Welp, got through a meh first date tonight and can go back to my cats now. The guy revealed that he had actually seen me previously when I pitched my student group to one of his classes, which made sense because he had started flirting with me and asked me out like ridiculously quickly when I met him. I thought he was just incredibly forward. Anyway, he comes from a really troubled family background that I just don't want to get involved with. I feel badly about that, but I'm also like *nope*, I have paid my dues with crazy family members!

ozoneocean wrote:
One thing I really dislike is “fashion”.
I like clothes, I like style, I like things that flatter a figure.
“Fashion” is a little different though. It's about disposable styles that are created and marketed to sell a new season's crop of designs, in order to maintain a yearly turnover and encourage people to keep buying.
“Fashion” rarely equals “style”. More often people are peer preasured into wearing ridiculous, ugly, unflattering garments simply to remain current.
Always the most stylish people are at complete variance with current fashion. They make their own style from theings that flatter them or that they love so much they make it look good and it becomes part of their character.

I hate that you're only supposed to wear certain colours at certain times of the year - and there's an extra layer of that when you're a girl, because the same applies to makeup. My favourite colours are deep reds, navy blue, dark green, that kind of thing, which apparently I am supposed to wear exclusively in the fall. So generally I try to do all my clothes shopping in autumn. I demand the right to dress vaguely like a stylized old-timey army general all year round, darn it!
I'm also trying to find a teal dress for my sister's wedding (she's doing a mismatched bridesmaid dress thing) and it looks like I'll have to wait until super close to the event, because teal is not a winter colour. -_-

Build up a general wardrobe of classic styles and wear what you want when you want. The whole color thing is really passe these days and only effects when certain clothes are available. But you can wear them any time. My mom worked in woman's clothing for 40+ years classics and style, never fashion. There's the stuff you see onthe runway and then there's the stuff designed for people to wear and it seems never the twain shall meet. It's almost like designers throw up anythng just to see what'll stick.

It's another one of those paths not taken for me since I've always loved historical costume and clothing. Never quite learned to sew anything more than a button or a simple seam but I do know how patterns go together. I watched my mom sew for hours with patterns on the floor and needles in her mouth. Once upon a time one would make those classic styles yourself with McCall and Simplicity patterns. There was a book on costume in America that I must have taken out of the library 20 times in grade school.

It it was up to me I'd bring back long tailed coats, full waist coats and ruffled lace collars for men and women. Why not both sexes wear the same but just with different cuts and accessories. Look at a woman's suit versus man's and we're doing that already. A little more panache people.

Or dress like me in a ball cap, an Aloha shirt and camouflage pants.

You're Magnam PI Bravo :)

Sewing more than alterations or decoration is intimidating to me because there's still a LOT I don't understand about shaping clothes to the human body. Like everything, so much of the langauge used is hampered by jargon instead of clear descriptive terms about what the purpose of certain things are… Cooking is another great example of where things are hampered by foolishness:
A pinch of this, a pinch of that; special recipie; egg in this; salt in that, boil; caramalise; simmer…

When in actuallity cooking is fucking simple if you know the right flavours and what all the different types of ingeridients are really used for: binders, fillers, preservatives, taste enhancers, colour, texture etc.
Most recipieces are generic bullshit, the exact end result of which can be achived by all sorts of different ingredients in many different ways as long as you know HOW things work. -Which we were never taught in Home eccenomics class.

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@Hippie- yes, the trouble with fashion and colour is that it means the stuff you want in the colours you want just aren't available till the right season… The best thing is online shopping! When you've done enough research you should be able to buy some well fitting stuff in the colours and styles you want, much cheaper than in the shops.
And generally it's cheap enough that you can write off any disasters… -wrong sizes, wrong cut etc.

—————-

It was the Melbourne Cup race today, the day all Australia stops what they're doing to watch the race, drink heavily and eat. For the first time ever I won first AND second place in the office pool! Funilly enough they were consecutive number: 4 and 5, and I wasn't going to put anymore money in because I already had two (11 and 22), but did anyway and picked those two numbers out last.
And I WON!
Only $38, but still a lot more than the $8 I put in.

ozoneocean wrote:
@Hippie- yes, the trouble with fashion and colour is that it means the stuff you want in the colours you want just aren't available till the right season… The best thing is online shopping!

