What I am thinking about right now

Right in this very moment.  Bam!  Instantaneous.

I feel a little odd right now.  Not sure why.

Yesterday I sent texts to a bunch of people who I hadn't talked to in a while, saying hi.  If you were the recipient of one of these texts, hey!  We should hang out.

Nothing if not awkward.

I am thinking somewhat seriously about switching my major to sculpture.  It doesn't involve drafting, I hear.  But the idea of working as an actual fine artist scares the bejezus out of me because, um, duh.  I'm not self motivated at all.  I probably would need to have a job of some sort. Like a go to work and work for someone kind of job.

I have things that I am needing to concentrate on that I am also freaking out about.  I have an art history test on thursday.  It requires dates.  This is a major problem.  Out of all the AP history classes (Euro, US, Gov) I took in high school, I learned and remember one date.  October 31, 1517.  I am probably maybe going to fail this whole thing.

I have crit today, for 3D design.  I'm pretty okay with my pieces, I'm not sure how everyone else has done.  The only other person whose stuff I've seen...well, if everyone else is like that, I'll be totally fine.   Their stuff kind of sucked, and this was Sunday night.  I spent all day Sunday and a good part of the day on Saturday working on these things.  I took pictures.  I'll post the pictures, eventually.

I have design drawing next.  I might fail design drawing.  I'm not doing so hot this semester, and I'm not really sure why.  probably because it involves a lot of ellipses.  Sometimes circles too.

Robert tells me that I am a special little snowflake, and I know that it's a fact.  He's going to get a job so that he can buy more graphic novels.

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(Minipost)

Between a tweet and a blog post, right.

I'm fairly certain that at some point in time, I've mentioned my obsessive, ginormous, unending crush on Chris Colfer.  His movie is coming out this summer.  I am excited, to say the least.



You're welcome.

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but I'm a student editor at my school's literary journal.  It's very big and exciting.  Today was the first time that I received actual stories to make actual decisions about.  I felt very....Carsonesque, but I didn't even have to blackmail anyone.  It's kind of odd, to be making decisions like this.  I know that most of these people aren't aiming to be professional writers, so I feel like whatever I do, I want to be encouraging and nice, but I don't quite know where we're setting the quality bar.  The things that I've read certianly aren't the best pieces of writing on the planet, but they don't totally suck either, and I don't know how to decide this without seeming like a pretentious ass who thinks the literary journal is a far bigger thing than it really is.

YUP.

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What I did with my Friday

Guys.  I have Fridays off of school and work and responsibility.  This is not a particularly new development, but today I did things worth talking about.  I woke up relatively early.  I texted my friend, who I'd made plans with earlier in the week.  Plans, still on.  I got my lazy butt out of bed at 9:15 and got myself into the car to pick up a friend of mine for fun! exciting! things!  We went to Wolfgang's for breakfast, which was awesome.  And then, after a quick detour back home to pick up my student ID, we went to the GRAM.
The GRAM is exactly like the DIA, except it's collection isn't as good and it costs a dollar more to get in.  And the building is new, instead of the fairly fantastic mashup of additions of time and space that the DIA consists of.  Today's visit had a Purpose (it's the little flame/that lights a fire under your ass).  We have to write essays.  For Art History.  About Rauschenberg.  He's a big deal, apparently.  And I don't think he's dead.  I should probably find out if he's dead or not before I turn my essay in.  These essays, apparently, are a big deal.  It's hard to express your thoughts in writing.  You should take notes and write an outline and then write your essay and rewrite and edit it.  This is what my professor has said.
How did all of us make it to college without writing an essay?  I mean, I'm speaking for others, maybe.  I've written an essay or two (or a million and a half, hey there APs!)

Really though, I do know how to write.  And not like a total idiot either.  We aim for 45% idiot, 50% normal human being, and 5% strange facial expressions and dinosaur noises.

I mean, I'm Literary.  With a capital L.

I like Instagram, despite all the hipster-who-thinks-they're-a-talented-photographer-stigma.

I had been thinking about taking some different classes next fall, if I can't publish a book and make all my dreams come true stay in school.  Printmaking is very high on the list.  Sculpture.  Industrial Design.  I need to get better at using the computer.  Apparently it has things other than twitter?  Who knew?  

