so I've graduated and shit .. guess it'd be appropriate to talk about it, but I gotta run ... I'll post for real sometime tomorrow or this weekend
May 2003 Archives
==================> ABSENTDESIGN.
It's that time again.
The week's been a good one, I think.
Monday was alright, I went to classes in the morning, math was review day (got back my two quizzes and I actually did better than Tyler on one of them! heh). English we pretty much did nothing if I can remember correctly, I think we watched more Truman Show (good flick, too bad we never finished it). Photography class we made prints for our class books. After school I didn't do much, but I did work on editing my video.
Tuesday was much of the same, except in the morning Paul came into my car around 7:30 (woke me up the damn bastard ;-) ) and asked if I wanted to go to McDonalds. So we did. This was very convenient because when I went to bed Monday night around 11:30 I had checked my messages and Pam Healy had asked how I was doing my annotated bibliography for Creative Writing ... something I had completely forgotten about altogether. Plan was to simply show up and say I'd forgotten ... which would have been 100% the truth ... and great thing is it didn't matter. But McDonalds instead of Creative Writing posed many convenient opportunities. So we did that. Lots of fun, came back for government and watched My Fellow Americans. Humanities we watched more Spirited Away but also reviewed some Baroque crap. Stupid bitch ms. cheevers is. Physics was a free day.
After school Tuesday was the NHS party, pizza everywhere and I decided not to eat any because I'd had McDonalds that morning and didn't pack a lunch but wasn't hungry anyway. Left the party at 3:00, called my Dad's secretary to find out what time I was getting my vaccine shots for Vietnam and turns out ... 3:15! So she calls over there to let them know I'm going to be late, because while Jewish Hospital Medical Campus is a mile away from school, I left the forms I needed at home. So I rush home, traffic was a fuggin' biotch, leave the door at 3:15 and by the time I'm downtown OF COURSE, third street has to have construction all the way to liberty and liberty is backed up for the entrance to the highway. I pull into the first lot, turns out it's for MRI patients only, so I have to pull back out, I pass the next lot which unfortunately was the only other lot and the one I needed to park in ... realize this fact, but traffic again is bumper to bumper cause of the highway onramp, and so I turn right onto the next street and thankfully find a meter to park at. I put in 2 hours worth of quarters (don't ask why) and run to the building, and thankfully there's already some ladies getting on an elevator and I hop in.
I wasn't late. Well, I wasn't late for my 3:30 extension that is. They said if I couldn't make it by 3:30 not to bother. But I made it. BARELY. Anyway, talked to the lady, had to get Typhoid, Hepatitis A, Malaria pills, and some Traveler’s Diarrhea pills. When she gave me my shots, I was feeling great. I'm like "man, I can't believe I used to faint when I got these things." She puts in the right arm, and actually I wasn't sure she'd actually done the right arm or not until she was wiping it. Then the left arm hurt like a bitch. But I was still doing fine, and she's cleaning up, and then all of sudden WHOOSH I'm so light headed I nearly faint again. But I didn't. She ran and got ice and some wet towels and I slowly felt better. That left my arms sore for the rest of the day, it got really bad around 9 or 10, but then slowly got better from that moment.
I then stayed up till 4:30 working on my video for English. It's so pomo it's crazy. Funny thing is that Tuesday I talked to her about how my video was a little long, and would actually go over my nine minute max plus I'd still need a presentation, and she said "ok I'll let you go last so you'll probably have to present Friday." Aiight. But I still stayed up till 4:30 finishing so that I could have it done with and over.
Wednesday I was constantly falling asleep in math because of the above bedtime, then English everyone presented and we definitely had to see Aaron Patterson with his shirt off 3 times in his video, plus Todd Elkin in the same state. Might I just take this moment to say that it was very traumatizing. Anyway, then photo more work on the class book.
