Shiny Bits of Foil

There is a mindset known as “tall poppy syndrome” where anything and anyone sticking their head up above the crowd gets it lopped off. I’m beginning to think I may be in a permanent state of TPS.

For the last few years, every single time hubs and I have to the point where we can afford to sock a few extra hundred dollars away to pay off debt, something bad happens and wipes us out. Every. Single. Time.

And once again, it’s happened. Literally the same day I was going to have him run by the bank to pay down a loan we have through them, he was diagnosed with a potentially dangerous condition. Said condition will most likely amount to nothing as long as we do what we have to for that to happen. If we don’t, he could die. Or lose a leg. Or have a stroke.

Unfortunately, doing what we have to amounts to racking up enormous medical bills – possibly (but not definitely, as of this writing) several days in the hospital, daily injections of expensive meds (and when the doctors are saying they’re really expensive you know the pricetag has to be ungodly) for a week, followed by months of a relatively cheap drug that has the unfortunate requirement of being made expensive because it’s use has to be closely monitored through regular blood draws and so on.

Oh yeah, our insurance? Probably won’t cover much if any of it, and even if it is covered the best we could afford involves a $10G deductible before the insurance even kicks in.

I’m getting to the point where I’m about to just give up any hope of ever being out from under potentially crushing debt, much of which was racked up by – wait for it – previous medical bills racked up when we were even more broke than we are now. (God forbid I’m ever late on a payment, because if that happens it’s all over.)

Seriously. I just want to give up. We’re paying close to $500 dollars a month on credit cards just to tread water and have been since I can remember. And the balances never seem to budge. Some days I just want to leave the house, lock the door and just walk off into the sunset, and damn the credit rating.  There’s just no other way to get ahead enough to get out from under without committing criminal acts. Welcome to the American dream. If the terrorists are killing us out of envy for our way of life, they’re doing it wrong.

For a while now I’ve been really jonesing to start making art again. It’s something I did a lot as a kid and as a teen, but something I’ve pretty much stuck in the back of my life closet since then, figuring on dragging it out in the rosy “real life” of the future.  Heh.

Well, recently I’ve decided to quit putting that shit on hold and start bringing art back into my life. And about a month ago, an idea for an amazing, incredible, cool HOLYFUCKHAWESOMESPECTACULAR!!11!eleventy!! project popped into my mind. It went something like this:

I’d create an art-quality handmade blank journal, something really cool and awesome in and of itself.  Then I’d release it into the wild with a statement in the flyleaf instructing whoever found it to add something to it – an entry, a poem, a found object, a short story, a drawing…whatever – then pass it on or leave it somewhere for someone else to find.  I’d also encourage participants to branch out from the journal, maybe write a song inspired by someone else’s poem. Maybe use someone’s entry as the inspiration for a painting, and so on. The journal and everything in it would be licensed Creative Commons so anything and everything in it could be the seed of something else. In the end, if I was lucky, maybe it would get sent back to me and I could put it on exhibit somewhere. And if it didn’t come back, no big deal. That’s just part of the life history of the piece. It’s an organic process that can’t be constrained or directed. It either happens or it doesn’t…well, you get the picture.

The idea grew from there. I’d put up a website – nothing fancy, maybe a simple bulletin board or blog – where people could come and discuss the project, share they’re own additions or sightings, link to art inspired by the project. In short, it would be a multi-dimensional, participatory, interactive community art project. It would be amazing, and fun, and creative and original…

Oooo…did I say original? Yeah. About that. Look what I just learned about Saturday (and, to my knowledge, had never heard about prior to Saturday)…

The 1000 Journals Project

From their site:

The 1000 Journals Project is an ongoing collaborative experiment attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels. The goal is to provide a method for interaction and shared creativity among friends and strangers.

How it Works:

Those who find the journals add something to them. A story, drawing, photograph, anything really. Then they pass the journal along, to a friend or stranger, and the adventure continues.

Yeah. 1000 Journals Project. Not one journal.  One fucking thousand journals. With a fancy-pants flashy-shiny web presence. And a book deal. And a LiveJournal community. And a fucking DVD docufuckingmentary on the project. It goes on and on and on.

