A Site of Beef by Ann-S-Thesia


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Saturday, December 02, 2000

Sara, Grey Day and A Day Without Weblogs actually draw from the same source, which is A Day Without Art, on December 1 (World AIDs Day). When I helped come up with the initial idea of Grey Day (Kimberly supplied the actual name), I was thinking of a protest similar to A Day Without Art, except instead of removing art, it would be removing all creative content; instead of blacking out, it would be "default greying out." As far as I know, Grey Day is the first wide-scale public participation in internet copyright awareness, but hardly the first of its kind of internet protest. Actually, as I mentioned earlier, I felt a little embarrassed for my lame page on A Day Without Weblogs, but even if I wasn't sick as a dog, it would still be pretty lame. I must be the only adult my age in the world who has not known anyone personally who has died of AIDS (at least that I'm aware of). So it would be presumptuous of me, with my limited experience on a personal level and limited knowledge on a professional level, to comment on the disease or to use my website/blog to educate about AIDs. So on December 1, my blog merely pointed to DWW where hopefully there were links to other blogs or websites with much more to say than I ever could.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:53 PM ||


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Faith's featuring Hieronymus at Puggie.com this month!

Watching Gunsmoke tonight triggered (sorry) a memory of a painting I did back in 1988 called "Mr. Dillon, I Don't Think We're in Dodge City No More." I'll have to scan a slide of it when I can sit up without the aid of a cushy sofa back. I guess it was done in my post-Goth neo-Spaghetti Western period.* It's rather comic and humorous, with two small sillhouettes of Matt Dillon and Festus in the background, the foreground consisting of several characters I'd made up, myself, and an albatross which was a secret symbol for a certain person I had believed we were leaving behind from our lives. How odd it is I would recall this painting at this point in my life, thirteen years after the fact, after what Stan and I went through at the end of this summer. Hmm. Maybe Finally, Albatross, I Don't Think You're in Our Lives No More.

*The post-Goth neo-Spaghetti Western (PGNSW) period of my painting started around the time we moved into our little rental house with a white picket fence on Grant Street in Fort Collins and was preceded by the post-college wrist-slashing $3.60/hour job unemployment food stamps suck disillusionment phase which in turn was preceded by my Goth phase (now that I think about it, I think I was the first Goth in Fort Collins back in 1983...people stared a lot...except there wasn't a word for it back then). The PGNSW was sort of my Gothness (which culminated in seeing The Damned in concert and meeting Dave Vanian and Rat Scabies in March, 1986) coming to terms with the fact I lived in the Western United States in the postmodern ironic Raygun era, appropriating images from 1960s TV shows like Gunsmoke, movies like Psycho and other thrillers and Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns, and listening to Ennio Morriconne (sp?) Spaghetti Western soundtracks, The Damned, The Virgin Prunes and The Dead Kennedys. Strange hybrid. The PGNSW period probably lasted until I went to grad school and moved to Madison. I don't know if there was a term for my period the first couple years in grad school...I was too depressed then to think about it. And in grad school, the profs try and kill any sense of passion you had for anything and replace it with contempt and ire. GRAD SCHOOL SUCKED. But then I got into my abstract glitter period. I think I'm still in that, simultaneously while I'm in my digital period (although I was digital even when I was in my PGNSW period too, but in a less advanced, "Mac Plus" way). Maybe 15 years from now I'll have better words for my "abstract glitter" and "digital" period. I think I have to get a little distance and perspective on it before I come up with a cool title like "post-Goth neo-Spaghetti Western."

Looking at these old slides really makes me want to do figures again. I stopped doing figures in grad school, mostly because GRAD SCHOOL SUCKED so I started to really hate people (well, just my professors, mostly...well, only my professors, PASSIONATELY), so why would I want to paint them? Doing large fields of metal and glitter was very transcendent. If you ever saw the movie "Immortal Beloved," the one about Beethoven, there was a scene when he was young and was lying outside and became one with a field of stars. It's like that. Hard to explain.

I hate that stupid ad for those clear braces. The actors they show wearing them don't even need braces. Looks like they'd cause one to lisp really badly.

