#appleworks

[1980sactionfigures]

Hulk Hogan As Thunderlips Wrestling Ring - Rocky (Appleworks)

#rocky #wwf #hulk hogan #appleworks

[morgenlich]

it’s wild to me that all my siblings learned word processing in school with google docs and have no idea how to use word (this has thrown the two college age siblings off immensely). back in my day (high school) you couldn’t use gdocs to write a paper because it had jack shit for formatting options, so especially if you needed citations of any kind….. (forget footnotes. it didn’t have so much as a hanging indent option)

#i learned on appleworks in school and taught myself word on the family pc + windows is what the high school used #(elementary + middle schools are one school district and the high school is a separate one #so the elem + middle schools until iirc 2016-17 school year used macs #and the high school had pcs) #this isn’t to like defend microsoft or word ftr tho i do prefer it the most #just like. thinking about how chromebooks being the default impacts people’s tech knowledge

[bobthedragon]

cringetober #5 - mspaint

I actually grew up with the mac version (Appleworks) which I loved immensely. anyway I doodled on this guy until the lag on my tablet was too overwhelming

#cringetober #monsters #mspaint #doggy #I hate how windows deals with tabletssss #but I love non-anti-aliased doodling

[cobragardens]

Self-Therapy in the Form of an Open Letter to Neil Gaiman and My Fellow Ineffables

Dear Ineffables, and Dear @neil-gaiman

I want to talk about Good Omens for a sec, ok? You are not obligated to listen! But if you want to listen, I have a Thing I need to say. And it's important to me and I have a Tumblr, so you can see where this is headed.

I know Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship, book and show, is primarily about the absurdity and tragedy and miraculousness and contagiousness of being human. I know it's about wanting friendship and cake instead of victory and ashes, and I love that. I know it did not start out as an intentionally or unequivocally queer story, and I know that neither the queerness nor the Christianity is the main theme of S1 or the book. And I think those are all good things: one of the big strengths that makes Good Omens so remarkable and so charming is its lightness of touch.

But Crowley did not start out as a demon, and Aziraphale did not start out as a butter-smooth liar, and they are neither of them the angel the other knew, and there are reasons for that. And S2 starts discussing those reasons, and now Crowley and Aziraphale have shared a very human kiss and have started a more overt phase of their ongoing conversation about what they are to each other. So one of the things we need to talk about is what it’s like to love the wrong person in a world like the world of Good Omens.

And I feel like I have some (very small) amount of expertise in this field. I do not have the skill as a writer to tell you what that was like to grow up Christian and deeply in love with my (also female) best friend in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the evangelical Christian Mecca of the United States. But I did it--or, rather, it happened to me--so I'm the person who has to write about it now.

It was Before Ellen. Homosexual sex was against the law in around half of U.S. states. Only one state (Rhode Island, which I am not convinced actually exists) had a law prohibiting discrimination against LGB people in housing, services, or employment. One U.S. state—my state, Colorado—amended its state constitution to prohibit prohibiting discrimination. Same-sex marriage did not exist. Same-sex couples could not adopt children. Being any flavor of queer could cost you custody in family court of any children you did have.

Queer young-adult novels did not exist. Movies and tv shows with queer characters did not exist unless they were serial killers or dying of AIDS. Safe-sex education did not exist, the LGBTQ section of the bookstore did not exist. Social media did not exist, the Internet was in its infancy (I was typing up papers in AppleWorks on an Apple IIe), smartphones did not exist. Porn was in magazines your friend’s older brother or uncle kept under his mattress.

The guy everybody in school thought was gay got beat up daily. The girls I'm not sure about. I only ever saw two girls/women who were out before I was 28 and met an openly lesbian woman in a university class.

In Colorado Springs, bumper stickers for Colorado for Family Values and Focus on the Family, both headquartered in the city, were common. Crosses and ichthys decals proliferated. There were only a few “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” stickers, but “Marriage = One Man + One Woman," or the same message in Ladies and Gents toilets symbols (with a pair of ladies and a pair of gents crossed out) were a regular sight on the backs of cars every day, every drive, my whole life there.

This was a world where there was one very specific God, who has one very rigid Plan, and whose Agents and Enemies fight each other for the eternal souls of every human being. And every player on the board was clear about this.

