Friday, May 14, 2010

I'm a loser but these kitchens are winners. Warning: *earmuffs*

COCKSHITBALLS!!!

It looks like the ModernSauce kitchen did NOT win the ugly cabinet contest that I entered last month.  WTF people??!!  Perhaps the chalk outline of the dead body I drew on the floor was a little too much...  Seriously though I think there must have been some nepotism or blowjobs involved that I wasn't aware of because my kitchen is a hellhole.  Had I known there were other ways to win I would have slipped one of these naughty shots of Madame Sunday in her lingerie in with my application:

Sex on fire.
I'll wait for you to change your pants.

Now Home Depot and Ikea are going to have to no holds barred fight to the death in the octagon for who has the cheapest price gets the honor of making my kitchen.  Let's look at a bunch of kitchen porn from my special archive to mourn the loss of what could have been.  Dream kitchen - I feel like we barely knew ye.  But you were always there with a kind word and sexy cooking fantasy to keep me going.  You will be missed.

The Lord is my shephard I shall not want...

Not gonna happen Lord - I have a serious design boner (RIP) for this kitchen. I know there appears to be no handles anywhere in that kitchen but I don't even care because then they won't leave weird marks on my face when I press myself against the cabinets for some mad kitchen hugs.  Also, I want to lick that fridge.  Look at it all slim and shiny.  It totally wants it.


lots of missing sources here.  sorry.



Something, something, green pastures...?

 
Pretty sure there's a chalkboard wall of disease-causing filth over that range but I'm too far gone in my grief to really care.  Also kinda distracted by the fuckawesome light fixture and cabinets.  Sigh...  I mean *sniffle*



 
Um...paths of righteousness...


Brandon Barre Desire to Inspire





Living Etc.
I'm like a horse with a carrot when I look at that chandelier.  Mouth open.  Drool.

 
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death
Black cabinets = melt.  Also = shadowy.  Because I'm good with putting things together that have absolutely no business being together whatsoever.  It's a special talent.  Just like my talent for LOSING!!! 


I will fear no evil
because you are totally with me
Angie Hranowsky in Coastal Living
I. A. DORE this kitchen.  Who do I have to send sexy pictures to in order to get that tile?  WHO??? 


 

 
Something about a rod and a staff...  yeeessss...
Decorpad
That is the sluttiest kitchen I've ever seen.  No real food preparation goes on in there.  I bet it just smells like sex and take out.  Fine by me. 


You prepare a table before me
Cuz my enemies are here...?
Design Babylon
I'm not sure exactly what enemies you're referring to unless you mean the JUDGING PANEL OF THE UGLY KITCHEN CONTEST in which case yes I do now have mortal enemies.  We're about to have our own octagon match, fuckers.  Also I hate assholes so they're probably my enemies too.  But I don't really want to invite any of them to my party so let's come up with a different plan that still involves everything about this kitchen, k?

My cup overflows...
Good thing you got a lot of cabinets.  Delicious delicious cabinets for storing overflowing amounts of fabulosity.


Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life

Well I think mercury is still in retrograde right now so there ain't a lot of goodness following me here.  I mean I LOST the contest and I guess you didn't read my last post where I fucked up some doors huh?  We're talking serious fail here Gawd.  But I would happily take some of those bottom drawers with glass because that is the most awesomenest thing I've ever seen.

And I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever
 Apartment Therapy
LORD if your house looks anything like my house I think I'll pass if that's okay with you.  But if your house - specifically the kitchen - looks anything like this then we're in business.  Are you pickin up what I'm puttin down here?

Do I need to send you a sexy picture?

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

I attempted fabulosity this weekend. Mediocrity ensued.

In a rush to get some shit done this weekend before the gawdforsaken heat of a Southern summer forces me to sit in a plastic kiddie pool all day drinking mojitos while overdramatizing the temperature I decided to do a little home reprovement.  Yippeee!  Somehow I think it's more fun for you than me so I do this to keep you entertained.  I'm a giver really.


