Monster Letters!
You can get your name in monster letters here! I love I-mockery at this time of year.
My Motto, Courtesy of Ron Bennington from the Ron and Fez Show
I think a person needs a motto, words to live by, a phrase with which to mold and shape one’s life and mine is: “Fuck it! It’s a magic phrase. As Stephen Baldwin says in Usual Suspects:”Bad day. Fuck it.” And then he shrugs off three murders like a dirty coat. It just makes me feel better to say it, at any time, day or night. I don’t mean to sound negative- To say “fuck it” is an affirmation, to say- this is not going to get me down. You know what? Everyone doesn’t like me, and worse, sometimes people who don’t like me have good things happen to them. I like someone, they don’t like me back? Fuck it! I have lost my keys, patience, or mind- Fuck it! If I failed, I must fail harder. There is no shame in failing, there is only shame in not trying. As the rainy season starts in Portland, long grey periods punctuated with moments of dark, I want to bring my favorite phrase to the forefront of the collective unconscious: Fuck it!
How Children Ruin Halloween!
I Love Halloween
I have always loved Halloween. I think it’s tailor-made for girls- who doesn’t like dressing up and being rewarded with candy? Maybe I love it because I snared my first boyfriend in 8th grade at a Halloween party while dressed like Cleopatra and kicking serious asp.
In college, I rocked an Egyptian Cat Goddess (Bastet for the nerds) look with face fulla paint and a head fulla acid and met a different guy. We made a date for a couple days after, but I didn’t keep it when I realized he did not actually know what I looked like. Of course, being a suburban gothgirl meant that the day after Halloween was the optimal time to head to Michael’s MJDesigns and stock up on cheap-azz clown white and fishnets. Day of the dead, indeed!
Historical Document from 1987.
Modern Adult Costumes
I like that in America, adults still get to dress up, although women’s costumes are limited to some combination of Goth girl and whore.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s not a giant difference between the two. But really- I’m a sexy witch, I’m a sexy maid, I’m a sexy corpse- and then the guys are all sumo wrestlers and ketchup dispensers? How is a sexy witch supposed to hang out with a sumo wrestler? All the guys are so into pirates, but they’re not into dressing as hobos, the disabled, cross-dressing transient muggers of today.
It’s not fair.
But my point- and yes, I have one.
Children Ruin Halloween
1. There is a new horrifying phenomenon when sometimes lazy, whorish Mom’s outfits are handed down, so you see an eight year old dressed as Spooky Nurse Fuckalot. Here’s some candy, honey. No, I don’t want an enema.
2. Halloween is about fantasy, and children don’t need any more fantasy. I’m tired of hearing their bullshit stories about what supposedly happened at Grandma’s.
3. Kids refuse to keep their costumes on. Last year, I met a ninja who had lost his sword and taken his hood off, so what we were dealing with was: a little person in black pajamas. I ask you. Pirates have their eyepatches upside down on foreheads. What kind of commitment is that to a “look”? No commitment at all.
Trick or treat is a farce, and as far as I can tell, it’s our fault.
The little ghosts and goblins are home having their stashes rifled through by their paranoid, chocolate-starved parents by the time the street lights come on. Let me say- most of the time that candy is, god forbid, poisoned, it’s the kid’s own parents who do it, and I’m sure they have their reasons.
I’m A Weiner
I just back from a casino gig in beautiful Coos Bay, OR. It was a fun gig supporting the very funny Milt Abel. After my last casino gig in Pendleton, the Mill Casino seemed like a fancy dream. Generally, I’m too cheap to gamble, and would prefer to throw my money in the toilet- but I was trying to hide my eyes from the sadness of a five hundred year old woman putting pennies in a slot machine, threw two bucks in a poker slot, and won ten dollars American. I’m a winner, no matter what they said in high school! Ten dollars=PROFIT!
Kelso Wonderland!
Having your name in lights makes you feel important! Having your name misspelled in lights only slightly less so.
Really and truly, I had a grand time featuring in Kelso for Mark Saltviet
Kumoricomedy!
Kumoricon is an annual convention dedicated to Japanese anime, and features three days of cosplay, video rooms, exhibitors, panels, video games, manga, and bizarre fan creations. We went as Leigh Bowery, who is not from anime, but we got our pictures taken a lot anyhow.
My friend Pete had a special DDR game with 13 songs from his label, Diskowarp, at table 17. Hundreds of barefooted people and one guy in a Furry outfit jumped on my DDR pads, which now must be bleached, and the surrounding booths heard the song “Oh Oh Oh Sexy Vampire” one thousand times.
If extreme dedication, shut-ins in leotards, or nerdiness make you sad, you shouldn’t come to this kind of event -but the DIY costumes, and the clashing of cultures really is something to see: I saw a hundred Links, a couple Howls, one Old Gregg, and dozens and dozens of beautiful Gothic Lolitas. These kids are all communicating with a visual code that I can’t understand, but for damn sure they don’t want to talk to you. Many of them can’t make eye contact, but oddly they will ask for hugs.
Anime nerds in their natural habitat, in the park across from the mall.
How to annoy nerds: Yell at them “We’re readin’ MAGAZINES!” and take their picture without asking. How to excite them: Yell “Matt Damon!”
Consumer Review: MyVu!
Woot.com
Every once in a while, electronics clearinghouse woot.com runs an event called a woot-off, which is a good way to make me buy stuff, because it makes purchasing needless electronics into a game, with timers and sirens and competition and congratulatory messages.
Recently, I got swept up in the madness and got the MyVu Personal Media Viewer, a purchase based on overcaffeination and the promise that I would look like Geordi LaForge. It plugs into an Ipod 5th Gen and gives a floating, Viewfinder-sized video image from your Ipod in glasses. I got it for fitty bucks, and am pleased to see that the parent website offers it for two hunnert, because that makes me look like slightly less of a sucker.
Maiden Voyage
First thing: obviously, they look awesome on. As I put them on during my train ride this morning, I was slightly self-conscious plugging in the attached earphones. Put in your ear-plugs, put on your eye-shades, you know where to put the cork. The video screens on the inside of the glasses are about the size of a fingernail each, and in a dark room, it looks like you are watching a small screen in a theatre.
The video quality is the same as the Ipod. This toy would make most sense to use to watch vids on a long car or airplane ride. I like the privacy of it. The two screens made me feel a little cross-eyed upon first wearing, but I got used to them.
(People keep commenting on my gloves, but I swear they’re just to wear on my bike!)
Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me. I am a nerd. I know it, Jackie Kashian knows it, and woot knows it.
Self Reflective Blogging
POSTSCRIPT: ZOMG, Woot found my post and linked to it from their blog- so if I link back to a blog linking to my blog, will the universe implode? Let’s see!
POSTSCRIPT PART DEUX: Well, the Woot.com link was interesting, as I watched 800 people traipse through my blog over the next couple days, leaving neither comments nor footprints, just like they were never here at all. Maybe there’s a lesson there about the internet. Et tu, page hits?
The real thing I wanted to mention was the danger of wearing the MyVu Personal Media Viewer in public. I wore them on the train one day and realized that an ex-boyfriend was in kicking distance and I had to pretend not to be myself, or if I was myself, absolutely I was not wearing wack-ass glasses.Yes! I am an asshole.