ILLNESS

Saturday, October 9, 2004

Dog Pee DREAM

I dreamt we still had Hieronymus. We also had wooden floors in the kitchen, as well as chairs with wooden legs (our kitchen chairs have painted aluminum legs...It's a nice stylish set with a long, but comfortable back, very art deco, that we got at the trendy Rubin's...but anyway....). Hieronymus started to pee near one of the chair legs. Stan and I were sitting on the floor watching this. I said something like, "Oh no! He's peeing!" but Stan said it was OK to pee on the floor, as long as he doesn't hit one of the chairlegs.

OK to pee on the floor? I must have been affected watching all those Animal cop shows where they seize 200 animals in one house.

Posted by Ann on 10/09/04@09:03 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

Friday, October 8, 2004

You never know what your Morning Coffee Cyber Cruises will turn up

Are these Warhol Action Figuresfor real?!?!

What is the mouse thing with the Floyd Prism shirt? I don't get that one, but those Andy dolls are awesome! I still want Pink Floyd action figures--not just The Wall figurines, but Pompeii-era action figures.

It'll never happen.

Posted by Ann on 10/08/04@09:04 AM CST ..::Link::..A Whisper Inside.

Thursday, October 7, 2004

DREAM: Huh?

This is one of those dreams that you instantaneously forget when you wake up. Only are you reminded of it when something during the day is a trigger. When Stan and I were at Jenny Street Market today, they were playing something by Tom Petty. So I remembered my dream: Stan had a cassette tape (!?!) of some movie soundtrack. It mostly had soundtrackish musical ambient tracks, but the final track was something by Tom Petty. ('the hell?) I was a bit baffled wondering why Stan would want it. I kept thinking to myself, "you're actually going to listen to this?" Not that Tom Petty is HORRENDOUS or anything, but there's a lot better.

I think Tim Robbins was also in the dream. And a bunch of left-wing hollywood types.

This is getting odd.

Posted by Ann on 10/07/04@07:11 PM CST ..::Link::..4 Screamers.

Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Dancing About Architecture

The other day I was watching one of those shows on HGTV where they show people's houses that have some interesting bit of history and show how the person has decorated/renovated them to make them very unique. One of the houses was what they referred to as a "shotgun" house. That word and the building structure stuck in my head. First of all, the building was nothing special, rather small, but what made it special is that it was in such an incredible state of decay when the owner renovated it, and now it's completely liveable, not to mention artistically redone. Second, that word, "shotgun house" haunted me. Where have I heard that before? Ah, the Talking Heads: "You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack." Although the house in the show was in New Orleans, I swear I have seen shotgun house before, especially in Fort Collins. Am I mistaken? I decided to do some research.

I found out that the term shotgun may refer to the way the rooms are lined up; theoretically, you cold shoot a shotgun through the front door, all the way through and have it exit the rear door. The house is several rooms deep and only one room wide (of course that assumes all the doors line up in the same spot). Or perhaps shotgun is an adaptation of the original African word for house, "to-gun"--the style is supposed to have orginated from slaves brought from Africa over to the Caribbean, and it then moved northward to the deep South, and then even further northward and outward to Missouri and the Carolinas. I wonder if it even made it further north and west to like...Colorado...or if the houses I seem to recall are even a further adaptation or modification/mutation...some sort of Colorado Vernacular Architecture.

I learned that term...vernacular architecture. As vernacular, when commonly referring to language, means an everyday language spoken by people peculiar to a certain region as opposed to a literary language, vernacular architecture is a sort of folk architecture composed of possibly many different styles and constructed by carpenters and craftsmen as opposed to designed by architects in a particular style (i.e., Victorian, Greek Revival, Dutch Colonial, etc.)

I learned that the house on the HGTV show was probably a "double shotgun" which is sort of like a duplex, with two shotgun houses side by side. The owner renovated it into a single-family building. It also looked like a creole cottage, but I would suspect if it was, someone on the HGTV staff would've known better. I failed to take notice of the roofline. A creole cottage's roofline is parallel to the street, whereas a shotgun house's roofline is perpendicular. The fronts of the houses look similar to me, with the long, shuttered windows. A very good site I found with interesting information on these types of houses is here: Bywater Neighborhood Association.

I do wonder if my and Stan's future had taken us to the south instead of where we are, would we be owning a shotgun fixer-upper? A creole cottage? A camelback (shotgun with a 2nd story on the back)? Instead of whatever it is we own? What is it that we own, I wonder. I did further research. I'm pretty sure it's some sort of vernacular architecture. The best I could come up with for its style is "Vernacular Folk Victorian Cottage."

