Archive for August, 2008

Creepy creepy onesie.

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Before we get to that, I was just watching American Justice (like Forensic Files, but different) and they were talking about a town called Truth or Consequences, Arizona. Which is a great name for a town.

Anyway, I painted my co-worker a onesie for the little baby girl she’s having in October. I painted it with a skull and crossbones. It’s a cute skull and crossbones, but it’s still somewhat ooky. You decide for yourself.

skull-onesie-small.jpg skull-head-small.jpg

See? Could be considered cute, could be considered horrifying and wretched. I think the hearts and crystals help. Well, I like it and hopefully my co-worker will like it. We’ll see.

Blogs I think are nifty.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I often peruse the Ntarwebs for new and exciting bloggery and whatnot, and I figure you do too. So I will share some sites I frequent that maybe you will like as well. Some have strong language, so be forewarned.

The Impulsive Buy
“After sucking on it a little bit, the smooth texture of the lollipop turned into coarse sandpaper, which was kind of off-putting. It was like the lollipop grew a five o’clock shadow in my mouth.”

Izzle Pfaff!
“An American Girl. That is a really awesomely white cast. It’s like staring at a glacier.””

One Good Thing
“There’s gonna be a Thomas Kinkade Christmas movie this winter. I just hope all the buildings in the movie appear to have raging conflagrations within their walls.”

Storytime.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

My mom is from Central Africa went to college in Cape Town, South Africa. Being in Africa, she went on many safaris. She mentioned to me that once she was traveling through some nature park during marula fruit season. Marula fruit is a tree fruit that animals really like. It falls off the tree and a variety of animals eat it and then it ferments in their bodies and they become drunk. Really. Anyway, Mom saw an elephant that apparently had a nasty hangover and while normally elephants are pretty docile keep-to-themselves kind of creatures, this guy was really angry and attempted to flip over a van with his tusks. It was a terrifying moment and difficult to watch. I believed her, but I didn’t expect to see anything like it in my lifetime. Well, thank God for YouTube, bringing drunken sub-Saharan animal footage to all of us. Please to enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axur5W83znw&

Mental bits and pieces.

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Thank God the Olympics are over. At last, I can get to sleep before 1:00 in the morning. It sure was fascinating and engrossing. I got sucked in like a dust bunny to a Dyson, I tells ya. Now I can return to my normal schedule of obsessively watching Forensic Files as I fall asleep. I am lulled into dreamland by “…and this thread from John’s blue sweater found in the vehicle led investigators to conclude he was Debbie’s killer…” Ah, unsolved murders are so soothing.

Okay, returning briefly to The Batman Movie of Recent Recentness, something occurred to me. If you live in Gotham, and the bridges and ferries are blowing up regularly, and people are getting held hostage left and right, and people are shooting each other in the street, MAYBE YOU SHOULD MOVE. I’m just saying. I was watching a program on the Son of Sam (while waiting for Forensic Files to come on). He killed six people. Just six – and all of New York flipped the freak out. People wouldn’t go out at night, women dyed their hair blond (SOS tended to kill brunettes), there were 300 cops on the case, etc. The Joker kills, I don’t know, like, 100 people in this movie, and not one “Moving” sign in the whole film. Not one character says, “Hey, screw this whole thing, let’s go to Montana. I’ll homeschool the kids, we’ll grow some vegetables and milk some goats. Enough of this already.” My empathy well for the inhabitants of Gotham is pretty much dry.

So I gave my mom the purse tonight and she looooved it, which was great. I’m so pleased that she was so pleased. Hooray on that front. I must now paint a onesie for my co-worker. She’s having a little girl and I’m making her a black onesie with a skull and crossbones on it. Because that’s the kind of people we are. And little pirate girls are so precious! I’ll keep you posted on that.

How you like me now? Huh? (pounds chest)

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

My mom likes the designs I paint on my purses, but she actively dislikes messenger bags. So for her birthday (August 24th) I went out and got a nice black Nine West bag and just painted the BEJESUS out of it. Momma is from Africa originally, so I put a protea on it. A protea is a big scary African flower that looks like it could be Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Momma also likes the mourning doves that hang out near our house and coo and eat birdseed and are just generally precious, so I put two on there for her. And voila!

protea-purse.jpg

Would you like to see a detail? I bet you would.

protea-purse-detail.jpg

I shall give Mom the bag this weekend, I will report back on her reaction (hopefully glee, fingers crossed).

