Some Room-mates suck more than others! Sometimes they tie you up, steal your awesome hair, and then kill your boyfriend with your sexiest shoes. So next time you bitch about dirty dishes and extensive S&M scendarios in the living room; pay attention to the fact that you're not hand-cuffed to a bath-tub by a maniac, who is planning on sucking your boyfriend's dick later.

You know room-mates: they keep you up at night with their fucking. They bring their lame friends over. They don’t clean up after themselves. They judge your life choices, they tell you about the retarded life choices that they’ve made and expect you to keep quiet, while every part of you is screaming “Why the fuck did you do that?”

Another bad room-mate from Back In The Day: Puck! From The Real World! Back when people were more real! Puck made fun of Pedro, the world's most adorable AIDS patient, was a nazi and made-out with hot girls and then blabbed about it to their friends. What a dick.

Sometimes they fall in love with you, and make your life awkward. They leave you terrible notes and expect that those notes will effectively make you do what they want. They steal your food, or they never have food worth stealing. They’re annoying, or lame and totally fucking necessary. Because you can’t pay the rent by yourself.

And really, honestly, if you lived by yourself, you would live in filth; never making an attempt to vaccum or clean the bathroom. You would have less shit (because they bring haf the furniture or the entertainment system) and you would never have sex in your house because it’s so disgusting, you’re sure that it would ruin your chances.

My room-mate right now is great. Yes, she does chain-smoke in her room, which kinda bugs me. But she doesn’t mind if I stay up painting until 7am with the TV blasting. And she was really, really nice to me when I broke my leg. She bought me a Valentines Day present. She cleans the kitchen a lot. And she deosn’t leave me notes. Ever.

I'd like to dedicate this card to Farah: my worst room-mate ever. She made my life hard. And she was ugly. And she bought beige furniture, to replace my red, sexy furniture. And also, she was a bitch.

But I have had shitty room-mates in the past. There was Kris, who was great, until his girlfriend Farah moved in. She hated me. And she left me passive agressive notes. Whereas, before she moved in, Kris and I would just tell each other stuff and it would be no big deal. There was Allie, who left her old mattress in our backyard for six months, until it had rotted, and started pulling the fence it was leaning on apart.

There was Randi, who had never cleaned anything, in her life. She also couldn’t wake up in the morning. She claimed it was some sort of disease. So every morning, her Mom called her to wake her up. If it didn’t work, her Mom would come over to our apartment and wake her up. Something I had no inkling of, until I woke up at 8am, on the living room couch, to a middle-aged stranger tiptoeing into our apartment. So I emptied the rank cat boxes, and tried to vaccum years worth of dust and crap up, in order to make our tiny Maxi Pad more liveable, but really, it was impossible.

And there was Bob, whose friends came over at all hours of the night. Most of them came to our apartment as a detour after they had gotten out of prison. His skanky-ass-crack-whore girlfriend stole all of my jewelry and he left two huge boxes of garbage in his room when I kicked him out.
There were The Lesbians who would have knock-down drag out fights in the living room. And leave me stupid notes about how I need to clean up after myself when I spill coffee on the counter in the morning. They would freak out if my cat ate their cats food, (um, hello? Who can control that kind of shit?) They would go into my room and move things around. But mostly, the problem with The Lesbians was that one of The Lesbians didn’t like me talking to her girlfriend, AKA my other room-mate. I started loaning her girlfriend books, but we had to keep it a secret, because her girlfriend didn’t like her to read. Seriously.

Condoms Rock! They help keep you barren and disease-free while still allowing you to engage in hot-sex with strangers!

Krista had skanky-bar sex with strangers. Unprotected Skanky-bar sex with strangers. Which grossed me out to the millionth degree. I mean, it’s fucking 2009, condoms are not “a good idea”. They’ll keep sex from killing you painfully. They’re a necesary part of having sex with strangers. She got upset because I “judged her”. Which annoyed me too. If you don’t want me to judge you, don’t tell me shit. If you don’t like being judged, don’t spend so much time with me. But don’t expect me to listen to your stupid-ass stories, and nod my head and make sympathetic noises. It’s cool that you like to sleep with creeps. But please don’t expect me to think that sleeping with them is a great idea, and especially don’t whine to me that you might have given your co-workers boyfriend Chlamydia. There are condoms in our kitchen, bathroom, living room, and dining area. You can’t do anything in the house without having to move a condom. Don’t fucking tell me that you didn’t use one.

I made this card as revenge for all the creepy notes I've ever gotten. I hope you fucking note-writers are sorry! And I hope you note-receivers are comforted.

