September, In Which I Get Cranky About Fashion

Do not let what I am about to say confuse you. You may take away the wrong message and I am quite adamant that such a misunderstanding not happen. You see, I am about to say that this year's fall fashions need to be set on fire. What I mean is not that menswear-inspired fashions, per se, need to be put to the flame-- how could I, when I own a pair of these puppies?

No, what I mean is the one item of clothing that embodies everything I hate about fall this year, purely because they have been around since at least last fall if not earlier and I keep waiting for them to die but, like that one Alzheimer's-ridden great aunt who insists on lingering and lingering in a nursing home for a good 20 years longer than she should be entitled to under any merciful god, eternally circling the drain and projectile-drooling on you when you make your bi-annual visit more out of guilt than of genuine affection before screaming about the 12 cats she lost when she was moved into hospice care back in the Reagan administration, they never do. Yes, I am referring to ankle boots.

See, there's this little thing called a cut-- the way your shoes, jeans, shirts, tights, whatever are cut will affect the way you look. Cut them the right way, and they'll make you look taller and leaner than you already are (a sartorial miracle). Cut them the wrong way, however, and it's far less flattering-- you'll look short and heavy, much like photos of your beloved Great-Aunt Mildred back in the 40's. This, by the way, is why that whole leggings-under-skirts trend was so irritating. It made teenage girls look old and frumpy. Was there anybody that looked good on?

But I digress. Anyway, so about ankle boots: sure, they look really, really cute when they're not, you know, being worn by anybody. I mean, who could not fall in love with this:(Steve Madden, $159.95)

I know. They are completely adorable. Look at those little brass buttons! Makes you want to strap on some riding gear and start beating horses with riding crops. (Note: I do not advocate beating horses with riding crops.) But see, the thing is, while they look SO cute while still in front of their little white backdrop thing, being photographed for the website or whatever, they look completely innocuous. Then you finally give in and shell out, and cut ends up rearing its ugly head, and you end up looking like Mischa Barton here:


And that's if you're lucky. See, much like gladiator sandals, ankle boots end in such an awkward place-- just above the ankle, in fact-- that it ends up cutting your legs off in just about the least flattering place a piece of footwear could possibly manage. I cannot fathom how you could begin to make ankle boots look flattering and cute on an actual human leg that had an actual ounce of fat anywhere on it (for example, Mischa Barton above, who weighs about as much as my pinkie finger the last time I checked). The only way I can imagine ankle boots looking even remotely good is when paired with skinny jeans, but if you're going to go that route, why not just wear regular pumps? It defies explanation.

I swear to god, all the trends that I've seen since, oh, 2006ish have just been a giant practical joke played on us by designers who want to see how much shit they can get away with before we catch on and stage a revolt.

The Amber Spyglass: Philip Pullman Is Very, Very Disappointing

Okay, so I JUST finished His Dark Materials. Lame? Yes, but not half as lame as the ending of The Amber Spyglass.

1. The Golden Compass:

Awesome! It had witches and gypsies and a shadowy evil organization that was kidnapping children and using them for nefarious secret purposes and an evil hot chick and people getting shot and blowing up and freezing to death and someone is going to fucking KILL GOD and oh yeah, MOTHERFUCKING ARMORED POLAR BEARS, FUCK YEAH.

2. The Subtle Knife:

What the fuck is this Cittagazze shit can we stop with this and get back to the MOTHERFUCKING ARMORED POLAR BEARS now please? And who's this Will dork? OH MY GOD THAT KNIFE CAN FUCKING CUT TIME ITSELF. Oh, he lost some fingers, that's kind of cool I guess. Yawn. Okay, book finished. I hope the megaawesome showdown with God will happen soon. Maybe a polar bear will rip his jaw off! Sweet!

3. The Amber Spyglass:

Well, that whole "war with God" thing sure fizzled out in a hurry. Almost as if it wasn't the reason for the entirety of the last two and a half books. Oh, looks like the whole Fall of Man Part II that Lyra is supposed to play such a huge role in is going to come down to two 13-year-olds fawning over each other in the moonlight. Annnnd she goes back to being An Ordinary Girl that Anyone Can Identify With in about 2.5 seconds. That's... certainly... something.

And wait, what was Dust supposed to be?

---

Does anyone else get the feeling that Philip Pullman died halfway through The Amber Spyglass and his 13-year-old niece finished the series for him or something? I mean, there was all this stuff about Dust being a subatomic particle that binds the Many Worlds interpretation together, and then he just threw it all away to sort of halfheartedly reveal that it was actually TWOO WUB between teenagers. I kind of feel like he was actually reaching for something much bigger with the whole Dr. Malone side plot, but he couldn't quite flesh it out and anyway God was already dead so he decided just to make the universe magically heal itself by having Lyra and Will feed each other super love apples. Or something. Oh, hey, apples. That's metaphorical. I can't be the only one who had trouble finishing this book because their eyes kept rolling, right? Right?

