12″x12″. India ink, acrylic paint and household bleach on hardboard.

   I drew this while studying anatomy and bone-splinting.

   Instead, I’m going to kick off the year by breaking out of that toxic “I HAVE NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE TO SAY” circle and creating a meme instead. Memes are cool.

   Make a “favorite things” list: things you would recommend to others and what makes them so special. List only one thing per category.

ONE GUILTY PLEASURE Devil May Cry 3‘s Bloody Palace Mode    I’m not a gamer. And that’s an understatement. I grew up in a time where troubleshooting told you to blow on games that don’t work to remove any dust. I still think of “gaming” as playing House of the Dead at local pizza parlours: and by “playing”, I mean “accidentally” elbowing your friend in the ribcage mid-gameplay because some kid spilled Coke all over the trigger and your gun is taking longer to reload. One time, my brother bought a Playstation 2 and tried to teach me how to play Turok and my character spent five minutes twirling around in a circle because I couldn’t figure out how to turn left.    For some unbeknownst reason, the only game I can play is Devil May Cry 3 (Special Edition) on my PC. I think I’m some kind of savant.    What I love best, is this thing called Bloody Palace Mode, where you basically get to just kill things until you run out of lives. It makes me feel like I’m 8 years old again, replaying all the easy levels in Super Mario just for the pleasure of squashing Goombas like bubble wrap.[LINK]
ONE BOOK    Craig Ferguson’s Between the Bridge and the River    Within the first paragraph, I knew I was going to love this story; by the last page, it earned a place on my list of favorite books of all time.    The writing is raw, gritty and uninhibited: stripping down and exposing each character honestly with morally-ambiguous actions and hilarious streams of consciousness that everybody can relate to (whether or not you’d like to admit it) and, in doing so, tells a story that says far more about human nature, psychology, love and spirituality than most classic literature. [LINK]	ONE SHOW Rescue Me    This is what drama should be.    I’ve never watched another show that takes me across the emotional spectrum and back again, the way that this one does. Rescue Me is as funny as it is heartbreaking and over its lifespan of six seasons, never lived to see a dull moment.[LINK]
	ONE ACCESSORY Rainbops by Beehive    I’m the type of person who has a pair of shoes for every mood, weather report or social occasion. I absolutely adore these boots (pictured here, in “Austin”),from their appropriately dreary look to the fashionable cowgirl cut. They add a soft touch of color to any neutral outfit; and style doesn’t compromise function (warmth stays in, rain stays out).    They also bring to mind French Impressionism; like hitting the town dressed up in a Monet painting. [LINK]
ONE ALBUM Generation X Kiss Me Deadly (1981)    The songs on this album are each tied to wonderful memories; maybe that’s why I’m so in love with it. Listening to the songs brings me back to being 22: a fresh college dropout, raging against the world, impoverished, lacking any kind of direction and madly in love. I remember spending all my money on booze and clothes, forgetting all the things I wasn’t and dreaming of what I could be, and speeding home every night with my boyfriend’s cologne in my hair and clothes turned inside out and this album blaring over my car speakers as I raced the sun home.    Old punk rock fans will appreciate this album for its historical contribution to pop culture. Personally, its monumental of being young and carefree; something that I’m hellbent on holding on to. [LINK]
ONE FOOD Gourmet lollipops by The Groovy Baker    These lollipops come in dozens of exotic flavors, with authentic ingredients baked right in. Delicious and prepared exquisitely: hand them out as unique party favors or stick them in a vase to liven up your home with a grown-up candy jar. I recently ordered a batch of Absinthe (made with the real thing) and Sugar Cookie (covered in powdered sugar and chopped almonds), and was blown away. I can’t wait to try more; I’m leaning towards Baklava and Blackberry Merlot next round. [LINK]

   Comment or reblog with your own recommendations.

   Images © their respective owners; please visit the retailers’ websites (links provided) for more information!

   I’m revamping this website entirely, hopefully will have a COMPLETE working gallery by late Spring/early Summer 2012. A couple art jobs and projects are currently in the works, and commissions will be reopening after the new year. Stay tuned!

   Today I had a couple things to ship out that I had been putting off for days, because L.A. County has been pouring for like a week and I was saving my packaging tape just in case I had to start building an ark.

