WALL BACON!

The fortune cookie paintings triggered a need in me to paint pictures of other food items, and this has now become a full-blown obsession.  I started off painting five 4"x4" canvases to look like toaster waffles (complete with tinted varnish "syrup"!!!).  Now I want a breakfast nook specifically so I can hang a bunch of these righteous waffles up in there.  Sadly, my kitchen is laid out in a way where there's no good place to hang art (or room for a table or chairs), so they'll have to grace someone else's nook. 

So yeah...I painted some waffles (with toasty brown edges!), and they are fabulous.  And then I thought, hey, these waffles should come with a side of bacon.  But not strips of bacon painted on a big ol' canvas - I'd want this bacon to stand alone in bacony glory.  But how to accomplish this?

My brain excels at problem-solving, and "how can I make fake, wall-mountable bacon?" is exactly the kind of weird-ass quandary it loves.  I have indeed come up with a way to construct artificial bacon strips, and I'm 99% sure I know how to make 'em hangable...but I haven't attached the hanging hardware yet so you'll have to be content with a picture taken on the floor.

BEHOLD!

Hungry? :)

Gender Wednesday: Dude, you are SUCH a chick.

My friend posted the clip below on my Facebook wall a while back.  I love it because it shows just how stupid and arbitrary gender stereotypes are.

You can bend anything around until it looks "masculine" or "feminine", really.  Knitting?  Oh, yeah, that's a dude thing.  Guys are so good with their hands...and good with counting, which is a big part of doing the fancier stitches.  Cooking is another obvious manly pastime, what with all the math involved. 

Sports, though...sports are sooooo girly.  Chicks are smaller, y'know...makes 'em more agile.  Plus women have a lot of physical endurance - their bodies are built for childbirth, after all.

Etc., etc.

Anyway, enjoy this delicious comedy!

THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER

Is there a word for a braingasm triggered by the perfect intersection of two or more awesome pop culture references?




*Head explodes*

A sneak preview of my new series of paintings!

This post from a while ago made me realize that fortune cookies rarely contain any useful information...and I decided I need to fix that.  However, I'm gluten intolerant and not good at baking anyway, so I'm doing this the only way I can: through painting!  Check out the very first painting in my new Cookie Wisdom series:

 

The "fortune" is an actual slip of paper I typed, printed, cut down to size and glued to the canvas.  Not only does this look more interesting and authentic, it also allows me to sell each painting for less than if I'd had to painstakingly render all that precise lettering by hand. Win-win!

I've done four of these paintings so far, each with an important piece of wisdom or advice*: "Be your own guardian angel", "Be brave", "You are stronger than you know", and the one shown above, which I made just for me.  I'm going to hang it up in the area where I paint to remind me to stay calm/take time for myself sometimes/not be such a worrywort.

In the future I'd like to offer custom fortune cookie paintings.  That way you could order one with a piece of wisdom you choose yourself - something you sometimes need to be reminded of.  Also, let's all take a moment to picture the awesome gift-giving potential here:

Classy - you could use the person's favourite quote.

Predictive - an actual fortune you would wish for them, like "You will be famous" for an aspiring actor.

Passive-aggressive - if you're forced to buy a gift for someone you don't actually like, consider going with a backhanded compliment like "You're as sweet as you are pretty."

Outright snarky - do you have a playfully mean relationship with someone?  Perhaps they'd get a kick out of a cookie whose fortune says "Fewer carbs" or "Nobody likes you."

I'm totally psyched about this idea (can you tell?).  It's weird, but after every painting (or series of paintings) I do, I always feel like "Well, that was it.  That's the last cool idea I'll ever have.  I've used them all up now."  And then a few weeks later - pow - new inspiration hits me and it's like getting a phone call from a childhood best friend who's still just as funny and smart and awesome as I remembered.  It's like "Oh!  Wow.  Inspiration?  Is that you?  I never thought I'd hear from you again.  How you doin'?"  And Inspiration and I have a long talk that leaves me feeling electrified and before I know it it's 3am and I'm making a blog post because I'm too excited to sleep.

By the way, all this cookie-painting has made me want to do other paintings of food, too...just because.  I'll let you know how that goes!

And hey - feel free to suggest "fortunes" to me - if I like one I'll totally use it (and unlike with custom orders, you're under no obligation to buy the resulting painting).

*Yeah, yeah, technically that's not a "fortune" but neither is half the stuff you'll find in an actual fortune cookie.

Shoutout Sunday: Weird Green Cat

Today I will be discussing Weird Green Cat.

Weird Green Cat is a webcomic that comes out every Monday, and it is awesome.  Creator Brett Donnelly excels at crafting dead-on parodies of Star Wars, comic book characters, etc., and seasoning them with exactly the right touches of philosophical sweetness and cynical grains of salt.  It's like someone put geek culture through a Holden Caulfield filter*.

If I had to pick a favourite comic, it might be this one, based on awful '80s fantasy film Ladyhawke (it's funny 'cause the guy is saying exactly what I was thinking when I watched it!) but the competition would be very, very close indeed.

Incidentally, Brett also does digital commissions.  I'm getting one, but I haven't been able to decide what I want him to draw for me...there are so many things I'd love to see translated into his drawing style!  You can also purchase a fancy, high-res print of any of his comic strips - or rather, a print of some of his comic strips, because he'll only print each one once.  The list of still-available-comics is here - order your favourite one while you can!

Last but not least, you can purchase a handy educational 12"x18" poster of A Phylogeny of the Undead (the hilarious faux-Latin names alone are worth the price of admission, kids!).

