Friday, June 28, 2013

WELL...

...okay I didn't take a picture today, but I've been taking pictures in my mind, ripping up magazines, and  crafting a pan-flute out of broken mechanical pencils. I excuse myself thusly.
Now, enjoy a list of vocabulary words I've written down from the books I've read this summer along with sentences I've written to help me remember them.

effluvium: an unpleasant or harmful odor, secretion, or discharge.
The effluvia of baby barf resonated in my living room years after the incident with the slim fast and breast milk mix-up, and I vowed never to store my weight loss beverages in unmarked bottles again.

sylphine: like a sylph (a slender, graceful woman or girl) (this is a pretty archaic word)
At the street corner stood the sylphine silhouette of a woman, but upon closer inspection it was merely a lamp post, so I sat on the curb and wept bitterly. 

fey: giving the impression of vague unworldliness; possessing supernatural powers
Even though this elusive and fey sophomore strode the hallways clad in flowing black cloaks and spoke to no one, by 4 PM each day she was in her room watching Arrested Development like the rest of us.

crenulate (or crenulated): having a finely scalloped or notched outline or edge (esp. of a leaf, shell, or shoreline)
What a waste of a mollusk, I thought to myself, as the pugnacious six-year-old boy shoved the crenulated shell of a live scallop up my nose.

immutable: unchanging over time or unable to be changed
Winning the lottery doesn't alter the immutable fact that I am sixty-two years old with a thirty year-old son who refuses to move out of my house, let alone get out of his race-car bed frame.

poleax: to cause great shock to someone (or, noun, a sort of battle-ax, and in another verb form, to hack someone with said battle-ax).
Naturally, the DMV worker poleaxed the disoriented and now wide-awake customers when he poleaxed the young man (who made the vacuous decision to remark on the length of the license renewal line) with his recently sharpened poleax. 

garrote: to kill by strangulation, typically with a thin length of rope or wire
Typically if a violinist instills within his or her audience the urge to garrote said musician with their own violin strings, it is a sign that a career in the orchestral arts is not a plausible one.

exorbitant: unreasonably high
Despite a complete lack of necessity and square footage for a taxidermy Alaskan Grizzly Bear, Calvin purchased it with fervor in hopes of relieving his irrational fear of salmon.

ursine: related to bears
Unfortunately, the soul of this bear was only temporary suspended in ursine limbo and would soon reanimate and acquire a taste for neurotic humans.

atavistic: relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral
In an atavistic fit of despair, the starving mime quite literally pounced on the butcher's table of raw meat, startling the previously bored couples and impatient children at the open air market.

purloin: to steal
He managed to consume most of a lamb shank, staining his striped shirt in the process, before the authorities arrived and compelled him to purloin a bundle of meat and sprint into the nearest subway entrance.

Wow, I had more words but I got really tired. Maybe I'll do a couple at the end of every post from now on. Well, because I didn't take a picture today, I should rummage through my hard drive to find something to post for the sake of getting the attention of those who only look at my images...



My portrait of a conservative Circa 2009, that should do it.


zzzZzzZZzzzzzz

Thursday, June 27, 2013

More anxiety, and words


Hey.

This image would be better if my body and face were as sharp as my hands and the low sugar, high fructose corn syrup free cherry pie filling. I'm glad my mom didn't see what I was doing in our garage, because however disturbing a final work of art may be, it will never be as disturbing as seeing the process, your daughter stuffing her face with canned fruit and spitting it back out onto the ground repeatedly.
I got home from hanging out with friends and immediately set up this picture, which is a visual embodiment of my anxiety. A phrase that I tend to insert into common conversation is "I'm gonna barf," which is an infantile way of expressing a complex tug-of-war running from one end of the slimy grey rope of my brain to the other. This picture is just a feeling, an effect of phantom conversations that move in waves of mental nausea and of terrifyingly saccharine pain (Stay tuned for Rachael's Mind, a small crowded closet where a paranoid forty y/o woman, wearing a bandana and eating a Special K cereal bar, sits at a traditional high school desk and tries to talk to her cat).

