Welfareloser's Blog

my friends, as the year draws to a close, i have evaluated my banjo collection and found it lacking. there’s trogdor, the green resonator 5-string gold tone maple classic i built from a kit. and there’s plucky, the tiny openback 5-string travel/children’s banjo.

after careful consideration, i have decided that what this collection lacks is a 6-string banjo. not a banjitar, which is tuned like a guitar and played like a guitar. a 6-string banjo is tuned and played like a 5-string banjo, but has an extra bass string on it. i’ve decided it’s an absolute necessity if i want my arrangements of pop, rock and metal songs (in other words, songs originally written for guitars, which have two more bass strings than a 5-string banjo) to sound totally freakin sweet instead of just kind of sweet.

first i considered simply adding a 6th string to my current banjo – drill a hole, add a new tuner, replace the nut and bridge, and it’s done. the pros are that it’s cheap and easy; the cons are the aesthetic damage and the compressed string spacing, which will make it a little more difficult to play.

my next thought was to build another banjo from a kit, and replace the neck with a guitar neck. this would be kind of difficult, since the neck would need some fairly serious modifications to properly acommodate the high drone string.

so i took a look at the gold tone line of banjitars for further inspiration, and found that they’ve just recently started making exactly what i want: a 6-string banjo. even though they made up a completely stupid name for it, the “lojo,” there’s a historical precedent for the instrument, meaning i’m not an asshole for wanting one. i’m just old-school, yo.

the things i don’t like about the lojo are the open back and the larger pot – i can just barely hold a standard banjo with an 11 inch head comfortably; i don’t think i have a prayer of pulling off the 14 inch head, even without a resonator.

so i looked at the plucky again, and saw that its strings were a bit closer together than on trogdor, and i still manage to play it comfortably. so… decision made: a new standard 5-string banjo with an extra string crammed in.

i’m getting a nice fat upgrade of the maple classic, the orange blossom special in kit form. i’ll get a new nut, and new bridge – trogdor sports a pimpy custom submerged-hardwood katz eyz bridge, which i had made 1/8 inch shorter than standard to better fit my small hands. i can compress the strings as necessary at the nut, and let them spread out just a little bit extra at the new bridge – not so much that they spill off the neck, but even a tiny amount of extra space between the strings at the bridge will make a huge difference in ease of playing. there’s some concern that the extra tension of the strings kills some of the tone, which is why the deluxe banjitar has a special bell brass rim, and the lojo has the larger pot. i don’t think my plan will kill the tone anywhere near as much as a banjitar setup, since the banjitar not only adds the low string i plan to add, it replaces the highest string with an even lower bass string. unlike the lojo, my plan has a resonator, the awesomely upgraded bridge, and a 3-ply maple rim. at most, i’ll have to experiment with different tailpieces and heads, but i fully expect to get at least as good a tone out of the new 6-string as i get out of my old 5-string. i haven’t decided yet where to put the tuner for the 6th string – probably inside the C-curve on the treble side of the headstock, which is kind of lopsided and jerry-rigged, but perfectly serviceable.

now i just have to decide if i want to dye it some other obnoxious color, like orange-blossom orange or vagina pink, or make it the same green as trogdor, possibly like all future instruments i will build. nothing like an awesome signature!

and i have to name it. given that it’s about 3 AM and PRM and i are up watching tv and surfing teh interwebs, now’s probably the perfect time to permanently saddle it with whatever comes to mind.

while it is laughably douchy to not get around to facebook friending your beloved spouse for months for no particular reason, it’s another matter entirely to utterly refuse to ever be your spouse’s facebook friend on sheer principle. that’s kind of awesome.

a guy PRM has been friends with since grade school, WaltJizzney, came over to hang out with me, PRM and TalkyTalky wearing some… glasses. they looked kind of like the dark pair in this picture:

to get an idea of what they looked like on him, superimpose those glasses over this image:

when WJ stepped out of the room to get a drink, TalkyTalky wondered aloud if we needed to have an eyewear intervention. i didn’t want to say anything… PRM didn’t want to say anything… not surprisngly, it was TalkyTalky who finally asked what the fuck was up with WaltJizzney’s glasses. WJ let the question hang for an uncomfortable moment, feigning ignorance, before proudly admitting that he wore the glasses solely to fuck with our heads.

