Halloween Costume

I spent all my time making a Halloween costume this weekend, so here is a cheerful Halloween greeting doodle that I made some years ago.

And some pictures of my Halloween costume which happens to be freaking awesome.

I am a gargoyle in case you are wondering.
And yes I made it.
And no I have not finished a draft of my thesis, why do you ask?

Unfortunately, after putting quite a while into making this mask, I discovered that there is actually nothing interesting to do as a gargoyle.
MASSIVE COSTUME OVERSIGHT.
Gargoyles are stone. They just sit there, being cool, way way up high on ledges of cool buildings.
But there weren't any ledges to perch on at the Halloween dance.
And also I am afraid of heights anyway so I would probably be unwilling to perch on them.
So I stood around like a dull boring rock.

When I tried to do anything I just ended up looking stupid like this:

I think I would have had more fun being a mime with Max (a mime cuss it!!!). I did win the individual costume competition, but I think that Max had more fun, even though I stole his imaginary rope out of spite.
Also some one suggested that I should have a pigeon, why did I not think of that? How come I never have good ideas?

Pumpkin

Fall is a hard time for pumpkins, Halloween and then Thanksgiving.

Pumpkins are an important part of Halloween.
Unfortunately for them.
They are an important part of Halloween the way that turkeys are an important part of thanksgiving, and pinatas are an important part of birthday parties.
It would not be the best to be a pinata.

But today is not pity a pinata day here at seize the absurd,
no it is pity a pumpkin day.
Or it could be pity things beginning with the letter "p" day, poor Peter Pettigrew.

However the suffering of a pumpkin can at times be very beneficial to private ambitions. For example if one carved the following message into one of them:

Family : "its weird that no one is coming to our door."
Me: "yes that is in fact very strange. I suppose I will eat all the candy then."
  then proceed to eat all of the candy yourself and pass out in a sugar coma of glory.

And that concludes a slightly depressing message about pumpkins and pinatas, however I am going to bet that before today you never said to yourself "thank goodness I am not a pumpkin or a pinata"
You're welcome.

Hegel Rant

I know its supposed to be Octoberween but I had an outburst of fury during our last seminar, which took up three pages of my seminar notebook and was sufficient to distract me from anything that was said in class, which was good, because I was livid and I may or may not have been close to having a full-scale emotional melt down and throwing my chair through the window. 

Anyway I wrote this during class and I thought I would share it with you.

For the sake of context, here it is: we are reading the works of Hegel for class, he is an unintelligible German philosopher. Well, unintelligible to me anyway a few people seem to understand it because they have a muse for German nonsense or something.

Here are my seminar notes since they are extremely stream of consciousness I have attempted to give a play-by-play of them in italics:

I began with an odd moment of self-reflection…probably because we kept talking about self-consciousness and I was mainly conscious of being irate.

 Whenever I am not capable of understanding something I get uproariously angry and throw a hissy fit. Three weeks of Hegel readings that I don’t understand has pushed me off the deep end.

 Other humble people are like, “I don’t understand this, but its ok, I can still have an open mind”

Me: “I have no idea what this is saying. Therefore it is stupid and wrong.”

Which leads me to the following conclusion: People who think they are smart, are handicapping themselves with respect to actually being smart.

One might ask: Liz how did you become such an arrogant twit?

Well, self-confidence is considered a virtue. Sometimes.

Self-confidence is a virtue that I did not come by naturally (this became evident in high school where I spewed a toxic river of self-deprecating humor). So I set out to construct an artificial self-confidence, which I based on my bright and shiny intellect.

            Today as I sit in this Hegel seminar, not understanding a word anyone is saying, I find myself wishing that I had a time machine. I would go tell myself, “listen, don’t put all your eggs in that intelligence basket, you’re just not that smart.”

 And previous me would say, “I don’t have any eggs, or baskets... and I wouldn’t take your advice even if I did.”

After that period of soul searching I proceeded to draw an angsty cartoon, which went like this:

(note this endless spiral of screaming insanity)

More whining:

In high school people would tell me things like, “hey I really like your cartoons! You should do that for a living,”

And I would respond, “No. no one will like them. I think I will be a smart person. Maybe a Professor.”

8 years of higher education later, and now I am saying, “turns out I am not good at being smart either I think I will draw cartoons”

A return to a commentary on the misery of seminar and some sort of self-help guide to Hegelian depression:

No amount of tea could restore my emotional state.

