Deviant Dispatches

Now that we've gotten a few snowfalls, I'm really gearing up for winter and Christmas. They're my favorite time of year, meaning that I love to pull out books like this and go nuts. Snowflakes for All Seasons by Cindy Higham But one thing at a time. I understand the myriad reasons that people like to set up their Christmas decorations early. Some feel like I do and want the season to last as long as their families will stomach it. Some have to do it early because December is just too busy, or have to take advantage of help while they have it. All that is fine, but I prefer to wait until after Thanksgiving, and I wish retailers did, too. But this list of retailers open on T-giving shows they're much more concerned about the shorter shopping period between holidays than people being thankful for what they already have, for even one measly day of the year. (Yes, most people are thankful on other days, too. But I think it's reasonable to set aside one day ...

This has been one hell of a week, and it's only Thursday. On Sunday night, I got very little sleep. Monday morning, I learned that come September, I will be forced to work five extra hours a week for no extra pay, right after we had this extravagant remodeling done, when we were told there would be no pay cuts. (I hate being salaried, I hate sliminess, and I hate, hate, hate technical truths.) Monday afternoon, I either caught a cold or had a sudden onset of allergies that is still around now. Tuesday was fairly mediocre, but on Wednesday, a coworker backed into my car and left a "dent" the size of both of my hands, spread out. He's covering everything, but this is already an obnoxious headache - plus the car is still new to us, since we've only had it for one year. All of these things could be worse, of course. There are no layoffs happening, I don't have a flesh-eating virus, and my car wasn't hit hard enough to fall over the embankment and roll in...

Dear Media, Just because you hate yourself doesn't mean everyone else should hate themselves, too. I'm really getting sick of all these ads I'm seeing lately. It doesn't matter what site I'm on - Facebook, Pandora, the freaking dictionary  - they are all full of ads for people with a negative body image. That or they're designed to give people a negative body image, which is Not Okay. It's driving me nuts. Imagine how it feels to me. I'm at work, trying to verify a word's definition or spelling, when BOOM: I get whacked in the face with an image of a not-so-large woman shrinking to a size 0 before my very eyes. Even if I'm perfectly happy with my body, I don't want to be confronted with the fact that most people are on diets every time I turn a corner. It's depressing. And since I'm not perfectly happy with my body (as most women and many men are not, thanks to you), all those ads do is make me question my proportions and dera...

Source Friday is Buy Nothing Day , and I'm really excited for it this year. Every year, I do my best not to buy anything on national holidays, like Thanksgiving. Buying things on days like that tells retailers that yes, people will buy if you are open - and they say to themselves, "Why aren't we open more?"  That leads to employees having to work Thanksgiving Day, which should be a day spent with family and friends. This year, my sister works 8:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day to 5 a.m. the next morning. That means trying to sleep all of Thanksgiving, waking up for a rushed meal at my grandparents' place, and running back home to get ready for work. Her hours are all thanks to Walmart, the leaders in corporate holiday ignorance. They open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving this year. This year, their workers are striking to protest such ridiculosity. It's about time. Buy Nothing Day was started by the group Adbusters , who also started the Occupy movement . T...

Source I have big, big plans for today, and for the rest of my four-day weekend. Unfortunately, if I can't shake off the sleep that's caught in my eyes, I'll spend the rest of today napping and being lazy. This is not an acceptable course of action. Here are the steps I'm taking to remedy that: 1. An immediate and cold shower, lasting about five minutes. This will make my nerve endings scream, "AUGH! We're awake!" 2. A cup of Assam Gold Rain  black tea to make the brain cells snort, "Whut? Iz okay, we can has think nao." Or maybe I'll skip straight to the English Breakfast . That always gives my brain a good kick in the pants. 3. A head-first dive into my list for the day. Usually, by doing that, I tend to just forget the rest of the sleepiness, and by the time it's all gone, I've already been productive. The problem with all of these is that I have an unusual sleepy feeling today - one not caused by a lack of sleep. I ...

