Oh sweet disappointment....

WARNING: NERD FARE BELOW. I'm pretty sure this isn't worth reading, but if you're bored/you like scary movies carry on.

So, I've been searching for this one movie... combing the internet to figure out what it was for months. (I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have the poster on here, since it's copyrighted to the studio, but it links back to Wikipedia, sooooooo...)

Finally, today, I worked backwards through Wikipedia (ah, fine use of my time) until I FOUND IT. All I could remember was that there were five different stories... one involved a dead man whose wife wished for him to come back to life, which he did... after he was already embalmed, and she tries to re-kill him with a samuri sword, but he's doomed to live forever. The other was about a man who ran a home for the blind, but abused them until they put him in a dark basement full of razor blades and fed him to his own dog. Oh, and I distinctly remember a serial killer dressed as Santa Claus (and the little girl lets him in the house!).

It's got all Joan Collins in it, for whatever weird reason. Anyway, I'm so excited because it's like one of those puzzles you can't solve for days. And I couldn't find it even when I searched for "Tales from the Crypt" because the series got stupid after this one came out. However, all of my searching is for naught, because you can only get the stupid thing on VHS and I'm sure it will be at least 4 years before someone decides to put it on DVD.

Boooooo. This movie is awesome. And scary. And I'm glad I solved the puzzle, but I still won't get to see the movie unless my VCR magically resurrects itself. Boooooooo.

And yes, for whatever reason I did feel that this was worthy of going in my Blog. Yay Halloween.

ach-ay-double-ell-oh-double-ewe-double-ee-en

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Kacie took this picture of my pumpkin and it makes me SO happy.

We had a busy weekend carving pumpkins, carving more pumpkins and hanging out with Jared. Mat, Jared (plus the lovely Kakie), Meredith and a slew of other choir folk came to Shreveport for Rhapsody (Will's last!), and of course, Tacomania ensued, as well a night of weird gossip, which always happens.

Essentially, it was a good weekend.

And now it's Halloween AND my Dad's birthday, and I'm sure he'd just like everyone to know that Scorpios are FAR superior to everyone else and that checks can be made out to Howard Smith and mailed to our house.

Happy birthday Dad!

I'm currently dressed up for the Holiday as a hungry college-student/bookstore employee.

PAINT!

Holy crap. This video is seriously the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Watch it twice. you must have Quicktime.

http://www.bravia-advert.com/paint/thead/

my shirt is an extension of my personality

THREADLESS IS HAVING A $$$$$$$$$$ (that's ten dollars) SALE.

So, um, go forth and wear t-shirts. I don't think I'll ever stop loving t-shirts with witty/beautiful things on them. We live in an era of wearable, inexpensive art. What do supermodels and designers wear on their day off? The same damn t-shirts as rock stars and joe shmoes.

Why do people like it? Because everyone can participate (the poor are especially deft at this, being the original "Goodwill" shoppers) and you can go your whole life without seeing the same t-shirt on more than 3 different people, because there are billions out there and it's all about finding the one. A t-shirt is like a lover for every day of the year. In cotton.

Oh, and I cut my hair. (and that t-shirt isn't mine.)

put this hotdog train in gear

It's probably never a good idea to post while you have a migraine, but I'm going to. Because I'm just that (insert adjective here, because I can't think of one).

See? This is going well already!

No really, I want to post today because it's been an eventful week and next week is going to be a homework death trap.

Last week was fall break and after Tim and I went a-camping, I took my first-ever trip to Michigan to attend an "information festival" (read: conference) at the Thomson-Shore book factory. I'm sure "book factory" isn't the technical term, but their not publishers... they build books. It was nerd paradise.

I'm really not sure if I learned anything I was supposed to learn, that is, anything that will help me layout and create books for the Tintamarre, but I did learn about some of the finer points of desktop publishing AND... AND...

I got to see how books are made! We actually walked through the whole process from beginning to end, from .pdf file to actaully, honest-to-god, hold-it-in-your-hand, finished book. And oh, that glue smells funky.

