Random Chaos: Universal Prayer Time

Chaos is my God, I've decided. When thinking about our galaxy and how it came into existence in the universe; a fantastic beyond fathom event that created enough energy to kick-start our sun and send everything we know to be as "The Milky Way" into a wild spin with a momentum that, by the time it's all over, will take hundreds of billions of years (more or less) to wear off; a momentum that will live on longer than humans, longer than the earth; when I think of this, naturally, I'm humbled. The force that created this, creates other galaxies in the same way, but with very different, random results. This force, probably not intelligent, but even if it is, is undeniably chaotic and unpredictable. This same random splash of chaos that makes life in our galaxy possible can just as easily take these possibilities away. In fact, the fragile, delicate balance of life on earth and in this galaxy seems more impossible than possible when thinking about our galaxy and the chaotic, random events that created it. It does make one wonder if this is too intricate a design to be random, too delicate a balance... Either way, it's still Chaos, and it is what rules life. This must be what God is.

Do I choose to worship it, is the question. Worship is a depressing word to me. The idea of worshiping anything seems like a complete waste of time with no real, practical purpose, therefore isn't worth the commitment. So, I'm sorry, Dear Universal Chaos, but I don't have time to worship you, for my role in this grand story of yours is far too short to waste on worshiping you... you being an entity that, whether I worship you or not, would just as soon send a giant, world-destroying asteroid into my back yard as you would a giant sack of $100 dollar bills.

I will, however, respect you. This is probably a very smart thing for me to do. You built the delicate machine that spins this little galaxy in its perfect momentum in time and space, making life possible for me and you could, without prediction, end it all tomorrow. I promise to respect this fact and live every moment of my minuscule life as if you have decided to do just that... end it all tomorrow.
--Amen

A Safe Haven

For the first time in too many years I got sucked into a good book I couldn't put down until it was conquered and I just have to write about it. I have fallen in love with a new(ish) author who just barely hit the literary "scene" (as if I'd have a clue what that is) just in the past decade; an era that has had me sharting crotch-fruit out my vag-hole, raising said fruit to be half-way decent mini-humans, working the streets for money, and just generally too busy (and oblivious) to take note of any new authors.

Her name is Haven Kimmel and she's a safe, funny, mildly twisted, writer. I read the first seven words of her fourth novel called, Iodine the other day after spying it at Books-A-Million in their Big Bargain Book Blow-out Bonanza bin(or some such alliteration) that conveniently clutters the corral-like line one is forced to wade through far too slowly because the eye-brow pierced store-clerk barely knows what a book is let alone can run the register without the aid of an over-paid, under-worked "manager" (who has twice as many facial piercings) while selling one. I was buying the book Mom, A Celebration of Mothers by Storycorps for Nannette. It was to be her M-Day offering as a sign of appreciation for her sharting me out her vag-hole (and doing a WILD job of raising me thereafter) some 38 years ago. The Storycorps book was nice, but kinda small and I felt a little guilty for getting something that should really be described as a "hardback pamphlet" so I decided to fluff-up my offerings by throwing in that bonanza bargained book with the pretty purple and black swirly cover from that tempting, alliterated bin because after all, people in line behind me, I'm sure, were staring at me and there was really nothing else to do but grab that book and pretend to read it while I waded in line to buy it. It was either that or let out a nervous "stop staring at me from behind you fucking pervs" silent fart.

I got home later that afternoon and was doing inventory on my matriarchal goddess offerings when I grabbed Haven's book and started to put it in the [SEVEN FUCKING DOLLAR] pretty, pink and black (with butterflies) gift bag I knew Nan would just love. But then I remembered those first seven words of that purple-y swirled book I had read in that corral a few hours prior and decided to read a few more... next thing you know... three chapters were devoured. I would not prove as much of my love to the goddess, and I was fine with that.

I kept the dramatically discounted, purple book and read its innards all through my slumberous mother's day and just finished it up two nights ago. While I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed by the end (I refuse to spoil it because you should buy it and read it yourself, she's got bills to pay too!) I am left with an overall sense of gratefulness for this young writer for writing something that was just plain old fun to read. One of the things that made me love her is her description of an evil character, a business man, probably a pedophile (she never clarified) as being a "Friend of Foreclosure" and saying that he "is not a Natural Man but rather their loan officer". Me being a real estate appraiser could not relate more to those imaginatively accurate descriptions. I have not been able to rip through a book that fast in what feels like centuries, so I raced out and bought two more of her books. I call her "safe" because she will not change my life, but "fun" for being "mildly twisted" in an alarmingly normal way.

Anyway, this blog entry is dedicated to the support of this new(ish) artist and I wish her years of prosperity and good fortune!

