[e020] Midnight Mantra

Olen niin väsynyt. Ei ole aikaa nukkua.

[e019] Dear School

Dear School,

I am tired, exhausted, burned out. I would love to start sleeping more, but you keep me up. You, and that dastardly creature called Life. We've been on rough terms in the past, and we have always managed to work things out. If you let me get a big chunk of my Halloween costume done today, and if you permit me to decorate the house for Halloween, I believe we'll be able to get along once more. If not, I declare war. Please think this over.

Best regards,


- You know who.

[e018] Mumblings

This restlessness that strikes me in the middle of the night is proving to be the bane of my immediate early mornings. The past two weeks I've been figuratively kicking myself, feeling less responsible and more a slave to my muse. Every night I work myself until I'm falling asleep in front of my project, my ephemeral obsession, and then every morning I'm overcome with listlessness as I sip at my coffee for artificial awareness. I wish I could freeze time and give my body the rest it needs when it cries out for it instead of pushing myself harder and further. I can't tell if I'm subconsciously doing this because I'm trying to battle another surge of depression by keeping my mind quiet and busy, or if my internal clock has my days and ways confused with mother Europe.

Today I dropped a sculpture class that was not living up to my expectations. Without revealing too much, I can say that I think the graduate student teaching it did have the best of intentions, just not the best of methods. The class title and description sounded really exciting and seemed like they would combine two of my favorite things: science and art. Unfortunately, it seemed to be bad science, and even worse: absolutely terrible art. Some of the concepts behind the pieces we looked at were genuinely intriguing, but the execution poor. It was also very apparent when the teacher was not comfortable speaking in front of the class because her voice would quaver, her hands would quake, and she would clear her throat or stumble over her words. Beyond these things, my heart wasn't in the class. No - my heart sat at home, watching me patiently from my drafting table, calm and knowing that I would come to my senses and return to that sacred place.

I am exhausted and ready for bed, but I am hesitant, almost afraid, to try and sleep. Maybe a few more minutes of rearranging around this rat's cove of a home (clutter, clutter, clutter, but oh so pretty in all its eclectic disarray) and I'll be ready to jump into my dream-land once more. In all honesty, I want to wake up and start my first free day to myself. I want to create. I think I'm burning out emotionally and need it as a retreat.

[e017] Productive Weekend

I had a really excellent weekend, catching up on some much needed work hours, finishing up some older and previously abandoned projects, and getting a chance to hang out with some friends before the semester has a chance to consume me. On Saturday one of my oldest friends was having a house warming party, and within five minutes of walking in the front door her mom had loaded me with four shots. What a welcoming! I really enjoyed not being a wallflower for once, and I had to laugh at myself for blacking out/falling asleep in her hottub. At least I didn't drift away too far...

Sunday was equally as wonderful. I went over to an artist's friend's house to work on making a bootleg toy, and to collaborate with him on another. Within the next weeks I really hope that we can set up a photo shoot for his "girls with toys" series, which includes a card and potentially a toy crafted after the model. It'll be the second trading card series that my face will be on, but more importantly: I get to spend more time with him and play with toys! It's like being a kid again, but a thousand times better. Once we make the molds for said toys and get the first resin duplica out I'll post some pictures up here. Do I need to even say I made an insect head for one of the figures? We also have some fun plans in the making of modifying some furbies for our own devious purposes.

As far as art goes, I made a Saturnalia MN pendant to pimp out, and I plan on making a ton more over the next weeks to hand out as promotions during larger events. They're somewhat eco-friendly as they're made from bottle caps I've been saving up for two years now:


(Arrogant Bastard is a fine choice for a bottle cap necklace)


(Showing off my necklace and my glow in the dark sunglasses)


(My hair is huge)

If you haven't checked out their music video yet, now is an excellent time to do so:



And when you're done with that, go to Saturnalia's facebook page and like them.

What else, what else? I made some Super Mario mushroom knobs for our Good Will rescued entertainment center. They're really simple, with machine screws baked into the back and a gloss glaze coat that makes them look very ceramic.





Now, if only today were nearly as productive as the last two I would be set. Instead I need to scuttle away and read another chapter from another textbook. Woe is the student life.

[e016] It's Hard to Scream with a Throat Full of Glass

After a satisfying nine hours of work yesterday, I needed a happy break from the tedium that had become photoshopping insects. EJ and I went to Safeway to pick up some milk for my necessary dose of coffee in the mornings, and while we wandered around wide-eyed as usual, I fell in love with a pair of sunglasses. I knew, right then and there, that they needed to glow in the dark. I also knew that I needed to paint something else on them, though I had no idea what.

It's now almost 4:30 in the morning and I'm still up, painting while going back and forth listening to Disma and Combichrist. I can't tell if I don't want to sleep, if I had too much caffeine earlier in the evening, or if my Muse is screaming so harshly in my ear that sleeping never stood a chance of meeting me tonight. Perhaps it's a mix of all three.