L.L. Bean catalog. Year round perennial classics and all colors available all the time. Before I became Magnum P.I I lived in their clothing. Yuck preppie! Keep the collars down and eschew exclusive monograms on your chest and it's very comfy and you can sleep in it and wear it the next say and noone notices because rumpled is okay.

—————-
It was the Melbourne Cup race today, …
And I WON!
Only $38, but still a lot more than the $8 I put in.

Congratulations!

@ozone: Any suggestions for online clothes shopping? I haven't found anywhere particularly cheap yet, but generally when I've bought clothes online it's from bigger/more established companies (topshop, modcloth, the bay etc.)

@bravo: I think the colour thing probably affects women's clothing more than men's, and makeup more than clothes. Compare the number of young women you see wearing dark lip colours in autumn and in spring/summer and you'll see what I mean. :)

HippieVan wrote:
@bravo: I think the colour thing probably affects women's clothing more than men's, and makeup more than clothes. Compare the number of young women you see wearing dark lip colours in autumn and in spring/summer and you'll see what I mean. :)

I do. But in fall for men you see muted sportswear, “deeps” “darks” and horrible earthtone ties. Everything becomes burgundy rather than red and ochre rather than yellow. Darks used to come in with the Fall line and ecru, yellow and pink with the Spring line. The style has changed to a large extent as bright ties and deply colored shirts are in all year round now.

Used to be woe to the man who sought ecru or pink in the fall! Or conversely who wanted hunter green or burgundy in the Spring. Ever try to shop for wardrobe to go on a Caribbean cruise in October? Unless you go to Marshall's and haunt the clearance rack you ain't finding nothing.

The so called fashion treadmill is pretty awful, especially considering the poor folks who have to make this stuff are working for next to nothing and the name brands are profiting hugely from their plight. What's relatively cheap for us on the high street would probably be a months wages for a Chinese garment worker.

Decent clothes don't come cheap. You've either got to have the money, or the time and determination to track down good pre-owned items. I love a good suit, but a good suit is well beyond my means. The suits on the high street appear to be made out of the same fabric they use to make wetwipes.

@Hippie-
I'm no expert on where to get women's clothes, BUT, I've had a lot of success through E-bay. There are a lot of resellers who use it as an easy way to set-up shop and offer nicely priced stuff in mulltiple sizes, colours and styles form China and Korea for men and women.

China has decent quality stuff these days. Bad quality stuff tends to come from India at the moment generally, they seem to be moving on to that early stage of crappy mass production that countries all seem to go through, where quality control is almost non-existant.

The stuff offered ranges from standard items to pretty unique stuff- You can also buy it from sites like Alibaba Express http://www.alibaba.com/premium/express.html or http://www.aliexpress.com, which are where the Ebay sellers tend to get their inventory from, direct from the suppliers. Your local retailers will be buying that same stock actually.

—

Scarf- if you want nicely made, well priced suits you can buy the fabric of your choice and have it made to your design. If you get it made in Bali it's quite cheap… but a long expensive plane trip for you guys in the Northern Hemisphere, I know… Though you could get similar prices in Turky, which is a lot closer and cheaper to get to. Just need an English speaking contact.

Huehuehuehue

Today during my drive back home on an otherwise pleasant afternoon, some jerk in a collared white shirt driving the car behind me decided to flash me the bird as soon as I looked in my rearview mirror. Maybe he was upset that I counted two seconds at the stop sign. This was a nice way to dampen my good mood a few notches.
(￣^￣)ゞ

Oh wait, today started on a low note. The Republicans regained the Senate majority last night, which means it is time to break out the booze and drink to forget!

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On the topic of clothes, fashion, and colors:

I have purchased about half of my wardrobe online because of the sales and cute styles readily available online. I usually buy from Amazon and various chainstores. The important thing to look for is the sizing charts. Most of the time, actual sizing varies between countries. An (XL) in China could mean a (M) in the USA. Just have an idea of your bust/waist/hip measurements and get the best fit.

It is not so easy to purchase a formal dress online because of the sizing issue. Bridesmaid dress shopping could be easier, but the problems I have run into in the past were dress lengths too long that needed to be rehemmed.

