Fwd: SANE Nov 3 Zentangles, then?

From: Weasley

I'm up for a watertown dinner !

I did see an article on zentangles - see the website zentangle.com.

They sell a kit for $50, but the article I read gives the basics - draw 4 dots, connect them. Then draw pencil lines inside - like a piece of thread that falls all over. Within each one of these areas, draw a repeated pattern(circle, squiggle, line, dot, etc.etc). Continue doing this in each area.

There's probably a lot more to it than that, but it looks like you could definitely do it on a napkin.

From: Batsy
If you go to the zentangles website and look at their newsletters they give a detailed diagram in almost each letter. After looking at a bunch, it seems like someone has diagrammed doodling and is making money on it.

Sounds to me like a plurality for zentangles. I suspect we can finger this out without purchasing the $50 set - if someone wanted to figure out and pre-string a 9-tile "ensemble," we could do them separately and put them together to make a collaborative effort. If that ain't signif, we can each just try to do one or two. A newspaper article listed 'em as 3 1/2 " square, and I presume that's the paper, not the four dots. See "letters" or the gallery for more zenxamples. You might wanna bring snappy paper and archival ink, but I plan to bring pencil and eraser, a narrow sharpie and not-so-wonderful paper to start, but don't let my hallmark temerity preclude your starting out all effulgent and perdurable and evanescent without excrescence.

Phew, I got all my vocabulary words into one paragraph. Next month, "corporeal" and "putrefaction," among others.

This activity might be a bit intense for restaurant napkins, but Casa ArrBee in tony Somerville (I think Tony played the undercover beach ball in Beach Blanket Bunko) is available, and will still have Halloween decor around, no doubt. So unless there is a groundswell to go out to a restaurant one month before our Winter Solstice Fandango (slated to be at Marie Mack's on Tuesday 8 Dec - mock your calendars (nyah, nyah, you don't have enough weekdays!)), I'd propose y'all wend your merry ways here on:

Tuesday 3 Nov 2009 7ish

Arr Bee's Umble Habode, Sumvul

SANE Nov 3 Meeting - Where? What to do?

Blank (-minded) verse,

We picked a meeting time,
but that sociable gadabout Pam A cain't host
(or attend, alas).

We currently have
no place to meet at up with for.
Five six sevin, down with eight.

Nor do we have a thang to do
once we meet,
short of swapping election day stories
and mumbling darkly
about them good ol' Republicain't days.

"Oh no we cain't!"

Feels like another Sumvul meeting
We could free-for-all
or play pokah,
or dance with the devil in the pale moonlight,
unless it's raining
or the moon be new.

Be newbee doo be dooby noo
Walla Walla, Wash & Kalamazoo.

Alfredo, Lard Tennyson

P.S. You got something to do at the meeting? Lemme know, we'll run it
up the pyre and see who sets fire to it.

Grannie Mac

News on the baby front. And just in case it's not obvious, she's probably bringing pics of Frankie, not Open Studios, to the next meeting.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mary Mac

Date: October 19, 2009 3:51:16 PM EDT

Frankie Rae was born on Oct 10 at 5:15 am weight 7.2lbs, 19.25" long, full head of pin-straight black hair, but that may change drastically, no one can figure out what color her eyes are, they are very dark though. She's healthy, eats, poops, cries and most of the time she's asleep; generally speaking just perfect! The parents are doing fine, for entertainment they watch her sleep. Apologies for taking so long on the report, life was going a little to fast/busy in the past two weeks. Just had open Studios this weekend and yes, I didn't send out any announcements for that either. I'll bring pictures to the next SANE meeting.

best,

Murray ( I'll answer to anything)

SANE Story Jam - 29 September 2009

Procedure: Everybody wrote the first line (typically a sentence, sometimes more) of a story, all pages went face-down in the center of the table, then were redistributed. After adding a new line, the page was folded to hide all but the most recent line. After a few iterations, we determined as a group how many more lines until all stories were done, to give us a chance to “wrap up” the story line. One person read each completed story, and we tried as a group to come up with a title for each. During the exercise, authors were encouraged to write a name or description of characters at the bottom of the page, to help with continuity, but this was at each author’s discretion.

Transcribed by Richard, sentences were grouped to look like paragraphs, some spellings were normalized (except where the misspellings seemed deliberate), and punctuation was adjusted to taste.

