If anyone wants to own up to their punk piece (who isn't Doug, Melissa, or Josh), please leave a comment.

I am super curious.

Who likes waking up to do some homework, checking a German syllabus, and then discovering that she has a test that day??

I DO I DO

Oh wait.

That's a big fucking lie.

[snerk]

No one who reads this needs to care, but I was just going through a mix that an ex made me and I didn't realize that there was overlap with a song off of a mix that another boyfriend of a different time period made me and it made me giggle a lot.

I don't know, blame it on the fact that I'm stressed out and sleep deprived.

That was the whole post.

EDIT: I lied, there is more. They also both finished with a superfamous Sufjan Stevens song.

Besides that the mixes are fairly different.

But those both make me giggle.

The punk assignment is giving me more trouble than it ought to. It is, at its core, fairly simple, but uh...

I totally am not angry enough about anything right now to write in a punk voice.

I'll probably end up making something up, or staying up super late so that I can get super pissed or something.

Expect a post on the Halloween scene later, but suffice to say, it was suuuuper fun and I had a rockin' good time at the McApartment on Friday and at the Singers party on Saturday.

Here is why I adore my brother (one of many reasons, anyway).

So the birthday cards that were addressed according to instructions given by my mother (my mom, my brother, my godparents) were very slow in showing up because my mom is silly and gave people a ridiculously vague address that is blatantly wrong (nowhere does Spruce street show up on there, only the name of the University and a misspelled name of the college house). Thus, I receieved my mother and my brother's cards today, two weeks post-birthday (haha- post... mail... get it?). My brother's card is as follows.

The front has a picture of two flowers, above which is some dumb ass script that reads "For My Sister." Inside, the printed text says (in the same goofy script) "May everything beautiful about this day find its way into your heart. [flower] Happy Birthday"

My brother wrote:

"Caroline,
I realize this card is over the top, but it was the only one they had. Also, I think this card encourages a return to traditional moral values, something that can get lost on a college campus. I hope you are doing well and working hard.

All the best,
Ben"

I realize as I type this out that this is probably only funny to me, or funny to you if you know me and think it's ridiculous that I can be related to someone this uptight and straight-laced, but for reference, the whole thing is tongue in cheek, and my brother has a habit of pretending that he is an overly moral man with a stick up his bum. I mean, he does have a stick up his bum, but he can be very funny at times.

This whole card's hilarity was probably also aided by the fact that I heard his voice saying the text that he wrote, in his ridiculous fake-serious bass voice.

End of story.

I know, I know. I was supposed to post through fall break. And I didn't. That's okay. I was busy. This'll just have to suffice. And if this post makes less sense than my regular ones (shocking concept, I know), blame it on the lack of sleep and the fever. Well, supposed fever. I have one of those suuuuper stuffy noses where your head feels enormous and your breath feels really hot when you breathe through your nose.

H'okay. So I woke up ass early on Friday, stumbled through the pouring rain to the train station to catch a train to the airport (where there were CRAZY LONG LINES at security) and got to Providence, got picked up by my mom, went grocery shopping (I ATE REAL FOOD THIS WEEKEND), and then were deposited at home, which is, incidentally, where I went to high school. Post-eating things, I dragged Artie around campus, saw some friends and teachers, went to Wellesley (college) and it was still raining, met Artie's friends, saw my friend who goes to Wellesley for thirty rain soaked seconds, ended up at home soaked through to the bone and ate real food and watched BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and then shitty on demand free movies.

That was Friday. And only two sentences.

Saturday.

Woke up grossly early, bummed about the house, had luncheon with a family friend, watched cartoons before that, went to see my sister's field hockey game after that, saw people from my class in high school who shouldn't have been home but were, walked into my town to rent American Psycho, got home, went to WATERFIRE in Providence (super pretty, there are pictures tagged of me there in the Facebook) and met the artist of the whole thing (pretty cool), saw my brother a bit before that, came home, watched American Psycho, random OnDemand things, and went to sleep ludicrously late.

Sunday.

Head of the Charles.

Fiasco.

HAH.

I got myself lost in Cambridge, which was shameful. Shameful shameful shameful. Thus I missed my brother's race, ended up walking a grand total of probably more than six miles in a two and a half hour time period. Artie and I ended up just sort of meandering about Boston after that and I ended up seeing Bartolotta, a kid I went to camp with, who means a bunch and a half to me (and then some) and I saw Frank for two seconds that afternoon (also camp, also awesome), and Phil and Dave were in Boston so I saw them (though frankly I see them a lot here).

Note to those of you that have not been there: The Boston Public Gardens are beautiful at night.