Ya know, this unstated desire between Marshall Dillon and Miss Kitty is sort of like the one between Mulder and Scully.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:22 PM ||


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Sorry for the extremely lame page I put up yesterday for the Day Without Weblogs. I've been flat on my back sick since Wednesday, so it was really hard to do anything creative. This time, I know it is the flu. All the off and on poopy feeling I've had since Halloween finally built up to this finale (I hope it's over, anyway). I am wiped out and unable to work, unable to eat much or keep much food inside. I haven't been this sick since I had Mono (misdiagnosed as an infection for which I received antibiotics which developed into horrible antibiotic allergy complications) in 1988.

TVLand is having a Gunsmoke marathon this weekend. I think I'll go retro down memory lane and watch a lot of it while I rest and get my energy back. I always liked Gunsmoke. Never liked Bonanza. Bonanza always gave me an uneasy feeling...kind of like the Brady Bunch without the female component, but much creepier. Gunsmoke was creepy in a good way...in the austere mood and desolate tone. I think I also liked it because it wasn't based around a family unit. I think I had mature taste when I was a kid. I remember being subjected to my friend's taste in teevee shows and thought they were pretty peurile. But on the other hand I could only take so much of my parents' constant doses of "Masterpiece Theatre."

Which makes me think...ironically, I never watch PBS, except for catching a rare episode of "Nova." Although I love Wisconsin Public Radio and National Public Radio, the television equivalent just seems lacking or dumbed down. So much of it is geared toward kids, whereas the cable stations like A&E, Discovery, TLC, History Channel, etc., do what Public Broadcasting should be doing, but much better. Plus, there's commercials so you can use the bathroom or grab a snack. What has absolutely driven me up a wall on some PBS shows as of late is the "sub-dub-narration" or whatever it is that they've inserted, describing scenes. I think they are doing this for the blind who are "watching" the show...sort of like an aural equivalent of closed-captioning, but at least with closed-captioning, you can opt to have it or not. This is forced upon you as part of the show. To me it's just a lot of unnecessary audio clutter--there's the main narrator, usually male, and then this additional narrator, usually female, dubbed in between main narratives. Drives me nuts. If it were to be translated into a visual equivalent, it would look like a Florida Butterfly Ballot.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 12:15 PM ||



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Wednesday, November 29, 2000

I just remembered that two years ago today we lost our cat Vladimir.

If you have an animal, go hug him or her for me, OK?
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:59 PM ||


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This following post has nothing to do with my political affiliation or lack of one thereof. It's just an observance that I can't help but notice each time I hear Al Gore's voice without the visual image of him (like on the radio or something) to accompany said voice. He sounds like Mike Judge doing Butthead pretending to sound educated. (Mike Judge is the inventor of Beavis and Butthead). Listen next time. Close your eyes. Imagine. It's him!

Just to be fair, the preceding was not paid for by the Republican committee to elect George Bush Dictator President. It only came from my distorted little mind.

To be fair again, I would suppose that Dale Grippel (sp? from King of the Hill) sort of sounds like a slowed-down version of Bush. Almost seems like Judge used Bush Senior as the model for Grippel, at least visually.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 1:23 PM ||


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I think that I must have eaten some of that oyster dressing that Al and Tipper brought to the T-Day dinner that I mentioned in my 2nd paragraph of the post on November 27th. Either that or it's a continuation of this flu thang I've had since Halloween. This is not good.

Yesterday after we took Hieronymus to the Doggie Chiropractor I felt so sick, so I went to bed and Plato came and lied down next to me by my stomach. There's nothing sweeter than having a loving dog that knows you're sick as a dog.

Note to self: Ask Stan to get one of those old fashioned 1950s TeeVee Dinner Stands so I can set it up with my iBook in the loo. Would be much more convenient that way...
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:55 AM ||


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I was so angry when I wrote the post that was formerly in this spot. Thanks to some super sleuths at the Cyber Crew Forum, I was able to get some information that I need to contact the person infringing on my copyright directly as well as the head honchos at EBay. If I get no results from her first, all the lurid details will go back up.

