Category: LEARNING DAY
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There was a dark time in the 1980s when pantyhose mania struck the nation. We’d just learned that apparently we have a climate? And that climate might be changing? The nation reacted to this traumatic news in the most ’80s way possible. They made horrific pantyhose goblins:
I don’t know why this frightful era of pantyhose crafting befell humanity, but it might be our darkest period since the Crusades. Pantyhose are underwear. We’re all on the same page about that, right? They’re sold in the underwear section. They come into direct, intimate contact with feet, butts, genitals, and thighs. Sure, people could sacrifice new pantyhose to the pantyhose golems, but they weren’t doing that. Pantyhose are fragile garments; women had to wear them every day until we won our God-given right to rock jeggings, and they had so, so many extra pairs of pantyhose they were desperate to get rid of… desperate enough to do anything. From that desperation, a book was born:
Sara Lavieri Hunter is Marie Condo’s Antipope. She claims to be a home organization guru. She’s written other books like 10 Minute Tiny Home: Hundreds Of Easy Tips To Straighten And Clean Every Room In Your House, and 10 Minute Organizing: 400 Fabulous Tips To Organize Every Room Of Your House – In Spite Of Your Family. With each one, she tweaked her name a little to Sara L. Hunter, and then Sara Hunter, almost as if there was something she wanted to distance her name from, some shameful past secret like, I don’t know, the fact that her book on how to reuse pantyhose has a full section on cooking with used pantyhose!
Apparently, Sara never worked in a kitchen and saw those horrifying food safety videos about the dangers of using underwear as a juice strainer. In this chapter, there are so many ways that pantyhose comes into direct contact with food that I may look with suspicion at every meal I eat for the rest of my life. This book suggests you season your food with pantyhose!
Put raw chicken in the foot of your old pantyhose and fill that bad boy up with breadcrumbs. Yes, the bread crumbs will fall out everywhere, covering your kitchen with salmonella and foot germs, but if you do it over a baking dish, it won’t be that messy. Then why not just use the baking dish? Removing the pantyhose makes this tip five times less messy and ninety-six percent more sanitary!
Since there are nowhere near 500 acceptable ways to use pantyhose in the kitchen—in fact, I would say there are 0 ways—this chapter utilizes the same one tip thirteen separate times. Number 41 is to use pantyhose to store lettuce, which almost counts as a useful tip because storing lettuce in plastic does make it wilt faster, so storing it in something other than plastic is mostly a good idea. Sara tasted that brief flash of genuine helpfulness and decided she couldn’t get enough of it.
Tip number 59: Store parsley, 61: Store carrots, 62: Store hot cocoa packets, 63: Store apples, 64: Store potatoes, 66: Store lemons and limes, 67: Store tea bags… basically, in this woman’s kitchen it’s impossible to escape eating something that has touched hosiery. Not even the birthday cake is safe.
Let’s think about this for a second. You can use pantyhose as a juice strainer because it’s full of tiny holes. Why would something full of tiny holes work as a pastry bag? This tip will leave your hands covered in frosting and leg sweat. Are we cooking for a pervert, Sara? Oh, we are? We have been this whole time? Well, then your book makes a lot more sense, Sara!
I’m sure right now you’re asking yourself how you can avoid pantyhose freaks. Don’t worry; there are signs of this affliction, and they are not at all difficult to miss. These people are not hiding their problems. They may even openly wrap your prepared food in pantyhose and gift it to you.
This is a good way to figure out if you are leg worthy to the pantyhose lunatic in your life. If they give you the foot, know that you’re a lesser friend and someone out there got a whole leg of cookies. And I know it’s gauche to bring up money while stuffing cookies into pantyhose, but have pantyhose ever been less expensive than plastic bags? This is all very suspicious.
Stunning is definitely the perfect descriptor for this gift. I would be stunned if I got pantyhose wine anywhere but prison. Another warning sign of a pantyhose kitchen is of course, repurposed pantyhose clothing.
Yes, if people see a woman in a tube top, they will think that’s crazy, but if you sew pantyhose to that tube top, they’ll say, “There goes the most normal woman I ever saw with pantyhose slung over her shoulders.” It’s not just the clothing that can give away the pantyhose-obsessed. Look closely at their hair, and you may notice something amiss.
