Niff.Dot

>
I am in love with my new work space… swoon…

>Concurrently, I need to quit starting projects at 8pm on a Sunday.
But I finished it…
And in a glorious act of shameless self-promotion, I invite you to behold my latest…
(and am also entertaining offers for purchase…please?????)

Click to enlarge.
(That’s NOT a suggestion.)

I used super-shiny black puffy paint for the outlines, so it has this super-cool (NOT Xmas-lights) stained glass effect. And even has purple feathers. I do declare.

Voulez-voulez vous goin’ ta bed now.

>
I have a theory that Smurfette was just Papa Smurf in drag. Interesting to see what feedback I get on this.

Theory aside, it turns out that she was magically created from clay by the Smurfs’ enemy, Gargamel, so that she would use her charms to cause jealousy and competition amongst the Smurfs in order to cause their fall. He left her in the forest and a passing Smurf took her to the Smurf village, where she was kept out of kindness.

Gargamel’s plans didn’t work well at first, as her appearance was flawed. He had designed her in such a way that she might be attractive to a sad and despicable person like himself, but to the Smurfs she looked like just a male Smurf but with long spikey black hair and a dress. She tried to be feminine and considerate, but was unattractive and proved to be more annoying than seductive.

Papa Smurf took pity on her when she became depressed because the other Smurfs teased her about being fat, so he practiced plastic Smurfery on her for several days and nights in order to make her the beautiful and appealing Smurfette the other Smurfs know today. This time, she caused almost every Smurf of the village to fall in love with her.

Alas for them, it did cause violence and jealousy as schemed by Gargamel, causing chaos among the Smurfs who competed, fighting against each other to win Smurfette’s heart. She herself later convinced Poet Smurf to open the water dam just to see the spurting water, but the dam got stuck and the village was flooded. After struggling to close the dam on his own, Papa Smurf showed his frustration towards the trouble-making nature of Smurfette, who, offended, announced that she would “return to the great sorcerer Gargamel’s”. The Smurfs were shocked about this statement, and Smurfette was put on trial.

The Smurfs, blinded by their passion towards her, declared her not guilt, as Jokey Smurf, her attorney in the trial, claimed that Judge Papa Smurf was the one who made her attractive. Brainy Smurf, as the prosecutor, was booed and pelted with tomatoes, just as much because of the audience’s love for Smurfette as their dislike for him. Still, she felt sorry for the trouble she had caused and ran away into the forest.

The Smurfs got their revenge on Gargamel by using the same process that he had used to make the Smurfette, but in this case they built a man-sized, wart-covered, ugly old hag who talked Smurf Language and chased the horrified sorcerer all over the forest.

Smurfette returned occasionally to the village though she found that her presence still aroused (heheh) conflict. When the Smurfs argued about which one should marry her, she herself chose Grouchy Smurf had customarily stated “I hate marriage”, thus making her point that the subject was closed.

The Smurfs then moderated their passion for her, worshipping from a distance, and she settled permanently in the village. She even learned to talk in Smurf language when previously she had talked in straight human speech in accordance with Gargamel’s magic.

Considering that the Smurfs were a Saturday morning cartoon, perhaps introducing the concepts of raginag male hormones, female insecurity, stereotypes, diva-egoes, precursors to eating disorders, plastic surgery and self-esteem issues to the impressionable young minds of 7-year olds (hey…that was me!) is far more damaging than the so-called objectionable content in Sponge Bob.

So rather than indulging in a delayed irritation and pissed-off-edness and what kind of message this bleached out attention whore may have had on the minds of my generation, I prefer to stand by my opinion that she was Papa Smurf in drag.

At least that way I can forgive her bleaching her hair and getting extensions.

Voulez-voulez-vous dontcha wish your Smurfette was hot like me…

>Whaaagh! 32!

>I decided to try painting my own face for Halloween instead of paper mache ones. Face paint doesn’t stay put for shit so I decided to use some of my acrylic inks that I’ve used on my masks. With any luck I won’t end the evening bleeding from the eyes due to some skin-ink related toxicity issues. But what a great costume that would make!

btw…the Spurs have won their first two games of the season. Not a bad way to start, I feel.

