My Favorite Model

Alackaday, for my life drawing class has been rubbed out by the merciless eraser that is time. At least the last class was a fun one. Lori, Queen of AwesomePoseLand, modeled, and all of her poses are awesome. The awesome thing about awesome poses is that they often result in awesome drawings!















See? Awesome!
Right.

Interesting Observation: the pool of Northeast Ohioan life drawing models is composed almost exclusively of bikers.


Speaking of bikers...
Okay, this requires some background. The students at my high school never used the library. It is a sad fact that, until last year, no one I know ever checked out a book. Why? We were scared! There were two short, blond, and very elderly librarians. They were both SCARY (have I emphasized their EXTREMELY HIGH FRIGHTENING QUOTIENT enough?). Orange just spent a few million dollars upgrading to a "media center", though, and Angry Librarian 1 retired (in protest? Perhaps) and was replaced by The Really Nice Librarian That We All Remember From Elementary School (she is also short and elderly, but more of a light, dusty brunette than a blond).
So, now that the hate factor of the library has been reduced by 50%, sometimes... my friends and I actually work on projects there! Most recently, we did a 3 panel mural that represented the themes, motifs, and symbols in Salman Rusdie's The Moor's Last Sigh (go read it!). As we are coloring in Ganesha, Angry Librarian 2 walks by, breaks into a maniacal grin, and tells us her life story.

OH MY GOD

She is a biker! The licence plate on her motorcycle says "Ganesha". She was married in a Hindu ceremony. Her house is filled with curiosities from the Jewel in England's Crown.
What?! Are you as floored by this development as I am? Cuz I am seriously floored. And now she is nice to us. It is eerie. I expect Rod Serling will be popping by any minute now.

I'm pretty sure there is a moral having to do with books and their covers here.

The Kids at Camp

They used to call me Alison Wonderland. In retrospect, it's a pretty cool nickname.

Seriously, Guys, It's an Ethical Dilemma

Sir Robo-galacticoman: But Princess Ashaleey, I love you!

Princess Ashaleey: No, Sir Robo-galacticoman, it can never be!

(It's for the love of her country! She is worried about the potential immortality = king forever issue - no one likes a metal tyrant)

ZOHMBAYHZ!

I promise not everything I draw is dead!

Skellingtons

It was a real skeleton. I touched it. It was cool.

By cool, though, I mean sad. Despite the beautifully simple lines and the awe inspiring, complex structure (evolution blows my mind), I can't help but to wonder who she was.

Anyone seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High? Do you think she was a vagrant who sold her body to science for $30? I have no idea when she was alive. Maybe she was the victim of grave-robbery in the 1800s? Did she know parts of her body that she herself had never even seen were going to be thoroughly but dispassionately scrutinized by art student after art student for decades. It's like she's being whored out. I wouldn't feel so bad about it if any of us had the talent to really render her with the passion, innovation, and loveliness that her bones deserve, but as it is, she is prisoner to our mediocrity.

In other news, I'm still jazzed about MIT. Not even art can bring me down from the cirrus (is that the very, very high one?) cloud that I have been floating on for the past 55.5 hours.

MIT '12

Yes.

This isn't l'etranger!

Part 2, Chapter 4 of Albert Camus' l'etranger is the chapter that I have been assigned to teach tomorrow. Naturally, that means that I've spent the evening puttering around the internet trying not to think about the fact that I left the wee tome in my locker. And thus, the origins of this post:

I googled some phrase in Klingon, the only result was an old livejournal. I explored the livejournal. What's this?! The fellow speaks at least 5 languages, how interesting... and then I see a string of comments, a 'conversation' in which the blogger and another non-native English speaker attack an American for using the present tense of 'to forget.' No where else in the world, they say, have they ever heard anyone say 'I forget' instead of 'I forgot' or 'I have forgotten.' The American, they say, is just plain wrong. Now, the American failed tragically in defending himself and his countrymen, and I would have gone hastily to his aid if the thread (and, in fact, the entire blog) had not died several years ago.
So, I will justify the American 'forget' here. This may be not be true of everyone, but when I say 'I forget,' I say it with the expectation that I will remember the information at some point; it has been only temporarily misplaced. I say 'I've forgotten' when I doubt that I will ever be able to drag up the lost kernel of knowledge. Chalk it up to the legendary American optimism! We of the United States refuse to acknowledge the potential endurance of any sort of negativity.

And I should go look for l'etranger again.

Uberdoodle

Wow. This is supposed to be a sketchblog. Sometimes I forget!

I will be surprised and slightly perturbed if anyone figures out what this is about.

Primary Shenanigans

Geraldine Ferraro was on NPR the other day to tell folks about the deluge of Republicans that moseyed across party lines to vote in the Democratic primary. She claimed that if they hadn't done so, Hilary's numbers would have been much higher.
Okay, Geraldine, that's great, just sayin' tho... my observations at the polls contradict your analysis. Most of the Republicans I checked in said that they were voting for Hilary because they didn't think she would be able to win against McCain. Others said that they were voting for Obama because if they had to have a Democratic president, they would rather it be he than Clinton. I think the Republican votes for Clinton and Obama probably cancelled out. If the results were skewed in anyone's favor, I would say that person was Clinton.

NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN

The Government! If I ever had faith in the bureaucracy, I have lost it.



About a month ago, Mrs. Price asked if any seniors who would be 18 before the November election wanted to work at the polls March 4th. Because I am an idiot, I though ah! involvement in the political system! fun!

No. No. No.

The only thing it involves you in is confusion and disillusionment.

