Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Waffle and Syrup Sheets & Fruit Pillows

Can I have this -- please, please, pretty please? $100 for these sheets. Pillows are sold separately. Find this at B Fiber and Craft Emporium.

Baked Potato Bean Bag Chair & Butter Pillow

I want! I just don't want it enough to pay $250 for it. If you do, visit etsy page, B Fiber and Craft Emporium.


A Slice Would Be Nice

..If it didn't cost $250. Find this at B Fiber and Craft Emporium.






















Hand constructed pizza slice sleeping bag!




















To view more items from this etsy shop, click here.

Interesting..

They Need Hugs Too

Monday, July 30, 2012

Sunday, July 29, 2012

J, again

I posted "J"once before. It's such a great song, that I feel the need to post it again. I don't smoke pot, but that doesn't mean much, here.


J - Ani Difranco  - House of Blues, Anaheim, CA 4/2/11

Can’t sit on my porch and smoke a J
And remember how peaceful life can be
But all night long are a bunch of pushers
Selling drugs right there on my TV
Drugs that whether or not I buy
Are gonna end up in my water supply
Along with who knows what else, who knows when,
Just gotta take a deep breath and drink it in

And ‘round here there’s one thing people know

It’s that government ain’t there for you, it’s all for show
And I’m trying to tell them it don’t have to be so
But I can understand that their confidence is low
Cause ‘round here people’re so high they can’t see
Over the tops of the tall pine trees
Down to the mouth of the Mississippi

Oh, blood ignited in a blighted sky

Oh, blood on the water like we all could die
Blood in the reeds glistening in the sun
Blood on our hands, each and everyone,
Here in the calm before the wars
When the earth shrugs us off like dinosaurs

Here in the sunset days of yore
The first signs washing ashore

And goddess, come and lift us here in deepest Louisiana

In the gut, where hunches come from
A message goes out loud as it can


And you’d have thought we’d have come more far somehow

Since the changing of the guard and all
I mean dude could be FDR right now
And instead he’s just shifting his weight
And the disappointment is the knockout blow
Filmed in torturous slow-mo
Oh hope, please come where I can see
Don’t let the poison get the best of me

And goddess, come and lift us here in deepest Louisiana

In the gut, where hunches come from
A message goes out loud as it can

Oh, truth is for telling, truth is foretold

Truth is for those with the guts to behold
We got vampires down here in Louisiana
We need voodoo dolls, we need talisman
We need wooden stakes and shards of light
We need harbingers riding through the night
We need fountain pens
, we need whale harpoons
To overthrow the oil tycoons

Cause there’s no fish in the water, no birds in the sky

No life in the soil, no end to the lie
No time like the present and it’s passing us by
But it’s never too late, never too late to try
Cause if we all had to change, we all just would
And we would move closer and that would be good
And we would buy local and we would buy less
And we’d realize that wasn’t our happiness
No, that wasn’t our happiness
No, that wasn’t our happiness
No, that wasn’t our happiness
No, that wasn’t…

And goddess, come and lift us here in deepest Louisiana

And goddess, come and lift us here in deepest Louisiana
And goddess, come and lift us here in deepest Louisiana
In the gut, where hunches come from
A message goes out loud as it can

this is good






















Tattoo acceptance in the workplace

More Thank You Think

More Thank You Think
By Lady J - 2012©

I cried
Not because I could relate
but because you could

Columbus (Was on to Something)














 (source)

Columbus (Was on to Something)
By Lady J 2012©

For all you know, I could be having a party in my head
Still my face lay flat
Columbus fell off the face of my body
and left it where it's at

Oh, how I miss.





















Just Saying

God, We Could Use a Little Help Down Here

Hendrix Hair





















touch-arts.com

G-Free

Anger & Courage

 "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."
~St. Augustine

dainty embedded flower














cupcakesaresocool

mini tie dye














cupcakesaresocool

Pastel Field














cupcakesaresocool

elegance
















cupcakesaresocool

old fashioned














cupcakesaresocool

sploosh
















cupcakesaresocool

clounds and cupcakes

































cupcakesaresocool

Caterpillar Before The Butterfly















cupcakesaresocool

neon gathering

getting down and swirlly














cupcakesaresocool

I want to swim in this pool














cupcakesaresocool

purple and pink sitting in a tree..
















