julheart

"Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.
It is only
here or not here."
- Margaret Atwood

"Glitter on the wet streets
Silver over everything
The glitter's all wet
You're all chrome. You're all chrome."
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Heads Will Roll

Well I'm an unabashed Karen O fan (being the mother of two Korean/Polish girls, and because I like how sorta perverse she is, and actually musically talented) and I think this latest song may officially make the Yeah Yeah Yeahs huge-mongously famous. It's not a crime to be catchy... I'm a child of the 80s so I get it... and the video too, replete with MJ monster, glam rock lyrics, and homage to Dale Bozzio/Missing Persons including an organ and see through vinyl coat. Didn't like the ending so much - would have preferred they left it simple with Karen O and the MJ monster, but ah well... still in love...
They're here tonight in Austin playing for ACL - not many bands I would make an effort to go out and see live, but this would be one of them if I could manage tickets...
Heads Will Roll

Oh yeah. And Beyonce. I really don't know much about her - at all. Never really been a fan. But one of my team members was talking about the whole Kanye/Beyonce/countrygirl debacle and insisted I see the Single Ladies video. Holy crap I'm impressed - beautifully simple video and what a dancer, and what a body...
Single Ladies

Which of course makes me think of how simple videos showing a good charismatic person moving around doing what they do are really the best. This being one of my old faves (and one I can embed... yay):


and then, just thinking in general, of music videos i like... there's the brothers quay 'are we still married' video. i think it makes me think of a household... with children. like mine.


oh yeah and this one by alex budovsky/the real tuesday weld. not sure what it is about it... but i dig it.


this one too. heh... the clothes... the pimp battle dance...

Taken from here:
http://rejectedreality.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/the-best-memes-and-post-titles-are-stolen/

The concept:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?



1. Happy Hobbit Feet, 2. toast brooches :P, 3. Ghosts, 4. Memories, 5. Eric Bana Side View, 6. White Trash Day-Spa, 7. Boracay Island White Sand and Willy's Rock surrounded by Blue Sky and Blue Sea, 8. Vegan Key Lime Tartletes, 9. Nature's Design is far better than any Thomas Kinkade!, 10. Honeymoon Photos, 11. My chickens are affectionate!, 12. Hearts

watched for the perseids this morning. only two shooting stars in about 15 minutes, which really isn't so bad considering how close i am to the city and that the moon is half full.

a grinning fox with something in it's mouth

"How physical yearning
became permanent.
How desire became devotional
so it held up your house,
your lover's house, the house of your god.

And though it is no longer there,
the pillars once let you step
to a higher room
where there was worship, lighter air."
- Ondaatje, Step

a long couple of months...
university of texas asked me back to show some paintings at bass concert hall and this time i'm not in a side hallway but actually have the 4th floor. YAY. but didn't have much time to do it. boo. still have about three weeks to come up with a couple more before 'wicked' opens. yay.

the space is really beautiful. pics below.




btw i hate the burning barn. can't win em all.

and i did some paintings of the kids for the house including the one below (freaky hair at my daughter's request).


so starting again tomorrow on spending every night in the 90+ degree garage with my ipod and something like art. working large. sweating. and actually happy in some weird twisted way. and thinking things couldn't get any more twisted than they are... but i know i'm wrong about that.

and here's to lisbeth zwerger, whose work is really just great.
purty colors.

"Know the enemy, know yourself, and victory is never in doubt, not in a hundred battles. He who knows self but not the enemy will suffer one defeat for every victory. He who knows neither self nor enemy will fail in every battle." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"There are five pitfalls for a general: Recklessness, leading to destruction; Cowardice, leading to capture; A hot temper, prone to provocation; A delicacy of honour, tending to shame; A concern for his men, leading to trouble." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"This is your penis 8---o. This is your penis on drugs 8========O." - random spam

I've been reading a lot lately for some reason. It feels good. I read the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu but it had this affect on me where I completely let everything go... let everything just happen without doing anything (which, after reading Sun Tzu, I realize is not REALLY what the Tao Te Ching is trying to say). But, even at work, I was starting to get all mushy. So Tommy recommended reading Sun Tzu's Art of War instead which is more of 'The Way' moved into practical application. Great book. It's general enough that it really applies well to every day life, particularly at work.

I'm in the middle of a book by Octavia Butler called "Parable of the Sower". I realized I couldn't name any female sci fi writers, and I love sci fi. So I looked up female sci fi writers and happened upon Octavia Butler. Started this book which predicts an America dystopia fifteen years from now where citizens pay outrageously for police and fire services, where things like water and groceries cost so much only the rich can afford them regularly, and where the only places safe from widespread street violence exist behind walled communities. Imagine a world where today's headlines pervasively describe our entire country. The story, from the point of view of a young girl trying to survive without the help or protection of civil government, has completed sucked me in with all of its details. I'm suddenly thinking practically about everything. And I'm avoiding the media right now. I'm not a doomsday-er at heart by any means and I don't believe that America is a place where everything is going to Hell (or this particular dystopian future), but I can't resist this story... and it actually makes it crystal clear to me that the media focuses so much on the negative when really our world and our every day lives (at least in the U.S.) are not as bad as they might seem by CNNs reporting. Too bad we don't see more good news in the headlines out there - about people still accomplishing positive things.

