Under the Influence

I thoroughly enjoyed our last class.  The subject shifted to a criticism of the class itself, and though I disagreed with the criticism that was put forth, I rather enjoy the change it has inspired.  It was a very fun subject, and I enjoyed putting in my two cents.  Due to the extra freedom in my brain cells, I came up with a way better final project idea than what I'd already decided on doing.

River's Edge

As much as I'd like to say it isn't the case, I have to admit that my I get my inspiration from alcohol.  That's not to say that it's the basis of my inspiration, but it is what allows the inspiration to flow.  It's as if I bullshit myself so much, that I need the alcohol to filter the bullshit out so I can know what my real emotions are.  Once I get to that point, I am good to go.



Jacob's inspiration is pretty decent. I would agree that the city can be pretty beautiful with its lights and architecture, but the thing I like to think about is what cities will be like after they've been given back to nature.  It's nice to look at the world and see what man has accomplished, but there isn't really anything mysterious about it.  I'd like to think of what it will become once nature has taken it back and made it its own again.  I think that would be something to really enjoy.  I like to imagine future people finding these places, talking about their theories of how aliens helped to build our skyscrapers and shit.  Once they have that added mystery and strangeness, they will be more inspirational to me.  Right now, I suppose I can appreciate what they are and recognize their beauty, but there isn't really a whole lot I find inspiring about them.  There is one thing I do find inspirational about them, and that is the nightlife, drinking and meeting people.  I feel like it's a good place to find colorful and interesting groups of people.  I think the homeless population gives the city flavor, but the city, buildings and such (as Jacob seems to see it) doesn't do a whole lot for me on the inspiration side of life.

The Brotherhood of Justice

I brought a Keanu Reeves poster to class.  I had no idea what to do to show who I thought I was or wasn't, so I thought it would be nice to do something somewhat random.  I figured I could do something that might have been stupid and let everyone in class judge me, because I figured if I couldn't show who I thought I was, I'd let others tell me who they thought I was, based on a poster I didn't put any effort into.  I didn't really get much of a response from the class, which I should have known would happen.  It's not that the class didn't care, I think the problem was that I just didn't really present anything worth responding to.  Beth did respond in a way that made me relate to the class the fact that I knew what they knew about me, which is very little (or maybe a lot if we're looking at this sideways).  Anyway, showing that I didn't know or have anything of value reflected my own confusion about myself, which means that my lack of a reasonable project perfectly resonates with who I think I am and who I might actually be.  By doing this project, I revealed myself far more than I think I could have by actually putting forth the effort to bullshit through an assignment.

Flying

After seeing the trees this past week, I have decided to make some trees of my own.  The trees I made aren't literal trees, and I didn't really make them either.  I just put them together.  I think I will have trouble explaining my project, which would mean it is a success and reflect perfectly who I think I am.

Young Again

Class was amazing this time.  I've had many opportunities to see the tree display at Herron, and I've always just told myself, "Sometime." Anywho, I was thinking about where an inappropriate to shit might be in the exhibit, and I realized that pretty much anywhere would do, which made me realize that my idea wasn't really that creative at all.  I noticed that everything looked way more interesting to me while I was lying on my back.

During the discussion something strange happened to me.  I suddenly knew exactly what I was going to do for my final project.  I don't think it even had anything to do with that part of the discussion, but it worked for me, and now I'm really happy and hope my project isn't too shitty to do 4rill and get a good grade and shit.

Act of Vengeance

I believe that this assignment isn't bullshit (it even says so in the instructions), because Beth obviously spend some time typing the shit out.  I tend to think freedom is a good thing in most capacities.  I think this could easily have been a bullshit assignment if the assignment were to simply not go to class and do anything else, but there is a lot more to it.  Having read all the way through the instructions, the time spent outside of class is going to leave me thinking about class and what I need to be doing.

As with most projects, I am somewhat fearful of the time and effort I am going to have to put forth in order to complete it.  At the same time, the freedom and openness that accompanies this class really takes a lot of that fear away.  I'd say that there is enough fear to keep me motivated to do things, and there is enough freedom to keep me from being crushed by my fear.

