Alrighty then: Twittering!

So, I think I'm now feeding this blog onto Twitter. If you want to see, you can follow me on there - it's www.twitter.com and my name is betsystreeter. I'm also messing about with posting from my phone so look out - can random pictures of street signs and yard art be far behind?

BTALD: Undo.

For every home improvement, there must also be a way to undo it. Because whether or not it is an "improvement" may be in doubt when it's all said and done.

I have many cans of ill-advised paint out in my garage. I'm told that I can donate it to the pile at my local hardware store for people who might want them. They're not bad colors, or evil or anything, they're just... wrong. Like the beige that turned out to make our living room look like the inside of a giant lipstick. Or the red that in the kitchen kind of looked like vampires had been through.

But the best service that the home improvement stores could provide their customers would be: calm. Some kind of service that helps you to keep breathing and remain calm when all you want to do is Be Done. Because I'd bet that most of those things that require the "undo" products happen during that "I want to just get this done" phase. Like, spilling. And, breaking. Maybe meditation tapes, or yoga. I would suggest beer, but we know that would only result in more things that had to be undone later.

Do Animals Get Annoyed?

When I see a nature special, I often wonder how many of those animals are getting on each other's nerves. Do ground squirrels dig into each other's burrows? Does everybody think, "There's those hyenas again. They are SO irritating." And, what about those birds that sit on top of other animals?

We currently have a little nature event taking place in our attic. Someone small and furry is hanging out up there and making digging and scratching noises at exactly the same time every night. We tried to close the spot that we thought our friend was getting in, but the noise continues. So we are either acting out an Edgar Allen Poe story in slight miniature, having trapped him in there, or our friend has some other way of getting in and out. I'm guessing the latter. But maybe we'll look up there and there will be a mini fridge and shag carpet and bean bag chairs. I'll let you know.

Four Years Ago Tomorrow...

Four years ago tomorrow, I did two things... I gave birth to my son at 1 in the morning, and I started publishing daily in the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia. So this time every year, I think about where I was in 2004 - lots of things getting started! I had only been generating a daily panel for a few months, having published spot cartoons for about 10 years before that. So that was a really exciting time. In between contractions.
Now I am so glad I started publishing daily, because it means that I draw every day - and that is really important to my overall health and happiness. Crazy day jobs in the past have obscured that, and that's been a bad thing. So I want to say,
THANK YOU to the Daily Press for picking up Brainwaves, and even putting it up next to Dilbert!
And, THANK YOU to everybody who reads here, or in your local daily, weekly or monthly, or online, or anywhere. You are all fabulous.
Oh, and THANK YOU to my son for finally showing up after 2 weeks of contractions. That was totally worth it and you are a capital dude.

A Toothbrush, A Hairdryer, and Some Ipps

Don't try to read it here, silly. It's too teeny. Go see it on Flickr.

This is based on an incident that occurred in our bathroom many years ago. My husband and I were living in an apartment and were getting ready for work. He was brushing his teeth, I was drying my hair. He turned and looked at me and opened his mouth to show off his icky toothpaste. I aimed the hairdryer at his face. The laws of physics being what they are, toothpaste ended up covering pretty much the whole bathroom. It was fabulous.

BTALD: Toothpaste Factorial

It seems that someone learned factorials at the toothpaste factory - you know, the maximum number of combinations that you can make with a given number of choices. So they took all the different things toothpaste can apparently do, like whitening, and tartar control, and sensitivity, and sensitive tartar control, and tartar whitening, and control of sensitive tartar, and...

Well, now we all get to stand there and stare at all the boxes and try to figure out what we want our toothpaste to do. Then there's the flavor question. So, I am wondering -- are there certain toothpaste features that are BAD for certain people? I mean, this is the only reason I can think of why you wouldn't want to just offer all the toothpaste options, all the time. Maybe some people have a weird reaction to tooth whitening? Or the sensitivity stuff causes you to become weepy or something?

I mean, with mouthwash, they could just make the labeling a LOT more clear. There's Gross, and then there's Gross with Flavor, and then there's Burn Your Mouth Off, and then there's Gross but Pretty Color.

I just with that if they were going to offer all these options with toothpaste, they could throw in the stuff they do for kids too. Like, they could put glitter in it. That would make my decision a lot easier.

Announcing the Drooly Dog Blog!!

Okay, I've been posting here a lot about art and creativity and teaching and it's time that stuff had its own home. That way this blog can focus on my cartooning, and give the Ipps a little breathing room too.

