She wants her cup of stars.

It has never been a better time to purchase an exclusive Abernathy Green t-shirt, designed by our own drawgirl. Why? Because drawgirl  and her boyfriend Slasher both got laid off their respective jobs this week. Merry Christmas, guys! 

If cute-culture is not your thing, check out Slasher's Jack of No Trades line for a more aggressive, political look.

Abernathy Green and Jack of No Trades shirts are comfy, high-quality, and sweatshop-free. This is a great time to support an independent artist and get a cool new shirt for the new year.

While playing "Moonage Daydream" on Rock Band:

drawgirl: Is this from his Ziggy Stardust period?
me: Well. Given that it's a song about gay alien sex...
drawgirl: Oh yeah.

Rock Band is a game that perfectly understands and embraces the most important parts of having a real rock band: 1) Coming up with vaguely obscene band names, and 2) Buying your rocker new cute clothes. So far our X-Box contains band names like the Bints, Bad Panty, the Barackers (that one was junkyard's idea), the Anatomically Correct Dolls, and V-Jay D-Jay. It's also possible--even likely--that the "character creation" module has seen more use than the actual game play itself. But there are tattoos to place upon your Barbie Doll Rock Star! And like twenty hair-dos!

And yes, we have done other things besides play X-Box since drawgirl got here. We also watched a bunch of TV and played Dungeons and Dragons.

So as per usual we were talking about porn, the topic at hand being the website Slasher's been hired to work on. The website involves a lot of specialized fantasy-sex multimedia--literal fantasy sex, as in magical sex. drawgirl was elucidating the manifold possibilities to spacecowboytom in the backseat of the car in a perfect monotone: "You can have vampire on werewolf, vampire on fairy, vampire on elf, vampire on dark elf, vampire on succubus..werewolf on fairy, werewolf on elf, werewolf on dark elf, werewolf on..."  The three of us busily came up with various other magic-sex opportunities (centaurs, mermaids, time travelers, Ziggy Stardust, etc).

me: What about superheroes? What about like magical superheroes? Like Dr. Weird. Isn't he a magician superhero? Could you have superhero on werewolf?
drawgirl: Er...do you mean Dr. Strange?
me: Whatever. Sure, Dr. Strange.
drawgirl: (pause) Well sure, but only if he was a magic magician.
me: Oh, a magic magician? Really? Was he magic? Did the magician have some kind of magic powers that made him magical? Thanks for specifying.
drawgirl: You know, as opposed to someone who was bitten by a radioactive magician.

hplovescats sent me the following video with a note saying he thought it'd be "right up my alley." Does anyone else's boyfriend send them things like this?



The only thing I find annoying is that I didn't make the movie first. I've been making this joke for years.

Even more interesting, though, is the hot new product coming out of South Africa: the anti-rape condom. I spent a good chunk of time on Rapex's website going over the tersely worded FAQs after drawgirl forwarded me the link. Check out the Rapex font for a clear idea of what this product is about. 

1. Move is slowly coming together. Cats need health certificates, and I'm slowly trying to acclimate Jack to the car (he's terrified of it and yowls frantically every time it starts moving. Meanwhile, Bodhi's just like "Hey this is cool, but can I have a phone book to sit on? I can't see out the windows.")  hplovescats and I need to plan our route and start making motel reservations that are pet friendly. Oh, that's the other update: Hodge is moving down with me now instead of next year. I feel kind of guilty uprooting him. That said, he's from Austin and his family is there, and I don't think this is the worst move we could be making. Also, we're hoping the Austin post-production industry will be fruitful for him.

2. I totally love my sister-out-law, who we'll from here on out call Sis in a privacy-protecting gesture. She is adorable. She's four years younger than we are and she's an artist and designer, but also a big old geek who watches buttloads of Fruits Basket and Inu-Yasha. Also she is helping us find a house. She's been driving around Austin peeking into windows of rentals and reporting back to us. Tomorrow she's going to actually go inside and if she feels good about the house we'll probably sign a contract (since she has awesome taste and knows what we want). I'm really excited to live near her, because she's fun and I've always wanted a sister and I'm totally too shy to tell her I think of her sort of like my sister but I do.