That night my family left for Baltimore. The grandmother was home for all the graduations (the brother's at Hopkins, mine this Thursday) and all of them, including her, left for Joe's. I stayed home for finals. Anyway, that afternoon I napped for about two hours, and then got up and went to Kroger to buy everything for my chili conqueso (16oz Velveeta cheese, 2 cans of Hormel chili with beans, and 4oz of diced green chilies, pour everything into a container, preheat to 350, cook for 30 minutes ... stir ... eat) and ran into Amanda Steinhauer while I was paying for it all. She was there to interview for a job. So I invited her back to my house to see the English final, considering she was one of the actresses, and we did that, and then she left and I started working on my annotated bibliography. Then I made the conqueso around 11:00, and went to bed around 11:45. Heated it back up that morning, Creative Writing I made my credo/pledge thing, last ten minutes of class I heated the conqueso back up again in her microwave. Government we finished My Fellow Americans and watched our English projects, whoever had one. Oh! And we watched a pep rally tape from 1995 with a skinnier, younger Ms. Stewart as the dazzler coach! Physics final was pretty easy. Only couldn't answer two of them.
Napped after school, and then went to Joanna's concert. Turns out others had the same plan, I figured I'd be the only one there, but Marc, Ashley, Anna, Robert, and some others showed up. The show was incredible! Reception afterwards, and then stopped off at Kroger to buy fruit, milk, and orange juice. Worked on the final when I got home, fixed up some stuff, etc, finished around 1:30 or so, outputted it to two tapes (one for her to keep) and then made this sheet that explained some stuff. Went to bed around 2:00. Math final in the morning, which I thought went very well until afterwards everyone including Tyler thought it was hard and didn't go well. This basically means that I did horrible, because something had to have gone wrong for ME to think that I did well. Scheisse.
Finally presented the final, we had our donuts in class and the milk and orange juice (and the fruit I brought was for me, since I'm not eating sweets (I'm on the sweets bet again with the sister)). The final went off well, and she gave me the following hilarious comments on my card. "You really 'get' the complexity of the po-mo" (so I have decided along with the help of Marjorie to incorporate pomo into the contemporary slang dictionary) and then "You raise some frightening questions." I thought this was funny. Want to see for yourself?
My English Final!
It's 40 megs, I was able to download it in 2 minutes 3 seconds (335kb/sec) on my cable modem. Dial-ups won't be so lucky.
It's being shared on XDrive, I had to sign up for a free 14 day trial and I HAVE TO REMEMBER TO CANCEL before that ends, or else they'll charge me five dollars a month.
It's realmedia, if you don't have that go download it.
And that's basically it. Finished the photo class book (which I'll scan later) and then after school went to Dairy Queen with some people (couldn't eat any though, again, sweets bet) and after THAT went to the Vietnam kitchen with Mr. Curtis, Joanna, Ashley, Marjorie, Matt Schauer, and Tony Parker. SUCH GOOD FOOD! Came home, napped about, and did nothing for the rest of the night but work on getting some sort of internet video of my English project.
Spork.
PS - let me know what you think of the video! all of you!
So I don't remember anything else major happening Wednesday night, or Thursday. Friday was the bell trip, and that pissed me off. I mean, it was fun because everyone was there, and it was a great chance to sign yearbooks as well as one of those "last chances together" opportunities. I'm told Project Graduation is one of these as well. Anyone going? I need to turn my stuff in. Anyway, we actually left the dock, which is supposedly quite the opposite of what last year's senior class got to do. The thing that pissed me off was that before we even got on the buses we decided (pretty much everybody) that we'd go instead of cutting because we figured they'd alphabetize the buses and take attendance. Nope. So on the bus we're like "well, they'll take attendance on the boat." Nope. The whole time they never took attendance and had no way of knowing who actually went. But again, it wasn't bad. Although, supposedly Big Gene didn't want us back too early (side note supposedly: they had police at the doors to make sure we didn't get back in?) so they sent the buses all the way down river road to zorn, to brownsboro, to 65. It was f'in bull. We got back at 2:00 instead of 1:10.
