Saturday, December 22, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Two Ones or One Nine
Cold and dark.
A soft glow has gone.
Press on, but it's not the same.
Lights don't dance for me.
The sky has changed.
Do you gaze like I do?
Pale face in the heavens.
Does it call to you?
Chilled tears alight on your face.
Could you know they're mine?
Tonight the sun burns out.
That look, will I see it again?
Sparkle and shine, between smiles.
Mirrored eyes, I see no regrets.
Questions half answered.
The truth or the lie?
A move in the darkness.
A pledge in the light.
An art in the silence.
A laugh, and a sigh.
A spiders thread.
Can it bind the unbound?
Move aside my subtle armor.
I'll destroy me if I must.
I'll adore me if I must.
I'll console me.
If I must.
Image courtesy of Matt Hoffman
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Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Do what we must, because we can't.
More Paints
I think I'm not sure if I like the birds, I like everything else.
What do you think?
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Saturday, October 13, 2007
Easy Steps
First -- books which I will write to become famous:
Bob Dylan to Michael Bolton in 3 Easy Steps
101 Uses for a Laundry Basket (Plus Bonus Dog Idea)
Also: (and I have no idea what this is referring to)
Shoulder Robot and Frozen Baby
Food = Poop
That is all.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Taunt (Rank 25)
Freaky Pillow
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Beach Safety
Don't think you can go to Santa Cruz and jump your motorcycle over cars. Maybe you can jump your bike over other shit, but not over cars, mmmkay?
Ninja Edit: Thx Celeste for pointing out this awesome sign of fantasticness.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Moving Forward
(Also, my chest looks awful in this picture... where the heck did all the red blotchyness come from? That's not actually there...)
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Got Milk?
It scares me when I see a new month on the expiration date of my (chocolate) milk. I can't believe it's already almost October. Before you know it, we'll be celebrating Hatvember, Scarfcember, and Bandanuary again.
You know what else scares me? When my body decides I need calcium or protein or something and I end up drinking half a gallon of milk in the span of an afternoon. I don't even like milk. What gives?
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Entertain Me, Myself and I
(Here's my 'pondering reality vs. fiction' face)
I'm officially addicted to this show, however this one episode appears to be broken and its killing me. I swear its like a soap opera for geeks, and I'm totally swooning over Helo. He's buff but still incredibly sweet. What gives? Do guys like that actually exist? Maybe the writers for this show are all women and he's a figment of their combined imaginations.
And yes, it was a delicious pomegranate green tea energy drink, which I thouroughly enjoyed.
Couch of Blackness
Why yes, it would be. Why?
P.S. This couch's luck doesn't appear to have changed. Aaron's sweatshirt has been sitting on it all week and I just went to move it to take a picture and its soaked with Niki pee. Eew.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Reap What You Sow
On Sleepless Roads
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Jabba the Cat
Pit Of Self-Loathing
Today was strange because traditionally, the first day of the year that I find myself staring down a pomegranate in a big box grocery store has always been a good day. Then I followed up this stare down with an intensely frustrating day. I was almost in tears at one point, and those of you who know me know how rare it is for me to show emotion, let alone cry, in front of other people.
I'm starting to wonder if maybe its just not humanly possible to wake up every morning, square your shoulders, and hold your head up as you face each day. Some days I feel so splendidly weak that I wonder how I can be trusted to make sure I survive.
Does it count as strength if you don't really believe it? I mean I tell myself all the time what I need to do. I suck it up and make sure these things actually get done, but internally I freak out about it the entire time. Maybe that's the issue. Maybe I'm just never really strong so on the days when I can't push myself as hard I really notice what I'm made of.
It just seems like I'm made of tofu, or maybe pudding. Then again, one time somebody told me I taste like raspberry jello so maybe that's it. No, it wasn't Devilsaur either.
Okay that's about enough complaining. Next time I see a pomegranate in a grocery store I'm going to buy it and have a goddamned fantastic day.
