The Spelling Test

It is stories from my childhood day.
I have always loved to read and I found the majority of school work inane-
So I read in class.

In elementary school-

In junior high -

and in high school -

When I read a book I stop seeing the words on the page. I also become utterly oblivious to anything which occurs around me. Some people mall this being off in "la - la - land" La-La land sounds like a terrible place full of tellitubbies. This place is more like "not present to this world of endless drudgery - land" and it is awesome.

One day in fifth grade I was reading a book in class and paying absolutely no attention to what was going on. Suddenly an echo-y voice from a different reality said, "Aright turn in your papers class." Slowly- sluggishly my brain tried to grasp what was going on, "papers? what papers?" As I regained consciousness I shot a glance at somebody else's paper, "I see numbers - numbers with words written next to them." and the top of my neighbors page said, "SPELLING TEST".

The fog lifted.
                  My mind spun frantically but to no avail. I read straight through a spelling test.
The rest of the class passed their papers forward.
                 shoot shoot- um okay I know most of the words right? we practiced them this week but they are never going to be in the right order and even if they were close there is no way that I have enough time to...
Miss Smith flipped through them one by one...
               Ah! AH! brain panic mode coherent thoughts equal zero. error. error.
Her brow furrows and she starts to walk towards me
              No time. No plan. O gods of foursquare help me now.
And she says: "Elizabeth where is your spelling test?"

I attempted to answer that question.

Her eyes stared coldly into mine with the hatred of an underpaid school teacher who cannot understand why children live to torture her.
And then she said nothing and walked away.
I never retook the spelling test.
She never said anything about it again -
and I learned what mercy feels like.

I have some strange wishes.

I have some strange wishes - I thought I would share them with you.

The number of push-ups I am capable of doing is in fact negative two.

The candles mock his pain.
sorry this is late-ish.

Absurd Cards

I am unemployed - and I thought to myself, "Self, there are people who write greeting cards and stuff. I think they might get paid like 2 dollars an hour for it."
Today I tried my hand at writing some greeting cards and postcards.
It mostly degenerated into me bestowing captions on a ton of stock photos using MS paint. They are the quality of greeting cards you can buy at the 99 cent store.
They came out absurdly.

A birthday card for people who are getting old. May also double as a thinking of you card for people in rehab.

Tell your friends that you went camping without them - so they can all be glad that they did not go with you and that they do not smell like campfire smoke.

It sounds a little bit like the gorse bush is the one who is there for me when I do stupid things. Grammar = needs practice.

Probably the worst smelling thing at the zoo- but then lots of things smell bad at the zoo.

Somewhere a greeting card writer sends cries for help via the cheap greeting cards that he writes everyday for 14 hours.

Actually I think I usually do mean this when I whine about wanting to be somewhere else. 

- Ron Weasley 

annnnd I need a job.

St. Tequilus

The patrόn saint of upperclassmen seminars:

Anyway I have always thought that icons were beautiful - thus I am appreciating them by drawing blasphemous-ish spoof.
I think this picture is funny all by itself -
but I wrote more because it felt lazy not to write anything - thusly I have composed the whiny rant below. Feel free to skip it.

His hat askew and his eyes looking in slightly different directions - St. Tequilus is the one who is there to help you in seminar when somebody asks about Emma, "Why are we reading this book anyway?" -to which I think I said something uncharacteristically romantic like, "Love is beautiful and worth imitating." Answers like this are only pull-off-able if you have had a little tequila and are not considered a fluffy romantic sort.
St. Tequilus is there to help us when we are reading Gulliver's Travels and we wage a two hour fight to show that the houyhnhnms are not Swift's depiction of a perfect society.

St. Tequilus give us patience to bear with the extremely philosophical people -
Who do not do well with literature- a world of simultaneous contraries.
Who do not think a story can be great unless it ballyhoos their perspective - (Cough* Flaubert).
Who believe that literature exists to serve ethics.
Who hate The Waste Land - but only read it once and skipped the notes.
Lastly St. Tequilus help us to be not overwhelmingly pompous in the face of this philosophical ineptitude. Help us to admit it when we don't understand and maybe actually learn something - amen. 

Saying amen to your own prayer is like saying "I agree with myself," at the end of every sentence.

