Author: Lydia Bugg
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To explain to you what Poopsie Slime Surprise is would require me to understand them, and I can’t even pretend to do that. For some reason, around six months ago YouTube thought I might be interested in a video of cartoon unicorns in diapers and crop tops singing about how much they enjoy shitting. This is not the worst thing YouTube has ever recommended to me, and since it was not a man yelling about the Star Wars, I clicked it.
I became obsessed with understanding Poopsie Slime Surprise. What was it? Where did it come from? And most importantly, what rules and principles dictated its universe?
At its most basic, Poopsie Slime Surprise is a toy for children that allows them to feed a large plastic unicorn a bunch of chemicals, then rock it back and forth for a few minutes, then push its heart-shaped belly button to get it to take a big, slimy dump from its heart-shaped butt hole into a toilet that comes with it. Perfectly normal toy, right?
What baffles me is not the shitting unicorn, but the shitting unicorn’s many accessories, which seem to imply a wider Poopsie world. To understand the Poopsie universe, I first turned to the lyrics of their music video, which now has over three and a half million views on YouTube (comments are disabled though, no idea why). For some reason, Lyrics.com didn’t have the lyrics on file but don’t worry; I took the time to transcribe them myself.
It goes on, but there’s so much to unpack here. How does one “get loopy” off their Poopy? What could that possibly mean? Does it mean that they’re just so jazzed to have gotten the opportunity to poop? They live for the fleeting moments they’re shitting so much that it makes them loopy when that joyous time finally arrives? Or do they, like, get high off their own poop? I have to ask. What else could get loopy off my Poopy possibly mean?
Ok, so this is the other element that really rounds out the Poopsie universe. The one thing the unicorns love other than poop is brands. They use parody law to take iconic fashion brands like Marc Jacobs and turn it into Fart Jacobs, which would make sense if little kids had any idea who Marc Jacobs was. Otherwise, who is that joke for? All this does is create a generation of children who will grow up to one day discover Marc Jacobs and go, “Lol, that sounds just like Fart Jacobs from the Poopsie Slime Surprise dolls. Remember how fucked up those were?”
If you’re at a place no one can hear you, here’s the Poopsie Slime Surprise song in the only context that could make it worse.
It’s not just designer fashion labels that Poopsie Surprise parodies. They imagine a world where all food could be poop as well. You’ve got Caca-Cola, and for the weight-conscious slime shitting unicorn, Diet Caca-Cola. There’s also Poopsi, Whif Creamy Poop-Nut Butter, Rad Bum Energy Drink, Cacafina water, Dr. Pooper, Poozza Hut, In-Then-Out Burger, Poopda Express, Wipe Castle. I could go on.
It feels like some of these names were written by a comedian, and some were written by the boss’s nephew Kyle. In-Then-Out and Wipe Castle, I respect, but Starbucks, for instance, is just Barfbucks. Monster is Poopster, Arby’s is just Poopy’s in the Arby’s font. Again, I have to wonder what child wants to play with a parody of Monster energy drink? I mean, a friggin rad one who’s too busy doing sweet wheelies to follow FDA guidelines, I guess? That has to be the target demographic, right? Children made uninhibited by neglect and chemicals?
Monster isn’t the only less-than-kid-friendly drink in the Poopsie universe. They also have straight up alcohol for babies.
Yes, that is a play on Rosé all day. Can you imagine the uproar if all of a sudden Barbie came with a tiny little forty of Colt 45 and an itty bitty roll of duct tape so she and Ken can play Edward Fortyhands? We should at least hold poop monsters to the same standards.
Maybe the slime-shitting unicorns aren’t meant to be role models for the children? Perhaps the creators reverse engineered all of the fast-food into this world by asking themselves, “Why do these unicorns shit so much?”
“Oh well, they must have terrible diets, right? They’re, I guess, babies? Because they wear diapers, but also they are slamming fast food all day and washing it down with Monster energy drink and booze. That is the backstory for why the unicorns must constantly shit, and it’s simply the ritual derived from their natural habits of living like garbage that make them love shitting so much. Oh, God. They’re not babies at all. They’re full-grown adults who wear diapers because their diet necessitates it.”