I'm tired and I recently finished cutting out the faces of female celebrities while thinking of relevant insults, and I want to wake up early, so here is a PREVIEW of what I will actually do on my next post with the words that I've been collecting from various books I've been reading:

admonish: to warn or reprimand someone firmly; advise or urge earnestly; warn of something to be avoided.
"Don't touch the burrito, you fool!" the young man admonished his grandfather, who was so crotchety at this point he was about to eat the overflowing bean sleeping bag just to punish his insolent grandson with violent flatulence. 

Just so I can remember them!

Alright, gnightgrkksdsldfmgndfk

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

More Lens Babies/The first idea I feel I can classify as "big"


 First I'll talk about this so I get it out of the way. If you actually follow my blog, you probably follow me around on Facebook, so you've already heard about this today, and if by some miracle you haven't, then Jesus H. click HERE and EXPLORE THE PAGE! People are already giving me ideas, I'm elated.
I'm not exaggerating when I say this pile of supplies has been building up for about five years. I've made lists of summer goals annually since I was in sixth grade, and I've rarely followed through with any of them. I try to keep up with crafty projects during the school year and over time I've noticed that when I'm making something for a specific person, I feel more motivated to create a unique, high-quality final product (I make the best frickin' birthday cards, ask anyone).
So now I am working under deadlines to create Top Notch artwork in an insanely short span of time to please other people! Sounds a lot like my regular school year at Iolani! It's true, sometimes I feel lost without the tortuous private school structure, a structure which often completely dismantles my desire to make art, or write, or read, or, you know, do anything else besides cry into my mattress.
HOWEVER, these deadlines are incentive to push myself to do what I love, and do it prolifically, instead of farting in my bedroom all summer.

I put up this huge map of New England in my room and made it into a calendar, indicating when I will start and finish my projects, while constantly reminding me of where I want to end up for college.


            

I know it's actually rather warm in New York right now but just let me have my frigid digits fantasy. Wow now I'm going to start a band called Frigid Digits. COPYRIGHT 2013!

I already have a lot of great suggestions, like picture frames made from my camera graveyard. I have to learn how to make a lamp, as well as an instrument (the type was not specific, so technically it could be an instrument of torture, but I don't think that's what friend Emily had in mind), and my goal is to try out as many new mediums as possible. These few months are going to make up for all the hours and years I wasted on playing Animal Crossing or watching movies from the Gay and Lesbian section of Netflix until three AM (well neither of those things are complete wastes of time, but I certainly didn't balance out my arting and vegging).

I've always wanted to do some sort of large project and get other artistic people to collaborate and just BE EXCITED with me, and I think I'm on the right track!
This is happening at the same time as my photo-a-day project (which I AM DOING, although my flickr needs updating), and my Fabric Barf Saga at work, and my ever-growing book queue, and my eventual plan to develop a more substantial writing portfolio. The writing part worries me. I've written creatively significantly less since starting this blog, and understandably so. But I've also been reading more and taking more pictures, so all is not lost. The prospect of starting to write more is contributing to my anxiety, and I think I'm going to start waking up at five again to write when my mind is fresh (at a certain point in the evening my eloquence shuts off and I try to write out words like "eloquencey" which don't exist, and get mad at spell check for telling me so).

Now that I have specific projects and goals, I don't feel like vomiting all my organs onto the floor out of anxiety over this Big Idea I got. By the way, I was inspired by Phil Hansen's Ted Talk. This guy creates wonderful works of art using outrageous materials that range from worms to his own used bandaids. His website is here.


NOW FOR TODAY'S PICS.
I accompanied the 8 AM and 10:30 AM photo classes on field trips to Waikiki and Chinatown, respectively, and brought the Canon with the Lens Baby again. Sometimes these photo excursions turn into an opportunity for these kids to buy off-campus beverages during school hours, but they produce images that are much more refreshing than those taken on the utilitarian Iolani campus. I walked around with Ms. U (Alison Uyehara-Ngo is her full name, I feel like I need to fully introduce someone who I am talking about) while the students gallivanted; they were out of our sight within ten minutes on each trip. In Chinatown Ms. U bought me a Thai tea smoothie out of the kindness of her heart, which nourished my penniless teenage soul (payday is coming, though!).
Again, it's extremely difficult to focus with the Lens Baby, but the Muse produces whimsical, lo-fi images that are quite endearing.









