boodatude: yes

terrific post tonight by boodatude here.

Gone Fishing

I'm taking a break from the blog. I'm traveling to see my mother in a week, and getting ready for a trip to Italy in April and return to Colorado in May. I don't have a laptop at present and am a little worn out from blogging for so long. "And then I wrote". So turning it off but not shutting it down.

testing

something weird's going on with blogger. Yesterday Namowal's blog was a blank page, and today mine is. Hoping that posting this will change things.

This Just In

Gee, and just after they had that big sale on Charbucks underwear. Check your labels, pals.

Actually this is a wonderful createion from acapela tv. They also have a make it yourself cute cartoon feature which will entertain you greatly if you're the only one in the room.

I'm so happy to find this stuff. Flash provides great scripting possibilities for interactive animation, but the scripting language got so complex that people don't use it for silly stuff very often.

Office Party

Glad you all made it to my office party today and glad no one fell in the punch bowl-- actually it's just orange jello and gin, but you gals put a mighty dent in it. Guess you're not exactly vegetarians!

L-R: stray g, Namowal, Linda D and yours truly.

Oh, and make your own party here.

Pilot's Dilemma

email received today: read the story before you look at the picture!

You are a South African bush pilot working for Blue Sky Aviation. You fly in some critical medical supplies; then enjoy a quick lunch at the hospital.

It is a stifling 100 degrees in the shade and you are eager to get back up to the cool, high blue yonder.

On the way back to your plane, you discover that the only bit of shade within 1 mile has become very popular...

You start calculating the distance to the plane door and wonder...

'Do I feel lucky today?'?? (Scroll down!)

Who's on Deck?

Had a great time today with stray g and pat, who spotted the pirate flag in the background. it had red eyes.

All the coolest people come from the South, I'm convinced. I should have stayed there-- (went to high school in North Carolina) but now I'm so San Fernando Valley.

Plaid Hair

I've been fooling with Whinsey ideas again, and also trying to get comfortable drawing on my laptop. I look enviously on namowal's gorgeous loose laptop sketches, done in Painter.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I went to fill Whinsey's hair and it came in plaid. What's this? Then I kind of liked it, especially after I threw the woodcut filter on the whole thing, my big weakness at present with Painter X. She sure looks sophisticated!

The Big White Gas Tank

This is our propane tank. For several years I've been urged to paint it to look like the old tank that was taken away. The old tank was painted around 1985, named the SS Marmotta, and was quite appealing. Here's a picture of it. It was a rental tank.



I took pictures of it in stages of completion.



We own the new white tank. It's slightly smaller. I think I'm going to paint it, maybe even this week. I bought paints for it last week. I'll put dogs past and present in the submarine windows. You did see that it was a submarine, didn't you?

ps those who use blogger.com-- did you know that all your blog's pictures are already stored in albums at Picasa? I was surprised when I figured it out.

The chocolates go to Tom Davick, but you get-

His winning entry was entitled: "Anita East Tennessee Beehive Can I Hep You"
(sounds like someone who's gonna try to house sit here.)

All the entrants are on display here in a fancy Flash component which won't display within Blogger, something I find very annoying.

but everyone who entered can have a choice of one piece of art from the groups displayed. (One per person regardless of number of entries.) The art will be signed, and from the group, but not necessarily the one on top.



Clockwise from top left:

1. Anita coming out of pool Esther Williams style
2. a woodblock print titled "Jailbirds"
3. A drawing from the dream sequence in "Quasi at the Quackadero
4. same- on paper with watercolor markers so it might fade
5. Ancillary Anita- but no background
6. water fighting little Anita and Snozzy
7. The Octopus Stroll

If you submitted an entry before today, just email me your name and address and I'll send you the cel you want, and Tom, want that chocolate dark or milk?

Thanks to all who entered-- I got such a kick out of your pictures.

ALSO!! Note new cool feature. If you make a new picture, then go directly to sendcard, you can send a postcard of that very card. However, if someone gets there before you, their image will be on display. Let me know if it doesn't work, though.

