Category: vegan

Horror Haiku

I did some PA stuff for the incredible people at Seraph Films and I’m in this behind the scenes short, being snarky. Horror Haiku are short films made based on viewer suggestions, by Seraph films!  Watch the Horror Haiku we made here!

Alt Resume

I am close to taking my Summer Sabbatical, which is not really what it is, but it makes my Mom feel better when I say “I’m Taking A Sabbatical” instead of “I’m quitting my job and hanging out all Summer”.  I thought it was time to get my list of “OTHER” skills together and post them on the Internet.

If you feel like you read a slightly different but kind of the same list as this one, it’s because my site was hacked and my service restored from last week’s restore point and I lost it.  It’s because SOMEONE was very jealous of my 70 hits a day.  Eat it, haters!

1. Pit Toilets: I’m very good at using pit toilets in Asia.  You just have to pretend you’re camping, which you kind of are.

2. Sleeping on Airplanes: Also work related.  I can sleep bolt upright on a red eye to Turkey and emerge as fresh and ready as if I had slept in a garbage- filled car.

3.  Tap Dancing.  I’m not the world’s best tap dancer (SAVION GLOVER, because we can really only have one famous tap dancer at a time), but it’s the skill that took the most time and expense to learn, and which has the lowest street value.  I’m considering trying to make people pay me NOT to do it.

4.  Bemani.  It’s no longer fashionable but I can totally do it- I get more points for style than accuracy on Dance, Dance, Revolution, but Karaoke Revolution is my bitch.

5. For that matter, I can lead in six count swing, and I can lead about five things in Lindy hop- I’m a good Lindy follow- I like a lot of dances.

6.  I can make dance parties happen.  I can make people do it.  At karaoke, at coffeeshops- most of the time.

7.  Karaoke.  I’m good at it.  I don’t have the most amazing American Idol style voice, but I know my range and I will perform the SHIT out of a song.  I like to work a crowd.  When I do it in Hong Kong they are upset with the dancing and eye contact.

8.  Comedy.  I do it for money and for free.  Mostly for free.  Don’t ask me to tell you a joke, I’ll make you laugh, m-f.  Just you wait.

9.  I can draw- I haven’t for around five-seven years, but I probably still can, right?  I’m sure I can.  I have an art degree.  I can blind contour the shit out of something.

10.  According to the Munsell test of Color Acuity, I am a Superior Color Discriminator.  I will discriminate the shit out of your color.  I need a lab coat and a light box with a true North setting.  But I will do it.

11.  I can make patterns and sew.  Again, I usually don’t.   But I can make seriously obscure and fucked up Halloween costumes!

12.  Goth Makeup and Fantasy Make up!  I have an airbrush and I’m  not scared to use it, including airbrushing a fake tattoo on you!

13.  I’m really good at telling long, involved, interconnected stories to people on acid.  I can be on acid or not, it doesn’t matter.

14.  I can tell a fake art history lecture at the drop of a hat, especially if the hat is from a particularly evocative period

15.  I’m really good at making one kind of vegan chocolate chip cookies.  Just one kind.

16.   I’m really good at maintaining a blog for 8 years that only my mother consistently reads!

17.  If I had just bought my first guitar, I would be a crazy natural guitar playing genius- however, I have had my own guitar for a decade, and play it occasionally.  I’m mediocre, but proud!

18.  I’m really good at steering an oversized Costco shopping cart with my elbows while eating free BBQ nuts.

19.  I’m a good trivia team member- I don’t know that much about television or sports, but I’m very good at arbitration to try to determine the likeliest answer.  Also, I like to win but I don’t care if I do.

20.  I’m really good at running a White Elephant party.  I will whip the crowd into a frenzy over Scratch tickets and a rubber garden gnome.  Blood will flow!

21.  Despite all the above, I’m really good at not going to Burning Man!  I haven’t gone every year it’s happened!  Consecutively!

With this kind of skill set, I’m gonna destroy this job market!

Let’s Get Pink!

    I am an old-school goth and I color my own hair.    After spreading my amazing wisdom with a friend today, I thought, what if I was hit by a bus tomorrow, and this wisdom is lost to the ages?  So here’s tips on weird hair color.