Ms. U and her new, vaguely Jane Fonda haircut

SELFIE1!!@!!@



I have several more complicated photo projects clanking around in my brain right now. Perhaps not clanking, for that implies I have empty thoughtspace, of which I have a scintilla. I have photo ideas shuffling uncomfortably in the crowded airplane aisle of my brain, probably trying to go to the bathroom or find an extra blanket, and I just need to schedule times to execute them.
One idea requires black and white film and a handful of volunteers who are willing to share a painful experience with me, take me to the location of that experience, photograph them, and print the image in the darkroom while removing their face from the print. I am trying to think of ways to get a wide demographic of people involved in that, so I don't know if I will execute it this summer.
My other idea involves broken enlarger lenses, my favorite forest, and my stalwart model Sarah Garcia. That is definitely going to happen, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, dudes.

–Rachael










Tuesday, June 25, 2013

MMmm, yes, my Irrational Social Anxiety

I was struck with an interesting idea today after watching this Ted Talk and subsequently destroyed the living room for an hour to take a picture, but I will be revealing things about that on the morrow.
Because I really didn't feel like taking pictures yesterday, I borrowed a Canon from school so I could shoot with the Lens Baby we have, in hopes of being inspired by this alternative technology. I don't know if I've mentioned that I'm a Nikon person, but using a Canon with little experience feels extremely awkward, like trying to talk with a retainer molded for someone else's mouth.

This is the lens I was using–
Wat.

This model is called Muse, has a fixed aperture with an accordion middle, and you bend/squeeze it to focus. It's sort of difficult to get a perfectly sharp spot in the image, but it's certainly fun to play with.





MR. MEOW MEOW


Alright, the past few posts have been introspective or taciturn, so I think I should write something a little more humorous.
Although my mother insists that I have a gift for making friends (which explains why I'm invited to Total Ragers every weekend and my calendar is overflowing with social events), there are small, seemingly harmless things that trigger social anxiety for me. I'll use my frequent trips to Coffee Talk as an example, because that is where I chilled, much like a villain, after work today.
I went there frequently during the spring semester, but there was a period of two weeks during which I didn't drive and didn't purchase my usual Iced Dirty Chai.

Wait. Will the barista still remember my order? Is he going to notice that I didn't come in for a few weeks? Will he be offended that I didn't come for my Dirty Chai? How do I greet this dude? How long do I hold eye contact? Do I say hello in a knowing sort of way or do I nod my head or curtsey or WHAT DO I DO?!

It really only gets worse when I'm paying for my drink. One time my debit card was rejected, which instilled in me the most violent sense of shame you could imagine in a small then-sixteen-year-old body.

Okay I will take out my card first and put it on the counter just so and now I will take out my stamp card WITHOUT THE LIBRARY CARD THAT STAYS IN THE WALLET okay the stamp card will go here I will sign the receipt now, oh god that's not what my signature really looks like, the guy working today is really cute I screwed up my signature CUTE GUY THAT'S NOT MY REAL SIGNATURE PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

You know in case I end up marrying Cute Guy and he watches me sign the marriage certificate with my actual signature and screams "THAT IS NOT HOW YOU SIGNED FOR YOUR DIRTY CHAI ALL THOSE YEARS, YOU ARE NOT MY WIFE, YOU FILTHY IMPOSTOR!"

There is little exaggeration going on at this point. My anxiety from today, while taking the Lens Baby shots, went like this:

I hope none of the baristas see me taking a picture of my cappuccino, I always hated That Asshat Taking Pics of Their Coffee, but now I am said Asshat. I mean it's not like I can take pictures of those women speaking Japanese over there. Did they just look at me? They are judging my asshat coffee pics. Okay coffee is gone let's take pictures outside NOT BY THE WINDOW I CAN'T LET ANYONE INSIDE SEE ME TAKING PICTURES AGAIN oh man I want to take a picture of this newspaper stand but this is a four-way intersection and there are so many people who are going to wonder why I'm taking a picture of a newspaper stand. Okay I'll walk down this way, cool, jesus christ that woman sitting on that bench stopped her conversation when I walked by SHE WAS JUDGING MY CAMERA, I'M SORRY I AM WALKING AROUND WITH A LARGE CAMERA, EVERYONE.