I scoured the Poopsie Slime Surprise Instagram account in search of a vegetable, and all I found was this tribute to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. This is real:
It seems kinda weird to memorialize a Supreme Court Justice catty-corner from a Poopnos big gulp spilling over with green diarrhea, but Poopsie can’t help but celebrate the death of any form of law.
“What if the shitting unicorns aren’t an aspirational toy for young girls but more of a cautionary tale?” I started to think. They could be a ghoulish parable of avarice. I decided to look for evidence this was MGA Entertainment’s thinking when they made these asshole-birthed dolls.
It turns out in 2019 there was a legal dispute between MGA and fashion brand Louis Vuitton over a poop-shaped Pooey Puitton toy purse from the Poopsie line. In their legal complaint against Vuitton, MGA said, “The use of the Pooey name and Pooey product in association with a product line of ‘magical unicorn poop’ is intended to criticize or comment upon the rich and famous, the Louis Vuitton name, the LV marks, and on their conspicuous consumption.”
Yeah, that’s right. This poop purse is activism. MGA is teaching children how ridiculous these so-called high fashion brands are through their seething parody. Chanel number 5? More like ChaSMELL number 2 amIright? Apple Bottom jeans, more like Apple BUTT jeans, hahaha.
(Editor’s Note: I want to do one. Salvatore Ferragamo? More like Save Tony He Fell in Da Goddamn Toilet! While I’m here, this poop article came together pretty well, Liddy. I’m having a nice time, and really learning a lot. – Sean)
(Editor’s Note: I should get in on this. Gucci? More like Poo-cci. That’s not Armani, it’s Fartmani. Buttberry, Fartier, oh no it’s in my brain. Sebastian Pee-or. I hate the thing I’m becoming. Yves Taint Laurent. -Brockway)
Except that if they are skewering the fashion brands by associating them with their terrible toys, it seems kind of weird they have Poopsie Slime Surprise Halloween costumes. What child is like, “Mother, I want to be the horrible shit unicorn for Halloween? May I borrow a bottle of RosĂ© to complete my costume? A six-pack of Red Bull will do if you don’t have one.”
It’s hilarious that MGA knew putting a grown child that can use the toilet in a diaper and a crop top was bad, so they just kind of stuck a picture of the unicorn on a dress, and that’s the whole costume. For a human child to get any closer to being a Poopsie slime surprise doll would be illegal.
So, since it seems unlikely the Poopsie dolls are meant to be horrible, gluttonous commentaries on American consumerism, what ARE they? Again at a loss for answers, I decided to look closer at MGA’s history in the toy world aaaaaand it kind of explains everything.
MGA is the company that owns BRATZ dolls, and they seem to keep Mr. Beaning themselves into weird sexual situations with their toys. Concerned parent groups have complained about BRATZ for years for dressing too provocatively so when MGA developed the LOL Surprise! toy line, they were very careful to dress the dolls more conservativ…oops, sorry no. They put them in full dominatrix gear.
The LOL Surprise! Dolls are supposed to surprise and delight children by developing new patterns on their bodies when dipped in water, and I’m sure whatever Mom pulled out a doll in Florida juice bar pasties was effectively surprised. Parents were not happy with this, but MGA didn’t give a shit.
Later the same year, they released the first male LOL Surprise! Dolls, and this time the surprise was a whole ass dick and balls. That’s right; they suddenly decided to make their dolls anatomically correct. Warning, doll penis incoming:
MGA responded to parents upset by the surprise dick by saying, “We currently have a notification on all packaging, website, and product retail pages that states the LOL Surprise! Boys are anatomically correct. After all, human beings are naturally anatomically correct.”
Ok, sure, but like, why just the boys? You may be shocked to learn that women also have genitals. The female LOL dolls have featureless holes between their legs like they’re rubber ducks. They have all the anatomical correctness of a liferaft emergency. Plus, the female dolls don’t come with the same warning of bad-idea genitals the male dolls do.