3 nice sites and a Bunny

Veer is an ultra stylish design blog that did a piece on me a while back. I've enjoyed poking through the links and posts.

perfect stars
did this cute illo for me the other day, but now my name's off- should have responded sooner. Nice colorful and loopy style. I haven't had a chance to explore the site yet.

Here's a Flash site for highlander prod that is so much fun to play with. They're an animation company in Israel according to cold hard flash.

Dinah brought this rabbit home for the weekend while her friend Chelsea was away. We put it in the aviary and the chickens all almost died of heart failure. bokbokbokbok

Then Molly panicked that the chickens were in trouble and raced around the aviary as the rabbit streaked around inside the cage.

the bokbokbok continued for a half hour after the rabbit was put in the garage.

This afternoon we got Chester out for a romp on the grass and rooster Elle tried to attack him. The bokbokbok started up so we headed to the other yard.




Rabbits are so soft.

Tomorrow Jon's brother and family will be in town so we've got cooking to do!

New Cartoon by me!

I think if you click on the image it will take you to the cartoon- testing now-
Here's a text link too.

Yesterday's link was impossible for just about everyone except Linda Davick and Fearless Freep.
I created the cartoon in Flash, then took it into After Effects to put it all together, output it as a Quicktime movie and then despaired when it was 613 mbs.

But I took it back into Flash to make a Flash video, which doesn't look as pretty, but it did the trick size wise.

Although I'm one of the people who believes copyright law is just about null, please don't post this to youtube or share it too much as it might affect my chances of selling it, and I'd really like to keep this thing working.

Let me know anything that you don't like or doesn't make sense. As usual it goes by awfully fast, but if you can read you can follow along!

Time Travel Check-in

Maybe it's the holidays, maybe it's the blog, maybe it's my secret psychic self, but all sorts of long lost pals and acquaintances were checking in with me this week for the first time in twenty plus years. Truly a delight.

One of them triggered all sorts of memories. We'd met at a screening of my films in the 1970's. I did a lot of trouping(sp?) around the country then and met lots of people. He mentioned a woman, I'll just call D here, who had tried to get me interested in the world of computers. So I wrote back this email, which then returned as undeliverable. Of course I know sometimes those emails really are delivered, but since it might never have made it through the digital ozone, here's what I wrote to him.

(part of the email that got returned)

I have tried to remember D's name.  That whole Palo Alto showing event, and a few visits with D, I've thought back on.  At the screening someone gave me a napkin with a message on it.  He worked with John Lily, and invited me to swim with dolphins.  There was a phone number.  I didn't do it, and regretted it always.  Also I think that was where someone gave me a business card from the Time Travel Institute.

I googled D. and saw she's credited with designing Centipede-- 
wow!   There was someone she wanted me to meet back then, someone who was starting up a computer company where really exciting things were happening.  Could it have been Bill Gates-- or Steve Jobs?  I've always wondered.

I was so shy and stuck in my ways in those days-- hmm, come to think of it I still am!

Okay, that's the first one, but the second one really made me almost
faint at the keyboard. I'd been thinking of this person frequently all the past week, with no idea why. I googled her with no luck. I'd even thought of going out to the garage and digging in a box for some letters from her. For awhile she spelled her name strangely.
We were in college together. I haven't heard from her since around 1976.

this is Clare-- remember me? i just spent 25-plus
years as a newspaper reporter and am trying to figure out how to make the transition to more remunerative employment... i just switched from 20 years as a self-employed correspondent for the Boston Globe to the same role for the once formidable arch-rightwing NH statewide daily, the NH Union Leader, a paper that once made liberal politicians weep but that now seems like a husk of itself...
anyway, i live in portsmouth, NH with my 16-yr-old adopted daughter, a divorced boyfriend, and 13 yr old Basset hound. I'm still a liberal. Iago just emailed me that you were on the web after Tom contacted him. We were having an email reunion on the sad occasion of a friend's suicide (Whit Garberson). Hope you are well, Clare

Happy New Year- 2008!

This is my happy new year suitcase that stays under the bed until the year's big finale. It's filled with antique noisemakers. And a pin the tail on Froggy chart from a very long time ago.



