Juan in Brampton, Ontario wasn’t persuasive enough to convince his girlfriend, Kat, to skip work and go to her own surprise party. His friends were…not so happy.

Meanwhile, Sam’s best friend baked this for her husband after he re-arranged the living room early in the morning without telling her, resulting in some seriously bruised shins. “What’s even meaner,” Sam says? “She can’t cook. The cake probably tastes, well…bitter.”

Still hungry for more? Sharrin in San Diego, Sam in Daytona Beach, and of course, Cakewrecks have documented plenty more examples of sugar-coated hostility floating around the interwebs.

And then there’s my personal favorite (again, straight out of the michael scott playbook):

related: “I don’t need a birthday cake,” I said.
extra credit: passive aggressive cakes [cakewrecks.blogspot.com]

…courtesy of the hapless young lads of North America.

As documented by Kimberlee in Lawrence, Kansas:

And by Grant in Toronto, Canada:

Happy breakup season, everyone!

related: Some dating advice

If you’ve ever bought Twizzlers from a vending machine, you probably know that there’s a good one-in-three chance that one tiny corner of the plastic packaging is gonna get stuck — and bang on the glass all you want — only yielding after an extra 75 cents is inserted. Some folks, however, aren’t willing to condone that kind of stubbornness in their packaged sweets.

related: Who’s the smartass?

Caitlin at Ontario College didn’t write this note, but she feels for the person who did — she and four friends on her floor also had panties go missing from the dorm laundry room. “The thief seemed to particularly prefer black thongs,” she says. (Unlike the notewriter, however, they don’t necessarily want them back.)

Since then, however, it seems the thief may have (ahem) moved south of the border. The female residents of Alexis’s apartment building in Seattle are now facing a similar problem.

And then…well, then there’s Japan. Jason spotted this note in Tokyo when he was staying there a few years back. Unfortunately, he never got the whole story, but that might be for the best.

related: Are you there, Margaret?

extra credit: Panty thief busted, then busted up [the smoking gun]
Panty thief jailed for laundry larceny [msnbc]

…well, you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne…

And in London…

…a saucy variation on a much-photographed placard from London’s Soho:

But my favorite sign was spotted by Nick at a backpacker’s hostel in Rio:

related: The whore of West Babylon

related: Seriously!?!

Says our anonymous Facebook user in Ottawa: “It’s exactly what it looks like.”

related: In daylights? In sunsets? In midnights? In posts on Facebook?

Given the highly intellectual discussions this site’s commenters have become known for, it seems safe to assume that the question, “How are we to judge poetry?”  is one that you, dear reader, have no doubt pondered on many an occasion, along with other more academic concerns such as the proper resting state of the toilet lid.

Well, as the late Philip Larkin once said, “I think a poet should be judged by what he does with his subjects, not by what his subjects are.” With that in mind, which of these poets would you judge “less likely to make you totally vom”?

Is it this one, from a university campus in Toronto?

…or is it this one, spotted by Kacey at the YMCA in the college town of Champaign, Illinois?

related:  A limerick

extra credit: The Poet of Dirty Words: Reconsidering Philip Larkin [slate.com]