Five Things

Here are my favorites this week:

1. This ad campaign from UN Woman is pretty awesome. I tried their little Google trick and got similar results. We've got a long, long way to go.

2. Believe me, I've had experiences with collection agencies, most of them awful: Rude, abusive and demanding. But this company? Please, let me get these guys next time I get sent to collections.

3. "McDonald's doesn't want to pay its workers more. It wants YOU to pay its workers more."

4. Creepy and/or disgusting Halloween candy. I'd love to be part of a think tank that comes up with these.

5. RIP Lou Reed. This gorgeous, bittersweet animated video features one of my favorite Lou Reed songs.

How to Name Your Band

My new band is playing at an open mic tonight so we can get an idea of what the stage sound will be for our first real show in Omaha at the Waiting Room on November 7. The thing is, we don't have a name yet. Coming up with a name is excruciating. A long time ago, I was watching Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train and when the Japanese chick put on her jacket on the train, I said, "Oooh! Mister Baby is a great name for a chick band!" And my significant said, "Well, then start a chick band." So I did. I wish this one would come as easily.

We've been throwing out band names like candy on Halloween, and we've gotten nowhere. The band consists of me on the ukulele and singing, my sister Meghan on the accordion, my niece MacKenzie on the singing saw and our friend Patrick on the bass. Patrick is pretty laid back about the name, but the rest of us? OMG. We're a bunch of indecisive hens. Just take a look at some of our excruciating texts:

September 24

Kenzie: The shiver twitches.

Me: I tried to think of a shiver name because that's one of my favorite words. There's a band called Shivaree, which is a great name. How did you come up with that? Are you shivering and twitching?

KZ: My co-worker made a weird face and it looked like a shiver twitch and I thought, "that'd make a great band name!" Like shiver twitch and the so & so's or something.

Me: Too close to the front of my teeth. The "sh" and "tch."


October 19

KZ: Pale Annie.

KZ: Dervish.


October 20

Me: How about raven 8?

Meghan: Reminds me of that's so raven.

Me: Garden Gods?

MG: It's okay, needs something.

Me: Archives?

MG: Archrival?

Me: That's a local ad agency.

MG: Really? I didn't know that. Something something band name something.

Me: We're screwed.


October 22

MG: Lucy and the killers?

Me: The foundlings?

MG: Too close to fondling. Gremlins. Something with gremlins.

Me: Too kitschy. Moon junkies. Jackpot moon.

MG: I like names with moon in it. I have to carve a jack o lantern now. I'll get back to you.

Me: Carvers.

Me: The carvers.

Me: Pumpkin moon.

MG: Fever carver.

MG: The plumes.

MG: The ribbons.

MG: Honey belly.

MG: The funereals.

MG: Killer peacocks.

MG: Penguin the killer.

MG: Dearly beloved.

MG: Honey grass.

MG: Riddley shears.

MG: Okay, I'll stop now.


October 24  

Me: The Mighty Collisions.

Me: The Ephemerals.

Me: Ephemera.

Me: The Collapse.

Me: Supergiant.

Me: Mighty Palaces.

Me: Cold Shivers.

Me: The Dark Matters.

Me: The Gamma Rays.

Me: The Magnetospheres.

Me: The Unearthlies.

MG: No to ephemera, mighty palaces, shepherd moon. I really like the collapse, the mighty collisions, dark matters, magnetospheres & unearthlies. If we can, make it so the first word isn't "the".

Me: Agreed.

Kenzie: THE IS IN FRONT OF EVERYTHING! I don't know why you guys are against it.

Me: The the thing doesn't apply to every name, just those that give off more cool without it.

KZ: The bulbs, the crooked bulbs, the atmospheres. I dig shepherd moon a looooot.

Me: I like the bulbs a lot. I also like the unearthlies a lot.

KZ: The unearthlies is too cartoony. Shepherd moon for the win!

Me: What do you mean, cartoony? I think it sounds like fog on a creepy lake.

