I Don't Really Get Twitter

I've never been a big Twitter fan. I don't really get it, but I think it's because I don't use it properly (maybe?). But when I started this blog, which obviously hasn't taken off because work is draining me pretty hard, I figured I should have a twitter account in case I, you know, suddenly became savvy at orchestrating social media.

I've had the account (@CraftyJackson) for less than two months. I've tweeted all of 12 (twelve, ten plus two) times. Yet today I get this:

Uh, what?

My last two tweets were from BBC news, so...

No, that still doesn't make any sense.

See, I'm a goodie-two-shoes. Somebody tells me I need to start changing my behavior, and it doesn't matter if it's my mother or my boss or the faceless auto-generated text of a giant corporate machine, I get paranoid and panic. Oh my God, I need to change my behavior. But how? What have I done and what should I do instead? What if I do it again and the Twitter page YELLS at me again?! Omg, omg!

And one of the articles I tweeted was about Twitter! Though I posted it without comment, I was applauding Twitter and their refusal to give out data! And I have all of (probably) eight followers (can't tell, they're still re-starting my account), so how the hell could I be spamming? Now I feel rejected, criticized, guilty...

Yeah, it's ridiculous. That is bogus. Twitter, this goes against my eager-to-please nature, but... I'm gonna go ahead and ignore your admonition. Because flatulent dinosaurs and Twitter-in-court aren't spam, they are NEWS.

Temple of Heaven Puzzle

So last week I was bored again and started poking through my craft box looking for something new to do. I came across the weird felt dessert kits I got in Japan that I will definitely have to do later, but I also came across these wooden puzzles I convinced my mother to buy for me when we were at Michael's a few years ago. I have two, the Temple of Heaven and the Dragon and Phoenix (can't get links to Michael's, but I sure didn't pay that much for them). I also have some cheap-o watercolor palettes leftover from the creation of Louis, the Greatest Halloween Costume I've Ever Made (2010). Louis was the best post-make-up career sculpting accomplishment I have ever done, and I'll tell you all about him some day.

Where I was going with this was Boredom + Wooden Puzzle + Watercolors = Something to Do. I decided to start with the Temple of Heaven because I really like the Dragon and Phoenix and figured I should practice before I made that. I have actually been to the real Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and I took this picture (among many, many others) in 2009:

So I used that for reference in painting. Which was tedious. Painting all these damn little pieces was TED.I.OUS. Also I ran out of the dark blue so combined teal and black for the very top, which doesn't look very good. The white didn't show up at all, so the billions of little pieces on the bottom that I tried to paint white look like I didn't paint them at all, so it looks super-half-assed.

Also, the pieces were quite inconsistent. I probably could have spent a lot of extra time figuring out how to arrange them all perfectly or sanding the shit out of them, but I just don't have the patience for that. I think if you buy a puzzle the pieces should already fit, is that too much to ask? For that matter, let's address the sandpaper they gave with the kit:

Yeah, no. Luckily I have some really rough emery boards that I am not likely to ever use on my actual fingernails, so I used one of those instead.

All in all, I would pronounce this: meh. It occupied my time, but now I'm done with it and just wish I still had a fireplace. It seems so wasteful to just chuck all this wood, but... this is ugly and just waiting for my cats to destroy it. Ah well, maybe the Dragon and Phoenix will turn out better.

Star Trek Saturday!

ST:TOS Season 3 Episode 20

The portrayal of hippies in movies and on television is hilarious to me, whether it is contemporary, as this was, or retrospective, as in the movie I just saw today, Dark Shadows. These TOS hippies were played as willfully dismissive of anyone's point of view that didn't match their groovy mentality, a negative portrayal even while Spock sympathized with them. They were idiotic and self-destructive. Dark Shadow's hippies were naive, dumb stoners, a cardboard piece of historical comic relief. My favorite hippie portrayal might be from Stargate: SG-1's season two episode "1969," come to think of it: visually stereotypical, but sensitive for as little screen time as they got.

TOS wasn't always so judgmental of hippies. The season two episode "Assignment: Earth" has a smart and sympathetic hippie character, wearing the most eye-hurting combination of pink and orange ever assembled into one outfit.

Clay Beads with Sculpey

 Once upon a time in a land far away, I dreamt of being a special effects make-up artist. I think Star Trek: The Next Generation was my inspiration, actually. I wanted to make aliens.

As part of my short-lived and extremely expensive make-up career, I acquired a number of sculpting tools and a taste for sculpting. Not a talent for it, not even an appreciation for it, or much knowledge of it. But just enough of a taste to enjoy it.

So when I got all starry-eyed about jewelry making this past winter, I thought I should make my own beads to make it all more truly handmade, for when I opened my amazing Etsy shop. Then I got really creative, as I sometimes do when I am bored at work or need a bit of a vacation from reality. I have a whole list (somewhere) of all the things I am going to figure out how to sculpt from Sculpey, turn into jewelry, and sell for mucho dollars. I'll give a few of them a try down the line to give us all a laugh.

Meanwhile, in a crafty frenzy at Michael's earlier this year I bought a few small blocks of Sculpey in several colors, and back in January I snatched up a friend's toaster oven before she donated it to Goodwill. My very first Sculpey bead-making experiment was a failure, as I discovered I have no natural talent for shaping pretty beads, and I burned the hell out of the first few I slapped together. I think it's because I was watching Game of Thrones, and stopped paying attention to the toaster.

The other day, I decided to try again. Months ago I had found a tutorial somewhere on making pretty beads with a funny name, and based on an extremely hazy memory of this tutorial (which, now that I look back on it, probably didn't even make sense when I originally read it), I smashed together some clay and was predictably disappointed with the results. So I just rubbed some stuff together and came up with these:

... and was actually rather pleased with how they looked. "Remember, Self," I realized. "Start with simple stuff and go from there." So I made some more:

Which I baked on these makeshift bead holders (that is a 3" jewelry wire baked into some Sculpey):

Glazed:

Then sat back and admired.

Certainly they won't be winning any awards, but I kind of like them. And it's about the baby steps these days, I need to keep telling myself. The real lesson, of course, is that I need more equipment, tools, and clay. Also maybe next time read the tutorial again.

Star Trek Saturday!

Season 2 Episode 15

From the wonderfully irreverent Trouble with Tribbles episode, we have this total WTF moment right at the beginning. While I am no Fashion It So, I am going to go ahead and speculate that somebody, somewhere, was preeeeeetty fucking high when this got approved.