And now the giveaway is finally here! I wasn’t lying this time!

To recap the bounty:

• 5 eyeshadows and 1 blush of your choice from My Pretty Zombie cosmetics = $33 value

• a custom Somnambulant painting from the skullz0rz series = PRICELESS. J/K, probably like $20

• a set of 5 zombie notecards from my non compos cards shop = $15 value

• one 8×8 lomography print on metallic paper of Trudy Stufflebean from my Appledale Snaps shop = $20 value

• one mp3 CD chockful of all the bands I mention on here constantly.
• random last minute miscellanea.

So go! Enter, and enter often! There are tons of different ways to get extra entries, like by submitting a sketch of Henry! (If you’re one of the awesome people who already sent me one, you can already check that off as one entry.) Comment on the posts that my friends chose as their favorites last week – each one counts as an entry! And if you’re a dude, you should still enter. You never know when you’ll be entering a drag queen pageant and then you’ll really be glad you have 5 shades of hot, glittery eye shadow at your disposal. Or just give it your wife/mistress/daughter/mistress’s daughter/bus driver.

Just, thank you. Thank you so much for reading my stuff and making me feel nice. You guys rule.

Giveaway ends on Saturday.

If you win and don’t like it, it would probably make a good door stop or fireplace kindle.

Hopefully that gives you incentive to keep reading and enter. If not, I can maybe throw in a Henry-prepared casserole and some through-the-kitchen-window Polaroids of Hot Naybor Chris.

Tip: the giveaway possibly has something to do with the old blog posts my friends have shared on here throughout the week. You don’t think I’d make this EASY do you? Pop quiz all the way!

The first mix tape I ever made  I was 3 or 4 and using a Fisher Price tape recorder, the kind that came with the attached microphone on a coil. The mixtape was opaque yellow with a rainbow on it and I vividly remember jamming the mic into the speaker of the TV while the video for Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” was on. Years later, I taped over some of the more frivolous recordings with speaker-crackling songs from my favorite 80′s movie, Back to the Beach.

In addition to that were snippets of adult conversations I would clandestinely record: my mom and Grandma whispering in the kitchen, my Pappap on business calls. God, I miss mix tapes. I miss THAT mixtape, especially.

This painting is an homage to those neon-flavored lo-fi years. It’s painted on a repurposed piece of stock art I found at the flea market & purchased for the frame. It comes varnished and ready-to-hang. Get stoked!

With the frame, this measures approx. 9in. x 9in.

If you want it, you can get it here.

(I was  going to keep it for myself, but it’s time to let go of some things.)

I came home after randomly spending NINETY MINUTES conversing with Momesis* at the playground (yes, this really happened and I can’t believe my fingers are about to admit this, but: it wasn’t so bad) to find a package from the lovely and oh-so multi-faceted Brandy of Zen Master Flash fame.

(*A preschool mom who hijacked the class Halloween party last year, which did not sit well with me. I’ve referred to her as “Momesis” ever since.)

She made me my own personal scene kids for my birthday, you guys. I was stunned when I unwrapped them. Stunned.  Unless you just met me a minute ago when you tried to sell me ya-yo out of that hobo’s boot,  you should know how much I love scene kids and wish to be a mother to them all.

Of course, Chooch immediately tried to swipe them, so I brought them to work with me, which is where they will live, next to my picture of Austin Carlile and Chiodos, because the other thing you would probably learn about me after spending like, an hour on my blog is that I don’t like to share.

Not even with my own kid.

And also, Chooch and I fight like rabid siblings. Henry’s mom was over my house when I was opening the package and it looked like she was getting ready to take a wooden spoon to both of our asses for acting like spoiled bitches.

It’s funny, because Brandy posted a picture of the scene kids on her blog last week, and I fucking flew to her Etsy shop, hoping to find them because I was so ready to buy the shit out of them. I had no idea they were made for me!

And she gave me one of her signature Freak Flags!

You guys should all check out her blog and her Etsy shop if you’re not previously privy, because she’s a real class act.

***

I know I don’t get serious on here a lot, but I am just genuinely struck by the kindness and generosity I’ve encountered in the people I’ve met through blogging. In the last week alone, the outpouring of love and condolences from you guys after I broke the news of my grandma’s death was astounding, and just what I needed to get through the week. I never really had much support growing up, so to have it now is a really incredible feeling, and not something that I take for granted. There are so many times I feel like I just want to quit blogging, but then someone will remind me that at the end of the day, this is why I do it: To make friends. To feel less alone. To feel like I matter.

