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

My brother, Stephenie, the novelist.

My sister, Joy, the artist

I guess I don’t talk about tarot cards that much, so I get why she’d be surprised. All of the kids in my family read cards with amazing accuracy. My brother also writes novels, and my sister makes jewelry, and paints and draws, and makes clothes. I’ve always wondered if it was an artistic thing. And then I don’t know, so I give up and spend a few minutes pitying my parents, who wanted us all to go to college and get real jobs, and have careers with clear trajectories. And then I get distracted thinking about my brother’s short stories, and I worry about finding him a publisher. And then I worry about finding me a publisher. And I forget to figure out if reading Tarot with accuracy is connected to creative ability.

My first cat’s name was Tarot, because even though he was completely feral, he looked like he knew how to be loved, and love me back. I got him from a crazy-cat lady in California. She’d found him in a garbage can. He was six months old, and he’d never lived inside. It took me a year until he let me pet him, and even then, I had to corner him in the bathroom, and use thick gloves my sister gave me to pick him him, and put him on my lap, while he yowled. I prayed he didn’t scratch my eyes out, while I pet him over an over again, saying fiercly “Someday you’ll like this!’

I was pretty feral when I got him, I’d just estranged myself from my family, and I was 22, living in my hometown, all of my friends had gone away to college, and I didn’t know how to make new ones. I was working 90 hours a week, and I wasn’t sure if my life was going to be worth fighting for. Taming Tarot was one of the few things that gave my life direction and trying to show him love injected compassion into my angst-ridden existence. And slowly, as he started to look to me for love, so did I. I got some therapy, and started coffee-shop slutting around again, and he started letting me cuddle with him at night.  And all the while, I read my own cards over and over again, for guidence.

This is a picture of my third costume change of the evening, at one of our blow-out Fun House parties

The thing is, my cards always told my future. And it scared me a little. And one day, four years later, I was at college -I’d gone back to school to get my tiny Sociology degree- and I got the New Location card. Which always means I’m going to move. I called my Fake Husband, who I lived with at The Fun House and told him. “You don’t have to move just because the cards say you do!” he blustered. “No. You don’t understand, I don’t want to move, but the card came up, and when it does something outside of my control is going to happen, and so I’m going to.” I was sad. And a little frustrated. I liked our ginormous house of awesome. But Steve and I always seemed to be arguing this was just one more thing. He’s still kinda Christian in his thinking. And things like Tarot cards are spooky and a little wrong. “Well, just because your cards say it doesn’t mean you have to do it.” He hung up quickly. I glared at the phone. Unbenknownst to both of us, Crazy Dennis, our Speed-Freak landlord was  breaking into the Fun House at that very moment, so he could leave an eviction notice in my bedroom on the back of an envelope. I found it when I got home from school. “What do you think about Tarot now?”  “I just try not to think about it.”He replied uncomfortably. And I thought “Well, if Steve can ignore the fact that Tarot’s real, than I can too.” So, I put my cards away, and I moved to Portland. Tarot died when we moved here, he’d gotten into a fight and some other cats sharp parts had knicked his lungs. The vet said if I’d had a million dollars, I might not have been able to save him. And I was so sad, I couldn’t say the word for a long, long time. I ran out and got two kittens to replace him three days after he died. They were cuddly and cute and open and loving and so opposite him, I put the cards and the cat away in my mind and I haven’t thought much about either since.

But the last six months have been hard on me. I love my life. But it’s become unpredictible and extreme. And every day something huge happens, and I have to figure out how to deal with it. Some of it is good stuff (which I will reveal to you, dear internet, when it’s all finalized. I don’t want to get your hopes up and then dash them) and some of it is bad stuff. And it’s gotten to the point that I’ve realized that The Universe was right when it decided to give me Tarot Cards.

