were lost but now are found

This past weekend was a boon in terms of finding things that were lost and that I had more or less given up hope of ever finding again. On Friday afternoon, after several weeks of searching everywhere in our house I could think of, I found a missing savings bond. Yes, dear readers, I advise you all to learn from my mistake and never, ever, misplace something that translates directly into about $900 of cold hard cash. Weirdly, I found it in my office, on the floor, under a stack of miscellaneous papers, in a folder with other savings bond-related items. I must have brought it to work sometime a couple months ago to call the Treasury folks, since as a government organization they are only open during the hours I'm at work.

I suspected that savings bond was lying around somewhere, but what was really shocking was when a dickumbrage and I watched a guy run up to our house sunday morning and leave a package on the front porch. Our first thought was "bomb?" but it turns out to have been a package I mailed my sister for her birthday over two months ago that she never got. It was a particularly frustrating loss, since the item contained within was a hand-knitted scarf I had made for her, and not something I could go pick up another of at a store. And it just so turns out that my sister will be in town next weekend, so I can give the scarf to her in person.

eveel, like the fru-its of the deveel

So, exactly how bad does an artist have to be before one becomes complicit in their badness by liking the art they create?

By "bad" I mean "doing really rather horrible unethical and/or immoral things" that don't necessarily manifest themselves in the art.

Exhibit A: Some folks were talking about buying a Phil Spector box set, which pissed me off in light of what I've learned about him lately. (Granted, it also pissed me off because the music is being marketing as Phil Spector's, when really it was largely the music of girl groups produced by Phil. The paranoid feminist in me assumes the aforementioned folks [male] bought the CD because it's easier to maintain your manly punkrock cred by saying you like Phil Spector than saying you like girl groups. If you are more secure in your manly punkrock cred/like girl groups than I assume the folks in this story to be, you should invest in this absolutely incredible box set.)

Exhibit B: I still listen to Biggie even though I know he beat his wife and other women (discussed in this article).

FUN or DUMB

Oops.

The spokesman added that the company recognised that there were some who viewed Banksy's work as legitimate art but that their graffiti removal teams were "staffed by professional cleaners not professional art critics".

[post title from AV Geeks recent show "Other People's Property"]

i've lost my faith in shipping

I've been burned by the world of shipping.

First, a package containing a lace scarf I knitted for my sister's birthday with my own widdle hands got lost. I shipped it USPS Priority Mail, and didn't get any sort of delivery confirmation, so it's pretty much lost in the great dark chasm of untrackable mail. Perhaps it's on the Island of Misfit Mail, or perhaps it was eaten on her doorstep by a vicious paper-and-wool-eating feral cat. We may never know, and I figured I'd learned my lesson about not paying the extra 50 cents for delivery confirmation.

Yesterday, a package containing a rather expensive coat I purchased on bluefly.com, in preparation for the move to Beantown, disappeared from my front porch. This time the shipper was DHL, and proved that even delivery confirmation doesn't prevent your package from being stolen off your freaking porch. I'm a bit pissed at the DHL delivery person for leaving a big ass package that says "Hello! I' m a big package from an online designer outlet!" on my front porch, as opposed to the much less visible back deck, but whatev. It's gone, and they don't have that coat in my size any more, and I have to wait "up to twelve days" for bluefly to conduct its investigation before I can get my $140 back.

I'm totally switching to Trystero.

dear grandma: you are not being divorced

My grandmother - my dad's mom - has had dementia for several years. I'm not sure of the exact diagnosis (it's not Alzheimer's), but the symptoms are basically a progressive loss of memory. Two years ago, my grandfather died under somewhat mysterious circumstances: he died underneath his own car while my grandmother was still inside. He, of sound body and mind for his 80+ years, had taken care of her. She didn't have any memory at the time of what happened when he died, and she had a hard time remembering that he had died.

Over the next while, my grandmother would sometimes remember that my grandfather was dead, and sometimes wouldn't. She'd tell my dad, for example, she was mad at my grandfather for not being around for a couple of days. My dad gave her a call last night while Dick and I were at my folks house for Easter dinner. My grandmother was very upset, because, she told him, my grandfather had served her with divorce papers. That, she said, was why he hadn't been around lately.

My grandparents were totally devoted to each other, and it's amazing to me that while my grandmother can't remember that my grandfather died, she's constantly aware that he's missing. My poor dad doesn't know what to do - apparently they've stop reminding her that my grandfather is dead, because each time they tell her it's like she's getting the news for the first time (she is, in a way). I told my dad about this book I had heard about on NPR a while back, and he seemed interesting. Which is good, coming from the family that never admits to or seeks help for problems that are more emotional and mental than physical.

beantown, ho!

It's official: dickumbrage and I shall be moving to Boston, Taxachusetts at the end of this summer for me to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the Massachusetts College of Art. A brief tour of Boston courtesy of Google image search:


See, you move to a big city, and you get shot.


Mr. Baseball Hype 2007, aka "Dice-K"


There are Boston baked beans, and then there are Boston Baked Beans.


Giant Christian Science HQ, including Pool for the Drowning of Nonbelievers, Monolithic Skyscraper of God, and tacky neo-neo-classical cathedral.

It turns out that a couple of folks we know from current or past connections to Southern Private University are also planning on moving to Boston about the same time, which is exciting, because now we can commiserate with someone about cold weather and a lack of collard greens in grocery store produce centers.

won't you be my bikefriend?

It's been nearly a year since ankle met car, and I'm still not back to running. The pain in the little screwed together joint is actually getting worse. The weather is warm, and I need to get out and work off my winter lipid stores. Fortunately, my ankle tolerates biking well, so I'd like to get out for some nice long bike rides. I'm pissed, though, because the one cycling group in the area attempts to serve four counties, and most of the rides start in a county that is not my own. Driving 30 minutes to ride a bike is both absurd and a pain in the ass.

Also, I've been afraid to ride on my own since I was bitten by a dog on the local greenway. It's a little paranoid and silly of me, but I justify myself by reasoning there are many good reasons to have a biking buddy based on rational fears.

So, anyone want to join in on some slowish bike rides with a slightly out of shape lady who only has a mountain bike? Weekends are good, some evenings work too.

what do i do with this crap?

There are many things I like about living in Our Fair City, but the city services often leave something to be desired. For example, yard waste. Dick and I have actually started doing things to our yard - things that encourage growing, rather than, say, trying to kill the grass so we don't have to mow it. We planted a little herb and veg garden that we are very proud of. We check it hourly to see if any of our seeds have sprouted. We pulled weeds and raked up some of the leaves that have been clogging our yard since they fell off the trees several months ago.

So now we have a pile of the dreaded Yard Waste. Dreaded because Our Fair City will only dispose of your yard waste if you pay them to. That's not such a bad deal, I guess, if you have over $100 to spend on a big plastic bin and the fee to have the city come and take it away every now and then. I don't, and, frankly, I suspect there are many other people who don't have 'yard waste bin' at the top of their list of things on which to spend $100. If I pack up all of the crap myself and take it to the nearest recycling center, I still have to pay a fee. The city website suggests I could alternately buy one of their composting bins, sold at cost (a good deal, I admit), for my yard waste. But a big pile of leaves actually makes for pretty shitty compost, and the composting bins are currently sold out. Lovely.

I've considered sneaking my leaves and such into a neighbor's yard waste bin in the middle of the night, or perhaps taking part in the age-old tradition of piling it all in the back yard and setting it on fire.

In other waste news, any one want a couple bottles full of used cooking oil?

mystery fabric

In my pondering of what sort of fabric would behoove a spring/summer dress, I've become obsessed with Westfalenstoffe. Westfalenstoffe (which, I think, roughly translates to "fabric from Westphalia") is a kind of cotton fabric from eastern Germany. The designs combine geomtery and folk motifs in amazing repititions, and remind me of Paul Klee



The mystery is not so much locating the fabric - I discovered it among the many fine offerings at Reprodepot.com, source of the amazing cubicle fabric - but finding out something about its history. The manufacturer of the fabric (I think there is only one..) says this about it:

The workshop for Westfalenstoffe has been successful for more than 75 years.

It was found by german state-prize winner Professor Hanne Nuete Kaemmerer and other notable designer.

The designs are influenced by the typical art and traditional way of living found in the westphalian area of Germany.

