Insert Pretentious Song Lyric Here.

I'm moving to Los Angeles. Due to family stuff, partly, though I'll be moving in with friends. Who's in the area?

Away, on a kahuna of ninja glitter.

looking @ my transcript and degree sheets i realize that i have the grades of a smart person who doesn't care if she looks like a screwed up dumbfuck. clearly this is misleading; i am feeling distinct strains of embarrassment. also something resembling stupidity, though not specifically the IQ kind.

working on my senior honors thesis outline, catching up on various readings for exams, and writing 2 final papers. my internship completely bombed this semester, and though my teacher won't penalize me for it bc it was pretty much the massachusetts mental health center HR people dangling a carrot for 4 months, it feels asstacular.

don't get me wrong: I think everything is going to be fine as long as I can show these writing assignments the creativity that they deserve.

I had a good time in nyc for thanksgiving with potatocouch. Also met up with icebluesilver (though half expecting that i'll see the username struckthrough now, it's been so long since we eJournalled at each other) whose new beau reminds me of ... ... remus lupin, down to the car-crash clever friends, and introduced her to kanna and ahvia who continue to joke and draw and ditch me with my little sister to watch movies.

though we all did watch Enchanted in the end. It was cute enough to give you insulin shock.

anyway i have to go rip off wu cheng'en/arthur waley now. cu.

it's like coming back to your elementary school and getting a sense of claustraphobia bc the hallways look smaller but also a bit of vertigo bc they parallax faster. except, you know, in livejournal it's just bc they fitted the textbox width smaller.

i'm starting an internship with a partner/subsidiary mental health center of Harvard Medical soon. it's an hour's commute, which is a pain in the ass, but it should be a nice bullet on my resume. a silver bullet! to destroy the unemployment monster once i get my ass out of here. it's my senior year at college. that's faintly frightening to think about.

i have a senior honors thesis coming up, too. i think i'm going to steal the the monkey king and 'rewrite' it in the american comic book genre. redemption, religious fusion and enlightenment-as-a-construct should still feature prominently. i don't know. i don't want think about that too much either, which makes me think i might of bitten off more'n i can chew, which makes me ruminate over the fact that i can still spit it out. til november 22. to write or not to write?

never the question! i'm still gaming and thinking too much about gaming however, of course. i think im becoming more and more of a jerk the longer i piss around on the internet. that is, less willing to screen human foibles from my consciousness, and more willing to give a shit, whether kindly or angrily. when people want sympathy and attention because they feel pathetic and their efforts have gone unappreciated, i don't object; it's the posturing that offends me. the implicit 'should's, the sense people owe them for efforts they neither asked for nor had use for and their work is worthless in and of itself, and the passive-aggressive insistence that it's somebody else's fault so why aren't you trying to make me feel better. it's also beginning to irritate me too much when very nice, altruistic people martyr themselves to protect and take responsibility for people who are perfectly capable of standing up for themselves. then again, it also pisses me off when people who dont know i disagree with their unfair critics tell me to stop defending people from their criticism, so im sure theres no small garnishing of hypocrisy to these complaints. i think i'm becoming an unsympathetic and uncompromising yet cowardly asshole.

and a clinical psychologist, too! ...i was going to say that was ironic, but i guess it isn't necessarily. and here i become self-referential to the point of... not having a point.

uhhh. as an explanation: i crashed at 12AM after drinking and watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit for a suitemate's postmodernism class, then rose at 5AM to find an unfinished cider bottle and climbed in front of the PC to finish it. good to be a college nerd. now i wish i didn't have an exam coming up on wednesday and a vacation flight to figure out, in addition to the above garbage. i am perpetually wondering how i'm going to keep up with real life once i'm out of here. i'm too sloooow and i still miss my turns.

this song is liquid awesome. You ought listen to it: Ne Yo's "Because Of You, introduced to me by eaterofcrayons.

also this one: Marty Casey and the Lovehammers' "Trees" -- It'll be you and me / up in the trees / and the forest will give us the answers.

and no offense to johns hopkins university, but they totally owe me $300. hhhlife. later.

man this is still my favorite photomanipulation ever. oh my sad horseshit pixels/composition/internet frivolities.

frankly, i think these are just incredible. my dad was born in the year of the pig, which supposedly means bad luck until next february, but it sure didn't hurt his photography.



