There’s this French guy who works at the farmers market by my house. He works at the apple stand. And he is French! I love him. He sells me apple cider and he calls me mademoiselle. Seriously. He’s like “Bonjour, mademoiselle!” “Good morning mademoiselle!” “You are here for ze apple cider, yes?” “Ah, thank you, mademoiselle! I will see you next week, no?” It makes me feel like I’m Belle from Beauty and the Beast in the beginning, when she’s walking through the village.

I know Baby Chewie looks a little like he got kicked out of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but… no, I got nothing. Baby Chewie just looks like he got kicked out of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And turned into a plushie. But let’s not get into that in a discussion of babies.

You know, I am unemployed right now, so if you don’t want to get the whole costume, I’ll make you the wig. In exchange for money.

This is… not the best of the costumes. But babies get dirty, so my babies will need enough clothes to not have to do laundry every two days. And at least this one has a nice, jaunty toque.

Why does Baby Darth look like Bernard “Beans” Aranguren?

Oh, generic X-Wing Fighter. I love orange. The straps supposed to be asymmetrical, right? Because it looks like Blayne got to it, and now it’s all sci-filicious and I do not approve.

A couple of years ago, I made my mom some tea cozies for Christmas. Some were a more traditional tea cozy, but I made one in red and yellow and gave it ears, like when Dobby wore a tea cozy as a hat. This is what this makes me think of. There are the green ears, and a look of insurmountable joy upon my face.

Baby Storm Trooper kind of looks like Cthulhu, but I still just want to squeeze it. If that storm trooper hit his head on the door, I would definitely hug him when he cried.

Baby C-3PO kind of looks like an Ewok to me, I think because you can see it’s kind of fuzzy. Speaking of which, why the fuck aren’t there any baby Ewok costumes??

ALSO UNRELATED. But not really! As I’m writing this, I’m watching Ace of Cakes which we all know I love. Not only are they making a White Russian-flavored toe cake for Lebowski Fest, they’re also making a Millenium Falcon. That makes up for there not being a Han Solo OR Indiana Jones costume for babies. I guess that means I’ll be making my own.

So I loooooooooovvvvvvvvvve Ben from Ace of Cakes and that means I’m very happy to mention that he had a starring role on the Stanley Cup episode. Favorite episode! I can’t embed it, so here’s the link on youtube!

Halloween is nigh (ish) upon us, and if you (like me) don’t have your costume set upon, you need to get cracking. Since I don’t have mine decided, I’ve been looking at Halloween costumes for babies. Growing up, I think I only had one storebought costume (Supergirl, in case you’re wondering), and I’m pretty sure it was a) pajamas, and b) a hand-me-down. I wore the crap out of that outfit, as well as all ones that my mom either painstakingly or haphazardly made me. Once I got older and made my own costumes, I wore the crap out of them too, but that was more because I usually made them out of my own clothes or our dress-up chest, and I have always had a kind of… unusual fashion sense. In fact, just the other day, my mom “offered” to get me some clothes to wear to our Thanksgiving family reunion this year, because apparently I usually embarrass her with the clothes I choose. In the words of Stephanie “Step On Me” Tanner, how rude.

Anyway. Baby Halloween costumes. For the record, these are all adorable, but I do not condone prostitot costumes. Not kidding, I saw a baby showgirl costume. That’s disgusting, and also that baby kind of looks like Bat Boy. But don’t worry, parents and people who like adorable things, there are plenty of age appropriate and INSANELY CUTE costumes. Most of them are animals.

Doesn’t this one make you want need a skeptical Asian baby to dress up as a fluffy bear? If not, there is something very very wrong with you.

This is a really good example of the costumes that I like for kids (and for myself). Lots of the costumes that you’ll find for kids are based on Disney Channel characters or terrible-looking animated movies. This is just a cute baby in a squishy nom nom nomy panda suit. I want it so bad. The costume, I mean.

Sure, the baby’s face looks photoshopped in  (I  guess the original baby model wasn’t cute enough WHICH IS BLASPHEMY). But a baby in a monkey suit squeezing a stuffed monkey? Genius. Meta. Meta genius.

So maybe you don’t think of winged demons as real life animals, but I guess they don’t swoop outside your bedroom windows every night. Also this baby toddler is so happy and fun looking, I just have to tickle her tummy, even if she is a devil child.

Ah, the piece de resistance. I really don’t think I should have to say anything about this. UM HELLO BABY DRESSED AS AN OTTER. LOVE.

This one isn’t cute. It is a little, but mostly it looks like a dinosaur is eating that baby’s head. Not cute.

Ashley and I watch a lot of Ace of Cakes. It’s enjoyable and about cake. Plus, Ashley has this totally false idea that Geof and Mary Alice are secretly in love. No. False. Not accurate. It is just totally not true, and here is the evidence: Ashley makes things up and there is no evidence to support her theory except other things that she makes up.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the real hottest guy on the show: BEN. Soooooo cute. He looks like someone, but I don’t know who (if you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments and especially LEAVE PICTURES!). I feel like maybe it’s someone I went to college with, but I can’t figure out who it would be. But I love him even with his rooster hair and pedophile facial hair, and even though he totally wore a bandana on at least one occasion at work, which means it was filmed and is on the internet. Either way, he is totally cuter than Geof, and I mean Geof is really cute. Ben is like, dirtier or something, and therefore better. I mean, I don’t think dirtier is cuter. No way. He’s better because he’s so good with his hands. He works at Charm City Cakes because he’s such a good builder!

