Exploding bracelet... good intentions gone bad.

I wanted to make a charm bracelet out of a bunch of extra copper I had lying around and this is what happened:


This is a perfect example of "over-working" and "over-designing" in my opinion. Although one gets a nice rush of green and copper color, the individual bead charms get lost in the mess. Instead of showcasing a my varied wire work technique, this looks like a telephone company exploded or something. It looks even worse when I wear it. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

What constitutes "make your own?"

Since I miss Sarah, I decided to post a cute pic of her here. This is the chocker she's been working on for a rediculously long time because the chain links keep poking and scratching her all up due to the wire gauge she used. Did you know that Darice has discontinued their fabulous non tarnishing 18 gauge wire? We went out and bought more brand-X 18 gauge wire, but the coating kept peeling cracking...hence her use of pokey-ouchy 24 gauge wire.

Anyway, she's freaking busy. Ah grad school. I'm so glad I finished that.



Here's a pic of Monica just cause. Notice she's knitting socks.



*edit* I feel bad for leaving Shizuka out, so here she is:


She's knitting a scarf at lighting speed for her hubby.

Rant:
The other day at Hobby Lobby I saw a booklet that said "FREE PATTERN! Make your won beautifully decorated tulip purse."

Well of course, that peaked my interest. I've crocheted a few bags before, and there were some half-hearted attempts at sewing my own bag via free form guesses in terms of patterns. However, they never came out all that great. The picture in front of me depicted an annoyingly cute black handbang with feathers around the upper rim and I really like the "tulip" shape of the purse (the kind where the base is smaller than the top). I was curious what the flat pattern would be.

I enthusiastically yanked one of the instruction booklets from the hook and was suprised to find that it was only one page. When I looked at the instructions, to my horror, I realized the first line was:

First purchase premade tulip purse from Hobby Lobby...

Okay, somehow the whole "make your bag" part was missing. I looked around for perhaps a companion flier, but no, they honestly printed this thing out to tell you to purchase a pre-made (albeit undecorated) bag.

To make things worse, that dubiously effective line was followed by:

Decorate. Feel free to use any of Hobby Lobby's coordinated kits...

I looked up at the shelf and noticed rows of color-coordinated sequins, beads, feathers and iron-ons in labled bags with stupid whimsical names like "Paris Pink" or "Hawaiian Flowers." Next to that was a pitiful collection of components standing on their alone as if the general population was incapable of coming up with their own stupid themes. I was appauled. Are people really that uncreative?

Does that technically constitute making your own bag, I thought to myself? Aside from using a glue gun and reading instructions in the decorating kit, where was the skill involved? The term shouldn't be making it should be assemble!

If you think I'm kidding, I managed to find a similar set of "instructions" from Hobby Lobby, although this one lets you pick your own feather boa. Oh boy. Look ma. I can measure with a ruler and glue rhine stones into the letter "S." My initial starts with "C" but the instuctions had an "S" on there. heh.

Anyway, I've got an itch to create piece of jewelery and I'm not sure what to create. When I say make...I really mean fabricate from scratch. By the way, I've got an arts and crafts blog now that I'll be putting finished projects in. It is located at adzuki.blogspot.com. Who knows, maybe I'll even include some "how-tos" that don't consist of "buy a premade bag" in the first line of instructions.

Old Sketch

It seems weird to not have anything in here at the moment, so here's an old sketch I did back in college. Nothing fancy...just a bunch of shells, but I post this here because my technique has gotten a lot rougher over the years, so it is interesting to look back on this drawing.

under constructions....

yep, it's under construction now. Don't worry, I'll fix it, eventually. Heh.

Perhaps a permanent portfolio?

I stole Monica's idea to have a separate blog just for my artwork. Makes sense. :) Anyhow, I'm utterly suprised that "adzuki" hasn't been taken already.

Oh the power of google...and dolphins

Ha! Thanks to Sarah I got a stat counter for this blog since I wanted to prove to her no one else read it but me, her and a couple of friends. Well lo and behold, I saw someone found this page via "seaweed and weeseed." It was my brother!!!! Mr. Johnny Luck himself. He was kind enough sign up for a logon simply to provde clarification on the post about him:

Oh no! I googled 'weeseed' at Eric's request and this is what I see (he knew of this blog). Deception and embellishments abound! Yes I do love dolphins and like stuffed ones the best. You did not get a snake, you got sunglasses, mom brought seaweed home 2 or 3 months prior to weeseed coming home because she wanted to eat the happy meal. Also, I never won a bike, it was a 500 dollar gift certificate to Addidas, and also an Anna Kournikova workout tape (part of the Lycos.com promo). Playstations had not been released yet, and I was in the 7th grade. It was a SEGA game gear. You were in high school at the time. I did not vote republican in any election year I voted Libertarian. My rifle was named DEENA and I sold it for 80$ more than what I bought it for the other day. I am not a prude as I am made out to be, since I want to own a tata-bar in Dallas within 4 or 5 years-cant have republicans fooling with my TABC license.

