does anyone want to help me turn this into a childrens book?

Once there was a belly button who was attached to a being. The belly buttons name was Innie and it was very fond of the spring time. “When it is spring I get to breathe!” thinks Innie constantly. Now, Innie isn’t just the average belly button, Innie has hopes, dreams and desires. “For instance” remarks Innie, “I would really enjoy going to the moon to have some cheese. Oh! I would also love to travel to Australia because Koala bears live there! But most of all, I wish I could duplicate myself to finally have a friend.”
Innie has always lived a difficult life. You see, when Innie was born his mother had died, so he has never grown up with parents or a family. His life is left in a hairy wilderness where no one else lives so communication is nearly impossible. Sometimes, rarely and usually only once a day, Innie will get to see the outside world and everything it is made of. Sadly though, he does not get to clean himself much at all and is sometimes left dirty for days on end. “I like to be clean just as much as I like to see the sunlight!” says Innie empathetically. “Maybe someday I will get to take a nice long bath and wash myself with soap to get out all the fuzzies. I don’t like the fuzzies because they smell really bad.”
All Innie has ever wanted was to duplicate himself to have a friend. It seems like everyone around him has a friend or gets to clone himself. “It seems to me that everyone has a job out here!” The brain has intelligence and gets to reason, imagine, and keeps the rest of the being in order while the eyes see, the mouth tastes, the ears listen, and organs keep the being alive. “Even those tiny cells get to duplicate and be the building blocks!” cried Innie suddenly. He was not happy, he was not content, and most of all, he felt as if he were useless. “Maybe I’m not fit for this world! I’ll just run away!” Although he tried to escape and break away it would not happen. He is stuck for life on this being.
One day, though, to Innie’s surprise, he met a friend! It was on a warm and sunny day at the beach, one of those rare times that Innie finally gets to see. From afar, he saw another belly button who was also attached to a being. “Oh my I can not believe my eyes…maybe, just maybe he could be my friend! Am I clean, do I look okay?” As he came closer to the belly button he felt self conscious about the smelly fuzzies. “Hello there!” shouted the other belly button. “My name is Outtie, how do you do?”
“I am right as rain! My name is Innie” said he with joy. He took a long look at Outtie and realized that fuzzies were on him too! “Why look” chuckled Innie, “we both have fuzzies.”
“Why yes, I am rarely clean, but, you don’t mind?” asked Outtie politely.
“No, no, not at all my good friend.” And Innie and Outtie became quite close.
“Say”, said Outtie, “Will you be my clone?”
“I wouldn’t say no” said Innie with joy.
So Innie finally had wish of being duplicated and no longer felt that he was useless.

Ohhh, when we find things...

I found a flash project from high school that I made. Needless to say, it's epic.
Find it below:


Jesus that's messed up.

Well, sparkle and fade, eh?

All,
Did this blog really wink out after only 12 posts? Really? Oh man. That doesn't bode well for any of our future endeavors now does it?

Get back into taking them pictures and posting 'em.

C'mon now!

rest in peace

rest in peace julian. you were always my favourite man, and funny and good and great. always wanting to fight people in parking lots. remember when we met up at the 7-11 parking lot when we were 13? and you had just fought someone? love you man.

lately..... and dreams

I look out from my window that sits securely on the third story and I peer out onto the lonely desolate streets that have called my name and beckoned me to be with them at dusk. The windows are an awkward shape and it allows a flowing draft to pinch my nose. Yet, for some reason that I can not explain, it comforts me to know that the wind wants to follow me, here. Houses line up and touch each other side by side without knowing their own names and one catches my attention as it sits quietly in between a funeral home and a daycare center for children. A family in black laments in sorrow for a loss; they never saw it coming, and it is here, it is real, this is reality. And yes, down the lane a young mother that is innocent in her eyes, but guilty in her heart, picks up her daughter by the wrist and tells her to shut up. Is this really the town that I chose to live in?

The house is a grainy yellow that has undergone sever damage of weather patterns that make it impossible to predict what is about to come. The paint falls off slowly and one can see the wood underneath, a putrid yellow wood that eats away at a soul. The windows have been broken but the glass still sparkles in the light of the street lamps that never turn off. One by one each light turns on duty, almost paying respect to the evil that lurks at night on this street. My eyes avert my attention to a cat that waits to find its peace in a corner with some dinner without this society interrupting him. Why does that cat purr so soundlessly at the sky, up into the night? A purr that is so deep, protective, and insecure, as if to say “There must be someone up there, and if there is, please, help.”

As the cat struts along with his head down he sits to stare at a man sifting through the trash of the decaying house material. He is poor and his face shows lines of hate and sadness. His hair is white and curly and flows everywhere that the wind would like to take it, which makes him very irritable. The wind picks up speed, movement, and whips him in the face; it is his own punishment for making mistakes in a beautiful world. It is his repent that his family wanted him to have. His eyes are hidden, and if he can not see, and if the world can not see his eyes, then he does not exist. That is comforting as well.

