Happy Halloween, Blogosphere!

I love Halloween even though year after year I never do anything to celebrate it but wear a Halloween t-shirt with some jeans and Halloween themed socks to pass out candy at the door.  This year’s socks are purple with a cartoon-ish skeleton and bones and currently covered up by my slippers because it’s freakin’ cold today!  I’m not into the gory stuff.

Here’s a question about the holiday that’s been plaguing me for a few years:  Why does every women’s Halloween costume have to be slutty?  Let’s do a case study:

I apologize for the small picture, but you get the idea.  Besides, I like to keep my blog SFW.

This charming little diddy is called “Adult Glass Slipper Princess Costume.”  Well, they got the adult part right, but it doesn’t come with any glass slippers so that right there is false advertising.  Oh wait, they’re referencing a glass slipper so you know it’s supposed to be Cinderella, but by avoiding calling it “Slutty Cinderella” they’ve avoided having to pay royalties to Disney, who should be shutting this down for copyright infringement.  I’m not a fan of the slutification of wholesome family entertainment.

If the “dress” were any lower I would be able to see nipples.  If it were any higher on the bottom I would be able to see her gonorrhea.

If I hypothetically bought this costume, I don’t know where I could find the shoes to go with it, so I most likely would have to buy those clear plastic shoes because plain black pumps just wouldn’t be right.

The great thing about these shoes is they don’t make the wearer of the costume look like more of a stripper… oh wait.  Yes, yes they do.

Now I would never buy a costume like this because I don’t need to scar the little children who come trick-or-treating at my door for life.  This ensemble is really only appropriate for a strip club, or maybe a regular club if you were already drunk when you put it on.  It also lacks creativity of any kind, which I think is one of the great things about Halloween.

Here’s another problem I have with costumes like this: with the nation’s epidemic of overweight and obese people, surely some of them are crazy enough to put something like this on, especially since all the “plus size” costumes are slutty, too.  Thanks for that, Party City.  Here’s some information from the CDC, my go-to government agency on all things diseased.

 

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html Go to the website to see an animated map of obesity trends and states starting from the 1980s. It's startling to say the least.

Basically, a third of people in this country are obese.  Add in the overweight people, and you’ve got a lot of people who should not be wearing skimpy costumes.  Yeah, I said it… if you weigh over 140 (and I’m being generous with this) I don’t want to see you in a skirt that’s way above your knees.  Let alone the skirt from our case study, where it looks like if that skinny model put down her leg, I would be able to see all her bits.

 

Look, I’m not trying to discriminate.  I’m fat, too.  It’s okay to be proud of your curves if you want, but I don’t want to see every last one of them.  I think we can all agree, many of these costumes are crossing a line no matter what size you are!

Anyway, I have to go clean up my husband’s pumpkin mess.  He’s working on his second jack-o-lantern of the three we’re making.  I already finished mine, having opted for a traditional face.  You know, round eyes, triangle nose, toothy grin.  How’s that for wholesome family entertainment this Halloween?

WIJFR: evermore

evermore
Alyson Noel
301 pages

I was browsing through the teen section the other night at Barnes and Noble, birthday gift card burning a hole in my pocket, looking for something easy and dark to read.  I came across some books that sounded interesting that were second and third in the “the immortals” series and then I remembered – I had ordered the first book from PaperBackSwap and it was sitting at home in my TBR (To Be Read) pile!  There was ten dollars in savings right there.

So the next evening I cracked it open around six pm.  Six hours or so later it was over.  I wasn’t overwhelmed but I wasn’t underwhelmed either.  I did order the second book on PBS and, since it’s on a wait list, it should mail in about four weeks meaning it will most likely get here in six.  I can wait.

The story is about a teenage girl, Ever, whose family died in a car crash; she was the only one to survive.  Since then she can see other people’s auras and see her dead sister and they have conversations and hang out together because her sister won’t cross over.  Meanwhile, Ever meets a new boy at school, Damen, who is immortal, which he makes very clear is not the same thing as being a vampire.  What’s more, he tells her, she’s an immortal, too!  Kismet.

Since evermore is a teenage paranormal romance novel, I have obviously have to compare it to Twilight and Twilight was much more believable.  Both are a great page turner though and I couldn’t put it down until I was done.

On a side note, it probably seems from my book reviews recently that I’m into fluff more than substance these days, but I don’t review every book I read.  Also, I tend to alternate something more serious with some fluffy like evermore.  I’m still trying to get through Eat, Pray, Love right now and I’m still stuck in the middle her section on India.  To be honest, I was going to give up on it, but I’ve decided to skim until it gets better.  So that review will be up when I finally get through.

Congrats to Hubby!

Chris got the part-time seasonal job he wanted!  He’s never worked retail and I think that’s an experience everyone should have at least once in their lives.  So today he got himself a swanky job at Best Buy.  I won’t go into all the details of the job, but it’s a good one and we could use the money because med school isn’t cheap.  We also are pretty sure we’re not moving first week in December but first week in January instead.  The living situation isn’t awesome here, but it’s what we have to do, so it’s what we’re going to do.

So there’s a little update on our lives.

