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Crasstalk Classic: How to Survive a Hangover

Good morning/afternoon. Last night we revisited the most awesome post in Crasstalk history. I suspect many of you played along with the home version of The Crasstalk Drinking Game (patent pending,) so we are giving you the next logical step in Classic Crasstalk. This is the key to your overindulgent salvation. Follow it step by step and you will win at alcohol abuse. Enjoy.

Well, it is that time of year again. Even those of us who don’t regularly indulge usually toss a couple back, and for those of us who do it can often end like this:

No matter how good our intentions, New Year’s Eve is an invitation to taunt the liquor gods, and that means paying the price the next day. In the spirit of kindness, I am posting my time honored method of easing the hangover pain so that the first day of your new year won’t be utterly painful.

I know that there are many so called “natural” and vitamin remedies that are supposed to help a hangover, but they are all bullshit. Hippies don’t know shit about drinking, put down the crystal and let a professional help you.

For this method you will need the following:

36 oz. of water

2 anti-inflammatory tablets of your choice (I like Alleve).

2 pieces of bread

2 grams of decent weed

One comfy pillow and blanket

A cable TV hookup or a Netflix account

Phone number to a good pizza place or really good leftovers that are easy to reheat

2 cans of Coca-Cola (absolutely no substitutions on this)

The Night Before

It goes without saying that you can avoid this by not drinking excessively in the first place, but that is for little girls and it is a long time until the MLK weekend, so fuck it. I can also tell you to stick to one type of liquor, but you inevitably will mix bourbon with champagne and will end up doing a shot of absinthe that someone brought back from a holiday in Europe. Again, fuck it. You should drink some water before you go to bed, but if given the chance to get some nasty from whomever you wind up with, skip the water and go for the sweet loving. Rest easy knowing that you will survive the consequences of your foolish behavior. Again …

The Day of Battle

Step #1: Try not to sleep more than a couple hours later than your usually waking time because that makes your body confused and you’ve already pissed it off enough. If you are sleep deprived you can nap later.

Step #2: Shower, or at least wash your face. You smell awful.

Step #3: Drink one of the Cokes. It should be ice cold. Drink it slow.

Step #4: After 15 minutes, toast the bread and eat it (use butter if your stomach isn’t too upset). Drink 12 oz. of water with it.

Step #5: Wait about 20 minutes. Smoke some weed. If you smoke cigarettes you should have one at this point. I know, I know, you are going to quit, but today is not the day. Leave that shit for next week.

Step #6: Now is the time to take a tylenol or whatever. Your stomach will appreciate that you waited.

Step #7: Watch a couple of hours of TV while snuggled in your blankey on the couch. I recommend Law and Order, Futurama, the Twilight Zone, or Star Trek. All of these will probably be on marathons tomorrow or you can get them on Netflix. Avoid porn, horror movies (this is not the time to finally see Hostel), anything really sad (alcohol is a depressant). If you must watch sports you are going to have to choke down a couple of cans of mid-priced domestic beer to make watching your favorite team blow another great season palatable.

Step #8: Take a nice nap. Try to keep it under an hour so you won’t fuck up your sleep schedule and turn into a vampire.

Step #9: Take the second anti-inflammatory with 12 more oz. of water. Return to the couch for more movies (maybe there is something good on Lifetime).

Step #10: Drink the last Coke and smoke some more weed. At this point you should be ok to eat some real food. Try cheese pizza, chicken soup, or pasta with a red sauce. Avoid carbonara, salad, Indian food, anything too spicy. Don’t make your stomach even angrier.

Step #11: Return to the couch and slowly drink 12 more oz. of water. See what Benson and Stabler are up to. Check in on CT and make fun of everyone else for a having a hangover.

Step #12: By this point you should be able to go on with your day, but if you can stay on the couch do it. Avoid phone calls from family, annoying internet arguments, or anything else unpleasant. This is the first day of the New Year, you have 364 more days to be irritated.

Step #13: Profit! You win at drinking. Now don’t do that again!!!

Have a wonderful New Year!

