OK, here are some beads I made today. I was making a lot of green&black beads, and I needed to blow the dust out of my brain so I put together the dookiest color combinations I could think of. The one that is so dark you can't see detail on it is a pale seafoam-green transparent bead with layers of opaque gray and red dots - it sounded revolting to me so I had to try it, and it actually looks really cool.

Oh, and I'm just figuring out about the light tent and I think I need to add another light with a little more warmth so the colors look more vivid and true-to-life in the images. I'll get better at this, I hope.

My favorite of this group is the bead on the far left. It's an ivory core with dots in the middle of an intense yellow clear pyrex and a transparent cranberry glass dots on either side. The oxides in the cranberry glass react with the ivory glass and it starts turning black and having all kinds of oily swirls - that's why the glass melted in and made the yellow dots look more like little square windows in between the cranberry/ivory tug-of-war.

I made about 50 beads today, so I should probably make about 125 tomorrow and 125 on Monday. We'll see. So far I have lots of good pairs for earrings, and that's always a good start.

News Flash:

Film director Guy Ritchie has encouraged his wife Madonna to start directing her own films.

Translation: He's sick of hearing her tell him how he ought to be directing his work. This is a classic example of "if you know so much about it, why don't you do it yourself?"

This might get interesting.

This came up in conversation with me sister today. We were talking about the "cell foam" blog post and she told me her good friend M (Hi, M!) works for a phone company and lots of first-time cell phone owners call up and complain that their "celica" phone isn't working. The helpful phone company representative will ask what seems to be the problem, and they say they are not getting a dial tone.

Somehow, it's hard for me to believe that people this profoundly stupid are not a new phenomenon. I'm guessing the subsets of people who are waiting for the dial tone on the cell phone and the people who don't get out of the way of incoming hurricanes overlap dramatically. These groups are probably also heavily populated by the We probably soon will hear a statistic that there are more fatal car accidents caused by people talking on cell phones than are caused by drunk drivers. It's coming, just wait.

I have to make about 20 necklaces this week and at least 6 dozen pair of earrings. That's a about 300 beads, conservatively, 72 matched pairs among them. I'll be a zombie this time next week. Watch this space.

Rest in Peace, Jack Palance, and remember to protect your cooling system against corrosion.

LOVED Jack Palance in Bagdad Cafe. He was one of the true originals of American Cinema. I thought he was creepy and weird when I was young, but after seeing him as the loner iconoclast with loopy visions in Bagdad Cafe, I realized I actually kinda dig him. Well done, Jack!

Funny thing is that I goober around with the language so much that sometimes I slip up and mis-pronounce something or mis-type it when I didn't intend to. Like today, the nearby office for my cellular provider was out of stock of the blackberry I wanted to exchange my old cell for, so I went online and googled "cell foam dallas."

*pendulous strand of drool puddling on the keyboard*

I was really exhausted. It's not my fault, really. I was up making beads until 1am last night.

Probably have a necklace photo in here by Sunday night. Most likely.

Arnold Rimmer meets the female version of himself

Red Dwarf - good stuff!

Golly, I love that song. The video is not the point - but I didn't know a source to link just the audio from the web, so that will have to do.

When every event is tension-filled and it seems the whole house of cards is balanced on one teeny fulcrum at every turn, I get crisis-fatigue. Know what I mean? Anyway, happy or not with the way things happen, "Let Go" is a lovely reminder that good things can come of bad, and maybe you're focusing on the wrong thing to begin with.

Things have been really stressful to me for some reason lately. I'm not feeling burned out on my job, in and of itself, but one person in particular has become a pebble in my shoe AND they have my cell number and abuse it--having called me on days off two weeks in a row, waking me up in one case. I'm getting a new cell foam tomorrow, and I'll program their phone number with the name "SATAN" next to it so I'll know not to answer when they call. My current phone has a cracked display which doesn't, so screening calls is not really an option. And I'll just have to be satisfied with my fantasy of him duct-taped to a chair, covered in Crisco and me with a flame-thrower.

No wait - that's the wrong answer. I'm going to let it go, right?

The recording is by Frou Frou and the singer is Imogen Heap. I'm practically peeing myself because I'll be seeing her in Dallas in a few weeks. *joy* I love her style.

