melissagay

Silly Car Shenanigans

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:32:44 GMT

You know what I hate?

The "Check Engine" light in my car.

It never comes on when I need it. This is true for every car I have ever owned over the course of my life. My alternator dies! Does the "Check Engine" light come on before my car stops moving, on the middle of a strange highway, in a strange state, at night, in the rain? NO! My water pump ceases pumping! Does the "Check Engine" light see fit to alert me before I do lasting damage to my vehicle? NO!! My carburetor collapses into a singularity, sucking in all matter and energy within its event horizon in the process! Does the "Check Engine" light so much as flicker? NO!!!

And now, once again, my car-- a brand world-renowned for its reliability-- suddenly ceased running while traveling along a US highway at 60 miles per hour. Does the "Check Engine" light see fit to warn me that my engine (you know, that "Engine" thing, as in "Check Engine"?) was about to stop dead, before stranding us in the middle of rural Kentucky, well outside the AAA free-towing radius from our home?

Do I really have to tell you?

Fortunately, Billy the AAA Tow Truck Guy who came to our rescue was a knowledgeable resident of the area, and he towed us to an auto parts store with a mechanic who he assured us would fix us up quickly and at a fair price. Then he kindly dropped us off at a small local airport where we were able to rent a car and carry on our merry way without delaying our arrival at our destination by so much as an hour! It worked out really well, our trip was great, and we had a wonderful time, aided in no small part by the warm and fuzzy afterglow from the great luck and great kindnesses we experienced during our automotive mishap.

Sure enough, Dave the Auto Shop Guy was swift at the repair, and the cost was low enough to make our budget-crunched wallets do a little wallet dance around the store. We were on our way home, without going broke, and with time to spare!

We were not two miles into our trip when... the "Check Engine" light came on.

vaklam turned us right around and took us back to the shop.

Dave got out his diagnostic device and asked the car's computer what the deal was.

The car's computer said: "Dude, like, I don't wanna harsh your vibe... but, like... your catalytic converter's gettin' kinda old. You oughta think about replacin' it someday."

Me: "What, you mean like now? Like it's getting ready to die on us RIGHT NOW?"

Car Computer: "No, Dude... like... someday."

Me: "..."

Me: "So, you mean you're warning us so we can-- what?-- start the process of thinking about replacing it... someday? Not, say, because it's going to cause MY ENGINE TO STOP RUNNING IN THE MIDDLE OF A HIGHWAY, OR SOMETHING?"

Car Computer: "Yeah, Dude... like, I don't wanna bring you down."

Luckily, vaklam convinced me that forcibly removing the "Check Engine" light with an icepick was in no way going to facilitate our trip home.

Two quick kid stories

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 03:38:37 GMT

B said, "My baby teeth are going to come out. And my baby arms are going to come out." Then he insisted I pretend to take his arms off and he stuffed them into his shirt until he "grew" his permanent arms.

B has just brought Lord of the Rings/ Wonder Pets crossover fic into being, with his narrative "Ming Ming Meets the Nazghul."

Adventures in kids' toys

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:48:36 GMT

So, it took Brendan all of a week to determine he could remove the dress of his Tasha stuffed animal Backyardigan.

And how to turn her dress into a ninja mask.

He now calls her "Naked Ninja Tasha."

v + v = X

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 21:52:26 GMT

Quick kid story:

Brendan held up two fingers in the shape of a "v" and asked me, "Is that an eck?"

=)

OMG, SPOILERS!!!

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:48:35 GMT

OMG, BRUTUS TOTALLY STABS JULIUS CAESAR!!!!!!!!

OMG, ROMEO AND JULIET KILL THEMSELVES!!!!!!!

OMG, THE ALLIES WIN WORLD WAR II !!!!!!!

OMG, TRUMAN DEFEATS DEWEY!!!!!

OMG, JFK GETS ASSASSINATED!!!!!!! AND SO DOES MLK!!!!!!!

OMG, THEY TOTALLY FIND NEMO!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, so I finished Deathly Hallows and I'm totally trying not to spoil anything for my husband, who's still on Chapter 4 or so. This includes suppressing my reactions to everything and even my general emotional state after finishing the book, which might lead him to some spoilery conclusions. The strain of holding it in is becoming too much for me. Something had to give!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Creative Process

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:44:31 GMT

In a conversation last night with whirl_twirl, I was recounting my creative process, for no particular reason other than I'm trying to finish a painting and misery loves company. It got me thinking, though-- do any other of you on my exceptionally creative friends list experiences anything similar in your own creative process?