This is my real job. Yesterday, a coworker and I went to sell books at an offsite event - at a country club. Knowing that, on its own, without knowing what kind of country club or anything, made me think, Yeah. This is going to be interesting.  And unfortunately, I was right. Country clubs can be good things, but generally only if you're a wealthy older white man with a nose so long you have no choice but to look down it at people, or if you married someone who fits that description. True, there are many nice people who belong to country clubs, people who give to charity and appreciate and respect all life, but they sure as hell weren't coming out of the woodwork yesterday. We arrived at the club and pulled our massively unwieldy cart to our display table. I'm telling you the truth here: a lady with terrible (but probably expensive) taste in clothing came up to me, before I'd taken anything off the cart, and shoved her reconstructed nose in my face. "How mu...

Now that the Wisconsin recall election is over, I'd like to shed light on something many of us may not have considered in all this: money. You may say money has been a huge  part of this election. Walker raised over $30 million in his recall campaign, trying to buy a win. Everyone's been talking about it. But I'm not talking about it in that way. Consider the following: $30 million could... Send 30,000 ShelterBoxes to families in need of disaster relief. Each box contains a tent, water purification and storage, a toolkit, and many more items that are essential when a home has been demolished. Give 60,000 cows to families in need of milk, via Heifer International . One heifer provides four gallons of milk per day, enough for a whole family and then some - not to mention a yearly calf, too. Assuming a minimum of four people per family, that many cows could provide for 240,000 people - more than the entire population of Madison, Wisconsin . 20 years of main...

  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...

Work was hell yesterday. Not only is there a ridiculous after-Christmas sale going on, but everyone decided yesterday afternoon was a good time to get rid of their possessions. The buying area had mounds of books waiting to be purchased by the store, and sellers had to wait 45 minues before anyone could get to their stuff. Insanity, I tell you. On top of that, the most ridiculous questions kept coming in. For example: "Where is your true fiction section?" "I'm looking for a book about the history of cameras. It's orange. Do you know where it might be?" "Do you have [popular book that's only been out for two days, which is certainly not at a used bookstore already]?" The phones aren't working right, either, so by the end of the day, I was wiped. Spousal Unit didn't have to fight very hard to talk me into the Market Street Diner . We checked their menu to be sure they had veggie options, and to our surprise, they had many good ...

Are you looking for gift ideas for others, but have no money to buy them with? Look no further - here's a slew of homemade projects that others will love! No matter your talents, you can find something here to make for others. These starry ball ornaments have a simple crocheted star wrapped around them, making an elegant new ornament out of an old one. You can make a handful of these before Christmas arrives and hand them out to friends and family in pairs. The pattern is also on Ravelry . You must know someone out there - adult or kid - who would love a Brainmonster hat. Hats actually knit up pretty fast, especially when they're for a little head. This one is also on Ravelry . This is a great recipe for Spiced Tea Mix , which my family always called Bohemian Tea. All Free Crafts provides lots of ideas and recipes for things in jars, from cookie mixes to hot chocolate. They even provide labels, like the one above, which you can print for free and attach to the jars. Add a spr...

Has anyone else found traditional wedding gifts to be kind of ridiculous? You know the ones: you're supposed to give tin or aluminum for the tenth anniversary, silver for the 25th anniversary, and so on. Because nothing says "Happy tenth anniversary" like a tin cup or aluminum can. To a certain degree, these gifts make sense. Paper for the first year: so the couple can finally finish writing their wedding thank-yous (ahem note to self) , and it's cheap for them to give to each other. But there's some bizarre stuff on that traditional list - I know they vary sometimes, but I'm going off of the one I found here . Honestly, no joking: the 32nd anniversary gift is conveyances. Like bicycles and automobiles. I guess that's why it's the 32nd anniversary and not the 52nd, because they might have needed to add wheelchairs to the list at that point. The modernly devised anniversary gifts aren't much better. Rather than paper, that list starts out with clo...

