Meet Balls

I've tried about seventy different prescriptions of rose-colored glasses to look at this one. No matter how strong they are (and in this latest pair, Stalin looks like the pancake bunny), this name still grosses me out.


Meet Balls?

I mean, is the goal to look like you just dipped your fingers in squishy globules of ground up cow flesh?

Or...is it a tantalizing promise of your social life to come?

Either way, let me reiterate: eww.

Tennis Corset

Not only is this an awful name for a nail polish, but it is also one of the worst ideas for a piece of clothing I have ever heard (with the possible exception of foot-binding marathon shoes). Tennis is a game in which participants are expected to run around the court quickly. A corset is a device that inhibits you from breathing and will make you pass out if you try to run or bend over. It does not seem like a (game, set, or) match made in heaven. Maybe if you are so figure-conscious that you cannot leave the house without your corset even to exercise, public sports are not for you. It's OK; they invented Wii Tennis for a reason.

Also, the elitism of tennis combined with the Victorianism of corsets makes me suspicious of the kind of people who would wear this.

"Lady Thistlethorpe! What a pleasure to see you again! You are looking delightfully frail and delicate today."

Lady Thistlethorpe, with great effort, manages to breathe deeply enough through her tennis corset to raise her racket in greeting.

"Oh, Sir Caddington, you do know how to flatter a woman. Have you had any luck engaging a new upstairs parlor maid for Stuffybritches Manor?"

The tennis ball passes seven inches from Lady Thistlethorpe's gracefully outstretched arm and sails into Sir Caddington's monocle, cracking it in half.

"Alas, no. We thought we had found one at last, but she turned out to be a dirty papist. Caught her with those grubby little fingers on a rosary."

The ball speeds at Lady Thistlethorpe. She takes one step toward it on her tennis high heels, totters, and crashes to the ground. Sir Caddington nods his head approvingly.

"Damned fine woman, I've always said. Jeeves! Smelling salts!"

Baby It's "Coal" Outside!

Really? This was the nail polish you were so excited about that you busted out the exclamation point?

(photo from Nail Polish Diva)

Here's an idea: if you only have enough currency at the Punctuation Store to pick out one present for yourself, how about investing in a comma? I know, it doesn't have the flash of an exclamation point, but the upside is that you will look a lot less like an idiot, with the pleasant side-effect of being grammatically correct.

Oh, and thanks for the quotation marks around "coal." I was in danger of believing that, in a bizarre and terrifying sequel to Cat's Cradle, the carbon in our atmosphere had literally transmuted into sedimentary rock and was in danger of crushing anyone who ventured outside. ("Yes," Steampunk Santa said, as he unleashed the particle of Coal-9, "you've all been very bad.") The thing is, I know what it would be like to have coal outside. I don't, however, know what it would be like to have to worry about "coal." What exactly are the scare quotes supposed to indicate? Something kind of like coal is outside? Watch out, it's sandstone! Oh, no, here comes whale blubber, another non-renewable source of energy!

I assure you, if you persist in saying things like this, you will soon have nobody left to call "baby."