The Bath Mitt of the Elder Ones

As you can see, I did, after several stops and starts, finish both sides of the mitt and join them. Now I have to do the tentacles. The final touch will be the eyes.
I'm using Emerald Green at the moment, but for the rest I think I will most likely use and sea green. Let me know what you think.
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The Crochet of Cthulhu: Designing the Mitt

Some of you might be wondering how I am dealing with all of this. Well, I'm doing it with a lot of liquor and tylenol PM. Last night it was tequila, today it's gin.

But I continue on with my cthulhu bathmitt. Here you see one side finished. I used a spray stitch that I got from SweaterBabe.com's Fabulous and Flirty crochet book. Unfortunately there were no directions on how to reduce stitches so I had to wing it.

The wings I got by modifying a pattern for butterfly potholders in the Annie's Attic The Ultimate Book of Potholders.

Of course the challenge was that I didn't keep very good notes on how I made one side, just kind of experimenting until I finally found something that worked. The next challenge was trying to reproduce that side so both sides would match. Posted by Picasa


The Little Things
I still feel horrible, but my mood did lighten a bit when I saw that someone came here looking for a cum recipe.

In the Immortal Words of Socrates...




"So now that you're dead, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?"-Heathers

I've been laid off by NYU.

A month ago I received a phone call from Maureen, formerly referred to as Vichy here. (I no longer see any reason to protect these asshats from criticism so I will use their first names. ) She asked if I wanted to teach in the Fall. The phone reception wasn't very good, but assured her that I did want to teach, but before we could discuss how many sections and so forth the line cut off. The following week I received an emergency email from me asking me again, if I wanted to teach and if so what book and how many sections.

I wondered seriously about how to respond. Did I really want to go back? Shouldn't I look for something else?

But, of course, they were asking me to come back. It was a bit flattering to keep saying that I wanted to leave and be talked into staying. Not to mention long ago I liked teaching. I worked hard to get this job and maybe, I thought, maybe this year would be better.

So I agreed to come back and teach a reduced course load. I thought this way I could make some money and still be able to cover events like the NYCHFF.

Last night I got phone call from Maureen telling there was a "problem with the sections." What was the problem? They didn't have enough and so I wouldn't be teaching despite the email that I received only three weeks ago. Why won't I be teaching? Because the union won, and so they can't afford to pay me after five years of working for them with no health insurance. Five years of teaching. There are two teachers who have significantly less seniority than I do and have been more problematic. I mean, you tell me to teach this essay and I do, unlike Lionel who had to be told multiple times what the required essays were and still failed to do so for two years while ignoring another injunction and requiring his students to write essays on Paradis Lost. Or how about Sandra who can't seem to make it to any meeting on time by an hour or so? These are teachers who have only been with us for two years, but they decided to keep the summer staff all year round.

You have to love the loyalty.

I have to say on a certain level it's an honor to be laid off from a staff where I have a colleague with a Ph.D. who doesn't know enough not to give her diabetic mother maple syrup or another professor who told his class that "black women have to come to terms with having to settle for less when it comes to a man because most black men are either in jail or are drug dealers" or yet another teacher who demonstrates such unrelenting idiocy I wouldn't trust her to sit the right way on a toilet seat. And Ken doesn't even have a master's, and his previous teaching experience? He used to teach gym. That's what you're astronomically high tuition is going towards. Having a former gym teacher help you with your writing skills.

I, on the other hand, was a specialized tutor before I became a teacher. I have my Master of Fine Arts in English with a focus on Writing from the number seven ranked university in the country. I was pivotal in changing how HEOP/C-STEP teaches their summer Pre-Map course including doing massive research to help aquiant teachers with works that they would have to teach- works that all of them admitting they hadn't read since high school and didn't reread before teaching it. (The work in question? The Aeneid.)

But they can't afford that anymore. Yep it's just too expensive to keep around the one person who believed in actually reading the essays required of her class.

So welcome to rock fucking bottom. I'm 31 with no boyfriend, no assets, and no career. I don't even get the prestige factor anymore. I don't get to say "Oh no no being an Nyu prof. it's not THAt impressive." I'm unemployed. Unloveable and Unemployable.

You know, when Eric left five years ago, it was this job that really kept me alive. Seriously. No matter how depressed I got I still made it to class, I still taught, I still handed back papers. When my therapist suggested that perhaps I might consider going to an asylum the reason I didn't go was because of teaching. I had been trying to get a job in teaching for a year. I finally caught a break, and I wasn't going to give it up. Not even when every morning I was drinking vodka with gatorade just to get to class without throwing myself on the subway tracks. I was not going to lose this job after I had lost everything else I cared about.

And now here I am, with nothing really to care about anymore. Utter humiliated because a place that should be begging to keep me could care less. It's a good thing my father is dead because I can't imagine what he would say about this, but it wouldn't helpful. So I'm an utter failure at 31. Makes me wonder why I fought so hard to live this life.

