detour

I always end up talking about my cats. Somehow everybody I talk to for any significant amount of time knows I have two cats who are obsessed with eating, poop on my stuff/the floor, and sleep with me at night. I can't explain it. Maybe because they're the smartest and most intuitive cats I've ever met. That Demetri Martin joke is always sort of present in the back of my mind..

Funny: The Hills parody, also this and anything involving Judd Apatow + people he knows.

Inspiration: Seahorse Ranch

bad news

Words that should never have been brought into the realm of non-online publications and out of the world of 'bad slang': manscaping, metrosexual, guyliner, manorexia

The newest and most offensive because it doesn't involve male appearances and I actually care about this topic: starchitect - i.e., Frank Gehry, Frank Llloyd Wright, Herzog & deMueron, Michael Graves.

STARCHITECT? BAD.

Wow, just wow. I want this in my life. OH WOW. WOWWWW.

my foot is DOWN

Why I hate the winner of the Vita.mn 1st Anniversary Cover Design Contest:

1. It is too patriotic.
1a. 'WE ARE ONE' sounds like an ad for the army.
1b. There are too many stars and stripes.
2. It is really trendy - but trendy five years ago.
2b. I've seen the cursive typeface at the top a billion times on teen domains.
2c. Stencil font.
2d. The tiny little 'tech' '001' font. AGH! ! !
3. The stars are just random ass Photoshop brushes.
4. He used layers of varying opacity to create any sort of interest.
5. HE USED A PICTURE OF HIS CHILD.
6. THERE IS A HIGH CONTRAST ONE-YEAR OLD BABY WITH RAYS COMING OUT FROM HIS HEAD.
7. A BABY JESUS IN THE CENTER.

$10

k.a.
Frida's First Thanksgiving
mixed media
8.5 x 11"

poop

Today when I left the WAC, the air smelled like poop.

Today when I got out of the car to buy food for dinner, it smelled like poop.

Today when I got out of the car to go to the library, it smelled like poop.

Now it smells like poop in the home office, but I think it is just cat pee.

pop 1

It's about that time of year when I have to start going to see a bunch of movies because it's the beginning of Oscar season and I need to have seen as many movies as possible by the Oscar Party. This does not include movies like 'American Gangster' that I would never, ever pay to see, much less waste two hours to watch Denzel be boring. Also, I must begin brainstorming for costumes.

11/9: No Country for Old Men
11/16: Margot at the Wedding
11/21: I'm Not There
12/5: Juno
12/7: Atonement
12/21: Sweeney Todd

Oh, crap, this is totally boring. My handy holiday movie preview guide, Entertainment Weekly, says that the most likely to be nominated films and performances also includes me seeing 'Charlie Wilson's War '(aka Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts being annoying), 'Michael Clayton,' 'There Will Be Blood' (Daniel Day-Lewis, though, great!), and, uh, that's about it. I'M BORED.

But I'm clearly going to have to dress up as Javier Bardem and his hair.

N/E FYI

Uncle Franky's Live WebCam: Uncle Franky, lover of hot dogs, and inspiration of pumpkin carvers, also loves his customers.
Psycho Suzi's MotorLounge: This is why I moved to Northeast MPLS.
Pierre Bottineau Library/Grain Belt Brewing House: The most beautiful library complex.

some things

It seems like every day I do something embarrassing and stupid or have an emotional breakdown I'm supposed to reinvent myself and decide upon a self-improvement project.

Last week it was purely appearance to help jog my innards to remember what they could be. This week it is to become an artist. I made several sketches today already. I'm on my way, aren't I? The next time I get upset about something, cry, call my mom, drunk dial, I'll probably start working on that novel or collection of short stories I've been meaning to do.

Still, these are ways to deal with a roller coaster couple of months. And they're good goals, mostly, but the problem is they only get half done because I'm either a) over it or b) onto my next crisis and setting my next goal.

Today I walked to work and walked back. I walked back over St. Anthony Falls on the Hennepin bridge around 5pm and I imagined I was walking over the Thames on the Waterloo. I looked around for Parliament, and instead I found a building that looked vaguely European. It was enough for me.

