Month: January 2006

Art, Paintings, Poetry

Who Can See the Wind?

Shelly

Solar Wind

Who Can See the Wind?
by Christina Rossetti

Who can see the wind?
Neither I nor you
But when the leaves are trembling
The wind is passing through.

Who can see the wind?
Neither you nor I,
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

This weekend has been sunny, warm, and generally gorgeous–a welcome contrast to last week’s typical Winter in Indiana dreariness. It’s windy, though, so even though it’s in the mid-50sF, it feels a little brisker than it actually is. Yesterday, we had bright blue skies, but today, even though the sun is out, it’s hazy and the sky is a pale, bleached blue. But, the wind…! It\’s howling and gusting and thundering, by turns. I swear, it’s more solid than not, so that you almost feel as if you could see it[1].

Anyway, no new art today, at least not yet. Perhaps later. After a four-day weekend, most of it spent hacking up bits of lung tissue, I realize that I have had precious little in the way of actual ass-sitting. Sure, I’ve talked about it, but the sitting itself has actually yet to materialize. So, maybe, that’s what I’ll spend the rest of the day doing.

Speaking of not sitting on my behindermost, I did finally manage to finish mucking out the laundry room yesterday. Even though the stuff destined for the Mission is still in there, it’s taking up about half the space it did pre-mucking. I can actually get to the washer without falling over things. The point of the exercise was that the dryer fairy may, at any point, decide to visit. I wanted to make sure I could actually get the old dryer out, before she arrived. I even pulled it out and cleaned behind it, so that I won’t have to do that when we swap out machines. (You would not believe the assortment of junk I found back there!)

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[1] I had a book of poems when I was little, that included several by Christina Rossetti. I’ve always loved this one, in particular. It wasn’t until a college art history class on the Pre-Raphaelites that I realized she was the sister of that Rossetti.

The Pre-Raphaelites were an odd little group. Ruskin, and artist, poet, and critic, was shocked and appalled to discover, that women–or, at least, his wife–had pubic hair. Or so the story goes. Apparently, he had this rude awakening on his wedding night, which disturbed him so much the marriage was not consummated. I’m not sure I buy that story, as someone who had spent his life in the art world, around artists and models, should have known better. True, it was traditional to portray women with pre-pubescent, hairless nether bits, but still, surely he’d seen a real, live woman in her altogether before[2]?

Okaythen, class dismissed!

[2] This total and complete non-sequitur brought to you by NyQuil: The sneezing, stuffy head, sore throat, hallucinogenic, where-the-hell-is-my-brain cold medicine.

Photography

Look at the Bones…!

Shelly

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Lower Jawbone from a Pig

I had been planning on sleeping in late, then spending the day in my PJs in front of the teevee, watching the Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back. But, I was wakened at the ass-crack of dawn by my across-the-lane neighbor, who was loading his horses into their trailer. He’s a man of very few words, though he seems friendly enough. He smiles and nods at me when our paths cross, and has occasionally mowed my outside-the-fence grass when it’s gotten extra unkempt[1]. He loves his horses, though[2], and spends a lot of time hanging out in the barn with them or taking them on weekend riding trips. I assume that’s where he was off to bright and early this morning. Which is all a round about way of saying that my plans for an extended day of ass-sitting in front of the television were shot to hell. I ended up getting up early, cleaning the kitchen (I never got around to finishing it yesterday), vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, and, after months of procrastination, sorting out the laundry room. The laundry room is where I throw all the junk I don’t know what to do with it. There are old couch pillows, bags of plastics for recycling, jumbled tools, a mortally wounded dryer, stacks of games, three old aquariums and their associated paraphernalia, window screens that I never put away properly, and lord only knows what else, hidden under, between, and behind the aforementioned.

One of the things I found was a jaw bone and some vertebrae I was given by a friend. (It pays to have friends who understand one’s fondness for weird stuff, and who will cater to it.) I don’t know what I’ll eventually use them for, but in the meantime, I had planned on using them for sketching. I love drawing bones, and these are nice and big. For now, I’ve photographed them, which provided all sorts of entertainment for Harriet and Pandora. They both thought the bones might, just possibly, be for them. Ha! Harriet was crestfallen when I told her to back off, and she realized that she wasn’t going to get to investigate more closely.