If there is one thing I feel from this assignment, I would have to say it is relief.  I also feel a little conflicted since this assignment also reminds me that I have shit that I need to get done.

Youngblood

Today's class was (I mean is) nice. I didn't do anything, but I do know what I'm going to do.  The concept of the class is very nice.  It reminds me of the Innovation Time Off policy at Google.  It is mandatory for Google employees to spend 20% of their work time working on anything they want, which has led to the creation of many of their most popular products.  I think it's nice to be able to work on something when it isn't something someone is forcing you to do.  I feel more creative already.  I need to write a paper for one of my other classes, and I'm going to take this time to use my extra creativity to bullshit my way through it.

One Step Away

I felt like drawn into this project due to the fact that two people in the class new something no one else knew about it.  I like secrets, but I don't like secrets that others are keeping from me.  Coincidentally I needed to to know immediately what was going on, so I started doing Google Goggles searches from the classroom.  This took me nowhere in my quest for the answer.

I've spent a lot of time wondering how it pertains to class.  Of course I could see that a lot of this stuff is seeing old things in a very sideways manner.  The shared clothing is a very different twist to an old way of doing shit.  I sure did enjoy some of the concepts they had to offer.

To find clues, I went to the Pantalaine website.  It seemed half-way legit, but there were still things about it that didn't quite add up.  I finally got the break I wanted when I looked up the locations of the store.  The map they show isn't too revealing.  Luckily, we are still left with the options to switch to satellite view and zoom.  What I discovered nearly turned my world upside-down.  Instead of being in a building, the marker on the maps puts the Pantalaine Family Store in the middle of a wooded area behind someone's house.  It became clear to me that someone wanted us dead.

I'm not 100% sure of the point of this project, but I am 100% sure there is a point.  I think it's nice that the Pantalaine thing showed normal things with a simple twist that would bring people closer together, so perhaps we're supposed to see the way a simple alteration to something can completely change its function.  Sadly, I didn't look at anything else, which means I'm probably entirely wrong about what was going on.

Letting Go

I enjoyed class today.

It was nice.

I had a lot of fun.

Everyone made me feel very comfortable.

The two boys in the corner ate burritos even though the sign above our heads says not to.

No one got hurt.

There was some bullshit.

It was a blast.

It really got fun when we had to put our favorite movies up on the board.  I think only a few people in the classroom realized I put more than one, because I didn't feel like people were putting enough Keanu Reeves movies up.  I even got to find a nice young lady to come into our area to pick her favorite.  I like getting up and doing things.  I move my legs and they pump blood back up into my torso, and I feel much healthier as a result.  I probably burned a good 500 calories in class today. I'd say that's a big plus.

Our new project is very interesting.  The fact that two people are keeping a secret from me has really gotten my attention, and I feel I won't be able to rest until I discover the real meaning behind the articles we looked at in class.

Work

So, I've really been hating my life when I am at work or thinking about my job, and lately have been bringing up the possibility of killing myself with my fellow employees.  This is what I have come up with so far.

I would like to hollow out my eye sockets and insert explosives to see what kind of results I get.  My coworker, Craig, showed great enthusiasm in helping me with such a task.

I am constantly telling Amy, a cashier, that I want to shoot myself in the face.  She has been making jokes about it lately, as if she thinks it's a laughing matter.  She's right.

I just told Cassie, another cashier, that I'd like to be in an accident that would leave me paralyzed, preventing me from coming back to work.

My friend, Deanna, told me the other day that she worries about me sometimes.  I asked her what she meant by that, and she claimed I was self-destructive.  She's the only one who doesn't seem to get that it's a joke.  I've never really done anything to hurt myself intentionally.  I've never shot myself in the face or hollowed out my eyes.  It is nice to have someone care enough to consider the possibilities instead of just laughing though.

I heard on a program on The History Channel about Abraham Lincoln that the former president would often threaten to hang himself from a tree in the White House lawn when someone was doing something to piss him off.  That is why he is my favorite president.