( Collapse )

Opinions sought: which one should I turn into a b-chan icon?

re: clubbing -- i think im getting too old for this shit. and i think skeezy guys grind up behind you even when you're spacing out stock-still bc they think you're high and hope to leverage that.

re: first exam for 'seminar in clinical psychology' -- fucking monstrous! apparently the teacher designs his tests with a 15% curve (1.5 letter grades) in mind bc otherwise his grade average would be way too low. that felt awful, i'm so glad it's over.

re: 'architecture of the imagination' english lit class -- there is this beautiful blond boy who ignores me completely. i think i am in love.

re: spring break -- my mom's set my calendar so i see my grandparents after summer vacation instead, so i have nowhere to go and only 2 weeks to plan. my housemate has invited me to argentina. all i remember from argentina is from the books about horses from my childhood. cowboys who had bowie knives as their only dining equipment. dust. whole lot of sky. cigarettes. not exactly my scene, but that wasn't buenos aires (sp?) so i'm considering...

when i blank out i like to think about all the answers i've gotten, in the past, to that one question: what's it like to be in love? sometimes, it feels like everyone in my social circle has an answer that smacks of certainty except for me.


1280 x 800

my favorite bad retort in months: 'fuck you and the high horse you rode in on.'

&another i like:


undistort/resize here

< that is from the chinese new year 'festival' that the asian student association held last week, quite possibly the best cny event i've ever attended: one of the boys doing the shaolin martial arts demonstration accidentally kicked 2 holes through the cafeteria wall. the announcers were flabbergasted, and the boys themselves -- up in their tight white wife-beaters and gelled hair, the very essence of canto-pop hipster butch -- looked so sheepish it was adorable. of course my housemates thought i was being insane, so easily amused, and then they thought i was being inane when i went over to the wall and tore out the biggest pieces of plaster out of the holes to keep. afterward, i got the traditional chinese characters 龍龍 drawn on my shoulder, which translates literally to 'dragon dragon' but actually describes a dragon in flight. according to my roommate, anyway. of course she might just be motioning to the world about my redundancy in her life, but it's okay: it was free, superficial, and washed off when wet, so it's her case in point.

lately my sleep patterns have been obscene bc of insomnia, but my writing groove is coming back -- thank god; i think it's s.a.d. levelling out and ameliorating, seeing as how almost exactly this time last year was when i dove back into the rp circuit, applying for st. john allerdyce @ SWEET X HIGH who is still my favorite. oh, john. every power punk song in the world will be about you and nothing in your life shall ever be beautiful.

despite the above theory regarding mood disorder, however, i have been picking quite a few bones w/ the world lately. i guess this isn't too surprising a thing for me; i differentiate starkly between being pissed off over principle and the malaise from seasons. i can be pissed off but generally happy without getting depressed, but i didnt used to get pissed off this much. as such, i can only suspect that i'm changing as a person and quite possibly also getting to know other people better. it makes me wonder if i am cut out to become a psychotherapist; some part of me is no longer content with allowing people to find relative happiness if it's by delusion or rote, 'muddling along' in masturbatory comforts without resolution. if i'm going to help someone i want to take actions of consequence based on clarity of thought, and it drives me crazy when people don't see, when others become the victims of one's victimization, insecurities crawl like maggots from every orifice, pride staaaaalls and staaaaaaaaaalls and -- arguably the worst part -- one's experiences become so singular and self-centered that the only way some can intimately connect with different people is by requiring their sympathy instead of mutual empathy. fucking a. i hate it when empowerment becomes about stupid power-play instead of justice and equality.

i think that's why some feminist discussions drive me crazy, too. completely lose the point. for instance, take today's 'cultural perspectives in china: heroes' class -- everyone was losing their shit over how the female protagonists were never realistic. they came off as extensions of Confucius' finger wagging from down the dynasties, yes, but for God's sake -- we'd spent the past 7 classes lamenting how unheroic their male counterparts were, too. muscleheaded martial heroes whose missions flopped, the one 'success' won off the edge of a knife that slit the throats of ten innocent people, whiny princes who don't do their own fighting, skinny scholars who were led by the nose by two-dimensional female characters, emperors chased in circles around their throne until their physician hits the bad guy with his medicine bag. they're all human and the storytellers (or translators) may have been somewhat lacking. there is sickening bigotry and exploitation rife in chinese history by anyone's standards, and i don't mind discussing that -- as long as we're actually discussing that.

i need some sort of senior thesis for my english major. i am thinking about writing a story where a woman is an asshole even by 'male' standards and the men are as worthless as women complain culture paints them and both genders suffer the trials of rape and redemption, the words 'construct,' 'eidolon' and 'conformity' get used exactly 44 times each, and the final boss has silicone injections in his gonads, an ironic sense of humor about it, a counting house and a vegetarian cat. and the gross natural product is the charges on your MOM.

we got a blizzard the other day and my one wednesday class got cancelled. surprisingly, the constant threat of slipping and concussing yourself on iced streets distracts from singles awareness day.

i also have new icons and web-design in-progress.


beta


beta


alpha, colorcasts here -- clients have chosen blue and black.

