hmmmm..... do you think this here site's got enough going on to enter this? i was considering entering the self promo category... and if i do, is there anything you'd fix on this site before i submit it?

this little chunk of conversation from last night is still cracking me up:

"so let me get this straight. you, my boyfriend of a year and a half, are getting me a toothbrush holder for christmas?"

"well... it's a really nice toothbrush holder."

********

foks, it's still better than tupperware. apologies in advance for possible infrequent posting this next month - got hired to do a buttload of painting, which will be taking up just about all of my free time and then some. but it's a nice chunk outta the bills so a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do! i only hope there's a little time in there to make this one thing i wanted to make for xmas presents... i'll give you a hint - it's neat, it launches, and it holds four toothbrushes.

and now that it's the day after the day after xmas, it's time to encourage consumerism and paying bills by pushing the fact that there's a shop on the website... it always feels weird doing that, you know? but the chance that someone actually is looking for fun weird things to buy for family for xmas, it could pay a bill or two. so on the merchandising train i get.

in that vein, i have to say that when i started the points system, it was a combination of a way to encourage comments and craziness on the blog, but also to kinda give an incentive to people who would maybe think about buying something from the shop - if you get enough points at the end of the year as a combination of both things, you get a free painting. which isn't a huge deal, but it's one of my babies, you know? so i'm switchin' it up for these last few days of november and december to give people who haven't been participating in the blog shenanigans a chance to catch up. not that i'm changing the rules in the middle of the game, but that i'm taking out the blog part of the points just for december. and if you decide to purchase something in the store, you'll get twice as many points as you would've if you bought something yesterday. so if you bought a painting yesterday, you'd have gotten like 5000 points. (more if you paid for shipping). but today, that painting'd get ya 10000! pow! (if this sounds like total hooey please, i'd like to hear from you. but i hope you understand the reasoning behind it.)

and i'm tired of writing emails and myspace bulletins, so now i'm gonna go do something else that involves no computers! but it's a secret, and if it turns out you'll know about it soon enough! hooray!

ah, the day after thanksgiving.

i love when i have weekdays off, because i can watch trashy daytime shows that i always miss when i'm working. it's amazing how bad that shit is. i just saw the tyra banks show for the first time a little while ago, and please won't someone shoot her and put her out of all our misery?! dear lord she is LAME!!!

okay she brings this couple out, telling everyone about how they've had so much bad luck recently and to make up for it, she's sending them on the honeymoon they haven't taken yet in the two years they've been married. but the stinker is she builds it all up, saying how it's gonna be this FABULOUS DREAM VACATION, the likes of which would be something demi and ashton would go on, or maybe brittany spears. and then she introduces these two dudes who put the thing together - they have some company where they plan dream vacations and getaways and crap. and i'm picturing this honeymoon, something awesome in the carribean, or hawaii, or europe, or some exotic locale like detroit, right? something completely outrageous that i could never in my lifetime afford.

and then she tells them "WE'RE SENDING YOU TO VEGAS, BABY!!!"

cue the record-scratching noise. hold the phone, stop everything. did you say vegas? i mean, vegas is great. really. dig it, never been there to party but that'll change soon enough, but vegas as the dream honeymoon that they've always wanted? i dunno about that. seems like a stretch. especially when tyra starts showing footage of all the places they sent this couple while they were on their dream honeymoon. like the celine dion stage show.

let me just say if i EVER win a dream vacation from somewhere and it includes celine freaking dion, i will buy a shotgun and take out every person responsible for making me sit through that garbage. (and you shoulda seen the guy in the couple's face when they're filming him walking out of that concert - it was awesome, like "yeah THANKS tyra. THANKS A LOT.")

that was a much longer rant than i anticipated... sorry about that... yesterday was cool. went to my mom's for a while and hung out, had a quick dinner with them, then advanced token to josh's where i made my first thanksgiving turkey and it turned out really tasty! deeelicious even! stinks that josh had to work... i came home and fooled around on the computer for a bit, worked some more on those xmas cards, and then fell asleep to the apprentice. i wonder if the team that stole the megaphones got in trouble for that. gonna have to look it up. i have time, you know, since i have the day off! time to get back to the judge joe brown and xmas card tests.

oh yeah and check out pics of dinner with josh and his bro chris here!

hope your holiday was a fun one - 50 points to you for what your favorite thanksgiving food is!

