i'm the luckiest girl ALIVE!!!

the wunderbar, wunderbar sockenbr has been on vacation in japan. his pictures have been terrific to view and i've been immensely enjoying the experience of japan through his lens!

but look at what came in the mail!!!





A POSTCARD FROM JAPAN!!!!

and not just any postcard! it's a postcard of kinkakuji temple with, wait for it....HELLO KITTY STAMPS AND LITTLE TOTOROS ON IT!!!!

*fainting from the joy of it all!!*

recovering from faint to post closeups of the stamps



and the totoros!



*resuming faint!!*

katamari damacy 2 screenshots!

how fun does this look???? how fun???

SOOOOOO fun!!!

(found via boing boing)

tie me in, tie me down

as a tie in for the new "star wars" movie, m&m's will be offering a dark chocolate version of, well, m&ms starting april 1. which is, like, tomorrow, isn't it?

dark chocolate good. new "star wars" movie better be good. but it won't be and i'll end up being disappointed again.

stupid lucas.

erm, anyway, link found via not martha.

how comforting

wow. looks like i was in the immediate area when some fool high school student shot himself today.

seriously, the library is just across the parking lot from that school.

i really can't wait to move to a city where i HOPE the students are smart enough to not put loaded guns in their pockets, let alone carry the damn things to school.

more to love about seattle

did you know that seattle has a cupcake bakery?!?

i mean, they make cakes, but they specialize in cupcakes!!

cupcake royale. check it out. it's one of the first places i'm going after i unload the moving van!

(found via all cupcakes all the time. i love them so much!)

update!!: the all cupcakes kids have a flickr group! cupcakes take the cake!! i really, really like these people!

oh, look! blogger's working.

jesus, it's about time.

anyway, lots of little stuff to write about. so, let's get started. (tee hee!)

first off, i'm morally bankrupt. on the day that p2p went to court, i bought the new beck album. i could make the argument that i haven't bought a major label release since radiohead's amnesiac, but what's the point? we all know that i compromised my principles because i love beck. sigh...

but speaking of guero, i love it! and like everyone else in the world, i too think that it sounds like odelay filtered through mutations. and on "hell yes"? there's a robot voice that says "hell yes"! eeee! i love robots! (now you see why i didn't pursue that journalism degree. because of the "eeeee" not because i love robots.)

switching topics, irony of ironies, the pope is now being intravenously fed. and that's all i'll say about that.

also, johnnie cochran is dead which means there is one less lawyer in the world. which is all i'll say about that.

oh! and jerry falwell is in critical condition. and, again, that's all i'm saying about that. although i really, really want to say something gleefully mean. it's hard to fight the urge but i'm doing it.

may i add how it's quite appropriate that he's being treated in lynchburg of all places?

(looks like it was harder to fight that urge than i thought. *shoulder shrug* oh, well.)

one last thing. last night i caught veronica mars on the tee vee. and i think it's living up to the "buffy" comparisons. veronica's smart, resourceful and cute. only no superpowers or demons. just a mystery about who killed her best friend and what happened on the night she (veronica) was drugged and raped.

six more episodes until the end of the season. it's on 9 pm, est, tuesday nights on upn. i know, upn. but, well, it's actually a good show for a change!

peeps update

ok, so the homemade peeps don't look like peeps because the marshmallow's glued to the dish.

but they taste like marshamallows, and that's cool. because now when people ask me what i did this weekend, i can say "i made marshmallows. whad you do, hottentot??"

actually, no, i proabably won't say that last part.

in other news, this morning i ate a pickle that tasted like vegetable soup from a can. not a really pleasant experience when you're expecting to be tasting a pickle. bleah.

kiss easter eggs

this is why i was looking up photos of kiss.



you can rest easily now, scootie.

peeps to be

happy easter. i hope you've mutilated several chocolate bunnies by now.

i've just made my marshmallow slab out of which i will cut little bunnies in about 12 hours from now. (the marshmallow has to dry for that long.)

i tinted the creme pink with two drops of vegetable dye. it was a beige color before i added the red. beige because of the 2 tbs of vanilla extract!

the powdery stuff on the top is corn starch. it helps to deal with the stickiness factor. (it's on the bottom of the pan too.)



i'll update later on today once the peeps are completed.

donnie dorko

tonight i made donnie darko easter eggs. no one can doubt my commitment to sparkle motion now.