D: god the inconsistent grain makes me hurt

the icon used on this livejournal entry features chad michael murray from the latest episode of one tree hill, where he shows up done in goth for all of 4 seconds. what a sad and beautiful woman. my other one is of adam lazzara, right here, with words poached from some highly articulate intellectual who hangs out at kanna. i wish his nose ring showed up better. he is a pretty funny boy.

1280 x 800

suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. young death sits in a cafe smiling, a piece of money held between his thumb and first finger (i say "will he buy flowers" to you and "Death is young life wears velour trousers life totters, life has a beard" i say to you who are silent. - "Do you see Life? he is there and here, or that, or this or nothing or an old man 3 thirds asleep, on his head flowers, always crying to nobody something about les roses les bluets yes, will He buy? Les belles bottes - oh hear , pas cheres") and my love slowly answered I think so. But I think I see someone else there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards she is sitting beside young death, is slender; likes flowers. -- e e cummings

the photo representation of booker is David Belle, the co-inventor of parkour and actor from the crazy french action film Banlieue 13 which was made by some of the same guys who did Ong Bak. The girl's Anne Hathaway.

i need to defribillate my writing muse.

The Envoy of Mr. Cogito (Trans: The Last of Mr. I Think) Go where those others went to the dark boundary for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize go upright among those who are on their knees among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust you were saved not in order to live you have little time you must give testimony be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous in the final account only this is important and let your helpless Anger be like the sea whenever your hear the voice of the insulted and beaten let your sister Scorn not leave you for the informers executioners cowards - they will win they will go to your funeral with relief will throw a lump of earth the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography and do not forgive truly it is not in your power to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn ( Collapse ) -- Zbigniew Herbert

* margin note/teacher quote: "Your skull will be among theirs: a true prize. What a prize."

---

“

Building Dwelling Thinking Gathering or assembly, by an ancient word of our language, is called "thing." The bridge is a thing--and, indeed, it is such as the gathering of the fourfold which we have described. To be sure, people think of the bridge as primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would become a symbol, for instance a symbol of those things we mentioned before. But the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bride and then afterward a symbol. And just as little is the bridge in the first place exclusively a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that strictly speaking does not belong to it. If we take the bridge strictly as such, it never appears as an expression. The bridge is a thing and only that. Only? As this thing it gathers the fourfold [earth, sky, humanness, and divinity]. Our thinking has of course long been accustomed to understate the essence of the thing. The consequence, in the course of Western thought, has been that thing is represented as an unknown X to which perceptible properties are attached. From this point of view, everything that already belongs to the gathering essence of this thing does, of course, appear as something that is afterward read into it. Yet the bridge would never be a mere bridge if it were not a thing. -- Martin Heidegger

”

---

“

The New Yorker: Rewriting Nature ... A new book, "Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-Enchantment of the World," by George Levine, a professor emeritus of English at Rutgers University, tries to vindicate Darwin for students of literature by emphasizing his modest "sense of wonder," the almost mystical awe at the sheer existence of life in the universe; Darwin disenchanted believers in Heaven, but he reënchanted lovers of Earth. Levine’s book is one of the most appealing and subtle attempts to bridge biology and the humanities. It proposes an "enchanted secularity"; because Darwin robs mankind of place and purpose, he gave us a chance to love and revere nature "precisely in its refusal to be like us." ( Collapse )The hardest Darwinian view of all is still roomy enough for ordinary love to breathe in. Darwin was a Darwinian fundamentalist. But he was not a Darwinian absolutist. He knew that what feels to us like soul or spirit—the flash of understanding at an infant’s smile or grief at a child’s death—can never be argued away. He thought that he had found the secret of life. But he knew that nothing could solve the problems of living. That takes all the time we have. -- Adam Gopnik

”

---

&this is how i waste my life in ps:

final composite:

composited from: ( Collapse )

Edit: Actually to make this post marginally less worthless let me know if there's any specific image you'd like to see tips, on Photoshop effects or other 'how-to's. I don't know if I have the time for comprehensive/full-length tutorials, but at the very least I can offer my amateur insights.

Edit2: Of course there were more stock/composted images involved than I posted above; I didn't have the time to go back and hunt down every stock photo I'd used again.

