Laurie Pink draws pictures for you. Mostly with speech bubbles, sometimes without.
I know the wedding is done, but you can still wave your flag at the after party! Here is a special Widdleton flag, to celebrate the marriage of William and Middleton.
Simply print out & sellotape to a straw/stick to make your very own patriotic flag!
It’s mother’s day! You don’t have a card! Quickly! Download this! Then print it out! (don’t forget to tell your printer to scale it to fit A4. It should be exactly A4 size, but some printers are funny like that).
Awesome! You’re the best offspring ever!
(And keep my name on the back - I drew this for you, man, it’s the least you can do. Yeah! Fist-bump!)
Graham Linehan just retweeted David Whittam’s* link to an… intriguing music video on YouTube, by a lady called Lori Watt, of New Zealand. She writes, composes & sings all her songs herself, yes she does.
I had a look at what other YouTubely treasures she had to offer and found this one, which I like even more than the one Graham posted.
I felt moved to write a small piece chronicling the video. I hope you don’t mind.
I hadn’t realised how long it had been since I’d written anything. Getting words out of my brain into a not-appalling order has been like teasing wire wool through rusty cogs. Apologies if this shows.
Chill In My Vein, by Lori Watt : A Music Video
Lori Watt walks towards us across a sunset beach of glistening sand. Her seductive stride may or may not be down to the trousers she’s wearing. Her feet are bare, her arms swinging with an easy-going abandon.
Then she remembers she’s meant to be babysitting for her cousin, and wanders off.
She has a chill in her vein, Lori sings to us, wearing her yellow Data-from-ST:TNG contacts. Certain things come undone, she croons, unfastening the buttons on her lime-green jersey vest. She’s trapped in a dark place, she informs us, from inside a large cardboard box, and in the garden she wipes away some wayward eyeliner that stands in for tears on her face.
Such moving literal translations of lyrics (look out for the “two-way street”) are but the start of a powerful four minute, thirty-seven second visual journey.
Lori’s seductive cystitis-walk takes us to her producer and dear, white-haired old mother, sitting on a bench outside a newsagents, where two unknowing pre-teens caper about on wobbly rollerblades.
Unaccustomed to Lori’s particular genre, both adults must look away from the camera, in order to conceal their broadly grinning faces.
Alas, it all starts to go wrong when the producer, after briefly perusing her contract, is driven off-screen by a barbed comment box that pops up over her head. Then Lori’s white-haired mother seizes hold of a child, keeping it in place with her iron octogenarian grip until it finally manages to break free and run away. Disappointed, the old woman rises and minces coquettishly towards camera, then remembers she meant to nip to the bookies, and exits stage right instead.
Bereft of company, Lori undulates down to the beach to consider her arm. Her mother follows, spotting the children in the surf. Whilst sitting on driftwood, itching at ringworm, Lori is momentarily grasped by an unseen man with gnarled hands & stumpy fingers.
Fortunately, Lori manages to wrest herself free. Her experience forces Lori’s mother to see the forceful grabbing of young girls from the other side of the fence, and she swears never to do so again.
The children roam happily, unmolested, and Lori and her mother discover a lost love for each other, strolling with hearts full of romance hand-in-hand down the beach. The children dare to walk close-by, and Lori’s mother gives the camera man one of her special smiles.
As the video narrative has finished a little earlier than the song does, a slideshow follows to fill time:
Lori in a little skirt. That time Lori was on stage. A guitar. Lori with a guitar, although a different guitar to the one we’ve just seen. A treble clef having an acid flash-back.
Moving acoustic string-plucking that challenges us to re-consider the the accepted notion of “in tune” that the music industry forces upon us, fades in.
The slideshow, having covered Lori’s musical career all the way back to infancy, ends.
Because it has been a while since we watched it, a series of clips gives us an abridged recap video’s narrative: The Producer whispering cruel things to wheeled children about how she is a very good musician in NZ history, Lori tending her itching skin, and that terrifying appearance of the Unexpectedly Old Hand.
In a moving denouement, Lori discovers and meets up with the leathery, stubby-fingered assailant and forgives him.
He places his old, gnarled hands on her hips, this time in an act of not-at-all-creepy tenderness. Awkwardly, they hug.
It’s all going to be alright.
Fade out.
Important Epilogue:
Lori Watt has written and recorded her own songs, made videos for them, edited it all together, and posted them on Youtube. She has fans, and has even been interviewed. Have I done any of these things? No, I have not.
Just saying, y’know, it’s easy to mock, but better to go out and make stuff you love.