Some of my hair is UV reactant now, and I want these sunglasses to match that. I'm tempted to redo my nails again and make them glow in the dark. I'm not sure what spurred my recent obsession with things that glow in the night, but I'm going to take full advantage of it while it lasts.

As for the creature on my glasses? It's a glorious earwig, decidedly yesterday's insect of the day. The Order is Dermaptera, meaning "skin wing", and can be easily recognized by the pincer-like cerci at the bottom of the abdomen. Contrary to popular urban legend, they do not crawl into your ear and lay their eggs inside your brain - that would be, after all, a little bit too cool for reality. Rather, they eat plant matter, be it dead and decaying or live, though some species are predatory. They also look awesome painted on glow-in-the-dark sunglasses.

[e015] Nightmares and Sleep Paralysis, pt. 1

Sometimes I make very bad decisions when trying to study, like taking a two hour powernap and then expecting to be completely functional when I wake up. I normally start out feeling fine and energized, but within an hour when I start falling asleep in front of my papers I assume I need only an extra twenty minutes, so I set an alarm. I get up again, feeling like the waking dead, and set another twenty minute alarm. And then another. And another. And another. It's a bad cycle that results in me being more tired and less focused than if I would have slept for 6 hours straight. I'm sitting here, drinking coffee, trying to finish this study guide without blacking out in front of my keyboard. I wonder if I wouldn't be in this situation if my teacher had posted our study guide more than a day before the final exam.

I used to have super bad insomnia years ago, which I have somehow (thankfully) mostly recovered from, potentially from me feeling happier and more well-balanced. Nightmares were my frequent midnight guests, and I would wake up in a cold sweat with a silent scream caught somewhere deep in my throat. Over time I started developing sleep paralysis with this, and whenever this happened I would realize I was dreaming and needed to escape. Immediately. This would always happen when the dream would start getting too intense. Something was coming, I could feel it, I could sense it with every fiber of my being, and I wouldn't like it. I had to get out. I had move my fingers. My arms. I had to say, "No", which would always come out as a gasping croak on the few occasions I stopped breathing… followed often by heavy coughing.

I have always woken myself up from sleep paralysis. One of the most noteworthy of these times I had been dreaming I was in a condemned house. In my dreams, I've noticed that the house I am in always somehow reflects my current mental state. Like in so many of these style dreams, all of the lights in the house suddenly die. I am emerged in total darkness, groping my way around the hallways and trying to find a way out. Then I feel it coming. All of my hairs stand on edge, and my stomach starts to churn. I feel like I am going to be physically ill, like I'm about to completely lose myself to absolute terror. I have to escape. I have to get out. In that dream, I closed my eyes and pressed myself against the nearest wall, sliding down it slowly. I started talking to myself: "I am dreaming and I need to wake up. I am going to open my eyes. When I open my eyes, the first thing I will see are my closet doors. The walls in my room are red. When I glance down, I will see my yellow comforter." Before whatever it was arrived, I found myself wide-eyed staring at my closet doors. I immediately glanced down and saw my yellow comforter.

This morning I set my alarm for a twenty-five minute nap. Five minutes to give me the opportunity to fall asleep, and twenty to dream. I immediately fell into REM and the nightmare began, innocently enough, as a normal dream. My dreams generally follow a long and elaborate story-line, almost always coherent, and when I do remember them they come back in full detail: conversations, facial expressions, the way rooms look, the emotional reactions of the people in the dream - it all comes flooding back and I dwell on it all day. This morning things were disjointed.

I started off at a skateboarding contest and bumped into two people that I won't directly name, since I'm not sure they would be comfortable with it: one I had class with and loves sailing, the other I met at an event and loves puppets. I don't think we actually talked - I just distinctly remember seeing them at the venue. In reality, I can't skateboard at all. In the dream, it was something I was confident about doing, though I left the event before it even began. I bumped into Danny, Erik, and EJ, and we all went to Danny's gallery. Mesa didn't look like Mesa, and I had driven my car into Danny's gallery. Things were so clustered that I had a hard time navigating around it and decided to bring my car back outside. There were cops waiting around a corner that made me feel nervous, so I U-Turned back to a closer parking spot. When I came back in I saw Wade there and I met his sister - in the dream, she had a huge sweet tooth, like me, and we talked about food.

Again, for no reason, the dream shifts. I told Wade's sister goodbye and went to my house, which was conveniently right around the corner. The backyard wasn't outside at all, but encased in a giant living room, complete with linoleum floor. When I entered I felt a wave of sickness. There was a dead dog in there, suspended from the ceiling, over half of its body eaten. The back legs remained, and the front as well, but bones and sinew were revealed at the tops - and that was all there was to the dog. Curly white fur on the legs, suspiciously clear of blood, and a small portion of the torso connecting them still. It was in a leaping position, as if it were trying to get away from whatever ate it.

