Vicereine Radio Episode 2

Vicereine Radio returns with a doubled-up episode: double the flavor, double the fun, and quadruple the grooves. Click the image above to listen, right-click to save, alternate link here

Michel Gondry…

You’ve done it again! Delightful new music video from M. Gondry, most of whose ouvre is amazing (in case you didn’t know).

Mia Doi Todd “Open Your Heart” dir. Michel Gondry from Viewers Like You on Vimeo.

The message I take away from this is that colors are awesome. Michel Gondry + Colors  is pretty much guaranteed to be a beautiful thing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Goodbye, 2009

IT’S 2010.

Whoah. As others have noted, that year sure went by quickly. (ol’ 2009, RIP – we hardly knew ye).

I haven’t had time to prepare my 2009 retrospectives yet, but rest assured that it is of utmost priority! I have been busy with assorted festivities over the last few days so I have not had the chance for poor old bloggy here.

However, here are some of my resolutions.. I feel I am probably getting somewhat overambitious, but I think it’s good to aim high? haha.

RESOLUTION REVOLUTION 2010 HERE WE GO.

- Become [substantially more] independent – aka get a job/$$ – aka ‘skills to pay the bills’.

- Become *helllllof* amazing at electronic music – YOU DONT EVEN KNOW

- Finish (or at least make major significant progress on) my two current larger writing projects, a novel and a non-fiction work. I spent much of 2009 on these, but didn’t get as far as I’d hoped.. I kind of lagged toward the end of the year, too :\ Must forge ahead now!! I am very excited about both of them so I think I need to make them utmost priorities.

Also, blog more often/regularly. See the aforementioned utmost priority, haha.

- Learn to play the bass. Cause that’s gonna be awesome. [I got a bass and amp for Christmas! More on this later.]

I guess those are my main ones, and should keep me pretty busy O:) I think I have a few more and will probably make more if I think of good ones… not sure what to do for a physical goal, however. Last year I decided to be able to do a pullup and also the splits, and I actually accomplished both! That was pretty kewl. I really want to take some kind of dance class, but not sure if I will have time.

2010 – let’s see what you shall bring, eh?

New Year’s Eve: Blue Moon

Apparently there is going to be a “rare blue moon” on New Year’s Eve?

Yahoo News – Rare New Year’s Eve ‘blue moon’ to ring in 2010

Ok, I guess it’s not.. *that* crazy, but it is cool to have a full moon on New Year’s. Also, the article is written in a rather silly fashion… I especially like:

“Blue moons have no astronomical significance, said Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.”

Well ok then!

[I’m back from Idaho and other holiday festivities which have kept me from my preciouss blogs, haha.. but may not have time for *real* entries for a few days yet.. we shall see.]

More Files from the Santa Crawl

So, here’s a few videos from midnight at the Santa Crawl in downtown Reno.. though very short, I think these capture a lot more of the event and event-goers than the photos did. I was trying to do a newscaster-like narration, which you may be able to tell was somewhat influenced by spirituous liquors. O:)

(haha, gotta love the Blair Witch-like realism, by which I mean out of control camera spinning. I was fearing for my life!)

What a good time.

In other news I kind of want a nicer video camera, but I also already want a lot of other things that have priority.. but someday! When I get the mad $$. Cameras for dayz.

This N That

Well, once again I had a busy and fun-filled weekend that didn’t permit much time for blogging. The busy-ness (first had ‘business’.. doesn’t quite read the way I wanted, haha) has continued into this week, thanks to me lighting a fire under my own ass to get into the music studio for long blocks this week to try and figure stuff out FREALS.

This has led to some dejection and frustration (coupled with ladycramps getting me down), and not having time to go to the gym for two days in a row, I realized, was contributing to my bad mood. I’m hooked on endorphins, apparently! Which is a good thing to be, except when you can’t get your fixx.

