TV Screen Endangering Commercials

I need to vent my spleen as it has filled up with whatever goes into spleens. I've seen that commercial again. The one that makes me want to strangle a teacher. It goes something like this:

Two couples playing Scrabble. One person puts down the word 'you'. The next person says, "I'll build on that word," and sets down the letters n e f c . Another alert Scrabble player says, "Hey, that's not a word-- and you're a teacher!"

Then, the worlds most retarded teacher says-- and I swear she says this-- "Yes it is a word. It's pronounced "nefque" and it STANDS FOR Nassau Educators Federal Credit Union."

That's when I start yelling at my TV. "THAT'S STILL NOT A WORD YOU STUPID FREAKIN' BITCH!!!! AND YOU'RE A TEACHER!!!!!"


This angers me more than the people who cannot do simple tasks like drain spaghetti or peel an egg. The worst offender in my opinion is the dumb bunny who needs a Snuggie because she doesn't know how to use a blanket. A blanket. She has a problem covering herself with a blanket. I need to repeat this: She cannot cover herself with a blanket without major frustration and failure. This is probably why she needs to buy a robe and put it on backwards.



You know who else needs a cockpunch? That stupid fucking hipster in the Sam Adams commercial. The one who never tasted Sam Adams before. Why he never tasted it before, I don't know. Probably because he's a stupid fucking hipster and it's not PBR in a can.

But that's all right. You can be a stupid fucking hipster in your plaid pork pie hat if you wanna. Just don't try to sound like a smart fucking hipster by saying, "I obviously was selling myself short by not even considering this as a possibility." No, you were not selling yourself short. You were selling Sam Adams short. You stupid fucking hipster.


How about the guy that the worst thing that ever happened to him was that he had to leave work and wait in line at the post office. If that's the worst thing that ever happened to you, you need to STFU and go buy some more stamps.  Although I don't find him half as rage inducing as the woman in that same postage scam commercial.

"Can you only get stamps? No, you stupid person. What a dumb question I just asked myself and ascribed to you so that I can talk down to you."

HELP

I Only Ever Leave The House To Eat These Days

A short while ago, me and hubby went to Smorgasburg in Prospect Park and had a very lovely time. Almost everything we ate was delicious. Almost.

First off, it was a great day and a great crowd. Not to thin so as too look sad but not so crowded that a streetsweeper is needed in order to take two steps.

We went hungry. Don't see a need to eat anything before going to a smorgasborg, erm, burg. When we got there, we made a beeline to Porchetta for a roast pork sandwich. This is NOT a picture of the roast pork sandwich. We were so hungry we scarfed down the delicious, delicious, oh so delicious pork sandwich which I didn't even think to take a picture of. I'm not sure what this is a picture of but it looks yummy, doesn't it?

I saw a sign for arepas. I LOVE arepas and had to have some. But instead of a delectable slice of fried cornbready and melted cheese heaven, I was given this . . . thing. Palenque claims to be Colombian, but they spell flavor with a "u". What self respecting American spells flavor with a "u"? These people ain't Colombian and that ain't no arepa. I took one bite and handed it to Dany. He was much more intrepid. I took two bites. We actually threw it away.

THIS is a corn and cheese arepa. A nummy, nummy corn and cheese arepa. Can you imagine throwing this beauty away?

Throwing food in the garbage made me hungry. Good thing there were a gazillion food stalls. Bombay Sandwich Co. made giant samosas and mango lassi that were gobbled up posthaste.

It was now time for dessert. If you have read this blog before, you may remember the last time me and Dany were out and I had to have some ice cream, things did not end well for me. In fact, it all came out in the end. Explosively. Luckily for me Alchemy Creamery makes non dairy ice cream. It was almost exactly like eating regular ice cream except for the creamy part. I'da had seconds if it wasn't for the fact that I was finally stuffed.

We didn't get a coconut but we did spend quite some time watching this man swing his machete around like a Baby Doc Duvalier supporter. From far back in the crowd. And keeping a close count of his fingers.

And lastly, we did not rent a bike. This is a family sized bike. There were all sizes and we thought about it but the line to rent was about an hour long. I, for one, plan to go back to Prospect Park just to rent on of these and look like a complete dork.

