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Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

number one summer jam!

derrick's first hit single: Jesus Was Awesome v.1.1

alright! our final symbols were due in graphic design today (mine was scotch tape)

she's holding on to our final productions, but we got all our process work back and graded.
my list of terms relating to tape got a 10/10
my 3-D model got a 10/10
my sketches got a 6/10
and my final draft from tuesday got a 10/10

together, those four process grades make up (duh...) 40% of the final grade...so so far i've already got a 36 on my tape symbol. the final printout is worth the other 60 points. we'll find out soon enough.

not too shabby, althought in the critique she noticed no difference between my tuesday draft and my today final. there were about twenty changes but they were all very minute details, only noticable if you looked at both side-by-side.

downloaded most of the streetlight manifesto album and i'm totally digging it.

stuck in my head for no reason as i haven't listened to it in days...elliott smith's "baby britain":

baby britain feels the best
floating over a sea of vodka
separated from the rest
fights problems with bigger problems
sees the ocean fall and rise
counts the waves that somehow didn't hit her
water pouring from her eyes
alcoholic and very bitter

we knocked another couple back
the dead soldiers lined up on the table
still prepared for an attack
they didn't know they'd been disabled
felt a wave, a rush of blood
you won't be happy 'til the bottle's broken
and you're out swimming in the flood
you kept back you kept unspoken

you got a look in your eye
when you're saying goodbye
like you wanna say hi

the light was on but it was dim
revolver's been turned over
and now it's ready once again
the radio was playing "Crimson And Clover"
London Bridge is safe and sound
no matter what you keep repeating
nothing's gonna drag me down
to a death that's not worth cheating

for someone half as smart
you'd be a work of art
you put yourself apart
and I can't help until you start

damn you, kerry. i don't get what people like about you.

easiest way to get into new music for me? just browse amazon.com
check out the similar artists or the reccomended albums or read the lists fans make which group one album you like with a bunch you've never tried.
liking death cab for cutie got me into the postal service, which got me into tilo kiley, which somehow got me into interpol...somewhere down that line i got into against me! which has now gotten my interest ensnared by Streetlight Manifesto and their album Everything Goes Numb
streetlight manifesto is apparently half of catch-22 with half of one cool guy, and i remember liking catch-22 in high school and all the reviews say that this album continues from the previous catch-22 record, which they all dub the best album ever.

so i must check out this streetlight manifesto...as well as catch-22's keasbey nights

yeah, kupek ROCKS!!! you can hear his new "worry song", a new 2004 recording of "poster child for happiness", and the vanilla dome version of "on the other side of the world" streaming on PureVolume (Kupek)
mal (kupek) also plays most of the music on the remake of "cavity search" for his friend jacob (canadia), available for streaming or downloadable mp3 on PureVolume (canadia)

whoo! advertising!


and for all who read this and are interested, i reccomend that you forget watching the tv for primary results, as the media is a pack of liars. i, for one, am following the primary tonight online at Primary Monitor which updates every 15 minutes with results and will do so for all of the primaries.

haha, just before i came to work, i stumbled across brendon small's web page, where he uploaded (and i downloaded) a bunch of his mp3s. i only had a chance to listen to the first few, but so far they're all the full-length original recordings of many of the songs from home movies. it makes me very happy to have the actual songs from the franz kafka rock opera without the sound effects and characters talking over them.

listening to the salteens' "let go of your bad days" in class right now.

goddamn his is some catchy canadian pop.

i read on their webpage that it was ranked the 13th best new album of 2003 by some canadian music magazine, right after the dears' "no cities left" and before radiohead's "hail to the thief"

i decided that, temporarily at least, i'm just going to get the microphone and not the midi keyboard. i'll do all the instruments a cappella and then tinker with the tracks to make them sound like instruments.
if that fails, i'll just do a cappella with myself and the occasional loop.

i realized this once it dawned on me that i still suck on the keyboard.

three weeks of class and i've filled about half of the first page in my math notebook. three lines of that were today when i wrote "~a drowsy rage~" really big.

i have a bad habit of having terrible but funny thoughts in theater. today, when one of the girls was telling us how she had five breast tumors removed over the weekend, all i could think of was that scene near the beginning of putney swope where the man sings "i have a malignancy in my prostate, but when you're in my arms, its beniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiign!"

after class, brent, jesse, and i went to taco bell and had a long conversation about professional wrestling and mixed breeding. fun.

after that, brian, max, and i went food shopping. on the way in we were stopped by a raggedy middle-aged guy with no front teeth and a large empty bucket, offering to wash our windows for spare change. i explained that i had no spare change. when he inquired how i had no change, i told him how i used it in a bit in my theater class, after which he told us that he knows martial arts...which are like arts...the art of...um...i could break your back...

threatening people outside a supermarket is not the best way to succeed in life.

got my salteens cd this morning. still haven't listened to it. listened to far too much his name is alive and against me! to listen to something else right now.

yes, that exclamation point is part of their name, like freakazoid!

i want to try to cover "sink, florida, sink"

my mom and sisters saw it, but i was moody that night and chose to ignore it.
sean at the library said he saw it this weekend and it was good but predictable.


i'd like to thank the person who invented vinta crackers. they are my saving grace.

i need to get some real food...like...soon. there is nothing.


i'm having a bit of a hard time deciding on which keyboard i'll eventually buy. up until yesterday i was all set for the M-Audio Keystation 49e, which goes for 99 bucks and has 49 velocity-sensative full-size keys. its the one they use in all the GarageBand demos and is on sale at the apple store, so its like the offical MIDI keyboard of GarageBand. but yesterday i looked on the M-Audio webpage and saw the eKeys 37, which is only 59.95 and has 37 mini-keys. looking over the features (look 'em up at m-audio.com) i realize that i don't really need all the stuff that the 49e has...but i'm worried that the mini keyboard won't be able to do what i want...

i think i'm still aiming for the 49e.

i need a few more paychecks. food and music...i need food and music.

for future reference, of the eighteen people currently registered to post on this blog, eleven of them are female.

conclusion...my friends are lazy and have short attention spans.

