Dear Elitist Snob Cosplay Enthusiasts…

A few days ago, I read this article on BuzzFeed, about a young woman who knows virtually nothing about such things being walked around New York Comic Con and asked to name various characters that were being depicted with varying degrees of accuracy and success.

Her answers were all hilariously, good-spiritedly, entirely wrong.  Which is cool.  If it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing.  But she was a good sport about it.

The same, however, can’t be said for the commenters on the article who called her “uneducated”, asked if she’d been living under a rock, wondered if she’d ever had a childhood, all sorts of variations on that same assholic theme.

What bothers me the most about that reaction is that the cosplayers I know, the ones who actually make the costumes and post the photos and bring the characters to life for these conventions, would never react that way to this young woman’s ignorance of their craft.  Granted, I don’t know every cosplayer in the world, but the ones I do know are genuinely nice, friendly, helpful, supportive people who get that their thing isn’t everyone’s thing.

So, because I’m fighting a cold and it’s making me grumpy and considerably less forgiving than usual, I’m issuing a little challenge to the judgmental elitist cosplay fans who are convinced that lack of knowledge of their particular interest makes someone a complete moron.

The following are photos of women who will be immediately recognizable to most pinup & burlesque enthusiasts.  Can you name them all?  Can you?  CAN YOU?!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

#13

#14

#15

WTF really?  You can’t?  Is it because you’re an uneducated rock-under-dwelling Amish who never had an adolescence?

Or is it maybe just because this isn’t your thing, and that’s perfectly okay?


ANSWERS WILL BE POSTED HERE ON 10/15

Solicitation: How to Get What You Want from Women in Their Underwear Without Pissing Them Off

Late last year, I was approached by the editor of a magazine and asked if I would consider submitting some photos.  This editor and I have a number of mutual acquaintances, one of whom is a good friend of mine so, on the strength of that, I happily agreed.

Thus began an ongoing communication, during which I shot not one but two sets for the magazine, both of which I agreed to keep exclusive until after they had been published, and made sure I kept the editor apprised of the progress of both shoots as progress was made.  No specifics beyond general themes were ever discussed, but since this editor came to me based on the work in my portfolio that he had already seen, he knew my style.  The photos were submitted well before the deadline for the issue, and when emails were sent out to let contributors know which high-resolution images needed to be sent, I found out that one image from one set would be published, and the submission of the second set was not even acknowledged.

Flash forward a few months, and a dear friend of mine finds herself in an almost identical situation, with a different magazine; approached by the editor, asked to submit a photo set based on the strength of her portfolio with only a very general description of what they’d like to see, time and money spent on the shoot, photos kept exclusive and submitted well within the required timeframe and, after several attempts to find out the status of publication, finally given only a lukewarm “maybe” as to whether they’ll ever be used.

I’m not going to say, now or ever, that any editor is obligated under any circumstances to guarantee publication of unseen work, regardless of who initiated the contact.  The editor’s job is to make sure all work published is in keeping with the quality and overall image of the magazine and, until you’ve seen the pictures, you can’t know they meet the criteria.  So my issue with the above mentioned situations is not that the photos asked for weren’t used.  My issue is with the communication, or rather lack thereof, from the editors’ sides.

In both of the above situations, the burden was on those editors to let me and my friend know as soon as possible that the work submitted was not what the magazine was hoping for.  A simple “you know, I appreciate you taking the time to do this, but it isn’t quite what we’re looking for” would have been fine.  A simple “you know, we’d love to see a set from you in a bar-type setting with mood lighting and a sheer black robe” prior to the shoot actually taking place would have been even better.  What is not at all even a little bit okay is “just send something Christmas-y” or “we’d like photos of you wearing red lipstick” and then leaving the model hanging for an answer, or ignoring the submission altogether.