I gave my sister and my awesome brother-in-law tickets to come with me, and that will be cool. I think the last time we all went to a show together, they were in high school, 1989, The Cure at Texas Stadium. I think Curve opened for them, or Lush. Can't remember.

Here's a funny story about that night. BiL is 6'4" and along with the 3 of us, another couple from their school came to the show that night. Texas Stadium is terraced, and someone from the next deck up was throwing ice down on the people on our level. I turned to my future BiL and said "let's go kick their asses!." Now, mind you, I was 5'2" of ass-kicking machine (I know - what was I thinking?!!) and his friend was along for the ride. At that moment, though, I had no doubt of my prowess. OK, I WAS loading 100 pound bags of mail into trucks all day at the time, but I dunno - I'm not exactly skilled in the arts of combat, unless you count pissing people off.

So I led the way and here these two young men came with me to the upper deck, and we saw the perps, but they'd moved away from their place and were watching from about 40 yards away, knowing that we came to put an end to their shenanigans. I saw one of them had a huge - must have been a 36 ounce --beer that was about $12, and they'd left it sitting on the floor by where they'd been sitting when they were throwing ice. Oops! I kicked it over and smiled sweetly as one of them slipped into a purple-faced rage.

A ZZ Top-looking usher/bouncer/crowd control guy came up to us and said "is there a problem?" and I said "no, but there's going to be if those guys keep throwing ice down on us." I suppose he rode herd on the jerks, because they didn't throw any more ice on us. Or maybe they were afraid of BiL & his friend. Or maybe they were afraid of me.

Anyway, I expect there will be no need to do any butt-kicking at the Imogen Heap concert. It will all be sweetness and light and I'll be on good behavior. I'm slightly more mature.

It's so amazing here, so let go.

drink up baby down
are you in or are you out?
leave your things behind
'cause it's all going off without you
excuse me too busy you're writing your tragedy
these mishaps
you bubble-wrap
when you've no idea what you're like

So, let go,let go
Jump in
Oh well, what you waiting for?
It's all right
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
So, let go, let go
Just get in
Oh, it's so amazing here
It's all right
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

It gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow?
Such boundless pleasure
We've no time for later
Now you can't await
your own arrival
you've twenty seconds to comply

Well, I finally got some new beads made tonight. I worked on transparent hollows, because they are my all-time favorite. In fact, the funny thing about making the hollow beads is that this is one of the more difficult techniques to do, but it was one of the first things I spent hours and hours trying to master, and now it's easy-peasy. Getting the cell walls of the bead to be of even thickness can be a bit of a challenge, but mine turn out pretty well, generally.

First you take the stainless steel rod and lay on two parallel rings of molten glass, which is about the consistency of thick honey. Then you build out concentric rings on each of these until you have two parallel (if wobbly) disks. This can be challenging because you want the disks to be stiff enough to stand up to the new layer you lay on, but they still have to be hot or the new glass won't adhere to them. Then you either build the edges of the disks toward the center (toward each other) or you do what I do and take a pair of 12" tweezers and coax the soft molten rims together, where you seal it up so a little air is trapped inside the space. Think of it like an air-filled ravioli. er, sumthin.

At this point, the surface is all ropey and wonky-looking, and I gave up at this point when I first tried it all those years ago. It seems at that point that this could never possibly morph into a smooth and pretty bead. Of course, now sometimes I leave them in the wonky state because I like variety in texture, but this knobby looking beastie was intimidating when I first started making beads.

Then the real fun begins. The bead with the hollow space inside is completely sealed around the mandrel and as the surface of the bead melts into one smooth unified piece, the air trapped inside heats up too and expands, plumping the bead out into a nice little sphere. It's a gorgeous process, and I wish I could show you here.

The amazing thing about working with glass is that it is in its most exquisite and enchanting state when it is in molten form, about 1700 degrees F for the Moretti/Effetre and Lauscha glass rods I use. This mesmerizing state is why so many people fall in love with glass-working. It's hot and uncomfortable and has its physical strains, but it is a bewitching process. I promise to post a photo of a new necklace or some such in the next week.

I have intentionally avoided watching election returns the night of. I took the doglet for a walk down the street past the elementary school where the polling place is for my neighborhood. A guy stopped me to give me "literature" on the street, and doglet sidled up to his shoe and copped a squat. I yanked her collar in time to keep her from desecrating his footwear, and laughed "well, she's marked every other spot on the street, so you are uncharted territory." He seemed a little freaked out. I hate when people don't play along. I should have let her pee on his shoe and at least someone would have been doing what they wanted to, as Big Edie would have said.

