Groceries!

Posted on July 9, 2013 by marey mercy

Grocery store time again! I told myself I was going to a different grocery store because it was closer to some other stops I had to make, but truth be told I was hoping to get more pics for the blog and thought a different location might yield more results. Turns out I was wrong about that because not much in this particular store caught my eye. I did manage to snap a few shots, though:

Ah, sausage gravy. Just like Grandma used to freeze.

Things started picking up a bit when I zeroed in on all those little add-on geegaws that hang from the shelves all over the store. Like this for example – I love how these “Glam Gloves” reach glamorously down for a roll of toilet paper. In defense of rubber-glove glam, I believe the toilet paper was two-ply with aloe:

GLAMOUR!

This weird, aisle-specific impulse item tapped right into my twelve-year-old boy humor:

When your dryer lacks a pair

Then this one really got the adolescent giggling going:

You can find this in the aisle marked “Late Night.”

Now, I get the eco-friendly functionality of this next item, but the “Before” graphic really did me in:

Dude, just EMPTY THE BIN already. Plus the “After” bin is totally empty, so I call foul

After mis-reading the label here I immediately whipped out my iPhone to Google what, if any, new piece of Save-Texas-Women-From-Their-Own-Feeble-Minds-and-Naughty-Lady-Bits legislation might had been passed overnight to mandate such an ESSENTIAL item:

Panty Essentials – Welcome to Texas, ladies, now plug it up good!

Once I got that straightened out, it was time to pack up and leave. But not before this happened:

Hard to argue with the logic here

I actually saw this one on my way out the door but chose to pass it by as I’d already put up my phone and had a cart full of groceries to deal with, plus it was in a high traffic area and stopping to snap it would have jammed up the customers. But by the time I’d loaded everything into my trunk it was bothering me so much not to photograph it that I went back inside to get the picture. On top of all this, the store had Coke 12-packs on sale for buy 2 get 1 free, and there was Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Mint ice cream in abundance so overall, I’d consider this trip a success.

I Love Grocery Shopping

Posted on July 3, 2013 by marey mercy

I used to hate grocery shopping until I realized that hating an activity which involves pushing a large cart through a massive building overloaded with shelves stuffed with every type of consumable commodity imaginable and basically being able to buy EVERY SINGLE THING I wanted to take home and eat was probably the laziest, most selfish, and ungrateful First World Problem ever. About the time I made that realization I also happened to be reading a book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (nope, can’t pronounce it) that suggested, among other things, creating an optimal experience out of mundane of tasks by incorporating into them something you truly enjoy. So I decided to incorporate photography into my grocery shopping experience.

Seriously, this place is huge.

Come for the jam. Stay for the gems. You’re welcome.

This quickly evolved into taking photos every time I had to run an errand of any sort, since as a world-class White-Whiner I tend to resent doing everything that doesn’t involve sitting in front of my computer and eating ice cream. You know, things like going to CVS to pick up that prescription medication which is entirely covered by my insurance and has kept me from conceiving unwanted children for 20 years. Or driving three miles to the veterinarian to pick up one of the many medications that my completely pampered and spoiled mutt Sprocket needs to keep from getting itchy, ’cause Lord knows I cannot tolerate the thought of my dog suffering from an unscratchable itch. You know, huge inconveniences like that.

Welcome to Texas.

I actually opened up an Instagram account with the intention of focusing solely on taking iPhone photos while running errands – I think I even put in my profile a line like “Running Errands Since 1985” since that is roughly the year I got my first car, and a life of never-ending errand-running began. But as with every other online endeavor in which I engage I was incapable of remaining focused and now my Instagram is just a mish-mash of pet photos, fashion shots uploaded from Flickr, and the occasional photo of my feet. But mostly dog shots. And as with any other online endeavor I engage, I don’t grasp Instagram enough to go back and edit my profile to take that stupid line out that no longer makes any sense given the content of my photos.

Come for the pork. Stay for the puns. Yep.

I rarely take photos at the grocery store anymore, especially since I go to the same one all the time and I ran out of things to photograph eventually, but spending a few months using grocery shopping time to snap pics completely changed my attitude about the entire activity. First of all, it made my trips twice as long. As I said, I rarely take pics now, but I still enjoy going because I have discovered the benefits of shopping for food in a leisurely manner. There is not only a lot of interesting stuff in a grocery store once you slow down and really look at what’s on the shelves, but you will pretty soon notice that you are the only person in the entire place who isn’t in a rush and pissed off about being there. It’s almost an out-of-body experience because of how easily you can relate to others’ frustration, while feeling none of it yourself.

