Firstly, I am not consciously “friends” with anyone who is anti-gay. So if you’re one of those idiot friend-aggregators who will befriend anyone you met for five minutes while stopped at a red light, then yeah, you’re going to end up sharing social media space with a lot of people who hold divergent opinions. One solution would be to just befriend people you’re actually, you know, friends with, and not befriend everyone and then self-righteously ban them from your presence for disagreeing with you.

Secondly, these people who are so onanistically congratulating themselves for supporting the gayz – well guess what, I have seen each and every one of you make bigoted, idiotic and shaming remarks and arguments about many other social groups. You are all intolerant of someone, but you mask your intolerance in jokes and “statistics” and bullshit rationalizations. Supporting gay marriage is the most popular and least-contentious cause du jour among people of our sort, so coming out in support of it yourself is bandwagonning at its most tiresome. Of course everyone has the right to get married, you fuckwits. Of course the people you are friends with would support that. What are you even talking about, you puffed-up, choir preaching assholes? Each of these self-righteouser than thou posts is just an excuse for the same people to beat their chests and proclaim how supportive they are of something that (in most cases) is purely theoretical for them. Whatever. STFU. You don’t get any cookies.

I have seen these same people support the denial of rights for other marginalized groups. I’ve heard the racist, sexist jokes they make. I’ve seen them mock people of different body types, of varying physical ability, condemn people who make lifestyle choices different to theirs. They are intolerant on many, many other issues, and then have the effrontery to condemn other people for their intolerance.

What a bunch of assholes.

If I honestly told people to never speak to me again unless they supported equally the rights of every single person on earth, I would not even have myself for company. We’re all bigots in our own ways. It’s not admirable, but we should at least recognize it, and not condemn others for what they do until we sort our own shit out. No, we shouldn’t tolerate people voting each other’s rights away, but for fuck’s sake, when you do speak about issues like this, have some fucking humility. Understand your place in the system which oppresses anyone not fitting the norm. Try to be a better person. And stop being so fucking self-righteous on facebook. Go do it on your blog like a regular person.

Firstly:

Sephora Moonshadow Baked Pallete

I got this Sephora baked pallete in “In the Dark.” I’ve been hankering for this for awhile, ever since I bought one of their baked moonshadow trios in “Meteor Shower” a few months ago. These shadows are lovely and full of shimmer, can be applied dry for a lighter look, and with a damp brush for more intense pigmentation. I am really happy with this purchase, the colors in this set need to be seen to be fully appreciated. There’s an oil-sheen type of green/black/gold, and a gorgeous deep purple with black, as well as that intense blue. The lighter colors are great for highlighting. I’ve seen some online critique of this kit, that it’s too small (it’s not?) and that people don’t like that the colors are mounded, they feel like the color goes everywhere when you try to get it on your brush. Maybe those people are holding their brushes in the toes or something, but I find it a great size and very easy to work with. Nothing but good things to say about these colors (as always, they will last longer over a primer, but they’re fairly long-lasting without.) $30 at Sephora

I also picked up the Smoky Studio Customizable Eye Palette, which, at $34 is pretty much too good to be true. It’s a nicely sized palette with 64 colors, packed in three-color sets. You can swap them around in the palette to make sure your favorite colors are close at hand, and included is a mini-compact that can hold three sets of the three-color packs (I hope you are following this, it makes sense in my head)

Smoky Studio Customizable Palette

Anyway, another brilliant value from Sephora. I’ve found their house-brand shadows to be entirely adequate, and with primer they are long lasting with fairly intense pigmentation, depending on how you apply them. This is a bargain-basement price to get a great set of base colors, and there are several colors in here I’ve been wanting to play with, so I am very happy with my purchase.

On clearance, I also got the Sephora Hot Hues All-Over Bronzer in Flush for $7 (from $24)

This is a large (almost CD sized) compact with a variety of neutral tones in it, perfect for highlighting cheeks or eyes. Some darker colors that could be used as a bronzer, but I suspect I will mostly use these for neutral eye looks, and as blush. I think the Flush set is more pinks, there was another compact that would be suited to people who love to look orange. Price can’t be beat for the amount and quality of product you get.

Anyway, that was my day at Sephora yesterday, and it was satisfying indeed.

