My New Website!

My new website is up called Myth and the Maker.
www.mythandthemaker.com
It's going to be a combo of my normal blogging plus creative writing I've done and various things I've made (photos, videos, podcasts, etc) so go check it out!

The New Plan: Help Me Help People

I decided yesterday that if I want this blog of mine to be something I keep for a while, I should have my own website, rather than a blogspot page with my own domain name thrown on the top. I plan to make the site much more interesting and consistent but have no room to move or customize on blogspot. The problem comes in because to make this website last I need advertisement, due to a disagreement with Google I can't use the AdSense program, so I need a website where I can sell my own ad space. To have a site hosted there is a pretty sizable start up fee that I can't afford. I am going to start saving and trying to get an actual sight going but if anybody is interested in speeding up the process I'm going to start posting a donation button at the bottom of my posts. I don't really expect anybody to feel like I deserve their money so I vow that every single dollar donated will be matched and donated to The Shelter Network, a charity that works to permanently rehouse  homeless people and families, as soon as I have purchased the necessary webspace. None of this money will end up in my pocket, and every cent donated will end up helping disadvantaged people find a home. So whether you have any interest in seeing me create my website, or if you just want to help people, every dollar helps.

My Tattoos (Part 2)

The way this blog layout works, you're probably reading this before the post about my first tattoo. If so, that's probably fine, this isn't exactly Breaking Dawn, I'm sure you'll be able to keep up without the back-story. [I often wonder if my constant need to establish myself as an anti-Twilight force in the world is actually just prolonging its popularity by keeping it fresh in people's minds. Oh well, it's just one of those things I can't get enough of hating. Oh, but for the record, some of my favorite people in the world absolutely love the books.]

Anyway, my other tattoo. This is it:

Again, I know the photo sucks but I figured I would look like a tool asking my roommate to take pitures of my tattoos for me. It's good enough for you to get the idea I suppose.
 

I got the first one the day after I turned 18 (I turned 18 on a Thursday and the tattoo shop was an hour away and the tattoo would take five hours so I didn't have enough time that day. It's still exciting the next day, I promise.) and was immediately dissatisfied. Not only does your first tattoo, if you're happy with it, instantly addict you to the act and feeling of getting tattoos, but I'm very strongly ocd about some things and symmetry is one of them. Not the cute or annoying ocd people say they have when they really just have adorable little pet peeves and fetishes, like an actual obsessive compulsion. Asymmetry literally makes my stomach hurt. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw this piece of Bob's art, and my soul, on my my right arm that I just loved, and on my left arm was just an equally worrying asymmetrical mole I had been asking my pediatrician about since I was six. I had to balance it out but hadn't though ahead about a second tattoo coming so soon. I happened to be reading Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, because I'm either exactly the pretentious intellectual douchebag you think I am or genuinely obsessed with the ideas of rights and human liberty, and read the lines "My country is the world, my religion is to do good." I instantly fell in love with this line but felt like there was more to my life and belief system than simply doing good, so I changed it to "The World is My Country, To Love is My Religion" because I can't think of anything that defines my life more than my desire to and fascination with love. I asked Ryan-Bob to draw something fitting the same layout so that my need for symmetry would be met, but in a different style so that I wasn't some idiot with the same tattoo twice because he wasn't clever enough to come up with two ideas.

I realize that a good number of people who read my posts won't give the tiniest shit what my tattoos say or why I got them, but when I get the same question a couple hundred times a week, I have to assume there are at least a few people who would like to know the story behind them. Leave comments, tell me how much you like or hate my tattoos or tell me how enjoyable or boring and unreadable my writing is, just leave some sort of comment to validate my feeling of self-expression, that's all I really need.

