Imagine the scene: A middle-aged hygiene-product designer, sitting at his/her drawing board in his/her sanitized office, with forty other hygiene-product designers, looking out of the smoked-glass windows, wondering if this is all there is... wondering how many "ergonomic" shapes can there possibly exist for a toothbrush... wondering how quickly his/her name will disappear into history after he/she is gone... calculating how long till they retire.... wondering if the bloke who thought of stripey toothpaste was ever commemorated... wondering wondering wondering.... when a cat walks along the window ledge, sits down and starts licking itself. With that nasty rough tongue cats insist on having.
"Eureka!" thinks the bored product designer, "that shall be my claim to fame and fortune!" for he/she invents the TONGUE SCRUBBER on the BACK OF THE TOOTHBRUSH.
Imagine the scene: Here I am, waiting for replacement brush heads for "Sonic the Toothbrush" to arrive in the post... for they are so exclusive, cool and head buzzing (though not blue and spinny like Sonic the Hedgehog) that they must be ordered.... I digress... so I have to buy an interim non head vibrating non electrical toothbrush with which I must do all the work (Sonic the Toothbrush does EVERYTHING... I just have to stand in front of the mirror).
And this interim toothbrush is quite pretty, looking a bit like a Nike trainer, with rubbery "ergonomic" bits so my poor hand doesn't get toothbrush strain (one day, no one will be able to hold anything square anymore... a tragic day in history that will be....) and it is very light, further helping to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome from excessive weight... Sonic the Toothbrush weighs about four kilos... in a nice way.
And on the back of the head of this interim toothbrush is some further rubber, with rubbery fingery bits, that looks like a sex aid if you ask me (more bloody porn googling coming soon then) and I realize it is one of those TONGUE SCRUBBERS that I've seen advertized on the telly.."Don't leave home without scrubbing the shit off your tongue, cos otherwise the completely anonymous man you kiss in the metro will either vomit immediately or catch the plague from you or shout out loudly 'this woman has puke-breath'" or words and images to that effect...
So I TRY the toungue scrubber.....
Bloody bored hygiene-product designers. Luckily I wasn't intending to kiss any anonymous men in the metro today.
technorati tags: tongue, torture
March 30, 2006
Modern torture methods
March 29, 2006
Bubblebubfest
Last night I taught the girls to make unlimited bubbles in the bath.
Why the hell did I do that?
I think I may come to regret divulging my great knowledge of foaming bath products to my children.
In other news:
Professor Doctor Robert Wibble has come up with the goods... in no time... I wonder if or how he ever gets any actual work done at his Wibiversity. So, Chapter 13 is up and it is BRILLIANT. Go there, read it and just try and imagine what Cream is going to do for the illustration.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 28, 2006
train stations are great
all life is there.
Well. How HASN'T she squished him yet?
I see an awful lot of couples in the world in this formation, don't you? .. tiny skinny bloke, 'nORmous wobbly (and usually grumpy looking) fat bird.
One day, it'll probably be made illegal to be this thin or this fat, or seen together in odd couples, not conforming to the ideal.... there'll be a death sentence for anyone without straight teeth or straight knees and there will be no sense of humour allowed... anywhere... whatsoever.
Until then, let us enjoy. (and after then, REVOLUTION!).
NOW, Blogstory... crisis almost over... we hit a bit of a glitzch, but a certain grand Wibbler is going to step into the breach and write another chapter. PH-EW! Thanks for hanging on in there. Alma will be back in service très très soon.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 27, 2006
March 24, 2006
March 23, 2006
a wintery blustery rainy day in the alto alentejo
I love Portugal.
All of it.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 22, 2006
this week i shall mainly be using...
...proper indian ink and a real dip pen (the kind what I can never find here in Portugal for reasons unexplainable). Drawing on real paper is just so much more satisfying.
Digital everything is groovy. But the real world will always be better.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 21, 2006
Flies with OCD
I wonder if there ARE flies that suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
To us, the fact that they fly in, spew up on our food to digest it then suck it up is pretty nasty.
But to them it's just housework, isn't it?
Daddy Fly: Phwoar, you look luvverly in that apron, Doris, with your sensory feelers all tousled like that, fancy a quickie?