Coming Soon To A Theater Near You

There’s nothing like a great movie experience. You know when you get there twenty minutes early just in time to use the facilities, get snacks, find the best seat in the house (at least four rows up, dead center), and the line is short, like Nick Cage and Adam Sandler opening weekend short — a veritable movie theater Nirvana, that’s what this is.

You stake your claim. Perhaps you put your jacket and handbag in the seat next to you, you know as a subtle indication that you don’t want the Johnstons and their trough of children, Gummi Bears, Slurpees, and loud-talking nonsense sitting right next to you. They won’t get the message. They never do. Nevertheless, you’re comfortable, you’ve leaned back in your reclined seat, and the armrest is all yours.

Ok. Er, yeah, that’s what you used to do. Well now you should really just pull out the crime scene booties, a hair net, and perhaps a full body rain slicker because going to the movies is like taking a hot bath in someone else’s bathwater! Literally like licking the door handle of a public restroom.

Dr. Philip Tierno Jr., the director of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at New York University Langone Medical Center, analyzed spot samples taken from the armrests and concession areas of four NYC movie theaters, as reported by Good Day New York.

Do you know what he found?! What can only be described by the good doctor as “gross contamination.”

This is a pure culture of E. coli,” Tierno said, pointing to a Petri dish from the counter top. “There could be any kind of virus there.”

At the AMC theater’s Empire 25 location on West 42nd Street — you may recall this was the home of an infestation of bedbugs leading to the theater’s closing for fumigation — there were 15 heath violations. One of which was for “evidence of mice or live mice present in [the] facility’s food and/or non-food areas.” Yoikes! He also swabbed the “butter button.” You know that little contraption that’s used to spray butter on your popcorn, yeah well, that thing came back with “environmental organisms” with likely the presence of other, potentially harmful bacteria.

Similarly, the “butter button” at the City Cinemas 1, 2 & 3 theater on 3rd Avenue and East 60th Street came back with “fecal organisms and Enterococcus” bacteria. (Man alive, sheesh.) And not to be outdone, after testing the armrests at both, “Yeast was [present], which could be found in feces or vaginally found,” Tierno said. Klebsiella, an intestinal bacteria, was also observed at the AMC location in Times Square.

What, just what?! Hold on just one damn minute. So there is literally poo covering the surfaces of various items that come in contact with your food and your arms at these theaters…along with any number of other unregulated poo instances? That’s a whole lot of “butt” on that butter button. Yes, sure, I know we live in a germ-ridden, mostly filthy environment if you put the entire world under a microscope, but who, just who, is rubbing their nethers and then shamelessly slathering those particles on the “butter button?” It makes me think that some wanton poo-man is just waiting for you to get your popcorn so he can gift the “butter button” with some of his primo ass-sauce. Is nothing sacred? Can you not just enjoy your pseudo-butter/greasy trans fats in relative peace? Apparently, no. There’s poo to ingest. Nice.

Only one of the four theaters came back with what Tierno describes as “insignificant” amounts of bacteria. Bay Plaza AMC Theatres in the Bronx has this honor. But after 43 health violations lobbed against them last November, one would hope that they’ve cleaned up their act.

Of course each of the main offenders recounted here have offered some sort of PR riddled statement, “We at the blah-blah theater consider the cleanliness of our theaters a high priority, blah, blah, safe environment, sorry you were unsatisfied, blah, and we’re working to blah, blah.”

Whatever.

But really, just clean up the poo.

What is Photo Phriday and Why is it Misspelled?

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PhotoPhriday started on a whim: while chatting in Crosstalk on TSTSNBN, I suggested we share pictures of our personal living spaces. A few people were game (if memory serves, Matty McBoy’s reply was, “I’m game”) and the photo sharing began.

We had such a good time peeking into the lives of our friends and neighbors that we turned it into a real game. Since then, we’ve shared pictures of ourselves, our shame, our art, our travels. Best of all, it is a great way to get to know the amazing people with whom we share our online time.

