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The Previous Grand Mufti (aka Max Brooks)
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[Oct. 11th, 2008|03:56 pm] |
Holy living poop on a popsicle stick. Acrylic glass bead medium. It's like painting with caviar.
I have a wonderful evening planned with a beautiful and intelligent woman. I have a 12 hour Masquerade game tomorrow and it looks like the weather will be decent for it, as we're playing at Tolmie until 8, Evergreen CAB until midnight. I just bought myself a Malmsey buttload of new paint with my employee discount.
Best three day weekend ever.
I like Kirby. I like Resident Evil. Two great tastes that, now, have never tasted better together. |
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[Oct. 11th, 2008|02:12 pm] |
Reading Richard III, one of the few plays I completely ignored in college. I regret that now.
EVIL HUNCHBACK IS PISSY AND TAKES ON THE WORLD!! EVERYBODY SUFFERS/DIES! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!
It's hilarious, witty, violent and macabre. I love it. |
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[Oct. 11th, 2008|12:47 pm] |
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"I beg all of you! Please, please don't turn this nation over to Islam and terrorists and atheists! Our nation was founded on a belief in God. Our forefathers came here for freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion! Even on our money it says "In God We Trust" and our pledge of alligiance says "Under God"! Please people let's keep it that way "Under God"! Please don't give our country over to evil! If Barack Obama is elected president atheists and terrorists and people like the president of Iran and Osama Bin Laden will have more of a foothold in this country than they already have! Please people open your eyes to what is happening! Please vote for McCain\Palin on November 4th!"
On the downside, we'll have to listen to 4 years of this, but on the plus side, maybe they'll all go Waco and the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will have justification to shoot them and take away their children. Did I just type that? I think I did. Typey typey typey. |
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[Oct. 10th, 2008|09:44 pm] |
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Oh, why hello there, Troopergate. We had almost forgotten about you. |
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[Oct. 10th, 2008|04:32 pm] |
I've not mentioned it but my eyes are severely burning regularly for the past month or so. I suspect that it may have something to do with the fertilizers sprayed around here, since this is a still a fairly rural area. My eyes are a serious concern in my life, since my father has a dead eye and my grandmother was blind. I freak out about it just a bit.
I'm sorry Ben Stein, but your eye drops aren't doing much for me. Maybe if you used chemistry instead of faith.
In other news, I'm obsessing over acrylics these days. When I studied acrylics in college, nobody ever bothered to inform me that there are these wonderful things called mediums, that not only let you communicate with your loved ones that have passed on, but make your acrylic paint do all sorts of crazy stuff. I'm really fascinated by the acrylic tendency toward peeling off easily. Acrylic does some things oil simply cannot, and despite the old guard still preferring oil, you'd be hard pressed to find a mundane person who could tell the difference at sight. I like acrylics because they dry in half an hour and have some... unusual... properties.
First experiments in viscosity medium have been splendid. Adding viscosity medium to your acrylics not only lowers the cost of new paint (enormously) but allows some interesting effects. The early complaints about acrylics, int he 50s and 60s, were that acrylics don't have the strength and tactual body of oils. Nowadays, through science, that's hogwash.
Two experiments I've tried:
- Loading the acrylic up with viscosity medium allows you scrape it on thick, and if you wait a few minutes before it's totally dry, you can use rubber stamps in the paint, which is really interesting. I've never seen anything like it. You can then fill the stamp divots with transparent gloss gel medium mixed with pigment, which leads to a stupendously alien appearance that you simply cannot get with oil or watercolor.
- Put some viscosity medium'd acrylic of a dark color into a baker's frosting triangle, with a fine tip. Squirt it out like you would frosting. You can use this to build a framework like stainglass leading, or even a strange version of Cloisonné enamelling by filling in the viscosity medium frame work with gloss translucent medium filling. My old (worthless) metal professor Keith Lewis would be gog-magog'd if he could see it.
An idea I have percolating:
- What if you could paint on something that is stretched like canvas on a tee but is transparent? I had the mad science idea of putting a base coat of transparent self-leveling medium and pigment on top of a layer of florist's mesh, on top of a piece of glass. When it dries, peel the wire off the glass, taking the acrylic with it. Stretch it as you would canvas, and then paint/glaze on top.
