`Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
`I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can’t take more.’
`You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: `it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’
The forthcoming incarnation. Click to see immensely large @ high-resolution.
`Nobody asked your opinion,’ said Alice.
`Who’s making personal remarks now?’ the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea.
“We’re All Mad Here” by JessRabbit on the redbubble.
`Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, `I don’t think–‘
`Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off.
“Alice in Wonderland 10” by hooray on the deviantart.
Neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
`At any rate I’ll never go there again!’ said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’
(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, Chapter XII.)
Last week, my daughter’s friend and schoolmate told her that she had a “secret.” The secret was that, whenever her older brother got out of the shower, if no one else was home, they would have sex.
My daughter and her friend are both 5.
After my daughter told me this secret, which she rightly suspected seemed “off,” I turned the car around and drove immediately back to her school, where I tracked down the girls’ teacher and told her what the friend had told my daughter. I made no judgment in my retelling as to whether I thought this was true or not, just reported what had been said and put it in her hands. The next day, the friend’s mother picked her up from school, so I assumed things were okay. The day after that, it was the girl’s grandfather. She hasn’t been back to school since then. So I guess it was true. A five year old girl should have secrets about magic and dreams and glittery wands, about easter baskets and kisses on the cheek under the slide, not being penetrated by her brother’s penis when there is no one around to keep her safe. This is more to me than just the loss of innocence, this is a complete obliteration of it, the sucking dry of a life that was only newly struck when it got pulled down.
I have spent the week trying to wrap my mind around the entire thing, while dealing with the questions of my daughter, who still dimly feels she is under a cloud of trouble or suspicion for having this secret with her friend. She has asked me why kids can’t have sex, why family members can’t have sex, and why her friend’s brother would want to hurt her; whether her friend will still want to be her friend when she comes back to school, if she comes back at all, what is going to happen to her friend now, and why her friend cannot stay with her parents if it was her brother who was the problem. Dealing with her questions and keeping her close during the day has occupied my mind. But it’s not so easy at night, when she is asleep, and I am asking myself some of the same questions.
I did not believe there were evil people, just evil decisions, until a friend of mine died violently. It changed my view. I don’t think evil is an excuse, or a disability. I still think it’s a choice, but it’s a more overarching and wholly tarring choice than I originally perceived. For awhile after my friend died, I was obsessed with crime and criminals, afraid to leave my house, dreading that the same thing would happen to me. My daughter’s birth came within a few years of my friend’s death, and I think —I know— that my paranoia increased. After my marriage and move to another state, I isolated myself and my daughter completely in our house and told myself I was finally safe and happy.
Neither of these was true. There is no way to escape a dark place that isn’t a physical reality, but a pit in your mind, that keeps dragging you back down. I’ve done my best, I think. I recognized my unhappiness, I stopped running, I emerged, and I took my daughter with me, but to what end?; I’ve brought her to the only place I’ve ever lived and actually felt safe, and evil is already intruding in her short life. It makes a moment when she will be taken from me by some less-than-human person seem inevitable. It haunts me, it suffocates me, this idea. It is breathtakingly terrifying. I really don’t know what to do.
Rebekah Del Rio – Llorando (“Crying” cover, Mulholland Drive)
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001). This track is a haunting, a capella, Spanish language cover by Rebekah Del Rio of the Roy Orbison song “Crying” (Orbison, Melson 1961). Some screencaps are from here, some are from here, and some are from TK on the lj. Some I took myself from the sneaksters who have managed to put a bit of this up on the youtube. Thanks to all sources.
Yo estaba bien
por un tiempo
volviendo a sonreír
I was all right
for a while
I could smile for awhile
Luego anoche te vi;
tu mano me tocó
y el saludo de tu voz
But I saw you last night,
you held my hand so tight
as you stopped to say hello
Y hablé muy bien
y tú sin saber
que he estado
Llorando por tu amor,
llorando por tu amor
Oh, you wished me well
You couldn’t tell
that I’ve been
Crying over you,
crying over you
Luego de tu adiós
sentí todo mi dolor
Sola y
llorando, llorando, llorando.
