Stripper Elves Have Holiday Spirit, Right?

Alright, it's Christmas time.

Xmas.

...Consumerism mass.

Ass.

My friend was bored to tears at work and asked me to tell her a story.

Here is what she looks like holding a thick chocolate shake that is too large for her:

In any case, anyone who knows me understands that if I'm asked a question or a reasonable task, I will comply.

This often involves nudging me and reminding me though, as my memory is both jack and shit.

SO

I wrote a thing.

Oddly enough, I wrote a Christmas thing.

There are four key characters in this and you will see them as they are introduced. I'm leaving the illustrations black and white for now so that anyone can print them out or take them to color in. If you do a fun job of coloring them, send them my way at deddrie@gmail.com so I can see your interpretation!

*ahem*

Once upon a time, there was an elf named Squibble. 

Squibble had worked for Santa for many years. The hours were long and grueling. Only the three richest kids even got their handiwork these days. The rest was all being outsourced to China and India and that was not what Squibble signed up for!

So he went on strike. Unfortunately, he was the only one to go on strike, as no other elves had any issues with how things were done.

An elf from public relations ran a memo down to Squibble announcing his “forced retirement”...

This was odd, as Squibble was a young elf.

As he cleaned out his tiny elf desk and found his thimble mug and teeny tiny stapler, a girl elf, his replacement, stepped up.

Her name was Bumple, but everyone called her “Glitter” since her stripper days.

She looked at him with sadness in her eyes as he walked away. She sat down at her new desk.

Glitter noticed something shiny. It was a pencil sharpener, and a rather nice one. It had his name engraved on the side.

 

“Oh noes!” cried Glitter, “I must return this to Squibble!”

Well, by then Squibble had already hopped on the polar train to go back to his shitty elf apartment.

Glitter didn't know where Squibble lived.

She asked around.

No records were kept of ex Santa elves.

Hell, he'd be lucky to get a reference, and it wouldn't even be from Ol' Nick himself.

She decided to look for clues.

His trashcan contained a tea bag, three tissues and a used condom.

Jiggles thought Glitter was strange for going through the garbage, but she explained that the used condom was from her romp with Squibble in the back office.

Jiggles couldn't say where Squibble lived exactly, but she had heard him mention Downtown.

...Also, she was about the only one in the factory to give Squibble a “good review”...

So on Glitter went, sharpener and tea bag in hand. Downtown was filled with icky penguins. They wore rubber suits and asked her to go “diving” and to “get some fish” with them.

Before long, Glitter happened upon a specialty tea shop. “Tea Baggins” was owned by a chubby hobbit, Bob. The signs in the window showed bags like the one Glitter held.

Bob told her that only two elves ever bother to shop there. One sounded like Squibble and had left a matchbox from Honkers bar and strip joint.

Glitter snatched the matches and marched off to Honkers. The ladies there were rude and hated Glitter for her success as a stripper in the good part of town.

After much harassment, finally a college student gnome who was stripping just to pay her way through gnome-med school said, “I remember someone like who you describe. He asked for a lap dance and then started crying about his mother. He even brought me to meet her. Super awkward.”

The gnome remembered the address of the mother, drew it out on a napkin and handed it to Glitter.

“It's a big old house just that way. I think it's haunted!” She pointed and Glitter shot out the door.

“HOPE YOU AREN'T ALLERGIC TO CATS” the gnome yelled after her.

The house was huge and dusty as Glitter gingerly stepped inside. “Hello?” Glitter called out meekly to no answer.

“He-hello? ACK!” A thing that may have at one point been a cat ran through her legs.

Glitter passed the kitchen, noting how few knives were in the rack.

She passed a bedroom that looked disheveled and stained...

Then, the only room left...

The basement.

“Shit” said Glitter.

As she reached for the door, clutching the sharpener as though it may save her life...

A hand shot out and grabbed her by the arm. Glitter screamed!

The old elf looked at Glitter, then put on her comically large glasses to look harder.

“I don't want any Elfscout Cookies! They give me the runs! Go way!” said the old elf.

“No, no.” Glitter clutched her left breast as she tried to catch her breath.

“I'm looking for your son, Squibble.”

The old elf laughed and said, “Oh thank the lord! He found one that isn't a skank! Come on to the dining room Dear. We'll have some tea.”

Glitter was tired and questioned if she should get involved with this guy Squibble in any way.

Still, the tea was hot and the cats were well enough behaved.

Just as Glitter had begun to ignore the eighth embarrassing tale of Squibble's youth in favor of watching a cat lick its own anus for half an hour, there was a knock at the door.