No, really, it's sort of debilitating sometimes. I also have problems with meeting up with people for Social Events the first couple times. I love being punctual, but I don't want to seem like an anal-rententive psychopath, so I get anxious to the point of nausea while trying to arrive somewhere fashionably late, routing and rerouting through traffic and unforeseen challenges constantly. Is this something I'm going to grow out of? Did I get stuck with the Detail-Oriented Anxiety gene? Dear god I hope not.

THX,

W-2POREWIKLF;WEROIGJ;FLKGAF










Sunday, June 23, 2013

I'm really really sunburnt right now

All over my body, like, ohmygod-this-is-third-degree-that's-not-a-hyperbole sunburnt. But, it is a product of a day at the beach with new friends, so I welcome this rosy, painful, and temporary body suit.


Okay, I had an image in my head, and this is not it. I was frantically jumping back and forth, up and down the steps from my garage, attempting to creating a sinister walking motion, but it either came out too blobby or just stupid looking. I ultimately chose this one and morphed my legs into a cloak because I like what my hands are doing. Seriously, I have no idea how they got that way, but it's pretty cool.
There are some visible tropical plants on the right side and that just screws with my ambience, but I can't reconstruct the topography of my front yard area. I was exhausted after all that jumping (seriously I probably looked like one of those ghosts that haunts a house and repeats the same motion over and over again) so this is the picture I have for the day, even if I am not happy with it. And that is okay! Because we can't have awesome days every day. Nor can we have eloquent blog posts everyday, apparently. I'm gonna go read.

Thanks,

–––




Saturday, June 22, 2013

just the twenty-first

Today I took several Average Photographs. First, I got lunch with friend Catalin after work, whom I haven't seen in a while, and like any pair of teenagers sliding into the summer doldrums we had no idea what to do, so we sat in a park that was hot. Very hot. Hot as balls, I believe.

I rate this as average not based on subject matter, Cat i luv u.


Then I got home and started reading a book and doing my laundry and it was raining and the rain was nice in the light, sort of pale yellow, and the sun was a bright splotch sitting on the edge of the mountains, and the puddles in the driveway created a fractured watercolour of the world, and the rain turned into a fine mist so I thought it would be a good time to take a photo. I ran inside to get my camera, but it was just a few moments too late, and the sun had ducked behind the edge of the valley, and the light was gone, so I took a dumb picture of a flower.


Edited to mimic the light, of course. Then, feeling perhaps a momentarily lapse in young adult propriety and a wistful childlike urge to become part of the environment, I lowered my face into the puddle.



And I look very tired, because I was, although not sad, just interested, like maybe I should put away my words and my lens and just feel the world with my hands and face and feet for a while, but it started raining again, and my camera was going to get wet, so I went inside, and I read more, and I left the world. The street you live on feels prosaic, presently. Maybe it didn't, once, because you had less to think about, and more room to observe.

I made food, I made french pressed coffee with homemade whipped cream, of which I have eaten half a pint in the past two days, with blueberries. 

Just a day, mundane, images. 

And I did start to type out 'maybe if you jam all three images together they will amount to an Interesting Image,' and then I thought, well actually I can do that, so let's see. I put them into Merge HDR in Photoshop, a feature which combines two or more images that are of the same thing but are exposed differently to get a higher dynamic range of light. It just mashes them together and gives you a list of preset effects to make it photorealistic or high contrast or whathaveyou. 
So I came out with this–


It doesn't look like it but all three images are in there. It's interesting, if anything. 

Perhaps I will compose something tomorrow, or in my sleep, or on the way out of it.