The best part of my last two days (both of which had me feeling pretty low, which I hate since I usually feel like a sunny ball of energy, haha) was hanging out with the girlz, having nice chats and delicious squash/yam soup for dinner. That cheered me up in a big way.

Tomorrow I’m not going to the studio, and I intend to have a mainly computer-free day (minus a few real blog posts I’ve been meaning to get up – Xmas movie series starting tonight!) making crafts and getting some exercise. Staring at a screen all day really does things to you, I’ve found.

So, what I’m getting at is, GO OUTSIDE! Get some fresh air. Make something with your hands that does not involve typing or mousing. Oh, the irony of me saying this on my blog.

Black Friday [indeed]

I did not buy a single thing today.

I didn’t even have to try not to, though. For one thing, I was working, actually earning money instead of spending it in some way (the opposite of my current financial strategy most of the time, ha).

But for another thing, I’ve been thinking about this day more than usual this year – and not in a good way (for Black Friday, that is. For me, it’s been great.)

I was first faced with a reminder of this ever-so-important day a little over a month ago. The source was the Yahoo front page, which admittedly I feel a little bit embarrassed about still having as my homepage, and which sometimes has ludicrously silly and trivial main headlines (I recall with especial ‘fondness’ the one entitled “The Best Way to Eat Chicken Wings – You’re probably not doing it right”).

ANYWAY, I remember thinking, “Black Friday? What does that mean? Oh, they do mean the day after Thanksgiving. But it’s not even Halloween yet! This is getting way out of hand, people.” But that was only the beginning.

Maybe I’m just noticing it more, but the hype around Black Friday seems more exaggerated than ever this year. From the sheer amount of news coverage, innumerable BF sites, and barrage of ads from all directions talking up the ‘event’, one alien to our culture might presume this to be a major holiday.

In fact, it is. Or it seems to be. I did not see much Thanksgiving ‘news’ or ads that I can recall. But I guess being happy about and thankful for what you have doesn’t really sell $25 printers, if you take my point. (Though it does sell a lot of very specific food items, obviously.)

But that’s what I find so completely baffling about the entire thing. The proximity of two such fundamentally opposed paradigms – so much so that I feel the bastard lead-in to Christmas (BF)  has all but overshadowed the original holiday (Thanksgiving) and its meaning completely.

So, let me get this straight. After what should ideally be a day of gratitude, an occasion where we actually stop to look around and appreciate all the things in life we work so hard for, the reasons for working and trying and doing, the first thing we’re supposed to do is…

Go out and buy things until we drop.

In a time when our wasteful way of life is becoming swiftly more apparent, and more problematic, than ever, there’s still this frantic plea of desperation over it all, trying to drown out all that unpleasantness by imploring us to buy. Buy. BUY!

As if it’s some kind of cure.

Incidentally, I’m planning to make most of my Christmas gifts this year.

THANKS

Well, only 15 minutes left of Thanksgiving, but I felt compelled to at least make a quick post. I had a lovely day filled with family (although less family than usual.. only 6 of us for dinner this year), ample playtime with my pets (dog wrasslin’), and delicious food.

My favorite food item this year was our deliiiicious cranberry sauce that we made with pomegranate and walnuts, both from our trees outside. YUM. I just wanted to eat it by the spoonful.

And the best thing about having a small group for Thanksgiving dinner? MOAR LEFTOVRS [om nom nom nom]

Also, I’m going to post a Thanksgiving minimix over at RemixMusix in just a sec, so be sure to check that out. (It’s not actual Thanksgiving-themed music, just songs with titles that fit in with the theme)

Fun with lip products

So, I’ve been having fun playing with the Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tars the internet makeup world has been buzzing about. These are super-pigmented color glosses with a unique texture, and come in a complete range of colors, including some crazy ones like blue, green, and yellow – they’re intended to be mixed to create your ideal shade.

