I have two things to show you. First is a video I shot of a spider weaving a web off the side of the road. It's my first upload to Youtube! I feel younger and hipper already, don't you? ;)
The other thing is this site http://www.badspiderbites.com/spider-web-construction.php that shows how an orb weaver spider weaves her web. It's so cool I've watched it about 10 times already. Spiders are really amazing, especially when you take into account that the one I filmed had a web that spanned at least 15, possibly 20 feet.
:)
I hope you're all well. I'm great here, just doing the Summer Stay-at-Home Mom thing. Swimming, hiking, vacationing, crafts, etc. Everyone continues to thrive. I wish the same for you.
My husband watches this site called Give-away of the day and today's free software is watermarking software you can use to protect your online images. I thought it would be something many of you might like for your online art.
Just click the link above, download the software, unzip it, run the "activation.exe" and then install the software. It will work for any system onto which it is installed TODAY ONLY.
More info about the software:
Watermark Factory allows you to add text or image watermark to any picture. Protect your copyrights or simply add comments and date stamps to any picture. This useful program has beautiful and easy to use interface. You will be able to process thousands of files in a few seconds. It works with EXIF and IPTC information. Also Watermark Factory allows converting images into various formats and batch file renaming. (normally $49)
I downloaded it, but have not yet used it. My stuff doesn't really get ripped much, but I know some of you who have real problems with it and thought others might need it too!!
I hope you're having great days! I'm off to the park with my daughter to ride the train and frolic. :heart:
Apr. 12th, 2007 @ 10:05 am
I have to tell you that I need us to be far, far LESS STUPID than we sometimes are. There is a single fact with your health, and that is that if you sense a problem, that you are in charge of it. You are your own best - and sometimes only - health advocate when it comes to your own body.
I have just heard my second story in my life about a woman (not a friend of a friend spam glurge, but people I actually KNOW) who has found a lump in her breast, reported it to her doctor, been told after a cursory exam (no biopsy) that it's "nothing" and then has gone home, only to watch it grow and grow over the course of a year. When they finally pushed to get it REALLY checked out, they have advanced breast cancer.
People, if you have a lump and your doctor doesn't think it's a big deal, get a second opinion. And do not, under ANY circumstances, sit back and watch that lump grow and grow inside you and think "it's no big deal; the doctor said so".
We are vital, strong, intelligent women. Listen to your bodies and, if you have to, stand up and SCREAM ON A CHAIR until you get the medical attention you feel it needs. And please don't fall into the trap of fooling yourself that it's "nothing", just because a medical professional says so.
Next time you're in the shower, do your breast exams, and if you're behind on your yearly "woman" exam, make your appointment and go get looked at. Cervical or ovarian cancer is just as important to look for as is breast cancer.
Don't be ignorant, naive or stick your head in the sand. Do whatever you can to see that you live a long, healthy life, for yourselves, for your families, for your friends.
If you don't already know, Michael Richards (of Kramer/Seinfeld fame) had an unbelievable meltdown at The Laugh Factory a few days ago, where he called some hecklers the "n" word about a bazillion times. He went on Letterman shortly afterwards and apologized. He seemed genuinely sad and remorseful, but kept repeating "I am not a racist".
If you haven't seen these clips and you want to, you may do so at You Tube:
Anyway, one of the blogs I read is The Musings Of A New Millennium Nigga and he had some really interesting thoughts on the whole matter. He said it better than I ever could, so here are two excerpts of his longer post (that you can find at his site, linked above)....
************
...Hear me out on this. I know it's radical. But may be you are racist. May be you just didn't know how fucking racist you are. May be a lot of Americans are like that. May be this entire nation should try taking the first step...and that's admitting you have a problem.
I've heard so many friends of the Black race over the years say that we Blacks need to take responsibility for our lives and stop blaming others. I'm going to have to request you be held to the same standard, Mr. Richards. I'm going to have to request that others, Black or White, who would use your racism to explain why I shouldn't say nigga get the cause and effect relationship straight.
You see, racism like the shit you said at The Laugh Factory helped to create the world in which I exist, a world where I never know which seemingly benign White person is walking around with visions of "niggers hanging upside-down with a fork sticking out their ass" dancing around in their head. I've become who I've needed to become to survive that world.