Voulez-voulez-vous it’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown…

>Today’s stuff:

I think I have a spray paint headache.
Am having a lot of fun with these tho.
Having so much fun, in fact, that I have no energy for blogging today.
I’m a busy girl…I’m unemployed!

Voulez-voulez-vous huffing…

>Due to popular request (or more to the point, harassment from my friends and relatives) I am getting off of my ass and am going to be selling my masks. So, here they be:

This one is now sold.

This one was very labor-intensive, being one big doodly line.

$105.00

$95.00

$85.00

$100.00

$95.00

And this one isn’t finished but I wanted to see what it looked like with white-on-white.

I can negotiate if someone wants me to color-customize it for them.

So, there you all are. Please feel free to let me know if you want to help a poor, starving artist who hasn’t had Pellegrino in ages.

Voulez-voulez-vous advertising

>Sleep is overrated.
At least my brain thinks so.

Thus, I blog. This is what I’ve got at 4 am:

I have two favorite fruits. Pomegranates, as I have discussed before, and Asian pears.

Thursday. Pike Place market. Post-job interview (and one that I really, really want…).

As I emerge into the hordes of mindless cattle (otherwise known as tourists), the sea of carbon-based life forms parts long enough for my eyes to fall upon what I can only define as one of those things that you assume must defy all laws of nature. I recoiled in both astounding awe and, I must confess, abject terror.

Permit me to explain.

“Asian pears have a high water content and a crisp, grainy texture, very different from the buttery European varieties. Also, Asian pears are not as intensely sweet, having a more refreshing, light taste. It is not a cross between apples and pears, as common names like apple pear may suggest, but its shape and crisp texture are reminiscent of apples.”

So if you were to use the above human hand as a scale reference, unless this dude was Andre the Giant you would surmise that an Asian pear was roughly the size of a baseball.

Apparently the folks at Pike Place market have other ideas in mind.

I mean…how?? I don’t…I mean, come on…what happened to this damn thing?
The pomegranate is not one of those minuscule, beginning of season waifs…it’s a good size pomegranate, a little bigger than a baseball. But the pear, holy freakin’ cow. Once I saw it, I knew it had to come home with me. A mutated ball of freakishness such as this was far too awesome to stay in a nondescript heap of less astounding fruit unworthy of its wonder.

This damn pear was so freakin’ huge it was difficult for me to grab it out of my backpack one-handed.

One of my housemates dubbed it “Pearzilla”.

Voulez-voulez-vous insomnia, pears, and flying fish.

So, my parents are interesting people.
I’m currently living in a house with two new parents, and as such I have observed that the parenting techniques with which I was raised are quite a bit different than the approaches that seem to be popular at the moment.
Not so much in the technique, per se, but more along the lines of communication and jargon.
It was really a situational thing. Observe:

*Note: Please keep in mind that the following -isms were said in jestful, humorous situations, not incidents of verbal child abuse. Otherwise instead of sharing them, I’d be at my therapist.

1. Leaving the door open:
“Were you born in a barn?”

2. Standing in front of the TV:
“Your father weren’t no glassmaker, move!”

3. Random acts of illogical behavior:
“You wouldn’t know your ass from a hole in the ground!

4. Inability to find objects in plain sight:
“You couldn’t find your ass with both hands!”

5. Backtalk:
“If I wanted shit outta you, I’d squeeze your head!”

6. Talking too much:
“What, you got diarrhea of the mouth?”

7. Asking for something I was too lazy to get up and get it myself:
“What, yer legs broke?”

This one was my grandpa’s:

Flicking the top part of my ear with his fingers:
“Does that ear-itate ya?”

Driving his knuckle into my friggin’ ear canal:
“Does that bore ya?”

And my mom thought I had “selective hearing disorder”. Ha.

Though, one of the funniest memories I have from my childhood has nothing to do with me, but my brother, who is 5 years my junior.

Where we grew up in Issaquah was somewhat of a rural area, so it was not unusual to have an area of suburban-style homes surrounded by farmland and pastures.

Our house was in such a location.

Right across the street was the property of my friend Tricia’s family, who owned some kind of gravel company. So on the right side of the street, you had houses. On the left, barbed wire forming a barrier between the grassy acreage and aforementioned houses.

