Flash, the Animation not the Superhero

Have you experienced Flash animation?! It’s the great popular new way to grab the attention of us consumers who are just aching to spend money on any old thing we see advertised. Yes, yes!….. I giggle happily when I think of the hours I spent trying to match dance moves with the hip hop alien. Oh ho ho! How light on his talons he was! Imagine then my delight when the Flash Masters decided to assail our eyes with booty dancing office workers. Woop get it git it! Wow! I really got to get me some of that insurance.

Since then though, things have gotten a little down in the mouth. It’s probably the recession bringing everyone down. It’s like the Flash Masters conferred and decided that when people are unemployed, and losing their homes, they need to really be thinking about how wrinkly they are. We should be concentrating on how the Disney like magic of: mineral powders, miracle crèmes, pomegranates, cave bat placenta injections, green tea colonics, Lost Sea mud masques, and acai berries can really take our minds off of the trivial goings on of our pre-apocalyptic western dream, and back onto the surface where we can get back to spending like Americans! Breaking out those hardly earned dollars on stuff that really MEANS something. God Bless America.

I love also that flash can mimic perfectly, and constantly, and repetitively, the sponge like quality of a post maternity belly. Yes I am giddy with delight to know that with a few freeze frames looped together I, and millions more women and men, can be informed of the disaster, heartbreak, and global importance involved in not having the belly of a 16 year old cheerleader. Phew. Thanks advertising and thanks Yahoo for bringing all these imperatives to our attention …U Rock.

Yes Ma'am!!!

The mammogram monologue: I had been putting it off for an entire year because of fear of the procedure. Women that I had heard talking about it seemed to be reduced to the kind of facial expression usually reserved for seeing vomit on the sidewalk, or discussing x-husbands. To my mind; not a good selling point. Take into consideration that I have never liked to have feminine examinations. I actually don't know anyone who does. I think the label for my feelings about a fore-mentioned procedures would be hate. Why-why-why must intimate body parts be subjected to instruments that are: cold/duck billed (!)/palpitating/flushing/dilating and PSI rated when they are attached to a person who has ISSUES.

(Issues should be pronounced eschewing the "sh" sound and replacing it with a double consonant sound of "sz"),(Should also be modulated well up into the upper registers of the vox with a vocal finish that creates a timbre imitating an enchanted singing whoopie-cushion.)(All the above notes on pronunciation actually lend the word "issues" a total of 3 syllables as follows: IS-su-es with the emphasis on the first.)

Where was I? Oh... big issues. Yes I have been "blessed" with big "issues". (I am employing the use of what is called a euphemism here to stand in the place of more seedy terms as used in the in less literary blogs. Ahem.) They have been bouncing, jutting, high beaming, diving towards down, and generally making a spectacle of themselves since 4th grade. Far from being treated like the Goddess incarnate endowed with pendulage to set worshipers at the priestess' feet, I was instead treated to teasing and grabbing by boys, and vicious whispers by girls.I spent my junior high years with my arms crossed all the time, even while walking. (Not as easy as it sounds. Apparently arms are used for balance.) Fun bags indeed.

Needless to say when I arrived at the "Breast Center" I tried to avoid using the word "breast". I didn't feel at all nice mannered when the valet (man style) used the word with abandon. And, when he asked me if I was to visit the Breast Center for a mammogram, I could swear I saw him raise an eyebrow with loutish pride at his license to say "breast" to a woman and not get slapped hard across the face. Inside the Centre' d' Buube I felt as if all the people around me were watching with a mocking my "bigguns" with a cruel knowledge. Well.. it is a mammogram center after all. Because allthe female types at the center were there for the same reason I found I had to avert my eyes from all. I felt like we were all just big mammary glands wearing dresses and moderatly stylish hair-dos. (Not an all inclusive list)

Now in case you didn't know it's important to understand that I am self conscious, and the idea of my"objects of attention" being brought out for perusal by just anyone, just sounds severely un-good. Not at all appealing. Not in the slightest. Not kidding. And, the certitude that they (according to consensus) will be squashed to within moments of high pressure bursting...sort of makes me angry in a nauseous way. Why aren't all these women giggling nervously or pacing? My thought patterns go manically like this: They all seem so relaxed. I refuse to accept that I am actually going through with this procedure. (fingers in ears) La la la la la. I will pretend that I am okay with naked dancing and hot tubbing and nudist retreats. No, no that feels like too much. I switch to Buddhist consciousness techniques attain a connection with the "present" so intense, that I acquire a spontaneous diagnosis of Autism as a backlash. Suddenly I realize that it is my turn and I began the strut of the doomed to the disrobing area.