Across our street are a row of houses that must have been some of the first tract housing in Madison...circa 1910. Both our next door neighbors' houses are really similar to eachothers, however our house on our block is unique. In fact, I've only found two other houses like it in Madison, both on the east side as we are, but north of East Washington (we're south of it). The other two houses have not had the extensive mid-century remodelling as ours had, at least not on the exterior. Fortunately, all three houses have wood siding--the other two never seemed to have ever acquired that nasty faux brick WWII-era tarpaper, and we removed ours and restored the wood. Unfortunately, a starburst pattern that surrounded our attic window was removed around the time the stupid tarpaper was added. They literally chiseled it off so that the tarpaper would lay flat, the bastards. We added some classy gingerbread scrollwork we found at a local Menards to make up for the loss, making our house even more unique. Last year we finished painting our house's exterior. "Frangipani," a light buttery color, is the base. We painted the 2nd story gable ends "Dutch Cocoa". We used "Baked Clay" and "Taupe" (very neutral) as the trims. It's not as decorative as San Francisco Painted Ladies, but it's very decorative for our area in Madison. We've gotten lots of compliments on it. When we uncovered the tarpaper, we saw the original paint color was dark brown and the trim was an ochre. Typical for its era (our house was built in 1908, I believe), but too dark and depressing for me. I wanted a light main color for the first floor so that it would reflect light back into the windows for our houseplants' sake, but I wanted to keep it in the same hue range (browns, golds, warm earth tones) as the original. One of the other houses like ours is painted in tasteful sages and dark browns, unfortunately the third house is all white (yuck).

But back to shotgun houses. For years, I have had reocurring dreams about a fictional Fort Collins. The dreams have been frequent, sometimes dealing with different areas of the town. They're usually not mentioned with my dreams I record for this journal because they're so common that they're almost a subtext, and not important to the more "plot" oriented dreams I write down. These have repetitive motifs...travelling through these different parts of "Fort Collins," seeing the landscape and the houses that are all pretty much consistent during each different dream. I could actually map out this city's regions, and describe what each region is like. Certain parts of "midtown" Dream Fort Collins, east side, is a low-lying region. The houses are old, in decay. Some are on stilts or brick piers, much the way shotgun houses were built. Other parts of Dream Fort Collins, like East Stuart/Stover Street, has areas where all the house are painted white, very small on very small lots. Some of the pictures I've come across on this recent shotgun house research have been very similar to these dream images. Where did these dream images come from? I've never been to the south...I'm a northern creature. When I was merely a young teen I had scary dreams about burned out or decaying houses on stilts, something I'd never seen in my life, only to see, years later, something on tv showing those kinds of houses in the south. This is a mystery.

I did manage to find this link at the Colorado Historical Society showing Vernacular Masonry style homes of Colorado. Those houses, especially the two in the middle, look SOOOooooo old Fort Collins. I know we have been in houses like that when we were looking for places to rent. I do not find them attractive at all, and I feared if Stan and I decided to stay in Fort Collins and buy a house there, we would have had to settle for something like that.

And finally in my housing research, I came back to Madison. I found these two links to Lustron Homes, which are post-WWII all steel cold war pre-fab homes. There are some in Madison. I never knew that's what they were before. I was always fascinated by their exterior siding...I thought it was just some sort of mid-century aluminum siding that was square rather than made to look like wood slats. I didn't realize it was porcelainized steel. I didn't realize the whole house, including built ins and plumbing, was steel. It sounds awful...noisy, cold in winter, hot in summer, susceptible to rust, dark, claustrophobic. It just begs the question, what were they thinking? I later found this link to the Journal Sentinel that highlights one of Madison's morning radio hosts, Sly, and *his* Lustron home. His decor is all very ironic and retro, and very fitting of that era. It's more like a museum piece, rather than a home. I need a house that breathes, personally.

Posted by Ann on 10/06/04@12:02 PM CST ..::Link::..2 Screamers.

Monday, October 4, 2004

Disney Witch Tale #283

I have no patience for the impractical. I have no patience for the impetuous.

OK, this was going to be a big rant about the wedding and the impracticality of us going, but I think I made myself clear on that point. Instead, I'm just making this a memory lane post.

So we knew this person over a decade ago. She must've had some severe imbalance or something, because one time she wanted us to watch a movie that she had seen and she had liked a lot. OK, fine, I have nothing against watching a movie that someone is drooling over...I have movies like that myself that I wish everyone could watch and savor (although I have found out sometimes it's best to keep them to yourself as they are frequently lost on those who just don't get it). So we tell her yes, we'd like to watch the movie sometime. Turns out she'd rented it, and she wanted us to watch it THAT NIGHT with her. Whoahhhh...hold on here...whatever happened to agreeing on a time to see the movie? What ever happened to dates and having the two parties agree on a mutually arrangeable time? I don't know what specifically was going on with us that we couldn't make it...I think I was finishing up graduate school and Stan had started graduate school and we were both working and very busy. But we couldn't see it that night, or that weekend. We could see it the next weekend. Would that be OK? No, that wasn't OK. It had to be THAT NIGHT. She had already rented the movie. But we can't make it tonight. We're very busy. Can't you wait? No, she couldn't wait. She had to see it, with us, THAT NIGHT.

'The hell?

