Rare Finds Tuesday!

From my friend Maureen:

DDT WALLPAPER, WOW!

DDT WALLPAPER, HEY KIDS!

From the Salvation Army Art Department today; A Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – poster created entirely in needlepoint!

$7.99

Le mépris Condensée/The Condensed Contempt

I watched Contemp, so you don’t have to.

Contempt (French: Le Mépris) is a 1963 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the Italian novel Il disprezzo (1954) by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot.

American film producer Jeremy Prokosch ((image below, in red convertible, looking smarmy) Jack Palance) hires respected Austrian director Fritz Lang (Above, right: playing himself) to direct a film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. Dissatisfied with Lang’s treatment of the material as an art film, Prokosch hires Paul Javal (Above, middle: played by Michel Piccoli), a novelist and playwright, to rework the script. The conflict between artistic expression and commercial opportunity parallels Paul’s sudden estrangement from his wife Camille Javal (Above, left: played by Brigitte Bardot), who becomes aloof with Paul after being left alone with Prokosch, a millionaire playboy.

Homemade Organic Baileys’ Irish Cream

Ed note:- I started this post a while ago – en route to a party -  but then I got lost.

It’s that time. And with a few hours to spare, I am finished. I have just finished making a huge batch of homemade Baileys Irish Cream (the registered trademark omits the apostrophe. <–fun fact!) for a party this evening. I love Baileys (“The Orchard Centre at the Hayden Farm in south County Wicklow has been the dedicated visitor farm and the spiritual home of Bailey’s Irish Cream since 2002. With a pedigree herd of 140 cows producing over 1 million litres of milk for Baileys annually. The Orchard Centre, with capacity for group up to 350 people, also caters for special events, incentives, conferences and the ultimate Baileys Experience”.) but wanted to make a more organic version.

Anyway, I surfed for recipes and found that a lot of them used Hersheys’ Chocolate syrup (loaded with High Fructose Corn Syrup, which stimulates the hypothalamus to amplify the feeling of hunger, meaning that the more you eat, the more it can never be enough) so I modified the one that looked easiest in an attempt to create an almost completely organic Irish Cream, which I call Mosely’s Irish Cream because Mo is short for Mosely. And Mosely Josely, according to my father.

It wasn’t easy. And, of course, fraught with speed bumps and minor calamities (Mosely is short for Calamity Jane). I melted a bar of Scharffen Berger unsweetened 99% cacoa bean dark chocolate in a double broiler (which seems sorta like a double-wide, but a vertical one, with the top floor being removable), stirring constantly while adding organic heavy whipping cream. Otherwise the chocolate clumps up and I would just put it in my blender but I didn’t think I had one, so I stirred and stirred.

Then I poured it in a huge bowl and added organic unsweetened condensed milk (hard to find, actually)  and pure organic vanilla bean. More stirring. I then added eggs (Is this sorta like Egg Nog? Maybe I’ll try that next) and organic unbleached sugar (seriously? we bleach sugar? simply to… what? change the color?) and glugged in a whole lot of whiskey. And it is amazing! But, it was still lumpy so – still thinking I didn’t have a blender – I used innovation and used my brand-new, never-used electric toothbrush as an electric whisk! I was really proud. Of myself. But it didn’t much help the lumps. My wrist was sore from whisking and stirring and the electric toothbrush alleviated that, but fell short of my lofty expectations. But then I remembered that I have an Aerolatte! But the Aerolatte is like an electric whisk for Barbie-size projects so that was getting nowhere, slowly.

Only then did I realize that among my recent gifts was a Nuwave Twister Blender, which is more like a set of Blenderettes because it has two smallish compartmental  thingies for blending. Anyway, it’s all finished and chilling and is just amazing! So I thought I would share the recipe. As for measurements, wing it. I never write them down because I guess it makes it unfun and I have to focus on what I am doing or I will have another calamitous trip to the ER and my insurance only covers part of those, as I have found out. Trust your palate. Oh, and add organic almond extract. Measure, taste, rinse and repeat.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gnome de Pluehm

Today is a Benigngirl Holiday because it is Gnome de Pluehm’s birthday. Well, tomorrow, November 20, is his birthday but today I am beginning bloggerly preparations. Coincidentally, it is also Nyal William’s birthday (tomorrow, again) and, coincidentally, both are loyal readers and commenters of this blog, so — all together now,

Happy Birthday Men!

