Glassblowing!

Mike & I spent 8 hours yesterday and 8 hours today in the hot shop, making glass for a color application intensive. When I bewailed the fact this evening that I hadn't yet written a poem, he pointed out that the hand-blown glass I've been making for the last two days would probably qualify. Oh yeah! Hey look at what I made! Technically, I blew this glass yesterday, but it came out of the annealer today, so it wasn't finished until today--that counts, right? And tomorrow we'll get the next batch out of the annealer.

The green pitcher isn't something I blew this weekend, but I included it because I'm proud of it.

Ain't it purty?

Cracked the bottom of my glass when I broke it off the punty, alas!

Dalek Glory Hole

Another video segment from the show. Obvious thanks to Happy Fun Ball.


Dalek Glory Hole

It's the newest sexual sensation that's sweeping the galaxy!

Dalek Glory Hole.

Yay!

Get yours today!

A product of Funco!

Warning:

Funco  is not responsible for premature ejaculation, penile chafing, penile perforations, or whiskeydick

Dalek Glory Hole should not be used with animals

Dalek Glory Hole may become depressed if left unattended

Dalek Glory Hole does not cuddle.

Dalek Glory Hole may cause full or partial castration

In case of emergency, Dalek Glory Hole's safe word is <80's modem noise>

Do not taunt Dalek Glory Hole

Additional potential side effects may include Bruising, Epilepsy, Headaches, Lack of Self Worth, Space Warts, Anal Seepage, and Extermination

Dalek Glory Hole! 

Now available in Bronze, Brushed Silver, and Soylent Green!

OK Cupid

Oh OK Cupid
Is the worst video game
I have ever played.

Give me Ms Pac Man
Gobbling up her oysters raw.
Outrunning her ghosts. 

Nothin' like pregnancy for your go-to inspiration at 11:30

“I make life!” crow I,

assembling chromosomes.

Oh, my aching back.

Casino

Meet me at the Casino.
I'll wear a dress from my mother's closet.
A bad shade of orange that clings
in the wrong places.
We'll scalp tickets to a has-been show.
We'll realize with some horror that we fit
 into this crowd a little.
I'll call you by that nickname
you wish had never stuck.
You'll lose at roulette.
Black. Black? It should have been red.
I'll bring all of this year's hope.
I'll bring all I'm ready to lose.

Sock Puppet Action Theater

For background, I'm directing/producing/co-writing a show in October for The Humboldt Impropriety Society, a local sex-positive community that throws erotic parties. This will be our last event, and the theme is "End of the World." So the show will be presented as an episode of The Big Bang, an intergalactic reality show that kidnaps people from different worlds and makes them perform in sexy acts, and if the audience doesn't like them enough, their planet gets destroyed. This will be presented through a combination of live action and video. This is the first time I've shot video for a live public event, and I'm still generating some of the material.

This is a screenplay for one scene, a montage of previous episodes, as performed by sock puppets:


Sock Puppet Action Theater
Female Narrator: "Last time on The Big Bang"
(as performed by Sock Puppet Action Theater)

Sock Boss: We need more performers! Hold another audition!
Lackeys (holding black hood and duct tape): You got it boss!
(Lackeys unspool duct tape)

Cut to Cheesy UFO effect flying through space.

Cut to jungle scene (potted plant)
Sock Monkey sits in pot, masturbating.
He climaxes. A black hood flies over his face and he is dragged away.

Cut:
Small Alien: Do you like your genitals fondled?
Sexy Alien: Actually, those aren't my genitals. That's Squiznar, the vestigial alien symbiote permanently attached to my body.
Small Alien:  Oh, sorry!
Sexy Alien: No, it's okay, he likes it.

Cut:
Sexy Puppet: That was so good, I think I busted a seam....

Cut:
Small Alien: What do you mean you're pregnant? I thought you were male!
Sexy Alien: We are.

Cut:
Small Alien: You can't destroy my planet. It's the only one I have!
Sock Boss: Sorry kid, it's not personal. It's just show business.


Cut:
Montage of alien puppets having sex.
Interspersed with Sexy Alien in labor, and the occasional shot of a static planet.