A Timely WIJFR: Ghost Hunting

Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society
Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Michael Jan Friedman
273 pages

I picked up this book at the library thinking it would help me with my NaNoWriMo project, but instead it was a delightful (maybe delightful isn’t exactly the word that should be applied to true ghost stories, though…) collection of case stories that the The Atlantic Paranormal Society (T.A.P.S.)  have investigated over the years.  I read the book mostly at night before  I went to bed, and since I am usually susceptible to such things, I thought it would definitely give me nightmares.  Thankfully I was nightmare free over the three nights I read this book.

Each case story is only a few pages, with the exception of the last story about The Stanley Hotel where Stephen King’s The Shining is based.  I found this story one of the most interesting because King is one of my favorite authors and it seems he himself had some actual paranormal experiences while staying at the hotel, which inspired him in his writing.  My second favorite case took place in Batavia, NY, only half an hour down the thruway from me, at an old asylum where there is a supposedly sordid past.

Everyone knows these guys have a popular TV show on SciFi (excuse me, SyFy) Network but what’s great about this book is they explain a lot of things that weren’t shown on TV, including some spooky evidence.  What I enjoy most about T.A.P.S. as opposed to other ghost hunters is they don’t claim paranormal without really good evidence.  In fact, their goal is to debunk all the evidence they find and they only declare a haunting if they can truly not find any explanation for their evidence.  Hearing strange banging in your basement?  They’ll check out your piping before declaring it paranormal.  Doors opening by themselves?  Better check the air vents; more often than not the doors are swinging open when the heat kicks on and shutting when it kicks off.  Because of their high standard for evidence, they don’t believe orbs indicate paranormal activity, which I have a hard time with considering I caught an orb on film once in Colonial Williamsburg.  Ever since then I was inclined to believe I had caught something paranormal on film.  The orb was shaped a bit like a skull, but I have since lost the picture and thus any proof to my claim.  In all likelihood it was just a piece of dust.

Despite the fact that this book didn’t help me with my NaNoWriMo research at all and despite the fact that it’s not written at the highest quality, I found it to be very interesting and timely.  Halloween is only a week away after all!  I don’t think Ghost Hunting will convert any non-believers, but if you do believe, give it a read.

Birthday Recap

Thanks to all my Facebook buddies for the birthday wishes!  What started out as a rather crappy and unhappy day quickly turned around to one of the best birthdays I’ve had in a long time.

I got up and received a call from work about something I (accidentally) screwed up the day before, which was kind of sucky, and I was almost sucked into more Facebook drama, which I’m glad I choose to ignore or I would have been brooding over it all day.  (Side note: Vaccines don’t cause autism.)

I made myself some cinnamon buns for brunch, took a good shower, and hubs and I headed off to the Great Pumpkin Farm in Clarence where we purchased 107 lbs, or four, large pumpkins and three bales of hay (almost type hales of bay, haha) for the front porch.  While hubs produced a clever display with said items, I wrapped his mother’s birthday present because, what are the odds, we have the same birthday.  Then it was off to Rochester.

In Rochester we exchanged presents.  Holy cow, the in-laws spent too much on me.  But now I have a fancy Keurig machine that makes me delicious drinks to show for it and Barnes and Noble gift card that I can’t wait to buy books with.  We just set up the Keurig this afternoon.  I’ve been wanting one for a couple years and it’s amazing!  The machine came with a ton of K-Cups so I had a cup of Earl Grey and hubs is having a cup of coffee.  Yay!

Then we all headed out for dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse where I had the second best steak of my life, the first having come from Delmonico’s Steakhouse.  It was smothered in some sort of seasoned buttery goodness and the mashed potatoes were even better.  We had a coupon for a free appetizer and has some cheesy shrimpy crabby dip that was amazing on some seasoned tortilla chips.

After our delicious meal, we headed over to Eastview Mall, one of my favorite malls of all time, and headed straight for Teavana.  I got myself 2.5 oz of Peppermint Tea, which filled the tin!  It’s a very fluffy tea so you really get a lot of bang for your buck; it only cost about $5.00.  Chris got some Darjeeling tea for himself at a steeper price of about $19.00 for 2.3 oz.   Chris hasn’t had fresh tea in over two years, though we are still drinking the Chai he got before he left for Dominica, and I’m still drinking some Monkey Picked Oolong from a year ago.  They’re not supposed to last that long but they still taste fine to me.

Best part: We figured out how to use the Keurig to make the hot water for the Teavana tea.  Win-win!  Just made myself a pot of Peppermint.

The Yankee Candle store was right across the hall from Teavana so naturally I had to stop in there to smell the new Christmas scents.  There were a lot!  The Mistletoe and Fig didn’t smell nearly as good as I hoped it would, so I ended up just getting three votive of some new scents: Winter Wonderland, Peppermint Swirls, and White Christmas.  The Peppermint Swirls is one of my new favorites.   I guess I’m on a peppermint kick!

We left the mall after that and drove back to Buffalo.  It was a really great night.  Tonight we’re having dinner with my parents and (twin!) brother to celebrate our birthdays.  Should be another good time.