At the end of each semester at my school, they give out forms for the students to fill out about the performance of our teachers and the effectiveness/relevance of our curriculum. One of the questions that they want us to answer is something along the lines of:
"How did this class add to your understanding of other cultures, ethnicities, religions and/or sexual orientations?"
Soon after the students make their way through the scan-tron portion of the form and reach the written replies, frustrated cries of "how the hell are we supposed to answer this?" start to fill the room. I'll admit, I've been stumped by this quandry many times as well. Though, I think I've figured out how to answer it properly. For my cinematography class, I replied:
"We were introduced to the photo-dynamic imaging magicks of the European man, the American man and the Oriental man."
I hope the faculty are as pleased with this response as I am.
Also, to everyone who has volunteered to help me out with my weekend shoot, THANK YOU! Trying to organize a shoot on top of everything else I'm dealing with right now has been quite an ordeal, but it looks like everything is coming together nicely. I really am grateful to you all.
All the tubes in my head and chest are clogged with mucous today. I have a pulsing headache, and the energy of a slug that ate a bottle of melatonin. I really hate being sick. At least this is my last semester of school, and I can start telling myself "You're starting to feel sick - you should take care of yourself" instead of "If you rest, you'll just fall further behind and have less time to sleep later. DRINK MORE CAFFEINE AND WORK HARDER!" within a few months. My body can't take this kind of abuse like it could a couple years ago.
I haven't blogged in a while, and I probably won't for a while more. Until mid-December, work and school will add up to the equivalent of about a 60-hour week plus homework, so my leisure time will be sparse and usually spent with friends instead of loafing in front of the computer. So, if you haven't heard from me in a while, ask me out to lunch, dinner, a movie, or whatever. Chances are that I need an outing of the sort.
And wacky pictures/articles via myspace and email are always welcome as well.
On a lighter note, those who have a sense of humor and aren't morally opposed to listening to music might enjoy Paul and Storm
I'd recommend starting with "Your Love Is," but most of their stuff is pretty good.
To my delight, I have discovered that Bjornar B. still updates his website. He used to make drawings for Somethingawful until he realized that people were laughing at him, not with him, and subsequently decided to create his own site. A recent feature on his page is: 3 Types of Obesity (Fatness). I got a good laugh out of it. I'm not sure whether he's developmentally disabled (since his drawings and language skills don't seem to have changed much over the last 6 years or so), or if he's someone's gimmick... but his stuff is funny enough that I don't really care.
My summer class is ending this week, and I start a new job as an assistant for developmentally disabled adults next week. I'll be dealing with people who have been deemed fit to live on their own, but still need help with things like paperwork and grocery shopping. I'll have to watch Elling again after working this job for a while.
After several revisions and much tweaking, One Minute Racist will finally be completely finalized this week, and submitted to PBS's POV programming. It's been about 9 months since the first cut was finished, which is kind of remarkable, considering that the first cut took less than a week to make. Unfortunately, I won't be able to post the final version on the web, since PBS wants a pretty high degree of exclusivity... though I'd be glad to give people copies on DVD if they're interested.
Many of you have probably noticed that I haven't been online much lately. This is because I have moved into a new apartment, and don't have internet there yet. After much wrangling with AT&T's semi-functional web page and voice recognition phone menus, I finally have DSL scheduled for installation at my new place as of the 12th, although AT&T warns me that they "cannot guarantee that AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet will work at your location until the service is installed" Hooray.
Anyhow, the new address is:
2210 E 27th St Oakland, CA 94606
It's a really spiffy, incredibly huge room, especially for what I'm paying. It's in what used to be the Russian consolate building, which was constructed in 1870. The ceilings are over 12 feet tall, and the wainscotting is taller than I am. I'll post pictures once I get a bit more unpacked and organized.
That's all for now. I'll be checking my email and such from time to time at internet cafes until the interweb is up and running at my new place, but probably won't be online much until the 12th or later.
As you may have guessed from the long gap between blog updates, I have been out of the house a lot lately. Finals are over, and I've actually had the time to go places that aren't home or school. I have refamiliarized myself with that big, glowing ball in the sky (tip: it is not a good idea to look directly at it for too long), and, from a quick glance at my skin tone, someone might mistake me for a person who's not a socially crippled nerd. I have been hiking in Redwood Park and Tilden Park, and there are photos:
Thanks to Katie, I have now been properly educated about the squirrels in the Bay Area. Contrary to popular belief, the most common tree squrirels around here are not red squirrels, they are fox squirrels. They are not native to the area, and they are not being displaced by grey squirrels. It is, in fact, the grey squirrels that are native, and they are being displaced by the fox squirrels. Also, the chubby little squirrels that live in the rocks at the Berkeley marina are California ground squirrels.
I have also been introduced to The People's Choice Music project, in which the group attempted to make the world's most popular and most unpopular musical pieces, based on surveys about what people liked and disliked in music. The Most Unwanted Music is actually pretty spectacular. It features an operatic rapper, a tuba, bagpipes, an accordion, and children summarizing major religious and national holidays in two lines (Ramadan, Ramadan, lots of praying and no breakfast!). Download it here.
