Deviant Dispatches

Way back in the day, I posted my goals for the year (my birth year, not the calendar year), and I couldn’t find my goals from the previous year to do a recap of those accomplishments. At long last, the list is located. Here are the goals I detailed in 2010-2011: 25 things to do before I turned 27. 1.       Participate in NaNoWriMo 2.       Submit novel to Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest 3.       Finish The Neverending Quilt by August 2011 4.       Write weekly* 5.       Learn some Korean 6.       Keep running/belly dancing 7.       Take a creative class 8.       Finish Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susannah Clarke 9.       Get paid for something I wrote/made* 10.    Find a wedding dress by Thanksgiving* 11.  ...

Imagine that every day when Superman uses his phone booth to change, three people happen to walk by. As Clark Kent ducks in and starts ripping his clothes off, the first person strolls by. (Clarkie has apparently forgotten that duh, phone booths have glass doors.) Huh, the innocent bystander thinks. I hope that guy’s okay. Did a bee fly into his shirt? As Mr. Kent continues to get naked, the bystander wonders if maybe it was a whole swarm. Then, out steps Superman. Astounded at having seen the superhero up close and personal, Bystander #1 runs home to tell her family about the guy who got naked in a phone booth and stepped out wearing his underwear on the outside of his spandex. Bystander #2 doesn’t see the transformation, but knows Superman recently invoked the power of flight in the name of justice. He tries to make an ordinary phone call, not knowing this booth is Superman’s boudoir. Bystander #2 forgets about the call and examines the random pile of clothes, then disc...

I took some pretty nasty spills as a kid. I haven’t yet had a broken bone, so far as I know (though my little toes are mangled enough to suggest it), but I had my fair share of rollerblading wipeouts and slow-motion trips down the stairs. But the worst was probably the time I ran into barbed wire. At about age 9 or so, I had my first horseback ride (a real one – not one on the chained-up circle-ponies at the circus). We visited some distant cousins, who had a farm and a huge white horse named Marshmallow. I got to trot around in front of the barn for a while. Magical, though I wasn’t allowed to go faster. Running was faster than the pace I was riding. At that age, I ran everywhere I could. I loved running. I ran at school. I ran home from the bus stop, kids shouting, “Run, Forrest, run!” at my retreating back. (Having not seen that movie, I didn’t get it and didn’t care if they were making fun of me. Just another day in the life.) Running was fun to me, and so I ran at every...

Let me tell you about my first kendo class. I was all kinds of nervous to be going out into a new part of Madison, all by myself, to do something I knew nothing about with complete strangers. So I persuaded Spousal Unit to go with me. (I would have still gone if he hadn't come with, but it was a comfort to have him there.) We arrived early as the website suggested (though a half hour was maybe a little much), and proceeded to sit around for 45 minutes until anyone arrived. Apparently, the class starts at 7:30 instead of 7. I had even e-mailed the instructor about it, and he said 7. I felt like I was in New Mexico again. The beginning of the class was fun. We learned the different bows, footwork and why it's important, and practiced swinging shinais in proper form while listening to the seasoned students count in Japanese. It was entertaining to watch the students practice in all their gear, and they were especially serious about it because of an upcoming tournament. B...

I have a new obsession. The song is Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye (go-tee-yay). I've heard it once, and can't get it out of my head. Unfortunately, I heard it a week ago, and all the parts of the song are jumbled in my head, so I'm not sure I remember it correctly. There's also the issue of New Song Nostalgia - when you hear a song for the first time and it seems absolutely amazing, but you hear it a second time and it's actually terrible. I'd have watched the YouTube video five billion times by now if not for the fact that our internet is as fast-moving as half-frozen coffee sludge cross-bred with a giant sloth-slug. I've managed to load the first few seconds once or twice, but it's the chorus that thrills me (or did, if I remember right). Solution? Go to the library this weekend (where their internet is a cross-breed of a bullet train and Michael Phelps) and buy the song. And I already have the song Architects and Engineers by Guster...