WaltJizzney’s wife, CrazierThanThou, explained why she would not be WaltJizzney’s facebook friend. the explanation involved more cuss words than it did pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions combined (probably because, in the course of the conversation, WJ put on the glasses, pulled his pants up past his navel to create what had to be a painful moose knuckle, and started dirty dancing behind her. in public.) and the jist of her rant was… it was because of the glasses, which he is wearing in his facebook profile picture, along with a huge, shit-eating grin.

most wives would make fun of him mercilessly, but still be his friend. CTT makes fun of him mercilessly and will never ever ever be his friend. like i said, awesome.

pictures of christmas and whatnot to follow when i get back home. right now i’m busy doing unforgivable things to my gastrointestinal tract. until then, i offer a bit of randomness to tide you over.

me: so i don’t think i want a leon paul foil after- goddammit.

PRM: what?

me: dude, i can’t have a serious conversation with you when you’re jumblin your jumbly bits.

PRM: i don’t know what you’re talking about. (note that he does not stop scratching his junk for a second.)

me: i don’t want to pet a dog that’s in the middle of LICKING his balls, and i don’t want to talk to a dude that’s in the middle of SCRATCHING his balls.

PRM: how about a monkey that’s jacking it?

me: right. i’ll come back in an hour when you’re finished.

PRM: i’ll be asleep.

yesterday was EvilGremlin’s 9th birthday. EG is what you might call a challenging child to raise. he’s wierd. he’s stubborn. he’s opinionated. he’s blunt. he’s incomparably lippy, which goes great with the “opinionated” and the “blunt.” he’s also one of most genuinely kind and giving kids i know. and even more important, he’s willing to recognize his flaws and work to improve them, something i can’t say about many adults i know, let alone kids.

in a lot of ways, he’s a great target for bullies. he’s tiny, and he doens’t have any shame, so, unlike a lot of bully-bait, he makes no attempt to fade into the background and escape the notice of bored bullies trolling for lulz. but if character is what you do when you think nobody is looking, he has a character of rare quality in a kid his age. let me give you two stories that say it all:

one day last spring, he was out in the yard with a couple of girls. one is in his class, the other two years younger. two boys from the neighborhood approached them. with homemade toy swords. made out of one-by-fours.

the girls saw the boys and immediately starting screaming at them to go away, get out of their yard, GO HOME. (apparently, they’ve met before.) the boys continued to approach without saying a word. i got up off the porch to go over and ask them nicely to go home. i revised my plan when the younger of the boys – a year younger than EG, but about the same height and quite a bit heftier – reared back his chunk of lumber and slammed it into the little kindergartener as hard as he could. i screamed the boy’s name and told him to take his stick back to his own yard. he responded that it wasn’t a stick, it was a SWORD, while the older one stared at me with a serial-killer’s lack of emotion. i managed to to tell them to go home without cussing (score one for maturity.)

i was pretty sure the girl’s arm had to broken after a hit like that, but she was okay. as the boys headed back toward their own yard, i sent EG and his friends to play in the front yard, just to be safe. then i noticed out of the corner of my eye that the two boys were circling around the other side of my house toward my front yard. mother. fucker.

i pretended not to see them, walked up to my porch, and then kept on walking through the house to the front door. i stayed low, out of sight of the boys craning their necks around the side of my house. i watched them tiptoe toward my kid and his friends, and once they were directly in front of me, i slipped quietly out of the front door and tiptoed behind THEM. i wanted to see how far they were going to take it, so i could be sure later that i wasn’t just being some crazy-ass over-protective hysterical mother.

i wasn’t. they raised their swords. EG saw them first, and started yelling at the girls to climb up the tree they were playing under. the girls were shrieking. EG’s eyes were huge, he was obviously terrified, but he didn’t budge. he planted his feet in front of the tree, threw his skinny little arms out and yelled in the deepest voice he could manage “oh, NO! you are NOT going to hit them!” the younger boy tried to plow past EG, and while EG was busy trying to stop him, the older boy – EG’s age, but at least a head taller and 50% heavier – started circling around behind him to get to the tree. as he raised his “toy” cudgel to swing at the girls, who couldn’t climb high enough to escape his reach, EG did some utterly retarded-looking ninja move where he stuck out one leg to try to block the bigger threat, while still waving his arms in the other direction to keep the younger one at bay. at this point, the older one’s eyes narrowed. he dropped his brain-basher. instead of trying to get around him, he advanced on EG, arms in front of him like a zombie, hands extended to wrap around EG’s neck. no shit. an eight-year-old. what. the. fuck.