(I’m still posting this, though, because I really really enjoyed writing it. What a bitch)
* I know, I could have started this with “David Whittam tweeted…”, but I didn’t see that tweet. I saw the retweet. It would have been a bare-faced lie to make it like I was all reading David Whittams feed all day long, like “Girlfriend, I read that David Whittam tweet!”. That would be a lie - unfair to you and David and, ultimately, myself.
There is a potato on our front wall. I first knew of this from Sj’s tweets yesterday.
@essers: What’s that on our wall? http://twitpic.com/2yscgb
@essers: Well, of course. It’s a potato! #Duh http://twitpic.com/2ysczi
@M4rkm: @essers an apple?
@essers: @M4RKM An apple of the ground, yes…
@essers: @M4RKM Somehow, an apple would have made more sense #thelogicofmisplacedfruit&veg
@CalamityKate @essers I was so confused by that potato this morning!
(Kate is Sj’s eldest)
@essers: @Calamitykate you know it IS potato fairy season…
@essers: Out-thunk again! Don’t mention it on the Oxbridge application… RT @calamitykate: @essers I was so confused by that potato this morning!
@Baroness_Sheene: @essers does that mean your wall is chipped?
@essers: @baroness_sheene Ba-dum tchish! Congratulations on the worst potato joke in response to that picture :D
@HarrietPenguin: @essers well what else was it likely to be? Durr. I knew as soon as I saw it.
@JustKristin: @essers The Potato Placer strikes again! Was the spud able to give you any information?
@M4rkm: @essers what are you going to do with it??
@essers: @M4RKM I am going to watch it carefully, to discern its purpose…
@M4RKM: @essers I bet, that someone will STEAL the potato….
@essers: How can you steal an unowned potato? #Mmmexistential
@M4RKM: @essers i’ll rephrase.. maybe someone will claim ownership of the abandoned potato…
@essers: @M4RKM I am intrigued as to what will happen to the potato, if we just leave it. I wish I had a webcam to watch it…
Today I saw the potato for the first time, upon leaving the house for a run with Smith (the whippet). It was a bit like meeting a vegetable celebrity. I was pleased that it had stayed in place, so that we could see each other.
Later I met Sj from work, and when we got home, I took a picture of the potato (still there) & tweeted the important potato update.
@lauriepink: Wall potato update! It is Still There. http://twitpic.com/2z1zp5
@JustKristin: @lauriepink I really think that someone should go out and talk to the potato, get its demands…
@lauriepink: @justkristin It seems quite stoic. I’m not sure whether it would interact.
The potato remains on the wall. Updates here, as they occur.
Picture meme! Picture meme!
(click upon to embiggen)
This Influence Map meme (created by fox-orian of Deviant Art) has been filtering through all my favourite illustratey twitter-mates of late (if you want to have a go, you can get the template here). It’s made for some very interesting viewing, and some very pretty viewing indeed. It’s also an excellent way to stumble across artists you’ve not seen before (I discovered the amazing art of Craig Mullins this way).
I’ve decided to cheat a bit, and do a few. I realise the point of the Influence Map exercise may well be to ruthlessly pare down ALL your influences into one map, but… but… there are so many!
I couldn’t possibly leave out any of the chaps & chappesses on this map, as their work has all contributed enormously to why I draw what I draw the way I draw. And their drawings make me go “mmmmmmm” inside, which is probably the most important part.
Next up: Makers!
Though maybe not for a while. How did all these illustrators doing their Influence Maps knock them out in a day? It took me that long just to think of people & find pictures to use on tinterwebs!
It must be perfect, you see. PERFECT!
A sketch for potential painting on the wooden hording that’s up next to The Band On The Wall in Manchestie at the moment…
Today Sj went to a site called Write Or Die, which she found via a link posted on Twitter. Write or Die is good. You write, and if you stop for too long, it plays a very disturbing noise (like babies, but wronger), or an irritating noise (banaphone song! Joys!), or - in Kamikaze Mode - starts deleting what you’ve already written, one word at a time.
I put my setting at 500 words in 10 minutes. I didn’t quite make the word limit in the time, so it was fortunate that I had discovered the “electrocution mode” button was unclickable (it must be a mac compatibility thing). I was still writing after 10 minutes, so it chose not to punish me. Anyway, this is the story I wrote in 37 minutes…
Toby The Little Red Dog
Once upon a time there was a little dog called Toby, and Toby was red.
It’s unusual for a dog to be red, and in a way it was a bit unfair, because it’s easy to see a red dog and think it’s covered in paint, or even blood.
Toby had had a lot of baths.
Toby had also been seized on a catchpole by frightened dog wardens quite a few times, too.