I've heard of a class called "Digital Foundations" which may be something along the lines of what I need.  Also, CAD and Rhino, which do things mystical and unbeknownst to me.  I could take initiative and make these things, um, knownst to me.  Or something.

After the Rauschenberg, we talked for a while about the universe and how it is positively falling apart nearly constantly and also about how I have not read Jane Eyre.  Personal fault, I admit it.

And then I made soup.  Soup!  I should've chopped the onions smaller.

And then I thought that there was going to be this really great speaker at the GRAM, but it actually sucked, so I dragged my roomateboyfriend there for no reason.  Poop.  

And then I doodled.

Also, you should check out Rookie, FYTattoos, and The Mind Experience (this is much cooler if you are me than if you are, like, anyone else in the universe, but bear with me) and you might like them.  Or you might not.  I know that I was wasting time there today, and having fun with it.

My SUPER EXCITING VERY TOP SECRET GREAT AMAZING PROJECT will be revealed VERY SOON.  Dudes.  Be excited.

BUT FIRST, let's talk about something else.  Two different people pointed out my horrible accent to me today.  Maybe it's an upper midwestern thing, maybe it's a me thing, I dunno.  All I know is that, sometimes...



I love all y'all.  G'night.

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Quote of the Month

"I mean, to be honest, I’ve never even really understood the war between nerds and popular people. Like, who do…who do…who do you guys got? ‘Umm…we’ve got George W. Bush and, like, Tom Brady.’ Oh, okay. Well, I see your George W. Bush with Bill Clinton, and I raise you an Abraham Lincoln and a Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, I can easily see your Tom Brady with the thinking man’s football player, Tiki Barber, and I think I can raise you, hmmm, an Isaac Newton, a William Shakespeare, a Blaise Pascal, an Albert Einstein, an Immanuel Kant, an Aristotle, a Jane Austen, a Bill Gates, a Mahatma Ghandi, a Nelson Mandela, and all four Beatles. We win."
John Green

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Fiction Friday

I'm not dead, I'm just falling a bit, for a while.  Becoming disconnected, becoming human again.
Someone once told me that drowning was like coming home.

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On Measurements.

Hey.  I'm being a whiny little piece of shit about this, and if you don't want to read it, I understand.  I barely even want to read it.  For serious.
Click, if you must.

(minipost)

Do you ever have those afternoonsdaysmonthsyears where you feel wildly unmotivated?  There are things to do and you sit down to work on them, but you just can't?  That is me.  All this week.  It isn't very much fun, I'll tell you.  Not fun at all.  Like a day in which you do absolutely nothing and end up sort of hating yourself a little bit?  That is my everyday since Sunday in which I did nothing.  Like got out of bed at 1 pm and lazed about in my pyjamas all day doing nothing.

That kind of makes me hate myself a little bit.  Eh.

I am also thinking of novellas as a viable option and embracing the idea of the book as a physical object.  I want to learn the basics of bookbinding and make a limited run of this little project I've been working on.  I'm thinking that it would be free to download, with an optional donation* and then have the same thing as a printed piece of wonderfulness.  Or maybe try to find a publisher?  Melville House has come up a few times in passing over the years, and they seem like they might be interested in this sort of thing.

There's also this other project that I've been working on, with a friend.  It's very exciting and a little bit scary and I'm sometimes overcome with that very bad feeling that I tend to get when I'm doing group projects at school, where you feel like you're not putting in enough work and then the paranoia takes over and you just know that everyone else resents you and thinks you don't deserve to be in the group.  I am a little bit crazy in this way.  YUP.

Maybe this minipost is not actually so miniature after all.  Hum de dee.  I'm going to bed now, I have to get to school early tomorrow for a Furniture club meeting.  Furniture club is one of those events that reminds me that oh, yes, there are more than five people in this program.  Funny.  I brought home my model of the table thing that I made and it is...incredibly useless.  Where am I supposed to put this thing?  I might just throw it away...

I am thinking more about sculpture lately.  I really like 3D.  We are building masks that are supposed to evoke emotions and mine is agression.  I have a lot of pent up agression inside my soul.