Cool, cool,

–Rachael






Friday, June 21, 2013

Dark things/What I read twice in an 18 hour period

Today's picture lacks relevancy to.. anything, really.


Sometimes I just like creating scenes. This doesn't have a concept, and it doesn't have an elaborate story behind. But what if it did? I feel compelled to add background to these things I create. I make these images to entertain myself. I survey a mundane space and I invent ways to transform it into the edge of a nightmare. I've always loved creating fantastical, unreal worlds, since I was little, whether I expressed them through childish scrawl or kept them hidden beneath a blanket fort in my mother's bedroom, in my head. Now that I'm older I have the means to visualize and crystalize these worlds, but they've turned dark. They're all dark, even if they completely contradict my mood (my mom was standing by talking to me about our New York adventure at the end of the summer as I got into the sink), these worlds just fall into shadow. I don't think that's a bad thing, because most of the time I don't live in them. I did, however, create a series of images last semester that were very dark, and very real, and very much a part of me. You can look at them here, I won't talk about them now.
I am exhausted, and I still can't write, so I'm not going to weave a story for this image just yet. But I will, very soon. 

What I really want to talk about is a short novel I bought yesterday afternoon and have read twice since then. Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane came out on the eighteenth. I don't want to give much away, so I'll say it's a fantasy novel about the darkness of childhood, told from the perspective of an unnamed man whose memories overwhelm him in a fast wave when he visits his previous home in Sussex, England. I had previously read three of his books (American Gods, Neverwhere, Smoke and Mirrors, which is a collection of short stories) thanks to the book lending generosity of friend Maya, but he has many more novels so I wouldn't call myself an expert on his work. I had read many great things about this almost novella length story, especially from Gaiman's wife, Amanda Palmer, on her blog (you should really read the post here, it's hilarious and enlightening), but through the first half of the book it didn't feel as groundbreaking as his other stories. They are always lined with myths and symbolism and are told in beautiful poetic prose. The Ocean is no exception, it just didn't hit me with the same sense of wonder as did the other books. 

Until it did, and then everything happened at once.

It's hard to explain how a book impacts you if it's not a well known piece of classic literature, or you don't want to give away much about the story. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to claim I felt connected to this man's disjointed memories of a girl who could fit an ocean into a bucket. I'm only seventeen; childhood may feel like a hazy dream, but it didn't end too long ago. I think everyone goes through a Holden Caulfield phase at some point, and The Ocean does a hauntingly beautiful job of drawing connections between a kid's fantasy world and the horrible, half-truths of adulthood that are always present throughout youth, but manifest in ways that are almost impossible to understand.
This book goes far beyond what little I'm saying right now, which is why I started reading it immediately the next morning after staying up until midnight finishing it.

When I finished reading it the first time, I wrote something, so I'll record some of it here because it makes more sense in a poetic way than what my somnambulant brain can come up with now–

In childhood, wisdom is observation, knowing completely the minute world that you can fit into. The universe at large is cavernous, like adults, like the space between electrons and the nucleus, between the quick minded negativity of adulthood and their center, their heart. How far away adults can seem from their heart...

...it goes beyond a fear of growing up, or a fear of dying. What is most frightening is that I don't even know what it is that made me drop tiny oceans down my cheeks in that moment. Part of me hopes I will never know.
And that ocean, that beautiful void that no physical image could ever replicate, that suspended space that undulates through a child's dreams– it feels like a place we've all been. It feels familiar. I've breathed in those salts but no grains remain embedded in my soul, now. That forever understanding of anywhen and everyplace... it's like we all leave it behind when he kick over the sloshing bucket into the sandbox when it's time to go inside. I cried because I understood that I will never feel that again.

Childhood, childhood. I don't know if any of this is making sense. I am very tired, so I will sleep now, and not read this book for a third time. Not tonight.



Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Serious cat pics/Overheard tween conversations

I lugged my entire bottle collection out front intending to photograph it, but my cat followed me outside and distracted me with his fluff, so I shot him instead.


