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‘You’re in a lot of shit’: Parents bust teen house party, 1988
03.28.2015
01:13 pm
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Here’s a short, amusing video of teenagers rocking out to Roxette’s “The Look” whilst having a small house party in 1988. Everyone is having a good time that is until… the parental units come home and shut the whole thing down.

Mom uses the word “kiddo.” You know you’re in big trouble when your mother calls you “kiddo.”

 
via Gawker

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.28.2015
01:13 pm
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3-D printing, T-shirts and cufflinks: The surreal world of sonogram mementos
01.21.2014
10:52 am
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3-D fetus
 
For the record, I like babies. I think self-proclaimed baby-haters are usually just acting out bogus irritation so they can feel important by taking umbrage with someone who can’t fight back. And I’m not one of those self-righteous people who constantly feels the need to declare (a little too forcefully, and generally apropos of nothing), that new parents can be weird. Of course they can be weird—they’re sleep-deprived and incredibly emotional and their lives suddenly revolve around a tiny living creature totally dependant on them. It’s a weird situation, and I think we can all stand to give parental weirdness a little break now and then.

However, I will always find the obsession with sonograms completely weird. That shit is notably, exceptionally, particularly weird. It’s not the sonogram itself, nor the idea that a parent might get excited about it—it’s the conflation of sonogram “photography” with actual baby pictures.  Sonogram pictures are “photography” only in the most literal way, and a sonogram print-out is no more a “baby picture” than a colonoscopy photo is erotica, and yet there is this reverence for that blurry little photo, which almost never presents anything even halfway resembling an actual baby. And then there’s that 3-D ultrasound imaging—more identifiable, I suppose, but far grosser-looking.

But in the spirit of embracing all things that creep me out, I have decided to grace you, dear readers, with a short list of some of my favorite ways people memorialize their ultrasounds, starting with the delightful little hellspawn you see at the top of the screen.

Sonograms themselves are a product of fairly recent technology, meaning we are at the dawn of a new baby-era. But forget 3-D imaging, for $600, you can 3-D print a life-size model your fetus! Their tagline is “Imagine holding your baby before he or she is born,” (No thank you! Before they are born, they belong on the inside!) and they come in a satin-lined box. You know what other kind of box is usually satin-lined? A coffin. Coffins are lined with satin.

I’m not a Luddite by any means, but one does have to wonder if this micro-observational tendency will escalate further as the technology becomes available. Will we someday regularly witness fertilization, perhaps watching sperm swim across a high-definition screen? Will we root for the little guys like they’re pro athletes? Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone envisioned the escalation of “test-tube” babies to the advent of robotic wombs—perhaps we’ll view fetal formation entirely outside the body! Honestly, I’d find that all preferable to dead fetus doll in a coffin, but let’s move on to the lower-tech options.
 
sonogram portrait
 
Custom sonogram portraiture posed sort of an aesthetic quandary for me. Which feels more uncanny—the chintzy, sentimental folk art sonogram painting, or the stylistically mature product of obvious training?
 
sonogram portrait
 
I’m going with the second one, if only because the store-front’s pitch leads with death:

Every life is a miracle to be celebrated and remembered. My Miracle Ultrasound Paintings were inspired by the memory of our niece who’s [sic] life ended just three short days after her birth. We were left with her ultrasound picture, one of our first and most precious memories.

