ONE:  I just need to eat a lot and then have a nap and I will emerge a pretty butterfly

TWO: It doesn’t matter what sort of food I eat, or the nutritional value it holds, I will emerge a pretty butterfly.

THREE: Sure, food waste, pollution and proper disposal of garbage is an issue. And people around the world are starving — but I can nibble just one small hole through a piece of food and move on to the next piece of food. Why? BECAUSE I WILL EMERGE A PRETTY BUTTERFLY.

HELLS YEAH BUTTERFLY ME.

“Eppur si muove” — “And yet it moves” Words puportedly said by the great Galileo after being forced to recant his theory of heliocentrism by the inquisition. Okay, sure … there’s  no actual proof these words came out of his mouth, but it’s the sentiment that matters:

The truth is the truth. You can cover it up with bullshit religious ideas, dumbass textbooks touting ridiculous unproven crap like (un)intelligent design, you can order torture and inquisitions, force people to recant, you can turn a country into The Handmaid’s Tale. That doesn’t make your words the truth. The earth moves (and many other things also happen) whether you believe it or not.

And, well … as a person who writes, draws, makes music, beads, crafts, bakes, sews and so on — I don’t think the second tattoo really needs an explanation. It was either that or “REMEMBER TO BREATHE!”

Filed under: Geekery, Random, Science!, unwork ]]> http://pegomancy.com/2013/05/17/permanent-stupidity/feed/ 0 pegspirate tattoos neil_degrasse_tyson_quote http://pegomancy.com/2013/05/15/the-magical-dream-story-of-the-shit-witch/ http://pegomancy.com/2013/05/15/the-magical-dream-story-of-the-shit-witch/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 02:17:13 +0000 Pegs http://pegomancy.com/?p=1535 Continue reading →]]> Once upon a time I had a dream. I’m not talking about a metaphorical dream, a la Martin Luther King’s speech. I mean an actual dream where I was asleep and dreaming of things that weirdos like myself dream of.

And in this dream, a  bunch of friends and I were wandering around a ginormous museum. There were dinosaurs, castles, knights, swords, cannons — all the awesome stuff that makes museums awesome in ways that only awesome geeks can appreciate because historical geekiness is awesome. And I don’t think I fit the word “awesome” enough into this paragraph, so: awesome awesome awesome awesome.

And then, as sometimes happens, it turned into an “I have to pee” dreams.

A number of you know what I’m talking about. The dream where you have to pee and therefore have to find a toilet.  Which turns into an epic quest that a therapist would have a field day with analyzing.

Because first of all, there’s the issue of even finding one. Every where you look, there’s no toilet. Even when you think you’ve found one, you’ll open the door and it’s a tiny pit where a toilet used to be.

If you’re lucky, you finally find a toilet.

Except, well … it’s out in the middle of a huge room populated by numerous people. So you’d have to pull down your pants and do your business in front of everyone. Or you find a stall, and as soon as you sit down, boom! Walls gone. People there. Your ass hanging out for all to see.

Fun fact: I have gotten over this version of the dream because at some point in time I was just all “OH TO HELL WITH IT, PEOPLE! THIS IS MY ASS! THIS IS MY ASS ON THE CAN!“

Or you do find a washroom, but the toilets are about as clean as a post-last call washroom at a cheap dance club.

But, great luck! In this particular dream I did find a washroom in the museum. The stalls were even clean! I may have frolicked and skipped between the stalls I was so happy I found them.

Then I saw her. A girl from my past who is/was an absolutely awful person. To encapsulate the extent of awful would take far too long, but to summarize: she was one of those “popular” people who thrived on drama. Often drama she created, all while proclaiming victimhood to her followers.

Even when she wasn’t instigating drama, she thrived on it, playing friend, listening to everyone’s ills, gobbling it up like it was her fuel. And while she portrayed this as being full of compassion for fellow people of the world, it just … wasn’t. There was just something rotten under the surface.

And this girl was totally hanging in my washroom dream. The moment she saw me, she ran over oh so excited, and greeted me with joy, as if I were her newest bestest best friend in the world. She invited me back to her place to hang out and talk and catch up on the good old days.

Her place was a small cottage, complete with greenery. Situated within the washroom.  In the middle of her “yard” was a cauldron, bubbling away, providing power and fuel for her house.

And then I noticed the washroom’s plumbing.All the lines were hooked up and led to this cauldron.

She was — as my dream brain dubbed — a shit witch. A person who takes your shit and then brews it for their own energy and uses.

I’m actually quite impressed with my dream brain for coming up with such a term.

