Fun! I Had Fun!

Halloween party preparations! I forgot how fun it is to make weird stuff!

Like these heart-shaped pickled beets I made to garnish spooky Bleeding Heart Martinis:

So fun to carve them into heart shapes. I don't remember ever making cooked pickles before so that was fun too. I hope they taste good! They're supposed to leach creepy red tendrils through the martini.

The BEST thing is the horrific mummy meatloaf I made. I can't even believe how well it came out. I have to show you the before and after shots so you can see that it really is a meatloaf and not a war atrocity.

See - bacon wraps. Onion eyes and teeth and tomato sauce glaze for an extra charred flesh effect.

The results:

True Terror! What a horrible nightmare! Complete, resounding success! Will anyone dare to eat this wretched thing? It's almost insensitive.

I put a ton of work into making these ridiculous, meaningless things. It was so much fun! Clearly I need to do even more stupid, meaningless things!

Chocolate, CREEPY, Bacon

Today I made chocolate chip cookies for Pete.  I think I may have eaten six of them myself already.  BAD MEL!!!  Maybe it was only five?

Anyway, while I was doing the dishes I had VPR on (yes, I'm a member) and "Radiolab" was on.  They were discussing the Uncanny Valley effect.  This is what you get when someone attempts to make a facsimile of a human (say a robot or a CGI character) and they get pretty close but not close enough.  Anyone viewing the not-close-enough facsimile gets creeped out* and can't stand to keep looking at the thing.  They said a scientist tested the effect with monkeys and the monkeys all got creeped out too.

This completely explains my lifetime aversion to that Scientology guy who jumped on Oprah's couch.  (Ew.  I don't even like typing his name in my blog.  Ick!  I typed it but I had to change it!  Shudder)  Brad Pitt is headed that way too.  When the posters for the film of "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button" were up everywhere I couldn't stand to look at them either.  CREEPY!!!  Giant photoshopped faces of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.  Yeee!

Bad plastic surgery causes the same effect.  They'd better watch it out there in Hollywood.  I wish someone would fund arts education at least for the folks who decide which people we all have to look at in our popular culture.  Wabi-sabi everyone!  Please!

I'd better stop thinking about this because I'm giving myself the heebie-jeebies.

I will move on to state that tomorrow I plan to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies.  This time I will be putting fresh cooked bacon bits in with the chocolate chips and walnuts.  I need to find out if it works!!!

*becomes profoundly unnerved.  See, I don't have to talk like a hippie.

Yuck

I don't smoke but if I did I wouldn't want to tamp my flamestick out in the palm of anyone's hand.  Also, I don't want to beat the crap out of a piñata that looks like anything alive.  Not even for candy.

Not Pretty

So sad that I actually left the apartment looking like this.

I asked Pete to take this photo for the blog.  Now that I see it I'm sad that I looked like this in the apartment.  That is bad.

I had to go paint the gallery floor tonight and I didn't want to risk getting my normal clothes painty.

However, I don't think I was the worst dressed person on the T tonight.  Close, but maybe not the worst.

Do I have to buy cute looking crap clothes that I can wreck or can I just get over it?  We're not discussing the hair and face here.

Mel On The Beach

Photoshopping by Billy!

Fashion - Pass It On!

Thank you, Jenn, for pointing out this little number from Victoria's Secret. They're so excited about it. The title at the top of the window even says "NEW! Harem-pant jumpsuit." It also comes in leopard print.

It looks like a nice enough article of clothing to wear, as pictured, on the beach. Perfect for those days when I want to look even less attractive than I normally do when I'm on the beach.

Jenn's comment: "hahahahhahahhahahaa!"

Ugly Trend

These leggings are so ugly.

I have seen them out in the real world a couple of times. Only, thank God, on women under the age of twenty-five. They all had perfectly good figures and they all looked terrible in these leggings.

A man might disagree, I don't know. Maybe guys like the ten-ton-sausage-stuffed-in-latex look. Perhaps to them it screams S-E-X!!!! But if you're over twenty-five (and therefore expected to have some sense) and you want to look like you have some class, don't wear these.

