Megan's Blag

Death of a cranky, leaky Titan

2011-03-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

It is a sad sad day as I commemorate the death of a faithful companion. My red, '91 Mazda MX-6 came back from the clinic today with a very long list of complaints (mostly an oil leak of unknown origin that causes the alternator's belt to slip) that would take anywhere from $800-1200 to fix. Since my dad bought the car for $1500 about eight years ago we decided that it's life must now come to an end.

As you can see it is only 231 miles shy of 200,000 miles. After traveling from Colorado to Utah to California and back, with a very inattentive owner, it certainly now deserves a break and a good send off. We shall forgive it's annoying automatic seatbelts, and how it didn't idle in its last year. Instead we shall remember how it traveled from Provo to St. George through a horrible southern Utah blizzard on a quarter tank of fuel, and how it gave a high school girl a modicum of actual coolness on the occasions my dad felt sorry for me in the cold and let me drive it instead of the Cool-Mobile (Honda Civic Wagovan). It even had a radio that worked! kind of...

Goodbye Red Hot! We will miss you!

In other news, my flowers are blooming! The first image is a Gardenia, I think it's some kind of hybrid because it doesn't smell like a gardenia, but oh well. The second is a Bird of Paradise, and the third is the blossoms on the peach tree. Thank you Grandpa Mizner and California! I couldn't have grown these flowers without you!

The best thing I ever learned to do...

2011-02-21T23:26:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the only cartoon I absolutely loath and cannot even watch through ten minutes is Disney's Snow White. Which is a shame because the animation is truly artistic and groundbreaking. But I cannot stomach more than a line of Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White.

However, I have not always been aware that I hated the singing, but rather hated the poor, innocent film for another reason altogether, and one infinitely less logical. The song "Whistle While you Work" has always reminded me of something I could never do, which is of course whistle. When I was four years old and had to do the dishes or pick up 20 tons of Lego's, it was always my goal for it not to take forever but it always did, take forever I mean. I probably took me eight months alone to put all the Lego's away.

So for a song to make the promise that whistling while working could make to time go by faster was everything I longed for. From that time on I have practiced whistling with very little success. I think around age twelve I could make a very low whistle, much like a fog horn but very quiet. Maybe more like a dead car horn. The dead car whistle had to get me trough the next ten or so years. I'm sure people would have poked fun of my wimpy whistle--if only they could have heard it.

Then came the horrible day when I discovered I could no longer do the dead car whistle. It was like losing a small hamster friend that didn't do much but was always there when you needed it. My suffering was acute and I can't remember how long I went completely whistle-less. But on another quite ordinary day, I discovered I could whistle real notes--that other people could hear! I was quite astounded and practiced a bit 'till I could show Alex. I don't know if he was amazed as I was, but let me tell you, it has been the greatest discovery of my life . All you whistlers from childhood don't know how truly amazing whistling is, how it can make you happy on a rainy day and all the other poetic claptrap people say about whistling. It is all true! It makes work go by faster and annoys everyone around you as a bonus!

My next whistling adventure is to learn how to whistle for a dog, which my current whistle doesn't quite have the stamina for.

P.S. If you've ever wanted to do really truly do something, don't give up! If I can learn to whistle at 23 you can learn to repair record players, or whatever ...

Quilting with a cat

2011-02-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Quilting has been a hobby of mine since my mom helped me make my first quilt for a Young Women's project. It is a ridiculously cute quilt made of old jean that is a checkerboard of pockets and stars. I took it to BYU and used it as my comforter, in fact still use it as a comforter.

My second quilt I cut and pieced entirely on my own, with no help from my talented mom, who thought I was crazy. She did give me advice while choosing the colors. I'm sure my mom thought I was nuts. One spring break we borrowed several quilting book from our friend Bonnie Kelly, and I picked an "unfolding star quilt." It was quite a lot of fun. I think we worked out that with everyone/;' who came to help do the hand quilting it took a total of 150 hours to complete. As a my first solo quilt I think it came out rather well.

Here is also a detail of the quilting we did.

Now, as to the reason I still use a college blanket for my bed instead of a sweet traditional hand quilted quilt--Mr. Tony Fluffypants.

I imagine having a cat is a little bit like having a small child and trying to do something that is clearly very interesting. Except that children don't usually have very pointy claws or love to eat string.

