hey! it's me, taz!

"I just do eyes. Just eyes."

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 02:19:01 -0800

A great photo my husband took yesterday in Varvakios market in Athens. Very Blade Runner, don't you think?

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Post-its from the edge

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:47:01 -0800

I'm mad about Marc Johns' wry, whimsical post-it-note drawings and other illustrations. Check out everything on his photos group (three pages).

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I love getting up early

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 21:45:36 -0800

Sundaydawn

Snapped this a few minutes ago. Dawning Sunday morning.

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Der Smoke

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 08:58:14 -0800

Smoke

Here's a "digital painting" I did for Illustration Friday, which is a site that posts a theme on Fridays, and artists create and post thumbnail links to their work on that theme during the week. This is really a great way to browse a lot of different web artists (look on the left to "view all" or browse by medium, or use the "viewer" page), and hey, themes are just fun, right? This week's theme was - you guessed it! - "smoke".

So, in my imagination, this is really big, right? And the bottom "painty" part is really textured and the top "smoky" part has lots of layers of cloudy, sort of yellowed varnish with slight collaged elements in between layers, see? No? Well, then, you're just going to have to trust me that in my imagination it's supah cool..

I'm not sure I'm even going to upload a link to this there - it was just fun to play around (update: okay - I did). And I've found at least one other Voxxer doing Illustration Friday; here are all her posts with that tag. Neato!

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voxidoodle

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:55:09 -0800

I do wish Vox would let us do a bit of customization... just choose a design, then upload our own background (and bullet, if there is one) and change accent colors. This is what I'd do today:

Voxxy

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Iconic Theodora

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 02:56:03 -0800

Jocelyn Mathewes has a nice portrait series of Eastern Orthodox women holding icons of their patron saints. My favorite is this beautiful photo of Liana Lloyd, with an icon of the Byzantine Empress Theodora:

Women-with-icons

If you aren't familiar with Theodora, well, she's a fascinating figure. Lowborn and a burlesque actress and probably a prostitute in her early years, she rose to become co-ruler of the Byzantine Empire with her husband Justinian in the sixth century, enacting laws proscribing forced prostitution, granting women rights in divorce cases, allowing women to own and inherit property, and instituting the death penalty for rape. See also, "Theodora and the Politics of Sex". She is also credited with many acts of philanthropy as well as saving the empire by exhorting her husband to attack the rebels instead of fleeing during the revolt of Nika.

Unfortunately for Dora, though, it seems her chief biographer has been Procopius of Caesarea in his "Secret History" where he paints her as a skanky ho. However, Procopius had a big hate on for Theodora and Justinian, and in the same book asserts that "Justinian was, in fact, a demon disguised as a man because men... claimed they saw him late at night in the palace walking around without his head" (from here). And one of his chapters is even titled "Proving That Justinian and Theodora Were Actually Fiends in Human Form". Well, all righty, then!

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Penguins, Fight the Power!

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 04:19:37 -0800

Posted near my home:

Penguins-unite

It (basically) says: "LEOPARD SEALS SUCK... NO MORE VICTIMS!"

Ha!

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urgh

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:17:46 -0800

Not-this-tight

My pants are too tight. That's the bad news. The good news is, it's because they're my way-old pants, my two-sizes-ago (at least) pants, because my regular clothes are too big now. I'm kinda stuck in the middle; my good-weight clothes are still a little too small, but fit better than my bad weight clothes. But I don't want to buy anything 'til the beginning of the year, since I should be pretty much whatever weight I'm going to be then, and hey, coincidentally, that's when things go on sale. Works for me.

But in the meantime... omg, how do people who wear tight clothes do it? So uncomfortable! Urgh. But now that I'm home, I'm going to put on some nice sloppy sweat pants (that's the good news) and clean house (that's the bad news).

PS: to all the people I told I was going to Athens last week, I didn't go; to all the people I told I was going to Athens this coming week, I'm not going. Now it looks like the middle of the month for going to Athens.

Summary: Pants too tight, not in Athens.

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Show me the money!

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 03:00:36 -0800

This is wonderful.

Funnymoney

Bravo! Encore! More! More! (via Monkeytime, who found it via Look at This)

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Collection: Leon Bakst

nobody@vox.com(taz) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 07:41:14 -0800

Baxt_cost_of_firebird

I've made a collection of Leon Bakst (or "Baxt") costume illustrations from images found around the web (two pages).

Bakst was a Russian artist who shook the early 20th century world of theatre and ballet with his brilliant designs. I adore his use of color and pattern, and I'm amazed by the fluidity and animation of both his designs and his illustrations. Even the white space in his sketches seems to have form and motion.

You can view brief details on him in the info for the first image in the collection; for more, you might want to check out this geocities page which seems to have more background than other sources.

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