Let's talk about fashion

More specifically, let's talk about things I hate. Since bad fashion and bad taste make me suffer, I decided to give you a glimpse inside my wonderfully sarcastic mind. I am sick with Covid and feel extra bitchy these days, so there you are. You're welcome.

The wet cement hair look:

Picture source is here.

Came across this picture, and I will not say a word on anything except the hair. So, the hair. This magnificent hairstyle is very simple to achieve; judging by the colour, first you pour mustard or diarrhea on your head. Then you wait for it to dry a little before styling it in that dashing "my hair is trying to run away from my head and I had to take measures" pinnacle of achievement. 

The nude lipstick (as seen in the pic above):

Ladies, your lips are not supposed to be the same colour as your nose, unless you are dead, or on the way there due to severe anemia. The human mouth is usually darker than the rest of the face. Trying to make it disappear is not the goal. You want to use make-up to look more alive, healthy and attractive. You won't achieve that with a lipstick several tones lighter than your natural lip colour. I understand intense red may not be your thing, but tuberculosis brown or cadaver beige is not your thing either, believe me. In fact it's nobody's thing. The only exceptions to this are: Halloween make-up, zombie make-up, a significant other who's a necrophiliac, OR having dark brown or black skin. In that case other rules apply, and beige or even white lipstick can look sensational. And please oh please, do not use a dark pencil to define your lips and a visibly lighter hue on the inside. Only professional clowns do that. Are you a clown? I didn't think so.

The cheap green

This shade of green always looks cheap and tacky. It also doesn't look good on anyone except maybe foodball players, who get paid millions to wear sponsored shit, so colour choice is the least of their worries. I'd give it a wide berth. It screams last discounted items and misery. It is particularly ugly in shoes.

Stiletto nails 

 

I don't know which hellish hole this style crawled out of, but it needs to return there and die asap, and failing that, be killed by fire. It's one of the most unpleasant and anti-erotic trends I have seen. There is a reason old ugly vampires are portrayed with such nails in horror movies. I am an avid horror fan; however, horror is not the feeling you want to inspire when you caress a person. And how on earth do you manage not to put your eyes out by accident in your sleep? Do you sleep with oven mittens on?

Animal print anything

How many times have you seen members of the old European aristocracy, or politicians, or bankers wearing animal print anything? Do you really think it's because they haven't discovered it yet? (Spoiler: No, that's not the reason.)

 

I think that's enough for today, as I feel exhausted. Needless to say, opinions are my own. Feel free to disagree and wear whatever you like, however it works for you. Life is too small for uniformity.  

 

(As per usual, if you'd like to support this grumpy old cat, please buy her a coffee.)

Listen carefully to your gut

 

Your body never lies to you. You should listen to it, especially if you want to follow a path related to magick or if you are an empath or psychic of any kind.

 
If you're feeling stressed, or angry, your body is trying to give you a message. Whenever I feel angry, it's because someone is violating a boundary and entering my personal space uninvited. My mind may not be up to speed with what's happening. I may need to discuss with a friend to put my finger on the exact reason I feel mad and how that person is disrespecting me. It's not always obvious, but I know something is wrong. I know it because I'm irate. What my mind can't immediately locate under layers and layers of social conditioning, pretence, and polite coercion, my body understands just fine. The animal in me bares its teeth and wants to bite. I should listen to the message for my sake. Careful here: listening to the message does not mean acting on it. Feelings exist to give you feedback. They aren't there to tell you what to do. Impulsively acting on them is not going to take you to a better place.

What if I'm wrong, you'll say. What if the person or situation is OK and I'm the one who has the problem?

 

Even that is a valid reason to back off. They may be safe, they may even be suitable. But if you are not feeling comfortable, then you're not ready. Not being ready is as valid a reason as they come. And if you're right about feeling uneasy, believe me, you don't want to find out why the hard way.

A few nights ago I was out, doing my walking routine. I usually pass by an old building with a large garden. The garden fence is mostly non-existent. If I step into that garden, I find myself walking alongside the street. The street and the streetlights are no longer visible, because there are large bushes that act as a natural fence. I need to take thirty to forty steps in that garden before I find myself on the street again, exiting through a hole in the fence. 

 

It's usually quiet in there, and sometimes I take the detour because I want to feel the change in atmosphere. This building is very close to Ymittos mount, and even though it's next to other houses and in theory I am still in the city, the atmosphere is different than walking on the street. I don't take the detour every night; only when the mood strikes.

