My name is Alisa Starr. And 2 weeks ago, I moved from Portland to Seattle. I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. I also have them in lots of stores. And I’ve made and sold 45,767 Snarky Cards so far.

I’ve been planning and working on this move for a couple of months. And I’m a little surprised that I pulled it off.

And I’m uncomfortable, finding new places for things I can’t quite decide if I should have kept. My room is too small for all of my shit. Or maybe I should have just burned everything and started over, instead of shlepping all these journals and craft tools and books and dvds from that tiny, shitty town I’ve escaped.

I called Stephen in a panic. “Nothing. Is. Organized.” Anguish made my voice shrill. Stephen remembers the satisfied look on my face when I finally made file folders for all of the love letters I got in high school. And organized them by sender, and year and month. “I know you can do this, Alisa. You can organize anything.” He spoke slowly, so I had to really pay attention to him. He also sounded really sure, so I thought about it. And I remembered that the list of people I’ve slept with has it’s own file folder. I started thinking maybe I just have the wrong furniture.

“But why is it so hard?” I whined to Arlette. “This was so easy when I was young! I used to do it all the time! I thought it was fun!”

“Remember how fucked up we were? Yeah, moving was fun because all we had to concentrate on for a few days, was putting things in a box and hauling them from one place to another. Now we like our lives. We’re comfortable. And moving is exhausting.” I thought about it for a minute. “Oh. Yeah. I was pretty sure I was gonna end up in jail or in a mental ward until I was, like, 27. And moving was a vacation from worrying about that shit.” My voice caught a little bit. I hadn’t realized those fears had passed until right then.

This is me at my landlord Jen's house, for Thanksgiving. That's Seattle behind me. Isn't it pretty? Isn't it nice that Jen invited me to her house for Thanksgiving? Yes. I do look very, very tired. I am really tired.

I love my new house, a thousand times more than I loved that shitty apartment I used to inhabit. The house is old. And, unlike my old apartment, nothing is my fault. If something doesn’t work, I don’t have to fix it, or report it, and then get in trouble, because my land-lord is an asshole, and is pretty sure everything is my fault.

If a bill comes, I don’t have to collect the money to pay it before something gets shut-off. The walls are not permanently stained by my hair-dye, or my Snarky Card paint. I don’t have to fill the house with furniture, and I alone am not responsible for making sure that the walls are covered with inviting art. I just have to keep my space clean, and write checks when the money is due. It’s such a relief. I had no idea how much of a constant worry that apartment was until it wasn’t anymore.

And my new landlord is  awesome, and nice, as opposed to the property management company I’ve been dealing with for the last six years, who used to exude a freakish amount of despair and weirdly displaced anger for a small office operating in a supposedly friendly town.

This is my friend Alice! This is the pillow she made for my ass, when she heard that my new studio has a cement floor. Isn't Alice nice?

My new office/paint studio, is no longer My Living Room. Which means that my room-mates and their guests no longer randomly wander into the middle of my 12 hour painting jag and emotionally vomit all of their problems all over me, both annoying and distracting me.  It’s cold, and the floor is cement. So, I need to get cushions. And maybe a space heater. But the ass-cushion Alice made me before I left, and my paint sweaters seem to be doing the job all right. And the privacy allows me to get lost in my work. Which is something I treasure so much. I need that psycho-paint-a-thon head space. It gives me relief so that I can go out and sell cards.

My cats are happy. And I didn’t lose that much shit in the move. And I have friends. And selling here is pure joy. It’s so easy. People just seem to like my cards. And me. And they enjoy buying them. And they’re so fucking funny! It was fun being the funniest person in the room in Portland, but this last year it’s just gotten lonely. In Seattle I’m one of a bunch of clever people. And perfect strangers tell me the funniest, most surprising stories. And finally being around people who are as charismatic as me is making me up my game.

So: in conclusion, I live in Seattle now, and even though the move made me really fucking tired, I really like it here. You might see me haunting the bars on Capitol Hill. Or, if you miss me, you can get my Snarky Cards from the Internets. And as a prize, because I’m so delighted by Seattle, Go to http://snarkycards.etsy.com and enter the coupon code seattlerocks, to get FREE SHIPPING!

Love,

Alisa

This is me, making Snarky Cards. Not Glamorous, I know. but painting is messy.Yes, I'm smoking a joint.

