Benigngirl does not comply

According to an article at Total Recall Info, Benigngirl has been ordered for removal by the authorities

RECALL INFORMATION
June 5—Benign Girl recalls more Toy TELEPHONE SETS—Greece

Manufacturer: See Below
Product: Kids Toys

Start Date: 2009-06-05  End Date: 2009-07-05

Product: Toy telephones – Super telephone

Brand: Benign girl

Type/number of model: Code No. 143-333

Description: A toy telephone set, comprised of a pink and white flip-top mobile telephone and a pink and white cordless telephone. The toy is operated by 3 button batteries of 1.5 V. The set is packed in a blister on cardboard bearing a picture of two dolls (girls), the CE mark and warnings.

Country of origin: China

Damage to hearing

The product poses a risk of damage to hearing because the weighted emission of acoustic pressure is 119.7 dB which exceeds the maximum permitted value of 80 dB.

The product does not comply with the Toys Directive and with the relevant European standard EN 71.

Withdrawal from the market ordered by the authorities.

Pulp Science Fiction Spring Event

Paper City Studios Announces Spring Open Studios and Installation Event! May 8, 9 and 10, 2009.

Paper City Studios’ “Pulp Science Fiction” spring event offers open studios with resident artists working in painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, multimedia, performance and fashion design. Guest artists featured in our 5,000 square foot special exhibition space present gas masks for elephants, video by alien invaders and close encounters with spaghetti and marshmallows. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 8, 9 and 10 at 80 Race Street in the Holyoke canal district. Admission is free. Information at www.papercitystudios.wordpress.com

Pulp Science Fiction Poster

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Place: PAPER CITY STUDIOS
(MapQuest – 80 Race St, Holyoke, MA, 01040)

Dates and Times:

Fri, May 8 Opening night reception, open studios and installation exhibit – 6 to 9 p.m.

Sat, May 9 Open studios and installation exhibit – 12noon to 9p.m.

Sun, May 10 Open studios and installation exhibit – 12noon to 5p.m.

ARTISTS SHOWING AT PAPER CITY STUDIOS

Bernard Banville, sculpture/installation

Michal Barrett, sound

Neil Broome, collage, painting

Christopher Blair, video

Torsten Zenas Burns, installation , video projection

Karen Dolmanisth, sculpture/installation

Bruce Fowler, sculpture, video installation

Unique Fredrique, unknown artistic direction

Kari Gatzke, installation

Gary Hallgren, sculpture

Amy Johnquest, installation

Charles Jones, sculpture

Ruth Kristoff, sculpture/installation

George May, photography

Rebecca Migdal, multimedia

Mia Nacamulli, installation

Chris Nelson, sculpture/installation

Dean Nimmer, painting, drawing

Twyla Reardon, installation

Mo Ringey, sculpture

Kim Rosner, clothing design

Nancy Sachs, sculpture

Dan Warner, installation/video/sound

Christopher Willingham, painter /installation

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Bruce Fowler, brucefowlerart[at]yahoo.com

Dean Nimmer, deannimmer[at]gmail.com

Paper City Blog

Parsons Hall Project Space

Wednesday, April 22, 8-9 AM on Mo Radio

My guest will be Jess Dugan and we’ll be chatting about An evening of TRANS Art and Activism. Listen live if you are in the Pioneer Valley area at WXOJ-LP, 103.3 FM from 8-9 AM or, stream it live at www.valleyfreeradio.org

The podcast will be posted later in the day at my podcast page.

Advice Columnism for hacks

Dear Mo-ie Dearest, I am just short of cutting off my ear for love, signed, ~>

“]

Wine Glass with reservoir: Two of these together might make a heart shape - making this image relevant to this post - and might help rekindle the love. [SOURCE

Dear ~>,
Hmm. Maybe something less van Gogh-ian would be better and more au courant, révolutionnaire? Perhaps cutting off some split ends for love? And weaving them into a love wreath to be framed and hung on the wall, or used as a dangerously flammable lampshade (for the danger and drama of it)? Perhaps add in some strands from ripped jeans.

Hell, make a garland and wear it around your neck like a giant neck corsage. Better yet, make the whole pile into a garland and then immortalize it in a colorful jello mold and sell it to MOMA for a million dollars, become instantly rich and famous and take a year off to travel the world staying in villas, chateaus and yurts, and rekindle the love.

Yes, that is the best plan my friend. Start weaving; figuratively and literally. I have all the best ideas. ;-)

Your pal, Mo-ie Dearest

If I were a puppet

Better yet, if I were at a puppet show I would be the child on the right, over the word “mundo”. That’s how I most often feel inside.

Say it With Cake: Stray Cat Sayonara

I should have gotten him a buck-toothed Deer cake to celebrate a week since surgery.

SAY IT WITH CAKE

CAKEY MESSAGES BROUGHT TO YOU BY CakeWrecks

Today was a week since Chauncey the Cat’s surgery so it was time to let him go. Somehow he seemed to know this as he was restless. I got to my studio at 10 AM today and pulled back the blankets and he blinked at me all sleepy-eyed and hunkered back down in his bedbox. So I made him a plate of Fancy Feast with a side of dry and slipped it into his cage.