Oh, Fuck this Tammi Rae Shit!

The struggle to explain her existence and subsequent non-existence in a way that was as awe-inspiring to you reading it as it was to me experiencing it was so overwhelming and virtually impossible to do it kept me from even wanting to turn my pc on, let alone log into interweb world. (Ok, plus we couldn't pay our cable/internet bill this month because the old man has serious prostate pains and had to spend serious moola to see a doc, that's not code for anything, that's the real shmeal, anyway, he's better for now, so moving on) Nothing I thought of to write about her ever turned out to be what I originally wanted to portray to you people, but this, as it turned out, was the final point in Tammi Rae's short life.

If you haven't figured it out yet, Tammi Rae was a fictional character created by this artist, Vanessa VanAlstyne and this is where she explains her experimentation with Tammi Rae. There were a few good reasons for me to be inspired by this story, as it was being told, and the main one is its common theme of basic human nature. The internet has done wonders in showing me that people, the world over, completely suck! Furthermore, there is absolutely no one who is exempt from this appraisal. All. People. Suck. Even the people who act like they don't suck, actually really do suck the worst. (They suck almost as badly as this post!)

I was raised, religiously speaking, as some sort of buddhist and what I got out of the sparse sprinkles of buddhistic* knowledge is basically that all people are a burden on this earth and all its inhabitants, even each other, and to acknowledge this is to be self-aware (I know I got it all wrong, but I don't care). It actually takes a concerted effort to lessen your contribution to the human burden factor and I would estimate that approximately only 5-7% of the world's population realizes this. I believe the internet is the greatest tool history has ever seen in exposing the ugly truth about humans. This exposure isn't bad though. Its supposed to serve as a mirror to aid the viewer in a journey of self-awareness, because once you are self-aware, the better able you are to lessen your burden on the living beings around you, physically, or virtually.

Now I'll wrap up how this view of mine relates to Tammi Rae and her creator, Vanessa. Vanessa knows that all people suck and she is quite the humanitarian in her efforts to help us see that. Her somewhat sacrificial efforts landed her on April Winchell's fantastic new website Regretsy, for some excellent (probably too excellent) exposure. The suckage of humanity was also exposed on that day when people looked down their nose at their keyboards and told Tammi Rae just what an ignorant asshole she was for her beliefs. I guess the old adage, favored mostly by those under 12, "it takes one to know one" fits well here. In this case, it took one to expose many. Bravo, Vanessa!! Bravo!

*Its a word, because I said so!

I promise!!

I am putting the finishing touches on the final installment of the Tammi Rae Jensen story. I know my readers (all 4 of you) are dying to find out how this amazing story ends. I will be posting it within the next few days, I promise. Please stay tuned.

No Hell-Cats for Tammi Rae!

PART 2 OF GOD BLESS GLITTER GLUE AND PUGICORNS!

I'm just gonna start this entry out by blasting you with the bad news.... Tammi Rae Jenson.... is no more. Whether or not she really got into heaven is debatable, but the fact remains, she no longer exists. But before I tell you what happened to her, I'm going to tell you what I knew of Tammi. Its not much, seeing as how I only just heard of her four days ago. Or maybe I did know all there is to know about Tammi. She graduated from High School, she works at Chili's restaurants, she has type 2 diabetes, lives with her sick aunt, and loves to paint with glitter. Oh and also she is a religious zealot. Tammi probably doesn't even know what a zealot is, but if its anything like a Hell-Cat she'll have nothing to do with it, thank you very much! All she knows about a zealot is its a word used quite frequently by all the 'critics' who grace her comments' sections with their very wise and [obviously] intellectually superior interpretations of her art. Here are just a few of the more brilliant assertations I was able to gather from some of Tammi's wildflower gardens she'd scattered around the interweb...

-Huh?

-Your zealotry knows no limits, does it?

-I'm hoping like hell that she's not old enough to vote. It is people like this young woman who are clinging to propaganda of political parties under the guise of religion that are ruining our country. My advice would be a lot of college and perhaps a little exposure to the rest of the world beyond whatever church or town you are a part of. And by the way, our president is named Barack Obama, not "The Obama".

-OMG! red glitter! In the words of the maker: “supream”. High school diplomas must be easier to come by in Texas?

-A fundy who apparently celebrates Halloween. Interesting.

-the fuck is a pugicorn?

-I would not buy anything from someone who couldn't at least spell 'vain' or 'celebrity' correctly. And that art was made by a 4th grader. I swears.

-it's crap

-I think as an Christian I am not fond of the way she is *witnessing* and as an artist had her painting were on the wall of a class for a critique it would have been picked apart.

and finally... I saved the best one for last...

um.... i don't think so. Obviously this person has a problem with something, but instead of finding an artistic way to express it, they make this crap with their idea and feelings more clearly expressed in their hateful writing than their artwork. Now I'm all about expressing some type of disagreement or loathing through art work.