(the frank was originally from a readymade pumpkin stencil. so, props where props are due!)

kissopoly

for reasons that i'll go into a little later, i was looking up pictures of kiss online.

and look what i stumbled upon! a kiss version of monopoly! kissopoly to be precise.

check out this product description..."players roll the black dice and advance to ROCK & ROLL ALL NITE, wondering if they’ll be “hired as a roadie to set up the catman’s drums” or if they will “win 2nd place in the girls of KISS beauty contest!"

it's fun for the whole family!!

frankenpeeps

06
Originally uploaded by bfelice.

bfelice is a genius!

she's made frankenpeeps, a mashup of blue and purple peeps!

check out her whole set! it's amazing!

(thanks to bunchofpants for pointing it out to me!)

small scale

i have a confession to make. i'm absolutely in love with tiny objects. you know, model train towns, dollhouses, tiny pies, etc., etc.

i'm not sure what my obsession with miniature things means or exactly when it started, but i've been working small scale for a long time now. (at least since 1998. my senior show included 70 paintings and not one of them was over 5" x 6" (about 12 cm x 15 cm, give or take a bit)).

continuing in that vein, i've started making small sculpey objects this week. (i don't have access to a kiln right now so i'm having to work with what i've got.) you've already seen the previous post about the tiny katamari. today i made a teeny tiny gamecube with a wavebird controller.



(sorry for the (usual) awful picture, i didn't have access to the 3 megapixel camera when i took it.)

i know it might not be exciting for anyone else except me, but i'm really into this right now. it's been a while since i've worked with anything claylike and i'm smitten with the tactile-ness of it.

craftamari damacy

i made a tiny, sculpey katamari tonight. specifically from the "make virgo" mission in katamari damacy. (it's got little hearts on it.)



gee, do you think i'm addicted to this game yet?

less is more

some things i'd like a little less of, please.

1) seasonal allergies. esp. since i can't take anything for them because i'm allergic to antihistamine. which is in all allergy medication. ugh.

2) the busted buzzer in my building. my ups guy is a smart fellow. and he knows the drill to get into my building. so when my phone doesn't ring and he says he didn't get an answer when he called upstairs, and this, in turn, necessitates the lady from downstairs bringing up my package, i know it's busted. again. *eyeroll*

marshmallowy goodness

today saw the arrival of marshmallowy goodness from portland, oregan. thank you, food fight! (if you're looking for hard to find vegan/veggie staples and can't find them in your town, check out their store! it rocks! prompt delivery too!)



as soon as i pick up some vanilla extract and some corn syrup, i'll try my hand at making my own peeps!

and, of course, i'll post the gooey, goopy results here!

staggering animatronic

lookit this! it's the deer equiv of that damn billy bass thing!

i'm not sure if i really want one. i mean, cool! it's a veggie deer head! but, ew! it's a veggie deer head that's motion sensative and plays "sweet home alabama"***.

found via boing boing


*** funny story about "sweet home alabama". i once had a roommate that was originally from alabama. he swears there's an am station there that is state sponsored and only plays that song. 24 hours a day/7 days a week of "sweet home alabama".
and my old roomie always wondered why i told him that he had moved UP when he moved to tennessee. (check the map. it's a geographically correct statement! winky wink!)

jackie NOOOOO!!!

crap for crap!! fred flare was selling pink jackie o sunglasses! but now they're all sold out!

