Mutterings of a Mad Woman

Ah, Facebook. How you entertain me. The following is an overview of my dark journey through the spiralling depths of social networking.

I decided to join Facebook as Ghoul Friday (naturally). So if you are a fellow ghoulie, add me as a friend if you like. You can track which groups I think show possible potential or you can bring a group of interest to my attention (let me know in the friend request that you saw this post).

As of two days ago, there were 533 groups with the word "Halloween" in it. You should know that about 30 of those are actually fronts for a costume shop spammer who has created a collection of their own fake groups and has "commented" (read: pretended to be an innocent group member) on each and every Halloween-related site there is. Shame, shame on you.

The very first group at the top of the search list was a group (at first I thought it was Japanese, but I think it's Chinese) whose title was half in English, half in what I believe are Hanzi characters (*) which read "Oh my God,**Halloween ********". I was stumped since the group was labelled as being spiritual and had Christian links and posts (which made up the only bits of English available).

Last summer I was in Montreal at the Yves Laroche/L'Autre Gallery for "Second Hand Smoke and Mirrors", a showing that combined the talents of two artists.

Let me introduce you to Kathie Olivas from Tampa Bay Florida. She is an artist, collector and curator of what is referred to (so inappropriately) as 'lowbrow art': the type of funky art you see in magazines, on record or book covers, on many an indie concert poster and in shops that sell Vinyl Designer toys (of which I am a collector). Calling it lowbrow is like saying all contemporary and pop-culture pieces aren't art at all, but just meant for key chains and bumper stickers. For some reason creators of what is, I suppose, commercial art tend to have a self-deprecating sense about them. But I digress.

Olivias (and Peters) creates images of children in costumes - often with multiple masks - that have a certain eerie yet cute feel about them. She pairs them with rabbits or other fuzzy creatures who equally produce a sense of uneasiness, whether they are reaching for the child's lollipop or simply standing in frame. And to my delight, she is involved with the launch of Scavengers Mini Figures Series 1, a collection of vinyl toys recently released that are high on my Christmas list.

You can see more of her work at Miserychildren.com, but before you leave let me tell you about another artist.

It started with a book. Eventually, it became a fantastic little adventure caught on film. First thing's first though.

Scott Kenemore wrote "The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead", a not-so-normal take on how to approach life in a more peaceful way.

"Do you struggle out of bed each morning and sway lifelessly across the room, mouth agape, arms hanging slack, murmuring unintelligibly? Well, take heart: you’re not alone! But these other staggering, limp, perpetually drowsy folks just happen to be zombies — and it turns out they can teach us a lot about enjoying life. And only here, between the covers of this book, will you learn their secrets to happiness.

For anyone who is not involved in building websites (for profit or pleasure), let me share a little known curse which afflicts those of us who do: you never get around to finishing your own site because you're so busy working on other people's.

I swore I would finish the fine details before I would blog again. That was 8 months ago. I still have quite a bit of work to do on this site before I am satisfied with it, but I've decided it's time to push forward with posts regardless of the missing tweaks and tidbits.