Let's Talk About How the 2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is Basically the 1980 Film "Flash Gordon"

The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show happened last night. Some people have noted that it was ridiculous for this show to feature a $10m bra. Some people have commented that using emojis for underwear is bizarre. Still others are focused on the amount of underboob shown at the after party. But no one has addressed the biggest and most obvious issue with this year's show: it was Flash Gordon regurgitated onto a runway with Taylor Swift singing in the background. Seriously. Check it out.

First, from their Naughty Savior of the Universe Collection, Victoria's Secret gives us Flash:

In all his various costumes:

And, of course, we have Dale:

And the great Prince Barin:

And much to Flash's dismay, there's Aura, modeling the Neurotic Space Princess Bombshell collection:

But the greatest of these, my friends, is Prince Vultan, coming straight from the Victoria's Secret Sexy Little Hawkman collection:

When I grow up....

Today I learned there is an actual job with an actual title... and salary... and benefits package... where one is paid to talk about video games on social networking sites... in German... which is pretty much what I already do when I'm supposed to doing my job. This leaves me with one burning question, what the hell kind of f*ck off career counselor did I have that I didn't know about this? Seriously. You had one job, career counselor. One job. Where the hell were you when I was all "I think I'm going to go to law school and be a lawyer"? Why weren't you there telling me, "Really? You want to do that? Because you could talk about video games on the internet for a living and probably get paid a lot more."

Because now I know anything is possible, here's a list of my top four dream jobs. Feel free to send any leads on any of them, since I've obviously been failed by my career advisor.

4. Professional Bioshock Player

I will play Bioshock for a living. People will watch me with rapt fascination and some may even bet on me, just as they do people who choose to play with balls or pucks for a living.

3. Internet Spelling/Grammar Police

I will be paid to issue citations to users of Facebook, twitter, reddit, youtube, assorted forums and comment sections, and other web media who screw up English spelling and grammar. I will also be in charge of banning repeat offenders on a multi-strike system. Native English speakers will be banned from the entire internet after three strikes not reasonably attributed to autocorrect or intoxication or seven strikes including autocorrect mishaps and wastey-face fails. Non-native speakers will be banned from interneting in English after twenty strikes not  reasonably attributed to intoxication or autocorrect or fifty strikes including autocorrect mishaps and wastey-face fails.

2. Professional Con & Music Festival Attendee

I will go to cons and music festivals for a living. When I have time while I'm living it up at the various events, I will tweet about what an awesome time I'm having, diss crappy cosplayers, and gush about all the cool celebrities I've met and amazing bands I've seen. I'll also post photos on various social media outlets to make others jealous.  The benefits package will include a wardrobe stipend and food allowance for each event.


1.  Poutine Critic

I will be paid to travel the world sampling poutine at various restaurants and food trucks and rating the product. As I will too frequently be in a food coma to be expected to write an actual article critiquing the nuances of each poutine, my ratings will simply be on a scale of one to ten, held up on a giant card Olympics-style at the conclusion of my meal. A minion will photograph the same and upload them to a blog or submit them to a food magazine. At the end of each calendar year I will revisit each establishment earning a "10" and crown one poutine champion.

It's No Wonder I Turned Out the Way I Did

I was thinking today about the old Apple ][ games I used to play when I was a young, impressionable kid. This is possibly definitely not because I've been playing a lot of Face Maker and Oregon Trail on the Apple ][ emulator while stuck on the phone with difficult clients. Yeaaah. It happens. Your doctor probably does it to you, too.

Anyway, I played a lot of video games as a kid. In fact, I would say that video games played a pretty substantial role in my development. No one really seemed concerned about my video game playing growing up... much to my dismay, actually, as that also meant no one was concerned when my joystick started systematically giving me electric shocks on a daily basis. That's probably why I have such poor dexterity to this day. But, I digress. Point I'm trying to get to is, nowadays people are up in a dizzy whizzy about the deleterious effects video games are having on kids as if video games suddenly turned into these wicked creations that exist solely to corrupt the youth of America. But the fact of the matter is, video games have been effed up for a long time. Looking back as an almost 30 year old woman, I can, without question, say there were some seriously messed up games that I played as a kid.

