Sunday, November 30, 2003
My head hurts and I have tons of work and these stupid art projects which I haven't got enough time for and there is my brain being all exploding-like and whatnot and ow ow ow.
Anyways, proper postage soon, about the infinite joys of Thanksgiving break.
Until then, have some rather disturbing marching kittens from Mr. Veitch of Rathergood. The same fellow who did the northern England Destiny's Child kittens, you know. I wish I knew German so I could tell for sure when it starts looping, but I suggest you watch it for a good while anyways, just to get the feel for it. If you watch it long enough, the whole world seems to be bouncing up and down in time to a beat which exists only in your head. Infinite good times.
If you need a break after watching that for a while, check out another animation by the same fellow. This one is sweet and a little sad and rather soothing, especially after the marching kittens. It's about some sad baby orangutans who bought the wrong bananas. If you've been keeping up with your B3ta like a good interweb trekker, you know all about the filter and happy baby orangutans, which makes this little ditty several times funnier.
Beth and Amanda put up very nice colorful Christmas lights in the hall around their door and down the wall, in the shape of an M. I'll take a picture at some point. They're quite cheery and festive. My roommate saw them doing it and said, "They're putting those up in the hall?!?" To which I said, perhaps a wee bit testily (headache, you know), "It's not like they're putting up Jesus on the cross. You'll live." She huffed. End of complaints. To me, anyways.
Proper blog soon, I promise. Right now, sleep. Sleep would be nice. I won't get it, but it sure would be nice.
edit: Oh, and is anyone else disturbed by the dining hall's promise of 'creamy style chicken'. Now, I may not be the best cook in the solar system, but something tells me that chicken is not supposed to be creamy. I always thought of it as... solid. I rather think that if I were cooking and my chicken came out creamy, I'd throw it out and start over.
But that's what we're being served on Tuesday, so apparently it's good enough for the dining halls here.
Lip smackin' good!
11:44 PM
Saturday, November 22, 2003
What a end of the week and weekend it has been thus far. Long blog! Sorry.
Thursday was relatively uneventful, except that we had that guest artist lecture deal. The artist was two people from the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP). They've taken this utterly poor and cruddy alley in California and filled it with wicked cool murals. The lecture was actually much less boring than I thought it would be, although it did not excite me to the wild state that last week's biological illustrator lecture did.
Then I went out to get ice cream at Stucci's with Helena, before I had dinner. Woah! Radical and anarchistic! Ice cream before dinner? What was I thinking?
Friday was filled to the brim with insanity. I had to wake up at 5 am. The art school inexplicably makes everyone sign up for their classes before they actually register for them. This poorly planned event involves everyone going to one room in the art school at the same time and fighting like rabid wolves for a spot on line before the classes they want close out.
Thirty or forty kids actually slept over in the art building, so that they would be there before anyone else. They were not in a good way come morning. The ones whom I knew were Taylor, Andrew, Shlomo, and Natalie. Natalie, especially, looked like someone had plunged her into a vat of nonsleepingness. Oh, and Stephanie was there, but we do not like her, so she does not count. She is sometimes called 'The Token Stoner' and sometimes 'The Troll', which brings back memories of home.
So I was sitting out at the bus stop at CC Little at 5:30, 6 am. Campus is freaky at that hour. I walked from the Hill to Central Campus without seeing one single solitary person, which has never happened before. Even at 3 or 4 am there have been people walking about the Hill. I saw one military fellow in his gray military sweats right when I got to Central Campus, but he had his head down and looked pretty pissed about whatever petty task had necessitated his being up and about at such an hour.
No one had bothered to tell me that at 6 am it is still pitch black out. So dark that all of the stars are still out, and the moon is still high in the sky. It felt like night. Creepalicious.
So I was sitting there, drawing the dental building because I had nothing better to do (also that is one strange building). It was utterly silent except for the occasional cawing emanating from the giant crow rookery across the street. All of a sudden I hear someone behind me shriek out my name all long and drawn-out-like: "FelineAnarchiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist!" Only, you know, with my real name.
It was Ren and Claire, emerging like wraiths from the dark depths of the diag behind me. Like stumbling wraiths, more exactly. Loud, stumbling wraiths. As it turned out, loud, stumbling, blindingly drunk wraiths. As Claire said (loudly), "We are so drizz...drizznizzle....drizzizzle...drizznizzledrunk." Or as Ren said: "FelineAnarchist, you're my friiiieeeeennnd. I like you. You... you... Claire, she's in my claaaasss... I don' like my class... Shl...Shlmommoly... Shlo-mo looks like Bob Saget. Saget. Bob. I don' like him. Megan is oh kay. I like... Paul. An' I like yoooohoooFelineAnarchist. Hee hee. I don' like the rest of our class. No. They're stuuuuuuuuuuuupidid."
I expressed worry. The fact that they were exceedingly inebriated didn't particularly bother me (I don't mind it if I don't have to live with them), but what did disturb me was the fact that it was only just 6 am. And they were stonkered. And it was a weekday. I did mention that it was Friday, right?
Anyways, I rode the bus up to North Campus with them (Ren: No Claaaaaiiiiiiirrrrrreee! Don't stand in the road! If you die I'll be so [hic] saaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! and also, Ren: I think I'm gonna thrivvava... throva... throw UP. Claire: It's OK. This is a... a bus. Everything is plastic.) We got there and they yelled drunkenly at some poor kid on a skateboard. Then we went into the building and were dismayed to find 40 of our classmates already present. To be sure, they were none too clean, and they were in foul moods, but they were there.
There ended up being all sorts of fights about who had what place in line, but eventually I got to sign up and I got my classes. That doesn't really describe the extreme levels of insanity that went on there, but I honestly don't think I could do it justice, other than to say that sleeping over in the art building seems to bring people to a Lord of the Flies level, emotionally and socially speaking. Also, you never want to lie down on the models bed, because it is allegedly coated in 'junk juice'.
I also feel bad for the people who showed up later, because, despite the utter evil I went through to get my place in line, I wasn't there half so long as some of those kids had to be. The whole event stank of poor planning and I shall probably curse the art administrators forever and a day for subjecting me to such a thing.