Cupcakes Are So Cool

Be My Purple and I'll Be Your Pink















Cupcakes Are So Cool

Tie Dye Murkiness
















Cupcakes Are So Cool

Be My Pink and I'll Be Your Purple


















Cupcakes Are So Cool

Put My Heart Somewhere

































Cupcakes Are So Cool

Ready For My Close Up

Cupcakes Are So Cool

I See Stars In a Sky














Cupcakes Are So Cool

Put a Bow On It

Cupcakes Are So Cool

If Colors Could Be Perfect, They Would Start Here














Cupcakes Are So Cool

rad in every way

neon in a sea of foam

Pink, Purple, and Everything I Could Ever Want

Go Fishing Cupcakes















Cupcakes (:

Saturday, July 28, 2012

2012 Summer Olympics cupcakes by Darcy's Cupcake Creations

2012 Summer Olympics cupcakes by Darcy's Cupcake Creations.

This year, it happened.

Remember?

Feed the Nest

































(source: Dreads)

Mine Were Magenta and Then I Let Them Fade

































(source: Dreads)

oh, i get it now.

Violence, Humor and When Women Expect Rape

*Trigger Warning*


"The problem is that every woman in her entire life has that one moment when you think, 'Oh! Here's my rape!'"
---Ever Mainard

Earlier this month, there was an uproar over a very unfunny joke, made by comedian, Daniel Tosh. Tosh made a joke, suggesting that rape is worthy of laughter. It went down like this: A woman and her female friend went to the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, where Tosh was performing. Tosh made several rape jokes, to which an the woman rebutted; "actually, rape jokes are never funny." Tosh defended his ego but saying, "Wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…"

Not only is what Tosh said unfunny, but it is anti-feminist and pro-male privilege. I can't speak to Tosh's experiences. I do not know if he has been raped. But, I can certainly say that as a man, he is less likely to be a victim of rape. Tosh ignores the fact that there may have been rape victims in the room. I'm going to go out on a limb, and say that he probably doesn't know that many women expect rape. A rape joke affects those who have been raped, a rape joke affects those who know others who have been raped, and a rape joke affects those who expect to be raped, a rape joke affects those who fear rape. A rape joke affects women.

Tosh isn't the only comedian to have made rape jokes. The "joke" I am most familiar with comes from George Carlin. A man whom I have often find crude, hilarious, witty, and inappropriate.

Below is the transcript from a Carlin show.

Well, sometimes they'll say, well you can talk about something but you can't joke about it.
Say you can't joke about something because it's not funny. 

Comedians run into that shit all the time.
Like rape. They'll say, "you can't joke about rape. Rape's not funny."
I say, "fuck you, I think it's hilarious. How do you like that?"
I can prove to you that rape is funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.
See, hey why do you think they call him "Porky," eh? 

I know what you're going to say.
"Elmer was asking for it. Elmer was coming on to Porky.
Porky couldn't help himself, he got a hard- on, he got horny, he lost control, he went out of his mind."
A lot of men talk like that. 

A lot of men think that way. 
They think it's the woman's fault.
They like to blame the rape on the woman. 

Say, "she had it coming, she was wearing a short skirt."
These guys think women ought to go to prison for being cock teasers. 

Don't seem fair to me.
Don't seem right, but you can joke about it. 

I believe you can joke about anything.
It all depends on how you construct the joke. 

What the exaggeration is. What the exaggeration is.
Because every joke needs one exaggeration. Every joke needs one thing to be way out of proportion.


Carlin gets it right when he tells us that rape is not a woman's fault, but he zips right over common sense, when he tells us rape jokes can are appropriate. Ask a rape victim, and see what they say.

What is also just as unfunny is that, as mentioned earlier, many women come to expect rape or expect to be in the face of danger. I won't post statistics about rape, here. They're out there. Work some Google magic, and you'll find a lot, that speak to the depressing fact, that the odds are against you the moment the doctor exclaims, "It's a girl!"

I of course encourage women to be cautious but I would never encourage women to go through life on edge, fearing every man they meet or every man they don't. And taking time to learn how the rape statistics apply to you, is not fun. But if you do make yourself privy to the dangers, your stomach is likely to churn. Being female is all it takes. And what a crippling thing it is, to know that on some level, any level, a woman might expect rape.

