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

And so I explained how it’s been feeling like everything is starting to fall into place here. And I can’t leave just when it’s starting to get good. I cited the publishers that are sniffing around my book idea, and the impending t-shirts I’m going to make and sell with Brianna from Tender Loving Empire. And the cute boy who’s been flirting with me lately.

And all of those things are real. Sans the boy. Last night the flirtation I thought I was having came to a screeching halt when I tried to take him up on some of his intonations. And so I spent the better part of this morning moaning in hung-over shame. “Why? Why did you think he actually liked you?” I viciously whispered to myself as I stomped around my apartment. “You’re still in Portland. He’s cute. And he flirts with you constantly. Why did you think that you were going to get some make-out?” My cats looked a little frightened by the stomping, and then started making out. Again.

See how Tigger's about to plant his face in Chester's A-hole? Yeah, that's his happy place. He has a special sigh for when he hits it just right.

I don’t know what is going on in my life. Everything is opposite. My gay cats have started to have orgies, while they perch on top of me. The other night, Tigger sat delicately on top of my room-mate Patrick’s chest, and Chester ran over, and lovingly started to lick Tigger’s balls. Patrick noticed that they were doing it on top of him, but he’s gotten used to it, so he just kept watching tv. This gay-cat-sex thing has become a constant. They are no longer two separate cats. They are now just one long gay porn. And I’m surrounded by cunt-teases.

So, last night, I made an ass out of myself by assuming that a cute boy who has been flirting with me with increasing intensity wanted to make out with me. And today I feel bad. Not because I was rejected, but because I feel like for weeks, I’ve been sculpting this beautiful and amazing penis out of clay, and I was just getting the kiln all fired up, so that I could glaze it, to make it hardened, so that I could use said beautiful penis for future friends-with-benefits fun. Right? And last night, just as I was trying to put the penis in the kiln, some stupid Portland boy wrenched it out of my hand, and dropped it on the floor. And when I bent down to pick it up, it was all smooshed and flat, and it didn’t even look like a penis anymore. And I realized that I’d been trying to make a working dick out of shit. Not clay.

That’s how I feel.

Because rejection honestly doesn’t bother me. And if last night had been a simple rejection, I would have been fine. But as soon as I was like “You know how you tried to slip your hand in my bra earlier? Yeah, let’s do it on purpose this time”. This particularly beautiful boy came up with a string of reasons why that was a bad idea. And I found myself mired in bullshit excuses. When he probably meant “I like flirting with you, but you’re not really my type.” Or something. Who knows? But he couldn’t find the words to say it, and I was drunk and completely confused. Usually when boys stick their hands down your bra, you can milk that sort of situation for more action. But this is Portland. In this place, boys don’t have casual sexual encounters with women that they want to continue to be friends with. Boys here date. Because they’re sad. Not only are they sad, they have a lot of other feelings, that are hard to untangle. And sex just makes them feel more things. So they can’t have it unless they mean it…. and if they do try to have it casually, they cry. Seriously. That has happened to me more than three times since I’ve moved here.

I know this. I know all of this. But the flirting was so exciting. And so testosterone-y. And everything else seemed to be looking up. And so I got carried away, hoping and wishing that I was finally going to find a friend to fill my Vagina.

And like I said, things are going well in my life. They’re just not going well inside my Vagina.

Fortunately, there’s a solution to this kind of conundrum. It’s called a Vibrator. I haven’t had any fancy money for things like Vibrators for the last four years or so. So I’ve been rotating through the 6-7 old ones I have rattling around in the Happy Box. And since I’ve started my sad rotation, I’ve thrown a couple of vibrator funerals. I finally had to say good-bye to my first vibrator- a present my best friend Emily gave me when I moved in with the last man I had a serious relationship with. His name was Mark. And he was terrible in bed. It was a smart gift, Emily. You totally outdid yourself. And, not only that, it was classy how you put it into a box that held your checks, and gave it to me in front of my parents, and our friends. I don’t think a single person realized what you’d given me.

Ten years later, I haven’t had a relationship since, but I have had a really hard time getting rid of that vibrator. Even after the motor died. And I realized that it’s flesh tone looked a little… wrong.

So, I was delighted when It’s My Pleasure called me to ask if they could carry Snarky Cards! And even more delighted when I went into their store! I’ve been meaning to go to It’s My Pleasure since I moved to this town. It’s a sex-positive vibrator store. Portland’s answer to Good Vibrations, if you will. Which is rad, because I grew up thinking that Good Vibrations was the best standard with which to judge a Vibrator store. And when I got to Portland, I couldn’t find Good Vibrations. I could, however, find Fantaseyland. Which is not a sex-positive sex-toy store. It’s the kind of place where creepy guys jack-off in the back room, while you stare at the big-breasted women looking at you wickedly from the inside of the packages of vibrating fun.

