.

Home | About



Although this is written in first person, it does not necessarily mean I wrote it about myself. Sometimes I think we are at odds with our surroundings: the current trend is towards natural foods, products, and lifestyle; but convenience is not part of that lifestyle. However, what is convenient usually isn't good for us. Strange paradox.

Home | About

This year is OUR YEAR. Shockey's gonna do his cockwalk (Shockwalk?) all the way down the field and right into the endzone. You'll see.

Home | About

I've begun reading the classic books which so many high schools oblige students to read...only this time, I'm actually going to read them. Lately, I've grown tired of the hype surrounding pop culture books whose popularity will fizzle out along with the Legging Revival. I'm sure the Twilight Saga is a wonderful teen trilogy, and I bet the Harry Potter series is probably a glorious pubescent paradise.

But I just want something with substance, something with weight. I wanted to read something with an underlying commentary, my agreement or disagreement with the author's commentary notwithstanding. So this post will serve as an on-going checklist for those books which I plan to tackle in the near future.

These are in no particular order and which one I read next will greatly depend on the book's availability at the EBR Library.

1. Dickens, Tale of Two Cities
2. Orwell, 1984
3. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
4. Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
5. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
6. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (on the fence about this one; teenage angst is a turn-off)
7. Heller, Catch-22
8. Steinbeck, Of Mice & Men
9. Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter
10. Hemingway, Farewell to Arms
11. Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
12. eventually, Tolstoy's War and Peace
13. Austin, Pride and Prejudice
14. Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
15. McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

I noticeably left books like Invisible Man, Frankenstein, Things Fall Apart, Silas Marner, and Heart of Darkness off my list for a particular reason. I was, in fact, required to read these in high school.

I tried. I promise.

But I just couldn't make it through them. Having to highlight, take notes, and decipher the implications behind the symbols, irony, and foreshadowing made it more difficult to pay attention to the overall plot. I resented something about Summer Reading Lists...probably the "Summer" part. Still to this day, when I think of Silas Marner, all I can remember is the weight of my eyelids.

I might try Invisible Man and Heart of Darkness again, but I can't force myself back to Silas Marner or Things Fall Apart. Some friends have suggested that I try Hemingway's Old Man and The Sea;Vonnegut's Galapagos, Breakfast of Champions, or another of his books; and Austin's Jane Erye. They are unofficially on the list, too.

Let the geeking begin!

Home | About | Share

Love a little Looziana.



Here's my abbreviated photo recipe for Jambalaya.The bottom of my cast iron pot has gotten a lot of use and is beginning to take on the look of an heirloom piece...I can't wait for it to take on the smell of the spices I've used after decades of love. My cast iron skillet is generational. I have a small skillet I use for cornbread, eggs, or biscuits that belonged to my great grandmother. My favorite one of hers is a skillet with four little heart-shaped pockets, perfect for shaping scrambled eggs. Perhaps I'll share pictures of that one day, too.




Lace

Home | About | Share

There's not a day goes by that you don't hear about The Storm. Although the city has made leaps and bounds, it's still important to remember the significance of the event.

Forget the politics.
Forget the racism.
Forget the pundits, the talk shows, the sensationalism.

Don't forget, however, that actual people were involved. Breathing, feeling, thinking, scared human beings. Think back to the last time you were scared. Truly, completely afraid. Recall the helplessness that overcame you. Now multiply that times your mortgage, your pets, your neighbors....your favorite restaurant.

Fortunately, New Orleans no longer looks the way it did in 2005. Most of The Ring Around The City has been pressure washed, painted, or demolished and rebuilt. The Big Easy is bustling, partying, cooking, and functioning beautifully. I never fully appreciated the Gem of the Gulf until it was almost lost when the water rose.

Hurricane Katrina Tribute 2.009

Home | About

After a friend at work brought in these delightful little eggplants, I absolutely HAD to do something with them. They were too cute to leave behind, but too cute to eat!

As a result of my inability to make a committed decision, I compromised (that's a decision, right?!). I decided to eat them...after I photographed myself making a mini-eggplant Parmesan dish, complete with marinara dipping sauce!

To honor the lovely ADPi who gave them to me, I named the photography series and the dish after her: Eggplant Barbesean.