yeah...that's one of the things i miss about my classes from last year...listening to music in class. my figure drawing teacher the first week of class put on alan parsons project and i was like "ooooooooooooooooooooooohhhh, man this is awesome" bu then people started listening to their headphones so loud that they couldn't hear his instructions, so he started putting in their cds in order to appease them and we ended up listening to john mayer, dave matthews greatest hits, and sublime's self-titled album far too much. i had nothing against john mayer before that class but i grew to really hate that album. in my perceptual drawing class that semester i put MSI on once because no one else brought any music and katie liked MSI but had never listened to tight. the whole class basically reacted with a "what the fuznuck is this crap we're listening to?" i also put on TMBG's factory showroom because i knew the teacher was a TMBG fan in college. it got an almost identical reaction from the class. that's when i started bringing my discman and headpones in to class everyday because its the same time they started listening to sublime's self-titled album in that class.
figure drawing second semester i almost always had my headphones on, usually with some matt good or radiohead. i put the bends on the stereo once, but i stepped outside during the title track to spray fix a charcoal drawing and came back in to hear, no kidding, sublime's self-titled album. although the instructor really enjoyed hail to the thief when i put that in a month later.
and my color class second semester we listened to 50 cent alot in class. one day, nate put on incubus's make yourself, but he kept skipping over my favorite tracks and repeating drive. i don't think we ever listened to sublime in that class, so for that i loved it.

i usually had headphones in when i was in the photo lab last semester because there was never good music on the boom box that they brought in.

but yeah, i'm pretty sure i won't be listening to much music in my classes this semester, aside from the music for american creativity 2. this past week we listened to alot of big band music. next week he said he'll give us an intro to rock and roll. it would be impossible to get away with music in my math class and the walls in my graphic design classroom this semester are white, unlike the room last semester with grey walls so it was a little darker and you could get away with the cords going up to your ears.
maybe i can sneak some good music into bits i do in my theater class.

i'm really pretty angry right now.

my numerous attempts at burning a dvd have all resulted in failure, the mall is a terrible sham of floridian existance, and we discovered that somebody ate the rest of the pizza without it being one of us or ever telling us.
y'see, max and i decided to order two pizza hut sausage pizzas thursday evening. we couldn't eat two whole pies at once, but knew it would make good leftovers until saturday. i had three slices that night. this morning i checked the fridge and found nothing to eat or to drink except for margarine, provolone cheese, and water. i assumed max ate the rest of the pizza, and later on he told me that he assumed i did it.
so neither of us actually ate half of the pizza that we bought...and that pisses me off alot. like, i'm really insanely angry right now.

and there's nothing good on tv, and i can't do my type homework because the labs are closing and i don't have the particular fonts on my computer (goddamn having to use particular fonts...goddamn you bodoni, frutiger, goudy, serifa, all of you damn fonts.)

GRR!!!

until one of us can convince maria, erin, elysa and laurie to start posting again, yes.

i was curious about family tree, since the track listing looked a little funny like that.

i don't feel like doing homework today. i know i'm gonna end up doing some, but i feel like laying around all day. its saturday and i want a break.
homework this weekend: revise the first 9 of my 18 contrast pairs for design with type. print out candid photo of myself and prepare a silent scene in which i find a penny for my theater class.
anything else i do would just be homework in advance, which i think i'll do since there's not much due monday.


radiohead's "gagging order" is a damn lovely song, but i am absolutely hooked on his name is alive's "baby fish mouth"
i was so excited when i figured out some of the lyrics listening to it on the way back from work yesterday. i think its something like "eve and adam in the garden. breathe the air and walk around. half past the time now when we..." or something like that. i am totally rocking HNiA right now. i adore this music.
so yeah, i'm working out how i could cover "gagging order" and still do it justince, and i've got a joining of HNiA's "Underwater" and "Baby Fish Mouth" which i think will sound pretty sweet.

maybe that's what made the mars rover stop responding the other day. it overheard the state of the union, expecting to be mentioned, and bush completely ignored the poor little guy. he felt so dejected, he's not taking any phoe calls from america for at least a week.

and yeah, our abandoning hubble really bugs me alot.


i hopped out for a few minutes last night for a quickie walk (homework makes me want to walk) and fount two new packages in my mailbox! my His Name Is Alice cd Always Stay Sweet, which is tremendously pretty music, and my new hard drive!
it works crazy fast. i didn't need to install any software, just plug and play. i transferred seven gigs of ducktales episodes onto it in under two minutes. GarageBand actually works in what appears to be real-time now that the memory has cleared up a bit.

Nice to be back!

I think I'm living proof to refute that sleep+creativity study. I sleep a good 8 to 10 hours. More than that, and my mind is hazy and hard to focus. In fact, I'm super creative if I'm oporating on 5 or 6 hours sleep. Unfortunatly, my body hates me for it.

So I read this blog that made an interesting point about Bush's SOTU address: he didn't mention going to the moon and Mars. He mentioned steriods in sports and "protecting" marraige, but he couldn't find room to squeeze in something about us going to Mars? All the more reason to beleive that his earlier announcement was nothing more than a poll-booster stunt. We're not going to Mars or the moon under his watch. And he's making NASA ditch the Hubble telescope (it's true) so that he can reshuffle the organization to his liking, which really burns me.

Ga. Taking about aWol gets me all worked up. I'm going to have trouble sleeping now.

In other news, I emailed the guy who draws 9 Chickweed Lane and told him that if I were female that I would gladly have his child. Or that I liked his comic. I can't remember which.

Derrick: Hey Ya, Charlie Brown!
Derrick: i can't believe i didn't think of that sooner
Cassandra: hahaha!
Derrick: exactly what that song needed
Cassandra: it fits perfectly
Derrick: a little inactive at some points, i get kinda sick of the general dancing
Derrick: but the stuff that synchs up is lovely
Cassandra: but the chorus parts are perfect
Derrick: wait till the last verse
Derrick: its great

well, letterform studies that i did yesterday were a rousing failure today.
actually, not rousing. not rousing at all.

we're on break right now so we haven't had our personal critiques yet, but in the class critique it was obvious that i didn't understand how the criteria for this portion of the assignment were so different from last week's. she also hates my use of non-objecive elements.
one of the contrasts we had to show was slant, and i figured just using italic fonts wasn't really showing that much slant in the composition, so i used italic fonts and horizontal lines to convey the shift in balance.
i thought those studies in particular were very successful...but i am a terrible person at all this stuff.

i wrote two verses last night, reread them this morning and i still kinda like it. its not at all what i originally intended, so that means i came up with a whole new song without realizing it. so far, the new one is called "i do" and the one i meant to write, which i'll try to do tonight, is called "dustin" but i'll probably change both of those when they're done.

i was thinking of doing a salteens cover, but i could never pull it off remotely shmaltzy enough, so i think i'll try one of the dears. maybe "everlasting." i've been going over my favorite bright eyes songs for cover material. i'd love to do "drunk kid catholic" but i wouldn't be able to pull off half the things it needs to sound as cool as he originally did it, but i think i could do a mean "method acting," i'm just not sure about the ending to either of those songs. they wrap rather awkwardly.

tonight, many, many drawings of a tape dispenser.