The rules are few:

Pictures are for sharing, not for snarking. No judgement, no jerks.
Each week, there is a theme and a host. The host selects the theme.
To host on Crasstalk, you must have an author account and you must write a short post about the theme. This should be done no later than Thursday evening and set to “pending” so the admins can schedule it to be published on Friday.
If you are new to our community and are a commenter, but do not have an author account, be patient. Hang out, comment, and participate in PhotoPhriday and on other threads. Once we know you, you have a better chance of being asked to host.
Hosting duties rotate. The current host selects the following week’s host from among those participating in PhotoPhriday. You aren’t obligated to host, but it is really easy!
If there is no host, one of the admins or I will jump in for a week. If you host and can’t find someone who agrees to do it for the next week, please let me know. You can contact me at [email protected].
If you don’t want to “out” yourself, be sure to remove personal details before taking and uploading a picture. Please don’t out others: don’t post pictures of other people, their children, or anyone who may not want to have their mug on the Internet.
No NSFW photos. Sorry, pervs.
Instructions for how to upload and share a picture should be included in each PhotoPhriday theme post.

Oh, and the spelling? It is one word, no space, because it had to work as a tag on the old site: #photophriday (#pourafortyonthefloor), and it is misspelled because I was trying to be cute. Now we’re stuck with it and every time I see it, I think, “phuck.”

This week’s host is DogsOfWar. He dropped no hints about the theme, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be about clouds.

Yes, you can! (find fun plus-sized clothing)

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SCENE: LeftCoastLady enters the room, shuffles toward a rocking chair and lowers herself into it.

When I was younger, the stores catering towards women who fell into the plus size category were severely limited. Worse, what you did find was usually comprised of horrible patterns, boxy cuts, and just overall unflattering. And we didn’t like it, but we lived with it!

Fast forward in time…

Thankfully, with the magic that is online shopping, finding plus size clothing that is fun, flirty, and even *gasp* sexy, has become very easy. Sure, the plus size mainstays such as Lane Bryant, Catherine’s, Fashion Bug, and those small amounts of space allocated for plus size clothing in department stores (when compared to what’s allocated to the Misses’ and Juniors’ sections) are still around, but why not have some fun with your wardrobe?

Another great benefit of online shopping is the ability to shop globally. You’re not just stuck with what’s available — or more likely, what’s not available — in your area any longer!

Here are a few sites that either cater entirely to the plus size market or have a wide selection of offerings in their plus category.

Simple Shirt Dress from ASOS Curve — This shirt dress from ASOS Curve could be dressed up or down.

One of my favorite sites is ASOS Curve. Carrying sizes 16 to 22, the site offers clothing that you can wear to work as well as going out. When I’m getting dressed for work in the morning, I tend to go for the easy pieces that don’t require too much work. This simple shirt dress is a perfect example. Throw on a pair of knee-high boots or a nice heel along with a bracelet and voilà!

UK-based Evans is a site I visit often to drool over their offerings…and to wish the damn exchange rate would settle down. Still, the company offers classic pieces as well as special collections that go beyond the expected looks when it comes to the plus size market. Last fall, the company offered a collection by Beth Ditto, lead singer of The Gossip. While the looks weren’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, I appreciated how daring it was.

Gorgeous Grecian Drape top from Evans. — Loving this gorgeous Grecian Drape top from Evans.

Another long-time favorite is B & Lu. Their looks tend to skew a bit younger, but still stylish. Their pieces are fun and last for some time. If you want something to show off curves, check out the Raquel Dress. Leopard calls not included.

Missphit is an online boutique that takes traditional-looking clothing and adds an edge, a sophisticated one, but an edge nonetheless.

Get in the navy with this cute Nautical Shrug from Missphit.

Last, but certainly not least, I have to highlight the sexy offerings available to wear under your great finds. I’m a huge fan of lingerie and probably have way too much for someone who’s (currently) single. Still, I love a flattering and pretty lacy thing that makes you want to prance around the house as if you’re in a music video…or a back-up dancer for ’80s era Prince.