Apparently I fucked up on a few details, but note, he won a $500 gift certificate instead of the new bike AND a Anna Kournikova workout tape. Sheesh, I thought that was in addition to the new bike. Sega versus Playstation. Boy, life is tough.... For the record, he did purchase a rather lovely hoodie for me using the gift certificate. Also, getting sun glasses in my happy meal instead of a stuffed snake compared to Johnny's dolphin is an even more depressing version of my story (and I don't think Mom ever liked eating happy meals, J-luck).

When I confronted bro about this, he answered with a string of e-mails:

seaweed and weeseed are super furry now that i washed them.
so white on thier bellies too...so suprisingly clean!

i was showing eric how wierd google is on IM...and i said id try weeseed...and this is what i see.

poor weeseed...he was called a lass.


oh no...
i am a lucky guy
why just the other day i thought itd be nice to win one of those big
animals in the claw game at D and B and I got one!
But i'd call that skill.


Notice he didn't deny the close-to-fetish fascination with dolphins. I ought to get him a new little one to mess with the close knit family. There's also Dexter the huge one that squeeks and a medium sized momma dolphin. There needs to be a little girl dolphin in the group for Seaweed and Weeseed to fight over.

By the way, here's a pic of one of the alledged dolphins. I believe this is "Weeseed" given that he's not as old looking. He's lying next to, Missy? Deena? I don't even know the name of this handgun.



Well, that's my dolphin post of the day

Short update on flying objects

A couple nights ago, Trent Reznor got struck in the face by a lighter flung by a crazy fan while performing "Hurt" (yeah, I know ironic). He overturned his keyboard and stormed off, cancelling the rest of the show. I've seen lots of shit get thrown on stage before, but honestly, what does it accomplish? This is the equivalent of a boy throwing a rock through the window of a gal he's got a crush on. Stupid.

On a different note, I can't get my stupid frames to render properly on Internet Explorer. Bah...It looks fine on Firefox though.

The Wonders of Lysol

A friend of mine once told me about a certain administrative-assistant-who-shall-not-be-name who decided it was a good idea to use a can of Lysol spray to clean out the coffee cups at the office. Needless to say, I was appauled to hear this and I now bring in my own mug.

However, that lovely story doesn't even remotely compare to this gem of an image I found of an ad from the 30's.



Yes, that's right. Lysol used to make vaginal douches. I actually had to read it twice for it to sink in that was what they were really talking about. Isn't that nice? This was referenced from an article about vaginal scalding and tissue damage from the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health. Some gems: sawdust tampon from the Soviet Union, articles on Doctors masturbating their patients to cure certain ailments (including "thank you" letters from past patients), costumes made out of feminine hygiene products, and images of every freaking tampon, menstrual cup and maxi pad that has ever existed. Reading the accompaning ads from the past are a great hoot as well.

People who look like each other and ought not to

My husband looks like a cross between Foo Fighter's Dave Grohl and They Might Be Giant's John Linnell. Unfortunately, I don't have good pics on hand, so you'll have to take my word for it if you don't know him. Supposedly, I look and act a lot like that lump from the Zoloft commercials, but since that isn't exactly a flattering comparison, I don't really want to go there.

Indeed uncanny resemblances exist everywhere. By simply typing in the seach string "separated at birth" into google, one gets a plethora of amazing results with some related to archived images from a magazine called "Spy" back in the day (thanks Sig!). I was infomed by this cohort that the notion was such a hit, a monthly segment was featured in that magazine called, you guessed it, "Separated at Birth" featuring haunting images like Joan Rivers versus a Rhesus Monkey. There are commercials devoted to this concept as well: one depicting people with high cholesterol along side their favorite their foods, one comparing indivuduals with various models of Volkswagons, etc. The doube mint gum commericals have produced some funny uncanny resemblances. Here's a favorite:


If that's not your cup of tea, one can head on over to the MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards and take a peek at people who look like Marvel Comic characters. Crazy shit, let me tell you.

So, to jump on the comparison bandwagon, here's are my contributions. These are the ones that are bugging me currently.

Actress Juliet Stevenson:


and

Designer Austin Scarlett (no, he's not a drag queen):


I love both of them dearly. I really do. I thought Juliet's acting in "Bend it Like Beckham" as the culturally ignorant homophobic soccer mom was fantastic and I was rooting for Austin Scarlett all throughout season 1 of Project Runway. They look like they could be mother and son...uh, or sisters even.

*
Mack Brown, UT Football coach. Hookem horns!


and

El Presidente:


One conveys intelligence and the other doesn't. I'll let you decide. Now, I can just hear someone go "But they're both Texans." Um no. I need to kindly remind folk that Bush moved down here from Connecticut.

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Here's one I almost didn't put up simply because I respect the two:

Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth


and

The Thin White Duke, David Bowie


Ya know, I find them both attractive in a weird magnetic intense sorta way, but the juxtoposition of these two pictures is unsettling. I just don't like the fact that they look like each other. Not sure why that bothers me, but yeah, I admit it, it bothers me!