Cut:
Doctor Puppet: Push! A little more! I see it...it's...it's...
(Face Hugger alien shoots out onto doctor's face.
Cut: puppets climax. Cotton wads fly at puppet's face.

Cut to Doctor Puppet on ground with Face Hugger attached: It's a girl!

Cut: Planet blows up. (Star Wars Alderaan shot)

The Ocean of Stone / Die Steinenes Meer

BACKDATED POST- (due to being out of internet contact and in wilderness)

Last week on my 4 day Alpen Mountain hiking trip with friends we scaled 3 very large and scary peaks and once we hit the last, southern peak this is one of the eerie and breath-taking views we saw... Die Steinenes Meer... or The Ocean of Stones....

I was so inspired by this visual movement of Stone I had to do a sketch in the hopes of one day creating a painting....

BUt the only thing I had on me at the time of hiking was a pill box of IB-Proufen so I dismantled it and drew it on the back...

Ouroboros/30 Days

1. I'm having a drink.
2. I need to sleep more.
3. I need more free time.
4. Why don't I dance more?
5. Why don't I read more?
6. I got a new game.
7. I got a new game.
8. I got a new game.
9. Money is tight.
10. I got a new game.
11. I don’t have any time.
12. I'm stressed.
13. Aggggggggggghhhhhhh!
14. I love being off caffeine, I have so much energy.
15. I'm not drinking anymore.
16. Tomorrow will be a caffeine day.
17. I got so much done!
18. I need to sleep more.
19. I'm just an insomniac.
20. I can't wait.
21. Almost there.
22. One more day.
23. This is an awesome game.
24. This is an awesome game.
25. This is an awesome game.
26. I just don't have time to shower every day.
27. I’m not playing today.
28. Today was productive.
29. I'm so glad to be free, that was taking over my life.
30. I'm having a drink.

it's about time!

Just got back from a 4 day hike in the Bavarian Alps with Steph, Holly Oliver and Nathan woot woot!. Will post more of what I did during this time shortly. For now, here is a piece I finished last Sunday before the trip. Fractured earrings!

Picture Day

I probably should have brushed her hair...

In the middle of the night

Wake up to an empty bed—

I’ve chased my husband away with persistent pregnancy snores,

again.

Without looking,

I know he’s left the alarm on

set for an hour earlier

than I need to wake.

It takes me about

an hour of fuming

before I reach over to check.

It’s on.

I turn it off.

I understand my fury

at his lack of basic courtesy

is actually sublimated hurt;

my rage is really disguised lonely

in the wee hours of the morning.

That doesn’t drain one whit of the righteousness away.

Lying still,

I pace furiously in my head until the windows turn grey.

Rising, I ease up to the third floor balcony,

Where the sun is laying out the most incredible array

of orange, pink, gradual yellow on the clouds.

I watch for a minute & try to soothe myself.

I can’t watch the whole thing.

Sunrise, though stunning, is slow.

I’ve seen so many extraordinarily beautiful things in my life

that turning away isn’t hard,

as if I’ve seen enough sunrises,

as if the world,

putting on a horizon-shattering light show just for me,

is commonplace,

insufficient.

But five minutes later

the light through the crack in the clouds

has set the whole window on fire,

pulled my chair back to the door—

I am a fool.

The smudge of golden,

thumbprint of that careless luminous artist

fills a third of the sky,

casually laid over

the clouds I know are supposed to be grey.

Impatient rays emanate from the gloomy gate below,

bursting madly forth

uncontainable.

Only the morning patter of rain,

pure, melodious and clean,

can drive me back indoors.

The birds all going

poke holes in the tight color-corralling clouds,

and paint leaks out into the watery blue world,

thinning, spreading, turning the whole thing

bright.

Ugh, in 15 minutes

Negative feelings, mostly revolving around the weakness of a feline subject. One that meows with a grating, obnoxious tone. Beautiful eyes, though.

Never gonna leave it

Sweaty fingers

squeaky chair

cat fluff mixed with

dust & air

buzzing houseflies

screaming birds

(betcha they say

dirty words)

piercing sunlight

in my eye

smell my roommate’s

garlic fry

sit down on a

pocket comb

Look! More dishes;

home sweet home.

