My name is Alisa Starr. I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. Recently, I was in Seattle and I loved it. I’m planning on moving there at the end of September. Until then, I’ll keep haunting the Portland bars that I’ve grown to love.

The lovely girls of Twilight

The end of my trip to Seattle was sweet. I typed my Snarky Cards at Twilight: an Art Collective in West Seattle that’s been selling my cards for the last two years. I love the girls who own the place. And I’m proud that they’re my friends. And I’m glad to be part of their wonderful boutique. While I was in Seattle, I made some really great paintings for this show. I’m really excited about them. I think they’re the best ones I’ve ever done. They’re all $100 each. And they’ll be hanging on the walls at Twilight for the next month.

$100 Now for sale at Twilight Artist Collective!

Usually, when I’m typing my cards at a show, that’s my whole world. I’m watching people laugh at my cards, and making them new shit I think that they’ll like. I am typing as fast as I can, to show off, and get the stock out. But this time, I got to watch people looking at my paintings. It was awesome. My shit was hung at the far wall. So, they’d wander, peering at the other artists work. A little intent, trying to decide what they thought. And when they got to the Snarky Paintings they had this bored/concentrating look on their face. And I got to watch their expressions change, first they smiled a little at the bright colors, and then, as they read them, they would break out into a grin. I’ve been watching people have reactions to my cards for so long, it never occurred to me that watching someone like my other shit could be more rewarding. But it was. I felt like a real Artist.

Afterwards, we went out for a real celebration and we laughed our way through dinner and drinks and I remembered what it was like to hang out with a posse of ladies. It was delicious. And I felt loved. I floated my way through selling for the rest of the night.

My sister

Joy and I got along fabulously. I think we’ve always been on the same team. But we didn’t realize it. Growing up in an abusive household meant that we didn’t know how to be nice to each other. It didn’t help that Sherri used to pit us against each other. I was smart and ugly. Joy was dumb and pretty. And we used to curry favor with her by talking shit on each other. It took us  years of being careful with each other. Holding our tongues. Trying not to judge each other. And last month it paid off. We tried to be nice; it wasn’t easy for her to let me take over her apartment with my paint-a-thon. And it wasn’t easy for me to do anything. I was so distraught when I got there that I couldn’t really talk. She made a special effort to be kind. And I made a

Joy's delicious bitches: Yuriko, Jenny and Marissi

special effort to tell her what I needed, and how I felt. And by the time I left, I knew we were a team again. More than that, I loved her friends. They folded me into their group seamlessly, like I wasn’t a hot, broken mess. They just walked right past my nervous breakdown, and got out the make-up and costumes, and started a giggly gossip girl party, and between their kindness and their ability to have fun  no matter what, I climbed out of my pit of self-pity and despair, and right into their fun. I knew that when I move there, I’ll have friends. And the person who knows me best will be happy to help to tell me to get my shit together; whatever I need most.

Quartz lying in Joy's bed

I was on my way to pick up a book for my rideshare home and i passed a guy selling random shit on the street. I picked up 2 Faye Kellerman’s and 2 mannequin heads for $8. The mannequin faces were dirty, like they’d been fighting. I quickly stuffed everything

Quartz lying in Joy's bed with a mannequin head

but them in my backpack so I could stroll down the street, holding one in each hand by their hair. Happily pretending they were the heads of people I’d killed. When I got to my sister’s house, I put one on her kitchen table and hid the other one in her bed, cackling the whole time.

It was a beautiful end to a great trip. Now, I’m haunting the bars of Portland, scaring up rent money. And money for my move. Hopefully I’ll see you out there, somewhere.

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

Me, slingin' my Snarky Cards

Dear Internets,

My name is Alisa Starr. 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.

This Sunday, Red Light Clothing Exchange is having their annual Naked Shopping Party! I’ll be slinging my cards, with my typewriter, and my boobs. There’ll be a band, and prizes. I mean, prizes that are not just “win all the clothes you can wear” which is, of course the big prize.

People have been asking me what the deal is with this Naked Shopping Party.  The rules are simple: everyone shows up with clothes on. The biggest prize offered is  that you can win all the clothes you can put on at once. Obviously, it’s easier to fit more clothes on, if you start off naked. If you’d like to shop naked, you put your name in a box and the delicious and delightful staff at Red Light draw the names of 2 boys and 2 girls from the box.