Enter Hips & Curves. (Note: The site does feature lingerie models, so use caution if opening this link at work.) I love this site a lot. While they do offer the everyday bras and panties, the fun is in the lingerie section. From fantasy wigs to costumes, Hips & Curves offers all you need to make a sexy night turn into a hot and sexy weekend. Hmm, I think I just found something else I want to buy…

Super-cute lace camisole and panty set. — This super-cute lace camisole and panty set from Hips & Curves will make your significant other pay attention when you want something.

While this has focused primarily on the online shopping experience, I can’t end this article without calling out two of my favorite “brick & mortar” shops in the U.S.

For those of you in NYC or planning to visit the city, I cannot recommend Re/Dress enough. Located in Brooklyn, you’ll find lots of new as well as vintage plus size clothing. The women in the shop are nice and the prices are great.

Similarly, if you find yourself in my neck of the woods, be sure to visit Fat Fancy Fashions in downtown Portland. I’ve been frequenting Fat Fancy since they were an operation run out of a garage where they had a store set up one weekend a month. Over a year ago, they moved into a storefront and their fans have followed.

Skirt from Re/Dress — This skirt was one of LeftCoastLady's great finds from Re/Dress in Brooklyn.

So, there you have it! Some fabulous clothing options await you online and I’ve only mentioned but a handful. There are plenty others out there, including the various Etsy shops that offer one-of-a-kind plus size fashions.

You’re not limited to wearing the same old boxy clothes, so go out and be free and be stylish!

Now, get off my damn lawn…and go pick me up two pairs of thigh-high fishnet stockings.

Hump Day: Try and Behave

Here is your naughty thread. Behave and don’t post any nips, vag, or penii. Please.
Now, on to the hotness. This is Paul Dinello. I think he is beautiful. If you don’t you a complete jack ass.

Here is some of his best work. Caution: weed reference.

Funny is sexy, always.

Pregnancy: What no one tells you ahead of time

I’ve had several people email me and say things like “I just heard the word episiotomy for the first time” or “I didn’t know that your face blew up into craters when you were pregnant!”. The emails invariably end with the phrase “Nobody told me that.”

Indeed. That is part of the gestation initiation: There’s a whole bunch of stuff they don’t tell you before you get pregnant. Then, when you’re pregnant, slowly, the mysteries of gestation and birth are revealed to you. It’s highly unsettling and, I think, a little bit unfair. There should be a bit more disclosure for the potential recruits. I doubt knowledge will change much. Most people will still have kids anyway, thinking “I’ll be the exception to the rule”. Knowledge doesn’t stop lots of people from having second or third children. Look at Michelle Duggar. There can’t be much she doesn’t know at this point and it’s no deterrent for her.

In the interests of full disclosure, here are a few things about pregnancy no one ever tells you about. Some might happen to you, others won’t. However, at least two of them will.

Pregnancy zits: They can put adolescence to shame. You can get them on your face, chest, back, nose, wherever. By this point in your life, you’ve probably forgotten how much zits can hurt. You’ll remember.

Food aversions: You hear a lot about morning sickness, which is something you usually get over after 12 weeks. Food aversions can last the whole pregnancy. I was personally so freaked out by chickens during one pregnancy that I had to stay away from the rotisserie chicken section of the grocery store. I couldn’t even think about the shape of a chicken without wanting to vomit. I know a woman who had the same problem with lettuce. She was convinced she could smell lettuce if it was in the same room. Common food aversions include eggs, meat, milk and salad.

Hair loss: This might happen after your delivery. Or it can happen when you’re first pregnant. Or both. If it happens afterward, buy the Rogaine for Men. The kind for women isn’t as good (of course).

The advice and the touching: They say it takes a village to raise a child and I will vouch for the fact that the village certainly seems to think so. The moment you show signs of gestating, the village will be up in your grill nonstop and the customary boundaries of personal space will cease to apply to you. People love two things in life: Dispensing advice and touching pregnant women. They’ll come up to you with all kinds of advice, some good, some weird and then their hands will creep towards your belly. They’ll get more aggressive as you grow. By the time you are in the 3rd trimester, you can’t fight people off with a blowtorch. Sometimes a woman, with her hand on my belly, would relate a gem of wisdom from her years of parenting and what I really want to do was not to ask for more advice but to ask “Have we met?”

