Our friend Hannah came round last night (she contributed a comic to Adventures in Menstruating #4) and told me about something she’d like to contribute to the next issue: Choose Your Own Adventure in Menstruating. Now I’m all over ’80s pop culture references and children’s books, so I’m as happy as…Larry Appleton. While we wait to see what form Hannah’s parody of Choose Your Own Adventure books will take, here’s a cover I found online that could qualify for ‘Not Menstrual But Should Be’.
My main question, though, is:
Why is UFO 54-40 shaped like an applicator tampon?
Now my brain’s constructing an alien menstruation ritual involving the dance of the spider holding the cat toy and those three gold coins. Maybe it’s a subliminal comment by the artist on the cost of feminine hygiene.
Upon further inspection, it turns out this particular book gets a mention on the wikipedia page:
One book, Inside UFO 54-40, revolved around the search for a paradise that no one can actively reach; one of the pages in the book describes the player finding the paradise and living happily ever after, although none of the choices in the book led to that page. The ending could only be found by disregarding the rules and going through the book at random. Upon finding the ending, the reader is congratulated for realizing how to find paradise.
Wow. Who knew? I really did pick this cover at random from a search because of the inexplicable giant tampon. But now it feels kinda like a metaphor for what we’re doing here with this whole menstrual malarkey – breaking a few rules and being a bit random to live happily ever after.
Anyway, I’ll stop killing time and wait for Hannah’s more highbrow (or at least less unintelligibly spontaneous) contribution. But Tampon Crafts oughta get in on some sci-fi stylings. Just sayin’.
God, it even has the little slits at the top like the paper applicator Tampax.
I am still traumatized by some of the death endings of CYOA books I read as a kid. I too vividly imagined sinking to the bottom of the ocean with a concrete block tied around my ankles and still feel dizzy remembering it.
I know, right? I used to give myself papercuts from holding all my options open with a finger in each page. Unfortunately, this backfired as I then tended to die several times per book…
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