My House is Cold as Shit

If you noticed the title of this post, you might assume that this entry will be me whining about how cold my house is.

Seeing as how we've already been there, because I whined about how cold my apartment was last year, I won't do that to y'all agian. That would just be cruel and unusual punishment.

Or probably just cruel punishment. Not really all that unusual.

Instead, I'm going to tell you what I want for Christmas!
Because Christmas is awesome, basically. And also because I don't want to study, I don't want to!

It's Dead Week here at WWU, and that means everybody wants to die. It also means I get to go home in like 8 days, which is super exciting, but also means that finals are next week, which makes me want to die.

I hate finals. Actually, I hate tests in general. Yuck.

So, in the spirit of procrastination and Christmas, I present you with my letter to Santa.


Dear Santa,

I know you're a pretty busy guy, and I realize this letter is probably even a little late. Sorry about that. Normally I'm way more prompt with this kind of thing, but I've been a little stressed lately. You see, I've got papers due, and bills to pay, and I had to spend forever and a day in the municipal court trying to pay my speeding ticket, and finals are coming up, and I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life and I think I'm out of clean socks...

ANYWAY.

So, here's what I want for Christmas.

1. World Peace

That's it.

HAHAHA

Just kidding. I mean, that'd be nice. But last time I checked, they didn't make that in Santa's workshop. Er. Your workshop.

Well.

1. A gift card to Target. Because Target is the shit. I buy pretty much all my clothes there, and also I can get groceries there. Also, I really like the boots they have. I love boots.

2. Boots.

3. Doc Martens. With flowers. Like this.

because we hipsters have claimed doc martens for ourselves. which the goths are pissy about.

4. Clothes. Because I am poor, and buy food instead.

5. Books.

6. Kindle books.

7. A trip to Europe. For 8 months or so.

8. A plane ticket to South Carolina, to see my sister.

Or if you wanted to save some of this for my birthday, that'd be cool too. It's only 4 days after Christmas, you know.

Love,
Marshall


Well, my lovely imaginary friends, that's it until finals are over. I promise to write over break, though!

Raspberries and Ice Princesses

Halloween is just around the corner, and do you know what that means?

candy! it means candy!

Sadly, no. It no longer means (free) candy for me, because society has deemed that, at 19, I am too old to go trick-or-treating. Stupid society.
If I went door-to-door asking for candy, I'd probably get either life-choice advice, seriously judged, or alcohol.

or possibly drunken, judgmental, alcohol-drenched advice. complete with more alcohol.

If you ask me (I realize you didn't) though, the college version of Halloween is seriously overrated. If you're a girl, it seems to mean that you dress up in the "sexy" version of something, put on teetering high heels, and giggle at boys.

none of these things are even remotely sexy. or clever. seriously, sexy Nemo? since when are fish sexy?
never, that's when.

This does not sound amusing or even remotely fun to me. Of course, this may have some link to my childhood.

doesn't everything?

When I was a kid, I had pretty much the weirdest ideas for Halloween costumes you've ever heard of. I honestly couldn't tell you where I got those ideas, except to remind you that I read a lot, and also talked to myself with frightening frequency. My most infamous costume to date is the Halloween I decided to be a raspberry.

yep. I know.

Yeah, that's right. I wanted to be an inanimate object, a piece of fruit. In day care that year, for show-and-tell one day, we acted out our Halloween costumes. Everyone else got up in front of the class and meowed, or barked, or at least acted shit out. I got up there, curled up into a ball on the floor, and didn't move for the next ten minutes while my classmates shouted increasingly desperate guesses like "A rock!" or "A pumpkin!" Strangely enough, nobody guessed raspberry.

The same year, my little sister was an ice princess. She found this beautiful white dress at the thrift store, dripping with lace and glitter. She had a crown, and a wand, and she might even have had matching white shoes.

show-off.

I, on the other hand, got a pink sweat-suit from the thrift store, pulled my hair into a top-knot, and spraypainted it green. Like a stem. Bam, costume done.

I'll give you a hint. I looked nothing like this.

This was also a Hanksville Halloween.

