OY! PA-LEESE...

I'm beginning my Christmas shopping for my kids this week. Luckily, righteous and diligent parents have saved me from making morally irresponsible choices. This holiday season major toy manufacturers have teamed up with the likes of Al-Qaeda and possibly SATAN himself to offer these outwardly innocent but insidiously dangerous toys. Take a look.

That clip was from Associated Press. I wanted to see updates from this news story so I fearfully explored that path of ugly stupidity and took a peek at ultra right-wing Fox New's take on the story. Not surprisingly, Fox News expands the doll's messages to include Satanic ones as well. And if you understand what they are from the video clip? then you're marked and you must BURN, WITCH BURN!

The power of suggestion is everything. Adults pick up many accidental little quirks in kids toys. Mike Mozart's humorous reviews of common toys demonstrates this point. This one's my favourite, how... HOW did Disney miss this before it went into production?!

The one case of true toy sabotage I know of is an act of genius in my book. In the early 1990's a group claiming to be the BLO, the Barbie Liberation Organization took 300 talking Barbie and G.I. Joe Dolls and switched the voice boxes before returning them to the store. G.I said things as, "I hate math" and "will we ever have enough clothes?" while Barbie said, "Eat lead, Cobra!" and "Vengeance is Mine!".

Mike Bononno was the mastermind behind the prank and went on to form The Yes Men with Andy Bichlbaum. They're activists, posing as representatives of the World Trade Organization, Exxon, Dupont and others to expose the true nature of 'The Man'. They call it "identity correction" and their weapon is elaborate satirical pranks. The Yes Men documentary is smart and gut-busting funny. Here's the trailer for it. Go rent it! Now I'm off to sleep to rest up before confronting the crazy Christmas Shoppers. G'Night.

**A big thanks to Andrea for the doll news clip (keep them coming!)

Peace and Quiet

Quiet Place

Ellen Sereda

A little doodle I did while taking a break from scrubbing the mysterious red stuff on the bottom shelf of my fridge today. It turned into a drawing that I quite like and is available matted in my Etsy shop. Now my Etsy widget on the side is symmetrical again (yay).

When you sketch purely from imagination as I was doing with this drawing, it's pretty clear that you're influenced by whatever is going on at that moment. In my case, my daughters were bickering for most of the weekend. After exhausting myself as a referee, I gave up and hid in the basement with my pen and paper and let them fight it out. My youngest has a new (only mildly disturbing) saying she uses when her older sister is squeezing her or pinning her down, "That hurts so much it doesn't even hurt anymore!" I should have bred more. In a big families, the sibling torture is nicely spread around, not so damn focused.

So I was craving some peace and quiet. Today, I also received some old photos of my parents and my family when we were all young. Both my parents escaped from Estonia during WWII. We grew up as part of an Estonian community in Ontario. My parents Estonian friends were close enough for my siblings and I to call them Aunt and Uncle, but our only true blood relatives in Canada were my Great Aunt and her family. Thanks to the magic of Face Book, my cousin has contacted me and has been sending old photos. I love getting them. As I was looking at them today I thought of old rustic, Estonian, woodsy like things when I drew the picture (the background is pure BC though).

It's interesting to see old photos of yourself that you've never seen before. Here is one photo sent today of me and two of my sisters with my great aunt. I'm the little, squishy one sitting down. Awww, poor me, cute but a little like a flunkie alien child from Village of the Damned. I would be posed for world domination if only I could find my other shoe...

Ocean Music - WIP

I sold a few things in my Etsy store and thought I really need to start adding more pieces. I'll be adding this little painting shortly. This is my daughter, who actually has started enjoying posing for me, so I'm taking advantage of it. I'm reworking this piece, trying to determine what I want for the background. I'm thinking the suggestion of a beach at night and cityscape in the distance. Basically Vancouver, which is where I spent the entire day today.

I would post some of my pictures of my escape from suburbia into the big city, but when I downloaded them, they were all blurry, except for this one...


I've never seen this picture before. It was no doubt, taken by one of my daughters, who DO understand technology better than me. This is my poor, old dog. It's the holidays and time to humiliate the pets. Gently placed hats allowed, garland and lights, no.