That afternoon I set up vague plans for those who would partake in the shooting of my English video project. See, Ms. Collesano (who by the way doesn't hate me, or at least told my sister that she's enjoyed having me in her class and all the PC teacher stuff) gave us this project on postmodernism. So I had a script and everything all ready. Then Nick Mattei (aka Kamel! who never posts anymore) made our plans to see matrix reloaded. Side story. Dr. Morehead actually told us that scholars are praising Matrix Reloaded becaues it is one of the few sequels not to use a colon in the title. I'm sorry, but how do you praise a movie for not using a colon? And then Ms. Collesano's analysis of the matrix in English every red day doesn't help either.
So I saw the movie, and it was good I guess. Here's what I wrote already in a comment though:
I was kind of pissed off. It didn't work at all as a movie by itself, it more than certainly required the first movie to see it, and it more than certainly requires the third movie. The first movie worked totally by itself as a film. This one was entirely reliant on the other two. And I'm pissed off cause I need to see the third to answer all my questions.
It was decent. The CG was really good, but they still haven't gotten the full body CG rendering replacements right. Like the scene with thirty million Smiths. Also, they spent so long making sure every smith looked real and looked like smith, but Neo the whole time looked kind of fake. Finaly, I was never much of a fan of the first one. I thought it was a good flick with nice action, but I always thought it was overrated. This is definitely my opinion of the second one. Far too overrated. Spork. |
Saturday we started filming. I got up at 11:30 (I was supposed to call Iain at 9:00) and showered, and called Iain around 12:00. When I got to his house I open the bag Jay Anderson (props to jay for providing my digital camcorder since my sister didn't bring home ours from college (supposedly it wouldnt' fit in her luggage)) gave me and turns out the power chord I saw in there was not the power chord to the camera. So we had to charge the battery, but I wanted to run on a power chord anyway. So we run to best buy and buy this adapter that has six different plug types and like 12 different voltage settings. Well, the only one we needed was 7.2 and the closest it had was 7.5. After lots of questioning of the best buy employees I thought would know best, we decide it's ok to give the camera an extra 7.5 volts. But lo and behold, when we get back to Iain's house none of the six plug types fit the camera. In the case of the two plugs closest, one was too big and one too small. So we'd been chargint the battery this whole time so it didn't matter.
We started at his house with random shots of his hands, so as not to show his face (Because obviously that is quite seriously postmodern). Then we went and got Amanda at the mall. We went down to Iain's dad's office (which is the Kentucky Art Museum or something like that) and went to the fourth floor to film. We found this wall that was nicely painted all green, and this is good because the scene CAN call for green screen if I wanted it to. We'll see if I can pull off green-screen for my film by Wednesday though. Anyway, we shot all of Grant's stuff first, because he had a date in Lexington and needed to get out of there in an hour (we ended up getting him out in an hour and fifteen minutes, not bad). Anyway, most of the scenes Amanda seduces Grant, and so I now have excellent incriminating evidence against both of them. ehehe.
Grant got out of there and we filmed a few takes of Iain in this office with Amanda as the secretary. Then the battery ran out and we spent an hour goofing around in the office (At one point amanda and I tried hiding from iain but he never came to find us regardless of how much stuff we tried making noise with (like hitting pipes and metal sinks with stuff surely loud enough for him to hear). We figured since he worked there he'd want to make sure we weren't breaking stuff, but after twenty minutes we were getting bored and went back upstairs and he said he figured if he just never came downstairs eventually we'd give up and come back. go figure (iain's no fun). So we only shot a little bit more before the script required Iain's hair being cut.
