Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine

I took these photos in London in February 2020.

People flying out of LAX internationally were greeted with signs warning them not to handle animals if they went to Wuhan, an almost comic understatement of what lie ahead. I think often about how moments in time can be sullied by what's unimaginably to follow, how quickly things can escalate. I hope this isn't one of those times. Staring daggers at the doomsday clock.

I'm a vehement Valentine's Day disliker. No holiday has the right to come in at the tail end of winter like that when everyone's tired, cold, broke, and sick of their families and loved ones. They should put May Day in February instead. Or Easter. Or Boxing Day! Something low stress. February's days are too short, the groundhog always sees his shadow (allegedly! no groundhog would be interviewed for this post) – it's an untrustworthy month that can't even commit to the number of days in it. Throw the whole month out! It also just sucks for me personally – I'm pretty much always single, plus I am unmoved by obligatory gestures and hallmark card sentimentality. The best thing anyone ever did for me on Valentine's Day – the only good thing – was when this guy Zach I was barely seeing scrawled HAPPY VALENTINES in red sharpie on a religious scare pamphlet about the horror of piercings. I love it both ironically and unironically. It says "which piercing hurt the most? Tongue? Yikes! Nose? Yikes! Actually, the piercing that hurts the most is the one that you've probably never thought about. The hole that was pierced through your soul." Thank you Zach. I will always remember you for this, not the time you said "I'm not listening to anything you're saying, I'm too distracted by how good you look." (Need a "where are they now?" expose on Zach, the guy who did one great thing, but it was so great I'm still thinking about it twenty three years later.)

Happy Valentines, Heathens.

Love, Kate

(P.S. it's the tenth anniversary of this post)

Zarvis bum oil redux

I don't like telling anyone what to do .. I mean thanks for being here willingly and reading this weird stuff I write so that it lands in a brain and doesn't just float into the cloud and dissipate like the majority of our ideas, energy, and time; but listen: I would really like you to read the original Zarvis bum oil post (< link) before you go any further. Go ahead – we'll reconvene here in a minute.

Ok, is your mind blown? Put it back together and prepare for it to be blown again.

Last February (2020 BC, "before covid") my last huzzah with the outside world was a trip to London and Paris. You can probably guess where I'm going with this: I paid the Zarvis London storefront a visit .. wait though, BY ACCIDENT. I STUMBLED ACROSS IT.

After laughing like a crazy person and snapping a couple of photos, I excitedly tried to chat up the gal running the store, ready to be embraced (maybe given the deed to my castle in Scotland, an inscribed tin of bum oil, or whatever – at least some fucking tea) and instead she completely went apeshit bananas on me for photographing the Zarvis sign. I explained the situation. I showed her my ID!!! But she wanted nothing to do with me and insisted I was violating her trademark by photographing a sign with my name on it! Come on lady. You can't trademark my name!! I kept trying to reason and she just kept yelling at me to delete my phone photos. No way, psycho. The last she saw of me I was holding my license up to the window desperately, like a fish drowning in oxygen, like Charlie in Lost

 

It was a total barf-o-rama.

Check this out. Even Mom was mad!!

^ this is Mom mad. She's very nice about it.

That's it, London woman. You're out of my will. You want that dirty hippo mug? Tough crap, jerk. Also, the store was empty. shrug shrug. 

 

subscribers? this post is for you. It's boring ... but it has a photo of Hoxton Street Monster Supply

 

 

so unfortunately this is happening

oh, that's very small. It says EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE WILL BE DISCONTINUED JULY 2021. If you're getting emails when I post, you won't be getting them anymore, effective anytime now.

there's a way to download your subscriber list but blogger doesn't adequately tell me where to find it (maybe I'll figure this out but I haven't yet) and I really like just having a widget that does all this for me. I'm no tech wiz. I sometimes think I have brains, but I can't remember anything, can't ever figure out tech issues, have no sense of direction, don't know how to hook up anyone's tv and can't make any sense of human beings so what's the brain for? Maybe it holds my skull in place?

I did promise a photo of Hoxton Street Monster Supply. Here it is. Go pay it a visit if you're ever in London*

"Customers are politely requested to refrain from eating the staff"

 * hint about next post

 

Zarvis bum oil

Recently I was looking myself up online and I came across an article extolling the virtues of Zarvis bum oil.  I typed "Zarvis art" and "Zarvis bum oil" came up.

That's right. The price has gone up and they seem to be calling it something else these days, but here's the magic stuff, if the Daily Mail can be relied on. They tell us it's for massaging babies, which may be why they took the "bum" out of the title; but the Daily Mail also tell us we should be pummeling our buttocks, so they may just vulgarize everything, or possibly "bum oil" and "baby massage oil" are interchangeable terms in England.  Wait - here I've found an American reference to "bum oil" (warning: accompanying pic of diaper rash possibly NSFW, um ... you decide) and a shop actually called "Magic Bum Baby."

what is this illustration? snowman bum?

G-rated bum oil search results:

Are these Zarvis London people relatives of mine? 

I hope so, because A. bum oil, and B. they have that initials piled together thing that looks really fancy and I'm sure that someone in the extended family must have me in their will and I'll get a call any minute now from an estate executor who has been going bananas jetsetting all over the globe looking for me.  And I will either get: the first dollar ever made from bum oil, framed, or a castle in Scotland.

like someone else who sells bags that cost more than my rent

Gossip Girl season 6, ep 1:

Rufus: Lily, what are you doing here? I thought you and Bart were circling the globe on an 80 foot yacht.

Lily: Well, the yacht was 110 feet, and most people who’ve actually been on one call it a boat.

Likewise, people who've been all over the globe probably don't use the word "jetsetting." So when you come back and see that I have struck out all occurrences of that word (which is probably just the one) you'll know that I have finally made it.

I'll bet that this is the first time YSL and "bum oil" have appeared together in print.
"Pummeling buttocks" and "estate executor."
"80 foot yacht" and "NSFW."  Well, maybe not that one.

thank you, London

... for the atheist bus campaign