“Hey Mom, listen. I know I just said I'd never move back here, but I just got fired today and-”

Squibble looked up to see Glitter clutching a tea cup, his sharpener on the table, a book of embarrassing photos out, one of the cats was in his mother's hair and another was obviously thinking about shitting on Glitter's feet.

“The fuck is happening?” asked Squibble.

“Oh Dear! This is Glitter from your office! You should marry her.” The old elf beamed.

Squibble said, “Mom, we don't even know each-”

“SHUT UP AND GIVE ME GRANDCHILDREN BEFORE I'M DEAD YOU LITTLE SHIT” said the old elf.

Glitter handed him the sharpener. They smiled. The three of them smoked a bowl and Glitter got Jiggles to come over and help them clean.

The old woman never got her grandchildren, but she was so senile that she didn't really know the difference anyway.

Eventually she passed away and Glitter, Jiggles and Squibble lived happily ever after in sin.

Also, Squibble wrote a book about aging cats and wound up with way too much money.

He thought about donating it, but too many years working for the man left him just wanting boats, bling, and elf pussy.

The end. 

The Things In The Basement

My mother and I have been meaning to tackle the basement for some time now.

...Like...

Years.

It's been years and we haven't wanted to actually do this.  Mold and gross and spiders and cat shit and horrible.   That's the basement. 

I'm going to add to this post after a shower and probably sleep...

I can't even really breathe right.  It's just dust and chaos in my lungs.

For now, I leave you with this:

A three feet tall Mickey Mouse.   He is one of two.  I don't mean that my mom has a Mickey and a Minnie.  No.  No no.  I mean she has two Mickey Mice from like a bazillion years apart.  They are both symbols of my father's love.

At this point, I don't know which is the stronger symbol.

The fact that he got her not one, but TWO of these,
or the fact that he allows them to still hang around the house...
...
Including this one who looks WAY too happy living in the basement.

Later, maybe tomorrow... I'll draw things and explain this guy:

But not tonight. 

EDIT:  Okay, "tomorrow" became like half a year later but shut up. 

First of all, I was getting a lot of joy from getting rid of some of my sister's old PETA propaganda stuff.  I'm all for protecting against animal testing and of course any killing of animals should be humane, but let's face it, those people are mostly crazy.  
The PETA people are the people who DESPERATELY want everyone to be vegan, regardless of the health requirements others may have.  I, for example, would be living off of supplements and thus would probably be even more underweight and feeling like garbage than I already am.  Being allergic to nuts and chickpeas and being intolerant to soy means I need to not be vegan in order to live a resonably comfortable life.   I view these folks much the same way I view members of extremist sects of religions.

*Ahem* 

So, the basement.  

 At one point, Mom started playing with a Polly Pocket and ranting to herself about how toys should be wooden and not plastic. 

 I found my PEZ collection.  ...All of them.  Oh my fuck.  I'll need to post photos to show you all.  

EDIT: LOOKIT: 

I used to have even more.  This is what is left. 

EDIT to the EDIT: OH SHIT I FOUND ANOTHER ONE

EDIT TO THAT OTHER EDIT: HOLY BAJEEZUS THIS ONE WASN'T EVEN OPENED: 

 It's like a year later and I'm still finding these??? 


Lezee... What else? 

OH!  The music box! 

The creepy baby carriage music box! 

It just wouldn't stop.  Creepy AND never stopping.  Like some horrible, haunting background music in a horror movie where a child has just asked you to play but they've been dead for eight years.

Then my sister came down (Nevermind that she refuses to go into the basement due to spiders in order to do her own laundry, but she'll come down when we are trying to clean out the place...) and she immediately turned the damn thing back on when it had finally shut off.  

There was also a Whatever Happened To Baby Jane moment of her arguing with my mother about whether it was mine or hers to begin with.  According to Mom, creepy-never-stopping-baby-carriage-from-Hell was mine.  You know what?  My sister can have it.

...Then my sister dug through the garbage for a coloring book, farted loudly, and then went back upstairs.  

Of course, that coloring book kept her entertained for days, so who am I to judge. 

To state again here...  She basically came down just to fart at us and leave.

Finally, I found my old space heater.  It has since been cleaned by Rob and is being used in the apartment on its fan mode, as it is now Summer.  

This thing is just a little box but I love it.  For months between this original post and the edit, I had used this in a desperate attempt to keep my at the time very lonely and not-retaining-heat self warm. 

It's waaaaay too hot right in front of it, but freezing to either side in the dead of Winter until the air circulates.  As a result, I wound up curling up like a cat and happily burning myself.         

There was also a moment of Mom picking up a book and saying, "Oh!  Legacy of Love!  ... Oh.  Not what I thought."        

EDIT: OH BAJEEZUS WE FOUND ANOTHER ONE

Thankful for Alcoves

The temple I grew up with is very different now, 

yet eerie and comforting in how little it has changed.  
Entire wings have been added, but some areas remain the same.  

