Madame Boogedy*

The spirit photography of William Hope.

I've seen a spirit before (in addition to the ghost that used to be in the ModSauce Ranch).  He wasn't wearing a sheet but he was kinda transparent.  It was my cousin and he was wearing a baseball hat and dirty tennis shoes and smiled and waved to me from the teal green recliner that was in the corner of our living room growing up.   I think he came to visit me because obviously I'm the psychic one in the family.  Spirits ain't dumb y'all!




here

Old costumes...

here




here






two from here

  J'dore gore but it's really hard to tap into my inner pagan (it's pretty surface actually...) when it's 75 degrees outside, sunny and birds are chirping.  AND A SUNDAY!!!  The calendar is such a dick because how are you supposed to celebrate anything on a school night??!   I don't get many trick-or-treaters since parents these days are pussies and take their kids to 'Trunk or Treat' events because nothing makes more sense to me than combining Jesus and the devil's holiday.  So what's left are the ghetto kids (and teenagers) who don't even bother to dress up but just show up at my door with Bi-Lo grocery bags and attitude while their parents wait in the car at the road.  Just make an effort - ANY effort - and I'll give you candy.  So I'm not handing out candy this year because I think it was supposed to happen last night and I was busy getting my "Trick or 'tini" on elsewhere.  That's MARtini.  Tonight my sprinkler is strategically placed on my sidewalk because I just overseeded my lawn and that shit will die if I don't keep up the watering.  Also the only candy in my house is organic dark chocolate and I do NOT give that away.  Sorry kids.

It's too bad because I really love Halloween and dressing up (and SUGAR).  However it's really hard to top the Magnum P.I. costume of a few years ago so better to end on a high note.  So let's celebrate with the trailer to one of my favorite horror movies (I use "horror" loosely) - 1982's Basketcase:

youtube it here

The hot dogs get me every time.

Or if you'd prefer something a little less bloody and with more Fabulosity there's always this:

Tim Curry = instant panty creamer.

 

*High five if you know that movie reference.

This makes me exceedingly happy.

via sfgirlbybay

 Even a lone picture about summer just languishes in my drafts.  I'm so lazy.  But instead let's just say that I'm REALLY early for pretend decorating my patio for next year.  I pretend decorate it every year because I always think I'm going to find some really good sales in the off season but that never happens because apparently plastic furniture that's under a billion dollars and doesn't look like your grandma's sunroom had dirty sex with Ashley Furniture is like trying to find a unicorn in a haystack.*

*If you aren't familiar with that phrase I just made up let's just say it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack but harder (and sparklier) because everybody knows that unicorns are allergic to hay.  And peanut butter.  And assholes.

Purging is good for your mind and body. Bad for bean bag chairs.

I'm still purging my blog files so take a look at this word and picture vomit awesomeness that's been trapped in darkness for months waiting to be rescued to be reunited with its mistress for all the world to see!  

It's a chalet in France.  It starts out kinda cool...

But then this...

Aw hell.  It's one of THOSE houses.  *eyeroll*

Ok well the whole place is made of plywood and concrete which is fine I guess.  It can work sometimes...  Those lights are kinda squee-worthy.

eeehhhhhhhhhh....  I'm starting to get bad vibes from the helmet lamp and weird furniture...

from Design Milk

Well shit.  Way to fuck up some badass views with some BEAN BAG CHAIRS!!!!!  I'm sure they are ridiculously expensive bean bags by a fancy Italian company I should know about and are only made by blind gypsy women with six fingers from the hills of Romania (are there hills in Romania?) and stuffed with feathers of virgin geese but FUCK, y'all.    It's STILL a bean bag.  [MS sidebar: I, of course, totally had a purple pleather bean bag when I was about twelve but that is not relevant in any way right now]

from seesaw

You think you're so cute don't you??  It makes my eyeballs bleed.  

Now maybe I was kuh-razy drunk or something, I don’t know (it was March when I saw this and who can remember that far back?) and something about this place spoke to me. So I wrote a story 'bout it. Like to hear it? Here it go...