Dear Internets,

As some of you know, My name is Alisa Starr. And I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. They will crack you the fuck up.

Here are my boobs to make up for my messy painting picture.

Lately, I’ve been losing myself in my work. I’m learning how to paint new shit. I’m selling like crazy. I’m getting more internet sales. It’s been liberating. Part of that, is because Arlette came to pull me out of the depths of my recent despair.

Arlette is one of a few of The Bad-Ass Bitches. The other girls in this crew are Claire and KT. I keep trying to unite the bitches, and they keep resisting. “What if we’re all in a car accident together?” Rebecca argued reasonably when I complained about her reluctance to enact a scene from my own private Justice League movie. Each of The Bitches has their own unique super-powers. However, all the bitches are hilarious.

This is just one of the gems on pantslock.com

Arlette is really good at making fun of other people. She has other skills. But her ability to call other people on being dicks, even very subtle-y, has always been one of the things I treasure most about her. Recently, Arlette has started a website called Pantslock. It’s a website devoted to REAL introductory emails sent from men on dating sites. I like to think that I helped inspire it. In the early days of my sluttery, I placed a lot of Craigslist ads. I remember printing out some of the creepier and more insane responses to bring to her house, so that we could read them to each other over whiskey.  Sometimes I would get a novel of gibberish. And sometimes I would get insults. And sometimes I would get “Hey! Like yer ad! U wanna hook up?” And then there were unsolicited dick pics. Some of which I kept.

Either way, Arlette has created a nice place on The Internets to submit weird-ass shit that men send you when they see your profile, and want to sleep with you. It’s hilarious. And updated often. And you should totally make it your home-page. I’ve made it mine.

Lately, I’ve been swimming a lot. And I’ve been selling a lot. Meridian Gold Dust, North 45, Circa 33 and the Great Muu-Muu’s have been my hooking grounds. I’ve been digging the Art Prostitute gig. But Seattle keeps tugging on me, and so this weekend, I’m gonna be selling my wares up there. Until then, I’ll see ya at the bar.

Love,

Alisa

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Alisa Starr, and I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. They will crack you the fuck up.

For the last few months, I’ve had a lot of Big Stuff happen. I was in a relationship, which messed with my identity. Because I haven’t had a relationship in about ten years. And it ended in a fiery explosion of suckiness. And then I was heart-broken. When things were at their best with Magnum, I was freaked, completely freaked out. “It’s like I spent the last 17 years building this brick wall, and he burst in and punched a hole through it.” I complained to Arlette. “That’s not true. You’ve been taking the wall down, slowly for the last few years. It’s a little more like you got it down from 10 feet to 3 feet high, and he came and kicked those bricks over.” She countered. I harumphed. I didn’t like that I was letting someone in that close. But I couldn’t help myself. I was in love with him. And I haven’t been in love since I was a teenager.

I know this doesn't really fit the post, but I like putting pictures in. And since this post is about my inner turmoil, I thought I'd show you pretty pictures of me. Hoping my boobs would ease the suffering of having to read this. Yes, I'm wearing clown panties.

I knew he would leave me. So did he. I just hoped that before he did, we would have some good times. And I would feel like I was good at it. The boy girl thing, I mean. I just wanted a little hope. Instead, he hurt me as hard as he could and then he left. In retrospect, I should have expected that he was the kind of person who hurts others because he’s unhappy. My parents were those kinds of people. And it would have been a lot to hope for that I’d gotten over my shit enough to date outside my type. We re-enact the most painful things that happen to us over and over again, until we realize that we can’t fix it. And then, hopefully, we move on.

The fact that I was in a relationship kinda fucked with me. The fact that I was broken-hearted rocked my world. For the last four months, I’ve been trying to put back together my sense of myself.

It’s been17 years since I’ve been hurt so badly. Men don’t hurt my feelings. They piss me off. I think that the fact of my pain was worst to me than the pain itself. I just kept thinking I’d made a terrible mistake. My friends were sympathetic, but in the end, they’d shrug and say “Well, yeah, DUH. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and you get hurt.” And then they’d keep talking. But I couldn’t hear whatever came after that. Because I was stuck. Alisa Kay Starr doesn’t get hurt. When a boy pisses her off, she goes out to the bar, and finds another boy to go home with, and she keeps doing that until she can’t remember why she liked the boy who pissed her off in the first place.