Since I grew up there, even though I had hardly ever attended services, 

I still get a bit defensive when people who have been hired since my leaving 

make jokes about me invading “their temple”...  

It's my temple.  After all, I know all the best hiding spots.  

I even found a new one.  It's an alcove. 

I thought it had an IOU plaque which basically stated that it will be... 

something, but apparently it's just a giant hole for the plaque itself.

It states the new name of the Hebrew school. 

People had spent a lot of money to have random things named after their family 

(and to help the temple)...
I thought it would be a display case, maybe?  Nope.

Well, it displayed a rare, rowdy Rowyn.

I even ignored my own thoughts!

I adjusted early on when someone passed me. 

He was questioning why I was hiding, 

but I assume my “possibly about to take a dump” pose didn't help. 

Thankfully, I've learned that smiling pleasantly tends to make people just smile back

and go away. 

Even as a kid, I was generally avoiding services to go make out with girls in the classrooms,

but I would sometimes sit just outside of the sanctuary, 

or on the stage in the room just across from it all, 

in order to listen to my father sing. 

The room itself, 

the expectations I felt, 

and the “community” environment that I never felt fully a part of 

kept me from wanting to participate. 

I thought “cult” whenever the congregation said things together, 

and I thought “fake” when a person I didn't know would hug me because of who I was. 

I had a lot of trust issues even then, 

and I knew that I was supposed to keep anything I was going through or living with a secret. 

These people weren't going to be my friends, 

even if some may have genuinely cared about me if I had given them half a chance. 

I didn't want a Bat Mitzvah. 

It didn't feel right to have one. 

Going up in front of everyone was horrifying to begin with, 

but add the idea of them all listening to me speak and chant 

when I couldn't even stand to hear myself, KNOWING how strange I sounded... 

How mumbled, quiet and awkward... 

And on top of all this, 

morally, I could not bring myself to lead a service for believers 

when I didn't really have faith myself. 

This is not to say that I didn't believe in things. 

I did. 

I had a lot of beliefs. 

They were just really negative 

and involved the idea of believing in the Devil more than a caring God, 

which is ssoooooo not a Jew thing. 

To this day, whenever I write a story about the Devil, 

he is mostly a victim of circumstance. 

Cocky, but was once a loved angel. 

The fact that I interpreted this character in such a way may say something. 

One day, if I remember, I may write a whole entry for this. 

In any case, “faith” implies something more positive and hopeful. 

It's that feeling of “I KNOW this going to be okay” and I didn't have that. 

I knew that I prayed and I followed the rules and did everything I was supposed to,

but nothing got better. 

In my little child brain, there was no future, 

and so if nothing got better RIGHT NOW, it was never going to. 

(The allergy incident in Israel probably didn't help, 

though the fact that I survived it should mean something.)

My love for temple then meandered to only a love for the camaraderie of my friends

and one for the building itself and all its hiding places. 

Somewhere in there, I did grow a kind of faith. 

It's small and strangely shaped, 

but it has helped me when I needed assistance, 

which means it has done the job just fine.   

Birthdays!

Again, being back at my parent's house is odd on many levels.

For one, I forgot about what my mother does for birthdays.

...My mother keeps things. Like... Everything. I'm not sure if it's a security thing or what, but it means that she'll reuse decorations like a really environmentally aware crazy person, rather than just a regular crazy person.

As such, I get bombarded by every birthday I ever had upon walking into my old room.

So, I had a troll birthday once.

I really, reeaaalllly liked trolls. I had hundreds of them, but they've since all been given away. Well, not all. I kept a couple really neat ones, like my Egyptian guy.

I'm awesome.

Shut up.

So the birthday party... How old was I? I don't even remember.

I had a troll birthday ice cream cake, troll plates, decorations... Oh yeah. I was trolled up, and apparently, this one fragment survived to say hello today.

Next up was a balloon attached to the inside of my door. Meaning, a deflated balloon. My door is kind of disgusting because I used to have a lot of stuff all over it, then tore it all down when I moved, aaaaannnd it still has gunk from all that crap.

So this is what that looked like:

Real classy.

My window is now sporting a bikini, 

and there was also a banner on the stairs.

What I'm not showing you is this foldable thing that involves a cupcake with eyes. Not only was this particular item kinda creepy as a kid, but as a now 27 year old adult, it was a little funky having it at the head of my bed... lookin' at me.

I asked my mother if she minded it's removal.

She thought about it.

She got me a couple tops and an action figure of Otho to add to my Beetlejuice collection.

Otho is kind of a big deal in my brain, just as Mayor Maynot of Nightmare Before Christmas. They were both played by Glenn Shadix, who has passed on.