The next day, I picked up Amanda and we went to Iain's and then went straight to Fantastic Sam's. CLOSED on sundays. So we went to SuperCuts where we flimed the chopping off of Iain's big ass pony tail! I'd post pictures, (Because I flimed it, remember this is for my script) but it's 11:00 and I dont' think anyone will read this before after school tomorrow in which case everyone will have seen the new style anyway. I think it looks good, and that he's needed to do this for a long time. Amanda thought the same thing. We then went back to his house for him to shave (we filmed this too) and then went back to the office and spent a long time shooting the rest of the scenes. IT took forever because Amanda has a hard time keeping a straight face, plus she'd constantly write things on the pieces of paper she'd have to hand Iain in the film and this would make him laugh. Oh, and we'd constantly joke about how the movie was going to turn into a porno.
But when it was finally done, we shot some scenes of Iain getting in and out of his car, and then went to Qdoba and got a girl who was reading a book on a bench to be in the movie and let Iain hit on her and she'd pretend to walk away. Then we did the same in Ear-x-tacy with these two chicks. Finally, we got smoothies, called it a day, and we all went home.
So I've got a lot of editing to do for the movie, and I'll try and make a nice compressed quicktime or wma or realtime version of it as soon as I'm done. Till then, stay tuned.
Spork.
Alright, so Sunday night I was studying for AP Physics and finally just decided that I was wrong when I thought I could learn the extra stuff Albright didn't teach us AND relearn all the stuff he did. So I didn't go to Physics B, and while I could have left school, I stayed anyway and went to gaymanities and ... physics. I skipped the physics b test so I could come back to school for physics class. How utterly depressing. Monday was a fairly easy day, though, so that's good. Creative Writing we had a pseudo-free period where we basically were given books to look through, find poetry assignments, and do one of them. I wrote this poem through the eyes of a Teddy Bear all about his life with his human owner. It's good. Foster's was easy cause we just reviewed for the test, Cheev's we watched movies (Spirited Away! (only got fifteen minutes into it)), and Physics the engineering sub did our homework for us. Yeah. It was badass. I ran afterschool, and played some Halo I think, and somehow it was 9 or 10 and so I went to bed.
Tuesday I took a math test, the first in the three test trilogy. It actually was pretty easy, and if it weren't for my inherant ability to make mistakes I might have actually gotten a hundred. I dunno when I'll find out my score, but I'm confident because I knew how to do every single problem! And I finished early! I could have gone back to fix those mistakes that I always make, but I had English to read. In English, we talked about the short story we read and the Matrix. This was kind of fun, Suma afterwards filled me in that I shouldn't have enjoyed it because supposedly it was boring, but I thought the cyberpunk stuff was really interesting. I know I'm a loser, but hey, if the postmodern hero is a hacker that likes to rawk, could that be me? ;-) No, cause I don't hack. Damn. But I can code. I can certainly RAWK. Or at least I listen to rawk ... same thing, right? Cause it's not like Neo is picking up any guitars or anything, right?
So Ms. Collesano hates me, but more on that later. Photography class we took a field trip to this old house near school and had to take at least one picture of each person in the class (including ourselves and including mr. curtis). There was no light, but it was still fun. Once we exhausted the basement/first floor we went upstairs and we all got on the roof and THEN the light was gorgeous outside! I'm going to scan my contact sheets here in a second, we'll see if I'll add them to this post though (update: I did scan them, and you can find them in the photographyphoto2lastrollever directory, I even added descriptions!). Fourth period I developed said film and made said contact sheets afterschool. I came home, and I slept! And then I drove jimmy around, and then I played some Halo, and then around 9 I studied for a couple hours. I got a third of the way through the review book before I went to bed around 11-11:30.
This morning I got up 10 minutes early from my already 10 minutes early time. So this was like 5:30 instead of 5:50 when I got up. By 6:30 I was out the door and at McDonalds buying coffee, and then I got into the lot at quarter till seven and studied till 7:20 when we headed over to UofL. I continued to study in the halls with everyone, and then sat down and studied a bit more. I got about three fifths through the book, and I covered MOST of the institutions of us government chapter which accounts for something like 35 percent of the test (all the other sections are 15). Then I took the damned thing! First section I only did ok, second section (essay section) I rawked that bizotch! I think all my essays were as good as they could have been, except one which for one of the four parts I only half answered. So that essay will be a 7/8, essentially. So yeah, overall, I'm hoping for at least a 4. A 3 if I really messed up unknowingly, and a 5 if I'm lucky.
