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We’ve met Ian Ironwood before, a Men’s Rights Activist and sexbot enthusiast with retrograde views on gender and a taste for similarly retro art from the fifties. Ironwood is a prodigious meme-maker, but one with a tendency to repeat himself.
One of his primary themes — you might even call it an obsession — is the notion that HA HA FEMINISTS, NO MAN WILL EVER WANT YOU. Today, we’ll examine just how Ironwood conveys this totally super original notion with the help of old magazine illustrations.
May your pillows always be just slightly too fluffy or not fluffy enough.
May there forever be a pebble in your shoe.
May it always rain just when you’re headed to work so that you have to go through the day with soggy feet.
May a cat hair always be in your nostril so you have a constant tickling sensation.
Yes yes yes exactly.
“May your apartment always be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.”
“May some of your boxer shorts be too big and some too small, even though they’re all the same size and brand.”
“May cats chew through the wires of your old videogame consoles – the ones you will never be able to replace.” (Too harsh?)
“May the company from which you bought an expensive hot air balloon ride go bankrupt before you get to ride, and may your money be non-refundable.” (This one happened to me and it sucked. 🙁 )
“May your telephone number differ in only one digit from a 24 hour pizza delivery service.”
@LinuxLea
Classic. :p
My mother once accidentally called our local police station when she meant to call the Thai restaurant that had messed up her order. “Ma’am I’m afraid we can’t do anything about this.”
There are also classics, like :
“May your phone/doorbell rings every time you take a bath/shower”
“May it rains every time you do the laundry/had just wash your car”
“May mayhem occurs in May”
“May Jehova Witnesses always interpellate you each time you cross them, and may they ring your bell every morning you want to sleep in”
“May you live in interesting times” ?
“Men of quality don’t marry feminist wives”
I mean. She is already a wife. Another man marrying her would be bigamy.
I bet most “quality men” really woudn’t want to marry a “wife” (already married woman), feminist or not; in most places it’s considered a crime and all.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Another day, another misogynistic threat.
“Men of quality don’t marry feminist wives.”
Sure, dude. I’m glad I don’t fit your definition of “quality”. Small victories…
May your bowels move every 3 minutes or 3 months. (Not mine, I got it from someone on Slacktivist.)
Why the hell would I choose waking up with some smelly He Man MRA and his stale beer farts over waking up alone or with cats for the rest of my life?
Also the classic Aussie insult.
May your chooks turn into emus & kick your dunny down.
Translation
Chooks = chickens
Dunny=Outhouse
And, of course, “fuck you like it’s a chore, on a poorly put together Ikea-type bed where your partner is clearly more concerned with the bed falling apart than anyone’s pleasure.” But it seems like maybe that’s too close to their lives… (Also from Slacktivist.)
May you step in dog poop and not notice for the rest of the day, but everyone around you does notice. (That one’s mine.)
Inspired by a previous thread: May your pasta not fit in your containers.
May you be ‘splained to by everyone around you forever.
@Moggie:
Steady on now. Cursing people is all very well, but there are limits…
One of my favourite things is when I try to click on ‘Recent comments’ and the screen moves, but then I end up landing on the relevant ‘Recent posts’ link; so I end up where I wanted to be anyway.
I’m easily pleased.
May your “s” key sometimes stick. Not all the time. Just some.
May your cat wake you at 0500 by licking your eyelids.
May your google ads hammer home how old and unwell you are.
May you get raspberry pips stuck under your dental bridge.
Youse lot do really good (terrible no-good very bad) curses all right.
May your computer keep running inexplicably slowly and may the programme you’re working in always freeze just when you were about to save your work, and you wait and wait to see if it resolves and then just when you run out of patience and click to close it appears to unfreeze but it’s too late and it closes down and you lose everything since the last save and then you miss the deadline.
Not that this is why I (like so many of us) compulsively hit save every few minutes, or anything.
(mind you, I’ve never missed a deadline. yet.)
::hits save a few more times, just in case::
And may there always be a bulky bit of the seam in the toe of one of your socks that always works its way into the most uncomfortable position no matter how carefully you put your socks and shoes on. And if you try to trim the excess thread, no matter how carefully, may your sock always instantly unravel.
May the bus-driver who waved you on when your oyster card didn’t get a beep from the machine always get off to change drivers at the next stop, so when the inspector gets on later it’s a different driver so you get fined.
May you always be slightly uncomfortable in a way that you think doesn’t show, but it totally does and therefore messes up every interaction you have with everything.
“May your four-person team consist of three people who only bought the game this morning.”
Oyster cards? Austerity got so bad you now pay your bus fare in sea shells in independent Britain?
Hm… Curses.
I still remember one I learned in childhood. It’s a bit grim for this purpose, but I like it enough to share anyway:
May you inherit a home with a thousand halls, and in each hall a thousand doors, and behind each door a room with a thousand beds, and in each bed a thousand fleas, and in each flea’s mouth, a thousand teeth. And may a crazed wolf with a thousand snarls chase you from bed, to bed, to bed….
*******
Now, for some that fit the theme better:
May the lottery draw your usual numbers–the one week you fail to play.
May your streaming always hitch at the key moment of the plot reveal.
May your beer always be flat, your wine like vinegar, and your spirits sour.
Of course, for the nastiest of them, I reserve my worst curse:
May you someday gain full self-awareness, and understand what an awful piece of shit you really are.
May all of your global emails go out with one embarrassing typo.
@numerobis:
It’s worse than you think. Thanks to their enormous seashell reserves, the Maldives have just purchased the entirety of the United Kingdom.
The Maldivian President was asked for comment on the matter. They said “turnabout is fair play,” before laughing so hard they were unable to continue.
(Obviously I’m joking.)
May your cat wait until you have gotten comfy in another room before wailing that they want their food bowl refilled even though in fact their food bowl is completely full, and after you add so much food it’s actually in a mound in their bowl, they still wait until you’ve started the dvd up again to wail for you to come and just stand and look at them eating.
Hmm, now I want to get a cover for mine with a photo of an oyster on it. Why did I never think of that …
I have decided that they’re named in tribute to Arthur (or ‘Arfur’) Daley*, who famously and sagely observed that – to one accomplished in the arcane arts of ducking and diving, knocking out dodgy motors to an unsuspecting public and always coming up with a new proposition for a nice little earner – “the world is your lobster”.
.
.
.
.
.
*A fictional (just) archetypal 1980s London “businessman” with a great love of Margaret Thatcher and a penchant for ripping people off. TV comedy series “Minder”; played by the really rather good George Cole (who was in the original St. Trinians films as a young man, as it ‘appens)