My Tweets as Pictures: Twelve

I’ve decided to start running again. If I run 5 miles a day, I can be out of the state by next Monday.

Stoned

I’m no fashion blogger. I admire them, and sometimes peek at a few for new releases. But I’m terrible at attributing items in my photos and I tend to wear the same stuff all the time, so I’d be the world’s most boring fashionista.

When Clementine Ishtari announced that she was looking for bloggers for a new home and garden event, I jumped at the chance. I admire Clementine’s work, and I was sad to see Awesome Blossom close earlier this year. I’m thrilled to have been accepted as a blogger for Nook and Cranny, which will start later this summer.

Signing on for Nook & Cranny also put me in the group to receive hunt items for the upcoming Mesh Around Hunt, which is being organized by The Ego Company, and launches tomorrow. I don’t know how people keep up with reviews and hunt items and find time to blog them all. I admire anyone who does!

I had time to open a few of the hunt preview items, but I’m only blogging one of them today.  Partly because I’m still figuring all of this out, and partly because it’s so beautiful it deserves a post of its own.

This is the Geode Ring, from HANDverk. It’s the Mesh Around hunt gift from Daphne Klossovsky. It’s my first piece of mesh jewelry, and I love the clarity and detail.

I’d kill myself with a ring this large in real life, but I love it here.

The Mesh Around hunt is grid-wide, and a great opportunity to try new mesh items. You can get more info here.

My Tweets as Pictures: Eleven

I can play all of those memories by year.

My Tweets as Pictures: Ten

It’s not a cherry Kool-Aid moustache. I’m a grown up. It’s a Pomegranate and Goji Crystal Lite moustache.

My Tweets as Pictures: Nine

If I fall silent you should assume that I grew hopelessly despondent over this relentless sunshine and stabbed myself to death with a spoon.

My Tweets as Pictures: Eight

Welcome to my brain! 1st floor, women’s lingerie. 2nd floor, crippling childhood trauma. Top floor, fear of super-gluing my eye shut again.

(You can always click through to see the pic bigger and mo’ betta. This one especially looks better when you do.)

My Tweets as Pictures: Seven

Nothing gets bloodstains out of your childhood.

I Love the Internet

Yesterday someone sent me a kind comment on Flickr about one of my photos, and also congratulated me on having been chosen as the SL Pic of the Day. Imagine my surprise when I went searching to find that the photo above had been chosen as the SL Featured Pic of the Day back on May 8th. It took me  a while to find it, because I had no idea what she was talking about.

Had I never received her comment, I would have never known.

The SL Pic of the Day is pulled from the Second Life group pool on Flickr. I’m not clear on who chooses the pic each day, but I can tell you that there are hundreds of SL pics posted in that pool daily. So I’m hugely honored to have been featured. Yay me!

But, what the fuck, Linden Lab? Someone (presumably a Linden, although who the hell knows) scrolls through the hundreds of pics in the pool, chooses one to be featured, downloads it, notes attribution, and then uploads it to the Second Life Inworld blog, the Second Life G+ page, the Second Life Facebook page and the Second Life Tumblr page. For a whole day, my snapshot was featured in all of those places. How cool is that?! But it would have been even better if I had known.

In the midst of all of these steps that PhotoDude Linden had to take to feature my shot in all of these places, how hard would it have been to leave a comment on my pic at Flickr? Something along the lines of, “Hey congrats! We loved your pic and we’re featuring it as the SL Pic of the Day!”

It’s a simple thing.

Had they done that, I would have been thrilled. I would have tweeted, blogged, and shouted from the highest mountain. I mean, dude, what an honor to be chosen as one of only 365 pics a year out of thousands? Huge honor. Totally thrilled. Huzzah.

But instead, three weeks later I’m finding out in a roundabout way and completely astounded by LL’s constant communications failings. I’ve said it before, and others far more eloquent and knowledgeable have said it time and again, Linden Lab is missing so many opportunities to effectively communicate that at this point it’s almost comical.