Or maybe a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow parting gift cake

About 30 minutes later he started crying and I saw that he had accidentally pushed his plate out of the cage, out of reach. So I went over to fix this and he started hissing at me. He doesn’t often hiss at me.

Instead of a goodbye note he left me this cake which he must have made in his Kenner Easy Bake Oven

After fixing the plate I went back to work at my computer and heard him crying and this started a pattern of crying till I came to his cage and hissing when I got near. So I did it; I opened the door and also opened the door to the hallway and went back to work. I never heard a sound, but 5 minutes later I peeked over and the cage was empty. Dude was gone.

So I made this cake for him and left it in the hallway, near his new home. It has liver frosting.

I didn’t see him for the rest of the day but just now I walked out to the back hallway and there he was; sitting in his usual hallway spot staring at me. And crying. As usual – as had been our ritual for the past few months – I sat on the floor a few feet away and talked to him and he stopped crying and settled down.When I went back in my studio I saw him peek around the corner to look into the door that I left open for him. I am buoyed by that.

That’s it. We are back to where we were, more or less. I am glad that he is not mad at me I am glad that he seems to miss me.

I thought this was a dog cake but it turns out that it is a ewe cake.

Oh, and before I let him go, we added sheetrock walls to his special new home so that when the landlord’s dogs are here, they can’t annoy him, even when he is in his indoor patio. I even taped a picture me on his wall inside his new catitat.

Reception April 18, 2009 – Tabla Rasa Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

If you are in Brooklyn on April 18…

For $10 you can be in a Kinks Reunion Movie

In a way…  click here.  See for yourself.

Geoff Edgers, in his Kinkumentary

Stray cat update #I-lost-track

THE STRAY CAT SAGA (back issues of this saga are here. See the Caged Cat Cam here.)

So this whole stray cat thing goes on and on, as things do if you let them, if you are a dramaqueen.

If Chauncey was black and white, he'd look like this inkblot. But he's butterscotchy-ish.

It is a wee bit overwhelming having this little living being in my studio because I feel responsible for his emotional well-being and so I ask my therapist for advice but she just asks me what I think she should think that I should think and do. So, I look to fortune cookies and friends for advice.

(He who hurries cannot walk with dignity.” Thanks ever so much, that’s very helpful.)

Now that she’s a male I have named him Chauncey, as was the popular choice in my naming-the-cat poll the other day. Captain Marvel Chauncey, the amazing (<–for some reason which I don’t yet know, but am certain of) stray cat. Chauncey for short with Marvie as nickname-in-waiting. I mostly think of him as Chauncey but call him Marvie, which rhymes with Harvey which makes me think of spying on my parents’ grownup parties when they’d laugh and eat Harvey Wallbanger cake.

Colored cream cheese Harvey Wallbanger cake sandwiches in blankets

And wear maxi skirts and have little cocktail napkins with funny things on them and eat little colored cream cheese sandwiches. We’d crouch on the top steps to the finished basement and go running every time someone went up the stairs to use the bathroom. I’d help make the colored cream cheese sandwiches and little folded mushroom pastry things and marvel over the jello molds. See how it all comes together? Harvey, Marvel, Marvie, grownups, responsibility, raising a stray cat. But I was talking about the stray cat.

Stray cat update III: Help name the newly male cat

PART I, PART II, PART IIB

POLL WITH MULTIPLE CHOICE AND WRITE-IN OPTIONS FOR NAMING THE CAT AT END OF POST

I finally got an appointment to have the stray cat checked, vaccinated and fixed on Wednesday. I was relieved to have the ordeal nearly over and also to have the chance to clean and rearrange her cage in a more logical manner, so she’d not hunker down in her litterbox in fear. I would put the new bed in a box I had made for her in the back, and the litterbox in the front, so I could clean it daily. This was a logical plan.

The Animal Control Officer was due to pick her up at 5ish and bring her back at 9ish, both in the PM.

It was a big day, that Wednesday.

"CAT" in his bedroom: post surgery

I went to the Doctor at 11AM and she diagnosed shingles and gave me a prescription. She also took blood and ran tests and booked follow-up appointments with her and also with a specialist.

This is not my exact Animal Control Officer, but is a reasonable facsimile

I took the first new pill at 6ish. Then I started feeling nauseous and anxious but that made sense since I have been always been against trapping this little stray cat who had appeared in my hallway months before. I was worried that she would be traumatized by a trip to the vet. When the ACO came I hid in another studio so I’d not get upset if she cried. I was getting really nauseous. As the nausea grew worse I thought, “this seems worse than nerves and worry. I wonder if I am allergic to this new prescription.” Then it hit BAD. This could not be nerves, I recall thinking in that blur of willspareyouthedetails.

At 8:30ish PM the ACO calls. She is out in the alley in the rain with my stray cat, who, BTW, is a boy as it turns out. She waits in the alley for 10 minutes till I can get to a place where I can let her in. I open the door, we put the cat in the newly cleaned and logically rearranged cage, I throw a few hundred dollar bills at her, ask her if she has a gun I can borrow (for me, not the cat) and as soon as she leaves (she would not give me her gun), I call a friend to take me to the ER. Because now I am sure this is some horrible reaction to the new anti-viral medication.

"Cat"'s temporary resting house with layout

By 1 AM I am on a bed and have been examined by a Physician at the ER who has looked at my arm and asked about the needle mark …