I have a confession to make: I am a kickstarter impulse-supporter. I usually impulse-buy/support to get things: the quilt with the October sky’s constellations stitched on it in gold, a “finally a flattering well made maxi dress!” (which still really wasn’t that flattering… I was really hoping…but at least it served as the final confirmation that maxi dresses are not for these hips. It’s not you, it’s me, clingy tube of death), a folding origami hanging wall planter, an ergonomic laptop lifter (which if it ever arrives, SPOILER ALERT AMR: I backed enough to get one for Ann Marie too… among many other things, we share laptop posture fatigue), a tiny magnetic thing that wrangles your iphone cords, a cat calendar of a cat that looks a lot like Nipsey Russell dressed up in a different costume every month, viking lawn games, an obscure typeface, support for a band who never made me the mix CD that my backing earned me (ahem ahem, SWEETHEART), a present for Daddy and a present for Mama that must not be named before Christmas… mostly it’s actual things, bizarre and beautiful creative ephemera. I get the emails, I click through, I drop $10-ish dollars, I get something weird months later in the mail. It’s just my kind of esoteric delayed gratification retail therapy. But I recently took part in a different kind of project, just as impulsive. I paid a dollar to have a stranger execute my portrait in 5 minutes over gchat. His plan was to sketch each of the backers in order, all in a row, in real time, and be done the same day. Things I learned a) the internet is amazing b) it is impossibly hard to sit still even for just 5 minutes. No wonder Las Meninas all have those crazy looks on their dwarf faces. This is me, second from the right on the bottom row: