Boris The Spider

B is for Basil assaulted by bears.



B is also for bat. Not to be confused with:



or:



Though these crazy-asses also emit shrill, eardrum-rupturing squawks that only dogs and grandmas can hear. And I've heard they sleep upside down in caves and suck the life out of everyone around them, so I understand your confusion.

Nay, I'm referring to your regular garden variety, hairy, flying rodents. They're far more intelligent and probably less likely to give you something contagious than the Sharons and Britneys and Parises wandering the Earth.

These bats you won't need a healthy dose of penicillin to be with:



Batman, bitches! From Over the Top Eclectic Embellishments (that's a mouthful. that's what she said. hey-yo!).

Ashes To Ashes

A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs.



A is also for Alice Cooper. He may not be scary by today's standards (scary *old* maybe), but royal douches like Marilyn Manson credit "shock rockers" like Alice Cooper for inspiring them to be all the douchebag they could be. Thank god for acts like Alice Cooper, who kicked disco's ass right out of the 70's. For those about to rock, we salute you Alice Cooper.



Though you may be one of the OG's of manly makeup, you kinda ruined it for Teens These Days. Do the words "Green Day" come to mind? Guyliner is SO 30 years ago.

The Monster Mash

You should know that October is my most favorite of months, not only because of crunchy leaves and pumpkin pies and all that Martha Stewart-y happy horseshit, but largely due to the Halloween factor, what with all the strange and unusual. I myself am strange and unusual and it's only fitting that I punish you all with an entire month's worth of blogging devoted to things of creepiness and weirdness and whateverthehellelse.

If you've never heard of the writer Edward Gorey, I demand you look into him. He's known for his grim illustrations and penchant for bleakness, and if Wikipedia is right (which it rarely is), it claims he was also a pop culture junkie, so he might have been my soul mate or BFF 4-Evr. You know, maybe if he wasn't born, like, 50 years before I was. Anyhow, he wrote an awesomely wicked and wonderful book in 1963 called The Gashlycrumb Tinies. The interesting thing about the book is that you'd never in a million years guess it was from '63, what with it's very modern "humor" and Emily Strange-esque charm. A simple book, Gorey tells the tale of 26 children from A to Z (each representing a letter of the alphabet, like A is for Amy, etc.) on each page and their untimely demise. Reading is fundamental, suckas!

So starting tomorrow and for the next 25 after that (give or take a day, due to either my forgetting to blog or giving-in to slack), I'm going post a Gorey illustration a day and do an alphabet game of my own, Halloween-style.



(Dude, you KNOW I'm corny, don't front like you're suprised.)

Rock 'N' Roll High School

3 things of (probable non-) interest to report, all of which made me weep a little, and considering crabby fembots from hell don't cry, this is a death-defying feat, for I now may rust into indifference and never again will I be able to bitch so carefree and full of vim. But screw you, vigor!

1.) The first of incidents happened yesterday at the bus stop. As in, *school* bus stop, not grody public transportation bus stop. The last time I was on a public bus it made me itch and rue the moment I declined on bringing a flask of Jack Daniels along for the ride. So waiting at the bus stop sometimes results in awkward social situations, as it did yesterday when I was forced into making that "pleasant conversation" BS with a teenager waiting for her little brother. So we were talking about absolutely nothing and I dropped the line "get medieval on your ass" and I immediately knew I said something painfully unhip because she looked at me like I was speaking Yiddish and went "umm, WHAT does that mean?"...crap....here's me: "You don't know that phrase?! Say WHA? Everyone used to say it...you know...from Pulp Fiction..." and she goes: "No. I never heard that. I was like, 2 or something when that came out".

Holy snapple, sweet baby jebus smite me where I stand right now. Send a swarm of locusts to annihilate me into oblivion. Better yet, send a Flock of Seagulls. She was 2 when I was 18 and now I feel OLD. Old and ridiculous. I'm 31 and that's not old, right?! But apparently Teens These Days hate me and I'm officially An Adult. Well who the hell said it was OK for THAT to happen? At what age do we go from young and hip to old and embarrassing? Because inside my head I feel exactly like I did when I was 18 and seriously, I know I'm a total dork, but I thought I was a somewhat happenin' kind of dork. The Magic 8 Ball says "Don't count on it".

2.) The second thing makes me weep, but in a joyous way. I saw a guy in the mall (yes, I was at the mall. I was buying an Auntie Anne's garlic pretzel. Don't judge me.) wearing a tee shirt that said I ♥ Haters. That is probably thee best thing I've read in ages. It'll be my life's mission to find that shirt. FINALLY a tee shirt company "gets" me. Up yours, Hot Topic, you don't know me, I'll cut you. Sigh. I do love me some haters.

3.) The third thing is the most grotesque thing of all and that, my friend, is the fact that not only am I old and not cool, but I am getting even older and not cooler in 36 days when I turn 32. I mean 29! Yes, I'm turning 29. For the 3rd year in a row. Here are possible gift ideas for you to think about at work today: mass quantities of Swedish Fish, a mixed tape of 80's metal, a Chippendale's dancer named Derek, a I ♥ Haters tee. Your call. Or maybe I'll just stay hidden in my bedroom that day reading The Babysitters Club and listening to Wham records.

My name is Kim and I do not support this message.

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.