But that scenario was not this. I was mopey. And I couldn’t imagine sleeping with anyone who wasn’t Magnum. And I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself to get over it. I asked a few other people about break-up procedures and got nowhere. I wanted a ritual. Something to do with myself while I was waiting for time to do the thing that time usually does. And as I floundered for something to do, I began to question my identity more. I think I was just stunned that anyone got that close. And I felt like an idiot for letting Magnum in. All of which are normal feelings, according to the regular people I know. But they weren’t normal for me. And the fact that I was hurt made me feel like I’d made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. And the thing was, I’d waited for him. I never told him this, in fact, I haven’t told very many people this, Internets, but while I’m confiding, I might as well get it all out. I wanted to move last year. But some part of me knew that he’d be free, and we’d hook up, and so I stayed, waiting for him. That little voice in the back of my head, which tells me which cards to give which girl, and when leave for the bus (Alisa doesn’t have a watch. Alisa has intuition. God, talking about myself in the third person is kinda icky.) told me to wait for Magnum. So I did. And being with him gutted me.

This is my most popular card of all time. I don't need any intuition for this card. I just hand it to everyone.

So, naturally, I started to doubt my intuition. The thing is, I depend on my intuition a lot. Snarky Cards is based on it. I try to make as many smarty-pants decisions as I can. But a lot of selling my art isn’t based on the bottom line. Some of it is me, meeting someone, and 30 seconds later, coming up with a pile of cards that fit their life perfectly. People think I’ve read their mind. And I have. It’s my own little psychic trick.

If I don’t trust those instincts, I screw up. But more than that, I start feeling insecure, and then I really screw up. When I get insecure, that part of me that can figure out how you feel about your lover, or you father is operating without any kind of constraint. And so for no apparent reason, I start talking about how much better my relationship has gotten with my grandmother since she died. And your face crumples, and it turns out that your grandmother was the most important part of your life, and she died two days ago. No shit, that kind of stuff happens all the time when I’m not listening to my intuition. Obviously, making people angry/sad is not good for business. And stepping on other peoples feelings depresses and frustrates me. I’ve been able to pull things out of people since I was 11 years old. Being able to pull a grown-ups’ secrets out of them scared the shit out of me as a kid. It took me a long time to figure out what to do with what people tell me, and how to leave their stuff alone. So when I suck at it, it makes me feel 11 again. Overwhelmed by my lame psychic powers.

So, I felt stupid, and sad, and alone, and bad at relationships. And I thought seriously about giving up on Snarky Cards. Because if I can’t read people, I can’t sell. If I can’t sell, I might as well just go try to get a Real Job. And anyway, I am clearly no longer a slut. I don’t drink that much anymore. What’s the point of my tiny little career, anyway? And so on and so on. You get the point, the more I questioned myself, the less sense my life made.

Me and Arlette at our favorite bar in San Francisco

Which makes a lot of sense. My identity was completely changed by Magnum. It’s still changing, in a really big way. And that kind of shift is scary. I don’t think I started to be OK until Arlette came for the weekend. We were going to go out and take over Portland with our unified radness. But in the end, we had a slumber party weekend. We dyed my hair, and went to the goodwill, and Arlette made amazing food, and we talked about stuff, and watched the first season of Veronica Mars. And by the time she left, I felt a little more like myself again. We’ve been best friends for 8 years. And I think I just needed to be with someone I love, who loves me, so that I could feel like “Maybe I don’t suck at this. Maybe I don’t always make shitty decisions about love. Maybe it’s OK that I made a mistake with Magnum.”

And, of course, there’s Karate. Karate and I have been going home from the bar, off and on for the last year. Not seriously. Never more than once a month. But still, it’s the longest I’ve ever had any kind of sexual relationship. And Karate and I see each other at the bar at least once a week. We’re friends with the occasional benefit. In the wake of my Veronica Mars weekend, I think I was feeling stronger. Whenever I’ve been annoyed with the way things are between me and Karate, I tell him, and he thinks about it, and then he does what he can. It was late, and I’d had a lot of whiskey. “You make me feel like I’m good at this stuff.” I sniffled into my drink. He smiled. “You’re really good at this stuff.” he reassured me. From there he went on to say how I’m fucking beautiful. And how I make great art. And, in the end, he was just so nice to me.