But it’s really not comical, it’s really sad. I love the internet, I adore virtual worlds and I have a soft spot for Second Life. But, DUDE, get a clue. Linden Lab fails at the smallest of things, the simplest communication. And each missed communication is a missed opportunity to please a customer. And shouldn’t that be your goal, LL? To please your customers? I mean, really. The ineptitude is staggering.

And yet, here I am, logging into SL in what little free time I have. Does that make me an idiot?

No, this makes me an idiot:

Or a genius.

Harlow Heslop started a Golden Peen Contest on her blog. And since this is the internet, we rallied around the penis.

This is partly why I still log into Second Life. Yes, PeenHenge. And also Marx there. She’s the cute one, not the giant one. I log in because it’s fun, I have friends there, and I can enjoy freedom and expression. I log in to Second Life because I like it there.

But I dislike the feeling that no one is steering this ship. Coms are down, the toilets are overflowing and there’s a fat guy puking in the buffet. We’re running amok in the halls and using the life jackets as pool toys. And we’re trying to ignore the fact that there are icebergs in this here water.

Or something like that.

I love Second Life. I want to see it succeed, thrive and grow. And I do my part by spending what little mad money I have there, using my own voice to extol its many peen virtues, and these days showing off how creative Second Life can be with photos.

But as Linden Lab continues to repeatedly and spectacularly fail at even the  most basic communications, I can’t help but think I want Second Life to succeed more than the Lab does.

And even I know that’s a failing business model.

Guess What

I’m not perfect.

You’re not either.

You’d think, what with all of us being imperfect and stuff, that we wouldn’t be so freaky about letting those imperfections show. Or at the very least accept that we’re imperfect and move on.  But instead we hide our freak flags, mask our imperfections and tuck our wobbly bits into Spanx. Metaphorically speaking of course, since I don’t have any wobbly bits.

I’m raising daughters, and it’s exhausting to work so hard to counter popular culture’s message that perfection is the ideal. My girls are real people, with beauty and flaws. But those flaws don’t negate the beauty, inside or out. That’s a tough message to get across today.

I lead by example, by proudly displaying my flaws for all to see. I admit my shortcomings, I don’t cover my scars and everyone here can list the things I’ve done wrong (and they do, daily).  I’ve found that admitting my imperfections makes it easier to improve on them, and try to do better next time. Everyone works harder with an audience, after all.

The program at my daughter’s high school graduation this weekend said, “Strive for Perfection.” And during the three day speech from some president of something boring, I pondered that message to the graduates.  Should you strive for the unattainable?

Oh, I get the whole, “If  you reach for the stars you may not get them but you’ll be higher since you tried…” or some such. I understand that setting goals, even hugely out of reach goals, can help us make progress. But, perfection?

Granted, “Strive for Acceptance of Your Imperfections” doesn’t look as nice in gilded gold script. But that’s what I want for my daughters. Perhaps true perfection is seeing the real world and the real people in it, and loving them anyway. Recognizing that you will never be perfect, and loving yourself all the same. We should all strive for that.

My Tweets as Pictures: Six

The weeds my neighbor carelessly tossed in my yard are the most beautiful flowers in the vase.

My Tweets as Pictures: Five

I don’t miss vodka because it made me drunk, I miss it because it made me deaf. 

My Tweets as Pictures: Four

My story is the same as yours, only different. 

My Tweets as Pictures: Three

Negotiating the terms of my surrender to this jar of peanut butter.

My Tweets as Pictures: Two

As much time as I spend looking out windows, you’d think I would actually enjoy being outside.

My Tweets as Pictures: One

The blood that runs through my veins is type fucking crazy.

Embrace the Cliche

Fragile

Mother’s Day

My mom is a brilliant artist, has a great sense of humor and is smart as hell. Everyone loves her and goes on and on about how cool she is. But my mom was never a good mother. l did learn a lot about how to be a good mother from my mom, but it was from her example of what not to do.

I realize how harsh that sounds. Hallmark doesn’t make a card that says, “Thanks Mom, for keeping me alive until I was 16 and could move out to save myself.” To say that I had a strained relationship with my family would be the understatement of the decade.

