Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: absinthe, crows, erika koivenen, laundry
I am beset with an intense feeling of uselessness today because it’s too cold to torch. I’m attempting to be semi-productive by writing about stuff, which works I suppose, but it’s not as good as making beads. Anyhoo, with nothing new to say I thought I’d empty out my camera and tell you all about the pictures I took in the last week. That should be loads of fun, yes? Let’s get to it.
This is our new bar area. We decided that there just wasn’t enough stuff to look at in our kitchen so on Saturday Don installed that row of tap handles near the ceiling. Eventually, when we hang a new ceiling ,we will both figuratively and literally lower that bar. There’s the new beer fridge and if you look carefully you can see my cool ice bucket and a brandy snifter full of absinthe. More on that later.
Maybe on Friday of last week we noticed a mysterious looking wound on the tip of Don’s nose:
We were worried that it might be cancer so I took a picture of it to email to my mom who is well-acquainted with skin lesions. It has started healing since then so now we believe it was the result of a chemical burn caused by caustic solution used to clean brewing equipment. Phew!
On Sunday a massive flock of crows gathered in all the trees surrounding our house:
There was a multitude of them! It’s hard to get the scale from that one photo but four trees were just full of them. What a lot of crows there were! And the cawing! Neat!
One day last week I took a picture of this guy hauling a sled load what looked like a giant pile of laundry:
…or maybe it’s kittens. I don’t know for sure.
On Saturday Erika came over and we drank cocktails and bent pieces of rigid, flat wire into curly Q’s so she could weld them into something neat or “neat-o” as she likes to say:
Erika brought a couple hundred of the wires over in a large coffee can– each maybe 6″ long or so. She said that they were parts of a loom or something. Erika only works with material that other people throw away–no matter how much work it takes to make that material usable. I don’t think anyone can understand how labor intensive that kind of thing is. It took us all night to bend those curly-Q’s. She blows my mind with that stuff.
That’s it for the pictures!
My cyber-hero Jim Sheely has a couple of his drawings up on the Ebay. I’m so excited! That almost never happens. Here’s the link to them, though, if monsters with giant scrotums freak you out you probably shouldn’t look at them. I’m bidding. Won’t you?
While perusing the SRA mixed media category I came upon a familiar familiar–Gus Fink. I have a couple of his drawings and a weird little painted fimo pin that he designed. My pin is this character, Dead Pickle Guy, something like that. I still wear it on my jean jacket. The dead pickle has this big hole in his head from where a cockatoo bit it. I was street vending maybe 5 years ago when this guy who had a cockatoo perched on his hand came up. The bird leaned toward me and I thought maybe it wanted to hop onto my shoulder but then it just took a big bite out of my pin. Stupid cockatoo. Anyway, just the other day I was telling someone that story. I had not thought of or looked for Mr. Fink in a long time–and then today, there he was! He’s got his own little line of bobble head toys that are so fantastic. They remind me a lot of the pins except with awesome packaging. I bought this one today. I think I’m going to need more. How in the hell does someone get a line of toys like this? These are so, so cool. Good for Gus Fink.
In other news…Our weather, man. Yesterday, Monday, it was 45 degrees. I got to frolic all the way to the post office and the bank and back, which was great. I had my window open in the studio all day. Now, Tuesday night, I just checked the weather and it’s zero degrees with a 27 below wind chill. It’s supposed to be minus 10 tonight. Yup, weather.
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog
Don and I went grocery shopping in the middle of yesterday. That is possibly the most significant monotony-breaking event that has happened to me all year. Sometimes life just sucks around here. Anyway, I saw this Pop Tart display and was sure that some ad person in pop tart land hired my beloved Don Hertzfeldt for some twisted new ad campaign aimed at stoned, pop tart devouring college students.
After just minutes of research on the google I found out that the drawings were not the work of Mr. Hertzfeldt and are in fact from a several year-old “Crazy Good” ad campaign the commercialsfrom which you can watch on the You Tube. Disgruntled animation forum dwellers swear that the Pop Tart people are stealing bits from Hertzfeldt. I watched some of the commercials and I think they also resemble short cartoons David Lynch did a while back. So, it’s a pretty ubiquitous drawing style. Who’s to say.
One thing’s for sure, in a very short period of time I learned a lot about Pop Tart ads and Don Hertzfeldt. What a beautiful internet moment that was.
Also…
Baked Virginia ham taste without all of that annoying ham!
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: ice in the drink, ice in the toilet, snake mug
Do you see that? There’s ice in our friggin’ toilet! Yow! I bet that’s a cold seat. The downstairs bathroom is unheated and with the wind whipping up from the basement it gets pretty damn nippy in there. I haven’t seen this before though. Thought I’d share.
