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Wednesday, 30 March 2005

Secrets: Must See Item of the Week!

Even if you don't do anything remotely useful for the rest of this week, GO CHECK OUT THIS BLOG! It's fascinating.  Part art, part social experiement, PostSecret is a blog dedicated to posting up the secrets sent in by hundreds of participants.  The artist invites people to pick up post cards and share their secrets, preferably illustrated.  While the selection on the blog is limited, the collection is wonderful.

It's interesting how people willingly reveal these secrets only when they are so far removed from where it will be posted.  Blogs are different, especially if friends read your blog, how can you post your deepest darkest secrets then? Also, I think this project has a lot to do with that very very dark secret, something you barely even admit to yourself sometimes.  And of course, there's something to be said about our fascination with reading them.

As an added bonus, the creator is local and he exhibited many of his cards at ArtoMatic in december 2004.  He also has a travel bug out through geocaching.com with a box of cards...I've convinced my friend we should go out and find it and send in our own secrets.  The problem, I think, is now I have the precedence of the exhibited secrets, when  I think I would have been truly creative if I had no basis for comparison. 

Thanks, P, for showing this to me!

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug


by: DJGroovySlug at March 30, 2005 21:55 | link | comments (1) random thoughts

Wednesday, 30 March 2005

 STAR Workshops

Just to keep the Prof. utd on the semester, I've attended the following workshops:

Dreamweaver I, II, III, IV
Flash I & II
Unix Basics
(in progress: Flash III, Dreamweaver V & VI, InDesign, Photoshop)

The schedule is somewhat hard to find time for me to go, but the instructor mentioned that we can do one-on-one sessions if the classes offered don't fit our schedule.  I might sign up with  friend for the remaining Dreamweaver classes, since they don't offer those classes as much. 

The classes overall are quite good.  I feel like they move at just the right place.  I've had Tim Bell as an instructor the most amount of times and he is by far the most helpful and best instructor out of all of them, but they are all really good about addressing all your issues and making sure you understand everything.  I really like Dreamweaver now, except I don't have the visual design skills to make something really cool, which is an idea for a class they might consider.  Except part of me wonders if now that I have Dreamweaver I will forget any HTML I've ever learned. 

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 30, 2005 14:58 | link | comments (1) dj groovy slug recommends

Wednesday, 30 March 2005

 Wednesday Poetry

There is always a certain amount of coincidence in life.  I was going to post this poem anyway, but now it serves a dual purpose in celebration of American Girl's fabulous news!

So here's the story behind the poem.  I think I've known for a good portion of my short adult life that I don't want to have children.  But nothing made me realize this more than when we read this poem in english class one semester.  Everyone in class had the same collected breath when we finished: "Awwwwww!" Me? I thought it was weird.  And I realized that reaction isn't normal.  Of course, I'm still young, and as some of my older friends say, I probably will end up having kids.  But I obviously need some therapy first.  Don't let my weirdness detract from the sweetness of the poem! Kinnell is a lovely poet.

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run -- as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears -- in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on --
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body --
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
-Galway Kinnell

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 30, 2005 11:09 | link | comments (3) wednesday poetry

Tuesday, 29 March 2005

Technology Sucks (Blows?)!

Remember that scene in Office Space where they take a bat to the office printer?  I feel like doing that to my collected group of devices in my room.  I spent the day trying to get my printer to actually print something.  I changed the cartridge and now nothing comes out.  It acts like its printing but the pages come out stark blank. Now I've fussed with it so much, it refuses to do anything until I replace all the ink cartridges (I had changed only the black ink cartridge).  It's so frustrating that I wasted a whole afternoon on this, with the added time of going to a computer lab and printing out my assignment there before class.  It still doesn't print, I've wasted over $40 on new ink and I still need one more cartridge that I will have to get over the weekend since the computer store on campus doesn't have yellow.  And if that doesn't work, the whole thing is going out the window.

Now to top it all off, I was essentially done with the hypertext assignment we were supposed to do for class, when Word "unexpectedly quit" which lost all my documents and made me royally pissed off.  I don't understand creating webpages on Word, and I don't have Dreamweaver or the like, so I was trying to make do.  But now they are all gone.  So I resorted to simply redoing my index page (homepage).  It more or less worked...except the commas are these funny little symbols.  Again, a whole evening wasted, which I just hate cuz I can't afford wasted time right now.  I hate technology.  It occurs to me that unlike olden days, we understand the technology that we use a lot less.  A farmer not only knew how to use a plow, he could fix it if it broke.  Now the computer breaks down and half of us feel as though a part of us has gone into cardiac arrest and we don't know the heimlich maneuver.