Viktor and Juliette live here. Viktor is an architect and Juliette is a graphic designer. Juliette’s only personality trait is the waifish indifference she oozes while she chain smokes clove cigarettes. Viktor believes in purity of mind, body and space.  He champions materials like plywood, concrete and glass, meditates everyday and likes to subsist solely on raw food and a blend of wheatgrass and 4-leaf clover juice to keep his colon sparkling clean. In fact, Viktor thinks a clean colon is next to godliness (if he really believed in god).  All guests are actually anally probed before entrance to the house to assess their worth.  Rejected guests get the Viktor-special: a 3 day fast consisting of only early morning dew off of the French wildflowers growing along the mountainside while "guest" sleep in a special detox tent and scrubbed clean with hot water and steel wool (purity of material) until they are clean. Only then can they enter the home to sit upon the bean bag thrones to admire the view of the sky because they can’t see over the balcony because they’re sitting on the floor. Then they will discuss [insert existential stuff here] until they will retire to their plywood beds and then fall asleep to boring yet pure dreams. El fin.


Wow.  I don't really know where that came from but I’m thinking this should have been left to Bank of Fabulosity… but I tell you what, my brain is feeling cleaner. Just like my colon after one of Viktor’s specials.


Aaaahhhh….

Facets are a girl's best friend

I'm still blog purging.  Please enjoy this selection of facet and triangular goodness that I've been storing in my Bank of Fabulosity since last winter so pardon me if you're already sick of seeing it.   What's good about the Bank of Fabulosity is that there are no overdraft fees, I don't have to make deposits using a drive-thru teller and it's so mediocre there's no worry that it's too big to fail.  The bad thing is that there is no compound interest.  As a matter of fact I think you lose interest over time - hence the purging before ALL interest is lost. 




here





Olivia Jeffries via mint




Gerard Caris via Grain Edit

From the 70's (didn't we just talk about that?) but totally relevant.

here

Xaviar Veilhan

So insanely awesome...  If it was possible to be friends with a giant piece of yellow art I want to be friends with her.



Provokator branding concept via Behance









The Casa da Musica by Rem Koolhaas in Porto, Portugal built in 2005 and the logo and brand identity using the facade elevations.  The logo can then be used to create custom color graphics for the user (I have no idea why) which you can see on the source site. 



last three via Kathy Kavan's Another Design Blog

 These are freeze frames of an animated logo that represents the weather (and offers a brand of sorts) for the Nordic town of Nordkyn.

Kathy Kavan uses the logo of the Koolhaas building and Nordkyn's helpful tourist info to illustrate the trend of polymorphic brand identities:

These design systems are flexible, intriguing, sometimes generative and show a 'living' element to the branding that adds another level of interest to the identity

A level of interest, I think, where the user is engaged and necessary to the uniqueness of the brand itself.  That's pretty genius.  I think her analysis also applies across the whole trend too. Angles and facets are the result of crystallization (I guess. What am I a scientist or something?); a natural process that feels both precious and primitive and inherently changing - somehow feeling “alive” in its ever-compounding state. They could also be manmade which still involves a process but I don’t want to get too technical because it’s ruining my story. Aaaaanyway, this “organic” feeling contrasts nicely with the rigidity of its sharp lines and corners giving each piece a dynamic “personality” if you will. (Will you? WILL YOU GAWDDAMMIT?!)

I think there is also the implied element of time. Whether it is a quickly freezing water droplet or the slow millennial creep of a geomorphic element, looking at a faceted object feels like a still moment in time.  Or perhaps at the very least some amount of time in the process to create said piece of fabulosity.  It speaks of past movement and future growth and nothing says “FUTURE” like 80’s vector graphics and pointy things.  Really it’s about ancient rocks and future technology, static lines and implied movement. Oh yeah, usually it’s shiny. Squee!!

Just like this chair!

Studio Job via Busy Being Fabulous

Graham & Brown wallpaper ad via BBF

I don't really care about the wallpaper I'm just digging the groovy chair and vase thingy.  AND the tulip table = forever love.

Pure hawtness via Color Buzz

Urban Archeology's Origami tile wallpaper which won Interior Design's Best of the Year: Wall Surface.  Yes, it's TILE y'all!





via MFAMB

Table (?) things I would totally own if I knew where to find them and had a jillion dollars.

Justin Lamont via The Design Files



Jake Phipps Stellar mirror via Design Milk



Yes it's bowler hat lighting dude Jake Phipps.  Don't know if I want a bowler hat pendant lamp but I squee hard for this mirror.