So to all the people who come back and read this even though I might be abrasive and obnoxious a lot of (most of) the time: You matter to me, too. Thank you. <3

When Milly came calling on Ethel one afternoon, she was a bit unnerved by the soft plopping sensation she kept feeling on her shoulders.

Milly tried not to look distracted while Ethel yammered on about the new compost pile her husband Jim-Bitch had engineered right there in the backyard, next to the rusted 1967 pick up truck and behind the pig sty. As more gentle plops landed upon her shoulders and gingham’d bosom, Milly tightened her grip on the mason jar of moonshine Ethel done served up. Trying her darndest to retain eye contact, she waited for Ethel to get up and whip her kids before flicking and swiping at the hardening lumps on her shoulders.

Twenty-eight minutes into her visit, Milly was taking a long slurp of ‘shine when something wet and mushy went splat-squish on her head. And then, a second later, a thick brook of warm goo glooped right on down her forehead, right on past the whisker-sprouting mole, before pooling into a moist inlet of fecal marsh at the bridge of her nose.

Looking up slowly, Milly was met with ruffled feathers and at least eight sets of beady eyes.

“Ya’ll gots some birds up in there,” she drawled to Ethel, pointing up at the rafters. And she took another long gulp of moonshine while Ethel went to town with a leather belt on the backside of her redheaded stepson for burying the neighbor in the brand new compost pile, goddammit.

***

New size pendants up in here! Measuring 1.22 x 1.22″, a print of my original painting Ya’ll Gots Some Birds Up In There has been miniaturized and sealed with resin so that you can have your own piece of lilliputian art to string around your neck. Or the neck of your dog. Or perhaps you want to dangle it from your rear view mirror. This thing was practically made for dangling. Get yourself one here.

Chain not included, just in case the dangling gets weird and verboten; I don’t want to be held responsible.

It wasn’t so bad at the orphanage after Sister Nutbuster’s interest in birds piqued upon receiving a sign from God. She had always paused to admire squawking woodcocks and bobbing robins, even as a small leg-braced girl, but now that she knew their feathers were saturated with the holy spirit, she spent hours at a time in the courtyard foraging for loose plumage to rub over her pious undercarriage.

This meant less time for Sister Nutbuster to crack the grubby orphans on their ruddy bottoms for sneezing, missing a bead on the rosary, and communicating with Satan through cracks in the bathroom tile.

Eventually, avian mania reached its apex when God told Sister Nutbuster to steal the money from the chicken pox vaccination fund and build a lavish aviary, one with gilded gazebos and fountains bloated with holy water and fenced with statues of big-titted Greek broads.

Trayvon, a ten-year-old orphan whose broom closet bedroom was stationed next to the aviary, really reaped the rewards from Sister Nutbuster’s obsession. At first, the incessant chirping made it hard to sleep; but after a few days, the birds began telling him important facts like how to build a bomb using pulpit dust and communion wafers, and cooed lullabies to him every night in the style of Gwar.

For the first time since he was dumped on the front steps of the orphanage, Trayvon felt content, like he finally had a family.

A few weeks later, Trayvon expired from bird flu.

There was a large, oblong crate in the middle of the room, atop which Dixie cups and crumbled napkins had been absently discarded.

Billy’s friend Pietro arrived behind him, a small box wrapped in joyful floral tucked under his sweat-stained pit.

“What is this, a birthday party?” Billy asked with a sarcastic laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what my invitation said,” Pietro responded, his caterpillar brow flexing.

Billy glanced around the room and found his sister Yvette with a basket of matzoh. He wove his way over to her, and her answer to his kosher inquiry was, “This is a seder, is it not?”

Confused and slightly panicked, Billy withdrew his invitation from his blazer pocket. It clearly said “Come get wined and cheesed” in yellow comic sans.

Swiveling, he noted that Amber Flushbum was holding a battered Trivial Pursuit and Kevin Kickscrotum, clad in fluorescent mesh, was corkscrewing two pink glowsticks in the air.

Just then, Patty made her grand entrance, her lazy eye obstructed by the thick black veil which draped from her crown.

“Friends, thank you all for coming to my little soiree.” And with a dramatic flourish, she wrenched open the lid of the crate, causing an avalanche of red plastic cups and cookie-crumbed napkins to cascade to the floor.

Inside was the rotting corpse of her mother, her mouth frozen in a twisted snarl.

Little gasps burst throughout the room like breathy firecrackers. Beverages were dropped to the carpet in shock. The person in the kangaroo suit passed out by the foyer, but not before the unfortunate situation caused them to drop a deuce in their panties.

