Free Couch?

This guy should probably never become a used car salesman.

Colour Me Bad

So Gina and I have a lot of discussion about color. Lately, we've been talking about a cowl that she's going to knit for me. Strike that...a cowl that she BETTER knit for me, or else. Anyway, we were talking about scrumptious yarn and awesome hipster knitters with names like Cecily and wearing sweaters while prancing around New England and looking like this.

Alright, I won't look like that, but maybe Gina would. Except for the pants part. Not that Gina doesn't wear pants, well...she doesn't, but I mean she doesn't wear trousers just skirts. Whew! That was embarrassing!

Anyway, Gina turned me on to the idea of having your own color palette (wikipedia breaks it dahn).

Color analysis, also called skin tone color matching or color seasons, is the process of finding colors of clothing and makeup to match a person's complexion, eye color, and hair color. It is often used as an aid to wardrobe planning and style consulting.

Color analysis is the process of determining the colors that best suit an individual's natural coloring. There are several means of analysing personal coloring. The most well-known is "seasonal" color analysis, which places individual coloring into four general categories: Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. "Winters" and "Summers" have cool coloring. Some clues that a person has cool coloring might include ash tones in the hair, grey-blue eyes and pinkish undertones to the skin. "Springs" and "Autumns" have warm coloring. Some signs of warm coloring are red or golden hair, golden brown eyes and golden undertones to the skin.

Gina is an autumn, I think...which affords her the ability to wear all of these colors and look fancy.

Jessica, for the last few years of her life, has had this type of color palette.

I don't have any other way to explain why I wear black, except for referencing one of my favorite songs by The Smiths.

Lately, though, I've gotten a little tired of just black. Partly, because it's hot in the summer. Since I'm forced to deal with the sweaty and humid Pittsburgh summers, I've extended my color palette, too. Let's just not get crazy.

Raspberry

Mustard

Olive

Gray

I don't know if color necessarily frightens me, but rather...black is a calming and protective color. Ask any goth kid how they feel about it, and they may tell you that they're into eating puppies or dressing like bats or whatever it is that people tell them to like, but the truth is is that you can hide so much behind black clothes: not just fat.

As I feel better about my own appearance, I find that more color finds its way into my wardrobe. I mean, look at that raspberry color! That's practically bright. Sort of.

So, I think I'm leaning toward olive for the cowl with some fancy button closures. Look at this pretty girl's mustard cowl!

I'm anxious awaiting late fall...I even have the wardrobe to prove it.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I'm forced to listen to a lot of "Adult Album Alternative" when I'm imprisoned in the candle shoppe. While I'm a fan of the occasional song by the Wuss-Rocky, PG-rated all-stars that fill the muzak of stores that are geared toward middle-aged women, I find myself having a really hard time not being offended by the constant barrage of non-offensive music.

That is, except for this (that's actually TOTALLY inappropriate for the candle shoppe):

"Brother Louie" by The Stories is a mix of forbidden love, lust, jungle fever and injustice with a really suggestive soul backdrop and a lot of suggestive lyrics:

She was black as the night
Louie was whiter than white
Danger, danger when you taste brown sugar
Louie fell in love overnight
Nothing bad, it was good
Louie had the best girl he could

When he took her home
To meet his mama and papa
Louie knew just where he stood

Louie Louie Louie, Louie
Louie Louie Lou-I
Louie Louie Louie
Louie Louie you're gonna cry

There he stood in the night
Knowing what's wrong from what's right
He took her home to meet his mama and papa
Man, he had a terrible fright
Louie nearly caused a scene
Wishin' it was a dream
Ain't no diff'rence if you're black or white
Brothers, you know what I mean

"Brother Louie," is by far my favorite muzak song...but I really did, at one point, enjoy listening to Taylor Swift. She seems like a cute and adorable little girl that writes cute and adorable little songs about being in love or stickers or whatever it is that girls like (that song "Mean," is really adorable and is a wonderful way to help kids deal with bullying). On an especially slow day of imprisonment, though, I actually paid attention to the lyrics of Swift's "Fifteen."

Yeah, alright...I'm a little late to complain about a song that's been around long enough to be on candle shoppe muzak, but there are a few of the lyrics in this song that are just infuriating.

And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind, and we both cried.

Alright, we know exactly what she's talking about: virginity. Really Taylor Swift? That's all that a fifteen year-old girl has going for her? Where the hell are you from? Saudi Arabia?

One of those senior boys will wink at you and say, "You know I haven't seen you around before."

Where did you go to high school, Taylor Swift? If boys in high school had anywhere NEAR this kind of game, I wouldn't have had a boyfriend when I was seventeen that was ten years older than me with a kid, a rap sheet and a huge line of bullshit.