Mummy Fly: Ooh, you are awful, Nev... I'm busy, I'm making dinner. And then I have to tidy up. And then there's the ironing to do. And if you think I'm going to muss up the bed after I made it so nicely this morning, you've got another thing coming. Honestly. You male flies. And - don't - you - dare - put - that - beer - can - down - on - the - coffee - table - without - a - coaster! If you think this house cleans itself, it doesn't!
Daddy Fly: Well, would you like me to give you a hand?
Mummy Fly: NO!
technorati tags: art, illustration, insanity
March 20, 2006
mummy! there's a dragon biting my bum!
Well. Last week I celebrated my very physical four year old and her swimming pool derring-do. This week, my very cerebral six year old and her exploits in the art world (mummy, when I grow up, I want to be a artist [sic] like you). Ain't she fab? (well, obviously you're going to say, YES, VIT, SHE'S FAB... aren't you).
Last week it was summer in Portugal. After five months of winter. And now it's winter again. Bloody hell. Did anyone else on the margem sul get that sulphurous smell this morning (not the usual portucel smell, but far far nastier)?
busy busy busy. mwah mwah mwah.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 17, 2006
a little orange man
The girls and I have just watched The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and The Corpse Bride (both bloody marvellous, if you ask me) and they couldn't understand how stop-frame animation works (hey, they're only 4 and 6) even with the "HOW STOP-FRAME ANIMATION WORKS FOR FOUR AND SIX YEAR OLDS" films in the extras on the DVD. So I thought I'd spend half an hour this morning showing them.
And I remembered why I ran kicking and screaming away from animation when I was a young thing.
TAKES WAY TOO LONG.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 16, 2006
Mara....maca.... maça.... oh, arse.
I don't know about anyone else but I have a mostly visual memory. This is great. Apart from remembering every scene I ever look at, I can remember loads of stuff including vast quantities of numbers and other geek stuff cos they automatically get associated with things like monkeys and hoisin sauce and Benício Del Toro in my little tiny brain and I remember them forever.
It has its downsides. I can't remember anything I'm told in Portuguese, because in the time usually used to associate things with shoes sitting on top of a mammoth who smokes a pipe, the word is instead getting translated into English. So all my vocabulary in Portuguese comes, not as a picture of some grotesque occurrence (Benício Del Toro AND hoisin sauce... two of my favourite things, but boy are they ugly) but as a picture of the actual word.
So when I ask someone what the word for something is, I am going to forget it within thirteen seconds if I don't write it down or repeat it continually until its use. Which could be embarrassing.
So when I wanted to burn those nasty little bastard deathly hairy pine tree caterpillars out of my tree the other day (hey, you don't want to deprive this girl of her fun do you?... and no I don't like killing things...except deathly hairy caterpillars that could really hurt my babies) I needed a blowtorch (okay, so the picture is more of a flamethrower... LET a girl fantasize!) I had to go to my friendly neighbourhood hardwarestore man if he had a..... o fuck. I'd forgotten the word that el prof had told five minutes earlier....if only I'd written the bugger down... (in my head...macariço.... maraçico.... maraquiçe (which would get me into trouble...yes... hello, I'd like something rather poofy).......what's the bloody word???????).... "Boa tarde, do you have erm... one of those things that makes a flame?"
"What," he said looking at me thinking, oh god it's that Englishwoman again always asking me for stupid things.... "you want a lighter?"
Hurrrumph. The moral of this story: write the bloody word down.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 15, 2006
it's the curly bits
I don't know what it was that made me get so irritated by this bloke and his gal the other day, but jeez, did they irritate me. It might have had something to do with the fact that they were desperately proud of themselves in their ultra fashionable straight off the "pull and bear"/cheyenne/fuck-knows-where-they-shop peg clothing, so fashionable to every last detail that their tiny little brains couldn't possible fit any more fashionableness into them. They looked like they might be kids' TV presenters or stars of the appalling Morangos com Açúcar (a teen telenovela for the hard of thinking).
It might have been because I was stuck in the ghastly El Corte Inglês waiting for El Prof Português to come and meet me so we could get the hell out of there, and El Ghastly really makes my head swim in its frank awfulness... I can't quite see the point in it. Except the "international cuisine" bit of the supermarket bit which has a few more bottles of japanese/chinese/thai/indian things than my local "what is soy sauce?" Modelo.... when I arrive I think "hmm... I'll have a little wander" and five minutes later I'm thinking "GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HELL HOLE!" so anyone getting in my way like this bloke and his gal are just going to irritate me.
