TeslaCon 3

I blinked. I blinked again. And the page still appeared to contain a row of bored-looking anthropomorphic bacon strips. Luckily, the artist was sitting next to me at the time.
“Tell me about this one,” I said.
“That's an unemployment line,” she said. “I drew it after I got fired from my last job for burning a bunch of bacon.”

 Ahh.

 Then I turned to the page that looked like vomit on flowers.
“And what about this one?”
“Oh! One time I was walking down the street and I saw this guy hocking a loogie onto a planter. I thought it really expressed something.”

I like these ladies Piña Colada meets on the Internet. He should keep bringing them home with him.

I almost missed meeting Piña Colada's new artist lady because I spent most of the day ON THE MOON. Or, ya know, at TeslaCon.
...which is the local steampunk convention set ON THE MOON.




It's technically December now, so I didn't even mind running into Moon Santa. It didn't hurt that he was was sitting on this lady's lap. She said she knew what Santa wanted for Christmas this year, and I believed her.

 

Krampus did not beat me with a stick. I suppose I have been insufficiently naughty.



Misha and I decided to fix our not-naughty-enough problem by crashing the ladies suffrage rally with monarchist protest signs.




Oh my god. It's a guy cosplaying Data from Star Trek cosplaying Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes. I love everything.

 

That guy on the left. I WANT TO STEAL HIS FACE.




Things you learn at a steampunk convention: Spicy chocolate gears are as tasty as they are ridiculous.

Oh Vessaline, why are you so mean?

This is Vessaline.

 

She was abused as a child and then kidnapped by faeries, whereupon she developed a taste for human flesh. That's the story, anyway.

When I started the plush Vess creation process, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to provide her with an authentic childhood mistreatment experience. What if her tiny, fluffy heart failed to wither and grow cold? The whole project would be ruined.
Luckily, I've got the right kind of friends to help me out.

My cat gnawed on her innards.
My girlfriend juggled her limbs.
She had to watch my boyfriend play Magic: The Gathering for four hours.
And now I'm eating some cereal and making CRUNCH CRUNCH SLURP noises right next to her ear.

I'll bundle Plush Vess off to meet her new faerie keeper next month. I'm sure she'll be bloodthirsty enough to please him by then.

At least I never lost a fork in my bra

MARA: My girlfriend thinks your coffee tastes like Satan's asshole, you know. She asks in the morning whenever she sleeps over, “Are we going to have good coffee, or are we drinking Satan's Asshole Roast again?”
LEX: Satan's Asshole Roast is a misnomer. We drink the same roast of coffee, it's just that you guys add more water and sugar and whipped cream and, like, vodka to it.  
MARA: The vodka is part of the whipped cream!  
LEX: I know, but it makes me sound more sane when I point out that I'm not the one who drinks vodka in the morning. And anyway, isn't Satan a master of temptation? I bet his asshole tastes really good.

Mara couldn't refute that, which is a little disappointing because I'd hoped the conversation would go on long enough for me to mention that one time when she lost a fork in her bra.
Because nothing supports your taste in coffee like not losing forks in your bra.

 In completely unrelated news, this is S'anna.



She drew my character in the Changeling LARP and I basically can't stop vibrating in joy over how awesome it is. Look! Look at this thing!

 

Peat's costume is a little different than it was in the pre-LARP pictures Mara took last week because I added this mask my friend Sarah made. (You can find her etsy shop here: Dark Monday)



Sometimes I get jealous because I know so many awesome artists and I couldn't art to save my life, but then I decide that rolling around in pretty things sounds like a lot more fun than being jealous, so I do that instead.

It's Tough Being Faerie President

Gulp brand bait worms certainly have a flavor. I'm not quite sure it's the “natural live bait taste!” they advertise, but when you're holding them in your mouth, waiting to spit them all over the Winter King's suit, your tongue really knows there's something going on.

I guess I could chew some actual worms to test Gulp's flavor claims, but I doubt I'll bother. It's a failure of scientific curiosity on my part. Do they stone you for that these days? I like science! Really! I just like laziness and not chewing worms slightly better.

 Anyway, Mara took some pictures of my Changeling character before I left for game yesterday. This is Peat Bog. She accidentally became Autumn King and she hates it a lot so she spits worms at people instead of making cogent political arguments.



Mostly she just wants everyone to leave her alone so she can concentrate on making mortals believe in fictional undead fish people. Is that so much to ask?