 MEOW

MEOWMEOWMEMWOMWEOMW 

MMrmmrpprhprhpphm

Like any normal, feline-infatuated human being, I love taking pictures of my cat. His name is Kabie, and he is debatably the handsomest cat in existence. He sheds profusely, and a thin layer of his fur covers every inch of our furniture, floors, and clothing. Our house is a pet allergen nightmare.

Let me tell you more about my cat.

Kabie is eight years old now, I believe. I think that means he's over the hill in cat years, right? Even so, this ball of fluff is extremely energetic (when he feels like it). You can find him lounging on our kitchen counter above a cabinet that he knows for a fact holds his cat treats. Sometimes if my mom forgets to give him one in the morning, when she tries to walk down the stairs on the right side of the counter Kabie will lean over and literally bat at her shoulder and meow incessantly. My mom obeys, of course. We're enabling him, it's tragic.
He doesn't like to be held for more than half a second, but he will accept all petting sessions. Occasionally I can spoon him for a good fifteen minutes if he has been lying on our couch and is too lazy to move right away.
I took these three over the past few years–




We also have a large golden retriever named Bart. Bart and Kabie could have their own sitcom, and I need to find a way to set this up. They have been best friends since we got Kabie as a sixth month old kitten (well, disregarding their first meeting, which involved a lot of hissing). My mom had Kabie declawed so he wouldn't tear up the furniture or our dog's face. It's kind of sad to think of a clawless cat, and had I been an adult I wouldn't have made that choice. He never goes outside, for mother is paranoid he would be stolen by some horrible human because of his beauty or that he would be disemboweled by a neighborhood cat because he lacks sufficient defense mechanisms. 

I digress–

Best. Friends.

My animals enjoy "playing" with each other, which includes Kabie swiping at Bart's snout with blunt paws and nipping his nose, Bart taking Kabie's entire face in his mouth, and lots of barking and howling. They never hurt each other, which makes it endearing and extremely entertaining to watch. I also see them groom each other on a regular basis. THE CUTE, IT RADIATES FROM THEIR FUR.


OKAY!
Time for part two of this post, which I'm going to write quickly because I'm hungry and impatient to start and finish a book I bought today.
So, I was cutting matte board in the drawing & painting room today during the second printmaking class. The students are from (entering) 6th to 8th grade, I believe. At first the class was mostly silent, but today the table closest to me had a lively conversation. What makes the dynamic of this particular table so hilarious is the presence of a single anime-obsessed girl. I know who she is, actually; she's entering eighth grade and was dressed up as England from Hetalia. I don't know anything about the other students so I will label them by gender or appearance, whereas she will be referred to as weeaboo, or maybe just W.

W: So, when's the longest time you guys watched nyan cat?
Boy 1: Uh none, I've never watched that.
W: I watched it for seven hours.
Several: ..What?
W: Yep I sat there and watched it for seven hours, I went insane.

---

Girl 1: Yeah, Eminem, he's the greatest rapper in the world.
Girl 2: I can't believe he's white.
Boy 2: Eminem is white?
Several: UH, YEAH, DUH, etc.
Boy 2: I had no idea he was white.
Girl 1: Yeah I thought he was African American until I saw his picture!

---

W: I used to know the lyrics to every Justin Bieber song on two of his albums
Literally Everyone: WHY?!
W: For Irony.
Boy 1: What's irony?


I made eye contact with anime girl at that point, it was just too good to be true. I applaud her for doing things for the sake of irony at age twelve/thirteen. 
Is it okay that I am transcribing these things? Is this unprofesh? Anyways, I think these kids are fantastic and I hope they say more amusing things in the next four weeks.

That's all for now, thanks dudes.

–ME AGAIN







Tuesday, June 18, 2013

An apology to myself/My movie watching oddities

Hey guys, I skipped a week of blogging and haven't taken a photo since the sixth. Oops. Sorry, me.
I've felt pretty horrible, actually. Kind of like this–

Vom-unacceptable


Yesterday I had a migraine and *attempted* a four hour nap in a puddle of my own sweat (thanks, weather) while *attempting* to block out the loud reggae meandering through my window from some house in the valley. Right now my neck feels like someone snapped two boards against either side for every hours while I slept last night, and moving is excruciating.
Note: Not Quite Hellish will now be featuring Rachael's Abnormal Body Issues on a regular basis.
I also haven't written things because my mind feels like one of those squishy toy things that you drop from one hand to another over and over again without ever really grasping it. Thus, I have to decide between forcing myself to write and waiting for it to come naturally. The eternal question.