This one's my absolute favorite: Live Turtle Races every night at 10 pm



But 50-Thrilling Girls-50 and in Paradise- is mighty thrilling too. Sounds a little Islamic- woops shouldn't say that. shh. Not sure what N.T.G. means.

Random NewYear's Eve memories:

My mother saved pie plates, and at midnight we'd go out on the porch.She'd ring a ship's bell and hand Carol and me empty pie plates. We were supposed to think of things we wanted to say to hell with, and then toss the plate over the railing into the side yard.

One early year my best friend Jeanie surprised the family by running naked around the dining room table, as the spirit of the New Year.

A friend of Jon's said he thought the reason New Year's parties don't compare to the parties in 30's movies is because of the ceilings. In movies of that time (and most movies) you never see the ceiling and it makes things seem much more ebullient or something. But it may also be because of the running times- 90 minutes max in the old movie compared to 3+ groaner hours at the party.

I bet I'll be asleep before anyone else who reads this since I woke up at 4:30 and got to the lake before dawn. I can't remember a New Year's party that was really fun, maybe because no one wants to throw that darned whip cream.

Which reminds me of one more old holiday story. Before Dinah was born we had big Halloween parties. We had a tiny backyard with a pool that just filled it. I bought a plaster Santa and put him in the bottom of the pool for a creepy effect. The pool had colored lights. Later that winter we had to get him out. The pool man was complaining. I dove into the most hideous cold water and somehow fetched that bleached out Santa.

And tomorrow Dinah's going to do the Penguin Dive at the Santa Monica Pier. I'm impressed!

Ever happen to you?

You know, when you have to type the swirly letters, have you ever gotten one that actually was a word or a sentence? Wouldn't it freak you out if it said something meaningful? (and don't call ME stupig!)

When Sally Met, uh--um, QUACK!

In the tradition of Valerie Plame, I'm not identifying this secret blogger agent, but we had a very jolly time at Guelaguetzal which has the weirdest menu of any Mexican restaurant in L.A. They serve gorgeous horchata with nuts and melon and unknown items floating in it. Looks like a party in a glass. Tasty!



Ole mole-- my tamale was gigantic and delicious but better left out of the photo.
The napkin dispenser took our picture before we left.



Hey I thought Christmas was the next holiday! Secret agent, we must meet again soon!

Geographical Thrills

When I looked at my map just now, my Tasmanian visitor is back, and so is someone from Iceland. wow!

This and that and Xmas SPLAT!

aww-- from 5 years ago. a Colorado snowman.

My mother's always had a thing about carrot noses on snowmen-- they upset her-- best left to the analysts-- it came to mind tonight as my mind is starting to reel with holidays past and present.

Hope Mom remembers I'm coming for Christmas and not Easter on Wed.

I tried making her great Chex mix tonight after researching various recipes. I knew the ones calling for garlic bagel chips were not her recipe, because those chips hadn't been invented when she clipped this recipe.

The one I tried insisted it was the original from the 50's. While it was still warm I was furious as it was salty beyond endurance, but now that it's cooling off it does indeed taste like Mom's Chex mix. I found it here, and used butter not margarine.

Jon and I decided this was the year to proclaim no presents, except for Dinah, and it's amazing how all our relations seemed to like the idea just as much as we did.

(Actually we're going to cheat and give each other a present or two, but the principle is we don't need a damn thing.)

In fact the idea spread like a stain on a silk shirt and now none of us are helping the economy in China. Besides, how was his stepsister going to get those Frango mints in Chicago when Marshall Fields isn't a store anymore? Even my mother thought it was a great relief, though peculiar, very peculiar.

At the party I went to last weekend, (where I nearly hyperventilated from being around so many loud and attractive people after two months in the boonies), my friend Catherine, a very talented web designer, told me the hot thing she's been tracking is ning, so I bring this to your attention. I grabbed a spot at ning, http://funonmars.ning.com,
wow no one had taken that one yet--but won't have time to make sense of it until I'm back from New Jersey at least. Feel free to join or start your own, and explain to me what it's all about.