EDIT - POST-CLASS: ok, not that bad. she enjoys my color pallettes, just not the added lines and my compositions are strong. ok, feelin' better.
also, i worked out a pretty cool upbeat covor of radiohead's "the bends" in my head on the walk here. sounds similar to death cab's "sound of settling" since that's stuck in my head. i don't know why i want this album to be upbeat. probly cuz it would be far too easy for my first recording attempt to be slow and moody.

i forgot to mention before that the "oy vey" article was actually taken directly from CNN.com
rather than post the entirety of these long articles, i'll just post the links

Cannibus for MS sufferers in England
i'm happy there are serious scientists somewhere looking at making cannibus based perscription drugs like this. i'm sick of medicinal marijuana being written off as too far-left (read: Phish fans) and just being a perscription pack of doobies. no, these scientists are working on a cannibus-based drug. excellent. this means they actually do believe there's something beneficial to it rather than just getting high and forgetting that you're sick.

Study confirms that more sleep = more creativity
i suppose this explains why i'm less creative than all three of my roomates and dan arrigo.
sarcasm optional.

Rabbi offers a prayer for web porn sufferers
i honestly didn't know it was that much of a concern. dirty, dirty jews...

Does sex still sell?
Thank god...I was sooooooooooooooooooo sick of this visual teasing method of music "sales" in the mid-90s...that's why i stopped listening to pop music. i think its recent wavering (and an increased quality of music) is what slowly has been bringing me back, though i still love my non-mainstream music plenty.

i'm seriously thinking about covering this song. i love it. phil ochs's "outside of a small circle of friends":


Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they’re hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it’s gonna rain
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Sweating in the ghetto with the panthers and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides we got the cops
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Oh there’s a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The supreme court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine.
But we’re busy reading playboy and the sunday new york times
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we’re much too high
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Oh look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends


my first thought, based solely on the rhyme scheme, was to do it poppy like death cab, but i realized that would ruin the whole song and shame phil ochs into a second death. it would need to be more aggressive and rebellious, which is hard to think of music for since i've been listening to death cab, mum, and his name is alive all week. when i get back to my room, i'm switching over to rage against the machine to get my head into the game for this song. i keep hearing it sung like loudon wainwright. i want to make it cool and electronic like mum, but again that completely ruins the song in this instance.
i had this idea running through my head last night of having two vocal tracks. one would be sung and the other would be spoken. the volume levels on them would alternate at various points in the song, so you could always hear both but one would become more dominant in certain points and the other would dominate in other points. i think i'll do a little of that to add to the aggressive nature. phil ochs songs beg to be sung (sung along, even) but the aggressive tone of the song needs a kick.

that's the challenge of a cover, doing a song you already love and trying you best to add to it, so that the song becomes slightly more.
there's no way i can hope to improve upon the late, great mister ochs, but i'm going to have fun doing it my way.

i'm hoping to completely self-produce a full cd by april. an ep is more likely, but i like to keep my chin up. i can only imagine that half of it will be covers. i'll try to keep it interesting. i'll likely cover kupek's "poster child for happiness", the above "outside of a small circle of friends", and a couple others. i'm not really sure about any of it yet. i've already scrapped three of my own songs this week after really enjoying them for about an hour and then deciding that both the music and lyrics for all of them were trite and terrible. i do have a few with potential, though. they just need to be fleshed out. i'll probably call myself sanskrit and i'm thinking the first album's title will be sunrise highway, with the cover being one of the photos i took along merrick road (yeah, its not sunrise highway, but they look the same, and sunrise highway sounds better and has more suff on it)

at least its a smile. welcome back, morgan. missed ya. in regards to your latest statement on ClusterF_cked, i agree that the Dean campaign is far from dead. in fact, i'm now worried that a bunch of the potential Dean voters out there will have seen Dean's "poor" showing in Iowa and decided "awww, shit, i was gonna vote for someone else, but now i'd better vote dean since no one else is doing it."
keep in mind that i'm not saying all or even many people will do that, but there's always that little furrow in my brow. he's definitely still in the race, i'd just prefer clarke. i absolutely prefer dean over kucinich or lieberman, though. they're all nice guys with great ideas, but i have priorities.

i would adore a clarke/edwards white house. a clarke/kerry one would be good too, but i'm worried that's a bit too much militant.

did anyone else notice during the state of the union last night when bush said that this year would be the end of the patriot act, how all the democrats started applauding and the republicans all looked at them awkwardly? that was the greatest thing i've ever seen in a presidential address. and then bush had to try to push over the democrat applause to defend the future of the patriot act. so wacky.


today, in the mail, i received His Name is Alive's Someday My Blues Will Cover The Earth
among HNiA fans, it is known as the beginning of the end for HNiA, the beginning of the uncreative music, but i still like the R&B influenced ballads. i like the old stuff too (Always Stay Sweet should be arriving sometime this week) but one does not deny the other. like how some blur fans like both the old stuff and Think Tank and some see it as the end of their tremendous career. i still don't like Think Tank as much as 13


i was reminicing in class this morning. while i was home and nova and i were comparing bands, she mentioned how she didn't like Third Eye Blind except for "that one song"
after establishing that "that one song" was "10 Days Late," i asked what about "deep inside of you"?
oh, yeah...
and "jumper"?
um...yeah, i guess...
"blinded"?
the new one? yeah...that's catchy...
"how's it going to be?"
ok...i do like Third Eye Blind, i just don't like that i like Third Eye Blind

i have to agree.

The problem with PC is that, in my mind, it is too easy a way of not dealing with issues of rascism, offense and personal behavior in general.

In a PC-less world, if someone where to say something that you take offense to, you would let them know it. If they continue to say it, then you now know something about that person's character: i.e that they are an asshole. Or they might apologize for the remark, letting you know either that a) they didn't know what they said would offend or b) they are lying about being sorry and are thus an insincere bastard.

But with PC, all that goes away because the issue can't even be broached. This keeps us from learning about one another. This is my problem with PCness

Which isn't to say that people should go around saying the N* word like it's ok. But if someone does go around saying the N* word, then you know that they are an asshat and deserve whatever they have coming.


Also, hi folks. Sorry I haven't been on here much.

In addition, I probably could have worded the above diatribe better, but I'm operating on 3 hours of sleep, some Dr. Pepper and a smile.

New York rejects 'Oy Vey' sign

NEW YORK (AP) -- "Oy vey" was too meshugga for the city Transportation Department.

The department said Monday it rejected a request from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz for a sign on the Williamsburg Bridge reading "Leaving Brooklyn: Oy Vey!"

The agency felt the sign -- featuring the Yiddish phrase for "oh, woe" -- would be more distracting than helpful to Manhattan-bound motorists.