And they shop. And everyone else shops too. But they shop naked. And the rest of us get to watch. How rad is that? While we’re watching the naked shoppers, I’ll be typing up new and custom Snarky Cards. I’m excited about partying it up, and writing some new shit for your horrible and hilarious sexual situations. There will also be lots of Snarky Undies for those of you who haven’t gotten a pair yet.

So, if you wanna celebrate Easter the way Weed Jesus would want you to, come on down to Red Light, to get your custom Snarky Cards, your Snarky Undies, and your voyeur on.

See ya then!

Love,

Alisa

Here are some cute girls, diggin on Snarky Cards at O'Brien's on NW 21st Ave!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m Alisa Starr. 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.

Tonight I was hawking them at the Bossanova Ballroom, in between acts of the Bikini Creature Beach Feature! Which was awesome!

I suck at describing stuff, so I’ll just quote the Portland Mercury on this: “ Bikini Creature Beach Feature is a charming mélange of ’60s beach blanket flicks, ’80s sex gooferies à la Hardbodies, and grindhouse motorcycle gang pictures. Bikini beach bunnies dance, a sea witch vamps, the local motorcycle gang cruises around with their ape, and Guantanamo Baywatch and the Lordy Lords soundtrack the shenanigans.” My friend, Matt Stanger, wrote this musical gem. And it was everything that it sounds like it was, and more. It was so fucking FUNNY! I laughed for, like, two hours straight.

The story is simple, it’s about 2 beach dweebs who have to fight a biker gang, and their rapist gorilla, Randy Bannanas, in order to race against Big Daddy and The Sand Witch. The prize for the race is a trophy and a gift certificate to Planned Parenthood. The Sand Witch is knocked up, and she wants that gift certificate baaaaaad. And Big Daddy races dirty. Will the dweebs prevail? Will they keel over from Big Daddy’s Crazy Dirty Farts? The suspense is awesome!

I think that the best part of the play was when one of the beach dweebs (the one who always got maced) said to one of the beach bunnies “Do you know CPR? Because I know ASS TO MOUTH!” Every 15 seconds there was another line that had you reeling. And then there was a minion! Who crawled around on the ground! He rolled joints for the sea-witch. And she would beat him as a reward. He wasn’t allowed to wear clothes, and he fetched things for her. Sigh. I want one of my very own. The band was live, and there were at least 15 girls, whose roles were pretty much to dance throughout the entire fucking play.

Rogue is my favorite super-hero ever. She's spunky. And she gets to make out with Wolverine. Who is a bad-ass. And, oh look! Her tits are huge! Like all the other chick super-heros. Totally reasonable theory.

Here's a picture of my boobs, so you see why I'm big-boob-biased.

A few of them had HUGE tits, which reminded me that Stanger is awesome. I’m so tired of watching tiny-titted ladies shake their sugar. I feel like if you’re gonna put some girls onstage in tiny outfits, give me a few double D’s or else I’ll be wondering what the fucking point is. This is probably my way of being Alisa-centrist, since I’m sure you’ve seen my huge rack, shaking around town. However, I like to think it’s because of comic books. When I was a little girl, all the girl-super-hero’s had HUGE tits. So, as a child, I assumed that women get all of their power from their boobs. Which, it turns out, in my adult life, is true. So, when I see boobies, I’d like to see them large, please.

More Alisa Starr Boobs!

Anyway, Bikini Creature Beach Feature didn’t disappoint. Hilarious-wise, and Titty-wise. If you didn’t go, that’s OK. I’m sure that Stanger will create another creation. Keep an eye out for Matt Stanger Productions. Anything that says that, is going to make you piss your pants with laughter. And if you did go, you and are both in the cool-kids club, and we will be laughing, and gasping private jokes FOREVER! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Love,
Alisa

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. Which are huge. So is my ass. We call my ass The Mountain. Well, we call it The Magic Mountain now (Thanks Asa!). I’m looking to get my ass down to normal size. This means we might have to sacrifice some boobs, but I’m willing to go down to a D cup (from my triple D’s) for the cause.