Buy bleach, creme developer (stays put better than liquid, 20 for darker colors, 30 for lighter), a plastic bowl and a little brush, gloves, tinfoil, and SPECIAL EFFECTS color.  NOT Manic Panic.  You might have to order it on the computer if you don’t wanna go to a lot of goth stores or headshops, but believe me.   It’s worth it.  It’s a lot longer lasting.  Some of them glow under black light!

The above brands of vegetable dye are cruelty-free.  Vegan bleaches are by Manic Panic (I KNOW I SAID THAT BUT THAT WAS JUST FOR THE COLOR) and N’Rage (both available at Sally’s Beauty Supply, where you can also get nail charms and Kolesteral.)

For allover color, do the following:

1. Make sure you’re not yet 30.   You know that scene in the movie where a guy runs up to a girl with cute punky pink hair, and he touches her shoulder, and she turns around and she’s 50 and everybody GASPS?  You don’t want that.

2.  Bleach your hair all over, and in general, do the below but everywhere.  The directions below are specifically for spot color.

Start with clean-ish hair.  If you’ve got a lotta junk in your hair, wash and dry first.

1. Work out what you want colored.  Comb around and pick out a section.  Pin everything else back.  Put conditioner where you don’t want to bleach.
2. Bleach your desired area(s) and wrap it/them in tinfoil.  If you need a really light shade, throw a hair dryer on it for a minute, or until your head gets hot and you can’t stand it.
3. Watch one episode of 30 rock without commercials.  Check your hair.  If you are going for a really LIGHT color, you’ll need to use a HIGHER VOLUME DEVELOPER (30/40) and you’ll need to process LONGER.  Manic Panic’s Cotton Candy Pink particularly won’t do SHIT until you are PAPER WHITE.  DON’T ASK ME HOW I KNOW.  If you’re using a darker color, you don’t need to bleach out white to get the color to grab.  Yellow/blonde will be fine.

4. GODDAMNIT, I TOLD YOU NOT TO USE MANIC PANIC.  A note on color:  PURPLES, DARK REDS, PINKS are GREAT for longevity and for fading down to attractive colors.  BLUES and GREENS tend to slip early, and not to nice colors, they get a little sickly.  You’re the boss of it, but you’ll need to touch up more often with the cool/blue tones.  There is a BLACK MANIC PANIC, but you’d have to be a crazy person to use a no-lift BLACK when you can do Henna BLACK or regular chemical SUPERMAN BLACK?  What, you want to rub off on your sheets?  Do you hate your Mom?

Good.  I hate her too.

A real Goth will have dark sheets and towels because of our hair.  But if something happens and you’re bleeding out, it might take you a little while to tell.

5. Wash your hair and dry it, bone dry.  Really dry.  If your regular hair is light, you might comb conditioner into the immediate areas you don’t want to color.  If it’s near your hairline, smear some vaseline on the hairline to keep it from turning colors.

6. Wear gloves for this part.  Nobody wants to shake your weird purple hand.  You’re already an outcast.

7. Brush dye onto the bleachy part, use one of them little brushes from Sally’s, comb it through, get it good and saturated.  Wrap it in tinfoil.  Put a showercap or plastic cap on.

And now we come to The Part that separates the girls from the women.  This is The Secret.  The package will tell you to process with hot dryer for 30 minutes and wash out. 

This is bullshit. 

It will not give you the eye-popping, long-lasting saturation that makes people wonder “is that a wig?”

8. Sleep in it.  I put a plastic cap, then a do-rag or gypsy scarf or whatever on and go to bed, and wash it out in the morning.  The color dye is vegetable dye and will not damage your hair, it has no lift of its own (which is why you bleach separately), and I sleep in it, and it pretty much stays pink until it grows out.  And then I do the same thing eight weeks later, except concentrating on the new hair with the bleach!

Yayyyy!

How Starbucks Made Me Their Bitch

May 2012: Starbucks has really got me over a barrel.

