i'm converting to group costumes

I was the evil DJ complete with facial scar, dreadlock goatee, Skullcandy headphones and turntable. We also had a David Bowie, who looked eerily so much like David Bowie (Labyrinth version, not necessarily Zoolander version). David Bowie and I were the only cross-dressers of the group. I'm not sure why all three of my costumes this year turned out to be male characters.

More work Halloween pics to come.

i want to

Hunter wanted me to pick three images to represent me and my work and to explain why. This was one of them. Why? Because I love animated gifs (lately, at least), and photography (I didn't take this photo, but I found it here), and I feel lots of different things. Also, because I recently realized that I rarely don't have a crush on a boy.

This will hypnotize

and enthrall you.

What an amazing Japanese thing. My favorite is the sumo.

more secret scripture

There are so many strings of words in this novel that I don't ever want to forget.

He carried a highly ecclesiastical umbrella, like something real and austere, that said its prayers at night in the hatstand. (92)

And from his eyes came slowly tears, immaculate human tears, before the world touches them. River, window and eyes. (101)

Always the deluge of rain falling on Sligo, falling on the streets big and little, making the houses shiver and huddle like people at a football match. Falling fantastically, in enormous amounts, the contents of a hundred rivers. And the river itself, the Garravoge, swelling up, the beautiful swans taken by surprise, riding the torrent, being swept down under the bridge and reappearing the other side like unsuccessful suicides, their mysterious eyes shocked and black, their mysterious grace unassailed. How savage swans are even in their famous beauty. (125)

He was a demon for growing vegetables all the year round, which apparently is quite possible if you know how to do it. Like most things. (127)

Oh, he cleared his eyes of everything then, and he stared at me, and for the first time I saw what was also hiding in John Lavelle, a sort of kindness. How much of such kindness the war had covered over with corpses and curses I do not know.
'Will you show me my brother's grave?' he said, in the same tones as another might have said, I love you. (108)

Now yet again I discover I do not have the language, the lingo, to talk to her about this, or about anything. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach. (70)

photo from here

i'm now expanding beyond frame-by-frame action photos

words from this book

"i'm glad i have you on my creative team"

That's what Jared said to Adrienne during their ring ceremony. Adrienne said even more beautiful things, but I can't remember them. Luckily Hunter caught it on video.

Each table (for seating arrangement purposes) at the ring ceremony/dinner/reception was labeled a different Beatles song. Ours was "Strawberry Fields."

The guest book consisted of personal messages written with dry erase markers on cut outs of word bubbles and thought bubbles held up to the guest's face to be photographed with Photobooth on a Mac Book Pro. I hope that makes sense, because it was awesome.

I wish Christina lived in Utah.

i started my morning with a glass of airborne water.

I woke up late and the first words in my head were, "I feel like a train wreck."

I need to be in bed by ten tonight.

annual spooky dinner in provo

Pumpkin soup (meaning tomato/basil/chicken soup)

Creepy witch fingers complete with hair and knuckle lines

I like what marriage has done to your sense of Halloween.

Dressed up? Unlikely, but the colors look nice.

Genki desu ka?

Hooray

Our little fraulein

Gotta catch 'em all!

I love this tradition.

hypothetical conversation posed by amy

Do you want to hang out this week?

I dunno, maybe you should ask Elder Oaks, and see what he thinks. He might have some good advice. I think he lives around here.

and i mean no

can't stop making animated gifs

This one goes back 2.5 years to the Denver Red Rock Amphitheatre. It might seem like I've been going through every single thing in my iPhoto to see what I can make animated gifs out of. Yes, that's exactly what I've been doing.

haunted graham houses

This is the house that Danbien built

Yurt under attack

So unique, different, honorable, uncentered

How unfirm a foundation

wish i could dance

I'm officially in love with Kyle Hanagami's dancing.



His YouTube channel here.

Cannnn't stop watching.

wild things

From this day. Jason and Danny are popping out of random places.

the city, the city

Is New York the most beautiful city on earth? It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the nights there. I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on magical powers. Squares and squares of flame, set and cut into the ether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
-Ezra Pound in 1913


I felt actual nostalgia when I read that.

It's happened so much less than I'd been expecting, but I like whenever I feel it. I miss the magical nights there—the nights walking through the streets, the nights waiting for the train, the nights when I'd sneak up to my rooftop, trying not to let the door bang. My roof was the one place I could go where I felt alone. I'd go up there to watch the little cars and little people, to enjoy the unnatural orange glow from the mix of lights and pollution that always seemed so beautiful, and to try to find the stars.

image from here

another reason i need a dog

found here

hearkening back

Every once in a while I remember this. It always makes my day.

olifants and magick trix

Is this real? Mia Michaels is leaving SYTYCD? That is sort of sad.

