Rainbow Reverie

In the hot dry heat of the summer of 2005, in a plateau desert town where tiny green bugs swarmed so thick sometimes you’d have to clean hundreds of bug bodies, smeared heavy with green slime, off your headlights before they’d work at night, I put pens in my hair.

I’d pile it up thick and messy, off my bare white shoulders, and wrap wide rubber bands the color of old folks flesh around it. It needed to be out of my face for the hours I spent poring over ink-smeared pages with a leaky red pen, looking up sometimes to push my black-rimmed glasses up my nose, crack a joke, have a drink. Eventually I’d stick a pen in that mess, and lose track of it. Find another one. Get back to work. Put it up there, too. Wander to a meeting, collect another pen and stow it in my hair as well.

Eventually there’d I’d be, a nymphet of the copy desk, the medusa of writing implements. Bare-armed and crowned with words. What a wonderful summer.

It’s a new year, time for a new project. This one will cure the winter blues AND your New Year’s hangover. That’s right, it’s RAINBOW VODKA!

Who DOESN’T like to begin each new year with a hangover so foul you wish the sun would supernova just so that it would be sweet, dark, glorious night for all eternity?

This rainbow skittles vodka is so delicious and colorful, it would make even Ebenezer Scrooge feel merry and bright. Appropriate for all seasons and all moods, it can be served sweet ‘n’ neat or mixed with all manner of fizzy things. Serving suggestions to follow!

First, get some flasks. They don’t need to be fancy or even match. But it helps if they’re clear, because what you’re making is going to be purdy. REAL PURDY.

I got these on the cheap at The Container Store.

Then, get a big ol’ bag of Skittles.

I like to get the supersize bags, but you can get as many or as few as you want, depending on how much vodka you want and/or how many skittles you think you can eat.

Step 2: Next (and this is kinda sorta my favorite part), bust open that bag of Skittles and separate them all by color. Be sure to eat a few to “even out the numbers.” You’ll want about 10 Skittles per ounce of vodka for infusing. I usually make a batch that uses a normal size bottle of vodka (a fifth), and so use 60 Skittles of each color.

You can use coffee mugs, like I did, or cereal bowls, or your kitchen counter, or whatever you want.

Step 3: Next, you want to put the Skittles into some infusion containers – leftover water bottles, soda bottles or any other type of container with a lid works just fine. Use a funnel to get the Skittles into your bottle if you need to, then pour 6 ounces of vodka over each color.

Shake ‘em to within an inch of their lives and then let ‘em sit overnight.

Step 4: Shake, shake, shake. Wait, wait, wait. The next morning, shake ‘em again. If they’re not all dissolved yet, give it a little more time or a little more shaking. Once everything is fully dissolved, get some coffee filters or paper towels (or if you’re fancy, cheesecloth might work). You’ll notice there’s a lot of white gunk floating around in there – that’s the candy coating, and that’s what the coffee filters are for.

Step 5: For each color of Skittle, put a coffee filter into a funnel over a bowl with a lip or a measuring cup, and pour the infusion through the filter a little at a time. You might have to use a spoon or your finger to move the sediment out of the way, or use a few coffee filters.

Step 6: Once you’ve done that, it’s time to put the tasty Skittles vodka into their rightful homes – your lovely glass flasks or jars! Use your funnel again, and be sure to rinse it out between colors so your flavors don’t get all muddled.

The delicious finished product!

Serving suggestions:

Serve neat or on the rocks, plain as the day is long.
Mix with sprite or club soda, on ice.
Mix each color with a little juice or soda of its corresponding flavor, and something fizzy:

• red with cherry coke or Hawaiian punch
• orange with orange juice and club soda
• yellow with lemonade
• green with limeade
• purple with grape soda

Handy list of supplies:

• A fifth of vodka (we like Monopolowa, because we get to sing the Monopolowa song, which we made up, and involves clapping and foot-stomping)
• 1 pound bag of Skittles
• Five 8.5 ounce or bigger flasks, bottles or jars
• Five empty water or soda bottles
• A funnel
• Bowls or cups for separating the Skittles by color
• A measuring cup
• Coffee filters or paper towels

Enjoy!

Via.