You said, “So long,”
left me standing all alone
Alone and
crying, crying, crying.
No es fácil de entender
que al verte otra vez
yo esté llorando.
It’s hard to understand
but the touch of your hand
Can start me crying.
Yo que pensé
que te olvidé
pero es verdad,
es la verdad
que te quiero aun más
mucho más que ayer
Dime tú que puedo hacer.
I thought that I
was over you,
but it’s true,
oh, so true
I love you even more
than I did before.
But darling, what can I do?
¿No me quieres ya?
Y siempre estaré
Llorando por tu amor
llorando por tu amor
For you don’t love me,
and I’ll always be
Crying over you
crying over you
Tu amor se llevó
todo mi corazón
Y quedo llorando, llorando, llorando
Llorando por tu amor
Yes, now you’re gone,
and from this moment on
I’ll be crying, crying, crying,
Crying over you
Purchase Mulholland Drive, a StudioCanal film, from amazon online or in person at some big, dreadful electronics discount store where they make their employees dress all alike and discourage self-expression while simultaneously crushing their professional ambitions and private dreams, or even someplace mind-numbingly similar but with a wider range of products to assuage your human misery at the altar of merciless soul-raping capitalism, Walmart or Target; whatever, I don’t care. I am just encouraging you to do this consumer bullshit so I don’t get sued. If it were up to me, David Lynch movies would be showing at most theaters everywhere always, so it’s tough for me to recommend virtually profitless small screen shenanigans. And by tough I mean I am going to go chew light bulbs now.
This movie will come up again, these are a really small handful of caps compared to the rest. I’ve just been blue and listening to this song a lot lately.
From all the shit the one I got to buy is music
From all the jobs the one I choose is music
From all the drinks, I get drunk off music
From all the bitches the one I want to be is music
Music is my boyfriend
Music is my girlfriend
Music is my dead end
Music is my imaginary friend
Music is my brother
Music is my great-grand-daughter
Music is my sister
Music is my favorite mistress
Music is my beach house
Music is my hometown
Music is my king-size bed
Music’s where I make my friends
Music is my hot hot bath
Music is my hot hot sex
Music is my back rub
My music is where I’d like you to touch (Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) — “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex”)
At a superficial blush, I think her paintings deal with imagery and conventional styles that are popular right now in the commercial world of art: lissome nymphs interacting with the natural world, an almost photo-realistic style, like a photograph or illustration recreated with oil paints, but I feel like that is, like I said a superficial comparison. The truth is that she really finds the darkness at the heart even of the popularity of those images, and more nakedly and skillfully tells the story behind them.
“Isabel’s Secret.”
The work has authority. I suppose maybe if you were to just striaghtforwardly describe her painting next to another, similar product on Etsy or something, telling only what you literally see vis-a-vis the subject matter and depiction, it could be accidentally mistaken for one of this genre of lesser and more wanly committed artistic storytellers, trendy but sort of twee, but that is not the case for me with Brooks.
“Wanderingbel.”
Besides her obvious superiority even of strictly mechanical talent — which gives her paintings a sophisticated weight lacking in some illustrations that deal with similar subjects and imagery — for me, there is more going on thematically in her compositions.
“The Gaze.”
I feel like if you look at her work, Brooks digs much deeper, like her work is a more authentic prototype than a lighter imitation, a more complete interpretation of an older and overarching theme.
“Reverent and revered.”
I am fascinated by the legends and tales that have been passed down through the rise and fall of empires and how they are weathered by oral tradition and cultural change.
“A Promise to Return.”
I work with my own personal mythology to reflect ideas on love, memory, and the inexplicable human talent for anthropomorphizing the cycles of life and all its manifestations. (via)
“Isabel and the Life Web.”
Adjusting to being Single and Living in Richmond is a bit of a roller coaster ride, but I’m pretty sure its more Tank Girl and less Hope Floats so it ain’t all bad. (blog)
Love Tank Girl. Sold.
“Driving Into the Sun.”
To discuss commissions or wholesale orders (or just to say howdy!) please drop me a line at: Robotroadkill [!at] gmail.com. (etsy)
“Half a second,” my favorite one.