My current quilting project is very small compared to my three queen size quilts. It is a measly 2 feet by 4 feet. It does however have 1058 blocks, compared to the 820 blocks of the unfolding star, and the 117 of the jean quilt. I plan on making the quilting very artistic and last night I finished piecing the top:

I never understood the meaning of annoying until I was arranging the blocks and Tony would treat them as a waterless slip-n-slide, careening through them and then carrying half away on his fur. It took listening to all six hours of the BBC Pride and Prejudice just to find an arrangement that I didn't hate. The quilting will most likely be an exercise in patience.

It may be a year since my last blog, but it's been 2 since Matt's!

2011-02-03T16:48:00.000-08:00

Don't have any accidents or oust any dictators; I'm writing a blag!

Actually, I'm not going to write about our inmate who climbs up the curtains unapologetically, but instead about this:

It's a giant tumbleweed. I would have had Alex or somebody stand by it so you could get a better idea of its scale, but no one was home so it sits next to the tangelo tree. It reminded me of a story my mom told me about a soccer match when Joel was no bigger than this tumbleweed. I guess a similar shaped weed came onto the soccer pitch and proceeded to run down one of the tiny soccer players. Everyone, including the kid who was the target of the tumbleweed's furor, watched as it blew across the field, ran over the kid, and blew away again. I have illustrated an alternate scenario:

You might be surprised to hear that writing this little blag was difficiult. You see I'm having a problem with my computer. Most of the time the screen looks like this-----

Other than that minor issue things are going well here in our trailer. Who knows, I might even post again while we live here!

Oh the British...

2010-01-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

So once again I've discovered how being British, or even just pretending to be British, makes one more awesome by a ratio of 783013 to 1.

I was reading about the horrible earthquake in Haiti, wishing that I could go and help, when I read this article about the US Occupation of Haiti. I was getting the "conquering" vibe from several foreign websites, but I though that was mainly news-mongering, until I read this article.

America is always wrong, part 85: US is accused of 'occupying' Haiti

I though that it was very apropos that it was the French who accused us of occupying their former slave state. Also, nothing unites English speakers more than agreeing that the French are silly.

I'm so glad that the US and nearly every western and eastern power have offered assistance to the devastated and helpless Haiti. I'm sad that the African countries don't have the resources to send, because I'm sure they would love to help, and I'm also sad at the lack of response from the middle east. I think that if anything could help that war-torn dessert, helping somebody else could do it.

Anyway, the British rock. I started reading more articles written by Janet Daley (who is in fact, only pretending to be British), who wrote the above article and discovered that the British call crazy "kill-the-people-to-save-the-planet" lobbyists "Warmists." She also proposed a plan to, instead of trying to alter the planet's climate, help our poorer neighbors prepare for said climate change. Pretty radical I know.

I find that now that I'm jobless I think a lot about politics. The condition is worsening, so hopefully I can find some employment soon.

The End of a Career

2009-12-16T19:38:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have wanted to hang out with me in the past 3 years, you'll know that I can never do said "hanging out" without some very careful planning a month in advance. This is mostly due to the odd hours of my job.

Since August of 2006 I've had the same job working for the BYU Info desk. It is basically been the best job ever, but since I'm graduating from BYU they won' t let me stay. This means I won't have to work 6am-10am one day, then 9pm-1am the next, but it is a sad day indeed. Now what kind of stories will I tell to garner attention at Alex's Master's get-togethers--Lame "I've-read-so-many-works-of-litterature" stories? Who will I argue with about whether or notTwilight is porn? How will I earn money?

These are problems I'm not sure any future job could imediently solve, but untill all my questions are answered I will leave you with some of our strange calls:

Operator: BYU Operator
Caller: Did you know that it is raining outside?
O: ....No?
C: And did you also know that the sprinklers are on at the Provo Temple?
O: Uhh...
C: And do you know what that means!?
O: That the temple is wasting water?
C: Mushrooms! Mushrooms are going to be sprouting all over the grounds of the temple. I need you to call them to let them know
O: (befudled pause) I can connect you there to tell them.
C: Oh, well, that will be fine. Someone has to let them know before this gets out of hand.

Operator: BYU Operator.
Caller: Hey, do you know if BYU accepts testies?
O: I'm sorry, did you just say testies?
C: Yeah. I know they have some cadavers on campus, and wanted to know if I could donate some testicles for science.
O: Uhh, I'm.. not.. sure..let me connect you with BYU Phillanthropies. All donations go through them.
C: thanks a bunch.

