Monthly Archives: February 2008

Friday Five, 2008.02.15

Posted on 2008.02.15

After a long hiatus, here it is again: the Friday Five:

1. Do you ever wonder if the way you see things visually aren’t how other people see them?

I know I don’t. I have no depth perception. Interestingly, since no one ever told me this, I never realized that my experience was different than others’ (I just thought I was bad at sports [which I also am]).

2. What kind of sounds are the most annoying?

Nails on chalkboards, power tools.

3. When walking through a store, do you shop with your hands by touching/feeling the texture of things?

Depends on the store, and the things. Usually I don’t, but if I’m buying fabric or clothing or something like that, I do.

4. If you could only smell three scents for the rest of your life, what would they be?

Turkey cooking, pumpkin bread baking, sour milk (that last one is for practical reasons).

5. What sorts of things do you savor when eating them?

Food, generally ;)
Specifically, chocolate and pastries.

Happy St. Skeletor’s Day!

Posted on 2008.02.15

In the same vein as yesterday’s post, today Neatorama alerted me to the existence of St. Skeletor’s Day.

St. Skeletor's Day

St Skeletor’s Day is a non-commercial alternative to the corporate whorefest that is St Valentine’s Day. Each year, on February 15th, the festival of St. Skeletor occurs worldwide. The purposes are:-

  1. The destruction of ‘lurrve’
  2. The destruction of saucy greetings cards
  3. The destruction of people with boyfriends/girlfriends

St Valentine of course is the patron saint of making single people feel like crap — each year, the celebration drifts further away from the celebration of love, and further towards the celebration of fluffy handcuffs, expensive flowers, thoughtless greetings cards and other tat shaped into heart shaped packaging, putting pressure on people in relationships to partake of their hard earned cash and actually buy this crap.

What a wonderful idea!

I wonder how many people will remember it next year. I’ve added it to my calendar :)

Also, I wonder how many people (out of those I normally hang out with, I suppose) actually know who Skeletor is, or better yet, remember watching He-man. I have a feeling that many of them are too young. And there is a very fine line between ‘old enough’ and ‘too old’. :/

Victor Delta

Posted on 2008.02.14

Ever notice how Valentine’s Day has the same initials as Venereal Disease? Coincidence? I think not.

VD

As far as I’m concerned, Valentine’s Day exists to make everyone miserable (and to sell flowers and chocolate, of course).

  • If you are single and don’t want to be, you feel defective.
  • If you are single and do want to be, you still have to put up with all the love-drunk meatbags.
  • If you are not single, you have a lot of pressure to live up to whatever secret expectations your significant other most certainly has of you, but almost certainly didn’t tell you. (You have to be a mindreader.)

The way I see it, if you love someone then let them know whenever or however you can – nothing lasts forever. Also, doesn’t a surprise tend to carry more weight than just doing what’s expected of you? Anniversaries are alright, I guess, because they celebrate just the two (or however many) of you; but waiting for a generic marketing holiday to show affection seems to cheapen things.

That being said, it’s still a good excuse for an anti-Valentine’s Party! If you hate this holiday as much as I do; and if you want to get together and eat some unromantic foods (pizza, beer, wings) and watch some unromantic movies (Rosemary’s Baby, Cemetery Man, The Shining, etc…); then you should stop by my place Saturday night!

Unconscious Mutterings

Posted on 2008.02.13

I used to do these, years ago. While bored recently I was perusing my ancient blog posts and remembered this. I figured it might be a good way to encourage me to post more :)

  1. Score :: card
  2. Luxurious :: home
  3. Party :: dinner
  4. Limited edition :: rare
  5. Security :: enhanced
  6. Betty :: Page
  7. Under construction :: not
  8. Pest :: control
  9. director :: insulator
  10. Express :: delivery

…I can’t explain the “director :: insulator”, but I think it may speak of deep-seated mental trouble.

Some Darwinism, on Darwin Day

Posted on 2008.02.12

I think that if someone were to fall for this obvious phishing attempt, then they probably deserve what they get:

Wickedfaire III

Posted on 2008.02.10

This weekend happicow and I drove down to NJ and met up with some friend to attend this year’s Wicked Winter Renaissance ( / pirate / ninja / Lovecraft ) Faire. This faire was vastly different from the last one that I attended, in that there was no snow, and more walls (meaning, more concurrent performances, but less of a sense of unity).

There seemed to be less renaissance than I remember from last time, and more like-minded people hanging out and being naughty together (friends were made, but I didn’t catch their names; also, someone tried to stick a vibrator up my nose), enjoying some great performances (like Voltaire, and the White Elephant Burlesque Society), and buying some nifty swag (like that underbust I’ve been craving forever [at a great price, too!]). What garb there was, if any, seemed decidedly more Victorian than renaissance, but that suited me fine. :)

Like last time, our main goal in attending was to see Voltaire, though this year I decided I really didn’t need to annoy him with any photo-taking (though I did annoy him with conversation, delivering messages of love from Syracuse).

Unfortunately, we only attended the faire on Friday. Though the quality of what was available was wonderful, there really didn’t end up being that much of it, and we saw most of what there was to see (save performers) in a few hours. Since we were unfamiliar with the majority of the performers, it was hard to decide whether it was worth it to drive down for another day, not knowing where in the schedule we should have been aiming to attend. Instead, we hung around in northern NJ, visiting Asian markets and documenting strange discoveries.

Due to the legal kerfuffle surrounding this year’s faire (wherein the hotel refused to honor the contract until they were taken to court about it, and then tried to weasel their way out of it by charging credit cards and canceling reservations) this may be the last faire. That’s sad, as it really is (AFAIK) a unique and wonderful event. To help out with the legal fees, you should buy one of these nifty-keen escape from Holiday Innsmouth Cthulhu shirts.