Pouring My Art Out

Dia de los muertos… part 4…

Posted on August 12, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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So by now you should have finished your homework and Goggled all about dia de los meuertos, right?

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And now that you know all about ‘the day of the dead’, you should know a little something about the folk art that accompanies it,so I shouldn’t have to explain why I am doing all these pictures of skulls and skeletons, right?

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Oh wait… you still don’t know why I am… and will continue… to post such an astounding number of these pictures… or how it ties in with the visit by my English relatives, do you?

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Okay, I feel your frustration…

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But I need to start getting ready for the barbecue we are having with the English relatives today…

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And I am stiff and sore… and sunburned… from all our walking around…

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And I haven’t had my coffee yet… wait… is that a dead Michael Jackson puppet???

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To be honest, I am having fun stretching this whole story out, serving it up in little bits along with the photos…

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And I am enjoying the photos. I was so busy taking them, and walked so far to get them, that I didn’t really admire what I was looking at properly.

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But I will try to mix in more pictures of other parts of our adventure along with these, I promise.

Posted in Stories of my life | Tagged art, dia de los muertos, humor, photography, san diego, skeletons, skulls, travel | Leave a comment

So maybe you were thinking I just made the whole thing up about our English relatives coming to visit…

Posted on August 11, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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So… you did your homework and went back to last summer when we visited them in England and did lots of cool stuff… so I shouldn’t have to introduce them, right? Just kidding… that is Malcolm, Lynne, and Dot. We did some London sightseeing with Lynne and Malcolm, and we stayed at Dot’s house in the country… you should really go back and look. Lynne and Dot are cousins. Malcolm is Lynne’s boyfriend. I love them all.

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Ha! See what I did there? That is my cousins… in front of a candy store named Cousin’s. But because, as you are well aware, I have crack squirrels living in my head… and I have been busy… it will take a while to explain where we were, what we were doing, what all the pictures of skulls and skeletons in the earlier post are all about, and what we did today and what we are doing tomorrow…

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But so far… and for the foreseeable future, we are still focusing on the first day… which was yesterday… because I took a lot of pictures yesterday… and I took more today… and I will take more tomorrow… follow me?

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On the first day, we went to the historic Old Town part of an Diego… but wait… nothing is that simple in crack squirrel land. The story will unfold as the pictures do… and you will learn about San Diego’s history, and Mexican culture and heritage and food, and about other parts of San Diego… and about my relatives and who know what else?

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See… Dot is already learning about American culture… and our penchant for socially awkward, politically incorrect statuary.

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And speaking of which… of course the first bit of the local history and culture we introduced them to was the margarita!!!

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Because that is how we roll…

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And then I grew angel wings… but we will get to that later…

Posted in Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, family, history, humor, margaritas, photography, san diego, travel | 14 Comments

Dia de los muertos… part 3…

Posted on August 11, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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Brightly painted skull in sombreros… and skeleton ladies in beautiful dresses… what does all this have to do with my English relatives coming to visit us in San Diego… what does this have to do with anything???

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And gee, Arthur, you have already done two other posts of skulls and skeletons, and you tell us there are more one the way?

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And why on earth did you walk for miles in the hot sun to take these pictures?

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And what exactly is ‘dia de los muertos’ anyway???

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These are some of the questions that might be going through your head right now… (unless you speak Spanish and know a little about Mexican culture, and remember that San Diego is only a few miles away from the border with Mexico… you know… where Trump wants to build his stupid wall)…

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But I can’t answer these questions now. I have to take a shower and get ready to spend another day with my relatives… and take more photos to share with you…

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If it really bothers you, you could just Google the answers to some of these questions… about Mexican culture, I mean…

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You could learn about the world you live on…

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Or… you could just look at the pretty pictures…

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And wait for me to tell the story…

Posted in Stories of my life | Tagged art, dia de los muertos, humor, Mexico, photography, san diego, skeletons, skulls | Leave a comment

Dia de los muertos… part 2…

Posted on August 11, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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I would love to tell you what happened yesterday on the first part of my newest adventure…

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We had so much fun with our visiting English relatives!

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But I need to get ready to go out again…

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You know… a 5

For the next part of the adventure…

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But for now, trust me when I tell you that it took a lot of work to get all these photos…

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Even if you have no idea why I am sharing them with you…

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Instead of just going straight into the pictures of actual living people.

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But then again, you already knew that I have crack squirrels living in my head…

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Posted in Stories of my life | Tagged art, dia de los muertos, humor, photography, san diego, travel | Leave a comment

Dia de los muertos… part 1…

Posted on August 10, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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So why, you might well ask, when I just made such a big deal of my English relatives coming to visit, am I showing you a picture of a skull?

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Well, don’t let it worry your pretty little head!

