I'll Have What She's Having

Good Morning!

Weight: Jan 18

195 lbs...Wow. That's 1 lb in 2 weeks. At this rate...

Socialism

We share our bread,
We share our fruit,
When we get paid,
We share our loot,
The poor don't go wanting,
The rich don't go flaunting,
We're all so happy but we don't have any incentive to work harder so production goes down...Phyllis Harland

Capitalism

A Capitalist knows,
How his money grows,
To maximize his yearnings,
Don't taxidize his earnings...Phyllis Harland

Marxism

A Marxist thinks,
That Capitalism stinks,
A worker's revolution,
Is the Marxist solution...Phyllis Harland

The Kindle

Do you have a Kindle? I don't.

My partner bought one a couple months ago and she has not been without it since. Although there are many books not available yet on Kindle, there are still many books to choose from. Many of the classics and "Complete Works of.." are free or $0.99.

My partner likes it because it's so easy to read and easy to hold. You can turn pages with a click of one thumb and the screen looks just like paper. She says it's not illuminated from behind like your computer screen, so it's easy on the eyes.

In just a few short weeks, she has read:

• Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz


• Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond


• Uranium by Tom Zoellner


• Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth
  

Yes, she has odd taste in literature. But she now knows more about uranium, Captain Cook, and the Byzantine Empire than I will ever know. Another good thing about the Kindle is that when you finish one book, there is another one right there waiting to be started.

She got a leather case for it and it looks and feels just like a book. For me, she ordered a subscription to The New Yorker. Each week, the new issue just magically pops up in the menu. She also bought me the Complete Works of Franz Kafka...I'm reading "The Trial" right now.

Should I get my own Kindle? If I read more because of it, then yes. Right now, I read in spurts. Maybe with a Kindle, I would read more consistently.

I still have to think about it awhile.

Van Gogh "The Bedroom" Diorama

I'm working on a diorama of this painting by Vincent Van Gogh. I started with the floor. I would give credit for the floor technique if I could remember where I saw it. I cut a piece of heavy paper to the exact dimensions of the floor, then cut random lengths of popsicle sticks and glued them down on the paper. Two pencil dots at each end of each little plank looks like nails. When it was all dry, I sanded it down and put a wash of burnt sienna acrylic on it.

I made sketches of the furniture for reference.

Then I just kind of built the furniture with craft wood, sticks, etc. to look as much like the picture as I could.


Here's what it looks like so far:




I still have to hang some cloth for a towel by the door on the left, and there's some junk on the back wall behind the bed. Also it looks like a brush and a blue ceramic water bowl on the table that I have to make. I think the paint job needs to be scruffed up a bit, too. Then...a Van Gogh action figure so I can play with it.