It seems like a pretty weird inconsistency to insist your male dolls must have their glorious ding dongs because, after all, humans are anatomically correct, but then when it comes to your female dolls, it’s “I’m sorry, what is a Laybeeah?”
This is not a feminist rant about doll dicks. It’s just another example of strange, inconsistent, poor decision making on MGA Entertainment’s part. Even the Poopsie surprise line has its own scandal!
They had a joke milk carton of 2% milk with a parody of a missing child poster on it, and already that joke is, WOW, dark, but they included a phone number on the carton that led directly to an active sex line. Can you imagine being the phone sex operator and getting a call about missing poop? You frantically google sexy poop detective to find, oh god, so many results.
These incidents led me to finally understand my questioning of Poopsie Slime Surprise is futile. It’s a shitty doll. Literally in both the sense that it shits and how it does not work very well. Consumers reported that it gets gummed up with slime easily, sometimes to the point where slime pours out of the unicorn’s mouth. The toy, without exaggeration, is so bad it shits out its own mouth while children try to play with it.
I will never get answers because there are no answers. Kids think poop is funny. It’s a unicorn that poops. Don’t look for meaning in the chaos. Just play with your unicorn shit.
You should follow Lydia on Twitter!
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Pauli Poisuo: who also poops when you squeeze him, but it is not cute. Well, it’s a little cute.
Scholars often debate the best time period for literature. Was it the modernist movement with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulker? Or perhaps Romanticism, which saw great works from Poe, Shelley, and Austen? In my personal opinion, it was Supermarketicism, the period in the 1980s when tons of horny housewives discovered supermarket paperback romance novels.
It was a time of colorful language when the women were moist, and the men were musky. As these novels grew in popularity, more and more women decided to seek their fortunes writing them and to facilitate that, in 1984, Jean Kent and Candice Shelton wrote THE ROMANCE WRITERS’ PHRASE BOOK.
The tale of THE ROMANCE WRITERS’ PHRASE BOOK is outlined in the intro where the authors explain they had trouble getting published until they learned about “tags” — short one-line descriptions that up romantic tension in a book. So they sat around together whispering phrases like:
You know what’s sexy? Being imprisoned. This sentence somehow manages to remind me of both prison and spiders while attempting to make me horny. Jean and Candace bring that level of unsexiness to so many phrases in this book. For instance, almost every page contains the word moist.
Living moistness sounds like the title of an unlicensed The Blob remake. Nondescript! Nonperishable! Nothing may prevent it! Scurry, kids; it’s The Living Moistness!
It’s awe-inspiring how much this book uses the word moist. I could go on, but legally I can’t go on. If this article gets any moister, they are going to shut us down.
The language in the book isn’t just unsexy. Sometimes, it misses sense entirely. I get the need for metaphors in romance. It’s difficult to capture the feeling of falling love without using some kind of comparative language. It’s even more difficult to figure out exactly what this looks like:
What does that mean? Please, no one tell me. It sounds like this was written for a very specific slash fic of Dream and The Corinthian from Sandman.
He does tick a lot of my boxes… tall, dark, and has mouths for eyes. There’s just something about his smiles I find off putting.
Sensitive fingers could be kind of sexy, or it could be a rare disease killing the heroine in a regency romance novel. “I want us to be together darling, truly I do, but I have… I have sensitive fingers. I’ll be dead within the year. The doctors say there’s nothing they can do. My fingers, they’re just too damn sensitive.”
When the book isn’t coming up with confusing metaphors, it’s over-explaining the simplest possible gestures.
You mean, she smiled? That’s called smiling. We actually have a specific word for that very facial gesture because it’s kind of a big one. Also, I know they know what smiling is because there’s an entire section on it and this phrase is not in there!
I have to say there are some positive things this book tries to bring to the romance novel genre. There’s a certain way we portray men in romance novels, and it’s unrealistic. Most men don’t have six packs and also aren’t naked outdoors while using a fully clothed woman to hide their dick in a creative way.
The ROMANCE WRITERS’ PHRASE BOOK rejects this unrealistic portrayal of male beauty in favor of a variety of colorful descriptions for men.