I do not consider myself the be-all and end-all of magazine editors, far from it.  But I know what I want and I know the only way I’m ever going to get it is to ask for it, clearly and concisely, from the people I think are most likely to be able to provide it.  Case in point: I received a cover art submission for an upcoming issue that was almost what we want.  I emailed both the model and photographer and said “can you redo this same concept, making these changes and adding this?”  They said “hell yes we can!” and I have no doubt that we’re going to have an amazing cover that is exactly what we want.

Communication.  Is.  Key.

And it’s not actually all that painful.  Editors don’t like sending out rejection emails any more than contributors like receiving them, but you know something weird?  I’ve lost count of how many emails I’ve received over the past year from people who have sent work that is not in keeping with what we publish, thanking me for taking the time to let them know we wouldn’t be using their submissions.  They’re not thanking me for turning them down, because that would be silly and masochistic, but they are thanking me for not just letting their hard work vanish into a black hole of sent-and-never-answered emails.

To anyone who takes the bullshit line of not having time to reply to all submissions, no.  Just... no.  If you have time to ask for submissions, and time to profit from other people’s work, you have time to create a form letter that you can cut and paste as a reply to work that you don’t want to use.

Rejections are like band-aids.  A quick and clean rip that stings for a second is far better for everyone than ignoring it until the adhesive rots and it falls off on its own and lands you don’t even know where until it gets caught in the vacuum cleaner belt and starts to smoke and stinks up the entire room.

Unsolicited submissions to open calls deserve at least the token formality of a standardized rejection notice.  Solicited submissions?  Yes, those deserve considerably more.  If you ask someone for something, you are placing two burdens of responsibility on yourself.  First, that you communicate your requirements clearly.  Second, if you do not communicate your requirements clearly, and leave the details up to someone else, that if the end result is not what you had in mind, you at least have a big enough pair to let the person who did the work know you won’t be using it.

Before You Go On the Food Network…

Before you go on any Food Network program, it would serve you well to learn how to properly pronounce some commonly-used words in the culinary field.  While you’re at it, you could have a go at learning to pronounce “culinary” as well, but I’ve given up holding my breath on that one. 

However, there are some things I’m not quite ready to give up the fight on yet.  And I am really fucking tired of hearing so-called culinary “experts” constantly mispronounce the following:

Mascarpone – There are days when I swear if I hear one more person say “MARZ-ka-pone”, I will just douse my television in truffle oil, set it on fire and throw it out of a ninth-floor window.  It is pronounced “mas-kar-PO-nay”.  Why is this so difficult?  Why do I hear twelve people pronounce this incorrectly for every one that gets it right?  If you need a helpful hint, LOOK AT WHERE THE ‘R’ IS IN THE WORD.  Last time I checked, rules of Italian pronunciation did not include “if ‘r’ follows the second vowel, it should be sounded before the preceding two consonants”.  Those rules do, however, include pronouncing all vowels.  I know it’s not always easy for an English-trained brain to see an ‘e’ at the end of a word and think it’s there for anything other than garnish, but in Italian, there are no silent letters.  So say your ‘nay’.

Chipotle – If Jack-in-the-Box commercials can get this right, all you fine dining experts have no excuse.  It’s “cheh-POHT-lay”.  Not “chee-POL-tee” or “cheh-POL-tay”.  Again, a none-too-subtle hint, LOOK AT WHERE THE ‘T’ IS IN THE WORD.

Mozzarella – The most common, and to me least understandable, mispronunciation of this word is people simply forgetting that it ends with an ‘a’.  Was the final number at that concert you went to the other night performed a capell?  Is that bone in your knee a patell?  When it looks like rain, do you grab your umbrell?  Do you cringe every time your toddler insists yet again on watching her DVD of Cinderell?  Then why do you think you’re cooking with mozzarell?

Quinoa – I’m willing to cut people a bit more slack on this one just because it is kind of odd looking to an English-trained brain; however, it’s still not that difficult.  It’s pronounced “keen-wah”, slight emphasis on the first syllable.  I won’t throw a flaming truffle oil-soaked television at you if you don’t get it right all the time, but please at least make the effort.

