Let's talk Tilda.

Some people follow Kim Kardashian and her perfect face contouring like a cult and then there's the rest of us.

The rest of us with our normal boneless cheeks and sagging jowls need an androgynous weirdo to worship.  *enter Tilda Swinton stage left riding a baby dragon and reading a newspaper*

Tilda's such a badass who gives less than zero fucks.  Negative fuckitude.  

Sometimes she sleeps in a glass box for ART.  I think she's an alien fairy that rides cyclones for fun.  

AND I heard that even though she's married she has a hot young boyfriend that travels with them on family vacations and shit.  *raises eyebrows*  I just KNOW there are strap-ons and crying involved.  (Maybe her boyfriend's name is Cyclone...?!)  I have a good sense about these things.  I'm really good at deciphering kinks.  

Well other than gay stuff and people with foot fetishes...  

And people into clown sex, infantilism, Furries.... ok pretty much I can only tell kinks that might possibly involve me and even then I'm like, "what am I supposed to do with lederhosen and a dozen jelly donuts but okay you bring the baby wipes."

I'm totally kidding.  

I of course already have baby wipes.

ANYhosen, when someone in my Tilda network of devotees sent me this link to her spread in May's W magazine I had a moment.

Gawd, I want to go to there so bad...

This is how I imagine I look like walking around my house.  DON'T YOU?  Imagine yourself, that is.  Don't imagine me cuz that's weird and creepy.

But then I had another moment because this place looked familiar to me and not just because of the hallucinations.  Turns out, the location for this shoot is something I blogged about several years ago!  I'm a trendsetter!

Long time readers may (probably not) remember Los Pazos in Mexico built by eccentric, surrealist weirdo Edward James.  Relive the magic (and nudity) here.  He already sounds just like Tilda.

Vintage picture of "Stairway to the Sky"

Some dude named Jacob K styled the shoot and probably read my blog and didn't credit me with giving him the great ideas but whatever.  It's cool.

Gowns work great in the jungle of weirdo love.  Good job, Jacob K.  

Here's Tilda contemplating weirdness (and what she's going to do to her young manfriend later tonight) in a different gown while in quantum flux.

This space is known as the "Cinema structure with the double staircase."  Looks so empty and lifeless without Tilda who I'm not even really sure is actually alive...

The top picture is from W and the bottom is a vintage photo of the entrance to Edward's living quarters.  I bet Tilda did something really artistic and/or perverted up in there.

But in a gown.

This could be Tilda's O face but she's most likely sending out a mating call to other aliens on our planet in a frequency us humans just can't hear.  

You may only approach Tilda if you've dipped your entire arm in a sterile vat of fairy piss before being coated in powdered Smurf clay.

It is physically impossible to complete a fashion editorial shoot without including an all white, albino alien look.  It cannot be done.  You can Snopes it.

I'm actually terrified of her now but really in love with her finger jewelry so I'm willing to overlook this.  Also, I'm trying to be nice so we can work out a timeshare for Los Pazos and maybe even her hot young boyfriend.

I'll bring the donuts and baby wipes if he can swipe a few gowns for me.

The absurd architecture of reality.

This weekend the humidity dropped below 200% so it was a great time to get outside and celebrate my beautiful state:

Tennessee, y'all.  

We have whiskey and rocks.

I spent Saturday all up in Nature and shit.  It's like I temporarily forgot my #1 hobby is sitting in front of a computer.

If this doesn't earn me my white trash hippie merit badge then I don't know what else I can do other than grow my pubic hair into dreadlocks while shotgunning a Miller High Life.  

It was beautiful even when it started pouring down rain for our 45 minute walk back to the car which I'm totally fine with because every lady person knows that rainwater is excellent for your skin.  

I don't know why - probably sky poison? - but my skin always feels delicious after I spend some time in the rain.  That makes me sound like a fucking crazy homeless person that is in the rain a lot but I assure you my life is not like a Jimmy Buffet song.  I don't even like Pina Coladas.

I further celebrated my geographic area by sitting on a couch inside watching the entire 1st season of Small Town Security.  

AMC. Stuff that's scarier than Walking Dead.

If you are unfamiliar with this experience it is a reality show on AMC - yes, a real network - and is the most riveting - pardon my language - turd I've ever seen float down the river of television.  

