Hold on to your bats! Er.. we mean butts. Either way, the Lab has a doozy of an update for you – a new Genius Loci release staring our furry night-winged friends; Hallowenches at Black Phoenix Trading Post; our monthly Full Moon scent; and a trunk show of vintage BPAL rarities. Links and descriptions to all can be found below!
++ GENIUS LOCI: BATS OF LOS ANGELES
The baby bat Screamed out in fright, ‘Turn on the dark, I’m afraid of the light.
– Shel Silverstein
Illustrated by Drew Rausch, scented by Elizabeth Barrial, and inspired by our local furry flighted fuzzballs.
ALLEN’S BIG EARED BAT These mountain-dwelling cutie pies roost in caves, mines, and rocky outcrops, and love to munch on moths that they catch mid-flight.
A fuzzy moth scent, dappled grey and delicious: rosehips and sandalwood with a touch of tobacco flower.
CALIFORNIA LEAF-NOSED BAT The California Leaf-Nosed Bat prefers the desert. They’re homebodies and do not migrate, and they’re also definitely Type A bats, as they don’t hibernate. Go go go!
Nightfall in the desert: Mojave yucca, creosote bush, saguaro, dusty clove, and sacred datura.
GHOST FACED BAT A venerable and well-respected bat, Ghost Face Bats can trace their ancestry to the late Pleistocene era.
Sugared coconut meat, vanilla pods, condensed milk, white honey, and benzoin.
MEXICAN LONG-TONGUED BAT The Gene Simmons of the Phyllostomidae family, this little buddy has a tongue built for harvesting nectar, extending up to a third of its body length and covered in hairy and horny papillae.
Smoked chili peppers, caramelized saffron, and clove bud.
PALLIDBAT I want my rooftop filled with Pallid Bats. Not only are they cute as hell, but their favored meal is the Arizona bark scorpion, whose sting is the most venomous to be found in North America.
Bats > Scorpions
(Sorry, Scorpios!)
Tea leaf, bourbon, a sting of white ginger, and Italian bergamot swirled in amber incense smoke.
WESTERN BONNETED BAT Fairly antisocial as bats go, Western Bonnie sticks to colonies of less than a hundred other bats. A girl needs her privacy, you know.
Butterscotch tobacco.
++ GENIUS LOCI: BATS OF LOS ANGELES – HAIR GLOSS
MEXICAN LONG-NOSED BAT The Mexican Long-Nosed Bat is a versatile critter, building her roosts in caves, vacant buildings, hollow trees, or sewers. She loves agave nectar, pollen, and participating in a polygynandrous mating system. If the cavern’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’!
Agave nectar, mushed guava, and wildflower honey.
SOUTHERN YELLOW BAT The Southern Yellow Bat is the friggin’ cutest, and she always looks like someone just told her a hella funny joke. The cackling grin on her face sums up my life goals.
Warm patchouli, smoked pumpkin, and golden amber bubbling with sugared almond.
WESTERN SMALL FOOT BAT With golden dorsal fur, but brownish-black wings, limbs, ears and facial mask, she looks a bit like a tiny flying Siamese cat. She is the bat world’s little debutante, draped in fur and headed to a masquerade.
Wild roses twined around creamy amber and a tangle of patchouli.
HYRROKKIN Thou didst smite the head of Keila, Smash Kjallandi altogether, Ere thou slewest Lútr and Leidi, Didst spill the blood of Búseyra; Didst hold back Hengjankjapta, Hyrrokkin died before; Yet sooner in like fashion Svívör from life was taken.
Hringhorni, Baldr’s ship, was the largest of all such vessels and was to serve as the god’s funeral ship.
When Loki murdered Baldur, the gods built the funeral pyre on his ship, Hringhorni. Hringhorni was massive, and none of the Aesir could move it, so they begged help of the Jötun, Hyrrokkin. Fire-smoked and flame-haired, the giantess arrived on a gargantuan wolf harnessed by reins made of live vipers. Hyrrokkin was able to push Baldur’s funeral ship out to sea, but the force of her strength caused the earth to quake and the rollers to burst into flame. Thor, angered by the quake and the conflagration, was intent on murdering Hyrrokkin until the Aesir stayed his hand.
Viper-green and smoldering: smoke-swirled black pine, patchouli leaf, coriander, and sweet green vetiver.
