I'm 30. I'm an artist. I'm a geek. I like interesting foods. I love randomness. I'm in Indianapolis, but Chicago-born. I'm marrying Harold in April 2010! :)
"'In some places in the world,'' he said, ''you can see people chasing the last fish. In the Java Sea in Indonesia, I have seen fishers going out in the morning, six of them going out and coming back with five pounds of fish. That is the end point, a pound of fish per person per day to sell for rice. That's where fisheries go if you let it happen. That's where it stabilizes. These people cannot feed their families.'' Unchecked, he says, the same will be seen around the world, and the fishing industry will leave little in the seas but harvests of what he calls ''bait and worse,'' the bottom levels of the marine food web like sea cucumbers, jellyfish and, eventually, plankton for future generations to eat."
- Kamilah Gill
from Bookmarklet
It's sad what's happening to fish. I think a lot of species won't be around in another decade or two.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
I'm very afraid of that, too. This scientist is on our side of this issue, I think.
- Kamilah Gill
Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle - So this is the Popeye that Popeyes is named for? Yet I've definitely seen the Popeye cartoon character in the restaurants in the past. They've completely removed Popeye stuff in recent times. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Wait, is that a picture of the Virgin Mary I see in the shell? Ebay or Letterman I think are the only choices.
- Brian Sullivan
Jason, probably not. It was just the only 3 nut peanut in my bunch of peanuts at Five Guys Burgers tonight. I think 4 in one shell would have been truly amazing. I wonder what the world record is?
- Kamilah Gill
I'm convinced the area you're living in is radio-active. All these mutations! ;-)
- Kittyburgers
Hmmm, I think I'll pass on that pet. :-(
- Kittyburgers
As much as I'd like to believe I've outgrown my fear of GINORMOUS BUGS, I now know what my nightmares tonight are gonna look like. I just hope I don't bruise myself slapping the GINORMOUS BUGS offa me in my sleep! :-0
- vicster
Is there a David beetle? Cos if there is, it's impromptu youtube movie time!
- Mo Kargas
Interestingly, really big insects and other arthropods seem *less* creepy to me. At least they don't scamper around and crawl on you and buzz suddenly. I've held a giant hissing cockroach and a giant millipede (all those little moving feet felt *weird*). They aren't like bugs at that size. It's more like holding a hamster... or maybe a small lobster?
- Kamilah Gill
I'm with you on the big bugs, Kamilah. The little ones worry me.
- ha3rvey (doink doink)
If Jackie ever found one of those walking around our house, I would be deaf forever. I do, however, like that I have a much greater chance of killing it with a baseball bat than the little ones that always seem to get away. At least there's that.
- Robert DeBord
Yep, they can be big. I think that's why the other pic didn't phase me or make me think right away that it was faked. I know these critters can be huge.
- Katy S
The other one is enhanced, I think. It's just a *little* too big and too fat. They could have just left it this size. This is awesome enough.
- Kamilah Gill
When I went to the larger pic, I could see the blurring around the edges, so I wasn't sure if it was just a fluke or if someone had played with the picture. Regardless, I knew it was possible for the grub to be large.
- Katy S
Anyway QUIT CALLING THAT OTHER ONE A CATERPILLAR, PEOPLE!
- Kamilah Gill
I haven't used Hulu much yet, but I'm using right now at lunch to watch 30 Rock for the first time in ages and Hulu is *awesome*. Why are they going to screw it up by starting to charge for it? Or so I've heard? What change is about to happen at Hulu again?
The 30 Rock ep turned out to be pretty clever (the auditions one). Wish I had, like, 50 hours a day so I would have time to follow all these shows and still sleep, eat, work, and make artwork. Anyway, any thoughts from Hulu fans about the upcoming changes? It's kind of hard to search for Hulu on here because I bet I'd mostly get links to shows people are watching, not discussions about Hulu itself.
- Kamilah Gill
They backpedaled a bit so I'm not sure what it's going to look like. I don't feel resentful of it because I've never been one of those people who expects a free lunch on the Internet (except in the case of gov't-supported entities. Libraries, etc. should have their catalogs online, public universities have an obligation to post good content). If they end up charging, I will assess whether it's worth it to me or not. If so, I'll pay. If not, I'll watch shows another way.
