2013 Calendar Re-issues: Idiom, Fake Ad and Chinese Zodiac

While the Retro Fake Ad Calendar and the I’m a Chinese Zodiac Animal Calendar art and format remained the same as last year, I decided to alter the Idiom Calendar. The format is now a small wall calendar where the pages are stapled together in the middle. In addition, there are two new idioms included: Tip of the Iceberg (cover) and Day in the Sun (last page).

Pattern Stamps

Recently, I spent a chunk of time carving stamps. I did some sketches of different patterns and chose some of my favorites to make into stamps. The faster and less involved way would have been to have a stamp company make them for me, and that would have made the most sense if they were highly intricate or type heavy, but my patterns were fairly doable to hand carve. Plus, I really like the imperfections and slightly off lines that make the stamps feel handmade and unique. It wasn’t exactly fun carving all my patterned stamps, but I’m happy with the results. I think they’re quite nice. Simple. Geometric.

You’re #2 Card

Everyone wants to be number one. Number one is (obviously) the best. We play to win; we don’t compete to be number two. We want to be number one with the prestige and big trophy (that we can then lord over everybody else).

A Fine Cheese

Cheese is delicious. And a fine cheese should be savored. It’s all about quality, consistency and flavor, and some cheeses are just better than others. There’s quite an array of cheese to choose from, but while some cheeses never impressed me much with their bland flavor, others I love and just can’t seem to get enough of.

Just as actual cheese varies in quality, so do cheesy movies. I admit that I enjoy a good cheesy movie from time to time. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to watch something with depth. Sometimes I just want to watch something that’s light and amusing and utterly absurd. Yes, I like the occasional low budget made-for-TV sci-fi movie…if it’s a good one.

Usually I’ll see promising commercials for these low-budget sci-fi movies, but once I watch the first ten minutes I’ll often get bored and give up. However on rare occasions I stumble upon a fine cheesy movie. A movie that has an entertaining (and highly implausible) premise, with actors that have just the right dose of ham, dialogue that’s over the top in a good way and gory inventive deaths (and plenty of them). I tend to like the genetically mutated animals that are larger, smarter, faster and stronger than normal (and generally seem to be bullet proof for some reason). I like these types of movies because the enemy can be seen and killed, unlike natural disaster or epidemic plots that the characters tend to have a more cerebral and a less physical battle against.

I want my cheesy movies to be a good time—light-hearted gory fun with almost cartoon-like violence. A good cheesy movie isn’t going to win any prestigious awards, but it’ll make me laugh at its absurdity and I’d say that in itself is an accomplishment.

Ten Sheep Limit

While I may have trouble falling asleep at times, I recently I had a different sleep trouble that disrupted my slumber. I had fallen asleep well enough, but then in the middle of the night I was aware of being in that half-conscious state and somehow a stray thought about a project crept into my mind and nested there. All of a sudden I was groggily thinking about this project and then other thoughts decided to join in and my mind just didn’t want to turn off. I’m not sure how long my cluttered mind was distracted for, but when I started to hear birds chirping I knew I’d been half-awake too long and desperately wanted to get back to sleep.

So I did one of my simple tricks to clear my mind: I counted to ten. I count really slowly. One. [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] Two. [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] Three. (And so on.) The slowness of counting helps me to breath more slowly (which makes my heart rate decrease) and thus relaxes me.

Once I count to ten, I start counting from one again. It’s like counting sheep, but with a sheep limitation. I can’t count endlessly because then I’d start doing math. I’d get to a number (e.g. 242) and then divide it by sixty (seconds) and think of how many minutes I’d been trying to get to sleep by counting. And then my frustration would build because I still wasn’t asleep yet and irritation always makes me more alert. So by counting to ten repeatedly, I lose track of what total number I’m at and am therefore less apt to get distracted by unnecessary thoughts. And luckily this trick worked well enough for me to get a couple more hours of actual sleep before I had to wake up.