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I am weak. I am so easily creeped out I don’t watch the evening news. I watch a great many movies with my fingers smooched up against my eyes. Hell, I can’t watch most horror movie commercials on TV. As a child, I found certain portions of Sesame Street to be terrifying. It was with great trepidation that I saw the movie Fight Club. I ended up loving it and buying it and watching it numerous times (through my fingers). I recently saw my hands-down favorite film of the year Choke, by the same author as Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. He’s one hell of an author, and his books translate well to the screen. I would love to tell you all about Choke, but I took a vow to maintain some semblance of tastefulness on this website, so I will do my best to describe the not-too-nawsty bits for you. Main character is a sex addict who works at a Ye Olde American Waye of Lyfe park. Think Williamsburg, churning butter and blacksmithing in authentic garb, that kind of thing. When he’s not getting his groove on with random strangers of describing his role in American history to disinterested schoolchildren, he’s doing one of two things: visiting his mother in a home (she is suffering from dementia) and making himself choke on food in restaurants so the patrons who save him will feel a connection to him and also possibly send him money. Heartwarming tale, isn’t it? Well, it would be totally awful if it wasn’t Sam Rockwell playing the lead. I don’t know how he does it, but Rockwell makes the character into something other than a big bag of pathos and lameness and greed and vile dreck. He’s funny and sweet at times, and you really feel for him. And even though whole pieces of plot are hard to believe (you could say they are “hard to swallow!” Haw! See what I did there?), I let it slide because Sam Rockwell is so great. This is going to become a big cult classic, I’ll bet.

Continuing in this Palahniuk vein, a blog I read called FourFour (I referenced FourFour when describing the cat show) talked about another CP book, called Haunted. If you’d like to read Rich’s entry, here’s the link:

http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2008/12/threshold-reached.html

If you want a quick summary, here’s the best part: Palahniuk wrote a short story called Guts. It makes people faint. No, really. From Wikipedia:

While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel Diary, Palahniuk read to his audiences a short story titled “Guts” … which appears in his book Haunted. It was reported that to that point, 40 people had fainted while listening to the readings. Playboy magazine would later publish the story in their March 2004 issue; Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing. On his tour to promote Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories in the summer of 2004, he read the story to audiences again, bringing the total number of fainters up to 53, and later up to 60, while on tour to promote the softcover edition of Diary. In the fall of that year, he began promoting “Haunted”, and continued to read “Guts”. At his October 4, 2004 reading in Boulder, Colorado, Palahniuk noted that, after that day, his number of fainters was up to 68. The last fainting occurred on May 28, 2007, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where 5 people fainted, one of which occurred when a man was trying to leave the auditorium, which resulted in him falling and hitting his head on the door. Palahniuk is apparently not bothered by these incidents, which have not stopped fans from reading “Guts” or his other works. Audio recordings of his readings of the story have since circulated on the Internet. In the afterword of the latest edition of “Haunted”, Palahniuk reports that “Guts” is now responsible for 73 faintings.

Now, when Rich on FourFour described the story, I thought it sounded familiar. See how above it says they published it in Playboy? Cricket has a subscription to Playboy and guess what? When the story first came out in 2004, I READ IT. I READ THE WHOLE STORY. I did not pass out. I did not throw up. It made me walk and sit funny for about a week, but other than that, I made it where others failed. Whoo hoo! I am one tough cookie. Please turn on the night light before you leave.

Here are some links if you want to learn more:

I am really, really into glass, especially blown glass. Unfortunately, I am also really, really into about six or seven other things, so in order for me to own blown glass, it has to be small and relatively inexpensive. I started collecting handblown glass balls about eight years ago, when I finally had a (meager) income of my own and could use it here and there for a desired object. Also, many high-end craft stores don’t want to pack those things away, so they put them on sale after Christmas, and I swoop in like a ball-buying demon. Over the years, I’ve acquired quite a few, and now that I own my own apartment, I finally could display them. My mom gave me a table she didn’t want that has rods going all the way around it, so I thought, “A ha! I will display my glass orbs here hanging from ribbon and they will be out of the way (reduced chance of breakage) and they will catch the light from the window and it will be delightful!” So that’s precisely what I did.

Here’s the problem: See those six boxes on top of the table there? Those are six new ornaments I received this holiday season. I am going to have to cull the herd a bit, because space is at a premium. I’m going to hang the new ones around the sides, but I’m going to run out of orb-danglin’ room mighty quick. That’s my New Year’s wish: May this be the most difficult quandary I have to deal with this year. That would be nice.

Zahks = Saks Fifth Avenue. My grandmother spoke with a heavy German accent and so she referred to Saks as “Zahks” (pronounced like “socks” with a Z). Therefore, I refer to Saks as Zahks. Anyway, the windows this year were particularly cute. For the last few years, they’ve had beautiful windows, but they had creepy dolls in them. Moving creepy dolls.

