Me, This Afternoon

Visit Girlish Whimsy in at it's new home.

Or, check out Curiosities, an "electronic wonder-room" on tumblr.

That's it!

Convinced that my comments will never work again, I've moved my blog to wordpress, which is much more complicated and annoying to work with.

But you made me do it, Blogger.

You made me do it.

Smell you later!

Sunday Poem

Life Is But A Dream
Lewis Carroll

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--

Long has paled that sunny sky;
Echoes fade and memories die;
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?

Ha!

Dan Brown ruins every thing!

Dan Brown's latest book takes down freemasons.org

I've got it!

This shall be my next cross stitch!


Also, my Julius Caesar comic is finished has terminated fantastically.

Cross-Stitch Success?

My first cross-stitch project!

It is of a goose meeting a friendly snail, from a kit I found in the back of a closet (circa the late 70s-early 80s).

I've spruced it up a bit by disregarding the color instructions. PhotoBooth isn't really doing justice to the pinkness of the goose.

I've hunted through the backs of all the household closets and found no more free 1970s cross-stitch patterns, so perhaps for my next effort iI'll make my own.

Browsing online I've discovered that most patterns are best appreciated ironically:

Also, many seem to be concerned with welcoming people to places.

Animals are also popular, whether offering encouragement:

Drunkenly declaring their love*:

Or just hanging out, striking self-satisfied poses:

*That bunny is going to be sooooo embarassed when his friends tell him about this tomorrow.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad

This is what I made Maw and Paw for their 38th anniversary*. Check them out, in all their youthful innocence (at ages 22 and 23).



*Yes, it is the cheapest gift ever.

Ha! So true...

In other news, now that The Gothic Novel has reached it's stunning conclusion* I've begun a new genre-parodying e-novel.

This one takes on the historical-mystery-thriller genre, which I both love to hate and hate to love.

I hate the dumbed-down scholarship and the way they put wild conjecture on the level with actual fact so that they're indistinguishable to the average reader (something scholars are quite capable of doing on their own without the help of fiction). I get annoyed with the way the protagonist, always a supposed genius in his/her field, will randomly forget hugely important information when convinient for building suspense**

But many of the genre's silly conventions appeal to me. I like the location-hoping, where every clue has to be visited in person at some famed historical site. I like the idea that great discoveries are just sitting there in plain sight, waiting for some one to accidentally figure them out. And I like an academic protagonist whose superpower is obscure knowledge. Especially, I like the character of the distinguished British gentleman with the sparkling wit and endless knowledge to turns out to be evil, usually.

The first chapter is currently underway. Stay tuned for...

When mild-mannered professor Nick Harris accepts a job at small college in the Midwest, he doesn’t expect anything more challenging than trying to interest a room full of teenagers in Early Modern history. But St. Mary Francis College holds the key to a centuries-old secret so powerful, so shocking, that the quest to unlock it sends Nick racing across the globe. He soon discovers that he’s not the only seeker interested in ancient truths. There are others following the same path, and some seem willing to kill to see that Nick never makes it to the end...

*I initially wrote "is done" in place of "has reached it's stunning conclusion," and whenever I do that (replace a simple word with a more hyperbolic statement) I imagine Winona Rider in Beetlejuice, writing her suicide note. "I am alone [scrtach scrtach] I am utterly alone. By the time you read this, I will be gone, having jumped [scratch scratch] having plummeted..." Just thought I'd share that. Incidentally, I learned the meaning of "utterly" from that scene.

**Interred with their Bones, which I'd otherwise classify as "pretty-not-bad," provides a particularly irritating example, in which the heroine totally forgets about Cardenio and then, when the plot requires it, it all "Oh, right! Shakespeare wrote some lost plays!"

Hey, What Happened to Julius Caesar?

Oh, I moved it over to girlishwhimsy.com.



Update: It's done!

Sunday Poem

The Longest Poem in the World

Of course I fall asleep and a girl asks to hang

All I had to do was tweet and the door bell rang.

got a bloody cold and im living in an ice box!

so happy both my teams won this weekend! Tide and cocks!

Going to the fair for some rides, food, animals, and cute guys I hope...

Listening to a bunch of Who the Hell is Jane? ish and it is DOPE!

I spent hours cleaning my room and only half of it is clean now. Sigh. ):

What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.

The sun goes down, and so does she.

And I'd love for you to join me.

things got a little bit crazy and somehow i lost my pants

seriously need to start applying for scholarships and grants .

Can't believe we've seen Serena, Nadal and Venus play today.

boy we've had a real good time, and I wish you the best on your way. ?

FOLLOW ME, AND TWEET ME!! :D

so watch, and you shall see!

And no, i don't, I don't care what you say ♪

Callum and I were very brave today :o)

Brain food = coffee and cake.

And it's all, all so fake~

Well, Now I Know Where to Get my MFA

Vermont College of the Fine Arts: Where We Let You Just Sit Alone In a Pool of Light, Being all Emo and Exploring Your Soul

Gothic Novel Update

IT'S FINISHED!

By which I mean, all thirty chapters are written, and the resolution is as resolved as it's going to be.

I may go back and refine things, I may ignore it for another five or six years and then put out the New, New Revised Edition.

Only time will tell.

Sunday Poem

Best Thing Ever?

Just when you think it can't get any more amazing, about three minutes in, it transcends to a level of amazing so amazing there are no words to describe how amazing it is.

Something Worth Reading

I missed this when it first came out, because I was in NYC, but there is a quite thought provoking post on Shakesville: The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck, about the difficulty of dealing with mysogyny from men we otherwise love, like, respect.