My dream-self left and found my friends and ran away from the shit witch, all while laughing and having fun. She wasn’t impressed, and followed me outside trying to be friendly and talk.

So I turned to her, and at the top of my lungs bellowed “LEAVE. ME. ALONE!” She was left whimpering in the background of my dream, all sad and angry that she could not get my shit.

And when you think about it, it’s a good moral for either dreams or reality: Stay away from shit witches. Do not engage with shit witches. Tell shit witches to leave you alone. And then walk away and get the hell along with living your life.

Fabric!

To begin with, I was lucky. Lucky in the sense of “Oh hey, I already have a red corset as my dear friend made me spend a few hundred dollars on a custom made one to be a bridesmaid at her wedding” lucky. I also lucked out in having a mediaeval dress pattern sitting around. Because, uh… who doesn’t have a mediaeval dress pattern just sitting around? I ALSO lucked out when visiting the fabric store by finding an awesome navy blue fabric with stars on it.

The luck ended when I took out my sewing machine to start working on the project and discovered that the tension button for the 30-year-old machine was completely shot. As in “the metal screw holding an extremely important part of the machine together was snapped in two places” completely shot. I ended up borrowing a friend’s sewing machine for two weeks — but had a deadline. As said friend also had to sew her matching Bat Girl steampunk costume. Motivation! It was there. There were other set backs though. Like cat:

Y U want to sew my blanket up????

Eventually I finished up the dress and started in on the jacket. Considering in all past sewing adventures, armholes were my nemesis, I was pleasantly surprised at how easily this went together.

Poofy shoulder jacket

The real joy was the trimming. Why? Because I got this snazzy edging that while awesome and completely fitting for steampunk, needed to be sewn on by hand.

That’s a lot of stitching.

On top of that, guess what also had to be handstitched? Oh just ALL OF THE GOLD RIBBON TRIM to transform my corset into a Wonder Woman style corset. There was a lot of netflix watched during this period in my life so I didn’t go bananas. Well, more bananas than I already am.

Wonder Woman Corset

And then it was time to accessorize. Wonder Woman needed a lasso — so that meant a trip to the fabric store to buy golden curtain cord.

I’m good with knots

A trip to the thrift store lead to the discovery of theses totes awesome earrings.

Pretty pretty pretty

Then there was what to put on my head. Sure I could go with a tiara/crown. But that doesn’t really seem steampunky. The logical thing to do was to have a small top hat fascinator. This is when years of being crafty paid off. Ribbon spool + cd spindle clear cd + hot glue + felt = awesome.

How to make a hat

Look, I’ll be honest. At one point I totally glued my fingers together. And there was burning. But it was all for a good cause, because look at this pretty!!

Hat! Hat! Hat!

Well, then there was also the dark blue netting to add. But in the end I even finished up everything way before the big weekend. Tah Dah!

Sexy mofos

Photobombed by a Nazgul

10. My cat has low expectations of me. Food, water, shelter, snuggles, play and litter box changed. I CAN TOTALLY HANDLE THAT. Everyone else? Expectations. For example, people who I see on a daily basis expect me to remember their names. What kind of ridiculousness is that? My cat doesn’t expect me to remember his name. That would imply he responds to it.

9.  LOOK AT THAT BELLY! LOOK AT THAT BELLY!

LOOK AT IT.

8. My cat doesn’t judge me if I walk around with no pants on. Or naked. He doesn’t care. He’s already there in no-pants land. Also? I can eat beans and fart til the cows come home. Does he care? No. You would.

7. He’s not racist. I’m not saying *you’re* racist. But really, you’re a human. You judge people and are probably an ass on some level over something stupid. My cat doesn’t hate based on religion, race and so on. He hates because he is cat.

6. He protects me from monsters at night. Do you? No. You don’t.

This is a reenactment.

5. Despite being a 15 pound male cat, my Jellybean loves playing with sparkly pink toys. My cat is not bound by silly cultural ideas about “gender.”

4. Moustache

You’re jealous.

3. He cleans my kitchen floor by licking it. Now that’s dedication. You wouldn’t do that.

3. Once again … LOOK AT THAT BELLY! LOOK AT THAT BELLY!

Put your paws in the air and wave em around like you’re going to rip apart a hand when you get tired of a belly rub.

1. My cat has never made me cry. People have. People are awful. People break your heart and let you down. Even the best people sometimes. Especially the worst people. The only time I’ve ever cried because of a cat has been when they get sick or old and have to be euthanized. So screw you people, I’m sticking with cats.

