oh. goooooooooooooogle me.

There is definitely merit in writing utter nonsense in one's blog or inventing words and pretending that you haven't. You end up in the first pages of the strangest Google searches.

two nations divided by uncommon teeth

Well, I left the house, ventured out into the world and oddly nothing struck me... nothing ... none of that phenomenon known only to bloggers as the-"there's today's post"-moment.

And I came home. And I felt a bit run down and ill. So I took to the sofa. And I turned on the telly. I love my telly.

And on came a load of Amerkan TV ... and Amerkan cartoons and sit-coms, some of which are hysterical, some of which are dire. And I by coincidence two of them did the same joke, a thing about teeth, Bridish teeth to be precise and lo, it became clear to me that an Amerkan stereotypical idea of the Bridish is that we/they have bad and un-straightened teeth which is very funny because we/they, the Bridish, think exactly the opposite about the Amerkans, that they all have overstraightened, over-perfect, over white teeth and enormous mouths to put them in. (look at any satirical cartoon about Amerkans... BIG teeth.)

Funny.

Sorry, I think my brain is lacking sleep and clarity and silly juxtapositions of teeth stereotypes are all my synapses can produce. My three year old is making a bad habit of not sleeping until really late and then I can't sleep and my head is full of cotton wool. I may have to read her some really really boring stories.


tags: illustration

a brief interlude for a commercial break

Not a Persil ad, but a mention for Natalie, (Blaugustine's Augustine) who has new lovely prints available at photobox. And take advantage while you're there of sending some "good publishing vibes" cos she's sent a load of stuff away and WE WANT THE GNOVEL AND THE GOD STRIPS PUBLISHED!

Don't forget all the other bloggers wot sell stuff (including poor old violet 'iggins who'll be putting something up at eBay later to try and feed her seven fatherless children).

Plus, if you live in Portugal, and happen to buy Público today (thurs) I'll send you an imaginary chocolate biscuit if you manage to work out which is the madge drawing SOMEWHERE in the contents. More posting later... when I've been out of the house for half and hour and have gathered enough village ammo for a week's worth of blogging.

rules rules rules rules

There are an awful lot of rules in Portugal, and an awful lot of them take a long time to filter through into one's skull.

As we all know, we Webb girls are British. Half-English-half-Scottish-British. And there is something a British girl does at the beginning of Spring. Religiously. It's in her blood. Yes. She flings the windows open to let the fresh air in, the fug of winter dust and yuk out and to inspire herself to action (before she spring cleans... but hey, I'm not THAT much of a stereotype). And from the very first minute of Spring until the very last moment before the sun is snuffed out in October (we have to wring it out as long as we can) the windows STAY open. Fresh air, although it may be the fuggy black dusty fumey smelling air of the inner city or sileagey poopy shitty smelling air of the farm where we lived and the vitparents still live, is fresh air and there's nothing like it after a long drab cold winter. In the summer the warm air circulates through the house and all is well with the world.

So, five springs/summers/autumns/winters here and I still forget that windows open let in the "yellow dust of hideous yuk" that comes from the pine cones and coats e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g....and flies and that a fly in the house means instant death to everyone and nothing can continue until it's been euphemistically "dealt with"... I still forget that the window open in summer lets in too much hot air ... that the window shut in summer creates a greenhouse effect... that a house needs airing ... that a house needs to keep the warmth in ...

*imagine here your trusty Vit as a cyborg (or whatever you call robot people) and there are so many rules going in and NOT computing that her head blows up with sparks and smoke and everything*

Too many rules, too many rules, too many rules ...

tags: illustration

now put your mouse down....

... and say hello to a new person who came into the world last night at 10.16. His name is João and he took just an hour to come out. BLIMEY! Anyway. Wave at the screen and say "Hello João, welcome to the world!"



I haven't seen him yet, but his daddy says he looks just like his big brother, so I just drew him instead.

PARABENS!!!

next post on the way later.

tags: illustration

is she or isn't she?

No... not "is she or isn't she wearing Harmony hairspray?" (gosh, didn't ad campaigns stick around in those days?)... is she or isn't she a ghost!?

Well... do you believe in ghosts? I don't.

Actually I do. But, you don't want to come along on a Tuesday morning (or a Monday night if you're in Australialand) and read a post that starts with "I believe in ghosts" because then you'll be thinking "Oh lorks, she's off on a spiritual rampage... this'll be worse than when she gets all political on us... I just remembered I've got to pick up the dry cleaning".... so let me reassure you that I'm not .... I just want to describe a strange thing that happened this morning:

I was coming back along the road, having dropped off the two small stinky things that Madge calls daughters, back towards our house and I saw this old lady walking towards me. I drove past her and stopped outside our gate. I watched her in the rear view mirror for a couple of seconds, idly wondering who she was since I know most of the old ladies in our village at least by sight (there's an AWFUL lot of them). I got out of the car to open the gate without looking up, it was starting to spit with rain. Got back in the car, looked in the mirror again to reverse a bit... and she was gone.

I whipped the car inside the gate, went to close the gate and looked out on to the road and looked harder again and that old lady was most definitely GONE. There was another lady who was coming from another direction by this time, but she was already looking at me as if I was an escapee nutter because of the extremely stripy cardigan I was wearing (I have to have stripes in my life... if I'm not wearing something stripey on the outside you can bet your life savings I'm wearing either stripey socks or stripey knickers... I don't understand it myself.) so I wasn't about to ask her if she had seen the amazing disappearing old lady.

Nothing struck me as odd about her in the first place. She was in black-extremely-faded-to-grey widow's garb and she had a face like an old walnut and very droopy boobs. A lady who had worked extremely hard all her life, like most village women around here. In her hand she carried a plastic bag from the minimercado, bright red, and today is a day when a particularly bright red glows out against the murk and the greyness... and when you see a person walking along with a modern accoutrement, like a bright red plastic bag you assume, don't you, that that person is real and not a ghost... because of course, all ghosts come from the olden days and don't carry bright red carrier bags, do they.

Then it struck me that I'm TERRIBLY prejudiced about ghosts and OF COURSE they can be carrying modern things, they could have died yesterday.

THEN it struck me that maybe I should eat some breakfast... low blood sugar does things to me (hence the size of my bum.. gotta EAT!)

tags: illustration

toddlers, the truth and videotape

There is a universal truth that is "put a little boy in front of a video camera and he will do karate chops and kick boxing for your entertainment". We got a dvd the other day of "a day at our nursery school" and the little boys made sure they carried out their genetic instructions and did their chops and kicks and Bruce Lee faces at the camera (I wonder if they've ever heard of Bruce Lee).