i was a little worried by my boy’s utter disregard for his personal safety; part of my brain was just screaming THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU RUN, BOY! but mostly, i was proud of him for standing up for his friends in spite of the fact that it was gonna hurt reeeeeeeeeeeal bad. when he saw the boy’s hands coming at his throat, his eyes got huge. he screamed like a girl. he squinted his eyes shut and turned his face away. but he didn’t budge.

of course, i had seen enough at this point, and was only a few inches behind the older one – close enough to reach out, put my hand on his shoulder, and yell cheerfully “HEY GUYS! HOW’S IT GOIN?” there was no apology on their part, no admission of wrongdoing, and no fear or shame whatsoever.

fast forward a few months to the next incident. some of the families in the neighborhood were grilling out. the parents were sitting on a porch hanging out, and the kids are playing in the yard, out of sight. EG wound up playing with the 4 other boys around his age, which included the two involved in the cudgels-and-choking incident. i watched the kids play for almost an hour, knowing full well i look like a complete pain in the ass to the parents who don’t have to watch their kids. and after an hour of watching EG handle himself well, i finally let the peer pressure get to me and headed up to the porch to hang out with the other parents.

yep. within 20 minutes, the oldest boy in the group, RadHippie and NewfieMama’s son PaleFace, came running up on the porch, EG right behind him.

now, what i found out LATER that night, talking to EG alone, was that, in the course of the watergun fight the 5 boys were having, EG asked brain-basher the younger to please stop shooting him directly in the face non-stop while he was trying to reload his empty gun. given that i had watched every other boy in the group whine out convenient new rules as necessary all night long – “heeeeey, you can’t shoot me twice in a row; you have to shoot somebody else!” “uuuuuuuuu-uuuuuuuh, you can’t shoot me when i’m reloading!” “you don’t get to stand so close and shoot me; that’s not faaaaaaaaair!” – this seemed to be a perfectly reasonable request.

brain-basher’s response to this was to fill a BUCKET with water and dump it over EG’s head. i asked EG why he didn’t immediately come home, which is what i’ve been working on him to do when this particular group of kids inevitably decides it’s time to pick on him. turns out he did try to come home – but the other 4 boys surrounded him and all four started shooting him. in the face, of course. so then as he’s yelling at them to get out of the way so he can go home, PaleFace pushes him back and yells, “yeah, why don’t you go home and cry to mommy like a little baby?” and then, apparently, other yo-mamma insults were hurled at my boy. i don’t know what they were. EG said, and i quote, “they were so awful i don’t even want to say it again.” fair enough.

so, back to PaleFace on the porch. all i knew at this point was that “something” had happened. and PaleFace’s report was as follows: “EvilGremlin said that his dad says i’m an asshole, and that my mom’s gonna die from all the smoking and drinking she does.”

the needle scratched across the record. crickets chirped. score another one for the boy’s inimitable mouth! so NewfieMama, one of the most genuinely sweet people i know, put down her cigarrette and beer and said, “oh, honey, that *is* true, but when you say something like that to them, it makes them very sad.” of course i’m instantly mortified – but only for a second. because you know what? he didn’t tattle back. and he didn’t lie. he looked NewfieMama in the eye and said, “i know. i’m sorry.” then – in a move that still makes EvilRedHead giggle and say awwwwwww every time we bring it up, he puts his hand on NewfieMama’s shoulder and says, “i know it’s very hard to quit.”

so, i excused myself and took the boy home. we talked about it a bit. after getting the whole story out of him, he was in tears over losing it and saying something nasty, and apologizing and saying he’d try harder next time. what i’ve told him in the past when the other kids gang up on him, tattle, and then lie about their involvement to avoid getting in trouble, is this: you will get in trouble more often than the other kids, not because what you’re doing is worse, but because i want to make sure you don’t grow up to be an asshole. and god love him, he GETS that. he doesn’t get bitter about other kids getting of scott-free by lying their way out of it. he just focusses on himself. so long as he’s trying to do the right thing, he’s happy.

