It’s no secret that I read magazines in the bathroom. Hell, I do most of my reading in the bathroom. I am just one of those bathroom reader type of people.

We get this magazine, because we subscribe to The Movie Network cable package, called Movie Entertainment and in that magazine are fluffy articles about movie stars and the listings of what movies are going to be shown when and on what channels. It also has a lot of ads.

So in that magazine was this ad and because I love Drew Barrymore and in this ad she looks particularly beautiful, I think, I paid more attention to it than I normally would to most magazine ads. And that’s the entire point of using a spokesperson like Drew Barrymore.

But what really made me take notice of this ad was her eyelashes. The ad is obviously for mascara and when I noticed this ad on Monday, I was thinking “there’s no way a mascara can make your eyelashes do that” and I started reading the copy, looking for fine print. The copy reads:

“lashes that want it all, can have it all!

NEW lashblastfusion a dramatic blast of volume and length/

COVERGIRL has gone all out with its first ever volume + length mascara. The fiberstretch formula and oversized brush make every little lash bigger, fuller, longer-looking and more dramatic.* Blast your lashes to bold levels of length and volume with new LashBlast Fusion. easy breezy beautiful COVERGIRL

Take beautiful back online or from your mobile @ covergirl.ca”

“Ah ha!” I thought. There was the asterisk that’s going to tel me that their product doesn’t really do what the picture implies it does! So I look at the black mouseprint at the bottom where the asterisk was and it read:

*vs. bare lashes. Drew Barrymore is wearing LashBlast Fusion in Very Black.

What? That’s all they had to disclaim? This mascara realy does make your eyelashes do what they’re doing to Drew’s in that picture? THAT’S AMAZING! I’m going to run out this weekend and get me some of that mascara since my current one is almost finished! I mean, if a mascara can actually do that, then I’m SOLD!

So that was Monday.  And I left the magazine folded backward to that ad all week because I wanted to remember what that mascara was called so when I was out this weekend, I could pick some up. But still, something didn’t seem quite right. I just didn’t quite believe that a simple mascara, which is really just liquid, could make one’s lashes that full and long.

On Tuesday I read the ad again, wondering how they could make the claims they were making when I didn’t believe their product could do that.  But there it was in black and white, they were saying that this was basically the best mascara on Earth and that Drew was wearing it in the photo. And I read the fine print at the bottom of the page again and it still said the same thing. Surely if there was tomfoolery like digital manipulation, Covergirl would have to disclaim that fact, but there was nothing in the ad that said that so their claims had to be true. And even though it seemed too good to be true, I had to believe it because no company wants to get sued for false advertising, right?

On Wednesday I scoured the ad again. Started at it and read the copy 3 times over. I looked at the picture. I started thinking like, “okay maybe her eyelashes look fuller because she obviously has smoky eyeliner on her top lid and in the corner of her bottom lid too” and again, I read the copy, looking for another asterisk that would tell me that the photo in this ad had been manipulated in some way. But it simply wasn’t there, so again, the claims had to be true, right?

Well on Thursday, yesterday, I was examining the ad again and that’s when I finally saw it. At the very bottom of Drew’s very Caucasian skin is very white mouseprint that I missed even though I’d examined the ad for 3 days straight and was actively LOOKING for fine print.

(Click to enlarge)

The teeny tiny WHITE on basically WHITE mouseprint says:

“Lash inserts were applied to add lash count to Drew’s lashes before applying LashBlast Fusion mascara.”

Yep. I knew it had to be too good to be true and even though they cover their asses by including that almost invisible disclaimer, this is pretty much false advertising and Covergirl AND Drew Barrymore, who at the photo shoot should have said, “hey, isn’t this a little dishonest?”, should be ashamed of themselves.

This ad does not tell me what your product does. It tells me, after 3 days of searching for it, what your makeup artists can do and that’s dishonest. I’m not a makeup artist and neither are most of the women buying this product,. Women who, I can guarantee, AREN’T like me and looking for fine print and are buying this product based on the picture in the ad WHICH IS A LIE.

ADVERTISERS: SHOW ME WHAT YOUR FUCKING PRODUCT DOES AND DON’T LIE TO ME.

Your product can’t be too great if you have to LIE about what it does.

So fuck Covergirl. I will never buy another Covergirl product as long as I live and my opinion of Drew Barrymore has gone down by quite a bit because she went along with this lie and smiled for the camera. There’s no integrity there.