*
Josh Groban:

and

a garden variety Hobbit:


I'm having a hard time finding dissimlarities, actually. LOL. Don't get me wrong, Hobbits are nice, and Josh has one of the best tenore voices out there. Furthermore, he's cute, but I do wonder at times...

*

Fortunately I don't find Ville Valo of HIM attractive and it isn't only because he looks like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka:


See?


Nuff said. Maybe it is the pouty mouth or the bloated face. Not sure.

*

At some point Dave Navarro (was it Red Hot Chili Peppers?) looked good...

but then he started to get plasticy looking like in that Hollywood-fake-tan-fake-eyebrows sort of way.



Kind of like, oh I dunno, that first puppet that dies on "Team America?"



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Speaking of people who used to look good: Maria Carey. What is going on with Mimi? I've said this before, but the girl ought to know that she ain't Bono, nor is she Madonna. There are some outfits that she shouldn't be wearing!



Fortunately, this pic is better:

And then it struck me when I was watching the Grammys the other night that Maria looked a good bit like Miss Piggy:


*

Speaking of Madonna:


She's looking a good bit like Hedwig:


I'm debating which one looks better in spandex. Then again with Madonna, she's always changing her look, so why not a drag queen rocker from East Berlin? BTW, if you haven't seen the musical or the movie, check it out. It's amazing.

On death and dying

One of my old cohorts from high school wrote this in his blog recently:

Health care costs have been rising way faster than inflation. Some of the rise in Medicare costs are because there are more and more old people. The solution to that is obvious - kill anyone over 70.

While he was being facetious (at least "sorta" he claims), I will admit I've come to this solution at times myself whenever I muse about social security, padding my savings for retirement and most often, when I think about my aging parents and in-laws. While is it incredibly easy for me to imagine taking care of my mother and Travis's mother in old age, I don't know if I could make myself watch over either of our dads. I suppose Travis's dad, Bill, will end up just like Travis's grandfather (who is only referred to as "Dr. Fricke")--stubborn, insane, deaf as a doorknob and completely unwilling to take help. And, he'll probably end up living with 97 cats (that's a story for later). He's already heading down that path, anyway.

My own father, Mike, will most likly degenerate into a needy, self depricating geezer. While Bill is simply in denial of old age and dying, my dad is terrified of it. He's also a workaholic measuring his worth by how much money he makes. My dad also is afraid that he'll lead an impoverished life in old age and has investments out the wazoo to make sure this doesn't happen. He reminds me constantly that we won't be able to support him in old age. Of course Travis and I are "poor" by his standards and I guess I can see his vantage point given that his last bonus amounted to my yearly salary (for the record, we do just fine and have no debt...). Anyhow, his path of insanity has all to do with money. Hence, when he is old and unable to work and unable to earn, I do think he may end up getting very depressed. Monetary greed already owns him now.

If we all had a pre-set date on when we would die everything would work out better. People would deal, calculating retirement would be easier and people would appreciate what they have more while they had it. So, killing off everyone over the age of 70 doesn't sound like a bad idea. If you ended up dying earlier, tough luck. That's life.

I look forward to getting older. Already, things that used to bother me a lot when I was in my early 20's don't bother me anymore. I've got a thicker skin. I can walk away from things easier. I'm better able to decide what is important and what isn't. Every now and then, I come across postings from various discussion boards where adolescent are whining about their next exam, complaining about their current fling, whining about their parents. Life is really so incredibly simple at that age. There's a great line in the book Magnificent Ambersons that says "30 can't tell 20 what 30 is until 20 becomes 30." That's so true, so while I can talk my head off and try to convince these peeps that everything they're talking about has very little relevance to real life, they're not going to listen.

In terms of dying. Death itself doesn't bother me, but the pain and complications that leads up to it might. I have a vivid memory of my grandfather defecating on himself after he suffered a stroke. I still remember the look of humiliation on his face. I don't think I'd be able to deal with that. With pain, I distinctly remember two times where I was in so much pain I wanted to die. One was an especially bad case of pnemonia back in 99 and the other was when I had an infected jaw due that all started with an undiagnosed tooth fracture. I can't even produce proper vibrato anymore since the infection spread to my soft pallate and caused me to need to have a root canal and oral surgery. I can't imagine going though that at the age of 70 or 80. I know it would be much worse.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I think it stemmed from my observations on how little people appreciate things. I have an aquaintance who took over my admin duties for the NIN fan club and she's experiencing all sorts of frustration due to this behavior. Instead of simply appreciating that someone new is on board who cares about the club, people complain about her way of doing things simply because they're new. Or, if they do like her, instead of simply giving words of encouragement, they'd rather display their affection by bashing me. Its just negative energy all around. I worry about her at times. Why surround one's self with such negativity? Say we did have exactly 70 years to live, would it be worth using up some of those precious days to deal with these types of people? This applies to a lot of things in life. Why stay in a bad relationship? Why stay in a bad job?

I need a fucking martini right about now. *yawns*