But the misunderstanding was usually quite quickly cleared up, and everyone laughed about it afterwards, and then said things like “Fancy that, a red dog!” and “I thought he was just covered in paint - that’s why I washed him!” and “I thought he was covered in blood! That’s why I ran away and locked the door and called the man to come and shoot him with a tranquilizer dart. Poor poppet.”
Some people, when they realised Toby just happened to be red - especially small children and parents of small children (and occasionally adults who didn’t have any children but watched children’s TV anyway, for their own reasons) - would say “But he’s not even very big…”
They’d be thinking, of course, of the cartoon, Clifford The Big Red Dog. They’d often sound a little bit disappointed as they said it, too.
Fortunately, Toby was quite a happy and garrulous little dog, and so wouldn’t notice the slightly sad tone of voice, which was good because he probably would have felt quite upset about that.
Of course, this was a silly thing to be disappointed about, because Clifford The Big Red Dog is just a cartoon. Red dogs come in every size that normal dogs come in. They are just much rarer.
Since Toby had started wearing a special vest that said “I AM A LITTLE RED DOG. NOT A DIRTY DOG OR A KILLING DOG”, the confusions had happened considerably less, which made Toby pleased, because he didn’t like the tranquilizer darts, as he’d often get itchy reactions around the needle-pricks on his bottom.
One day, though, Toby was running in the woods when he saw a pheasant. He was VERY excited, and chased the pheasant through the hedge. Then the got stuck. Then he got unstuck by pulling extra hard until his vest tore off. He was glad not to be in the hedge anymore, but the pheasant had run away and he didn’t know where he was.
After a while of wandering along farm lanes and through fields he didn’t know, he came across a farmer’s house. He was very pleased, because he’d been out ALL day and was quite, quite worn out.
When the farmer saw him through the kitchen window, trotting across his yard, all red and wobbly-legged, he leapt out of his chair, nearly knocking over the lovely cup of strong tea that the farmer’s wife had just made and put on the table in front of him.
“My lord!” cried the farmer in his endearingly regional burr as he ran to the front door, fetching his big farmer’s gun on the way.
Toby didn’t have his vest on anymore! How was the farmer to know that he was just a red dog & not a BAD dog?
The farmer stood in the doorway and sighted down his gun, squinting, with his itchy finger on the gun’s itchy trigger (not itchy like Toby got from tranquilizer dart needles, but itchy in a jumpy, tense way. Which, incidentally, was a bit like Toby’s back legs felt when he woke up from the tranquilizer darts). His wife joined him at the door, looking nervously over his shoulder. She was worried. Partly because the kitchen table had just been revarnished recently and she hoped she’d mopped the tea up quickly enough to keep it from making a mark; but also because a little dog covered in blood, whilst quite adorable, was always a very bad sign on a farm that relied on revenue made by produce from animals that nearly ALL dogs found delicious.
It was lucky for Toby that the farmer’s wife had joined him, because the farmer was concentrating so hard on trying to get Toby in his sights (he wasn’t very good at reloading the shotgun & had used up one of the shells shooting into the air at new year’s. Shooting up in the air is an irresponsible thing to do, as bullets falling down out of the air kill people just as surely as bullets shot right at them. But the farmer was very good at breeding cows and sheep, and not so good at being responsible when he was a bit tiddly) that he didn’t notice the flutter of white dog-vest over by the gate.
The farmer’s wife, however, DID spot it. She spotted it especially quickly, because she had never seen a pheasant wearing a vest before, and was thinking that she’d expect the first vest-wearing pheasant she ever saw to at least be wearing a vest that fitted it properly & wasn’t all tattered. Also, was it perhaps an ironic fashion statement that its vest proclaimed it to be a dog? Pheasants are quite orangey in colour, but don’t look at all like dogs. Dogs frequently chase pheasants and, indeed, some dogs are trained specially to go and pick up dead pheasants when they’ve been shot by aristocrats.
Why, thought the farmer’s wife, would the pheasant wear a vest saying it was a dog? Pheasants aren’t known for their natural sense of irony, or even for being particularly sarcastic (a surprising number of birds are. Especially finches, which comes as a surprise to most people).
Suddenly, the farmer realised that the vest the pheasant was wearing was LITTLE DOG SIZED! Also, it was tattered because it had been torn off its previous owner, which - the T-shirt quite clearly stated - was A LITTLE RED DOG!
That’s a funny coincidence, isn’t it? What with a little red dog, trotting towards the farmer and his gun, and everything…
The gun went BANG!
