Milestones

An Alert Reader informed me that my most recent blog entry (the one about my Moderating playlist) was my 100th post. Yeah, definitely a milestone, so thank you for mentioning it to me, Alert Reader. Although it's pathetic that you have nothing better to do than count the number of blog entries that I make, don't you think? FYL.

And no, you people won't be invited to AJ's 100th Blog Post Party. Seriously, you dare to ask?

Speaking of milestones, I'm well on my way to achieving Total Face Mold Domination. I knocked off MyAG #4 this summer and assumed my rightful place as The Asian Doll (because I'm half Japanese, you know). I am also tied for second with that lame-ass Josefina mold for GOTY doll faces and will continue to claw my way up the GOTY hierarchy. Plus, I caused simultaneous earthquakes in Virginia and Peru a few weeks ago. And yesterday, I single-handedly shut down AG's Customer Service Department by telling everyone there was a special 25th anniversary employee luncheon with ZOMG Pleasant Rowland in attendance. I dodged the mad rush to the cafeteria, then locked the doors behind them for a couple hours while I hacked the Customer Service system and wiped out all AG replacement part inventory.

Jiggy dressed up as Pleasant. I don't think anyone realized it wasn't her. He can be quite fetching when he wants to.

Best of all, even members of the First Estate acknowledge my successful journey on the path to Domination. Another Alert Reader sent me in a photo she snapped outside her church just this past weekend:



That's right. I'm here to save you from yourselves.

AGPT Moderating Soundtrack

Yeah, so, I haven't written in this thing since the Rapture happened back in May. That's because I have a real life and don't sit on my muslin ass all day in front of the computer. But you people? Yeah, let's just say that if you committed a crime with your ass (I don't want to contemplate what that might entail), the CSI Unit could ID you instantly by the butt cheek imprint on your desk chair.

Whatever. Inspired by what would have been the 65th birthday of Freddie Mercury and his chest hair yesterday, I've decided to create a new playlist on iTunes. I'm going for a "Moderating AG Playthings" theme. The other Mods seem to be cool with this but mainly I think that's because they're convinced it will keep me from kicking their shins every five minutes. Dumbass mods. How long do they think it takes to create a playlist? They don't know me very well, even after all these years.

Here's what I have so far. Now you know what I'm listening to when I mod your posts.

AGPlaythings Moderating Playlist:
1. Hit Somebody - Warren Zevon
2. My Shit's F*cked Up - Warren Zevon
3. Fat Bottomed dolls Girls - Queen
4. Mission Impossible Theme
5. When You're Evil - Voltaire
6. Some kind of long, extended pr0n riff. (Note to self: explore this in depth. With Jiggy. Allow David Duchovny to offer his pr0n expertise. No cameras.)
7. No More Mr. Nice Guy - Alice Cooper
8. Paying the Cost to be the Boss - B.B King
9. Doll Short People - Randy Newman
10. You're Pitiful - Weird Al Yankovic
11. Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan
12. Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan (Mr. Dylan can be a cranky bastard. We get along.)
13. Your Mind is on Vacation But Your Mouth is Working Overtime - Mose Allison
14. You're Breakin' My Heart - Harry Nilsson
15. The I-95 Song - August Campbell

I was going to put Carly Simon's You're So Vain on there but that would merely confuse people who don't get irony.

Feel free to suggest more songs to my AGPlaythings Moderating Playlist, because you can never have enough mean, hateful, inspirational music to listen to while you're doing your job.

It's the end of the world as we know it

Yeah, and you thought it would be a cold day in Hell before I quoted Michael Stipe, didn't you? Granted, I've never forgiven him for mocking Dan Rather, but now's not the time to hold grudges (or at least not too many of them). Because lo, the Rapture is coming tomorrow!

Now I don't want to hear any lamenting from you lot about the Rapture. I first warned you about this on December 22, when I predicted that a plethora of dancing, singing people in penguin costumes is a sign of the coming Apocalypse. Your next warning was on Groundhog Day, when Dr. Phil saw his shadow and I told you about the electric catfish that live in the Nile River.

See? See? I TOLD you people then that the end of days was nigh and to plan accordingly. And did you plan accordingly? No, of course you didn't, because there was a free shipping code from American Girl back then and you were too busy stocking up on plastic crap that you didn't need. Impatient fools. If you'd listened to me, you'd have waited until tomorrow, when you can score all the plastic crap from AG that you want during the post-Rapture looting.

Yeah, too late now, chumps. Tomorrow is May 21 and it's the latest End of Days. For real.

I've got plans. First off, we've got several crates of dry ice that we're going to place in pairs of doll shoes that we leave in the middle of your rooms, and then we're going to hide your dolls so you think they've been Raptured.