OR!!!
Not even do stretching. Lay a waffled framework of florist's wire, taking care to be as stylistic or messy as you like, and then do the same.
I really am obsessed with the 3-dimensional qualities of acrylic. I think it's so fucking cool. |
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[Oct. 10th, 2008|01:16 pm] |
Obama's buying half hour TV blocks on major networks, and before you wince, there's something here that's terribly clever that everybody seems to be missing.
McCain is already low on funds, as evidenced by his pulling out of Michigan to focus on Ohio. Obama literally has more money than a candidate needs, but he's using it very cleverly to defeat his opponent, in one of the more brilliant applications of Macchiavellian politics I've ever seen. By amping up advertisement to a new, epic level, Obama is forcing McCain to compete, a thing which McCain can't help himself but do. This will result in one of two options:
- McCain ponies up and blows several dozen million more dollars than he has for the national campaign instead of the electoral states. This lowers the amount he has free to spend in the electoral states, putting him at an enormous disadvantage, and soldering off his impact there. Obama can then continue to buy ads on top of the big one.
or
- McCain doesn't slap money down, and continues to focus on the swing states. This exposes his flank to attack, as suddenly Obama is advertising in all states, instead of just the swings. A half hour to attack one's opponent without the opponent being able to defend himself (as lightly as he does, regardless) is deadly in a close campaign. I can foresee several of the tighter red states flipping to blue just by dearth of "Oh, so that's what Obama is like." since McCain must win all ten swing states to win, and Obama only has to win one, this is a brilliant, epic, legendary tactic.
Now, the only disadvantage to this is that McCain will robble-robble about the "uncooperative media" and his imaginary "maverick" status, but nobody pays attention to that shit anyway.
Las Vegas is giving 9 to 1 odds that McCain wins right now. They've stopped taking bets for Obama. |
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| Sweet and Sour Sauce not included. WE ONLY USE KETCHUP IN AMERICA, YOU SOCIALIST. |
[Oct. 9th, 2008|10:01 pm] |
Ronald McDonald proudly presents some choice McNuggets from the Foxnews.com forums. I can personally guarantee that each and every one of these is 100% white meat, Southern fried for your dining pleasure:
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Heard today from my husbands associates and FOXNEWS confirmed it.. Part of the market crash is people with money (not me, and Obama will make sure I never do) are taking their money out of Capital Gains until they see if Obama gets elected.. This is ONLY the beginning folks!!
Good thing real patriots don't bother with anything except Liberty Dollars!
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Obama's entire history is socialist and revolutionary. Every sponsor and group that has helped him or he has been involved with are socialist and corrupt. He has done nothing to limit government or regulate government to benefit anyone.
I thought "revolutionary" was a good thing. Guess I just can't trust those goddamn Founding Fathers of ours.
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He said that he grew up poor, his mother was on food stamps... I believe that this country is one of immense opportunity. Has anyone really wondered how this poor kid growing up in Indonesia for a while got into Columbia / Harvard? That must be some crazy scholarship! How he bought a multi-million dollar home on a Jr. Senator salary? He didn't invent a new widget or hit the lottery... Certainly no inheritance... He didn't marry the money... Where did the money come from?
Student loans are impossible to get these days. Tell me about it.
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Why all the questions about Barack's past? You can read about it in his own words! Read his two "memoirs"... You will learn more about him that you want! From Dreams of My Father:'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.' From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosityagainst my mother's race.' From Dreams of My Father:'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.' From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.' From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa , that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself , the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.' And FINALLY the Most Damning one of ALL of them!!! From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.' Neither candidate is responsible for the current economic crisis. They are each 1% of the senate! Neither can fix the problem before or soon after the election - so lets focus on the long term issue of "who" these guys are. At least with McCain, we know what we are getting!
I'm not sure what we're getting from McCain's memoirs. Is it that Obama writes in coherent sentences and hasn't crashed three planes in the name of L I B E R T Y?
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ColoradoMom...if you are truly a mother you would protect your kids from this socialist. Your kids will learn to hold your hand out and just wait for the government will do it for you. Obama will teach we don' have to be accountable for our actions. These are not scare tactics..How is McCain's campaign scaring anybody by pointing out the facts, but it should scare you that someone like Obama and his radocal friends are so close to the whitehouse. I would be scared that your kids' kids will not know America as we know it..So these are not scare tactics its the truth and if the truth scares you, don't vote for Obama.