Eh, I should have known it was all going right downhill when Lee Scoresby died.

Binaural Beats - OR - Are your children getting high off of SCIENCE MIND RAYS?

So I was chilling out by myself (working off a slight hangover, actually) when I happened to come across this little gem. Yes, apparently Junior, tired of chugging cough syrup and snorting nutmeg for kicks, has found a far more insidious source of jollies.

THE INTERNET.

The basic idea here is that-- as I understand it from the article-- there are certain frequencies with alter your brain waves. Teenagers are using them to become more relaxed or chilled-out or better able to yell "FAG NIGGER" into their xbox live headsets for 30 hours straight or whatever it is teenagers do when they're not shooting up their high schools because they have acne or something. You'd think that, since music can't make your liver fall out, kids listening to vague wom-wom-wom noises all day would be preferable to kids railing Adderall in middle school bathrooms after recess, but apparently the danger lies in the fact that musical weed is a gateway drug that will lead you into doing harder things, like meth. I know how it is. One minute you're taking your first puff of a joint your weird friend Jimmy's older brother managed to score and three months later you're throwing dicks up your ass in a dirty alley for $2. I see it all the time.

Anyway, because I am all about responsible journalism (and recreational drug use), I decided to check out and see if this low-frequency weed actually does anything. Luckily I didn't have to shell out for the I-Doser, a sort of musical bong (or maybe it's actually musical weed, since all they're giving you is mp3s... anyway, that's not the point) since there are plenty of samples available on YouTube. Immediately, I found a video that promised me nothing less than infinite bliss. Excited at the prospect of floating in waves of my own joy, buoyed up by dolphins carrying my gifts of love and peace in my own private ocean of sheer euphoria, I clicked.

Turns out infinite bliss is a lot more like a vague headache than I would have thought. The underlying wom-wom-wom sound is kind of neat, but the synthy stuff they overlaid it with sounds like David Bowie with a debilitating hangover (or severe brain damage) fucking around on 80's Casio keyboard, trying to remember how Crystal Japan goes but not quite getting it. Actually, the more I listen, the more it sounds like the intro to an 80's instructional science video. I keep expecting the music to fade out and be replaced with a voiceover about atoms or something. "OUR FRIEND THE ATOM. What is the smallest thing you can think of? A pea? An ant? Well, many millions of times smaller is the atom, the building blo--" and then I fall asleep. I am forced to conclude that there is really not much to getting high via sound, unless you're really into re-creating elementary school for yourself.

By far the most interesting thing I found while searching for free drugs to stuff into my ears on the internet was not actually a drug at all, but a really intense mindfuck. If you have some time, put on your headphones, shut your eyes, and experience getting a haircut from an Italian barber... ON THE INTERNET. There were a few times when I actually had to open my eyes to remind myself I wasn't in a salon with a racial stereotype whispering in my ear.

Look Valve, this episode shit has got to stop

This is what my list of games looks like on Steam right now:

half-life,
half-life,
half-life,
half-life 2,
half-life 2 episode one,
half-life 2 episode 2,
half-life 2 episode 1.24,
half-life 2 episode pi,
counterstrike,
counterstrike: source,
counterstrike: the reckoning,
counterstrike: episode half-life,
counterstrike 2: electric boogaloo,
portal.

A Pictoral Representation of My Life in the Last Few Days

I haven't been around since last month. What have I been up to? Let's find out!

I made a ceiling cat, who watches me sleep:



Then I made failcake, collapsed in a heap:


Folded a cube, with friends trapped inside:


Then changed my name to something with pride:


Then I saw Snake:

And ran out of rhymes. :(

Es gibt eine Wunderland im Canada! Scheisse.

I went to Canada's Wonderland today. I am typing this as I rub moisturizer into my face because I'm Dutch and as everybody knows, the Dutch and the Sun go together like peanut butter and the Holocaust. The hatred is burned into my face. Either hatred or sunburn. Or genocide. What?

I learned something today: Brown people LOVE roller coasters. I don't mean like whitewashed Brown people, I mean like there was a crowd of dudes behind me in line for Top Gun (now Flight Deck) who were jabbering in Tamil. Behind them, there was a crowd of women and children in chadors (and one niqab). I think I saw someone making butter chicken. Oh, and they ALL rode. Even the one who looked 60 or 70. It was bad ass.

I also learned that Brown people get sunburns. Ha ha ha, Zaheen. Ha ha ha ha ha.

And just so this won't be an entirely wasted post, here's a photo I took that I think is pretty badass:


She's wearing a sari and a baseball cap. <3

warcrack, again

Wow has been eating so much of my time lately. I'm so sorry.

Here is a graphical representation of what I've been doing with my life:







I apologize for how scarily bad my "art" is.