For those not intimately familiar with the geography of the south-east corner of Utah, Hanksville is a very small town between Canyonlands National Park and Capitol Reef National Park. Because our family would often go on long camping trips down in that area in the dreary fall and winter months, there were a couple times when we were gone for Halloween.

And so it was that we discovered Hanksville. Hanksville is too small to have much of a trick-or-treating scene (Wikipedia estimates its population to be around 200 people), so instead the locals gather at a local gymnasium, parking vehicles in the parking lot. Inside the gym, there are lots of kid-friendly games, including costume contests, carnival style games, and the timeless classic of Throw-the-Shoe-at-the-Rat.

don't worry, it was this kind of rat. for some reason, the whole rubber rat phenomenon struck a chord with our family, and every year around Halloween our own front porch is graced with several large, possibly rabid rubber rats. I also received one of my very own from my father in the mail recently. thanks, Dad.

I remember there also being some sort of musical chairs type of game, in which it was possible to win entire pies (or they might have been cakes. this was a long time ago) The year I was a raspberry, I won two of them, and then they made me quit. Jerks.

must... have... more... PIE

It's also quite possible that there was a heavy Mormon influence, this being Southern Utah, but I honestly can't remember that. If the cake-pies said "Jesus is really cool and hey what about that Joseph Smith guy, he was pretty great too!" on them, that memory has escaped me.

something like this.

Once the supply of Jesus-pie in the gym was exhausted, or the bitches cut you off, there was the most redneck version of trick-or-treating I have yet had the pleasure of experiencing.

Out in the parking lot, everyone would flop down their tailgates, or pop open trunks, set up some lawn chairs, and then the kids would troupe from vehicle to vehicle, gathering candy. There was also probably country music playing loudly from more than one F-350.

One of the years we went (probably the first year) we were ill-prepared for such an adventure, and instead of handing out sweet, sweet sugar rushes wrapped in colorful packaging, we handed out granola bars.

I'm pretty sure it was these ones. man, those crumbs get fuckin' everywhere!

However, in the years to come we were more prepared, and brought real candy, instead of that fake hippy shit.

Later Lander trick-or-treating years consisted of a large group of friends. Our parents had all known each other since we were in diapers, which meant we'd all known each other for pretty much our whole lives. We'd all gather at the Milo-Kink's (that would be a hybridization of two last names, neither of which are spell-able) house, and there would be a kid's table and an adult's table. Having never in my life voluntarily sat at an "adult's table," I couldn't really tell you what went on over there, but our table (the better table) there were always Halloween-themed snacks, like smoking punch, ants on a log, and crackers shaped like fingers.

like this. mmm, fingers.

Then we'd all race upstairs to get ready, critically comparing each other's costumes. When we were all quite young, it would be the groups of dads who would accompany us from house to house, hanging back on the sidewalks as we all raced each other to the door, thrusting our treat bags into the faces of those at the doors.

just ignore the watermark... also, that kid in the front looks excited, but don't be fooled. he's really thinking "wow, all I get is that shitty sucker? definitely TP-ing this house. now who's the sucker, muthafucka?

Once we were older, our parents let us go out by ourselves. On any given Halloween, there were usually anywhere from 8-15 of us in one large pack. The safety-conscious dads would give us a perimeter that we had to stay in (from Garfield Street to the park, and not past 9th, or over the river). We might have broken that perimeter, but that's actually kind of a huge area, and your legs start get tired after a while, plus your candy bag gets heavier and heavier, and you start thinking about all those shiny, crinkly, brightly colored wrappers, filled with every manner of candy, from Reese's to Dots, and everything in between.

but Dots suck. seriously. nasty.

Once we finally returned to the house, bags triumphantly bursting at the seams with all our loot, we'd dash upstairs to the common room at the back of the house. Each kid would claim an area of the floor, and upend their bag, sending candy tumbling across the carpet. Then, the trading would commence.

There's always candy somebody likes, that somebody else doesn't. So, you trade. It would get pretty heated, let me tell you.