RADOCAL!!!!! Yes dear, we call those "grandchildren", here in Marxist Demoncrat Babushka Land.
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[Oct. 9th, 2008|02:27 pm] |
The point is that doesn't care about any shady dealings Obama may have had with white people, only scary black men who we can all imply are "terrorists" and show close up mugshots of that look vaguely simian. Since he can't legitimately bring up the race issue (although I don't doubt he'll throw a tantrum by the end of this and it'll fly out anyway), McCain has to accuse by implication. The word "terrorist", whether he's black, white, Muslim or whatever, has the implication of "outsider, threat, alien".
Just a fact: Ayers has been public knowledge and well known nearly a year ago. Hilary Clinton tried to diffuse her loses with it. It didn't work. The people who care about Ayers (and there's not many of them) already care, and are already in the numbers. McCain is merely preaching to the choir at this point, since he doesn't have what he really wants: a white baby, Obama smoking crack publicly, and a murdered white grandmother.
Nevermind that there's two interminable wars going on, never mind that our economy is rapidly sinking to sub-Depression levels, never mind that the health care system is a national shame and never mind that his call for "Country First" openly allows for Alaskan secessionists, jobs going to Singapore and large numbers of corporate executives changing their citizenship to Dubai to avoid a Marie Antoinette style insurrection they foresee in the near future.
No, Mr. McCain, just keep banging that Ayers and Reverend Wright drum, because that certainly worked for Hilary Clinton, the star you hitched your dreams upon. We've thankfully got three weeks left of this bullshit, fully expect Palin's kid to get wed with the hope of shutting down the media for two weeks. Expect the whispering campaign to amp up. Expect accusations of a tilted press. Expect clowns and circus tents and dancing bears and lynched negroes. Expect everything. |
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[Oct. 8th, 2008|10:45 pm] |
Another Pokemon userpic, but Professor Oak hasn't been discarded. I just figured it was time to start using multiple userpics.
Pichu slapping his ass tauntingly is too adorable.
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| Krokodil Gena sings a song. |
[Oct. 8th, 2008|08:39 pm] |
Krokodil Gena is considered to be the Winnie the Pooh of Russia. However, the same animation firm, Soyuzmultfilm, wanted to do a Russian version of Winnie the Pooh, although the Soviet censors required very specific changes. Pooh is less of a lovable but optimistic victim of circumstance and more vindictive, if not down right deceitful.
Soyuzmultfilm was unique among animation firms in that it was not commercial at all, the Soviet Academy of Film paid them regardless of whether or not they were commercially successful. Because of this, some of their films are bizarre and esoteric, full of strange and subtle Communist dictates, but still slightly subversive at the same time. The live action children's studio, a subsidiary group of the Academy of Film, produced Russian versions of stories that Disney had already covered, of which their version of Mary Poppins was the most popular. In the Russian version of Mary Poppins, the Russian version of Mrs. Banks is a party organizer, and the Jane and Michael characters are dutiful members of the Soviet Pioneers, the official Soviet answer to the Boy Scouts. Mary Poppins was not employed by the Banks family but was actually related to them, a chubby Russian babushka reinvented. Unlike the Julie Andrews Mary Poppins, this babushka Poppins was stern and authoritarian, giving advice to the children who inevitably disobeyed and were punished cruelly for their mistakes.
The most commercially viable series that Soyuzmultfilm ever made was Nu Pogodi, the equivalent of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. It's the continuing tale of a clever and resourceful rabbit who constantly outwits his aggressor, a wolf.
An interesting factoid about Nu Pogodi is that it was a source of contention from party officials who felt it didn't accurately serve the purpose of educating and uplifting the children who watched it. They demanded that the rabbit be given the outfit of the Soviet Pioneers, and they wanted the wolf to be a more prominent capitalist figure, trying to put the rabbit into forced labor, rather than just eating him. In one of the rare instances of out and out victory by artists subjected to censorship, Soyuzmultfilm was able to leverage considerable freedom from these restrictions by getting their cartoons shipped to the outlying Soviet satellite states, thus bringing in enormous income to the Academy of Film. The rabbit was not forced into the Soviet Pioneers and the wolf remained a somewhat lovable idiot.