Remember to check a mirror! It’s the one step of building a human head out of pantyhose most people forget!
I respect a book that makes sure tip number 420 is insane. Sure, why not? Make a wig out of pantyhose. No one is going to stop you. We have free will, and we’re using it for pantyhose wigs. In fact, you can artificially enhance yourself with pantyhose in any way you see fit.
No part of the human body is safe from the pantyhose. No profession is safe from the pantyhose. There might be used pantyhose in your children’s school.
An A for effort and an F from the health department. The way this book involves children in the pantyhose is even more disturbing than the way it involves cake in the pantyhose. It does acknowledge that letting kids hang out with a cloth rope is generally a bad idea because every baby’s hobby is trying to die, but it’s also like, eh, it’s probably fine, right?
You’ll want your strip long enough they can’t swallow it but short enough they can’t wrap it around their neck. A foot? Half a shin? Whatever, you’re a pantyhose maniac, you’ll figure it out. Babies are supposed to be tough. Sometimes, they should eat a little bit of pacifier dirt. As long as it gives you a way to display your old pantyhose that baby can munch on a dirty pacifier all day.
The book does acknowledge that if you are this invested in getting rid of your old pantyhose, you might also be dumb enough to suffocate your child by sewing a Halloween costume without air holes. I have to appreciate a product that understands its audience on this level.
You might think after 400 or so incredible pantyhose crimes, the advice in this book would start to get a little thin, but you would be wrong. The most amazing advice in this book comes in the last few entries. The versatility of pantyhose really didn’t come through for me until the final tips which display the wide range of pantyhose uses. Who would have ever thought you could wipe your ass and bread chicken with the exact same thing?
Then if that wasn’t enough versatility for you, you can use that very same toilet paper material as an eternal bond with your soulmate! (Preferably white pantyhose for proposing, black or brown for poop).
Wow, this book really did it. They made pantyhose come into contact with every conceivable hole in the human body. They even found a way for pantyhose to touch your heart. To combat the evil released by this book, I will be releasing a competing novel called Exactly One Thing You Should Do With Pantyhose After You Have Worn Them. It will be short and succinct, maybe a picture book. No children will be sacrificed to pantyhose in the making of my book. I doubt the author of 500 Pantyhose Curses I Have Personally Enacted can say the same.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Nicholas Lovino.
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Learning Day: Moms! On The… Net!?
The Tesla Cybertruck: wait, stop, where are you going. Come back. I applaud your blanket aversion to CyberTruck HorseHockey. But look at this thing I found:
The Ugly Truckling: The Story Of My Cybertruck is a children’s book. It’s a children’s book about the Cybertruck, and the difficulties faced by poor helpless Cybertruck owners. The premise is that Cybertruck owners are demonized, because the Cybertruck is shaped different from other trucks. Society’s superficial cruelty attacks the Cybertruck, like The Ugly Duckling before it.
You may think the discourse around Cybertrucks is not just vehicular body-shaming. The Ugly Truckling thinks differently. It asks why people are so mad at itty bitty widdle Cybowtwucks. Y R U buwwying the Cybowtwuck fow wooking diffwent??? They’re only shaped that “ugly” way so they can achieve good design goals, like a trunk that downsizes your fingers. “Wow,” you are saying, “the book title’s allusion to The Ugly Duckling is flawless. The Ugly Duckling didn’t choose to be born that shape, and the Ugly Truckling didn’t choose to burst into flames during a car wash.” I’m glad you understand this metaphor so well. I probably don’t even need to show you the book’s title page. The title page clarifies this metaphor with a powerful fist, of ham.
Sincerity time: this premise could’ve been an okay web cartoon, in the hands of a satirist. It also could’ve been written better in its sincere form. But no. Our universe’s eldritch Ideas-God placed this premise in the hands of Diego Martinez. I’m here to poop on Diego, but also feel grim sorrow for him. We’ll get to why I feel bad for him later.
