Category Archives: true life 2008

I hate artists

(sometimes)

One evening a few months ago I was talking to a fairly young artist with a degenerative disease that is increasingly forcing her to rely on assistance with the tasks of daily living. As if this weren’t indignity enough, she’s also made the decision to change her focus from painting and drawing (media she’s been working in for over a decade) to photography, as she finds it increasingly difficult to control a pencil or brush. The photographs she showed me were gorgeous. I wish she’d shown work at Artomatic. I don’t like to reveal personal details without permission, so we’ll call her The Photographer for the sake of this little story.

Another artist, a vague acquaintance both of us, ambled up and joined our conversation. We’ll call him The Asshole.

This guy is one of those folks who don’t show work at Artomatic because he considers himself above it. Knowing full well his fellow painter was now engaged in a lot of photography, he still proceeded to hold forth about how photography wasn’t art, photographers weren’t artists, and how anyone who collected photography lacked taste. The typical bluster and art school pretension I’m sure we’ve all heard more times than we can count. I was itching to make the equally banal pronouncement, “Painting is dead” because that’s another one I’m tired of hearing, but I really didn’t want to stoop to his level. Maybe I should have introduced him to this guy.

If he’d picked a fair fight with, say, Dr. Birdcage, I probably wouldn’t even be recalling it (unless she’d wrestled him to the ground and forced him to eat tarantulas). But it struck me as the height of cruelty to knowingly belittle someone else’s work, after they’d worked so very hard to carve out a new path for themselves.

I know I’ll get at least a dozen emails asking this guy’s name. I really don’t know it. He paints somewhere in Maryland. He’s a jackass. That’s really all that matters. I think you have to have a rather insecure view of your own work to be so mercilessly judgmental, particularly about things you don’t even understand. Made me glad not to own any of this guy’s work, can you imagine the bad energy that stuff must give off? Ick.

The bitch is back

I'm sure this squirrel is stalking me

I’m sure this squirrel is still mad about being evicted from the attic. She has a distinctive tail, which isn’t quite visible in this photo, but trust me, it’s her.

After her penthouse door was sealed up (and we had our electrical main replaced because she’d eaten all the insulation off it), she spent months racing around on the outside of our house, looking in the windows and following me from room to room.

If I didn’t close the blinds, she’d bang on the windows with her little squirrel fists when she saw me. I’m sure she was giving me the finger with her creepy little squirrel hands.

She didn’t even have a nest up there, she was just partying. I’m surprised to she hasn’t found a way to pick the locks to get back in and set up house again. Yet.

For now, she just sits out there on the compost bin and stares at the house. She’s planning something, I can tell.

I’m quite certain squirrels harbor grudges. We probably should have had her relocated when they fixed the attic, but we didn’t think it was necessary.

Lesson learned.

Oh, Samer, you let me down

Samer is off on a 61 day round-the-world journey. If anyone asks, you can tell them he’s off to the Olympics to compete in the javelin. It’s not true, but you can tell them that.

Right before he left, he posted his strategy for dealing with jetlag. I was hoping for an entertaining bit of Hunter S. Thompson-esque advice. Instead I got a strategy that boils down to “stay up all night.” That’s not a strategy, Samer, that’s how we spent 1988 – 1991.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to vicariously following his adventures on his blog and via flickr. Bon voyage!

Royalty, or maybe just a royal pain in the ass

This morning, someone referred to my “confidence, strength and intelligence” as well as my “extraordinary talent, charisma, athleticism, wit, unfailing good judgment, sexiness, grace, beauty, and mad skateboarding skillz.”

Okay, only the first three were actually suggested by another human being, it’s not outside the realm of possibility (read: entirely true) that the others were supplied by the voice in my head. Or possibly my mom.

No matter. You already knew these things, for I am your queen and you will worship me. Why else would you be here? It has come to my attention that you’re behind schedule on shrine you promised to build in my honor. This displeases me, but I am trying to learn to be patient with lesser beings, so I’ll give you a little more time.

In lieu of being worshipped at my own shrine this spring, I tried to convince Rania that we should run the Disney Princess Half-Marathon. The nice people at Disney are throwing a whole weekend in honor of my birthday, how can we not go? Rania was underwhelmed by the idea.

I have much work to do, but so do you. Why are you still sitting there? And don’t even think of using linoleum or other vinyl flooring anywhere in the shrine. The consequences? You just do not want to think about the consequences.

writer's block

I love the idea of the church sign generator, but whenever I go to the site my brain freezes and I can’t ever come up with anything clever.

Sometimes I wonder if they’re using some sort of sign generator at our local Popeye’s. My all-time favorite (real) sign was from a few year’s ago. It read:

Happy Mother’s Day
breasts legs thighs

It was a classic.

But now, I need a nap.

Happy 4th of July! If you burn your fingers off with those fireworks, don’t come crying to me.