I’ve been wearing a lot more makeup lately, particularly eye makeup. Makeupping while feminist can be tricky, I’ve seen a lot of studies where women won’t leave the house without makeup on, etc. Like they need it to face the world.

For me, makeup isn’t like that. I really enjoy the sight of my naked face, and don’t have any problem with thinking I need anything to change it. But makeup is so danged fun. I don’t put on makeup to make myself look “better” – I actually think I look best without it. But I wear it because the makeup itself is pretty, and pretty things bring me joy. Just like doing my nails all sparkly  - I don’t think it makes me or my nails more attractive. More attractive is far from the point. The point is that someone out there is making these awesome sparkly beautifully colored things you can put on your body and carry around with you all the time. How cool is that?

Anyway, that feels like an important thing to explain, because to me makeup is more an art project, not a camouflage. And just because I talk about it, and talk about enjoying it, doesn’t mean I think it’s a necessary thing, for any of us.

For the record.

I don’t know that we ever will. We have sort of living together plans when she gets off the road in 2013, but we LOVE being apart almost as much as we love being together.

The three months thing was much too long. (I think anything over three weeks apart is too long.) But I’m loving being home alone right now, and not having to pay attention to anyone except the dogs. I got home this evening, I fixed the house wifi, and walked the dogs, and phoned a few people, and did things on my own, and am really looking forward to sleeping alone for the first time in ten days. I can read as long as I want to, or even write in bed until I fall asleep, which I can’t do if someone is trying to sleep beside me…
And Amanda’s back in Boston tonight for the first time in four months, and am not even expecting to hear from her until around Tuesday. And then I’ll see her on Friday, and we’ll get about five days together.
I cherish the time apart, and I cherish the time together.

I suspect that when we do actually get somewhere for both of us to live, it will have two wings, or rooms, or be two places next door to each other, or across the street. With some places in common, and some places we can be alone.

(We have completely different theories of what should be in a kitchen, for a start.)

There aren’t any rules to this thing, other than what we make up, anyway. I married someone fiercely independent, except when she wants to not be alone, and am myself rather happy to be on my own, except when I’m not.

And I really loved that reply. Mostly I see people assuming that relationships mean cohabitation. Sometimes I see people agree that relationships can also mean living separate lives and having separate spaces, but rarely do I see people acknowledge (because they assume the separate spaces people have no hearts, I think, no softer feelings) that when we who don’t want to live with you want to BE with you, we want it badly, and we want it desperately and hard. And that’s another piece of relationships that has to be accounted for – I don’t want you around until I want you around SO SO SO MUCH. And it may seem selfish and it may seem wrong, even to your partner. It may not seem fair. But if you can find the person with whom it seems natural and understandable and fair, and you’re an adult and can deal with that kind of “I love you but please get out of my space for now.” then I think you are very lucky.

If finances and temperaments allow you to live separately, that’s already a fantastic thing, but if both of you can understand OMG NEED YOU NOW and then OMG NOW NOT SO MUCH… Dang, that sounds perfect. Probably more than most can hope for, and probably prone to more hiccups than the text above admits, but dang it’s nice to know that someone somewhere is living that way.

Be that as it may, my polish-nerd heart geeked out with joy when my two a-england nail polishes showed up in the mail. (Or, two nail varnishes arrived by post, for those joining us from overseas.)

I had heard so many things! I was so afraid they would disappoint! What if I had chosen bad colors? What if they weren’t so nice as I hoped?

Nope. They’re awesome. Well, the one I have on now is awesome, and it’s awesome enough to make me assume any of their colors would be good colors.

I ordered Princess Sabra and Princess Tears and I am wearing Princess Sabra today (I really wanted to get my hands on Dragon, but the promotion that was on was for only in-stock items and that color was backordered.)

Anyway, flipping gorgeous like everyone else has already said. Applies easily, is so shiny and strong and… solid-looking on the nail. And the color! HOMG the color. Can’t really describe it, hope my pictures do it some justice.

Sunlight shot - look at the colors!

Another sunlight shot - I noticed after I took this close up that I was kinda sloppy around the nail bed. Deal with it.

In office lighting. Office lighting is the worst.