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 29, 2005 23:34 | link | comments dj groovy slug recommends, random thoughts

Tuesday, 29 March 2005

Things I Would Write if I didn’t Think Anybody Ever Read this Blog

I’m really worried about the future. When I talk about it, or write about it, I put it in the safer term: “stressed.” But I’m truly worried, wringing my hands in private, what am I going to do after graduation? Why sugar coat it any longer? I don’t want to do anything. I want to live with my friend in Ecuador for a month, then spend the rest of the summer backpacking around Europe and eventually make my way back to Hawaii where I will become a surfer and make all my money at my shaved ice shop. But no, I have to find a job, get an apartment and become a yuppie who goes out for martinis after work while wearing nice pumps. Hell, I already do the martinis and have nice pumps. I fear I’m turning into a yuppie, but at the same time, I feel like that’s what I should want next. But sometimes I want so much more.

 I am nowhere near where I should be with my thesis. I procrastinate and sometimes I can’t turn off the damn television and make myself write anymore. Sometimes I just plain don’t care. I spend my days half working on it, half trying to figure out if I’m fooling my advisor. How much longer can I pull this off? I’ve hit this wall where I would rather do nothing for a while, and I really mean nothing. Sometimes I just lie in bed and listen to my iPod and stare at the ceiling. I can do this for hours.

Who am I fooling? I have no idea what I’m doing and what I should be doing and frankly, most of the time I’m lost in this place somewhere inside my head and when I come back to reality, I realize I’ve missed something important and it’s too late for me to say anything.

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 29, 2005 14:59 | link | comments (5) random thoughts

Monday, 28 March 2005

This Divided State to Be Screened Tonight

Since I posted previously on Michael Moore, I thought tonight's screening at the JC Cinema would be of interest to some.  I'm not sure if the director, Steven Greenstreet, is a supporter of Moore making it hard to say how the film should be, but it sounds really interesting.

This Divided State, a film about the controversy that erupted at Utah Valley State College last year when director Michael Moore was invited to its campus, will be shown tonight in the SUB II Ballroom on the Fairfax Campus at 7 p.m. The showing, sponsored by the Program Board, is free and open to all.

 Filmed by the young director Steven Greenstreet, the documentary chronicles the intense free speech debate, cash bribes, threats of violence, and other astonishing events that followed the announcement that Moore would appear at the college. Greenstreet, 25, and his crew captured material that would form the feature that not only documents the political divide in Utah County, but also mirrors the current national divide. Greenstreet will make brief comments and answer questions immediately following the screening.

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 28, 2005 11:03 | link | comments random thoughts

Monday, 28 March 2005

I Kick Ass

I think that should just be the title of my blog. So what's going on in my life?

1. Three of my picks for Final Four have made it, which means my bracket should be number one in the pool.  I won't list the team I have going on to win the championship here, because I just don't want to jinx anything right now. But when Mich. State toppled UK for the upset, I just about orgasmed.
2. After three straight days of clouds – and I mean NO SUNSHINE whatsoever the weather bug is finally claiming high 60s to low 70s this week. Finally! I almost paid for a tanning booth just to boost my vitamin D.
3. I was blessed with considerable Easter victuals to last the rest of the semester.

 okay so not that exciting. I really spent most of my weekend catching up on all my readings and research for my thesis. I had hoped to make it to the Cherry Blossom festival, but the weather made that plan pointless. And I totally failed on going to the Biennial at the Corcoran. Que sera sera, Sometimes you just have those boring weekends.

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 28, 2005 00:49 | link | comments (3) random thoughts

Monday, 28 March 2005

Writing About Cool, Ch 1-5

 Initial thoughts: poor writing and weak argument make for boring book. Honestly, I feel this book makes an argument for something that doesn’t really exist. While Rice makes us aware of our conceptions regarding the word “cool” and how it has been appropriated into advertising, I still fail to see the point of the book. Mostly, I think I disagree with his use of the word “cool” as a cultural form, rather than simply a “term” that has been manipulated, especially seeing as how “cool” can mean so many things to so many different people. I don’t think Halo 2 is cool, it’s just not. My cousin would say it is. Rice does not make the distinction between the use of the term and perhaps the idea that the idea of “cool” has simply been created by advertisers. What precedence do the advertisers work off of when they market something as cool? In this case, it becomes an argument for what came first, the chicken or the egg? I feel like Rice preaches to the choir: he acts as though we are all fooled by the advertisers, which I don’t think gives a lot of credit to students that are the product of post-modern thinking. We’re all very aware of corporate motives. Although he does address teenage consumption and advertising, he fails to realize the term “cool” does not permeate through all aspects of life, especially as my own parents could barely figure it out for themselves. I don’t even know what’s cool.

