Alternate Title: Livejournal, Ain't Never Gonna' Give Up On Your Love

Huzzah ! No more vague recollections about how much time has passed between the last near-destruction of the house and the current one. Instead, you can just look it up via Calendar.

See ?

Anyway, a few days ago there was a kitchen fire here at Chez Xeno, which resulted in my burning a rather impressive hole into the linoleum floor. It's okay, though. The 5-lb box of baking soda and my ordained spirit guide (a large roll of duct tape) fixed everything. I even managed to salvage the cooking pot, thanks to an extra-large supply of cleansing powder.

Maybe the lingering aroma of near-death would have smelled more savory if I'd only splurged on those leather floor tiles* a few years back, though.

Of course, the big question is, does this merit a special new Tag, or do I have to wait for Near-Escape No. 3 ? [ponders] What do you old-timers think, hmmm ?

*Link kind of swiped from the inimitable Madman at Mcat's blog.

Casey says, "Perhaps." Apparently the key to lasting victory is understanding why (cough) adult films are like B'way musicals, except when they're not.

Now that I know, it's a safe bet that everyone else already does, too. But WTF... it's the damn NEW YEAR, MAN !!

Thank You. My New Year's resolution is now... uh, resolved. I actually posted every day for a whole week in 2009. I'm now free to drift off in the aether again, spinning my wheels and accomplishing things only by sheer stupid luck. You've been a wonderful audience. Please remember to tip your server.

[smooch]

Blame mechmuertos. The other day, he had a thread with a link about actual human women dressing up as DC Comics' Wonder Woman. Naturally this led to me needling him about how it would be more entertaining to see a bunch of guys dressed up as Wonder Woman. Soon afterward, a friendly search engine assisted me in locating artist Timberoo's computer rendering of "Wonder Man", which originally... uh, sprang from here (see pg. 6).

At one time, I was a totally obsessive fan of superhero comics, though I could see well enough that they were the ultimate embodiment of the male gaze[tm]. The dissymmetry between depictions of male and female characters was patently obvious even without a cool name. My amusement at/annoyance over same became a constant white noise that endures in my reptilian she-brain to this day. It's not as if the rest of the world, much less the superhero comics themselves, have gotten any better in this regard. If anything, it's all gotten even worse, she said-- herself sounding like Grandpma Simpson. Or like the only superheroine still worth paying attention to.

Thus I'm highly amused at/annoyed with the inevitable manly male commentators in the CBR thread who are all upset because (gasp !) in Timberoo's art you can see that the men have naughty bits!!! Poor, silly fanboys. My heart bleeds for you. Don't you get how EMPOWERING it is being dressed up in a thong and thigh-high boots ? Tsk tsk. Such prudes you are.

P.S.-- Of course I still remember that Marvel Comics really does/did have a character called Wonder Man. Yeesh. I'm not THAT old.

P.P.S.-- The poor, poor fanboys scarred for life by Timberoo's imaginary renderings of fictional characters really, really don't want to click on THIS creative visualization of "Wonder Woman." I found it here, because I live to serve.

Yeah, and you all thought the cards (2 1/2" x 3 1/2", w/an image area of 60 X 85 cm), were small. Each of these has a completed size slightly bigger than a quarter. I bought a couple of oversized hole punchers at the local craft emporium at the end of 2007, and I love them. So much easier than using a stencil to make circles.



( Want Love ? Get Closer. )

Last week just wasn't all that great, and as a result I was, er, inspired to rent The Trial of the Incredible Hulk*. It's a bad habit of mine when sad to fill the nearest large container with cut-rate fondue and soak my head in it for as long as it takes to feel less like crap. It was a decidedly entertaining way to kill an hour and a few minutes. In fact when it was over, I felt a vague and decidedly upside-down disappointment. Trial wasn't anywhere near as mind-blowingly awful as presumably non-depressed humans (or even those who know a lot about actual comic book heroes) implied in their reviews. Also I regret not having time to watch it all over again tomorrow so I can create an exhaustive checklist of all the plot holes. Not the least of which is that the Hulk's alter ego has a beard but the Hulk doesn't. [snerk] Luckily the bigger, stronger, faster mice were gleefully chewing away starting about forty-five seconds in. Once again, I'm spared having to do any heavy lifting while in a deteriorated emotional state. :/

Posthumous message to Bill Bixby: My heartfelt congratulations on A) Finally finding a pair of straight-leg jeans and B) Letting yourself get talked for once out of yet another plot where you're messing around with some woman young enough to be your daughter. If you'd left that to the other 99.9% of show biz, I'd have even fonder memories of you.

( Can This Post Be Saved ? )

*As a card-carrying Generation-X nerd and one-time Marvel junkie, I consider the schande of watching this now to pale considerably next to the schande of having initially missed it. How could this have happened ? Oh, never mind. Virtually nothing I was doing in 1989 is worth discussing here. Also I didn't have a TV.

