Introducing Chinimals, and other Beasts with Bad Teeth

Okay, so you can look at the link to Photoshop Phriday, here, but only if you PROMISE not to show it to elementary school-age kids. You're only allowed to traumatize older children with these wickedly funny, but undoubtedly grotesque photos.

Yes, back "in the olden days" when kids had things like "snow days" and we had crappy TV (maybe three grainy channels) and no brothers or sisters to torture or avoid torture from, I had to entertain myself with what I had lying around.

So, on long days like these, I found myself doing arts and crafts with mail order catalogues left around the house. One of my favorite pastimes involved cutting and pasting catalogue images in unusual ways in a little game I am ashamed was called "Freaks."

I know. It's wrong. I admit it. But, cut me some slack, I often worked in something of a vacuum at the time. I feel badly now about how upsettingly un P.C. that was. But, my parents gave me books like "Struwwelpeter" to read, so what do you expect?

(Oh, hell, it's so lame to blame it on the parents. Clearly, I was a screw-up all on my very own.)

My favorite catalogues to "get creative with" were the seasonal J.C. Penny and Montgomery Ward catalogues.

The models in these thick mail order catalogues were just begging to be "rearranged." They always looked so perky and jaunty in their 1970's polyester that pasting one model's giant smile onto the head of a guy boldly posing in boxers was just too much fun.

However, this game involved stockpiling different sets of hair styles, and different kinds of mouths and legs and arms, and paste them all back so they looked really bizarre. I glued them onto poster boards and made elaborate motifs which I now believe my mother discretely took to the garbage when I wasn't looking.

Little did I know there would one day be entire careers dedicated to precisely this sort-of low brow entertainment, but back then, it was just the beginning of my unhealthy preoccupation with all things twisted.

I started out with reading things like Mad Magazine and occasionally playing "Freaks" with the J. C. Penny catalogue, then graduated on to bigger things like, Monty Python. I was even drawn to work that was still obviously "freaky," but in decidedly more serious ways, like Diane Arbus, David Lynch and David Kronenberg.

Clearly, what makes me tick is not always for the faint hearted.

However, in my credit, even though I engaged in this very insensitive"snow days" game, I do think I've always been drawn to the world of the "outsider." For better or worse, I always identify with those who don't fit in.

But, believe me, I know, I know.  I'm a mom, now, so I really should know better.

Unfortunately, I do, but I still occasionally peek at Photoshop Phriday.

So, sue me.

However: I take NO responsibility for screwing up anyone who sees the shark photo! Seriously, that's your job, not mine.