Sweet drawing

It's my first night teaching, right, and I'm substitute lecturing on the history of video art. A couple people fell asleep, one kid wandered off for about an hour or so, understandable. At the end of the night, I'm tidying up the room when I come across this gem:




As far as I can tell, dude has some interesting post-apocalyptic fantasy involving can-o-beans and a gas mask. What?

Tilt-A-Whirl!

We're rocking out.
The Carny is over it.


-molly b.

Location:Coney Island

once you pop...

today, this came to my attention:

http://www.pringles.com/en_US/Pages/Xtreme.aspx?Flavor=2

yes, indeed, pringles now makes "extreme screamin' dill pickle" flavored chips. i like potato chips. i like a strong dill pickle. but together?

i'd love to have a conversation with the guy (yes, guy) who invented this. how many man hours did it take to bring this artificially flavored pickled cucumber on a potato chip to perfection? and just think of the other important, productive things that could have been done with those hours.

maybe i'm getting ahead of myself. more simply, i'd love to ask this guy what the inspiration was behind creating these chips. maybe it was his grandfather's dying wish to see these produced and marketed by pringles. maybe it was the result of a stimulating conversation that was had while smoking a joint (more likely). maybe pringles overheard that lays had this recipe in the works and assigned the project to some guy in order to get it out on the market before lays. but whatever the inspiration was, these extreme screamin' dill pickle pringles are out there, and i hope that guy is proud.

that guy made it.

Tom Ford Buys Wrinkle Cream at CVS

Prior to Epic Road Trip 2010, I dragged the mom to CVS to lay in supplies for the road. When we first rolled in I noticed some well dressed man sitting in the wrinkle cream aisle reading packages.

After collecting things we headed to the check out, while well dressed man cut the line in front of us. I did the non-verbal WTF and headed for the other line, at which point mom filled me in. Then Mr. Tom Ford whipped around and rolled his not-yet-wrinkle-creamed eyes at us. Next time he should save some bucks and just buy Preparation-H.
We're not gonna make it.


-molly b.

Location:CVS, Cordova Road, Santa Fe, NM

evidence that we're not gonna make it

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2012657551_man_in_banana_costume_arrested.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/08/finance_rep_arrested_for_putti.html

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/worlds-biggest-writing/

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2010/08/levi-johnston-to-star-in-reality-tv-show/1

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/article97630.ece

http://www.pot-bellyblinds.com/index.htm

Big Breasts!!!

This chicken has 'roid rage because she has to wear a DD. Back in the day, chickens didn't need bras!

Love,
India

WILL ELIJAH MAKE IT?

GRAFFITI ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF NASHVILLE.

-- INDIA

Good Luck. Bad Luck.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was entitled "Good Luck, Bad Luck." The narrative structure was pretty simple, you followed a boy as good and bad things happened to him. But it had such a brilliant structural simplicity, that the book was almost like a kind of poetic verse:

"Good luck, you get to fly an airplane"
"Bad luck, the airplane runs out of fuel mid-flight"
"Good luck, you have a parachute"
"Bad luck, there's a hole in the parachute"
"Good luck, you land in the water"
"Bad luck, there are sharks in the water...." and so on.

I feel like the structure of this book formed and reflected my impression of what life was like. Recently, I had an "We're not gonna make it" experience which I would like to use the "Good luck, bad luck" structure to tell:

Good luck, I am getting out of New York City for the summer and driving to Santa Fe

Bad luck, a day after leaving New York I discover my car is unsafe to drive

Good luck, it is only the struts which need fixing

Bad luck, the job will cost me all the money I have

Good luck, the tire company offers me a credit card with 0% interest for the first six months

Bad luck, after six months, the interest goes up to 22%

Good luck, the car makes it to Santa Fe in one piece

Bad luck, on my second night, I am rear-ended by an uninsured maniac who drives off laughing after I scream for help

Good luck, there doesn't appear to be any damage

Bad luck, when I take my car to the mechanic, I find out that there is damage and it will cost me

Good luck, my mechanic tells me that I should get my money back from the tire place as my new struts aren't really new

Bad luck, my struts now need to be replaced again, the second time in one month!

-- India

The Death of Human Decency

About 3 years ago, while living in London, I was standing on a crowded tube platform waiting for a train to take me to a play that I didn't want to see in the first place.

