I Hate My Mother’s Awful Goddamn Toaster

By Shawn

Right now, I’m on vacation, so I’m spending a few days visiting with family. My mother is a wonderful lady, and it’s always a pleasure to see her. And it’s because I love her that I’ve decided to stage an intervention. Mom, you need to hear this: Your toaster is fucking terrible.

Why is the toaster so terrible? Because any attempt to get it to do more than slightly warm something results in a thermonuclear holocaust. This, for example is what happened to my bagel this morning.

You. Dick.

I cannot stress how impossible it is to get the toaster not to do this. Great if you want Chernobyl-bread; not so good if you were hoping for something edible.

I have tried repeatedly to impress upon my mother how much her toaster blows. Still, she refuses to replace it. Her argument is that even though the toaster cannot toast anything, its other functions work fine. I don’t think we need to be so forgiving here. It’s called a “toaster”; that’s a hint that its purpose in life is to toast things. Regrettably, this is precisely the area in which it falls down on the job.

Regardless, my mother feels she can’t throw it out because it was a gift. Mom, I don’t think the person who gave it to you would be offended. Unless she hates you, she probably wants you to have a toaster that works. Also, I really don’t think she’s going to find out about this. She lives in a different state than you. How often does she call to check in on the toaster? And even if we lived in a world where people called other people to see how their appliances are doing, couldn’t you just lie? It’s not like she’s going to drive to your house just to have a little visit with the damn thing.

Just in case you’re worried that she’ll show up here and indignantly demand to know why you’ve replaced her toaster with something that doesn’t turn everything it touches into a smoldering ruin, I’ve got you covered.

There, see? We’ll just tell people it offed itself because it was tired of being shitty. We had nothing to do with it.

At this point, my mother will no doubt protest: “But I don’t feel like going through hassle of getting a new one.” Well, Mom, I’ve decided to save you the hassle. I’ve found you a well-reviewed toaster on Amazon with two day shipping. I will buy it for you. Please, just let me help you, and we can all move on.

WTF, The Internet. AKA, “No, A Single Fuck Panda.”

Dear The Internet,

We’re writing this open letter to you because something happened recently that really baffled the crap out of us. First, a little background. As administrators of this blog, we’re privy to certain information about how people access it. (Though, no worries, readers, we can’t see who you are or anything.) For instance, some people link to it from Facebook and others find it by searching for various terms on Google.

When people find us through Google, we can see the search terms that led them to click on our site. Most of the time, they’re pretty innocuous things such as “sibling and charybdis,” or “same girl Shakespeare,” or “Sam Worthington.”

A little while ago, however, someone found our site by searching for the term “fuck panda.” You might recall that we do have a post entitled Fuck Pandas, which is a sensible, accurate rant about how useless pandas are, and this is what the person found. Still, we were a bit confused as to what they were looking for–

Shawn: So, did you notice that somebody found the site by searching for “fuck panda”? What do you think that was about?

Ann: I see two possibilities. One, they were searching for rants about pandas and forgot to type in the “s” . . .

Shawn: Or, two, they really were just searching for a fuck panda.

Ann: I don’t know what that is. I don’t want to know what that is.

Shawn: Whatever it is, it’s not a good thing. It’s not like, if we knew, we’d feel better.

Ann: I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure they meant it to be plural.

Shawn: I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.

We were prepared to leave this mystery unsolved and simply move on with our lives. But then things took a disturbing turn. A few days later, someone found the blog with the search term: “no, a single fuck panda.”

Well, thank you for resolving our debate. You did not simply leave off the “s.” You really just want a single fuck panda. We’d like to make a few points in response.

First of all, we still don’t know what a fuck panda is. But whatever it is you’re trying to do here, we’re pretty sure God and the federal government would not approve.

Second, in light of your single-minded determination to obtain a fuck panda, we don’t know why you clicked on us again. You must have known from your previous visit that there are no fuck pandas for you here. We don’t condone this thing you’ve got going on, and we’re certainly not engaged in any fuck panda retail.

Third, “no, a single fuck panda” doesn’t make any sense as a search string. It only makes sense as a response to our conversation. So naturally, each of us initially assumed that the other was responsible for this. But here’s the thing: we weren’t. Neither of us did this. And what’s most baffling is that no one else was present for that conversation—no one overhead it.

This is the part where you need to explain yourself. How did you know? How did you do this? Why did you do this? And finally, our curiosity’s just gotten the better of us here—what the fuck is a fucking singular fuck panda, and why do people keep searching for it?!

With reluctant awe,

Ann and Shawn

Rant #1: Fuck Pandas

By Ann (Dedicated to Lara, for her mutual rage on the subject.)

Here’s the thing:

Fuck pandas.

Fuck ‘em.

No, I’m serious. I’ve had it with their bullshit.

All the time, people are always going on about pandas. “Oh, good heavens, the poor pandas are so endangered!” “Oh, my stars, we have to save them!”

Great idea. There’s just one problem.  You can save those giant failure-bears from poachers, but there’s no way to save them from themselves.

You see, pandas don’t want to be saved. They want to die. Because God made them to die. Think about it.

First, let’s talk about their food source.  Now, in spite of the fact that pandas were designed to be carnivores—they even have a carnivore digestive system—they scorn meat with all its life-giving potential and concentrate all their efforts on obtaining, yep, you guessed it, bamboo. But why, you ask yourself? It must be because bamboo is better for them. Pandas couldn’t possibly be so bad at living that they made a species-wide decision to turn their backs on the food they’re supposed to be eating in favor of the shittiest, least nutritious plant that ever existed, right? Wrong. Bamboo is the shittiest, least nutritious plant that ever existed. It is the most hideously inefficient source of energy God was able to come up with. Pandas could eat three goddamn tons of that shit and only have the energy to sit up, sneeze on themselves, and then lie the fuck back down.

This sneeze is the most action this panda baby is going to see for the next three days of its life. I would’ve said three years, but let’s get serious. It’s going to be dead by then.

So, okay, okay, maybe their food source isn’t the best choice. But maybe God gave them a break and made them especially good at having lots of hot panda sex?  Nope. Wrong again. Pandas hate having sex with each other. Probably because their potential partners (of which there are how many left? like, three?) are all lazy bags of shit who are about as sexually appealing as stuffed teddy bears—because, let’s face it, pandas are basically inanimate objects.

And even when, by some act of divine intervention, two pandas muster up enough energy to hump each other for the requisite thirty seconds required to produce an offspring, they’re too tired to take care of it. So, unless we step in to nurse the fucking thing ourselves, it dies just like its parents intended.

Humans have done everything to save pandas. We give them all the fucking bamboo they could possibly require, we force them to have sex with each other despite how creepy that is, and then we even take the fucking babies away and try to raise them ourselves, because for some reason we think it’s necessary help these incompetent, lazy-ass bears survive another day, against the manifest will of God.

Face the facts, people. Pandas don’t want our help. They want the sweet release of death. Just let them go.

“But they’re so cute!” Sure, they’re cute. You know what else is cute? Every other fucking mammal. So let’s stop giving our time and energy to a creature too boring to live and bestow it upon one that’s going to go out and do something for itself.

I don’t know, like wolves maybe. Wolves are go-getters.