Jews vs. Omnivores: No, Actually, It’s Not On

The other night, I was poking around the Internet looking for a good recipe for vegan buttercream frosting.  I’m not a vegan, and don’t do much vegan baking, but I’m going to try a new cupcake combo that features avocado frosting and, if I’m topping my cupcake with a vegetable anyway, it just seems silly to not make the whole thing vegan.  I found one that sounded pretty good, so I took the logical next step in the online recipe screening process and started reading the reviews and comments.

And that’s when I discovered, much to my surprise and sorrow, that apparently I hate Jews, and have all my life.  Which not only sucks for me as a person, but has the potential to make the holidays really awkward.  My sister is Jewish and, honestly, I’ve always thought I liked her a lot.

This recipe calls for sugar, as many recipes for sweet things do.  One of the commenters stated that it should specify beet sugar, because every time someone uses cane sugar, terrorists burn down an orphanage full of baby seals.  Or something to that effect, I don’t recall the exact phrasing but it was something very much to that effect.

Which prompted another commenter to say “Hey now, how about you calm down, of course you use cruelty-free ingredients whenever possible, but come on.  I’m a raw food vegan and I don’t have to make it everyone else’s problem.”  A comment and a way of thinking I appreciate; I have my thing, other people may have different things, nobody has to force their thing on anybody else.

The original commenter then rebutted with irrefutable evidence that I and many people just like me who may, like me, have spent their whole lives thinking otherwise, must in fact hate all Jews.  Because if you consume animal products, or even if you don’t consume animal products but take the incredibly irresponsible path of not trying to force your beliefs down the throat of every omnivore you encounter, that is exactly the same as the Holocaust.

(Which of course had nothing to do with anyone trying to force his belief system on everyone else.  But I digress.)

You have no idea how much I wish I were making this up.  You also have no idea how much I wish I had just called any one of my vegan friends and said “hey, email me a recipe for butterless buttercream.”  However, since I can’t unsee this exchange, I’ll do the next best thing; present one very large fact, and a few equally large opinions.

The Fact: Until you figure out a way to glean adequate sustenance from rocks, every time you eat, something is dying so that you can live.  Suck it up, Betty Sue Beetsugar, because there is no getting around that.  Welcome to our exothermic existence, where we’ll thank you to stop comparing omelets to Auschwitz.

Now for the opinions.

Many vegans cite the desire to never harm another sentient creature as the basis for their lifestyle choice and I absolutely respect that, it is an admirable way to live, every day of your life making a conscious effort to not do harm.  However, where our thinking diverges most sharply is the place where “sentient” is defined because I consider plants to be every bit as much sentient creatures as animals are.

I am what is known as a crazy plant lady.  I talk to them and they talk back the only way they can; through movement.  They lean toward me when I walk out with the watering can.  I’ve had flowers open in just the time it takes me to refill that watering can and walk back to the garden.  I used to have a patio that was edged on three sides by planter boxes and, when I sat out there to read, all of the plants would lean toward where I was sitting.  Yes, 270 degrees of plant life, all leaning toward my chair.  They were as aware of my presence as I was of theirs.

And do I eat them?  Yes, I do.  For the same reason and in the same way that I eat animals and animal products; because I will die if I don’t eat something, and with awareness of and appreciation for the fact that a living thing has ceased to live so that I can continue to do so.

So while I respect that desire behind the vegan lifestyle, I see unavoidable flaws in the execution.  Nothing anyone can do anything about as long as we’re all enjoying the previously mentioned exothermic existence.  And not a problem as long as everyone is willing to respect everyone else’s thing.

What I can and will do something about is blog the ever-loving fuck out of anyone who tries to tell me that I am an immoral, heartless, conscienceless waste of space and oxygen because I don’t share their objection to the consumption of animal products.  You know what I object to?  Embalming fluid.  I object to human remains being turned into masses of highly toxic matter that aren’t fit to be returned to the ground to nourish the very plants that we all rely on for survival, vegan or not.

