last week's jams:

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NEW LINKS COMIN' SOON

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

cool, i'll probably just be laying around all weekend anyway.


class was good this morning and i'm really happy with the way this semester went. i put together most of my package for kendra's class while i watched the west wing and then it started raining. i cleaned my room and packed more and talked to my mom on the phone and then max and brian agreed that we should go out for a while, mostly to go to pop comics. at this point, the rain decided to become a downpour. we stopped at walgreens first to pick up my film, which for some reason wasn't ready yet. it took us about 45 minutes at least to get to pop because EVERY intersection was completely flooded and traffic was extremely slow, despite most of the cars being SUVs that you would think would plow through lakes like this.
i got the latest issues of Y-The Last Man and Demo, along with the Love Fights trade paperback and told them to cancel my subscriptions over the summer.
we forged our way back up to walgreens, where i got my binocular photos back (less than great) and we stopped at KFC for food to bring back. my sneakers soaked through at one point and my right foot was completely soggy. i was unbearably happy to get back to the apartment and into some fresh socks.

every time i walk into my room, it seems like there's so much more for me to do.
seriously, if i buckled down, the rest of packing should take like 45 minutes, but its hot as hell and i don't have a stereo to motivate me, so i do a little at a time and cool off. i'll pack some more tonight, including packing up my hard drive, and get some sleep. in the morning i will present my magnets (which came out moderately sweet, in my opinion), have a couple of apple toaster strudels, finish cleaning and packing, including my bedspread, vaccuum my room, have it checked and get out of here. i'm worried about my schedule because the earliest time for mike to check rooms is 4:20pm, which i signed up for, and i'd be really uncomfortable taking a cab any later than 4:30 since the shuttle leaves at 5. i hope he's prompt and it only takes two minutes and i get a cab on time with no problems.

oh yeah, while i was cleaning, i stopped by the library and exchanged sixteen quarters, five nickels, and seventy-five pennies for a five dollar bill. that amused me a little.

OH HOLY CRAP!!!

Just today, Apple released the new iTunes 4.5 (yeah, i know, i didn't care at first either). the release lists a whole mess of new features, but the one that has me ready to mess my pants is AUTOMATICALLY CONVERTS WMA TO AAC

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLZ YES!!!
the only thing worse than WMA format is realplayer format. if you use a mac, WMA is pretty much a pain in the ass. only program that can play it is windows media player for the mac, and then you can only open one document at a time, so if you've got a whole album in WMA (of which i have a few) you have to stop after every song and load up the next one. it also makes it impossible to burn these onto audio cds.
but now we can convert them to AAC format, which is SPEC_FREAKING_TACULAR!!! now i can add all of those songs to my iTunes playlist, edit the track info, burn them to cds, edit them anyway i want, and they'll be lossless and smaller in size!!!


oh, this is very exciting. first thing i'm doing when i hook up my computer at home is installing that.

i looked at some pictres from las year's Siren Music Festival (which, by the way, is sponsored/run/whatever by the village voice) and it looks kind of insanely crowded and tightly packed and whatnot.

still, its a free all-ages show outdoors with Death Cab and TV On The Radio, so its got to be totally sweet.

i'm listening to Kupek's "This Is Intolerable" LP for the first time in like five months. i forgot how totally awesome it is.

in the past three days i've gotten at least four phone calls and the same thing happens every time. since there's nothing in my room, i'm never in there (its just depressing in there), so i'll be in the living room or kitchen. when it first rings, i think its some sound from the television or the stove or just outside (its a weird and noisy street out there). on the second ring i acknowledge its a phone, but i don't know who's since all four sound the same except for tom's which has two different rings at the same time, so i stick my head in the hall. on the third ring i confirm that it is my phone, so i run in, pick up, say "hello" and get a dial tone, so either someone's kinda bad at playing a prank on me, something's wrong with my phone, or someone's calling me but doesn't have the patience or something. whatever.

goddamn, i love this cd. once again its going to be totally hard to not wig out when i see Mal at the art fest. he was the only one i was weird with last year. even frank miller i was ok with, though i did trip over someone's coat on the way to talk to him.

The Blood Brothers are playing the North Six in Brooklyn on Coral's birthday. i like the one album i've heard of theirs, but i doubt its enough to warrant going to the show.
the Unicorns totally need to play somewhere in new york this summer. that would be quite the insane show, and totally excellent.
and they just announced that Death Cab for Cutie are also playing the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island, along with Blonde Redhead and Constantines and a bunch of other bands i don't really know, but hell, Death Cab and TV On The Radio is quite enough to get me interested.

two tests today, each one took me about fifteen minutes to complete. i'm still feeling really out of it, but i managed the long hot walk to SunTrust and Walgreens to deposit a paycheck and drop off a roll of film from my binoculars-camera. tommorrow we will see how those turned out.
tonight i need to make some quick revisions to my design with type project and start packing up my clothes. tommorrow i will hand it in, construct my graphic design final project, start packing everything else (camera, stickermaker, cds), and throw out or box up whatever's left (coat hangers, cutting mat, brayer, spray fixative)
friday, i hand that in, have my room inspected, turn in my keys, say my goodbyes, and go home.

