Presented to you with little comment
I know people who were asked to leave this branch of the church because they were considered too “out there.”
By. These. Guys.
Also, the 19 second mark. GOLD.
Read MoreMorning inspiration.
I love a good TED talk. So inspiring, so enlightening.
I’m going to go drink heavily til I forget this. Anyone coming?
(Hat tip to Greg)
Read MoreMirror, mirror…
There are days when the Internet is simply exhausting with its never ending stream of kittens and bodily functions, and then there are days when the people on the Internet are the source of exhaustion.
Example? These people:
“Hey everyone, is it super geeky to be writing a 30,000 word thesis on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and loving every minute of it? Because I am!”
“Don’t look now, but I may be the geekiest geek ever. Sitting at home on a Saturday night, sorting my Coltrane collection according to the starting note of the penultimate bar in each piece.”
“OMG how geeky am I? Working on a freelance piece about Enver Hoxa’s anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism. No interest in my pitch for it yet, but I just HAD to write it.”
OK. We get it. YOU ARE CLEVER. Too clever for the rest of us, but you simply must remind us of it because if you don’t, your perpetual struggle to be special may go unnoticed. Luckily for us all, we have the Internet and its marvelous capability as a broadcasting tool.
We all have our quirks, habits and odd hobbies. And we often talk about them. But must every utterance be phrased in such a way as to ensure all those reading it know that this quirk is the quirkiest quirk ever? NO. BECAUSE IT’S NOT.
If the Internet has taught us nothing it’s that there is always a bigger geek, freak or fake penis out there than you. Always.
So calm down, self-proclaimed geeks of the Internet, and take heed: the real geeks, the ones you seem to aspire to be, are far too busy getting their geek on to insist on anyone’s attention. Don’t believe me? I give you this man:
He’s in his own world and doesn’t need your affirmation to know that it’s a good world indeed.
We should all be so lucky.
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Nickel and diming me to death.
How have the hipsters not yet spearheaded a Nana Mouskouri revival? Just look at the hair, the glasses, the music that can only be enjoyed ironically, the ridiculous rose on her mic, the fact that she is clearly taken with her own genius…
Hipsters, meet your grandmother.
**Edit: can I add to the above list “off-kilter vocal delivery” ? Very important to the hipsters.
Read MoreA hunting I will go.
Why do I love yard sales so much? Is it the knowledge that treasure could be found around any corner, on any table? Is it the deals? Is the way you can try to imagine bits of people’s lives from the objects they want to rid themselves of? Is that they allow you to pass silent judgement, both on the overall quality of goods, as well as the condition of said goods? Actually, if I find something I deem to be treasure and it’s covered in dust I get inwardly more gleeful – they have no idea of the value of this thing!
I like objects with a bit of history, I like how things were made back in the day, and I love how many of them were made on this continent, not in one of a million Chinese factories.
But never mind the why’s of this, I have treasures to show you!
Mr Wry was otherwise occupied yesterday and I was left to sift through a decent multi-street yard sale on my own. The neighbourhood is a bit child-heavy for my yard sale-ing taste, with too many toys or items from young households. But I did find one very nice mirror to go above the chest of drawers that serves as our main bar.
It has potential, with its leaded glass insert, but it’s being held back by its “bleached oak” frame. But for $3, I’m willing to let it hop up in the chair for a makeover – and not even a complicated one! A little chrome paint for the frame and some glass paint for the back of the lead insert and that puppy is ready to hang!
Cue short, mirthless laugh. Not even complicated, she said.
I began with the lovely jewel-toned paint I acquired to paint the clear insert around the edge. Have you ever been in one of those situations where you know you have done this in the past and it turned out terribly, yet your brain just sits its big ass down on the memories of this, allowing only a muffled “pmmph..bad idea ppffhhbmm” somewhere in the background? Yes, that.
