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Self-control. I do not haz it.

Thursday, October 17th, 2013

I like green, specifically light yellow-green, the color of the first buds of spring. I also like a variety of blues and purples and browns, therefore I tend to use those colors pretty exclusively in my work. It’s as natural as picking up a pen in your primary hand. Occasionally, however, I like to stretch muscles creatively that I don’t often use, and that can mean using colors that you’re not naturally attracted to. I’ve never used rocaille beads because I thought they were a bit flashy (they are glass beads that are lined in the hole with shiny metal) and I almost never use yellow, orange and red. Snorth likes orange, and I like Snorth, so I decided hey let’s make something with yellow, orange AND red inspired by her. So when I get home at night I spend about an hour decompressing from my job by watching “Lockup” on MSNBC and beading a lariat. It’s an extremely repetitive stitch so I don’t have to think too hard and it’s a good way to prepare myself for that night’s sleepytimes. The point of me telling you all this is I have no idea how to end the bottoms of this lariat. I want to end it with a fancy flourish of some kind. I’ve done that for this one:

And this one:

I mean, you can just stop beading, tie it off, and that’s the end. That’s totally an option if that’s what you’d like, but I like it to look like I didn’t just run out of beads. I want the bottom to look intentional. So I went on Etsy with the intention of buying two lampworked glass beads. Two. You hear me? Just two. Two beads.

Here’s what I bought:

Yeah. Hence the title of this blog entry. And note that in the picture it’s just pairs of beads, but the first one is six beads, then seven beads, then two, then seven, then two. I’m no mathematician, but that’s not just two beads. We’ll see which one of those works best for my project.

Posted in My Art/Design/Business, Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Stuff n’ things.

Thursday, October 10th, 2013

1. There’s a British website called Terrible Real Estate Agent Photographs. While the photos are indeed extremely terrible, the comments are great.

2. Et tu, Animal Planet? I understand The History Channel going over to the dark side for the sake of ratings (I mean, how much Hitler footage can you show in a day?), but animals are forever interesting. There’s no need to bring fake made-up animals into this. No Bigfoot and no mermaids. Stop it.

3. There is a TV show in England called “Quite Interesting,” and they put out a list of Animated Animal Facts. They are the greatest. And they are illustrated by a very talented man, Mr. Whaite. Some of my favorites:

And he did a great movie poster in neon:

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Stuff, Teh Intarwebz, The Telly | 1 Comment »

Two artists that are magnificent and humbling.

Tuesday, October 8th, 2013

I was perusing a bunch of websites as I do every day or so and I saw these weird little stegosaurus-monsters with barnacles all over them made of clay.

I was intrigued so I clicked and lo, a world of magic and wonder was revealed to me. Meet Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenko. They’re Russian and they’re AMAZING. Here’s what they do.

First, Slava creates an animal. He has a ton of molds he’s made and he takes this tail and this eye and these horns and he brings it all together, smoothing and melding the elements together. The creatures are absolutely delightful and if Slava stopped there, it would be fine.

But then more stuff happens. Anya is an illustrator that reminds me of the British illustrator Arthur Rackham. This is one of her drawings.

Anya draws right onto the clay, and then paints over it with what appears to be black glaze. Then I imagine it is fired, sealing the black glaze to the porcelain.

And then Anya paints with color. She is amazing. I can’t even with the beautifulness.

Are you seeing this??? ARE YOU???

Ohmygod. Much to my sadness, they make the pieces to order as requested by clients and I can’t commit to any one beastie or style or motif. I WANT ALL THE THINGS. When I finally get my act together, I will pick a design and get something made. In the meantime, I friended them on Facebook (I recommend you do as well) and watch their creations with a mixture of envy and desire.

If you want to commission a work of art, here’s their website. It’s in Russian but Google will translate it for you.

http://farfora.com/

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Things (pertaining mainly to animals).

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

1. Have you people seen this commercial? HAVE YOU? Chickens have gyroscopes in their heads. I love this commercial. I love it. It should win all the awards.

http://youtu.be/nLwML2PagbY

2. A lot of really stellar news headlines out there right now. You don’t have to even read the articles, the titles tell you all you need to know.