Hello darlings! It’s a little-known fact that I’m addicted to meetups. They give me an opportunity to wear jaunty hats and bright colors (how else will people from the internet recognize me?) and have coffee or cocktails with strangers who then become friends. What’s not to love?

The next one I’m doing is in Portland. It’s something of a queer lady coffee klatch – but I’d love to meet anyone of you who is queer-friendly and would like to grab a cup of coffee with me. So come one, come all – bring an open mind and a couple bucks for a cup o’ joe or hot chocolate. I can’t wait to see your smiling faces!

The Deets:

Where: BiPartisan Cafe, 7901 SE Stark St., Portland
When: Saturday, Dec. 15, 10 a.m.
Why: For fun!

At 21m24s:

“…It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.”

ALSO big wins in Washington state, Maryland, Maine and Minnesota. And let’s not forget Wisconsin! Take that Mittens!

To quote my roommate: As sorority girls everywhere have been saying for years: “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

I recently wrote an article for xoJane about leggings. A fairly innocuous topic, right? Sure, people have strong opinions about fashion. And leggings are a particularly polarizing issue: Of those that give a crap, half think they’re god’s gift to comfiness, and the other half think they’re an abomination to butts everywhere. So while I was expecting some fallout of the “those aren’t pants, dumbass!” variety, I wasn’t prepared for the body-shaming that I got.

My favorite remark came from commenter Maggie Wessel, who had this to add about my worthiness as a human being:

“… I kind of hate the author’s claim of [having] “jiggly” legs. YOU DO NOT. Shut up, stop trying to become more human by deciding you’re a fat girl just like us.

Also, go buy real pants.”

Ms. Wessel can excoriate my legwear choices all she wants. But her claim that I am less than human because I don’t fit some arbitrary definition of “fat” is total, complete bullshit. “Stop trying to become more human by deciding you’re a fat girl”? Wait, what?

This sounds like a familiar argument. Oh, right: It’s that message we’ve been hearing our whole lives: “You are less than if you do not conform to my exacting standards of beauty. And you will never conform ENOUGH.” Don’t we ladyfolk have to deal with enough shit about our bodies, no matter what size or shape or color we are, without adding yet more criteria? Thin enough to conform, but fat enough to be human? No. Just, no.

Turning our anger on “skinny” chicks is counterproductive. Eloquent Mags isn’t pissed at ME, she’s pissed at THE PATRIARCHY. She’s pissed that a woman’s self-worth always, always boils down to her body and its fuckability quotient. And you know what? I’m pissed too. But instead of farting all over the internet about how chunky women are better than skinny women, or curvy ladies are better than not-curvy ladies, or willowy betches are better than round squishy betches, let’s all focus our attention on judging women for their actual human qualities. Sound like a plan?

Furthermore, let’s stop posting this shit all over Facebook:

Ah, yes. Here we are protesting the way we judge women’s bodies by… JUDGING WOMEN’S BODIES.

The way to get people to stop judging women’s bodies is to STOP JUDGING WOMEN’S BODIES. Not to switch WHICH particular body type we deem superior and which we deem inferior. This whole “real women have curves” nonsense is bullshit, and anyone with half a brain cell who takes half a minute to think about it knows it.

What does that make me, a FAKE woman? Last time I checked I had two X chromosomes just like most of these other betches. And I could even go out and acquire myself a Y chromosome and STILL BE A WOMAN. Mind-blowing, I know. I could even have been born a man and still consider myself a woman. Or not have any gender at all, or be triangular or trapezoidal or spherical and STILL BE A FOR-REALLY-REALS HUMAN BEING.

I don’t need jiggly thighs to be considered human. Nor do I need to have thin thighs. Or big boobs. Or two kidneys, or two legs, or eyeballs, even! It’s amazing, the beautiful rainbow of body types human beings of all genders come in. And whether or not anyone considers our body types attractive should have very little to do with how we stack up as human beings.

So Maggie Wessel, I respectfully disagree. However, you’ll be happy to know I have bought several pairs of real pants. Because unlike women, there is actually a distinction between “real” pants and “not real” pants. Because pants, unlike women, are objects that can easily be sorted into categories based on their physical characteristics. You see the difference?