Forgive me, we had our weekly family movie night and today's screening was, Fred Claus. I'm still recovering. So I'll leave with a beautiful singer, Lior and his wonderful video done with silhouette marionettes. And yes, I've made peace with YouTube.

What to Put on Barbies Walls

Lucien Freuds' painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995) sold for $33 million this past May, a record for a painting by a living artist. I'm kind of wanting to use a mini version of it for the interior of the Barbie house I'm working on. But no, that is cruel. I'll give my daughters a Barbie house that is pretty and bright with no social statement attached. Also, I'm imaging that awkward moment when their friends leave our house and tell their parents, "...and their mom made them a doll house and pasted pictures of naked, fat ladies on the wall". Uh.....no

I've always liked Freuds work. He's known for his stark painterly portraits that never romanticize the subject. He paints flesh, exaggerating folds and crevices like some kind of figurative topographer. His painting of a pregnant Kate Moss is unlike the Kate Moss we're used to seeing. And if this queen was a 15th century one, he just might lose his head. He gets to the blood and guts of what people are, which is...blood and guts. To me, his art makes more accurate statements about the human condition than anything his dopey grandpa said.

Suburban Tales and some Art....

My heroism was put to a test today. While out on errands I came across a scene of a security guard pinning down and trying to handcuff a struggling man. The man's hysterical girlfriend was screaming at the security guard. Then she lunged at the guard, so I sprang into action. After determining the man was securely handcuffed and concluding the woman was unarmed, scrawny and probably weak, I said to her, "Hey, don't do that". I don't think she heard me though, because by that time, I was blocked by the 2 people who had already pulled her off the security guard. Then a calm onlooker said to the woman, "You're making a scene you know," as if the whole thing in sleepy, middle class suburbia wasn't already a scene. But I could leave, reassured my work was done.

My poor reaction time is no doubt from staying up too late again. If anyone knows a good technique from switching from a night owl to a morning person, I'd be ever so grateful. I knew I was especially tired today, because I glanced at my wall calender and misread December 8th as Hajj (Muslims pilgrimage to Mexico) and didn't question it, just thought "why the venue change?" Oy. It's been quite a day. Tomorrow, I'm in the studio, painting and listening to soothing music ALL DAY.

I feel a need to be at least a little useful and to make up for my humiliation for accidentally posting an altered version of the kitschy 80's Soviet ground beef commercial I originally meant to show. If you didn't see it (and I'm hoping that's EVERYBODY), some twat thought it was oh-so-clever to subtitle the ad with juvenile references to male appendages and the like. Sheesh. So, for you artists and those interested, here are some links and resources for films and videos relating to art/artists .

The PBS series Art:21: Art in the 21st Century is a fascinating program on current contemporary artists and the direction of contemporary art. On the website you can watch show previews, bios of all the artists featured and related links to them. If you can catch it when it airs, it's definitely worth watching.

Saatchi Online TV has a little bit of everything. Mostly low tech weblog info on artists, visits to artist studios, galleries, etc. And if like me, you're miles away from an art scene, you can live vicariously through this site. There are a few short films and film previews. This preview of a documentary on artist Alice Neel by her grandson Andrew Neel fascinated me. Her unconventional and tragic life and her art are explored in this film. Certainly an artist I want to know more about.

I have more links but since I'm blogging everyday this month, I need to ration. Until tomorrow my good people...

I'm never going to use You Tube again

****update****This post originally had a You Tube ad on it. It disappeared this morning, so I went to find another version of it and updated it. What I didn't check was that the updated version was embellished with lewd and completely humourless subtitles. OOPS!And that is THE last time I will ever embed a video again. Maybe. So in all, I apologize if you received that video in your email box or reader. This blogging challenge is proving stressful. Puppies, I should just blog about rainbows and puppies. Moving on then...

I'd like to make a correction to this post, in which I shared the slinky toy commercial from my childhood and said I didn't think they made metal slinkies anymore. I was wrong.

Look!

Yep, my anti-consumerist rant backfired. My kids saw the commercial and whined for a slinky.

Last week while clothes shopping, my kids' paranormal toy sniffing gift led them to find a couple of slinkies hidden in the back of a high shelf in the toy section. After getting the slinkies home, the excitement didn't last long though. That old commercial is all lies. You need a physicist to calculate the exact arc, position and speed to get those babies to make it down more than 2 stairs. And I didn't cheap out on them when buying them either! I just noticed my receipt reads, "Slinky - DELUXE". If you look closely at the picture maybe you can spot the upgrades or special features I missed.

