Opopanox, Home of the Arrogant Worm

See this emoticon?   =/  it is the look of Stupid.  As it turns out, my vocabulary’s all (well, half) wrong for art. This is because I supplied my own terms, hadn’t heard (or read, for that matter) on ….well, turns out to be quite a lot of words. To be fair, I might’ve read some of the terms and then promptly forgot. But in my defense they mainly did Renaissance and Georgia O’Keefe in school, and for some reason that still eludes me, focusing heavily on the painter’s life. At any rate I regularly underpaint (really, it’s a part of the painting process, – I swear – It involves a brush and paint, don’t care what they say ’sniffs’) and chiaroscuro, which seems to go for the underpainting. What a pretty looking word. But anyway, I was reading about the history of Veneer and his techniques vs. others past and present and lo! Found something I haven’t tried before, painting a section of picture ’till completion at a time. It sounds interesting, and with acrylics it’s still feasible. But god, there’s that awkward state when you’re still figuring out the technicalities, used arcrylics in realism once b’fore. This is supposed to let you blend better, I’ve a habit with acrylic to hop around the picture which isn’t real conductive to blending. Ugh, this is another one of those times I wish there was an art school, I’ve a feeling I’m not using the arcrylics to their best advantage, makes me cringe. And I really need to review anatomy, been lax. Fer instance, how’s a turtle put together? Tendons, muscles, anybody? Who the hell knows. Hmmm. Could continue with feet, too. Need a model, have you any idea how dull it is to draw the same pair of feet over and over? =(  That and I’ve been depressed, doesn’t help. Get inspired for five minutes, lose it, while later, inspired 10 min, it leaves, et cetera and so fourth. meh. And why are the art books useless? I have a few, none of them mentions helpful things like that! And they give bad tips, like using salt in watercolor and using hairspray as a fixative. Both apparently degrade the picture, structure and view wise. I already knew that of the salt, but the hairspray surprised me.

- Note to self; canvas is a right pain in the ass.

A-HA! I got a velvet picture from my sister in a huge frame. Picture’s got a gigantic tear in it but it was the frame I wanted in the first place ~Cheers~ Now I just have to figure out how to get the damn velvet out and to buy a large piece of plexiglass. And figure out what to make to put in said frame. Because they don’t have a canvas this size at wal-mart, and I couldn’t afford one this size anywhere, I don’t think.  Hmmm. Never made my own canvas frame b’fore. Oooooh, and what the hell medium to use? Thinking about being narcissistic and creating a self portrait. Slight problem with that though, it only looks photographic if I use either charcoal, soft pastel, colored pencil or pen w/ pointilism. Soft pastel isn’t as permanent as I’d like. Never used colored pencils on canvas and I’m pretty sure the teeth’ll catch the color and if it was gesso’d first the colored pencils won’t adhere well at all. So that leaves black and white. I refuse to do it in watercolor. It would look nice in watercolor, admittedly, but I’d like it to be less …dunno how to explain it. They’ve a tendency to have an abnormally vibrant, fantastical quality no matter the subject, not what I’m going for. For some reason I never took to acrylic much, thinking about trying it again though. Been thinking I’m missing some essential part of the process there.  S’pose I could do it in pen w/dots, but I -so- wanted color. Wonder if this is the universe’s way of telling me to pick up a set of oils. The two times I tried it (at eleven and 21, respectively) I found the brushes too hard to clean and definitely not used to the drying times, and the paint is so – thick -, just an odd experience altogether. Granted, I didn’t have a proper space set up and running water was always a few rooms away, which I know contributed to the dislike. Hrmz. Using a cam to get the picture to work from (that is, if I settle on it) cuz the idea for the pose, no way can I see myself out of my peripheral vision, let alone at such an angle.  Eh, I dunno yet. But my, it’s certainly a large frame!

Found my pictures! Sketching one of ‘em, actually. And good lord, s’creepy. According to the back of the photo I was four, scar was new (could’ve sworn by calculations I was five at the time, but I s’pose that’s where having a long memory gets you, things blur) and there was this horrible bowl haircut. What the hell were they thinking with a bowl haircut? Eh, I know what they were thinking. “Cheap!” Anyway, doing a sketch, working on m’hatching and crosshatching. I dislike it unless I’m doing it in color, but I’ve no colored pencils, so graphite it is, but for some reason my patience has never been good with hatching and pencil. Which is weird, because I quite like crosshatching in colored pencil, the layers are fascinating, and pointilism also takes patience and that, too, is fun. Excellent way to get carpel tunnel though, if you decide to make a living off it. Feelslike your hand n’wrist got stomped on a few hundred times after several hours of filling in a small amount of space, and it takes – forever -. Read a Heinlein book (Farnham’s Freehold) a few weeks ago, forgot to blog about it. I was so very, very disappointed. Ooooh, and Firefox has been updated, everything’s bigger in it but I’m not sure as of yet what else managed to change, besides giving the web address in bookmarks along with the title of the page. Should look it up.