In other news..I got a new drinking wessel off of the Ebay
Isn’t it cunning? If you tinkle the ice cubes just right it sounds like a real rattlesnake. Resin animals make me happy.
Yeah, so…I think it’s colder today then it had been so far. My own expert opinion as a closet meteorologist. Beadmaking still not going real well. Have I mentioned that me and Don are going to Mexico next month? We are. Don’s employer is picking up the tab. I get to use my shiny new passport that looks like the introduction of “The Colbert Report” with all of it’s eagles and flags. Speaking of “The Colbert Report”, don’t you wish that writer’s strike was over? I can’t believe anyone let them go on strike in the first place after what happened the last time…remember? The last strike was when some bright apple invented reality television. No writers necessary. Sweet Jesus, I don’t think we’ll ever recover from that. That reality television is like one of those beasts with seven heads–you cut one off and then a bunch grow back in it’s place. A “Hydra”. That’s what that beast is called.
Interesting side note: I Wikkied “Hydra” to see if I had the right name for the seven-headed beast and found out that the male team on the reality show “Celebrity Apprentice” called their group “Hydra” at the suggestion of Gene Simmons. For f**k’s sake.
Winter came on suddenly this year flash-freezing our neighbor’s lawnmower to the ground that lies between our two houses. Imagine it’s surprise mowing happily along and then BAM! A blinding snowstorm. It probably lapped the house a couple of times before running out of gas and succumbing to the cold. Poor lawnmower.
Yeah, I guess I’m pretty bored here. I’m getting a minimal amount of torching in but the store pets, as always, keep me from letting outside air in. Who would have thought that keeping two sensitive, mostly hairless exotic pets in a glass studio would be a problem? You’d have to be a psychic.
We got through Don’s birthday party on Friday. Some very cool and strange tiles came out of that crowd. He recieved as gifts two dense, delicious birthday cakes (from folks who really know how to bake) with a conservatively estimated combined weight of nine pounds. My digestive tract is enormously screwed up from all of the party food I’ve been eating. I’ve had a pretty steady supply of it since New Year’s Eve and the giant container of cheese balls. It will not stop snowing and being cold here. It’s below zero now so I can’t make beads. I’m cranky.
On the brighter side–Our taxes are done and I have a much better understanding of that whole Quick Books thing. Doubtless, I will forget everything by the next time I have to do sales tax but if I was able to figure it out once I can do it again.
Today I curbed my inner dumbass by removing my long scarf before I sat down on the toilet. What did you do?
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: absinthe, magic putty, pop tarts, taxes
Last night I sat up shredding a grocery bag full of credit card receipts that I accumulated while the store was open. Slow going, that. I thought that the thermal paper they were printed on was supposed to degrade on it’s own but after sitting there for four years the receipts were still readable. If I ever get that many of them again I’m just going to burn them. That would have been faster and more fun.
Speaking of receipts, our accountant needs the business end of our taxes by January 20. God, how I hate stopping work to do taxes. I’m aware of this deadline every year and still it’s like some horrible, unfair surprise every time it rolls around. This isn’t the most hectic January ever so I guess I don’t have too much to bitch about. Just forget I said anything.
In other news…On January 1st Wisconsin legalized absinthe. I found this an unexpected and odd thing to happen because it means there are absinthe lobbyists somewhere in the world. I imagine that they have mutton chops and wear monocles and top hats and don’t wake up until noon or so. I tried a tiny bottle of it the other day. Undiluted it tastes like a cross between rubbing alcohol and Listerine. Not so good although, given it’s history with the artist and poet types, I think it’s going to be the new martini. Or maybe, knowing the college crowd, the new Red Bull mixer. They could call it “The Oscar Wild”. (Little absinthe humor for you.)
I went into my shrink’s for my quarterly med check this morning. They’re still arranging the little dinosaurs in the hallway for the patients to enjoy. Or perhaps for the staff’s amusement. I thought this was really, really strange the first time I saw them doing it. Quite frankly it’s a little to close to the stuff that I do all the time. IMHO Patient/therapist boarders should be a little more distinct than that. Anyways, over the last year I’ve grown fond of the plastic animal groupings and look forward to seeing them each time I go in. As you can see, this arrangement features a handwritten sign that reads “Humans are our friends”. Such a comforting sentiment. Of course humans are or friends. We love them. Right below that someone added in pen “but they taste good.” Zany mental health care workers.
Another picture from my shrink’s office was this:
This is the staff entrance door. It’s in the hallway maybe 10 feet from the patient entrance door. I didn’t ask what the heck happened because it’s more fun to imagine. Someone really wanted in, didn’t they? Maybe they were seized by an excellent dinosaur diorama idea and they forgot their key. I actually can’t imagine circumstances under which someone would have to get into the offices that badly…unless it’s a lot more fun in there than they let on.
