Sunday, January 27, 2008

showtime at the el sleezo: the two-hour cure

hey, so maybe you're feeling a sort down? a tad blue?
well, if you've got a case of the mondays or S.A.D. and don't have a dog to pet or friends to hang out with because you live in the crappiest part of the crappiest city because you're going to a school you hate, i've got a recipe that will put the world right -and all in under two hours!



The Muppet Movie (orig) is maybe the best movie I have ever seen. I actually watched in THREE times in 24 hours. I would recommend watching the movie first. It starts out slow with Kermit strumming in the swamp. There are too many great moments to really get into great detail but there are a few things I would like to point out -cameos aside.
1) the el sleezo bar is probably the best bar in the world. fozzie bear's sailor joke is the best joke. (hannah and i have SOLID plans to open a bar called the el sleezo that will also be a joke shop)
2) running gag of running gags
3) could also be called the muppet meta-movie
4) the image contained in the sentence "all i can see is millions of frogs on tiny crutches."
5) the showdown scene

(mea culpa: i kinda hate miss piggy)

so by the end of the movie you're gonna be feeling pretty okay, near good. you're gonna be a little weirded out because you're gonna be really inspired by kermit's speech to doc hopper at the showdown about what the power of collective joy can be -but roll with it. go ahead, put on "what we do is secret." and before you know it, right around the drum solo intro of 'circle one,' you're gonna be right back on track. in under two hours.

cake odyssey

so, today me and nicole got marooned on this desert island.
nicole on beach
doesn't that sand look great?


we left our lil dinghy and went to explore the island. who knew the jungle had such great photo ops?

let's get TROPICAL


we decided to hightail it out of town. and, well, our boat may have been busted, but our thumbs weren't!
keep it up

but, as you might imagine on a desert island, there wasn't much traffic.
hitchin

eventually, it started getting dark. (they DO have night in the jungle, if you didn't know)
no luck

we decided to find a place to stay. luckily, there way just the cutest lil place right in town!
wee-pee

nicole started to make dinner.
nicole warms her hands

then we realized we had it all WRONG.


cake oddysee

it turns out we were just on a dessert island. DUH-LISH

Saturday, January 26, 2008

psychic connexxxion

so amber was writing about how there should be a birth control called "prebortion" right as i was taking this photo entitled "rock bottom?"


it's sort of like how she was telling me about pissing in a cave on the beach after drinking beer to take a pregnancy test and then a few days later, here i was doing almost the same thing (-and not just cuz its cool)! note: since i don't live by the ocean or a cave i put on some "dolphins and whales" tape i got a thrift store last year in an echo chamber. it kept with the spirit of her story and also was VERY SOOTHING. it's like the wind blew me the no-babies vibes straight from the bay.

call it what you will, but at that moment i was totally reassured by knowing how great my friends are.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

ode to friends I

so, i am trying to write this response for theories of media about the dialectic and like why i think it is TOTALLY LAME and not just cause Althusser said it was too teleological (is it ever reasonable to call something too teleological?i mean, isn't convergent totality what a teleology would require?), and all i am thinking is....

what's with hannah's face?

hbeardrowsy

srsly, open em

why can't hannah open her eyes?
hannah's sweepy


here we go,
finally


other faces with droopy lids that i love:

FAVIE FACES

TANK GIRL

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

driving miss lazy

oh hey,

somethings have been happening. like me getting my driver's license!



i had to go to bloomington to take the drivers test. i took the megabus to indy which happened to be a DOUBLE-DECKER. i got to ride in the top front seat the whole way.
the test went pretty well. i parallel parked and everything.
i wouldn't have thought it, but i really do like driving. alot.


why can't i do my homework? it is because the weather is totally lame and bums me out? is it because i just can't suffer busy work anymore?

if only all homework was as good as watching these anemone videos from zoology.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

SPIRIT ANIMAL

i didn't know he could play backgammon!

"you mean my whole fallacy is wrong"

So, I am reading Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media for my Theories of Media class. And like that's cool and stuff. I think he's an important dude in the genesis and development of Media Studies. But, ya know, I am just not sure that I can take him that seriously after reading this:

"As long as we adopt the Narcissus attitude of regarding the extensions of our own bodies as really out there and really independent of us, we will meet all technological challenges with the same sort of banana-skin pirouette and collapse."

Now, McLuhan may have some points about the whole failure-due-to-refusing-to-recognize-ourselves-in-our-technologies thing and he may be making an astute analogy between the Narcissus myth and the non-water technologies of our current moment, but he can't even get slipping on a banana peel right! Obv, Macky is missing the ESSENTIAL point that slipping on a banana peel is a moment of greatness (and authentic IMMEDIACY between the startled body and the uncanny environment) that no leaping weirdo in pink tights can begin to approximate. DOI.

How can he "understand media" if can't understand the most basic joke?