so i gave him a big hug, told him he wasn’t in trouble, and that this incident wasn’t his fault. as i made him an ice cream cone, i told him that honestly, he held it together better than most adults could have in the situation he was in, and i was very, very proud of him.

there was an old woman i used to know who thought EG was “rude.” and, yeah, he is. but you know what? he’s working on it. and if his biggest flaw is that sometimes his mouth runs away from him, fuck it. he doesn’t bully. he doesn’t hit. he doesn’t even hit BACK. so when this old woman is telling me specifically, about how EG is rude to her grandson, whom she described as such a sweet boy who reached out to the world with such love, and she wasn’t saying that i should keep EG away from him, of course, *but*…

and i’m thinking, THAT kid? seriously? you mean the kid who’s two years older than EG and twice his size, who i’ve spent the last 5 years watching knock my kid down on his ass (when nobody else is watching, of course, because hey, if YOUR kid isn’t the one crying, there’s nothing you need to do, right?), boss around, grab shit out of his hands WELL past it being age-appropriate, refuse to share toys as soon as nobody was looking, grab video game controllers out of EG’s hands the second adults stopped looking and refuse to give them back, refuse to even look at EG or answer when he wasn’t even being annoying (belive me, i’m more than happy to admit when he IS being a pest) and generally be a no-social-skills having turd? THAT KID? and you know what, i’ve never had a problem with that kid. every kid does some stuff you’re not proud of (if you think your kid doesn’t, you’re not watching.) it’s when you want to pretend that your kid has no problems (hey, if you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, right?) but you wanna harp on my kid’s problem (hey, he’s admitting he was wrong! let’s GIT ‘IM!) that i start to get PISSED. screw you. my being open about my kid’s flaws is an invitation for you to be open about yours. so we can all be comfortable and support each other witout embarrassment of competitiveness. if, instead, you take it as an invtation to jump all over my kid’s flaws and use it as some kind of sick proof that your kid is flawless, screw you. i am done with you and your fucking kid.

every time this kid pushed EG down, i’d help him up, brush him off, and tell him that wasn’t a nice thing for that kid to do, and then be so proud of him because i rarely even had to tell him not to grab or push back. he just brushes it off, gets back in there, and tries again to have a pleasant interaction because he is constitutionally incapable of holding a grudge (i’ve actually had to convince him to STOP trying to be nice to the brain-basher brothers because, you know, maybe they’re NOT really your friends who just “made a mistake,” as he puts it.) to have to sit and listen to some delusional crap about what a kind and loving kid her grandson is – a kid who i’ve never known to even mention the name of someone he considers a friend at school, let alone actually play with one – while she enthusiastically tells me about my kid’s lack of social skills? yeah, that was a bit much. i held it together, though, mostly becase it was so absurd it wasn’t even worth worrying about. (PRM didn’t. words were exchanged over that one.) of course, this old woman then proceeded to tell me all about what a mess her other grandson was, to the point that it was kind of a toss-up as to which kid – EG or her other grandson – she liked less, so… i’m just sayin. it’s hard to care much about her opinion on the matter at that point.

i like my boy’s choice of friends. i like how he sees the world. i’ve learned not to worry about how he looks in comparison to other kids. the kid down the street has a different kid over every night of the week, is playing with other kids every minute of the day. EG doesn’t do that. after the watergun incident, i worried that he was socially unskilled, because he has a friend over or goes to a friend’s house once or twice a week, plays with his brothers quite a bit, and spends a couple of hours a day by himself. is that wierd? crap, what’s wrong with him?

nothing. he needs those hours alone to explore the thoughts inside his head. he dreams. he plans. he designs robots and treehouses and boardgames. he writes books. you can’t do things like that if you spend every minute of the day hanging out with your friends. a wise man once said he was suspcious of anyone who wasn’t happy with his or her own company. i agree. he has friends who love him dearly, that he gets along great with. if the cool kids want to pick on him… fine with me. i can’t say i’m heartbroken over the fact he’s not going to spend every minute between the ages of 15 and 35 texting friends to find out which party or bar is going to have the biggest party that night. he’ll probably stay home and practice his (insert stringed instrument here; he hasn’t really settled on one yet) instead. probably without a beer and a cigarrette. because that shit’ll kill you!