I should first mention that all my analogies of life tend to be nature based, I was raised in an all female landscape business that was founded and run by my mother, for years we shared generations of stories over the tops of the flowers we cared for. Those ecosystems provided a framework and context to talk about the more complicated parts of life. That is where my imagery comes from. (interview)
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you?” said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”
Wanted to take a second to link to Music for Relief’s Download to Donate page, where you can download individual tracks or an entire playlist of songs by a variety of great artists, with your money helping aid relief efforts in Haiti. You have probably already read that an aftershock struck today measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, which will obviously complicate and prolong rescue efforts and rebuilding in the wake of last week’s quake. If you like music and have some spare change, this is a great, small way to help.
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are differences of administration, but the same Lord. (1 Cor 12:4)
The Man With the Plan.
In partnership with the United Nations Foundation, Habitat for Humanity and Dave Matthews Band’s BAMA Works Haitian relief effort, Music for Relief is working to provide immediate aid with food, water, and emergency medical supplies, and long-term sustainable housing solutions for the people affected by this catastrophic natural disaster.
Musicians on the mix, mastered by supafly bamf Brian Gardner, include Dave Matthews Band, Peter Gabriel, Alanis Morissette, All-American Rejects, and Lupe Fiasco.
There are various gifts, and various offices to perform, but all proceed from one God, one Lord, one Spirit; that is, from the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the origin of all spiritual blessings.
A confession: When I was a kid, I kind of always wanted to be the Joker. The whole Catwoman thing mainly started because I knew that a girl Joker wouldn’t fly. I remember vividly that when I explained this to my older cousin, he patiently said, “Well, what about Wonder Woman?” and I threw my hands up in disgust: clearly, he was missing the point entirely. I wanted to be the guy across the street from this kid, staring him down from my front porch, smirking and wearing a purple suit. Maybe smoking, too. You know. For maximum badass effect. “In your face, Smarmy McSavesalot — this is what I think of The System!”
I think this career goal still haunts me and is responsible for my general dissatisfied lack of commitment as a working adult. How you going to find me dutifully plugging away in a cubicle when I promised my babyself always to rage against the machine?
So, putting that insight together with Ben Okri’s quote, I guess what this chain of thought is telling me is that I need to learn to keep my eyes open for signs and portents of a destiny that can dovetail with my dreams. I cannot believe that I was meant to go either rudderless through this world, or chained in a galley, desperately wheeling my arms around for a ship I already hate, which is bound only to sink no matter whether I keep paddling or get consistently whipped for refusing to row. I won’t believe that. I can’t accept that that is the plan for me or for anyone.
E’s fourth resolution for 2010: Look for signs. Keep hope alive. And, really, there is no reason not to wear a trimly-tailored purple suit while I do it.
Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life, some rain must fall. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Longfellow also said, “The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” I’m trying very hard to internalize that message.
I took this. About a year ago. With my Diana F+. It was the first roll I shot with it, and almost all the rest turned out wretched.
This track by the Beatles was the B-side to “Paperback Writer.” It is noteworthy for being one of the first songs to use backward vocals. The final lines feature the first verse sung backward, with “Raiiiin” as a chorus over the top.
“I fell in love with an alien” by vampire_zombie on deviantart.
If the rain comes, they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead.
If the rain comes,
if the rain comes.
When the sun shines they slip into the shade
(When the sun shines down.)
And sip their lemonade.
(When the sun shines down.)
When the sun shines,
when the sun shines.
Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.
I can show you that when it starts to rain,
(When the Rain comes down.)
Everything's the same.
(When the Rain comes down.)
I can show you, I can show you.
Rain, I don't mind.
Shine, the world looks fine.
Can you hear me, that when it rain and shines,
(When it rains and shines.)
It's just a state of mind?
(When it rains and shines.)
Can you hear me, can you hear me?
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.
One of the other, like, three pictures that turned out.
sdaeh rieht edih dna nur yeht semoc niar eht fI.
(Rain)
niaR.
(Rain)
enihsnuS.
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. (Gilbert K. Chesterton)
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.