My sister and I shared the same difficult childhood, but we had very different ways of coping. I chose distance and therapy. She chose suppression and denial. My way was better.

Before her head injury, my mom and I rarely spoke. My sister and I were civil to each other, but only communicated in the most superficial way, and then generally only about our kids. We got together on special occasions, but I always scheduled extra therapy following “family time.”

I’m a damn good mom. I’ve provided my kids with everything I never had, and so much more. Watching my daughters grow up in a nurturing, supportive and safe home has been better therapy than all the years I’ve spent on The Couch. I’m proud of my girls, and of the mom that I’ve been for them. I fought hard to be healthier for them, and for myself.

The irony of my situation now is not lost on me. That I am now caring for my mom and my sister is such a cruel cosmic joke that it almost makes me believe in an evil god with a twisted sense of humor. But my childhood beat any belief in a higher being out of me years ago.

This is the strangest Mother’s Day that’s ever been. Even stranger than the year I was 10, and my mom left me in a hotel in Breckenridge on Mother’s Day and didn’t come back til Tuesday. This year is strange because my mom is a different person. That marble block changed her profoundly. Oh, she’s still self centered, selfish, myopic and narrow minded. But she’s also bewildered, fragile, childlike and hard to hate. The very part of me that I worked so hard to develop and that I am so proud of – the mom in me- is what feels compassion toward these new traits in my mother. Her helplessness is taking advantage of my maternal instincts- even though it’s totally subconscious and even though she never showed any maternal instincts toward me.

That she now benefits from my compassionate mommy heart is an incredible irony.

My sister’s insides are winding down like the gears of a clock with a dying battery. Her liver isn’t doing its job, which is making it hard for the rest of her body to keep up. This Mother’s Day I left my kids in charge of my mom and my niece- and each other- to spend the day at the hospital with my sister. What a fucked up state of affairs.

I’m glad I’m a mom, and I’m proud of being a good one. I’m still working out how I feel about the rest of it.

Don’t even get me started on Father’s Day.

Conforming, Deforming and Mesh

I remember when I got my first prim hair. My first sculpted clothing. The first time I fitted prim nipples. Change can be exciting, but it can also be difficult. So far, I have some mixed feelings about mesh.

I love mesh furniture. LOVE IT. I could not be more pleased with the mesh pieces I’ve incorporated into my home, and I intend to blog about them. But right now, I’m talking about mesh clothing. I’m having a hard time embracing it. Mainly because it’s having a hard time embracing me.

Now, I’ve read the whole “just adjust your shape and shut up about it” crap. I get that. I downloaded the Standard Sizing Package to try to understand how best to wear mesh. The thing is, I don’t have all day to make a new shape for each outfit I wear, nor do I have the patience. And frankly, I worked hard on my shape. I didn’t buy a shape; I measured my own body and learned about proportion and I crafted my shape. I’m very proud of my shape, and I dislike having to constantly tweak it.

Here’s my everyday “me” shape. (And because I had my hair cut just like this a few days ago, this is now my everyday “me” hair.)

In the real world it took me 6 years of running 5 miles a day. In virtual worlds, it took me several hours of tweaking and fine tuning.

Here I am in a typical dress on clothing layers, with a prim crotch-flap skirt:

Enter mesh. One of the things I adore about mesh is the ability to take shots like this one:

No way I could have ever taken a shot like that with a prim or sculpty skirt. That dress is mesh, so I also could have never taken that shot without adjusting my shape pretty significantly. Even with the alpha layer that hides some of my body, I cannot wear 100% of the mesh clothes I put on without adjusting my shape.

According to the Standard Sizing guidelines, I am closest to a size Small.  But even in a small, my body thickness is too high, and nothing fits. The more I  move, the worse it looks. And apparently, my breasts are far smaller than the “standard” sizes, as I constantly have a large gap between my tits and the garment. In some outfits this looks far worse than others, but in all of them, it’s unattractive.

