Ugly Sweater Parties

What is the opposite of preaching to the choir? Preaching to the heathens that wander into church for the free sip of wine? I'm not sure. Anyway, that's what I'm doing right now as I know for a fact that I am the only twentysomething in the country who has never attended an ugly sweater party. And I know that some of you have even hosted these theme parties yourself. 

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I would like to say that I have never been invited to an ugly sweater party. So I can't claim that I've ever taken a principled stance and actually refused an invitation to one of these things. I don't have much will power, and I don't want to make it seem like I feel strongly enough about this issue that I would give up the rare opportunity to leave my one-room hermitage just to make a point. As you can see, such opportunities are few and far between for me. It is 7:30 PM on a Friday night and I am at home by myself posting to a blog that is, at best, read by five people (but five people of the highest quality, might I add). 

Anyway, all I know is that ugly sweater parties have gotten out of control. By this I mean that last time I was in Value Village (which is a second-hand store where I buy most of my clothes these days, except for underwear, which I now order online from gap.com. Is that too much information?) there were two girls in front of me, either SPU or UW students, sometimes it's hard to tell. (No offense. I mean, some of my best friends are UW students.) I could tell this because the girl placed two ugly sweaters on the counter and asked if she could pay for one with a debit card and one with cash, because it was for her roommate. 

Maybe I'm just bitter because the only time I ever placed a costume choice in the hands of a roommate I ended up being the red Power Ranger for Halloween. Bronwyn got to be Superman, her friend got to be Batman, and Cara got to be Spiderman and I was the red Power Ranger. I had never even seen the Power Rangers. 

But that is irrelevant. The point is I thought having an ugly sweater party was funny when I first heard about it. But now I don't get it. At this point it's no longer an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also about ten years too early for it to be an ironic party theme ("Let's have an ugly sweater party. It'll be so 2007! Like when they thought it was so funny to have parties to make fun of the sweaters people wore in the '80's.")

Apologies. I'll dismount from my soapbox now (10! She sticks the landing!). I haven't been this controversial since 2006 when I wrote about pink baseball caps and Kenli accused me of hating breast cancer victims. 

Untitled

I've decided to post again even though I am not particularly inspired, nor do I have anything to say, just to keep up the momentum and to keep this from becoming the now-defunct non-blog. 

To answer your questions: tuna head was vetoed, as in it will not be appearing in the company e-newsletter, but we still like to call it that (behind Greg's back, of course.) So Tuesdays have become Tuna Tuesdays because that's when we send it out. I also like "Constant Tuna" as a code name since we use the Constant Contact program. So that's the tuna. 

As for Nano, I started out with a brilliant idea, which of course was not mine but Caroline's (the Young one), of writing "A New Englander's Guide to Seattle." I still like this idea. What I ended up with is in no shape to be shared now or maybe ever, but I think it was valuable experience for the process of it. That last sentence didn't really make that much sense, but I feel like you might know what I mean, so I'm not going to rewrite it. This is one thing I learned from NaNoWriMo. If you erase, you'll never reach the word goal. So you just have to leave it there and move it. It's kind of a good life lesson now that I think about it.

Maybe I need a theme. 

For the blog. 

Suggestions?

November Excuses

Apologies for not posting for over a month. In case anyone still checks this, I will offer an explanation for why there was not a single post in the month of November. Basically it was because I had too many outlets for my bad writing last month that there was nothing left over to post. First, I competed in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the second year in a row. I successfully wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. It is not a novel; it's not even the nonfiction narrative about moving to Seattle I intended it to be. All it is really is a big ass document, full of whiny journaling for the most part. 

And as if that was not a large enough quantity of crap, I have also been producing low quality verbiage for not only the Windworks newsletter (the only reason I include the link is because I think you should check out page 3 of this issue--I made Brian dress up for a fashion shoot), but also for our new e-newsletter, which I fondly refer to as "the tuna." This is because my boss named it "Tuna Head." I am not making this up.  I walked into work one day the week before Thanksgiving to find that my boss, Greg, had stayed up all night creating an e-newsletter. For those of you who have seen our website, you will understand why this is scary. Anyway, he had written a short introduction to the e-newsletter, which informed the reader/customer that the e-newsletter was named the "Tuna Head (Tune Ahead) Newsletter." He then went on to claim that "tune ahead" was a nautical term for planning ahead and that "we" liked "tuna head" since it was "catchy" and "memorable." Needless to say, the name was vetoed by every other member of the staff since we all agreed that a.) there was no reason the e-newsletter needed a name and 2.) if it did have a name for our company newsletter, it shouldn't sound like we smoked a bowl and then had a brainstorming session. 

