Entrepreneurs

Yesterday I went to a Entrepreneurs conference....That doesn't sound like the kind of thing I would do does it? but I did it because:

•  I was invited by a friend who I assumed would be coming but actually didn't go,
•  I didn't have much else to do. 
• There was a speaker who had access to a lazer.
•  It was free and you got a free drink.
•  I think I could be an entrepreneur if I wanted to, I just probably don't want to.

There were lots of speakers from different organisations, mainly ones to do with helping people start new businesses. The first thing the first speaker said was that entrepreneurs are a different breed of person, they work harder than the average 9 to 5 worker, and their job is their life.  Well if that's the case I want to be the opposite of an entrepreneur e.g someone who works less hard than a 9 to 5 person, where there's more to life than my job.

I've always wondered about that Dolly Parton song 'working 9 till 5.' What is she trying to say? Is she complaining? because I think they are actually very reasonable working hours. My husband works 8.30 till 5 with a total of 3 hours commuting each day, and only half an hour for lunch, and he hasn't written a moaning song about it.

So anyway this woman talked for half an hour about how they help people become entrepreneurs and in that time she said the word 'entrepreneur' about 5000 times.

She also said 'our website is literally www. entrepreneurcountry.com' I'm so glad she didn't tell us that metaphorically or I might not have been able to work it out.

At the end there was a question time and I asked how they made their money....she didn't enjoy answering that one but the man sitting next to me said 'good question'

The man sitting next to me had a handle bar moustache and when I asked him what he did he said he was working on getting the internet off laptops and phones and into the 'real world.' I asked for an example, and he said he has a bubble machine in his workplace and when you tweet his work twitter account bubbles come out. How very useful. He has also invented a chicken feeder that emails the owner when it's getting empty....Frigging look outside your window you lazy chicken keepers!! I'm a great believer in keeping the internet inside a box that isn't constantly accessible. Theres nothing you can do with an ipad that you can't do better with paper and pencils. Like wouldn't you totally have prefered it if you had received this blog post by hand written postcard? I would have done little doodles of unimpressed chickens and everything.

Anyway the man with the lazer said I could come to a 'making day' in his shared studio space thing and I can see the lazer and the 3D printer and stuff. I thought all printers were 3D or else how could you put paper inside them? but it turns out this printer can print 3D things.

Art, Kids and Comedy

Art, Kids and Comedy are some of my favourite things which is lucky because I teach art to kids and I am a amateur comedian. I've just given myself the amateur comedian title right now on account of the fact I have preformed comedy 6 times and I have 2 more times on the pipeline.

Kids are great, the reason is because they say funny things all the time without knowing it. Which means as a amateur comedian, you can just use the stuff they say as material, and they probably won't try and sue you. I can't wait till I have my own kids who will obviously be hilarious the whole time, and this hilarity will make our whole family rich an famous, as we tour the world in our magnificent sparkly comedy tour bus.

Last week I was teaching kids about colour mixing and I was saying how blue is a primary colour which means you can't make it you have to buy it. A kid said 'the people in the shop must know how to make it though' as if I'd just forgotten how you mix blue. I really wish I knew how they did make blue paint. I guess I could google it, but then there would be no mystery left in the world.

This week in art we have been learning about portraits, I made a PowerPoint of some famous ones from the Mona Lisa in 1503 to a portrait of the Queen by Lucian Freud in 2001. So far I have showed this PowerPoint to 3 classes of 7 to 9 year olds, and they're reactions have been very simular: Frida Kahlo's 1938 self portrait is hilarious...well she does have a mono-brow.

But the majority of the discussion was about Andy Warhols 1962 Marilyn Monroe print.

The comment made by two children in two different classes was 'I've seen this at Pontins'. When I told them that the Marilyn picture wasn't even a painting and he didn't even do it himself they were outraged and chanted 'cheater' 'cheater'. Then a kid asked why Lucian Freud had painted the queen with a crumpled face.

I have been making my own art recently... or rather I have been mocking video art through the medium of video art. Is it art? is it comedy? is it film-making at it's finest? Or is it a mental woman hoovering the face of her husband? Who can tell.  I hope it wins the Tunner prize and a Baffta, and some kind of comedy award.

http://youtu.be/n8tkFcf3VaQ

Things that have happened.

I haven't blogged for a while but here are some things that have been happening.

1) I finally finished my outdoor mural, so I no longer have to wear 1000 layers of wool all of them covered in paint. whoop!

2)  My old housemate from 4 houses ago came to stay. 4 houses ago was my favorite house followed by 2 houses ago I quite enjoyed that. Although my current housemate is pretty special. My x housemate's name is Josh and instead of arriving at our house by bus or car like a normal person, he turned up while I was shopping in Asda having hitched hiked from kendel. I took him to one of my favorite places 'the crocky trail' which is like a playground where it is socially acceptable for grown ups to go. It turns out we are doing a fairly simular trip in the summer although he will be doing it on no budget e.g he actually eats out of bins and sleeps in doorways sometimes. We're planning to meet up in Istanbul.

3) Check out my new homemade notice board, It's got pockets to put pens in and everything! Two pockets are made from a long denim skirt that I used to wear in sixth form before someone told me I looked like a christian, one pocket is from another pair of jeans with holes in and the other pocket is from the first skirt I ever bought when I was 11.

4) I cycled 29 miles in one go! unless you count when I bought chocolate in a corner shop half way, which I don't count. It took 3 hours. On our summer trip Dan wanted us to be able to cycle 60 miles a day, so this was a bit of training. I have concluded that with a proper long break after 30 miles I could probably do 60 miles but it wouldn't be a very holiday like holiday so we probably won't do 60 miles most days. If you want to follow what is going on with our trip which will begin on 30th July you should go to twitter and find @hananddango2q8. If I was more technical and less lazy I'd put in a proper link.