It’s My Pleasure is found on Sandy and 63^rd ave, in a cute little white house. The porch creaks in a nice way, and there’s coffee and tea, waiting for you inside. A giant black cat, Lucifer, loiters on the porch, demanding attention from everyone who walks through the door. It’s the kind of place where you can find the tasteful Kama Sutra, and pretty butt-plugs. If you have a question, Brandy is happy to help you. But she’s just as happy to let you browse by your lonesome. Either way, you’re not going to avoid eye-contact with other customers, or worry about someone offering you $20 for a handjob, while you try to figure out if you want just Clitoral stimulation, or some G-spot action too. And now, they also have Snarky Cards!

While I was there, I shopped and I found a new Vibrator, to soothe my angry, lonely Vagina. It’s called Little Kiss. And after the first time I used it, I thought about starting a new religion dedicated to using Little Kiss. It’s that good. I think once you try it, you’ll join my new religion. It felt like gentle, tireless fingers, working their hardest to give me orgasms, over and over.

So, I’d like to dedicate my latest painting to the boys of Portland. It’s one of my most popular cards. My friend Kay wrote it. And I’ve always thought it was mean, because feelings are important. But I’m feeling it now!

This is me, selling my shit in a bar! My tits look enormous because they are enormous

My name is Alisa Starr. I made Snarky Cards: Brutally Honest Greeting Cards. I sell them in bars from a box that hangs beneath my boobs. I also sell them online. And in stores. You can find them all over the place. They will crack you the fuck up.

I’ve turned a few of my bestselling cards into paintings for your pleasure. I hope you like them. I hope you buy them. They’re cluttering up my house, and I need to pay an extraordinarily large electric bill this month, because I live in the goddamn North Pole.

I mean, I know we had an Indian Summer this year, and the days were hot into September. But I didn’t think we’d pay for it by freezing our asses off for all of December. I mean, seriously, it’s the 7th of December. And today I went outside wearing two and three layers, and my ass and my teeth were so cold I couldn’t think straight. And my ass (or The Mountain, as I like to call it) does not get cold. Ever. I keep it enormous so that it keeps me warm. It’s the size of my friend Lauren’s studio apartment. So the fact that The Mountain froze means that we have some seriously crazy-ass weather going down right now. I mean, it would have been warmer if it had snowed. How fucked up is that?

So, I hope that you enjoy my paintings, because I need to heat The Art Shack.

This was the first Snarky Card that I ever wrote. It sells like crazy. Everyone loves this card. Well, who can blame them. Everyone loves rejection, when you can do it to someone else.

There’s something secretly delicious about rejecting other people. Whether you’re interviewing for a job, apartment hunting, or plain old dating, being the first one to conclude that “This isn’t going to work” comes with it’s own secret, guilty, glee. When you reject first, it implies that you’re better than that job, apartment, person. Or that you think you’re better (which is the same thing, really).

And this card doesn’t have any bad words, and no real assignment of blame. It simply states that you think you’re better than someone else. And so you can’t see any kind of future relationship. Which is what you mean when you say all the crap you find yourself saying when you’re trying to “dump someone nicely”. (Which by the way is a waste of time).

Maybe you take home people for the wrong reasons.

Like the time I took home that Frank Sinatra impersonator, which was ironic, because I hate Frank. Or the time I slept with a guy because he made a bad (as in poor quality) racist joke. Or the time that I took a guy home because he made great physical comedy with the pads that come in my double D bras, or the time I took a guy home because I thought that we knew each other on Friendster, and had been flirting for weeks. But it turned out we hadn’t, and I didn’t know him at all, he had been purposefully vague so he could get some action. Or the time I slept with a guy because he had cancer. I mean, he didn’t have it anymore, but he hadn’t had sex since he’d had cancer, which is apparently traumatizing. Or the time I slept with a guy because he said he was friends with Kaytee Sackhoff. Or the time I slept with a guy because he was sad. Or the time I slept with a guy because he had a pretty name (Tyler Jewell). By the way, don’t ever do that. His name was pretty. And so was he. And he graded me after sex. I didn’t get an A. But he didn’t really inspire my best kung-fu. And also: he was not giving me much to work with. But did I want to talk about it afterwards? No. I did not.I wanted to pretend like it was good and then walk my ass home. What the fuck, Tyler Jewell? Or the time I slept with that guy because he made a lot of dead-prostitute jokes.

I have a history of bad sexual decisions. And I appreciate it every time someone says that they love me, despite the fact that I offer my vagina up to boys for random and sometimes indiscernible reasons.

So I made this card because I love this idea. That my friends care about me, no matter what kind of crazy random stranger-hate-sex I engage in. And I love that it’s a painting now. I hope you buy it for someone who you love, or someone who you love, who puts my bad sexual decisions to shame.

And then, there’s Fuck you and your fucking Feelings. Maybe you need learn how to tell people to fuck off. Maybe you’re the kind of person to whom strangers tell secrets for no apparent reason, and you’re tired of it. Maybe you are responsible for everyone’s feelings, and you want to take a vacation from that particularly lame job. Or maybe you hate feelings and sees them as a sign of weakness.

Whatever your deal is, I hope you hate feelings enough to buy this painting, which tells feelings to fuck off.

So: Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you don’t have to look at ugly people, or eat bad food, or sleep somewhere cold, or have sex with someone you no longer like, or go without sex. I hope that all of your regular problems dissipate into the Christmas booze and food and generosity that they always talk about on tv!