Let's take a look, shall we? For brevity's sake, we'll only look at Apple ][ games. We'd be here all year if I started talking Nintendo, SNES, or Genesis.

1. ZooMaster -  This was an action game released in 1983, in which the player plays a character who basically crashes a zoo and starts shooting all the animals. In case you didn't get that, this is not a hunting game and you're not shooting bison to feed your family like in Oregon Trail. Oh no, you play a dude who rolls up in the zoo, in his little car and just starts dropping all the animals like it's the streets of West Compton and they're all a buncha crips on the wrong side of the Tupac/Biggie Smalls feud. What. The. Hell? Why? Why would you put out a game that consisted of perpetrating a drive by on frickin' zoo animals?

2. Stickybear Bop - Stickybear had a franchise of educational games released in the 1980s. Stickybear could teach you the alphabet, fractions, or shapes or simply assist you in dropping napalm out of a hot air balloon in a game called Sticky-bear Bop (which Cyndi Lauper did not do the soundtrack for. Most unfortunate).  As gameplay went, Stickybear Bop wasn't all that effed up. But let's address the elephant in the 5 1/2" disk drive, shall we? What the hell kind of a name is Stickybear for your titular character? And what the hell kind of a name for a children's game is Stickybear Bop? Think about it. Stickybear Bop was released in 1986. We learned from Cyndi Lauper in 1984 that "bop" means masturbate. So what the creators of Stickybear Bop have essentially done is given us a masturbating bear that has, through his depraved, blindness-inducing acts, gotten himself all sticky and would like to take yo' kids for a ride in a hot air balloon.  Awesome. Stickybear is Pedobear's dad. I have no doubt.



3. Paperboy - Paperboy was an Atari arcade game released in 1984 and ported to the Apple ][ and other game systems in the later 80s, in which the player is a paperboy delivering newspapers to his faithful subscribers. Sounds legit enough, right? Hell, it might even teach us something about responsibility and having a job.  Except that's only one third of Paperboy's objective. The others: eff stuff up for people who don't subscribe to your paper and hit people and animals who annoy you in the face with a newspaper. Essentially, Paperboy was an economic terrorist, breaking the windows, tombstones, and lawnmowers and killing the dogs of those who didn't purchase his wares and instigating class warfare by effing with blue collar workers repairing automobiles or working on roadside drains. Now of course, I didn't understand economic terrorism as a child, so primarily what I got out of Paperboy was the main goal was to piss as many people off as possible, so they would stop subscribing and I could vandalize the hell out of their stuff and knock them off of ladders. Which really isn't that bad of a way of life, except, jail.


4. MoneyMunchers - This is a 1982 maze game. The character would navigate his way through a maze, in which someone had made it rain, picking up the discarded cash money and avoiding the "money munchers" which were big creepy insect bastards that would eat your money and kill you. This is effed up for two reasons. One, it's essentially Patrick Bateman versus the giant bugs, sans Huey Lewis music, which means it's just a lame yuppie exterminator, and two, I firmly believe it and it alone led to the inspiration for and creation of 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" which we can all agree is not a stellar piece of music.