"'Oy vey' was originally a Jewish phrase, but everyone knows what it means and it's now a common Brooklyn expression -- part of that Brooklyn attitude," said Markowitz, a Brooklyn native. "All I'm trying to do is put a smile on people's faces. I'm sorry if the DOT has no sense of humor."

The city earlier nixed a sign reading "Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit!" at the Verazzano Narrows Bridge for what agency spokesman Tom Cocola said was the same reason: "a lack of directional information."

While the "Fuhgeddaboudit!" sign was criticized by some as an anti-Italian slur, Cocola said any concern that the "Oy Vey" sign might offend Brooklyn's large Jewish community was not part of the agency's decision.

graphic design is fun. i don't ever want to forget that. it is a language that i love and a skill i adore and an activity that impresses me continuously.
sometimes i just need a little affirmation like that. i will re-read that post someday and remember that its not all bad, because i will hate all of this in about a month.
well, i stressed over that model for nothing, really. kendra thought it was brilliant. fact is, i constructed my model out of paper and scotch tape, which was rather clever, teh class thought, as it explored the essence of my object, scotch tape. almost all of the other models were built with sculpey, a few were carved out of wood, and there was one giant martini glass formed out of chicken wire.
the critique was rather fun. pointing out what did and din't work, ripping apart the people who weren't thinking straight (its fair, that was me a few times last semester and will be again in about a month), all that jazz.

today's most listened song is the title track from Death Cab For Cutie's Transatlanticism
today i ate a Banquet dinner, chicken fried beef steak.

earlene and i had fun looking through Material World, a book i remembered from years ago, when enlargments from the book were on display at Unicef headquarters in new york while Nova was working at the UN. great book. this photographer choses an average family in each of about twenty countries (more or less) and asks them to remove all of their belongings from their house and place them in front of the building. he then takes pictures of the family with their entire belongings in front of their house, and you can contrast and compare the standard of living all around the world. great stuff.


i can't wait for the debates on thursday. i'm really pulling for clarke. aside from liking all of his policies so far, he and dean are the only nominees with more executive experience than legislative (i'm not entirely sure if sharpton has either), which i think is a definite plus whe you're running to be the chief executive of the free world.

and dean really bugs me. i don't like that guy at all. how can you trust a man who acts like he does? feels like i'm back in middle school watching that guy and his dramatic temper tantrums.

a totally bland day.

whereas on saturday i did absolutely nothing as the day flew by and i wondered what the hell i did all day, today went both slow and fast.

fast because i've mostly been wrapped up in one menial task all day.
slow because it feels like its taking forever.
this task is producing a scale model of a tape dispenser for my graphic design class in the morning, something i really should have done between the past couple days. its not that hard. its actually pretty easy outside of my lousy motor skills. my layout for it, however, requires some annoying glueing and taping, which is what i'm currently taking a break from.
today, i ate half a bag of trader joe's mini ravioli.
today's most listened to song was múm's "today i am 9," followed by world/inferno friendship society's "the models and the mannequins"

the day was uneventful and bland. the only noteworthy points of humor were when max watched two episodes of the west wing with me, complaining "i can't believe you got me to watch this" and when the three of us (brian, max and i) were walking to the labs, passing by the rather large group of students and faculty dressed formally for the memorial service for a freshman who was killed over the break. when we realized what we were walking past, there was a sudden awkwardness, and then we realized brian was still carrying a teacup with a little bit of hot cocoa in it. the image was suddenly hilariously insensitive.

little more work on this thing, then the daily show and the west wing, then finish this thing and sleep and wake up for class.

stephanie appears to be mad at me. alas.

oh man, somebody give me liberal arts homework...
liberal arts homework is something that occupies an entire other portion of my brain than the rest of the stuff i do, so it forces me to shift gears, even if the work is lame. working in the same gear starts to bore me, so for amusement i find myself downloading tons of crap. crap which i discover a week later i don't even want.
i'll have a few gigabytes free once we burn all these ducktales episodes i downloaded onto dvds. and once i've got a few more free gigs, i can freelyplay with GarageBand, which works but slowly because of all the crap i've got going right now.

i feel slightly ill. maybe its just the hour. i prefer to think its the humidity. its much more humid here than at home, so i perspire more which makes me feel grimy which in turn makes me feel lousy all the time. it also gives me zits, which is also unhappy. i'm sure i'll feel fine in the morning, but now i feel icky and i can't sleep and i very much want to stay away from my graphic design homework until morning. so i'm reading and posting here. reading sandmand: endless nights and listening to the cure and yann tiersen.

i've been trying out my binocular/camera this weekend. my mother bought it for me, its pretty cool, but a bit awkward. binoculars with a camera built in so you can take pictures of far away objects. and since it uses two lenses, you get two pictures on one exposure. biggest problem is its real hard to not look conspicuous taking pictures when you're holding a pair of binoculars up to your face. there's always somebody around, and they can always very clearly see that you've got binoculars, which is very awkward.

ugh...i just realized i still have two death cab albums on my computer that i haven't burned to cd yet. transatlanticism grew on me. it's catchy.

home movies was brilliant a few hours ago. there are no words to explain how much i love that show. it is marvelous beyond comprehension.

yay, heather is here now...again! excellent. i was getting so lonely on here.

out of curiosity, i just did the math and realized that i make about $93.75 a week at the library.
so why don't i have a couple extra hundred dollars in my bank account, i ask...

and then i remember that every week i contribute close to forty bucks to groceries, which always strikes me as odd.
living is expensive. i'm still waiting for my dinner in pill form. and i don't mean like those dietary substitutes like slim fast and all that jazz, i mean a full meal that makes you feel full and healthy. once that technology is well honed and becomes more popular, i bet they would become relatively inexpensive so you could buy three times as much food at the same cost, only it would all be in pill form.
but instead i'm stuck shelling out half of my paycheck every week for food that isn't even all that great.
i don't know if its the comfort of home or the quality of the food that allows my cheeks and chin to swell the little bit they do while i'm there, but when i get back to school i slim down once again. its weird.

i really don't eat that much while i'm here. on average one meal a day. most of the time i eat its eaither because my stomach hurts or because i've got nothing immediate to do and i see other people eating. i rely on beverages more than i do on solid food. i keep myself constantly hydrated. i guzzle bottles of cran-cherry cocktail and brisk iced tea. i think one week i might just go to the shell station, buy a couple bottles of whatever and abstain from food shopping for the week, see how it works out. if i really get hungry, i can go to burger king or buy something quick at the shell station or the vending machines downstairs.


i have the rare creatures cover of radiohead's "motion picture sountrack" stuck in my head...its a tad annoying, but very beautiful.

for the holidays, my aunt, uncle and cousins gave us the demotivator's 2004 calendar, which is very nice and entertaining. well, turns out that its producers, Despair, Inc., have a whole line of demotivational products including conversation hearts, t-shirts and mugs.

my homework this weekend includes building a scale replica of a scotch tape dispenser, which i will work on tonight. glad i hadn't thrown out the leftover paper scraps from my boxes yet.

i started a cute new graphic for the blog before i left for work. looks good, but i didn't have the time to upload the changes yet. it'll be funked out soon enough.

haha, glad i bought that hard drive yesterday, because LaCie doesn't have it on the webpage anymore.
maybe they only had the one left.