(Actually, I'm not sure dolls can be Raptured; the Reverend Harold Camping's website wasn't exactly forthcoming about this. But if we can be Raptured, I'm for sure smuggling along some of those little alcohol miniatures in my backpack. If I leave out the Belize tour guide I should be able to fit in at least half a dozen little bottles of booze. I don't think I'll be needing that Belize tour guide at the Rapture. I've got better places to go).

Anyway, after we freak out all the doll owners, Jiggy goes into action. See, Jiggy looks enough like Jesus that he's going to wake up early tomorrow, don a robe and sandals, and go knocking on random doors crying out "Rise and shine! Shake a leg." Once he's put the fear of God into people, the Entourage sneaks in through the back door and steals all their electronics, jewelry, and sex toys.

Well, maybe not the sex toys; I don't think there's much of a market for used sex toys.

Then we head to the post-Rapture after-parties. What happens post-Armageddon stays post-Armageddon, so no pix.

The next morning, after this bullshit blows over and everyone has a good laugh (except for those people when they figure out that their sex toys are missing), I get back to work. I've completed my first children's book.



Unfortunately there was a content leak and plagiarism and legal issues involving authorship, and what-all, so I've got to put a call into Cousin Antonin. I'm confident he'll still be around after the Rapture.

See you on the other side, people

If a Llama Poops in the Forest

I'm still in Japan on my humanitarian mission. I see that some of you forgot to donate to the organizations listed in my last blog entry. I know this because I am omniscient and also, Lady Gaga has a lot of those prayer bracelets left over.

Look people, cough up some money for Japan tsunami relief instead of buying plastic shit from AG. It won't hurt you to abstain from AG spending. I, on the other hand, most likely will hurt you if you don't donate. So yeah, consider those options.

Speaking of shit, did you know the book Everyone Poops came from Japan? Seriously, it's the book's tenth anniversary this year.


Now I'm no prude, but I don't understand that book. Sure, everybody poops, but must we talk about the various shapes, sizes and smells thereof? I fail to comprehend this focus on the specifics when basic facts are neglected, like the truism that both babies and really old people poop in their pants. That seems like far more useful information to impart. The book also doesn't explore serious issues such as the nature and essence of vampire poop. Or zombie poop. Or Darth Vader's poop. Then again, the book never even answers its own question about what whale poop looks like. I think that's because the whale is constipated. However, I did learn that rhinoceroses pay no attention when they poop, which is biting social commentary of the first order about people who shit where they live. I'm not naming any names, mind you; draw your own conclusions.

I was thinking that if those has-been celebrity apprentices on Donald Trump's show can write a children's book in two weeks and get published whilst deserving real authors toil for years without publication? Yeah well, me being me, I ought to be able to churn out a book for publication overnight. That one book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, that was some high concept. I could do a variation called If You Give an American Girl Collector Doll Shoes, except it would have limited market appeal since only morons care about the slippery slope of doll shoes. Goodnight Moon is a classic; I could write Goodbye Sun about a super-nova that destroys civilization as we know it. What, too much of a downer? Whatever; seems to me that toddler lit could use a dose of reality. How about Goodnight Moonshine, a gentle farewell to Grandpa Bunny's still in the days of Prohibition?

Oh but you know, there's that Click, Clack, Moo book, the one about union-organizing farm animals. I think it got banned in the state of Wisconsin recently. I could write something like that, only about llamas putting on a 70s era variety show. It's high time the world learned how good llamas look in gold lamé. Jiggy says he'll illustrate it, just as soon as he's done deconstructing Everybody Poops as a performance art piece for this year's Burning Man. The theme at Burning Man this year is 'rites of passage' so, yeah, this has potential.

At any rate, let me know if you have any ideas for children's books that I could write. If I choose yours I might give you an acknowledgment. Or I might not; depends on how much you donate to Japan tsunami relief.

聖パトリックのハッピーデイ

Top of the Irish to you.

I don't even know what that means. But I'm half-Irish, you know, so I'm talking the talk and walking the walk in my ass-kicking green boots. That's right, green ass-kicking boots. Never let it be said that AJ isn't fashion forward and color coordinated.



Also, I dyed my hair green for the day. All of my hair. No pics of that.

Anyway, I'd like to take this solemn Irish occasion to address some concerns related to the other half of my ancestry. Because I'm half-Japanese, you know. And right now, I'm celebrating St Patrick's Day in Japan. This sort of sucks, because there's no green beer and also, the nation of Japan has just experienced the worst natural disaster since Charlie Sheen...but more about him later. Just in case you are in denial and have your head buried in...whatever...an 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan last week approximately 250 miles northeast of Tokyo, causing a tsunami that resulted in incomprehensible destruction in northern Japan and has precipitated a potential nuclear disaster.