I was 12 when my dad and I met two women on a hiking trail and, after we all said hello and they three had chatted a bit and the women had walked on, he asked me if I had "gotten any spiritual witness about them." He told me he suspected they were lesbians.

I was 14 when I burst into tears and shouted at my dad when he spoke viciously of the two gay men who had come into his place of work earlier in the day. He called them “flaming” and “faggots.” I told him we were Christians and we were not hateful about people in that way. I didn’t know what the word faggot meant, not for sure (I picked up the meaning of flaming from his imitations), but I could tell it meant they were people who did awful things, and that he hated them.

I had never seen my dad like that before, hating someone. I had never heard him speak that way about anyone.

I was 16 when I rode in the back seat of our next-door neighbors’ Ford Focus on the way to Bible study and listened to the handsome Christian newlyweds up front discuss how awful it was that gay and lesbian couples were now allowed to adopt children in the state of New Jersey. It was bad, they said, that children could find homes with queer people “because children learn from their parents.”

I was 17 when 2 straight men beat and tortured Matthew Shepard and left him tied to a split-rail fence on the side of a road 3 hours north of Colorado Springs as a warning to the rest of us. A scarequeer.

A joke in poor taste, you may feel, this little pun. It is a pun, but it's not a joke.

One of Shepard’s murderers used the gay panic defense in court. In the U.S. the gay panic defense is one of reduced responsibility: a man cannot be held fully legally responsible for murdering another man if he claims he thought his victim was gay and making a pass at him. Because, under U.S. law, it is considered common for men to go temporarily insane and murder men they think may be gay and making a pass at them. I have rewritten this paragraph five times and that is the absolute least bananas I can make this sound. It is real and it is still a thing.

I was also 17 when Pastor Luis, the head of my church, preached in sermon about a member of the congregation who had fallen in love with another woman. He told us firmly: "She is no longer a lady. She is a lesbian."

He refused to counsel or marry them, services he insisted upon performing for the heterosexual couples among his congregants. He said he told the woman and her fiancee that they and their sin were not welcome in his house of God. He told us, the ones left, that we were not to contact the ejected woman or continue any friendships with her.

It was a small church, only about 60 people. Pastor Luis looked right into my eyes and held the eye contact with me (other peoole turned to look) when he said, "And if you don't agree with that, you are not welcome here either. You can leave now and never come back."

I did. For 10 years after that, I thought God had told Pastor Luis about me. That Pastor Luis had gotten the same "spiritual witness" off me that my dad had gotten off the 2 women we met backpacking. That he somehow knew—that any Christian might know if they listened, if they sniffed carefully enough. The smell of evil, I thought, must linger on me.

I was 18 when I got my first tattoo. My parents were relieved when I told them that’s all it was. "We thought you were going to tell us you were pregnant, or gay," they said.

I was 19 when a trans woman at a coffee shop told me about how she'd been fired as a substitute teacher from the biggest school district in the state. She didn't pass, so she dressed as a man when working. One day she made the mistake of wearing a women's button-down shirt (with the buttons on the left, not the right), and someone noticed and complained.

I was also 19 when my boyfriend's parents became concerned that he might be gay. (He had gotten his ears pierced and dyed his clipper cut pink while away at college.) As Christians his parents were against premarital sexual activity of any kind, including masturbation or sexual desire, so my bf couldn’t tell them how he knew he wasn’t gay, and for over a year they wouldn’t believe him. His mother bought some books from Family Christian Booksellers, the biggest Christian publisher in the U.S., about how as a Christian she should respond to her child’s queerness.

Throw them out, cut them off, and do everything you can to make sure your child starves and suffers, said the books. (I read them all.) Hunger and homelessness were the goal, they advised, but any misery you could cause was helpful. Turn other relatives against them, don't let them take their belongings when they go, cancel phone contracts and insurance plans.

When your child asks for help because they can't support themselves, you can force them to leave their beloved and drop their friends in exchange for survival, said the books. They will either eventually see that you and God are right and loving, and repent of their sin, or you will catch them lying to you and sneaking around, which is proof that homosexuality and other sins go hand in hand.

