Shelly

Hemp Bound Journal

December 25, 2005October 5, 2015 Shelly

I uploaded a couple more pages from the hemp bound journal. One is kind of meh, but I like the poem that accompanies it. The other is visually more interesting, but the poem isn’t as good. That’s about par for the course. The poems are part of the Creation Myth series I’ve been playing with.

This journal was a great idea, but it ended up being a royal pain in the arse to work in. The pages are nice and heavy, which I like, but the brown color gives me a mental block. I keep pulling out the gesso and waxed paper to try to cope with the unending brown. I wonder why that bothers me, but white paper doesn’t?

A Question of Ghosts
December 22, 2005

If we were soaked in the practice
Mechanisms of truth
Lost in the work
Sanded and rectified
Stuck tight to what seemed fitting
What was lately manipulated
Encouraged
Then killed,If, all around us
The ghosts were deserting,
Would we become gods
Woe takers and lightning makers
The careful sculptors of bones and
Guardians of the lesser portion?

Three Things
December 6, 2005

Three things
Are not four things.
Three things
Are sharper than knives,
Silent famines of thought that
Shine silver like moons in the dark.

Three things are perfectly cold
By intent
By design
By the deadliest scheme.

Three things are ancient wheels
That turn in the night,
Near misses and reflections.
Three things
Are stitching thought to flesh to deed,
Bone drawing blood slickened sinew.
Three things are problematic monsters
Ministering, waiting, and watching.

Crankypantsing

Guilt By Association

December 25, 2005October 5, 2015 Shelly

Concerning last night’s rant, I think I’ve figured out the vague feeling of discomfort. It’s the same feeling I got as a child, when the kid next to me behaved badly. The possibility that I would be assumed to be complicit in the behavior was upsetting. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be associated with what had happened, but on the other, I felt powerless to stop it, because of some stupid unspoken kids’ code. It’s a matter of peer pressure. “Don’t rock the boat, or your life will get even more difficult.” As I learned yesterday, that sort of bullying is not just child’s play; adults do it, too.

And, to be clear, I don’t have a problem with Christmas itself. I was raised nominally Catholic, and my family still celebrates the holiday. However, I don’t take that as a license to smack other people upside the head with my personal holiday fetish. It bothers me when others do it, because it seems manipulative and unsportsmanlike. Or maybe it’s just ignorance. I dunno, but it seems to be born of the same urge as the chipper “Happy Yom Kippur!” blessings that obviously non-Jews wish to Jewish folks. Nice try, but it’s so close, and yet so far. I assume the effort is appreciated, but the end result only underscores the lack of any serious interest in understanding another point of view.

I have a similar problem with films like Memoirs of a Geisha. It’s a thoroughly western movie about a non-western subject. In it’s way, it’s repackaged Orientalism: it’s objectifying, exploitative, and fetishistic. And, I can’t get past the fact that the actors are Chinese. Because, apparently, all Asians do look alike.

Pets, Photography

Cats! In! Sinks!

December 24, 2005November 15, 2015 Shelly

Foolish human! A raised finger cannot stem the tide of eeevil.

Plotting

Sweet, Sweet Lovin’ Soothes the Eeevil Beast

It must be time for Saturday cat-blogging.

I’ve never understood the attraction cats have for sinks, but over the years, several of the cats I’ve lived with have been sink sleepers. Rory, too. His favorite place to hang out–aside from his kitty condo–is the bathroom sink. It means that I often have to brush my teeth and wash my face and hands in the tub, but I’ve gotten used to it.

I couldn’t get a photo of him curled up, asleep, in the sink, which is unfortunate, because he seems so snug and comfortable. But, I did get a few of him being sweet and/or eeevil.

Rory’s tail isn’t in a weird position. He’s a bobtail, so that’s all there is of it. It isn’t usually as poofed out as it is in the first picture. He’d been rolling around in the sink, which gave him a little bit of static cling. I’m blaming the new cat food, which is seriously drying out his skin and coat. Petting him is a bit like petting a sparkler. Also note the Eeevil Glowy Eyes of DQQM in the middle picture. He is All Bad, All the Time, Bay-BEE!1!! Except when he’s groovin’ on the sweet, sweet lovin’, and even then, Teh Eeevil is lurking, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. Mostly, though, he’s just a damnfine cat and a total riot to live with.

In other news, I stopped by the Backstreet Mission[1] on my way home from work the other day. I picked up quite a few books to use for arting, including some ’70s vintage world and US history text books for high school and middle school, a 1939 algebra text book, a high school world cultures text book (again, from the 1970s), the Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book (1943 ed., which is chock-a-block with great illustrations and photos), the Better Homes and Gardens Family Medical Guide (1964 ed., again, with the groovy illustrations and photos), and a 1931 US history text. Most of these will be used for my new altered book project, which I intend to get started on this weekend.

_______________________________
[1] I’m a big fan of shopping at thrift stores. Not only can you find lots of cool junk at cheap prices (something that anyone who makes art with recycled junk should appreciate), but the money generally goes to the folks who need it the most. The Backstreet Mission does a lot of really good things for folks in the community, and I like being able to support them whenever I can.

