the elephant tree

i got paid $250 today to talk about South African liquors and liqueurs made from the marala fruit (which elephants like to eat) for 3 hours. not bad but now i'm tired.

i just got home at 2:30a from working at rothy's for about four hours on our puppet skit. we were walking back from the bodega on a beer run when we saw a black trash bag on the street come alive. it was contorting and then it was squeaking and 4 rats ran out of it and there were still more rats inside making it a monster bag.  

the bats

my insoles are lost in the mail :(

an animation about bats

dogoween

I originally wanted to be Wishbone as Robin Hood, but the Robin Hood portion of the costume looked god-awful, so I scrapped it at the last minute. This year for the school Halloween party I was a dog in a dress. I maintained Wishbone's coloring.

that confused look dogs have

dog and cat friends

im getting insoles

what happens when i don't respond to my dad's e-mails quickly enough. gotta love that dad

baby growing up

One of my pitcher plants caught its first bug (under my supervision) today. I am so proud.

Also, our fucking frat boy neighbors have raucous idiot backyard parties every single weekend and the bass is so high that my brain is throbbing as I lie in my underground bedroom. Just go die in a hole.

new elvis discovery

this is so good. i've listened to it 20 times today.

things i saw on the internet today

Ol' Fish Eyes looking breathtaking here

a really amazing and fucking scary automaton

All that interneting must have tuckered me out because I'm having a grand ol' time being anti-social and staying home by myself

favicon madness

i updated my wordpress bullshit about a month ago and have now stayed up until 2:30 am for no good reason other than putting my favicons back in place. rah rah rah

proposed monument

Claes Oldenburg, Proposed Monument for Mill Rock, East River, NYC:
Slice of Strawberry Cheesecake, 1992

dog tired

I think school is going fairly well but I don't think this lifestyle is sustainable. I was in Chinatown buying acrylic at 9:30am, installing a climate change project at the Union Square Farmer's Market until 3pm, started learning about gears and cams and ate my single meal of that I had today (McDonalds), went to choir from 7-9, fucked around with my broken Vectorworks/Adobe Illustrator file until finally fixing it and laser cutting the acrylic at 11:30p. Left school at midnight, got home via subway and shuttle at 1am, sleeping now at 2a with a myriad of undone assignments due tomorrow.

yes yeah

we found back-end web class to be pretty damn boring today

adding the form to my homework took me a dedicated, silent, non-distracted 7 hours of coding, frustration, fear and panic today, so please fill it out: http://chendex.herokuapp.com/

also, i was the focal point of rothy's homework. bask in my glory: http://valerie.herokuapp.com/

other people on the train

On the subway this morning there was a homeless-looking person in an erratic altered state, stumbling violently and looking very unpredictable. His or her (I really couldn't tell) smell was completely rancid and filled our side of the car and I held my breath. I was marveling at how people were literally running out of his/her path, jumping out of their seats, grabbing their children and scurrying, when I realized that I myself was cowering into the young man sitting next to me. 

big brass band

I was at school for fourteen hours on Friday. Everyone was getting all cranky at everybody else. I bought two bags of groceries and trudged home at midnight. The L train has been running on limited service, meaning that on weekends or after 11:45 pm on weekdays you have to get off the train two stops into Brooklyn and continue on a shuttle bus. Naturally, not as many people can fit on the bus as just got off the train. However, because of party night traffic impeding the shuttle buses, when I got off at the Lorimer stop there were no fewer than 200 people crowded around the shuttle stop and quickly becoming an angry mob. I would've been angry too if I weren't already so impossibly tired. I wasn't able to get on either of the first two shuttle buses but finally found my way onto the third and nodded in and out of sleepytime consciousness. During a moment of wakefulness I realized that Craggs and her boyfriend Frank were on the same shuttle bus as I was. When I hollered at them they decided to get off at my stop instead of theirs and we all jumped off the bus at the Jefferson stop. We could see that there was a huge party going on with a brass band playing on the second floor of a loft. In a spontaneous moment of spontaneity, we followed the sound and ended up in a sweaty vivacious party full of young people dancing to a 15-piece brass band, many of the musicians women, which I really enjoyed. It was so loud and so fun that I regretted being the square with a backpack and two plastic bags of groceries. I wanted to stay forever because it all felt very fated and symbolic that there is a hidden big loud light at the end of the tunnel.

i entered in this

i know i'm the only one who looks like she's sitting in front of a trash bag, but it was a "table cloth" from the dollar store. http://worldofcolorhonorchoir.com/gallery/e101cac2

school week

The week goes quickly.

The way I see it, it starts on Friday, when I begin to source materials for my next puppet. Shopping takes up a surprising amount of my work time. Friday, Saturday I'm mostly working on the puppet and the performance with a little bit of other work and chores wedged in the in-between moments.

Sunday the day is organized around going to ballet for an hour, which is the one hour when time stops. I do my pliés and think only about the alignment of my body.

Monday I start my website coding for Dynamic Web, perform with my puppet, and finish the website Tuesday, moments before class starts.

Wednesday I stage some crazy public art intervention, edit the documentation, read a heap of academic readings about the environment, write a response all to turn in the next day for Renatured, and start building some mechanical moving thing for Automata, also due the next day. That night I get drunk for happy hour and then go to choir, and time stops again. I sit next to Jessica, a dancer who is my choir friend. We're learning to sing some very beautiful songs, including Beethoven's Hallelujah Chorus. I'm amazed by how conductors are parcel out two hours a week between so many different songs and correct the notes, pronunciation, and phrasing for every voice part. Our conductor is a wonderful, expressive Wagnerian-type who isn't nearly as dictatorial as conductors I had in undergrad but produces great music by knowing how to appropriately woo an unruly crowd. After choir my brain is in music mode and it's nearly impossible for me to think about work anymore.

Thursday, finish moving machine, go to class, go to class, go out to a bar with schoolmates and stay out late until it's the new week.