sssssssssssnake oil.

my first assignment from the temp agency was quite random, working at a cosmetics convention.






overheard:
"all I know is that it's enzymamnatic and good for de-crustation."
"chicos has the most attractive extras."
"where has she been?? that's a half hour of sales that she's never going to get back. ever."
it was the strangest thing, the people attending the convention were the most unattractive and unstylish people ever. they owened spas, hair salons, nail botiques, were make-up artists, and attending beauty school, but i couldn't imagine consulting them about anything besides slurpee flavors. there were gadgets to steam clean the skin germ off you, and $3000 shaking machines to liquify your cellulite and thin-ize your thighs. creams and pastes made out of seaweed and apricots and placenta to clear up or soften up or firm up your skin. blacklights to whiten your teeth, dry your nails, and prevent wrinkles.
thank god i was just selling make-up.
i developed a little demonstration for the "glitz fix" and glitter we had, it went like this:
"have you seen our "glitz fix" yet?" and the person would go "no" and i'd say, "let me show you. first you take our "glitz fix" and apply it to your skin," and i make a squiggle with the "glitz fix" on the back of my hand. "you can't see it now, but when you use it with our loose glitter," and i'd take a pinch of glitter and sprinkle it over the squiggle and then blow off all the loose glitter to leave the glue part all encrusted with shiny glitter. and your hand is still in a shimmering cloud of glitter, and it looks magical and you show the small crowd of people how cool it looks, and say, "the "glitz fix" adheres the glitter to your skin. it's really dramatic looking, right?" and people would put one "glitz fix" into their basket along with a few glitters. i got it down fairly good, until some lady asked how you're supposed to use it on your eyes.
"oh your eyes. well, uh, oooooof course, well, you'd want to be alot more...careful." because i don't really know anything about the make-up i was selling, as i had never used an "eye base" or "lash primer" or "lip sealer" or any of the things ladies who use alot of make-up use to help all their make-up stay on better. lord.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

the light in the end of the coffee hole has come... i just finished my last shift. !!!
and celebrated by making a drink on my bike.

this also ends the tale of the little keds i wore, they will no longer be subjected to spills or have slops of grounds poured on them. this is the last pic of them dirty from coffee:

and here they are after a washing...

i was kind of sad during the beginning of the day, the last week or so i had been trying to think of a customer that i should ask out just because i'd be leaving. there is one who seems a little older than me, he orders a large coffee with 2 shots and always tips a dollar. but he has a girlfriend. there's another boy that kind of looks like what you imagine harry potter to look like from the books (not the movies), he orders a small coffee and reads the paper for a long time and rides a bike. but he didn't come in my last day. but then one of my favorite boys came in, the little latin one who dresses so sharp, like a leader of a 70's drug cartel. but i think he's probably like 16 or something. "just my type" you'd think, but honestly i really don't want to make the time in my busy life for a whining boy who'll shrink my world. so i didn't ask anyone out my last day.
peter, the best shift lead in the world, came in to say goodbye, he was dressed in an expensive cashmere sweater and looked so handsome and nice, i hugged him and told him how soft he was.
at the end of the shift, we took shots of tequila while we cleaned up. everyone is always so proper at work, no one REALLY wants to break the rules, people do, but in minor ways that don't make things easier or more fun for anyone. it's a very managed atmosphere. there's cameras everywhere that the central office can look in on all the time, and the shift leaders are all concerned about their jobs and care about their permanent record in life. i always tried to convince people that we should take down the big delicious poster of the pain in the ass drink, but everyone was like, "noooo, we can't do that" and there's no team effort to close early or drink on the clock. everything's all micro managed, just the way i hate it . but the shots were fun. i wish we did them more often.
besides the anti-shenanagin atmosphere, everyone from work is really nice and i'm sad to not work with them anymore, though i'm really quite happy not to have to work at the coffee hole. lately i drift off to sleep tossing and turning thinking about making drinks wrong. i won't miss that. after i got home the night of my last shift, i lay in bed smiling, unable to sleep. i tossed and turned, but i couldn't relax for thinking about all the timers i hid around the store to go off at various times during peter's shift during the next day. har-dee-har-har!!! i even threw one above the lights, wrapped up in a bag and timed to go off at 3ish. the beeping will be faint and barely detectable and in an unlikely and inconvenient place. i could barely get to sleep for all the happiness.