For now, My Dear Hotdogger, consider what a children’s author should do with the premise of “Ugly Duckling Cybertruck”. If they do the sincere version of that premise, their Truckling should be a Truckling. The truck should be small. A baby truck. Like what I assume happens when Pixar’s Cars characters make a baby and it’s born baby-sized and it’s not grown up until Cars 7. That’s what a Truckling book should depict. Then the Truckling is the correct size for a child to befriend it. The Truckling can be their puppy. Then both the child and the Truckling get comfortable with their own flaws and foibles as they age into self-awareness.
Now let’s draft the satire. In that version of the idea, the baby Cybertruck grows up, and becomes a seven thousand pound monstrosity. The Truckling develops all the faults of a Cybertruck. A real Cybertruck is Cybertrickedout with faults. You depict its true status as an expensive, unsafe electric pickup. Then, at the end, it runs the kid over. Edgelord Jonathan Swift bit complete.
I don’t like either of those book ideas. Diego has an even worse third idea. He tells the story of a Tesla-pilled dad Tesla-pilling his regular child about a regular Cybertruck. I’m not adding that concept. It’s there from jump:
Are you aware of the genre of children’s entertainment that depicts flawed dads? There are many books, and entire Sesame Street storylines, for kids whose dads are divorced or jailed. That’s good! We’re overdue for that. But we needed one hundred further “troubled dad” books before we needed one book about CyberTruckJerkDads. I respect the complexity of divorce, and criminal justice, and owning any of the Teslas that debuted long before Elon Musk both mischaracterized and committed election fraud. If you bought a car-shaped Tesla a while ago, I get it.
I do not get Cybertruck buyer’s remorse. The Cybertruck is an innovative new idea, in the sense that Ford and GMC had that idea first but aren’t narcissists. The Cybertruck also debuted five years AFTER Elon Musk called a stranger a pedophile for fun. Every Cybertruck purchaser had enough alternatives and information to not buy a Cybertruck. They also have the option to roll up their windows and tune out the haters. You can own a Cybertruck. It’s fine. Your only punishment is some of us frowning about it. I know a set of rich Internet men believe that is “cancellation”. But you don’t need a Cybertruck AND universal adulation. And you don’t need to purchase a children’s book to read to yourself, to soothe yourself, while your child sits there like a prop. When you read this book at your child, you read about a dad lecturing at his child. Story Dad lectures Story Child about Elon Musk. Then the child likes Elon Musk and Cybertrucks and by extension their dad.
“Now read that page to me”, said too many childrens’ fathers. “Read. It. To. Me.”
Hey kids: have you heard of the most prominent character in this book? His name is Elon Musk, and he’s saving the environment.
I’m conflicted about Elon Musk’s role in electric cars. Apparently most of his work at Tesla involved lowering safety standards and harassing/impregnating subordinates. Other people founded the company. Other people designed the cars. However, Elon Musk was an effective cheerleader and rodeo clown for the concept of electric cars. A well-written Ugly Truckling could celebrate that. Elorm helped the environment. However, fun fact, the main way to acquire this children’s book is to make Amazon Dot Com print it on demand. Amazon drop-shipped this to my door in less than 24 hours, and I am not an Amazon Prime member. Much like Kanye West cookbooks and creepy “captivating” histories, the final page of The Ugly Truckling bears the Amazon print-on-demand Mark Of The Beast.
The book also has multiple extra blank pages before the last one, for no good reason. Turns out the Cybertruck fandom’s carbon footprint has an oscillating shoe size. Anyhow: The Ugly Truckling is an astounding achievement in Elon Musk Criticism. The Ugly Truckling is more devastating than every leftist, online, correct statement about Musk. It wrecks him because it doesn’t mean to. It’s written by a Musk fan. The Ugly Truckling opens with a lot of generic factoids about Cybertruck impressiveness. Did you know the Cybertruck is as powerful as 805 horses? It is! That’s almost as powerful as the good-looking Teslas!
Then the book celebrates a key feature that sounds good, if you forget other humans exist. The Cybertruck features all kinds of features to keep you safe. You, individually, will be safe. Also you might not be safe if you drive the truck too fast, or shut any of the parts without tumbling clear of their blade-sides. But the Cybertruck is so safe from disasters. Disasters like blackouts, and floods, and other crises this book depicts just one child surviving while their community struggles. Readers see people’s food spoil and homes flood while the protagonist #cybers along. It’s like if the I Survived series covered our dystopian future. It’s like if the emperor Nero cybertrucked while Rome burned.