One book acknowledged that cutting them off would endanger teenagers and young adults and leave them vulnerable to rape, murder, and human trafficking (though it called being trafficked "prostitution"). But Christian parents acting in the name of God's love would not be responsible for the harm their kids suffered, it said: the children were bringing whatever happened to them on themselves as a natural consequence of living a sinful lifestyle.

In fact, said the book, being attacked or abused could be good for your children: if they suffer enough they may realize it’s their gayness that has caused all their problems and repent of their disgusting unacceptable love and desire.

In the United States, LGBT children represent 40% of homeless youth under 18. "Family conflict" is the number-one cause of LGBT youth homelessness.

I was 22 when the pastor of my boyfriend’s church received news that one of his congregants was engaged in a same-sex affair. Extramarital affairs were very common in his church—three of the deacons were cheating on their wives with other (also married) congregants, and my bf’s parents had been swingers —but this was the first and only time the pastor ever called a church member to the altar, outed him by described his sin to the congregation (c. 350), and demanded the man apologize to everyone and ask their forgiveness. The pastor told him that if he did not apologize he and his wife and children were not welcome to continue attending.

I was 23 when I heard that same pastor’s sermon on avoiding sexual temptation. Give up affection if it causes you to sin, he said. Scoop out your own eyes, cut off your own hand. He instructed men only to hug other men side-along, one arm around their shoulders, lest a real embrace cause them to feel sexual desire for another man. (No mention was made about how women should hug, or that women might ever feel sexual desire at all.)

I remember listening to this pastor's sermon and thinking, I know something about this man that he does not know about himself.

I was 24 when I went with my boyfriend to Pulpit Rock Church, seeking answers from the sermon they advertised on their signboard about sex and sexuality and gender. My boyfriend loved wearing women's clothes. Transgender and cross-dressing were just starting to replace transsexual and transvestite as the accepted terms for the things he might be. Nonbinary and genderqueer were not words we had. He wasn’t sure yet which thing he was; the thing he was was still, for us, unspeakable.

"Men are created to be men and women are created to be women," preached the pastor at Pulpit Rock. "Men and women are different in a way that can't be explained, and they fit together in a relationship in a divine way. A man and a man or a woman and a woman may love each other, but they'll never have the spiritual connection of a godly relationship that a man and a woman can have. We don't have to understand it, but we shouldn't question it, because that’s the way God made it."

Then he talked about how he and his wife could both make French toast (or maybe it was pancakes), but the way his wife made French toast was female somehow--ineffably--because she was a woman, even though the French toast was the same. My bf and I left in the middle of the sermon.

I was 25 when Ted Haggard, best friend of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson (of “Spongebob is teaching our kids it's ok to be gay” controversy) and pal of George W. Bush (the POTUS who pursued, in his own words, "a Crusade" in Iraq with the U.S. military to fight the influence of demons "Gog and Magog[…] at work in the Middle East"), was publicly outed. Male escort and Mike Jones—whom Haggard hired to sell him meth and give him happy-ending massages—recognized ‘Pastor Ted’ as the leader of Colorado Springs evangelical megachurch New Life Church, a nationally famous preacher who denounced the evils of homosexuality from his pulpit, and Jones, a big damn hero, tipped off the press.

I had heard Pastor Ted preach twice. New Life Church was a lot like Heaven in Show Omens in that it had a lot of open space and bright fluorescent lighting and smiling well-groomed people in it, as well as several giant digital screens floating in the air to either side of its dais on which the face of the straight-passing white man bringing his people the word of God was projected as he spoke. This latter feature also resulted in a slight resemblance to a Hitler rally, but there was more medium-stained oak in play than either Hitler or Heaven would find tasteful.

I was 26 when I acted as an informal lettings agent for one of my landlord's other apartments and the young Christian woman living downstairs asked me refuse shelter to any gay or lesbian people because she didn't want to have to live in the same building with them.

When I asked her how I was supposed to know whether someone was gay, she said, “Well you can just tell, can’t you?”

I was 30 when I came out to my Christian parents. Having read the Christian parenting books, I was hugely relieved when they didn't throw me out of their house, where I was living after college (and a few major depressive episodes and two global recessions). I was relieved that they wanted to continue to have a relationship with me at all, in fact.