Operator: BYU Operator.
Caller: Hey can I talk to Cori?
O: Sure, What's the last name?
C: Smith.
O:I'm not finding a Cori Smith...
C: Oh, Smith is my last name.
O: ....Do you know Cori's last name?
C: Oh! Yeah, it's Johnson.
O: Ok, here he is. his number is...
C: Oh wait! I just want to talk to him.
O: Ok, let me give you his number and connect you. It's 42...
C: Can't I just talk to him?
O: Umm he's not actuall here, in the room. Let me connect you to his office...

Locks of love

2009-07-31T09:35:00.001-07:00

Today I got my hair cut for the first time in about a year. I decided that I would donate my lengthy locks to wig making for bald kids.

My neck feels so free now.

Also I thought it was high time I put picture of my beloved hamster Lawrence on my blog.

These were taken when we first got him. He was so tiny and cute. He is the love of my life...after Alex of course. :)

The Only Time I Have Regreted Being Mormon...

2009-07-24T10:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Pioneer Day to all you people who don't get it off. Unfortunately, BYU-Info is still operational, so I get to spend the whole day in the office. It is the goal of everyone who works here for an eight hour shift to find some way of entertaining one-self. Most people resort to facebook and its many diversions; I myself favor to waste my time looking at Cute Overload and Lolcats. Today we were blessed with Yahoo!'s viral-video-finding-powers with THIS tidbit--

As you can see, this is easily the most awesome way to start a wedding. I feel like if my family weren't Mormon this is what we would be like.

Not really a real post...but drool worthy, yes

2009-07-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

So I was just browsing the interwebs when I found this piece of awesome...

I'm sorry, what was that? I was too busy starring at Jacob's wet, naked chest. Too bad I am married and it would be pedophilia and also illegal to kidnap him...

Maybe sometime I will actually write a real post, but until that faraway day just enjoy.

New Moon

2009-06-01T16:59:00.001-07:00

Yay, I win! I will be the first to post about this twilight related thing! The trailer for New Moon Premiered at the MTV Movie Awards last night. Twilight also won awards for best movie, best female performance, best breakout male performance, and best kiss. Here is the trailer.,

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Looks pretty good, eh?

(FYI: I actually haven't heard the the trailer, only seen it. Our work computers don't have sound, so if there is anything untoward about the sound, I am ignorant.)

Endure

2009-05-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

I seem to be pretty despicable because I have one millions things to blog about (my new hamster named Lawrence [the cutest hamster in all the land], my new garden, my new internship) but I haven't. Instead, I'm going to write about T-shirts.

The supervising computer for my work just got the Adobe Suite installed on it, and I have been going crazy with it. I volunteered to design our office t-shirt, and from there I have made two other t-shirts: one for my boss who does a "cousin camp" for her little grandchildren, and the other for our Wilkinson Family Reunion. I had a lot of fun with them, and think I could probably make a cottage business for camp shirts...but don't worry, I won't.

Here is the BYU Info Shirt. It is views of the front and back respectivly.

Here is the one for my boss. She wanted a simple design for a kids camp.

Here is the Wilkinson Family Reunion shirt. It depicts the greatest of all Wilkinson legends: THE VEGA. For those of you who don't know, the Vega was manufactured by Chevrolet 1970-1977. It had an unusual aluminum-block engine, that had some serious problems, most notably, the valve stem cells would split or crack, leaking oil into the combustion chamber. Basically, you could only go about 200 miles on one quart of oil. We had a Vega when I was growing up, and it was a very uncomfortable, and somewhat unreliable car. But it was the best car.

Some of my memories include: going around corners and the passenger door flying open; wanting to go to the park, but unable to because the door wouldn't open at all (even though it was unlocked); five to ten minute wrestles to get the car in reverse; the hump where the middle seat should have been; looking at the ceiling, which was like one of those 3D puzzles that pop out if you cross your eyes; and always leaving puddles of bright green antifreeze where ever we went (when the car was turned off it would promptly dump all of its vital fluids on the ground).

The reason we revere the Vega is because of its drive to go on. It seemed to serve us when we needed it the most, and wouldn't give up on us even when we retired it (at the dump). In the end, my dad called dumps to see what he could get for the car, and one dump even said in a disgusted voice, "We don't take Vegas." When he found someone who would take it, he left it running on their scales (so it wouldn't leak all over the scales), but it also seemed fitting. The car that never died.