5) Today I showed some year 5s this poster as I am teaching world war 2 through art.

I asked them why you shouldn't dress extravagantly and one child said "because if you wear fancy bright clothes the germans will see you from the air and bomb you" -That made my day.

6) I recently dreamt that this is what people wear in Turkey. I hope it's not true.

7) I went to a Zumber class! shocking I know. I was the kid who when asked by a P.E teacher the rhetorical question "Would you rather play soft ball or pick litter?" answered "pick litter" But who can resist the charms of Danni Mcguiness, who is a newly qualified Zumber instructor.

Morbidly Jolly

Last night I dreamt that I had a pet baby gorilla with florescent green eyes, but unfortunately my adorable pet suffered from obesity. He was 'Morbidly Jolly' - my new way of describing really fat people or gorillas (not to their faces obviously gorillas are very sensitive about such things.) My other new phrase of the moment is 'That's insanity gone mad!'

Back to the gorilla who was male but nameless, it's hard to describe the mixed emotions I felt. I loved this gorilla with it's florescent eyes unconditionally, but we both needed to admit he had a problem, he was still totally adorable in my eyes but he needed help, and he was just beginning to realise that for himself. He'd actually agree to let me weigh him so that was a positive first step on his long road to recovery. That's really all I can remember of the dream.

In real life news I have been working on a outdoor school mural. It's been pretty hard work in the wind and rain and cold temperatures. Today I met the head teacher for the first time who said 'it looks great, but you couldn't have picked worse weather' to which I wanted to reply 'this is normal weather for the time of year....YOU couldn't have picked a worse month to commission an outdoor mural!'

It's all good though, the dinner ladies are mothering me with cups of tea, and there's only one day left till it will be finished.

I've posted a few photos of the progress of the mural on twitter etc but here's a photo of the messy mingy mangle of masking tape leaves and paint.

P.s I just texted my husband and mentioned that I was writing my blog and he said 'say hi to the internet from me' so 'hi'

Angel Hair

I normally think spooky paranormal stories are a load of *insert rude word here* and I think I still do. But here is a spooky paranormal thing that has happened to me and Dan recently:

One day a few months ago I was in a grumpy mood, I can't remember why, I think we were off out somewhere and Dan was trying to de-stress me before leaving. He was being lovely I'm sure, but I was still grumpy until we spotted something very unusual as he was getting changed. About 5mm from Dan's nipple was a very long straight white hair it was at least 10cm maybe 20cm long! Dan was more than a little surprised when I pointed it out, he said things like 'what's that?!' and 'it's not attached' however when I pulled it he said 'OWWW!' and my detective skills lead me to believe that this meant it was attached, (that and the gift of sight.) But how could a hair grow that long without being noticed? and why was it white? These are the mysterious big questions of life that remain unanswered. We had a good laugh about the whole thing and it really did put me in a much better mood. Dan even suggested that God sent the hair to cheer me up. This hair has since become know as 'Angel Hair'

Fast forward to last week, and as we're getting into bed Dan tells me that he found and removed another angel hair. I wished he'd let me see it, there aren't many pleasures in life better than seeing long white hairs on your partners nipple right? Dan says 'Maybe God has sent it coz he knows we needed another laugh.' and I say 'well you shouldn't have ripped it out then, you need to save it for our next argument.' THE VERY NEXT NIGHT.... we have a (I'm not going to say argument) we have a healthy solution-focused-conflict, when it's all sorted we go to bed and SUDDENLY I remember the angel hair. 'It was sent for this moment' I say. *cue spooky music*

If that story does not prove the existence of God and angels then I don't know what does.


p.s if you don't know me well, you might think that that last statement was genuine, and I would like to state for the record that although I do believe in God, it has nothing to do with my husbands nipples. Maybe science can explain that one.

I Love My Skin

a poem by Hannah Jones.

I love my Skin,
 it keeps me in,
if there was nowt,
my guts would fall out,
I'd be no fun to cuddle,
as bones and a puddle,
I'm so glad I'm not goo,
coz I want to hug you. x

Berlin

After having a bit of a rubbish summer holiday, we decided to go for a little winter holiday in the lovely city of Berlin. Except we didn't really stay in the lovely bit, we stayed in the red light district. It's the first time Dan had ever seen a prostitute before- aww bless. I've seen about 60, maybe 5 or so in Liverpool and about 55 on my uni trip to Amsterdam. It was all fine though, we didn't feel unsafe or anything, there were just quite a few women who were waiting around on street corners wearing inappropriate footwear for the weather conditions. On the first night after Dan had got over the shock of seeing one, he started using them as landmarks to remember the way back to our hotel, you know like "turn right when you reach the one with the red boots"

One of the best bits of our trip was going to the zoo, we saw a baby elephant, Orang-utans and leopards having "married time" Here is a video of he orang-utans where we have done a voice over of what we think they're saying. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx9a7HqrWio&feature=share&list=UUJpCd0Tly9_aPHQd6MOjmhQ

We went to the savador dali museum and saw what looked like his GCSE work but none of the good famous stuff. I hope one day I'll be famous enough that people will pay to see all the rubbish art I did in school that's under my bed. One of the painting had even been folded in half and then unfolded and put in a frame. I personally think if Salvador himself values that piece so little that he would fold it, then it's not worth framing.

we also went on a cool graffiti art tour and saw stuff like this:

It's a man, made up of men, eating a man, and it was painted in response to the secret police.

I know we're cool and cultured right? except for straight after that Dan ruined our cool and cultured image by going to a takeaway and ordering a pea calzone. and he hates peas.

I will leave you we some of our german made up words:

snugerzkinenkoff

peldontingenburg

shooflesteinencrow

its fun to just say them around germans and see their reactions.