Maybe if you're emaciated and trying to look like you aren't then they could work.

If you really must wear hideous leggings this style is surprisingly more flattering to the non-emaciated figure:

I saw a regular woman (probably in her thirties) wearing these the other day and, while really not to my taste, they were in fact flattering.

One more thing about leggings: wear a long top with them. Really, cover your butt and your crotch. I don't care what the other girls are doing. You'll thank me when you see photos of yourself a few years later. Or you'll wish you'd listened to me.

Yes, I do know this from experience.

Certain Disgusting Bugs

I've been away. Now I have a backlog of things to write about. Unfortunately I'm really beat right now so I'll just tell you about my most recent gardening.

When I got up to Vermont a couple of days ago I saw that I had lily leaf beetle larvae the size of winnebagos (the vehicles) chomping down my lily buds. Honestly if I hadn't seen them in the act I would have blamed deer. No exaggeration.

Lily leaf beetle larvae have to be the most disgusting insects on the planet. They are revolting and vile. I don't like 'em. I like most bugs but these are just nasty.

I swiped this photo from a UMass website. The page has everything you need to know about lily leaf beetles on it, including photos of the much less revolting (actually rather attractive looking) adult form.

As you can see the larva itself is bad enough (gross!) but while it's up to its evil business of killing the hell out of your beautiful lilies it is also crapping all over itself to ward off predators. That's fine and dandy in Asia where it actually has predators but totally unnecessary here.

So this weekend's gardening consisted almost solely of me going around with a container of soapy water and flicking the nasty grubs off of my lilies.

I also did some reconnaissance and I hope to have time to post some photos tomorrow.

Warning: Gruesome

I had an unusual dream last night.  It was about vampires and, I think somehow, the economy.

I'm not one of those people who have a thing for vampires.  I haven't read the "Twilight" series.  I can't stand Anne Rice's writing or horror movies in general.  

Sometimes some people are able to write good stories with vampires in them.  Dracula, by Bram Stoker is a wonderful story beautifully written.  "Buffy  The Vampire Slayer" was a great T.V. show.  It had engaging characters, surprising plot-lines and was presented with humor and humanity.  In all of these examples vampirism is eroticized (which is probably why some people like vampire stories)

My dream was nothing like any of them.  In my dream groups of vampires would take huge bites off of people, removing half their body-mass in three quick chomps.  What was left, partial torsos on legs, stood bleeding on the sidewalk.  The vampires would drink their victims' blood from pools in the street. 

When they weren't devouring people the vampires were rather personable, even endearing.  They just seemed like normal, genial people until all of a sudden - bang - half your head was gone.

No eroticism, no remorse.  It's just the way things happen.  People do that too.  Look at farm animals.

Like I said though, I think this dream was about our economic situation.  For example, I'm sure that most of the people who speculated with money, from the house-flippers to the mortgage traders, CDS traders and ponzi-schemers, are loveable people.  I'm sure most of them never thought about what they were really doing.  They probably ignored the fact that down the line somebody (not them or anyone they cared about) would get screwed.  

We all do things like that sometimes.  We all ignore how our simplest actions (or inactions) can really do damage to others.  Damage is a law of nature.  I absolutely believe that nothing can live without somehow  damaging something else.  

People can't think about things like that all the time.  We'd be immobilized.  We do have to think of it a little bit to mitigate the harm we do.

Anyway,  it wasn't the kind of dream that would make my Netflix queue.  I hate gore.

A Quick One On Prop. 8

Proposition 8 is plain discrimination.

You know who makes laws based on religious principles? THE TALIBAN. If they're wrong to do it how can it be right for Christians to do it? It's wrong to force your religious views on other adults who are entitled to their own beliefs.

Gay marriage is coming. It's the future, a matter of time.

To all the gay people who want to get married: Massachusetts still respects you.

Yesterday I Made Another Blog

Born out of my rage at the heat and humidity of Summer, my new blog is called "Mel Disagrees" although I'm considering changing the name to "Summer Sucks."

I've already posted on it four times.

The Photo I Should Have Posted

Sorry