likes sizzurp.

sooo soft.

wouldn't let me take a photo of her.

was surprised when i asked him if he's from nebraska. can you blame me?

http://sfsquirt.blogs.friendster.com/soundtracks_for_modern_li/

is really an old school san francisco native.

where's jadie's picture?!?

NEWSFLASH!!!
euna just barged into my room and was all, look at this!! and holding a box that had been sitting on our foosball table for the last few days, addressed to someone who doesn't live here. it was for a neighbor who no one likes anymore, and now we had a box that was meant for him. so we opened it. it said it was from "edible specials" or something, and when i lifted the lid, a little fly escaped, and inside was a bunch of chocolate coated strawberries and stuff! we squealed and went to dig in, but then noticed the pieces were dripping juice. on further inspection, the strawberries had mold and the apples were soggy. but dang! it was some gourmet shit, in little paper thingies and all. what a waste. if we had only ate them when we first go the package, it would have been fine. so euna and i pulled the wilted strawberries out of their chocolate shells like fruity escargot, and went to the bathroom sink and rinsed the chocolate off with water. and besides the velvety soft inside, it was a delicious snack. DEEEE-licious. and if this becomes evidence of mail theft, euna is innocent.

BALLS IT'S COLD!! 48F!

There's alot of things i want to talk about tonight, like:
bitches,
hos,
pcp,
gay thugs,
judas,
boys who can't be your friend,
boys who only want to be your friend,
boys who only want to be more than your friend.
but tonight ellie and i done did hang out, it's strange, cuz after i don't hang out with miss e for a while, we don't see eye to eye for a while. that might sound strange, but it's true. tonight i explained some drama to her, and she was like, why don't you just deal with it for two more weeks? and i didn't have a good answer for her besides "it was a house decision". ellie's always a grounding force in my life, a voice of logic.
today on the bus to the haight, i got all emotional thinking about love and love lost. then i picked out the most expensive boots i could find. healing i tell you.
when ellie and i went out tonight, we spent some time talking to a nice young man whom i could very well get a massive crush on. ellie and him are friends from college, so they talked about their old friends and stuff, and every time i decided to barge in on the conversation, i did so in the usual way of talking about something different, and in a very winded and unwound way. it ruled. that really gets the boys i tell you, interrupting conversations with irrelevant anctedotes that don't make sense in the first place. i don't know, i was nervous. damn, and i just realized i never bought a round of drinks. shoot.
maybe i wanted to add a few things to the above list about things i want to talk about, but they're things i don't really care about specifically and i'd just want to talk shit about them in context of someone who i'm mad at right now.
the other day, at the coffee hole, a corporate person came in to do some testing or something. she is a rule following bitch, who said things like, "you can't chew gum on the floor" and "it's not quite the consistency of melted ice-cream" and made me hate her, but then there's those weird things like how she shakes hands that seals the deal. she was wearing this shirt with the sleeves rolled up 1/4 way, but in a way that made her look short armed like a tyranasauraus rex, and she shook my hand by giving me just the last two joints of her cold limp fingers, then flinching at my grip (i've been told i have a "good" handshake), i didn't have any choice but to think she's a total chum sucking choad. and tonight when i told ellie about this woman, and gave her a demonstration of the handshake, she laughed. so then i had to show her how this woman's arms looked so short in the big sleeves, and ellie bats my hand and says, "shh, stop it." and i'm like, "huh?? the arms were really short, like this!!!" and put my arms up high and wiggle my hands in front. she says, "taura!" and points her head at someone right behind me. i freeze, knowing it's the bitch from work, with her limp ass hand shake and short ass arms. and of course, when i turn around... there's a guy with actual short arms, like his mom took some pregnancy drugs but it made his arms the exact lame length as i was pretending the woman from work looked like. what a laugh. next thing i know there'll be all these actuall retarded people surounding me and whoop-doo-dee-doo, there's goes my jokes for 3 years. haaa, just kidding. i didn't mean it, i need to go to sleep and none of this makes very much sense. tha's my excuse.

tomorrow morning i will come back and edit... not now.

