Cajun Style

19:22

Live tweeting seems to be the new hotness. Live blogging, once so cutting-edge, is now the exclusive domain of journalists and other strange people who somehow got allowed into E3.

Well, speaking as someone who's currently wearing a Justin Timberlake Sexyback 'Club Tour' (unsure what this means) track jacket, I, friends, am bringin' live blogging back.

Pop quiz: this is mostly:

A. An attempt to keep my hands busy with a keyboard instead of grabbing inappropriate butts;

B. A way of drunk-texting the ENTIRE INTERNET instead of just select exes, booty calls, and former managers;

C. Increasingly masturbatory, as I find myself more amusing with every passing beer;

D. All of the above, of course, freaking DUH, it's this one. Pick this one.

19:31

By the way, STATUS UPDATE: I'm on the bus to Nerdy's house right now. Once I'm there, I'm going to ingest several of the beers I'm currently carrying and play "Watermelon Cat" with my godson, who is a cat.

Watermelon Cat is a game where I pick my godson (the cat) up and flip him over and nibble his belly (much like a hairy, reluctantly participatory wedge of delicious watermelon).

19:52

Aaahahahaha... Haha... Hahahaaa... Yep.

20:56

"You guys never saw that Justice League version of the Golden Girls? That's a classic."

Nerdy's made Russian tea cookies, but we're undecided whether we're going to bake them or just eat all the dough because we're adults now goddamn it.

21:41

Not sure how much Chinese food I just ate, but if my body can't handle it, then my body isn't up to the task of being my body.

We're gonna watch Guardians of the Galaxy again pretty soon. I could probably watch that movie until I die. At least until I slip into a coma. Maybe even while I'm in the coma. I'll bet I'd watch it in the coma. Hell yeah.

Crow the Cat is the only cat I've ever met who not only permits belly rubs, she demands them, and delights in their reception.

21:55

Gettin cozy up in here.

23:12

"Let us put MORE of this liquid into our bodies!"

Draxx knows how I plan to spend 2015. And following years, really, until further notice.

Nerdy and I have decided to dress as Bruce Banner and Tony Stark for Halloween this year, in case anyone was wondering. Prepare your trousers well in advance.

The second or third time I saw this movie (Guardians of the Galaxy, which is, BTW, a multi-million-dollar film about the power of friendship) I was in a, how you say, fragile emotional state, and I cried throughout Rocket Raccoon's entire scene at the bar on the planet that's a head. At the time, I think I empathized with Rocket, but since realizing that I'm not, in fact, genetically-modified wildlife, I've realized I actually identify a lot more with Draxx the Destroyer and his near-lethal drunk dial.

00:06

SRS tho, let's all agree that the saddest part of this movie is the part where they break through the blockade, because that's the part where Peter Serafinowicz dies, and fuck THAT.

also, happy 2015 y'all.

Electuaries and definition, yeah I'm fucked up now

Today I created a Gruntfile all on my lonesome for the first time - it was peachy. Grunt rocks my socks super extra hard and makes building and deploying and all that crap feel like second nature; and when a complete mess of a human being like myself makes a declarative statement like that, bitch better recognize.

Also, I discovered Autocomplete Rap:

And that's realer than Real-Deal Holyfield And now you cakewalk and windows 8 know how I feel
— Autocomplete Rap (@autocompleterap) December 30, 2014

I'd consider it a crowning glory of my achievements in the field of computational linguistics if I were ever able to generate a Twitter feed of this magnitude.

Striking It Rich

Amidst my piles of Christmas swag this year was a pair of earrings made out of fountain pen nibs, a gift from my mother delivered with an exhortation to "keep writing." I may be odd-looking, prone to fits of verbal violence, and generally not a likable person, but I do not disappoint my mama. So here we are, back to writing.

It was a relaxed and relaxing holiday, all things considered. I can't say I'm ready for it to end, since its ending entails me returning to a city that currently excels at making me feel lonesome and tragic - but things, especially holidays, do end, and that's exactly the sort of attitude I'm going to need to adopt if I'm going to make it through next year halfway intact. (and yes, by "intact," I do mean "unneutered." Holla.)