I had always thought the ability to see my own future was a consolation prize for giving me such a shitty childhood, abusive parents and a stubborn nature. But now that I’ve had some therapy, and my abusive childhood is no longer the defining thing in my life. I mean, I still think about it sometimes, but it not longer hurts my feelings that those things happened to me. And I’ve started to accept my stubborn nature, and give it some begrudging props. I wouldn’t have gotten this far with my Snarky Cards if I hadn’t been so sure that this was the best way to make myself a writer. I’ve wanted to be a professional writer since I was 6. I made a promise to myself that I would one day be a writer. Which is why I’ve worked my ass off, 90 hours a week for two and a half years, hungry half the time, promising myself it would get better if I could just stand being poor and scared and tired and hungry for another year. Stringing myself along, ignoring kind-hearted people who told me over and over again to get a real job and work on my dreams part-time. “Like a normal responsible person”. Because I’m stubborn. And I said I would finish this. And I said it would make me a writer. And I don’t have a goddamn book published yet.

Lately I’ve begun to think that rather than being a consolation prize for a hard life, my Tarot Cards tell my future because my life is so weird, and totally unpredictible, and I need some advance warning about what’s coming up so that I can get ready. And The Universe knows that, and so it gives me a heads up out of consideration. And, maybe the advance warning of what’s going to happen next will allow me some mediocum of security in a world where I depend on Strangers in Bars to pay my rent. Or, as I did last night at Kelly’s Olympian and Meridian Gold Dust, the electric bill and phone bill. -Thank you Strangers in Bars! Todays electricity is brought to me from you! And also: Cute-Boy-Rich: Please stop intonating that we’re going to make-out and then disappearing. You are a cunt tease. Nobody likes a cunt-tease. Next time I see you, you better be cornering me in a bathroom and trying to grope me.

So, tomorrow night Fenbi’s playing a show again. FINALLY! They’ve asked me to read Tarot for anybody and everybody. I will be doing that for $5 a reading at the Ash Street Saloon from 8pm until close-to-closing. A word of warning though: When Fenbi plays, you need to shut-up and dance. That’s what I’ll be doing.  So -before and after the cute boys entertain us with deliciously dancable music-you can get your present, and possibly your future read for $5. I’ll bring some Snarky Cards too, so anyone who wants to peruse through those can.

I’m off now, to try and make some sort of gypsy costume, so that I’ll look like a vagrant fortune-teller. I hope to see you tomorrow night!

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!

And here is my latest card: The Parasite On Society. For the person in your life that you wanna keep fucking, even though they’re prospects are looking grim. It can console and reassure them, while cracking you up. And really, isn’t that a pressing concern when you get laid off? I mean, I’ve been fired almost as many times as I’ve been hired, and I worried that it would make me a little less fuckable everytime. It didn’t, but it took me a while to get that. And so I made this card.

Lately, I’ve been out selling a lot. I loved San Francisco, but going home didn’t save me, financially, like I hoped it would. Arlette is right. There’s no magic bullet. (what does that even mean, anyway? Aren’t all bullets kind of magical, in that they can kill people really, really fast?) I’m building a business, and the more I work on building it, the easier things get, but it’s all still work. Yes, I do a lot of it stoned or drunk, and a lot of it’s fun, but a lot of it’s exhausting too. It may be a fun job, but it’s still a job, to put myself out there, night after night, hurling my breasts and cards at strangers over and over again, hoping that something will stick. And sometimes it feels like a job. Except with this job, there are always lessons, in everything I try.

I didn’t make a million dollars in San Francisco, but I didn’t lose money by going. And I realized that the change in Scenery is good for me. So is going to a new city, where I have to create a new buzz for my shit all over again. Although, San Francisco remembers my cards, so it wasn’t totally starting over. I’ve sold them there about four times in the last two years. So I had some street cred to start out with.

How fun would it be to have people try to put your earrings out all night?

My sister and I have started talking to each other again, so I think a trip to Seattle might be in the works, as the next spot where I try for Total Bar Domination. She’s pretty keyed into the Seattle art scene, and she makes some pretty cool art herself. My favorite of her new shit is her Cigarrette Earrings. Not made out of actual Cigarrettes, but they look like they’re lit, especially in the bar.

While Joy and I might be on the up and up, I’m not sure if I want to test out new-found friendliness by crashing with her. So, Seattle-ans: If you have a couch, and you think you want a Surly, but Sexy Snarky Card Chick crashing on it for a night, lemme know, would you?