Piña Colada came home just as Mara and I were about to head back inside. I stopped to say hi because I'm polite like that.

Saved From the Tsunami

I almost missed the chance to watch Misha get his tattoo because my face was too busy being a tsunami of mucus. I figured the tattoo parlor would want to maintain a clean n' healthy vibe, sorta like a doctor's office. I mean, those are the main places that use fake skeletons as decor, right? Tattoo parlors and doctor's offices? So I called Misha and told him I couldn't come because his tattoo guy would kick me out for being a leak-nosed hooligan.

And that's when Misha told me something amazing: His allergy medicine works even if the thing you are allergic to is the cold virus. Awesome!

Man, I wish I'd known that earlier. I would've made way fewer snot lattes.

Anyway, even though I felt perfectly healthy after taking the allergy medicine, I was still careful not to touch anything in the shop. It was really hard when I found this giant fake tree covered in bones.

And then they had an entire superhero themed room and I wanted to just... like... rub against everything forever. But I maintained my self control and somebody should give me a cape just for that. I promise I won't blow my nose on the cape after this allergy medicine wears off.

Or maybe Misha should get the cape. After all, his hand glows under blacklight now. That totally counts as a superpower.

Noodle-Armed Demon of Spite (I want to punch me in the face for this)

I just ran out of justice tampons, so I guess I'll have to buy the regular kind now.

The tampons originally came from a fancy resort where my parents were doing a puppet show. If you're a performer, the resort doesn't pay that well in dollars, but it does pay pretty well in time at the resort. You get treated just like a paying guest, so when you fill one of their kayaks with blackberries and then eat the whole kayak, you may get a bit of side-eye from the management, but they certainly don't stop you.

Only this time I didn't get treated exactly like all the other guests. I wanted to go to this arm workout class because sometimes I feel bad about having a set of flaccid noodles instead of arms, but the guard lady turned me away at the door.

“Only paying guests,” she said.

And the tiny, spiteful, noodle-armed demon in my head threw a tantrum. “You said we'd get treated just like paying guests! YOU SAID!”

I managed to quash all external signs of my demon-tantrum in front of the guard, but 11.6 seconds later I discovered that every single bathroom in the resort was equipped with a miniature treasure box full of tampons.

In the third bathroom I visited, an old lady caught me scooping double fistfulls of tampons from the treasure box.

She fixed me with a withering glare.

I stared her right back, all aglow with righteousness.

“It's for justice,” I said.

Oddly, her expression didn't change much after that. I don't think she got it. But Hitler used to be legal in the past so I guess I shouldn't expect old people to understand justice.

Hm. Reading about the situation now, it seems entirely possible that I've been using spite tampons for the last several months instead of justice tampons. Oh well. I'm more than a quarter century old. You can't expect me to understand justice.

Precious Mermaid Oil

My new roommate isn't named Piña Colada. His parents named him after a completely different fruity alcoholic beverage, but I'd like to show a token of respect for his privacy so I'm not going to tell you which one.

If there's a story in this house, I'm pretty sure it's Piña Colada's and the rest of us are just supporting characters on his journey. Most of the people around here roleplay and Piña Colada doesn't, but he understands real adventure.

Like, he got to Wisconsin by hitchhiking from Florida with a backpack and a guitar. Piña Colada keeps his guitar wrapped in white lace like a bride but I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually want to marry his guitar. (Is that even a thing? Can you be sexually attracted to guitars? I want to say “no” because most of the words used to describe attraction have Latin roots and guitars didn't exist in Ancient Rome. Lyres were pretty popular though, so I guess you can be sexually attracted to lyres if you want.)

Piña Colada didn't have much of a plan for his arrival in Wisconsin, so it's a good thing he's extra charming. He met my girlfriend, and within a few days we'd offered him a room in our house. It was a pretty good investment. Not just because of the guitar, but because sometimes he says things.

Piña Colada walked through the room when I was telling people that one of my friends looked like a mermaid.

“My father used to hunt mermaids,” he said, “but not just for sport. He'd heat the house using their precious mermaid oil.”

So there's that.

My girlfriend is much better at coming up with roommates than I am. The last person I invited into the house was this guy:

I built him out of fleece and evil and then he tried to steal my soul so I had to kick him out. I hope he learns to play the guitar. Then he can win souls legitimately in guitar playing contests instead of just stealing them for no reason.