I have a fancy-ass ceiling fixture that I would love to have repaired in time for friends coming over on New Year's Day. I live in NE Portland.

Does anyone you know make last-minute house calls on stubborn light fixtures without charging more than the original fixture cost ? I suspect this is a minor problem but am unwilling to risk seriously damaging the fixture by messing with it myself.

Bonus points if they'll take plastic, and I would prefer somebody with the "licensed, bonded, insured" thing rather than your kindly Uncle Joe who could electrocute himself by mistake and land me in a heap of expensive trouble.

Thanks. Happy Holidays.

(Crossposted you-know-where.)

[ETA: A helpful soul at the always-dependable Opera Glasses & Popcorn points out that certain holiday traditions are better off left in the dark.

Plus, Earl Blumenauer wages War on Xmas[tm] by helping get Santa arrested.]

In which I try for the look of those old 1930's Soviet movie posters*, and miss it by miles: (Umm... kilometers ?)



Some days I'm just too damn lazy to make sure the ruler is straight. That's the main problem. :o

However, the re-working, in which I go crazy with the "Cut/Paste" function, Free Transform and varying degrees of "Brush Strokes: Spatter," actually turned out well:



At least I think so. The cats are fed. I'm going to catch a few more hours of sleep.

*Link borrowed from here.

In the reworking, there's a filter behind the figure called "Sketch: Torn Edges." No, I don't know why it's called that, either. "Sketch: Halftone" is beneath the figure's feet. Of course there's some repainting and recoloring, too.



The purple background is from an early or mid-1960s magazine. Purple was a pretty scarce commodity in the 1950s. Unless grape jelly was involved. I just thought that you should know.

And here's the do-over. Much repainting and re-coloring. Also Free Transform of the text. The filter is a medium percentage of "Artistic: Dry Brush," which gives a nice stony quality to the coffee beans. I was originally aiming for that vintage poster look*-- and missed it by a country mile. The doctored version is a little better, though:



Once I made the man a redhead (with the help of a few brushes), it was necessary to change his skin tone. "Command-U" took care of that pretty well, but it's strange by the standards of either current or old-time advertising. In which even White couples usually feature a darker male figure than female. Just as the male is/was usually taller and older.

It only occurred to me recently that the figures look like they're prone rather than standing. (In the original illustration, they were embracing in front of an Xmas tree.) So this may be the dirtiest card I've posted, to date. Well, not involving cold cuts or anything else overtly phallic. [skulks off in shame]

*Though not this poster in particular. I'd never seen it before today. Honest.

The re-do is mostly variations of the "Brush Strokes: Ink Outlines" filter. The texture makes me think of the elaborately-stitched patches we used to collect when I was a pup. That weird luminous quality suggests masses of tiny stitches in bright colors.



YMMV, of course...

Same image, using "Brush Strokes: Accented Edges," medium percentage, "Dissolve" mode on the brown eggs. The spoon and eye were re-colored with a flick of the "Hues" option on "Command U." Other minor alterations with brushes and the like.



And now, another reason that being 41 is better than being 40:

QYPTHONE !!

Thank You, varro. How do I explain this band to the uninitiated... What you do is take lounge music, Western Swing, vintage Sesame Street/Electric Company tunes, Rick Wakeman, small-combo jazz, Devo, The B-52s, Space 1999, Ye-Ye girls and whatever else you have in the back of the fridge that hasn't gone off. Toss big scoops into a blender with ice and a splash of some unnaturally-colored liqueur (or Italian Syrup, for those in recovery). Then run the blender at high speed without bothering to put the lid back on. You could put on a rain bonnet first if you're the fastidious type, I suppose.

Or else, just get a listen here.

Same card, with a "Sketch: Chrome" filter turned down in the background. A diluted version of "Artistic: Cut Paper" is underneath the gelatine dishes. A little repainting to try and make the glass rims more convincing. I've never been much of a painter, but I do have a cupboard full of cheap glass dishes. Have to at least make the attempt then...



Other minor corrections.

The dishes are duplicate photos from identical cookbooks, but you can see that there's still variation in the colors from dish to dish in the original card. Sometimes the duplicates have differences much more pronounced than this.

Same card. Blur tool used on the sink, with Sharpen on the fixtures. The fish had some color adjustments and Sharpening, especially around the eyes. Free Transform on the hearts. Of course the typeface is overhauled, and that's an "Artistic: Rough Pastels" filter on the blue strip at left. (That strip is a magnified bacteria from an ancient duotone school science textbook. You'll be seeing it again soon.)



Oh, and a major razz to a Major Unnamed Huge-mart. I went there today, only to find out that they've decided compost bins are just, like so last decade. They've decided not to stock compost activator any more. However, I was offered a really good deal on a kitten-sized cat bed and a beach bucket featuring Spongebob in Army fatigues. Both lovingly crafted by abused young women in China. Also, it's great how these stores selflessly work to whittle down my fat ass by forcing me to spend half an hour walking around and around a space the size of football stadium in a futile search for three items and/or some wage slave who might know where they are.