I barely made it back to Central in time for chemistry, but, after angsting horribly about maybe having to miss it, I got there just in time. Then I fell asleep for most of the lecture, but at least I was there.
I then got coffee and ATM money and a Fleecy Winter Hat of Gloriousness. Because I decided that I needed one. Starbucks peppermint mochas are good, but I hate drinking out of those 'hot drink cup lids'. I always manage to spill it everywhichawhere.
Later in the day I figured out the bus schedule to get to Meijer (i.e. Walmart meets Best Buy meets BJs Wholesale meets grocery store). I caught a bus at the Union. While I was waiting, I watched Fox News do a series of interviews with people right in front of the Union about ticket scalping for the upcoming Michigan/Ohio State football game.
I actually fell asleep on the bus, but thankfully I woke up before my stop. Freaked out when I woke up, though, because I have no knowledge of the area at all, so I had no idea if we'd gone by Meijer yet. Great for the ol' heart, that was. Anyways, I got yogurt (the whips kind, but they're only good when you unwhip them), and string cheese, and Cape Cod chips, and a couple of frozen dinners to try (not Healthy Choice, because we already tried those, and they are absolutely vile), and popsicles! I finally got popsicles! The best, classic kind...the Popsicle brand, the orange, cherry and grape single popsicles.
I randomly met Dave on the way out of Meijer, so we bussed back together and trundled our groceries back to the Hill. At this point it was about 7ish and I said to myself, "I shall do homework! I shall be a good student and get these multifarious papers and projects done." I lied.
I got back in and my roommate was asleep, with the lights off and the TV on (loud), which is her preferred sleeping environment. Not a very good homework-doing atmosphere, though. So I viciously cooked some noodles in the room, vindictively punching the little beepy buttons, hoping that it would annoy her as much as it does me, when she trots in at 4:45 am and decides that she wants Easy Mac.
I then charged out of my room, screaming as I went, "Lo! There go all plans to do work!" I did not stop until I reached North Campus, whereupon I harassed Seth all night. He drove me home because the buses do not run past a certain hour. It was his roommates car, but his roommate is magnanimous.
There was also a Dance Marathon on Friday night, which I did not see. But hallbuddies Beth, Shelby, and Amanda went. They talked at me about it a great deal both before and after the fact. I am not interested in dancing for money, so I did not attend.
Today was the 100th Michigan versus Ohio State football game! *commence screaming in wild excitement and joy* 35-21! 35-21! 35-21! Buck the Fuckeyes! 100 years of busting their nuts! Ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
i did not take this picture, but you can be sure that these wolverine fans are SMELLING ROSES!
Photo credit to Amir Gamzu of MGoBlue. Good photo, Amir, whoever you may be.
I got up early to get foodness with football buddy Caroline. Then we trotted down to where the band comes out, and we followed them into the stadium. There were so many people in the streets. Friend Adam was wearing only body paint for a shirt (he had painted Navarre's jersey onto himself), so I laughed at him and called him a crazy man. Because he is. I then met up with Mike so that he could tackle me before the game. This is a tradition, and if it is not done before a game Michigan is more likely to lose. 100% of fact.
The stadium was packed to over capacity. Yes, we SET THE RECORD FOR THE MOST PEOPLE WATCHING A FOOTBALL GAME IN ONE PLACE EVER! EEEEVVVVEEERRR! (the old record was also set by us, at the Notre Dame game earlier this year) EEEEVVVEEERRRRRR! 112,118 people! One hundred twelve thousand, one hundred and eighteen people packed into the Big House! Do you know how many people that is? That is a whole frelling lot of people.
All sorts of cool things happened before the game, like Gerald Ford coming on the big screen and giving us a speech about how much Michigan football meant to him, and flyby of military jets, and the parents of the senior football players coming onto the field. I took pictures of some of these things.
I did not take any pictures during the game, because I was too consumed by insanity. I absolutely screamed myself hoarse, and I leapt about like a maniac, and was jostled and hugged and whaled upon in joy by everyone sitting around me. 'Course, I jostled, hugged, and whaled upon all of them too, so wonderous times all 'round. But I was very sore in throat and body afterwards.
After the game, despite at least 5 pleas over the PA system to 'not approach the field', the students rushed the field in a fit of insanity, drunk on sheer joy (and actual alcohol, in some cases). There were a lot of police on the field, but at the end of the game they just sort of shrugged and stepped aside, contenting themselves with encircling the goalposts to make sure that no one pulled them down. Anyways, when you have over 30,000 undergraduate students, and more than half of them rush the field, you are going to have a lot of severely overexcited students on the field.
A very large contingent of students, once on the field, ran over to the opposite endzone, where they all stood and jeered at the biggest clump of Ohio State fans, who were sitting in a dejected block of red in their seats, trying to think of ways to leave the stadium without actually getting killed or, at the very least, crushingly humiliated.
I did not take any pictures after the game, because I had absolutely murdered the battery on my camera. It does not seem to have a very long life. But good times were had. The frats had outdone themselves. One of them had a red car on their front lawn, which represented Ohio State. There were several large sledgehammers, and all were welcome to smash the car up as badly as possible. It was infinitely amusing to watch very, very drunk people try to hit the car with the sledgehammer. Usually they hit the car and then fell over. I was saddened by the untimely passing of my camera battery.
Then I came back to the room and collapsed and had a popsicle to soothe my aching throat. Wendy's was consumed for dinner, and good times were had in the Jo lounge with Brian from the Third Floor, until dear roomie finally vacated the premesis so that we could wreak havoc in my room. And then I blogged.
Anyways, if you want to see pictures from today's game, I done made a photo album of sorts. It doesn't have every picture I took, because that would have been a lot of uploadin', but it has some of them, so you shall have to be content with that. They are not all in order, because the 'rearrange photos' feature is bizarre and unworkable. They are mostly in order, but not quite. Sorry. Also, as already stated, I have no pictures from after the game, because my camera perished on me.
Hopefully things will work out OK if you click here. I have captioned all the photos, so read those, or else you might get confused.
Hopefully that will work.
On to Sunday!
*edit: I nearly forgot. My roommate broke her computer tonight. She spilled vodka on the keyboard and then it shut off and would not turn on again. If this means that her computer screen is not going to be on all night, lighting the room like some horrible travesty of a lightbulb, then I am a (semi)happy creetur.*end edit*
11:14 PM
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
OK, I am now posting. Because I said that I would. I am always as good as my word.
