The Antisocial Socialist

Did you read that NYT article where J*rd*n P*t*rs*n talks about how swamp witches are real and go "WTF?" But also, "damn, that's a really good name for a punk band." But also, "WTF?"

I have good news for you! No, I'm not starting a punk band. But I did make t-shirts.




They come in three versions:
Chaotic Female
Chaotic Enby
Chaotic Femme

Those are the two genders that JP seems to have the biggest problems with, but if anyone wants to buy one with another gender (or D&D alignment, or style, I guess), I'm happy to do them up.

All profits go directly to the TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation.

 
Apparently my little design got famous enough to be tweeted by local fascist nutjob Greg "the Goof" Renouf!

I would be flattered were it not for three critical errors in his sentence-long tweet:

1) I'm not actually an anarchist, nor am I part of any anarchist group, nor does this design have anything to do with or benefit any anarchist group. I'm not even sure which anarchist group he's talking about. I mean, I like (some) anarchists and I have broad ideological agreements and commonalities with them, but I lived in a cooperative house for too long to actually be an anarchist, as I'm quite fussy about dishes and such.

2) It says right in the product description that the graphic refers to peacefully dealing with fascism through fun sports like baseball.

3) And this is the weirdest one—I am not nor have I ever been a Christian. I mean, this commemorates a battle primarily fought by Jews, albeit with some Christian allies. But while I've been accused of belonging to all sorts of beliefs and causes that I have nothing to do with, I don't think I have ever in my life been mistaken for a Christian.

So that's neat.

My latest review is up!

In other news, I did birthday festivities this weekend. It involved Ethiopian food and fancy drinks at Shore Leave. Here is a punch bowl that is on fire:



Okay, it's not a lot of fire. But it was still on fire.

The despair about aging lifted a bit in the presence of good friends, a number of whom I hadn't seen in ages. So that was lovely. Also I got incredibly drunk.

Did a bunch of gardening. I now have almost all of my vegetables in. I'm keeping it simple this year: lots of tomatoes, basil, scotch bonnet peppers, and one experimental ghost pepper. Planted marigolds to help the tomatoes along. Going to pick up some pickling cucumbers tomorrow. The kitten frolicking through the periwinkles is Merlin, one of the tinykittens. Both the two remaining tinykittens and their tinycat mom have claimed my backyard as their territory.




Bonus pictures of my cats, taken with my portrait lens.



And I got boots! They are like this but more black than red, so essentially the same finish as the boots they are replacing, except that a) they are Docs, not Fluevogs, and b) they do not have massive holes in them. So that's good, too.

The best thing of all is that it's a long weekend and I can actually catch up on my sleep and such!

Sorry for so much fashionblogging lately* but this amuses me so I'm sharing.

I have bad purse luck. Part of this is owing to the fact that I object to purses being a thing. Men's clothes have pockets in them. Deep pockets! Sometimes pockets that are hidden in waistcoats. You have all heard this rant before, but there is no reason beyond The Patriarchy for women's clothes having a paucity of pockets. I do not like having to haul a purse around, particularly in this day and age when so much stuff is compact and would fit in pockets if my clothes had the correct amount.

Accordingly, when I get a purse, I need to fill it with All the Things to justify its existence. Which means that my purses seldom last long. Also, women's clothing and accessories are manufactured to fall apart quickly so that you buy more of them because Invisible Hand of the Free Market.

So I've been quite happy with my CBC bag that I've had for a few years. It's cute, it's large enough to fit most things, and it's patriotic in an ironic way. The only problem is that it only has a snap to close, making it easy to open when you do not want it to open, and also that it's falling apart. Which has been a tolerable situation for awhile, but as you know, Bob, I'm headed to Morocco basically any second now, and probably having an easily opened purse whilst travelling is not the wisest.

To cut a long story short, it died. Large swatches of fabric around the snaps essentially disintegrated, as if it became cognizant of its own impending obsolescence and just gave up. I was sad.

But! I had a back-up bag, a cute little teal number that matches my hair. Just large enough to accommodate the necessities, though kind of a pain if I'm trying to fit the Little Red Book in there or get something out easily. Ah, it would do for an everyday purse, or so I thought.