Another interesting footnote is that Bill Scott, co-creator of Bullwinkle and Rocky, travelled to Russia during the height of the Cold War on a private tourist excursion, after having made several professional friendships with the staff of Soyuzmultfilm. Bill Scott had been a key figure in the lefty UPA studio during the 50s, his ultimate work there being the modern and artsy Telltale Heart, which was an enormous success in the USSR, as were the rest of the UPA cartoons. Upon hitting the border, he was grilled on what he did, and when they found out he was the voice of Bullwinkle, he was interrogated at gunpoint about the characters of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Later in his life, Scott discovered he had a thick file at the KGB, and nearly every detail of his life was known. The FBI, who knew Scott had lefty opinions, had him watched steadily when he came back from Russia, suspected of being a spy. Poor Bill Scott, just a poor and relatively anonymous cartoonist, never knew any of this. |
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| Today's grab bag post. |
[Oct. 8th, 2008|03:18 pm] |
♥A is for age: 28
♥B is for beer of choice: Blue Boar
♥C is for career right now: Framing Serf
♥D is for your dog's name: Bul-Gogi
♥E is for essential item you use everyday: Pilot V5 Precise brand pens. There is literally no substitute on the market.
♥F is for favorite TV show: Arrested Development. I find it's wisdom to be valuable in everyday life.
♥G is for favorite game to watch: Horse racing.
♥H is for Home town: Olympia, WA.
♥I is for instruments you play: The Ocarina of Time.
♥J is for favorite juice: Partial to anything Cran mixed with vodka.
♥K is for whose butt you'd like to be kicking: MAVERICK.
♥L is for last place you ate at: Home. I had a Mrs. Callendar's turkey pot pie.
♥M is for marriage: Not now, hopefully in the future.
♥N is for your name: Kenneth Max Brooks.
♥O is for overnight hospital stay: Post-suicide attempt.
♥P is for people you were with today: Nobody.
♥Q is for what's your best quality: I'd like to say wit, but because I can't I'll say humility.
♥R is for what are you currently reading: Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. I'm one of these people have a very difficult time reading fiction, I'd much rather be reading biography or eccentric history.
♥S is for relationship status: Taken.
♥T is for time you woke up today: 11 am. WOO FOR DAYS OFF.
♥U is for the type of underwear you have on: Stripy black and grey boxer briefs.
♥V is for vegetable you love: Broccoli. I'm against the legumes on principle.
♥W is for worst habits: Ennui.
♥X is for x-rays you've had recently: Last one was for a broken leg, but that was a 9 years ago.
♥Y is for something candy : Gummi anything. Any of the Wonka products.
♥Z is for zodiac sign: Cancer.
They should've called this show "Father Awesome and Action Nun".
Also, here is the King of Sweden. He'll give you things that you are needin'.
According to my Swedish informant, he's sort of a Homer Simpson character that everybody adores because he's a bumbling idiot. It's like somebody called Central Casting and asked for Charles Nelson Reilly.
Crispin Glover is my favorite schizophrenic Satanist ex-child star son of a Bond villain. He's the Orson Welles of schizophrenic Satanist ex-child star sons of Bond villains. |
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[Oct. 7th, 2008|10:29 pm] |
Ach du lieber, what a miserable day.
I show up to work to find all store managers present, have a group hemorrhoid about the district president showing up for a spot check tomorrow. First thing I'm told after walking in is that the janitor just quit less than 15 minutes before I walked in (wonder why) and I was to fill his duties for the night, plus my regular duties, plus work cashier (I like to pronounce it "cash-YAY!" just to spice things up). I recognize that this is just a temporary situation and that I'm at least thanked for my team spirit, but Jeepers H. Crackers was I all quisling'd up. I've never done any sort of janitorial before, let alone mopped more than three times in my life, so I was simultaneously completely oblivious to obvious mistakes and overeager on the minor details.
