Paper!

Thank you for all the lovely paper samples. I will be painting on them shortly. Emoticon says: :)

I put on my super-powerful magnifying glasses and read your enclosed note. I listen to This American Life too on occasion. Sometimes it's funny and informative and sometimes it makes me very sad and almost hopeless. It tends to be a really good show overall. I can't listen to Ira Glass' voice without thinking of a Lynda Barry comic about an awful boyfriend she had in college (supposedly him—she won't say publicly). I hope he's become nicer since when that comic was published.

I'm listening to the American Life Scene of the Crime podcast right now. It's great. Funny monologue about a car crash and Josh Whedon sings his DVD commentary to "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" and Dan Savage speaks on being a lapsed Catholic and agnostic and the passing of his mother. Everything great about podcasting is in this episode, I'd say. Plus it's a live broadcast.

I'm going to work on a photo project but first I must get up and move to the kitchen to clean our dinner mess from last night. It's a pot & pan and dish explosion in there. For a family that doesn't pig out too often, we sure make a lot of dirty dishes. Imagine if we cooked meat all the time like my Grandma did. She always had a cast-iron skillet on the stove full of meat and/or refried beans. That stuff is hard to clean, although she had her method: boiling water in the pan afterward, wipe clean. I'm always afraid I'll rust up everything, but she swore by this method and it seemed to work well. Plus I guess the boiling water would kill some germs and such. She was a water saver too. Wouldn't rinse with running water from the tap. Had to use a dish pan full of clean water for a dunk and rinse. She had lived many years in a house with no plumbing or indoor bathroom, so she knew her stuff.

I'm sorry about the ongoing insomnia. This is really funny but I often check in with Dlisted at the end of the night too. Especially after reading some harrowing news article. I just can't go to bed with some real-life horror story stuck in my head. So Dlisted it is. It has just the right amount of sardonic writing combined with the absurdity of our celebrity-based culture to put me in a mellow yet bemused state. Then I go to bed and read for a few minutes before lapsing (hopefully) into unconsciousness. I also take Benedryl (a generic variety, bought by the bottle-full), and/or Advil, and/or melatonin. In different combinations and degrees per night. I just can't function anymore with broken sleep. Until Jackson starts going to a school that starts later in the morning, this will be my routine. I have a year to go. Luckily there's summer to help me catch up on sleep. Here are the things that used to help me sleep but no more (as a lament):

1.) No liquid intake after 8 PM.
2.) Exercising hard during the day, or a long walk.
3.) One Advil.
4.) Hope.

The name of the "you can do art" book I'm reading is The Creative License by Danny Gregory. I don't usually like these kinds of books because they're full of platitudes and unrealistic affirmative thinking. But this one has a lot of practical advice for shoving art into your daily life and why that's really good for you and humankind. Plus all the little illustrations throughout. You might check it out for library purchase if you don't already have it. Could be helpful for a lot of people struggling to deal with their inner creative urges.

Thoughts of Marc Maron: perhaps he's doing too much right now. TV show in the works, touring, live podcasting, etc. How can he concentrate? His schedule sounds bonkers. Do you think some of his neurosis stems from all the nicotine lozenges he ingests every day? That can't be very calming. Something not-so-good does happen to comedians who "make it." They lose their edge, frustration, or something. The thing that makes them "every man" or woman. You need that in comedy. I think Steve Martin has managed to hang on to his humorous self throughout his early success, but I think that may be because he's exceptionally intelligent and has many interests: play-writing, art collecting and appreciation, directing, music. He's pretty well rounded. He just published a twitter book with his tweets and funny anonymous replies. He finds the creativity in everything. He's promoting and touring with bluegrass legends right now. People who have one thing—that makes it tough when it's all riding on that one thing. But who knows? It's a mysterious process,

Oh, Donna Summer has left us. Sad. 70s-era critics were always saying she had a limited voice (most critics hated disco). I always thought she had a very distinct, emotive voice. She really felt her songs, no matter how dance-y and repetitive. I can't imagine anyone else singing this song. She's soulful and joyful and sad at the same time.



And this is timeless. The birth of electronic trance.