These are three of the books I actually got to watch them create. The Mexico Reader is what they call "perfect bound" which really just means it's a paperback. The other two are "case bound" which means that they're hard cover. We got to see the covers printed; the binding covered and stamped with foil; the pages printed, cut, folded, sorted, sewn, glued, notched, bound, dried, pressed, nipped, sealed, boxed and on their way. It. was. so. cool.

I completely understand why books are so expensive. Every little decision they make, from the weight of the cardboard in the cover, to the specific way the pages are stuck together... each one of those decisions has to fit together and they all cost money and take time. Even if the machines that they use to make books are a mile long, there's still that one step that someone has to do by hand. Their foil stamper was a 75 years-old lady, for god's sake. It was crazy and awesome.

And it was nice to see fall, even if it was just for 2 days.

I got back and I had tests to take, which would have been a problem if I wasn't taking, um, two 101 classes. These tests are little like being tested on, say, different flavors of ice cream, or state capitals. If you don't slip into a coma, the test's not that hard. (That's not to imply in any way that I'm some sort of genius and I know everything: I still have to study, it's just that the information is not analytical ANY way. It's fact regurgitation, which is good preparation for "Jeopardy.") Ahab was married to Jezabel, Gregor Mendel studied peas, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

The comes Graveyard. I'll post photos if I get to a point where I can walk up the stairs without feeling like death and pain and death. As usual, Graveyard was AWESOME. Who doesn't appreciate a good costume party? It's more than that though, it's so awesome to have everyone you really like in one place, at the same time, all happy and crazy and dressed as inexplicable bizarre things you'll never forget (even if you can't really define them)?

Amy made Cider and a bunch of (old) people came over to pre-party at our house. David and Nate were old men. Mikey and Jason were Jay and Silent Bob. Kacie was a cat burglar. Amy was the Loveshack (a little old place where we can get together), plus tin roof hat. Kristin was a 70's pornstar. I have no idea what Parham and Evan were, but it was disturbing. Blake was a bad doctor. Steph was a devil. Seth was "the Dude" from The Big Lebowski, complete with rug and White Russian. Tim was Iraq and it was hilarious.

I was a skeleton and my right shoe hurt my foot. The shoe hurting wasn't part of the costume, it's just a fact of the matter.

It was a really great night. It seemed short (perhaps because the party got shut down), but it was still great. I think about the fact that I should have graduated last year, and therefore would have missed it, a lot. I'm fairly sure I'll be more-than-satisfied with just five Graveyards in my life, but I'm still glad I got just one more.

This brings us to yesterday, when I made pancakes for a bunch of boys and couldn't cure my headache as hard as I tried. Kristin and I played in a Scrabble tournament (OH MY GOD!), and didn't win any money, but we did get 53 points for playing "SHITTY" on a triple-word-score. Needless to say, our 12 year-old opponants didn't stand a chance. Then Tim and I went on a date to the arcade on the boardwalk, and won enough tickets at skiball (and other sillynesses) to get a ring, a sticker, and two suckers.

We talked about religion and the quest for knowledge and human nature. And then we went to Li'l Joe's and talked about it some more. I really love him. He's a cheap date and I think that talking to him makes me a better person. It's a good balance between taking care of my material need to not spend any money and my spiritual need to be alive and engaged with changing perceptions of reality.

I'm 97% happy. I just wish this migraine would go away.

Posted: I Brake for Unicorns

Nous faisons du camping. Ooh la la.

You know you've had a good trip when you come back with a camera full of pictures of Tim looking truly hilarious and almost terrifying.

Fall break is here (thank sweet baby Jesus) which means that Tim and I had to take another one of our absurd vactions, where nothing makes sense and nothing normal happens. This time we thought it would be even more exciting if we threw nature into the mix and went camping. It was my idea (sound of trumpets, hailing my excellent idea), and it would have turned out exceedingly well if winter hadn't started fifteen minutes after we got out of Shreveport.

