Debate drawings

We went out to watch the debates yesterday. The guy next to me was drawing Mitty and Obam-bam so I followed his lead. His results were more impressive. Romney is all about the hair and the strong jaw. Obama has round protruding ears. Both have 100-watt smiles but tired eyes.

The writing at the top were notes about a poem (unrelated). The bottom is a quote from a Real Change vendor selling papers downtown. His non-election version is "If you do not have a dollar, I'll take a twenty." 

Earrings

Hi friends! At the encouragement of my beautiful sister, I'm going to stick some things back up here for a few days and see if I'm ready to get back into the blog groove. I think it'll be mostly photos of art/craft things I'm working on. Welcome.

These are some earrings I made recently using a wire-weaving technique.

DIY washable ink tattoo

Tell me I don't have a future as a kick-ass tattoo artist.

Model Apple Reinvents Itself; Sacrifices Self in Process

I made the Apple Pie-Crumb Cake Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance last night for dessert, since I needed to use the fruit originally utilized as pretty models for my still-life for art class. The big red apple seen in the background seemed like a logical place to begin this endeavor.

The mr. said, "So we're eating art?"

I've included a photo of the before and after to the left to help you get a better feel of the transition that took place. I still need to utilize everything else in the painting: orange, pear and lemon, but the tiny apple in the front row is still up for debate (it has unsettling brown spots).

I HIGHLY recommend the muffins - there's an adaptation over at Mad Vegan in the Kitchen. One thing I've been puzzling over though, ever since becoming 'civilized' enough to use measuring cups and spoons: my quantities are turning out way less than the recipes promise! This recipe yielded only about 9 muffins instead of the typical dozen. What's that about?

In other food news, we're getting our first box of produce from the farm we signed up with as our CSA (Community-supported Agriculture, read about it here). Exciting.

Things I am putting off

So, if you scroll down slightly & peek at the left-hand column, you'll find I've gone through my archives and labeled a bunch of old posts, to make my archives more accessible for all (ok, mostly me). I have to say, I like looking through old blog stuff. Currently the mr. is working very hard - he has been for hours.

Here are a bunch of things I "want" to do but...:
1- study for my US driving license test. I've read through the entire pamphlet at this point, now I just need to commit it to memory.
2- read the rest of Naked Lunch. I had a quota of 20 pages a day to just get through it and have it done before it's due date at the library, but I've skipped for the past 3 or 4 days (ok, I only followed it for 2 days...)
3- work on my painting! i went and got a little lamp specially, and came close about an hour ago, but somehow I wound up here working on the blog.

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Image: Stolen coaster! Background: the still life I am procrastinating on. Reflection in window: main living area of our flat.

Braising

I am braising (Vegan with a Vengeance - my cookbook - describes braising as "sauteeing and steaming in... sauce") cauliflower, unsuccessfully I think. My neighbor just walked over to borrow some salt. I thought those kinds of cliches only happened in the movies. (At least it wasn't sugar).

Buddha and friends

Dear Blog,

I actually have work to do, so I'm not sure what the fact that all I really want to do is post this picture means.

Little Lines

Day 20 of Ramadan, and I can hear the traffic raging from my window. Traffic is like the cold; you're happy to be indoors where you can avoid it at a distance. Especially in Ramadan in Cairo.

**

The picture is of the cover of my journal. Drawing those little lines is really good for passing the time.

A. & S. at work.

Sketch from yesterday; Cousin A. & Sister S. working on a book together. Really. They're talented like that.

The Whiffenpoofs

In the drawing on top, I wanted to just draw anything interesting I could think of and kind of pretend it was a composition. Well it's something, I'm just not sure how well it all comes together. The dragon is from the emblem for the Yale a cappella (without instruments, I looked it up) singing group the Whiffenpoofs. I saw it in a magazine and then discovered I missed their performance in Cairo at Sawy. But the dragon still looks cool. And Whiffenpoofs is a great name.

French Pretzels

The first picture is something I did while suffering from insomnia one night while on vacation. I don't know why the pretzel chose to speak French; it just did.

The second were sketches of the typical tourist stuff you can see from the Thames; homage to Danny Gregory (he drew the same things in his book Everyday Matters).

Writing Link; Paper Chinaman

I made this happy-looking Chinaman with my origami class yesterday.

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Good link for the writerly-inclined: How to Become a Famous Writer. An excerpt from a book of the same title at the No Media Kings website, where she advises to publish as much as you can, however you can. One suggestion: "Print poetry on stickers and post them around town and in train bathrooms." Ariel Gore, the author, also has a cool blog.