The entire photography series, and somewhat of a recipe, can be found here. Of course, if you so choose to photograph your recipes at every step, keep in mind it takes thirty times as long to make. It took two hours from the time I washed the little suckers until the time I took the final photograph. This was a dish that should only take 20 minutes.

Labels: barbesean, cooking, eggplant parmesean, photography

Home | About

Finally! I have finished redesigning my website! Soon, I will post new pictures, poetry, and other artistic ventures...or mildly artistic ventures...HERE!

I do have a project list...which I will tackle at my leisure and depending on my motivation levels:

1. Post my photography series: Eggplant Barbesean
2. Post the "Vending Machine" Poem and Photos
3. Finish and post the Jambalaya photography series
4. Re-do the Hurricane Katrina Tribute in honor of the 4-Year Anniversary
5. My Black Is Beautiful series, which I've waited two years to make public.

The United States Post Office--well, the gubment in general--isn't really known for its outstanding creativity in Graphic Design. However, I received a piece of [junk]mail this week that I just couldn't throw away...even though this is something I would have trashed otherwise.

Check this out!




The whole thing is laid out like a file folder with collage bits-n-pieces of information that you might normally find in a rough-draft idea.The whole thing had shadows and bevels (obviously form real photographs of the items, not Photoshopped in) to give it a realistic, three-dimensional look.

Horray for the USPS! Let me know if you know the design firm who did this!

From Southeastern Louisiana University's news release page.

In case you are just getting this news--which would be a poor decision to be checking this site for the latest news; I am a horrible blogger--the Hammond Chamber of Commerce has selected ME among 11 other design students at Southeastern!

Yay! Gary Keown's upper-level print design class competed among each other to create a promotional brochure for the HCC. The winning designer would later be commissioned to create a folder to match the brochure and be serenaded (ok, ok...recognized) at a meeting later this year. Exciting!

While I am thankful to have been chosen, there are amazing students at Southeastern who really did a great job in designing a brochure for the Chamber. Hopefully they will be recognized in another opportunity to design for a client as Southeastern's Graphic Design program has done a great job of challenging us to graduate better artists, designers, and professionals from the university.

Holla!

This week I haven't been able to sleep much. Usually in the wee hours of the night (morning?)--and likely due to delirium--my mind races with conspiracy theories, What-Ifs, Holy Craps, and just plain Crap thoughts.

This thought falls into one of those categories...Likely the just plain Crap category, but it's interesting nonetheless.

There's so much discourse on American materialism, consumerism, and commercialism (m/c/c). There's similar discourse on British and growing Chinese m/c/c. But you don't hear much about French or Mexican m/c/c. After I Googled it, there are, in fact, entire books on consumption and culture. I flipped through the Google Book The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America [editors: Martin Daunton & Matthew Hilton] and found a passage on French and German consumerism. I even found bloggers comparing consumerism.

All this research (yes, there is more to which I have not linked) came from one late-night moment: Does a culture's language influence a predisposition to materialism? If the language has a gender-neutral pronoun--e.g.: "it"--does that give (or is it related to) an ability to objectify things by not giving them the human gender assignment of male or female?

For example: houses, cars, computers, shoes...these are all either male or female in Spanish [and French]. These cultures are not widely covered for their materialism. From my experience and studies, Hispanic cultures are centered around religion and family. Spanish dignifies objects with a male or female gender assignment...which somewhat links the objects to being human.

Chinese, English (American and British), and German all use the pronoun "it,"and all three languages have lots of research on their society's consumption. Maybe because these languages allow their respective speakers to objectify things--even things which HAVE genders, like pets and babies--maybe this lends a peek into how the speaker organizes his or her thoughts around the world; more specifically, maybe using the word it aids a culture in determining what can be bought or sold.

Maybe the pronoun it is a product of materialism. Maybe it set the stage for materialism. Maybe language and materialism are influenced by a third variable: culture (very likely); but that begs the question: Just because you live in America, and speak English, does that necessarily mean you are materialistic? Or just because you live in America, and are materialistic, does that necessarily mean you speak English? Maybe there IS a link between language and materialism. Maybe I'm nuts.

Quite far fetched, I know (well, not the my being nuts part. That's quite possible).
Egregious claim? Maybe so.

But Maybe not. :)