Mermeladas

this post is awesome!!!

I need to stop writing about my good fortune, because somebody up there doesn’t like it. Now I’m not working in a regular fashion; it turns out that I will be lucky to work in an extremely irregular and sporadic fashion. 

                                   

                                                         this is all bad fashion.

So pay-less work it is! And that’s fine, albeit really not ideal since I still need the money. Maybe this stagnation will lead to more blogging!* Maybe this is a divine sign and I ought to write more often, maybe this will be good for us. I promise to reduce my complaining and begging to a minimum, though…

That was my obligatory introduction.

It has been a while since we last spoke! I confess the inactivity was somewhat intentional: I felt too guilty to post anything since I said that I would be finished with my drawings for the contest. And until June 29th at 2:34 PM, I only had two of the three done. I guess I should reveal what contest this is first:

             

                        please appreciate this picture because I had to restart my computer                                              twice in banal attempts to upload a picture of my own.

The main idea is to draw a scene which could appear in a [good] science fiction story; this snapshot would ideally interest the viewer enough to make him or her read the story. 

I thought nobody knew about this contest, but according to Wikipedia, only hundreds of people enter the illustration contest every quarter of the year† The judges are also scarily professional and most have become scarily professional, famous, Manhattan-dwelling artists. So that was all not very encouraging, considering I don’t draw science fiction-y things and that the galleries of past winners are truly intimidating.

But I did it! And now I’m really a winner at heart, awwwwww…. Actually:

                                             

                 1) Acquire pin. 2) Write stuff on said pin. 3) Add three exclamation                                                   marks at end of stuff. 4) Make stuff undoubtedly true.

Seriously, I was very happy to have finished this. That’ll show ‘e… me.

And “what else have you been doing in the past twenty-ish days?” A good question. “Nothing worth mentioning.” A really crappy answer. But since this is a blog, and not just a blog, a Tumblr powered ‡ blog, here you have my main activities:

  • Wasting time on imgur when bored
  • Wasting time checking email and/or ¶ facebook
  • Feeling guilty about not updating ze blug
  • Forgetting things I thought would be Cool and Funny to post
  • Not finishing what I st….

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* Sad, pathetic blogging… 

† As opposed to the thousands of applicants their writing contest receives.

‡ I don’t know why this sounds silly to me when I see it, it makes perfect sense…. 

 Yeah, who am I kidding, there is no “or” there

Snakes

I enjoy making the baby snake play with the ball at the beginning: it looks so cute!

Here’s the thing

I have had nothing to blog about lately: I’m exercising every morning, finally working in a pseudo-regular fashion, and volunteering at a small, cute, gray building with great potential. It sounds like I have attained the mid-life dream,* and am as satisfied and healthy as ever. Well, there are those little could-be-better things, but all things considered, I’m in no position to complain.

                                                                        just like this, that’s me.

I have also been trying to finish those drawings for the scholarship. At this point, I’m afraid I’m not going to make my deadline —June 30th —which is stupid because I have plenty of time and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to work. Oh, it is also dumb because I delayed turning in my work three months ago. I’m working on them, and as an guilt incentive, I promise I’ll put up a mash up of the three finished drawings.

I hate that inability to get things started †, and I’m partially consoled by the fact that in 84 days, I will be the most busy I have ever been. And I’m really looking forward to that. Lately, I’ve been thinking that I’ll have the chance to explore the most complex place in the world, and it just about blows my mind. I can’t wait.

                                                                            huh?

And, okay, when I said there hadn’t been anything to blog about, I lied. These were just thoughts floating around…

It was a hot and lazy day, and I was walking back from McDonald’s, having just gotten an ice cream cone. I was licking away happily, ‡ and I wondered why there wasn’t any ice cream art. I mean, there are ice sculptures; and some of the things on that cone just looked kind of cool, in a minimalist, aesthetic way (like that one-fold-only origami) Had I just chanced upon a fresh and unexplored venue? Or a terribly boring one? Who knows!

I just know some of the things that came up on Google after “ice cream art” were sorta interesting:

                

                

                                    

                                 This is exactly what I mean! I hope this isn’t photoshopped….

                             

One last thing, I have been obsessed with Monk lately (and most of it is on Netlfix!)

       

                                                        go watch it if you haven’t

so I just about had a fit when I saw Tony Shalhoub’s facebook page!

         

Truth is, he can easily be my grandfather, and I think it’s too creepy to send him a friend request (what if he said yes!) So I have to content myself with blogging about it, sheesh….

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* without the spouse and kids, of course. But we have gone over the future-as-a-solitary-endeavor-thing. 

† laziness?

‡ When I’m rich and famous, this quote will come up without any context all the time…

Cloudy with a chance of words

Okay, I haven’t written in a while, and the word cloud above is kind of cheating. But it’ll have to do. 

Enjoy that. More later!

Let’s not look for a pattern here

So, even though I was out for most of the day, I still managed to get my daily dosage of web surfing. These are the results, in no particular order.    

          

New York, 2012. Be there. Or try to, it looks like a cool idea.

Artsy Lindsey: will it work? Frankly, the shots look overly dramatic —how could she ever pose for them without feeling stupid?

          

                                      much quicker than learning them…

              

            
                                            MAJOR WHISKER WATCH ALERT!

And finally…

            
                                                           ViHart again

threading

Over the weekend, I made a disturbing discovery.

Ever since I wrote that makeup post, I have been watching tutorials on and off when I’m bored. It was during one of those aimless searches, born of an idle brain,* that I found yet another way women regularly torture themselves in the name of beauty.

Originally, I just wanted to look at diagrams of how eyebrows are “supposed”  to look. If you’re a guy, it might be fun (or upsetting) to see how close your brows resemble the female ideal:

                                         

A) An eyebrow is born! At the corner of the eye.

B) The purported highest point of the eyebrow. It is gotten from a line connecting the edge of the nose, just where the nostril † begins, and passing through the middle of the pupil.

C) The end of the eyebrow. At the end of the line connecting the side of the nostriland the edge of the eye.

Anyway, I was reading through a lot of “all eyebrows are beautiful!” but they “can be better” fluff when I came across this word —threading.

                          

                                  this thing kept me awake for two nights when I was little

If you’re anything like me, given the topic, I just imagined a perverse version of Botox, with sewing instead of potent neurotoxins, that stitched and stretched skin all over the face. 

Instead, threading is an ingenious, albeit really weird, technique to get rid of facial hair. 

                                           

                                                 doesn’t that look bizarre?

The only thing you need is a piece of 14 inch thread (could you figure that out?) tied in a small loop.

Slip forefinger and thumb of each hand into the loop and hold it up so it makes a rectangular shape. Twist the thread by moving one hand in circular motion five or six times; this should create a small line of knots in the middle. 

        

                                     People will tell you this does not hurt. It hurts.

The comes the painful part. Bring the thread to your face. By opening and closing the gap between forefinger and thumb, the row of knots in the middle moves, tangling up with any hair in its path and uprooting it (I think of trees when saying that…)

Apparently, threading is done in salons for expensive prices. I have saved you thousands of dollars! But you can thank me later. 

As a goodbye, listen to this song.

          

                                     it’s been stuck in my head for a while

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* Sorry, Shakespeare

† If “mermeladas” is a nice word, “nostril” is probably at the bottom of the list.