Back In Black

I'm back, y'all! Well, not so much "back", because that would mean actually traveling outside of a 10 mile radius, which I have not. But that makes me sound like a pretty big dork. So I'll say I was away on a whirlwind adventure, after finding an old treasure map in the attic and my 80's icon teen friends of mine and I went searching for the pirate booty, and oh the crazy times we had, what with the playing an organ made from human bones and the narrowly escaping booby traps set by Chester Copperpot. In the end, I forgot I stuffed my Gloria Vanderbilt jean jacket with precious rubies and was able to save my house from Troy's dad after all. Good times.

I know all my fan is concerned that maybe I have nothing to bitch about and maybe I'm turning over a new leaf, ending my reign of pessimism and complaining and even, perhaps, on my way to becoming well-adjusted. Until the day comes when I am crowned supreme dictator of the world like I know I am destined to be and when everyone just realises they should just do what I say because I know what is best even for people I've never met before, I promise that as long as I wake up every morning, I will always be stabby about something. Bad news for you, I'm afraid.

For example. There is something amiss with this recent 90's-revival of "going green". Don't get me wrong, I'm all for recycling and reusing and let's face it, wearing vintage clothing is the ultimate in recycling and keeping more crap out of landfills, so right on with that. But lately I have gotten more ridonkulous magazines in the mail than ever before and I bet my bottom dollar that I never signed up to get catalogs from L.L. FREAKING BEAN. What super genius at that company thought I'd EVER be an LL Bean kind of girl? The day I buy a $75 pair of suede slippers lined in shorn sphincter fur from the rare Alpine yak will be the day hell freezes over. Not that I'm against shorn sphincter fur, in fact I bet it's quite lovely. But I buy my slippers like every other red-blooded American, and that is on the $2 clearance rack at Kmart. I also got this week a free copy of Bicycling Magazine. What luck for me. I don't even like to walk to the mailbox on my front porch.

Not to sound all "down with the man", because that would be far too much of a hippie-like mentality and we all know that hippies are wrong, but that being said, the economy must really be sucking if even Big Business is trying to drum up sales by getting me to buy a $200 plaid rain coat and trade in my 1988 pink Huffy 10-speed for what, a $2000 nature-friendly mountain bike? The humanity.

I found this great website called Vintage Roadside that gives you a little history about old skating rinks, bowling alleys, diners and all that wonderful old roadside stuff you love. The site also sells tee-shirts with kitschy, retro graphics for men and women that go up to size XXL, like these:



.

The cool thing about Vintage Roadside is that they donate a portion of all their sales to The National Trust For Historic Preservation -AND- if you buy a tee shirt, you can sign up to get yourself a free 1-year membership to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. So see? I DO care about saving stuff. Just not spiders. They can go extinct for all I care.