Monday was MFA, Little Miss Sunshine, waking up super late, seeing my dad, carving pumpkins, and Forbidden Planet. Tuesday was going to school in the morning to see my painting and drawing teacher, flying home on a plane LITERALLY half filled with Penn kids, being sick, seeing the Prestige (REALLY GOOD), and having just taken some Nyquil liquicappy things, so I'm going to go to sleep. Maybe I'll write something interesting that isn't halfassy and just recounting my weekend to fill space (sorry Greg, I figured I'd be honest).

Later, childrens. And by later I mean tomorrow. And hopefully less congested.

Listening to Against Me! makes me think of this past summer, driving along at night, windows down, music super loud, with me singing along while only knowing half of the words, while whoever was with me either put up with the music, or, like my friend Molly, actually knew all of the words and could shout them far better than I could.

Art and I have sort of a love hate relationship. All throughout high school I was known as being one of the more artistically talented and creative kids, especially in my drawing classes. I had my own exhibition at the beginning of school, was in open portfolio night and got to talk about my work, and did a senior project in art, and I had a substantial sized satellite show at our senior arts night. I even won the fine arts prize.

Over the past few weeks I've just been drowning in my digital design and drawing classes. Stuff that I come up with is really uninteresting in digital design, a lot of my drawings have pretty simple technical problems, and that sort of thing is really disheartening, to be perfectly honest. It's a huge blow to my ego and confidence, and it's also discouraging, and calls into question whether I'm actually any good at this sort of thing. I know I'm not bad at art, so don't think I'm all "oh, I SUCK!" because that's not it. I just don't know how to deal with coming up with interesting ideas. I think I just need to become a lot less inhibited and get out there more in terms of seeing new things and trying different techniques.

I dunno, I was just really frustrated yesterday and ended up spending about five hours straight in Addams (I mean, including class) and not being satisfied with anything. Maybe I just need to work harder and figure out some stuffs.

Specific, I know.

That's what I do.

IN OTHER NEWS

I'M SEEING THE MOTHERFUCKING PILLOWMAN TONIGHT AT THE WILMA THEATRE. FOR FREE.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the service, last.fm is a pretty cool site. Not only does it create a profile that displays the top artists in your iTunes, as well as the top tracks, but it also gives you a lot of information about various songs if you search for them. I used it in looking for albums to get more information about them.

Okay so I haven't posted in a really long while, or often enough, so this'll be a slightly longer one.

I was talking to Damien a couple of weeks back and we started talking about photography (which makes sense, since Damien is in a photo class, we both take digital design together, and we got onto the topic of art and thus, photography) and he has a really interesting take on photo. It's not a tremendously unique one, but it is one that is pretty different from my own, so I find it an entertaining one to reflect upon.

For Damien, photography has to be really thought out and planned; every photograph must be absolutely deliberate and composed, much like a drawing. Photography is very much about intent and the finished product should reflect that to some extent. This makes it sound like he poses everyone very carefully, which I know is not the case, but in looking at Damien's photos I know that isn't what he means. Basically, his philosophy seems to be that people cannot simply point and shoot cameras. That's not how photography works. In order to make photos into art there must be some very definite thought behind it.

Speaking of art. Last spring I did a "senior project" at my high school, which consisted of me creating portraits of six of my friends, and one of them was this one (LOOK LEFT!) of my friend Alex, who was the guitarist in the school blues band (which I was in, but as a vocalist). Drawing him was super frustrating because this kid has just about the worst ADHD I've ever seen; I asked him to stay still for five minutes and he couldn't do it. So I asked him to lie down and sleep and stay still that way, and he was still twitching and fidgeting. I eventually gave up and took some pictures of him as reference images, and then played with powdered graphite and ebony pencil, and the final product is what you see to the left. Now, my high school's yearbook does this thing where parents can purchase a congratulatory page for their kids and put pictures and a cutesy message on it and all that jazz (not unique, I'm sure), and so I got an email from his parents today asking if they could use this image on the page that they are purchasing. Woo! Basically that made my super rainy day.

And on top of all of that, right now "Stairway to Heaven" came up on random, and I had been discussing it with a friend of mine yesterday. Gripe about how cliché or dumb you think this song is (DOUG) but it remains one of my favorite songs in the history of ever. A lot of intensely powerful memories are tied into this song. The song started to come to a close and I was anticipating hearing "a long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile..." (even after almost three years) and so I had to put on Don McLean's American Pie. If you're Doug or Josh, yeah I know I'm a big dork, but it was my first instinct, and I kinda had to because it's been a while.

Anymahoo, that's about it for me. Enjoy your days.

Friday's show, for those of you that couldn't tune in (which I assume was pretty much everyone, since no one listens to WQHS, even though everyone should).

You say it's your birthday? Well it's my birthday too, yeah!

