
Occasionally, I have my eyebrows waxed while an Asian woman repeatedly scolds me for the gunslinger’s mustache I’ve apparently been sporting about town. How I can consider myself a woman, she’ll never know.
I wouldn’t submit myself to such verbal abuse if my natural eyebrows didn’t make me look like the love child of Brook Sheilds and Leonid Brezhnev. Which I am not, of course. Her name is Lilly and she’s a Scottish eyebrow model.
My salon of choice has a poster hanging on the wall I can only describe as mesmerizing. They used to have two. I took a photo of the one seen here, but was heartbroken to find that the other had fallen and broken. I think that’s what she said. Either the poster tore, or there is a tiny boat in her mother’s esophagus that goes ‘toodle toodle!’ when she coughs. I’m not very good with accents.
The other poster boasted nails just like these typing on a 1980′s Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, which I can only assume is how she made all the money for this second poster. It was like a little success story unfolding before my eyes.
Or maybe it is a love story…
The Sad Love Story of Salon Nails and the TRS-80 Computer
Our heroine begins as a secretary, toiling at a classic computer. She puts aside a portion of her meager salary to have her nails professionally done, because even a lowly secretary deserves to feel pretty and, luckily, she doesn’t understand it when the salon girls mock her “ugly huge American feet.”
One day, I think it was a Tuesday, the boss notices her amazing nails and the two lovebirds begin a whirlwind romance that ends in Vegas where our heroine triumphantly holds aloft her winnings, sure her life will be nothing but roses from that moment on.
*snapshot* What happens in Vegas leaves Vegas as a poster.
The next year Radio Shack discontinues the TRS-80 for failing to meet the FCC’s Radio Frequency Interference rules, and our heroine’s brain has been irrevocably fried from years of exposure.* She forgets who she is and wanders onto the train tracks.
In the end, all they find is one finger. One perfectly manicured finger.

This is the TRS-80. I made up the bit about it eating people’s brains so I would appreciate it if Radio Shack would not sue me. If they did, I couldn’t afford to get my mustache removed.












she never made it to the train tracks. I think she went back home and blew her cash hiring equally disiillusioned Bay City Rollers (scottish “band”) to play her one person parties every S A T U R D A Y night.
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Oooh… they used to have a Saturday morning show for kids I watched. I like that ending better!
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“Toodle toodle.” I can’t. I’m seriously crying. I too have been victimized in such a salon, and I am more than certain they have made fun of me in their own languages. The upside is that I’ve had the Chinese character tattoo on my ankle confirmed about 10,000 times. It definitely does not say soy sauce.
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Nail salon gals have TOTALLY patented the “oooh… you want to walk around looking like THAT?” look. I’m sure I don’t want to know what they actually say…
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Toodle toddle LOL!! Those nail salon girls are always good for a giggle. xD
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Since I didn’t see the first other poster, I’m going to pretend that her other hand is completely un-manicured and the nails are all hangnails and bitten nubs.
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Sorry, they were 80s fabulous!
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Maybe after the TRS-80 was discontinued, a new model was purchased for the office, but due to the brain damage she had sustained she was unable to cope with the new technology. When her boss and now ex-lover fires her, in a maniacal rage she uses her perfectly manicured Nails of Death to rip his heart out, for all the heartbreak and insult and lack of Workman’s Comp.
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Oooh… I like that one two… maybe I should change this into a “build a story.” Follow a path… does she get her nails painted red or pink? One leads to death…
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Been to a nail salon but once. Asked them where the best Vietnamese food in town was. They directed to me “Pho Little Saigon”
In Little Saigon I got trapped in the restroom and kept banging on the door as employees shuffled by and giggled. It’s a nail salon – dirty restaurant conspiracy. They were born to laugh at us and our big feet.
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Maybe you accidentally went to FAUX Little Saigon, because they are notorious for their bathroom traps…
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I like to think that her tremendous nails helped her become the worlds greatest computer hacker via her TRS-80, until she accidentally broke into the military’s WOPR super computer and started playing battleship with real live nuclear submarines but then ends up marrying Ally Sheedy. They later win the lottery or something so that’s where the money comes from.
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Well I think the Internet was still the Arpanet in 1980′s so she couldn’t have possibly been a hacker… andHolyCrapI’mANerd.. But the Ally Sheedy thing makes total sense. Remind me to do my Ally Sheedy voice for you should we ever meet.
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