Foreshadowing!  Let's nail some shit good!  Raaawwwwrrrr!
In non-related information I bought a new camera a few weeks ago.  Not like a pocket camera with a jazzy name like "Snappit" or "Powerpixel Deuce" but a real name that's a single letter followed by a really giant number like the Omega Z9000000 Camera of Amazing Awesomeness and Espresso Machine.  It takes two hands to hold.  I can't figure out how to use it because I'm a functionally retarded when it comes to things with buttons but I refuse to watch the two DVDs it comes with because instructional videos are for quitters and I know that if I keep staring at the dial long enough I'll magically figure out aperture, F-stop and ISO/WTF.  My plan is totally working because so far I've figured how to take pictures of fireworks (thank you lax TN laws regarding explosions) and things really close up.  Hence the box of nails.  And more nails:


I tried to bedazzle my face mask but that wasn't as successful as you would assume it to be.
Because I'm the best and most talented daughter of all time I spent Mother's Day patching sheetrock at my mom's house.  It's the gift that keeps on giving because no one can ever look at a wall and say "dividing up spaces into functional areas and privacy is so dumb!"  Mom totally agrees with me because she doesn't even know this blog exists and Madame Sunday is absolutely keeping it that way until I fuck up and mention it, like, two years down the road and then there's a really big awkward moment and lots of hurt feelings.  Happy Mother's Day 2012!  

MS Helpful Hint #1:  This one's for the laaaaadies!  Let's say you want to patch some sheetrock one day for your mom or to repair the wall after a Lady Gaga/Beyonce dance off went horribly awry - the Madame recommends slathering your hands in shea butter first and then you can sand til your heart's content!  Your hands can still be free of gloves to fondle your wall but your cuticles are totally protected from the drying effects of sheetrock dust.  I would wait a few minutes for the lotion to soak in because otherwise it'll make a paste with the dust and then you'll have cottage cheese hands.  Don't ask me how I know this.  If you figure out a way to protect your face without coating it in shea butter that will probably break you out or have you look like a DIYer's bukakke dream whore please let me know.  I guess you could use a ski mask but the sheetrock dust acts like a dry shampoo so you lose that morning after benefit for your hair...  It's a conundrum!

They're dead.  Don't worry I didn't make tiny sculptures with them using skulls and rib cages.
More Xtreme close-ups from the Omega Q2000000!!!!   Also, Photoshop mediocrity.



Headin back to the ModernSauce ranch...
Worst "composition" ever.  BEst SiGn evEr.


Oh look!  Now I can take pictures of things at middle distances!  I TOLD you I could figure out the Omega M798000!  With that winning accomplishment under my belt I decided to tackle some things at the ModernSauce Ranch that I have been avoiding I've been too busy to get to.

Remember when Madame Sunday “polished” some door hinges a few weeks ago?  Well I finally decided to return them to their home and hang doors this weekend.  Par-tay right?!  I figured that I would probably check that off my to-do list some time around September so I’m actually AHEAD of schedule.  Procrastination Productivity FTW!  It wasn’t all high-fives and home reprovement magic though because SOMEBODY (I’m blaming Charlemagne that little bitch) forgot to keep the hinges labeled in the correct order and for which door they belong to.  MOTHERFUCKER!  So that’s 3 doors x 3 hinges each = 983948394839843 options for failure.  I did indeed find them all.  I’m not sure how it’s possible that the exact same hinge suddenly morphs into a secret key of trickery when you go to screw it back into the frame but indeed they did.  They are made of goblin brass I tell you!! 


MS Helpful Hint #2:  If a demon cat comes in and messes with your ordering system leaving you to guess which hinge goes where and you are forced to test out the fit of each hinge before screwing it in, I recommend you work from the bottom up.  Do not - I repeat DO NOT - start from the top where you had to hammer the ill-fitting goblin hinge to fit into the notch only to have it skillfully launch itself from said notch directly onto your hand 6 ft below.  Goblin brass has the density of iron wrapped in a black hole and the aim of Tiger Woods.  (I don't really know what that even means so insert your own sports reference here.)  I might be crippled.  I have a feeling that the makers of goblin brass have a team of lawyers akin to BP so I would probably lose that lawsuit.  Assholes.  