The best thing about my relationship with Magnum is that I was so hurt afterwards, I had a hard time walking. He didn’t hit me. But he said some pretty terrible things to me before he ran away. And I think some of my identity un-hinging, was me realizing I just couldn’t be with assholes anymore. They’re my type. It’s my Daddy Issues. I’m always trying to make up with Jon. Not actually with him. Jon is an asshole. He has done and said some horrible things to me. He can’t fix a lot of the shit he’s done. No. My relationship with my actual father is over. And so I date assholes. I think when I was in my early twenties, I thought that it was love when a guy told me I was worthless. Therapy relieved me of that retarded notion. But as I got older, I think I really was trying to figure out if I could make it work with someone who treats me like shit. As practice. Hoping if I could win over an asshole, and get one to act right, I could take those asshole-taming skills back to my father, and give it one last shot. But with Magnum, I think it was just purely habit. And when it was over, and I was literally limping with heart-break, I realized, I have to give up assholes entirely. I need a lot of confidence and a good amount of peace of mind in order to do my job. And I can’t sacrifice any of that to a lover.

Which freaked me out further. I mean, I’m no longer a slut. I’m now a girl who has feelings. And those feelings can get hurt. And so, I can’t date assholes anymore. Some part of me just believed that I would never get laid again. No-one bitches about not getting laid as much as nice guys. It’s a little ironic that I was destitute, because all of a sudden I realized someone would have to be REALLY nice to me in order to get my clothes off. And I just didn’t believe that would ever happen. Maybe because I’ve never had a romantic relationship with someone who was really nice to me.

So, when Karate swept me off my feet, with his compliments, and his kindness, I happily followed him home. And sleeping with Karate again, really made me feel like it’s going to be OK. Karate is a great lover. So, I didn’t feel like I was trading anything in for the niceness of him. And it reassured me that I will have just as many nice lovers as I want.

Beauty and The Beast is still my favorite movie. I mean, she reads, she says what she thinks, she has brown hair, and she turns an asshole into a Prince. It's like Disney selling me my own story.

And, so I figured out that, yeah, all this shit is different. I’m loving differently. I’m letting people in. And that means that my ups and downs will be higher and lower. And I have to let go of this angry slutty girl I used to be. But if I were telling the truth on myself, I’d say that while I was that angry, slutty girl; I incessantly wrote poetry, and I lived for didactic feminist literature. I scrap-booked like crazy. And I was still sentimental as Hell. I really wanted a dog. And I over-identified with Disney movies. I was never adeptly described by two words. No matter how rad those words were. So maybe letting go of those two words is not the end of an identity.

So, I’ve come back to myself. I still like to give strangers advice. I still like to go to bars, no matter how much I drink when I get there. I still like to flirt with every man I meet, whether I go home with them indiscriminately or not. This last month, I’ve started to realize that I’m not ready to give up on Snarky Cards yet. And as my confidence grows back, my intuition comes with it. And I get a little better at all of it.

So, you can see why it’s been so long in between posts. I think that the last time I posted, I was in the middle of this. I wanted to wait until I saw my way out of it a

Me and my typewriter, Bob, and my tits, and my cards

little bit before I wrote about it. I’m still trying to scrape together enough money to move to Seattle in October, and so you might see me out selling at the bars. These days I tend to stick to my favorites: Gold Dust Meridian, Circa 33, North 45, 21st Ave Bar and Grill and my beloved Muu-Muu’s. So, if you want a Snarky Card, from a chick who is trying to pull her head together, stop by any of those bars on a Friday or Satuday night, and keep an eye out for my tits, which will be hanging out of whatever slutty red dress I’ve recently found at the good-will. I’ll happily show you the new shit. And with a $20 purchase, you get a free motor-boat.

Love,

Alisa

Dear Internets,

 As you may know, my name is Alisa Starr. I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. They will crack you the fuck up. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. Mostly, I sell them in Portlandia. And sometimes, I sell them in San Francisco, where my bad-ass bitches reside. Even more sometimes, I sell them in Seattle, where my sister lives.