And then there was Cara, who persuaded me to move to Portland, to live in the shack in the back of her house. We had been best friends for five years. We had been through thick and thin. It was going to be fun! But Cara had just had a baby. And I guess I didn’t like her baby enough, because she wouldn’t let me baby-sit, she didn’t trust me alone with the baby. And that evolved into me just not being welcome. In her kitchen. Which I paid rent for half of. She started shooting me cold looks when I came into the kitchen to eat. So I felt bad every time I ate. Or everytime I thought about eating. It was like living with my mother except without the fun excorcisms!

And she must have made some sort of anouncement, towards the end of my living there, because after a while, she wouldn’t talk to me, and neither would her boyfriend, her brother, her sisters, or her friends, when they came over. It was a shunning. It was effective. It made me want to move. But it was creepy and scary and weird. I totally get why the Amish use it as a threat now. Because even when you dislike the people shunning you, it still hurts that you’re not worth looking in the face. She also left me a lot of fucking notes.

So I get it. Room-mates can suck. And I want to honor your room-mate troubles with Snarky Cards. I hope you dig ‘em.

And to any and all of my old room-mates who are reading this, who I just talked shit about: Ha! Ha! You were dicks to me, and I talked shit about you on The Internets. And you can’t do anything about it. Because everything I said is true.

Superalisa at the Show!

For those of you who don’t know, I sell Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. Today I had a show at the Sellwood Masonic Lodge. And by show I mean “Craft Show”. You never know what you’re going to get at a Craft Show. Sometimes I find lots of people who love my cards. But Snarky Cards are blatant and for the most part, overtly sexual. So half the time I just get a lot of blank looks from families who are equal parts annoyed and puzzled by The Innapropriate Girl.

I was excited about this show because it was in a Masonic Lodge. I figured, you know, even if the show was a bust, maybe we could still do some snooping and find out about this cult called “The Masons”. We did not find out the Masonic secrets. Yes, I could have sworn that I overheard someone say “Child Sacrifice” but I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so I’m not sure how dependable my evesdropping was. It did crack me up, though, as I headed towards the Expresso machine.

And I did come up with some pretty juicy new cards, thanks to the lot of dirty-minded-marrieds that were there. Sellwood is a family-oriented area of Portland. And because of the aforementioned family-setting, I had two amazing moments!

Moment #1: A cute 8 year old came over to my booth, to offer his help. “My Dad says I’m a better salesman than him.” He said with a knowing laugh. I nodded. I beleived him. He seemed to be defecting from his father’s booth and trying to branch out from mine. His ideas included: hiring him to sell my cards, and offering candy. I appreciated his ability to cold-call on a new potential employer. Then he started going through my cards. And it seemed like he was capable of reading most of them.

“So I told him he could read them but some of them have swears in them, so he needed to keep it our secret.” I told Lisa later at the bar. Her eyes widened. “You asked an elementary school kid to share a secret with you?” She shreiked. “That is so creepy! You are so creepy!” I shrugged. “I guess that’s why he wouldn’t shake on it.” Lisa shook her head, fearful as if I’d magically become a child molestor in front of her very eyes. “Someone clearly talked to him about Stranger-Danger. Good thing, too!” I looked at her thoughtfully. “Huh. Usually asking them to keep a secret is how I relate to kids. Kids and old people.” I said, interested at this new twist, where I’m creepier than I thought I was. She stared at me in horror, as I started giggling. I have become the scary ending to a childhood lesson.

Moment #2 A friendly soccer mom asked me to make a card for an old high school crush of hers. She described the situation in spurts out of the sides of her mouth, in a manner reminiscent of inmate talk, while her children flitted innocently around us. I created the card that said:

“It’s a good thing you’re so hot, otherwise your cunt-teasing would really piss me off.”

She read the card, and delightedly counted out her money. As we were saying our thank-you’s, her son carefully started pulling out all of the condoms that I usually keep at the bottom of my Snarky Card Bowl, mixed in with my business cards. “I’m trying to get people to have more sex.” I usually say brightly when anyone asks what they’re for. “Go ahead! Take one!” This usually gets me a laugh and helps people stay on target: Snarky Cards and Sex. He pulled out three condoms, without comment. And with each condom, he looked at me proudly, waiting for his praise. I didn’t know what to say, and his mother’s valient attempt to ignore him, while he was seeking admiration from me was starting to make us all a little uncomfortable. She yanked him away as I stuttered out “Good job! Thank you so much! You’re very good at finding birth controll! I’m so proud of you!”

I mean, he was working so hard at seperating out the condoms from the business cards. And it was a praiseworthy endeavor. However, he was six, so I couldn’t exactly tease him about handing me condoms. Unless I wanted to come off creepier than I already had.

So, in short, today we learned that when exposed to small children, I come off badly. Some might even say “Molest-y” Also: married people have dirtier sex lives than single people.
As a tribute to all children everywhere, and anyone who has ever been a child, I give you: Dad’s The Reason I Need Goddamn Therapy! I hope you enjoy it. That’ll teach hard-working Craft Dad’s to let their children wander over to my booth.