So here is today's picture.
But, please please view it here, it looks so much clearer on flickr.




I saw Man of Steel today and formulated this image during the last third of the movie. I enjoy the grandeur of superhero movies, but I lose interest if the last forty-five minutes are purely hero and villain crashing around a desolate city like two high-speed humanoid pinballs.

I thought people might be interested in seeing the original image:



What I did: 
I am surprised I had enough silver eyeshadow to cover my entire face and some of my ears and neck. I used the grossest grey halloween face paint in existence as a base. I'm not so privy to skin altering photoshop techniques at this point, so I like to do things oldschool. 
I did have to alter my neck/collarbone area, change my hair colour, and clean up skin imperfections. Other than that, I kept the silver tone created from the original RAW file the same. I changed my eyes to make it more dramatic. Did it work? (Yes Rachael it did good job).

Next up, the three saddest moments in Man of Steel in chronological order. Sometimes unimportant details upset me when I watch movies. These aren't vital pieces of information (well, one of them might be), but if you hate spoilers in all forms then don't read these. Actually, do read them. They might be funny.

1. When Lois Lane breaks her Nikon D3s. Technically a robot that is guarding the twenty-thousand year old ship from Krypton shoots its lens off, but it is ENTIRELY HER FAULT for taking a picture with an enormous external flash of alien defensive technology. Come on, Lois, what were you thinking. That is a seven thousand dollar camera. It was bad enough that you dangled the poor thing over an icy precipice while trekking to find mystery man Clark. I morn the death of this camera more than any other death.

2. When the Kents don't grab their dog when running away from the tornado that kills Jonathan Kent. I can't tell you how many times I run apocalyptic daydreams through my mind and work out how I would save my entire family, INCLUDING MY PETS. How could you forget your dog in a moment of peril?! That would be the first body I worry about saving, my arthritic golden retriever. If one of them had grabbed the dog, Clark's dad would not have died. ARGH.

3. When the ultimate fate of the chubby ex childhood bully Pete Ross is revealed to be working at an IHOP in Kansas. I don't know why, but little things like that get to me. Why IHOP? Are we taking a stab at his weight problems? Pete isn't such a bad guy! And an even more tragic moment is when Clark and evil Kryptonian she-devil whose name I can't remember crash into the joint and completely destroy it. That was Pete's livelihood, guys! Why do we have to pick on Pete? (I'm making a huge deal out of someone who had maybe seven different words in the entire movie.)

Also, the funniest part of the movie for me was when a ship or a person or some other flying object destroyed a Sears, foreshadowing the mass closing of this mediocre department store.

ALRIGHT, so I'll try to be a good girl and take pictures every day from now on. We'll see if my neck agrees with me.

THANK YOU FOR STAYING,


-----23or[320o-13iwpokf'd;slfkw;ELK;lkdask;gffdgkasdlfkasfd:L;ADF


Sunday, June 16, 2013

hey

I promise I'll post soon.
I'm scrap bookin'.




Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Fabric Barf Saga Part 1

Today is the best day of my life, and you're going to tell me I'm insane, because the source of my joy is the maelstrom of textiles that is the mixed media room cloth bins.








The teachers didn't have anything for me to do for the first two hours, so I volunteered to organize these art-filled hell-holes. I took mixed media when I was a sophomore for a semester and was horrified upon opening one of these bins. If you don't support the door, it will fall open and vomit impossibly minute pieces of fabric all over everywhere. There was zero organization, save for a few plastic bags filled with certain colours, so during the latter half of the semester I tried making sense of the chaos when I was finished with a project. I only managed to fill a few plastic bags, separating the cloth by pattern and colour, but there isn't an efficient way to store the cloth in these bins that give students the impulse to dump their unused materials wherever they will fit.
SO, I've made it my duty to figure out a way to make finding colours and patterns and fabric types an enjoyable experience and not like sifting through a desert made of dust and thread.
Most people would have a stroke if they had to deal with this, but I am elated. 