Recently, in the middle of my life-philosophy-blowing  Thing, I also went back to San Jose, from whence I came, and confronted my parents about their abuse, and explained to them, that no matter how nice they would like to be to me now, it doesn’t make up for the shit they did to me before. And we’re not going to have a relationship.The depths of my despair meant that I couldn’t do any of that shit at home. I think I was left alone too long with my feelings or something. Because after a while, I was crying every day. For hours. And nobody came to check on me. And after a little while, my abandonment issues started sounding alarms. And then the fact that I was sad didn’t matter. The fact that nobody checked on me was the problem. I felt alone. And I was sure that I’d been right all along, and everyone will leave me eventually, because who could ever learn to love a loud-mouthed-big-assed-titty-showing-bitch? (I have illustrated both my big ass and my titty-showing above, for those of you who would like to see more boobs and ass to get you through this long-ass emotional post.)

All of this line-drawing, boundary-having, combined with all this relationship-having (and then Not Having) has left me…drained. I found myself in “the depths of despair” to quote Anne of Green Gables. And I couldn’t figure out how to snap myself out of it. Eventually my shrink suggested drugs. Or, she strongly recomended, that I call my friends and ask them to come help me. Which is hard. I hate asking for help. But more than that, I hate pills. I love weed, but pills kinda give me the heebie-jeebies. And so, when people suggest I take them, I try to fix my shit, so that I don’t find myself at a pharmacists’s mercy. So, I called my sister. And she said “Come to Seattle. Bring you paint, and your cards. I’ll buy you a train ticket, and you can stay here, and work until you feel better.”

So, I’ve been hiding out, in her apartment on Capital Hill, painting and thinking, and smoking weed, and worrying about how I got myself into this hole. Joy has been a goddess. Sometimes, when we’re together we’re 15 again, and everything we do is hilarious, and a little mean. And sometimes we’re in our thirties, trying to figure out how to be kind to each other, only after recently ending our five-year-war. For most of our childhood’s we were on each other’s sides. We kept each other safe. But in our twenties we became different people, or more ourselves than we had been.

THis was my motto for the last ten years. Well, maybe my motto was more like "Be alone, fuck often".

Joy falls into relationships easily, and stays for as long as she can stand it. I avoid contact. I like sex, but I think, for the most part, I haven’t really trusted men. And it’s easier to fuck ‘em and leave ‘em than it is to trust them to be nice to me. And due to said shitty childhood, I’ve had really crap taste in men. And I always thought, if I’m gonna have shitty taste in men, I might as well keep contact with them brief and to the point.

But my inability to pull myself out of this funk has trumped all that. We may annoy the fuck out of each other, but in the end, she wants me to be OK. And I think I just needed that feeling. I think I just needed to stay with someone who gave a shit that I was OK. Portland is a wonderful town, but I don’t think I have a lot of friends there. And even if I did, I don’t have anyone who wants to take care of me. Who will check in, because they know I’m going through something hard. So, I’ve been sleeping on her couch, watching her dress her friends up for parties, and eating her yummy food. And after a day or two, I was able to start painting again, and then I was able to start typing. And then I started selling in Seattle.

Anyway, that all seems to be changing. I think that the depths of my despair come, not from a break-up, like I first thought, but from me, creating a new person inside of myself. My shrink likes it when I do this. She calls it cocooning, and she gets this look in her eyes, like I’d make a good case study. I sit around, and I make art, and I think about who I’ve been, and what I thought, and I get rid of some stuff, and I figure out what to keep. And in the end, I have more self esteem. And I take less shit. And I tell people how I feel, and what I need quicker. It takes a lot of sleeping, and some crying. And I have to talk to somebody who knows me, and can talk me down, when I climb myself up a tree, with all of my crazy-thinking.

Like, last night, when I tried to pin all of my bad feelings on Magnum, and Arlette wasn’t having it. “You just got stretched too thin.” she chided. “You tried to do a lot of hard things at once, and now you’re a little vulnerable. But don’t blame Magnum for all of this. No relationship can knock you down this much. And you’re not broken, you’re just a little delicate now. You’ll recharge. And no GUY will ever shake you up this much. This is your family, and your parents, and your identity.”

This is Jenny, one of Joy's crew, in the middle of before-the-party-dress-up!

So, I’ve been hibernating at Joy’s. And her life is fucking amazing. Her friends all live a block away from her. And they all wander as a group from house to house, carrying weed and beer with them as they go, trying on each other’s clothes, telling each other funny stories, making or eating food, and generally preparing for the next party, knowing full well, that the party they’re already at will be better than wherever their going. Her friends come over, to do all of those things, whether Joy’s there or not. And so

Yuriko and Marissi getting ready to party!