so, happy ninth birthday little man. i look forward to many more years of watching grow (hopefully at least a few more inches), having your friends help you tear up my house (i wan’t kidding about the fact that you will be sitting on those goddamned chairs until you move out of my house at age 18, whether you have broken them to piles of splinters and springs or not), and helping you to explore and learn about the things you love (and son, i didn’t want to have to say anything, but now is as good a time as any to get over your love of football and maybe consider fencing instead), trick-or-treating for unicef more successfully than any other kid on the planet (i don’t know if anyone else has ever had to tell an 8-year-old to “tone down the rhetoric,” as yet another adult goes scurrying off for change, only to be met with, not a request for the definition of the word “rhetoric,” but the response, “well, that’s just not going to help those kids who don’t even have clean water, is it?”) and build the things you’ve designed (or, as often as not, explaining the realities of economics, man-hours, and occasionally space-time that make the design in question impossible.) of all the boys, you’re the one i’ve worried about the most, and probably the one i need to worry about the least.

you know how, sometimes, you look at a kid, and he does something, and for a second you are actually looking at that kid’s parent? it might be a facial expression, a way of tilting the head, a way of laughing.

or a way of yawning. seriously. the other day, one of the boys yawned. and for a second, he did not just resemble his daddy, he WAS his daddy. because as far as i know, there is nobody else on the planet who squinches up his eyes, stretches his mouth out into a tall, lopsided oval, and then loudly breathes in and out half a dozen times really fast, like a monkey spazzed out on meth trying to imitate lamaze breathing technique, ending with a forceful exhalation, and finally a little shake of the head (as if the yawn required every bit of his brainpower for its duration, and once it’s finished he has to figure out what planet he’s on again.) it was strangely beautiful, and it made me smile.

it also made me laugh, because the little turkey didn’t yet know that he had to stop walking in order to execute his genetically proscribed yawn, and wound up landing on his ass when the yawn took over his brain. when it was finished, he looked confused as to why he was suddenly on his ass instead of still walking.

sorry bout that one, son. if it makes you feel any better, he also gave you his musical skills to go with that shit. it all evens out.

friending the retarded kid who went to your high school for 7 years just because his friend list is fascinatingly long and you have to get in on that action.
THIS WILL GET YOU TO HELL FASTER IF: you then make fun of him.

friending exes.
i actually don’t have this problem, since none of my exes are on facebook. however, several of PRM’s are. and i have friended them. where else but facebook can you play a game of scrabble with three of your husband’s ex-girlfriends at the same time?
THIS WILL GET YOU TO HELL FASTER IF: -you friend your ex just so you can show your friends pictures of his/her new significant other and make fun of him/her.
-you furtively monitor all friends, pictures and comments of your significant other’s exes and obsess over them, having a meltdown anytime your significant other is involved in any friend, picture or comment with him/her.
THIS WILL GET YOU TO HELL AT LIGHT SPEED IF: -you engage in the abovementioned monitoring, but pretend you don’t. if you’re telling you’re significant other that you’re not a controlling pain in the ass who wants to limit his/her access to exes – while doing everything you can to surreptitiously limit his/her access to exes… and insisting that you’re doing no such thing! – you’re not on your way to hell. you’re already there, aren’t you? also, you’re a HUGE douche. bottled-up douchebaggery is the douchiest of all!

having an unfortunate name.
i got lucky on this one. of the 62 facebook members with my exact name, all but about two are smoking fucking hot. LiquidCourage shares a name with 20 other facebook members. half of them are nasty-looking. the other half don’t even have actual profile pictures, possibly because they’re so unbeliveably unattractive that they would make 2girls1cup look like the mona lisa.
THIS WILL WIN YOU GET-INTO-HEAVEN POINTS IF: you friend everyone else with your name. for example, TheWriter has done this, and it amuses me.
THIS WILL GET YOU TO HELL FASTER IF: the other people who share your name are nasty. i know you’re thinking this isn’t your fault, but that’s how karma works. i don’t writes the rules, i just splains em.

too-frequent and boring status updates. i don’t care what you ate for lunch.