"I still think it's a sin, though," my mother gently reminded me. My father has refused ever to discuss it at all.

I was 31 when I moved to the UK. I've spent 11 years trying and failing to scrape a living in the Thatcher-hollowed market towns around Manchester, under the fucking Tories, through fucking Brexit, through fucking May and fucking Boris and that weird little cabbage Liz Truss, in order to stay out of Colorado Springs. I can't get medical care on the NHS and I can't work or leave my apartment bc I can't get medical care and I can't heat my apartment in winter on Universal Credit and I’ve been threatened and assaulted by doctors and raped by a nurse and I’ve tried suicide a few times, and I'm in some smallish danger of dying here in Britain's left armpit, but I am not in Colorado fucking Springs today, am I. So that's something at least.

I was 41 and living in the UK for a decade when a homophobe with Christian parents shot up the only gay venue in Colorado Springs, Club Q, murdering 5 people and shooting 19 more. I'd been to Club Q a few times, on dead nights, when I lived in the city. The shooting was 24 years after homophobes tied Matthew Shepard to a fence and left him dying as a warning to the rest of us.

I never told my best friend I was in love with her.

Instead I had anxiety dreams in which my subconscious warned me I wasn't safe. In one dream, Not Yet appeared tattooed on the back of my hand as I looked at a female classmate who was dating another girl. I had to wear gloves to hide the rainbow that had appeared, indelible, on my ring finger.

My first kiss was with a (Christian) boy.

I knew what I felt for my best friend was effervescent and golden and breath-stealing. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, knew I wanted to live with her in a little house in the Pacific Northwest in the mist and the trees and make her coffee with a Turkish press anytime she wanted it and cuddle her on the closed porch and gripe about the wool in her sweater prickling my arms when I hugged her. I knew her eyelashes made her eyes look like they had stars in them and that she had the lushest curves and most perfect skin I had ever seen, and that when she smiled or laughed the shape of her mouth made something in me ache like tuning forks must ache when they're struck and made to sing.

I never told my best friend I was in love with her because I didn't know those were the words for what I was feeling.

Not until years later, after she had left my life. I had been told (frequently) by a Higher Authority that queer love was disgusting and ruinous and sinful and ugly and twisted and inferior, not this perfect fragile thing as soft and trembling-alive as a bird in my hands. Why would I think this was queer love?

I didn't catch the worst of it. I wasn't chained to a bed or forced to drink water from a dog dish, like the foster parents of the gay kid in class did to him. (The school asked him to give a talk to our class so they'd bully him less, so he told us about his life as the teachers looked on. He was 12.) I wasn't sent to conversion therapy like one classmate. I didn't spend most of my childhood in Bible School like other devout Christians' children; my family read the Bible a lot, and prayed together, but my parents weren't regular churchgoers. I was so, so lucky.

It destroyed me anyway.

The thesis of my essay runs thus, fellow ineffables: A happy ending for Crowley and Aziraphale is necessary.

It is necessary not just because Bury Your Gays is an overdone trope and an act of homophobia in the hands of straight writers; not just because Good Omens has been crafted with such loving care in both book and show incarnations to be optimistic, even sunny, against a backdrop of Orwellian, cosmic, and Kafka-esque horror; not just because casting miracles of the magnitude of David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale happen once a generation and it would be a shame and a waste not to write more magic for them to chew on; it is necessary because, in most places here in Shitworld, there are real people having the experience Crowley and Aziraphale are having, and not all of us are able to make happy endings for ourselves.

We don't have ethereal/occult powers or authorial control, so we need stories to show us how to love and when to fight and why to fucking bother. And the harder those things are to see in this world, the more we need those stories. And the more we need people with influence and audience and privilege telling them, not just all us little Tumblr rats and AO3 and Pillowfort perverts.

Crowley and Aziraphale exist in a fascist universe run by the ultimate Authoritarian—not Big Brother, but Big Father. There is nowhere for them to go, not even their own minds, where it is safe for them to love each other openly. I am completely prepared to believe someone in those circumstances could go 6,000 years without realizing the love they feel for their best friend is the kissing kind of love. I know someone can go a whole lifetime without saying it.