My Tattoos

I don't know how my tattoos keep surprising people literally every day (as much as I'd like to, I won't rant here about people's misuse of the word literally or pretentious assholes' posh chuckling at what they probably think is me using an overused word in a cliched context, but that's the right way to use it. I'm sorry this is how my brain works. You'll adjust) and I've tried to show/explain them to people many times but would feel like a complete tool if I was frequently posting links to pictures of them or talking about the inspiration behind them like that guy who has a bunch of tattoos, and they're kind of neat, but he feels the need to explain the personal meaning behind each and every one of them to you to a point where you actually dislike his tattoos because of how stupid and cliched his obsession with their deepness makes them feel. Not that they aren't cool, he's just way too sure that they are and that you should think they are. I never want to be that guy. I love tattoos and every one that I put on my body will have great meaning to me but when I tell you about them, I couldn't possibly care less how deep or meaningful you think they are because it's my body and they mean something to me. I'm proud that after a year, they still remind exactly of what I wanted to remember every time I saw them. Some people don't make it this far. Some people don't make it a day.

I'm rambling. If you're going to read this blog you'll have to adjust to some rambling because certain things pop in to my mind and I have an irresistible urge to say them. Whatever the conversation happens to be about, it will remind me of something I'm annoyingly passionate about and my ego-centric brain will convince itself that you need to know exactly what I think about the subject. I'm sorry if this stream-of-consciousness style is annoying, read some Jane Eyre or something, you typed this URL into the bar or clicked the link, so deal with it.

Anyway, my tattoos. I have two. The first is this one:

 The photo kind of sucks but hey, how much can you expect from a PhotoBooth photo taken by someone who really doesn't care how cool you think his tattoo is. [As I typed that sentence I realized it sounded extremely arrogant. I don't want anybody to ever get the impression that I think I'm cool. This is a very unfortunate misconception. I promise I'm very far from being cool, or even having a good idea what it is, I just realized over the course of trying to take a picture that I felt did the tattoo justice that... fuck it, I know what it looks like and am happy with it, you'll just have to take my word for it. Try to never interpret anything I say as being cool, or the words of somebody who thinks they are cool, if you do you're missing the point entirely] But that's it. I drew it about a year and a half before I turned 18, then redrew it a hundred times because my standards for art are much higher than my ability to make it has ever allowed me to produce. I met a friend named Bob, Bob Z, or Ryan if you're me or his mom apparently. Ryan-Bob was an incredible artist and had just started doing tattoos so I had him redraw my piece as the pretty, detailed picture you see on my bicep.

This is the information for, map of, and reviews of the shop where he works. I would like to point out that the top two reviews both praise Ryan's skills and ability specifically. Ryan-Bob's talent is obviously wasted here. Go there and get a tattoo from him and make him popular and his talent and art known to the world.

The shamrocks are because I'm Scotch-Irish, depending on who you ask, and obsessed with Ireland and Irish culture. The words say "Nothing Ever Came From A Simple Life" and are a shortening of lyrics from a Flogging Molly song. I know all the reactions that people have to a teenager getting lyrics tattooed on them but I don't care. I love the band because they're Irish but those lyrics are basically the cornerstone of my entire world view and belief system. The idea that Joe the Plumber, no matter how important to society and the ones he loves and who love him, will never be featured in a history book or on some History Channel special about some crazy shit that changed the world is all I know to be true in this world. I don't know anything at all for sure other than than that you have to do something interesting in your time on this planet or nobody will remember you after you're gone. It doesn't have to be big, it just has to change something that somebody notices. I can't explain this to everybody who asks about my tattoo, which happens much less frequently since my employer decided 6 months into my employment that my tattoos had to be covered by long sleeves, so most people think I just have some lyrics by some Irish band that I love because it's cool to like Irish stuff, but I assure you the tattoo is the product of countless hours of thought and consideration about what meant enough to me to be permanently on my body.

This post is way too long so, even though I'm going to immediately write the second piece about my other tattoo and probably a few posts after that, I'm ending this post here.


Oh p.s. Although the original idea was mine and the layout was originally my idea, the art, and really anything really cool you like about the piece was entirely Bob's work. He's good at what he does.

Okay, Let's Try This Again

This is my attempt at rebooting my blog. I struggled for a while with what my blog should be about, I didn't think I was funny enough for a comedic blog, but I never felt I was quite intelligent enough for a completely serious, opinionated blog. This ridiculous crisis of bog-identity happened to coincide with the debut of a television show I'm on called My Life as Liz; the surprising fame from which has also provided me with an audience. I didn't know how to react to this audience at first but for some reason they started asking me very deep, personal, or intimate questions. I don't know what it is that makes people think I know anything about anything but the very reason I created this blog was to be a release for all the things I can't talk about with the people around me on a day to day basis, and if people are suddenly curious about what I have to say, hey, why not right? From now on I this blog will be an outlet for whatever I feel like saying. I will start by making the first few blogs about things that I am frequently asked on Twitter, Formspring, etc. which may be annoying or uninteresting to a few but it will settle the curiosity of many. Let's see how this works.