It was rush hour, or a bit after, and the platform was teeming with suits and smart phones.

The train which normally departed every 5 minutes from this particular platform was nowhere to be seen, and the natives were getting restless.

Finally a train arrived, packed with sweaty, angry office workers. As I tried to board a male commuter pushed me off the train and got on in my place. Barely disguising my indignation and disgust, I impatiently waited for the next train to arrive... and waited and waited.

Finally, an announcement rang out over the speaker system: "I regret to inform you that a passenger action at Cockfosters has temporarily interrupted service on this line, a replacement bus service is available above ground. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you."

In the UK "passenger action" usually means that a passenger has done something stupid like pulled the emergency brake, or vomited on another patron, but in this case it emerged that this passenger action was in fact a suicide. A man had thrown himself under the train at Cockfosters. As I walked away from the platform in shock to catch the "replacement bus service" I overheard a businessman mutter: "Inconsiderate twat, committing suicide at rush hour. Now I'm late for quiz night at the pub!"

Are we gonna make it, I wondered.

-- India M

Jesus saves...I think

We stopped to eat up some food in rural Arkansas where we chatted with some of the nicest people. Not only did they love the dogs...


...but they were also fans of Jesus! Then again, I can't read Chinese, so I can only assume what this tome is about.










-molly b.

Location:Somewhere in Arkansas

Motel, Hotel, stopped at Days Inn

The headlight stayed on, thankfully, and we made it to Waverly, TN. I found out days later that Waverly is home to a number of country stars, however we found none at this jem of a motel.


-molly b.

Location:Waverly, TN

Parking Lot Body-Shop

It's 102 degrees, maybe more in the parking lot of Lowe's. Due to an uncooperative headlight clip, India has resorted to an impromptu duct tape fix.



We hope with sufficient stick-um,
the light will stay in place for the next 1500 miles at an average land speed of 95 mph.



-molly b.

Location:Lowe's, Shawnee, OK

Hospital

Sometimes you find the strangest things while in unexpected circumstances. While hanging with the fam at 3am in the emergency room due to a paternal beer/blood pressure med induced fainting spell I happened upon a magical cabinet.




Huh?!
-molly b.

Media Review: Animal Hoarders!

While vacationing in Taos, NM with my best friend M. I had the occasion to experience some truly devastating television. The house where we were staying had satellite, because you need a satellite dish if you want to watch anything up there.

So, because we grew up in the 70's and still think they play old movies on late night TV, we began our viewing at 10pm. Flipping through infomercials, we finally found an actual program on the Animal Planet channel called "Animal Hoarders".

"Animal Hoarders" featured the stories of two damaged souls who engage in the practice of animal hoarding. I am not sure if this practice is in the DSM IV-TR, but I am confident that it will appear in the DSM V. Basically animal hoarding involves keeping ridiculous numbers of domestic animals in your house. It usually also involves said animals using your house as a toilet and spreading disease to you and to each other.

One of the two characters was a 60 year old obese woman with asthma recovering from the loss of her husband. As succor for her woes she hoarded long-haired Chihuahuas in the house where she lived with her mother and her mentally ill son (who was frequently pictured eating donuts or staring blankly at the ceiling from his single bed). She went to the pet store for fun, to look at squeaky toys.

The second and perhaps more depressing character in the Animal Hoarding program was male and in his fifties. He worked at a drug and alcohol rehab center for an hourly wage. After his wife had a liver transplant, she was forced to leave the house where she lived with her husband and five cats, as her doctor feared that she was weak to potential infection which the cats might be catalysts for (unintentional punning). Well once she moved out, her husband lost control. The cats, who were not fixed started mating with each other: creating other cats. You know how it goes. In the end, the man, who at one point referred to himself as a "poor slob" was living with over 20 cats who were defecating, urinating, mating and dying all over his tract home. One ossified cat was found behind the couch when he gave himself over to Animal Control.

It was hard to know what was worse: the fact that these two people had such problems, or that

media culture likes to make a spectacle of such people. Perhaps the issue is that our culture facilitates both these problems and their ridicule. The program itself with its lurid inter-titles "The hoarding can't be stopped. The cats are reproducing without end!" and close-ups of devastated middle american "losers" were frankly more nauseating than all the cat shit and dog pee.

Encounter with the Renaissance Man

Now what?

Missiles!