So, yeah.  That's all I have to say.  Go read now. :)



*which is something I just made up but I'm suddenly thinking it'd be really cool to have one...I'd run the Bible through it so I could read Jesus' plaintive musings about women.

Addendum: Don't Read This, Either.

Just a little postscript to this week's Caturday...I remembered something else that happened during Mordecai and Tulip's stay in my apartment.

Turns out cat physiology is somewhat similar to ours: which is to say, when Tulip was in heat, any time she'd get up from sitting on the couch she'd leave a tiny wet vagina print behind (funfact: this is why human women wear pants).  Each print was a neat little circle, like this:

O

I saw this and couldn't stop laughing.  I said to Mordecai (who, if you'll recall, tends to object to my general disgustingness commitment to telling the truth): "Dude, we need to buy a coaster for your cat.  She's leaving wet rings on the furniture."

And he was like "OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU STOP TALKING NOW."  (Which, frankly, I've heard so many times from so many people that the words have lost all meaning.)

Caturday: You Probably Shouldn't Read This.

The following story is disturbing and says some dubious things about my character.  However, it's also pretty funny, so I'm going to go ahead and share it.

A year or two ago, my friend Mordecai* found himself suddenly without an apartment.  He and his cat Tulip* ended up staying with me for a month or two while he looked for a new place.

Tulip was a teeny little slip of a thing -  not technically a kitten anymore, but smaller than a normal adult cat and in possession of the biggest, most vacant eyes I've ever seen. She was also unspayed and currently spending about half her time in heat.  She'd have about a week where she was all sweet and well-adjusted followed by a week in apparent agony, and it'd just kind of switch back and forth.

A cat going in and out of heat looks kind of like this.

So one day Mordecai and I are sitting on my couch watching tv or whatever, and poor Tulip is languishing on the floor making a constant stream of "CAN HAZ SEX NOW PLZ?" noises, and Mordecai sez to me, he sez:

"I heard you can satisfy a cat in heat by using a Q-tip [name-brand cotton swab]*."

[Note: you should have an inkling by now where this story is going.  If it skeeves you out, please hit the "back" button on your browser.  It only gets worse from here.]

And I'm like, "Huh.  I did not know that."

And Mordecai goes, "I could never do that to Tulip, though.  She's like my daughter."

"That's understandable."

Pause.

"Apparently it's totally safe for the cat, though," Mordecai says.

"That's good."

Pause.

"Yeah, and they love it.  It makes them feel better."

"Interesting."

Pause.

"My friend's veterinarian recommended it for her cat.  An actual veterinarian!"

I can't figure out why he keeps bringing this up.  Then, finally, realization dawns: "Mordecai, do you want me to [name-brand cotton swab] your cat?"

"Yes.  Yes I do."

I look over to where Tulip is writhing around in a frenzy of sexual frustration.

Normally I would never consider what Mordecai is proposing.  I'm an enlightened person, dammit!  I know about the importance of informed consent!  But still...Tulip looks like she's really suffering.  She seems like she might die if she doesn't get some action.  ('Course at this point in my life I've been single for a long while so I might be projecting a little bit.)  And hey, if even vets endorse this practice...

"Get her and hold her down," I say.  It feels totally surreal hearing those words come out of my mouth.  It feels even more surreal when Mordecai - who apparently thinks of his cat as a daughter - sets Tulip on the couch, grabs her by the scruff of the neck, and lifts her tail for easy access.

I go to the bedroom, get a [name-brand cotton swab], and lube it.  Then I go back into the living room and - how to put this delicately? - swab my friend's cat's vagina like it's the deck of a really filthy pirate ship.**

Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit: my movements were actually much more slow and careful than that pirate metaphor made them sound.  Still, the moment I "breached her hull", Tulip let out a howl that made all the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  Then she began to thrash.  I'd heard before that cats are loud and violent during sex, so I was kind of prepared for this, but it still freaked the hell out of me.  "OH MY GOD MORDECAI DON'T LET HER GO!" I shrieked.  He yelled back "I'VE GOT HER!  I'VE GOT HER!  IT'S OKAY!"

I continued gingerly probing Tulip's kittybits while she bucked and yowled and Mordecai held her in place as best he could.  Finally she let out a screech so totally bone-chilling that we both simultaneously leaped away from her in fear for our lives. 

The whole episode, from "get her and hold her down" to the Screech of Imminent Dismemberment (which I think may actually have been a catgasm), had lasted three minutes, tops.  Once released, Tulip was utterly  blissed out - total pleasure overload - so happy she didn't know what to do with herself.  She started purring like a jet engine and alternately rolling around on the floor and running up to various articles of furniture to rub her cheeks against them.  Her cheeking was so passionate, so vigorous, that Mordecai joked, "Damn, if Tulip were an outdoor cat she'd be pushing a parked car down the street with her face right now." 

Also, for the next few days she didn't seem to be in heat anymore. 

So overall I guess the [name-brand cotton swab] experiment was a success - although Mordecai and I ultimately felt weird about the whole thing and agreed not to do it again.  But first I told him I was gonna construct a cotton swab strap-on "for next time" (and pantomimed holding a cat up at hip level and thrusting) just so he'd go "ARRRGH EWW NO."  He is hilariously squeamish sometimes and I can't resist messing with that.

* Name changed to protect the guilty.
** Clearly, I'd either be really bad at writing romance novels, or superfuckingawesome at it.  I haven't yet decided.