GET OUT OF MY HOUSE

Hey you.

Arachnid! Eight eyes. Spindle legs. Creepazoid. Yeah, you.



GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!

Wh..wait. Where do you think you're going?


Aw hell no. You can't fit in that crack...


Okay maybe you can.

Hey. HEY! I can still see you, you know.


Not cool.

pick a side, cat

Dear everyone who keeps asking...

I have 20 tattoos. Now shut up about it already.

Kurt's got a brand new blog

My friend Kurt just started a movie ... review? Blog?

I mean...he definitely writes about ...

Well he definitely watches stuff and then says stuff about it. But sometimes he doesn't watch the stuff, he just makes it up from what he's seen in the trailers. But he's reaaaalllly funny.

He used to write for MamaPop for like two years doing this but now he says they've accredited all his archives to someone named 'Marilyn' for some reason. That bitch is goin' down. Just kidding Marilyn. Really. Just kidding. (Or am I?) (Yes.)

Support the arts. Click here and then follow him to the other side. Of comedy.

Hot dog flavored potato chips. Really.

Ry guy and I went to Superstore today because I (falsely) heard they were having a sale on cardigans. It was totally fun because practically everything was on sale and since I've recently decided to start dressing a bit nicer (i.e. no holes in the crotch of my pants, no armpit stained t-shirts, etc) I picked up a few super cheap collared shirts and some sweaters perfect for a rainy Victoria winter.

We remembered we needed to pick up a few things like President's Choice brand whole grain dijon mustard, which is literally the best mustard on earth and every Canadian needs to try it. For real.

We were walking through the mammoth food section when the potato chip aisle caught my eye. I remembered last time we were there, President's choice had a chip out that was "greek salad" flavor and I wanted to show Ryan.

They were sold out unfortunately but they did have...get this...'ballpark hot dog' flavor.

No shit.

I was like "Um...gross."

Ryan used his 'I dare you' voice and asked if we should try it.

I read the ingredients.

Totally vegetarian, (BUT NOT VEGAN because I think that tricalcium phosphate comes from some kind of milk product or old fossils that are in rocks? Wikipedia is messing with me.) with a healthy dose of MSG.

"Okay. Let's do it."

We bought them for like a dollar because Superstore is cool that way, and went home. Then we drank some rum with Dr.Pepper which is the best drink in existence, and finally worked up the courage to try the ... hot. dog. chips.

"I'm scared." I said.

"I bet they taste like dill pickle, mustard, and ketchup chips."

"Okay, I'll try them." I conceded.

He poured some in a tupperware bowl for me.

"Woah, that's way too many," I thought. "I just want to try one to know how gross it is and then blog about it."

Ryan went first. Then I had one.

We photographed our initial reactions.



Don't mind Ryan's freaky bendy thumb. The point is...they were good. And yeah, they smell like hotdogs. And they taste like hotdogs and dill pickle chips. It's so weird. I ate like fourteen and a half of them, all the while making comments like "This is so weird" and "I can't believe it. Hot dog chips." and "I actually like these!"

What the...?

So friends, go down to your nearest local Superstore and pick up a bag of weird flavored chips. They also have 'buffalo wings', and some kind of chicken thing and ribs? And some other ones I can't remember. But anyway the point is...make sure you read the bag to see if they're really vegetarian first, and the bag says if you try it and you don't like it you can bring them back to the store and get a full refund.

So yeah.

Talk about trying new things, right? Hot dog chips? WTF?

slug, etc

1. University classes start today. I am sitting here aching with jealousy at that new-textbook feeling. One of my facebook friends put it best: Starting new classes feels like opening Christmas presents. I might go out and buy some school supplies just to put my soul at ease.

2. One of the weirdest things is when your boyfriend gets part of a giant Japanese backpiece lined and it goes from the top of his thighs to his shoulders, and he moons you to be funny but it actually looks cool. Like...mooning for the sake of humor is over for him. Now instead of being met with disgust and laughter he's going to get staring and awe.

3. How did a slug get into my house? And how did it make it halfway across the kitchen floor before my curious cat noticed it?

Look! How cute! I love their little antennae. Did you know their eyes are at the ends of their antennae? And did you know that slugs have 27,000 teeth in their mouths? And some types are cannibals? And the mucus they excrete has a chemical reaction to copper which produces an electric current? Pretty cool huh?


Here comes trouble little slug!


This was taken from the slug's perspective.


It's a good thing I was there to interfere by this point.

I scooped the little slimer up on a postcard from Niagara Falls and rolled him into some shade in our backyard.

Maybe one day it'll grow into the famous banana slugs that are prevalent in this neck of the woods.

Hey, speaking of slugs, check out this cute one from South Africa. No, really, it's so cute!

don't squish spiders

Even with the sort of creepy animation, the more I watch this video the more I love it. And the song is catchy.

extreme tat party photos from the last week

Some pics stolen from Roberto's facebook page. The first two are me, trying to take photos of my own back thigh. (Not easy)

Stencil:

 

Scabby in-the-bathroom photo:

 

Other photos:

Ever wonder if tattoos hurt? Well I bet Becca could tell you.

