Girl Anachronicles

Yesterday I found a website that trumps all other nostalgia websites I’ve come to know so far:  I’m Remembering. It’s a blog built on a Tumblr engine, its theme is specifically 80s and 90s nostalgia. I Love the 80s never had it so good and so right. I found things in there that I had forgotten about in the longest while, and others that I remembered but I couldn’t find elsewhere on the web.

Some examples:

Sea-pony whose only power is to blow bubbles underwater, yay...

I owned this exact My Little Pony seahorse, with the clamshell stand that would never stick long enough to the bath tiles… goddamned doll also looked like it was always dirty. It had a blowhole to blow bubbles, but being the little motherfuckers we were, we used it as a squirt-horse instead.

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..he stares at you from his perch while you're sleeping..

This one came from nowhere. I suspect it was a hand-me-down toy, like many others we had – our youngest aunt was only 9 years older than me, not enough time to deem the toys obsolete and throw them away, so I inherited tons of them! I loved this Rowlf puppet so much that I salvaged him time and again from the trash bin and many charity collections, and is now probably slowly dying in a room in Mom’s house.

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..creepy little clown to live on your nightstand. Whose idea was that? ..

This was obviously a pre-”It” item. I barely even remembered him until I saw him in the imremembering.com site. Then it was like opening the memory floodgates: the lamp in its full glory, then how it came apart little by little, until at last the only thing that remained were those immortal plastic balloons.

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..plastic lasts forever..

I was amazed when I saw this pic. We had these exact two cups at home (among a myriad of other assorted plastic cutlery pieces, such as Transformers bowls and He Man dishes). I still keep a plastic Hello Kitty cup from that time. These things indeed last forever!!!

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...all it was missing was the alternative of an alien head.

This was another hand-me-down from my aunt, but boy, did I have fun with this! This was the one piece that got me drawing fashion designs as an occasional hobby. Of course, by the time it got to me, the color pencils were long gone, so I had to make do with a carbon stick.

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MUSIC! FUCK YEAH!

This was one fucking useful toy! I used it every day: I played the Read-along vinyls, I played my Rainbow Brite record, I played just about anything that would fit into that record player. I would play things time and again until I made my mother nauseous. I’d put on plays for the whole family – and would force them to watch, god forbid they turned away! I was such an attention whore when I was a kid … I dunno what happened…

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If only I had been able to shrink tiny enough to play IN this castle...

I almost went into tears when I saw this: my favorite toy ever! This castle was a Little People castle, but it eventually became the “anything goes as long as it fits” castle. This castle was under siege by the GI Joes, it became soon the reign of She-Ra and friends, He Man knocked at its drawbridge! Even the Thundercats visited every once in a while…

And as a bonus:

RUN AWAY!!!

Not a toy, but a fixture in our local McDonalds playground. This tree reminded me of a talking tree featured in one of my favorite local children’s show – Titi Chagua. Talking trees were this thing I adored and abhorred at the same time. It eventually turned into indisputable adoration, until I was at last transfixed by the Ents. I <3 talking trees.

So, if you’re already over 21 and like going on a nostalgia binge … http://imremembering.com

You know how appliances and cars have the very annoying tendency to break down just when you come across money? Well, my belongings apparently learned how to fucking read, and they must have found this blog post to be a sort of challenge.

My cell phone (an unnecessarily swanky Palm Pre) started acting up some days ago: it’s a touch-screen phone, and suddenly it started acting as if a thousand fingers were playing on it all at once. It started making calls and writing emails by itself. I was like thisclose to calling the Ghostbusters, but then I realized that a) they don’t cover electronics, and b) they’re fictional characters. So I did the next best thing today: after work, I took the Child of Poltergeist to its parents – the Sprint Store.

Sorry, lady, but our policy doesn't cover Palm products.

Vero rode along with me to keep me company and also to have her own Palm Pixi looked after (hers was a bit torn up by the usual tear and wear… well, “the usual tear and wear” by Vero). It was pouring by the time I got home to pick her up, and by the time we got to the Ponce de León Ave (where the Sprint store is), the streets were absolutely flooded. I drove on, confident that my teeny Toyota Echo would make the trip with no incidents.

We dropped our phones with the tech team and headed across the avenue to have lunch. By the time we were back, the bottoms of my pant legs were soaked and my sneakers were all squishy and mooshy inside (yuck! like walking on seaweed, nasty nasty, I don’t wanna feel like I’m Under the fucking Sea every time I take a step! those tennis shoes have GOT to go!). We got inside after taking some flak from a random guy about us smoking outside. Fortunately, Vero’s phone was fixable. Mine wasn’t. It had fucking RUST inside, the goddamned thing DID go and sing Under the fucking Sea with my tennis shoes apparently. They tell me it’s replaceable with a deductible of $100 I don’t fucking have.