Below is footage of comedienne, Ever Mainard (Great name. If I wanted children and I had a girl, I'd want her name to be either Story or Ever) joking about rape. According to notes attached to the YouTube video, the incident was her own and it occurred just days before her performance. That certainly tells us how this woman is trying to grieve and cope.

She is certainly not joking about rape in the same fashion as Carlin or Tosh. Mainard is bringing levity to the issue of how rape culture affects the way women feel.


"Here's Your Rape" - Ever Mainard - Chicago Underground Comedy - January 31st, 2012

The debate as to whether rape can be funny or if feminists are working hard to be "thought police" will be an on going one. Rape itself is on going. So, as long as rape exists, we might want to be mindful of how rape culture makes a woman feel. Rape culture not only frightens, saddens, angers women, but it is so prevalent that women expect it. Now, how is that funny?

To learn more about Ever Mainard, click here.

Resources:



National Domestic Violence Hotline (24 hour) 1-800-799-SAFE

I suppose so



















Art & Architecture

You Know What’s Great About You? You Just Can’t Take (or Give) a Compliment by Hugo Schwyzer

A wonderfully written piece by the amazing Hugo Schwyzer. Here it is in its entirety.

You Know What’s Great About You? You Just Can’t Take (or Give) a Compliment

By Hugo Schwyzer 
 
Is there anything we crave more –- and trust less –- than a compliment? It's axiomatic that compliments can be hard to take; as Anna North put it, accepting them is "a skill that often escapes even the most accomplished women." While giving praise seems so much easier, there are still "no-go zones" for more than a few women –- like complimenting a straight man you don't know well on his appearance. Few of us have as much ease accepting and giving them as we'd like. As the research shows, there are some things we can do to start to change that.

In a just concluded four-part series at The Beheld, Autumn Whitefield-Madrano examines complimenting behavior from almost every imaginable perspective. Her first essay looks at the complex role compliments play in women's relationships with each other; the second explores the research on sex differences in compliment-giving; the third discusses the broader cultural purpose of praise; the fourth considers the complex impact men's compliments have on their female romantic partners. Taken together, the posts offer an important mix of analysis and introspection as well as a terrific summary of three decades worth of scientific studies on the subject.

It's not news to point out that men are taught to use compliments as a seduction technique. Looks-based praise is such a familiar staple of straight men's hook-up patter that pick-up consultants advise their students to use the "neg" — a gentle, teasing insult — in order to surprise and intrigue the women they're hitting on. Since everyone knows that complimenting a woman on her looks is the cornerstone of so many men's seduction technique, their initial affirmations of desirability, however welcome, don't always carry a great deal of weight.

It's in relationships, however, that compliments become more problematic. Eagerly anticipated but also easily dismissed as well as often overanalyzed, Whitefield-Madrano writes that there's almost "no way for a (male) partner to win" at the game of giving praise.
Compliments become laden with tension: Does "You look pretty" carry less weight than "You are beautiful"? Does "You are beautiful" become diminished if it follows "Do I look okay"? Does a dropoff in compliments mean that our partners are less attracted to us, or that they're comfortable enough to express admiration in other ways, or that they don't want us to think they only find us beautiful when they explicitly say so? Or does an unflagging stream of compliments mean that they're uttered by rote and don't "count"?
That tension isn't just rooted in women's insecurity. Though she writes that she's never "really found a comfortable place to exist with compliments," Whitefield-Madrano said in a Skype interview that part of that problem lies in how men themselves deploy compliments in a relationship. Just as guys are taught to praise a woman's looks as a strategy to get her into bed, many use compliments to soothe or distract anxious or discontented girlfriends or wives. (The classic example: woman asks man if she looks okay; he avers that she looks "beautiful" or "fine," but does so without even gazing at her closely.)

Though Whitefield-Madrano says that men "can't win," the blame for that isn't just due to what she calls women's "contradictory" expectations for men's compliments. Just as women are raised to "perform beauty," many men learn early to "perform compliments" as a tool for everything from seduction to conflict resolution. Men's compliments come with an agenda every bit as intentional as women's efforts to look a certain way in order to invite validation. When Whitefield-Madrano insists "it's me, not you," she's letting her male partners off the hook a little too quickly.