I already appear to have forgotten this past weekend. This week, it is just sucking my soul right out of me. My memory too. Hmm. What the heck did I do this weekend? *mind straiiiiin*
Friday I went out to dinner with Pam and Sara. 'Out to dinner' meaning that it was a big deal because we went somewhere that required getting in a car. If you have to drive there, it's a journey to be immortalized in epic poetry. At least, that's how it works in Ann Arbor. Then we came back downtown and had ice cream, because it may be winterous out here, but you can never go wrong with ice cream.
Then all sorts of madness occurred, involving hallmate Nakia and a bunch of her friends, me, and Katy. Oh, it was weird. And loud. And funny. Katy has this goal of 'getting with the black man', as she says, and oh man, I can't even begin to describe Friday night. Suffice it to say that it was very late, and very loud, and very hilarious. Oh, and it involved Nakia inticing people to come over by tempting them with handcuffs.
Saturday I watched the Michigan/Northwestern game on the ol' TV. We won, of course, 41-10. I called Dave up to taunt him, and we actually had quite a pleasant and lengthy conversation, which only began and ended with me gleefully abusing his wimpy football team. Otherwise it was very civil.
Sunday I had a chemistry review during much of the day, which was evil. But I went to it. Because I try. I got back after the first quarter of the Lions game, so I watched the rest of that. Sigh sigh sigh. 35-14. A depressing score, especially against the Seahawks, whom I consider sort of a nonentity kind of team. I mean, yeeaaah, they're at the top of the NFC whatisit, West? with a record of 7-3, but still. I dunno. The Seahawks?
Then I watched the prime time Patriots game, which was nice. Very nice. 12-0 against the Cowboys. There was a lot of press about the alleged animosity between Bill Parcells (former Patriot coach, currently coach of the Cowboys) and Bill Belichick (current Patriots coach, former undercoach to Parcells).
The next day I was Stockwell for dinner, and Dave (from here, not Dave from Northwestern) caught sight of me across the dining hall. So he screamed, at the top of his lungs, "HOW ABOUT THOSE PATRIOTS?!?!?" I, of course, screamed back, "HELL YEAH!" Masschusetts representin' in the Michigan dining halls.
adam vinatieri about to put the scoring smack down on dallas. so to speak.
The Dolphins won on Sunday, 9-6, against Baltimore. I have nothing to say about that, as I didn't see it (I was at chemistry, and even if I hadn't been, I don't think it would have been on TV out here). Except that every single point in that game came from field goals, so, er, props to Olindo Mare (the kicker, people! the kicker!). He does good things.
Y'know, all three of my teams have good kickers. Mare on the Dolphins, Vinatieri on the Patriots (we all remember that Superbowl), and Jason Hanson on the Lions. Hason, especially, has a golden foot. Many games, he is the only source of points/hope for the Lions.
In other football news, utterly unrelated to my teams, the 9-0 undefeated Kansas City Chiefs were defeated. By the then 4-5 Bengals, no less. Such scandal. Some guy on the Bengals had been quoted beforehand as guaranteeing that they were going to be the team to stop the Chiefs, so the newsy folk went nuts over the fact that they proceeded to actually do so, but whatever. If Cincinnati had lost it would've just gotten glossed over in the postgame coverage.
Of course the excitement is starting to build for this coming Saturday, which is the Michigan/Ohio State football game. The Game of the Year. The Rivalry to End All Rivalries. In short, it's going to be one hell of a crazed and good time, and I shall bring my camera to immortalize the event. Probably the digital one, so I can share out the joy over this lovely Interweb.
The chemistry test last night was utter evil. So let us move on. There was practically no one in chem lecture this morning, undoubtedly because of the test last night. But march on we did. Prof. Yaghi was showing us a slide of dry ice. He stepped back and said, admiringly, "Isn't that beautiful? I'll bet your sociology teacher doesn't show you anything that beautiful. I'll bet he shows you vomit."
The sociology teacher is a recurring theme in our chemistry lectures, because Prof. Yaghi claims that if a sociology teacher gave us outside reading we would do it, but if a chemistry teacher did no one would read it. Which is probably true, actually. Anyways, we then had a 5 minute conversation over whether or not people were upset by his use of the word 'vomit'. For some reason that is also a recurring theme in my chemistry lecture.
If only the tests were as good as the lectures.
I've already done a lot of other stuff this week, like harass the LSA people, and storm the anthro-zoo office, and make nefarious plots to get me to a grocery store on Friday. But these are boring things, and you don't wish to hear of them. Not that the rest of this blog has been exactly wonderous stuff, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
Jeffrey Rowland claims that he is going to start writing short stories on his Live Journal. He already has one up. It is highly glorious. I laughed out loud and woke up my roommate, but that is her own damn fault for still being asleep when I had already been to class and back. That ought to be made a capital crime.
Farscape! Possibly maybe sort of coming out with new episodes! Not a whole new season, just some new episodes to maybe tie up the series better than the last one did. So go visit the Farscape link over the side there. I never did remove it. See, my hope just sprang eternal and all that.
In roommate news, we have started a fun and fruitful cycle of window closing and opening. The room gets up to 80º daily. So I open the window. I go out. I come back. She has closed the window. So I open the window. I go out. I come back. She's closed the window. So I open the window. And so on, ad infinitum.
Oh, and I know the image of my digital project in the previous past might be x-ed out. That's because I posted it to B3ta, so that I could get some more opinions on it, from people who's opinions I generally trust. That is to say, if something sucks they will not hesitate to be very vocal in their disgust. They actually reacted quite well to this, though, so I was rendered happy. Anyways, the point is that it overran my bandwidth for that picture, because my host (Villagephotos) sucks. So it should be back up whenever the bandwidth decides to calm the heck down. Sorry.
Right-o, this is sort of a pointless post, because I know that some of you don't like hearing about the football. But you know what? I like the football. So take that, that, an' some o'that! Right now it's time for this Feline Anarchist to get fed. Good day.
