Am I the only person who thinks Freud looks suspiciously like Sean Connery? March 31, 2010 at 7:12 am Familiarizing strangers with my art. I completely forgot I uploaded this project I did to youtube. Here is my self portrait in video form March 30, 2010 at 3:29 am I threw my back out while coughing. See, I have the physical health of an eighty year old woman so this is not really that unusual. I’ve had trouble with my back for about 3 years, I found out in 2008 that I have scoliosis (woo?) and that because of the way my spine was bent, my sciatic nerve was pinched (I am the only person under 30 I know who had sciatica.) I learned to cope with that pain. Then on the bike trip my back gave out about a week before we got to Omaha (at which point I went to the hospital and they gave me hella hella drugs and told me to not ride my bike so I could save my hands etc etc.) Once my back got over it’s bike-induced hissy fit I was pretty good… until last night when I coughed so hard that I threw it out again.

However, I still have drugs left over from my summer back problem which I’ve just taken. Hopefully i’ll be tripping balls in an hour. March 24, 2010 at 6:17 pm I decided I am definitely moving to Portland, ME to go to school there in the fall. I’m going to go look for apartments in May and my friend Rose who has just finished her pastry degree is moving up there with me. I am so excited! March 20, 2010 at 9:13 pm College and college-based anxiety Photos in the following post are just there to beak up the wall of text. They’re just random photos I had lying around. Warning: if you don’t like listening to people drivel on about their various neurosis DO NOT read past this point. March 10, 2010 at 7:29 am Today’s post is brought to you by the color red. The only picture I have is kind of fuzzy, but it will give you a good idea of what the color looks like. I love it a lot. Rich  is entering it in to a couple contests at the Phila Tattoo Con so I’ll be there in the afternoon/evening of the 27th getting judged by strangers.

other things are happening, but I haven’t got time to chat. Time to chat acquired! So I’ve been cleaning like mad for the last two days since my friend Zoe (circa 1990) and a couple of her friends are coming to Philadelphia (and Baltimore) for a couple days and are crashing at my house. its been a disgustingly long time since I last saw miss Zoe, I think I went up to Providence last winter. Cheap Spoke Rims And TiresAnyway, that is particularly exciting.How To Clean Car Air Conditioner Vents I have still not heard back from schools, so for all I know I won’t get in anywhere and i’ll have to go live in the woods somewhere. Buy Wooden Bath Mat AustraliaI seriously forgot how nervy I got while waiting for school stuff.

it has been a little over 2 years since I went through this last time. The other day I was in my living room and it was about 5 so the sun was low in the sky and it hit this sculpture in a very weird way: the sculpture is (if you can’t tell) of two hands which look really religious now that I think about it, but they were originally intended to be playing cats cradle. I have since lost the string, and they are on top of a very high bookshelf and I honestly forgot they were there until the other day when they spooked me via the strange spotlight effect of the sun. the blood red look of the wall behind it helps with the spookyness (though in reality, that wall is magenta.) I also found two cans of tomato soup in my basement while I was looking for my sleeping bag (last used on my bike trip). Apparently when I was packing back in August I thought that the same box as the sleeping bag was a good place for some tomato soup. not being one to waste food EVER, I made soup.

and a ton of really really good bread. good times, good times. potentially exciting summer plans to be talked about when they are finalized. March 7, 2010 at 7:32 pmEnglish Language & Usage Back in grade school whenever we played a game of Tic-Tac-Toe (X's and O's) and the result was a tie, we would call it a "Cat's Game." I've never heard this term applied to a tie in any other circumstance and was interested in where this term came from and why it seems to be unique to Tic-Tac-Toe. I always took it as a sort of dismissal of the game. When you think about the games that a cat would play, such as batting around a toy, or chasing it's own tail, there is no win condition. So basically it is saying "That is a game that served no purpose". Apparently on the broader scale tic-tac-toe has always had a connotation with cats in many different cultures, here is an interesting snippet from a podcast discussing the topic The "best answer" on Yahoo regarding this subject refers to it as a "cat trying to catch its tail."

The analogy is that a cat won't win the game of trying to catch its tail, and you can't win a tied game of Tic Tac Toe. This seems plausible, but then again, I've seen plenty of cats catch their tails. Another source suggests that Tac spelled backwards is cat, and cats scratch. And, since the game is a scratch . . . Completely winging it here, I'm going to suggest that Tic-Tac-Toe is typically a childrens' pastime, so it's natural to associate it with The Cat's Cradle Game (a "game" which nobody "wins"). It's worth noting that many/most children are fiercly competitive. If two children are playing Cat's Cradle and it "goes wrong", one might well start complaining vociferously that it was the other's fault, and thus that he somehow "lost". It's easy to imagine a nearby adult stepping in and defusing the situation by pointing out that Cat's Cradle isn't a "win/lose" sort of game. It would thus be quite natural for the children to figuratively refer to that "no winner" game later, when Tic-Tac-Toe ends in a draw.