It might have been HIS DISGUSTING BO DUKE HAIRDO making me feel queasy with its sideburns and horrid curly bits. (a bit like blokes who have really long hair but still get the pubey bits at the back of their necks.... BAAAAARRRRRFFFF... sorry, I've always wanted to get that off my chest.... sigh).
I love getting out and about, don't you?
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 14, 2006
fit to burst
I went to see my mad but fab four-year-old at her school swimming lesson yesterday, which is difficult to get to normally. But loads of other mothers have made it at least once and she's been giving me earache about it. So it was about time I went (I've got my car back, did I mention that, another reason that I can actually get to the swimming pool without taking the whole day over it).
I stood on the balcony over the swimming pool with that hot chloriney fug smacking me in the face, winging me back to swimming club when I was a kid ... I love swimming... it's the absolute solitude I love most about it. No-one can talk to you when you're swishing through the cyan blue water, you can turn off the world and think. I stood on the balcony and looked for my baby... not to hard to find. She was the only one in a pink swimhat instead of blue. She is having an extreme pink phase.
And there was my fearless little girl was throwing herself at all the different activities (the kind that make a mother's heart stop when she's standing on a chlorine fugged balcony because she can't jump in after her fearless little girl who has just jumped into water that is deeper than her, after a ball that the teacher has thrown for her and that little girl is coming up from the bottom, swimming half way across the pool to get the ball because she dropped it and swimming back to the side) aimed to help teach them to swim and running back to the front of the line because she just wanted to keep throwing herself at them and in it.
And I cried my heart-bursting-with-pride out while making it look like I was just grinning my head off at her and making silly thumbs up at her which just means "muito FEEEEEEESH" in our house (very very cool).
Wow. This being a mummy thing does have the most amazing rewards.
Oh god, I sound like one of those mummy blogs.
Sorry.
But I don't care.
Ha.
See?
I'm too tough to care.
ooh. I've just noticed I forgot to draw her armbands. She's not that tough yet.
Or I could say that it ruined the aesthetic of the drawing.
Or I could tell you some other such bollocks.
But that's why I could never be a car salesPERSON (god I hate bloody PC)... I'm too honest.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
WAH!!!!!!!!
Wah? Meaning boohoo. Meaning WHAAAAAAAHHHHHH. Sob sob. Sob. WWWWHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Feel like being a bad loser. And Zed told me not to cry. Because she feels TERRIBLE about winning the Best European Blog FOR THE SECOND BLOODY YEAR! Ha. My bum.
Always the bridesmaid, always the bridesmaid.... Hummmmph.
Right. Tantrum over (congratulations, you cow). I'm fucking with you. I was nominated in the top five European blogs for christ's sake. What more can a girl ask. Thank you all for your votes in the bloggies and the fistful awards. Mwah.
Now, back to business. See the drawing above? That REALLY happened yesterday. The guy behind is on a bicycle. Reading his text messages. The guy in front is on his motorbike. Reading his text messages. They are both moving at 5kmph.
I've decided they must have been having a secret adulterous gay love tryst ... the only way they can be together is by texting each other whilst on their respective bikes. My god. It's tragic. Can they not be allowed to love? But that's village life. Nothing is private. Everyone knows everyone's business. If they were seen in any other circumstances, Pedro's mother would hear about it. Miguel's wife would hear about it. Where would it all lead? What about the children?
Or maybe they're just a couple of twats.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 13, 2006
a rare photo...
...of some bacon. I cured it myself. I like unsmoked bacon. Can't get it anywhere here. So a girl has to make it herself. Very satisfying. Astonishingly easy. Don't need to buy that horribly expensive imported watery crap any more, nor make do with heavily smoked streaky (i.e. toucinho or the stuff they call bacon here... which is toucinho with another label on it) when i want it just a good old fashioned bacon sarnie (with HP) for my breakfast.
I'm glowing with pride.
addendum: a friend has just put me onto THIS magnificent blog for SERIOUS bacon eaters. Thanks Spaceboy...b.a.c.o.n. mmmmmmmmmmmm
technorati tags: BACON!