That is an area that, to my way of thinking, seriously needs improvement.  Cruelty-free agriculture, and the economic feasibility of it, is an area that seriously needs improvement.  Being more aware of where our food is coming from is an area that, for just about everyone, seriously needs improvement.  But there is a difference between “areas that need improvement” and “Nazi Germany”, and those of us who really are making an effort to be good people and not completely screw up the world will thank you to recognize that difference before you start with the finger-pointing.

Maybe I’m Not As Shameless As I Thought

Anyone who has known me for longer than five minutes has most likely heard me say “I am completely shameless when it comes to promoting a good cause” or something very similar.  And it’s true, I am.  If I want your money to go somewhere, I will walk right up to you and ask you to send it there.

Like right here, where I’m saying you should go donate to my fundraiser for the American Lung Cancer Partnership.

See?

When you have something the very survival of which demands attention being called to it, if you don’t do it, no one will.  And I have learned over the years that one of the best ways to be as shameless as is necessary to market effectively, without turning people off, is to not even pretend you aren’t behaving like an attention whore.  Embrace your shamelessness.  Flaunt it.  Turn it into an asset.  Make it so shameless it’s funny.

I have some friends over on Facebook who market their modeling pages with posts along the lines of “You should go like my page, then tell all your friends to like my page, for no better reason than there are boobs.  Huge boobs.  Boobs just for you and your friends, over on my page, just go like it”.   That’s the right kind of shameless.  Self-deprecating boob-intensive marketing shamelessness.  And it works.  Because it’s so shameless it’s funny.

However, today I was on the receiving end of a completely different type of shamelessness, and I have to say I found it a bit offensive.

Over on another social networking site, I received a friend request from someone whose name I recognized and work I am vaguely familiar with.  I assumed it had been sent because this person also was vaguely familiar with my work, so I accepted the request and followed up with my usual “Hi, nice to meet you!” comment on that person’s profile.  The response I got to that comment?

“Go like my Facebook page!”

Um... wow, really?

I might have let it go, and not let it drive me into a fit of enraged blogging, had it been left at that.  It was not.  Following that comment was a message from this person, asking for me to go vote for a photo they had entered in a contest.

A contest in which I also have a photo entered.  A photo it never even occurred to me to go around asking random people with whom I have no previous connection to go vote for.  A photo this person seems to have completely overlooked in their quest to garner votes from complete strangers.  And not once in this entire exchange was there any mention of boobs.

This person may in fact be a really nice person, and not have any clue how offensive this whole thing was, but you don’t just walk up to people you don’t know and start asking for things, that is just not the way it’s done.

Or is it?  Is that the way it’s done now?  Am I really old-fashioned, to think there should be some sort of connection, or at least hint of reciprocity, before you start asking for favors?

There should at least be some mention of boobs, right?

(Seriously though, you should go like Naomi VonKreeps and Veronica Virgo.  For the boobs.)

Freakish! Shocking! And, oddly enough, A Crock of Crap!

Along my Facebook travels the other day, I happened across a photo and article posted by a woman who has quite a knack for posting things that will start discussions.  This post was no exception.  It was about a Romanian model named Ioana Spangenberg, her “freakish” figure and “shockingly” small waist.  According to the article, Spangenberg’s freakishly shocking measurements are a 20” waist and 32” hips.  And this is the photo circulating with the article:

The comments on FB ranged, predictably, from “eww OMG gross!” to “everyone is beautiful in their own way and you’re going to Hell if you think otherwise”.  I couldn’t even get to that part of the discussion.  Because I couldn’t get past my disbelief that people were A) accepting those numbers without question, and B) accepting them as shocking and freakish, also without question.

My contribution to the discussion consisted of pointing out that, in order for the photo in question to be showing a woman with a 20” waist above 32” hips, those numbers would translate to a flat 10” over 16”, and her hips in the photo would only be wider by 3” than her waist on either side.