HOLY HELL!!! 20 rolls of 800 ISO Fuji Film (36 exposure!) for under $3.50!!!

ok, it pisses me off when people enter debates with me and can't follow my analogies and instead feign superiority...infallibility.

steph mentioned Avenue Q to me on AIM (not by name, oddly, as a theater person she didn't know the name of the show) by referring to it as a "Muppet spoof"

i retorted that it is a Sesame Street spoof, not muppet. when she argued, i asked if they spoofed Muppets Take Manhatten, Fraggle Rock, the Storyteller, or even the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, and she replied no. i insisted that since they only parodied the muppet segments from sesame street, it was not a "muppet spoof", especially since sesame street is a product of the Children's Television Workshop utilizing muppets for some, not all, of its segments and is not a product of Jim Henson Productions like all of the muppet movies and tv shows are. again, stephanie protested.

i proposed that if someone were to parody the weekend update bits from Saturday Night Live which utilize current events and headlines from the news for humor, it would be a Saturday Night Live spoof and not a spoof of the news in general.

its fairly simple:
Muppets are a whole spectrum of entertainment.
Sesame Street is one television program that uses some Muppets in it, but not all the time.
Avenue Q clearly parodies the Muppet portions of Sesame Street, but not the rest of the Muppet entertainment universe.

The news is a whole spectrum of information.
Saturday Night Live is one television program that uses the news in it, but not all the time.
Our fictional spoof clearly parodies the Weekend Update (news) portions of Saturday Night Live, but not the rest of the news programs (like Dateline, Wolf Blitzer Reports, 48 Hours, The Daily Show, or even Larry King Live)

it would be a terrible misjudgement to say that the fictional parody of ours is a spoof of Larry King Live, which our parody doesn't even remotely resemble, so i find it unfair to say that Avenue Q parodies the Muppets in general.


but some people are completely unwilling to change their minds...

now, i know i'm a stubborn guy, but i've been in enough debates to know when the other side actually makes sense and i should back down before i shove my foot in my mouth.

stephanie is apparently not one of those people...


rar, i'm being much to hard on her. she's my friend. but goddamn, i get really worked up over debate and she's just wrong on this and it offended me because her statements degraded the Muppets, which is a cultural entity that i have cherished from an early age. if the show in question were actually a muppet parody, it'd be a different story, but its not at all and she's just wrong, dammit.

doctor dean's political commandos seem to think it's unfair that general clarke has such a strong following in new hampshire.

i'd like to point out tht clarke is making all relevent paperwork (and more) about his history available to the press in his "reading room" whereas dean still has all of those sealed records in vermont that he refuses to let anyone see. (for more on clarke's reading room, click the above link)

i'm weak, i caved, i bought the LaCie hard drive. including shipping to school, it was $169. i should have it next week, not that i need it yet.
my next paycheck should be geared exclusively at paying for that. i had plenty in the bank, but i want to be sure i can replace whatever money comes out.

additionally, i received an email saying that my order for his name is alive's "always stay sweet" has been shipped, so i should get that next week as well. its a nice compilation album, spanning the lifetime of the musical anomoly that is his name is alive, including some of my favorite mp3s of the past year "chances are we are mad," "in every ford," "cornfield," "how ghosts affect relationships," and "sitting still moving still staring outlooking"

michael moore officially endorsed general wesley clarke for president, calling him "a breath of fresh air in the White House." hooray!

i think that max, brian, and i are going to see School of Rock at the dollar theater tonight. it'll be a nice vacation from the first week of school.

i still don't know why we only have one holiday all semester and its the second week of class. NOBODY NEEDS A BREAK THE SECOND WEEK OF CLASS. the third month we could use a day or two off, but the second week, most classes haven't really done anything yet!

in graphic design today we brought in objects to make symbols of and had to make clay and wire models of them without looking at them. my clay tape dispenser caved in and my wire light bulb was pretty lame, although it was the class favorite of the three wire light bulbs made. i'd like to point out, though, that part of the reason my clay tape dispenser was a failure might have had to do with the fact that i was the only one in class whose clay object was hollow.

i've been doing the research for a few hours now...i think i'll just buy it now.

ok, i'm really tempted to buy this

120 gig firewire hard drive from LaCie (who i trust with firewire drives), 7200 RPM (exactly what kendra says we need for digital video next year) marked down to $159

i think i may see how much is still in my bank account here and just buy it right now...

wow...ummm...wow
i knew that there were people like this, and i'm not saying it's a bad thing to be in to your chosen religion, but this just makes me feel a bit awkward.
no offense to the man, but russell butts always bugged me a little in high school and middle school. he was a bit light in the mind and...well...i just wasn't a fan.
but apparently he's given himself to his lord, jesus christ.
maria's and my own thoughts on the matter:

maria: tell me if you find any particular statement outstandishly humerous
derrick: "I am just an ordinary 19-year-old girl with ordinary thoughts and feelings, but underneath all that ordinary is a secret I have deep inside my heart.  My name is Danielle Lori Gaffney and my secret is candid.  My secret is Jesus Christ."
maria: ;lkjdj;lfkjadls;kfjal;djflakjsdf
maria: no, I meant just for russle
maria: I didn't even get to taht
derrick: "The song “Breathe” started playing and at that point there was no denying the fact the Lord was trying to talk to me."
maria: oh jesus H
derrick: wow...i didn't know that god spoke through country music
maria: I was thinking of "God isn't something that was forced upon us, but encouraged
derrick: so it was god who wrote all those hick songs about killing iraqis
maria: but those were all right answers
derrick: i'm entitled to read what i want to as weird and wrong
derrick: his opinion on the forced-or-encouraged image is skewed because he ended up caving and loving jesus
derrick: to anyone else it may look like force, but i accept that he can see it as encouragement
derrick: its the reaction to a bad pop song that gets me
maria: if you 'encourage' something in a child's development, you're fucking forcing it
maria: douchie
maria: they don't really ahve much of a frame of reference
derrick: WE know that, but russell doesn't
maria: or at least any better frame of reference
derrick: because god warped his fragile twat of a mind
maria: apparently not
maria: his mind is a twat?
derrick: yeah, and it looks like god fucked him upside the head pretty bad
derrick: BOOYAH!
maria: ooo!
maria: burn!
derrick: what can i say, god's a perv
derrick: you know he watches you in the shower
maria: let's not go that far
derrick: you can't deny the lord

i've been cleaning out my hard drive, making room for more stuff so my computer won't get all stupid and finally deleting the crap people gave me but i never use.
mostly what i've deleted was all the music i had in my iTunes library which was already burned onto a cd.