There is another universal truth that says "the camera never lies, especially when it's filming little kids under school age"... since kids of a certain age are incapable of lies and deception (the household three year old proved this in a scientific study I carried out over the weekend: it was a game of twenty questions where one kid has a card with a thing on it - a badger, a balloon, a picnic basket etc - and the other kid has to ask questions, get yes or no answers and guess what's on the card. Three year old picks up card. Looks at card. Shows mummy the card. "It's a badger mummy."... end of that round then. try again. picks up new card. looks at card. shows mummy card. mummy reminds her not to say what it is. Big sister asks first question: "is it an animal?" ... "YES," cries three year old, thrilled that her big sister is so clever "it IS an animal... it's a rabbit, well done!")

So when we got our dvd I was delighted to find that they do tell me the truth and my babies do eat properly, do eat fruit for lunch and eat it to the sound of classical music... there would have been no way to fake a room full of three to five year olds eating apples to the strains of Brahms... "Diogo, Mafalda, Mariana, João... eat your apple when the nice man points a camera at you please"... "Why? and what the bloody hell is this awful music?" It just wouldn't work.

(I was hugely thrilled to see that my girls are SO good that they BEHAVE in their little games and little ballet lessons and little lunches.... but that just makes me sound uptight and english, so don't tell anyone I just said it. ta.)

tags: illustration

the clocks have gone back to being forward

The clocks went forward last night.

Every day of the week I have to wake the small people up with bells and whistles and megaphones and screeching and threats of boarding school. So how come on Saturday they religiously get up an hour before they do on a weekday? And how come this morning they got up two hours before they normally do (counting the hour that the clocks lost in the night) especially since they went to bed late late latíssimo? I'll tell you why. It's to torture me. Three times up in the night to escort one or other to the loo (every night... I haven't slept a whole night through in six years..."go round the other side of the bed and get daddy out of bloomin' bed at this ungodly hour and tell him to take you to the loo... pleeeeeeeeeease!".... "NNNNNOOOOOOO! I want YOU, mama!") does not make for a restful night, even if I have got my "miffy" pyjamas and Pushkin (my teddy) and a gale howling outside. I tell you, motherhood is doing for me what prime minister hood does for most people (look at what Prez Tony looked like eight years ago compared to now... and do the same with John Major and Maggie and most of the rest...) making me old and haggard and definitely befuddled before my time.

So in the morning I'm not hugely patient when they fight over MY computer to do their CBeebies on-screen jigsaws "It's that one..." "Shurrup! I don't want your help!" "Mama, she doesn't want my help!" "Well wait till she asks you for help, then you can help... you'll ask you big sister for help won't you?" "NO! I want YOU, mama!"...."SEE? mama, she doesn't like me!!!!!" ... UG.) and I'm hardly awake - not for the first time I put the coffee grounds in the cup not the pot, forget to put the kettle on anyway and look at the toaster knowing there's something wrong but not knowing quite what (possibly a lack of bread inside the toaster) - and I'm most definitely slower than normal to realise that the internetwebthingy is as slow as an extraordinarily retarded snail and I can't do my usual sunday morning five minute speed posting...

All conspiring to make me forget for the ninth time that the clocks have gone forward so we're due to have lunch at the inlaws in an hour rather than two hours, we're unwashed, unclothed, unbrushed and undone and I'm still just farting around on my lil' ol' pc... so, happy easter sunday, don't eat too much roasted baby goat if you're having to suffer roast baby goat... I hate roasted baby goat... not because it's like eating miffy and her friends (she must have a cute baby goat friend somewhere) but because it's way to goaty... yik. bleat. bleat.


tags: illustration

a slow easter weekend

First came O Acidental:

Then came Afixe:

Then Madge finally deigned to draw a Happy Easter for Vitriolica Webb's Ite.
The cheek of that woman.

tags: illustration

I'm working on it.

My neighbours, Morwenna and Dave, model "t-shirts by madge"... to be whispered like in a Calvin Klein ad... *shhhh* "t-shirts by madge"....*shhhh* and you'll just have to pretend that Morwenna looks like Christy Turlington. .. and then imagine some really pretentious words to go with it. I'm entirely un-pretentious, so I couldn't possibly come up with any for you here. O_O.


So, Madge and I have decided that it's a bout time we became cult icons.

And what to you need to become a cult icon? a T-SHIRT! Just think HOW many t-shirts are out there with Ché Guevara or Bart Simpson on? Or with a Picasso drawing or a Keith Haring design? A good couple of dozen, I should say.


Madge has found a fab online tshirt printer network who only use quality tshirts, who do v-necks as well as round necked tshirts so that we girls with big boobers can have a look in without looking like britney spears before she discovered how ghastly gert bazonkas and polo-necked tshirts look, who will print and send you tshirts from near to wherever you live... instead of having to pay several hundred dollars in import tax and postage to get stuff from the states (or, if you're in the States, from Europe) you just pay local(ish) postal charges. Cool huh? And the profits will go towards ME AND MADGE and our MAC (...and Violet's seven children of course, they may get some new cardboard boxes to play in).

So, in the next few days she'll be uploading a load of t-shirt(ish) icons and drawings, including the Afixe bonequinhos. Tell me in the comment box what you think, what you want, if you want it, why you want it, what washing-up liquid you use (personally, I use Fairy Sabão Natural... LOVE that smell of marseille soap) and who's your favourite character in King of the Hill and/or Angels in America (the two single greatest things ever to have come out of Amerka).

tags: illustration

as sure as eggs is (cracked) eggs

***to accompany today's drawing I would like you to hum "The Blue Danube" to yourself***



After all the raindancing, on Monday, the rain came, after five long months. It still has an awful lot of catching up to do to reverse the drought, but it's a start.

And on Monday morning I looked out at the rain and thought, well that's good ... I have nowhere to go today and there's nowhere I like to be more when it's piddling down than in my house looking out at the lovely crappy weather. Really, it is one of my favourite kinds of day. It is also the kind of day you don't want to be on the Portuguese roads.

And I was just enjoying sitting at my PC soon to be a mac, looking out of the window dreamily at the sky the colour of an old grey sock, when the house-professor ran down the stairs... "I need to get Lisbon and I'm a bit late (a bit... hmmm... a portuguese bit) could you give me a lift to the station? P-leeeeaaaase?"