Bow to your sweaty, fat-faced king, ladies. This is what inclusivity looks like! Boys can get moist too. I want to see this man they have created. I want to browse the supermarket and gasp at a nude Bob Hoskins-looking dude in a bog with a beautiful woman tantalizingly ignoring his dick.
Of course, women don’t get the same kind of diverse descriptions. We are “flowerlike,” our hair resembling “strands of lustrous glass” or a “golden mist.” Hair that is somewhere between fragile and nonexistent is an absolute requirement of romance novel heroines. We are “exquisitely dainty” while men are strong with “long sturdy Viking legs.”
So, now might be a good time to mention that other than this book about how to write a good romance novel, Candace Shelton doesn’t seem to have actually written any romance novels. And Jean Kent wrote exactly one. You can tell it’s lame because no one is even a little bit wet or nude on the cover.
Now, I don’t think this means Jean isn’t capable of writing some sexy, sexy stuff. The lovemaking section of THE ROMANCE WRITERS’ PHRASE BOOK has got some real gems in it, as you can imagine.
It’s got tingling. It’s got surging. It’s got groins! A term used exclusively by romance novelists and PE teachers!
I can’t imagine anything more soulless than a sex scene written with a jumble of cliches pulled from this book. Say what you will about Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James probably came up with 100 creative descriptions for the vagina alone. That’s what great romance authors do. I would say this book was cheating if it weren’t so so bad. It’s like cheating on a math test with the answer key for a Cosmo quiz. Fifteen divided by four is C; wait at least a day to text back. Make him wait, and he’ll be moist, moist moist to hear from you!
In the intro, Jean Kent describes these tags as “The difference between a cold, factual report and an eager, pulsing, sensuous story, that whisks the reader out of this world into a rapturous dream of wondrous love.” Truly written like a woman who has just discovered adjectives. Then she must have wandered into a publisher’s office and convinced someone to pay her actual money to write what can only be described as a trembling, surging, moist pile of words.
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Rich Joslin: The moistest, dampest, just damn sexiest bogman in the Okefenokee swing scene.
Categories
Nerding Day: Brides in Love
The story of Brides In Love begins where so many great love stories do– in prison. Charlton comics started when a guy who went to jail for selling books of song lyrics without the writer’s permission met a lawyer (presumably not a great one because he was also in prison). Together, they decided to start a publishing company that specialized in, among other things, comics for broads.
To decide on titles, they stuck the words love, marriage, teen, romance, bride, and secret into a sack, shook it up, and whatever popped out was the name of their next comic. What they ended up with were things like I Love You, Sweetheart Diary, Romantic Secrets, Romantic Story, My Secret Life, Just Married, Teenage Love, Teen Confessions, and Teenage Confidential Confessions.
I don’t know what gave Charlton comics the idea that this was what women were looking for in comic books. I would be way more likely to pick up a comic titled Teen Confessions: I Fell Into A Vat Of Nuclear Waste, or I Love You, and I Fight Crime, With My Six Extra Arms, or My Secret Life As A Six-Armed Monster Hunter.
However, a think tank of -certainly no women- decided that what ladies want in a comic book is a hero who is a woman, a villain who is her husband, and a solution to their conflict that is they have to stay married because it’s 1963. Instead of doing battle, they make up, and usually, the woman apologizes and admits that she was a dumb idiot all along. Then they all live happily ever after, which for them is, like, ten more years until they die of lung cancer, or gout, or one of those other diseases you get from having too much fun.
Since Brides in Love is an anthology series, we get to see this same scenario play out over and over again like we’re stuck in the misogynistic romance comic circle of hell– a magical land where a woman can go from wanting to end her marriage to being ready to apologize in one panel because she took a nap.
“I don’t know why I told my husband that I wanted to divorce him. Probably because I was on my period or some dumb shit like that; remember me from exactly two panels ago? What a friggin bitch!”
The story featured on the cover is called “JUST FOR KICKS,” but for some reason, they recolored the whole thing to change the woman from a redhead to a blonde.
The main character in it is super pissed at her husband because he keeps making her go to parties, and she’s tired. Which, wow, I would kill for 1963 problems.