Today Colin did the first session on Ryan's backpiece.

Wanna see? It's a tiger. Going "RAAR". It's gonna be fighting a dragon, which will cover the celtic grateful dead thing at the top.

So. Bad. Ass.

Before you look though, I'm gonna warn you. MAN BUM is evident in the photos. Don't worry, it's cute.

Here's the stencil, sideways 'cause blogger's being a douche.

And after the first half hour or so:

JUST SAY YOU'RE SORRY or STFU

So here's the response sent to my boss from the owners of the restaurant where we had the most unfortunate meal ever. As Sarah is a freakin' internet superstar, she posted about it on her blog and word spread.
Fast.

Sarah also emailed the owners personally to express our dissatisfaction with...pretty much everything.

Word for word this is the response she received today.

The italics are them, the straight up letters are me.

Hello Sarah,

I have had a chance to chat with everyone who worked the evening of your party and thought I should give you a final wrap on the whole unfortunate experience.

Please remember that I am giving you an alternate perspective-one from the staff in hopes of reaching a mutual understanding of what happened and ,of course, for you to understand how truly sorry everyone involved is.

I will go through your issues one by one:

Service was slow.

Some members of your party arrived 15 minutes early for their reservation. It mentions on your site that you were told that we don't hold your table past 6:30 if everyone isn't there. That's not entirely true. I, in fact, took your reservation and I recall stating the following, " our policy on weekend large party reservations , yours was originally for 12, we hold your table for 20 to 30 minutes, at that time if we are needing the table space we will ask if we can break up the space. I joked that one person at a table for 12, 30 minutes later was not arriving for your party-clearly misunderstood and not too funny either.

The manager explained to the gentleman who announced himself for the party the table wasn't quite ready but would be momentarily. They were welcome to wait at the front door or on the patio (where there are seats and would perhaps be more comfortable). Less than 10 minutes later (and still before their reservation time) they were lead to their table, they were informed that their server was just arriving and would be there shortly. Granted, 5 full minutes went by before the server arrived , offered them waters and took their first orders. According to our pos system their first drink orders were in the system at exactly 6:30.

It is my understanding that you, yourself were not there for any of this-is it possible they exaggerated their wait times?

15 minutes for appetizers is not unusual on a busy evening , and I don't want to encourage the idea that fresh cooked foods should come any faster.

It's a mystery as to how it is possible that the johnny cakes were cold and stale. These are made fresh every hour and are held in a warming cabinet. If you arrived late and they sat on the table they may have been room temperature-hardly cold and certainly not stale. Is it possible they weren't perfect-of course. Our complimentary bread is something we normally do quite well but I won't rule out the possibility that this basket was not perfect.

Your friends's beer being stale.

This is unusual to say the least. That bottle of beer was opened at the time of being ordered and delivered promptly. If the product is sold to us flat there is nothing we can do about that until it is noticed. It was returned and a new one as its replacement and clearly not at an additional charge was brought out by the manager as soon as it was communicated to the server.

There were a number of patties sold at your table and one had a quarter of the crust left on the plate. I will assume it was yours that was left on the table.

Again these are made fresh in house and handled quite well. Is it possible that it wasn't heated enough-yes. Stale is difficult for me to see but perhaps...

The fish dish-all the fish and veg were eaten and a small amount of rice was left on the plate. It was the rice that the guest commented on. It is coconut flavour and the batch for the evening was double checked when this comment was made and found to be as it should. Personal preference? We have no problem with that-a discount to this meal was given.

Your salad being old and uninspired.

The greens came in that afternoon-organic and fresh. If you don't like the dressing-fair enough. We can certainly look at revamping the dressing. Again, no problem-a discount was applied to this meal.

The bolt in the salad.

This is clearly the issue of the evening for all involved. It's something that never should have happened and is the first time in almost 8 years here that it has happened.

The line cook responsible has been reprimanded and will now be seriously disciplined. I can only extend my fullest apologies. The Chef feels terrible and wants to somehow make it up to you. I let him know your opinion of the Reef so he isn't holding much hope for that but wants you to know it at the very least.

To be clear-your party wasn't charged for this salad.

The manager, Tamara, came over when alerted to this and offered a round of shots in the meantime to lighten the mood. A gentlemen suggested 2 rounds would make it better. She laughed and said alright-any preferences? Your party was clear in its needs of vegan, etc and she had two rounds of rum based fruity shots. For you to call them weak is unfortunate. We make fruity rum drinks, that's what we do. If you wanted tequila, you could have specified that as we clearly only wanted to make you happier than you were with your experience.

The busser and not the Chef came over to clear your table. He does not normally interact with guest, his duties are simply to clear, reset, etc. I have spoken with him about his curtness and he apologizes. He will no longer be bussing tables for us.

Half of our staff are "crazy tattoo" people so you should have fit right in.

