Prepare Your Butts

PREPARE YOUR BUTTS FOR THIS.
This thing I found.
It's so bad.
The title is "Mono no Aware" which translates to "thing of misery" which is right on the money. That is one accurate description of this.

What is your Chinese zodiac animal?

Today's writer's block.
Because you really care, I'm sure.

Born in 1982, I'm a water dog.

Don't care.

I have a confession.

It's something I've never told anyone. It's something I didn't think anyone would ever understand. I'm reading a book right now, and it's bringing the feeling back.

BOOKS MAKING YOU FEEL SOMETHING?
I don't understand.
How can you make those books speak their mysteries to you?

It's not something I would ever be able to act on, but I wanted to write about it to try to understand it better.

When I was young, I wanted to be a nun.

It wasn't ever a matter of faith, really. It certainly can't be now, as I don't even identify as Christian anymore. It wasn't a matter of celibacy, or swearing off men or relationships. Actually, even when I was Christian, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have been strong enough to take the vow.

Don't care.

Trying to stay on top of this whole blogging thing, if only for my own sanity. It feels good to sit down and write again, whether or not anyone else is watching. To those who do read and comment, thank you. Your time and care warm my heart and make me feel welcome again in an arena that once felt as much like home as my own bed pillow.

Wow that was douchey.
Anyway my hands are so cold right now I think I'm prepared to fire an ice blast.
Will this be my super power?

It is tradition in Greg's family to visit the matriarch for Christmas. I first met Grandma Joan this time last year. I was nervous, but I'd heard enough stories to guess that she had much in common with my own grandmother. Sure enough, Joan is a wonderful, classy, strong, opinionated, loving woman with her family's best interest (and the protection of her good china) always at heart. What a wonderful lady!

Stand back, I'm gonna focus.
Hey, my hand is warming up.
I'm going to shoot a FIRE blast instead.
Is this my super power?

Last year, we visited Joan at her house in Pelham Manor, NY. Her condo on Pelhamdale Avenue is in a beautiful old building with clinking, clanking pipes and such an efficient global heating system that she keeps one window in each room cracked all winter long... in NY! Even during the big blizzard that hit the day after Xmas last year! The sprinkling of antique furniture, picture frame wainscoating, and soft pastel color palette only remind me more of my grandmother and her taste in home decor. This year, however, the entire Cornell family visited a cousin named Ellen at her summer home on Long Beach, New Jersey. What a treat!

Rich people.
I'm sure that's the image she's trying to project but you just mentioned credit card debt so nice try.
If you are rich then you're teetering on the precipice of mediocrity.
Here's a post entitled, pretentiously enough, "On the notion of placing needle to skin, therein to depart some ink, some art..."
Or: "getting a tattoo" as normal people say.
Also I just saw a picture of this "summer home" and I'm pretty sure I've seen college dorms with nicer furniture. Antiques indeed.

Each of my tattoos means something very special to me. My last ink was a year ago, and I've never adored a piece of body art more. I have ideas for a few more yet to occur, so I thought I'd jot them down to share.

Oh please, do share.
I really care about what you're going to get branded on your skin for eternity.

I have a sugar skull planned for my right calf, mirroring my clan Lamont crest on my left calf. She will have Mexican marigolds for eyes, with gentle green leaves poking out from behind to suggest eyelashes. She'll have a black spiderweb spreading up and out in a triangle from the bridge of her nose across her forehead and further.

A what?
A sugar skull?
Either way, sounds real classy.

The calavera itself represents Texas, where I grew up; my fondness for the Spanish language and Mexican culture; my late grandmother, whom I miss dearly and honor daily; and my new home in New York.

And you get all that from that mess.
What represents Texas?
Outside of the skull for surely Texas begs for annihilation but outside of me and you who would really get that?

A single word, written in Scottish Gaelic and using the Ogham alphabet, may grace my left wrist in time. The word, and its meaning is special and private.

So why bring it up?
God this is stupid.

I've long entertained the notion of a phoenix and kirin to compliment my dragon tattoo, but those aren't certain.

I've killed Kirin in Monster Hunter and Final Fantasies (several).
I think I have a deeper connection to Kirin than you do, let's be honest. This shit isn't spiritual. It's just some bullshit you can trash yourself up with and appear deep.
I mean, really, if you were going to get something to complete the dragon tattoo you'd have to get a white tiger, a black tortoise, a blue dragon and a red phoenix. Then I guess Kirin in the middle.
But no, you only mention the phoenix and Kirin, which suggests you don't know much about Chinese mythology.
Not enough to get it branded on your flesh, anyway.

A friend of a friend has a glorious tattoo under her bust, caressing and expressing the womanly curves there.

A girl at my college had one of those tit tattoos. She got mad when I was staring at her tits.
Well excuse me, bitch. If you don't want people looking don't put pictures there.

A tattoo I'm recently in love with, but that I will likely not mimic in any way, belongs to a recent friend from the road. He has 23 small ravens in flight tattooed up his right arm, one for every year he's yet been alive. I just love the idea...so beautiful, so simple, and so artfully done.

High Marshall Helbrecht of the Black Templars has the Templars cross tattooed on his forehead.
That's when I'll condone tattooing, in fact. When you're a genetically enhanced super warrior and it's your forehead.

What tattoos do you have planned, that you haven't yet carried out?

Maltese Cross on my forehead.
Apparently this person lives with the Renaissance Festival.
Because you can do that I suppose.

Health insurance is possible, but not plausible. Rennies tend to take care of each other with strange combinations of pagan and western herbalism, massage, and chiropractic and/or acupuncture where available.

So they're going to die in their 40s just like people did back then.

It is definitely a feasible way of life; there are people out here who have lived only like this for 30 years. The thing is, though, you have to be willing to relinquish all notion of what you think you need to be happy and satisfied. The difference between brick-and-mortar lifestyle and rennie life is not just night and day. It's French and Swahili... mayhaps literally. I have 6 or 7 changes of clothing and I often wear mostly the same outfit all week, minus clean underwear and socks. I bathe twice a week, but my body has adjusted and so I don't smell or look dirty. My tent is full of dust and burrs. My breakfasts are sometimes potted meat on bread and my dinners are sometimes noodle cups.

Feasible in the same sense being homeless is feasible.
Because that's exactly what this sounds like.

My sky sparkles with ten thousand more stars though, and my friends are so close they feel like siblings. I get to see the sunset every evening, and I've shared more communal meals than ever before in my life.

I could see the sunset every evening too, if I went outside.
Is this really fair recompense for bathing twice a week?
I mean I went to the renaissance festival twice or so and it was basically a bunch of filthy hippies acting like twats. The only things worth going for were the blacksmiths and the glassblowers and, of course, the jousting.
You know, the people engaging in industry and manly activity?
God this is really boring.
I'm going to do something else now, goodbye.