10:29 AM
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Blogger now has an official stance on what to do if your mom finds your blog. Too bad mine already reads it and presents no difficulties, except for rare occasions when I omit certain things I might have otherwise found blogworthy. Emphasis on the rare. Recall that my Saturday usually involves a combination of UMich football, pizza, homework, football in the diag, and bringing people back to my dorm to make fun of my roommate. You can see how this affords my mother little opportunity for worry.
Yesterday it was over 60º out. Today it snowed. Pretty much all day. Ah, this crazy Michigan weather. We also had a tornado warning for most of yesterday, and I hear tell that there actually was a tornado in our county. Although I did not see a tornado, the wind gusts in Ann Arbor were over 50 mph. Good times! Woo yay midwest!
In other news, I finished that digital project which was ruining my eyes. Ah, my aching aqueous humour. I posted an unfinished version of it in past days (the Nov. 5 blog, if you'd like to look at them both and compare), so I thought it only fair to post to final one. Quality is shite because computer compression is shite. Shite is spelled britishly because I feel like it. Also the background is stupid, because I despaired of ever being able to competently wield the mesh tool, so I gave up and left it as it was before I just did more damage. Oh well.
image was here, but photohost died, sorry
Yesterday I was dragging my lazy carcass across the bridge from my dorm to Central Campus. Going past me in the opposite direction (towards the Hill, that is) is my chemistry professor. He sees me, waves, and says hi! I was transported into joyousness. I mean, I'm in a class of about 200, 250 kids, and I never sit in the front, and I never volunteer information in lecture. How would he recognize that I was one of his students? I know not. But I find it extremely gratifying that he does, in fact, recognize me to some extent. And he's a teacher whom I enjoy, so I was very happy that, even though he does not know my name, he sort of knows who I am.
My art lecture teacher, on the other hand, most definitely does know my name, because I have a nasty habit of cornering her after class and haranguing her about the difficulties involved with trying to schedule classes in a dual-degree program. But, as she's the head of the art department, any such difficulties are entirely her fault, and she therefore deserves the verbal harassment.
The guest artist lecture today was The Best Lecture Ever. The guy was a biological illustrator, and some of his work was exactly what I want to be doing. I was literally squiggling around in my seat for sheer, unadulterated joy. He did some work for an encyclopedia of animals that was, essentially, the exact same thing I did for the Book o'Time. Drawing the little critters! Holy cats! Exactly what I want to do!
Anyways, he was showing us a bunch of a his drawings, and he would say what they were. So I was sitting there, giggling like an idiot, no doubt bugging the heck out of Heather and Joe (who were on either side of me) and saying the names of everything a second before he did. He would show us a bunch of drawings of a critter and I would say "Tardigrades!" a second before he would. He'd show us another page and I'd say "Lemurs!" Or "Thermal Vent worms!" Or "Hyraxes!" And then he said, "Now, can anyone guess what hyraxes are most closely related to?" and I giggled like an idiot some more and said, "Elephants!" a few seconds before he said 'elephants'. Ah, it was so good.
(and for those who do not know, a hyrax is a little fuzzy critter about the size of a football, looking something like a cross between a prairie dog, a hamster, and a rabbit. so most folks wouldn't think that it's most closely related to the elephant.)
Anyways, it was the best lecture in the history of lectures, because it was literally exactly what my dream job would be. And the sweetest bit of it is that this guy works at the UMich art school. I have this vast, all-consuming need to now track him down and latch onto him like some kind of eager, but probably unwelcome, lamprey.
And the perhaps even sweeter bit is that he's teaching one of the second-semester freshman drawing classes! So there's a chance that I could have him as a teacher as early as this coming semester! You have no idea how excited that possiblity has gotten me. Although, if I don't end up with him, I'm going to be vurry sad.
Thursday night, duh duh duh dum. My dearest roomie is out inebriating herself. Which is fine, really, it's her own affair, except that I have early class tomorrow, and I have only missed one class so far this year, and that was accidental, as in, accidentally not waking up until it was already over. The point being that her drunkenness causes difficulty for my sleep, and this renders me exceedingly Rageful. Fer crissakes, it's a weekday. Do you see where I'm coming from here, people?
You all ought to go take a gander at Helene's Blog, which contains a fruitful and illuminating conversation we had last night. I believe it was sparked by my away message, which was something along these lines: "I come in, and my roommate has found a video of a kid she knew back in high school, who had filmed himself having sex with some girl. So now she's watching it, with the sound turned way up. For this, I have no words." That is, sadly, 100% of fact. The kid videotaped himself having sex with some girl. I believe they were both subsequently expelled, not because they filmed themselves in such an act, but because the tape was then distributed all over the school. By the guy. Whom my roommate knows. So of course, when she finds a copy of the video online, she naturally has to watch it, all the way through, with the sound turned up as high as it can go. And she has to watch it twice. Of course.
If someone tells me that LA is populated by normal people, I am going to call them a Big Honking Liar, and just leave it at that.
I am not going to post images from my current digital project, because it involves applying various Effects and Filters to images we create or photographs that are on our computers. So that means that all you folks back home are being rendered in odd and disturbing fashions, and then printed out for the perusal of my entire digital class. Sorry. They don't know you anyways.
It's art! Art, I say!
*runs away, shielding head from flying projectiles*
11:18 PM
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
What a week this is turning out to be. I'm not even sure I can make it to Thanksgiving with my sanity relatively intact.
Today in chemistry we were trying to discuss things like sigma and pi orbitals, and hybrid orbitals. They're a little complicated to draw, so people were complaining about having to draw them on the homework and on the test. Our professor tried to show us what they looked like, but he couldn't draw them properly either. So he looked around and said, "Who in here is an art student?" I raised my hand, of course, and looked around. No one else in the entire lecture hall had their hand up. Damn. Why am I the only art student actually taking hard classes? I don't think Prof. Yaghi was expecting anyone to raise their hand, because he looked a little surprised, and then said, "OK, so there's one of us in the room who can draw these things." Which was funny, because I had just doodled a bunch of them in my notebook. Sigh.
