Things I'm tired of explaining to customers:

-What this (om) symbol is.

-What om means.

-How to pronounce "namaste".

-What "namaste" means.

I know I went to a hippie college but I really thought more people knew what these things meant, at least the kinds of people who might be inclined to come into my little Newe Age Shoppe. It's hard not to sigh when someone comes up and asks what language this here "namast" is in or what this "Squiggly thing" means.

Conversely, not everything means something. That there is a coin from Bhutan made into a necklace. It means, uh, someone made a coin from Bhutan into a necklace.

In other news, we're having a big sale through Sunday. Lots of cool stuff is marked 50% off, all crystals are 20% off, and some of them are 50% off too. For the crystals, we get our additional employee 20% discount on top of the 20% sale, so this of course means that I bought a small handful of stones today. My new additions:
- lepidolite
-malachite (mine has more swirls than this picture)
-hematite, which looks like bits of the T-1000.
-pietersite, the swirlings of which look like a Klimt.
-my own little lingham

I also have my eye on a little bit of spirit quartz and what looks like a schmeer of jam on white bread, or as the label says fluorite on its native white matrix.

Mark joked about us moving and having to haul a box of rocks with us. I assured him I'd lift said box of rocks.

Date:	2008-05-12 21:49
Subject:	more metal than you
Security:	Public
Mood:	curious

My apartment is SO FUCKING METAL!!! Some people have bird feeders that attract cardinals or finches or squirrels. Some people draw raccoons, which can be troublesome but kind of cute. Not us. For the past few days we've had FUCKING VULTURES hanging around on our roof, just lounging about. That's right, they can smell the carrion stench of the truly, darkly HARDCORE!! Sometimes they sit on the sloping roof bits next to the windows and peek their black, bald, Skeksi heads in the window. The other day one was up on the bubble skylight, sliding around and leaving little vulture foot skid marks. Other times they hop around the rook perimeter in single file, hopping past the window one at a time. Today I had to shoo them out of the driveweay as a headed out.

Is there something dead in the walls that we can't smell? Have they acquired a taste for living man flesh? Are they spirit totems sent to give us some obscure, metaphysical message from the ether? Does our roof seem like the perfect, Gothic abode for creatures of darkness? Who knows, but I kind of like having them around and find their presence only slightly unnerving. Why? Because vultures are fucking awesome.

toothpastefordinner.com

I am coming to terms with the fact of my personality that I may never be able to settle down and focus on one thing as a life's work. I kind of envy people who do, who know from a youngish age they want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a postal worker or a teacher. Sometimes I want that certainty. My affliction is like a slow motion attention deficit.

As I've written before, the fact of my getting married and committing to one person for, hopefully, the rest of my life, was the easiest decision I ever made and I've never had a second thought. The thought of committing to a career, however, scares the bejeezus out of me. There are too many things that catch my attention and then demand my intense and bookish focus. Makeup artistry still holds me in its thrall, but lately, after working with and handling the stones and jewelry at EF I've developed an interest in at least recreational gemology. Part of it is my desire to seem knowledgeable about parts of my job. Part of is my nerdish compulsion to know lots about something kind of obscure, like feldspar or how one turns a regular topaz into mystic or sunset topaz or the fossilization of that lovely ammonite you're holding, ma'am (which I did have to explain to a woman who wanted to know what, exactly, a fossil is).

I suspect many other people have this same issue. Even if you HAVE decided on one thing to do and it holds you for decades, the world is just too wondrous and interesting to not look around.

Holy crap! For 10 long years have I waited for this day: Portishead has a new album out! Why did I not hear about this sooner? I had long ago consigned them to the realm of late-90s trip hop artists I loved who quit the game too soon but perhaps before they got too stale. From what I've heard of their new album, they still sound like Portishead, but different and current. Beth Gibbons' voice still makes me want to weep. Some of my weekly discretionary income will def be going towards this. Portishead...FUCK YEAH!

Oh, whoops, I couldn't help it, three more stones asked to come home with me today:

-one citrine with a beautiful little veil of rainbow inside.

-two bloodstones speckled with what looks an awful lot like crime scene blood spatter...hence their name.