Obviously ads lie all the time. The reason I was looking for fine print is because there’s always fine print. But I think this ad was extra deceptive with putting white text on white skin in a print so small I had to put my glasses on to read it. Again, I was actively looking for fine print for 3 days and didn’t see it until the 4th day OH AND BY THE WAY, I went to college for advertising. I know how it all works. Because of that, I’m not as easily fooled as most people and this is also a very good example of why I decided not to get into that industry.There’s way too much sleaze and deception.

Anyway, the ad just pissed me off and even though my voice isn’t very big and this post isn’t going to make a bit of difference, I just couldn’t sit there and not say anything about it.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I can’t art journal to save my life. “But anyone can art journal!” I’ve been told when I’ve said this out loud, but that’s not true. I mean, unless you don’t have hands or you’re blind or something, yes, you can physically art journal (and I’m sure some people could even overcome those obstacles and make beautiful journals!) but I don’t think everyone is particularly suited to it and I think I am definitely one of those people.

So first of all, for those wondering “what is an art journal?”, allow me to explain: an art journal is simply a book full of art, kind of like a scrapbook and sometimes using scrapbooking elements, but usually an art journal has more homemade elements in it than prefab ones. Sometimes art journals have themes, sometimes not. Most of the time it’s in a diary format in that each page is expressing something emotional or personal, but there usually isn’t a whole ton of text like you would have in a written journal.

I have many friends who art journal such as Eveline Timeless, Sirens Idyll, Nolwenn and Poetic Dreams and if you follow the links on their blogs, you’ll find both instructional videos on how to do art journaling, but also the blogs of other art journalers all across the internet. Suzi Blu, Julie Pritchard and Willowing have taught classes on how to art journal (and I’m sure there are more people out there teaching classes on it) and there is even a magazine dedicated to it. In the online mixed media world, or at least the corner of it I seem to frequent, art journaling is all the rage.

And I totally cannot do it.

I tried though! You can use any old notebook or sketchbook to use as an art journal but the standard is the good ol’ Moleskine, which I used it my latest attempt at making an art journal. Behold:

Introducing myself on the first page to any potential readers should I accidentally leave the book somewhere. I thought I was off to a pretty good start.

Page 2 was done shortly after laparoscopy #4 when the doctor wanted to put me on Lupron.
If you read my page on endometriosis, you’ll see how I feel about Lupron.

And then…

….

…yeah. :o/

The thing is, by the time I basecoat a page with whatever colour I want to use and wait for it to dry I’ve either forgotten what I wanted to express OR I’ve already written it all out and gotten it out of my system in my written journal, of which I have many many many many. Basically, art journaling for me, is way too slow of a process. I would LOVE to leave behind beautifully illustrated, mixed media books when I die for future generations to marvel over but I think they’re going to have to settle for just text because it seems as though that’s what I’m best at and writing is just how I express myself. (Although since becoming medicated, I no longer write hypergraphically so I’m not going through a notebook every month. This is both good and bad. Good because notebooks are expensive. Bad because I miss spending whole days just writing writing writing and documenting every little thing.)

In my written journals, I don’t even doodle. Sometimes I decorate the covers, like this one for example, but most of the time I leave the covers as they come and I almost always write in them using my beloved Pilot V5 extra fine pens in BLACK, although sometimes I’ll use Uniball Fusion pens because they come in colours, but that’s still pretty rare because I don’t like their tips. (Like, in a few weeks my current journal will be full and the next ones up to bat are a pink journal and a blue journal that are both sparkly and identical except in colour and I have Uniball Fusion pens in the corresponding colours – although Uniball Fusion pens are expensive and don’t go far so the ends of the books will probably be in my regular black ink.)

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that I’m envious of people who can actually express themselves through art journaling and I’m hoping that after participating in The Sketchbook Project, I’ll maybe dust off my Moleskine and give it another try. I think another part of it is that I’m actually pretty utilitarian and so my lizard brain is all “why make it pretty when you don’t have to? Writing’s faster!” and then there’s also my inner critic, who has the voice of my evil grandmother, saying, “you could be spending that time on art that pays your bills blah blah blah” and I really need to learn how to beat that voice back. Perhaps this will be my new year’s resolution for 2011.