Another Matrix complaint which I was going to make and then forgot about. Those metal suit things they were fighting in? The entire battle sequence involving those was overlaid by my brain repeatedly chanting, "Mechwarriors, Mechwarriors, Mechwarriors." Mechwarriors was a pretty bad computer game I had on my old Mac. I'm sure there are other, newer, better, dorkier versions, but that's the one I know. The graphics were pretty good, but the control over your 'battle mech' was abysmal. I used to have the most fun going into the training levels and seeing how far 'off course' it would let me go, seeing how much of the background terrain they had actually mapped out. Like, your training course would have these moutains in the background, and I would just trot off the training course and see if I could actually reach/climb the mountains. Which I sometimes could. So, props to the programmers, I guess.
The only way I could ever play it, though, was to get all of the cheat codes online and use them. Because I was horrible at it, and my mech would be blown to bits in a matter of minutes without my illgotten invulnerability and infinite ammo and such. Anyways, once you had the codes it was a pretty fun game to just tool around with. And those guys in the Matrix were definitely in openair mechs.
i. am. mech. warrior.
Oh holy freaking cats, I just got nostalgic about a bad, old, Mac computer game. Someone shoot me now, I've gone over the edge of the Chasm of Dorkiness!
Wait, woah. I dislike anime and manga and all that jazz. Hooo. OK. I still have some small measure of dignity. *sighs in relief*
Cat damn this weather. Why must it be *hot*? And *muggy*? That's just not right. I do not approve.
I also do not approve of the fact that trying to register for classes as a double major is one of the single most impossible things ever. Because, you see, the art school curriculum is meant for people who are taking almost all art classes. There isn't room for much else. Certainly no room for classes that come with three lectures week, plus a four hour lab tacked on one day a week. As I've worked it out now, I have room in my schedule in the middle of Thursday and the end of Friday, but there's no class that's held at those times, so I have less credits than I should but NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT.
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
OK, hall heading out to lunch now. I think they have grilled cheese today. Grilled cheese is good.
11:20 AM
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Well, you all knew it was coming. The Feline Anarchist Matrix: Revolutions review. It was, ahem, inevitable. I was going to post it last night but I had unfortunately broken my computer. Yes, very scary, especially as I hadn't backed it up recently. I did not relish the idea of losing all that data. But I done fixed it today, so all is well.
Yesterday Heather and I braved the Ann Arbor bus system to get to the Briarwood Mall, which is an odd sort of place. It's confusingly set up, even by mall standards, which are generally geared towards getting you turned around and thoroughly confused. The buses seem to run on the same principles. The hours at which they run are sporadic, unpredictable and, on weekends, end before 7 pm. The reasons for this are much speculated-upon, but to no ultimate avail.
So. The movie.
It was disappointing, but we were all expecting that. I'm still debating whether it was better or worse than the second one was. Reloaded was so bad that it was funny, and things like the freeway scene had some redeeming value. Revolutions was bad, but not even bad enough to be funny. Or bad in ways that were just boring, like being far too chatty at bits, and having highly unimpressive fights. So while Reloaded pissed me off for being bad, Revolutions left me with almost no emotion about its badness. Still deciding if that means it was worse or better.
Perhaps I ought to warn you that this may very well (i.e. certainly will) contain some very blatant movie spoilers. So do not read on unless you don't mind such things. Consider yourself duly warned.
I take this time to mention that the Lions just beat the Bears, 12-10! LIONS VICTORY!!! (we love you Jason Hanson)
Back to Matrix.
I was thinking about listing out the movie's merits and faults, but, to be quite honest, there just aren't many merits worth noting, so we'll just deal with the faults here.
The first, and potentially most egregious: the nature of the peace reached between Zion and the Machines. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the whole original point was to free all those humans who were being used as meat power by the Machines. Was that not at least a part of the whole freaking point? So they make peace. Which is nice, really. But what is conveniently not mentioned is the fact that the Machines still have however many billions of humans being harvested for organic power. Do we no longer care about them? Even accepting that many would prefer the Matrix to reality, did we just give up on the whole 'freedom of choice' bit? Eh? Eh?
The Merovignian. Still hanging around. No one got rid of him, so far as I can tell. Heck, so far as I can tell, they didn't even get rid of his skeazy S&M club. Are we just ignoring whatever brand of mischief he's intent on causing? He had such potential to be a cool, or at least funny, character. And they make no use of him at all. At least in Reloaded that whole restaurant scene had comedic value. The club, this time, was dealt with so summarily that it didn't even have time to be properly funny. Plus it didn't have Captain Bracca in it, so it lost a good 2/3rds of its awesomeness value.
Morpheus. Better than the pathetic prophet of Reloaded, but now reduced to a doughy nonentity. You don't care about him one way or the other by the end of the movie. He's ineffectual and almost extraneous at points. Lightyears away from the nonlame leader of the original Matrix. Sad. Just sad.
Trinity. Sure, Neo loves her, that's nice. As the audience, we probably should have a pretty big vested interest in her fate. When she snuffed it, I honestly didn't give a rat's excretory system. Oops. Did I just ruin the movie for you? Sorry. I didn't care. It was a lame scene. They had to kill her off because otherwise Neo wouldn't be able to do what he was supposed to do. He wouldn't be able to Jesus-ify himself properly. Ugh.
The Oracle. Why? Because I believe. Do you know the answer? Yes and no. Will you tell me? No and yes. Why? Because. It was only infinitely annoying. Plus the whole our-actress-upped-and-died-on-us-so-now-we-need-a-story-for-why-the-Oracle-suddenly-looks-different bit.
The Mobil Avenue train station. Limbo, anyone? Sheesh. They couldn't have looked up the Old French or Latin root word for limbo or something and based their train station name on something like that. Lazy gits.
The Manifestation of the Great and Malevolent Machine Mind. It's a fat man's face stuck on a giant metal porcupine. Which emits squids from its pores. If someone can tell me why this is good, rather than silly, I'll be quite willing to listen to them.
The Ultimate Battle. It was extremely tame for the final, most important Matrix battle yet. There have been Matrix battles far more impressive. For a Matrix battle it was very mild and uninspired. OK, so they displaced a lot of rain. Big frelling deal. They didn't do anything cool, they just flew at each other and went through walls. Nothing fancy. Another point, which was made by another review I read. Two men in all black. Fighting at night. In the rain. Sometimes it was a bit difficult to tell who was who and just what was going on. Sigh.
