each experience is worth twenty points

Get your clay (about a half pound is a good start for beginners) and start squishing it. Squish on it here, then over there, then there... I advise to not fold it over itself, as that would create what you're trying to get out, air bubbles. Squish your clay until it's workable. You can check your clay by cutting it in half with a wire. When you cut it and don't see any air bubble it should be good to go.

This is how you start to center your clay.

Smack into a round ball. Smack, not pound.

There is no pounding when you try to get centered.

Throw your clay as close to the middle as you can.

You are trying to get centered.

Start spinning the wheel and center your clay. Center the clay by placing one hand on the side the the other on top of the clay ball. The hand on the side should push towards the middle of the wheel and the hand on top should just keep the clay from pushing up into a cone. You will know it is centered when the clay looks like it is not moving but the wheel is moving. This step is extremely important if your clay is not centered it will be difficult/impossible to make a nice pot.

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Mr. Olsen said I would fail 3D art but it turned out failure meant a C. And that was fine with me. It would have been pretty embarassing if I actually failed an art class.

All I did in i high school was go to art class. Well not art class so much as art room. I liked making things. I liked working things into other things. I liked bobbling around and thinking about stories and songs and how colors interacted with them. How peoples heads responded to notes and tunes and words and noises. I was on top of the world. I listened to sunshiney motown music in my minivan every morning. I drank cheap wine on bonfires and beaches every weekend. I read books that I wanted to read for me and not for school. I was surrounded by love and glee in people and in pictures.

I hated 3d art because it scared me. First of all, I hated the soddering iron. Growing up with a firefighter made flame of any kind a scary, scary thing. I didn't want to sodder things. Not a ring, not a scultpure, not a single assignment that brought to mind the scary murmuring of mom-and-stepdad conversations the morning after a brutal fire in which stepdad would not tell details. So those assignments, I avoided.

Moreso than anything, the problem with 3d art was that damn pottery wheel. I hated that pottery wheel. I could not spin. I could not sculpt. My clay was never a distinguishable form before I angrily crumpled it up and threw it into the bins making sluree. I didn't have the patience or the agility. My clay never got centered. If your clay is not centered, you cannot turn it into anything else. So I never made anything because I never got centered, and this and my fear of fire is why I really-but-not-really failed 3d art.

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Wet your hands, and raise the clay into a cone, then squish it down into a thick hockey puck. You can do this a couple of times. It is called wheel wedging and it helps condition the clay. Make sure it is still centered when you are done.

Of course, you cant actually do this if you are not centered. If you're clay is not centered, you're clay is not going to do anything else.

Wet Your hands and stick your thumb slowly into the middle (spinning of course) until it leaves about 1/2 of an inch for the bottom. Also until it make a round hole in the clay.

Wait, what did I just say?! You cant do this if you didn't get centered. Did you ever get centered? IF YOURE CLAY IS NOT CENTERED YOUR CLAY IS NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING ELSE.

Stick your four fingers into the hole, and slowly pull out until the hole is about as big as you want the bottom to be. Place your fingers on the edge of your newly widened hole. Place one hand on the outside and the other on the inside of the clay wall make sure they are directly in line with each other so if you removed the clay from between them your finger tips would touch. Pull up the walls by starting at the base of the pot and pulling towards the top with even pressure on you finger tip. Continue this until you reach your desired height or until the walls are about a centimeter thick.

THIS IS POINTLESS DONT YOU GET IT. YOUR CLAY WAS NOT CENTERED. YOU CANNOT MAKE A POT.

Wet your hands, if you want to shape it, just "cup" the part of it that you want to be smaller then the other. This just take practice to learn.If you want the top to be a bit wider than the neck, slowly pull it out a bit. Not too much, or it'll fall off.

What do you mean by "if you want", you can't want anything, theres nothing to have! You're not making a thing! How are you going to shape something that you never got started correctly in the first place?! You have no foundation. Without a foundation, what do you build on?! You can't make a pot when you never centered your clay, your clay is not alright, your clay cannot do anything else until you first center it!!#! WHEN IS THIS GOING TO GET THROUGH TO YOU!?

When you're finished, get a wire or fishing line, and use it to cut the bottom off the wheel.

When you're finished? What a joke. When did you get started?

Scooter's christmas wish-list:

1) Snow-Scooter. 

november seventeenth

need more vitamins. need more protein. want to run and kick a ball around. Before exercise comes a revealing of truths or something. having trouble reigniting my creative surge. Where did it go? Need a creative-kick-in-the-ass. ---->maybe look to others image of creativity and beauty as in stolen art books.

so, like, will my words make rhymes that are not protected by a locked chest? will my brain hurt when i fail to connect to the three other parts that once pointed out mean ten times i remember them? will memory start being in my step once again or is it as fragmented as the clothing, books and boxes in a basement haunted in and by minnesota?

what gets created again and again in circles all over everything -- isn't it always inextricably linked to the circles i ran from? and in that process of running away -- did it happen too quickly? have i slash-and-burned tru luv and is chance in abundance? Or is chance just the out of our hands word we use to mean to say choice? and isn't free will referring to the sweet queer boy hidden in all of us (me)? is there a way i can make this verse more real and accessible to my friends around me? Stella is right, "The thing about Poetry, tovah, the thing about Poetry is that it doesn't have to make sense." when hava told me that night in the unmentionable alley (RIP REEF) that i walk around with open love in my heart, well i believed her then but now am trying to see that, see that in myself without looking to others to see it reflecting back at me. self-reflect and then, like, comes self-love, right? perhaps more to that flow than meets my eyes and perhaps, again, it will take three more of these books/blogs/parts to get it straight.

reminders -- listen harder when i am listening. say what i mean. leave notes in tree trunks. think of everyone in life as humans and never as concepts. give up gluten. concepts are not real; humans are realer than anything. take a hotsaltybath. look at the nature more and run in it and don't (try to) conceptualize the nature. sew life-positive messages on to all types of clothing and backpacks.

Dancing Cabbage # 1 is done. I better see it recreated on someone's flesh in the near future. 

Grease Fire.

I trudged blocks of rain to plant myself at a home-work haven just to find it burnt down. The windows were blackened, outside I smoke cigarettes with a group of youths that had a few bags containing way to many pastries. There is a leak in my roof, this is odd because I live on the first floor. So it must be someone (alex's) shower or sink. I have to read a hefty amount of hegel. Hey bloggers, get a grip and post? 

Monday Morning Montana Mope.

Meg saw us put the final polishes on the trip as we pulled into the gravel drive of the Bettman House to summon a possible sleep. We, (the admiral, carns, and myself), Had decided to sprocket out of Missoula when the going got ruff. We left last night at 11:45 and got here this morning at 9: a.m. (without the help of caffeine or other such stimulants). It was a rainy affair, and I remain proud and sad at such an accomplishment, even though I offered virtually no aid in driving. 

Montana itself was the medicine I needed. Though there was lacking enforcement and expectance of all things crew. You can smoke indoors at many cafes, and there are real buffalo heads on many a wall. Grease in spoon is fun but not all the time. I cut out of being vegan for the past while, and I regret it. At this point it has almost become like smoking cigarettes, a constant contrast and battle, but something that is always good to talk/complain about. 

We drank the montana crowd under the table.