Wandering

Having publicly admitted my workout failure to even complete a full session of Tai Chi classes, I thought I should try to find my sport. I have no idea what that could be. It can't be team sports, because I have the competitive spirit (but not the serenity) of a Buddhist monk. Although, I got pretty riled up about over a game of Wii bowling last year.

The only thing I really like to do is walk. No, more like, wander. A friend from high school contacted me a while back and asked if I still loved to walk. She remembers how I would say no to a bus ride and choose instead to spend 3 hours walking home from the across the city. When I moved to my current city, I worked nights and explored the mountain trails in the region for hours. Then I worked days and had children and the years and the scale moved forward.

So I'm off today to explore again, although I don't have the time (and probably not the stamina) to explore for hours. I'm determined to keep this up, because finally I understand that consistency is the key to everything. That's what this daily blogging challenge is about, consistency. What you do doesn't have to be perfect or amazing or brilliant or extreme. You just have to DO, like the tortoise plodding along.

And in the spring I'm thinking of taking up fencing or archery. Yep, old fashioned sports with weapons. I wonder what that says about me. I think it means I played too much Dungeons and Dragons with my brother when I was a kid. And I'm a geek. En garde!

Happy Blogaversary from the Land of Crisis

Who says Canada is boring. Our current government has a real possibility of being overthrown. Yet in typical Canadian style it involves a lot of paperwork and very dull characters. I'm disgusted with every one of them. None of them represent me anymore. I've also discovered our Governor General is rushing home from Prague (sort of rushing... on Wednesday) to attempt to sort out the matter. She is the personal representative of the Queen. The Queen of England. The woman who is our head of state but has no other purpose in our country other than having her head decorate our money.

However, I'm not going to let the matter get me down because today is my one year anniversary in the world of blogging! And so even though I'm a terrible party planner, I'm going to throw a virtual party.

First, a celebratory cake.This was tough, because when googling "existentialists cakes" you get nothing, and that's what I really want pastry wise. But this is even better! Picasso's Woman with Crow by artist Jean L. Zaun, not a cake but all chocolate, including the frame. Yum.

For wiping off the chocolate, you must use these, retro stressed mom napkins available at Mikwright. They read, "where the hell is my pickle fork? i can't have anything nice with you kids" I love them.

During the party we can play a giant game of scrabble like this one played at Wembley Stadium in London.

Later we can sit and put our feet up wearing these bird seed shoes and see who can attract the most birds.

Hmmm...I even give bad pretend parties.

But it's been a good year here. To all those who read this blog and to those who comment, I'd just like to say I couldn't ask for more intelligent, beautiful, perceptive, interesting, wise, articulate and overall super duper fabulous total strangers come into my life, who now... feel like friends. Cheers!

The Blogging Challenge

I found this brooch I made when I was about 20. I created wood painted jewelry and sold it occasionally . I had enough sympathy sales from friends and family that I was able to pay for a month's rent or was it rye and cokes? Memory eludes me.

At the time I thought I was basing this image on Edvard Munch's The Scream. What I didn't realize, was in fact, I was painting a pretty accurate self portrait of me in the future, specifically last week.

Three points and I'm not going to harp on them, but quickly just imagine:
1. arthritis in your cheekbone
2. toothache
3. sinus infection

ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

The other annoying thing I won't do is what every woman who has given birth does when she experiences strong pain in her life is to use the childbirth scale. On a scale of one to ten, how bad was it in comparison to childbirth, that sort of thing. Irritating.

Seven...it was a seven, sometimes 8 1/2 and with no cute, cuddly baby reward at the end.

I'm much better now. So better in fact when I read about the blogging everyday for a month challenge, I thought I'd participate. It was for November, but I see others are starting one for December, so I'm signing up. Yes, it's December, the worst month to start. Christmas Day will probably have nothing but a YouTube video of the burning Yule log, but I'm going to give it a go.

Be prepared for creative spelling, big grammatical errors (even more so than usual) and pointless ramblings (even more so than usual). Possibly even some intense personal disclosures, simply for lack of better ideas. Anybody else want to take the challenge?