The Promised "Fashion" Blog

I'm a geek. Geeks, traditionally, suffer from an extreme lack of fashion sense. So what am I supposed to say about fashion?


Whatever I want to. Just because I'm a card-carrying Geek (President and co-founder of GAEK--"Geeks And Enthusiastic Kindred") doesn't mean I'm always wrong... just "unconventional." I like to think of myself as "eccentric" ... it sure beats the hell out of "nut-butter crazy."


So what's new in fashion? Well, to really know what's "new" we have to know what's old.

We've gone from wearing animals to wearing cotton and synthetic fabrics... not sure how. (I'm not a fashion historian.)

How did we DO that?

 Then, apparently, some of us (one of us) decided to devolve, and went back to wearing animals...


But this time... their Flesh!

Okay, in all honesty, can we really call Lady Gaga "one of us"? I mean--don't get me wrong--I love her music and her eccentricities, but she's kind of... a freak? Is that appropriate? o.O


I  don't know... but somehow when she went back to animals she forgot that we ONLY WEAR THE SKIN!


It reminds me of that Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson in which a caveman is advertising his new invention to his carcass-clad brethren by telling them (something like) "with this new knife you only have to wear the SKIN of that animal!"


I couldn't find the comic... otherwise I'd post it... or at least quote it correctly. But you get the idea, don't you?


Well too bad! >:O
We're moving on. -_-


Let me introduce you to my alter ego: Ralphe le Fashion le Man! ^{*("Ralphe" is pronounced just like "Rafe" but spelled much more fashion-ishly.)}


~Both in Doodle and in Photo~

You can tell by my purple shirt, red bow tie, suspenders, slacks and white socks with black sneakers (the last two of which you can't see in this picture) that I AM the greatest fashion expert on this side of the Nile... or the Rockies... whichever.

As the Doctor says, "bow ties are cool."


(You know you're right when you get your fashion lines from a sci-fi show.)


Where was I?

Oh, yeah... I was going to disregard not being a fashion historian and tell you about the history of fashion.


Well... in the beginning we were all red-faced and nudists.

Soon, however, the social burden of always standing behind an appropriately placed plant became too much, and someone invented portable plants.

Then (finally!) someone had the great idea of slaughtering animals to clothe ourselves.


PETA was still a long way off...

And that's where we're skipping ahead a few thousand years to get past all the freaky weird fashions of Revolutionary France and stuff et cetera.


On the SDA Facebook page I asked my followers to give me pictures of "outrageous fashion." As usual, only Satchel responded.

:\

The rest of you have failed me. You deserve to be disciplined!


"I should discipline you! Five times a day! With bricks! Uh-huh... in a pillowcase." -_-

^You get bonus points if you know what I'm quasi-quoting there. ;)


Anyway... let's take a look at some of Satchel's photographs.


...okay let's just look at ONE of Satchel's photographs:

"I'm the law around these parts..."

This picture is Satchel and her husband, Sheriff Woody. This IS how they dress everyday!


...I wish...


Wouldn't it be fun if more people forsook modern fashion, and took a trip to the waybackwhen when we all wore DIFFERENT fashions?

Don't worry... I don't mean anything crazy like the 80's or anything! Just like... 1864...


Okay, so that's just my fantasy.


Whatever.


Let's ask ourselves a question now: What makes fashion good? What makes fashion bad? What makes fashion fashionable and what makes the unfashionable unfashioned? Are there unfashionistas out there to let us know? (Do we just call them "geeks"?) Are you an unfashionista? Or a fascist? A fattist? (someone who is prejudiced and discriminates based on body fat ratios...)




Fattism at work... :(

 All right... I'm just going to admit it. I really don't have anything to say about fashion.


:\

You should still hang on my every word though... because that's FUN!


...or so I hear...


Whatever. You can all blame Indiana for this travesty of a post... she made me do it about fashion. :('

Oh well...


Ciao for now.


And Happy Birthday to Doctor Who--quite possibly the greatest fashion icon of... somewhere... somewhen... who knows... (DW was first aired on November 23rd, 1963... it is 48 years old today.)

 Just go do some evil.