I've been called to Japan because of my expertise in disaster relief, seeing as how I survived my own AG collection and gone onto bigger and better things. That plus I'm half-Japanese, you know.

Thus I'm here to tell you people how you are going to help Japan in its hour of need. What you need to do is this: put down the green beer for a couple seconds and go donate money to each of the following organizations. You need to do this by midnight tonight, and I've got all AG dolls on high alert to make sure it happens. So don't wimp out...or else. I'm half-Japanese, you know.

Salvation Army
** Text the words Japan or Quake to 80888 to contribute $10 to disaster relief efforts. The donation will be charged to your next phone bill.
** Call 1-800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769) or visit www.disaster.salvationarmyusa.org.

Red Cross
** Text REDCROSS to 90999. The text sends $10 to the Red Cross and charges the money to your next phone bill.
** Call 1-800-RED-CROSS (733-27677) or visit www.redcross.org and donate to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami relief.

International Medical Corps
** Text MED to 80888 to give $10 to International Medical Corps and learn about other ways you can help medical teams provide support and health care.

Lady Gaga Prayer Bracelet
What? My close personal friend Lady Gaga has designed a $5 "We Pray For Japan" Wristband and it's for sale right now on her website, with all proceeds going to tsunami relief efforts. You can also give an additional donation, which you'd best do because it's not wise to piss off Lady Gaga. Click HERE for that.

Facebook Global Disaster Relief Page
Yeah, this one is for you people who play those boring Facebook games and want your time to actually, you know, be put to good use. You can donate money by purchasing virtual goods in CityVille, FrontierVille, FarmVille and those other crap games, with the objective of raising $2 million for Save the Children's Japan Earthquake Tsunami Emergency Fund. Click HERE to find out more about that.

There. Now you people on Playthings know why I've not been commenting on your pervy threads comparing my underwear to Molly's (WTF? And really, what makes you think I actually wear underwear? I'm half-Irish, you know.) or correcting your pathetic grammar and spelling (because that's a lost cause anyway). Clearly I have more important things to do than babysit you lot. And also, in case you haven't noticed, you cannot evoke, provoke, or summon me by clicking your heels and sassing with faux-chatspeak in your posts. In fact the harder you try, the more pathetically attention-seeking you appear to be. Seriously, do I look like your first grade teacher? I'm half-Japanese and half-Irish, you know. Get it straight, people: I choose the place and time of my apparitions, not you. Indeed, given my humanitarian mission right now, I scoffed at your shameful presumptions that I've nothing better to do than recover from Mardi Gras, get in fighting shape for St Patrick's Day, plot for April Fool's and party with Charlie Sheen.

Because let me tell you about Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen is my Sworn Enemy. We had this Thing, last summer when he was in between pr0n stars and wives, wherein I allowed him to join the Entourage on a trial basis. That didn't last long. Two and a Half Men? Yeah, well, Charlie's less than half a man, if you know what I mean. And also, he's a thief. I was working on a performance art piece at the time called Winners that featured me and Jiggy as a pair of star-crossed lovers masquerading as a half-Japanese, half-Irish goddess and a Vatican assassin warlock. We effortlessly and magically converted tin cans into pure gold and lobbed violent torpedoes of truth on a daily basis. We had magic and poetry in our fingertips most of the time (and this includes naps) and only rarely needed to dine on llama blood to replenish our strength. All the other gnarly gnarlingtons' lives were shameful train wrecks filled with blind cuddly puppies, but we defeated earthworms with our words...and you can only imagine what we could have done with our fire-breathing fists.

So you see, in a funny way, I'm responsible for Charlie Sheen. Because that bastard Carlos Irwin Estevez stole my high concept and is using all my best material! Rest assured that I'm not going to let this pass. I'm busy in Japan but I've got Cousin Antonin on the case back home. I had to get in touch with him anyway last week for his 75th birthday. I called him up and shouted obscenities at him. He knew it was me; it's an old family tradition. So yeah, I called in some favors and Cousin Antonin will take care of Carlos for me. And if he doesn't, Righteously Bald Undead Yul Brynner is on the job. Because Charlie Sheen, he's my Sworn Enemy, and we all know what happens to my sworn enemies.

Public Service Announcement: This is not a Simian Baby

Because I know you people are easily confused, I want to assure you that this eBay listing is not for a prototype Bitty Baby. Nor is it an auction for a new line by AG called Simian Babies.



