Big, Bold, and Beautiful

Watch the above video before reading…

Are you done? Alright then.

I realize I’m a little late on posting this entry, after all today is October 6th and the deadline to register to vote in Virginia. If you haven’t registered and you’re reading this on Monday, October 6th then please, STOP READING! Go to http://maps.google.com/vote or http://www.rockthevote.com/rtv_register.html and register, please.

This is the most important election or our time, and I for one cannot wait to vote. I’m so eager that I’m actually going to vote early absentee which means I won’t have to fill out an absentee ballot and I’ll be able to use the machines, which, let’s face it, is so much fun.

As anyone that’s met me before knows I’m voting for Obama but it doesn’t really matter who you’re voting for as long as you vote. If you are eligible to vote and you don’t then you have no right to complain. You had your chance to change the country… hell the world and you didn’t. You decided you couldn’t be bothered or just didn’t care, in which case I’m glad you didn’t vote, because if you can’t be bothered to do something that considering how much it could change takes so little time then, as my mom used to tell me, “Your laziness know no bounds!”

Why wouldn’t you vote? Aren’t you excited? Can’t you feel the electricity in the air? Everything’s different this time. I don’t think I’ve heard people my age so optimistic before. Before this we were just pissed. (Alright, now, because it’s my blog and I’ll say what I want I damn well please, I’m going to talk about Obama.) Most of us can’t stand what Bush has done to this country but we couldn’t do anything about it until now. Now, not only can we do something about it, we have a candidate that we think will do something about it.

I don’t know I would do if another republican won the presidential office. I think I’d have to leave. To know that this country has learned so little through so much would break me I think. The one good thing that came from Bush getting into office for another term was that he couldn’t blame anyone else for what was happening. He’s the reason for so much of what is going on and if Kerry had won I think the right would have tried to pawn everything off on him.

Something that has always bothered me about the right’s criticism of Obama is that they call him a celebrity like it’s the worst thing on Earth. The actual definition of a celebrity is “a famous or well known person.” That’s it. And frankly, isn’t that what every candidate wants to be? Name recognition is number one reason incumbents continue to be incumbents. So isn’t it ideal to have a candidate that’s considered famous, that people actually want to see on the television, which people flock to in droves, skip school even, to hear speak.

Isn’t someone that evokes this much fascination, inspiration, and yes, hope, exactly what we and this country need?

All I know is that I’ll have a say in the next four years of this country’s future. Will you?

Drawing is not my thing. I know I know an art student that doesn’t draw? But it’s not, never has been. I used to hate art class in elementary school because I couldn’t draw and I thought art was a waste of time. I mean I could be getting more boring math out of the way and then go home sooner if I just didn’t have art…or music…or gym…especially gym.

Now I’m in VCU’s esteemed art program where I on many occasions have had people ask me how I got in to the program if I don’t draw and therefore did not submit a “rendering from observation.” In fact my drawing professor even asked me this. The good news was that she hadn’t been thought it was obvious that I had never drawn before from my terrible pictures.

For those that don’t know all art students have to take four classes during their first year in the art program: Time Studio, Surface Research, Space Research, and, you guessed it, Drawing Studio. I’m taking Drawing this semester and have to say that I’m doing pretty well for myself.

Don’t get me wrong, my drawings are no great shakes, but I’ve made a lot of progress all things considered. This is the first drawing we did in that class, on the first day of class. Our teacher basically introduced herself and then sent us off to do our first drawing, just like that. Needless to say I was kind of freaked out and really had no idea what I was doing, big shocker this drawing sucks.

But we learned different techniques and had more practice than we probably wanted and then I did this drawing in our fourth class (we just had our 14th).

This is the first drawing I was relatively happy with. I don’t know if it was working with organic shapes for the first time or what but this drawing just seemed to make a giant leap from the ones before it. My most recent ones are even nicer but I don’t have pictures of them yet. (BTW I’m not doing all of this just toot my own horn, we’re putting together our midterm which is a portfolio of our work so far, so I have to take photos of them anyway.)

I told my professor my thoughts on this too. That I thought I was doing pretty well for someone who’s never drawn before. To my delight she agreed with me completely.

