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do you ever get the feeling that R. Stevens is both a kindred spirit and far too cool for you?
i know i do.

just in time for the holidays:



a five-song EP from the Pen Sixteen Club

1. Go, Charlie Brown!
2. Jingle Bells
3. 123456CHRISTMAS
4. You Don't Have To Be Jewish To Enjoy Christmas
5. 5

all songs by Sanskrit & Stuckey except "Go, Charlie Brown!" by Lawson, Sanskrit & Stuckey


need to do a bit more remixing and print out the cd sleeves. they should be ready for distribution next week. i plan to make a bunch and give them to max and brian to distribute as they wish and bring some home with me.
god, this is such a waste of time and energy.
the ones i distribute will probably go for three bucks each. i haven't decided if the art on the cd is going to be either a printed label or hand-drawn on each one. that's going to be different for each person distributing. i think i'll hand draw all of mine since i like doing that these days.
i'm shifting back and forth between three bucks each and five bucks each.
i need to get some money back on these because i'm the one paying for all the paper and the cds themselves. i don't intend to make any real profit on these. the pen sixteen club is, after all, a side project.
i'd like it to be less than a buck a track, since that way people will be more enticed to get it than the new bright eyes single, even though the only people who would buy it are ones who know me and don't know connor oberst, so that's sort of a bad example.
i dunno. i think its a very cute collection of songs and they should be lots of fun to listen to this holiday season, honestly, although track 4 is bound to offend a few folks. i just couldn't cut it. i thought it was the most brilliant improv brian and i had ever done.

also, remixing and new tracks are underway for my first album which i am tentatively aiming for a june release. maybe i'll distribute a few copies at MoCCA. won't that be wacky?! maybe i can work out a mini comic to go with it.
oh man, i'm thinking way over my head here.

check out my lomohome for my first roll with the colorsplash

MoMA has reopened in Manhattan after its sixth major rennovation. the new gallery has twice the gallery space it did before and it still has the sculpture garden, so don't worry about that.

i wanna go and people need to come with me. all you artsy bitches back home, we're going to MoMA when i get back there in a few weeks.
this means you heather, maria, dan, nicolle, stephanie, matt, whoever the hell else.
i doubt i'll go with more than one or two people, but still, all of you should and i most certainly will.

i spent all of last weekend working on my model of my fisher-price trade show design for exhibition design class.
i'm going to spent most of this weekend working on my character figurines for 3D Problem Solving class (expect pictures of all of these up soon)
next weekend is thanksgiving, and max and brian are going to max's family's again, so i'm gonna be hanging all by my lonesome for the better part of the week. the library's closed so i can't work. i imagine i'll work on designs for my graphic design project (wayfinding systems at the aquarium) and my biodiversity of earth project (ecological awareness signs), and probably a couple of songs. maybe even finish the pen sixteen club's x-mas ep. hopefully the labs will remain open. they should, just with diminished hours.

suzanne's doing an on campus thanksgiving dinner with all her on campus friends again this year. i'm providing the stuffing again this year, but maybe she can cook the turkey herself this time.
what are the odds she'll knock on my door that morning and ask me to do it again just like last year? probably slim, but still...

sadly, without television this semester, there will be very little to amuse me over those five days.

woah... so Colin Powell stepped down as Secretary of State and has been replaced by Condoleezza Rice?!

on the one hand, this slightly raises my opinion of Colin Powell, though its still worse than it was four years ago, but i do sort of fear for the US if Condoleezza Rice is our public face, what with all the lying and denying and whatnot.

former Secretary of State Madeline Albright spoke at my elder sister's college graduation. now that was a good woman, and i was proud to be an american when the world saw her as our representative.

i wouldn't trust Condoleezza Rice with with my french fries.

latest happenings that don't pertain to class (images courtesy of max lawson):


we have officially engaged in a rivalry with the apartment five doors down regarding christmas decorations. our balcony now has many chistmas lights and a cardboard reindeer brian made. max's window is adorned with garland and icicle lights. we've made various decorative improvements to our living room which impress all of our visitors. the most bold of these actions, though, was gift-wrapping our front door. even poking a hole for the peep hole seamlessly:




apparently, someone got really mad at the snack machine in the Bayou Apartment Complex for eating their change, so they broke the glass and took all the snacks (except for the gum and life savers on the bottom row. as of this morning most of the shards of plexiglass had been swept away and all of the life savers were gone as well)

I BOUGHT A COLORSPLASH CAMERA!!!



i'd been batting the idea around for about two months now and i finally just caved and did it.

