Mailbag Monday 54

Hello dear readers, it’s MAILBAG MONDAY again!  On this special day I will search through my mountain of reader mail and answer the five most pressing questions!

What’s that you say?  Do I really get that much mail?  Well, I’ll admit…the contact sectionof this website doesn’t get used that often, but, one of the perks of wordpress stats is that I can see the google search terms that people use to find my site.  And I’m going to go ahead and pretend that these search terms will count as reader mail, since they are often entered in the form of a question.  So as you read these, remember that each “question” was something that someone actually typed into google that brought up my site as a hit which they then clicked on thus letting wordpress stats report to me the search they used to find my site.  I could make up the questions myself, but it turns out the actual google searches are far better than anything I could come up with!

This month I answer the following questions:

• How to make your own halloween costume isley?
• Scuba battle?
• Cow Hentai?
• Did john wayne cheat on maureen ohara in mclintock?
• KC renfest secret?

So, without further ado, it is time to dig into the old Mailbag to see what kind of things have been on my readers’ minds in the last month!

How to make your own halloween costume isley?

Oddly enough, I was asked the exact question (more or less) by my friend Big NAsty (as she is known in online circles) last week.  She needed  a last minute costume to wear to the school she teaches at, and came to me for advice.  The first thing that came to mind was to turn to my pair of trusty spiked bracers that I got at ren fest 15 year ago and have paid for themselves 10-fold since then.  With those it would be a simple matter of wearing my black metal patch vest and some corpse paint to make a super kvlt costume.  But then I realized that high school students would probably think she was just going as KISS.  And Natalie wasn’t so sure about how well the 19 upside down crosses and 14 pentagrams on my patch vest would go over at school.

Thus we went with plan B, 80s metalhead.  She just borrowed my relatively PC 80s patch vest (though she was iffy about the “Heavy Load” patch over the ass), my Thor Devastation of Musculation shirt (that is size small but I always try to wear it anyway in spirit of the devastation of musculation), a pair of antique mall boots (that I for some reason thought fit me even though they were a size and a half too small), a bandanna, and one of my pairs of fingerless biker gloves:

Thus, I guess all it takes to make your own Halloween costume is to just borrow some of my clothes.

Scuba battle?

Normally, for any kind of exotic fighting advice, I’d just turn to any of the many badass books that I read for your answer.  However, aside from that Jack Reacher fight in the pool where he choked the guy so hard his head almost tore off, or maybe the ending of Shibumi, I’m not sure I’ve got a good literary reference for this.  Luckily, I’ve seen every Connery bond movie at least 15 times, so I can at least give you some general tips for scuba fights.

• If you have a knife, ALWAYS make cutting their air pipe as your primary goal.
• I repeat, do NOT stab them, go for the pipe that is connected to their oxygen tank instead.
• If you do not have a knife, pull their mask off.  The inrush of water into their eyes will incapacitate them for the duration of the fight.
• If all else fails, try to lure them into a shiver of sharks.  Yes, I had to look up “shiver of sharks”.

Cow hentai?

Jesus, I just did that cow porn post last month and I’m already getting searches like this?  Obviously I’m just livid about this situation which is why I’m going to go ahead and throw this picture out there, which, I’m sure, will really help curb further searches along these lines:

I added the milk cartons to make that safe for work (in the loosest sense of the phrase), though I’ve seen enough hentai to know that that probably isn’t actually milk.  Milkake maybe?

Did john wayne cheat on maureen ohara in mclintock?

Yes.  But don’t worry, after he gave her a good public spanking she forgot all about it.

Kc renfest secret?

As a frequenter of the KC renfest for the last 15 years (ever since that fateful day where I bought the spiked wrist bracers mentioned above), I know my faire share of secrets.  I know where to sit at the joust so you can cheer for the bad guy and also be in the shade.  I know that the joust kind of sucks anyway and that even the shade and cheering for the bad guy isn’t worth it.  I know that one should never attempt to eat 12 inches of sausage by oneself.  And I know a few secret entrances to the realm of mystery and lure known as the KC Renaissance Fair.

This year proved to be a bit of an adventure on that front.  See, because the main parking lot was full, all traffic was redirected to the far inferior back parking lot, a portion of the realm whose secret roads and entrances I was not privy to.  However, I was not about to spend all my foot long sausage money on the exorbitant entry fee (or, you know, give cans of food to the homeless to pay a slightly less exorbitant entry fee), so I set off on a mighty quest to, um, sneak into ren fest.

I had to hide behind a van-shaped wagon while a large group of travelers made their way past me to the main gate.  Sensing a lull in the foot traffic, I made a dash for the fence at the edge of the woods.  After making short work of an old rotted board at the bottom with my ren fest boots, I managed to squeeze through without being seen by any of the guards at the gate.  Once inside I found myself in trackless woods outside of Mermaid’s Cove.  After wandering a bit I came to a deep ravine with a swiftly flowing stream at the bottom.  Summoning forth the last of my strength, I leapt out over the abyss and managed to grasp an overhanging branch on the opposite side and pull myself to safety.

Once I had regained both my footing and my breath, I saw that my only two options were to brave the perils of the Mermaid Cove maze, or attempt to burgle my way through the back door of the wall of artisan shops to my right.  Knowing full well the dangers of the Mermaid Cove maze (and knowing full well it hadn’t officially opened yet and thus it would look strange if I exited it), I snuck in the back of one of the buildings, gave the proprietress of the Knotty Lady a bit of a shock, and then was then quickly on my way to the foot long sausage stand!

#KCRenFestSECRETS