One day she leaves her husband and goes to a hotel where she naps and eats a bunch. So basically, she’s living the dream, and all of the men around her are like, “A woman? Eating? Send her to the insane-atorium! Blast her with a firehose until the ghosts leave her uterus!”
But it isn’t a uterus ghost that’s making her crazy. It’s a baby, which is much scarier! She went to a hotel and ate hotdogs, not because she’s insane, but because she’s insane from pregnancy! Which is fine. When she finds out, she wishes her husband were there, and he is! He tracked her down and is standing over her bed in a posture that is not all threatening, calling her a little idiot.
It’s not just the writing that suffers in Brides In Love. They could have hired an artist who doesn’t use twins conjoined at the head as a model for two people kissing.
Seriously, that one is the most terrifying but all of the kissing pics have the same vibe as the drawings of elephants from the Middle Ages done by monks who had never actually seen one.
It’s like every illustrator for Brides In Love was a graduate of The Art Institute For Male Virgins Who’ve Never Even Met A Woman.
I look at this, and I can hear the artist saying, “Kissing? Sure I can draw kissing. That’s uh, um, that’s when the girl puts her whole mouth around the boy’s lips so that his mouth is in her mouth, right? No, I’m not sweating. YOU’RE SWEATING.”
This artist has a problem with mouths in general. For instance, there’s the last panel of the third story, which is about a woman who marries a much older man. Her new stepdaughter, who is her age, for some reason, refuses to call her “Mom.” The woman ends up inheriting a bunch of money, which she gives to her husband to help out his failing business. This convinces her stepdaughter she’s not a gold digger. Then they all do this for some reason:
You know, just a stepmom and her new daughter, hanging out with their mouths open and tongues slightly out. It’s like someone wanted to draw a comic for women but forgot women have eyes.
Since this isn’t your typical comic book, it doesn’t have your typical comic ads. Most of the ads in Brides In Love are for weight loss, hair extensions, and nursing school. But on the very back is the kind of insane ’60s shit that makes me vaguely miss a time when everything was legal. It’s an ad for a photography studio that promises to send you 20 coupons, and if you get them 20 clients, they will give you a live miniature monkey. The ad is sure to note the supply of monkeys is limited, which makes me picture a man sitting in a stinky room with nine monkeys begging God for some kid in Yonkers to sell enough portrait sessions.
Do I wish I were alive in the sixties? No. Nothing has made me happier to be born in an era where women have some creative say in their lives than reading this comic. But do I also wish I were alive in a time when you could win a free monkey from a comic book? Hard yes.
Lydia will send you a live miniature monkey if you follow her on Twitter.
Categories
Kung Fu for Girls
Being a writer is hard. There’s a lot of self-doubts that can creep in. You start asking yourself, why am I doing this? Is what I’m writing actually any good? Which is why a book like Kung Fu For Girls: Self Defense With Style is so comforting. The author of this book clearly knows nothing about Kung Fu, or girls, or style. He’s just some guy who saw a Jackie Chan movie once and went for it.
It’s a good reminder that writing isn’t about talent. It’s about confidence, luck, and being the type of person who will dedicate your book to someone called “Mad Dave.”
Usually, when you pick up a book on self-defense, there’s a long bio of the author, including an itemized list of every ass they’ve ever kicked. It’s an explanation for why this person is qualified to write this book. A good bio for the author of Kung Fu For Girls would be something like:
Instead, the author of Kung Fu For Girl’s credentials remain a mystery. We’ll never know what clown school taught Simon Harrison that women can only learn self-defense if you treat us like morons or six-year-olds. The tips all assume that women will stop listening after five minutes if you don’t bring the topic back around to shopping or something cute.
Which is why the main principle taught in Kung Fu for girls is KISSIE KISSIE, an acronym for Keep It Simple, Simple Is Effective. The author advises women to “say KISSIE KISSIE to yourself over and over.” I like to imagine all Kung Fu masters are doing that as they crane kick dudes in the neck.
