I, Photoshopper.

I have been taking a class this semester, name of Electronic Strategies/Computer Imaging. It is a Painting & Printmaking course, but we are mostly learning how to use different awesome and prohibitively expensive for the private citizen programs, like Dreamweaver for web design (look out world; I know HTML code!!! I can marquee whatever I want! AHAHAHAAA) and the incredibly cool and endlessly kick-ass program, Photoshop Creative Suite Four (CS4) which retails for like $700 and I am no way getting for Christmas from anybody, more's the pity. But, I can use it at school, so I thought I'd post you all a couple of examples of my superb creations that cost me $7.74 to print, with ink at .028 cents per square inch. To post on blogger, though, is FREE! Both were created with the use of good ol' Microsoft Paint (mostly the stretch/skew and inverse color tools) and screen caps of fabulously talented peoples' quilts, which I then altered drastically with Glorious Photoshop, which did I mention is freakin' cool as hell? Yes, I believe I did. What isn't cool is that no matter how I try, I can not get the final and truly badass versions of these files to upload to Blogger. Why? Not for lack of trying. So feast your eyes on the just-short-of-finishing-touches versions, and imagine how they might be a little cooler. Or I can tell you. This one down here has shadows and fades on some of it, and the one up top has a whole other level. But the gist is present, I guess. I'll try to get the real ones up soon....

Newbie + Littlekins = A whole lotta hissin' goin' on

Well, I have some exciting news to report! Exciting for the likes of me, anyway; namely, a person who is thrown into flights of ecstasy over the presence of baby cats. I got a new one! My boyfriend called me at work on Saturday and casually asked if I would like a kitten (!!!). I casually replied "Oh, maybe, what do they look like?" while thinking "OMG! OMG!" and practically jumping up and down. It turns out his aunt had a couple left from a litter of fine countryside Virginia farm-cat stock. He said there were two, a grey-and-white, and a "gold" one. When he said "gold," I very un-spazzily asked if by that he might mean orange. Orange and white striped, maybe? And he said "Yeah, I guess you could say that." I then said "Is he fluffy? Is he healthy? How old is he? Is he tall? How long is his tail? What color are his eyes? Does he have large paws?" To which he replied "He looks cute to me. If you want him, I'll bring him over tonight." Needless to say, I could very much not concentrate on work for the rest of the afternoon, especially since if my boyfriend is willing to use the adjective "cute" on anything, then that's a really cute kitten all right.

Now, let me explain why I don't have a kitten already if I like them so much. You see, I have Smalls; ol' Jasper over there in the pic on the left, and he's quite a handful already. He co-habitated with another cat for the last six years, and thoroughly hated her ass the whole time, engaging in at least one bloody scrap-fest a day, coupled with all kinds of chasing, harrying, and cornering under the bed style activities. He is not called the Princely Prince for nothing, man. He is the man around the apartment, more's the pity if you forget it. So I was not going to bring some poor sucker into that world without a damn good reason. I did notice that when the other cat moved out for good, he seemed to be a little lonely with no one to lacerate on a regular basis. I also noticed that when my boyfriend spent time with him while I was at work, he seemed way less needy when I got home. So, I considered another cat, but wondered if Kins was perhaps one of those kind of cats that needs to be the only cat in the household. I have had a long-standing policy, though. That policy is this: If a kitten falls into my lap; be it found under a car/bushes/bench, thrust upon me by well-meaning co-workers, sleeping on my doormat, etc., I have no choice but to keep it. This scenario fit the bill, mostly. Also, I went to Chincoteague on a real vacation with my family when I was about 8 or 9 (meaning not visiting the relatives over the holidays, but just my family, with DAD who almost never got leave to spend time with us from the Navy) and it was a fabulous week of fishing all day for crab with my big brother and when not doing that, playing with the one thousand orange stripey kittens that lived on the docks across the street from our rental. I never had an orange cat, but I liked them from then on. So when this little "golden" fella fell in my lap, it was no contest. And Jasper's taking it well, all things considered. He was even playing with him this morning, even though when he saw me looking he pretended he was ignoring the kitten. A little swatting when the baby gets near the food dish, and the odd hiss here and there, but a much better reaction than I expected. It's just a tiny six-week-old baby, after all. So, Clyde, the Orange Kitten Of My Dreams, has now joined the household. May it be a long and prosperous relationship. And may the two cats start sleeping together in a squishy pile sooner rather than later, because that is some cute shit, man.

My trip was fun, and I'm on a mission from God.

Well, as for the trip, it was good; except for the 2(!) speeding tickets that were garnered in upstate NY and the veritable monsoon that ran us out of the Phish show a tad early due to waterloggedness. Duck = delicious; caves = cold, and diverting but not the most impressive display ever; Gourmet dinner = outstanding; Phish show = hotel check in was a pain in my ass and everyone else's, but the show was pretty good despite the weather; Animal Park = awesome, even though we switched it to a different animal park that was more directly available on our route.

