stationary

it's summer, which means you're gonna need a whole lot of please come to my or happy fill-in-the-occasion-here cards. the stuff on etsy might be a little more expensive than if you were going to buy a box of cards from target, but these are handmade and you can even personalize them if you wish!

bbq postcards, bday invitations, thank you cards, and congratulations notes!

each of these etsy stores has many many more products, i just picked a card from each to show a variety of things. but i think it's pretty clear even from these four what my aesthetic is. :)

from left to right:
girlingear studio: modern & handmade paper products for home
cutie patootie creations: personalized t-shirts, invitations, oil...
lucky bee press: letterpress paper goods
three dog party: typewriters + dogs = magic!

differences

jean kilbourne - can't buy my love: how advertising changes the way we think and feel

"Agonizing disconnections occur in men's lives too, but men are socialized to respond differently than women to these violations. Men who watch their mothers being battered in childhood are more likely to become batterers themselves  whereas women are more likely to become victims of batterers. Men who are sexually abused as children are more likely to become predators, whereas women often end up more obviously damaging themselves, marrying child abusers or becoming prostitutes."

creep!

this is from a while ago, but it's freaking hilarious. i love john waters' look!

dreamers

friedrich nietzche - "in the old days people knew how to dream. they did not have to go to sleep first."

blue book drama

it was finals week and somewhat unwisely i waited until 30 minutes before class to go buy my blue book. crazily enough, the stupid bookstore was closed early! but someone directed me to a vending machine for scantrons and stuff.

so i went over and saw that luckily, there was one set of blue books left. (i only needed one, but it came with two). but guess what? the normally 39cent blue books are priced at $1.25 for two. that's fucking crazy!! i could buy three for this price, with almost enough for tax! and of course i only have $1, $10, and two dimes. gah!

i so buy the blue books with my $10bill and get a ton of change back. but the change return "pocket" of the vending machine is really shallow so some of the change bounced out onto the ground. btw, this machine is in a freaking cage so getting my change was kind of difficult. gah!

i angrily text rip. he tells me to sell my extra blue book to someone for $1.

anyway, i go to my classroom, which is locked, so i sit in the hallway and count out my change. strangely enough, i have $5 in dollar coins and another $4.75 in quarters. yup. somehow i got $9.75 in change from $10 for $1.25 purchase. i guess maybe the person ahead of me couldn't get to their change on the ground in the cage (or didn't notice it)?

i have my coins stacked up around me, and as i happily text rip about the new developments my teacher comes by. she asks if i'm planning to bribe her. i laugh and ask if that'll work? i tell her the story and she suggests i sell the extra blue book for $1.

we get into the classroom and of course some guy comes in and asks if anyone has an extra blue book. i give him mine, not saying anything about money cause seriously, i just bought two for 25cents. he thanks me but doesn't say anything about money either, which i think is actually pretty rude. oh well.

another couple minutes go by and a girl comes in and asks if anyone has an extra blue book. someone gives her one and she thanks the girl and hands her $1. the girl doesn't say "whoa, that's too much!" or "dont' worry about it" or anything along those lines, she just pockets the dollar.

i angrily text rip again. gah!!

i hate derek shephard

i hate derek shepherd from grey's anatomy. i disliked him from the beginning actually. he was just so damn pushy with meredith. it got kind of hard to watch him trying to talk her into a relationship with him.   and then we find out he's been married the whole damn time!

the worst thing was seeing how pathetic meredith became after that! SHE'S THE VICTIM TOO! i don't understand why she and addison both let derek control them. addison cheating doesn't give you to right to cheat on her. it's marriage; not tit for feaking tat. and why the hell, after derek decides to "do the right thing" and give the marriage another try, is meredith still begging him to choose her? and is this really "the right thing" anyway? yes, you are married, but you can't stand even the sight of her; so does this sound like a marriage that can be saved? especially since everyone knows, including your wife since you never let her forget it, that you're actually in love with someone else? and at every turn, he guilt trips his wife and gives puppy dog eyes to the woman he put through this whole terrible situation. addison cheated with mark but at least everyone knew she was married. so are you really any better than her?

fast forward. meredith and derek get together. and she makes a halfhearted attempted to kill herself and wouldn't you know it, but derek bails on her. yet he still claims her loves her?

and then they're together again, ish. except that now she also has mcvet. and derek is basically unwilling to fight for her. but when did he ever EVER fight for her? except for at the very beginning when he was trying to force her to date him? you know, when he was still married. but meredith still loves him!!

fast forward again to now, and now they are married and she's done this horrible thing which is still completely understandable because it was for the wife of her mentor, who happens to be the love her now dead mother's life. i mean, come on! clearly she shouldn't have done it, but you can certainly sympathize with her (though of course derek can't, or is it won't?). and so now derek is going to leave her, again.

what the fuck is wrong with derek shephard? he is the most selfish person ever! he thinks he's all loveable and kind and honorable, but he's really just a selfish man who loves the chase, bails when people need him the most, and has a whacked out moral system that he forces everyone else to abide by.

and still meredith loves him!


if it weren't for the fact that i only watch one other show (castle, which, btw, is freaking amazing, tho castle has become super-sherlock who is never ever wrong), i would've given up on grey's years ago. damn i wish pushing daisies was never cancelled...

blue & green

Ellen Meloy - The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone and Sky

"When a name for a color is absent from a language, it is usually blue. When a name for a color is indefinite, it is usually green. Ancient Hebrew, Welsh, Vietnamese, and, until recently, Japanese, lack a word for blue... It has been shown that the words for colors enter evolving languages in this order, nearly universally: black, white, and red, then yellow and green (in either order), with green covering blue until blue comes into itself. Once blue is acquired, it eclipses green. Once named, blue pushes green into a less definite version. Green confusion is manifest in turquoise, the is-it-blue-or-is-it-green color."