Okay. No biggy... it'll just be a quick jaunt to Coina station and back... but the phone rings just as I'm picking up my handbag (the stylish one with my afixe characters all over it)... it's sogríssima (m-i-l) "Could you please give me a lift back from Setúbal? I need to take the car to the shop to be mended" ... "sure thing, just as soon as I've dropped 'im indoors off at the Station".

So, that's my lovely rainy afternoon gone but that's okay... except for the rain thing:.

You see... everyone in the world thinks that Portugal is a hot country where the sun always shines and everyone is a smiley happy person. That's what I thought before I lived here... completely forgetting (stupid, I know) that it needs to RAIN for the pretty palm trees and bougainvilleas to grow and for everyone to be a smiley happy person (ha.ha.ha.ha....ha). And when it rains, it RAINS. It rains and the world turns into a shallow swimming pool. And miraculously, SOME (for "some" read "an awful bleedin' lot of") people forget this between rainstorms, and just get in the car and OFF they go.

And of course this means the "Waltz of the Two-Wheel Drive and the Jack-knifing Oil Tanker" may begin.

There was a jack-knifed tanker waiting for me at the station roundabout with two or three things crashed around it, with thankfully un-crunched people.... and all the way down the long and slidey hill to Setúbal people drove right up my arse... presumably to be able to see the pores on my nose in my rear-view mirror... in the pouring rain.... as sure as eggs is eggs is eggs, with the rain come insurance claims and squished people.

by the way... if you're not a Portuglot, the little chap with the umbrella is not actually shouting "FIRE!" as babelfish might say, but in this instance it is more of a charming expletive .... like "F**KING H*LL!"

All together now: "Nah nah nah nah na... poop poop, poop poop.... nah nah nah nah na... poop, poop....."



tags: illustration

lazy picture blogging

moonsky0

I wish I'd painted this. but really it's a photo....I liked it so much, I had to post it.

I do like my skies.

and the guests were:

(names changed to protect something or other, maybe my ass... if I invented Portuguese names, I'm sure to get a real one in by mistake)


Jocasta Jones and Mirabelle Marchmont take time out from their busy schedules running their tiny little shop that sells overpriced over designed crap to attend the party, wearing some of the shop's stock it seems.

The Unfortunately-Fortunes, the billionaire uglies... take a break in their busy schedules to attend the party... the host is definitely in need of cash.... they ain't here for their looks.

Mrs John Sadistic, Mr Sadistic is somewhere on the other side of the party, taking time out from his busy schedule to drool over Miss Jocasta Jones. Mrs John Sadistic is here.




Sisters, Marge Hasbeenica and Victorola Hasbeenica (anyone recognise them?)... absolutely past it - at last - taking time out from their busy schedules at drug rehab to come and get blasted at the party.

(Inspired (as was yesterday, obviously) by my once-a-year reading of a Celebridióta magazine, which I nick from OTHER people's houses... just to see if the world is as sad and bad as always. It is. )

It's like rabbits and headlights. Tragic.


tags: illustration

I wonder if plastic surgeons go to art school

I wonder this, because it's just so easy to draw one line wrong on a drawn face and the picture becomes a strange zombie doll, dragged out of the bayou in Mississippi. Plastic surgeons don't have the luxury of a rubber/eraser or art lessons, so how DO they get it right? I think maybe that question is in no need of an answer.

I'm wondering my wonderings because it's celebrity hype crapola time again, another edition of Quinta das Celebridades (Celebrity Farm)... they didn't learn the first time and are just going to do it all over again. The first time they exhausted the C-list of celebs and are now onto the D-list... quite appalling and inane entertainment which just fuels this inexplicable worship of celebrity for the sake of celebrity. Obviously, poverty of the celebs is a prime factor and they seem to beg to be on these shows... the worst example of the celebrity celebs being the "tias who don't do much" (see, by contrast, the career tia ..by dra seuss) who don't have jobs and just live to be glamourous.

The ghastly hello/heat/caras/ola magazines of this world just prolong the agony and make an awful lot of people think there is some merit to promoting plastic surgery, drinking copious amounts of champagne next to copious swimming pools and not much else.

Given that generally, GENERALLY, most normal people in the western world are reasonable, hard-ish working, and not really money-crazed, fame-crazed, drug-crazed zombies out for more money, more fame and more drugs, and given that to outside the western world we allow and fuel a portrait of ourselves as being money-crazed, fame-crazed, drug-crazed idiotic bastards by buying into the stupid cult of celebrity, buying their perfumes, buying the gossip, being interested and fuelling the nonsense that pays film stars 40 million dollars per flick and all the nonsensical money sending that goes with it etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.... is it REALLY any wonder that fundamentalists under any flag, of any religion, and common or garden peoples POORER than ourselves HATE us? HATE US with a "I want to blow them up" kinda HATE.

lie in?

We didn't used to have a gutter. Portuguese houses inexplicably didn't have gutters. When it rained (and when it rains here... it RAINS) the noise and destruction was terrible.... the calçada (portuguese pavement stuff) would fall to pieces, great troughs would be dug out by the water in bits of earth or grass... and the sound was like an armoured car trundling across the back yard. And then suddenly someone thought it a good idea to sell guttering. Huzzah! thought I when we got ours... at the very least it will be quieter when it rains.

Hah. First there are the pigeons posted on each side of the house. Other birds nest up there and you can hear them go tink tink tink. And at every temperature change (i.e. morning and night, warming and cooling) the whole guttering system creaks uncontrollably. It sounds like the Titanic going down.

Very relaxing.

tags: illustration

natalie's got a new strip of 'im upstairs

So, if you've never read augustine's interviews with god... go there immediately and read the latest... they are funny and charming and heartening and clever and witty and brilliant and soulful and .... GO SEE THEM! then read the older ones. That's an order. And if you work at the Guardian, tell someone to make it a strip!

And Demian Stimson is back in the blogosphere... he's another come back to Blogger and putting up his old site bit by bit, a great way to read the stuff you never read in the archives... dem is a doodle strip blogger and bloody funny and a lovely guy too!guildofghostwriters.blogspot.com


tags: illustration

What a useful tool a satellite is!