 

So here I was, strolling without a care in the world, listening to All About Eve. I love that band, especially their sad songs, and I was in a good mood when I reached that place. I walked five steps in and realised I was terrified, though there was nothing there. I took one look at the way the light wind was making the tree-tops shake, another look at the darkness, and something inside me screamed, "get out, get out now, return to the light." 

 

For a split second my mind attempted to barge in and convince me that everything was fine. You know: there is no reason to feel that way, there is no-one here, you should not act like a baby, blah de blah. Thankfully I'm way past the point I need to prove myself to anyone, myself included. I elbowed my mind in the nose, metaphorically speaking, turned on my heels, and I was outta there. I admit I breathed a huge sigh of relief as soon as I stepped back into the safety of the streetlight, and I kept looking behind my back until I had put some distance between me and that place.

Now you're probably expecting some dramatic explanation, some proper justification for my behaviour. I am sorry if this is going to be anticlimactic. I don't have an explanation. I can say that the particular night was in the time-frame between the two eclipses. During eclipses various gates open, as eclipses are powerful astrological phenomena that release a lot of energy. Maybe something had stepped out of one such gate. What I do know for certain is that I am too old, and have had too many nasty etheric encounters in my life to shit in my pants just because the wind was blowing. I was spooked that night, I was downright terrified. I like darkness a lot, but that night, the wrong kind of darkness awaited in there. It was the hungry darkness that lurks in bad places during the small hours; the darkness that causes car accidents to happen, that makes normal people decide to bash their wife's head in because she said the wrong thing. That sort of darkness. And honestly, exorcism rituals are a lot of work. It's just plain stupid to have to go through one because you carried something home with you. 

 

To sum this up, don't ignore your own body screaming something at you. Feeling like an idiot for being spooked without a reason is a hundred times better than going through damage control because something bad happened. And some bad things cannot be undone, so please be vigilant. These are strange times.

Hope the new year will be better. Take good care everyone.

(As per usual, if you'd like to support this scaredy old cat, please buy her a coffee.)

American (F)arts

Can I complain about something? I know some people will think I'm mad. I don't particularly care. Also, I am going to be graphic, disgusting, and fixated on the Freudian anal stage. Be warned.

Have you ever had a friend who offered to get you on a date with someone they know? Naturally, you're reluctant, so they show you a photo of that person, and he or she is drop-dead gorgeous. And hey, from what your friend says, you have similar interests! So you give your consent and your friend arranges a date. The suspense is killing you, you count the days backwards, you are happy. Finally the day of your dream date comes, they arrive at the restaurant and they look just like their photo. You can't believe how lucky you are. You sit down, giddy with anticipation, and timidly engage in conversation. For the first few minutes it goes remarkably well. Then as you open the menu to order and glance at your dream date, you notice with pure horror that they are digging inside their nose. You stare because you can't believe you are seeing that. You are still staring while they pull out a ginormous booger, give it a perfunctory once-over and eat it.

I've just described my relationship with American Gods.

I read the book years ago. It's not my favourite from Gaiman's arsenal, but Gaiman is my favourite writer, so naturally I was very excited American Gods would become a TV series. I had also watched and loved two seasons of Hannibal, so Fuller seemed a good choice. Alas.

Before AG started, I made an attempt to watch the 3rd season of Hannibal. I managed to watch two episodes. They were painfully slow, boring, and pointlessly gross. Bodies forming out of blood, becoming blood, Will wandering around aimlessly while being up to his eyeballs on hard drugs, blah de blah. I may try to finish the season... or not.

Then American Gods started. And in the first minutes of the first episode I saw a chopped arm flying in the air. And I shuddered, because this is not Gaiman's style, and hoped I was wrong. 

But I was right.

To do the series justice, there are some brilliant scenes, and the actors are doing their best. But the rest of it is that dream date of yours eating boogers while you watch in fascinated horror.

"Artistic" slow mo with flies and candles, lots of sex, pointless mostly, bodies forming out of some liquid dark material and being re-absorbed... Wait, am I watching the 3rd season of Hannibal again? 
-No you dummy, that's American Gods. 
-Oh, silly me. But why is it so slow?
-They use slow mo to make every episode last for three hours, so that you think you got more time for the same money. It's a marketing trick. You wouldn't understand.
-You are right. I don't understand.

-Oh, these two guys are having sex... That's sweet. But why are they suddenly depicted in the desert and they change colour, as if they are the negatives of a photo?
-It's esthetics. You wouldn't understand.
-But...
-Stop asking questions. It's a Fuller/Gaiman show. That alone should have made you fall on your knees and pray. Why aren't you impressed?
-Because it doesn't make sense. It's like Galadriel turning black in LOTR... But she had the One Ring.
-Shut up and let me watch the show.
-Okay.