~Rafe

Onward! And Blablah Bla Blah--Fixed the Link*

We quit home about 3:00 in the afternoon, and arrived in Aurora, CO. about 11:00-ish. Of course we entered a new time zone and gained an hour, so the trip was actually about eight hours long.
Anywho... so I'm in Aurora.

Is this a "yay" situation?

Sort of... ish.

I am going to spend the next two weeks in the boring confines of a hospital room, but (on the bright side) I should come out the other end feeling less like a dead man in a sand pile.

Interesting note: I discovered today that the same company that supplies toilet-paper holders to icky-ish gas stations also supplies rubber gloves to nice health clinics. o.O Does this inspire confidence in you?

It does me. -_-

Who better to trust with health than TP people?

Besides the NAZIs, of course.



Sanitary NAZIs

 Luckily the glove-wearing people I have to deal with aren't NAZIs. No one likes NAZI doctors... I am part Jewish, ya know.

I have promised Indiana, or The Ingenue at Oddbits and Grimcracks that I would do a post about Fashion sometime in the next two weeks. So look forward to that.

Also, if you haven't already, go watch my movie Urban Prophecies here.

So, I guess that's all for now.

Go do some evil, and ciao!

~Rafe

Quotations From my Quotable Friends

I haven't posted in almost a month... and for that I am sorry. :\ I'm still working on that crossword puzzle I promised, but I lost the paper with the answers, and my sister repossessed the computer I was making it on... so it may be a while. :D

I hope this entertains you in the mean time. It is a collection of some of my favorite quotes from friends, myself, and others that I really like. Though, because my friends may not wish to admit they fraternize with me, I'll only identify them by initials.

"After the punch line, you need to shut up." ~Old Gubaran proverb. "YOU LIKE IT CEITAINLY WE BLESS YOUR HEALTH THE STYLE IS NUMEROUS!" ~Actual text from the packaging for a toy bazooka. Bad grammar and spelling as well. "What is a rafe?" ~J.C. (No, that's not "Jesus Christ," although God is a friend of mine, He knows what a "rafe" is.) "Well it's entertaining writing, and someone got pudding on this." ~M.B. "We will discuss it. End of discussion!" ~M.A.B. "Have people always been stupid or is it a recent development?" ~Danae from "Non Sequitur" "Give me a fly swatter and I'll show you how much of a teddy bear I am!" ~C.R. Also (not) Known As: "Teddy Bear" "The jokes in life are funnier than the tragedies are sad." ~Anonymous "You know, its really too bad you are a guy, you would make a great girl." ~K.M.V.K. (A girl said this to me.) "He's like my girlfriend, except he's not gay." ~L.J.S. (Again... a girl said this about me. I'm beginning to see a pattern... But, she's correct, I am not gay.) "Aaaaugh! I broke the Bible!" ~ M.A.B. Me: "I call it art." M.A.B.: "I call it a bent straw." "Remember... [long pause] ...I forgot." ~My Mother "Let's start over, and I won't blonde this one up." ~T.O. "If you read that E-mail, it's proof that something is wrong with your brain." ~Alice from "Dilbert" "Would you mind not standing on my chest? My hat's on fire." ~Doctor Who (Tom Baker) "Stupidity has a knack of getting its way." ~Albert Camus "Cleverness and stupidity go together." ~Ovambo proverb "You have issues, dahling, ok?" ~P.B. "Don't worry, stupidity produces antibodies." ~Susie from "Calvin and Hobbes" "Which way is straight for me?" ~Me. "A folk song is a living organism; it is ever changing." ~Charles Hoffer "The saying 'I think therefore I am' is not necessarily reversible." ~Me. (Aren't I wise?) "Raphael is always right." ~K.V. “When in doubt, kill cute things.” ~Stephen Pastis "Of all the people in the world... you are one of them." "The greatest thing about America is that we are not judged by what we are, but by who we can schmooze." ~Aubry Anne Carechild "I can only be nice to people for so long. It's like a countdown clock. Some people's time is longer than others. Some people never had any time at all. I'm grateful to have friends that stuck around even after their nice time was up." ~M.R. (Seriously, one of my favorite quotes ever.) "Sometimes the chai tea flows through your blood stream and makes you giddy enough not to care about grammer or spelling!" ~K.V. "Rafe's just gonna make a shitty comment, ignore him." ~J.J.B. "Penguins are the highest form of comedy." ~An old Gubaran proverb. "Swine, ceramic sentinel, Guard the golden disc!" ~Dwight Erthenwall "Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it." "A well developed sense of humor is the freezer that adds balance to a penguin's steps as it waddles the iceberg of life." ~L.H. "Hunt for ways of adding the twist of funny." "The best friends you could ever surround yourself with are the type of friends who would murder your enemies with a rusty spoon just to see you smile." ~S.P. "Hey, what do you think of Pavlov's theory that the Pope is Catholic?" ~Bucky Katt from "Get Fuzzy" "No shame. No mercy. No glory." ~P.B. "My eyes were vomiting." ~M.A.B. (Discussing "Transformers 2." Apparently she didn't like it...) "Explosions are cooler than kites. Word." ~M.A.B. "A true genius will spread the genius' work so that the lesser can know as well." ~S.P. "Dude, if stealing a stick of gum will keep me out of Hell, I'm gonna go rob Wrigley's" ~M.K.V.K. "If you were coming at me with a weed whacker I'd be scared." ~M.B. (Even in context, that was a weird one...) "If you need instructions on how to wash your hands, Maybe you shouldn’t have a job." ~KJ52 "Lost is just like Gilligan's Island... only trippier... and on steroids." ~Me... I have the right to quote myself. Anyway... I hope you enjoyed at least SOME of those. I know I did. I tried to take out the ones that are only funny to me because they recall a funny memory. Still... I'll try to post again this month, and hopefully I'll have that crossword puzzle up soon. For now, Ciao! And, as always, go do some evil. ~Rafe