Without satellites we wouldn't have global positioning systems, cheap international phone calls or quite so much crap on the telly. Nor would we have photos from space of a whole country that is visibly in dire need of a drink. My drawing is paraphrasing (if a drawing can paraphrase) the maps we saw in the papers the other day, since the original photos didn't have Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Setúbal written on them... although obviously, they did have "my house" in BIG WRITING - hey, even space men need to know where vit 'n' madge live, you know - nor was my Nasty Geography teacher, Miss W, standing between them, threatening anyone who gave a wrong or stupid answer with death or extreme physical handicapping (I was once pinned up against a wall by her, by the throat, my feet off the floor... sure, I'd said something stupid... but didn't expect death by throttling by psychopathic bitch at such a young age... I was assured that she lost a lot of weight years after this - admittedly, she was very brave for dressing the way she did in the face of so many foul teenagers, with tight tight trousers over the most HUGE arse you've ever seen - got herself a boyfriend and became a nice person... I still find it hard to believe and would LOVE to pin HER up against a wall by the throat).

But basically the story is this: Portugal is as dry as an old rag left out in the sun and we are in big big trouble. Our garden looks like the Sahara... except the weeds of course, which must be airplants, because they're thriving... first it was burnt by the uncommmon frost and now it's being dried to death. We've got some .... erm... can't remember the name, but beautiful succulents with enormous green pointy leaves that got frozen and turned to really attractive mush and a cherry tree with one blossom flower on it and a beautiful green leafed tree that is now a brown leafed tree on the top half. bugger.

There are old ladies who walk around the village, staring in at people's gardens, muttering extremely loudly about the state of those gardens. I've seen them, shamelessly peering in through our gate (the only one we can't and haven't made un-peerable-through) sniffing the air, shaking their heads, saying THINGS to each other or themselves... "Ai, que vergonha!" my mother in law, sogríssima, heard about her own garden one day, when she was hidden behind a bush one afternoon (no, she wasn't actually hiding... she's too grown up for playing hide and seek... she was just gardening and the bush was obscuring her) ... luckily sogríssima is big enough to take it, especially since her garden isn't a vergonha (shame, embarrassment) I'd have popped out from behind the bush and sworn volubly at the old bag in the road... and I'm expecting them to be walking past my garden any day now. Grrrrrrrr. I'll be waiting.

Expect this map to turn a scary shade of red over the next few months, if we don't get some enormous, flood proportion, rain storms soon, as all the forests that didn't burn last summer will start burning any time now. Trouble trouble trouble.


tags: illustration

buggy's world

and look here! hey hey hey... I'm on a MUG too!...buggy's world

American Street...

... has a new look today.. and it's by ME!

well, the drawing is by me, anyway. It's on and off today as they fix the template (I guess) but woooo wooo! cooool huh?

one of these days, someone is going to figure out...

how the brain works, ... and then we're all done for. One day, someone is going to say... "here... it's all in the synapses and nothing more. You are all just a jumble of electronic impulses, no more, no less." and they'll be able to tell me exactly why at one in the morning when I should be asleep I felt like blogging a really gruesome drawing, except that it didn't come out gruesome at all, more just a ponderance on why the things that come out of our heads do come out of our heads. and now I've just shorted my brain, because I've got myself into a bit of a mobius strip of thought on something... I think I need to drink less coffee.

tags: illustration

Hibernation is over...

... and everyone is coming out to play. This winter lasted SO long and so these last two days that have been sunny and actually WARM, rather than sunny and extremely cold (if your house is built for summer not winter) have coaxed everyone out of their houses and life seems to be teeming on the streets. Unfortunately, much of it is happening in the middle of the street, down which I drive at about 12kph terrified of hitting someone as they have a leisurely chat in the middle of the road.

I got this old bloke glaring at me because HE had stepped out in front of me and I had dared to stop and not run him over. Several old lady conversations were too intense to notice that there were cars and enormous great quarry lorries (say quarry lorry three times really quickly, and see if it makes the roof of your mouth tickly) steaming past.

One woman slammed on her brakes in front of me so she could say hello to a little girl she knew who was sort of walking on the pavement with her mother (I say "sort of walking on the pavement" because generally there isn't a pavement, just a sandy ditch which many people interpret as "well, the whole tarmacced bit must be mine, then")... completely oblivious to anyone else who might be using the same road as her.

There were dozens of dogs out this morning too... but... erm... well, I forgot to draw them... I'm ashamed. Here... this is what they looked like...I just can't find the post I wrote about them... hmmmm.



I just love spring... and I'm feeling all springy with lots of work to do... better go and do some then.


tags: illustration

if you like high kitsch...

and own a "blue lady" (i've been looking for a full five minutes on the net for a repro of the most tasteless and most reproduced painting in homes of the tasteless/kitsch-lovers... and in the meantime have rediscovered the astonishing amount of crap out there... go and do a search on Google for ""blue lady" painting" ... just SEE... fantastic stuff... so if you don't know "The Blue Lady" you're out of luck... it MUST be somewhere.... and after all that I found it here) here are two more ladies to hang next to her:




prints A4 A3 and A2 at my photobox.
tags: illustration

cable tv with no remote control...

(on my telly in the kitchen, where I work, cook, slave, steam)...and fifty-odd channels of complete crap to skip through to get to the one or two that I watch... most of the time it just reassures me that there indeed is only crap being broadcast out there... I could write whole blogs on the crapness of modern telly (how do I know it's crap? because I am a hopeless addict) ... but occasionally I come across the odd gem of euro TV...

We get Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian and British TV on our cable, and this morning I was trying to get to the news on 21, which means flicking through at least one channel from each country (I can already hear several male readers of this saying "why doesn't she just reprogramme the TV channels so the ones she wants are 1 and 2 or something?"...oh... where would be the fun in that?).. and found it was weather time on Rai Due (channel 2 of italian national TV) and now i think about it more, it could have been Rai Uno... like you care...anyway LOOK what the Italians get to do their weather:


He was a Lieutenant Colonel in some armed force or other, I have no idea which, but WOW, what a difference to the floozies and nerds - or the more rare floozy-nerd - that you get everywhere else. What authority! Wouldn't you just believe every authoratative word he spoke? (although, hey, it's in italian.... food and lurve: authority... meteorology: nah)... And if he got his forecast wrong... to WHOM are you going to complain? The NAVY? I don't think so....

"Today in Napoli it will be 17 degrees and very nice" *italian accent, obviously*

later on: *ring ring* "Hey, Rai Due, ...I'm calling from Napoli and it sure as hell wasn't 17 degrees here today... I want to make a complaint!"