Also, did you know some people in the world have guns? Yes! Guns might seem like a romantic element of the Old West. But they’re still with us today. Good thing the Cybertruck protects you from that gun problem. A problem which there is no other way of addressing.
The Cybertruck also gets pitched as For Kids. The child and their peers hang out in it. After all, the Cybertruck has a screen and speakers. Much like most living rooms, or rooms you carry a laptop into. But hey, why not experience that in Cybertruck? Cybertruck! There’s truly no better childhood treehouse than a Cybertruck. Especially because the last good Tree Fort Tree got chopped down to print and package this book.
Other than this Emilio part, the story is didactic and flat, because that’s propaganda for you. Did you know a Cybertruck can power a tool for welding? Just like a generator? And/or an extension cord?
Entire pages get devoted to Consumer Reports-assed fantasies of owning the first-ever truck impervious to minor besmirching.
There’s also a big spread about the production reasons for the body of the truck being shaped that way. I did not know that stuff. It’s pretty much the pages you’d find in a good version of a Truckling book.
There’s one totally wild claim in this book. I’m convinced it’s a lie. But I’m open to the possibility that it’s depicting the personal experiences of the book’s author.
That’s an easy page to gloss over. But it’s depicting a schoolteacher getting in trouble for showing their students their Tesla. I could not find evidence of this ever happening. No teacher’s ever been disciplined for demonstrating a Cybertruck, or another “S3XY” Tesla model. Has that ever happened? If you can find evidence, please share it. I’ll badger Robert and Sean and we’ll update this bit. So far I can only find people feeling Musk-induced Tesla Remorse, for the real reasons and not for Cybertruck Body-Shaming.
More refined googling led me to weirder stuff. There’s one truly wild story about a teacher facing criticism for Teaching Tesla. However, they did not teach about the car brand. Did you know there is a scientist with that same last name? He built stuff like coils. An Oregon teacher demo’d one such “Cybercoil” by firing it up in their classroom and zapping the words “I <3 Mom” onto students’ skin. The marks were temporary-ish. One kid’s skin had lingering redness and swelling. The teacher got in the newspaper for doing this, and for not facing any disciplinary action from the school, and for being arrested by police but then released without charges. The teacher also has One Of Those Faces. I do not say that cruel thing to be cruel. I say that to wonder how our flawed justice system did not jail him on a conviction for Worst-Degree Vibes, or execute him for Possession Of Cabin-Fella Stare.
I struggle to imagine there’s a world where a teacher gets CANCELLED for half-assing a Cybertruck parking lot “field trip”, yet this hard-to-justify Nikola Tesla lesson goes unpunished. But maybe the author is describing himself. Maybe he got punished or canned for walking his students into the parking lot, and toward the maw of his future truck. This brings us to the tragedy of The Ugly Truckling’s author. I did not try to contact or speak with Diego Martinez, because I am a coward. I did read his biography in the back of this book. His biography is positive.
I also fact-checked that bio a little. The facts are true, and depressing. Diego Martinez founded a private middle school. It opened its doors as I type this. It has a professional website. It has 10 followers on Instagram. Based on every picture on both those webpages, I know Diego Martinez’s plan for launching a school. His plan was to purchase a Cybertruck, put stickers on that Cybertruck, and drive in circles until his community realized science is cool.
You and me are Internet users. We know there’s a Musk Cult out there, railing against Deep State Forces that are the Real Reason his website don’t work good. So it’s easy to forget about people who aren’t so online. Diego Martinez only seems to know Elon Musk is “the electric car guy.” Diego only knows “Cybertruck robot shape is the most Science.” That is a dangerously shallow understanding of Cybertrucks, placed in the hands of a dreamer. Diego Martinez heard about the Cybertruck. He got hyped up about it for earnest, child-like reasons. And when a little bit of backlash about the Cybertruck pierced his bubble, he did not ask where it came from. He drove 110 miles per hour toward a solution. He presumed the solution is a little bit of scicomm and a whole lot of love. That progression is why this book exists.
