i went to art school for photography, and it was great. i met so many amazing photographers, in and out of school. and i try to keep up with what everyone is doing, and sometimes it's really inspiring, and sometimes it's depressing. it makes me wonder about what i'm doing now, i haven't taken a photo for myself for months. i have photo jobs, which is the best thing in the world and my goal to be able to support myself with my camera, but it's not the same. it makes me sad. winter is coming up, it's pretty much dark at 5pm, and it's going to get cold soon. and this would seem to be the worst possible time and place to make work, but i'm going to cross my fingers no. i've been working on a body of workfor the past year, night photos about trees and light and stars and etc, and i would like to keep working on it. no, i need to keep working on it. so here's to goals.
these photos were taken in menlo park about a year ago.

the derby programs are finally finished. not printed, cuz that's not my responsibility thank goodness. but they're laid out and lookin good, and now i can get some rest.
sometimes i lay in bed and think about all the things i have to do, and it sucks. i wonder why i didn't take the baby steps that make up the larger steps that get me closer to my goals, the baby steps that i set out to take for that day, and it makes me feel terrible. i like to make up different slogans to help me with things, motivation is a big one. staying cheerful is another. unless you're in my family, i probably don't talk to you when i'm cranky, and so you would have NO IDEA that i'm not my usual wonderful self ALL THE TIME! i know, it's hard to believe.
on monday at derby practice, i took a momentous hit when i was jamming. like, flying through the air sideways and then landing on the shoulders. but my fingers came first, and now my middle left finger is a monsterous purple sausage. i have to ice it all day and it's difficult to type.
tasha's b-day party was grrreat last weekend, at the after party at her house we danced and danced. i got to pull out all the sweet moves i practice by myself and even learned some new ones... conrad showed me how to salsa! well, he tried. i'd be trying so hard to do the steps, and then he'd be like, "NO! NO SAN FRAN!" i'm not sure what he means by that, i don't think my booty moves are a sf thing. he thinks tons of stuff i do or say that he's never heard about are san fran things. oh that connie. so no rump shakin' in salsa. or something... earlier when it was a bunch of derby girls dancing together, there was some nerd that no one knew trying to get in on the action. we just kept shutting him out, and he finally went over to conrad and said, like, dude to dude, "these o'rourkes girls, they dance like that but they don't put out. they're just a bunch of teases." !!! i know! what an idiot! but i forget that's the message guys get when there's booty dancing going on, they see it as a direct invitation to hump. i guess that's the point of booty dancing most of the time. but really sometimes you're just having fun.
my finger really hurts now, from all this typing.
these photos were taken with my holga on the awesome camping trip i went on with my mom last summer.

tari & mandy's halloween party

tons more HALLOWEEN PHOTOS here!

i just watched a video of a porcupine eating a banana, it was sooo cute. then i watched a video of a cat curled up in a toilet. i think it's ok for me to go to bed now.
the videos calmed me.

my favorite jeans are called stretch pants

a short review of the mall:

gateway is the only mall for me, don't give me no southpointe and i won't call it westfield or whatevs. i remember gateway when it was named gateway and had astroturf down the slanty parts. so i had to go to gateway earlier this week, and this is what i thought.

panic- yes, you're going to feel panic at the mall, cuz you get lost. it also bring back thoughts about shopping for christmas and buying things for people that you know they won't like and you're throwing your money away, but it's december 23rd and time to just buy some shit so you don't come up with a diary from claire's and a coupon that says, "good for one free lunch on me!". coupons are great.

tiredness- the mall tiredness is like casino tiredness, you want to go home but can't find your way out, and plus there could be the greatest thing you need if you just go into the next store. this is real tiredness that will stay with you for 24 hours, don't disregard it.

hot topic- it's a terrible store. i'd rather shop at jones & company nyc or whatever it's called. it's everything that is wrong with teenagers for all time, with a price tag. you want to be bad? you want a shirt that says, "i'm not crazy, don't listen to the voices in my top hat"? you want to be a rebel but still want to fit in with a bunch of future losers? step right up to hot topic.

the food court- it's a great place to eat. and while you're sitting by yourself eating a runza, you can pretend you're not an internet predator looking for some underage tail. even then, it's a great place to eat and relax.

harry and steve's- a shitty place to shop. if you plan on giving jobs to mongolian children, go to old navy where the clothes are at least good.