Speaking of motivation and procrastination: I missed my blogoversary yesterday, which is about par for the course. I tend to do the same thing with my birthday. I’ll remember it a few days ahead of time, forget it on the day, then remember it again a few days later. I’m kind of surprised I stuck with it for this long, because I’m not always good at following through with things. My intentions are good, but I’m often sorely lacking in the motivation department. I haven’t managed to make daily updates, though I was delusional enough in the beginning to think I might do so. But, I have been fairly consistent, which is good enough.

So, here’s to another year of blogging!

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Sacrum from a Cow

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[1] He spends an inordinate amount of time on his riding mower. I suspect he’s one of those folks who finds mowing therapeutic. They’ve got, I think, three acres of land, about half of which is beautifully manicured grass. If you’ve looked at photos of my, um, “yard,” you’ll probably have noticed that mine is not anything approaching manicured. I hate mowing and really couldn’t care less how my yard looks. It used to be pasture, and wasn’t maintained at all, aside from the occasional bush hogging, until I moved in, so I figure anything I do, no matter how pitiful, is an improvement. Still, I’m sure it irks my neighbor no end that he has to look at my sad and sorry excuse for a lawn.

[2] When it’s really quiet out, I can sometimes hear him whistling songs or talking to the horses.

Pets, Photography

As Promised, with a Side of Cute

Shelly

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First, the cute, in the form of Miss Harriet Brown.

The rest of the photos were taken this morning from the driveway. I’ve been meaning to get some pictures of the driveway itself for months now. It’s more off-road than on-road. The center driveway photo shows the trench SBC cut when they laid phone cable. I have no idea what on earth they were smoking when they did it. It should have been laid along the edge of the driveway, not in it. After repeated complaints about poor sound quality and dropped calls, they eventually came out and moved the line. Unfortunately, they did not do anything about the huge trench they’d made.

Every time it rains, water funnels down the driveway and washes away the gravel, widening and deepening the trench. Last summer, while I was house sitting for the neighbors, we had several days of heavy rain. The bottom of the trench shifted and deepened, and my poor little car was eviscerated and mortally wounded. So, that’s why, when I was car hunting, I wanted something with both high clearance and part-time 4WD. I do not want to repeat that particular experience.

You may ask why we don’t just fix the driveway? I rent, and the folks who live next door don’t own the driveway, either. They only have an easement to use it. The owner keeps chucking gravel at the problem, but it’s only a bandaid solution. Maybe it’ll be fixed, someday, but I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, I now have an off-road vehicle.

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The Driveway of Dqqm

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Abandoned Truck Bed & Cap

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Old Tires

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Abandoned Trailer

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Gas Easement

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Pylon

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Bird House

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Fence Near Entrance to State Forest

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Stream Along Driveway

Crankypantsing

TeeVee Commercials

Shelly

I’m home sick again today[1], so I thought I’d share a few thoughts on daytime television commercials. First, Wilfred Brimley needs to learn how to say diabetes. The word has four syllables, not two, and the last one is long, not short. It gives me flashbacks to when Kate Jackson was the spokesperson for Mercury cars. She used to pronounce it Mer-cree, which annoyed the shit out of me. What the hell did she think that u was for, decoration?

Another commercial that makes me cranky is the laundry product (dunno if it’s for detergent or fabric softener) that features the song Baby Boy. The mother (it’s always a mother) picks up her son’s clothing while the song plays in the background. She sniffs it and wallows in it, in a manner that screams “Innappropriate!” and “Bad Touch!” Squick!

And, speaking of all things squicky, the new Hardee’s taco salad commercial is bad, bad, bad. No one eats their food like that unless they’re being paid to do so, IYKWIM AITYD[2]. I’m sorry, but if that’s your kink, it is Not Okay. Please get help and God bless.

In totally unrelated news, a couple of dump trucks of gravel were delivered this morning, so it looks like our alleged driveway will soon be mended. Again. It could be fixed for real, but that would take time, money, and an ass load of work, so I’m not holding my breath. In lieu of actually fixing it, Ralph occasionally throws gravel at it as a stop-gap cure.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to get out there and take pictures of just how spectacularly messed up it is, so I figured I’d best hop to it before it was covered up with a new strata of rock[3]. While I was out, I also took some photos of the surrounding landscape that I haven’t photographed before (I really hope they turned out, because they’re quite pretty in a barren, wintery sort of way). I’ll resize and upload them as soon as I finish brunch and I’ve cleaned the kitchen.