I like to carry them in my pocket, not for any sort of airy fairy crystal magic reason, but because I figure I bought them, they're pretty, it's a pity to hide them away at home all the time. Gives me something to look at when it's slow at work or when I'm in the bathroom.

At Busch Gardens on Tuesday, my internal monologue sounded a lot like the end song in Team America: World Police. Baby gorilla...FUCK YEAH! Sheikra...FUCK YEAH! Free beer...FUCK YEAH! Coatimundi...FUCK YEAH! Clydesdales...FUCK YEAH! Montu...FUCK YEAH! And so on and so forth. I become very excitable at theme parks.

It was the perfect day. The weather was warm but pleasant and since it was week day between Spring and Summer vacation during an economic slump, we practically walked on every ride. We even got to do Sheikra twice! And I'll tell you this, folks, if you really want your shit fucked up then sit in the back row. Because of the way the seats are tiered the view from the top of the jaw-dropping first plunge (where you pause for a horrible 5 seconds) isn't that much different from row to row. When in the front, the first drop feels like free fall, where one second you're hanging in the air and the next you're falling. In the back, though, the first part of the coaster car pulls you just over the lip, so rather than falling down it feels like you're being fucking shoved/yanked over the edge, which can truly make you shit your pants.

When we went on the first time, a kid in the row behind us bellowed, "THIS IS SPARTAAAA!!!" as we plummeted off the first drop. We all had just enough time for a quick chuckle before our stomachs hit our chins.

Also, I saw the coolest old lady getting in line for Sheikra. She looked to be in her 70s or so and was very neatly dressed: black and white blouse, red jacket, matching red lipstick, big Jackie O sunglasses, and a filmy white scarf tied over her head. I hoped she was getting on and not just waiting for someone. Well, when Mark and I exited and watched the video of the coasters behind us, there she was setting into a seat and pulling down the shoulder harness, sunglasses and headscarf still in place. So old lady who retained her impeccable red lipsticked smile and accessories on Sheikra, I salute you. You are officially, besides Mark, the coolest person I saw all day. Normally I think people who get dressed up at theme parks are dumb, but you were classy. Rock on.

Mark and I were absolutely smitten with the baby gorilla Bolingo and stood by the glass panel watching him and his mom play. Later that night as we snuggled, Mark confessed that seeing that made him want a baby gorilla. I assured him that whenever we have kids, if they're like me, they'll be born with a nice coat of dark hair not unlike a gorilla. Don't worry folks, all the hair is gone except in the normal places an average adult female human has hair, but there were apparently a few dodgy minutes after I was born where my parents were checking for a tail or scary incisors.

Today at work I helped a really nice older lady pick out a gift for a friend. They were some pieces I liked looking at but would never buy, so it was like surrogate shopping. It was quiet enough that I could spend time helping her find just the right stones to put in the pendant she was buying, and I admit I nearly got choked up when she told me what a good day I had helped her have.

Later, a young guy came in and wanted to tell me all about how he was studying wizardry (after hefting some of our wands and twirling them about). He then proceeded to explain about the coma that made him realize he had the ability to turn things into other things, the marital art and sword and knife work he studied and how it made him very good with his fingers, which surprises the ladies (he claimed). Didn't know if he was flirting or just talkative, but I certainly took the chance I could to help a woman pick out wind chimes rather than have to make non-committal responses to his life story. Nice guy, just weird. And dude if it was flirting, well, a) I'm married and b)I only date necromancers anyway.

Oh, work! You have the best crackpots!

Today's acquisitions:

-a piece of tourmalinated quartz, which is, as it's name implies, quartz with tourmaline inclusions.

-a piece of rutilated quartz , which is run through with rutile, a titanium ore. The golden strands are sometimes called "Venus' hair".

Mark expressed worry that his wife is always getting stoned at work, har har. Alicia warned that this is how the trouble starts, with little nuggets here and there. Uh-oh!

Oh heck yeah, Mark and I have the day off tomorrow and so are going to Busch Gardens where he'll get a military deal that lets us in for free. Huzzah, the military is subsidising our rides on the floorless, pants-filling Sheikra! I look forward to riding roller coasters with Mark and revisiting the site of our first date.