Pandemonium rippled through the house. “I thought this was a baby shower!!

“—game night!”
“—key bowl party!”
“—porno exchange!”
“—furry club!”

Patty laughed sadly, and began to choke. She raised a red Dixie cup filled to the brim with Billy’s Lambrusco and took a hearty swig to wash down the piece of matzoh that had become snagged in her esophagus.

“No my friends, I sent out those invitations because I couldn’t find any that said, ‘Come Celebrate the Murder of My Rapist Mother’.”

[Original painting available on Etsy. Great Christmas gift for your garbageman!]

A short time later, I painted the inside of it.

“1 Apple, 10 Of Us”

I stare at it a few minutes every day and it drives me nuts because it just doesn’t look done. Then this morning, it hit me. Artificial grass. It needs artificial grass.

Then I will finally be able to make Henry attach some wire shit to the back of it, so it can hang from the wall and constantly remind us all of that horrible day at the flea market where I walked for miles with a broken toe and Henry grumbled a lot and wouldn’t buy us a puppy.

In other non “fake art” news, I went on a field trip to the pumpkin patch yesterday with Chooch’s class and it was pure, unadulterated terror, from the bus ride all the way down to the song we learned about dirt. I will maybe write about it tomorrow, but I will be honest – I’m a little traumatized.

It didn’t sound so bad when he thought about it quietly to himself. But when Jorge heard the words as they tumbled off his wagging tongue, it occurred to him that perhaps he sounded crazy.

Pretentious.
Fatuous.
Obsessive.
Brain-fucked sociopath with a speech impediment.

He had good reasons though, for avoiding epidermic contact. It wasn’t the feel of flesh that diddled his nerves, no not that at all. Peggy Snorkleton had luxurious skin that felt like the distressed hide he wrapped around his Glock, and he did so enjoy a good rubbing against her.

It wasn’t until his mother accidentally lost her balance at the traveling freak show and collided with a leper that he began to see just how vile a human’s hull could actually be. The varying degrees of elasticity, the blemishes that sprung up the closer you got to a person, the moles dripping off bare backs like stalactic raisins.

Stretch marks.
Psoriasis.
Scars.
Freckles on an albino.

And then there was the dermatitis; the dandruff, the miniscule vellum scraps piling up like abraded artifacts across bathroom sinks.

Lately he was petrified of flesh-eating diseases.

Mersa.
Parasites.
Ticks.
Lice.
Crabs waiting to hail a new carapace cab from a dirty pubic pelt they’ve outgrown.

And still, after all the careful explaining, the guests at Francis Featherflicker’s birthday party didn’t understand why Jorge chose to stand in a corner while the rest of the revelers partook in a riveting round of Twister. It was nearly too much for Jorge to bear, even as a spectator: the mashing of limbs, the entwining of phalanges, the friction of bare flesh against the plastic mat, the rubbing and sloughing of a half dozen human appendages catapulting derma debris into the air.

He could be inhaling someone’s scalp scales.

Somewhere in between right-hand-red and left-foot-yellow, a boy with jagged-edged hair gave a diminuitive girl an Indian brushburn. For kicks, he did this. The sound of her flesh twisting beneath the boys clammy palm sent a fissure through Jorge’s psyche.

It was here  that Jorge began to notice that his teeth were grinding.

He was used to being excluded, though he supposed he excluded himself. He was used to mostly sexless relationships; and on the occasion where he woke up feeling a bit randy, a sheet with a hole in the exact positioning of the genital vicinity would need to be laid down between him and whatever person was willing to be his partner in such Amish-styled relations. He was used to declining invitations to pool parties, the thought of all that moist skin, amalgamating into a filthy stew of sweat, urine, chlorine, saliva once sent him reeling into panic.

Jorge was accustomed to people regarding him as a pariah.

Freak.
Outcast.
Asocial.
Queerbot ripping entrails from roadkilled hobos.

But when, in the middle of quite some intense limb-locking, Curly Dustbin wafted a legume-laced bubble of flatulence into the faces of several unfortunate guests fighting for the green spot, causing a chain reaction of chunky purging, Jorge was thankful to be standing alone in a corner.

(Originally published April 14, 2009. Reposted today because I can do shit like that.)

But this month, the person I was given to gift expressed an interest in lomography, so I sent her the photo below and its accompanying story. She in turn told me that the photo and story were disturbing, and that her daughter asked, “What is wrong with her?” For a member of the Dark Side to think something of mine is creepy and disturbing? Best compliment ever.  