‘Cause nothing says fun like WHOLE WHEAT BUNNIES.

Taking photos in the grocery store, however, can be dodgy and there are obstacles to consider. I learned early on that snapping pics of other people is always suspect and will tick people off. If you’re determined to do it, be sure you mute the phone (because my iPhone is what I always use) lest you get caught trying to take a photo of an old lady’s glittery headscarf, and then the shutter sound gets her attention, and she looks at you like you’re some sort of pervert, and makes you delete it (yep, that happened). Also, employees don’t take kindly to you wandering the store photographing items for hours, so you have to be stealthy. And yes, I have been reprimanded by grocery store managers more than once, which is not something I enjoy, so I do my best not to draw attention to what I am doing. Sometimes I pretend I’m using one of those scan-it-to-get-the-cost apps, but that’s pretty stupid considering the prices in a grocery store are clearly labeled on the shelves, so that isn’t going to take you very far. I am admittedly unskilled when it comes to iPhone photos; I’m never good at shooting from the hip, and with my phone I’m a disaster, so I struggle to get decent focus even when I’m not trying to sneak a shot. Therefore, I’ve learned to use a combination of looking like I’m not taking a photo but also looking like I don’t care if you know I am taking one to get away with it, if that makes sense.

I think Blue Bell ice cream is strictly a Texas thing? So sorry, rest of the world.

Overall I highly recommend the strategy of taking whatever it is you just hate to do, and finding a way to incorporate something you love into it. I suppose someone might be concerned that the opposite will happen and they will come to detest the thing they love because it’s now associated with the hated activity, but damn seriously, if that happens, you need either some new hobbies or some different tasks because something’s gone wrong. I guess you have to get the love-to-hate ratio right to ensure that doesn’t happen. I actually never finished Csikszentmihalyi’s book so perhaps I missed the chapter where such an equation is introduced. If anyone else gets past page 238 and comes across it, let me know.

I bought one of each. All my breakfast foodz have the word “kidz” in the title.

Art Does Not Apologize

Posted on June 25, 2013 by marey mercy

Every artist I know has a clutter problem; we’re not hoarders (a show I’ve never watched, by the way, because somehow I got the impression that at least one kitty corpse is unearthed in the debris each episode, and that ain’t right) but when we come across things we might be able to use someday, we really can’t – actually, we shouldn’t – pass them up. My artist friends and I all have stories about how we try to contain the chaos that is the never-ending collection of “I could totally use this for something” junk that, no matter how hard we try or how many resolutions we make, eventually takes over our lives.

My friends also share stories of significant others who must learn to tolerate the art-cluttered home – one of my favorite stories involves a garage sale and rows of cheap mannequin torsos. I’ll admit this is the one way in which I have an advantage over some of the artists I know: my husband is an artist himself, so he actually contributes to our clutter more than he complains about it. But thinking about those less-than-tolerant SO’s to which the necessity of a gross of mannequin torsos must be justified – and oh man, am I envisioning the amazing uses for mannequin torsos right now – brought to mind the quote that is the title of this post: Mandy Patinkin shouting at Hugh Grant in a scene from Impromptu. I tried to find a little snippet of just the quote itself on YouTube but all I could find was this three-minute version of the entire scene, still totally worth watching.

I have closets stuffed with insane vintage costumes I’ve never worn but have every intention of doing so, someday, while my actual, wearable clothes are crushed up front like David Beckham fans in China. For example, here is the “coat closet” in our hallway:

Four poor coats crushed by the weight of vintage caftans and square dance outfits. Eventually I had to move the petticoats out altogether and move them into my husband’s suit closet – I adore petticoats but they do NOT store well. On the floor you can see several sets of fleece blankets and flannel sheets, which I use as backdrops for my photos.

And by the way, that navy blue sequin coat is a real coat, not a costume, and I do wear it regularly; what I like most about it is I saw a picture of Kelly Clarkson once wearing the same exact coat, AND it’s from Ann Taylor Loft, which cracks me up – go Kelly!

Speaking of flannel sheets:

This is one corner of my office, which is also my “studio,” piled high with sheet sets. Meaning when it’s time to take pictures, I move all the office furniture out of it, pile it up in the family room, and tack a fleece sheet to the wall. Really high-tech stuff, don’t you know. Oh, and the big gray and purple Athleta bag has a massive afro wig stuffed in it that I could not get back into its box once I took it out.

And at one time I did use all those weights, thankyouverymuch. I just haven’t touched them in about a year. But I am going to. Next month. Seriously.