The Magic Mountain: Only the brave will climb it

Creston Pool opened about 3 weeks ago. It’s an outdoor pool, mostly filled with children getting swim lessons, and the 16 year old lifeguards who teach them. I do laps there in the afternoon, and try to swim around the pool on the weekends, while the pool is crowded with people just bobbing and screaming in a recreational attempt to get out of the heat. It’s weird to be the only fat chick at the pool. It’s especially weird to be the only adult swimming who doesn’t have a child taking lessons. Sometimes I eavesdrop on the lessons, trying to improve my strokes. I love swimming. I always have. I think it’s because I’m a cancer, and we’re crabs. But I also took swimming lessons every year from the time I was four until I was ten. My mother kept me in swim lessons for an extra long time, because she liked to flirt with my swim instructors. She was a young mother, younger then than I am now, and the boys who ran the pool liked flirting with her back. By the time I was 11, I actually got on the swim team, in Santa Clara. I competed and won some medals. And then I turned 12, and started to get self-conscious about my body, and the idea of wearing a bathing suit just sounded humiliating.

So, I forgot that the pool is a perfect place, where I’m always the right size, and it’s OK to be athletic, and nothing can hurt me while I’m swimming laps. Usually by the 25th minute of my work-out I have some sort of epiphany about work, or my feelings, or my life, that makes it all easier. And then I get out of the pool (a little wobbly as the leg I broke doesn’t exactly remember how to climb the pool ladder) and I feel muscular and strong.

I like to walk back home, on Powell, wearing my wet suit, letting it dry in the sun. I think of this as an exercise in loving the way I look in it; trying my best to like my body as it is, rather than wishing it was different. And while I swim, the sound of children laughing and learning things reassures me, bringing me back to a time when my life was simpler, and I was sure I was easy to like.

Last night I went out selling in Southeast Portland, and I met a whole lot of people who’ve been buying my cards for years, and are happy to see that I’m still doing it. It was like a nudge from the Universe saying: You’re still OK. You’re doing a good job. You just have to keep going. Between that and the Magic Mountain plan, I think this summer is going to turn out OK.

I just relisted some cards on my etsy site. Kitty AIDS has been one of my favorites. At first I thought it was a card I could send my grandmother, but recently I’ve realized that she’s actually Hella-Religious and she would probably get upset about me making fun of the baby Jesus this way. Then again, she does hate cats….

Love,

Alisa

See? They're huge! And they help me pay my rent.

I’ve going out to bars selling a lot lately. For those of you who don’t know, I make Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. And lately, the bars have been seeing a lot of me. And I’ve been seeing a lot of them. And there have been some cute boys, and flirting, and I’ve made a bunch of money, helping me pay my electric bill and keeping my cats in food. So, thanks Portland!

Oh yeah. And guess what, internets? I’ve decided to stop having sex! Forever. Just kidding! I’m going to try to go a month. A month that will feel like forever. I know, I’ve said this before. And some cute boy (or my period) would usually come along and screw up my resolution. But I figure if I keep trying to quit having sex with strangers, over and over again, eventually I’ll get it. At least, that’s how my business manager quit smoking. She just kept quitting. I figure if it worked for cigarrettes, it can work for anonymous sex, right?

See? I'd like to give this to someone. Someday. Maybe soon. Ish. I'm embarassed about this. But I'm glad that I can come out to you, internets. Thanks for understanding about my Vag having feelings.

OK, so here are the rules: flirting and making-out is ok. But making-out is a maximum. You might be asking yourself “What the fuck is Alisa’s problem? Why is she putting herself through this?” You might also be asking yourself “Why do I care what happens in Alisa’s Vagina?” I don’t know why you care what happens in my Vagina. I just know that I’m compelled to tell you what’s happening in my Vagina. But I can tell you why I’m going to turn perfectly awesome hook-up potentials into high school make-out sessions.

See, when I wasn’t looking, some monster jerry-rigged my feelings to my Vag. So now, while I can still have awesome sex with boys I meet at bars, I find myself wishing it was more than a one night stand when I get home in the morning. I keep finding myself wallowing in regret. So, I’ve decided to try not to have any more one night stands for a while. This is going to be hard, since random hook-ups have been my primary dating experience for the last couple of years. But it looks like I don’t have a choice. And I promise you this, internets,  if I find the fucker that hooked up my feelings to my Hoo-Haa, I’m going to beat the living shit out of them.