How to help your friends who are depressed by Hegel:

1. Telling them that Hegel is awesome = the worst plan ever. You: “no Hegel is great and really makes a lot of sense if you kind think about it sideways.” Depressed friend:  “I can’t think sideways.” Result: depressed friend tries to murder you.
2. Compliments = not helpful, “no! you’re smart!” … no really I have just have had a frickton of evidence that I am in fact not smart. I don’t believe you or your compliments.
3. Sympathy cards = acceptable, they should say things like “sorry for the loss of your intellect” and “during our senior year my mind leapt into a black abyss of despair just like yours, I believe that with the help of bourbon milkshakes you can make it through this trying time” these are helpful statements.

See how many times I said self? I am practically Hegel.

Octoberween

Halloween is my favorite holiday. This is occasionally a source of contention.

OTHER PEOPLE: No. Really your favorite holiday is Christmas.

Presents? Christmas cheer? spiked apple cider?

ME: No it isn't.

OTHER PEOPLE: Fine. Then your favorite holiday has to be your birthday.

Its all about you, how could that not be great?

There's cake, and in your case tequila.

ME: Nope.

BEST FRIEND: No really Other People, it is Halloween. She's not even joking.

If you asked me to list some months it would probably end up like this:

...July

August

September

Halloween

November

December...

In celebration of my love for Halloween, Seize the Absurd will be Halloween themed throughout October. I have decided to call this:

AN OCTOBERWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA

beginning today with coverage on a Monster Halloween Party, attended by the most famous monsters in history.  Luckily the paparazzi have acquired several promisingly dramatic snapshots.

Adam and his recently reconstructed bride share a pleasant conversation with the Wicked witch.

The Witch serves a marvelous pumpkin-eyeball punch to the fearsome guests.

(Frankenstein is the doctor, Adam is the monster. Which is easy to remember because it makes perfect sense, since he is the first re-created man....you're all welcome very much.)

Medusa has chosen a lovely albino boa constrictor named Reginald as a necklace. The necklace menaces the waiter, who was attempting to serve shots of invisibility potion.

On the left is Chatty-Caty with her fish bone tattoo.

The Mummy, who is intent on impressing the ladies, has failed to notice that his bandages have slipped, exposing some rather unattractive decaying leg.

Mer-woman and the Magic Rabbit are unimpressed.

It seems that the cause of Mummy's unraveling bandages, is a devious vampire, who has nailed a loose end to the floor. Count Vladimir gives him a scathing look as he drinks a bloody Mary (complete with eyeball instead of olive).

That was the last of the paparazzi pictures acquired, it is believed that the photographer proceeded to provoke a werewolf .

Eavesdropping

 Some of my friends occasionally try to get me to study in a coffee shop, without success.

They say things like, “we have the Sundays... maybe if we just go out and do our homework somewhere else we will finish it, and then eke out our last milliseconds of weekend freedom dreading the coming Monday morn on a couch in front of the television. ”

Except that I can never get anything done in a coffee shop.

Because I like listening to other peoples conversations.

I listen with rapt attention to people's mundane problems. While their friends play angry birds on their Iphone and mutter approval, I find their drama fascinating.

If my friends had these problems I would probably ignore them and practice using the force (which just might work someday so I am going to keep trying...but I find the lives of complete strangers interesting.

Whats even more awkward is when you find yourself answering the questions of people in a different conversation.

And that’s why I am not allowed at Starbucks any more...no actually its because I had too much caffeine that one time and stole that old lady's wig..

Eavesdropping was probably more effective back when houses had eves.

Now, apparently eaves are overhang from the roof.

 I am going have to go searching for some eaves to drop from.  

Confessions of a tween-aged ipod

IPOD: This is an ultimatum. Remove Call Me Maybe.

LIZ: no! Ipod, Call Me Maybe is a good running song.

IPOD: If you do not remove Call Me Maybe right now I will reveal all of your terrible music to the universe!

LIZ:  Egad. betrayal and blackmail, what is next Ipod? how can you despise me so?

IPOD: 3....2....1....1/2...

AND NOW INTRODUCING: VARIOUS BLACKMAIL SUBSTANCE!

 BROUGHT TO YOU BY LIZ'S IPOD (and the letter h for "ha ha Liz is a sucker")

My ipod is trash.

It is a very private place.

If everyone saw the contents of my ipod I would probably not have any friends.