Some patterns designed in the 1930´s are still part of the current collection and remain just as popular as when they were first designed.

But I can't find any other information on the innernets about Westfalenstoffe or Prof. Kaemmerer there (also, apparently, spelled Hanne-Nute Kammerer). My curiosity is piqued.

My dad travels to Germany regularly on business, and he'll be heading there in April. I think I'm going to send him on a mission to get me a few yards (meters?) of Westfalenstoffe, based on my guess that it's relatively common there and would be cheaper than buying it from a U.S. website and paying for shipping. Plus, it's fun to send people on international shopping errands for you.

day-after women's day post

The author of the wonderful Dress A Day blog has a post about the subtle sexism of men imparting their opinions on traditional aesthetics of femininity to women they hardly know. In her case, its "I really like it when women wear dresses."

I was asked once by a male colleague, in the midst of one-on-one meeting in which I was interviewing him about project for an article I was writing, if I ever considered growing my hair long. My response at the time was "No." In retrospect I wish I had said, "What I do with my hair is none of your fucking business, buddy." Because it's not, and what kind of asshole brings up the hair style of a woman in a professional setting?.

Oh. And there's that, too.

meltdown, or, just melty

Even after becoming an atheist, living in sin, and not attending mass except for when your parents make you go on Christmas, sometimes that Catholic upbringing comes back to haunt you. Sometimes it makes you buy Virgen de Gaudalupe air fresheners for your car. Sometimes it makes you unbearibly neurotic with the anger/guilt combo induced by your mother nearly weeping when you tell her you've chosen the Dark Path of Art School and she responds, "You're leaving me just like I left [my mother]," and "My stomach really hurts now." And then you want to drink a lot and also get a tatoo that says "I BROKE MY DEAR OLD MOTHER'S HEART" on your forearm, which, come to think of it, puts you in kind of the same league as Britney Spears, except that she's probably Methodist or whatever and did it out of spite/insanity and not as a penance for being the worst daughter ever and breaking your mother's heart with your selfish, selfish educational pursuits.

And sometimes it just makes you see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese.

Mmmmmmm, grilled cheese.

ghost in the machine

My car radio seems to have been inhabited by a ghost: I'm driving along, listening to the slow jams on Foxy 107 FM, and suddenly the frequency hops down. It's been happening with greater frequency over the past week to the point that this morning Owen Bennet Jones was interrupted every 3 minutes with a trip 0.2 down the dial. Local College Station keeps skipping up to Local Moderately Sucky Jazz Station.

A little innernet searching hasn't yielded any newsgroup discussions of problems like this. That's a little disconcerting, because that means it's not a common problem. My limited knowledge of audio electronics has led me to hypothesize that the problem is with whatever mechanism scans the radio frequencies. I further hypothesize that whatever in this mechanism makes it cease scanning frequencies has gotten "loose" or "wiggy" and thus jumps around unexpectedly.

I'm afraid I may have to call (gasp) the dealer, but I suspect they won't offer any help until I haul the car into their shop and have them charge me $80 for zip ties like they did last time. Maybe I should call the Car Talk guys. Or maybe I should get in touch with Tangina Barrons.

shameful shoe shopping post (which is also the 'shamefully alliterative title' post)

I blame the upper-60-degree weather last week for causing some rather premature spring fever, but I've been wasting lots of time lately thinking about summer shoes.

My philosophy on shoe buying has changed slightly recently, from "buy whatever is cute, cheap, and reasonably comfortable" to "I need something I can walk 2.3 miles in and wear to work." To new philosophy is due to the fact that I've been walking to work 3-4 times a week lately. The bike has a flat, and I determined that walking was a better option in the chilly winter anyway. Once the summer humidity sets in, my natural ability to sweat more than most burly men will likely make walking to work undesirable, but until then, I am loving it. Plus, I don't have to wear a helmet.

So I need shoes that appease both my vanity and my feet. Many women I know swear by Dansko shoes, though I've avoided them in the past because a) it's hard to find a pair for under $100 and b) they've looked a little too much like their wooden inspiration:


Yeah.

Apparently, though, they are practically sinfully comfortable, and the better styles are more John Fluevog than Dutch Boy.

These three are all on ebay for exceedingly cheap prices, around $35 including the shipping.
Basic, versatile, but not thrilling.
I really really like these.
These are red and therefore good.
These are from Zappos, and are not cheap. But they are Mary Janes, which I love, and I kind of like that they are more shoe than sandal.

So much to ponder.

one meeellion dollars

i'm not a reject!

Tuesday I got some good news: I am not a grad school reject! I'm not accepted, either, but I'm on the waiting list for the MFA program at Big Public University of Another State. I've taken this to mean I don't come across as a big fucking idiot to at least one admissions committee, which is actually kind of a shocking thing to realize.

Perhaps I shouldn't be gloating about these things semi-publicly yet, but fuck it. I found out I'm not a total reject. And that is exciting.

more fake social experience brought to you by expensive innernet thingies

If you were outraged/driven to drink even more by Second Life's virtual march on Washington, you'll be pleased to hear that your tax dollars (well, for some of you) are being spent to give rich, white college students the opportunity to experience white privilege - virtually. It's called Game2Know, and it's coming to a Southern Private University near you.

The game is intended to enable users to experience the effects of institutionalized privilege (on the one hand) and disenfranchisement (on the other) by having to adopt a persona of a different race, gender, ethnicity, ability set, etc. By loading the virtual world with real-world statistics about disparities in access to housing, education, health services and the formal and informal institutions that connect people to capital, users will experience how being a member of a particular demographic group has a direct effect on their ability or inability to accrue wealth and “succeed” by the norms of the “American Dream.” As they play the game, participants will learn how factors other than individual ability affects material success, including access to privileges that often seem invisible to those who benefit from them.

It's a good thing they're not making those poor kids actually leave their sheltered campus to experience the majority non-white city in which they live: it's dangerous!

Plus, now you can be white and have a black avatar without having to justify yourself!

cubicle skirt

I finished the skirt out of the cubicle fabric last night, and wore it to work today. This was the first time I made a skirt from this pattern on my own (my mom helped with pinky skirt), and I endeavored to follow all the instructions and do everything all good 'n' proper. I also wanted to add a lining to make the skirt warmer and less translucent. I found some instructions and managed to figure it out, so now it's business on the outside, white cotton with light pink polka dots on the inside.

It seemed to take forever to put it together, and having to hem two skirt bottoms (once for the skirt, once for the lining) was a drag. But it was a good learning experience. It still has many imperfections, but I love wearing this skirt. It's flouncy and a little poufy and in general fun to wear.

On:


Off, with glimpse of the lining, and cat:

garbanzo goodness

Yesterday I was searching the internets for a recipe for lemon scones, as we had some lemons in the house and I needed to make something quick for the weekly knitting get-together. In the process I discovered Orangette, a food/foodie blog run by a woman in Seattle. She posts recipes (and excellent pictures of the result), I found inspiration in her most recent post about a chick pea salad.

I've actually been making a heated version of this recipe for about a year or so, and it's one of my favorites: heat up olive oil and garlic in a pan, add chickpeas, heat; add salt, pepper, and parmesan. This recipe came from some fellow* on NPR talking about the fact that Americans don't know how to create meals that are tasty or healthy. He provided this as a typical Italaian lunch, which, when served with good bread and a salad, is nutrilicious, easy, and elegant.

So when I saw the Orangette post of essentially the same recipe, except cold, and with a little fresh lemon juice, I couldn't believe I'd never thought to make it that way for lunch. This morning I did, and there was much rejoicing.

*This may have been the same guy who famously carted an entire pig carcass on his Vespa and butchered it in his NYC apartment. I can't remember his name, and one look at the results of a Google search for "butcher pig" had me wishing I had not tried to discover it that way.

vagina friday!

Really, I don't look for the vagina-related news; it finds me.

-A new movie about vagina dentata, (aka "thorny ladyflower" aka "fang tang"). Made by a man, natch!
-Menstruation-related ephemera from the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health. the museum is in Germany, and run by a man who's sensitive about menstruation (but not Dave Foley). The website is so terrible it makes my head explode and is virtually unnavigable.Old ads for feminine hygiene products, including one that came with 3-D glasses! Pamphlets designed to simultaneously educate pubescent girls about the bodily functions no one wants to talk about and make sure they feel good 'n' ashamed about it! Oh, and naked Danish cartoon teens from the 70's. I don't know what they're saying, but I think it has something to do with feeling 'fresh' for a date with that hot 45-year old dude at the discotheque.

things i learned before 10 am

It snowed here this morning for the first time in two years, but what really amazed me today was the many insane things I learned in this article of the Washington Post.

