Archive for July, 2010

“Fitness” images, charts and a website y’all should check out.

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Today, I was doing a search on Getty Images for “fitness”. Not “exercise”, not “healthy”, not “nutrition”. So why did this picture of a budgie on a pineapple come up?

Getty, methinks your search parameters be too wide.

Now, some charts that make me happy.

In keeping with my chart theme, I saw this blog about three months ago, and I every time I go to the blog, I laugh and laugh and laugh and embarrass myself. The website is Hyperbole and a Half.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

This woman who writes this blog, Allie, she’s awesome. She makes truly evocative and emotionally powerful drawings in MS Paint that make me giggle unstoppably until I almost tinkle in me pantaloons. If that sounds like an oxymoron, I understand. You must go and experience for yourself. If you read only a few entries, these are the ones you should read. The first one even has a chart!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-spiral.html

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-fish-almost-destroyed-my-childhood.html

Rockin’ my grump.

Monday, July 26th, 2010

I’m sorry, were you just on your way to bed? Hey, guess what? No bed for you. We’re going to sit here while I tell you about my craptacular evening, and you’re going to listen to the whole thing.

I had a wonderful weekend. I went up to Massachusetts and saw a play and went to a craft show and checked out some galleries and ate some lovely food, it was just delightful. Then my father drove me to Wassaic, which is about a third of the way back home, to catch the train back to White Plains. I caught the train, all was well, but two towns later, the train stopped. And now we weren’t going anywhere. I figured there’s a signal problem or something and continued listening to my iPod. The conductor got on and informed us there was a fire on the tracks in Patterson and as soon as he got more information, he would inform us. Time passed, the earth rotated a bit more, and then the nice conductor man informed us that no trains were moving above Southeast and we should look for alternative modes of transportation to get where we were going. Armed with that little nugget of knowledge, I called Cricket and asked him what he would do in this circumstance. He said to get a cab to take me to Southeast where I could continue on my merry way. So I called a local cab company and got a guy to come. The cab-guy didn’t have any cabs available that evening, but he realized we were in a bind, so he came to pick us up in his own car. Oh, and then there was drama. I offered to take a bunch of people with me and there was pushing and shoving and yelling. Two hippie artists who were on the train with me came with, as well as three older women. In order to avoid a fight, I offered to sit in the trunk area of this hatchback cab, where there was something like nail polish remover leaking all over the floor and it soaked my pants. At one point the male irritating artist hippie said, “We can all ride together, but we all have to be on the same page, man. We can’t be quibbling over little pieces of leather, man.” I wanted to punch him in his little hippie mouth. Oh, and his girlfriend took the front seat without offering it to any of the older women riding with us, like it was owed to her, because, you know, they make documentaries, man, not like us status-quo squares. Anyway, we started on our fifty-minute journey to Brewster, and the driver, who is a nice 55-year-old man, says, “I’m sorry for your tough trip. I’m going to try to make you all laugh,” and we’re all thinking NOOOOOOOO please don’t. Let’s all sit in silence and think about life and its vicisitudes. But we said nothing, so he told us he used to be a pilot for TWA and proceeded to dictate every moment of the remaining trip as if it was a flight (“Hello everyone, welcome to flight 703 to Phoenix, we’re just starting our assent…”), taking breaks periodically to say driving instructions to himself (“Go, go, make the left…. NOW!”).

Oh no, there’s more. He also spoke like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd to us (we were all apparently wascally wabbits, who knew), and after we stopped at a local Mobil station, he told us he liked to make sounds like a cymbals and drums with his mouth. He then put on ABBA’s Greatest Hits and both beatboxed and made rocket-taking-off-noises (“Fwoochsh!”) to three, count ’em, three songs, until the crappy hippies yelled that they hated ABBA and he needed to turn it off, which I think hurt his feelings a little bit. The he informed us that he could smell anything, like a beagle, and howled like a beagle (“Barrooooo!”). Finally, we arrived at the Brewster station and got comfortable to wait for the next train. Not five minutes after we arrived, a train rolled into the station. OUR train. The train we were JUST ON. I guess they had cleared up the fire situation shortly after the cab left. The whole cab trip was for nothing. We all just dejectedly boarded the train again and sat back down. So my one-and-a-half-hour trip took three-and-a-half-hours and involved a mentally ill cab driver, two arrogant young hipster snotbags, and three tightly wound older women who I had to calm repeatedly. I now reek of acetone and my pants are ruined. Good times, good times.

