It’s been a busy day in quarantine! I think I had less than an hour off at one point in between things I was doing.

7 a.m.-1 p.m.: Otherworlds online conference:

The first lecture was called ‘Introduction to Cube Space” and was about Kabbalah, which pretty much flew over my head, both for confusing subject matter and that for me it was 7 a.m. I liked the “Sorceress and the Scepter” talk after that better, more about reprogramming your brain, battling your family who wants to talk you out of things, being nice to your past self but being a drill sergeant on your current self, and desires. I like anything with royal attitude and trying to better yourself. She also talked about when you can’t make a decision to get yourself into a panic/fight or flight stage to force you to get it done, or getting someone else to do something for you if you never can get yourself to do it.

Notes from in-between class chats:

* There was a guy in there with the same birthday as me, three years younger. Birthday hangovers!
* “If there’s something we can all take away from this quarantine. Maybe we can all stop shaming each other for not wearing pants.”
* “I got bored and started telling stories online, which I regret later...” Then she started telling a story about setting her boyfriend on fire. “The suit worked! We did set him on fire! He was fine!” But there was too much smoke..”It was funny and one of those things that happened in the 90’s...You just don’t find that level of commitment any more.”
“We could find someone....”
“You know, everyone in the 90’s set their boyfriend on fire...”
“I set my shoes on fire....” while she was wearing them....
I think it was the same girl who said that they made a chlorine bomb out of a dodge ball, buried it in the ground and lit it.... “My neighbors made me do a lot of stupid shit.”
“Y’all are a bunch of no pants wearing pyromaniacs.”
* "I taught my corgi to surf." On a boogie board.
* "The macaw loved to shit on the wall."
* "My illness is chronic, but my tits are iconic."

During the meal break chat (for me, more like midmorning), I got belated birthday texts from Robert and Sarah. Sarah said she lost track of the date, and 'You can pretend my quarantine bangs I gave myself yesterday were for you." The photo is hilarious--uneven on one side, very short, very wincing smile....

Note to anyone else considering quarantine bangs, from someone who’s had ‘em all her life:
(a) When yanking down on your hair tu cut it, cut the hair at the middle or so of your eyebrows. NOT SHORTER. The hair will bounce back and then be too short.
(b) Don’t just cut them in what you think is a straight line across the head. I had a hairdresser who suggested just taking half of your bangs and twisting them like a rope and then cutting them at an angle (again, by the eyebrow) and then doing the same on the other half, it looks more natural.

After their lunch, there was a talk on the resonance of magic and how music and speech affect it. This is a cool idea, albeit it was a little short and thinking of shit like the Skagit Valley Choir kind of buzzkills it a bit these days.

During the break, there was more fun conversation, mostly involving somebody finding this picture of dinosaur sex.

"Well, apart from dinosaur sex, anything else?"
"What did I walk into, hell?"
"You left us unsupervised."
"There's T-rex smut."

On the topic of pets and people breaking theirs out:

"I never had small dogs before. I got hustled by some hippies at the farm."
"I named my cat Catrick Swayze."
"You are the dumbest thing alive."
"Our cat licks walls. We have a verified wall-licker."

At 1 p.m. I left Otherworlds because my theater company got together to read a radio play: "Ellery Queen: The Circus Train," in which Ellery, his inspector dad, his secretary, and the inspector's sergeant Velinda (I read that one) are rerouted onto traveling on a train of circus performers, where they meet the owner as she sells the show. The next day she's had her head bashed in with the giant's shoe and the money is nowhere to be found. Of course the giant, the midget (it was 1943) and the fortune teller are the suspects, everyone's shoes have wandered around, and whodunit? Madame Zara knows, which of course means she won't tell...or be ABLE to tell.... You can probably guess who's left and reasonable to do it :P It even had sound effects, though sometimes those had issues.

There was also snark between Janene and I on the chat, when the Lawn Guys were raring up and I wasn't sure if everyone else was hearing them, and she suggested taking a 12 gauge out there.... because happiness is a warm gun!

I went back to Otherworlds around 3:30 for a class on Meeting Thor, which was a lot of “here’s what the myths say, and no, it’s not like they did it in Marvel. Thor and Loki are not brothers,” which led to discussions of pop culture and magic and how people think that “Manon” from The Craft is real and how they think the rule on Charmed about doing nothing for personal gain is real. Also, "Jesus and Thor do not get along. There are thousands of years of history of them not being buddies. I probably shouldn't think it's funny, but it is funny."