What happened was someone was selling stuff at eBay and they were using a "logo" that I originally created that enclosed my face in a frame...knocked out my face, inserted their own. My original graphics can be found at my digital gallery under "Splash from the Past."

Sooooo nervy of them. Not something I like to wake up to in the morning. One good thing is that there are a lot of people in the Cyber Crew who are willing to help out in matters like this.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:47 AM ||



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Tuesday, November 28, 2000

I was afraid I had done something terribly wrong. I was afraid that the reason why Netscape 6 wasn't showing my pages correctly was because I had code demons (invisible to my eyes, of course) lurking amongst my HTML. I was afraid that the geeks were out to get me because I'd played nasty pranks on them in high school. Nope. My two sites, Ann-S-Thesia and Dingbatcave, just had some extra "< P >"s where they shouldn't have been (didn't notice any problems with this pre-N6) to give some extra space where I didn't want it. And last night I troubleshot the problem (all by my little blonde self) with Eyebalm. N6 doesn't like to display animated gif mouseovers. That's it. Plain and simple. It's nothing against me. Zeldman's site, Happy Cog, has the same problem. So does k10k. AM I RELIEVED OR WHAT?
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 7:23 PM ||


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I just found out that about half my pages disappeared off my Ann-S-Thesia site. Poof. This is not the first time this has happened. I really hate the host for that site. About three years ago I got my main site hosted through Simplenet, at that time an economical, dependable, and recommended company. But over the course of the next few years they changed and eventually got merged with/taken over by the evil **shudder** Yahoo. ICK! Well, I stuck with them because I am loyal to a FAULT. I have since gotten hosts for my two other sites, my dingbat site is hosted at HostSave (tell them dingbatcave.com sent you). $6.95/month, 30 megs, 2 gig transfer/mo., 5 POP email addys. My fine art site and this blog is hosted at EZ Publishing (tell them eyebalm.com sent you). $9/month, 50 megs, unlimited transfer/mo., 3 POP email addys. NO COMPLAINTS with either of those two either. I'm considering my options at this point. One is to switch to EZ Publishing for Ann-S-Thesia on a different plan that is comparable to the one I'm using with **shudder** Yahoo. I'm strongly considering that. The only thing is, I hate transferring. Looks like it's inevitable, though.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 6:32 PM ||


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If my insurance company was State Farm I'd drop them like a hot potato. Typical big business prickheads favoring the economic Darwinists who are armed and dangerous in their big SUVs, cell phone in hand, not caring who they run off the road or maim or kill, just as long as THEY are safe and given discounts for their choice in bullymobiles.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:46 AM ||



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Monday, November 27, 2000

Beef beef beef. Listening to the radio this morning and people kept saying things that got me irate. First there was this guy, some "expert" interviewed on "As It Happens" (I actually really love "As It Happens") who was comparing the post-election drama to Twin Peaks and he said something about the main character getting shot. You fool, Laura Palmer was not murdered by a gunshot. That was that *other* teevee drama. I also have to disagree that she was the main character. Yes, she was the character the plot was originally based around, however since she was *DEAD* at the beginning of the series and wasn't in as many episodes as say...Agent Cooper, I would hardly call her the main character. Then he said that people lost interest after about a dozen episodes. Yeah, the general teevee-watching public probably did because they have attention spans of five-year-olds and couldn't deal with Lynch's foray into supernatural, metaphysical and various spiritual ideas from assorted religions and mythologies, not to mention the overall unique weirdness of the show. But those of us who thought Twin Peaks was the absolute best thing ever to happen to network television EVER, ten years later STILL pull out the TP videes every spring and watch them over and over. Note to self: pick up where you left off on the TP videes. That's why everything went wrong this fall...you didn't finish your cycle!

