CHAPTER 10: SCRAPBOOKING: HOW TO MAKE AN AWKWARD MOMENT LAST A LIFETIME
Scrapbooking. For the last twenty years or so, uncreative, family-oriented people have whittled away their hours, pasting photos of their kids and grandkids onto overpriced paper, along with a few stickers of puppies and a font vaguely related to the photos subject matter and called it a wholesome activity.
As a hateful man, I see great potential for hatefulness in this process, both in the areas of demoralization and subversion.
Preparation
Before you begin undertaking this mission, I highly advise you to read up on scrapbooking at your local library. I am by no means an expert and cannot provide you with anything more than a general knowledge of the hobby that I have garnered from observation at craft stores while my fiance shops for fabric, overheard discussions of the activity and wikipedia. Wear an unconvincing disguise when you do so and speak with a bad cockney accent in order to make other people you encounter extremely uncomfortable. You get bonus hateful points if you are asked to leave the library for being totally creepy.
From what I understand, scrapbooking can get ridiculously expensive, so be prepared to fork over a couple hundred bucks for supplies and equipment. If you are attempting to subvert a scrapbooking group, you'll need to appear serious about the hobby, and that means having the essential gear. If you are attempting to demoralize, you'll need to put a lot of time and resources into the project to make it sincerely hateful.
Subversion
Do you find your neighbors annoyingly wholesome? Do their family game nights and frequent outbursts of hugging strike you as eerily Osmond-ish? Chances are that someone living under that roof is a scrapbooker, and if so, you need to infect them with your dysfunction.
Maybe they'll host a neighborhood barbecue or invite you to one of their children's birthday parties. Use this as an opportunity to case them out. If you find any signs that someone is a scrapper, let it slip that you do a little scrapbooking, yourself. Being an overly friendly schnook, there is a good chance that your neighbor will invite you to scrapbook along with them and their boring friends.
So now, you're in.
You need to make this circle of biddies incredibly uncomfortable, and the most important way is with the context and subject matter you choose for your scrapbook. Photos of your child's first bath should be presented with the phrase "Bad, filthy baby!" and coupons for cleaning products. Snapshots of your child napping should be accompanied by a blurb "We fornicate while it slumbers". The layout for a photo of your offspring playing soccer should be titled something like "Steve likes sissy-ball" if its a boy or "Looks like we'll be renting a tux for the senior prom, after all." if its a girl.
Of course, you could also completely fuck with your fellow scrappers and use photos of an entirely different family or families that you pulled from the internet. Do not provide them with any clues to your relationship to these people, beyond the occasional sigh.
Beyond the uncomfortable subject matter of your scrapbook, your behavior needs a bit of an uncouth flourish. Refreshments will probably be served at this get-together. Hard liquor probably wont be, so you want to appear to bring your own. If you take this route, I recommend going to your local liquor store and buying a jug of the cheapest, shittiest looking whiskey or scotch that you can find - all the better if it comes in a plastic jug. Empty the bottle out and fill it with apple juice or water, then place it in your bag of scrap booking supplies. While getting black out drunk would definitely ruin the the party, it will be far more traumatic to your fellow scrapbookers if you appear to be unfazed by drinking an entire jug of cheap bourbon. Don't break the jug out right off the bat, either. In fact, you should excuse yourself to use the bathroom several times in the first hour or so before the jug actually makes an appearance. Once the bottle actually does come out, you'll immediately become unwelcome. I recommend taking a long, brutal swig, slamming the bottle down on the table, glaring at everyone and hissing something to the tune of "You're all dead inside and you don't know it!", then storming out.
Another possible angle to your flourish is to make increasingly less subtle hints that your are under the impression that this is an opening to a swingers circle. Make sure to let one of the milfier scrappers know exactly what kind of vehicle you drive and show her the keys. Attempt to play a little footsie. Refer to your spouse as your "open, but dedicated, life-choice partner". When one of the snack bowls is empty, throw your keys in and, if you are a male hateful man, reassure the other guests that at least one of them "isn't going to have to lez out when we're done". If you are a female hateful man, you should express your excitement about "getting to lez out after all this scrapping."
With any luck, you'll not only make your neighbor hate you, but you'll make your neighbor's scrapbooking peers hate them for bringing a deviant asshole into their wholesome hobby circle.
Demoralization
Demoralization is one of the central tenants to being a hateful man. Life has already slapped the taste of the sugary outer coating of existence out of your mouth, leaving you with a bitter reality pill to swallow. Why should your offspring be allowed to live in blissful ignorance of the cold, hard fact that life is a long chain of awkward moments, uncomfortable pauses and the occasional near miss? You're not demoralizing them early on to be hurtful, you're demoralizing to build a stronger, more resilient person. Scrapbooking is an excellent tool for this tempering process.
