My Inkless Tattoos

By kate on December 3rd, 2002

In April of 1999, I got laser eye surgery (you can read about that here). Letting a doctor scrape at my eyes took some degree of bravery, so I wanted to commemorate it with a ritual of some kind. I searched around for just the right idea, and finally hit upon the idea of an inkless tattoo. The idea originally came from Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller. I read his excellent account of his first inkless tattoo in the book How to Play in Traffic. Penn explains, and I agree, that the appeal of getting a tattoo is undeniable, but that the permanence makes it troublesome.

The answer to that is the inkless tattoo, which is a tattoo applied with a regular tattoo needle, but with no ink. It creates a cut, which, when properly treated, becomes a scar that lasts about a year.

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First Livejournal Post

By kate on July 4th, 2002

This incident caused her to become a religious maniac

(That is the caption on the June page of my Edward Gorey calendar.)

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World Music

By kate on April 2nd, 2002

World Music. What does that phrase mean to you? For years, I avoided world music because it simply didn’t interest me. Lately, that has completely changed.

It started with a few CDs that were sort of westernized world music: Songs from the Victorious City by Anne Dudley (of Art of Noise) and Jaz Coleman, and Traveler ’99, a compilation from Six Degrees Records. They were owned by good friends of mine, I heard them, and ended up owning them.

I guess it makes sense that my attitude really changed when I came home from my big backpacking trip to southeast Asia. The funny thing is that, aside from Balinese music, I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to music while travelling. But now that I’m back, I can’t get enough world music. It just sounds new and interesting to me.

Here are some of the CDs that Steve and I have acquired this year and that I can’t seem to get enough of:

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Encyclopedia Project

By kate on January 19th, 2002

I am generally fascinated by how morals are omnipresent in everyday media. (I own a CD-ROM of old educational, industrial, and promotional films from the 1930s-60s called Ephemeral Films. They’re incredibly humorous and interesting at the same time. Hundreds of them are online at the Internet Moving Image Archive.) You can see pictures of the sort I mean at The Institute of Official Cheer.

Anyway, that’s an interest of mine, so I occasionally buy old encyclopedias from a thrift store. I have bought family medical tomes, a “Home Handyman” series, and regular encyclopedias; all from the fifties and sixties. I’ve been cutting out interesting text and illustrations. You’d be surprised how many good ones there are – I have a big envelope of interesting clippings. I’m still looking for good ideas for what to do with them all.

CONTROL

This is one of my first clippings, from the article “Floods”. It is a map of the United States, with the major rivers shown. Superimposed on the map were the words “Flood Control.” However, when you cut out the map from the page, only the word “Control” remains, ominously written over the US map.

Last Christmas, I made magnets for my friends and family, with cutout pictures juxtaposed with cutout text. I have included some of my favorites below, for your entertainment (apologies for the bad scans):


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My Second Marriage Proposal

By someone else on June 22nd, 2001

It was a pretty nice day, sunny and warm, and I didn’t really have any more preparations to make, so I decided I would do it. Under the pretext of showing you the city, we made plans to do some driving that evening. I had the ring already – in a design that symbolized how perfectly matched we were. After dinner, we got in the car. I was nervous, in a way, but you didn’t pick up on it. By this point I was just cruising on momentum, letting my intentions guide me along and not worrying about the details too much.

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Eye Surgery: Entry Eight

By kate on May 9th, 2000

AVOIDING EYE STRAIN

I have installed a program called Break Reminder on my PC. It pops up every 10 minutes (or whatever interval you want) to remind you to take a “micropause” – looking away and/or stretching for a number of seconds (also configurable). When it pops up, I spend ten seconds looking out my window, focusing on far-away objects. Then I close my eyes for a few seconds and relax them.

These simple things, which take about a minute each hour, brought my vision back to 20/20 after a regression. Everyone who works on a computer should do this, but especially anyone who has had eye surgery. If you value your new-found vision, take care of it.

Here are some resources:

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