Finally, the parents would tell us it was time to go, and you'd get to lug your bag of primo, optimum loot home, clutched tightly to your chest so your mom wouldn't steal all of your Reese's.

because seriously, this shit is like crack to my mother.

But in my life, I have been: a black cat. A death-fairy. A blue satin ghost with a long black wig (possibly the ghost of Cher?) Some other really random, strangely disturbing things that popped into my weird little brain.

This year, I think I'll be a My Little Pony.

because I'm awesome.

Autumn

Hullo, my imaginary friends.

this is sort of how I picture our relationship. but with cookies instead of pasta.

Long time no… see? Or something.

As you may or may not know, I have been on top of an active volcano for the entirety of my summer, shuffling tourons (tourist-morons) around a large dining room in a larger old inn for money.

thankfully, not quite this active.

Or, if you prefer, I have been acting as a hostess at Paradise Inn in Mt. Rainier National Park in southern Washington.

it is pretty fantastically beautiful up there, when the sun is out.

Either way, it translates to absolutely no internet (or at least very, very little, very pitiful internet), which in turn translates to no blog posts.

Also I am lazy.

But autumn is fast approaching us, which means all sorts of exciting things. If you cannot think of what exciting things those might be- never fear! I have prepared you a list of the things. Here ‘tis:

1.     Autumn means school will be starting soon. Whilst I am not terribly over-excited to jump back into the world of collegiate academia, I am very excited for these things, presented in a sub-list:

a.     Seeing all of my friends again

b.     Rugby starting up once more

because let's face it, who wouldn't be excited?

c.      Ok, I’m actually excited about a few classes

d.     But mostly, buying new SCHOOL SUPPLIES

yes. this excited.

Let’s take just a moment to talk about school supplies. When I was a child, being tragically homeschooled, we did not really have the traditional back-to-school shopping frenzy I now know is rather a part of the public school phenomenon. 

So when I was introduced to said activity the first year I actually attended public school full-time, I had a field day. I was quick to discover that I fucking LOVE buying school supplies. 

 also this.

Crayons, all arranged perfectly by color, tips sharp and shiny in their box. Markers, caps neatly un-cracked, spongy tips not yet tainted by other colors. Colored pencils, pointy ends sharp enough to stake a vampire. Pens in all shapes, sizes, and colors, their metallic ends going from normal to super-ultra-Kate Moss fine 

and in this case by "Kate Moss fine" I mean super ridiculously holy-shit-eat-a-goddamn-cheeseburger skinny.

(also, gel pens. I remember gel pens being, for some reason, extraordinarily popular).

 I also remember them being absolutely shit pens that worked for all of about 2 seconds, then totally crapping out on you and refusing to write no matter how much you shook them. then, days later, they'd combust in a deluge of glittery rainbow color like somebody shanked a My Little Pony.

Spiral-bound notebooks, pages pristine and crisply white, wire un-bent, covers brightly colored with everything from limpid-eyed lurid Lisa Frank unicorns to shiny photos of whatever pop star was uber popular in 2005 (I was a bit out of the loop then -see: homeschooled-, so I have no idea who that might have been. Britney Spears? The Spice Girls? Al Green?)

oh yeah. it was definitely Al Green.

So yeah. Now I get to do that all by myself, with no mother hanging over my shoulder to sigh dramatically and mutter under her breath about how an almost 20-year-old college student really does not need the pack of 1,324,567 Crayola crayons.

 yes I bloody well do! just lookit them all... mmmm, crayons...

It’s a magical experience. If you are no longer a student, I would recommend you frequent your local Wal-Mart sometime this season (but before it gets too picked-over, so you won’t have any trouble procuring your very own Justin Bieber 2011-2012 planner,

 ...cannot...handle...so...much...douche...

and also in the middle of the night so you can hide your shameful purchases from everyone but the freakish people that are Wal-Mart’s graveyard shift people.

 shudder.

Also so you don’t have to judo-chop some 3^rd grader for your Justin Bieber planner. 3^rd graders are very rarely in Wal-Mart at 2:30am) and pick out some school supplies. Go ahead. Smell those new notebooks. Give the pencils a whiff. Run your fingertips over all the 3 ring binders. I can pretty much guarantee it’ll be awesome. Also that you’ll end up spending wayyy more money than you initially intended.

whoops.