1. David Lynch and Donovan are travelling around together telling people about the wonders of Transcendental Meditation.


2. And were hosted by the Hungarian ambassador to the U.S. in what was probably the craziest dinner party of the year, or since Salvador Dali died.


3. "...D.C. diplomat band Coalition of the Willing..." Wh-What?! Not, however, the same as Bobby Previte's band Coalition of the Willing. So confusing! But what I would pay to see them both on the same bill...

iRaq

Can two wrongs make a right?

With Photoshop, apparently yes.



(Originally here, via here.)

car falling apart

The other day I was driving on the highway, and a piece of my car fell off. Not all the way, but there's this large plastic piece that hooks under the engine and whatnot on the front that is no longer attached in the way it should be.





If it weren't for the bungee cords, it would be dragging on the ground. It seems fairly non-essential, so my plan is to just remove it entirely for the time. But do I need to replace it? Since it's just plastic held on with hex nuts, I figure I could replace it myself rather than paying whatever absurb cost a repair shop would charge. I've browsed a couple of car parts websites, but I can't figure out what this thing is called.

Give me your ideas, oh wise ones.

i am totally into self-referential clothing

Which is why I just bought two yards of this:



I can't wait to make a skirt out of this and wear it to work, which looks just like the design on the fabric, except that at my office some of the particularly anti-social computer programmers rigged up makeshift cardboard doors on their cubes.

I'm thinking of using the same pattern I used for pinky skirt, which I've been wanting to make again since the pink seersuckerish fabric is a bit out of season at the moment.

But I really need to stop buying fabric until I actually complete some of the projects I dream up and purchase supplies for. I want my weekend project to be cleaning out the 3rd bedroom in our house enough to be able to use the sewing space for sewing, but putting together grad school apps may take precedence.

By the way, I bought it at ReproDepot.com, which is awesome.

return to routine

Pre-vacation December was hell, due to a combination of legal things, massive work bullshit, frenzied grad school application preparation, holiday things, and ongoing inability to have money in my checking account for longer than a week after I get paid. The whole Christmas thing was a much-needed break. I went to my sister's place in [city next to] Norfolk, Virginia, and had a pretty nice time knitting and spending time with the fam and making cocktails out of vodka and whatever else she had in her house.

Dick was in New York for Baby Jesus Day, and I flew up there the day after Xmas. We had a lovely time. Details of our adventures are forthcomning, but for now let me say that the most suprising things about our trip was how sore my feet and leg muscles got after a couple days of walking around and how damn much we missed the kitties. They, apparently, missed us too, and since we got back three days ago it's been a human/kitty love fest. Except for this morning at 4:00 am, when Astro Cat decided it was time to run around the house and Macy Cat decided it was time to eat the Christmas tree.

adulthood sucks

Tom Waits doesn't want to grow up, and neither do I. I mean, driving and being able to eat whatever you want for breakfast is nice, but I have had way too much grown up crap to deal with lately. Today I participated in that age-old maturity ritual, Visiting A Lawyer. So many rules! So many funny names for everything! Plus, I've been mired in the hell that is applying to grad school, complete with financial-anxiety-induced sleep loss and throwing application materials across the room. At least as a child tantrums weren't accompanied by existential* crisis.

Thank god we adults are able to procure copious amounts of alcohol and chocolate.

*Get a job, buddy!

belated thanksgiving recap

A much-belated list of highlights from my favorite non-religious holiday that also kind of commemorates genocide, or racism, or something.

-Homemade salmon pate!
-Dr. Sis says you're not supposed to use hyrogen peroxide on your boo-boos anymore. Mom says: back to the mud-and-leaves method.
-Dad to existentialists: "Get a job, buddy!"
-According to Dick, the Celebration Roast was delish.
-Arsenic and Old Lace

i was told there would be punch and pie

I made two pies for this year's Thanksgiving feast:

pumpkin



and apple.



Perhaps next year I shall also provide the punch.

always

I just can't get enough of this Erasure video.

a vegetarian twist

I picked up this brochure on the way out of a branch of the public library. The illustration raises so many questions. Such as:

-Is that turkey exceptionally large, or is that woman exceptionally small?
-If the former is the case, is it to suggest that the woman is a vegetarian because the turkey is a) her lover or b) really fucking scary?
-Are those marijuana leaves at their feet?

I suspect this brochure dates to c. 1980, not only because of the pastoral-maiden-hippie as vegetarian, but because all of the recipes inside ascribe to the "it's not vegetarian unless it has wheat germ or soy in it" philosophy of vegetarian cooking. The North American Vegetarian Society also suggests that you serve your "Holiday Loaf" with "Mashed Potato Balls." Does making them into balls somehow mean less animals die then when you serve them the regular way?

The more I look at this, the more it creeps me out. Note to single men: if the woman invites you back to her secluded island, DO NOT GO.

CMSuck

Not too long ago, us folks at Southern Private University tech organization got a new CMS. Yesterday I got my first hand at what is now, officially, the CMSuck. I'm not a Web designer or any sort of expert, but my job is to take the mess of verbs, nouns, and punctuation marks that passes for writing in the tech world (sorry tech types, I call 'em how I see 'em) and make it more closely resemble written English and more usable to people who are not tech types. Thus, much of my time at work is spent repairing terrible writing and terrible design.

This year we're scrapping the terrible writig and terrible design and getting a new website, which I'm helping to populate using the CMSuck. And the CMSuck sucks hard. It might be fine in the technical functionality and all that, you know, stuff people who know more about software are concerned about. But frankly, that's not the most important thing about a CMS. People get CMS software so that the average user can change website content without mucking around in design or coding. And the problem with the CMSuck is that it's unintuitive and a pain in the ass for an average user like myself to use. It's more infuriating considering SPU tech organization spent literally two years before they picked out a damn CMS. It probably cost them a pretty penny, too, and I sit and ask myself, can we just get Drupal instead?

bitten

Yesterday morning I was bitten by a dog while riding my bike on a local greenway trail. It was with it's owner, and not on a leash, and I guess it thought that my faster-moving self was prey and took a bit at my left leg (yes, the one that was broken).

I spent most of yesterday at the police station filling out a report and at the Urgent Care getting a tetanus shot and a prescription for antibiotics. I'm still rather cranky about the whole thing and mostly want to sit on the couch all day and eat chocolate.

pink elephant cake

I made a pink elephant cake. Enough sugar to give you the DTs.

website...makes...brain...hurt

So I followed Lisa B.'s advice and got a super-cheap web hosting account at 8-95.com. In spite of the site name, my hosting package was only $3.95/month, and I paid for a few months, which is very nice and fits my budget. I've got the pages for the site almost done, but trying to figure out all this web hosting crap has my brain in knots. Particularly the domain name server crap, which is something I haven't had to deal with in my limited web authoring experience.

I did some reading about web servers and whatnot at howstuffworks.com, and I feel like I have at least a better conceptual grasp of how the innernet works, what with their calming tone and hand-holding. The DNS stuff is still a mystery to me. My main question is: if my domain name (elsasname.com [not actually the domain name]) is registered with one company, and my web hosting is done with another company, do I need to change the DNS settings with one and/or both of those companies? Or is everything ok, and do the web hosting and the domain name just know how to talk to each other automatically?

state fair

Dick and I went to the state fair on Saturday. We experienced the demolition derby, fluffy baby animals, a 664 pound pumpkin, copulating chickens, and a delicious soft shell crab sandwich. We also had the pleasure of getting there via mass transit: Our Fair City's bus line ran shuttles every hour to the fairgrounds. At $4 round trip, it was well worth avoiding the traffic and parking nightmare.

