| Retrospective spurred by viewing a photo essay on Los Angeles |
[Nov. 21st, 2009|01:15 am] |
There's something about Southern California that I don't like. It might only exist in my imagination, but I always think of it that way. Something about the way the scrubby green trees cluster in the shadier sides of hills of otherwise brown grass in every background, and every middleground is overlayed with palm and eucalyptus trees in the vast, flat valleys littered with freeways, billboards and miles of tract housing, and that waxy thick saturization of colors in the summer that make everything harken back to middle of the last century, everything from the big band bust to the beach boys.
Southern California is ugly.
I haven't even been there for probably three or four years. I probably just have bad memories associated with it.
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| Puzzle |
[Aug. 21st, 2009|03:44 pm] |
I've had an old puzzle that I got at Crown Center in Kansas City probably about 25 years ago. It was a drawing fixed on heavy cardboard of an old car which I colored with crayon and then put through a machine that cut it into a puzzle. I've kept it this whole time.
Now I've just moved and I inherited a bunch of cute red Ikea picture frames. I thought the puzzle would be just about the right size for one of them, so I laid it on the floor to put it together. It was only 12 pieces, but somehow, one piece was missing.
I haven't put that puzzle together since I was about seven years old. I have moved 19 times since then. My expectation for this puzzle is now pretty much lost because part of it is possibly gone forever. That memory can never be as complete as it once was. It's impossible to reassemble it, to remind myself of how things really were versus what my perception was at the time that the memory happened.
Before I made this slightly sad discovery, I was looking at the screen saver on my laptop. It strings together the pictures in my iphoto library into photo collages. As I saw the pictures, I thought about how a lot of them were just taken days ago, others months and years ago, and how in a way it almost feels like those moments can only be memories and nothing more.
They don't have to be, but sometimes it feels that way. You hope that everything that happens to you is an experience that you build on, that everything blends together, and you stay the same person, you just get smarter, wiser. But sometimes it also feels like things from your past are from another life, like you hardly even know the person in the photograph from 2003, even though you know that its your own face.
You start to wonder what the life you have now will mean to you in five, six, seven years.
You don't want to just have a life where there are a decent amount of good memories to look back on, you want the whole experience to sort of mean something all together.
It's a strange and sometimes rather depressing feeling when you are reminded of things you've almost entirely forgotten about, or when you realize the truth about something that you've never really realized before, even though it was part of your entire life. You feel like perhaps your life so far may have mostly just been random.
I suppose that at my age, even if it were true, you can't give up. You just try harder. But it's still confusing. |
|
|
| Mmmmm....dog |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|09:51 am] |
This is a real commercial that plays here in Washington State. How did they not realize that the first segue is just really, really bad? |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 20th, 2009|01:43 pm] |
|
The phrase "I don't care what other people think" when uttered is often one of the biggest lies imaginable, and is often said with the most self-conscious of intentions. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|12:17 am] |
|
I like it when things that used to be kind of awkward and tense end up fun, happy, and friendly. |
|
|
| DEATH |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|11:06 pm] |
.jpg) |
|
|
| Faith Versus Science |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|02:19 pm] |
I absolutely HATE the faith versus science beef.
Many people know that I am an atheistic agnostic. I don't know if there is a better term for it, but that's what I'll call it. To me, it means I don't believe there is a god, I don't consider there to be good evidence that there is one, and furthermore, I don't believe that there is a good reason, in spite of any amount or lack of hard evidence, that I should think so.
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| MJ |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|03:49 pm] |
|
It would be one of the least surprising supernatural things to happen if he came back as a zombie and started dancing to thriller. Tell me you wouldn't start dancing with him. |
|
|
| Updates |
[Jun. 14th, 2009|05:46 pm] |
I want to just start school and start studying and occasionally, when time allows, be able to relax, unwind, and do things with friends, make new friends.
Right now, I feel pulled in so many directions. I have to worry about my unemployment not being cut off, I have to keep doing a job search three times a week, even though getting a job right now would totally throw things off as far as timing things that I have to get ready for school, so I have to pray that I don't actually get one. I have to write a letter for this worker retraining program and submit an application. I have to get my portfolio ready (which is really what I want to be working on, and what is really most important), I have to move, I do have some good leads, but I don't have a new place 100% lined up.
I am pretty sure my student loan should go through just fine, but that's still not solidified.
Then of course, there's always the feeling that somehow, even though I'm pretty sure I have everything covered, there is something that I somehow don't know about that is vital in getting everything done for school.
So I sit around with this dual feeling of anxiety and boredom. Complaining doesn't make it better, and I know it hardly makes me attractive.
Well, anyway, back to writing this letter. |
|
|
| News of the world. |
[Jun. 8th, 2009|12:43 pm] |
The world being me.
Construction.
Construction will change my life, it seems.
For months, now, they've been tearing up the entire block across the street from us, and soon construction will begin. Around the clock, non-stop. This has caused my room mate Aaron to decide to take an opportunity that came available to him to move out.
Upon that, Alan decided he wants to move out too. The alternatives would be that he and I would absorb the rent that Aaron would not be paying...to live in a house that will be amidst a pounding din for two years. No thanks.
Alan and I needed to get separate digs anyway. We have lived pleasantly (for the most part) as exes and friends for about a year, but well...that could only last so long anyway.
So I can either stay here and fish for new room mates, or find a place of my own as well.