NOOOOOOOO!!!

food fight!

i have this love/hate relationship with peeps. i mean, the flavor!! (hooray!) and the squidgy-ness! (ew!!)

normally, it's not such a big deal. easter rolls around. i see peeps. i think "huh. too bad there's gelatin in them." and forget about it.

but this year it's been a different story. i got the peeps craving hardcore!

i thought i could solve the problem by getting some peeps lip gloss. it's nice, but there's not a chew factor. (if you're not vegetarian, you may not know of the need to eat something "bitey" every now and then. and by bitey, i mean meat-like ripping, using the incisors, good old fashioned carnivourous chewing!)

so i thought why not make my own peeps? i'd just found out about emes kosher gelatin which just happens to be vegetarian and i've got a vegetarian marshmallow recipe. easy, right?

not if you live in a ratfuck town like memphis. (ratfuck. it's my new word.)

but this is where food fight comes to the rescue! they're a veggie/vegan grocery store based in portland and i just placed an order there for 4 packs of emes and a bag of vegan supreme marshmallows (just for the hell of it. i've heard the vegan supreme rock, yo. but i can't get them in, you got it, ratfuck memphis.)

anyway, hooray for food fight!!

i'll let you know how it works with the homemade peeps.

cool!

wow! check it out! my flickr group, what's in your bag?, got a mention on boingboing yesterday!

hooray!

(thanks emdot for pointing it out!)

i'm so vain. i bet i think this blog is about me.

i have been feeling rather vain lately. simply because a kid that i was testing asked if i was still in college.

and also because i got carded at the liquor store today. the clerk asked if i was really 31.

i never thought that these things would make my week, but then again, i've never been on the other side of thirty before. laughing!!

protest in the a.m.

hi, all.

short vent here. and also a shout out out to all the demos/indeps/greens in memphis.

el presidente *spit* will be in memphis this morning spinning some more propaganda.

if you don't have to be at work at 7:00 in the am, there's a protest downtown in the pinch district.

i can't be there and MAN am i pissed. i think these *cough* presidential *cough* visits are scheduled to make protesting difficult.

anyway, if you can make it, please attend.

spring fever/wanderlust

i've got spring fever and wanderlust. one is bad enough but the two in combination make me all fidgety and slightly cranky about it still being winter in memphis of all places.

sigh...

but i've been finding respite in several things. like samantha brown's passport to europe series. although, now that i think about it, this might be contributing to the wanderlust...

still, there is panda kopanda (panda, go panda in the u.s.). i mean, who can be cranky when there are talking pandas on the screen? (although nausicaa.net does say that it was created in the midst of a "panda fever" epidemic in japan. i wonder what the symptoms are...)

but best of all is the public library. today i had out shipped to my local branch. i can pick it up tomorrow! hooray!

oh! how could i forget buffy?!??! i'm now officially addicted. and since i'm only starting season two this week (thank you, netflix! and groc for recommending it!) i've got lots to look forward to!

clarification

i just reread my last post and it sounded as if i had soured upon moving to washington.
let me just say that this is definately not the case. i'm really excited! i just shouldn't write on an empty stomach! haha!

honestly, how can i help but be enthusiastic when i consider that not only am i going to be living near mt. rainier but that i'll also be living in the same city as the first sur la table!

i mean, it's the original store, for pete's sake! so, hooray for seattle! i can't wait to live there! regardless of the stupid state flag!

state flags

leff and i have managed to live in states that have pretty decent graphic flag designs up to this point. like tennessee's (not the best of the lot, but at least it's simple), maryland's and, in leff's case, new mexico.

so, um...check out washington's.

uh...were they even trying? i mean, washington's flag is the equivilant of new mexico just having mexico on their flag with the words "new, fresh flavor" emblazoned across it.

wow. i guess i should've seen this coming from a place whose state gem is petrified wood. (i'm not kidding.)

still, at least it's better than here!