Now why Ms. Collesano hates me. Two classes ago we had some reading. I did the reading. There was this short story, and I read it, but on the BACK of the short story was this essay on "homelettes," which are basically these postmodern things where the infant doesn't recognize itself and therefore it's ego till a few months into its life and then even still it only sees a reflection of itself and so that's a virtual image and not even the REAL thing. Yeah, trippy stuff. Well, I didn't see that page so I didn't read it! So when she called on me and asked what a homelette was I had no idea! I looked like a babbling idiot and she asked me if I did the reading and like an idiot I said "no" when I technically HAD, but I had no idea what she was talking about. It wasn't till later I realized there was a whole sheet on this topic and I just had missed it. So first, she thinks I dont' read. And this pisses her off (for good reasons, I guess) because she took the time to copy everything, collate it, staple it, etc.
Then we had to turn in our books. Well two periods ago I turned in the three little books (stranger, writing on literature, and sound and sense) but I didn't turn in the literature book because I remembered her saying she'd only collect the little books first. Turns out she was taking them ALL. NO BIG DEAL, yet. She was giving one more day to turn them in. Well, of course, I forget the big literature book because when I went to bed I said "remember to stuff the lit book in backpack" (I stuff my backpack in the mornings before school) but of course, when I woke up and got ready for school, I forgot. So at school when one person didnt' have it, she was ok, when two didn't have it, she was fine, but when she called on me and I was number three she flipped out and yelled at me. She was technically yelling at all three of us, but she looked right at me when she was doing it. It was actually kind of scary, and made me very uncomfortable.
AND THEN, today after the government test, to try to make up for the fact that I hadn't turned it in yesterday, I brought it by second lunch (the government test ended right before first, so this worked perfectly). Well, she got really mad, beacuse she said she "didn't want to do that right now" and I said "this is the only time I could bring it by, I'm between government tests" and she says "well I'm between class and this is my lunch!" but she took it anyway and closed the door.
So yeah, Ms. Collesano hates me I've decided. In a matter of one week I've gone from a good student that she liked and had an A with, but now she hates me and I lost 15 points for not turning in my books plus the whole hates me thing so now I'll probably have a B. I know, it's senior year, who cares. And for some reason I care. Oh, also, I didn't take the app test in that class cause I dont' get credit, but she doesn't know this. She just knows I didn't take it, but not why. So that's also probably why she hates me. But Im' going to blow her away with my video final, just you wait and see.
So yeah, after dropping that off I left school (nobody in parking lot) and I went to Qdoba, I figured some people would probably be there, and I was right. I ate with Matt Fenzel, Chris Gibbs, David Vitale, and Kendell. Qdoba is so fuggin' good. In the parking lot when I was leaving, I essentially had the length of my Jeep to pull out from. I'll make a little diagram out of dashes and pipes. --------
As you can see, this is not a lot of room to pull out from. I think I did the reverse, forward, reverse, forward, reverse, forward, etc. about 12 times. It was literally reverse an inch right, forward an inch left, reverse an inch right, etc. As I'm doing this I see a senior who graduated last year named Josh (goes to Hopkins for Creative Writing) in the very same parking lot, but he was running away, and also looking very lost. I didn't get it, but anyway, I couldn't wave at him. I come home, and had to explain to my mom why I was home early and why it was ok to not to be at school even though it's going on. She conceded pretty easily though. Jimmy was already home, he didn't go to school today because he dumped his girlfriend yesterday and supposedly there's a lot of drama going on over it and he just didn't want to deal with it.
|volvo |
-------- -diagram is as proportionally
to scale as possible
-note the room between me and
------------ volvo is the same length as my car
|c ||me||c | (maybe less?)
|a || ||a |
|r || ||r |
------------
I'm going to go play some Halo.