YES!!!

TV On The Radio just announced that they're playing the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island on July 17th! whoever's around at that time, you're coming with me.
additionally, i just discovered that Mum is playing the Bowery July 25th and 26th, for those interested.

ugh...so far there are three graphic novels coming out in july from three of my favorite artists.

first, Arthur Dela Cruz(who i'm still expecting a sketch from for winning march's kissing chaos fan art draw-off)'s My Destroyer Vol. 1 comes out july 14th.

then, Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life comes out july 28th

and sometime in july not specifically announced, Craig Thompson's Carnet De Voyage comes out.


additionally, i shipped out my boxes today. i'm half hoping that the monitor gets lost as i have insured it for more than the cost of a new flat panel one, but the whole reason i'm sending it home to begin with is that i intend to use my computer this summer and just don't want to risk it. i also took all the decorations off of the walls and packed up everything i wanted to go into storage but wouldn't need for class this week. my room is now a wasteland of cds, random papers and plastic bags, with a couple of boxes for good measure. its terribly depressing. i plan to be living out of my luggage by thursday afternoon and at this rate i'm way ahead.
as i was on my way out this afternoon, i ran by jeff lange, whom i've had almost all of my graphic design classes with so far. since i have been so bereft of livelihood these past couple days, my hair was clean and bouncy and bereft of any styling product, demonstrating how long and unruly it actually is now, which is often hidden slightly by whatever gel or wax i feel like in the morning. he stopped in the middle of the road and asked, with eyes wide open, "did you used to have, like, longer hair?" "yeah, last year i had a long ponytail down most of my back." "oh yeah...wow...you look totally different after you got your hair cut."
i found that very amusing. my hair now is at that phase where i can always see it out of the corner of my eyes. it won't stay back or up and its just that length where it loops under my eyes and disguises my ears. i need to get it cut again soon. i've amused the thought a couple of times of having coral do it. i'll see how i feel about that later.

flat panel 17" monitors for the mac:
Samsung SyncMaster 173S - $404
Sony STYLEPRO SDM-S73/B - $439
Samsung SyncMaster 170 N - $428.92
Planar PE171 17-inch Black LCD - $429.99
Sony STYLEPRO SDM-S71R - $424
CTX PV 720 - $399.83
Vison FV171 - $362

i'm feeling crazy out of it. radha insisted on us rehearsing our scene for hutchison's class on saturday afternoon, so i came by at 3:30 in costume and ready to go and i woke her up. then, in class yesterday, she gets there 15 minutes late and realizes she forgot her props and costume. that and she completely forgets everything we went over the previous week and pretty much ruins the scene as far as i'm concerned. tom's techno, classic rock, metal, and instant messenger kept me up most of sunday night/monday morning. neil borrowed my favorite pen and i was so sleepy that i forgot to get it back. its a little silly, but i just feel very uncomfortable and insecure without it. yesterday i was lugging around my computer and all the stuff i'm sending home to wrap it for shipping. i started thinking about buying a flat monitor since mine is bigger than an iMac and annoying to move about. i called up my parents for their opinions as i do whenever i'm thinking about buying something more than fifty dollars and my mom immediately wigs out and calls me greedy. i wanted to scream that i wasn't even asking her for money but an opinion and that i, unlike my sister that she was relating me to at the time, have not asked for any money since coming to ringling outside of tuition (though i appreciate what my parents do buy for me, i have not asked them to do so), so after that i was in pretty-much-fucking-pissed mode all night, trying hard just not to kick anything. that mood also made it hard to fall asleep.
today is the only time max has all week to drive me around, so i'm mailing off my computer and putting my stuff in storage today. whatever is left in my room tonight is either going in my luggage or being left for the guys to put in storage after i'm gone.
so between people being stupid, my inability to sleep well, my having to wait until late at night for the labs to be open for me to do homework, my not having my favorite pen, and my sad and empty bedroom, i am not feeling particularly well or all that sane.

luckily, TV On The Radio is most enjoyable music and i have plenty of batteries for my discman.
its also yucky out today and i have two tests tommorrow.

i'm thinking of selling my monitor, which is bigger than an old iMac, and getting a nice flat screen monitor. it saves deskspace, but more importantly for me, its easier to pack and ship. goddamn, do i hate lifting and packing that big ass monitor. ideally, i'm looking at the apple 17-inch studio display. the flat one, of course, as that's the point of all this.

here's a decently priced one, ($255 as of right now) too bad its still got five days on an eBay auction
here's an even better one, ($103 as of right now) too bad its got six days left
there's one used on amazon.com for $460. not bad.

with my ringling student discount, i can get a brand new one from apple for $599.

ok, i've officially had TV On The Radio's "Staring At The Sun" stuck in my head for three days straight. I have the rest of the EP and they're all totally great songs, but that single is just uber-catchy.

