Mustache Monomania

moustache

Typical mustache-themed pollution found among the thriving aquatic plants in Oakland’s Lake Merritt

Baby hipster

Baby hipster

Fake mustache tolerance runs rampant

Oakland is the only city in California listed on the notorious “America’s Most Mustache Friendly Cities” report. Hence, we predictably encounter the detritus of the inexplicably still-popular parody: the fake mustache. The use of the fake mustache attempts to mock society, yet at the same time blindly follows its hackneyed fads. The paper backing shown above had been pulled from a stick-on mustache that was undoubtedly attached to the tender upper lip of an innocent toddler, who I assume was also donning a hoodie and sunglasses. This whole charade just goes to show that no toddler is truly innocent and that young Oakland parents want their kids to look like the Unabomber, or just porn stars. Either way, the babies are exhibited as the farcical caricature of well-manicured sexually mature men—the male counterpart and precursor to the immoral abomination we know as the pageant girl.

sherlock5-300x225

Sexy (Asian?) baby

 

Sexy baby parties

lilman2

a.k.a. male infant

To those parents, congratulations! You have a sexy lil man as a baby! I know you reveled in launching that miniature grown-up man from your womb. America loves a sexy baby, so thank you for contributing to this perverse movement. However, if you knew that your baby was fully facial-haired in utero you would have ripped him from your loins and torn him piecemeal, shrieking like a banshee, and you probably wouldn’t have thrown a mustache-themed Lil Man party for him. What if he offers mustache rides to all the little pageant girls at the party? Try to hold back from sexualizing your stylish child. If you’re fortunate, he will eventually grow up to be the Big Man of your dreams:

Baby, full grown

Your baby, full grown

Lil Women?

Alternately, the female version of Lil Men could be Little Women, which summons images from Louisa May Alcott’s famed Victorian novel about four young girls who fussed about their hair and lamented over their poverty. Their dear mother “Marmee” tells the girls, “If Jo would only wear a fake mustache, she could get a real job and support us useless womenfolk.”

In adult society, the faux whiskers are applied in an empty, slapdash manner. Lest we forget what happens when such an unexceptional object receives high ironic status and is bandied about willy-nilly:

mustachevictim

Woman wakes from surgery to find doctors put moustache and teardrop stickers on her face


 

Finally, you’re welcome for not posting any images of real babies with fake mustaches. But please, when in public, pick up your mustache-shaped litter so the ducks don’t choke to death on your self-adhesive charm.

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Gentrification Mutation

Oakland natives

Oakland natives

The effects of gentrification are taking their toll on my Oakland neighborhood, with the most recent intrusion developing within the bird population. We’ve grown accustomed to our ragtag pigeons, scavenging lake gulls, and black-crowned herons who scream, cackle, and squawk into the night. Their birdy cacophony entwines with the discordant howls of the local vagrants. These birds are not the most elegant or ideal as far as fowl demographics go, but they’re OURS.

Suddenly a new feathered tourist has come to town. A fair-weather opportunist. A songbird. Turdus migratorius be his name, also known as the American Robin. His wearisome song consists of a single repetitive, maddening note that he broadcasts ad nauseum ALL NIGHT LONG. And also, ALL DAY. His tirelessness and arrogance are an affront to the local bird residents. He lazily roosts in one tree morning and night, sipping his $5 soy latte while displacing the scrounger birds who are indispensable for pecking the previous night’s vomit off the sidewalks as if it’s a delicacy. I will look into the zoning laws in this area, but I’m open to suggestions. I’m considering organizing a collective nonviolent direct action to pressure this bird out.

Sample the soundtrack:

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