–

In breaking news: I have extended my wardrobe colors to include green tea green, turquoise, blue green, and light blue + grayscale. I will not combine them with my monochromatic yellow/orange clothing. Lately, my eye has been drawn to the green/blues of the spectrum because they are relaxing and emotionally calming. I think Autumn just has too many yellows and oranges that surrounding myself with the cooler colors balances the rest out.

same wrote:

Huehuehuehue

That's a laugh with an Irish accent right? :)

@Kawaii- nice summer colours. I still wear black most of the time- office wear.
I look forward to when it's hot enough here that I can wear shorts to work again (damn this long spring…), then I'll be wearing Tan shorts with black shirts mostly- I love that colour combination, Black and Tan, but I always feel a bit wrong about it since that was what a rather brutal troop of British soldiers were called who did some bad stuff in Ireland during the troubles.
-My Grnadmother was a staunch Irish Catholic and made sure I learned all about that stuff… family hiritage and all that.

Black and tan is the mixture of beers or certain breeds of dogs. No need to go into painful historical nastiness like the Irish Constabulary.

Have a beer and fuck the English.
@kawaii: you discovered teal! I remember in 1988-9 when aqua/pink combinations were HUGE in menswear. We had a whole spinner of aqua/pink/grey ties in the store. Frightful things but at the same time beautiful with a pink shirt and grey slacks. Be a real man without a doubt of his manliness and wear pink! I had a whole drawer of teal and pink sports shirts too. Pink shirt and teal tie also looks great with a black suit. Maybe a little mobster-esque but still sharp.

As I sit here in my monotone navy blue style-less security uniform. Sometimes I miss dressing to impress as opposed to dressing to intimidate.

Haha! I had to look up the Black and Tans in Ireland just now.

I am sitting here wondering where I have seen the pink and teal combination before and, of course, it is the color scheme of the page design, diner, and uniforms in Bottomless Waitress!

The reason I am going to avoid pairing my yellow clothes and green blue clothes together, is because it will closely resemble the color scheme of Drunk Duck. Maybe staring at the forums and main page have finally started to influence my own color choices.

Hehehehe….

I really REALLY want to try the horror game Five Nights at Freddy's.

Just one small thing stopping me…

…

I'm deathly afraid of animatronic creatures. In fact, this is one reason I avoid going to Chuck E Cheeses and circuses (the other reason being CLOWNS)…

bravo1102 wrote:
Have a beer and fuck the English.

Yes - we are up for it!

___

Working this online job is a little disorientating. It's hard to distinguish between working and not working sometimes. I sit in front of my monitor with a cup of tea, clicking through a selection of random websites, then when my work is done, I do exactly the same thing. I'm having to go for long walks every morning, just to remind myself there's a real world too.

ozoneocean wrote:

same wrote:

Huehuehuehue

That's a laugh with an Irish accent right? :)

I'm now curious if I laugh in an accent and if laughs even have accents.
I sensed an Irish conversation and had to come back.

Accent laughs???? I'm not sure if they do y'know? Laughs are weird, people change them over time. I laugh like an idiot.
You can change your laugh while you're laughing thoug and make it sound stange- I'm talking REAL laughing here, not fake laughing. If you think about it while you ARE doing a real laugh thoughh you can get sme interesting results. Deepening your laugh, making it higher, taking all its breath away…

heh… It's hard to show accents in writing I think. All those nuances are lost when translating from actual sound to printed word. Ah fahnd it verei difficult sometahms.

And now… I'm not doing that again.

Oh… and any tips on designing uniforms? I'm gonna redo my old Battle Fortress comic, but when it comes to designing military uniforms I'm stumped. I could use the uniforms from either Wing Commander or Macross as a template, but I'd like to be different.

Come to think of it, where does the idea for the Macross “normal” dress uniform come from? And when there's a combat alert, do they strip it down for the flight suit, or are those things worn under the flight suits?

Hmm… Maybe when designing those so called “normal” uniforms (what soldiers are wearing when they're not flying) I should take that into account. Of course this means I'll have to avoid skirts for any female fighter pilots (it'd be really hard to stuff yourself into a flight suit while wearing one). Thanks to the inertial/G cancellers built into the fighters G force is something they won't have to worry about…

There's also the question about military rank. Clearly navy ranks are used when we talk about space ships and such. But the pilots are also taught how to use ground maneuvers like what the Marines/Army use (due to their fighters transforming into a humanlike form thought they wield pistols instead of rifles), so I may have to use army ranks too?