Mine goes something like this, annotated with accompanying emotions at each stage:

1. Initial idea. Genius!!! Pure genius!!! I am *giggly* with anticipation.

2. Start artwork. Meh-- I might consider it a good start, tomorrow, after I look at it again.

3. Lay down underpainting; start on top colors. Life is perfect!!!! This is what I was BORN to do!!! I love everyone, everywhere!!!!! World peace is possible! Birds sing, bells ring, small animated woodland creatures do a dance and clean my kitchen.

4. Notice a problem with the [lighting/colors/focal point/lines]. The problem is incorrigible!!! The whole concept was fundamentally flawed from the get-go!!! The piece is so horrific-looking it makes me want to claw out my own eyes. I am the worst artist in the entire world. I am alone in my misery-- ALONE, I say!!!! All is dark in my sight, food turns to ash in my mouth; cliffs are too good for me to throw myself off of.

5. Work the problem through. I am a fevered mess of pain and raw nerve. Personal hygiene and sleep are just things that happen to other people.

6. Problem resolved. A nightingale twitters timidly in the distance. A juddering spark of hope glints in my sunken eye.

7. The finished piece begins to emerge. WOOOOO, I AM ON FIRE!!!!! It just doesn't get any better than this!!!! ALL OF NATURE CELEBRATES WITH ME!!!

8. Painting is finished. I am so slick. What was the big deal? Why was I ever worried about this? I am such a cool artist. What a pro!

9. Take a much-needed breather between projects. Yay, I finished a painting!... and now I will never, ever have another idea as long as I live. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!!!!

10. Repeat. Is there any wonder I'm on medication? :-)

So, what's your creative process like?

Metal Memories

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:58:03 GMT

My son, ever the wild man, saw an old Lawrence Welk Show rerun at his great-grandmother's house a while back, and he loved the music, the dancing, and the bubbles. So his grandmother got him a Lawrence Welk tribute DVD, which he enjoys immensely.

On this DVD is a performance of the song "Precious Memories." Is everybody familiar, at least in passing, with this old church-music standby? "Precious memories, unseen angels, sent from somewhere to my soul..." etc. etc. Sweet, catchy little ditty, often sung by a choir.

Brendan has taken to singing it, as well. Only... well...

I think he is trying to sing all the voices of the choir at once. But the effect is that he sounds just like Till Lindemann of Rammstein when he's bein' all screamy. Also, the boy tends to staccato-stab each word as he belts the song out. And the words, as he sings them:

"PRE-CIOUS MEM'RIES!
UN-SEEN AN-GER!
PRE-CIOUS AN-GRY SCENES UN-FOLD!!!!"

I would love-- love-- to know what he thinks that song is about.

I want my Buddy Christ!!!

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:34:49 GMT

Wal-Mart is selling JESUS ACTION-FIGURES!!!

JESUS ACTION-FIGURES!!!!!!

So...

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:18:54 GMT

Anybody got a Potion of Black Dragon Control?

“PIE DOESN’T HAVE TENTACLES!”

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:10:52 GMT

This one is just too funny not to pass along.

http://skippyslist.com/2007/07/09/cephalopod-surprise/

Kid stuff

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:10:15 GMT

Well, it has finally happened. B has discovered the most annoying noise in the world and his own ability to make it.

I questioned him about it. He is apparently a dragon. Further research discovered that he is an acid-spitting black dragon. This makes sense, as The Noise is sort of a hawking, rasping, hissing-spitting kind of sound, which he is able to belt out at astonishing volume.

My new mantra is, "This, too, shall pass."

Also, for those unaware, oatmeal is good black dragon food.

Cooking and musing

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:42:51 GMT

Today I made my personal best-yet rendition of chana masala. I think the key was not letting powdered coriander seed anywhere near it, for a change. I've been trying to change up my recipies a bit lately, as all my mainstay Indian dishes were beginning to taste alike. I count this one as a rampant success and have recorded it for posterity.

While I was busily chopping up cilantro stalks, I took a sip of coffee and ate a stalk and remembered what a glorious combination cilantro stalks and coffee with half-and-half are! I wondered as I have before whether there was some iced-cilantro-stalk-coffee-latte' recipie out there somewhere. My Google Fu turned up nothing along the lines-- does anyone out there know of anything like this?

If not, I may just try to make one up. My take on this would probably be like a Bloody Mary, except cilantro stalks in place of celery, and iced half-and-halfed coffee in place of, er, blood. Anyone? Anyone?

The horror... the horror!

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:31:19 GMT

My boy has lost his nunchuks, and the world is ending.

Just thought you might want to know, in case you need to get your affairs in order.

The darndest things happen in the South

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:01:29 GMT

Yesterday I went outside to look for one of my son's toys on the porch. I opened the door just in time to see an entire pack of Jehovah's Witnesses come shambling down the road. There were about six of them, all elderly with sweet faces, and all wearing wide smiles as if thrilled to be out and about on such a lovely morning in their suits and flowered dresses.