The hosts of Heaven and Hell will take away even the words for love when they can. We need people who don't just wield words but the power of the word spreading the message "There is a way to make this work. There is a way to exist. You can make a new world."

Mr Gaiman, I know from reading some of your other work that a big part of your whole Deal as a writer is an ongoing enthusiasm for the immense, even mystical, power stories have to shape individual and shared realities—sometimes to doom people and lock them into a destiny, but as often to let them escape their fate by imagining and conceiving a new way of living, or of living with each other, where none was possible before.

Hate and hope are the result of the stories we tell each other--I know you know this because I know you know that in saying it I am referencing a story you wrote. Like the hate, that hope only exists if an author says it does. And real people’s hearts, real people’s lives, are made and broken by listening to the wrong stories or hearing the right ones.

Crowley and Aziraphale are your characters, and Good Omens is your story to tell. You have written a setup in which, if you want these characters to be able to love each other, you (they) will have to create a world where that is possible. Please write us a romance. Please put enough sweet in with the bitter that we can survive it.

We have such faith in you because you have shown your readers and your audiences that you deserve that faith. Please choose your phrases wisely. ❤️

#good omens #good omens 2 #human rights #Colorado Springs #lgbtq #writing #religion #christianity #aziracrow #aziraphale x crowley #neil gaiman #stories #ineffable husbands #good omens s2 #trauma #mental illness #tmi #say your right words the goblins said

[kiyaar]

Re your locked-in-the-dungeon idea:

1. I love it, just reading the options hurt me *chef's kiss*

2. I'm genuinely curious: do you apply this level of without-hope-angst to all fandoms/ships/relationships that you like, or is stevetony a ship that inspires you especially this brand of actually-no-win-scenario?

Sincerely,

Someone who considered themselves a seasoned angst lover and then started to read your fic...and quicky understood that they were just scraping the surface.

Never change!! :))

I am so glad. this is from an actual WIP, but I'm away from my comp right now, so I'll post you a snip later. 2. yes. I think I've always been this way. I am always craving a more extreme emotional experience in my media than what is readily available. if I am seeking out fanworks, I am looking for the dark. I credit this tendency to a.) an authoritarian upbringing and b.) neurodevelopmental trauma. now, though, as an adult, I'm just a garden variety multiply disabled person trapped in a body of daily horrors, so I am literally always accumulating fucked up medical and physical experiences to put in my lil writing grist mill. I like to see it pressed into a meat form that's consumable. (you're reminding me that I talked about some of this, and darkfic more generally, on an episode of @podonthesuit.) I wrote this original novel length space opera as a kid. did it on appleworks at the library. and it was full of torture and betrayal and abuse. I was very proud. I then wrote (fannish) keelhauling fic when I was ten and I went to the library! and I researched it! and I was so happy. it just made my fucked up tender little heart light up. so. #bornthisway, I guess. there is, too, a reason I latched on to 616 stevetony like a cold-water leech sensing warm, pulsing blood. the angst potential is enormous, and compressed, and exists in equal measure with the emotional highs - love, trust, long friendship, earned ride-or-die moments - and that makes it hit 10000 times harder. you do not have to go very far to walk into the angst face first in comics. and I like to write canon-compliant fic, or AU but heavily-conversant-with-canon fic, so this is the natural place for me. so much raw material. an angst-monger's dream of a strip mine. free angst to anyone who will handle it gently and work with it. or lick it straight from the ground.

#thanks for asking about my dark little heart #anon #i really do like talking about this because i think it's important in this time of facism and censorship to be unshamed of consuming art #i make fucked up art #i consume fucked up art #it's niche but it's where i live #ki replies

[somer-writes]

Through what medium do you primarily write? (Pencil, computer, voice to type, old timer typewriter, what?)

ya boi is a computer girlie 💕 i hand write when i am desperate and need creative relief (usually while traveling). i need to start keeping a pocket notebook to write down the weird ideas i get in the middle of the day and promptly forget.

i would LOVE a typewriter but i make dumb mistakes and also the ease of uploading work directly to platforms is very nice. plus you cant mail manuscripts to most publishing houses any longer and i dont own a scanner.