Dia de los muertos

and happy halloween!

before our big halloween party on the 28th, i called my dad and he gave me the advice to not let anyone slip me any rufies... but i slept through it all on my own thank you. yes, i missed the whole dang thing cuz at 11:30 i decided to take a nap in my legolas costume in the living room. how sad. but i guess the party was great, including euna at the door declaring "no ins and outs" at about 3am because everyone was eating the candy we set out as treats. and that made her mad. ...?

Happy Birthday!!

Daters Not Haters turns 1 year old, and yesterday was Tasha's 26th birthday!
more about that a different day.

I haven't written in a while, losing tens of thousands of blog fans i know. But it's not for lack of thinking about things, or even feeling about things. Oh no, I've reverted back to ye olde diary as of late, similar to those years spent at coffee houses, librarys, and unkept beds scribbling in notebooks about important stuff. I've written a couple of personal essays, with big hopes that they'll make the cut and get into this daters not haters thing, essays titled,
"Regrettable Emails"
"Feelings"
"the Nose Knows: Blog of the Zine World"
and something loosely based on Brian Kelly.
They need some editing though.
I just can't put anything in here you know...
Dang I'm tired, and I have soooo much to say. Soooo much to catch up with you on, and soooo many pictures to share. Sooo until then, ciao.

a boy just walked out of one of my room-mates rooms just now, but he was cool and waved at me while i was trying to take a photo of something in my mouth. sometimes you get all mommed-out and if the boy can't make conversation or be a gentleman, he looses points. well, this one smiled and waved and left, and i ran to the window to see which bus stop he was going to, so maybe i could glean some info about him. where did he go? where is he? holy shit! homie has a car! a nice one too! not only is he cute and polite, but he has a car. i barely know anyone with a car here in sf, like 2 people. not joking. anyhoo... yesterday at work i needed something on the top shelf in the back room, and had to stand on a bunch of boxes because i couldn't find the step ladder. the box was all wobbly and squishy, and i was afraid it was going to make me fall, so i jumped off and squished the box more. later, i heard my boss getting mad in the back, and after 2 seconds, i realized i broke about $150 of biscotti when i stood on that box. oops. "wow, that's too bad." i said, "they should really pack that stuff better."

it's early. at least too early for me, 7:30am on a saturday morning. it seems like i just went to bed, and i did. our pesky church neighbors are congregating in front of our house (and their church), waking me up with their chatting. everyone has their car or truck parked on the sidewalks for the whole block, trunks open and full of suitcases and bags. i'm hoping they're packing up and going back to el salvador. my phone is mad at me, beeping and telling me how many phone messages i have, all from the same person. all messages i deliberately avoided last night, leaving my phone at home while euna and i went to walgreens and bought candy and what i call "panty savers". there's a lynda barry drawing about marly when she tries be friends with a crazy dog in an alley, and has to take all this time and care to come pet it with out it biting her. when the dog finally lets her pet it and she gets up to leave, it starts growling and getting scary eyes and won't let her go. found it! (god i'm good! cept it was a cousin and not marlys...)

