out with the ogre

yesterday i totally did what i said i was going to do and cleaned my room. unfortunately, i didn't actually START cleaning until like, 9pm. before that i took a nap, talked to people online, and watched a few episodes of the simpsons. oh, i also complained a lot !

i didn't just want to straighten up, i wanted to CLEAN. which meant dusting all my books and getting rid of clothes and books i don't want to make room for stuff i DO want. none of the clothes were in donatable condition, so i just tossed them. the books i'm going to put on my porch to see if anyone wants them, so uh, if you want every book by yukio mishima, somerset maugham, or emily dickinson stop on by !



i also had a lot of dusting to do, which is a bummer because i'm allergic to dust. i dusted both bookshelves (only one is in the pictures) and the dust rag was like, black, and my sinuses felt like they were glued together by pain and some glue. i felt very sorry for myself !

i regret that i didn't take real pictures, but here's some before-and-after shots:


from the door before


from the door after

my bed before


my bed after


some trolls and dust before


bookshelf sans trolls

so um, those trolls. i have a weird shameful... i don't want to say 'attraction' cause that implies a sex thing but like... a weird shameful attraction to troll dolls? i love them and i can't help it. despite this, i know that is really weird and lame so i never really bought any until a couple of years ago, when i found all those trolls for $1 at the flea market by holmesburg prison.



don't let that picture of historic holmesburg prison distract you though cause i still have some trolls ! i had those trolls shamefully hidden in my closet and when my mom was visiting, she somehow found them (when she was trying not to clean my room cause i wouldn't let her, which led to her picking up everything i own and asking me what it was) and put them on display. she also was like, "LOOK AT ALL YOUR RAT FINK DOLLS" and INSISTED that trolls were called "rat fink dolls" when she was little. please note that my mom is independently and keenly aware that this is rat fink:



and wasn't confusing them or anything. this may be true, but my mom also insisted that the NEWSPAPER printed that rod stewart had to have a gallon of semen pumped out of his stomach (we were talking about who that rumor was about when we were growing up, and my mom was like, 'it was rod stewart... IT WAS IN THE NEWSPAPER !!!!').

WAIT LOOK AT THIS COOL THING JEANNE FOUND !!!!



can someone look at the link and tell me how much those are and if they're for presta or schrader valves??

anyyyyway, i digress. i didn't finish cleaning until 12:30am, and then i took a cold shower and went to bed, so my xbox is not getting set up until today... unless mouse wants to hang out !!!!!

p.s. christina mocked my trolls until she came and looked at them and then we had this weird maniacal troll interlude where we were basically hysterical and at the end of it she got all serious and wouldn't let me throw them out.

if you want me to stay

what's up dudes ! yesterday i went to the place across the street from my office and got my eyebrows waxed. my regular place, princess nails, closed in 2008, so i've been an eyebrow nomad and basically just letting them grow out and getting them waxed when i come across a place every few months. i hadn't really done anything since like... february? and i realized that there's a place right across the street from my office, so i went there. the girl did a perfect job and left them huge but neat without trying to thin them, but i also got a really weird vibe from the salon. i don't know how else to explain it but it made me feel uncomfortable ! maybe it's haunted.



after i got home, i sort of cleaned up my room. my mom gets here after work today, so i wanted to drop some towels and bedding off at the laundromat, and also like... make my room presentable because my mom is very into clean houses and i am not and i want to make her proud ! about halfway through i got distracted by the internet, but i did manage to gather up like 2/3 of my laundry, take out a bag of plus size stocking packaging and used tissues, and change my bedding. my goal for this week though is to actually clean my room, since i have a 6 day weekend.



mike came over after that and we went to the grocery store to get dinner- they have a salad bar now and i have been weirdly into "salad bar" as a meal lately- and we watched glee. i want to talk about all my problems with glee now (sorry you got overshadowed, mike):



superficial problems
- this may be a problem with me, but the singing makes me want to die of embarrassment. especially when the boys sing, but ESPECIALLY when the teacher gets all "funky" and raps and shit ! i fast forward through a lot of the songs.
- also, i hate that their itunes success means that every episode has like 10 songs now
- too many main characters with boring stories.
- so um, is glee a club or a class? why does an after school club always end with a bell? why is it in the middle of the day?
- i hate both kiss and lady gaga for the same reasons- really terrible music made by terrible pretentious vapid jerks that people are tricked into liking by cool costumes. an episode with both was too much- at one point i had a pair of scissors poised over my heart ready to die if someone waggled their tongue like gene simmons. i'm writing this from heaven, two times over.