5. The Oregon Trail - I'm not going to bother with a description because if you don't know what The Oregon Trail is, get the hell off my blog. Anyway, The Oregon Trail earns a spot on this list solely because it came with an educational label. Hear me out. I know we all played it at school so it seems like it was educational, right? But think about it. What did you actually learn?  I learned two things.
First, I learned people on the Oregon Trail were weak ass bitches who should have been going to the gym before hitting the trail. Why? Because "You killed 972 pounds of meat, but you were only able to carry 100 pounds back to the wagon."  Now really, if you can't lift more than 100 pounds, you probably should've stayed on the east coast and applied for some sort of 19th century disability. Seriously. Not to mention holy illogical, Batman. My family is starving and we need to get across the country before the weather turns bad, but hey let me take time to carve out exactly one-hundred pounds of meat off this bison before I head back from this hunt. And how the hell was it always exactly 100 pounds that he carried back? Did he take a scale out there on the hunt? Because I don't remember buying a meat scale at Matt's General Store when we embarked on this endeavor.
And second, schadenfreude. I learned schadenfreude. You show me the person who didn't think it was hilarious that their little cousin, the neighbor kid, and their BFF got cholera and dysentery. You can't. Because they don't exist. Oregon Trail bred a whole generation of little schadenfreudy sociopaths.  "Hahaha! Jen's got cholera again. Let's pick up the pace and cut back her food!" Oh stop judging me. You did it, too.

Things You May Overhear During a Game of Sonic Spinball with Kathy and Rach

Last weekend I bought a Sega Genesis, complete with Sonic Spinball. And then Kathy and I ate Po' Boys and had a Spinball playoff. It sounded like a deranged, vaguely pornographic Tourette's convention came to town. It was awesome. And because I believe sharing is caring, here are the evening's best quotes, compiled for your reading pleasure.

The following quotes are real. The names have been changed to protect the innocent (NB: there is no innocent; no names have actually been changed).

• "Where's my sh*tf*cksgiving?!"
 
• "No. Nonono! You get in there! You. Get. Up. In. There. Good boy!"
   
• "Bahnurrrt. I like when it sounds like a fart."
   
• "Noooo you dumb*ss, get out of his mouth!!"
   
• "I'll bag your worm, baby."
 

• "Come on b*tch, come onnn b*tch! Oh, thank you."
   
• "Loooooooop de forrrrce!"
   
• "Arggghh. Why do you gotta make it all long and drawn out and I gotta thrust into his mouth til I'm dead?!"
 

• "Sh*tter!"
   
• Sang: "F*ckkkk my f*ckkkking liiiiiife!"
   
• "Sploooooge! Nooooooo!"
   
• "You're supposed to go in the hole!"
   
• Sang (to the tune of It Must Have Been Love): "I don't wannna be herrrre, especially not with that dude's mouuuuthhh."
   
• "Now I got two mother effin' birds!"
   
• "How 'bout a ride?! Wtf?! Are you hitting on me?!"
   
• "This level is a terrible thing of....terrible-ness. "
   
• "Gahhh...ahhh...ahhh. Oh! I got out of his mouth! Oh yes!"
   
• "Turn. Turn you stupid whore!"
   
• "Nice heaving. Now actually do something!"
   
• "Domo arigato, *sshole!"

A Pictorial Letter to a Snake

Dear Snake-Lady,

We've known each other a while now. We've had some good times bad times and some bad times along the way and I feel the time is come for me to tell you how I feel.

Snake-Lady, I confess. The first time you came into my office, I was moved. My stomach flittered and I could feel the bile rising into my throat. I'm not sure if it was your horrifyingly small mouth that reminds me of an anus:

Or your creepy triangle of hair that spews forth in all directions at jagged 30 degree angles:

Or those Thick-As-A-Mexican-Coke-Bottle Math-Teacher glasses:

with those crazy googly eyes of yours coyly peeking out from behind:

Or perhaps it was the sheer bat-shit insanity radiating off of you. But whatever it was, I could barely contain my excitement vomit. I knew from then on my life would never be the same. And I was right. 

You're always with me now. You call me just to chat about your landlord's conspiracy with a university to bring you down. You show up unannounced to tell me about your neighbors having sex with their cousin. You curse incoherently for hours on in, and all I can do is nod and smile. It's touching. It touches me right in my feels (the negative ones and the ones associated with regurgitation, to be specific).