Because despite what I seem like, I was an optimist once. No one is this angry unless they have been disillusioned. I came to NYC 12 years ago thinking I would show all those kids who made my life miserable, who made fun of me and said I could never get a boyfriend, never get be an actor. I was going to Be Something. I was going to have a good life. And it wasn't going to matter that I was disabled because people would love me despite that, and I was going to be important and do good things for people and most importantly be loved.

My junior year, I was emergency hospitalized for three days. Three. I was in a hospital not more than five blocks from my dorm and about ten from campus. Everyone knew where I was, they promised to visit. In three days not one person came to visit me, not one. My mother ran her hospital from the phoen at the foot of my bed. She got more calls than I did. The night before my released she left because of a board meeting and the next day I crutched home in the rain.

And that's when I began losing my faith in people. I didn't start off bitter and angry, I swear to you I didn't. I believed once that I could have a good life, that some man could love me.

And I believed in the Lochness Monster too.

And now? Now I just want to die. Because I can't take another disappointment. kiss Kiss is always telling me that I'm strong, but I'm not. A person can only take so mcuh. And I've wasted all my strength trying to deal with my health and other people and you know what? I deserve a fucking break. Just one. If I had a boyfriend to go home to I would feel different. Some one who when I came home would just hug me and make me feel like I was a somewhat desirable human being. That would be something. But at the moment, and I know it makes some of you nervous when I say these things, I just want to be dead. To have fought as hard as I have to live this life and have all that effort end up here, well honestly H.P. Lovecraft said it best when he said that in oblivion there are no unfulfilled wishes because there are no wishes to be fulfilled.

The only good news is that unlike my cousin, I'm not going to federal prison.

Well, yet.

A Day in the Life...
One of the more amusing things about having a blog is the ability to track search hits. For example, I get at least four hits a day for people looking for the Eggy/Iggy in the Basket recipe I posted. People, it's bread, butter, and an egg-not quantum mechanics. And yet it seems I have become the official eggy in the basket recipe of google.

Anyway, I thought all of you might be amused if I posted the searches that have brought people here over the last 24 hours. It starts off slow, but trust me there are some diamonds in the rough down there. My personal favorite? Google Search Jur Ass in the Park

August 27th

9:03 PM Netscape.com Search gay morrocco

9:14 Pm Google Search iggy in the basket

9:30 PM Google Search Charles Ng torture videos

10:08 PM Google Image Search solid gold dancers

10:41 PM Google Search detective shows of the 80s

10:44 PM Google Search Sylvia Davies

10:56 PM Google Search bunniblog

11:53 PM Google Search dante A woman makes a guy cum, it's standard. A guy makes a woman cum, it's talent.

August 28th

12:06 AM Google Search Greeb birds at loon lake

1:35 AM Google Search drama queen poor soul of pompeii

2:31 AM Google Search Gromit sofa lofa review

8:51 AM Google Image Search Tor Johnson

10:07 AM Google Search nasty break up card

10:51 AM Google Search how to make iggy in a basket

11:03 AM Yahoo.com Search dating websites nyc

11:38 AM Ix.quick.com Search what the eye sees the mind believes

12:23 PM Ask.com Search shoe licking husbands

12:38 PM Google Search iggy in the basket recipe

12:54 PM Google Search Van Helsing Anima

12:59 PM Ask.com Search he who goes for vengeance must dig two graves

1:35 PM Ask.com Search does a lost self esteem cause a young girl to lose her virginity

2:46 PM Google Search give action to get action

3:12 PM Google Image Search Solid gold dancers

3:55 PM Google Search valkyrie costume wig

4:13 Pm Comcast Search snatch.com

4:54 PM Google Search me taking a shower film

4:54 PM Google Search surgically implanted tail

4:59 PM Google Image Search Solid gold dancers

5:16 PM Google Search (UK) "See a male stripper"

7:08 PM Google Search Jur Ass in the Park

7:11 PM Google Search Iggy in the Basket Recipe

8:02 PM Google Search Valkyrie Costume

8:08 PM Google Search Valkyrie Costume

8:48 PM Google Search "Bondage Shoes"

9:02 PM Google Search (New Zealand) "People who talk in metaphors should shampoo my crotch"

Well, they should.

Midnight with Moonshine and Mason Jars
Drinkin' vodka on the rocks out of a mason jar right now. No pissanting around with a small glass. I want liquor and lots of it. Luckily my mother has a well stocked liquor cabinet, and she can't drink any of it. (My mother developed an allergy to alcohol a few years ago, but still maintains her liquor cabinet for entertaining. I am entertained.)

