so mad right now

Don't make me angry.  You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

those of you who know me know that 

1) i have a bad temper i have a hard time controlling, 

and 2) i am an athiest but can respect other people's religious beliefs, but sort of go thru the roof when Christians proselytize.  

My aunt is a Christian minister, and i have a few christian friends and blah blah blah, so it's not like i act out on my prejudice against Christianity, though i do admit to having one, but I do try to be understanding about people's beliefs, just like i try not to have a bad temper.  but holy shit, i am so upset right now i feel like i'm gonna pass out from anger.  i'm about to share an Etsy conversation i had with someone I bought a shirt from.  and please, if you disagree with how i treated this person (I said I wasn't gonna leave bad feedback for them, but since they never got back to me about that, and i hated the shirt I bought from them so much, i ended up leaving bad feedback anyway, and i know that's not the most dignified thing to do, perhaps, but i was just pissed about this whole exchange so i left the bad feedback anyway), please don't let me know right now.  i really don't want to hear anything negative about how i handled this situation, i just want to post it on here because i'm so pissed and have no other outlet at the moment. 

Here goes (business name taken out):

Hi,
I ordered 2 t-shirts from you and I haven't received them yet, though I think I may have received an email saying they were being shipped. So I just wanted to know if you shipped them, and if so, when, and by what method.
thanks!

xxxx

Dec 5, 2012

Hi thank you for your order! we apologize for the delay we have just been extremely busy with orders and we have been working as quickly as possible in the order they are received. Your package is being shipped out today Priority Mail through USPS, We are also located in California your should probably be receiving is as soon as tomorrow if not definitely by Friday. We thank you again for your patience your business is much appreciated. =)


xxxxx

yeah, i think i saw that you are in monrovia, and i live pretty close (and used to live in monrovia, on huntington). sounds good. just wanted to make sure and hadn't already been delivered.

xxx

Dec 9, 2012

Hi, can I return the navy elephant shirt I bought -- I'm very unhappy with it. It's almost impossible to see the print. I know I chose the color navy but I just assumed the print would be visible on the shirt, I didn't know the navy would be so dark or thought that if it was darker, a different ink color would be used to make the elephant visible, the way the shirt on you site has red ink for the elephant on the yellow t-shirt, not black ink on a near-black t-shirt.

xxx

Dec 9, 2012

Hi yes we only use the red wine ink on the gold
Navy is more on the darker side but customers order this combo from time to time and always do our best to fulfill our customers request no matter which color and ink setup. We can exchange for you no problem, There is a restocking fee because we would no longer be able to reuse this shirt but I will discount it to 50% since you did not know how dark navy was but navy is dark. We will also discount the shipping costs 50%. Please go ahead and select a new shirt with ink from the listing, You will receive a brand new shirt in a new style. We will invoice you for $7.45 to cover the shipping costs and restocking fee. Thank you for your business. There is no need to send the shirt back since we cannot use it any more and it will be counted as a loss.
Thank you

xxxx

Dec 10, 2012

Hi, no, I am unhappy with the t-shirt so I don't want to order another item from you even at a discounted amount, but thank you. I have a shop too so I can appreciate that you tried to come up with a resolution even though it's one I'm not happy w/ (yes navy is a darker color but every company's 'navy' is different; I have probably 3 pieces of clothing right now that are considered navy, and none of them are as dark as that t-shirt, so I think it was reasonable for me to assume when I asked for that color that it was not going to be too dark to see the elephant print on it, the way it is), so I'm not going to leave negative feedback.

xxxxx

16 hours ago

As from the history of our conversations you were not happy with the elephant shirt. We offered to exchange the shirt at a 50% discounted rate and for you to keep the shirt. We know you were not happy with the shirt and we really tried to work it out with you but you refused and said you own a shop and will not leave bad feedback because you appreciated that we tried to work it out and resolve the issue, But you went back on your word and left us 2 bad feedbacks which is very unfair, because now you lied to us. I dont know if you just forgot what you said or not. We will offer a partial refund for the elephant shirt of 50% for the shirt. We only want to provide a positive experience to all our customers but we would like for you to revise the feedback and send us a kiss and makeup. We have not had a chance to leave feedback for you yet. Bad feedback is only a last resort when problems cannot be worked out and do not appreciate that you went back on your word when we were only try to fix a problem. We will await in a timely manner for your response.
Thank you
 