my friends online immediately reacted to the news with a "what happened to your old camera?"

rest assured, i still have my real camera. i still use it. it still works to the best of my knowledge.
but this, this is just fun. this is a toy camera.
there's no adjustable lens to take care of.
there's no lcd screen and difficult cr2 batteries.
there's no automatic film advance or rewind.
there's no focus or aperture control or zoom.

its just a glossy white plastic capsule.
so why am i so excited about this? well...


primary cause for excitement is the unique colorsplash hotfoot flash, which sticks out from the side of the camera like an illuminated tumor
the bulb (which is powered by a simple AA battery) is surrounded by three gels. by simply rotating the wheel on the side, you can switch from a standard white flash to yellow, blue, or red, flooding your photographs with a new layer of energy:



next is the exposure settings. while not having any real shutter speed control, there are two settings, instant exposure and long exposure, in which the shutter remains open for as long as you hold the shutter release button down. this allows for the streams of light and the blurs and burns that i so love in my more aggressive photographs. what is truly innovative about this, however, is that in long exposure setting, the flash itself doesn't actually go off until the moment you release the button, allowing you to wave the camera around for as long as you like making a chaotic and fluid background, then steady your shot on the subject of the photograph and release. the flash will ensure that the final subject of the photo remains clear, awash in whatever color flash you so choose:



and finally, the sheer design of it. the thing is beautiful. small, smooth, glossy and white. retro and futuristic at the same time. how can someone not have fun when this silly little contraption is pointed at them? a small singular plastic unit lends itself to being jammed in my pocket and brought to social events and whatnot. also, having to wind the film manually allows for MULTIPLE EXPOSURES, which are always crazy and exciting.



so yeah, i ordered that today.
i should have it sometime next week.

this may not seem like much to everyone else, but another super cool thing to me abou tit after researching fun toy cameras i like is that this one uses 35mm film, which is ever so much easier to buy than medium format film or polaroid film.

today i found out my camera isn't really broken, i just don't know how to use it, still. the lens hood for one of my lenses is still cracked, but that's not really a big deal, and for some reason the lens still comes out far too easily, but at least it works.

today we covered our front door with christmas gift wrap, cutting little holes for the lock and handle and poking a hole for the peep hole. with the exception of the fact that we needed three pieces of wrapping paper to cover the whole door, it looks pretty seamless. there's garland and icicle lights in max's window, garland and lots of strings of lights in our living room along with a santa claus hat pinned to the wall and another pattern of christmas gift wrap making a border on one wall, a string of paper snowmen in our balcony window, and christmas lights all along the edge of our fence.
its cute.

i made this as my contribution to the spirit, based on a sprite from The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link:

for those curious, here's my spring class schedule:




i don't know why it worked out this way, but all of the classes i wanted were absolutely opposed to being on wednesdays, so i have wednedays completely free. how weird is that?

no idea yet on my work schedule. i was going to try to get tuesday and thursday nights, but now that i have my wednesday completely free, that seems just odd...

THIS JUST IN:

The United States of America has a sexual preference, and it is gay.

HAPPY ELECTION DAY!!!

by now you've all undoubtedly made your way to the polls and answered a questionaire of patriotic duty.

now i'm sitting here, eating mac and cheese, checking poll results on as many websites as i can think of, and feeling generally satisfied about how this is going to end up...except for the mac and cheese, that can only end poorly.

oh, what's that? you're wondering who i voted for? well, maybe this will answer your questions:



more here

click here for the mp3 of my newest song

click here to vote for it on MacJams.com

with this one i really was sort of thinking about a final album, which i'm sort of passively and actively looking forward to at the end of the year (school year, not 2004)

also, look at my website which now finally has some graphic design work up with more to come in the near future, just like all my photographs from the summer


my camera is still broken from my trip here after hurricane ivan. i need to get it to a camera place to have it looked at, but i rely on other people to drive me places and other people are busy/lazy.

morgan: it took me a couple seconds, but i very much enjoy this week's strip fight. also this week's paperclip is quite good, though i didn't see it last night and that made me sad. I WAS LOOKING BUT IT WASN"T THERE!!!

well...it was, but it was old...

Alright folks. Tuesday is "Exchange You're Broken President for a New One" Day! Go out to you're local voting dealies and vote! Or so help me (shakes fist menacingly at ceiling of dank hovel)...

Also, I fight in Strip Fight! Check me out and vote if you likey! This week: Revenge! Also, check the archives for the one I did last week about Zombies! Woo! Exclaimation points! Woo!