roller girl name

This rock star needs a roller derby name. Why? Tryouts are in June and my name is going on the list.

Please vote on your favorite name, provide a good reason, and suggest a number. Alternately, craft a name I haven't thought of! I'm fresh meat, and I'll need a good name if I want to have a chance at being chosen for supper.

1a. Sanguinary Mary (O+)
Sanguinary means bloodthirsty. But all you GRE high scorers already knew that.

1b. Social Menass (DSM-IV)
I'm a social worker, so why not be a social menASS after hours? This name has really withstood the test of time, but now rests timidly in second place for number one. The DSM is the mental health practitioner's bible, and we're in the 4th version.

2. Chubby Bunny
This new name has been getting a lot of excitement around here lately. In 1999, I won Chubby Bunny against 19 other dirty hippies with competitive souls. My costume would include a fuzzy tail and floppy ears. Stevie B. suggested a number of =8{

3. COG (center of gravity)
I've broken one front tooth 5 times, the 2nd and 3rd times at the roller rink in 5th/6th grade. My mother refers to my mouth as the center of gravity. This name requires lots of explanation, but it sure has a strong rationale.

4. __________
I want to think of a name that alludes to my astonishing, supreme arm wrestling track record.

5. Amelia Fearhart
This needs some more creativity in the first name, but it's going down the right runway.

6. Make You Holla ($5)
Stevie B., once again, cracked me up with the suggestion of a number as "same as in town." What else would work?

Okay, your turn. Whaddya think?

how to make a laptop bag from a cardboard box

I really like this!
Link: via Wikihow

bird wings

Loved these bird wings found on boing boing.

After I posted about boing boing previously, I found out that it's something like the most popular blog ever, ever, and that my innocent reference to it was "cute." Sharing a blog with techie techie's has that side effect sometimes. I do things that seem totally cool to me that were totally last month to [fill in the blank]. Ego deflated, just a bit. (I'm winking right about now, fyi.)

These bird wings are so great. I still think about my dead bird collection project a lot.

one down, three to go

I am *almost almost* done with my first semester of social work graduate school.

One more 30-page paper and then I'm done with school for a month.

OMG!

I'm feeling energy from thinking about all the SINGING and COOKING and ART MAKING and PHOTO TAKING and RANDOM THOUGHT THINKING and SEWING and KNITTING and LAUGHING and MOVIE WATCHING and CREATIVE NEIGHBORHOOD WALKING and all sorts of other FUN things I get to do REALLY REALLY SOON. (Here I almost come with knitting needles in hand, Martha and Nancy!)

Writing Dear Sasha has been getting me through this end-of-semester intense time.

It's almost here! Vacation! AAA!

!!!!!

duct tape wallet

i think Hugo wanted to make one of these once.

pink and green, perhaps?

collecting dead birds

I woke up at 4 am today, hungry. While I sat in the dark eating a bowl of cereal, I thought about collecting the dead birds I see. I've seen two in the last two months, and I imagine that if I look for them, they're really everywhere.

I envisioned carrying around: latex gloves (I'm not allergic), baggies of various sizes, a metal scooping device, and a Tupperware container of about 5" x 5" x 3".

I'd like to bring them home, organize their feathers and limbs, and take portraits of them against a solid background. I'd like to have a dead bird series even if I don't know how to taxidermy.

how to make a table

I really want to make a table like this. I've been wanting to make furniture for so many years now.

I feel a little lame saying it again, but here I go -- I just don't have enough time these days to be creative. It's sad. Maybe I'll hole up in winter break and make furniture and knit legwarmers???

Blog Action Day

Blog Action Day is a pretty creative idea. Check it out. I just registered our blog on the site.

taxidermy sculpture

Every time I see a dead bird or mouse on the ground I am reminded of an artist Hugo obsessed about a few years ago. Unfortunately I don't remember her name. (Hugo, who was it?) Here is someone who might be her. I'm really not sure. Regardless, go to the bottom of her page and click the links to see the various mice. My favorite is pope mouse.

