Though Halloween has passed, today still feels like a good time to post something scary. It comes courtesy of friend-of-the-site Colin T, who encountered the picture that follows in his hotel room at a Marriott. In Colin’s own words:

• I don’t say this lightly, but I’d like someone at Marriott to be fired over this. Or at least have a formal reprimand placed in their HR file. This makes me want to never stay at another Marriott for fear they’ll come up with something worse.

With all that as preface, let’s have a look!

This was the “art” found in Colin’s room at the Auburn, Alabama Marriott TownePlace (sic) Suites, and “art” is an extremely generous word. Who would do this? Why would they do this? Just…well, what in the unholy name of wretched word clouds is that?!

It took me several minutes of staring at it to find the basic idea of it, which seems to be the phrase “Life is to be lived”. Alright…fine. But even if we accept that as a reasonable message for hotel art (and we really shouldn’t), what’s going on with the rest of it?

You can find three other full words, “it”, “terrific”, and “everything”. But beyond that, there’s an assortment of partial words, some of which I’ve made guesses at below:

• fantastic

• intrinsic

• -astic

• mag-

• excessive

• expressive

• expevted (?!)

• neglecting

• explorative

• everywhere

Most of those are positive words, but “excessive” and “neglecting” certainly aren’t, and “expevted” isn’t a word at all.

In addition to the poor content, the execution is also bad. Zooming in shows how sharp the letters in “life” are. Compare that against the falling “it” up top:

Those are compression artifacts on the “i” and the “t”, and they’re on the original poster itself, not caused by the photograph. You can spot plenty more on the letter jumble at the bottom:

If this is art at all, it’s bad art, poorly done. The worst of both worlds!

Finally, let us not overlook the location of this piece. As you can perhaps tell from the reflection, yes, this pile of crap is in the bathroom. In fact, it’s directly across from the location where it actually belongs, the toilet. As a result, hotel guests are forced to contemplate it while using the facilities. That’s just no way to start your day.

Recently, I purchased a package of that delightful winter treat, the clementine. They’re easy to eat, and tasty, but this particular package really had some things going on. I didn’t notice what I’d picked up until after purchasing, but these were apparently “Cuties”, which seem to be made for small children:

On the other hand, it’s possible the target audience is some sort of citrusphile fruit freaks. The imagery features unzipping that’s more than a little obscene, as well as eyebrows that look rather lustful. Frankly, the whole thing feels sexualized, and that’s just gross. Try to unsee it! I know I can’t.

Still, I’d already bought them before I noticed this, and returning them because they were “too sexy” seemed likely to get me on some sort of list. So, I cut open the net to place them all in a fruit bowl and rid myself of the disturbing wrapping. When I did, I found that some of the clementines in the package had stickers on them.

These stickers appear to serve no real purpose, except perhaps to make me feel far less adult while I enjoyed a snack, and also to provide content for this site. Herein, a very brief review of the five Cutie stickers I saw:

Rudolph Cutie

This was the first of three stickers which were all appropriate for the Christmas season. Of course, if you take a look, you’ll see that Cuties don’t appear to have noses. As such, it seems as likely as not that “Rudolph Cutie” here actually has a giant, disgusting cyst. Barvd!

Jingle Cutie

This sticker is fairly innocuous, though with the hat, it looks more like a “Santa Cutie” than a “Jingle Cutie” to me.

Stocking Stuffer

I like this sticker, because it alludes to the tradition of placing oranges in a Christmas stocking. I don’t know that a single small Cutie would make a great stocking stuffer, but a few could be nice.

Captain Cutie

Things took an abrupt turn away from Christmas with this pirate-themed sticker. I’m not sure what this has to do with much of anything, but at least we know this is one buccaneer who won’t get scurvy.