Or Hell, I'd even like to deserve this card again. I kinda just wanna take a chance on somebody, you know? Even if they might suck.

I feel really validated by the fact that Dr. Mc Steamy from “Doctors who cry in Seattle” (also known as Grey’s Anatomy) is having this very same epiphany right now about his penis. It’s like our genitals are acting in concert. Although, these are his fake genitals, and they’re my real genitals. So, not really. But his fake-epiphany still validates my real one. Which is yet another example of television working to make my life better.

I think I’m headed back to San Francisco sometime next week, for Passover. Until then, I’ve been loading up the internet with new Snarky Cards, for your pleasure. Some of which, are displayed above. I hope you like the new cards. And thanks for understanding about my new Vaginal status.

Love,

Alisa

In the meantime, I’ve got these new Snarky Cards on my website, for your pleasure!

When you get a good blow job, you should reward the giver of the good blow job. YOu need to encourage that sort of behavior. So I’ve made you this card so that you can reward the person who sucks your cock better than anyone ever thought possible. I hope it gets you some more good head.

I have amazing tits.

Anyone who’s ever met me knows this. Because I usually wear clothes that show off my 6 inches of cleavage. I love it when someone can’t stop staring at them. I love that people squeal and talk about them, and stare and get distracted. I love my boobs. And I think that everyone else should love them too.

So, this card is for anyone who has ever loved a rack the way I love mine. Or the way that I think everyone should love mine.

I hope you like it. And I hope you use it to honor the tits that rule your life.

It started a few months ago. I’ve sold 22,000 Snarky Cards since I started, and most of those I’ve sold to Portlanders. So, around September, I was starting to feel like I was old hat. Old hat means overfamiliar through overuse. Or, not fresh. And that’s exactly how I was starting to feel.

I wanted to go somewhere where I was fresh, where Snarky Cards was new. I like going into a city and spreading my own version of The Good News. -As opposed to my mother’s Good News, which is that Jesus died for our sins, and whosoever beleivith in Him shall have everlasting life.

My Good News is that you don’t have to have sex with someone who bores the fuck out of you anymore. I can help you dump them! Or: sometimes hate-fucking is a good alternative to fighting. I like to think that both my mother and I are doing God’s Work. Just my work for God is more fun.

Seattle’s always been a little charged for me. It currently houses one of my most despised ex-boyfriends and my sister. Whom I have been fighting with on and off again for the last ten years. Mostly on. It’s a weird kind of fighting too. We’re either at each other’s throats, trying to kill each other, or we are on the same team, reading each other’s minds, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing until we piss ourselves at our own jokes. Maybe it’s always that way with sisters. I don’t know. She’s the only one I’ve ever grown up with. In our teens, we were so close, I thought we were the same person. In our twenties everything in our lives exploded and we started resorting to emotional trench war-fare.

I knew if I went to her city, I would have to try to make-up with her. (The ex-boyfriend is out of the question. I may hold that grudge until I die. I hope he gets a very painful cancer. I know it makes me a bad person, and I don’t care.) So, I called, and I tried to apologize, and she apologized, and we yelled a little, and then we cried and slowly things have started to get better and better between us. But I wasn’t sure if we could handle a weekend together.

In my head, I am always more succesful than I am in real life. So in my head, I came to Seattle, and stayed in a hostel, and spent a few hours with Joy at a time, and we got used to each other slowly, and I had an out so that if we ended up fighting, or I couldn’t stand her, or she couldn’t stand me, we could retreat to our seperate places. But in real life, the week before I came up to Seattle I made enough for a train ticket. Not enough for a train ticket and a hostel bed. It didn’t matter, because Joy seemed sure that I should stay with her anyway. So, I got on the train, with my cards and my boobs and tried to hope for the best.

Joy and Emily. I know, my sister (the blond) and I look opposite.

When I got to the train station, there was a hot girl there, holding a sign that said my name. How rad is that? I’ve never had anyone hold a sign with my name on it. “Alisa?” The Hot Girl said “I’m Emily. Joy asked me to come get you!” I was so struck by how nice that was, that my sister sent someone to get me, and it set up a precident of niceness that Joy and I stuck to for the entire weekend. Emily did her best to buffer between us, and she was necesary and important as a buffer. Joy and I still got on each other’s nerves, but we really tried to figure out how to be nice to each other. And somehow, the effort of kindness, is as good as kindness itself. I really liked both Joy and I that weekend. I took a lot of deep breaths, trying to figure out how to say something important to me without hurting her feelings. And I think she did too.