Cocks, LOL
Also, cocks, lol.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Holiday Hijinx
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Ah, Youth
2) Late 80s/Early 90s Movie Marathon - Stuff like Princess Bride, Labyrinth, Legend, Dark Crystal... Ferris Bueller, Maybe some Molly Ringwald action...
3) Tree Climbing - I realized I haven't climbed a tree in forever (unless you count the steampunk treehouse at Burning Man) and I used to climb at least one tree every day.
4) Bike Ride Picnic - Fill up a backpack with fresh produce and maybe some whole grain bread or crackers, get lost on my bike, stop when I find someplace suitable and eat. Then get unlost.
5) Blanket Fort Night - I haven't even attempted to build a blanket fort in my room and I've lived in there for almost a year now.
6) Oldstyle Video Game Day - I'll have to dust off my Atari, or maybe an afternoon with Maniac Mansion, or a Street Fighter II Tournament. I'll have to enlist Jaime's help for that 'cause he has all the cool button pad things...
Help me decide! (Or, help me decide which thing to do first. Now that I look at them I think I might have to do all of them... as time permits.) Also, if you help me pick, you are invited to join me... now there's an incentive if I ever heard one.
Ok also, I took Fall outside to try to get some better pictures and I think I actually got one that's sort of good... (P.S. the detail and shimmery overlay on this is a silver tone, not gold, even though it kind of always looks gold in the pictures.)
Questions?
Comments?
User Ideas?
Tips?
Tricks?
Lets hear 'em!
Sunday, September 23, 2007
If wishes were fishes
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Field of Golden Intentions
I've got birds on my ear and a devil on my shoulder. The birds told me to save it and try to put together "a body of work" so that I can whore my art around town and try to get "a showing." The devil says to try to sell it online 'cause I like money. Yet again, I don't know what to do.
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Fields of Gold
I hit a snag with my planning phase when my sketch pen died so I'm just kind of going for it here, which isn't what I usually do... but it appears to be working, as this isn't even done yet and I'm already madly in love with it. (The photo is slightly distorted and cropped cause it's a photo, not a scan, so don't be too harsh.)
What do you think?
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Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Painting Project
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Irony
I did not take this picture, but I did love this installation:
It's always out there, on the horizon, and that's all there is to it.
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Monday, September 17, 2007
"Sleep" or "Why I’m Usually Up All Night" plus special bonus features!
Next topic: Holidays.
This past weekend I witnessed a rather large celebration in progress in Santa Maria. It appears that this event was large enough to warrant the closure of at least one street in the Town Center area, and the erection of a large stage for crazy loud music of a Mexican nature. (Yes, I said "erection.")
I hear it was Mexican Independence day. I heard it all the way from my mom's house, about a mile away.
So, as we discussed, I think if we're going to go so far as closing of city streets and big celebrations for foreign national holidays, you can't just go leaving out all of the other countries and their holidays. Keith wants to celebrate Bastille Day. I'd love to have an extra day off in July, so why not. I bet we could set up a stage someplace downtown and blast French pop-rock all afternoon. Chelsea says we should have Boxing Day off. I don't really understand what the deal is with the "boxing" but, I'll take another day off after "Christmas."
Can we put it to a vote and just add an extra holiday every couple years or something? C'mon, who wouldn't vote for an extra day off every year? Think of how many department stores could have Bastille Day sales! It'd be fantastic, if you're into that...
Also, per Chelsea:
Toothpick Deck.
That is all.
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Milk and Honey
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
You and Me and All of the People
Monday, September 3, 2007
The Burn
Not that I thought I wouldn't... it just seemed like many of you thought I wouldn't... but I totally did.
Disclaimer: This blog may contain over 40 photos when I'm done with it. These are but a fraction of the photos I took over the last week. In order to see more photos, or any of the cool stuff I brought home, you have to at least act like you like me and hang out with me in person when my laptop is within reach. This type of action on your part will also grant you access to the more risque stories which will not be included in this or any other blog (of mine.)