Ladies and gents: I successfully avoided putting the box of cereal in the fridge when I got up this morning. Hooray for that. Now for news that you actually care about. First, thank you for participating in my meager little survey. Results said that, if anything, you would all like to see more letters to various entities, be they undead mythological beasts or undead modern companies (seeing as corporations are people in the good ol' US, I guess they're just as at risk for becoming vampires, too). Tied with that was a craving for more book previews. I am totally okay with that. It helps that at work, I'm now the custodian of sections that I care about, so I will more often stumble across awesomeness. Such as the one I'm going to tell you about later this week... But overwhelmingly, rather than seeing any one particular thing more often, results said that you all like Deviant Dispatches the way it is, and wouldn't change it a bit. Which is why I'm go...

One of my favorite things about being with Spousal Unit is that I know so much about him. About a year and a half ago, I realized he had a certain laugh for when he wanted to tell me something funny. I’d recognized it for a while before that, but it wasn’t until then that I consciously realized how intimate that was. I usually hear it when I’m in a different room. I’ll be making dinner, or knitting, or getting ready for work. He’ll be on the computer, or playing a video game, and his laugh will appear. It’s a little louder than usual, and a bit more exaggerated. At some point, I unconsciously began interpreting it as him saying, This is so funny; Allison, you have to hear this. You’ll get a kick out of it. For a long time, I insisted I would never get married. One day (before I met Spousal Unit), I woke up and thought that eventually, it might not be so bad. Maybe. Another day, years later, I thought that if I ever married anyone, it would be Boyfriend Unit, but I was not anyw...

Dear MyHotShoes.com , I was incredibly pleased with my recent purchase from you: a pair of knee-high boots with buckles and zippers and laces all over. I felt like the most fashionable pirate on the high seas (or in my case, the Great Lakes). I kept discovering wonderful new things about them, and - ask any of my friends or family - repeatedly lauded their greatness. Now. You're based in California, so I understand (in a way) your not knowing what winter is like for us Midwestern folk. Allow me to explain. Here, we get snow. Snow is wet. Snow melts sometimes, and becomes ice. Ice is slippery. In such hazardous conditions, it is a good idea to have sturdy, reliable footwear. Not this crap that you refer to as "boots." And now for your closeup. Let me tell you about the excellent craftmanship you worked into these plastic soles, since you obviously put no soul into them yourselves. Note the six holes around the perimeter of the heel. By the time the base...

Yes, musicians deserve to be paid for their work, especially in a world where so few actually buy CDs anymore. But that doesn't mean YouTube deserves to be shut down. That doesn't mean random comics deserve to be blocked. Essentially, SOPA and PIPA are about censorship, and under those bills with their incredibly lax wording, you could come to Deviant Dispatches one day and discover it's shut down. Don't know what I'm talking about? Read a good explanation here, via CNN Money (whose parent company supports the bills, but it's a fairly unbiased article). XKCD has some excellent links you can follow. Time has a list of different ways you can shout from the rooftops that you don't approve. As long as I'm on a political note: big shout out to my fellow recall peeps! We are 1 million strong , and one step closer to the 21st century again - though we'll never get a chance at that high-speed rail again, will we, Governor ?

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a thrift store, casually browsing for various things, such as bookshelves and skirts, particularly an orange one to complete my skirt rainbow, so I can cross it off my birthday goal list . The bookshelves were not a success; neither were wall shelves. So I scouted out the skirt aisle, hoping something long and orange would catch my eye. I started at the size 0's (which I am not) and moved up from there. (Many of my best skirts have been categorized as much larger than my size at thrift stores, simply because of a drawstring, so I more or less ignore categorization). As I reached the end of the aisle, where another customer browsed, I thought it was yet another day of skirt-rainbow defeat. But just beyond some shorter skirts, I saw a long, uneven scrap of orange dangling down. MINE! my brain screamed in my head. It's my skirt! That's the one! At that point, I didn't even know if it would fit, let alone what the rest of it looked ...