This is life before you know who you're supposed to be.

Really? You know, I'm a lot older than Taylor Swift and I still have a hard time dealing with the notion that I'm actually old enough to be allowed to drive a car (I woke up the other day and swore I was like nine). I'm irritated that I'm supposed to have it all figured out between the ages of 18-30 (including purchasing a house that all my friends will like, having a fucking baby and sitting at a job I hate for forty hours a week), and if I don't...I'm some kind of loser/bum that isn't worth the paper that my birth certificate was printed upon.    

Taylor Swift, c'mon now. What're you like...twenty? You get dumped by John Mayer, dated Taylor Lautner and one of the Jonas Brothers and all of the sudden you're a wise old sage? Much like all of these singing/songwriting girls, you need to release a Christmas Album, a fragrance and then fade slowly into relative obscurity whilst having wisely invested your money. Even Karen Allen knows when it's time to hang-up acting and create a knitting company.

Relapse

I had posted in one of the very first Frou Frou Shit blog posts about how I had a thrift store obsession that was previously out of control...that was now under control. I have been doing so well with keeping my junk-shopping in check, but today posed a bit of a relapse...that I'm totally thrilled to report.

I went to a thrift shoppe the day before last and managed to not buy the following items.

1. A VELVET Elvis painting (not one of the valuable ones, but a pretty sweet painting).
2. A three-foot tall framed embroidery of a myriad of forest animals including an owl and squirrel.
3. A fall coloured soup tureen.
4. A 1970s men's red, white and black "Kimono" still in the packaging!

After being incredibly upset with the treasures that I had to leave behind, I was set on a purpose on my day off today to find some mirrors for a wall hanging I'm making. I was on my way to another thrift shop when I passed a garage sale. Garage sales are fantastic because they mostly feature people that want rid of their wares for very little, instead of people that are trying to make a career of junk-hustling. Although I didn't find any mirrors, I did find this beauty for TWO DOLLARS!

Now, I know,  I'm not supposed to be buying any more lamps (so says Dustin), but the lampshade alone is worth way more than two dollars and the lamp is in perfect condition. The color is gorgeous and it fits incredibly well into my preexisting dream of an aqua living room. Lamps like these usually cost a lot more and as Gina so astutely pointed out...I'm losing money by not purchasing this piece of retro Americana.

When I finally did get to the thrift store, I found fifteen different shirts to try on! Now most of them didn't fit correctly, but I was thrilled to even find that many to try and managed to find this vintage lovely(try not to make fun of me too much for the myspace-style picture. I tried to get a photo of the shirt with it's sweet polyester tie and insane print. I also have no concept of the appropriate way to hold a camera to take a photo of myself that doesn't make me look like I'm fifteen years old posing for someone that has been featured on, "To Catch a Predator." You get the idea about the shirt, anyway). When I was in Charlotte visiting Laura last time, we went to this really great antique shoppe that featured a vintage clothing store inside. It was an amazing slice of decades of fashion change, but the prices were high and some of the clothing was shabby. I was thrilled to find that this shirt has been treated with care (and has probably been hanging in the back of a Nana's closet for forty years) and it was also a yellow ticket item! Yellow tickets were 50% off today, which made this shirt $1.50! Beyond awesome.

Although I did leave behind some sweet treasures, I managed to find a few lovelies to fit into my home. I guess we'll see if I'm still allowed to live in the apartment when Dustin gets home and finds another lamp.

The Sound and the Furries

What Wikipedia says about Furries,

Furry fandom is a fandom for fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.^[1] Examples of anthropomorphic attributes include exhibiting human intelligence and facial expressions, the ability to speak, walk on two legs, and wear clothes. Furry fandom is also used to refer to the community of people who gather on the Internet and at conventions.^[2][3]

^{What I think that this really small description of this huge subset of people fails to describe is the sweetness of it all. Although there are plenty of people that creep-up the place and don't bathe enough, most of the fursuiters and the fans are sweet and unassuming people that receive new people with a kind of warmth and mirth (in spite of so many of them being socially awkward and "weird") that cannot be replicated by all of the bullshit that people invite into their homes through the media.}

^{After Garett, his friend Georgette and I left Anthrocon, we ate at The Sharp Edge in Downtown Pittsburgh where two yuppie women dined at the next table. While Anthrocon was over for the year, there were a few remaining furries wandering the streets with tails, feet and badges. They stopped in mid sentences to have a jeer and then returned to planning their "happy hour," at Mad Mex. Oh yeah, the FURRIES are the problem and deserved to be treated with your jeers...you scazwags. I'm so sure that you're the very definition of style and sophistication as you're pounding seven dollar peach margaritas in your pumps.}

<sup>I find it hard to describe the kind of soul that would be able to stand a really furry suit in the summer for the sake of fandom (I mean, why not have the convention in the winter? Then, you could be outside and be totally comfortable), but I really feel like they should be under considerably less scrutiny than the drunken idiots filtering out of PNC Park after watching the Pirates lose for the bazillionth fucking time. Oh really? Drunk at a baseball game? Well, you TOTALLY reserve the right to judge people.

