Apparently a long, long time ago when I was recording an ATM transaction in my Quicken I accidentally typed in "widthdrawal," and every time since then I've unknowingly been letting it autocomplete to this horrible, horrible typo and I seriously didn't even notice until now. This bothers me an irrational amount. Also WOW I really should be asleep instead of writing this totally incoherent habbaalliihnhnn,.ll;;;;
So I was just making my way through that nebulous nebula of hyperlinks that is the Interweb when I found myself over at The Superficial for some reason or another. The posts are all quite amusing, but there were two things I liked in particular. The first is a quote about Paris Hilton wanting to have kids:
Paris is a whore who wants attention. Based on med school classes I never took, I would have thought the Jenga of STDís that somehow keep her body upright should prevent her from having even recreational sex, so to think of her having sex with the sinister purpose of reproducing is pretty hard to stomach. [emphasis mine]
The second thing was a post about a new movie called Snakes on a Plane. It's about some guy who unleashes a crate of rattlesnakes... wait for it... wait for it... on an airplane. According to IMDb, the title has since been changed to the ultra-generic Pacific Air 121, which is a mystery to me because Snakes on a Plane is a total genius title. I'm serious. I can't stop saying it over and over again, in my head. (Hopefully it will never progress past the "in my head" phase, or I'll probably have trouble getting through airport security.) Also, the only cast member IMDb currently lists is Samuel L. Jackson. Is it genius, or is it PURE GENIUS??
Let me tell you about the house next door. Last year it was populated by a bunch of people who kept a relatively low profile, aside from their cats being everywhere, but we were okay with that. They moved out over the summer, though.
This year, the house has apparently been turned into some sort of cooperative, with the occupants constantly cycling in and out. Right now there's something like ten people over there, not to mention some homeless guy who's had a camp in the backyard for most of the year. I don't know if their landlord is completely out of his or her mind, or if it's an independent property, or what. We generally just acknowledge that next door is really weird.
This quarter, though, the current occupants have taken to kicking off each weekend with a bonfire and bongo drums. This isn't that offensive of an idea. The neighbors on the other side last year, being the first-year-away-from-home freshmen they were, would frequently engage in acts bordering on arson or start shouting matches with their girlfriends-of-the-week, but it wasn't too bad because they'd usually do so in the opposite corner of their yard. When these new hippies (as the bum describes them) have their little powwows, the smoke stench and aggressive bongo playing are quite invasive. So, last night around 11, I opened up the windows and blasted a few selections from Kronos Quartet's Nuevo.1 This got them to pack it up after about fifteen minutes. I felt very accomplished.
BUT!! I need to come up with something new for next week. Surely, at this very moment, the neighbors are reinforcing their fire pit and augmenting their bongos with the latest contraband bongoing technology. It won't be enough to stick with the same songs. Besides, it wouldn't show enough dedication to the battle on my part to stick to the same handful string-quartet-turned-mariachi-ensemble tracks. I'll definitely need an improved arsenal of my own. Right now I'm thinking the best of M.C. Hammer or Will Smith. If only I had complete Corn Mo albums.
1 "El Llorar" is my favorite.
So it turns out my last quarter at UCSB is definitely going to be my favorite. I'm only taking three classes, so I don't expect the work will pile up too badly. Sometimes I even come back from class and find myself writing out some of the characters from the day's Chinese lesson for review, since I usually get out on the early side and still have some motivation to be productive. Amazing!
I also resigned at my campus job, which helps with the shorter hours a bit. In its place, I'm doing some work putting together a Website for a company in Boston. It gives me hope for keeping up freelance projects on the side, since it's got work-at-home hours and—I hate talking about money, but—generous pay. Also, it's great to be able to just mess around with CSS and get paid for it. [Tangent: I recently put together a list of pros and cons for different navigation menu styles, and right at the top of the list of cons for my favorite two styles was "not compatible with Internet Explorer." I hate hate hate hate hate how Microsoft is single-handedly stunting the potential of the Web.]
One of the other things I planned for all of this quarter's job-less free time was learning some new tricks. That is, Maya, ActionScript and PHP. Granted, they're all a bit tricky so the latter two may have to wait till the summer, but Maya has been a great experience so far. Right now I'm just going through some tutorials on the basics, but the training videos are really excellently-done and easy to follow. I've been watching around one to two hours a day (although this week has been light because I've been practicing instead), so it's sort of like just having an extra, self-paced class. As for end results, I had character modeling for games in mind when I began (and still do), but I'm proud to say that I've already been able to put my fledgling skills to use: I needed some awkward perspective shots for some pieces for my drawing class, so I threw together a couple quick models of a Russian sculpture and the George Washington bridge. (The bridge is not one of the slabs, by the way.) After a little rotating, I ended up with some great reference images. Now I can't wait to get into lighting to use along those lines.
Of course, I've still managed to burn up plenty of free time with a few new games. A couple weeks ago it was Half-Life (the first one), and now it's Tekken 5, in which I think I've finally graduated past Fighting Game Mentality Level 1: mindless button mashing. It was a fierce struggle, however.
So, that's about it. To sum up: enjoyable classes + freelancing + learning software + still tons of free time = yum. Now how come it took four years to figure out that formula?
So!! I've decided one of the themes in my work for my last art class here at the UCSB will be "Slabs of the World." (Or it could be "Slabs of the World on Tour," I haven't made up my mind yet.) I'm envisioning this as a series of images of famous or not-so-famous slabs from all over the globe, depicted in their natural environments or possibly venturing elsewhere. So far I've come up with a list of around ten slabs, but I'd like to have as large of a pool as possible to draw from, so please nominate your favorite slabs. Either IM or email, or even just leaving a comment would be fine.