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!!! my new favorite thanksgiving decoration is the middle-finger turkey. why this hasn't been done a billion times already is beyond me. happy thanksgiving, jerks!

okay get ready to stretch your mind, people, cuz i got zero good original funny ideas for this week's illustration friday. so for this week's theme, free, i thought i'd share with you how much i enjoy the free time i get sometimes at work, because it gives me a chance to do shit that makes me chuckle.



if you have no idea who bob mathers is, lemme bring you up to speed. when we were in the kosh, jenn, sarah and i went to the ymca for all our fitness needs. the best thing the y had to offer was it was a total of three minutes from work, and they had this class called "fit for life". ("fit for death!" as our pal kathy McA. would so lovingly call it) this filthy aerobics class was taught by members of the y that had volunteered their time. the worst of em was one bob mathers, who was an accountant in his life outside those gymnasium doors. who was the angriest most crazy insane dude ever inside those doors. and who had THE WORST AEROBICS MIX TAPE EVER. EVER. every song sucked harder than the last. but the best was when we were doing stretches at the end and this one line from one song was on a continuous loop. i can't remember what that song is right now, but every time i hear it on the radio now it cracks my shit up.

coming soon, in keeping with the oshkosh ymca vein, a tribute to mr. psychobutt! cheers!

so the xmas cards, they're comin' along. cleaned up a bit on the blocks, changed around the ink colors, and i'm hoping to have a test run i love by thursday morning. this one hasn't been my favorite project by far, but i like it enough to keep working on it so i guess that's gotta count for something. or it means i don't know when to quit. or it means I'M NEELY O'HARA, THAT'S ME ON THAT JUKE BOX!

required holiday viewing for you folks is the classic 60s flick valley of the dolls. jenn and i watched this together one fateful night a couple of years ago and have been shouting it's praises ever since!

hands up if you loved valley of the dolls! looky here, helen lawson's on board and you should be, too!



100 points to you for renting it and telling about your thoughts on the movie here! if you've already seen it, that's fine just tell me your favorite parts! (better take the points opportunities where you can get em folks, surprises on the points front are comin' up on the horizon!)

Parking on hills scares the fuck out of me.

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

i almost forgot! cheers and welcome to sarah, who just recently started blogging! jenn and i worked with this lovely lady at the 'kosh, and she's currently living in japan and teaching english to elementary school kids! domo arigato mr. roboto!

Its a medically proven fact that theres no better way to deal with the loss of ones appendix than to receive a happy stuffed one from steph and josh!

hmmm. i don't hate it, but i don't love it yet. but i don't know what to do to it to make it something that makes me go "hell yeah that's pretty sweet!"

i have one blank linoleum block left. i may take out the xmas tree and put a red squre with a piece of white-stripes-ish candy in the middle of it, because who doesn't love candy? it's on the back burner for now, maybe i'll feel better about it tomorrow.

well it's about time!!! i saw this movie months ago! i'm counting down the days til i can see it again...

somewhere along the line i signed myself up on the rolling stone email newsletter list. i used to read it daily, but not so much anymore. usually it goes right in the trash. i don't know why i opened it today, but i'm so glad i did because i got to read this gem of a quote:

"I'm a lot of fun on morphine, but I'm not fun on Vicodin." -- madonna

good to know madge, good to know.

so i know i never got around to pictures and tales of vacations, but i will tomorrow night i swear. no, really this time, i'm gonna do it!

currently i'm working on bringing myself into the now with learning css for easier website building. davesite.com has an interactive tutorial thing i'm working with - kid's got fifty bazillion ads on his site so he can raise money to buy acres of rainforest, and i feel like i'm actually learning a thing or two, so that's just lovely. you know, the whole helping hippies thing. (just kidding. kind of) i know i can do the same coding in dreamweaver much easier, but actually understanding how the code works is oh so helpful, you know. one of these days i'll actually build a website without jenn and mark as my tech support!