Feeling Old? Here Are Some Buildings As Old As Civilization

Seriously only barely making one blog post per week but that doesn't mean I can't bore you with shit I find endlessly fascinating. Another data point that may be of interest: The worst I feel, the more I fucking curse.

Barnenez:

Earliest carbon dating for this site is about 4800 BC, out-dating the oldest Egyptian pyramid by 2000 years. Just so you know, this is how we was living just shy of 5000 years ago.

Gobekli Tepe

The digging guys-- who I have a romance all about if only I can get the freaking 1980's romance OUT OF MY DAMNED HEAD AND ONTO THE PAGE-- have dated this dig to about  7550 BC or so. My hypothetical romance dig dates long before this Gobekli Tepe. Don't worry. I'm not trying to change pre-history. Just trying to get some boomchicka wow wow in with the fascinating history of prehistoric digs. Also, my make-believe dig is in Eastern United States. A long way away from where this real site is in Turkey.


The Tumulus of Bougon or, even better, The Necropolis of Bougon

The earliest of these buildings has been dated to about 4800 BC and was found stuffed full of skeletons. More excavations in the French town of Bougon revealed even more building filled with skeletons. And arrowheads, broken pottery and beads. Which leads me to believe that the prehistoric French built sturdier houses for bones and garbage than they did for the living.


Saint-Michel Tumulus

See? Another tumulus in France that survived from pre-history. Also filled with dead people. And don't be fooled like I was. This ancient burial mound is near Carnac, which is on the other side of France from Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. Mound Saint Michel, Mont Saint Michel-- easy to get them confused. 

See? Easily confused!

Totally And Completely Blocked

Can't write. It's killing me. Gotta do it but words coming not at all. Imagine scene in head many times then words on paper go. But this not happening. Instead only pictures for paint. Romance and blog fall to wayside. I paint picture of  dinosaur.

"Rawr" say T-Rex, "Asteroid destroy whole world. Michele no can write few ten thousand word. Michele be destroyed my asteroid!"

Michele now go stare at blank screen. Write maybe one hundred word. No word come. Michele wait for asteroid.

In Which I Pay Tribute To 80's Romance Couple

It has been hot as balls stuck to thighs around here. Today is either the fourth or fifth day over 95 degrees. When it gets this hot, the tiny little electric fan on the computer table is very little use to me or my computer. What I end up doing is sitting down, sweating profusely after 5 minutes-- especially underboob, imagine I'm dying of heat stroke doing the strenuous exercise of moving my fingers across the keyboard and heading back upstairs to the only air conditioned room in the house. Trouble is, I can't write up there in the bedroom. The writing computer is the desktop downstairs. Upstairs is my Fire and my paints.

I hear that there are people who write novels on their Kindle Fire. To them I say, "How the fuck, dudes?" I can't even write a passable YouTube comment on my Fire.  What I can do upstair, however, is paint. Right on my bed. Drives my husband batty. Here's a painting called Help!:

Yesterday I was feeling specially guilty for not adding to the 2,000 words I've typed so far. That's out of about 15,000 I need to finish this thing off. But I was thinking about 80s Romance. Problem was, I wasn't thinking about the hard crap I'm trying to get down now. It's really boring, early character and situation set-up that's bogging me down. Instead I was thinking of the ending missing chapters with the homina-homina bowchickie-wow wow. So I painted this:

There was more wanted to impart to you all today but the sweat has dripped from my eyelash directly into my eye and now my eyeball is on fire like the rest of my sweltering body. I hear there is a cooler front making its way to us here in the Baked Apple. We should be getting some relief by Thursday night. I will be seeking relief right now by going upstairs where I won't die.

Space As I Promised

Space painting is fun and easy. You should do it. Really. Here is a lovely young lady to show you a fast and easy way to paint nebulae.



I tried this technique painting the bug nebula. Some call it the butterfly nebula but scientists call it bug and so will I. Here is a picture of the bug nebula taken by NASA:

You can see why some call it the butterfly nebula. Anyway, here is my terrible rendition of the bug nebula:

The green was supposed to be underneath the pink and red but the pink and red did not have the covering power. Still, so much fun to paint.


I also painted the Milky Way. I did not use the lovely Empathy Film's technique. I did sort of a free-hand, off the top of my head type dealie and was very proud of myself when two separate people knew it was the Milky Way on sight.