caca nails- it's actually CA (california) nails, but they put it in the window twice with no space between the two abbreviations, i can't help but think of it as caca. i've never had my nails done professionally, so i wouldn't know about caca nails.

there's a shitty art photography studio that has photos of a horse that looks like it has two heads, and aerial views of memorial stadium. and the candle store. and the store that has a wax butler out front. i don't know how i feel about these stores. like caca nails, i've never been a customer. ok, i guess i hate the art photography store.

so i'm walking around the mall, trying to decide how i should remember how to get out of the mall. go back to the food court and go towards aldo keeping jc penny on your right, or go to the proactive booth and make a beeline for caca nails... feeling the panic and tiredness, when i remember wet seal. lord i forgot! and charlotte russe! yess! as far as i'm concerned, these are the best places in the mall to shop. these are the stores i'm sure that destiny's child shops at, so therefore it's good enough for me. and guess what i found at wet seal? the same kind of jeans i bought in may, but they haven't got them in again until now. and i found the last pair in my size!! success! the denim is sooo stretchy, allowing previously unheard of amounts of tightness with amazing amounts of comfort. i think they're actually called leggings. awesome. so i got them.

in conclusion, the mall kind of sucks, but you can find some things there. you can eat, and sit around, and look at teenagers and see what the popular styles are so you can avoid them.

that's a wrap.

speaking of art photography, that anne geddes bee baby pic i have up really harshes my mellow. everytime i see it, i get a little angry.

happy birthday molly!

good luck hood rats and girls going to minneapolis! kick some butt!

when i was downtown today going to the bank and stuff for work, i saw two reporter ladies walking down the street with a camera and stuff. i thought the blonde one was kate ellington from 10/11 who did a spot about the mad maxines (video to come later) that i was in, and so i smiled at her but it wasn't her. it was some other blonde lady and her and her partner asked to interview me for the news. i said yes, and they told me i was to give my opinion about steve pederson getting dismissed from doing something with unl football and tom osborne getting that job. and i'm all confused because i don't know who this guy is or what happened to him or what his job was, but they want me to say something really bad, and keep on simplifying the situation so i could make a comment. finally i'm like, "i'm sorry, i don't know who scott peterson is, i don't really know about football." and they laugh and say, "ok, you could just give your opinion on TOM OSBORNE then." but i don't have an opinion on tom osborne, and i tell them they should do a story about roller derby. i apologize to them, but say i would give a really bad interview, and say goodbye.
when i got back to work, i told everyone the story, wishing i would have just pulled something out of the air to say about football and the husker legacy and lessons and all sorts of things, when nolan told me the dude's name is steve pederson and not scott peterson. ha. and way back when, i didn't know who scott peterson is either.

favorite saying of our derby announcer...

"that's gonna hurt tomorrow!"

lizzy's bruise.
you don't know the half of it buddy.

warning: this is a serious quote, taken verbatim from a blog i looked at just now. i repeat, this is a serious quote with no hint of sarcasm.

"We shared our tattoo ideas, and his was the Chinese character for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few people I can talk openly with about love. We’re such hopeless romantics."

and it's a dude writing it.

the last few days have been real crappy.
and then, the least of all worries, the girl at the coffee shop has no idea what the word "steeping" means in regards to tea. huh?
conrad loaned me a book last night, rain of gold, before we went to that funny little amigos on 27th and capital parkway. i've never been there before, there's only outside seating and a GIANT billboard directly above you that you never noticed before and now is larger than life. we ate cheeseburgers and fries, and vowed to never eat cheeseburgers and fries again. i read my book and went to bed, thinking "tomorrow will be better, a new day and all that." nope.

check out my awesome new handlebars, conrad set me up over the weekend with a little bit o'this and o'that, making it ride like a whole different bike!

in case you didn't know, i spend about 80% of my day posing and lounging on my bike.

another thank you to mr. miguel, my personal work is up too now. click here!

this is from a shoot i did with a friend's little girl a few days ago. she is THE cutest thing, with white-blonde hair that flips up on the sides in a huge swoop. there are actual start-to-cry-cuz-she's-so-cute photos of her, but this ain't no anne geddes.

big news in tauraland, finally have my website up! one bizillion thanks go to miguel for his tireless work to get it up, all that pointing and clicking and cutting and pasting made my head spin. if you for some reason go to taurahorn.com, please keep in mind that it's just WEDDING photographs, and old ones at that. don't judge me.

