Tomorrow, January 18, this website, along with (hopefully) millions of others, will go black for 12 hours tomorrow to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (also known as HR 3261).

Maybe online piracy is a huge problem. But this bill is just another attempt to make an end-run around Net Neutrality, the principal that the Internet should be a free-wheeling place where ideas can be exchanged, whether within or without the reach of corporations or governments.

Because the bill is not clear enough about what exactly is and isn’t legal. Or what is and isn’t to be considered part of one’s First Amendment right to free speech. So it should not pass.

So enjoy January 18, which promise to be a day with many fewer distractions than most 21st century days. Or call your Congressperson, and ask them to look something up on Wikipedia.

Also, check back here tomorrow after it’s all over and see if there isn’t a magical new post that just may happen to appear magically…

This is the Captain at his weird and wonderful best, with the greatest freak band of all time.

I don’t have a Crush Object for sale like I would like to, because my wrist still is causing me all kinds of making-things problems and ruining my life and plans. But I have an appointment with the rheumatologist on Thursday. So stay tuned. Needless to say, it will be freaky. In the best possible way!

I made the star on top myself from cardboard, silver paint and paillettes and craft glue. It attaches with a clever cardboard loop on the back.

Here you see all the elements of the 2011 Yule Bush: velvet oranges, paper mache moons and stars, crochet flower pins with ribbon strung through them to make them ornamental, garlands made from origami cranes strung like popcorn and a golden cowbell:

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Pillows made form recycled Tshirts stuffed with soft, durable, unnoisy dry cleaning bags. 100% upcycled, now available quite cheap in the TuraLura Shop:

Found Superman. ‘Nuff said.

SOLD.

Mudflap girl reads the S.C.U.M. Manifesto.

SOLD.

90s Filth anti-aircraft gun.

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Cliff Chiang superhero pillow.

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Meet Satan Claus. Or rather, understand him. You know you’ve met him before.

Call it a Jewish girl’s Christmas cynicism, but frankly Santa and Satan have a lot in common. Fond of the color red. Inciting envy and stirring up temptations and lusts and whatnot. And Santa does all of this on Jesus’ birthday! Stealing the spotlight from the baby Jesus- how much more satanic can an entity be?

To read up further on the Santa-Satan connection, check out Jeffrey Vallance’s “Santa Is A Wldman” article from the LA Weekly, and I think my point is clear.

Sadly, I do not have any Satan Clauses to sell this year, because my wrist is hurt and I can’t work with clay. If you love Satan Claus and can’t live without him, email me at whatitis[at]turalura[dot]com and I will try and make one for you as soon as possible. It just won’t be before Christmas.

He is 100% handmade except for his belt buckle. His face, hands, nails and little cloven hooves are made of modeling clay; his body is made of red gauze-wrapped wire (so he’s posable!); his suit is made of red velvet and white fake fur, and his boots are made of fur, vinyl and cardboard. He also comes with a Santa hat, a fake beard (because sometimes I think of him as a Satan who steals Santa’s costume and replaces all the toys with lumps of coal) and is, ahem, anatomically correct. His pants are not made to come off though, so if you must, please feel Satan Claus up through his pants. TuraLura is not responsible for anything that might ensue as a result of getting your Satan Claus nekkid. Oh, and newer versions than the one in the picture have tails to help them stand upright.

However. Crafted at the Canal is happening! There are lots of super-talented crafters, I’ve sold a bunch of awesomeness, and lots of it is only and exclusively available live from me at the craft fair until after December 18 when it will all be over. And Build It Green! Gowanus is an amazing and inspiring place, which you will love.

Further however. Despite my Christmas cynicism, I actually know and love quite a few people who love Christmas with pure hearts, and I have the utmost respect for those people. So for them, I offer this holiday season anecdote:

One of the vendors at the craft fair is a farmer who is selling winter vegetable CSA shares. He has a 4-year-old daughter who comes along. She’s a very delightful, cheerful child, and I like children, and today we played together a little when it wasn’t so busy.

She pretended to be a doll under the big BIG Christmas tree. And then I made a Christmas wish, and I wished very hard, and she turned into a real little girl.

Then she told me that Santa Claus was 15 years old. “So he won’t die for a long time.”

A moment later, though, he was only 13. I couldn’t quite stand for that, somehow.

“Santa Claus can’t be only in junior high school,” I protested. “He is old. Very old. But it’s okay, because Santa can’t die.”

“Because he’s magic, right?”

“That’s right.”

TuraLura will be appearing LIVE at the BIG! NYC Crafted at the Canal Holiday Reuse Fair in Brooklyn. Launch party is this Friday, December 9 at 5pm, and there will be free beer. That’s right, shopping and beer. Soudns pretty good, right?

I’ll have most of my currently available wares, as well as some brand new stuff that may or may not ever appear in the TuraLura shop, so if you don’t come on one of the 5 days of the craft fair, you may never get to enjoy them for your very own. And some pieces are so unique that if they sell, they’ll never, ever exist again…

Anyway, here’s a preview to entice you (if free beer didn’t quite do the trick):

We got T shirts for men and women, all sorts of crochet jewelry, pillows made from old T shirts and dry cleaning bags and more (porcelain baby fish boy not for sale)!

Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906-August 8, 1985)

There are lots of people who have been referred to as “style icons” throughout the ages, but really no one compares to Louise Brooks, whose image and style radically transcended her impact as strictly a silent film star.

She made at least four classic films (Beggars of Life, Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl and Prix de Beaute) and 13 lost or less-than-exceptional ones; inspired two comic strips, Dixie Dugan by John H. Striebel and Valentina by Guido Crepax, who also used her image for the masochist O in his illustrated Story of O.

As a trained dancer who worked with Martha Graham as a teenager (when the picture of her was taken), Brooks pioneered a naturalistic style that was not well understood by directors and studio brass in its day, but is artistically more durable than the expressionistic styles of Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish.

She was a reader and a thinker, and eventually a writer. And a bitch, and an alcoholic. Beauty smoothed her path in some ways, and made it harder and lonelier in others. She wrote a novelized version of an autobiography, named it Naked on My Goat after a passage in Goethe’s Faust, and then tossed it down an incinerator. She was caustic and bitter and hilarious and smart, as well as fantastically beautiful. None of this brought her happiness.

For a more thorough account of her remarkable life, which also included dating Charlie Chaplin just after he released The Gold Rush; turning down the Jean Harlow role in The Public Enemy because she hated Hollywood and William Wellman, even though the role would have made her a major star of the 1930s; encounters with the wealthy and famous, and believing herself a failure  until being rediscovered in the 1950s, get your hands on Barry Paris’ extraordinary biography HERE.

Hand embroidered portrait, naturally dyed 100% cotton background, 100% cotton thread in black frame. ‘Cause the eyes have it.

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