++ TRUNK SHOW
We’re running out of room at the Lab, and it’s been a long, long time since we’ve had a trunk show. When Brian and I were rifling through the prototype and snafu shelves a few weeks ago, we dug up two busticated Snake Oils – one that was a mispour of Lemon Scented Sticky Bat, and another involved an Aggravated Vanilla Incident – and we unearthed the very first Samhain prototype from 2002.
We don’t have time to do a full-blown trunk show right now, so we’re offering these three for sale. They’re in very, very limited quantity:
***One more thing: PLEASE vote on November 6th.***
As a special call to action, our perfumer Elizabeth Barrial has created a page with resources for eleventh-hour activism leading up to the Midterm elections, which will have tremendous effects on the lives of women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and many others.
This effort ultimately inspired the following perfume blend, funds from which will go to help the ACLU fight voter fraud.
RESISTANCE I created this scent as a symbol of solidarity. It is an autumn scent, swirled with fall leaves, huddled against the cold winds of November.
We’re together in this fight. You’re not alone.
Bourbon vanilla and vintage champaca absolute with sweet patchouli, dried red fruits, leather accord, pumpkin rind, and a splash of bourbon.
I always found it a bit odd. Hilarious, but it raised too many questions. When did Steve make these? Why did Steve make these? How did he manage to be so cheesy and overly sincere knowing how much crap he would get from the other Avengers for it?
Well, today my sister told me her headcanon. Picture the scene. Steve leans on the back of a chair, as above. Peter immediately launches into ‘So, you got detention…’. Cap blinks. Peter awkwardly tries to explain. It turns out Cap has no idea what videos he means, and neither do any of the other Avengers.
So they get in touch with the company who made them, and they swear blind that it was really the real Captain America, and that it all his idea. That he came in and said how much he wanted to help the youth of today.And the Avengers all lose it because someone is running around doing an unbelievably good impression of Captain America, they could have destroyed his reputation, they could have infiltrated the Avengers; and instead all they are apparently using it for is to make silly, embarrassing videos.
It’s completely baffling. Who could possibly be behind it all?
A mystery.
I had a serious yearning for banana bread and then one of those people who pass through the place selling random things came by with a tray of sponge cake and really good banana bread.
fuck every democrat who says the issue of trans rights is a “distraction.” fuck every single liberal who say that the threat of stripping every trans person of legal recognition is a red herring or a losing issue and if we focus on it too long we’ll throw the election. we’re talking about human rights, access to medical care, sex education, discrimination, citizenship, and a whole lot else, for millions of people.
trans people aren’t a “distraction.” we’re human beings. the fact that so many liberals turn their backs on trans people is fucking despicable.
Okay…but this, right here? This is exactly what the Republican party wants. Young voters turning against the Democratic party and either not voting at all, or voting in favor of some third party candidate that has literally zero chance of pulling in enough votes to win. They want division among the ranks. They want to split our vote.
In political terms, calling something a ‘distraction’ means it’s a distraction tactic, not that the issue itself isn’t important. The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves. They deliberately drop issues that they know are hot-button topics because these are the topics that have the potential to be the most divisive.
They’re awful but they’re not dumb. They know trans rights is an issue that could potentially split the democratic vote. It’s an issue that’s very heavily weighted toward the younger side of the party, which again, was a deliberate move on their part. If they can convinced you that the “big bad Democrats don’t care about you little trans and nonbinary kids so why bother,” then they’ve effectively won the election in a walk because the democrats went in divided–again.
Look, the democratic party isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But it’s literally the only party that has a snowball’s chance in hell at overtaking the republican majority right now. If we as trans and nonbinary individuals ever want our identities respected and protected, it’s the only party that’s going to be able to get us there, because it’s the party going in the direction we need to go. If you want to vote in favor of our rights, then vote Democrat. No number of videos with pennies is going to change the fact that right now, in this political climate, third party candidates are not going to have enough power to effect the changes we want.
Warning against something being a distraction doesn’t mean “don’t look at it or worry about it,” it means, “hey, I know this is majorly upsetting, and absolutely something needs to be done, but don’t let it divide us.” It’s literally because the issue is so important that democrats are warning against it as a distraction tactic–if we want to prevent that kind of change from happening under republican rule, we have to keep our heads and not let them keep us from voting as a unified party.
Please don’t let the political rhetoric make you think that the democratic party isn’t going to be fighting for us and our rights. That’s kind of exactly what the Republican party wants you to think. It’s a division tactic. Don’t fall for it.
The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
I’ve been voting since 1998. This is what they do every single election.
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