to describe how one of the students on campus captured footage of the events on his cell phone.

The last sentence is, of course, the punchline:

"I knew it was something way more serious than [a bomb threat], so I started taking the video," he said, adding that he often visited CNN.com and knew he could send his video to I-Report.

Oh my god. Really? I-Report is this stupid format they've been pushing for several months on CNN wherein readers can send in their homemade footage and have it shown on the news site. I like to call it "Current Events' Funniest Home Videos." It's just about the laziest form of news reporting I've ever seen. How much lazier can CNN get? The answer is none. None more lazy.*


*This was a Spinal Tap joke. Please be laughing, because I am.

Definition of Irony -- One of a Series

Amusing (at least to me, and the rest of you geeks [you know who you are]): A car with a university-style sticker on it that reads "Vulcan Science Academy."

Ironic: The sticker is crooked, and placed about six inches left of center.

End of lesson. Thank you.