Monday, January 14, 2008

under lock and key

so, all of a sudden i have started locking my door of the first time in my whole life.

i didn't have keys the entire time i lived in bloomington. i am just now learning to drive and had always used a combination lock for my bike, so for the first 18 years of my life i had no keys. none. i am not sure that we even have a key to the back door of my house.



when i moved to new york, every roommate i ever had complained about how i wouldn't lock the door to our apartment. partly, i would forget. but, there was a lot of times i would think to lock the door and then choose not to. something about locking it made me uncomfortable.



when i got back from england, my dad came to ohare to pick me up. after the lady at customs asked me annoying questions about my septem piercing and said nothing of my trip to amsterdam within the week. we had bloody maries in the airport bar and headed to my apartment in hyde park to drop off all my luggage. when we got to the building we unloaded all my huge and fucking heavy bags and tried to open the door. my keys couldn't open the initial door to the front of the building. it didn't make any sense. i called my landlord's son, Darian was "chillin on the beach" so he couldn't come let me in. But he let me know that the locks had been changed and he promised to call someone to let me in. it was fucking cold and i hadn't slept at all during that EIGHT HOUR flight and had perioded all over my jeans on the plane and i just wanted to drop my stuff off. finally, after like fifteen minutes, the lady who babysits really rowdy kids on the first floor comes to let us in. she was the only one in the building i ever really talked to. i really like her. she is always complementing me on my tattoos and hanging out gettin really drunk with these vetrans in wheelchairs in front of our building where we don't have a stoop or anything, just a muddy grassless area. anyway, i explain that i hadn't gotten the new key or anything. she lets me know that there had been alot of drama and she was ready to spill.

apparently, her mother was coming over to visit and was attacked in our lobby by two large women with hammers. she didn't really make it sound like a robbery but i am not sure why else you would beat up an old woman with a hammer. my neighbor could hear the noise from her ground floor apartment and came rushing on the scene. she wrestled the hammer away from one of the women and started beating her face in. i guess she got her pretty good since some other people called the cops and there was blood all over the place. the women ran away before the cops came.

the next week, in the building that my windows face, whose windowsills i can touch, a young woman who lives alone was haning out in her apartment. she hadn't locked the door after coming in and someone broke in and started beating her. the attacker tried to rape her and had knocked her almost unconscious before a neighbor who happened by on the way to change his laundry interrupted the attack.




they changed the locks on our front door and put in a camera. but, it doesn't feel like it really makes a difference. i have never felt unsafe really ever. i have definately never lived in a place where i felt like i had to lock my doors while i was in the apartment. i mean, i would be bummed if my stuff got stolen, but honestly not enough to really lock my doors. living in fear is a new feeling, and not one i am used to. i woke up three times last night to noises that weren't anything, but feeling petrified. i was almost asleep just before writing this when i realized i hadn't locked the deadbolt after blake and hannah left.

though, it's not the only reason i hate living alone, getting freaked out and always being alone at night is really really shitty.

and it's like reason 10000 that i really want a dog.


***photos of the keys and locks are from the victoria and albert collection. can you belive these things? do they actually keep people out? or are they a theft deterant because the theives would just steal the fancy ass locks and not need any gold.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

about time

for XTREME BEER

what took them so long?



a trend i can get behind

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

so this dog is in a psychiatrist's office...

so, i moved back to chicago. and that's going pretty cool. i have been taking lots of photos mostly of funny things i see walking around. but i left my camera connectin cord back in bloomington. i forgot that the best thing is living in a city and walking around feeling like it is just full of little gems, if you'd notice them. one nice feature of chicago is the alleys. since basically every has an alley, there is this parallel network that is just foot/bike traffic and trash to dig in. sometimes since the streets are so wide and you're just walking all alone on the sidewalk not encountering any other pedestrians it can start to feel like there isn't the 8 lanes of traffic next to you. its just you cruisin with this background of worn-thin hand-painted hotdog advertisements.


really, things are going surprisingly well. i am chalking it up to the great unseasonal weather. school is turning out great. zoology is going to mostly consist of the professor showing us quicktime movies of bizarro marine invertabrates and us yelling out the appropriate phylla. today, i blurted out "so cool!" in class three times while watching these crazy sea critters move in unpredictable ways. i will be sure to share the best ones.

to get in that festive school spirit, i went to go buy binders today at the office maxxx. i was yelling on the phone to hannah about how lauren berlant was my (academic) soulmate and this woman walking by me in the store started yelling "YOU GO GIRL. YOU GO GIRL!" at me. i didn't know what to do so i gave her like the biggest 'sup?' chin nod. why did she yell that? was she encouraging the idea of soulmates? i hope so. cuz that's a totally sweet goal.


speaking of soulmates, i am really into this video jay howell and jim dirschberger made.




i am pretty much way into the things jay howell makes. i mean, they are really funny and about dogs and being really stoked. duh, it's my jam.


fyi:
2008=positivity and productivity.

2000cre8, dawgs!


gotta go to a videodrome screening for theories of media which is so far the professor explaining to us new yorker cartoons. gee thanks for the tip, dude.