"Certainly, signor, we will send the Lieutenant Colonel himelf down to see you at once... in his battleship"
*click* phone goes down.

Hey, maybe Italy was taken over by a military coup this morning and we don't know about it yet, and this guy has just taken over from the usually horribly overdressed and over made up women you get on Italian TV....(they scare me).

Or maybe I was hallucinating.

I'm hoping that Ria in Rome is going to be able to fill this in a bit for me.

tags: illustration

spring is springing ... at bleedin' last

I WAS just about to do a lovely springy post about it being a lovely springy day, all happy because spring is finally springing back and that the signs are all around.

I was going to tell you about all those springish signs, such as beautiful blossoms bursting out of abandoned trees in abandoned gardens of derelict houses, such as the birds singing their crazy little hearts out in the tiny wood behind our house, such as the sun actually being warm when it shines, such as the reappearance of these mad bastard fat bugs that screech into my kitchen by the dozen, throwing themsleves heavily at the lights, then crashing onto their backs on the floor, unable to get on their fronts again without mine or the small people's help.

I was going to tell you that I was sweeping the kitchen floor this morning only to find that in the deeper recesses of my kitchen floor there are bug graveyards, where they haven't been found and have died on their backs or have been "accidentally" squished by miss five-year-old ("really, mama, can you believe it? I accidentally stood on another one... hahahaha...", "you squished it on purpose, didn't you?", "well, avó (pt grandma) squishes them" (and every other living creature she comes across)..."well we don't wantonly squish bugs in this house... what's it ever done to you?" "oh, mama, it's YUKKY!"... ...) *sing funeral march for dead bugs*

I WAS just about to write all this and post my drawing of said bugs graveyard when the phone rings. The phone doesn't ring much in our house during the day, so I guessed it was going to be one of THOSE calls. People who want el professoro usually ring his mobile and only a very few people call me on the house phone...and it is always a huge relief when it's someone I know, because I have terrible problems with phone conversations in portuguese with strangers.... and it was somebody from Continente (hypermarket), doing a phone campaign about Easter. As far as I could gather. And usually I say nicely that I don't want what ever someone is selling thank you very much, I must go now and put the phone down. But this one had used one of our names, so I just had to make sure that she was just selling something or doing a survey before I got rid of her. So, I stuck it out for another thirty seconds.... decided that I couldn't hear her very well anyway, said very nicely, I'm sorry, I haven't got time to talk about these things, we don't want to buy anything anyway and I have to work....

"PARVA" she says.... I assume she thinks I've put the phone down.... but I haven't, because I'm waiting for her to say the "Okay then, sorry to have bothered you, good morning" or some platitude similar. Saying parva in this instance, non pts, is like saying "stupid cow" in english.... "EXCUSE ME?" I say "Who is parva?"
"You are!" she says. (mesmo disse, "a senhora é que é parva!")
"EXCUSE ME?" I say. "Why am I parva?
"Because you are! You have to work? HA!"
I'm beginning to lose it, so the prof is nearby, so I call out loudly in extremely pompous-sounding english... "Prof sweetie, could you please ask this woman WHY she is calling me PARVA on the phone... " but of course by the time I've put the phone back to my ear she's gone...

Things like that can really ruin my morning.

fucking parva. I ask you. Continente can go shove it.

<
illustration

It's a BLOGGIE!

My lovely blog-pal Zoë WON A BLOGGIE! (for the best European Blog)... she's still blubbing over her acceptance speech.... well done luvvie... it is a bloggie well deserved... the Zedster doesn't have fans of her blog, her readers are more like friends who are party to her life (with Quarsan, Coralie, Tatiana and Todd)

My other lovely blog-pal Petite Anglaise sadly stayed in the "and the nominations are:" of "the best new blog" award, which she should also have one, cos she's simply fabulous and writes beautifully about being "an inglish" in Paris.

Do I sound like Joan Rivers?

the joy of being lazy

A few years ago, if I had wanted to paint this picture, just to see if it would work, it would have been an almighty production, wasting tubes and tubes of paint, time and money only to discover that hmmm.. well... it's okay i suppose... and I probably wouldn't have done it.

Now, I can scribble a doodle with my electronic witchetydoodlethingy, rub off a bit here, repaint a bit there, rub off a load more with out destroying the paper because there is no paper, decide at the end that I wanted the lighting to be more sunrise than sunset, change my mind again and turn it into a mosaic of little thumbnails of differing tones with the click of a button... all while I'm supposed to be doing something else.... catch the odd email in between decision changes... forget to eat lunch cos I'm having far too much fun... then post it immediately after finishing it for a significant number of people to see.

I left art school only twelve years ago (I say "only" only because it feels forty years ago and we're already really computerised) ... and using a computer just WASN'T the done thing in those days (you could only really dtp in those days, to a fairly basic standard) and REAL artwork had to be sent in the post or hand delivered... paper, sticky tape, mounting board, stamps, terrible anxiety about the state of the postal service - would they take "do not bend" seriously - and if there was something wrong with the artwork, more than likely it would have to be restarted from scratch. Out of desperation I (i.e. no work, couldn't bear any more trudging between publishers and agents, portfolio under my arm... eugh....) I went and got a job in a tiny graphic design agency and printers. I was the graphic designer. The printer was downstairs waiting for me to graphically design stuff for him to print. Be under NO illusion. I am the world's WORST graphic designer. I just can't do it... I don't get it and it bores the crap out of me. In my interview for the job, I remember being asked for the LAST time "You can do paste-up, can't you?" (at which my heart sank... paste-up... requires accuracy, a steady hand, nerves of steel and an EXTREEEEMELY high boredom threshold).... Luckily, I was left to my own devices most of the time and taught myself about all the software I could find... and found that physical paste-up (i.e. paper, photographs, scalpel blades and glue) was rapidly becoming a nasty habit of the past....

After a few more desperate attempts at being a graphic designer (i.e. a steady job), I turned to a life of computers for a few years, became a minorly techie-geeky-software nerd. Being an illustrator was too stressful... and being a graphic designer was FAR FAR worse.

Where am I going with this? I don't know... I'm just enjoying the laziness of sitting in front of my little machine (to be replaced with a decent mac one of these days... natalie & andre, you persuaded me at last) and having a reason to scribble and enjoying drawing again... a joy which eluded me for a long time....but more importantly I'm posting this because I'm not of a disposition right now to draw my weekend experiences in Forum Montijo with two over excited (but wonderful! (just in case they've learnt to read in the last few hours without telling me)) little girls and everyone EVERYONE gawking at us, a. for being foreign, b. for my wearing a dress and bright red shoes. *sigh* Some things don't change.