KZ: It doesn't flow like fog over a creepy lake. It kinda gets stuck on the tongue before it comes out.

Me: Yes, you're right about that. And I really don't like Shepherd moon that much. Feels kinda boring and distant. I loved it when I first thought of it, though.

KZ: I loooooove shepherd moon. It sounds so mythical, like some massive cosmic dude with a fluffy beard and starry eyes keeping watch over the universe.

Me: Yeah, that's kind of why I don't like it. It doesn't feel accessible. It also sounds like the title of some bad romance novel. In fact, that's what I'll name the hero if I ever write another one.

KZ: That it's distant is a good thing. You said yourself that you want a name that gives us room to grow under.

Me: Yes, but I want it to be more exciting. Like the magnetospheres or the atomic fevers or something.

KZ: Fine. I just love it so much everything will pale in comparison now. Those sound so punky. We aren't punk at all.

Me: We need something inbetween. How about The Inbetween?

KZ: Gah, too deep.

MG: I can live with Shepherd moon. It's a little blah but a cool image. I googled it and it is the name of an Enya album, but otherwise not taken.

Me: OMFG that totally figures it's an Enya album. Well, that's out.

MG: Blah, like it makes me think of little boy blue sleeping in a haystack losing his sheep or whatever.

Me: Yeah, Kenzie is wild about it.

MG: I know, Kenzie you and Enya are like BFF now.

KZ: You guys are crazy. Enya and I know what's up.

KZ: The boo hags.

Me: LOL the boo hags!

The name I loved best from the beginning, when we first started thinking of names over Labor Day weekend, was Wretched Family.

Me: Can we just go with Wretched Family?

KZ: Ugh.

Me: Gamma Rays?

Me: Spider Milk?

KZ: Gamma rays is alright. I like it better than all the others, I guess. Spider milk is pretty awesome.

MG: Collision kid?

Me: Nah, too karate kid.

KZ: Blackberry sunshine!

Me: Hippies.

And here we are, six hours away from playing and still trying to think of a name. I can't remember who it was that used to call me "Last Minute Lucy." It was either my dad or an old boss. But it's true that I work best under pressure. If I'm in true form, the perfect name will just roll suddenly out of my mouth as I introduce us to the audience.

A Conversation With Ruby About Naming Her Frog

Me: What kinds of pets do you have on ABC mouse?

Ruby: I have a frog and a dog.

Me: What's the dog's name?

Ruby: Lulu.

Me: What's the frog's name?

Ruby: Fwa Fwa.

Me: Fwa Fwa?

Ruby: No, Fra Fwa.

Me: Fra Fwa?

Ruby: No, Fra Fla.

Me: Fra Fla?

Ruby: No, Fra Fra.

Me, coming to my senses: Oh. What other pets are you going to get?

How to Remove Sharpie from Your Kid's Skin

Does your kid ever do this? Tag her face with Sharpie? I learned a neat trick for removing Sharpie ink from the skin during my 11-year stint as a bartender in a music club. I can't count the times I stepped into the women's bathroom to find a gaggle of underage girls slathering their huge Sharpie XXs with lotion and wiping them clean off their hands. Next time your child gets creative with a permanent marker, do this:

Get some decent lotion. Nothing too full of fragrance, which is industry-speak for nasty chemicals.

Slather the lotion over the affected body part.

Wipe gently with a soft tissue.

All clean! 

Now, put the Sharpie back in your personal pen box and give the kid some watercolors to paint herself with. Comes right off in the shower.

10 Things Your Kids Should Be Able to Do by the Time They Leave the Nest

My hypochondria says I'll probably be dead before Ruby needs to call me from her apartment panicking that her stove won't light, or that she flushed her flipflop down the toilet. I might miss out on those little crises, and that scares me to death. But this post isn't about how badly I need to quit smoking in the very, very near future, but rather some of the things I want to teach Ruby by the time she's 18 so she's not fixing broken chairs with duct tape or driving around town on a bald spare tire.