xxx

15 hours ago

yeah, it seemed pretty lame that you never thanked me for agreeing not to leave bad feedback before in my last email, when i expressed that i was really unhappy with that elephant shirt and the "deal" you offered. since you never wrote anything back like 'yeah it sucks that you were unhappy w/ the product and w/ our offer to sell you another shirt at a discount, but thanks for saying you won't give us negative feedback,' i figured you must not care, so i thought i might as well be honest about the bad experience i had with your online store. man, the photo shown for the elephant t-shirt when it shows our sale is an awesome shirt -- it has burgandy ink on a gold shirt and it looks really good, not like the waste of $20 shirt I ended up buying from you, the pitch black elephant on the near pitch black shirt. i still don't understand why you didn't just take the shirt back -- i guess it's because you'd be taking a loss, but you also said in that email that people have ordered black printed animals on dark navy shirts, so I'd think you could just have kept that hsirt that I'd returned (it doesn't take up much space) and refunded me, not offered to sell me another shirt at a discounted price. my guess is that you guys are young, and i really wanted to nurture your store by keeping my mouth shut about what a bad experience i had w/ my purchase w/ you, but you weren't gracious enough to send a follow up email, and that graciousness would have gone a long way. i just dropped that elephant shirt off at the out of the closet on sunset as a donation this afternoon in fact because it's an absolutely shirt to me. so, i don't know, maybe next time someone says they're really unhappy w/ their dealings w/ you but won't give you a negative review, you should show them that that means something to you instead of just never sending any follow up. yeah we're all diy on here and blah blah blah but there's still such a thing as courtesy, an why should i protect your reputation if you don't seem to care about it.

xxxx

January 14 2013 8:54pm EDT

We are of course thankful if you did not leave bad feedback but we thought we would just leave it at that. We do care about our customers and feedback. You stated you also have a shop so we would expect for you to know the feeling of receiving negative feedback. You have a great start for your shop with established feedback and sales. There are many great ways to promote your shop and free ways of advertisement that are guaranteed to bring sales and have been proven to work. Well there is no need to attack us on a personal level by calling us young, or to say we dont care, because for one I am not that young and I do care, To back on your word does make us feel that you do not care that we really tried to work things out, but left it off as it still being your word. Feedback is important and can never leave anyone bad feedback unless we were ripped off of cheated., It is a last resort and very unlike us but we have done what we can to try and fix the problem. You even left a neutral for the other item just because you were upset about the elephant and that item had nothing to do with this issue. So this is the last time I will reach out to you with this message. We dont want there to be any hard feelings. I dont know if you follow Jesus Chris but he said we are to forgive each other and love our neighbor as our self and not let pride get in the way. Its nothing that you lied to me, for I am nothing, but there is someone much greater that we will all have to answer to one day. God bless you

xxxx

January 15 2013 11:17am EDT

(person's name), i think it's incredibly offensive that you would bring religion into such a minor, piddling affair as my and your disagreement over your product and customer service. Do you really think it's appropriate to threaten me w/ the idea of being judged because I behaved in a way you disagree with? I feel truly and seriously disgusted with you right now -- how dare you invoke God like that, like he's on your side because you're in the right, over such a MINOR thing as this disagreement we had? it's truly disgusting to me. i did the "kiss and make up" thing for your shop. I hope I never meet you in person and I never hear from you again -- I really can't stand when people use religion and God in conversation as manipulatively as you just did. you don't own God. He belongs to everyone, and he really, really doesn't take sides over stupid crap like Etsy customer service disputes.

addendum:  I've had a few hours to calm down.  but I still wanted to share his most recent response to the above (admittedly ridiculous) string of writing:

Jesus Christ is the way the truth and life and no man cometh unto the father but through him
May God bless you.

xxx

How fucking tempted to write back to him write now (I won't engage anymore -- believe it or not, I do have some self control) the lyrics to the classic Iron Maiden song:

xxx


Torches blazed and sacred chants were phrased
As they start to cry hands held to the sky
In the night the fires are burning bright
The ritual has begun Satan's work is done
666 the number of the beast, sacrifice is going on tonight  

xxx

okay, all for now???
...
xox Robin 
 

Professor

Well, I know that I’d said earlier in this blog that I will watch almost any movie, and that it might be sort of a neat exercise for me to write reviews or at least passing thoughts on these movies, but, I don’t know if I should or even could write about some of what I saw this weekend.  Here was the lineup:

Nutty Professor (1996)

Nutty Professor 2:  The Klumps (2000)

I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry (2007)

Hunger Games (2012)

Wanderlust (2012)