Also, Grey's was pretty dumb last night.

I'm not actually a TV fiend. I don't think.

I was looking through my Africa photos from this summer and found the video posted below. Since I haven't posted any Foster sibling videos for a while, I thought I'd post this. It occurred right after our guide told us that elephants will fake charge a couple times as a warning. He also told us that hippos never fake charge. They will just charge, and one time his safari car was chased by an angry hippo for a full five minutes.

the charge from Becca Foster on Vimeo.

Also, here is an African magic trick for your Friday:

sebastian singing

Remember this, Christina?
I still love it so. Especially at 0:13.

how did she make this??!

I'm so jealous! Srsly.

FROM HERE.

This made me look up more skull cakes.

Now all I want to do is make skull cakes.

I sound like a mommy baking blog (a creepy one).

halloween phantoms

Last night I was a Halloween phantom.

Drew and I rang doorbells and crouched behind cars like creepsters

while Rebekah kept watch from the porch.

flash cs4

I forgot how much fun motion tweens are. I'm creating snow.

Fun!

too many wants

I want to bake cookies and leave them as surprises.
I want to watch Shakespeare in Love, because it's waiting on the DVR.
I want to longboard and also to play football but won't for two different reasons.
I want to relearn constellations and reorient myself in them, with them.
I want to stop eating mid-afternoon vending machine pretzel snacks.
I want to go to India and Iceland.
I want to always remember everyone's birthdays.
I want my house to smell like autumn.
I want a cozy reading nook.
I want to put more things on my bedroom walls.
I want to not need sleep.
I want to finish my Halloween costumes.
I want to calm down.
I want to name a dog.

solid oak

how amy really feels about eggs (and halloween)

Don't be fooled by the somewhat-cheery expression on her face,

this girl is an egg massacre-er through and through.

I'd forgotten that I even took this picture.

What a nice surprise!

the sartorialist

I don't know how many times I've fallen in love with the subjects of his photographs.

the secret scripture - parts i love so far

A person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark.


his hair cropped tight like a condemned man


Whose sleeve do I have to grip, to tell my story to? It use to be Bet. Now, sleeveless.


Now we are two foreign countries and we simply have our embassies in the same house. Relations are friendly but strictly diplomatic.


Into the kitchen I went. How welcome a figure I can't say. Not very, probably, my sudden presence endured.


He recited to me all the intimations, suspicious and histories of his heart, not perhaps even bothering himself with the thought that I might not understand, but offering it all as a music quite as desirable to him and therefore to me...It was the way he had learned to live, in Ireland, the accidental place he loved.

photo from here

salsa hangovers

Rachelle moved to Dallas about a month ago and took her blender with her, leaving me blender-less and therefore salsa-less. I finally bought a new blender on Wednesday and made three batches to both consume ravenously with co-workers and sell to some of those co-workers for them to take home and enjoy at their leisure. They'd missed it, and I'd missed it.

My burning jalapeño hands had not missed it, however. The extraction of contact lenses on those days is hellish.

i'm just saying

Between my NPR radio alarm going off every nine minutes this morning and NOT getting up to go to the gym I somehow registered that Obama won the Nobel Prize. I'm usually skeptical of the things that I "remember" hearing from when I'm half awake, so when I finally got up to get ready for work I checked The New York Times.

This is why the Nobel committee awarded him the prize: for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Interesting that one can win this prestigious award based on efforts alone.

tying off

I finally got these photos back from my sister.

It was my first time tying off while rappelling

(Brandon had to tie himself off and then assist me),

but then I cartwheeled and three-sixtied myself around that cliff

like it was no big thang (that's what I told myself anyway).

things i need to learn how to do

• use iMovie (I feel like I am tech-savvy enough to do this. Also, I want to put the instrumental part of Beirut's Scenic World to some sort of movie.)

• do graffiti

weirdest commercial ever

Agency: SapientNitro
Country: Russia

I sort of love it?

slight mascara tint

Inspired by this.

enough

Is this obsession with fake mustaches really still happening?

Really?

tumbling through my head all morning

Your boy is like a memory
Some sense of touch and a melody
Your girl, she's a renegade
A hurricane that keeps you there, safe

-Stars, Look Up

I love whenever a person is referred to as a hurricane.

let me sleep

by me, from my words here

desk

Trying to find art in the day-to-day.