Radish skull

162 - 6/19/2008
Originally uploaded by illenion

Hooray, I won another Skull-A-Day contest! This time, the challenge was to make a skull out of a vegetable.

My radish skull was one of five winners, please see the others here: 1, 2, 3, 5.

Talent shows I have remembered

I'm sure I was in plenty of talent show audiences in grade school up through high school (I've never been IN a talent show, by the way - my talents aren't the kind that entertain crowds) but I really barely remember any of them. There are only two specific acts that I remember, even though I have no idea who the performers were.

The first was in elementary school, and some girls who I don't think were even in 5th grade yet performed some kind of dance routine to the Spice Girls song, "2 Become 1." You know, the one that is explicitly about having sexual relations*, albeit in a responsible way - "Be a little bit wiser baby, put it on, put it on." OMG, right!? Who approved that act? I remember thinking it was weird, but for reasons that I would not really be able to put my finger on until later.

The other one was middle school, just some kid doing a one-man show based on scenes from "The Matrix." That involved some really flat dialogue, saying "Whoa" a lot, and flailing around as though reacting to gunfire in Bullet Time. It was unremarkable, but for some reason it has stuck with me.

*My favorite euphemism for DOING IT, by the way, is "gettin' mad rutty." See also: "jazz hose." Oh, Achewood.

Passive Aggressive Note

Passive Aggressive Note
Originally uploaded by StuTheShoe

I told Stu about passiveaggressivenotes.com, and he found this amazing note at his workplace and submitted it to the website, but they haven't posted it. So you know what, I'M POSTING IT! That's right, I scooped them.

I like how you can SEE the fury, in the scattered, inconsistent punctuation and the random capitalization, not to mention the run-on sentences and crazy multiple exclamation marks. Also, it's a two-pager so you know this is Serious Business.

The little face is killing me, though. I thought it was supposed to be some kind of sour face emoticon? To me, it looks like carefully-restrained madness, but Stu said that it's supposed to be a normal smiley. He was actually the one who suggested she add that, to lighten the mood...

Is it working? Did you reach the end of this note and think, "Oh, I guess she meant all that in a friendly way"?

Tiny sweater

158 - 6/15/2008
Originally uploaded by illenion

Speaking of George Washington again, the picture at right is what he would look like if he was wearing a sweater.

I made this little item based on this pattern, but I made some alterations. It's small, fiddly work, but I really like how it turned out. It's a gift for Brims, who always wears stripes.

I'm still a new knitter, so I am trying to learn some new techniques with each project I do. This little sweater taught me how to love increase stitches!

Washington, Washington

So, that t-shirt rug I'm knitting? It turns out that one strip of that rolls up nicely into a POWDERED WIG! Look, I'm George Washington!


I tried to recreate what George Washington might look like in a self-portrait-in-a-mirror Myspace picture. Haven't you always wondered?

Apparently C. showed this picture to a few of his friends and coworkers WITHOUT providing the context of what I was actually knitting, so they probably think I'm the kind of person who knits powdered wigs for no apparent reason. I suppose there are worse things...

Also, if for some reason you haven't already seen this video, SEE IT. It's one of my favorites:

T-shirt rug tutorial

New project! I'm recycling old t-shirts into yarn, and knitting it into a rug. I know, that sounds kind of hippy-dippy, but it's also fun and recycling is always good. Here's how this works...

You need some t-shirts, and some big knitting needles! I'm actually using bamboo chopsticks that I sharpened, sanded and waxed smooth. You also need to know how to do the garter stitch.

Cut the shirts into strips, about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch wide. To minimize having to mess around with joining strands of your yarn together, try to cut the longest strips possible. A good way to do this is to cut in a spiral around the torso, starting at the bottom.

You can probably knit with the material flat, but I stretched it all out so it curled in on itself and was round and more like yarn.

Here's a picture of the whole process, with flat material on the right (that's not spiral cut around the torso like I mentioned earlier, that's a sleeve), yarn in the middle, and knitting on the left!


Here's a closeup of the knitting compared to the flat material. The knitting transforms boring thin fabric into thicker and slightly more exciting fabric:


Since my chopstick needles aren't very long, I am going to knit thinner strips, and then sew them all together lengthwise into the final rug. I will probably use some different colored shirts to make stripes.

Tacky person of the day

Yesterday I was in the bakery section at the store, and I watched a woman knock over a piece of cake, then scoop it off the floor, back into the box it fell out of. Then she started carrying it around, and I thought she was going to take it to the counter or give it to the attendant, but instead she waited until she thought no one was looking, then randomly shoved it onto a different shelf. How uncouth! I went, riled, and retrieved the FloorCake and took it to the counter so someone could dispose of it. The spirit of George Costanza compelled me, and I wanted to yell out, "You know, we're living in a SOCIETY!"

Yarny

Remember when I learned to knit? I'm still at it! I've learned to do stuff like cables (pictured at right), which... I don't really know what to do with because I'm not planning to make a sweater or anything.

I would like a project to work on, but I don't really have anything in mind right now. Plus, yarn is an expensive habit. What I have is a bunch of random scraps and small balls of yarn in a bunch of different colors and weights, and random needles, some which I don't know the exact sizes of. What's a girl to do?

I wish there was some kind of database online where you could enter the size of needles you have, the weight and amount of yarn you have, and it could spit out a list of different projects you can make based on what you have. Does such a thing exist?

EDIT a million years later: There IS such a place online - it is Ravelry!

Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones

Why isn't Short Round in the new Indiana Jones movie? Just kidding! The fact that I know he's not, despite not yet having seen the movie, indicates that I know why not.

I would love to see Jonathan Ke Quan in there, though. I hear you out there, all, "Who?" Keep up, I'm still talking about Short Round. My vision is of a grown-up Short Round in a Very Special Cameo where he starts to say something in an "Asian" accent, but this time everyone is just kind of appalled, so he drops the act and addresses the audience briefly on how racial stereotyping is just not what we're about anymore. But then he winks, or pulls a fortune cookie from his pocket (and maybe drops a little bit of it and steps on it so it audibly crunches), so we know it's still him, and he's not mad at us... he's mad at the situation.

I just looked up what Short Round is up to these days, and OMG he is 36. Not that you would know it by his IMDB picture, in which he will be 12 always and forever. According to IMDB he does martial arts stunt choreography. Man, when are Asian folks in Hollywood ever going to be able to find success without being a total stereotype? (At least yellowface seems to more or less have gone away.)

This is my favorite thing I found out about him: "When phoning his mother during the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) movie shoot, he referred to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as bearded man 1 and bearded man 2."

Spoiler alert!

If you haven’t watched the video for R. Kelly feat. Usher’s “Same Girl,” then you shouldn’t read this. Or, if you only watched part of the video, then stopped before the end because you thought you “got it” already (yes, I was a fool and did this at first), then you shouldn’t read on.

Here is the spoiler: Kells and Ush think they are both dating and being played by the SAME GIRL, but assuming the video is canon, it is revealed that it is actually identical twins. That makes sense, right?

I DUNNO…

Traits shared by the twins from R. Kelly feat. Usher's "Same Girl," in relative order of plausibility:

• Physical attributes – height, body proportions, complexion
• Beauty mark on left side of mouth
• Tattoo on ankle
  
• Has a child
• Georgia Tech alumna
• Nicknamed “TT”
  
• Well-paying job at TBS
• Lives on 17th and Peach Street, in unknown city in Georgia
• Attends music industry parties
  
• Drives a black Dodge Durango, with vanity license plate reading “ANGEL”
  
• Loves some Waffle House