I’ve been admitted into this club, forced to hang out with her hilarious and kind friends. And being surrounded by people has helped me with the cocoon thing. I miss my cats. But so far, I don’t seem to miss PDX much.

Seattle, it turns out is much more marvelous than even I had anticipated. The people here are smart, and funny and they are trying to figure out sex and themselves, and dating, and friendship. I’ve been trying out some new bars. And I think I’ve made some friends. There are a few cute boys that I have some simpatico with, who might wanna hang out in the future. Everyone seems to dig Snarky Cards. And Snarky Tits. And life in this town is a lot less bleak than life in Portland has been. “So, move and have sex, and make friends, and be around people who actually do stuff. Portland is where hipsters go to die.” Arlette recited, in a bored tone of voice. She’s been trying to get me to move for ages. And you, Dear Internets, might have noticed, that I haven’t been happy in PDX for a while. “Well, you told me a year ago, that you couldn’t live in Portland for longer than a year.” Claire said. “So it’s about time you moved.”

This is my newest painting, for sale at Twilight this Thursday!

So, I’m trying to figure out how to make it work. I’m checking Craiglist. I’m mentally packing up my house. I’m figuring out the logistics of getting my ass from Portland, to Seattle. Along with all of my shit, and my cats.

Until I go back and pack up my Pdx life, I’ll be out in Seattle, selling my Snarky Cards, mostly haunting Capital Hill, working on paying my last month’s rent in Portland. And on Thursday, I’ll be debuting my new paintings, and typing Custom Snarky Cards at Twilight Artist Collective.

Come check out my new shit, and celebrate my newly declared Seattle Love at Twilight Artist Collective on Thursday, May 12th, from 6-9pm. I’ll be typing up a storm. And I’d love to make your life easier, by writing you some hilarious and angry Snarky Cards.

Love,

Alisa

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Alisa Starr. And I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. They will crack you the fuck up. I mostly haunt the bars of Portlandia, but I’ve been known to show up on Capital Hill, in Seattle, and I love The Mission in San Francisco.

Over the years, I’ve haunted a lot of different bars in Portland. I’ve walked into almost every single place that sells liquor in order to pay rent, or spread the good news of Snarky Cards. Muu-Muu’s is in Northwest Portland. I started selling there two years ago. And it became a staple on my route. I make a lot of money there. Almost every night in Muu-Muu’s is a $100 night.

But once I started selling there, Snarky Cards became a group project. And the kids who work there: Choia, Justin, Mark, Loren, Moira, Alonzo, Kevin and Noah, Big Voice Steve, all feel pride in my success. Because they’re part of it. They help me sell. They hype me up. They let me come in, and they like to show off my cards to anybody who’s drinking. They listen to my problems, and they tell me their shit. And we dance, and we work together, and we bitch about the same customers. And we hang out with the same regulars.

The magic of the Muu-Muu’s is that you can walk in not knowing anybody and if you sit at the bar, you make friends with your neighbors and the bartenders and you start to get that “We’re all in this together” feeling. Big parties and couples-in-love inhabit the tables, and you can see people falling for each other, or hear the uproarious laughter from across the room.

Like these two hot people, sitting at the bar, right? You could hook up with one of them next time you pull up a barstool at Muu-Muu's

And, little known fact, if you sit at the bar, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll find someone you wanna chat up, or you’ll find that someone hot is chatting you up. Not always. Sometimes the frat boys and hoochie mama’s who drink at The Gypsy invade the bar space, but most of the time, there’s some pretty good game getting thrown down at the bar itself. And I love me some good game. It’s fun to watch the hot boys and girls who go there to drink eyeing each other and trying.

A few weeks ago, I walked in and I saw the “Snarklandia” sign and my heart jumped. It was posted up at the bar, on the back of the taps. It was a low night. I’d been telling myself that nobody really likes me. And any second now I’d get kicked out of every bar in town, because they were sick of my tits, and my schtick, and my cards. I was having the “Big Alisa Meeting” fantasy/fear. Sometimes I tell myself that after I’ve left a bar, the staff gets together and has a meeting about how they’re all sick of me.

See why the dudes who fall for me have to move to an island afterwards to recover? Part of that is my hotness. Displayed here.