It's also quite difficult to prop a door an inch off the ground with a bandaged nub hand while your other hand is full of an 85 lb drill trying to gently coo magic words of love to goblin brass to unlock the secret of eternal door opening and closing.  Because guess what people?  Drills get heavy after awhile.  


Probably no Ryobi endorsements any time soon...
I can't believe we live in a world where that little gadget on the left holds thousands of pieces of vital life saving information and yet this is the best thing we could come up with for a drill?!  There is only one possible explanation for it - a sexist conspiracy.  It's just another way to keep me chained to a life of luxury and cushy office jobs!!  I'm biologically programmed to have less upper body strength than men and I can't change that.  I was born this way, it's not a choice, and I should have the same rights to drill holes and haphazardly rehang doors as more bicep-endowed individuals!  And NO I refuse to lift weights to conform to your ideal of what a drill operator should be!  FUCK YOU SEXIST PRODUCT DESIGNERS!!

So after three hours (there may have been some napping in there too) I finally figured everything out and the bits of goblin brass that were being obnoxious just got hammered into the closest available door frame.  I made those hinges my bitch. Who's the master now goblins?
See that hinge that looks only slightly shinier than it did two months ago but no one except me will ever be able to tell?  Yeah – I did that.  Does my bling make you jealous?  Does it also make you jealous that my trim is so freshly white while my door is the disgusting color of 40 years of nicotine and neglect?  Mmmh hhhmm.  Thought so. 

Now some people might say that it is easier to paint a door off of the hinges rather than on but those people are fucktards and have obviously never painted a door.  Calculate the drying time of 3 (sometimes 4 coats) of paint and primer multiplied by each side of the door plus the extra space necessary to accomplish such a task and you're looking at 8939384 hours of time and a  full basement.  I have neither.  What I do have is a natural gift for applying painter's tape and some thighs that could use a few squats taught delicious thighs I like to keep toned.

Foul door color aside I did good.  I was feeling all proud and flushed from victory until I realized that I forgot to plane the doors.
GAWDAMMIT!  That's as close as it comes to shutting.  FML.

I may not have nice doors, a modicum of forethought or two working hands but I do have the nicest Azalea on the block.  
That's twelve feet of absolute bloom vulgarity right there.  See - Azaleas ARE the sluts of the Spring.

Think it's time to have a drink and light some fireworks.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Stepping outside the bitch box.

Based on the life-changing awesomeness of my last post I wanted to be careful to not paint myself into a box of bitchitude.  I'm really like a butterfly you can't contain.  A saucy enigma.  A non-contained butterfly enigma with gossamer wings of glitter and dewdrops floating on the winds of change.  DON'T YOU CONFINE ME TO YOUR BOX GAWDAMMIT!!    


It's just that people make it so damn easy to rip apart their shit.  I mean art.  I mean... stuff.  Whatever.  I have wonderfully funny filthy and saucy opinions on a whole manner of things but I am more than just a judgmental tool for your entertainment!  I have feelings too and enjoy liking things!  Ok there's a lot of bitchy feelings in there but sometimes I like to be positive because it makes my soul glo.  On the inside I'm like the Buddha.  Butterfly outside - Buddha inside.  It's similar to 'inside peanut butter outside jelly' but with more Noble Truths.  (virtual high five if you get that reference without having to click here.  Nobody will - it's just for me really.  sigh...)


I also like liking things* because I'm very easily influenced and being snarky ALL the time quickly spirals into an ever-deeper hole filled with venom, depression and hilarious yet catty comments.  I'm easily swayed just by my own self.  


Just look at this actual conversation transcript:


Madame Sunday: Wow look at that [piece of awesomeness].  Isn't that incredible?!