Now, I'm going to tell you a story. It's a long one, even with the risque bits removed. Please enjoy it, or don't, but if you don't, then you can just eff right off.
Let's start with Friday, the longest day in the history of me. Scotty P. I have not forgotten that you completely lied to me and made this work day a very sad one because I learned that I can not, in fact, trust you.
So after I learned terrible things about Mr. P.'s trustworthy-ness, I got to leave. I made the two-and-a-half-ish hour drive up to Santa Cruz which was mostly uneventful. When I arrived, a long weekend of... stuff... began.
There were Planet Earth movies, and Hackers movies, and Pick 'n' Pull Jabbas, hiccups and snags in our plans, dinners with sausage ('cause I love me some sausage,) cleaning, more cleaning, shopping, more shopping, more cleaning, packing, sleeping, reading, and then just when I thought it would never happen, leaving.
Some time on Monday after a trip to the DMV and another run in with the Jabbas, and a bunch of that other stuff I just mentioned, we managed to leave on what would become the perilous 10-ish hour drive to Black Rock City.
So, first off, there was the food-tastrophe. One of our cabinets popped open in transit and a jug of juice decided to escape with a box of soy milk. By "escape" I mean "explode all over the floor." After that was cleaned up and we headed further on down the road, we had to stop for water, and discovered another food-tastrophe. Apparently none of us noticed the fridge latch until we arrived at BRC and our guacamole decided to commit suicide by the time we'd hit Reno. So there was another clean-up, and some water shuffling, and we got on our way again.
We stopped at another point for gas and managed to catch the lunar eclipse, which was AMAZING, but unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it. :(
When we finally pulled up at the long and dusty path to the greeters stations, BMIR (the BRC radio station) let us all know, that the man had already been burned by some idiot with a bottle rocket (or some sort of projectile fire) as a prank. Seeing as it was about 4:30 AM on Tuesday, this news definitely made me a little sad. What is Burning Man without the man? (Everything turned out okay, I wasn't sad for that long.)
When I woke up later in the day on Tuesday, Celeste and I went for a ride around the open playa. Now you may all enjoy some photo bits.
So then Celeste and I headed back to Prowly. (In case you are not familiar with this term, Prowly is our trailer. She is super sexy and we love her.) By this time, Mike was up, and the two of them headed out for a little exploratory time. I decided not to stick around camp for my first day there, and headed out on my first solo playa adventure.
Then I jammed over to Center Camp where I wrote in my journal for a bit, drank some delicious lemonade, and watched some live musical acts.
Chelsea, this man, he should be your idol.
After his set was over, this woman got on. Her name is Belinda Blair.
Also while I was at Center Camp, I bonded with some random guy who had the same exact journal as me, another random guy traded me a hug for a bracelet, and a gorgeous naked blonde woman fed me grapes from the vine. They were the most delicious grapes I've ever tasted. Not just because she was naked, but that might have helped. She said they were from her neighbors garden. I bet she has lucky neighbors.
It was also on this day that for the first time in my entire life, I put on a two-piece bathing suit, and absolutely loved it.
That night we headed out to see what was going on. I heard some tales of "domes" which were supposedly "going off" but they were nowhere to be found. Also, this is the night when I received an Infraction Notice, and subsequent spanking. The welts and bruises from this spanking are still clearly visible, but again, if you want the more risque stories and photos you'll have to follow the above instructions. For now, satisfy yourselves with a picture of my Infraction Notice.
After that I got a chance to take a picture of the Ewok Treehouse at night, which looks like this:
And then, the Thunderdome:
After the Thunderdome, I found this area with fun fire and flameyness. I'm a bit of a pyro myself so I had to stand and watch for a bit.
Then it was time for the big round Cubatron.
MY PHOTOS CAN NEVER DO THIS THING JUSTICE. NO PHOTO EVER COULD.