You get your own forum with the spot-- that's sort of amazing. And it's free. Yet another way to stay really busy and get dumber in the process.

I'll post again before Christmas-- but it's dicey in New Jersey at the Quaker retirement center, especially since I don't have a laptop.

And announcing!

Jon was no help-- he liked the puns and wittiest ones, but this was a NAME I needed, something that I could say without slurring or spitting.

So I took it to the Pelicans at Lake Balboa. Mouse over and then click to find the winner. (sound on)

The great entries, don't think I missed any:

Lunchmeat
Snow Man
Big Foot
white knight
Marshmallow
pudding head
Pearl
Cotton Ball
My Little Pony
Sugar Baby
Tea Cake
apollo
marcel marceau
napoleon dynamite
silverlight
Tapioca
White Shoulders
Remember Mr. Peabody?(Mr. Peabody)
Caspar
romeo
Snozzi!
Back Door Man
snow bird
Lamb Chop
Eddie Haskell
bertrand russell
Little Chick Pea
Mod Squab
White Lightnin
Mac, short 4 macaroon
James Brown
Mr. Big
Whitey?
Maltese....
Bob
Noel Coward
Squablicious
squabble
Milky Way
Pretty Boy
King Arthur
Dumpling
Kindle
Shmoo
McNugget
Iggy (short for Igloo)
Squabiscuit (a long shot becomes a pigeon)
Rocky
Coconut Creme Baby
Frosty
Sputnik
E. B. White
Alfred North Whitehead
White Cap
Flash Lite
François Truffaut
Mr. Tibbs
Henning
Ajax
Dovezilla
Dollop
Dough Dough Bird
Poppin' Fresh
Clydesdayle (Clyde for short)
De Düva
Candilicioius
Mr. Pickles
Sweet P. (P. for Pigeon)
Puff Daddy
Frappuccino Grande
Stuart Margolis
JCPenney
Walter Pidgeon
Altoid
Bibendum (the official name of the Michelin Man)
beignet
Sugarloaf
Splenda (or Splendove)'cause he's a substitute.
snowbird
white knuckles
white lightning
baker woman
pineapple torte
scratch 'n' sniff
meringue
bechamel
Foster Grant
Gregory Peck
white boy

Why James Brown? Aside from the fact I cracked up right away, we have a tradition in the aviary of totally inappropriate names. (and now the squab has a theme song!) Like the rooster's name is Elle, and the all black chicken is named Star. There used to be a chicken named Axie. Jon's favorite was Mod Squab, but that is hard for me to say,as I see that b flipping back and forth into a d. Same with Squabble, I mean I'd go back and forth rhyming with scrabble or sounding like squab. And then I start to feel like Donald Duck.

I loved these entries. Noel Coward the squab, how funny! Squabiscuit! Actually I'm cracking up all over again looking through this list. Thanks, all. And Marilyn, send me your address so I can mail the grand prize. (funonmars(at)earthlink.net)

Here's the Prize- winner tba Sunday

This dear little chicken saint came back with me from Santa Fe, from the Museum of Folk Arts and Crafts. It was NOT a part of any gift basket-- I bought it for myself! I could say give it a name but NO don't you dare! Seems to me it's a nice prize for this contest, though some pals were hinting about Kindle. But I don't have Pioneer Woman's vast resources. (That gal gives away big bucks in her contests!) In the future I'll drag out some art of mine, but if you saw what a teetery mess that closet is in, you'd say, "Don't open that door!"

I've made a list of all the entered names separate from the blog so I won't remember who said what, and tomorrow I'll go in the cage and try them out. There was a giant hawk in the back yard this morning which the crows were chasing off just as I went out to feed Mr. Mystery and his friends, so I guess the word that there's a new squab in town has definitely gotten around.

Whoever started posting the baking names this afternoon was on a psychic streak with me as I spent the afternoon making the pineapple torte with meringue and whipped cream and pineapple custard. If I don't drop it on the way to a Hanukkah party tonight, it should be a big treat.