3. Have we discussed the glorious website Animals Talking In All Caps? Because it’s really cool and we should look at it right now.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Stuff, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

I saw documentaries. Let’s talk about them.

Monday, September 2nd, 2013

I’ve had a busy week at my jobbie-job so while I was working on Keynote decks I opened up Netflix on the side of my screen and watched a bunch of documentaries.First, I saw After Porn Ends, which is about the life and times of several porn actors. It pretty much is like any other career in that some people really hate what they did and have massive regrets and other performers are fine with it and enjoyed the sex and the spotlight. I did not know that porn actors worked so little. I assumed that it was like a five-days-a-week, 9-5 type job, but it’s totally not. The lower-end folk work about one day a week and if they get famous enough they film as infrequently as seven or eight times a year. They do other stuff on the other days, like signings and appearances and headlining in strip clubs, but they have surprisingly little “interpersonal relations”. I mean, what the actors do in their free time is their business, but if work is the only time they have sex, they’re not having a whole lotta sex. The other thing I noticed in the film but was not surprised by is the men seem to deal with the life much better than the women. To be a male who has worked in porn is to be a stud, but to be a woman who has worked in porn is to be a whore. That’s a bit of a disappointment to me since they did the same exact job. I hope in the future that if a woman is a former porn worker, after she retires and becomes a regular-job-owner she is treated like a person, not a social outcast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV5lSmDWk24

Then, to balance it out, I watched (A)Sexual, which is about people who don’t have any sexual attraction to anyone or anything. As with any sexual preference there are all kinds and types, but the majority of them are friendly and want to be in relationships with people. Humans are drawn to herds and companionship, and the asexuals are no different, they just don’t want to engage in any sexual behavior. It’s a fairly new movement and is different than celibacy. Celibacy means you want to hook up, but choose not to. Asexuality means you don’t want to, so you don’t. One thing I realized while watching this documentary is how snotty sexual people are to the asexuals. All I could think was, “They aren’t infringing on anything you do, if anything they’re removing themselves from the dating pool so you have more options, so shut the hell up and leave them alone.” Visit the website of fuckmeets.com to find single people you can hook up with. You may also check out free sex cams here. And if you’re looking for the best onlyfans creators to watch in 2025, then make sure to check out a list of cei onlyfans creators here.

I imagine that if I was asexual I would feel like a total outsider in our culture because so so much of what we see and what we encounter is driven by the desire to be with another person, or be seen as attractive by a specific person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYMh9zkt6r4

Finally I watched Bully, about kids who get bullied. This is a hot-button issue for me because I was bullied mercilessly as a kid. Here’s what I realized after watching this program: there are two types of kids who get bullied. One are the kids who have no control over their predicament (an ethnicity different from everyone else in the school, short, funny-looking, mentally-challenged, poor, etc.) and there are the kids who bring it upon themselves by saying or doing epically dorky things. I was both, predominantly the latter. I dressed like a weird artsy person. I spoke before I thought. I didn’t understand social cues and made people uncomfortable. If I could give kids in school one piece of advice, it would be BLEND IN. BLEND IN REALLY HARD OR BE VERY QUIET, and then when you get to college do your thing. Don’t fly your freak flag until after you leave high school unless you’re okay with people shunning you or mocking you. People stop being as mean in college and especially after college, and there’s a reason for that. I saw a play called Well and one of the lines that I loved was, “The good thing about being an adult is you can leave.” There’s one scene in Bully where the kids are all lined up on the playground and it looks like a shot from prison. If you’re grown up and people are mean to you in your job, you quit. At a party, you go home. In your town, you move. If you’re a kid, you can’t do anything. You HAVE to go to this place and do stuff you don’t want to do all day, otherwise you get in trouble with the government. That makes school a jail-like environment, with gangs and hierarchy and bribery and blackmail, all that stuff. Two things to look for if you watch this movie:

The opening credits scene where the kid is alone on the bus and The Scala Choir sings Teenage Dirtbag, which is one of my favorite songs. Beautiful.
The well-wishing but astonishingly inept Vice Principal and her handling of two specific bullying situations. I gasped and put my hand over my mouth during one of them, it was so shocking how poorly she dealt with it. It’s got to be a gift to be that dense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUy2ZWoStr0

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Awesome things that are awesome.