Picture the the following scenario:
You've spent fourteen years raising Steve. He was a cute kid. You had some good times together, took him on vacations, spent money on healthcare and video game systems. His teeth are finally straight after two years of expensive and frequently lost retainers. How does Steve reward you? He begins turning into a cocky little idiot who actually thinks a thirteen year old girl is going to overlook his double chin, surprising amount of body hair and mild acne because he slathers himself in Axe Body Spray, tilts his hat to the left and mouths off to his parents.
As a hateful man, you know all too well that Steve is on an inevitable collision course with crushing disappointment that will eventually lead to posting humiliating videos of himself crying on youtube. The girls will ignore him because he developed early and is too masculine. His mouthiness is going to get his ass handed to him because his comfortable lifestyle hasn't made him hard. You need to intervene. You need to temporarily crush his morale so that he'll be more open to your hateful guidance.
Gather a collection of 10-20 photos. The more humiliating the subject matter and the more poorly shot the photo, the better. This will be easy. Once the kid turns 10, the only photos you will ever get of them will make them bitter and uncomfortable later on in life. Trust me, I speak from experience. The only photos my parents have of me from about the age of eleven to eighteen depict me stuffing my face with food, deliriously ill, wearing my much hated scouting uniform, haggard from being at camp, pissed off about a bad haircut and fugly school photo clothes, moping, gawking or wearing long underwear in lieu of pants. Kids at that age generate four things; stink, drama, pimples and awkward.
Once you have chosen the images you want to use, you will want to set up layouts for each page. As stated earlier, I'm not an expert on this process, but from what I can surmise, there are five basic steps.
1. Arrange the photos into clusters that can be used to accentuate your child's innate awkwardness.
2. Choose a series of themes relating to uncomfortable moments in your child's early life, real or invented. Some recommend themes include;
"Nice mullet, Steve."
"In a just world, coach would keep you on the benches because you run like a girl."
"Boy, that was a good look for you, Steve! "
"Steve is 13 and still a Webelo."
"Way to Ruin Tyler's Birthday by crying, Steve!"
"Summer With Grandma. Awesome, Dude."
"That's the fifth fist fight you've lost to a girl this year, Steve."
"I Didn't think You'd Actually Wear Those When I Bought Them For You, Steve. Dammit."
"Gettin' husky!"
"The Retainer Years."
"She Doesn't Even Know You Exist, You Dweeb."
"You Lost the Pinewood Derby Because I Can't Be Bothered to Help You Cheat like Tyler's Dad."
3. Select the proper image for the layout's background.
I recommend going for something irreverently related to the subject matter in the photo or photos you are displaying. For example, if the photos depict Steve suffering from acne while attending his cousin's wedding, the background should have slices of pizza.
4. Compliment the images with stickers, labels, souvenirs and a caption.
Suppose you have an image of Steve learning to ride his bike and Steve sitting on the sidewalk next to his bike. A doting scrap booker might include stickers of bikes and motivational phrases like "Go, Steve, go!" and checkered racing flags or something. A hateful scrap booker should include bandages, stop signs, a small-font caption for the image like "For the love of God, Stop Steve!" or "Nice training wheels, ass."
5. Caption the image with a title in a font relating to the subject matter.
Suppose you have a page done up in a Christmas theme. The picture is of 12 year old Steve, half awake on Christmas Morning, holding the bottle of London Gentleman your brother gave to him as an in-joke between the two of you. He looks grumpy and confused and is still wearing his pajamas. You've decorated the image with candy canes, sugar plums and the caption "That wont cover the stench of shame, Steve." Now you need a title. Select a large, bold, Christmas related font, then choose a statement that makes it clear that Steve is worthy of ridicule. "Christmas 2005: Steve Still Believes in Santa, but is Losing Faith in a Merciful God."
Once you have a collection of pages, place them in an ornate, faux-leather bound three-ring binder. Write the child's name on the cover of the album using a gold or silver calligraphy paint marker. If the subject of the scrapbook is a boy, trim it with lace. If the subject is a girl, hot glue rubber vomit and creepy-crawlers to the cover.
Present the scrapbook to them at a public event, marking a turning point in their life, and be sure to show it off to all their friends - especially members of the opposite sex.
Steve may think he's cock of the walk for graduating from middle school. He may be getting mouthy and trying to rebel against you. But wait until you bust out the collection of photos of him sobbing in the back seat of the family minivan after being rejected from the little league team or looking humiliated while waiting for the bus on his way to what you are calling fat camp.
Then make that ingrate mow the lawn and get a job.