After explaining KISSIE KISSIE (the second KISSIE is silent), the introduction says, “Kung Fu For Girls can be your pocket bodyguard. Carry it around with you, and it will help you take care of yourself wherever you are.” I don’t know how this book is supposed to help you defend yourself. Are you supposed to consult it while fighting someone? If that’s the case, they really should have included a chapter on reading while being stabbed.
You might have assumed that the phrase “self-defense with style” was a metaphor, but no, this book literally tells you to attack a man with a tube of mascara, lipstick, or a comb. As if I wouldn’t understand that shoving literally anything into someone’s eye is painful. I don’t mean to say that stabbing someone in the eye with mascara is a bad idea. I do that shit to myself all the time, so I know it’s painful.
I love the fact that the end of number five on Handbag Kung Fu says, “try not to run into too many rapists, muggers, or murderers, in one journey!” Damn, I guess my trip to Sin City is canceled. Thanks for the great advice!
You might have noticed there’s an entire page devoted to beating a man with your cell phone. This book was written in 2004—the bygone days when a cell phone was sturdy enough to kill a man. Today the best you can hope for is blinding an attacker with the flecks of broken glass from your shattered attack phone.
This page also includes another list of the same stuff that a woman might have on her to fend off an attacker: pens, keys, pencils, combs, but it also adds bits of old wood. Who does he think is getting attacked here? Buffy The Vampire Slayer?
Don’t worry, Kung Fu For Girls isn’t full of advice that’s unhelpful because it’s so extremely obvious. Sometimes the advice is unhelpful because it’s so extremely specific. Like this page on what to do if you and one other woman get into a fight with an entire bar full of thugs who have never heard of ducking.
The only place this exact scenario makes any sense is in a ’90s Charlie’s Angels movie. All of the scenarios in the book have a weirdly descriptive quality. “You dozed off on the train. When you wake up, a scary man in a nylon tracksuit, white loafers, and no socks has placed his hand on your thigh.”
Why does what he’s wearing matter? This seems to indicate that the issue with the man placing his hand on your thigh while you’re sleeping is that he’s dressed like a real nerd. If he’d worn socks MAYBE, maybe this would be ok, but white loafers and no socks? This guy needs an ass-kicking.
If the scenario were, “you dozed off on the train. When you wake up, a scary man wearing a bespoke Armani suit, black loafers, and fancy black socks made by the sad Kardashian brother has placed his hand on your thigh,” would the solution just be, girl, you better lock that shit down now?
Another thing I don’t like about the examples is that the drawings are kinda horny. For most of the book, the woman illustrated to demonstrate movies is wearing pants, like on the cover, but as soon as we get to the part where she’s rolling around on the ground, they made sure to draw her in a skirt, with her underwear showing, which seems super necessary for educational self-defense purposes.
Also, every time the book advises to kick a guy in the dick, they really outline precisely where the dick that’s being kicked is. As if the reader needs to see the exact location of the dick in a diagram to properly kick it. Is he hoping we think the dick is located fourteen inches down his left pant leg?
Wait, he does? Oh, I get it! The author’s credentials are so clear now! This is the only book for women about fending off perverts that’s written and illustrated by an authentic pervert!
Categories
Heal Your Cat the Natural Way đźŚ
Owning a cat is like saying, I want a pet, but also I want it to hate me. So, owning a cat that you heal entirely with holistic medicine is like saying I want a pet, but I also want it to hate me and be extremely ill.
I’m not here to tell you that holistic medicine is total bullshit. I’m sure it’s just as effective as writing “I hope I get better” on a piece of paper, setting it on fire, and throwing it in the garbage, but oh no, that’s not a garbage can; it’s a barrel of gasoline, and now your arm is on fire a little bit. That’s exactly how effective I think holistic medicine is– leaving you probably a little bit worse off than before you tried to treat yourself.
The fact that Heal Your Cat The Natural Way is written by a respected veterinarian is proof that the term “respected” is relative. Like, I’m highly respected among the butt and weiner joke community, but that doesn’t mean anyone should listen to anything I say.
For ease of discussion, I would divide this book into two categories:
1.) Things A Cat Will Absolutely Never Let You Do To It or “Un-paw-nted Meow-lestation!”
