Why I love to photograph banjo players:

They NEVER MOVE.

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Terry Baucom and Tony Rice perform with Mountain Heart at FiddleFest in Roanoke, VA.

When I posted this twitpic of my office-in-progress, my friend Taryn requested some closeup shots of my monitor.  The monitor is one of my Favorite Things Ever, so I did.

The Monitor was originally Radford University surplus property, but I adopted it after it was on my desk at Whim for like ever.

The stickers come from all over.  My friend Grant asked me where I got the sticker on the back that says “Certified” (I forget what the rest said as I’ve since covered it up – Wilderness Rescue something).  When I told him some dude was giving them away for free, he told me he’d done a month-long course to earn one.

Most of them are bands.  My friend Walt was a promoter for Sony at the time and was forever giving away band stickers.  Thus, there are bands on the monitor that I love to freakin’ pieces, bands I loathe, and bands I’ve never fucking heard of.  It’s easy to guess which are which.

… Which also explains the Ozzy sticker.  In our old Whim office (remind me to post pictures of that awesome) the Monitor sort of blended into the background.  I’ve taken it with me in my travels since and it’s definitely an attention-whore.  When I worked at Ferrum people would come into my office and tell me how much they liked my “computer with the stickers.”

The Monitor’s right side is the most badass because I let it fall on that side in the back of my car, where it sat for several days while I commuted from Ferrum to Floyd on Cannady’s Gap Road.  The scratches and distortion are awesome.  Due to this, I decided if I ever get to do a grunge project I’m going to create my own distortion rather than fakin’ it with Photoshop.

The top is kind of lame, because I had to leave the vents open so it wouldn’t burst into flames (awesome as that would be).

I made a shitty photoshop collage of my favorite bits, because there’s just so much going on on this thing.  Sorry in advance for its massiveness.

So, that’s my monitor.  It gets a max of 1024×768, weighs 40 pounds, makes a horrible buzzing sound, and I love it forever.

About five years ago when I moved out of my parents’ house, I amassed a number of hand-me-downs.  Many of these proved useful enough to figure in my daily life from then on; others sat untouched in a box and were toted around from apartment to apartment in each subsequent move.  I insisted to myself that eventually they would prove useful.  Some did.

I nearly bought this lamp from West Elm before realizing that buying lamps is stupid since I had a handful of unboxed hand-me-down lamps stashed in my slowly-shrinking collection of unsorted moving boxes:

The trouble with hand-me-downs is they usually never jive with the stuff I pick up for myself.  So, I fixed it.

Here’s the before:

I kind of dug the silhouette of it, but wasn’t into the delicate flowers & brass quite so much.  That’s the original shade on the right.  It’s the kind that clips onto an incandescent bulb, so even if I liked it I wouldn’t be able to use it anymore.

And the after:

The shape is so much more obvious now.

I already had the shade, and the spray paint I bought to paint these shelf supports in my kitchen (and then didn’t):

So instead of buying a new lamp for 60 bucks, I made a new one for nothing.  So, that’s alright.

When we moved in in May:

Now:

This stuff’s been there about a month and none of it’s dead yet.  I’m shocked.

Edited to add: I resized these after adding the text, and didn’t mean for one word to be bigger than the other.  Infuriating.

Hey guys,

The Internet just wanted to you be aware of acne.  Dear everyone:  acne exists.  See?  Now you’re aware.  Mission accomplished.

Solid Chocolate Lungs.

Solid. Chocolate. Lungs.

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Photo by Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (flickr)

My rental backyard currently looks like this:

The photo doesn’t show it’s biggest problem – a serious drainage issue that makes walking to that gate nigh-impossible and prompted me to christen the house “SWAMPHOUSE” during the rental process.  The good: income from mud wrestling tournaments.  The bad: best place in town for hot, sexy mosquitos to get it on.

Before the summer has ended (or likely, as the summer ends), I’d much rather it look like this:

It should also feature this:

Tessellating Paving Stone.  Yes.

Tomorrow I paint walls.  This may be getting out of hand.

Images made from Rubiks Cubes.  It’s interesting how the artist (artists?) transitions from video game icons to full-on photo style images over time.  I wonder if he/she solves the cubes to fill the solid areas or cheats and uses them pre-solved out of the box.

(Why I quit wearing contacts)

Janine Antoni

On interpretation:  participants/parkers describe color-coordinated parking as a calling for “healthcare for the elderly, adequate women’s rights and human rights”, and as “bullshit.”

Carpark from Mark Tribe on Vimeo.

Also, I would have titled this project “COLORPARK” instead, but in 1994 when it was developed I was too busy hanging out on the third grade playground, trying to get the swing to go over the bar.