Halloween Ideas

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. And while I have a bit of an artsy/crafty streak, I've never been one of those people who can make a really cool costume. My best work was probably when I was a box of popcorn in Middle School, of course I had to take the box off if I wanted to sit down.

Last year I kind of copped out a bit as was a flapper:

Here are a few of my ideas for this year. (if blogger had a poll feature that I could find/figure out I'd let you vote, instead leave your opinions in the comments)

Easy to do:

Rosie the Riveter

cotton candy: (my idea for this costume is not exactly the same, but along these lines)

Mark has already decided on his costume but before he did we thought about a few couples costumes including my favorite, Kermit and Ms. Piggy (again I'm not sure I'd do it this way exactly, but it's not bad)

And finally, we talked about being a monkey and a banana, inspired by this baby costume:

Hypocrisy Now!

I became a vegetarian over 16 years ago, and it remains a decision I’m proud of and that I’ll stand by for the rest of my life. And while in recent years I’ve become more concerned with human rights, I will always think that animal rights are an important issue; far to often over looked.

However I think I officially hate PETA. I don’t want to, but they really make it difficult for anyone at all to take them seriously. Their ridiculous “Sea Kitten” campaign is just the tip of the wasted money and effort-iceberg that gives vegetarians and animal right supports a bad name. Last week was doubly embarrassing: first the most ridiculous non-story (the president kills a fly) becomes the most pointless offense PETA has ever railed behind.

Then the announcement that Che Guevara's granddaughter Lydia has decided to start a "vegetarian revolution" by posing for PETA with "the torso naked, covered only by a sling loaded with carrots as bullets."



Because nothing says a respect for the life of all creatures like a half naked lady co-opting the image of a man who led a very bloody revolution. (A man who said: “I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.” And “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm”)

It all just so woefully misses the point, especially when you add on the reports that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 17,000 animals, nearly 85 percent of all those it has rescued.

I’d like to see an animal rights organization that can maintain a profile as high as PETA and put their resources to good use: finding homes for stray animals, aiding with controlling the pet population in humane ways, improving the conditions and treatment of animals used for food (as well as the industry’s impact on the environment) and encouraging people to choose vegetarianism in a more realistic way.

Just saying.

PS. Best thing I’ve read about the whole trend of hipsters (and their babies!!) wearing shit with Che’s face on it without knowing what they are saying:

“If you believe in the freedom of the press, the right to belong to a political party of your choice, the due process of law, and/or private property, then Che Guevara was a monster, plain and simple. These T-shirts send a message, which effectively boils down to this: I have vague left-wing sympathies but don't read history. I am educated enough to want nonconformity but not intelligent enough to avoid conformity. I believe in supporting the wretched of the earth but happily purchase products from multinational corporations.”

And dressing a child who can't even go to the bathroom on his or her own to align with your vague uninformed political leanings is even more offensive forcing them to wear your favorite band's shirt.

Why Dora Stopped Exploring

She decided to go shopping instead. I guess we are supposed to be relieved that she’s not all totally tarted up Bratz style. But seriously? You can’t do any exploring in an outfit like that. Listening to the things my 14-year-old Little Sister faces between friends getting shot and boyfriends going to jail I realize that what a doll like Dora or my childhood favorite Strawberry Shortcake look like is of little to no consequence.

But I’d like to make the argument that it’s all the more reason to just leave them alone. These dolls aren’t for tweens, or even 8-year-olds, these are little girls these are marketed for, as in the 3-6 set. They are hopefully in the ever-shrinking period of innocence; a chubby tomboy with a backpack suits them just fine unless you tell them otherwise.

Girls have the rest of their lives to worry about their weight and talk about boys, give them a few years to make up adventure stories and appreciate the simple joy of a chubby strawberry scented head.

My Stalker Grunted on my Twitter

Yes, I blog. Yes, I gchat. Yes, I check facebook more times a day than a person should. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t get irrationally annoyed by the pointless technological obsessions in which I don’t engage. Twitter chief among them.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

“They are struggling because they have confused new with good.” EXACTLY.

In good company

Part of what made me decide to be a writer was winning a $50 savings bond for an essay on Children's rights when I was 6-years-old. It was also about this time it became clear just how awful I am at spelling.

Over the following 20+ years I’ve struggled almost daily-- try as I might, I still have the spelling ability of a slightly dim-witted child. Ironically, I make a living as a writer and editor, and even for a time as a copy editor. Practice and study has made my grammar and vocabulary skills passable and maybe even a little above average.

But nothing has made more than incremental improvements in my spelling. My childhood friend Jessie taught me mnemonic devices to for words I couldn’t spell (it says something about my brain that I still recite “Silly Cats in Egypt Never Catch Elephants” every time I write the word “science”). After a substitute teacher sent my mom a spelling test in which I’d missed every single word, my mom and I tired everything we could think of to drill the correct sequence of letters for my weekly list of words into my brain (I finally settled on conditioning myself by listening to tape recordings of the spellings over and over before the test). As an adult I’ve managed to mostly cover my affliction at work, but not at all from my friends. Between IM conversations, the spelling bee I subject my roommate to whenever she’s nearby when I’m writing, or my un-natural anxiety when someone suggests a game of scrabble, my lack of spelling ability is a kind of running joke.