Addendum: Snorth has informed me that I was not riding with hippies, I was riding with hipsters. It’s a subtle but important difference. I stand corrected. So, for your information, hippies = dirty, friendly pot-smoking free-lovers. Hipsters = the ass-weasels that rode in the car with me.

Some links that need to be part of your life now.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

http://catalogliving.tumblr.com/

Catalog interiors are decorated weirdly more often than not. What if real people lived there, and they decorated like that? “Catalog Living” answers that question for you.

http://hackedirl.com/

This stands for “Hacked In Real Life”. There are signs. People do bad things to the signs. You and I laugh. Here are some of my favorites:

“We don’t pump our gas, we pump our fists!”*

Monday, July 19th, 2010

*lyrics from a Jersey-type dance song I heard recently. How fabulous are those lyrics, really?

I went to a Jersey Shore-themed party this weekend, and for those of you living under a rock, or perhaps behind it, there is a show on MTV about American-Italians who go to the Jersey Shore every summer. Let’s be polite: they have a distinct “look”.

There’s a great deal of hair care product and bronzer and tattoos and drinking and steroids and lasagna and house music. This show became insanely popular. So there were spinoffs, like Jerseylicious:

And Jersey Couture:

And suddenly these orange Oompa-Loompa people took over the world. So, many people have had Jersey Shore-themed parties this summer, and I went to one of them. And Lordy, I went all out. I got a Bump-It for my hair, and four-inch-high gold stilleto heels (I wore them for a total of 300 feet, from the car to the front door, then those shoes were OFF). I got bronzer to make my face all roasty-toasty-brown, and… well, see for yourself.

Cricket took that while we were stuck in traffic on the Cross Island Expressway with no air conditioning. And people in the other cars were laughing at me. I took a slightly better picture about fifteen minutes later, but you can’t appreciate the poofy hair.

I found it rather humorous how much, in the upper picture, I resemble Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Apparently it’s my destiny.

Some photos.

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Since I’m crazy busy with a fairly interesting project I’m working on (pictures a-comin’!), here are some photos that I’ve been meaning to share, but haven’t got around to posting. First, I did a search for “antlers” on the internet this morning and I found this sweet little image. Awwww.

My friend JR and I have marveled at how good some tattoos are, and how truly bad some tattoos are. As JR says, “Every tattoo artist has to start somewhere.” I thought of that sentiment when I witnessed this craptacular backpiece at Coney Island when I went for the Mermaid Parade. I followed the dude for quite some time to snap this winner.

Finally, this Fourth of July, I went with Cricket to watch the fireworks. There were bloodsucking bugs, as there tends to be outside (which is one of the reasons I tend not to go outside). Cricket handed me a little nylon bag and told me to open it. Inside was a jacket with mesh armpits and a hood with mesh going over the face, like a low-rent beekeeper’s suit. You could unzip the face part if you wanted to talk to someone without you looking like you were wearing your camping burqa. Cricket took a picture of me in it. We called it “The Faithfulmaker” because no one, absolutely no one, would think you were sexy in this thing. Cricket said it was like “a chastity belt, but lighter!” See for yourself.

The hotness, it is palpable.

Spoonflower ‘n’ things.

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Before we get started with today’s blog entry, let’s all look at a SmartCar completely covered in crocheted blankets. They took something I love and made it better!

Now that that’s taken care of, I have some charts to share.

And now, on to Spoonflower. Spoonflower is a genius idea of letting people print their own fabric. Anything they want, on fabric. A drawing they made. A piece of clipart they were diggin’. A picture of their pet fish. Really, whatever they want. Here’s a picture of their homepage.

And, bonus, sometimes if the design is a cool enough idea, they sell that fabric to the public. I picked some of my favorites.

So if you’re making a quilt or an apron or a pillow or a doll or any number of cool things and you can’t find a fabric that suits your needs, Spoonflower can help.

www.spoonflower.com

And now, a cicada to keep the beetle company.

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

For a first time experiment to make an insect with translucent wings, I think this turned out pretty great. I’m going to make a new, better cicada now with the knowledge I have obtained from this one. Thank you, original cicada.

He’s propped up against my phone to tip him up towards the light, in case you were wondering.

I made a beetle! And there’s a reason I did it!

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

Okay, now I know what I’m doing. I’m making some three-dimensional beetles and other insects, maybe some moths or cicadas that I will mount on boards. I just finished a nice beetle using a combination of polymer clay, wire wrapping techniques and composite gold leaf.

It’s about two inches long, to give you some proportions. I think it’s coming along great. We’ll see how this project develops.