A good example would be a piece that I created not so long ago. It is untitled still, but its as follows (I'm not brave enough to post a pic.) Its the scene of jesus hanging on the cross. Only in my scene you have a view of the entire hill, and no one is hanging on the other two crosses beside jesus. At jesus's feet and spread all across the hill are some fairly gruesome dead bodies.

My piece was created because I find it very funny that christian live for the day that they will die. And all over a man that they can only learn about through shards of ancient and often mistranslated literature. And yes I have thoroughly enjoyed this uninvited chance to brag on myself. Thanx for listening!!!

Now, some of those comments are from her flickr page, some from her blog, others are from the regretsy listing I mentioned in my last entry, and the rest, in particular that last one, are from a post I made about Tammi Rae in one of my new 'mommy' groups. Its another mommy website's Hot Topics type boards that I recently joined and have, so far, not made any real waves *snore*. In my post on my new hot mommy topics board I asked "Is this really art?" and the overwhelming response was "NO"! Some did say that while they didn't like it, they could see how others might think its art. The thing that's really cool, though, is I knew something about Tammi Rae that the other mommies didn't know. Something that you, the reader of this, probably still don't know.

Actually, I know a few things. One of the things I know is whenever we are confronted with an anonymous internet persona that appears to be inferior in any way to us, we immediately know and understand everything that is wrong with that person. The reason for this is, it is much easier to look down on people(as opposed to looking up to them) and recognize what they are doing wrong.

Thankfully, there are some people who are able to see past the blinding, glittery, extreme surface of something to find its redeeming qualities. Let's just take a look at some of the content of Tammi's work and try to see what exactly is so bad about it...

In one piece she says "Hellcats do not love people. Demons want to harm you, not be your sexy friend. Do not take candy from demons. They will feed you poison. Love Jesus." This is from probably my favorite painting of Tammi Rae's. Its very similar to the Heidi Montag piece with the pretty, bright, red, sparkly, glittery flames of hell that make my heart shine! :D But this one, as you can see here, features what must obviously be a Hellcat (should that be capitalized?) instead of a picture of Heidi Montag after a 6 day whiskey, oxycoton, and slim-fast bender. I don't know what fate this delightful painting met but I'm looking at a good spot on my wall above my desk where I'm sure it would feel right at home, reminding me everyday that demons are not my sexy friends, and hellcats do not really love me, despite my deepest desires to be loved by the evil hellcats. I try not to sin and be bad, but its hard to remember. I need this painting. I noticed on another artist's blog that this particular painting is up for grabs, but I'm scared to even ask what to offer, as I've never bought original art before. Its scarey like a hell-cat to even consider. X_X

How I found out what happened to Tammi Rae is what I started to describe in my last entry about my scroll down the comment tree of that Regretsy post Heidi Ho. In that comment tree something mystical and more whimsical than I could have ever hoped for happened, it was inspiring, and comfortably familiar... and I'll get to that in part 3, which should probably be called "A Wild Troll Appears!"

God bless glitter glue and pugi-corns!

My travels through this land called 'The Internet' bring me to so many new discoveries, people, and adventures that I would probably never have the honor of experiencing had I never came here and the next one is never any less exciting than the last. God bless that Al Gore for inventing this place! I'm currently unwinding from my latest little adventure of semi-epic proportions that was so inspiring it has me entering a new post in this dead blog. -- I was going to blather on about why I haven't posted in here for a while but decided not to put any reader graciously reading this to sleep. Instead I'm going to just move on with the story of Tammi Rae Jenson (the artist who painted that lovely piece you see at the head of this post) as it is much more exciting than any of the bullshit excuses I was going to lie to you about. --

It all started Friday afternoon while "working" in the office. If you work in an office, with internet, you know what I was really doing and no, there was no porn (that day). Instead I was browsing one of my favorite new websites, Regretsy. The "whimsical fuckery" on that site just brightens up my day and this day was no exception... in fact, this day was practically the pinnacle of my travels through interweb world! (I may be a little drunk in my exaggerations. As I noted above, I'm still unwinding from this.)