While I make a point to avoid criticizing anyone’s mourning rituals, I would say, of the women I know, very few would be inclined to make a baby-related purchase from a vendor who begins their sales pitch with an anecdote about the death of a baby. Then again, very few of the women I know would invest $100 in custom sonogram portraiture. I’d wager the artist is addressing a very niche target audience.
 
sonogram t-shirt
 
This is simply too literal for my tastes. Much like those leggings that simulate the appearance of human muscles, I’ve just never been a fan of any clothing that brings to mind the removal of skin. I once had a friend who had her fallopian tubes tattooed over their location and it was a semi-distracting reminder of her guts. The difference is, of course, that she got the tattoo specifically to embrace the discomfort surrounding reproduction and our fundamental existence as, to quote Vonnegut, “meat machines.” This T-shirt, on the other hand, is supposed to be “cute.” Ah the subjectivity of beauty!
 
cake topper
 
I would not eat a cake with a sonogram cake topper. The visceral reminder of a fetus generally kills my appetite, and frankly, I question the motives of anyone who gets too hungry around fetal imagery. There’s also a store that prints your sonogram on water bottle labels. Drinking the fluid from a container with a fetus printed on it has got to be some kind of Freudian cannibalism thing, right?
 
cufflinks
 
I saved this one for last, mainly because totally I dig it. I totally dig sonogram cufflinks. They’re functional. They’re subtle and discreet—they don’t scream to the unwilling world, “hey, look at my fetus.” The idea is morbid, but quietly so, and can therefore be executed with some degree of self-awareness. Plus, I can imagine totally going through a Patti Smith-style post-baby menswear phase that would necessitate the use of germane cufflinks. Most importantly though, it’s a disarming object of subversive style, and it can be used to creep out and embarrass your children someday—I mean, why else would you even have kids?

Posted by Amber Frost
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01.21.2014
10:52 am
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The Mega Man-Pram: A stroller for the dad with debilitating masculine insecurity!
08.01.2013
06:45 pm
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stroller
The vRS Man-Pram, the “masculine” baby stroller for the man who has a little… baby.

I simply don’t understand certain strains of masculinity. See, I was under the impression that caring for a tiny living creature (one which you ostensibly produced through sexual intercourse with a lady) would make a man more secure about the image of his virility. However, a survey by Czech automaker, ŠKODA, found that more than three-quarters of the 1,000 British fathers polled would spend more time strolling with Junior if only the buggy screamed “I AM A MAN!!!” The so-called “Man Pram,” pictured in all its… glory, purports to increase paternal participation in care work by assuaging what must be the most delicate egos ever to emerge from the Y chromosome. I had to read the press release for the Corvette of strollers three times to be sure it wasn’t a joke.

ŠKODA has unveiled the ultimate baby buggy, dubbed the ‘vRS Mega Man-Pram’ – a high performance vehicle that has been designed to provide the ultimate baby transportation experience. ‘King Size’ buggy is the ultimate accessory for new dads.

Milton Keynes, 25th July 2013 - To celebrate the launch of the Octavia vRS – the fastest ŠKODA ever – the company gave a team of engineers the task of bringing the same qualities that go into the car to other everyday objects. These included the vRS Man-Pram and were highlighted in a new ad launching the third-generation Octavia vRS.

The pram’s vRS style makeover fits perfectly with a ŠKODA-commissioned survey of 1,000 dads which found that two thirds (76%) admitted they would spend more time pushing baby if they had access to a higher spec and more stylish buggy.

The result is a remarkable baby carriage: standing two metres high. The buggy comes complete with wing mirrors, hydraulic suspension, 20 inch alloy wheels, oversized brake callipers, anti-stress grips and a headlamp beam for night walks. Tots lucky enough to be carried on board can look forward to “sports-style upholstery” and “adjustable lumbar support”.

 
“Lumbar support?” Have these engineers ever held a baby? They’re basically jelly that shits. Lumbar support implies a specific part of the body needs to be stabilized, as opposed to the whole of their entire jiggly little person. And that’s really the least absurd feature of this absurdly cumbersome design. Those wheels? And how counterintuitive is the idea of a butch stroller? As soon as you see it, you just know that big (little?) daddy here has issues.

At the risk of invoking the sort of language that probably produces this kind of monstrosity, I feel compelled to address the would-be customers of this ridiculous stroller… dudes, man the hell up.
 
manly stroller
 
Via Gizmag

Posted by Amber Frost
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08.01.2013
06:45 pm
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