Reclaiming Miss Havisham: April 2008

Art is everywhere, y'all

Why spend hundreds of dollars on art? I found this on the sidewalk this morning walking the dog:

I think I'm going to give it to my gay pothead friend. (what?! gay! pothead!? in San Francisco?!)

April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

See, what I feel like would happen here is you would sit all the way back in this chair and the point of the triangle would, and since I'm a scientist I'll use clinical terms, wedge itself right in your ying yang and you're left with one buttcheek pointing east and one pointing west and both hanging off of the chair.

No sir, I do not think this chair is for me.

April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Ways My Job is Different than Yours

My boss wanted to show me the albino bunny we just got so he came in my office with it and held it over the lunch I was eating. I just had to watch acceptingly as white bunny fur fell into my food.

April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

IMPORTANT!

I saw this on AphroChic and then went to visit the site myself. The question is:

Does anyone know how I can get my paws on a Louis chair in funky fabric like this? Oh yeah and not crazyass expensive. Does anyone sell anything like that? Bright funky chairs like this?

image from Maison La Vallette

April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Book Snobbery Put to the TEST

I subscribe to a few of those blogging blogs (blagging blugs?) that gives tips about making your blog better. I know that sounds silly, right? But even though its just a blog at the end of the day it's something I produce completely by myself and I'm uncomfortable putting my name on something if it's not exactly how I want it.

But yeah they say you won't have any readers unless you stick to a small pre-determined niche, like interior design for example. People can only handle so many topics at a time and are using blogs more and more for reference so the more specifically catered, the better. This is the tip I can't seem to do well on. I have a really hard time staying on topic. I have what we in the soft sciences call "verbal diarrhea" and it's translated itself over to the blagosphere. While Verbal Diarrhea, or VD (hah!) is amusing to those around the inflicted person, it's not so awesome when you tell your boss you think he looks totally gay in his pink polo. Which I did. Last week.

BUT Staying within the confines of a niche is the very OPPOSITE of taking it to the max, and since I lost about 75% of my readers with the move to TypePad, I feel less of an obligation to stay in pocket**. So I guess I'll start doing whatever I want. There will still be design, because I'm still obsessed, but you must forgive me when I stray.

I love a good book list. It brings out this competition I have with myself. I want to read everything! I found this list "106 books of pretension" at What Would Jane Austen Do?
and it's a pretty good one. It also makes me feel pretty bad about myself. Here we go:

Books I’ve read are in bold; books I’ve stared but haven’t finished are in italics; books I own but haven’t read are marked with an dagger (†).

Total:
Books I've read: 22

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi
9. The Name of the Rose †
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick †
12. Ulysses †
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man †
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
53. 1984 †
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses †
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest †
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables (started and not finished in French language for fucking French lit.)
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time †
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury †
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-Five †
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion (can’t remember)
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values †
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow (MOTHER OF GOD HOW CAN ANYONE READ THIS WHOLE THING)
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers

oops...

April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Miss Havisham's Mother's Day Pick

Miss Havisham wasn't known as being the greatest of mothers but just because she brainwashed her daughter into a man-consuming bitch doesn't mean that Mother's Day is lost on her. So forget the flowers and the arsenic laced tea and consider this:

It's important that you understand the key differences between the Hollywood Royalty Edition and the old DVD. You see, I actually DID get this for my mother for Mother's Day a few years ago. However, whoever is in charge of this movie is doing a BANG UP job because this edition features a full length commentary from JOHN WATERS!

I have this version of the DVD and I've only listened through the commentary once, I can say with confidence that it is QUITE excellent.

I may have to make a list of essential movies for this blog.

Amazon Listing for this DVD

Some advice:

1. If you ever meet Faye Dunaway, NEVER EVER mention this movie to her

2. No wire hangers.....ever. (this is a given)

3. Do no call this movie campy. In the words of John Waters "It's not so bad that it's good. It's so good that it's good."

4. I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dirt.

5. Invest in a good eyebrow wax

And finally, DON'T FUCK WITH ME, FELLAS, THIS AIN'T MY FIRST RODEO.

April 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Miss Havisham's Green Tips for Around the Home

I wouldn't say I'm eco-friendly as much as an eco-acquaintance. The whole green movement to me is kinda like the White Stripes. I sorta like it, have a few songs on my pod but at the end of the day I really don't give a shit. If you ask me to invest to go see a concert I'm just going to back out grumbling I don't want to be around all of those hipster freaks.

