Weird Day

So far, weird day.

This morning at one of my jobs, a mother stopped in to say she wanted to be with her son while he had an appointment. Mind you, a college-age guy whose appointment was already half over. The mother became hostile and finally said that he has learning disabilities. So she got to sit in with him.

Then I get a call from a man who isn't and never was a student of the college I work for, but he wants help because he doesn't have internet and if I could look up body removal or mortuary transport services and get a number for him that would be great. I explained we help students with resumes, cover letters and job searching, but I'd give it a try. I couldn't find a number for him and I was thoroughly creeped out. Thankfully, the phone call ended soon after.

Next up: tutoring elementary-age Baltimore city school kids. Yesterday, out of four students, two threw their books to the floor and a third gyrated against a computer. ALL mouthed off.

This day should continue to be interesting.

And I have the Top Chef finale to look forward to tonight!

One More Blog in Before Class

Today hasn't been such a great day. I can tell by how hot/red my face feel. Arg!
I'm trying to rearrange some things in my life, and maybe being frustrated/anxious about that isn't helping the heat recede from my face.
Blah.

The only thing I can remotely think of to write that might be somewhat interesting (and that I can share with the public) is about Top Chef. The finale is this Wednesday and I guess out of the three left, Stefan, Carla and Hosea, I'll root for the underdog, Carla. She quirky and has a new-age mentality where she puts love into her food and a smile on her face, even when she's working in the back kitchen. Colicchio (a chef and judge) doesn't buy that kind if philosophy, but it seems to be working for Carla. She's in the finale, isn't she?
As for Stefan and Hosea, they should just whip out their junk and measure already! Damn.
My mom has this theory that Fabio was kicked off because the show needed an "asshole" or bad guy character around, so the judges kept Stefan. Maybe that is the case. A television show will do anything for ratings.
And a small little rant about that new British judge. Unless he's actually eaten cat food, he shouldn't be allowed to say someone's food tastes like cat food. Dumbass.

Cutting it close ...

So I've realized that I need to expand more on my project (number of pages and links) and that's a little hard because it's so simple. Basing my project on a song is funny, but I'm afraid that I might be dragging it out too much and it'll turn annoying. Maybe not.


I found some pictures of the puppet that Prince plays with in the movie. I'll be damned if they aren't selling copies of it on ebay. Serious, what does ebay not have? But to put a point on what is scaring me about this project is trying to draw.

Draw?

Yes, drawing. Unless I photoshop all the pics (I might) I had the idea to draw this puppet. Simple, right? It should be! But I haven't even tried yet.


Maybe because I already have these images in my head and if they don't come out exactly right then I am immensely disappointed.

Yeah, I gotta lighten up on this, huh?

I can't imagine how I would be if I had stayed in graphics communication class. Geez.







P.S. YES!!!! Kate Winslet won an Oscar, FINALLY!!! She's the BOMB!!! And I'm glad Heath Ledger won. I wasn't surprised, but it was still kinda shocking to hear his family give speeches.

Hugh Jackman!

I know I should be talking about my project, but the Oscars are too damn funny! I mean, actually funny. And I've fallen in love with Hugh Jackman all over again. The man can do it all.

Okay, so about my project, I've decided to not use the Homestar Runner characters and instead use a replica of the puppet that Prince had in the movie Purple Rain.
I'm guessing this doesn't make too much sense at the moment, but it'll all come together soon. And hopefully that won't be too last minute. Evolution takes so damn long, I'm beginning to realize ...

Today I went to B&N and my cheap ass actually bought books! I didn't spend as much as my friend (think in the hundreds, seriously) but I got three books: Coraline, The Road and a collection of short stories by Baltimore writers called Baltimore Noir.
Not that I need any more books, for the sake of Pete.

And it's freakin' cold! Cali girl can't hang!

Wow.

Seriously, "Wow" when I realize that not much is going on with me. Except work, classes, homework, Gizmo, and trying to maintain some "normalcy" overall.

I'm completely revamping my EP project. I had this idea to draw crayon stick figures, but this morning the characters of Homestar Runner reentered my life.
And why not use them? The stuff is free online and they make silly pencil drawings themselves. Those who know about Homestar might find it funny. Those that don't know, well, who cares? When/if anyone sees my site, they'll just think I made up some funny-looking characters.

I like this idea and am very glad I still have two more weeks until presentations. Not that two weeks doesn't go quick, and if I put it into some real perspective, I'm actually a week behind. Good Lord, a month and a half is already gone from this year!

Blah.

Books

I finished What is the What by Dave Eggers and damned if I didn't cry near the end. It just happened and was unexpected, considering that I thought there was some melodramatic writing at times.

So I'm reading another cheery book The Corner by David Simon. Hey, it's Baltimore, and I wanna know. I think this book is already more hopeful than Homicide and I'm finding it hard to do homework instead of reading. Oh damn, what a dilemma, right? I want to keep reading because this book deals with people who haven't already been murdered and still have a chance at turning things around. There are even pictures of these people! I feel personally invested, which hardly ever happens.

Or maybe I'm just being uber-sensitive to everything right now.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and I made chicken taquitos with corn tortillas, as they should be made. It took the longest time to find freakin' corn torts!
Oh and the two things have nothing in common, it just kinda happened that way.