A Letter from my Doctors... a Reply from their Patient

First some back story:

The Doctors at the CF (yes, I have Cystic Fibrosis) clinic apparently don't understand common courtesy. Who schedules appointments with people without asking them when they're free? Or even, at the very least, telling that person when they they are free and asking them which of these dates/times work? (Follow that?)

The Doctors at the Clinic do. :\

Needless to say they scheduled me an appointment and sent me a little letter summoning my presence at an arbitrarily set date and time that neither I nor ANY of my family members had a hand in selecting. A while later I got a letter saying that that date and time didn't work for them, and that we would have to reschedule. (I thought that was funny. They can't even summon me when THEY are free...)

A day or two later we got a phone-call from the doctors. They wanted to schedule an appointment with me. I wasn't home at the time, and my mother took the call.

What my mother told them: "I don't know his schedule, you'll really have to talk to him."

Not even a tentative decision was reached in that conversation.

A few days later I received a letter informing me that I was summoned to an appointment that was again set arbitrarily without me or my family having any say in the matter.

I rolled my eyes, and promptly forgot about the appointment. Oops.

Today I received this letter:


Biltz, Raphael J

This letter is a reminderof our office policy concerning missed appointments. You and/or a family member missed your appointment. Per *Hospital Name Deleted* policy you and/or your family members will be dismissed from the clinic after three no shows. When you cannot keep an appointment, you MUST call prior to your appointment to cancel. If this is not done, you will be dismissed from the clinic and then would have to find a physician outside the *Name Deleted* outpatient clinics. If you have questions, you may contact our office.

Please do not ignore this warning.

Sincerely,
*Hospital Name Deleted*


I have written the following reply:


*Hospital Name Deleted*

This letter is a reminder of my patient policy concerning scheduling appointments. You and/or a staff member scheduled an appointment without consulting me. Per my policy you and/or your appointment will be ignored when arbitrarily scheduled without my consent. When you wish to schedule an appointment, as per the dictates of common courtesy, you MUST call prior to setting the appointment time and date and confer with me. If this is not done, you will not be taken seriously. If you have questions, you may contact me at home.

Please do not ignore this reminder.

Sincerely,
Raphael J. Biltz

Do you know why they call people receiving medical attention "Patients"? Because you really have to be patient with the Doctors. Not only do they make you wait twenty minutes in a cold room (as often as not in your underwear) they act like idiots and we have to remain polite.