Then, to add weirdness into the equation, a house across the street burnt down (completely) and people were shrieking and terrified about it. To make it worse, I went out on smoke break, and found the bag that the arsonist dropped, full of firecrackers. I don't think it was a deliberate arson, just some kid playing with firecrackers for some reason ended up setting a house on fire. I had to call the police and fill out a report, and then get lectured by the police that if I see a suspicious bag, I'm not allowed to touch it. In hindsight, most definitely. It's just not one of those things you think about when you're just trying to do a job. I ended up losing an hour out of my already cramped schedule.
I'm at least pretty stable medicationally at the moment, otherwise I probably wouldn't have a job right now.
Seriously, retailers, could you just fucking relax for one moment in your life? Customers don't care if things aren't faced properly or the top-stock isn't shelved. You want us to sell things, I completely understand, but which way the toilet paper goes does not help us sell things. |
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[Oct. 7th, 2008|02:46 pm] |
Dear Sir:
The brilliant plan to reclaim your dominance as leader-of-the-free-world-in-waiting is as follows:
- Design a society of suburban exclusion, guarantee that the plebs will be safely insulated from each other by race, religion and monetary hierarchy. Place these suburbs just far enough away from each other that the only recourse is individual transportation, and actively slash the funding for mass transportation in the interests of "self-sufficiency".
- Actively seek to ghetto liberals and other workshys into large cities, where their voting districts can be easily managed and Gerrymandered into forcing them into a hatred of outsiders as ill-bred and unmannered. This will allow for stronger and more permanent alienation from the urban and the rural, allowing for quiet and unnoticed ideological conquest.
- Raise the price of gasoline so high that the plebs will no longer have the option of going anywhere. Granted, the only reason they go anywhere is for cheap alcohol and plentiful prostitution, but the point is to isolate them from each other, so that the only reason they use individual transportation is for going back and forth between work, essentially focusing their lifestyles with a daily devotional of commute.
- With their options for freedom of movement severely limited, the proles will turn to alcohol, tobacco, illegalized narcotics and racism thinly veiled as fundamentalist religion to while away the time between work and Bible study. Slowly raise the taxes on alcohol and tobacco until they are nearly as expensive as gasoline, forcing the illegal drug trade into a skyrocket. Amp up the "War on Drugs", terrify the young into religion, make sure to plant political pawns in every church, and before long you've got a nice, tidy little society of exurban sheep willing to do whatever you tell them to do.
- In the meanwhile, make urban areas fabulously attractive to liberals, malcontents and perverts, allowing them to fester in their little Masque of Red Death fortresses, dying of drug use, sexually transmitted diseases, crime and pounding against the walls of their cage with impotent hatred for a system they no longer have any chance of changing. Occasionally allow them to riot or lynch a few corporate symbols, turn these into repeated media spectacles, to further terrify the suburban and rural into horror.
- Occasionally run false-flag operations of terrorism to continually remind the proles of their mortality, increasing the importance of religion and political orthodoxy, ad infinitum. Make it evident that the government processes are failing, all the better to guide the stupid toward corporate fascism. From time to time, allow the electricity or gasoline supplies to fail, giving them a glimpse of what could happen should they fail to blindly obey.
With these suggestions in mind, you should have no problem whatsoever maintaining a Republican stranglehold over the nation for years to come. Rule by fear since that is the only reliable method.
Sincerely,
Uncle Screwtape |
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[Oct. 7th, 2008|02:17 pm] |
According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. It is a common process that every person uses to some degree.
To understand the process, consider a person in a couple who has thoughts of infidelity. Instead of dealing with these undesirable thoughts consciously, he or she subconsciously projects these feelings onto the other person, and begins to think that the other has thoughts of infidelity and may be having an affair. In this sense, projection is related to denial, arguably the only defense mechanism that is more primitive than projection. Projection, like all defense mechanisms provide a function whereby truth about a part of themselves that may otherwise be unacceptable is shielded.
Compartmentalization, splitting and projection are ways that the ego continues to pretend that it is completely in control at all times, when in reality human experience is one of shifting beingness, instinctual or territorial reactiveness and emotional motives, for which the "I" is not always complicit. Further, common in deep trauma, individuals will be unable to access truthful memories, intentions and experiences, even about their own nature, wherein projection is just one tool.