In honor of our trip to the fair, carnival strippers! (warning: some boobies)

wanted: web hosting

In case you haven't picket up on this, I'm applying to grad school in fine arts. For the sake of having a go-to portfolio, I've been working on a website to showcase my art, and now I need a place to host it. Any suggestions? I've been paying this company for email and a to own a domain name for my last name (i.e. elsa'slastname.com), and their cheapest web package, with 5GB disk space and 250GB bandwidth is about $5 a month. I have no idea if that's a good price or not. I'm thinking 5GB should be enough to hold the several dozen image files I'm going to need to store, since web pics are delightfully low res and I'm not making them particularly big. There are also various other perks - free domains, and, I think, email, that would mean I wouldn't have to pay for that other stuff.

in need of $

Man, I am broke. Moving (which I did a couple of months ago) will do it, but mostly my own poor budgeting and profligate spending is to blame. Now I'm feeling the need to get a little side job to help rebuild my savings, especially in light of looming grad school application fees and Christmas gifts.

I'm looking for something that would only be a few hours a week (3-5ish), doesn't require long-term commitment, and isn't in food service or retail. Unless that involves, I dunno, wine or fancy cheese or something. I don't do children, either.

Thus far I've come up with the following:

-prostitute. Nice in theory; licking the asshole of some nasty guy not so nice in practice. Also, STDs. Also, very displeased boyfriend. Also, potential of transvestite/transexual Michael Caine trying to kill you.
-ticket-taker at local arty theater. Very close by, dickumbrage connections, but potentially mind-numbing.
-GRE prep course teacher. Actually, I already have this job, but the only class available to teach right now is at a college almost two hours away. Also, I'm kind of tired of it because it requires a lot of effort to, you know, teach people stuff, and it requires a certain amount of out of classroom time.

Hm, not much a list, is it? Any ideas?

get out of my life, american pornparrel!

Dear American Apparel,

Please stop invading my life with your pseudo/actual pornographic internet ads, especially the one with that 14-year old girl in cotton thing that looks like a bathing suit from a Bo Derek movie except not shiny and not a bathing suit, that is essentially a leotard not made for dancing. What the hell does one do with a leotard not made for dancing, anyway? You sell at least a dozen different ones, including one that is completely mesh. A mesh leotard folks. The only other time I've seen a mesh leotard was at a store that also sold sex toys. And that's fine. I've got nothing against mesh leotards in theory. But this mesh leotard isn't even in your "Intimates" section. Do you mean to suggest that this is somehow clothing? Mr. Charney, I know in your dirty old man fantasy world this is, in fact, what young attractive women walk around in all day. That still doesn't make it clothing.

And while 95% of the ads I can't avoid every time I try to read a freaking blog or about sports in the Village Voice or whatever feature women being scantily clad and harsly lit whilst they do hipstery provocative thing ("Oh, look at the hair fall in my face over my head in a totally unnatural way!"), the one man you put in the ad made me want to vomit. Please do not subject us to the horrid vision of a scruffy unbathed hipster man in tighty whities (all-be-them tighty burgundies). I see that picture, and I can smell the nasty B.O., feel the oil oozing from his clogged pores. There is only one woman attractetd to a man like that, and that is Lindsay Lohan. I, for one, fall on the underpants-wearing side of the spectrum.

mod MF dress

The sewing bug has bitten again, and although the room where the sewing is supposed to take place is still the room where all the crap we don't know what to do with gets stashed, I bought this pattern on ebay. It's mod! It's a-line! It's "E-Z"!

I chose this pattern because it seems like it will be really versatile (and because it claims to be E-Z to make). I could make it out of lightweight gray wool, or hot pink boucle, or iridescent silk, or an elaborate velvet print, and all versions would look great. I love the possibility of the contrast sleeve bands too: I think my first version might be some black and white houndstooth with red sleeve bands. Maybe even something in a contrasting print, to be all crazy like that. Another idea would be to use some sort of trim along the sleeves and/or bottom of the dress. Or put a giant button at the neckline. The possibilities. are. endless.

Because I cannot contain my obsession with a project in the early stages, tonight I am planning on doing some fabric shopping. Even though the patttern hasn't even arrived yet. OBSESSED.

shelter in place, fools

News of last night's explosions and chemical fires that released a cloud of poisonous chlorine gas into the air in Apex, NC (watch the video. it's impressive) reminds me of my childhood. No, really. I grew up in the "chemical valley" of West Virginia, in a town where a slow river cuts through the hills of the western edge of the Appalachians. Chemical plants line the river for several miles, including a town called Nitro, named for the nitroglycerine plant located there during WWII. I don't know how the area became dominated by the chemical industry, though maybe its because there's a lot of space and not a lot of people, and plenty of people who find a chemical plant a more comfortable place to work than a coal mine. Especially when all the coal mines are closing.

Kids in the midwest practice tornado drills at school (get under a desk, crouch into a ball, cover your head with your arms), but kids in the chemical valley practice Shelter-In-Place. Shelter-In-Place involves closing yourself into a room and sealing up windows, doors, etc. with duct tape. Every Friday at noon a test siren would sound throughout the valley. To those of us at school, it meant it was almost time for lunch.

There's even a Shelter-In-Place mascot. Meet Wally Wise:


He's a turtle. They hide in their homes. Get it? He even has a paunch to, um, help those rural Appalachian types identify with him better, I guess.

My dad has worked on the management end of the chemical industry since I was a kid, and I once had a tshirt with Wally Wise on it. I wonder what happened to it...

Oddly, Apex doesn't seem to have had any Shelter-In-Place plans in place (schools, places of work, etc. are required to in places like Chemical Valley, WV). That may be because most of the Research Triangle Park area is, natch, research-oriented rather than production-oriented, and there are few plants to speak of. But dude. A warehouse for hazardous chemicals? Don't you think you might want to warn people about that?

those cancer sticks can DANCE

So, so amazing. Apparently, one of the first TV commercials made.

I wonder what the "M.F.T" in "L.S./M.F.T" stands for...perhaps "Lucky Strike: Mother Fucking TIGHT." Or, to keep with the slogan on the package: "Lucky Strick: Mother Fucking Toasted."

barbie living

When my sister and I were young, we were crazy about Barbie dolls. Actually, not so much the dolls as all the stuff they came with. Some people argue that Barbie reinforces unrealistic feminine body ideals and traditional gender roles. Really, I think most 5 year olds are pretty oblivious to those messages coming from their dolls. Barbie, in my opinion, is about training kids to be consumers.

I think my first major Barbie accessory was a hot pink metallic corvette. Shortly thereafter my sister got a red Barbie Ferrari (more classic, perhaps, but not nearly as hott).

Being the spoiled children we were/are, we both eventually acquired Barbie houses. She had the Barbie Dream House, a three-part, two-story thing that came with balconies and furniture and shutters and fake window box plants. I had the Barbie Townhouse, a smaller, more urban style in three stories with an elevator. This seems weirdly indicative of the different people my sister and I would turn out to be in our 20s. Well, except I'd have had the Barbie Rented Arts and Crafts Bungalow.

To be fair, she doesn't have the Barbie Dream House yet, but she's a doctor, and it's only a matter of time.

the usual suspects

One of these adorable kittens peed on my gym bag this morning. I don't think we'll ever know which one, which is one of the interesting things about having three cats.

Let me tell you, washing urine off your things is not a fun way to begin your day. Especially when it's shortly followed by a message from your wireless phone company reminding you that you haven't paid your bills for two months (oops) and that you need to pay now or else.

Fortunately, in between these happy events, my wonderful man friend bought me a chocolate croissant and orange juice to cheer me up. It's not easy to shake off the crankiness caused by a pool of urine on your stuff, but that's a pretty good start.

project!

In continuing my quest to learn skills that require me to use my hands (insert joke here) and my fantasy to some day have a job that doesn't require me to work in an office all day (insert other joke here, perhaps), I'm taking an upholstery class at Local Technical College.

This chair is my project.

This picture, what with the nice morning light, makes the fabric look snappier than it in fact is. Don't get me wrong, I adore hot pink, and hot pink chenille upholstery fabric is no exception. What you don't see in the picture is that the fabric has a dingy, brownish/grayish hue to it and is incredibly faded (based on the parts of the fabric never exposed to light/people). One side of the seat cushion fell victim to spillage of hot wax, and much of the fabric on the buttons is literally worn to the threads.