Shit i forgot to take a pic with the good camera last night, will a quick and dirty cameraphone one do?

it's a weekend full of good things, people!

number 1, i changed my underwear and you should be proud.

number 2, i joined the ranks of the girls with the pixie cuts again and i'd forgotten how much i love this hair.

number 3, and most importantly, the redesign of josh's blog is complete! please, if you're not easily offended, check it out. and if you are easily offended, and you go over there and don't like what you see, please keep it to yourself. cuz this shit is seriously cracking us up, and we don't mean any of it.

cheers!

this week's topic: strong. i wonder if i will ever again have enought time to start and finish a new illustration friday on the day the topic is handed out. this may be the first and last time it happens. work was a tad slow for the past few hours. but this cracks me up!

jon stewart, why do you have to be so damned expensive to see?

yesterday i got an email from jenn, saying someone put a phone number up on perez saying it was jared leto's, and that i should call and check it out.

so as any responsible young woman would do, i took a break from work and went outside with my cell phone for some good old-fashioned crank calling. the phone rang four times and went to voicemail, where i left the following:

"hello, jared leto? this is shaniqua. we went out last week and you never called me back. i think you're a jerk and a shmuck and i'm keeping your wallet!"

*****

a few hours later my cell phone rang, saying it was a private line. expecting to hear my sister michelle on the other end, i pick up and say "hey, what's up?"

a dude who sounded like he just woke up slurs together "whoissthis?"

"uhhhh, WHO IS THIS?" i shoot back.

"thisssischristiann" he mumbles, "did you call me?"

"uh... NO." i reply, "you've got the wrong number, dude."

and he doesn't hang up, just sits on the line trying to comprehend what is happening on the phone. so i hung up.

*****

it wasn't until four hours later that i put two and two together and got OH FUCK THAT WAS PROBABLY THE NUMBER I CALLED! dammit jenn that wasn't jared leto at all, it was just some dirty hippie pothead slob who wanted me to give him money!

the moral of the story kids is you should always, and i mean always, blindly call phone numbers given to you by your friends. that being said i hear ron perlman lives at (714) 903-4449, and you should probably give him a call.

20 points to the first person to decode this!

okay i've got nothin' for this week's illustration friday that hasn't been done a million times before. the topic is night and time is growing short... so how about this tshirt josh and i came up with on our layover in cincinnati last week instead? it's got a skyline in there... that was a nighttime photo...

too much of a stretch for night? sorry folks. i suggest you write your congressman!

just a little somethin' that's been sittin on my desk for a couple of weeks that i finally hit with my trusty highlighters...

geeeeeeeyargggggh!!!

add this to the list of things that bug: realizing halfway through the day that you forgot to put deodorant on this morning.

that and having to go to dictionary.com because you just realized you have no idea in hell how to spell deodarent/deodarant/deoderent/deodorant.

20 points to you for listing some pet peeves, and i swear a more substantial post is in the works!

Guess whos going to cracker barrel!

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

on the road again... We're coming to you LIVE! from the phoenix airport! We had wine on the flight and im a little buzzed!

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

no time this week for a new illustration friday, so how's about you enjoy this oldie but goodie for the broken theme?



so very very much to talk about in regards to vacation, and work was completely slammed today. we're heading out for new mexico tomorrow morning, so stay tuned for a detailed, photo-laden report next week on all vacation fronts!

and i can't believe halloween's over already. what an amazingly good time.

also, cheers and congrats to mel for gettin' in the small works show, and jeers to me for gettin' snubbed! i'm gonna make like jenny on the L word and start a rejection wall, where i post up all my thanks but no thanks letters!

seriously, though, no worries, there's other art shows out there to submit to and i'll get on that when vacation's over... but seriously dude, is scad's humor gene broken? i'm voting yes on propostion they're shmucks on election day!

Cut your hair, hippie!

This just in- technical difficulties with our plane, seems like we'll be hanging out in cincinnati for a little while...

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

Josh is overjoyed to be heading back home. (that was sarcasm, people.)

dammit i do not want to be leaving for home in the morning.

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com