Friday, January 07, 2005 :::
 

Some of my friends are accusing me of acting like an old person who watches the news. NO MORE POLITICS! Ugh! How do you find out about the world if you don’t watch the news, attend lectures, and travel?
If you don’t pay attention politicians can get away with anything. Basically that is right they are doing right in your face, RIGHT NOW!
Bush is demolishing the Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and the rules set forth during the Geneva Convention.
IMO he should have been ousted during his first term.
Go ahead…be distracted by porn and the constant sexual innuendo and go buy a new toy or make that a new outfit. Yippee! I feel better.
As one of my friends said before Xmas when I asked what she truly wanted, “Make it ANYTHING pink that I can wear.”
How subversive.
My friend C said that anyone under 35 has had a pisspoor (his word) education…by design. The government wants people to be dumb so they can pull all sorts of things.
I’m just trying not to be caught in their net.

Ed Paschke, one of the Chicago Imagist, and an outstandingly magnificent painter, died November 25, 2004 at the age of 65. I first saw his work when I was 6 years old at Art Independent Gallery. He was a night person so he painted neon tubes around portraits of weird street/circus/wrestler people like they were store signs on a dark city street. The nocturnal versus the diurnal. His studio was his living room (just like me) and he and his wife raised two children who thought it was utterly normal to have paintings-in-progress all over their small living space. Later when he took a studio it was a small office room in a two-flat. That is why his paintings aren’t huge. Small space=small art.
I always thought he used an airbrush, but no, he worked in small dabs, tight, and smoothed the paint into curves.
I once heard Liz Phair assisted him. I am jealous.

One more thing about Paschke…he met his future wife when they were in art school together. At 32 she was stricken with Parkinson’s disease. He didn’t leave her like many a man would; instead he rededicated himself to her. That is admirable.
But would a man take a girl who is a broken toy right in the beginning? Or would he only stay with someone who got broken AFTER the wedding ring?

T is off to Thailand for 3 months. He goes every year. He won’t be where the devastation is; he stays inland, high in the mountains with the same family. J is off the Costa Rica. O and family left for Paris, the most-visited city in the world, I hear.
I want to do the Oregon beaches with P, and Alaska is high on my list, plus I truly want to visit one of the four places in California where the Monarch butterflies congregate in the trees turning them into a sea of orange.

16 painting down, 4 to go.

BTW to those that asked: nice deal.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 9:49 PM

 

I get by with a little help of my friends...newspaper articles (both political & artnewsy), ironic pics, awesome art, odd toys, and on ocassion something as beautiful as this:

Should you ask that favor of me now
I'd have to answer, "No," suspended
as I am between life and something
not quite lived-a type of death
that shreds the soul of joy
like late summer flowers are
stripped from the autumn ground,
thrown upon a truck, and taken
God knows where, leaving the garden
still and quiet-the snow
that bleak, white cracked crust-
Ice underneath just waiting to ruin me.

Beautiful. Wish I knew who wrote it.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 5:12 PM

Thursday, January 06, 2005 :::
 

Attn: Book Editors
Need a hot-seat book of modern short stories?
The carrot dangles over here.

The Key to Advances:
"nice deal" $1 - $100,000
"good deal" $101,000 - $250,000
"significant deal" $251,000 - $500,000
"major deal" $501,000 and up

+++++++++++++++++++++

I called him early, 6:10, knowing he would be slamming down the alarm button.
"Can't sleep."
"Stressed?"
"I'm so jacked I can't get down."
"I'll stop over before work."
He placed me in bed, massaged my back, and I finally closed my eyes.
He returned after work and took me to The Onion for dinner...mermaid soup and lamb chops.
A man will save you, if you let him.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 11:57 PM

 

Here's an excellent, highly-readable link explaining Mexico's dream of a

Reconquesta, a reconquest of the United States of America.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 4:04 AM

 

Here's an excellent, highly-readable link explaining Mexico's dream of a
"http://www.vdare.com/awall/conquistadors.htm">
Reconquesta, a reconquest of the United States of America.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 3:52 AM

 

Get proactive. Feel free to copy and use the following:

I recently called your business and would like to know why you have an auto-voice message that includes Spanish. The United States of America is a melting pot of many, many cultures and ethnicities. If you wish to include special messages to represent ALL of the different people in our country, fine. Otherwise you should remove it. It is anti-American. We must all do what we can to fight ALL forms of terrorism that undermine the foundation of our country.