Imagine if those were your only thoughts about the robot shaped truck. If that is somehow all you knew, you could’ve written The Ugly Truckling. The book is a hopeful tribute to something poisoned by culture wars and bad men. I’ve been racking my brain for a parallel example. All I’ve got is a thought experiment. Think about the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. Our militant sovereign citizens ruined that flag’s vibes long before J6 ruined it. If you did not know that stuff, you could spin a yarn about The Little Snake That Could. Or if you only knew scraps of the flag’s 1700s origins, you could doodle the tale of a Revolutionary War toddler who dyes cloth the exact shade of French’s brand mustard, despite his British Haters. Is that a nicer headspace to be in? Maybe that’s a joyous path to (wait for it) tread. Maybe it’s nice to not know anything beyond “snake cool!” and “truck cyber!” and “idea haver just likes Blade Runner a lot!” In that worldview, any dad who feels that same way is more nerdy than evil.
The dramatic irony here is cursed. I feel cursed emotions for the entire creative team of The Ugly Truckling. They stumbled into making an evil book for benign reasons. And I don’t know any more than the next fella about how we should lead our lives in this vale of tears. I just know Diego Martinez is sitting in the empty lobby of his STEM middle school waiting for kids to pour through the front doors. They’ll stream into his classrooms any second now. They’re about to do that. They’re probably not here yet because they’re running late. They’re late because their parents’ non-cyber trucks can’t drive fast. Yeah, that’s why. They’re on their way, he hopes. And when the hours tick by, and the real reason for their absence becomes clear, I don’t want that realization to crush Diego. When disappointment slices its Cybertruck’s Cybertrunklid through his Cyberknuckles, I hope Diego only loses his Cyberdigits, and retains his Cyberzest for life.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, who is raising awareness for the non-profit group Divorced Assholes Devoid of Fundamental Understanding for Cybertruck Knowledge, Education, and Recognition.
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Learning Day: EGG đźŚ
For a long time, I’ve wanted to cover an early 2000’s teen magazine for this website, you know, the ones that were all about girl power! Which meant that girls power the economy by buying our patented anti-ugly bitch cream. While American magazines from this era were pretty nuts, they had nothing on what was going on in Japan, where egg magazine was publishing the latest in Gyaru fashion, a type of style I’d call Jersey Shore meets Jersey Shore harder, oh God, they’ve fused and are attacking New York City! Egg promoted big wigs, bigger hats, and spray tans that might legally constitute a hate crime.
I saw one website refer to Gyaru as an “American casual style” but that feels like me dressing up as Super Mario and calling it Italian Casual. I don’t know what American casual in the early 2000’s was exactly, but it probably wasn’t this. Oh God, wait, was it this?
The majority of EGG magazine is pictures of young girls layered beside products. Sometimes there are tutorials with style tips such as how to look like you got kicked out of beauty school for a sinister plot to steal all of the wigs and combine them into one super wig. An “Autumn Hair Arrange” is what I think emergency responders call it:
The fashion of egg can be pretty wild, but my favorite part of the outfits is when they sprinkle in a little random English, like a button on a hat that says “I heart surf” or “let’s gal” – things that are so close to the correct phrasing, but also far enough off that I feel like they might be clues to the location of a billionaire’s fortune. I look at a poem in an ad for jeans that begins, “Then I, in I am See,” and I want to go full National Treasure on that shit.
Honestly, the egg clothes don’t bother me so much; it’s the hair I keep coming back to. It’s the hair that haunts me. Hair seems to be very important to the Gyaru subculture, and the most vital thing about that hair is that it is big. One of the headlines assured me that “Hair Make Point.” Sometimes, that means they physically make a lot of points in the hair, and sometimes, it means that everyone should see your enormous floating wig pile drifting toward them from half a mile away. It’s as if all of these women are trying to look big to frighten off a bear. A “Big Head CARRY,” if you will.
Egg wasn’t just about how girls look. It also offered help to girls who are struggling in segments such as Gal Crisis! At least, I think this is an advice section where they pose one woman with exaggerated distressed expressions next to letters from readers asking for advice. Also, one of their lady issues seems to be getting groped in a cage? The point is, I wouldn’t take advice from egg. But in the early 2000’s, this was one of the few sources teen girls could go to if they were in gal crisis. It’s not a regular crisis; it’s a gal crisis, so it’s fun! Please help them.