And you will have to take my word for it that the polish perfectly matches this awesome NYX Ultra Pearl Mania shimmer powder I am wearing in Lime. I have been meaning to write a post about that stuff because it is so awesome and it is so cheap and it is so pretty, and with primer it wears so goddamn well.

And as long as I am mentioning things I’ve been meaning to mention, I have to retract my universal pan of NYX Girls nail polish. Some of the lighter polishes are pretty crappy, but earlier this week I tried some Pacific Blue that I had purchased earlier and it was really decent. Good coverage in two coats, strong vibrant color. So, the lighter colors are wishy-washy, but the deep ones do okay. Only problem is that it’s sometimes hard to tell from their swatches what kind of color you’re going to get. But for $1.99, it’s worth experimenting.

Anyway, so excited for my a-england polishes. I will probably break down and buy more later this spring, they are really lovely.

They are by a company called Pazzion, who rudely only makes their shoes available outside the US. That means that here they sell on sites like ebay for upwards of $100. Now, I will pay in the triple digits for a really practical shoe, but I have a hard time paying that much for a whimsical shoe that I will not wear very often. So when Jay Miranda posted about these last year, I fell in love, I added them to my ebay wish list, I sighed and pined, but I did not buy.

But you know how they say that you should give yourself 24 hours to think about purchases, decide if you really need them? The theory is that if you forget about it after 24 hours, you really didn’t want/need the thing as badly as you thought. Well, I’ve been thinking about these shoes for a solid year. I WANT them. But something about them wouldn’t let me spend that kind of money, sight-unseen, toes-unfelt. What if they were uncomfortable, or didn’t fit true to size? What if I was stuck with an overpriced pair of shoes that I never wore? I couldn’t do it.

Then! Yesterday at Target, proving that all things come to those who wait for knock-offs, I found these beauties:

$20! $20 of my American dollars, and my feet are just as rhinestoney as you please. I could not be more excited. I have shiny princess shoes, and they fit perfectly and are comfortable, and I didn’t have to spend $100+shipping to get them. Plus I get to skip having the twee leather bows, which seem as if they’d get dirty/torn off anyway. Sometimes it pays to be patient.

Here’s a slightly nicer promo pic from Target’s website.

Maybe next one I try I will try two coats and see if it makes a difference, but basically I think from a collection called “Prismatic” I should get something more than really, really glittery. I want some color shift, and that’s not happening at all.

I feel like I’ve been spoiled with awesome live music this year. I haven’t been to a ton of shows (or wanted to be) but the shows I have seen (Rasputina, Griffin House, William Fitzsimmons) have been so amazing both musically and in the fabulous natures of the performers. Each of these shows has been as intimate and amusing as it has been musically delicious, and they’ve all really given me that feeling of – damn, glad I saw this live. There is such a difference between seeing a band perform live and seeing an entertainer on stage – and these shows all featured entertainers.

Saturday’s show was lovely. For the most part the crowd was great. Both performers mentioned how much they loved performing in St. Louis, and how the crowds here are always really good to them. I felt that everyone really understood and respected the type of music we were hearing, and at times the entire crowd stood in complete silence, concentrating on the stage. That said, I am still not a fan of the Firebird. Especially for a show like this, which is a sitting show if ever there was one. The sound was good, but standing for two hours staring at a stage without moving is just uncomfortable on my old bones. Also, the floor at the Firebird was seriously disgusting. Twice I almost walked right out of my sandal, it was so sticky. And this was not the crowd that made it sticky, meaning it had not been mopped since the night before’s Axe Body Spray sponsored concert (no, I am serious) So yeah, that was gross. And their drinks are bad, and it was hot and they wouldn’t turn the fans on, and ugh. Firebird. Bleh. Old Rock House would have been a million times better venue for this show.

But anyway! Despite the location, the show was utterly lovely. WF has a wonderful self-deprecating humor on stage (Going to slow things down for you with this next one. I know, you didn’t think it was possible to slow it down. But I’ve been experimenting with negative beats per minute.) and is obviously musically, lyrically and vocally gifted. I think my favorite moment was when he pulled out his banjolele (it’s a thing! I looked it up later!) and just sang with it, simply and quietly. Everyone was utterly still, until we all started murmuring along as a group. Kinda transcendent, if you don’t mind me being sentimental about it.