In other news, Rik Mayall as Alan B'Stard is the British version of Stephen Colbert's pseudopegraphy. |
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[Oct. 6th, 2008|01:33 pm] |
Having never worked in a video store, I get a bizarre voyeuristic thrill out of reading Confessions of Porn Store Clerks, but I assume it wouldn't be as funny if I actually did. I guess it's because I have always felt that the best jobs to have are the ones with the most pathetic customers, since it's a real boost for the self-esteem. Naturally, this is a fantasy, and I know Brianna probably has some stories, but my closest experience is in framing.
First off, framing is stupidly expensive. Like any traditional art form with a set and specific group of tools, only a few companies make the equipment. I've worked in three frame shops now, and they are all serviced by two companies: Larson-Juhl, who makes frame moulding, and Bainbridge-Neilsen, who makes mat board. The most difficult to procure pieces of equipment are an ATG tape gun and a pinch-nailer, both of which are available through framing supply firms but otherwise completely unavailable to the general public. Go ask sometime at your Joann's or Michaels for a framing pinch-nailer, and they'll give you a product that looks almost like the industrial pinch-nailer, but complete trash. The truth is, pinch-nailers and ATG guns are items that make custom framing a viable commercial service, and therefore it is just not desirable to sell them to the public. Plastic sealed framing wire is possible to get, but they hide it among floral arrangement supplies, so I'm warning you now never buy anything specifically marked "framing wire". It will rust within two years and destroy your frame, and your only recourse is likely to just get a custom frame job anyway. Over the years I've been able to lift the required tools for myself to be able to frame my own stuff on a small-scale basis, and I'll tell you right now that if you're an artist, learn to paint to store-shelf sizes, such as 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20. You will save yourself thousands of dollars in framing by planning ahead. Also, avoid odd shaped frames like ovals or triangles, stores don't often stock these styles and custom framing that does these shapes is outrageous and hard to find, since in the state of Washington alone, only two shops do them, and they're both in Seattle, both of which charge at bare minimum a $1000 a piece.
As for glass, there are two or three companies that each make a different product for different purposes, such as the high-retail-low-wholesale Masterpiece brand glass, which (really) is worth the extra few bucks you'll pay when getting something professionally framed, as opposed to the less expensive but vastly inferior Conservation brand glass, which looks like shit and will break at the slightest tap. Framing is not terribly difficult to do once you've mastered the basics (remember: an air compressor with a pump nozzle is the most technical piece of equipment you'll need) but the vast majority of human beings are terrified by anything involving the cutting of glass.
Living close to the Cardinal Glass Factory, and hearing daily from my mother who works at Labor and Industries, glass is deadly stuff. People are literally giving themselves internal lung lacerations from microscopic shards of glass they've inhaled while working there, and dying bloody, miserable, brutal deaths that largely go unreported because these folks have likely left employment (Cardinal hires through temp agencies exclusively) sometimes months before the problems begin. Make no mistake, glass is dangerous, and normal people are terrified of the stuff. Properly handled and cut, glass is easy to handle and easier to cut than paper, believe it or not.
The point at hand (sorry, I really like framing), you'd be stupefied by the retarded things people have framed. My most recent four figure sale was a 30x40 blow up of a really shitty digital photo from a cruise ship photographer, pixellized and printer-washed due to lack of ink, framed in a 7 inch face-wide, 4 inch deep, 24 karat gold plated, hand-carved Italian imported moulding, with in-frame electric lighting installed and brass engraved title chip. This came to $4000, in a shop that rarely sees an order go more than $800-$900, even with bells and whistles. This apparently was the last photo of a wife's husband who had died, and grief-stricken (but clearly well-willed) wife had come straight from the funeral home to order this monstrosity in his memory. I could not talk her out of it, she was dead determined to get the gaudiest thing we sell, as a shrine to her late husband, glowing with 2-watt LEDs nightly.
Point the first: Printer ink will simply not last. No matter what quality glass we use, no matter how many UV rays we promise to eliminate, that poster will be a faded pink and blue blob within three years, assuming Madame McDuck keeps the frame in a spot outside of sunlight. Watercolor paintings, which have a viewing life of 50 years total, will be faded within 20 years. There's a museum in London, I forget what it's called, entirely devoted to watercolor, and they have some of the earliest watercolors available, including some really awesome Wyeths, and in order to see them you have to schedule an appointment ahead of time and they drag out each piece from a pitch-black room one at a time. Your measly Inkjet ink won't even last a fraction of that.