But the gun went bang up in the air, because the farmer’s wife’s lateral thinking kicked in just in time to put together all the odd things she was seeing in front of her at that moment (she would later realise that the answer to the dead man in the room with the puddle riddle that the farmer read out to her from the paper earlier, was that he was killed by a block of ice!) and realise that the vest wasn’t the pheasant’s but TOBY’s. He wasn’t a bad dog at all! She shoved the farmer’s arm, causing him to miss and fire harmlessly into a cloud (luckily the bullet didn’t fall on anyone either, and clouds really don’t mind being shot because they are just made of water).
Toby was so startled by the bang that he turned round & ran all the way home without even thinking about it. On the way back, he leapt over a log and rolled and rolled in a stream. It was very lucky, he thought, that the farmer had shot in the air, because Toby had been quite lost in his thoughts and not even noticed the farmer OR his house until the loud crack of the shotgun.
Toby leapt out of the stream, and shook from his nose to his tail, before he barelled off through the woods, following the unmistakable smell of his street and his house that was suddenly so clear.
It was very lucky, Toby was thinking, that the farmer had shot in the air like that, because otherwise Toby would have walked right into him.
And if he had walked right into the farmer, thought Toby, the farmer would almost certainly have noticed that, as well as being naturally red, Toby was all covered in blood from all the sheep he had just killed and eaten.
I have been getting a lot of spam emails from a company that calls themselves “A Place for Mom”. They tell me about their lovely rest homes that I could put my mother in.
I decided to email my mum & let her know that some mystery internet spamming company were wanting me to put her in a home (which is a shame, because her house is REALLY nice).
Here’s the email I wrote her:
I keep getting spam mail from “A Place For Mom” with the title “Troubled Over the Difficult Decision of Eldercare?”
We can quickly help you find the following options:
“Fortunately, there is a simple way to find an elder care solution for your loved one! A Place for Mom is a FREE elder care referral service assisting families in finding resources of every kind.
- Assisted Living Communities
- Nursing Homes
- Retirement Communities
- Alzheimer’s Care Communities
- Residential Care Homes
- Home Care Services
- Other Elder Care Services”
As helpful as they’re trying to be, I find them sinister. I think they may want to experiment on you.
This morning I got this email from my mum:
Well, we all need to think ahead. Thought you might like to know what resources I would like for when the time comes:
A small desert island
ambient temperature mid 20s to mid 30s
palm trees
sand
2 giant tortoises
yacht
wooden hut on stilts (to keep out spiders and in case of flooding)
supply of stella, gin and wine
ok, and some water
food too
well-stocked library
podcasts of The Archers
fishing line
snorkel and goggles and nice coral reef to go and look at
no sharks
I do hope that means you are no longer quite so Troubled over the Difficult Decision…
xxxxxmurm
PS perhaps you could book us in quite soon…
Now I must go an check Ebay for giant tortoises. I may write & complain to the A Place For Mom people. They really haven’t contributed to making my position any easier at ALL.
Sj is overjoyed and in awe for, yea, her parents have either got a brand new lovely breadmaker, or grown weary of breadmaking. In these special circumstances, the white goods are passed on to us (see also: slightly faulty electric water filter, electric tin opener).
She stood next to me, reading through the magical things that our brand-nearly-new Zygonoptic 3000 YEASTOMATIC breadmaker can do. I heard her murmer “Jam. It can do JAM…” three times over, her voice a mix of hushed wonder and fearful anticipation.
It can also do bread. Not just any bread, but ALL THE BREADS OF THE WORLLLLD! You put the ingredients in, and you press the button, and you get bread! Just like they used to make at home in the old days. Cast iron, um, Irons, heating in front of the fire… a tin bath nearly full with heated water (fetched from the pump, and warmed over the flames), breadmaker all full of ingredients, just waiting for the button-push from mother…
Anyway, I wrote a list of the breads as she read them out, so fantastical and carbohydratey impressive did they sound:
Lauriepink: “Brioche, salami cheese bread, old fashioned oatmeal bread, chocolate bread…” I’ll have to prise this breadmaker from her cold dead hands
(It’s true, I will. Also, I have been informed that breadmaking is what I am now expected to do in the day while Sj works)
Anyway, I got a tweet back from someone telling me their chocolatey wife (mmm. Chocolatey waaahhhhhf) had done an ear prick as he read them out my tweet (my tweets are read aloud! Joys! I can just imagine all the family sitting around now, listening with rapt attention. The young’uns all big ears and grubby faces). Also, could I give them the recipe?