actual problems
- for writers who 'get it' to the point that they deal with the subject matter that they deal with (teen pregnancy, homophobia, bullying, eating disorders), they contradict every message they send either in the same episode or a later episode. apparently the message is that it's okay for the GLEE kids to be different, but the class of sub nerds at the school are TOTAL FREAKS and it's okay to make fat jokes about them or mock them for being 'weird' or uncool or dressing poorly ! like, they have a whole episode about how mercedes is perfect the way she is and she shouldn't give in to pressure to lose weight but every single episode has a fat joke about other girls (goth girls, AV club girl being bartered with for food, etc.). and in the madonna episode about women feeling empowered, the resolution to the guidance counselor's storyline was for a male character to tell her what to do and fix her problems for her.
- also, the message to mercedes was that skinny girls hate themselves too and every woman hates her body so it's okay to feel that way? and that quinn's pregnancy cured her eating disorder? cool guys that's a real thing !
- they pick songs based on literally one line of the song fitting the theme without paying attention to the rest of the lyrics. like, rachel's lifelong dream is to sing with her mother, so they get together and sing... 'pokerface' by lady gaga. i get that it has the line "she's got to love nobody"... but it isn't about a tough familial relationship, it's about... uh, bluffing with your muffin?
- their idea of expressing themselves and being individuals is to... do faithful covers of popular music and ape the style of the artists that performed them? cool message.
- lots of tokenizing. like, suspicious inclusion of 'asian girl', 'black girl', 'disabled person', 'hispanic guy' that hearkens back to an OSHA poster or the burger king kids club



this is reinforced by the fact that no non-white characters get meaningful non-shallow storylines like, ever and all the major drama and strife and "real problems" are given to able-bodied white leads.
- lots of weird slut and whore shaming, with all of the "good" characters abstaining from casual sex or sex at all (rachel, the guidance counselor, etc.)
- i do like how they handle queer teenagers/homophobia (i'll get to that in a second) but their portrayals of queer people has been kind of rigid. like, the gay male is acceptably feminine and just one of the girls and into makeup and fashion and madonna and showtunes (though to be fair, he struggles with accepting this in himself because he feels pressured to be more stereotypically masculine) and the portrayal of queer females is hot bisexual cheerleaders, with kind of bogus jokes about manly women and dykey women, mostly at the expense of the female cheerleading coach (played by jane lynch), who they've gone out of their way to portray as straight.



that said, the speech about homophobia from kurt's dad to finn was one of the best, rightest things i've ever seen on television. i seriously was astounded- i've never ever seen anything like that on prime time television before. if you didn't see it, kurt's dad catches finn yelling at kurt and calling stuff in his room 'faggy', and he in no uncertain terms lets finn know that calling a 'thing' faggy is the same as using that word against people, that homophobia is as unacceptable as racism or any other type of hate/discrimination, and that treating being gay like a joke or a punishable offense is hateful, unacceptable, and wrong. i love the way they've dealt with kurt and his dad, and i love that kurt's character was not written in the tired stereotype of "bitchy fag"- he never says negative, shallow, or hurtful things about womens' bodies or appearances (i'm looking at you, writers of "ugly betty"). of course, they'll probably negate all this by showing a gay bashing of a sub-nerd later but for now it's the best thing about the show.

i can't believe i just talked about glee so much !

uh, i guess in other news i got some leggings at old navy that fit really well. these are them- they run pretty big. the xxl fits me with extra room and i'm probably bigger than anyone reading this ! they are a lot more comfortable than the other leggings i had and don't slide down, so i got four pairs.



this may not seem like a huge deal but my ED stuff has been bad, and i've gained weight and none of my clothes are comfortable anymore, and i feel uncomfortable most of the time. it's nice to wear something that doesn't feel like it's riding up or falling down or constricting me like a boa constrictor.

i'm going to go work on some work so i can head out a little early ! my mom gets here after work and my updates may be sporadic while she's here. i'm really excited, though oddly i'm worried that she won't like me anymore !

p.s. cornholio