First, I bring you these fun filled time wasters:
- Cats in Sinks. Yes, that’s right, pictures of Cats! In! Sinks! Rory would approve, I think.
- Stuff on My Cat. Have you ever felt the need to pile stuff on top of your cat? Well, you are not alone.
- My Cat Hates You. Some cats are bad seeds. Other cats are really bad seeds.
Happy Monday! It was a pretty useless weekend, so I didn’t bother to bore y’all with the details. Some highlights, though: I went to see The Libertine on Saturday. Johnny Depp does not disappoint. And, who knew he’d look so good with ’80s heavy aluminum hair? Then, I spent most of yesterday on the couch, watching fil-ums: The Road to God Knows Where (Nick Cave, like Mr. Depp, rarely disappoints), House of 1000 Corpses (revolting), and The Craft (I finally got around to watching it; not bad. At least I now know why Charmed insists on ruining The Smith’s How Soon is Now.).
At one point yesterday, the cat and the dog–who were lazing on the couch with me–started to yawn at the same time that I did. Now, that’s when you know you’ve achieved ultimate uselessness. I’m blaming it on the weather. I always get sleepy when it rains for days on end.
There’s not much to report from the Department of Arting. I didn’t finish anything over the weekend, but I did some preliminary work. I coffee-stained three pairs of toddler’s tights and a baby’s dress, which means my hands smell like coffee. I’d bought them–the tights and dress, not the hands–ages ago for a series of paintings, but they were so starkly white that I didn’t end up using them. I also primed several largish sheets of paper, which means I have a layer of gesso perm-a-bonded to my coffee scented cuticles. Because, you know, I apparently can’t apply anything even vaguely paint-like without using my hands.
While watching movies, I went through a pile of magazines, cutting out junk to use for collage work. Which reminded me of a tip from Andy. You can erase the clay-coat printing from magazine pages. A regular old eraser will work (but is a bit tedious). I found that a foam sanding block or super fine grit sand paper works great, too. Here’s the fun part, though: you can place objects, like coins, keys, or buttons, under the magazine page, then erase/sand over them, leaving a reverse rubbing of the object. Pretty cool, eh? You can do the same thing with larger patterns. The planking on my deck is old and weathered, with a raised grain that would lend itself well to this sort of thing. Many old buildings have interesting wrought iron grille work that might make nice reverse rubbings, as well. I don’t recommend doing any sort of rubbings of grave markers, though, because no matter how gentle you are, it deteriorates the stone. Sad but true. The kindest thing to do with grave markers is to take photos instead of doing rubbings.
And now, the inevitable crankypantsing: While upgrading some of the software on my computer, I decided to give iTunes a try. Boy, was that ever a mistake! For some reason, it doesn’t work on my system. I don’t know why, and I really don’t care enough to figure it out. I tried uninstalling it, redownloading it, and reinstalling it, and that’s as much effort as I’m willing to invest in it. The problem is that the audio is garbled. I assume it’s a compatibility issue. I can play music just fine with other programs, so I know my sound card is not faulty. I think I’ll stick to my old copy of MusicMatch Jukebox, thankyouverymuch. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough.
red paper boat 