(Saint Basil the Great)
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? (Douglas Adams)
It ain’t no use to grumble and complain;
It’s jest as cheap and easy to rejoice;
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
Why, rain’s my choice.
(James Whitcomb Riley)
Photographed by Nirrimi Hakanson on facebook, via ffffound.
I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies. (Eden Ahbez)
He covers the sky with clouds, he supplies the earth with rain,
and maketh the grass grow on the hills. (Psalms 147:8)
Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain. (Langston Hughes)
Looking for upsides. How about this? Shit week, yes, but hey, free car wash.
Just heard from Miss D and she had great news today which she desperately needed after the poo sandwich of her Sunday. Now have bathed and prepped dinner for kidlet and am off to set off post-holiday soosh bombasticos with the Panda Eraser. Hopefully things will slowly but surely continue to look up!
Lily Allen + panda suit = Perfectly cramazing!
Catch you guys later. I’m sending good vibes into the universe without hope for karmic payout but I wouldn’t mind if it were a byproduct — join me!
Sheets of rain keep falling here. It’s pretty when a little sun comes through, it makes it look like glass. But otherwise it’s overall a very dingy scene and it bums me out even more than a rainy day normally would (I actually like the rain, mainly) because I am waiting to hear from my husband about his grandmother. She’s not expected to live much longer than the next few days; when she passes away, I will fly to Portland to be with him and the family. I simply can’t let him go through that alone, and I would never disrespect my in-laws by even considering not going, to say nothing of the fact that I would like to say goodbye to a woman in whose home I lived (we rented from them once they moved to a retirement center), whose son I spent a great deal of time with, and to whose grandson I got married. It will be difficult, but it has to be done.
So today, being that it was raining cats and dogs and I think I even saw a ferret, and as kidlet had a school holiday, I wanted to have special bonding time before I travel without her. We are almost never separated, so I’m anxious about that as well.
We decided to make chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (total rainy day food) and watch us some uplifting movies. First up was The Wizard of Oz, and it started my wheels turning about the books and about the pluses and pitfalls of escapism.
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.
Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale.
Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.
Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.
L. Frank Baum
Chicago, April, 1900.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Introduction.)
A lovely sentiment, but I find Baum’s assertion as to the lack of nightmares and heartache in the final product of the Oz books — of which I am one of the world’s staunchest and most highly devoted fans — intriguingly debatable. If I have time later this week, I will try to have a movie moment with Return to Oz, which will shed some light on what I mean.
Holly Owens as Dorothy in the Emerald City, for Tarina Tarantino’s “My Pretty” collection.
— Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown?
— Uh-huh.
— Jolly old town!
“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, then I never really lost it to begin with.”
Did You Know? … two of the images in this post are pictures of my daughter at Christmas. She gets a new pair of ruby slips every year.
Figure’d it be fun to do them chicks on bikes and stuff, like if it were mariocart. this idea actually came from a drawing i did for fun of them in super deformed style over a year ago (i’ll post as soon as i can.)
WAY cramming for SDCC, i am ignoring my family, friends, and loved ones this week until i get shit done.
and before any of you gear heads try to figure out the bikes, realize i just draw them, i dont build them. ivy’s bike is 0 emissions by the way (source)
He also put up some of the steps of making the final product, very cool:
“The Story of Menstruation” is a Kotex-sponsored ten minute animated short intended for educational uses (Walt Disney, 1946).
It is narrated by an extremely serious but I think a little bit cranky older woman, who kind of sounds like Lady from Lady and the Tramp, or the dark-haired fairy in Sleeping Beauty: you know, that two-pack-a-day husk to the voice and sort of lecturing, grousy delivery, like she is about to threaten not to tip the waiter at a Chinese restaurant because he has not come back to refill the water, just generally kind of crabby and lightly gravelly in that weird old-people-racist way. Does this make sense? I think you know what I mean.
For the record, I’m not presently on the rag, I’ve just been organizing my bookmarks in to folders and I stumbled over my youtube link to this gem. Did a googly-moogly for screencaps cause I didn’t much feel like capping the whole thing myself, and found a set that were pretty much what I would have done, although I have supplemented with a couple stills of my own.