It’s not based in reality. I mean, bars have gotten sick of me before. But only a few bars. And it was mostly in the beginning, before I could gage where I could/should sell, when I was just blindly trying shit. I wasn’t friends with the people who ran those places. And I didn’t want to be. The Big Alisa Meeting fantasy/fear is loosely related to the “Ex Lover Island”. Which is something I cooked up a long time ago. I’m pretty sure that all the people I’ve ever slept with or dated are all living on an island together, where they have therapy (directly related to the trauma of sexing/liking me) and they form a support group on the island for whatever damage I’ve inflicted. Also, they divide chores fairly. Once an ex of mine has sufficiently recovered from the scars I left on him, he’s allowed a day-pass into the real world. From what I gather, this island has a good wi-fi connection. Because occasionally those fuckers try to friend me on Facebook.

Alisa and Arlette! I would have thrown KT up here too, but she hates to have her image captured by the internet.

So, today, firmly rooted in reality, I know that my bartender friends always seem happy to see me, but the relationships feel fragile. And I sometimes think one wrong interaction, one misstep, and their smiles will turn into looks of resignation at my presence. It’s probably just an extension of my basic insecurity. I am a bad-ass bitch. Who worries sometimes that nobody likes her. I don’t think I even knew that the Big Alisa Meeting fear was happening to me as often as it was, or how ludicrious it sounded, until I went to San Francisco, and I confessed it to Kaytea and Arlette. One of them laughed. And the other one said “That’s fucking bullshit, stop it!”. I don’t remember who did what. It doesn’t matter, because at that point they had become one seamlessly perfect best friend. And I was so grateful to let her handle all of my bullshit. After that, I got that the Big Alisa Meeting is a bullshit fantasy I’d concocted, and not a real possibility.

But this is before that. So, I was too nervous to ask right away if the SnarkLandia sign was about me. I hoped it was. But I didn’t want to say anything about on the off-chance that they’d be like “Well, actually, we had a meeting and we decided we don’t like you anymore. I don’t know who put that sign up.” I asked Moira If I could draw some boobs on the sign. And she was delighted to let me. And those three seconds of drawing calmed me down. And I let go of my fears. And I realized that whether the sign was about me or not, that bar is my home. And somehow I just… I started trusting that my friendships there are real. They love me for me. And they love me when I’m not super-on. And they love me when I’m tired. And they love me when I’m a little sad. I fell in love with the bar right then. And I included it in my idea of home.

And then Choia bought some of my Snarky Panties. Which she promptly put on her head. And I danced to the kick-ass music in the aisles, while I sold my cards to everyone in the bar. And the magic of that place infected me. And now, when I’m nervous about selling, or when I’m having a hard night, I tell myself that I’m going to end up at Muu-Muu’s. I promise myself that I can bullshit with my friends at the end of my night, and it gets me through until I can walk through that awesome door one more time.

So, if you’re wondering where I’m at, there’s a good chance I’m headed to Muu-Muu’s.Or maybe I’m already there. You should come by.

Love,

Alisa

I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. They will crack you the fuck up.

You can check out my cards, online, on my etsy site.

Lot’s of people look at my cards online. And I’m glad, they’re funny, I like that I’m entertaining the masses. But not a lot of people buy them online. I pay my bills selling Snarky Cards, and I have been eeking out a pretty good living at it, but paying my bills is always a close thing. Last month I went to San Francisco, but the few weeks before that, I stopped buying food, because it was hard to afford the ticket to go to SF and food at the same time.

Arlette The Awesome!

“That sucks.” My friend Arlette pointed out. “You should make it easier for people to support you.” I was frustrated. And tired. And hungry. “I’m doing everything I can. I work 12 hours a day. What else can I do?”My voice had that annoying whiny quality it takes on when I’d like to give up.

She sighed. “Hello? People look at your cards online all the time. You should ask them to donate, if they’re not going to buy.”

“I don’t have time to figure out how to install a donation button.” I was petulant. Arlette is a web-goddess and can do this sort of thing in about 5 minutes.  It took me a month of hints, requests, and a few more petulant sulky conversation, before she agreed to do it.  She is sometimes begrudging with her web-goddessry.

And despite the fact that I had to perform a little emotional blackmail to get her to install thing, it is still a magnificently nice thing that she did, in suggesting and then installing it. Right?