I’m enjoying Drawing Studio as much as anyone in that class is I think (we have for two three hour sessions every Friday) and though I get tired of it I’m not completely hating everything I turn out now, in fact I actually like some of it.

I’ll post the latest few photos when I have them and if you are interested in seeing more of them or any of my work I post almost everything onto my deviantART page: http://lunagoddess21.deviantart.com

Ugh! It’s 10:32pm on a Monday and all I want to do is some homework before I go to bed. Of course nothing so simple could ever be allowed to take place so I’m in the hallway with my laptop unable to connect to the internet or any VCU server for that matter because apparently the hallway isn’t a valid place to access the network.

Hang on I’m going to try one more time… nadda thing, of course.

Now it would make sense if I wasn’t able to see something on the order of four different servers all in the 100% zone, it would make sense if my “wireless connection status” didn’t show 100% signal strength, BUT THEY DO! They always do. But when I try to connect to them I get moments like this when I honestly think I’d make more progress banging my head against a wall, at least then it would distract from the convulsions taking place in my brain.

Every time I try to connect I get this optimistic looking green progress bar that even goes all the way to the end, but its lying to you! It may be at the end of “renewing IP address” but the real test is the “waiting for IP configuration.” I stare at its equally optimistic blinking green arrow thinking “maybe this time.” Instead I get a horrible red X and an emboldened “Connection Failed” message across the top!

Each time this happens I learn something new about my computer. This time as I repeatedly clicked on different icons in the lower right tool bar I found out why when I watch videos on my laptop they occasionally freeze if I move even the slightest amount. Apparently Lenovo thought it was a good idea to have the “ThinkVantage Active Protection System Properties,” under which has the “shock detection sensitivity” turned to its absolute highest. And what does it do if detects even a quiver? It temporarily stops the hard drive!

Under “About” it says, and I quote, “The ThinkVantage Active Protection System” is an automatic feature that helps protect your hard drive from damage caused by strong physical shock and vibration. It continuously monitors the movement of you ThinkPad computer and temporarily stops the hard drive when a fall or similar damaging event is predicted.” Now this all makes sense in theory, protecting my hard drive from a fall, say…off the top of my bunk bed, is a good thing. The problem with this little feature is the “predicted” part. Each time I change the position of my legs while sitting on my bed watching TV online is not a cause for panic!

What this computer really needs is a microphone because believe me if I were ever to drop my laptop off my bed the entirety of Johnson Hall would hear “O SHIT!!!!” Then it can stop my hard drive.

At first I wasn’t positive I’d enjoy this blog assignment, I thought the videos might be too dry and theory oriented that they wouldn’t be interesting. However, after watching Yves Behar’s video I feel very differently.

While watching his presentation I just kept thinking, “so cool,” and then as he progressed I actually started to recognize a few of the projects. The two I definitely recognized were the “Jawbone”, and the “One Laptop Per Child.”

The “Jawbone” headset I’ve seen on people on the street for a long time now. I actually had no idea that it was anything other than a normal headset until now though. This headset detects when the jaw is moving and therefore talking and when it recognizes this eliminates background noise.

The OLPC or “One Laptop Per Child” project is something I not only recognized but considered buying. The laptop was running a special last year that if you bought one laptop you received one laptop:

I actually talked to my parents about maybe going in together and getting one for my little brother, we decided against it (these laptops are made for kids much younger than he was) but I was still surprised to see something I’d considered getting on this presentation. Like I said, I thought they’d be mostly theoretical, and if practical then probably unattainable.

Though I didn’t recognize or even know about the “NYC Condom” project I still loved it. I’m all for safe sex and I think it’s great that New York City Health is promoting that with free condoms.

I’ll admit though that I was a little surprised at the design of the dispenser. It’s very attractive but compared to his other seemingly very simple. I thought at first it was going to be like the automatic towel dispensers in bathrooms where you wave your hand in front of it and one pops out so you don’t have to touch the machine, instead you simply tug one out, like a normal paper towel dispenser. Still I love the design of the dispenser and the whole ad campaign as well.

I looked into Yves Behar after watching his presentation and found his company: Fuse Project. I am amazed at some of the things they are producing, from simple objects that are redesigned like the drink tray that has slots for the drinks so that they won’t spill, to the almost over-engineered like the room where the walls are made of liquid crystal so that you can put up digital images as your “wallpaper” (this is under their concepts section of their website but I doubt it will be long in the making).