So, where do I start?  Perhaps with the admission that the movies that held me most in their grip were the Eddie Murphy Nutty Professors.  The thing is, I don’t feel like this is a true “guilty” “admission” or anything like that, because things like Vice Magazine (pre-Viacom buy-out) have definitely made it the norm to show a “surprising” interest in low-culture creations.  So I’m not thinking I’m blowing any minds here by having watched and sort of liked these movies.  Let’s see.  What can I say about them?  Both films really revel in their crassness, and it was sort of just fun to let my fart-joke-flag fly.  Here is an example of some of the funniest dialogue from the first one (courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes site):

1. Mama Klump: Everytime we have a meal you start breaking gas. Don't break gas and destroy our meal!
2. Papa Klump: Don't tell me to stop! You were the one who brought up colon cleansing and all that mess!
3. Mama Klump: I did not say anythin' about breakin' gas, I said that I was gonna get my colon cleansed!
4. Papa Klump: Oh, so you can talk about puttin' a tube up somebody's *ss, but I can't break wind.
5. Mama Klump: I didn't say nothin' about puttin' a hose up somebody's *ss, Cletus.
6. Papa Klump: Well what do you think a colonic is? You think you run yo' *sshole by the car wash?
7. Mama Klump: You're chokin' the baby! [Ernie Jr. spits out food with laughter]
8. Papa Klump: Look, as long as I pay the bills, I can do what I want at this table. Case in point; [farts]

Now, in my day, I have heard many, many (at least 5), new-agey yuppies speak straightfacedly about colonics, usually at holiday parties, and so, I don’t know, this dialogue is along the lines of how I wish I could have responded to one of these holiday party guests.  Like, “you can talk about paying someone to stick a tube up your butt but you get uncomfortable when I mention preferring the eastside? 

The first of the two films is more adult, like, more swears and whatnot, so it’s preferable in my book to the more kid-friendly sequel, which is not without its crass, farty, complex love-hate relationship of weight problems charm either. 

More on the other movies tomorrow, maybe.

XO princess

Another Survey

1.  What job did you want to have when you were a kid?

2.  If you have seen Girls, do you love or hate it?

3.  What is your favorite Matt Dillon movie?

4.  What’s your take on Cassavetes? (question courtesy of the Le Tigre song, but meant sincerely)

5.  Most embarrassing moment?

6.  Have you ever seen the 2011 movie This Must Be the Place?

7.  Favorite Quentin Tarantino movie (or do you hate him?)?

Here are my answers.  Write yours in the Comments box -- it's super fun.

1.  Always a writer, but I went through a phase of telling everyone I wanted to be a writer, illustrator, fashion designer and choreographer.

Robin Crane the next Bob Fosse?

2.  Love it.  Like Tiny Furniture less but can still appreciate it.

3.  Rumble Fish.

4.  Love him so much

5.  Once in 3rd grade my dad left the house for like 45 minutes tops to go to the grocery store.  In that time, one of our dogs had his choke chain leash stuck in his mouth and when I tried to get it out of his mouth, he bit me, not hard enough to draw blood even.  I felt bad for my dog, who was really agitated, and also scared about being bitten, so I called my dad's recent ex-girlfriend, who lived nearby.  I was crying as I spoke to her and told her my bit, and she thought I'd said my dad was choking and had bitten me.  So she said she'd take care of it and got off the phone.  I calmed down from the bite, settled my dog down, and stopped crying -- done and done.  nope.  shortly after dad got home, unaware that anything had gone less than smoothly while he was out, the police, ambulance, a fire truck, news van and his ex-girlfriend all showed up.

6.  I really want to see this movie but have been unable to see it in the theatre or get my hands on a dvd.

7.  I sort of hate him in a way, but I like him too.  Reservoir Dogs is my fave, because of the tragic tenderness between Harvey Keitel (who is so good in it) and the horrible Mr. Orange.

my 17th birthday invitation (1996)

my boys

my boys

Yesteryou lucky chapter 13

13.