If this post doesn't make sense... it's been a long weekend.

Happy B, Miss M!

Today is the birthday of a long term reader of Vitriolica... it's getting way past her bed time, but she can see it in the morning when she gets up and has walked her big brother to school with her mummy with a big tummy (she's pregnant, not fat... I'm not horrible! I'M NOT!)... she is my three-year-old's buddy in extreme exuberance and potential terrible naughtiness (I think we may have to protect Lisbon against them when they are in their teens) never stops talking, answers the phone PROPERLY (unlike mine who turn into gibbering idiots on the phone to anyone) has a naughty little smile that could melt ice and most importantly she is awfully clever (she can recognise a Madge Webb drawing from the other side of her mother's lap in front of the computer).

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY Miss M!
(She's the one on the left... my miss M is on the right)

by the way... they are not holding hands... they are passing evil notes between the two of them, plotting the next naughty stunt they are going to pull off.

spamming: a new dawn....

first there was the old fashioned "nick/buy an email list and send crap to everyone" spam.

then came "send bots out to copy email addresses from people's web pages and web logs and then send crap to everyone" spam.

then someone inventive saw how blogging was the new thing and created "comment" spam... which I could never see the point in... really, how many people click through from "Marvin (WWW): Hey, great site man!" ... to unwittingly discover whatever porn/ppphhaaaarrmacy/lotto site was at the other end? I mean "hey great site man!" and any other generic crap they put is hardly likely to set you thinking..."Gosh, WHAT an interesting fellow...I bet for sure that he has a super and entertaining blog... I'll go straight there and have a look".

and now the zenith in stupid or rather WEIRD spam is "Technorati whore" spam, otherwise known s "linking spam".. it seems there's a person/bot/engine somewhere who is creating blogger blogs with nonsensical names (you can spot them a mile off though, they seem all to be like this "TwoWords" i.e. two words, stuck together)... they are full of posts of "interesting facts" dating back to January 2004 (i.e. pasted out of wikipedia yesterday)... then some charlie has, randomly from an engine seems, stuck me and and few other blogs in a blogroll down the side with a few "e-commerce" sites mixed in - insurance, wine online, cornish holidays (yes, PADSTOW.com is there...) etc etc etc, presumably so that vain old me (as in Technorati whore... the technorati boys know MY name! I've TOLD them it many times.... ) who checks regularly who links to me cos I love it love it love it... will go and check out their site, see the bloody adverts in the side bar and visit the boobies who want my money...

WELL, they can all bugger off and go jump in Padstow harbour and get the hell out of Blogger. Tossers.

bloody advertising... bloody spamming... bloody everywhere... grumble grumble grumble.... turning into an old git before your very eyes..... grrrrrrrr.

on a lighter note:

What can make a five-year-old, a three-year-old, a mummy in her thirties and a daddy in his forties laugh uncontrollably all at the same time (a difficult feat, I think you'll agree)?




answer:


I swear this is true.

It was rush hour and we were just stopped for something on the side of the road and there she was, risking life and limb at THE most dangerous junction in the west of Portugal on that little electric scooter thing (the ones they had to sell off at a third of the price cos no-one would spend €600 on one)... where enormous trucks rattle past at 90kpm and cars swerve constantly to avoid each other (who needs circuses OR terrorists)... and she waited and waited and waited and finally she got her moment to turn out into the main road... ... ... 3kpm bzzzzzzzzzzz. Hyterical.

I almost thought I'd been teleported to New York or something.

Don't forget

it can happen ANYWHERE

aaah, that's better.

that light on dark text was giving me a headache... so back to black and white for a little while.

Out of sight, out of mind, out of conscience...

What do you tell a five-year-old when she sees the circus come to town and the five-year-old begs you to take her and her sister but all you can see is caged animals, in dark dingy cells, bored out of their minds and you ain't going to take them in a million years?

Poor little things, how many beautifully coloured, exciting circus scenes have they seen in their tiny lives in books and in cartoons...hundreds... and it all just looks marvellous to their little minds (who have no taste WHATSOEVER... dontcha just think circuses are the tackiest thing ever? All that glitter and lycra? YUK).

Every six months or so, some circus or other comes and pitches up in Azeitão. Sometimes they stay for two or three weeks, even though they only do three days of shows. All of that time, the animals - from lions and tigers and kangaroos to less exotic goats and dogs - are chained up or caged up the whole day and whole night with only their rehearsals and shows to keep them interested. And that whole time I drive past the site on the way to the nursery school and feel bad. I feel worse because I don't do or say anything about it - just fume quietly like I do when I hear stupid racist things or stupid homophobic things being said/done in my vicinity... A TERRIBLE coward am I... never been brave enough to stand up and protest audibly about things that are wrong - and here, outside of the cities, where the word vegetarian isn't found in the dictionary, any brave animal rights protester would be starting from a different start line altogether...

I come from a place where cuddly wuddly animals are more important than children... i.e. Ingerlund, where the doberman gets steak and the children low grade fish fingers... and Rolf Harris tugs the heart strings of sad women as he does his Animal Hospital shows from the RSPCA clinics... and "Vet School" and "Vets in Practice" and "James Herriot" (I'm sorry, papavit-papavet, but you know it's true) are what middle England classes as high drama... so it gets to me when I hear dogs chained or caged up howling ALL night out of boredom in people's back yards or the alternative, allowed to run the streets in packs just waiting to be picked off by some car or lorry... a cat that seems like it's been steamrollered is not an uncommon sight on the side of the road... and I hate the livestock market part of the monthly Sunday feira... I know ladies in my village who can rip the head off a chicken soon as look at it. And before anyone says anything... no I'm not a veggie, and yes I am an ENORMOUS hypocrite and sitter of fences...

But, when it comes to the circus, I wish they'd just sort their bloody act out or give up using animals who shouldn't be there.

So there. Hmph.

some days...

...there's just no point in trying to be mean or funny or clever or witty, about Portugal life or anything else... it's just not there, in my rattling head, which is concentrated on a few dozen other things today... so instead, a photograph of a scene I witnessed under the stairs last night... honestly... I shouldn't have left those little tiny whiskey glasses lying around.



snarf snarf.