3. Our 4th was fun. We have patio furniture now! After three years of us whining every summer, "Hey, we should really get some patio furniture," drawgirl finally invested in some and it is totally awesome. We have places to rest our asses, and also shade! So we sat outside and grilled and drank. Then we blew stuff up in the streets.

4. Left a message at infinity tattoo. No one has called me back yet. I am going armed with about 20 Rischa sketches from drawgirl and a few ideas. I'm hoping we have time to finish a partial sleeve before I take off. That's right, I'm gonna do it. I used to have this fear I was suddenly going to become vanilla in my old age. Considering my aging process has consistently taken me away from soccer mom-dom, I'm not going to worry about it anymore. Also: if I'm going to end up a soccer mom, I will be the soccer mom with the best fucking tattoo and the most pimping hybrid minivan. And the other soccer moms will have secret crushes on me. Rock.

5. I was super domestic this last week. I resized a gigantic old t-shirt (my Reed O-Week shirt with the Trojan horse waiting outside Eliot Hall, which is maybe the dorkiest thing I own? No, that's a lie.) so now it looks super hot on me. And I made my first pie. It was a vegan pie and I'm not so sure the crust turned out but the banana-chocolate filling was tasty. I should have taken a picture of me in the shirt with the pie so you'd see how Doris Day I was.

6. Still sad about the move. Still having wild mood swings. But hanging in there. It's all good.

I got home tonight and found a Mother's Day card on my pillow.






I know the pictures are kind of crappy; in case you can't tell, the can says: "Tuna for cats." It accompanied the card.

Yesterday Slasher brought over a copy of Guitar Hero, and after consuming a marvelous good feast courtesy of Drawgirl, we moved the furniture and rocked out. No, wait, I'm sorry...RAWKED OUT. Nothing but capital letters for the Cock House Five (which was the, uh, inspired name for our band that hplovescatscame up with). Okay, so the game is ridiculously fun. You get this little controller, and through a variety of button pushing and lever waggling you the player get to rock out. Much like Dance Dance Revolution, only with a toy guitar. I'm sorry, with a MIGHTY AXE! 

Anyway, there seem to be two kinds of people that play this game. One is the Stoic. You know, every band has that guy. He usually plays the bass. He stands there just playing the guitar, nodding at his own vast competence from time to time. As the mighty oak allows the wind to howl through his branches, so does the Stoic stand, feet planted, letting the violent forces of rock blast against him without swaying. Most newbies seem to be Stoics, largely because we are just trying to get the right damn button.

Then there's the Showboat. Slasher is in fact a Showboat. Slasher was the individual we had to move the furniture for. He jumps up and down. He swings the guitar around. He plays it behind his head. He gets down on his knees and plays to the gods of rock. He is also more good at this game than any working adult person should have the time to be. Though I will say, by the time I started getting the hang of the game, it was becoming obvious to me that I myself will be a Showboat when I can do it without losing track of the buttons. I just couldn't help it. I wanted to move my shoulders around. I wanted to tilt the guitar up. I wanted to thrust my hips in obscene ways and throw up the horns at the screaming crowds chanting my name. 

If you are a compulsive singer, I would advise wearing a ball gag during this game. As I discovered during "Ziggy Stardust" and "Killer Queen" both, it is not for the novice to sing and play at the same time. You wil forget the difference between green, red, and yellow, and your fingers will fail to obey you. Just concentrate on the damn buttons. 

Also: avoid "Crossroads." Eric Clapton is not a Guitar Hero but a Guitar Demigod, and you should not try in your hubris to reach that star else you will only get carpal tunnel. Or make your tendonitis angry with you and spend the rest of the evening with an ice pack pressed to your wrist.