Rainbow Dash is ready to hit the skies! [UPDATED]

RD Complete (13)
Originally uploaded by Aarlone

If I crochet another Rainbow Dash, there are a number of things I will do differently. Her ears are not too well-spaced, which makes her face and head look kind of weird. The eyes also don't look too great... they need to be a bit more even and smooth-looking, I think.

The wings were rough. I need to devise or discover a new pattern for the wings. If I do a Fluttershy, I'll have her wings closed, which will be a lot easier to do, but that just doesn't work for Rainbow Dash's character. Also, I'm a terrible nerd about this.

Final pet peeve: I need a better way of layering her mane. It's probably too thick on top, especially when compared with her tail. But at least it was easier than Rarity's mane, which will give me nightmares before it's complete.

The final decision I have to make is simply: Etsy or Ebay? Hmmmmm...

UPDATE: I decided to go with Ebay. Here is the link to the listing.

I Have So Much More Respect For Crafters

It is a little-known fact that I've known how to crochet since I was fairly young. I remember my mother teaching me how to crochet a blanket when we were still living in our first house - I was probably around 8 or 9, because we moved shortly thereafter. And so, for the past (ye gods) 20 years or so (holy shit now I feel old), I have, on occasion, gotten out a hook and yarn and worked on an unfinished project. Because for all of those 20 years (sweet hibbly jibblies) I really only knew two stitches. The one to start the blanket (what we hookers (hehe) call a chain stitch) and something called a half-double crochet. It sounds fucking complicated, but it was what I learned, and I got to be damn good at making enormous blankets while I watched television. It was the best way to survive winters in South Dakota - not only did I have something productive to do, but it kept me warm while I was doing it!

Aaaaanyway... I eventually got sick of making enormous blankets, and normal-sized blankets are boring, so I wondered how I could keep crocheting, but not have to lug around a project for three years until it's finished, and I can give it away to a properly-unwitting friend. Then I saw this blog. Go there. I'll wait.

Ponies. Crocheted ponies. I did a little more searching, and discovered that you can crochet a whole butt-ton of things, but mostly things that are cute.

"Damn, that looks complicated," I thought. "But I've been crocheting for 20 (*sigh*) years, I'll bet I've got enough of the basics to be able to pick it up easily enough."

I found a good tutorial (you want good amigurumi tutorial? You go here. You go here now!) and watched the videos, and found a beginner pattern and went to town.

That was project one. Some random enormous-headed blue person-thing. Look how proud of myself I look.

Project two. Curious Alien. This thing's feet were sons of bitches. It is my least favorite. Also, variegated blue was not a good yarn choice. Check me out hiding behind it. I am so ashamed...

You ready for project three? Because it's fucking awesome.

Remember what I said about being able to crochet practically anything, but especially cute things? I ended up making two Hobbeses, and I didn't even keep either one of them, because I am a chump.

Projects three and four. Guess which one was a gift for a coworker, and which one is on the top shelf of our enormous DVD tower.

Cthulhu is hard to see, because he pretty much absorbs all light around him. Possibly because I chose a variegated dark green. Regardless, I have no good pictures of Cthulhu. Also, why don't I have a completed photo, with his wings that drove me mad? Mad, I tell you; mad! Also, pink elephant. I put googly eyes on it, too, but I don't have a photo of that, either. Probably because Cthulhu made me so crazy.

Here are projects five and six. And you know what? They're ponies. They are still in progress, because the original blogger that made the ponies in the first place has yet to release a pattern, so I just went off of the photos there, and did the best I could with what I already knew about crocheting cute things. As it stands, the bodies for Rarity and Rainbow Dash are fully constructed, and now only need detail - eyes, mane, tail, and cutie marks, basically.

