Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Oh, bundle of joy? More like, oh holy crap what is this drivel? We present the first of a two-part series looking at some horrid reader-submitted secret baby and baby-daddy romances. Are you excited? I am. I had to put Freebird in the other room so his fragile little mind would not be warped by any of this crappe.

Sarah: By virtue of spending a lot of time with a newborn, I have slowly improved on my ability to guess how old a baby is. And this man, he is scoring with more than one woman, because those kids are not the same age, and yet they appear close enough in age that they couldn’t have been born by the same person. I don’t know what kind of design we had for daddykins, but I think it involved more than one designing woman, if you know what I mean.

Either that, or they are fraternal twins, and the one hanging off the front is bogarting the boob in a big, big way.

Candy: Sorry. Can’t snark. Am too occupied by the incredibly disturbing implications of printing “WHO’S THE DADDY?” on a bent-over baby’s ass.

Sarah: Oh Lord. It’s never too early to teach your molestation skills, given that the little boy is totally trying to grope the girl. And both parents are like, “Aw, isn’t that sweet?” Jeez. Add that image to the title and you’ve got a Sarah with a major case of the skeevies.

Candy: Man, years of being on the Internet have given me entirely different perspective of what “Papa Bear” means.

I’m creeped out by the way the mama bear’s holding on to the little girl. “No, hon, you’re not done until Papa Bear is done.” Smile smile smile.

Ugh. I need a Silkwood shower.

Sarah: Act now and we’ll DOUBLE your order! You’ll not only get a Rent-a-Dad but you’ll get a PLASTIC ALIEN Rent-a-Dad! We’ll graft a head onto an alien’s body - because aliens don’t need sleep! All the better for you!

Candy: Why are there so many strange half-naked men toting babies on the covers of these sorts of books? To add insult to injury, these half-naked men look like they’re about to drop the goddamn baby. Does Harlequin have a shirtless-dumbasses-playing-basketball-with-caved-in-baby-skulls fetish?

Sarah: “Dude. I don’t know who the hell you are, and I don’t know which of us has on a more stupid-looking head accessory, but I do know this: you have bad breath. It seems you are the last stubborn cowboy who refuses to accept the benefits of good oral hygiene.”

Candy: This particular alien surrogate dad is about to EAT THE BABY’S FACE. Just you wait: his smiling face is going to split any second, revealing that freaky second-head-with-pointy-teeth thing like the xenomorph in Alien. Kids know, man. Kids know.

Sarah: “Look, you’ve stolen time, the sun, possibly the space-time continuum AND the flux capacitor. But you may NOT HAVE MY SHIRT, BUB!”

Candy: Dude, he’s totally going to reach into her chest and rip out her implants and run away screeching with delight because NOW HE WILL HAVE THE BIGGEST MAN-TITTIES OF ALL, YES HE WILL PRECIOUSSSSSSS. And she knows it, too, but she’s a romance novel heroine, so all she can do is sit there and gaze, limpid-eyed into the distance, and quiver gently.

Sarah: That dude above needs to give THIS chick the shirt. I think it’s a chick anyway. It might be a man with cantaloupes glued to his chest. I’m not entirely sure.

Candy: Whoa. I think I might’ve seen this chick on the cover of the “Midgets Who Love Getting Fucked in the Ass By Chicks” porn DVD.

In any case, that is one of the scariest beckoning fingers I have ever seen. RUN, MOTHERFUCKER, RUN.

Sarah: Can someone tell me why he has skunk hair? And why long flowing hair that looks like one mess of tangles is supposed to be the essential image of romance?

I mean, Candy and I just experienced Caribbean Splendor, and if our hair looked like that, I’d be alarmed.

Not to mention her fingers are broken or twisted. Ouch. She must have been trying to comb that hair.

Candy: The amount of L’Oreal Féria required to dye that chippy’s hair boggles the mind. She must buy them in gallon tubs at Costco or summat.

And good call on the finger thing, Sarah. Dude has a total fetish for the knobbly feel of broken fingers scraping across his chest.