after i deleted about 5 gigs of unneeded files (including all of the mp3s that the previous owner had left on the computer) i realized that i really love my His Name Is Alive mp3s, but didn't have any albums, so i went onto amazon.com and bought two albums used for $16 total. so in the next two weeks i should receive those albums and have really funky trippy r&b in my possession.

here's a wallpaper i made from my favorite photograph that i took over the break. that's the union square west station uptown N-train plaform.

here's a decent shot of the road and sky in merrick
here's a cool shot of central long beach, with a bus coming in the shot
here's a nice one of dan, erin, anna and heather
here's one i took in our living room after i discovered multiple exposure mode on my camera
and here's a nice one i took over my shoulder on the train while we were stopped at the jamaica station

i tried posting this before, but blogger felt like ignoring it so i'm retyping the abridged version:

drew arnold, the head of the student union at ringling, is trying to organize a voter registration program on campus. sean at the library introduced and drew and i seemed to agree on all the key issues involved. thing is, drew and the two friends of his most active in this are all seniors and won't be here for the big election in november, so if this little prgram of ours actually takes flight, i'll be the one in charge, theoretically. so this looks like potential for tons of politically active fun, getting students interested in the election, registering them to vote and helping them aquire absentee ballots if necessary. i don't care much who they vote for as long as they have their voices heard. i'd prefer if wesley clarke were the next president, but i'm not going to try to sway anybody for any particular candidate, regardless of their party, opinions or whatever.

additionally, the microphone i got from MoCCA is a pc-mic. my g4 doesn't even have the input for it. however, i found a really nice logitech USB mic for the mac for 29.95 online. i think i may invest after i ensure that i have GarageBand

american creativity 2 seems like a decent class. kinda hard to stay awake in a dark room at that hour, but good subject material. today we watched looney toons cartoons and segments of movies from or about world war 2. and there appear to be no papers to write, just tests, which is a plus in my book. gonna be weird to be in a class of 76 students, though.
my math instructor pissed me off today. i'm not going to go into it, but he flat out said i was wrong when i wasn't and it made me mad.

i have ben folds' "All U Can Eat" stuck in my head...

i've had the salteens' "time you have been wasting" stuck in my head all day and most of yesterday after beck's "nicotine and gravy" finally popped out, so i caved in and ordered the album, let go of your bad days, because it turns out to be only 11 dollars american on their webpage, including shipping (10 dollars canadian for the album plus 4 dollars canadian for shipping) so i will soon have even more canadian pop stuck in my head.

apple's iLife '04 is officially released on friday, so i expect to see the pirated GarageBand software online by saturday morning.

today it was announced that Mo Willems (Sheep in the Big City; The Off-Beats; Codename: Kids Next Door) will be awarded a Caldecott award for Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus
hooray, Mo!

i feel all kinds of fashionable in my new clothes from express. felt like pointing that out.
scanned, cleaned up, and uploaded a few photos. i'll post the links later.

right now i'm at my first shift back at the library for 2004. it is dull and awkward. i'll get back to shelving books as soon as i'm done typing this. my classes are decent so far, except that my geometry course looks like it will be a recap of 6th-7th grade math. my little sister, who seems to have a hard time in math, could ace this class. it merely annoys me, so far.
we're having a fun little experiment in the apartment: how long we can last without buying groceries. the food aspect isn't so bad as the drink aspect is, as there is very little beverage in the fridge and the water here was recently contaminated due to a ruptured pipe. i boiled a pot of water, let it cool, and then ran it through the brita filter. still tasted like crap. there are really nice brand new vending machines with better food and drinks than before, but they're also slightly more expensive, and after buying the one text book i decided to buy, i suddenly find myself at a loss of one dollar bills.



i neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed GarageBand. but first i should probably get to my job and design with type homework.

hahahahaha...
i'm pretty happy with the conclusion of Scott McCloud's "A Bucket Full o' Kittens

holy crap, that was a great freaking episode...

brendan small is a genius, and they might be giants are just plain awesome

max and i decided that tmbg will write and perform the theme song for refill robots v.2.0

i neglected to point this out yesterday, but i traversed from my home in long beach to my home in sarasota. approximately a seven-hour voyage. flew song for the first time rather than jetBlue.
song has nice design elements, very colorful everything, nice food on the plane, and probably the most aesthetically pleasing terminals of all airlines, but the actual trip itself was rather shotty. a bit too much of a shaky wobbly flight for my comfort. kept feeling like we were going to drop like a rock onto south carolina. and the particular plane i was on hadn't been renovated yet, so the stickers were all peeling off, the walls were an unpleasant beige, the tray table fell too low, and there was nothing to entertain me. they claim that by fall, all of their planes will have satellite tv in every seat like jetBlue and all that jazzamatazz.
mostly what bugged me was the song employee who checked me in was a real asshole and pissed me off.

jerry's back, to my surprise. i thought he was coming back in the fall, but here he is, so that's cool.
max and i hung out a good bit last night. he's a funny fella and i'm glad to have him around. we went to walgreens and i decided to buy a mach3 razor. i was confused because on the same wall, side-by-side, they had the mach3 champion, mach3 turbo g-force, mach3 turbo g-force with a small can of gilette shave gel, mach3 turbo g-force with a 7-bit screwdriver, and a pack of 4 mach3 turbo cartridges. the confusing thing was that all five of those packages were the exact same price. naturally, since i already have my own full size can of gilette shave gel, dislike the color red, and love free crap, i got the one with the screwdriver set. it makes me look macho.
brian came in today. i walked out of my room after reading for a while, and there he was making waffles.

on that topic, max downloaded three more episodes of invader zim that were never aired here. "zim eats waffles" is just about the funniest cartoon i've seen since i first came to ringling.

production on the zim dvds is underway, here's a picture i found of the mock-up for the boxed-set's box:


the labs are still closed. i wanted to scan my negatives from the break before classes started, but alas, that must wait.
i bought one book for my classes, as all the books that the bookstore said were required are ones that i always see at the library. the one i bought was the quickstart guide to adobe indesign2

i still haven't finished unpacking. i have difficulties moving in and out of places. for the whole month i was home i never put down bedspread. i just lay my sleeping bag on top of the mattress and slept on it.