This dress from Ison has an alpha that completely erases my boobs, but the gap looks bizarre. This is the size small dress. It doesn’t look so bad from the front, but from any other angle, I have a huge space between my chest and the dress. The only way to fix that is to make my tits much bigger, which I am loathe to do. Or I can try the next size down, an XS:

The XS fits my boobs a bit better, but the shape is so far off from my own, I look like a bobble-head. The second shot is the dress worn without the shape altering Alpha layer.

This next dress from Mons comes in 2 sizes: big boob and smaller boob. I figured YAY, I guess I have smaller boobs, so maybe this one will fit. (And yes, I know I should always try Demos before buying. Don’t lecture me.)

But even the smaller boob size has a very large gap, which gets even worse when I move at all.

But the thing I do like about this dress is that the breast area is at least shaped well. Most mesh pieces that I’ve bought make the boobs look rather shapeless and “mound-ish,” without a nice hug to my curves.

Like this next number from Ladies Who Lunch. You don’t even want to know what I paid for this outfit, and I’m not gonna tell you so stop asking. Considering I can’t wear it, it was far too much. No matter how I tweak, or how much I work, I cannot get this outfit to fit me. And speaking of mounded boobs! This is just a NO- which is a shame, as I really love the print. This is one of the worst shape offenders so far.

One mesh outfit that I do love, and wear quite often is this one:

The top is from Cold Logic, the skirt is from Mon Tissu. I love that the skirt is a blend of system layer and mesh crotch piece. It moves so perfectly and never gaps oddly, and I didn’t have to even wear an alpha for it. The top fits well enough, but I still have the nipple exposing gap.

If that’s not the look I’m going for, this top looks just fine with a bra underneath. I refuse to make my tits bigger to fit a shirt. My C cups are just fine, spank you very much.

Here’s a dress from Boom that has a great shape and shading, even around the breasts.

I have several mesh items in my inventory that will never, ever be worn. And that’s a real shame. The pieces that I do love, I’ll wear when I have time to tweak and play with my shape. But for everyday wear, I still don’t choose a lot of mesh. Between the boob mound, chest gap and standard sizing issues, it’s just too much hassle. Hopefully, just like prim hair and sculpty clothes, things will continue to improve. I’m not even mentioning Qarl’s mesh deformer yet- it could make a real difference, but I’m not convinced it will happen anytime soon.

As for standard sizing, there is really no such thing. Sure, clothing makers need a guide. But the beauty of the world lies in its variety, not in its conformity. It’ll take more than a pretty mesh dress to make me conform to a “standard” body size.

Silly Expectations of a Dream

I don’t buy many dresses inworld, and especially dresses that aren’t made for moving around. In SL, some dresses just don’t wear well at all; they’re good for taking pics and not much else. I’m a frugal fashionista, so I would normally never buy a dress just for a pic.

But that’s exactly what I did. It helps that sales benefit the Ashraya Project. And that the dress is gorgeous. That helped too.

You can find the dress at Anture’s booth.

You can find the hat at Lode Hat’s booth.

You can find the song that’s stuck in my head here.

New Ink

I have several tattoos in the real world, and will be getting a new one next week. (Yay!)

But I very rarely wear tattoos in virtual worlds, mainly because they just don’t look right to me. They lack a clarity against the skin, and I dislike their muddy look. I thought maybe  I should look again, and see if anyone is doing better work that I could wear.

Who’s your favorite tattoo maker inworld?

One a Day

I’ve been taking a picture a day. This may not sound like a lot, but I’m trying to make each one reflect my mood, or something that’s going on. I’ve been posting them on my Flickr, but I’ve decided to post them here too.

One a day. Sometimes accompanied by words. Sometimes not. They always look better bigger, like most things, so click through to mo’ betta admire my genius.

Hats off to good pose makers. I wanted to make my own pose for this shot, yesterday:

Making a good, natural pose is difficult. Far more difficult than I expected. My kudos to those who do it well. For now I’ll stick with using theirs.

No, this isn’t a 365 project. I can barely commit to waking up tomorrow, much less posting a pic every single day for a year. But when I’m taking them, I might as well post them.

There’s two for today. Thanks for peeking.