- Spidra Webster
In Hulu's case, it's just about like watching TV except that it's on demand. There are ads, and, for most people, the picture quality is not as great as it would be on a TV set (though I'm sure there's some way to rig things up to display Hulu on a full-blown TV). So, in this case, I personally think its fine to get a "free lunch". Those of us who truly love the content will pay for DVD sets and so on.
- Kamilah Gill
There's a difference between $40 for cable quality and free. Even on broadcast TV we "pay" for it by watching commercials. Hulu has far fewer commercials, which is one of the reasons I like it. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy it has no subscription fee for the moment. But I'm sure the programmers and servers cost $. I don't expect a profit-making entity to subsidize watchers indefinitely. I wouldn't if it were my $.
- Spidra Webster
They would need to provide more than "tv on the internet" for me to pay for their service. There are other ways to get shows on-demand otherwise. I like their experiment: some shows have the option to let you see a long (15 minutes?) commercial/ad before your show starts to watch it commercial free throughout. I wouldn't even be opposed if they presented more commercials to keep the...
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- Arlan Koizumi
I'm cheating a little bit tonight and posting a full Moleskine spread along with today's sketch, since today's sketch was a little bit dull. (But happy birthday, Paul!) - http://kamilah.posterous.com/im-chea...
Luckily for me, today's subjects had lots of white space and very little color. It ended being kind of late, anyway, so I was running out of time. ...
- Kamilah Gill
from Posterous
This is a beautiful, beautiful piece. Listen to it, you've probably heard it before somewhere. It's featured in The Big Lebowski in the part where The Dude meets the porn director and then gets drugged into having the Busby Berkeley fever-dream.
- Kamilah Gill
"The perfect song. Henry Mancini’s Lujon is the perfect song. Note to all musicians everywhere: you might as well give up. You’re too late. Henry Mancini already did as much with music as can be done." I just watched The Big Lebowski for the first time, and one of several things it gave me was the urge to immediately find out what song this was. My dad could tell me what it was right away if I'd played it for him. Heard it many times as a child. *So* lovely.
- Kamilah Gill
from Bookmarklet
I love Mancini (with the exception of the cheesiest stuff he did for soaring vocal choruses...) Interesting that this particular piece elicits so much from the commenters on that blog.
- Spidra Webster
Mancini can be cheesy, yes, but Lujon really is just beautiful to me. I also tie it to my childhood, along with a lot of other instrumental music that my dad played for us (and continues to play when we visit him).
- Kamilah Gill
Oh, I didn't mean to say that Lujon is cheesy. Not at all.
- Spidra Webster
I didn't think that you did say that. Sorry, I think was a little unclear. oops
- Kamilah Gill
Kamilah, you really should sell prints of some of these. :-)
- Jason Huebel
Love it! When I first read your title, I thought Derrick had the squirrel nut zipper and tin roof in addition to the chocolate.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
I knew it could be read both ways, John. Kind of works either way ;) And Jason, I can see about the selling prints thing. I'm game. I just need to find a good way to do it. I'd probably compile a set of greatest hits or something. In a couple more months, I should have enough to pick some out and post them all together.
- Kamilah Gill
"echo... echo... echo..." j/k.... sorry you don't have a headset.... there would some serious issues without the one I have at the office.
- Harold
This worked okay since I didn't have to say much. I just turned the handset volume all the way up. It was lower than the speakerphone, but still audible without me having to hold it.
- Kamilah Gill
Do you guys have the Avaya VOIP sets or the digital phones?
- Yolanda
Yolanda, I'd better not say. I got in trouble once before for saying something about what types of phones we use. Even though I think all traces of where I work have been removed online, I don't want to risk that again. I'm sorry :(
- Kamilah Gill
No Doubt Sues Maker of Guitar Hero Video Games - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com. Oh, please. I thought Gwen Stefani was cooler than this. Between this and the disturbing fetishized Harajuku Girls entourage, I think I'm finally getting kind of tired of her. She's getting kind of douchey. - http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...
"No Doubt says that it agreed for Ms. Stefani and her band mates to appear in the new game Band Hero. But the rock group said that the game makers went too far by allowing Ms. Stefani’s virtual counterpart to perform songs that No Doubt never recorded, including “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones. This “results in an unauthorized performance by the Gwen Stefani avatar in a male voice boasting about having sex with prostitutes,” the lawsuit says." Seriously. Can't people take a joke?
- Kamilah Gill
from Bookmarklet
"Remember remember the 5th of November." I just felt like saying that. Don't know much else about Guy Fawkes Night or "V for Vendetta".