So, we drank and I sold some cards, and I discovered the Wild Rose and The Comet and they discovered that they liked my cards. And my boobs, and my stories.

After the first night of selling and hanging out, Joy and Emily and I went to a Karoke bar, and partied down. I did not sing Karoke. I don’t sing Karoke, unless my friend Kay announces that we’re going to Chopsticks. I’m a sucker for their sweet ‘n’ sour chicken, and when Kay gets up to sing, it’s almost always something awesome like Alanis Morisette, “You oughtta know”. If Kay’s drunk, and I’ve had some yummy Chinese food, then conditions are perfect for me to sing in public.

So, conditions were not perfect for me to sing in Seattle. But I sold cards and schmoozed while the hot bitches my sister and Emily are friends with sang their asses off.

Seriously, how hot are we?

We stayed and sang and it was hilarious and awesome. And afterwards, we got greasy mexican food. Which is not better than Chinese food. But it’s hard to find greasy Chinese food at 3am in a city you’re unfamiliar with. So, I settled.

 All in all, it was a righteously good time. That was about two months ago. Since then, I’ve been back twice. I didnt’ want to say anything until I knew for sure, but so far, Seattle seems to kinda dig me. And I have to admit, I have a medium sized crush on Seattle.  And if we can keep up this flirtation, it might culminate in sexy-time for both of us!

This is me, slaving away at my typewriter (Bob).

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. But I haven’t been going to any bars in the last week. I haven’t been going anywhere the last week, because I’ve been slowly dying from Bird Flu. I know all the cool kids have swine flu right now, but I’m old school. And besides, birds are creepier, and I believe that they could do this to me. When I think of pigs I either go to Wilbur or the parable of the man who threw pearls at swine.

Or maybe he was supposed to throw pearls at swine and then Jesus stopped him? Or maybe he wasn’t real, he was just a story Jesus told about how you shouldn’t throw pearls at swine? Anyway, those three elements were in some sort of Sunday school lesson that I didn’t learn: Jesus, pearls and swine. I think if I ever knew the story, I got distracted because I didn’t want the pigs to choke on the pearls. That was, clearly, when I was  a little girl, and hadn’t seen Deadwood yet, and didn’t realize that pigs can eat people’s bones, effectively covering up a murder. I’m not saying that I wish I’d seen Deadwood as a little girl, but I wish I’d known that as a little girl, because I love murder mysteries, and I love plotting the perfect murder, and that information would have come in really, really handy, when I was, like, 8.

Fuck you birds!

Anyway, so I’ve got bird-flu. And I’ve been so convinced of my imminent death that yesterday, I started doling out the cats and my Janis Ian CD’s to my more responsible friends. So, I haven’t been selling my wares in bars, or really, anywhere. I’ve been too busy trying to breathe without hacking up my lungs, and my wild and crazy moments were mostly about me eating cheese. Which I know I shouldn’t do, but I had it in my refrigerator, and I was hungry, and I love cheese, and it didn’t make me cough so hard I wanted to die for too long.

This way to The Donation Button! PS: My tattoo says "The mistakes are all lessons".

Speaking of which: food. As some of you might have heard, Arlette, my favorite computer goddess, added a donation button to my website. It’s on your right side. And if you love reading my blog, or looking at my cards, kicking me a few bucks can help me keep on, keeping on. Thanks to Aunt Julie and Barbara! I got to eat the last few days. See, if I don’t go out and work every day, I don’t have money to buy luxuries like food. And since I couldn’t leave the house, those donations saved my life. So, if you like reading the shit I write, please hit the donation button. I’ll be thanking everyone who donates in my blog, and letting you know what I did with the money.

In the next month, in addition to food, I’d like to buy a scanner, so I can get my newest cards online to you. And some blank canvasses so that I can start making more Snarky Paintings! I’d also like to give my cats some worm medicine. Yes, you can help important things happen in in my cats asses!

In Conclusion: here is the latest Snarky Card, online, for your pleasure. I hope you enjoy, and it helps you confront a friend about her addiction to her baby, which has wrongfully replaced her addiction to alcohol.

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!