Self:  I know right?!  Stunning.


Madame Sunday: It's the most glorious thing I've ever seen!  What I wouldn't give to put that in the ModernSauce ranch!


Self: Omigod my heart's on FIRE with how beautiful that [piece of awesomeness] is!!! AAAAAHHHHHH!  


Madame Sunday: But you know I don't really know where to put it and how the hell do you really clean it...?


Self:  Yeah [piece of awesomeness] does seem a little big now that you mention it...


Madame Sunday: And what's that stupid thing on top supposed to be anyway?


Self:  I HOPE YOU DIE AND BURN IN HELL YOU FUCKING [piece of UN-awesomeness]!!!!!!!


See it turns sour so easily.


But when I came across these porcelain pieces by Kate MacDowell I couldn't even convince myself of a reason to not like them!  And being a product of my generation I don't like anything unless there's an animal involved or it's in white.  Double points for anatomical references.  You can imagine my delight when I stumbled across all of them at the SAME.  DAMN.  TIME.


Of course in the comments you are always free to rip apart the things I like.  I welcome dissent!  Let's just not have a mutiny or anything... you know like that old timey book about a mutiny on a ship or something.  I think it ended bad.  I'm not really sure.  I'm also not really sure my readers could take over my blog either but I don't really understand how the internet works so just to be safe I've got my eye on you! 






Her work is about the often deadly relationship between man and nature.  How bout we just splash each piece with a bunch of oil from the Gulf for maximum relevancy.






The birds are my favorites of course, particularly this one.  I want to pet it.  I love touching sculpture because the artist's hands touched it and that tactile sensation feels like part of the piece that I should get to experience too.  But museums get all weird when I rub my face of their marble statues and get all handsy with their bronzes.  WELL FUCK YOU, YOU BUNCH OF ART COCKTEASES!!!  If you didn't want me to touch it you shouldn't have made the velvet rope so easy to jump!  Docent fail.






Yeah I know.  Porcelain.



Ugh - this makes my stomach tight and skin crawl just thinking about it.  Which is awesome.  I'll take a visceral reaction like that over contrived design any day. 

Romulus and Remus.  The tension in that little open mouth drives me wild.


Awwww.  I feel glowy inside too!  I like liking things.


Sometimes...

*It has come to my attention that my subconscious totally stole that from a tweet per the hilarious Rich Holschuh of @concretedetail who you should follow.  FYI my subconscious is a little bitch and will probably steal tons of other jokes from people way funnier than me but I can't help it because it's my SUBconscious and all and I don't have any control over it.  Just like I can't get rid of those dirty dreams about Rahm Emanuel, a beef n' cheddar and a tractor that I so desperately want to banish (not really).  DON'T JUDGE ME!!!!! 

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The best thing to happen to books since Fahrenheit 451.

Tonight I prayed for forgiveness from the blogging gods (Bill Gates and Dooce) for my lack of posting activity these last few weeks.   My recent Hades-delivered sickness and the trappings of real life (wtf non-internet life?) left me functionally retarded and unable to form sentences with recognizable nouns and verbs.  On second thought you probably wouldn't have been able to tell...  But subsisting solely off of cinnamon toast and stress did make me cranky and weak (again, probably hard to tell a difference) so I'm just going to blame my blogging drought on the fact that I haven't had a drop of the sweet sauce (read: cheap wine) in almost two weeks.  Since the 'Sauce' is technically 50% of this blog you can understand how important that is to my creative process.


Fortunately I was roused from my creative hibernation by some serious fuckery (and I also unscrewed the top off of a bottle of the good stuff).  Now I don't mean to tread on the Moggit Girls territory here but what in the hell is going on with "bookshelves" lately?  


Archive II from David Garcia


A nomadic library says the artist and designer.  Or are we like hamsters trapped in our self-imposed wheels of institutional education in constant motion but never going anywhere... mmmhhhhhh....??!?!!!