In other news…It’s Don’s birthday today! He’s 44 years young. Here’s a picture of him from last Halloween when he was Osama Bee Ladin. That’s Erika next to him. Happy Birthday, Don!
I’ve been walking past this electrical box in my neighbor’s yard for 2 1/2 years and I never recognized it as being an object in my reality until someone put this sticker on it. I asked Don if they just put the box in and he said no it’s been there all along. That’s kind of spooky. I wonder what else I’m not seeing.
I stayed up until all hours watching cooking shows ’cause I couldn’t get to sleep last night. Those shows are filmed in a very interesting manner these days. They shoot the food super-duper close up so it looks like a colorful landscape. It’s very engaging to look at even if you have no plans for cooking food of your own. Have they always been filmed like that or am I just noticing that now that I’ve read the sticker on the box and my mind is free? I just don’t know…
But I digress…what I really wanted to talk about is a commercial that I saw during the Iron Chef. For some reason things that I see on late night commercials are starting to look good to me. I think this tendency is both genetically and age related. My father’s resistance to the allure of “As seen on TV” products is almost zero. That was not always the case with him. He’s in his late 60’s so I think I’ve got a while before I’m at that point.
Gah! I’m still digressing but I do want to tell you about the first ASOTV product that I bought just last week. It was that “Magic Putty” stuff. It’s an epoxy in putty form that you mix up by kneading it with your fingers. To me sounded a lot like JB Weld Steel glue I’m always using except it sets up faster. I’ve been wanting something like that for a long time, especially for gluing knobs. (In theory you could use it to make threads inside a knob to screw your rod into. How great would that be? Only the greatest thing ever!) Anyway, I did not end up phoning in my credit card–I just googled ‘Epoxy putty’ on the google and found someone selling it (epoxygator.com). So I didn’t get the super bonus deal that was advertised but I did get some putty to try and it is FANTASTIC. I repaired a cast bronze Tiffany reproduction lamp base with it in about five minutes. And now I feel like I’m teetering at the top of a slippery slope because ASOTV products don’t seem quite as annoying as they once did.
So, back to the late night cooking show commercials. I didn’t see my beloved putty last night because most of the ads are For The Ladies. Hair removal, life insurance and health aids mostly. One ad that really appealed to me was for these pads that remove toxins (like lead and cellulite–the inclusion of cellulite on the list of heavy metals is how you know this is For The Ladies) from your body while you sleep if you wear them taped to the souls of your feet. People’s feet, the commercial explained, are like a tree’s roots except instead of absorbing nutrients they seep out toxins. While you sleep. If you are wearing these pads. The pads turn black when they’re full. Even though they are full of heavy metals it’s ok to throw them out with your regular garbage. Over the course of several nights the pads should turn less and less black as your body detoxifies. A lifetime supply is offered for a low price though I suppose much of the fun of using the product ends when the pads stop turning black.
Now I want some of these pads! I probably absorbed a bunch of stuff when I was kneading that putty. I just want to see what they look like and maybe smell them. If I’m going to make believe that I am detoxifying my body I would rather do it with foot pads than fasting and enemas. Maybe my dad will buy some for me. Just have to get him watching the right channel.
After much searching I located the “Year of the…” notebook. It fell behind the couch probably right after Don circled the final five phrases. So no one voted on it. The funny thing is that, upon re-reading the list, the phrase I liked the best “The year of clean laundry and dirty living” turned out to read “The year of clean lobsters and dirty living”. Even though I think that’s hysterical it doesn’t make sense so it’s not exactly a phrase one can live by for the next year.
The long and the short of it is, for 2008 we’re reverting back to a phrase we thought up a few weeks ago which is “The year of curbing your inner dumbass”. It’s sort of awkward to say but it’s something we all can agree on. Living by this phrase is very simple–whenever you catch yourself doing something stupid, stop doing it before you or someone else gets hurt. For example, the other day I was standing on a chair vigorously pounding nails into the woodwork on a doorway. I almost fell off once because the chair was a little farther away from the target than it should have been. Had it been any other year I would have tested my luck and continued pounding but, since it is the year of curbing my inner dumbass, I climbed down and re positioned the chair before finishing the project.
Do you see how easy it is to follow this little credo? And how great it would be if everyone did this? It does not apply to unforeseen stupid things like locking your keys in your car or wandering out into traffic because you’re preoccupied with thoughts about hedgehogs or whatever. Those are hard to help. It applies only to things that the universe has warned you about in the past, things that experience tells you are a bad idea, things that you do because it’s never worked before but you like your odds this time. Like attempting to pour a glass of water from a just filled Britta pitcher or considering the expiration dates on meat to be more of a guideline than a rule. Most dumbass moments are easily avoidable if you just think about what you’re doing while you do it. Let’s work on that for 2008.
Aardvark Art Glass 