Java Jane’s Friends and Family

Yet another fun day!

nobody@vox.com(Melissa Ann Lambert) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:51:42 -0400

First off, I promised to insert these pictures of my incredibly messy apartment last post. Finally getting around to it...

I must say things are better now. I've managed to clear all of the clutter off the kitchen table, making it suitable for eating (again). Then again it may well go back to being this bad soon.

I've learned to take this in stride. Many people have mentioned that this is part of my "artistic" personality, and don't judge me for it. So why should I?

My kitties certainly don't!

Hope everyone is having a safe and happy 4th.

IMG_3676

IMG_3673

IMG_3674

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scott walker suits the mood

nobody@vox.com(kitty) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:05:10 -0400

Walker Brothers - Love minus zero 1965

Scott Walker .We could be flying.

scott walker jesse (2006)

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things on tuesday

nobody@vox.com(kitty) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:13:29 -0400

The bad things:

The sweating
The things at the back of the cupboards
Self-deception
Breaking up is hard to do
Heartburn and other forms of indigestion
Sleep shortage
Negotiating, particularly with an attorney involved
The proliferation of homeless people
Schizophrenic in the showers at the gym, having loud arguments with herself
Anorexic/ skeletal girl changing at the gym to whom I would like to feed ice cream
Missed deliveries
Phone books

The good things:

Sun and thunderstorms
The Oregon Coast
mint.com
Cute bird who wants her head scratched
Guided by Voices
Morning Pages
The sunlight in my living room
Flex-time
Health insurance, for free
Chocolate Chunk cookie from Dahlia bakery
New laptop @ work - no more carrying mine back and forth
Powell's books
Yoga

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Vox Hunt: Oh Canada!

nobody@vox.com(Steve Betz) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:20:42 -0400

In honor of Canada Day, show us your favorite Canadian.

How can you choose just one? I've enjoyed the NFL and a lot more because of these guys...

Jace

Skins ...

Skins

and of course Tight-Rope Willy (who for all you ladies bears a certain resemblance to Jason Bourne... if you know what I mean....)

TRW

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hot hot hot

nobody@vox.com(kitty) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:03:59 -0400

Seattle is HOT after 6months of 40 degree cloudy drizzle, it is a nice change. Sadly for me, heat makes me groggy and cranky and, well, pretty useless. Combine with that the fact that the relationship I was in for the last 9 months or so just ended (amicably but heartbreakingly), and I could not sleep much at all over the weekend, and I ate a hotdog that made me almost throw up from acid reflux, and the movie I was planning to see tonight isn't playing tonight, and I accidentally deleted about 1,000 words of my memoir... well, I'm pretty much not having fun. I could use a happy surprise of some kind.

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Go See WALL-E

nobody@vox.com(Steve Betz) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:20:41 -0400

I had a whole idea for Me & My Monday, but of course I forgot my camera today. So, instead of that, I offer a rare movie review. The Beloved and I realized the other day that we don’t go out to see movies all that often. Apparently, we prefer staying in our own backyard and having happy hour to the maddening crowds.

This weekend though, we were both interested and excited to see the latest release from Pixar, WALL-E. This movie is remarkable. Of course it is replete with the mind boggling animation (can we call it animation anymore?) that looks more real than most over-FX’d movies that include actual people that we expect from Pixar, but its so much more than eye-candy. To me, this one is near that "Finding Nemo" pinnacle.

WALL-E

WALL-E tells the story of an industrious trash-picking-up robot (who's developed a few idiosyncrasies) that works ~~in New Jersey~~ on an apocalyptic future Earth that humans have fled because of trash and pollution (but it was probably based on the stretch of the NJ Turnpike from say, exits 9 through 16). Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the movie is that essentially has no dialog. The robot stars are anthropomorphized for sure, but this is the best example of visual story telling I’ve seen since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s episode “Hush” – without the creepy evil or sexual innuendo.

I won’t give away the plot or resolution (they pulled one punch that would have really made this movie transcend all family fare, but I can’t nit-pick their choices…), but as with Pixar stories they wrap the Big Themes around very small personal stories, and this is no different. There are also enough inside jokes to keep adults happy.

This one sure was.

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Enough of that VD...

nobody@vox.com(Melissa Ann Lambert) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:04:04 -0400

No, I don't mean the STD variety. I mean a certain individual who's initials are VD (supposedly in Iraq, of all places) who tried to get me involved in some sort of gem-smuggling scam (maybe money laundering as well) as well as get one of my limited edition pieces. I ended up shredding both of the $2,500-over-my-asking-price checks she overnighted. I've saved all the evidence - it got to be so weird - many names involved, many people calling me, things just got weirder and weirder. No one can say my life is dull!

I guess what I've gotten out of this is I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I just kept smelling fish, so I hung in there and sure enough, it was a scam. I'm now in the process of setting up paypal on everything, so if anyone wants to purchase they just do it through paypal, and that's that! The life of the "online artist"...sure I'm not the only one. Then, of course, there's the ongoing struggle of the "orphan acts" which means pretty much anyone could download and use your work with no penalty (i.e. steal). My policy has always been pretty liberal - I know people can download my image if they want. But I was really surprised to learn from a certain person in the art world I deal with that he himself "steals" works from well-known artists and doesn't care if they don't have a signature or are "originals" or "limited edition prints". "I have the work, don't I?" he said. WOW. To make it worse, he himself is an artist.