In any case, the figure was wrapped in metallic silvery paper. I opened it up and realized that it was the inside of another wrapping paper made for Hannukah. I thought that was a smart way to re-purpose the wrapping paper.

Actual quotes below:

My mother is actually a very intelligent woman.  

She is also a nursery school teacher and I think somewhat in denial of the entire world.  So...  There is that. 

In any case, my father gave me a cold for my birthday, and I started my morning with a nose bleed. 

As I told my friend and my mother, it was like my face was trying to participate in the festivities.

“HERE! HAVE A NOSE BLEED! LOOK! I MADE IT MYSELF!”

My mother was looking on the bright side, as always...

My eighteenth birthday was a fun one. It was a Bruce Campbell party. I had all my friends dress up as various characters of his, while I was the man himself. This meant I wore a Hawaiian shirt and glasses.

I quickly questioned my assignment of Ash to a friend of mine when she said “Oh, that costume will be easy! I'll just go to my father's workshed, get the chainsaw and-”

We even had a cake with Bruce Campbell's face printed on it. ...Yep.

Most of my cakes over the years were either ice cream cakes or actually pumpkin pies.  I have no use for normal cakes. 

By the way, I actually sort of met Bruce Campbell in person once. 

I'd say he was solidly unimpressed by me. 

Nice enough guy though, so it didn't help my fangirlness. If anything, it just made it worse, because then I could say “ZOH MUH GUH HE LOOKED AT ME FOR A MINUTE!!”

I'm sure I'll try to relate that whole story sometime. For now, back to birthdays.

Lesse...

OH!

So my 21^st birthday was a hoot. I had a vampire masquerade. We rented out a space in the firehouse for it, and my friends acted as a live band. I invited everyone I could sort of call a friend at the time. It was like Facebook but in person.

“I vaguely know you! You don't know this person... but you should! BE FRIENDS NOW.”

I still have my giant blow up grim reaper. The decorations over all were pretty freaking awesome.

My birthday last year was actually a lot of fun for me, even if it ended kind of horribly.

See Birthday Bashing

Now, there is one special birthday I should mention here.

My 19^th.

It never happened.

I'm not saying it was bad. Not at all. It was a very peaceful day. So peaceful, in fact, that I totally missed that it was my birthday.

...as did everyone else.

It was my first time really away from home, off at art school three or so hours away (depending on who was driving). I had a cellphone for the first time in my life and I didn't really know what to do with it, I had my computer... I had ways to tell the date.

I did.

But I didn't have any clue that it was November 17^th.

And neither did any of my friends or family.

I had been in a minor car accident (this seems to be a theme?) with my mother, and being over 18, the insurance guy called me to hear my side of things.

What else? Ah. My 16^th.

I called it my “Sour Sixteen” because I was a creepy goth kid even then.

A costume party, as most of mine are, I told everyone to come dead. If they didn't come in a ghost/ghoul/zombie type costume, we'd “kill” them. ... With makeup.

We had people drown, be slapped to death, strangled... It was a lot of fun.

I was thinking of not posting this right away and saving it all till tonight, because tonight is glow golf... but I'll just add an edit after the fact. 

TO BE CONTINUED 

...
EDIT: 
 Here is an image of one of my friends, to give you an idea of how the rest of the night went.  

The glow golf is at the mall around here, and we had about ten people playing.  Mom stayed for a bit and then fled... Which was fine because a couple of my buddies came home with me.  We played a couple ridiculously long games of Batman UNO, because I'm an adult and I do what I want.  

In any case, glow golf itself was a ton of fun, and I wasn't the only birthday-haver present.  A gaggle of children were seated in the little party corner, and when they started singing "Happy Birthday", I decided that they were very nice.  Well, clearly, they were totally singing for me.  

After all, I am the Empress and it was my birthday. 

The whole place is divided into two sets of golf, but it doesn't make any sense since there isn't another entrance.  You can't actually play the other one unless you've gone past the first... so the fact that it starts over at "One" is stupid. 

We all behaved rather well until that second "One" showed up.  Then it was chaos.  

It was a good chaos though.

The music was hilariously awful.  A friend (who I call Xena for probably obvious reasons) described the people in charge of the music as "a bro and three *giggles like a valley girl*"  Another friend decided later on that this made them "sises"...  

They didn't know who Queen was.  We all felt a bit old, but...  Really?  Really you don't know Queen?  

I wanted to slap their parents. 

Xena described "Under Pressure" and got it played in honor of the fact that the band played that at my 21st birthday.  Nostalgia for the win!

Even sitting on a bench afterwards and hanging out while mini Christmas trees were fisted was fun.  

Yes, you read that correctly, and no, I'm not going to elaborate.