that lynda barry is sure great. i think about that story all the time. now the church people is all gone, and i finished the cupcake i took home from work, and am about to drink some tea i took home from work. and i guess it's good that i got up early, cuz i have to be at work by 6 tomorrow morning and i'm not sleepy at night unless i got up early. i stayed up late last night with euna, she heard me on the phone and we went to walgreens and then ate tons of snacks while watching cable tv and she told me it's the right thing to leave the phone upstairs. if there's nothing i can do about it, i try not to miss people. ellie's on tour, and i really want to talk to her, but i just have to wait until she gets home. i miss ted, he spends entirely too much time with his girlfriend, so i'll just have to wait until he comes home to change clothes or something. i miss my family, but that's why we have technology. i missed you, and against my better judgement, i knew it was possible to see you if i called. and i called and it was a mistake and i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry about everything. i miss holding you, but i don't want to get back together with you. i miss the being that is you, but i don't miss the fighting and i don't miss the bad, and i don't miss the struggle to keep things together. i missed being in a relationship, and there's a you-shaped hole in my heart, but what i don't miss is how i used to miss me. i hated missing taura when we were together. and i've made a million analogys about it, and they're all true because that's just how things are, like a 20 sided dice. you probably won't read this, but that's ok. not talking to you is part of the process. and so is missing you.

shoes, getting dirtier at what i now call the coffee hole

today at work, i saw that i had been assigned to the bar. i hate bar. damn. who's on counter?
"so erik," i say "you're on counter"
"yes"
"do you want to be on bar?"
"no,"
"yeah," i say, "it's too hard for you. you better stay on counter, easy stuff. it's better for you."
erik just looks at me.
"yes i like counter"
"yeah yeah, i know, they want me on bar because they know i can handle it. you're on counter because it's difficult for you to make all the drinks, yeah, it's too hard for you."
when i got back from taking out the trash, erik was at the bar and my shift lead told me i was on counter.
success.
the other day i looked at how many coffee-to-go boxes i had to make, and it was alot.
"hey kevin," i say to him "remember that day when you didn't stock coffee-to-go boxes?"
"no, i stocked them" he replies
"yeah right, i don't think you know how to make them."
"oh really?" kevin says "what are you talking about? i make those every night!"
"well, i bet i make them faster than you. you're like, "doo-dee-doo-do-do-da" when you make them! ha!"
and next thing you know, we're having a box making contest, and my coffee-to-go's are finished.
success.
and then we went bowling and drank beer.


i found a bandaid that i bought in nicaragua earlier this year, and put it on some heinous hangnail i had. later that day i realized the bandaids are the masking tape with little holes and a piece of cotton in the middle. how economical.

we went to a launch party the other night, for chow magazine. it was really nice, and we ate a bunch of little things on sticks. like lamb and shrimp and something delicious called a potato pillow which was not on a stick. and drinks, plenty of drinks.
bets and teds

"what kind of purse is that?"
"it's a knock-off"

day 3 at the coffee shop

Things and stuff 4

new shoes after one day at the coffee shop.

the other day euna and i were looking at a purse at some shop when she throws it down in disgust saying, "this ruching is totally pointless!!"
what do you do when you realize you like patchouli smell? in incense, not hippie oil. and what do you do when you realize you like froofy espresso drinks with hazelnut? HAZELNUT.
caltrain is really fun. i wish the ride was longer so i could chill out on the second level and look out the window. maybe it's time for another train trip.

dang! there are more of them than i thought. diz iz my bike.

