jackshoegazer: (3D/Grant)
I survived another creative writing workshop.  This time there were almost no criticisms and a ton of praise.  Apparently this poem is particularly good.  Now I have the problem of upping the ante or at least writing another poem equally awesome in a couple weeks.  This one is a revision of a poem I did a couple years ago, so some of you may recognize it:

Listen )

However, I am not doing terribly well in French.  Last year I successfully managed an AB both semesters.  So far, I'm looking at solid B or BC range.  It's like I was supposed to have been studying French all summer.  Suddenly I am supposed to be able to listen and follow along perfectly even though I've never heard or learned most of the vocabulary used.  It's ridiculously frustrating, but it's the last semester I have to take it, so there's at least light at the end of this hellish francophone tunnel.
jackshoegazer: (Horns/Pan)
I went as Bob Ross this year.  Here's me at Slave Leia's 80's Halloween party.  Jacquelyn went as Marion Ravenwood with an awesome Headpiece of the Staff of Ra.  Eric went as Mr. Rogers.  There was a great Hunter S. Thompson there, as well as a Gozer, two Indiana Joneses, Roger & Jessica Rabbit, Peach & Mario, and Slave Leia's boyfriend went as Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.  It was pretty awesome.


MOAR! )

jackshoegazer: (FuckYou/Drunk)
The guy I'm sharing a big table with in the Education building looks like a young James Spader, which means he looks like a fucking douche canoe.  He's attempting to study for an Italian exam, but his girlfriend is here arguing with him.  They're whispering pretty low, but from I can make out, they binge-drink a lot and so do their friends and James Spader is really upset because some girl was passed out in his bed and apparently had puked all over his room.

I shouldn't be surprised; I hear conversations like this all the time, more so than any other topic.  Kids drink too much in college?  SHOCKER, I know.  But as someone who has been-there, done-that and likely partied harder than 99% of these kids ever will, I can't help but feel a little OH-FOR-THE-FUCK-OF-GOD-GROW-UP.

But I know it's something that they have to go through.  It's our cultural equivalent of sending the adolescents into the woods to prove their manhood as we get, it's the only thing remotely close to a shocking and transformative shift into adulthood that our culture allows.   Let them burn off all that crazy, undirected, unfocused energy and hope when they come out the other side, they're functional adults.  Hope is the key word in that sentence.
jackshoegazer: (Jack/OhNine)

I had half of a pitcher of a tasty IPA and watched an a capella group with some friends.  Now, I am lounging.
jackshoegazer: (Random/Faceless)
I'm sitting between two different rooms in the Rathskeller and thus I am simultaneously listening to MSNBC and some jukebox playing Tears For Fears.  Everybody wants to rule the world...

An acquaintance of mine just found out that the kid he'd been raising wasn't actually, you know, biologically his.

I sold an old Polaroid camera to a friend of mine who I haven't seen since my first semester at community college back in 2007.  Turns out since I last saw him him, he's gotten into the Western Esoteric Tradition and hermetic philosophy and Qabalah and all that.  It was nice talking to someone about that stuff since I don't really know anyone else who's into that whole lovely universe.



Do we really have to listen to six more months of Republicans playing crazy-chicken before we know which kook will be losing to Obama?  When Pat Robertson says the GOP has gone off the deep end, I think it's time for the GOP to do some soul-searching.

Being able to say "wife" opens up a whole toolbox of cultural contexts and archetypes that I'd been previously unable to access.  Or in layman's terms, being married continues to be a weird, weird thing.
jackshoegazer: (3D/Grant)
I found another new hobby – making ringtones for the iPhone.  I made like ten of them so far.  If anyone wants them, here they are.
jackshoegazer: (Random/Antlerbike)
I should really be reading about early Homo hunting hypothesis or Shakespeare's sonnets, but instead, I'm procrastinating with more graphic work:



The whole cursorial versus ambush hunting argument is very interesting, which is pretty much the most interesting thing about this class so far.  Well, that and the "expensive tissue hypothesis" in which when early Homo switched from gut-intensive ape-like diets full of fruit, berries, tubers, and honey, to easier-to-digest, awesome-as-fuck meat, and our giant churning bellies slowly evolved into into giant thinking brains.
jackshoegazer: (Smoking/Phone)
I just got a phone call on my landline and the caller ID said it was from "PHONE SCAM."
jackshoegazer: (Hipster/Panda)
Did you know that the French word "avocat" means both "avocado" and "lawyer"?

  
jackshoegazer: (Spock/Detective)
It turns out I sold two photographs during the art show I was in back in August.  Between the wedding and school, I'd forgotten all about it and finally went to pick up my check and my other photos today.





Surprise!
jackshoegazer: (News/Fucked)
scumbag is a used condom.  It's a relatively young word, only in use since 1935.  It wasn't used as a derogatory term for a person until the late 1960's.
jackshoegazer: (Skull/Bullseye)
Here are some recent graphic projects I've done.  One is a beer label, in case you didn't catch that.  The other is a rave flyer.  They asked for modern and sleek with just a little sexy. Click to embiggen.







jackshoegazer: (3D/Grant)
Two of my digital art pieces are now available at RedBubble as iPhone cases.

     

Click to see them and more!