Brrr, instant nightmare for me. It looks like the demonic ghost of Jon-Benet come back to wreak havoc on those who did her wrong. This year, they found a book (or they had a book written for them) called A Flake Like Mike.

http://www.intergalactico.com/work/design/print_illustration/a_flake_like_mike_1.php

It seems like a nice book with a positive message, but here’s the best part: Saks has some kind of relationship with Swarovski, the crystal manufacturer, so everything was BLINGY BLINGY. Me being a magpie, I was in heaven. And the characters from the book are very cute, so I took some pictures of my favorite parts of the windows.

This is a window of how Mike blends in with all the other snowflakes. It’s all done in felt, which is a very matte material, so there’s no flashy anything. But wait! The hexagons around Mike’s face flip over:

MAD blingy bling. Three-dimensonial sparkly goodness. I stood in front of this window for longer than you’re really supposed to, but I was so entranced. It combines so many of my favorite things: hexagons, repeating patterns, the aformentioned sparkly goodness, radiating lines, etc. You know when you play peek-a-boo with a small child, and you cover up your face and then you “Peek-a-boo!” at them and they laugh over and over? That’s what this was like for me. These panels would flip to plain snowflakes and then flip to this and- “Ooooooh!” -I would be dazzled all over again. I found video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu7ieKBGhpM

The other window I loved was the last one. All the snowflakes are happy, but the best part were the snowflakes riding a merry-go-round of sorts at the top of the window. They were the HAPPIEST SNOWFLAKES EVER. You couldn’t stop smiling at them.

And they’re riding around in a circle, you can practically hear them go “Yay!” “Whee!” “Whoo hoo!” as they swing by. I hope this is a trend that Saks keeps going with, the cute, almost kawaii-style windows. With a great deal of crystals. Gotta have crystals. Blingity bling.

I hope you all had a happy and joy-filled holiday season. I received a variety of coolie-cool presents: I got two hand-blown glass ornaments from my parents (I haven’t taken a picture of my glass ornaments in my apartment yet, don’t worry, it’s a-comin’), one of which is from Europe, which is pretty rad, all of my orbs are made in the U.S. I buy them mostly from the glassmakers themselves, or a store called An American Craftsman. From Cricket I got the coolest gift imaginable, and what’s better is that I wanted it but told no one, and Cricket KNEW. He KNEW. I adore this gift.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/interactive/a5bf/

I have a boombox IN MY CHEST. I’ve programmed it with the Imperial March from Star Wars and the A-Team theme song so when I enter a room, I can play either of those. So freakin’ great. Also on the shirt’s soundtrack: The theme song from Dr. Horrible, Stayin’ Alive from Saturday Night Fever, Call On Me by Eric Prydz, and a variety of sound effects for various situations.

I went to B.’s house the day after Christmas, and his parents were in town. They gave me homemade apple leather (so delish) and homemade grape jelly (haven’t had it yet, but I’m guessing delish as well). They also gave me a burl. A maple burl. For those of you who don’t know what a burl is, it is a big knot of wood. It’s heavy and it’s dense and it’s hard to carve, but when you do carve it, you reveal beautiful markings inside. It’s now sitting in my studio until I figure what to do with it.

Mmm, burlicious. B. asked me to paint him a moth, and I banged that out this week. I chose the comet, or moon, moth because it has pretty markings and ruffled wing tips. Here is a pic of the moth:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrumyeye/2220283493/

And here is my artistic interpretation of the comet moth:

I was originally going to color the moth, but I decided to color in the outside and leave the moth pure and clean. I used a brown pen to draw it and brown watercolors to do the background. It kind of gives it a Victorian butterfly-in-a-case feel. Hopefully B. will like it.

My favorite moments of this video are 1:07 and 2:15. I need this shape-shifting anime owl in my life right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es52WQKLumI

I haven’t forgotten about the tortoise. I just haven’t had the chance to get to my table saw and cut out my background piece for it. Hopefully when I go over to my parent’s house tomorrow night, I’ll run away from the holiday celebration for a short period of time and hack some pretty birch plywood into small squares and use one for my tortoise. However, this doesn’t mean I have not been making stuff. I’ve made some delightful animated gif ads for NewCastleNOW.org. Look, a rotating globe ad:

I iz proud. Right now I am working on a massive (I mean MASSIVE) embroidery project for my kitchen. I have a big piece of Formica blocking in my refrigerator that I want to cover. About eight years ago, I was on grand jury duty and started an embroidery piece to kill the time while I waited for the train, sat in the courtroom, etc. Then it sat in a Williams & Sonoma bag in the basement for seven years, and recently I unearthed it and had an “Aha” moment. Sho’ nuff, it fits perfectly in the spot I want to cover. So I have picked it up again and am sewing on it like it is going out of fashion.

It’s a rectangular piece of muslin I painted black, about four-and-a-half feet by two feet. I painted some muslin red and cut out the shapes of maple leaves. Then I ironed the leaves onto the black background using fusable web, a glue sheet that melts when ironed. Now I am making the veins and color differentiations with thread and, because I am me and I am anal to the max, I am using itty-bitty little stitches. Here are some pics to give you an idea.