Ferm Living puts it on everything.

Monroe pillow



Monroe tea towel





Monroe wallpaper





Make a blanket from it...

wooden textiles (!) by Elisa Strozyk





And you can wear it too...



spinthread's etsy





stone & honey necklace via oh joy





Earshell via Design Milk

Um... think I'd rather have the necklace.



United Nude lo res shoe of AWESOME FABULOSITY OMIGOD I WANT THESE

To get the design of the shoe you use some kind of new computer software design thing-y where you digitally fragment the object or something, in this case a shoe....  I don't know, it sounds complicated like the logo software above.  But if shoes aren't your thing you can get a FUCKING LAMBORGHINI!!!

via Today and Tomorrow

BLADOW!  I don't know if you can actually buy this but whatever.  It's awesome and I bet it's completely stealth.  Except when being hauled on the trailor through some ghetto town.

I can't top a Lamborghini even though I could keep posting angle-y things forever but you get the idea. 

Also, I should get bonus points for not saying I was "facet-nated!" anywhere in the post.  I almost said facet-icular but I did stop myself.  I AM able to draw the line sometimes! 

[MS sidebar: I'm not.]

I'm psychic, life sucks sometimes, eat another cookie. #LetsBlogOff

We’re taking a break from our regularly scheduled fabulosity to talk happy, happy, joy, joy today in response to the latest Let’s Blog Off question. Let’s Blog Off being the avenue for which multiple bloggers get to mouth off about the same topic. Gawd bless the internet.


The Blog Off gods are asking as this decade ends - a decade of 9/11 and tsunamis and hurricanes and recessions and Justin Bieber – did we gain something worthwhile? Is there something we can look forward to now and a reason to be optimistic for the future? Is there cheer?  I'm feeling cranky verbose today so my answer is "You're asking the wrong question." But let's break it down ModSauce style. [MS sidebar: there is no ModSauce style unless you count rambling and inappropriate jokes about jesus a style but it sounds cool if you say it like that.]





Gavin Potenza



But first let me tell you this: I'm a psychic. It's totally true. One time I had this dream about a black leather purse with ruffles - yes leather RUFFLES - and then two days later I saw it in a vintage store. I HAD to buy it because the cosmos basically dream-told me to. Also I sometimes have dreams about friends that are really vivid and usually involve details that I have no prior knowledge of.  Oddly it only works on dudes (sorry ladies!) and sometimes those details are super sexy and... wait maybe those are different kinds of dreams.  Anyway, the purse story still proves I'm psychic. Because I know what's going to happen in the future: more bad shit is gonna go down. Lots of it. I don't know when or where but it is DEFINITE and pretty tragic. It’s going to happen to you too. These things just come to me - it's a gift and a curse.

So in light of this stunning revelation I just laid on you, if you are feeling cheerful that the worst is over and that you’ll never encounter a tragedy like the ones in this past decade then you are dumb. Shit happens. It’s life. Eat another cookie. If you feel cheerful because ‘even though we’re in a recession and I lost my retirement savings at least we’ve all learned how to be more mindful and value the things that really matter in life’ you are less dumb but kinda deluded. That might be true for some people but it’s presumptuous to think that we as a country/community have shifted our entire mindset to have our priorities straight. We can all hope, but if you’ve stood in line at a Walmart recently I think you’ll agree mindfulness is a luxury.




So do we have a reason to be optimistic? I don't know... DO you have a reason? The blog off question (which is the question the media seems to be asking too) kinda supposes blanket answers like the one in the paragraph above. That times were tough and we’ve all learned our lesson and we’ll be happy now that we’ve seen the error of our ways and the bad people are far far away. I think people somehow EXPECT for there to be blanket cheerful solutions for life’s woes. Although a nice box of wine usually does wonders for all kinds of ills… The issue is not that there isn’t cause for optimism but that people assume their happiness will be handed to them and when they receive tragedy instead they look at it with stunned indignity.






Being happy is a state of mind and a choice. It is not a right. You are not entitled to happiness and you certainly are not more entitled to it because you work harder than the people around you. Happiness is not a reward for being a good person or for overcoming tough obstacles. People operate under the assumption that if you work really hard in your job and do good things and help people that somehow we'll all be rewarded with mansions in the sky and tax breaks and lake houses full of North Face jackets and ipods full of Justin Bieber. But there’s a reason we have the cliché ‘bad things happen to good people.’ Because they do. And to all people. You can’t control what life gives you, only how you react to it.