Oh, the sin of vanity.
As a watercolor painter myself, I've been working on tackling the fading problem by using acrylics with clarifying medium for the least color-fast colors, the reds and the blues. Watercolor reds are derived from carmine and various rust chemicals bound with gum arabic, one of the main ingredients in Skittles. Next time you're eating Skittles, drop a few of the same color in a small amount of water, wait a few minutes, and you've got a reliable, low cost watercolor paint. The Skittles will be a stark white color after the food coloring and gum arabic have dissolved into the water. When I was studying watercolor (instead of studying oil, as my school had a really strict progression of classes for each study, watercolor having fewer students and therefore was easier for me to get admission into), we had a few assignments to grind our own colors, and I tell you that mixing your own colors is probably the best exercise any artist can do to learn their medium. Watercolor wasn't invented until the discovery of gum arabic, which dissolves easily into water and is the binding medium for the watercolor ingredients. Unfortunately, it doesn't withstand many of the chemicals and minerals that go into oil paints, and so you end up with colors that fade, whereas oil paints do not.
So, acrylics, developed during the Post-War period of industry, have become a godsend to the watercolor artist. They are as fast drying (if not faster) as watercolors, and can be added to a clarifiying medium to provide the additive white see-through of watercoloring. Best of all, it doesn't fade (not that we know of, at least), so my biggest experiments in the past year or so have been subtly replacing watercolor with a low color-fastness with clarified acrylic with high color-fastness. The advantage to this is that the reds and blues of acrylic are far stronger than the reds and blues of watercolor, which leads to some interesting problems and awesome advantages. Most watercolorists tend to paint in a light, often called "feminine" style, avoiding heavy applications of paint that allow the vibrancy of oils. It's interesting times to be a painter, chemistry is changing everything. Georgian painters only had eight colors to work with, Impressionists had about 13, and modern painters can literally call Winsor-Newton, send them a snatch of the color they're looking for, and within a few weeks have a custom built formula for that color.
Also, Winsor-Newton is the best paint you can buy. I have several hundred dollars worth of their product and I've never been dissatisfied. I proudly recommend their products, and they make seriously terrific india ink as well. I'm still experimenting with brushes, so I don't have a brand I recommend there. I do try to stick to the Arches Moulin brand of watercolor paper, but my current experiments are in smooth Strathmore 300 series (Edward Gorey) Bristol, and this really interesting Canson brand Canva-Paper, both of which lead to interesting effects for watercolor. The advantage of Arches Moulin is that it is the toughest paper to withstand the paper-soak method, which involves filling your bathtub with water and letting the paper sit in it for an hour or so. Arches Moulin has been produced for the last 400 years and has something of a cult around it, for good or ill. The downside is that it's ludicrously expensive and overpriced, and requires a little extra know-how due to it's wide grain and eccentric knife-open slicing technique.
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
I could talk about art supplies all day. One of my closest friends, Billis Helbig, mixes his own ink with a secret ratio. I haven't asked, to be honest. I wish I was living in a space with a dedicated creation zone so I could get room for a proper scanner set-up.
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
From last night's Masquerade game:
I'm playing a Malkavian, named Argus, who showed up to last night's game and loudly declared himself the new Seneschal, which the Lasombra Antitribu Prince laughed and acquiesced to. Argus is definitely one of those slow-burning Malks that appear to be completely normal until the Storyteller taps me on the shoulder and gives me my new cause-celebre. Last night, he told me that had the revelation that the Ventrue are not a clan, and therefore are not qualified to possess a Primogen.
The Prince, deferring to his new Seneschal who thus far hadn't betrayed him (and I really don't think he will, Argus is a hard-line Camarillist), promptly revoked the Ventrue Primogen's seat, and I think it was the Lasombra in him happily looking for an excuse. Argus held a Powerpoint Presentation on the matter.
SLIDE ONE: "The Ventrue are not a clan."
SLIDE TWO: "The Ventrue are not a clan."
SLIDE THREE: HLUGALUGALUGHLUGHGLUALALALUGH.
