my self portrait project meets my robot boyfriend.

59/365
Originally uploaded by less like math

I have been doing a year long, once a day, self portrait project which is documented over on my flickr page. this is yesterday's photo which features the glasses that my mother hates and corresponding text concerning my maternal protective instincts getting a little gnarly. i have been reading We Need To Talk About Kevin, and as unpleasant as my extreme emotional responses to people hurting braedyn may be, juxtaposed against the theme in this book i'm glad that they exist. in my case it is often hard to know what the right response might be, to know how to corral all of those emotions into a responsible reaction. but as hard as that may seem, imagine trying to form an appropriate response when what you naturally feel is next to nothing.

now for some levity:

i am quite likely going to be a dog owner in the near future! (!!!)

thanks to my friend sarah i now know that these cookies exist. thank god.  they are lady gaga themed and are inspired by some of her best outfits.

o hai there!

Q: You know what's better than NEVER posting anything on this blog at all?

A: Having my first post in 3 months be about this other blog I've started.

'Cause that's how things work.

Soooooooooooooo.....i have this new blog.

Name: I Know That's A Thing...
Age: um, like....a week or two.
Interests: ya know, shows and movies and Wikipedia and ....lifestyle cleaning products, that kind of thing.
Religion: ex nihilo nihil fit...or whatever.
Here for: finding out about stuff and dropping tons of knowledge on you guys. you are welcome.

So far I have thoroughly covered:

Underwater Photography

The Dormouse

Whether or not it is possible or okay for your sternum to pop.

Coming Soon:  the phrases "On the wagon" and "Off the wagon".  What they mean and which one is the bad one.

Don't miss it!

29, FTW!!!

jorts.
Originally uploaded by less like math

I am told that I should blog about something soon because checking my blog only to find a month old post about all of the tiny things I love is getting stupid and boring and that people hate that shit and that pretty soon they'll hate my blog so much that they'll just start hating me in real life.

I also turned 29 two days ago, so that's a pretty good reason to have something interesting to say.

This year's birthday came and went with an unusual lack of fanfare. My hometown hosts a street dance pretty much every summer and I felt sure that it usually fell on the first weekend of June, so basically the weekend of my birthday. Based on this misguided assumption I planned a trip home to dance to country music in the middle of Main Street. But, alas, the street dance is the last weekend in June, not the first. We still made the trip and got to spend Braedyn's birthday with my parents. And I did manage to get cut off and then kicked out of at least one bar, so all in all, success. My mom treated me to a trip to my favorite thrift store in the whole wide world where I came up with a very respectable birthday-quality haul. Some new favorite dresses, some new favorite shorts and one amazing bicycle which in the end I didn't buy because I couldn't figure out how to get it back to Austin.

Even though 29 isn't much of a milestone birthday I feel like I should have goals or resolutions for the year. I've been trying and trying to think of what these would be but to be honest, other than the normal "be better at life" stuff, I'm having a hard time coming up with any. That being the case, for the moment I am content to just have one. This year will be my year for follow through. Back in March I was feeling really motivated to work on and complete some form of comic and I think this is the one goal I'll really try to achieve. In my greatest pie-in-the-sky fantasy by the time Staple rolls around next year I will have enough material to look into having a table. For me this means seeing through to completion at least four mini books worth of funnies, a handful of worthwhile prints, and ideally one larger book of sketchbooky stuff. You heard it here, I am going to TRY. And you, my readership, can try not to die of shock at the sight of me making an effort at something.

Contender goals that didn't quite make the cut?

* pay my bills on time
* sleep more
* consume fewer giant sandwiches
* make responsible emotional decisions
* remember to shave my armpits


Basically turning 29 has been pretty underwhelming, which should'nt be too much of a surprise what with the whole non-milestone thing. It certainly pales compared to the year I had a Strawberry Shortcake party, or the year I got my first cd player, or the year I went to a silent film porno retrospective, or the year i came home to a buttload of vintage dutch mod furniture. Really though, it was pretty good. I drank, I ate, I swam, and I only spent it with people that I really love. Asking for more than that would kind of make me a douche bag.

So 29, my name is Larissa, and I am about to rock your ass right off.