Olympics.

Friday, August 15th, 2008

I’ve been watching the Olympics almost every night for the last week, and gosh darnit, it’s exciting. Right now I’m watching a bunch of pudgy Belgians give the Americans a real run for their money in women’s beach volleyball. Go Belgians with the poochy bellies and thighs like Clydesdales! I think the best moment so far is the woman from America, the swimmer in the relay, who’s 41 and just had a kid and then kicked copious amounts of ass and broke the world record and got us the silver medal. What’s that, agist Olympic pig-dogs? I spit on you.

I am amused by the quantity of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s commercials. I find it funny that the world’s most important sports event is sponsored by sugar water and deep fried mechanically separated chicken. Oh, and I just saw a commercial for Budweiser, proud sponsor of the American team. Please add “caloric alcoholic beverage that many of the athletes are too young to drink” to that list. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gravy fries, I’m not pure of heart. It’s just, it’s a major athletic event. It seems contradictory. I wouldn’t want to be an author going on a book tour sponsored by Kingsford Charcoal, perfect for all your paper-burning needs.

These athletes are freaky, by the way. One of the lady gymnasts performed extremely well on the uneven bars, did one of those hard landings, and we the viewers find out later that she had a broken bone in her foot the whole time. Dear God, I get a hangnail and I consider taking a sick day. She had a broken foot-bone and she’s flinging herself off of high things to slam down on that foot with all her weight… see what I mean? Freaky.

So hooray and yay for Michael Phelps, you’re clearly part eel and we’re all very proud of you and your size-fourteen feet. May you grow gills and disappear under the water to marry Ariel and live on the ocean floor with dancing singing crabs for all eternity. It is your destiny. Good luck on your twelfth (!) gold medal tonight and may all your full-body shaving not be in vain.

Batman! Batman Batman Batman!

Monday, August 11th, 2008

Ugh, what a week. It was one of those weeks, the ones where the work just keeps on a’comin’. You think you’re done, and you’re wrong, oh so wrong. One of the things I had to do for one of the projects was get screengrabs of all the times the Nancy Botwin character drinks a coffee beverage on the hit show Weeds. What I learned was that that woman drinks an insane amount of fluid. Every time we see her, she’s either drinking coffee, or soda, or wine. I’ve renamed the show Pees.

So I finally saw The Dark Knight. Do you know why the word “dark” is in the title? Because it’s the darkest movie ever. Not plot-wise, no, more like someone forgot to turn on the lights. There’s Batman and he’s wearing all black, and he’s fighting some bad guy in an abandoned warehouse with one scrawny little bulb and the camera keeps changing position… I tell you, more often than not I had no damn idea what was going on. I told Cricket afterwards I wish everyone in the film wore those orange jackets deer hunters wear with their names written on them in big black letters so I could keep track. BATMAN. MOBSTER #1. MOBSTER #2. That kind of thing. Here are a few things that stuck out for me in the movie, and don’t worry, they won’t ruin the film for you.

1. Is the mayor wearing black eyeliner on his lower lids? God, that’s distracting, especially in Imax. I’m supposed to be taking him all seriously, and I can think is, “Aww, emo mayor.”

2. Does Batman need to speak in that ridiculous gravelly voice when he’s Batman? Stop that.

3. Is his name “Batman” or “The Batman”? Because there’s a whole chunk in there where they call him “The Batman” and it sounds odd.

4. That magic trick The Joker does in the meeting with the mob? Best magic trick EVAR. After The Joker did it, a smattering of applause broke out in the Imax theater I was in. That’s how good it was.

If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it, it’s very good. But remember, it’s 2 1/2 hours long and very plot-heavy, so don’t be thinking you can take a tinkle or get popcorn in the middle, because you’ll miss the thread and then you’ll be very confused for the rest of it. And trust me, you don’t want to miss a moment of Heath Ledger’s performance. He’s just terrific.