Last night, I played this game: Bohnanza. "Bohn" is German for "bean," and this game is, in fact, a game wherein one strikes it rich by harvesting beans. Doesn't that sound fun? Of course it doesn't, which is exactly why you're going to feel like a damn fool when you play a round of this game and realize you're fully prepared to play this game continuously more or less until you die. Turns out, planting rows of card-beans and conning your friends and family into trading you the beans you need for far less than their worth, thereby securing your brutal, merciless triumph-by-bean-gold? Fucking magical. That's what that is. These are magic beans, Jack.

You may be able to infer from my tone above that I won at Bohnanza quite handily, if with little honor. That's how homie do, though; and if there are two people who are used to watching me debase myself at the slightest whiff of victory, it's my father and brother, who were my opponents. I therefore regret nothing.

We also got down with some Big Boggle, which was a fiasco and a half, as my brother proceeded to pound myself and our father into quivering jelly with his legendary fists of lexical fury. As a linguist, playing word games that utilize timers is a struggle on a deeply personal level. If you do anything other than win by a landslide, everyone observing and participating will be all, "Whaaaaat? How can you looooose? I thought you were a liiiiiiinguist!!?1!!"

This is a logical fallacy, but an understandable one. The trouble, you see, lies in the timing. Language is to me less of a forte and more of a fetish, something of which I am such a huge fan, something which obsesses me on such a base level, that I often have difficulty coming at it objectively. I want to stare at the words, gently caress them, try them out in my mouth in various combinations, take them home and cuddle them and study them lovingly beneath a microscope... I am their bitch. They are most assuredly not mine. Timed word games, therefore, are a trial*, as I feel panicked and rushed, forced to cast about wildly for language out of context, prevented by the traitorous little plastic hourglass - always, that devilish little plastic hourglass - from giving any of the precious words the love and attention they deserve. Take away that hourglass, and I can often excel - I recently won at Scrabble, you see, and have been feeling flush ever since - but introduce time pressure into the mix, and I'm down for the count. It feels cheap; I just met these words, and already I'm assessing them on point value? What kind of language skank am I?

No, no, I'm sorry, that ain't me. Take your dirty Big Boggle victory, brother. I'll be in the corner, whispering sweet nothings to my declension tables, loving language on my own time.



* Note that Bananagrams is an exception to this rule, because seriously, who the hell does not love them some Bananagrams. Seriously.

third.

On the third day of Christmas, no one gave me anything, because it was just a Wednesday like any other, but it's also Piroshki Day, so that, at least, was worth getting out of bed for.

I've moved to the International District, Seattle's answer to Chinatown, its PC-er name reflecting its surprisingly low population of residents of actual Chinese descent. English isn't really the minority language here, of course, but it sometimes feels like it is, especially when I'm shopping in Uwajimaya, my friendly neighborhood supermarket. For every snappy young hipster couple debating the merits of different ramen brands, there's a ninety-year-old Japanese lady buying thirty tins of green tea, a Filipino family whose kids are playing tag around the durien display, a gaggle of Korean high schoolers shrieking over a particularly amusing candy... and me, skulking around the canned tomatoes and feeling elongated and uncultured.

In fact, though, being Caucasian doesn't stand out here. I mean, there aren't a ton of Caucasians, but the nice thing about the ID is, nothing stands out here. I've never gotten less attention in any neighborhood, Seattle or otherwise, than I do here. The Witness Protection Plan should send all its... protectees?... to the ID. No one would ever find them, care to find them, or care about them at all.

Having just come off a breakup, I'm deeply a fan of not being noticed. I'm also a fan of the library being a few blocks from my apartment, of the random waterfall that takes up a city block down the street, and of my hardwood floors, though I admit, with embarrassment, that I'm perfectly shitty at taking care of them. I LIKE TO WEAR SHOES INSIDE. SO SUE ME.