This past weekend, the bizarre 1976 documentary Grey Gardens was on television, and I called my mother to tell her to turn on the telly, but she was already watching it, horrified.

The film starred mother and daughter (big Edie and little Edie) who were aunt and cousin to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Both famed as great beauties in their youth, the 80-ish big Edie and 50-something little Edie had been cohabiting for about 25 years, since the ailing mother called her daughter home from a budding showbiz career to aid her in convalescence after surgery. Little Edie never left, because she was the only one who would (or could) care for her bat-shit manipulative mother.

Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie O, had sent these brother documentary film makers out to interview the Edies for a film they were going to make about Lee and Jackie, but that deal fell through. Then the brothers proposed the Edies were an intriguing subject for a film.

Bequeathed on Big Edie in 1923, the 28 room mansion, Grey Gardens, was noted as one of the most splendid garden estates on the East Coast at that time. By the time of the filming, it's pretty much kudzu world. The Edies live predominantly in a few rooms upstairs along with a clan of 6 toed cats. At one point, Big Edie says "Look, that cat is going to the bathroom on my portrait. Well, at least someone is doing what they want to do."

The ladies cook on a hotplate and keep cold food in a mini-fridge near their piled-under twin beds. Supposedly, the place was so infested with fleas that the film makers wore cat flea collars on each ankle during filming.

My favorite part is when the camera follows little Edie up the darkened staircase into the attic, and through a window milky with dirt we see a raccoon peering into the darkness expectantly. Edie says all these different animals live up here, opossum, raccoons, etc. Next thing you see is her upending a sack of white bread and then opening and dumping a box of cat chow out on the floor for the varmints. On the attic floor - she's feeding the rodents - amazing!

Anyway, I think I'm going to sell some crap on ebay and maybe, just maybe, like, ya know, clean up. Sheesh.

But I'm keeping my barf bags, dammit.

Interesting news from monday - this totally got my attention - Naked man arrested on concealed weapons charge. Impressive. He'd recently been paroled and was found naked lying on a tree stump masturbating and was going to be arrested for indecent exposure. However, when asked by the arresting officer if there was anything he should know, they guy told him he had a weapon secreted in an intimate area of his person. Turned out, he had a an awl wrapped in electrical tape in his rectum.

Wrecked 'im? It liketa killed him. ba-dum chhhh!

I digress. Anyway. On to the more important issue of the day: it will be exciting to see how things pan out today with the US elections. Sadly, one could not honestly say that this has been the most contentious or ugly campaign in living memory - this seems merely par for the course (or should that be coarse?) and it's quite wearing, actually. If we held our elected officials accountable, we wouldn't have such a high rate of recidivism - er, make that career politicians.

And one thing further about polls and the media: there is this huge turning in the polls in just the past 5 days which rings false to me. I haven't changed my mind one whit about whom I will vote for, and I don't believe other people have, either. I'm thinking the pollsters want to shape public perception and provoke a reaction that will get out the vote, and I think that is a prime example of the cart pulling the horse. If this election, like the last major one, has greatly disparate results from what the polls have been saying, then I think the way public sentiment is "measured" pre-election should be scrutinized and scrapped, or overhauled at the very least. That's my two cents.

The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!

Yes, that's me channeling The Jerk. I've finally made the switch to cable internet. Yippee. All systems go. Cheap thrills for a crashing dullard.

Sorry the posting has been so spotty lately, but I've been a little under the weather and didn't feel like going out to post from Kinkos. Anyway, even though I'm fully dressed (the installer came by, so I HAD to be) it's nice to know I could be in my pajamas right now if I so chose.

That all-pajama weekend is coming up soon, I can just feel it. It may be the first weekend of December, but at least it's on the horizon. Yay.

I have to say I LOVE Vietnamese food, and I used to have it regularly until I had two gross-outs in a row at my favorite local.

Once I was eating my Pho Tai (noodle soup with wafer-thin slices of beef on top - yum!) and reading a book when a roach came up on the table. I grabbed a magazine and swatted at the wee beastie but it got away. So the damned thing got crafty and went to the underside of the table to the extreme other side and came back up and made a beeline for my plate. I rather expected the little devil to pull out a handgun and demand my purse. Too bold!

