skelectica's mindflip

http://www.happyharpers.spaces.msn.com

check out what i've been making and selling!! 

next stop, red deer's farmers' market!!

 Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven 

***********

i printed and cut these out and podgied them to the front of the sketch book i got for my birthday, just to remind me. i'm thinking about doing a bit of journalling tonight, and maybe a bit of yoga.. 

have i said what i got for my birthday? 
q's mom gave me 2 16x20 inch canvases
q took me to the art store, and we sunk $70 on supplies: sculpey, a carving tool, charcoal (pencils and just a piece of charcoal), tiny canvases (3x4 inch and 2x2 inch, the larger of which i've already used, and are now on my bathroom wall looking like neal cassady and allen ginsberg), watercolor pencils, big sketch book, and i think that's it.

tuesday night, we went to adam and amanda's place for dinner, and she gave me this book: drawing with children, by mona brookes, and it is awesome. 

in other news, i've figured out why i haven't been posting any pictures. i thought i was just lazy, but it turns out i dont' have the cable for one camera, and the camera that i have a cable for displays the pictures all screwed up. that, and i both found and lost the necessary cable today. so, no pics of all my latest creative endeavors. i might have to pick up a new, cheap camera that i can actually, you know, USE.

smoke break now. note how "quit smoking" is nowhere on the above list. i think i might use these resolutions to enter the february craftster challenge. we'll see.

so i've been thinking for quite some time that i should just hop on the old ell-jay every day or so and post on the "writer's block" topic. at least i'd be posting instead of just lurking.. i miss livejournal. therotund has stolen me away.

how am i celebrating hallowe'en? here you go:

a few weeks ago at work, alicia and i decorated the store, which isn't really so much a store as a cart in the middle of the mall. we built a cardboard castle on top of it and covered it with that crappy plastic "scene setter" wallpaper that wal-mart had for $20.. it looks awesome, especially now that it's all hung with spiderwebs and wee ghosties. maybe there will be pics sometime..

friday night, my neighbor sarah and i threw a costume party at my house. we even sent out invitations. again, maybe pics.. there were about 20 people there, mostly in costume.. i was courtney love, and q was link. you know, from zelda. also in attendance were a dead couple, a witch, wolverine, a sexy pumpkin princess, jason voorhees, some vampire girl thing, the scream guy.. oh, and  a mummy and his slutty sexy kitten girlfriend.. she was also a bitch, though i don't think that was part of her costume.

saturday afternoon, i dressed up as a princess and went to a tea party for my friend's 3-year-old's birthday. that was awesome.. tea was EVERYWHERE, and the snacks were delicious. homemade hummus? mmmmm. and olives, and peppers, and teeny tomatoes, and CHAMPAGNE!! the kids were hilarious after a few glasses of that! (just kidding).

saturday night was a quick trip downtown, and a quicker trip back home to nurse q's upset tummy. he was fine on sunday morning....

when we went to edmonton IN OUR NEW CAR. yes. we got a car on the road. a '92 eagle talon, another car that q can scratch off his "dream cars" list.. whatever.. now that it's passed a safety with only a couple hundred $$ of work needed, he wants to "soup it up. because it's cool." again, whatever.

edmonton was a trip to the ski and snowboard show, where i decided that tobogganing pants from walmart would be just fine - as opposed to buying "snowboarding pants" for like $300. ridiculous.

then we went to ikea, where i bought a set of funnels, a toilet brush, slippers, and a piece of art. pics. later.

when we got home, i went for a sauna.

another sauna on tuesday night, then out with darlene for some indian food. it was awesome.

today, i was supposed to work from 9-3, but alicia had to come in late, so i was there till 4, when the mall hosted their annual "fright night", which is really just a cop-out for lazy parents who want to deprive their kids of all those great canadian trick-or-treating memories by taking them to the mall for nice warm, cozy, safe handouts. cheap, if you ask me. what's a canadian childhood without running around in a snowsuit under your plastic costume, wiping out on the first snow, and taking candy from strangers? bah.
i had to stay till 7, when fright night ended, because (see above) our cart was SWARMED with kids and their parents, and we didn't want to get robbed blind, either of merchandise OR candy. 

now, i'm celebrating halloween by grumping to myself every time the doorbell rings, eating a bowl of mushroom soup, and gearing up to watch a movie with my husband, snuggled up on the couch.

how's your holiday?

 MAGPIE

Intelligence, Familiars, Occult Knowledge

A Magpie totem helps you use
whatever metaphysical or occult knowledge you have –
no matter how incomplete it may be.
The flip side is that Magpie people can become
jacks of all trades, but masters of none –
dabbling into everything. Be careful to apply your intelligence to the task and take it to its completion.
 
Magpies have the ability to open up the doorways to the Spirit and Fairy Realms.

Magpies have been familiars to witches and if you have one as a totem,
it might have been your familiar in a past life.
If this is the case, Magpie will be at your side permanently, helping you as it did in the past.
However, again, be careful of using occult power for quick effects
and not taking the time to complete training. 
Misuse of magic can have dire consequences.

here's the link to my flickr site, full of wedding pics.. there are more coming, as soon as they're emailed to me.

www.flickr.com/photos/skelectica

also, i'm not sure if i mentioned here, we moved.. comment if you'll be needing my new mailing address for anything, and i'll email it to you.. or something..

Here are the rules...people who are tagged need to write in their own blog 7 random/interesting facts about themselves, along with these rules. Then, tag 7 people to do the same.

1. i'm getting married in 12 days and 4 1/2 hours.
2. i've been making ash trays from pop and beer cans, and i sold 2 of them at work on saturday.
3. i'm pretty good at pool.
4. i kind of like doing laundry.
5. i'm a terrible procrastinator. see? this is what i'm doing when i'm supposed to be downloading music for the wedding and writing my vows.
6. i don't think i could ever listen to TOO MUCH billy joel or paul simon.
7. cheerios are a favorite snack of mine.

tag:

cer1997

mustard_seed

onceupon

spanambula

uncut_diamond

cider

pantsie

so i saw this post at stuffonmycat.com, and i wanted to post, but i thought youse guys might get more of a kick out of it here, since i, for one, had no desire to scroll through about a thousand pages' worth of strangers' stupid nicknames for their cats.

my cat's name is stella, but i call her stellabelly, stella-ella, kitty, cat-cat, kittykitty, baby kitty, fat cat, muffin, stupid, muffincat, fatty fatty two by four, pretty girl, pretty kitty, chubby baby cat, smelly cat, poor kitty, kitten... there's probably more - i call her something different every time she walks by - but that's all i can think of for now.

she's such a pretty kitty. she's some kind of calico, and she's got really teeny pointy feet, but she weighs about 18 pounds, and she's built like a pitbull. tomorrow, i'll post a pic of my cat in the blanket fort that she made today. no kidding.

what do you call your pets?