I cannot say that I will be suiting up next year, but I hope to go to more than just a day's worth of Anthrocon activity in 2012. Besides, I'm still hoping against hope that there is some kind of Fursuiter karaoke.</sup>

^{Enjoy the pics. Some of these costumes are brilliant!}

Guiding Light

I really hope that this is the end of my endless sea of computer troubles. After relying upon my telephone interwebs, the library and my parents' computer, I'm mad at my own reliance upon this technology. There was a time, previously, where I deleted my facebook account and ceased using the interwebs in any kind of serious way for several months and it was heavenly, but now I feel enslaved. In a lot of ways.

With my acquisition of a full-time, but temporary, job, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to be interesting. My fifteen minute NPR-filled commutes allow me to learn a lot about the current economic climate in Greece and how that reflects upon America's own debt problems and my Kindle allows me to read about the cultural implications of Christmas in America (the thrills never stop!), but the majority of my days are filled with mindless cube-work. That's right, I've taken up a cube.

I'm not exactly sure how millions of people all over the world manage to get up everyday and do this kind of work, but somehow...they're able to push billions of pieces of paper from one end of the room to the other, day after and day, and not throw themselves off a cliff. Douglas Adams wrote about human beings in, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy," in a way that pinpoints so much of what I'm feeling (my previously-healed but newly inflamed hands are showing) at the moment,

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

It's Electric Boogie Woogie Woogie

So after hearing Gaga's, "Born This Way," about three million times and SLOWLY coming around to the second single release, "Judas," I was hesitant to buy the entire album, for fear that I would be face-to-face with the notion that Gaga was a one album wonder. Luckily my father, an avid Gaga fan, purchased the entire album...that I promptly swiped while they were on a motorcycle vacation in Maryland. After listening to this album several times, I am prepared to endorse it (I'm sure that she's sighing in relief about this).

There are two songs that really stand out for me (and probably the two songs that won't be released as singles). First, "Government Hooker."

This song wins for me not only on wack-a-doodle merit, but also because I really enjoy the overuse of the word "Hooker." I'm also digging the double entendre of the lyric, "Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy/I'll make you squeal baby/As long as you pay me." I feel like Gaga's ability to make my enjoy really slutty lyrics is quite a talent, because Wiz Khalifa tried it and failed miserably. Even though this song is kind of misogynistic, much like Prince's "Pussy Control," it gives the character power through sexuality. I can dig it. If women are going to be objectified (we can't seem to stop that moving train), then why not give them the power to do something with that?

My favorite song on this album is, "Electric Chapel." This mash-up of butt rock, synth pop and euro pop is completely intoxicating. I was disappointed to find that as Gaga has started performing these songs in them media that she's picked the much-less engaging (and, actually, totally crappy) "You and I," instead of this song. While Hooker couldn't necessarily be a mainstream radio song, "Chapel," totally could.

I love the guitar riffs interchanged with the really soft vocal and I love the call to action in the lyrics:

Follow me
Don’t be such a holy fool
Follow me
I need something more from you
It’s not about sex or Champagne
You holy fool

If you want me
Meet me at Electric Chapel
If you want me
Meet me at Electric Chapel
If you wanna steal my heart away
Meet me, meet me baby in a safe place
Come on meet me
In Electric Chapel

I enjoy this song even more than the singles from the first album, but I know that this could never be a debut hit from an emerging artist that fancies herself the Mother to a hoard of, "Little Monsters." Songs like, "Pokerface," and "Bad Romance," (even though I liked "Paparazzi," "Telephone," and "Alejandro," more than the latter) are the kind of songs that make fans, but I really feel like songs like Hooker and Chapel are the songs that sustain those fans that will mature along with the music. The ones that don't aren't fans of the artists but rather fans of the fad.

I have to give a shout out (that's right a shout out) to the song, "Heavy Metal Lover," too. Another song with filthy lyrics that I love (although it looks like this video has some images from "Telephone," etc.).

I want your whiskey mouth all over my blond south

Red wine, cheap perfume and a filthy shout

Tonight bring all your friends because a group does it better

Why river with a pair, let's have a full house of leather.

Even Gaga knows how much I enjoy the Leather Daddies. Ha!