It follows a family of characters so eccentric it would give any Southern Gothic-lover moist panties.  This group of foul-mouthed misfits provide security and private investigation for the North Georgia area as well as more mouth-dropping moments of absurdity for the audience than I thought possible.  But I haven't seen an episode of Honey Boo Boo yet so...

Even Funny or Die is in on the action.

Not only is it worth you buying it from Amazon or iTunes immediately, it is filmed literally ten minutes from my house.  And that's not a figurative "literally" it's a literal "literally" because Ringgold, GA, the setting for this masterpiece, is less than ten minutes away from where I live in the grand metropolis of Chattanooga, TN.  

I may or may not have family and friends in Ringgold...  *uncomfortable shifting*  

I can recognize almost every single building in the background.  It's not a proud moment for my area.  I urge you to watch it post haste.

But since I can't actually build a blog around crazy shit in my area (CAN I???) and because I'm all into nature and shit as well as private investigation now (segue alert!) I thought I'd get to the bottom of this image that has haunted my Pinterest dreams the last week. 

I'm not sure what's going on here but there is a lot of purty wood, a wall of green things similar to what I saw in 'teh nature' this weekend and a shiny floor that looks more like a fog machine was turned on.  I don't know but it makes me want to put on my glitter eyeshadow and just DANCE in the forest. *jazz hands*

In addition to reality show train wrecks, those are some of my favorite things - modern ambiguity and an unquenchable desire for glitter and Fosse-inspired movement.  Upon further investigation I learned it is a vignette in the 'Origami House' in Singapore designed by Formwerkz Architects.  

I'm so good at the investigation thing I think I could work for Small Town Security.  

Money, sex and power, OBVIOUSLY.

Say the architects: Adapting the concept of Origami – the geometric folding of a piece of paper to different shapes and forms- we attempt to depict the parent-child relationship in the way their dwelling spaces are intricately juxtaposed within the sculpted volumes created by the folding of bronze metal planes. While the child...  

Fuck, I just passed out from boredom.

You know what's more interesting than everything they just said about this house?  SMALL TOWN SECURITY.  If I didn't already hook you, did I mention they talk about sex all the time?  They have someone that actually delivers dirty magazines to them.  Welcome to the fuckery of the South, y'all.

I don't even know what I'm looking at but I think I like it.  

THESE ARE ALSO MY EXACT THOUGHTS ABOUT MY NEW FAVORITE TV SHOW.

Did I mention there is an openly transexual person on the show?  That's a big deal down here... I may have choked up a bit at that part of the story.

There's also something on the show called a "shit stick" which also made me cry but more from shock, confusion and revulsion.

all images from HomeDSGN

Lemme just say that someone pees their pants on camera and that's the least shocking thing I watched in that episode.

That pool runs the entire length of the house... Just wanted you to know.

This show is the best thing to happen to me since Sister Wives, obviously.  It's kinda sweet but creepy as fuck.  

Similar to my conflicted feelings about this house because even though I enjoy it immensely I can't figure out where the living room is where I would curl up on the couch, shotgun a Miller High Life and watch the beautiful love story of a transexual and his reincarnated non-wife while they protect and serve on tv. 

Gawd bless the architect that would ever have to work with me should I ever have enough money to build a house.  

They would probably rather die from a shit stick through the heart.

Secrets to my blogging non-success: Pinterest, gays and animal genitalia!

This weekend proved to be a very informative one: while cleaning out my closet I learned I really don't look as good in empire waist tops as I think I do.

I learned it's possible to give yourself temporary lactose intolerance (that's soooo worth it) after making a mac and cheese with sausage, goat cheese and eleventeen other types of cheese.  

After a few cocktails with some homosensual hippie types, I learned that Tennessee is home to Short Mountain Sanctuary which is a commune/home base for the Radical Faeries - a collective of pagan-esque gay men from around the world.  Ahh Appalachia, the secrets you keep...

And most importantly I learned that not only do I have a Bachelor's of Scienze in Home Ekonomics, I am also an investigative journalist!  For instance, just this week I had to get out my secret design blogger decoder ring to find the source of this bedroom that I saw all over Pinterest:

And by 'all over Pinterest' I mean 'all over my bedroom' because I found one pin and then printed a thousand copies out, taped them to my bed pillow and then dry-humped the shit out of them.  It's so dreamy like a really sterile hotel in fog.  But something about the decorgasm felt familiar and upon closer inspection of the now-destroyed paper I realized it was THIS room: 

SCHWING!  It's Francisco Costa's bedroom and an old favorite of mine.  Ahhh... memories.  I included it my round-up about horse art a few years ago because I used to have the time to do round-ups like that.  It's a post I'm proud of because I think I only had ONE horse cock joke in it.  Wait... I should reread to be sure...