Bah.

The same card. Some Lasso and Fill repairs. The cold cut has some Smart Blur filtering. I readjusted the pink hues with "command U" to make them look brighter and less grubby. I blame Satan. That triangle of weird limbless space-canines (actually, they're just fancy rolled napkins from an old volume of American Home, early 1960s) got a medium percentage run-through in "Artistic: Plastic Wrap."



Hijinks ensued at work. I am drinking beer and listening to Weird Al, which just makes every last one of you so beautiful to me.

Redo in Photoshop with a smattering of Sharpen/Unsharp, Blur, and "Distort: Craquelure" at the bottom. Plus some repainting of lines with the help of the Polygonal Lasso tool. Some use of cut, copy, paste, brushes and Transform on the frosting flowers.




This duo is in honor of Liberal Catnip, who produces (on a more or less daily basis) such gems as this, both in filthy communal areas and in her own pristine space. It was she who ruined the Olympics for me by pointing out a quote somewhere that said the new logo for same looks like a monkey on a toilet. (Damn. NOW what am I going to do for fun next year ? Did I keep that Scrabble board or Goodwill it ? Damned if I can remember...)

Catnip also blogs regularly about issues in Canada, on account of that's where she lives and all. Since I hear my fellow unhappy Americans threaten to move to Canada about every fifteen minutes nowadays, I would say that the sooner you start learning about how things work up there, the better. If the first big wave manages not to come across as complete ignoramouses, perhaps there will not be a giant electric smart wall speedily built in order to keep the rest of us out.

In the redo, the square/head is smaller, thanks to Transform and a little Clone Stamp. There's a mishmash of brush and pastel circling the square to soften the space up a little bit. The head is run through a medium setting of a "Distort: Glass" filter, which more or less obliterated the facial features. They were Lassoed from the original card, then cut and pasted to the redo with no change in size. Those "eyes" are oven dials, as I'm sure you were dying to know.



I like using floral imagery in these things, but feel timid about it, since it's such a cliche' in ATCs. How do I know that one day I won't wake up to find myself collaging cute kids in sailor suits on tricycles with the words "You're Special" floating above them in gold leaf ? Not that there's anything wrong with that... [cough]

When nerds go into overdrive. Warp drive, whatever.

Don't even ask me what I was doing when I stumbled upon these.

It's just too sad to even discuss.

...the very simplicity of mixes-- just add water and stir-- made women feel self-indulgent for using them. There wasn't enough work involved. In order to enjoy the emotional rewards of presenting a homemade cake, they had to be persuaded that they had really baked it, and such an illusion was impossible to maintain if they did virtually nothing. "This is typical of what the average housewife said: 'Yes I'm using a cake mix; it saves me a lot of trouble but I really shouldn't,'" [an adviser to General Mills Ernest] Dichter wrote later. His advice was to leave the homemaker something to do --for instance, add the eggs-- whenever she made a cake from a mix... [General Mills] seized on this wisdom and promptly reformulated their mixes, leaving out the dried eggs. Women started adding their own fresh eggs, stopped feeling guilty, and cake mixes became a success. Over the years this story came to be a favorite among other consumer experts... The egg theory, with its emphasis on the homemaker's personal investment in the cake, set the tone for much subsequent advertising... -- Laura Shapiro in Something From The Oven: Reinventing Dinner In 1950's America (2004)

Shapiro's book pulls back some layers (sorry) of myth that pile on top of each other when even the most mundane parts of American culture are center stage. If you've ever picked up those reprint collections of 1950s ads that are bursting with unnatural colors and maniacally bright-eyed White women smiling with way too many teeth, Something... will make an interesting companion read. The images and recipes in the former are the most visible illusion, but behind that illusion the company men and women Shapiro writes about in detail were evolving a whole other assortment of them. As in the passage above, explanations and strategies for marketing prepared food were changing all the time. The pitch was more important than the quality of the goods. Industry drew in the professional cooks and writers who were once its most severe critics, offering them steady money in return for the look of prestige. Sound familiar ?

( Read more... )

Same card, run through "Pixelate: Color Halftone." Used the smallest setting available, with the "Exclusion" mode and a low opacity percentage (less than 20). Keeping it as subtle as possible when the dots are so big and the image is so small seems to be the key with this filter:




If you A) didn't grow up during the 1930s or 1940s and B) don't have my particular obsessions, I'm not sure that you should be expected to know just what "Tid-Bits" are. If you guess right, I'll send you a jar as a prize-- Just as soon as my time machine is back from the shop...

And here's the doctored (dressed ?) version:



The the limbs and faces were gone over with a few miscellaneous tools to smooth (heighten ?) their Caucazoid coloring first. A "Blur = Smart" filter smoothed everything out further. Then the whole thing went through the "Artistic = Poster Edges" filter.

I admit that part of me hoped it would magically turn into this. But I'm better now.

I'm off to set all the clocks back and then return to bed. :D