The listing in fact reads

"Your are bidding on 1 large prototype package of the 12" planet of the apes figure. This package is direct from the factory, and is in a heart printed box from the American Girl line (mattel).

Thanks for looking..paypal only"

So let me spell this out for you: you need to use Paypal only if you wish to purchase this twelve inch Planet of the Apes action figure shoved into an old Bitty Baby AG box.

Yeah. That's right. I'll be at the bar if you want to join me in a round of "WTF is that?" Because I don't even know where to begin with this one (mocking the grammar and spelling fail notwithstanding, because that's like shooting fish in a barrel).

Anyway, I'll have you know that Godzilla does not approve. Don't EVER try to shove Godzilla's ass into an old Bitty Baby box and peddle him on eBay. Many have tried, and none have lived to tell the tale.

And now for a short break to discuss the weather

I have it on good authority that the end of days draws nigh. How do I know this? Well, Dr. Phil saw his shadow today, which means he is still a fat pig. Granted, that doesn't necessarily spell the end of days, but it's worth mentioning. Meanwhile in Punxsutawney, I am told that Phil the marmota monex did NOT see his shadow today, prompting Joe Wilson to rise up from whatever hole he lives in and cry "You lie!" Seriously, Phil, have you looked at the weather lately? Early spring, my muslin ass. See you in six weeks, at which point I expect a lot of chumps will be calling for your ass in the barbecue. You have naught to fear from me as I neither believe your feeble prognostications nor have I a hankering for woodchuck meat.

But really, the crux of the matter regarding the impending end of the world is this: in Egypt, there are electric catfish that live in the Nile River. Really. Electric catfish. If ever there was evidence that the end of days was drawing nigh, it's this. Because everyone knows that eels are zombie-like creatures, and electric catfish are related to eels. So voilà, it stands to reason that quasi-zombie-like creatures which emit electromagnetic energy are going to rise up and take over Egypt, which surely signals worldwide doom and destruction. Ergo, the end of days is nigh.

Take a look at Egypt right now and tell me I'm wrong about this. Go ahead, try. It's similar to the Rise of the Ginger Army as prophesied in the Book of Nellie, only not really.

But you're not particularly concerned about the end of days, are you? "No, not really, not unless it impedes my products being shipped from American Girl in a timely manner, AJ."

Right. What you people really want me to do is explain why AG is caught in an endless cycle of product retreads, aka a perpetual AG Groundhog Day.

There are two aspects to this. One is when AG goes and uses the same mold, paints it a little differently, and markets it as a new shiny for the ignorant masses. Like Kaya's fire here:


And the Campfire and Treats fire here:

See? Same damned fire. Well, sort of. Kaya's is a bit shinier, as befits her being from 1754. Rocks were prettier then, being part of unspoiled nature and all. And of course, the second fire pit is actually an upgrade because it plays "four classic summer camp songs." Yeah, I don't know what four classic songs your battery-operated plastic fire pit plays, but mine belts out The Doors' C'mon Baby Light My Fire, Hendrix's Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire, Talking Heads' Burnin' Down the House, and of course The Stones' Playin' With Fire.

There are many examples of this sort of retread, such as MY water bottle and the Hopscotch Hill water bottle, MY scooter redone as a generi-modern doll scooter, MY Toshi hopped up on steroids and force-fed Tang to turn him into an orangutan of fail (but we all know what happened in the end, so it's all good), multiple cases of same shoe-different color, AG's various Pet Carriers and Pet Beds and Grooming Tubs, and the identical designs marketed as Stars and Moon and Flower trundle beds (both of which splinter the moment you look at them sideways). I'm sure there are more incidents of AG retread fail that escape me at the moment; come up with your own if you are so inclined.

Now to be fair, it's not like one can whip up a helluva lot of variation on water bottles, fire pits and pet furniture design. But the rest, yeah, that's plain lazy-ass design.

Then we get the variations-on-a-theme thing that AG does. See, AG sells toys. For sure they are pricey toys, but they're toys. The window of opportunity to hook kids is a small one, given how quickly kids grow up. So every couple of years, AG repackages some damned outfit or accessory and sells it to a whole new 'generation' of kids. That's why we get multiple variations of boogie and paddle boards, flippers, cheerleading and dance and ballet and riding outfits, bowling uniforms (WTF, why?), snowboards, ski gear, inline skate sets, and best of all, MY pajamas for Mia and that current imposter for GOTY, Kanani.

You might conclude that AG wouldn't know an original idea if a groundhog came up and bit it on the corporate ass. And you might be right about that, but remember that the end of days is nigh and plan accordingly.