And I'm feeling a great deal of warmth for family, coworkers and friends these days. Maybe it's the reading. Maybe it's that in a very short period of time we've had a couple of friends come into town and another coming very soon. I'm all warm and fuzzy. And happy to be alive.

Stelios Faitakis murals

"Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all" - Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Two days off was great... though I had a hard time the first day getting over what a colossal waste of time not scratching anything off a 'to do' list was. Then I turned a corner somewhere in a cafe while forcing myself to read a book I didn't like, put it down unfinished, walked and walked and walked, found a new book in a bookstore, took my mother out for lunch (no kids, no husbands), went home, drew animals, watched 'Twilight' and allowed the teenage girl in me to enjoy it, took a couple of long baths, slept a little, stayed off the computer, imagined I was a dozen other people with seemingly better lives, settled happily with being myself and slept.

We had a great weekend complete with a fun night out with an old friend and a completely insanely surreal 10+ kid birthday party at Chuck E Cheese for my daughter, who seemed to think all of her dreams had come true. Couldn't have been better. :)

Petrina Hicks photograph

Because of your words I am voting for:
For a door to become a door,
A lock - once more a lock.
For this gloomy beast within my breast -
A heart.
- Akhmatova

i'm pms'ing and tired and frustrated and looking forward to two days off and not looking forward to feeling stupid and soft and scatterbrained until then.

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." - Aeschylus

"Only 19 yeears old, her Booobs are natural comedians" - random spam subject line

oooooh grrrr. so in the last couple of months i've registered HUGE amounts of hits (tens of thousands, yep i'm serious) on this image that i have on my site of julie adams (b movie horror queen, not me) with the creature from the black lagoon. spent some time tracking it down and found it's freakin hotlinked on some stupid 'lost' series forum as someone's signature line. rude! annoying! i pay for that bandwidth. anyway i changed the name of the good image and used the hotlinked image address on my site to post the one below instead.

brand new kewl image for the lost forums!


this weekend i read some article about how box wines are actually getting good. so i went the local snooty grocery store and went to the wine section (where there's a permanent employee hanging around to answer snooty wine questions). i asked where the boxed wines were and was disappointed in the lack of derision i got from the dude. instead he got all perky and showed me all the fancy boxed wine. i got the kind he cheerfully recommended (black box, but again i'm disappointed in how unimpressed he is with my low class) and no the wine wasn't dirt cheap - but holy moly it's good just every day wine and i'm drinking it happily. yay for new things; there's a box of wine in my fridge.

and i'm getting a pda! yay! i think. not sure about having my email-box attached to me 24/7. though honestly i didn't even know what a pda was until last week... i'd heard of blackberries and iphones: i've just been ignoring the fuss. speaking of which i have to pick between a blackberry and an iphone. they're the same price through my mobile provider. though the blackberry has a red version so i'm leaning that way... which is a little sad, but the truth.

we also went to amoa (austin museum of art) where we chatted with my cousin paige who works there now and then drooled over clifford ross' photographs. they're simply amazing - and impossible to capture on a blog since their 'amazingness' is in their high resolution. the wave pics are 50"x60" and perfect - every droplet, every bubble.
describing what he's done inventing a camera and using cold war spy plane film...

"Realizing the limitations of existing film and digital cameras, he invented the R1 high-resolution camera system, which uses military aerial film and a unique digital post-production process, capable of capturing the individual shingles on a barn from two miles away. The resulting photographs - "Mountain Series" - are among the highest resolution single shot landscapes in the world."

below is one of the wave photos, very very tiny unfortunately. and a link to one of the mountain series, which we also saw. in order to 'get' this you have to realize that you see a huge landscape in front of you (5' x 10') but when you step close you see a tiny tiny chair or shack and you see every single little slat on it. it's a pretty amazing tech marvel in person. i can't wait to show my dad... mr photography dude.

wave photo - 50"x60"


a link to ross' site where you can zoom in on one of his mountain series.
http://www.cliffordross.com/zoomview/index.php?page=photography

and here i am. as confused as ever. but happy in chaos. where i belong. i don't think i like things easy. i'd say i'm inventing my own problems, but that's not true either. i'm not crazed and i'm not making things up. right now, in this moment, i'm at peace with whatever all of these feelings are. i probably won't be tomorrow. or friday at 11am. or sunday morning at 5am. or whenever. as long as i can love the people around me in whatever way is best for all of us... a little suffering for me now and then is okay.

"No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn’t bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn’t teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding." - Helprin, A Winter's Tale

"Fast cars. Sizzling sex. This is her kind of race!" - back of some book

i like do-ho suh. i think he's great. he's not from Texas, but that's okay. he's still great.

lots of dog tags made into a sculpture:


and more...