Discussions before and after....

* One lady saying that a lot of her teachers were really crazy, "crazy as in 'was in a cult for like a minute" crazy. I learned a lot!”
* "You did miss the T-rex smut earlier."
"Now that makes me sad."
"I definitely want to see the diagram."
"It's a tasteful, educational one."

* "Much like Highlander 2, I don't think they made a movie. i don't think that exists."
"My father said he had more fun watching me lose my shit than watching the movie."
* On watching Thor with Christian parents as Thor bathes:
"At least my god is hot."
"You're not wrong."
* The teacher made this meme: "Come to the heathen side, we have Thor.”
* When doing a drawing: “All names are in the candy bowl of destiny.”

In another Zoom Safari sighting, someone broke out a vomit bag from "Mark of the Devil.”

At five, I bugged off to watch the RISK! show, recommended by my storytelling instructor. One cool thing about living on East Coast time: I can squeeze in multiple things and not even have to worry about the commute!

I had a brief moment of being creeped out when they wanted us to say where we were from on the chat and I just said “California” (I don’t see the point of specifying city when I am at East Coast events?) and then the host guy (Kevin Allison) called out that someone was specifically from my town. I then went through the chat and was all, nobody else said they were from here and I didn’t say it, so how did he know? Creepy.

Another sighting for Zoom Safari: Kevin broke out a painting of gay cowboys banging that he keeps in his bathroom. Did get a shot of that at least.

The storytellers were:

(a) Kevin Allison, with "This is a document that has to be read to be believed." After his show ended, he was stuck doing cater-waitering at a company that wouldn’t tell you where you were going before you had to deal with famous people. At one point he had to cater-waiter for David Koch, who he hadn’t heard of before, and then later was inspired to write some gay porn for Playguy magazine in which Koch’s son banged a hot cater-waiter. “They had an emphasis on anuses and that is the direct way to my heart.” Direct quote from the porn: “He was a shower and a grower.” OF COURSE HE WAS.

So yeah, now I can say I’ve experienced my first gay porn in quarantine!

Comments from the chat:

* "KOCH blocked!" in the chat
* “Rewrite from the perspective of Jared Kushner, please." (Kevin later declined, saying he hadn’t written any gay porn in a while.)

(b) Burke Heffner, telling the story of how he was a camera guy for a super dubious guy in Anchorage who would still not be ready in the morning and ask Burke stuff like, “Do you like big boobs?” Turns out this guy owed everyone money and Burke himself never got paid, so he got the bright idea to steal the camera as recompense, basing it entirely on movies. Where this goes wrong is when Blake gets into the house, everything is packed up in boxes because the guy is about to make a break for it, and Blake ends up finding a shit ton of “giant veiny cocks and penis pumps” spilling out all over the basement, along with gay porn. Suddenly I, and Burke, got why the guy was asking about boobies. And then, “while I'm still standing ankle deep in dildos in the dark in a basement that's not mine, Anchorage, Alaska is hit by an earthquake." He did find the camera and had it mailed to NYC. But ironically, it was as VHS camera and that was when DVD discs came out, making it useless. All he got out of it was a story and a brick, and this was not the movie he thought it was.

(c) Katherine Wu told a story about telling the girls at summer camp that her dad would lock her in a closet. Which technically he never did, but he did abuse her and treat her and her mom like crap in other ways. After telling the girls, she gets special treatment that day, but one of them tells them a counselor, the cops are called, and of course Katherine has to be all “My parents would never hurt me.” Sigh. You knew it’d end like that, but still.

Next up was DC Benny, recording in his bathroom to get away from the pets. Which led to the following comments on chat:

From RISK! Podcast to Everyone: 06:21 PM
Yes but he’s not using the toilet for anything but a chair right now!
From Me to All Panelists: 06:21 PM
WE HOPE
From (name redacted) to Everyone: 06:22 PM
But that bidet's going full blast

Anyway, DC is a New York landlord who finds out that the guy who owned the building 2 owners ago is apparently connected to the Staten Island mob or something. His niece still lives in the building and if she ever has any trouble, he threatens to make some phone calls. Even though “I did have a couple of fantasies about buttering the stairs,” everything is fine until the guy gets Alzheimer’s, comes over to the building forgetting that he no longer owns it, and then takes off his pants (he’s wearing a diaper), gets into the bathtub and tries to make imaginary wine, until his nurse comes to get him.