Mouthcandy

I really have issues with this final sticker. There are many modifiers for candy. We use “ear candy” for catchy music and “arm candy” for a young person accompanying an older individual on a date. There’s even “nose candy”, for cocaine. But mouthcandy? That’s just candy! It’s the default. You don’t need the “mouth” modifier. It would be like saying “heart blood”. That’s just blood!

Also, I’m not sure why this Cutie was dipped like a candy apple, but it’s very unappealing.

Conclusion

At the moment, I’m on the fence about purchasing more Cuties. Ultimately, if I can find a clementine that doesn’t make me feel like I need to wait until the lunch bell rings to eat it, that would be best.

2017 is almost over, which means it’s well past time for this year’s edition of Barvd. We may not even remember most of the most nauseating social media posts of 2016, but they happened nonetheless. Let’s make this a very scary Christmas, with a long overdue summary of the most disgusting tweets and Instagram posts from last year. Thankfully, for six more days, 2016 still is last year.

January

Winter weather in Boston is frightful, but it doesn’t usually involve arachnids.

@eyemadequiet

Marie here found the exception, and now I’m scared to put on clothes without shaking the hell out of them.

February

I know we’d all like to forget Ted Cruz even exists, but this gross triptych is worth remembering, despite the something-shaming.

@scottsimpson, 2, 3

At the time of this writing, BeefyWattle.org is still available for registration.

March

March of 2016 had a large number of nominees, including several disgusting food items, which are always a favorite. And yet, this is insane “abbreviation” topped them all.

@mrgan

That’s simply unacceptable.

April

I really like this tweet with no context at all.

@jkubicek

If you like, click to learn the context, but you might also choose to let it remain a mystery!

May

As Spring sprang in 2016, our pal Scott came back with a sickening Instagram post. I’m dry heaving just thinking about this:

@scottsimpson

Anyone considering purchasing this might better spend their time and money on cleaning.

June

Get ready for the old switcheroo…

@mattingebretson

Well played, Matt. I’m sure your parents are, uh, very proud.

July

Previously, we heard about hot, smoking bully sticks. Now, it gets worse.

@mccreath

It’s likely this is really putting the “anal” in “artisanal”.

August

Do you remember the 90s? They were pretty good overall, but they certainly weren’t perfect.

@sarahkendzior

There’s a lot to take in here: The sweat. The McDonald’s. The thighs. Oh god, the pasty thighs. Let’s see if we can move on faster than Bill jogged.

September

Celebrities got into the Barvd game last year, with Canadian actor Devon Sawa sharing this monstrosity:

@DevonESawa

I guess we’d call it a “turpus”? At least until we cram a chicken in there to make it a “turpusen”, anyway.

October

In addition to being the last full month with hope and brightness in the world, October 2016 provided a bit of a mystery. When first looking at this tweet, it was not clear what was going on.

@MannyElk

I first saw a person’s backside. OK, it’s a man, and he’s not in the best shape. Ah, jeez, is he at a urinal? That’s kind of gross. But ultimately, what’s the big deal? Let’s have a look at the full image:

Oh. Oh god. No. Why?! At least it’s a nice callback to our April selection.

November

I’m sure November had plenty of disgusting tweets. However, nothing was worse than this tweet (as well as others like it from news sources around the world):

@cnn

As you can likely guess, I chose CNN’s tweet specifically. While I certainly wish this had been fake news, CNN is a credible news organization, and this was all too real. It was also all too sickening.

December

The day after the 2016 election, I quit reading Twitter cold turkey. I haven’t been back since. As such, I don’t have a selection for December. Viewing Donald Trump’s tweets from the entire month would provide plenty to be disgusted by, but you’re better off avoiding it entirely. The real world is stomach-turning enough without reading the ravings of the absolute worst president in history.

The End

That’s it for the year 2016, and likely for our annual Barvd reviews as well. We’ll likely still have Barvd one-offs in the future, though. If you seen an awful tweet, Instagram pic, or other post, send it in, or tweet a link to @OneFootTsunami.