Well, I figured, what the heck and shrugged it off. Unfortunately, I should have quit while I was ahead. The next time I went in, my iced tea arrived festooned with the carcass of a baby roach. ew. OK. That was it for me.

There's another Vietnamese joint in town my boss loves, so we went there Thursday. Much cleaner, thank goodness. But I arrived early and went to the bathroom to wash my hands. The gel in the soap dispenser wasn't soap - I strongly suspect it was anti-bacterial hand gel. My hands felt more disgusting after this "wash" than before. So, as I'm drying my hands, my married ring goes flying off and lands by the roach bait under the terlit. Ew. What a total grossout.

Now, mind you, the dropping-the-ring thing wasn't their fault, but for goodness' sake - soap is soap, people, and "sanitizer" is NOT soap. Soap works because it breaks the cell walls of dirt bits, and if you are washing properly and for a decent amount of time, your hands will be *ting!* CLEAN when you finish washing with soap. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way. Hand sanitizer should be held in reserve for those moments that facilities for washing are not available.

About 7 years ago I was performing with a classical vocal ensemble, and in our travels, we went over the border in Matamoros (super down-market) Mexico for a day of shopping. I'll never forget being aghast as my fellow singers stepped off the bus, clustered on the dusty Mexican street, an obviously rich and predominantly white bunch of Americans, blocking the donkey path as they handed around the anti-bacterial gel.

I savored the irony later when the same idiots were getting sloshed on maragaritas filled with ice which was no doubt manufactured from the local pathogen-infested water. Monteczuma's revenge, they call it. I'm ok with that, just so's we know there was some ugly Americanism going on up front that warranted a wee bit o'payback.

Oh, and WTbloodyF is UP with the traffic in DFW lately? It's been like day-after-Thanksgiving traffic over and over lately. Spending 45 minutes to travel a mile - Maddening! I need a jet-pack.

Saturday's post will be late in the day. Hopefully when my cable comes Monday, I'll be back on my regular schedule and again the social butterfly.

Today when I called up the phone company to cancel my DSL, the girl tried to run through a spiel of extra services they'd like to offer me, and this after I'd been bitching about the crap service her company provided. I responded by saying that if they couldn't even keep a clear phone line and DSL running for me, why on earth would I jeopardize other services that actually keep me connected to the outside world? More on that crap next week, no doubt.

Have a great weekend.

The Dallas Morning News did an article yesterday listing statistics on the grease-clotted fodder we Texans gobbled up at the State Fair last month, to the tune of 2.5 million corny dogs sold, etc.

People will go on about a healthy alternative not being available to eat on the midway.

Well, here's my contribution, and I'm thinking I need to patent this toute-de-suite and reserve booth space to sell my new invention at the next state fair. I'm going to be a millionaire.

Are you ready? Are you sitting down? OK.

Deep-fried Salad-on-a-stick. It could be a 1/8th wedge of Iceberg lettuce with olives, tomato bits and little buds of ranch dressing embedded, then breaded and deep-fried.

Or, how about deep-fried cole slaw? What's better for you than cabbage?

What do you think? I'll let you know when I do my IPO, mkay?

So, allow me to say how very intently blogger blows when it comes to posting images lately. It was so much better in pre-Google era. Here is Doglet's birthday photo, one day late, wisely farmed out to a third party image-hosting outfit. Please to enjoy.

And speaking of outfits, yes, I know this space-dog get-up is beneath her butch dignity, and you can kinda see her hurling eyeball-daggers at me. Sorry, doglet. Everyone knows what a tough girl you are. No one will hold that sparkly pink against you. They'll blame me.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of technical difficulties, blogger's image issues pale in comparison to the suckitude of SBC/ Southwestern Bell/ A T & T (or whatever they are calling themselves this week)'s for-shit-DSL.

If the DSL is working my computer is on the fritz. If I get a Mac, that craps out after about 5 minutes. I get a machine that works, finally, and then the DSL is unreliable. I'm thinking a plot is afoot. Now I'm waiting for the cable company to switch my internet over so I'll have access at home again.

What doesn't make sense is I'm not even surfing the web and looking at porn and opening risky attachments in email - how does my system keep getting fried? Like I said, it's a conspiracy.