Drakyn went to Camp Trans and, from his post, had a grand ol’ time. Wish I could’ve gone, even though I’m not that fond of camping. Really dislike the bugs. And the odor of the portapotty’s, I’ve a sensitive nose. Speaking of toilets and shit, guess what I stumbled upon on the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival Boards? The link to the thread is located here. The italics part below is from Drakyn’s Back-From-Camp-Trans post, Link Located Here, the bold is from AmazonHeart;

Michfest is no longer it’s main thing, though certainly its still important to CT. The “WBW”(such a BS phrase) policy is pretty much unenforced and it seems like the majority of festies either don’t care if trans* women are there or want trans* women there. In fact, some festies who left early left their wristbands with CT for trans* women to get in and another festy donated money for tickets for trans* women. I missed the days we walked the line, but I heard that reception was mixed which is pretty normal. Though there were some folks that didn’t talk to any negative people at all.

The mtf-spectrum folks who went to fest all had a good time, they even hosted a workshop on ENDA. One woman I talked to said that one festie she had spoken with in the line recognized her and came over and said hi and was very glad that she had made it into fest.

Bolds mine. You know, this is just so wrong on every conceivable level. Feh-muh-nust spends hours and hours, weeks and weeks raising money for tickets for women who can’t afford to go to Fest so they can go. Some of my friends paid the upper limit of the sliding scale this year because they knew it might be tough given the economy, and they don’t have a lot of money, either, they scratched and scraped themselves but they wanted to support the Festival.

And then we have FESTIES giving their wristbands to CT people so they can not only stroll through the gates but stroll through without paying a penny. This is basically theft.

I took the liberty of leaving out her email link, she stated she didn’t want to send traffic to Drakyn (or apparently even mention his name) so she gave her addy out so people could get his blog post from her and read it themselves. Now me, being the cynicist that I am, suspect she’s attempting to avoid trackbacks and the like. How rude.

Now, my question. How can giving a bracelet to another be ‘theft’?

A ticket costs an amount of money. For each bracelet a ticket must be bought. That bracelet ensures that whatever woman is wearing it is able to spend the amount of X hours the festival is open inside the festival. Giving something away is not theft when the price is set. It isn’t so much money for so many days. It’s a set amount of money for a week. Loaning something that’s already been bought to someone who fits requirements to use it (in this case, being a woman) is not theft.

Hey, let’s talk about theft for a moment. You know, just so we’re clear. That bracelet doesn’t magically extend the time a person is allowed to go if it’s given to someone else. Really, it doesn’t. So there’s no theft of services that way. The bracelet is made to let women into festival. If one woman leaves and another woman takes her place, there’s still the same amount of resources being used that’s already been paid for. The bracelet wearer isn’t swindling you, the complainer, out of a damn thing. I didn’t hear about anyone creeping up while a bracelet-wearer was, say, standing innocently in line to -steal- their bracelet. I certainly didn’t hear about anyone cackling madly and then bolting with the goods. What a mental image. (Steal. You know, what didn’t go on? The – actual – definition of theft?)

But, back to the bracelet. It doesn’t give the second woman extra hours in the festival after everyone else is told to toddle home. Bracelet lasts the same amount of time as everyone else’s. Nor does that bracelet of admission transform into a VIP pass to…wherever, I don’t know what their paranoia is conceiving, really. Maybe, they wonder, a given bracelet turns into a backstage pass to meet the Indigo Girls! Or perhaps upon showing the given bracelet at mealtime the lucky bracelet recipient can receive all the vegan nutloaf she wants! Who the hell knows. At any rate the woman who received the bracelet isn’t getting any extra benefits that others don’t already have with their own pretty little wrist decorations.

And AmazonHeart’s paranoia comes out to play. Apparently she’s able to decide whether someone is or is not a festie by what kinds of workshops a woman facilitates, as seen in her comment below.

