iRead’s Neighbors

NEW York maze

nobody@vox.com(Procrastinator) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:03:41 -0700

A recreation of the Statue of Liberty 10 times bigger than the original has been unveiled in North Yorkshire. Farmer Tom Pearcy cut the image of the New York landmark in fields a few miles from York, the city after which the American metropolis was named.

The 1,300ft (400m) long maze has been made using more than a million living maize plants and covers about 18 acres. The original statue is just more than 111ft (34m) tall, from the heel to the top of the head.

Mr Pearcy has been creating mazes every summer for the past five years on land just off the A64, near York. His previous creations have included a Viking long ship, the Flying Scotsman and Big Ben.

This year the farmer has moved his attraction to a new location near the Yorkshire Air Museum, at Elvington.

He said: "As a 'new' York Maze it seemed appropriate to base this year's design on New York. I also wanted to mark the links between York and New York.

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Kymberlie's Daily Twitterings

nobody@vox.com(Kymberlie R. McGuire) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:38:18 -0700

09:35 Awake, but still not feeling great. Wondering if my stint is irritated or something. Thanks for all of the supportive Twitters; y'all rock. #
15:02 I reviewed Luis Navas (5)/5) on Yelp.com: I've been a pretty regular receiver of massages for.. tinyurl.com/6eddo4 #
20:34 Totally feeling blown off. W.T.F. #
22:51 And just because I haven't Twittered about it lately, look how Geeklandia has grown! geeklandia.myminicity.com/ #

Kymberlie's Tweets automatically shipped by LoudTwitter. Blog comments are welcomed and encouraged!

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Emma and Northanger Abbey

nobody@vox.com(Emily) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:05:34 -0700

Emma

Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen

This week I finished Emma and Northanger Abbey. These were the last two Jane Austen novels that I had not read. I loved both of them, but I'd rank Emma 5 of 5 stars and Northanger Abbey 4 of 5.

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUT BOTH BOOKS BELOW

I found Emma to be a more perfect and complicated novel. I knew she was not going to end up with Frank Churchill, but I did not have a clue how Miss Austen was going to transfer my strong affections from Mr. Churchill to Mr. Knightly by the end of the novel, so that I would be satisfied with the ending. However, transfer them she did, and I was pleased with the result. Mr. Knightly is no Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth, and it is a bit creepy that he's so much older than she is and has loved her since she was 13. But not nearly as boring or as wishy-washy as Edmund in Mansfield Park. It was also exceedingly funny; Mrs. Elton is perfectly horrid and all the more humorous for it. But I think what I like most about the novel is Emma herself.
She is such a great character - bold, funny, smart, good tempered andacutely aware of her failures and shortcomings (after the fact). She’s so sure of herself that it makes it all the more interesting when her plans go awry.

It was very easy for me to love Northanger Abbey. Catherine is so fond of novels and it affects her thinking and has humous consequences. However, Isabelle and John Thorpe were the most loathsome characters I encountered while reading any Jane Austen novel. They weren’t comically terrible (like Mr. Collins, Mrs. Elton, or Mary Musgrove), they were just completely horrid. I really like Henry, he’s an excellent love interest. But the resolution was underwhelming, considering how painful Catherine’s removal from Northanger Abbey was. Also lacking was the final culmination of Henry’s declaration of love. It did not hold up compared to Captain Wentworth’s letter, or Mr. Darcy’s second confession of love to Elizabeth. Despite all this, I greatly enjoyed the book. I liked that it moved quickly and was pretty suspenseful. (I did have to google “pump room” though, and find out exactly what it was. The name sounds horrifying.)

Words and phrases I now use too much, as a result of spending over a month engrossed in three Jane Austen novels: exceedingly, loathsome, irksome, pray tell me, upon my word, obliging and indeed. If only I could always stay immersed in Jane Austen’s world. :)

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The 9 Year Old Niece

nobody@vox.com(Dave) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:10:36 -0700

Silly Bae

called me yesterday at work...from daycamp.

She needed to:

make sure I was still coming to visit tomorrow
find out if I knew how to send her ring tones. She needs some new ones
find out Santa's phone number or if I called him to tell him hello...and the elves, too

1 out of 3 ain't bad.

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QotD: What, no horses?

nobody@vox.com(Alex) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:08:06 -0700

I am a farmer who raise ducks and cows. The animals have a total of 9 heads and 26 feet. How many ducks and cows do I have?
Submitted by The BlueTie.

Sorry. I haven't been out of high school and standardized testing that long to solve word problems for fun.

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Cathy Dennis

nobody@vox.com(W♥M) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:36:24 -0700

07/24/2008 07:31:44 ♥ written by vu ()

Cathy Dennis - All Night Long (Touch Me)

Cathy Dennis

Discography

[1991] Move to This

[1992] Into The Skyline

[1996] Am I the Kinda Girl?

http://news.yahoo...

NEW YORK (Billboard) - UK Singer/songwriter Cathy Dennis stormed America at the beginning of the...

So, I caught the news about how 90s dance diva/pop singer, Cathy Dennis, is still making a living in the music business - not as a performer, but as a music writer. She's responsible for huge hits for Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, S Club Juniors, and Janet Jackson, just to name a few. I'm happy to see her doing so well!