Here's where I point out that photographs of space paintings are non-representational. At least mine are. Some paintings look lovely in real life but take horrible pictures. Some are pieces of crap IRL but photograph beautifully. I could not get a good picture of The Milky Way to save my life. But this picture of the very, very bad painting of aurora borealis does not at all convey how awful this painting really is.

This painting is worse than paint-over bad. It's burn the canvas bad.

I was waiting until I had the whole solar system down before I made a Space entry, but as I have mentioned, painting has fallen by the wayside while I struggle with getting down perhaps a grand total of 15,000 words in a very simple story. From Monday until right now at this very moment, I have gotten down 1872 words. I know because Word very helpfully mocks me with this fact every time I open it.

Now on to the solar system-- my second and third paintings ever were the sun and the moon. Don't remember which order. They came out nice. I must say, I've gotten much better at blending my shading since I did the moon. Still, I kinda like the stark rings around it.

Since then I've been having astrological problems with my space paintings. Take Mars for example.

I painted stars in the shadowed part of the planet, as if you can see stars through Mars. It took me quite a while to figure out why, although my Mars came out pretty well, there was something very off about this painting.


My lack of an astrophysiology degree again rears it's stupid-ass head with Jupiter and Io.

It was supposed to be Jupiter and a very distant Neptune (why Neptune and not Saturn? Because I don't know how to paint rings), only that isn't distant at all. In fact, it's too close to Jupiter to be Io. Actually it is to close to Jupiter to live and far, far too large.  What do I know about proportion and perspective? Apparently, about as much as I know about astrophysics.


As is evidenced by my Neptune's Moon.

What gave me the silly idea that it would be cloudy on Neptune's moon? This time I'm giving myself an out. Triton does have a thin nitrogen and methane atmosphere. So that explains the haze.

That's it. I don't know when I'll finish the solar system. After another 13,000 words AND I learn how to paint planetary rings.

Creativity Is Zero-Sum For Me So Therefore: Trees

When I was a child I wrote. A lot. Didn't write for other people to see because that would be embarrassing, but I had notebooks and loose papers and snippets of stories all over the place. This continued well into my young adulthood. I got over being embarrassed and thought, hey! wouldn't it be nice if someone paid me for this? And that's when I realized nobody cared.

In my regular adulthood I discovered mosaic. This is where I found I had a love for boxes. If there was a plain box within eye sight, that shit was going to get covered in tesserae. I didn't write much, though. But I did make a beautiful mosaic box where we keep my deceased brother-in-law.

About ten years ago, my son gave me a how-to book, a set of tools and a box of beads and I started making jewelry. I love making jewelry and still make some on occasion. Right now, in my head, I have a pair of earrings inspired by my painting Honeybear.

Yeup, that's right. I no longer make heaps of jewelry because I started painting. A lot. I don't seem to do anything in moderation. In my computer I have folders just for tree and space paintings which I was going to share here once I painted all the planets and painted the perfect tree.

Well, now I'm writing again. From scratch and not re-doing old stuff. Which means the painting has fallen by the wayside and I may never get my perfect tree. So I'm sharing me tree folder with you now.

We'll do them in the order they were painted and see if I've made any progress.

My first painted trees. I watched a tutorial by Angela Anderson and painted them. Not bad, I thought.

But I wanted to paint a realistic tree, so watched a lesson by Clive and did this practice tree.

Night of the Triffids (yes, that's supposed to be a walking tree) is actually me trying to figure out changing the value of a color using white and black paint. The base color is Ultramarine Blue.

The secret to Paper Birch is masking tape.

I really enjoy painting backgrounds. So much so that I don't want to ruin my background by painting over it. But this worked out well. I call it Tangletree. You Xanth readers will know what I'm talking about.

Now for a tree with leaves. Had a nice, stormy background. The grass is terrible and I was going for a wind-tossed look. Getting a little bit closer to the perfect tree.

Oh well, now we are a few steps back from the perfect tree. The canopy is far, far too small and didn't know how to correct it, so I named it Stunted Cherry.







Tomorrow I'll do my space folder, which is chock full of really terrible paintings. And some cool ones too. If you'll excuse me, I'll now go back to banging my head against a Word blank page.