And as far as female hairstyles go I'll probably be more relaxed about that, though I'll have to explain how they get all that hair inside their helmets…

Lonne-
Your thing with the Battlefortress comic was sexy girls. Take that and run with it!
That means short skirts and thigh-highs baby, no need for realistic uniforms in an anime inspired comic. If the skirts are short enough they won't hinder a flight suit worn over the top. ;)

As for ranks, go for US Marine ranks- They fight on land, sea, AND the air.

Have skirts so short they wear same colored panties under them and can throw themselves into a flight suit.

Look at how short that skirt is. It'd fit under a flight suit no problem. OR have short skirts and jackets over a skin tight flight suit.
I did that for the Aordian uniforms in Battle of the Robo-femoids. It's a short black jacket over a skin tight suit. A mini skirt is optional and is usually worn when the alternate thigh high boots are worn. There are also cool over coats that are an excursion uniform or alternate dress uniform over the undress trousers and turtleneck as worn in Tales of SIG.
http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Battle_of_the_Robofemoids/5393262/
http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tales_of_SIG/5466461/
If you noticed in Tales of SIG I felt that Star Trek_TOS skirts were too short so I added black skirts underneath!
For ranks you could use Technician and chief for enlisted and naval ranks for officers. Something neat about commanders and a captain as a ship commander as opposed to a captain leading a company and a colonel commanding a ship? Or you could just have marines and fleet with both ranks represented. The fleet does ground support but the marines specialize in ground combat. So you'd have marine pilots and naval pilots operating together but marines being the ground troops but often with naval officers. (like the Royal Navy. In WWII Admiral Mountbatten commanded ground troops who worked in combined operations with the navy) By the way although the USAF kept army ranks for officers it uses technicians and chiefs (though offically sergeants) conversely the RAF uses naval style officer ranks (flight leader and squadron commander) with army enlisted ranks.

Lonnehart wrote:
And as far as female hairstyles go I'll probably be more relaxed about that, though I'll have to explain how they get all that hair inside their helmets…

I think this problem is best solved by making the hair and the helmets one and the same, as they do on the moon.

Ironscarf wrote:

I think this problem is best solved by making the hair and the helmets one and the same, as they do on the moon.

And that SHADO Moonbase outfit converts into a jumpsuit by zipping on sleeves and legs! A great costume design by Sylvia Anderson. I have the whole UFO series on DVD.

“As they do on the Moon”
HAHAHAHAHA! ^_^

HAHAHA!!! That's a lot of hair gel. I can imagine a meteor striking her hair… only to be stopped.

Heh… I think instead of running away with the idea of cute and lovely women in the Zephyr crew I should add a few beautiful men as well. The Bridge Bunny thing and a mostly female ship crew is something that I think is way too overdone in anime. Then again they somehow sell the series.

And now that makes me think of Go Nagai. He doesn't treat his women very well in his anime. Especially in his giant robot anime Mazinger Z and everything related to it. He did make an all female giant robot team, but while the male robot got lots of detail and weaponry, the female robots… not so much. And the female bots got destroyed a lot and were often equipped with ineffective weaponry (Aphrodite A had boob missiles… and that was it)…

The way the heat is set up in my house is so stupid. My room is the furthest away from the furnace, and by the time the heat gets to me it's just a weak little gust of room-temperature air that makes my room feel drafty more than anything. Being on the North side of the house doesn't help either.

—

I got kind of a crappy hair cut today. I could have sworn the salon gave me a different name, but when I showed up it was the same woman I had last time (who also did a crappy job then). I showed her this picture of what I wanted, and came home with this. I mean, I understand she can't do exactly the same thing but my hair honestly looks worse than when I just roll out of bed and part it in the morning (my usual routine). She didn't even try to style it with the same kind of curls as the model…it basically just looks messy. I could tell it was going to go poorly from the beginning, because she didn't even bother to ask what side I part it on.