quote

from the blog teen drama, where they were describing people at the roller rink:

For every half-dozen i-bankers with their ties tucked into their button downs, there's a dude in a mesh top making love to a giant lollipop.

today at work i was proofing a grant for someone, and i came across these letters:
"f"
"i"
"v"
"e"
lined up, and i said the word in my mind and the number came to me, and i almost moved on to the next word, but something didn't seem right. i looked back at the letters, and they didn't make sense, and i just kept staring at the letters put together and wondered what they meant. then i started telling myself that it's "5", but it just didn't look like it. and i had a hard time convincing myself that those letters equal "5". i tried to forget about it, and just kept on reading.

it reminds me of when i was little and would pick a word like "couch" and say it over and over until it was just a sound. then i'd keep saying it and try to remember what it meant, and when it came back to me, i'd marvel at how a strange sound could also be an object. how our representation of something could become so separated from not only it's meaning, but unattached to the object.

after my grandpa willard had a stroke, we visited him at the hospital in scottsbluff. he'd lay in bed and be half asleep and sometimes say something random. i was 15 or 16, looking for meaning in everything and would create tragically beautiful stories around his comments, springing from the well of his secret past where handwritten letters were like gold, bread was baked not bought, and things were classy and romantic - when grandpa was most likely talking about lunch time. "to be in his mind," i thought, "with all those secrets." the images in my mind were as disconnected from his life as the the word "shoe" and a shoe had become in his.

cass n' gina

got married!
cass wanted a robot cake with a flashing light on top.

ellie and i went to highschool with cass. he was a senior when we were sophmores, and so all those boys in his class we were friends with, called us "LGs" - for "little girls".


conrad and i matched, and it wasn't an accident. it is the result of meticulous shopping and color comparison. i hope you can tell that my belt and his tie are the exact same color of red, no other red would do. this is sort of my dream, boys, take note...

and here they go, off to munich!

congrats!

derby down the river...

a month ago or so, the ncdg all went up to valentine to camp and go tubing down the niobrara. it was so awesome, even despite the drama.

i wish i was there now, floating on down with good people, drinking beers and making fun of all the boys on the side of the river. they waited in droves, these teenage to young 20something boys, waiting for girls to float on by in their bikinis. and they'd whoop and holler and try to get them to pull over and party with them. the little floatilla i was in, me, my sister molly, silvia bullet and shiv, floated on by one group of dudes who must not of been having much luck, and about 4 or 5 of them were standing in the middle of the river. so when we get close, they start cheering and telling us how pretty we are and how much they want to know us, and we just laughed and said hi and no we don't want to get to know them, bye. and one guy got crazy and did a backflip onto our cooler in the middle of our floatilla,(a floatilla is a group of tubes attached together.) and he's kicking around and spilling beer and all his buddies are cheering him on and we push him off. then, all his dudes are like, "yeah! take that girls! haaaa!" and high fiving like someone made a good point, and we look and see that it's not only the 4 or so dudes in the water, there's a dozen more up on the banks standing in a row looking down at us. it's too funny not to say anything, so we say, "i'm not surprized it's just you dudes up there!" "yeah, where's all the girls? you're just a bunch of dudes hanging out together!" and then they get this confused look on their faces and start to look around them like they were gonna see a bunch of chicks with them. but there were no chicks, just 20 dudes drinking beer in their underwear together, having a great time. and they seemed so disappointed that they went from cool dudes partying on the niobrara to a slippery wet homo-fest in the blink of an eye, that we couldn't help but keep it going. "gonna have a little sword fight tonight?" "have fun with your circle jerk, boys!" "bye! sleep tight in your little tents!" and the boys started booing us as we floated away, with one who pulled his shorts down and shook his paperwhite ass at us, totally proving us wrong. i had the worrrrrst sun burn ever, but i'd do it again.





more photos can be seen here

this is from dwight nebraska, they like america and god.

went back to fortune palace with big c and he let me order anything i wanted-ladies, take note, even pop! and once again we saw this amazing poster which brought back memories. last time we were here, a little 7 or 8 year old black kid with an all white family had some valuable advice:
"if you ever go to china and see one of those guys walking around," he points to a poster on the wall "DON'T follow him!"
as we remembered this the second time, reliving details like the fat all white family, big c (he wants me to call him that) and i both remembered this, at the same time:

"DON'T follow him."

on a lighter note...
my parents are road tripping the summer away, and keep extending their vacation. in their old age they'll get a van and turn into hippies again and talk about how beautiful insects are. i can barely wait! you look at your parents and see how your life could be, those two people you're made from, and it can be both scary and inspiring. and you hope you have the same kind of positive qualities that they have, and hope to learn from the pitfalls that they've encountered. and it's awesome to see your parents grow and change and still manage to have fun, and i just kind of breathe a sigh of relief and know that life isn't a death sentence. profound! nolan has this really bad idea of growing old, he says old people are "smiling shadows of death" or something like that. and i'm all like, "nuh uh nolan, that's not going to be me when i get old! i'm going to have long white hair that i keep up in a bun, and i'll wear elegant tunics. i'll have a garden and lots of cats and art openings and either a husband or boyfriend at my side! i'll be all old and wise and drink tea and have my grandkids over all the time. it'll be great." nolan's going to write my eulogy, and he's going to call me a community treasure. i don't know if i'll have money or not, but i will have an old rv and travel around and take photos and write alot. maybe i'll start to paint and swim laps every morning. i'll live out in the country in an underground house, or a haybale house, and have a cockatiel that all the cats want to eat. what can get better than that? nada. the other day i was in iron brush visiting with tyson, and he got a wild hair and decided to draw a really mean picture of me in the future. i had a skull head and no teeth, with wild unkempt hair. he was saying that i'll be addicted to pills and smell like cat pee, and kept referring to the future taura as a "gummer". i didn't like that prediction at all, but could imagine growing up with a different set of circumstances in my life, i could end up there. so, uh, thanks mom and dad for raising me to not be an old drug addled gummer. who likes cats.
speaking of cats, guess who likes me now? bendi. yes, the fat cat my sister molly calls "the most beautiful cat in the whole wide world" and "gorgeous". the cat who my dad rescued when he found her as a stray kitten in the front yard with puncture wounds all over her body, who hisses at me when i walk by. i should say, USED to hiss at me when i walked by, cuz now i'm her best friend. do you know why? because bendi has figured out that i am god, the center of the universe, the giver of life, the bringer of...KITTY FOOOOOOOOD. it's a miraculous transformation, you can only imagine it if you didn't know what an awful cat she was previously. heck, i think i'll go pet her right now.

today is sunday.
tasha and i went to the funeral for mary and adam's baby. i know mary through tasha when they were best friends in highschool and played in g.i. jill together, she's a strong girl. i know they'll get through it together, and my heart goes out to them during this time.
not very many non-travel team skaters are showing up anymore to practice, which sucks cuz the mad maxines (the travel team) have room for alternates and some of the best girls who could be up for the spots, aren't shownig up. and the mad maxines want to skate as a team and work on their strategy against the "left overs", the girls in the league who did not make the travel team. REAL fun. lots of pile-ups and injuries, girls are dropping out like flies. not enough people for a good rotation, so you just play and play and play and only get to sit out once before you're back in. i'm all wobbly on my skates, i'm blaming it on the 2 month break we took where i didn't practice at all, so i'm an easy target for all the girls to take out. tasha hurt her knee today, she's the shortest one in the league right now. i'm not very tall either, and not especially bulky or muscular, when i skate low, my eye level is below some girls' ass level. that's tough. tasha and i were talking about how it would be to skate against girls who were at our ass level, how much nicer it would be to tower over skaters instead of seeing a brick wall of ass in front of you the whole time. but then you see girls who are kick ass jammers and blockers who are about as big as a pencil. so your size only means so much. ahhh... tonight i was jamming and had got through the pack and one of the girls came up behind me and grabbed my hips and threw me down. total major foul. she went to the penalty box, which sucks for her team, but then i'm on the ground and have to fight my way back through the pack again, making the longest two minutes of my life even longer. you'll never know how long 120 seconds are until you have to jam.
someone sent me a cd yesterday, with only one song on it. i've listened to it about 86 times. "i was told that you have a hole in your heart, but it's no longer shaped like me". when i drove home from today's awesome practice listening to that song, i just about lost it.
oh, i don't know, everything's fine. i don't know why i'm being all depressing. but when you get knocked down over and over and your sister hurts her knee and then you start thinking about a little baby who died, you can't help but want to cry.