The Paranoid Armchair Astronaut

"You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other."

— Carl Sagan

The Pseudointellectual Psychonaut

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. 

Out on the edge, you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The Sensible Musician Dude

"Man cannot endure his own littleness

 unless he can translate it into meaningfulness

 on the largest possible level."

— Ernest Becker

Thoughtbook: Brain Farts

Tiny pocket notebooks but a bit chunky. They measure 82 x 62mm and contain 160 pages of awesome blank paper! The perfect size for writing down random brain farts that could be ridiculous or brilliant. You definitely need to bring one the next time you go on a trip.

Thoughtbookmarks

The idea for the bookmark was to take a nice memorable first line off an awesome book, type it in a strip of muslin cloth, fasten the ends of the fabric with metal clasps and attach a charm and a feather. Tadaaa!

But then I made one that didn't follow that rule. The Hunter S. Thompson quote was just too good, I had to make a bookmark for it.

"I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man." 

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

"All this happened, more or less." 

- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

"If I am out of my mind, it's alright with me." 

- Saul Bellow, Herzog

"It was like so, but wasn't." 

- Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2

"The real people wanted no part of me." 

- Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

Thoughtbooks: Doodle

When I started photographing the notebooks for my Etsy shop, it started to become even more fun. I could almost imagine what kind of people the probable buyers are and started using props I found lying around my craft room to give the notebooks the personality of their imagined owners. I wish you could hear me squeak.

Things you make me write and doodle. I see a sex-deprived female in her mid-20's who is still coping with a tragic break-up from a long-term relationship. She probably likes eating donuts and listening to ovulation-triggering indie rock songs. No one calls her on the phone because everyone knows she gets panic attacks. She's sweet but sad and maybe if we take a quick peek of her notebook, we'd see gory doodles and drawings of her ex-boyfriend's penis in all the glory of mutilation.

Words you will never read. Probably a confused female university student who reads too much novels authored by iconic feminists. She is in love with her room mate, an opinionated smart chick who is a huge Virginia Woolf fan. She'd probably doodle stuff in this notebook to dissipate the sexual tension while her room mate does a monologue on abortion while getting dressed.

Everything I could never tell you. Think of a female Dexter. This could be a pocket scrapbook of penis foreskins of serial rapists she has slain.

Wow. I hope my sense of humor did not disturb you. I actually imagined less brutal personalities but they would sound gay if I actually typed them out. I like my alternative belles better.

Cosmic Oneness

This is the second set of notebooks I gave as gifts to friends but the first set of quotes. The first set of notebooks I gave away you can find on the previous post in the first photo - they were personalized descriptive texts of how I perceived my friends.

This bunch, on the other hand, had quotes from Richard P. Feynman, Carl Sagan, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Cesare Pavese, and Albert Camus and gave them accordingly to friends who triggered specific emotions or mental states that were perfectly articulated by the quotes.

A lot of love and thought were put into each of the covers of these notebooks.

The Random Encounters of One Awkward Island Warrior Princess

This is the first notebook I made. For myself of course. And, yep, the awkward island warrior princess is me. It's a long story I don't want to go into. Anyways, it's not that interesting.

The whole typewriting on muslin cloth originated from a green clothing line I created a year ago. I called it Wearcyclables. I made 8 dresses and 4 tops to get the line going but then I couldn't part with the clothes so I ended up not selling them. Now, they're somewhere in the junk that is called my closet.

Thing is I get these hypomanic episodes of creativity where I get epiphanies of starting something that I end up not pursuing after I've proven to myself that I could translate the ideas into tangible things.

I've always likes doing things with my hands. The satisfaction that comes from the process of creating gets me by/off (whichever you think is appropriate). I never really create to make money. Selling these notebooks is another way to test myself of some issues I'm trying to come to terms with. Yeah, I got lots of issues. I'm retarded. That's another reason why I like to waste time making stuff, it's a form of therapy.