I have 2 Nickleback songs.

and Call me Maybe, as aforementioned.

It would probably be a fascinating social experiment to take people's ipods by force and play them on shuffle.

My friends would probably all have “Friday night lectures from Thomas Aquinas College's, “Catholic people and more Catholic people” lecture series.

Or... “The complete works of Aristotle on tape”

What lectures on a Friday night? Yes sir. You heard me correctly. Lectures. Every other Friday night. They are “mandatory” with hand quotes which means that I attended approximately one during the entirety of sophomore year.

But you know what? We are 111^th on Forbes' list of 650 colleges. With 350 students.

With no internet.

Did I have to remind myself about that?

As a result of living without the internet for four years I have some joke material on Newton and Kant. Splendid.

In a spirit of further self-revelation, my ipod is a fascinating combination of musical soundtracks and songs that say mothercusser.

Whats that mothercusser?

I found a squid mothercusser!

It plays checkers mothercusser.

Oedipus literally mothercusser.

That song would go platinum baby.

Words in rap songs should be about 50% swears. I find that if the percentage of swears falls below about 50% music is no longer effective for causing me to run faster or acquire comedic cartooning ideas.

My terrible taste in music has some unfortunate side affects however, I frequently find myself blurting out snippets of catchy stupid songs by Rianna, or Lady Gaga, Katy Perry. Which is embarrassing when I am around people who I am trying to impress with my IQ (these people are people who do not know me).

 When this happens I usually attempt to convince people that my head receives radio waves... and therefore I cant help it.

Anyway I am totally cool with all that music, people are like “what rubbish children listen to these days” but there is nothing like blasting some meaningless pop music as you race back to school after having happy hour margaritas, slightly attempting not to be late to evening class, and slightly attempting not to go off the road.

It is a little funny that these people consider themselves great artists, I mean yeah they make stuff (like a lot of money) so they are artists...but great artists? That is some powerful self delusion. If you are Rianna and you think you are as good as Mozart...then, give me your money.

So there are some confessions of a tweenage ipod.

Coming up next week: some strange imitation Faust.

Sorry that there is just this truckload of text here, I was writing dance entertainment for school... please accept this libation

a picture of me as an elderly hick person: 

PS. I have the hampsterdance on my ipod. You guys remember that?

Emma

This week for school we read Emma as a result this post sprang from my head like Athena from the cranium of Zeus.

Several reasons why living in Jane Austen’s Emma would kill me (and ruin the novel):

1. Clothes.
   Look at those dresses and bonnets and crap. You couldn't even get away if you were a dude, even the guys had to wear fancy frilly stuffs.
2. Nobody ever says what they mean.
   You can't really tell whether or not anyone actually likes you from what they say so you have to watch everyone's behavior like a dramatic teenage girl with hawk/x-ray vision. Leading to continual guesswork about what motive might be behind each persons slightest action. Example: Mr. Knightly seemed overly concerned with Miss Farifax's health at the party last night- EGAD! Is he in love?!?... 
   Girls spend a lot of time doing this anyway, thus they love Jane Austen.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. One's character is determined by their style of handwriting and ability to write letters.
   Let it be known that if I had to distinguish myself as an intelligent and educated person through personal letters, it would not work out for me.
   If I wrote a letter to my sister Grace it would probably go like this:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Dear Grace,
   We are related.
   Love and other mushy stuff,
   Liz
   
   
   P.S. This postcard is of the Easter Island heads. Isn't it really fun that ancient people went through a bunch of effort just to cuss with us? I can picture one Druid hard at work on Stonehenge saying to himself with great joy: “this will cuss with them forever”.

As you can see I have distinguished myself as a gentlewoman through copious swears.

4. Every time Mrs. Elton calls Mr. Elton her “Lord and Master” I would barf.

Thus it is manifest that upon being trapped as a character in Emma I would go bat-cuss-crazy as is depicted in the following destruction of a tea party.

In conclusion:

Congratulations Jane Austen! everyone does actually want to hear about your weird sexual fantasies. However, I think I will stay right here thank you very much.

On a slightly related note:

I believe that a dramatic teenage girl who was given hawk/x-ray vision would make the following statements:

“My name is written on the boy's bathroom stalls at least four times. I think that guarantees that I am the most popular person at school. The homecoming crown is MINE.”

“all the benefits of x-ray vision are useless at Abercrombie and Fitch.”