3quarksdaily - THE PHANATIC AND OTHER MONSTERS. Further proof (if any was needed) that anything, *anything*, can be analyzed to death. Also proof that someone had some similar thoughts to my own about these things, but mine were much more fleeting. - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarks...
"The monsters have no historical antecedents. They're clearly not animals, and they're not the caricaturization of a person. They sit, instead, as the third point of a triangulation — not between humans and animals, but equidistant from the two. They're clearly meant to invoke something of our environment: the Philadelphia Phillie's Web site lists the Phanatic's birthplace as the Galapagos Islands — a place whose name evokes rich ideas of life and biology and evolution — and not some place as fanciful as the Phanatic itself."
- Kamilah Gill
from Bookmarklet
I guess there's not really anything wrong with spending a little time pondering these phenomena. They are *there*, after all...
- Kamilah Gill
The internet is all about such things. And even before the web, plenty of academics have written papers on things just as esoteric and gotten paid to do it.
- Spidra Webster
The Believer - The Disappearance of Ford Beckman. HOW A CELEBRATED AMERICAN ARTIST WAS FORCED TO TRADE HIS MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR COLLECTION FOR A JOB SELLING DONUTS. Well now how can I pass up a headline like that?? - http://www.believermag.com/issues...
This is directly relevant to me and my situation. About to read it now before going to sleep. "When the economy sours, news anchors talk of housing and manufacturing, of hedge funds and barrels of oil. They generally don’t discuss the lives of artists, and how their careers are crushed into a dull oblivion. If artists survive the fiscal and emotional shakedown, they steady themselves as adjuncts in the Midwest, they design for architectural firms. They take corporate commissions and they sit on city planning boards. They might show again, but this time in coffee shops or farmers’ markets."
- Kamilah Gill
from Bookmarklet
That's an interesting story. I can't help but feel for the many artists who don't even get the chance to rise to an international height from which they can fall.
- Spidra Webster
For some reason your comment reminded me of De Goya and the conditions under which he painted. To support himself he painted portraits of the rich and positioned. His other art was quite a departure. I wrote a poem about this quite awhile ago and it was performed at the Indianapolis Museum Art during their De Goya exhibition. Another life. ;) I put it together with some background music...
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- Melanie Reed
Goya is very interesting in that even in his portraits of the rich he managed to subtly diss them while getting paid. :)
- Spidra Webster
Spidra, Bingo! That is pretty much what my poem is about. ;)
- Melanie Reed
No on the contrary, I was agreeing with you! :)
- Melanie Reed
It's a bizarre life story. In this case, truth really is stranger than fiction. I really don't think anyone could just invent a story quite like this one... I didn't realize that he had achieved international fame until I got into the article. So it's a bit less relevant to me than I'd hoped, but, still, it does touch on the difficulty of being an artist in general. He just made some choices that ended up being really bad for him later on.
- Kamilah Gill
Late-Night "Deep Thoughts". Comedy - The Sitcom Digresses - 30 Rock - NYTimes.com. Perhaps a bit of overanalysis? Well, it *was* written by an editor for The Believer magazine (related to Dave Eggers, McSweeney's, etc.). - http://www.nytimes.com/2008...
"Unsurprisingly, it was “The Simpsons” that introduced the digressive gag into the sitcom arsenal. Instead of drawing on cartoon staples like Acme explosions, “Simpsons” writers made use of the pliability of animation and gave pop-culture allusions entire scenes of their own. The creator of “Family Guy,” Seth MacFarlane, followed suit and pushed this technique to the extreme, hopping from sketches about Steve Buscemi’s teeth to Aquaman to a diabetic Fat Albert."
- Kamilah Gill
from Bookmarklet
"On deeper inspection, these narrative techniques recall the Postmodern literature of the 1960s and ’70s, a time when writers of metafiction began following in the lineage of “Tristram Shandy,” stressing interruptions of story over story itself. In “Gravity’s Rainbow,” Thomas Pynchon spent 10 pages discussing a sentient light bulb; Robert Coover’s “Pricksongs and Descants” ambled through multiple realities; John Barth’s “Sot-Weed Factor” was called an “anatomy” of a story."
- Kamilah Gill
Last time I tried to draw Tina, I was way too tired. This time, it's still kind of late, but I was able to take my time. I have the nice smooth Moleskine surface now, too. ...
- Kamilah Gill
from Posterous