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Posts Tagged ‘ rant ’

the angst cat.

Listening to: Camera Obscura — You Told A Lie

As my math teacher would say, So Happy It’s Thursday (if you get that, you’re a winner). I have bags under my eyes, even though I slept soundly last night — and I’m one of those people who doesn’t get bags under my eyes, even if I don’t sleep at all. And of course I didn’t realize that lilac eyeshadow would only make those bags more noticeable about halfway through dance today. I’m in an especially stabby mood — so much so that I avoided the dining hall and opted to have Coke Zero and too many dark chocolate chips for dinner — and I’ve half a mind to pull a Mariella and take some prittstick and glue my lips together.

But it isn’t all bad. Yesterday was my birthday, which could’ve gone exponentially worse if I hadn’t been wearing the most awesome underwear in the universe (trust me, it’s pretty epic). My friend/potential roommate down the hall threw a ramen party, which was fun and strange and involved her and her/our other two friends, who are all also Korean, marveling at how large my hands/feet/eyes/body in general are. It made me feel kind of special, but also self-conscious. Also yesterday it was warm, which was nice and allowed me to wear short-shorts even though I didn’t leave my dorm after 3pm. Tomorrow it’s “supposed” (read: it better not), and it’s my school’s Revisit Day, and the only bright side is that, due to the special scheduling, my day ends at 10:45 am.

I can’t wait until Sunday. It feels like over the past few days, I’ve been wanting to shoot myself in the face but only managed to shoot myself in the foot instead.

2011: 03/31
CATEGORY: misc.
2 comments

it’s only the end of the world.

Listening to: Panic! At the Disco — Nails For Breakfast, Tacks For Snacks

Let me begin with a complaint: my coccyx aches. I just had my weave taken out and my hair wrangled into single braids, so now I’m blonder than ever. Firefox crashed every time I tried to upload this header photo and every time I turn on any sort of media all I hear about is news of death and destruction and even more impending doom. Maybe we set the year 0A.D. too far back and it’s already the Mayans’ 2012, and we’re all going to die (well, we are anyway, eventually, and I don’t actually believe that 2012 is Armageddon because Ragnarok should totally come on a February 31st).

On Saturday I went house shopping with my aunt and cousin and enjoyed petting other people’s cats and debating doors vs. windows as sniper targets (my cousin doesn’t want to live in a house with lots of windows, because “nobody’s ever been shot through a door;” I told her I was going to shoot her through a door just to prove her wrong). I won a silver medal for a double exposure LC-A+ print in the national Scholastic Art Awards, despite my photography teacher’s telling me not to hold my breath waiting to win anything. And I’ve planned an epic photoshoot with Blé for Friday inspired by:

but in suburbia and with cheaper clothes (obviously, since stylist/photographer anwa has a nonexistent clothes budget and all the shmancy vintage dresses she just inherited from her mother are at the cleaner’s). Have I ever mentioned that I love love love Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, possibly definitely even more than I love Annie Leibovitz (okay, definitely definitely more)? But I’m having a crisis of method in deciding whether to shoot this shoot in digital or in film, but I’m kind of leaning towards the film because then I get to use all of my better lenses AND I will take a “behind the scenes” little photo-movie with my new Flip camera to make up for the fact that it’ll take way too long to get the prints developed.

2011: 03/14
CATEGORY: fashion
misc.
news.
photography
4 comments

to help in your escape from pattern.

Listening to: Björk — Mouth’s Cradle

AARGH.

And, to top it off, an old photo because my interwebs aren’t working. But before we get to that, the weekend:

School let out for a few days on Thursday, so I went back up to Montréal and killed a significant portion of my brain cells on Sims3 binges. Lots of cold, lots of snow, lots of peanuts (maybe prompted by the book I was reading at the time, Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross). I got my dress for the winter formal (more on that later), a bunch of tights, and a bunch of belts. Also started reading Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton, which is a pretty good if not jargon-loaded biography of, you guessed it, Andy Warhol. (Also made me think of The Dandy Warhols, few of whose songs I can play on the radio right now). It kinda makes me want to start silk-screening my own photographs.

Speaking of my photographs, I’m thinking of getting an Etsy or finding somewhere else to sell them online to finance my artistic endeavors, such as film buying. I was discussing this at class today, and my teacher said that his baseline price for student art was $50 dollars, but would any of you actually fork over that much for a photograph? Any price suggestions?

Which brings us back to the original complaint. Today, as the first day back from break, epically sucked. First period I took a math (con)test and, due to my immense skill, answered a grand total of 10 out of the 25 questions. My English class group project, which is putting on a scene from Taming of the Shrew, is going horridly, thank you — the other half of my group decided to sleep through class in a foreshadowing of the rest of the project. And some people are just too… is infuriating the right word? Well, someone’s asshole rating went up today.

Conversely, things seem to go worse when I drink coffee in the morning.