meat?

a couple weeks ago, a couple friends and i were looking at restaurants at the camp near south coast plaza. one of us wanted to go to native foods. the special of the day was bacon and scrambled eggs on toast with watermelon mint salad. so we went inside and i read the menu more carefully and i saw that there was no meat! it's a vegan restaurant. i felt SO DECEIVED! all their meat is tofu! GAH!!!!!! i had it when vegetarians do that! if you don't want to eat meat, just don't do it! there's no reason to try to pretend to eat meat by eating something that's called bacon when it doesn't taste like, doesn't look like, doesn't smell like, in short, isn't anything like bacon!

anyway, it was still the best looking thing on the menu so ting and i split an order. we got it and... lol. the bacon was... not bacon looking. haha. yes, it was brown, and it was thinnish, and cut into a long strip but... anyway. it didn't taste bad... but i said that it was just dried tofu (doh fu gan, if that makes any sense in chinese?). i was like, "white people only know about plain white tofu, so they think this is amazing. but to a chinese person who eat like 5 kinds of tofu a week, this aint nothing new!" it was ridiculous!


to be clear, i don't have anything against vegetarians or anyone else who restricts their diet for whatever reason. but i really just don't see the point of eating fake "meat" if you've made the decision not to eat the real thing.

felting

a couple years ago i got interested in needle felting, which, if you're not afraid of needles and like soft little figurines, i suggest you take up since it's incredibly easy. i only made one thing, a simple sheep, but some people, like f for felt, can make crazy amazing things.

etsy store: f for felt
prices vary

she did most of the main cast from alice and wonderland (the rabbit in the above pictures is the one who leads alice down the hole). and most of her stuff is 100% felted, even the eyes! all her stuff is SO amazing. my favorites, though, are her bear skin "rugs." she even has a hot pink one! :)

$49 each

fingerprints

the world would be different if...

we didn't have fingerprints. not just because it would make fighting crime harder, but because we wouldn't have a lot of grip. it's not just finger strength, you know. the little grooves on our fingers actually do a lot of work for us because they create friction. don't believe me? wrap your hand in a piece of satin or silk and try to pick up a smooth glass vase. now get some canvas or burlap (or any cloth that is rough to the touch) and pick up that same glass. it's so much easier now! (and yes, i know this isn't the best experiment. even silk has ridges. and if you wore smooth rubber gloves you can still pick up the glass [tho it would be even easier with grooved rubber gloves]. so ha! grooves to make it easier).

sexy brides

i think kate's dress was beautiful, very fitting for a princess in today's times. i didn't much like bustle or the train, but i think it was very appropriate for a royal wedding.

okay, so i don't really care that much about kate or the wedding or whatever. i'm not british. and while they couple is coming to los angeles, i'm more excited about what it will do for the local economy than anything else.

what i'm really posting about is how i hope her style will influence women here. i've recently been watching a bit of say yes to the dress (i know, i know, but it's on when i eat lunch and i do love clothes so eh), and i'm surprised by how many brides say that they want to look sexy on their wedding day. and i don't mean a little sexy. cause i think kate's dress was pretty sexy. it has a lowish v-neck and the waist is very fitted. but some of these dresses.... they have see through bodices with the cleavage cut down to the bottom on your boob! it's crazy! but everything has it's time and place, you know?

peninsula story

nora ephron's - i feel bad about my neck: and other thoughts on being a woman

"a man and a woman live in a house on a deserted peninsula. the man's mother comes to stay with them, and the man goes off on a business trip. the woman takes the ferry to the mainland and goes to see her lover. they make love. when they finish, she realizes it's late, and she gets up, dresses, and rushes to catch the last ferry home. but she misses the boat. she pleads with the ferryboat captain. he tells her he will take her back to the peninsula if she gives him six times the normal fare. but she doesn't have the money. so she's forced to walk home, and on the way, she's raped and killed by a stranger.

"and the question is: who is responsible for her death, and in what order--the woman, the man, the mother, the ferryboat captain, the lover, or the rapist?

"the question is a rorschach... and if you ask your friends to answer it, they will all answer differently."

i'll comment with my answer and explanations.

progress

edison: restlessness is discontent--and discontent is the first necessity of progress. show me a thoroughly satisfied man--and i will show you a failure.

always the same

1. back in the day us girls used to keep notebooks. we wrote stuff and passed them along to each other. we weren't bitches tho, so they weren't slam books. anyway, i found an e-notebook that i started up back in the day and here is an excerpt of my first post:

I hope you all like my new idea (this).  It's like a electronic notebook.  Instead of paper, it's on a disk...  I figured this is better then paper notebooks cuz like 1) Paper means trees...

i find it hilarious because i'd forgotten that even back in 1997 i was environmentally conscious! tho, to be fair, the e-notebook didn't last long. each of us had one post. i think we went back to regular notebooks since you could write in them spontaneously.

2. in the same e-notebook entry i wrote: "By the way frozen stuff is great.  Like strawberries, bananas, peaches, grapes...  BUT NOT APPLES!  Apples frozen taste nasty!!!  I haven't tried oranges yet, but id they taste good then grapefruit should too." and from my possible first blog post ever (1.27.03), i wrote: "frozen grapes are delish. green seedless ones esp."

some things never change!

happiness

Chuck Palahniuk - That's the best revenge of all: happiness. Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.”