14 stories are included (the numbers in the title indicate 1st or 2nd round) - click on the "jam" label to see 'em all at once.

Next meeting, you ask? Tuesday 3 November (Election Day). Plans are afoot for the Winter Solstice Dinner at Mary Mack's on Tuesday 8 December - either a Pot Lucker or we'd Order In from somewhere good. Cheesy gifts will probably be the order of the day, distributed by some new method, no doubt. Like a helicopter or a llama. Possibly hirsute dwarves.

Story Jam 2.7 Chanel No. 2

He doffed his hat at the attractive alien, never realizing that in her culture that action tied him to her for life. He tried to get rid of her by expelling the loudest fart he could muster, but he only succeeded in soiling his pants and increasing her adoration. Little did he know that it was her favorite smell, and she was, unbeknownst to him, a “nose” from the elite parfumery of the house of Chanel.

His plan failed, he couldn’t throw her off his scent. What would his next plan of attack be?

Cock-a-doodle-doo! He had a plan: he would lose her now! He ran through the pack of dwarves (or were they dwarfs? -- he didn’t have time to ponder spelling!), and lost her in the crowd. The crowd were all dwarves -- they hid her from him. After all, she belonged to them and they didn’t want to lose her.

Story Jam 2.6 Cockapoo

The words meandered into spirals confusing all the readers except one -- he was already quite twisted already. Having read the book already, he knew what was to come, but how would he warn the others?! He realized he would have to write a book himself, and quickly. But why? Who would read it? Who would publish it? And what would it be about?

He just wanted to write about his beloved cockapoo (and you thought no one would use that!), but the publisher wanted more meat! So he wrote carefully, writing the next-to-last sentence of his pathetic, birdless life. His birdless, pathetic life was transformed by the care of this next-to-last sentence and he rose phoenix-like from its ashes.

Story Jam 2.5 Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina

In her later years she could not remember how she came to be demoralized by the poet. Could it have been the way she treated him during their tryst in the mountains of Argentina decades before?

No, no, no, it could not have been the hot, steamy sex in the beautiful mountain stream that left both of them exhausted, panting and covered with lichen fungal infection.

It must have been the frantic paddling when they saw the giant water strider emerge from the eddy beneath the foamy waterfall.
“I had better evolve into an underwater bug soon, if I want to keep living near deep water,” he noted.

Deep waters run deep, grasshopper.

And so David C., who really wanted to remain anonymous, was trussed and sorely hung on his own petard.

Story Jam 2.4 Hirsutomania

Oh no, 2:00 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I guess I’ll get up and start that project I’ve been avoiding. I am so excited that the world will be mesmerized by my embroidered tassels. Of course, the tassels were hanging from a part of my body that interested half the population.

“But which half was it?” I wondered, as I thought about the half that was dwarves, the half that was insane or the half that was sadomasochistic.

The bearded lady was an autoeroticist’s dream; a hermaphrodite to dwarf all hermaphrodites.

Gillette has the answer: “Shave, lady -- there goes the dream!”

The hirsutomaniac drowned his loss in a bottle of gin.

Story Jam 2.3 Stumple the Crutchless Bumbler

“Oh drat,” he muttered, “I’ll never get my crutches mended at this rate!” He thought: “What did Amahl [of Night Visitor fame] do when his crutches failed?”

Once again, he would pull of his artificial legs and stumple down the hill to avoid the coyotes that where sniffing his sweet.
“Christmas on crutches,” he bumbled, “If I can just milk it to the batten of the heel, all wheel be wall.”

Jeez, another nonsensical phrase that just popped into my head, and all because I stepped into the gooey mess that I (at first) thought was an unbaked cookie. Except that stepping into gooey messes should inspire a better line than that!

“It’s a long way to tip a raree,” he noted to himself, while he scraped off the sole of his shoe.

Story Jam 2.2 Doggerel for Dad

Dogs are known for being loyal and obedient partners. The man hated the dog because he was so much like the dog. It had all started when he was just a pup, his dad always told him -- and come to think of it, he didn’t much care for his dad, either. And his dad started when Hector was a pup, he thought, but not much.

In fact, thinking was a thought alien to him.

In fact, thinking was alien to him, and he hadn’t done much before, and wasn’t going to do any again.

And thus he went off into the sunset with a full heart and empty head.

-30-

Story Jam 2.1 Spalled Wall

The hill was not much to look at, but on closer inspection, there were large rocks with dug-out areas in the crevasses, which clearly indicated the presence of a large, clawed animal who left balls of long black hair.

“Hair balls, air balls,” she sang, “scary malls of spare dolls.”

Molly’s spalled walls crawled with polliwogs. Dogs, frogs, blogs and clogs. Smog, job, death in a minute.

Death was looking good in this run-amok rhyme scheme. He took a look at himself in the mirror, draped provocatively in this rhyme-scheme from hell, and thought: “I’ve got to see a doctor about that electrolysis!”

Story Jam 1.7 Marv Throneberry and the Magpie Eggs

In the warm morning sun, a magpie ate breakfast, a distraught grasshopper being pulled limb from limb while still alive. I ran to the closet and got my gun, shot the magpie and made some eggs. They were magpie eggs -- small and Mississippi River brown -- but I hadn’t eaten in a fortnight. But as I started to dig into the eggs I was reminded of my recent stomach issue and how the phrase might be revised to “Brown Egg Quick Step.”

I threw down the fork and headed for the bathroom yelling, “Here’s another fine mess I’ll be leavin’ near your throne.”

The fork was truly revolting, covered with tiramisu and small globs of moss from the carpet, though the throne remained bejeweled and radiant. The being that sat on the throne was also moss-covered and wore the carpet as a toupee.

And so ends another second grade play in Montana!

Story Jam 1.6 A Sniff in Time Saves Wrinkles

The dog took a quick sniff, then moved on.
“What the heck had Fluffy been eating?” he wondered, scratching his chin with his back leg. Since taking yoga classes, he’s been very flexible! Though his muscles have begun to sag and the skin hangs down from his arms.

The next time, he will skin his victim after he has died so the tissue can be draped more gracefully. That’s because skinning a moving object can lead to the most unseemly wrinkles. The wrinkles can be a wonderful texture to the composition of life.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, till death does us part.

Story Jam 1.5 Doorbell Doo-Doo

Bing bong! Farkling Weebler dropped his badger and scooted over to the front door, nudging the Jell-O out of the way with his good foot. “Good foot, my ass,” thought Farkling to himself. “There better be something good on the other side of the door to make me suffer like this.”

Holding his bad foot with his good hand, Farkling surged through the door to find nothing but bellowing cows. And Farkling impossibly held his good foot with his bad hand and long-jumped over the steaming pies. And finally he reached the door, opened it, and there it was -- the flaming brown bag of dog doo.

Like a weenie, Farkling stomped away until an enormous smoky shit stench permeated the foyer. What was the joke about ten pounds of something in a five-pound bag?

The bag explodes -- or five pounds oozes out the sides.

Story Jam 1.4 Ulysses S. Beegee

Panic set in as the motley group of travelers realized that their handsome guide was not going to show them fantastic works of art, but that he would lead them to the dark side of his personal “creative endeavors.” However, before he did, he warned them that some content was not for the squeamish, then they continued up the snowy mountain. Cold Mountain really was more like it, except that Nicole Kidman wasn’t waiting on the other side, and these broads could hardly be called sirens. Sirens! More like glorified clowns with big hair, lots of make-up and awful clothes.

“If I wanted to return to the ‘80s, I woulda taken better care of my BeeGees albums,” he said to nobody in particular. “Well, in that case,” said the nobody in particular that lived in his head, “you could have been a BeeGee and look where you’d be now, in that case!” Well, had you been Andy Beegee, you’d be dead, and frankly that might be quite instrumental in resolving at least this story. For it was Andy Beegee who, many years before, had begun the saga that today ended with the destruction of the mysterious mansion.

Story Jam 1.3 The Trembling Wembly

The sun came up over the foggy lake and I knew we had a crazy day ahead. On the south shore, we could see a hulk-like cloud of backlit mayflies.

“We don’t have much time -- hurry up with that marmot, won’t you?” she muttered petulantly.

The other diners waited impatiently for the next course to come out of the kitchen, making do with their water strider appetizers. Finally the creviche - or was it ceviche? -- arrived, but no one could remember what that word meant and the meaning could not be determined by sight, so they ate in silence and wondered.

“When was the last time I tasted silence?” he wondered, remembering it tasting less like ceviche and more like, well, armadillo. And with that thought, he went to the drawing room, had a brandy and got his gun. He took aim with his trembling Wembly, but when he pulled the trigger, it only clicked.

