Bees Love Truth

So someone messaged me on flickr asking if they could post some of my photos of taxidermy on their blog, as they'd seen some posted elsewhere (these people didn't ask, I don't think, but they credited me, so it's plenty fine). I was charmed, and checked out the Ravishing Beasts blog. In a recent post, I found a link to this taxidermy art piece, on which those who are yucked out by taxidermy should not click. But I'm impressed (though less so by the snooz-ers Artist Statement). Here is Ravishing Beasts' page of contemporary taxidermy art.

(Anyone who gets why I used this avatar gets double awesome points.)

We've been watching ST:TNG episodes lately, and, since we broke through the first season and it started getting good, we've been inhaling a lot of them (it's been a while since I've seen some of these, especially in order). We just finished with the two first Locutus episodes, and they made me wonder a bit about a couple of things.

First, the creation of a 'speaker' by the Borg, as an intermediary between them and a soon-to-be-Borged race, makes vague sense on the surface. This wiki says that the role was (at least) retconned in an in-universe Shatner novel (shudder) to be for the purpose of 'less waste' in the assimilation. This is cute, but I don't really think we see any evidence of this from Locutus. He doesn't exactly appeal to the Enterprise on any particularly human basis; he pretty much just hits the 'resistance is futile' button. The most personal he gets is to name people, and to speak directly to Riker. So I'm not really seeing the benefit for the Borg here. Maybe they just have a really bad sense of what people need in order to feel convinced. Maybe Shatner is just not a very good writer.

Second, he has a name. Supposedly this is normal for a speaker (and there is a Romulan in Shatner's book who has the same role, but that means exactly nothing). The funny thing is, 'Locutus' is clearly Latin-derived. Did Picard name himself? He'd know enough Latin to do this, probably, whereas the Borg sure shouldn't. This is a cute idea, that he was their first speaker and therefore they took ideas about how this should be done from his brain. However, the Shatner-book ruins it again by mentioning that the Borg had made a speaker for the Romulan worlds, named 'Vox.' This is just annoying, because what do Romulans care for Latin? Unless the stupid progenitor-race that made all the Star Trek sentient species humanoid also seeded a latinate root-language, but, honestly, that's even too stupid for me to consider. So, again, I must conclude that Shatner ruins everything. But in a hilarious way.

Collection of westernized-Japan prints so awesome, you'll... slap Dan Aykroyd. If he's around.

Many of these prints are supposedly from the collection of the MFA here. HMMMM.

Look, look! Squidfingers has some new patterns up!

Anyone got a preference?

So there is this site, by the same people who are responsible for Threadless, only this one is for non-tshirt textiles and wallpaper. My enjoyment of this idea outstrips my ability to participate, but I tried anyhow:



I have another one (better, really) in the pipeline (there is some kind of rudimentary vetting process, presumably to screen out the goatses and such), because I don't like having something so halfassed as my only representation. You could, however, sign up and vote for my crappy crap, as with a threadless design. Only worse.

The general site tone seems to be pretty non-weird, or else I'd've done something already with those beetles I made.

Patterns are sort of difficult. You all should give it a go.

What being a tall artist is like, apparently.

No, actually, it's kind of an awesome idea. I'd rip it off if I knew twenty whole people. And could draw better.

I have been doing a little photoshop painting; if you want to look at a few low-contrast monochrome sort of character portraits, you, uh, can.



* Don't actually remember where I got this one. Some filmmaker, maybe?

Blogging! Not always interesting.

In the past couple of weeks, I guess I have:

- broken my camera (dropped on floor)
- broken my keyboard (spilled tea on it)
- procured new camera and keyboard, wept bitter tears at expense and at crappy mushiness of keyboard
- experienced doubt about long-term employment/lifepath whatnot
- stopped caring so much
- started caring again, and spent too much time trawling craigslist for dumb positions like Photographer's Igor
- finished a painting I like okay
- been fed fancy japanese food several times by parents
- achieved a semi-pointless unpaid summer thing where I babysit famous parrots
- agreed to make t-shirts such that it is almost impossible that I will break even
- refound this site



* a line from a movie I watched on TCM, whose real name I don't know, but I mentally refer to it as 'Billy and the Divorceasaurus.'

Since I ran out of legal-size paper, and therefore can't print out my type project until probably tomorrow (oh NOES), I instead made an inaugural ad for the Wendy. The copy is a little goofy, but, really, so am I.

The swedish firm's name translates to 'Remarkable Obsessive Beehive Company.'

I chose the main body font (Chaparral) as a compromise between the style at the time and something look-atable, but now I'm thinking something sans might be better. Thoughts? I may hand this in as extra credit for class, since otherwise I'm probably getting a B+ for almost no effort.