Spork.
so today is my 18th birthday! i can now:
+ go to concerts at headliners!
+ buy things from infomercials!
+ enter contests and sweepstakes!
+ be on the real world!
woow, life opportunities are just opening up everywhere! why didnt anyone tell me being 18 was this fun?
- jo [buy me presents. kidding.]
I'm almost two weeks overdue again on a post. I apologize.
I honestly don't remember much, we had our photo show, which I meant to post an invite for so that everyone would come but I didn't. Thanks to those that did come. It was a lot of fun, great photo work, maybe not as cool of a show as the Lavahouse, but that's because this show was more refined and clean cut. Matt Fenzel has this amazing picture of this bus, I don't know why I like it so much but I do. And Matt Schauer comes back from Scotland two days before the show and manages to put together six entirely brand new pieces all from the trip, and all amazing. I threw in this1, this2, this3, this4, and this5. There, now you don't have to go see it for my work, you can go see it for all the amazing work done by everybody else! Oh, and because this1 has a twist on the matt job, and you should go check that out.
I took the BC Calculus test. That bent me over backwards and did me sideways with a spatula, if that in anyway provides insight into the test. Tuesday night this week I went to bed at 4:30 Wednesday morning and woke up an hour later at 5:30 to go to school. Why? My English reading log. Actually, it wouldn't have taken so long if I hadn't lost all my Tess stuff (which I found the next day during class). So that meant I was extremely tired and didn't really find time to study for calculus, and decided it would be more worth my while to sleep than study because if I did study I'd have fallen asleep in the test. Oh well, I only need a four on the AB subscore to get credit at NU, I can even get a 1 BC and a 4 AB (supposedly this is possible) and still get credit, so rawk out. Tomorrow is the Physics B test, and I should be studying but I'm writing this.
I'm also working on a screenplay for my English final on postmodernism. It's going to have consumerism, loss of identity, loss of distinction between reality and virtual reality, image is everything, and surveillance all at once! I'm excited. If you are interested in an acting role post a little comment here so I'll know who's available these next two weeks. I can't use all of you, and I also have specific characters in mind so some of you may or may not fit those characters. But let me know. I'm taking the project on alone as far as my classmates go, but my sister comes home Wednesday with my old miniDV camcorder (Sony TVR-27, f'in sweet). It's going to be so phat.
Let's see, I know more than this happened ... It may have been last week, I think, was last week Derby? I had a derby party, that was fun, I made burgers on our new grill, which is a freaking beast! The burgers were good, and then we sat by the fire. People left early because they're all boring. Just kidding. JLew brought Derby Pies, mmmm goody. I don't really remember much else, I need to pick the running back up, I'm starting to REALLY get lazy, it's so crazy. I'm currently trying to employ my brother to help me, we'll see how that goes.
Alright, so I guess that brings things up to date. My prom only cost me 9.50 (7.50 for a movie and 2.00 for a cup of coffee afterwards). Grant and I went and saw Identity at Tinseltown. That was a pretty great movie. Once again, though, I got carded. Do I really not look 17? Or is it because every time I get carded it's the same guy? Grant didn't get carded, and he's a good three feet shorter than I am ;-). Yeah, so Identity was great because of a lot of reasons. One, the preview doesn't give anything away. I hate movies that give away substantial amounts of plot and leave you already knowing the killer partway through. Secondly, every time you thought you knew the killer, you were wrong. And then, they pull a huge twist on you! And then they pull another twist on you AGAIN right at the very end! Totally unsuspecting. Great movie. At starbucks, Grant and I caught up on old times, discussed the plans for my movies and he gave me a few suggestions. Then we rented "This is Spinal Tap" which is a brilliant movie. He left about 1:30. Church this morning, lunch, and now I need to leave to go buy some stuff and then study fisix.
Spork.