But, like some of the other things about myself that I’ve spent years being self-conscious of, I’ve come to accept it as just part of who I am. The best part? I’m not alone. Today I found this fantastic list of six wordsmiths who couldn’t spell. The list is comprised of mostly famous writers...and the inventor of Scrabble. Proving that a love a words and the ability to spell don’t have to go hand in hand.

In which I’d prefer that my unborn children not be stereotypes who only read books with sexy covers.

Some would argue that Moby’s entire existence has been a simultaneous cry for both help and attention. But, despite (and maybe at times because of) his antics I always found him kind of endearing. Until know.

Now, he just seems really f-ing clueless. It’s like his heart is in the right place but he doesn’t realize what he’s saying. Which is basically, “I like gay people so much that I hate straight people, because my stereotypes of straight people aren’t as hip and fun as my stereotypes of gay people.”

(Actual Moby quote: “If and when I ever have children, I want gay children…(the gays) have started fewer wars, and they tend to be well educated, fun to hang out with, and they have nice homes, bars, and restaurants.”)

Also annoying is how Moby’s stereotypical unborn gay children are marketed to. You see, kids are totally image conscience, even kids who read, and they can’t go around reading a book from the 1970’s with a cover that reflects at all the decade in which it takes place/was written. "It's a style—it's saying, 'We are exactly who you are. This is the world you'll feel comfortable with. Nothing about this book is going to make you feel awkward to carry it and wear it. It's as sleek and cool and as with-it as you are.'"

No it’s not as cool as you are, and it’s not a pair of jeans or issue of Seventeen, it’s a book for Christ sakes and even kids are that image conciseness. Sure update the cover of a book when new additions are printed, but personally I hate reading books with “Now a Major Motion Picture” and lame movie poster printed on the cover.

Besides, teenage girls will read Forever even without the stupid chick-lit looking cover. That book is H-O-T!

Things I’ve thought about this Week

I’ve thought about writing about several things this week, but didn’t have enough to say about any of them to warrant their own post. So here they are in a convenient “listicle”:

• As if people needed more forums on the internets to whine, there is a site called angryjournalist.com. Sometimes though, they make a point…the best I saw: “If you got a journalism degree, you probably don’t even know how to spell obituary nevermind write one.”

• Speaking of spelling, to know me is to know my spelling anxieties, and my creative methods of getting around my dyslexic shortcomings (i.e. looking up synonyms of words I want to use in order to find how to spell them because even spell-check doesn’t know what I’m trying to say.) Truly, my poor spelling is one of the things I am most self-conscious about. Imagine then my horror last Saturday night when I was forced on stage during 30 plays in 60 minutes to participate in a Spelling Bee! I lost of course. And was told “ You have to decide if losing this means that you are a loser for this moment, or if you will be a loser for life.” How about a little from A and a little from B?

• I have found pretty much everyone to be mildly to highly annoying in recent weeks. Top honors to these “anti-sprawl arsonists/activists” though, way take a worthy cause (anti-sprawl and environmentalism) and get it completely f-ing wrong. Burning “green” houses to make a point about conservation? Well done.

• I am completely over Obama-fever. In fact, I am over the presidential primaries all together, they reached the oversaturation point a month or two ago, yet still managed to hold my attention. Until now. Seriously, I don’t care if Bill and Hillary took a walk in the park or if Obama is now using the word “transformative” instead of “change”. I’m just over it. For now. At this point, I’m voting for Nader. Also, wil.i.am? The first video was cheesy, but sure, inspiring. The second video? the chanting is kind of creepy, and um, really why don’t you just sleep with him and get it over with already, he’s going to need a restraining order if you keep up this kind of fawning.

• Despite myself, I don’t hate Ellen Page as much anymore. I watched Hard Candy last weekend and was quite impressed with her performance. I think that maybe all the hype about her in Juno was because people wished they made bigger deal out of her in Hard Candy, but torturing a pedophile isn’t as mass market friendly as an emotionally unconvincing poorly written pregnant high schooler. Plus she made fun of the lame Juno dialog during her SNL monologue, and for that I am grateful.


• And finally, this week I’ve been mildly obsessed with Songza

And in my best behavior, I am really just like him

The Village Voice’s review of Sufjan Stevens’ BQE Symphony started off with this:

“All my friends who don't live in New York hate New York. Near as I can tell, they imagine the city as one giant, loathsome American Apparel ad, a crass, joyless, narcissistic, careerist, emaciated, insincere, hopelessly uptight, suffocatingly twee cesspool of white-privilege Williamsburg hipsterdom.”

This description prefaced the review to describe not only the trying-to-hard-cuteness of the show, but no doubt its audience too. My desire to go probably puts me in at least three of those categories if not all in some people’s eyes.

Sufjan’s symphony about an expressway sold out so quickly though that I didn’t get a ticket and as much as I love him wasn’t will to pay the $150 asking price on craigslist.

Still, without actually attending, I can mostly agree with the review. Sufjan is helluva talented, and yeah some of his songs make me get a little teary, and damn if he isn’t cute. Which is exactly the problem, he sometimes over does the cuteness, and sometimes gets a little too ambitious (even he had to know the 50 state thing was going to get old fast), or overkills a good thing (the wings, the Avalanche CD). Still though, he tries, which is more than you can say for a lot of people. Sooner of later he’ll realize that when he doesn’t try so hard he makes some pretty amazing music.


(Sufjan trying too hard)

As for me, well that’s in the eye of the beholder I guess. I think the description of New York isn’t totally off base, but then again I still don’t think I consider myself a complete New Yorker. I’m more of a citizen of the world…