So we get into the car and suddenly we’re trapped in a huge-ass traffic jam. Everywhere we turn, there are cars stopped like it’s freakin’ Christmas in Plaza las Américas (the centermost circle of HELL). I’m guessing it was an hour before we finally got home, but on our way there we find out the reason for the excess of traffic: a man got killed in a gas station smack in the middel of our route home. So, I took an alternate route, and just when I start picking up speed I realize: my brake pads broke. They most likely got water-logged while they were still hot and -POP!- they broke.

$100 for the cell phone, God-knows-how-much for the brake pads, WTF!?

Car! Cell phone! Goddamn you and your fucking opportunism. Go fuck your mothers.

Not my actual car. My car is dirtier and has a better personality

I hate you and I love you, but fuck you, phone

PS: Upon later remembrance, I realized my phone DID undergo some liquid distress. One drunken night, I dropped it on the ground and didn’t notice until half an hour later. It was a rainy night. It DEFINITELY sang Under the Sea with that pesky little lobster.

Go fuck a goat, Sebastian!

Wish you had smell-a-vision. Then you’d be able to smell this…

I know, it’s classified as “WTF” if it’s coming from me, tooting Puff Daddy’s horn for designing such a delicious fragrance (or tooting P. Diddy’s horn at all). It was unintentional and the associations to the perfume made the purchase so much easier (and impulsive).

A few months ago I started reading the Sandman comic series by Neil Gaiman, and about time, given the whole lot I had heard before about the comic. I loved it, and I immediately connected with Delirium.

Thing is, one day I’m walking around a mall, and I picked up a small paper card sprayed with this perfume that I pretty much liked. I stowed the paper away, and took it home, used it as a bookmark for Brief Lives. The perfume permeated the whole book, accompanied me in the Delirium-ridden story, got into my nostrils and my senses until the smell of it was forever associated with Dream and Delirium.

This past weekend, Mom insisted on taking me shopping, and I budged. There were more than a few things I was wanting/needing. I decided to go snooping around Macy’s perfume department, and I really don’t understand how I recalled the name of the perfume so clearly. What I didn’t remember so well was why I was remembering a perfume named Unforgiven.

As soon as I whiffed at it again, the decision was made, I had to have it. This perfume IS Delirium, this perfume IS Dream. It wasn’t until I was drawing out the credit card to pay for it that I noticed what the signature on the back stood for.

Puff-fucking-Daddy, aka Sean John. Jeez!

But then again, he’s got a better nose for fragrances BY FAR than all the little Hollywood bitches designing stenches for the gullible masses.

#1, Found this on eBay, and although I’m not gonna bid on it (what for, really?), it was yet another nostalgia trip to renew my memory of this tin lunchbox.

Specially of the matching thermos, which never sealed completely and would always let some of the juice out onto my napkins, utensils, other thermos or even worse, onto my sandwich.

#2, I just learned that Guillermo del Toro is producing a film adaptation of one of my favorite comics: Death: The High Cost of Living, and he wants creator Neil Gaiman to direct! Awesome move! And I’m SO looking forward to it, it’s scary. They could also fuck it up so many ways

All hail the Endless!

First things first – I did my own nails about one or two weeks ago, and they looked fantastic… for two days, that is, until the ol’ nail polish chipped off. And that will happen, why not, I mean: i did only one coat, no top coat, no base coat. Can’t be bothered with those details, but I realized having a fast-drying nail enamel helps making the process less painful (yes, beautifying myself is always painful).

I found this in my humble nail product box (which is really just an old, wobbly shoe box) in a nice, shimmery, cream-colored shade. Can’t remember the name, but it was incredibly quick to dry (plus points) and it turned out to look gorgeous on my short-short nails (double plus points) But then mom showed me a Bettina shade that proved to be an inspiration (#168, I think … did you know that the company that makes the Bettina nail polish we Puerto Rican girls buy for $1.99 a bottle in our local drugstores and supermarkets, has no presence in the internet!?!?!)

So, that would be my intentions today: buy Maybelline Express Nail Color in a shade called Racing Rubies (see pic above) and get some nice, dark red scratchers, very fast!

Tonight we have a small business get-together with one of the bands we sort-of manage (and by “we”, I mean CarbonoMúsica), which means I will have to prove myself once again as … The HouseWife!

That would mean (mainly) sweeping and mopping the house a bit (white tile is a bitch!), and cookin up some canapés…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

I meant: grab a crate of beer and some chips and dip on the way home.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the second 1991 Sacred Heart School class pre-reunion, which would be sort of like a staff meeting to plan and talk about what needs to be done for the official reunion. I might go. I might not go. I still don’t know, it all depends: Eze gets in to work (@ Border’s) at 8PM. Frecuencias Alternas remains under Pepe’s control, I might as well help him out.

And Sunday is still a blank, with a small hint of what could be done. BBQ, anyone?

… or maybe some cookies?