I was reading back through my study abroad blog, and as boring and incompetent as I felt there, I did have a few worthwhile thoughts. One of them was about bridges - and how walking over bridges made me feel so content, every time, and a different kind of content, according to the day, time, and feeling. Today I listened to the same album on the way to and from work, one at 8am, one at 5pm, and it told me very different things.

I guess the end goal of these things is to stop having these personal crises and just fulfill all these things as a normal human being, but I feel I've been pretty functional for the last three years so it's about time for some crap, isn't it?

(A Jennifer Davis art work was in order for today.)

BUGS ARE PEOPLE TOO

There was this huge controversy when the Huang Yong Ping "House of Oracles" exhibition went to Vancouver (from the Walker, I might add) this past spring. In one of Ping's pieces, 'Theatre of the World,' representing both Jeremy Bentham's idealized prison, the Panopticon, and as "a metaphor for the conflicts among different peoples and cultures - in short, human existence itself," he placed a handful of small bugs and reptiles to stand in for us destructive humans.

The SPCA complained, blah blah blah, said the point of the work was to encourage fighting and that there were no simulated natural environments and whipped out The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act Chapter 372 to prove it. They got the opinion of some doctor and the SPCA people to say that the creatures in "Theatre of the World" were officially under 'distress' and issued these orders:
i) Removal of tarantulas and scorpions from the artwork
ii) Increase the humidity (e.g. add plastic liners to 4-5 alcoves)
iii) Increase heat in the evenings
iv) Provide deeper substrate (minimum 2")
v) Monitor weight of the snakes, skinks and toads on a weekly basis to ensure no weight loss, and to remove any species that experience any weight loss.

The Vancouver Art Gallery eventually removed all the creatures and left the empty shell standing. The brilliant Canadian Press had this to say about the piece:

"The installation features millipedes, scorpions, tarantulas, frogs and insects in a simulation of a magic potion produced in ancient China by putting different species of animals together in a jar.

WHAT! WHAT! THIS IS SO STUPID OH MY GOD I HATE THE SPCA AND THE CANADIAN PRESS AND EVERYBODY WHO MAKES A BIG DEAL ABOUT THIS OH MY GOD. "MAGIC POTION PRODUCED IN ANCIENT CHINA" HOLY SHIT.

Other stupid things: The doctor who was appointed by the SPCA to observe the exhibit said he "received advice from the American Zoological Association that any zoo that exhibited the same animals on view in Theater of the World in one display area would risk losing its accreditation because such animals are incompatible and should not be housed together."

OH MY GOD NOW THE ZOOS ARE THE VOICE OF ANIMAL RIGHTS? WHERE IS THE DEBATE OVER ZOOS?

He was also quoted as saying that "in a proper zoological display, you often wouldn't be able to see the animals because they would be hiding. 'That's how you can tell if an exhibit is good or not.'

Um, that's exactly what made headlines in Vancouver for a week - they assumed two toads were missing/dead and then found them HIDING UNDER SOME GRASS.

I was trying to find an article online to link and found this little gem: Controversial animal art exhibit still at risk. ARE YOU SERIOUS? A picture of two bugs facing each other with the caption: "bugs fight it out?" ARE YOU KIDDING? Seriously - blame Canada.

(P.S. The acronym of Vancouver Art Gallery is "VAG" and it's funny because they use it in press. Funny: "ACCUSATIONS OF ANIMAL CRUELTY BUG VAG")

gehry denies any fault

A building that looks like it shouldn't work, doesn't work - Frank Gehry is getting sued by M.I.T. because a building he designed for them has cost them lots of money in repair costs since it opened three years ago.