Strange Juxtaposition

When I was at school, I GOT things like Maths, Biology, Chemistry... I could see the point of Art and Languages, could almost stretch the point to PE (physical education), my own personal torture. But, I never GOT why we had to do English Literature.

It would go like this: From about the second year of secondary - age twelve to thirteenish - our English teacher would tell us at the beginning of the academic year the one or two books we were to study for the year... things like "Of Mice and Men", "1984", "Far from the Madding Crowd", and other such brilliant but miserable classics.

And this classroom filled with repulsive pre- and peri-adolescents (myself very much included) would have to read through these books a few pages at a time, one person at a time, out loud to the class. Purgatory. PURE unadulterated PURGATORY.

For a start my school was a jewel in the world of cement... it looked like a factory straight out of "1984" and I still have terrible dreams, twenty odd years later, where I'm roaming the corridors, getting lost, because the only thing that changed from floor to floor was the colour of the paint work on the doors... and writing that, I got the unmistakeable memory-whiff up my nose of vinegary chips from the snack bar... ah nutrition...

Our English lessons almost always took place in the newest block of the school, which wasn't made from greyish brown cement like the rest, but colourless grey breeze blocks (they have different names in different countries, but they are ubiquitous... great big rectangular GREY GREY GREY bricks, all aerated and uncomfortable to be shoved against in the frequent stampedes during the school day)... and the woodwork in that newest block was all laminated in grey formica or painted with grey paint. Inspirational stuff.

Add to this font of creativity the monotoned drone of a spotty yoof who doesn't have a clue why he or she is doing this in the first place and you'll begin to understand how Thomas Hardy's evoked Wessex landscapes escaped me and Steinbeck's portayal of poverty struck thirties America left me cold.

I always wondered at my (real) sister's delight at reading novels while she was still ensconced within the cement factory, and some of my co-workers... also their ability to pass exams in this subject... the only exams I failed with extraordinary flair were not only English Literature O level (at fifteen/sixteen), but also the literature chunks of my French A level and Theatre Studies A level (17/18).

Thankfully, I discovered not too much later the joy of reading fiction for myself. But sometimes, I can't help but remember one English teacher, who looked like an eighties version of Shakespeare, who would insist on saying things like (read this with gentle-voiced scottish accent)"now, here we notice an interesting JUXTAPOSITION between Gabriel Oak and the TREEEE in this field... " and I would look at him blankly and wonder if Thomas Hardy had wanted for us to notice the interesting juxtaposition between Gabriel Oak and the tree or if he just wanted to say that there was Gabriel Oak, in a field, standing next to a tree...

What the HELL has all this got to do with that drawing up there? Well, I was drawing that drawing up there, of a couple whom it is eminently possible to see walking around Lisbon of an evening... a women, dressed up to the nines in the latest THING of high high high fashion, and the man, dressed as 99.9% of Lisboeta men of a certain age (25-60) dress... blue trousers, checked shirt (the kind that vets in Britain wear religiously) and sensible shoes... at a push a blue sweater and at an even bigger push a pair of "Camper" bowling shoes... and the word juxtaposition came into my head... because it is such a strange JUXTAPOSITION that one doesn't see outside of Lisbon... except at maybe the odd awards ceremony.... the men so constrained in their sensibleness JUXTAPOSED with their wife/girlfriends' lack of constraint and non-sensibleness... very very funny to watch though.

And I still don't get why we had to analyse literature.

It's the twenty first century.

There are a few things that we should have grown out of by now:



Obviously, I'm missing out war, famine, poverty, nastiness, reality TV, lifestyle TV, excessive cleanliness, film and tv award shows, fossil fuel burning, manga, giving credence to celebs just because they're celebs, and being uptight about social status. But, I feel I've covered the important ones in my drawing.

I'm secretly thrilled to be watching the reconstructions of the OJ Jackson trial (including the stand-in Jackson, who is about hundred pounds heavier than the original and even has his face painted white and his nostrils painted in to look like those strange, disintegrating, reconstructed ones, and a few very bad wigs), while I bemoan its stupidity loudly in front of everyone... since I'm delighted that the freak will finally be destroyed as he surely will. Not that I'm against freaks per se... wouldn't want to be less than polictically correct (yeah, right).. but what else would you do with him/it?

an accurate representation of here...

...and don't forget to include the cold (icy) wind.

and it occurs to me that even if you were an illustrator who owned your own newspaper group and out of pure vanity illustrated every magazine and newspaper you owned... you'd STILL never get the chance to do superlongblog pics. Would you? HA!

Oh the joy of electronicness.

for gawd's sake....

RAIN won't you?!?!?!
from your art correspondent, Madge.


I drew this of Vit this morning. She won't thank me for it.. would you believe she went into the garden to do a rain dance... it is the driest portuguese winter since 1931 and we is gettin' a bit fed up.... Vit is growing weary of the dry air, the electric shocks every time she touches anything and the grass turning day by day into ugly yellow straw... and if there's a colour that our Vit hates it's yellow.

And, I'm afraid she'll lose her temper when she sees this.. but it is a faithful representation, albeit a little impressionist, of her big arse, bounding around like a fat stripey chicken, doing what she claims was a genuine Native American Rain Dance. I don't know what the Native Americans would have to say about it.

ps I've put a huge version of my favourite fado singer up as a print.... anything up to A2... she's just gorgeous.

turning Portuguese, I think I'm turning Portuguese, I really think so... di di di dee dee dee....

turning portuguese

at least punctuality-wise anyway.

I've always been terribly english in my punctuality and it has always been terribly hard for me to arrive at an appointment/party/restaurant later than ten minutes early.... really really really.... I'm derided in my family for getting to my art school interview six hours early... (a LONG time ago)...

So, one can imagine how hard it has been for the last few years when I have arranged with portuguese friends or family to do stuff at a certain time at a place that may be a good drive away from home... and then not even leaving home till at least half an hour AFTER that appointed hour... the professor refusing to leave because he knows that whichever friends or family they are, if they are portuguese they'll still arrive after us... and although he has never been wrong - I don't think we have arrived after other people more than once - I still drove down the motorway feeling that icky ick feeling of an englishperson being late...

When I say late, I'm talking portuguese late, not that ridiculous english "fashionably late" of half an hour to forty two minutes (past that your unforgiveably late)... we're talking two hours late, three hours late... I've waited five hours for a doctor in his waiting room before because the arrogant bastard that he is didn't mind being late...