Once the office furniture gets shoved into a corner of the family room, it will stay there anywhere from two days to a week, which is really lovely. This is why all my wigheads are also in the family room, perched on a bookshelf:

Believe it or not, this is quite logical. Since the aesthetic value of the bookshelf is already ruined by the office furniture piled up in front of it, why not just pull out whatever wigs I’m going to wear in the photoshoot and plant them there as well? I can just pop out of the office real quick and yank it off its stand when I’m ready to wear it. It may not be attractive to the visiting family member, but to me at least it’s practical. I do eventually move the furniture back into the office – because when it’s time to use it as an office again, I do need a chair or two – but I see no reason to move the wigheads, since I’m just going to get them back out again a few days later. There’s only so much effort I’m willing to put into maintaining a socially acceptable living space, folks. It is this same attitude that has resulted in a Christmas tree that stays up in our living room all year (and by the way, the necessity of moving furniture from room to room also requires said furniture to be easily transported, i.e. really cheap. Thanks, Fingerhut! I love a sofa that comes in a box and I can carry over my head).

Speaking of practical:

Ridiculous shit like this is just everywhere; massive platform shoes, Dynasty-era ballgowns, and Lolita bows the size of airplane propellers I will never wear in public and, in this case, I might be wise to never wear, period. The sign on the floor in this photo, by the way, says “Life is Short, Buy the Shoes,” which is prophetic considering how short my life would be were I to actually try and walk in these. Weird, random, seemingly useless, and occasionally disturbing surprises abound in our house, like this little pile on another bookshelf:

That’s two more cameras (a Canon PowerShot G12 & an ancient, tiny Canon PowerShot SE-or-SX-something-or-other that I do still use on occasion), some filters, a portable softbox, a curling iron for wig-styling, and…a meat cleaver. See, friends often find random items in CVS or Toys R Us that they (rightly) think I could use in photos and send them to me – that’s how I got the cleaver, which is plastic, by the way. And I think I also spy a bright blue belly dancing scarf used in one shoot and tossed back there when it began to bore me.

Since we’ve mentioned wigs a few times now, here’s how they contribute to the clutter:

Wigs in bins are tucked underneath everything in my house that actually has an underneath. And that’s an industrial-strength fan used to blow hair, scarves, skirts, etc. around in photos – attractive when sitting on the floor like that, I know, but since every available Underneath in our house is occupied by wig bins, there’s nowhere to put it that would keep it out of sight. More wig storage:

Yes, that is the Underneath of my computer desk. The bright pink tag in the left-hand corner, by the way, says “Gothic Lolita Wigs,” which is my favorite online costume wig store; I think they have the best costume wigs by far for the price. Just because a wig is costume, people, does not mean it has to be crappy. I probably own one of every style they make – in fact, I spy two in this photo that are still in the shipping envelope – damn, I forgot to open them!

Yep, more wigs, and wig-related products. This is what goes on in my bathroom cabinets instead of, well, whatever is supposed to go on in bathroom cabinets. See, I’ve been filling my house with art junk for so long, I don’t even know anymore what else I could possibly put on shelves besides all this mess. This is why I never have room for things like sheets (the ones I will put on our bed, not the flannel ones I hang on the wall) or soap or mouthwash or deodorant, or any of the normal things one puts in bathroom cabinets. Nope, all that stuff just stays out on the counters, so everyone can see my hygiene products.

I took more pictures of places wigs are stored, but I’m getting bored with that, so let’s move on to my husband’s contribution to home decorating:

Guitar gear stuck in another corner of the family room, directly opposite the wigheads on the bookshelves, in fact. At one time he would lug all that stuff up the stairs to our “guest room” (i.e., guitar and recording equipment storage area), but pretty early on he figured out that was a waste of time considering eventually he’d be lugging it all back down anyway (Remember: Christmas tree up in the living room all year, people).

Lastly I will leave you with a gear placement that might actually be practical, if it ever rained in my office/studio:

I have two more sets of these umbrella stands shoved into our walk-in bar, which is of course not used as a bar but for more, you guessed it, storage. There is also a huge muslin backdrop in there that I’ve never used (but totally will someday), two plastic tubs full of wacky Christmas ornaments I occasionally wear as earrings (in photos only) or stick into a wig (again, photos only), a few extra tripods, some gold and silver reflectors, and two exercise balls that are actually used for exercise (very dusty). On the plus side, we’re not drinkers, so it’s not like this misappropriation of living space has resulted in bottles of booze sitting out on the coffee table.

I don’t know what to say about all this in summary, other than if you come over to visit, you’re going to have to deal with clutter. And as Mandy Patinkin says, art will not apologize for that. But, in spite of what the movie clip may imply, art will NOT harm you! Well, unless you try and wear the shoes.