I'm sure I'll tweak the pattern I've devised a little bit when I start working on Applejack, and if I ever want to do Fluttershy, I'm going to have to come up with a new wing pattern because that made me almost as crazy as Cthulhu's wings (PS, did you ever think you'd see Fluttershy and Cthulhu mentioned in the same sentence... twice?), but by and large, I'm fairly happy with the pattern, if not my current ability with the details. I have no idea, for instance, how to not make Rarity look completely derped, but this is a learning process. In spite of the fact that I've been crocheting as long as I have (oh, so long ago), I'm still not much of a crafter. Anyone who can do a lot of this type of thing has my respect.

That said, I'm a little tempted to keep Rarity's eyes the way they are, put her on Etsy, and see if I can't get featured on Regretsy. Because that would probably make my goddamn day.

The Secret the Science Fiction World DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!

I have very recently made a discovery that changed my life, and I'm going to share it all with you now, so that I can change your lives as well. Besides, if I tell fourteen people, those fourteen people will tell fourteen people, and then almost thirty people will know this earth-shattering secret. Are you ready? Here we go.

Human cloning is real. I have met Neil Gaiman's clone.

You're shocked. I know, I was too. It took me several days for this to sink in. When it first hit me, my brain tried to rationalize it in a lot of different ways. Mostly that this guy just looks a lot like Neil Gaiman. But that just isn't the case. He's a clone, and he was grown sometime in the early 80's. Which is the other thing that really rocked my world. Human cloning is real, and has been real for my entire life. I got kind of depressed when I realized this, having wanted a few clones of myself for many reasons ever since I found out what cloning was and what having a day job was.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions here, obviously. If Neil Gaiman has a clone, for instance, who else does? I can't even speculate. This is too huge. Why would Neil Gaiman clone himself, and then keep that clone in southern Minnesota?

I know that there are going to be a lot of skeptics out there. Probably at least 20. And that's okay. I want each and every one of you to know that I'm going to do my best to verify this report, up to and  including a proper DNA test. But that's going to take a while, because Neil Gaiman is a very busy man, and he's not just going to come to my house to give me a cheek swab when I call him about the matter. That'll probably take a few weeks. And also, obviously, pics or it didn't happen. I'm going to get a photo of them together when I get the DNA samples. Because otherwise some jerk could come in and say, "That's not a clone of Neil Gaiman. That's just a hack Photoshop job of an old pic of Neil Gaiman 'shopped into a gas station. Loser." And that will make me cry, because I don't even have Photoshop.

But those are all incidental. I know the real argument against Neil Gaiman having a clone is the fact that the first mammal cloning wasn't until 1996, which is a long time after the early 80's. But on that, I'm one step ahead of you.

 

In other news, I've been working a lot of overnights at work, in an effort to utterly miss out on all the crazy holiday shopping madness. I haven't had a full, decent night's sleep in almost a week. I'm not sure if it's because of the work, or because this is just too much of a revelation for one brain to stand. 

I'm guessing the latter. The truth is out there, people.

It Gets Worse and Worse Every Year

I had intended to write this before Halloween, but shit happens and at least I'm writing at all. Now that I've been working in retail for a few years, I've become more acutely aware of a complaint that everyone seems to make around this time - namely, how early stores begin putting out their Christmas decorations and merchandise. I hear it while walking through the store all the time. "Can't we just get through one holiday at a time?"

Now, I do understand why decking the halls this early is so frustrating for pre-holiday shoppers. I know that for a lot of people, the holidays are a crazy, stressful time. I know that it is a lot easier to focus on one thing at a time. I know that there are a lot of reasons people hate this early setup that I'm not aware of. But there are aspects to the situation from a retail standpoint that other people aren't seeing either. So here are some of the reasons why, while it might not be totally pleasant or satisfying for the general public, or even any of the 11 13 people that will ever read this, stores start setting up for Christmas before Halloween even gets close - from my limited perspective.

Reason the first: I've only worked in one retail store. My store competes with a number of other retail stores in the city, one of them being a WalMart. I can only speak for my store, and certainly not for WalMart, but our operating situation is such that we don't have the staff or budget to pay them to get things set up after Thanksgiving.

I've heard that Nordstrom's does all of its holiday set up while the store is closed on Thanksgiving day. They are lucky sons of bitches.