And so, I give you The Donation Button! To your right! No, up above that thing, no below that thing. Just between, ok, you’ve almost, oh, shit, no never-mind, It’s a big fucking button in the middle of the stuff to your right. And if you like reading my blog, or reading my cards, and you don’t wanna buy one, kick in a buck or two. It’ll keep me in food, and if I keep eating, I can keep entertaining you!

Most of them, of course, somehow couldn’t make it until I was able to walk (OK, limp) around and show them some semblence of a good time. Seeing my history in the face of my friend while she watched me sell my art sewed it all together. Past met present. When I broke my leg, I couldn’t take care of myself. And I’ve always taken care of myself. Depending on other people so completely devastated me in ways that I was surprised by.

As part of my post-broken breakdown, I’ve been trying to figure out why I started selling Snarky Cards in the first place. Thankfully, Arlette is sensible and kind. “Because you’re good at it.” She said in between bites of Ole Dirty Bastard (Voodoo Doughnuts completed her Portland experience). “Are you sure I’m not just trying to make up for a shitty childhood?” I asked. “Nope. You like people. And you’re making your art.” She said. She sounded sure. And she is one of the people who knows me better than I do. So I believed her.

Trusting her made me feel light, and peaceful. After I shoved her onto the MAX line to the airport, I floated over to Radish Underground, to see if they wanted some of the new cards Arlette and I had made while she was here. They bought them all. (So, newnewnew Snarky Cards at Radish Underground, now! Check it out! Doesn’t it look like a freaking party in there?) Celeste, who co-owns the shop, has her own clothing line, and we talked about a dress I want her to make, so I’ll have something new to wear selling at the bars.

Afterwards, I had a relaxing drink at The Teazone, where the cute bartender chuckled over the new Snarky Cards I restocked them with.

And I just spent 3 hours getting some new cards ready for the internet. Here’s the first one, all ready for you to send it to your best buds who make bad sexual decisions:

Making my Art, and selling it takes faith. And like all faith, sometimes mine falters. So I need to borrow better faith from my friends.

Thanks to everyone who keeps buying my cards, and telling me stories about how you used them to make your friends laugh, and decorate your fridge, and confront your exes and hit on strangers.

And thanks, Lauren, for telling me that your Mom loved them. I like your Mom. She gave me an Easter basket full of chocolate for Passover last year.

Until yesterday, I’d been largely ignored by The Internets. I got a few big orders and people looked at my cards online, but mostly, I didn’t get a lot of traffic.

So last night, when I realized that hundreds of people were visiting my site an hour, I freaked out. Arlette, for once, answered her phone. “Is this like when a boy likes you and it scares you?” She asked.

I thought about it. When a cute boy likes me, I tend to freeze up. I can’t figure out how I got him to like me in the first place, and I worry that I won’t be able to do it again, so I stop doing anything, for fear of scaring him away. Unfortunately, statues who tell lame jokes aren’t sexy, and my imitation of one usually scares the cute boy away. And once I notice he’s gone, I heave a sigh of relief and start telling great jokes and being Charming again. “Yes. It’s like that.” I said. “Well, cut it out.” Arlette responded “and tell me about those boots you just bought”.

I spent the rest of the night eating cake batter, smoking and worrying. What if you guys don’t think I’m cool? Ironically, I started all of this. I emailed both Clinton and Crystal and a slew of other bloggers that I think are cool, asking them to check me out, and write about me. Apparently getting what I want scares the shit out of me.

Last night I had errotic dreams about a circus clown.
And when I woke up, I realized I hadn’t even been calling out his name right. While I’d been having sex with this clown in the woods, I’d been calling him “Jerimiah” my sister’s ex-boyfriend. That’s how unnerved I was.

After I decided not to analyze my calling Jerimiah’s name out in a sexy dream, I got up, and baked the cake batter. And then I realized how I could make you keep liking me: new cards! So, here’s the latest and greatest Snarky Card, just for you, Internets. If you’d like me to send you one of your very own, than you can order it on my etsy site. Where a hundred other cards wait to titillate and reassure you.

Because that’s what my cards are for. They reassure you that you aren’t alone. So your boyfriend doesn’t put out, or you like coke more than sex, or maybe you were molested or you’re a stalker and you want a nice card for your victim. Whatever your deal is, I want to reassure you that your life is normal. No matter how screwed up it is.