I have two ideas for books at the moment. One is a book of microwave-only meals for office workers. I got to “ranch-flavored frozen chicken breast with corn” and then realized most of the book would be [insert salad dressing] flavored [frozen meat chunk] with [vegetable], so I gave up. The other is a book called “Pitch Meetings I Wish I had Been Present For.”

“She Hulk” is on there, and “Cop Rock,” of course. Those meat-flavored Doritos. And Magic Potty Baby.

It would be easy to make fun of the person that thought a urine-shooting doll would be a good idea, the hapless mid-level manager who gathered a handful of sloppily gathered focus-group data stating without doubt that a pissing, grinning homonculous would be bigger than Elmo. (It’s the grin that’s most disturbing. I only smile that much when I’m taking a piss if a hooker is shoving a corn cob up my ass at the same time).

But mocking this suit is wrong, wrong, wrong. This guy was a God among suits. Imagine the moxy and showmanship it took to convince a roomful of captains of industry that sinking upwards of a million bucks developing a doll that did nothing but sit on a plastic toilet and piss was the best idea since peanut butter (chunky). This is a man to be feared. This man could convince you to invest in Magic Nursing Home Resident, fer fook’s sake. All Magic Nursing Home Resident does is weep fluid from her bedsores and complain bitterly about drafts.

What’s YOUR favorite pitch meeting? Discuss.

Which of course sent me into a grammar spiral. “Extremely hot,” I think, would be universally recognized as too hot to drink, and if it’s too hot to drink, I can’t very well enjoy it (unless Starbucks is suggesting I bought the coffee for a purpose other than consumption, like enjoying its heady aroma of the tactile sensation of the cardboard cup holder, but I think it’s safe to assume that that is not that they had in mind), and if I can’t enjoy it, the hell was the point of the message? It’s like a sign reading “Careful, the cliff you’re about to drive off of is extremely high.”

Stop trying to be cute and just tell me that the coffee is hot.

(I put “hot coffee” into Google image search and got the dude from Grand Theft Auto III banging some broad)

Here’s a sample review from the nearest marked property to my building, about 6 blocks away: “drunk men passed out on the stair case, homeless men outside begging for change, rats everywhere, no one locks the door, super doesn’t care at all, muggings on the street all the time, NO HEAT, sometimes no hot water and the building is falling apart!”

Define “all the time.”

You have to admit, that’s an incredible bargain for poark.

2) Graffiti, like a campaign speech, should have a simple message that speaks directly to the heart.

Taken at Union Sq subway station.

What I ended up with was this…

which was somehow even more horrifying than what I was after originally. It turns out that someone made a whole collection of these things, each one more mind-bendingly disgusting than the last. Take this little gem, for instance:

I know it was a simpler time, and I know that rampant political correctness had not yet tighteneed its iron grip on casual speech, but I find it difficult to swallow that it was ever flattering to say to someone “I’ve broken out in a rash over you.” Coupled with the image of the child, who is clearly in agony over the weepeing sores that have broken out on her body, we can only conclude one of two things–
a) People in the past were awkward when it came to expressing emotions of an affectionate nature
b) People in the past were hopelessly stupid.

I like this one for both the implied threat of domestic violence and for the “How about it” at the end, like the wolf lives in Flatbush.

There are no words…

And finally, to end on a high note, nothing says true love like vehicular manslaughter. This WAS the day of the three-martini lunch, after all, so for all we know, this scene might have been a lot more common than we think.

I’m still a little puzzled how anyone would look at that and think, “Aww. My guy’s just tops.”

Find the entire collection here.

If you’ve ever seen a picture of the comic Demetri Martin, you will be familiar with this haircut — long around the entire skull except for the front, where it is cut across at eyebrow level and pasted against the forehead.

I hope it’s different where you are, but this haircut seems to be a scorching-hot hipster trend, far surpassing the popularity of skinny jeans and Army-surplus jackets combined. Every single person except me, the Israeli, and one blond surfer guy was sporting it. Women, men, young, old, it made no difference; everyone looked like they had just spent two months in a bomb shelter thinking about how much they liked The Ramones. It’s a horrible mating of emo and cheap. The surfer guy looked confused.

Much to my girlfriend’s dismay, I began interrupting her conversation every fifteen seconds to ask, afeared, “What the hell is wrong with everyone? Why do they all look exactly the same?” No one could give me any answers, nor did they care to. It was eventually gently, then not so gently, then violently suggested that I go home, which I did, because it’s easier to drink when your eyes aren’t being date raped by hipster hair. Cheaper, too.