Although, I did discover while looking for Ben clips on youtube that Geof’s last name is MANTHORNE. That might make him a little hotter, sort of like how the most attractive actor from the Harry Potter movies is probably the guy who played Oliver Wood, because his name is Sean Biggerstaff.

I haven’t written here in forever. I’m really not into my job right now, and as a result am spending much of my time working on my resume, writing cover letters, applying for jobs, and completely destressing by watching as much terrible television as possible. I’m about two weeks away from starting to watch the Hills. Lord beer me strength, I never want that to happen. Anyway, I decided to take just a few minutes to alert people who stumble here to what’s going on over at Bitch.

I first read Bitch, jeez, almost ten years ago. I think it was like 1999 or something. I had read Bust a few times before, mostly before it became a glossy, while their website was seldom updated, and it still retained a bit more of a strictly feminist edge. None of this fashion spread and knitting crap. I mean, I love love love knitting and other fiber arts. I really consider fiber arts my biggest and sometimes only talent. But I don’t consider embroidery to be a feminist act.
Bitch isn’t that kind of feminist magazine. Bitch is for women who want to be a feminist and want to read about feminist issues that are actually issues – not how to buy your own house, sandwiched between shoes and makeup. Bitch is like Ms. but skewed a bit younger. It’s intense and sometimes a little scary. And for someone who’s been consistently reading the magazine for almost ten years, their current situation is kind of intense and scary. A couple of years ago, Bitch‘s distributor went bankrupt. It was kind of a huge thing for independent media. Punk Planet folded because of it. Bitch barely made it through. And now they’re struggling to come up with the printing costs for their next issue. They need $40,000 to print the issue. Bitch has, according to what I’ve read online, raised about $15,000 so far, but they need another $25,000 by October 15. If they don’t get it, they’re done. There goes a major source for feminist voices, one that can influence and inspire young women to announce themselves as feminists. If you have a few extra dollars (which I know is hard in the current economy), I totally suggest donating them to Bitch. It’s non-profit, tax-deductible, and a good cause. Or, well, I think so anyway.

This is not me playing Rock Band. I would totally take a picture of myself playing Rock Band, except I don’t look nearly as good or cool or like I’m having as much fun as these people. I sit cross-legged on the couch, holding the guitar controller vertically so it looks a little like a sitar, with my mouth open a little so that I get really concerned that I look like a total mouthbreather.

BUT IT IS MY FAVORITE THING EVER!!!!!!!!!!! I just bought a friend of mine’s XBox, with like 5 or 6 games, including one about ROBOTS (I haven’t written about ROBOTS yet, but I should because ROBOTS were my favorite thing ever until I played Rock Band), but all I do is play Rock Band. I’m obsessed. It is the coolest thing in the world. I got it home at about 8pm Thursday night. It’s now 9:42 Saturday morning, and I’ve spent eleven of the intervening 37(ish) hours playing. I had to work yesterday, so that took out about 10 hours, and oh yeah. I had a fever of 102 Thursday night. It’s totally gone now. That’s right. I had a fever, and the only cure was more Rock Band. I love it so much. The only way it could  possibly be better is if there were Black Kids or Decemberists songs on there.

I’m now so obsessed with it, that when I listen to my iPod – NO JOKE – I imagine what buttons I would push. It’s RIDICULOUS. I have to seriously force myself to not play. It’s like “hey you  could play another 20 songs on Rock Band or you could go to sleep since you’ve apparently been sick all week without realizing it, and maybe sleep would help you get better.” And then I play another 20 songs on Rock Band and realize that I stayed up until 4:15 in the morning trying to play “Don’t Fear The Reaper” on medium.

And why do I play so much, exactly? Besides it being totally awesome? To buy my character (Sarah Kathleen, who looks a little like me but much much more tattooed, because she’s a video game character and I’m not so it hurts a lot more for me to get tattoos) more clothes. This is exactly the same reason I obsessively “played” (built houses) in Sims for 5 years. Decorating video games is so much fun. But, really,  it’s not nearly as much fun as getting a perfect score on a song. Which I haven’t done yet, but I did get a 99% on “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Mostly because it’s damn easy.

Oh and also everything here refers pretty much only to playing guitar on Rock Band. I’m NOGOODATALL at drums. But Ashley is awesome and between us we already have a tour bus with roadies!

This gif. That’s all. Just watch it.

This is why. It is amazing. I freaking love it. I got it for $1.50 at my local apothecary, and it makes me whole life worth living. No matter how terrible my day is (and my days are really terrible, if you had to work with the aforementioned dude you would understand why), I know that I have the best friend in the entire world to come home to. Jack Daniels? Some kind of sex toy? Or the world’s best bath sponge? It’s the world’s best bath sponge.

It’s just this little mesh pouch, kind of like a mesh bath poofy sponge thing, but it’s a tube with elastic at one end. You put a bar of soap in the open end, and then you just wash yourself with it. It is so nice. It’s invigorating and leaves you literally fresh-scrubbed. I love showering now, it feels so good. If I was a terrible person who likes to kill water, I would do it TWICE a day now. But once is enough. Not really. It’s hard to control myself now. I will literally stand in the shower just scrubbing for like 8 minutes. Not even washing my hair, just that. And then I feel wonderful and like I can go out and fight misogyny for the rest of my day.