So far, the birthday has been pretty awesome. I am nineteen years of age now (though I mean, technically I won't be until sometime tonight around 8ish), and I am listening to an AWESOME song by Girl Talk (Overtime), and I had drawing this morning which involved us using COLOR PASTELS which are super pretty and fun to use. I rang in the birthday at Robin's with Artie, Kim, Matt, Michael, Jesse, Cat, Steve, Ryley, and Lauren. Robin made dinner and cake and then Jesse made delicious pumpkin things and shortly after midnight my little sister called me to say a quick happy birthday (she was still up doing homework), and then around 1ish I walked back to my dorm with Artie and Jesse and Kim (at least until her dorm), and arrived to find that my roommate (asleep at that point) had taped a happy birthday note to my door. Breakfast consisted of a banana, and then I remembered that Tovë and Joyce gave me a cookie once they learned that it was my birthday today, so I had part of a deliciously large vegan cookie.

Basically, birthdays are fun. And it's also really funny because random people I haven't talked to in a very long time as well as people I regularly talk to have inundated my Facebook wall with posts saying happy birthday. If not for Facebook, I don't think very many people would know that it is my birthday at all.

But yes- class, then loitering, then Singers, then dinner and a movie! Hooray!

Grumblegrumble.

Photoshop and Illustrator frustrate me. I am not understanding Photoshop as quickly as I'd like to, and Illustrator exposes the fact that most of my art is glitzy renderings rather than anything of substance in terms of ideas. Historically I've been more of an observational artist than anything else, probably mostly because I've had academic drawing classes my whole life, and not had to do as much drawing from concept as I should. I'm just stressed for not a very good reason and I'm fully not being proactive about it.

I think I need a swift metaphorical kick in the pants.

IN OTHER NEWS.

Hrm... Well this week looks crazy full. Tomorrow is singers, as usual, and then a Photoshop tutorial, and then there's a study break tomorrow night that I'll go to because it gives me a chance to see a bunch of people that I typically don't see.

And I really don't feel like being so self indulgent as to put down my entire week's schedule.

Even though this is a blog.

And inherently self indulgent.

I am super tired. I think today is an "I am going to stay in and watch movies!" kind of night. Mmm. Maybe I'll even get more than 5 hours of sleep tonight. Scary concept, I know.

Noooo energyyyy.

Links for you!

Playlist from this morning's show

And then I have this friend who is AN AMAZING poet who does spoken word stuff and she's on this website thing and you should all click it and rate her poem with a five, and even if you don't rate it, you should check it out because it is SUPER AWESOME.

That is here.

When you click there you should ALSO check out the poem "Audio Class" by Chad. I got a chance to see him do this over the summer. I went to a slam and saw this and it was SO SO GOOOOOD. Okay done.

Two more Battlestar Galactica episodes to go.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know what a nerd I am

I have fourteen forty-five to fifty minute episodes of season 2 to get through before season 3 of Battlestar Galactica premieres on Friday at nine.

Can I do it?

I AM DAMNED WELL GONNA TRY.

I'm thuper cool, I know.

Heh... I apologize for my previous nerdy ass post, but I liked the bit at the bottom that said I had scored higher than 99% of my peers on Dork, Nerd, and Geek....

... even if it is only because very few people have probably taken the test.

Anyway, last night was a night of procrastination! Woooo! Can I get an amen? No? Okay then. I'm not so much a fan of being awake at this early an hour, but I have class in half an hour, so it's really a necessary evil. Besides that, the Mingus that I am listening to makes it a little bit better.

I'm trying to remember why I sat down to write in the first place. It was probably mostly that I felt like griping and whining and making up for the last frothy procrastination post. Ah mothershittersonofanass... I just remembered that today is a day of work. I have a digital design project due upon the morrow. This one is, at least, far more exciting than the last. It includes PATTERNS and LETTER FORMS and really boring other things.

In any case, I can't get this file to open up in CS2.
It was an exercise for Illustrator, and I modified it in Illustrator 7, only now it refuses to be uploaded into CS2, which is FRUSTRATING because when I was working on it and imported it into Illustrator 7, it deleted ALL OF MY LAYERS, and I had to go back and create entirely new ones. Which doesn't sound too scary to those of you unfamiliar with the program, but LET ME ASSURE YOU THAT IT WAS A PAIN IN THE ASS. There I go again, complain complain. Heh... we used to make fun of anyone in my Spanish class who complained, and so we would use really really really bad Spanish and say "quejarse quejarse" and that just popped into my head.

Grr I should REALLY go to class. Enjoy your respective days, people.

This made me laugh. Real entry later, I promise.

Modern, Cool Nerd 69 % Nerd, 65% Geek, 34% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd. Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)! Congratulations! Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Professional Wrestling Love & Sexuality America/Politics Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness You scored higher than 99% on geekosity You scored higher than 99% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test