Friday morning a new Regretsy post went up titled Heidi Ho. It was a listing of a very strange, folksy but juvenile and kind of hoaky looking painting that had so much going on it was hard to formulate exactly what I thought of it at first glance. It featured a very ugly version of some celebrity named Heidi Montag burning in hell as simpleton words of warning to love Jesus and stay out of hell floated starkly above the doomed heathen (who I had never heard of before this painting, btw). The artist's description of the painting was poorly written and very obviously an extreme conservative view (to say the least) about how America should act and how we definitely don't want to be a "ho ho like that Heidi Montag!". But despite the extremist nature of this strange religious bird, I too typically dislike flashy, "veign", celebrity-of-the-month types so I was kinda diggin' this shit. But really, here's the real reason I was falling in love with it, the very best part of this piece, the part that immediately grabbed my silly-hearted attention was the massive amount of sparkly, dark-red glitter used to paint the joyously hellish flames that engulfed this uglified celebrity... correction... celbrity for her unforgivable sins of being a "trust fund baby"!

Me being the true Regretsy fan that I am was immediately intrigued by this artist and went directly to her Etsy shop. Her profile was .... I can't even describe it, I'm just going to copy and paste it here

My name is Tammi Rae Jenson and I am a South Texas Artist with a Highschool Diploma who works at Chilli's restraunts and paints. I currently Live with my aunt who has some health problems and needs help sometimes, I also have type 2 diabetes and would like to remind all of ya'll out there to take care of ya'lls selves! I am a strong Christian woman who practices her relgion over at Second Baptist Woodway here in Houston! Come on by for some great Christian Fellowship and a wonderful service. Churches provide a great way of meeting people who are strong in faith, even though some sadly use it as a country club. I hope that my ebay auctions will provide you with art work that while it might have scarey content (hell, hell cats, worms, Satan) will serve as a reminder that Christ Rules, and God reigns suppream! Try not to sin and be bad! because Jesus is watching all ya'll! If you have any questions about God, my Paintings, or Anything else please just sent me a question down at the bottom of this here ebay auction!

I certainly noticed all the grammar and spelling errors, but more than that, I couldn't help but notice that she was referring to it as an 'Ebay' listing when it was on Etsy. Brilliant!

The "whimsical fuckery" done to poke fun of this whacked-out religious zealot over at regretsy was a 'View it in a Room' piece that I didn't really get at first, because I don't even know who this ho ho, Heidi even is. So, I decided to move on to the comments section and see what fuckery was going on there. The very first thing I noticed about the comments section is that it was already up to #200 and it hadn't even been up for more than 3 or 4 hours. As usual, most of the comments were snarked-up and mildly entertaining, just enough to keep me from working too hard but not enough to make me follow along and keep reading past the 50th or so comment. Also as usual were the repetitive posts of forced snark that embarrasses me to read, so I tabbed out and decided to actually try and get some work done.

Later that evening, after doing my part to contribute to the destruction of Western Civilization, I decided to go back to the Heidi Ho post and make my very own comment. It would be my first post ever on Regretsy and I had come up with a brilliant one that I KNEW would be perfect for my debut! "God bless glitter!" is what it was going to say and I was certain no one else had said anything like that... I was sure to get 50 or more thumbs up=! I feverishly logged in to the site so I could post my glittery brilliance, but something strange happened on my scroll down the comments tree that side-tracked me (even more than glitter, go figure) and completely erased my memory of wanting to make my glitter comment and it was pretty fucking cool what I saw in that regretsy comments thread that day!

I don't know what it is about the Regretsians. They have A LOT of time on their hands (bless their whimsically fucked hearts) and were so intrigued by TammiRae's outrageous persona that to say they began to dissect her is a gross understatement. They tracked down and poured over every blog entry she made, every ebay and etsy listing of her artwork she ever posted, and uncovered her Flickr page and also found some videos that I can't seem to figure out how to post up here, right now. Well, I guess I'll end this entry at this for now and just call it PART 1.

So, come on back for part 2, which I'm thinking of calling The Age of the Hellcats! It promises to flip the lid on whatever type of art you think is going on with Tammi Rae Jenson. Of course, if you were a super-sleuth of Regretsian-like intellect you would already be figuring this mystery out. If you're like me and are easily distracted by glitter and newly found mythical creatures, like hell-cats and pugi-corns, you need someone else, someone with more time, snark, and regretsian-sleuth to dig through the surface of something simple and discover the complexities of the innards.

One last thing before I close out part one, I'd like to share this delightful blog entry of Tammi Rae's from a little over a year ago when her Pugi-Corn painting sold on E-bay. The thought of her running out to the craft store to get more glitter glue had me smiling all day after I read this...

Sunday, October 26, 2008
Joy of Pug-icorns
man..i just got in from a long shift at chillis and donig some invantory.

Praise God! someone bid on my ebay acutions!

great timeing too, i need mor glitter glue!

I"m so excited!
Praise God!
And Jonathan said unto David, O LORD God of Israel, when I have sounded my father about to morrow any time, or the third day, and, behold, if there be good toward David, and I then send not unto thee, and shew it thee
1 Samuel 20:12