I am out of town and making this post on my lazyass, wonky, POS laptop so please forgive the odd spacing and etc. My chillmat broke and it’s overheating and as much as I love these birthday men, I am not going outside to work, though it would solve my overheating laptop complications.

Happy Birthday, Gnome de Plue------ue---uem, ....

“Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.”
Jean Paul Richter

The beaver’s powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America’s favorite birthday boy.

“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.”
George Harrison

Voltaire, half smiling, appears to be looking at his thoughts–perhaps at the tragicomic failings and follies of having a birthday.

“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age.”
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Although modern birthdays (especially in America) are mainly populated with horses, carousels from earlier periods frequently included diverse varieties of animals, including dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, and deer, to name a few.

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
Rabindranath Tagore

Whenever you walk into a room remember always that you are the least important person in that room, unless it is your birthday, or you are an angry Mime.

“My mother is going to have to stop lying about her age because pretty soon I’m going to be older than she is.”
Tripp Evans

By making a Bose-Einstein condensate in a particular isotope — rubidium-85 — and then changing the magnetic field in which the BEC is sitting, researchers can adjust the wavefunction’s self-interaction between birthdays and national holiday.

“You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”
Bob Hope

Blair: “There is a hopefulness in his contextural destruction, especially in his birthday work.”

“Age doesn’t matter, unless you are cheese.”
John Paul Getty

“I’ve pointed out to Gnome de Pluehm that he’s the person he is today because he came under the wrath of Bill Mitchell.”

To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.
Ken Keyes, Jr.

Birthdays - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

So many candles… so little cake.

See the birthday clowns. From what do they flee, in their double-entendre wanders?

I Think I Only Have A Pair

(Ed note, I think I only have run-on sentences).

I have always loved the anonymous painting, Dogs Playing Poker and so I especially love Silas Kopf’s take on  it in the below masterpiece, “I Think I Only Have A Pair”.

After an exhaustive and exclusive interview with Silas – spanning days, weeks, decades perhaps, in which I followed him around everywhere he went (at times with leaves taped to my turtleneck, jeans, and  wooden platform shoes, [in keeping with the elements of his work], in an attempt to get some candid anecdotalities), even going so far as to hire muscle to forcibly hook him up to various thought-stealing apparatus’, lie detectors, intravenous truth-serum drips, and the like – I managed a rare act of brevity, summarizing all of my notes into the following quote  from Silas regarding his work and the insinuations in this article:

“Perhaps Mr. Munger sees more than I do, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t subliminal perspective.”

It is yet too soon soon to tell if he will succumb to suggestive thought suggestion tactics administered by said muscle and present this piece to Gnome de Pluehm for his birthday bash tomorrow- which I am overseeing in this blog – but we can all only hold our breath and hop (typo, but I’m keeping it).

From the on-line journal Art In Conflict

By Mr. Selwyn Munger

It is a fine line between Pop Art and kitsch. When Pop first made its way into the art world in the late 1950’s many regarded the movement as kitsch, basically mundane without any real artistic content. What are we to think of an artist who reverses the order, taking kitsch and trying to make it Pop? This is the direction of Silas Kopf’s entry, I Think I Only Have A Pair, in the recent Salon de la Marqueterie Biennial in Marseilles.
Kopf played off the famous painting by C. M. Coolidge of Dogs Playing Poker (1904) (sometimes called “The Bold Bluff”) and turned it on its head by using popular figures apparently involved in a game of cards. I say apparently because there is much more behind the imagery than a simple bit of gambling. At the table are the cartoon figures; Betty Boop, Mr. Peanut, and Daffy Duck. Seated between Duck and Peanut is the pop icon Marilyn Monroe. And does that shock of white hair at the bottom of the picture belong to

Chris Blair Saturday evening, October 10, at Gallery Elusie

So if you are out and about on Saturday night, October 10, or can be prompted to get out and about, would it not be so lovely to go see Chris Blair’s new work at Gallery Elusie?

The reception is Saturday night, October 10, from 5-8 and there will be food and wine and art and such, and is part of the Easthampton Arts Walk. Gallery Elusie is located at Old Town Hall at 43 Main St., Easthampton, MA.