2011: 02/08
CATEGORY: misc.
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interest in colors, I discover myself.

Listening to: Asa — So Beautiful

Early in the morning, especially on Sundays, sunlight streams through my window and makes everything light. I am unable to rearrange my room because I need my head by the light when I sleep; I need to be able to peer out out the window as I work; and I need my window perfectly unobstructed. I hate artificial lighting. As long as there is sunlight it is bright enough to read, to write, to type. But I also hate dusk. I hate when it’s too dark to go on without additional light but still too light out to close the window; I hate when the glass in my window goes from clear to glossy reflective black and the walls of my room go from white to an ugly, florescent-induced yellow.

Tonight I’m sending out the first chapter of my novel. It’s kind of nerve-wracking, especially because I can’t help but think about inevitable rejection. The more I write and edit, the more wrong I find, but I can’t stop editing because what if I miss something then. My social life has, for the most part, withered away over the past week, and every time I try and restart it I feel uncomfortable and go back to my room to lie on my bed, bask in the sunlight, and pretend I live in a different written world.

2011: 01/23
CATEGORY: misc.
news.
writings.
3 comments

no-one should call you a dreamer.

Listening to: Peter Björn and John — The Chills

ARGH.

No, that was not a pirate noise. That was me expressing my frustration at this dismal cesspool that is life. I am in an angry emo mood right now (and, appropriately wearing my “and that’s when I snapped” shirt). On the other side of the connecting door, my roommate and our mutual friends are giggling over something that probably has to do with Facebook, but I am sitting alone and sulking because 1. they are all nice people 2. I have difficulty connecting with girls in my grade at my school, so even though they are nice and mostly-welcoming I feel uncomfortable around them and thus feel forced to lock myself in my half of our rooms. Last night they all went out to see the hypnotist who came to campus and locked them in the theater, but I stayed behind in my dorm, watching Catch Me If You Can and eating my detention-bound older-and-guy friends’ takeout before going to bed at ten and sleeping for 12 hours. And I have been incredibly unproductive and unable to do write and do anything really other than reading The Dante Club for the past several hours. Yesterday I was so frustrated because I 1) butchered the map of Europe and 2) didn’t exercise at all and 3) was forced into an incredibly stressful lab partnership with the one person whose presence stresses me out the most, and we didn’t have a spectrometer and he was being sarcastically demanding and I was afraid that I was going to set my hair on fire. And my laptop battery is five inches from death and I’m running out of toothpaste and chewing gum and all I want to do is go home and take a billion rolls of 800-speed film and drink Starbucks and drool over notebooks with the people I love most.

And it has stopped snowing where Ash lives, so I will oblige her previous request of some pictures of snow. Voilà.

2011: 01/09
CATEGORY: misc.
photography
4 comments

jump high or be lifted (and subsequently dropped).

Listening to: Blue Foundation — Eyes On Fire (Zeds Dead Remix)

Augh. Only the second day back, and I’m already drowned in homework. Might I say that I’m pretty annoyed? First thing first period yesterday. I had a cumulative first-semester quiz. Then at photo class my teacher basically told me that my photos have no focus (in a conceptual sense, not a technical one). I disagree with this. I don’t believe that every image I capture has to have a meaning; maybe it’s all hyper-Surrealist.

But anyway. Today in dance we were working at the barre for the first time, which was… interesting. Suffice to say that we are not a ballet group. At all. Then, while working on our current modern piece, we had to partner up by size/height and were told that we were going to do lifts. Cue thunderclap.

Being the second-tallest person in our class, my partner was a very nice German gymnast girl who was waaaay too patient with me. I took one look at her and said, “I’m lifting you.” But then our instructor gave her customary evil laugh and informed us that we’d both have to lift each other. Cue lightning.

Before we got to the actual lifting, however, we had to do a little trust fall/sit and backwards somersault. I am not a very trusting person. My partner and I had to try about seven times before I would let her sit me down, me feeling worse every time she told me that it was okay. The entire debacle went something like this:

Her: Okay, now, leave your feet there, and I’ll pull you backwards.

Me: Sure! *walks backwards nonetheless*

And repeat. Then, after the backwards somersault, it was time to do some lifting. For anyone who doesn’t dance, it’s important to understand that lifting isn’t about weight or strength or anything; it’s about momentum and timing and both people working together to keep from collapsing into a sad heap. Me lifting my partner wasn’t that bad, except that I kept turning her the wrong way. But then came the moment I’d dreaded: her turn to lift me.

…And then everything exploded into a cataclysmic fireball of doom.

