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Pretty much all I have done for the past three days, reading through my blog, is have a nervous breakdown over my future career. But I can't do any more until Monday anyway, so today you are going to get ALL THE IMAGE POSTS.

Starting with origami from the past two weeks, which I have neglected shamefully. I haven't done many actual diagrams, but I've kept myself busy. I did a drinking bird that I could not figure out how to make drink:

A "proud rooster" to which I apparently lost the diagram:

And a two-sided basket, which I think is my favourite from the whole month.

The rest of the time I was busy using up old spare paper, making cranes to send to OrigamiUSA, which will be handing out Cranes For Peace at 9/11 Tribute Centers throughout 2012.

COMING UP: A photo post and a Cheaper World. Stay tuned...

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I warned you we would be coming to...

( A Cheaper World. )

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FRIDAY PHOTO POST

FOLLOWING ALL OTHER PHOTO POSTS TODAY...which I am cleverly using as a way of distracting myself from stress, sorry my neurosis got all over your friendslists.

Yeah so. Icons! Teasers here, the rest beneath the cut. Please feel free to use and alter as you see fit; credit is nice but not required.



( ICONZ. )

And now, photos!

A while back when I posted about not buying an encyclopedia of Sherlock Holmes, people wanted to know why; fortunately I took a picture that shows just how boring it would have been.

PEDWAY TRIPPING. I would like a radio prize! (I have no idea what the hell that was about, it was down a dead-end corridor in the northeast pedway.) Also, I thought the Pedway Metra Station was just a station. Nope, it's a whole underground retail community.

I just really like the South Shore Line's logo, and it looks oddly apt next to the Pedway Compass. The station itself is large and creepy. Bear in mind, at this point, we are still directly underneath one of the busiest areas of downtown Chicago.

Beyond the station, in the entry foyer to the parking garage, are a couple of tripped out but ultimately pretty awesome murals. This one is my favourite. The parking garage itself -- or rather the SERIES OF FIVE underneath Millennium Park -- reminds you of where you parked by assigning your area a famous landmark in the city, and plastering the area with disc-shaped logos of that landmark. I kind of adore the Baboon Disc.

I found this -- well, I say found, it's not like it was hiding -- coming up from a Pedwaytrip. This is a huge building in downtown Chicago with a giant mural on it I had never seen before. I don't know what the hell is going on in the mural, but it's very impressive.

Enough Pedway. How about an owl who's been REALLY CRANKY since 1857?

I went to the Art Institute two weeks ago, exploring some areas I hadn't before in search of the Painted Tambourine. (See what I mean about how frustrating that must have been?) I also found some other awesome art:

-- Cupid Chastised by Bartolomeo Manfredi, or as I like to call it, "Bondagey Threesome Wingfic"

-- Adam and Eve by Cranach the Elder, which I am sharing with you not because it's particularly unique (it was a favourite theme of his) but because for some inexplicable reason, Eve has a pet elk.

-- This is a monkey in period French costume conducting a symphony of other monkeys. I can't explain to you why.

-- When the Chicago Stock Exchange building was demolished, two things were saved and installed at the Art Institute Museum: the trading floor, and some kind of Entry Arch, which now sits outside the museum at the northeast corner of the block. It's pretty awesome, except it's surrounded by barriers and plants so you can't actually get a good look at it.

And those are the photos what I have taken in the past two weeks. Possibly three. Time and me don't get on that well.

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I finished Imperial Bedrooms this afternoon. Like its mirror-twin from twenty-five years earlier, Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms is an incredibly quick read. The two books are Ellis's fastest; The Informers might be shorter -- I haven't done any kind of measure -- but it's much more (possibly needlessly) complicated, and takes a lot longer to read.

( Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis. )

Final Verdict: Well, it isn't his best work, but it's better (and shorter) than his worst. I think it's a compelling, disturbing follow-up to Less Than Zero; at least before this you could pretend they got happy endings.

Now that I've read all of Ellis's work, at least all the novels -- there are a ton of interviews and magazine article and all -- I'm working on a sort of comprehensive "My Thoughts On The World" essay, which I don't expect will be terribly coherent but should at least be interesting.