Sauron Goes to the Beach

Here in California it has decided to be disturbingly hot and sticky in September.

Wanting to put my face straight in the air conditioner  level = 100%

As a result Californians have been flocking to the beach in droves.
I stopped to think about it and I realized that I have been to the beach the last three weekends.

Last time I was at the beach with my friends I was suddenly bored of lying around like a banana slug trying to get a tan - so I decided that I wanted to build a sand castle and proceeded to enlist various other individuals who were significantly less enthusiastic about my architectural ambitions.

We started building a castle / pile of sand.
Friend: "This is Mordor."
Me: "Oh boo. Can't it be something nice?"
Friend: "No."
Me: "This is why we can't have nice things- because we turn them into Mordor."
Friend: "Shut-up. You are building Barad dur. I will make Cirith Ungul and a moat."

Thus the image of Sauron on the beach wearing a floaty and worrying about potential sand and water damage to his armor appeared in my imagination.

 (How is Sauron's armor not deflating that floaty? The floaty's love and adoration for Sauron keeps it alive. Look at the sparkle in its eyes.)

Sauron: "Oh look at all these people having a good time. I hate it."
Sandcastles are difficult to make.

(after a good while my Barad dur was still lump-like in nature and altogether unimpressive)
Friend:
"Your Barad dur sucks.
It needs to have definitive architecture.
It needs to be taller."
Me: "WELL I KEEP DESTROYING MY DEFINITIVE ARCHITECTURE TO MAKE IT TALLER! I CANT DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. STOP BEING SO DEMANDING SAURON."
Friend: "Your evil kingdom architecture ability does not live up to what you said about yourself on your resume. This is the last time I let an orc do anything which requires even mediocre wit."

As it got later our sandcastle (sand-very small mountain) began to get continuously smashed by larger waves. (that is the fun part). After one of these waves hit and flooded our moat I over-dramatically yelled "Noooo!" And furiously threw buckets of sand and water out of the moat.
Two older ladies were walking by - they looked at me for a minute- saw a huge mid-twenties person building an unimpressive sand castle with comic fervor and started laughing. I laughed with them.

Lastly there was this awesome kid there- who did this:

And then another wave would crash over him and then he would spit out some salt water regain composure and yell, "BRING IT POSEIDON!!!" again.

(So Poseidon usually has feet and Triton is the one with the merman tail but I wanted to draw one for the sake of fun - stop whining mythology die-hards.)

However - we do not threaten the gods especially Poseidon because:
1. The Odyssey - do not piss Poseidon off by messing with his one eyed son. Not that he was in to big rush to get off that island - Odysseus: "Poor me. I am having such a terrible time cheating on my eternally faithful wife with this Nymph Calypso. I just can't stand it anymore." boo-hoo.
2. Hippolytus - If you send Poseidon to kill your innocent son he will freaking do it okay? Don't mess with him.

Rabid Furbys.

Back in the 90's this toy called the Furby rose to astronomically high popularity. This caused parents to fight to the death to acquire one for their kid at Christmas time.
My little brother was all about robotic toys - so he got one.
I hated it.

Reasons I abhorred Furbies
 1. They look like fluffy bird-trolls and speak in baby gibberish.

2. I hated them and was convinced that they were possessed.
I believed that taking the batteries out of them could not kill them. They would just know that you had tried to murder them them. They would hate you even more - and keep on talking.

Furbies are staging a comeback. I am not a fan of this.
A year or so I was standing in our library flipping through Time or something while I attempted to put off doing home work. It said "the Furby - hot 90's toy makes a comeback" - I yelled in terror.
Anyway so when a new generation furby appeared on my facebook feed I suddenly had a mental picture of me fending off slews of rabid furbies with a sword - I have cartooned this thusly:

Creepy toys/ children's tv programming pop quiz:
1. What would it be like to be one of the people in a Teletubbies costume? Do antidepressants and counseling come with the job?
2. Which toy is scariest?
      a. Troll Dolls
      b. Glow babies
      c. A tickle me Elmo that starts talking in the middle of the night.

- note about Teletubbies I just youtubed it and its creators were like, "well this is how children think."
 Sooooo basically you are saying that being a kid is like being on acid?