You just have to know that before you look at it. Also, I want one of these in my big backyard. The Cubatron is this giant round arrangement of lights. It's quite tall, and each little bulb on this apparatus is capable of producing ANY color light from white right on through to the palest and darkest shades of every color you can imagine.
Here it is all decked out in green:
Here it is all multi-color fabulous:
Moving on to Wednesday:
Wednesday was our camp happy hour night. By the time we all got up and going, it was nearly time for camp activities, so I spent most of my afternoon writing letters and hanging out around our shade structure dome. (I'll have to tell you all about the dome-tastrophies later.) Around 6PM we all got our formal wear on and started up our crazy camp activities.
So I had a crazy great time pretending to be "Bob Mothafuckin' Barker" for about an hour at our Drinko game (after Celeste and I repaired it with our crafty utility knives and my super glue, along with the help of some tall guys.) I got to heckle and laugh with some random people who were cruising by, and everybody enjoyed Drinko. (Who wouldn't like a game you can't lose, when the prizes are all free booze-a-licious drinks?) I also got to meet a few great guys who were staying at a camp down the street. They all had matching green mohawks, and I wish now that I had gotten their contact info, because they were seriously cool people and it'd be awesome to hang out with them again next year, if they're around.
Then we decided to bail on the camp after dark and see what sort of trouble we could get into out in the open. By this time, I don't know how many drinks I'd had, but apparently I though it'd be fun to take a few silly pictures of the moon through our shade structure, among other things. Here, enjoy my intoxication with me:
(Sorry Chelsea's Mom. I know I'm bad, mmkay?)
Okay enough of that. We headed out into the open after this, and I was saddened to find that there was still no man. There was, however, an art car which would quickly become my 'favorite art car.' The camp responsible for it was called Garagemahal, although I wouldn't know this until many days later. As we were riding around on this art car filled with fantastic music, we came across some people riding flaming metal anglerfish.
Celeste and Mike felt the need to get off the art car and dance at least once, and when we finally got off the car, it was at this HUGEMONGOUS structure which I heard was called "The Oilrig." It was at least 7 stories tall, all wood, and you could climb these insane stairs all the way to the top, fill your hands and legs with splinters, and get fantastic photos and videos from the top. It was at this point, that I got to take a picture of the birthday cake art car.
Moving on to Thursday. Thursday was so dead. During the day we were riddled with crazy dust storms, so I spent the whole afternoon in the trailer writing letters and reading. That night, everything we heard was "going off" was not going anywhere, let alone off. This was the night that I decided that "going-off domes" are a myth. There is no such thing as a going-off dome.
Anyway, the only pictures I took that night were of the temple, which was also an incredible structure, made entirely of unfinished wood. It reminded me of dollhouse remnants, all pieced together into this breathtaking structure.
Friday brought more storms. Both of dust and rain. Friday brought something else too though. It brought a man. Not just any man either, THE man.
After all the dust and rain cleared, we all stepped outside to survey the damage to our camp. This would be the appropriate place for me to tell you about our dometastrophies.
First of all, on Monday, before I even arrived, a huge dust storm lifted our first dome off of the ground, blew it over one of our camp leaders, and into a neighboring camp, destroying the windows and doors on one side of one of their vehicles. The dome was retrieved and more firmly anchored, but it never quite recovered. Our second dome was constructed with a few pieces out of order, and looked a bit more like an igloo than a dome really. At some point in either the storm on Thursday or Friday, the first dome collapsed and had to be condemned.
Poor dome. We are all grateful for the shade and also disco fever that you were able to provide while your metal legs held you up for us. You will be missed.
While I was out surveying the damage, I decided to take some pictures of the crazy storm clouds as they passed. With these, you also get a few good shots of our surrounding camps, but keep in mind, this is after two days of devastation from the storms.
That night was my first night on the playa with the man lit up in all his green man glory.
