Enough with the gutter-based content. Today, I want to show you this
My fingernails are really shiny, sparkly silver. All day long it has been making me cheerful to see them twinkling as I have gone about my work duties and stuff.
This combination of cheap nailpolishes was a real winner:
One coat of the Sally Hanson opaque silver, two coats of the LA Colors silver glitter. It has lasted for three days of normal wear (including washing dishes and pulling weeds in the garden) which is about two days longer than I can usually reasonably expect nail polish to last.
Seriously not safe for work. This post features content of a dirty, big rubber penis I found alongside of the road. I hope you consider this fair warning.
On Saturday, I found myself among friends, hanging around behind an abandoned industrial building. Some folks were drinking beers; all of us were talking shit. Because that’s what we do. Shoot the bull, drink beer, and hang around debris-strewn alleyways behind abandoned buildings. We’re classy n’ shit.
Any old how, I wasn’t drinking beer because I haven’t been really into it lately. Too hot out, plus I really annoy myself when I’m drunk these days; so, I’m off the hooch by default.
I just couldn’t sit still, and I didn’t feel that talky, either. So, I roamed around the vicinity of our little private park and discovered a pair of abandoned boxer briefs. I poked them with a very long stick but nothing really came of that. I teased my hair up into a great big tumbleweed-y brush. Then I started playing with broken glass and discarded chewing gum (it was Big Red…it still smelled all cinnamon-y).
I made these little crystal forests out of busted up glass stuck into two wads of chewing gum that were melted down to the asphalt.
realized a few days later, that my little episode of antisocial personal amusement hearkens back to an amusement I used to pursue as a little kid. When we’d be somewhere where there weren’t other kids to tear around with, and I didn’t have any emergency equipment with me (I often carried a hand-me-down purse with a book, a doll and some clothes, or some art supplies in case my parents dragged me somewhere boring) I would sometimes build teeny-tiny replicas of Bedrock City out of pebbles. I really, really liked the Flintstones when I was a kid. I’m sure 90% of the jokes flew straight over my head, but I liked the dinosaur appliances and hole-in-the-floor cars.
I’m going to make it up in yellow cotton with an orange daisy print and orange topstitch detailing on the yoke and inset, but what I REALLY want to do is make it up in red, with black for the inset and yoke, and be all
If I had illustration skills and videography skills, I’d make a stop motion animated music video for this song. I can see Pressed Rat in his red jodhpurs and Warthog wearing a striped tie (it is yellow, orange and green in my mind’s eye).
Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop,
They didn’t want to – ’twas all they had got.
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat’s collection of dog legs and feet.
Sadly they left, telling no one goodbye.
Pressed Rat wore red jodhpurs – Warthog a striped tie.
Between them, they carried a three-legged sack,
Went straight round the corner and never came back.
Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop.
The bad captain madman had told them to stop
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And pressed rat’s collection of dog legs and feet.
The bad captain madman had ordered their fate.
He laughed and stomped off with a nautical gate.
The gate turned into a deroga tree
And his pegleg got woodworm and broke into three.
Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop,
They didn’t want to – ’twas all they had got.
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat’s collection of dog legs and feet.
Do you ever read something and just find your face stuck like this ?
Yeah, so I read a woman’s blog entry recently that just made one eye squinch up, while the other bugged out, and my mouth perhaps went “wha’ th’…you have got to be kidding me…the hell you say…” and maybe something incoherent about skirt/cold-dead-ass.
The thesis of said blog entry, if you don’t feel like clicking through, is that when we “ladies”* wear skirts, we diminish our credibility.
One more thing: The Black Skirt Initiative = the same woman. So. Does or doesn’t she want you to wear a skirt? Maybe she doesn’t want you to wear one, but she sure wouldn’t mind if you bought one from her.
I think the main thing that irked my working ire is the notion of women policing each other as to what to wear, how to present themselves, especially doing so in ways that evoke shame, that invoke the “Male Gaze” as a threat, and that aim to stifle legitimate means of expression (and I consider fashion sense a legitimate means of expression). I also think it dodges dangerously close to the accusatory tone one hears out of the anti-feminist camp which states that women who dress “provocatively” bring sexual harassment and rape upon themselves.