I've been sort of half-following Capcom's Killer 7 since its announcement an incredibly long time ago, mainly because of its unique aesthetic. (It looks sort of like cel shading meets Out of This World or Flashback.) It keeps getting delayed and delayed, though, which had me wondering what was up. This brief hands-on report over at Kotaku reveals what Capcom's development studio has apparently been doing for the last few years: loads and loads of drugs:
[...] You are playing as a man bound in a wheel chair and possessed by seven distinct personalities. Each personality has its own weapons and special skills. You can shift between the personalities at will to try and solve problems and deal with enemies.The mechanics of the game are as distinctly unique as the plot. To move you sort of choose a path and hold in the A button. You can stop at any point down your path to deal with problems and try and look for clues. The game is full of clues, birds alighting on your shoulder, strange men in leather and chains talking to you, people crawling up walls. Itís a very interesting game.
The shooting element comes in to play often in the game. You hear maniacal laughter and have to switch to first-person mode and then scan the area. If thereís something around it will appear shambling toward you with a bomb strapped to its body. To kill it you can shoot away or target the bomb. The more blood you cause to be spilled the better, because you can collect it for use down the line.
This is one of the most stylistic and bloody games Iíve ever seen. For instance, one of your personalities can summon spirits, but to do that she slashes her wrists and splashes the air with gouts of blood.
Do any of those ideas have anything to do with each other??
I saw Sin City last weekend and it was actually pretty great. It proved Robert Rodriguez can do more than put together really amazing trailers, even if he was pretty much shooting each scene directly from the comic. I'm looking forward to the DVD and its inevitable side-by-side movie/comic comparison feature.
Until then you can adorn your desktop with these wallpapers, featuring the grizzled John Hartigan. One's based off a panel from the comic, and the other's a shot of Bruce Willis from the same scene in the movie. See if you can tell which is which!!!
Here's a new desktop of everyone's favorite insane Japanese rocker, Hotei Tomoyasu (or Tomoyasu Hotei, if you prefer). This is the cover of his great, great album, Scorpio Rising. I cleaned the image up a bit and replaced the background. Multiple sizes available in the gallery.
Be sure to check out Hotei.com. I don't know, just because.
A voicemail Noah left with me earlier today:
So the PSP's proprietary media type is called UMD, right? That strikes me as problematic because they can never sell two-packs of it, or games that require two discs, because then it'll always be a double-UMD.
HA HA, VERY FUNNY.
So today in Japanese art history I was supposed to be discussing some slides with my partner-of-the-day, but we had run out of things to talk about so we mostly just observed the human catastrophe sitting in front of us. This guy and his cohort had been drawing my attention since the beginning of class, when he returned to his desk from the front of the room with a bewildered expression on his face. He turned to his friend and half-whispered, "Dude, everyone's turning in written shit," referring to the reading response due today. (Minigripes about this professor's weird journaling and partner discussion practices located here.) He then plopped down in his seat, donned a ridiculous grin, and slowly doubled over in silent laughter. Dude #2 murmured several sentences, each of which caused dude #1 to lean forward several inches further in hysteria.
The room then darkened and the projection screen began to extend down from the ceiling. Dude #1 turned completely around and looked at me with a crazed expression. He offered me a series of questions: "Are we going to watch a movie now??" Then, "Are you ready for this??" Then, "Are you ready for this??" He whipped back around to murmur to his friend.
"That guy is really drunk," my discussion partner whispered. "And it's 9:30 in the morning, on a Monday."
The rest of the lecture passed without any more pop quizzes from the dude, probably because he was too busy trying to snap surreptitious photos of the professor with his camera phone. (wtf) Then, a slide of the walkway leading up to a Buddhist temple entrance popped up on the screen. Dude turned to his friend and excitedly whispered, "Killbill!" All one word, just like that. His hand shot up enthusiastically and I braced for what I knew was coming as the professor called on him.
"So, uh..." he started. "I know the film Killbill is sort of unrelated, but, uhm... Is it possible that it could have, um, any effect on architecture, you know?"
The class sat in stunned silence. Even the professor paused for a second before responding.
"That, uh... That's something you could discuss with your partner, although it's completely irrelevant."
At the end of the period, I overheard the dude complaining to his friend about the class being "total third grade stupid bullshit." I wonder if he'll be back on Wednesday.
Metafilter user Divine_Wino responds to MSNBC's article on how to wetshave:
A badger hair brush is all right, for the pikers and fifteen year olds who are cultivating that "did I just have some chocolate milk or is it a mustache look", real men rip the head off the badger (preferably Mauritanian NOT the ones from Brussels, which are actually a kind of non-swimming water rat, think Nutria but unable to swim or even float) and lather that up with some Vendigliani Otrusco, which is a Sicilian emollientie di priapari (lit. boner cream). By all means use an English lavender scented creme if all you are going to do is spend the rest of the day comparing man purses down at the emo-record shop, but if you are trying to emulate the real leading male lights of the century you are going to need at least the Vendigliani, the scent of which Graham Greene once noted "... most resembles that of toasted almonds, with perhaps just a tint, a mere suggestion, of stale urine."Finally using a blade at all smacks of Oscar Wilde on poppers levels of limp-wristedness (you might as well try to have some kind of man-baby and spend the rest of your life baking orange zest muffins). Real men, true men, (like Kaiser Wilheim, the last actual MALE man who ever lived) merely lather up and then, elbows clasped tightly to the sides, perhaps two inches above the kidneys, sprint at top speed towards a coral reef at low tide and with a last light (but masculine) leap, scrape off 1/18th of their face, per side, per day. If no coral is available it is best to grow a beard, as attempting the same thing on pumice or god help us, volcanic rock is akin to living ones' life as a Spaniard.