1. Know the names of essential household tools and how to use each one. Screwdriver, pliers, wrench, hammer, level, drill, jigsaw, gorilla glue, clamps, etc.

2. Clear a drain clog. No child of mine will ever spend hard-earned money on highly caustic chemicals that often do little more than destroy the pipes and pollute the water. No, a clog needs a snake, period. Plumber's snakes are inexpensive, and snaking a drain is easy. Gross, but easy. Extracting the source of the clog is highly satisfying, as is not having to call a plumber or the landlord for something that is so simple anyone could do it.

3. Maintain the toilet. Toilets are simple, elegant machines. If there's a leak, it's easy to troubleshoot the cause. If you flush something you shouldn't, removing the toilet to get to the trap is really a piece of cake if you have the right tools (see #1) and have a little time to spare. Replacing the flapper, flush valve and flush mechanism is easy, and it's essential to know how to do it if you want to avoid having to jiggle the handle every time you flush or dig around in the tank every other day to put the chain back on the flapper. I don't know about you, but it's a lot of little things like that that add up to debilitating chaos in my brain.

4. Mow the lawn. This is a task best learned early, in my opinion. Probably because I learned it early. I'm a very good mower when I get around to doing it, and that's because when I turned 13 it was my job to do the yard work. Ah, the memories, blasting Rush on my Walkman, daydreaming about love, or escaping, or becoming a big star and saying "ha, ha" to the bullies... Teaching Ruby how to fill the tank, check the oil, mow straight, overlap the rows, switch direction every mowing and clean off the blades safely is something that will serve her well her whole life.

5. Do laundry. All the little laundry rules! Sorting the clothes, how much soap to use, remembering to clean out the dryer trap after every load, setting the most energy-efficient water levels and washing and drying cycles, etc...not to mention the best way to fold clothes to prevent wrinkling and save space. Included here would probably be basic sewing tasks like putting on a button or mending a seam tear.

6. Cook. For God's sake, if you can't feed yourself by the time you're a teenager, you're in for it. You'll end up eating fast food, microwave burritos and chicken pot pies, and that's not good for anyone. Oven and stove safety, flipping an egg, following directions, using measuring utensils, cleaning up after yourself.

7. Change a fuse or reset a breaker. Stuff is always tripping breakers.

8. Maintain the car. Check the oil, fill up the windshield washer fluid receptacle, put air in the tires, change a tire, use jumper cables. The basic things that keep your car running and help you avoid paying someone else to do what you're perfectly capable of doing yourself.

9. Address a letter, endorse a check, read a bill, understand a bank statement... all those lost arts that aren't nearly as necessary as they once were, but that will come in handy when the end of the world comes and there's no more internet.

10. How to read labels. Clothing labels, ingredients labels, warning labels, etc... I had to research all the symbols they put on clothes so that I wouldn't wash Gerardo's vintage stuff and shrink his fancy pants that can't go in the dryer. Navigating the wide world of labels is essential for getting shit done right.

Five Things

Here's what I've been skulking around looking at this week.

1. Chicago artist Nick Cave (not the musician) has a really incredible show up at the Denver Art Museum. Love.

2. "...Christ, fellas, you really can't complain when their first, last and only solution is to light everything on fire and call it done." More people need to vote in Texas.

3. Really cool animated gifs by artist Zack Dougherty.

4. Sculptures of appliances made of translucent polyester fabric. These look like X-rays.

5. Hoochieween!

Arts & Humanities Art Show - My October Picks

Gerardo is the art teacher at our school district's high school focus program, Arts and Humanities. On the second Friday of each month, he exhibits student work, sometimes drawing a couple hundred people. It's by far my favorite gallery in town. Many of the students are extremely talented, some with maturity beyond their years. These are my favorites from this month's show. Sorry about the glare on the frames. I need to be about 5 inches taller.

These are by Jade, whose research on vintage tattoos led to these remarkable drawings using black, red, yellow and green markers. You can see more of her work on her DeviantArt page, including some killer photography.

