Stuck in my head today

Karina, by Ryan Adams.

A quick Google image search for "Karina" turned up a handful of half-naked ladies and this:

For the benefit of Mr. Kite

This week is a whopper of a week.

Today my group had to do our presentation on Wes Anderson for COM. All went fairly well, although we didn't take up the full 45 minutes. The professor nodded several times and seemed to take notes that took some considerable concentration. I'll take that as a good sign.

Tomorrow my Creative Nonfiction class is workshopping my latest piece. When I turned it in last week Pierce walked by to pick it up, looked at it, then at me and said "No title" and clucked his tongue like my grandmother. Last time we went over one of my pieces Pierce asked me to learn the english language. I'm not sure he enjoys my work.

Thursday I have a paper due for my other English Class, 1945-present literature. Really interesting stuff. I'm not exactly sure what to write my paper about. On my last paper my professor said "despite all its obvious strengths, I'm not sure you answered the question put to you. Next time try to answer the prompt." He liked my work, just wasn't right on target I guess. So I'm trying to be more careful this time.

I also want to send out shirts to some consignment jobs that I haven't done and should have last month. I also want to clean out my closet and get stuff ready for the Salvation Army. I also want to write more, just for funsies and read some books. There's a lot I want to do and more I need to do, but I'm not sure I'll find the time. The human drama continues, no?

Tagalicious

I got hit. Kim Bagwill, a fellow Blogger and interesting artist (I meant the fellow part about Blogger. I don't consider myself an interesting artist... yet) tagged me. It happened a while ago but I never did it because... well because I didn't have time. Also I didn't know what to put. Then I realized it doesn't really matter that much. So here it goes!

The rules of tagging are as follows:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Six random things/habits/quirks about me:

1. My instinct is to never answer the door. When random people walk up to my house I always want to hid. Actually, I do hide. I can see them head up the driveway from my computer so I usually plaster my face to the desk and wait for them to leave. It doesn't matter if they're friendly looking. I did this today. My car was in the driveway with the windows open. The garage door was open, too.

2. Every once in a while I catch myself coming up with elaborate escape strategies. In class I'll look for the nearest door or open window. Then I'll think about how to duck and dodge my way outside... you know, just in case.

3. I have hobbit feet. People usually don't believe me until I show them. They're really hairy on top and each toe has a puff of hair on it.

4. There are three foods that I eat for a month at a time. Clementines, bagels and chocolate milk that I mix myself with Hersey Syrup. For some reason I rotate them. I'll have each fairly regularly for a few weeks and then not again for a year.

5. I once purposefully pronounced the word "gross" as "grahss" for a long time until I couldn't really make a distinction between the two. I'm not really sure why. I also taught myself to say "Do what?" instead of "What?" or "What did you say?" when I didn't understand or hear someone.

6. Every morning I wake up with a different song in my head. Sometimes it's a song I haven't heard for a while. Just one phrase will be stuck in my head until I either go out and start doing something or listen to it on my iTunes.

One Good Reason to Overthrow the Government

Taxes.

I know, I know. Most people, those of you who have been doing taxes all your life, don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it, either. And I especially don't want to hear about it.

We've never done taxes before. So, naturally, the whole thing was daunting. Add to that the fact that in 2007 we opened our own business (which I was determined to make legal, so that we could participate in shows and order from wholesalers). Then add to that the fact that Samantha has some kind of magical write off for spending money on school related things out of a specific magical fund. I call these things magical not out of cynicism or jest, but simply because, despite all my best efforts, I don't understand how they work. I just finished China Men tonight and have decided that mysticism, honestly, may be the only answer for some things; so they are magic.

My Dad gave me this advice: "I'd just wave my hand and pretend you started in 2008." He meant the business. But it's kind of obvious when I started it. I applied for a Federal Employer Identification Number and for a license from the State of Ohio. The one thing I don't need is for the IRS to show up and land me with an audit; my paperwork is hardly in order. So I filed the business papers, or at least what I assumed to be the business papers. This was all done with TurboTax which, contrary to popular belief, does not make taxes easy. Undoubtedly it makes them easier, but not easy.

I won't go into too much detail about Sam's school expenses. We made at least 3 phone calls to ask her Dad about the information we needed. He's one of those people who doesn't read numbers correctly, straight from Kevin James' standup. The best I can figure, he was feeding me numbers with decimals without my knowledge. However it happened TurboTax was showing that we owed the IRS upwards of $80,000. Which couldn't have been right. Sam ended up going through it line by line with him and, since they have the same numberspeak, was able to input the right numbers.

Like I said, I don't want to talk about taxes. But I also don't like the last post about going to Pittsburgh (which I posted because I didn't like the post before that, either). So, I'll have to post something in the next week to replace this post, and the next week to replace that post. It's like sweeping the dirt under the carpet, except I'm sweeping dirt under more dirt.

All's Fair in Love and Warhol

On a whim (and I mean complete whim) Samantha and I joined my brother, Adam, and his wife, Kendra, on their trip to Pittsburgh this weekend.

I never thought of Pittsburgh as being awesome, which it is. I didn't know anything about the place before this weekend, so it seemed strange that Sam wanted to go. I was thinking "what's in Pittsburgh"?

The answer to that question is kind of complicated. It's a city full of the things I like. We hit The Strip and browsed a ton of street vendors and storefronts, and we headed over to South Side to check out that shopping district. There's a lot going on and the city was lovely. Or at least lovely as much as a city can be. My only real experience with a city is Cincinnati. Pittsburgh seemed to be much cleaner than Cinci and our hotel was smack in the middle of everything we wanted to do, so walking the streets gave you a real feel of liveliness that I've never gotten a glimpse of in Cincinnati.

We took a quick walk to the Andy Warhol museum and got in for $4 with a student ID, which was sweet. That place was pretty cool, with tons of Warhol hanging around and a fair amount of other artists. I'll fully admit that I never "got" Andy Warhol. I thought he was kind of a hack. And he is. He's a total hack. But after seeing what he was doing up close, and learning that he didn't really do much of the art himself, I started to get the point. It helps that I'm a screen printer. If you've ever learned to play an instrument, you have a new appreciation for music. It's the same here; when I saw his screen prints, knowing what it takes, I had much more respect for the art. Warhol's story is pretty great too, and the museum did a fantastic job of incorporating information about not only the art but its inspiration and method.

This cow is probably one of my favorite of Warhol's pieces. At the museum they have all of his source images laid out for this piece. You can see where the idea began. One of these prints is hanging in the poster store in Uptown, Oxford. Some day I'll get one and hang it in my house. Or maybe I'll just make it for myself.

The lovin' feelin'

Can't stop, won't stop.

It's been a while, but lo-and-behold TealTown hits the front page of Etsy.com yet again.


I'd like to thank the Academy, everyone who has ever supported me and even some people who haven't, and God who probably had something to do with this.