This is my favorite picture from my first roll of film taken with my new Holga. This was taken somewhere between the mojave preserve and twentynine palms, in a mysterious valley filled with shacks of different colors. some abandoned, some inhabited… all creepy.
Many more, and hopefully better, photos to come. :-)
Today I was charging my iPod, and I picked it up and saw this:
Yes. Harg. A Google search is inconclusive, and my own knowledge limited. What, or who, is this “harg”? There are no other documented occurrences of an iPod displaying a cryptic “harg”.
I am feeling a combination of scatterbrained and wanting to write. This is not good.
Year in review, in chronological order:
Quiet. Cold. Got a job designing on campus at the CTL. Figure drawing was frustrating and long but helped my sketching. Learned how to weld. Photo gigs started picking up! Dated Tara, like cliff jumping in the river with your friends. Decided to take all three 200-level graphic design classes Spring term and apply to the BFA a year ahead. Ran the Ragnar relay. Dated Nicole, like a meteor. Spent rest of summer on BFA portfolio. Applied to the BFA and triumphantly, thankfully, was accepted. Gave the BFA everything I had. Made great new friends in the design program. Home in Las Vegas. Family. Christmas. Amboy desert excursion. Quiet.
This semester completely beat it out of me. Coming home to Vegas, I felt like a half-dead desert traveler crawling into an oasis with tire tread marks on his back, a reminder of the semi truck that hit him while crossing the desert road of graphic design. It was hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever done aside from serving a mission. But it feels good to pour out your passion onto something, to stretch beyond your limits and be physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually reminded every day that you are alive.
This year will be better. I will screen print posters. I will take lots of pictures, with FILM. I will think at night and read by the lamp. I will listen to Alan Parson’s Project’s I, Robot. I will have fun with my friends. I will stay far away from pop-tarts. I will never start designing with an empty well. I will get sunshine. I will go to New York City and come back with Knowledge. I will hold hands. I will go hiking often. I will have an epiphany. I will run 8 miles again and again. I will let myself enjoy life. I will be ok.
Danielle and I were thinking, people could use some tips about picking up hitchhikers. Think about it: have you ever thought about the concept of hitchhiking, without immediately linking it to murder? Are there not important reasons for this? It thus becomes obvious that everyone could use some tips about avoiding killage when hitching a ride.
1. IF YOU ARE A HITCHHIKER and you are picked up by a truck driver that looks pretty okay, but then his eyes turn red and he pulls a machete out from under the seat and says to give him your belongings or else he’ll murder you, and he might murder you anyway because that’s what people who have red eyes do, DO NOT WORRY. What you need to do is tell him that you buried all of your gold somewhere nearby. And that you’ll lead him to it if he doesn’t murder you quite yet. Then reassure him that if he graces you with these extra minutes to live, he can murder you after he gets your gold. He will be pleased with the idea and follow you wherever you lead him. Now the “ball is in your court” as they say and you can lead him to a police station, into a cave of hungry wolves (if he is obese you can just get up to the cave and chuck a rock in there or something and then run and the guy will be totally screwed), or off the road into the forest to where there’s that creepy cabin where ANOTHER murderer lives and they would totally have a face-off.
2. IF YOU ARE A DRIVER and your guilt for not picking up strangers on freeways somehow overwhelms your survival instinct, you have a problem. At times hitchhikers have weapons that they’ll pull on drivers to get them to unwillingly drive to a certain location or participate in a high speed chase involving helicopters. If this happens to you, DO NOT WORRY. The bearded maniac sitting next to you may be holding a five-inch blade, but YOU are piloting a sixteen foot block of STEEL filled with FLAMMABLE LIQUIDS. You can use the car itself as a weapon against the man in your car. This is achievable in several strategic ways. Option 1 would be to begin to act like a maniac yourself, veering dangerously close to cliff edges or into oncoming traffic for several seconds at a time, acting like you have no desire to live anyway, and thereby psychologically disarming him and causing him to fear for his own life instead, thereby causing the potential murderer to become, in fact, the potential murderee.
Sometimes people say how unbelievable it is how many laws we have in this country, but when situations like these come to mind it makes a lot of sense.
Anyway, Option 2 is to make sure you’re buckled up, but that the murderer isn’t (typical of your average killer). Then, get going about 50 miles an hour, and point out the passenger side window at some feigned terror. When the murderer looks, definitely slam on your brakes.
Option 3 is to plan long beforehand for such situations. Effectively, you can booby-trap your car. Be creative.