Catching Raindrops

moocow

Happy One Week of Blankaday! (i.e. obnoxious pep talk that is mostly to myself)

     Hey, today is day 7 of daily creative output on this blog! Thank you so much to those who've hopped on board, and discovered that making something *every* *single* *day* is not, in fact, a trivial feat.

     It's about day 3 or 4 when it really sinks in, isn't it? Oh, this is work. This is...do I really have time for this? And once you run out of the backlog creative juice you may have had stored up, it starts to get harder to squeeze stuff out...

     And then the next thing is that you're posting stuff that isn't your best, that's tossed off because these 15 minutes are the only 15 minutes you're going to have today, or maybe you've been at it for two hours and can't seem to grind out anything good; the stars aren't aligning. And letting others see work that you know isn't good is so painful and hard. And one could make a solid career argument against it--if you want to sell your stuff, or make a reputation, you want only your most shiningest stuff to ever appear in a forum where someone else might see it. You don't want to tarnish your rep by letting other people think you think *this* crap is worthwhile, right?

     And yet. This is why I still think this forum is super valuable, and why I hope you do, too.

     Constant creative output takes muscle. Just like a daily workout that's really hard to drag yourself to at first, it seems like a huge drain after a few efforts. That's because the muscle is flabby; sure, it's easy to churn something out when you're inspired, but it's a whole different skill to make a thing go because you haven't made a thing go yet today. Doing ten pushups is REALLY HARD if you're not used to doing ten pushups, and even harder when you did ten pushups yesterday and the day before and your beleaguered muscles haven't yet recovered. But if you make yourself do ten pushups again today, and tomorrow and the day after that, it gets easier. Like, in about ten days it gets easier, to the point where you can start thinking about maybe doing eleven tomorrow, because the challenge is diminishing. But getting to that point where you can confidently start pushing yourself further requires getting past that critical first lull, where you're drained of your early novelty-energy and it's easy to think of reasons why doing ten pushups today is actually a bad idea.
     So, IF you happen to find yourself at the stage where thinking about sitting down and doing a post to Blankaday seems exhausting and not worthwhile, I recommend the following mantra: "if I do this today, it will be easier tomorrow." This is your workout, your challenge, your job. Tomorrow is the reward. (And--reality check--ten pushups, or a single sketch/poem/photo/whatever, is not in fact more taxing than the human body and brain can bear. It will not damage you with the exertion or drain your creativity-well to the point of no return.)

     Constant creative output also takes time, and we are all busy people. This problem is particularly hard to overcome. It's one thing to ask yourself: "is it worth 15-30 minutes of my day to develop this creative skill?" and respond "why yes, yes of course!" and a whole different thing to ask yourself, "is it more important to use my limited free time on writing this poem, OR on these three chores that I've been putting off all week that REALLY REALLY need to get done, OR on this overdue phone call to my grandma, OR on a much-needed 15 more minutes of sleep tonight?" A perfectly legitimate answer to this question might be, no, today it's more important to do this other thing, and that's too bad but that's the way it is.
     However! Before you answer that, consider what your priorities are holistically. Do you want this creative aspect of your life to be a significant part of your identity? Is this a skill that it's important to you to develop and live by? Adjust your priority ranking for this kind of work accordingly and consciously. There's no moral advantage to putting creative output either at priority 1 or priority 15, but if it's in the top 5 or so for you personally, chances are you really do have 30 minutes for it daily. If it's down at priority 15 or below, stop now! You don't have time for this. Go do something more important and spare yourself some guilt. 15 minutes a day is a lot, relatively speaking.
    If you're like, this is totally worth 15 minutes but it keeps taking me an hour, then here's a suggestion: set a timer. Work madly for 15 minutes and then post whatever it is that you've got at the end. Then you will have done your awesome workout and not blown your whole day. If the output embarrasses you because it's hacked out, just attach a note letting us know that you've given yourself a 15-minute constraint, and we will all understand and judge you less harshly.