Reasonable minds may disagree on my creative and political choices. Earl Ofari Hutchinson opined on Arianna Huffington's blog that the increasingly random use of the "n-word" by black comedians was partly to blame for the incident. "The obsessive use of and the tortured defense of the word by so many blacks gave Richards the license to use the word without any thought that there'd be any blow back for doing it. He wasterribly wrong and got publicly called out for it. The blacks that use and defend that word should be called out too. Who's willing to do that?"
He got the tortured part right. But the defense is of myself, of the place I have scratched and clawed to create for myself in this society, this country, this world. I defend myself against those who wag their finger at me, who disrespect me for my personal choice. I defend myself against those who would in any way excuse the rapist for calling the woman he rapes a "bitch," simply because she may call her girlfriends "bitches" when they're talking shit on the phone.
I know the difference between Dave Chapelle and David Duke, Mr. Richards. I know that I laugh with Chris Rock but never at the Little Rock Nine, Mr. Hutchinson. Don't conflate and confuse the issues.
The more I think about it, the less I feel like I should be doing the apologizing. I'm not sorry for what you did, Mr. Richards. And, because your racism exists independent of my choices, I don't even feel sorry for what I do....
....So, do me a favor Mr. Richards, don't apologize. Don't apologize while you hide behind "I'm not a racist." You are a fucking racist. You may not want to be. You may not want us to know that you are. You may not enjoy seeing yourself that way. But the truth of the video is overwhelming.
You didn't use "nigga" like I use "nigga." You know why? Because you can't. You have neither the cultural nor the emotional context that would allow that to happen. You simply saw some Black people and said the first fucked-up thing that came to mind, the thing that comes to more minds than we may ever know or admit. "Nigger!" It wasn't about a shared struggle. It was about the hate that made that struggle my reality. And anybody who would blame me for that is fucking bugging. [Note: "Bugging" is a word that niggas use when they mean that someone is "flipping out." Usage: Michael Richards bugged the fuck out and called some niggas "niggers" at The Laugh Factory last Friday night.]
Mr. Richards -- And I call you that to model a behavior I like to call "respecting other people's humanity" -- you are one racist muthafucka.
So, now you know what I think of you. And I already know what you think of me. That's a start.
So, don't apologize. Not yet. Not when it's so clear that you said what you meant and you meant what you said.
No, it does not shock me to "see what is buried beneath," muthafucka. The sound of the tell-tale heart that is racism pounds and resounds in my ears. So I guess I am sorry about one thing. I'm sorry that this is where we find ourselves...even in this new millennium.
I giggled my way through every entry. Very worth reading. Interestingly enough, my favorite entry was about the steak. (You'll know it when you see it.)
I've survived another year of preparing Carnaval photos. :) After starting out with over 800 photos, weeding them down to a usable 250ish and then paring those down to 180, I placed them on a grand total of 21 pages. WHEW!! Don't ask me to work on another photo any time soon, OK?
Anyway, please come take a look. There's the main intro page that has been updated to reflect the new costumes, plus I added a section on costuming tips:
Carnaval has come and gone, leaving us exhausted and thrilled and small celebrities for a few weeks, until it all fades, and we wait until next year when we kill ourselves getting our costumes ready and do it all over again.
I wouldn't miss it for the world. :)
I'm sorry for the colored background on several of these photos. That's the way it was done originally and I'm too lazy to change it now!! :)
My concept this year was "Queen Bee". While trying to sleep one night in 2005, I was mentally planning my Carnaval costume for 2006 - this is not unusual; it often keeps me up nights. Suddenly, the words "Queen Bee" popped into my head and I knew that was IT for me.
The skirt is sort of a wanna-be tutu. It's a portion of an umbrella wired together with a lot of heavy gauge wire and covered with feather boas on the top and lots of black net underneath. It had lights in it and was trimmed in red ribbon.
The gauntlets (as we call them) are black and lined in red and black trim. They have long purple ribbons hanging down from them and at the center point of each ribbon on my arm is a bee.
ALL BEES were hand-made by me. I think I made about 50. They started out as yellow puffballs and I painted three black stripes, wrapped them in wire, added wings and antennae. I never want to paint another bee in my life. Seriously, it was tedious and backbreaking!
The corset was custom made just for me, and I LOVE IT!! It was the perfect thing to hid all my post-baby flaws. :) It's the only thing other than my shoes, stockings and thong that I didn't personally hand make. The shoes are 7 inch platforms that I've worn every year for the past four years. They make this short girl very, very tall.
