Vertically displayed.

Sadly I’m not referring to a strip club. I’m referring to a woman of extremely ample chest I saw at the store.

She was in her mid-thirties, wearing only an open black suede jacket and a white lace bra.

Now before anyone complains, I’m not one of those internet idiots who doesn’t know what breasts look like, particularly of a very large size, of an older age, and probably post children. What I am saying is that even someone with perfect pert upright natural breasts shouldn’t wear that outfit. Two feet of cleavage in any direction is a bad look unless you’re at a renfaire or you’re Christina Hendicks (because frankly, what else can she do?). And even then it’s supported, not a shirt that’s just a bra around the navel at a grocery store, which not even your sexiest 18 year old girl should be wearing.

I am entirely stunned it didn’t immediately violate a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” policy. I’m also amazed I didn’t hear “Woman arrested for indecent exposure when her nipples were hanging out at a Fry’s grocery”, come to think of it. And most of all, I’m utterly shocked this wasn’t at Wal-Mart.

They don’t look good on cholas, and they don’t look good on you. If you don’t live in the southwest US, and thus don’t know what I’m talking about…

It’s weird. You’d think raising the eyebrows up would make a forehead look smaller, but it only serves to make it look larger. The permanent surprised expression combined with the effect of pushing your eyes down (visually speaking) makes it look like you have a developmental disability. I mean hey, maybe that’s the goal, but I’m pretty sure they’re doing it because they think it’s sexy. But who actually likes that look?

How egomaniacal have we become? Must we be in every photograph we take, and beyond that, must it always be a horrid squeezed together “arm held out looking at the camera” angle? Is it too much to say “Hey, can you take a quick picture for me?”

Apparently it is. We’re so damn self-important we have to have a camera that shows the picture on the front so we can see every shitty photograph starring ourselves as we take it. At least we haven’t made the Myspace mirror shot an official standard yet, but I’m not sure this is better. Aside from enabling terrible photography and egotism, this makes the dreaded “fat girl angle shot” all the easier, and I think we all know someone with a regretted Myspace hookup due to one of those.

Maybe I should just give up on this whole “quality pictures on the internet” thing, but I really don’t think pandering to the lowest common denominator is ever a good idea.

Do you spend an hour every day trying to look like you just woke up?

Yeah, fuck you.

(This post brought to you by the “MGMT is a really shitty band, and I hate people like their lead singer” fund).

This one is dedicated to my friends suffering through it daily in retail.

Read the god damn signs around you. They’re everywhere, and they’re important. Not just stop signs. Signs that say “this item cannot be returned”, “please do not leave movies here”, or signs that have a price on them.

Just a few hours ago, I visited a Pizza Hut, wherein the man in line in front of me kept pointing to items on the display in front of the counter and asking how much they were. “How much are the pizza rolls? How much is the pizza mia?” His finger, each time, touched the price clearly displayed on said sign while the man behind the counter had to figure out what he was pointing at. Turns out that light doesn’t bend around the pointer’s finger and reflect back to the clerk’s eyes so he can magically see what’s being poked on the other side of the counter.

This isn’t uncommon, of course. When I worked at a video store, once a day I’d have someone walk up to the display for used movies and ask how much they cost. Each movie was not only individually labelled with a very large sticker on the front, but the sign above them said “$14.99, 2 for $25!” And yet, they asked. Truly when Clerks asked “How much are these muffins?” Kevin Smith was channeling the frustrations of everyone to work a register.

Every day, people put videos in front of the sign that says “Do not place movies here, place them in drop box”, or more often, they’d look at the sign and just reach around it to drop movies on the other side, a behavior I always found pretty unexplainable. Some ridiculous “rules don’t apply to me” sense of entitlement?

A few weeks ago, my doctor, my DOCTOR, was guilty of this. A woman who performed surgery on my toe couldn’t read a sign in front of her.

You see, the video store I worked at has an outside, drive-through drop box, but it’s in a very bad neighborhood. Someone destroyed the lock and access panel, so we taped the drop-slot up, put a sign that says “Do not use, out of order” in front of it. Rather than read the words on this paper and tape blocking her from using the drop-box, she tore it off. Three days later when informed her movies haven’t been returned (because they couldn’t be removed from the box), she chose to start yelling at the cashier and manager. Apparently, she was “doing a million things at once and didn’t have time to read fucking sign.” I’m concerned that one of these things was driving, certainly, but she had time to rip off the sign and tape. Because she’s special, like everyone else ignoring a sign.

And that’s a doctor. Someone who I’ve personally witness cut open a part of my body and remove things.

How do these people survive? How do they keep jobs or businesses? How do they not get hit in traffic? Are they the ones who just keep rolling when they turn right from a side street to a main street, forcing you to slam the brakes?

