HausOfImps

November 26, 2022 - welcome to my new profile, an eternal work in progress

My old account is benevolentghost -- I cannot access it and was hoping to merge it with this one, but recently learned that admins don't read site email and need to be contacted on their personal Facebook accounts. As such, this obnoxious section will likely remain on my profile forever. In the past few years, I have gotten my mental health in check and gotten better at communication, so I'm excited to be swapping again. I made up the swap to damilola but was not rated. I cannot reach the others. My cumulative rating between both profiles would be approx 4.95 -- if properly rated, three 3's and two 1's from inactive users -- which is what I keep in mind when joining swaps.

Please consider joining the group I run with @feverfawn if you live in the US!: Monsters, Myths, & Legends. It started as an ATC-only group, but we now host all types of swaps -- email, postcards, book and wishlist exchanges, assemblage, letter writing prompts, etc!

About Me

Greetings! My name is Lisa and I'm a 35-year-old woman living in Chicago. I try to keep my life pretty low-key and spend most of my time with my partner or my family. I like to read, craft, and send mail. I also like old Dateline episodes, bad Lifetime movies, and weird old Christian fraudster interviews and documentaries. I have taught ESL and adult basic education here and there, and I miss it dearly! Hopefully I can get back on track with something like that in the future.

I am a Furby collector, a McLuhanite, and a satirist. I love philosophy**, comparative mythology, proboscideans, and avian dinosaurs. I'm in the middle of an ongoing research project about elephants and their ancestors in folklore. I'm obsessed with fringe religious and political movements -- I seek to understand, and occasionally, to reflect back what I see. I like art and culture from all over the world. If I don't mention it, it's probably because I don't know much about it.

Meet the gang!

They are all precious to me and have very complex lives.

I like crafting ATCs and making mail art, but I've taken a bit of a break to focus on postcards and simpler trades, just because they better align with my mental state and abilities at the moment. I would like to ease back into art, but probably participate at a slower pace than I did in the past. My "likes" section gives a better idea of what I'm into. Right now, I've been having fun with sticker bombing.

I am likely going to be hosting again starting after the winter holidays. In the meantime, I'd like to do private one-time writing/letter swaps, photo swaps, postcard swaps, and destashes. I especially like writing (and zines, though that's a bit high effort for me right now) about shared "academic" interests, and also about the paranormal and occult.

If it matters, I'm a Virgo sun, Scorpio moon, Leo rising. There is a lot of Virgo on my chart. I would describe myself as LaVeyan in most simple terms, and I'm happy to speak to like-minded souls.

Thank you for reading and gettin' to know me!

(** - because people ask -- I'm interested in mind, consciousness, pain, language and communication, mass media, group dynamics, etc, usually from a Marxist perspective. I also am very interested in cognitive science and psychology in general. I haven't finished my degree, I just like to read.)

Favorite colors: pastels, black, bright and tacky colors, maroon, goldenrod, teal, all shades of green

Likes - ABC's

A - arabesque, aliens, anatomy, architecture, angels, Anatolia, altered states of consciousness

B - beluga whales, Bigfoot, bright and tacky colors, body horror, Baphomet, banknotes, bringing Sabrina home

C - collage, cryptids, Charles Manson, capybaras, cultural stuff, crabs, cacti, conspiracy theories, ceremonial magick

D - daruma dolls, dinosaurs, demons, dreams

E - elephants, Erlik Khan, Ancient Egypt, esotericism

F - Furby, folklore, food (on washi and stickers), friendship bracelets, flowers

G - gnomes, guinea pigs, glitter or foil stickers, gods/goddesses, gargoyles, Great Lakes

H - history (important leaders, military, etc), Hindi, the Hodag

I - interesting facts, India (Dravidian architecture!)

J - jesters, Furby (jester edition), journaling

K - kawaii, Kirby, keychains

L - Lisa Frank, lobsters, lion dance

M - marabou storks, mastodons, mushrooms, mythology, Mega Man, maneki-neko, Mr. Rime, musth (not to be confused with musk), militaria

N - Nintendo, Nibiru, New Age imagery

O - Oranguru, occultism

P - philosophy, Pokemon, penguins, pyramids, postcards, photos, pastels, Pennsylvania Dutch, psychedelica, paranormal, Paul Bunyan, early US presidents, pigeons, peacocks, propaganda

Q - quotes, Qabalah

R - religions/sites of worship, ruins, Russia/Russian, Regigigas

S - stickers in general, shoebills, storks, South & South East Asia, stamps (foreign), Sanrio, San-X, Satanic Panic, space/galaxy, skeletons, spiders, Studio Ghibli, Sufi-inspired art, swamps, Super Ghouls N Ghosts

T - Turkiye, Tamagotchi, tourism postcards, Trevenant, Turkic mythology, trading cards, tarot

U - urban photography, Urdu, UFOs, used books

V - volcanos, Volcanion, video games, Virgo (sun sign)

W - woolly mammoths, washi tape, writing systems, weird stuff

X -

Y - Yokai

Z - zeybek dance, zines, zodiac

Ultimate Wishlist: postcards or souvenirs from the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, anything related to the Hodag, Furby-related anything, Pennsylvania Dutch folk art (imagery on postcards or playing cards, larger trades), Doreen Virtue angel cards, photo negatives

Normal wishlist: loose tarot or Oracle cards, loose Pokemon cards, depictions of demons, anything in Cyrillic, Devanagari, Arabic/Perso-Arabic (any language ok), washi samples, stickers, of postcards related to any of my interests, damaged postage and CTOs

My apartment building does not have an outgoing mail slot, and we are advised not to use the outdoor blue mailboxes because of the frequency of theft, so here is where I send my mail every time (unless I take it to the counter): the indoor lobby of my post office. This box was not broken into, a car swerved into the lobby last year and they have not fixed it yet.

Just a lil piece of my life for ya ;)

Please be patient, I'm sure I'll edit this profile a million times. And, as always, please feel free to reach out if you'd like to swap, if you have a question or problem with a swap I'm hosting (or my group), or if ya just want to chat!