This looks like my little old grandma, sweet and prim. I love the background and the color of her hair. The flower pattern on the dress cracks me up. It's so totally something this woman would love. Whether or not it's intentional, I love the focus of her eyes, and how one eye is a little more open than the other. 

I wish I had gotten a glare-free picture of this one. It feels vintage. It's sweet and creepy, and maybe a little sad. The details of the porch behind the trick-or-treaters are great. 

This is the same artist who did the drawing above. I adore this: the orange roofs, the winding lane and that sky! I love the sky. 

This was done with a Sharpie. It's meticulous.

I'm not saying I want this in my house, but it's so full of emotion and movement that it's absolutely striking. I love the surreal quality of the lips and teeth, and how the eyeball on the right appears to be bulging out of its hole. 

 I love the details on this one--the wood door, the shapes of the clouds, the blades of grass cropping up, the perfect geometry of the shell. This is illustration at its finest. 

Five Things

Here's what I've enjoyed this week:

1. Mean Tweets: Celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves.

2. I love interesting cleaning tips, but I never use them. I should use them.

3. I have a few of these Really Annoying Facebook Friends. I know I'm not one of them, though, because I'm so afraid of being annoying on Facebook that I rarely post.

4. I often don't read this sort of thing on account of being a massive hypochondriac certain that I'm going to die either right now or within the next few months. But this was worth the fear of having to acknowledge that yes, someday I will die. Probably not right this moment, and maybe not in the next few months, but eventually.*  Kinda helps you see more clearly what your priorities in life should be in order to avoid deathbed regrets.**

5. I love stories like this and this.

*Right after I wrote that I had a tiny little panic attack and for about 4 seconds I was pretty sure I was going to drop dead right then.

**Warning: this article contains those annoying links that don't take you anywhere even remotely related to the content. One link is haphazardly attached to the random words "you do" and when you hover over it, it says, "Save money on you do! Offer ends soon!" and gives you a link to what is certain to be some crappy, spammy ad site or something. WTF? Some asshole is just attaching random links to random words, and he (or she) needs to be severely schooled in SEO.

McDonald's Wants You to Pull Up Your Pants

Sometimes I get sucked into my Yahoo! news feed, and click on articles I know I shouldn't click on for my own good. I did that today. Oops.

It's an article about two McDonald's stores in Texas that have banned baggy pants. I don't get the baggy pants thing, but whatever. I'm not offended by it. I do have a slight distaste for dress codes in general, but it wasn't the dress code itself that got me worked up as much as the sign:

"PULL YOUR PANTS UP or Don't Come In!!! Try to have some decency & respect for others, No one wants to see your underwear."

First, the three exclamation points. Isn't that a little excessive?

We're used to seeing this:

No Shoes

No Shirts

No Service

It's to the point, neutral in voice, reasonable. And now, this:

No Shoes

No Shirts 

No Service!!!

Ah, it changes a bit. It's emotionally charged. It's passing judgment on those who aren't wearing shoes or aren't wearing shirts. 

The McDonald's sign is shaking its finger at you with a big, disapproving frown on its face. "Pull up your damn pants, you disrespectful whippersnapper! You kids these days, with your underwear hanging out for God and your mother to see! Why in my day...!"

Why not simply this:

Baggy Pants Not Allowed

Just stating the rules, like No Left Turn or Employees Only.

OMG! No Left Turn!!!

Employees only!!! We're Serious!

Okay, so the exclamation points set my teeth on edge. Then I read the middle part: "Try to have some decency and respect for others, No one wants to see your underwear." Jesus, you already said that with your three exclamation points. We get it already. The word "try" here indicates that McDonald's feels that those who choose to wear their pants a certain way are completely void of decency and respect for others, and that having some decency and respect for others is something they will have to put grave effort into doing simply because they let their underwear-clad ass show. Boy, it must be easy going through life when everything is so black and white, no gray areas.