My contribution to the discussion was resoundingly ignored as people carried on with their OMG-gross-ing and you’re-going-to-Hell-ing.  So, for those of you who think common sense and math are tools The Man is using to keep The People down, I will revert to what The People seem more receptive to believing: pictures.

The dashes are the same size font.  If the numbers in the article were accurate, the 10 dashes at her waistline would line up with her actual waistline, wouldn’t they?

I posted this line of reasoning on my own FB page, along with the photo below as a basis for comparison, taken of me when I first started modeling back in the late 80’s and I too had freakish and shocking measurements of a 20” waist and 32” hips.  Except where I come from, that’s not called “freakish and shocking”.  It’s called “your dad’s people were a bunch of short large-assed tiny-waisted Italian women”.

The comments that photo received were all extremely flattering, along the lines of my shape looking more natural and being more attractive, and before I continue, I would just like to say thank you.  Seriously.  How much you all love my ass means the world to me.  So thank you very very much and, in case you didn’t know, there is a black & white graphic of that photo available as a poster in my shop.  Just sayin’.

However, flattering as those comments were, the comparison I was trying to make wasn’t between what’s attractive and what isn’t, or even between my late 80’s body and Spangenberg’s body.  The point I wanted to make was two-fold.  First, a 20” waist is hardly freakish, nor are 32” hips.  Second, there is just no way the article’s numbers matched the article’s photo, and it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure it out.  Simple arithmetic and a dash of common sense are all that’s required to spot that, if you’re willing to look.

The photo of Spangenberg being circulated is one where her waist is cinched.  There’s nothing wrong with that, if she wants to do it.  There’s also nothing wrong with a newspaper reporting that Spangenberg is able to cinch her waist down to a “shocking” mere 14” or 15”, which is my guess as to about what’s shown in that photo.  That is definitely unusual, because when I had that waistline, I could only cinch it down to about 18”, there was just nothing more to pull in.  So that’s impressive, and worth some ink on an otherwise slow news day.

But to quote the great Judith Sheindlin, don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.  Don’t tell me smaller than average measurements are freakish and shocking, and don’t tell me I’m looking at something that I can easily figure out is not what I’m looking at.  And next time you see something like this, please take a minute to question what you’re looking at, and compare it to what you’re being told you’re looking at.  Maybe if we all start calling bullshit often and loudly enough, people will stop trying to feed it to us.

Frederick’s, You’re Just Lucky I Already Love You

I know there is stupid crap that drives me absolutely insane while seeming to not bother anyone else on the planet.  I get that. I really do.  But there are some things that I CAN’T believe are just me.

And one of those things is photos of models with their garter clasps flailing in the breeze.  Because they’re called garter clasps for a reason.  That reason is, they are meant to clasp things.  Specifically, stockings.  They are not meant to just hang there.  That’s why most of them are detachable, so that one is not obligated to wear stockings every single time one chooses to wear a particular piece of lingerie that happens to have included garter clasps.

This evening’s mail included the Spring catalog from Frederick’s of Hollywood.  Frederick’s has been a significant line item in my monthly budget for longer than I care to admit.  The IT guys at Fredericks.com recognize my ISP address on sight.  I look forward to my Frederick’s catalogs the way most people look forward to weekends, or dessert; something I know I can count on to occur regularly in my life, but that still gives me a happy every time it does.

So imagine my frustration when I opened the latest catalog and, before I even turned three pages, I saw this:

Two more pages, and I saw this:

Really, Frederick’s?  You have been making and selling this stuff since 1947.  You are the world’s foremost experts on the subject of trashy underwear.  As such, you are counted on to set an example.

Aesthetically, this is no less ridiculous than models wearing jeans with the waistband buttoned and the zipper down, or corsets with half of the center eyelets unlaced, or bras with only one of three hooks hooked.  And from a marketing standpoint, do you not realize you’re just shooting yourselves in the non-elegantly-nylon-clad foot by showing the products this way?  Why should women buy stockings from you when you are sending the message that it’s perfectly all right to go without them?