The class itself is amazing, if it does provide me more exposure to the middle-aged home-schooling christian mom than I usually seek. In an uncharacteristic turn from my usual misanthropy, I've discovered that the DIY streak we have in common actually makes them pretty easy to get along with. Though I do get a bit of joy of mentioning how my project will be used in my Atheist Den of Sin with my Shack-up Boyfriend To Whom I Am Not Married But With Whom I Have Sex NOT EVEN FOR THE PURPOSE OF HAVING CHILDREN.

presidential doodles, other random caffeine-induced thoughts

I really want this book. For some reason I feel like that means I have succumbed to the brainwashing of the Shallow Hipster Elite. But is it so wrong to want to see Lyndon B. Johnson's "slightly nightmarish scribbled man-on-fire aesthetic”?

Apparently, all I blog about these days is recycled info from various Gawker blogs. Eesh. I should try doing some work.

Now, off to a meeting with Insane Egomaniacal Boss's Boss Man. Always a treat.

poor doggie

This seemed like the kind of thing on which Ms. Bunchofpants would report wonderfully, but I figured I could offer up the topic for potential insightful analysis.

In Washington, D.C. yesterday morning a park police officer shot and killed a dog playfully running loose in the park. The dog, a pit bull named Precious, belonged to a resident homeless preacher named Texas Joe.

Via Wonkette, and I'll agree with their interpretation of events:

The real cause of the murder seems to be this: A power-mad federal cop told Texas Joe to put Precious on a leash, and when the harmless homeless man didn’t jump fast enough for the cop, the cop shot Precious dead.

And, it highlights the unwarranted reputation pit bulls have as inherently aggressive, dangerous animals (fyi, they're not).

child of the corn

So I've got this Lion Brand yarn left over from a project, and I don't know what to knit with it. So I go to the Michael's Lion Brand Pattern Finder, search for patterns with this yarn, and lo and behold...





Is it genius? Madness?

I'm just glad I don't have the skill level to create this. Because I know some people soon to have babies, and I'd be tempted.

a place to rest one's ass

So Dick and I moved into a place together a few weeks ago, a charming little Arts & Crafts bungalow. But little it is, any my couch is too big for the living room. Out it goes, we said, and now we've entered the hell that is trying to purchase a sofa. Actually, we're looking for something more loveseat sized (or what trendy stores seem to be calling "Apartment Sofas" these days). My god, how can a mass of foam, fabric, and wood cost so damn much? I mean, even a Todd Oldham loveseat is $979.00 at Target. I don't shop at Target, but I used to, and this whole $1000 loveseat thing is not the Target I once loved.

The used sofa option is on the table, but it turns out that people, at least people around here, have terrible taste, as evidenced by nearly every single post on the local craigslist. I like to imagine shopping for used furniture in Scandinavia is like an orgiastic Adventures in Cheap Modernism, porn for people obsessed with clean lines. But in the middle south, it's more a bring-your-own-vomit-bag affair. Dear people: please do not buy a sofa with a floral pattern unless it was made before 1978. Please. And those expensive leather things that look like a morbidly obese sea lion rubbed with olive oil? Yeah.

the king of creep

American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, who's creepiness was made public in a 2004 Jane Magazine article (alas, hard to find on the innernet these days), has been stripped of the King of Creep title. The new winner: 'Girls Gone Wild' CEO Joe Francis. Based on the experiences of a writer from the L.A. Times, the reality of the new King of Creep makes the "get young women drunk and get them to do dirty things" premise of the videos seem ethical by comparison. Being a violent, emotionally stunted and thoroughly misogynisitic person is much, much worse for the world when you've got a shitload of money.

photoness

Image005
Originally uploaded by elsacapuntas.

I decided today that I want to create a website for my photos (this is the sort of idea I come up with when bored in a meeting), sort of as a start to preparing for applying to MFA programs. Thus, I have uploaded ten black and white photos I did a while back for the world to see. Luckily, it seems that the largest jpeg I really would want to have is a relatively small file, but I"m still thinking about signing up for Flickr Pro account for the hosting. That way I wouldn't have any limits on how many files I could upload and bandwidth and all that crap. Anyone out there have experience using Flickr as a hosting service?

It turns out, though, that when I initially created these files in the high-tech fashion of lying photographs on the ground and making digital "slides" of them with a digital camera, I didn't have the camera set to record at a high enough resolution to makes these things look ok. I can't remember how I resized them, but at full size these they look like ass. Any suggestions out there for how to do this better next time? Getting the color right for black and white photos in a digital version is a pain in the ass, too, because despite what the name suggests, black and white photo papers have different tints to them. This one is "warm," and thus a bit greenish.

it doesn't look quite like this

I made this dress last night. The pattern is from Blueprint, a new Martha Stewart vehicle. It was so damn easy looking, and I have a bunch of fabric a friend gave me for free a few weeks ago, so I ran right home after to work to try it out. I chose a light blue cotton with 1/8" gold wiggly stripes that is basically like a men's shirting fabric.

Making the dress ended up being a bit of a, ahem, learning experience. I made the dress following the instructions, but when I tried it on it was huge. Positively tentlike. I took out one of the side seams, cut away 4 inches of fabric, and it was still too big. Took out the seam again, cut away more fabric, and, lo and behold, it was too small. Since you sew the side seams first, I would have had to take out every single seam I had sewn to make the side seams smaller so the dress would fit. Instead I donated the first dress to my cat for a new thing-on-which-to-lay and used the remaining fabric to start over again.

The dress still ended up a little big, but it's probably an issue inherent to wearing a garment that is essentially a rectangular laundry bag: you're going to end up with some extra billowing in the upper torso area. As the picture indicates, you pretty much need to wear a belt or something with the dress to give it some shape. I'm going to make a wide sash with some extra fabric to make a sort of midriff band, which in trials looked really nice. In the end, it actually turned out quite cute, and perfect for the terribly hot weather that has recent beset the region. Some day I'll get a digital camera so I can share pictures of these things more often than the occasions when I can surreptitiously borrow my camera from work.

fuck you, day!

It's been a demoralizing day, and it's only barely past lunch. Sample:

-Power went out in my apartment while I was getting ready for work, for no apparent reason (it wasn't even raining)
-Forgot my access badge for work
-Got soaked by a sudden rainstorm while waiting to be picked up after lunch
-Thought had resolved issue that caused significant other and I to not sign lease yesterday with new slum landlord, only to discover that slum landlord had a new evil plan in store: to make us go through the rigamarole of lease signing and deposit-paying only to tell us that they, the landlord, would not be signing the lease until they had completed the background check. So now these people have my money, and I don't even have a real lease.
-Have gotten absolutely nothing done at work today

Right now I'm thinking maybe I should avoid turning on the stove and using any power tools until I'm solidly into Wednesday.

dressification

I made my first purchase via an Ebay auction ever. Well, at least kind of - a friend bid on my stereo receiver and speakers for me when I was in college, but I didn't do anything except approve dollar amounts. This time I did it all solo. I was the only bidder, which is a good way to win the thing you bid on at a good price.

My prize:



Including shipping, the grand total is $12.99. I hope it fits.

take that, cast!

I have a nurse to thank for it, but the hot pink cast suffered a swift death at the hands (teeth?) of a mini circular saw. I was a little frightened when the nurse put that thing through the cast, but amazingly it didn't make any large gashes in my skin. I mean, in addition to the still-healing one from the surgery.

So, yep, I'm cast free. In its place I'm now wearing a walking cast "boot" thing that looks like a ski boot, but with less range of motion and without that weird forward-leaning effect. Over the next week I'll be gradually getting used to putting weight on my left (injured) foot until I can walk without crutches. So, no cup-carrying yet, but it is soon to come. The doc also gave me the green light to swim, and thinks I probably won't be needing physical therapy to strengthen my atrophied muscles. Huzzah! It is a good day. A day that behooves drinking.

I made it myself!

pink skirt
Originally uploaded by elsacapuntas.

I am so very excited. After many years of wanting a sewing machine, I finally inherited a sturdy little machine from a great aunt. And, after many years of wanting to, I'm finally learning to sew clothing. This is my first finished product - a simple slightly pleated skirt made out of a very lightweight cotton. The pattern is very versatile, so I'm thinking I can make many versions out of different kinds of fabrics and patterns. I have a dream to do one in black silk dupioni, but I'll probably pick up something a little cheaper for skirt #2.

Mmmm, satin short-shorts...Slyvester, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)"

Thanks to dickumbrage for sending this link to me (since, alas, he doesn't post to his blog much these days, I don't feel so much like I'm stealing his thunder).