A Concerned Citizen

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 3:49 AM

Wednesday, January 05, 2005 :::
 

This morning, at 11 a.m., all of Europe participated in 3 minutes of silence to honor the people that died in the tsunami. It was very gracious and respectful. They showed 100s of people who stopped in the streets and stood quietly for the 3 minutes. Very surreal and very soulful.
Let's do the same here. Americans haven't lost their spiritual core. Many of us do care.
Join me today at 5 p.m. Central time. Just stop whatever you are doing. Silence. Say a prayer if you wish. I will be adding prayers for the soldiers and the Iraqi people.
If you will be at work, tell your coworkers and your boss. If you are the boss, encourage your employees to participate. And if you are a mom, do it with your children.
Peace.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 10:29 AM

 

Just minutes ago all of Europe participated in 3 minutes of silence to honor the people that died in the tsunami. It was very gracious and respectful. They showed 100s of people who stopped in the streets and stood quietly for the 3 minutes. Very surreal and very soulful.
Let's do the same here. Americans haven't lost their spiritual core. Many of us do care.
Join me today at 5 p.m. Central time. Just stop whatever you are doing. Silence. Say a prayer if you wish. I will be adding prayers for the soldiers and the Iraqi people.
If you will be at work, tell your coworkers and your boss. If you are the boss, encourage your employees to participate. And if you are a mom, do it with your children.
Peace.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 3:15 AM

 

That's the way they all became the Brady Bunch, the Brady Bunch, the Brady Bunch...
I'm down to TVLand. Hee. Sleep two hours. Get up for two, down for two...I am starting to feel better.
12 paintings finished! Okay maybe that is why I became sick. I am overdoing it, still the deadline is looming. 8 to go. So...painta painta painta.

I saw Santa Claus on New Year's Day. He was standing on a sidewalk in Richmond talking to three adults. It was him. He had the rotund belly and the right hair and beard. He was dressed in red wool long johns. He looked ...relieved, and was smoking a cigar and kicking back a beer, most likely a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I have two witnesses to attest to it.

An odd waking dream keeps happening in my head. Actually it isn't strange at all, rather pleasant, I would say. It is of a dining room. The end wall is dominated by a map of the world, a detailed map. There is a husband and a wife and ...well I can't tell how many children, but at least one. Actually I think it is two. And the family is discussing the world..tsunamis, Iraq, places to travel. I wonder what it means? A longing? My destiny? Someone else's life that I admire? Not sure.

I am sick, in another world, and these painting WOW they are so fresh, something new is happening and I'm riding it's tail. Yeeeeeeeeeeeee Ha!

Did I share my new soup variation? Add 2 T salsa to Campbell's Chicken and Rice soup. Serve it with tortilla chips.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 2:03 AM

Tuesday, January 04, 2005 :::
 

Chili in a Box sounds impossible, doesn't it? It is real. I just whipped up some chili, no beans/cream cheese dip for dinner. I am going to eat it with hot pepper slices. Hopefully that will chase away the germs floating inside of me.
Still the idea of Chili in a box seems just wrong. I mean it is meat. Doesn't meat need to be canned or tinned so you don't die from poisoning?
If I never post again, call Hormel.

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 4:05 PM

 

2005 has begun on a haggard note. Two days of ice storms where everything is covered with a sheer layer of ice. Put on yor traction boots! 6-10" of snow scheduled for tonight. I have nasty cold, first one in well over a year. Vick's Vapor Rub is a miracle. Let me grab some right now!