Sunday, August 25th, 2013

1. I think we should take a moment out of our busy schedules to look at this amazing embroidermation. I am in awe.

http://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/08/18/embroidermation-test-4/

2. Tim Burton cakes. The shrunken head one is my favorite. Real shrunken heads always look like grumpy sleeping newborns. The one from Beetlejuice looks seriously concerned and startled, how I would imagine most of us would look if our heads were shrunken.

http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2013/8/25/sunday-sweets-a-very-burton-birthday.html

3. SUGAR DOILIES OMG.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr06/2013/8/23/10/enhanced-buzz-6953-1377268446-11.jpg

4. This octopus camouflage. I could watch this gif on a loop for eternity.

http://i.imgur.com/l1Oyu.gif

5. The Romans understood nanotechnology, people. WHY IS THERE NOT MORE OF THIS TODAY.

http://mlkshk.com/p/TQ0A

Posted in Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

The Renaissance of Television.

Sunday, August 11th, 2013

We are living in an amazing time, television-wise. For the first time in maybe ever, everyone I know isn’t talking about any of the films coming out, only the TV shows, and specifically the TV shows on cable, not network. I don’t think anyone predicted this. I would like to talk about some of the shows I have seen recently, but because everyone watches shows in their own time the issues of spoilers is a big problem. I think if I put this here, I should be covered. No one can accuse me of springing surprise endings on them.

Since there are so many channels, I think executives are starting to allow the creatives to be creative. Creativity was never the issue. It was executives being scared of alienating viewers or losing sponsors. First there was late-night stuff, like Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, and that’s proven to be wildly popular. And then there’s the way Louie is handled, which is genius. FX said to Louie C.K. that if he could make a show for $250,000 an episode, which is not very much money when you consider how many people work on that show (approximately 70 people per episode), then he could do pretty much whatever he wanted. And Louie did, and it’s worked out well for everyone. That should be the system for tons of shows. I’m surprised they haven’t done an MST3K-type show yet. The budget on that must have been minute. It was really just funny people being funny, which is always entertaining. Anyway, my point being television right now is amazing. And I’m going to talk about a bunch of shows that I think have been amazing recently.

Breaking Bad

I know everyone and their cat has been waxing poetic on the awesomeness of this show, but I’m going to join them. Damn, this show is so good. I feel bad that Jon Hamm hasn’t been getting the Golden Globe and Emmy nods because Bryan Cranston keeps taking them, but (sorry Jon) Bryan deserves them. That role is crazy. The cinematography is fantastic. Hell, the songs they pick to go with different scenes is freaking great. I watch each episode like I’m watching a work of art being painted right in front of me. For crying out loud, did you see that train heist? I don’t think I drew a breath once during that. (Also, hey Bill Burr, one of my favorite comedians!) Now, this doesn’t mean the show is perfect. I know I’m in the minority, but I hate Jesse Pinkman. I have always hated him. I think he’s a useless tool. You know how some women are attracted to damaged men because they want to fix them or heal them or mommy them or whatever? I am not that woman. If I was Walter White, as soon as I had my connections set up and ready to go I would have dropped Pinkman like a Pizza Bite fresh from the microwave (they can be very hot). My other problem with the show is they keep killing off the characters I like. I liked Gale, the weird-music-listening-to, exceptional-coffee-drinking, vegan chemist. They killed him. I loved Gus Fring and he psycho OCD whatnot. Y’all know what happened to him. I thought Mike was a hell of a character. Surprise! Dead. POINTLESSLY dead. Totally did not need to die. I’m glad the next eight episodes are the last because I can’t deal with them introducing another super-dope character only to off him.

Will there be a Breaking Bad CD? I hope so. I would like all their musical selections in one place. Vince Gilligan, work on that.