In other news, my pink & green girls are coming along fabulously and if I didn’t need the money, they wouldn’t be for sale once they were finished because I am absolutely in love with them. Each girl is going to be on her own canvas, which is what I’ll be working on today, and be her own piece, but really, I envision selling them as a set. I doubt that’ll happen because when I make paintings intended to be sold together, it never happens, but hey, I still try. Here’s a sneak peak at my pink & green girls that are going to simply be titled “Pink & Green I” and “Pink & Green II” because I’m original like that:

And with that, I’m off to find breakfast and get back to work on these canvases. I hope you all have a wonderful day!

HOLY FUCK! THERE IS FUCKING FOOD GROWING IN MY BACKYARD!

This fact, from time to time, when I really think about it just blows my tiny little mind. I don’t really know why I think it’s such a big deal, but I’ve been examining that tonight and I think it’s the whole “not being dependent on the grocery store” thing. And maybe the fact that I nurtured these CRAZY HUGE PLANTS from teeny tiny seeds since March, not really knowing what was going to happen. It’s not like my frontyard garden where I scatter seeds, let them do their own thing out there with very little help from me except watering them twice in the beginning and then I know more or less what’s going to happen to them. They are going to grow into purple, pink, white, blue and sometimes yellow flowers that grow into this one gigantic bush that people walking past marvel over.

And here’s where I might as well segue into what some of you will see as bad news: this is the last year I’m going to do the Keep Off the Lawn Project (which is just a stupid name for my wildflower frontyard garden for those not in the know). Blake’s going to weed whack the garden in a couple of weeks before everything starts going to seed and next year instead of spreading wildflower seeds we’re going to be spreading grass seed or laying down sod. :o/

Here’s the fact of the matter: I love my frontyard garden, like really really love it, but at the same time it gives me massive anxiety and this week, after I went out and took pictures of it and noticed all the weeds and fretted over the seeds that never grew or the fact that the back half of the garden is all bachelor’s buttons and the front is all cosmos and it should be the opposite because cosmos are taller that bachelor’s buttons. Also, the bachelor’s buttons bloomed in July and started going to seed at the beginning of August while the cosmos just started blooming a couple of weeks ago so the whole thing looks uneven ad unkempt, like in a bad way. And unless I spend hours and hours and hours out there transplanting, there’s no way to fix it (and even that probably wouldn’t even be possible, everything’s way too close together).

And here’s the thing, which I’ve explained before: I can’t spend hours and hours and hours out there. I can barely spend the few minutes out there it takes me to take pictures of the garden. I feel like I’m being watched and judged by people n the cars going by and I’m terrified of someone walking down the street talking to me or worse, my neighbour who I barely know and our relationship is super awkward for a million reasons I won’t go into right now. So I sit here and fret about the weeds and how REAL gardeners walking by are judging me and my garden. I paid the kids twice this summer to weed the garden (and again to deadhead the bachelor’s buttons), but kids aren’t very good weeders, they aren’t very strong and I can’t be out there telling them what to pull or what to leave or how to do it. I mean they do their best and really weeding the garden is just an excuse for me to give them money anyway, but that doesn’t help my anxiety over weeds.

Wayne & Judy’s house, well “old house” I suppose, on the left of us is for sale right now for only $99,999.00 (it was purchased for $150,000!) so it’s getting a craptonne of people looking at it and they make me nervous as all hell. Wayne & Judy’s backyard and back deck, as I’ve explained before, overlooks both our front AND backyards so there’s absolutely no privacy ad lately every time I’ve gotten up the courage to go out and do something in either garden, there’s been some stranger either touring the house with the real estate agent or ever crazier, people have been pulling over, because the price of the house is advertised right on the “for sale” sign, and have gotten out of their cars to look in the windows and come right into the backyard and look around. To even GET into the backyard you have to open a latched gate! I don’t get the nerve of these people!

AND WORSE! GET THIS! Two weeks ago some creepy balding guy knocked on my door and wanted to know if I knew anything about Wayne & Judy’s house! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, RIGHT? I just about had a goddamn heart attack right there, I swear to god! And I was SO STUPID about it too. When people knock on our door, the dogs generally bark like crazy until they sniff whoever it is (no matter who it is) and then they go lay down. This guy knocked gently enough that he didn’t set off the dogs, which I always see as a good thing (I’ve trained just about all delivery people to do that because the barking makes me crazy and I don’t know how to make them stop – anyway, totally different topic…) so when I answered the door, I actually stepped outside and closed the door behind me. So the kids didn’t know I was interacting with this stranger and the dogs didn’t know and what if he was a crazy stalker person who wanted to kill or abduct me? No one would know I was gone or hurt or dead or whatever! In hindsight I was just like, what, are you fucking retarded? That was so stupid! Anyway…