I don’t usually re-post my “super gay stories,” but I wanted to give this one another spin, since it was so well-received the other day. Just let me bask for a minute, alright? Christ.

And hey! If you want your own copy (which is printed on really cool metallic paper, by the way!), you can get it here.

Sally should not have been surprised when she was turned away at the door.

“But I was invited!” she insisted, coffee-stained invitation curved around the womb of her hands. She held it up to the man’s face, pulling it taut so he could see that her name, in adolescent lower-case, was penciled in at the top. Her name, it was there! Her name was right there next to the day-old coffee splash that looked like Hitler; right there, preceeding the typed words IS INVITED.

Laughter flitted from the bowels of the banquet hall. He flicked the invitation, knocking it loose from Sally’s grip and slamming the door in her snout. “No pigs invited!” she heard several revelers shout in unison, followed by more hideous laughter. “Pig’ll eat all the food!” The cruel heckling made the bile effervesce within Sally. For a brief moment, she could taste its sour flavor as it burned against her uvula. She swallowed it.

She tried to swallow the hideous laughter, too.

Fifty-three minutes later, Sally sat in her parked car at a truck stop just a few miles outside of town. She numbly nibbled on the sandwich that was handed to her through a window by an androgynous teen with a snarled upper lip, Sally’s own pout puckering involuntarily as her tongue moved over a spot of bread, moist from pickle sweat. Choking back a sloppy slurp of lemonade, Sally cried out bitterly, “I belong no where!” She groped in the darkness of her car, until her fingers eventually came up with a pen.

You might not know it yet but you will be sorry. Sorry for slamming doors in my face, for flushing my poems down the commode. You will be sorry for not letting me carole with you that one Christmas in 1987.

As a child, Sally was invited to parties only because her father was the principal; parents used her spot on birthday guest lists to keep their own slovenly spawn from flunking out of third grade. And Sally, so full of jubilance, would put on her best Laura Ashley, and she would step into her best Mary Janes, and she would wrap the present in the best foiled paper. And last, she would pull on her rubber pig mask.

In front of her father, all the kids would chant “Oh Sally’s here! Oh, Sally, Sally, Sally!” But then the door would shut behind her and her father and his little green Pinto would be a dot on the horizon.

You might not know it yet, but you will see that my headgear did not define me, that my stutter was not a reason to make me a cafeteria pariah. You might not know it yet, but my halitosis was bearable under the supervision of Altoids.

And then it was, “Oops, Sally, I didn’t mean to tear your dress” [as Mary Misslegap swiped at the silken floral with a boxcutter] and “Uh oh, Sally’s having her period!” [courtesy of Agatha Angelfuck pollacking her with Heinz] and “Sorry, Sally, there’s no cake left for you” [as Tommy Wettail smeared it on her face like paste, snapping her bra for the cherry on top]. And there would be that hideous laughter again. Sally would swallow that hideous laughter and go home.

You might not know it yet, but you will realize that I had things to say, ideas to share, if you could have only seen past my muffin top, past my cleft palate. You will realize that the brown stain on my white trousers in Spanish class senior year was mud, not shit from my own self.

And even after all of that, Sally was willing to give her old peers a second chance when the invitation arrived that day. YARDLY GREEN HIGH SCHOOL’S TENTH REUNION it said in an elegant script. Sally, who had too much hope for humanity, was anxious to show off her poker straight teeth and Kathy Lee knock-off. But Sally, whose better judgement raped her thoughts with reality, couldn’t help but falter in her step when she arrived at the hotel that night.

You might not know it yet, but I don’t care about your Better Homes and Garden wedding. And I don’t care your child was born with Downs Syndrome. And I don’t care about how you feel about me. Not anymore.

Sally should have known she was only invited as entertainment, one more lashing for the social reject. It was just like grade school, only now the cruelty was liquor-enhanced. Sally should have known there would be no punch-drinking and name tag-wearing for her that night. But now, parked next to a rocking eighteen-wheeler with frosted windows, Sally knew; and soon they would too.

You might not know it yet, but I am unable to swallow that hideous laughter.You might not know it yet, but I was really fucking good at Chemistry.

Sally had just added the final flourish to her signature when her pen bled its last drop of ink. Sally folded the coarse brown napkin she had been writing on and peeled off the pig mask;  with a forceful stab to her carotid, she used the sanguine ink to scrawl ATTENTION: ALL OF MY WORST CRITICS on the top of the note.

And that is exactly what a mulletted trucker in a camo vest was reading, coagulated in blood and pickle juice from a half-eaten Hoagie Hocker sub, when the bomb went off at that hotel with the hideous laughter.