Four legs good, two legs bad

Transition to the new Target store went very well. I have walked to work every day so far, with no trouble-- which is very good, since our car is, we think, permanently dead now after a small accident in a parking lot, in which the driver's side front wheel was bent to an angle that a wheel simply shouldn't be at. Fixing it would undoubtedly cost more than the car is worth. It was going to die any minute anyway, and I guess there were worse ways and worse places it could have happened.

Anyway, I love this new Target. And it's so much closer to home than the one where I used to work. Part of me is hoping that when my old store finishes its transformation into a Super Target, I can just stay here instead of moving back.

On break today, I spent $4.23 ever-so-frivolously. But it made me happy. See, I found the most bizarre, fascinating, vaguely creepy product I have seen in all (both?) my years stocking shelves.



Seen from the side, this toy looks more or less like a normal pig. But turn it, and you will find that IT HAS ONLY TWO LEGS. And not "two legs" in the sense of an anthropomorphic fairy-tale pig that walks on its hind limbs and uses the front ones as arms. This pig could never walk in a million years. That's right, it has just ONE LEG IN FRONT AND ONE IN BACK.





The idea for designing this creature, I imagine, started with the thought of making an outline of a pig seen from the side, and creating a toy that was little more than a two-dimensional cutout. But then they went too far in giving that cutout some realistic features.

You will note, seeing the pig from the front, bottom, or back, that the body is fatter than the legs. Furthermore, the face is carefully designed to look like a pig's face when seen from the front-- which, of course, encourages the viewer to look at the toy from the front, whereupon the eye will wander down to the single front leg, and the brain will go "WTF?"

And he only cost $2.99... in my opinion, the bargain of a lifetime.

(The rest of the $4.23 was a little tiny pool table from Target's dollar-store section, plus some sales tax.)



I'm naming the pig "Big Brother," in honor of the cartoon on Homestarrunner.com where Strong Bad draws a picture of a one-legged dog named "Li'l Brudder." I figure that since my pig has twice as many legs as that dog, he can be called "Big Brother." Plus the fact that George Orwell's two most famous books featured (a) a society ruled by an imaginary figurehead named Big Brother and (b) a farm ruled by pigs.

(Oh, and he has a squeaky thing inside him!! He's really meant as a dog toy, you see. But no dog would appreciate the Dada-ness of it all.)