So I think the right question to ask is: have you made the decision to be happy about your life despite however shitty it might appear at the present moment? That’s easier said than done sometimes – especially if you’re one of those people that doesn’t have a job right now or is standing in line at a Walmart. It’s also a question you can only answer for yourself.






At the ModSauce Ranch, I’m pretty optimistic for the near future because I'm buying myself a really damn expensive kitchen! But it’s not all shiny tiles and buffets of beautiful paint chips – there will be crying and yelling and excess wine and washing dishes in the bathroom sink and probably undiscovered horrors in my subfloor that are just waiting to kill my bank account. Not including the budget I’ll continue to be on after it’s done and the fear of making the right decisions and the remorse of wishing for better ones and omigod why am I doing this again??!!! But in the end I’ll still get a new kitchen and I’ll just share all the horrors with you in hilarious blog posts. I like to be greedy with the rewards but share the shitty parts. I believe that’s called capitalism.






While I realize how fortunate I am to be able to (barely) afford a project like this I’ll still have to make sacrifices for it. I worked hard to save my money and spent loads of time researching and making spreadsheets and phone calls and verbal threats to make it happen. So the kitchen will be built and it will be glorious and I accept all the inevitable drama that will come with it. But expecting that I will somehow be a better cook when it’s finished and turn into Martha Stewart because of it isn’t optimism, it’s delusion. Just like spending your life working hard thinking you will avoid hardships and doing the right thing thinking it will provide you with happiness isn’t being optimistic it’s being delusional. Happiness is not having all of your expectations fulfilled, it is a choice you make with your heart after making intelligent choices with your brain.  Ok sometimes those brain choices are optional but it helps...






I’m having another psychic moment because I think I’ll be exceedingly happy pouring cocktails on that shiny new laminate-counters-that-I-wish-were-quartz and eating raw cookie dough standing next to my new cabinets because I spent all my money on a kitchen and still don’t have any furniture to sit on while I eat that cookie dough… I’m optimistic I’ll figure that part out eventually.




Go here to read everyone else's thoughts today...  I don't know if they're psychic but I bet they're pretty cool.

Purging, pastels and polaroids.

I'm doing some deep fall cleaning around ye olde ModSauce blog and posting a bunch of old, half-finished and probably all-around lame things in the near future.  Aren't you excited??!!!  Sometimes a girl just needs to purge whether it's a closet of last year's ill-fitting clothes, a blog dashboard or vomiting up a few too many cocktails.  So buckle up readers for a few awkward posts of that not-quite-right shirt that looked so good on the clearance rack in March/omigodwhydidihavethatlastshot type of blogging this week.  I'm gonna spaz out with my vag out blogging style!!!!!!  (I'm not)

To get started I'm posting a bunch of small conversations that I've been having with myself that really should have been kept private but what's the point of having an anonymous blog if you can't rant about dumb things and embarrass yourself on occasion?!   


For instance I can't hold it in any longer that I hate these chairs:

I love vintage and ugly things - especially together - but these chairs really make me want to projectile vomit directly in someone's face (that kind of purging isn't fun).  All I see is Farrah Fawcett hair wings and forced charm.  If you're wanting something eccentric and quirky I think you can do better.

Even if you try to make it all cutesy like this:

here and WTF is going on with that giant plant????

...it still looks dumb.  But I see these about every week in thrift stores down here so if you happen to be in love with them I'll mail you one.  Shipping is one jizzilion dollars.

..........

In related vintage recycles that makes my vag spazz (and not in the good way):

here

I don't care if they're super hawt right now and Kate Moss has a pair she wears with her high waisted jeans you look like a jackhole wearing them.  So does she.  Super sweaty toes and cold cracked heels are the most fucktarded combo ever.  And no one ever really looks good walking in mules of any kind anyway.   EVAR!   I don't care how comfy those birks are you CANNOT run in them and if you're going to buy ugly elephantine shoes for comfort you sure as shit need to make sure you can outrun a criminal in them because they need to at least have a purpose other than than showing off your striped sock collection.  [MS sidebar: you can't run in flip flops or stilettos either but those are cute and sexy and that purpose totally trumps practicality because cute shoes will attract people to you and THEY'LL save you from bad people.  Proven fact.]  This goes for those feathered mules too because even though you might think they're sexy they're not.  You look like an unimaginative housewife pretending to be saucy while clomping around with marabou on your feet and if I know one thing about dudes it's that they probably aren't looking at your feet lurve feathered shoes that make it sound like you're a horse galloping around in the bathroom.