As a result, in our family when we say "Be a VEGA" what we really mean is "Endure to the end." I thought it would only be natural to draw an homage to the Vega for our family reunion, to remind us to stick it through the tough times, and to always park so we can pull forward, in case you can't go into reverse later.

Sex, Lies,and Photoshop

2009-03-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

I just saw this really cool video article in the opinion section of the New York Times. Once again if you are squeamish of women (and this time men too) clad in bikini's then beware, you have been warned, although, it is kind of the whole point....

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/03/09/opinion/1194838469575/sex-lies-and-photoshop.html

I entirely agree that the false images portrayed by the media give false notions of beauty to those who look at them, whether it be men, women, young girls, whoever. People should know that the images they see in movies and magazines are not real. They are in fact, impossible to achieve using mortal means. So next time you see a skin care add with skin that appears to glow from within, or a man who muscles seem to too proportional to be true, it probably is. Too perfect to be true I mean. And admit it, you really wanted to know what I wrote when you saw "Sex" in the title....

Artwork from last year

2009-01-27T06:40:00.000-08:00

So finally I am posting my artwork from last year, which includes: oil, watercolor, gouache, ink, a few acrylic, and an egg temera. Woo-hoo!

This is the first extended painting from my figure painting class. It is in oil. If you are offended by bikini's, there isn't much I can do for you except say at every other art school models are nude :). This painting, which is mounted on a door cut in half, took probably about 40-50 hours to paint.

These four are the start or my in-class shoe series for Aqueous Media. Aqueous media is any media that uses water as a vehicle (rather than something like oil). The whole semester I painted these shoes in different ways and with different materials. The top three are watercolor, the first one being an arbitrary/abstract.

The last one is an ink transfer and very watery gouache (most inks are also Aqueous Media, the ink used for this was water-based Intaglio ink).

I only did these three painting of my blue wedding shoes, the first one titled "Sacred Blue" was the first painting I did for the class. It is in watercolor. The single shoe is in acrylic, and the last is India Ink. For the ink one I used different hued washes, diluting the ink with water.

This is one of two painting we did on a plein-air(pronounced plane)field trip. The other is so grotesque I couldn't bring myself to put it up. This one is a view of the western mountains and sky seen from Rock Canyon Park in Provo.

These are my favorite painting from my Aqueous Media class and they are Gouache! Huzzah! The first two are from a second Plein-air outing, and I'm not going to lie, they are awesome. Doing the second painting, of the thicket, I began to understand the principles of painting outdoors and my teacher was pretty impressed.

The last two are shoes of course, the last took quite a while, but one in which my teacher was also impressed. All of the shoe painting I did in the 3 hour segments of class-time with the shoes sitting in front of me, and it made painting the Dr. Martins difficult because lighting would be changing day to day, or even hour to hour.

These are kind of misfit paintings, in that i just barely took pictures of them. The shoes are the last shoes I did for Aqueous Media. They are in Egg Tempera, which was a somewhat difficuilt media to work with, hence I only did the one painting. The shoe part is only about 5"x5" and the whole piece is 12"x12". I still like the kitchenesque tiles, mostly because it is super hard to get Egg Tempera to look that flat and consistant. Bragging rights really.

The whistle was for my final project. I painted about 15 items from my typeset tray.

The last painting was my in-class final for Figure Painting (the very last picture is a closeup of the models face which was tiny on my painting, very hard to get right). It is in oil.

Yay for the last painting, that I will show at least... It is of my face. A giant face.

This was my Final project for Figure Painting.It is on the other half of the door from the very first painting. It is of course not a perfect likeness. You also might have noticed the red things coming out of my neck; those are a Maya symbol of sacrifice, with some of my own embellishments. It's in oil. Yah, it's weird, but my teacher really liked it, so that's that.

So, for the two or three of you who really wanted to see my work, hooray! For everyone else...sucka's! :). This is of course not every single piece I did this year, but the ones I liked the best and still have with me, or had already taken pictures of.

P.S. All these works are copyrighted to me, so no stealing please.

2012: The end of the world?

2008-11-19T09:16:00.001-08:00

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MAYA (and Megan):

So I just watched a trailer for the movie 2012 which involves the Maya Long Count calendar ending on December 21st, 2012, and so begins the apocalypse . The Maya calender does indeed end, after 5000 years, on Dec. 21st 2012, but it is the same as our calender ending every year on Dec. 31st, not a prediction of the end of the world.