Tiny Little Roll Call!

legion
Originally uploaded by less like math

Last night I was at an ASL softball game (Emo's v. New Brohemia, for those interested [also worth noting, there was a dude in a full bearsuit in attendance...FULL BEARSUIT]) and the conversation on my periphery turned, pretty early on, to the ridiculousness/appeal of Coors Light in those tiny little 8oz. cans. They are patently ridiculous on most levels. What the point of that amount of Coors Light could possible be is completely beyond me. But even as you're rolling your eyes at them, it's hard not to start feeling a little bit of an affinity for them. They're just so SMALL!!! Not unlike Pearl "stubbies", which in a simpler time and in my unwavering teenage opinion during said simpler time, were the best beers of all time.
In discussing the pros and cons of these tiny beers it occurs to me that we should use the existence of things like ridiculously tiny beers as a jumping off point for what I think is the best theme party idea ever. Yes.....EVER.

It is.....

you guessed it!

A TINY PARTY!!!!!!!

In my perfect vision the ingredients for this party would include but not be limited to; tiny beers, tiny cocktails, tiny food, tiny cupcakes, tiny music, tiny musical instruments, tiny decorations, and best of all it will be a costume party and people have to wear tiny clothes!!! (for some reason that is my favorite part)

Maybe it's just me....no, it's not just me.....this is a great idea. My birthday is right around the corner. Maybe I'll just throw this tiny party for myself.

........what?

Yes, I would do that. Yes, definitely.

I am welcome to suggestions, anything that you can imagine being better in tiny form. I'm thinking tiny pinatas....just big enough for 3 or 4 pieces of candy or a tiny bottle of booze. We could beat them with copsticks, they would be THAT TINY!!!!

And now, some tiny things that I would like you to take note of:

Everyone's favorite......Fake Tiny Food!!! Even better, fake foreign tiny food!!!!


And then, going above and beyond, there is Real Tiny Food, like this!

You can get the recipe for them at That's Not What The Recipe Says Dot Com.

Courtesy of Martha Stewart, tiny pinatas are a real thing!

Try to even think about these without it making you feel a little crazed. Not.possible.

♥ The Bristlebot ♥

Wanna make your own? OKAY!!!!

These tiny tiny comics by Phil McAndrew

They are about 1.25" tall and in full color! My heart is officially beating too fast for me to confidently consider it healthy.

Who could ever forget this tiny house. This tiny house that WILL one day be mine. And the Turk's, I suppose.

Tiny Texas Houses

Lastly, these little Kurt Halsey drawings on 45's. He understands tiny better than most anyone. I think that's probably a fact.

Kurt Halsey


Okay!!!! one more thing. (it's really very hard to stop)

A tiny little video for a tiny little song about bruises and strawberries!


Ack! Okay, seriously, last thing. We'll pretend I didn't even include this one.

Goddamnit, slow loris. You are so cute.

Guh.

The End.

Enough just to know that it was there.

larissa marie swindle.
Originally uploaded by less like math

Because I don't have much to say that will be of any interest, because I am permanently exhausted in every sense, because my weekend was long in the bad way, because I have been reading through old emails and livejournal posts and rediscovering things i liked a lot of years ago, because i fell asleep by ten o'clock last night and still want more sleep, because i have to think about how to do that right thing and i don't want to think about that, and because reading is fun(damental), i have a couple things to share with you today. They're old things but they're good things. If you think of my gmail account as a keepsake box, which i do, then these things are some of the things i know I'll keep forever.

Imagining Defeat
David Berman

She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.

Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter.

except as a memory of rest or water.

Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise

that she woke me up at all.


*That was the first David Berman poem I ever read. It still kills me every time I read it. Along about the middle, the exact point would be the phrase "but always as a tree way up ahead", i get a knot of something in my stomach. It gets bigger and bigger and then I'm glad when the poem is over....and then I read it again.

And then there is this -


The Sixth Burough
Jonathan Safran Foer

excerpt
"It's getting almost impossible to hear you," said the young girl from her bedroom in Manhattan, as she squinted through a pair of her father's binoculars, trying to find her friend's window.

"I'll holler if I have to," said her friend from his bedroom in the Sixth Borough, aiming last birthday's telescope at her apartment.

The string between them grew incredibly long, so long it had to be extended with many other strings tied together: the wind of his yo-yo, the pull from her talking doll, the twine that had fastened his father's diary, the waxy string that had kept her grandmother's pearls around her neck and off the floor, the thread that had separated his great-uncle's childhood quilt from a pile of rags. Contained within everything they shared with one another were the yo-yo, the doll, the diary, the necklace, and the quilt. They had more and more to tell each other, and less and less string.