Other than hardwood floor concerns, the dry, lizardlike skin I sport whenever the temperature drops below 40F, and occasional insomnia, everything is going fine. As I mentioned above, it's Piroshki Day at Piroshki on 3rd, so I expect a pleasant carb coma later this afternoon, which is always an enjoyable state for me. Those of you with access to calendars may also note the day's close proximity to Christmas, which is both pleasing (cookies!) and stressful (the horrifying, near-paralyzing burden of having to attain thoughtful gifts for a disappointing number of friends and family members!). I'm happy to report, though, that I just found out there's a Christmas ballad called "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot," which is about a kid who is probably an orphan and got nothing for Christmas, and that's the entire song. It's good to know at least SOMEONE is penning tunes about the harsh realities of the Christmas season - namely, that Santa is very old, and his memory is going, and you're probably next on the list of people whose lists he's gonna lose.

ZOMBIES.

SO many transitions. The mind reels.

The Last Of Us is an incredible game. I know I'm late to to the party here, but good god DAMN. If only MB would stop getting his face et off by zombies, I could really get a feel for the joys of this thing. And by "get a feel for the joys," I mean "focus on not crapping myself, because for some reason we thought it would be cute and fun to turn the lights off while we played."

jfc.

Daily.

I don't write enough.

Yesterday I SHIPPED. It was my first Thing that I have Made that shipped! It's all quite delightful, except for the part where I'm pretty sure it needs to be made a hojillion times better. They say, though, that this is normal, for the first time.

You see, I'm at the point right now, with code, where I was at age roughly 16 with sexual intercourse. When I was sixteen, I'd been doin' the horizontal mambo for a little while (yeah, yeah, started early and all that, and no, it wasn't that I was hot, or something - I was just bored and slutty) but somewhere maybe halfway through the year, I hit this perfect sweet spot between pathologically low self-esteem and burning desire to get better at it, and I realized, that A. I had no idea what the fork I was even doing, and B. I wanted absolutely nothing more than I wanted to be ABSOLUTELY.THE.BEST.EVER.AT.THIS.THING.OMG.FOR.SRS.

In the case of sex, as you all know, I became seamlessly amazing at it and I now never make any mistakes during sex or am awkward in any way and I especially don't make lightsaber noises while playing with penises ever. You know that about me. I'm glad we've come to this understanding.

In the case of code, to put it critically... I'unno. If I choose to believe that we as humans can achieve anything we desire with enough hard work and elbow grease, then, yes, I'll probably be as good someday at JavaScript as I am at the no-pants dance (ladies.) If I choose the more sensible approach of believing that we can achieve our desires within certain parameters, and accept mediocrity beyond them, then, congratulations, me, I'm teetering on the brink of Being All I Can Be. A comfortingly morose conclusion, that; and one with which I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

See, I am tired of knowing myself backwards and forwards. I'm tired of being good at and bad at exactly what I always thought and was always told I'd be good and bad at. Heaven forfend - I'm starting to believe I might be approaching a state in which I might be ready to start considering the idea that I'm able to be good at something I fully expected for quite a while to be pretty bad at.

Imagine that.

tl;dr: I am better at fucking than coding, but I'm hoping to continue improving at both, so that one day, I am GODDAMN MIND-BLOWINGLY INCREDIBLE at fucking and pretty good at coding.

Additionally, I have a houseguest right now:

Dat tail wag blur doe.

Dreams.

A few weeks ago, I went to New York City, to ramble through Brooklyn with Billz and create Art with Michele Serchuk. Then I went to Zurich, to climb the rafters with K. Then I went to Prague, to readjust my perspective on reality. Then I went briefly to Luzern, to shout at swans. Then I came home.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112227994524873175075/albums/6057216614659144769

Despite my best efforts, I am still home, and under deadline, strung out, stressed, generally alarmed, but increasingly verbose. The magically delicious silky smoothness of the new keyboard on MB's and my utterly pimpin new desktop babeh doesn't hurt my aspirations of literary greatness, that's for good goddamn sure.

What else? Oh, right, my back piece is finished:

Big ups to Michael Gardner, who says "Aww, why are you being such a little bitch?" when
I cry when he scrubs his needle into my spinal column like a demented child with a crayon of pure pain.

(Notable note: there is no red ink in this tattoo. That's, you know, blood. #hardasfuck)

Old.

What will we look like when we get old?

Will we look the way we remember looking? At some age, does the mirror become less of a physical reality and more of an idea? Will nothing change but everything feel like it has, or will everything be altered and we still feel like we're walking around with 25-year-old legs, or will it be a little of this, a little of that, 25-year-old legs carrying a 50-year-old torso with 75-year-old breasts and a brain that's half 19 one-third 37 one-eighth 52 and the rest is not able to be quantified by someone who hasn't Been There.