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This is, in fact, part of the adventure…

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You will meet the relatives… and other people… but you will also learn about other cultures…

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But you will also see a whole bunch of skulls… and skeletons… and there are good reasons for that…

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But for now, let’s just say I had a long day in the hot sun…

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And I drank one big-ass margarita…

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And I am tired…

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And there are two more big days of this adventure to go… and I already took 200 pictures… most of which you are going to see… with more coming after that…

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So just sit back and enjoy the ride… and I will explain where it is taking us as we go…

Posted in Stories of my life | Tagged art, culture, dia de los muertos, humor, photography, san diego, skulls, travel | Leave a comment

A couple of pictures of a baby lizard I took in my yard yesterday while I tell you about my newest adventure…

Posted on August 10, 2016 by pouringmyartout

Okay, these aren’t very good pictures. I should have gotten out the good camera… but the lizard was only about two inches long and it was so cute! Anyway, I am glad we finally finished up the pictures of my last adventure, because I am starting a new one today. Some of my English relatives are here in San Diego!!!

If you want to learn about them beforehand, go back about one year… just a little over one year… to our big adventure in Europe. You can meet the relatives, and also see us doing some fun stuff… like: Seeing the Queen of England and the Royal Family, watching a scene from as James Bond movie being filmed right by Big Ben, exploring London, seeing another movie scene being filmed in Liverpool, visiting the English countryside, running all around Paris, and going to both a castle and a concentration camp in Germany. And lots of other cool things.

The funny part of this new adventure is that, while I have no idea what we will be doing while they are here, when they leave in a few days, they are going to visit my mom, and they are driving the opposite direction on Highway One, the same road I just shared with you from my last adventure.

Posted in dogs and other animals, Stories of my life | Tagged england, family, humor, lizards, photography, relatives, travel | Leave a comment

That’s an abysmal color… a Pepto-abysmal color… ha… see what I did there?

Posted on August 9, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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Okay, we have reached the end of my last adventure. We have, once again, visited the Bay Area, and seen many marvelous things… flowers and sunsets, dogs and babies, San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Morro Bay, and last… and definitely least… Los Angeles and its oh-so-annoying traffic.

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Leaving Morro Bay, I was still captivated by the beauty of my surroundings.

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Somewhere near Santa Barbara, I stopped at a view point take these two quick shots. This is where the wild… and cold… Pacific Ocean of Northern and Central California begin to give way to the more tropical beaches of Southern California.

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It also means that the fun part of the drive is pretty much over.

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So I amused myself by taking random pictures out of my car window while I battled the traffic… wait… what does that mean? I know it is a line from a Led Zeppelin song… I was raised on the Zep… but does that mean that you can rent a woman with big legs and no soul? Why would you do that?

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I didn’t get a picture of the driver, but it was a young guy with really long hair… which may or may not have been a wig. Let’s just assume that he shows up at parties and DJ’s classical rock songs or something like that.

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Hey… how did I end up in Korea… in the 1950’s??? Oh, wait… this is near where they filmed the M*A*S*H TV show… that explains it.

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That’s where I spotted this monstrosity… being driven, as well you might expect… by a well-endowed, very tan,. very blond woman… who may or may not actually have been blond. Well, that just about does it for…

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Wait… what the heck is that?

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I have no idea what that was… I am not a car guy… but, as I’m sure you guessed, it was driven by an extremely -douchie-looking, rich, white guy, who may or may not have worked for some movie studio or evil corporate law firm… and was weaving in and out, cutting people off… it was good to be back in Southern California…

Wait… no it wasn’t!

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged california, cars, humor, Los Angeles, photography, travel | 2 Comments

Gee, Mr. Trump, thanks so much for helping me rediscover my white male guilt…

Posted on August 9, 2016 by pouringmyartout

Wait… you know that was sarcasm, right? We’ve been to the moon, why can’t we invent a sarcasm font? But anyway, I grew up in Berkeley, California during the 60’s and 70’s. Believe me, I know liberal white male guilt.

But I was finally getting over it. I had convinced myself that, while white males have certainly brought more than their fair share of suffering to this planet down through history, my own conscience was clear… (hey, I just noticed that conscience is spelled: con-science… I wonder what the hell that means???)… I mean, I felt horrible about slavery, but I never owned a slave, and, being adopted, for all I know, my relatives fought on the right side of the civil war. I have never abused or exploited anybody of any race. I raised my daughters to judge people individually. I have always believed that women should be paid as well as men, and should be able to hold any job they want. And I actually thought we were making progress.

Now Trump has managed to not only find all of the white males that I was so ashamed to be associated with, but to coalesce them into an actual movement… a movement in the wrong direction, but a movement of sorts. So I guess I have to go back to feeling guilty about the very people that, by all rights, I should have the most in common with.

Oh boy.