It’s also related to one of the things i find so tiresome about celebrity magazines and their endless stream of best-dressed/worst-dressed/who-looks-fat/who-looks-ana articles. It’s all about laying completely subjective judgments (written in authoritative tones) on what should clearly be considered matters of personal taste and inclination. Like Princess Beatrice, upon whom I have a bit of a girlcrush. This child has a stupid quantity of money at her disposal, a beautiful face and figure, and regularly goes about looking as though she’d been styled by Pippi Longstocking on a gin bender. Somehow, I find it incredibly endearing that she apparently deliberately dresses as oddly as she does.
The voyeur culture surrounding celebrities, especially the bitchy, snarky looks-ism that is woven deep into the fabric of that culture spreads outward, and we all end up wearing a bit of it. Some of us, like Lesley and her swimming suit and All Mel, All the Time say “fuck it” and wear whatever the hell they want for comfort, personal style, and just because.
Or like me and my skirts. It’s hot as hell out there right now. I can’t show up to work in shorts and a tank top, but I can pass muster in a sleeveless blouse and a knee-length skirt, and so by gosh and by golly, I sure as shit will. My skirts are age, setting, and and lifestyle “appropriate.” I’ve hit upon a formula that works and from which I rarely deviate. My skirts are generally knee-length or somewhere within a couple of inches thereabouts. A-line or somewhat flared. Printed, or solid, dark colors (usually brown, like my trousers). I find that this length (circa knee) is ideal for my purposes…long enough not to scoot up too high when I sit, short enough not to blow back into the rear brake caliper on my bicycle as I ride to and from work. Likewise an A-line or a moderately full gored or gathered skirt works well for mobility purposes. I have ease of movement for walking, filing, stair climbing, and general flailing about, but the skirt isn’t so wide as to be obtrusive, and again, stays free of that nasty rear brake. With the right top, accessories, decent shoes, and when my hair co-operates, I end up looking about as good as I ever will, and what’s more important, being comfortable throughout the day. That way I can concentrate on more important things, like writing letters that will wow potential clients, like coercing Adobe X to co-operate with headings for multiple page sizes, or with deciphering a project manager’s cramped and globby hand-writing. You know…using that brain that my skirt somehow magically obviates.
I have a hard time believing that a skirt muffles a woman’s message. Or that overtly feminine clothing automatically decreases my credibility as a worker, as an intellect, or in society at large. Talk to me for five minutes, and I’ll make you think whatever I want you to think about me. I’m no dummy; I just like to play dress up once in a while.
*I take exception to being called a “lady.” I’m a woman, not a girl, not a gal, not a lady, and only a chick when I say so. The lady/ladies thing invokes an outdated image of being delicate, wimpy, and lesser. It places the woman as a secondary class citizen, someone who requires protection and regulation, who is not an agent for herself.
Oh…also:
Because you can’t open up a ranty blog post about feminism and fashion with a Dead Kennedy’s reference and then not deliver on the promise.
I’m drunk with the re-found power to post photos directly to my blog from Flickr. It has taken me an embarrasing four years to figure out how to configure a remotely hosted, WordPress-powered blog for said feature.
After a decade of being vaguely broke and more than vaguely pissed off about it, I have finally paid off my student loan.
Before the July payment was set to draw, I shut off the automatic draft, transferred an extra $1,000 from my savings to my checking, and paid that bad boy off. I just received the “paid in full, no promissory note†letter, all nice and official, yesterday.
For the past 10+ years (except for two, three-month hardship deferments) I have been paying Sallie Mae slightly more than I could comfortably afford as penance for pursuing an ill-advised MA in Medieval Studies.
For a long time, I thought that when I got my student loan paid off, I’d throw a big-assed party, or have a shopping spree to the tune of a monthly payment, or do something extravagant, but now, I’m just kind of over it. I threw double birdies in the general direction of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania as I clicked “make payment†and felt a profound sense of relief. I’ve no longer got a $500-a-month reminder of the indiscretions of my youth poking me in the ribs every month. I can bung more money into savings, or invest in fixing up the house. Or maybe buy a new pair of boots without agonizing over it for a month beforehand. Whatever.
It’s done, it’s behind me, and I say never, EVER again. No more loans. Not negotiable. If I can’t afford something straight out, I don’t need it.
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