commenting on every single photo every one of your friends ever posts. if you actually have something to say, go for it. but i don’t want my home page to be half-taken up with you saying some bland fucking version of “nice pic!” 18 goddamn times. every. single. day.

commenting on a nasty picture. it’s not the comment itself that’s necessarily wrong; it’s the fact that everyone you are friends with will get a copy of your comment, and the photo, on their homepage. so, for example, if you go to a halloween party where someone’s costume happens to be a hospital gown, and after the keg was getting empty someone lifts the buttflap to reveal some pasty, hairy, man-ass, someone else takes a picture of it, posts it on his facebook account, and then you comment on that photo, all of your friends have to look at that shit the next day, possibly at 6 am before they’ve even had their coffee. just something to think about… *cough* DirtyMartini *cough* *cough*

not taking your turn in a game. don’t prolong your agonizing humiliation.

not accepting your cousin’s friend request. don’t make me kick your ass, again, beavis.

trying to friend everyone who ever went to your high school. there are many levels of friend-list exclusivity. i, for example, limit my friend list to people i know fairly well and plan on hanging out with whenever possible. most other people are less restrictive in who they put on their friend list. it’s not a douche problem until somewhere around the “everyone i’ve ever heard of” level. we have never once exchanged so much as a hello. we’re not friends. go away. friend-list neffing is douchy.

broadcasting a naked solicitation for sympathy. if your status update reads something like “AttentionWhore McDouche is feeling sad,” you’re a douchebag. so don’t be surprised when someone like JokerJitsu throws in, among the “awwww, feel better soon!” comments you were fishing for, something along the lines of “shut up, douchebag.” because there’s love… and then there’s tough love.

harrassing every friend you have to engage in a game of scrabble with you, even when you know they have a real job. having trouble with this one, myself. check your notifications, dammit! it’s your turn!

RULE #62.1: DON’T HAVE A DOUCHEBAGGY PROFILE PICTURE.

most of the credit for this section goes to JokerJitsu, who articulated it in one of our combination phonecall/IM chats last week. there are seven basic types of profile pictures on facebook. some are acceptable. some are unacceptable. some are acceptable under certain conditions only.

TYPE 1: a picture of your offspring instead of you.
verdict: unacceptable.

millenials, take note and file this away for future reference, but this message is even more important to those a decade ahead of you. generation Y, as you enter your child-bearing years, please take a lesson from the mistakes of my generation, because it appears that my fellow gen-Xers are the major offenders in this category. yes, you procreated… you and 99% of your peers. congratulations on checking that one off your “conforming to social norms” list! while we’re all very impressed that you tricked someone into combining genes with you by promising to love them when you already barely even liked the motherfucker… when they named the goddamned thing facebook, they assumed you’d be smart enough to figure out they meant YOUR face. because seriously, when i’m trying to figure out if you’re my cousin chris jones, my neighbor’s brother chris jones, that meth-cooker chris jones i went to high school with, or some other “your search found more than 500 results” chris jones, a picture of a small creature that is roughly 25% phenotypically like you IS NOT FUCKING HELPING ME.

i offer one very, very narrow window of exception to this otherwise iron-clad rule. i have two friends who just had babies in the last month – TalkyTalky and WireTap. TalkyTalky’s wife, BicycleIrish, changed her picture to a shot of TalkyJunior and his new baby sister, and WireTap changed hers to one of her new baby boy (on the day he was born. and then played a round of scramble. yay for free wi-fi in the delivery room!) when you have a baby, the only thing anyone wants from you is to see the baby, so the offspring-as-profile-pic is non-douchy for a very limited time. within a couple of weeks, WireTap had changed her profile pic to one of her and the baby, beginning a smooth transition back to a picture of only herself. (her emily post has always been impeccable… begging the question, how the hell has she been my friend for the last 17 years?)

TYPE 2: a picture of you and your significant other.
verdict: depends who you ask.

this one actually doesn’t bother me much. i just got on facebook two months ago, and i’ve really enjoyed seeing pictures of people i remember as scabby-kneed little turds looking all hot and grown-up and in love, sometimes with someone i also remember as a goofy-looking little dork. JokerJitsu, on the other hand, refers to it as “a pic of a bitch and the man she has no identity without.” so, use this type of profile pic at your own risk.