Staring At The Sun MP3
Staring At The Sun music video (Quicktime)
Lyrics:
cross the street from your storefront cemetary
hear me hailing from inside and realize
i am the conscience clear in pain or ecstacy
and we were all weaned my dear upon the same fatigue
oh my own voice cannot save me now
it's just one more breath
and then down i go

your mouth is open wide
the lover is inside
and all the tumults done
collided with the sign
you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your body's over me

note the trees because the dirt is temporary
more to mine than fact face name and monetary
be what you will and then thrown down your life
oh it's a damned fine game and we can play all night
beat the skins and let the loose lips kiss you clean
quietly pour out like light, like light, like answering the sun

you're staring at the sun
you're standing in the sea
your mouth is open wide
you're trying hard to breathe
the water's at your neck
there's lightning in your teeth
your body's over me

wowowow...this woman is asking how to search the sound library, so i show her step-by-step on the computers how to do it. twn minutes later she comes by and asks to find music, because all she can see are cds for sale. i show her the music section of the same webpage (there's a button that says "sounds" and a button that says "music") and she's having the same problem. i look over all the cds listed, all grouped by style of music, of course, and ask her what she's looking for. she wants "home on the range"
i explain that these cds are all royalty-free music written specifically for this purpose and a known song like home on the range will NOT be on here. she asks if i know how to search the music library. since the cd titles are the style of music and there are no specific songs you could possibly want to find on them, i say no, not any more than i've already shown her. she could take a couple of them and listen to see if she finds something she likes. she asks if anyone else here knows how to search for music because her project is due tommorrow.
OH GREAT FUCKING IDEA!!! you need a SPECIFIC song on SUNDAY, the day before its due, and you want to search the ROYALTY-FREE music library which you've NEVER used before.
UGH!!! YOU ARE A FREAKING MORON, LADY!!!

you want to use a specific song like home on the range, go find it yourself! go to best buy or tower records, or just download it online, i'm sure there are some wicked midis of it.

trying to print dvd case designs in the lab, but there's a 19 page document printing ahead of mine. no worries, i still have 50 minutes until i need to be at the library.
i'm thoroughly addicted to the Young Liars EP from TV On The Radio right now. its a brooklyn-based band, so i'm surprised they don't have any new york dates lined up for the summer yet. same with les savy fav. alas and alack.

brian and i are very much hooked on watching Gargoyles reruns on ABC family weekend mornings. this is like the third or fourth weekend we've done that and its just such an enjoyable cartoon.

we're pretty sure max fell asleep. we didn't see any light or hear any sounds out of his room all morning, even before his 12 noon deadline, so either he finished early and celebrated with sleep, or he just plain fell asleep, or he's eerily quiet.

max has been working on a 24-hour comic since noon. he's apparently pencilled all 24 pages and inked half, so he's taking a quick nap.

my left hand has been sore for about a week now and i don't know why, and right now i have a tremendous headache, so i'm going to bed.

one week from right now, i will be at home, probably dragging my stuff up into my room.

it was twenty years ago today that the AIDS virus was discovered.

my mom told me that seth tobocman spoke to SNUUC on sunday. i already figured he was there as part of the social action committee, but since i don't like alot of what the committee does and i pretty much can't stand don obers, its director, i chose to ignore that fact and just keep in mind how much i love seth tobocman.

hey, check out this recording the three of us did for Brian's World's Greatest Toaster!!!

got packing stuffs today. packing up my computer after class in the morning so it can go home.

YES!!!
its a great day on Pitchfork's music news
today they reviewed the new Les Savy Fav singles collection/dvd "Inches", giving it an awesome 9.1 score, and announced that the Decemberists are preparing for their new album by playing new songs on their newly announced tour, including New York's Bowery Ballroom on June 10th and 11th!!!

hey everyone! (see, i did it again!)
next tuesday, be sure to head out to the nearest Ben & Jerry's store for Free Cone Day!
and while you're there, don't forget to enter their sweepstakes to win a free iPod, iMac and a trip to Ben & Jerry's headquarters. the first 50,000 people to sign up for the sweepstakes get a code for a free iTunes download.
also, participating Ben & Jerry's stores will have representatives from Rock the Vote! on premises to register people to vote.
free ice cream, free iTune download, chance to win an iPod and an iMac, and voter registration??? best ice cream-related giveaway ever!!!

and yes, the Ben & Jerry's in St. Armand Circle in Sarasota is participating in all of this.

because i know you're all oh, so interested, you can check out all the drama of the Ryebot vs. Firehazard Photoshop Street Fighter battle here, complete with exciting commentary and the full size images, which make great wallpapers.

you see the humor i injected there? i pretended that someone actually reads this aside from myself and my mother, who i'm sure is having a hard time loading this page when i post a couple new jpegs everyday.

they seem to think that my last show was really cheap.
i seem to think that these people know nothing of style and substance.