I has a scared.

Apparently my life is a lie. I’ve avoided most horror movies under the impression that I can’t handle them. (See my post on childhood traumatization). This was also reconfirmed when I couldn’t last five minutes into the Dawn of the Dead (new version) and had nightmares from Shaun of the Dead.

So I came up with the brilliant idea of having a horror movie marathon over the weekend to see how utterly messed up I would become and then documenting for the sake of this blog (And science!)

Unimpressed cat is unimpressed

Except after watching movie after movie after movie, I was not messed up. At all. If anything I was bored and cheering for the bad guys.

But just so I feel like I’ve accomplished something, here are summaries to each of the movies I watched.

The Last House on the Left (remake)
So I almost threw up at one point in the middle of the movie when the first girl was being murdered.  Garrett Dillahunt seems like a lovely guy in real life. Also I giggled because … Jesse Pinkman. The whole movie is just normal people just doing awful things to each other which puts it less on a horror level and more on the suspense level — something I can handle without freaking out because that’s like every single episode of Criminal Minds, Numb3rs and so on.

See that knife you have? YOU USE IT TO STAB THE SHIT OUT OF SOMETHING TRYING TO KILL YOU.

Halloween (original)
I know this was supposed to be the original slasher film that started a long long line of slasher films etc. etc. and launched Jamie Lee Curtis’ career.

But all anyone talks about is how badass Michael Myers is, but he never does anything except creep.  And when he finally does kill, and it’s completely expected and not surprising.

Then Jamie Lee Curtis’ character had two, count them TWO chances to stab the eff out of the bad guy until he definitely was completely dead and did she? No. She dropped the knife and wandered off and all that. Her character doesn’t even deserve to be alive if she’s that stupid.

Saw
Going into this, I thought it was going to be bad. Gore has always not be my forté. But I fell asleep midway through, because that’s how … engaging it is? The whole thing is just over glorified torture porn.

Dear Hollywood: I am totally up to the challenge of writing headlines for prop newspapers. Call me.

You know what I find scarier than bodies being hacked? The shitty headline writing when they do the pan-over of various news articles. Example recreation:

“This is a really important piece of
pie.”

They put one word on its own line. So wrong. I am having nightmares that only someone who does newspaper layout can have.

It

Awww… lookit you Tim Curry. All clown-like and adorable.

Holy shit, it’s smoking man. And Jonathan Brandis. And Harry Anderson. And Tim Curry. I’m too busy being nostalgic for all these random actors to be scared.

This was one of those movies that freaked out all the kids my age growing up. But I’m not freaked out. I’m more amused at the production quality of it all. Also … glowing lights? Really? Oooo I’m so scared. Nice fail, King.

The Woman In Black
Look Harry Potter. I’m not falling for this melancholic ruse you’re putting on. Get back to Hogwarts and magicking. Also, I kinda cheated because I looked up the plot of this movie long ago so knew what was happened. Because that’s how I roll if I find something too slow.

The Grudge
Meh. Screaming weird faces. Weird chattering noises. Everyone gets screwed. Whee?

Tremors
Not scary. Hilarious. Why is this filed under horror? Also. Kevin Bacon. With his perfectly feathered hair. I am jealous.

You sass him Kelly, you sass him good.

Nightmare on Elm Street (remake)
So I fell asleep midway through this one.

Friday the 13th (remake)
Meh. Boobs, boobs more boobs. And blood. I have my own. Do not care.

Freddy vs. Jason
Meh. Again.

The Hills Have Eyes
Well … at least the people are fighting back in this one instead of standing around playing stupid?

The Orphanage
Creepy, thoughtful and the usual for Del Toro. But as usual, Del Toro can be counted on to have a morose but not freak-you-out-so you can’t sleep happyish ending.

Dawn of the Dead
My nemesis. I do not like zombies. I do not like zombies at all. Oh fuck zombies. WHY ARE YOU LIGHTING THEM ON FIRE? THEY JUST BECOME FLAMING ZOMBIES HURDLING TOWARDS YOU. OH GOD ZOMBIE BABY COMING OUT OF HER WOMB AGHAHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGH… … welp. I lasted through the whole movie. No nightmares at all either. Does this mean I’m cured?

Land of the Dead.
Theoretically, I should’ve been freaked out by this film because zombies. But no, I was not. I was actually cheering for the zombies because the humans were just assholes.

And then I gave up and went to watch The Swan Princess.

Because the gender tropes and BS found in most fairy tale movies are awful and scary?

