Bye-Bye Blogger

This blog has moved! Most of you won't be able to tell, but a few of you might. Please revisit http://www.barbiedreamhearse.com, update your RSS feeds, admire the categorization of posts, water the plants, and pat yourself on the back for being a part of an itty bitty feminist movement with a giant V8 engine under the hood!

The Decals Are On!

Jody did a great job on my rear door decals, and they got all kinds of exposure as I drove from Kirkland to West Seattle in rush hour traffic to run an errand.

I decided to leave the sides alone for now. Enough people have convinced me that I don't want to junk it up like a race car, and I don't have any concrete design ideas at the moment. The fact that it's a big white hearse makes it stand out on its own.

I've spent the last few days cruising to different Seattle locales. One of the places I hate to drive most happens to be my current neighborhood. I rarely park on the street here since I have an expensive garage space, but last night I found myself trying to parallel park on 1st Avenue in front of Le Pichet with a bunch of people hollering, gesturing, and otherwise distracting me. I know you think you're helping, but I have a backup camera... so back the hell up and let me park.

Also, to the striped shirt wearing douche in the black Mercedes who cut me off at the Seneca exit on I-5 only to get back on the highway, thus negating any reason for being in my lane in the first place, I'm shaking a tiny fist at you too!

Addendum: The picture requests were almost instantaneous, so here's one of the back of the car, even though the light is hitting it wrong and it looks like crap. And here's one of Lola, the little dog that hangs out at the shop.

Please Design a Website for Me

With pie charts. For free.

Apparently 27b/6 has gone the way of the dodo (the above link is a mirror of the referenced meme), but the BDH is still around and this blog is no longer cutting the mustard as an online presence. I need a prettier, more effective marketing website, and I've known I would for about a year.

I suppose I was suffering from delusions of grandeur thinking I would be able to put something together myself. While I can create basic websites that function and provide information, I can't draw or otherwise create graphics to save my life, so I need to enlist some outside help.

In addition, three people who know what they're talking about recommended Wordpress independently of each other, and I'm considering moving everything over there (still using barbiedreamhearse.com as the domain name). Blogger is going to stop supporting updates via FTP, which is what I like to use for backup and other purposes. The other purposes mostly pertain to my little custom blog, PlatKat.com, with which the BDH site shares an account. Since the BDH blog's template is solely within Blogger, I thought switching to Blogger's publishing method would be easy enough. Sadly, the WWW-dot in front of the site name is too much for Blogger (and/or iPower) to handle as things stand. I must humbly admit I'm not sure how to fix this in the short term, despite some of the good efforts made by friends.

In short, it's going to take some time. Like the BDH herself, marketing the BDH is going to be a work-in-progress for longer than I could have guessed. Web help is always appreciated, and if anyone has a crystal ball handy, it looks like I could use that too.

Keep It Down, Hitler

While looking for examples of girlie auto decoration, I found this eyesore:

Pink Beetle Convertible for Barbie's Big Five-O

*cringe* I guess it makes sense that our traditional blond-haired, blue-eyed buxom babe would be driving a femmed-up Nazi sled for her 50th birthday, but did they have cram it down our throats with 50 different shades of pink?

Outer Dilemma

Now that I'm finally at the point where I can put decals on the car, I'm at a loss for what should go on there. Awhile back, I met with Francis, owner of D Only Son in LA. Unfortunately, he's friends with Admir, Admir and I have unfinished business, drama, drama, etc.

So, I decided to wait until I was back in Seattle to have decals put on the car. I was lucky enough to have the guys at L-M Auto recommend JJ Graphics just down the street from their shop, where Jody has been putting together some mock-ups of what they might look like.

I'm going to move forward with the artwork on the rear door:



But I'm not loving the look of the large lettering on the sides. I had a really blurry vision of what I wanted, but I'm not a designer. I can't even begin to dream up something as nice as what a more artistic person could, let alone pull it out of my head and into a viewable format.

So basically, I'm left with letters on a car. They could be straight:



Or angled:



Either way, it just looks unfinished to me. I'm hoping to get the help of some designers in the coming weeks to, well... finish.

Rain City Hearse Club Meetup

After being in the Rain City Hearse Club for almost a year, I attended my first meetup today at Poodle Dog in Tacoma. Even if I had been in town for any of the prior meetups, I probably wouldn't have gone without a hearse. Judging from the low turnout and the emails from non-attendees that followed, it's an understandable sentiment.

Rick, Frank, Mike, and I met with Troy, who is organizing this year's Crypticon in Everett. He gave us an overview of the event and how we could help. Since I have a hearse that is outfitted specifically to transport people, I'll be making airport runs before settling into my booth at the convention.

Although I have a pretty good idea of what I want to wear, there was talk of giving me a full-on gothing. I've always gotten by wearing relatively little makeup, and I'm not even sure that goth makeup would look right on someone with my facial features, but I'm open to whatever people want to do. It's not like I have a personal conflict with scaring small children. Plus, Troy is planning to have Chuckles DeClown greet guests at the airport, so it would be nearly impossible to be the freakiest-looking person there.

They're expecting about 5,000 people to attend for three days of shows, activities, and partying, so I think this will be an fun chance to make some contacts and promote the car. If you were too lazy to click the Crypticon link, it runs June 18-20. Folks in the Seattle area: Come out for at least one of the days and say hi!

Barbie's First Passive-Aggressive Seattle Note

As I may have mentioned, I am back in Seattle now (YES YES YES!) and while I love this city very much, it is not without its drawbacks. Namely, people here seem to think their opinions are important enough to spend time writing notes to other people they don't know and will likely never meet. As you can imagine, Craigslist's "Missed Connections" section is very popular.

Anyway, my temporary living situation puts me right in the heart of downtown, which means I have to put my car in a garage downtown. I understand space is limited, but the place I keep my car is the largest garage that is close by, and they don't have spaces for longer vehicles.

They have spaces for SUVs, however, and when I can snag one of those, I'm golden. People entering the garage can see my car and avoid it. But if you like to enter the garage doing 60 mph in your Z3 roadster, you were in for a rude awakening if you didn't slow down when you turned the corner.

I found my car unharmed, but with this note in the window:



I appreciate the compliments, but my first reaction to the note was, "You almost hit me twice? Were you drunk?" I stick out a little far, I admit, but I think people had ample space to get in and out:



Still, I am in danger of getting clipped, so a working compromise is to park in two spaces at the very bottom of the garage where my car will be nearly out of sight and unable to offend anyone else's delicate sensibilities!