Over the last few weeks, we've had a few members of staff steadily working on getting the holiday decor onto the sales floor and getting set up. They're doing other, non-holiday-related set-ups for the store, so it's not a constant thing, but it is steady. There are a lot of projects, throughout the store, that happen in the many weeks leading up to the actual holiday season. It adds up to a lot of man-hours.

If we were to put off all those projects until after Thanksgiving, we would still have to give our staff work to do in the interim, and pay them for the work they do. Post-Thanksgiving, all those projects would be then compressed into the space of a day or two. Maybe a week. We'd need an increase in staff and hours in order to get it all done. It's just beyond our capability. So we start as early as we possibly can, and we hate it as much as everyone else.

Reason 2: We start getting sent holiday stuff unspeakably early. It can start getting shipped to our stores as early as September, or even August. And then it sits there, taking up space in the back rooms, until it can start going out. The earlier we can get that crap out onto the sales floor, the more room we'll have for the next wave of still unspeakably early holiday stuff. Or even the regular stuff, that also needs a place to sit until it can go out onto the sales floor.

If we stockpiled the holiday stuff for weeks in an effort to maintain any semblance of holiday sanity, it would overflow, and we'd eventually be buried under an avalanche of bells, bows, and chocolates. And there'd be no room for the regular stuff, too, so you'd have the occasional cases of motor oil and toilet paper adding to the avalanche. Fun!

Reason 3: This ties in to the previous reasons. The holiday merchandise takes up a large portion of the store. What would you think, as a shopper, if that portion was empty, devoid of product or decoration? We have to fill those empty places up. If we don't fill it up with holiday stuff, we'll have to fill it with regular stuff. And when we can put it off no longer and the holiday stuff needs to go out into its rightful place, that regular stuff has to get moved, either to another home in the store, or to the back rooms. It's a case of either doubling the necessary work, or not utilizing available space.

Let's face it, folks. Stores are places for the public to buy things. If there is an area that is not being used to display things that can be sold, it's being wasted. If there are products in the back that are not on display to be sold, those products and that space is also being wasted. For a store trying to stay open and provide jobs, we have to make this small sacrifice.

Ultimately, it all does boil down to money. Delaying the inevitable holiday set up has a huge financial impact on a store trying to stay competitive. As a shopper, is it more important to you that the holiday decor and merchandise is in place at the proper time of the season, or that it's clean, and well-stocked, and that the employees are able to help you with the things you need, even if they start decking the halls in October?

That said, there is no excuse for playing Christmas music any earlier than Thanksgiving. I've heard it's already started in some stores. I've been away from work for the weekend, but if I start hearing carols tomorrow night when I go back, I'm sure it'll make me quite a bit stabby.

EDIT: The Christmas music started yesterday. Somebody should be fired.

Crypticon Swag

This year's Crypticon was a bit more subdued for us than the last 3 years, but I took home some decent swag, and here it is.

 I am a huge nerd. This is me going RAWR!

 Artwork by AntLucia.com. I had a hell of a time deciding which print to pick up.

The Arsenic Lullaby book, from last night's post. Your eyes don't deceive you - that's an illustration of someone choking a baby on the cover.

Fuck yeah, Crypticon!

Sexy sexy shoes from Iron Fist. I actually also have a matching shirt, that is also sexy sexy.












That's pretty much my swag.

Possibly My Favorite Exchange From This Weekend (aka How Much Of a Twisted Son Of a Bitch Are You?)

We just got back from Crypticon, which is one of the year's highlights for me. And now I will present to you my favorite exchange from this weekend.

Nick and I walked past the table for Arsenic Lullaby, and one of the gents at the table said to Nick, "Hey, you look like you've got a twisted sense of humor! Come here! Do you think things that are strange and wrong are kind of funny?"

Nick and I looked at each other. I tried not to laugh too hard. There are a whole lot of inappropriate things that make us giggle, and so he allowed that yes, he does have a dark sense of humor. The other gent at the table looked at me and asked if I was a little bent in the head as well.

