I was a childhood conman.

I was told to "blog something, FCOL" by my dad. Once I determined that FCOL wasn't something I should feel insulted at, I dug this gem out. I've been working on it a while, but I really don't have anywhere to go with it.

I am not a very interesting person, from a fictional standpoint. I mean, I can be occasionally pithy, and I do like to do things like wear wigs and sing spontaneous choral pieces (when enough friends of a similar mind and intoxication level are present), but I'd be straight-up screwed if I were a character in a novel. I have a very supportive middle-class white family with strong morals that would love me even if I ran away, shot up a butt-ton of meth-laced fruit loops, got pregnant and tattooed, cut off a toe in a drug-induced paranoid high, changed my name to Sunshyne, and became a lesbian hipster who ate other people's pets. Now that's love, people. Hipsters aren't generally accepted.

Image from LATFH

Part of that might have to do with the fact that I already have a tattoo, my mom apparently did drugs and went by Sunshyne in college (when she was a hippie backup singer), and my dad just REALLY REALLY wants grandkids, but most of it is love.

Anyway, back to the point - I'm not tragic enough to even rate a last name in a fictional adventure. I not only know my birth parents (and having a twin brother kind of makes it impossible to pretend I was adopted), but my mom's incredibly detailed genealogy projects mean I can trace my ancestry back 4 or 5 generations on my dad's side, and all the way back to the time of Columbus on my mom's side (His name was Samson Mason. He was a pioneer of justice and equality in a time of general raping and pillaging. Actually, I have no idea 'cause records aren't that detailed. His name was Samson, though, which seems a bit ill-fated to name your child since the dude started out blood-thirsty and donkey-abusing and ended up blind, bald, and in a bad BDSM situation after an interim of sex with heathens. Which actually, Samson Mason was around when the Native American nations were being universally labelled as "heathens" in a stunning display of ethnocentrism, so that kind of pans out if he's the side I get that 1/50th Cherokee blood from.). Also, I don't have superpowers that I know of. (Go waaay back to the beginning of that last parenthetical. It's a list of what I don't have, remember?)


I'm not particularly filled with angst, I don't suffer from anything other than the standard fits of depression that don't seem serious enough for medication since I'm still in the "college" age-bracket and that apparently is normal, and nothing particularly life-shattering has happened to me yet.

So basically, I'm a bit boring.

Oops

PERSON (leaving at 3:30): I'm out for the day.
ME: Lucky.
PERSON: It's for a visitation.
ME: ... Less lucky.
PERSON: uh... yeeeah.

Awkward.

Speak Friend and Enter Doormat - Step 1

This doormat is gonna freaking happen. First step is (as usual) getting references and deciding layout.

Using google-fu and thanks to a helpful yahoo answers entry, I found both the actual Tengwar characters of the Sindarin in an easy to decipher format as well as a great, clear jpg of the actual gate of Moria from the LOTR book.

Found at http://www.anarda.net/tolkien/moria_gate.jpg

This is gorgeous. It's also the wrong orientation for a landscape-style doormat. I figure I have a couple options: I could get a doormat that's the standard rectangle and slap this in the middle, I could mess with the Tolkein illustration to fill up the doormat in the proper orientation, or I could chop off the top of the graphic and smack it on a half-circle style doormat.

OR I could just put the Tengwar characters for pedo mellon a minno all fancy-like and have "Speak friend and enter" in dramatic allcaps across the bottom. I'm doing lots of crappy little thumbnails. I think what I'm going to have to do is (once I am no longer at work) go and make stencils of each element that I may want to include and just juggle them around manually to see what I like the look of best.

At this point, it's still only a model. But honestly, I kind of forgot I was planning on doing this... which is why it's taking so long. In other words, any progress is... at least progress, right?

Flammable Giraffes - It's How I Roll

I bought some stuff for my mom today from Perpetual Kid. I took the customer note box as a personal challenge.

This is a totally true story. Unless it isn't, in which case I was lied to.

I told my brother to put it on Reddit and make me famous.

Now I'm just waiting on the internet fame to start rolling in.

UPDATE: I took so long to write it in, they made me redo the whole order process. So I did.

This is, unfortunately, also true.

UPDATE 2: http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/t3l1i/my_sister_bought_a_mothers_day_gift_online_and/
your turn, internet.

UPDATE 3:
I just got my stuff delivered, and attached to the packing list was the print out of my note:

Crappy photo brought to you by crappy camera phone! Filling all of your slightly blurry, dark photo needs!

S/he liked it! Made the whole thing worth it.