hither and yon

This took fucking forever. Life has been draining me of life!! I'm so tired all the time, idk. It's hard to get the momentum going for these nothing posts when I could just as well spam twitter but~ I really want to get back into the groove of things.

I don't even remember how to do this! I open this page and I just talk?? What about? What did I do before? I have no memory of anything. wtf did I even have thoughts in the past? Was I even alive??

Okay I'll just free-associate or something. LOL because otherwise I'm so orderly~

( vintage whine aged in the finest crystal decanter )

(to my cousin) There are mouth-eating rollercoasters coming at you and you've been permanently transfigured into a sock. They've surrounded your house and they're going to eat you. You can get worn by some guy and walk out, but the rollercoasters will eat him but you'll be safe. Or you can stay and get eaten and the man will be safe. What do you do? And the man is your brother.

(again to my cousin) You have to sleep in the same bed as everyone in the world with ice cold feet. Your choices are to die and then no one will have ice cold feet anymore, or live. The ice cold feet mean they're crazy.

I'm taking a 1 unit seminar class on interactive media, from the dept. of Design and Media Arts (omg so much secks already). I thought it was going to be about media that facilitates human interaction, like the internets and whatnot, but it's actually about media -- that is interactive! Fancy that! I don't know why I'm being all sarcastic. Like, media that involves both the human and the system in mutual, simultaneous activity, in that the system responds to the human and the human likewise responds to the system. So we're talking about computers, video games, experiment art/installations, etc. It's really cool.

Ugh long intro. FROM THE READING:

[...] Another solution [for interactivity] that aimed at using the specific nature of television broadcasting was Oliver Hirschbiegel's Morderische Entscheidung - Unschalten erwunscht (1991), a murder mystery broadcast simultaneously on two television channels. The channels looked at the same events from different points of views (linked to the movements of the two protagonists), so the spectator was expected to zap constantly between the channels. His/her understanding of the story depended on this alternation (having access to two TV sets would have spoiled the idea).

omg badass. BADASS. IDK why I wrote up all that background stuff; you don't need to read it to know that this idea is BADASS.

In 1991, the French artist Alain Fleischer presented his "unfinished film" La femme au miroir (The Woman in the Mirror) in an exhibition called Les Arts Etonnants. A 16mm film was projected directly at the audience, who used little pocket mirrors to bounce it piece by piece to the screen. This extremely low-tech solution, obviously a late echo of the "expanded cinema" of the late 1960s, produced one of the most effective experiments in audience interactivity the author has experienced. It created an 'organic' mosaic-like image that was constantly fluctuating between order and chaos, shifting from representational to nearly abstract and back again. The continuing effort to align the mirrors correctly led to intensive interaction between anonymous audience memebers. Instead of trying to change the course of the narrative, the purpose was the reconstruct the 'lost' unity of the film, a goal that was possible to achieve only momentarily. The mode of interaction chosen by Fleischer was perfectly suited for a work that dealt with the fragility and instability of identity - obviously, not just of the protagonist, but of the spectator as well. The identity itself is a 'projection', always in flux and at risk of losing its integrity.

OMG SO MUCH SECKS. JUST SO MUCH. OMMMG AMAZING. I don't know wtf the ~obvious~ "expanded cinema" of the late 1960s is but ommmmmg if it's this amazing I want to. People are so rad.

The reading btw was written by the prof. teaching the class and he's really nice and it's all just super-cool.

MORE CHATLOGS B/C THEY ARE TOTALLY AMUSING TO EVERYONE NOT JUST THE PEOPLE INVOLVED AMIRITE

( I DON'T MEAN TO BRAG BUT )

LOL I'M OBNOXIOUS

Some bitch this morning left the water on while she carefully massaged every particle of her stupid soap into every pore of her stupid face. RARRRGGHHHH.

Fact: the sinks on my floor are arranged onto counters; they aren't free-standing basins.
Problem: PEOPLE ARE DISGUSTING. How are the counters wet ALL THE TIME? WHAT DO PEOPLE DO TO IT? What are people putting on it to make it so wet? Disgusting: hair in the sink. Most disgusting: hair floating in puddles on the wet ALL THE TIME counters.

Fact: you should not be allowed to shower if you cannot TURN OFF THE WATER. SO MUCH DRIPPING, ALL THE TIME. EVERYTHING DISGUSTING ALL THE TIME.