At the top of this section is cat acupuncture. I can’t even begin to imagine the iron cast genitals on a man who would try to give acupuncture to a cat. After listing the main advantages of acupuncture, the author notes, “Disadvantages are few, mainly some cats are anxious when needles are inserted,” which seems like a pretty big disadvantage to sticking needles all over your cat’s body.
Included in this section is a diagram of acupuncture points for cats. Please pay special attention to number’s 31, 18, and 20.
Go stick a needle in a cats butthole is going to be my new way of telling people to fuck off.
Cats are known for looking uncooperative in advertising photos. For example, there’s this fluffy cat bed whose occupant is planning your murder.
This cute lil police officer who just ominously turned his body cam off.
But no cat is as miserable and angry as the model for kitty electro crystal therapy. Electro Crystal Therapy is “a technique pioneered by scientist Harry Oldfield of diagnosing and treating energy imbalances in the body.” Don’t worry. The cat is not being electrocuted. It just wishes it were.
Electro Crystal Therapy simply sends electricity through the headband to create an energy field that interacts with the energy field of the patient, aka your cat, to stabilize energy imbalances. It’s a dumb hat full of electrified rocks that your cat has to wear for ten to twenty minutes. Anyone who has ever tried to put a Santa hat on their cat for a Christmas card knows how well that shit is going to go down.
The entire book is filled with vague references to “energy.” You should have energy but not too much, and if it gets out of balance, hoo boy, you better lookout. There’s no explanation of what is being referenced by the extremely vague term “energy,” but then, I wouldn’t expect a lot of specifics from a book that prescribes the color blue to cure diarrhea. We all know if that worked, every Taco Bell on earth would be preventatively painted blue.
The color therapy section fucking rules because it does have to mention halfway through that cats don’t actually see color.
It’s like the author wrote this entire section, then remembered that cats couldn’t see color and didn’t want to delete it for word count reasons.
The final thing the book tells you to do, which I don’t think your cat will ever let you, is tape random shit to it to make it feel better. Suppose it has a wart? Tape a banana peel to it.
Cat got a wound? Tape some Geranium leaves to it!
Look how sad this cat is. He’s clearly battled his master for the right to his dignity and lost. Now all of the other cats in the neighborhood are going to call him Geranium legs for the rest of his life (which will be mercifully short because his owner taped some leaves to his gaping holes instead of taking him to the vet).
I was going to say the second part of this book is stuff your cat will let you do to it because it is nothing, like placing some amethyst stones nearby as a pain reliever or locking it in a room with a lavender aromatherapy candle to make it less horny. However, this article can’t be five thousand words long, and I want to talk about the many discussions of cat horniness in this book.
2.) Much Ado About Cat Balls or “Pseudoscience: The XXX Purr Parody!”
There are little side stories in each section called homeopathy case studies. They each contain a fun little anecdote about a cat successfully treated by cat sorcery author, Richard Allport. The longest one is the tale of a cat who was so angry about getting neutered that his hair fell out.
Imagine the seething rage of this terrible cat. It was so angry; its own hair ran away from it. Then it just sniffed a plant and was like, you know what? Balls are overrated. I need a prescription for Staphisagria because that shit must be good.
Richard Allport didn’t always make terrible cats less terrible, though. At least once he took a cat that had become briefly more agreeable thanks to an injury to its balls and stupidly fixed its balls, releasing the terror once again on the world.
It sounds like someone did their civic duty by kicking this cat in the balls, and this nerd went and fixed them. This is not an adorable anecdote about how homeopathy worked. It’s a crime!
Under the subheading of Male Reproductive Issues- Hypersexuality, there’s a little section full of a bunch of different homeopathic remedies for cats I call the “Oh God I’ll do anything just, please make him stop” section. My favorite of these is the suggestion to massage your super horny cat with lavender oil. What!? He’s totally going to think you’re hitting on him!
A LOT of research has obviously gone into this topic. There’s way more about cat balls in this book than cat cancer. Cat cancer gets two pages that basically say, wow, cancer is a bummer. Maybe have your cat sniff some Rosemary? Also, how are its balls?
Please don’t ask Lydia about cat balls on Twitter.