Everything in the Palais Breast is designed to put us womenfolk at our ease. The architecture-the rugs-the art-the comfy terry cloth robe. It almost seemed as if I were being manipulated into a state of calm! Next I am in the second waiting area where those closest to the Mashing Mammogram Machine ride awaited our turns. We all sat serenely in our white robes furtively stealing glances at each other's chest regions and wondering-about-whatever-it-is we-were-wondering-about-but-probably-about-the same-thing...boobs. Yep. We got 'em, we wanna keep 'em. I became slightly queezy from the meditation video playing on the big screen plasma monster on the wall. AAAAaaaaand I'm up to bat. (To note: I never use sports terminology unless under great threat.) Into the room, off with the robe, and onto the slab went the girls! One at a time please! Please no pushing: queue up! Okay now....I had no idea the nurse would be moving my boobula around on the plastic plate like a baker with a bread dough. Ugh. I felt as if I had my ta-ta in a giant play-do pressing machine.

However, it didn't hurt at all, phew.

This is when I started to play my role for all it was worth. Note: at that instant I was in the psychological place where in an uncomfortable situation I "become" the individual who isn't scared like me. I even started talking to the technician as if my "melons" were not even attached to me. I spoke about them clinically, looked at the digital photographs, didn't even wince when she pointed out my nipple in the picture. (Silent screaming could be heard on all 7 relative planes of existence however.) I even resisted the primal urge to roll my eyes when she mentioned that women often say the picture looks like the moon. Hmmm, Artemis be still. You will be happy to know that my boobs are "the kind a technician dreams about". That is in fact what the lady said to me. Wow, I am so proud.

So ended this mammogram date. I felt so glad to be done with that breast ordeal that I was euphoric, my boobies like Thelma and Louise...free of responsibility and with a new sense of fearlessness.

Pre-dawn Quiet

Looking at the pre and post daylight hours I have a constant craving to be a vampire and always live in the soft colours seen here in this picture. (It's either a vampire or a graveyard shift 7-11 clerk. However, I find the Slurpee to be untrustworthy and dimwitted companion of the night.)

The velvety shades relax my retinas making me feel like I can finally stop squinting. Some days I squintch so tightly I'm sure my face WILL stick that way. Just like mom said! My eyes are lazy about the sun; the ding dang glowing orb makes my eye innards stretch so tight they make designer jeans look like MC Hammer's pants. Look it up.

I am going to paint this photo soon, but it's so lovely I wanted to post it. Plus it gives me a chance to wax ridiculous on the interwebissimo. Ah twilight. Vampire life might not be so bad. I honestly get a tad miffed to read about what monsters they are. So they kill people by sucking them dry as beef jerky. We humans have done no worse on a global/economic/ecological scale since time immemorial. But, it's like buying a juicy lamb chop at the store. No-one had to see the cute lil animule sliced up...so no harm done. Oh, OH I get it! You're one of those high browed philanthropists who believe that because humans are capable of conscious thought and are rational minded (?) that we have somehow check mated our way out of the food chain.

Well, we have lived a long time with no predator. And, cancer and AIDs are not at all romantic. Now with a vampire as our predator we not only have a chance at immortal life ourselves ( a big drawback to vampirism in my opinion. Talk about ad infinitum, to say nothing of the reference lists.) but we are probably in for some hot sex too! Okay calm down I really don't endorse the taking of innocent lives. If I did I would be wishing myself right inside ole W's tighty- whities directing wars with his heat seeking joystick. (Not that he doesn't already have a full load in his britches already. I 've digressed off my point now and will have to reconfigure and coagulate. So back to the coffin!

Seeing and Memory (these paintings)

How much information can we store in our memories? There is always so much to remember that some casually accessed number, or code will occasionally slip and be logged as "no access". Each day our eyes take in even more seemingly random and unimportant visual information. Data that has no words just shapes like bubbles floating unnoticed through our consciousness. In daily movement through our lives there are traffic intersections that signal us to turn sown a known street, and lightposts that, on a walk, let us know we are almost home. But we hardly notice the craving our minds have to meet and recognise these objects in our secure view of home, neigborhood, town, city, country.
These things arouse my curiosity in a world where we are always looking straight ahead marching onward and upward to our destinies. It is the peripheral view, and the contorted memory of place and time that I want to explore. I want to paing the images that I see straight from the fishbowl of my memory: floating images that sometimes connect and sometimes seem unrelated and confused. These meet up as paintings emerge with the random numbers and words that come crashing out of short term and long term memory with no anchors.
As dreams are a releasing of tension and sorting of information, so my painting is a similar experience for me. I hope the viewer can enter the world and attach their own meanings to the buildings and atmospheres they see.