Gingerbox Photoshop Street Fighter:
Ryebot vs. Firehazard
Round 6 - Firehazard:

wow...um...that kind of sucks.

not knowing what the hell anything else in the image is now, i guess i'm going to have to work off of the idea of little white lives?

tonight, at the library, i somehow slipped back into my old high school habit of using big words to make what i say sound more important. it worked, as i seemed to incite more conversation, but i feel kind of dirty whenever i realize that i've done that.
its not like its all that bad a practice. i like using "big" words (the ones i go for aren't even that big. i'd only call them five-dollar words, at most) its just that they're really unneccesary and eventually i realize that i do it to sort of raise the bar just for the hell of it.
its cocky, really. dammit, i love it, though.

additionally, free comics are good. free comic book day should be good this year. but most surprisingly, and most pertinent and immediately entertaining, CLICK HERE to read the full first issue of Daredevil: Father, written and illustrated by Joe Quesada

almost as important as the days when i feel like i'm finally into graphic design, the field, are the days when i feel like i'm part of graphic design, the people.
i was bored working on color palettes in class this morning and there were only fifteen minutes until i could comfortably leave, so i brought up bestbuy.com and looked up the Rock Against Bush compilation cd to see if they had it (they do. new world/inferno song, new decendents song, new jello biafra song, new recording of one of my favorite against me! songs, and more) and gil happened to look over my shoulder at the track listing. we started talking about punk and ska bands changing over the years, which lead to discussion of punk bands we used to like but the new stuff sucks, which lead to discussions of funny things we've seen/experienced at concerts. at this point, randy, jamie and jose joined the conversation, and we continued from there and it was just plain fun. and then i went off and watched two lovely episodes of the west wing.
and listened to the decemberists while i did more color palette work.

hoorah for the decemberists.

the west wing - feel good, think smart show of the century!

i almost forgot, Happy Hitler-Bine/20!

the bunny i drew the day after easter.

concerts while i'm home to keep in mind:

May 19th - The Strokes - Central Park Summerstage, New York
May 20th & 21st - The Magnetic Fields - Town Hall, New York
June 6th - Minus the Bear - Bowery Ballroom, New York
June 8th - Wilco - Irving Plaza, New York
July 30th - They Might Be Giants - Prospect Park, Brooklyn

damn, more bands need to play new york this summer. i feel no compulsion to really see any of those, though they'd each be nice.

so this is what going insane looks like

click on it to see more madness

haha, my favorite Scary Go Round ever:

yeah, his short stories are great. and his art is most definitely addictive. its annoying and blasé at first, but once you've read a few of his stories you start to really love his style and see it as completely unique and inventive.

jeff krichmar sent me a link to a song he put together. it's not bad, a little amateur. kind of derivative, but meh, its hooky.

nova's working in DC. she moved out there last weekend and got a new iBook. somehow, this inspired me to finally research my powermac to find out exactly what model it is. turns out i have a PowerMac 733/G4 Quicksilver. aside from mine being a tower and hers being a laptop, here are the only noteable differences:
her G4 processor has 67 more megahertz
she has a combo-drive (DVD, CD-RW) whereas mine is only CD-RW
hers has twice as much built-in RAM, but mine is far more expandable than hers
my hard drive is 10gigs larger than hers
otherwise, they're more or less the same dealy.

laptops frighten me a little. how can you carry around a computer like a notepad or something? its just a little creepy to me.

tom replaced his tower with a laptop about a month ago. speed metal and instant message noises still flood out at absurd volumes.

i think, a little after i've settled back home, i'm going to order the MacAlly iceCad Mini Graphics Tablet
i was worried about the size, but i drew a 2.85"x2.14" square on a piece of paper and drew in it and its quite comfortable, at least, on paper. the reviews on amazon were encouraging, and i found it on Yahoo! for only $36.43 including shipping.
that's a damn good price for a graphics tablet, especially one with 1024 points of sensitivity and designed for Mac OS X (also works on OS 9.2 and Windows98, ME, 2000, XP)

sidenote: its sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hot in the library today. i keep wiping the sweat off of my upper lip.

woah...whole new friggin' layout
its amazing what you can do in a couple hours with too much sugar in you


went to walgreens, bought a couple pounds of easter chocolate for under ten bucks. fifteen cents per cadbury creme egg. my teeth hurt after two, so i've been giving them out to people for fun.