Orange is the New Black

Yet another awesome TV thing that’s happening. Netflix is making their own shows. They made Lilyhammer, which I haven’t seen but is supposed to be great. Then there was House of Cards, which I also still haven’t seen but is supposed to also be great. I saw the original British series on PBS and that was dope, so when I get a chance I’m going to hunker down and watch the whole series in one day. There’s those episodes of Arrested Development that I need to see as well. A month ago Orange is the New Black came out on Netflix and I watched all thirteen hour-long episodes in basically a day and a half. So good. None of the actors are really famous. It’s mostly unknowns and character actors. And they are fantastic, I love them all. I can’t even name my favorite character because I enjoy so many of them. I guess my super-favorites might be Crazy Eyes, Miss Claudette and Tastee. And the old Chinese woman with the mustache. I did come to the sad realization that my personality would fit perfectly on that show. My spirit animal is an incarcerated woman in America. Wonderful realization to come to. Hooray for me. Also, there’s a prison guard that I have all kinds of feelings for. He is adorable. He ends up hooking up with an inmate who has full lips, a substantial rump and a wack dye job. I could totally be his girl. And oh? What’s that now?

OH HELL YEAH I CAN DRAW. ALL DAMN DAY. Call me.

Game of Thrones

I just watched the latest season of Game of Thrones. It was a bit underwhelming. Not bad mind you, far from it, but I have come to expect a certain amount of incest and rape per episode, and this season just did not deliver. No one accidentally touches their sister, or intentionally touches their sister. Frankly, there’s a profound lack of sister-touching. Theon gets tortured a whole lot (I called this season, “Wow, Theon’s having a crappy time, isn’t he”), and then there’s the Red Wedding, which interestingly I did not find to be the most horrible thing to happen. Don’t get me wrong, it was awful and horrendous, but the next episode when they cut off Robb’s head and sewed his direwolf’s head on his torso and then paraded around with it, that just gross and disrespectful to both man and beast. It made me feel unwell. I found out later that the producers/directors split one book into two seasons, so this season was diluted by half. People are concerned that George R. R. Martin isn’t writing these books fast enough. It takes him about five to ten years to crank out one of these tomes. In fact, at the most recent Comic Con Paul and Storm (a comedic band that I’m a fan of) sang this song live on stage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7lp3RhzfgI

And then this happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqcqapoFy-w

Which personally, I think is just the bee’s knees.

Now, not everything on TV is glorious, blessed by the tears of the angels. There’s an irritating trend right now of making crime shows based on Swedish and Danish originals. There’s The Bridge and The Killing and Broadchurch and Wallander. Here’s a breakdown of every single one of those shows. Dead body in the village. Anyone could be a suspect. Cops do some investigating. Everyone looks serious all the time. Eyebrows are perpetually furrowed. At least twenty minutes an hour is devoted to someone pensively staring out onto the beach/the moors/the desert. And the pace must be mind-bendingly slow. They could cram so much more stuff into an episode if they didn’t take for-freakin-ever to do anything. I am presently trying to watch Broadchurch and The Bridge because I have high hopes that the closer it gets to the end, the more exciting it will get, but I think I will be let down. I shall heed the words of my co-worker Børkke, “High hopes and low expectations.”

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Teh Intarwebz, The Telly | No Comments »

Internet.

Monday, August 5th, 2013

1. Reddit did a contest – who could write the best two-sentence horror stories. Here’s an article about it.

http://io9.com/two-sentence-horror-stories-are-actually-pretty-chillin-923728355

I looked at some of them and while the stories were plenty scary, the comments underneath made me snort-laugh.

2. There’s a web comic I like called The Dog House Diaries made by three men: Ray, Raf and Will. In addition to web comics, they often post charts. Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while knows of my love for charts and infographics. Here are a few of my favorites from The Dog House Diaries.

Posted in Charts, Random Art Bloggery, Stuff, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

The world be filled with weirdness. Yar.

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

1. Hands down, my favorite headline of an article this year:

I read it about three times to see if it said what it really said. It does. The article is about a man who photographs people down on their luck, streetwalkers and junkies. This time he brought his telescope and these two ladies of the evening Takeesha and Deja were entranced by Saturn. Takeesha was inviting the johns who drove by to come look at the rings with her. I doubt any of the johns took her up on her offer, they were more concerned with Uranus ifyaknowwhatI’msayin’ I will not apologize for that.

