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Fucking Day: Love Signs
Category: FUCKING DAY
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single guinea pig in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. That’s right, crowd, I’m sick of doing upsetting things. This one’s just for me, a woman with an absolutely insatiable need to see guinea pigs in top hats. I never thought I would be able to enjoy my two hobbies, Jane Austen and rodents, at the same time, but technology has advanced to a point where almost anything is possible, and this is what we use it for.
My most controversial opinion is that we should remake all of the classics with guinea pigs. They’re so expressive, so easy to wrangle into a variety of hats, and there’s not a third thing I could possibly want from them. A Guinea Pig Pride and Prejudice is like the William Wegman dog thing, except way less sexual, and also way more sexual because it is very directly the story of two guinea pigs falling in love and entering into the union of Christian marriage.
This is the kind of weird artifact that I worry AI will rob the world of. I don’t want to see a made-up guinea pig with three ears reenact Pride and Prejudice. Knowing that a real human had to wrangle the guinea pigs into the hats is what makes it fun. Picturing someone painstakingly constructing a tiny period accurate guinea pig croquet set is the fun part. Here are some guinea pigs with no hats. Look how boring!
The opening article of this line is a lie. There is no acknowledgment at all within the work that the stars of this Pride and Prejudice reenactment are guinea pigs. It’s a very straightforward retelling with a full cast that appears to be made up mostly of lady guinea pigs, so it’s actually A Gay Guinea Pig Pride And Prejudice. The ladies are really strutting their stuff in the cast photos. Check out the legs on Doris, and Madel has clearly just gotten her hair done. These ladies are ready to put on a serious production of Jane Austen’s most beloved work.
So now that you’re familiar with our cast, let’s begin the story with Act 1, in which the handsome redhead Mr. Bingley, a single man of large fortune, comes into the lives of the Bennet sisters. Note how the photographer even cast a red-headed guinea pig in a nod to the red-haired Mr. Bingley of the famous 2005 Pride And Prejudice adaptation. You can really feel Mr. Bingley’s desperation to escape the rigid ideals of society in this picture. Or, maybe the guinea pig is trying to wriggle out of his hat. Either way, it’s a perfect picture.
We get a layout of the Bennett family, and then we cut straight to the party where Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy meet. Absolutely no filler in this adaptation. We haven’t got time for nuance. We’ve got sooo many guinea pig fainting couches to fit into the story. The chemistry between our two leads is immediately electrifying. Elizabeth is looking at Mr. Darcy like he’s a calcium rich chew.
There’s the iconic quote about how enchanting Mr. Darcy finds Elizabeth’s eyes, and you know what? It just hits a little differently when those eyes are on the sides of her head, like a prey animal. I agree this guinea pig is enchanting.
Of course, Elizabeth’s sister Jane and Darcy’s BFF Bingley fall in love. I mean, who wouldn’t fall in love with Jane when she’s wearing this absolutely friggin’ fantastic hat? They clearly had to design a hat specifically to fit this guinea pig’s voluminous hair, and they crushed it. The costume designer for the production is Tess Newall. Her contributions to the project were so vital that she’s credited alongside photographer Alex Goodwin and Jane Austen as a co-creator of this book. I don’t care if she went to fashion school hoping to make it to the Parisian runway; this is better.
As we all know, this is the point in the story where the evil Mr. Wickham, deflowerer of innocent virgins, enters the story and catches Elizabeth’s eye. According to Jane Austen, he had “all the best parts of beauty- a fine countenance, a good figure, and a happy readiness of conversation.” Let’s see this stud.
Wow, what a fucking scumbag. There’s some obvious type casting going on here. Of course, Darcy sees Wickham and is immediately like, “Oh hell no. That guinea pig tried to fuck my fifteen-year-old sister.” I hope there’s someone reading this article who’s never read Pride and Prejudice and the only version of it they will ever know is me describing how the guinea pigs did it.
The tension between the two is palpable. I don’t know what they did to fill Mr. Darcy’s eye with such rage. Take away a carrot? Could be take away a carrot. They hate that. Of course, Elizabeth only knows what Wickham tells her about Darcy, which is that they grew up together and Darcy is jealous of Wickham because his Father loved Wickham more than Darcy and even left Wickham a large inheritance, which Darcy refused to give him. Do we have a photo of Darcy and Wickham together as children? That feels essential to the story.
Oh good. I’m pretty sure in the story they did wear enormous hand-embroidered doilies with their initials on them. This picture is giving me an idea for a spinoff called Pride And Prejudice Babies. Probably in that one, we would leave out the part where Wickham runs off with Elizabeth’s fifteen-year-old sister, perfectly named Lydia. Not in this one, though. In this one, the guinea pig is still a tramp.
At this point in the story, Darcy, who’s been wrestling with his feelings about Elizabeth for a while without telling her, randomly pops up while she’s on vacation and is like, “I’m sorry you’re so poor, but for some reason I’m in love with you anyway. Let’s get married.” Elizabeth says no in a big way, and he is devastated. I mean, just look at him. They definitely took this poor man’s carrot away.