After that was Kelli Dunham, whose story (she tripped over her own feet, a burlesque singer helped her pick up her papers, the singer read her nametag saying “kinky poly switch looking for you” and said she was looking for her too...) starts out as the most romantic kink story I ever heard, then sadly her girlfriend gets ovarian cancer and they try going to Lourdes to get it cured. It doesn’t work. They met while living apart and the girlfriend didn’t want to let Kelli move in because "dying people do not start new relationships” (I’d say that too). The one miracle they get is that the girlfriend lets Kelli move in for the year before she dies.

They held a Q&A afterwards, in which we found out that Kelli got kicked out of being a nun for, I kid you not, "insufficient docility and too much self esteem,” DC knows a guy named “Petey Tomatoes” in the neighborhood, and that nobody wanted to talk about how they were doing in quarantine and everyone got quiet. “Reality! Oh shit fuck, that exists?” Kelli said. Though she did say that getting international viewers is a “neat little offshoot of this whole apocalypse thing.”

After that, because I went from living on East Coast Time to West Coast Time, I watched another Everett Improv 2 person Zoom call improv show with Britney “Weardo” Barber and Mike “Beardo” Murphy. They said that they sold 70 tickets but I think about 30 of them flaked. Oh well!

Memorable quotes from the show:

Britney:
"You need to be the poop you want to see in the world."
"You never saw Macaulay Culkin shit all over the Sbarro?"
Britney’s wife is in the house tonight: “Her vagina within ten feet, I feel way more powerful.”
Towards the end of the show: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost LOTS of audience members!”

Mike:
"I'm getting really good at drawing the genitalia of mountain beavers."
"I just draw mountain beaver dicks. That's all I do."
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit shit! How's that?" (sound check)
"I'm gonna go bad farts, and I stand by it.”
"If we keep drinking this will be the first of many poop scenes.”
“Stars: they’re just like us, they shit all over the food court.”
On Britney’s wife: “Absolutely, I feel her vagina throughout my computer.”
“I’m dead? And I’m going to get head? I’m pretty sure I made it to heaven! Yessss! It was a little iffy there for a little while.”
"Only on Everett Improv is a dead head something to be excited about."

During a serial killer sketch:
“I’'m sure you'll find an new murderer with that attitude."
"Fuck you! Fuck you for not killing me!"
"You don't deserve it!"
"Why? because only the good die young?"
"You don't deserve my wrath!"

In the chat I was all, “Mike Just Happens to have a machete in the garage?!” (Seriously.) Someone else was all, “respect for having a machete at the ready,” and I was all, “What kind of lifestyle do you normally have to need a machete at the ready?!”

On terrible comments and suggestions made from the audience:
When asked for suggestions, I said “Anne Frank” and Britney said, “That’s fucked up,” and I was all “actually happening.”

Some guy threw out the following “suggestions:”

"subject I dumped my 300lbs girlfriend as a teen and then saw her again at 25 and she is a victoria secret model. how would you get her back?"

The chatroom seemed a bit taken aback, and I was all, surrrre, that wasn’t accidentally an e-mail you posted in here instead? Someone else was politer and said “you should probably just die alone.”

Later, the same bro suggested, ”you lost 300 lbs and now are a victoria's secret model and want to let your ex down in the show.” Mike was all, “That's a great idea and we'll do that eventually."

At one point Mike had to pee and there was a poll as to whether or not he should leave his mike on for that. The nays had it.

They also took audience suggestions for words to write on the wheel of spinning and when it got to “schmegma,” someone asked what it was. I was all “DONT GOOGLE IT” and Mike said “dick cheese” and I was all “but what he said.”

Anyway.... you get how THAT went.

In other news, I finished another project (a pandemic knitalong cowl), made my mom a bracelet for Mother’s Day/birthday, got an idea for another cross stitch, and am debating doing this but am not sure what I’d do. “The Deconstruction” sounds like fun, though I am not sure what I’d do for a “distance” themed project for 48 hours. By rights I should say, try to contact the people who won’t contact me and see what happens or something, except I’d never get up the nerve.

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