I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.

Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?

[...]

This, then, is the terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: Men are allowed the easy comfort of their unexamined privilege, but my regard will always be shot through with a steely, anxious bolt of caution.

In particular, I was reminded of my father. Everyone, I think, has someone in their life resposible for sending them irritating forwarded email, and Daddy Pimms is mine. He either doesn't think (or doesn't care, I go back and forth on this) "Hmm... perhaps my daughter, being a woman, will be less than amused by this email about the hopeless folly of womankind," and sends me something like this:

---

From: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com
Subject: Thought you'd like this...
To: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com

With the high rate of attacks on women in secluded parking lots, especially during evening hours, the Minneapolis City Council has established a 'Women Only' parking lot at the Mall of America Even the parking lot attendants are exclusively female so that a comfortable and safe environment is created for patrons.

Below is the first picture available of this world-first women-only parking lot in Minnesota ..

---

You know what's even more hilarious than the fact that women can't drive? The idea of women being sexually assaulted in parking lots!

I mean, you'd have to be a total humourless scold to find the framing of this joke really creepy, right? You have to totally miss the point, which is about driving and how women suck at it because they're probably putting on make-up or like, baking cookies in the glovebox. I mean, why would a man who has a daughter who often parks in parking lots at night (not to mention a wife who is also wont to do that) be at all turned off by that first paragraph?

And then there was this:

---

From: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com
Subject: IT help...
To: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com

I think of you as my IT expert. [nonsensical question about his computer edited out]

---

Now, this I might actually find kind of funny, if he was saying something along the lines of "This is ironic, because I use you as my IT expert, a job many think women are unable to perform." But in fact, he was attempting to pay me a compliment by pointing me out as exceptional*. Because this image is a pretty accurate representation of a certain type of woman, but I should be able to laugh at them because I am not that type (i.e. not skinny, blonde, straight). In fact, I should want to laugh at them. He was giving me a golden opportunity to mock women who are prettier than me, and isn't that a favorite pastime of the ladies? When they aren't shopping for shoes and nagging their husbands?

And finally:

---

From: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com
Subject: This is worrying
To: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com

Beer contains female hormones

Last month, Wits University and RAU scientists released the results of a
Recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer.
Men should take a concerned look at their beer consumption.
The theory is that beer contains female hormones (hops contain
Phytoestrogens) and that by drinking enough beer, men turn into women .
To test the theory, 100 men drank 8 pints of beer each within a 1 hour
Period.


It was then observed that 100% of the test subjects :
1) Argued over nothing.
2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong.
3) Gained weight.
4) Talked excessively without making sense.
5) Became overly emotional
6) Couldn't drive.
7) Failed to think rationally.
8) Had to sit down while urinating.

No further testing was considered necessary.
Send this to the men you know to warn them about drinking too much beer!

---

And so:

---

From: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com
Subject: Re: This is worrying
To: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com

why in the world would a woman find that amusing?

you know, mom always tells me to just delete your email forwards without reading them, and I won't do it because it seems so incredibly rude.

and while it baffles me how anyone who has the slightest respect for the women in his life could be amused by this email, I can accept that it's the sort of thing guys enjoy amongst themselves without really thinking about it.

however it doesn't seem to me to require more than a millisecond of contemplation to realize that whatever you and your buddies might think it probably won't be entertaining to women, so sending it to me is at best an example of how little thought goes into your emails and a worst a deliberate attempting to be insulting (especially when i've already mentioned several times that i don't find that kind of humor cute).

either way, i'm left to ask myself why i don't just listen to my mother and delete your emails without reading them.

---

And so, he refused to email me for a week. Daddy Pimms is perhaps the world's most powerful sulker. Finally, as I always do, I apologized, because I would rather have a dad who talks to me than a dad who doesn't.

To quote Shakesville again:

There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. [...] I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, "I love you."

*Ugh, how I hate exceptionalism "compliments." It's okay that I wear lots of dresses and don't know about sports, because I'm not "girly" to the point of being annoying. I've been praised many times for not "seeming" gay. I'm not one of "those" fat people (the kind that do nothing but eat donuts all day, presumably) so it's cool to engage in rampant fat-hating right in front of me.

This Exists

I saw one of these at the store the other day, and, upon returning home, had pretty much convinced myself that I'd hallucintated it.* Because why would such a thing exist? Who would invent it? Who would buy it? Why? Why?

I did a little Googling to find out what these things actually look like. From (shudder) feeling the package, I'd gotten the impression that it contained one giant, suggestively shaped log of cheese-powdered food product, but it appears that they're more like nuggets.

So really, they're just giant cheese balls. Which is... not really any more right. I just imagined what biting into one of those would be like, and it made the top of my mouth hurt. And let me tell you, I am a fan of Cheetos.






Oh, and by the by, folks, let me just warn you. Googling "giant cheetos" brings up some disturbing stuff.




Yeah... No thanks, I'm good.

*I'd spent about 14 hours in the car, driving from NYC to Michigan. Pretty much everything after we stopped at a Waffle House in Ohio around midnight felt like a hallucination. In fact, it was probably the Waffle House's fault. The whole experience was like a really bad absurdist play. The waitress handed my friend her toast with a cheerful "Here's your cheese steak."

Seen in PA

A sign for the Twilight Diner.

A girl in the car commented "Do they have vampires there?"

I wonder. And what do they serve? Deer's blood and patriarchal
repression?

----
Kitty Pimms
Sent from my iPhone