10.10.09
I am unbelievably, irrefutably, kinesthetically, non-denominationally occupied. I have been on campus since 8 am YESTERDAY. Indeed, I have, as they say, “pulled” an “all-nighter”. Now, as Salvador Dali and other Surrealist painters did, it is time to use sleep deprivation to my ARTISTIC ADVANTAGE. But first, to share some things learned in the past few hours:
1. Water keeps you awake. Lots of it. TONS of it. Not only does water naturally help you stay alert, but you obviously need to take care of the output of such water quite frequently. This, I have found, keeps me more awake than caffeine.
2. In the periodical restroom trips throughout the night, in the mirror I have seriously noticed my beard grow out longer each time. It is a bizarre feeling to be occupied with one thing for so long that you can WATCH YOUR OWN HAIR GROW.
3. I didn’t think I could look more like hell than I already did, but this has proven to be false. A self-appraisal of my physical appearance returns the official result: “DYING WEREWOLF FOUND IN SOGGY DUMPSTER”.
10.12.09
Whoa. I spent almost 30 hours straight in the studio and was awake for around 45 hours. It was like a time warp. On one hand, it was so satisfying to finally have a few hours to work on a project; on the other hand, I was approaching lunacy by the time I went to sleep. But honestly, I guess that what I did really isn’t that crazy. I have design comrades who do the same thing way more often than I do.
I have a friend named Libby who once stayed awake for three days and three nights because she heard that by that point, you are legally insane. She stayed up and made pies all night instead, and on the third night she was out on a walk and had a hallucination involving a cat crossing her path, then suddenly turning from orangish to black and its eyes turning evil and red. She knew then that it was time to go to bed. I believe this because when I saw her in the final hours of this experiment, she had CRAZY EYES. She looked at me, and something instinctual spoke deep within me, telling me that I was standing in front of someone who had something very wrong with her.
Over the Thanksgiving break, my family and I went up to Cedar Mountain to cut down a Christmas tree. On the way up, we saw a few frozen waterfalls.
And here’s the Gibson crew, sans Jake and Linds who are on missions:
It’s times like these that cause you to remember just how caught up in life you’re getting. Getting out in Nature with your loved ones and away from work and computers throws everything back into perspective.
Okay, so happy thing: I e-mailed Camera Obscura, and they e-mailed me back! Kinda fun. However, I’m kind of confused by Lee (the drummer’s) reply.
Here’s the situation: I watched some videos of their performances for the first time the other day, and I was surprised to see that the band’s faces were all stone-cold emotionless during fun and upbeat songs. I decided to send them some constructive criticism about smiling and really getting into the music as they play. I was so stoked to get a reply that I assumed the best of intentions on their part, but the more I read it, the more I am thinking that maybe they were not pleased with my comment. Here’s the two messages below, I would really like to know what you guys think I should interpret this. It’s a little cryptic. (FYI, the people he mentions in his message are lead singers of bands such as R.E.M. and The Cure.)
Hey Camera Obscura,
I just wanted to say two things. The first, I think you guys are fantastic. I own all of your albums and I think you have a great sound. Tracyanne’s voice is beautiful and the more I listen, the more I catch the little nuances in how she sings certain parts. That makes her a great lead vocalist.
However, the second thing is that today, for the first time, I watched some videos of your performances and I noticed that you guys all had pretty somber faces during performances, except for the drummer, he seems pretty happy. If I was to think of anything that would keep you guys from going even bigger, this would be it. Tracyanne especially, I swear if you kept a big smile on your face the whole time and showed some emotion relative to which song you were playing, your shows would be ten times better.
Just a thought. You guys are great. My Maudlin Career is a great installment in your discography.
- Luke Gibson
And, for the reply:
Hey Luke,
thanks for your mail.
Would you mail Robert Smith, Jim Reid, Michael Stipe, James Allan etc and recommend that they smile? Is it worse for a girl not to smile than a man do you think? We’ve talked about this a lot and I still don’t think we understand your comments. I can assure you this, there is nothing worse than someone shouting “SMILE!” at somebody who is not. This is not going to work.
Just a thought.
Lee
So what do you think?
(Edit: So I re-read the e-mail this morning and it’s pretty obvious now that Lee didn’t have the most flowery intentions in this message. The funny thing is, I already replied to it and, still being in good humor, decided to elaborate on my comments that they didn’t apparently understand (unknowingly rubbing it in even more). Maybe it was naÏve, but hey, it was Sunday, I had just had a great meal with good friends, and a band I liked had sent me a message.
Laura, you have a point. I’m not sure if I want to support a group of people that don’t have the good sense to take a little criticism from the people they’re performing for. Either way… if their performances are dull and lifeless, they have no one to blame.)
Today I learned that typography, however unrefined, can reveal to you answers to your problems. This image isn’t very good, but putting it together helped me unearth some negative energy I’ve been holding on to.
Ultrasounds Awesome