Fuck-me pumps are only good for one thing (and it ain't walking): 

Elvgren from somewhere...

sitting in your sheer nightie writing in your diary.

here

Or DIYing in your bra.  Duh.

........

Every time I'm restacking my junk mail on my coffee table that I call "decorating" and see this cover:

it makes me really stabby that I paid money for this magazine subscription.  FUCK YOU HB and your mauve and dusty aqua.  If you want to be on trend with the pink and blue palette this is how you do it:

from the awesome tumblr Bohemian Punk. Blue eyeliner FTW.

This might be a crazy mess (meh - I'm more lenient with fashion spreads) and she's probably wearing high-heeled clogs with this at least she's relevant for 2010 (by way of 1970's of course) and doesn't look like a Architectural Digest editorial from 1989.  This shade of pink is yellowed and the blue leans towards cobalt.  It's how you rehash the past.   The circle of life.

Are you noticing a theme yet...??

In an effort to purge a bunch of unrelated random thoughts, it turns out there is in fact a theme.  I think that means I'm insanely anal-retentive awesome.   The overall trend that lately is this psuedo-70's vibe that's all about new pastels and "crafty chic."  I don't know if I truly believe there is such a thing as crafty that's "chic" but somebody else sure does.  I think we can partly blame this:

we heart it

The polaroid camera.  It gives every piece of inane bullshit it captures immediate "personality."

here

Sometimes that's a good thing if you're a horrible picture taker like me but lately I just see a lot of vintage sweetness and spools of thread elevated from Martha Stewart stylized craft editorial to artsy photograph of hodge podge granny hoarding.

And of course the polaroid camera was a hipster favorite and we all know that hipsters are the real mavens of trend cycles.  

via ffffound

And etsy style of course...

A RAINBOW YOU SAY????!!!!

I would set a baby panda on fire for anything coconut but I swear to gawd if I see another gawddamn picture of a tinted 'macaron' I will take that burning panda and shove it up your ass.  IT'S JUST A COOKIE MUTHERFUCKERS!!!!

last three from here

here

Ditto the cookie rant for cherry blossom pictures because I've really reached my quota for these.

I will admit sometimes I feel a little pastel-y but let's just blame it on an occasional surge of estrogen.  Sweetness and dewdrops and granny glam are fine if that's your thang but this new surge of it doesn't feel authentic to me.   I'll take it any day of the week and twice on Sundays over shabby chic but pastels are still pastels.  They still need something bigger/darker/grittier to ground them otherwise it's still just lace and ruffles and bunnies.  But now you can process it with iphone app and then BLAMMO!!  You just became infinitely groovier!!  Or add a few stitched flowers to it = one-of-a-kind eccentricity!!!!  But that's precisely the issue - real personality doesn't come from a photoshop filter (I don't think...?!) and while the 70's were groovetastic and it's fun to be nostalgic sometimes (what trend isn't to some extent?) it's an applied aesthetic.  

Everything looks cooler from behind the filtered haze of my yellowed aviator glasses and polaroid viewfinder but once you take that away it feels ironic that we're being nostalgic about another decade of recession, high unemployment, an unpopular war all with a liberal president thrown in there somewhere.  But I don't really know anything about the 70's because I wasn't alive then and that's a whole lot of episodes of Charlie's Angels I have to watch and I don't really have that kind of time so y'all can tell me I'm dumb if you want.  If you want a burning baby panda shoved up your ass...  

But I guess not everything viewed through a yellowed haze has to be cookies and flowers - I'm quite partial to these "pastel-esque" graphics.

here

And if you like your polaroids way nastier there's always Pornaroids.  I did not make that up and yes it is NSFW obviously.  Porn is where trends go to die. Or is it where they are born??!!!!!!  *DUN, DUN, DUUUNNNNNNN*

Think about that mystery of life while I write in my diary...