Talk about getting cockblocked.

Yeah. Stumbling across that book was some fun, let me tell you. And you just gotta know in Asheville lots of people have heard of this project, even if only peripherally. So if I go ahead now, it’s just going to look like a lame-ass derivative copytard low-ball version of an already world-famous art project. And I can’t even use the angle of being inspired by the project, because I wasn’t and hadn’t even heard of it. Hell, even the artists statement in the beginning of the book is virtually identical to the one I was concocting.

The thing is, anything I do now will just be a pale, drippy Dollar Store candle compared to the raging inferno of artistic vision of one fucking thousand journals sent out world fucking wild and tracked on a high-end website by a goddamn LiveJournal community of fans. It’s a been there-done that project. Like making your own one-person Kon-Tiki boat and sailing it across Lake Lure.

God fucking dammit. After 20 years of hibernation, my inner artist finally got its nerve up to make a grand entrance on a local level, only to discover that the fucking Lollapolooza festival was already scheduled to play next door at the same fucking time.

Fuck.

Tags: 1000 Journals Project, art, FUCK, journals

Snarky comment. Catchphrase!

I love how his “heard worse in a bathroom” remark totally dismisses and disempowers their comments as basically the offensiveness equivalent of unflavored oatmeal.  Also, I love how he points out that their definitions of masculinity and femininity totally mark them out as cultural dinosaurs out roaming around past their expiration date, right up there with business owners who still think that “web sites are a fad.”

Here’s a quick photo update of my adventures in knitting two socks at once. I’m using Cat Bordhi’s new Personal Footprints method, where you knit the foot from toe to heel, then open up a hole to knit in the cuff. These are intended to be a bit large, because I intend to felt them down a bit for warmth and cushiony goodness.

Working my way up the cuffs

A better shot of the shape of the socks

(Also, check out the hair. That’s the glorious new no ‘poo do, on an alternate wash day – didn’t rinse today, just wet-combed – and after having had a day’s worth of running my hands through it out of frustration because my brain wouldn’t work right. And it still looks good and even has a little bit of body left. In my ‘poo days, it would have looked like oiled seaweed by now.)

Tags: Cat Bordhi, craft, DIY, knitting, socks

Flourless chocolate cake is pretty much the perfect chocolate delivery system ever.

Tags: chocolate, flourless cake, food

Check it out, crafty peeps. That’s two, count them…two! Socks being knit at once, magic loop style. Oh yeah, I rock.

I’m making a pair of thick fuzzy house socks out of some really rough-spun Shetland/angora mix (rough spun as in, I’m still picking out grass as I knit). I plan on making them too big and felting them down to size for extra toasty-toes excitement.

(Sorry I look like a bum in the pic. It’s late and I didn’t feel like prettying up. What can I say.)

Tags: craft, DIY, knitting, sock

A few weeks ago, I came across this article about a guy who, in keeping with his paleo lifestyle, had decided to ditch the shampoo and soap and just shower with water. The basic hypothesis is that our bodies evolved systems of natural flora, fauna and chemical balances to keep our skin in healthy with just water, and that the harsh chemicals in soap actually counteract all those carefully evolved protections and repair systems. In addition to being the sensitive-to-anything-chemical gal that I am, I’m also open to trying new things just for the hell of it and highly interested in lowering both my expenses and my carbon footprint. Additionally, I was intrigued and somewhat frightened by the notion that using soaps and shampoos not only exposes you to caustic, carcinogenic and sometimes even neurotoxic chemicals that get absorbed into your body through your skin, but that in many cases these harsh detergents and chemicals actually create the very problems they’re used to cure.

So I decided to give it a try. I personally didn’t go the “alternate shampoo” route (baking soda/vinegar), because I wanted to test the theory about the body having a natural cleansing balance that’s capable of functioning without any chemical assistance at all.  So I just went from shampooing to rinsing with water.