Edit3: most of the credit for ocean.jpg goes to Miah's player on XMYB, as she came up with the concept, selected the images, and put everything together, and she still isn't done finalizing the image -- the final will be published elsewhere. I just gave a zillion filters a try by myself and posted in case anyone wants to try something similar.

Torrent: Fantastic Flame Screensaver
feat. creepy chimes over crackling and popping sounds.

now all i need is a decent resolution image of Xavier Mansion, configure the screensaver to replace the desktop capture instead of that, and my geekery will be complete. Or maybe the Sydney Opera House will do. Or I could contrive of an Allerdyce family photograph, though I have often been tempted to photomanipulate 'john's wall of shame,' maybe a notched belt going across the bottom. How marvellously accomplished my boy is.

---

computer science grade:		B
statistics for psychology:		B
advanced fiction:		A
general view of english literature:		A
status:		3.4 GPA, Dean's List (I don't know I guess the deans are really easy)

i guess sweating all that blood kind of paid off.

---

clubbing last night was fun because the music was fucking fantastic -- amazing DJ who actually made drum and bass trance remixes of everything from Andain (already trance) to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I find dancing to trance a lot easier than to RMB or anything else, but I find other genres a lot more listenable, so it was an all-round good experience. except, the good-looking guy who came up to me, blame_them, and belleiseult turned out to be 18 years old, his company even younger, and I didn't turn 21 to hit on jailbait. A first: there was this white guy with a two-foot afro (which I think was actually rooted to his scalp) and an acrylic ball who had good moves for a stage hog. robert drake. blame_them was wearing pastel pink that several sleazy older men mistook for a neon 'victim' sign.

---

I'm thinking about making a proper website for myself. Partly, I figure I might as well try the most 'respectable' excuse for spending one's life in Photoshop, because writing games apparently isn't, and it's not like I wouldn't have content. Put my web-design and graphic design shit up. New layout exhibiting new skills. Should probably get my own domain, too; I've been a lampyr off certain people forever. BCHANAR.COM, PYG.NU, NU.PLEES.NU, SIRFIREPANTS.ORG, I don't know. Suggestions are welcome! Until then, now I have 2 website prototypes to make for someone desperate enough to pay me for them.

---

I watched The Queen and Pan's Labyrinth recently, and reread parts of Julia Ecklar's Regenesis. The former was a really eloquent illustration of the dichotomy and hypocrisy of public versus private grief, how the media circus gets over/involved, and the in/sincerity of civilian sentiments for their celebrities, as well as the interface between old symbols/obsolete traditions with modern society. The relationship between Tony Blair and the Queen fucking rocked -- humiliation, humility, empathy from opposite political wings. Pan carries its tagline well: "Innocence has a power that evil can not imagine," but man, that was sad. Regenesis had a fragment I love -- "... [menagerie animals] that will never know the dignity of self-sufficiency or the company of their own kind." Which, I think, are definitions of sympathy and dignity that can be applied to things other than menagerie animals. Not that I look forward to taking responsibility for myself. Now I want to put my head through something bc I put Regenesis down and can't figure out where.

---

I have one vacation week this upcoming semester, March 16 to March 26th. I will be trying to visit my grandparents in California, but I think spending all 10 days there would be too much for them, so I'm considering bouncing through VEGAS or aggravating some friends in person. Never been to Florida, and a zillion of friends live there, though it's a little out of the way, so I don't know if I could get a ticket deal that qualifies as as a layover there. Of course, there's always New York City too, and I've never been to Jersey.

---

Edit: some Pirates of the Caribbean III: At World's End promotional images have been released.


I KNOW RIGHT

( Collapse )

feat. some of the infamous bamboo scaffolding that
Jackie Chan made famous.

+1 of potatocouch, 2 from our visit with urbia to Lantau Island, and 2 mugshots of me in the club get-up that freaked out my parents just now

( Collapse )

an inconceivably important note: my new fancrush is Adam Lazzara from Taking Back Sunday. In this video, his goofy expressions are adorable -- esp. when he does that little roll of his eyes for You are, you are so cool -- and he swings his microphone around like he's gonna give his guitarist six stitches in the head (which he did, once, apparently, in front of several thousand Belgians). My kind of guy! Their video for "Liar (It Takes One To Know One)" looks like an amazing piece of graphic art that, someday, I will have the technical skill, patience, and emo inspiration to make.

PS: I'm 21 years old now. bit sad to be celebrating this one in a city where I've been able to drink since I was 18, but people make skeptical pig noises every time I point this out, and that's my schtick, so they're unsympathetic jerks, which makes it's hard to lament. Later.