Invent interesting metaphors and similies for women's romantic novels.

Update:

* I removed the images from view temporarily
* I did this because I am about to use them and I want to fix the ones that didn't scan properly
* How am I using them? For better or worse, I have entered (don't laugh) a contest that involves a reading and I plan to project the images while I read the text
* This takes place in one week
* I have been practicing, and I recorded the first half of it (just audio, that's all I'm worried about really)

So excited to attend this contest.

That is so cool! I'm sure you'll knock their socks off.

yaaaaaaay awesome, Amanda! wish i could come.

Thanks guys! I am pretty excited, trying not to get my hopes up and be cool. (This is hard for me since I always get my hopes up and am never cool)

I made another few little ones just for fun and framed them, but I don't really have any purpose for them yet. I guess I'll wait until some birthdays roll around?

Seriously I would have never even considered showing these to anyone unless someone had encouraged me, so thanks for real.

My birthday is in November. I am just saying.

Wow I seem to have missed a whole lot between the sandbox + now but this is seriously awesome + I'm so excited for you! Crossing fingers, but I know you won't need luck bcuz yr work will blow everyone away. This is great!

Did you arrange for a smoke machine? Or for some to video the performance for us ilxors? :)

Excited for this!

I have nixed the smoke machine as (1) I couldn't find one and (2) even if I did, it might obscure the images from being projected and (3) it has been suggested that that would be "too much" :(

If someone is going to record it, I would rather not know until it's over. I will say that it sounds better read out loud than I ever expected it to.

You will be great, you know it. My birthday's a week tomorrrow. Just sayin'. :D

Oh! Really?! I should have been able to figure that out from our birthday conversation the other night, but it's going on the calendar. I hope you like late birthday presents!

I hope you like late birthday presents!

That should clarify things.

Em -- I sent you a message.

I have been kind of a maniac with these again. I made a couple of little ones and put them in a frame, only one of them is facing the back because it's the thought behind the thought. You could also just reverse them if you want.

This is the outside
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7146/6829780917_58935872dd_z.jpg

I also made a Valentine!

Well, the people failed to recognize my genius; if you want to win a contest judged by invisible rules, go with comedy instead of high concept. STILL, there was definitely some competition, and I did well.

Maybe my screen wasn't big enough. Next time!

Your genius, nevertheless, is fully recognized and intact here at lix. That muscular one is swellerrific!

Thanks! Tomorrow I'll post my Valentine. It's a little different, but same general feel.

What's more romantic than kissing a corpse? Happy Valentine's Day, ILX! <3 u.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7034/6829783589_40a29fd4e1_b.jpg

First three stanzas (minus the last line) are from the version of "Fair Margaret and Lady William" which had been "communicated to Percy by the Dean of Derry, as written down by memory by his mother, Mrs. Bernard." (From Vol 2 of the 5 volume The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" set, p. 201. I used the last line from the version Shirley Collins sang on The Power of the True Love Knot why because I felt like it)

Ah! I knew I knew those words. Would've been the Shirley Collins, yes.

LL this stuff is so so awesome I wish I could kickstart you an art prize of yr own!

Oh, it's more than enough that anyone cares.

These really knock me out. Sorry the judges were a bunch of ninnys.

Eh, it was just a good deadline/excuse to get excited about something/costume opportunity.
I'm not quite sure how to proceed, but I think I'll just keep making them and if the opportunity to read them aloud presents itself, I will do it.

I do have 5 volumes of ballads and no shortage of other things to cut up and glue together, that's for sure.

Not exactly related, but I threw this together from an ancient ESL book called Time and Space: A Reader. It's pretty much a goldmine, but it's all b/w. (image sorta nsfw but honestly, it's a drawing and not really very explicit at that)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7204/6873874317_14a4d22934_z.jpg

Do these images still exist anywhere? I knew you were reading at the Whistler, but I had no idea about any of this until just now!