Ay, there's lots more, but if I get into it all we'll be here until next year. I move on.
Oh, and you ought to go see this pretty little tidbit, called The Meatrix. It's funny because it's so well and appropriately done. Makes me want to rally against those damn agricultural conglomorates. Just go see, it's highly worth it.
Friday night I actually didn't end up going to the WORK opening. Oops. I really did intend to go there, seriously. But I was wending my way through the diag, and ran across a large group of people I knew playing football, and they demanded that I join them. Well, it was a really nice night, and you all know how much I like football. Sigh. I'll get down there eventually. It's not as though the show's going anywhere for a while.
Roommate stupidity never ceases to amaze. She's coming down with some sort of cold which involves coughing. So of course she goes out to have a smoke. Stupid and nasty on it's own, but now I have to smell the crud. Ughck. She is also looking forward to Thanksgiving, because she gets to go home and stock up on Nyquil, Percoset and Aderol. Which she takes like candy. I honestly have no idea how people like this manage to exist in real life.
Lunar eclipse last night, it was pretty cool. We could see the moon, but the lights make it so that you can't see the stars, so when it was eclipsed the entire sky looked black. It was freaky. Very Krikkit-esque. Only dorks will get that reference.
As mentioned above, Lions victory today! Ha HA! Almost entirely thanks to Jason Hanson, our kicker. Lawd bless 'im. It was 10-9 up until the last minute or so, and then we got the ball and kicked it. Then the Bears had it with time to make a move, and we intercepted it. Thusly saving the game. Ahhhh, so wonderful. All of the TVs on my side of the hall were acting spastically, so I went to watch the game with Beth. We discussed the attractiveness of Joey Harrington. And we were very, very happy when they won. Ah yes.
Pity about the Dolphins. They went down 31-7 to the Titans. Sigh. I tend to think that it's because they still are using their backup quarterback Griese, as opposed to the starter Jay Fiedler. I think he's still injured. A damn shame, that.
OK, going to Burger King with Amanda and Beth now, for the sheer, unadulterated hell of it. Go Lions!
3:07 PM
Friday, November 07, 2003
Cripes. I just reread the last blog, and it's almost incomprehensible. I was in some sort of bizarre, rambling state. My apologies for making you slog through that literary muck.
As you may or may not have noticed, I have made all sorts of revelatory changes in the massive links menu on the side. Changes that mostly involve spacing the links differently so they take up less room, but this is a big stride for me. OK? OK? I also added my sports teams, so that you may follow them as obsessively as I do. Oh, and I stuck Cascadia under the comics side, because it is not updated often, but there's lots up already which you may peruse. And when it does update it's good times.
I also reinstated Death to the Extremist, which was up many moons ago, but was removed when it went on a long and sad hiatus. But now it's back, more or less every Friday, and the randomness shall live on. Not for the literal or boring of mind.
And if you're wondering where the fine Boxing Match: cat vs. carrier video in the last blog came from, it was created by Ryan Estrada. He does what we in the art business call Painfully Skillful Work. And he did animation for Harvey Birdman! And he had (has? dunno if it's still there) an installion at the DIA (that's Detroit Institute of the Arts, not the Dia art movement based in New York, mind you)!
He emailed me about linking to the Boxing Match video, which, as you all know, is highly appreciated. Feedback makes the Feline Anarchist grow strong and healthy. Yes, I still like hearing from all you California folk, you are not forgotten. Anywho. He's a nice fellow. And apparently his brother goes to U of M. This, as we all know, is a Good Thing. I will probably stick his link up on the side as soon as I can be arsed to mess with the code again.
not this dia. the other one. (big metal thingy by richard serra, as it happens)
Things which make me wonder #1: How did my mother know what to put in the package she sent me this week? How in the world did she know that I had been having olive cravings? A can of olives is not a normal thing to send in a food package, but send it she did, and want it I had. Also, how did she know that I was thinking of going out and getting a bag of those very same goldfish crackers? Amazing. These things are unexplained. My mother is Wicked Smart.
Things which make me wonder #2: Who starts screaming into their cellphone at 4am? Well, I know the answer to that, and it is (surprise surprise!) my roommate, but the real question is why? Why in the name of all that's somewhat holy would she start yelling into her phone at that hour? If she really had to be on the phone, couldn't she have done the polite and normal thing and go out into the hall?? Did she maybe somehow think that I could not hear her?
Well, I could, and I did, and it woke me up. I made some sort of noise of complaint, which had no effect. I then said, very loudly and irritatedly, "It is 4 am. I need to get up in less than 4 hours. I can hear you, you know." She stopped talking for a good solid minute, during which I rejoiced at getting through. Then she started talking again as though nothing had occurred.
I think that at this point I made a miserable, groaning Noise of Death, whereupon she huffed in unriteous indignation and dragged her worthless carcass out into the hall. Where she proceeded to talk so loudly on the phone that she woke up our neighbors.
Sigh. Why could I not have a normal, reasonably considerate human being for a roommate? As opposed to this criminally inconsiderate fiend from Hell, I mean.
Much ado this weekend. Heather and I are going to try to go see Matrix tomorrow, if we can figure out the buses. Big 'if', that. Sunday is the Lions game, and then I have a chemistry review session at 3, for the test in two weeks. Since we all did so abysmally on the last one, our teacher is convinced that he needs to teach us an extra lot before this upcoming exam. Alas.
And I think I shall pop over to the WORK gallery opening tonight. 'Tis the actually fairly big/nice undergraduate gallery in Ann Arbor. And actually a little hard to get into. I'll let you know how it goes.
Last night:
Pam (lying on her bed and not inclined to move): FelineAnarchist, could you grab my phone, it's in the charger right over there.
Me (struggling with the phone): Geez, how does one disengage this thing?
Pam and Shelby: *hysterical laughter*
Me (bewildered): What? What?
Pam and Shelby: Disengage?!?!
I still don't know what was so funny. I unwittingly amuse my hall. *Shrugs*
1:17 PM
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Sometimes, things on the Internet suck. This is not one of them. Just go see.
Funny because it is true.