I was really excited about this show, and it lived up to all the hype in my head. So glad I got a chance to see him perform.

And it’s especially exhausting the day after you’ve been to a doctor and had her, instead of really helping, half-help and then suggest your drop an anvil on your own head, as a form of treatment. When you have so many people in the world talking insanity to you, and they’re people you should be able to rely on and trust, and they’re all so poisoned by the weird messages that humans have sold each other that they can’t even use their logic-makers anymore, that’s just plain scary.

So today I am tired. But I have the day off, and it’s beautiful out, and all my bills are paid, and I feel okay physically, and there are people in my life who I love with almost my whole heart, and they love me too, and so I am very lucky. And the other stuff is so tiring, but today we do not focus on that stuff, today we focus on how good things are.

Adina was another polish I was eager to try, and it is beautiful. I wore it topped with China Glaze Luxe and Lush last week and I am sorry I didn’t snag a picture of it, it was very pretty. However. Even with a base coat, Adina stained the crap out of my nails. Stained them bloody pink, even. I look like I have carbon monoxide poisoning, and I am glad I don’t have to go into the hospital for any reason, because they’d seriously start treating me for some kind of disorder.

I’ve only had nails stain like this with one other (Sally Hansen) polish, and it was a bright green, so I was startled that this happened, especially right through a base coat. I’ve changed my nail polish twice since then with no sign of the stain abating, so I guess it’s just going to have to grow out.

Instead of covering it up though, I decided to go with the flow. I added a few layers of a sheer, pale pink OPI (sorry, don’t have the name here) and then topped it with OPI silver crackle glaze. I am really enjoying how soft and pretty it is. What you can’t see here (and I also really like) is the pink shiny bits showing through the crackle glaze makes it look a little bit like my nails are diseased and cracking off, and there’s wet, glistening skin showing through.

Yes. That’s disgusting, I know. But it also amuses me.

The day the collection dropped I bought Stone Cold, Smoke and Ashes, Riveting and Fast Track. Fast Track I might not have bothered with, but I saw a great swatch of it on someone’s site, and I love it a lot – great neutral but with sparkle to make it interesting. I was wavering between Stone Cold and Electrify, and I ended up with Stone Cold because someone swatched it and swore that it was dull in the bottle but awesome on.

They lie! Last night I tried it for the first time, and I was totally disappoint. It looks like plain black in the bottle, and it looks like plain black on the nail. It has some kind of deep teal shimmer, but even in the bright sunlight it’s almost impossible to see. Blech.

I needed to get out of the office today around lunch, so I headed up to Beauty Brands to see what was the what. They had a “buy two get one” sale on China Glaze, so I picked up three of the colors I hadn’t tried the first time around. I got Electrify, Luxe and Lush and Foie Gras.

When I got back to the office I threw a quick coat of Luxe and Lush atop the Smoke and Ashes, and that did liven it up quite a bit. This is the first “flaky” shimmer polish I’ve tried and it’s a bit fiddly to work with. It really needs a good top coat to smooth it out, and if you look at my index finger on the tip of the nail you can see one of the flakes sticking straight up. (Imagine trying to paint your nails with viscous Goldschlager.)

The colors in Luxe and Lush are very pretty, not captured well in my office’s awful florescent lighting. Copper and green and gold are all in there. I am sure I will play with it more.

My other (surprise) favorite from that collection was bright orange “Riveting.”

Orange is usually not my thing, but this looked so amazing in the bottle, and it’s even better on the nail. I see why they called it “Riveting” because you really cannot stop looking at your nails when it’s on. Bright orange with flashes of red and gold. Really a lovely and intense color. Overall the collection is really well done. There’s nothing on the horizon I am nearly as excited about, so I think I might slow down on my purchasing for awhile and work with what I’ve got.

BARGAIN ALERT Seche Vite topcoat is some super-magical stuff, but it’s not super-cheap at about $10 a bottle. But last time I was at Beauty Brands I found the $20 professional refill kit on sale for 35% off. When I went back today I checked their clearance area again and found another box – this time 35% off with another 20% off all clearance. So I ended up getting it for less than $10, and it includes a full-sized bottle of top coat plus enough product to refill the bottle 8 times. This stuff is worth it at full price and I got the bargain of the century on it. Go me!