That's about it. I'll try to start blogging again. Thanks for reading. 

Dock Staff/Editor

I can't wait to update my resume again.

Dock Staff, Windworks Sailing Center
-Cleaned boats
-Performed light maintenance, including oil changes, electronics installation, and (fun) marine sanitation system repairs
-Edited monthly newsletter

Our current issue

Clearly not as fun as the now-defunct Front Dock Lines, but I do occasionally try to sneak the occasional bad pun or ironic pop culture reference.

If you check out the archives, you can see that the newsletter (or "News Letter" as it's called on the homepage) had nowhere to go but up. I'm still working out the kinks (new font-- Franklin Gothic Heavy-- for headlines this month), but in three issues I've accomplished a few things:

-Eliminated bubble letter captions on photos
-Purged newsletter of underlining
-Reduced number of typos per page from around 17 to less than 0.5
-Brought overall look of the newsletter into the 21st century

Things I was less than happy with in my first issue as "editor" (in quotes because my boss still managed to come back from vacation and in less than 12 hours micromanage the whole thing and turn almost everything that was in my voice into his voice, which sounds much more like a used-car salesman) included my boss turning the hilarious ad (that Kate wrote--thanks!) from a spoof of a personal ad into what sounds like more of a solicitation for prostitution.

Here is how the ad show have read:

PERSONALS
Classy S/V Seeks Owner for LTR
Svelte 42.5' Dufour looking for an adventurous partner who isn't afraid to get salty. Sophisticated craft enjoys long sails around the Sound, but is also comfortable with dinner cruises or hanging around the marina. Serious inquiries only.

Only Greg, who apparently thinks people need to have sales shoved down their throats, takes out the last line and replaces it with "Brings money to the table through charter program."

Anyway, if anyone actually reads the thing (and I won't feel bad if you don't because even my mom just skimmed it-- I sent her a copy of the September issue and she didn't even see that I had written "My Mom's Cure for Seasickness"), let me know your brilliant ideas for next issue.

I've Been Doin' Some Writin'

So I thought I'd share with you. Although you've probably heard most of this before.

Duck Captains of the Puget Sound: The Adventures of Captain Quack Sparrow, Part I

I used to be a duck tour guide. And by “duck tour” I don't mean escorting naturalists around a pond; I mean driving an amphibious WWII vehicle full of tourists through downtown Seattle while playing cheesy '70's music.

According to my first job performance review, the actual content of my tour was solid. Despite having moved to the city only a few months before, I had picked up the fun facts and historical anecdotes rather quickly. It helped that almost everything important that happened in Seattle history occurred in 1907.

But my personality score was much lower, reflecting a lack of sound effects and props, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to obtain a minimum of three wacky hats before my next tour.

Since the majority of our customers responded favorably to captains wearing mullet wigs and making obvious jokes, you can imagine how much they enjoyed my grudgingly-worn child-size plastic viking helmet and my sarcastic sense of humor. Midwesterners and west coasters love sarcasm. In fact, sometimes I could make it all the way to the waterfront without a single person realizing that maybe that Starbucks we just passed wasn't the only one we'd see on the tour.

But I could hardly blame them; even after just a few months of being out here, my East Coast reflexes began to atrophy. First I lost my ability to cross a street without pedestrian walk signals and soon after I found myself almost unable to converse with my own people. On one tour, when I mentioned that the floating home used in the movie Sleepless in Seattle was purchased by a couple from New Jersey after the filming, I remembered that one of the families on the duck had said they were from New Jersey, so I asked if they knew the couple that bought the house. "Yeah, that's actually why we came out here-- to visit them," the mother said. It took me a whole 2 seconds, enough time to say, "no way, really?" to remember that sarcasm could be a two-way street. It had been so long.

But despite my refusal to adapt my delivery to the tastes of our average customer, I still received occasional positive feedback, even having my comedic talents compared to Ellen Degeneres. Once a woman getting off the tour looked at me and said, "You're funny . . . like Ellen Degeneres." Now I’m definitely not funny, but I am a lesbian, and I think that's what she meant.

But I amused myself and that was what counted. After all, I was the one who had to take my tour four or five times a day. At the end of each hour and a half, I’d pull into the parking lot, and say, airline-style, "On behalf of everyone here at Ride the Ducks, I’d like to thank you for riding with us today. We know you have your choice of amphibious tour providers here in Seattle and we'd like to thank you for choosing Ride the Ducks."