Another interactive segment was “Photo Mail,” where Egg fans could send basically any grainy Razor flip phone photo, and Egg would publish it regardless of the content. The photos they got swung wildly from selfies of teen girls in silly makeup, to cute pictures of pets, to multiple takes of a Winnie the Pooh doll threesome. They published it all! No one was going to edit the Photo Mail section. They had wigs to buy, assemble, and unleash.
Was there other, non-Winnie-the-Pooh-getting-railed-in-a-blindfold sexual content in egg?
Sure, even though they called their ten-year anniversary issue “Girls History Of Egg,” it wasn’t just a magazine for girls. It was also for perverts, and they knew that. I don’t know what this arty photo shoot with some kind of anti-prejudice message is all about, but I know they decided to spice it up by adding a woman double-fisting popsicles and showing her ass. I spiced it up even more with a Winnie the Pooh Getting Railed in a Blindfold sticker.
There are also random porny cartoons dotted throughout the magazine. It’s real whiplash to turn the pages and see a girl in a fedora, another girl in a fedora, a girl in a comically oversized scarf, and then a cartoon of a woman with a squirrel tail in lingerie being gazed at by a man with eight psychedelic mushroom penises bursting from his jeans. You know, for example.
I will say this is one of the weirder cartoons. Usually, they are pretty typical depictions of a man and a woman having sex where the woman looks sort of bored, like maybe the punchline is that the man is doing a bad job. Typically there are way fewer psychedelic mushroom penises involved, two or three max.
Egg would occasionally release a themed holiday issue, my favorite of which is the Halloween issue, also known as “Battle of Halloween party.” Halloween is probably the second biggest holiday for eggs, so it makes sense they decided to go all out for this one. Based on the cover, you might think that they didn’t feature any actual Halloween costumes, but oh boy you would be wrong.
I respect egg Battle of Halloween party because they covered all the typical girly Halloween costumes. They did sexy Minions, sexy witches, and a sexy party animal, which is just a girl in normal clothes eating a banana, but they also didn’t shy away from more controversial sexy costumes like “The sexy military.” They’re doing the sexy wars. It’s like the regular military but in way lower-cut shirts that say, “Whassup, dawg.”
The Halloween issue also has a horror makeup tutorial of a girl with her mouth sewn shut that will genuinely give you nightmares. I liked the sexy military better than I like the sexy face accident. Hell, I’d take the sexy minions. They were also holding bananas. Are bananas an integral part of Halloween in egg? Does a “Whassup, dawg” iron-on denote an officer in the sexy military? Was it a special occasion, or do those three Poohs fuck like that every ni– AaAaaAAH, I forgot this was the picture I was talking about:
In case you’re thinking egg only set out to traumatize women, let me tell you right now, there is a men’s egg. They released monthly issues alongside regular egg and even had special editions such as men’s egg HAIRS. The HAIRS issue features many hairstyles of the day that work for both young Japanese men in Final Fantasy cutscenes and middle-aged white women who come into a restaurant five minutes before closing and order a three-course meal.
Egg started publishing in 1995 and stopped in 2014 due to the decline in popularity of… all the things it said were cool. That is until it was resurrected in 2018, rising from the egg of its own fallen egg, it started publishing online and has released several physical issues, although it’s no longer a monthly publication. They seem to be a little more similar to GOOP now, with one issue headlined “egg’s soul massage.” They even introduced a new face of egg in 2023. It looks a lot like the old face of egg, but the hair is certainly more manageable, which I’m thankful for. This version of egg haunts me less, although it stares directly into my soul more. Massaging it.
Today’s egg is toned down; classier, some might say. I’m not that person, but I can see where some might say that. Some of the things I learned in egg gave me a gal crisis. I might still be having it now. Thank God it’s just a gal crisis and not the regular kind. According to egg, I can solve this by eating cylindrical food and joining the sexy military. I’ll be fine.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Cuevas, who died triggering a booby trap of pointy wigs in search of a Japanese jeans treasure. RIP.
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Fucking Day: Nude Vampires