Let's talk about women... All the attractive female characters we've come across so far are unavailable virgins, neurotic wrecks, or man-devouring insane bitches who use everyone around them on a whim and destroy their lives. Poor, poor Laura Moon. In the book you are not the despicable, ego-centered bipolar bimbo of the series. It takes effort to make a female character so loathsome, but they spared no effort. And they succeeded spectacularly. If she was on fire, I'd douche her with gasoline to put her out. Of her misery, I mean.

The esthetics of the book are fucked six ways to Sunday. The book may be slow at parts, but it captures perfectly the atmosphere of a growing storm. It lets the reader steal momentary glimpses of those dangerous beings and situations looming at the edge of one's perception, at the edge of normal and every-day. Those glimpses come to slowly replace the normal until they are Shadow's every day. But it is subtle, smart, delicate. And then you have the series, which replaces the melancholy and restlessness with grunge, gore, dirt, filth, kitsch and blood. It sounds good... if we're talking about The Walking Dead. Or maybe the streets of a large medieval city where sheep, cows and beggars with leprosy are happily stepping on their own shit next to a marriage taking place. Everyone is fondling everyone else's tit and other parts of interest with fingers covered in sour wine and grease, someone is vomiting in their plate, and the rest are hailing the groom and the bride. But is this the book I read, even remotely? No fucking way. 

The music of AG can be divided in two categories. The songs are incredibly bland. The creators of the show seemed to have picked the top 40 of pointless songs which cause mild irritation while they are being played, and get immediately erased from one's memory as soon as they stop. The rest of the soundtrack is a dream sonnet written by a renown proctologist. Every time something creepy/otherworldly happens, the music is literally from another world. Imagine three or four people with various wind instruments inserted in their anus. One has a saxophone, another a trumpet, one has a flute, and so on. Imagine whatever you like. These poor people are tied up and gagged and some psychos are torturing them. One of the psycho torturers repeatedly inserts a needle in the flesh of the guy with the saxophone in his butt. He can't scream, can't move or fight, hence those bleating, desperate little noises coming out of his other end. Something's gotta give. On the other side of the room, another psycho torturer is stepping on the gout of the person who has the trumpet in his butt, steadily increasing pressure. And so you get that deep, insistent, ominous wail that shudders, ululates and changes in tone. It really is a thing of beauty, if you have a poster with Tomás de Torquemada on your bedroom wall. And you masturbate to it morning and night.

Honestly, I know I am going to be part of the minority who hates the show, and I can understand why someone may be impressed by it. But I don't care. This show sucks. It sucks so much that it could easily have been the vacuum cleaner the Almighty used on the Sixth Day, to clean the mess before He rested. If you ask me, He's still asleep, and the creators of American Gods stole the bleeding thing and turned it into a TV show. That's how much it sucks.

Rant over. Watch the Handmaid's Tale. It's amazing. 
Off to bed.

PS: If anyone, absolutely anyone, dares say that the reason I don't like the series is that I can't take it, I'd like to inform them that horror is my favourite genre. Also, if they think I dislike it because I am a prude, I'll make them a part of that anal quartet I described above, and have demons gang-rape their mouths while I record the musical achievements of their butt for the next season of the show. I may even become rich, who knows? So don't even think about it.
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After the elections

Today I wanted to write something that makes sense, but I found myself incapable of saying anything other than one syllable words like "shit", "fuck" and "fuck this shit". No, I don't want to analyse why electing the next Hitler of mankind and giving him access to nuclear codes is insane. I can't even begin to analyse why this misogynist, racist, disgusting man is a terrible blow to everything I hold sacred, to human rights and the evolution of human race. I wish I could send him and his voters to a planet in another solar system and leave them there, to let us the rest of us live in peace AWAY from them. But as I said, I won't analyse. May whatever Higher Power exists, if something exists, have mercy on us all. End of analysis. I'll drink my tea now. Soothes the nerves.

A few days ago I was on Ymittos at night, the mount near my home. It was awesome, because the cloudy sky provided plenty of illumination and I had good company. The best bits were the total absence of artificial light and the wind in the trees. The forest speaks in sounds unlike human languages, in rustlings, shakings and creakings, in the soft sound of leaf kissing leaf. Forests at night are another world; different rules, no human presence, no-one to help you except for your wits and common sense. Words can't communicate the beauty of the night outdoors, the sensation you aren't alone, the irrational certainty that tree somehow got closer since the last time you looked at it.

