It may be that record numbers of people won't be able to bring themselves to vote for either candidate. A battle between who can bring out the loyalists. I had a stern talk with the 2 first time voters in my household. Florida swings!

Market, plants bought there. Pedicured, shoveling yoghurt and strawberries into me and then the yard work must commence! Figure out what to plant where, scissors my grass. I'd hoped to clean up the street, but there's a bigass truck in front....

I need to do some weeding today too.

OMG, I just bought everything at the party store. (Not the liquor store, people from other places! The paper plates and stuff store.) I am increasingly concerned about how I am going to get all of this stuff to the actual party.

Sensational Japanese Contemporary Art

These are amazing.

Today we are going to look at some cutting-edge contemporary art coming out of Japan, covering some popular culture, futurism- and steampunk-influenced Japanese artists largely unknown in the West.

We asked Tomoo Yamaji, an artist specializing in three-dimensional sculptures (who has a good knowledge of similarly-styled work in Japan) to choose his favorite artists - veteran and young, famous and relatively unknown. He came up with a list of eight artists that cumulatively represent the state of contemporary three-dimensional art in Japan.

Wow, those are amazing.

We saw some contemporary Japanese glasswork in the galleries at Santa Fe that we loved.

And some great contemporary Japanese ceramics! Which we bought and brought home, because they were tiny little chopstick holders and fabulous. We couldn't afford anything else in the gallery although we go every time. But one of these times we're going to buy one of the $600 wall vases because they are astoundingly lovely.

I have skated, which was very therapeutic. I walked out feeling damn good. Now I am at work dealing with paperwork and seething with suppressed anger and a little self-loathing to top it off.

Wow, those are cool.

So I had a ridiculous good omen or something in iParty -- I had been looking and looking for placecards, and had basically figured they didn't have any, when my cell phone rang. So I put everything down to check the phone, and it was an unknown number, so I didn't even answer it, but I looked up, and there were the placecards! Yay.

Oh no, Scrappy! You should have zero self-loathing, due to how awesome you are.

Tardy the Man Pony, and other crappy vintage toys that never existed

The artwork of Randy Regier channels the dime store toy aisles and the flashy comic book advertisements of the 1950s and 1960s. His toys promise rip-roaring thrills on their colorful packages...and deliver confusion, horror, and crushing disappointment once de-boxed.

Let's take a look at some of Randy's unabashedly rip-off playthings like John Manshaft the misleading action figure — he comes with hand-painted socks! — and the gasoline-fueled "electric Sun."

Regier's toys are filled with various forms of snake oil sleight of hand. A box that screams ELECTRIC TRAIN SET contains small print denoting it's actually an ELECTRIC man waiting for a TRAIN SET — the locomotive is nowhere to be found.

His John Manshaft line boasts exciting box art of the hero in space and medieval times, but most boxes only contain a single forlorn, bug-eyed action figure in his underwear (Manufacturer Gypco Toys covertly informs the consumer to "cut out box lid for clothes and accessories.") Still other doodads are plain unsettling — look no further than the prancing abomination Tardy the Man Pony. Here's a sampling of Regier's many demented playthings.