This could be a very exciting development.
jackshoegazer: (Cab/Taxi)
Today, I had a nice conversation with a British anthropologist.  We mostly talked about how odd it is that more people in England aren't religious at all and churches are weird places for old people, and yet in America religion has thrived and some ridiculous percentage of people, even higher than in Revolutionary times, believe in God.  We also discussed some people's amazing abilities to simultaneously consider the religious beliefs of other cultures, past and present, to be quaint superstitions while not applying that same standard to their own chosen form of religion.

A different passenger, an old retired woman who used to work for the university, who was going to pay her cable bill, told me about a little restaurant in the Italian neighborhood called The Three Sisters (one of whom shortly died.)  When this woman first moved to Madison in her 30's, she tried to go there for dinner once, but they refused to serve and "unaccompanied woman."  And later, she went back with her little white-haired mother, sure they would serve her this time, yet they still refused to serve women alone.  She assured me she was no spring chicken and even when she was, she was no one a man would try to pick up in a restaurant.

She also told me that her husband died four years ago.  She turned off the internet because they only used it for his business.  She never drove so she still doesn't.  Her husband owns a Prius, but it's just been sitting in the driveway all this time.  She doesn't even know where the keys are.  I think it's because she doesn't realize that a Prius doesn't have a normal-looking key.  But she's happy, because walking and busing gets her out more.  She'd rather walk eight blocks to catch a bus she knows is coming rather than find a new bus closer to her house.

I picked up an early-twentysomething man at his house on the far-west end of Madison.  He was going downtown to pick up his car because he'd gotten too drunk to drive and left his car behind.  We driving for about three blocks when he said, "Shit, pull over!  That's my car!"  What?  "That's my car, stop!" And he got out and apologized and gave me ten bucks for my trouble.  So, yes, dear readers, he likely drove most of the way home drunk and didn't even remember doing it.

Such is the life of a taxi driver.

Garbage

Oct. 20th, 2011 12:50 pm
jackshoegazer: (Somber/Oscar)
I am a hibernating bear today.  Our new roommate, Eric, a friend of Jacquelyn's from college, had acute chest pain at 9:30 last night.  I took him to the emergency room where they basically said it was "attack of the bacon cheeseburger" and was likely gastritis.  They gave him a bunch of acid blockers and said he should follow up with a gastroenterologist.



We finally got out of the ER at little after 1am, which is hours and hours after I usually go to bed.  Thus, I am a sleepy guy today.

I'm trying to keep up on everything, but I can't bring myself to do much of anything.  I am not a happy camper lately.
jackshoegazer: (Leisure/Chair)
For my writing workshop, we were told to write a bad poem.  Since I am not a fan of structured poetry and especially not fond of sonnets, I decided to try and write a sonnet about love.

Sonnet on the Theme of Ice

Your lips are cold like something made of ice,
And when I push back, your lips freeze to mine,
And my heart thinks that’s not so very nice,
It beats alone, like me, tonight, with wine.

I am stymied and corrupt but I think,
That your love could rub and butter me up,
But alas, my tears fell in the mixed drink,
And you drank from my sorry martini cup.

So now I’m drunk and I remember you,
And how I kissed you years after you died,
But listen closely, don’t you misconstrue,
My soul was never so drunk as my pride.

Like ice to keep the vodka freezing cold,
Your lips were warmer than my heart’s black gold.

I actually kind of like it, sadly.
jackshoegazer: (Body/Man)
I ran my first 5K today as a fundraiser for GSAFE, who work to make schools safe and end bullying for LGBTQ students. They are awesome and do good work. I got a cramp in my leg into the first mile and had to run/walk the last two, but I still did it in 38 minutes. Once I got off the cement and ran on the ground next to the road, I was fine.

Here's my team.
jackshoegazer: (Writing/Typehead)
The nineteen-page short story I wrote for my creative writing workshop went over pretty well.  A lot of the criticisms I was already aware of, as they were fairly structural things which resulted from squashing a novel-length idea into nineteen pages.  It's a sort-of mystery and it was fun watching the people who caught the clues argue with the people who didn't catch the clues.  I was enthralled to witness people discussing the themes, trying to decide what I was trying to say, which side of which arguments in the story I was taking, which themes won out.  There were some secrets in the story that no one caught, which makes me wonder if I should keep that little secret a secret or make it a little more obvious.  Part of me likes that there was one thing that no one caught.

There was, however, a universal consensus that the following was an amazing scene.  It's a woman responding when an old detective asks her about her husband who has gone missing:

She sighed like she was remembering the taste of a great steak, but it was more immediate, more palpable.  There was a nostalgia in that sigh that I’ve only ever heard in women from my own generation when asked about their husbands––young men who went off to wars and died undiminished, men who never aged, never developed faults, never got fat and fathered children, who never got angry and never worked too hard, or had to be nagged to mow the lawn, but lived forever as handsome paramours who never sinned and were always faithful.  An archetypal phantom no mortal could live up to.

I actually enjoyed having my work critiqued.  This is the first time I've been in a class where I wasn't––by far––the best writer in the group. (I know, modest much?)  I liked hearing ideas and critiques from smart and sophisticated readers.  It was badass.  Or I am a masochist.


jackshoegazer: (Boy/Squares)


I went to see Communist Daughter last night.  Actually, I went to see a friend's band who was opening for Communist Daughter.  I felt bad there were only a dozen people there, but it was a Tuesday evening around dinner time.  However, it was a good show and I downloaded their latest album this morning and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.  I'd enjoy it more if I didn't have to stop listening to it to study for the French test I have in two-point-five hours.

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