I had HUGE issues with chapter five, especially with cultural jamming. These cultural jammers are trying to make us aware that what we see through advertising is artificial; however, they are still defining themselves and their ideas through the idea of “cool.” Subversion does not mean originality, it means going against the norm, which means the norm is still defining your actions/ideas. Of course, I think someone else in the class mentioned the idea of innovativeness (http://camelia.motime.com/post/424812), and I agree that originality is not something 100% pure. All of us are products of everything around us, no one wakes up one morning and thinks of something that wasn’t completely original. It may be something no one else has done or thought of, but it’s still a product of the combination and pastiche of everything around us, it is the combination/pastiche that is unique (the final product).

Rice’s idea of “cool” reminded me of the idea of connoisseurship, esp. when he mentions the fact that we just “know” when something is cool. Sally Price, a cultural critic, writes in “The Mystique of Connoisseurship” that “we generally deal with the task of discrimination according to a complex set of cues, in pursuit of the impression of being just a bit more (correctly) discriminating than our raw perceptual faculties allow us to be.” (14). Applying this idea to the term “cool,” it proves that “coolness” is artificial, since no one really knows what it is. She also quotes Kenneth Clark, a famous connoisseur, “I never doubted the infallibility of my judgments…This almost insane self-confidence lasted till a few years ago, and the odd thing is how many people have accepted my judgments. My whole life might be described as one long, harmless confidence trick.” I feel as though it’s all artificial (think: The Matrix, yet in real life). What does it all mean? Part of me wonders why we should care if it is all artificial. I choose the red pill.

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug
by: DJGroovySlug at March 28, 2005 00:38 | link | comments dj groovy slug recommends

Friday, 25 March 2005

What We Think: Now's You're Chance to Say

Got this off of Jheka's blog, and Seth was kind enough to respond to my comment.  I thought our class would be interested in something like this, especially since we're so much in the center of all of this.

 xxx, Luv DJ Groovy Slug
My name is Seth Spores; I am one of the three editors and co-founders of College Tree Publishing. We contacted hundreds of university and college conservative and liberal groups, political science departments, and university news papers and requested essay submissions from people in the 17 to 25 year old age group on political and social issues. The end result was What We Think: Young Voters Speak Out, which was put out nationally in late October. The book was meant to be a running forum for political _expression of America's youngest voting demographic, and in that regard has been a success. Since the book was published in October, the book has already received national press on CNN, MSNBC, an hour long special on CSPAN-Book TV and has been nominated for the Franklin Award.

 We are a non-partisan company possessing a Republican, Democrat and Libertarian leaning editor, trying to give fair and equal voice to all ideologies present among college age youth. We are currently accepting submissions for our next two books, What We Think 2 and What We Think About God and looking to increase the number of well written pieces. Our goal is to receive 10,000 submissions from now through summer, and to publish the top 200 to 300 in late third quarter.

I am contacting many blogs and other forms of media not necessarily connected to Universities, in hopes of reaching a wider base of essayists. We would like to know if you would run a short story on your blog, stating that we are requesting submissions for national publication. All authors are given full credit for their work, a short bio is dedicated to them in the back of the books, and we've been arranging book signings and talks across the country for authors in our current edition so these young authors get the credit and visibility they deserve. Let me stress finally that individuals submitting need not be in college to qualify for publication.

Please feel free to contact us with questions or requests for more information,
Seth Charles Guy Spores Editor and Co-Founder of College Tree Publishin
seth@collegetreepublishing.com
www.collegetreepublishing.com


by: DJGroovySlug at March 25, 2005 19:38 | link | comments (7) random thoughts

Friday, 25 March 2005

Do Guys Really have to Worry Bbout This?

Thanks to the always quirky Wash. Post online discussions, I present The Urinal Test and The Urinal Game (judging by the range of topics, it's obvious that nothing gets done in half of DCs working population - oh wait, we're talking about the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.  Suddenly it's all very clear...).  I think I've learned more from these than I have from four years in college and a long-term relationship with a male.  But I have a question: is this really true? Have you male readers out there actually thought about this?  What happens when you throw stalls into the mix?  Do you look like a wuss if you take the stall?

I can't think of any women's room etiquette that works on this level, although I know you will be mauled if you try to skip the line. 

xxx, Luv, DJ Groovy Slug

by: DJGroovySlug at March 25, 2005 19:00 | link | comments (3) random thoughts