YES.

We were both handed a copy of the 10 year book, already opened to short pieces that would gauge how twisted we were. We read the pieces, and I got a good chuckle out of the one I read. This encouraged the gents at the table to select other pieces for us to read. I read one near the end about the boogie man. It made me laugh until I cried. The second gent turned to the first and said, "Dude, I think you asked the wrong person."

THE END

Fuck yeah, dreams! Fuck yeah, theatre!

I've blogged about my dreams before. More often than not, the dreams that I remember come from those times when I've woken once already, but sleep in because sleeping in is for the cool kids. It's those mostly-asleep states that generate, for me, the most interesting, memorable dreams.

I really liked this morning's dream. In it, I had written a children's play about fairies who hadn't gotten their wings yet. On reflection, it's pretty damn close to the Cutie Mark Crusaders from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. But it's a dream, so I'm not going to be too hard on it for being a bit of a rip-off.

It was hard to tell from the dream whether I was watching the play, in it as one of the fairies, or stage-managing it. I remember that there were 3 fairies who had yet to get their wings and were very frustrated about it, and one fairy who had her wings, but couldn't fly, which was really embarrassing. There was one bitchy fairy who was a total bitch at the other four for not being able to fly, and she had this sort of lackey character that she could drag around and feel superior to. That's really as developed as the story every got - at least in the dream. After I woke up and thought about it a bit, I realized it would probably work better with fewer fairies. Two without wings, tops. And bitchy fairy's lackey shouldn't have wings, either. Because then there could be a plot thread that would allow one of the fairies to realize that she was actually just like the lackey, who was like a pixie or sprite or something - she wouldn't be getting wings, but she could do fucking magic, which kind of made up for it. It's a children's show, these kind of things totally make sense, I promise. Also, spoiler alert: bitchy fairy couldn't fly either. She was just being a bitch to hide the fact that she was just as flummoxed by the whole flying thing as the non-flying fairy was. And spying on non-flying fairy to see if she can figure out the trick first. But they all learn a Valuable Lesson about stuff at the end.

The set was awesome. There were poles set up stage left, painted green so they were like flower stems, that the actors would swing around. Um... kind of like pole dancing, my brain has just pointed out, but more fanciful and fun, and a whole lot less smutty. Apparently dream brain is much less smutty than awake brain. Or more so. ANYWAY, the fairies would swing around on the flower stems and pretend they were flying, and it was all a whole lot of fun for them. There were trampolines strategically placed around the stage, so that fairies that could fly could jump on the trampolines and fly through the air without having to get into any of the complications of a fly system, which, I'm given to understand, isn't any fun for actors. Besides, it's fuck-off expensive. Look at that Spiderman musical. Even when I'm asleep, I'm completely focused on low-budget theatre. The first play I was ever in was A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which I played the fairy Cobweb. We used trampolines to fly, and it worked really well. Plus, it was wicked fun.

I even dreamed up a meeting with the costume designer, as we tried to figure out how to do the fairy wings. The initial idea was to use those lame wings that you always see on bad Halloween costumes, but we ended up coming up with something much better. The actors would wear a lightweight harness that held a pair of thin, curved PVC pipes (or something similar) at their shoulders, that were draped with colorful ribbons to make it all look fluttery when they moved. Trust me, visually, it was epic.

Even though I know that I'll probably never get around to fleshing out this dream into a fully-staged play, unless I get a co-playwright to work on this with - I am not good with kids, you guys - I like that a part of my brain is still thinking about theatre, and wanting to be involved in it. It's been hard going to school for 9 years, high school and college combined, and having your whole world revolve around the stage, and then only working on two plays in the 5-6 years after you graduate. I have this hope that starting next year, things will change and I'll be able to do a lot more of that type of thing. The ultimate hope is that I'll be able to create a career out of it eventually. I'm just stuck right now.

UPDATE: I just got confirmation from a 100% legitimate and not-completely-perverted scene designer that my flower stem poles are the way to go. So take that, smut!