Sure enough, two men broke off from the group at my driveway and came up to talk to me on the porch. We exchanged observations about the glorious weather, but instead of attempting to detain me for long, as they've been known to do, they were simply handing out flyers.

To a convention.

A Jehovah's Witness con.

I swear, I'm tempted to go, just to see what it's like! But I know they'd only want my brains.

Cicada Season!

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:57:09 GMT

This post from Onion AV Club superstar Tasha Robinson reminded me that this plague of locusts some places are experiencing was once a major highlight of my childhood!

Cicada season was a particular delight to my brother and me. We looked forward to it every summer. One of us would find the first husk of the year, and then the great hunt would be on! It was my favorite pastime to go out and collect the shed husks. It was like an Easter egg hunt, only the benefits were, um, less easily explained to the casual observer.

Back then, I saved every husk I harvested. I had boxes and jars full of the things. I called it my collection of "locust shells." Particular treasures were the extra-super-big ones and the extra-super-tiny ones. We would each stick our most interesting and anatomically perfect finds of the day on our shirts by their little toe-hooks and wear them as jewelry.

I never liked to wear more than five at a time. Too gaudy.

For decades afterward, despite having reached adulthood and moved at least seven times since those days, I still find the occasional box of locust shells. They make great compost.

And... still great jewelry. I can't resist wearing them whenever I find one.

Clothed In Memories

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:09:07 GMT

My mother is an only child. My father only had one sibling-- my Aunt Dot.

Her longstanding, stable career as a legal secretary and her devoted care of her invalid mother until the latter's death belied her eccentricity. One day she would be offering to take one of us to Europe on vacation, and the next she would revise her will to leave all her property to her two cats (there were always two cats; it was her ideal cat number). She had been engaged twice and actually married once (in an Edwardian lace gown, no less!), but ultimately discarded each of the men in her life in favor of her own solitude. She ended up leading around a meek boyfriend twenty-five years her junior.

Her apartment contained an entire wall of vinyl albums-- operas, Broadway shows, symphonies, and dance tunes. Her bookshelves were likewise packed, most memorably with fine art books, historical romances, mysteries, and Chinese poetry. In one corner was a display cabinet housing the Lenox "Enchanted Princesses" porcelain figurine collection. Hanging over the arched doorway to her kitchen was a stained-glass rendering of a Mediaeval unicorn tapestry. And in front of the sliding glass doors to the balcony, there was the giant stuffed bear. Her favorite cat of all time, a Russian Blue the size of an ocelot who lived to be about twenty-one, was named Smokey Bear, and one Christmas she brought the stuffed animal home for him. I used to play on it and hug it, and it smelled smoky, like its namesake, though the aroma was due to my aunt's two-pack-a-day habit. Over the course of her early schooling she had been skipped forward a couple of grades, and she started smoking at fourteen, so her peers (the sixteen-year-old fast crowd) wouldn't call her a baby. This was positively the only example I had ever heard of Dot following a crowd instead of doing her own thing.

She was a flamboyant woman, tiny of body and titanic of presence, a redheaded beauty who had charmed ambassadors into submission, a member of the Opera Society, a museum supporter, a stunning intelligence, a quick temper, and a dedicated ballroom dancer. It was not too uncommon for her to dance all night, change clothes, and then go to work. Once, presumably running late, she wore a dancing dress to work. The supervising attorney sent her home to change, but not before she tried to argue the appropriateness of her sleeveless black suede, low-cut, slit-legged, fringed evening dress for the office. "This is a Lillie Ruben original!" she informed him. I smile and chuckle every time I think of it.

In fact, she had been out dancing the night before she died. she had come home in the early a.m., and evidence has it that she ran some errands afterward but didn't even get all her groceries put up before collapsing.

The scene was grim-- apparently she had struggled around the apartment, possibly trying to get up or get to a phone. A neighbor called 911 after she failed to appear at work or answer her door the following day.

My brother and mother were the executors of her estate, and it turned out she was deeply in debt, having lived many of her extravagances on her credit cards. Anything that wasn't specifically willed to individuals was sold to pay them off. A few things of hers I have now. The Lenox figurines housed in their display case now stand in a corner of my studio. Her music box collection stands in a bookcase opposite them. I wore her platinum dinner ring on my pinky until my hands outswelled the tiny band. and the Lillie Ruben originals? She willed those... to my brother.

Being a nice guy, he gave me my pick of them before he sold them. Her closet positively scintillated. There were spectacular beaded gowns, silk dancing dresses, sequins, taffeta, satin, and of course, the sexy black suede number that got banned from the office floor. Though she was several inches shorter than me, and several cup sizes larger, most of them fit me, so I picked a few very special pieces before giving my brother the nod to cart the rest away.