Crankypantsing

Resistance Is Futile

December 24, 2005October 5, 2015 Shelly

I find the underlying assumption that the default state is Christian troubling. I feel the same way when I’m wished a cheerful, peppy “Merry Christmas” by the cashier at the grocery store. It’s not a huge deal. I don’t expect that there’s anything to be done to solve the problem, or even if there is a problem. I just know that it makes me squirmy.

Apparently, it’s Not Allowed to say so out loud, though. If you do, you may be told that your discomfort indicates that you’re bitter, insensitive, uncivilized, unhappy, and intolerant, or that it means you want to kill the baby Jesus. You may even be told that most Americans are Christian, so if you don’t want to celebrate Christmas, you don’t belong here, so you should move to another country. No matter that you are an American citizen and you have every right to stay right where you are, and to voice your discomfort in ALL CAPS. Because, my understanding is that it’s not okay to dictate how other people feel, and that’s what the entire exchange came down to. I felt uncomfortable about something, and was told that I have no right to feel that way. Talk about a ridiculous response!

Another thing I find troubling is the insistence, by some folks, that non-Christians should just go ahead and celebrate Christmas because it’s the season and everybody else is doing it. Why the pressure to take part in what then amounts to a secular holiday?

And all because I had the nerve to say that I felt uncomfortable when people assume that everyone else is automagically Christian. The mind wobbles.

Crankypantsing

Happy Festivus

December 23, 2005October 5, 2015 Shelly

Since the Christmas season makes me cranky as hell, and because today is Festivus, I shall commence with the traditional Airing of the Grievances.

In 1979, my younger brother left a peanut butter sandwich on the table in the front hallway. I was punished for it, even though it was not my fault. To be fair, I accidentally set him on fire in 1978, so I guess we’re even.
I had to eat liver and onions when I was a child, and I’ll bear the emotional scars for the rest of my life.
In 1976, Vicky Poff stole my library book about Hawaiian gods, and I had to spend an entire month’s allowance to replace it. That grieved me terribly.
In 5^th grade, Beverly borrowed my Unauthorized Biography of Andy Gibb and did not return it. I was over it by 6^th grade, but I haven’t forgotten.
Speaking of book stealers, one of my former coworkers borrowed my big-assed Oxford Classical Dictionary, and never returned it. I am seriously grieved about that. Bastard! (You’ll note that my taste in reading material has improved dramatically over the years.)
I hate blog memes/tagging. I find them a total waste of my time.
I moved 18 times and attended nine schools, before finishing high school. And, no, I’m not from a military family.
I got the horse of my dreams when I was nine years old, but he was green-broke and ornery as hell, so he was actually more of a nightmare. I was not only grieved by this, but was damn-near killed on a couple of occasions.
I spent the majority of 9^th grade at a school chock-a-block with preppy, rich doctors’ kids. Sophomore-senior years were spent at a teaching laboratory school, which was, again, chock-a-block with preppy, rich doctors’ kids. I didn’t care so much, though, because it was on a college campus, and it was easy to skip class and get drunk.
My 2^nd grade math teacher told me that I was slower than molasses in January. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t nice.
My algebra and computer programming teacher was more interested in picking on kids and looking down girls’ shirts than he was in teaching.
My 9^th grade Algebra teacher, who wouldn’t let “stupid girls” ask questions in class, is at the top of my teacher-related grievance list. That jackass should have stuck to coaching basketball, because he had no business anywhere near a classroom.
Math, in general, grieves me. Not so much because I had some really bad math teachers, but because I’m numerically dyslexic. I try to be careful, but there’s a disconnect between the numbers I see/think and the numbers my hands write/type, so I’m forever transposing numbers, not seeing them, or just making them up. I’m constantly screwing up my check book because of it.
In one of my family’s many moves, I lost nearly all my childhood books. That was Teh Suck. I’ve managed to replace most of them, but there are still a few that I’m missing.

Next, The Feats of Strength!

Pets

Teh Cute

December 22, 2005November 15, 2015 Shelly

Three Wise Monkeys
Credit: Graham C99

Last night, the coyotes were having a raucous good time, with lots of yiping and howling. They spend the warm weather in the larger section of forest, a few miles away, then move to the smaller section of forest behind where I live during the cold months. I’ve been hearing them in the distance for the past week or so, as they moved closer, but last night they were right outside my house. Coyotes are shy animals, and even when they’re close-by, I rarely actually see them. I know they aren’t a threat to me, but knowing that on a logical level doesn’t stop the hair on the back of my neck from raising up. Last night, they were close enough that I could hear their feet crunching on the frosty gravel of the lane, as they passed by.

It’s interesting that they returned on the night of solstice.

Harriet’s reaction to coyotes has always amused me. She pretends they don’t exist. I know she can hear them, but she doesn’t acknowledge them. If dogs came that close to the house, making that sort of racket, she’d be in a tizzy, but not so with coyotes. It’s like she’s trying to impersonate all of the Three Wise Monkeys at once: “I cannot hear them, I cannot see them, and I will not speak of them.” If you point them out to her, she looks at you like you’re smoking crack.