First - more of me being idiotic - I lost my notice-to-serve card and didn't know which ward I was supposed to go to. The Board of Elections didn't return (any of) my call(s) until after the Monday night preparation had started. I didn't get that call, though, because I was out driving around town trying to find the place myself. When I finally arrived, we couldn't do anything because the Polling Location Coordinator had not showed (shown?) up. We called the BOE and they named one of the Presiding Judges PLC. They had no idea what was going on, and neither did we. My precinct was also missing its second Republican Judge, and they didn't send us a replacement when we notified them.
So, from 5:30 Tuesday morning, almost nothing went right. Campaigners infiltrated the building, the Republican Judge sitting next to me spent the whole time talking about how Hillary Clinton has no soul and insisting that non-attorneys should not be allowed to vote for judges, and THE POWER WENT OUT. The back-up lights went out shortly after. The PLC called the BOE, but they just said to hold tight while they figured out what to do. The adults all stood around arguing. It was like one of those corny horror movies or reality shows in which a group of regular people hole up together and make pseudo-logical arguments that result in stupid decisions. Holy shit. It was like these people had not even read the handbook, like they were operating on some other plane of existence were rationality had been twisted around in some terrible, wild knot. When I finally got to leave, my car was completely encased in ice. Like a popsicle. A Honda Accord popsicle.
I will never, ever sign myself up for poll working again.

A Paradox, a Paradox, a Most Ingenious Paradox!

KING:
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal, some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal, has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty. Through some singular coincidence, I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy, You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year on the twenty-ninth of February; And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover, That though you've lived twenty-one year, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over!

RUTH AND KING:
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

FRED:
Dear me!
Let's see! (counting on fingers)
Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!

ALL:
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

FRED:
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
years twenty-one I've been alive,
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!

-Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance
Parce que I had this song stuck in my head all day this February 29th

Word of the Day

In other news, here is a cool new word I found:

AUTOSCHEDIASM

It comes from Greek, auto is self and schedios is casual or offhand. Together they make a noun that refers to improvisation or something extemporized.

Snow Day

It has been snowing since I got up at 6 this morning, and it has not yet stopped or slowed. My car is buried under at least a foot of snow, but I don't have to go anywhere today because school was cancelled YEAH! An extra day to study for my Euro test. Another plus, it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful outside.

But I have a problem with snow days; when I am alone for long periods of time, I think. Generally I just depress myself. Today was not much different.
I tried to figure out what inanimate object I am most like. I had already decided that I was m ore like an inanimate object than an animate one, you see. At first I thought perhaps a dead leaf. It lets itself drift about stiffly and then crumbles into pieces beneath a boot or buries itself beneath a pile of other dead leaves and rots. Then, the lamp on the little desk in the living room caught my eye. I thought, "I am like a lamp." I am purely decorative. People light me up when they will, use whatever illumination I provide, and turn me off again. Then I realized that I could not be a lamp, for a lamp may be turned on, and the reason that I was comparing myself to these various inanimate objects was my uncertainty that I was at all sexual. So, now I was thinking about lamps and sexuality and I noticed that lamps are, in fact, rather sensuous. The squat, rounded base I was picturing seemed like some sort of fertility symbol. I was reminded of that voluptuous prehistoric stone Venus that appears in the first chapter of every art history book I've ever read. The lamps are pregnant, I suppose. And even more appropriately, pregnant women are often said to be glowing. Then, I realized the lamp I had had in mind was hidden away in the back room, and the lamp that I was actually looking at had a very straight base, more like a brass dowel. In fact, as I looked around the room, every lamp that I could see was long and thin. The only one that was even slightly bulbous was clear glass with a straight metal rod inside. I cannot decide whether this is another example of my family's sexual repression, or whether it means that my mother (as she is the one who decorated the house and chose the lamps) is somehow dominated by my father, the only male in the household and therefore the only one to whom a phallic symbol could refer. Sometime within the week I shall take inventory of all our lamps. Maybe there are curvy ones upstairs?

Gah! This is what happens. I can't even decide whether or not this sounds idiotic yet. It probably does and I won't be able to see it objectively enough to notice for months. Frustration.

The Least Threatening Tailgater

A sunny yellow bug with a flower in the windshield followed me for ~10 minutes on the way home today. It wanted me to go faster, but I couldn't take it seriously!

Poetry!

I chose this poem to analyze for an English paper and it was COOL.

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there must always be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a cornor, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the foresaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

So, why was it cool? The Musee des Beaux Arts = the Musee royal des Beaux Arts de Belgique in Brussels. It is the home of Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. The coolness comes in here - I had been a bit confused about the entire first sentence. Seriously, I thought, where did this stuff about dogs and torturers and horses with the itchy butts come from? Then, while looking through a collection of Breughel's works, I saw The Census of Bethlehem (containing a pregnant Mary, a dude opening a window, and a bunch of kids skating) and the Massacre of the Innocents (dogs and a knight on a horse by a tree in the bottom right corner). Better, they're both at the Musee, too.

I love finding things that allow you to imagine the situation surrounding the conception of a creative work.

Yes! And Mrs. B says my analysis of sound devices and structure rocked her socks (my words). AND she didn't get angry when I called Auden a little raincloud. Overall, this paper writing experience rates a 10, I think.

So, I am actually going to keep up a sketch blog. For real.
To start:


A nice transition from my old blog to this new one, I think.

+the blue is appropriate because it is MIDTERM WEEK. This could fuck with my straight A average, which would make me look like a slacking senior, which would prevent me from getting into a good school - THIS IS ALL VERY DEPRESSING I MUST STOP.

It is nice that my grades won't really matter next semester, though. I might actually have time to read some books outside of those assigned for school. I'm thinking... Kant, maybe? Supposedly you need to reread his books several times to understand them, and now that I have time, why not?

Getting ahead of myself. You don't have time yet, silly! You have a calculus midterm.