TYPE 3: glamour shot.
verdict: douchebo baggins.

seriously. for my college-age friends, i don’t mean your senior picture, or a picture of you at prom. those are fine. you’re dressed up, you’re looking good, your smile is genuine. i’m not making fun of you for those. (since i’ve met virtually all of my college age friends through the fencing club… what i AM making fun of you for is the ass-whupping i handed you last time i fenced you. ha! … … … okay, and just in case one of the really good fencers happens to be reading this post … i kid! you’re awesome. i bow to your skills. oh god please don’t hurt me again.)

i’m talking about some stiffly-posed bullshit that you obviously paid someone a lot of money to do to you. one that you probably have in a “portfolio” that will never get you into so much as a porn movie. (i’m not sayin. i’m just sayin.) you don’t look like a playboy bunny, okay? so posing like one, airbrushing and all, only with your clothes on, is completely douchy.

unless you’re darth vader. in which case it’s awesome.

blame PRM for that one. as he read the above paragraph over my shoulder, he held up one of the star wars happy-meal boxes i’ve saved for sending lunches to school when one of the kids has forgotten to bring his lunchbox home the previous day, and said, “unless you’re darth vader,” and then referenced this infamous craigslist personal ad. while cackling, of course.

and now, i must add: if you actually use as your profile pic a combo type 2/type 3, glamour shot of yourself and your significant other, god help you. you are a bag o’ douche that, after fermenting in the fake tropical sun in your overpriced glamour shots studio, exploded on my computer screen. and i hate you. and your boyfriend’s gay.

by the same token, if you’re doing a combo type 1/type 2, yourself + spouse + offspring… well, i would say god help you, but you not only have no identity of your own, you have no personality whatsoever. your idea of yourself is a “family protrait,” something as sterile, unremarkable, and bland as the words “spouse” and “offspring” themselves.

so fuck it! might as well. you’re not fooling anyone, anyway, and there’s something to be said for truth in advertising.

awwwwww, i’m just kidding. you’re totally pulling this off. in fact, isn’t it time for you to procreate again to keep your “checklist of adherence to social norms” on schedule? go to that dinner party now! kiss your “spouse” like you’re michael jackson and s/he’s… anything over the age of 13. i’m just sayin. you look totally natural and comfortable. truly. you guys are TOTALLY in love. and we’re all going to keep smiling tightly and cooing effusively at your adorable relationship until you go home inevitably early with your lame excuse to cover for the fact that you have no use for each others’ company… at which point we will all breathe sighs of relief, relax, and commence wondering aloud what the hell is wrong with you again, like we did that time we all totally noticed that it took you, like, MONTHS to get around to being each others’ facebook friends. way to be cordial to each other! you guys are awesome… just like your facebook picture!

also, if you’re packing 3 or more people into a 75×75 pixel thumbnail picture, for gods’ sakes, your face – you know, the one someone is trying to see – is about 12 pixels total. game, douche and BAG.

reading over my shoulder again, PRM has accused me of BUI, Blogging Under the Influence. so i told him that we ran out of meth weeks ago, and its too cold in the garage to cook more. and that, if he was going to hover like that, he could give me a damn backrub. because i own him like that. yeah.

before we move on, an exception to the type 1/2/3 combo rules: my cousin Tweety has as his profile a picture of himself and his four girls stuffed into a cardboard box. it’s not only cute, it’s funny as hell. also, you can see his face just fine. i’m not sure how that works, but it probably has something to do with him having a head the size of a watermelon.

onward, ho!

TYPE 4: “me… with the most expensive vacation i’ve ever taken in the background.”
verdict: kinda lame, but definitely acceptable.

it’s a cliche, but what the hell. a pretty background is a pretty background.

TYPE 5: “dude, we’re at this party, and it’s, like, totally freakin awesome WOOOOOO!”
verdict: acceptable.

again, so long as you don’t have 2 or more friends in the shot, making it difficult to see your face, this is usually a non-douchy way to go. really, this style of picture is only douchy if you are a huge, unrepentant douchebag 24/7. i’m just sayin… if you have an orange fakebake that’s 10 shades darker than your dark-rooted hair, eyebrows plucked into an expression of perpetual surprise, and seeing a camera pointed at you makes your brain scream “hey i know let’s do a charlie’s angels pose wouldn’t that be like SOOOOO FUNNY?!?!?!?” … well, there’s just no non-douchy picture that’s ever going to come of that, anyway.

