The Death mark.
I was recently asked by a non-geek friend why I sometimes wear what I like to call the “death eye.” I tried to explain to them but-meh. No dice. So I shall thrill the internet with the not so thrilling take instead! The first time I ever used liquid eyeliner, I was 14. I bought it at Target when I was using my 8th grade graduation as an excuse to spend money of cosmetics I didn’t need and probably wouldn’t ever use. Among them some very glittery dusty stuff and waterproof mascara a “friend” convinced me I needed(in case I cried at graduation!), despite the fact that the only tears likely to be rolling down these cheeks were tears of laughter when I saw every other girl in church crying (church-I went to a Catholic grade school and when I graduated, I was anything but a compliantly pure Catholic girl).
So I got home from Target in a small tizzy, practically shaking with the excitement of playing with my eye-liner. [side-bar:While I’m not a make up person, mostly because I refuse to put it on and take it off every day, I do sometimes get VERY VERY bored and do wacky things with the make up. Once, I spent an hour creating and applying a beautiful and pristine geisha face. Because it was 2am and I had nothing else to do…] I took the plastic off, unscrewed the cap, and pulled out the thin brush covered in inky black goodness. I opened my eye, and slowly and carefully moved it along my bottom lash line. It was perfect! Black! Rich! Totally awesome! And then…I blinked.
You see, you’re not SUPPOSED to put liquid eye liner on your lower lash line because… When I blinked and opened my eye, I COULDN’T SEE! And what my other eye saw in the mirror was not unlike wide doe-eyed stare found on many an anime character. My entire eyeball was black. My eyes began to compulsively blink and water and the whole bit. Half watery eye/half real black tears rolled down my cheek and I began trying (and failing) to flush my eyes with water. 15 minutes later I was laying in my bed, washcloth over my eye, moaning, and the eyeliner was in the trash. I WASN’T GONNA FALL FOR THAT SHIT AGAIN!
Cut to: I’m going to say I was 16. I’m probably wrong. It was probably more like 17. Anyway, whatever age I was, I started reading Sandman for the first time. The first book is kind of hard to get through if you’re a lil’ bit of a comic n00b (like I was) and by the end I was almost ready to give up, but then–Death. Probably my favorite character of all time and the reason I kept reading. Because by the end of book 1, I wasn’t thrilled with Morpheus as a person, and I’m a character gal. The less I care about the character, the less I care about the story, the more I lose interest all together. But with those brief scenes, Death captured my imagination and made me hang on long enough to fall in love with each and every character(including Morpheus). I love everything about Sandman, but Death is my own personal -I don’t know what to call her but she means a lot to me.
In fact, Death meant so much to me and was so influential, I started toying with the idea of rockin’ the whole swirly eye thing. Simple, classic, easy to get on, easy to get off. I wouldn’t do it all the time, just those days I needed a little oomf of comfort and smidge of the happys. First, I tried it with my regular black eye-liner. No dice. The pencil smudged very easily and seamed to turn from clean line darkener of the under eye bags in about an hour. This left me with one other option-THE LIQUID EYELINER! duh-dun-DUH.
In the name of geek obsession I drove to Sephora, talked to the salespeople in my nice I’m-talking-to-sales-people voice and got eyeliner recommendations. AND-BEST OF ALL-tips on how to do what I wanted to do! Turns out the trick is in the steady hand and patience. And a q-tip. Don’t forget the q-tip! I went home with my eyeliner, this time prepared, and spent about a half an hour practicing over and over until I was ready to go out into the world! And now I am. Most days. =)
And all of that was a fancy way of saying I love Death and I like to make with the fancy eyeliner sometimes. Any questions?
Seriously, WTF is a scented cupcake?
Well, tonight I was watching Cupcake Wars with Lesley (@geeksoap). Or, at least we started watching. Food Network had other plans-namely, they wanted to air a repeat! NOOOO! Not just any repeat, but the PILOT repeat. This show had one cocky bastard who got kicked off in the first round, one normal sassy black woman who might have won if she didn’t listen to her partner, and two CRAZY blondes (one tall, one tiny and organic) who ended up going to the last round. Lesley and I half-heartedly tweeted about it but it was the most annoying re-run on the planet.
Meh.
So now, it’s 1 o’clock in the morning and Food Network just re-ran the episode AGAIN. And I watched it AGAIN. I’ve now seen the episode three times and a lot of stuff annoys me about the people on this show but I have one REALLY huge and lingering question–
What the FUCK is a scented cupcake?
I literally have NO idea. I believe during the first viewing someone tweeted something along the lines of “I do not think that means what you think it means.” Pretty much. Are the cupcake wrappers scented? Are they misting the cake with body splash? Throwing some essential oils in the batter? I. Don’t. Know. And when I don’t know something, I Google it. Google doesn’t help! GOOGLE DIDN’T TELL ME ANYTHING! I’ve been using Google practically since Google existed and it has NEVER failed me this way! There’s recipes, there’s things scented like cupcake, but no explanation on what it MEANS!
Frustrated by Google, I half-heartedly took the conversation to a Facebook friend (Ha! Friend. Right?).
Katie- Okay. WTF is a SCENTED cupcake? REALLY! I want to know.
Katie’s Friend- it’s like a lemon cupcake that smells like vanilla instead
Katie- …are you making that up?
Katie’s Friend- yeah
Failure. And taunting me with the promise of knowledge I’m desperate for. Too mean, Katie’s friend. TOO MEAN!
And all of this anectodal mess leads back to my original point-WHAT IS A SCENTED CUPCAKE!?
Anyone?