I panicked. This mess needed to be hidden, immediately. The owner of the dog was coming by soon. I saw a long, posable gate nearby and started blocking off the mess, forming a barrier around this miniature crime scene. As I worked I spotted the ribcage on the floor, still held together by some muscle, though mostly eaten. Various other bones and chunks of fur littered the parameter, and I caught myself wondering what happened to the animal's skull. I heard a noise and froze, though to my relief it was just my own small, white dog trotting by. She started sniffing at the remnants and I had the sudden feeling it was her that had caused the disaster. I shooed her away, and then a morbid impulse to document this grotesque moment seized me. I took out my camera and switched it to the video setting, trying to focus on the floating dog, which seemed oddly elegant in its violent death. I heard another noise and stopped again, quickly shutting off the lights in the room, hoping to hide the still-suspended dog corpse in the darkness. No one came, and I felt relieved. Temporarily.

When I reached for the lights to turn them back on nothing happened. I frantically switched them on and off, hoping for the light to return. Again, nothing. Deep inside I knew they wouldn't - this scenario was all too familiar. The monsters - or the demons - arrive and the lights don't work. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Was it something caused by the wind? My mind isn't working, clearly, as I'm indoors and there is no breeze. No fan. No circulating air. But I'm still hoping blindly. There is movement again, and I know I'm no longer alone. I start approaching the creatures to try the light switches just behind them. As I draw nearer my vision adjusts. The movement was an antennae from one of my sculptures (the roach in a hoodie). I am not threatened by this one. It's the other thing, the one that has its back turned to me, that frightens me. It's this other thing, I think, that brought my sculpture to life, that is silently conversing with it. I get so close to it that I could easily touch its shoulder. I press the light switch down, hoping once more to scare it away with the light, but the light doesn't come. I try again and again - nothing. Irritated, I growl, "Stop it!" to the creature.

He turns around suddenly, a violent sneer across his face. "No." It's his expression of malice that sends an electric shock through my body. His face is inches from mine, and he is partially crouched, as if in a striking position. His arms are out by his sides in a threatening gesture. In self-defense I try to pull myself free of the paralysis. Unlike so many previous times, I am not worried that I won't be able to wake myself up. I know it will take a few seconds, maybe ten or twenty. My fingers start twitching, and then my arms. I try to force myself to move just a little bit more, and it works. I sit up, wide awake, breathing shallowly. His psychotic demeanor is still burned in my memory. My alarm hadn't gone off - less than twenty minutes had passed.

The one thing that never stays clear in my mind is exactly how these creatures look. Maybe they are too terrible, and my unconscious self deletes them. It's always their body language and the strong emotions that they rouse that sticks with me. Every. Single. Time. I remember all of them, but I don't remember them at all. My demons will always stay with me as faceless entities.

[e014] Overwhelmed

Minus the cigarettes in this image, this is how I've felt the past several days. Yesterday I spent over twelve hours working on a final project submission for an online class, and this morning I woke up excessively early (after little sleep) to prepare for a quiz. Our teacher has offered some extra credit for the first exam, so I want to work on that before staggering into work looking like a crack coffee fiend. I've fallen hours and hours behind at my job, so it looks like a good portion of my vacation will be spent trying to make-up for lost time.

Oh, did I say vacation? Why, yes. That is correct. This Friday night EJ and I are leaving for Connecticut to visit my brother and his lovely wife. I'm crossing my fingers for a punk show, a space metal show, hiking, being a beach bum, looking for snakes, going on more insect-massacre sprees, and wandering about New York. Also, let's not forget one of the most important facets: gratuitous amounts of photos.

Looks like my time is up. Back to the coffee pot! (It's the student equivalent of the Bat Mobile.)

[e013] 1,001 New Ways to Stalk Me

For when I have nothing useful to say, or when I am not feeling particularly articulate:

Tumblr is the place to lurk.

[e012] The face of insomnia.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep and all coherent thought has long past, I try to make the most ridiculous face I can muster:



It's about then that the demons of sleep acknowledge that they have a potential problem on their hands and release me into dream-land. Sometimes while I'm still conscious. Jerks.

[e011] Not rinsing my dirty mouth with soap.

(gifted by a friend from Sweet Soap Treat.)

[e010] Raising Butterflies

About three weeks ago a coworker and I took off from work early to run around campus and collect insects. This is fast becoming a weekly hobby for me, even if the outside temperature does feel like an oven set to broil. Not only is jumping around in the bushes with a net a great way to meet interesting people, but I love looking at the diversity of the things we collect together. On this particular day that we collected, however, I did find something that didn't go straight into a vial of ethanol or a kill jar: two queen butterfly caterpillars.