Bad jokes: Around the third trimester, people start making hysterical jokes. Look how huge you are! Do you beep when you walk backwards? You don’t walk, you waddle! You’ve been pregnant since God was a boy! Do you think you are ever going to have that baby? Are you eating lots of pickles and ice cream? You still haven’t had that baby? Oh boy, are you in for some sleepless nights!

Yes, the people around you turn into standup comedians and they all recycle the same jokes. I firmly believe this is at the root of all pregnant women’s grouchiness. The swelling, the exhaustion – these are all things a person can cope with. However 9,878 jokes about the same damn thing will make a woman want to slap everyone she sees. Fortunately, people will write any and all bitchy comments you make off to pregnancy crazies so feel free to tell people to go to hell. For once, you can get away with it.

There are many, many more untold stories of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing. I’ve barely scraped the surface. Unfortunately, I got so annoyed thinking about all the irritating jokes that I’m going to need a glass of wine to calm myself down and think clearly again.

Basic Color Theory: Design Notes for the Artistically Un-inclined

Remember when you were a kid and in between eating fistfuls of paste you had your box of poster paints? Red and blue make purple, right? So why did it always turn out black/brown-ish purple mess? Because red is not a true primary color. Red has yellow in it. Let’s get past red, yellow and blue with today’s subject, basic color theory. I touched on some of the aspects of this in our previous article but I thought some further information and visuals might be fun.

The two major ways colors are created are applied and light which then play into each other but that’s getting too deep for today.

Put simply, applied is paint, though that is seriously simplified. Pure pigments aside, basically any color can be created using the CMYK breakdown. In printing this is called process color but most art students get to use these colors in gouache for color theory classes . C=Cyan, M=Magenta, Y=Yellow and K=Black. With these four primary colors you are able to create most other colors. C+M=Purple, M+Y=Orange and Y+C=Green for your basic secondary colors. All three together make a warm black. Brights, neons, metallics and white are not possible to create using this method. The large majority of things you see printed in magazines, newspapers, books (not old books), anything that shoots out of your home printer is printed using this way. Art prints often are not and it depends for textiles, but usually not. It is a basic and cost effective way to get the rainbow. An uneven mix of CMY will create a brown. An even mix will create a grey.

Light, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. Light is how most computer art programs function so it’s good to know. RGB are Red, Green and Blue. Secondary are R+G=Yellow, G+B=Cyan, B+R=Purple and all three together equal White light. All brights and neons are possible with this mix. Hence all the bright and shiny colors on your television. Some of the secondary colors seem counter intuitive but if you look at the graphic you’ll see they are basically the inverse of applied color with a couple shifts. Ah, patterns in nature.

As a little interesting end tidbit I left our friend ROYGBIV off of the chart. He is the basic colors visual light wavelengths. He is the rainbow. Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.

Now get your hand out of the paste and go paint something!

How to abuse Google’s search ranking, for fun and profit

J.C. Penney, one of the oldest and most trusted institutions of commerce, was recently caught bumping up their search rank in Google by using deceptive tactics.

Google has been around since 1998, and ever since they came online, people have been trying to exploit its algorithm to make it so their pages appear first on Google’s listing. Have you ever gone to a website and seen a bunch of terms at the bottom of the page, or sometimes hidden (only visible when you highlight them with the mouse)?

The site was trying to artificially bump its search ranking. Google has “robots” that search the web and extract pertinent words. Loading your site up with descriptive words is one of the oldest tricks to try to get in to Google’s index. Google keeps their search algorithm secret, but they do disclose some information about how their bots work.

J.C. Penney exploited Google’s search algorithm through site links. Lets say you’re selling tires. If a bunch of automotive-related websites link to yours, Google takes that in account and assume that your site’s content is highly relevant and deserves a high rank. The more sites that link to yours, the better.

Google is smart enough to rank sites in terms of overall importance, so a link from someone’s tiny blog might give you +2 points, but if a site like Walmart links to you (they’re big, and get a lot of traffic) – you’ll get +10 points. The more points, coming from relevant sources, means a higher rank. You’re probably thinking “who cares if you’re #1 vs #2 on Google’s search ranking?” but the exact position matters. A lot. Researchers have done studies that say most people are proportionately more likely to click on the #1 link. If you’re a business as big as J.C. Penney, millions of dollars are at stake.