The exhibit runs from Oct.10 – Nov. 14, 2009

Chris is a very nice guy and talented artist. His work can also be seen on my walls, at my new apartment.  ;-)

A Tale of Two Locks

An old story, this, which I just found in my drafts folder;  the story of a housesitting adventure from July, gone awry, which I meant to post after I had a chance to tell the owner of the house as I figured she should be the first to hear it. And it’s much funnier as a verbal tale, but gosh, aren’t we all so busy? So this is how she will find out, rather than over drinks. ;-) And so it is written in present tense because I don’t have the energy, in the midst of my second move in one month (yet another drama), to change all the tenses. This is a tale of two locks. The tale of the two moves is for another day.

I am housesitting for a friend, a relatively benign thing, and yet things can so quickly change from the benign to the traumatic, to the hilarious, in the click of a lock.

I have housesat here before. I housesit a lot. I am in demand and it is high season. I am in demand because I don’t snoop, a common complaint about housesitters, so I am told. I must be told this because I’d otherwise not know it. I don’t need housesitters myself, as I have no house. And no longer have a pet.

I am super-obsessive about keys (and most things) when I am housesitting (and even when I am not) and if I go out for even a minute, I bring my keys. If I go out on the deck for even a piece of a minute, I unlock the door AND I bring my keys. But this morning was different somehow. Maybe I was not me this morning. Maybe my OCD let up for a minute. There are too many maybes to even ponder.

So, on this morning I let Girlie Girl (not her real cat name), the 18 year old cat who I am watching, out on the second floor deck for a minute and she immediately threw up all over it.  So I ran in and got water and soap and paper towels in order to clean it up, and a sudden gust of wind blew the door shut and locked behind me.I was stunned and unrealistically kept turning the knob, as though it would turn out to be somehow not true that I was on the wrong side of the door and that it was actually locked. But nothing changed.

This is not such a great ‘hood to be out in while wearing a skimpy and tattered t-shirt with no products from Victoria’s Secret or any other such purveyor of such things underneath, but then what ‘hood is? But this ‘hood does have some interesting characters running about in all manner of dress and with all manner of urgencies, running about at all hours, so perhaps it was the best ‘hood for such a spectacle.

Thankfully I had taken off the tattered shorts and thrown on a pair of jeans before that lock and that wind conspired to create this drama for me, but I had no shoes or sunglasses or keys or cell phone.

So I thought to run barefoot to my studio 6 blocks away where at the least  I have a spare car key and people to help me, and so I ran (ish), in my wobbly, disjointed manner, due to all those herniated disks and bone spurs and ever-spasming muscles, with eyes squinting against the very bright sun, arms crossed to cover the tatters and lack of said purveyed underthings, and as I ran, I realized that I much resembled a sort of not-so-uncommon local person of a certain type, and who might be perhaps experiencing some sort of drama due to some sort of deal, perhaps gone bad, or in desperate anticipation of some sort of deal which would very shortly go very well, if you know what I mean. I had been woken up at midnight-thirty the night before by someone yelling, “Hey! HEY! I don’t care what you do in your own home but I am NOT going to watch you beat up on a woman.” I had then looked out the window to see a bunch of of guys in a car below, passing some sort of illuminated thing, while the driver stood outside and beside his car yelling, and had heard one of the guys inside the car say, “She probably tried to rip him or or sell him some bad shit.”

When I got to my studio, with wild, unbrushed hair and unbrushed teeth, I had no key and so I banged on a window with a stray brick till the building manager let me in, and into my studio, for my spare car key. That was a start. Yet everything in my studio is in garbage bags for the ongoing and massive extermination (another traumatic story) but I dug around and found a tank top with built in sports bra, and the only shoes I could find; a pair of high heeled clogs. All in all a lovely ensemble, yet definitely some sort of upgrade. And it’s not like I care much about my appearance but I do generally cover myself and make attempts at cleanliness. I was somewhat horrified to be out and about in this condition.

The only person around at the building with a truck was presently underneath it in the parking lot gluing his muffler back in, so I ran next door to where my new stepfather works (husband of the biological mother I just met in the last year or so) and borrowed his mini van so we could load a 20 foot ladder and go climb in the one second floor window which I had just shut that morning, but not yet locked, thankfully.