Educational Comics, Finding Your Life Purpose

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It's funny how a job confers life meaning. It shouldn't; shouldn't there be things I want to do naturally?

But there aren't. What I want to do is eat cookies and watch Sex and the City and check my email a hundred times a day.


I'm thinking about the dreaded life purpose.

There's the obvious "make the world a better place," which is all very nice and good, but incredibly vague. All kinds of tiny and humongous actions would fall under this broad umbrella of leaving the world better.

A most interesting website, Anxiety Culture (they have features about why phoning in sick is the best thing you can do for the economy and how to avoid responsibilities, all written in complete earnest), offers something more specific in an article entitled, "How to Find Your Own Purpose."

They offer a simple formula:

1.		Identify what you like about yourself.
2.		Identify how you most like spending your time.
3.		Imagine your idea of a perfect world.

Your purpose is what links these three things together. In other words, it is the way you can use your favourite characteristics, abilities and attributes in activities you like best, to manifest your vision of a perfect world.

====================================================================

I've never seen it explained so succinctly.

Here's another web page I liked with information on finding your purpose:

Finding Patterns to Find Your Purpose at the blog Success from the Nest.


I've already tried answering these questions quickly, (both from Anxiety Culture and the 'Finding Patterns' post), but have yet to tie them all together to discern my life purpose.

Notebook Notebook Notebook

Things I did while on my intense long weekend away.

The first is a time-intensive design for the back cover of my notebook. The productive powers of boredom. "I'm so bored, I'm so bored, I'll write 'notebook' as many ways as I can on my notebook." I also wrote 'bag' three times on my bag. But decided 'hand' as many times as it would fit on my hand would be pushing it (besides, I'd already done a strange fusion oars/sun/flower design there).

In the Box Comics

In the book Gulliver's Travels (which I only read half of, I don't think even the nerdiest/ smartest kids in eleventh grade English read it all the way through) Gulliver travels to the land of horses, and the horses only speak the truth, because the purpose of language is to communicate, and what's the point of false communication?

I'm thinking about that.

Think tary'a and saying things just to move your vocal chords. In this context it makes no sense.

"Enjoy the silence?"*


* Depeche Mode song: Words are very/ unnecessary/ they/ can only do harm.
Click here to watch the video. It's really cool. And here for the complete lyrics.

Pink Comics

A veritable smorgasbord of comics - discovered yesterday in the treasure trove that is keri smith's archives (think way back, I started from the beginning, 2003): Drawn and Quarterly. Clicking on the 'Artists' tab will lead you to little rooms for each artist where you can see previews of their work. Check out Joe Matt's. (Everything is in PDF).

Potato & Victim Comics

Apologies: I was away for the weekend and my system of proxy posting didn't pan out.

Good news: I'll post til Thursday to make up for it.

This is from my back log.

Cheers.

A comic & a drawing

The comic and the drawing are not fresh, I must admit. They are a few days old, like the vegetables in my fridge (purchased Saturday). Why insist on buying food then leave it? Why? How to overcome laziness?

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To the left, you will notice a small notice in the sidebar (right above the links) that says: "Subscribe to Posts [Atom]." It's basically an RSS feed. It will go into your bookmarks, in something called Bookmarks Toolbar Folder (if you have Firefox). Then when you see my blog's name, to the right will pop out my most recent posts, thus enabling you to discover when I've posted something fresh. Which should be everyday, for at least a week.

Torn jeans & recent cooking endeavors

List of recently cooked/baked things (listed chronologically, from most recent):

• Oats (a bit of a cop-out, but still, 5 minutes of cooking time)
• Soy milk (it's not technically baking or cooking, but it created a food and it was the most labor intensive)
• Cool cucumber soup
• Banana bread (see previous post)
  
• Chocolate Wacky cake (from the glitter cookbook, which I cannot find in the web archives)

Photos: the jeans: they are torn, as you can see, and I wanted to turn them into shorts, so thought I would picture them first (from a tip saying if you find it hard to get rid of old clothes, try picturing them first - don't remember where I read that). It didn't work, and they live on - for now.

Non-jeans photo: paper cranes hanging from the ceiling. Probably not a permanent home.

Missing: Art Supplies

Today's creative endeavors, inspired by seeing these awesome webcomics:

xkcd - "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The disclaimer warns "may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors," but I proceeded recklessly anyway. Check out the featured comics in little boxes.

Also check this out. The story of stereotypist, a webcomic artist who decides to move to Mexico for a year. His comics are awesome too. You can see some here.