I’ll just apply this pretty paint to bring in a lovely pop of colour. It’s transparent so I may need a coat or two more. Oh my look at how uneven that goes on. Perhaps just another coat. I’ll get the hair dryer to speed this up. Wow does something here smell like burning hobo? Let’s have a look…hm still really uneven. Sometimes that one extra coat just perfects the whole CHRIST THIS SMELLS LIKE PRISON HOOCH GONE WRONG. My head feels funny and this looks like ass. No, even the bumpiest, wobbliest ass in the world has more to recommend it than this shitty green disaster.
The only saving grace of this paint is that without days to cure, it’s fairly easy to get off with a bit of Windex. Fairly easy, just like this whole job was uncomplicated. Jesus.
Once that was done, and trying to stay positive about this task, it was only a matter of masking off the mirror and taking it outside for some alone time with my can of chrome paint. I’ll have this done in jig time!
Speaking of my can of chrome paint and yard sales, check out this ridiculous $1 find from a month ago: it began life as a dusty, oversized bunch of blueberries, and was soon transformed into a shiny bunch of blueberries that adorns the coffee table. Do blueberries come in bunches? They do not. If anyone points this out to me, I say “Yes, but it’s postmodern.” and look at them as I imagine Foucault would.
Back to the mirror… The masked off treasure and I headed out behind the shed where I have my professional painting set up. Cardboard on the grass, yes – but it’s well ventilated. As I made my way around the mirror, working my magic, I felt a funny sensation on my lower legs followed by a sharp pinch. I glanced down and shot 3 feet in the air as I realised my person was being invaded by an army of ants. Not army ants, though that in no way lessens the affront.
And look what I found tucked away very near my painting station:
And not just this hill, another couple of them, swarming with ants, one of which I am quite certain BIT ME.
I will not dwell on the ant hill except to say I AM NOT FUCKING MESSING ABOUT, ANTS, I AM GOING TO BURN YOU OUT. Mr Wry is lucky we had no gasoline handy yesterday, or I would have taken the internet’s advice for burrowing insects and gone for an underground fireball. We are now calmly planning a chemical intervention. For the ants.
So I dragged my painting station a few meters away and finished it up.
While it dried, I tended to another matter. Currently above the bar is a beautiful glass peacock plate Mr Wry gave me:
This is now needing a new home, and as it happens, across the room, to the left of the TV is a space that, apparently, is in need of something to house. How do I know this? Well, one evening, while I was entertaining, my lovely friend Miss B suddenly pointed to this space with a finger that moved in a damning circular motion and said:
“This tableau…no. This is not working for me.”
I was then sent some instructional images on tableaus that work. I have decided that the peacock will be at the heart of a tableau of lovely glass plates which I will collect over time. So for now, it will need some temporary companions. Luckily, I had found these little gems at a local shop for a fiver each:
And with some lovely little botanical prints of mushrooms in them, it would do for now. I’ll just pop the prints in and..oh. The front of the frames are coming apart from the back. So that’s why they were a fiver each. I see. Well! Nothing a clever lady like me can’t fix. Into the Bessey clamps they go:
Hey Weldbond, what can’t you glue? Nothing! You are awesome. Those will be done in a jiff, so I will just head down and hang the mirror.
Now, if you are not aware, this house I call a home is a post-war build. Not ancient, but old enough that the walls are not gyprock. It takes a bit to get a nail into them, and I needed to get a nail in. I’ve never had a chunk of wall explode in my face like that. Very unexpected and a bit unwelcome as well. So moving the nail another inch up and tapping a little more delicately and we got the job done.
Voila!
Not too bad! And now to retrieve the frames from the clamps and hang my not-so-tableau.
Not so fast…when I purchased my fiver frames, I also failed to notice their lack of a hanger on the back. But I am nothing if not determined, and so I carved a bit out of their back, enough to let the flat head of a nail hitch up in the edge of the frame, and banged a few more nails in the wall.
As you can see, the work left me too exhausted to take a decent shot. Never mind. The work is done and I am feeling happy once again. So to take us out on a happy note, I leave you with this little fellow, another yard sale find from last week – this one to feed my desire for painted glass ornaments.
Until next time, readers, Happy Hunting!
Read MoreMugs, bags, and more