So far, I have six of the shades (haha god I have problems with makeup buying) and four more samples on the way. The colors I own are fairly “normal” – Hush (pink-nude), Anime (BRIGHT hot pink), Katricia (medium lavender purple), Feathered (white), Plum (browny-plum), Grandma (coral). Soon I will also be able to use RX (bright blue), Tarred (black), Vintage (deep burgundy), and NSFW (bright red) to make even more colors, hurrah!

Last night I was playing around with some of them…

This is a mixture of Katricia, Plum, and Feathered. I put a lot on for the picture and because they do look nice when carefully applied in this way, but this would be horribly impractical for actual wear.

In fact, I think the only way to successfully wear these out is by (well, following the directions the site gives) and using a tiny amount with a lip brush – much less than you would use of any other gloss. The formula is really slippery and will smear/get on teeth easily if you put too much. I also really recommend blotting it to get the nice color without the gloppy mess!

Here’s a little bit of Anime (hot pink) added to the above and then blotted.

A little more normal, right? Haha, well at least in my book.

I then decided to put a different weird gloss over that – MAC’s Cobalt Blue pro gloss.

ooOOoooo… though as much as I love this, I can’t imagine ever wearing it outside of the house, haha

Well, that was fun indeed.

Glitter lips tutorial

A couple of days ago while messing around with possible Halloween makeup, I came up with this:

I think it came out really well, so I decided to post a tutorial for it. I think this would work with any color of lipstick and any color of glitter, so it’s perfect for modifying to your color preferences. I like the black base because it really sets off the color and sparkle, but I also think a glittery red or hot pink lip would look *AMAZING*.

This time I decided to try a different color over the black base, and chose pink. My only pink glitters are MAC’s Very Pink Reflects and Neon 60s. But Neon 60s came out rather surprising…

Yowza! Pink, purple, blue, and black… all my favorite colors

GLITTER LIPS TUTORIAL

What I used:

All MAC stuff: 316 lip brush, greasepaint stick, Feline kohl power liner, She-Zam dazzleglass, clear lipglass, Reflects Very Pink and Neon 60s glitters.

Important: DO NOT rub your lips together at any time during this process. This requires very pigmented and thick products that will most likely get on your teeth and clump pretty badly. It will look terrible. SO DON’T DO IT. Resist the urge. Please be aware that this look is not practical at all and really should not be worn places where eating/drinking are necessary! The price of having sparkly wonderlips

1. Start with clean, bare lips. (My lips are kind of dry, so I used lip balm and blotted it off to prime them without adding a layer that would affect color application).

2. Use the greasepaint stick to line and fill your lips until the entire surface is matte and black. You should be able to get fairly good definition of shape using this. If you want, you can line beforehand with Feline e/k or any black pencil liner (chola status? haha) or afterwards to perfect the shape (my preferred method).

I don’t think this looks that great, because the paintstick is kind of drying. For a nice matte black lip though, you could stop at this stage and just add a non-shiny balm overtop.

3. Add your preferred gloss, using the lip brush to gently paint the gloss on (I try to avoid getting black color into the lipgloss tube!). I like the super-sparkly silver MAC She-Zam dazzleglass:

4. Get your preferred glitter. Still using the lip brush, pat the glitter gently in a small area at a time to get a nice covering. DO NOT smear. I like to just do it in the center of both lips (not all the way to the edge) so the black still shows. This is with Very Pink:

I don’t think it looks that great at this stage either, because the glitter is kinda crusted onto the gloss I guess you could say. But in the next step, it really comes together.

5. Using the clear lipglass and the lip brush, gently paint the gloss thickly over your lips. Again, do not rub your lips together. Done properly, this creates a very slick, sparkly look.

Now, that looks pretty neat.. the MAC Reflects glitters are very finely milled, so it looks kind of like a dazzleglass, just more extreme. But I really wanted sparkle, so I decided to add the other glitter, Neon 60s. (again adding gloss over the top)

So there you have it! Hope this tutorial was helpful. If anyone tries this for Halloween or otherwise, I would love to see pics of different color combinations of glitter and color