Besides, it looks much hotter

and far less stupidly tacky

when you do it right, doesn’t it?

(These lovely styles, and far too many others, are available at www.fredericks.com.  And, you know, if you're so inclined please feel free to send gift certificates to Harlean [at] poeticpinup.com.  Just sayin')

How to Design a Font that Really Sucks

If you had asked me, a few years back before I was heavily into incorporating text as an integral part of my daily routine of artsy what-nottery, if a font could suck, I mean really suck, suck to the point of drawing all goodness out of the project in which it was used and make me want to stick sharp objects in my brain as a result of its absolute unmitigated suckery, I would have said no. I would have likely said “pffffft, of course not, it’s just letters, it may not be exactly what you want but how can it actually suck?”

Little did I know. So very little. There are fonts in this world that exist at a level of sucking that Stephen Hawking, Stephanie Meyer and James Dyson can only dream of someday understanding.

But if you too dream of creating something that really really sucks, it doesn’t have to remain merely an impossible dream. You will be well on your way to Hall of Fame Sucking Greatness if you can design a font that includes any or all of the following characteristics.

- LARGE AMOUNTS OF REALLY FUCKING UNNECESSARY SPACE

Few things thrill me more, when I am trying to lay out a block of text as a single block rather than a dozen separate lines, than using a font with padding that exceeds the size of the letters themselves coded into it. Seriously. I love a 12px pad on 10px characters. It rocks. I have specially choreographed happy dances for just these little moments. To Ricky Martin songs, even.

Then there's...

- TOTALLY UNFUCKINGRECOGNIZABLE LETTERS

Go ahead, call me old-fashioned. When I type letters, I like the letters I type to look like the letters I type. So it’s a little wake up call for me, a much-needed nudge into the present, when I find a font that makes, for instance, a lowercase ‘k’ look exactly like a lowercase ‘f’, and the ‘f’ look just like a ‘t’, and the ‘t’ like an uppercase ‘I”. This is not a bad thing, in no way a flaw in the font. II’s me, clinging Io a pasI IhaI has no place in Ihe now, insIead of loofing torward inIo a brighIer Iomorrow.

And finally, a recently discovered favorite...

- EXTRA FUCKING CHARACTERS

When I first encountered the “craaazy” font that manifests its craaaziness in the form of adding extra characters to text, characters that the user didn’t actually type, my initial impulse was to drive to my mother’s house and slap her for not letting me know sooner that my life could ever be so good. It was like every wordy dream I never knew I had coming true all at once. Particularly when my text included a URL and I was just giddy imagining all the fun people would have trying to find my website! They wouldn’t know which of the craaazy mystery characters was the extra, it could keep them occupied for days! Why do we not play Hide & Seek on the Internet more often? What is this insistence on making businesses so easy for people to just waltz into? WHERE’S THE CRAAAZY FUN IN THAT?!


And that, boys and girls, is how you make a stupid font that really sucks.

This post is dedicated with gratitude to the creator(s) of Monotype Corsiva, my new go-to font. Mr. and/or Mrs. Corsiva, I heart you with all of my heart.

Dear State of California...

Dear State of California,

Thank you for being so much smarter than I am. I know you must be because there are things that seem to make perfect sense to you that are, sadly, completely beyond my ability to grasp.

A car was brought into an automotive repair facility this morning, needing minor work done in order to be able to pass a smog inspection for registration renewal. This automotive repair facility is certified to perform smog inspections; however, the vehicle registration renewal form specified that only a smog certificate from a Test Only or Gold Shield facility would be accepted.

Even though those facilities use the same equipment in the same manner to read the same emissions and issue the same certificates as our repair facility. And there is no regulation stating that the smog certificate can’t be issued by a facility where the vehicle in question is having other work done. The only reason we are not able to obtain the smog certificate at the facility where we have already taken the car is the verbiage on the registration form.