I've always thought that a good deterrent to auto theft was having a car that's not worth stealing. Apparently, this isn't the case. Mine went missing yesterday, at some point between returning from doing laundry and leaving to go bother Ian at work. Though, I still can't figure out why someone would want to take my car... it's a piece of shit inside and out, and any money someone could get for it wouldn't be worth the effort of stealing it and finding a buyer. There wasn't even much gas left in the tank.
A police officer is coming over to take a report soon. Hopefully it'll end up like the last time my car was stolen, and they'll find it ditched on a curb a short distance away after whatever stupid kids stole it finished their joyride. If not, I don't think I'll be too bothered. I've been thinking about getting rid of it anyway, and I live right across the street from a BART staion, so transportation won't be too difficult.
I guess my new approach to preventing auto theft will be to not have a car to steal. If that fails, I will be thoroughly bewildered.
In other news, the price of Alans has dropped considerably:
Cartoon All-Stars You will feel a deep sense of shame as all the cartoons you watched in the 80's are regurgitated into a drug-awareness video in which they boldly confront marijuana and good taste. Included is a touching intro by George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush. I do have to say, however, that this is pretty well animated for an utter piece of crap.
Exploding Whale v2.0 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4096586 Evan and I were debating whether or not this was funnier than the original. On one hand, the original was intentionally detonated, ended up crushing a parked car, and showered the onlookers with dead whale paste... on the other hand, this new whale burst in the middle of a crowded street, and its penis was apparently a draw for tourists. Tough call.
Talking Cat Sadly, I can't find any footage of this without a really annoying laugh track. I want to hire this cat to be a voice actor.
Battle Rangers screen cap It could just be because this hasn't bean beaten into the ground countless times, but I think this may be funnier than "All your base are belong to us."
There is no washer or dryer where I live now. Until a few weeks ago, I had spent my entire life living in buildings with both a washer and dryer, sometimes coin-operated, sometimes not. Completely unacustomed to my new circumstances, I have been letting an enormous pile of laundry build in my laundry basket, until realizing last night that I would run out of socks and underwear this week if I did not do something about it this weekend.
Apparently, the rest of my roommates have been coordinating trips to houses of friends and relatives with laundry facilities at their places, but none were planning a trip this weekend that I could tag along on. I had to find a laundromat. Because of their favorable arrangements, none of my roommates had any nearby laundromats to recommend, and Kean pointed out that perhaps it isn't wise to entrust your entire wardrobe to a facility in this neighborhood unless you plan on guarding it the whole time.
I started looking up laundromats in Oakland, and I remembed "A Laundromat" on Piedmont Ave. I've been poking fun of the name every time I pass by it ("Frankly, there's really nothing that sets us apart from any other laundromat, hence the indefinite article"), so I decided to go see if it lived up to its name.... and, by golly, it did. There were washers, dryers, detergent dispensers and change machines. Nothing was out of the ordinary; everything worked like it was supposed to, and people who weren't operating washers or dryers quietly read magazines at the tables while waiting for their clothes' cycles to finish. There wasn't a single remarkable happenstance during my whole time there.
I'm really glad to see that some business owners are scrupulous enough to give their shop an honest name. Yes, I'm looking at you, Shirt King of Oakland. You may fool some people with your name, but I'm well aware that shirts don't have a royal family in this city. For shame.
Here's a delightful cultural artifact from before the National Socialists ruined a perfectly good symbol of good luck:
1.) Why is there a large, blue and yellow-ish bruise on my ribcage? I don't remember doing anything that would have caused it, and I haven't done any heavy drinking lately, so a mystery bruise of this magnitude is quite an anomaly.
2.) Why are the additive and subtractive color spectra different? The way I understand it, pigment functions by only reflecting certain wavelengths of light, so it's all additive by the time it reaches your eye... but you get different results from mixing the same colors in the additive spectrum than you do in the subtractive spectrum. I've tried asking instructors at my school about this, I've tried asking friends about this, and I've tried asking random nerds on the internet about this... nobody has given me an answer as of yet.
3.) Are there any good American political theory writers? Ian asked me this today... there are plenty of satirical political writers and topical political analysis writers in this country, but are there any who analyze the political world in order to build a model for understanding it? I'm sure there are plenty out there, but they don't seem to get much exposure... I'm just curious. I guess there's Naoam Chomsky... though, as far as I know, most of his written theory is about linguistics.
4.) Should I get rid of my car? I live right next to a BART station now, and the only place I regularly go that isn't easily accessible by public transport is Caveh's... though having to sit through a long bus ride seems like less of an inconvenience than all the troubles and expensese that come with owning a car and driving in a city where nobody pays attention to the traffic laws or where they're going.
That's all for now. Answers, attempts at answers and completely irrelevant replies are appreciated.