It’s going to resemble maple leaves frozen into the surface of a lake. After all the leaves are stitched, I’m going to stitch silver thread all around each leaf to look like frost. Then I’m going to finish the edges of the tapestry with ribbon and hang it from a rod.

Stitches on leaves with my toes for scale:

Two more leaves, one unfinished (you can see a small bit of unfinished leaf in the one with the yellow tones):

I think it will be a nice wallcovering, and I like the fact that something that sat neglected in my parent’s basement for so long has found a purpose. It’s going to be a while before it’s finished, I have five more leaves to go. I’ll update it as it happens.

1. OMG, why is every other commercial for perfume? Perfume is a SMELL. You cannot smell anything on the talking picture box. So far, what I have learned is that if I buy perfume, I will smell like a non-smiling twenty-something lady model, or possibly Elizabeth Taylor, or a horse. Which is to say, I have no freakin’ idea what your perfume smells like, so quit it with the stupid commercials.

Actually, that’s not true. Mariah Carey has a commercial for her perfume, which has butterflies and rainbows on it. I can tell exactly what her perfume smells like. It smells like a girl. A girl who revels in the stupid stereotypes that are associated with women. Like this. Or this. If it wasn’t for her version of “O Holy Night” I would dislike everything about her.

2. Has anyone seen the trailer for the new Clint Eastwood movie? Where he says, “Get off of my lawn,” to a bunch of hooligans? How GREAT is that!?! Clint is an old gruff dude and he’s totally embracing that. I think he needs to incorporate more oldisms into all his movies. But not in a Grumpy Old Men way. Those films were appalling. The only way I think it would be alright would be if Clint said something stupid like, “I got coupons for the Stop and Shop!” but then he riddles someone with bullets. Then it’s okay.

It’s a cover for Publicis’ annual thing that they send out with a review of the year’s activities (businesses won, people hired, awards, etc.) Publicis seems to like a great deal of and ornament and layers with drop shadows nowadays, so I’m pretty pleased with what I came up with. It’s so lush and detailed. Definitely in keeping with their look. Hooray for me.

It’s like a Christmas present and when you unwrap it, you get… well, you get information and facts about our company, which isn’t on most people’s lists, but whatever, it’s still a good-looking cover. The insides were really cool too, but I don’t want to post any pictures of them here. I don’t think any of the information was sensitive, but I’d rather play it safe. Don’t wanna dooce myself.

Ah, the holidays. They come at this wonderful time of year when the sun sets at four in the afternoon and I fall into a deep depression from lack of vitamin D. Thankfully, I work in an area that has a spectacular array of Christmas lights, which helps when even if you get out of work at a reasonable hour like 5:00, it’s still dark. On my walk back to Grand Central, I get to see this:

And directly in front of me as I exit the building, I see this:

It soothes the soul, it really does. Even better, this year they have this new thing going on. See those trees in front of Macy’s? You may remember them from the Thanksgiving Day Parade post, when I cursed them for blocking my view. Well, now I love them, because they have LED lights in them that make them look like they’re dripping phosphorescence. The first time I saw it, I stood there with my mouth agape like I just strolled out of the mountains of West Virginia and I done never them lit-up things. I took a video of it with my camera and turned it into an animated gif, and even though the footage is very grainy, hopefully it will give you an idea of what it looks like.

SO PRETTY. It’s mesmerizing. I hope to trek over to Saks Fifth Avenue and take pictures of their windows. They’re really good this year. They’re about a snowflake named Jeff Mike who didn’t fit in with the other snowflakes. Awwwww.

Addendum: Here’s a lolcat that shows, fairly accurately, what I look like when pretty Christmas lights are flickering all around me.

1. Sean John/Diddy has a new perfume out and it’s called “I Am King”. I have low self-esteem and now I think I know where it all went. Piffy Puffy Poofy got it all, and maybe someone else’s as well. Goodness gracious, that’s a lot of narcissism.

2. While watching the Christmas commercial for Victoria’s Secret, I realized Heidi Klum can have twenty-seven kids and a stroke and she would still be the hottest woman in the whole freakin’ world. Heidi is HOTT, all caps, two “t”s.

3. Just saw a commercial for Jim Carrey’s new movie Yes Man. I don’t really want to see it, but there’s a scene where Jim goes to a Harry Potter costume party and for a split-second someone wearing a Dobby mask walks through the shot. Frankly, that’s kind of awesome. Now I think I’m going to have to see it. Oh, and I just watched the preview… yeah, I’m going to have to see it. Expect a review eventually.

4. Have you seen the recent Campbell’s/Progresso soup ads? SO MUCH DRAMA. Soup commercials used to be, “Our soup is delicious! Try it!” Now it’s like the east coast/west coast rap wars.

“7 out of 10 people prefer our soup!”
“No, they don’t, they prefer ours!”
“Your soup tastes crappy!”
“Well, your soup has msg!”
“Your mother has msg!”
“Oh, kiss my soupy-”
*bang bang bang*

People, it’s SOUP. It’s a wet version of “real” food. Build a bridge and get over it.