*to the "Samantha gets to write fun things fund"

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Fiction Friday

You are an expert weaver, even though you don't know it. You take these fragments of information, bits and bytes of you, and you spin them into something more, and you take all of those something mores and you tie them on your loom, taut, taut, and then you get going, shuttle flying back and forth. Faster, faster and you create something from it, you build a life for yourself. I stare at you like I'm amazed, because I am. You're creating fictions, whole universes that never existed before you, and I'm amazed. You're not. You're used to it, this is the norm for you.

How very strange.

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Quote of the Month

"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on tv telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."
Frank Zappa


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Well.

I can't think of a title, whatever.
I HAVE THE FAULT IN OUR STARS.
So.  Um.  This year.
It's a new year.  It's my TENTH year in which Harry Potter has been playing a disproportionatly large role in my life and also the NINTH year since my house burned down which means, in a way, that I am not a child anymore.  Odd, isn't it?
I've had a bunch of stuff going on!  It's all very interesting!  And sometimes it sucks.  Like a lot.  I haven't been writing on either of the novels, because when I revisited No More Stars I realized just how much it was like my NaNo and I don't love either of them.  In fact, I think their stories are dumb and plots are unimaginative and characters are ill-defined and I kind of hate them.  So that's that.
I need to write a novel and actually finish it and not hate it.
I should write some short stories.
I should write a play.
I should get off my ass and do something, once in a while.
There's an exciting new project that my friend/housemate and I have been working on, and if it all goes as planned, it will be perfect and amazing and JK Rowling will send me a letter letting me know that she really thinks it's great and then I will DIE.  Can you imagine how cool that would be?  If it doesn't go as planned, I will be sad.  I'm very worried that it won't go as planned.  At least I'm good at worrying.
I heard, yesterday, that my school is starting a collaborative design program next year.  I don't actually know what collaborative design is, except that apparently you study all aspects of design and then you go get a MBA.  Hmm.  I think that might be interesting?  One of my friends (the person who made this blog layout, incidentally) told me that she was switching her major from Graphic Design to Advertising, which means that she would do more ad directing than actual, like, making advertisements and such.  That might be interesting.  Also, for the Fashion career day, the vice president of Kenneth Cole is coming to talk.  Like, woah.  And there's Bodies of Art coming up, which seems cool.  Fashion is weird.  I am not a fashionable person at all, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's...interesting.  You know how male is the default in most things, but in fashion, there are clothes, and then there's menswear?  Like an afterthought?  That's interesting.  I'm getting a little more excited about Kendall and Kendall things.  That's good.  Also, I plan on going to the Meyer May house on Sunday and it will be fantastic.
New semester has started!  It's pretty exciting.  Drafting will be shittons of work, Art History will be a party but not as fun and engaging as last semester, Design Drawing with a different professor is woah crazy I feel like I don't know anything anymore, and 3D is fun and great.  My 3D professor is fantasticly weird and the class only has seven people and it's all very cool.  LIKE (10).  Whenever we discuss things, it's makers and objects, never artists and works of art.  I like that.  I like that expanded definition of things that matter.  Also, we discussed artists who are alive today.  Somehow, it strikes me as very odd that there are fine artists who are alive right now and all they do is art.  And...there are more than 20 of them who exist.  How does that even work?  What is that like?  I follow one of them on twitter, and it seems to involve...calligraphy?  This is that awkward moment when I admit to all of you that deep down, I want to be a fine artist and live in a crazy commune in the woods somewhere and make things all day.  Only not.  They don't always have internet in the woods, did you know that?
I dropped Oral Rhetoric.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  In high school, I felt a lot like I should have been trying harder, I should have been challenging myself to reach my full potential and I really wasn't.  I'm scared of doing the same thing now.  I just want to be perfect.  If I keep up this only-taking-twelve-credits business, I'm going to graduate a semester or year late.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but...I have to have some sort of measurable success in my life.  Is that bad?  Does it show a deep internal lack of confidence?
Probably.  Whatever.
I need to make some shapes for 3D and do a million drawings for Design Drawing and eugh.   I will listen to podcasts while I do them.  Fuck college.  Now, I have to be at school at 10 on one set of days and 12:30 on another one.  PARTY ON.
I have so many feelings about this. This is cool you should check it out and also and wow huh.  That's the internet for ya.
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