We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of my blog being in existence. Hurrah! To celebrate, I have a question for you, which you can answer in one little click. Meanwhile, I'll be here, pounding my head against the wall and pretending that my favorite football team didn't play like high schoolers last night. (And don't just start whistling and casually browse away from here. I'd love feedback from everyone!) What would you like to see more of on my blog in the coming year? If your answer is something completely unrelated, feel free to note your preferences in the comments.

I'm very excited for the movie version of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which comes out in theaters on March 23 . I absolutely loved the books in that series, and can't wait to see what they do to bring it to life. The intensity willl be amazing, I think, and Jennifer Lawrence seems like she might actually play a good Katniss. I know some of my friends will have concerns about staying true to the book and the possibility of the movie totally ruining the book in their eyes. I have some similar concerns; would you expect less of someone who has a t-shirt like this? Available here I don't really believe a bad movie can ruin a good book for me, though. The two are very separate medias, one relying imagination, the other asking merely for eyesight and hearing. And even if the movie isn't exactly the same as the book, it can still be a wonderful movie. The prime example of this right now is Harry Potter. I've enjoyed pretty much all of the mo...

Yesterday I found a book called The Art of Romance , featuring hilarious artwork from old Harlequin and Mills & Boon covers. While searching this morning for the various wonderful covers featured within, I ran across Smart Bitches, Trashy Books , a website devoted to reviewing romance books (and more than occasionally poking fun at the covers). I am an amateur, they are professionals. Check out their wit and snark. Over at The Independent , you can enjoy a little slideshow of old Mills & Boon covers, featuring such gems as Romance Goes Tenting by Phyllis Matthewman. (No double entendre intended, I'm sure.) And what the hell does the clown in the background have to do with this book? I really hope he's just randomly on the cover, otherwise we've got a romantic remake of It on our hands. (Click  that link with caution - it's funny, but there's still a clown.) Another wonderful, awful title is Grace Before Meat by Sara Seale. Not sure I even want to s...

The best $1 movie I ever purchased was "Panda and the Magic Serpent." The movie is one of the first color animes, which came out in the 1950s. It's a trip and a half. For the most part, it's just a fairy tale: a white serpent is transformed into a woman, a boy falls in love with her, and a sorcerer tries to break them up because he knows what she is. But one of the best parts is when the sorcerer and the snake-woman decide to have this magical space battle. I'm not exaggerating: the two of them are kind of floating around in some kind of black void (he with his crystal ball), shooting various colors of light at each other. Everything up until that point is pretty normal, then BOOM! Early Chinese space disco. Despite that oddity, it really is an excellent movie. It's a precursor to modern anime, and you can see a lot of history from this one movie. Give it a shot - you will especially enjoy the musical bits.

When I was in high school, I was part of the Forensics team. (Not the crime-solving, fingerprint-collecting kind, the drama and presentation kind.) My category was poetry, meaning whenever we had competitions, I would get up before a group of people and read my selected poetry outloud before peers and judges. Junior year was my best in Forensics, when I read the poem "Ball and Chain Record Store" by Ellyn Maybe. In the poem, the main character ends up calling her boss a pig, wreaking havoc on the store, and waltzing out to the beat of a drum nobody's playing. I went to the state competition in Madison each year I participated, but junior year was when I received a perfect score and a gold medal - not an easy feat. But I'm sure half my success is owed to the poem I chose. (The other half goes to my coach.) I found that poem in The American Bible of Outlaw Poetry , edited by Alan Kaufman. A copy showed up at work the other day, and it's sent me into a fan...

A friend gave me some Amish Friendship Bread starter. It's delicious stuff, sweet and cakey when you follow the common modern recipe, which involves instant pudding. I didn't have any on hand when I made my first batch, and I think I prefer it without. The bread is still plenty tasty without adding that, too. For the second batch I made, I wanted something less sweet and more healthy - the original recipe I used calls for a full cup of oil and a full cup of sugar. (I also wanted to add cranberries.) So I reworked the recipe to get this tasty concoction. Follow all the usual Amish Friendship Bread directions for your starter, but use the following ingredients instead. Cranberry Friendship Bread 3 eggs                                            ...

