Movies, music, applied art, books, poetry, graphic arts
Here’s the final product for the MINT Gallery Windows III project:
As I mentioned, the cheap ass acrylic paints did not play well with the polyurethane, but I repaired it as best I could. I’ll be more careful next time! The whole series of pix as I made (and repaired) the window are in the Art Projects Gallery. Enjoy!
The window is almost done. The cheap ass craft paint does NOT work as well as regular house paint for these – but I can’t afford a rainbow of colors in house paint! When I put on the polyurethane, the acrylic paint started to streak. Luckily I started on the back, so I used a much lighter hand on the front – although it still pulled up here and there on the front. BAH. So, today I’m trying to fix the frelled background with pearlescent glaze which is working fairly well. Even that stuff is pulling up the poly/craft paint a little bit. I wanted to use the glaze originally but couldn’t find it since it was in the coat closet rather than downstairs with the other paint. ? It would have saved me much misery had I found the damn glaze in the first place. :-/
I’ve got to go and get the party grub today. I’m not feeling all that great, but I’ll make it. I’ve also got to get the hardware for hanging the window, too. I’ll get extra for Stormy since I’m betting she has not put hanging hardware on her window yet. Other than that, I plan to take it easy today to recover from that bitch Flo so I can have energy for tomorrow. (Let’s hope this pwan works!)
I really hate having to suspend accounts. But these asshole clients need to understand that I am not running a nonprofit here. If they want free hosting, then they can take their files and MOVE, but ID hosting ain’t free. One of the suspendees has plenty of money, but just doesn’t want to pay, the other is just flat out squirrelly and thinks that I’m running a charity. I really love it when a client owes money for 6 months, then gets pissy when I finally try to collect. WTF ever, dude, your site is suspended and I’m done. Pay or don’t. I’ll write your deadbeat ass off next year as “bad debt”.
I’m killing time until noon or so when I can start harassing the printer for the TEV menus. I just want to go out, run my errands and be done. Why so difficult? CK!
The MINT show window is coming along nicely. I’ll be ready for poly late today or tomorrow. I should lay off the glitter…but that’s like, ridiculous, so on it goes! Yay! I’m also putting glass beads along the outer edge. You’ll see. I’ll post pix when it’s done.
In other news, that bitch Aunt Flo has shown up – which explains my odd hunger and headaches the last few days. 3 wk interval this time. Nice. At least the worst will be over by Saturday. Harumph. Trust me, ladies, if you have the opportunity to get rid of the vile organ via childbirth or whatnot, TAKE IT. You will regret having it when you are old like me. :-/
Ok, off to glue beads.
Unless you’re trying to refinance your house, immersing yourself in web comics or reading the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success… Probably not!
In the re-fi department: Epic FAIL. Property values have screwed us. It’s also my opinion that our loan processor screwed us by waiting 2 months to get our loan started. Had she gotten off her ass and started it last month, I feel certain it would have gone through. Yes, I’m a little bitter.
In the web comics department: Full of WIN! I happened upon a ustream.tv live stream of PvP‘s Kurtz drawing yesterday and ended up meeting some awesome people and getting the comics meetup group I’ve been wanting to do handed right to me. Awesome! If you are interested in this group, please shoot me an email.
In the Seven Spiritual Laws department: Full of WIN! I started reading this book again just a few days ago and have been blown away by the resonance I feel with the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Particularly the 5th and the 6th. You can get the gist over at Chopra.com. For such a small and unassuming book, it packs a powerful punch. I can’t help but feel that the comics meetup group was offered to me in response to my asking for it. I just can’t. As I’ve said before, I think that The Seven Laws is my religion. All I know is that they work.
And finally, I’ve read several good articles in Wired this month. That is a mag that either I flip through without anything grabbing my attention or I read it cover to cover. This month, it’s cover to cover. There is an awesome article on brain mapping and today I read an excellent article about a woman that was billed as having perfect memory – until she was diagnosed with OCD.
The Memory article rang true to me because it offers a more scientific reason for people who are obsessed with their personal history and cannot let go of past events. I always say “Let it go!!” and it turns out, letting it go is the thing most people do to get over trauma, etc. But this woman’s case has illustrated that constantly going over past events of your life does indeed make it impossible to let go of the events and therefore let go of the neuroses that were brought on by the events.
What the first batch of scientists thought was perfect memory, turned out to be perfect memory of ONLY this woman’s personal story and big events (plane crashes, other disasters) that occurred during her lifetime. And it was seemingly perfect recall because ALL her time was spent going over and over the details of her life. This “perfect memory” case was actually an OCD case. All it took was a professor of psychology spending two days with her and asking questions that were not about her own story to figure out that she didn’t have perfect memory at all. A brain scan proved that not only were her memory centers normal, but the OCD areas were abnormal – she definitely has OCD. Makes sense to me: the whole process of memorization is going over something many times. If you repeat stories about your life’s traumatic moments over and over, they are only going to be ingrained.
What’s truly amazing about this idea of reinforcing memories (or NOT) is that it is also one of the Seven Laws: #6 The Law of Detachment. The law of detachment is basically: LET IT GO.
Hmm. Maybe I’m onto something… ;-)
We took a jaunt today to see the Chinese Warriors today down at the High Museum. Caroline was nice enough to drive the van so we could all pile in and not have to screw around with MARTA. It was me, Nick, Caroline, Xia, Heather and Charles. W00t! There was, of course, no photography inside the exhibit, so you’ll have to be happy with the wiki pics.
The Terracotta Army was found in Xi’an China in 1974 by a farmer digging a well. This army was fabricated for the First Emperor of Qin, 220 BCE.
The exhibit is the largest one that China has sent over, which is slightly disappointing since there were only 9 actual warriors on display. It was a small exhibit when compared to Tut or even Titanic. I don’t blame China for not wanting to send out their shit to the unwashed masses, but I tell you, after seeing pics like the one below, seeing only 8 in formation (the 9th was at the start of the tour) was a little bit of a letdown.
The detail on the warriors is amazing! They really do have individual faces. There were 9 molds for the various ranks, but each one was finished by hand to give facial features like mustaches and such. You can see some remnants of the colours they had when they were new. Also, you could see where they’d been burned by marauders who broke pretty much everything into bits then burned the tombs. Every piece had to be reconstructed from the broken pieces. There are about 1000 put back together, but there are over 7000 warriors in the tomb. A. Maze. Ing.
They also had some of the newest excavated pieces up. They found a musician and bird area where it is presumed that the musicians played and the birds danced. There was one musician, a swan and a crane on display. They also found an area that had acrobats and strong men for more entertainment and the funniest thing, there is an area with bureaucrats – hey, someone has to keep all this stuff organised, even in the afterlife!! There was a strong man and a bureaucrat on display.
Another display was of the half sized horses and carriages, which was awesome until I realised they were reproductions. It was still a really great thing to see these 2200 year old relics and read all about how they were made despite the small number and repros. They did have a sculpture display of how the pieces were made, which was very cool.
If you are near Atlanta, I highly recommend seeing these amazing pieces before they leave April 16 (I think). Be warned, it’s crowded on the weekend! They are extending the museum hours for the last couple of weeks, so go if you can. TOTALLY worth $18!!