At first I thought they might be monarch butterfly larvae, but after some fast google searches I found out the difference - the queen butterfly larvae have an extra row of "horns". I've never successfully raised butterflies on my own, so I was hesitant to take them in as a pet project. What changed my mind was that they were both already in their fifth instar (a time in-between molting and growing), which is their last instar before forming their chrysalis. The other turning point was that the bush I found them on was devoid of their normal food source, and both would have potentially died, anyway.


(The second caterpillar - note the three sets of horns and the small, yellow aphids on the branch)

The first caterpillar was larger and formed its chrysalis within a week. The second one, while in its last stage, still needed more food to grow. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more living desert milkweed plans and thought for sure it was going to starve to death. It got smaller and smaller every day, up until I spotted three more bushes (covered in hemiptera such as aphids) by the light rail station. The diet of the queen butterfly caterpillar consists of milkweed leaves and blooms, so finding three healthy, blossoming plants made me super happy. Overnight the caterpillar seemed to double in size, and within a few days it also formed its chrysalis:



Yesterday night my fiancé and I noticed it starting to darken up, and this morning we awoke to a beautifully emerged butterfly.





Both butterflies were released in memory of my father- the first two days before Father's Day, and the second this afternoon. :)

[e009] How art works.

This is how art works, explained eloquently via text messaging (shortly after mentioning cannibalistic tendencies):

"cool, we can have tantric demonistic sex in your leftovers, on a giant pentagram drawn on the floor in fresh blood, then make a fresh sacrifice to the dark one, then we should be ready to make some toys! sound like a plan?"

I just submitted it to textsfromlastnight, so hopefully that goes through.

[e008] Monster #1 in Progress

Introducing: monster # 1. By the time this is finished, it will (standing straight) be anywhere between 5' to 5'10" tall. It has/will have movable joints in the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles.







He's looking at you.

[e007] Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I'm absolutely terrible at making layouts, so I decided to change to a another cute default one. I think it fits this blog well.

I am absolutely exhausted and should try to sleep, but I'm excited to be sitting here and typing away at... well, no one. I'm just happy to type I suppose!

[e006] Silly forgotten drawings, part 1.

I found this when I was cleaning during finals week:

"Pizza is red
chees is yellow
the spises are colorful
and so are you.

Love, Rebecca"

Even if I couldn't spell as a child... I was still awesome.

[e005] Countdown

3.5 more weeks until I get to retry keeping this maintained. Just you wait, universe.

[e004] "I went there because it sounded cool."

While this break hasn't been filled with as many exciting insect collection trips as I hoped, I did spend a few minutes hunkered down in front of a map trying to decide where I wanted to go in the [near] future. That was when I realized that a lot of the places I wanted to visit I had selected because they sounded cool.

For example: Coffeepot, Hellsgate Wilderness, Santa Claus, Cash Mine, Hidden Treasure Mine... I mean, who wouldn't want to go to Cash Mine? Or Hidden Treasure Mine? And how neat would that look on a locality label? I'm still debating if this is a good thing or not, to go somewhere just because it has a fun name. This new obsession started with Bumble Bee, which is where I went collecting about two weeks ago. The original plan was to go to Horsethief Canyon, but after getting such a late start and still having to finish off Christmas shopping I picked a closer trail: Black Canyon National Recreational Trail.

The trail itself is 79 miles long, "stretching from the Sonoran Desert lowlands in Phoenix to the high grasslands in Prescott Valley." Edwin and I, of course, did not and could not possibly walk the entire thing, though we were content with snooping around for beetles and then walking a good two miles afterwords. I don't think words can describe how beautiful the landscape was, even on such a potentially dreary day. The wind was like ice, clouds covered the sky, and the rain came sporadically. We were lucky to have packed raincoats... and even so, nothing could defeat my overwhelming sense of happiness.



How could I not be happy around a face like that?





Or walking around a place like this?

My absolute favorite thing about Arizona is that one doesn't have to travel far in order to find someplace scenic. Earlier in the week we had taken an afternoon to trek North Mountain, where we stumbled upon... Santa Cactus?



(Please note the coals for eyes.) I told him that this year I wanted a GPS for Christmas, and when I got home I traveled back in time three days and ordered one from Amazon. I think he used some sort of hypnosis on me, though I'll never be able to prove it.

Directly across from our spiny friend there was also a heavily decorated mesquite tree. The "top" - in quotations, because this was a broad/general area - had a solar-powered star that I couldn't successfully photograph. While many of the ornaments dangling from the branches were store bought it looked like an equal number were hand made. My favorite was easily this little Cupid:



He shot Edwin and I, and now we're even more studpidly in love, which I didn't even think was possible.

Well... it's about that time to scamper off to bed. Hopefully the dog will relinquish my pillow by the time I'm ready to fall asleep.