It’s tricky to do in 140 characters, so here it is in full. Chocolate Bread, courtesy of the Ominipotex Loafinator 4000 (King Edition):
Chocolate Bread (this is in the Sweet Breads section. Aren’t Sweet Breads fried testicles? Or am I thinking of Sweet Meats?)
[Obviously, it’s for breadmaker chocolate bread, but if you’re a cookery type I bet you can adapt it]
- Water - 250ml
- Table Salt - 1 & a half teaspoons
- Butter, chopped - 35g
- Strong plain/bread flour - 480g (3 cups)
- Sugar - 2 tablespoons
- Skimmed milk powder - 2 tablespoons
- Cocoa Powder - 1 tablespoons
- Bread Improver (don’t want your bread to be rubbish now, do you?) -1 teaspoons
- teaspoon
- Dried sachet yeast - 2 teaspoons
- Mix-ins: Choc Chips - three quarters of a cup
- Pour water and salt into the bread pan and add chopped butter. Combine flour with sugar, skimmed milk powder, cocoa powder, bread improver and add to the pan. Make a small pocket in the top and fill with the yeast. Wipe any spills from teh outside of the pan.
- Place the bread pan into the breadmaker, lower the bread pan handle and close the lid.
- Press the Menu button to programme (5) Sweet.
- Select Size, Crust Colour and press “Start”. Bread will be baked in the number of hours indicated.
Do not use Time Delay Setting when baking Sweet bread as the ingredients will spoil and KILL US ALL.
Mix-in sound (8 short beeps) will indicate when to add choc chips during the kneading stage.
NOTE: This recipe is only suitable for a 750g loaf size.
BAD
Woken up by postman knocking at door. Bedroom cold. Have to fall out of bed & stumble downstairs.
GOOD
Knock at the door rescued me from a vivid ‘you should have got up when you woke up two hours ago’ dream just as I realised that the desert rat moccasins I was half way through putting on weren’t actually dead, and the one I was holding in my hand had just started to growl quietly at me. Very troubling.
BAD
Step, bare foot & still half asleep, in cold dog poo at the bottom of the stairs. Hippity-hop-stumble onwards - as knock at the door is surely postman who will go away if I’m not quick - shedding bits of poo stuck to sole of foot as I go.
GOOD
Parcel at the door. Yes!
BAD
Dog poo stuck to bottom of foot.
Clean off dog poo with kitchen towel and dettol surface killer (closest cleaning thing to hand, and it does kill 99.9% of germs, after all. I’m sure feet aren’t too different from kitchen surfaces. My toes have probably never been cleaner), saying disapproving things to dog as I do so.
GOOD
Clean foot. And a parcel!
Head upstairs armed with kitchen cleaner (it’ll have to do - fabric/carpet spray has mysteriously disappeared), kitchen towel & plastic bag to clean up rest of poo.
BAD
Step with newly-cleaned foot in one of the bits of cold poo shed from foot as I hobbled downstairs. Clean foot with Dettol again. Tell dog I don’t like it anymore & that no one makes friends with dogs that poo inside.
GOOD
Discover Sj tidied the bathroom last night. Mmmm… tidyyyy.
BAD
Find two more bits of old dog poo residue that have presumably been missed from other clean ups. One of which is all crusty on the carpet (it’s patterned & blue, which is better at camouflaging dog poo residue than one would expect).
GOOD
Come downstairs to find chickens have ambled in from the yard, out of chicken food & hoping to steal some of the dry dog food. Nerys, the head chicken, is moulting & looks entertainingly skanky.
BAD
Chicken poos on floor on the way out.
GOOD
Dog nearly eats chicken poo, then opts not to when I say NO, very firmly.
With plastic bag full of poo & poo/dettol infused kitchen towel, along with my cold but germ-free foot, I decide that Jaffa Cakes are - given my brief rollercoaster morning of parcel joy, dog poo horror (not to mention the fearsome living rodent foot-sheaths) a perfectly acceptable breakfast food.
Maybe some toast, too.
BAD
Find out that, while I was distracted eating jaffa cakes & making toast, dog has run delightedly in from yard with a stick that it has then proceeded to chew into little pieces alllll over the rug.
GOOD
Tea. Hot, restorative tea…
Final GOODs:
Moulting chicken amusement
Parcel
The cleanest foot in the land
Tidy bathroom
Final BADs:
Brought to full consciousness by DOUBLE cold-dog-poo-foot-sensation
Nearly out of kitchen towel
So, when it comes down to it, more goods than bads. Also, the arcel is full of treasure - hurrah! So, all in all, a win morning that I shouldn’t actually complain about.
But, come on. Bare foot into dog poo. Twice. Arrgghh.