March 11, 2006
Inglesados
Recently I've been getting quite a lot of this:
"You're English?"
"Yes"
"Not American? Dutch maybe?"
"No, English, well, actually, I'm British but yes, English."
"But, you're NICE. Are you sure?"
"Well, erm... yes, I'm sure."
"And you speak Portuguese! hmmm. Amazing."
I never really believed that stereotype of the English... the cold, arrogant, stuffy, snooty type that comes to foreign countries, and refuses to even try to speak the language, talking down to everyone because everyone is clearly inferior.
I do from time to time find myself excusing "English" behaviour though it is often the old style English behaviour that happened a good long time ago, the kind of old fashioned ex-pat behaviour of the 1950s in, let's say, Cascais, related to me by people who were around at the time. But that's not how we are these days. Is it?
More and more I get the idea that "we" English in Portugalialand, on holiday or expatriates, are or are seen as, frankly, awful. Rude. Arrogant. Cold. Distant. (Not me. I'm lovely. But we all know that already).
Oh, arse. I'm so disappointed. Oi! English, be NICE!
technorati tags: Art, illustration
dzn-rsh-cAn-ss
Say the title. That's how you say desenrascanço. Desenrascanço is one of two Portuguese words which are said to be particular to Portugal and untranslateable into any other language or culture (the other word being "saudades"... I'm not even going there... gets me into the realms of fatalistic fado and there'll be death threats in the morning... google up saudades)... hmmm. People LIKE to say that, don't they..."WE have a word that you'll never really understand because you are a foreigner and WE are so complex and interesting".
I expect the Swedish have 97 different and untranslateable words for "jumping in a frozen lake having just got out of the sauna and being beaten with birch twigs" ... it's on a need to invent basis. Desenrascanço (easier to describe is its verb, desenrascar ... see it IS a very useful and used word) is a word like this. A word that needed to be coined very very desperately in Portugal.
UNLIKE saudades which actually IS (sorry, but really, it IS) fairly translateable in two or three words into English, desenrascar takes a few more words to describe because it covers a multitude of sins.... it means to disentangle, pull it out of the hat at the last minute, improvise a solution, sort the problem out, work it out when you get there.
I wonder if my dear pt friends and relations who proudly proclaim this amazing talent for desenrascanço that they and their compatriots posess, for which a whole word had to be invented (I think that there's a chinese word that means the same thing) know that, as they are telling me, I am thinking "if you didn't get yourselves into the mess in the first place you wouldn't have to desenrascar yourselves in the end." But being nice, I don't say anything.
(and being a master of desenrascanço myself it might be seen as a little hypocritical....)
:)
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 10, 2006
finally!
Apple are a wonderful load of people, aren't they?... they produce lovely easy peasy software for we poor souls who just haven't got the time to fart around with bloody html (if you haven't got iLife06 yet, mac people, get it)... so I have finally put up my portfolio site using iWeb (so, at the mo it does look very applish... that apple will become more pepper with time)... which has kept me busy for ..er.. not very long actually cos it was so easy. (iWeb... very VERY easy).
And yes, that is my real name.
Back in the morning, when I'll teach you non-pts a new word. Desenrascanço. the most popular word in the Portuguese language.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 08, 2006
another day...
I'm not going to wish anyone happy women's day... half of you are blokes and half of you already know you are women... so you don't need an awareness day or any other such nonsense to tell you that you are by far the superior sex... you are multi-taskers extraordinaires, much prettier than men, well most of you, you are non-violent and don't as a rule go round blowing things, or yourselves, up, you are clever and funny and compassionate with all the tools to be a wonderful mother, you are connected to the earth as a life giver (hahahahahahaha, eugh...YUK) ... oh, and you are vacuous, vain, bitchy and vacuous again.
How the bloody hell (i've given up the f word for lent) can I go round saying "woot woot, I'm a woman! hooray!" on a special day invented by some mad person a hundred years ago (pre- universal suffrage.. when, a DAY might have been a good idea)...IT'S WEDNESDAY for a start... when I have work to do, shopping to do, laundry to do, children to pick up, cooking to do. And then what? Am I supposed to PAMPER myself? What is this new silly modern PAMPERING thing? Have we really turned into such lumps of silly girly jelly that we need to treat our greedy silly little selves every day, every month, every year? Pathetic. I guarantee that most women won't be celebrating their freedom, their suffrage and their rising position in the world... just being given flowers or hoping for chocolate. And the ones who don't have all that don't know it's International Women's Day.