   Which leads me to the final, maybe trickiest objection: I don't feel comfortable letting other people see unfinished work! They will judge me on it and see me as less good at this than I really am! I'm a professional and the image I present to the world (or to the 8 people reading and contributing to this blog) has a real impact on my life!
     Now, to a certain extent, this is legit. If you're a working poet, or want to be, and you need those in your professional network (publishers, readers & potential future book-buyers, other poets, English faculty at the school where you work) to think highly of you, you want to craft that professional image carefully. This blog is not advertised anywhere, but it's not currently password-protected either (it could be, if enough of us want that) so theoretically, someone from Outside could stumble across it, connect it with you, and judge you based on it. And, let's face it, daily output is never going to be consistently stunning, certainly not in the world of creative work.
    Your answer to this might be different, but for me, the posting is worth it. My largest demon, my biggest obstacle to producing poetry, is: this isn't good enough. People are going to think this is dumb. This is bad, I'm a bad poet, I don't even have the right to put this out there and pretend like anyone would want to read it. I haven't used any poetic devices, my thinking is too unsubtle, this is trite, there I go again telling not showing, that word is wrong, that whole stanza sucks...and on and on.
     This demon is SUPER powerful if I do what it says. If I hold back on sharing my stuff because it's not good enough, the voice gets louder and I stop even trying to write, at a certain point, because I know already why what I'm about to write is going to be bad, except for those rare moments when the clouds part and the god-whisper trumpet descends to my ear and I KNOW what to write. Since that happens to me on its own about once every two years (though, interestingly, much more frequently when I'm writing daily), that would make me pretty clearly Not A Poet.
     But if I ignore the demon and share my stuff anyway, it gets quieter. It's kind of like the workout muscles--the more I do it, the easier it gets. When I reach inside for the inner strength to let the world see even my non-optimized self, when I stand behind that shaky work as part of me as a whole artist and insist that its existence is as worthwhile as that of my more polished stuff, the demon's got no leg to stand on. No one in the creative world would claim to believe that everything you produce has to be incredible. The more our work gets out there and catastrophic judgement fails to come crashing down, the less shame we can possibly nurture around our output--and that throws down the last rail in the fence between us and our work, us and daily practice, us and fertilizing the garden so that when the amazing inspiration does appear, it has a rich & hospitable environment in which to thrive.
     And those people whose opinion you care about, when presented with a truly stunning example of your best work, made possible by months of churning out crap, are not going to be blind to its value just because they saw something of yours that was less good. If they are, it's not worthwhile courting their opinion, because the world is full of true listeners & art lovers and THEY are the ones who set the bar for real success, not the insecure folks who box you into Not Good the first time they encounter you and are tone-deaf to you forevermore.

     So.

     Don't give up. Make something shitty today, and post it. Decide how much time you're really willing to spend on this project, and stick with that. If you keep working, it'll get easier next week, I PROMISE. I'm so, so grateful to y'all for being here in the first place, and please know that seeing your work come up every night makes it easier for me to sit down and write, knowing you're out there struggling too.

     And if you're reading this all like, 'what's Alissa talking about? This making-work-every-day thing is no big deal; she's making it sound hard!' Well then fuck you very much, God bless you, and please stick around as an inspiration to the rest of us.

XOXOXO!
A

Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen

It's a little odd to put food-making up here, but there was liquid nitrogen involved, and blinky bunny ears (and later a giraffe costume and nutella), so I think it counts.

Sorry y'all but you're going to have to slog through probably a LOT of pregnancy poems outta me this month

Expecting

Sunlight falling over the empty crib.

Vacated shelves in the closet slowly filling with

tiny white unitards.

We’re attracting hand-knit objects

and people won’t stop asking me for his name.

My body moves restlessly, not under my control—

my dancing belly, blissfully unaware

of the seismic disruption six weeks hence.

Six weeks!

Long enough to germinate an Allium Christophii seed,

Long enough to learn basic glassblowing,

Long enough for summer to turn into fall,

Long enough to make a papa out of my boyish husband and,

if I’m lucky,

a mama out of me.

 Allium Christophii Photo: Jennifer Benner