It's not easy being green. I typically don't like things that aren't easy but since this trend isn't really going away I would irresponsible not to touch upon it. So here are some things you can do around the house to be Eco-casually-acquainted:

1. Get rid of Towels and Washcloths

Washers and Dryers use so much energy! Imagine how much good it would do if no one had towels and washcloths clogging up the works. What do I do instead? Every time I take one of my 90 minute showers, I use about two rolls of paper towels to wash myself and then pat myself dry. I save energy and water not using towels and washcloths and any extra rolls can be given as a delightful and disposable toy for the family pet!

2. Learn the concept of "water inertia"

I'm a scientist first and foremost so here is a little concept you mendicants may not know about: inertia. Objects in motion like to stay in motions. In order for an object at rest to become in motion you have to overcome an energy threshold (usually the coefficient of friction) with an applied force. Why not apply this concept to running water and save that required energy. Your running water is already in motion so don't turn it off if you think you will need it later. After brushing your teeth just leave the sink on. Go take a nap, play some online poker, the water will still be there. And when you come back to it, the energy of starting it back up is saved. So easy!

3. Enhance your recycling

You're already recycling but sometimes you're getting rid of things you may need later. That junk mail insert for 20 cents off of tuna fish will come in handy someday but you haphazardly recycled it! Invest in a xerox machine to start your own information archive. Make backup copies of all mail, newspaper, even books so you don't regret anything once you've recycled it. To get started you'll need about 100 reams of copy paper weekly and access to a copier. You could make this in your home:

and Mother Earth thanks you.

So before you go get all friendly with the environment, slow down! Take a step back and say, "Whoa, Environment, not so fast! I'm not that kind of girl." Then try one of my tips instead!

April 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Welcome to TypePad, bitches!

Thank you for being a good sport about this blog move. It's a huge pain in the ass but it's fun. I have a lot more control so I can potentially take this blog TO THE MAX! It's extreme. I hope you can handle it.

April 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Read Moar Blags!

from xkcd

So doing my regular tour of duty reading blags I couldn't help but be a little put off by Holly from decor8's article in Real Simple titled Cutting through the Design Blog Smog which was referred to on Apartment Therapy Los Angeles.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people spending less time on the computer and getting out into nature or whatever, but I don't know how cool it is to urge people to limit their blog reading to ten or less.

Blogging is considered the whipped fluffy topping on the writing community so it's seemingly acceptable to tell people to limit their intake. While there are some really shitty useless blogs (mine being one of them) clogging up the world, at the end of the day each blog is the efforts of a real person to put their own words, voice and opinions out into the world to be judged by strangers. It's not always easy. It's a bad analogy but you wouldn't tell someone to limit how many books or periodicals they read. That Steinbeck can be a real timesuck.

I guess it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to read that my words and the words of other small time bloggers are considered internet "smog". This is an easy attitude to have since decor8 has tens of thousands of daily readers. There's no chance of that blog not making the cut when people shave their reading list down to 10. She doesn't come out and say "limit your reading to the top ten design blogs" but obviously that's what would happen if people were to choose. The big blogs are sponsored. They have things like contests and give aways, and the authors are emailed tips from designers and artists directly. If people only read 10 blogs, that would pretty much mean the end of things for the rest of us.

Perhaps Holly can remember a time when her blog had a small readership and how many of the people who supported decor8 along the way are bloggers themselves. Are those blogs part of this smog? I'm sure they'd hate to think their writing is thought of as the big purple stretch mark on the thigh of society.

I don't live in communist china. My media and information consumption is not controlled by 10 people. What I love about blogs is the constant flow of NEW thoughts, NEW opinions, NEW ideas. It's important to reach out to different blogs, you never know what you'll find.

There is a solution, folks. Google reader. Say it with me, gooooooogle readdderrrrrr. You can even use any RSS feed reader, actually. Just subscribe, check your reader along with your email, skim the new posts, star the ones you want to come back to. You can follow tons of blogs and spend as much or as little time in one sitting as you want reading them. No one reads every word of every post. You skim until you find something that you want to read. Or you just look at the picutres. It's not that hard or time consuming, and you are exposed to a spectrum of styles and opinions. There aren't enough eames rockers in the world for us to all read the same blogs...

Now I want to thank all of the blogs I subscribe to, and the ones I have yet to even discover. You guys could never smog up my life. Thanks for keeping it fresh and always remembering to take it to the max!