OMGFG!!!


i neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed it.

i had a very good day, i think.

between a totally kickass display of graphic design skills and some nice introspective time to build up my confidence and comfort in my rapidly growing graphic design skills and awareness and watching the west wing (i *heart* will bailey) and having a totally kickass pizza and a nice relaxed shift at the library and finally coming up with a resolution and method of execution for that photoshop battle piece that i felt was strong and playing gran turismo while listening to they might be giants and my roomates and i doing a kickass a cappella rendition of mega man 2, this was a totally good day.
i left out the sophomore photography show, because it was pretty lame.


after this past month or so, i totally feel for the first time that graphic design is absolutely what i can do for a long time and be very happy with it and do a totally stellar job with it. i still need to learn alot, but i'm definitely comfortable with it now, and that took a while, like two years.

and i hadn't listened to "they'll need a crane" in like a year.

i feel so big.

last week i had burger king everyday for lunch. this week i've been better, but i just had half of a medium pizza hut pan pizza with sausage and diced tomatoes. i'm going to have the other half for dinner.

ugh, i feel big. good thing i do so much walking in the summer.

well, it took three months, but Scott McCloud's morning improv "Whose Mind Is It Anyway?" is finally complete
probably among the strongest webcomics i've ever read.

i've gotten a small handful of positive reviews on macjams this week. unfortunately, they're all anonymous so i know they didn't vote on a score for them.
i also got a negative score on "the disease," which i think is my strongest song, so that bugs me just a little. these are all crappy little demos i use to figure out how to do little things with the software and hardware, but i still think they're decent songs.

for the third straight day, i kicked the crap out of graphic design class. rich had to give me a high five for all my thoughtful critiques. and kendra gave me a 12 out of 10 for my work today, while most of the class got 8s. woohoo!
there are times when i feel so out of it since i'm totally new to graphic design and all, but there are times like this past week and a half where i feel like i'm really evolving into what i hope will someday be an amazingly awesome graphic designer.

now if only i could settle on one approach to this photoshop battle rather than jump back and forth between four different methods.

ryebot finally makes a return volley. i'll see what i can do.

speed metal and instant messages fill the night

there's something very hypnotic about that giant sprite of me running. once i have it on the screen it just starts sucking away all of my rational thought.

tonight at the library, this one guy who's always trying to get away with stupid crap came in to watch a video in the meeting room. he made a small production out of me having to unlock the door for him, at which point i pointed out the styrofoam container in his hand and reminded him no food is allowed in the library and said "yeah, don't worry, i got it."
an hour or two later, he wanted to renew the video he had. upon scanning his card i saw that he had five overdue videos and told him that. he insisted he never left the library with three of them, returning them as soon as he watched them in the meeting room weeks ago. i wrote down all the call numbers and checked both the stacks and the video room and sure enough they were all missing. he protested another minute or two, at which point i pretty much made it clear that we have no way to know that he doesn't have the videos if they're checked out in his name and they're nowhere to be seen.
another hour later he came up to pay off the late fee on the videos and renew them. i told him i can't do that until he brings in the videos so i can discharge them. he got indignant because all he wanted to do was renew them and he was willing to pay the late fee. this is where i started having fun. i got up and smiled and told him that renewal is a benefit for people who bring in their items on time and that these are the penalties for being late, and that he could either go get them and i could discharge the videos and he could pay the late fee and then check them out again, assuming no one had placed a hold on any of them, or that he could keep them as long as he wants but pay an even higher late fee later. he mumbled something about this being unfair as he walked out, at which point i proudly proclaimed that these are issues easily resolved by returning things on time. the three people waiting behind him and my supervisor all got a good laugh out of that.
twenty minutes later he returned with all five videos, twenty dollars, and a very sour face. i resisted every urge to egg him on and went about the procedure exactly as i would anyone else, rather keeping to myself how terribly amused i was at how this almost escalated into a real fight.

during his last visit, my supervisor alerted me to the fact that the new student life building which begins construction next year will have a student fitness center. i commented how very angry i was that i would not have such a facility during my term at the school...so i had a bit of pent up physical energy just waiting to be released then and there. maybe he picked up on that and decided to shut up and leave with his humility.

or maybe i just have a big ego tonight. whatever, its always fun to one-up people at art school, especially at the library.

needed something mind-numbing after library. tried watching showbiz moms and dads but it just made me mad, so i retouched a mega man sprite to look like me:

ryebot started a new Photoshop Street Fighter battle with me. we'll see how it turns out.

his first strike posted while i was in class this morning:


my counter posted after the west wing:

seriously, iAlarm has not woken me up in almost a week. that stuff is busted, yo.

i drew a bunny in math yesterday. i will scan it later.

last night i challenged ryebot on gingerbox to a round of photoshop street fighter. i made the first strike and he hit back. as i was working on my first counter attack, the thread became flooded wth people criticizing the amateur way ryebot worked on my picture and that the whole battle was already ruined. about two minutes after i posted my first counter, the moderators reccomended we delete it and start over since so many people were being bitches so early on.

i don't know why, but that kept me up for a large portion of the night, laying in bed thinking about what could have been done to fix it.

easter sunday: work eight hours at the library, write the same two words over and over in as many similarly differeny ways as i can creatively stand with my limited supplies, no chocolate.
its hot and beutiful out all day. as soon as six o'clock rolls around and i'm grabbing my bag to leave, it starts raining and thundering and lightninging. this keeps up all night, only escalating in intensity, and of course i have to go to the lab. as i start maneuvering around the puddles in my hooded sweatshirt, i notice how fantastically beautiful the intense rain looks right around the streetlights. i run back to my room for my camera, but realize that there is no shaded area from which i can see the splendorous areas of light, and going out in the rain and shooting upward like that would completely ruin my lenses.
so i go back out and completely soak myself on the way to the lab for stupid type brochure layouting.