2.     Autumn means I get to wear long pants once more, hiding my ghostly pale legs from the angry, angry sun. Also I don’t have to shave any more. My legs, that is. My face I still shave, since everyone knows you don’t grow a beard until November at least. I’m joking. I would never grow a beard. I haven’t the jaw structure.

unlike this fabulous gentlewoman here.

3.     Autumn means crisply brisk winds whisking in off the bay, bringing with them the enchanting smell of the sea and nautical adventures.

note to self: next time put safesearch on when you google "nautical adventure"

4.     Autumn means the leaves changing colors, washing the verdant streets of Bellingham with deep, rich yellows, browns, reds, and oranges.

5.     Autumn means Halloween, which I have always adored. Though it’s a… slightly different experience now as a college student than it was when I was a kid, it’s still fantastic. It’s when you get to dress up as freaky as you want, go anywhere you want dressed like that, and people will compliment you on your fucking custom-molded vampire fangs!

 because this is the kind of person that wears custom-molded vampire fangs on the days that are not October 31st.

Also, free candy. Need I say more?

which everyone knows that, despite possibly dubious origins, is the BEST kind of candy.

6.     Autumn means at least 4 or 5 public showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which means you get to wear fishnets, stripper heels, and drag queen makeup in public and rub elbows with actual drag queens while shouting very rude, suggestive things at the movie screen and throwing things like rice and toast. You might also get an unexpected lap dance from a man in a gold loincloth and blonde wig dressed as Rocky.

and really, what more could a girl ask for than Tim Curry in stockings and 5 inch heels?

7.     Autumn means cute hipster boys on fixed-gear bikes peddling about with copious tattoos, way too many layered scarves, and unnecessary old-man glasses, scribbling slightly emo poetry in privately owned coffee shops, and blushing when you wink at them.

indeed.

8.     Autumn means I can quit my job (hooray!) (more on that later)

it'll probably too much information. but that's ok.

9.     Autumn means that Thanksgiving is right around the turkey, so close you can almost smell the turkey and taste the prolonged contact with extended family.

mmm, the only country that is on 2 continents... 

wait what?

10. Autumn means that winter is coming.

I love winter. seriously. so much.

So those are all the reasons I love autumn. I do believe it’s my favorite season. What’s yours, my loverlies?

Pink Toenails and Aluminum Tubes

So I’m sitting on a plane right now. How neat is that? I’m sitting in what amounts to a giant aluminum (or whatever the fuck planes are made of- I don’t actually know, and I’m sure as hell not gonna pay for WiFi so I can Google “what are planes made of”) tube that is hurtling through the sky at, according to the little screen in front of me, 904 km/hr. Or 565 m/hr, if you prefer that.

Canadians wouldn't.

Humans is crazy.

I was super excited when I saw that this plane had WiFi, but it turns out you have to pay for it, and I’m too much of a broke college kid to fork over 10 bucks just to surf the net for an hour and a half. So I’m reduced to typing this up in Microsoft Word, and then I’ll just post it later, when the internet is free.

aww, poor obnoxious little white girl problems. how adorable...

This weekend is Easter weekend, which wouldn’t normally be all that exciting for me, 

except for, ya know, Zombie Jesus.

but I’m flying out to Salt Lake City to have a “girl’s weekend” with my mom and little sister. The tradition originated with my mom and her mom, aunt, and two sisters – every year in the fall, for the past 5 or so years, the five of them go to New York for 4 days and live it up. They stay in a nice hotel, they go to fancy restaurants, they see a Broadway show, go museum-hopping, etc. 

no. not like that.

So a couple years ago, Cacky, Mom and I started our own tradition. New York is a little out of our price range, so we picked Salt Lake instead. We stay in a cool downtown hotel for 2 nights, go shopping, go to a day spa for one “treatment” each (I pick facial every time. It’s like a face-massage with steam, and it makes me pass the fuck out. Suuuuuper relaxing.) and generally hang out and do girly things. It’s a blast.

although afterwards, it feels a bit like you've sand-blasted your face.