Not Art.  Just fuckery.  I think it's still plagiarism even if you add a cushy bench in the middle.





Chaos Theorie by Manuel Welsky
Definitely not art.  Barely functional.

Perhaps I'm having a problem with semantics and not the product.  I can't tell what's installation art and what's for sale at Velocity.  Or maybe my wheel of higher education has stolen my imagination...  To me design is supposed to be creative problem solving while hoping for aesthetic appeal.  Because this isn't Design: 


Libraria Newton from Francesco Polare

It's creative masturbation.  There's nothing wrong with masturbation but you can't sit on your couch all day jacking off to the self-reverential awesomeness of your own ideas.  Don't you need a real job to buy the horn-rimmed glasses to read your collection of Chuck Palahniuk books you designed your "shelves" for?  However I'm guessing the market for vice grip bookshelves is probably pretty small (and available at Home Depot) hence all that time on your couch.  









From the designer:

The Hübler is a creation using concrete – and books with a ‘concrete’ history – in various planimetrical surfaces. The absence of the books, due to their various dimensions, form different shapes of various depths and heights. The result concrete structure will not have a final shape, because, by using it, visitors can change the books or remove them.
The politically outdated books have been donated by the Research Institute Library of Radio Free Europe, the once active radio channel, sponsored by the US that fought against the Communism before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The table constitutes a monument to eternal knowledge – set in concrete- and it is a monument to the degeneration of information, to the immortality of the past and to its disintegration, while also offering an opportunity to reflect on the essence of the book.
The aesthetic reaction is not generated by the composition, rather by the abstraction of the artwork. Our aim here is not to show the technical virtuosity, the perfection of the design but the conscious use of the technology, with all of its rigid potentialities. The control over the material is obligate on a certain level, but not it is not the ultimate intention, or the main scope.

It's "interactive".  Like a thousand pound Kindle.  I think they must have been rendered functionally retarded like I was last week because that last paragraph doesn't even make sense.  [MS note: if you use "planimetrical" in a sentence we can never be friends.  Just sayin.] 




The polar bear bookshelf that can be yours for about $4000 depending on the rate of exchange for Euros.  Don't forget international shipping.  If it was just a stuffed polar bear I probably would have been much more likely to buy it but once you make it "functional" for storage it makes you an asshole and me *eye roll*.
Produced in a limited edition of 50 (price on request of course) the religion bookshelf was curated (curated? seriously?) by John Simonian and designed by Mike and Maaike as a "theological observation" meant to bring together the world's most influential religious texts and present them all equally.  Of course 75% of this bookshelf is blank so I'm thinking it's actually a bookshelf for atheists.  In that case I'll take one!




Looks like punishment.






It's a reading light that only comes on when you take your book off of the top.  Because being confined to one tiny area for a specific task is EXACTLY what customers want now.  Are you paying attention Steve Jobs?






the Soft Shelf from here
Looks really easy to dust.




Even though these shelves look like they are in the middle of paying lip service to someone at least these have shelves that are straight and easy to use which is definitely better than the essentially useless masturbation above.


Maybe with new technology books with actual pages to turn will soon begin to feel passe and almost quaint.  I mean you can't display the contents of your Kindle or iPad quite so easy to impress your dinner guests.  But you can put a few select books on a donkey shelf and VOILA!  Instant artistic merit.  Call me old fashioned if I like my books on boring straight shelves or (gawd forbid) stacked underneath lucite boxes filled with pretty things like Lonny tells me to do.  Still hate the fucking rainbow of book organization though.


So I guess the question is 'Is it Art or is it Design?'  I give a thumb's up for 'art for art's sake' but once you try to attach some semblance of functionality to it I start to get itchy.  Or is there a sliding scale of middle ground now called 'functional Art' where things are designed with an artist's statement bigger than the actual purpose of the piece created and I need to just accept that even though I'm obviously an unimaginative simpleton?   


To me it just seems like masturbating to make a baby.


Or in this case a bookshelf.