^- me, post trip to the lab. my sweatshirt and shoes are soaked right through.

at least this new modest mouse cd is awesome.

happy easter, ever'buddy!

not mine, Redmond's

right now i am a half-hour into my 8-hour shift at the library.
t'will be verrrrrrrrrrrry boring, but at least i will get real paid next week *midnight vultures in my head*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARIA!!!



i miss watching movies and eating pizza. i think i'll do that when i get home in three weeks. and then get a job. hopefully michael's will actually hire me this year.


i swear to god, we're food shopping tonight. seriously, or someone is getting hurt.

scott mccloud removed this link when he realized it was for review purposes. lucky me it was still in Safari's history.
its a really good silent comic strip, but definitely not something for the kids or to be read at work, as there is frequent nudity. still, a good story, for those interested.

i'm not allowed to have a wholly good day, am i?

i still haven't eaten much and i'm verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry sleepy, and now i'm at work.
somewhere between class and now, my watch broke, so it always says its 12:00. its not even that i need to reset it as that the actual frame of the watch is broken.
ah, well, it was two dollars. but it was very cool.


i'm gonna have to resort to fast food again tonight and i'm going to have to fight my hardest to not doze out during work in the next couple hours and its just going to be rather dificult for me.

that's three watches that have broken on me this semester.


i'm working the library for eight hours on sunday. that has a great likelihood of being coma-inducing.

iAlarm didn't work this morning, which makes me mad. that's the whole reason i kept poisoned open at night, because sometimes iAlarm just doesn't wake up. i heard some dogs barking this morning. i checked my watch and it was 8:37, so i pulled on the shirt and pants i'd had on last night, threw a bunch of things in my bag without really being sure what they were, pulled shoes on and raced out the door. kendra seemed to throw a little fit when she saw me come in late. today we presented our four additional objects to the class for reccomendations before we go ahead with the new icon set. the first few sets were ok but mostly boring and i managed to wake up enough to give some mediocre critiques. i was the last to go before our break. my theme was things that hold other things together. i showed them a rubber band, a screw, a nail, a paper clip, and a picture of a therapist's couch. the whole class laughed when they saw the couch and kendra's face just lit up. she also really loved my explanation (the rest are all things you can use in the office, but once you bring in the couch the entire meaning of the set changes, and having more than one such object would confuse the viewer). they were worried about making an icon of a rubber band, so we switched the theme to quick fixes and replaced the rubber band with a safety pin, replaced the paper clip with a band-aid and got rid of the nail all together.
during the break, i washed my face.
when i came back, i was just a flurry of ideas. i started throwing out whole new concepts for everybody and kendra loved it. after the first three, the student would just present their initial ideas, kendra would think for a second and then say "what do you think, derrick?"

so i had a good morning, overall. more important to me than kendra loving my ideas was that all of my classmates seemed generally enthused with my ideas.

kendra's class has had me start thinking about graduate school. not immediately, i want to get out and actually be a graphic designer for a while, someday i think it'd be really cool to be a teacher or something. it just seems like i'm better with ideas than execution. i have a good handle on the process, but i'm more interested in the critiques, really.

download or open in new window for a better view. sized down via html so it will read well in the blog.



erin: whoa that picture is supercool
erin: are those powerrangers?
derrick: mmhmmmm
erin: i like them
erin: and kirby's supercool
erin: that's really good
derrick: you like the power rangers
erin: i do
erin: the original 5
derrick: tommy's back now
derrick: though he was the 6th
derrick: he's the teacher on the new show
erin: ahh
erin: i don't like tommy.
erin: i never did.
derrick: he was a jerk
derrick: and a bad guy
erin: he wasn't as bad as when they started to get rid of people though
derrick: i have no idea how he became the leader
erin: justin was totally the leader
derrick: when they replaced the red, yellow, and black rangers with younger kids who were pretty much the same characters
derrick: HE SO WAS
erin: he was the leader because he got special powers with his stupid white uniform
erin: yeah i didn't like how they replaced 3 of them at once
derrick: the white uniform was stupid as hell
erin: that was so dumb
erin: yeah it was
erin: it's not even a color
derrick: white and gold, yeah, real good colors for a ninja
erin: :(

haha, that's so unfortunate for you, max.