Now that Christmas gifts are complete, I've returned to one of my eternal projects for the time being: the Neverending Quilt. In surprisingly short time, I've managed to sew the first nine squares of this quilt together, resulting in a small blanket about one square yard in size. The squares are uneven, despite my efforts at blocking, and there are still myriad threads lounging about, waiting to be of use. But it's a semi-functional blanket at last. According to the phrasing on my list of goals, I've completed goal 3 on my list of 25 things to do before I get older. I'm pleased with that, but I'm going to keep working on it. I still have a few more squares to attach. When I say a few, I mean 18. And I have 22 more to make yet. At this rate, it will take me another 3 or 4 years to complete The Neverending Quilt. Just when I thought I was starting to get somewhere, the dang thing slaps me in the face. Some glorious summer, Spousal Unit and I will ...

Most days, we simply go to work. Do our jobs. Run errands. Come home. We move quickly because we have places to go, because there are things to do, because there is always another thing to keep us busy and moving and focused. It's not that we ignore the beautiful things around us; rather, we're not open to seeing beauty all the time because our minds are closed to things that might distract us. When that happens, we miss things like this. Most days, we just keep driving. We don't stop and let ourselves be amazed by what's in front of us. We drive away and pass it by. Today, I challenge you to take a moment to enjoy a little thing of beauty. It could be frost on the grass, the texture of a cloud, a father-son interaction that makes you daydream. The best part? You don't even have to look for it - not hard, anyway. Just open yourself up to it, and beauty will be there, like it's always been.

Rather than writing a post for you, today I've given the blog its semiannual facelift. (This is becoming a rather frequent thing - I hope the blog isn't getting too spoiled.) For your enjoyment, the following changes have occurred: New picture header, complete with new tagline. I do enjoy coming up with those. A list of my "top ten hits," as it were, according to number of pageviews. That's on the right. Removal of my favorite links. It was starting to get crowded over yonder, so I closed my eyes and clicked. If you want it back and would rather let go of something else, let me know. I'm already well over my allotted hour of work for the day; Spousal Unit advised I do something fun on my day off, rather than doing like I do and accidentally working all day. So... maybe I'll read. It's hard to resist the urge to clean, though. Enjoy, and let me know if you've got suggestions for anything.

Christmas has come and gone, and so have all my Christmas gifts to others. Which means I can now share them with you. Feel the excitement, people! First is a little guy I made for a friend with an office, which was barren except for stress. This is Fuzzball the Destroyer , of planet Zweeflebox. He fits in the palm of one's hand, squishes rather nicely, and has opposable eyeballs. This might be the best destructive fuzzy thing I've ever created. (Yes, there have been others, but no relation.) I created him with size 6 needles, Lion Brand fuzzy pompom yarn, and a strand of brown Caron. The eyeballs are Patons Grace mercerized cotton. On a slightly more practical note, I crafted a selbu (Norwegian-style) hat. You remember Kaelin, right? She's the one with her foot all over the top of this page. I made this hat months and months ago, and I was so thrilled with it that I almost gave it to her back in September. But I resisted, and now she has a Christmas ha...

  Welcome to another year. It's another chance to get right all the things we did wrong last year, a chance to improve our lives permanently and shoot for the stars. Any of you have goals set so far? As you know, I make goals every year based around my birthday, but certain New Year's resolutions are very popular. According to usa.gov (yes, our government has a website devoted to this), the most common resolutions revolve around a healthier body: eating better, staying fit, and losing weight. This website has some good suggestions for losing weight in a healthy and safe way. Suddenly cutting out meals or running 5K will only serve to hurt your body; introduce changes slowly. Portion control and daily exercise can go a long way, even if it's only a half-hour walk and one less chicken wing. I am a bookseller, not a doctor, so talk to yours to help get a plan in place. Don't forget to be safe - even diet and exercise changes can hurt your body, if not handled i...