But I knew things were special the day you barged in to bare your soul shirtless torso to me, 

and confess to me your deepest secret - that it was the year of the snake, and you were in fact a snake,

so I had best watch my back or perhaps put a gun to my head. Oh, I knew things were special for sure then. Real special. More special than I could ever ask for. 

I tried to run. But you, you sneaky snake, you wouldn't take no for an answer. Day in and day out you begged the receptionist, the accountant, the other lawyers, the copy machine to make me take you back telling them that I had asked God to send you to me. Until finally one day someone said yes (it wasn't me, just so we're clear).

And so here we are, Snake-Lady. Together again. You coiled up in the parking lot waiting to ambush me as I walk to my car and me slaving away trying to make sense of your incoherent case file. 

It's beautiful, my dearest Snake-Lady. The truth is, it's so beautiful, that working on your files, or listening to you tell me about the bird that hacks into your Facebook, or seeing your crazy eyes, anus-mouth, and triangle hair makes me want to hang myself...

... with piano wire...

...whilst Billy Joel's Piano Man plays on infinite loop in the background.

And maybe I could overlook everything up until this point - all the times you've ambushed me at my car, all the times you've cursed at me and spittle flew at my face, all the times you've told me about being a reptile, all the times you've stripped in my office, but enough is enough, Snake-Lady. Piano Man is a terrible song. And you've made me daydream about it. Do you know what that does to a person?! Probably not. You're nuts. And so it is from the bottom of my hear that I say this to you, my dearest Snake-Lady, I hope Billy Joel makes you into a pair of snakeskin pants, that he wears every time he plays Piano Man. 

Not Billy Joel

Forever and ever. For all eternity.

Yours truly,

R aka the Mongoose. 

Remember that time...

Remember that time I went hiking and tripped over someone's discarded dentures just hanging out on the ground and it was disgusting and creepy but also kind of hilarious and rad? Yeahhhhhhh.

Failcation in the Windy City

Four years ago this day, March 22, 2009 - a date which will live in infamy - a group of friends was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the combined forces of the City of Chicago.

Four years ago this day, a group of friends was on vacation in the Windy City. The friends were having an awesome time and being general rockstars. They ate delicious pizza. They celebrated the glory that was an Einstein’s bagel; they shopped and scored 90% off designer clothes. They drank bubble tea and laughed and laughed and laughed the nights away. But then, as their last night in the city drew to a close, quickly and silently the fail monster came all up in their hotel room and raped them in the face.

Sunday morning, the hungover friends depart their hotel for delicious bagels to help them cope with their rough last-night-in-the-city throwdown. They squeeze into a taxi like an accordion and direct the driver to the nearest Einstein’s. The friends arrive in the financial district only to find that Einsteins doesn’t open on Sunday. The friends are devastated and move to a café where they are not able to eat bagels. One friend is so distraught that he falls out of the booth and busts face.

The friends decide to move on and make the most of their last few hours in the city. They meander down Michigan Avenue with minimal success at finding anything purchase worthy. Then the friends decide to get some of that fancy Chicago popcorn. The friends pull out the iPhone GPS and set off for a popcorn adventure. The friends arrive to a 60% demolished popcorn shop. The friends will not partake in any popcorn this day.

The friends then decide its time to cut their losses and go home. The friends taxi back to their hotel, check out, lug their bags down the street and onto the train, and call a crazy Russian to take them to their car parked out in the ghetto. The crazy Russian spends the car ride telling them all about his super rad boost mobile phone. The friends are simultaneously amused and scared by crazy Russian. Crazy Russian drops the friends off at their car with a wave and a creepy "Bye byyyyyye."

The friends load into their car nicknamed the pussy wagon and boasting a giant "batman for president" decal in the back window to set sail for home. The friends drive approximately 700 feet. The pussy wagon starts to sputter. Then the pussy wagon convulses. Then the pussy wagon’s malfunction light starts flashing. The friends limp along to the nearest gas station and attempt to look under the hood. The friends can’t find the hood pop latch thingamabob. At all. The friends call roadside assistance.