God, I don’t even know how to tell you what happens next because it’s so awful. We find out that Mr. Wickham is secretly… a gamester! Not only that, but he’s guilty of wanton profligacy. His greed sickens me, but the tiny little playing cards and dice on the teeny tiny poker table heals my soul.
Elizabeth is upset about the way she treated Darcy when she finds out that Wickham sucks and massively disrespecting him in public is actually the least Darcy could do. She realizes that her family is pretty poor, and being married to a rich guy would probably be radical, and she is so depressed that her family sends her on vacation so that she can stop killing their vibe. Then who should she run into but Mr. Darcy again, and the tension between them is palpable.
He does still love you, Elizabeth! I yell at the book. Guinea Pig Elizabeth does not respond. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s in a book or because she’s a guinea pig. Perhaps she’s too distraught by the news from her family that her fifteen-year-old sister has run away with Mr. Darcy! He did it again! Look at that fluffy rapscallion. So proud of himself. He’s got a little drum to play a little victory march for taking Lydia’s virginity, and he won’t even marry her!
Darcy has to track down Wickham and pay him a bunch of money to convince him to marry silly, impulsive Lydia. The poor girl just wanted to get laid, and now she’s got a husband who’s a gamester. A gamester! Darcy tells Bingley to hurry up and marry Jane, so now Lydia’s got two sisters married off and she’s like, “actually the whole thing where Darcy bribed Mr. Wickham to marry Lydia was pretty hot maybe I’ll marry him and be rich and happy with my husband who’s kind of rude to men who are creeps, which is actually an awesome personality trait and not a bad one.”
This would, without a doubt, be Jane Austen’s favorite adaptation of her work. No one has ever captured the romance, scandal, and hats in the way that these guinea pigs have. They should do versions of every classic story starring guinea pigs. Wait, I’m sorry, they have, including the birth of Jesus Christ (and his litter of siblings, I’m assuming).
This is the only medium I want to read any book in from now on. I want A Guinea Pig War And Peace, a Guinea Pig Handmaid’s Tale, maybe not A Guinea Pig Fifty Shades Of Grey. Probably don’t make that one with guinea pigs. Unless you give Christian Grey a really sick hat.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: SpaceJamFan, who also happens to be a tiny guinea pig in an adorable hat, but for reasons completely unrelated to this article.
Come with me to the Hallmark Christmas Hunk preserve. Hallmark has constructed an environment that feels natural to the Christmas Hunks. They’ve got a log cabin that looks a little rustic but actually costs 1.5 million dollars. It’s surrounded by fake snow, but the background is clearly all green. Inside, they can wear sweaters, and drink cocoa, and oh my God, it’s not a preserve at all! They’re hunting them! They’re on the hunt for Mr. Christmas.
The Hallmark Channel decided to jump into reality TV with a hunk hunt, and it’s incredible. They found a bunch of men who seem like real-life Hallmark heroes and made them compete for a chance to pretend to be exactly who they are. The average Finding Mr. Christmas hunk’s backstory is, “Well, I used to be a rescue swimmer in the Navy, but I quit to take care of my Grandma and kiss tiny little birds all day. It’s a serious avian flu risk, but it makes the birds so happy.”
Each man is given a personality clearly chosen by the producers, and they hammer home those personality talking points hard. Some of the personalities are normal things like cowboy, firefighter, former athlete, and generically handsome, and some are things like old guy, was in Hamilton, and divorced dog dad. I made a helpful graphic so you can remember everyone.
In each episode, there’s a “Festive Face-Off,” which is basically a little bit of Christmas-themed torture for the hunks, and whoever wins gets an advantage in their “Star-Quality challenge,” which is generally in some way an acting challenge. In the Festive Face-Off, the hunks do things like cut down a Christmas tree and run an obstacle course with it, untangle an enormous ball of Christmas lights, or wrap an awkwardly shaped Christmas present. When one of them said he wraps Christmas presents by asking his Mom for help, they essentially built ejector seats and catapulted him out of the building. Sorry, women love a hunk who can wrap a present.
The show doesn’t really kick off until episode two. In episode one the firefighter gets eliminated because he reads lines like he’s never seen words before, a common hunk problem. In episode two the hunks get a modeling challenges and with that challenge come two fantastic things: puppies and Tyler Hynes. You may recall from my previous work that I didn’t really get Hallmark star Tyler Hynes, but the thing I’ve realized is that acting is only a third of what’s important about being a Hallmark Hunk. Hallmark does tons of fan events, cruises, and conventions, and that’s where Tyler Hynes shines. This man GETS the female gaze. He took one look at a contestant trying to figure out how to pose and said, “Take off your shirt and wrap the Christmas lights around your torso.” Tyler Hynes is for the girls!
He’s this hyper confident short king who’s never met a piece of furniture he can’t drape himself across casually, and he makes all of the wanna be Mr. Christmases look like chumps. Why are we hunting Mr. Christmas? He’s right there. Take him down, fellas.