Anyway, this news caused me to flashback of my high school youth. I had seen her beautiful 60s haircut and neon green album cover and fell in love with her. I got her debut album, Move to This through my primary way of purchasing semi-cheap CDs: BMG Music Club (which I'm still currently a member).

I think at the time, she had "Just Another Dream" as a hit single, a dancey number with that catchy line "is it for real or is it just another dream (just a dream)", followed by "Touch Me (All Night Long)" which shows off her dancing skills on MTV.

Cathy Dennis - Too Many Walls

Once I had the album, I was drawn to her sweet lullaby love song, "Too Many Walls". This song, complete with the violin parts, did really well on the Billboard charts.... and I believe it was the last time we heard from her in the States.

I don't know what happened really, she disappeared as quickly as she appeared on pop radio.

Looking at her discography, I can tell you that she did release two other albums, and a greatest hits, but as far as I know, they were only a blimp on the radar in the US. I'm sure she fared far better in her home country.

As luck would have it, Discopop reported a brand new Cathy Dennis album called Sexcassettes should be out in 2008:

Her manager, Spice Girls svengali Simon Fuller, adds that the album has “a real contemporary guitar feeling” - which is less encouraging.

I don't know about 'less encouraging', but it should be interesting to hear her new original songs.

Dennis, from the recent Yahoo article, adds more details:

Actually, yes. I've been working for the last year-and-a-half with a band I put together called Sexcassettes. We're shooting a video for the first single, "Killer Love," this month, and I hope to have it out by the end of the year. It's more of a band sound than produced pop. As usual, I have no idea what to expect.

Links: wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Dennis

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New blog at MaribelMade.com

nobody@vox.com(Mari) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:24:32 -0700

I've left this place hanging for quite a while. Not planning on changing that, I just wanted to redirect any soul out there that might come across this to my new and improved blog at MaribelMade.com. The new blog focuses on less talk and more on actual production of my arts and crafts. That's right, I get down to the knitty gritty of toy construction (see the Mars Sock Monkeys and Jebby the Whale), knitting, drawing, painting, digital art and crafts with a tons of pickies. Go, hurry! Check it out!!

I also sell my toys and related Mars Sock Monkey products at:
Maribel Made on Etsy
Maribel Made on DaWanda
Maribel Made on Zazzle

Other places you'll find Maribel Made:
MySpace
Facebook
Flickr
Indiepublic
DaWanda Shopping Directory
DIY City
Stylehive
DeviantArt

Birthday Party Mars Sock Monkeys flyer

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Battle of Time and Space

nobody@vox.com(Procrastinator) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:18:00 -0700

Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Rest Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Breathe Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework Housework = Weekend

Work Work Work

=Weekdays

Cry Cry Cry Cry Cry Cry Cry = Everyday

DSC07330

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Cardboard Gandhi

nobody@vox.com(Procrastinator) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:00:16 -0700

An American artist has made a 17ft cardboard statue of Mahatma Gandhi – and published step-by-step instructions on the internet to help others do the same. The over-size sculpture of the Indian icon - complete with glasses and walking stick - has been unveiled at the Eyebeam gallery in New York.

The model is a tribute to Gandhi’s 248 mile Salt March across in India in 1930 in protest against British taxes. Artist Joseph DeLappe built the statue after recreating the march with the help of a treadmill and the online world Second Life earlier this year.

DeLappe spent 26 days walking with a digital Gandhi character across the game’s virtual landscape. The steps he took on the treadmill powered his Gandhi avatar's progress through Second Life.

"After walking with Gandhi for 240 miles I decided it would be interesting to recreate him in monumental scale,” he said.

The cardboard Gandhi, which is the same height as Michelangelo’s David sculpture, took 24 days to build and is held together with glue alone.

DeLappe created the sculpture in pieces so it could be taken apart and stored, or shipped to new venues.

Unfortunately DeLappe's made a blog about it HERE

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Burnt lot

nobody@vox.com(Procrastinator) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:59:49 -0700

The first guitar to be burnt by Jimi Hendrix onstage is set to fetch £500,000 at auction. Hendrix's 1965 Fender Stratocaster, which was famously set alight on stage during a performance at London's Finsbury Astoria in 1967, is going under the hammer with other historic artifacts from the world of music.

Among these are Jim Morrison's final notebook of poetry and musings before his death from Paris in 1971 and the last surviving drum-kit of Led Zeppelin's John Bonham.

The Doors lead singer's manuscripts are likely to sell for up to £100,000 while Bonham's drumkit could go for as much as £20,000.

But the pick of the musical collection will be Hendrix's guitar, from the opening night of the Walker Brothers tour on March 31 1967.

At the end of his show Hendrix set fire to the base of his Fender Stratocaster – as the astonished audience looked on and petrified venue staff ushered the performer off.

While Hendrix was being treated for minor hand injuries, his guitar was retrieved by his roadies, and eventually returned to Garland's London offices.

The guitar was then kept at the home of Noel Redding - bass player with the Jimi Hendrix Experience - before Garland collected the guitar and stored it at his parent's garage in Hove.

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