What about the flip side: the compliments women give to men? Both Whitefield-Madrano and the extant research focus primarily on the appearance-based compliments women give each other and that men give to women. The reason that we know less about female-to-male compliments is obvious: it's still tremendously risky for women to praise the looks of men with whom they're not in a romantic relationship. Two recent studies (both in PDF) have looked at the compliments women give men. Both found that women are much more likely to praise men for skills rather than appearance, while guys are much more likely to praise the ladies for their looks. Though there are many reasons for the discrepancy, women's fear of having a compliment misinterpreted as a sexual invitation ranked at the top.

Researchers Christopher Parisi and Peter Wogan discovered that "compliment guardedness is the female counterpart to female caution about where to walk at night." It's not that women notice men's appearance any less than men notice theirs –- it's that for women, the consequences of praising what they see can be so much more dire. When asked about that conclusion, Whitefield-Madrano agreed. "I can't imagine telling a man I wasn't intimately involved with that he was handsome," she said, "not because I wouldn't want to but because of the likelihood he'd misconstrue it as a come-on." As Parisi and Wogan found, gay men attracted a whoppingly disproportionate share of appearance-based compliments simply because women felt confident that they "wouldn't take it the wrong way."

In 2012, it's no secret that men care about their looks. But the evidence is that we're getting far fewer compliments about our appearance than we'd like – and that women would like to give. In order to get that longed-for validation men have to take on the responsibility of making it safer for women to tell us what they like about faces, our bodies, and our style. When I asked Whitefield-Madrano for one way men could start to shift that dynamic to make women more comfortable, she suggested that (straight) men could start complimenting other men's appearance. That would make two things clear, she noted: first, that compliments aren't just part of the "feminine realm," but that men can and do both give and want them. Secondly, it would establish men's ability to hear a looks-based affirmation as something other than evidence of sexual desire. The more men can do to show that we can distinguish aesthetic appreciation from lust, the more compliments we're likely to get. (Better grooming might help too.)

As Whitefield-Madrano writes, we want more than to just hear "you're so pretty" or "you're looking handsome." From a friend we want to know we've been seen and found pleasing to the eye; from a partner, we're looking to hear "I am attracted to you. I want to be near you. I choose you; you are special to me." Those words carry far more power when we can trust their sincerity. The more men do to rethink how they've been socialized to use compliments –- and how they frequently misinterpret the ones they receive – the closer we'll all be to getting the validation we crave.

Arizona "Tea" Nails

I don't consider Arizona Tea, to be tea. It's syrupy and contains way too much sugar. It's pretty much imitation-tea flavored juice. Even so, I love these Arizona Tea, cherry blossom nails.






















source: lime crime makeup tumblr

Happy National Dance Day, 2012!

Today marks, the 3rd annual National Dance Day. National Dance Day, a grassroots mooovement, that encourages everyone to move! There are different ways that you can participate.

Here's info straight from the Dizzy Feet Foundation.

This year, National Dance Day is Saturday, July 28, and the Dizzy Feet Foundation has partnered with The Music Center and Los Angeles County to present the west coast’s largest National Dance Day celebration. We’re thrilled to hold the event at Los Angeles County’s newest, most exciting outdoor destination, Grand Park, and everyone’s welcome to come out and move!

The Dizzy Feet Foundation has created two new official National Dance Day routines: a Hip-Hop Master Class from
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE all star Lauren Gottlieb, and an Everybody Dance routine from Zumba Fitness®, which has teamed up with Dizzy Feet to spread the message of dance and movement. Learn both routines, submit videos of you and yours performing them (Like DFF’s Facebook page and then click on the National Dance Day tab to submit your video), and show us what you’ve got on National Dance Day!

Join us from 10:00AM-12:00PM on July 28, 2012, at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles. You’ll witness fabulous dance performances and follow along with some of your favorite dancers from
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE and amazing talent from Zumba Fitness ® as they lead the crowd in the official National Dance Day routines. But the fun doesn’t stop there — plan on sticking around until 2:30PM for fun, free dance classes for all ages and exciting performances by some of the best and brightest young dance talent in Los Angeles!


Swing dancing is my dance of choice. What's yours?!

manicured














Art & Architecture

camel apple cookies















source: cutest food