Had to take the cat to the animal ER earlier tonight. She was quiet today and at first I thought she was getting better, but then she seemed sluggish and unresponsive. She still has blood in her urine and so we loaded her into the carrier fearing kidney failure.
The Good News:
This vet, unlike those asshats I've been visiting in the city, did a whole work up-blood and urinalysis. The urinalysis revealed blood in the urine, but was surprisingly normal aside from that. The bood work was completely normal. This means Miss P isn't dying any time soon.
The Bad News:
The lack of any clear indicator of what's wrong means that even though there isn't any serious failure, we still don't know what the fuck is wrong and clearly SOMETHING is wrong if there is still blood in the urine. So off we go to the vet tomorrow with new test results, crossed fingers, and hopefully a not to hypocritical invocation of the universe's beneficience towards my cat.
Even More Bad News:
This event fits in well with the end of this summer. I was supposed to work on getting published and working on my own writing and instead I've managed to alienate my friends with the postings on a blog with a rapidly decreasing readership. The cruising of job listings has revealed that essentially I am totally unfit to be anything but NYU's flogmonkey. I continue to fail meeting lifetime markers like getting health insurance and prusuing a career with advancement potential or even finding someone who will regularly attempt romantic advances towards me.
And on top of that, I can't write.
And I don't mean that I don't have any talent. I have some talent at writing. There I said it. But I can't do it anymore.
And I know because I used to be able to. Even when it was difficult, there were stories I was compelled to write down. Now I have notes, but it's like hysterical muteness. Is that even a word? I open my mouth to speak, I poise my pen to write, and something stops me, paralyzes me, keeps the pen in the air.
And sure some of it is because I'm not as talented as I like to think I am. And now I've become this depressed paralytically terrified frumpy emotionally stunted completely unemployable failure of a cat lady. And I only had one cat. It's not like I was maintaining a house of three cats single handedly while running a whole fucking hospital like my mother, the Pastel Puma, who still has to drop everything to help her idiot daughter take care of her own cat.
The good news is that since this vet took my cat off of valium I can snitch one.
And that's the best news I've had this week.

Saturday Night Feature Upstate New York Edition: Solitary Drinking Games
Well it's Saturday night and I'm in upstate new york WITHOUT A FUNCTIONING TV SET and a doped up cat.

Ahem.

Well I've already cruised ebay (I bid on another vintage potholder crochet book-I don't even know that many people who know what a potholder is), and now it's time to marinate into oblivion.

Now if you're like me, and well I hope for you're sake that you're not, but if you are, then you don't need an excuse to drink. Drinking is merely a function like breathing or eating which one need not invent excuses for.

But for those of you deluded idiots who thinking that drinking needs excuses, but find yourselves alone with a liqupr cabinet and a desperate need for a reason to raid it, I offer some of my solitary drinking games.

Wicker Man-The Drinking Game

For those of you who might have an original copy of Wicker Man, do a shot everytime a rabbit is mentioned or the image of a rabbit appears on screen. Trust me on this-those rabbit bastards will get you hammered. Especially if you're like me "Oh look that cookie kind of looks like a rabbit if you squint and twist your head."

This game can also be used to kick off the festivities of those foolish enough to go see the remake.

The "I Can't Believe I Watched That" Drinking Game
IMDB has a list of the 100 worst rated films. Set up your bottle and glass. As you scroll down the list, each time you spy a film you watched, do a shot. The odds are if you saw any of these films, you are long overdue for quite a few shots. If you are a MST3K fan, you are in for some serious drinking.
The films on the list that I watched:
Leonard Part 6
Manos: Hands of Fate (MST3K)
Alone in the Dark
The Garbage Pail Kids
Jaws: the Revenge
Teen Wolf Too
I Accuse My Parents (MST3K)
Monster a Go-Go (MST3K)
I did manage to avoid Thunderpants, Anus Magillicutty, and Santa With Muscles. And I thought I deserved a drink for that.
I have to say that I'm surprised that no Ed Wood/Tor Johnson films are on that list.
Variation on the game: if you saw the film in a theater 3 shots, cable two shots, MST3K one shot.
Incidentally you can do a varietion of this game with a TV guide. Go through your guide and everytime you find a film you've seen showing on the Sci-Fi channel after 1 am, do a shot. If you saw it in the theater, do two shots. If you own the DVD of the film, three shots. If you're a lightweight, just do one night. If you're brave, do a whole week.
Metafilter: Two Drinking Games
This next game, well it's something of a niche favorite.
Don't get me wrong. I love metafilter. I do. But lately, well, the kids have gotten some sand in their bathing suits and it's beginning to show.
Game One: Pick a poster and do a shot every time that poster comments on a thread. If you frequent the place, well, you know who to pick and who you definitely need to have a shot after reading. (Delmoi, hint hint.)
Game Two: Guess how many comments into a thread before someone starts a Metatalk thread about what's going on ie why this post sucks, why this person is being a troll, why metfilter is no longer the fabulous haven for intellectual bloggers everywhere it used to be, why don't they make purple M&Ms etc. For every comment over your guess, do a shot. Kind of takes the sting out, don't it?
If you have friends over, can I mention how much more fun games like Trivial Pursuit or even Candy Land can be if you add liquor into the mix?
Any games you all would like to add?




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