I liked Tricia because she had a really cool house, big dogs, and horses.
Big, beautiful ones that would come up to the barbed wire so you could feed them grass and their fuzzy muzzles would tickle your hands.
I was 8. My brother was 3.
Three.
Three is like two on steroids. Only more mobile.
A little too mobile for my mother’s preference.

One afternoon I had come running into the house to grab some Kool-Aid or a Twinkie or some other overly-advertised cliche-ridden icon of my childhood, and my mother asks…

“Where is your brother?”

I dared not respond with any biblical references.

“Uh, I dunno..”

Furrowed brow.
“He went out there to find you!”

“I said I dunno! I didn’t see him!”

“Oh for chrissakes,” she muttered, and went storming out the screen door.

About 18 seconds later:
“KEVIN MICHAEL!”
(oh, shit…he got the two-name salute…kid’s in deep shit now…)
“Get your ass back over here RIGHT NOW!”

Like any good sibling, when you hear your brother/sister getting the riot act, you have to run to the scene immediately in order to be in sufficient gloating range.

To my combined delight and horror I saw what was causing my mother’s elevated blood pressure.

My brother, all three years and 2.7 feet of him, had miraculously wedged himself between two rows of barbed wire and was now grinning like a dope…

And standing right behind the McCann’s 23-year old, curmudgeonly, 1100-lb Quarter Horse mare by the name of Stella.

“Stellllllaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!”

I have to confess my gloating waned a bit.
We eventually got him back on the safe side of the fence (the busy street with no stop signs) and with the stereotypical “young man!” and “never, ever…” and “wait till your father gets home” tirades she shuffled him back through the aforementioned screen door.

(I would like to interject that this will be the same screen door that my right arm will plunge through two years later when my brother slams it on me while I had my hand outstretched. Only it plunged through the glass portion. Another time, perhaps.)

My mother thought long and hard to come up with a solution that did not involve locking my brother in his room.
She had a giant supercomputer named Deep-Thought built in order to…
Okay, maybe not. But she did have what she called “A moment of genius!”

+


=

Complete and total abject horror from neighbors and passers-by. And reassurances from my mother that it was not considered child abuse and was in my brother’s best interest. And Stella’s.

On occasion you would hear mournful, dissatisfied wails from a small, toe-headed boy who had inadvertently wrapped himself around a tree and was flailing helplessly against his new restraints. He did not consider this a good prize. After much diligence he figured out a system. Partly out of convenience, partly defeat. He often glared at the equines across SE 134th st.

Stella swept flies off her back with her tail.

 

Voulez-voulez-vous when I was your age…

>

Okay, so even though I’m inversely adopting this philosophy, I thought I’d still share it since I thought it was pretty damn funny.

Though boredom kind of sucks ass, too.

I think I need to go hop on the bus for a few hours and expose myself to the oddities of humanity to give me some material to write about.

Be back in a bit.

(three hours later…)

Well, the only noteworthy thing that was happenin’ on the Metro Transit System today was a guy that was sitting up front so he could chat up the bus driver (this can, at times, be a
not-so-pleasant experience for the Metro employees.) He was discussing the personal life of a friend of his who insisted on reproducing even though she had neither financial nor emotional means to effectively care for said children. Apparently the “babies’ daddy(s)” were nowhere to be found and “she ain’t got a fuckin’ clue wit what she doin’…”. Love it when people have no reservations whatsoever about dropping f-bombs in public. Or disclosing the personal lives of their acquaintances to anyone and everyone. I did not introduce myself.

So as far as material goes, the trip was unsuccessful. Save for the pomegranates. I popped into Madison Market to see if they had any amazing deals on food for starving artists like yours truly and to my utter delight and surprise that had moderately happy-looking ones for $1.29. So, there was that.

I am picking myself up and out of my funk. Things could be much worse. I may be unemployed, broke, and heartbroken, but I have amazing friends and a wonderful home to live in with “landlords” I love dearly and their 2-year old daughter intensely so. Save for a few recent snags, I am truly fortunate.

Voulez-voulez-vous glass half full.