i have seen those dedicated word processor doodads. the “e typewriters” which are cool and also stupid expensive???

for writing software i do my non serious work in gdocs. I’ve saved everything I’ve ever written since 2011 and it’s sitting in my drive rn. i used to use to word but once my license was up i moved to gdocs exclusively. despite having a MacBook i despise the AppleWorks suite so i don’t use pages. for my more serious projects i use scrivener and am still learning how to use scrivener. its good for trad formatting and moving stuff around easily just annoying to figure out bc its not all that intuitive. I’ve tried plottr in the past and it wasn’t for me and ive used campfire as well but ended up gifting my license to a dm friend of mine since it’s more equipped for that.

If you want a good free writing software i highly recommend pagefour. It’s based on Ms word 2013 and uses open office. its very similar to scrivener,

#writing software #scrivener #i only got it bc a nanowrimo discount #Pretty nice but i suggest getting it through the discount rather than full price #I haven’t used any of the subscription based ones except plottr #I’m a pantser tho so shrug

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Only realised recently I was unambiguously in the right when I told other students in 7th grade to use TextEdit in place of Appleworks (apples shitty overengineered proprietary Microsoft office knockoff) for in class writing assignments even tho the teacher got angry with me about it

[heedra]

i didn't really use the computer much at all (aside from cd-roms) until middle school and didn't have a personal computer or unlimited internet time until a year or so into high school so i definitely feel like my relationship with the internet is slightly different than a lot of other ppl from my age group. my preteen/early teen computer experience was:

-neopets

-nanosaur

-yahoo flash games

-using using the lasso tool and paint bucket to frankenstein together clipart chimera beasts in the Appleworks word processor program (not even the actual paint program)

-browsing deviantart for fanart of naruto and pictures of werewolves to download to the shared family desktop computer's storage

-roleplaying as envy from fma (on neopets)

[krjpalmer]

MacAddict November 1999

This issue’s cover story talked up inexpensive alternatives to big-name (and big-ticket) applications, alluding to the CD-ROM included with the magazine as a source for shareware. There was also some coverage inside of AppleWorks, the new name for the integrated software formerly known as ClarisWorks (regardless of what old Apple II users might have made of their own integrated software’s name being reused...)

#computer magazine cover #macaddict #power mac g4 #cd-rom

[d-issent]

So all of my old artwork of my Railway Kitties © are .cwk files and I'm fighting tooth and fucking nail to get them to open, since appleworks doesn't exist anymore. If I manage to get them to open, I'll let you guys know.

[lcd-101]

I painted along with Bob Ross in AppleWorks 6.

#iMac G3

[morgenlich]

apple's inability to create and stick to a word processor is honestly really funny to me

#brought to you by someone whose first real computer classes used appleworks lmao

[howdoyoufeelaboutmakingthesong]

How Lauren Martin Sees Music

Visual Thinking with Lauren Martin

From painting to singing to illustration to textiles to keyboards, and on!

Today we will take a closer look at a *key* member of Frankie Cosmos, Lauren Martin. That's right, she started out designing our t-shirts, and ended up as a bandmate playing keyboards, singing harmonies, and even some 2nd guitar!

Lauren and I originally met in MIDDLE SCHOOL when Lauren formed a band with my brother! I inserted myself into their friendship as annoying little sisters tend to do, and eventually she and I started playing music together too. We had a band which performed one "show" in Eliza's backyard for 3 of our friends, but we were both very shy performers.

Lauren ended up pursuing textile design, and was the obvious choice when it came to designing and printing the first ever Frankie Cosmos merch. She screen printed everything by hand in my parents kitchen, and we laid all the shirts out to dry on the ground (as pictured above). She filled in for some shows sporadically while in college, and when she finished school in 2016, she officially joined the touring band as our keyboard player.

[Close It Quietly Album Art Time Lapse]

Lauren continues to design merch for FC, and has found her own audience for her illustrations and design work. She sells her own prints, apparel, and more on her website, and posts lots of fun drawings on her instagram.

Q & A with Lauren Martin

How did you first find yourself playing music and performing?

I never intended to perform but always found myself performing anyway - usually because I’d be playing music with other people and they would encourage me (/drag me along) for the live element. I have really bad stage fright, performance goes against my nature. But because I keep ending up doing it, it’s clearly something that’s important to me in some way…even though it feels in conflict with who I am.