I would love to work on things like this, designing with a mind for both form and function and I think this Behar and his company are absolutely brilliant.

I wasn’t as lucky in finding the second video as the first. It took me a couple tries before I found a video that grabbed me.

Jakob Trollback didn’t talk very long, only about two minutes, the rest of the presentation was a music video he and a friend created, however what he had to say was very interesting. He discussed how he thought music videos today are very reactive, the music is more of a soundtrack to the video instead of the focus. He wanted to eliminate “us,” people, from the video entirely.

The video he created is interesting. I find the choice of music odd considering the choice of visual. It doesn’t quite go together, almost, but not quite. Also the video itself is slightly boring; the effects he uses are fun and cool but repetitive.

I think that his concept is a good one but his execution was seriously lacking and didn’t really inspire me to want to make human-absent music videos. Then again, it could be just my view of music and music videos that has affected my opinion of his video. As I’ve shown on this blog I love music videos and of course love music.

I feel that music is such an important part of my life and people’s lives that trying to take people out of the equation, though I understand his point, is unnecessary and almost impossible. There’s a reason that everything every television show, movie, even commercial, has music to it. Our lives are enamored with music, as they should be in my opinion, so to try and take the human out of music when our lives are surrounded by music constantly seems odd and impractical. Even if I’m just listening to a song I’m still visualizing people in my head performing or acting out the song, so no matter what music and people will always go hand in hand for me.

This is a response to a small part of Sarah's blog entry "a world without love would be a deadly place." http://blog.vcu.edu/narumsv/

I am very tired of people questioning the rate at which doctors are prescribing antidepressants to adolescents. For a while people said that the drugs were causing a rise in suicides so they put a big warning on the label and doctors started trying really hard not to prescribe them. big surprise to everyone but me...suicide rates went UP!

No one, not even parents, know what it's like to watch a friend go through depression and not be able to tell anyone that could help.

A very good friend of mine had very bad depression all through middle school and into high school. She was a cutter and talked about suicide several times. We all knew about it because she talked to us about it and about some of the things that were depressing her. You're probably wondering why none of us told her parents. One of her biggest issues though was her parents, and I still believe that telling her parents probably would not have helped, we all worried that instead of getting her the help she needed they would make things worse by getting angry.

Finally one day, I don't recall exactly how, her mom discovered that she was cutting. Her mom was completely shocked of course and I think hurt too. But her parents finally took her to a therapist and she began a regiment of antidepressants that she still adheres to.

She is a completely different person now, and I mean that in the best way possible. Myself and her other friends used to worry that tonight she was actually going to go through with it. One of her friends even called the suicide help line once to ask for help. Now she's at UVA and doing great.

In my opinion problems arise when people take their medications but stop going to therapy. The two have to go hand in hand. People on these medications have to have someone to go to to say how things are going and who hopefully have the attention to detail and professional background to realize if and when something isn't going right.

I have had far too many friends go through depression, but I've also had many friends get help. I know too many people that benefit from these drugs to condemn them and it's time everyone else stopped. There are people out there that need these drugs to help them function on a day to day basis and they shouldn't be made to feel like a freak or weak because of that, and they definitely shouldn't have to fight with their doctors to get the help they need.

It is 1:15am and I am now 19 years old. Weird. I feel kind of old. I keep meeting people that are only turning 18 now and I’m like “seriously?” I guess I’m used to being older and in fact I usually like it, but 19 is like…19. It’s just hard to wrap my head around. 19 is one of those ages when adults are like “my 19 year old daughter is a psychology major at Stanford.” I guess it really comes down to the fact that…wow, I’m in college.

I know, I know, duh right? But it still hits me every so often. The same thing happened last year when every now and then all of a sudden I’d realize “holy crap I’m not even going to be in this area come next year.”

Other things hit me at times too. For instance, I’m not going to be taking these courses come the spring, I’m going to be at VCU for four years, I’m only a freshman, I’m a college freshman, I actually managed to become an art major.

I know it seems silly but sometimes I can understand what adults mean when they talk about cherishing the moment and how time flies and all that. At the time it seemed like high school would never die and yet here we are. I even visited some of my teachers when I was back home for break. Of course I only visited the teachers I liked so it was nice, but it was odd walking through those halls again wearing a visitor’s badge.