Of course, the “Festies” who “left early” and ripped off the festival by giving their bracelet(s) to CT people might have been CT people in the first place and not Festies at all, like the CT person who facilitated a workshop on ENDA on the land.

No matter what, we all know each woman pays for her own ticket and to give their bracelet to someone who hasn’t paid is stealing from Fest.

Okay then. So any festie that leaves early and doesn’t want to waste hard earned money on something she bought rotting in the nearest rubbish bin because she can’t stay the full week is, according to Heart, not ~ really ~ a festie. Apparently it is an us vs them thing, after all! I was always a little unclear on that point. Does that include everyone who has to leave early or just those that would rather not waste hard earned dollars and want to share the wealth of actually being able to afford to go?

Don’t bother answering! I already know the reply. A lot of people, I’m thinking, already know the reply. If I had a hefty sum, I’d lay the bet that if a festie donated the rest of her ticket-time to a woman lucky enough to be born like Heart that pined to go herself but alas, didn’t have the necessary funds, she would be waxing poetic about the mystikal Tribe That Bleeds and its awesome Sisterhood Connection that just had to have been the cause of such generosity. Sisters, looking out for each other! So sweet!

So then, Heart states that everyone pays for her own ticket.

Oh Rly?

I see she hasn’t talked to…herself much. Fancy that. Does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing? AmazonHeart, aka Cheryl Seelhoff, aka Heart, Aka, crunchygranoladyke, ‘cept that was one of her sockpuppets, probably shouldn’t include that one as a regular alias… Anyway, Cheryl’s famous for her collection plate, she certainly didn’t pay full price for her own ticket herself when she solicited for funds last year. So where’s the beef? What’s that I hear, the booming sound of silence?

Here’s a thought. If people don’t want the end effects of their donated funds being used how they wouldn’t spend it, they can keep their funds to themselves and stop bellyaching. (I’m assuming here Cheryl (the one who posted the thread in question) hasn’t donated to something she hasn’t benefited from, seeing as she’s complaining for -others- hard-earned cash being spent how she doesn’t like, and not her own. I’m looking at you, Cheryl, what with the consistent ‘Please give to my person’ posts. Ever get ’round to removing that tree?) Can’t believe people are being so negative about others being thrifty and not letting bracelet time (and money) go to waste, ugh.

Oh, and then there’s the exchange of Rabbit.Leaps and Nedra. First comparing trans women to rapists, then there seems to be a save-our-asses post. Quaint, really. Filthy and quaint and horribly, horribly foul, and very unsurprising, especially considering the posters.

Nedra – If we fight, we might hurt ourselves. If we don’t fight, we wanted it.

Rabbit.Leaps – heh…. read that again. sounds like the delema of a womon being raped.

Nedra – Rape is the extreme magnification of that same mode of thinking. It’s not rape. But it’s still a violation. And it still triggers shit we shouldn’t have to experience on the Land. The lack of understanding of that only futher repels me from the transwomen who do attend — *actively*, *knowingly* against the intended boundaries.

Ps – AmazonTrader goes on in the second page about how much handier she is than Brenda. Apparently she’s so good she can open her wristband perfectly with a buck knife, one handed, by herself, with no damage! Most people don’t throw a mini-fit about a trans woman including herself in on bracelet removing skillz.  Reminds me of Heart and her almost amusing claim that she ~so~ isn’t transphobic, Oh NO Dear! Now get away from me, you have cooties!

Since the most vocal of the insulters of trans people seem to live on assumptions concerning our genitals and sexual activity, I do believe I sense an awfully large smear of shi- oops, ‘fundamentalism’ staining their person. In that vein, this song is dedicated to you, my dear reactionary, bigoted internet neighbors. Enjoy with my blessing, and keep an ear out for the end.

‘Assumption’ by The Arrogant Worms

-Edited, my horrid eyesight mistook AmazonTrader for Heart with the apparent cooties about the knife skillz. Edited to correct.

Sorry, been working on a literature blog, just wanted to quickly update that the kitten that bolted was found. And oh boy, is she a pig. Eats everything, doesn’t seem to matter what it is, she’ll stalk over to whomever she sees eating and try and snag it. Anyway, I’ll make a more comprehensive post in a few days, been really letting this blog go and I haven’t meant to, need to fix it.

-Also, someone has come to Ye Olde Blog with the search term ‘fisk fucking’ again. S’an odd sort of screwup, really.