So, I'm hereby announcing the launch of The Drooly Dog Blog, where I will put all my material on fostering creativity - particularly in kids. I'll write about my experiences teaching, post kids' artwork, and hopefully give kids/parents/teachers/families/schools lots of tools to get those brain synapses firing off in fabulous new ways. I'm also going to develop periodic Art Challenges to see what you all can come up with.

Please forward this (click that little envelope!) to anyone you know who has an interest in art, creativity, and helping kids, theirs or others', get creative and make art a wonderful part of their mind and life. We need creative problem solving skills so badly in our fast-moving world. Help me plant some seeds!

Barf.

Alright, those last couple posts have been kind of esoteric, so now let's talk cat barf.
You see, recently my cat barfed on my pillow. On. My pillow.
And yes, it soaked on through.
So, obviously this is not a usable pillow any more. But, not wanting to be wasteful, I attempted to wash the pillow in the washing machine.
Well, as everyone knows, a wet pillow is a 600-pound pillow. And so the washing machine cannot spin it around.
So, I got a soapy, 600-pound pillow.
I then lugged it outside and dumped it on the ground, where it proceeded to leak water everywhere for seriously a day or so.
Then I flipped it over and it leaked some more.
Now it's kind of fluffy, but it's soapy, as I mentioned. So it needs to be rinsed.
I thought about the bathtub, but that's too far from the door. I' wouldn't know how to get the 600-pound pillow outside again.
So there it sits, impressing everyone who resents when people just leave random stuff sitting outside their houses.
I'm not sure what to do with it now.
It is mocking me.
My cat is mocking me too.
Barf.

Education Architecture

So if you search on "Education Architecture" on the Web, you get lots of sites about how to build buildings that are great for learning in. Which is cool.
However, I'd like to use the term a little differently, as an adaptation of the term "Information Architecture." Education Architecture, for me, is the process of developing highly adaptable learning tools that address the many constraints on education today. I'm sure it's in use in other places in sort of related ways, but here I'm adapting it for my own purposes.
As I've mentioned, I'm an Info Architect by profession when I'm not cartooning, and I think that design in general is extremely well suited to solving educational problems. We designers are used to taking constraints and requirements, putting them together with hopes and aspirations, and coming out with something constructive.

Make Your Own Darn Art (Box) is the first project that I would call an Education Architecture project. I'm seeking feedback from my smarty-pants friends on how to grow it. (Oh, and some of my smarty-pants friends have pointed out that I shouldn't publish the architecture for the Art Box just yet, as I figure out its business plan. So no, you can't see the Wiki right now.)

There will be more Education Architecture projects as well (and more Wikis as I go). But I'd like to adapt the phrase as not just being about buildings, but also about the design of adaptable learning tools.

Make Your Own Darn Art (Box)!

Here's the deal:

• Our education systems never seem to have enough money or resources.
• Creative thinking and problem solving are critical to learning.
• Kids learn a whole lot of creative thinking and problem solving through the arts.

So, how do we teach kids these skills with basically no money, materials or time?

You Make Your Own Darn Art (Box).

This may not look like much, but seriously there's a whole universe in there.

This is my first project in something I'm calling Education Architecture... I'm an Information Architect by trade (when I'm not cartooning), and I also teach drawing to kids, so this is my way of gathering together a Method for kids to learn about art and creativity. It's portable, it's lightweight, it can be used anytime, and hopefully it's something you can have fun with.

If this venture is successful, maybe there will be an Art Box appearing in your neighborhood!

BTALD: Trouble parking? Don't!

Parking is so weird. It's a by-product of the fact that when we go places, we take with us this big metal thing that we have to shed when we get to our destination. So we paint lines all over the ground and have all these rules about where you can put the metal thing, and where you can't. And which direction it should be facing. Unless you're in Britain, where apparently it's okay to just pull over whatever way you happen to be. I love that.
I am a self-admitted parking snob. I place a certain amount of my self-worth on how well I park. If I take up too much space by being too far over, I consider myself a bad person. I apply this to everyone else too. This is dumb. But I do it.
There is a parking garage in San Francisco that has regular sized spaces around the outside, but these eensy-weensy ones in the middle, mostly obstructed by poles. I've brought home my fair share of paint samples (bright blue mostly, I think that's Level 3) from that garage. It's amusing to watch people in enormous vehicles go into, and out of, these little spaces and eventually give up. Probably taking some of their own paint samples.
Anyway, I will never understand why everyone in the universe does not want to go everywhere by train. You can be exhausted. You can be drunk (or sobering up). You can read. You can work. You can meditate. And, you don't have to park. I mean, it just doesn't get any better. It's the greatest thing to just get off the train and walk to wherever. And, while you're on there, you can look at the person next to you and say, "You know, I'm a terrible driver. And I can't park worth a damn either. And it doesn't matter!"