J.C. Penney decided to hire a shady SEO (search engine optimization) company to register thousands of websites whose sole purpose was to link to J.C. Penney. The SEO company would fill these sites with commonly-used search terms, and links. For an example, here’s a link to a Huffington Post “article” that was published before the Super Bowl:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/what-time-superbowl-start_n_819173.html

See how most of the “content” is short, simple paragraphs which seem to be factoids (at best)? This site is designed to be indexed by Google so that someone searching for “What time does the Superbowl start?” will be directed to the HuffPo page. This is way more advanced than J.C. Penney’s stunt. (Their pages are so un-interesting they’re not even worth linking to, unless you like looking at lists of household goods.) This HuffPo page isn’t really an article, it’s not really a “listicle” … its a page designed to drive traffic to the site.

Simple tricks like this have been vetted by Google since its inception. Since Google relies on bringing pertinent search terms to people, they really frown on stuff like this. A couple of years ago BMW in Germany decided to post a bunch of invisible text on their website (terms like “cars, auto, which car is the best?” etc) and Google de-listed them. They removed BMW from any and all Google searches! (BMW changed their site and got re-listed.) Every couple of months someone will come up with a “super ninja SEO technique” to drive traffic to websites. Generally any “super ninja SEO technique” will work for a couple of weeks, until Google changes up its algorithm. (Look in the “computer” section of Craigslist, and you’ll find all sorts of ads from people with “super secret SEO techniques.” It’s mostly bullshit.)

In response to J.C. Penney’s deceptive tactics, Google changed its search algorithm. Sites that used techniques like J.C. Penney lost a ton of traffic. In fact, Google came out and said that approximately 12% of their search rankings have changed in the past week. That’s a ton of upheaval!

Here’s another thing: Web users should be aware of how search rankings are calculated. The number one link in Google might not be the best result for you. If you run a website, its really deceptive to get traffic like this. As someone who buys a lot of stuff online, be wary of links!

Pregnancy – The Home Stretch

Do you remember waiting for Christmas or your birthday as a child? The wait seemed eternal, especially the last couple of days. You felt like you were going to spontaneously combust because of excitement. When you’re pregnant and near the end of your term, this is often how you feel. You’ve had enough of being pregnant and you really want to meet your baby. Plus, you feel like a whale and you would really like to see your feet again.

At the very end of pregnancy, you stop fearing labor. Instead, you begin to worry that you will always be pregnant. Forever. This is your main fear and it replaces any concerns you had about delivery. You want the baby out and you want it out now. I think this is nature’s way of making moms brave enough for labor.

When you’re in the home stretch of pregnancy and complain, there are evil, sadistic people who say things like “Relax, get some sleep and enjoy the end of your pregnancy.” They counsel that you won’t get sleep when the baby arrives so you should stock up on sleep. This is ludicrous advice because sleeping in the last 2 weeks of pregnancy impossible for the following reasons:

You can’t roll over
Your skin feels like it’s being stretched over a drying rack
You have pee every 7.8 seconds
You have occasional contractions that keep getting your damn hopes up
You are so swollen that you somewhat resemble the Pillsbury Dough Boy

I don’t mean to sound negative about pregnancy. I really wanted to be pregnant both times. I was thrilled to be having the children. However, my pregnancies became difficult and uncomfortable due to some health problems that were exacerbated by pregnancy. Also, I am a stunningly impatient person. Waiting for 9 months was almost unbearable for me. I would have preferred to place an order and receive a baby within 48 hours. But, nature does not operate that way.

So, when I was within a week of my due date, the sole focus in my life was labor. I wanted it to happen so bad. I would have welcomed labor pains like a child welcomes candy. I began to look for ways to induce labor. The most popular approach, from what I read, is sex. I’m not even going to comment on the feasibility of sex at the last phases of pregnancy. There are logistical issues which are complicated by the fact that by the end of pregnancy, many women have completely lost their minds. Therefore, most men are terrified of their wives and would rather chew glass then initiate sex.