I had to get rid of every size 4 in my closet after I realized I would never see those measurements again, Miss Scarlett. Motherhood has added two extra inches to my form from shoulder-level all the way down to my mid-thighs. I painstakingly culled every dress in which I had spent many happy hours dancing with naught but a rueful glance backward. But somehow it never occurred to me that those magical dresses which had belonged to Aunt Dot would be likewise affected.

Until today.

I tried on the "mermaid dress," aqua silk with silver and white waterfalls of beads cascading from sleeves and hem. Couldn't zip it. Couldn't even pull it over my hips. The golden gown I wore to Josh R.'s wedding-- I could barely zip it, it might be salvageable! The gorgeous red dance dress with diaphanous silk layers and crystal-bedecked crescent-moon-shaped clasps-- maddeningly close, but unzippable, even with all the give in the fabric! The luscious forest green beaded gown with the silk lining-- probably not. The purple woolen sheath with the huge rhinestone accent buttons-- heartbreakingly moth-eaten.

These gowns face an uncertain future with me. I will never again fit into most of them, and I doubt I could convincingly alter them. I cringe even to think of cutting them, or of disturbing a single seam! I certainly don't have the money to take them to Lillie Ruben and ask them to do what they can for me-- and even if I did, there are so many more things around the house that need fixing, I'm sure my own penny-pinchitude would never allow me the extravagance. I suddenly saw these gown as a luxury to which I could never return, much as my Aunt might have longed to return to the luxuries of her Old Money childhood, though it plunged her into debt. No, I cut up my credit cards long ago, and I won't take that glamorous bait.

But for now, at least, to hell with practicality; though they be consigned to the dark recesses of my tiny closets, I'm keeping the lot of them.

Especially that little black suede number.

Hypericon-o-Mania!

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:58:06 GMT

HYPERICON, HO!!!

I will be showing my art at Hypericon 3 this weekend, and much fun will I have! I think I'm on four panels this year, three of which I'm actually scheduled on, and one of which I'm totally crashing 'cause it's on "Great Moments In Comics" and I'll just talk and talk anyway. I'm playing in a Cyberpunk game, an Amber throne war, and some new boardgames that I don't even remember the names of! Yippee!!! Can you tell I'm excited??? Can you tell I don't get out much???

This Wondermark comic pretty much sums me up.

Anyway, I'll be bringing the Hypericon piece shown above, debuting a new large color painting, and a new black-and-white design, and at the urging of friends I'll also be exhibiting some of the Amber Trumps I painted/drew for the game I'm currently enmeshed in. Oh, and of course I'll be showing the Hebrewpunk cover art for the new book by Lavie Tidhar from Apex. And! Lots! More!

Here's my obligatory website link, and here's the Hypericon site.

Hope to see you there!

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:32:52 GMT

In other news, I hate it when I can't sleep.

Popular media contributes to societal downfall!!!

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:31:12 GMT

Thanks to pomobarney for bringing this article to my attention--

Research links exposure to violent scripture passages to increased aggression!

There is only one solution to this problem. That's right...

BAN THE BIBLE!!!!

(...Plus, I hear the word "scrotum" might be in it.)

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:36:48 GMT

I dreamed I was late for roleplaying because I was shoe-shopping.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?????????

Kids! Are! Fun!

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:00:28 GMT

I so love my boy!

He is on a "Little Mermaid" kick of late, and he thinks Ursula is the height of cool. Then today he asked me, "Do you have octopus pants?"

OCTOPUS PANTS!!!!!!

I told him I would totally make us some octopus pants for Halloween. But somehow, I don't think we'll be waiting until Halloween to wear them. :)

Website update

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:15:11 GMT

Ok, the new stuff is on the website, including the double-barreled laser gun picture I talked about here (although in the tiny jpeg you can't actually see that it's double barreled, so, alas!), and the Aslan painting I talked about here.

And since they're on the web, I can post them, woohoo!

Because misery loves company.

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:21:55 GMT

They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

Stupidity

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:26:03 GMT

A Newberry Award winning book is being banned from elementary school libraries because it contains the word "scrotum."

This is the stupidest thing I've heard all week, and I've heard lots. It's a body part, people! If people are unable to tell kids the proper names for their body parts (or in this case, it was a body part of a dog that sustained a rattlesnake bite), well, I just don't know how people expect their kids to function in life. I truly don't.

So, I've decided the most mature way for me to handle this is to make today Talking About Body Parts Day.

Scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum scrotum.

There, now I feel better.

And I can assure you that my three-year-old knows what and where his scrotum is.

Apparently, I got issues

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:05:48 GMT

I don't know what my issues are with my alma mater lately, but two nights in a row now I've had dreams that (first night) the University decided I wasn't doing well enough academically and kicked me out, and (last night) University officials were trying to take custody of my child away from me. Jeez!!!