Then, after a few days at home, I headed up to NOVA to go to my friend's wedding party on Saturday, which was great because we've known each other forever and all our buddies from far and wide came to attend, and much reminiscence regarding who met who when and in what dorm, coupled with much beer and wine, took place.

Now, I'm in school again (alas...) and balancing that with work and the recent advent of my extremely cute boyfriend as a resident of my apartment has me exceptionally busy. But not so busy I can't tell you a little about a movie.*

As a result of a conversation with said boyfriend last week, I realized that I hadn't posted regarding my Favorite Movie of All Time. So, in an attempt to rectify my negligence, I will now say a little about the magnum opus of dear departed John Belushi and still-living Dan Aykroyd's careers, The Blues Brothers. This 1980 film, written by Aykroyd and John Landis, is the most universally defining movie of my life. I watched it one hundred thousand times with my brother growing up. Every line from this movie is permanently engraved on my cerebral cortex, and if an eight year old girl could have turned herself into either Jake or Elwood Blues, she would have done it in a snap. I idolized those guys like nobody's business. My brother named his two puppies after their characters 17 years ago. I can't even begin to explain how every nuance of this movie is exquisite to my personal sensibilities. For a white kid like me, there were no cooler people on the planet, real or fictional.

To summarize the plot, Jake gets out of the Joint (Joliet Prison, hence his nickname "Joliet Jake") and brother Elwood picks him up. They go visit the Catholic school they attended as children and find out that it needs money to stay in business. They decide to reunite their old band and have a benefit concert. The rest of the movie involves the two of them rounding up the old members and attempting to stage a huge show, all while falling afoul of the law in numerous ways that involve many car chases and crashes, one of which takes place inside a shopping mall. There are musical numbers by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, and the brothers themselves, who had albums in their own right.

I love the blues, and I love sarcasm, and I have a fondness for outlaws, and my brother loves cars, and we both enjoyed the over-the-top car chases immensely. I will admit that my deep and abiding affection for this movie is probably entwined with my equal affection for my brother and our childhood together, but I will also attest to the fact that I have seen it plenty of times without him and it is still my top favorite movie ever. If I could be this movie, I would. I would be a black suit and sunglasses and a fedora, and I would be blues music as played and sung by the greatest purveyors of the sound, and I would be a Plymouth Bluesmobile, a performance of Rawhide in a honkey-tonk with chicken wire in front of the stage, Aretha singing "Think" in a soul-food dive, Elwood cooking toast in an apartment the size of my bathroom, and I'd be in that jail at the end when Jake and Elwood perform Jailhouse Rock for the inmates. And if I could live the scene in which this exchange takes place:

Jake: First you traded the Cadillac in for a microphone. Then you lied to me about the band. And now you're gonna put me right back in the joint!

Elwood: They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God.

I would. I surely would.

And there you have it. Words cannot express properly, but if you get any of my meaning, get this: All movies I ever see are unable to hold much of a candle to this one. Watch and enjoy.

* I am trying to work up a Top 10 for the sidebar, just so's you know where I'm coming from. Stay tuned!

Plans for the Weekend!

Tomorrow, I am heading to New York City to eat a chinese duck (as you can see on your left) with my extry family, the Brownings of Venice. This will be but the first leg of my fabulous plans, which after duck will include a tour of some caves in Upstate NY (with only one Browning), as pictured on your right. Then I'm going to have a fabulous gourmet dinner at the restaurant attached to the caves, as pictured by my belly, and including roast beast in gorgonzola cream sauce or some such delicious nonsense.

After the dinner, there will be a luxurious Best Western, and then the next day I'll be seeing my favorite band, Phish, for the 111th time, at Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center, which is rumored to be a lovely venue, as pictured over here on your left again, followed by a night of revelry at the Saratoga Springs Hilton wherein I will pay an enormous fee to enjoy a hotel 1.7 miles from the venue, which is key to the whole revelry aspect.

THEN, on the way home, I'll be shooting through the lovely town of Harrisburg, Pa, where I will enjoy the fantastic sights at Lake Tobias Wild Animal Park, where, godwilling, I will get to do what these people are doing, namely, stroke an elk. And all manner of other critters in their fabulous petting zoo, as well as view non-pettables, like a tiger, and maybe a napping one at that. Then I must return to RVA and face the true End of Summer, as defined by the fact that I have to go to SCHOOL again and this time for like four months. Poo. But, I will take the memories of Duck, Loved ones, Caves, Good Food, Phish, the Hilton, and Wild Pettable Animals home to bolster me in my time of drudgery.