Anyway, here’s what I really wanted to talk about in this post: I’m taking this class called Sociology of Gender and Society, and it’s super fascinating. To my readers who have already been through the college experience, I’m sure you’ve all taken some form of class something like this. But for me, it’s pretty much the first college class I’ve taken that has actually partially changed the way I look at almost everything in my life.

except puppies. I look at puppies the same.

The professor is pretty awesome; she’s smart, funny, engaging, and knows what she’s talking about. Plus, she’s really interested in what she’s talking about. We’ve been examining traditional gender roles in our society: in the media, in popular culture, in literature, etc. And all of these discussions have really been making me look at things I previously didn’t even think about, and go “Hmm, that’s really sociologically fascinating!”

Actually, that’s the PC version. Half the time I look at stuff and go “Holy shit, that’s way more sexist than I realized! Damnit!”

except Barbie. Barbie is pretty much exactly as sexist as I always thought it was.

And then I feel like going and punching Glenn Beck in the beans-and-weenies. Or something.

hopefully he would make this face.

It’s been a really eye-opening experience for me. I’ve always considered myself something of a feminist, but ever since this class, my feminism levels are wayyyy past what they ever were before.

We’ve been reading this book called Schoolgirls by a journalist named Peggy Orenstein. It was written in the eighties, so admittedly it’s a bit dated, but some of the things she says just make me so fucking mad! The book is about how she, as an investigative journalist, went and spent six months in two different middle schools to examine the discrepancies in public education, and the level of institutionalized discrimination. She spent six months in a middle school with primarily white, upper-middle class students from affluent suburban families, and six months in a middle school with a majority of minority students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in much poorer neighborhoods.

there really is no cheerful picture-way to represent frightening discrepancies in socioeconomic background resulting in a poorer education for minorities, so instead here's a picture of a sunflower.

It is a fascinating book, but some of the examples just break my heart, and make me want to scream at the same time. I find it hard to summarize without either making it sound overly dramatic, or not dramatic enough, so you’ll either have to take my word for it or look it up yourself. It’s some very interesting reading.

this is the book. note to self though: if you're going to google image search "schoolgirls," make sure to clarify what it is you're actually looking for. or put safesearch on.

And speaking of gender bias in the media, have any of my lovely readers seen any of the whole blowout over the J Crew ad in which their creative director sent out an email ad with a picture of her 5-year-old son with his toenails painted pink? Yep. This one, innocent, simple, ordinary picture created a media shitstorm to eclipse even that godawful “Friday” song. One Fox News “psychiatrist” consultant called the ad “promoting transgendered children” and said that the child’s mother had “better put aside some money for psychotherapy for later in his life.” Ass.

here's the ad. my god woman, stop psychologically torturing your child. clearly, his joyful laughter hides his inner gender turmoil. also, putting hipster glasses on him will clearly give him a desire to listen to Sigur Ros and drone about the "mainstream automatons" later in his life.

First of all, what the fuck is wrong with transgendered people? Promoting them is a bad thing? Don’t be such an ignorant dickwad. Second of all, it’s NAIL POLISH. It’s not permanent, in fact, on a five year old boy, I’d be surprised if it lasted more than a week or two. Third, if he knew how many times my cousins and I had painted my little cousin David’s toenails and fingernails, and how many times he’s expressed his wish to be Hannah Montana he grows up, he’d probably shit a brick.

yep.

Sorry. That last bit had a bunch of cusswords in it. But I have very, very strong feelings about all this.

Anyway, I’ll be done for now. Just a few things to chew on, I suppose. Thanks for reading my angry rants!

If you didn’t actually read any of it, and skipped to the bottom in hopes of cute baby pictures or something, I’m sorry I failed you. But don’t tell me, k? I like to think hundreds of avid readers hang on my every word.

here, are ya happy now? it's a cute baby animal. now if you skipped here from the beginning, go back and read the whole thing! or else...