(no subject)

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Liz says she was 2 days old when she wore her first Halloween costume, which was a pumpkin outfit.  Beats out Claire, who was just over a month old when we stuffed her in that trickertreat bag—one of the adorablest pictures of her ever.  She had a funny little face.  But anyway, Happy Birfday to Liz!  Verily, ’twas a good one.

 

I was kinda expecting Halloween to be like last year, when I went to a Celtic festival the day before and clog-danced, then prowled the streets for about 15 minutes, bought some port salut cheese, and went home.  Halloween for me was, sadly, all about family—punkins from the punkin patch next to the mall (which Dad sez went out of business this year, dammit), the Utah Symphony Halloween concert with Heather and anybody else who felt like coming (though that’s been getting progressively lamer as the years pass, too), my brilliant overage trickertreat strategy of Helping With The Neighbors’ Kids (Halloween is more fun with kids under ten, anyway), and then back home to drink some cider and forget about my candy till like mid-January.  So being away from home didn’t lend itself to Halloween celebrations.

 

Silly me.

 

The day before Liz Day, Friday, Carson had itself a Halloween bash of the goddam high school dance variety.  I hate parties that blare horrible “music” at deafening volumes.  I’m bored by them.  You can’t really interact with people.  You jump around, spank the local crazy dominatrix,* take pictures of sexy costumes, do a party line, and now it’s been fifteen minutes and you’ve sorta run out of things to do, aside from yell to your compatriots, “What’s the point of this?”  “What?”  “What?”  “I can’t hear you!”  “What?”

 

I left.

 

But Saturday—ah, now Saturday was something.  That was Liz’s birthday, as well as the day of the International Student Association’s Halloween party—a cheerful, slightly offbeat attempt to explain to the students from Elsewhere what the hell we’re all carrying on about.  Somehow I wound up signing up to help with the decorating, which tradition says that I avoid like the plague.  But there I was, in full sprite regalia (my bust trying to bust out of the little vest I was in), with Liz as Lord Voldemort and Emily as Hufflepuff #6, and a slew of new faces, taping garbage bags over the windows, setting up pumpkin-carving stuff, and blowing up balloons.**  And then I got to use my origami superpowers to make a whole wodge of waterbombs with faces of jack’o’lanterns and ghosts drawn on them, like the ones in my room.  I also did a nice little black cat in order to garner applause.  And while I folded, Liz and Emily used their superpowers to draw fantastic little targets for a shooting game called shateki.  The targets were all pictures of Japanese spirits and demons, except nobody could think of what to do for the last one, so I finally suggested a Día de los Muertos skeleton with a sombrero and a T-shirt that said I © Japan.  Close enough.

 

The best part of the party was about an hour before it was officially set to open, about the time Josh showed up in his monk’s habit.  There were only a few of us there, and we got to try out the games and fool around with the prizes (plastic boomerangs and juggling balls), take pictures of Lord Voldemort chasing around Hufflepuff #6 and of the clergyman conducting an inquisition on the sprite-witch, trade random bits of Tom Lehrer songs, and curse each other with our wands.  There was even a balloon fight, which I stayed well back from to avoid the possibility of a Scary Pop near me.  Somehow Liz, Josh, Emily, and I all wound up with jobs when the thing actually got started: Liz checked IDs, Josh stood around threateningly as the “bouncer,” Emily painted faces, and I painted signs for things we’d forgotten to make signs for originally.  (I get extra super bonus points because when I found out I needed to make signs, RA Pat let me into the Top Secret RAs-Only Back Room without a second glance.  I am apparently the sort of person you’d trust with the prize box or the bake sale money.  I am incapable of being bad, except by accident.)  Photos were taken; many adorable sexy witches and dragsters now grace Liz’s camera.

 

And then, after we’d had all the mingling we could take, it was back to The Fortress Of Terror to watch Alien, and I drove everybody nuts because I’ve watched all the backstories and am now quite the expert at it.  Brilliant movie, as is its first sequel.  (The other sequels, to use Claire’s colloquialism, suck monkeys, although Brad Dourif brings very slight redemption to Resurrection for his total weirdness.)  Say what you will about cheesy special effects, That Thing is still one of the scariest, most nightmarish horrors ever to grace the psyche of humanity.  I’m a Ripley and a xenomorph fangirl all the way, and I also think the robots are fascinating characters and very well-acted.  I love how the first time you watch the first one the bot seems totally normal,*** and then you watch it again and you’re like “Hang on just a bloody minute!  That bastard!”  And I love how they parallel it in the second.

 

I’m going off on a tangent.  Damn.

 

Today we will watch Aliens, and that will round off Halloween this year.

 

 

*Brittany.  And I suppose this step is optional.

 

**Which I would then put far away from me, because I have a very mild phobia of balloons.  Not helium balloons, just the ones that people blow up.  I can blow ’em up, but I don’t like to be around them because they’ll go POP and then I’ll jump and it’s scary.

 

***Up until he goes nuts and tries to shove a dirty magazine down Ripley’s throat, but y’know.

Comments

[1000milesaway.livejournal.com]

Happy Halloweenie Time, fellow nerdgirl :)

Sounds like you had a more festive Halloween than I did--I returned some clothes at TJMaxx and stopped at my local coffeehouse, where I spent all of the 15 minutes that I was there trying as hard as humanly possible to avoid my mean-spirited whackjob of an ex (who was offended that I didn't want to talk to him). I almost wish I put on my bellydance costume and prostituted myself for candy by my lonesome instead.

Parties are overrated. It may be due to the fact that I am uncomfortable around sloppy drunk people and would much rather have a few drinks for the sole purpose of chilling out with a small group of friends. Also, I enjoy conversing with interesting people, rather than faking it with lame girls or with guys who are more interested in getting in my pants than getting to know me. But perhaps the biggest reason I don't really party in the traditional sense is that, as you said, the music usually sucks. Then again, 99% of what I listen to is not in English and most people don't seem to be down with stuff that's not Black Eyed Peas or 50 Cent or your typical Top 40 bullshit.

My idea of partying hard is either going to a gay club, a quirky little ethnic nightclub or just having a few drinks and talking bellydance technique with my dance teacher.

Something tells me, though, that we'd probably throw a rockin' party if we were to ever join forces someday.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Indeed. We would invite only cool people, and we'd play good music at manageable volumes. And we'd blow everyone's minds with our conversational skills and brilliance, and they would all consider themselves so damn lucky to be able to bask in the glow of our personalities.

Aliens is good

[gondolinchick01.livejournal.com]

I spent Halloween sitting at home stealing Blow-Pops from the trick-or-treaters' candy bowl and reading the third book in this uber-cool fantasy series I discovered recently (A Bed Of Earth) by Tanith Lee. Two days previous I had gone to my very first high school dance with a dude from Satorian, and that was actually quite fun. I'll send you some pictures of my costume assuming the camera program stops being stupid.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Ooh ~ do I know this Satorian guy?

One of the dudes setting up at the party, Anders, had made himself a chainmail shirt. Before he put it on, he explained he was going to be a dúnedan. And I said, "Oh, a Ranger?" and he got dreadfully excited and said, "Yeah! You know what one is!"

And thus began our friendship. He can also recite "A Elbereth Gilthoniel." Let's hear it for making friends with geeks.

[gondolinchick01.livejournal.com]

Kindly inform Anders that he's my new best friend. Satorian guy's name is Oliver Lemmon--he's a senior like me and very sweet and funny with the nicest hair I've seen on a guy since Tyler Mayer graduated. *sigh* Oliveeeeer...