(Tangent: MAN, I need to try and get a screencap off that one episode of Sealab 2021 in which Captain Murphy goes all nuts and institutes Martian Law and dubs Marco “Sir Phobos, Beater of Ass” and then proceeds to beat the shit out of Sparks’ fingers, because Sparks’ fingers? Look about as fucked-up as that chick’s does.)

Sarah: Here is my unanswered prayer: NO MORE CROTCH SHOTS. A crotch on the cover does not say romance any more than long hair. The crotch? It says, “Hello. I am a groin.”

Candy: Nothing says true love like heads superimposed on crotches, unless it’s heads superimposed on crotches in an effort to hide the massive wet spot.

This New Year’s Edition of Covers Gone Wild visits the popular themes this year: man-titty, bad poser covers, bestiality and classic clinchy awfulness.

Candy: Sweetie, here’s a hint for you: that half mask? Ain’t doing shit. You need more coverage--say, from forehead all the way to chin, perhaps even neck--if you’re really trying to hide all that fug.

Sarah: That is one big zit he has on his lip. I’d have hidden the lower half, rather than the upper half.

I’m not sure what the goal is here: he’s not fascinating in a sexy, dangerous sort of way. He looks more like those Capital One commercial vikings who come after your credit balances.

Candy: Look! An innovative way to clean out your ear canal! Press up against the groin of a shiny, be-titted, blond-haired alien, and his specially enhanced pen0r will dig out years of accumulated wax. You think he’s some kind of intergalactic warrior, but no, he’s a selfless, far-future otolaryngologist.

Sarah: Is he giving birth? Did he just crap a heroine? Is she hiding from the blazing sun of Gutron under the safe shade of his galactic man-titty?

Or is he hiding the wet spot in her hair?

Candy: “What are you going to fuck today, Napoleon?”

“Whatever feel like I want to fuck. Gawd!”

Sarah: Nice body paint. But seriously, I bet it’ll give her a monster of a yeast infection.

Wait, maybe that’s who he is: Yeast Infection Man.

Candy: Dammit, how do these cover artists know that my wildest dreams involve a corpse with testicular elephantitis wearing a scabies-infested robe and slinging his gear in an electric blue speedo? Damn. They’re psychic, PSYCHIC, I tells ye.

Sarah: Wow, that’s totally my wildest dream, too. I mean, especially the part where his robe looks like he’s taking a wildly huge piss on the ground.

Let there never be chest hair or speedo sacks in the CG cover world in 2006, k? That should be the art department’s resolution right there.

Candy: I do believe we have a winnah for our ongoing man-titty competition, ladies and gents. I really like his thoughtful pose. What is he pondering? Whether his saline implants are going to rupture? Whether his tits are firmer and bouncier than Pamela Anderson’s? What it sounds like when doves cry?

Sarah: I will tell you what I think. Just like when I see the perfect orbs at the nude beach casting perfect round shadows on the ground: Those are NOT real. 

Sarah:Isn’t she a little, um, small? For his Night Stalker? Unless she uses those little arms to pull out his most recent kidney stone. Merry Christmas! It’s a calcification in your urethra!

Candy: What the fuck, people? Look, if the sexes had been reversed, that pixie thing would’ve made a barely satisfactory dildo. How in the hell is the nookifying supposed to work in this case? He diddles her with a lubricated Q-tip? She swims up his ass and tickles his prostate? Inquiring minds want to know.

Wait, scratch that, they DON’T.

Sarah:Ah, yet another reason to be glad I converted to Judaism six years ago. I don’t ever have to worry that one day, I’ll wake up, and Thor the Vacant-Eyed Cookie Thief will be lounging in his altogether under my tree.

I don’t think Thor needs a cookie that big, either.

Candy: Man, if I found that under my Christmas tree, I’d run for a shotgun. Not that I own a shotgun, but the thought of something like that lurking in my house is making me itch to buy one.

Sarah:Merry Christmas! There’s a teeny little dead guy perched by his man titties, dangling in your sock.

Candy: Nothing says “CHRISTMAS SPIRIT” like miniature corpses and midget necrophilia.

It’s probably a good idea to drop these “below the fold” so to speak, as some of them are, well, no, they’re all pretty damn egregious, just in different ways.

This week: another set of cover art figures that kinda resemble celebrities.