Even with the disasters (water leaked in the trunk, soaking clothes, bedding, supplies, etc.; it was rainy and overcast until the day we left; Tim put raw meat in the water supply [don't ask]; we couldn't find the campground until it was too dark to see your hand in front of your face, let alone put up a tent; the campground didn't sell firewood... so on and so forth), it was definately the best weekend I've had all semester, and it's not even Saturday yet.

Hot Springs (Arkansas) doesn't have much to offer in the way of mountains--I'm sorry, I'm a mountian snob, my mountains will always be better than anyone else's (get your mind out of the gutter)--but it was still beautiful. And even though it was cold, it was sort of refreshing. We camped right by a little creek, complete with raccoons digging in the mud at night (they have sensitive paws, according to Animal Planet), and there was a trailhead not more than 150 yards away.

To add to the joys of shish kabob on the grill and sleeping in 7 layers of clothes on the cold, hard, wonderful ground, Hot Springs actually has-- TA DA!-- hot springs. It's nothing like Glenwood, where there's a giant pool, or Buena Vista, where you can go to the natural springs, here they have these bath houses where you buy a bathing package and it's like a spa. It started out as a way to cure people of their various ills using the "natural healing properties of the springs": in the museum they had an "electrotherapy bath" where an electrical current was shot through the water. The springs there put out something like 85,000 gallons of water a day. I don't know if that's a lot, but it sounds impressive.

Anyway, after freezing to death all day yesterday and hiking it out anyway, today was utterly cloudless and Tim and I went to the Buckstaff, the only remaining opperational bathhouse in Hot Springs. There's a men's floor and a women's floor and they basically wrap you in a sheet and then give you all these different water treatments (a mineral whorlpool bath, a sitz bath, a steam bath, a needle shower, hotpacks) and then you get a massage. It. Was. Spectacular.

And, I had a Rueben for lunch. Beat that.

Anyway, we're back in Shreveport, which is absolutely not fun in any way, because it means stupid things like laundry and dishes and homework, but I do get to go to Michigan on Sunday for a conference on book-making, which is nerd heaven. Heaven for nerds. So it ain't all bad. And who could be cranky about coming back to Shreveport when Tim has officially entered his "baby penguin hair" phase (see photo to the right), which is Kristin's favorite, as well as my own and it's highly portable--it's fun no matter where you are.

Oh, and I have to mention that I haven't cared about a TV show since Pirates of Dark Water came on Cartoon Network the summer between 7th and 8th grade, but Mikey and I-don't-know-who-else have got me hooked on stupid Grey's Anatomy, which I shouldn't admit because there are definately NO pirates and no Alex Trebec on that show. Not that Alex was on Pirates of Dark Water, but I digress...

Maira Kalman Rocks my Grammatical World

I got really excited today because Maira Kalman, this crazy, non-sequiter artist and designer from New York (aren't they all?) has an art blog on NY Times Select. I had really hoped to link to it from here because it's all existential and artsy. She embroiders quotations from Faust on pieces of linen table cloth a makes it look cool instead of agoraphobic, which is how I would picture someone who embroiders quotations from Faust on anything.

Kalman released this illustrated version of Stunk and White's Elements of Style. This is my favorite illustration, the title of which is "Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in." Which is maybe, maybe, a stroke of genius.

I suppose I'll settle with linking to her website (you can click on "Susan" to the get there, if you're thusly inclined). Enjoy, Susan.

I have no idea why I think Kalman is so cool. It's mostly when she combines her weird illustrations with words that things really get exciting. My favorite thing on the website is one page from her children's book, What Pete Ate, which says, "The Twinkle Twins have a dog named Twinkie. Twinkie may look insane, but she does not eat their things."

Again, no idea why I find the whole thing hilarious, but I'm sad that her blog isn't public domain. Though if you have Time Select, I think you should kill some time looking at it.