wait...sad/painful memories was totally full when i went in. a couple of kids must have switched out and into the classes you wanted.

after talking to the IT people, i got my internet back this afternoon.

here's my class schedule for fall 2004 for those interested:

this is what my desktop looked like a couple days ago:


looks pretty similar now, except no instant messaging, no weather widgets, and i cleaned up the documents a little bit.


i love mirah's "the sun" and "apples in the trees"
they have both been stuck in my head all night.

today i am not having a good day.
IT shut off my internet yesterday. apparently someone was uploading something from me the night before and they caught me file-sharing. i only keep poisoned open at night because, since it is constantly being connected to people whether they search my files or not, it prevents the computer to going to sleep so i'm sure my alarm will go off on time. while the alarm program i use is designed to wake the computer from sleep at the appropriate time, it does not always work, so i leave poisoned on so it won't fall asleep.
yesterday i found out that my final exam for math and our final performance in theater are both the last monday of classes. this sucks as school ends on a monday. what the hell kind of school ends on a monday??? its awkward. naturally, a week or two ago i made plans with my mother for my coming home and i decided it would be best to leave the friday before class ends so i can get out of here comfortably. that and for some reason flights are really expensive after that friday. i already talked with mr fridshall about taking the test in advance, but i don't know what i'm going to do with hutchinson. the final scenes are dialogues with predetermined partners and half of every group didn't show up yesterday so we're all fairly lost.
today was the critique for our zone plates. i only had four on the board. we were supposed to have six as a system and mine most certainly did not act as a system. its not terrible, because a few people agreed that my images and my text were really strong and my concepts were among the strongest, but they were underdeveloped, which is fine by me as it was a three-week project and i didn't have any files for a week and a half of it. i did take comfort in that my half-accomplished work was still better than a few of the other people's work and that i was not the only one without six on the wall. heidi also had four undeveloped, eyelen had three very much underdeveloped, and katie, camay and jeff didn't have any. still, seeing your crappy work up there just makes you feel like you'll be mediocre for life and that really brought me down. i dunno, something this morning just had me in a funk all day.
i had to leave class early to get to the registrar's office. when i left class, all five of my first pick classes were still open. when i got to the office, one, (my new media elective, digital video) had closed. just as the registrar and i had hammered out a good alternate schedule (twenty mintues after my scheduled time) graphic design 2 section 1 had filled and any other time would conflict with my liberal arts. we shifted alot of things and looked over the whoel course catalog. i ended up with a decent shedule and only two of my original five classes, 3-dimensional problem solving and advanced art history: gay and lesbian art. my new media elective is exhibit design which should be helpful if i keep it up at MoCCA, and i'm taking the ecology of the earth (woo, i sound like a captain planet bad guy when i say that).
sadly, on thursdays, i have 3-dimensional problem solving and graphic design 2 back-to-back, which is something i never wanted to do with two graphic design classes, but its the way they organized classes.
i missed half of the west wing while i waited on line at burger king. it was the debate episode and it was sooooooooooooooooooo much fun to watch and just as i was enjoying it, it ended and i was sad.
i took a twenty-minute walk to make a five-second deposit at the bank.
i went to IT, signed a piece of paper that said "i have used peer-to-peer software and RSAD doesn't like that." (i read it very carefully, there was nothing enforcable in the document i signed) and they said i'd have internet back by 5.

i didn't.

and from all that walking around in the hot, hot sun and getting generally mad at the school for jerking me around every which way they can today, i am not smelling good. i don't smell bad, but i just feel a little gross. max got some drinks while he was out today, but there's still not much to eat. none of us are free to go food shopping until thursday, and brian think that if we wait until thursday then we'd might as well hold out until sunday and do the week's shopping at the beginning of the week...which seems like a really dumb idea to me as we'd be spending a whole week without any real food in the apartment.


i'm just edgy. i need a shower and a shave and some music.

dammit, next year they're not going to let me get all the music i need. i NEED it. i could not make it through college without a steady influx of new music.

woah...was that like the FINAL home movies???

yes...yes it was. home movies is over, man. honestly, i feel like a chunk of my heart is missing right now. it wasn't a hilarious episode, but it made my heart twinge.

the good news is that brendon small is currently working on both the home movies dvd and cd, as well as a new concept album of his own.

the bad news is that i am very sad and want to cry.

umm...mia...you do know that the graphic down there isn't my t-shirt design but a link to my t-shirt design, right? there's no chrome anything, and its orange, not yellow. i think if actually printed it would be quite snappy.

today, despite what brian says, i graphic designed like WOAH! i kicked the loving hell out of three of my zone plate designs today. tonight i tweak them and tommorrow i kick the crap out of the others. brian denies my amzing work because the only times he saw me today was during my breaks. you canNOT do this much work in adobe illustrator without getting away from it repeatedly. i had a sandwich, we made a quick go around walmart, at one point i needed sweets badly so i went down to the shell station and bought many cookies.

