2.26.2011

truth: Maslenitsa is "butter week." look it up.

i haven't blogged in forever.  oh oh oh, my 3 followers.  oh, my 3 followers, ohhhh.  you must be wondering what fascinating and important things i am doing with my time.  the 3 of you must be just dying.  here's what i've been doing: nannying for a 15 month old baby child called eva 3 mornings each week.  i tell her to jump and then she bends her tiny legs and pushes her tiny socked feet into the floor and i lift her and move her all around the room to create the sensation that her legs are as powerful as a bullfrog's.  we watch cartoons and it's a job. i am also still selling coffee to people as a job.  today i broke a plate.  2 even pieces, a clean break.  i just stared at it on the floor until the baker said, "so.  what do you need?"  those are the kinds of questions i used to ask the ladies i worked with when i was a skills trainer.  one might say, "i want spaghetti for supper," and i might say, "ok, what ingredients do you need?" or "ok, what's the first step?"  and then we would go through the whole glorious process, step by step, because sometimes the "natural responses" that people are supposed to share just don't come and for some reason, we insist that they should, and so i was paid to practice normality with people by co-cooking spaghetti and whatnot.  i guess it makes things easier overall if there's a formulaic way to do any given task, but it gets pretty boring, and i think it would be fine to make spaghetti by putting 3 whole tomatoes and a quarter pound of ground beef into a pot of water and macaroni noodles, covering it, and setting it in the oven and then stringing string cheese for an hour to substitute for shredded parmesan.  i love string cheese.  so that's what i've been doing lately.  and i started a no-money internship with the advocates for human rights, which is the greatest thing that i've accomplished lately besides not being dumped by ryankitten, who is a very good support and easy on the eyes.  as an intern, i make phone calls, update databases, and write about child prostitution.

i'm not going to say too much about Maslenitsa.  it's "butter week," which i said already.  it's a pagan celebration of the revival of nature celebrated in the last week before lent BY RUSSIANS.  it involves leaving pancakes on graves of loved ones, cursing at and burning strawdolls in demand of spring (*note: the doll is always dressed in women's clothing, it is NOT okay to burn a strawMAN or to blame a strawMAN for how goddamn cold the winter was because IT'S NOT HIS FAULT), brawls, gifts, and gargling with vodka.  this is what it looks like:


i don't know why i'm blogging about Maslenitsa.  leave me be.  i am supposed to be going to a gay bar tonight, one of my favorite activities, but kelli now has a stomach flu and is having a pepto snack and a nap, so i might just stay in my parents' home to watch The Office while everyone else in his or her twenties gets fucked up on fun and has a regular time of it.  snooze.  oh, there's another thing i did, which was going to chicago last week with 6 women to celebrate our 3 year reunion.  i love them, all 6 of them, because they are my girlpile and because they are so fucking witty and great at drinking wine out of plastic cups, dancing on poles for free shots, and walking in high heels.  i wish we were all living in the same country in the same state or province and in the same house or flat.  that's what i wish.

maybe i'll do a sketch again someday.  it's been a while.  i haven't been sketching but i have been making things.  i made potato man.  eventually, i had to throw potato man away because he lost an eye and he went soft and he started to green. i can put a pancake on his grave next month if i feel like it.

2.07.2011

truth: totally alone, no puppies, no kitten

my parents are in mexico.  ryankitten is in iowa.  my wife is in iowa with admiral jeff goldblum.  silverback and stormfellow are in someone else's house, sleeping on someone else's bed, pottying in someone else's yard.  it is just me and kelli and the big house and a few beers left in the fridge.  here is how i know that i have been working as a barista too long: the customers assume that i am the owner of the cafe.  they ask if i am the ex-wife.  i am not the ex-wife.  i am twenty and three years old and i am just trying to keep my piggy bank from going hungry.  i am just trying not to lose my wits.   i feel very alive in an i-could-die-at-any-moment-for-absolutely-no-reason way because i have spent my day reading bukowski and eating things made from chocolate.  why does bukowski keep writing the same story.  why does he keep writing it.  why do i keep reading it.  i feel like he must be sitting at a bar somewhere raising his glass to mankind for being habitual and crass perverts because if we weren't, his glass would be empty and he'd get bored.  

i grabbed at everyone's face last weekend.  kittens are afraid of that but roses are not afraid of anything. 

kitten #1

kitten #2

rose


[several hours later] i am finished with bukowski.  Pulp: a pulp fiction version of his usual - old man gets drunk repeatedly, loses his money on bad bets, looks up women's skirts, picks a few fights, sizes up the whole world and decides that it is full of idiots and whores, the end.  i decided that i will continue to read bukowski forever because i like that a dirty old man casts himself as a hero in an unjust and meaningless world.  i also like that his idea of a hero is extremely offensive.  i also like that his dirty old man heroes occasionally interrupt their drinking, fucking, fighting, and betting to say something lucid and profound.  there's just something about it.

2.06.2011

(sk)etches: 2


on nicholas ganz's graffiti women

Nicholas Ganz's Graffiti Women: a collection of work and artist statements from female graffiti and street artists.

it's strange to categorize artwork by the sex of the artist who created it unless the artist identifies with their sex as an artist with an intention of conveying this in their work.  my head starts spinning when i think of the implications of publishing a collection which highlights the very same issue that it proposes the deconstruction of.  it's usefulness or value hinges upon the significance that we assign sex as a distinguishing factor of human experience.  personally, i hate that the question ("Was it made/written/invented by a man or a woman?") even presents itself when i encounter things, but it does matter (for the time being, until our actions and assumptions align with our ideals).

many of the Graffiti Women artists use their art as a means of appropriating and/or redefining femininity.  they feature and manipulate mainstream images and concepts of femininity - pouty girls in lingerie with sinister expressions, crowned whores and bleeding saints and schoolgirls with machine guns, the female form twisted and exaggerated casting a downward gaze upon the viewer.  other artists claim their work to be "neutral," wanting to avoid classification as a subculture within a subculture.


several artists spoke on the theme of street art as a public art, an interface between the individual and the structure of society, a reaction to invasive advertisements and normalization, as though culture were wool pulled over the eyes and graffiti were a tear in the fabric.  i like this.  i like that as artists, we choose that which we wish to see and then make it visible.  i like that one person's vision can be accessed by another.  i like that people are willing to break or bend laws that violate their rights and/or inhibit their experience of their environment.  i admire non-licensed street art that provides social and political commentary as one of the stronger and more humanitarian methods of creating change (if it's true that we are products of our environment, it makes sense to reform that environment by entering into dialogue with it).


omri
hera

fafi


faith47

miss van

swoon