For The Person Who Has Everything...

This holiday season, why don't you treat your favorite friend to a Snuggie... for DOGS?



Yes, that's right, for the four-legged friend-of-a-friend who needs to keep his chest warm and his paws free, the Snuggie for Dogs is the perfect invention.

Except for the following problems:
~Dogs can sit, stand, or lie down, just as humans can, but humans do not go about dorsal-upward in two of these situations; the Snuggie for Dogs would *fall forward off the dog's back* if it were lying down or walking around!
~More importantly, dogs, unlike humans, have no reason to "keep their paws free," because they have no opposable thumbs: they do not need to hold a book, telephone, remote control, or any number of other activities that humans are pictured as enjoying from the confines of their backwards-sweater-blanket.

I've never particularly thought the Snuggie was a useful invention. This leaves aside the problems that arise when you consider that the Slanket came first, or that you might resemble alternately a lazy monk or a hoodless Klansman in your ridiculous blanket-gear of choice.

But this? I'm sorry. There's no excuse. This is a new low in cultural failure.

An Open Letter to the Swiffer People

Dear Swiffer® People,

Why you gotta go and make me feel like a slob?

Let me explain.

I'm moving from an apartment with tile and hardwood floors. I undertook a necessary move-out cleaning ritual: dust, spray, wipe-down, vacuum, sweep, mop. You will notice that I am quite thorough. Indeed, between the stages "sweep" and "mop," I usually add the Swiffer® Stage, in which I attempt to pick up any dust bits small enough to have evaded the watchful gaze of the broom, the long arm of the vacuum extension. This is the point at which you and I come to terms.

I am not a slipshod cleaner, Swiffer® People. I have OCD just mild enough to make it difficult for me to work in dirty or cluttered environs. I fixate on spots, scratches, and other discolorations on the floor that other people would not notice. Sometimes I use my hands to sweep up the last bits; sometimes I vacuum the bottoms of my feet to avoid tracking around any clinging crumbs. My property manager commented that I had a meticulous eye for flaws during the move-in inspection, so to detail any damages for which I would not want to be held responsible.

So then. Why, after having dusted, vacuumed, and swept, does the bottom of every Swiffer® Sweeper™ Dry Sweeping or Wet Mopping cloth always turn a disgusting grey color?

I know the claim: your products pick up what brooms leave behind. But brooms *and* vacuums, *AND* dusters? Swiffer® dusters, mind you, so you may not lay the blame on a bright blue plastic dusting bandit. Nonetheless, these are the facts: I am not a slob, but something tells me that repeated, full-on OCD cleaners would still find persistent dirt.

In short, whence comes this guilt of pre-Swiffer® Squalor?

Sincerely,
ColorMeDorothyParker

I Am A Camera

Few things in life give me a better sense of satisfaction than good photographs. Antique images particularly fascinate me, and recently it has a lot to do with my Master's thesis adviser's book and my assistantship in a course on American Visual Culture. This fascination also likely has something to do with the longstanding tradition, since Eastman revolutionized point-and-click technology, that anyone can take a picture. Attend any art fair, and you will see stall after stall of flowers and rocks, and you will think "I could do better."


(my grandma feeding chickens)

And probably you could. With an eye for shot composition and now through the miracle of Photoshop, everyone is going pro — Photoshop's efficacy in this is debatable, since although undoubtedly easing the process, it perhaps cheapens truly excellent photography. Suffice it, something there is that doesn't love a digital camera: maybe for the same reason I would rather frame and hang my own picture of a mossy tree stump, or better yet, something actually interesting, I have come to fetishize film cameras. And since anyone can take a picture, you'd think my walls would be covered with prints. Yes?

No.

You see, I have a camera curse. I'm sure this started during youth, when it seemed that every Christmas or birthday, members of my extended family would give me cameras. Not that they might have thought I would like one, but probably because they won it in a raffle, or got it as an office gift, and just needed to unload it. I don't remember other cousins getting cameras, but I thought it was destiny. But no. My brother, never prodigal with his allowance money, saved and developed (no pun intended) a hobby of collecting antique cameras. He now has his own darkroom and develops his own film. Maybe I should have become a doctor first with a cathartic hobby second, instead of someone who has tried to make a career out of a cathartic hobby with a doctorate.

But this curse. No kidding: my brother let me borrow his fantastic film camera during a trip to Salem for research. I learned the buttons, the shutter speeds, the f-stop, the modes, gears, and everything. What I didn't learn was how to load the film: after several days of photographing landmarks and gravestones, I learned that the film never took up on the reel. I had to go back and do it all again. This time it overshot and ripped the end of the film out of its canister. I cried when I opened the film door and an unwanted ticker-tape parade of undeveloped, now ruined images came cascading out. And that's not all: one of my cameras, which I had prepared and packed, that I let my parents use for our family trip to Arizona, was also improperly loaded. No family Christmas photo by the Grand Canyon or the Camel Back Mountain or the red rocks of Sedona this year: she's done it again. My first digital camera took a tipsy lurch off a bookshelf (why was it stored all the way up there, you ask? Because I'm an idiot.) and the last image it captured was a streak of white light and a blurry grasping Me that well represented its death.


(go to the light, little darling)

Today, the curse is broken! My mom found me a used digicam on Shop Goodwill that arrived in the mail. Completely functioning, with memory card, two batteries, power source, and... wait. USB connector cord? Son of a bitch...