arden emailed me requesting that i add additional pages for various services, include some background on her and her work, quotes from people she has wed, and maybe a new picture of her.
of course, i would love to do all of those and more, but she needs to give me the things she wants on those pages before i can do jack. she's having a hard time comprehending that i don't already have all the information about her ministry and i don't have any pictures whatsoever, all i have are the near-identical advertisements she gave me. THAT'S IT. just for this email suggesting all the things i told her i needed for the past three months, i think i might just make a completely absurd wedding webpage that amuses me and put that up in its place. I TOLD HER THAT FOR THREE MONTHS!!!

today i listened almost exclusively to Steve Burns's "Songs for Dustmites" and Mirah's "Advisory Committee", two very mellow and at times exciting albums that i find excellent for full-day graphic design sessions like this.

this blog is rapidly becoming and online journal, which upsets me. if i wanted that, i'd just keep using the caleida and livejournal i gave up on because i hate online journals.

hey, check out Reverend Arden Fekett's webpage. i built it a couple weeks ago and saved it to my external hard drive, which crashed before i could upload it.
its nothing special. arden gave me a couple copies of pretty much the same advertisement she'd made and that was it, so i really had no information or style to work off of other than what was there. still, i think i made a couple of slight improvements, but i still want her to send me more information so i can make an actual webpage and not just a one-page web advertisement.

I'VE GOT MY HARD DRIVE BACK AND ALL MY FILES INTACT!!!



today is a day of celebration. this hard drive will henceforth be treated with love and respect. the first thing i'm going to do as soon as i'm done with kendra's project is design some stickers for it to give it some personality.

a user named crustibooga seems to really dig my last three songs on macjams.com
i checked out his songs and they're really quite spectacular, so the fact that he liked them so much makes me feel alot better. in fact, on The Disease, which got four scathingly close-minded negative reviews, one defense from maria anonymously, and one brief rebuttal from me, "there's a pause button", crustibooga wrote "I know this is gonna be controversial, but this is better to me than 99% of other stuff here, including my own! I think they have more depth than most, their quirkiness and experimentation is refreshing!"
hooray!

i think now that they're done i actually prefer the disease over organ grinder, but i still enjoy organ grinder. i think it bores me because its so fresh in my memory.


kendra really digs the compositions i have this morning, so that's good. fedex.com says my hard drive was delivered at 9:29 this morning, so i'm going to try to pick it up as soon as i get out of class.

grab my hard drive, make a late breakfast, watch the west wing, shower, go to work.
jeff lange said he'd give me the startup disc for panther while i'm at the library. i'm not going to install it yet, just copy the disc so i can test out panther over the summer, see if it really speeds up my computer or not. it seems to be insanely fast on the lab computers that use it.

turns out that matt good cover was a very unsuccessful april fools prank. i don't care, i still think its a hot photograph. i was pretty sure it was fake since that's definitely a new york subway car and matt good vehemently hates the united states.

this afternoon i rocked out a new composition for kendra, completely without any of the materials from my hard drive, so i'm proud of that...that and i think it's a badass idea/image. luckily, a few of the designs i did are online in the jpeg i posted on here of the full spread from my accordian-fold book, so if i wanted to use any of them (which i mostly don't) i can copy and paste from that, which i did for this one.
i'll try to upload whatever i've got this weekend.

MOM, i got the jetBlue printout in the mail today!
i also got an ad from Sam Ash who are having a four-day sale which i'm sure i have time to squander engaging in...not.

Institutional Technology says they're cracking down on peer-to-peer file sharing, and one of the guys on Gingerbox got busted by Universal for downloading Eternal Sunshine from Suprnova.org, so i think i'm going to be happy with what i've got on my computer right now and call that that.

the people at MacJams.com are voting my new song as the worst of all of my stuff, and most of the people who hear it seem to dislike it...so......you all suck if you don't like it. i know its not great, but i do think its fun.
and the people on threadless seem torn on my shirt (see below) which is alright because i'm not big on it, i just think it'd make a good t-shirt that i can totally see mall kids wearing.
and a few of the heavyweights at Gingerbox seem to hate me. the latest cause of this is a thread that showed images of the batmobile in the new batman movie as well as an artist's rendition of the costume. i don't like the idea of batman using a tank so early in his war on crime and in the artist's rendition the abs were even more exaggerated than in the last movie. my saying those two things led to people believing that i said the movie would suck because of this, and they argued that its more "xtreme" and that the artist was using artistic license in the exaggeration. i replied that i looked forward to the movie because i love the cast and director, and that the folds in the cape and the stylization of the chin were artistic license, but the double-outlined abs and straight line down the crotch were obviously takes on what the artist had heard of the costume.
whatever, i don't care...that's just what's up.