12:54 pm | 30 August 2004 | in which I am so very, very pretty

Incongruence

So I scored this sweatshirt at Goodwill that is possibly one of the most important cataclysms of fashion magnitude ever, ever. I know, you are saying to yourself "a sweatshirt? and fashion?" But let my sweatshirt show you how compatible the two can be. The sweatshirt is grey and is pretty much huge in that I could fit, really seriously, two of my torsos inside, but in that magical sweatshirt way, it's still only barely hitting my hip on one side. I know my torso is freakishly long, but sweatshirts are seriously cut on snowman-shaped dummies, for real. The most important feature, however, is not its beer-gut-concealing volume, but the neckline. For some crafty housewife has used clearidescent (I just made this word up, hah) blue craft-glitter-paint-glue to carefully faux-appliqu� printed fabric roses, in unharmonious beige and pink, across a line several inches lower, and wider, than the neckhole's original location. THEN this awesome artisan took some silver glitter and made basically like a drop-shadow under the roses, or like wanted to represent the magickal dew the roses are emitting, and so anyway there's a crapload of sparkle happening up on this shirt, so when it sags louchely off one shoulder, it is wreathed with beautiful terrible roses outlined in electric blue starlight hellfire. Also the sleeves have been "shortened" by being cut off at a level that seems appropriate for whatever five-footer perpetrated this glory, but which hit mid-arm for me, adding to the hilarious incongruence. This sweatshirt makes me laugh all the way to the bank. "But Claude, you're using that clich� in the wrong context." "NO I'm not. I am laughing to the Fashion Bank to make a withdrawal from the MILLION DOLLARS this sweatshirt is worth."

Project: Averted

The last few weeks I have been totally cracked out, getting three or four hours of sleep a night, freaking out randomly, doing five million* projects and jobs and whatnot, and while it's been fun, I crashed hard this week (Monday night, just after leaving Staples' Copy Center**, I started randomly crying into my Diet Dr. Pepper, all "I'm so tired! Wubluhuhuhh." While my weariness is not only self-inflicted but twelve years in duration, it doesn't mean it doesn't intermittently slay my already anemic, low-blood-pressure-having, non-sportif ass. So anyway, I was all tired, and stayed in Friday night with a pizza (which hi, my name is Claude, and I am now having a baby—a baby made of cheese, pineapple, and jalape�o) and a copy of the first season of The Simple Life, that Fox show where Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie have to "survive" a month (oh God no! THIRTY DAYS!) in the sticks, which welcome to my childhood. And along the way, while also fostering a weird love for them (and more on that later), I really started to regret that I hadn't planned my imminent homegoing trip at the beginning of the summer, so I'd have had time to totally just work out and use self-tan lotion and get all wiry and leathery and Paris-y and blonde and whatnot, for the sheer, pure purpose of freaking my hometown out. God, I'd have LOVED that. But given my already fragile state, probably that much Metab-o-Life or Mystic Spray Tan or whatever would've sent me over the edge and I'd have started actually acting like that, putting booties on my dog.

Feral and automatic

I once hated Paris Hilton, but in a weird way I've come to like her. In a sense she represents total innocence�sure, it's entitled, uppercrust, gross, cheap innocence, but it's innocence nonetheless. Sister literally does not know what she's doing. While Nicole and a passel of local boys are standing around on a front lawn somewhere in the Ozarks, we're treated to an extended montage of Paris selecting the appropriate outfit (what one should wear to hillbilly grillers is, apparently, a shell-encrusted sundress and floppy hat, all of which should be loosely draped across what is, even to aware-of-the-realities-of-the-fashion-industry, Southern-California-dwelling me, a leathery, wiry, emaciated frame), while posing, strutting, mugging, moueing, flouncing, vogueing, and otherwise sashay-Chante-ing. It's magnificent in the same way that a cat torturing a mouse is: it's kind of feral and automatic. It's simply her nature. And I, for one, am totally down with it.

Pretty

This morning, as happens waaaaay more to me than to anyone else, I am certain, I kicked my ankle (left) with my own foot (right) and but this time managed to hit exactly on some vein or something, because an immediate purple bloodsac sprang up on my weirdly bony ankle�seriously, it was as though I'd had a grape Skittle implanted just under the surface of my skin�and I'm hoping my leg doesn't spontaneously gangrene and fall off, but at least if it does I am wearing my pretty lavender shoes today, and my giant bloodclump sort of coordinates, it being aubergine and all. Pretty pegleg!! PRINCESS!!!!

A fruity cocktail

In other fashion news, which I'm sure all you dudes really care about, I bought this dress/top over the weekend, and it was way on sale, but I'm wondering about its longevity, and whether I shouldn't exchange it in the end for this bag, which is pretty much the same price, since it's the perfect size for a weekend and has cute pockets and whatnot. Only thing: I have a million (MEEEELYOUN) totebags, and who's taking me on a weekend getaway? Uh, that's right, nobody. The fact that I have been dwelling on both of these questions since I bought the dress/top Saturday morning is testament to either my own ridiculousness or the lengths to which I will go to avoid thinking about important/depressing things. Probably it's a fruity cocktail of the two. And I am dumb. clm.

*J.J. and I are recently obsessed with overusing "million" and pronouncing it "meeeelyon" and kind of Mr. Burnsily, as so: "My bonus check is for thirteen MEEEEEEEEEELUYON DOLLARS."
**Which offers copies at only 6� per, and more than that, operates on an honor system, not that I advise swindling, but that counts one page, even if it is double-sided (like for chapbooks or zines) as one copy, not two, so what you'd bust out 18� for at Kinko's costs literally one-third of that at Staples. And 8.5x14" is the same price! GO TO STAPLES, PEOPLE.