tonight the neighbors next door are having a really annoying rave type thing. there was a guy standing outside with gigantic skulls painted on his clothes, one on the back of his shirt, and one on the back of each of his legs. this is not a kind of party i want to go to.
last night there was the bestest scifi program playing on i-mystery, i HAVE to get a copy of it. i'm all about old sci-fi radio programs, and the internet is a grrreat place to listen to them. there's the kinds made practically for kids about communist spider aliens, and the "journey into space" sagas are awesome, and then you have the episodes of "escape", which are the best. but last night i heard a new type, it was the dramatic reading and dramatic band playing. there'd be a few sentences read, like, "the night sky cracked open like a hammer had stuck it like a gong, lightening searing the landscape searching wickedly for humans." and then the band would start playing music and sounds that reflected the statment, going on for 5 minutes or so with lots of theramin. then another clue to the story: "it was ships from beyond, terrifying and ruthless in their hunger for human death. martians." and the band would play scary music some more, and in the second hour of the program, there was less and less narrator and more and more singers telling the story (badly). "like the sun through the trees warming the moist spring soil you came to me, to make me smile. like the sun through the trees, you are gone" and a man sings these words out in anguish over a slapping bass line, because he thought his lady got blown up by martians(but she was ok it turns out, and then we get to hear some duets). and it keeps on going, 20 seconds of of dialog and explanation, and 5 minutes of space opera sounds. it was very theramin, very funky, very dramatic and very long. i had to turn it off to go to sleep. but i can't believe the amount of work someone put into that program, i bet it's on record someplace.
ellie and i went to the mall downtown today, getting some items and checking out the new parts. we went to the bloomingdales, and i expected alot. i must say, all the purses and bags were hideous. only a few le sport bags were ok, and they were still $160 for not quite the right thing. the mall is crazy, you can't find your way out and it's like time doesn't pass, it's like a casino. it's crazy.
making friends at work

..."these are a few of my favorite things"...

ghost ride the whip

i don't know what's worse about being an old nerd, having to google "riding the ghost whip" or thinking it's what you do when you ride your bike and balance another bike along side you.
but this is what sucks about being young...
weird safety cars and screechy voices.

paint remover.
i've never really had to go to church in my life, i've had to develop a hatred based solely the people who do go. and woo-hoo, i'm a hatin' right now. we've lived next door to a pentecostal church for the past three years, and they give us no end to grief. at first we tried to make friends with them, say hi and try to chat and all that, but they wouldn't have any of it. they set up their tables and chairs and grills and coolers in front of our house blocking our door, throwing things against our wall, having their teenagers (here the old lady in me goes, "teenagers") hang out after tuesday night bible study yakking it up about fornications and cars until all hours of the night. yeah, and i know i'm not any better than them, any more well mannered or good or any of that, but i don't call myself a christian and tell people they're going to go to hell. the other day coming home from my great job, i had to push around old folks with my bike who were sitting in front of our door grilling some stuff for their stupid church bonanza, and it made me so mad. i had already had a lame day at work, but this was too much. so i went up stairs and put my speakers out the window and played cradle of filth as loud as it would go. euna and i spied on them from ted's window to see their reaction. cradle of filth is possibly the most obnoxious music ever created, and should send those el salvadorian pentecostals fleeing like roaches in the light. and while we're spying on them, euna says, "who actually listens to that this kind of music?" and the only answer is, "boys. boys who want to drown out their feelings."
right now i kind of want to drown out my feelings, but cradle of filth is not the answer. you don't want to listen to elliot smith and start crying some more, and "hey ya" is going to make you feel things in retrospect you will wish you didn't. maybe old 97s to make you think about the old days. or merle haggard to remind you about when you used to have a car. but not arcade fire to make you think about crying at work. the misfits just may be what the doctor ordered. and cradle of filth when you need to rid your street of church goers.
word.

a day off...