Yeah, they're on flickr. I'll email you a link.

Merci.

They should also be linked above but not to the set.

Amanda's project + this piece make me feel like i should really be reading romance novels

Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex (1949) "[Woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other."

In romance fiction this formula is reversed, as scholar and former Mills & Boon editor jay Dixon (who spells her name with a lower-case "j") observes in her book The Romantic Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1995. Woman is the Subject, man the Other.

That is indeed true if the Romance Writer's Phrase Book is any indication!! I remain really disappointed in the overwhelming negativity of the book too. The last line in my "novel" is also the last line in the book --
"her mind was filled with sour thoughts."

I mean, think about that.

I also had a difficult time getting her to do anything that was not a reaction to what he was doing.

Tangentially, my mom attends a lot of "writer's conferences" at which she sees ALL kinds of weirdos (self-help, self-published romance writers, memoirists, etc) and she said that by far, the most depressing scene was in front of the romance writers' booth. She described it as "grim."

All of this just makes me more interested in it, naturally.

haha. maria bustillos recommends mills & boon and harlequin joints published between the late '30s and 1980 fwiw

Ive surely posted this romanticalz novel cover I made once, on here before right?

http://www.memorygongs.com/cover_3redone.jpg

This sort of reminds me of what La Lech has been up to: http://heroofswitzerland.blogspot.com/2012/01/judo-casebook.html

Interesting! Totally. I made a few more. I guess I could put them up here?

This one is my favorite of the newer ones that are not part of the original Ch. 1-12. (I have no idea what to call this btw -- I don't speak art language beyond very rudimentary basics -- I know what an installation is. Kind of.)
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7058/6777765246_262502353a_b.jpg

Yes please! I prefer your stuff, as it's more creative, but I quite like the judo strips... kind of imbues a lot of the trite problem page writing with more pathos, maybe?

xpost

Some of those are really odd... are they still from the same book? I don't even know what "foundation-training in the iron game" is meant to mean.

I called it "It may also radiate"

The words are from Jean Kent's other phrasebook, this one,
The Professional Writer's Phrase Book

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Pk-ZdE9GL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I wish I could pretend to know how to talk about this stuff, but I really don't. I never took any art classes beyond photography and pottery, which I toooootally bungled.

And the new phrase book is just like nonstop utter nonsense -- there are these "commercial phrases" used in sales, lots more sex, but a little more graphic and with fewer nipples this time (?) and TONS OF PIZZAZZ! (not really)

I mean, "banged his walker noisily across the room" <--- where exactly are you going to use this phrase? is that really an all-purpose phrase?

also it's a new issue of "story of life" -- i have another one but i don't really like it as much so i am not going to post it.
i do like the cover of story of life #41 though

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7188/6923935271_16905b779f_z.jpg

the article is about sun damage to the skin

i'm not sure if that's sfw or not?!

sorry if not :(

Is your worry about how to talk about it artistically mainly because you don't really know how to explain what you're doing to other people? I'd say it's collaged found poetry using the cut-up technique, I think most people would understand that at least roughly.

And the new phrase book is just like nonstop utter nonsense -- there are these "commercial phrases" used in sales, lots more sex, but a little more graphic and with fewer nipples this time (?) and TONS OF PIZZAZZ! (not really)

This is a great description. Once again, I want these books. I'm assuming the "walker" being banged noisily across the room is what I would call a Zimmer frame? So, like, some cranky old person stomping about?

So, like, some cranky old person stomping about?
Yes.

Do I have your permission to use your description of what I'm doing? I don't know what else to call it and I like doing it but explaining the whole thing is getting a little tiresome for me and also for everyone who makes the mistake of asking me what I've been up to.

Q - can you see the rabbit?

Haha, of course you can use that description.

It took me ages to actually work out that it was a person on that Story of Life cover. I kept on looking for Wittgenstein's duckrabbit in the contours. And now the only rabbit I can see is in the diagrammatic person's crotch.