So earlier, I made the statement that one of the potential Mr. Christmases chose the personality of Divorced Dog Dad, an insane combination of words, and I blew right past it, but here is the part where I explain. Hayden’s wife took the dog in the divorce, and he is sad about it. So you can imagine that he bursts into tears when presented with the puppy for this challenge. Tyler Hynes comforts him, and it’s pretty adorable, but then we have to watch “I miss my dog” become his whole personality for the rest of the show, and he ends up in the top two. I guess women love a man who is sad about a dog. The aerospace engineer got eliminated in episode 2 because the puppy hated him, which is a great reason to kick a man out of anywhere.
I call episode three the Injuries Episode because it begins with a contestant dropping out because his retina randomly took a vacation from his eyeball, and he went blind. Then Old Man Parker sliced his hand open on the Christmas lights they were supposed to be untangling, and then they announced everyone was going to have to ice skate. I’m cackling, I’m screaming, I’m throwing up. Either I have been poisoned, or I love watching the hunk torture. My transition into festive Jigsaw is complete.
Sadly, no one broke any bones during the ice-skating challenge, but they did have a girl fall down in front of the hunks as a test of “heart”. Almost all of the hunks gallantly helped the girl to her feet, except for one, and that generic hunk immediately had his magic hat taken away and dissolved into a pile of lifeless snow.
Episode four centered around a talent show; the talents included square dancing, folding a fitted sheet, rollerblade bartending, and jumping very high. I didn’t make up a single one of those. Old Man Parker got sent home for talking about his wife too much during a fake interview with E! News, and probably also for not sacrificing enough blood to the blood God during his Christmas lights challenge.
But WAIT! Hallmark movies are all about second chances. (I thought they were mostly about getting railed on a Christmas Tree farm, but sure, Hallmark, go off.) They decide to let the remaining hunks vote on whether Parker can return, and they unanimously vote to bring him back! Only to see him kicked off the very next episode. In a way, it was cruel to give him a second chance. Hallmark is all about giving second chances and then immediately taking them away for entertainment.
Now we’re getting to the part in a reality competition show where we need to see some tears. The men are forced to do a dramatic breakup scene, and Hayden gives the actress in the scene a squeaker that supposedly belonged to his beloved former dog to hold because he feels it will help him “connect with her emotionally.” This should have gotten him eliminated, but it doesn’t. Hallmark loves the painful loss of a dog.
Hayden is probably the best actor in the group, which honestly makes me wonder if the dog is even real. I have a dog-based conspiracy theory that I won’t share with you because the dog estrangement storyline is testing so well.
The best episode is the one where they made the hunks attempt to do improv, which I’m calling Festive Jigsaw. These poor hunks don’t know how to have thoughts, which is why they need the safety of the hunk preserve to survive. There is no ethical way to hunt hunks. You can tell the remaining hunks’ spirits are truly broken as we approach the finale. Generic Hunk Ezra, Divorced Dog Dad Hunk Hayden, Cowboy Hunk Blake, and Hamilton Hunk Elijah are all that remain of our dwindling hunk supply. I’m going to give you a spoiler alert for the ending by letting you know that Ezra is the tallest hunk.
To lift their spirits, production flew in special women from their lives. Mostly their sisters; Elijah’s pregnant girlfriend was allowed in, too, even though he mentioned her way less than Hayden mentioned his precious dog. I swear, for one second, I really thought they might have gotten Hayden’s dog as his special guest. I know production reached out, and his ex-wife said absolutely not. They had to settle for his sister. Everyone was bummed.
The sisters are there to watch them perform a dance that one of the instructors from Dancing with the Stars taught them. Blake the cowboy can only square dance, so he is fed to the reindeer along with the other past hunks. This left only Hayden, Ezra, and Elijah. Of course, they simply lined up the hunks and let the longest one win. Congratulations to Ezra, here he is on the poster for his Hallmark Christmas movie:
What do you mean, Ezra’s Hallmark movie actually stars two cute dogs? They chose the tallest man. How could he not be the best at the job? Has he worked on any other Hallmark movies since he won the contest last year? It looks like they gave him a small role in 2025’s Christmas On Duty, but he is not the leading man.
Hayden got a better Hallmark ending than Ezra. By that I mean he’s the only man who does not own a dog that’s selling fifty-dollar dog sweaters on his personal website, AND he started a podcast with the contestant who had the detached retina called Blondies: Out Loud. As we all know, a podcast is one of the best ways to gain fame and money, even better than playing a supporting actor to a dog in a Hallmark movie.
Hallmark must have considered this project a success despite the fact that it did not yield a leading man for them. After all, they need an almost unlimited quantity of bland hunks to feed into the Christmas machine, so if one isn’t a success, they’ll simply gather a new batch and begin the hunt again in Finding Mr. Christmas season two, where the prize will be the lead role in a Hallmark film that’s actually about two Pangolins finding love at Christmas.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Max Baroi, the king of Christmas Hunks. If he had his own streaming channel where he stood around in christmas sweaters for 84 minutes while different puppies waddled on and off screen, we’d be the first subscribers.