Yesterday I came in to work for 3 hours to cover during everyone's break time because Alicia was wretchedly sick. The manager who asked apologized profusely but I didn't mind at all because:

a) she asked the day before so I was able to schedule myself, instead of summoning me on the morning of a day off
b) I'd be able to pick up my paycheck, and I was planning on stopping by work to do that anyway
c) it made sure I was up and out of bed at a reasonable time
d) it was only 3 hours from 1pm to 4pm
e) it helped them out of the lurch and while we were still a little short, it was a little better
f) ultimately, I like my job and coming in for only 3 hours is not a huge burden

Really, the ultimate upshot is that I was off early enough that I could go rock shopping for a few little nuggets that had caught my eye while I was working. I first chose a little, pocket-sized piece of labradorite, a baby version of the egg-shaped piece I got before and one that looks rather dark and unassuming but for the brilliant flash of rainbow along one of its sides.

Next I picked out some Tibetan jet, which apart from having a wonderful black luster is cool because, since it's made of compressed carbon, it's much lighter than it looks. You expect the weight of a similarly-colored piece of hematite, but get air instead. This slight discord between what's expected and what's experienced is delightful each time I drop it in my or another's hand.

The final piece was a little round nugget of selenite. Nearly the opposite of jet, this has a white luster like tiger's eye and, in it's rougher, pillar form looks just like a scale model of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. A word of caution: if you have any selenite, don't get it wet. It's a very soft stone and water will, at best, change its luster and at worst dissolve it. Yikes!

Later in the night I drove out to The Cock & Bull for Kira's going away party. Very sad. I'll see her one more time at work on Sunday and then she's off for Boston and a summer studying storyboarding. Exciting for her, of course, but it's a pity because I think we could have been good friends if she'd stuck around. Oh well, I've got wonderful people here still. Speaking of which, I'll be seeing Jess and Adam tonight at their house for the usual round of beer-drinking and shit-shootin which, to me, makes for a great night out.

Funnily enough, when they came in to see me at work the other day Cara asked if we were all related! I think it might be because we're all three very pale and have dark hair and, as she said, just seemed very familial, which I suppose is a good thing to be with friends, really.

I had yesterday and today off from work. Mark is doing CG stuff and I'm on my own here, so you know what that means: I'm going to the library and then to play resident artist at Starbucks! Yay! I'm more excited about such activities than I should be.

On the video game front, I finally made myself grind through the Temple of the Ocean King in Phantom Hourglass last night, and this morning I finally beat the game. Huzzah! Once I made it through that goddamned temple, the final boss battle was a cinch.

Also on my list of things to do today is play the copy of Okami that Mark bought me for the Wii. That game is so fucking beautiful, and anyone who ignored it when it was on the PS2 needs a boot to the head. You play a wolf who is the earthly incarnation of the goddess Amaterasu and you go around fighting evil and doing good deeds so that you earn Praise, which is kind of like a count of how much faith the people on Earth have in you. What makes it unique is that the whole game is in a sort of sumi-e style of animation which looks gorgeous and kind of makes you feel like you're tripping balls as you play. You also use a paintbrush to do things like paint in and fix broken bridges and the like, thought the controls for that on the Wii can be a bit fussy, as evidenced by the fact that it took me about 10 tries to make a single fuckin' horizontal slice through a rock.

Still a great game so far, and I highly recommend it to those who like their games very Japanese and sumptuous.

Today's weird pet of the day, brought to you by petfinder.com, is Isis, a Sphynx/Siamese mix. She is awesome because she is literally half Siamese, half Sphynx, completely hairless on her back and sides but hairy on her head, chest and belly. This is madness, people! This is mad scientist territory right here!

As Katie the rock/book maven at work asserted, I'm becoming quite the little rock hound. MY latest acquisition is a wee piece of fluorite. It's like the one on eh right, clear but for a single band of purple. It caught my eye in the stone bin for its unusual color (most of the others are shades of purple and green). Then I picked it up and behold! There's a panel of iridescent rainbow inside! At only 75 cents, I determined it must be mine before some knucklehead absent-mindedly picked it up and threw it in a bag with a dozen anonymous stones to take home. I set it aside and with my employee discount ended up spending the princely sum of 64 cents, a small price for some so tiny and perfect and timeless (the damn stone will be around long after I'm worm food). It fits nicely in my pocket so that, like The One Ring, I can take it out and marvel at its loveliness throughout the day.