Sigh. International Women's Day? Bloody silly.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 07, 2006
i wish i was horribler
I have awful things that go through my brain. Really nasty sick humour, evil ideas, wicked thoughts. But my "niceness" filter is too strong. And I want the whole world to like me. And I don't want to offend too many people. So I make it all nice and fluffy and not tough enough.
I always wanted to be as brave and open-brained as someone like the dear departed wonderful Bill Hicks. But then people don't like GIRL gobshites, do they? And I'm not brave enough.
I'd better stick with the plaits, the sickly grin and the "niceness" filter switched on, until I'm internationally enormously hugely famous and rich... then I can firmly switch the filter off.
What a hypocritical gobshite I am.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 04, 2006
my bid to be a "Top Gear" presenter
As much as I despise cars, hate how much we rely on them, hate what they do to people (turn them into arseholes or dead things) and the environment (well, duh)... I actually have to come clean and announce that I actually bloody love them and driving and being a bit of a speed freak from time to time. (being a gemini can be very confusing).
Since I was seventeen, I have rather got through a few cars (Hillman Imp, Suzuki LJ80 (when adorable jeeps were still rugged...ie. wheel arches for seats in the back), Citroen 2 Chevaux, Renault 5, Ford Escort MkII, Triumph something, Opel Ascona, I'm missing a couple here, there were more....) except for the last seven years when I have had the same car (which was bought before I got here, ie I had no say in it, ie. it's a citroen saxo... sigh... but still pretty good... once I got it "trained" in my own little way, oh, until my stupid neighbour pranged it the other day and showed just quite why saxos come high on the crunchability list), that's just how much I loved them (what do you mean I would have taken better care of them if I loved them? I was like a Peter Stringfellow with cars... I just wanted to love them all, all the second hand ones i or my longsuffering papa could afford).
In this last couple of weeks since I got pranged by that twat I've been lent/rented a couple of brand spanking new cars... those midget things, that the car companies have been threatened into inventing, silly little city cars that hold either people or two bags of shopping but not both. The first I was given was a Hyundai Getz. It felt kind of spaceshippish inside. And that was all I could say about it. Then I got a Citroen C1. See accurate illustration of said car above.
I think now is the time to apply for a job on Top Gear (I'm prettier than James May and way taller than Richard Hammond (cor), how could they say no? Clarkson, obviously, gets to stick around).. and my scripts would be easy to write as I intend to bring motor journalism into a new era of minimalist-pre-ironic-chic: "The Citroen C1. It's like driving a bumble bee. A bumble bee that can do a ton. But a bumble bee nonetheless."
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 02, 2006
she dunnit again
'Member (as my serenely beautiful six year old says) my amazing but high maintenance three year old (see illo above... can't wait to get back into those pink camper flipflops)? Well, since October she has been my amazing but high maintenance four year old.
And do you want to know what she did this afternoon? You do. I know. And it is the SECOND time the little bugger has done it: da da DAH!... she cut all her hair off, to the scalp in places, with nail scissors!
She's so freaking cool! (she takes after her mother)
technorati tags: Art, illustration
March 01, 2006
there's nothing you can say to change my mind
I just can't stand carnivals. I just don't get them. Any of them. I can almost understand why people want to dress up and get in line to shake their booties or boobies - there's an exhibitionist struggling to get out of some people - but why does anyone want to watch them? I once went to watch the town carnival when I was a kid, the equally lame English kind of carnival, all silly floats (which are just dressed up tractors and trailors and lorries) and people in bad costumes waving as though they were royalty. I had heard from my school friends who always got to go to see the carnival that it was almost the highlight of the year, wonderful fun, amazing to see... I was soon to be horribly disillusioned. Brash-coloured-polyester-clad people who I don't know trying to get me to join in the "fun" just makes me feel a bit ill.
Blimey. That makes me sound like a right frosty old bag, dunnit? I'm really the smiliest person in the whole world. But I still hate bloody carnivals. Really.
What are you giving up for lent?
technorati tags: Art, illustration