I too am broken

I know I'm broken, but trying to put in words what that means to me and those around me hasn't come to me.

Fortunuately, through Jenny the Bloggess, I fell upon the wisdom of blogger Diana Lark. I don't believe in blessings or luck; I believe that good people crash into my life because I see just a hint of their glitter and stick my neck out and say hello, even if it occasionally backfires and they bite me.

My bravery and willingness to look foolish (a lot) pays off when I begin getting to know someone as gifted as Diana.

Yesterday, while I wasn't looking, she downloaded a copy of my subconscious and then wrote a gorgeous piece of prose called "I am broken." Go read it.

http://dianalark.blogspot.com/2012/02/broken.html

Dot 15 seems a little dubious to me

Feb 19 -- first day of real winter at the Hellmouth

Current view from my yard. Two more inches of white stuff forecast tonight. It was low 60s F yesterday and will be back to that by midweek. Sure is weird around here.

And I'm guessing the author was thinking Coconut

Three pounds of string theory. Yikes.

Dug out my ancient webcam

So if you're on Googlechat or Skype and are madly keen to admire my graying hair, wrinkles, and multiple chins in real time, I might oblige. Unless you're a prospective date, in which case I won't, as I've already been warned a couple of times by kind friends that the webcam is even crueller to my sleep-deprived face than most.

I think the cleverly peculiar comic artist Dave Blazek must have concluded that my sporadic fanmail to him had to be the result of dire sleeplessness. I swear he drew this one because of me.

I've bought everything of his in print. Go buy one of his books already. If you liked the oddness of Far Side or Bizarro, you'll like Blazek's work. 

Personal ad dating horror stories, sorta funny

I share these because many many years back, pre-Internet, I was asked by a gay male college student group to be their speaker for the month. So I shared my tales for an hour -- good and hilariously bad -- to a standing ovation...  and most men could relate to many of them, but had been assuming that their mistreatment was due to their orientation. Fantastic evening of endless hugs, endless adorable non-straight men expressing amazement that my cute, straight, sexy, 30-ish self would have been subjected to such abuse at the hands of straight guys so thus they could go away realizing that shitty behavior is not about them, it's about dealing with humans, who are quite often surprisingly shitty, especially when frightened.

On to the funny...

* We met for coffee and pre-dinner snack. Waiter brought ice water. No recollection of conversation topics. Date was awkward, I knew that. I already knew that no charm would overcome my disinterest in his appearance. (This was back in the day before online ads where you at least had a photo.) Date excused himself, went to restroom. I waited. Read the menu. Read notes in my wallet. Wrote more notes in my wallet. Waited. Finally, very nervous waiter stopped by, asked if my "friend" might be ill, offered to check on him. He entered bathroom, came back, confirmed that "friend" was not to be found but the only bathroom window was open, it appeared he climbed out and ran away. Waiter was beside himself with unease. I smiled a lot. Wish I'd had the maturity to laugh more or say the right thing to calm one very brave waiter.

*  We were supposed to meet at a Borders bookstore coffeeshop, late afternoon, weekday. I walked in, facing 5 geeks with their laptops, pretty much all resembling the bad photo I had of my date. I approached the one staring at me the most, asked "Dave?" He hesitated and said no. But he hesitated just long enough that my intuition screamed "You got him." Three other geeks are gawking from behind their laptops. I walked away. Then walked back, long enough to say to him "You spindless bimbo!"

Then I retreated to the math section of the bookstore. Minutes later, one of the onlookers showed up, approached me, assured me he was married, apologized that my blind date had been such a shit, and offered to escort me to my car. Nice guy!

How many Americans can even find Madagascar on a map?

Do penguins brush their teeth?

Do penguins have teeth?

If penguins evolved to need teeth, would they choose cherry gel embedded with glitter?  Over, say, herring flavor?



We bought a tube. Yup, definitely is glittery.

Is it really that hard to get kids to brush?

What exactly is Jesus on, in this image? Anybody? (another dollar store gem)

Inexplicable dollar store objects

Hard to believe these didn't sell and ended up remaindered.

If my heroes Phil Plait or Neil Degrasse Tyson get a boo-boo

Most questionable storefront window ever. Happy V. Day!

Florists, interior decorators, caterers, event planners. And this is their storefront?

I'm so proud to live in High Point, the furniture and interior design capital of the world.