I'm not sure why I like this room so much since without even knowing whose room it is you can tell that the queen living here gets vegan colonics, has a platinum (horse?) cock ring and isn't satisfied until the hospital corners on his bed linens are sharper than Angelina Jolie's Malificent cheekbones.

That's pretty much the opposite of everything I believe in: I get bacon colonics, [redacted for propriety] and I haven't made my bed in 17 years.

Maybe I only like this room because I get to make so many cock jokes about it...

The photography (ok, possibly the real reason I like the room) is by Australian artist and photog Martyn Thompson.  He has a book out about his interior photography called... wait for it... Martyn Thompson - Interiors. 

It looks like lifestyle shots of people who can afford to buy small islands but instead choose to live simple, monastic lives in beautiful places like this: 

 ...and then fuck them up with bullshit like this:

John Derian's house from, like, forever ago.

And this:

pics from Desire to Inspire

Fuck every piece of wayward furniture in this room and the platinum cock ring-ed horse it rode in on.  This is what it looks like when rich people masturbate and ejaculate money all over their house and call it decorating.  One Papa Bear chair is great but two is disgusting.  You just bukkakked all over your gorgeous house and in front of that deliriously awesome window.  (MS confession: I had to google the spelling for bukkake before I verbed it.  Do not attempt.)

How many filthy dick jokes can I squeeze into this post?  I'm going for an even baker's dozen.  

But I forgive Martyn for his photography clients because he still photographed one of my blogger favorite bedrooms.  He also has a nice, albeit sparse, tumblr with a bit more of his photographs and where I found this interview from Australian Vogue Living:

More fun things I learned: he makes his own clothes, appreciates Vivienne Westwood (like me and any person with eyes!) and is a Radical Faerie that twice a year visits Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee to sleep in a tent and tap into his homospirit.  

Well, I'll be damned.  That's a very weird and completely pointless coincidence involving useless facts about Tennessee.

The only point to that story is that maybe now you can see how a blog post actually develops in my brain:  cocktails > gay story time > bed time lullabies bed via Pinterest > squeeing > investigative journalism and internet adventures > dreamy interiors and horse cock > more dreamy interiors > bitter ramblings by a lower middle class hack Madame >  inappropriate dick jokes > the rabbit hole of tumblr > gay hippies in Tennessee.

I just wanted to show you a pretty bedroom and then all hell broke loose!  That's essentially the formula for almost every single blog post I've ever written.  It's the Universal Formula for my internet success that fortunately consists of only 10% animal genitalia.

Problogger might want to take note.

Now, I'll probably want to blog later this week so I'm going to pour some gay hippies a few cocktails and see what happens...

PS. Martyn I have some friends you should meet.

This makes me exceedingly happy.

via this isn't happiness and Uncle Beefy and all over the interwebs this week.
But really from New York Mag with dozens more for your viewing pleasure.

Go forth, thou sweet readers and hug a Brutalist building, fake a unibrow, poorly decorate your landing strip and just enjoy some general badassery this weekend.

Just like The Little Mermaid but way more boozing and awesome.

I barely managed to finish my painting this weekend because Mother Nature decided to bless us with sunshine and parted the clouds so angels could come down from the heavens and dry hump the weather to make it beautiful for us.  Windows were thrown open, cats were napping in the driveway and cheesesteaks were eaten on the back patio.  It was glorious.

I even blogged a bit outside.  *GASP*  Yes, I didn't know it could be done either but I assure you I didn't burn from the sun's rays like a vampire past its curfew.  

The outside angels musta been feeling girly because my internet adventures brought me to this:

Zoinks!  My first instinct is to make fun of this pose but oddly I can't -  I'm too much of a sucker for vintage pin up.  Bonus points for the black tights and shoes.

And another:

Killer dresses AND ceramic animals??  Who is this girl?    

In addition to some Photoshop fuckery, that's a belly roll over that bikini bottom.  HOLLA!!