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[1] It never fails that I get some sort of respiratory plague after I’ve been around the barbarian hordes. I don’t know whether it was going to the ISM on Monday, or that I was in a car for three hours with someone who was sick, or if I caught it from someone at work, and it really doesn’t matter. All I know is that I may never leave my house again. It’s just not safe out there!

[2] If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

[3] Ahh, yes, here comes Load o’ Gravel #3.

Art, Collage, Crankypantsing, Journals, Ladybusiness, Poetry

Hemp Bound Journal

Shelly

Hemp Bound Journal: PWT
PWT

This page was an off-shoot of the discussion about the phrase “poor white trash.” I finally spoke up, and called the original poster on her demeaning comments. After having gone to great lengths to describe what she meant by “poor white trash,” and her qualifying how she is supperior to “them,” she had the nerve to reply that she hadn’t really meant it as a slur, because, hey, it’s all a matter of semantics. Um, no, it’s not semantics, not when you’ve precisely qualified and quantified your position. She made a lame attempt at claiming that there were all sorts of meanings for the word “trash” and that “poor” is a state of mind. Neither of those points, even if they were true in this context, addresses the fact that she’d spent umpty words describing a certain group of people, and how they are inferior to her. I had to laugh at her parting shot, though, that she’d suffered discrimination, too, when she was younger, because she had been called a poor, little rich girl. Now, that takes brass ovaries!

Because I thought the “it’s just semantics” defense was a laughable cop-out, I decided to consult Mr. Roget for alternate suggestions. The column spacing sucks, which is one of those things that unreasonably vexes me. I’ll probably add something else to the far right margin of the left-hand page at a later date, just for visual balance

I’d totally forgotten that the phrenology model was on that page, because the coat of gesso makes it blend into the background. It used to be thought that you could judge a person’s character by the structure of their skull. This theory was used as the basis for racial discrimination, as well as for the theory that you could tell just by looking at some people that they were wrong ‘uns. I guess some prejudices die hard, eh?

Hemp Bound Journal: Backbone & The Direction of Last Things
Backbone & The Direction of Last Things

Hemp Bound Journal: Letter from a Muse
Letter from a Muse

Hemp Bound Journal: Vessels
Vessels

No matter how much I think it’s wrong to kill another living being–and I do–I cannot get past the fact that we do not legally require one person to save another’s life. It makes no more sense to mandate that a woman must carry a baby to term than it does to force people to give over their kidneys or bone marrow or livers for transplants. I can certainly choose to be an organ donor, but I cannot be forced into it. But, some people think it’s okay to force a woman to carry a child to term against her will.

Uncategorized

Cookie, Cookie, Cookie Starts with C

Shelly

I stopped off at the grocery store on my way home yesterday to pick up lemons and brussels sprouts.

Brussels sprouts are one of the most perfect foods in the world. I like to halve or quarter them, depending on size, and sautee them in butter and olive oil. When they’re nearly done, I remove them from the pan, add a touch more oil, if needed, and toss in some black mustard seeds. After the seeds have popped, I return the sprouts to the pan and coat them in the seeds, then remove the pan from the heat. Splash a little lemon juice onto the sprouts and season with Kosher salt (and pepper, if that’s your kink), and enjoy. Mmmm.

So, anyway, the grocery store I went to, Marsh, keeps the brussels sprouts right across from the baked goods. All the while I was selecting my sprouts, there was a box of Lofthouse cookies–chocolate!–calling to me. I could barely hear the sweet song of the brussels sprouts above the din of the cookies, so I eventually succumbed. Resistance was futile.

The grown-up in me says that cookies and brussels sprouts do not a supper make, but the five-year old in me disagrees. Some days, the five-year old gets to make those sorts of decisions.

Music

Good Morning

Shelly

(Have you ever had cheese toast with a hint of cinnamon? Well, I cannot unrecommend it enough. I made cinnamon and sugar toast in my toaster oven last night, then cheese toast this morning, and the cheese toast has a slight bouquet of cinnamon. It is Teh Ptoui.)