today was a day off.
time to take it slow.
it was nice, i got a paycheck in the mail and rode my bike around town doing errands. it was beautiful and warm in the mission, i rode my bike slow and shopped slow and did everything slow. got olives, slowly. looked at new journals, slowly. thought hard about paper for more van dykes slowly, and sat in the social security office for an hour and didn't get mad. before i left for my errands, i drank "russian caravan" tea in the kitchen with betty and euna and we talked about the wedding euna went to over the weekend. and weddings in general. and i said i get teary at the things while i'm susposed to be working and photographing it. euna gave me a cream puff thing that was delicious, and so i ate it slowly and thought about riding my bike to make up for it. and then i did. ride my bike, i mean.
up and down the streets, not trying to race anyone, just chilling out and coasting and enjoying the day.
when i got home, i cut up paper for van dykes and put sizing on them. and i printed out a density chart and another negative. then i coated the sheets, twice. and i went to walgreens to get more gloves. then i exposed the new negative and called my dad. everything was going so well. while he told me about the grill and how he converted it to propane, i sat there zoning out with my mellow day going my way, and i didn't even fidget when he talked about the size of the holes he had to drill and the bit and the flow of propane etc for like 10 minutes, but then oh shit! the van dyke i was printing! i forgot!
so i ran downstairs and started thinking about things i need to do, things i need to say, things i have to do for real. i grabbed the print and put it in the water and it looked fine for a second, and then it turned blotchy and then it turned black. like solarization black. crap. what happened?
"i gotta go dad. i gotta deal with this thing"
"what's wrong with it?"
"i don't know. some chemical thing."
"it'll be ok,"
"no it won't, it's not going to be ok!"
"(laughs) now don't you worry about a such and such cost of thing..." i stopped paying attention. this print needed my attention, tears started pinching at my eyes.
"i gotta go."
"it'll be fine, taura"
"nothing's fine. i don't know what's wrong with the print, and i don't know how to figure it out, i don't know what's wrong with my life."
"something something something" for some reason my ears were rushing blood and i didn't take what he said in.
"i'll call you tomorrow dad. bye."
"bye"

what's wrong with my fucking van dykes? why do they look like shit? the blacks have no density, and the whites are grey. is there something i need to do still? is our water bad for the final rinse? are my negs bad? do i need to make litho negs instead of digital negs? is my coating technique bad? maybe i shouldn't use sizing. maybe the coatings are inconsistant and i need to get a special little thing called a puddle pusher. maybe i should try to add some potassium dichromate solution. maybe i should make some.
i forgot to tell you that i said fuck shit fuck shit alot while i was freaking out on the phone to my dad, saying shit fuck shit fuck and thinking why am i a fucking artist and have to work at a coffee shop and think that if i keep on making honest work, good things will come to me. there's no good things coming to me, i get doctors telling me i'm a boring piece of crap. why can't i be motivated and ambitious like all those fucking business people who decide to be photographers because it would be really fun and creative and then they attack it like they're trying to be in the fortune 500 of photographers, leaving flakes like me to think too much and work at a coffee shop.
and i went upstairs, slowly, wanting to cry about a few things. maybe i could look at hamsters on the web and feel better. but no, i need to figure this stupid van dyke thing out. i pull out some old van dykes i did in school to compare, and i have to go through a bunch of shit, but it's cool. i found the lost issue of my old zine, 6*Volt, issue #7. i found old drawings and comics i made, cyanotypes on silk, books i made and photos i had forgotten about. piles and piles of work, in boxes under my bed doing nothing. how pathetic. how sad.
and i don't know what the point of this is, or the lesson learned, but it's like i feel as if i'm at yet another crossroads. time to make a decision about my future. shall i go to grad school and do it all? or should i move to my parents basement and be a wedding photographer in lincoln? i give myself pep-talks all the time, and think up inspirational messages to motivate me to go forward. my new favorite is, "don't relegate your dreams to the possible, take them to the impossible" or something to that effect. it should go on a poster of a hamster flying a rocket and be distributed to grade schools.
i'll draw one and show you. (later)
at this point, it's past 12 midnight, i'm not sure if it's 12am or 12pm, i have a little trouble with that one. like, i know the minute after midnight it's 12:01am, but what is exactly midnight? sometimes i have trouble with right and left too. but i guess so it's 12:28am now, and it's no longer my day off. i'll go to bed and drink tea while reading my WWI book. but i'll still read it slowly.


oh yeah, my dad emailed me that someone called their house in ne from a law office in jersey and said i'm in trouble. ?? then two minutes later sent me another email about scam artists. it's like, ok ok dad, stop being paranoid. but then i did a little googling of the peeps, and turns out they're scam artists. or scam lawyers. so breathe easy and just worry about your regular debt.
oh yeah, and wednesday is my dad's birthday. i think he'll have to day off too.

