TGIF

It's friday, hoorah! And this is a completely pointless post featuring an a~z montage of my iTunes library.

Has anyone seen my fake tan?

Not to be an old biddy or anything but cripes, there is something very wrong with these pictures. Susan Anderson delves into a frightening American subculture that has flourished over the last decade. First recieving attention after the murder of child pageant winner Jonbenet Ramsay, child beauty pageants have been steadily growing throughout the world. Every year up to 100,000 children under 12 compete in pageants which is quickly transforming into a billion dollar industry. Spray tanning, coaching, make up artists and even veneers are all part of the investment. The ultimate goal is to be pageant winner and envy of every tween in the room.

Scary?

Push yourself

Make a flyer of your day

Create a constellation from freckles

Fix something

Make an encouraging banner

Recently I had the creeping feeling that I have been getting a little bit lazy in life. Apart from occasionally jamming my head in bus doors (prev post) I haven't been doing much to terrify and exhilarate myself, in the best possible way of course. Last night, in a burst of bravery I went to the movies alone. I have never done this. With an unfortunate sense of irony I picked 'Date Night', no judgement please. It had Tina Fey and I love her, alas the film was terrible. As I sat in the cinema surrounded by smoochy couples chewing on popcorn I felt pleased with myself. I had conquered a minor fear, I had pushed myself. The pitying glances and movie attendant who raised his eyebrows before saying "just one ticket the? just one...to Date Night?" didn't bother me at all.

I recently acquired Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's book 'Learning to Love you More'. It came at just the right time. The two authors gave the public a list of assignments to complete and published submissions in book and blog form. It catalogues the mundane elements that every day life can sometimes bring but encourages us to look at it in a new light.Visiting the blog and reading the book is slightly a voyeuristic experience into the lives of others but it helped me realise that we all have fears and we all need to push ourselves a little bit more.

You can visit the blog here.

Anticipation

"Let's just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you."

"The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, notdoled out to them by a grudging master."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

“I have only one thing to say to you, sir … if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”

ghost limb

I know I've blogged it before but uuuugh maaan alive I miss my polaroid camera! It's currently, very sadly, not in my possession and it's like suffering ghost limb without her.

bitter sweet nostalgia

As odd as it may be, I don't remember much from my childhood, but there are few things I will never forget!

my late nan's incredibly kitsch souvenir teaspoon collection from all over the world

my moose's blue willow collection, her cornish ware collection I now proudly own

those creepy waif like big eyed children prints I had in my bedroom which terrified me! but now I wish I still had ...

my nan's vintage tea cups, but going against my british roots and being a non-tea drinker, I never got to use

Awkwardness is the spice of life

Some days it seems the world puts on a comical show for only you to see. The other day, as I waited for the bus, an ash blonde woman in tight white jeans and a zebra skin top approached the post shop I was standing in front of. Facing the front of the store she stared at the two sheets of glass that had joined together creating a shop front. She stepped forward. She stepped back. She waved her arms back and forth. Suddenly it dawned on me that she thought the window panes were an electric door.

"Excuse me" I said. "The door is on the other side."

Looking bewildered she smiled at me appreciatively and made her way tentatively to the real sliding doors. The bus that I was waiting for was late. Instead of the my faithful chariot, the number 13 arrived and a man put his girlfriend on the bus.

"Goodbye my darling! Goodbye!!!" he yelled while waving furiously and hopping from one foot to another. As the bus started to move he ran beside it, creating an epic love story moment, bound to be imprinted in their minds forever. Instead of watching his lover become a tiny blip in the distance as the bus turned the corner, it ground to a halt at the red light. Things became awkward.

Piss elegant

I love a bit of tizziness, a bit of piss elegance. It is a dangerous genre to play with, as ultimately the ethos is 'so bad it's good', 'print on print on print' and 'more is more'. Confidence, irony and a dash of ignorance are required. The ladies of Kath and Kim, Strangers with Candy and Gummo serve tizz elegance inspiration with their lashings of pleather, PVC and pussybows.

behold!

I was ecstactic to stumble across Ashley Lande today ... when I should have been otherwise doing work ... her illustrations instantly filled my entire being with immense jealously for I love her work so! the characters in her illustrations appear to be bewildered primitives awed, terrified, and absurdly curious about the gods they behold, like naive children trying to make sense of a new toy. I physically ache, the line work and colours are ah-mazing. sigh.

Uuuuuuuugh

Uuuugh I also came across Aidan Koch, another stunning illustrator whose work has me convulsing with jealousy ... she creates the kind of work that inspires me to spend half my pay check on paints and felts and paper and coloured pencils ... swooooon

Colour and fragment

dear diary

I've never been very good with words, I find it difficult to arrange and articulate the thoughts in my head hence my preference for lists. I think it's safe to assume we've all gone through a phase of keeping a diary, somewhere to scribble down all our thoughts, fears, triumphs but even I read back through my pages and can't decipher what it was I trying to say! so instead, I've begun a visual diary. a picture a day.

Ugly

I went to a party recently where I spyed an unusual young man standing in the corner of the room. He had no one to talk to, blinked rapidly and wore a serene expression on his face. I was concerned immediately and couldn't stop watching him. Amongst the loud chatter, deafening music and obscene dance moves he possessed a power few of us are capable of, invisibility.

His problem (or advantage) it seems, was his ugliness. I watched him all night, marvelling in the way he was totally unaffected by his bustling surroundings, still blinking rapidly and hovering in the corner. Suddenly he was gone, and not one person noticed.  That evening I came to the conclusion that he was the most interesting person in the room.

"... To assemble material for a history of ugliness is funnier than to make a history of beauty, because beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages, nevertheless, a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. A beautiful nose should be no longer or shorter than any given measure. On the contrary, an ugly nose can be as long as the one of Pinocchio, as big as the trunk of an elephant, or like the beak of an eagle, and so on. Ugliness is unpredictable, and offers an infinite range of possibilities."
- Umberto Eco

I wish ...

I wish I lived in a Wes Anderson film.