So it turns out we didn't watch it with her, because we couldn't do it, so she watched the movie by herself and pouted the whole way through it in spoiled little Disney Witch fashion, and then was mad at us for the next two weeks or so. Either she was just so PSYCHOTIC that her rigid little mind for some strange reason would not allow further time to elapse without seeing it, OR, the poison that she had prepared for us had to be used that night before it went bad, spoiled, and then was unable to have the zombie limb-numbing effect she was hoping it would have on Stan or me.

Yeah, it was probably the poison scenario. That would make more sense than her psychosis. Yup.

Posted by Ann on 10/04/04@05:11 PM CST ..::Link::..2 Screamers.

Volcanocam

Mt. St. Helens.

Posted by Ann on 10/04/04@04:50 PM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

So we get something in the mail today...

...addressed to "Mrs. Ann Stretton and Mr. Stan Starbuck." So, just who are these adulterers? And who is "Mrs." Stretton married to? Mr. Stretton, one would assume. Who is Mr. Stretton? Is this that Stanley Stretton who keeps getting credit card offers? It's really funny that he has the same first name as Stanley Starbuck. Mrs. Ann Stretton must really like guys named Stanley.

Damn, how absolutely stupid does one have to be to not get the concept that if you are keeping your maiden name, then you address it to "Ms.", not "Mrs."

This wouldn't be so offensive if it was anonymous (well, yeah, it would be offensive, like when I got telemarketer calls and they didn't get the concept I was not Mrs. Starbuck, but still)...but it came from one of Stan's relatives. The dreaded wedding invitation we were fearing. Yeah, like we're going to fly to California during our vacation in Colorado to see a cousin of Stan's get married who never got along with Stan. Can you say "fishing for wedding gifts?"

Worse, Stan's mom is willing to fly us out there! Ummm...and we leave the dogs....where? I don't have much patience for the impractical, and this has been a thorn in my side ever since we heard of this wedding and my mom-in-law's generous offer of plane fare. If it was truly generous though, she'd understand it was not soley plane fare that would cost us a lot doing this, but also boarding dogs, motel fare, etc. If it was truly generous, she'd understand that we have no interest in going. It's not like we fly around the world frequently, and our not-even-always-yearly trips to Colorado are important to us, to see the area and our friends there.

Ugh. Not happy about this.

Posted by Ann on 10/04/04@04:18 PM CST ..::Link::..3 Screamers.

Sunday, October 3, 2004

Lloyd-Webber's Awful Stuff

In Roger Waters' lyrics to 'It's a Miracle' there's a line that "Lloyd-Webber's awful stuff runs for years and years and years". There's an ad on our local TV channels for Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the Opera, and from what I saw it looked far worse than awful. Ann pointed out to me that a segment of the music from this production sounded like it could have been taken from Pink Floyd's Echoes. It's my understanding that Roger alleges that Lloyd-Webber took musical structures from Echoes.

What I saw of the production and hearing a bit of music, which clearly sounded like it was borrowed to me, reminded me of another time in history: a period in Art History just after the Renaissance generally known as Mannerism when the way to make a creative effort was to use things from other art works and perhaps make them appear more dramatic. Artist stopped trying to come up with their own observations from nature and used other art works for their sources.

To me this seems so very postmodern. People feel they never have to be responsible for the content of anything because everything they write or create is simply lifted from other sources. People have the idea that they can never be blamed for making any bad art because everything they use in their production really comes from other sources. It's all very clever because in Mannerism and Postmodernism artists like Lloyd-Webber can make big productions without ever having to invest any of their deeper selves in their work.

I'm sick to death of the shallow way most creative people are recycling other creative ideas as their own in this post modern era of music and other arts. I guess I'm either old and out of step with people like Lloyd-Webber or perhaps I'm ahead of my time. There is very little art worth remembering from the Mannerist era and even the memorable works are quite dramatically dumb. I think this is how history will remember Lloyd-Webber's works. It may be like candy to most people living now, but it will surely fade quickly even from the imaginations of Lloyd-Webber's fans.

After Mannerism came to an end, artists were again looking at the human body and real landscape again for the sources of their intellectual creative works. This is how postmodernism will end soon too. People will become tired of artists who can't look into the depths of themselves and merely quote from others for their alleged creative content. I hope people will once again become interested in artists who actually lay their hearts on the line for their work instead of these worthless charlatans like melodramatic Lloyd-Webber.

Posted by Stan on 10/03/04@06:46 PM CST ..::Link::..2 Screamers.

DREAM with ugly painting

I dreamt I was looking at a painting, well, more like a wall sculpture. It was a pale green-colored canvas that somehow folded back. I think it was hung backwards, so that the backside of the canvas faced out and the front faced the wall, but part of the canvas folded over so that part of the front that was facing the wall faced out. I can't explain this too well. It was very minimal. Somehow this had won some award and it was supposed to represent something about society. In my dream, I understood its profound meaning, but upon waking, it was just stupid and ugly.

Posted by Ann on 10/03/04@09:31 AM CST ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

By Ann @ 09:03 AM CST:10:09:04 ..::Link::..Whisper or Scream?

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