I Now Own a Black Velvet Painting: My Life Is One Step Closer to Being Complete

There is a particular package I have been waiting for from Jett's Etsy shop, 256 Eclectica. I didn't even have to go shopping for it, because Jett knew it should be mine and told me so.

As with watching water boil, packages will always take three times longer than normal if you are excited about them, but after many moons, it came today!



The Palinode hasn't seen the loveliness of what I ordered yet, but when he does, he's going to be so excited, except probably not so much, because I don't think he's wanted a black velvet painting as much as I have for as long as I have.

Also? I don't think he's going to be as thrilled as I am with just how poorly the waterfall is rendered. For me, this was the selling point of the whole painting. It gives me great joy to see how the waterfall's spray is painted to follow completely unnatural, ruler-straight lines in a spot far away from and to the right of the actual falls. Is drunken painting an art form?

Its terribleness is its winningness.



This is how I roll, though. I like ugly. Do you remember the psycho salt shaker or the lovely Desmond here?



I think my painting will fit right in.

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PS. This is the best paint brush ever to exist. Imagine the damage to beauty I could do with this thing?

"Magic" Digital Video Brush - The best bloopers are here

Ira Glass On Storytelling

This might be just what you needed to hear today. I know it's what I needed.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

How To Fix Creative Constipation

My anxiety levels tend to rise at this time of year with the onset of fall, and, holy crap, are my anxiety levels up. I feel like the inside of me is a roof from which I have to be peeled.

While controlling my breathing and limiting my caffeine intake and getting a lot of sleep help with the anxiety, my creative output still tends to suffer. I start overthinking every line, word, and idea until I'm sure that I am full of head-to-toe shit. I know that this isn't the case, so, in an effort to loosen myself up and just get over it already, I've taken to doodling in order to let my mind go a bit.

I don't have any talent in the way of drawing, but I am enjoying making bright, goofy drawings, which I like to pronounce draw-rings:


click to view full size

And guess what? My brain seems to unclutter itself quite handily while I doodle out arrows and lines and circles and whatnot.

What works for you when you're all bound up creatively?

A New Template (Again), The NSB, And Stupid, Stupid Dreams

I have a whole new look! It’s a strange thing for me to do after Mirabile complimented me on Friday night for what has now become my old template, but such is life. I hope you enjoy this one as much, Mr. Visu, because I worked darn hard on it.

Saudi Arabia will hold its first municipal elections in October.

President Vladimir Putin is expanding his country’s strategic ties with China in military sales and economic co-operation. Russia’s tensions with the West have been rising, especially now that they feel there is a lot of unwarranted negative media being used to sway westerners’ opinions regarding Putin’s re-election.

Baldness may finally be cured, at least in the rodent world.

China has amended its constitution to include human rights and the right to private property.

The Fiery One and I went to an art gallery with a couple of friends this afternoon, because there was an art exhibition going on there that had been through my home city which I had heard a lot about. Yum. The exhibition was entitled “Soundtracks” and was split into three parts: “Come a Singing!”, “See Hear!”, and “Re-Play”. The titling really needed some work, but despite the folksy sound of the wording, most of it was fantastic. The best find of the afternoon was the Nihilist Spasm Band which hailed from Ontario. I could have sat around listening to the Nihilist Spasm Band all afternoon. How is it that such fantastic political, artistic, musician types flew under my radar for so long? I was listening to the music on these horribly misshapen headphones, having to press the right one against my ear so I could hear them in stereo, and staring around this large white room whose walls were lined with bizarrely shaped instruments, most of them stringed. The members of the Nihilist Spasm Band created many of their own instruments, seemingly out of whatever they could find. The sounds meeting my ears were often discordant, cacophonous, but elements of it would rise up and I would get lost in following the rhythm of the thread. This stupid gallery tour guide was leading a whopping tour of two through the NSB part of the exhibit, and she told them that “...the NSB were more political than anything else, as you can tell by their terrible music”. I wonder what it takes to get to be a closing-your-mind, forcing-your-opinion tour guide in an art gallery. Apparently an art degree and smugness are all you need to be a cultural mediator.

36,000 chickens are going to be killed on one British Columbian farm with the arrival of the bird flu.

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party won 96% of the votes in the recent election in Spain, promising to bring home their troops stationed in Iraq.

The California Supreme Court has ordered an immediate halt to same-sex weddings in San Francisco and will wait to hear arguments in May or June.

Worried about being single forever? Well, you don’t have to be. There is a website that offers to help pair you up with another single as a backup plan if neither of you is married in twenty years.

My dreams have been extremely boring lately. I really shouldn’t complain, because I didn’t have dreams that I could remember for what felt like a long time, but the ones I am remembering now are getting lame. It’s the same thing every night. I dream I might be pregnant, but I am not eager to find out either way and seem to take it in stride. I dream that I am looking down at myself and I am wearing a flimsy, grass-green shirt that buttons down the front. My breasts are very perky and my nipples point very noticeably through the material. I am not embarrassed by this. I dream about the hang-dog face of a young man in his early twenties. He is sad but sweet and cute in a homely kind of way, and I wish I could help him. Sometimes I dream bits and flashes of white, white skin. It’s all quite physical, more about indulgence of the senses than anything else, but the repetition is getting old. I keep thinking that maybe if I figure out what the hell it means, it will stop, but when I try to look deeper, I see nothing there. Any suggestions? Maybe eating a lot of cheese right before going to bed will throw curve into my dream world.

The story behind Marcus Wesson’s mass killing seems to be a complicated one to say the least.

Here is an interesting article that discusses the possible legal ramifications of accepting “civil union” as an alternative to marriage. No, really, it’s interesting.

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks in Madrid.

Tehran barred the International Atomic Energy Agency's nuclear inspectors on Friday, March 12th, and this has raised international concerns regarding their possible nuclear weapons program.