Dick loves the fact that Sylvester goes through FIVE different outfits in the course of this video. My favorite part is the satin short-shorts-clad dancers and their amazingly gay barefoot dance moves. The girl-on-girl hump dance is so, so, so amazing. I'm not gay, but this video kind of makes me wish I were. At least in the 70's.

final cast countdown, i hope

I'm in the last less than a week until the cast comes off. At least, on Friday I go back to the ortho, and I'm going to demand that he remove the dirty, itching, deteriorating hot pink thing on my leg or else. I haven't decided what "or else" will entail yet, though it's probably more of the copious weeping variety than the go and buy that smart little handgun i saw at the pawn shop variety.

On Friday it will have been almost seven weeks since the injury and six since surgery. If the cast does come off, I will suddenly be able to experience all sorts of wonderful things that have been missing from my life for the last two months. Such as:

-Showering without a plastic bag over my left leg
-Shaving
-Pedicures
-Scratching the maddening itches
-Swimming

While the first four there are sort of like, "oh, look, now I can have normal hygeine again!" the last one is really a treat. Ah, womblike submersion in a lovely indoor pool...I can hardly wait.

mark e. smith on english soccer (er, football)

When I first read this, I had a hard time believing it wasn't just very well-written parody. But with Mark E. Smith, all things are possible. And can I say how much I love The Guardian for printing this sort of thing?

"What Sven could learn from me," by Mark E. Smith

Running the national football team is very much like running my group, the Fall. As a manager, you've got to maintain a certain detachment from your players, and it's the same with my musicians. When we're on tour, I sit at the back of the bus. We're friendly but the secret of it is never get too ally-pally...

pat robertson, weight lifter of god

My favorite pointless news bit of late is Pat Robertson's claim that he can leg-press 2,000 lbs (via Deadspin). But what's even better is that once this rather absurb claim was pointed out, a Robertson spokesman went public to assure that the claim was true. (As the Deadspin folks point out, the Florida state leg press record is 1,335 lbs.)

wrath of the injured

There's nothing like the prospect of having to use crutches for 8 weeks to bring out the rage. If there one could identify a "benefit" from my situation it would be that I was able to get a handicapped parking pass that's good for the next few months. At work I can park reasonably close to the building I work in and only have to cross a small courtyard and climb a couple of half-flights of stairs.

This afternoon parking around work was insane because of a minor league baseball game going on across the street. I got back from lunch and all of the handicapped spaces were taken, as well as any reasonably nearby non-handicapped spots. But one of the cars didn't have a handicapped pass on it (it's always kind of a giveaway when you have a giant SUV that anyone moderately physically challenged would find impossible to climb in and out of). And oh, the parking authorities were notified. I stopped short of staying until the police were called to have the car towed, but I really hope the asshole ends up with the $250 fine.

It's not that having to park farther away once pisses me off. It's that when you have to walk around on crutches every fucking second of a day you won't take any bullshit from the part of the population that doesn't have to use their gimpy fore-appendages to transport their entire body weight.

bring your milkshake to MY yard

I really would like a milkshake right now. Just thought I'd let you all know.

I am a big fan of milkshakes, but I don't even know how to make them. The advertisement at many places claiming their milkshakes are "hand-dipped" suggests to me that hand-dipping is somehow essential, if only because it sounds dirty.

I do know a good milkshake when I see one though - real ice cream of the flavor of the milkshake. If it's strawberry there damn well better be bits of strawberry in it. There's a place around here that makes a chocolate milkshake by adding, I think, chocolate syrup to a vanilla milkshake. This is not a chocolate milkshake. They do, however, make a peppermint milkshake in the winter months with crushed peppermint candies in it that is awesome.

Milkshakes should also be served with just a little whipped cream and a cherry on top. Places that don't do that are just never really gonna cut it for me, however good the main substance of the milkshake.

Once I had a milkshake at a White Castle. Or, rather, "milkshake," as the thing I actually consumed was more semblance of food than actual food, quite like their little sandwich "hamburger" things.

To this day the best milkshakes I've ever had have come from Blossom Deli in downtown Charleston, WV. Those things are the shit.

half-woman, half-machine

Well, the percentages don't quite work out like that, but after getting two stainless steel screws put into my ankle on Thursday, I am at least partially an artificial being. People keep asking if this means I'm going to have super-bionic kickball skills as a result; alas, I kick with my right foot, and the enhancements were on the left.

The surgery went well. The anesthesia involved giving me sedation and then doing a nerve block on my leg, which involves injecting the anesthetic directly into the nerves of your leg. It made all sensation go away in my leg for several hours, which is one of the oddest feelings I have ever experienced. The day after surgery I was whisked away in a van by my family to go to a wedding in Cleveland. The 9-hr car ride was pretty awful, but it was nice to be around a bunch of happy and frequently drunk people who were all willing to wait on me.

I'm finally back at work, and it's nice to feel like a productive member of society again. This broken ankle is decidedly a pain in the ass. I've got to hobble around on crutches for two months. Two months! Since I can't do any sort of physical activity that involves using both feet, I'm going to dedicate myself to creating insane upper-body strength. I will crush all you little men with my bulging arms! Or something.

the opiates are making me all verklemmpt

Zacharias Moussaoui has attempted to rescind his guilty plea in his now post-sentencing trial for involvement in the 9/11 attacks. According to his affidavit (PDF, affidavit starts on p. 4), the fact that the jury didn’t give him the death sentence made him see the American justice system in a new light.

I awoke to this story on my radio alarm clock this morning, and I find it kind of touching. I was excited when I heard that the jury had passed on the death penalty, for a variety of reasons, and to see a person who is impressed by just treatment to the point of rethinking the entire American justice system is kind of inspiring. It’s also yet another example why treating anti-American extremists within a system of justice is a much better idea than subjecting them to extra-legal detention and torture. As if we really needed another example.

Of course, previous evidence that Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic leads me to think maybe he’s finally gotten on the right dose of anti-psychotics and realizes how batshit crazy his position over the last two years has been.

elsa's new nemeses: road and car

So I was crossing a street with a fern yesterday and got hit by a car turning right. Fortunately, only the front right corner of the car and tire hit me, so I landed on my well-padded ass with a broken ankle on my left leg and nothing worse. But still, the broken ankle thing sucks ass. The inside of the bone is broken and a bit displaced, which means I need to have surgery to get a couple screws to hold everything in place. That will happen sometime later this week, and it's out-patient surgery that usually takes 30-40 minutes and is done under sedation, so all in all it's an ordeal about equivalent to having my wisdom teeth taken out, without all of that unpleasant gauze in your mouth.

Now my leg is wrapped up in a splint (a "sugar thong splint" according to my two-weeks-away-from-graduating-med-school sister) that is sort of half cast, half ace-bandage mukluk. It's oddly similar in color to my cat, and she seems to have kind of befriended it. At least, that is, opposed to her reaction to me walking on crutches, which is like, "Bizarre six-limbed bionic creature coming through! Run!"

The fern, by the way, survived without any injuries.

this must be the opposite of hungover

Remember how I couldn't stand listening to disco the other day because I was hungover? Right now "Tangerine" is kicking my ass, in a good way, so maybe I should say that "Tangerine" is spanking my ass. The occassion? COFFEE. I usually drink green tea in the morning, but today I got up early to go the gym before work and I needed a little extra kick to get started at work. Because I don't drink coffee very often, I now feel practically high, and I feel the desire to write an entire blog post extolling the virtues of coffee.

Anyway, if disco makes your head explode when you're hungover, but spanks your ass when you're on a caffeine buzz, then...what was I talking about? Oh, right. COFFEE IS AMAZING.

irish flu

What's the best music to listen to when you are hung over?

This is the question I have been presented with this morning, as I am, indeed, hung over. Hung over and at work, which is not usually the case for me. I though The Salsoul Orchestra would provide some funky therapy to my barely-functional brain, but I was terribly wrong. "Tangerine" was just a little too much uppity disco and my head nearly exploded. So I thought I might ask the above question to the minions of the Internets. Then I realized I probably already knew the answers many of you would give.

htrouser: Fela!

dickumbrage: Reggae!

jason!: 1990's rave music!