kids say the darndest things

"i hate it when i miss a good car crash"
i am sitting by the window, but just missed it. i snap up the blinds to see, but only hear the offending car (i'm guessing, i didn't actually see it) zooms off to the 101. what a killer story i can make up about it even with just the sounds.

van dyke print, hecka fogged. practice makes perfect.

what you've all been waiting for...

you may recall, earlier this year when i was in panama, i talked about a childrens dance contest during carnival. i promised videos, and now 6 months later i'm making good on that promise. enjoy.

and here is a longer version, if you care to see.
this is a photo taka and i found one day walking down mission street, after a raggedy dude told me that once you go black you never go back. half a block later i told taka that once you go jap you never go back. this photo rules. it makes me so sad, and yet so confused. i'm assuming the guy in the photo cut out the photo of the woman and glued it on, but what was he trying to say? that she was standing next to him? that she lived in the u.s. too? that she is always on his mind, his momma? or maybe she died.

snake ate a sheep. i think. this is fucking bizarre looking. EXPLAINED!

this is from a photo shoot i was in a few years ago, my friend linnea's photographer girlfriend set up a disco party set and we all got dressed up in rediculous outfits. i ended up in a tube dress (???) and fed my friend kent a banana after we drank a bunch of absinth by accident. i took this picture of the girl who told me i looked good in a tube dress (lie), i never ended up seeing the photos from that night. thank god.

i woke up this morning really angry about my new job, and i sat in bed and wrote a long rant about it. but now it's just unfocused crazy-lady talk. you can read it in the comment section to but it's kind of annoying. here's a much better rant.

things and stuff III

did you know i have a degree in pop psychology? yes, it's true. from the really hard school to get into AND graduate called Taura's School of Pop Psychology. the courses are hard, you have to read alot of texts. reading "women are from venus and men are from mars", "the idiots guide to depression", "palmistry revealed" and watching nanny 911 are some of the things we talk, homework is constant criticism of people on tv. because with my degree from Taura's School of Pop Psychology, i'm now qualified to be smarter than everyone. so, you may ask, where does this get me now? pop questions to my dad and like, "should i be an artist or a journalist?" and "could i move into your basement?" this is the one definitive thing i've figured out though, it's called Taura's law of 5. here it is explained.
so me, i only have room for 5 things in my life.

1)my day to day life, bills, checking my email and phone messages, doing laundry, and other maintenance type stuff.
2)my loved one (boyfriend)
3)my job (sigh)
4)?
5)?

so what do i fill the other two slots with? if i try to sneak 3 things into 4 slots, it won't work, and something else will get smooshed out. like when i decide that i need to make a feature length slideshow of legolas drawings with music, i stop cleaning my room and come in late to work. that's because i'm also trying to be a photographer and do a blog all the time and think about grad school and try to figure out if i should move into my parents basement in nebraska (again). you got to focus, and keep it to 2 things.
for me, 5 things is about right, for others with better concentration and more discipline, you may be able to take on 7 things. but if you push a baby carriage around with cardboard and old shoes in it, maybe you should stick to 3: eat, don't get raped, thinking about the future and how you're going to make it better. ok so that's mean. but you get my drift

i'm sooooo glad crazy 80's man got voted off project runway tonight...

(shit.... why does so many things have to be my fault i ask. and since when did i need to listen to you???)

this pic is from ellie's bbq last week, now she's on tour with robin and i'm sure they're missing me tons. well i'm missing you both tons, and robing, i wish you had come to sf instead of whatever upper northwest city you went to!! c/m.

parafin wax hands

heath has one of those parafin wax tubs that they sell at walgreens, and at the bbq last weekend, we heated it up! it's like a vacation for your hands. it's great. it's not gross.

project runway meets america's top model

a friend who's a fashion designer, katie, asked me if i'd do a fashion shoot for her. not as a photographer, as a model! yikes!! if only i could walk around looking like this all the time...



i asked katie if i could have the chinatown manequin hair-do, but she said no.
chinatown special>>>