To summarize for you,

We failed on some service points, we failed on some food service but we absolutely tried our best during a very busy evening to make up for our failings.

Your party was comped 2 rounds of shots, the salad was discounted fully, your fish dish and salad plates were given a discount as well.

We are neighbours and both business people-you must understand the negative impact you are having on my business by posting all over the internet your very negative Reef opinion. I appreciate that the internet now allows many forums for voicing our opinions but they should be accurate even though they will always be biased as they are subjective experiences. If there are falsehoods advertised that affect others it becomes slanderous.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss with you in person how we can move forward.

I would ask that you alter your web posting to reflect that you were not charged for the salad, frankly, I'd encourage you to reconsider the tone of your blog but I can only ask. If you want to post this response that is fine too.

We take your opinion seriously and rest assured that staff are being reprimanded and different procedures are being put into place to see to it that this experience (any part of it) never repeats itself.

The manager, Tamara, feels terrible and walked over to see you yesterday. She was told you wouldn't be in until Tuesday so she will pop in to hopefully chat with you then.

I can appreciate that you very simply may have no interest in revisiting our little store but I do encourage you to reconsider.

You know what?

JUST FUCKING SAY YOU'RE SORRY. Even if this whole list of things is one hundred percent accurate (which, as I was there, I made the reservation, I was one of the first to arrive, etc I know it's NOT), they're making it so much worse by getting all defensive.

Ugh, I'm sick of this battle royale already.

I bet you didn't know I was in a hip hop group

Word up.

the last day of the german, plus some whining!

One of the worst things I've found about getting tattooed on the back of your thigh is that for, oh, three days now, sitting down is a pain in the (almost) ass. Walking too. And don't even get me started on using the bathroom. (Hint: it's a real balancing act up in there lately.)

And the clothing sticking was out of control for a while too. If you've ever gotten a fair-sized tattoo, I'd say anything with solid coloring that's palm-sized or larger, you'll be able to relate. For those who haven't, I'll explain.
As your body heals, your giant fresh wound secretes a bunch of plasma (white blood cells). And it's all ... moist ... for a day or two. Also? It's healing and trying to form scabs and new skin. And during this phase, if you, say, wear pants...they'll kind of partially heal into your body.

Okay, not really. I'm being overly dramatic, but they stick to the drying plasma.

And then you have to peel your clothing off of your very sore new tattoo.

Thursday, the day after I was tattooed with something fairly large, I wore a nice breezy skirt for maximum airflow and the minimal touching of my leg that it does. It was awesome until I sat down on the bus. I tried to casually skooch my butt forward on the seat so none of my thigh touched...anything, but being that I have such short legs, it kind of left me so hunkered down in my seat that my neck was bent at a right angle and my back curved in a big C.

So I thought "Hey, just sit kind of normally, and cross the sore leg over the other leg. It's cool."

Yeah, all good until my stop came up half an hour later and I stood up and my skirt was fused into my leg.

Every time something like that happens I panic for a moment. What if my skirt is stuck there forever? What if I pull it off and my tattoo comes off with it? I hope nobody can tell what's going on here, because it's really gross.

I peeled it off (painfully) and limped my way off the bus and to work.

Multiple stick and peels later, I noticed my skirt was feeling kind of stiff.

I'll let that sink in for a moment.


...


My skirt was feeling stiff. From my leg goo getting on it and drying.

I felt like slimer from the Ghostbusters.

Anyway, I actually started writing this post to complain about something completely different, something about going to The Reef for dinner with all the tat bros and our friend Becca finding a mothereffing BOLT in her salad*, but then I sat down and my stupid leg hurt a bunch. So this is what you got instead.


*Yeah, a gigantic olde tyme bolt that looked like it was from the industrial revolution era. Check it out. Later, the chef came by and Cody jokingly told him there was a reciprocating saw in his hot sauce. I laughed for hours. Still laughing in fact.

Needless to say, after the terrible service we got, all the attitude I got in booking the reservation for twelve people, all the attitude when we arrived (because we were fifteen minutes early?), the super slow service, the gross drinks, the flat beer, the 'free shooters' we got after the bolt incident that were really just juice I swear, the lack of apology from anyone except our really nice poor server, and the gratuity still included in the bill and all of us still paying full price, none of us are ever going back there.

That's The Reef, a Jamaican restaurant on Yates street, Victoria B.C.

Other than that though, we had a really interesting day yesterday.

First Roberto was tattooed by Gerry.
Then Gerry was tattooed by Roberto.
Then Sarah was tattooed by Roberto.
Then Becca was tattooed by Roberto.
Then Savannah was tattooed by Cody.
Then Colin was tattooed by Gerry.

Then we went for food and got 'screwed'. Get it?


Then...get this...karaoke.

In the weirdest place ever. Pics to come. I did not sing. Here's a few I stole from Sarah for now. Also, the photo above is stolen from her.


p.s. you don't see those alcohol containers. There's NO BOOZE allowed in there. The sign on the door said no, but the way they gave us a locking room for an hour in the back with no supervision on a Saturday night said yes.