M.I.T.: Your building sucks. It's cost us mad cash to fix all the cracks and leaks it's had since it opened.
GEHRY: I LOVE this building. It looks like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate.
M.I.T.: It looks like you partied with a bunch of drunken robots when you designed this.
GEHRY: This building is way more complicated than you can possibly imagine.
M.I.T.: We paid you $15 million for this piece of crap.
GEHRY: Yeah, and I'm worth every penny! Any thing I touch becomes gold! Or, aluminum! Shiny aluminum with twisty organic forms! Instant tourist attraction!
M.I.T.: Well, we wished you had paid more attention to making sure the building actually stood on its own...
GEHRY: That's not how I work. I take shiny, curvy, throw them up in the air, and see how they land. You should know that. Besides, you're just after the firm's insurance. And..it's not my fault.

i did this

I made this, now go submit.

i would have never made it as a biology major

Wait. Really? This is in the Science section of the New York Times at the end of 2007? And it's saying antibacterial soap may lead to hardier germs? I thought we all knew this. Heck, I remember my biology teacher back in high school (year of 01-02) raving about the antibacterial hand gel that was becoming popular and how using too much of this stuff was going to make germs bigger, badder, and more resistant. Ever since then, I've refused to use the stuff, and told my mom to never buy it. (She does, sometimes.) I know some people are addicted to it. And they're ruining it for all of us.

I love scientists who admit their ideas are ludicrous. And I like the image of little mice on shaking platforms even better.

October 30 was a good day for the Science section in the New York Times. Also a highlight: the secret history of the Manhattan Project in Manhattan.

THE FIRST THING YOU SHOULD DO AT WORK:
Hit up that free coffee right away and head over to Marmaduke Explained.

make it better

A goal I have been working on lately is to be "less nice."

I don't really know how to keep going on this issue because the things I have been writing and subsequently deleting don't accurately capture my feelings on the subject.

Here's a statement: I'm trying to be less passive.
And here's the problem: I have been called passive before and it's really irked me. Something about the term offers me a negative connotation somewhere along the lines of 'boring.' True, I don't argue. I let things go. I'm not hotheaded. But there has come this point where I am tired of being okay with everybody and everything. I am confident that personally I have opinions, feelings, all that good stuff that comes along with being an interesting human being, but with most people and situations, I don't think I necessarily need to share them.

There it is: I don't ever share my opinions unless it's with people that I'm comfortable with that I know might be interested in hearing them. I never feel that my opinions are better than anybody else's or that I have any right to pipe in and share them. This is why I never spoke in class. This sort of filter is what some people need more of, and some people, like me, need less of.

It's become less of an issue of being shy, and more about feeling relatively ignorant and/or not really caring.

If things suck, I'll see them through. Why? Because why should I put up a stink? There is also an experience to be had, to store away, to maybe bring out some other day, to tell as a story.

A problem: If something sucks, and I respect myself (which I'm not sure I always do), do I get out of it? Do I suck it up? If I leave, I feel like I've lost. So if I stay, I wave it off as something that happened. I wave it off as 'life.'

Much of the time things are really just 'okay.' Nobody wants to hear when things really suck. Nobody wants to hear it when you are bursting with ebullience and joy.

But I'm feeling a little boring. I'm feeling that I care too much about if other people 'like' me. I'm feeling bad about sitting alone at the lunch table. I'm feeling kinda bad about all of these things. It's difficult to change these things. It's difficult to change the way I have been existing and have always existed. Right now I have a list of things I need to fix and it's really long. And how do you start to fix all these things? Where do you start?

I start a new job on Tuesday and I keep telling people it's going to suck. And people keep telling me it's going to suck. And I'll probably tell people when I get back the first day that it sucks. But really, I'm going to be OKAY. Because I don't get mad about things easily. I don't get annoyed to the point where I can't deal.

Because I'm passive?

NE/photo

Train tracks under University at Hennepin.

dear friend

Something of note:


One of these is in an art show and one of these is an image captured by a specialized deer cam.

RE: Free Rice.com

So I've noticed that a lot of people have been posting freerice.com as their website on the f-book, promoting it, etcetera etcetera.

Miss EKF brought this website to my attention a couple of weeks ago and at first I was completely enamored, amazed, and vowed to give thousands of grains of free rice a day.

Until she brought up the point (10 minutes into us both competing for the most grains of rice given) that this organization has all this rice already. It's not like every time you get a word right it supports this organization that can then afford to give out 1000 grains of rice. THEY CAN AFFORD THE RICE. THEY HAVE THE RICE. WHY DON'T THEY GIVE THE HUNGRY PEOPLE RICE NOW? Especially if, on their parent website, they have a twitter-like count of every person dying of hunger every minute.

I constantly wonder about the value of 'awareness' as a way to make change.