When I am in a forest, I speak to it and explain I mean no harm, but there are things in such places that mean you harm regardless of your intentions. Nature isn't your mother. Nature is the Queen Bitch of all bitches, and you should treat her like a tigress that can pop out claws and rip you apart any time she feels like it. God(s) know we deserve it for what we've done to the planet.

I love the night, I love the forest. But at the same time I'm smart enough to respect and fear it. In the forest of my mind, alongside wonders I host monsters, and what is inside will inevitably be met outside.

Which reminds me. A few weeks ago I was returning home on foot. It was late at night, and I chanced upon the carcass of a ginger tom-cat on the pavement. Judging by the blood in his mouth, he had been run over by a car. But someone had also burned his cheek and his fur at parts, which made me sick. I do hope that person did that to the carcass, and not before; I think that was the case. 

I picked the poor fellow up and put him in a garbage bin. I had to empty a bag of garbage and use it to pick him up, but I felt it was the right thing to do, to somehow undo the damage done to him and offer him the respect he was denied. Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone do that? And how long before that person does the same to a living cat? I don't want to consider these questions. It makes no difference, and I did my part.

We live in a very fucked up world that's light years away from making sense, let alone from perfection. That's why we have to hold onto those things and people who make us feel happy and whole, imperfect as they may be.

Take good care of yourselves and be careful.

Over and out. 

Under a bitchy moon

Normally I publish reviews on my other blog, but this book made me suffer, and I need to share my pain.

J.L. McCoy: Blood of the Son. Vampire novel. Or perhaps brain damage. Soooooo...

It’s safe to say this book sums up everything I hate. Skye, the protagonist, is a Mary Sue, or perhaps I should say, a redhead Sookie Stackhouse with a love for rock music. She is gorgeous, but not aware of it. In spite of her Ancient History and Classical Civilization major, she speaks like a Texan cliché with the brain of an ostrich. She’s also petty, insecure, shallow and irritating. She supposedly is feminist but we soon realise she’s just an entitled hypocrite. She has no sense of social boundaries and more mood swings than a pregnant baboon. Her only redeeming quality is her love for her dog. Which leads us to the next question. Who the hell calls their dog Styvi Nix? If you stopped me on the street and asked me what Styvi Nix is, I would have said chest rub ointment.

So, little gothic Mary Sue leads a very exciting life. We’re offered detailed descriptions of all the times she showers, washes her hair, brushes her teeth, pets her dog, the toys she buys for her dog, what she does with them and her dog, what time she goes to bed with her dog, the types and brands of clothes, make-up and perfume she wears, what she eats for breakfast, supper, dinner, the drinks she buys, what she buys when she goes shopping in general… These completely pointless descriptions take about one third to half of the book. I almost felt cheated when we didn’t get any details on her stool production. I mean, I really feel left out. The suspense is a killer. Don’t do this to me. I need to know.

But wait. She is tough, because she takes Krav Maga lessons. Is she really? Almost every time she needs to defend herself, a man steps in and saves her. Maybe I misunderstand her, because she was unlucky in love. Well, judging by her actions, she hardly deserves the higher moral ground. When she gets the chance, she does the same and worse, and has the nerve to act insulted on top. But double standards are fine, because, you know, she is the protagonist and her drama and the unfairness of life makes a single teardrop appear and slowly roll down my cheek. Let’s form a circle and pat each others' backs to feel better.

The male characters of the book. Mmm. They all fall under three categories. Brainless daddy substitutes, ass-grabbing assholes, or generic vampire hunks with stunning abs. Which brings us to Archer. Oh, sweet Archer, you could have been a copycat of Christian Grey minus the BDSM paraphernalia and adding fangs. Bearing in mind I hold Christian Grey in the same high regard as a leper’s steaming turd, I wasn’t a fan. He’s a passive-aggressive, threatening, yelling, patronising ass, and I kept hoping he would be squashed by a titanium safe, or killed in a terrible accident involving a tank, a volcano and accidentally swallowing copious amounts of semtex. If only.

Pretty much nothing happens in this book. Except for the spine-chilling, toe-curling reports of shopping, grooming and eating, fits of jealous rage by almost everyone, some murders far off in the background and generic vampire hunks speaking in Gaelic, I could summarise everything in a paragraph. The only memorable event happens in the last chapter and then you have to buy the next one in the series to see what that is about. Personally, I’d rather stuff my face with poisonous frogs and wear a bramble bra for a week than read more of this series. If, on the other hand, you enjoyed Sookie Stackhouse and Christian Grey novels, you’ll probably find this book riveting. Dunno. Go for it.

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