As predicted, the first week was hideous. I looked like a homeless bum. But sometime during week two, the supply-and-demand function kicked in and my scalp stopped producing as much oil. At this point, I started getting a ton of flakes. I’ve read that this is not uncommon and that it, too, would drop off. My guess is that your scalp produces more skin as well as more oil when you shampoo to make up for the stripping (and probably skin-destructive) qualities of the detergent. Again, as predicted, the flakes cleared up in about a week.

So now it’s been close to a month and right on schedule my hair and scalp seems to be balancing out. I can go a day or two now without needing to rinse (about my norm when I was shampooing) and it still looks clean and healthy. I have no more flaking than I did with shampoo (updated to add: 5 weeks in and I have noticeably fewer flakes now than I did before. Love it!). My hair is soft and shiny and feels incredibly luxurious, like I just had a hot-oil spa treatment. And OMFG, it has body! Real body.

Let me tell you something – my hair has never had body. During the big-hair 80’s and 90’s, I used to spend hours gelling and moussing and crimping and curling and spraying just to get some semblance of fashionable lift. Lift that almost immediately deflated into mere “texture” and which, by the end of the day, was just a shadow of an attempt. My hair has always been so fine and so limp that bobby pins and pony-tail bands slide out of it as I walk. Curls don’t take. Permanents aren’t. You get the idea.

Now, 4 weeks after stopping with the shampoo, my hair has heft. I can push it around and it stays there (not like it’s gelled, but more like it, well, takes a hint). And I can’t stop touching it. Neither can hubby. It feels that good. And it smells fine, too. Not fruity or flowery, like with shampoos, but not stanky like unwashed hair. It’s just a healthy, neutral scent. If I knew that going no-poo would turn my hyper-limp hair into this gorgeous crown of creamy locks, I would have kicked Mom in the face the first time she tried to ‘poo my widdle baby scalp.

Seriously. You should give it a try. I’ve been reading about it on the net and almost everyone who gets through the “homeless bum” stage to the other side has nothing but raves to say about the process. People with unmanageably frizzy hair suddenly find themselves with glorious waves and curls (there’s an alternative Curly Girl method that’s a bit more involved if you have wavy/curly locks and going strictly no-poo doesn’t work for you).  People with scalp conditions wake up one day with beautiful skin. Straight noodle-heads like myself develop enviable manes that,  ironically, would not look out of place in a high-end shampoo ad. It’s crazy.

And yes, when the current batch of Burt’s Bees shower gel runs out, I’m going to try going no soap, as well. I predict good things, and although my skin is not problematic, I’ve read many other people reporting skin condition and disease turn-arounds as impressive as the results for no-poo hair. After seeing what it’s done for my hair, I can’t wait to see what it’s going to do for my skin. ¹

If you’re curious, just Google “no poo”. There’s lots of stuff out there, including alternative cleaners if you’re too chicken to go all the way (or if you’re one of the very, very few it just doesn’t work for).

1. Of course, going no soap is NOT about not bathing. I will still bathe regularly. I just won’t be using soap, except on my hands for sanitary reasons – germ theory still holds. [↩]

O. M. G.

Neil Gaiman is writing an episode of Doctor Who

That gaspy humming noise you hear is the entire population of female geeks joined in a simultaneous Tantric nerdgasm synchronized to peak in about 14 months. If I were you, I’d wear protective goggles.

Tags: Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman, really those are the only tags you need

Temp Hides Fun, Fulfilling Life From Rest Of Office

BOSTON—Ty Braxton, 23, continues to hide his fun and fulfilling life from the full-time employees of Hale & Dorr, the Boston law firm for which he has temped since July.

“At a job like this, where you’re surrounded by angry, perpetually stressed-out lawyers who are working 80 hours a week, it’s important to hide the fact that you’re enjoying a normal, balanced, happy life,” Braxton said Monday. “People get really pissed when they hear stuff like that.”

Braxton, who earns roughly one-fourth of what the firm’s lowest-seniority full-time employees make, said he has no desire to make his coworkers feel bad about their “boring, shitty lives.”

Tags: career, funny, Onion, work