Author: Shelly

Bookarts, Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Wonderfalls, New Journal Part Deux, and another Big Brother Rant

Shelly

Hemp Bound Journal: Cover

I spent time last night watching the first half of the last disc of Wonderfalls. The first disc sat here for nearly a month before I got around to watching it. I couldn’t remember what it was or why I’d put it in my Netflix queue, so I waited until I was good and bored before I watched it.

It was well worth the wait. The writing is brilliant–funny and smart. It’s quirky, but not annoyingly so. And, as there was, alas, only one season of the show, it’s not a huge, on-going time committment.

While I was watching TeeVee, I put some finishing touches on the hemp-bound journal I made the other night. I used torn masking tape to attach a photo of a stormy, sullen winter sky. It’s been ungodly hot lately, so I thought a reminder of cooler weather would be motivatory. We’ll see. Because there are only 24 pages, I decided to mete them out as two-page spreads. With one spread for a calendar/table of contents, that leaves 22 plus one to grow on. My intention is to do a spread a day.

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And now some more ranting about Big Brother. This one has been germinating for a while. In a previous episode, Eric got his knickers in a twist because Mike was kissing and hitting on the women in the house. M’kay. The women in question either enjoyed it (one, in particular, claimed to enjoy it a lot) or told him to fuck the hell off in no uncertain terms. It seems to me that that ought to’ve been the end of the Situation, but because Eric is afflicted with a surplus of testosterone, it wasn’t.

Eric, as head of household, decided that it was his place to give Mike a talking to. Apparently, those poor, helpless girls weren’t capable of speaking their minds and it was up to Eric to come to their rescue. Poor little girls. After calling Mike on being a flirtatious pain in the arse, Eric spent the rest of his tenure as HoH telling everyone that Mike had sexually harassed the women and that he needed to be voted out of the house. It fit nicely into Eric’s strategy. He wanted Mike gone and branding him as a pervy bastard was an effective way to achieve his goal.

Mike was a jerk, there’s no doubt about that, but using the umbrella of sexual harassment as part of your strategy for winning a game is, I think, pretty craptacular. I also thought Eric’s ubermanly “I’m going to protect these poor, defenseless girls from the big, bad, kissy monster” schtick was far more degrading to the women in the house than Mike could ever have dreamt of being.

What an ass! And a bully, too. Eric was this close to doing physical violence to Mike because he thought he’d been talking smack about Eric’s family. Who the hell cares? You don’t go around beating up people because they’ve got big mouths. It doesn’t solve anything and only makes you look like a total and complete fuckwit.

Oh, and I’m liking Kaysar more and more with every episode. The guy is smart and, I think, appropriately devious.

Bookarts, Photography

Demolition Derby and the Sunset that Wasn’t

Shelly

I finally got around to cropping and uploading photos I took at last weekend’s demolition derby. Yes, I said demolition derby. If you haven’t been to one, you have no idea what you’re missing. Not only is it the ultimate in recycling, it’s a ginormous amount of fun. I especially recommend watching the Bumble Bees (AKA the minis). A little four-door Geo Metro won the mini division this year. Alas, I got no pictures of the minis, but I got quite a few of the large and mid-sized cars, including a firemen’s confab. Also, alas, there were no explodiations or infernos this year.

It’d been overcast and oppressively hot that day, but before the derby proper started, there was a lovely break in the clouds and a tiny peek at what would have been a spectacular sunset.

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No arting today, but I made a nifty little book last night out of the end of an old stash of paper. When I worked at the art museum, I was given a stack of museum board. It’s half-way between rough watercolor paper and Davey board. It’s interesting stuff–nice for oil pastels or any number of media that work well on toned paper. The texture has a definite grain, but it’s not too pronounced once you’ve worked on it.

Hemp Journal: Spine

I tore it down to size (I really prefer torn paper to cut paper, especially for journals). I was too lazy to dig out my book board, so I used two folded sheets of the paper for the front and back covers. I doubled them over and punched holes in them along the open side, then used eyelets to reinforce the holes and close the open edge. Because I wanted to keep the book looking rustic, I used hemp twine to bind it. It’s just a basic, single-needle Coptic stitch.

Art, Artist Books, Collage, News & Politics

Artings and Musings

Shelly

First, the artings.

These are from the latest installment of the Color Erratica round robin. The color theme this time was “dusk,” so I focused mostly on purpley, winey colors.

The Pea Hens
The Pea Hens

I’ve had that peacock feather floating around in my stash for at least ten years. It was time to use it. The little cotton knickers came from a bunch of antique baby and doll clothes my mom snagged for me at a yard sale. The background is another piece of wrapping paper from Mr. and Mrs. B.’s wedding. This particular book has already travelled overseas, so I figured it was safe to include the poplar leaf and the peacock feather.

The Party Girls
The Party Girls

This was a silly little page. I kept the label from a bottle of Christmas sangria. It was too lovely to throw away. The purple wrappers came from a bag of chocolate truffle candies. The yearbook girls–glued to 35mm film negatives–are from the 1920s (Prohibition era in the USA), which makes me laugh, because the sangri was non-alcoholic.