On a side note for rock nerds: the iridescence seen in labradorite has a technical term. This technical term is labradorescence, which must have taken a lot of thought to come up with. I thought that English class taught us that you can't use a word to describe itself? "My God, the onion...it's infused with onionescence!"

I really like helping kids pick out stones, since so many of them are so goshdarned wide-eyed about it all and agonize over picking out that one perfect rock like it's a puppy, much as I did as a child and still do. One little girl left with a hunk of labradorite like my own, which I'd shown her since she seemed drawn to that kind of thing. I loved seeing her eyes light up as I tilted it to show off its labradorescence. Even her mom was impressed with that rock. Dealing with those kids make me think I just might be okay having some sprouts of my own.

Just a bit of a plug for some friends of mine. They made a gonzo horror film called For Christ's Sake. It's the heartwarming tale of the scientists who create a clone of Jesus Christ, regret their blasphemous tampering with the course of nature, and attempt to erase their creation. JC goes a bit crazy and proceeds to kill his would-be controllers in gruesome, biblical ways. Kind of a Se7en, Abominable Dr. Phibes sorta thing. I did makeup on Nicola (the blonde), Debbie (the brunette scream queen), Michael (skinny guy in the blonde wig) and Dustin (scientist in glasses) for Dead End, which is where I became friends with them.



Not in the trailer is the scene where Jesus sodomizes a man to to death, featuring a willy out the mouth and ranch dressing jizz. Alison gives this movie 2 Catholic thumbs up!

They plan on a sequel, which I think takes place during an Easter parade. Good times!

Oddly enough, now that I'm working I'm able to make my individual days off more productive than I often was when not working. Or rather, instead of just lazing around the joint all day, I actually go out and do the things I intend to. Good for me! Today I accomplished all I had listed for myself in my head:

-deposit paycheck

-finally spend ULTA gift card I got for my birthday from Jess, Adam, Chris and Reba on exactly what I was looking for: new mascara, gel eye liner, primer, and a color corrector palette for my kit

-start period

-go to Starbucks and get proper green tea latte (last week at another Sb I got one from someone who apparently had made very few of them, as instead of steamed milk with matcha I got a coffee latte with matcha dumped in, which tasted weird until I told myself it was like chocolate blended with green tea)

-write in journal

-finish a painting (latest is of a small, blobby baby sea monster that kind of looks like a Pokemon, I admit...I can't help the cuteness, I'm sorry!)

A good day off, and it's barely the evening. Now maybe I'll do something grown-up like organize some of the shit around here I've been meaning to for some time.

Egads. Found this courtesy of badplasticsurgery.com. You certainly don't have to watch the whole thing, just until you first see the female flight attendant. Apparently this is Delta's new safety video spokeswoman, Katherine "Deltalina" Lee and I'm left thinking, this was the woman they thought would set fliers at ease? With the lighting and angles and OMG oodles of plastic surgery, with the sound off it looks more like a clip from the dystopian future where androids straight out of the Uncanny Valley populate the service industry.




Now, ok, I don't know what pressures she was under that she felt the need to get cheek implants and a shave job on the sides of her nose, but this woman just looks creepy and the fact that Delta has chose her as a spokesperson precisely because of her looks bums me out, not that the rampant use of plastic surgery is all that new or shocking. What's even more depressing is all the dudes commenting on the video about how hot she is and how they'd fly Delta any day because of this how they hope to one day meet "Deltalina" and that all flight attendants can look like her. Urgh, argh, blarf. These guys are idiots.

Me, I would have made a safety video featuring Deltar the Safety Monster who tells you to buckle the hell up and shut your fucking cell phones off or, RAWR, you'll be seeing her clamped to the wing in-flight tearing out the gear and wiring that keeps you aloft, suckas.