So we – me and the building manager and his son – set the ladder against the wall. Yet the ladder stopped 4 feet shy of the window and we were all afraid of it and we were just standing there, staring at it for a moment, waiting for it to grow, and  just then, out of my peripheral vision, I saw a local sort of guy come along and next thing we know, he is climbing up our ladder and saying over his shoulder, “I am really good at this”.

Plato’s ideal city-state & stubborn realities

“Stubborn realities”, how apt the phrase.

Last week I re-read Tracy Kidder’s Hometown, because I had not read it in years and it was lying about at one of my temporary house-sitting homes. This particular section struck me and I’d certainly not remembered it from my first reading and so I thought I’d share;

Reprinted here with no thought whatsoever toward obtaining permission.

“Thirty thousand souls. Plato’s ideal city state was about that size, Northampton’s size. To relieve the squalor and congestion of Renaissance Milan, Leonardo da Vinci devised a scheme for building ten new cities. Like Northampton, each was to have a population of thirty thousand. And thirty thousand was roughly the size of the famous “garden cities” drawn up by Ebenezer Howard at the end of the nineteenth century. Howard intended his ideal towns to serve as antidotes to the overcrowding of great cities such as London, and to the growing impoverishment of the English countryside. And his utopias were most unusual in that a few approximations actually got built.

Howard’s perfect garden city was neither quite a city nor a country town. It combined the best of both.  It wasn’t an American-style suburb, but a truly self-sufficient place, with farms and rural scenery, urban entertainment and variety. Northampton had become a place rather like that, where many people went weeks without leaving because they found some of everything they needed and wanted here. But Howard’s garden city depended on a collevtivist vision. The garden city itself would be the only landlord. And, Howard figured, his new city wouldn’t need more than a few cops, because, like Northampton, they would comtain only thirty thousand people, “who, for the most part, would be of the law-abiding class.” Utopias by definition ignore some stubborn realities. If a place is big enough to provide all the variety that the law-abiding want, it’s likely to be big enough to harbor most varieties of human nature unrestrained.”

And so you see, my dear Nyal, that great writers do begin sentences with “And”, making it perfectly acceptable for untrained hacks like myself to do the same.

Kittens and tales and random updates

I typically don’t like to ever begin a blog post with the old, “Gosh, I haven’t written in so long…”, so I’ll not do so. Nope.

But it has been a while, hasn’t it? Life has been medical appointments every week and sometimes up to one or more per day, for days on end. I am now seeing my old neurosurgeon in Boston from the days of the beginning of this ordeal, back in 1995. That’s a haul. I need a vacation from appointments, and from my crumbling spine. Oh, and from general insanity all around. I keep hearing, “Gosh, the whole world is stressed out and crazy!”. Yep. More fodder for the eventual book and too exciting to possibly get away with posting here, except perhaps in the form of “installments from a ‘friend’s’ upcoming novel”. ;-)

Lately I have been transient as it is high season for house sitting and pet sitting. I have had one gig after another and it is rather enjoyable to be away from my regular place and to have new pets every week. Like the kittens I am caring for now. Gosh. That’s all I can say.

I am also looking to move as winter is coming and after last winters’ heating debacle – 16 days with no heat, and 5 of them with no electric, meaning we could not even run space heaters and had to work elsewhere – I don’t much expect more of the same. It occurs to me that someone should buy a building and build reasonable live/work spaces – truly reasonable and not at the fancy prices that are out there now – one would have a full building in months with a waiting list pages long. Time to win the lottery. Yet I have no desire to be a landlord. Is it landlordism that makes people crazy? Or do crazy people become landlords? Chickens and eggs, that is the parallel question.

In the meantime are kittens and cats and gosh, it is such sweet sorrow parting from each place. It seems good housesitters are hard to find, so they say, and I hear many stories of snoopers and the like. And so I am in demand. Everyone should have a talent. :-)

This has been a boring post, by way of getting back in the habit. Soon I will update about the stray cat and the ensuing drama. I am just getting my feet wet again here and getting back in the habit. Meanwhile I bring you todays’ kittens, as shot by my cell phone.

And throwing it out there that I am looking for new space. I have never been late on my rent here, in the past 3 plus years, and my habits and hobbies are of the quiet sort. Gone are the days of parties and loud music while I work. I wonder if I am growing up.

Thanks to everyone who has been nudging me. I promise to get back in the habit. You all are so sweet.

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.