Baubo and the Girls 1
Baubo and the Girls 1

Baubo and the Girls 2
Baubo and the Girls 2

The last two pages started out covered with dark purple tissue paper. It was a little too garish, though, so I covered it with unbleached waxed paper to tone it down. I love the way it looks–the scans do not do the subtle color justice. I used a couple more Polaroids from my Baubo’s Safari series. I separated the photos from the backing, then sanded through the photo layer, to make them lay flatter and give them some transparency and texture. The top Polaroid was also sanded on the front and rubbed with brown India ink.

The bottom page presented an interesting challenge, in that it had a window cut out of it by the person who worked in the book before me. I decided to emphasize the window by framing it with a scrap of intaglio print I’ve been carrying around with me since college. A cast-off from another student’s printmaking project, I picked it out of the trash and have been carting it around ever since.

Now, the musings.

Thanks to Cynthia for pointing out this article.

I think one of the ironies of the whole Rove debacle is that it shows just how dishonest and lacking in integrity this administration is. It seems to me that, when your platform is based on “moral values,” you might be expected to hold yourself and your staff to a certain, well, moral standard. Countering claims of wrong doing with “it’s partisan politics,” or “he didn’t actually do anything illegal,” seems to me to indicate an ethical disconnect. Since when were moral values a legal matter? Rove clearly discussed information that he had no business discussing with people he had no business discussing it with. Whether or not he’s legally in the wrong ought to be irrelevant to this administration, as it’s quite clearly morally wrong. Condoning such behavior speaks volumes about what’s important to Rove’s superiors and it’s not “moral values.

Oh, and speaking of ironies, dare I say that Mr. Bush’s rephrasing of his intention, from “the leaker will be fired” to “if the leaker did anything illegal he’ll be fired,” might–just might–be considered flip-flopping?

News & Politics

And This Just in from the Us vs. Them Newsdesk

Shelly

It looks to me like Rove is going to walk. I’m angered, but not surprised. What struck me, though, was this bit:

On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said President Bush should have done already. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: “This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said Democrats were resorting to “partisan war chants.

By reducing criticism of Rove to “partisan war chants,” Frist deflects the main focus from Rove’s actions and sets the stage for an Us vs. Them debate. A debate which, conveniently, no one can win, for we have always been at war with Eurasia Oceania Them Us… You see the problem this presents.

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Restrooms

Shelly

I just returned from venturing downstairs to a) use the restroom and b) search for a salad. The salad reconnaissance went well, but I have a few words to say about my jaunt to the cafeteria restroom. First, some background. The kind folks who originally designed this building neglected to foresee that us wimmins, being wimmins, might have needs that menfolk don’t have to consider. To whit, there are no tampon receptacles in any of the stalls in this building. WTF?!

To deal with this oversight, the powers that be have placed a not-so-clearly designated trash can outside the stalls. Yes, that’s right. Us wimmins have to carry our unsanitary refuse out of the stall in order to throw it away. Okaythen. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except there is no signage in the stalls indicating that one ought to do so. This is the campus library we’re talking about, so it’s a high traffic building. We get a huge amount of people who don’t know the system. And, this being orientation season, it’s a huge-to-the-nth-power amount newbies. That means that you get to wade through drifts of pad wrappers and adhesive covers as well as used tampon applicators. Again, WTF?! The pad wrappers are at least, well, sanitary. I do not, however, care pick my way through used tampon applicators. C’mon, people. This is getting ridiculous.

The other thing that pisses me right the hell off is that the toilets in this building can barely handle TP, so flushing a tampon down them is next to impossible. After the tenth flush, most people give up. And, who can blame them? It’s not reasonable to throw used tampons in the trash. It’s bad enough that we have to wrap up used pads and tampon applicators so that we can trek them to the designated receptacle–there is no way in hell I’m going to do that with a used tampon.

Is it too much to ask for refuse receptacles in the individual stalls?

Pets, Photography

Fog and Dogs

Shelly

I took these about a month ago, when we were having a spate of drizzly, misty weather. After it cleared up, we had nearly a month without useful precipitation. Hurricane Dennis came to Indiana this week, breaking the dry spell. It’s been a lovely, soaking rain over several days–exactly what we needed. It’s not been as picturesque as the pictures below, though, so I’m using them instead.

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Elliott is our dog-in-fog model. The grass was too wet for Princess Harriet to put her delicate little feetses in.

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And, because I can, here’s the obligatory dogblogging. Have I mentioned that Harriet is not (not!) a fan of air conditioning? Well, if I didn’t, she’s not a fan of AC. When it cools down in the living room, she scrunches up into a little ball and moans and groans and sighs until I take pity on her sad little self and cover her up with a binkey. If I’m a meanypants and ignore her, she goes to the bedroom, where there’s no AC, and roots around on the bed until she’s got the bedding wadded to perfection. I use it as an excuse not to make my bed in the mornings, because she’s only going to mess it up. I just pull the covers up and wait until bedtime to make the bed. A) I’m lazy and B) I choose my battles.

It’s a good thing she’s cute.

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Burritodog