So, anyway, I stopped at the Circle K-Bigfoot-BP-Mac’s-Whatever on 17th & College this morning, to get my daily dose of tasty beverageness. I can usually tell who is working the register by what music they’re playing: hip hop, bluegrass, NPR, B97 (manic top 40), or 92.3 (the dreaded “Quality Rock” station). And then there’s the Counting Crows guy, who reminds me so much of one of my former students that it kind of creeps me out when he’s working. This morning, though, the artsy looking guy, who usually listens to NPR, had T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” playing. The funny thing was that I was listening to “The Slider” in the car.

I have a feeling it’s going to be one of Those days.

Crankypantsing

In Other News…

Shelly

I somehow managed to slice the tip of my left, middle finger last night. I haven’t a clue how, which, being as it hurts like bloody hell, is something you’d think I might have noticed doing. Hrmph. I keep whacking it on things, and it makes typing exasperating.

After sitting in a car for three hours with someone who was hacking up her last lung, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I’m stricken with the plague, as well. I’d probably be more cranky about it, but it’ll give me an excuse to sit on my ass and watch all three Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back–something I haven’t done yet. Of course, that only means that this will be the first time in my life that I don’t get sick.

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that it’s 2006. That just doesn’t seem possible. Friday will be my one-year blog-a-versary. That, too, does not seem possible. If the rain doesn’t let up (the monsoon season in Indiana seems to encompass 11 months of the year), we’ll also have floods, as we did last year at this time. I noticed, while driving past Cook Urological this morning, that the river is creeping onto their lawn, and that there is standing water in many of the fields along the highway.

After a semester of having Wednesdays off, I’m going back to my previous work schedule. It was nice to have a change, but I found that having a day off in the middle of the week is disruptive. I also missed having three-day weekends. I found that I get much more done when I have a larger block of time.

And, to prove there’s more than corn in Indiana, I shall leave you with the world’s largest ball of paint. It is truly something to be, um, proud of.

Art

Lord of the Rings

Shelly

I went to Indy yesterday to see the Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Indiana State Museum. Oh my! It was absolutely geek-tacular. I hadn’t been planning on going, because it was my last day of vacation and I had a bunch of things I wanted to get done, but there was an extra ticket, so I decided to be an irresponsible five-year-old. I’m glad I did, because it was the last day of the exhibit, and it won’t be travelling or be shown again.

First, the bigatures. Wow! The attention to detail on every level was stunning. One of the models was of the ruined Hobbiton mill. It gets about three seconds of screen time, during a “flash forward” sequence, and took three months to make. The commitment to getting every detail correct is clearly present in the movies, but to see it first-hand made it even more impressive. I think the set and costume designers were in many ways the real stars of the LotR movies, so I was glad to have an opportunity to show support for the folks behind the scenes.

Second, the costumes.

  • I had no idea Liv Tyler was so itty bitty!
  • Aragorn’s costume was beautifully worn.
  • Galadriel’s gown had about eleventy billion little crystals sewn into it.
  • Sauron’s costume was ginormous. I hadn’t realized that there is engraved knot-work on just about every single square inch of it, literally from the tips of his crown to the tips of his toes.
  • Much of the accumulated dirt and muck seemed to be left in place. I noticed a big splack of mud on a saddle blanket.
  • The tack and armor from the Nazgul horses was un-freaking-believable. Oh my.
  • There was a gallery with nothing but battle armor from the different types of characters (Rohirrim, Elves, Orcs, Uruk-hai, Gobblins, Harad, etc.). Again, the attention to detail was staggering.
  • There was a small model of a Mumakil, complete with war tower. Very cool!

When I grow up, I want to have a job making scrolls and books for movies. There was a display of tchotchkes and ephemera, including mountains of texts, that made my mouth water so much my salivary glands got cramps. Mmmm.

After we got out of the LotR show, we decided to take a look at some of the permanent collections. I hadn’t been there since they reopened after remodelling and extending. On our way, we ran into the world’s most bestest kid, Piper, and her parents. ‘Tis a very small world. They had 4:00 tickets to the LotR show, and were killing time before-hand, so they went through some of the permanent collection with us. Mostly, that entailed me playing with and being led around by Piper, which was entertaining. For some incomprehensible reason, Piper decided that I was her extra special bestest friend. I am so not worthy. She got all excited when she realized I was there, and immediately attached herself to me. She is Teh Cute. What a sunny, happy kid! After three hours of walking around milling crowds of people, I was starting to get strung-out and cranky. Piper was happy as a clam, though.