I can, however, take comfort from the fact that my own self-image is unaffected by portryals like this because it's just so far from my own notion of beauty that I feel under no pressure to try and change myself in this direction. Not to say there aren't other images I aspire to, but this certainly is not fucking one of them. Also, thankfully, I have a spouse and move in the kinds of social circles that don't place very high value on that kind of style either, so lucky me.

So how about you? Does "Deltalina" (what a horrible nickname) and her drooling fanboys give you the jibblies as well?

Y'all need to put down whatever you're eating (especially if it's lasagna or a can of Clamato...though you shouldn't be drinking the latter anyway because that's fucking gross) and watch this trailer. The title of the movie should let you know what you're in for: Tokyo Gore Police. Proof that it's hard to do fucked up quite like the Japanese.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1214128517/bctid1485881525


Now tell me why this made me think of you, wsasianboy? All I know is that I want to find this movie and that those Iron Man trailers look like shitty snooze fests in comparison. A man in an iron suit? *yawn* A woman walking under a parasol in the blood rain from a man's severed arms? Fuck yeah!

Probably my favorite place to hang out at work is near the stone bins and crystal shelves. Now, I'm not all into the woo-woo healing parts of it, largely because I'm not sure how the vibrations of certain crystalline arrangements are supposed to work their mojo on my blood, for example, in the care of garnet. But perhaps I should lighten up about it and give it try, since I'm sure I have done and will do sillier things in my life.

I like hanging out there and just fondling all the smooth, tumbled stones, the carnelian, the goldstones (purple and regular), the hematite and moonstones. There are some nice rough slabs of calcite that I also find oddly appealing. It's just a great sensual experience, and I like helping people root through the bins and find rocks they think are neat, too, whether they're going to take them home to cleanse with a sage smudge or their cousin just really digs pink stones and they want to send them some.

Recently, as announced in our newsletter, we received a shipment of rare dioptase. Well, people have been going apeshit for it. Some of them seem to have an affinity for it, some folks I'm sure are into it because it's NEW and RARE and the pieces we have are actually quite affordable. I am not such a fan because, well, it looks like green space poop. Ok, that's not fair. The crystalline structure is quite interesting and the color is striking. I think what turns me off is that it's SO green. Too much copper in the pants, y'all! But hey, I take it out of the case for people, I pretend to think it's the bee's knees like they do, I make another sale, a rock goes to a new home.

Much more to my liking is the labradorite. See the lovely, sleek sheen? The color in its depths? It's like something a wizard would keep in their study. It's the kind of stone that when you look into it, it seems to be looking back at you. Isn't that much cooler than radioactive space poop? I think so. Which is why I set myself aside a nice egg-sized hunk of polished labradorite that I plan to purchase with the gift certificate we all got for having such good sales last week.

I figured I should get some and get it over with, since I stare at the stuff each time I walk by the case and work myself into a giddy froth whenever anyone asks if we have any labrodorite and can I show it to them. Will I SHOW it to them? I'll make LOVE to it in front of them if they so desire!

Ok, not really, but it really is a lovely stone.

While eating at Chipotle tonight (*drool* why can't you be closer, my love?) Mark was remarking on the fact that all the photos that decorate the interior of Chipotle are, in fact, of Chipotle. "Well, at least it matches the decor," he said with a shrug. This has made me now want to take photos of our apartment, frame them, and hang them in our apartment as my own weird meta-decorating experiment. How long would it take guests to notice, I wonder.

Here are a couple of production stills from Dead End:


Zombie say relax! Jim the zombie. The bones in the arm are, obviously, digitally added after the fact, but I applied the makeup and blood and the green screen sleeve that allowed said digital manipulation.


Linnea Quigley on the roof for a scene near the end of the movie. I got to bloody her up and give her some nice bruises, which isn't all so visible in this shot. I feel the general jacked-up feel of the makeup comes through, at least, though that may just be lingering terror from the rickety scissor lift we had to ride up on.

Awww yeeeah, pint of Boddingtons straight from the can! Classy! I was torn as to whether I wanted a latte or a beer, so I feel Boddingtons was the perfect compromise. I'm totally buzzed on a Wednesday night while Mark plays Still Alive (theme from Portal) on Rock Band. I'm nearly buzzed enough to attempt singing the part of GLADoS. Just how long can we put off adulthood?