Then on the Tom Clark show, his guest stood him up so he had to change his topic. First of all, what is it with these big-time authors stiffing WPR hosts? Look, if you're too much of a primadonna to appear on a radio talk show out of **shudder** Wisconsin (we only have the oldest and best statewide public broadcasting radio network in the NATION), then don't accept the damn invitation in the first place. Geez. I've had to do radio interviews before (once for WORT in 1990 about an art show I was having and in 1998 for Minnesota Public Radio's "Future Tense" regarding Grey Day) and it's not that fun and I'm always afraid I'll say something stupid. But I'm sure these people are quite experienced in the interview. I know I'd feel absolutely horrible if I forgot about an interview I was scheduled for. But I don't think that's their problem...I think they're just primadonnas who don't give a rat's buttocks. So anyway...I digress. Tom Clark has a pretty good attitude...he tells the name of their book, and then says "Don't Buy This Book!" He changed the topic to a straw poll on whether the listening audience thinks Gore should concede the election. Some woman called in with the most absurd reason why he should concede: "He's ruined our Thanksgiving!" Oh, puhlease. Whether you think Gore should concede or not, what an absolute stupid reason. How can Al Gore ruin YOUR Thanksgiving?!? Did he get drunk while watching the football games and make lewd comments to your oldest daughter? Did he and Tipper bring the oyster dressing that had been left out at room temperature for two days giving everyone horrid intestinal distress? Did the secret service limousine he arrived in accidentally back up into your new Saturn? Did he bring up that embarrassing moment out of your past again like he's done every Thanksgiving since 1981? No, I don't think so. I really doubt Al Gore ruined YOUR Thanksgiving. Give me a break. End Beef.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 11:31 AM ||


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I wasn't myself in my dreams. I was with a friend I had my freshman year in college and somehow she talked me into joining some sort of beauty pageant where we compete against eachother. I was totally caught off guard...I hadn't shaved my legs for a few days, and I was lying on sort of a doctor's office type bed thing and there were these women looking over my body (I was wearing a top and shorts) and taking notes. One of them put baby powder on my legs to see if I had shaved them (what's the point if they can't tell without the powder test?) I wanted to get out of there badly. Then this tall blonde model woman puts her hand on my shoulder/collar/chest area, pushing down real hard to get me to lie down so they can examine me further. I told her to stop pressing, that it was hurting, but she kept pressing harder. I started yelling and cussing at her and wake up with a start. Then in my other dream I was some sort of high society woman who was travelling with my husband (who wasn't Stan). I also had a toddler-aged son. I was walking down some really steep platform to get to the plane. I was afraid that if there was a plane accident my son wouldn't be covered by some kind of insurance or something. It was weird and stupid.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 9:51 AM ||



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Sunday, November 26, 2000

These people are boring me. I much prefer the goth version.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 7:40 PM ||


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Bad dream. Bad bad dream. (Note: although I felt well yesterday, this flu bug cold virus type thang has decided to stick around and torture me some more. Will it ever leave? Will it ever make me feel truly horrible enough so that I don't do anything all day and just collapse so I can finally get over it instead of just making me feel kinda poopy but still well enough to futz around on the 'puter because I'm such an artwork-a-holic and taking a day off to relax is against my ethics and aesthetics? I felt horrible in my sleep which probably caused this horrid collage-o-crap nightmare.) I can't remember any definite story line. Just a jumble of images. Like the one where I'm looking at this little mini tiny history of rock and roll book and I'm flipping through the little pages and don't find anything under "Eno" so I look under "Roxy Music" and the picture of Eno is NOT Eno. The guy is bald, but he has a widow's peak ferchrisssakes. NOT ENO. Stupid dream. The Bowie pictures weren't too bad....for a dream anyway...sorta circa "Station to Station." Then I'm checking my email (oh please, must I DREAM about this?) And there's people ragging about my blog and somebody is asking me the dumbest question: "Can you make me a graphic for Pokemon Chia Pet?" or something equally as stupid. Then I remember taking a bath in my old fashioned clawfoot tub but there were all these people around in the bathroom talking to me. I was wondering if I could put pajamas on and still take a bath so they wouldn't see me naykud. The clawfoot was starting to overflow.
posted by Ann-S-Thesia at 10:09 AM ||



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