The nice thing about living is that, no matter how bad things get, there is always a way out.



A couple of days later...

After writing my blog entry, I thought it made me sound a little weird, but I've just started watching Harold and Maude for the first time.  The movie really seems to speak my language, as I was quickly hooked into the movie by Harold's constant suicides.  I recently told someone at work that if it weren't for wedding receptions, I would strongly prefer funerals.  And goddamn, here I am watching a movie about a young man with the same feelings about shit.  I feel like in a way, I am the creative force behind this movie and should have a check coming in the mail from Paramount Pictures.

Rust

Today in class, we talked about religious beliefs.  I used to have beliefs (like the belief that religion is stupid), but now I don't.  I felt like chiming in at times, but I was afraid I might mess something up with the flow of things. Actually, I did chime in a few times.  It was a decent class, I feel like it really came together when we started talking about how our class exists as a group, and how the group is different from other class groups and how our group really seems to get along really well.  I was going to stay for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but I was way behind on a project for my photography class, and I had just seen Expelled a couple of weeks before, so I wasn't really missing out.

I enjoyed Expelled much more than I had expected I would.  I found that the director, Nathan Frankowski, did a good job at making many of the claims in the film appear to be accurate, and he gets even bigger props for making it entertaining as well.

I had been wanting to see Expelled for a while, my interest stemming from the pleasure I have had from watching a Michael Moore film and learning the techniques he uses to create a truly convincing piece of propaganda.  The reason I took so long to get around to watching Expelled is that I was quite sure that the logic in the film would be entirely lacking.  When I did get around to watching it, the first thing I noticed was that Stein makes claims with little backing evidence.  The fact that the evidence was left out of the narrative led me to believe that it was being left out because it either didn't help their case or went against it completely.  After researching Richard Sternberg, I found that the latter was the case. Read "For the Record" here and a detailed breakdown of this part of the movie here.

What separates Nathan Frankowski from Michael Moore is that Michael Moore spins things his way with the heavy use of montage, letting viewers assume things without actually telling us, while Frankowski simply presents us with straight up lies to get his point across.  But, as I said before, the film is still entertaining, and I maintain that films are meant to be entertaining, which is why Expelled still holds up as a decent film in my book.

The down side of the way this film is compiled is that the issue they are dealing with seems to be an issue they created themselves.  If there really is a problem with people being dealt with the way they claim in the film, we don't know who they are and don't know that it is really a problem.  If it really was an issue, why wouldn't the filmmakers talk to the people who are really being discriminated against.  If there are people being treated like this, then they should get to have a voice, but the lack of evidence in the film leads me to believe that this issue does not exist, at least not on the scale it appears to be in the movie.

If we are trying to examine the points the film is trying to make, I would only disagree with one of them.  That point is the connection made between the Holocaust and Darwinism.  I won't go into that issue because I've already written too much on the subject on this movie, and I feel most people would be able to see pretty easily the problems with this argument.

A good day to yous.

Pop-tarts

The only things I really look at as sacred are the relationships I have with people who accept me for being the asshole I am.  This is really the only constant thing I really care about.  I care about a lot of other things, but my feelings and opinions about things change from day to day. There are different sides to different debates, and I really see things from different sides depending on my situation.

I don't follow any religion, and I'm entirely against the idea of organized religion.  I think it's bad for the mind the way candy is bad for the teeth.  I don't think my view on religion fits in in any way with the way I view my friends. Maybe my lack of belief in anything supernatural gives more importance to the things that are actually present in my life.  Either way, I think friendship would be pretty important to most people.

I don't have any fears about this project, other than coming up with an idea for it.  I don't see why opening up about it would harm me or offend anyone else.  I'm sure a lot of people would agree with me despite what their own beliefs might be.

I decided to write a poem.

Marky Mark

There are several things I'd like to do during class to scare the shit out of everyone.  The sad thing is, the kind of stuff I come up with is the kind of stuff that would get someone killed or me arrested.  This makes it very difficult to come up with something that would scare people that would be legal and not completely stupid.  I thought maybe making out with a guy in class would be a good idea, but the fact that bigotry is pretty much nonexistent in today's world means that there would be no homophobes to scare in the classroom. I find this very sad because I feel this would have been the perfect experiment.  With no other ideas about something to do 4rill, I have decided to make it appear that I am doing something terribly disgusting (and probably illegal) while not actually doing so (making it perfectly legal).

I feel that much of what other people are doing is using fear tactics based on the unknown.  I'm going to create fear based on the known, and hopefully people will fall for it.  Fear of the unknown is one thing, but fear of the known is something else, because one knows exactly what he or she is dealing with, and the response will maybe show a lot about the person's personality.  I'm hoping people will scream and maybe cry.


Update:

Sadly, no one cried when I passed around my supposed shit.  I got a few people guessing what it was, but people didn't freak out at all really. That was my goal.  I failed to do what I had planned.  Even if I don't get a zero on this project, I will feel like a complete failure for the rest of my life.

The guy who set his hand on fire and shit was about to eat the brownie, until I told him that it had been up my ass.  That was pretty funny. It was pretty much the only reaction I got to it.  The Lloyd came over and didn't care what it was.  He was going to eat it.  I think that was nice of him.

If I could do it over again, I would bring in real shit. No one really even cared that that's what it might have actually been anyway.  If it really was, it would be even better when people started smelling it and trying to eat it and shit.


And then:

The number one thing that I responded to was the thing the one girl did where I had to get in a box. It was very relaxing despite the uncomfortable position I was in.  The lights in the room were off, ad it was even darker in the box.  My only complaint was that I wasn't kept in the box for the full en minutes as I was promised.

This project was nice, because I though about taking a shit in the box while I was in it, making her project my project at the same time.  Sadly, I couldn't think of a way to do it without making a mess, so I just decided to (not) do that for my project.

Sexual Healing

Today's class was supposed to be about fear, but I spent most of the time laughing my ass off.  Everyone who presented stuff to the class had good ideas, except for a few people who didn't have good ideas at all and failed.  I had to sit in a box, but it was only slightly uncomfortable.  It didn't make me laugh all that hard, but I think that was probably because I couldn't inhale in the position I was in.

Usually after laughing for a little while, I can't laugh all that much until I've had some time to rest.  This time it never stopped. I had trouble walking out at the end of class I was so worn out from laughing. I can't wait to scare some people myself.  I just hope I can stop laughing long enough for someone to take me seriously. If not, I will fail at life and probably die at some point.

There was a mouse.

Captain Crunch

I got became very sweaty walking to class today.  I liked the cooling effect it had once I sat down, but I would have much better preferred being cool in the first place, without sweating.

The class got underway, and there was little change from what I was accustomed to dealing with in the class.  The only difference today was that we had a new foreign exchange student who was having a lot of trouble staying in his seat.  He kept running around, trying to crawl into my bag and shit.  It was very distracting, considering how serious I was trying to be in the class discussion about Keanu Reeves.

From what I could tell, everyone survived.

The room was dark, but that didn't stop me from having a good time.  As a matter of fact, it had just the opposite effect.  It reminded me of a time recently when I took a shower in the dark.  It was like walking backwards, because my sister is always leaving razors and shit in the tub, and I wasn't quite sure what I might step on.  Nothing happened, but I did almost step on a ferret.

Captain Hook

I've come up with a new sense for submission to the branch of government that considers new senses:whichever branch takes care of such matters.

The new sense I speak of is the sense of magnetism.  I believe this would come in handy in certain situation and be nothing more than an annoyance for the greater part of people's lives.

The most obvious advantage to this is always being able to tell what direction one is walking sometimes.  This will come in handy when people are trying to find their way back to their cars after they've gotten drunk and lost their phones with GPS.

Secondly, it will be good for detecting things that magnetic shit could detect, like signals and shit. You know what I'm talking about.