TYPE 6: artsy.
verdict: ranges from kinda lame to kinda awesome; almost always acceptable.

these almost always involve only part of the face being revealed. and that’s fine. art is cool. but there is such a thing as bad art.

a lame example: a tight cropping of a picture so all you see is the eyes. hamfisted attempts at artistry are not convincing anyone of your artistic skills. you can use scissors, yay! so can my five-year-olds.

some good examples: you with a cool hat pulled down over part of your face, you peeking around a corner or up at the camera, you doing something so awesome that you’re only a tiny part of the picture (LiquidCourage, for example, uses a shot of him getting into an FBI “black helicopter.” can’t see his face, but it’s not hard to figure out that, yeah, you found the right guy.)

best example i’ve ever seen: one of my friends took a black-and-white shot of herself where only the right half of her face is in the frame. the backlight is dazzling, making her face a little fuzzy and turning her hair, already a perfect halo of blond curls, into a really bright halo. the overall effect is angelic, surreal, gorgeous, AND you can actually identify her in spite of that, too. winner!

TYPE 7: something funny.
verdict: usually awesome.

while offering up your offspring’s face instead of your own is completely douchy, a picture of something funny that has absolutely nothing to do with personally identifying you is kind of awesome. one condition only: it has to be something that is actually funny. some tired old joke that was funny when your grandma forwarded it to you when she first got on the interwebs 5 years ago is NOT FUCKING FUNNY. it is douchy.

my three favorites in the “funny” category – a guy i just friended from the fencing team, who bears maybe a passing resemblance to rick moranis, if the light is dim and you’re not wearing your glasses, has a picture of spaceballs’ “dark helmet” as his profile pic. the first time i searched him and saw it, i a) knew it was him, and b) laughed my ass off. anybody who randomly brightens my day like that is awesome.

EvilRedHead had as her profile a cookie-cake that was iced to look like her – if she was drawn into a “cathy” comic strip from 1981 – right down to the red hair and glasses. it was 1950s. it was fucked up. it was awesome.

and finally, EvilRedHead’s college roommate, BootyScoots, posted a truly artfully-angled picture of a plastic dolly, face down, dress scooched up to reveal her bare, plastic butt-cleavage. creepy, fucked up, and completely freaking funny. it’s especially funny because she has two little girls, meaning she didn’t conceive and arrange that set-up. it’s just something that innocently happened, and her dirty, dirty mind found the awesomely wrong pornfulness of the situation, and my god do i love her for sharing it with me.

if eyes are open and mouths shut, that’s about as good as it gets on school pictures. so this year’s christmas cards contain pictures of the 4 halflings, Impy, Chimpy, Druggy, and Mr. President:

note the big streak of orange on impy’s (SpazMonkey’s) face. at 8:22 AM, eight minutes before school started, he decided that he wanted to make a picture. of his hand. by putting his hand on an orange stamp pad. i figured, hey, we’re running late, it’s picture day, someone will wipe that off for him. yeah, apparently, that shit isn’t exactly washable. it lasted through a couple of baths.

since i’m not going to embarrass him by telling y’all who it is, i will go ahead and pile it higher by noting that, in the time zone where he is currently vacationing, it’s actually two hours earlier, meaning he reached this sorry state by 8:30 pm.

(10:36:33 PM): Hi HI Hi
(10:36:36 PM): HI!
(10:36:38 PM): Hi!
(10:39:58 PM): dude
(10:40:00 PM): for real
(10:40:01 PM): drunks
(10:40:06 PM): druuuuuuuuuuuujks
(10:42:01 PM): this game is much more fun when yo re there
(10:43:53 PM): bitch
(10:43:55 PM): drunken
(10:44:04 PM): you should totally be ancknowldgeing me
(10:44:17 PM): and th fact that I almost speellld acknowldiging
(10:44:21 PM): so much bette
(10:44:22 PM): r
(10:44:31 PM): whoa… i killed thatspelling
(10:44:33 PM): weeeeeeeee
(10:52:13 PM): listen. you only get me in this state… liek rarely
(10:52:16 PM): take advantage
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