So this guy, who again, was totally twitchy and creepy and I just got a seriously disturbed vibe from him, asked me if I knew about the house and I said that I could probably answer any question he had and he was just like, “well tell me about it” so I told him the downsides: electric baseboard heaters, no place for a normal furnace if you wanted to upgrade, because of the electric heat and the fact that it’s a seriously old house with no weather-proofing, Wayne & Judy had like, $400-$500/month hydro bills in the winter. You can’t get a queen-sized boxspring upstairs because the stairs are at an angle where you can’t get it around the corner, so if you want a queen-sized bed, you’re getting a mattress on the floor. One bedroom doesn’t have a window or a door.  Mice. Lots & lots of mice. No basement. Living room carpet was pissed on so much that it needs replacing and the house stinks of dog pee (unless the owner replaced it, which I doubt).  Blah blah blah. So I told him all this and he starts telling me about how he’s going through a divorce and “the bitch” is getting half of their $400,000 house and she took all of his “fucking” retirement money and he’s like, telling me all these details about his divorce, like the fact that he’ll be paying $1100/month in child support and I’m thinking “dude, what the fuck” but just nodding and hoping like hell that this creepy as fuck guy will not be my new neighbour…then two days ago I was in the backyard checking on the veggies and there that creepy guy was on the back deck of the house with the real estate agent. The house still has a “for sale” sign on it and a lot of people have been through since I saw that guy so I don’t know anything but man…I hope this dude doesn’t move in next door. I mean, he kinda leered at me when he was with the real estate agent. So creepy.

Wow, did I ever go on a tangent there.

My point is that the frontyard garden stresses me out more than it gives me pleasure so after talking to Blake about it, I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m still anti-lawn, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have to deal with grass. Mowing is Blake’s job. There *are* two flower beds in the front where I will plant flowers, I don’t know what kind yet because the beds are in a shady area and I don’t know what to plant,  but I figure I’ll let the kids have one of them each to grow whatever they want from a list of what will grow there and they can start their seeds in March when I start mine for the back garden.

Speaking of the back garden, Blake & I are considering expanding it next year, although we haven’t decided definitively. Our neighbour on the right (named Frances, I haven’t written about him much because there’s nothing to write about), whose house is also for sale, never goes in his backyard EVER so I don’t have to worry about making small talk with him because we have no privacy. I will have to contend with new neighbours once Wayne & Judy’s house sells but I’m going to treat this as immersion therapy and try to just ignore them. God help me if they’re friendly, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So that’s the plan.

Out of everything we planted in the back garden, which was a lot, the only things that thrived were sugar snap peas, burgundy beans, bobcat tomatoes, sugary cherry tomatoes and green and purple peppers. The tomatoes and peppers were started indoors in march and the bobcat tomatoes out there are fucking ridiculous. There are 3 plants, that are more like BUSHES, that have grown so big it just looks like one giant tomato bush. The tomato cages were useless because there were too small, so the tomatoes grew tall enough it pulled the cages right out of the ground and they’re all supported by leaning on each other in like, a tee-pee formation. Only one of my cherry tomato plants thrived, which sucks because they’re awesome, but the cage was useless with that one too because of it being too small. I had no idea how big tomato plants could get so I got the small 99 cent cages instead of the bigger $4.99 ones. Next year we’ll get the bigger ones.

And I guess that’s enough of my crazy talk, I’ll just get on with the pictures.

(more…)

The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.

“Decorative” is sometimes the meanest word you can use in art, a real no-no.

I did the roach stuff to keep decorators, or the kind that buy art to match the furniture or to put over the sofa, away. Although, my art would fit over the sofa because it’s long and thin, so it’s a joke! I don’t know how many people want to hang The Process, the giant, scary one of someone who worships Christ and the devil over their sofa, though. That’s what I like; it might be sofa sized, but not sofa-subject appropriate.”

- John Waters in Juxtapoz magazine

via my mom:

“Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears.”

- Richard Wilkins

Hmmm. I wonder which Richard Wilkins said this.

“Whatever desire Bogusky had for stability quickly morphed into ambition. Soon after Chuck Porter—a friend of his dad’s—hired the community-college dropout as senior art director, Bogusky set about turning the sleepy Coconut Grove agency into a fame machine. ” – Filling in the blanks. Part 1 by Alex Bogusky who did not leave the world’s hottest agency to find his soul