What will our husbands and wives think? Will we repulse them a little more each day? Will they spend the first fifteen minutes of every morning suppressing their gag reflex? Or will they not even notice? Will we be to them as divas, as heartthrobs, as even before the first day they met us, preserved in the amber of their passion for our bodies and minds? Which of these eventualities would be more devastating?

Will we cry at night, hugging ourselves, fantasizing about the costume we used to wear?

Will we sleep like babies, content in the knowledge that everything is as alien as it's ever going to get?

Will I fit into the same clothes?

Will I fit into the same skin?

Will I fit into me?

Will anyone notice, or will it all just slide by, inexorably, unnoticeable, and if the latter, would that really be such a bad thing? Not to be noticed, not to be noted, just to happen.

Vacated.

Upon arriving at the cabins, I was informed that Tenets had been laid in place for the weekend, and that they were as follows:

1. Douche It Less

I still don't understand what this means, except that it seems to have little to do with showering, but the degree of urgency with which Brettastic imparted it to me led me to believe that it may have been, in fact, the CENTRAL tenet of the weekend. For whatever that's worth.

2. Stay Off That Clutch

Brettastic owns a manual-transmission car, which instantly makes him a super-awesome Top-Gear-level auto warlock. Or at least, it would, had none of his passengers noticed his alarming habit of stepping on gas and clutch simultaneously while idling on steep hills. His engine noticed, too.

3. Be Safe

Let's not get carried away.

4. Nurse It To Completion

Originally applied to a cup of coffee, this tenet is something it's almost rude not to apply to other aspects of life, as well.

I dutifully inserted these Tenets into a Google Keep note, where they were formatted into a list of checkboxes, making them feel like to-do items rather than a set of guidelines by which to live 72 hours of one's life.

But live our lives by them, we did.

A bonus photo for you blogreaders, of adorable Emily, adorably snoozing in the adorable sunshine and adorably drooling adorable whiskey onto her adorable pillow.

More.

The corset saga continues, briefly. I wore it to a date a few days ago and got a very enthusiastic assist in its tightening. Finished product:

It shapes! It shifts! It shoves! It reminds you that even though you're claustrophobic, for some reason, you enjoy restraint!

I parallel parked while wearing this thing. Please inform those who accuse women of inferior performance behind the wheel, and also tell my dad, because he taught me to drive and loves stories about me parking under duress.

I get to spend the holiday weekend in the Olympics, springing into hot springs and drinking heavily in unusual areas in nature. There won't be any live updates of this blessed event, due to the blessed lack of internet connectivity among the treetops, but I'll have a photo album prepared upon my return.

In the meantime, please enjoy Things Tim Howard Could Save.

Squeeze.

I has a corset.

It's black and shiny and squishes me in like a somewhat elbowy hug. I've never worn a corset before, not really-for-reals; as a young Rocky Horrorite, I poured myself into an oversize bustier to play a double-gender-swapped Dr. Frank, but given its lack of actual compression - and my lack of an actual waistline at the time - I don't think that counts. THIS corset is for real. This corset ain't even playin.

First-time corset application makes one quesion everything one once thought one knew about one's own questionabl-to-begin-with shape. I tugged, gasped, jerked, hauled, muttered, swore, and sweated, unattractively. Moon Base attempted gamely to assist at first, but his heart isn't in it. Trial By Clothing is not his fetish. Luckily, Trial By More Or Less Everything is yet another of mine, so I kept at it until I was about 80% sure I'd managed to put it on in a manner that wasn't doing irreversible organ damage. +1 for me.