Either way, I was thrilled that he was back.
So we toured the playa under the light of the man. One stop we made was back at the crazy Thunderdome.
This really beautiful goth lady sang opera like you rarely hear. She had a voice like an angel, and totally mimicked that crazy blue opera lady from the 5th Element like it weren't no thang.
Then it was fight time. I have some pretty ok video of at least one fight, and these pictures:
Also, I saw some more crazy fire art that I really liked.
Friday night Paul Oakenfold was playing at the Opulent Temple. What I did catch of that was fantastic, but I was super drained from the elements and such, so I called it an early night, some time around 2 AM.
Saturday is the night of the burn. You can see a few pictures I've selected, but I think I may follow in Celeste's footsteps and not allow any non-participants to see the actual burn.
First the man raises his arms because he's just so darn excited about the prospect of being charred, again. Then a shit-ton of people crowd around him and dance around with crazy fire. I'd eventually like to learn how to do this fire dancing and participate in this part of the man-burning-ritual.
Then, people protest in order to try to save him. Where the hell were they on Monday night???
AND IT WAS A THRILL TO WATCH!
(Does that make me a bad person? He's not a reeeeaaaall man...)
So then Garagemahal decides that its an "our camp only" night on their art car, and just as one of them decided I should probably not qualify to stay on the car because I was not with their camp, their captain said it was cool if I stayed on the car cause he remembered me from a few nights before when we hung out with them. I ended up riding around on that car for hours, and the DJ they had that night was ROCKING that thing. I've never seen a double decker bus with a crows nest bump like that, ever. I loved every minute of it. They were all really nice and friendly, we talked about every sort of crazy subject you could imagine, and nobody went thirsty, including me. So some time around 3 I decided I should probably skip off of the art car and make my way back to camp, only, by this point my bike was nowhere nearby, so I'd have to walk.
It was on this walk that I met up with a slightly intoxicated tall guy with a mohawk who at first accused me of stealing his bike. Obviously if I had stolen his bike, I would have been riding it, instead of walking, so I defended myself thusly, and we ended up wandering around the Esplanade, barhopping, looking for missing bikes, checking for bedtime stories on the Bookmobile and having a generally unacceptable amount of fun. He was genuinely adorable, although that seems like the sort of word that any guy with a mohawk would hate to hear being used to describe him.
I'm not sure how it happened but after that night, I have to admit there is a certain soft spot in my little heart for all the adorable guys with their colorful mohawks, and all the (also adorable) guys rocking the bald look. (However, they have to qualify as adorable first, cause seriously that one guy from the other night who was just trying to get on anything willing with tits was scary.)
So sometime around 5:30 AM I ended up back at our camp, climbed into bed in my prison bunk, and fell asleep listening to the one song I listened to over and over every night of my burn.
Sunday afternoon when we woke up, we decided that we were all ready to go, even though it meant we'd miss the temple burn. We packed up Prowly, and handled our chores around the camp, then spent a jillion hours trying to make our way off of the playa. We finally arrived in Santa Cruz around sunrise this morning, and I helped get all of the perishables out of Ms. Prowly, packed up my car and drove home. I stopped by the post office in SLO to find that I have a package to pick up which wouldn't fit in my PO Box, but since it's a holiday, I'll have to go pick it up tomorrow.
Surprisingly enough, I've been awake and cleaning off all my stuff since then. I took my bike and car over to the car wash and sprayed the shit out of them to get all the playa dust off. That bike looks even better now than it did when I bought it.
This all just leaves me wondering when I'll be tired next.
So to recap my first burn:
Sunburns: 0
Tans: 0.5
Black Eyes: 1
Bruises: Too many to count.
Hand Shaped Welts: 1
Broken Bones: Possibly 1, my nose is questionable, it still hurts.
Cuts and Scrapes: Way too many to count.
Splinters: 3
Good times: Too many to count.
I'm homesick already. How many days till the man burns?
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