I had a fun day yesterday, talking with a fellow artist who gave me a book on using alternative archival materials in the printing process. He saw my extremely messy apartment and pronounced "you really ARE just like me!" I know it's worse than usual now, but I've been so busy with other things (more important!) Here's the pics to prove it...(coming up shortly!)

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QotD: Favorite Time of Day -- Easiest. Answer. Ever.

nobody@vox.com(Steve Betz) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:17:52 -0400

What's your favorite time of day and why?

Well, that’s such an easy question, it hardly bears answering. My favorite time of the day is: Happy Hour!!

Tonight, the Beloved is enjoying a zanahorita, and I’m prepared to enjoy a tall, cool tequila sunrise, which I think is an incredibly under-rated drink. It’s also a great, easy drink to make and perfect for summer:

Sunrise at Sunset

Tequila Sunrise

Fill tall glass with ice:
Add tequila to there (first row of blue dots)
Add orange juice to there (second row of blue dots)
Top with club soda

Mix with spoon, and drizzle in grenadine (or maraschino cherry juice). They heavier syrup will collect at the bottom producing the “sunrise” effect.

Happy Friday!

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Book 'em

nobody@vox.com(Steve Betz) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:16:38 -0400

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

1) Bold: I have read.
2) Italics: Those I intend to read. Actually, it would seem that there aren’t any…
3) Underline: Books I love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated. Given #2 above, I think that we can assume that if I haven’t read it by now, I’m not going to read it.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Note: one benefit of 12 years of catholic education, though EVERY WORD might be a stretch)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Note: I’m saying that having read several, doesn’t count)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Note: I know its sort of sacrilege for nerds to say this, but I really didn’t find this book very funny at all…)
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Note: shoot me)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I own)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (please…)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (How many of them? ½ point to me for a lot)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Note: At least I get one out of not reading “The Complete Works”
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So, 33 of 99 (because there is no 58), a count that I’m okay with given the quantity of Jane Austen (and Austen-like books on this list…), though clearly I will get schooled in the Brown Trivial Pursuit questions by Cori, Noelle and Ancora Impara.

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a study of objects

nobody@vox.com(kitty) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:36:19 -0400

These are some photos I took today around my apartment. Is a picture worth 1,000 words? We shall see...

shampoo & conditioner

This is the pretty new shampoo and conditioner my hairdresser sold me last weekend. And they should be pretty for the price. I have thought a lot about the price of haircare since I started going to a "real" salon (instead of the $12 hipster barber shop). I do like to chat with my hairdresser, but is it really worth $130 every 6 weeks for a cut and color?? Every time I go I feel like a sucker. But then there's the consumerist part of my brain telling me I deserve it and I am paying for quality. It's like there's an ad for a lifestyle I can't get out of my head. The haircuts arent really any better than at the barber shop.

glass doorknob, no toilet paper

My doors all have original glass doorknobs. One of the charming qualities of my apartment. I bought those cheap pink plastic beads in London 3 years ago and they have hung there pretty much since I returned from that trip. I haven't replaced my empty roll of toilet paper yet.

hullo, I am a behrd.

This is my bird. Her name is Beatrice. She would like my attention! And yours too! I got her when she was just a 3-month old chiclet in Jan '07. She flies.

jewelry tree

A jewelry tree I bought at Urban Outfitters. It looks like a bare tree branch, which I like. When I bought this it took two UO employees to wrap it in about 3 cubic meters of paper so it wouldn't break.

bird toy

When you have a parrot, it is important to keep it entertained. Before I left for 3 weeks in Europe, I picked up a few new toys to help appease her loneliness. As far as I know she has never so much as looked at this one.

my hats w/ family photo

My two most frequently worn hats. The top one (houndstooth) came from a boutique in Ballard (Seattle), and the army-esque cap came from H&M in Berlin. My man-friend hates houndstooth, so I am asking for trouble when I wear that one. It's like an allergy or something. Behind the hats and above the exercise bands is a family pic of me, my mom, aunt dawnelle, and grandpa frank taken in 2005.

lucky frog, dad's dogtag, and hand cream

The lucky frog was a gift that some friends bought me in Spain when we all went to Spain in 2006. When flying out of Amsterdam to the US the overly-cautious airport security asked if I had received any gifts, and I said "a marble frog." That stumped 'em for a minute. Next to that is my dad's dogtag from his short stint in the army in the late 1960's. The verbena hand cream came from the Metropolitan Market the day I temped at Publicis and found that the AC dried me out.

rocks, feather, gravy boat, silver egg & grandma

That thing in the middle is an egg-shaped thing that makes a dong-y sound when moved around. I have no memory of how or why I came by this thing, but I find it strangely appealing. Also shown: some rocks, a cute good-smelling thing my uncle once sent me from Hawaii, a feather from my deceased cockatiel Agatha, grandma Ireland's gravy boat where I keep my change, and a photo of my grandma Pat as a little girl.

art + eyeballs

A piece of art created by my man-friend, eyeballs not included. That light switch actually activates a 60 year old fan in the wall that does nothing but make a horrible noise.

einsturzende neubauten apron

I bought an apron at the Einsturzende Neubauten concert in Berlin. How silly is that? If you look closely, there's a bird. I never remember to put on an apron while I'm cooking, and really what's the point? But at least I have a cool apron.

sugar bowl in breakfast nook

This is a silver sugar bowl that actually contains sugar. It resides in the breakfast nook. I kind of prefer the tarnished look, myself. This is some kind of unwanted family heirloom that ended up in my car a few years ago.

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