            The next morning, Richard remembered to check the mailbox for mail before walking to his car and driving to work--it'd been a few days since he last remembered to.  He threw the handful of papers he found in there on the passenger seat of his two-year-old Lexus, a vehicle he'd never anthromorphologized as he had his other cars, for some reason.  And then in the elevator on the way up to his floor, when he finally got a chance to look through the handful of mail, he saw it:  a picture postcard from the site of the Liberty Bell, in Philadelphia, PA.  Was this from Beth?  And if so -- of all the places to run away and hide in, why Philadelphia?  Puzzling out the answer to this question occupied his thoughts for the rest of the morning, mercifully, so that for once he was deaf to the niggling background conversations so common to office life.  He went online and did some research about the city, to see if anything about the place would provide clues to why Beth might have fled there.  John Coltrane lived in Philadelphia, briefly, in a dangerous neighborhood with the intriguing name of Strawberry Mansion.  Edgar Allen Poe also lived in Philadelphia for a while too.  His concentration drifted and he thought about Beth's hair; she had a beautiful mane of hair when they first met, but she cut it all off one night to spite him, and she never let it grow back.  Then he remembered it:  her dad was from PA, not Philadelphia, though, one of the suburbs, but still-- that could be a reason for her to go there, to find some vein of comfort in the gnarled roots of her genes.

It wasn't her craziness, which made her so vulnerable to the whims of sane people, which had turned him off and made her intolerable.  It'd been her selfishness. He was in fact tolerant to the point of excess regarding the types of craziness he'd only seen in women.  In fact, sometimes he thought that was the only reason he didn't quit his job, which he hated (he wanted to own his own business, be his own boss, have some freedom at last) -- because of all the crazy women who worked there.  God how he pitied, even envied, them all their fragility and just-barely-hanging-on-ness sometimes.  He heard them talking as they walked in conspiratorial twos past his office, or exited the bathroom, and it seemed every on of them had an Achilles Heel located in the fragile pretty body of their personalities.  They'd been named clinically depressed or chronically anxious or even bipolar by some doctor of theirs, who Richard always imagined to be assholes.  To Richard, these women seemed brave as soldiers, to pull their camisoles over their heads and zip up their pants each morning despite the nervous trembling of their hands, to speak in normal tones to their supervisors when they wanted to shout or moan or cry instead.  Unlike these brave, albeit mostly unpleasant women, Beth had given up, years ago, practically the second she met him, he felt.  But he would save her anyway.  So the adventure started.

cir·cu·i·tous

I guess it makes sense that when I started this blog, it was with the intention of scanning and sharing my old, old zines (from the early nineties) -- I am somewhat stuck in the past.  Sometimes I don't even mean to be.  This morning when I was driving to work I realized (in a stronger way than past littler versions of this realization) that on my route, I pass the library where mom used to work when I was a kid, the school I went to for kindergarten and first grade, and last but not least, the fact that I work in the same office where I worked in 2004 - 2006 before moving to Philly, thinking that new opportunities would materialize once I had the Master's I earned while there.  I am not unhappy with re-treading old territory -- it's sort of unavoidable when one lives in the town where one grew up, and my hometown happens to be the world famous los angeles, so you won't hear me complaining about being stuck in the boonies or needing to get out of dodge and see more excitement and multiculturalism, etc.  Nonetheless, nostalgia is a melancholy feeling for me, and this morning as I passed by mom's old library and my old school, I did feel nostalgic.

Along those lines (of looking backwards), you may have noticed that since I started working on this blog again, it's been a long time since I reposted one of my old zines.  The main reason for that is that I can't figure out an ideal formatting for this project -- I feel like the zines are never big enough to be clearly readable.  However, I came across a neat cache of old cards and comix I did years ago, like in the early 1990's for the most part.  I'm posting some of them throughout the day, most likely, and over the next few days.  the ones I post today are gonna be black and white unfortunately, but, we'll see, I will try to hone my technical skills.

please love me.  please justify my non-belief in god.  please make me rich.  please keep me and my family safe.

robin

Legend of Legendary band Esther 1994

This comic is an example of how people sometimes aren't their true selves when they are hanging out with someone else -- but not in any meaningful way, in this case.  I drew this one when me and my friend Janet had a slumber party (1994), we were both drawing comics as a slumber party activity, but it wasn't in my true style, like, the humor isnt' really mine, but i was trying to impress her, as was she when she drew hers.  two things I think are really funny about this are that 1) we mention a girl named Esther in our class, but Esther was like 11 or something -- it was an elective with all different age groups, but me and Janet were at least a few years older than her, so I"m surprised we cared.  second, my misconception of Saint Morrissey in this is weird.  I love everything about him, from his homo-erotic/asexual vibe to his tongue-in-cheek sense of drama, to EVERYTHING.  

some teen birthday invite, featuring 2 heroes, Kim Gordon and Louise Brooks

1997 Sticker Bomb designs

These are the designs for the stickers I made that I used to sticker bomb Olympia with my Freshman year of college, before I stopped impressing myself with my street art acumen and when I didn't care about 'feminist' 'messages' or irony etc anymore