My brother just turned 15 in September and that’s another part of this that’s weird: he’s also a freshman… in high school. While walking around my high school I had to remind myself that my brother was also here somewhere. (Robinson has middle through high school but the middles school students are separated so high school students almost never see them.)

On the one hand I want to be done with school in general and just have a job already doing something I like. On the other hand I feel like I have to grab onto everything before it slips away.

Sorry to get so nostalgic on everyone, trust me when I say it’s not in my nature, but with so many big changes this year I guess I just needed to take a second and look back on all the craziness before I plow head first into some more.

OK it’s not what you think, but I bet I got your attention.

I went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on Friday with my friends and we had a blast. I’d seen the movie and had plenty of friends that had gone to the show before but my friends and were in fact virgins until Friday night.

If you don’t what I’m talking about then I suggest you Google “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and watch some of the clips (like the one above). The movie itself only has a plot for the first three quarters of the movie and even those three quarters don’t even make that much sense but once you watch it you love it. The movie came out originally in 1975 and was originally a huge flop but with the start of the midnight theater circuit became a huge cult hit.

From left to right Nicole is Dr. Frank N. Furter, I'm Magenta, and Eleanor is Columbia. I did our makeup, and yes it's supposed to be kind of crazy.

The whole “cult” thing is something I’m very familiar with and love. For some reason many of the shows I watch or grew up on are cult hits, I guess my family’s just special that way. But I think cult hits are shows that really illustrate the power of the fans. The show “Firefly,” written and created by the amazing genius that is Joss Whedon, lasted only a season due to network screw-ups that translated to lack of interest. I myself thought it was stupid when it first came out, but then I found out that FOX never aired the Pilot episode and, if I remember right, even aired some episodes out of order or not at all, so there’s no surprise that it didn’t make any sense! However, DVD sales were strong and groups like The Brown Coats, fans of the show, pushed hard for something to be done. Well something was done. The movie “Serenity,” the continuation/closing of the series came to theaters in 2005. In anticipation of this the Sci Fi network aired all fourteen episodes of “Firefly” in order, helping to raise anticipation of the movie.

I think fans are too frequently ignored in the movie and television industries. Actors who don’t have time to say hi their fans or networks that just ignore outcries are only shooting themselves in the foot. Sometimes they forget that we, the fans, pay their salaries and make them popular. If fans can keep a box office flop going for 25 years and bring a show back from the dead to become a movie, then there isn’t much we can’t do.

OK so I'm on a bit of geek - as if you didn't know - so I'm on the internet tootling around, actually trying to look at different blogs. I find out you can search through blogs on Google by genre. Of course I look up Movies, and what do my eyes behold but...wait for it....A NEW HARRY POTTER TRAILER!!!

OMIGOD!! OMIGOD!! OMIGOD!!!! *does happy dance*

Now, like many of you I was ready to kill someone when I found out they’d postponed the movie until FREAKING JULY!!! However, I have to say that it really looks amazing. This trailer is so awesome and even adorably funny at the end!

Also I’m kind of glad that they put it off *runs from pitch fork wielding mob* BECAUSE it won’t have to compete with the “Twilight” movie coming out on what I think was the original date for Harry Potter. Almost all Twilight fans are also Harry Potter fans and that would just to have to pick one to see, of course I probably would have already seen Harry Potter at midnight the night before but that’s entirely beside the point!

Alright change of subject, does anyone watch Supernatural? It’s a TV show about, you guessed it, supernatural things. Well it’s a great show and you should give it a try. (I just hooked a friend of mine on it.)

I’m the kind of geek/fan girl that also really likes certain celebrities and to follow their careers – not like a stalker! Anyways, the actors on Supernatural seem like their actually really cool guys (basing this off interviews and the like). This clip, which was shown at the end of the most recent episode of Supernatural, solidifies my belief in this.

Isn't he adorable!?!?

Thanks for putting up with me geeking out like this; I don’t get to do it very often now that I’m at college.

P.S. Isn’t the music video I posted ironic? I LOVE THIS PART!

P.P.S. I’m seeing Daniel Radcliffe in Equus in on Broadway in December! (See? Fan girl.)