If you are often on AIM, you have probably often seen my away messages pertaining to the fact that I have a digital art project on tap at the moment which is completely and utterly ruining my eyes. Computer art is bad that way. It is also bad because I have to use a trackpad, which is evil. I suppose I could go somewhere and buy a mouse, but I am forcing myself to learn to be completely comfortable with a trackpad. We are getting there. Whether we will get to the point of complete comfort or the point of carpal tunnel syndrome first remains to be seen.
image was here, but photohost died, sorry
Yesterday I went up to North Campus for my digital class. When I got there I was greeted by a sign on the door saying to go back home, because the teacher was sick. Sigh. So, back on the bus, back to the dorm for a couple of hours. Then I headed back up to North Campus again, for my art history lecture. Got there, and was informed by the huge crowd of kids at the busstop on North Campus that the art history teacher was sick. No class. So I had to turn around and get back on the next bus south.
Do you have any idea how extremely evil and annoying that is? You do not. Which, of course, is why I am telling you.
In my vast, frothing joy over the Lions victory on Sunday, I got myself a Joey Harrington (the quarterback, for all you contemptible nonLionsfan folk out there) jersey. Loverly piece of apparel, that. All brand-new design and black and white and silver trim, and other such goodness. It got here in two days, which confused me, since I had gotten the cheapest ground delivery possible. Then I realized that I'm in Ann Arbor, and it was coming from Detroit. Thusly, swiftness of delivery. I sometimes forget these things.
Hm. Not much else in the way of occurences today. Chem lecture, which I was actually pretty wakeful for. Then I ran some errands, which involved stopping at the UPS place, and getting a peppermint mocha from Starbucks. It was scrumptious. Then I lunched next door in Stockwell with the hall, which is what always happens. We've gotten it down to a science of dorm lunching. Except that, sometimes, if it's raining, we'll eat in our own dear MoJo. We try to avoid it, though, since the food is better next door.
Then I got dressed up (i.e. put on nice pants) and went up North to present my candified fruit project, which I could not think of a title for until the very last minute, when I decided to be lame and angsty and call it 'Preferable'. Sigh. Oh well. It was well-received, or at least, seemingly so. Good enough for me.
Some people had insanely good projects. Paul's was all about, if world hunger got bad enough, using human corpses as foodstuffs (à la Soylent Green). The class was split on it, with about half loving it, and half being freaked out by it. Those who had a sense of irony and those who didn't, in other words. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. Because it was.
Helena's was about Monsieur le President Bush keeping food from Africa, which, you know, is very typical arteest, but her presentation was cool. It was a giant painting of Bush (which was quite good) with a (real) plate full of Kashi jammed in his mouth. Very well done, I enjoyed.
Thomàs did his with a map and little characters and a conveyor belt with cookies on it showing the economic disparity between Detroit and Farmington Hills (very affluent, apparently). It was very good, very pointed. Made a lot of people uncomfortable, but I liked it.
The best, by far, in the entire class, was Joe's. He made a giant architectural-looking fruit arrangement, with artfully cut and arranged pineapples, grapefruits, oranges, apples, coconuts, lemons, watermelons and grapes. In the middle of it, under a pineapple cap, he had somehow set up a freaking fountain, so that water seemed to sprout out of the pineapple and cascade down over everything else. Damn those art/engineer doublemajors. It looked exactly like one of those enormous, elaborate creations that appear in hotels for Bar Mitzvahs and the like. His point was 'Fruit is beautiful. So I made a beautiful thing out of fruit.' After everyone else's highly angst-ridden projects, it was refreshing. In short, he impressed the hell out of everyone, and I have a picture but it's on my film camera so you'll just have to wait until I finish the roll.
On the plus side of that, I finally figured out how to work my scanner! (Thank you Ren, for telling me what I was and wasn't doing) So now I can scan in things I done drawn. Not that you want to see them anyways, but at least now the possibility exists. Huzzah for my Epson. It has much more of a sense of where it is than Woodrow does. I ought to name it. It's the CX52000, so Adam said I should call it Kicks (CX5), but that is dumb. Suggestions, anyone?
Oh, that ought to hold you crazy readerfolk until I decide to blog again. Looking it over, I seem to have used a rather lot of italics in this one. I am all filled with emphasis today. You adore it.
5:22 PM
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Forward down the field
a charging team that will not yield,
and when the Blue and Silver wave,
stand and cheer the brave!
RAH! RAH! RAH!
Go hard win the game!
With honor you will keep your fame!
Down the field and gain,
A LIONS VICTORY!
GO LIONS!
Ha ha, haven't had much opportunity to break that out lately. I've got it as one of my away messages, but I never get to use it. I got to dust it off today though! 23-13! Take that, you nasty little penalty-riddled Raiders!
Holy cats that made me so happy. Not only a win, but a legitimate, skillful win. The Lions picked off so many balls that it was beautiful. Our defense was a joy to watch. The offense was solid, with a much higher emphasis on rushing than they'd been doing. Ah, and it worked. Two touchdowns, a slew of field goals by the joyous Jason Hanson. So good.
And, of course, we beat State! 27-20. Close, and it came down right to the end, as it generally does, but a win for us! Chris Perry, our big runner, carried the ball a school-record 51 times, for 219 yards. Navarre didn't stink this game up either. And it was an away game, which makes it doubly sweet, since we've had trouble winning away games lately. Thank cats we beat State. I don't think I could've stood it if we hadn't. The shame would have been crushing.
Yup, just thought I'd make sure everyone knew of the joy which I am experiencing. It is marred only by the fact that the Dolphins lost to the Colts, making me frowny-sad. Pats play tomorrow, we'll see what we will see. But! Happiness! Michigan wins, Lions win! Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
5:23 PM
Saturday, November 01, 2003
*note: I wrote most of this last night, but one thing and another conspired to keep me from posting it. So here it is. And it's kind of a long blog. Sorry.*
Yup. It's Halloween. I have to say that this was one of the most random, inexplicable, and slightly surreal Halloweens that I've ever experienced. But good! Fun! Fun! Good! Strange.
The day was spent as it normally is, that is to say, in class. I barely made it to chemistry on time because I slept in a bit. So when I got out of the shower it was 8:55. My class is at nine. Well, I got there around 9:15, which was fine, because he had literally just started on the first slide at that point. To go from coming, sopping wet, out of the shower, to being fairly presentable and in my seat 20 minutes later must be some kind of record for me.