Please, people. Start looking at the signs around you. It’ll not only make everyone not hate you, but you just might live longer.

Of course, it’s never the idiot who dies, is it? So please, read the signs around you so the person who deserves to live gets to. And so he doesn’t spend 15 minutes waiting on your dumb ass to ask how much everything you’re touching costs, despite the fact your thumb is on the sticker that tells you.

Oh, and take a sign into the office to make sure your doctor isn’t totally oblivious on the job. You don’t want a nicked artery.

This shouldn’t require saying, but apparently it does. Sarah Palin has big hair. Isn’t that enough evidence it’s bad?

I’ve seen a commercial for a product called “Bumpits,” a “hair volumizer.” And they even have pictures likely not using their product. They’re the ones here in the pink frames!

Volume is alright, but this is making your head look mutated. That’s all. This applies to quiffs, of course. Simple is better with hair.

Tomorrow, we discuss how the mexican and redneck (or the combination hereby called rednexicans) women need to stop shaving their eyebrows and drawing on new ones with sharpies.

“My brain is swollen.”

“My head never regained its shape after I was born.”

“My brain was trying to escape, so I tied it down with my hair.

“I wanted to look like Nefertiti!”

“My mom and I love Bumpits!”

“Palin for pres in 2010!”

Remember when it used to be a channel with educational programming? They’d show operations, talk about history, medicine, all sorts of general knowledge.

What happened?

At any given point, TLC has become Lifetime 2, the sluttier, less informed little sister of the original. You know the one, the really cheery one who’s always pregnant and never stops gossiping, then says something REALLY stupid. At any given time (really, go ahead and check this yourself) TLC is running one of threefour things.(Edited because yep, somehow I’d left that at three. Thanks for the hate, MxMx)

Jon and Kate Plus 8
I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant
A Baby Story
Little People, Big World

You’ll also catch a ton of What Not To Wear and Say Yes To The Dress, or Wild Weddings. Plenty of Table for Twelve and Five under 5 too.

So what’s our common theme? Baby baby baby small people who we project child-like tendencies onto marriage marriage baby baby.

ONE of these shows has some educational value, and not much, but fashion is something one learns at least, so What Not To Wear has a mildly redeeming value if you put a gun to my head, but barely raises itself from the absolute ticking biological clock glurge of clown car vaginas and worn out uteri.

Protip:Most of these families are not good people. Especially Jon and Kate. It’s very clear the latter is a HORRIBLY controlling person, probably would be abusive if not for cameras, and just look at the hair. It screams “control freak.” I never knew hair could do that, but there it is. Well, that or “MASSIVELY BIPOLAR”, with the long on one side, short on the other, shaved in back. It’s a haircut that allows her just enough to look feminine, but the rest will do exactly what she wants and fuck you if you disobey while screaming “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!”.

Okay, maybe that’s a little far, but I doubt it. And I digress.

Wait, nevermind, it’s not. UPDATE FOR THE LULZ from Us Weekly:

Kate Gosselin says her spiky bob hairstyle reflects her feisty personality. “It’s my attitude! Everybody wants it. It’s work,” she tells Entertainment Weekly. “I have very, very thick hair, so it’s not going to work for everybody,” she says. “I’ve seen people come through the book line with thin hair and it just won’t work. My hair stylist gets calls from all across the country.”

The Learning Channel sucks. I don’t want to watch horrible people who got famous for a lack of self-control and condoms all day, I don’t want to see catty fashion talk(if I did, I’d watch Ugly Betty). I want learning, not overpopulation.

TLC, either change your format back, or change your name to Lifetime 2. Your call, but you can’t keep the name and the programming, it’s false advertising.

Would you let Donald Trump decide your new hairstyle? Would you let him critique your coif, your luxurious mane? I remind you he looks like this:

Then why do you let any of the E! channel fashion editors like Cojo or Christian Siriano tell you about fashion?

Obviously something is working for them, because they’re still winning fashion design shows, appearing on national TV, and generally being considered highly reputable correspondents. But one has had the same ladies’ haircut since 1978, the other is apparently an emo-fabulous Harry Potter. But oh, you will see them after any awards show, judging what other people are wearing, how they’ve done their hair, and the accessories they’ve chosen. Yet these men have never worn a single thing in their lives that wouldn’t result in a thorough mocking in the real world.

These are the same people who tell us Kate Moss is hot, think quiffs look good, tell us Renée Zellweger looks best skinny, and judge how good everything looks by how up to date it is with recent trends rather than how it looks on someone. Oh, and they said Robert Downey Jr looked bad at the Golden globes. So what do they know?

It’s time we rise up against fashion editors who demonstrate they have no taste with everything they wear on camera. The emperor is naked, and I say we replace him with Iron Man!

Alternately, me. I don’t mind sitting around on camera and being snarky, and I know I’m not stylish!