Maybe I Should: Part 1

I’ve worn the same skin in Second Life for years. Not just the same brand, but the same skin.

Maybe I should buy a new skin.

I like my avatar to look like me. I know, color me weird. My shape is based on my real world shape and I looked for skins that looked like mine. I’m short in RL, only 5’1″ and while I may have gained a few since I’m too tired to I stopped running, I’m still considered petite. I have gobs off sun damage freckles, and until my family sucked the life from me the past year aged me, I always looked young for my age.

 

So when I found this Curio skin years ago, I swooned. It looked like me (only better). Curio skins have always had a youthful face, and with my short shape I was often mistaken for a child avi. I worked hard to dress and style my avi to look more adult. And when makeup  tattoo layers were introduced, I just revamped my look with those, and kept on wearing the same skin. (Although it’s hard to find lipstick tattoos that fit Curio skins well, as her lips are freakishly full. I like to think of them as kissable.)

I also wore Curio because she was one of the few skinmakers doing nice freckles, back in the day. Now I can add freckles to any skin, which should make shopping easier, right?

My skin was made pre-windlight in SL. Yeah, it’s that old. So I decided to  look around at other skins. Surely there was something newer that I could love as much as my old Curio Breeze.

Sidenote: Whiskey isn’t my first avatar, she was an alt. I committed avicide on my main account a couple of years ago. When I made Whiskey, I tried to make her  not look like me. She had dark skin, dark hair, a much rounder body. That lasted all of 2 weeks. I just couldn’t get comfy in her. Even as an alt to play around in, I wanted my avi to look like me. Here’s Whiskey’s old, darker skin:

Curio’s June, in Bean

Buying new skin isn’t easy! For one thing, nice skin stores are laggy as hell, even with my new UberComputer. It takes eons to look at the skins, and you’re lucky if the Demo gets delivered. (Tip: Check to be sure that it did before you leave the store, else you’ll have to go through it all again.) The Marketplace wasn’t much help, I only got 4 demos from there, the rest I had to fight for inworld.

And then there’s the originality fear. I don’t want to look like everyone else. Popular skins are popular for a reason. They’re either gorgeous, or they’re cheap. I tend to dislike the typical skins, simply because they’re overdone. I want something simple and understated, not Drag Queen Fabulous.

First I went to Curio, to see what was new there. I picked up a half dozen demos, but over time Curio skins have gone all Benjamin Button, getting younger and younger looking with each release. I doubted I’d find anything better than my old standard.

A quick peek at the SL fashion feeds showed the same skins being worn over and over. I grabbed some landmarks and fought the teeming hordes of gap-legged pouty-faced beggars and grabbed some demos.

Then I went to my photo platform, got nekid, and tried them on. I wasn’t concerned about the body yet. The face is where I see my skin, the body can be dealt with later. I tried to find the most natural makeup for each demo, as I don’t wear dark or dramatic makeup much. My everyday skin is a la naturale. But some skin makers still over-do their most basic face, which is frustrating.

I used Nam’s Optimal Skin & Prim windlight setting. I haven’t tweaked my shape for any of these. (God I hate tweaking my shape.) Here’s the demos I picked up.

From Curio:

First of all, my normal skin, Breeze from Curio.

Now here’s Downtown. (All of these are in the skintone called Sundust.) Curio’s faces are almost out of focus these days. These are all fully rezzed.

Here’s Meadow. I love the blonde brows, and the lips are sweet:

Curio’s Candy. Looks a lot like Meadow? And also a lot like my 18 year old daughter. (No. Just no.)

Airhead, one of the more mature looking newer skins, but still far too young for me.

This is Beach, and the shading is to harsh for my taste.

And lastly from Curio, this is Sprout. While this is by far the youngest looking face she makes, I also have to say I love the fresh, natural look. I wish more skinmakers would make a purely natural face, and offer make-up tattoos. I love a blank slate.

So I went to LAQ. Here’s what I picked up:

This is Thea. LAQ has dark brows, with the option of a lighter brow in a tattoo layer.