Why is nature always called Mother Nature? Perhaps it’s because, like any mother, she quietly manages so much of our living without our ever realizing there’s a woman at work.
Try not to throw yourself off-schedule by getting overtired, emotionally upset, or catching cold. And if your timing goes seriously wrong, or you’re bothered by severe cramps or headaches, you will want to talk to your doctor.
Are you getting this? Stop crying and don’t even think about sneezing — you might delay your menstruation, which makes you a failure. Don’t you dare trouble your doctor with your uncleanly shenanigans. (Clapping hands for emphasis) Timing! Is! Everything! You bleed right or you go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.
What they are looking at is, like, this weird black puppy thing that floats up from the carpet, I think it is supposed to be a metaphor for all-women-share-this-secret? or some such likely chicanery.
The booklet [Very Personally Yours, provided by Kotex and meant to be passed out concurrent with the film’s screening in health classes] explores, among other things, that old taboo against bathing during your period. Not only can you bathe, you should bathe!
I have never heard of a taboo against that, because that is stupid and also gross. Unless they are referring to that murky, veiled crap in fucking Leviticus? Yeah, there is also shit in there about piercing the heart of a dove if you eat non-Kosher pork, and making a bunch of animal sacrifices for, like, pretty much every imaginable offense (where you would even get the number of animals necessary to slake Leviticus’s bloodlust is beyond me).
But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness. (Leviticus 15:28-30)
Turtles? Really? So every Israelite woman, if she was a woman of faith and law-abidance, is being told by Moses and Aaron that God said she should be going through 24 turtles a year? And she had to do this, follow through, sacrifice effing turtles? And every woman did it? Where are you even going to have that many turtles in the desert?! Doubt it. I’m coming right out and saying it: doubt it. Long story short, thanks for the concern about the taboo, Kotex-sponsored narrator, but I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been ignoring Leviticus for quite some time, ma’am.
Some girls have a little less “pep,” a feeling of pressure in the lower part of the body, perhaps an occasional twinge or a touch of nerves. But don’t let it get you down: after all, no matter how you feel, you have to live with people.
I have to what?! But these wolves are like family! “People?” I just don’t know about that.
(Damn near killed ‘im.) According to the wiki, Disney hired gynecologist Mason Hohn to make sure all the science was accurate. I take it he blinked during this drawing. I am not a stickler for biology, but I’m pretty sure my rectum is not just a tube with no discernible placement or beginning and ending, and I am almost positive my bladder and uterus are not shaped like golf clubs. Also, question: where is the vagina in this drawing? Why is the rectum even important to show? A tacit endorsement of anal, I say.
Menstruation’s relationship to readiness for sexual reproduction is absolutely never even once mentioned; you may imagine that sex itself also does not come up. But the production is, most film historians agree, noteworthily forward in its script — it is likely the first movie to use the word “vagina.” Too bad a crabby Virginia Slim smoker was the utterer and not someone more exciting and significant, like Bogie or Orson Welles. Wow, I now have to search every audio source possible to see if Orson Welles has ever been recorded saying “vagina.” Project! Anyway, like I said, the subject of exactly how babies get made is not broached, but the goal of getting a boy and making some in order to be all-growns-up is still endorsed.
I hope you have enjoyed and learned from “The Story of Menstruation.”
The Thought Experiment 
Gifts of the Spirit: Music for Relief
January 20, 2010Wanted to take a second to link to Music for Relief’s Download to Donate page, where you can download individual tracks or an entire playlist of songs by a variety of great artists, with your money helping aid relief efforts in Haiti. You have probably already read that an aftershock struck today measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, which will obviously complicate and prolong rescue efforts and rebuilding in the wake of last week’s quake. If you like music and have some spare change, this is a great, small way to help.
Logo by Casey Ryder.
The Man With the Plan.
Musicians on the mix, mastered by supafly bamf Brian Gardner, include Dave Matthews Band, Peter Gabriel, Alanis Morissette, All-American Rejects, and Lupe Fiasco.
Beautiful inside and out.
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