Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

Uh, what?

From Craftzine: Fetus Cookie Cutter

‘No holiday baby shower would be complete w/o fetus cookies’ ?? I beg to differ. Yick. Oddly, I find myself less ooged out at the thought of eating fetus-shaped cookies at a viewing of Kubrick’s 2001, which is the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw these things. But at a baby shower? Pass, thanks.

This morning I woke up early, snerking at a still-fresh dream. I could be hip, suave, and svelte, in my dreams — in the past, I’ve even been able to fly — but no, these day’s my subconscious still knows I’m a nerd.

In this particular episode, after a chain of odd-and-unrelated events, I found myself in a bar talking to a reporter-type that was friends with my brother. As I recollect, this “reporter” was rather Veronica Mars-esque (complete with cool cap similar to this thing that i totally want to learn to crochet… but that’s for another post), though tended rather a lot more toward the entertainment/tabloid end of the reporting scale rather than toward the NYT. She was bemoaning the fact that she was having difficulty getting an interview with Patrick Dempsey, despite being at some function-or-other where he was in attendance.

Hah. I have no idea from whence that nugget came; perhaps related to an ad we saw recently for Dempsey’s newest movie, and the fact that I follow Wil Wheaton’s tweets and have his latest book on my bedside table (which I’m enjoying as much as I did his previous books). He’s also a big ol’ geek (which you already know if you read his blog), and a McGeek like that, particularly one who can write so eloquently, and with such humor, about tech & geek life, trumps a McDreamy any day of the week.

I have big feet, and have since I was a child. It was small consolation to a self-conscious 7th grade girl that her size 9s were actually appropriate for her height, since being the tallest girl (and often tallest kid, period) in junior high in and of itself was a source of significant angst. My mother’s assertions that “if you had smaller feet, you’d fall right over! It would look funny!”, while they stuck with me, didn’t do much to alleviate the distress over having feet at least two sizes larger than those of my friends.

I eventually got over the whole size issue (though feet in general, still yuck), especially when a college roommate pointed me to catalogues where I could order my size 11s (and above). These days, size 11 is practically commonplace, and I can even go in some shops and buy them right off the shelves. They’re actually pretty stylish, too (unlike some of the clothing styles marketed to larger-sized women, but that’s a whole other rant).

This afternoon I wandered into one of the local shops looking for a last-minute pair of shoes to wear to a semi-casual function this weekend; I’ve had reasonable luck at this place this summer — relatively inexpensive footwear, several styles in my size, many of which I’ve actually liked. Finally, after scanning most of the aisles, I found exactly what I was looking for, and in the size I needed. But… the store completely ruined it for me by placing a big, bright red sticker on the box labeling it OVERSIZED.

Sigh, wtf?

Though size 11 is generally the largest size this store carries (and in many styles they top out at 10), these days it really can’t be considered “oversized”… and even if it could, what kind of marketing brilliance is it to use that term on any women’s fashion (or fashion in general)? It’s not flattering (it calls to mind those signs on trucks transporting half-houses or huge boats on the highway: OVERSIZED LOAD ), and if the intent was to highlight the size, the same large red sticker could have been used to simply state SIZE 11. Obviously the labels were created by someone not familiar with image-angst. Fortunately, I like this particular “boat-of-shoe” (and they don’t even look that big) and will happily don them this weekend, but please, these places need to get a marketing clue. :-/

In the break room this morning, a coworker mentioned a school assignment her daughter brought home recently: write a 20-word story about Halloween.

This, of course, resulted in several snarky suggestions by others on staff, but my favorite - the one that would have had me inhaling my tea through my nose had I been unfortunate enough to be sipping it at the time - was:

“All your candy are belong to us.”

I love working with geeks.