A woman appears as if out of nowhere and begins to talk with the old beggar and will not leave him in peace. And yes, she as well does not feel sorry for him, but he feels sorry for her. She is plump, short, trying so hard to be accepted. Her head carries a black mop and I can tell that she tries so hard in the morning, in front of that mirror to make herself beautiful. Pretty for who?... for a man in a bar down the street that beats his women so? When she walks past the lamp, and the yellow house, and the child care center, and the funeral home, she catches a glimpse of herself in the broken glass and wonders if she is real. So I watch her persist with the beggar, because he might be the only one in the world that thinks of her as wonderful.
The night protrudes on, forcing the path of destruction, of lame evils to step onto an unknown path. A couple across the lane yells at one another, telling each partner to fuck off and die. Twenty something year old boy stares at the ground and his feet move on, step by step, the lonely cracks feeling warmth for the first time in a year. Clouds move in on the stars territory and they start to argue, one by one, but the stars lose and they begin to cry. A puddle forms on the window sill, and without knowing I put out the flame, the heart of my cigarette in the puddle. I think I may have conquered and achieved victory. The night protrudes on silently without even a whisper.

I am hungry, I tell myself but can not help but watching this street outside of where I live take hold of me and hold me in its arms. Depart, as I will, to find a refrigerator full of nothing but a cool draft that will pinch me in the end.

i saw this really interesting program on TVB (Hong Kong television channel we get via satellite dish) that gave me hope about the future of HK. this couple talked about how they felt that Hong Kong citizens were too wrapped up in mindless superficial bullshit and nobody ever really talks about anything honestly. kids are so bogged down with homework and pressure to do well that they have to be taught how to really let loose and have fun, which is what they are making a living off of. these two run a sort of day camp where they teach kids how to be imaginative and carefree.

it felt really good to know that my hometown wasn't becoming completely jaded. either way, i miss it so much. Brian, you should consider going to Hong Kong. its basically the best place ever, unless you hate amazing food and cheap shopping like crazy.

ayyyyyyyye

I'm so sorry for the delays... I've once again realized that I am horrible with blogging daily. That whole self discipline thing is overrated anyway. I PROMISE to work on a photo to upload tonight. I still need to get my hands on photoshop. Suggestions?

Brian, I love what you did with the lamp! I've got one question though... why is that wolf not howling and where is the full moon? I'd give that project a B+ considering key aspects of a nightskape are missing.

I eagerly await the mastodons.

--adela

Brian's Lamp Shade Project

First of all, I hate torch lighting. I am not sure quite when it became ubiquitous, but whenever that was I started to hate it. It's faux-modern look really bothers me and I don't think torch lamps really have any place in a well-decorated (non-medieval) home.

My project started with one of these (purchased for me during move-in).

I later found two matching lamp shades in the trash. From then on, it became a project to decorate them.
Before:

I chose a simple nature scene of birch trees and a fox and created stencils in Illustrator in 15 mins or so.

From there it was just a matter of printing them on manilla folders (or cardstock if you have access to it).
Materials:

Then I got around to cutting out each of the elements (which were treated as individual stencils. If I did it again, the scene would be laid out already).

The final result is as follows!

(Notice how the lamp shade is a bit beat up...I am working on a second one which is less marred for a more ambitious design..hopefully including mastodons.)

As we get this rolling...

Well, we're slowly but surely getting things up and running around here.

WOTD: garrulous\GAIR-uh-lus; GAIR-yuh-\, adjective:
1. Talking much, especially about commonplace or trivial things; talkative.
2. Wordy.

Without saying a single word she managed to radiate disapproval . . . the air seemed to grow heavy with it and the most garrulous talker would wilt and fall silent.
-- Mark Amory, Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric

Yeah, I took it past "castrate" to an extreme. Add this badboy into your lexicon and watch your friends tear their tongues out in amazement.

Art project from Brian is forthcoming.

Brian Joins the Crew (teh Cr3w)

I definitely need to get in on this. Photos will be on their way. I am so pumped I just started my left leg on fire with rubber cement and a magnifying glass.

This just in: Forever21 now has Muscles and Hot Chip on their soundtrack for trashy shoppers everywhere.

More fun facts from beyond to come.

castro... wait no.... castrate?

THE new word of the day... which I think I will prolong into tomorrow will be castrate!