So I’m sure you have a good and sound and logical reason to require us to pump a few more fumes into the environment by transporting the vehicle to yet another facility in order to ensure that the vehicle is not pumping too many fumes into the environment.

No, don’t tell me what that reason is. I probably wouldn’t get it anyway.

Sincerely,
A Native Californian

My Inner History Geek is Not Amused*

Once upon a time, I worked at the Renaissance Faire. And when I say “once upon a time”, I mean “back in the days when an accurate portrayal of documented historic events and persons was actually considered important to the overall production”.

Back in once upon a time, we had a wardrobe mistress who had been seen drawing thick-lined black Sharpie X’s on the exposed body parts of performers when those body parts were not supposed to be exposed. We had live chickens that we carried around with us all day. We had ale, not Budweiser. And we had a woman playing Queen Elizabeth I who was actually... a bit homely. At least when she had her full “I Am the Queen” makeup on, she was.

Which was good. Because, you know what? It’s been pretty well documented that Elizabeth I had one foot on the fugly side, and the other on Ye Olde Banana Peele.

Yes. This is a portrait of Elizabeth I, as a teenager, when theoretically she was at her most attractive, painted during her lifetime, when the artist would have had to hear about it from her personally if it didn’t look good

and this was still the best he could do and have it be believable.

As you can most likely tell from the above portrait, Queen Elizabeth I was not pretty.

Flash forward past many a Renaissance Faire where the organizers, for whatever reason, felt like they had to find more

and more

attractive redheads to play the queen, and when I saw this one

taken by a friend at a Faire she attended with her daughter, I finally snapped. And when I snap, I blog. I used to buy shoes, but this is much cheaper.

So let me repeat, with caps lock on because that seems to be the only way some people on the Internet understand that other people on the Internet are serious, QUEEN ELIZABETH I WAS NOT PRETTY.

Striking? Maybe. Regal? Yes. Well dressed? Hell yes. Pretty? Not even close.

Guess what? She didn’t have to be pretty. We should all be so lucky as to ever have such a lack of need to be pretty. It’s like the old joke about not needing a Porsche if you have a big dick. Just substitute “pretty” for “Porsche”, and “control of the British Empire” for “big dick”.

But the times, as Mr. Dylan so astutely noted, they are a-changin’. So, Renaissance Faire Powers-That-Be, let me offer you a small bit of advice. If you insist on hiring progressively hotter redheads to portray one of the least hot women in the history of civilization for the sake of peddling as much cheap beer and mutton curry as is humanly possible in the course of six summer weekends, consider this:

Gia Genevieve is the chase, and you should just cut to it. Put her under permanent contract to play your Elizabeth I and call it a day. If you’re going to do it wrong anyway, you might as well do it wrong right.


*Yes, I know that was Victoria, not Elizabeth I. The difference between me and most of the people running historical reenaction events is I know that.

Gia Genevieve photo by Varga Photography

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that the woman in the third photo is actually portraying Mary I of Scotland, not Elizabeth I.  But I still think those first two Elizabeths are way prettier than they should be.

Dear Windows 7...

Dear Windows 7,

It was with great reluctance that I was forced to admit the machine I had owned and cherished for eight long years was no longer sufficient for my computing needs; great reluctance, and no small measure of trepidation. I know it makes me something of an oddity these days, but when it comes to my electronics, I do not like even slight change. And when finding a replacement for an almost decade-old PC, drastic change is inevitable.

During the new computer selection process, I was able to take some comfort in the recollection of the many advertisements put together to assure me that Windows 7 is, in fact, the best thing ever. In particular, a commercial featuring a young French woman came to mind, a woman whose vision reached so far into the uncharted that she was apparently one of the first people to realize a computer that did not crash all the time would be a really really good thing. I was quite frankly awestruck that anyone would even attempt to integrate a quality like “not consistently broken” into an operating system, but clearly it was something Windows 7 had done.