LAQ’s Olivia. I actually really like these faces, but the lighter eyebrow layers wouldn’t rezz for me.

This is Lovisa. I love the natural look, love the freckles. This actually looks quite a bit like me in RL without make-up (my eyelashes are blonde), 10 years ago.

Ebba is another very sweet face, with light makeup. Add some freckles, and I might love it. She’s not quite as youthful as the others I tend to like. But this skin is being worn by every other blogger out there.

And the rest of them are wearing Leah, from Glam Affair. I feel like a drag queen in Glam Affair skins, but thought I’d try it. I really, really dislike the blonde tattoo layer- it looks far too ashy. Not a good look. But this skin is so gorgeous on others. Go figure.

It would be SO MUCH EASIER to try on skins if designers would  name them something that makes sense. I didn’t want to have to go through 20 different makeup names to find the most natural. You would think that the first makeup would be lightest, but no. I finally gave up. This is Jadis V2 from Glam Affair.

League’s Jen skin gets a lot of airtime on the blogs too. But I found it far too harsh for my taste.

Here’s Amber, also from League. I know I said I wasn’t worried about bodies yet, but I will say, League’s bods are hot.

It took me forever to try just these skins. I’ve got several more Demos in a folder for next time I have a few hours to try them. For now, I’ll stick with my old fave.

 

 

Zoning Out

I’ve been exploring more, when I have time. I’m being introduced to Second Life all over again. I’m no Honour McMillan, but I’m enjoying seeing art installations that I was never able to view before I got a computer that would rezz them.

When you view a work of art from your own unique perspective, you’re adding your own dimension to what the artist presents, and yours is totally different from anyone else viewing the same piece. Duh, right?  The artist can control the angles, the paths, the windlight, the spots that draw the eye, but she can’t really decide how I am impacted by the work.

One person’s joyous expression of life can be another’s dark vision of hell- kinda like kids. It depends on where you are in your own head. It’s impossible to step totally outside yourself; you can’t see the world through someone else’s eyes or heart.

I explored Mysterious Wave (slurl) for a few minutes this morning, and I felt very little. I wasn’t especially moved by the work, nor did it evoke big swelling emotions like other works I’ve seen.  But of course, considering the week I’ve had, that could be entirely due to my own mood.

I wanted to feel moved by it, because it’s impressive. You can’t get a feel for the scale in photos, you have to visit to really appreciate it. And maybe you’ll feel more inspired by it than I was.

Feeling Everything and Nothing

My sister isn’t an “animal person.” I’ve known a few of those in my life and coincidentally,  I got along with zero of them. I am an animal person, through and through. Specifically, I’m a dog person. I’ve had a dog every day of my adult life. Of all of them, my Spock was absolutely the best dog I’ve never known.

You can meet him here, if you’d like to know more about him.

I lost my Ubergoob last night. His seizures finally took him from me. The sense of loss isn’t just acute. It’s deep. It’s related to my entire circumstances now. I’m moving from a home that I built myself, taking my entire extended family with me. I’m committing to long-term care of my mother, and continuing care for my sister for as long as it takes. My youngest daughter is graduating in May, and for a lifelong homeschooler, that’s huge. My oldest is leaving for the summer. Everything is changing. And did I mention that packing sucks ass?

Losing my boy in the midst of all of this has wrecked me more than I expected it to. I’m self aware enough to know that it’s a symptom of the bigger picture, and that angers me. I want to feel grief for my Boy, without it being muddied by grief for all of the other losses I’m feeling. But I can’t tease apart the strands of individual feelings right now. I’m just grieving for it all.

Life changes. I’m okay with change. (Shut up, Marx. I am.)

I’d just like to see some changes for the better, for a change.

RIP My Constant Shadow

I will find a way to grieve for you.

Fake it Til You Feel it

I’m exhausted. But by god I’m smiling.

People are comforted by a smile. Even fake smiles, if they’re good enough. As a kid I learned that adults left you pretty much alone if you smiled and gave them the answers they wanted. As an adult I’ve found that if you smile, people think things are okay.