The Author of this enlightening post (He’s the human one in the picture, not the cat)

(Guest blog post by Peter Damien)

Good morning.

My name is Peter Damien, and in light of recent holidays and events — such as a “video blog” which I will not elaborate on further — I have been asked to talk to you today about the True Story of Thanksgiving, which a lot of you foreigners don’t seem to know properly. I’m able to do this not only because I’m licensed to tell the True Story of Thanksgiving, but also through a special agreement between the President of the United States and the Canadian Moose-King.

Like most aspects of United States culture these days, nearly every country in the world knows about it, even if they don’t celebrate the same holidays. This is because we’re a bit like a neighbor who hasn’t got a clear understanding of personal space, so we will probably occupy your country and tell you about our holidays until you agree that they all make sense and sound like really good ideas. This has historically been the reason for the occupation of other countries. England, for example, used to occupy loads of places, largely because people all over the world were saying “What the hell is Guy Fawkes’ Night? Why are you celebrating someone trying to blow up your government? We– I– what?” So they came, occupied, told you all about it, and you were so charmed by their accent (which, in the past, was Michael Caine. Everyone sounded like Michael Caine all the time) that you agreed it sounded like a neat holiday.

But I digress, and I’m not licensed for that. I’m sorry.

THE TRUE STORY OF THANKSGIVING

Once Upon a Time, in the year 1492, there were some Pilgrims in England and they were sad because King Ferdinand and Queen Victoria were not being very nice to their quite reasonable pasttimes, and so they called their good friend Christopher Columbus who had a boat he had bought off his good friend Ferdinand Magellean. I know what you’re thinking and yes, frankly everybody was named Ferdinand back then whereas now? Almost no one is named Ferdinand, but lots of people are named Toby. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Anyway they called up Christopher Columbus and asked if he would take them in his boat, the Lusitania, across the Atlantic Ocean and to the United States, although it wasn’t called the United States just yet (spoilers!) it was still just called America.

So Christopher Columbus said “Sure!” and he got into his boat with all of his friends, the Pilgrims, and also his other friends, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln and they all sailed to America with a lot of turkeys and stuffing (which was used to fill holes in ship hulls, a use it is still put to now). The weather was really scary but they were all very good Christians and prayed to Baby Jesus for good weather.

When they got to America they found some Indians who were very nice and agreed to come over for dinner later on, but first the Pilgrims had to found a colony they called “Boston” and then founded another one they called “Plymouth” where they would build cars they decided just as soon as they knew what cars were (Spoilers!).

Later, the Indians came over and they all had a big feast because of the Pilgrims being hungry from all that sailing, and the Indians showed them beer which in the Indian language is called “budweiser” George Washington and everybody else were really super grateful to the Indians and they all lived very happily together for the rest of time without any problems whatsoever at all.

Later, after they gave thanks to Baby Jesus properly and then ate so much food that several of them had to be rolled away from the table like Katamari balls which they also didn’t know about yet because Japan wasn’t founded until 1942, approximately, anyway they all went to a big clearing where they invented a sport they called NASCAR. They had tried inventing football but failed to bring any criminals over and also they didn’t have very many helmets. NASCAR was very exciting and they all loved the unpredictable nature of the game — which way will the cars turn this time???? — although at the time they played it with Wagons and horses because frankly Plymouth was proving to be a real disappointment, and they were thinking of starting a different car-based town called Detroit, but they weren’t sure yet.

Later, there was a Thanksgiving parade which featured a marching band from every school in the area and gigantic balloons from every nearby business but since they had all just got there earlier that day, it didn’t take long.

George Washington and Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln and all the Pilgrims and Indians loved Thanksgiving so much they all agreed that they should celebrate it every single year to thank Baby Jesus but they also decided that before next year, they should build some shops so they’d have something to do with the day after Thanksgiving.

Some time later, Canadians appeared from somewhere else or whatever and decided that because they had sailed over too — with their friend Cortez — that they should also have a Thanksgiving, or whatever, and it continues to this day and is, if we’re all being honest with ourselves…complete plagiarism. But that’s not for me to talk about, that’s between the President and the Moose-King.

And now you know the true story! It is 100% factual and I am licensed so you don’t even need to look anything up at all! Isn’t that nice?

Wait’ll you hear about Christmas…

Thank you to the various ‘mericans who told me about their holiday traditions so I could attempt them. You are a fascinating people, and I wish our two nations a long and prosperous friendship.

(For the record — although I ham it up, I’m quite okay with being single, because quite frankly, I’m ridiculously awesome.)