This is about two thirds of the floral section. I am starting here and it will probably take me two weeks to get everything into rough categories before actually putting them away in an efficient way. I will definitely be documenting my progress, so if patterned fabrics make you nauseous or homicidal, never come back.
And LOOK THIS FABRIC HAS CHICKENS ON IT



Next on the agenda, I went to Bubbies after work with friend Emily for ice cream, and we both pooled quarters to pay for three mochi ice cream flavors.
Here's Emily's face today.


   





This is my favorite object, I  always have it even if it doesn't match what I'm wearing (DEDICATION, DEDICATION). 


Jacket; Forever 21, Vest; Vintage Store in Toulouse, France (lol sorry), Button-down shirt; Handmedown, Faux Leather Pants; Zara, Boots; Journeys, Watch; Urban Outfitters


I watched Annie Hall last night and had a fierce desire to obtain trousers and a wide rimmed hat. My closet is frighteningly expansive, but I didn't have the right articles to craft a look suitable for a Woody Allen film. I love this vest and button down combo, though. It's vaguely steampunk.

Anyways, that was today, and look it's only 4:26 PM!
Thanks for stopping by,

MMMMMMMMMM..                            

Vomatrocious

I have a few things for you this day. First off LOOK AT THESE PANTS







This outfit is just odds and ends and ridiculous pants I found at Goodwill. I was looking for skirts that looked sort of professional (you know, getting into the teacher's aid look) and honestly I think I hit the jackpot with this floral and polka dotted reject. They literally look like a skirt on each leg when I walk. It's like these pants dreamed of becoming palazzo pants and someone came in during adolescence and told them "No, the 70s are done, halt this dream of yours immediately" and they stopped growing at the knee. THEY'RE SHORTS. I love em'. Sometimes I buy the most ridiculous thing I can find at a thrift store to see if I can make it work. Usually I can.


Anyways, I took more film pictures today in case you were wondering if I am actually keeping up with that photo every day thing, haha (she laughs to herself). So to add more content and to mildly disturb you, I'm going to introduce you to Vomatrocious.


It started as a way for me to keep myself entertained in class. I'm not great at drawing realistic people, it's not something I ever progressed at beyond a fourth grade level doodles. So I embrace my inability to accurately make faces and I draw the most disgusting caricatures of nonexistent (well, sometimes existent) people that I can. Then I usually show it to whoever is sitting next to me and chortle at their discomfort. I created the gypsy thing above last year in English 10 honors, along with these–



The last one is my fav. I keep a small notebook (mOLESKIN ROCK ON) of these doodles now, but I have countless others scribbled on the backs of homework and tests. I wish I had my final history exam (on which I received a C+), because I made this brilliant doodle of someone's torso holding their own disembodied head by their spinal cord with a giant pencil lodged in the head's exposed brain, blood everywhere, complete with hearts and stars filling the negative space, as well as the accurate declaration of I DONT KNOW ANYTHING :D! 

Anyways here is the notebook and some of its contents. I apologize for the quality. Again, the scanner sounds like an angry ostrich and would wake up everyone, and there is no decent lighting at this hour. Maybe I'll actually post during the day at some point! Probably not!

           

            

            

            
I should explain the term Vomatrocious, which you probably already guessed is a blend of the words vomit and atrocious. I can't take credit for coining this, because it's a word that was used between my childhood best friend and her mother. It has stuck with me since I was eight and is an apt description of my doodles. I want to make a zine full of them sometime, I wonder if people would actually be interested in owning these barfy things. Would you? Let me know, I implore you.

Here's one more, I drew this on the back of a poetry test in creative writing. My teacher would react to my drawings with the best combination of uncomfortable laughter and strained facial expressions I've seen to this date.



I was very very hungry. The pit hair is accurate, I have stalwart pit hair and I hope you do too!

Well time to slepen all the nikt with open eye (if this reference is lost on you go here).

THANK, THANK.