My first instrument was flute in elementary school. But my first ever musical performance was a cello recital in middle school (to an audience of parents). After that I was in my high school’s all girl rock band. I played rhythm guitar. I remember we played One Way Or Another by Blondie. I was also in the school chorus, we would perform for elderly people at retirement homes. I performed a surprising amount considering how shy I was.

During the pandemic, your illustration work really took off. With visual art being full time for you now, and touring still on hold, does playing music feel different for you?

I think having one part of myself that was really important (being a visual artist) — having that dream fulfilled in a way, makes playing music feel better. It feels like I’m not missing out on one half of myself energetically. Finding an outlet that allows me to be more wholly myself, it makes me feel more creative as a musician than I did before.  After years of having a very regimented relationship with visual art during and after art school, during the pandemic I’ve unlocked a new side of myself creatively, and established my own style as a visual artist, and a musician. Recently I’ve felt a lot more confident in sharing my musical ideas.

You're a huge part of the aesthetic of Frankie Cosmos as a grown-up band, and took FC from my janky AppleWorks 6 creations to the legitimate poster designs, cute merch, and album art we have now. Has music always encompassed a visual element for you?

I have always been inspired by album art, and intrigued by the branding that goes along with a band. Not to say that it informs anything about the music - but I do think there’s a visual element of a band that has always been intriguing to me on the same level as sneaker logos or car logos. I like simplicity and impactfulness in graphic design. And I think music and design overlap a lot. I would never claim to have synesthesia, but I do think if you asked me to paint a song I could do that. Not being a trained musician and not having the standard language to describe what I mean when it comes to music, allowed me to create my own visual language about music.

I’m realizing now, the bands that were really influential to me as a kid, like the first albums I bought, were Gorillaz, who were cartoon characters to me, and The White Stripes, who were also cartoon characters to me.

Before you got into textile design and graphics, you were mostly painting in a renaissance style, and at one point considered studying painting restoration. How did you find your various styles over the years and how have your artistic inclinations changed?

In a weird way, I would say my artistic inclinations haven’t changed that much, it’s more just the subject matter and the medium have changed a lot. I’ve always loved depicting reality as I see it. My portraits were never “accurate” to life, they were accurate to my imagination. And now, I’ll draw a still life of something I made up. I like creating my own reality. Growing up, I was really inspired by old paintings because I would go to The Met every weekend, and I loved seeing the Hans Holbein paintings and Giotto, because I just loved that it looked like a fucked up version of reality. It’s not photorealism, it looks like what you would close your eyes and picture a person to look like. I love the way art can look like a painting of the inside of an artist’s brain.

[Banana Split Poster]

Can you compare your experiences in analog and digital art?

I love both, but I tend to gravitate toward digital mediums. As a perfectionist, I love the idea of being able to do things over and over in order to get it exactly how I want. I used to work in oil paints but I would get really frustrated with myself when it wasn’t going right, because I felt I couldn’t start over. It would probably be good for me to try it again, because I don’t necessarily want to lean into my perfectionism forever. But it was really freeing for me to start working digitally, because I can do it an infinite number of times, I can get it exactly the way I see it in my head. Also, in terms of material used…when I was making physical art, I was surrounded by so many canvases and pieces of paper…I really like sparseness and neatness in my space, so having everything I’ve ever made in a pile doesn’t work for me.

What about your sewing and physical textile work? How does that compare to your other art forms?

Music and drawing feel in a way like luxuries, whereas sewing my clothes (and cooking) feel like practical ways to use my creativity.  Those are more purely joyous outlets for me. My art is work, music is work, but sewing and knitting is truly just for myself. I don’t do it as much as I used to, but I always like to have a chunk of my wardrobe be handmade. I get to turn my brain off and just follow a pattern, do this repetitive motion.

What inspires you recently?

I’m inspired right now by exercising. My latest hobby is playing tennis. Growing up, sports were extremely important to me, I wanted to be a professional soccer player. At a certain point I felt like I had to choose between being creative or athletic. I’m recently getting excited about being physically strong again.

