Friday, March 3, 2006 B
"Insects"
10:54pm
The Friday Illo theme this week is Insect. So I went googling for detailed insect pictures. I was surprised to learn just how many tiny critters are considered 'insects'. There are ants, bees and wasps. There are flies. There are lacewings and antlions. There are 'true bugs', mantids, walking sticks and mayflies. Even butterflies and moths are considered 'insects'. Cicada, hoppers and aphids, grasshoppers and crickets are insects. Dragonflies and damselfies are insects. Of course the lowly cockroach is an insect. However spiders and centipedes are NOT insects. But the largest order of insects are BEETLES, with over 250,000 recognized species! Friday, March 3, 2006 B
"Insects"
10:54pm
Beetles, aka Scarabs, were important to the ancient Egyptians and a lot of important symbology accrued around them. The beetle is also the hieroglyph for the verb 'to come into being', as Sir E.A. Wallis Budge shows in his Egyptian Language:
Here's a weird bit of mythology concerning the beetle: Mummies were compared to the beetle larva preparing for a 'coming into being' in the next world, because pupae are like pale, mummified versions of the adult beetle.
I really had a puzzle with this week's 52 Figments question: Saturday, March 4, 2006 A
"Gold Medal?"
8:47am
2.26.06 :: Tonight is the closing ceremony for the 2006 Winter Olympics and you'll be there with the gold medal you won for...
I thought of being silly. The only thing I have any physical prowess in is ability to fall asleep, anywhere, anytime. In movie theaters, gatherings with friends, at work, my head tilts downward, and in less than a minute, I'm out. I mean, to those who suffer insomnia, this could be considered a talent. But seriously folks...
My talents lie elsewhere, no Olympic gold for me! So I salute those who do have such physical skills!!
I concluded many things lie in remote possibility, even losing 70 pounds, as I seem to have magically done in this picture, but physical prowess is NOT even in remote possibility!
That's the men's figure skating winners, whose costumes I simplified somewhat...
I now have all the 52 Figments results gathered into a separate gallery!
What are the odds of seeing TWO quirky road trip movies in one week? "Transamerica" is a road trip movie about a transsexual named Bree about to get the operation who just learns she has a seventeen year old son. She ends up going across the country with the kid. Saturday, March 4, 2006 B
"Dichotomy"
7:39pm
Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News says of this movie:
|
"By turns hysterically funny and heartbreaking, Transamerica is a film of tremendous warmth, charm and perception anchored to a central performance of unique power. "Huffman's performance is a marvel of physical struggle and inner turmoil. It's a kaleidoscopic viewing experience: Huffman the woman is playing a man trying to copy female mannerisms while the male ones keep bleeding through like an old paint job beneath the whitewash. The character is enormously self-conscious, while the actress can't allow herself that luxury. Huffman is sensational." |
The reviewer hasn't quite got it. It doesn't seem like Bree's femininity is 'a facade'. Yes, she's 'enormously self-conscious', but there's a whole lot of reasons for that. If you suddenly discover at age 45 you have a kid, and you're in a car riding across the country with him, and it's gonna be awkward, you're gonna be restrained and self conscious, and that's not even getting to the next part about you being a trannie and not yet had the operation.Forward...It's funny. The last road trip movie we saw, "Aaltra", we all asked the question, "How do these two hitchhikers in wheelchairs pee?" You never see them taking care of nature's call. Well, Bree pees. Her son sees. Things get interesting after that.
It's an excellent film. Felicity Huffman, who plays Bree, certainly earned her Golden Globe award for 'Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama'.
The movie left us with a strange surreal feeling. Mostly, it's because Bree looks and acts 'old'. Her son is young, and too perfect a rebel, or 'imperfect' a rebel, depending on how you see it. She doesn't fit in, and it's for so many reasons than just gender. Is it an old/young dichtotomy? We were traipsing the stores today, between lunch and movie. Why does it feel like we fell asleep for twenty years, woke up to find all those short little sweaters and ruffly, glittery skirts? We were in the ice cream shop, hoping to test the raspberry sorbet. Shop crowded with teenagers, we felt strange and awkward. We felt invisible. Hell, we were invisible. No one asked to help us. We gave up in utter confusion. We left and trodded across the road to Starbucks. Heck, the raspberry scone and hot caramel cider was better than cold raspberry sorbet, anyway.
And I don't want to complain, don't want to whine, don't want to sound like THAT kind of 'old person', don't ever want to sound like that kind of 'old person', not even when I'm in my eighties. But sometimes it's just strange and weird. And that's all I have to say about that.
And maybe it's not all I have to say. I want to be 'immortal' and 'ageless', and most times I feel like that. I am just the sleeping vampyre who woke up twenty years later to find an oddly shifted world. But I am 'immortal' and 'ageless', I feel young inside. Is 'age' an 'illusion'? Ask the teenagers, it seems a bigger thing to them. Forty year olds are 'ancient' to them. And it's just a cycle, the same old cycle that's been going since our ancestors in Africa.
Well, I can be 'young', but I have to accept the fact that 'young' people aren't going to think me 'young'. I don't have an Ipod, don't have one of those pesky phones, don't care. Don't want those stinky fancy purses...
(Did want the 70 dollar Hawaiian shirts, passed them by, made a note if Dillards ever has a really good sale on 'Daniel Cremieux' shirts to check back again...)
Besides I have those fancy expensive cotton lawn shirts. I really do have enough shirts. And I enjoy each and every one. Yes, I do, and I'm not going to apologize about that. While I got 'em, for as long as I have 'em, I'm gonna enjoy them.
And as long as I got breath, I'm gonna feel 'young', I'm the 'ageless vampyre', and if you don't believe me, I'll just smile and humor you, while I wear my loud Hawaiian shirts and Birkies, I'll just smile. And I think I'll have a piece of immortality, a piece or two. The story of my life ain't done, won't be done, the last 'keystroke' is a long way off a coming, and I'm going to declare myself 'young'. Even when I'm wrinkled and gray, may the Black Flame ever burn in me, a fire in my eyes, and if you don't see it, that doesn't mean it's not there.
This vampyre will get her last laugh!
I decided I wasn't happy with the logo I designed last week: Sunday, March 5, 2006 A
"Adding Some Fire"
9:30am
What can be said of the fact that he has four ears? One set is to hear the sounds of the physical world, the other is to hear the intuitive voices. The Spirit-Being behind him can only hear the intuitive voices. He holds the ankh, for he knows the secret of the Life Force. He has magic to help the flowers grow. What's the weird thing at his mouth? Perhaps a subtle divider to suggest the two sides of his brain, rational and intuitive. It needed some FIRE!
Now it seems more balanced!
I hope to color this picture soon.
Sunday, March 5, 2006 B
"Priest-Magician - In Color!"
8:06pm
© Joan Lansberry