CASTRATE

take some photos... or just simply write your dreams... or write something that comes as a form of a muse or inspiration that you receive from..... castrate!

ready...?

set...?

go.

p.s. TO: adela.

tomorrow... if you get this in time... you pick a new word. if we can not communicate before hand, i suppose that this way will do fine? its like a surprise anyway!

dreams

1st dream:
Setting: an old, dark apartment. Might have been my grandparents’ old apartment in Hong Kong
People: me and two friends (I don’t remember which ones)

I’m in this apartment getting ready for bed, just kind of wandering around until I get tired and a really powerful vacuous wind pushes me against a corner. I go to another room to investigate and find a huge dark figure has taken my friends through a tiny portal at the base of a large chair. To secure the portal, there is a metal latch shaped similarly to a magnifying glass held in by suction so it would be really difficult to pull away. The figure spots me and chases me around the apartment. The figure slips away and lets me believe that I outrun it. I begin to call everyone on my phone to ask for help to find my friends and everyone is telling me that I am overreacting and that everything is ok. I asked why nobody cared that these two people somehow disappeared inside of the apartment and the only answer I got was that they were ok. After more scrambling around, the two friends somehow returned but were inside of coffin-like beds where there was a heavy lid on top of them, and the dream ends.

2nd dream:
Setting: A large mental health facility for people around my age that operated like a boarding school
People: Lots of kids I don’t know in real life, but lots of friends in the dream

From what I remember, the dream begins with me and a couple of girlfriends sitting in a circle trying to figure out a way for one of our close girlfriends to see her fiancé who is also in the hospital. The school divides the students into squads so that everyone can be efficiently ‘managed’, depending on their mental status. Each group is strictly separated from each other and follows their own schedule throughout the day. We write letters to friends in different squads and find new ways of smuggling them. Today, it is my turn to hide the notes under my shirt and sneak off to a part of the school where I’m not usually allowed. I pretend to leave to see one of the therapists, but instead I pass the note on to another student who is doing the same thing I am as we pass each other in the hallway, who sends it to the right recipient. After I deliver my share of messages, it is time for gym so I lie to a series of hall monitors for them to let me into class. There are many gyms in the school, all enclosed by heavy doors in one hallway. I forget which room it is, so I look through each one looking for a familiar face. I can’t find anyone I know, so I make a wild guess of which room is mine and happen to be right. The kids inside are playing some sort of game where they shoot off a gun with a racquetball ball as bullets to try to hit certain targets, kind of like dodgeball. I find my friends and tell them everything was sent out. As I joined the group, they began talking about the final test that is administered to determine whether or not we should be released. An instructor will tether us to the ground as we’re standing, similar to the way that the end credits are in Mortal Kombat, and we pass if react the right way without freaking out.
Then I woke up.

--adela

On the line of Fiction.

last night i had a crazy dream and it went something like this: yannick and i were invited to this party for ten days. it was not a cruise, but it was not at a huge house and apparently it was really hard to be invited, so i felt happy and honored that we were to join them. yannick had some really cool job and was making lots of money, and i was doing an independent study with pernicone, an old history professor, on russia and female oppression in the 18th and 19th century. well, anyway, the house was pretty awesome. big, open, not too many expensive things and a big kitchen and lots of doors. there was a nice view but i don't know of what. i only remember that there was a nice view. anyway, yannick and i were sipping on some wine... some classy wine, when he excused himself from me and i could see him walking over to another woman, but i did not think anything of it. anyway, exactly as he did this i started to think of my classmate brett and apparently in my dream, he had cancer and we grew to become awesome friends. i felt bad because i was not taking care of brett, or at least making him laugh, and i was out on this ten day adventure. so, i could not find yannick anywhere so i retired to my room hoping that he would come back in a bit. that night he did not come back but was there when i awoke in the morning, so i thought everything was fine. the next day we were on a yacht and it was a smaller number of people involving beer. someone was making me laugh and my mind was elsewhere, on russia i think i remember, and on my friend from dublin, chris. i saw yannick talking into a woman's ear, the same one he talked to the other day and i started to get a bit worried. you know, thoughts entered into my mind like "she's beautiful and look at me... yannick deserves someone more beautiful, he deserves someone who can be sexy, he deserves someone who can please him..." and as these thoughts were racing in my mind i walked over to them. the woman stopped smiling and yannick just looked at me. i remember my phone ringing with a text message and it was to say that brett had died so i left the yacht and spent the day writing letters in my room, crying, feeling horrible. the next day someone picked me up and as yannick arrived in a limo with the woman, the man next to me said "shes beautiful, eh?". i remember that he had a deep voice, older, nice, trust worthy, and some irish accent. i smiled and said "he's been spending a lot of time with her..." and he replied with "oh, don't you know? they have been hooking up quite often on this trip..." and then my world crashed. i pulled yannick from the car, and i remember i was mcdonalds and i threw it out but everyone was still laughing at me. i pulled yannick from the car and preceded to ask him "why why why why?" and all he could was smile. i said "don't you care about me?" he said "of course, i'm sorry, it was just a small mistake." and then i said "a small mistake on the day that my only friend here has died." then i woke up.

--rachel

I'll spot this: the first ever spot!

--rachel

--spotted

--adela