BRAND NEW EPISODE OF HOME MOVIES IN ONE HOUR!!!

three classes tomorrow.
wake up early, shower, eat some trader joe's vanilla almond crunch, play with fonts, do math, act, clean my room. should be a decent day.

dammit!

after i spend two weeks fantasizing and planning to get apple's Soundtrack to record my own music, the announce that the 2004 version of iLife will include the new GarageBand, which is more accurately what i want to use
iLife is only 50 bucks, as opposed to Soundtrack which is 300, so i can afford to actually obtain it rather than steal it...except that installing GarageBand requires a DVD drive, which my g4 does not have.

god damn...

once again, i'd like to point out that i hate packing.
it takes no time whatsoever, but its aggravating. packing up your life and leaving...its very disheartening. this happens everytime i pack to go either to school or to go home from school...very upsetting.

i still haven't gotten that deck of cards from dan, nor have i received promised payment for the t-shirts, and he still has my copy of lost at sea.
i also need to reclaim my snes from heather. i honestly don't care that much, as it will waste away in my room for a few more months, but i want to bring same games back to school and i lent her some of my faves, like kirby super star, yoshi's island, and tetris attack.

back at school tommorrow night.
my plane (song) flies out of JFK at 12:45, arrives in tampa around 4. the next shuttle to sarasota is at 6, so i'll bring cds. i'll be in town by 7:30

today was the absolute last mall trip before i leave.
i got two new swanky pairs of sneakers at bloomingdales, two new pairs of pants and two new long sleeve shirts at express, a happy little clock at ikea, and sephora was still out of the anthony facial cleanser i like.

i'm thinking i'll leave my tie-dye shirt home as it gets no respectable play at school. and the ringling sweatshirt must stay as well. i have enough sweatshirts now.
and i developed two more rolls of pictures, at cvs this time. i like that they do a contact sheet, but i'm not a fan of their print quality. i think i officially have enough pics to make a decent webfolio of home photos, with the exception of my lack of mia pictures. but i have seen her maybe three times all month...grrr...

ArtWhenWeMelt: you see dangerous lives of altar boys?
MadeofStarSs: i read the book
ArtWhenWeMelt: yes, yes, good book
ArtWhenWeMelt: but i was impressed again by culken
ArtWhenWeMelt: kids a damn good actor
ArtWhenWeMelt: i need to look into his work more
MadeofStarSs: he was in that?
ArtWhenWeMelt: kieren culken
ArtWhenWeMelt: the little brother
ArtWhenWeMelt: yeah, he done gots mauled by a cougar
Made of StarSs: oh yeahhh
Made of StarSs: i remember that part
ArtWhenWeMelt: now imagine that happening to a culken
ArtWhenWeMelt: its fun to watch
ArtWhenWeMelt: probably my favorite part of being home is watching lots of movies i never get to see while i'm at school
ArtWhenWeMelt: that and better food
Made of StarSs: iu should make a list of pros and cons
ArtWhenWeMelt: i have
ArtWhenWeMelt: mentally
ArtWhenWeMelt: many times
ArtWhenWeMelt: they're both great
ArtWhenWeMelt: home is better, just barely
ArtWhenWeMelt: mostly because of the lovely people
Made of StarSs: of course
Made of StarSs: when do you go back?
ArtWhenWeMelt: saturday
ArtWhenWeMelt: damn florida
Made of StarSs: wow
ArtWhenWeMelt: at least you can drive back home if you really feel like it
Made of StarSs: no i can't
ArtWhenWeMelt: i'm stuck there for four months at a time
Made of StarSs: yeah that does suck
ArtWhenWeMelt: oh yeah...forgot, not your car
ArtWhenWeMelt: i can't believe how long its taking me to read dave eggers
ArtWhenWeMelt: i'm a slacker
MadeofStarSs: what book?
ArtWhenWeMelt: ahwosg
ArtWhenWeMelt: its unnerving because he writes the exact same way i do
ArtWhenWeMelt: so its comfortable, but at the same time, uninteresting
MadeofStarSs: i loved that book
ArtWhenWeMelt: yeah, its great, but i just can't get attached enough to read more than twenty pages at once
Made of StarSs: yeah i put it down a lot
Made of StarSs: i don't
Made of StarSs: know
Made of StarSs: it was good
Made of StarSs: not amazing
Made of StarSs: the end drags
ArtWhenWeMelt: but that makes me feel like an asshole, putting it down
Made of StarSs: kinda loses its flava
ArtWhenWeMelt: chipp kidd i didn't put down, stephen chbosky i didn't put down, michael moore i didn't put down, robert fulghum i didn't put down
ArtWhenWeMelt: but eggers...the guy writes the way i do, so you'd think i could get more involved
MadeofStarSs: that should say something
ArtWhenWeMelt: should
ArtWhenWeMelt: exactly
ArtWhenWeMelt: and therein lies my problem
ArtWhenWeMelt: i know i'm enjoying the book, but not the way i feel i should
MadeofStarSs: how do you feel you should?
ArtWhenWeMelt: it seems like i should be enjoying it because he has a unique stance that is exciting and edgy over events no one else feels like writing about
ArtWhenWeMelt: instead, i enjoy it because i know exactly where he is and i know exactly where he's going because i know its real because it sounds like my brain on paper
MadeofStarSs: hahah
Made of StarSs: that's great
ArtWhenWeMelt: but i don't like the idea of my brain on paper
ArtWhenWeMelt: its unsettling
Made of StarSs: yeah that's kind of gross

