one day i am going to grow wings

Catnip bug spray

Repel bugs, while getting your cat HIGH :D I'm not sure how effective the spray is, but if you have cats, it might be interesting to check it out. I am mildly allergic to cats myself, so it does me no good to have every kitty in the neighborhood blissed out by my possible lack of mosquitos.

I'm ordering some of their Peppermint and Tea Tree soap and shampoo bars. They don't smell as good as Lush stuff, but I think it may be more effective for skin and hair care. Plus, their bars are huge and last forever.

All Cupcakes, All the time

Man, I totally want to bake some cupcakes now. I've made bread puddings, cakes, cheesecakes, brownies, etc. but never really cupcakes. Thursday, I spent 4 hours making a pecan pie from a recipe in Cook's Illustrated magazine. It turned out alright. Better than a Mrs. Smith's box of pie, but not as good as the one from Pioneer Pies (which I later discovered to have the worst record of health code violations in the city, but damn, those filthy bastards made a good pie.)

I want some cupcake recipes.

Top 10 guy-on-guy onscreen kisses

I'm just posting this link so I can have a subject line that totally grabs your attention. I've seen about half the films on that list and they are pretty hot. I think I need to get Wilde on dvd; I've never been able to see Jude Law as anyone besides a really bratty gay boyfriend, nanny or not.

Anyway, this link reminds me of a story that Sarah's mom Jeanne told me once. A few years back, Jeanne was in town and I went over to say hi. After chatting for awhile, Jeanne said, "You know, a few weeks ago, I went to the video store and asked if they could recommend any Ewan McGregor movies." Jeanne was getting the movie for her other daughter Charlotte, who was 13 at the time and had liked Ewan McGregor ever since seeing Moulin Rouge. The clerk recommended Velvet Goldmine and for some reason or another, Jeanne decided to preview the movie before giving it to Charlotte. Needless to say, Jeanne decided that Charlotte was too young for a movie about glam rock and gay sex.

At this point, I have kind of a bad feeling about where this is going and Sarah and I exchange a look.

The next day, both Jeanne and Charlotte go back to the video store and while Charlotte's checking out the other movies, the clerk asks Jeanne how she liked the movie.

"I really didn't think that's an appropriate movie for a 13 year old," Jeanne told her.

"Oh no!" the clerk said. "I thought it was for you! I would never have recommended it for Charlotte. Of course, she's too young for a movie like that."

At this point, Charlotte walked up and asked, "What's wrong with it? It can't be as bad as Velvet Goldmine."

Both Jeanne and the clerk were shocked. "You've seen this?" Jeanne asked.

"Oh yeah," Charlotte said. "Sarah and Jennifer let me watch it. We didn't watch all of it. Just the parts where Ewan was naked and we fast forwarded through the rest."

I really wanted to hide under my chair at that point. Sarah and I both had that "we so fucked this up" look on our faces. It had never occured to either of us to tell Charlotte not to tell her mom about it in much the same way it hadn't occured to us that you can be a fan of Ewan McGregor and not, at some point, see his dick in a movie. That's quite a few movies you'd be missing out on.

Luckily, Jeanne didn't seem as upset as much as she just really wanted to see us squirm. And we didn't let her down on that, I think. Since then, I've heard that Charlotte has gotten to see Velvet Goldmine in its entirety and now has her own copy. See, corrupting innocent teens all works out in the end.

Well, for the past month I've been varying degrees of broke, so I've decided to put some stuff up on Ebay. Also, I can't continue with present hobbies unless I clear out some of the past collection.
Perfume, anime and dolly stuffs.

Speaking of Ebay, I have some Star Trek Barbies that I bought a hundred years ago. I forget how much they were at the time, but I looked them up on Ebay on the possibility of selling them and they are now $9 :P

*sigh* And with Halloween fast approaching, I don't have anything fun to do because I have to work. Bah. I shall console myself by surfing Gorey Details. I have a silver Edward Gorey bat necklace from them that I flove. The Haunted Portraits are also awesome. I want this and this one.

National Novel Writing Month. "Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing."

Is anybody doing NaNo this year? Or has tried it before? I'm kinda tempted... don't have any ideas though. I'm not getting anywhere with my writing, so it would be good exercise to try crapping out a novel in a month's time. (although possibly aneuryism inducing.)

In completely random news: the 24-hour Walmart in town has a really funky doughnut smell. I'm not sure how you can fuck up the smell of doughnuts, but they've managed it. It used to be a pleasant, baked goods kind of smell, but that was a long time ago. It now smells like a small village of doughnuts caught the pestilence and was wiped out and everyone ran away instead of burying their doughnut dead. Or, if you're into Lovecraft, it smells like primordial doughnut ooze that has morphed into some unnameable horror and lurks somewhere in the bakery, occassionally venturing out to eat a minimum wage employee.

In even more random news: today I found out that the new company running my call center will not be drug testing current employees. Or at least without good reason to. ^_^

I Am a Japanese School Teacher

This is the most hilarious thing I've read in a long time. The true stories of an American teaching English in Japan and trying to avoid getting poked in the ass by his pervy students.

I've been looking over the remains of my defunct website tonight. And for your procrastinating pleasure (you know there's something else you'd better be doing), I've put the writing section back up online. Here There Be Dragons.

There are a lot of (in retrospect) embarrassing things in it: I used the pronoun "i" always in lowercase, was overly enthusiastic about the Star Wars series at the time, etc. But I think I was a bit funnier back then, back before the Evil Call Center Job ate my soul.

"The Duke of Hazard" by Cintra Wilson

(You have to see an ad before the article, but I thought it was a very fitting eulogy.)