“Oh well, tomorrow’s another day.”

Story Jam 1.2 Epistle to Dippy

On the fourth day, when the bridge washed out, Ignatzio sat down to watch the papayas begin to rot. The bugs came first, eating away the flesh. Moisture set in, making the bodies soggy. As the decay progressed, her body blew up puffy like a balloon. She decided to ignore the bloat and thought back to her days, now long gone, as a prima ballerina in the seventh grade troupe. How she loved to be on stage dancing for the crowd. What happened to that seventh grade ballerina? Her weight has challenged her most of her adult life, damned if she was going to stop dancing just because she wasn’t a skinny nymph!

The End

No, not really, it’s just the beginning of what can only be described as a mindless exercise in futility and obligation.

Story Jam 1.1 The Gorillas of Montana

Muriel and Humphrey exited the apartment building, only to trip over the gorilla that was lying on the cold sidewalk. The gorilla was only “playing” dead, however. Others came to visit and had to step over the gorilla. Finally he grabbed a young woman who came through the door.

“You are the gorilla my dreams,” he thought (in gorilla), but she didn’t understand a word of it. They shared a cocktail and groped in the corner, while conversation was very limited. It was strange to see two gorillas having a cocktail, but in Montana, anything goes! Except the presence of his drinking companion, a wide-eyed bush baby, recently made illegal in the mountainous state.
He wondered what it was that was recently made illegal in the mountainous state, but realized, upon reflection, he didn’t really care.

Nanoseconds of screen time

Fans and Admirers (all right, Fans) (well, People Who Know Me),

After fighting through the crowds (for "Surrogates," "Cloudy with a
Chance of Meatballs" and "Jennifer's Body"), the dozen or so of us
who sat through "The Invention of Lying" enjoyed it enormously, and
will be back to see it several times.

Just to prep you, Mark (Ricky the G's character) loses his job and
doesn't have enough money for the rent, so goes to the bank to get
the little money he does have. When he walks into the bank, the
camera is where the tellers are, and we watch him pretty close-up as
he walks tenuously toward the tellers, I appear for at least a third
of a second (that's 24 tripled frames - 8 frames, each flashed on the
screen three times) over his left shoulder (that's up and to the
right of the screen), my white lack of hair and dark suit nearly
visible, tho hardly in focus. Given how much I was paid to be there
for 10 hours, and dividing that by 1/3 second, my hourly rate for
screen time is astronomical --- nearly, I'm sure, up to Jennifer
Garner's rate. All I need to do now is get more screen time, and I
can retire a rich feller.

Thanks to all who've feigned interest in, listened to or read through
my experiences in Bossywood.

R*ch*rd

Fwd: Who is Ricky Gervais, and why is he in Richard's shot ?

Cinema lovers,

Dy and I are attending the premiere tonight - well, our premiere, anyways. Dinner and Sox until 9ish, then on to the Cinema to be showered with confetti and champagne (well, to walk on popcorn and sticky soda residue) and sign autographs (read: credit card receipts). I will see if I am, in fact, in the damn movie a'tall - here's a recap of the scene: when Ricky the G is broke, in the bank and the computer breaks down, and he discovers he can lie (about his account balance), I am at a table behind him, to his left) filling in an interminable form. Black suit, short white (okay, thinning) (okay, balding) hair, brown briefcase (my own, its first film appearance, too), and Dyan's Uncle Dan's white raincoat draped over my arm. Just not sure I'm even in the film, tho, but that's surely a technicality. Later on I'm crossing the street in the far distance, anyone who can spot me there is not paying enough attention to the film.

I may have to wear dark glazzies to get by the hordes and throngs of as-yet-unknowing admirers...

Ricky the B

Begin forwarded message:

From: Leslie

Date: October 2, 2009 4:14:58 PM EDT

Subject: Who is Ricky Gervais, and why is he in Richard's shot ?

Hi everyone,

Richard - we have been seeing the commercials for your latest movie - congrats ! My kids want to go see it. I remember you are in the bank scene. Do you know approximately when it takes place in the movie ? Just want to make sure we see you. I don't know if we can make it this weekend, but Columbus Day is approaching....

Sorry to miss the last meeting ! Hope I can make it to the next one. Martha Stewart has some clip art templates for making vellum halloween lanterns, if you all want a Halloween idea.

Muffy Stewart

Talk to you soon,

Leslie