The annoying part is that this sense will come right from the brain's core, leaving people susceptible to death from opposing magnetic forces flying at the head.  This makes this somewhat similar to walking backwards.  Walking backwards wasn't really all that fun, yet people would typically feel a sense of danger from doing it.  Having magnetic powers might be a little fun, but the fun likely won't last, and there will remain a need for caution while walking around, doing shit.

Bodies might also be capable of sending and receiving cell phone signals.  I say might because I don't really know how anything works.  Do cell phones use magnets?  Probably. It's not something anyone can really know for sure.

When people go to the grocery store, they will have an easier time finding the right foods to give them plenty of iron in their diets.  They simply buy the foods that stick to them.  They will also get plenty of nickel and cobalt.

On the plus side, people will be far less likely to die from natural causes.

On the other plus side, people will be far more likely to die quick, unnatural deaths.

Everybody wins.

Includes "Mama Say"

Today's class was fun.  I laughed a combined 17 times. That isn't an all-time record, but it is a record for this class.  I feel like most of what I contributed during the duration of class was meant only to make myself laugh, which I succeeded at every time.  There were even a couple of times when other people laughed (twice, I believe), which makes things even better.

I enjoyed the things people did with dye and their eggs.  I felt like I probably did way less work with my egg than most others in the class.  It made me sad.

It was nice to find that I wasn't the only person with the abortion idea. I love abortions, and it's always nice to know that other people find abortions to be really funny.

Wringing Out the Dead

I didn't enjoy the walking backward exercise.  I want to get that out right off the bat.  It was stupid.  It wasn't stupid because of the terms of the exercise; I just think exercise is stupid to begin with.  One can exercise all he or she wants, but that person is still gonna end up like the rest of us.

I enjoy museums, zoos and parks, so I decided to go to all three at once.  I visited Crown Hill Cemetery.  It was a nice day.  The sky was slightly overcast and there were a few sprinkles here and there, but this didn't quite bring the temperature quite as low as I would have enjoyed.  I was slightly nervous walking backward in a cemetery.  People leave things laying around everywhere, and there are all sorts of squirrels running around.  A cemetery can be a dangerous place for walking backward, but at least if anything happens, at least you're in the right place.

Walking backward didn't really do a whole lot for me.  When I was in high school, I would drive my car in reverse all the time, so maybe I'm just over the going backward phase of life; though, I do feel like I'm going backward in other aspects of life.

The view of the cemetery about what anyone would imagine.  Marshmallows and phalli littered the ground.  It made me hungry to say the least.

Things got way better once I got to the top of the crown.  The view of the city was nice, but the amount of money and effort that had gone into the tombs and whatnot was way the ef ahead of the shit elsewhere.

I think if there is one thing I would want to use from the AVL in this setting, it would be the big monitor thing that shows a lot of stuff with very good detail.  It would be great for showing off the city coming out of the horizon.  It would also be good for showing really anything and everything from the view atop the crown.  There is a lot to be seen.

D

We went to a place in the IT building. While we were there we saw a lot of neat 3D technology stuff.  I couldn't really get to experience the actual 3D stuff due to a lack of vision in my right eye.  It all seemed really neat though.  We also got look at stuff on a huge monitor made up of smaller screens.  I thought it was really cool, especially when they brought the 3D scanner out.  I'm not a new media major, but I think I could have a lot of fun with this technology.  My favorite part of the large screen was the amount of map one could view on Google Maps.  I don't really know how often I would take advantage of that kind of technology, but I enjoy looking at stuff on Google Maps for fun, so I suppose that's enough to make the ability seem pretty sweet.  Other than that, I felt like there wasn't a whole lot for me, which is fine.  I like experiencing new things, and I don't expect things to always rub me the way I like to be rubbed (I won't go into details).

Level 4

The egg and I lived a lifetime together in our dream, but the time has come for us to return to our waking lives.

Goodnight sweet prince.

Opening Day

I had a lot of fun today. I made a lot of friends. I don't remember any of their names. They made me laugh. They inspired me to write short sentences. I adopted an egg. Someone shit on it. I think that's fine.


The class made me happy again. I hope it lasts.