Ha-Ha-Happy Halloween

YOUR BOYFRIEND:


No but seriously folks, Happy Halloween! To mark the occasion I thought I would share with you a small sampling of the total enthusiasm with which Americans approach this, the best of all the pagan holidays. I live in a pretty nice neighbourhood with a lot of families and kids, and they've gone all out with decorating their yards for Halloween. I took a few pictures today - and again, this is just a small sample. I swear there is a giant inflatable ghost Merry-go-Round on a lawn around here somewhere...



This poor pumpkin man was ambushed on the way up to the porch. Very sad.


What is that big orange thing by the door? Is the Human Torch a Halloween monster?

The ENTIRE YARD was full of stand-up thingies. I am impressed.

Best. Doorway. Ever.

Why yes, that is a giant inflatable Halloween snowglobe. (??)

Scuse me, m'aam, your kleenex collection seems to be caught in that tree.

Skeletal witch fortune teller?

Look at the creepy lady in the window to the left!

I love these little pumpkin lights, they're so cheerful.

Horrid skeletal scarecrow trying to escape.

Is that the giant prize pumpkin from Trader Joe's? Or just another hugemungus pumpkin?

I just like the way he's just sitting out on the porch there.

Ah, the classic vomiting cyclops pumpkin.

"Herein lies Fox News"? Bloody liberals.

And so say all of us.

(Obviously these houses will look so much better in the dark with everything lit up, but sadly my camera is too sucky to capture that. )

Red Roofs

My Dad sent me over some great pictures of Lisbon - my folks went to Portugal a couple of weeks ago (lucky buggers, oh well I am in America so we all get to be foreign). The one in the middle is a giant elevator thing which sends you up to a walkway to the top of the hill. Pretty damn cool.

All Around You People Are Having Hilarious Conversations

So this evening I was doing something that all hip yet minimalist young people must do from time to time: pruning my facebook profile page. It is a precarious and delicate activity, because of course your facebook profile must precisely yet modestly distill all the cool things about your personality into a few short lists.

Anyhow, so I felt my profile was too cluttered and a little stale, so I basically deleted a whole bunch of stuff from there. (I also added "Freakin' out the straights" to my 'Activities' box, but that's by the by.)

Sadly, I had to make the tough decision to viciously cut out all my carefully accrued Facebook quotes, gathered from several years of humorous occasions and the sparkling witticisms of my friends. But I could not bear to delete them forever! Too cruel! Therefore here they are, preserved for eternity on another bit of the internet:

Charlotte: "Do you think Hannah could be Jesus? Like, actually sent from God?"
Hannah: "What? What?! What's going on? What's this Jesus business?!"

Kaia: "We are incurring God's thunder-wrath with cigarettes and lesbianism!"

Garon: "W'chaaaa... BAM!!"

Lauren: "Only afterwards did I realise that this wasn't a good idea..."
Me: "Nonsense. Best idea ever."
Lauren: "No, I mean it gave me a wicked awesome wedgie!"
Me: "Oh. Fair enough."

Lydia: "I was just talking to Robin, I was looking away...and when I look back Jen is pulling pretzels out of her pants."

Hannah's Travel Journal: "I was soon to learn that English people go to the pub whenever they have five free minutes."

Me: "All I got of that conversation was Tim sitting in a box and saying 'erogenous'"
Tim: "That's how I roll."

Susie: "That bat keeps looking at me!"
Kaia: "That's its butt."

Kaia: "Oh no! Burritos is going to come out of me!"

Some best celebrity quotations:

Eddie Izzard: "I like my women like I like my coffee... in a plastic cup!"

Romy White: "Would you excuse me? I cut my foot before and my shoe is filling up with blood."

U-Turn, on Weeds: "Thug means never having to say you're sorry."

Better Work Ethic Than Me

Look at the amazing watercolours Lucy Knisley put up on her Art Journal, over at livejournal, this week. She is fantastically talented. And guess what, she did all these while she had the flu. To keep herself occupied while sick. I cannot even do such things when I am at the peak of health. (See the whole selection of watercolours here.)


Anyway, the moral of this story is that you should check out Lucy Knisley's website, titled Stop Paying Attention, and maybe friend her on livejournal, which may be a stalkery thing to do, but I've done it anyway, and it's worth it to see the amazing illustrations she produces.





P.S. I have mentioned Lucy Knisley before, in a post on diary comics. Knisley does good diary comics, too.

Defend Equality - Love Unites

Shepard Fairey has designed another fantastic poster, where you can appreciate the design and also go "right on!!" Go gay marriage! Down with Prop 8! Boo! Yay!

Hey, if you are in Portland come to the downtown Oregon Equality March, it's on October 24th. I'm going, and I will probably be wearing this. (Because sometimes consumerism and the fight for equality can go together.)

Some (Very) Amateur City Photography

Had a bit of a wander around Portland yesterday taking pictures, ostensibly for an art project but also because I like wandering about cities, and also because I especially like wandering about Portland. I Heart PDX, for reals.

This is a terrible picture of the view from the bus that I take every day to university, as it crossing the Ross Island bridge. I never get tired of this view.

This is a parking lot.

Lanterns at the Portland Art Museum.

Posters at Music Millennium on Burnside.

The Big Pink

Chinatown

A hilarious and random 24-hour art exhibit called the Church of Elvis, or something? You feed it a quarter and it tells your fortune and says funny things to you. It's on 4th and Couch, I would recommend a visit.

Union Station

So last time I saw this building it was painted blue and it was several blocks away... they moved it. On trucks. Crazy American houses made from wood.

I really like this bronze domed tower block.

A Benson bubbler.

A single Benson bubbler.

And finally, I cannot refrain from taking dozens of out-of-focus pictures of Stumptown mugs. Look at that lovely shiny red mug right there. Yum yum.