And done brilliantly, if I’m any judge. I’ve had my new computer for just over a month now, and she has yet to “crash”.

We have function-free interludes, and she does enjoy a good game of “Let’s See Who Can Find the Manual Restart Button”. And these things look like “crashing” because we humans are so conditioned by society to believe that a computer stopping in the middle of doing something and refusing to do anything further until we intervene has “crashed”, but I’m sure that’s just us projecting our own feelings of inadequacy onto our machines. They are actually Interactive Windows 7 Process Adjournments, and that is very different.

Very different, and obviously so much better. I really don’t know how to thank you.

Sincerely,
A PC whose idea was not Windows 7

Things that are Bugging Me More & More Lately: The Grammar Edition

We all have things that drive us crazy. And we all do things that drive other people crazy. It’s called “being human”. I for one am all over the being human thing, and do my best to let others be human in their own ways.

However, there are some things that people just really shouldn’t do. They shouldn’t do these things for two reasons. First, these things are wrong. Second, when enough people do these wrong things on a regular enough basis, they become accepted as right things.

I have given up on hearing the word “culinary” pronounced correctly outside of my own home. My sister is beginning to feel the same way about “foyer”. Granted, we were raised to set our sights high, but there comes a time when the towel must be thrown in for the sake of sanity.

So I let “kuhl-uh-naree” go when I hear it these days. It’s just not worth it. The rest of this post is dedicated to the things that I will let go only when my dying breath forces me to conserve my strength long enough to tell my loved ones how much they mean to me. The gloves are off now. I am far too annoyed to continue ignoring any of the following:

Things That Are Just Not Right

EVERYDAY – This is not the group of seven that forms a week. This is an adjective. It means “commonplace”. You can do something in an everyday manner, but you do not do it everyday, you do it every day.

ACCEPTED vs. EXCEPTED – Frankly I find it really disturbing to see these two words misused as often as I do since, not only are the spellings completely different, they do not mean even close to the same thing. You do not except things the way they are, you accept them. Or, you can take exception and not accept them. If you’re feeling particularly feisty, you can accept all of them except the exceptions which do not merit your acceptance.

DEFINATELY – This is not a word. Please stop using it as though it is. Whatever it is you are referring to is not definate, it is definite. Definitely definite.

IRREGARDLESS – Webster’s, Oxford, and Dictionary.com can all kiss my grammatically conscientious ass. This is not “nonstandard”, this is not “informal”, this is just wrong. Stop putting labels on it that make it sound like it’s okay to use under the right circumstances. It isn’t. Ever.


Words That Are Not Verbs

Here’s a hint to help you determine if a word is a verb; if you can’t add “ed” to the end of it to use it in the past tense, it probably isn’t. Now, this rule won’t always apply, but a little bit of common sense will take you a long way with words like:

WORKOUT – You can do an aerobic workout, but you do not workout aerobically. You work out. You did not workouted this morning. You worked out.

BACKUP – You make a backup copy. You have a backup plan. You do not backup your data, you back up your data. You did not backupped your data last week.

LOGIN – You have a login ID. You did not just use it when you loginned to your account. You logged in using your login. You will log in again tomorrow, using the same login.


Is That Your Welcome?

YOUR vs. YOU’RE – These are not interchangeable. One is about ownership. One is about a state of being. When in doubt, talk it out. Do you mean “YOU ARE welcome/great/silly/an asshole”? Then use “you’re”. I know, it’s another letter and an apostrophe. As you suffer through those extra keystrokes, take a moment to gloat. That’s your right when you’re right.

ITS vs. IT’S – see above.

THEIR vs. THERE vs. THEY’RE – A little more tricky, but really, how difficult is it to keep them straight?
Their – belonging to them
There – in that place
They’re – they are, again with the apostrophe being a none-too-subtle giveaway


This concludes today’s episode of Things that are Bugging Me More & More Lately. Please feel free to leave your own personal grammar pet peeves in the comments.