Alas, no. The universe tends towards entropy, and one of the buckles on it that are necessary for keeping it closed decided to tear. Which is weird, because there was no actual structural strain on it.

This necessitated buying a new purse.

A little while ago, when I had two non-broken purses, I saw a purse I liked at a shop and thought, "hey, if I didn't have enough purses, I would buy that one." It kind of looked like a book. Cool, but I have limited storage space and am not one of those women who hoards tons of purses.



So naturally, when mine died, it occurred to me that the shop might still have purses that looked like books. And, lo, it did! Which was when I saw the other side of the thing:



Which is why I now own a purse that looks like War and Peace and I crack up every time I see it.


* Kidding. I'm not sorry at all.

Does anyone want a thing on a t-shirt? (Or have design suggestions?)



Latest updates: The Honourable Wife-Beater's guys are urging him to address the crack video. He's fired his chief of staff for telling him to get help. The Brothers Ford totally disappeared the dude with the video and you'll never find the body.

I have been a busy sabotabby this weekend.

I went to see Tomboyfriend's EP launch on Friday night, which was fabulous. It was also the premiere of culpster's video for "Hot Divorcee":



Fitness and Vag Halen opened. Both of them were highly entertaining but I was especially into Vag Halen. As some of you may know, I have a serious weakness for hair metal. It's a guilty pleasure. If the same songs are covered by talented women, it's all the pleasure without the guilt.

I just returned from seeing Hercules, Handel's almost-opera. It was also really amazing. minussmile and I had gallery seats for the first act (until we swiped better seats at intermission) so it was all bald spots and vowels. I've never been to Koerner Hall before and the acoustics are spectacular.

In between all of this activity, and school, I have been packing and painting all the things. I am pleased to announce that the first project in Operation Teal has been completed!

Another kind-of-guilty pleasure I have is for shabby chic. I don't like the all-white look (for me—I like it for other people, but I can't imagine living in it), but I like the distressed look with splashes of colour. The rooms in my new place are quite small, which means that my usual decorating method of bold, dark wall colours will not work. Accordingly, my furniture is going to be dramatic instead.

( lots of furniture photos under the cut )

Finally, some people have requested a picture of the Black Coat of Swoop, so here I am in full-on winter gear: ( camwhoreage )

Okay, now off to bed—a bookshelf awaits in my kitchen for tomorrow morning.

zingerella has a pressing question that you should answer. In the name of SCIENCE.

By "SCIENCE" I actually mean "DAVID BOWIE."

Purses and earbuds. I find myself having to replace both this week.

My current purse has lasted nearly three years and was $25, making it the cheapest and hardiest purse I have ever owned. But the clasp broke in a way that is not obviously fixable. (I e-mailed the company just in case it is.) I've had my eye on another messenger bag for some time, so it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's irritating to have to replace purses so regularly. (And as I may have mentioned before, I'm ridiculously specific about purses, as the vast majority of them are not designed to be large enough to fit a book, waterproof, and not some sort of silly fashionable shape.)

Then my latest pair of earbuds went today. This was not such a tragedy, as they had the worst sound ever and were uncomfortable to boot, and I was itching to replace them. I am lost without my constant soundtrack, though. I dropped into a computer store and bought $5 ones so that I could get to work and back without having to hear people have loud, stupid conversations on their cellphones. These new earbuds sound much better but don't actually stay inside my ears. I've yet to find earbuds that are comfortable, durable, and perform the not-all-that complex task of transmitting music from the Ministry of Culture to my ears.

I know all about planned obsolescence and late-stage capitalism but really, this is downright inconvenient. Is it so hard to make things that don't suck?

Swiped from secretsoflife.

For the love of all that is unholy, make women's t-shirts available at geek events. I'll add that this goes double for political events, which despite claims to inclusiveness, still suck in this regard (I'm glaring at you, labour unions and your XXL men's t-shirts).

I used to have a whole bunch of t-shirts that I bought because I liked what was on the t-shirt, but the shirts looked like tents on me. I scrapped all but a few, which I wear as nightshirts, because life is too short to own clothes that don't fit.