Monday, November 24, 2008

Let's All Go to the Lobby



This is the trailer for a little movie I'm making for school. It's far from complete, but I'll put the whole darn thing up here when I reach that emerald city. Forgive my bad acting and please know that the titles I used are meant to be a bit silly (and the title of the film is a working one).

Anyways, here it is.

Friday, November 14, 2008

A Few Postables of Note from a Few Whiffens Past




In the last few minutes, I’ve recalled that I had a short-lived, hare-brained blog on my university’s website. After re-reading all four entries I’ve realized that I was in a very promise-making mood when I wrote them. To my memory, the titles of the entries were designed with the sole purpose of being either confusing or patently offensive. I thought it might be a neat thingy to copy-paste those entries here for you, my darling reader(s), to see for yourself(ves). And in case anyone was wondering, the “Funny Paper” never panned out, nor did the summer band between my little friends and me.

*


Shalom and Aloha

So, well, I found out the U has a blogging service the same way I find most things on the internet, by clicking on a funny picture. Whoever does the layout for the U of M homepage has a sense of humor. As a new student, I've been desperate to find something to officiate my entrance into undergraduate school. Since I'm a writer anyway, this looks to be a promising outlet. I already have a personal journal and a blog on another site (from which I may occasionally copy paste to this one), so I'll try to balance out all of my gay little diaries and make sure they're all substantial. I'll also try and keep this particular weblog dedicated to school-related odds and ends so as to make it coherent.

My plans for this week include blasting my remix of Milkshake with my door open some afternoon. Hopefully I'll make some friends who are into simpletext mashups. AND my boots should come this week. They're Beatle boots. Not the real kind, but the Giorgio Brutini kind. I'm pretty excited to wear them to Funk at the Fred this Friday. Black, 6" kidskins with a 3/4" heel. Fuck.

Well anyway, my only class tomorrow is Time and Interactivity, which is supposed to be some kind of digital art and video shit. Judkins said he took it and hated it. Hmm. We'll see, supplemental diary of mine.

Staregasm

So I've been to all of my classes now. Time and Interactivity was yesterday. I think it's going to be my favorite class by far; the teacher is great, the content sounds awesome, and I get to learn how to use Final Cut Pro. Then today I had my seminar, Arts and Culture in the Twin Cities; it was nice, and the teacher reminds me of my history teacher from high school. And I didn't mean to, but I think I stared at this pretty girl who sat across from me for a good portion of the class. After that, I had my Intro to Film Studies class, which wasn't as cool as maybe I'd hoped. I don't know, I guess maybe it will be better once we start watching movies instead of listening to the professor talk.

Then, last, I had my creative writing class, which ended up being a debate forum about the U of M workers' strike. There were some real dumb cunts in there who didn't understand what the strike was about and who could only think of themselves. The main issue discussed was whether or not, in support of the strike, we would move our class off campus to honor the picket-lines. The main argument against doing this was "I'm a selfish little bitch and I can't figure out how to change my schedule or walk two extra blocks to allow a bunch of underpaid and largely unnoticed service industry to get the money they've been promised by the government." My argument for the strike was "if you don't support this strike, you do support an unaccountable school administration and you're a selfish little bitch." Fucking people.

I actually have homework now, so I should probably get on that here pretty soon.


Poop Mouth/Corn Ass

Gaterud, Paul and I had a jam session and we came up with lots of great ideas for stories. I think The Funny Paper will be a big success.

Apparently-and you'll think this is funny, Diary-my Time and Interactivity class is using this same blogging service for the class blog. So I'll have two Uthink accounts...But I shan't forget you. Maybe I'll write in you more later.


Oatmeal Chug

I finally got Microsoft Office on my computer yesterday. This was in response to the paper I stayed up until five in the morning writing on Sunday/Monday night. It was supposed to be five pages exactly (with about a quarter of a page leeway allowed in either direction). So, I thought to myself: this will be easy. I could do five pages in a couple of hours.

So I didn't start writing the actual paper until about 8:45 that night. Anyway, I didn't have class until 11:15 the next day.

But I didn't have Word on my computer, which I didn't think was a big deal. If Textedit is good enough for Stephen Hawking, it oughta be good enough for me. But as I was writing, it seemed like progress was going AWFUL slow. Every time I looked at the print preview, it seemed like that fifth page was epochs away.

Finally, after eight hours of working, writing notes, drinking coffee, I was finished. But my printer was (and is) also on the fritz, so I had arranged with Gaterud to have him print it out for me and meet me before class. He informs me that the paper in printed out form is TEN pages. I explain that that's not possible, because Textedit told me it was five pages, and given that there is a standardized system of fonts and character sizes for all computers, and that I had met the required criteria therein when typing this paper of five pages. He handed me the paper. Sure enough I had nine and a half pages of text in my grasp. What the fuck? I explained to my TA what happened, and she said it would be ok if I just cut off half of the paper and handed it in tomorrow. But that's a work-intensive task in and of itself.

Fucking Textedit.


Raped in Half

Dear Diary,
I'm sorry I haven't written in you for so long. Time flies when you have absolutely nothing to do, I guess. Lots of things have happened since you and I last met. The love of my life became tangibly the distant, futile dream I knew deep down she always had been, and I got a job. I work at the TV studio on campus, to which I first came for the art class on which my other UThink blog resides. Funny how things work out.

Since this year is the 25th anniversary of Koyaanisqatsi, I am once again obsessed with it. Right now I'm listening to the soundtrack through the studio monitor at work. I've been on the lookout for cinematographically pleasing things to shoot lately, with some loose, insane idea that I might make something like a Qatsi film. I shot a time-lapse of the lunar eclipse last Thursday, but a bunch of emo kids came and sat at the table I was shooting on, so the tripod moved around a lot. Thanks again, emo kids.

The title of a new song I've recently devised is "Raped in Half." I think it's funny and to the point. Gaterud, Ben, Broc and I have all been preparing to play in a band together this summer. We're all going to write one original song before our first band practice and try to see which direction we want to take musically. I'll even upload the song I write on an upcoming entry so if anybody ever reads this they can hear it.

It's been great talking with you, Diary. I hope you can forgive my for abandoning you so long. From now on, you will be my dedicated work journal. Anything having to do with my profession as an infotech at the TV studio, my music, or my movies, will be relayed directly to you, for realsies.

*

PS-I’m going to try to make this little corner of internets more topical from now on. I can’t imagine anyone finds my balls-to-the-wall-boring life interesting.