The reason I obtained the corset in the first place wasn't for my own enjoyment, though. In two months, I'm headed to New York, where I'll visit my unbelievably attractive friend Billz:

...and shoot another sure-to-be-jaw-droppping set with my friend and admired artist Michele Serchuk. I'm quite excited about this shoot, if I do say so myself - and without blowing anything, all I can tell you is that it involves a fancy hotel room, this corset, and my famous 20-eye Doc Martens. Ladies, start lining up now, and leave your panties at the door, cause this shit is about to RIP THEM APART

I'm wearing the corset right now, actually. Word on the street is, you've got to wear them for an hour or two each day for the first however-many-days you've got them, so that you can bond with them or they can steal your soul via your pores or some crap. I'm not really sure. All I'm sure of is that it corrects my posture (which didn't need correcting in the first place, thanksverymuch, I balance books on my head for laughs), it looks not half bad when worn over a Portal T-shirt, and I wish Moon Base liked it better, because it makes me feel doublePLUSsexy.

Just something about feeling your liver bump against your esophagus that makes you feel ALIVE, MANNNN

Ink.

A third sitting with my main man Michael T. Gardner of Everett's Tattoo Garden.

Not only is he an artist of the highest caliber, he also knows to respond to all my weeps, wails, pleas and complaints with a friendly "Shut the fuck up," and that's a quality to be proud of.

This piece was begun a number of months ago.

(You'll notice the top bit is a cover-up. This isn't due to any lack of affiliation with the good Doctor of Journalism. That piece was very old and had aged poorly; I'm having it redone in another location after the back piece is completed. In the meantime, I'm making sure to stay extra weird, as compensation.)

Because I am surprisingly wimpy when it comes to tattoo pain, I tend to sit for no longer than two hours at a stretch; just enough time to make me forget what I'm doing to myself and start to say, in a sweaty, endorphin-induced haze, "Dude, that actually feels kinda good... Like, you're scratching my back, but, like, REALLY hard... Dude, I love you, man. You're the best." To which Mike answers good-naturedly, "Shut the fuck up."

I have lots of tattoos. I suppose I collect them, in a way. They're much more expensive than most stamps, and much more painful than, say, china cows, but there's something comforting in wearing your art collection permanently all over your body. A sense of ownership, of partnership, even, with the pieces, the like of which one can't have with mere objects.

Of course, I'm biased when I say that. I don't have any physical object collections. My fixation is on getting rid of things. I love moving the most - it enables the kind of wholesale, soul-cleansing bric-a-brac-ectomy for which I just LIVE. Nothing is safe from my rampage of practicality. Cherished stuffed animals; books I can't remember reading or wanting to read; touching birthday cards from faraway friends; Everything Must Go. Only once I've pared down my possessions to the things I am physically unable to part with - only then do I feel my job is done, and can I move forward contentedly, skin shed.

So I suppose perhaps that's why I find tattoos so comforting. I'll never feel OBLIGATED to get rid of them. No one can ever say, "Don't you feel like you have maybe one too many tattoos? Maybe time to cut down, take a few to the Goodwill?" They don't weigh me down; on the contrary, I find them liberating, comforting, like a weird, asymmetrical embrace. They take up no space in my apartment; only in the house in which I've got to live for my entire life, my weird, alien body, and if you've got to live somewhere forever, if you don't ever need to move, why worry about cleaning house, about purging? Why not just furnish it and decorate it as nicely as you're able?

I think about stuff like this sometimes in the midst of a tattoo sitting, while I'm making water-buffalo noises of agony, reminding myself in muttered epithets that I was the one who ASKED for this, and meekly acquiescing to Mike's genial request to "Shut the fuck up."

the fetish of the month

hey girl. why did you start a whole other darned blog? I mean srsly.

First of all, I would urge you to attend to proper capitalization. Just because you're me, doesn't give you any license to be sloppy.

I started a new blog because I've got things to say that I didn't feel right saying in any of the old ones, and because I thought of a pithy title.

is there really going to be a new fetish every month?

WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT GRAMMAR?

I'd never restrict myself to just one fetish in any given month.

is this blog SFW?

I give up. Do whatever you want.

And... honestly, WTF do YOU think? Don't be a moron.

what makes you think you have any right to say the shit that's going to come out of your mouth here?

Someone once told me "write what you know." I wrote too much, ran out of things I knew, and have now had to resort to writing things I wish I knew, things I want to learn, and things I've heard of people who might know something about.

If you don't like it, either A. don't read it, or B. fight with me about it. I love a good squabble.

what else do people ask you?

Not a lot. Disappointingly. I hope that changes soon.