What to do when it’s freezing outside

The weather in Toronto this weekend was pretty atrocious. After an outing to have a lovely burger dinner at Burger Shoppe Quality Meats on Friday night (with a pit stop at the very strange, masculine “Opera Bob’s” bar afterwards, where they took about 35 minutes to make me a cup of tea), I decided going out in -25C weather was overrated, and have holed myself up in my cozy apartment with the temperature set to ‘Tropical Rainforest’ ever since.

This, for me, is the start of winter. Here marks the weekend where I officially re-engage my “indoor activities” roster, which includes reading, quilting, baking, knitting and doing things on the Internet, not necessarily in that order. In wintertime, Pipes rediscovers her inner Domestic Goddess. And as 2010 seems to be the year of the Rebirth of the Blog (see: Jalapeño Pirate, Spaghetti Robot, etc) I thought it was high time for a new post.

So, yesterday I made use of my lovely Christmas gift of ceramic pie weights and baked a pecan pie…

Pecan Pie
*the verdict was “more pecans, less sugar”. Not bad for a first try, though.

…and today, inspired by the lovely new “Fletcher Mittens” I got from indigirl for Christmas, I finished knitting and stuffing and sewing eyes onto the Linux Penguin I’ve been working on (or rather, NOT working on) since March…

Grumpy the Penguin

Reading has been a bit eclectic lately. I recently completed the utterly abysmal conclusion to Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, ‘Breaking Dawn’, where the vampires *finally* decide it’s time to start talking about menstruation, and where I was disappointed to find there were absolutely zero sex scenes or even pages of tawdry purple prose waxing poetic about Edward’s heaving bosom or what’s-her-name’s engorged throbbingness or what have you. Sigh. 800 pages I never needed to read in the first place. I sincerely hope she doesn’t write a fifth book, though, or I’ll feel compelled to read that steaming pile of printed letters, too.

I’m accumulating a large stack of books to take with me to Mexico in a few weeks, for my first ever attempt at a non-adventure vacation. I’m nervous about being expected to basically lie down and turn off my brain for 7 days while attacking my liver with alcohol, so in addition to going armed to the teeth with SPF80 and an extraordinarily wide-brimmed floppy hat, I’m packing a heavy arsenal of literature and possibly some knitting to take along in case I need to jump-start my brain after baking it in the sun for a few hours.

Here’s the tentative list so far:
* Christopher Moore – Bloodsucking Fiends
* Fabienne Grevy – Graffiti Paris
* Lise Myhre – Nemi
* Caleb Carr – The Italian Secretary
* Agatha Christie – The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Hallowe’en Party; Third Girl
* Mark Dunn – Ella Minnow Pea (indigirl recommends)
* Marisha Pessl – Special Topics in Calamity Physics (indigirl recommends)
* Isaac Asimov – Tales of the Black Widowers
* Alexander McCall Smith – In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Additions? Suggestions? Do tell. Comedy/mystery/fantasy preferred. I’ll also take recommended (light, small) knitting patterns for vacations.

It’s not Larping, it’s just Cosplay

Poor LARPers. Back in 2002, Brunching’s Geek Hierarchy proclaimed the abysmal geekiness of individuals who choose to spend their leisure time dressing up as warlocks and dwarves, acting out campaigns “IRL”. The Shuttlecocks weren’t aiming to be cruel; they were just telling it like it is. LARPers languish in the deep netherhells of uncoolness – lower than tabletop role players, far below video gamers – they are mocked, often and hard. Even professional mockers like X-Play’s Sessler & Webb, aren’t above stooping to take cheap shots at these poor unfortunate souls (see: Wild Larping Kingdom for details). They are the whipping boys and girls of the geek world.

But what about a LARPer’s kissing cousin, the Cosplayer? Strangely, the cultural phenomenon of cosplay (dressing up without intent to perform) doesn’t suffer nearly the same degree of public stigma. Cosplayers are embraced as fun-loving jokers, beloved totems of the creative spirit found at conventions, in high schools and all over the urban sprawl of Tokyo. Recently, Felicia Day and the cast of The Guild made a joyful splash at SDCC by cosplaying as their online avatars.

All this fuss got me to thinking – in my many years of attending cons, I’ve never really dressed up. I found myself wondering who or what sort of video game icon I would choose to cosplay at PAX, if any. Laziness and my hatred of checked baggage instantly eliminated fun-but-bulky options like the King of All Cosmos or a Goomba. My firm refusal to expose my midriff ruled out nearly every female video game character except GLaDOS and Samus (again with the luggage problem). Maybe something subtle, something only recognizable by a rare few, something to weed out the hardcore from the n00bs. Then it came to me – instead of a character, why not dress as a notable girl gamer? Why not be Kate Libby from Hackers?

Please don’t think that I imagine myself hot enough to evoke Angelina Jolie, age 18 (before her stick-figure-hexa-mom phase) without the aid of considerable props. I did my homework and re-watched the film, to see if there was a particularly iconic wearable item beyond the vulcan haircut, hinged gauntlet ring, silver hoops and white or blue nail polish. I was surprised by two things: one, the shocking lack of photos of Angie’s various states of dress in this film (I thought the Internet had everything about celebs already?) and two, what an amazing job the costume artists did of building a self-consistent character with thoughtful wardrobe and make-up choices.

All of Kate’s clothes stay on a limited colour palette of white, black, silver, sky-blue and orangey-red: bright, confident, decisive colours with clear limitations. No blending, no softness, no apologies. The materials and style are entirely geared towards showing aggression, activity, sexuality, and an alien, unattainable quality. Kate wears slinky leather motorcycle gear, tight spandex surfer shirts, oversized hockey jerseys. She has outfits with straps, buckles and zippers in inappropriate places, kimonos and a dress with an obi. She’s basically flipping the bird at Trinny and Susannah.

Given the advent of Ebay and Etsy, I thought it would be easy to track down at least a few of these items. Again, I overestimated the webs. The only item that could be had on short notice is her New Jersey Devils hockey jersey. The red/white/yellow/black Suzuki Icon motorcycle jacket she wears is impossible to trace. I couldn’t find a reasonable facsimile of her black & white raglan shirt with the white-on-white skull & crossbones and legend “Too fast to live / Too young to die”, anywhere. The black & silver short v-necked satin kimono dress with black obi must have been custom made. And Quiksilver no longer has anything like a shiny blue low-turtleneck ladies surf shirt with their logo on the front, with or without a checkerboard flower pattern. I can only speculate as to which brand of club gear made the red and white jumpsuits (Snug? Kitchen Orange? House of Spy? FDCO? Tripp NYC?), or the wide-lapel silver pleather short jacket with long sleeves and exposed seams. Sigh. Better luck next time, Gadget.

In the end, I decided to use Ms. Libby as a muse for my new haircut, rather than as a model of fashion to imitate. Probably for the best – I doubt anyone would have caught the inside joke if I’d shown up to PAX wearing Kate’s club gear: a skin-tight white turtleneck and white pants with white plastic knee-high boots. Even your above-average geek would assume I was just doing a shitty job of cosplaying as a Stormtrooper with no helmet and no armor. Possibly due to my hatred of checked luggage.

Tell me, dear reader: who would YOU cosplay as?