[Love Love Tennis Club T-Shirt]

[Stay Sunny Tie-Dye T-Shirt]

Click Here for Lauren’s Website

#indie music #graphic design #frankie cosmos #diy #new york #visual art #merch #illustration

[icepixie]

tagged by @sarnakhwritesthings:

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? Dnd campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!

My WIP folder goes back to 1996. We're talking 300+ files here. Some of them are so old I don't even have the software to open them anymore, but they keep coming with me from computer to computer, little mementos that I don't really think about, that stay in storage, but that I can't bear to throw away.

So imma put some limits on this. The file modified date has to be 2010 or later, and it has to have more than 300 words. (I have a large number of Word/AppleWorks/TextEdit/FUCKING CLARISWORKS files that are basically a few lines of dialogue or a 25-word vibe description, so they don't count.) I'll asterisk the ones that I think I might actually finish at some point.

I'm also going to divide by fandom, because my WIP file names are on the not terribly descriptive end of the spectrum.

Babylon 5 baseball cooking 3* head heart hands hurt comfort russia*

Body of Proof mom thanksgiving

Bones socks

Castle 1930s

Corner Gas applications in quantum mechanics* fakeout

Due South post COTW ten dance undercover marriage

Figure skating RPF (shame, shame) grandmother*

Grace and Frankie we should get married

Northern Exposure feather past tense* sleeping beauty

X-Files bored

I don't think I have as many mutuals as I have fics, so if you're seeing this consider yourself tagged.

#babylon 5 #body of proof #bones #castle #corner gas #due south #grace and frankie #northern exposure #x files #fanfic #fic ramblings

[kiyaar]

Several years ago (I’ve been following you for a very long time lol), you mentioned that you loved Burn Notice and that you had written some fics for it that were saved on some floppy disks. Were you ever able to extract the stories from there? I’m in desperate need of angsty Michael torture fanfics, and you write the best angst <3 Unfortunately, it’s such a small fandom! I’m still so amazed that I found another person on here that loves the show as much as I do!

Yes! Yes. God, I love burn notice. I wish I could make everyone watch it. It is so, so fucking good when it finds its legs, which it does, quickly. I do have the floppies, but I'm more and more convinced that the burn notice fic is actually lost because I don't know why I would have still been using floppies in 2007. I don't have a reader, I look for them when I go to goodwill. I'm not actually sure what I would do if I got onto them...everything on them was written in Appleworks or Clarisworks. Maybe some plaintext if I'm lucky.

If you wait for the next time I need to rewatch a comfort show and you see me posting about a Burn Notice rewatch, poke me. I bet I will be moved to write some Michael torture. (I cannot confirm or deny this, but. There is a v slim chance that there's some baby kiyaar burn notice fic floating around on the internet somewhere, though, like on wayback - I definitely posted it ff.net back in the day. I was not yet named kiyaar, but it might be out there. I'm pretty sure ff.net took it down in the 2012 purge because when I search 'xxtrustno1xx' on ff.net there are no author results. RIP me.)

#burn notice #i fucking love burn notice #anon #i almost got bruce campbell to sign my dvds but the event was cancelled right after covid started #ki replies

[chroniclecloud]

Importance of Educational Technology in Ed-Tech Industry

Educational technology plays a crucial role in today’s education industry. It provides a fun and engaging learning experience for students, which helps them stay motivated and excited about their studies. Additionally, it fosters collaboration and communication among students and teachers, allowing for increased interaction and engagement in the classroom. Furthermore, the use of educational technology has become essential for teachers because of its importance in today's education industry. The technological advances made over the years have impacted every aspect of education, from online learning to virtual classrooms  For managing classroom tasks and using engaging content- Evidence suggests that technology-savvy teachers are more productive and maintain compelling learning outcomes by using technology to power their classrooms. Many may think technology is a distraction, but evidence suggests it encourages active participation in the school. Using devices like a computer, tablet, or other types of technology in the classroom help turn traditionally dull subjects into interactive and fun activities. One of the teachers in our school avoided using technology. But she was delighted when she learned to use Appleworks templates, make PowerPoint presentations, and use multimedia in the classroom. She admitted that technology increased her efficiency and that her relationship with students changed positively.