That's a hard style to match; mostly a temporary look you get through styling?
It looks like all you're missing is the extra body in the top portion. Couldn't that be achieved with mousse , back brushing and a dryer?

I've not got much recent experence with that sort of thing since I became a long haired yahoo. But when I was in my early teens It was all the rage to go through hairspray, mousse, and jars of brightly coloured hair gel.

At one time my hair was a variation on this theme:

ozoneocean wrote:
That's a hard style to match; mostly a temporary look you get through styling?
It looks like all you're missing is the extra body in the top portion. Couldn't that be achieved with mousse , back brushing and a dryer?

No, definitely. I maybe didn't explain too well…I also paid her to style my hair, not just cut it. I wasn't expecting it to look like the model when it just dries naturally or whatever. What's going on in that picture was apparently her best attempt at recreating the look with all the tools at her disposal. It's a pretty upscale place, too, so at the very least I should have come home with smooth curls and no flyaways. The cut itself also doesn't allow me to style it similarly to the photo, though…it's missing the longer layers around my ears and the shorter layers around my face. I might go back and get it fixed, but I feel like it would be really embarassing if she were there.

I actually think you would look good with sticky-uppy hair, by the way! Maybe a little more modernized, though…

—

Also, brand new rant. I got a weird email from my mom this morning saying that she can't handle Christmas this year (i.e. isn't coming to visit or giving gifts). She has really bad Christmas memories from childhood so I got the feeling that's what she was referring to, and emailed her back saying that it was too bad but we understood and she should do whatever is best for her own well-being. Then I told my Dad about it, and he seemed to think she was upset because she had to share us with him over the holidays and that I should have told her that we did want her to come visit. Which also makes sense, but if she genuinely feels like Christmas is too difficult for her I don't want to guilt her into something she isn't happy with. So I don't know. I'm not sure if this is the kind of situation where I'm meant to take her at her word, or if she's secretly hoping that we protest. It's freaking ridiculous that I'm supposed to be decoding messages from one of my parents.

@Hippie-
In the past when I walked into hair salons with reference pictures, I only ended up with a hairstyle exactly how I wanted when the hairstylist spoke minimal English. Sometimes I just ask for the best cut for my face shape. I think the haircut you received looks cute, it is very Marion Cotillard-esque. Your eyebrows look GREAT and nicely shaped and good color. I have a hard time trusting that a haircut will be worth the $35+ price, so I resort to DIY techniques to remove split ends and trim bangs with a razor. I think I found a winning technique that I will be using from now on.

–

On Friday, I celebrated the first day of my last year as a twenty-something. It was cool because I spent it at an arcade and playing the same driving game I used to play when I was twenty. The only difference was that my reflection in the video game monitor glass bears a stronger resemblance to that of a thrity-something.

A lot of the time, people are afraid of growing older and losing that youthful spark. I think that is a bunch of nonsense. When I was younger, I really thought things would be different. I thought I would be married by twenty-eight, but now I have so much more to offer in ways of experience. Just this week, I deboned and deskinned an entire whole chicken, I failed miserably at the same task in my early twenties. I baked a batch of brownie bites from scratch and sprinkled homemade powdered sugar on them. I feel that most of the challenges from one decade ago are still present, but I am much more prepared to handle them. I would not want to go back in time and trade everything I have learned so far in exchange for less gray hairs.

Happy Birthday kawaii! Great to read your thoughtful…well, thoughtful thoughts on the subject. I wouldn't want to go backwards to a younger age, either.

I get you now Hippie! That reminds me of the short haircut I got last year (or was it the year before???). It was all wrong and cut really awkward so I couldn't even style it. It only looked good at random… SO good to have real long hair again!
I would do those Duran Duran styles again… but only for a short time. That was way too much maintaince. I do not miss all the time I spent preening in the mirror with brush, comb and styling products. urrrrr… The way Adam Sandler looked in Don't Mess with the Zohan made me miss it.

If I were you I'd go to a different place. Shop around. If you go to the same one they like to hand you back to the person who did your hair last because they imagine your “hers” and it's really awkward to ask for someone else. -_-
Your hair doesn't match the model but it's not bad nevertheless. You can make it work in spite onf not likning the style :D

I feel for you with the family troubles!

—————

Oh god, Monday… -_-