Or something like that. I already mentioned that I have issues with trusting people with handling my weight. That, coupled with my off timing (and momentum that sent us turning, once again, in the wrong direction), well… let’s just say that it was special. We actually, finally, got in a couple of really nice lift/turns, but nevertheless when we finally ran through the piece, it ended with:

1. Us missing the cue for our fall/sit

2. Me rolling into her

3. Me getting the momentum wrong, again, and sending us in the wrong direction even though I wasn’t actually off the ground

4. Her exclaiming a rather tasteful curse and dropping me

5. Us collapsing in general, giggling, while everyone (sort of) danced on around us.

At least, we thought, we didn’t take anyone out with us. There was a particularly amusing incident with another two pairs, where one pair stopped moving completely and, whilst in the middle of a perfect lift, another pair turned and knocked one of the immobile pair over with the liftee’s foot. We felt slightly better after seeing that.

We’re doing lifts again tomorrow.

2011: 01/05
CATEGORY: misc.
1 comment

and the term is “middle”.

Listening to: Band of Horses — The End’s Not Near

About how I feel about midterms, which start tomorrow. Also, there is a dying fly in my room, and I hate its incessant buzzing and the way it stops and rubs its forelegs together and how ugly it is. I killed a fly yesterday and felt bad for a few moments after Blé had told me over the cellular waves how disturbing one of my current rewrites is.

Last night I hung out with my roommate’s friends, skipping dinner to watch 10 Things I Hate About You with seven of us huddled around a tiny MacBook screen. I spent the rest of the night house-hopping and eating other people’s food and wishing I was full until someone new came out with a fresh plate of Christmas tree cookies straight from the oven. I learned that supergeniuses can be dog people and that when karma smiles dumbasses fall into icy rivers and that, sometimes, the only way to save your ailing goldfish is to feed it to a contraband snapping turtle.

I felt like such a bad person last night that I was surprised I was in such a good mood.

2010: 12/12
CATEGORY: misc.
1 comment

donnez-moi ta main; nous volerons ensemble.

Listening to: Coldplay — Fix You

“…your heart is a strange little orange to peel” — St. Vincent, “Human Racing”

You might know the feeling. When you have something you want to say but pretend you’ve forgotten it when someone asks. When, later, you come up with entire speeches when there’s nobody around to hear them. I’m not quite sure why I bothered starting this post, to be honest.

I’m somewhat upset that I’m not jetlagged. I’ve traveled several thousand miles in the past few days, and tomorrow I’m getting on a plane and flying again — not even to somewhere to which, at the moment, I particularly wish to go. Is it paradoxical for me to think that if I changed time zones at least, maybe I wouldn’t feel so drained? Sometimes I would like to sleep forever, but I have too much stuff to get done.

2010: 11/28
CATEGORY: misc.
3 comments

mutually uninspiring.

Listening to: Tegan & Sara — I Can’t Take It

I feel like I’ve been stuck in a rut lately. I’ve had way too much work and, of course, not half the time it takes to get it all done. That means that I haven’t been doing much of the things that I like to do, like writing and unassigned photo shoots. This adds to the relative depression I’ve been feeling over the past week and a half, which itself was added to by the amazingly sucktastic weather (example: yesterday it was a torrential downpour and 44°F, and I sat on a cold metal bench, covered in mud, for and hour and a half).

On the photography front, I feel like I haven’t really loved anything I’ve shot since the start of the school year. Not to mention it all gets picked apart to its bones on a regular basis, and every day it all boils down to fashion photography: what it is and what it means to me.

I, personally, know that I want my final portfolio to be composed of what one could call “fashion portraits”. Except my teacher doesn’t believe that fashion photographs are anything but artistic advertisements, and that in order to shoot said photos I have to actively, well, advertise. Nor does he really like fashion photography, but that’s another matter. I, on the other hand, think that a fashion photograph is any photo with a large emphasis on the styling (and so, admittedly, does he, of course unless it’s my photo we’re talking about). So we have a large disagreement there, and every class we spend at least ten minutes debating it. And then there’s the whole question of “narrative” and the debate over what exactly that defines, and whether it’s present/ how much it’s present or not in my photos. And it’s all just so frustrating and

miss

creativity.

Ugh. I can’t wait until fall break.

2010: 10/07
CATEGORY: misc.
photography
1 comment

pinspiration.

Listening to: Andrew Bird — Cataracts

Pinspiration = Photography + Inspiration. Not to be confused with “thinspiration”, even if the models in more than a few photos are rather gaunt.

I’ve been really frustrated lately. My iTunes isn’t working (Steve Jobs, I see through your ploy to get me to buy a Mac, and that isn’t working, either!) and I haven’t taken any photos that I really, really like in what seems like forever. My current assignment is faculty portraits, which I’m sure my teacher just assigned because he knew that I would hate it. It’s due tomorrow, and everything I’ve shot so far is varying levels of suckish. And to add insult to injury, I have a combination allergy-cold, am covered in bug bites from soccer, and am so sleep-deprived that I can’t keep my (red and itchy) eyes open. So, since I have no new photos of my own to share, here are some of my favorites from around the interwebs.

2010: 09/22
CATEGORY: misc.
photography
3 comments

yeah, we went there.