So, what's your musical hair of the dog?

the dramatic conclusion

As of last night, the power is back in full! Joy. After locating the fuse box, Dick! offered to buy some fuses for me at the grocery store while I spent obligatory - ahem - quality time with my parents. He came over post-parental bonding to replace the burnt fuse, but, it turns out, none of the fuses were actually burnt or damaged. Most perplexing. After a little bit of courageous fiddling (it is the Box of Potential Electrocution, after all), Dick had the power on. What finally did it? In the line of the 3 fuses in the box was a fourth weird thing, a cylindrical metal thingy with a white knob/button in the middle. Dick! pushed the white knob/button in, and voila, power back on. What the hell that metal non-fuse thing is, I haven't a clue. Maybe an old-school fuse?

Ah, the joys of a 60-year-old electrical system.

artrant

What the fuck is up with artists charging so much damn cheddar for their mediocre works of art? Today at lunch I visited the local arts council facility to pay for access to their (mediocre, but with free chemicals) darkroom, and took a spin around their gallery. They have, usually, 3-4 artists exhibiting at once for about a month at a time. 75% of it is pretty mediocre, which is fine with me, until I see that some fucktard wants me to pay $400 for their 16"x20" piece of mediocrity. Seriously, asswipe, I don't care how much you spent on oils to paint that crap, it ain't worth it. I mean, this one woman wanted you to pay $150 for a copy of one of her abstract goauche paintings. A copy. Like, a photograph of a painting that wasn't that good to being with. And someone else was charging, ahem, $800 for an 8"x10" black and white photograph that wasn't anything special. I know how much it costs to print an black and white photo that size, and it ain't $800.


It's hard to put all of the blame on the individual artist, as there seems to be a prevading bug of idiocy infecting anyone who decides to make art of any kind at any skill level, manifesting itself generally in the following thought pattern: "I have made art, therefore it must be worth at least $150." 99% of the art for sale I've seen locally, including the stuff people put up on the walls in coffeeshops, has been at least that much. And the higher the price, the less good the art seems. "Oh, that cliched nude was almost endearing until I realized the person painting it thinks its so good that they can make some poor suck pay $300 for it."

I've had an ongoing fantasy about starting a collective of folks that sells art cheap. Like, $50 max, and it better be really big or really good to charge that much. Kind of like these people, except without the cheesy manifesto and dubious claims to inventing the Cheap Art Movement.

box found

I found the box, which turns out to be a fuse box, as Jason! suggested it might be (no thanks to the landlord, who has yet to offer any actual help). It turned out to be on the wall to the right of my oven, over (my) head-height. There are only 3 fuses, but I've never replaced one before, and, for that matter, can't even identify which one needs to be replaced. A little bit of twisting of one of them made some of the lights I had on flicker distressingly and I decided to leave the newly recoined Box of Potential Electrocution alone.

Dickumbrage, good man that he is, has offered to help out with fuse procurement and replacement.

land-mf-lord

Was it Marx who suggested that the landlords are the most heinous species in the capitalist system? Damn fucking right. Yesterday I attempted to run both a coffee maker and iron off of the power strip my computer is plugged into, and it was too much for the old, feeble electircal system to handle. Some breaker tripped and half of the power is out in my house. Which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem, except I live in crappy-ass old duplex with, apparently, the most well-hidden breaker box in the world. It being Sunday when this happened, I called the emergency maintenance number and left a message: just tell me where the fucking breaker box is and I'll be happy. I never got a call back. Today I called the landlord's office. Hm, the woman on the line wondered, is that box inside or outside? I can't remember. And all of their maintenance people are out today. And she can't quite imagine getting the landlord to fork over the $45 to send a maintenance person out just to find a breaker box anyway.

Apparently, the people I pay to maintain my property don't really feel like helping me find the fucking breaker box, or helping me get my power back on in any timely fashion. Bastards.

Where's my fucking renter's union?!

dork city

Mozilla is nice. But if you ever feel compelled to buy the Mozilla Thunderbird tshirt, you probably haven't had sex in ten years.

What's funny is that it's printed on American Apparrel tshirts. I'm surprised the internal battle between hipsterdom and geekdom in this tshirt hasn't made it explode.

accessory of the year

You may have heard of Segatoy Japan's iDog, a speaker for you iPod or other audio device. Now there is iFish.



iFish is capable of changing its feelings from happy to angry by waving its body side to side and by changing the color of the LED lights.

Watch iFish's Little Video. It's mesmerizing. And it makes you have to pee.

iFish is the source of all things good and beautiful.

attack of the estrogen

I blame the warm whether last week. It has kicked my hormones into hypermode and caused me to act like a cat in heat, except instead of wanting to hump everything in site, I have the overwhelming desire to act out my stereotypical gender role. And I don't mean the missionary position. I mean shopping.

Symptom #1: Obsessive reading of girlie blogs like Dress a Day and You Knit What?? The latter is pretty hilarious, especially since I started to knit a few months ago and finally feel like there is a wise, cranky voice to explain the preponderance of horrible knitting patterns in the world. In searching the archives I also happened to find a nasty critque of a pattern I had been planning to make, and now I'm thanking the gods of snarkiness for showing me the True Way.

Symptom #2: Relapse into fashion obsession. YES, I ADMIT IT, I CAN'T FUCKING HELP BEING BOURGIE. Sometimes I feel like acquiring a wardrobe that consists entirely of amazingly utilitarian clothing like the classic work jumpsuit, and then I start reading something like Dress a Day and my love for things like clean lines and pants with lining is rekindled. And then I visit the Ann Taylor Loft website and want to spend all my money on a tweed front slit skirt and I just feel dirty.

leave me alone!

What is it with people interrupting me when I'm trying to read at lunchtime? To me, burying my nose in a book sends a clear message: "I am a rude, antisocial bastard and have procured this reading material to avoid having to talk to you, because you are boring and tedious." Apparently the people who work at Gentrified Tobacco Warehouse think of reading as the sort of activity that doesn't even require an "Excuse me, can I talk to you now?" kind of courtesy. They launch into the small talk with no warning.

"That a good book?"
"Yes, it's quite a happy coincidence when my social interaction avoidance device also provides entertainment and/or intellectual stimulation. Unlike this conversation."

Today I was sitting outside on some large brick steps leading down to a fake stream running through the complex, reading. A woman I've never even met before walked right up to me, stood there for a second, and asked, "Aren't you afraid you'll fall in?" WTF? You interrupted a complete stranger's private reading moments to ask this? I'm sitting on a FLAT, SOLID SURFACE.

In retrospect, her question might have been some kind of threat, or maybe the concerns of a person who, like prime time TV show characters who see dead people, has visions of unsuspecting readers tumbling head first from their seemingly stable seating into bodies of water, moving traffic, or cabinets of expensive crystal.

But you know, maybe I don't want to be saved. I just want to be left alone.

i want to spenddddddd

Recently at College Radio Station we received the Galaxie 500 Peel Sessions CD, and upon playing the excellent first track, "Submissions" (which turns out to be a Sex Pistols cover) on a radio show, I downloaded the CD to my iTunes. Now I'm obsessed with the band, odd because I usually can't stand shoegazer stuff, but this has just the right amount of psych to make it good. I'm so obsessed that I've developed a jones for the Galaxie 500 box set, which can be procured on half.com used for around $60. It's still out of my music=buying budget, and far down the list of things I should be spending my money on. Alas.

In the meantime, I've had my eyes on even more expensive luxury items. I've lusted after my own a Pentax 67 medium format camera since I used one as a photography student in college, but the $2,000 I could easily shell out on one has never entered into the realm of financial reality for me. Since experiencing the joys of casual photography with a digital camera, and pondering the inevitability of learning digital photography on a more serious level, I've started thinking about investing in a digital camera.

I know a little about film cameras, but digital cameras are a mystery to me. I'm afraid of making the mistake I made when I bought my first 35mm film camera: buying a "nice" new camera from a mall camera store that cost about $350, a Canon Rebel EOS. When I started to learn about photography, I realized that these cameras are a total ripoff. Once you learn how to adjust the aperature and shutter speed to get a good exposure (which is really freaking easy), you dont need all of the annoying presets that come with this kind of camera. You can get a great used Nikon 35mm at a decent camera store for around $150 and spend the extra $200 on a nice tripod and cable release - enough to take photos as nice as you'll see in a museum.

I'm trying to avoid a similar experience with the purchase of a digital camera, but internet recommendations are usually made by professional photographers, i.e. assholes who take dull pictures of sunsets and are really into useless bells and whistles. I think a high-end consumer digital SLR like this might be good, but what I really want is something with around 6 megapixels that allows me basic manual controls without those useless "portrait" and "close-up" modes or the (also useless) ability to take a 5-second digital video. Does such a thing even exist?

