Happy Birthday, Sherry of After the Bridge!

So I really wanted to do something special for Sherry, because she is a very devoted reader and commenter to this blog. Since I know she appreciates my writing and um, humor, I wrote this especially for her. Please go to her blog and wish her a very happy day!

I wanted to make a blog cake for Sherry. I knew trying to slice a cake on the internet would get really messy, and would interrupt my morning Scotch, so I went with cupcakes, and of course they had to be Hello Kitty cupcakes, cuz they're so fucking cute.

I searched on Google for Hello Kitty cupcake ideas and holy shit I could have taken the whole morning just to browse the endless stream of freakish Asian cute sugar overload. 210,000 hits in .24 seconds? Fuck me. And even if you're making these for a three year old, get over it: every one of them looked like shit. We have lots of Hello Kitty items cluttering up my fucking house, so I cut out a Hello Kitty (head only, DECAPITATION, PERFECT!) from my Hello, Kitty! social events calendar, fuck you very much. I tried to find one that was the size of a muffin-size cake top, so I could just paste it on a vending machine muffin, but I failed, so I dug out the Hello Kitty Shrinky Dinks kit and baked one in my Hello Kitty toaster oven, too small to stick my head in, but whatever.

One website suggested I purchase white fondant (Sure.), roll this out and with a sharp knife cut 39 (forever, Sherry!) Hello Kitty heads out. They also suggested I use mini M&M's (split in half to get the oblong shape, beyotch) for the eyes and nose. I am also supposed to dye some of the fondant pink and use a flower shape cutter to put by her ear. For the centre of the flower, I'm supposed to have 39 yellow mini M&Ms available, fucking A!

After assembling these, I am to wake up and realize I had spent two hours with mother fucking FONDANT. What the hell was I thinking? So then I made the cupcakes (just basic chocolate cake mix, because hey, why go over the top at this point?) and iced them with canned icing, dyed pink from the blood streaming from my eyes. I put my imaginary fondant Hello Kitty heads on top of the cupcakes, and finally gave up and just used Sharpie pen for the whiskers. Fuck it.

They looked like shit and because of the Sharpie Pen, school paste, and blood they were completely inedible. I had to set fire to them, but that made them look like a kind of cool art installation, you know, Hello Kitty Cupcakes of Death. Perfect!

Happy Birthday Sherry and much love!

Curse you, Sandy Underpants....

...thanks to your Christmas gift, everyone will be able to spot me at Netroots Nation. (Sandy is my dear colleague at The Aristocrats.)

Salon tonight.

The Hello Kitty Motor Vehicle Registry Death Watch

Loyal readers to this humble blog are well aware of its Hello Kitty Airline Travel Death Watch. Yesterday this phenomenon appeared at the Motor Vehicle Registry in the state where I now reside.

Yes, the good news is I am now a registered voter with a valid Blue State driver's license, and the trusty minivan also breathed a sigh of relief to have some very nice Midwestern license plates of its very own. The Alabama plates, well, some days it's embarrassing enough that they say Alabama on them but then they had to go off with the whole God Bless America license plate and please don't get me started.

The whole process of becoming a legal Midwesterner took less than 35 minutes with virtually no wait time. Thank you, Midwest Motor Vehicle Registry People.

But about the adult woman after me at the vehicle registry. (I have more forgiveness in these matters if the woman in question is under, say, 22. This one was maturing fast into Oil of Olay territory and I should know.) She was wearing these Hello Kitty seashell flower earring thingys AND looking to register her car.

It was so confusing.

Was she forced to wear these as punishment for some vicious crime?

Or perhaps she was wearing these in the hope that they would disguise her horrible guilt?

Could it be that not everyone in the Great Midwest had heard about the thing called "Good Taste in Jewelry"?

Oh yah, that last one there, you betcha.

[It's high time, my friends, to make Hello Kitty Death Watch a Blogger post label...]