My pasties are little honeycomb, lined in purple trim and decored with a few bees. My wings are made of florist wire and are covered in iridescent fabric, trimmed in gold and painted with glitter. They "attached" by sticking down into the top back of my corset.
The Hive Headdress started out as long balloons taped together. I covered them in paper mache, painted them, attached the whole thing to a baseball cap base and then added all the trim to have it cover my head. My chin strap is a bra strap I've used for three years for all my headdresses. The headdress is also lit with tiny lights. The back (crushed purple velvet) was adorned with long, long red ribbons attached with red sequins set with gold beads. I have bees on wires "swarming" around the headdress that bounced and twinkled as I walked.
I hope you enjoy these photos. We had a blast. I'll tell you more later on my website.
Feb. 6th, 2006 @ 02:43 am
A photo from my "dry run" for my Carnaval makeup. My final makeup will differ from this, but this is how I tell if I like what I see in photographs. Often, what I'm crazy for in my mirror doesn't photograph the way I want it. I already know what I want to change, but for now, this is what I'm working from!
The title comes from a contest on another site that I entered this in. Just so you know.
Jan. 30th, 2006 @ 04:35 pm
DOG - Your daemon may be a dog if you are loyal and caring, and like to know what is expected of you. You probably are very family oriented, and have a small group of friends that you are very close to, rather than a large group of acquaintances. You dislike confrontation, but you will stand up and fight for the people and issues that you really care about. You may prefer someone else to take the lead in a situation, although you would rather take the lead yourself than have the situation fall apart. You probably enjoy routine and order, but that doesn't mean you don't like to have fun. If anything, your friends probably know you for getting intense, child-like pleasure in the small things in life.
You heard it here first. Remember this later, when you see this in the news. Some poor schumck is going to die, or at least loose a limb after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I promise you it's coming. Maybe not this year, but definitely at some point in time.
It's "Christmas Light Rage". You heard me. "Christmas Light Rage".
Picture "Road Rage", only you're in your own house, wrestling with length after length of Christmas lights.
So it's Christmas. You're happy. You've got your tree up, and all the decorations are down from the attic. You've got three very large, very full bags of Christmas lights: one of working lights, one of lights that have only 50% working lights, and one that's full of lights that don't work at all, but you can't bear to throw them out. Ever. (No matter how much your husband begs you!)
So you're sitting there with your lights. You open the boxes you bought last year at Target two days after Christmas when you had to wade through crowds to fight for the scant few boxes they had left after the holidays - lights marked down from $9.99 a strand to $2.99. You can't beat that, right? They go straight up into the attic to wait for Christmas the following year.
When they completely fail to light up. OR, better yet, they work when you test them, and then as you're wrapping the last length around the tree, they go out.
Christmas. Light. Rage.
And then, you decide that BY GOD you are going to get one of those half-working strands to WORK, dammit, because you simply MUST have another multicolor on the tree and so you sit down and test, one bulb after another, about 100 bulbs, prying them off with a tiny flat-head screwdriver. Only five or six times does it slip and plunge into your thigh as it dislodges a bulb. And only ONCE does the entire bulb shatter between your fingers, making you wonder, what's more frightening: all the tiny shards of yellow glass that narrowly miss imbedding themselves into your fingertips, or those little popping zzzzzt zzzzzt zzzzzt sparks from the wires on the still plugged-in strand so close to your body?
And at the end, although you replace a few burned out bulbs, the strand still doesn't light fully.
Christmas. Light. Rage.
So you go online, and research Christmas lights, and you learn about series circuits and parallel circuits and you go back out to the strand with a newfound purpose, and THIS TIME, you pull out each one of those bulbs again, but you test each bulb in a working strand already on your tree. You replace some more faulty bulbs.
And your strand still doesn't work.
And now you have two large blisters on your thumb and forefinger.
And the light strand on your tree you were using to test inexplicably goes out.
Christmas. Light. Rage.
This is a true story.
My husband wisely says nothing, but hands me a glass of wine. I throw the half working strand into the light strand "trash" bag (that will never be thrown away) and call a Jewish friend and learn that, wonder of wonders, he doesn't use lights. Next year, we're going with Hanukkah, mark my words.
Dec. 19th, 2005 @ 02:05 am
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