But all of a sudden, I've decided not to go against the tide anymore... and I'm going to TRY to be late late latíssima and see if helps me NOT get so stressed out every time there's an appointed hour for something (even portuguese telly is late, so I don't bother anymore)...

I know there are a few pts out there who will be horrified that I have given in, because, you are even more punctual at heart than I... but I'm going to give it a try and see if it relaxes me.

Somehow, I don't think it'll last.

beauty and the ukrainian

beauty and the bigotry

right, this is a speed post.... but I can't leave my blog un-properly-posted for a whole day, can I?

So, yesterday I was in Modelo, my entirely unfavourite place in the world, but then we all need supermarkets, don't we? and I was finally in the fifteen things or less queue behind three scruffy ukrainian builders who were picking up some food for their evening, probably in some horrible place, the only thing they can afford after sending most of their meagre money back to their family in the Ukraine... and they were utterly sweet and gentlemanly and one by one they filed through this checkout, paying for the few things they had picked up and they smiled, nodded politely, said please and thank you... patted my kids on the head... really pleasant people... and on that checkout was this woman who I normally avoid because she is quite quite awful.. a woman who is stunningly rennaissancely beautiful, with that certain Portuguese skin that is flawless and olivey and hair that I should have been born with, not her... who is never known to have smiled at a mere mortal nor a foreigner such as myself... and she showed these three perfectly kind, polite, almost deferential, men the most visible and utter disdain, sniffing the air, barely touching their money.... and I thought, what a waste of space. I hate bigots and beautiful bigots are far worse... and that's the end of my speed post cos I'm really behind in EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

grillers

grillers preview

did anyone ever discover what the gorillas in the fridge dream meant?

proper (proper as in paid) work to do today, so just instead of a nasty smear against Portugal (or even a nice chocolatey one, I've been a bit TOO nice recently, huh?), a small preview of one of the gorilla watercolours I'm going to be selling soon. If I can bear it. I have fallen desperately in love with my gorillas... they are my wallpaper on my pc and I keep painting them.

They are an endangered species, so they'll be very expensive! (and I need a spanking new pc, and every penny/centimo buys another meg of memoir)

I just got mine in the post, and it's GORGEOUS...

(this is a small version... the original goes from A2 to A4)

(this is a corner at full size (about an inch/2.5cm square per drawing at 300dpi))


.... so who wants one? from a fiver (£5, that is) for an A4 photo repro upwards...:

my picture shop.... in EUROPE! (with tshirts too)

And my cafépress (US)... loads of stuff.
(and if there's an image you'd really like on a shirt or a poster, let me know)

da...da.... daft.

I had been thinking all weekend how signage had been getting better recently. Where we live, you have to know where you're going before you can use the road signs to get there... by which time you don't need the road signs. I have to draw elaborate maps for anyone coming to our house, for if they religiously followed signs, they'd end up in Saragoza, not Azeitão. In the past few months, though, a few extra signs have been popping up, and it has been geting a little easier to find one's way around without the use of psychic powers.

So, I was full of confidence on Sunday, when I saw the signs that clearly said "Fundação de Serralves" that we might actually get there. We followed, we followed, we followed.... we lost the sign. We could see no entrance, no big blue P for Parque, nothing. We turned around, looked for the sign, followed, followed, followed.... got lost again.... Took a different road, found another sign, pointing towards Wales if you ask me.... got lost.
Asked someone.... followed their directions and finally got there. I am convinced that there is someone in the "Ministry for Road Signs" who sits on one of those giant maps they used in WWII to plan how very lost he can get people by placing enigmatically wrong road signs.

So, by the time we arrived inside the gate of Serralves, Madge's small people were desperate for the loo (for the ninety-eighth time that day) and I was in no mood for much other than a long hot bath and a dry martini. I was also still rather peeved about not getting there in time for the Paula Rego show which finished three weeks ago; every time we had planned to go, something or other prevented us.

So, here's today's question: do you think I or the more magnanimous Madge were in the mood for the "conceptual" art on display at the moment?

Of course the answer is a resounding NO! (sing that "no!" out like a large Wagnerian behorned fat lady opera singer if you will)

amongst other stuff ...an audio recording of some bloke cut to repeat in varying length and word order "no one can teach you touch" as you walked down a narrow corridor with the words painted on the wall.... and a darkened room with a puppet theatre, surrounded by a load of coloured light bulbs chucked on the floor, with a looped video of a shoe, it was a man's brogue, talking in an irish brogue (oh, god, was that the joke?) about something biblical, with a few chairs infront for the audience to sit at - the only audience entertained by that were Madge's three and five-year-old who thought it hysterically funny.... ... ... a 55 minute film showing some fog while a japanese man voiced over a story about a fox in japanese... I didn't stay to watch the end... ... and some hideous, godawful sculpture made so badly, with so little meaning, appeal, aesthetic or otherwise that I can't believe they had them ship them here from wherever they did and call the sculptor "one of the great sculptors of our time"...

I once did a tiny stint teaching A level (baccalaureat level) art students, for a month. The fact that most of them were doing it just to pass the time didn't help, and that I'm a terrible teacher, no, a REALLY terrible teacher, all contributed toward the month being a total unmitigated waste of time. But there was one highlight.... a trip to London to see the finalists in that year's Turner Prize. It was a year of a plaster cast house's insides by Rachael Whiteread, some stripey paintings and a load of rice with lazers shining in lines above it. I can't remember the other. I took some of the students around and instead of the stuff I should have said, I just proclaimed my utter disdain for such twaddle. I wasn't asked back.

But I actually rather like Rachael Whiteread's houses filled with plaster, and stripey paintings abound in my house and my non-shed is full of things half finished that will go tinkly tinkle in the garden when they're finished that I shall call sculpture. ...

And I know that different things get to different people and that I'm a visual person who can be thrilled by a visual and there are some that are audio who will be enthralled by an audio...

And I could write a doctoral thesis about what I think about art and its position in society and the greater scheme of things and that I think it is the most important thing there is and the most trivial thing there is, and that we only find great art while filing the mountains of drivel....

But I do get horribly irritable when vast sums of money go into the installation of STUFF, like the huge quantities of false walls in Serralves at the moment, built to contain each installation, which may actually just consist of a video projector and a white wall.... when things that really don't deserve exaltation are exalted.

So, I thought I'd do you a graphical representation of an audio visual installation I thought I'd create in my garage... to describe my feelings about MOST conceptual art these days..... follow the lines carefully and you will see......




:) heheheh