Like a Fiji Mermaid, only more dashing:

Complete with faithful on-the shoulder cephalopodic clam-eating side-kick, Poly (not Polly).

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.

I think it would be cool if there was a ‘Talk like a Ninja day’.

People could carry on their day normally, except never speaking (except maybe with throwing stars or poison darts - actions speak louder than words!).

On a completely unrelated note, the pirate vs. ninja Internet meme is very stupid, and I wish people would stop perpetuating it. Clearly, ninjas would be the victor in any confrontation between the two- the pirates would be lucky if they even noticed their stealthy doom coming through their grog-fueled stupors.

I’ve taken to spiking my hair. I mean, really spiking it- as in, there over a half dozen separate spikes of 2 or more inches coming straight off my head, prompting people to stare, blink, and yell “Whoa, that’s punk as f***!” when they see me. It’s purple, too, but I think you knew that already.

I think I scare old ladies. I know I scare (or at least piss off with my very presence) honky bus drivers. I definitely get more strange looks at the Salvation Army (we went there today, only to discover they had another “Family Day” where nearly everything in the store is 50% off).

I really dig the hair, but not so much the looks. I guess it comes with the terrirory, though ;)

I doubt I’ll do this every day, ‘cuz it will make it impossible to wear a hat, or even a hoodie with the hood up. Beth knitted me a sauceum pirate hat the other day, and now that it’s looking like we’ll actually have an autumn I’m looking forward to wearing it one day :)

’till then, it’s keepin’ my firefox/red panda cub warm :D

Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day (I find it annoying that every time I told someone this, their response was, more often than not, “According to who?” How boring. Does it really matter who? It’s fun for $DEITY’s sake!). I celebrated by wearing a Jolly Roger shirt that Beth helped me make, and a pirate eye patch. Unfortunately, I had the eyepatch over my strong eye (only for about an hour) and ended up getting eyestrain in the other eye, and a headache which stuck with me for most of the rest of the day. Bleargh.

We didn’t have any fun pirate games or movie viewing, but I did see a few other people wearing Jolly Roger shirts :)

Last night (after a nap to clear my headache) I went to the maul with ctl and happicow for dinner, where I managed to buy a small pile of Halloween junk from Spencers (I wish more places sold Halloween junk all year long, so I could budget my junk acquisitions over the course of the year! I <3 Halloween stuff!). Typically, while at Spencers I managed to break a shot glass. It wasn’t really my fault- I went to pick up the box to look at the designs on the glasses and one end of the box was broken so the glass fell out (nevermind that it bounced about 10 times before actually breaking, and I didn’t manage to catch it any time), but it was still embarrassing :( At least they didn’t make me pay for it on account of it not being my fault, really.

Oh well, tonight is Science Cabaret!! w007!