03.04.05

here's a weird thing about me. i think that march fourth is the funniest day of the year because it sounds like a military command. as in, "march forth!" shouted the commander! only, you know, with the numberical spelling substituted for the "forth" part.

i like almost homonyms.

anyway, when i typed today's date, instead of just giggling at combatant language, i realized that it's also in numberical order. 03, 04, 05. so in addition to being amused by the word fourth, i can also have a counting lesson!

wheee!

sxsw season

if leff and i had moved to austin this past december as we had planned (before we nixed austin and decided on seattle instead), we would be gearing up to hit the clubs during sxsw.

the good thing about still being in memphis is that we can catch lots of bands on their way to austin. (i40 loops around memphis which makes it convenient for bands to play through, as it were, on their way down to the conference.)

i'm listing dates here of shows that i want to see just so i can keep track of them. sorry to bore you with such metadata but well, i gots shows to see!

wed, 3.16.05 @ the deli--the reputation (with local band i can lick any son of a bitch in the house)

fri, 3.18.05 @ the deli--the apes

sun, 3.20.05 @ the deli--the bloodthirsty lovers

mon, 3.21.05 @ the hitone--enon and swearing at motorists OR @ the deli--guitar wolf and fantasy's core

wed, 3.23.05 @ the hitone--electric eel shock

and damn it! why do the enon and guitar wolf shows have to be on the same freakin' night?!? grrrrr!! i might have to get my dose of japanese punk with electric eel shock since i missed enon on their last tour when i was living in baltimore. (i ended up just b.s.ing with my new roommate in the parking lot until 3 am.)

sweet memes are made of this

i like books. i like bunchofpants. so i'm going to do the book meme that bunchofpants did.

1. Total number of books in your house?

more than you've got. well, unless you're benchilada.

2. The last book you bought was?

the little friend by donna tartt on monday night.

3. What was the last book you read before reading this message?

i read three or four books at a time so roast eggs--douglas clark, war trash--ha jin and the afterword--mike bryan.

4. Write down five books you often read or that mean a lot to you.

catcher in the rye--salinger. i read it every few years, goddamn it.

twinkle twinkle--kaori ekuni. beautiful and pure.

any wodehouse. i can read jeeves repeatedly and i always laugh.

magical thinking--augusten burroughs. i know, it's pretty new but i can't stop thinking about it.

narnia books--c.s. lewis. regardless of the religious underpinnings, i still love them.

5. Who are you going to pass the stick to and why?
smoke 'em if you got 'em but i'm not passing this on.

sisters of '77

sisters of '77, an independent lens documentary about the first ever national women's conference in houston, texas was on pbs tonight.

while the documentary itself was rather informative (i mean, in all of my american history courses, this conference was never mentioned. not once.), it left me feeling quite bitter. and not just because we're pretty much in the same boat as we were in 1977. (yes, baby steps have been taken, but the era still hasn't been ratified all these years later. and i shudder to think what will happen to women's rights under the current administation.)

what i'm most irked about is the second wave feminists' dismissal of women in my age group. betty friedan was quite flip in noting that we're in an era where people "...don't march". and gloria steinem pondered if the younger generation who, apparently, takes everything for granted, would stand up for their rights if they were threatened.

ok, look. protest styles have changed. and i don't feel like rambling on and on about how older feminists just don't understand third wave feminists(trust me, i could) because it's not going to solve anything. let's just say that i'm suprememly pissed. so much so that i'm thinking of chucking my gloria steinem autographed photo of male chromosomes out the window.

and that's definately saying something.

mental health thursday

thursday is going to be a mental health day for me. this means that i'm not going into that ratfuck of a thing that is referred to as my job.

as you can ascertain from the last sentence, i really, really need to take a day off.

the thing that gets me is that i'm typcially at the place only three days a week. but it's so mismanaged and one certain person whose job directly effects me is so fucking incompetent at everything she does that i feel like i'm there 75 hours a week.

so, day off. i'll work an extra day on saturday. and if anyone complains, they can bite me.

and i promise a real post just as soon as i finish this drink!