The State of the Giraffe

[feng_shui_house]

So far he's got 170,303 giraffes. I haven't yet giraffed today.

For the last couple weeks I've been slowly tidying up what used to be the tomato patch and LO and BEHOLD more than a dozen of the strawberry plants I'd also put in are still alive! YAY. I've been pulling weeds one at a time to try to avoid hurting the strawberries. My compost heap is now roughly a four foot cube and I still have lots of weeds left to go.

After I got too fried to weed pull I came in to resume working on this room. I have MOST of the stuff cleared from 3 1/2 walls (I'm not even THINKING about the closet yet, which is literally packed from top to bottom. Am continuing to patch walls. Have finished filling in a low spot that had been filled in from an AC being moved, have filled in holes where phone used to come in from another room, have scraped most of the flaking paint from baseboards (on one side there'd been flood from improper AC, on another side there'd been flood from main waste pipe rotting.) Have to patch in a lot of cracks above the baseboard. Think I should paint the area with Kilz, too. It's been dried out for a long time, but mildew was under the paint.

Have one remaining 10-ft. long wooden shelf to remove (I got the 2 lower ones already) & a couple heavy things from atop it. Have to get the ladder. Am tired... must... keep going... never get to paradise unless I keep going...



If you go to the search & put in Arnaud you'll find an amazing collection by one man with a heck of a lot of talent & humor. It would help if you read French, as a lot of them have dialog balloons.
http://www.olahelland.net/giraffes/search.php

Giraffezilla
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=5172
Giraffe morgue
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=6052
Off the graph
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=17546
Giraffeapple pie
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19850
2 much free time
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19976
cigarettes
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19973
giraffe drawing
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19958
baby giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=20603
window giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=20757
people giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21337
another people giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21374
giraffe of cards
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21331
embroidered? woven?
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21320
toy giraffe heap
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21301
jigsaw giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21298
Giraffe tree
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21172
twist ties
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=15739
rocks and paint on a lawn
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=17304
carrot
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21521
pincushion
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21402
Chess
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21446
Giraffe Vader VS Obi Wan Giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21453
Road giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21540
Gummi Giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21583
Alphabet pasta giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21562
Dr Suessish
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21494


Nice sketch
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=4306
REALLY nice sketch
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19798
Wonderful color watercolor?
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19962
Very nice watercolor, I think.
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19479
Not a giraffe
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19793
Nice rock painting
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=19467
Counterchange cut out
http://www.onemilliongiraffes.com/?id=21346

Published: Aug. 25, 2009 at 5:40 PM

STAVANGER, Norway, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A Norwegian man seeking to collect 1 million hand-created giraffes for his Web site said the total number of drawings and models has surpassed 130,000.
Ola Helland, 24, of Stavanger, Norway, said a bet with his friend Jorgen inspired him to create OneMillionGiraffes.com, which began receiving thousands of submissions each day after it caught the attention of Internet users on Facebook and Twitter, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.
"We were just small-talking and discussed the Internet and how amazing it is. I proclaimed that anything is possible nowadays, there are no limits anymore, and said I could easily get one million of anything if I wanted to," the British newspaper quoted Helland as saying. "Jorgen refused to agree with me and said there was no way I could get one million giraffes. So we made a bet.
"Two days later I made the Web site almost as a joke just to play around with the idea. I posted the link on my Facebook and Twitter account thinking I would get 10-15 giraffes from my friends and then it would just die off. I went out for lunch and when I came back I had 60 giraffes. By the end of the day I had 134. I started to realize that I had started something I immediately lost control over."
Helland said the only rule for submissions is that they must be created by hand. He said he hopes to reach the 1 million goal by the end of next year.
Published: Aug. 25, 2009 at 5:40 PM
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One million giraffes: the art project that is taking over the web
One man's attempt to collect a million hand-created giraffes to prove the power of the internet is on target – after the project caught the attention of Twitter and Facebook users.
 
By Matthew Moore
Published: 1:21PM BST 24 Aug 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6081316/One-million-giraffes-the-art-project-that-is-taking-over-the-web.html

More than 130,000 giraffe drawings and models have already been submitted to OneMillionGiraffes.com by people inspired to take up their pencils and paintbrushes in the name of collaborative online art.
• Want to join in? Send your drawings to mypic@telegraph.co.uk and upload them to the official site
What started as an eccentric bet between two friends has grown into a minor web phenomena, with thousands of new giraffes posted on the website everyday.
The entries range from colourful children's scrawls to impressive watercolours, with a few arrangements of fruit and vegetables thrown in to boot.
The 24-year-old web designer who devised the website said that he has been overwhelmed by the response to his project, which grew out of a conversation with his friend Jørgen earlier this year about the creative potential of the web.
"We were just small-talking and discussed the Internet and how amazing it is. I proclaimed that anything is possible nowadays, there are no limits anymore, and said I could easily get one million of anything if I wanted to," Ola Helland, who lives in Stavanger, Norway, explained.
"Jørgen refused to agree with me and said there was no way I could get one million giraffes. So we made a bet.
"Two days later I made the website almost as a joke just to play around with the idea. I posted the link on my Facebook and Twitter account thinking I would get 10-15 giraffes from my friends and then it would just die off.
"I went out for lunch and when I came back I had 60 giraffes. By the end of the day I had 134. I started to realise that I had started something I immediately lost control over."
Under the rules of the bet all giraffes must be created by hand; any submissions drawn on computers or bought from shops are rejected.
Mr Helland says he is now confident of hitting one million by the bet deadline of the end of next year. He has amassed 134,227 in a little over two months, leaving 494 days to collect the remaining 865,773.
But what began as a "silly art project" had grown into something more meaningful, he said, showing how the internet could help spur traditional family activities and old-fashioned fun.
"It's become a way of spreading joy and to get people to turn off their televisions and creating something real," he said.
"I love getting emails from parents and grandparents telling stories of how they sat down with their kids and fooled around with crayons for a few hours.
"Drawing, laughing and sharing something real with the people around them really seems to bound people together."
Mr Helland is now appealing for Telegraph.co.uk readers to design their own giraffes to push him nearer the one million target.
As well as the pleasure of winning the bet ("I will mention this to Jørgen every single day for the rest of my life"), Mr Helland hopes that his whimsical project will do some concrete good.
He is trying to attract a corporate sponsor to donate £1 to the World Wildlife Fund for every picture submitted, with the money used to protect giraffes in the wild.

BBC interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgA_KV9L4ts

Comments

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Your work is well in the progress! Ah, you may well discover something hidden deep in Ehouse intestines:-)
Yay giraffes!:)

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

It'll take me at least a week to put back just the stuff I've taken out so far-- I just KNOW I'm going to be tempted to sit down and read some of the magazines. :^)