I have to get back into my note-taking groove. Things were moving fast this morning in lecture! I feel a bit of a fool now because during Thursday's lecture, the prof was like "Logic is one of those subjects where a lot of people will find easy as pie and a lot of people will struggle enormously wif" and I was like PAH! I am in the first category of people, as I like pie and can do those logic puzzles within like... three days. That's ~talent~. But as it turns out I think I might be in the second category! I was just realizing I should be going "wait... what?" as everyone else was nodding like bobbleheads. Genius bobbleheads. Suzie is taller than Jane but shorter than the child wearing the brown shirt. The boy living in the red house is neither the oldest nor the youngest!!!!

I read this sort of upsetting article in the Daily Bruin (which, BTW, is okay what? kind of newspaper is that? are they serious about some of those articles?) about this 85-year old man who had been found to be a former Nazi guard. (It's this story.) He's been living in the US since 1955 with his wife and federal authorities have begun deportation proceedings. On the one hand, um, Nazis. And principles, and symbols, and that deep scar on humanity. But on the other... he's really old y'all, it seems a little much somehow. I guess, since they're not pressing criminal charges, just deporting him, it makes sadsense. The article was sympathetic to him too, and threw in random fax like how he's hard of hearing and has heart problems and has to use a walker. I will ruminate upon this longarr.

I was at one of the main student hubs, waiting for the person selling the Women's Studies textbook, and thus got the joy of hearing a local/student band (?) play. They were REALLY loud and might as well been Taking Back Sunday, they sounded exaaaactly like them, except with a less nasal singer. They were pretty amusing though. (I couldn't tell who was talking when, they all sounded the same pretty much. Whatevs.)

I have to admit, they had won me over by this point. They weren't playing to many people and they weren't that brain-gougingly terrible, considering who they sounded like. They weren't inept with their instruments at least. I thought about picking up a CD but. Okay I know I just said that they weren't so bad, but for real, they were giving me a monstrous headache and I couldn't freaking take it anymore, I HAD TO LEAVE THAT AREA ENTIRELY. I was late meeting my textbook person but it was worth saving my brains.

Scene: A little over an hour ago, waiting 4000000 hours for my sammich to be made at Bruin Cafe.
Me: *sucking vacantly at my drink, delirious from hunger and fatigue* OH GINGER ALE!!! You make me feel ALIVE. I love you soooooo much ginger ale, you are always sooooo gooooooood.
Seriously, I thought about how good ginger ale was for a solid minute. I was spacing out so hard. In fact I was l     i     k      e                      t                           h                         i                              s                            ~            

Still rewatching. After you get over some annoying speed bumps, it's enjoyable dry wit fun. Oh Trent, still my TV boyfriend. I'm so predictable. Dark-haired, skinny, good big brother --> hook, line, sinker.

anti-kink: teacher/student romances. NO. Just... no. I find it demeaning to the teacher. It's messing with my love of high school AUs.

Also, god what is wrong with some people re: social behavior? I think I am gradually learning that being cool, articulate, witty, and smart doesn't mean you're nice or not a sort of douchey fuckfaced DWP. BOO. Alright. Once I internalize this my life will be easier. Maybe.

I was worried about Mice Parade because the name teeters on being too cutesy in the shitty "indie hip" way but nope! I get an entertaining image in mind when I hear the words "Mice Parade" anyway.

At breakfast this morning:
Girl 1: Really? She said that? That's so funny. Jenny seems soooo emo, you know?
Girl 2: Yeah?
Girl 1: I mean she's always wearing, like dark clothes. And, like, she doesn't smile that much.
Girl 2: Oh yeah, I know what you mean.
Girl 1: She's just soooo emo. Like, I've NEVER seen her wear pink. Like you know, she's wearing dark colors whenever I see her.

It sounds like I'm making it up, and I wish I were, but I'm totally not. Also, though not in this context, there's this weird phenomenon that happens with stupid people, I guess, where they say "that's so funny" or "how funny" or "it was hilarious" without ever ever ever sounding like they mean it. If it was so funny, why is your voice as dead as your soul? HUH?

Andrew Bird sounds like Rufus Wainwright sometimes and a little tiny bit like the guy from the Format. Neither are particularly good things. But damn, Heretics is a good song.

Lately I do this thing where I get my food all laid out and then ignore it for like an hour. My turkey pastrami has been out for about 20 min now, waiting for me to finish this LJ poast. Be patient, little one!

Oh oh oh SPN JA DEAN SAM! Never ever going to get over it.