However, I think the most interesting thing about the trailer was the final shot telling us to "find the truth, Google 2012". I must admit I love Google and Wikipedia almost as much as I love my own self, but anyone who admonishes you to seek the truth through amateur web sites is clearly grasping for straws. It is also very clear to me after reading a few of the Googled web sites, that anyone who believes this theory has not studied the Maya because they call them "Mayans".

I feel it my duty as a student in a Maya art history class to tell everyone out there that only the Maya language is called "Mayan", never the people or anything else having to do with their culture, they are always referred to as Maya (By themselves and by those who study their culture. Yes they are still alive and well in Mexico and Guatemala).

So if you feel compelled to research the Maya, make sure the sources you are using do not use the word Mayan inappropriately. It means they don't have any idea what they are talking about or are just making wild and unresearched accusations without understanding the Maya culture.

Thank you, you may continue with your day.

T'is the season for me to stop slacking

2008-10-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

So it is getting to that time of the school year: "the hump". I really despise 'the hump' because it is the time when all the projects a haven't done or assignments haven't read come back and slap me in the face. This year I've been way better than in previous years but it has also been different because this year I am married and have a whole nother person to take care of beside myself. Even as I write this I am putting off writing a short essay on the Iconography and Importance of Blood in Maya Culture. Fascinating, yes. Nauseating, yes. Completed, no.

I'm wondering if "the hump" is something only experienced by slacker college students. Feel free to follow my example and whine and moan on my blog about "the hump". Also, if you want to learn about some nasty Maya self-sacrifice I can e-mail my essay to you. With illustrations!

Very interesting....

2008-10-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

I received an E-mail yesterday saying that my blog had been flagged as one potentially being a "spam blog", but since I was an "actual human being reading this" my blog probably wasn't a spam blog. When I read how they flag spam blogs it said those blogs often participate in link spamming and use gibberish and nonsense words....but please believe me, Gouache is in fact a real thing and I'm not making it up.

I also thought I should give a pronunciation guide since for the first year I saw the word Gouache I thought it was pronounced as if it rhymed with grouch. It is really pronounced /goo-w-ah-sh/ but faster and slurring all the sounds together. If you know the IPA then it would be /guwoʃ/.

I bring in the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, into this because I'm taking an introduction to linguistics class, that I love, and I learn all sorts of interesting and hypocritical things people do with language.

Today I think I will rant about people making fun of Bush for saying "nucular" instead of "nuclear" (which incidentally people don't even say that one right: the clear part is pronounced /klee-are/ not like /ear/). Anyway, apart from Bush having a totally different dialect than western America, he is making a mistake that EVERY SINGLE one of us makes, almost on a daily basis, just not necessarily with nuclear. Take for instance the word WEDNESDAY. Over time the pronunciation has been modified from the original /wed-nes/ to the switching of the consonants /d/ and /n/. This has been done presumably because it is much easier to pronounce.

The same can be said of the Midwestern and southern version of nuclear. The ending /ular/ is much more prevalent in English than the ending /lee-are/ (muscular, popular, tubular, etc. vs. Cochlear). So while the ending is incorrect, it is easier to say and it is more common.

If you are worried over our president's mispronunciations, take a chill pill. You do the same thing, just with different words. (Also look at the words, familiar /fermilar/, asterisk /asteriks/, Samson /Sampson/)

There is my rant. Obviously I have no pictures yet. Maybe sometime in the future...

My new blog because the old one was deleted...probably because I ignored it.

2008-10-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

So here is my new blog. I was guilted into making a new one since I have no way of communicating with the outside world that does not involve a computer.

Anyway, I'd better start with the title of this thang. For most of you normal people you probably have no idea what Gouache is. It is an opaque watercolor that is favored among illustrators because of its fast drying time, ease of application, velvet type texture, and ability to be erased/corrected. I just started using it for the first time in my Aqueous Media class and I have to say that it is the shiz. My plan with this blog is to post my current projects, wheather they be in gouache, oil, acrylic, finger paint, whatever. I know that there are like 3 people out there who are dying to see my work, so here it comes people!

I might also post my thoughts about things, I am rather opinionated and like to pontificate. I also reserve the right to do other things to my blog that are neither related to art nor interesting. Blogging world, here I come!

THIS JUST IN!
My old blog wasn't deleted, I just can't edit it anymore. If you want to look at the sad sad remnant of my former blog, here it is.