Roadside assistance takes forever and requires an egregious amount of over the phone paperwork, but finally the friends are about to be hooked up with a tow truck. Roadside assistance suffers a computer glitch and the friends must start all over. One hour later a tow truck arrives. Tow Truck Man is also unable to locate the hood pop latch thingamabob. So Tow Truck Man loads the pussy wagon onto his truck and ships it off to the closed VW dealership.

The friends remain at the Subway attached to the Citgo in the ghetto. The friends attempt to formulate a plan while eating $5 Footlongs and cookies. They will ride a cab to the airport where they will rent a car with their roadside assistance allowance. Sandwiches finished and plan formulated, one friend steps out into the ghetto to hail a taxi. A taxi pulls up and pops the trunk. The friend walks to the trunk to start loading bags. The taxi peels out and drives away. The friend tries again. Another taxi stops. The friend approaches the trunk. Taxi number two does the EXACT. SAME. THING. The friends hail a third taxi and jump in that ish with the quickness of the Flash and are off to the airport to find a rental car.

The taxi driver takes the friends to the lot where the rental cars are stored and dumps them off. The friends do not need to be in the rental car storage lot. The friends need to be at the checkout counter way up in the airport. The friends pretend to have just dropped off their car and board the shuttle from the lot to the airport.

In the airport the friends attempt to secure a one way rental car. They stop at the National counter. They are rejected. They mosey off to the Avis counter; rejected. They skiddadle to the enterprise counter; rejected. They try their luck at the Alamo counter; rejected, twice. They cry for the woman at the Thrifty counter; still rejected. They drag themselves to the Dollar counter; rejected. They throw themselves at the mercy of the Budget counter; they are offered an Impala for $250 plus 80 cents per mile = rejected.

The friends now decide that since they are at an airport and it is 6pm and they can’t get a car they should attempt to fly. The friends make a mad dash to the Southwest counter upstairs. The friends wait in a Disneyland length line and finally approach the ticket counter to beg for a plane ticket. Dena, the sales woman, informs the friends that the flight is full but invites them to buy standby tickets. This, she tells them, will entitle them to get on the plane if someone bails or to be shit out of luck if someone doesn’t. The friends look at each other with nervousness and exhaustion and throw down their $130.

The friends realize they must check at least one bag or lose $100 worth of liquidy beauty products. They rearrange and get it checked. The bag is loaded up on the plane to Louisville. The friends head off to find some caffeine and check in at the standby counter. At the standby counter the friends are told that everything is golden. There are still seven people who haven’t checked in so they should be good to go. The friends kick back with some coke zeros and breathe a sigh of relief that they will be in Kentucky in two hours.

The plane boards and the friends are informed by the uppity standby lady that it is full. The friends aren’t going to be home until tomorrow. The friends’ checked bag will be home tonight. The friends plop down at the food court to search for a hotel. They rock out a Priceline special – Doubletree Midway Airport. The friends are sad that they don’t get to go home yet, but take solace in the fact that they’re gonna go get a fancy ass dinner with their roadside assistance food allowance and will get to rest soon.

The friends head off back to the Southwest counter and get Dena to trade their standby tickets for real ones on the 6:30 flight the following morning. Dena instructs them that they can catch a shuttle to their hotel by stepping outside door #2. The friends step outside door number 2 and proceed to wait 35 minutes. Finally the friends say eff the shuttle and hail a taxi. The friends begin loading their luggage in the trunk. The cabbie freaks out and tells the friends to get it out. The friends are informed that no pickups can be made at this platform. The friends need to go to the downstairs door number 2. The friends have been waiting 35 minutes at the wrong platform.

The friends grab the escalator and meander downstairs to the correct platform. They make their way through the plethora of shuttles, limos and taxis until they find the red shuttle that Dena told them they needed. They ask the shuttle driver to take them to their Doubletree hotel. The shuttle driver declines saying he doesn’t actually go there and instructs them to call the hotel to secure a shuttle. It is now 8:45 and the friends are wrecked up tired so they decide to just pay for a taxi. They hail one and jump in.