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 1:19 PM

Monday, January 03, 2005 :::
 

you can check out your horoscope for 2005 here
Don't you miss MISS CLEO?????????????? Psychic friends...aaaaaaaah

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 4:12 AM

 

I am starting to disbelieve EVERYTHING I see on teevee. There was a news story on a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevadas in California. 14’ they say and show a picture of a reporter standing in front of 4 men shoveling a huge pile of snow. You can see part of a tire. “Believe it or not.” The reporter says, “That is a car inside there.” Looks impressive, except it doesn’t look right. The reporter doesn’t seem to be standing in snow and the pickup truck behind the “snowcar” has a foot of snow capped onto the hood and roof as REAL snowstorms pile on snow. It is not buried. If I didn’t suspect some monkey business I would think that a plow dumped all of that snow onto the car.

Another thing…many people, even those enlightened individuals, will refer to something on teevee as if it is REAL. Teevee is not real. It is fiction. Right in the middle of a serious social/political discussion a friend of mine stated that he thinks Martin Sheen on “The West Wing” makes a better president than dubya. I have never seen West Wing but I know it is fiction so don’t compare it to reality even if dubya is a corporate flunky.

MTV promotes itself as cutting edge, all about music. It really isn’t. They sponsor a couple handfuls of musicians/bands and play them over and over until they are drummed into your psyche. There is far MORE to music than Nick and Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, and Ozzie. Who made Madonna’s career? Her Like A Virgin tour was phenomenal, but what has she really done since then? What revoluntary music has MTV brought forward in the past few years?

I am trying to complete 20 paintings in 15 days…. could be a little punch-drunk, or zonal. Hard to say at this point.

Why are those peeps on FOX so…ON? Do they snort cocaine, or what? I don’t know anyone who talks like they do. They are too loud and too (what is the word I am searching for? Giddy? Frantic?) fill in the blank_____________.
I’m not that laid back and they frighten me.

A tragedy in the making…I have sheets of newspaper scattered all over the floor. I am painting. My nephew sits down next to me. I notice a BIG ad for a Field Museum exhibit on the Kennedy’s. I ask my neph, “Do you know who that woman is?” Answer: No. “Well you do know who that man is in the background, right?” No. “That is JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was our president in the early 60s. He was assassinated in 1964. The woman is his wife…Jackie Kennedy. Well you do know his brother, the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy…” No. “He was murdered too. Umm…how about Martin Luther King, Jr?” Yes. I know all about him.
Later the same day I am on the phone catching up with a longtime friend. We are in a heated political discussion and he tells me the story of a teacher friend of his. The teacher is talking to a class of high-schoolers and mentions that he is going to discuss the assassinations. The class said, “What assassinations?”
Still later in the same day, I am on the phone with my newish friend V. She is 27. I ask her, “You know who President Kennedy is right?” She says Yes. “And you know he was assassinated, right?” What does assassinated mean? “Murdered.” Oh yes, I know about that. I did a paper on him.

Another sort-of-related story I just heard. My pal T teaches at a preschool. One of the students is a little girl who is diabetic. The kids are fed sugary treats and juices. The mother of this child is one of those fur-covered Mercedes-driving women who doesn’t work nor does she have time to raise her daughter. She brings no special foods to the preschool for the child. So T did some research online and found out what the girl could have so she could bring in what she needs. T’s boss told her she was not to research the children’s diseases and was not to bring in anything special for one child. T was demoted. She is not allowed to teach. She is now an assistant.


Americans spent 34 billion smackeroos on weight-reduction products/equipment in 2004. L. and I were watching something when a commercial came on for a piece of ab reduction equipment. Now have you ever seen a person who is fat and has a flat stomach? I don’t think it works that way. You can’t do spot reduction. If you are fat you need to diet. Everything slims down at once. Yep, your big breasts shrink too.
The Bacchanalia of the end of 2004 is over. I am in my Lent period for the month of January.

I can’t decide which of my Christmas presents is the grooviest…. the vintage, rhinestone-encrusted wishbone brooch? (I adore wishbones!), the “grasshopper” singing Kung Fu dude? (hiiiiiYA!), my buffet? (I could live in a motel room and survive with this cool thing!), or the 70s oversized “I Got You Babe” mink vest that I plan to wear with black leggings and tall black boots? I am sooooooooo lucky. Love my other prez’s too! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

::: posted by bite me, kick me, make me scream at 3:56 AM