   Well, I waited ten minutes for the lady in front of me to methodically stare at each and every one of her cat stamps before packing her stuff up and going home (IDK, I think she might have been checking them for anal rashes). When I finally got up to a register, the cashier told me that I couldn’t actually ship my stuff via the regular post office, because I was using some weird pre-paid shipping labels I printed out online, and the regular post office may tolerate weird, but not shipping label kinda weird, so she directed me and my weirdly-labeled packages right next door, to the UPS/Fed Ex post office.

   So I ventured next door to the UPS/Fed Ex center. I’m sure that all UPS/Fed Ex branches aren’t like this one but just so that readers have some frame of reference, this place was like the mangy lovechild of an Office Depot and a foreign flea market, complete with weird smells, bulletproof prison windows with speakers and several ominous locked doors which probably led to negotiation rooms for the drug cartels and arms dealers which I’m pretty sure accounted for at least half of the people in line with me. First, I was greeted by an overwhelming cloud of smoke from the corner of incense products, which is something that I’d definitely expect from a t-shirt shop on Venice Boardwalk — not so much from a hole-in-the-wall postal center in a strip mall somewhere between a fried chicken restaurant and a smoke shop (but to be fair, I guess it’s nice to know where I can buy packaging tape, novelty keys and patchouli all in a single shopping trip).
   I took my place as the third person in line behind a lady mailing packages and another lady mailing letters, and hoped for the best. I should have taken it as a sign that things might not be all rainbows and puppies when a crabby Korean lady pushed in front of me with a truckload of paperwork in her arms after five minutes of writing at the desk-island in the middle of the store, but she was foreign and here on vacation, spoke broken English, was several times my age and had technically been there before me, so I didn’t make an issue of it.

   The lady with the package took a good fifteen minutes getting rid of her one item. I don’t know if it was because she got sidetracked by the random stoned woman who came in and started raving to the cashier about how the change machine actually worked or if because she was shipping cats in her package (I think you have to scan them for anal rashes).
   A scraggy-looking kid with a large, long box came in while the first woman was still at the counter. I clutched my stuff tightly (and probably growled at him subconsciously like a lion with a freshly-dead zebra, because shipping centers that also sell hookahs do that to a person), but he pushed to the front of the line immediately after package!lady left, anyhow. In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t make an issue of it, because the cashier immediately let him and his gigantic box in through one of the drug cartel doors, so I’m pretty sure that he was carrying an AK-47.

   The lady with the letters also took a good ten minutes getting rid of her stuff, even though she was only shipping something like two letters. In fact, I’m not even sure why she was in the shady opium-scented Fed Ex/UPS/cocaine center to begin with, instead of just shipping her letters at the U.S. post office, like normal human beings. Maybe her letters had weird labels.

   By this time, I was getting pretty thirsty and eye-undressing the vending machine like it was Isaiah Mustafa. The foreign lady was up at the counter trying to communicate to the cashier how urgent her paperwork was because she’s only here on vacation for a week. I have no idea what she was talking about, partially because she didn’t speak English very fluently and partially because I was debating whether or not I should get a drink from a vending machine that possibly contains traces of lead. The vending machine only contained water and energy drinks. I really wanted the Monster on the bottom shelf, but there were three rows worth of this canned “isotonic” thing called “100 Plus” which I had never heard of before. I decided that I’d be adventurous, so I grabbed a can. It was manufactured in Malaysia, distributed in South Africa and at least a third of the can was in Arabic writing, the nutrition information was missing about half the key points that I think are required by the FDA and I’m not entirely sure that it was legally imported to America… but I bought it anyway, because that’s how I roll.
   After about thirty-five minutes of waiting in line to deliver packages, I finally got up to the counter and wound up paying only a buck for my soda, because my labels were pre-paid. Take that, USPS.

   When I finally left the shipping center, there was an elderly lady in a raincoat over a bathrobe over a moo-moo, outside the smoke shop next door asking the owner, in a thick Appalachian accent, if she could tie her dog to the door while she bought cigarettes.
   …And I wonder why some people never leave their houses.

   For the record, 100 Plus tastes like carbonated grapefruit. And it’s been about 8 hours since I consumed it, and I have yet to contract botulism.
   …I’ll update later if I contract clinical weirdness.