We're playing a Year of Fire game and the Red Star just popped in the sky, so the Salubri loudly stepped into town. I never thought I'd say this, but I love John Warner. I really, really do. It's been too long since I've played with the guy. Whatever he is, he certainly isn't boring, and it's awesome playing in the "No Dudley McDursleys Club". 30 players, more than the current Olympia Cam, and now fucking McGrath or Redmon to deal with. It's fucking sweet. The group is actively working together to keep characters from needing to backstab each other just for the hell of it, and I have (honestly, believe or not) never played a Malkavian before. I played a Malkovian Ventrue, but this is a whole different beast.
Jeepers, I'm high today. |
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| Not quite the charming little ditty Benny Goodman would have had us to believe... |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|11:47 am] |
Verse 1: Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts, They had a quarrel one day.
Johnny he vowed he would leave her, Said he was goin' away,
He's never comin' home, He's goin' away to roam.
Frankie she begged and pleaded, Cried "Oh Johnny, please stay."
She says, "My honey I have done you wrong, but please don't go away."
Then Johnny sighed, and to his Frankie cried;
Chorus 1: "Oh I'm a goin' away and I'm a goin' to stay,
I'm never coming home;
You're goin' to miss me hon', in the days to come,
When the winter winds begin to blow, the ground is covered up with snow;
You'll think of me and you will wish to be back with your lovin' man;
You're goin' to miss me hon', in the days, days, days to come.
Verse 2: Frankie says, "listen now Johnny, to prove my love is true,
Every dollar I can save dear, I'm goin' to give to you,
So I think now dear, that ought to keep you here."
Johnny says, "Listen now Frankie, don't want to tell you no lie,
I've lost my heart to another queen, her name is Nellie Bly."
Then Frankie groaned, as her Johnny moaned;
Chorus 2: "Oh I'm a goin' away and I'm a goin' to stay,
I'm never coming home;
You're goin' to miss me hon', in the days to come,
When the winter winds begin to blow, the ground is covered up with snow;
You'll think of me and you will wish to be back with your lovin' man;
You're goin' to miss me hon', in the days, days, days to come.
Verse 3: Frankie then said to her Johnny, "Say man your hour has come."
From underneath her silk kimona, she drew a forty-four gun,
Oh it was bear, 'twas quite a large affair.
Johnny he dashed down the stairway, cryin' "Oh Frankie, don't shoot."
Frankie took aim with her "Forty-four," five times with a rooty-toot-toot,
As Johnny fell, then miss Frankie yelled;
Chorus 3: "Oh you're a goin' away and you're a goin' to stay,
You're never coming home;
I'm goin' to miss you hon', in the days to come,
When the winter winds begin to blow, the ground is covered up with snow;
I'll think of thee and I will wish to be back with my lovin' man;
I'm goin' to miss you hon', in the days, days, days to come.
Verse 4: "Send for your rubber tired hearses, go get your rubber tired hacks,
Take lovin' Johnny to the graveyard, I shot him in the back,
With my great big gun, just as he went to run.
Send for a thousand policemen, detectives right away.
Lock me way down in the dungeon cell, and throw the keys away,
My Johnny's dead, just because he said;
Chorus 4: "Oh I'm a goin' away and I'm a goin' to stay,
I'm never coming home;
You're goin' to miss me hon', in the days to come,
When the winter winds begin to blow, the ground is covered up with snow;
You'll think of me and you will wish to be back with your lovin' man;
You're goin' to miss me hon', in the days, days, days to come. |
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| Lessons from history for a Republican audience. |
[Oct. 5th, 2008|01:32 pm] |
Marie Antoinette. The hip, sexy young face of France. Brood-mare for Versailles. Happily donated money to the American Revolution. Beheaded during a time of economic crisis. Suggested that an angry populace could be mollified with cake.
Sarah Palin. The hip, sexy young face of the Republican Party. Brood-mare for Wasilla. Happily donated money to the Alaskan Liberation Front. Winked at the camera during a time of economic crisis. Suggested that an angry populace could be mollified with Couric. In way over her head, even if she hasn't lost it yet. |
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[Oct. 4th, 2008|07:23 pm] |
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...but in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me.... |
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[Oct. 4th, 2008|09:07 am] |
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I wish I was mayor of Hoboton. |
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