I need to decide very soon.
I also need to get my portfolio put together and submitted for the graphic design program at Seattle Central. I am a bit daunted, as I don't have much put together that I feel good about turning in, and it's almost entirely ink drawings. I need to diversify a bit.
I have until August to sort of teach myself how to properly use other medium well enough to make a composition or two that will look good in a portfolio...as a painting, a photograph, etc.
Hopefully, I will be accepted, and I will get the Worker Retraining program grant, which is essentially my current unemployment benefit, except I will not be required to continue looking for work in order to claim it, and I can possibly collect it for up to two years, rather than until my benefit runs out.
So, I have a lot to do.
That's pretty much where I am right now.
My goodness!
If I don't get accepted to the program, my options are:
a. find a different school to go to (the best alternate I can find to get into a graphic design program is Shoreline College, which is too far away, and I don't want to move that far or commute that far)
b. just start taking classes for a transferrable AA degree, and then either re-try next year for the AAS program (the AAS program only transfers 100% towards a BS degree at a select few schools), which would mean that I'd be taking classes that don't really have much to do with the AAS program, and I'd sort of just be taking them to either fill up time, or abandon the AAS degree, and go or an AA program that would get me into a 4-year school for a BA.
or
c. give up and start looking for a full-time job again.
I think b is my best option. I don't want it to have to be, though. I want to get into this program, train hard and heavy for two years, and be job-ready at the end.
So much to do...so little time, so many sudden things...it's a bit dizzying, but also exciting! |
|
|
| Catch 22 |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|12:22 pm] |
|
I don't know why the movie Catch 22 was so heavily panned by critics. I think it was a pretty good film, I just watched it again today. The last time I saw it, I was probably like 12 years old. I watched it with my dad and my brother. It was kind of surprising that my dad didn't turn it off and make me leave the room as its rife with full frontal nudity. |
|
|
| The curious case of benjamin button. |
[May. 9th, 2009|06:50 pm] |
Long, kind of listless, but still heart-tugging and decent.
A few things about it though,
There seems to be an awful long stage of Brad Pitt being very young (just growing taller) and looking very, very old. Then there's a short period during which he looks like a man 65-70, but looking rather handsome, if not a bit rugged and disheveled. Then he suddenly looks ambiguously like an extremely handsome 50 for a long time, then he looks like the real Brad Pitt (hot and 45) for an even longer time.
Then they pull one late trick in the movie where they make him look 20 years old.
His transition from being elderly to middle aged to in his later prime years were a bit drawn out, and some of it they could have done a few more things to make him look a little older. The gray went out of his hair awfully fast, and his deep wrinkles and liver spots seemed to disappear rather quickly and give way to him looking perhaps a bit fleshy, but still pretty tight for somebody who's supposed to look somewhere in his fifties or late 40's.
Brad Pitt is exceptionally well preserved. Sure, he's only 45, but still...he's a damn good looking 45. But he's not playing Brad Pitt, he's playing Benjamin Button. Your average 45 year old usually looks something closer to what the "28 but looks 56" Benjamin Button does.
Did anybody else feel like he went from being a freaking ancient Toddler/Adolescent to DILF rather quickly, and didn't he stay a DILF for an awful, awful long time? The Benjamin Button in the late 1940's is supposed to be around 30, but looks in his late/mid 50's, and he looks like the hottest 55 year old you've ever seen.
Other than that, though, the makeup, the CGI and everything were all very impressive.
I'd start talking about anachronisms, but I'd go on forever. Nothing that historically inaccurate really happened, just a few things seemed slightly out of place for their era at times.
Over-hyped movie, definitely, but still good. |
|
|
| Episode One |
[Apr. 11th, 2009|03:17 pm] |
|
Phantom Menace is so intensely bad. |
|
|
| Twilight |
[Mar. 30th, 2009|10:43 pm] |
This is just silly.
For some reason, every time I see Robert Pattinson, I can't help but think of Caberet...oh, chum. |
|
|
| myface |
[Mar. 28th, 2009|08:41 pm] |
I like that I did this.
|
|
|
| Spiderman 3 |
[Mar. 14th, 2009|06:08 pm] |
|
Whether you thought the first two were really good or pretty stupid, the third one is absolutely absurd in comparison. That is my opinion. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Mar. 12th, 2009|11:22 pm] |
|
As much as Jim Cramer is a complicit jackass, it's painful to watch John Stewart totally lambaste him on television. |
|
|
| Weird |
[Mar. 12th, 2009|12:53 am] |
I was reading boing boing tonight before I went to bed, and I saw this post about the demolition of some houses right across the street from me. Weird to see something like that end up on something like Boing Boing.
There's a video clip that is mostly just a photo montage with "And So It Goes" by Billy Joel playing.
I don't get the whole thing about people overlaying pictures and video with sappy music. Youtube is flooded with it.
Anyway, I took this picture of the torn down houses. I am mostly indifferent to the whole thing other than that the demo crews seem to start pretty early, but not any earlier than when I normally get up anyway.
I also am not sure that I need such a clear view of Broadway all the time. Soon, they'll tear down the Jack in the Box (the famous one that killed people some 15, 20 years ago) and all the storefront buildings on broadway, and we will have a fully naked view of broadway. I don't think I like that.
Something about a heap of rubble that is sort of aesthetically pleasing, though.
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
munia's journal