Everywhere I look online, I'm seeing the word "occupy" appear. At first, it was just "Occupy Wall Street." We Are the 99 Percent's website features posts from people who are in the enormous bottom segment of income in the United States: people who aren't making enough to live on and are involuntarily in hopeless situations. And with almost every post came that phrase. I had no clue what it meant. That was two days ago. Yesterday, I saw it again, in links on Facebook. Occupy Wall Street is a social/political movement (somewhat connected to the group Adbusters ) that some are comparing to the recent Middle Eastern revolts. The purpose is more or less to stand up, as the lower-class majority, and stand against a country run by the top one percent of money holders. According to the website , they have "an interest in returning the US back into the hands of it's individual citizens." (Guys, I love the idea, but you need a copy editor. I volunte...

It's that glorious time of year again, when everyone starts decking their halls, hanging their stockings, and thumpety thumping through the snow to find a Tannenbaum of their own. "Wait, what?" you must be asking. "It's September, right? As in, still-technically-summer, leaves-haven't-really-started-turning, still-need-my-apple-cider-fix September?" Yes, out here in the natural world, it is the end of summer. Geese occasionally honk obnoxiously overhead. Squirrels are becoming fuzzier nut-cheeked fatties. Humans dig through attics and basements for last year's sweaters, made holier-than-thou (literally) by mentally unstable moth hordes. Out here, it is summer. But a department store is about as far as you can get from natural, and in there... In there, it's madness. Red, green, tinselly madness. In there, it's only 64 days till Black Friday . Terrifying to think of, scarier to visualize. Yesterday at a Hobby Lobby, I had to walk by aisles and...

*Many thanks to Miss Lizzy-B for this post idea.* In high school, I thought that awkward teenager stage would never end. I grew so fast I tripped over my own feet constantly. My clothes never fit well. I always thought the crowd over by the door was laughing at me. And I never knew what to say, which often resulted in the weirdest things coming out of my mouth. So... like now, but on accident. When I got to college, that phase was stripped away in layers, like old wallpaper. I loved the color of the walls underneath: a sign that things were gorgeous on the other side. That was until I realized the walls were plastered with spreadsheets, and I found out it wasn't over yet. By that, I mean nobody told me there was a second awkward stage: stepping into adulthood. Now that I'm 26, I feel like there are certain things I should know. What a mortgage actually does, why it's called a 401k, something - anything - about actually budgeting rather than just guessing how much to spend...

Once upon a time, I was broke. (Yes, that's also now upon a time, but let's look at the former.) I barely managed to make it back to school at the beginning of junior year. I signed my first born over to Susie May for a loan (a.k.a. Vampires R Us) to make it back. I found a job at the lovely Picky Slave to start my fourth year working in grocery, this time a minor peon once again. I was willing to do anything to stay in college. Anything. The first few weeks made it clear that this job was going to be the seventh circle of hell (right between being stuck in a burning tomb and sinking in human excrement). It was going to be a revolting year. I knew all the produce codes as well as I knew the garbage compactor number from Star Wars: A New Hope (3263827), but still had to watch The Training Video of Torturous Doom (you know which one - it's the same everywhere you go). They made me pay $15 I didn't have for a work shirt barely one step above sackcloth and ashes. I had to w...

Dear Cthulhu, I'm a big fan of your work. It's most pleasant to know that someday, all the horrible things and people of this world will meet their demise at your horrific tentacles and will disturb me no longer. Even if I also succumb to your madness, it shall be with great pleasure if I can watch my enemies crumble before I go. However, I'd like to call in one teensy little favor: Will you please devour all of my maintenance records and bills at Teh Big Yellow Repair Shop of Doom and Teh Evil Credit Card Companies? See, I owe $2,000 for the work recently completed on my new-to-me car's suspension system, wheels, and transmission. And as I already have no job, no place to live, and hardly any money, I'd rather not have to pay that too. The Great New Mexican Trial of Pain and Fury is only just beginning. I know you've got a pretty bad headache right now, but if it is within your mighty doom-filled tentacles to grant me amnesty from this terrible evil, I would de...