Even when they aren’t.

So I smile, hoping to keep everyone else from coming unraveled. I’m faking it, but I’m not feeling it.

If the “primary caregiver” goes to shit, everything else falls apart. It doesn’t matter that I want to cry, scream, throw thing and strangle kittens- I don’t have that luxury.

Before my sister was handed the Big C diagnosis, I had never known anyone who had gone through this. People got cancer, and died. Or they got treatment and got better. I heard about them, but I never dealt with it personally. How long this might take – well, I’d never thought of it.

When my sister was diagnosed, her prognosis was poor. For the next several months, we all thought that each thing was The Last Thing- her last birthday, last Christmas, last school play. We all worked hard to keep it together, so that her last things would be special for my sister and her wee beastie. We were in a holding pattern of sorts. There was before, and there would be an after. We were in between. Life was on hold while we dealt with this between. We’d get back to our lives after.

But she beat the odds, sortof. More than a year into treatments, and we’re still here. In between.

Don’t get me wrong- I’m thrilled she’s still here. No matter how badly we get along or how bitchy she may be toward me, she’s my sister. She’s the mother of the most amazing girl in all the land. I want her here. Well, let’s be honest, I want her alive and elsewhere. But I don’t want her to die.

I had no idea we’d still be dealing with this, for so fucking long. We’ve met patients who have been undergoing cancer treatments for a decade! A decade of this!! Years of chemo, radiation, tests, drugs, studies- YEARS I say! I can’t keep this smile stuck on for years.

But for now, I’ll keep faking it, hoping that one day soon, I’ll feel it.

 

Everybody’s Famous

“I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is “In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.”
― Andy Warhol

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
― Andy Warhol

“Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.”
― Andy Warhol

“I don’t know where the artificial stops and the real starts.”
― Andy Warhol

“If everyone isn’t beautiful, then no one is.”
― Andy Warhol

Worth a Thousand Words?

As a writer, I’ve always believed that words are worth a thousands words, not pictures. Sure, a picture can convey a lot, but it’s the words around it that really tell the story. I would never have called myself a visual person, unless looking at words counts.

I’m collaborating with Botgirl Questi on an SL parody song and video. We’ve been batting around lyrics for a week. But neither of us seems really inspired by the lyrics. Botgirl, however, has been inspired by the video. She’s already produced three trailers for a song we’ve not even written! (you can see them at her blog.)

And in that week, I’ve taken hundreds of pictures in Second Life. (you can see some of them at my flickr.) I’ve barely written a thing. In fact, my last significantly wordy post here was titled Words Words Words, and topic was all about how words matter.

But right now, words aren’t coming. Maybe someday I’ll learn to balance a strong visual idea, like the ones I’ve been creating with pictures, with the right words. There are plenty of bloggers who do both. For now, I seem to be stuck in the images in my head, instead of the prose.

And that’s new.

I’m certain the words will come back. I just hope the visuals stay, as well.

Little Things

When the big things in life are shit, I work extra hard to remember the little things that offer joy. And since I’m cynical and catty, I have to balance out my karma by saying some nice things out loud.

The Little Things that make me happy today are all birds. Go figure.

There’s a baby robin and a wee mockingbird living on my dining room table. It never fails, every year, we wind up with a parade of teeny birdies to tend to. My youngest is the bird whisperer. These little guys are stretching their wings in the back yard today. It’s quite a sight.

There are wrens in the fern on the front porch, a heron checking out my koi pond, and a nest of wee tiny finches in the oak tree. I feel like Snow White, only blonde. And minus the midgets. Also I can’t sing for shit. What I mean to say is- there are birds everyfuckingwhere.

This time last year, I got a new tattoo. It gives me joy.

My tattoo artist is in town. I’m thinking about new ink. I’m not sure what I want to commemorate in my life. But that’s a big thing.

Right now, I’m focusing on the little birds things.

Don’t Look at Me

What are you, a Peeping Tom?

When I drape myself outside my own window, I expect privacy. How dare you look at me.

If you’d like my tongue, it’s firmly pressed into my cheek.