Meta, Photography

Happy Solstice

December 22, 2005January 16, 2016 Shelly

I finished uploading the rest of my existing art images to my Flickr account. Or, at least, everything that currently exists in digital format. I’ve got a few new things that need to be scanned and a couple of paintings at my mom’s house that haven’t been photographed, but they’ll have to wait until the motivation strikes me. I’m hoping that I’ll have lots of arting and scanning time over the up-coming three-day weekend.

Solstice Celebration
Image credit: SOHO – EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

Meta, Pets, Photography

Monday Pet-blogging

December 19, 2005January 16, 2016 Shelly

The sun came out today, and it was blinding. Harriet played for awhile outdoors, hunting bunnies and giving the squirrels a piece of her mind. I finally got a photo of her with her eyes squeezed half shut, because of the bright sunlight. I love it when she does that.

I let Pandora come outside with us for a little while, too, so that she could explore the snow while I cleaned off the car. She’s pretty unflappable, but she didn’t know quite what to think of the snow. It took her about 30 seconds to decide that it was not her idea of a good time. I let her back inside, and she hasn’t asked to go out since. Usually, she sticks her head out the door whenever I let the dog in or out, but I think her curiosity has been satisfied, at least for the time being.

A lot of the snow has been melted by the sun, but it was so cold today that there’s still a crust of it covering everything. I noticed that the snow on my car, which is dark, has melted completely, while the neighbor’s truck, which is white, is still coated in it. Yay for solar energy. It’ll probably be singing a different tune next summer, but for now, it’s nice.

I stayed home from work today, but didn’t get much done. I’d planned on working on a couple of art projects, but all I managed was some scanning and Photoshopping of old journal entries. I uploaded them to Flickr (Hemp-bound Journal and Dada Journal), and will eventually get them uploaded to the website.

Meta, Photography

It’s Flickrrrrr-ific!

December 18, 2005January 16, 2016 Shelly

I had intended to do some serious sleeping in this morning, but, alas, it was not to be. I woke up a couple of hours ago–too early to want to stay awake, but too late to reasonably go back to bed–to a solid grey day. I should have known that the good weather couldn’t last. The sunset last night was gorgeous, though, so I guess that makes up for it. It was an blindingly intense orange, with a ginormous sun pillar. I’ve seen sun pillars before, but never one this large or well defined. Of course, I was A) in my car and B) without my camera, so I didn’t get any pictures of it. Damn! What makes me cranky is that I almost picked up my camera on my way out the door that morning, but I decided it was pointless to take it along, as I was just going to work. That’ll learn me!

So, no pretty sunset pictures today, but I do have a photo I took last spring, just as the foliage was starting to unfurl. I love the lacy, delicate look of the pale, new leaves, and the softness of the mist. It’s just the ticket on a disgusting winter day, I think.

I did some cross-pollination last night. I uploaded a metric butt-load of images from my website to my Flickr account, and added/rearranged some of my sets. Dawn asked about my Flickr account, and it occurred to me that the audiences for Flickr, blogs, and websites are slightly different, so it might be a good idea to duplicate information. It’ll be an interesting sociological experiment to see how the numbers fall out.

I still have to upload watercolors (such as they are), paintings on canvas, the ABC book, and a few odds and ends, and do a little bit more fine-tuning of sets, but everything else is pretty much finished, I think. Hopefully, I’ll have time to finish it in the next day or two. I also found a couple of images that’d been uploaded to Flickr, that hadn’t made it to the website. I have no idea how that happened, but it’ll be soon rectified, as well.

It was sort of weird going back through some of the gluebook and composition book images. I did the typical “That sucks,” “That’s not bad,” and “I totally forgot about that one” routine. But, by the time I’d finished, I also found that my head was swirling with half-formed ideas. So maybe it was a good thing that I decided to do this at this point in time.

Crankypantsing, Music

6:58, Are You Sure Where My Spock Is?

December 17, 2005January 8, 2016 Shelly

6:58, are you sure where my Spock is?
Ears
Ears
Ears…
— Not Quite Tori

I often get random lyrics swirling around in my head. I think that happens to most people. The lyric du jour is not actually a lyric, though. For some reason, my brain insists that Tori Amos’ Spark would be vastly improved by the above substitution in lyrics.

I wouldn’t be suffering from this malady, if I had been motivated to burn some new CDs for the car. Most of the current CDs in my car are ones I made to listen to while arting. They work fabulously well for that, but they don’t do a whole lot to enhance the driving experience. Which is why, I guess, my brain started making up random lyrics on its own.

It could also have something to do with the fact that, though I went to bed early last night, I took Benadryl because my allergies were acting up. Usually, Benadryl makes me comatose, but last night, it made me wired-tired. I kept waking up, not knowing if I’d actually been asleep, or if I’d been awake and my mind had just been wandering. When I did finally fall asleep, I had weird dreams that kept waking me up. All in all, it was not a very restful experience, so I cannot recommend this product and/or service. Ugh.