Wow. Really?

Valentine, because I love you, I did NOT buy you...

A huge creepy card.






















Or a pink heart wearing sneakers.













Or dancing stuffed animals.









 Or a very long dog. Or a dinosaur with pink hair.












Or pink party favor kazoos.



I'm to understand that in this country, little kids are required on 2/14 to blatantly lie to each other and pretend they love everybody and give VDay cards and gifts to absolutely everybody* in their class. In other words, they are taught early on that it's mandatory to be a liar. In my country, 2/14 was a vicious, suicide-inducing occasion, just like Real Life. But there wasn't any lying. I miss it.




*And I'm guessing that these kids are required to give VDay crap to only the opposite sex. So we reinforce nice and early that same-sex love doesn't count and isn't acceptable.

Dollar store: FBI and Top Secret Spy stuff in the toy section

Aren't you glad I no longer write test prep workbooks?

Two of my gems:

Also, I tried to sneak a reference to Louise the Python into everything I worked on, so if she shows up in your textbook, you know I had a hand in it.

My monsters. Not papier mache... cloth mache... glue and old sheets

Chicken wire and newspaper body, covered in strips of old bedsheets (think Goodwill store) soaked in plain white glue that you buy by the gallon at the art store or the hardware store.

Then you paint. Easy.

My first was Agnes in 1990. She's still living on my fridge and I gave her a hat.

Then there was a cheap unfinished table at a yard sale. I definitely finished her!

































Finally, I was asked to create an homage to Rodin's Thinker. My first commission, woo hoo!  I shipped this guy in a massive box to some place in Charlotte NC.
























All inspired by the papier and cloth mache monster books written by Dan Reeder, available on Amazon. 

No artistic talent required!  Go buy Dan's books and create something hideously lovely!  Have fun!  Send me photos!

Louise decides that she's in the doghouse/dogbox

Americans call it the doghouse. The Brits call it the dogbox.




Either way, Louise the Python decided it was her time.

And later I stumbled on Python Glue at the local drugstore. What??

Tarot Cards in the toy section with Gags/fake spills/rattlesnake eggs. Yay!

Shout out to the local Dollar store for sensibly placing Tarot Cards next to fake blood spills and fake dog poop. Exactly where Tarot Cards belong.
There is hope!!

Trippy focus misfunction in the camera with a cool result

No photoshop trickery here, just a peculiar and artsy result from my old but good Canon 4.0 megapixel camera. I love it!

Crocuses before Groundhog Day. Things are getting weird around here.

Need fake lifesize penguins? A buttplug tablelamp? A Grecian urn?

Need all three but don't wanna make three stops?

Boy, did you come to the right place!

High Point, NC... world headquarters for interior decorating and furniture. Nobody ever said it was in good taste though, sorry.

This photo taken through a storefront window. I was too scared to go find out what horrors might be in the back room.

Easy and dazzling wax crayon art for people like me who cannot draw

Here's the finished art. Scroll down for the How To.

You'll need:

any old sheet of paper

a roll of paper towels

box of wax crayons that includes black (dollar stores are good for these)

something pointy -- I used a drawing compass. A skinny metal knitting needle would work.

some place you can work where you won't get yelled at for getting little flakes of wax everywhere.

dustpan and brush or a little handheld vacuum cleaner for quarantining most of the little flakes of wax before they begin migrating everywhere.

What I did:

I used several differently colored crayons to lay down a THICK layer of wax in random blobs making sure that there were no white spaces between them.

Then I covered it all over by coloring hard with the black crayon.

Then I used the compass point to draw a couple of snake outlines in the middle and worked outwards. Why snakes? They are dead easy to draw and back when I created this, I was smitten with a newly acquired pet python. Twenty-something years later, we're still together.

Cover up the wax where you aren't working with paper towels so you can rest your forearm on the towel and keep a steady hand without getting filthy or smearing the wax.

I drew all the snake outlines first, then went back and added stripes, dots, whatever. I tried to be random. Sometimes the pattern was chosen because I had fudged up something and so incorporated the fudge into the snake's design.

Start small for your first one! Go for something, say, 2 by 2 inches so you can experiment with what amount of wax looks good to you and what carving tool you prefer.

This takes hours but could be the perfect complement to podcasts. Good luck! Have fun! Get creative!