Oh, right, it doesn't matter, because I don't have the money to pay for it anyway. Whew.

next time take the sidewalk

You know what really gets my goat? People riding bicycles against traffic. I encountered such a person on my drive to work this morning. Now, the people I've seen do this aren't really the hardcore cyclist. In fact, they usually seem like they don't really know why they're on a bicycle in the first place, though it probably has to do multiple DUI charges. Thus, not only is there a bike coming towards you on a busy city street, but the person does that pseudo-slalom move, since people who haven't ridden a bike in 30 years have trouble going straight.

I'm not really sure what makes someone think riding against traffic on a bike is somehow a good idea, when driving a car against traffic (which, by the way, I also witnessed today)is generally a sign of mental defeciency. Most of the time I'd be the one to say that motorists' behavior around cyclists needs to be better enforced, but in this instance the person on that bike should have been slapped with a big ol' fine.

dan savage strikes again

Just as the common noun definition of "Santorum" gets press for being mentioned in "The Economist" (albeit in fantastically prudish fashion), Dan Savage takes another stab at repurposing the name of a politician.

From this week's column:

Confidential to everybody: "Pearl necklace" is out. "Cheney" is in. Pass it on.

I like it. Both a nod to the conservative lady's preferred accessory and Cheney's recent "neck spraying."

Re: the phrase "pearl necklace," how did the ZZ Top song of the same name ever get past the FCC?

a good cranky rant

I am cranky this morning.

For one, I am poor. This isn't usually the case, but I stupidly spent over my budget the last two weeks, and consequently I had to delay paying a big bill until this next paycheck, out of which I also have to pay rent. The result is a depressingly small amount left in my checking account until payday next friday, which I am trying to budget the maximum entertainment (i.e., beer) I can afford and still be able to eat meals that contain protein and vegetables for the next ten days.

Also, I'm really sleepy. Usually, anything more than 8 hours of sleep makes me feel more groggy than rested. For the last week or so, however, my body seems to be demanding something around 9 hours of sleep. And I'm not so much a snooze-hitter as I am a go-back-to-sleep-while-the-alarm-is-still-playing person, which means I've been getting out of bed an average of 9 minutes before I'm supposed to leave for work.

Once I get to work, I'm still falling asleep at my desk, so I go for some of the complimentary office coffee. The office coffee is utter shite. I mean, it's amazing that 300 people drink this crap every day without rioting. I wish American coffee companies would take a hint from the French and at least burn the cheap ass beans they use until you can no longer taste their inherent, terrible flavor.

Oh, and then there's this.

recent events

This past weekend Dick and I took a trip to Baltimore City.

Q: Business or pleasure?
A: A little bit of both.

Dick was conferencing while I spent some time furthering my quest to ensure that my future involves even greater poverty than my present, i.e., selecting MFA (that's Mother Fucking Arts) programs to which I would like to apply. Apparently, I come across as even more square on first impression than I initially thought. The faculty dude I met with, after 30 minutes or so of discussion, asked me earnestly, "Are you sure you'll like being at art school? There are a lot of weird people around here."

Now, in my estimation, the top three weirdest people out there are a) fundamentalists christians, b) swingers, and c) carnies. I think if I ever met a fundamentalist christian carnie swinger my head would explode, and the more I think about the more likely it seems that people like this exist. They probably live in the midwest. This is one reason I never go to the midwest.



My point is, art school kids are a lot more annoying than they are weird. And since when was artistic talent or merit indicated by how wacky you seem to be after half an hour? Anyway, I don't really blame the guy, as in interview situations I tend to revert to stick-up-the-ass prude-woman behavior that I learned from my uptight parents. I remember when I was interviewing at colleges the admissions officer at Bard reacted the same way to me.

sotu

Tonight George II will be giving his 6th State of the Union address, which I will be using a an opportunity to drink. I have vaguely fond/fondly vague memories of partaking in a State of the Union drinking game with htrouser and lady mctrouser in the past, but since they've fled for the Big City I've been searching for my own drinking game.

A Google search for "State of the Union drinking game" yields no less than 16 million results. Unfortunately, the pickings are actually quite slim. Most links point to this game at drinkinggame.us, which is kind of your typical drinking game with far too many rules for an increasingly inebriated person to keep track of. The other drinking game dominating the Google results isn't so much a drinking game as a satire, by Will Durst. It's reasonably funny, but not really meant to actually be enacted, though I'd like to know how many lefty political nerds try. Wonkette has a couple of additions to the drinkinggame.us one, which provide some much-needed cleverness. Overall, a disappointing selection. But this is the sort of lack of cohesiveness and direction we've all come to expect from the Democrats.

Maybe this year my drinking game will be "Drink constantly during entire speech."

mmmm, donuts

I've never been to Portland, but now I really want to go.

(They also do weddings: The service is performed by ordained ministers beneath the holy doughnut and a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes. )

bag obsession

I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions, but after getting some nice lights and street tires for my bike for xmas I've resolved to bike-commute to work more. I live only 2 miles from work, so it's hard to argue against biking. I used to bike more often when I only worked at my current job part-time, but I discovered that my inherent sweatiness was a problem with my biz-casual attire. Plus carrying all my crap to work - laptop, lunch, etc. - is a bit of a pain in the ass.

About a week ago I found a website that provides instructions on commuting to work. Apparently, non-bike fanatics like me have problems commuting to work because we're silly enough to think it doesn't require some change in routine. The advice I found most helpful is to not wear your work clothes while biking to prevent that unpleasant sweaty shirt syndrome and to get some panniers to transport your crap. Backpacks make your back sweaty, raise your center of balance, and are uncomfortable on you neck.

After some searching, I've located the dream bag for bike commuter made by an English company called Carradice. Carradice has been making bags for bikes for over 60 years, and I figure if anyone knows how to keep your crap from getting wet it's the English. Now I'm lusting after their bike bureau, which is a shoulder bag with laptop pouch made out of cotton duck fabric (nice and old school) that clips onto a rack on your bike. It has loads of brilliant features and looks good enough to carry around work.

If I had the funds, I'd add a rain cape and some rain spats to my shopping cart, because I'd love to be able to say I commmute to work in spats and cape.

blogger of slackness

Apologies for not blogging in a month, but I have been extremely busy eating cookies.

The highlights of my existence of late have been twofold:

1) A brownie consumed minutes ago, acquired from a plate of the same located in the break-room provided by an anonymous co-worker. These brownies had nuts in them, which is ok, but ultimately nuts in brownies are wack. For some reason, however, almost all recipes for brownies call for some sort of chopped nuts. What is up with that? Are brownie recipe-makers in denial about the general lack of enthusiasm for nutted brownies? Is there a secret deal between the chocolate industry and the nut industry? Regardless, the maker of these brownies was too easily tricked by the attemps of the recipe-maker to make him or her include nuts in the brownies.

2) The Elements of Style Illustrated, a Chrismtas gift from Dick. In the last few months I've hardly read more than five pages of anything, excepting the optics book I finally started only to discover that I have to learn calculus first to undertand any of it. Having attended a small Catholic school that paid its teachers so poorly that some of them qualified for food stamps, the quality of my education was highly variable. I learned how to write from my 11th grade English teacher, who was kind of nuts but passionate about literature. In 12th grade AP English my teacher was an ex-southern belle. Her husband had left her, and she spent our classes telling stories about the days when she was young, thin, and wealthy; about how she had never paid bills before her 40's; about how she was part of an organization of young women at Clemson in the 70's that helped recruit football players by joining them for dinner in a uniform of white miniskirt and orange go-go boots. "That is not selling sex," she claimed, "it's showing school spirit!"

Where am I going with this? Oh, right...so I never actually had to buy, read, or use The Elements of Style in high school, and at college they expected that I already knew everything there was to know about that sort of thing, so this is my first encounter with Strunk and White's little book. And it's great. It reads less like an instructional book than a manifesto and reminds me a great deal of Ezra Pound's ABC's of Reading. I like the illustrations in themselves for their sort of childish surrealism and in the book becauase they are completely gratuitous in a text about grammar and language usage. It's a wonderful piece of simple, aesthetically pleasing bookmaking.