Me and DJ Initial P, flaunting our shit-Photo by Evan Ballinger

how it began

My usual method of coffeeshop patronage was to choose an independent local business, and they would know my drink, and I would have a little punchcard and get free coffees with every tenth one. I’d make jokes to the employees and they would pretend to think the jokes were funny.

It was First Cup on Woodstock, and then Stumptown on Belmont. I would default to Starbucks when away from home, especially in podunk towns, because it was the best way to ensure that they would have soy milk. Also, they would use my special cup (here’s an art template for your own Starbucks art-your-own 16 oz tumbler! )

how I was seduced

Since moving to Long Beach, I have not found a walking-distance local coffeeshop, so I have been going to Starbucks.  One day, an employee pointed out that if I would just register a coffee card with them, they would give me soymilk (.60) for free.

This is annoying, because Baby Jebus knows that soymilk does not cost sixty cents more than cow’s milk, but I was paying it. I am addicted to the sweet latte goodness.

And now I can get it for “free”.   Because I’m in the “club”.  The “coffee club”.  They’ve tricked me. Like the airlines who now offer the “perk” of “checking a bag”, which used to be free and now is not.

So I got a card.  I kept it full.  Liquid assets.

Then, I found out that you can buy coffee on your phone if you get the app. You can wave your phone in front of the scanner like you live in Gattaca. So I did that. And that’s when they really got me.  You can do things like put money on your card, and send coffee money to friends, and find out what Starbucks food items are vegan, and blargity blarg blarg.  But the best part is, I got a star every time I drank coffee. I got a gold star, like I was in school.

coffee2

  13 stars.  Look how happy they are.  They’re dancing.

winning all the time

 I win a game by drinking coffee, which is something that I would do anyway, so now instead of going to Starbucks with some amount of shame, I am actively seeking them out. I CAN GET A GOLD STAR FOR DRINKING COFFEE, SOMETHING I WANTED TO DO ANYWAY.  People like getting gold stars.  They like being rewarded for stuff. 

Then they give you a special gold coffee card, just to let them know that I’m not a regular people, that they might toil and sweat for their half-caff sweet double chai frappucino, but that I am one of the chosen ones, and that I will have free soymilk-

the betrayal

  FURIOUS POSTSCRIPT, 9/18:  I got an email thanking me for my continued patronage, letting me know my coffee benefits are New and Improved. New and improved means that as of October 16th, MY FREE F*CKING SOYMILK IS GOING AWAY!

As a spoiled and privileged vegan, I AM FURIOUS ABOUT THIS, CORPORATE OVERLORDS!  I am reacting like a RABID WILDEBEEST!  I hope you enjoy the view of me leaving, because I’m not coming back after the 16th!  Unless, you know.  It’s an emergency.

Postpostpostcript 10/11: And lo, the end is nigh.  I have commented about soymilk on mystarbucksidea.com, and I have “liked” other comments about free soymilk, and now the board hates us for complaining about the same thing every day for a month.

I’m sorry, other people.  This is how the capitalist internet system works.

the final solution

And so, it has happened: if you feel a slight shiver, the sense that everything was picked up, rotated five degrees, and then dropped back into place, it’s because I have ordered an espresso machine and some coffee, and I am free.

And let’s be clear: I purchased an expensive, heavy, large machine to live in my kitchen because Starbucks wanted to charge me sixty cents for soy milk, which I used to get for free when I was special- and lest we forget, another group of people got pretty mad when their tea was getting taxed, and they started a little something called THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, and that’s a little more intense than my latte boycott!

Hell hath no fury like a vegan scorned.

The Math: As of this month, I have broken even on my espresso machine vs. the $60 a week I was spending at Starbucks, so the next 9 months of espressos are pure profit.  I’m sorry, corporate overlords!  I’m still an addict!  Just not a slave!

Jeffrey Campbell Goes Vegan!

Did you know that iconic, fashion-blogged, architectural shoe designer Jeffrey Campbell has put out some of his most iconic, glam, fabulous models in vegan versions this Summer, available exclusively on Convert?  Well, now you do, you silly rascal!  Thanks, J.C.!