2. I was walking past the enormous BCBG/Max Azria store on Fifth Avenue and I was struck by the oddness of one of the dresses in the window display. Let me take you through my journey. Dress #1:

Nice. Fine. Pretty.

Dress #2:

Equally nice, fine and pretty.

Dresses #3 and #4:

Again, nice, fine and– wait a sec, what the hell is going on with the dress on the left?

What’s going on there? Is this an homage to scoliosis braces? Or is the dress a lame attempt to mimic Leelo in The Fifth Element? Either way, fail. Crappity fashion.

3. Y’all watch Doctor Who? I do not. I do not enjoy like Doctor Who. I have no idea why. I SHOULD enjoy Doctor Who, but I don’t. It is a source of disappointment for me, my disinterest. It’s not for lack of trying, I can tell you that. I watched all of Season One on Netflix and thought, “I don’t care for this, but maybe it’s because of Christopher Eccleston. Perhaps I will care more with David Tennant.” So I watched all of Season Two and alas, I didn’t enjoy that either. I described it to Snorth as resembling a Christian gay conversion camp. An episode would start and I would say, “I like this! Yes I do! Like like like!” even though I was lying to myself. Then the episode would end, I would sigh deeply and with much dispair, straighten my spine, and forlornly click on the next episode, because that’s what you do. A ton of people I know and respect swear by this show, so eventually I will come around, right? RIGHT??? Nope. I was born this way.

Anyway, The Doctor is from a planet called Gallifrey, I believe, and he’s a Time Lord, so I think it is cool that the Gallifrean language looks like clock parts. That’s the point I was trying to make before I went on my self-hating Doctor Who rant.

4. I have found my dream chicken. They are called Ayam Cemani and they are from Indonesia. Their feathers are black. Their skin is black. Bones: black. Internal organs and muscles: black. For all I know, their souls are black. And I love them.

There’s a place called Greenfire Farms that sell them, but they are rare because the USDA has a ban on chickens from Indonesia. However, this farm got a bunch (legally, I have no idea how) and they’re selling juvenile pairs. I got so excited until I saw the price.

ARE YOU SERIOUS??? They’re CHICKENS. I looked into getting a wood duck back in the day and I was bothered by the $135.00 price tag for a juvenile pair. That is too much for chickens. Too much. Long story short: Jessica ain’t buyin’ no black chickens.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, New York, Stuff, Teh Intarwebz, The Telly | 1 Comment »

An artist I be diggin’.

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

Before Tiffany’s style of stained glass, the windows in Europe were painted with a mixture of powdered glass, fired, and rinse-and-repeat until layers and shadows built up. It’s extremely hard and you have to train for a long time. It looks like this.

Now, in Alabama there is a big artist collective and they had a group show where they created work based on Grumpy Cat in the material of their choosing. Most of the art was lovely, but one piece was especially stunning – Judson Portzer’s Sir Grumpsalot. Brilliant.

Here’s Judson’s bio:

The time-honored skill of glass painting sets Judson Portzer’s studio apart as an almost magical space within Lowe Mill. Judson uses “paint” consisting of finely ground particles of colored glass to render intensely beautiful images that seem to carry the weight of centuries of history. Layers of the glass paint are added to panes and then selectively removed to create highlights before being fired in a kiln to become permanently fused.

Here’s some of his drawings.

Here’s his calligraphy.

And here are a few of his glass paintings. Sometimes he works with other artists. Judson does the faces, hands and details, and someone else does the fabric and background.

He does oldey-timey style (real oldey-timey, like Byzantine) windows as well, if that’s what the project requires.

And I really like this butterfly (it’s the same butterfly, photographed first in a window and then on a light table). And this flower.

I think he’s great. Apparently in addition to doing church windows, Judson has a booth at the local Renaissance fair. I wish he was closer, I would totally buy a piece of his. So awesome.

Addition: Someone also did a Grumpy Cat Wall Street Journal portrait. I will never get tired of this cat and this meme. Never.

Posted in Random Art Bloggery, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

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