And seriously? Decency and respect for others? Really, McDonald's? How's that working out for YOU, you slimy bastards? Oh, right:

Let's not forget who's largely responsible for the public assistance bill we all end up paying because certain multi-billion dollar corporations don't want to pay their human workers a decent living wage. 

The baggy-pants crowd is better off without you, McDonald's, not vice-versa.

Update: this short video says it all. What a bunch of nasty pigs. 

Five Things

Here's what I found interesting this week while procrastinating:

1. If only I could grow facial hair!

2. Weekly illustration challenges!

3. Guy gets ticket for not riding in the bike lane. Proceeds to make a hilarious video of himself crashing into things blocking the bike lane.

4. Eerie photographs of things left behind in abandoned buildings.

5. Ten things Americans waste money on. I'm guilty of all except designer baby clothes and deal websites.

The Invasion of the Tiny Plastic Toys

I gathered up this little pile of meaningless garbage while I was going through Ruby's purses and backpacks and plastic grocery bags that she squirrels things away in:

Where does it come from? I never buy this crap, ever. It grows like mold in our house, multiplies like common kitchen pests. Can it even be recycled? I just Googled that and got sucked into watching this short video of a small beach cleanup effort that shows us what washes up with the next wave. Yikes!

Plastic toys in general are the current bane of my existence. They represent everything I hate:

1. Ugly stuff.
2. Clutter.
3. Toys with TV/movie characters on them (see #1).
4. Nasty chemicals disguised as things for little kids to play with and suck on.
5. Thoughtless, wanton consumerism at the expense of clarity, order and aesthetics (see #1 & #2).

One of the (many) reasons I didn't want kids in the first place was because of all the ugly crap that accompanies them, most of it garbage. Molded plastic toys, awkward talking books, cheaply-made stuffed animals, all of it made out of plastic, much of it with BPA, and none of it beautiful to look at. It gets played with once and then becomes another piece of clutter that attracts dog hair and dirt. 

I swore from the beginning that we wouldn't have it in our house. But then Ruby wanted that damned ugly plastic molded cash register so badly, and it was only $1.98 at the thrift store, and now it's in our living room.

I PROMISED MYSELF IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN AND I LET IT HAPPEN AND NOW IT'S INFECTING MY LIVING ROOM. Plus, you know, there's Christmas and birthdays, and our families are so big that the plastic ugliness adds up, and what kind of ingrate would I be if I wasn't thankful that Ruby gets to have new toys twice a year? And what kind of detestable, self-righteous bitch would I be if I insisted to my family that they only buy beautiful things for my kid? Ruby doesn't want beautiful things. She wants a doll that comes with a plastic bottle with yellow liquid in it and a shiny pink car seat with a hideous plastic cover and a tiny pacifier that never stays with the doll for more than a day. She wants a Batman figurine with a cape that comes off and a tiny shooter plastic thing screwed to his arm that houses a tiny little projectile that I find among the dog hair in the vent a week later. 

Fine. But the minute she's old enough to prefer fashion or whatever to toys, I'm scooping it all up and getting it out of my house, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Meanwhile, I try to keep it reined in, try to keep the ugliest stuff in her room, door closed, and the rest of it corralled neatly in the living room. It's her house, too, after all. But that doesn't mean I can't hate plastic toys with every mitochondria in my body and bitch about it to you, my faithful readers. 

Still, iffen I had my way, all of Ruby's toys would come from companies like B. Toys, whose offerings are mostly easy on the eyes, entirely devoid of the meaningless and the pointless, and just plain smart. Ruby loves these toys. I love the packaging. (Jesus, don't even get me started on the insanity that is toy packaging, with all the twine and wires and rubber stoppers and tape and molded plastic you have to open with heavy-duty tin cutters and cardboard inserts and advertising pamphlets and plastic bags with warnings on them...I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT TOYS.) And no, this is not a sponsored post. But I'll be happy to write one!

I could go on and on about ugly toys, believe me. But I won't. Because look how much she loves her ugly plastic cash register.