In This Day and Age, Modesty Still Exists

I ushered for The Vagina Monologues tonight. The show started at 8 pm and I stuck around outside the auditorium for another half hour for any stranglers. At 8:30, I packed everything up and took it into the sound room. When I came out, an older black lady was sitting far from the auditorium doors, near the elevators.
"Are you here for the show?" I asked, putting on my coat.
She smiled and nodded.
"Do you need a ticket?"
"Oh, I have one."
"But the show's already started."
I stepped closer, putting on my scarf and hat.
"Oh yes, I was in there." She shook her head. "I can't stay in there. I can't listen to that."
I didn't know what to say and I fidgeted with my bag.
"Them talking about body parts like that," she added, "I can't abide it."
I recalled the dialogue I had heard when I was stepping out: " ... I remember the first time I saw it, all red and wrinkly and shiny. I couldn't believe it ..."
"My husband brought me here. He's still in there. He can watch it, but I can't. I just ... it's too much for me. Maybe I'm old-fashioned?"
My mind tried to come up with something comforting and all I could say was "To each his own."
"Yes, yes!" She sounded so happy to hear that. "That's it exactly. To each his own."
"Good night."
"You have a safe one."

Room for a Little Rant concerning Little Dogs

I'd like to state that not every little cute dog is NICE or DOCILE. They do not want to be stuffed in purses or paraded around in any other degrading way a la the Hilton Whore.

I will never allow another stranger to tell me, "Oh, I know how to handle dogs" and then have to pull my dog away so a fucking idiot doesn't lose a finger.

YOU'RE NOT THE DOG WHISPERER!!!! I don't give a fuck how many episodes you've watched! And FYI, my dog is a rescue dog who was with two other families before I got her (don't get me started on them). I'm not perfect and neither is she. She has improved and I'm still trying my damnest with her.

So if you want to keep your fingers or nose, ASK PERMISSION before petting ANY DOG.

TRUST the owner if the owner tells you, "My dog is in training, please don't pet her." And don't you dare give that accusing look or I might bite you myself!

And for Christ's sakes, don't allow your rugrats to run up to any dog!! DON'T assume, because the saying is true: ASS=U+ME! Put your damn kids on a leash, if need be!

Thank you, and for those of you who already knew better, an extra kudos!

"Go then, there are other worlds than these."

Infamous line by Jake Chambers from The Gunslinger.

Anyhoo, I can't find anything more on hypertext and Forking Gardens. It keeps leading to some other college course outline or some student's essay.
I do like how I'm remembering lines from King's series and how they link up with Borges' ideas. So many other worlds and paths that your head would burst!
Standing on the shoulders of a genius ...

I took an easy way out for the second part of homework and worked a song into a circular path. I used to read the Choose Your Own Adventure books and I'd get a headache trying to figure out how many paths were possible.

It isn't hypertext, but it's books that Borges could've written, but didn't. Yeah.

http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_hexagon.html

He also had this to say about making up books:
The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.
-- 10 November 1941

Forking Garden path I

I can beat myself over the head for not blogging sooner, but what good would that be? I feel like I barely have a grip on this story as it is ...

"The Garden of Forking Paths" felt like the story itself could change at any moment, and the ending was a surprise for me. It reminded me of The Gunslinger series by Stephen King because at one point the characters are unpredictable and don;t allow the reader to know what could happen next.
And I'll state that one thing I simply cannot abide is King going back over his books and making changes to them, then publishing them again. WTF?? To "better" them? No, no,no,no,no,no.
Could you imagine what would happen if every writer was allowed to do that?!

So I thought I would look at the further end of my Google search and instead found http://www.dysmedia.com/. This artist Douglas Cooper has his work online: writing, photography, lectures. If I had to make a site to pimp my work, it would be similar to his.
Oh, and this: http://www.donniedarkofilm.com.

Okay, back on Forking Gardens. I found this link:

http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/commentary2.htm

and it allowed me to click on highlighted words, which took me to different pages and sections of text ... but that was about it. I got bored rereading the story.
Hmph.
Will look some more ...

Work/Not at Home

I found this site after typing in "short stories" and I like it. The short stories are categorized and the website layout is easy to read. Pictures are shown next to brief descriptions of the stories as well as the page length and a rating system. Actually, two rating systems. One is for readers to give so many stars and the other is for Adult Content. Huh. I guess that's appropriate?
There's also word games!

http://www.short-stories.co.uk/


Bibliomania. The name alone drew me to it. This site is less flashy than the above one (lack of pictures) but the list of short stories is loooonngg. Yeah, like that long. It has a lot of old writers (Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry) while the link above has the newest short stories. The Bibliomania also has books, poetry and drama, and they're all Classics. Who can do without the Classics, right?

http://www.bibliomania.com/


Can I pause for a moment and just state the obvious? TONS of stories exist out there in this world. It's mind-boggling to fathom how my work can possibly stand out.

Now that I've gotten that depressing thought out of the way, let's move on! :)

So in my last blog, I rambled just a little bit, but I did mention http://www.salon.com/ and http://www.neilgaiman.com/. Salon.com gives the latest news as well as having an archive of its past published works. I guess I like it because my undergrad thesis professor Susan Straight has so much published on there.
And Neil Gaiman? Hell, he's Neil Gaiman! I'm mentioning him just because I can.

I gotta read Coraline before the movie comes out ...