ArtWhenWeMelt: i have camera and film, i can take pictures
ArtWhenWeMelt: what i dont have is a maria
Mister LAZER: do you need me in day light?
ArtWhenWeMelt: no
Mister LAZER: ok, then we'll def. play tonight
Mister LAZER: and heather gets off at 9
ArtWhenWeMelt: hurrah
ArtWhenWeMelt: yeah, i have very few daylight shots
ArtWhenWeMelt: i prefer night
Mister LAZER: awesome
ArtWhenWeMelt: mia is pretty and i need proof of it
Mister LAZER: no one will believe you?
ArtWhenWeMelt: everyone says they've got cute friends but when they show pictures they're never that cute
ArtWhenWeMelt: i'm showing off how all my friends happen to be hot
ArtWhenWeMelt: so bring a bikini
ArtWhenWeMelt: and this is the point where i point out that i'm joking
Mister LAZER: I could've guessed that
ArtWhenWeMelt: i hoped you did, but i'm never sure
Mister LAZER: right
ArtWhenWeMelt: many a fight have started because of my sarcasm
Mister LAZER: yea,I can imagine
Mister LAZER: but you have to remember you're back in NY now
ArtWhenWeMelt: hooray!!!!
ArtWhenWeMelt: for three more days
Mister LAZER: teehee
ArtWhenWeMelt: by the way, dan's an asshole
Mister LAZER: what happened?
ArtWhenWeMelt: he apparently volunteered to design t-shirts for his mom's boss
Mister LAZER: why does that make him an asshole?
ArtWhenWeMelt: they gave him all the info and he started working on it a little
ArtWhenWeMelt: he called me up today as i was on my way out to go shopping and asked if i wanted to work on it
ArtWhenWeMelt: i said yeah, figuring i'd do it tonight when i had nothing to do
ArtWhenWeMelt: while we're shopping, my dad called nova's cell phone to tell us colleen called because she needed it done by 2 (it was 1:30 at this point)
Mister LAZER: woah
Mister LAZER: did you talk to dan since then?
ArtWhenWeMelt: so i came home, threw the whole thing together and had the whole damn thing, eight t-shirts, front and back, emailed to her within an hour
ArtWhenWeMelt: dan apparently went to the mall
Mister LAZER: wow
Mister LAZER: so..he didn't tell you when to have it ready by, and he had you do all the work
Mister LAZER: are you getting paid?
ArtWhenWeMelt: i think so
ArtWhenWeMelt: this, a half hour after telling me that i owe him five dollars
ArtWhenWeMelt: he's a funny fella like that
Mister LAZER: dan's kind of an unfortunate character
ArtWhenWeMelt: and he stole a very cool deck of cards from me
Mister LAZER: you owe dan $5?
ArtWhenWeMelt: the bastard
ArtWhenWeMelt: he owed me 95, gave me 100 and said we were even. i didn't disagree since he said we were even. today he decided otherwise.
Mister LAZER: well, i guess that's fair enough
ArtWhenWeMelt: well, in all fairness, we did agree that we were even
ArtWhenWeMelt: and he was sober when he said it
Mister LAZER: strange
ArtWhenWeMelt: but i agreed to give him the five bucks anyway as long as he gave me my deck of cards back

after reading that email announcement of barbara bernstein's resignation, i think i laughed for five minutes. it tickled me.

after watching crossfire pretty regularly this past month, i've come to two real conclusions:
1) - i very much enjoy politics, even after leaving model congress and attending an art school that didn't care about my SAT2 scores or AP credits
2) - i very much dislike republicans, even after leaving my intensly liberal hometown to study in the controversially conservative sarasota florida

among other decisions i've made as of late, i have determined that i do enjoy photography, just not the time, money, or aggravation it cost me last semester. the three rolls of pictures i've developed so far since i got home have been mostly good. one or two standout shots each roll, a few crappy ones. but i am mostly enjoying the really really cool ones, even if the effects i come up with are trite and contrived.

this time next week i'll be reeling from my first day of classes. three classes. design with type, geometry, and theater. i still need to work out how i'm getting to that theater class. it's downtown. they either need to move the class to campus or i need to get a ride every week. either find someone in the class with a car who i can get along with for a ride every week or borrow brian's bike or something. rar...that's no fun...why can't it just be in the selby lecture hall?


i dunno...there are some things i'm looking forward to back at school, but some things i just don't want to leave here.
that's why i'm taking so many pictures here, i guess.

turns out elliott smith's death might not have been suicide

i lay in bed for at least an hour last night coming up with new ways to rebuid my webpage now. i am never happy with that thing for more than a week. i almost hate it now, but i loved it so much last month.
we watched poolhall junkies last night. good movie. very good. gratuitous language, though.
coral officially dislikes bjork's post. she claims that the music is "too confusing." i claim that coral is "too stupid-face."
i must retrieve the deck of cards dan stole from me at laurin's house the other night. i must also take many more pictures in the next week and talk to arden fekett about her webpage.

meltingpretty: how are you?
ArtWhenWeMelt: alright, i suppose
ArtWhenWeMelt: today is a day of cleaning
ArtWhenWeMelt: i must vaccum soon as i have promised
meltingpretty: aren't there 2 'u's' in that word?
meltingpretty: anyway.
ArtWhenWeMelt: odds are
ArtWhenWeMelt: i feel greasy
ArtWhenWeMelt: its weird when i shave and it makes me feel greasy
ArtWhenWeMelt: i need better facial soap
meltingpretty: nooooooooo. you're fuzzless
ArtWhenWeMelt: i found some at sephora the other day that i liked
ArtWhenWeMelt: its a brand called Anthony
ArtWhenWeMelt: its men's skin care stuff with really cool graphic designy bottles
meltingpretty: you're rambling about facial soap, dear
ArtWhenWeMelt: all of them are fragrance free, inexpensive, feel good, and the proceeds go towards prostate cancer research
ArtWhenWeMelt: they keep it next to the versace stuff
ArtWhenWeMelt: except the anthony astringent is only six dollars a bottle
meltingpretty: uh huh
ArtWhenWeMelt: and looks a hell of a lot better in the cute simple bottles
ArtWhenWeMelt: so what's on your mind, non-voter?
meltingpretty: ummmm not much really, thinking and staying in
meltingpretty: the usual
ArtWhenWeMelt: sounds exciting
ArtWhenWeMelt: fireworks last night?
ArtWhenWeMelt: kids down the street banged pots and pans at midnight
meltingpretty: no, i didn't go anywhere
meltingpretty: that's what we used to do
ArtWhenWeMelt: which is weird since they're the ones lighting fireworks all summer
ArtWhenWeMelt: rambling is fun
meltingpretty: eh
ArtWhenWeMelt: no wonder i'm home with nothing to do
ArtWhenWeMelt: i can't handle simple conversation
meltingpretty: yeah, niether can i
meltingpretty: quite a duo
ArtWhenWeMelt: dynamic
ArtWhenWeMelt: diabolic
meltingpretty: mmhmm
ArtWhenWeMelt: dichotic
ArtWhenWeMelt: disinfectant
meltingpretty: damn straight
ArtWhenWeMelt: DAMN THAT ANTHONY
ArtWhenWeMelt: he's warped my fragile mind
meltingpretty: fragile fragile fragile
ArtWhenWeMelt: mtv ranked NIN's "pretty hate machine" on their list of 22 greatest cds

HAPPY ELECTION YEAR!!!



current presidential picks:
1 - Wesley Clark
2 - Howard Dean
3 - Ralph Nader
4 - John Edwards