The friends are greeted by Crazy Willie, the taxi driver with the purple James Brown wig. The friends tell Crazy Willie to take them to the airport Doubletree. Crazy Willie tells the friends about how he was a Motown singer with Marvin Gaye, is a professor at two universities, and has eight adopted daughters who are attorney anesthesiologists. The friends quickly realize Crazy Willie is completely frigging nuts. Suddenly, the friends also realize they are on northbound I-95. The friends begin to suspect Crazy Willie is not taking them the right way. Crazy Willie tells them to calm down. The friends explain that they have just had a bad day and are tired. Crazy Willie informs them that they don’t yet know what a bad day is and proceeds to sing an improvised song about the friends. The friends beg Crazy Willie to just let them out and so that they may take the train. Crazy Willie informs them that he cannot let them do that. Crazy Willie keeps on trucking. Crazy Willie is now winding the friends through Wicker Park (which is on the opposite end of the city from the airport and airport hotels). The friends tell Crazy Willie again to let them out and instruct him to stop at Damen Avenue (in Wicker Park). Crazy Willie gets back on I-95 and heads toward downtown, all the while telling the friends about the importance of education. One friend is now crying. Another is a half a breath away from strangling Crazy Willie. The friends spot the Hilton where they had been staying up ahead. One friend finally yells at Crazy Willie to let them out at that hotel. Crazy Willie tells the friends they need to chill out. They scream at Crazy Willie that they are tired, he’s taken them away from where they need to be, he's freaking them the hell out, and they just want out. Crazy Willie finally dumps the friends off at the Hilton after taking their money from them.

The friends are now right back where they started. The friends flop down in the lobby and cry and swear. It is 10:50. They are back in the city. They have had no food and have slept 3 hours in the past 48. The friends decide to form a plan. They pull out the iPhone GPS and realize they are thirtysomeodd miles from the hotel where they’re supposed to be. The friends decide they will cancel the reservation at the airport hotel and just stay at the Hilton again. The friends call Priceline to cancel the hotel; rejected. The friends call the hotel to cancel the reservation; rejected. The friends decide to make the cab company come back and take them to their hotel for free for screwing up so bad with Crazy Willie. The friends are informed that there is only Crazy Willie and one other cabbie at the whole company. The friends are too scared to ask one of them to come back and take them where they need to be. The friends are not fans of disembowelment. The friends then make a new plan. They will just stay at the Hilton and eat the cost of the Doubletree reservation. The friends are informed there is a housewares convention that just came to town and all 1800 rooms are full.

The friends resign themselves to taking another cab back to the airport to get on the right shuttle. It is now 11:30. The friends still haven’t eaten or slept. They decide they will eat some sugar at Fat Girl’s Christmas (that's Dunkin Donuts for those of you not in the know) when they arrive at the airport. Fat Girl’s Christmas closed at 10. The friends stand there dejected, hungry, and exhausted and anticipate their next fail.

Unbeknownst to the friends, salvation was at that moment pulling into the "kiss and ride " lot (Seriously could they have possibly come up with a more sexual sounding term for the drop off lot? I'll kiss and ride ya, babe). The friends spot Doubletree bus rolling in. It is the correct bus. The friends board the bus and tell the driver all about their woes. He laughs and is sympathetic to the friends, telling him that after hearing their story he never wants to travel again. He then offers to get the friends some food. The friends proceed through the Wendy’s drive through in the Doubletree bus and purchase Frosties and fries that they finally eat on their beds at 12:45am. The friends indulge in a whopping four hours of sleep, then load up on a plane. One friend has a planeaphobia meltdown. The friends cry down the runway and safely land in Kentucky an hour later. Failcation is over and they have survived.

And that, friends, is the story of my last ever spring break. All 100% unembellished truth.