 Yes, I'm aware I sound like the kind of person you don't give a fuck about, just give me a chance.

Things You Should Know: MSNBC is lying to you.

I just wanted to write a little bit about why, over the last eight or so months, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim has replaced the major news outlets as the only TV station I watch.

Lies

I am a very opinionated, politically minded person, and as such I like to know what's going on in the world, so I watch the news. CNN is the Wal-Mart of news so I skip it, Fox and MSNBC have extremely obvious slants, so I watch a little of both and piece the story together right? That's what I used to think. I'm very liberal, so I admit I watch MSNBC more than Fox, but I began to notice something about their style of reporting. The personalities on their shows make no attempt to hide their liberal viewpoints, but I began to notice that what the various shows actually cover, and what the station itself is actually presenting was much more conservative than they would have you believe. I had to understand why. 

Bullshit

MSNBC, like NBC, is owned by General Electric. GE is a very large fucking huge corporation whose sole purpose is to create profits for shareholders. There's nothing strange about that, that's how our economy works these days, the problem is what we call conflict of interests. GE, aside from its media operations, manufactures weapons and the machinery that goes into building military planes, helicopters, tanks, etc; they own health insurance and credit agencies, and own portions of many manufacturers and retailers who profit greatly from labor exploitation in the third world. How do you think a company like this wants you, the viewer to feel about ending war, fixing healthcare, fixing the credit system, or promoting fair trade laws, etc? If this is supposed to the outlet promoting the liberal agenda, it's no wonder Big Business and the political right have been able to do exactly what they want, to hell with the rest of us, for the last few years. I don't know where I'm going with this, exactly, other than just venting my frustration about what we've let the political and media climate become, and how out of our hands our own governance and well being has truly become.

Good Reasons To Ignore Valentine's Day

Every year on February 14th, millions of people spend hundreds of millions of dollars being romantic and proving their love to somebody dear to them.  I say this is a travesty. I refuse to, in any way, support Valentine's Day. If you don't believe you can ask my most recent girlfriends about the strife our relationships endured over past V-Days. Contrary to what I normally hear, I don't hate it because I'm cheap or because I'm anti-commercial, here are my real reasons for abstention:

1. Romance shouldn't be restricted to one day a year. As unmanly as it may be, I'm into love and romance. The thing is I think it should be real and true. I prefer the love stories in Eternal Sunshine or Garden State to those in Maid in Manhattan or My Big Fat Greek Wedding; I prefer the love songs by the Beatles or Ray Charles to those by Justin Bieber or Carrie Underwood; and I prefer honest, spontaneous romance any time of the year to focusing it for one day just because everybody else is doin it and you feel obligated. You should never do something special for the person you love because you are obligated to, you should do it because you want to. And you should want to surprise them with it.

2. How much you love somebody is in no way related to how much money you can spend to prove it. People who take Valentine's seriously are always disappointed when  they go all out on their loved one and their loved one does something a little more modest for them. This is wrong and should stop right now. 'Nuff said.

3. Greeting Card companies are bullshit. Greeting card companies make millions of dollars saving you from ever having to genuinely tell somebody how you feel, and Valentine's day is their cash cow. Funny birthday cards are one thing but all the sappy love cards with little poems in them do nothing but cheapen the sentiment they are supposed to be expressing. There is nothing sweet or romantic about giving somebody a card with a pre-written poem or message in it, no matter how deep or profound they may seem. Even if you suck at writing, the fact that what you wrote came from heart and your hands will always mean so much more to somebody.

Surprise your girlfriend with flower on February 5th or August 10th for no reason at all and see how much more it means to her. Surprise your boyfriend with a message or tickets to a sporting event on any day of the year other than Valentine's day and see if he isn't a little more inspired to romance. Help end Valentine's Day!