This morning I saw this bird as it was dying.
Beak was moving, legs were twitching, body was seizing. I know, it's gruesome. I'm more okay with death than your average person, so I like to stop and look at the dead creatures when I see them.

I wanted to scoop this bird up and taxidermy it. I wish I knew how.

mantra

Hugo and I are universe twins. (Don't you want to ask us what that means?)

We have a mantra: Boundless desire and Magnificent energy.

Go ahead, ask us what that means.

this large wall sculpture i've been working on

I have this large wall sculpture I've been working on, and then not working on, for a few weeks. After a dry spell I just now got some ideas for how to continue it. Thought I'd post what I'm working on just because I felt like it.

sleep poem

Some lines of poetry floated in my head last night in that stage between sleep and awake. So I wrote them down to expel them. They are so strange and nonsensical to me now. I've done this before (constructed lines of words in that particular state of sleep) but never written it down.

Here it is:

In this agreement
who gets more air?
Who gets more
refrigeration?
The net woven will
partially remain,
partially change.

mediocrity

Lately my daytime hours have overflowed with mediocrity and mind-numbing boredom. I will keep the complaining to a minimum. In essence, my summer job is painfully empty of productive tasks and I must sit in 5 m.p.h. traffic for 40+ minutes to and from.

I fantasize about creativity, efficiency, communication, productivity and joy. Every minute of every workday, I sit on my ass and feel angst and yearning to simply do something, anything.

This afternoon I will not take the freeway home. Instead, I will find another path to travel - I will wind through neighborhoods I have not yet explored and likely get lost, then eventually find my way back toward St Paul, whenever I end up getting there.

Later I will make dinner not from a recipe but from my own intuition of what would mingle well together in a pot. I will jump around and wiggle when it's done and has unexpected un-recipe'd flavors.

Tonight I will get out that godforsaken fantastic camera Laurie bought me that I'm so afraid of and take a ton of images.

I will post at least one.

I am tired of this mediocrity.

so excited... just can't hide it...

Today I started a 7-week summer job at a local technical community college, where I'll be an academic camp counselor for high schoolers. My knowledge about the job so far had given me the impression that it would be fine, normal, average, do-able. Not a drag and not a thrill.

Well.

First of all I was hugely impressed with the school facilities. Very modern, recently remodeled, ample equipment for the students, etc. Very clean, organized, neat, updated -- a huge improvement over the war zone that is the Oakland school system. Secondly, I found out that every day of summer school I will be in the classroom with the students while they learn various technical trades and I'll be expected to learn along side them.

Eek! Yay!

This means I'll get to use big, noisy, messy equipment! Paint things! Wire houses! Use fancy architecture computer programs! Drill! Draw! Design!

I'll get to learn all sorts of fun, new things that I've always wanted to know and then can apply to making art in my own personal life.

I'm so excited.

Some things you only see while riding a bicycle

Oh gosh! I'm still dying of laughter!

While riding my bike down Telegraph Street in Berkeley, I saw a BIRD flying across my path and dodging traffic with a CHEESY POOF sticking straight out of its beak. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

I put sunflower seeds on my porch for the birds, and what do they really want? CHEESY POOFS.

It prompted a delightful series of imaginative thoughts. I envisioned lots of little plastic birds with cheesy poofs in the beaks swinging from strings on the ceiling. The strings are attached to a motorized something that whirls them around the room.

The world is so strange.

(Note: This is not the bird I saw. Kudos to Laurie for the Photoshop magic quickness.)

Pinhole pictures

I stumbled across this and other images like it on the BBC News website. They are pinhole pictures and seem to be made from homemade devices like tin cans and paper boxes. I don't get it 100%. Look at the paper floating, though - the film gets exposed over time and creates some eerie effects.

If anyone knows anything about this, please tell me. I'm quite curious.

P.S. I just learned about Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day - there are some amazing images here.

P.P.S. And I just found instructions on how to make one from an oatmeal box! THIS IS THRILLING. I think I will rig one of these and use it on my roadtrip. If you didn't already sign up to receive mail art from me next month (see last week's Roadtrip post), send me an email 'cuz I'm getting mad ideas for ya'll.