Got out of chem at 10, went up North because my next lecture was at 11, so it wasn't really worth it to trudge all the way back to the dorm just to trudge back out to the busstop. I had delicious coffeeness from Pierpont Commons (that being on North Campus), then I sat and read in the comfy couches in the A&A building. And I chatted with Emily, who left lecture early because she's staying with her boyfriend at State this weekend. Good luck with the crazies out there, Em. We'd better beat them tomorrow (technically today, I suppose).
Anywho, I got back to the dorm, had lunch, Brynn's family arrived, which was a wee bit awkward, and I'm not 100% keen on her sister sleeping in our room (I mean, it's small enough with two people living in it), but at least it's better than random guys sleeping over. *I have already said too much*
Around 3:30ish Pam and I departed for our day of insanity. The ultimate plan was to go watch her old high school's football game, since they were apparently doing better this year than they ever had before, and got to some variety of playoffs, and it was a Big Deal. But the game wasn't until 7, so we had a while to do whatsoever we pleased.
We got hungry. Because we are insane, and because, for some utterly unfathomable reason, it seemed like a perfectly normal idea at the time, we decided to go into downtown Detroit for dinner. Specifically, Mexicantown, which is, as the name would suggest, the predominantly Mexican section of Detroit. Apparently today was Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead... sorry if I butchered the spelling, I've never taken a spanish class in my life). So before we went out to dinner we went to a Mexican bakery and got some dead bread.
By now the oddness and randomness of our evening was beginning to set in, but we shrugged, said 'whatever', and went to dinner at this Mexican restaurant which was actually quite good. For those back home, it was somewhere between Cilantro and Acapulco's in levels of fanciness. The food was delish. I had some form of quesedilla/chimichanga cheeseness which I highly enjoyed.
Then we got a wee titchy bit lost trying to get out of Detroit. Mexicantown is right on the side of Detroit that's nearest to the border into Canada. You can see the Ambassador bridge all purty and lighted-up and such from there. In any event, we nearly ended up going into Canada, because we somehow got stuck on the road that went to the bridge. We ended up being about 25 feet away from the border in a state of FreakOutingness. We had to turn off onto some sort of service road in order to get out of the stream of traffic.
I imagine it would have been fun trying to get back into the US. "No sir, we don't have our birth certificates on us, we're really sorry sir, we really didn't mean to go into Canada, we sort of got in by accident, we're very sorry, we just need to get back to our school, please." That would've gone over real well, I'm sure.
So, after spending much of our evening in Mexicantown, Detroit, we headed out to Pam's hometown of Carleton (again, unsure of the spelling). For those Michiganders, it's near something called Monroe or Munroe or something like that which I am told is a town most people would have heard of. It is, how shall we say, quite... rural.
Pam's actual neighborhood is really, really, really pretty. Everyone on her street has a really big bit of land, but the houses are at a reasonable distance from one another. There are cornfields nearby. Also (and this is what I loved), no streetlights. Yeah, it means that driving is an adventure, especially when the roads turn from pavement to dirt, but it also means that you can see so many stars. 'Cause you're nowhere near any sort of city, so there's no ambient light, and no streetlights. Very quiet and absolutely gorgeous.
So we drove around her neighborhood, and went to her high school (Aiport high school... the Jets). Then we made our slow and circituous way down to the football game, which was in the somewhat neighboring town of Trenton. The game was utterly packed, as it was a big stadium, and it was a really important game. The opposing team had the unfortunate name of the Trojans, which was compounded by the fact that their mascot was very plainly phallic-looking. Sort of an oval head and body, topped by a slightly larger rounded helmet.
A lot of Pam's friends had come back for the game, so I got to meet some of them. None of them went to UofM, but some were from Wayne State (I think that's what it's called... it's right in Detroit), some were from Eastern Michigan, and there were a couple slackjawed yokels from Michigan State, who were a bit cool to us. As we were to them. Ah well, it's a time of great stress between Staters and Michiganers. 'Tis to be expected.
Some of them seemed like pretty normal kids... other than the midwestern accents and the slight hint of ruralness which permeated the entire area, of course. There were some, however, who definitely reminded me that I was in a very white, Christian, farmy, Big Boy and White Castle sort of place. There were a number of beefy-necked kids with red faces and bad teeth. A vast majority of the people seemed to have bad teeth, actually.
Anywho, the Jets won, so there was much rejoicing and such. We hung around her town for a while after the game ended just generally enjoying the victory and mooching about with the football players. Then we drove back to Ann Arbor. It being a longish drive, we got to talking about certain things of a most fascinating nature. It was good times.
We got back to the dorm sometime between 12:30 and 1 in the am. There were hoardes of people out and about on campus. You could tell who was in a sorority because they travelled in packs and all had the same costume on. For instance, we would drive by a large group of schoolgirls in plaid skirts and knee socks. Then we would pass a contingent of naughty nurses (obviously from Brynn's dear sisterhood of KKG).
Brynn, her sister, and her friend Arielle came in around 1:15, drunk off their behinds. I have seen my dearest roommate come in drunk before, but never at this level of inebriation. We're talking about weaving all over the hall, tottering about on her high heels, vomiting copiously (in the bathroom, thank cats), hiccuping as she tried to talk, falling out of her nurse outfit from both ends, and saying "I'm so drunk, I'm so drunk, I'm so drunk, I'm so drunk," over and over again.
I have pictures. But I somehow don't think I should post them online.
So the drunken foibles of roommate et. al. amused both me and Pam until around 2, when Arielle went back to her dorm, leaving Brynn and sis to spoon up and pass out on the bed. They had to get up at 9:30 this morning. Ah, the hilarity.
Currently I am watching the Michigan/Michigan State game. It's halftime, and we are a-winning. This is a very, very, very good thing.
I finished my CFC project recently, after massive contributions of candy wrappers from my hall. I get the impression that they rather liked helping out with this particular art project. Anyways, it came out OK, nothing spectacular, but at least it worked. Here, you see.
image was here, but photohost died, sorry
There is a new, fright-filled Weebl and Bob up, which you probably ought to go see.
OK, this thing has been long enough. Go Blue!
12:42 PM
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