The boy asked the girl to say "I love you" into her can, giving her no further explanation.

And she didn't ask for any, or say, "That's silly" or "We're too young for love" or even suggest that she was saying "I love you" because he asked her to. Her words traveled the yo-yo, the doll, the diary, the necklace, the quilt, the clothesline, the birthday present, the harp, the tea bag, the table lamp, the tennis racket, the hem of the skirt he one day should have pulled from her body . The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put her love from him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he could never open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough just to know that it was there.

*If you want to read the whole thing you can find it Right Here. This is the first thing I remember reading by Jonathan Safran Foer. Summer emailed it to me at a time when I was really sad and it was the most comforting thing to read. Actually, looking back I think I had probably already read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but since it's my history I prefer to believe that I read The Sixth Burough first.

And so that we have balance, another poem -

Refusing the Necessary
Stephen Dobyns

becoming the river, we are the river.
unable to accept it, we are drowning.
your long hair floats on the surface-
sentences in a book i havent read.
you ask for help. i can do nothing for you.
the river passes between high banks,
thee- and fog-bound. it passes over the tops
of intricate buildings. we can see the people,
but not their faces. they are shouting.
we can't make out their words. fragments
of words float around us. we resemble
those fragments. the language is foreign.
we have waited too long for our decisions.
we have waited too long for the last boats.
we are afraid to surface or seek the bottom.
insubstantial, we are not enough to cling to.
foghorns continue their warnings:
the house is burning, the king is sick.
without daylight, we have forgotten the sun,
accepted a darker place. between the surface
and bottom, we may hang forever.

*I don't really have much to say about this one. I mean, what could you really even say.


So, there are a lot of things for you to read today. And if that's still not enough, there's always McSweeney's Lists. They never get old. Because, ya know, there are always new ones.

my new favorite thing?

my new favorite thing?
Originally uploaded by less like math

Well thanks for asking.

Texts From Last Night

I honestly believe that this might be the best idea anyone has had re: the internet in a VERY LONG TIME.

For the uninitiated it is a website devoted entirely to regrettable text messages the you send. That I send. That we all send.

There's something about the idea of posting them on a website and making them public that takes a little of the sting out of the full body cringe that comes when you pick up your phone the next morning, hands clammy with liquid shame, and scroll through the mistakes your thumb made the night before.

I just literally cringed remembering some of my own. I bet you did too.

Seriously you guys, this is hilarious. I mean it.

notables:

(917): My milkshake brings 85 to 90 percent of the boys to the yard

(818): On a scale of affliction to ed hardy, how douchy is it in there right now?

(310): its like his balls were made of silver and he was trying to polish the tarnish off

(410): You are still hot in my book. I wanna dry hump u like a 9th grader then hump for real when the herpes is gone.

(781): Is there a reason "Call me when you're legal" is written on my arm? I'm 22..

(517): I puked in a mailbox on the way back from your house.


oh.....


YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Come heavy or don't come at all.

Yart!
Originally uploaded by less like math

In case you somehow haven't heard, or you forgot, or you just can't get enough of hearing about it:

Yart Sale!!!!
Sunday May 3rd (this weekend)
Birdhouse Gallery
1304 E. Cesar Chavez
9a.m. until 9ish p.m.

Here's a very incomplete list of people who will have wonderful pleasers for sale:

myself, of course
Summer Anne
Bopnnie Rue
Jeff Freeman
Kathleen Noble
plus:
Amarin Enyart
Kevin Foote
Michelle Foster
Flip Solomon
Clayton Kalman
Patton Quinn

and oh jeez, lotsa other people too!!!!!

There will be lots and lots of lovely things to buy. We're having a Tito's sponsored Bloody Mary Mix-off at noon. (Open entry, bring your own ingredients, we supply the vodka, bring enough to mix for three judges, more if you're feeling generous).

There's an art raffle going on all day and we'll draw winners at 6 p.m.
There are cupcakes and cookies and sweetie treats in the works, and otter pops, and beers, and artsy craftsies, and maybe a hand-over-mouth kissing booth, and whatever else we can think of to entertain you between now and then.

I'm really excited about this and you should all come and bring everyone you know. My mom is going to be there, if that's a selling point for anyone.

It will be a total circus and it will be really really super fun!!!!!

So come to Yart! Do it do it do it!!!!