I decided to investigate a different approach – spicy food. I convinced my husband to take me to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. I ordered spicy black beans and nachos with salsa that I believe was called “El Culo Diablo.” I picked the hottest peppers out of the salsa and ate them raw with no chips.

“This,” said my husband somberly, “is what desperation looks like.”

Indeed, it was desperation. The Mexican food run did not pay off. I did not go into labor after the meal, but my husband reported that he was able to make the paint in the bathroom peel. I tried several other strategies, including Red Raspberry Leaf tea (tastes much worse than you’d think), long walks (I logged miles), acupuncture and laying on the couch weeping because I was so ready.

The baby, like all babies, came when he felt like it and not one minute sooner. This is the way babies are. They do what they feel like doing and you have little to no control over their behavior. It’s a theme that starts with the birth and continues pretty much for the entire time you are a parent. I suppose pregnancy at least teaches you some patience which is something you really need as a parent.

Photos here and here.

Up Your Game, Stalk Like a Pro!

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So you’re creepy. Okay. You’ve been pining for Mary Beth ever since the second grade when she threw a grape popsicle at your shirt and it got stuck there all through recess. You then went home and hid your popsicle-stuck shirt under your bed so you can revisit it, not much, just every once in awhile when you’re feeling really low. That’s not really weird. It’s just a thing you do.

It’s so frustrating that Mary Beth doesn’t even know you’re alive. It makes you feel all squirrelly in the head, really. You went through junior high with braces and acne, and that rash that made you look like the underside of an avocado — but just seeing Mary Beth’s face got you through the day. Now she’s married to fucking Josh. Of course she’s married to fucking ass-chapper, car dealer, gum-popping, dickfaced Josh. But she should really be married to you, and deep down she knows it. Little does she know, but she friended you on Facebook and you’ve been trading comments about pot pie recipes for weeks now. She probably doesn’t really remember you from high school what with the reduced inflammation and proliferation of the avocado’s ass rash. Lucky for you, you think her marriage to jackal-dicked Josh is on the skids, but how will you know when to make your move? You can’t just ask her when you smell her hair in the grocery store every Sunday.

Dan Loewenherz has designed the answer. The Facebook Breakup Notifier.

This app has one purpose, and one purpose only — to let the user know when the relationship status of those of their choosing has changed. That’s right. Now you no longer have to stumble upon the information by chance. Now you can spin merrily in front of your freaky bedroom shrines once you immediately find out that the, ahem, object of your desire is a single ready to mingle. What will you do? Congratulate them? Offer sympathy? Put that doll away and ask for a phone number? All of them!

The Breakup Notifier lets you log in, check off the friends you’re interested in, and then emails you once they’re no longer taken.

As reported in an interview with the Huffington Post, here’s what Lowenherz had to say about the new app’s genesis.

I got the idea on Friday night when my fiancee and her mom were talking about a guy to set up with my fiancee’s sister. Unfortunately, said guy was taken…so I asked them if they would want to get notified when he broke up. It was kind of a joke actually, but they loved it, and so on Saturday I spent about 4 hours building it out. I didn’t really tell anyone until yesterday.

I hope that people use it for good and not evil – it’s merely practical. If you’re going to check someone’s profile every day [to stalk them], you might as well get rid of the tedium and have the changes get delivered right to your inbox instead. When people don’t list their relationship status, Breakup Notifier reads it as “Unknown”. So if someone changes, you’ll get an email like the following:

“Hi Shirley,
Joe Shmoe has changed his relationship status to “Single” from “In a relationship”. Get on it!
Best,
The Breakup Notifier”

We totally needed something like this, because surely the internet and the Fooozebooks doesn’t already give out enough personal information. I suspect in the near future the advent of the “Maybe You Need a Pap Smear,” and the “You Fuck Like King Kong” apps are in the offing.

We can’t wait.

If you’re really interested [I won’t judge you, but I will check your trunk for skulls], here’s more information on the thing: Breakupnotifier.com

Happy hunting!