Well after some investigation I discovered her name is Elsa.  She's Swedish, writes a fashion blog for Elle, doesn't even own pants and lives the kind of life that magazine editorials and catalog vignettes try to replicate.  But for real.  It doesn't seem fake.  I'm pretty sure it's just.  that.  awesome.  This is what her Harry Potter movie night looked like for chrissake.  The madame part of me just creamed her panties.

I'm sure everyone else in the world reads her blog but I just discovered it because I'm lame like that so if you happen to know that she does terrible things like cuts in line or sets baby pandas on fire please don't tell me. 

Are you real or actually Ariel?!

But if you're like me and didn't know, I think she's pseudo famous over there in Europeland.  She's been on magazine covers and does red carpet-y things but it doesn't make me want to be her her friend any less (murdering baby pandas might though).  In fact, I'm kinda rooting for her like you would your best friend because those are the kinds of people you really want to see as celebrities.  Not just any old fame whore like we have around here.  


Ok, well those are kinda fun too.

I used to wear my nail polish like that in middle school!

I'm not usually one for fashion blogs because the line between documenting a person's fashion adventures and narcissism gets very blurry to me.  Not like a design blog where I give you every minute detail about my house or feature only art and design *I* like...  that line isn't blurry at all... *shifts uncomfortably*


But I like reading this blog (as much as the Google translator will allow me to read) because she feels somewhat normal but the kind of normal that seems super awesome - like how awesome is supposed to be.  With chipped nail polish and roots that need touching up and sometimes getting moles removed or peeing in bushes when you've had too many beers.  


Those aren't anecdotes from my life - this is all straight from her blog. 


Okay, those might be coincidental occurrences but this isn't about me right now! 


Naturally, I've developed a serious lady crush on this girl and her life.  I spent several hours this weekend when I should have been on a ladder digging through her archives.  Her summer was fantastic although it was probably just normal life.  I need to move to Sweden and buy some vintage dresses and change everything else about my life STAT!

Oddly enough you wouldn't even know it's a fashion blog except for the header.  It's more an insanely awesome lifestyle blog with a heavy emphasis on food, booze and parties that she photographs.  She'll even give you photography tips because she's nice like that.  Or you can just peruse her flickr.

It's like everything you ever wanted in a blog without any of the bullshit: food porn, clothing porn, shopping porn, but without any of that pretentious aftertaste.  You may even see a duckface here or there but you won't even really care.  That's how fun it is.

The vintage vibe helps...

As does the Filet-O-Fish!  Ahhh...  memories of college.

Wheee!  Let's party Swedish style!!!

Just a field trip to a country farm for the weekend. Tra li la, li la...

No this isn't a catalog shoot - IT'S REAL FUCKING LIFE!!!  In Sweden.  For awesome people.

Yeah, even the dog is smiling.  That's how fun it is over at this blog.

And guess what?  She has a sink full of dirty dishes and dead flowers on her counter.  Just like ME!  Normally I'd be bored as shit with this much detail into someone's life but I can't get enough.  I'm addicted!!

Her friends seem fun.  I'd be dancing like that if I had their super awesome life.

She also hangs around with people who wear glitter platforms.  As if I needed another reason to pack my bags.

She lives in a tea cozy cute enough to make Rachel Ashwell squee to death but I don't even care.  It's where she should live!  Her home was featured in a magazine too because of course it was.  She said "It’s so nice to have it saved in pictures for the rest of my life, something to look back on when I live in a huge castle in France, or something."   My exact thoughts about the Ranch.  We're basically blog twins.

I'm assuming this is a No Expectations party because I think that's what all parties in Europe are like (don't ruin this for me) and people there get to wear hats like that in a non-ridonkulous way.  I bet I could wear a bedazzled headband and fit in nicely...

More No Expectations parties.  Wassup, normal people apartments that are still on an Elle blog?!  Rock on with your bad self next to that lamp!  Fabulosity IS an attitude despite what boring American fashion/lifestyle bloggers tell you.

In yer FACE, America!

Since we're already proven I'm lame I'm just going to seal the deal.  Here's a video of her putting on makeup because I have a weird obsession with watching makeup tutorials. DON'T JUDGE ME!!! Perfect winged eyeliner does not just happen naturally, y'all!

makeup! from elsabillgren on Vimeo.

I was able to overlook the cutesy faces and winking because she put liquid eyeliner on AFTER she put on mascara. 

You just can't compete with that kind of awesome.